A Kiss Before You Leave Me
a novel by
James Hulbert
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2010 by James Hulbert
First published as an ebook in 2010
Version 1.01
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales, enterprises or publications is entirely coincidental.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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for Jim Carpenter
Table of Contents
Later she claimed to have known…
Later she claimed to have known...
Later she claimed to have known intuitively that whatever was waiting behind the bedroom door was something terrible, but something to do with love. At this point, of course, that could have meant anything. Someone she loved—Jack, in spite of everything? Casey and Mark?—held prisoner, or killed in the name of love. Someone whom Vince, in his own way, loved: some new woman in his life, her very existence unknown to Miranda, a new wife, or a love-slave to bear him the child Miranda had been unable to... or the woman who’d come before Miranda with Vince and had never let them be, Kathleen as the late Rebecca de Winter or the madwoman in Mr. Rochester’s attic.... Miranda meant it all as a joke, of sorts, and the point of it was, she found the whole menagerie there, an all-of-the-above to conjure with. The navel was also an eye, the key also needle and nail, and the beloved lived on in death, as prisoner, victim, lover, mother, and bride. To say nothing of the cat. Or of Vince himself.
Book One: Seeing Someone
[Dr. Johnson] said he had written [Mrs. Thrale] a letter which he wished her to read when she was alone. It was not for careless eyes and was in French.
“Why French?” she asked.
“The sentiments in it,” he said, “are best conveyed in another language.”
—Beryl Bainbridge, According to Queeney
What does an imagination do but see what isn’t there?
—Hanif Kureishi, Gabriel’s Gift
“It’s only when I’m alone that I can meditate on the charm of the woman I love.... When she’s with me, I won’t have a moment to see her: I’ll be too busy watching her.”
—Sartre, adaptation of Dumas père’s Kean
This is a story about what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve.
—Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White
Chapter One
It begins in a time without painting.
After the paintings of the distant past. Before the ones that are still to come.
But if this were a painting, the man and woman on whom we’re about to eavesdrop would be only what’s called a “detail” in it. Two figures in an interior, part of a “conversation piece,” a society tableau. As a painting, it might be from another century, another continent, and it would be awash in color, colors that go unnoticed now by both the man and the woman.
They form the oddest of couples. Both of them misfits, but in different ways. She looks out of place at a party this grand, and he, for one thing, looks wrong standing with her. They’re the right ages to be mother and son, but they stand and speak and watch each other like two people who met for the first time only moments ago. Besides, did such an unassuming woman ever bear such a son?
She is in fact kin to no one at the party, though she looks for all the world like some poor relation of their hostess, an aunt or elder cousin perhaps. It must be her dress, her hair, the extra weight, the thick and strangely tinted lenses. For the two women are the same age, and when they were at day school together not ten miles away it was tonight’s hostess who was the poorer (make that the less rich) of the two. You can’t see history in a painting, of course, but in this time-without-painting you can eavesdrop on what the woman’s saying to the man who isn’t her son and get a pretty good idea.
“Marianne... my oldest friend... so kind... invites me every year....”
She’s talking away as if to hold him in place, and for some reason he’s making no effort to pull away. He may be one of those men a great part of whose charm is to appear to be charmed. But if you were making book on these things you’d give good odds he was just devoting the obligatory five minutes to her before he could excuse himself to connect with someone more attractive or more important at the other end of the impossibly long room. And you’d lose your bet.
She—let’s call her “the editor” for the moment, since that’s how she’s described herself to him, as an experienced editor who nowadays does freelance work “when I can get it”—the editor’s been having similar thoughts. And the longer he stays with her, the more she hopes it’s not out of some sense of obligation, duty. She knows enough about duty—she was once a wife, and she’ll always be a mother—to suspect it’s dictating the actions of others.
What does he want, anyway? You’d guess differently depending on your point of view. And the context. If this were a different sort of party—in a larger city, and with the press in attendance, or explicitly barred—you might think he’d been paid to show up, to dance attendance on unescorted women (or men), or simply to be seen and admired.
“Too attractive for his own good,” some would say. But not the editor. When she was first widowed she might have put it that way, but she’s survived all that and tonight she can see him simply as a man of a certain type, who can be counted on to turn certain heads. And that, she knows, is something, regardless of whether her own head is one of them.
We can call her Kathleen now, the way she’s just asked him to. And he’s always been Jack to her, even before they met. Her old friend Marianne, you see, has mentioned him, from time to time: his history at her husband’s law firm, and some of the speculation about him. Kathleen’s also seen his drab, determined little wife working the other end of the room, on her own. But it’s not one of those conjugal team efforts: he’s not moving, not working anything or anyone, unless—surely not—it’s the oldest friend of a senior partner’s wife. Is anyone that calculating?
Perhaps he’s just... kind. The sort of man who dances with every woman at a wedding, especially the ones who are there on their own. Or perhaps he’s just as shy as Kathleen is. His voice is rich and deep, but his words are coming out in short phrases, as if he were uncertain of meeting with understanding and acceptance. Good-looking men can also be kind and shy, can’t they?
She notices he’s not drinking, and she approves. She, too, turns down every waiter who presents a tray filled with glasses of champagne. She leans closer to Jack, as if to impart a confidence: “It’s nice to find someone here I can talk with, for once.” It’s not quite true, or at least it’s not the whole story, but it’s a conversational ploy that’s never failed her: divulge something about yourself as a way of holding on to the other person. And soon she’s talking about her work again, the joys of sitting in front of her computer, going over someone else’s final draft, with a pot of tea and her cat nearby, and no interruptions. It’s not like being on staff with a New York publisher, but it lets her keep her hand in and earn something....
