“Yes, of course,” I said. “It’s much better for you and the baby out here. All this fresh salt air.”
Budgie turned over on her side, reclining like a harem girl. “Just look at me, Lily. I’m getting fuller already. Can you tell?” She cupped one breast with her left hand, the one holding her cigarette. The diamonds caught the sun and dazzled against her skin.
There was no denying it. Her breasts had rounded out with new weight, her soft brown nipples had taken on a rosy density. She looked almost maternal.
I lifted Budgie’s Thermos cup from the sand next to her elbow, took a swallow, and settled it back in its hollow. “Maybe I’ll go Tuesday.”
“Do that.” She closed her eyes again. “And start on that baby right away for me, will you? I want our little Nick Junior to have lots of company. Besides, I don’t want to be all fat and pregnant by myself, do I?”
“Naturally. Graham’s eager about that part.”
Budgie said sleepily: “I want you to be happy, Lily. I’m so glad you’re happy.”
Happy. Of course I was happy. Happiness thrilled through my veins as the subway train rattled up Lexington Avenue, or perhaps I was just dizzy from the heat. I was going to see Graham; I was going to marry Graham. My glamorous, invincible, universally admired husband-to-be. Mr. and Mrs. Graham Pendleton, engraved in black ink on thick ecru stationery. In a few moments, I would arrive home to my familiar apartment. I would take a shower and turn on all the ceiling fans and make myself lovely; I’d put on some low-cut silky number edged with lace and dab my wrists and throat with Shalimar. Graham would rattle his key in the knob and open the door, and there I would be, waiting for him, fragrant and soft-skinned and free of perspiration. We would make love on my bed with the daylight spilling across the room, and go out to dinner and dancing, and then come home and make love again and fall asleep together, and I would be Graham’s, entirely belonging to Graham and no one else, filled with love and hope for the future. Maybe we wouldn’t bother with precautions after all. Maybe I would take Budgie’s advice and start a baby as soon as possible. If we married in November as Graham wanted, no one would really notice.
Tomorrow I would take Graham to visit Daddy, and Daddy would be so happy.
Kiki would be my bridesmaid, of course. We would pick out her dress together at Bergdorf’s, something not too frilly because she hated frills.
The train thudded to a stop at Sixty-eighth Street. I got out and climbed the dirty, wet steps to the dirty, wet sidewalk and juggled my pocketbook and satchel as I opened my umbrella. The rain fell steadily, crackling above my head. After the summer at Seaview, New York was a shock of storefronts and people, of jostling competition, smelling of steam and dirt and human bodies. A pair of taxis honked angrily at each other, disputing possession of a lane. I crossed Lexington and walked down the relative quiet of Sixty-ninth Street before turning up Park Avenue.
The familiar vista spread before me: the wide avenue split by an abundantly floral central island, the tall gray apartment buildings with their forest-green awnings shading all the windows, the terraces scaling along the upper floors. I huddled beneath my umbrella and walked up the sidewalk, nodding at the doormen, until I reached the modest entrance and self-effacing lobby of my home.
“Hello, Joe,” I said cheerfully to the doorman. Joe was our building’s only friendly attendant, and the only one under the age of sixty.
His mouth split open. “Why, Miss Lily! There you are! Where’s our little girl?”
“Still back in Rhode Island. I’m just up for a couple of days to run errands. Have you been taking care of my guest?”
Joe’s face went holy beneath his strict cap. “Miss Lily, you could have knocked me with a feather. Been a fan of Pendleton’s since the Yanks first called him up. Don’t you worry, we’ve been taking good care of him. Some newspapers came by the other day, we chased them off.”
“Newspapers?”
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. We told ’em we never heard of him.” He bent forward. “Is it true? You’re getting hitched?”
I smiled. “Yes, Joe. He’s an old friend, and we just . . . well, it was a whirlwind.”
“Well, congratulations, Miss Lily. I’m sure you’ll be very happy.” Joe nodded to the elevator. “He’s up there now, in fact. Just got back from practice.”
“Really? Already?”
“It ain’t like working in an office, is it?” He winked.
“No, it isn’t.”
