The Loving Couple Read online

  Alice had selected her own school, or schools, of psychology as a venturesome tourist chooses dinner in a smorgasbord restaurant. Alice had begun with a big gob of Freud—perhaps too much?—and a salty helping of Jung. There had been a dab of Adler, a smidgin of Karen Horney, a generous portion of Flanders Dunbar, equal amounts of Reich and Reik, an indigestible mixture of Krafft-Ebing and Stekel and a final dollop of Harry Stack Sullivan. Piled high on a very small plate, it made for a confusing meal, but Alice always had the satisfaction of knowing that she had devoured something very, very rich.

  When Alice had finished psychoanalyzing her sister, she psychoanalyzed the bedroom—its frivolities and conceits. Then Alice had launched into a singularly unflattering capsule diagnosis of her brother-in-law's failings, which Alice had felt to be legion and insurmountable.

  Lying there in the fumes of cologne, hopelessly besieged by Alice, Mary had grown a little irritated—just why, she didn't know—at hearing Alice run John down that way. It was all right for her to call him a cad and a louse and a heel and a brute and a beast. A, because he was a cad and a louse and a heel and a brute and a beast; and B, because he was her husband—or had been until this morning. But she hadn't liked to hear Alice pulverizing him in clinical small talk. And another thing that had burned her up was Alice's constant trotting off to that old quack Dr. Needles to spend the whole appointment—and the whole twenty-five-dollar fee—dishing over her husband. Let Alice and Dr. Needles worry about Mice's psyche and stop gossiping about him. Conversely, it had always made her furious when he had referred to her sister Alice as a common scold. Albeit true.

  "I suppose I'm just difficult," she murmured.

  "What?"

  "I said, Alice, you've been a perfect darling—selflessness itself—to come and solve all my problems, but I can't have you wearing yourself out when you're in this condition. It's so close to your time and you're not as young as you were with the other two. Now, why don't you let me drive you home and you can take a nice nap and . . ."

  "Nonsense!" Alice had boomed indignantly. "Both Dr. Needles and my gynecologist say they've never seen a fitter mother—physically and emotionally. Besides, the baby isn't due for four more months and just let me tell you . . ."

  Well, the trick had worked—partially. Alice had become neither silent nor absent, but at least she had started talking about something else. Alice was active in Planned Parenthood. Born a couple of decades earlier, Alice would most certainly have been jailed for passing out contraceptives on the cathedral steps. Today she took a more moderate, but no less ardent, stand. Alice believed that those who could afford children should have all the children they could afford and when they could afford them. Alice always said that it was the duty of superior people to bring forth superior offspring. So far Alice and Fred had produced two—a boy of seven, given to chronic nausea and bedwetting, and a girl of five with nineteen distinct allergies. Alice and Fred felt that they could now afford to treat mankind to yet another superior being, and its birth had been as carefully plotted as the Invasion of Normandy.

  Alice could—and would—tell you a full year in advance just when, where, why and how her next baby would be born. The present incumbent was due on the sixteenth of February, after the Stock Exchange closing. It would be brought into the world via Natural Childbirth. "Strengthens the bond of motherhood," Alice had explained.

  "Alice," Mary had interrupted determinedly, "it's not fair for me to keep you one minute longer, what with your anniversary and the baby coming and Timmy's bowels . . ."

  "His stomach."

  "Yes, of course, his stomach. Well, I'm not going to monopolize any more of your time." She had begun propelling Alice toward the stairs.

  Even so, it had taken a good fifteen minutes to buck the various tides and breakers and undertows of Alice's Sargasso Sea of theories. But now, thank God, Alice was out. The silence was beautiful.

  She walked cautiously down into the living room, circled it aimlessly, not really looking at it, and then trailed into the study. She was surprised—and a little annoyed—to see how tidy the study was. She had fully expected to find it a shambles, after last night, just as the kitchen had been this morning. Instead it was spick and span. There was no trace of ashes or cigarette butts—and he must have smoked more than a pack, sitting there morosely staring into the television set. The glasses and Scotch and ice bucket had disappeared. Even his wretched tennis cups seemed to be freshly polished.