Jack seems to see a connection only now, what he calls a “coincidence.” Maybe she can help. “My wife was just reminding me on the way over”—it’s the first time he’s mentioned her—“I promised my grandmother, before she died”—so he is dutiful—“that I’d get someone to go over a family manuscript that may be worth publishing. It’s very personal, full of... family secrets...?” His voice, his eyes, suggest the secrecy is a bit of a joke but that he hopes she won’t laugh.
And she doesn’t. “All families have secrets, Jack. Of course, they usually don’t want to publish them.” For the first time she appears to take the upper hand.
“We don’t know what we want. But you’re right. That’s why we had to wait: till there was no one left to be hurt. Then find an editor—well, a translator—someone discreet—”
“Translator?”
“The manuscript’s in French.”
That, clearly, is a different matter. “Ah, well. I’m the soul of discretion, but only in English, I’m afraid. In my work if you know how to spell ‘divorcée’ that’s all the French you need.... Your grandmother’s family was from France?”
“By way of Montreal. They came to the U.S. in the 1890s.”
“So it’s an old manuscript?”
“Not quite that old. There was one person in the family who was something of a... throwback, who lived in France and kept a diary in French for a couple of years. In the 1920s.”
“Why not publish it in France, or Quebec?”
“That was part of the promise: wait till the death of... another relative, then unseal the manuscript, and publish it in English, if at all... at my discretion. My grandmother said it was really an American story.” He shrugs a little.
Kathleen usually prides herself on not missing much. But in her voice there’s simply understanding now, not pride: “It’s her own manuscript, isn’t it?”
Jack lowers his eyes and says nothing, but she takes the movement of his head as assent.
“And would it really be considered... sensitive... today?” With all the things people do to each other now, her eyes add.
His shrug, she thinks, has something Gallic about it. “No one’s looked at it yet. I never took French—just Spanish. I’ve probably been misspelling ‘divorcée’ all these years. I don’t suppose you... know of anyone?”
“A nice divorcée? Your wife would never forgive me!” Kathleen’s eyes twinkle. “Actually, I do know someone, but you might suspect me of having a conflict of interest.” She leans on the last phrase: she’s having a little fun with the lawyer. But she has to change gears. “Miranda”—she speaks the name carefully—“is a fine literary translator, and—I won’t say she’s never made a mistake in her personal life, but she’s.... Well, talk about discretion! I could say to Miranda”—she glances at his wrist, and not for the first time—“‘Jack was wearing beautiful mother-of-pearl cufflinks, but you must never tell anyone,’ and she’d agree, and she’d keep her word. And a real secret”—Kathleen leans in closer to Jack, as the topic dictates—“she could keep even from me!” She gives him a moment to smile.
“She’s a friend of yours?”
Kathleen speaks like someone who wants to be precise, disclose everything. “That’s the conflict of interest. She used to be married to my son. She still uses the name Kincaid—our name. It was a very friendly divorce, all water over the dam now. So—I may have a translator and a divorcée for you, and your wife can’t even object!”
They both laugh, Kathleen a bit more. Then she goes on. “If you’ll trust a recommendation from an ex-mother-in-law. No one ever said a mother-in-law was impartial, did they?”
Before long he gives her his card with all his numbers, and she promises to see what she can do.
Kathleen’s always been able to do a great deal. It’s now the next morning, though, and she never works on Sundays. Never edits, that is.
She’s already home from an early Mass, back with her feet up in her cozy living room, and she has plenty of time to spend with the New York Times before noon rolls around and even Miranda can be assumed to be out of bed and taking phone calls. Of course, it’s only Kathleen for whom this interlude is time with the newspaper: for the bundle of fur in her lap, it’s time for two friends to spend together in a comfortable chair, and Kathleen learned long ago to read with the paper constantly folded and refolded so as to free one hand for the magnifying glass and one for caressing Alcestis. “Domestic shorthair,” it says in the file at the vet’s, and that says all and nothing at all. She’s more precious to Kathleen than ermine, which the cat’s fur rather resembles, and Alcestis often hears that she’s “as close to ermine as this old lady will ever get.” (Kathleen’s son is generous, but not to a fault. And, however often she mentions ermine to her cat, she barely remembers her own mother’s furs and the world that went with them.)
On one recent occasion, however, Alcestis may have sold herself cheap. Kathleen is close to abandoning the assumption that the cat’s newly increased weight and girth are the results of maturity and inactivity—rather than of a bit of activity that would have occurred several weeks ago, at the time of her last heat, when she disappeared in the night and returned serene the following morning. “Well, Ally, if it happened, it happened,” Kathleen says now, a bit obscurely, as if reluctant to give her friend any ideas. “There are worse things. A little loving, then a little more loving, and then in a few months it’ll be just the two of us again.” Alcestis purrs as if she understood, but it’s unclear whether it’s for the first or the second of those two lovings—or for her friend’s loving, which doesn’t need the word to sell it. “And you’ll never have a daughter-in-law to deal with.”
Kathleen’s relationship with Miranda has always been complicated, and now, even after years of supposed healing, it’s not unusual for them to go for months at a time with no contact. But Kathleen in no way dreads talking with Miranda. Problems are there, after all, to be dealt with. Just handle them the right way and everybody wins.
