“I really think it is.”
“All right, you’re dying, and your teeth and hair are falling out. Whatever you say.”
“When I’m dead you can marry Linda and adopt Robin and you’ll have everything you ever wanted.”
“You’re completely rational.”
“That’s right.”
“Uh-huh. Whatever you say.” He got out of his clothes, used the bathroom, returned to the bed.
“Are you going to sleep now, Petey?”
“That’s exactly right.”
“You’re tired, huh.”
“Right.”
“Okay. I’ll sleep too.”
He stretched out, closed his eyes. After a few moments he said, “Why don’t you lie down, Gretch?”
“Yeah, in a minute.”
“I mean you can’t sleep in the lotus position.”
“Don’t you think I know that? Just don’t rush me, will you? I’ll lie down in a minute.”
“All right.”
“It’s a question of working up to it.”
He let that one pass, gave up, willed everything out of his mind. She was still sitting with folded arms and legs when he dropped off to sleep, but when he awoke in the morning she was lying at his side, one thin arm draped across his chest.
“It’s actually quite simple,” Warren Ormont told him. “On the one hand, you have to take Robin away from Gretchen. On the other—”
“I don’t see how I can do that.”
“Exactly. That’s precisely what’s on the other hand. On the other hand, you cannot take Robin away from her. Gretchen is the child’s natural mother—and if that isn’t a semantic absurdity I’ve never encountered one. Unnatural mother is rather more like it.” He waved a hand impatiently. “Neither here nor there. Gretchen is Robin’s mother. You are not Robin’s father, whose name seems to be legion. Or God, if Gretchen’s most recent outburst is to be believed.”
“She didn’t know what she was saying.”
Warren sighed. “No, and she rarely does. Still, she is Robin’s mother. Which gives her certain rights, the most among them being that of custody of Robin. If you took the girl and vanished into the wilderness, you would be guilty of kidnapping. I doubt you’d have to worry seriously about criminal charges but you would have to worry that at any point Gretchen could have you arrested and retrieve Robin, none of which would come under the heading of positive experiences for impressionable young female children. So as things shape up—”
“Suppose I had her committed?”
“Yes, you could do that. It’s more than possible you ought to. If it weren’t for Robin, that’s exactly what you ought to do.”
“Gretchen gets completely paranoid if I so much as mention a psychiatrist.”
“She’s had bad experiences in that area.” Warren hesitated for a moment, then shook his head shortly. “No, that’s not even a consideration, is it? To hell, for a moment, with what Gretchen wants or doesn’t want.”
“If it would help her—”
“To hell with that, too. I think it’s illusory to think of hospitalization as potentially helpful. In cases like Gretchen’s, the rate of failure is beyond belief. No, the important question is the effect not on Gretchen but on the rest of the world.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Life is for the living,” he went on. “It’s the survivors who have to be considered.”
“And?”
“If Gretchen were committed, that doesn’t mean you would get custody of Robin. In all probability, Robin would be made a ward of the court. Which would probably entail internment in an orphanage or something of the sort. Placement in a foster home, perhaps. No, you see, commitment might be a good idea if Robin were not in the picture.”
Warren went on talking, explaining what Peter had to do to ensure Robin’s safety within the existing relationship. Peter nodded along, barely able to concentrate on the flow of words. There was little that Warren was saying now that other friends had not recently said, little that had not occurred to Peter himself. Robin could not be left alone with Gretchen. Gretchen could not be counted upon to assume any responsibility. And Peter, in the course of this, had to go on working, had to go on living his own life—
“There’s one thing I could do,” he cut in.
“What’s that, pray tell?”
“I could marry Gretchen.”
“Do that and I’d personally sign commitment papers. And not for Gretchen, dear boy. For you.”
“I’m serious.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“I wouldn’t want to do it. I could marry her and then adopt Robin legally.”
“Ah, I’m beginning to see.” Warren ran a hand through his hair. “And, as adoptive father, claim custody of the child. I doubt it would work. It might in a short-term sense, but at any point Gretchen could decide to be sane again, hire a lawyer, and sue for custody. And probably get it—the silver cord tying mother to child has a powerful grip on the American judicial imagination. But even if this were possible, Peterkin, it’s a hell of a bad reason to get married. I don’t know of any overwhelmingly good ones, but that’s worse than most. There’s a limit to how thoroughly you can fuck up your own life on Robin’s behalf, you know.”
“I’m not sure it can be fucked up much worse than it already is.”
“No.” Warren shook his head. “No, things can always get worse. That’s how one sustains oneself in this vale of tears, Peter my lad. With the knowledge, that bad as things are, they can get worse.”
But how much worse could they get?
Gradually he began to organize his life so that Robin was protected from Gretchen. Whenever possible, he kept the child in his own company. When he had to work, Robin would wait at the Lemon Tree, or at the Raparound, or with Tanya or Linda or Anne. Once he took the girl to the theater with him. Robin kept remarkably quiet, but Tony Bartholomew had not been amused and Peter was given to understand that he could not baby-sit and light a show at the same time.