  For some reason the cleanliness of this room angered her. She had been planning to put it in order herself as a sort of final masochistic act of marital bondage, gently cursing him as she did so. Now she was deprived of these last rites, so to speak, of her life with him. She felt even more resentment than she would have if, say, the study had been strewn with broken glasses and bottles, if furniture had been overturned, if she had found a big, smoldering burn in one of the new leather chairs and possibly a strange, slightly soiled black brassiere in a disgustingly large size. That would have added fuel to her hatred of him—not that it really needed any more fuel.

  Last night she'd felt sorry for him as she sat there nursing her drink and watching him watching the terrible debacle of his television show, Pulse Beat. The show had been a real turkey, a turkey for which he was solely responsible. Now she was glad it had been such a little stinker. She loathed television anyhow and having to sit in the study every Friday night to watch "America's Prestige TV Show" had been fairly onerous, especially since he took every blown-up line, every wiggle of the scenery as a personal affront.

  Yes, she knew it now, she had always hated the Pulse Beat program. She hated the Popescu Pulse-Beat Eternal Non-Magnetic Swiss Watch of Geneva, London, Paris and New York, Ltd. She hated Pulse Beat's president, Manfred Popescu, that walking League of Nations, hand holder, knee patter and bottom pincher. She hated his dizzy menopausal American wife whose every diamond and emerald gewgaw had a Pulse-Beat watch concealed in it somewhere. She expected that she'd hate Mr. Popescu's wife's daughter by her first marriage—a ravishing brunette with the incredible name of Besame Bessamer. She'd never met the creature, but she had seen Besame's debut as an actress on Pulse Beat last night and Besame was just the kind of woman other women despise.

  She supposed that she was being silly to bite the hand that fed her—or, rather, had fed her up until this morning. Besides she was out of it all now. He could stay here, right in this very room in Riveredge and watch Pulse Beat on Friday nights.

  This morning she chose to forget that just a year ago she had considered Mrs. Popescu an exquisitely rough diamond and Mr. Popescu a lovable old rascal. In fact, it had been all her fault—through a series of accidents—that Mr. Popescu had swept her John to wealth and fame and John had swept her out here to this glossy little jewel of a Regency pavilion.

  Until her meeting with Lillian Schneider Bessamer Popescu, she and her husband had lived blissfully on the brink of financial disaster in one charming room in the East Sixties which looked as though it cost a good deal more than it actually did. She had had her job. He had had one play produced successfully off Broadway; one produced unsuccessfully on Broadway; and a far better one that was going the rounds of producers' offices. He had sold a story to The New Yorker, four to less exalted publications, a number of radio and television scripts and had two very funny sketches in a revue that ran through a whole winter. He had had one-third of a novel in the works, too. Naturally it all sounded great, but average it out, the lean periods with the fat ones and it came to about eighty bucks a week, plus what he felt he could take from the tiny estate that was left after his father's sixty-odd years of high living.

  But even with dubious checks handed out to the landlord and the telephone company, even with two solid weeks of Kraft's Macaroni Dinner after splurging on a very grand supper party in honor of a producer who later tried to touch them for fifty dollars. Even with all kinds of desperate little economies, they still had had fun. They were young and decorative an
d gay and popular and very, very happy.

  Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus had appeared in the personages of that Swiss fondue of mixed nationalities, Manfred Popescu and his unlovely bride, Lillian Schneider Bessamer Popescu. Having acquired a fearfully opulent penthouse on Central Park South, Mrs. Popescu next acquired the professional services of Mrs. Manley Updike, Inc., Interiors to give her "a few cute ideas, dearie." Mrs. Updike had taken one look, murmured something vague about disabusing Mrs. Popescu of all cute ideas and fluttered off to Santa Fe with the vapors. Still, a commission was a commission, so Lillian Popescu and the penthouse ended up in her lap.

  It was while she was trying to dissuade Mrs. Popescu from hanging her picture window in cloth of gold that the program Pulse Beat was conceived. Mr. Popescu had come storming home from the waterworks muttering a most impressive rondelet of steaming Balkan curses. It seemed, Lillian had explained, that Mr. Popescu had just witnessed the television debut of the long famous Pulse-Beat Eternal Non-Magnetic Swiss Watch radio hour. It was an all-girl orchestra apparently dedicated to such inspirational numbers as "I Believe" and "My Rosary." For some years the program had been a standing favorite of people who spoke the praises of Pulse Beat's refined-type program while setting their own dollar Mickey Mouse wrist watches to the famous Pulse-Beat beep—every hour on the hour.

