“Maybe just what she’s done for you in these past months is reason enough for her existence. A lot of people pass through this world and leave no mark.”
“I know one thing,” Ike said. “I’m going to make this the greatest Christmas she’s ever had. Robin—I want you to come. You’ve got to! I want to make it a slam-bang Christmas.”
Robin was silent. He hated illness—and seeing Amanda and knowing …
Ike felt his hesitation. “Maybe I’m being selfish,” he said. “You probably have your own family to be with. It’s just that I want to give her every possible kick, make every second count.”
“I’ll be there,” Robin said.
II
MAGGIE
EIGHTEEN
AT TWO A.M. Maggie Stewart was still awake. She had smoked an entire pack of cigarettes. For three hours she had paced back and forth—from the living room to the small terrace overlooking the bay. She liked facing the bay—the ocean was enormous and empty, but the bay sparkled with life. It was dotted with large yachts—their flickering lights sent shimmering reflections in the dark water. She envied the contentment of the people sleeping on them: it must be like a large cradle with waves lapping against the side—the easy lilt of the boat. She clenched the railing of the terrace until her knuckles went white.
Robin Stone was here! In the same city. They would come face to face tomorrow. What would she say? What would he say? Oddly enough her mind raced back to Hudson. For the first time in almost a year and a half she allowed herself to think about him. Long ago, or rather, right after her marriage to Hudson, she had learned it was best to ignore unhappiness. Thinking about it nourished it and kept it alive. Tonight, for the first time, she allowed the image of Hudson Stewart to come into focus. She saw his face, his smile that had gradually turned bitter—and then that ugly final frightening smile. That was the last she had seen of him—that terrible smile before she blacked out. It seemed so long ago, when she had lived in that big house as Mrs. Hudson Stewart III. Why was it that men were forgiven for anything—but a woman had to go by the rules?
She had married Hudson when she was twenty-one. Officially it had lasted three years. It was hard to recall just what she had felt in the beginning. She had wanted to be an actress. It was a dream that began when she was a child, the first time she had seen Rita Hayworth on the screen. It had crystallized when she saw her first legitimate show at the Forrest Theater. The living actors on the stage made everything in pictures pallid and unreal. This was what she would become. She made this decision when she was twelve and announced it at dinner. Her parents smiled and dismissed it as another adolescent phase. But she joined an amateur theater group while she attended high school and instead of going to dances, she spent her weekends studying Chekhov. The real explosion came when she announced she had no intention of going to college—she intended to go to New York and try for the theater. Her mother went into convulsive sobs. “Oh, Maggie,” she sobbed, “you’ve been accepted at Vassar. You know how I’ve stinted and saved to send you to college!”
“I don’t want to go to college. I want to act!”
“It costs money to live in New York—it could take a year or more before you got a job. What would you live on?”
“The money you’ve put away for Vassar. Just give me half of it.”
“Oh, no! I won’t give you money to go to New York and sleep around with actors and dirty old men who produce shows. Maggie—no nice girl goes to New York.”
“Grace Kelly went to New York—she was a nice girl.”
Her mother was adamant: “She was one in a million. And she was rich. Oh, Maggie, I never had a chance to go to college. Your father had to work his way through. It was our dream to send our daughter to the best school. Please—go to Vassar, then when you graduate, if you still want to go to New York—well, you’ll still only be twenty-one.”
And so she had gone to Vassar. She met Hudson when she was in her senior year. She thought him fairly attractive but her mother had gone wild with excitement. “Oh, Maggie, this is everything I’ve ever dreamed of! One of the best families in Philadelphia, and so much money. If only the Stewarts will accept us. After all, we’re respected, and your father is a doctor.”
“I’ve only had two dates with him, Mother, and I still want to go to New York.”
“New York!” Her mother’s voice became shrill. “Listen, young lady, get those ideas out of your head. I saved to send you to Vassar. I knew as soon as you told me you were rooming with Lucy Fenton that things were going to work out—you had to meet the right boys through Lucy!”
“I’m going to New York.”
“On what?”
“Well—I’ll get a job to support myself, and then try for the theater.”
“And just what kind of a job do you think you could get, my fine lady? You can’t type. You aren’t trained for a thing. I should never have let you join that acting group in high school, but I thought you would get it out of your system. And don’t think I didn’t notice the moonstruck way you looked at that foreign-looking boy.”
“Adam was born right here in Philadelphia!”
“Then he needed a bath and a haircut!”
