Chapter 15
Paul came back to the house Tuesday night, making it clear that he had returned only because of Sherry. He stayed at the agency until eight or nine the next three evenings, and for this there was a curt explanation, too. Monty Carrell had notified Mr. Pritchard that he was leaving Chicago next week, but would be willing to pile up enough illustrations to tide the agency over until a replacement could be found. Paul was spending his days calming Jim Oliver and inspecting art samples with Old Pritch. His routine work was pushed onto an evening schedule.
Sherry, too, had used the house for sleeping quarters only. Grimly silent, she ignored any attempt at reconciliation. Nadine would see her crossing the street to Leila's in the morning. Or speeding away with one of the Lindholm kids. Even in greeting them, she was soft-spoken and dolorous; the brassy colloquialisms had been erased from her vocabulary; Nadine yearned to have Sherry call something "swingin'" or "bitchin' " again.
No word from Warren, no calls from Vince. No visits from Leila Stroud. No one left but Monty ... and he never called. Courageously, he was restraining himself from influencing her final decision.
But because the hours were empty and sterile, and because he had invited Nadine to melt her "pain-wracked soul" with his, she wrote long, detailed, and intimate letters to Monty, telling him of her recent torments, subtly reminding him that there were others who desired her as he did, mentioning one who had left his wife because of her, naming two others who would be willing to follow suit were it not for the fact that she had now found the one absorbing love of her life. And would Monty please feel free to write or phone her? There was no one around now to intercept when the mailman came or the phone rang.
She wrote one letter on Monday, another on Wednesday. Nervously, Nadine waited for replies. When there were none, she phoned the studio; no one answered the prolonged ringing. He was avoiding Ann's persistent calls, but why couldn't he write? (She refused to think about Ann Helsley. It was too depressing ... too sordid to think of the sticky, confession-magazine implications associated with the silly girl.) Why didn't he write? He was cautious, that was why. Monty was too clever, too discreet to risk exposing their affair on paper. Someone else could read words intended only for her. Never underestimate Monty. (Yet he was leaving next week ... leaving!)
By Friday night Nadine began to glimpse the writhing emotional state that had made an escapist of Roy, a nervous wreck of Warren, a Zombi of Paul, a drunk of Vince. To want something ... to want and want and not to have ... not to know why you have been denied! Everyone else was swept from her mind. Day and night, parched with a single hunger, a solitary thirst ... Monty brilliant and nonchalant, Monty suffering the cruel scourge of those who failed to comprehend his art ... Monty in whirling, sweat-glistening damp-rumpled-coral-silk-spread erotic dreams; half-awake, half-asleep ... ravenous ... starved for him!
On Saturday evening, the last day in June, Paul went out for a walk; to get over his headache, he told Sherry before she closed herself in her room.
Nadine drove to the Gold Coast.
"You can call me Cass," the girl told Nadine.
Nadine followed her into Monty's studio apprehensively. It was an effort to appear casual.
The girl had barely glanced at Nadine. She had evidently been engaged in a messy job when the Chinese knocker had called her to the door. Cass returned to her task; wiping the tops of paint jars with a damp sponge and packing them into a corrugated carton. She was beautiful in the disheveled, long, black, tangle-haired manner of an operetta gypsy. Tiger eyes, luxuriantly shaded by dark, astoundingly thick curved lashes. No shoes ... black leotards ... a smudged white paint smock pinned together sloppily by an outsized safety pin.
And young, Nadine observed uneasily. Middle twenties ... no need for make-up except the careless smear of bright lipstick on her full, wide mouth.
Nadine looked around the studio, still attempting nonchalance.
"He's not here," Cass said carelessly. "Want to wait? He might get back." She shrugged indifferently. "Then again, he might not."
"I'm...."
"Nadine," Cass said. "I figured you had to be the ad guy's wife, from the way he described you."
Burning inside, Nadine forced a wan smile. "I don't think he's ever told me about you."
"I'm his mother."
The phone began to ring. Cass muttered, "Damn!" and answered it, explaining to the caller with a patronizing patience that Monty was out and, no, she didn't know where he could be reached or when he'd be back.
Cass returned to her job, lighting a cigarette in the process. "Imagine a babe getting brushed off because she's stupid? Know what I mean? Flips, gets herself knocked up, then wants a guy to change his way of living because she didn't know enough to count."
"Was that Ann Helsley?" Nadine was picturing the pretty girl in the powder blue suit, her sympathy with the caller.