“You know,” Tanya told him, “it’s sort of a nice feeling, isn’t it? I mean it’s tragic and all, but if you look at it a certain way, it’s like Robin is being brought up by the town of New Hope. And it gives me a kind warm feeling, if you know what I mean.”
Later he reported that conversation to Anne. He had come to collect Robin after a show and was sitting over a cup of coffee, postponing as usual the return to the apartment and to Gretchen. Anne fixed her large dark eyes on him, then suddenly erupted in laughter.
“Oh, God,” she said. “I can see it now—a title in a true confessions magazine. ‘I Was Brought Up by the Town of New Hope.’ Talk about unfit parents. This whole town is an unfit mother.”
Yet it was working out. And each time he returned to the apartment, each time he returned to Gretchen, he recalled Warren’s words. Things could always get worse.
The thought did not sustain him. Rather, it terrified him. Because things would get worse. They had to get worse. It was inevitable. Things were working out for the time being because Gretchen was inactive, silent, acquiescent, a human vegetable. She never interfered with his caring for Robin, never left the apartment, never attempted to break the living pattern he had established.
“Someday you’ll come home and find me dead, Petey.”
He could not open the door to the apartment without that shadow passing over him. She would not literally starve herself to death; in her current passivity she accepted enough of the food he prepared for her to sustain her life. But she might kill herself. She talked about it occasionally, and the threat of finding her there, hanging or wrists slashed or dead through any of the devices that his imagination constantly provided, was on his mind whenever he stood before that door with Robin’s small hand clutched in his.
“I wish you would kill me, Petey.” That was a number she got off on one night, stringing it out endlessly until he managed to shut her up. “I want to die but I’ll never have the nerve to do it myself. But you
could do it for me. You always do things for me, Petey. You could do this for me. I would help. We could make it look like suicide. We could figure out a plan. You’re good at plans, Petey. You could come up with a good plan.” And she went on telling him how much better it would be for everyone if she were dead. Better for her, because this was no way to live, no way to go on. And better for him and better for Robin and better for Linda, because he and Linda could get married and Robin could be their little girl and everyone could devote themselves to forgetting that Gretchen Vann ever lived.
Until one day, as he walked alone along the Towpath, he realized something.
He wanted her dead.
The thought caught him, sent a chill through him. He tried to get it out of his mind by force of will but it echoed in his brain and would not go away. In his mind he heard his own voice, cold and brittle: I want her to die.
THIRTEEN
Warren put his car in the driveway, walked to the front door of his house and fitted his key in the lock. As he opened the door, he heard Bert at the piano. He smiled and eased the door open slowly, silently. He padded softly across the plush powder-blue carpet and stopped at the archway leading to the living room.
“Night and Day.” “Always True to You in My Fashion.” “You’re the Top.”
He took deep silent breaths and let the music wrap itself around him. Usually he arrived home before Bert, but tonight he had gone with a crowd to the Barge Inn, had put himself outside of a half dozen cognacs, and Bert had finished his gig at the Carversville Inn and had come home still full of music. Bert had had classical training, and had spent many drunken evenings weeping over his wasted life, sure that he ought to be playing Mozart and Chopin on recital stages. But Warren knew that his special magic was with the material he performed routinely while people drank and talked over the notes he played. Cole Porter, Rodgers, and Hart, Harold Arlen—Bert’s fingers (not long and graceful, not at all, rather short and stubby but so sure of themselves, so certain at the keyboard) gave standards and show tunes a special grace.
Bert played for him, and often. But it was moments like these that Warren particularly treasured, when Bert was unaware of any audience. He liked to stand in shadow and listen. It was Cole Porter tonight, one song after another. “Anything Goes.” “Let’s Do It.” “Begin the Beguine”—
Finally, as a song ended, he cleared his throat and stepped into the room where Bert could see him. The dark head raised itself from the keys; the long saturnine face was creased with a smile. Warren applauded furiously and Bert lowered his head in a brief bow.
“Magnificent,” Warren said reverently.
“Devil. How long were you hulking there?”
“I don’t hulk. Since ‘Night and Day,’ I think.”
“Enjoy the concert?”
“More than I can say. If you would sing in public and if you were black, Bobby Short would have to find other way to make a living.”
“I doubt that he’s trembling at the prospect. How did, it go tonight?”
“It went. I was brilliant. The rest of the company was reassuringly adequate.”
“How comforting for you.”
“One lives for small triumphs.”
“Why don’t you make us drinks to honor the occasion?”
“When I arrive home first,” Warren said, “I see to it that drinks are waiting upon your return. Yet on those rare occasions when your return precedes my own—”
“I greet you with a concert.”
“A good point,” he conceded. “Better a concert than a Cognac. One understands.”
“I’d make the drinks now, but I’m playing the piano.”
“A noble cause. A noble savage. Odets, where is thy sting? You persist in the notion that the martini is a civilized drink at this hour.”
“There is no clock on my palate, love.”
“I shall do the honors, such as they are. Martinis and music. If they be the food of love, play on!”