She was amazed that her mother remembered Adam. She had never mentioned him. He had been a member of the Theater Arts group she had belonged to in high school. He had gone to New York and just this season he had come to Philadelphia with a real Broadway show. Of course it was a road company and he was only assistant stage manager. But he had made it. He was a real professional. The play had remained for a three-month run and she had seen him every weekend. Even Lucy thought he was divine. And then, the night before the play closed, Adam had asked her to come back to the hotel with him. She had hesitated—then tucked her arm into his: “I’ll spend the night with you because I realize I want to spend my life with you. But we can’t get married until I finish college. My mother will have a fit as it is. She never believed I’d go to New York and really try for a career. At least I’ve got to please her by graduating.”
He had taken her face in his hands. “Maggie, I’m really dead stuck on you. But—look, honey, in New York I live in the Village with two other guys. Half the time I’m living on unemployment insurance. I can’t even afford my own apartment, let alone a wife.”
“You mean you intended to sleep with me and run?”
He laughed. “I run to Detroit, then Cleveland, then St. Louis, then back to New York, and hope my agent has lined up a job in summer stock. I want to get a crack at directing. It’ll mean one of the lesser companies—and no money. Yes, Maggie, I’m running. An actor has to keep running all the time. But I’m not running out on you. That’s the difference. You can always trace me through Equity.”
“But what about us? What would we have together?”
“As much as any two people struggling in the theater can have. I’m hung on you, maybe I even love you. But you can’t plan in this business. It’s not a nine-to-five job, no steady salary coming in. No time for babies, a nice apartment. But if you want to come to New York after college—fine. I’ll show you the ropes—get you to my agent. Maybe we can even shack up together.”
“What about marriage?”
He had brushed her hair lightly with his hand. “Don’t leave Philadelphia, Maggie. Not if you think that way. Either you’re an actress or you’re a wife.”
“Can’t I be both?”
“Not with a struggling director. It couldn’t work. Actors and actresses are dedicated. They go hungry—they work—they dream—”
“Don’t they fall in love?” she asked.
“All the time. And if they love, they go to bed together, but if a job comes along that separates them, well, that’s the way it is. But an actress never feels alone because that burning thing inside called talent keeps her going.”
“I want to go to bed with you, Adam,” she said.
He paused. “Maggie … you have gone to bed with a guy before?”
Her eyes challenged him. “I’m not one of those burning actresses yet. I still have a nice clean bedroom all to myself.”
“Then let’s keep it that way. If and when you get to New York, look me up.”
Hudson’s entrance into her life, coupled with her graduation from Vassar, made their six months together so frenetic that she barely had time to analyze her emotions. She tried not to be influenced by her mother’s pathetic eagerness but she was caught up and carried along by the excitement Hudson brought into her life. The country club; her first visit to the racetrack; the two-week vacation in Ocean City as house guest of Mr. and Mrs. Hudson Stewart II.
In September their engagement was announced and Hudson gave her a seven-carat emerald-cut diamond. Her picture appeared in the Inquirer and the Bulletin.
She found herself “going along” as if it was a production at the Theater Arts and Hudson was an actor playing opposite her and at the end of the third act the curtain would fall, she’d hear the applause and it would be over.
But as the date of the wedding grew closer, she suddenly realized that when the curtain came down, she would be Mrs. Hudson Stewart III. Oddly enough her mood became one of tranquil acceptance, until she had lunch with Lucy, a week before the wedding.
They were sitting at the Warwick, discussing the plans for the wedding, when Lucy casually said, “Have you ever heard from that actor—Adam? I saw him on a TV commercial the other day. He had no lines, he was shaving, but I’d never forget those eyes of his. He’s rugged-looking. Jewish men are supposed to be exciting.”
“Jewish?” It had never occurred to her.
“Adam Bergman,” Lucy reminded her. “I remember one night he was talking—you were probably too starry-eyed to hear him—and he said an agent had suggested he change his name, because Bergman was too Jewish. And Adam said, I’ll stick with it; Ingrid did all right.’” When Maggie didn’t answer, Lucy added, “I guess that’s life. We all fall in love with the wrong man. And it’s all right, just so long as you marry the right one and settle down and have babies. Especially you—you’ll get a million every time you have one. Hudson’s father’s already given Hudson’s sister two million. That’s why she’s been pregnant two years in a row. Bud and I have to wait until my father dies.”
“But you love Bud, don’t you?”
“He’s nice enough.”
“Nice?” Maggie didn’t hide her surprise.
Lucy smiled. “I don’t have your looks, Maggie. I just have family name and lots of money.”
“Oh, Lucy, you are—” Maggie stopped.
Lucy cut in with a smile. “Don’t you dare say ‘personable’ or that I have brains. I do have brains, and there’s nothing I can do about my looks because they’re not bad enough. That’s why I picked you as a roommate, Maggie. I thought, If I room with the most beautiful girl in school some of it has to rub off on me. And that was when I first began to get some attention. I met Harry that summer. He was a desk clerk at a hotel in Newport. Can you imagine my mother letting me marry Harry Reilly who lives in the Bronx and goes to NYU? Not that Harry was asking me to. But in the fall I met Bud, and my mother is happy as a clam. I guess I am too—we’ll have a good life. But at least I had two glorious months with Harry.”
