Fortune's Hand (7 page)

And inwardly she cried, protesting, I never knew she existed! I would not have looked at him a second time if I had known. Oh God, it's so ugly and so sad. What will happen?

One Sunday afternoon she brought Robb, who was reluctant, to meet her father. He had protested, “I don't want to show myself in your house under false pretenses, Ellen.”

“I haven't said a word about you, and I won't without your permission. You're merely a friend.”

In the “little” parlor the bull's-eye mirror, for all its quaint distortion, had reminded Ellen of a Victorian tintype that might have been entitled:
Young Man Asking for a Young Lady's Hand
. They were paying no attention to her, so engrossed were the two men in their conversation.

It was a good omen. They had met immediately on common ground, where words like “justice,” “commitment,” “scrupulous” and “ethical” were in use. Amused, she had reflected that such words would hardly be part of the daily vocabulary among Wall Street moguls, or for that matter, among those who illustrate books.

Her eyes had returned to the mirror. Although there was little physical resemblance between her father and Robb, there was a startling correspondence of manner, of voice and posture. She sought for adjectives. Old-fashioned? Elegant? At any rate, to say the least, impressive. Worthy of respect.

And thinking so, the last qualms that lingered in her mind had departed, the last faint fear that a fleeting
infatuation might have been mistaken for something durable. No, not on Robb's side nor on her own.

There was an ordeal ahead of him. He was not a man to lightly break the bond he had made with the other woman—he had shown that he was not. That was how she thought of her: “Other Woman.” To say, even in thought, the name “Lily” was to draw the outline of a picture, to draw a person out of anonymity and clothe her with features: eyes, hair, body, and voice. Having clothed this particular person in that way, the rest must follow: her preparations for the imminent wedding, the home, and the children they would have. Then the shock and the suffering.

Her father had stood up and was shaking Robb's hand. “It's been a pleasure to talk with you. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some papers waiting in my study. They wait for you even on Sunday, as you'll find out before long.”

She recalled every detail of that meeting. “A fine young man,” Dad had remarked afterward. So now she was about to break a promise.

“I am in love with Robb. Perhaps you've guessed. I love him.”

“I wondered a little, I admit. How long have you known him?”

“A few months.”

“That's not very long, is it? Not long enough to be sure, I think.”

“I am sure, Dad. I know that I am.”

“Yes,” her father said, giving her one of his long,
appraising looks. “I do believe you are. But don't be hasty. Don't let things move too fast.”

Things
. Sex, he meant, although he would never say so. To her mother, Ellen had always spoken freely. But a father was different. Perhaps Mom had told him that she was still a virgin. Virgins were growing rare in the nineteen seventies. But she had wanted to wait for somebody irresistible. Now that she had found him, the pity was that they had no place for privacy. Robb's rooms were in full view of Eddy and Walt, which meant that everyone else would know. Modern or not, you didn't want to be the tasty new topic in your community's mouth. If only he could solve the problem soon! Finish the chapter with the Other, and close the book.

“He would be perfect for your office,” she said.

Her father smiled. “Hey, not so fast.”

“You've been looking for someone, and you said you liked him.”

“It's far too soon. You are not even engaged, and you may never be. Anyway, bring him around again. I'd like to know him better.”

And so Robb was invited to dinner one Friday. When Ellen went to call for him and rang the bell, there were voices on the other side of the door. When he opened it, she saw a woman sitting on the sofa in back of him, and then she saw his horrified eyes.

For God's sake, don't
, the eyes implored.

“I'm sorry. I must have the wrong address,” she said quickly, and withdrew.

So that was the Other, all cozy in the corner of the sofa. She must have surprised him by appearing today.
Ellen was furious, yet at the same time aware that she had no right to be. Instead of going home, she went to the movies, where, consumed with jealousy, she sat before the talking images without seeing them or hearing a word they said.

