Everything and More (57 page)

“His face was so terribly drained,” Mrs. Cunningham repeated with an anxious shudder. “Like putty.”

“Mother, after major surgery one cannot expect rosy cheeks.” As Althea spoke, she regretted her impatient flipness. But she was raw-nerved from waiting out the five-hour surgery and from the pain of her deeply troubled filial love. Besides, her mother’s breathy voice had always irritated the hell out of her.

It was not quite three in the afternoon and rain slashed down with tropical intensity as they returned from the hospital. Beyond the glass panel, Ossie, Belvedere’s new black chauffeur, held his graying head rigorously forward as he negotiated the water racing through the gutters that at every crossing balked the Silver Cloud.

Mrs. Cunningham’s jaw worked. “Your father always had such marvelous color.”

“Let us not use the past tense.”

“He looked so awful. . . . Do you think we ought to call Charles out?”

“No need for that, Mother.” Althea’s fingers itched to give a reassuring pat to the large, soft hand, but the eternal trauma marred even this time of shared anxiety. Muddy water spattered the windows, and she said, “And let’s not borrow trouble. I, for one, believe the learned surgeons when they told us they had gotten all of the malignancy.”

*   *   *

The next few days Mr. Cunningham lay morbidly listless, bleached of color and spirit, recuperating at an insidiously slow pace. He had always viewed himself as all of a piece, a gentleman in heart, mind, intellect, body. From now on he would evacuate through a bag taped to his abdomen, a scarred, maimed pensioner to the Coyne millions: that his wife remained at his bedside, solicitously performing every small task for him before either of the private nurses could move, inexplicably added to his horror of himself.

Even more telling was his daughter’s presence.

In normal health, he was able to consider their bond as purely that of father and beloved only child, but now, in his drugged weakness, her face and body blurred, forcing him to peer through a grim, dark veil beyond which wavered the shadowy outline of his anguish.

He would thrash to another position.

*   *   *

Five evenings after the surgery, as mother and daughter were being driven home to Belvedere, Mrs. Cunningham said, “Your father’s worse when you’re in the room.”

Althea went hot with mortification. “You don’t say.”

“Althea.” Mrs. Cunningham gripped the leather armrest. “We both want what’s best for him, dear. I’m only pointing out he will recover more quickly with less company.”

“Far be it from me to impede his progress. I’ll stay clear of the hospital premises. Or should I be banished from the city, too?”

“Your father enjoys seeing you.”

“You just said he didn’t.”

“Why must you take on like this?”

“Daddy wants me, is that it, but you’d rather not have me around?”

Mrs. Cunningham turned her large, homely face. She was a Coyne, with the Coyne tenacious strength, she worshiped her husband, she rejected the daughter who was her rival, and in this one instant it all showed. “It’s best if you’re not there quite so much.”

Althea drew a trembling breath. How, she asked herself, her mind prancing painfully, could this buck-toothed, unimpressive woman change her back into a helpless child, a victim?

“Quite so, then, Mother. As you say. One peek in the door, one bright, loving, daughterly smile, and then I’ll fold my tent and silently steal away.”

*   *   *

“I want to go to Blum’s,” she repeated.

“I heard you the first two times,” Gerry said. “But we agreed not to hit any of the Beverly Hills places.”

“When I made that agreement, I wasn’t dying for a coffee-crunch sundae.”

“Why are you being such a cunt?”

“I wasn’t aware that eating a coffee-crunch sundae indicated anatomy.”

“Blum’s is only a couple of blocks from Patricia’s—”

“I grew up in Beverly Hills, dear heart, I don’t need road maps.”

“A lot of the broads who work with Roy eat there,” he said wearily. “She thinks I’m in Bermuda. She couldn’t take knowing I’m here and not in touch.”

“Aren’t you the protective husband.”

They were parked in Althea’s Jaguar just north of Sunset Boulevard, where they could see the lights of rush-hour cars moving in rhythmic waves with the traffic signals.

“Althea, did he have a setback, your father? I thought he was getting better.”

“He is.”

“Then what’s bugging you?” he asked, gently passing his hand over the sleeked-back skeins of bright hair.

“Ahh, Gerry, Gerry.” The streetlight cast a desperate glint on her large hazel eyes as she turned to kiss him full on the mouth, pressing her tongue between his lips, insinuating her body against his. He groaned, pulling her closer, and she reached down, feeling his erection. She unzipped his fly, slipping down onto the floorboards to take his hot, straining flesh in her mouth.

