Chapter 14
Nadine prepared the dinner, adding inspired flourishes. From behind the guest room door, Paul tersely declined, saying his stomach was upset. Sherry was bitingly polite: "Thank you, I'm not hungry." Nadine drank two cups of coffee and, heavily disappointed, cleared the table.
It might take a little longer this time, she concluded. She had seen Paul only once during the morning, shuffling down the hall toward Sherry's bathroom. Something had turned over inside her, seeing his red-rimmed eyes; no need to wonder if he had slept. And she hadn't let him see her, darting instead into the den, building herself up for the awkward dinnertime meeting, which never materialized.
At eight that evening she answered the door chimes to find George Weidberger beaming his big-wheel-on-the-campus smile.
He had a date with Sherry, she was informed.
Sherry swept past Nadine into the living room, greeted George without her usual enthusiasm and Nadine heard them leave the house a few moments afterward.
Alone in the house with Paul. This was the logical time to approach him. If he didn't love her, he wouldn't be miserable. And since he did love her, it shouldn't take too much effort to win him over, then work on Sherry tomorrow, while he was away at the office.
Nadine returned to the bedroom to map out her strategy. It took too long. At about the time she had decided on the most effective method, she heard the Chrysler starting up in the driveway and looked out the window to see Paul driving away.
He had left the house silently. He hadn't been waiting for her to break the depressing deadlock. He hadn't wanted to talk with her and patch things up!
Knowing this, and not knowing where Paul had gone, brought tears to Nadine's eyes. She would have made an evening of it ... Tragedy of the Deserted Wife and Mother. She would have sobbed into her pillow. Except that even her brilliant imagination could not conceive of having lost Paul for more than a day or two. And also because there was no one around to appreciate the scene.
Monday, thinking it a waste not to take advantage of her hard-gained "freedom," Nadine decided to surprise Monty with a day-long visit.
And she did surprise him-in the act of persuading Ann Helsley that she should get lost. They had apparently been involved in a rousing argument when Monty came to the door.
Tears, tears ... Nadine was beginning to be bored to tears with tears. Ann was crying as Nadine stepped into the apartment. And the girl's resentment was unconcealed this time. Ann glared venomously at Nadine, told Monty she would call him later and slammed the door in leaving.
Monty sighed his exasperation. "Why should it be difficult to understand why I have no intention of settling down to connubial ennui with that?"
"Is that what she wants you to do? Marry her?"
Monty stretched himself wearily across his red couch. Relaxed, he let out a chuckling sound of amusement. "Letting her model for me gave Annie delusions of grandeur, I think. Can you imagine me marrying a roofing contractor's daughter? Who teaches ballet, tap and baton-twirling in a West-Side dancing school?"
Nadine crossed the room and he -edged over to allow her sitting room beside him. "You haven't kissed me."
"So I haven't."
Monty threw himself whole-heartedly into making up for the omission. And pressed his mouth against her ear, whispering, "Lover ... how long it's been!"
They would be together permanently soon, Nadine assured him, saving the thrilling news for the end; "I've told Paul about us."
For a split second, Monty looked as though he had been stabbed.
"Told him?" he asked.
"Yes, I told him. I couldn't keep it to myself."
"Without any provocation?"
"Some. For one thing, he was convinced I spent Saturday night with you."
"But you're clever enough to have ... surely you had an explanation...?"
"Monty, it doesn't matter now. He knows and I'm free and we're going to be together. That's all we want, isn't it?"
"Yes, but there ... one doesn't leap into this sort of arrangement, darling. It's going to make the Weidberger job difficult ... you should have considered that."
"You told me you're going away...."
"I'll certainly have to now. Moves up my schedule ... between this, and that nonsense with Ann ... gad!"
He furrowed his brow and Nadine suspected, though only briefly, that he was annoyed with her.
"Paul won't want to see you again," she admitted. "He's not ... speaking to me at the moment."