“I had no idea,” Robb told her on the telephone that night. “When I got home from the law library, she was sitting on the step. I didn't know what to do. You were expected here in fifteen minutes.”

“Well, just what are you going to do? She can't very well go home right now, can she? She could have let you know she was coming.”

“Don't be angry with her. Don't hate her.”

“I don't hate her. I only hate the situation.”

His heart was crashing against the wall of his chest. “She's been touring the shops all day for—for things. I'm at a pay phone in the drug store. I went out for aspirin. And I have to go back. Ellen, please. Please help me, just this once.”

He hung up and walked back to where Lily was waiting for love. And he no longer had that kind of love to give her. How was that possible? But it had happened. It had dimmed like a bulb going out, evaporated like a bowl of water in the summer sun. Now she was a friend, a cousin, even a sister, to be held dear and guarded from tears. I must, I must tell her the truth, he thought for the hundredth time, but not today. Here, away from her home, was not the place to bludgeon her with this news and let her flee back in the bus with her pain.

“How is your headache?” Lily asked.

“The same. By tomorrow, it'll be gone. I get them sometimes, so I know.”

“You didn't used to get them. Maybe it's your eyes, from reading so much.”

“I don't think so.”

He wished she wouldn't deepen his guilt with her concern.

“You'd better go in to bed. I'll read a little out here and I won't wake you when I come in.”

The way he was feeling, sleep would be impossible. But she insisted, so he obeyed, to lie for what seemed like the entire night composing and discarding the speech, the explanation, the apology that decency demanded of him.

In the morning he announced a conference with a professor.

“On Saturday?” Lily's whole body pleaded.

“It's often the only time,” he lied.

Her disappointment was tangible. He could have reached out and felt it on her skin.

“I'll only be an hour,” he promised, “or not much more.”

In the library there was thick silence intermittently broken by a cough or the squeak of a chair. He wondered whether there could be any of the others working there who were tortured as he was this morning.

Lily was still in her nightdress and robe when he returned. “I started to get dressed, but then I got to cleaning your refrigerator. Not that there was much in it,” she said, and laughed. “Anybody'd think you were
on a hunger strike.” She paused. “Well, I guess I'll get myself dressed.”

He knew what was expected of him. It had been many weeks since they had been together in a private place. If anyone had told me, he thought, that I could be here like this and feel nothing, I would have said he was crazy.

She was removing the robe and gown. He did not know why he suddenly thought of a little bird: perhaps it was because of her fragile shoulder blades. Without looking, he would have known how deftly she would set aside the pink silk pile of clothes and turn toward him, ready to run into his open arms.

There was no way now to refuse. He undressed and put his arms around her. Or had he merely allowed her to direct the embrace? He was starting to feel a surge of panic. Ah, poor Lily! And poor me! They lay down. He heard her murmur,
“How I love you!”
And still he felt nothing, nothing but the panic and the sorrow.

He opened his eyes. There in that corner by the chair had stood the girl with the green eyes. Oh Ellen … She had watched him first unfasten the buttons and then the lace that held her breasts; it was that one time, that one time only, begun and not completed; how long would he have to wait? Oh now, now. Ellen …

There was no way Lily could have known and yet she knew something.

“You're not yourself,” she said.

“Of course I am. What's different about me?”

“I can't say exactly, but I feel something.”

It was the third or fourth time she had made the remark that endless day. He had taken her out for lunch at one of Eddy's favorite, too-expensive restaurants. They had window-shopped, bought a book she had been looking for, and strolled in the park. The wintry afternoon was melancholy. Dead, soggy leaves lay on the sidewalk, and the city seemed to be staying at home, out of the wet, gray mist. Melancholy overlay all the other emotions at battle within Robb.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he said.

“It's hard to explain. Maybe—well, you haven't said anything real. Maybe that's what I'm feeling.”

“Real” was plans and dates. And it was true that he had mentioned none of these. He had spoken only in generalities, all pleasant enough but not what she wanted and what she deserved.