By the time she’s “broken the back” of the crossword, it’s time. She puts the newspaper and magnifying glass aside and lets Alcestis, sleeping now, stay in her lap as she dials the number.
Miranda recognizes Kathleen’s voice immediately and puts into her own a warmth they both know she doesn’t feel. In her own way, she’s still making amends.
Even though Kathleen thinks Miranda should view Jack Emery and the French manuscript as an enormous favor Kathleen’s doing her, she’s careful to couch it differently: “a favor for a man I met at Marianne and Bill’s last night.”
On the other end, Miranda was confused. She turned the music down, carried the cordless phone back into the kitchen to pour herself more coffee, then came back and settled in one of her two comfortable chairs to hear Kathleen out. Her first reaction had been to wonder what Kathleen was up to—what the real story was. But long experience had taught her she might never know.
“A Mr. Emery, J. L. Emery. An attorney,” Kathleen was saying, “an associate with Bill’s firm. A very kind man.” In need of “someone to evaluate, maybe translate, a long French manuscript. He kept talking about discretion, and judgment....”
“And so of course you thought of me.” Miranda’s joke was on herself, not Kathleen, and she was sure Kathleen knew it, too.
“I did think of you. It’s one of those family things”—they were both serious now—“and the poor man doesn’t know where to turn. He doesn’t know French, and he made a promise to his grandmother. It’s probably some very personal journal she kept. You could take a look, tell him what’s in it, advise him whether it’s worth translating. It could turn into a nice job for you.”
“A comeback?”
“You never really went away, dear.... Now, I didn’t promise him anything, but if you could just see him once, have a look at the manuscript....”
It was an easy decision. Miranda needed the work, and not just for the money. “It’s... so kind of you to do this, Kathleen. Sometimes I wonder how you and Vince can have anything to do with me. And here you’ve become... my friends.”
“We understand what you’ve been through. We’ve all had problems in life, we’ve been hurt, we’ve hurt other people. But it all has to stop sometime, and we have to go on with our lives. You’re doing that. You face up to things.... So—I have your permission to give Mr. Emery your number?”
“Of course.” But she was uncertain how to put the next part. “Kathleen, what does he know about me?”
“He knows you used to be married to Vince, and that you’ve had years of experience as a translator. But I didn’t mention—Oh, one other thing. It’s a bit delicate. I know you talk with Vince, and he’s always happy when you get more work, but... could we keep this between the two of us, my suggesting you for the job?” She seemed to be engaged in a bit of sensitive diplomacy. “It’s just that he wouldn’t understand. And it’s no one’s fault. Things between you and me weren’t always the way they are now, and Vince always blamed me. He and I are very close, but when it came to your marriage, your divorce—I promised him I’d leave you alone, let you live your own life. And he’d view even this as interference. To this day, you’re the one subject he and I can’t discuss....”
Miranda drew a deep breath, but not so Kathleen could hear. Always the secrets. “Of course I won’t say anything to him. And I’m sorry. I never wanted to be the cause of trouble between you.”
“I know, dear. It’s funny, isn’t it? He thinks you and I are enemies, but we understand each other and neither one of us can talk to him about it. Maybe we can just accept it and... turn the page....”
Miranda’s eye drifted to the bookshelf a few feet away.
Kathleen went on. “So you’ll see what you can do for Mr. Emery?”
Miranda had a vague sense of something wrong in the room, but she kept the conversation going. “I’ll... do my best.” She never fussed, never cared about appearances or what people might think, but now she stood on tiptoe to straighten a heavy bookend she must somehow have turned awry.
Kathleen, hearing the uncertainty in Miranda’s voice, sought to reassure her. “I just know you’re ready for this, dear.”
Jack eased a worn volume from his briefcase, but just as he opened its pages Miranda was suddenly there, as if by magic. He forgot the diary and rose to take her hand. She was beautiful.
He would say, much later, that he saw in her at that moment “an explosion of colors and possibilities.” There was more truth in the word “explosion” than in the others. But the explosion did have something to do with gold and rose and cream, and a piercing blue that was almost azure. And certain possibilities were obvious enough, weren’t they?
She seemed unaware of the effect she had, but Jack, ever conscious of how he presented himself, for a moment mistook her artlessness for show. Miranda, in truth, had spent more time steaming her grey Chanel suit than applying make-up. The only impression she’d wanted to make was of someone who’d show up on time and keep her promises. That, of course, was before she saw Jack.
He’d asked Maurice for a booth away from street noise and other lunch parties, and the headwaiter had his own idea what sort of lunch this would be. When Miranda arrived, her beauty confirmed his original notion, but the conservative elegance of her suit, and the portfolio she carried, complicated things. A business lunch after all, perhaps. Miranda’s breezy refusal of a drink seemed to confirm this.
Now it was Jack who took in the formal simplicity of the suit, warm for June but more appropriate for the restaurant’s air-conditioning than his own tennis shirt and khakis.
She glimpsed the notebook as Jack returned it to his briefcase. Saving business for after the meal? More “correct,” perhaps, than plunging right into this bizarre assignment, his grandmother, her death, her secrets.
One question, though. To let him know Miranda’s a human being. “So was that the famous diary?” A volume not much larger than Jack’s broad, sinewy hand, and bound in faded blue covers, like an account book from another century.
“Just volume one. I thought all ninety-three might scare you off.”
Her eyes widened. “Are there really...?”
