Illusions of Love (29 page)

Moving closer to Martin, Sylvia took hold of his right hand. This holiday was what they needed. Married people needed time alone. She hadn’t understood that well enough over the years. It had always seemed so important to do things as a family. But today she knew better. For all of her devotion, they essentially could only fix themselves. Children were selfish by definition. That’s what growing up was about. Learn to care for other people. Well, soon Julian would have children of his own. The important thing now was to cheer Martin up and save her own marriage. Hopefully this weekend in Tahoe would be a new beginning.

They did all the things they had done in the past: walked in the mountains, had drinks before the fire, rode horses down into the valley. They were kind and polite to each

other, but nothing seemed to rekindle the old sense of romance. Both knew it and both were miserable.

It wasn’t anybody’s fault, Sylvia thought. Something had happened to their lives. As she got ready for bed that night she decided that the air was very chilly even for Lake Tahoe.

It was the month after the trip to Tahoe that Martin ran into Jenny.

It had been Sylvia’s regular Wednesday in town. As he left to meet her, his age weighed heavily upon him. On his way out of the office, he realized that most of the brokers were in their twenties and early thirties. He had once been the youngest in the firm. In fact, he had been referred to as ‘the kids’. But the men of his father’s time had either died or retired. The world belonged to the young.

Outside, the bustling Yuletide crowds made him feel lonelier than ever. It had been the Christmas season when his father died; Christmas when he had broken up with Jenny. Frankly, he would be happy when the holidays were over.

As he sat across the table from Sylvia at the St. Francis he hoped the glow provided by two double martinis would conceal his depression. He was relieved when she didn’t seem to pick upon his mood and wasn’t aware that he was only half listening to what she was saying.

Something about the party that night and reminding him not to be late.

Then he kissed her goodbye in front of I. Magnin’s.

Two minutes later he had caught sight of Jenny and his life was turned upside down. All his feelings for her returned. It was as though the last twenty-five years had never existed. She aroused sensations within him he hadn’t

experienced in that many years. Nobody else had ever made him feel that way.

The next day in the office when he picked up the phone in his sweating palm to call Jenny, a wave of guilt swept over him. Not once during his marriage had he been unfaithful to Sylvia, unless one counted his thoughts of Jenny. But Martin knew that he was going to have an affair with Jenny. He knew that he couldn’t help it. He also knew that was a lie. Of course he could help it. All he had to do was let her get on her plane for Hong Kong without calling her, he thought as he finished dialling. Just hang up. Martin was about to when he heard Jenny’s voice.

“Hello,” she said in her lyrical voice.

“It’s me, Jenny-Martin.”

She laughed.

“I would have recognized the voice. How are you, Martin?”

“Fine. Can we meet?”

She paused.

“I asked you yesterday if you thought it was wise. Have you thought about it?”

“About nothing else. Somehow I don’t feel like being wise at this point. I want to see you, Jenny.”

“All right. Where shall we meet?”

“If it’s all right with you, the Fairmont.”

“That’s fine.”

When Martin saw her in the lobby waiting for him he knew how much he’d missed her throughout the years. She was still incredibly beautiful.

They went into the Cirque Room and ordered drinks.

“I still can’t get over meeting you yesterday, Jenny.”

“It was an extraordinary coincidence, wasn’t it?”

“I often wonder about coincidences. Is it fate or happenstance?”

Jenny laughed.

“Well, I wouldn’t get that philosophical. Now tell me about yourself, Martin.”

“What do you want me to tell you?”

“Well, there must be a few things that have happened over the last twenty-five years. Are you married? Do you have children? Most of all, are you happy?”

“I am married and I do have children. I’m not so sure though how to answer your last question. There have been times that I have been very happy with Sylvia that’s my wife but there have also been times when all I could think of was how much I missed you.”

Jenny looked at Martin over the rim of her glass.

“And I thought you’d forgotten me.”

Martin motioned the waiter to bring fresh drinks.

