Authors: Jacqueline Briskin
“Nightmare?” She stroked his sweat-drenched hair.
“I’ve had ’em every night.”
“This hearing!”
“No, this woman!” He rubbed his stubbled cheek against her shoulder. “Any idea how polite you’ve been?”
“I thought I was being biting.”
“Polite,” he repeated. “In a remote,
distingué
way.”
“Flying six thousand miles to force myself on you isn’t exactly a sign of indifference.”
“In you, Honora, it could be construed as noblesse oblige.”
“What was the nightmare about?”
“I have it often. We’re at the Mamounia, and it’s the lovely, purified and honorable English lady versus the vicious former Austrian guttersnipe grown into major-league SS gauleiter.”
“Curt, I never once turned us into stereotypes.”
“You asked what
I
was dreaming.”
“But it’s not fair.”
“Since when’ve nightmares gone in for fair play?” he asked. “Or people, for that matter. Let’s face it, love, when you showed up on the
Odyssey
, you can’t deny I played the goose-stepping Nazi.”
She kissed the coolness of his eye socket. “Mmm, nice.”
His fingertip was tracing her collarbones.
“I’d forgotten how much silkier your skin is.”
Silkier than whose skin? She briefly conjured Marva Leigh—or rather a loony image of Marva Leigh at the head of a long line of shapely girls with crocodile hides. Curt’s hand was moving down toward her breasts, and his light, subtle touch started a trembling that afflicted her like a form of paralysis. She could not move, yet her soul seemed to be flowing out in a stream toward his shoulders, his chest, his belly and thighs, his erection.
“Honora?”
“Ahh please, please, please.”
* * *
The following morning they woke to the drumming of rain. Beyond the looped-back blue and white curtains of the bay window, they could see large drops dancing wildly on the grayness of a man-dredged pond. A half dozen white ducks and their yellow ducklings had clambered beyond the narrow rim of concrete to huddle under the azaleas.
After dressing, they drove through the deluge to a logo marked on the map as Cracker Barrel General Store. Small and brightly lit, its shelves were stocked mostly with exotic, high-priced jars and cans. From the gondola and refrigerator unit Honor selected wholewheat rolls, eggs, bacon, double lamb chops, Boston lettuce, and a “home baked” pecan pie that appeared to be fresh. Curt added Beluga caviar, odd-shaped cans of French pâté de foie gras, glass jars of cornichons, various types of imported crackers and cookies, six quarts of ice cream in
various flavors.
“Curt, we’re here for a weekend, not a month.”
Patting her backside, he said, “You’ve forgotten my appetite.”
He piled in a half dozen bottles of Mumm’s, toothbrushes and the new Irwin Shaw novel for Honora.
She never opened the book. Logs were stacked outside the back door, tempting Curt to build a fire that crackled from the moisture.
She sat on the hooked rug, looking into the flames. “‘What is love? ’Tis not hereafter,’” she recited. “‘Present mirth hath present laughter.’”
“You said it.” He stretched out on the hooked rug, his head on her lap.
By lunch the rain had lightened, but it continued the rest of the day.
Sunday morning, though, was a beautiful May day. The sky was clear and the temperature brisk.
Perfect weather, they agreed, for a hike.
Setting out on the gravel road that circled the deserted golf course, they took an unpaved country lane, and soon rich red mud clotted the soles of her sneakers and his loafers. Crossing a one-lane wooden bridge, they came to the white fences of a stud farm. The horses looked like faraway toys grazing up the hill near the white barns. One of the thoroughbred brood mares had wandered down to the road, her carbon-dark colt frisking around her.
Honora picked her way across the scythed
grass to the fence, holding out her hand toward the colt. “I wish I had some sugar for Black Beauty,” she said. “Think he’ll grow up to be a racehorse?”
“A Kentucky Derby winner at least.”
“He belongs here, not running his heart out.”
“We’ll buy him.” Curt came to stand next to her. “He’ll be Lissie’s welcome-home gift.”
The breeze chilled the back of Honora’s neck. The voluptuous atmosphere of this weekend struggled against the harsher world of reality. “She has her term to finish.”
“It’s not the end of Western civilization, love, if she misses a couple of weeks. The hearing can’t run more than another day or so, then we’ll fly over to get her.”