  However, a trombone played by a lady sounded a lot better than it looked. In spite of diets, permanents and fluffy tulle dresses, the Pulse-Beat all-girl orchestra, as it flickered onto the television screen, gave more the impression of a pony chorus at Camp Yaphank than one of feminine pulchritude. Manfred Popescu had a diabolical eye for a pretty female and the first sight of his famous all-girl company—hairy arms raised in ecstasy as they roared into an a capella rendition of "Mighty Like a Rose"—had prompted him to cancel his contract, dismiss the advertising agency and send his troupe of muscular houris back to whatever side shows and wrestling rings had spawned them. He had always been a man of quixotic moods, Mr. Popescu.

  Well, one thing had led to another, and while she and Lillian were calming Mr. Popescu, she had just happened to mention that her husband was a young writer who had had ever so many things produced on television. The next thing she knew, the Popescus and she and he were all at Voisin discussing over Steak Chateaubriand a most marvelous television program called Pulse Beat. A week after that, five air-shaking dramatic scripts had been written for Pulse Beat and the Popescus and she and he were all at the Stork Club celebrating his appointment as advertising manager, starting immediately at twenty-five thousand a year with raises, bonuses, vacations and sick benefits commensurate with his ability.

  She had been so happy that night that she quite forgave Manfred Popescu's little pinch under the table while her husband was dancing a rhumba with Mrs. Popescu. Well, Lillian could shake her can off and hang her Moorish living room in glazed chintz as far as she had been concerned. The important thing had been herself and John. The job, the prestige, the security had meant that she could quit working, find a bigger place, have a baby. It had been the beginning of their life.

  It had been the beginning, all right. It had been the beginning of endless evenings in endless restaurants and night clubs, with Lillian's big bottom, swathed in knit suits, shimmering satin, and spangled peplums, swinging like a Pulse-Beat pendulum to the shicka-shicka-shicka of the rhumba band. It had been the beginning of Manfred's small, furry paws groping for her under the table us whispered endearments in Rumanian, Hungarian, Bohemian, Turkish, Greek, German, Polish, French, Russian, Italian and English travelled moistly into her ear on the wings of his faintly sour breath.

  A Swiss by financial, political and personal choice, Mr. Popescu had been born of capriciously mixed parentage in one of those obscure Balkan countries which is always appearing, disappearing, being taken over by this or that power, set free by another, divided, subdivided, established and disestablished at the whim of tripartite conferences, and then snuffing itself out in ensuing revolutions led by the Popular Front, the Legitimist Restoration or the Conservative Socialist faction. Between the womb and Lillian he had mastered so many tongues that he was equally at home in any, but equally incomprehensible and repulsive in each.

  Well, that's how it had all started. The rest was history.

  It seemed to her that today they had less money than they had had in their one-room-in-town days. They had been careful, at first; even managed to save money. But there had been invisible expenses of some magnitude—new suits to replace his shiny old serge and the threadbare flannel; smart new things for her to wear while entertaining the Pulse Beat movie-star-a-week at expense account luncheons; lavish floral tributes for Lillian; Countess Mara ties for Manfred.

  The Popescus, who were, understandably, not very popular, had demanded a great deal of their time, and even though it shouldn't have, that had cost quite a lot of money. She and John had moved way out here quite as much to avoid evenings with Lillian and Manfred as to have room enough for a baby. Now the marriage was all untidily wrapped up and finished.

  She moved on through the smart oval dining room—so warm and gala during candlelit dinners for Pulse Beat bigwigs, but cold and austere in its northlit emptiness today—and went into the kitchen. There were still dim traces of the wreckage of their forty-dollar coffee maker scattered in the corners. Stooping to clean up what remained of the mess, she realized that she was quite hungry, that she'd had nothing to eat since dinner last night. She wondered vaguely what there was in the house to eat.

  During their poor days in New York, she had been a resourceful and talented cook, the flushed author of many a towering soufflé and succulent bourguignon. As though by magic, little gourmet meals—equally pleasing to eye, palate and pocketbook—would appear from behind the stylish screen that concealed a grumbling, waist-high ice box, a dripping sink and a two-burner stove whose oven had a mind of its own. The whole kitchen there had been smaller than a cupboard here and yet she had made it produce miracles.