He grinned and shook his head. “An even dozen. Relax.”
She tried. “I’m not that easily scared, you know.” Just to set him straight. “But I’d like to start slow, look a bit deeper....” And it was a moment before her eyes left Jack’s.
“I do have the next few in my car. I didn’t know....”
“Well, we don’t know, do we?”
Then the waiter was back. Miranda ordered just a salad and Jack followed suit. Soon there was a large bowl of greens between them. Jack said he’d serve, and the waiter took his cue to withdraw. When Jack met her eyes again, he saw a trace of puzzlement there.
“What is it?”
She laughed, surprised into candor. “I was thinking you don’t seem much like a lawyer.”
“The only time I dress like one is when I’m working, and even then my heart’s not in it.”
“I didn’t mean your clothes.” She already knew it was his day off and that he’d just had a session with his personal trainer. But she’d expected Kathleen’s “Mr. Emery” to be more the overworked-executive type and less.... Her eyes moved back up to his face. “I don’t know what I meant.” She smiled again, then tried to pull the conversation into safer territory. He let her lead—a change from most of the men she’d known—and soon she’d forgotten all about seeming businesslike.
She got them talking about books and movies, and when the coffee came she’d led them back to the diaries. They decided she’d read the first volume, translate some sample pages, and tell him what she thought. “Then you can decide where to go from there.”
“You understand, you might spend weeks on this, and be paid of course, but we might not end up publishing.”
“Actually, I used to get assignments like this. From producers looking at film rights, publishers deciding whether to bid on a novel....”
“But now it’s mostly technical translations, you said.”
“Whatever comes along. If I had to choose between a novel and specs for a widget, I’d do the novel. And I’d love to work on a woman’s diary.... Your grandmother obviously thought it was a book people would want to read.”
“She said she didn’t matter herself—it was just that she saw so much, lived so much, in those years. This book was all the stories she’d never told me. I knew about her childhood in Baltimore, and her married life, after she came back, but nothing about the time in between. In Paris, in the late 1920s. Now, the diary may be a little... racy. She wanted it kept sealed as long as her son was alive.”
“Your father? Was he easily shocked?”
Jack rolled his eyes and mugged a “no.”
“Then I can’t wait to start reading.”
They both laughed.
“I was just thinking”—he sounded almost wistful—“I’d like a cognac or something, but I’m afraid I’d be at a disadvantage for all this heavy negotiating... unless I could get you to join me?”
She thought before she spoke. “There’s something Kathleen didn’t tell you. Give me seconds on cheesecake, B-movies till breakfast, every operatic indulgence... but one. I don’t drink. I’m an alcoholic.” There. She’d said it.
He looked at her as if for the first time. She sensed she was constantly surprising him, and she didn’t know what to say next. “Look, if I weren’t here with you I’d be telling my story ‘in the rooms’—in a meeting somewhere. It gets pretty juicy, and that’s just the parts I can remember. Anyway, I used to have lots of secrets. Now I just keep other people’s.”
“You have a right to... a few secrets of your own, don’t you?”
She reached out and covered his hand. “It’s not about rights. It’s....” She wasn’t sure what it was about.
“Miranda, what about you? What do you... want?”
She looked even deeper into his eyes, thinking. Something made her pull her hand back. “Let’s say, for now I want you to take cheesecake for an answer.” Her smile was faint, but warm.
“What are we talking about here?” He smiled uncertainly, as if he really didn’t know.
“I’m talking about cheesecake.”
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No. You asked me a hard question, and I pulled away a little.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Maybe I needed to....”
Then the waiter was back, and soon the cheesecake would be a reality. She faced Jack again. “Let’s talk about you.”
“I’m not very interesting....”
“Look. I’m a thirty-year-old divorcée who lives in front of a computer screen doing technical translations and hasn’t seen anyone but her ex-husband and her sponsor and the rest of AA for so long she can’t remember. Believe me, if you’re not interesting, I’ll never notice.” Her eyes put it differently: If you’re not interesting, I haven’t noticed.
“So you still see... your ex? I notice you still use his name....”
“Kincaid’s my name, too.” Obviously a discussion she’d had before. “I did a lot of work under that name, and I’m not about to start over with a new one. And Vince and I are friends.... But tell me about yourself, Jack. What do you want?”
He thought for a moment as the waiter brought dessert and more coffee. “I guess my life’s in turnaround. I’m getting an early start on my midlife crisis.”
She didn’t give him the laugh he’d been reaching for. She just pushed on: “But you... like yourself.”
If he’d never thought about it before, it was because he’d never seen the need. “I do. But there’s room for improvement. I’m still growing into my personality.”
“You like your work?”
“The law’s been good to me, but no. I made a lot of choices I’d make differently today.”
“So, for example, your friends aren’t lawyers.”
“If a man’s a lawyer and I like him, it’s in spite of it, not because of it.”
“And if a woman’s a lawyer?”
He gave her only half a smile. “Let’s say I’m just as happy you’re not a lawyer. Do you... love what you do?”
“I used to. But sometimes now it’s just work. I don’t know what I want. I know what I love, but that’s not the same thing. I love Billie Holiday, I love food, I love to read and dance and laugh.... I love France.”
“So did my grandmother. But she just had a couple of years there in her late teens, early twenties. Then she came back, got married, and... no more France.”
“That’s my story, too. I went to Paris twice before I was married, once with my great-aunt, when I was twelve, and once on my own, for a year. Then I came back to the States, finished college, married my high-school sweetheart, and here I am....”