“I have two jobs,” Honora mumbled. When she had put in her London call Friday morning, Vi had told her excitedly that two of the prospects had telephoned to give the go-ahead.
“That doesn’t sound like an insoluble problem. Didn’t you start out with a partner? Why not draw up the plans over here and get her to carry them out?”
“I can’t work like that. My best ideas come at the installation.” She stared at the cavorting colt. “Curt, I suppose we do have to talk about this.”
“By all means,” he said. “Let’s get it on the rug, our long-distance marriage.”
“This isn’t saying that I didn’t miss you while I was in England—I thought I’d die. But there were parts of being on my own that
were good. And my work was one of them.”
“You’re somehow the last woman I’d expect to man—or is it woman?—the barricades with Bella Abzug.”
“Don’t be snide.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. Hell, sure I did. You’ve always had this dreamy quality—that’s what attracted me in the first place. I used to think I was protecting a fairy-tale princess.”
“And I,” she said unhappily, “always felt like a useless china figurine.”
He gripped her arm. “Whatever my faults, Honora, I never put you down. I’ve always told you how much you mean to me. Before you I was hollow, a shell of ice with a terrified, starving kid rattling around inside. You turned me into a human being; you gave me the gift of myself. And this weekend haven’t I made it clear how lost I’ve been without you?”
“This has nothing to do with you, Curt. It’s
me
, how
I
feel. Can’t you understand?”
“No.”
“Think of it this way, then. We Sylvander girls are career-minded.” She despised her dumb-little-me conciliatory lightness. “I’m not in Crystal and Joss’s league, I’m strictly small time. But I can create gardens. People like my work. And working gives me a tremendous amount of satisfaction.”
“I know I’m a money-soiled oaf, but I’ve always had a problem believing in that art for art’s sake crap.”
“A major part of the satisfaction is getting paid for what I do. Darling, I’m not saying this
to hurt you, only to explain myself.”
He picked up a pebble, hurling it over the white split-rail fence. The mare cantered away, the black colt racing gawkily after her.
“You’re still holding Alexander against me, aren’t you?”
Easy denials flooded to her lips, but the conversation had spawned a feverish need to bring him within the honest circle of her emotions. “I don’t blame you, Curt, not anymore. But knowing Crystal had your child made me feel even more extraneous . . . it still does.”
“So you’re going back to England?”
“Curt, why won’t you understand? This has nothing to do with him or with how much I love you—nothing can change my loving you. But you’re in business. When you make a commitment you stand by it. Well, I’ve made a commitment—two commitments.”
His pupils seemed to go flat. Her stomach plummeted and she had a sudden, terrifying conviction that his next words would inform her that she must make a choice.
He’s going to tell me to pick—it’s either love and marriage or my landscaping, my imbalanced checkbook, my shaky independence.
Instead, he sighed wearily. “It’s embarrassing how much I need you.”
Weak-kneed with relief, she raised his hand and placed several kisses on his knuckles. “I don’t know how to handle this, my work and being with you. The truth is I haven’t been thinking at all this weekend.”
“That’s my wife,” he said, either cheerful again or putting on a good act. “Heart is in the right place, below the navel.”
“Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“Why not? You’re blushing.”
They joined hands, stretching out their arms as they circled either side of a large puddle.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“Not saying it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh, you could’ve said something along the lines that it’s ridiculous for Mrs. Curt Ivory to occasionally double as a day laborer.”
“If there’s one thing the past years have taught me, Honora, it’s that the accoutrements are my hang-ups, not yours.” He laughed and said, “So what the hell, we’ll commute.”
She laughed, too. “Your place or mine?”
“You’re different, know that?”
“You’ve changed, too.”
“Yes, but not for the better. And you’ve become an even more fabulous lady.”
* * *
Sunday evening they sat on their condominium’s curve of flagstone watching the setting sun set fire to the pond. The darkling sky was hung with a slender silver crescent.
“When we were children in England,” she said, “we used to wish on a new moon.”
“What are you asking for now?”
She smiled and said softly, “To stay here.”
