Janelle went to the bar and mixed two stiff scotches. She made the other woman drink through the sniffles.
“How did you find out?” Janelle asked.
Mrs. Lieverman opened her purse as if looking for a handkerchief for her sniffles. Instead, she brought out a sheaf of letters and handed them to Janelle. They were bills. Janelle looked at them thoughtfully. And she got the whole picture. He had written a twenty-flve thousand dollar check as down payment on the beautiful house. With it was a letter requesting that he be allowed to move in until the final closing. The check had bounced. The builder was now threatening to put him in jail. The checks for hired help had bounced. The caterer’s check for the tennis party had bounced,
“Wow,” Janelle said.
“He’s too sensitive,” Mrs. Lieverman said.
“He’s sick,” Janelle said.
Mrs. Lieverman nodded.
Janelle said thoughtfully, “Is it because of his two sisters who died in the plane crash?”
There was a scream from Mrs. Lieverman, a shriek finally of outrage and exasperation. “He never had any sisters. Don’t you understand? He’s a pathological liar. He lies about everything. He has no sisters, he has no money, he’s not divorcing me, he used the firm’s money to take you to Puerto Rico and New York and to pay the expenses of this house.”
“Then why the hell do you want him back?” Janelle asked.
“Because I love him,” Mrs. Lieverman said.
Janelle thought that over for at least two minutes, studying Mrs. Lieverman. Her husband was a liar, a cheat, had a mistress, couldn’t get it up in bed, and that’s only what she knew about him, plus the fact, of course, that he was a lousy tennis player. Then what the hell was Mrs. Lieverman? Janelle patted the other woman on the shoulder, gave her another drink and said, “Wait here for five minutes.”
That’s all it took her to throw all her things into two Vuitton suitcases Theodore had bought her, probably with bum checks. She came down with the suitcases and said to the wife, “I’m leaving. You can wait here for your husband. Tell him I never want to see him again. And I’m truly sorry for the pain I’ve caused you. You have to believe me when I tell you that he said you had left him. That you didn’t care.”
Mrs. Lieverman nodded miserably.
Janelle left in the bright new baby blue Mustang Theodore had bought her. No doubt it would be repossessed. She could have it driven back to the house. Meanwhile, she had no place to go. She remembered the director and costume designer Alice De Santis, who bad been so friendly, and she decided to drive to her house and ask her advice. If Alice was not at home, she would go to Doran. She knew he would always take her in.
Janelle loved the way Merlyn enjoyed the story. He didn’t laugh. His enjoyment was not malicious. He just smiled, closing his eyes, savoring it. And he said the right thing-wonderingly, almost admiringly.
“Poor Lieverman,” he said. “Poor, poor Lieverman.”
“What about me, you bastard?” Janelle said with mock rage. She flung herself naked on his naked body and put her hands around his neck. Merlyn opened his eyes and smiled.
“Tell me another story.”
She made love to him instead. She had another story to tell him, but he wasn’t ready for it yet. He had to fall in love with her first, as she was in love with him. He couldn’t take more stories yet. Especially about Alice.
Chapter 31
I had come to the point now that lovers always come to. They are so happy they can’t believe they deserve it. And so they start thinking that maybe it’s all a fake. So with me jealousy and suspicion haunted the ecstasies of our lovemaking. Once she had to read for a part and couldn’t meet my plane. Another time I understood she would spend the night and she had to go home to sleep because she had to get up for an early-morning call at the studio. Even when she made love to me in the early afternoon so that I wouldn’t be disappointed and I would believe her, I thought she lied. And now, expecting she would lie, I said to her, “I had lunch with Doran this afternoon. He says you had a fourteen-year-old lover when you were just a Southern belle.”
Janelle raised her head slightly and gave the sweet, tentative smile that made me forget how I hated her.
“Yes,” she said. “That was a long time ago.”
She bowed her head then. Her face had an absentminded, amused look as she remembered that love affair. I knew she always remembered her love affairs with affection, even when they ended very badly. She looked up again.
“Does that bother you?” she said.
“No,” I said. But she knew it did.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She looked at me for a moment, then turned her head away. She reached out with her hands, slid them under my shirt and caressed my back. “It was innocent,” she said.
I didn’t say anything, just moved away because the remembered touch made me forgive her everything.
Again expecting her to lie, I said, “Doran told me because of the fourteen-year-old kid you stood trial for impairment of the morals of a minor.”
With all my heart I wanted her to lie. I didn’t care if it was true. As I would not blame or reproach her if she were an alcoholic or hustler or murderess. I wanted to love her, and that was all. She was watching me with that quiet, contemplative look as if she would do anything to please me.
“What do you want me to say?” she asked, looking directly into my face.
“Just tell me the truth,” I said.
“Well, then it’s true,” she said. “But I was acquitted. The judge dismissed the case.”
I felt an enormous relief. “Then you didn’t do it.”
“Do what?” she asked.
“You know,” I said.
She gave me that sweet half-smile again. But it was touched with a sad mockery.
“You mean, did I make love to a fourteen-year-old boy?” she asked. “Yes, I did.”
She waited for me to walk out of the room. I remained still. Her face became more mocking. “He was very big for his age,” she said.
That interested me. It interested me because of the boldness of the challenge. “That makes all the difference,” I said dryly. And watched her when she gave a delighted laugh. We had both been angry with each other. Janelle because I dared judge her. I was going to leave, so she said, “It’s a good story, you’ll like it.” And she saw me bite. I always loved a story almost as much as making love. Many nights I’d listened to her for hours, fascinated as she told her life story, making guesses at what she left out or edited for my tender male ears as she would have edited a horror story for a child.
It was the things he loved me most for, she told me once. The eagerness for stories. And my refusal to make judgments. She could always see me shifting it around in my head, how I would tell it or how I would use it. And I had never really condemned her for anything she’d done. As she knew now I would not when she told her story.
After her divorce Janelle had taken a lover, Doran Rudd. He was a disc jockey on the local radio station. A rather tall man, a little older than Janelle. He had a great deal of energy, was always charming and amusing and finally got Janelle a job as the weather girl of the radio station. This was a fun job and well paid for a town like Johnson City.
Doran was obsessed with being the town character. He had an enormous Cadillac, bought his clothes in New York and swore he would make it big someday. He was awed and enchanted by performers. He went to see all the road companies of all the Broadway plays and always sent notes back to one of the actresses, followed up by