“I’ve never stopped loving you. Jenny,” he said.

“I’m not sure if I believe that.”

“It’s the truth. Whatever else you think, believe that.”

Jenny smiled.

“You may think it’s the truth, but when the time came to choose between me and your family, your family won.”

“I never really made a choice, Jenny, and I was still very young. I know I behaved badly after my father died and I’ve suffered because of it.” He reached across the table and took her hand.

“You know, I never stopped wondering where you went. For the longest time I tried to find you. What did you do, Jenny?”

Jenny twirled the olive in her glass and without raising her eyes said, “I don’t think I am going to tell you today.” Martin was silent and for a few minutes they sat sipping their drinks and carefully avoiding the other’s gaze. Finally, as if shaking herself out of some private dream, Jenny looked up and smiled.

“Well, Martin, it has been great seeing you, but I have a million thing to do between now and the time my plane leaves.”

“Jenny, I can’t let you go,” Martin said, uncertain how to persuade her to stay.

“Not this time.”

“I’m afraid you can’t stop me,” she said, smiling gently.

“Jenny, I’m no longer a kid. I love you and I don’t believe fate let us meet again just to say goodbye. You can’t walk out of my life again.”

“I think you’re a little confused. It was you who walked out of my life. Now really, I must dash.”

“Don’t punish me. Jenny.”

“You’ve already done that, Martin, to yourself.”

“You really hate me, don’t you?”

“No, strangely enough, I don’t. There were times that I did but not any more.”

“Please, Jenny, give me a chance to make up for the past.”

Jenny smiled. Years ago she would have thanked God on her knees to have heard those words, but she was no longer naive enough to believe him. He was a married man with two children. How could he possibly erase the pain of the last twenty-five years?

“I don’t think so,” she said, getting up.

“But thanks for the thought.”

Martin rose and helped her on with her coat. When they reached the lobby they stood facing each other for a long, awkward moment.

“How can I get in touch with you?” he asked, wanting to take her in his arms.

“That could be difficult since the job I have now involves so much travel.”

“You mean you’re just going to vanish from my life?”

“I’m afraid so, Martin. Stay well and happy New Year.”

He watched as she walked towards the elevator that would take her to her room. He remained frozen for a long time after the doors closed, the image of her face still before him.

How he walked to his car he couldn’t remember. The next thing he knew he was behind the wheel, driving aimlessly, reluctant to return home.

When he finally stopped near the Coit Tower, he turned off the engine and looked out at the dark, churning Bay. The bleak, overcast day reflected his mood. What was there left for him to savour if Jenny held no part of his future? The children were gone, and he wasn’t sure what he felt for Sylvia at this moment except an enormous sense of guilt. He started the car and began driving back towards the Fairmont.

This time he was not going to let Jenny run away without putting up a fight.

In her hotel room. Jenny was trying to pack. She would take something from the closet, fold it, then put it aside. It

was impossible to concentrate. After taking her evening dress out of her suitcase for the third time she gave up and lay on the bed.

Meeting Martin had shaken her more than she had revealed. Just seeing him brought back not only the memories of their affair but of the terrible time after he had left. She had never been so miserable in her life and she would never let herself be hurt in the same way again.

Wiping her eyes, she got up, undressed, and turned on the shower. She first ran the water as hot as she could stand it, then turned on the cold. When she began to shiver, she got out and rubbed herself dry with the big terrycloth towel.

Still too upset to pack, she put on a robe and poured herself some vodka over ice. Closing her eyes, she let the past wash over her.

She had never recovered from her affair with Martin. She had gone through all kinds of hell trying to put her life back together, but the truth was she had never stopped loving him not when she wished to die, not when she cursed him, not at any point in the lonely years since he had gone back to San Francisco. If only he had loved her enough to put her above his family. If only he had married her as he had promised she would not have had so many incidents in her life to bitterly regret. She had changed after he abandoned her, hardened. At times over the years she had forced herself to remember what a nice girl, a good person, she had been when she met him. But that girl was dead. Jenny had deliberately buried her, deciding that if it meant killing off some of her better impulses, the loss was worth the protection this new, cruel shell afforded her.

