The Loving Couple Page 15

  He thought for a moment. This was no time to tell a lie. Nor was it the time to tell the complete truth. In fact at no time would he tell the whole truth about having been made a fool of by Besame. Slowly he said, "I swear that I've seen her just four times in my life: first when she read for a part, again at dress rehearsal; last night over TV; and today for the last time. She means less than nothing to me. With both of us it was purely business." What answer could have been truer?

  She looked at him solemnly. "You're telling the truth?"

  "I'm telling the truth," he sighed. He felt purified. "But Uncle Tom?" he asked. As long as the mass confession was going on out here in the cold, he might just as well tax her with some of her escapades. "This friend of Fran's?"

  "Who," she said, "Randy?"

  Aha! "I thought you didn't even know his name!" he said sharply.

  "I don't,” she said quite simply. "Randy's all I recall. He's just someone I met with Fran five or six hours ago. He's not a bit nice. None of Fran's friends could be called nice. Neither could Fran, in fact."

  Oddly enough, he believed her.

  "God, but I'm sick of terrible people," he said. "After today, I. . .”

  "So am I," she said. "And I'm so afraid that we've been turning into terrible people ourselves. Vicious, grasping, scheming, mean, withered people—just like the ones I've been with all afternoon and all night. And we're on our way, you know. I've even admired some of them. But their terrible-ness rubs off. I can feel it on me."

  Was this the time? He hoped so. He was going to take the wild chance anyway. "Well," he said, "it won't any longer. That is, it wouldn't any longer, if only we could get our feet back on the ground."

  "You mean off the ground," she said. "Off the hallowed soil of exclusive Riveredge."

  "And off the sandy soil of the Villa Manfrillian and off the dance floor of El Morocco and off . . ." he said excitedly.

  "We're too old for that sort of life, darling," she said. "I'm nearly thirty and . . . Well, I mean we should be grown up and . . ."

  "And forget all this nonsense about who has the smartest house and the biggest car and the most progressive children . . ."

  "Could we, darling?" she cried. "Should we just chuck the whole thing and start right back here where we were before? Right here?" She gestured toward their empty apartment.

  "Will you?" he shouted. "Remember," he added with an air of caution, “I’m off the payroll. There won't be any Mr. Santa Claus with a fat check every week . . ."

  "And no fat hand on my thigh every night. Of course you'll quit," she said. "You never should have gone there. It was all my fault. You should have refused. You should have finished your play. You've wasted a whole year with Popescu."

  "Not wasted," he said. "I've learned a lot. I've met a lot of people who know I can write."

  "You'll finish it, then? We'll sell the house and come back here. I'll get another job . . ."

  "And a baby?" he asked excitedly.

  "Certainly a baby," she said. "Several perhaps. But we'll worry about that when the time comes. And when that time does come, there won't be any overpriced little housing development, no interfering sister, no Dr. Needles. We'll raise our children where we're happy. Then they'll be happy."

  "In one room?" he asked dubiously.

  "Perhaps in two—or three. But only when the time comes and then not in Riveredge. I don't even want to go back there tonight."

  "Where do you want to go?" he asked.

  "Let's go to a hotel. They'll think we're lovers—no luggage, no reservation, no nightie . . ."

  "No money," he said gloomily. "It's a beautiful idea, but I'm flat."

  "I have some," she said. "We'll go nearby. The Margate's said to be sinful. Then we can get up first thing in the morning and beard the superintendent here. I know he'll let us come back. You tipped him when we left, didn't you?"

  "I gave him millions, my beloved."

  "Then come, darling," she said. "Come before some horrible thing or some terrible person happens along to ruin everything again."

  "Where to? The Margate?"

  "Any place. Just so we get there soon enough to save our lives—our life."

  A car turned slowly into East Sixty-eighth Street from Park Avenue. They were bathed momentarily in its lights.

  "Stop the car, Fred!" a voice called. "There they are!"

