Garden of Lies (14 page)

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

Gil, no longer tugging at his zipper, his lower lip edging out in a pout, seemed transformed

from the young Gregory Peck she’d once felt attracted to, to a petulant little boy whose favorite

toy had just been snatched away.

“Oh, I think you do. I think you know very well,” he said in an injured tone. “This isn’t the first

time, as we both know. And what I’d like to know, what I’d
really
like to know, is what it is

about me you find so goddamn funny.”

But he looked so comical, with his face all screwed up, and his hair full of foxtails; and then

the lake water lapping against the shore in the darkness, making her want to pee worse than ever.

Again, she felt the urge to giggle rising in her.

“It’s not you, Gil,” she gasped. “It’s me. I get this way when I’m nervous. You know, like

people who laugh at funerals. I get all tied up in knots inside, and then it ... it all just bursts out

somehow.” Funeral? Oh God, she thought, what a comparison.

But his mouth went slack, his anger fading a little. “Goddammit, Rachel. What did you think

this was? A quick roll in the hay? Satisfying some itch? What are you so nervous about? I
love

you, goddammit.”

Then the giggles, with a demonic life of their own, began clawing their way up her throat. She

bit her tongue to hold them.

But his declaration, thank God, had shown her a way out, clear as an exit sign flashing on in

the dark.

“I’m sorry, Gil,” she managed to say, tears filling her eyes—[74] tears of pain brought on by

her throbbing tongue. “I like you. I like you a lot. But I guess I don’t love you. Not enough to ...

go all the way.”

Yes, right, and then next month or next year, as soon as she fell in love, it would be different.

And then she’d feel all those things she was supposed to feel.

Then it was Gil who was laughing, bitterly, as now he tugged up his zipper. “Love? You think

that’s what’s holding you back? Jesus, you’re even more screwed up than I thought. The truth is,

you don’t even like sex. Unless maybe it’s a woman you want.” He began folding up the mattress

pad with jerky thrusts of his arms, then stopped, fixing her with a baleful glare. “Whatever it is, I

hope you find it. I sincerely hope you do. Just from now on leave me the hell out of it.”

Now at the memory of it, Rachel winced. Then she thought of late last night, home at last,

lying awake in bed, aching with Gil’s words. Desperate to prove to herself she wasn’t frigid, she

had even tried masturbating.

But groping under her nightgown and rubbing herself down there struck her as even more

ridiculous than the things she’d done with boys, like bumping around in the dark without a

flashlight. Would she even recognize an orgasm if she had one?

Finally, she had just given up and wept. She’d end up a medical curiosity with a paragraph or

two written about her in some sex scientist’s monograph. A freak.

She’d have no one to love her. No one she could love back.

A clattering noise brought her back to the breakfast table, and Rachel looked up to see

Bridget’s broad back disappearing into the serving pantry with a pile of dishes.

“Anyway, it’s not as if I’m lonely,” she lied to Sylvie, keeping her voice light. “I’ve got you

and Daddy and Portia.”

Daddy glanced up from his paper again. “Well, I’m happy to see at least that your mother and I

are included with your dog. Only, I
do
wish you wouldn’t feed her at the table.”

Rachel snatched her hand from under the table, where Portia was greedily licking the last of the

toast crumbs from her fingers.

“That’s all, you big beggar,” she scolded the scruffy Lab at her feet, then sneaked him the last

of her toast.

[75] She heard Daddy grumble into his newspaper, “Why the devil is Kennedy going to do

P.R. in Texas of all places? Who needs him there? He ought to get busy mending a few fences in

his own backyard. I don’t like the way things are heating up in Indochina. It’s got the smell of

Korea all over again.”

“Gerald,”
Sylvie scolded affectionately. “Of all things, please let’s not talk about war.” She

turned to Rachel, her face lighting up. “I thought we might go shopping this afternoon or

tomorrow,” Sylvie ventured cautiously. “For a dress. A new dress for the party. Cassini has a

wonderful new collection at Bendel’s, just wait till you see.”