  This kitchen, with its expanses of plastic and steel, its ovens and broilers and warmers and spits, its ranks of copper and spice jars, its desk and telephone and special surfaces of marble and maple, was to have been her own domain. Today she hardly knew where to find a saucepan. Since Heavenly Rest had arrived, she rarely came into this room except to create something very special, such as a lobster mousse or brioche or a sauce béarnaise for Mr. Popescu's filet. Now it seemed that she and John ate out a great deal of the time. When they were at home, guests were usually there, too, and they subsisted on party food—hot house delicacies and the grander cuts of meat. Meals that were rich, expensive and dull, ordered, cooked, served and washed up by Heavenly Rest.

  It mystified her to think that in New York she had been able to manage a job, cooking, cleaning, mending and entertaining. Out here, where domesticity was a career, a vocation, a religion, she scarcely found time to make her own bed.

  Her stomach rumbled ominously and turning to the cabinet where she thought the coffee might be stored she opened it. Heavenly Rest had Scotch-taped some fearful religious chromos to the inside of the cabinet door. There was a gaudy view of the Boy Jesus talking to the elders in the temple. With flaxen curls and cornflower eyes, Christ was the image of Mary Pickford, while the elders put one in mind of Fagin, Shylock, Leopold and Loeb. A garishly hand-tinted "Last Supper"—not Leonardo's—reminded her of a drag party. There was also a life-sized sepia photograph of Mother Immaculate Peace looking like a caramel cupid.

  Curiously, she lifted a stack of religious tracts and gave a little gasp as a skittish parade of ants dashed out from under it and raced pell-mell out of the cabinet. Really, she'd have to speak to Heavenly Rest about . . . "Well, actually, I won't have to speak to her at all," she said to herself. "In a week's time it won't matter to me if a tarantula runs out of the cabinet." There was no coffee there, anyhow. She slammed the cabinet door and opened the big, yellow refrigerator.

  The telephone, yellow like the rest of the kitche
n, jangled sharply, shattering the silence of the house and shattering her, too. He was calling! It could only be he, probably with more abuse, or maybe trying to make up—fat chance of that—or possibly ordering her to pack up and get out of his house. The telephone rang again. Of course it could be Alice or, even worse, Lillian or Manfred Popescu screaming about last night's program, or . . . The telephone rang again. She might imitate Heavenly Rest's rich Mississippi accent until she found out who it was and then . . . No, he'd see through that. He was the one who'd so magnanimously given Heavenly Rest the weekend off in the first place. The telephone rang again. Or she could just let it ring. Never! Her curiosity wouldn't permit it. Her hand stretched tentatively out as the telephone began ringing for the fifth time.

  "H-hello?"

  "Thank God you're in. This is Fran."

  "F-Fran?"

  "Fran Hollister. Listen, you've got to help me. That tramp, Adele Hennessey, just called to invite herself and her shanty-Irish husband and a couple of other micks over—can you imagine—and I made up the first excuse that came into my head."

  "Which was?"

  "Which was that you two were taking me out for lunch and that we were going into town to that fool party of Lisa Randall's. I suppose Lisa asked you. She's asked everybody else in the world."

  "Y-yes."

  "Well, listen," Fran continued brusquely, "if you'll back me up in this, I'll take you both to lunch—anywhere you say, just so I don't have to put up with those Hennessey climbers. And you ought to be grateful. She'll be inviting herself over to your place next. So, what do you say to lunch—that is, if your old man doesn't mind having two women hanging onto him. There's this guy I'm going to meet at Lisa's anyway and . . ."

  A perfect ragout of emotions surged over her. The call could have come from him, from Alice, from Adele Hennessey, from the Popescus, from Mrs. Updike or Gerald or Gerald's Ronny. It might have been a call from Lisa or a cousin in Greenwich or Beth Martin or the dry cleaner. But Fran Hollister never telephoned you—if you were a woman. Even odder, Fran invited her to lunch and Fran never invited you to anything—if you were a woman. She'd known Fran both briefly and vaguely over many years and to her Fran embodied worldliness, glamour and mystery. She was as flattered and perplexed by the call as she was confused and upset. She didn't feel like seeing anyone today, especially not anyone as, well, hard as Fran. Today was a day for being alone with herself.