I followed Joe to the elevator. He pressed the call button for me. The cabin was already down in the lobby, and the doors opened with a spasmodic lurch. Joe opened the grille. “I’ll see you later, Miss Lily.”
“Thank you, Joe.”
I pressed number twelve and leaned back against the wall, watching the numbers ascend. The building felt quiet, empty, as if the heat and the rain had lulled everybody to sleep. I closed my eyes and counted off the clicks as the cabin rose.
So Graham was already there. He would have to take me as he found me, then. I took out my handkerchief and dabbed at my forehead, my chin. I took off my hat and fluffed my damp hair.
The elevator stopped. I picked up my satchel, opened the grille, and stepped through the opening. To my right stood the front door of my apartment, my home since childhood, with the claimant to my adult life now sitting somewhere inside, in the dining room or the living room or even Daddy’s study, reading the newspaper or listening to the radio, smoking a cigarette, a cup of coffee or probably something stronger sitting by his side.
He’d be so surprised to see me. He’d be delighted. He would pick me up and whirl me around, the way Nick once had.
My hands were shaking. I found the keys in my pocketbook and opened the door as quietly as I could. “Graham?” I said, but my throat had constricted, and the word was too soft to be heard.
I could hear him in the living room. He was making a stifled groaning noise, as if he was doing the exercises for his shoulder. I set down the satchel in the foyer, laid my pocketbook on the demi-lune table, and walked through the archway into the living room.
Graham sat in the exact center of the sofa, with his head thrown back and his hair flopping downward in streaks of sun-lightened brown. One arm in shirtsleeves lay across the sofa’s back, the other rested presumably in his lap. His eyes were closed, and I thought for an instant that he was asleep, except that his lips were moving, and from those lips came the groaning sounds I had heard from the foyer.
I stepped closer, and the rest of him came into view. His left hand was not in his lap, as I had thought, but speared through a ball of curling light-brown hair. The hair belonged to a kneeling female form, a girl, her lemon-yellow sweater and her generous brassiere discarded on the floor next to Graham’s black shoes, and her head bent attentively over Graham’s exposed penis, which emerged and disappeared in perfect rhythm through the plump red circle of her mouth.
As I watched, transfixed, Graham’s groans coalesced into a few incoherent words, and his hand moved with authority against the brown curls of his supplicant, guiding the girl’s activity. His hips bucked, but the girl held on tenaciously, her fingers secured around the base like a stack of pink rings. Her delicate shoulders gleamed ivory between the navy blue legs of Graham’s flannel trousers.
“Jesus, I’m going to come,” shouted Graham.
I must have made a sound of some kind, because the girl looked up with horrified eyes, and my mind was in a state of such incomprehension that it took me a few suspended seconds to recognize her.
“Maisie?” I said.
AFTER MAISIE LAIDLAW had stopped weeping and apologizing, after I had dispatched her, fully clothed in her snug lemon-yellow sweater, back to her parents’ apartment, I told Graham to gather his things and leave. I wanted him gone by the time I returned. He said he wanted to stay, to talk and explain, but I said there could be no possible explanation, apart from the obvious.
He said we would talk later, when I was calmer. I said I
was perfectly calm.
He said he’d made a terrible mistake, he’d been so lonely and unmoored without me, if only I’d visited him earlier. He said the girl had been after him since he arrived, throwing herself at him, literally taking off her sweater in the elevator just now, and what man born could resist those? He said at least they hadn’t gone to bed, he hadn’t actually fucked her, he would never betray me like that. I said it amounted to the same thing, as far as I was concerned.
He dropped to his knees on my parents’ rug and said he’d never do it again, never even look at another woman.
I said I wasn’t an idiot.
I said Maisie Laidlaw was hardly a woman.
He wouldn’t take back his mother’s ring, so I left it on the demi-lune table in the foyer, glittering in the lamplight beneath the two Audubon prints, and went to visit my father.
DADDY LIVED NOW in a special hospital on Sixty-third Street, more like an apartment building, really, except it was filled with nurses and doctors and the corridor walls were painted white. His room had a brief view of the park, and he usually sat watching that sliver of green with his flat blue eyes and his immobile face.
