Chapter 7
He moved restlessly around his apartment, telling himself it was good to be alone. There were loose ends that had to be tied up. First of all, the situation with Millardson and his far out son. This was probably not the first time Millardson had tried to work out a deal about Donald. Eric began to consider the gimmicks so they wouldn't snap shut in his face. He had to know Donald better. Anticipate his reactions. Discover his weaknesses. He didn't like the idea much. But in order not to mess things up, he had to get Donald talking. Maybe tomorrow night or the night after, he should see Donald. The boy was on his guard, of course. It would take awhile.
The prospect of letting this thing drag out into the middle of the week was less pleasant than getting it over with right away. At least he didn't have to play cagey with Donald. Steeling himself for anything, he dialed the Millardson number.
Donald said, sure he'd like to spend the evening with him. But he had another engagement. "Why don't you spend that time with Robin? She's far nicer company than I am. So clean. So pure." His voice seemed to lick over the idea. "And let us be honest, Mr. Spokane. You can't stand the sight of me let alone an entire evening together. But you did respond to my little sister. I really think you should entertain her tonight. In my absence. It will be perfectly harmless, I assure you."
Eric's first impulse was to hang up. "You're on my list, Donald. Not your sister. If you can't make it tonight, how about tomorrow?"
"Unfortunately, I'm busy tomorrow also. I'm afraid you'll have to play the game my way, if you want me to play with you at all, Mr. Spokane. Now, I'll call Robin and you can invite her out ... or whatever you wish."
As Eric waited for Robin to come to the phone, he tried to piece together Donald's motives. It didn't seem plausible that he would be anxious to have his sister go out with men. If anything, Donald should want to keep her secluded. If she fell in love with someone, if she married and moved out of the house, that would take Robin away from him.
"Hello, Eric. Donald tells me you wanted to see us tonight."
That she could sound so open, so unaware of what was going on around her, amazed him for the second time. "Yes. I was hoping we could be with each other under less formal circumstances, if you're willing." He half hoped that she would decline. Using Robin as bait for her brother made him feel lousy rotten.
"I would like to. Except that Donald's busy. Will you see me alone? I seem to be moping around today. You could pull me out of it, if you wanted to spend the time."
She didn't sound mopey at all. "That would be time well spent," he said.
"Six o'clock will be fine, then. And as you say, nothing formal."
"Right."
He hung up the receiver, not knowing whether he hated Donald or himself more for doing this.
At the same time he was curious about Robin. He couldn't deny that he was looking forward to an interesting evening. He might even learn something about Donald through her.
Anticipating how she would dress, he put on a sports shirt and zelan jacket, zipping it halfway closed and turning up the collar. The five o'clock shadow gave his face a certain hardness but he wasn't out to play Little Lord Fauntleroy with her. And if he had judged Robin correctly, she wouldn't give a damn how he looked.
When he came up the block, he saw Robin standing in front of the house, talking to an old lady with a poodle. He had been right about her appearance. Dressed in camel colored slacks and the famous sandals, she looked at this distance like a high school kid, her cropped head fragile in profile, yet animated with sturdy life.
She spotted him, nodded goodbye to the woman and came to meet him half way along the block. An undercurrent of questions was challenging him. That she would consent to meet him at all on such short notice and that she had not waited for him to call for her at the apartment were not the characteristic behavior expected of a wealthy girl. This freedom from artificiality pleased him. At least it would please him if he could be sure that it was her own idea and not Donald's.
"It's going to be a beautiful night," she said, getting into step with him. "I wish we were high up someplace, where we could look out across the horizon."
But he was looking at her, appreciating her own natural bloom of color. She was enough horizon for any man, her hair burnished copper in the growing twilight.
"I'll settle for a coffee house, though," she smiled. "Why don't you take me to the Village, Eric?" She linked her arm through his as they crossed Fifth Avenue. "We can ride the bus all the way down town. I remember years ago when I was a baby, Dad used to take me on the double deckers. They were fun."
"Why not?" But he wasn't pleased to take her there. He didn't like the idea of sitting this young girl in the middle of Bohemia. Something in him wanted to keep her in a glass cage where nothing of human dirt and misery could touch her.
They waited with a group of others for the Washington Square bus. The evening breeze played with her hair. He wanted to touch it and feel the silky texture.
"I'm glad you want to be our friend," she said out of nowhere.
"You must have plenty of friends." The bus pulled up and they were caught in the crowd to the door, preventing her from answering him right then.
They moved to the back but there were no vacant seats. She caught the hanger and they swayed together as the bus swayed through the traffic. People jostied them. Children going home from Central Park zoo floated their balloons between them. He wanted her to keep on talking but she couldn't now. The idea of a coffee house seemed suddenly right. There they could have the required privacy and all the unmolested time in the world for each to say whatever was necessary. She did not make him feel like a stranger. An area of warmth moved out from Robin to touch him. They might have known each other for years, he felt today. The natural reserve which she had shown in front of her family had softened. And she did not move away with annoyance when the bus bumped them together. Instead, she laughed, as though she knew he could not have meant to take advantage of the crowded situation. He felt that she trusted him, as people do sometimes, instinctively. And he intended to prove to her that this trust was well placed.