  Mary looked at John in panic.

  "Wait, you two," the clarion voice shouted. "I want a word with you!"

  "My God," he groaned, "it’s Alice!”

  "Run for it!" she cried. "It's our only chance!" He grabbed her hand and they started pounding along the pavement.

  "Turn the car around, Fred," he heard Alice call. "Follow them!"

  "I'm afraid I can't, dear," Fred said. "It's a one-way street."

  Laughing and running down the sidewalk with her hand secure in his, he couldn't for the life of him remember just what their quarrel had been about.

  The Loving Couple: Her Story

  Patrick Dennis

  (written as Virginia Rowans)

  By the Author

  Oh, What a Wonderful Wedding

  House Party

  The Loving Couple

  Copyright Page

  THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY • NEW YORK

  Copyright © 1956 by Thomas Y. Crowell Company

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except by a reviewer, without the permission of the publisher.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 56-10793

  Manufactured in the United States of America by the Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton, New York

  THIRD PRINTING, SEPTEMBER 1956

  for D. E. B.

  half a book is better than none

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and no reference is intended

  to any actual person living or dead.

  To ebook readers

  The Loving Couple was originally printed, as a gimmick, with His Story and Her Story back to back, with the covers reversed, so that a reader could at whim begin reading either story, then upon completion turn the book over and upside, and read the other spouse’s point of view.

  As in so much of life, the two stories met somewhere in the middle.

  For the purposes of this electronic version I’ve arbitrarily put His Story first, and let Her Story have the last word. Please be aware that the two versions might just as easily be read in the other order, however.

  The Loving Couple: Her Story

  One

  "All right, damn you," she shouted, "leave me! get out, get out, get out! Get out and don't come back!" The front door shimmed with a force that shook the house. Then there was an eerie quietude like the silence that follows a major explosion. The only sound she could hear was the click of his leather heels on the flagstone walk.

  "How dare he?" she asked the empty reception hall. "How dare John talk to me that way after the things I've had to put up with—the sacrifices I've . . ." She stopped talking. In the first place it was perfectly ridiculous to be staring into a convex eagle mirror and conversing with her own distorted balloon face. In the second place, to be fair—and she always tried to be eminently fair—she couldn't actually think of any real sacrifices she had ever made. Oh, there were little things like putting up with his old tennis cups in the den and not having chartreuse in their bathroom because he didn't like chartreuse. She had compromised on those. And there was a big thing, too, giving up her job and that snug little apartment in New York to move out here, like her sister Alice. It was a thing she said she'd never do and yet she'd done it. "For him," she said aloud. But that wasn't quite true either, she thought. I would have had to quit my job with the baby coming anyhow, and since the apartment wasn't really big enough for a baby we'd have had to move. No, there hadn't been any real sacrifices—"Just five, going on six, years of my life," she snapped. She kicked the train of her housecoat and strode into the living room.

 
; The living room was two steps down, an architectural conceit that had cost an extra five hundred dollars and also the baby's life before the baby even had a life. She'd fallen into the living room when she was six months pregnant just after the last ashtray had been placed, the last picture had been hung in the new house. The baby had been taken from her at the hospital that night. Now she made her way down the two shallow steps very slowly, very carefully, almost painfully. It made her feel like an old lady—eighty-two instead of twenty-eight—but she had learned to hate and fear those steps.

  "He was kind about, about the baby," she said to the empty living room. "Bringing me flowers and perfume and a fur scarf as a consolation prize and all that. But he blames me for it. I know he does. And ever since I lost it—ever since we came out here—he's hated me. No man could talk to his wife that way unless he really loathed her." She thought of the baby again and wondered what it would have been like. Then she shrugged her shoulders. "Probably just as well the poor little thing never was born. It can't be very pleasant to live with a mother who has to work to support you and . . ." She was getting dramatic now. She realized it and she stopped.