"Do you want to leave him?"
"Only for you."
"Yes, I know, but ... is this what you really want? Dearest, I'd never forgive myself if I destroyed years and years of happiness and security ... and then you found me disappointing. I don't want to influence you. This is a serious decision ... something I'm forced to let you suffer alone. Because I love you. I can't help you plot your future course because I'm biased."
His kisses lacked some of their usual fire, but it was understandable; it was all too overwhelming.
"Think about it. Don't listen to me. We'll stay apart from each other until you've made the decision alone...."
Monty rose from the couch, walking to his easel and gazing disconsolately at an abstract, noncommercial painting, only half-finished. "I live for you. For you and my art."
"You'd be able to devote all your time to serious work in Paris, wouldn't you?"
"Yes. Yes, no more being suffocated by vulgar beer advertisements."
"We'll manage somehow," Nadine said bravely.
"We...? Oh, in Paris. Yes, we'll struggle it out. As long as you have faith in me, love. It gets desperately cold in winter. We'll laugh at the cold. You and I."
"How cold?" Nadine asked cautiously.
"One January ... I'll always remember it as the month I lived on crackers and cheese and the pipes froze. If you only knew how revoltingly barbarian the French plumbing is!" He launched into a floor-pacing diatribe against insincere artists who refuse to relinquish their comforts to produce the zenith of their expression ... to wrench the heart from its warm niche of materialistic complacency....
It was impossible to channel the conversation, or the activity, into the more mundane channels. Or the more romantic ones.
"I hadn't realized," Nadine said, shoving aside a growing discomfiture, " ... that your work means so much to you."
Monty clasped her in his arms. "You're my art, too, Nadine. Why do you think I want this period of aloneness? You've got to be unshakably certain ... before you melt your pain-wracked soul with mine forever...."
"Monty, I get a little uncomfortable when you say things like that."
"Dearest...."
"I do. My soul isn't pain-wracked. I simply think we'd be gloriously happy together. And the hammy snow job about frozen plumbing isn't going to frighten me off. If the pipes freeze, we'll move to a flat where the toilets do flush."
Monty laughed uproariously and hugged her. "You're delightful!"
"Were you trying to frighten me off?"
"You've exposed me. I'm thinking of Paul. Lover, I have an absolute horror of irate husbands. They've been known to whip out pistols ... dreary episodes of that sort."
"Paul isn't going to challenge you to a duel. He's heartbroken, of course, but he's given me ... my freedom." The sentence came out sounding hollow; Nadine had never been inside of a cage.
"Paul's not apt to come looking for you?"
"He realized we ... have to have each other, I think. It was terribly painful ... but he told me...." Nadine gave the line all the time it deserved. "He told me to go to you."
"You handled it rather well, at that," Monty conceded. His sweeping kiss showed he had not lost his touch. "It's more comfortable in the other room," he said huskily, his lips brushing Nadine's.
With the coral curtains drawn and without the big Siamese to distract them, it was.
It was not until she had returned home that the queasiness set in. I am not Ann Helsley, Nadine reminded herself. I am not twenty-two and childishly naive. There was something lacking in Monty's reception; there was a restraint, a subtle reserve in his lovemaking.
Rejection was unthinkable. He loves me; Nadine's mind was adamant in this conclusion. But it only took that faint uncertainty to make Monty indispensable. The slightest possibility that he could resist her made him an object of scorching desire.
Paul's aloof return home at nine-thirty stirred a similar response in her. Besides, he looked so hopelessly forlorn!
Sherry was spending the night with Frannie Lindholm, anxious to get out of the funereal atmosphere of the house. At ten o'clock, Nadine came into the den where Paul sat blankly staring at a folio of figured sheets. He looked up solemnly as Nadine entered the room.
"Paul ... let me talk to you."
"Is there anything to say?"
"I can't help it, can I? If I'm ... capable of loving more than one person?"