“You could go back.”
“Vince and I went, on vacation, and I’ll go back some day.... Have you been?”
“Just once.”
She waited.
“On my honeymoon,” he said with a little shrug.
“You... used to be married?”
“I am married.” The resentment in his voice wasn’t directed at her.
She blinked, recovered a bit. “I’m sorry—I thought.... You don’t wear a wedding ring, you didn’t mention a wife, you don’t... seem married.” She felt like a fool.
He spoke as if he wanted, more than anything else, to be believed. “Legally, Claire and I are married, and we live in the same house, but... we’re not really together any more. So forgive me for not wearing a ring. It’s more honest that way.”
She ignored the part about the ring. And his honesty. “You ‘lead separate lives’?”
“I don’t lead much of a ‘life’ at all, but certainly not with her.”
“It’s none of my business”—now it really wasn’t—“but even when I was drinking myself blind and seeing other men, and Vince and I were breaking up, there weren’t really any ‘separate lives’ for us at all. It’s a... figure of speech. I take it back.”
“Maybe Claire and I have drifted further apart than you and Vince ever were. Did you have children?”
She almost smiled for a moment. “No.”
“We have a son, Jason, who’s almost thirteen. He’s what kept us together this long. But he’s going away to school in the fall. He doesn’t need us the same way any more. And Claire’s a fine person, a good attorney—much better than me—and a better parent, but.... We got married too young. We fit into each other’s plans at the time. But there’s nothing there between us. Not for want of trying. I did everything to make the marriage work. Total monogamy or bust. But—it’s ‘bust.’”
“She feels the same?”
“She’s worried about her parents. They’re very traditional, and they’ve done a lot for us. They live here—we settled here because of them. But they have to know, deep down. And they’ll understand. Claire doesn’t need me. Or this marriage. It’s time we got on with our lives.”
“And Jason? He knows?”
“I don’t think so. He just thinks this is what marriage is like.”
She thought, That’s the saddest part, but all she could find to say was “Have you and Claire tried counselling?”
He stared at her for a moment, then smiled. “Are you trying to save this marriage? Believe me, there’s nothing to save.”
“She feels that way, too?” Miranda still wanted an answer.
“For her, it’s not about feelings. She’s planning this the way she plans everything. Once Jason’s away at school, she says. I don’t know if I can wait that long.”
“Are there other people involved?”
“You mean, am I seeing anyone? Is she seeing anyone? No, but we’re both open to that.” Then... there they were. “And what about you? Are you seeing anyone?”
“No, I told you....”
“I just thought... maybe we could have dinner sometime.”
She stared at him. However casual his voice, his words sounded canned. Was all of it a line? But she tried not to think about that. “Jack, I don’t think either of us is ready. I know I’m not. And I couldn’t go out with a man who was still married to someone else. Believe me, I’ve tried it—listen, I’ve tried everything!—and it doesn’t work.”
His eyes didn’t leave hers. “You don’t feel anything today?” He spoke slowly, as if not arguing with her, just trying to get a sense of what was inside her. “I meet women all the time, and there’s nothing. I meet you, and all I can think is, if only I’d met you before I started making mistakes....”
“I’ve made more mistakes in some weeks than you could make in a lifetime. I’m trying to make fewer now.” No one would have taken her smile for that of a woman saying no. “Do you know how many men’s stories I’ve listened to in bars? But having a business lunch with a married man and falling for him and letting it turn into dinner and maybe breakfast”—she’d won now—“that’s a mistake I didn’t make even when I was drinking—to the best of my recollection.” Now the consolation prize. “Of course I feel something. If I were ready to go out again, and you were single and wanted to have dinner—who knows? But for now let’s... focus on the translation.”
Before long he was walking her to her car. “You don’t even want me to call you?”
“I’ll call you. Better still, I’ll mail you what I can put together on the translation.”
He looked at her as if he were losing her forever. She busied herself with her portfolio.
“Miranda, if I offended you—”
“Maybe in ten years I’ll tell you how flattered I felt in there. If you promise to act surprised. Meanwhile....” They’d reached her car. She shook hands with him, and held his a moment longer. “Friends?”
He gave her his best smile, but it came slowly for once. “Friends.”
Chapter Two
Miranda drove a few blocks, then began looking for a public phone. She’d forgotten the cell phone Vince had bought her, and few things happened in her life that she didn’t share with Casey—her sponsor, now her downstairs neighbor, her best friend, “the man who keeps me honest.” And the prospect of the new assignment, coupled with the feelings that Jack and her rejection of him aroused in her, clearly constituted news. She wouldn’t go into it all on the phone. But it was one of their rules to call with advance warning before dropping in, and there were rules she never broke.
The only pay phone she knew in this part of town was in the lobby of the building where Vince’s firm had its downtown office. She found a parking space in a twenty-minute zone right in front and was soon inside, dialling Casey’s home number. It was the first week of his two-week vacation from the rehab clinic where he worked as a counsellor. Friends had twisted his arm to get him to the beach for a few days, but he was scheduled to spend most of the vacation back in town painting his half of the house he and Miranda shared. They’d even talked of hopping on a train for a day trip to New York. With any luck he was back from the shore and....
She got his machine and pressed one to cut his message short. “Hi, Button! It’s Miranda, and things are going... pretty well. I went to see a man about a job, and I’d like to tell you about it and have you tell me I did the right thing. Call me at home after five if you get this. But, if you’re collecting messages from the beach, just wait till you’re back. No crisis. Love you.”