"Who else?" Cass rested her cigarette in the end of the easel trough. She picked out several almost-empty paint jars and dropped them in a convenient trash box. "A kid like that should play in her own back yard. Take you ... you're older, you've knocked around. Take me, I'm out for kicks. Nobody reaches me. You dig? So I can't get smashed. A kid like that's got no business fooling around with a full-time lover boy."
Sickly, Nadine. nodded. Cass hadn't looked up at her, but the yellow-eyed Carmen was extremely affable nevertheless.
"What she doesn't know is Mont would preen like a goddamn peacock if she jumped off the Wrigley Building. I think he'd reach the height of his ambition if some broad got so hung up on him she'd commit hara-kiri. Meanwhile, he's had to steer clear of her. Yowling bores him ... you know Mont."
"Yes ... I certainly do."
Cass picked up the cigarette for a quick drag. "I told him ... serves you right, Cellini. Feeding her all that flowery bull about your anguished souls! Jesus Murphy! 'Together we'll be one ... and we'll produce art!' If he tried that with one of us, he'd get his apricots kicked in. But she's a West-Side kid." Cass sighed. "That's the breaks, y'know?"
"You're helping Monty pack," Nadine said absently. (Her mind elsewhere, her insides floating off, churning somewhere in space.)
"Nah ... this is some stuff he said I could have. Not worth shipping but too good to toss out."
Nadine brightened. The girl wasn't going with Monty! They were only friends....
"Are you an artist, too?" Nadine asked.
"Nah ... my ex-husband is. I'll drop this crud at his place before we take off."
"You're going with ... Monty?"
"Maybe I am, maybe not," Cass said wearily. "I mean, it's been two years since I made the Apple, so I may go with lover-face. I don't think I'd dig the Frogs, though. Know what I mean ... kind of greasy and they eat snails, so I told Mont he can shove Paris. It's just talk with him, anyway."
"No, he really wants to go. He's always loved Paris."
"Where, on post cards? This is as far as he ever got from Queens, New York, dig? You know how Mont slings it. Good in bed, but so full of bull, it's comin' out of his ears...."
Nadine didn't wait for Monty's return. Cass waved her off agreeably without looking up from the messy chore.
Nadine drove erratically, her mind preoccupied with the revealing conversation. And then with the justification: the girl meant nothing to Monty. A mess. She was a parlor hipster and a mess. Safety-pinned clothes ... hair that hadn't seen a comb in days. She couldn't be more than an old, casual acquaintance.
Nadine tried a new tack. Monty was an artist. Inevitable that he would have off-beat bohemian friends....
And another turn. Why be incensed over discoveries of phoniness? During their first meeting Monty had admitted he was no boy scout. You had to color yourself a little to be interesting. I do it myself, Nadine reflected. We're so close because we're so alike!
Before she reached Riverdale, Nadine stopped at a public phone booth to dial his number. If Cass answered, she would hang up.
Amazingly, she reached Monty. He was thrilled by the sound of her voice. Sorry he had missed her. They talked for nearly ten minutes, Monty explaining that he had started several letters to her, but....
"... words are so inadequate. If I were a poet, I might be able to express what I feel about you. I can only put our love on canvas...."
"Monty, I wish you'd get down to specifics. If I'm coming with you, I've got to make plans...."
"I was going to suggest that I could go on ahead and find us a pad where we won't be disturbed too often," Monty said hesitantly. "That would give you time to ... finish up your business here and ... get organized."
When Nadine hung up, after a passionate adieu from Monty, she was less disturbed than she had been after the brief session with Cass. Yet a long, long way from knowing that inner security that gives unequivocal assurance; he meant every word of it ... I'm not being conned by an expert at the game.
Nadine pulled up in the driveway, noticing that the house was dark. She hadn't reached the door when headlights blinded her. Then the area was plunged into darkness again and she was able to distinguish the outline of the white Corvette. She waited on the walk until George Weidberger approached, calling her name. "How're you tonight, Nadine?"
"Fine, thank you. I ... just this minute got here."
"I noticed." He stood next to her, more nervous than she had ever seen Warren. "I just ... happened to be driving by."
"I don't think anyone's home. No lights. I imagine Sherry...." She stopped, uncomfortably aware of his nearness. "Was she expecting you?"
"No. I hope I don't need an invitation to drop in on you. Frankly, I'd rather talk to you. Not that Sherry isn't interesting, but you and I seem to converse on the ... same level."
