Where Love Has Gone (15 page)

and the baby crying.”

Still clutching the pillow and blanket, she went into the bathroom. Before I could move from my bed, I heard the door to the guest room slam shut. By the time I got there, she had already turned the key in the lock.

Slowly I went back to my own bed. Maybe it was all for the best. Let her get whatever was bugging her out of her system. Maybe by tomorrow night everything would be normal again.

But I was wrong. When I got home the next evening the workmen had already started redecorating the other bedroom and Nora had moved her clothing out of our closets.

I went downstairs and Charles gave me a message that Nora had gone downtown to have dinner with Mr. Corwin and several visiting Eastern art critics. I had dinner alone and worked in the den until eleven thirty, going over the access road plan for the project. Then I went upstairs and looked in on the baby, as I usually did before I went to sleep.

Dani was sleeping on her side, her tiny eyes screwed tight, her little thumb worrying the corner of her mouth. There was a noise behind me. I turned around. It was the nurse with the bottle.

I moved back and let the nurse pick her up. Dani found the nipple on the bottle without even opening her eyes.

“Let me give it to her,” I said suddenly.

Mrs. Holman smiled. She showed me how to hold the baby and I took Dani into my arms. She opened her eyes for a moment and looked at me. Then, evidently deciding I was trustworthy, she closed her eyes again and went back to work on the bottle.

I got into bed a little after twelve and Nora hadn’t yet come home. I fell into a restless sleep. I never did know what time she came home that night. I didn’t see her until I came home from work the next day. By then Nora’s mood had completely changed. She greeted me at the door, smiling. “I’ve got cocktails ready in the library.”

I kissed her cheek. She was wearing elaborate black hostess pajamas. “You look different,” I said, following her into the library. “Somebody coming for dinner?’

“No, silly. I just had my hair done.”

It looked the same to me. I took the drink from her hand. “You had a good day?”

She sipped at her drink, her eyes sparkling. “Wonderful! It was just what I needed. To get out and begin to be active again.”

I nodded, smiling. At least the storm had passed.

“I had dinner with Corwin and Chadwinkes Hunt, the critic, last night. They feel that the sooner I get back to work, the better. Scaasi told Sam he’d like me to have another show, no later than this fall.”

“Do you think you’ll have enough time to get ready?”

“More than enough. I’ve been sketching all day. I have a thousand ideas.” I held up my glass. “Here’s to your ideas.”

“Thank you.” She smiled and kissed my cheek. “You’re not angry about last night?” “No,” I said easily. “We were both a little wound up.”

She kissed me again. “I’m glad. I thought you might not like my moving into the other room. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. Mother and Dad always had separate rooms. It’s much more civilized.”

“It is?”

“Of course. Even though people are married they’re still entitled to a certain amount of privacy.” She looked at me earnestly. “Besides I think it preserves that little bit of mystery that is so important in any marriage.”

That was news to me. I’d never heard my parents complain about any lack of privacy. “What do I do when I want to get laid?”

“Now you’re being vulgar.” Then she smiled mischievously. “All you have to do is whistle.” “Like this?” I asked, raising my fingers to my lips.

“Stop. Charles will think you’ve gone mad!”

I finished my drink. “I’ll run up and wash my hands and look in on Dani.” I looked at her. “How was she today?’

“Mrs. Holman said she was an angel. Now, hurry and wash up. I had Cookie make a roulade of beef, just the way you like it, and I won’t have it spoiled. After dinner I thought you might come up and see how you liked my room. I had Charles leave an iced bottle of champagne up there.”

I began to laugh. So that was how it was done. Maybe she wasn’t as far out as I’d thought. I had to admit that it did add a pleasant little touch of the illicit to the whole affair.

Sometime in the middle of the night I said. “Won’t the servants think it kind of queer that with two bedrooms we wind up using only one?”

“You’re silly. Who cares what the servants think?”

“I really don’t,” I said, pulling her close to me again. “But I insist that tomorrow night you be my guest!”