She hung up, gazing absently at the back of her hand for a moment. Of course Casey would say she’d done the right thing. Now, if she told him how good-looking Jack was, Casey might think she was crazy for doing the right thing, but he’d have to agree it was right. Wouldn’t he?
If she’d been totally honest with herself, she might have admitted that at this point she needed to see and be seen by someone in whose eyes she would always be beautiful. But she told herself instead that she was riding up to Vince’s floor to save herself a trip another day to sign the papers he’d called her about. She’d wanted to insure her own life to provide for her mother, and Vince had found an affordable policy available through his brokerage firm and streamlined the application process for her. The papers weren’t urgent, he’d said, and, if she liked, he could even bring them to her apartment, just a few minutes’ drive from the house they’d once shared and in which he lived on alone. But she always preferred to see Vince at his office or in restaurants, rather than at his place, as she now called it, or hers. The public rites of chivalry sweetened these encounters for her; played out in private, the same rites would have been an awkward reminder of how much he and she had both lost—mostly through her doing.
The receptionist was an older woman she knew from Alcoholics Anonymous and whom she’d helped land the job. The woman beamed when she saw Miranda. “Nice to see a friendly face. It’s been crazy today.”
“Good crazy or bad crazy?”
“A few of the old pros love it, but the new brokers tense up every time the market dips. It’s been a real roller coaster today.”
“Is it a bad time to see Vince? I could come back after the market closes....”
“It’s a good time. I’ll let him know you’re here.”
Soon he was coming forward to take her hands, kiss her cheek, and escort her back to his glass cage. Vince, of course, always looked his part: hair freshly trimmed, the same Brooks Brothers suit and shoes that every other man in the office wore, intelligent eyes, ready smile.... “How’s my favorite client?” He’d had the question ready before he saw her, but now he began to take her in. “You look wonderful....” His voice trailed off, almost into another question.
What she tended to forget about Vince was how enormously likeable he was, in what appeared to be a simple, innocent way. A high-school quarterback and track star, a varsity swimmer in college, now a “regular guy” who loved his work....
His eyes drifted over the Chanel suit he hadn’t seen for years, and he found a new question: “Special occasion?”
“I was meeting with an attorney about a possible translation job.” All true, she thought. “I’ll tell you more if it pans out. I’m helping a family decide whether to go ahead with a project. I wanted to make a good impression, so Anne’s Chanel got an airing.” Miranda had inherited the suit, along with a modest nest-egg, from the great-aunt to whom she also owed the happiest memories of her girlhood.
“They’ll be lucky to get you, if it all works out....” He picked up the phone and asked for the papers Miranda was to sign. Her gaze lingered, almost fondly, over the new gadgets on his desk. She couldn’t recognize much; any fondness was for Vince himself, for this particular mania of his. Familiarity can breed a certain affection that survives parting, that may even grow stronger once we’re beyond the reach of what we’ve left behind. There’d been a time when she would have called the geometric shapes on Vince’s desk toys, but she understood now that these gadgets really worked, really stepped up his “productivity,” if he had any room for improvement on that score....
“And how’s everything else, Randi?” His old name for her, the name only he used.
“Oh, work is good.”
“Glad to hear it. Me too.”
“Crazy day?”
He shrugged. “Buying and selling. My kind of crazy. Want to know how much richer you are?” He turned to his computer screen, brought up her account, and gave her the good news. “But who’s counting?” She smiled at the old joke. Vince was counting. And he was good at it. Taped just inside the top drawer of his desk, she knew, were Homer’s lines about Odysseus that served Vince as an immodest visualization of himself: “He is so shrewd that, when it comes to amassing riches, no man on earth is his rival.”
They were silent for a moment.
“How’d you find out about the translation job? Did they advertise...?”
“Word of mouth. The lawyer knew somebody who knew somebody....”
“Good. People haven’t forgotten you.”
Her eyes fell to her hands in her lap.
“You’ll see, Randi. Before long....”
His assistant came in with the insurance papers, and Vince explained them in a few sentences. Miranda trusted him completely. After all, he’d almost doubled her money in the two years since their divorce had become final. This was the one vestige of the division of labor that had organized their existence as husband and wife: Vince took care of Miranda’s finances and told her no more than she needed to know. Now he was even helping her look out for her mother. The arrangement served Miranda well, and it provided the occasional contact they both wanted.
“How about you, Vince? I hope you’re getting some time for yourself....”
“Not enough. Well, I manage to see people, now and then. Old friends, I mean. The guys at the shore, weekends.”
To Miranda, weekends at their beach house had meant unwelcome confinement in a space utterly his—days and nights with no contacts but his cronies and their latest girlfriends. The house and its setting were oddly desolate, Casey had said, the one time he’d accompanied her out there: the sort of place you take someone you want to shack up with, not have a life with. Of course, Casey had never been disposed to take Vince’s side.
The house, strangely enough, had started off as Vince’s attempt to please her. She always said she loved surprises, and knowing how she also loved the beaches of the French Riviera he’d decided to surprise her with the purchase of a place here where they could “get away from it all”—meaning, often, away from Kathleen, who’d never really embraced the marriage and whose unfailing politeness Miranda found only too transparent. The options for Miranda and Vince became Sundays in town with Kathleen or entire weekends at a beach where Miranda was afraid to swim because of the undertow and where on land there was no escape from— Well, she had escaped, hadn’t she? And all she wished for now was the same for him. But, as far as she knew, he’d managed only to choose both Charybdis and Scylla, spending every weekend at the shore and every Sunday evening with Kathleen....