"You may have misunderstood, George. We...."
"I don't think so," he said in a surprisingly even tone. "Let's face it, I'm young, but I'm not stupid. We hit it off ... no point in pretending we didn't. We've already agreed that age is a ... relative matter."
She would have been forced into an untypical, unkindly, unNadine-like brushoff in another minute. But as they talked, Nadine caught a glimpse of headlights passing the house, then the sound of a car braking to an abrupt stop and backing to the curb.
George turned. Uneasily, probably recognizing the Cadillac more quickly than Nadine, he muttered, "It's Warren.
He was going right by until he saw my car. He keeps tabs on me ... like a juvenile officer!"
Warren came up the walk with a heavy, determined step. He dismissed Nadine with a brief, "Evening, Nadine," and turned in undisguised irritation toward George.
"Did you have a date with Sherry tonight?" he asked, his tone thick with implication.
"No, I didn't ... officially...."
"I wondered. Her father called the house earlier, wondering if she was with you."
"I was there at the time, Warren. You know I answered the...."
"Exactly what I'm trying to get across," Warren said. "You knew Sherry wasn't here, but you came to see her anyway'"
George shifted nervously. "I thought she might be back by now."
"Is she?" Warren demanded.
"No, she's...."
"Then there's no reason for you to wait around, is there?"
"We were only chatting about ... college courses," Nadine said, failing to lessen the tension.
For several seconds the pair stood facing each other like stags wondering whether locking horns would be worth the effort, after which George mumbled, "Goodnight," adding a more pointed, "Mrs. Whitten" and stomping angrily in the direction of his car.
Warren waited until the Corvette had charged down the street. Then, strangely shaken, he said, "I've about had it with that kid. He's upset Mabel ... given her all kinds of ideas. And now I find him hanging around you like a pup around a...."
Warren cut off the sentence abruptly. Nadine followed his gaze across the street. "What's the matter?"
"Is that Leila's car turning into her driveway?"
"Is that something to get shocked over?"
"I hate to be seen here, under the circumstances. I offered to drive Paul wherever he wanted to go, but he said Leila'd already volunteered...."
"For what?"
"To look for Sherry. I guess they found her, all right."
Under Stroud's porch light they saw Leila hurrying ahead to unlock her door, Paul following with a protective arm around Sherry.
"I hope Paul didn't see my car," Warren said. "If he did, tell him ... I was concerned about the kid."
"She was probably at Frannie's ... somewhere in the neighborhood. I can't see any reason for all this intrigue."
"As upset as Paul was ... I imagine he'd phoned all the obvious places." Warren apparently remembered the tell-tale Cadillac again. "Damn, always having to invent excuses ... having to lie!" And then, turning his guilt-ridden ire toward Nadine, "Aren't you going over there? You could see Sherry crying...."
"No ... they'll come here in a bit."
"Why didn't they come here to begin with?"
"How do I know? Maybe they didn't think I'd gotten home yet." Nadine reflected on the stupidity of the statement; certainly Paul would have seen their own car as well as Warren's. Irascibly, she said, "You're starting to make noises like a Riverdale housewife."
"I guess they gossip ... they're human," Warren conceded. "But one thing you can say for most of them. Their kids know where to find them ... and they know where to find their kids."
There was a brief, tense pause, the air around them heavy with the sounds of their first quarrel. Then Warren said, "I don't want to argue. I've had enough of that, lately, at home." He shook his head, as though attempting to brush away a swarm of plaguing irritations. Then he walked swiftly toward his parked car.
Nadine ignored his departure, looking beyond the long, black car to the lights in Leila's house, resenting her exclusion from a growing circle of people. Sherry and Leila. And now Sherry, Leila and Paul. Why had they gone there instead of coming home? And where in hell had Sherry been, getting everyone in an uproar and creating the embarrassing bit with George, giving Warren a derogatory impression when up until now he had thought of Nadine as perfection personified?
Cass, the questionable conversation with Monty, and now all this! Nadine sighed, discovered that the front door was unlocked, and walked through the dark and empty house to the bedroom, flopping disconsolately across the bed.
