Voices of a Summer Day (12 page)

Benjamin sat up, swung around, sat on the edge of the bed, his back to her. He saw his reflection in a wavy, dark antique mirror on the opposite wall. His body looked drowned in the gold-veined dim glass. His reflection reminded him of all the prizefighters he had seen who were losing, who were battered and outgunned and exhausted and who sat on their stools wondering if they could get through the next three minutes.

“Do I have to put my vote in the box this minute?” Benjamin asked.

“No,” Leah said. “I told John I’d give him an answer in a week.”

“A week,” Benjamin said. He stood up and began to dress. It had stopped raining. The rays of sunlight coming in through the divided curtains were steady and bright yellow now. There were splinters of gold all over the room, on the perfume bottles, on the glass of a framed print on the wall, on Leah’s breasts. Benjamin dressed in silence. There was a knot in the lace of his left shoe and he said, “Damn,” as he struggled with it. Leah didn’t move. Golden flecks came and went in her eyes as the curtains sighed in a flicker of wind and the sun’s rays shifted with the rustling cloth. This room is going to be here, Benjamin thought, she will be lying on that bed on other afternoons with the rain outside, and I won’t be here. Oh, damn, damn, damn, he thought. Then he had to smile, even the way he felt at that moment. One “damn” for a shoelace and only two more for such a shipwreck of love.

He brushed his hair neatly, settled his tie into his collar. In the mirror he looked unmoved, everyday, undamaged, a young man in correct clothes, making his way up in New York, a man who knew the right places to go, the right answers to give, the right people to love. In the mirror, late on a sunny afternoon in the changeable weather of May.

“In a week,” he said, when he was dressed and ready to go. He leaned over the bed and kissed her forehead. She looked up at him, unsmiling, her eyes open. “See you in an hour or so,” he said, and went out of the room, out of the apartment, and decorously down the staircase and into the noise of the traffic of the city, into the washed, brilliant evening air.

As he entered the crowded room with its mingled odors of fresh flowers, perfume, and gin, he saw Peggy’s face, and he knew he was going to get drunk that night. She was standing near the windows, which looked out over the East River. She was making a cocktail-party pretense of being amused as she listened to two men and a pretty girl talking around her. But her eyes were on the door, like a radar fix, waiting for him. When she saw him, there was a peculiar effect, which Benjamin had never noticed in other women, of something closing down—a flower bunching its petals against a storm, a window being shut and a blind drawn, an animal disappearing into its den, a book being closed in such a way that you knew the reader hadn’t liked the last page she had read. He waved to her, smiled. She didn’t smile back. She turned and smiled to the man on her right and talked animatedly. Actress, he thought. Why the hell do I have to put up with it? He took a martini from a waiter, in no hurry to go over to his wife, and kissed the hostess and shook Larry Rose’s hand and complimented him on the beauty of the female guests.

He took a good slug of the martini and started across the room. His body no longer felt weightless or victorious. Automatically he scanned the room to see who was there who could most advantageously be asked to dinner to serve as a buffer between Peggy and himself, to make Peggy postpone the fulfillment of the dark promise of her face at least until they got home.

For the moment, there were no guaranteed buffers. He would have to wait until he saw what other guests arrived.

“Ben…” He felt his arm being held and transferred the martini to his other hand. It was Susan Noyes Federov, Louis’ ex-wife, the first of three ex-wives his brother was to accumulate in his sentimental career. He turned and kissed her, false and friendly, on her cheek. Susan was a pretty woman with cleverly dyed chestnut hair and the dark, forlorn eyes of an Italian orphan. She had a full, tremulous mouth that even in laughter brought the word “defeat” to mind. “Ben,” Susan said, “is Louis coming?”

“No,” Benjamin said. “I don’t think so.”

“Is he happy?” Susan asked.

Benjamin considered the question. He knew what Susan meant. The field of inquiry, he knew, was narrow. Susan was not asking if Louis was happy because he was doing well in his work or because he had reached the semi-finals of a squash tournament or because he had made some money in the market or because a candidate he had voted for had won an election. When Susan asked, “Is he happy?” what she wanted to know was whether Louis was happy with the woman who had taken her place. And that was all. She also knew what answer she wanted to hear and so did Benjamin. He was not heartless enough to tell her that Louis was very happy indeed with his bride of three months. The tremulous mouth would tremble, the orphan eyes would remember the losses of a calamitous life. Benjamin shrugged. “It’s hard to tell,” he said.