She remembered one night getting drunk in a bar and waking up the next morning with a strange man next to her. She could hardly believe this was Jenny McCoy, the girl who was determined to leave Biloxi and make herself a success.

When she’d fled New York, she’d also given up her job,. and the one

she landed in Chicago meant taking a step backward. She had been crushed and bitter, no longer able to lose herself in the excitement of work as she had before meeting Martin.

She wasn’t making excuses. She was just too unhappy to pull herself together. Her performance suffered and she failed to get the hoped-for promotion. Since her salary was so much less than the one she’d earned in Manhattan, she ended up taking a room in a boardinghouse in the wrong part of town quite a departure from the elegant Central Park West apartment she had shared with Martin.

The morning she had woken up next to a stranger was when she hit bottom. Still half drunk, she staggered to the bathroom and looked at herself. Her make-up was smeared and her hair hung limply about her puffy face. Disgusted, she turned back to the young man who the night before she thought had resembled Martin. He was sprawled naked across her bed. In the harsh morning light she saw that the resemblance was the product of too many martinis. He was pale, probably from spending so much of his time in sleazy bars, and flabby from too little exercise. The hair which had appeared thick and wavy was now plastered down over a small bald spot. God, she couldn’t even remember his name.

With a shudder she went to the window and looked down the eight floors to the sidewalk.

If she’d had the courage, she would have jumped, but either fear or the spectre of committing a mortal sin prevented her. When she turned away from the window, she discovered a core of strength she hadn’t known she still possessed. She was going to survive.

She dressed and hurried out of the room. Without stopping to analyse her motives she went to the train station and bought a coach ticket to Biloxi. Then she went back to her room, where she was pleased to find that the young man had gone, stealing only her radio. She flung her clothes into her suitcase and went back to catch her train.

Little Jenny McCoy had failed up North. Maybe she never should have tried, but now at least she was accepting her defeat and going back where she belonged.

Biloxi scarcely gave Jenny a sense of homecoming. She had been away too long. Her first summer back was almost more than she could bear.

She had never known such heat, such dust, or such discomfort. She would have left but, unable to find a job, had soon run out of money.

The morning she walked into the Biloxi commercial bank she had eaten little for two days. Standing before the manager’s desk trying to fill out a job application, she was overcome with dizziness. She put a hand to steady herself, but it was no use. She fell to the floor in a dead faint.

She came to on a couch in the bank president’s office. As her eyes fluttered open she was aware of someone sitting at her side, holding her hand.

“Are you feeling a little better?”

Jenny wasn’t sure, but she nodded yes.

“My name is Cyrus Worthington, and I must say you caused us all a fright.”

“I’m sorry,” Jenny said as she tried to sit up.

“I really think you should rest for just a bit,” Cyrus said, gently forcing her to lie back down.

Jenny focused on the man looking down at her with such concern.

Despite a thickset figure testifying to a fondness for good Southern cooking and a face flushed by a steady diet of mint juleps, Mr. Worthington presented a very distinguished appearance. Thick grey hair was neatly parted over a broad forehead, and his even features were set off by a handsome smile.

Jenny was not aware that his concern was dictated by the throbbing between his heavy thighs or that some of his sexual predilections had made the most popular madam in town ban him from her parlour. All Jenny saw was that he seemed kind and that if she played her cards right he might offer her a job.

Patting her hand in the most paternal way, he said, “I understand, my dear, that you are looking for employment

“Yes. I have excellent recommendations, Mr. Worthington.”

She told him that she had been born and raised in Biloxi, had left to attend Hunter College, and then stayed on in New York to work first for the Gatti agency and then Elmo Cosmetics. Both companies would vouch for her competence.