But it was always in her room that we made love, never in mine. I always wound up having to cross the cold bathroom floor that lay between our rooms. I learned to turn the knob of her door slowly so that she would not hear me, for there were times when I found her door locked. There were times, too, when I fell across my own bed in exhaustion from my work and didn’t know whether her door was unlocked or not.

I began to feel like a man forced to turn into a one-way street that he knows can lead only to a dead end. I began to dread the rejection of that locked door. A few good jolts of bourbon before I undressed always seemed to ease the tensions so that I had no desire even to try the door.

I began the habit of giving Dani her midnight bottle and that seemed to help too. Somehow the softness of her filled a void inside me of which I had never really been aware. I would kiss her and put her back in her crib, then go to my room and find sleep.

On the surface everything was normal. Nora and I acted like any other married couple. We went out several times a week, were asked to parties, had our friends come to our house. She seemed everything a young bride should be. Loving and attentive.

But when it was time for bed, I’d make an excuse that I had some last-minute work to catch up on. I’d go into the den and have a few quick ones to give her time to go upstairs and fall asleep so that she wouldn’t know whether I tried her door or not.

If anything about this seemed strange to Nora, she never said a word about it. Time drifted by and she seemed content with the way things were. She was engrossed in her work, and several nights a week she went to art meetings or dinners. On other nights she would work in her studio, so that I never knew whether she came up to her room or slept in the small bedroom that she had fixed up down there.

Routine is a deadly thing. After awhile it seemed to me that this was the way it had always been and always would be. Like nothing.

What I didn’t know was that in her own peculiar dream-filled world Nora was almost as much afraid of me as I was of her.

She remembered the pain. The terrible tearing pain that seemed to move down from her stomach as the baby tore its way out of her. The pain and the bright white lights staring down at her from the soft green ceiling of the delivery room. Every color was clear and distinct. The blood on the white rubber gloves of the doctor. The black knob on the grey metal tank beside the anesthetist. It was always like that in her dreams. Even in that she wasn’t like other people. She dreamed in technicolor.

The doctor’s voice whispered reassuringly in her ear. “Bear down, Mrs. Carey. Bear down and it will all be over in a few minutes.”

“I can’t!” she tried to scream up at him but no sound escaped her lips. “I can’t, it hurts too much.” She felt the tears dribbling down from the corners of her eyes. She knew how they must look rolling down her cheeks. Like tiny sparkling diamonds.

“You must, Mrs. Carey,” the doctor whispered again. She could see the purple-red veins on the side of his nose as he leaned over her.

“I can’t!” she screamed again. “I can’t stand the pain. For God’s sake, do something or I’ll go out of my mind! Cut it up and take it out in tiny pieces! Make it stop hurting me!”

She felt the prick of a needle in her arm. She looked up at the doctor in sudden fear. She’d just remembered that he was a Catholic and Catholics believed in letting the mother die and saving the child. “What are you doing?” she screamed at him. “Don’t kill me, kill the baby. Please, I don’t want to die.”

“Don’t worry,” the doctor said quietly. “Nobody’s going to die.”

“I don’t believe you!” She struggled trying to get up but there were hands pressed against her shoulders holding her down. “I’m going to die. I know it. I’m going to die!”

“Count down from ten, Mrs. Carey,” the doctor said calmly. “Ten, nine—”

“Eight, seven, six.” She looked up into his face. He was getting all fuzzy around the edges. Like

in the movies when the picture was out of focus. “Eight, seven, six, five, four, seven, five, three.” The dark came up. The soft rolling dark.

13

__________________________________________

A sound coming from the studio next to the small bedroom in which she slept woke Nora. She sat up suddenly. “Is that you, Charles?”

Footsteps came to the door. It opened to admit Sam Corwin. “What are you doing in here?” he asked.

“I worked late last night.” She looked at her wristwatch. It was almost ten o’clock. It had been only five when she’d sprawled across the bed too tired even to take off her coveralls. “What are you doing up so early?”

Sam lit a cigarette. “I’ve got big news for you.”

She got to her feet wearily. She ran her fingers through her hair. It felt gritty and dirty. “What news?”

“Your United Nations sketch has been approved. Yours will be the only statue by a woman in the United Nations Plaza in New York!”