Rachel’s heart sank. At least thirty dresses hung in her closet upstairs, many with the price tags

still dangling from the sleeves, and Mama wanted to take her shopping of all things.

How simple and pure and easy if the only clothes in her wardrobe were what she had on—

baggy fisherman’s sweater, jeans worn to the softness of flannel, her old kick-about loafers. In

these she felt safe, her own true self. She imagined the dress Mama would pick out. Soft silk or

chiffon, pale as the dawn, with billowy sleeves and a skirt that floated about her knees. And then

she’d end up going to Mason’s party like a beautifully wrapped gift box but with nothing inside

it.

Miserable inside, she smiled anyway, anxious not to snuff out Mama’s eager look, wanting to

hold on to it, even if it meant pretending for just a little while to be Mama’s girl with the watering

can.

“Tomorrow,” she promised. “We’ll go tomorrow, first thing.”

Two days later, Sylvie sat in the wing chair across from the library television, the images on

the screen blurring as her eyes filled with tears.

In between the commentators, the condolence messages from heads of state around the world,

the newsreel footage of him as a young congressman, of his marriage to Jackie, they kept

reshowing the same nightmare: the motorcade, the open limousine with the President smiling and

Jackie chic as ever in a pillbox hat, waving to the crowds. Then everything going a little crazy,

Kennedy suddenly slumping forward, a black stain, blood on the back of his head. Jackie [76]

cradling him, then starting to climb out over the back of the car, and being held back by a Secret

Service man. The limousine speeding away.

Sylvie rose, stiffly, and flicked the television off. Her eyes hurt. Nearly midnight now, and

they’d kept vigil around the TV since early afternoon, she and Rachel, too stunned to do anything

else. And then Gerald had closed the bank and joined them. Everything, he’d said, was closing.

She and Rachel had been trying on dresses at Bonwit’s when they heard. Rachel had agreed to

go to Mason Gold’s party, but she was impossible to please as ever, every dress too fancy or

frivolous.

Sylvie suddenly found herself remembering the day her water had broken in Bergdorf’s.

Sylvie felt a dull pounding in her temples. Rachel and Gerald had gone up hours ago, but she

knew that if she went up, she would only lie in bed, her mind bringing back things she couldn’t

bear to remember.

Sylvie crossed the darkened study full of Gerald’s things, the solid furniture—so much a man’s

room—books, and old photographs of his parents and grandparents lining the walls, the Regency

break-front containing the librettos to every opera ever translated. The stereo, and underneath,

stretching all across one wall, his record collection. All the greats. Caruso. Pinza. Callas.

She stopped at his leather-topped partner’s desk, and fingered the engraved silver letter knife

Rachel had given Gerald on his last birthday. Old, heavy, beautifully worked, exactly right for

him. She understood him so well. The two were a perfect pair, so devoted to each other.

Sylvie felt a pain then, as if the letter opener had cut into her chest. She was all alone. Gerald

would never know of the terrible choice she’d made, never share her pain. How many nights had

she lain awake in anguish, weeping silently for the dark child of her own body she would never

hold in her arms, never see grow up?

Yet Rachel, not to have known her,
that
also would have been terrible. Sylvie couldn’t imagine

life without Rachel. Impossible.

Yet sometimes she sensed a
wholeness
missing from her love for Rachel, the feeling of

something permanently torn that could never be perfectly mended. How she envied Gerald, not

knowing; he had Rachel, whole, without compromise, completely his.

[77] Looking at Rachel these days, Sylvie saw fleeting images of Angie Santini, Rachel’s real

mother.

That stubborn streak of Rachel’s, was that Angie’s too? Insisting on being a doctor, of all

things, a life devoted to all that was ugly in this world—sickness, pain, death.

I’ve tried so hard to make her mine, cultivated, ladylike. But she’s her own person, not like me,

or Gerald either. Strange how she’s so small and dainty ... and yet so willful, so independent.