Trying to stifle his irritation and not succeeding, he replied, “I'm sorry I haven't been entertaining.”

“You're being awfully mean to me, Robb. You know that's not what I meant.”

“Well, it sounded that way.”

“Perhaps I ought to go home,” Lily said. “I had planned to stay over till Sunday, but perhaps you want me to leave now.”

“Of course I don't want you to, but it's your decision. If you're not satisfied—”

He wasn't going to beg her. Maybe it would be better if she did go. He wasn't doing her much good, although he had tried.

They walked back to collect her things, after which he took her to the bus. It was already evening; rain had
begun, and it would be a dreary night by the time she reached home. He was filled with contrition. Lord, don't let her cry, he begged.

She would not speak to him. He helped her onto the bus and waited at the curb for its departure. The door had been shut, so it was too late for him to leap on at the last minute to tell her—tell her something. He tried to get her attention, but she was staring straight ahead, although she must have seen his frantic wave. When the bus lurched away, he stood looking after it, then down at the dirty green swirl of oil in the puddle it left behind.

“So that's what happened,” he said to Ellen.

“The whole story?”

“She phoned me the next morning. She apologized—she apologizing to me! She should have understood that I wasn't feeling well, she said, and should have tried to cheer me up.”

“I don't know.”

Ellen's tone at the other end of the telephone was hopeless, so that he imagined her throwing up her hands.

“I'm supposed to be going there for Christmas. I'll have to do it then.”

“Oh Robb, you can't, you can't possibly. You would ruin Christmas forever, as long as either one of you lives.”

“I wish I could go to sleep and find when I wake up that it's all over, that Lily isn't wretched and you and I
are happy. Let me hang up now. I want to sit here and think.”

“What happened? Did somebody die?” asked Eddy as he pushed the door open.

Robb looked up from the sofa, where he had been sitting with his head in his hands.

“You left the door ajar, and I saw you. What's up?”

“Just tired, I guess.”

“Come on, you look like hell. It's as dim as a funeral parlor in here. Turn the lamp on and tell me what's wrong.”

“Eddy, you don't want to hear it. It's too miserable.”

“What? Somebody's got terminal cancer or something?”

“Not that, but almost as bad. I'm in love with Ellen.”

Eddy whistled. “What? I thought you didn't like her.”

“I didn't want to like her. I fought against it,” Robb said grimly. “I denied it. But it had already happened, probably at my first sight of her.”

“And to her, too?”

“Yes.”

“What are you going to do?”

“That's the question. That's what I'm trying to figure out. It's killing me.”

“I thought Lily was just here with you.”

“She was, God help her, and me, too.”

“Do you want to tell me the whole story? Begin at the beginning.”

It was, in a way, a relief to pour it all out, as in the confessional. In another way, it was painful to reveal such deep emotion so shamelessly.

“Eddy, I can't lose Ellen. So you see—”

“Is this what love is? Geez, I know I never felt anything like it.” Eddy put a kind hand on Robb's shoulder. “I'll tell you something, though. You'd better come clean with Lily, and right away, too.”

“I know that all too well! I guess I don't have guts enough to tell her the truth. She's so trusting! It'll be like beating a child.”

“But you've got to. You can't marry her now, can you, feeling the way you do? That would stink! Listen. This'll be like an operation, cutting the foot off to save the leg. A clean job, and then recovery.”

“Except for the missing foot and the scar, Eddy. I've asked myself a hundred questions: Had I been losing that first red-hot desire for Lily anyway? Without realizing I was losing it? I know I've been busy here and loving it all, the work and the city and friends, even before I met Ellen. I haven't been as eager to go home as I was the first year. I see that now. And then, then I met her … I sit in class or in the library, I walk across the campus, and it seizes me, the thought of her—” He gave a rueful laugh. “You know what I mean? It's a sudden weakness, like coming down with something. Am I a weakling? Tell me if I am.”