“I talked to him last week. On the phone. You know, he refuses to see me. Even for lunch,” Susan said. “Even though we have so many matters we have to talk about. I know he wants to see me. And I know who keeps him from doing it.” A significant ex-wifely twitch of the soft, hurt mouth. “He sounded tense, Ben. Awfully tense. I’m worried about him. I think he ought to go to a psychiatrist. I have the name of a very good man. He should at least go and
talk
to the man. Don’t you think he ought to go to a psychiatrist?”

“Maybe we all ought to go to a psychiatrist,” Benjamin said. He finished his martini and reached for another off the waiter’s tray. As soon as people start thinking about a divorce, he thought, they invite each other to go to a psychiatrist.

“It’s
your
brother,” Susan said reproachfully. “It has nothing to do with me. Any more. But you ought to take an interest. He’s on the verge of cracking up.”

“Is he?” Benjamin said. “I’ll check.”

“I don’t like to say this, Ben,” Susan said, holding onto his arm, “but you’re a hard family. There’s something very cold about both of you. You’re both the same. Attractive. And cold. I suppose it’s your mother’s fault.”

“We’ve told her so,” Benjamin said. “Many times.”

“You’re just like him.” She looked as though she was going to cry before the next martini. “You’ll joke about anything.”

“We
are
awful, Sue,” Benjamin said. “We remind each other of it every day.” God, he thought, how brilliant it was of Louis to get rid of this one.

“I’m just happy I’m out of it, that’s all,” Susan said. “Oh—” She was looking past him, toward the door. “Here comes your Grand Passion.”

Benjamin took a sip of his martini, making himself do everything slowly, then turned to see what sort of man Leah was considering marrying. But it wasn’t Leah. It was a girl by the name of Joan Parkes, an extravagantly bronzed, extravagantly dark-haired, extravagantly curvy girl who dressed outlandishly, using African ornaments or dresses that looked like saris or tight-bodiced calico frocks with hippy skirts or Austrian dirndls. She was brainless, neurotic, and irresistible, at least for Benjamin, and he had pursued her for three months two years before, at a time when Leah had been away from the city. He had pursued her out of simple, straightforward, helpless lust, and he recognized from the way he felt as he saw her billow into the room that he hadn’t changed appreciably since then. He had never even kissed her. He had taken her to the theatre, he had taken her to dinner, he had taken her to art galleries and concerts, he had even taken her to Virginia for a weekend, and she had never even let him kiss her. She didn’t have affairs with married men, she said. This wasn’t even true. He knew of at least two married men with whom she had had affairs. What was true was that she wouldn’t have an affair with
him.

“Never laid a hand on the lady,” he said to Sue, to keep the record straight.

“That isn’t what people say,” said Sue.

“People say the earth is flat, too,” Benjamin said. There was no hope of explaining his relations with Joan Parkes to his brother’s ex-wife. There wasn’t even much hope of explaining his relations with Joan Parkes to himself.

Still, he was pleased to see her. Almost automatically, knowing that Peggy was watching him and accumulating future points for debate, he drifted toward Joan. This evening she was dressed in yards of what looked like pink gauze to his untrained eye, and she was wearing something Mexican as jewelry in her hair. She was with an English movie actor whom Benjamin knew. The movie actor was an amusing man, full of all sorts of wild anecdotes, impossible to have a serious conversation with. As Benjamin approached the couple, making his way slowly, he decided that they were just the people to invite out to dinner with him and Peggy that night. His lack of success with Joan made him feel righteous and innocent about sitting down at the same table with her and his wife, and the movie actor could be counted upon to keep the conversation well away from domestic subjects.

He said hello to Joan, without touching her, and shook the actor’s hand. “What’s that in your hair?” he asked Joan.

“Don’t you like it?” she said. She had a childish voice and the remnant of a lisp.

“I like it very much,” Benjamin said. “I’m just curious to know what it is.”

“It’s an Aztec abacus, old chap,” the actor said. “Surprised at your ignorance. What else does a girl wear to a cocktail party? Where on earth did you go to school?”

