Onyx (44 page)

Standing, Justin peered down at the mound of ashes. “If I'm not who I was,” he asked dully, “who am I?” The question seemed meaningless. He could not think or feel. It was as though he were stricken with a peculiar form of amnesia that blanks out not the past but the present. “I'm nobody. Nothing.”

“Don't be ridiculous. You're the son of the richest man in America. Maybe the world,” Hugh soothed. “I've always imagined what would have happened if he
had
married Antonia. I've always wanted to set things to right. Justin, you're the firstborn. You're the one who should inherit Onyx.”

Justin's hands opened and closed. “How did you get these?” he asked dully.

“When I went to England to bring you here, I cleaned out their flat.”

Justin nodded. “Yes.”

“Tom loves you, he wants to acknowledge you—but you understand now why he can't.”

Justin bent to stir the still warm ashes with his forefinger. He said nothing.

Hugh made one of his rare misjudgments. “Surely you see that it's impossible, you and that Kaplan girl.”

Justin looked up. His furious blue eyes glinted through narrowed lids. “How do you know about Elisse?”

“Zoe.” Hugh's mouth went dry as he realized his mistake.

“It was meant to be private.”

Hugh sat on the arm of the chair nearest his nephew. “You know our Zoe.”

“And after she told you, you had Elisse checked out,” Justin said, roughly.

“Now you're being ridiculous.”

Justin shot a disgusted glance at the open portrait, and at the safe with its neatly heaped folders and envelopes. “
Haven't you
?”

The raw, hard note of command jolted the truth from Hugh. “What if I have?”

“You snooping son of a bitch, prying into
her
life!”

“There are so many other things for us to talk about,” Hugh pleaded.

“What gave you the damn right?”

“You're my nephew, Justin, all I have. Believe me, she's not worthy of you, not in any way. She's a nobody, a little red who's already two-timing you with one of her own kind.” Hugh took a deep breath. “Forget her, Justin, forget her.”

Sweat streamed on Justin's stark white face. “Just keep your nose out of her concerns. And mine!”

Hugh did not know what he had anticipated, but certainly it hadn't been this furious, dazed wet face, this hostile, accusatory voice. This temper.
He truly is Tom's son
, Hugh thought.
I should have realized that
. Yet how could this be Justin? Always the fair one. Justin, who must surely understand how much he, Hugh, had done for him. Hugh moved from the arm of the chair, turning his unscarred profile to his nephew. “Why don't you go to bed, Justin? You've had a long, draining day. The wedding, Zoe's nerves, now this. It must come as a tremendous shock. In the morning everything will look different.”

“You had no right, none!”

“I've
made
your life.”

“We're talking about Elisse. How dare you spin your filthy webs around her?”

He looked a resentful child rather than an honorable young man who had just been told his benefactor was also his uncle.

Hugh said coldly, “We'll talk tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Justin said, as if surprised that there would be another day. His anger had vanished with disconcerting swiftness. Blinking, he wiped his forehead, scattering droplets of sweat. With stiff, mechanical steps he left the room.

Alone in the corridor, he reeled. He had no clear memory of his outburst. He felt dizzy. Out of control.

He halted for several minutes at the massive carved door that led to the house proper before continuing slowly along the gallery to his bedroom. He turned on a single floor lamp and slumped on the edge of the bed, his hands dangling between his knees. The portrait of his mother, source of consoling comfort during his worst hours, seemed in this particular light to have a mocking, knowing cast about the mouth. The numerous photographs of his father—no, his stepfather—were a mortifyingly sentimental parody. He buried his head in his hands.

Who am I
?

I am not Hutchinson, not Bridger
.

“Elisse …” As he muttered the name the molten pain above his eyes eased a little.

He got to his feet, stripping off his wedding attire, which was clammy and sour with sweat.

A half hour later he was lugging his suitcase down the stairs.

V

Hugh had gone to bed. An insomniac, he usually read until very late, but tonight he did not even try a book. He lay in the dark, his mind fastened on Justin's hideously unexpected responses. He had made a supremely generous sacrifice. Far from being rewarded by gratitude or warmth, he had been brutally rapped on the knuckles as a meddler, a spy.
Justin's a changed man
, Hugh thought.