“He’s having a good day,” said the orderly, leading me through. “Ate his lunch all right. I read him the newspaper. Looks like they’re braced for another hurricane in Florida.”
“Another one?”
“That’s right.” The orderly nodded. “The Atlantic coast this time. A big one, they’re saying. Look, Mr. Dane. Your daughter’s here.”
My father’s head moved, shifting slightly in the light. I came around the front of his chair and knelt before him and took his hands. “Daddy, it’s me. It’s Lily.”
He looked at me, and the right side of his face lifted into a tiny smile. I touched his cheek, running my finger over a small patch of stubble that the razor had missed. “How are you? It’s been a hot summer, hasn’t it? I’ve missed you so much.”
“I can bring a chair,” said the orderly.
“No, that’s all right.” I lowered myself next to my father’s legs and curled into him. A weight settled on my head: his hand. The window dipped low, and I could just see over the ledge, where the tiny green sliver of Central Park beckoned through the rain. Once a day, they took him out in his chair for a walk along the paths, unless the weather forbade it. I doubted he’d gone out today.
“Just ring the bell if you need anything,” said the orderly.
I sat there for a long time, looking out the window, hugging Daddy’s legs, feeling the weight of his unmoving hand on my hair. A faint smell of antiseptic hung in the air, tangling with the smell of Daddy’s shaving soap. “Do you remember Nick, Daddy?” I asked softly. He didn’t move. “Probably not. He was the boy from Dartmouth, the one I was in love with. I suppose I still am. He married Budgie, Daddy. Budgie Byrne. They spent the summer up in Seaview, in Budgie’s old house, except Budgie fixed it all up. It looks very modern now.”
Daddy made a little noise in his throat.
“It’s not that bad. It was very run-down; they had to do something.” I stroked his leg, narrow as a matchstick beneath the thin flannel trousers. Still summer clothes, in this heat. The fan rotated in a whisper above us, shifting the somnolent air. “Anyway, there they were, and he was just as he always was, so grave and clever and handsome, so full of warmth beneath it all. It was torture, Daddy, watching them together. And Budgie . . . well, you know Budgie. She’s so beautiful, such a match for him. And she loves him. You wouldn’t believe it, I wouldn’t have believed it, but she does. She really does.”
Central Park swam in my eyes. I lifted my sleeve and wiped them. “So I started flirting with Graham Pendleton, Daddy. I don’t know if you ever met him. He’s terribly handsome. He plays for the Yankees. I was jealous of Nick, and miserable, and I . . . I guess Graham made me feel better. Made me feel lovely and loved. And then Budgie said she and Nick were having a baby, and I couldn’t bear it, so I told Graham I would marry him.”
Daddy’s hand made a movement in my hair, the fingers just nudging my scalp.
“He said he needed me, Daddy. You know I can’t resist that, people needing me. I thought I could do something right. Give Kiki a man to look up to, to play with, the way I had you. Give Graham the loyal wife he needed, the family he needed. But I was wrong.” The tears choked up in my throat and ran out my eyes. I doubled over, clutching his leg. “I was so wrong, Daddy. I have been so stupid, haven’t I?”
I sobbed into Daddy’s trousers, until the flannel stuck to my cheeks and my nose was brimming. I sobbed for ages, until I was emptied out, hollow, a thin-skinned vessel of Lily balanced precariously on the eighteenth floor of a building almost overlooking Central Park.
Daddy’s hand remained in my hair, though it didn’t move anymore. The rain sheeted against the window, an immense amount of rain, tumbling down the gutters and into the streets. When I got up to leave, I couldn’t have said whether I had been there two minutes or two hours. My bones were stiff and aching, my face tight. I kissed Daddy on the cheek and told him I’d come by to visit him tomorrow.
On my way out, I stopped at the telephone booth in the hall and flipped through the pages of the directory until I found the listing for Greenwald and Company, 99 Broadway.