They got out and strolled down Eighth Street where men in dungarees and beards mingled with women in their mink stoles. He saw a young boy clad in walking shorts go over Robin's body with his eyes, then stare hard at himself digging to see what was happening. The challenge jolted him, as he realized he was steering Robin through the crowds, holding her lightly by the elbow as though she were already in his possession.
They talked little as they walked, each content just to be here and together for the moment. He refused to think about the difference tomorrow would bring for them both. Class consciousness was out of style. Yet he had to face the fact that he wouldn't be here with Robin if he weren't in her father's employ. The impulse to square with her bulged up into his throat. Yet he could not tell her about Donald.
They turned down at MacDougal Street and found a coffee shop less crowded than most. An ornate place with heavy wooden tables and chairs upholstered in red plushy She went directly to one of the alcoves that looked out on the street and leaned back into the nook of the wall.
He extended a menu toward her, but she shook her head.
"I always take cappuchino," she said.
"Oh? I didn't realize that you came here that often."
"I don't. Anymore."
The waiter appeared and bowed over them.
"Two cappuchinos," Eric said. He took out a pack of cigarettes and put it on the small round table.
Couples strolling on the street peered in, holding their glances on Robin for as long as they could.
"You have an audience," he said.
"Do I? I was watching that bar across the street. The soldiers and sailors who go in. Most of them come out alone. It must be very lonely in a strange city with no one to call." Her own voice echoed their loneliness. Instantly she turned it off. "See, I am mopey today. Donald was right."
"Mope away then." He did not want to force her to speak. Better to let the feeling trickle out of her naturally. But he could not really let the subject drop. He felt a heed to get beneath the gentle exterior, to hear the sound of the deep waters running there. "I can feel sorry for the sailors. But how am I expected to feel sorry for you? It would be hard to believe that you don't have friends."
As he said the words, he realized that it wouldn't really be hard to believe at all. Donald was enough to scare away anyone. Yet it was Donald who had encouraged this friendship. He wondered if Donald's behavior was restricted to himself in this instance.
She had taken the match book and lighted the candle on the table. It glowed in front of her face as she gazed into the pear-shaped flame. The scrutiny of its brightness revealed the unblemished texture of her skin. Then she cupped her hands around the light, almost reading his thoughts. The outline of her lips in flickering shadow was the outline of sadness, though the corners tilted upward. He wanted to take her hand or tuck a coverlet over her knees against the chillness of ghosts that seemed to be floating in her silentness.
"Yes, I do have friends," she said.
"You could sound a little more enthusiastic." He spoke gently, wanting her to know that he was on her side, not chiding her or being flip.
The waiter came, placing their cups and folding napkins beside the spoons.
She lifted her spoon and began to stir it through the fluffly white cream, moving the scatter of cinnamon down into the liquid. "Let's not talk about me all night," she said briskly, recovering from the thoughts which had enveloped her. "Let's talk about you. After all, I don't know anything at all about you yet. And I'd like to."
He wanted to ask her why. Why should she want to know about an ordinary guy stuck away in an office five days a week. "Ah right," he said. "Shall I begin with my love life or the wild jungle escapade in Africa when I was surrounded by six elephants and three tigers."
"Tell me about the tigers, Eric."
The way she said his name always made him pause. She gave life to the word, the syllables became straight and dignified. "Well, this is how it is with tigers. They have a very unpredictable nature." And he found that he was telling her all about Cee-Zee.
From the way she listened, he knew she understood he was talking about a woman. The subject didn't offend her. On the contrary, she listened with an interest that flattered him.
"And you," he concluded. "Have you hunted tigers too?"
She grinned and her nose crinkled across the bridge with hearty amusement and knowledge. "All the tigers I've ever known were on a leash. Somebody else's."
He had not taken her for the kind who would allow herself involvements with married men. "Even Cuban tigers?"
"Especially Cuban tigers. And Portuguese tigers. And Italian tigers."
"Have you ever tried the home-grown variety? They come fierce and free, you know."
She looked at him slowly and he had the feeling that she thought him very naive. "For American tigers, one needs a permit."
"Yes, I understand," he said.
"Do you?" She moved a cigarette out of the package and lit it from the candle. Then she rested both elbows on the table and put her chin on the bridge of her clasped hands.
He moved the candle aside so he could look at her and so she could see him clearly. "Supposing I tell you that permits are not as difficult to obtain as you believe."
"I would say, prove it to me."
He drew in a long breath, calculating how far he could go with Robin and still not reveal what he was up to with Donald. "How hard have you tried?"
The smoke curled before her eyes, wending its languid path upward. "Need I tell you?" she said.
"Please do."
She surveyed him for a minute, feeling, testing. "All right," she said at last. "There is first the family tree to consider. The roots of it seem to twist up and tangle themselves into the branches."
"In plain language?"