It was just one of those things
Just one of those fabulous flings
One of those bells that now and then rings
Just one of those things… .
In the kitchen, he poured Bombay gin into a pitcher, added ice and a drop of scotch. The scotch, he had established, was better than vermouth at masking the sharpness of the gin. He stirred the mixture gently with a long silver spoon.
… just one of those nights
Just one of those fabulous flights
A trip to the moon on gossamer wings
Just one of those things….
He strained the martinis into a pair of large stemmed crystal goblets, added a slender shaving of lemon peel to each glass. The house was Warren’s, and all its furnishings, with the exception of Bert’s piano and a writing desk that had belonged to Bert’s mother, had been carefully selected and purchased by Warren. The house itself was unprepossessing enough on the outside, a small frame house on the northern edge of New Hope that differed little from its neighbors on either side. Inside it was a refuge, with every object within its walls carefully chosen to reflect Warren’s taste and provide his life with a framework of order and dignity. It was, indeed, a refuge he rarely sought; he preferred to spend his time in the company of others, over drinks or cups of coffee. But when he did come home it was important to come home to something perfect.
The house had been Warren’s before Bert entered his life, and the years Bert had spent there had had precious little impact upon it. A few objects had been shuttled about to accommodate his Regency desk and his Gulbrandson spinet (a grand piano would have dislocated things badly, and Warren thanked sundry gods that Bert was content with an upright), but otherwise things stayed as they were, with Bert appreciative of pleasant surroundings but generally indifferent to them. It was Warren’s special shelter from the storm, and it would continue to shelter him when he and Bert parted company and Bert moved elsewhere. Not that Warren specifically anticipated such a parting of the ways. It was entirely possible that they would live out their lives together under this roof. But it was also possible that they would not, and Warren had learned over the years always to be prepared for such contingencies. He did not believe that heterosexual marriages were inclined to be any more permanent than homosexual alliances. But marriages had that illusion of permanence. They were bulwarked by children, reinforced by judicial recognition, predicated on the assumption that no man or woman should tear their bond asunder. They were as apt to deteriorate as any other relationship, yet when they did so it was generally a considerable shock to the participants. They hadn’t expected this, they had quite believed the till-death-do-us-part number, and they were thus unprepared. Homosexuals expected that things would ultimately go to hell, and were more inclined to be surprised when they didn’t.
When he brought the martinis into the living and placed Bert’s upon the piano, Bert was singing:
If we’d thought a bit
Of the end of it
When we started painting the town
We’d have been aware
That our love affair
Was too hot not to cool down
He broke off with a quick embarrassed smile and reached for his drink, smiling again in appreciation at the first sip. Warren moved up behind him, placed his hands on Bert’s shoulders, kneaded the fine muscles.
“You should sing more,” he said.
“You always say that.”
“No doubt I always shall. You have a fine voice, but it’s more than that. You bring lyrics to life.”
Bert’s fingers worked on the keys. “You’re too kind.”
“I’ve told you all this before.”
“I know. It’s funny, though. I can’t sing to a roomful of people. It’s not just that it’s a mental block because I do it from time to time but it doesn’t work, I can’t really get into it. And as a result I don’t sing well.”
“Couple of acting classes might help. Some version of psychodrama. Teach you to get out of you
rself.”
“That’s possible, I suppose. The odd thing is, though, that I can’t sing when I’m completely alone, either. I embarrass myself for some odd reason. I can only sing” —his hands punched out a descending chord progression —“when I’m singing for you. Odd, no?”
Warren bent, nuzzled Bert’s ear, planted a row of kisses along his throat.
“You’re changing the subject.”
“Aren’t I, though,” Warren murmured, continuing. “It’s not odd, though. You love and trust me.”
“It’s odd that I love and trust anyone, don’t you think? Damn. It’s going to be hard to play this piano with an erection.”
“Doubt it’s ever been done before. Most pianists use their hands. A good idea, though. A little outré for television, but in the right club in the Village—”
“Devil. What do you know about a girl called Melanie?”
“She misses all the notes but I still like to listen to her, though I must admit I don’t know why. One gets on her side and cheers for her, I think. One hopes that, in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, she’s going to make it all the way through to the end of the song.”
“Not the singer. Melanie Jaeger, I think her name is.”
“Sully’s wife.”
“Oh, is she? I never made the connection.”
“Why?”
Bert was playing “I Get a Kick Out of You.”
“Tossed a pass my way tonight.”
“Melanie Jaeger? Where was this?”
“While I was working. Pretty obvious pitch.”
“Who was she with?”
“No one. Came alone, sat at the bar, and cruised the room like a piranha. She made her drinks last a long time. She wasn’t there for drinks or music. She was looking for someone to go home with. Found someone, too. No one I ever saw before, but she scored and took him right on out of there.”
“I’ll be damned. Melanie Jaeger. You’re sure she wasn’t meeting someone?”
“Not a chance. Nice little bit, too. Predatory cheekbones, and something special in her eyes.”
“One begins to visualize certain possibilities.”