"I always believed it was ... the two of us against the world. The two of us and Sherry."
"Would it help to know Vince was only ... babbling?"
"Don't. Please ... I don't want to hear names...."
"And I never looked twice at Roy. I really did write that letter for Leila ... "
"All right."
"I've been desolate about you...."
"That wasn't the impression our September girl-of-the-month gave me."
Nadine felt her face grow warm. "Who?"
"Miss Helsley. You remember seeing her early today? You do remember?"
Nadine's breath stopped.
"I took her call in Jim Oliver's office. Nice, Mommy? Your bed-hopping boy friend seems to have gotten her pregnant."
"I don't believe it. Monty's...."
"Too clever to err? She had two objectives in calling. Seems she thinks it's possible to garnishee his wages ... needs money, scared to death to tell her parents. I had to explain that Mr. Carrell doesn't work on salary. And that without a court order there wasn't much we could do to help her."
"Oh, Paul, I'm so sorry...."
"She only mentioned seeing you at Carrell's today in passing." Paul lowered his head, moving it from side to side, his eyes pressed shut. "How much can a man take?"
Nadine knelt at his feet, touching his hand. Paul made no effort to move away from her touch.
"Paul ... honey...."
"Didn't you know? Didn't you know what it would do to me? To all of us?"
(What if it were true about Monty and Ann? What if Monty's coolness today had been a replica of his callousness toward the lovesick Helsley girl? How much wiser, safer, to be here ... indisputably loved ... needed! What if Paris was cold and Monty was a flop as an artist? It was only a fluttering panic. But combined with her deep sympathy for Paul, for this tortuous emotion that wracked him, it made a reunion with Paul almost imperative!)
"I love you, Paul. I'm not like you ... this is the way I am and it's hard to explain...."
Paul opened his eyes to look deeply, painfully into hers. "Is it because you're sick? Emotionally sick? Maybe I ought to get help for you."
Paul pulled his hand from under hers and grasped at her shoulders, digging his fingers into her flesh. "Is that it, Nadine? You couldn't have destroyed me otherwise. You're kind ... you wouldn't hurt a fly ... you'd go twenty miles out of your way to pick up some trinket because somebody might enjoy having it. I love you. God damn it ... I love you enough to let you go if I thought another man could make you happy where I've failed...."
"You haven't failed, Paul."
"But he'll hurt you. He'll use you and hurt you."
That early it could have been almost anyone. Yet when the phone at Paul's side startled them with a sharp, jarring ring, Nadine knew instinctively who had dialed their number.
Paul lifted his head, whipping out of the anguished mood. "Answer it!" he said tersely.
"Answer it!"
Nadine fought to keep her hand steady as she lifted the receiver. Her own heartbeat pounded in her ears like jungle tom-toms.
"Hello...?"
"I can't go to bed alone tonight. I've been thinking about you...."
Paul's eyes burned into her; Vince's voice, woozy and deeply purring, came through with an audible clarity. With Paul only inches away, Vince may as well have screamed.
"... thinking about that night I picked you up ... parked behind the club...."
Paul's arm swung out without warning. Thudding, hard impact ... the telephone clattering to the floor, the short cord yanking the receiver out of her hand.
"Paul!"
"You lying bitch!" Paul leaped to his feet, blind with fury, knocking her off balance and rushing out of the room.
"Paul, wait! What are you going to do?"
"Get out!" she heard him cry. "Get out where I won't have to look at you! Downtown ... to a hotel ... as far from you as I can get!"
Sprawled on the floor, too stunned to move, Nadine heard the front door open and close. Listening closely, her breath coming in short gasps, she heard the motor starting up, the car roaring savagely away from the house.
Nadine thought for a moment. Apparently Paul wasn't going to do anything drastic. The call was a damned nuisance
... without it, everything would have been placid and pleasant by now. And there wasn't anything she could do to help Paul. Not until he cooled down and came home....