He went into the bedroom, and she heard him call the desk to arrange for another night’s
occupancy. Coming back outside, he said, “If we leave by seven tomorrow morning we’ll be at the hotel in plenty of time to dress for the hearing.”
They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes.
“Curt, have you seen Alexander?”
“I have only one child,” he said. “Lissie.”
“That’s sophistry.”
“I don’t want any part of him,” Curt said harshly. “He’s a psychotic without a twinge of conscience. I’ve heard rumors about the bribes he dangles—what I’ve been accused of is along the lines of comparing a piss to the Atlantic Ocean. He seems to have maneuvered his brother—a very competent engineer—into a ten-year exile in New Guinea. He’s a master at undermining a rival’s credibility—and often does it just for kicks. He came to Marrakesh specifically to break us up.”
“Yes. But, Curt, when he told me there was misery, genuine misery, in his voice.”
Curt leaned back in the deck chair with a heavy sigh. And Honora knew the furies of that single drunken minute in a San Rafael garden a quarter of a century ago would pursue him through the hours and days of his life.
Friday evening Joscelyn had taken a cab to Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown, to The Jazz
Downstairs where the music was deafening and marvelous. She had discovered the basement nightclub when she’d worked on the Washington Metro, and it hadn’t changed. Although many of the clientele came alone, it wasn’t a place to get picked up, but to share the pleasures of top-notch jazz.
At a few minutes before three she returned to the hotel, exhilarated from the music and a trace high from her split of
vin blanc.
Unlocking the suite door, she stepped quietly into the large bedroom that she shared with Honora. A lamp shone on the neatly turned down beds, each with a green-foil-covered mint chocolate on the pillow.
Joscelyn huddled in the doorway, gawking in ludicrous disbelief at her sister’s empty bed.
“Honora! Where are you?
Honora!
” she shouted, then held her hand over her mouth, aghast that she was so distraught as to be yelling in a hotel at three o’clock in the morning. A cursory search revealed the blouse that Honora had been wearing crumpled on the bathroom tiles beneath a towel and washcloth. The open tube of McClean’s and a red toothbrush were on the sink counter, the stick deodorant and spray cologne were open. (Among Honora’s endearing qualities was a meticulous personal cleanliness combined with reassuring messiness.)
Curt’s bedroom opened onto the small foyer, and Joscelyn had passed it in semistoned cheer, but now she saw that the door was ajar. A midnight sepulcher would have been easier to
peek into. After that one destructive rebuff she had avoided every questionably sexual area.
If he’s in there maybe he’ll figure I’m making another pass.
Indecisively she tiptoed to the foyer. Deep inside Curt’s room she could see the triangular gleam of the turned-down linen with the winking green eye of mint.
Of course he was out. He would’ve heard her yelling.
They’re together
, she thought. This realization was like plunging into a hidden crevasse. But why the shock? After all, wasn’t she the
deus ex machina
who had reunited them? Why should she be experiencing a sense of betrayal because these two people, both of whom she loved, were so obviously in the sack together someplace?
The following morning she was awakened by the discreet buzz of the bedside telephone. There was enough light seeping through the interlined draperies to ascertain that Honora’s bed remained empty.
“Joscelyn Sylvander,” she said sleepily.
“Miss Sylvander, I’m calling from Mr. Kohn’s office,” said a feminine voice. “Is Mr. Ivory around?”
“I’m pretty sure he’s not, but let me check.” She padded to the other bedroom, picking up the extension in there. “Sorry. He’s out.”
“When’ll he be back?”
“He didn’t say. When he phones in shall I have him call Mr. Kohn?”
“Yes. Let me give you the number at
his farm.”
Joscelyn wrote it on the scratchpad and hung up, rubbing her eyes.
How dare they just split?
she thought angrily.
All right, they don’t give a damn about me, but what if something comes up about Lissie?
It was then, finally, that she noticed the glowing red message button. She called down and was given Honora’s message.
Around noon Arthur Kohn called himself. Joscelyn explained that Curt was incommunicado for the weekend.
“The whole weekend?” The lawyer’s voice crackled.
“I’m sorry. Can I take a message?”
“No, it’s a confidential matter that I need to discuss with him. You have my number here at the farm, don’t you? Ask him to give me a ring whenever he gets in—no matter what time it is.”