Both men laughed. Joan touched the decoration in her hair with dignity. “You’re all the same,” she said. “You want me to look like everybody else.”

“You couldn’t look like anybody else if you tried for a hundred years,” Benjamin said.

“I don’t know whether you mean that as a compliment or not,” Joan said. “You’ve been so
hostile
recently.”

“When Joan uses the word ‘hostile,’” Benjamin said to the actor, “she means you haven’t called her at least three times a day for the last two months.”

“You’ve changed,” Joan said accusingly. “You don’t court me any more. You’ve become distant.” She was joking, he knew, but only half-joking. She didn’t want him, but she didn’t want him to quit, either.

“Imagine being distant with Joan,” the actor said. “In Britain it would be against the law.”

“All right,” Benjamin said, “I’ll be less distant. You’re both invited to dinner after this is over.”

“You
are
dear,” Joan said, touching his arm, everything in order again, the invitations steady and dependable. They arranged to signal each other when they thought they could politely leave.

Benjamin started toward the window, where Peggy was still standing, still talking animatedly to the same people. Then he saw Leah come in, accompanied by a tall, slender man with a gentle Yankee face. Every hair was in place on Leah’s head, her makeup was flawless but unobtrusive, the body, naked and warm on the bed in the gold-flecked room only an hour before, now shaped coolly into a black silk dress that showed a wide oval of creamy skin at the shoulder. There was just the faintest quick hint of a smile in her eyes as they met his. He examined the man as the couple approached. Stafford, unfortunately, was one of the handsomest men alive, as Leah had promised, and the pain was compounded by the obvious air of goodness and humor on the long, thoughtful face. As Benjamin watched Stafford coming across the room toward him, lightly holding Leah’s elbow, Benjamin knew that Leah had meant what she said when she had told him she was going to marry the man—if.

One week.

She introduced them to each other. Stafford’s hand was dry and hard, the hand of an athlete.

“Leah tells me you’re a tennis player,” Stafford said. His voice went with his face and figure, mannerly, quiet, pleasant.

“I stumble around the court,” Benjamin said.

“Don’t believe him, John,” Leah said. “He’s wildly vain about his game.”

Stafford laughed. “Leah’s seen me play, too,” he said. “She says we’d make a good match.”

Benjamin glanced quickly at Leah. The glint of malice and amusement he had expected to see in her eyes was there, as expected.

“We ought to get together and play,” Stafford said. “Are you free on Tuesday? Around five?”

Benjamin looked at Leah again. Tuesday, somehow, had become one of the days on which they usually made love. “I’m sure you can play on Tuesday,” Leah said. “Every time I call your office on Tuesday they tell me you’re out for the afternoon.”

“Yes,” Benjamin said. “Tuesday’s fine for me.”

“I’ll call you Tuesday morning,” Stafford said. “See what the weather’s like. Leah has your number, I imagine.”

“I imagine,” Benjamin said. “Speak to you on Tuesday.”

Finally he went over to the window. Susan was talking to Peggy now. Giving a bad rap, Benjamin thought, to all the male members of the Federov family, plus whatever relevant rancor she had left over from her divorce from Louis. As Benjamin approached his wife, he saw that Peggy was looking off to where Joan and her actor were chatting with Leah and Stafford. Peggy’s face was even more firmly shut than when she first saw Benjamin enter the room.

“Good evening, dear.” He kissed Peggy’s cheek. Her hair smelled fresh and springlike. He loved the smell of her hair and he was surprised to realize that he could notice things like that, even when he was annoyed with her, as he was that evening.

“Did you have a good lunch?” Peggy asked.

“Uhuh.”

“How was the tennis?”

“It rained,” Benjamin said. “Didn’t you see?”

“I was home all day,” Peggy said. Her tone was as closed-in as her face.

“I was telling Peggy,” Susan said, “that I thought Louis ought to go to an analyst.”

That wasn’t all you were telling her, dear, Benjamin thought, looking at his wife’s face.

“She agrees,” Susan said.

“Peggy’s a fanatic believer in Freud,” Benjamin said. “In reaction to her father, you know.”

“You don’t take me seriously,” Susan said bitterly. “You never did. Don’t think I don’t know. And don’t think part of what happened isn’t your fault.” She walked away, ready for tears.