ACCORDING TO THE RAISED BRASS letters in the lobby directory, Greenwald and Company received its visitors on the eleventh floor. The rain had lightened to a drizzle by the time I emerged from the subway, but my dress was still damp, my stockings still fused to my legs, my hair still a mess of strawberry-blond frizz. It was four in the afternoon, and the marble-clad lobby was nearly empty, in a state of hushed expectancy for the five-o’clock rush. I shook out my umbrella and pressed the call button on the elevator. I tried not to look at my reflection in the burnished stainless-steel surfaces around me.
I told myself that I was doing nothing wrong, that I was only going to see an old friend, to put things straight, to perhaps commiserate. I told myself that I had no designs on Nick, no intention of disturbing his marriage and his impending fatherhood. But my fingers were trembling as I pressed the number eleven on the elevator panel; my heart was smashing violently against my ribs with the consciousness of reckless guilt. Or rather, the consciousness of an absence of guilt: that I didn’t care, didn’t give a damn. That it was my turn to break things, to hurt someone irreparably.
I didn’t know what to expect from Nick’s offices. I knew he had managed the Paris branch of Greenwald and Company after college, that he had pulled it back from the abyss after the firm had nearly collapsed in the spring of 1932. I knew that he had returned to New York to take over the headquarters when his father died last year, and that he had proposed to Budgie shortly thereafter. Had he renovated, or kept the place as his father had built it? Would it be sleek and modern, like the apartment in Gramercy Park?
There was marble, plenty of it, cool and white. There were rich rugs on the floor, and comfortable armchairs, and bold modern art anchoring each wall in a shock of primary colors. At the end of the lobby, beneath a sign that read GREENWALD AND COMPANY in black sans serif, a pretty dark-haired secretary sat behind an ashwood desk. She cast me a look of haughty astonishment as I drew near, holding my dripping umbrella.
“Greenwald and Company,” she drawled. “May I help you?”
“Lily Dane to see Mr. Greenwald.”
“Mr. Greenwald is in a meeting,” she said promptly, with a touch of satisfaction. “Do you have an appointment?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
She glanced at the clock on the wall. “Perhaps you’d like to come back tomorrow.”
“No, thank you. I’ll wait.”
“The meeting is expected to last quite some time.”
“Nevertheless, I’ll wait. Perhaps you could give him my name, in the meantime.”
A superior smile. “I couldn’t possibly disturb him, unless it was an emergency.”
“Miss . . .” I searched for a name, either on her n
ipped gray suit jacket or a placard on the desk, but could find nothing. “Miss, I’m a personal friend of Mr. Greenwald’s. I’m sure he’d wish to be informed of my arrival.”
The barest flicker of doubt crossed her eyes and winked out. “I’m sorry. He left strict instructions. You’re welcome to wait in the chair, or else return tomorrow morning.”
I stood poised, staring at the door behind her, which was open to reveal a glimpse of the office interior. A hallway, lined with more marble. A man walked past, and another. One of them, quite young, came through the door and bent to whisper in the receptionist’s ear.
“Is the meeting finished?” I asked.
The man looked up, surprised. “Adjourned for a moment. Who are you?”
“Could you tell Mr. Greenwald that Lily Dane is here to see him?”
“Lily who?”
“Dane,” I said loudly, projecting my voice through the door. “Lily Dane.”
The young man looked at me blankly. “Lily Dane? We don’t have a client by . . .”
“Lily?”
Nick filled the doorway in full arrest, his face pale with shock, his suit dark and his hair brushed back into gleaming submission. I almost didn’t recognize him, except for his eyes, urgent hazel, nearly green in the cool artificial brightness of the Greenwald and Company lobby.
“Nick,” I said.
“What’s the matter? Are you all right?”
“I . . .” I looked down at the secretary, whose face had rounded into wholesome fear. “I’m afraid I forgot to make an appointment.”
Nick’s hand lay against the door frame, knuckles white. “Miss Galdone,” he said, quite calm, “it appears there’s been a mix-up in my schedule. I neglected to tell you I’d be meeting with Miss Dane this afternoon. A long-standing appointment; I had nearly forgotten it myself.” Nick looked at me. “If you’ll pardon me, Miss Dane, I’ll make my excuses to the gentlemen inside. I won’t be a moment. Miss Galdone, please make Miss Dane as comfortable as possible.”