A car started up. Hugh listened to the distinctive putt-pop tune of a Fiver moving along the private lane toward Lake Shore Drive. Where was Justin going? To get drunk? To find nirvana between a whore's thighs?

Suddenly Hugh sat up in bed, switching on the lamp. His eyes opened wide, staring.

What if he's gone to tell Tom
?

He gave me his word
.

But he's no longer the same Justin, no longer the soul of honor. He belongs to her. What if
… Hugh's mind leaped back to the shadowy garage, Tom rinsing soap from his arms:
You're a dead man if you say it
.

I'll deny everything. If Justin mentions the letters, I'll say he stole them, I'll say whatever I must
. Hugh wheezed spasmodically. He switched on the light and inhaled from a medical atomizer that he kept at his bedside, then pulled up the quilt and lay awaiting the worst. The phone call with Tom's furious voice at the other end. But there was no sound. Even his wheezing had subsided.

As he lay there rigid a mounting fury matched his fear and grief. It was too painful any longer to blame his nephew for his untoward reaction. Instead his devastation directed itself against the Jew girl, Elisse Kaplan. It was
her
violated privacy that Justin had ranted about,
she
was the one who had diverted Justin from the path Hugh had ordained he would take.

An hour later, his muscles taut, Hugh poured water from the silver carafe, taking two yellow capsules. The only effect of the double dose of strong soporific was a gradual numbing of the facial muscles.

He got up, pulling on his robe to stand at the windows. Above the leafless winter tree stars glittered from the farthest reaches of infinity. Numberless winking, incandescent dots. Hugh gripped the ledge, gazing at the snow dust of the Milky Way. His fear of his brother, his agony at Justin's outburst—and wasn't that unwarranted rage tantamount to rejection?—fed a hatred cold and remorseless as the stars.
This Elisse Kaplan has turned him against me
, Hugh thought.

With a deep sigh he went to his bookshelf and selected
Meditations
, but for once the calm perspective of Marcus Aurelius could not ward off the onslaught of furies.

CHAPTER 20

Elisse Hutchinson crossed the dim breadth of the room at the Hotel Laguna, yawning as she raised the slat of a Venetian blind to peer out at the Pacific. It was not yet fully light; no color touched the sea. The circling gulls and faraway fishing boats showed as they would on a Japanese print: dimensionless black markings.

Justin emerged directly below her on the beach. He looked up at the window, waving, dropping his towel on the sand, pantomiming cold by clutching at his arms as he ran into the surf to dive under the curl of a breaker. Elisse shivered in her new Viyella robe.
Only an Easterner
, she thought.
What sane Californian swims in winter
?

Six days earlier, on the cloudy morning of the thirtieth of December, the studio gatekeeper had rung to ask if it was okay to admit a Mr. Hutchinson. After those damn fraternal letters and two telephoned cool, veddy British postponements, excruciating joy had thrown her into such a state that she had no memory whatsoever of his explanation for his early arrival, or of any discussion to elope. By some legerdemain of time she found herself crossing the border to Tijuana in a mud-plaited Onyx, Justin clasping her hand against his thigh, a druglike sensual haze surrounding her. No chill of reality touched her until early evening, when they checked into this hotel room and she put in her long distance call. Neither parent wished her well, neither asked to speak to Justin, both cried audibly. She had anticipated this response, but that didn't make it any easier. Barely able to hang up the telephone, tears streaming down her face, she had said to her husband, “They're playing this like the road show of
Abie's Irish Rose
.”

That was Elisse all over. Her quickly-prickly personality forever battled her character, and as far as she was concerned, the struggle was her one saving grace. She saw herself as a blob pulled out of shape with every tug of her fatuously soft heart. She admired and envied Justin's code of fairness. No such permanently engraved principles ruled her life. Her sympathies pulled her every which way. She had joined with Mitch Shapiro to organize the grips not because she believed in the Struggle but because tears sprang to her eyes every morning as she passed the Columbia Pictures employment office with its sad, docile queue of day laborers hoping for a little work.