  She took a cigarette from a crystal urn and lighted it. It tasted stale and terrible—God only knew how long it had been sitting there. She made a face and put the cigarette out. She rarely smoked anyway and never when she was alone. "Well, I guess I'll be alone for a good long time," she sighed. She glanced at the formal and rather austere perfection of the living room and decided she hated it. Everything in it was pure Regency, genuine and expensive. When they had bought this house and moved out here she had decided that her living room wasn't going to be like any of the other living rooms at Riveredge. That precluded Modern, Early American, Eighteenth Century, French Provincial and Williamsburg Restoration. She and Lisa and Gerald and Ronny and Mrs. Updike and several other friends who were only too happy to give her advice had finally settled on Regency. Gerald had said the room was delicious. Ronny had photographed it in color. Lisa planned to do one quite like it next fall. Mrs. Updike took full credit for it and even brought a client up to see it. But today Mary hated it.

  She wandered angrily to the window and gazed out at the well-groomed grounds of Riveredge. Down on the road the grounds crew was raking leaves. Through the autumnal trees she could see the glass and fieldstone expanse of the Hennesseys' house. Smoke was curling up from the chimney and there was a big, vulgar, yellow Cadillac convertible standing in the drive next to the Hennesseys' big, vulgar, red Jaguar convertible. That meant that Jack and Adele Hennessey were entertaining guests for the weekend and that soon they would all come clamoring noisily over to look at the living room and cadge from two to five drinks apiece. A United Parcel delivery truck moaned up the road and disappeared, narrowly avoiding collision with a Buick station wagon full of children. She looked at her Pulse-Beat wristwatch. It was just ten. Ten o'clock on a Saturday morning at Riveredge. A happy family unit came trudging up the road on foot. She knew that they were the Martins. Mr. Martin was in advertising, Mrs. Martin had been a Goodhue and they lived in a white colonial house that didn't look out on the river but did have heirloom furniture, including a Copley portrait of an early Goodhue and a Sheraton breakfront whose grilled doors concealed television and high fidelity. Mr. Martin was wearing an imported chamois shooting jacket and blue jeans. The two children were wearing corrective dental braces and blue jeans. Mrs. Martin was wearing a vicuna polo coat and maternity blue jeans. There was a good deal of calling back and forth to the family in the station wagon—something about being due any moment now, something about storing tulip bulbs and something about watching the Notre Dame-Navy game together that afternoon. The Martins epitomized Riveredge dwellers and she hated them.

  She turned unhappily from the window. "Pretentious little suburban housing development!" she muttered.

  In five words she had described Riveredge with deadly accuracy. It was pretentious, it was little, it was suburban and it was a housing development. But there were hard and fast lines drawn at Riveredge that made it stand head and shoulders above the usual housing development, to make it the Versailles of the suburbs. To begin with, Riveredge was a Good Address. It had once been the Hudson River estate of a very rich family who, in the face of rising taxes and falling dividends, had been delighted to sell out to a smart real-estate operator. So Riveredge was no arid expanse of barren soil with a few pathetic shrubs and saplings struggling for existence. Every tree and bush and flower had been a tradition for generations, only the houses and the people in them were new. New, but by no means nouveau, with the possible exception of the Hennesseys, You didn't just buy a little plot and put up a little house at Riveredge, you joined Riveredge. And you joined Riveredge only after the board of governors had put you to a number of soul-searching questions as to the education, occupation, race, religion, political affiliations, financial and social standings of you and your spouse, your parents and their parents. This was also followed up by private investigation and all references were carefully checked.

  Once you had been admitted to the charmed circle of Riveredge, there were other restrictions as well. No plot could be smaller than an acre and no house less expensive than thirty thousand dollars. If you commanded a view of the Hudson, the land cost more. No two houses were alike and they were so far apart that you saw your neighbors only through binoculars—a popular pastime at Riveredge.