The weariness disappeared, displaced by a sudden elation. “When did you find out?” “An hour ago, Scaasi called me from New York. I came right over.”

She felt a surge of triumph. She had been right. Even Luke would have to admit that now. She looked at Sam. “Have you told anyone yet?”

He shook his head. “No. But we’ll have to get a release out this morning.”

She walked into the studio. “I want to tell Luke about it before he hears it anywhere else.” “Well,” he said, “it will be on the wires from New York by afternoon.”

“Then let’s tell him now.”

Sam followed her down the corridor to the foyer. Charles was just coming down the steps. “Has Mr. Carey left yet, Charles?”

“Yes, mum. He left shortly after eight o’clock, with the baby and Mrs. Holman.” “They went with him?” Nora exclaimed in surprise. “What on earth for?”

“He said something about it being his big day, mum. This is the day the first group of houses will be completed and there’s to be a ceremony. He left a message suggesting that you come out if you had the time.”

“Thank you, Charles. He did mention something about it. I had forgotten.”

The butler nodded and stood aside to let them pass. Sam followed her up to her room. He closed

the door behind them. “You didn’t know about it, did you?” She didn’t answer.

He looked around the room. For the first time he was aware that this wasn’t the room she shared with Luke. “What’s the idea of separate rooms all of a sudden? Is there anything wrong between you and Luke?”

“There’s nothing wrong.”

“Wait a minute,” he said softly. “This is your old friend Sam, remember? You can talk to me.”

Suddenly she was weeping against his chest. “Oh, Sam, Sam,” she cried. “You don’t know how horrible it all is. He’s sick. The war’s done something to him. He’s not normal.

“I don’t understand.”

The words came tumbling from her lips as if she could no longer keep them to herself. “You knew about his wound, of course? Well, it makes him want to do all kinds of crazy things.”

“Like what?”

“You know. Perverted things. He makes me do them. It’s the only way he can get stimulation. Without that he’s almost impotent! I don’t know what I’m going to do. Sometimes I think I’ll lose my mind.”

“I didn’t know he was wounded there. Did you suggest he see a doctor?”

“I begged him. But he just won’t listen. He tells me to mind my own business. All he wants is for me to have babies so that he can prove he’s a man!”

Nora pulled herself away and took a cigarette from a box on the table. Sam held a match for her. “He’s always doing things to annoy me,” she said. “He knows that the pediatrician told us not to take Dani out of the house. She has a cold. So he took her out there in all that muck and dirt and cold just to annoy me.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

She stared at him. “I’m going out there and bring her back. She’s my baby and I won’t let anybody, even him, harm her.” She somehow sensed Sam’s vague disbelief. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“I believe you.”

“Maybe you’ll believe me after I show you something.”

She turned and led him through the bathroom into Luke’s room. Dramatically she opened the small door of the night table beside his bed. “Look!”

His eyes followed her pointing finger. There were two full bottles of bourbon and one half- empty standing on the shelf. He looked at her in surprise.

“It goes on every night. He drinks, then he comes after me. Then he drinks again until he falls asleep in a stupor!”

She kicked the door shut and Sam followed her back into her room. He studied her silently for a

moment. “You can’t go on like this.” “What else can I do?”

“You can divorce him.” “No.”

The vague skepticism rose in him again. Suddenly everything seemed too pat, too well fitted together. “Why not?”

“You know as well as I. Mother doesn’t believe in divorce and would be terribly upset to have the family name dragged through the law courts.”

“And?”

She met his gaze steadily. “My baby. I’ve seen too many children maimed by a broken home. I don’t want anything like that to happen to Dani.”

He didn’t know whether to believe her or not. “I’ll go out to the project with you,” he said suddenly.

Nora looked at him in surprise. She had become so engrossed in the drama that she was creating that she had completely forgotten about going after Dani.

“To bring you and the baby back,” he said.

She smiled at him suddenly. He believed her. She knew that he believed her. And why shouldn’t he? The truth was obvious enough. She placed her hand on his arm. “Thank you, Sam. Go downstairs and have a cup of coffee while I dress. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”