Sylvie remembered Rachel as a toddler, no more than two, an enchanting child with

periwinkle-blue eyes and a cloud of soft amber curls. Sylvie had tiptoed in to see if Rachel had

woken from her nap, and was stunned. Rachel had managed to climb out of the crib, and grab a

clean diaper from the changing table. With her old wet diaper and rubber pants sagging around

her ankles, she was struggling to pin on the clean one.

Sylvie rushed forward to rescue her, and Rachel with her tiny baby hands pushed her away, and

said in a clear, almost grown-up voice, “No, Mama, I want to do it myself.”

Since then she must have heard those words a thousand times. Rachel, five, poised on the seat

of her new two-wheeler, demanding that Gerald let go of the handlebars. Her first day of

kindergarten at Dalton, insisting that Sylvie leave her at the door, that she’d go up alone. The

memories came to her like pictures in an old photo album.

And Sylvie thought,
Aren’t I just the tiniest bit envious, too?
Rachel seemed to know exactly

what she wanted from life, and how to get it. Sylvie wondered what her own life might have been

if she had not married Gerald. Not that she regretted it! No, not for a minute. She adored Gerald,

and her life with him. But what dragons might she have slain if not for Gerald’s protective shield?

What talents might she have discovered?

Oh yes, there were times—not often, but now and then—when she imagined herself out on her

own. In an office, perhaps, behind a desk like this one, phones ringing, people asking
her
opinion

about this or that, wanting
her
advice. Not just the wife of Gerald Rosenthal, but a woman with

accomplishments of her own, and a paycheck with her name on it.

Then Sylvie slumped in despair.
Who am I to want more? I have so much already, more than I

deserve. The dearest husband in the world
, [78]
more luxuries than anyone could hope for. And a

daughter as loving as she is headstrong.

No, she couldn’t love Rachel more if she were her own flesh and blood. She ached every time

Rachel walked out the door. She wanted so much for her ... every good thing in the world. But

also she longed to give back what she’d taken from her—Rachel’s sisters, her real blood ties. And

she could never do that, never.

Sylvie put down the letter opener. There was only one last thing she longed for,
needed,
to fill

up the empty space that moaned like a dark wind in her breast.

To hold her. Just once. My own child. The baby I carried inside me for nine months. Daughter

of my flesh. Oh, dear Lord, just to put my arms around her, kiss her. What I would give for that.

But that was not meant to be, ever. She’d probably already risked too much, hiring that

detective to find out where her daughter lived. And what had she gotten from it except more

heartache? Dominic Santini was dead, she’d learned. Rose lived with her two sisters and

grandmother, who was barely scraping by on Social Security and a small pension.

Sylvie had longed for a way to help Rose, to see that she was well taken care of. And then

watching television one day, that old show “The Millionaire,” she had had an idea. She would

open a savings account for Rose, anonymously.

Through the detective, she found a lawyer who would do what she wanted without prying into

her reasons. His office, on Second Avenue and Eleventh Street, was as far removed from the

mahogany-paneled 55 Water Street suite of Gerald’s attorneys as an Eskimo’s igloo. She’d

forgotten his name, but she recalled that dismal hole-in-the-wall, the dusty rubber plant atop the

filing cabinet, the dead flies dotting the windowsill. Through him, she arranged for a sum of

twenty-five thousand dollars—all she could scrape together without risking Gerald’s suspicion—

to be deposited in a trust fund in Rose’s name. Then a letter to Rose’s grandmother, naming her

as trustee, and informing her that the money was from a benefactor who wished to remain

anonymous.

Of course, it had been foolish and risky. Suppose Rose’s grandmother had gotten suspicious?

Suppose she had gotten in touch with the lawyer? But Sylvie had covered her tracks, giving him a

false name, paying in cash. Nothing truly bad could come of it, she had [79] reasoned. And this