Confidence slipping ... filtering between your fingers, so that in the very act of grasping for it, you admitted defeat. Dumbo without his magic feather, King Arthur without the charmed sword, Excalibur. Any one of the thousands of fairytale heroes and heroines deprived of their enchanted talisman ... a jewel, a spindle, a cloak, a steed ... Nadine rejected and powerless to cast her spell ... shorn of her invincibility; if everyone did not love her, then perhaps no one did ... no one, no one, not even Paul, who had given her the bewitched treasure of supreme confidence in her-self!
Nadine was awake when Paul returned to the house. He came into the bedroom quietly, flicking on a dresser lamp and apologizing for the light. "I'm sorry to disturb you."
"It's all right," Nadine said. "I couldn't sleep."
"Not very late. It's not eleven yet."
Politely banal, warming up to a cementing of relations, Nadine surmised. People always approached the patching of a rift with soft-spoken, exaggerated politeness.
"Did Sherry go to bed?"
"She's staying at Leila's."
"I can't say that I like the idea, Paul."
"She didn't want to come home, Nadine. Think about that for a while and ask yourself if anything ... if anybody's worth that. Sherry didn't want to come home. And tonight she left a note ... saying she wasn't ever coming back."
"Actually running away? Like a ten-year-old-boy ... running away to join the circus?"
"She was going to Bowling Green to see Carolyn Sankey. At least that's what she said at the bus station."
"Oh, not that again ... that freight-car-bus-station bid for sympathy! I suppose she told you in her note that she'd be taking a bus ... made it easy for you to find her! I suppose you and Leila had to drive all the way downtown and that you both made a dramatic fuss over her...."
"Yes!"
Nadine looked up, startled. Paul hadn't moved far from the doorway. He was standing there now without any support, unbelievably straight and immobile. He rarely raised his voice, but the "yes" had been hurled like a loud challenge.
He repeated the word now. "Yes! You're right on all counts! She ran away to get sympathy because, God damn it, any kid in her position could use plenty! And much as she wanted to run away, she wanted even more to be found. Let that sink home, Nadine ... she wanted us to find her! So I'm not ashamed that I went looking ... and I'm damned grateful her note tipped me off where to look. Because until I found the note, I could only bite my nails, wondering where she'd gone."
"And after that, you could rush over and let Leila drive you to the rescue. Oh, I can just see the two of you...."
Paul had come to the edge of the bed while she spoke. Leaning down, he grasped Nadine's arm, fingers closing over it hard. "You've got that a little twisted, haven't you? Sherry and I didn't want a replacement for you. We still don't. Let's keep in mind who walked out on whom ... who paired off with strangers, when all Sher wanted was you ... and all I'm ever going to want, as long as I live ... is you. Let's keep the record straight!"
The remainder was lost on Nadine. The essential thought lay in Paul's avowal...."All I'm ever going to want ... is you!"
Nadine reached out to retrieve the magic feather, the holy sword, the thrice-blessed charm. Her hand lifted to touch Paul's. Gently, she said, "I wish everything was ... the way it used to be."
As though the strings of the rigid puppet had been cut, Paul dropped to the bed. "What do you think we want, Mom? We want you to be funny again ... to ... do crazy things ... but only with us. I could forget ... Sherry could, too ... forget everything we heard ... everything that happened...."
"And everything you imagined, too, Paul?" (To accept forgiveness on any other terms would have left her too vulnerable to criticism in the future.)
His arms reached for Nadine, trembling violently. "When you get desperate, you begin to imagine things ... I suppose I did that, too."
"That nonsense about Roy...."
"Don't talk about it."
"And Vince. Ye Gods, and even that thing with Monty has been ... purely ... aboveboard. Not physical or anything...."
Paul winced. "I said let's not talk about it."
"You believe that, though? If you don't, there's no use in our ... "
"All right, I believe it. I want to, God knows. All I want to do is forget it because I won't ... I can't accept your being in love with anyone but me ... or caring about anyone more than Sherry."
Nadine sighed and nestled in his arms. She felt like crying ... perhaps, after all the important reconciliatory points had been covered, she would cry. And Paul would hold her and adore her for being silly and impetuous and be glad she was back where she belonged....
"Tomorrow," Paul said hoarsely, " ... let's make Sherry want to come home."
Nadine nodded against his chest.
"I love you," Paul said.
Nadine clung tightly to the magic feather without which she could not fly. Clung tightly and knew she could handle any of them now ... Monty included. "I love you," she said.
Not once, but many times in the bittersweet hour that divided Saturday from Sunday. (Her Excalibur ... her divinely protective sword!) "Hove you, too, Paul...."