Sighing, she rested her forehead against the pane, watching Justin breast a wave. Though she was crazy in love with him, this past week had been far from the land of bliss. Her anguish reached beyond parental rejection. The problem was her beau ideal himself.

In most respects he was perfect. She had come away without a handkerchief, even, and he had bought her a trousseau, waiting patiently on spindly chairs while she tried on all that was available in a size four in an out-of-season resort town; he laughed at her jokes and occasionally made a good one of his own; he ate quickly and neatly; he strewed his clothes reassuringly. Yet, yet … He maintained a mysteriously undefinable chasm between them. Had he before? They had been together so few times, and besides, an admiring awe had colored her perceptions of this paragon—matrimony had mitigated it only slightly—but in her heart she admitted he had been, well,
different
in September. She could not put her finger on this difference. How, she asked herself over and over, was Justin remote from her? Sometimes, or so it seemed to her, his eyes went sad and cold, a shrinking of pupils that was the obverse of seeing, as though he were gazing into some frigidly desolate interior landscape.

Justin had cleared the surfline. The sky was lighter, and she watched the ball of his head between his churning arms until she began to cry. Groping her way back to bed, she hugged the pillow that smelled of him, and fell back to sleep.

II

She jerked awake.

Knocking.

“Room service,” called a nasal masculine voice.

“Go 'way,” she muttered. “'S too early.” Justin had arranged for breakfast to be brought up exactly at nine each day.

Another rap. “Room service!”

She groped for Justin's gold Bulova.

Three minutes to nine!

And he had left before seven! She careened to the window. The overcast sky reflected elephantine grays on a sea that was empty save for one small fishing boat approaching the pier. No swimmers. Nobody on the beach. An outsize white gull perched on Justin's towel, which was where he had dropped it.

She shoved past the elderly waiter and his cart, zipping barefoot down the corridor, stabbing at the elevator button, not waiting, skimming down red-carpeted stairs to the lobby. Gripping the reception desk, she demanded breathlessly, “Has Mr. Hutchinson come back?”

The clerk's double chin dropped as he gaped at her. “I haven't seen him yet this morning, madam, but if you'll return to your room, I'll have him paged.…”

She swerved from the desk and ran to the beach exit. Shouldering one of the doors, she slammed her palms against immobile glass before trying the other, which was unlocked. She skidded down red tilesteps, and fell on the bottom one. Jumping to her feet, she pounded down the slope of cold dry sand to the roiling breakers. Morbid energy blazed through her like current through a light filament.

“Justin!” she screamed. “Justin!”

The surf's roar drowned out the name.

She galloped northward, not caring that foam sucked sand from under her arches and drenched her nightgown to her thighs.

“Justin!” she screamed. “Justin!”

And suddenly she understood the dawn dips.

All week he had been swimming long distances, smiling at her warnings about the strong undertow in the Pacific. She had seen his recklessness as masculine bravery.

How wrong I was
! she thought, holding a hand over her wildly banging heart.
Justin's big mistake
—
marrying me
—
has made him so miserably unhappy that he doesn't care if he lives or dies
.

She whirled about, galloping full speed back to the Hotel Laguna.

In the lobby she gasped out, “Hurry! Telephone the lifeguards! My husband went swimming hours ago!” The clerk's buttery chins were wobbling as he spoke words she could not hear over her racing voice. “I said call the damn lifeguards!”

“—is here,” the clerk finished, and jerked his head toward the revolving door.

Circling through was Justin, wearing a heavy, too loose brown sweater over his bathing suit. He was pale, and as he stared at her he grew yet more bloodless. She realized how she must look, the sand-caked gown clinging to her legs and showing the darknesses of her body, her hair all wild. The madwoman of the waterfront. Momentary embarrassment touched her, but she was too weakened by relief to do anything but swoop across the lobby and clutch at him, her sobbing mouth pressed against rough, salty wool. “You're safe … you're okay.”