“No new friends, Vince? I’ve been busy just with work... making my way... meetings... but you’ve got it all together, you could relax and have some fun....”
“You used to say I wasn’t very good at that.” He was having a little fun with her right now.
“But look at you, and then look at me: you’re the number two man in your office, you pick and choose your accounts, you’ll soon have enough money so you never have to work again... and I’m still paying for all the work I didn’t do three, four, five years ago. I’m not ready to meet new people yet, but I think you are.”
“There’s meeting people and there’s meeting people. I didn’t exactly go into a monastery when we split up. I’m just in no hurry to get into anything serious.”
“So you’re getting a little after all?”
“Look, I’m only human.” He grinned back at her. “We’re all only human, Randi.”
She shook her head. “Not me, not that way. I’m learning to enjoy my own company.”
“Well, you have excellent taste, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Vince, you always say the right thing.”
In addition to his ritual visit for pot roast every Sunday evening, Vince liked to drop in on Kathleen at other times unannounced. He would have said he was “just keeping an eye on his investment”—the small Cape Cod his parents had first rented as newlyweds and in which his mother had lived ever since. The former debutante and the handsome young sales rep had married against her parents’ wishes, and there had been no assistance and, as the years went by, no sympathy from the older generation. When her parents died, everything went to Kathleen’s only sibling, a brother, who had married well and remained on close terms with their parents. Kathleen had learned to be happy with what she had, she sometimes said, and not think about what her life might have been. She and Vince’s father, and after his death she alone, had just managed to keep up with the rent. But things became easier when Vince started bringing in money at sixteen, and then, when the house came onto the market in the early years of his own marriage, he’d surprised both of the women in his life by buying it, for cash: “as an investment for us, and so that Mama will never have to worry.” Soon they owned three houses, one in town (“Miranda’s jewel-box,” Kathleen had called it, although it was another one of Vince’s unilateral surprises, a near-McMansion on an acre of land at the end of a cul-de-sac), the one at the shore, and this relic of Vince’s childhood. Kathleen had lived here rent-free ever since, and so simply that, with the help of the check Vince dropped off every month, she could survive the frequent lulls in her editing work. Any hope for assistance from her brother had evaporated when he died and his widow quickly remarried. Kathleen had no conventional savings to speak of; her stockbroker son was her investment. True, even as he grew more prosperous, there’d never been any discussion of relocating her to a house in a more upscale neighborhood. But he kept the place up nicely, this reminder of the shared past of mother and son, a symbol of survival and endurance, and a benchmark against which to measure his own progress. Kathleen could hardly have asked for more.
When he left the office, he drove a few blocks out of his way to stop at a florist’s before he pulled up in front of his “investment.” He made his way around the house to the back door, glancing into the garage at his mother’s pink—and now nearly “vintage”—Lincoln. He’d bought it for her used when he was twenty, to replace the old Ford, and Kathleen, who said she “never went anywhere anyway,” had driven it ever since. You could smile at its lines, its grille, the extravagance of its headlights, call it a gas guzzler, a boat—but it was one more thing that had endured.
He rang the bell rather than use his key.
“Vince! Come in, honey, give me a k— Roses! They’re beautiful! How long has it been since a good-looking man surprised me with roses?”
“Well, if I qualify, I seem to remember....”
“You remember? I remember! But that was my birthday. Is today something special?”
“I just thought I’d come by and check on my best girl. See if she was two-timing me.”
“Well, you don’t have too much to worry about.” There was in fact the widower next door—Ron Harris, a retired police detective they’d known forever, who showed a protective interest in Kathleen—but Vince was sure she kept the man at arm’s length. “Come in, why don’t you, and have a look for yourself.” She lowered her voice. “Remember to check the closets—that’s where I hide my half-naked men.”
Alcestis joined in the welcome, trying to wrap herself around Vince’s ankles, until Kathleen, suppressing a smile, hoisted her up with her free arm. Vince had never concealed his dislike of cats, and Kathleen gave him his way whenever possible.
He did take a look around while she went for a vase. And as he looked, he saw—lost control for a moment, became not the unrivalled accumulator of wealth but the child who once lived in fear. This was the kitchen where his father, drunk again, had hauled off and slapped him when Vince was six. “Little shit... I TOLD you the next time I caught you staring at me like that I’d....”
But his mother was back, and he was an adult again, listening to her. “I hope you haven’t eaten. I’ll put some dinner together.”
“Unless you’d rather go out....”
“And share my Vince with every other woman in the restaurant? Honey, come on, take your jacket off.... That is the most beautiful suit.” Her vision wasn’t the best, and she’d removed her glasses when she fetched the vase, but she didn’t need them to confirm her son’s good looks. “You look just right in a suit. It’s a good thing you’re a stockbroker so you get to wear one every day.”
“That’s why I became a broker, Mama. Not for the money. It’s not about the money at all.” His eyes twinkled.
“Oh, I’m sure it isn’t. Honestly, when I think about the money you make—I’ll bet your father never made as much in a year as you make in a month.”
“No, I don’t imagine he did.” As much as Vince made in a week was closer to the truth, but he wasn’t one to volunteer information.
“He’d be so proud of you. Really he would.”