"In plain language, my great-grandmother and my grandmother and my mother have each produced one child who was not quite acceptable. I don't mean insane, that would be easier to cope with, I think. And each of them, in her turn, has committed suicide. Shall I stop now, Eric?"
"No. Go on, please."
She unclasped her hands and stroked off ash from her cigarette into the milk-glass tray beside her cup. "You should stop me now, you know. It's silly to be frightened by heredity."
"Nothing that frightens one is silly." He cast about for means to reassure her.
"But it is silly, whether one admits it or not." She sipped at her coffee, the words hanging definite between them. "I wouldn't want a son who couldn't adjust himself to living. And who couldn't be helped to adjust. I think I might kill myself too."
"Surely you don't believe that people can't be helped. Especially if therapy is begun at an early age."
"And how do you guarantee that one can spot the symptoms at an early age? Some children play together, exhibit kindness, intelligence, willingness to cooperate, good humor. All the things that one wishes in a child. How do you tell, Eric, that they are doomed to grow up the inheritors of a family weakness that destroys them slowly from the inside? Yes, how do you find this out until it is already too late? Until the child has deteriorated, morally and physically, beyond recuperation?" She spoke with a quiet vehemence, the numb flatness of despair giving a certain dignity to her speech and mellowing the youth in her features.
He sat back, not wanting to answer he-right away, not wanting to respond off the top of his head. She had given him the gift of her honesty. He must give her in return the gift of his thoughtfulness.
"I don't know," he said. "But I hope that medical science is a little more adequate now than it was forty years ago, thirty. Even twenty."
"And you would be willing to gamble on that?"
"I am a gambler by nature, Robin."
She lifted a drop of melted wax onto her finger and flattened it with her thumb. "That is because you are not a woman, Eric. There is a mysterious something in the process of carrying a child in one's body and giving it birth. I remember touching my mother's belly when it was high. Feeling the child kick within her. I remember the expression on her face, its mixture of hope and love and fear. Yes, a man can be equally attached to his children. My father's love is as great as any man's. But in our family, it is not the man who must deal with the responsibility. That is the obstacle, you see. The burden of blame more painful than birth itself."
He lifted his cup. The coffee had cooled and he realized they had been sitting there for a long time, though it hardly seemed more than a moment. The sky had lost its light now and a sprinkling of stars shone beyond the reddish glare of the neon lights across the street.
"And so," she concluded, "I find it best to hunt tigers that are leashed."
"You speak as though they can't be as dangerous."
"Well, they can't," she said with conviction.
Eric lifted an eyebrow in silent question.
"I am a coward, you see. I can always skip off to another country without feeling I've cheated."
"Without feeling you have cheated yourself either?"
"I've been through that phase a thousand times. One has to compromise somewhere."
She looked about her at the young couples who had taken various seats around the room. The soft atmosphere lent itself to intimacies out of place uptown. Men felt free to hold the hands of the women across from them.
Eric followed her gaze and then looked back at her. "You don't sound convinced," he said.
"But I have no choice."
He took a breath and said, "Perhaps Donald isn't so badly off as you think? Supposing I could prove it to you?"
She looked at him incredulously. "Sweet Eric," she said with infinite softness. "It's not Donald. You haven't met my other brother. You never shall."
The words left him speechless. Donald was certainly bad enough. If there was something worse than Donald in the family, he didn't want to see it.
"You don't look so sure of yourself now," she said. Her cup was empty and she tilted it to gaze into its bottom.
"I didn't realize," he admitted. "But that doesn't mean I'm ready to give in."
"As you wish. But Donald and I have a pact. We made it long ago and nothing can dissolve it. Yes. We promised each other never to involve a stranger in our fives. Better to let the bad seed die with us."
"And your father, does he know about this?"
She smiled with satisfaction. "Of course not. He couldn't bear the shame. Or the knowledge that eventually all his vast fortunes will go to charity. Yet sometimes I think he suspects and cannot allow himself to believe the truth of his suspicion. I feel sorry for my father. But I would feel sorrier if he lived to see his grandchildren with the other inheritance than his money."
Eric signalled for more cappuchino, needing a breathing spell to organize her revelations to him.
She accepted the second cup, drawing it closer to her and dropping sugar slowly to sift through the cream. "I suppose you are wondering why I'm telling you this when we hardly know each other."
He had flattered himself into believing that Robin considered him a friend. "Yes," he said slowly.
"Because I want you not to urge Donald into something that would destroy our promise."
Eric took a cigarette now and struck a match just to hear the sound and to watch the sulfur flare. "Then you know."
"Yes, of course. Dad has gone through this a dozen times. So far he has been unsuccessful."
"Then why do you lose confidence now?"
Robin pulled her jacket close as though protecting herself from a sudden threatening coldness. "Simply intuition," she said. Her eyes were luminous oceans bright and silvery as though a new moon were shining behind them.
Eric signalled for the check, then reached across and put his hand over hers. "You're right to respect that intuition," he said kindly. "I would like to know that you aren't afraid of it."
She looked at him, her lips parted just a little. He knew that she was afraid. Afraid for Donald. And certainly afraid for herself.