It was the first time since Oaxaca that she had initiated a blow-job.

*   *   *

“The red of the stripe in the Galanos is the perfect match for this Originala coat,” Roy said, hanging the two garments on a rack. “There’s several large scarves with the red, black, and white, if the customer asks. And black patent pumps—I prefer the Ferragamos.”

“Matching shoes are what everyone wants for summer,” said Margot Lanskoy. “What about having them dyed?”

“There’s a red patent Delman sling pump that should be good,” contributed Mrs. Sanderson, a trim older woman.

“The dyed-to-matches are peau de soie, and that’s too dressy. The same goes for the Delman, with that diamante buckle.” Roy’s warm smile showed she was not rebuking either of the suggestions.

“Now, Roy,” said Mrs. Fineman from near the door. “Don’t be such a purist. Let’s at least take a look at the Delmans.”

It was 9:15 on a Thursday morning, and in Patricia’s cavernous, rack-filled dress stockroom, eighteen smartly dressed saleswomen were seated on folding chairs around Roy and her display of outrageously expensive summer clothing. On a rolling cart were a large aluminum coffee urn, a quart carton of half-and-half, used cups, and the richly scented remains of a big platter of Bailey’s schnecken.

These Thursday breakfast meetings had been inaugurated by Roy a couple of years ago. At first there had been much grumbling at having to come in an hour early. Roy’s formerly undeviating popularity
had wavered briefly, but the sales staff received a one-percent commission: now the women entered enthusiastically into these seminars on assembling and accessorizing—a profitable and demanded aesthetic service that the rigidly departmentalized larger stores like Saks, Magnin’s, or Bullock’s Wilshire were unable to perform.

A stock clerk brought out a shoe box.

Roy placed the buckled, gleaming red pumps under the Galanos. “Far too dressy,” she said decisively.

Everyone, including Mrs. Fineman, nodded. Roy had developed an unusual fillip in her assemblages, and the Patricia’s staff respected her opinion. “Let me ask Mrs. Horak what she thinks” resounded commonly in the airy, elegant fitting rooms.

*   *   *

The meeting was over, and only Roy and Margot Lanskoy remained in the stockroom, Roy writing up the numbers for each completed outfit on three-by-five cards, Margot finishing a third cup of coffee.

“You never mentioned your husband was back,” said Margot, smoothing gray silk pleats over her narrow flanks.

“Gerry?” Puzzled, Roy turned to the older woman. “He’s in Bermuda, painting.”

“Then he must have a double,” said Margot. Everyone in the store had accepted that Roy’s husband had walked out on her and, liking her, had designated this “Don’t-Bug-Roy-Horak Month,” but Margot, a fiftyish recent divorcée pressed for the first time into the Beverly Hills labor force, had a limited capacity for sympathy. She added, “I saw a man but exactly the image of him at Blum’s.”

A hot, formless fear swept over Roy. “Was he in a booth near yours?”

“Not really close, no.”

“Then it could have been anyone.”

“You know me, farsighted as an eagle. This guy was an absolute dead ringer for your husband.” Margot’s darkly painted mouth formed a smile. “I must say I’m delighted he’s in Bermuda, absolutely delighted.”

“What are you trying to say, Margot?”

“If I don’t tell you, somebody else will. A tableful of us saw them.”

“Them?”

“A week ago, it was April 17, this man, whoever he is, was there with a good-looking blonde wearing custom Chanel. Fortia thinks she knows her from
Vogue.”

Endless anticipation does not lessen the extremity of horror a
condemned prisoner feels as the gallows trap is sprung underfoot. Jagged pain encompassed Roy’s mind.

He’s here with Althea.

I promised him I’d try to work it through, and he’s lied to me. He’s not in Bermuda. He’s here and never even phoned me.

Until now Roy had managed a clean split in her life. She had separated the weepy nighttime drunk from the self-assured daytime assistant manager of Patricia’s. But now her every nerve was screaming, and she thought: If I don’t have a drink I’ll die.

Leaving the stockroom and Margot Lanskoy, she found herself at her desk reaching inside the top drawer for her purse. She mumbled an excuse about the onset of the twenty-four-hour flu to Mr. Fineman. Normally she never left the parking lot before six, and the attendant had to juggle cars so she could back out the Thunderbird, her engagement present.