  You also signed a sort of Loyalty Oath at Riveredge. You agreed—and the agreement was notarized—to keep your lawn and shrubbery trimmed, your house painted, your windows washed, your dog muzzled and your language clean. You agreed not to drive faster than twenty in the grounds of Riveredge, not to keep explosives or wild animals, not to appear at the swimming pool indecently clad, and not, under any circumstances, to sell to someone whom the board of governors did not approve.

  Finally there were fairly stiff annual assessments for the man at the gate who kept out those who had no business in Riveredge, for the lifeguard at the pool, for the bus that took the young bankers and brokers of Riveredge to the station each morning and met them each night, for the grounds crew that trimmed and snipped and clipped all summer and raked and shoveled and graveled all winter. Not everybody could live at Riveredge—just a hundred lucky families. But it was so worth it. Just as the ads said in the days when they still had to sell Riveredge, it had "the convenience of the city, the charm of the suburbs, the peace of the country."

  She moved to the long windows on the opposite side of the room and stared down at the Hudson sparkling below. It was one of those perfect October days—warm in the sun, chilly in the shade. It was a day without a cloud in the sky; a day that made you think of football and chrysanthemums and new fall suits; a day when you could drive with the top down and be glad you were alive. Well, she wasn't a bit glad she was alive. She wished she were dead and he were dead and that they were buried in different cemeteries, She wished that it were cold and foggy and bleak—just as cold and foggy and bleak as she felt.

  She picked up another elderly cigarette. Lit it. Made a face and went slowly to the kitchen. The kitchen usually rang with the ungolden voice of Heavenly Rest singing along with an endless program of hep gospel choristers emanating from a mysterious two-watt station in Harlem. The airways between Riveredge and Harlem never carried the hymns smoothly. The plastic kitchen radio snapped and crackled with static and Heavenly Rest had what amounted to a genius for tuning in a program so that it sounded as though it were being transmitted by dental floss between two tin cans. But today the hymns, the static, the gospel singers and Heavenly Rest would all have been very, very welcome. Actually, she reasoned, it's really all Heavenly Rest's fault. If I hadn't given her the weekend off to go to that Mother Immaculate Peace outing, then she would have made the coffee and he wouldn't have got up and broken that expensive glass coffee maker and 1 wouldn't have called him stupid and he wouldn't have . . . She felt herself growing a little wistful. But bending down to pick up the shard
s of what had been guaranteed to be an automatic, never-fail, unbreakable, pyrex, electric coffee maker, she felt that old rage returning and flooding into her cheeks stronger and hotter than ever.

  It wasn't that he had broken the damned coffee pot. That wasn't important. But then he had come storming up to their bedroom, yelling and cursing, and awakened her out of a sound sleep. So she had said he was stupid and he had said: "Stupid, hell, if you ever did anything around here except loaf and run up bills, I wouldn't have to be up making the coffee!" Then she had said that he was acting like a naughty child and at seven o'clock on a Saturday morning—really! Then he had said he was cut and scalded, thrusting out a bleeding hand above the bed, thus ruining the new satin comforter. Then she had said: "Good! If you don't know how to run a simple gadget that even a halfwitted religious fanatic like Heavenly Rest can work, you deserve it!" Then he had said that if she had been properly brought up and not rotten-spoiled by that old imbecile of a mother out in Santa Barbara, he wouldn't have to get up and make his own coffee. Then she had said: "Just you keep a civil tongue in your head and . . ."

  Well, one thing had led to another. Nobody had ever talked to her that way. And there'd been the time, around eight-fifteen, when he had got off a particularly good one; at least he must have thought it was good. And a biting, cruel, twisted, completely unfair and untrue statement it had been. Then he had slammed off to the bathroom and locked the door. But that hadn't quite silenced her. Oh, no indeed! She had gone right to the bathroom door and delivered a few home truths about some of his less endearing traits until the door had burst open to reveal him trembling in his pajama bottoms, his face covered with rage and shaving soap. Well, he'd absolutely screamed at her and then slammed the door in her face when she screamed at him.