“I just want you to be proud, Mama....”
The slap cracks across the boy’s face, and the floor smashes into his body. And suddenly SHE’S there. No scream, no panic. She’s cold, lucid. Her anger perfectly in check. “Get upstairs, Tom. Now. We’ll discuss this. I’ll handle it.” And suddenly the big man poses no threat to anyone. He lumbers off, abashed, and Kathleen gathers the boy up in her arms. “Are you all right? Vince, I am so sorry. Daddy’s sorry, too. He’s not feeling well. He’s not himself.” She checks the boy for bruises, blood. He’s stunned; his cheek burns, but all he feels is amazement. This is the first time his father’s done anything like this. I wasn’t careful enough, the boy thinks. “Mama, I....” “Shh, honey, it’s all right. It’s not your fault.” She dries his tears, and she’s silent for a moment, gazing into his eyes. “Don’t worry. This will never happen again.” And he knows she’s right.
“...Guess who came to the office today.” She couldn’t guess. “Randi.”
“Oh? How is she?”
“She seemed... different. I don’t know.”
“Well, she’s been through so much. You have to make allowances.”
“No, it’s not that. She looked... radiant.”
“Well, that usually means one of two things. Is she... seeing anyone?”
“She made a point of telling me she isn’t seeing anyone. But something’s going on. She never could keep a secret from me long. You haven’t seen her, have you?”
“No, not for months.”
“She got a lead on a big translation project through some lawyer. I sounded out a couple of my clients about it, casually, people we both know. But—nothing. You’ve got your connections, Mama. You haven’t heard anything?”
“‘Connections’! Oh, you mean Marianne and Bill. It’s true, I went to their party last weekend, just like every other year, but no, I didn’t hear a word about Miranda. She didn’t say...?”
“No, she wasn’t talking.”
“Well, I’m sure she’s delighted to have work again....”
“She’s had work again for more than a year now.”
“Jobs you got for her....”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t know that.”
“You’ve done so much for her. I— Don’t get me wrong, honey, I’m not speaking against her—”
“Then don’t, Mama.”
“I’m really not. What you do is your own business. I just hope.... Vince, look at me. When your father got sick—”
“He was always ‘sick.’”
“When he couldn’t work any more—”
“When he couldn’t keep a job any more—”
“Let me finish. Please. There came a time when I had no choice. If we were going to make it, I had to do the work for both of us. I never abandoned him, you know that.”
“Yes, I know, Mama.”
“But I couldn’t hang on so tight I let him pull me down with him. I had a future—you and I had a future. My future was you.” Her eyes never left him, took in everything he was, everything he’d made of himself. “And now you have a future. You’re a wonderful man, you’re still young, you’re a success—you can have anything, anybody. You can have children. I just hope, when the right woman comes along—”
“Maybe she already came along. And never really went away.”
“No. After what she put you through, after what your father put us both through....”
“Mama, she isn’t Daddy. There’s no comparison. She’s working, she’s sober....”
“You’re forgetting all the times your father was sober.”
“I’m not forgetting anything.”
“And you’re forgetting all the things she did to you that even your father never did to me. With all his faults, he was faithful—”
“Mama!”
“All right. That’s between you and her, it’s none of my business. I try not to think about it. I can’t believe it. I still cry. That you had to go through that. Nothing your father ever did hurt me like what she did to you.”
“Mama, it’s all in the past. Let go of it.”
“That’s—what—I’m—telling—you. Be... be a friend to her, if you must. You’re too good, but go ahead, be that good, be yourself. But there’s going to be someone else for you, I know it.”
He smiled wanly, remembering the conversation of a few hours earlier. “You sure you haven’t been talking to Randi?”
Today was glorious, both the sunshine and the sheer adventure of doing exactly what I wanted to do. I skipped class and spent the afternoon in a café on the Boul’ Mich’, with a book. I’ve decided I can learn more by reading Colette (her latest novel, the sequel to Chéri) than by listening to a woman whose commendable goal is to “perfect” my French but who never hints at what’s going on in her own life.
And in the morning I just walked, for hours. I must have crossed the Seine twenty times. I saw more cats on my walk than I could see in a whole year in Baltimore, and every one of them obviously of royal descent! And the people! Throngs of them, all of them alive, all of them with real faces! And it’s true: even the air is different here, the light....
I don’t understand what men want from me. Surely not just sex: they aren’t mere boys.... For that matter, what do I want from them? I love just being around them. I look, but I pretend not to (that’s the best part!), and I never touch. For now!
Nothing I’ve ever read or known has prepared me for this time, this place. I know I’ve never been happier. I can let myself go.... No one cares here....
Miranda was lost in work when the phone rang. She managed to catch it only a second before it would have gone to voice mail. It was Casey, home from the beach at last, with tales and treats to share. They agreed he’d come up in twenty minutes. Back at the dining-room table where she always worked, she read over the last paragraph on the computer screen.
What were my parents thinking when they brought me here, to Paris of all places, and left me to live, practically on my own? One silly aunt, her overworked husband, two girl cousins who ask only to lead their own lives—which might just as well be the safe, comfortable little lives of their parents. So comfortable, so sure of themselves. Unlike me.... My cousins are there for me when I need them, but I’m truly free. For the first time. Shall I write that it frightens me, a little? If it does—and it does—then I must write it, for I’ve sworn to write everything down. And if I sense there’ll come a day when I regret what I feel, and regret setting it down, then let that intuition be set down