She had never gotten sozzled to the point of passing out. But when she got home, she did. Score another first for Roy Horak.

When she came to, her neat Early American parlor was plunged into darkness and a nasty, persistently repetitive sound vibrated. It took several jangles before she realized the phone was ringing.

She fumbled for the light switch. Gerry’s big, smooth paintings whirled around her and everything in the room seemed out of whack, as if she wore distorting lenses. Holding on to the backs of chairs, she shuffled her way to the noisy black instrument.

“So you
are
there, hon,” NolaBee said. “I’d just about given up. I let it ring and ring, and then reckoned that you’d gone out for a bite of supper with one of the girls at Patricia’s.”

“No, I was washing my hair.” Roy’s dishonest tongue felt swollen. A horrible sourness pressed behind her uvula. I’ll barf if I don’t lie down, she thought, carrying the phone back to the couch.

“You sound so funny. You all right?”

“I came home early with a splitting headache,” said Roy, stretching out.

“Taken aspirin?”

Lying flat, rather than alleviating the whirl of nausea, intensified it. “Mama, I’ll call you back.”

She staggered to the bathroom just in time. When she had finished vomiting, she sat trembling on the cold linoleum.

Gerry’s here in Beverly Hills.

He invented that lie about Bermuda and the Winslow Homer light.

He’s cut me out of his life forever.

The sharp pain that guillotined her at eye level had become intolerable.

Shoeless, in her white lace-and-nylon slip, she returned to the living room. A tumbler and fifth of Gilbey’s sat on the floor next to the couch. The gin was gone.

On the kitchen shelf remained only some ornately bottled liqueurs.

She gulped at the maroonish liquid, which smelled like Syrup of Figs, then bore the bottle back to the couch, setting it down by the Gilbey’s.
Lost Weekend
time, she thought. Next I’ll be hiding the empties in the chandelier, except I don’t have a chandelier.

Her titter ended with a sob.

The liqueur, instead of bringing a blessed nirvana, stoked up her mental processes until her panic at Gerry’s ultimate rejection became a physical need for action, any action.

She picked up the phone, setting it on her chest over the nylon lace of her slip.

The numerical sequence of thousands of teenage calls came automatically to her index finger.

“Althea?” she asked thickly.

“Mrs. Wimborne is not home,” said the remembered chilling accent of the butler—what was his name?

Roy shivered before she said, “Then I’ll speak to Mr. or Mrs. Cunningham.”

A pause. Then: “Who may I say is calling?”

“Roy Hor—Roy Wace.”

“Ahh, yes. A moment, please.”

She could smell the sourness on her, a depraved, ugly odor.

Mrs. Cunningham’s voice greeted her, but Roy did not hear the words. Into her drunken, bereft anguish had come a petulant dart of resentment toward the dowdy multimillionairess who was Althea’s mother.

Words, like her recent vomit, flowed in a racking spasm.

“Your daughter’s a bitch. A bitch, bitch, bitch!” she cried. “A fucking, stealing, conniving bitch. She’s got her sharp hooks into my husband. He’s an artist, Gerry Horak—”

“Who?”

“Gerry Horak, he’s famous and a genius, a real genius. What does a rich society bitch like her know about genius? He’s absolute Greek to her, she doesn’t understand a thing about him. What does she know about anybody? She only uses people to prove she’s better than they are. All she wants with Gerry is the proof she can take him away from me. Well, she can’t! Not with all your Coyne millions. Gerry’s not interested in money, he’s a real artist—”

“Roy, this is no time to talk.” The voice at the other end was hushed, anxious, almost pleading.

“So she’s trapped him with her body. Well, you tell her from me, she’s not going to get away with it!”

“I’m going to hang up.” There was a click.

“He’s married to me, I’m Mrs. Gerrold Horak! You tell her that I’ve changed my mind about working out a divorce, tell her that I’ll never let him go! Never, never, never.”

Roy was weeping in the unnumbable pain of bitter loss, she was weeping in agonized, drunken self-loathing. What had she said? She couldn’t remember.

How could I have screamed like that at Mrs. Cunningham? Mother raised me to be a Fairburn, a Roy, a Wace, she raised me to have nice manners.

She dropped the receiver and her half-clad, grief-convulsed body staggered like an unprogrammed robot into the bedroom. She fell across the quilted chintz spread. Once she had shared this bed with Gerry, once she had awakened in the night to feel the scalding warmth of his naked body next to her.