“Mother, you are a living doll. If I had known you could keep secrets so well I’d have told you a few,” he said. He spoke, as always when he was drunk, with a slow precision, as if each word were a stepping stone.
“Secrets?” Laura said.
“You are the living picture of guilt, my dear,” he said. “It is written all over your beautiful face.”
Laura put her hands over that face suddenly with a gasp.
“Terry!” she sobbed through clenched teeth. “Terry! If I hadn’t gone out he wouldn’t have come.”
“He comes when the mood hits him,” Jack said. “Which is most of the time, most anywhere. It had nothing to do with you going out, my little wifey.”
Laura looked up, her delicate face mottled pink and white and wet from the eyes down. “He wrote—”
“Indeed he did. He told me the whole romantic story.”
“Jack, darling, I only kept it secret because I was afraid you’d—you’d start drinking, or something—I—”
“You hit the nail on the head. I’m indebted to you. Your solicitude is exemplary.” He waved the fast-emptying bottle at her.
“Oh, shut up! Shut up! I love you. I did it because I love you.”
“You opened my mail because you love me?” He continued to drink while he talked…slowly, but steadily.
“I knew it was from him, Jack. I just had a feeling. The handwriting and everything.”
He laughed ruefully. “Just think what you’ve spared me!” he said. “I can drink in peace now. My wife loves me. Thanks, wife.” He saluted her.
Laura slid off her chair to her knees and put her arms around him, still crying. “Jack, Jack, please forgive me. I’ll do anything, I couldn’t bear to hurt you, I’d die first. Oh, please—”
“You’re forgiven,” he interrupted her. “Why not?” And he kept on laughing. But his pardon was so light, so biting, that she cringed from it. She lifted her face to him, streaming with tears, and he said, smiling at her, “You make a lovely picture, Mother. Sort of Madonna-like. If I could paint you, I’d paint you. Black, I think. From head to toe.”
She put her head down on his knees and said softly, “You’ll never forgive me, will you?”
“I already have.”
“Never,” she whispered, stricken.
“Oh, let’s not get maudlin,” he said. “I admit I would have been grateful for a little forewarning. But after all, it’s a simple question of sex. Maybe I should get rid of mine. That would solve everything.” And his soft, insane chuckling underlined everything he said.
Laura felt terror then. It rose and fell inside her like nausea. Whenever she looked at Jack it surged in her throat. It wasn’t the sweet guilty thrill of coming near Beebo that had cost her such sensual pain earlier in the evening.
“Jack, darling,” she said.
“Yes, Laura darling.” And the sarcasm burned her. But she went on, determined, raising herself back into her chair again with effort.
“Tell me what happened. Tell me everything.”
“Oh, it was dandy,” he said. “You should have been here. Incidentally, he asked about your health.” Laura couldn’t watch him while he talked. She looked at her hands. And all the while he told her about it she kept thinking, If only I hadn’t gone out tonight. Every time I do something completely selfish I suffer for it. And so does he. Damn Terry! Damn him to hell! He won’t ruin Jack, I won’t let him. This is once he won’t have his way.
It had been so completely unexpected, so startling, that Jack would never forget it or recover from it. Terry was as far removed from his life as if he were dead. And his life, Jack felt, had become a good thing at last. He had Laura to live for, not a wild, irresistible, good-for-nothing boy who wore him out and broke his heart and his bankroll. He had a new stature in the world as a married man, a new security. And the sweet hope of a child someday….
When he heard the bell ring, almost an hour after Laura had gone out, he took it for a neighbor and stood with the front door open while the elevator ascended. But when Terry stepped out, Jack was speechless. He couldn’t believe it, and he would have slammed the door and passed it off as a nightmare if he could have moved a little faster.
But Terry caught him and from then on it was as degrading and overwhelming as it had ever been. Jack put up the best fight he could, but it was little more than a gesture of protest. He was helplessly angry, helplessly infatuated. And all the while Terry prated to him of San Francisco and the Beats and the fog and the styles in clothes and the styles in lovemaking, Jack kept wondering, How did he find me? And the answer was, had to be, Laura. Laura had failed him. Betrayed him. It almost tore him apart.
Terry didn’t leave until nearly eleven, and Jack saw him out, still with the feeling that it hadn’t happened, that it was all an incredible dream. It wasn’t until he got the bottle and began to drink that he believed in it at all. By the time Laura got home he wished the whole damned world to hell, with himself first in line.
“And that’s all,” Jack said. “Naturally, the only thing to do after he left was get drunk.” He had nearly finished the bottle and it was all he could do to get the words out. They left his mouth slowly, discreetly, each one a pearl of over-articulation.
Laura took away what was left—a shot or two at the most—and he didn’t even try to protest. She helped him up and half dragged, half carried him to the bedroom, where she dumped him on his bed. He was unconscious the minute she pushed his head down on the pillow. Laura undressed him, tears running down her face.
“Sleep,” she said. “Sleep and forget it for a while. I’ll make it up