“You mean you—” Maggie stopped.
“Of course we went all the way. Didn’t you with Adam?”
Maggie shook her head.
“Oh Lord. Maggie, you’re an idiot. Why not? A girl should go to bed with a man she’s ape about at least once in her life.”
“But how will you explain it to Bud? I mean not being—”
“That’s archaic. You mean about the bleeding and all? I’m getting measured for a diaphragm; I’ll just tell Bud the doctor deflowered me.”
“But won’t he be able to tell?”
“I can fake it. I’ll just remember my first night with Harry. I’ll lie back and play dumb, whimper a bit, tense myself, and it will work. Want to know something? I never even bled with Harry. But I was hard to get into—I guess that’s the virgin bit. Poor Harry broke two rubbers before he made it. And I’ll see to it that Bud has a hard time—the first night, anyway.”
Maggie hadn’t had to fake anything with Hudson. Even the pain was real. Hudson had been rough. He tried to enter her immediately. It had hurt—and she had hated the whole thing. And it was the same the second night, and the third. They were on the Liberté en route to Paris for their honeymoon. The cabin was luxurious, but she was taking Bonamine and felt drowsy. Perhaps things would be better once they left the boat. At the George V in Paris, it was even worse. Hudson drank a lot and fell on her each night, without even an attempt at tenderness or affection. He satisfied himself and immediately fell into a dead sleep.
When they returned to Philadelphia and settled in the beautiful home near Paoli, she had thought things would be different. Hudson returned to work, she hired a staff, gave dinner parties, went to the club for golf lessons, and joined committees of various charities. Her pictures made the society sections of all the newspapers. She was the new young leader of Philadelphia society. Hudson was like a stallion, methodically taking her in bed each night. He never bothered to kiss her or touch her breasts anymore. In the beginning, she had felt she was at fault for not reaching her climax, but as the months passed she lost hope. She only longed for some display of affection in their nightly ritual. When she tried to feel Lucy out, she was answered with a shrug. “Sometimes it works with me, sometimes it doesn’t. But I moan and pretend it’s wonderful anyway. How is it with you and Hudson?”
“Oh great,” Maggie had said quickly. “But as you say, it doesn’t happen with me all the time either.”
“Look—it hasn’t happened with us for three months. My climax, I mean. Yet I’m two months pregnant. So obviously it doesn’t have anything to do with making babies. But you’d better make Hudson go easy on his drinking. That can make a man temporarily impotent.”
Maggie felt that a baby would change things between them. On the surface everything was fine. He was polite in public, he held her close when they danced, but they had nothing between them when they were alone.
She learned about Sherry at the end of their first year of marriage. Hudson had been going to New York alone on business frequently the last two months. On this night she was in the bedroom, dressing for dinner. Hudson was waiting downstairs. The phone rang. She was late, and continued to fuss with her hair knowing that the maid would pick it up. It continued to ring. Then through one of the odd timings of fate, she picked it up just as Hudson picked up the extension downstairs. She was about to hang up when she heard a female voice whisper; “Huddie? 1 had to call you.”
She felt oddly calm as she listened. Hudson’s voice was also conspirational. “Dammit Sherry, I told you never to call me at home.”
“Huddie—this is urgent.”
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow? Call me at the office.”
“I can’t, because I’ll be at work then, and I can’t call long distance—even if I reverse charges some of the girls would hear. Can anyone hear me? Is your wife around?”
“She will be soon. What do you want?”
“Huddie, the test came back, I’m definitely preg.”
“Christ, again!”
“Well, I can’t help it if the diaphragm slips. And you won’t wear anything.”
“Same doctor still in Jersey?”
“Yes, but he’s upped his price to a thousand.”
“Well-do it.”
“Huddie, he wants cash. I made an appointment for next Monday.”
“Okay. I’ll get to New York on Sunday and give you the cash—no, I better make it during the week. Maggie might get suspicious if I go on Sunday. Make it Thursday. I’ll be at your place at eight. God, I wish my wife was as fertile as you. Your baby is costing me a thousand to unload—hers would get me a million.”
He clicked the receiver. Maggie stood and waited until the girl’s phone clicked. Then she hung up s
lowly. She felt numb. Something like this had never occurred to her. She read about it happening to other people—but it couldn’t happen to her. Yet if she confronted him, what good would it do? She was twenty-two, equipped to do nothing. A divorcee in Philadelphia, even with alimony, was a lonely woman. She was stuck. There was no place to go.
She remained silent about Sherry but she joined a little-theater group. Hudson didn’t object. He was delighted with the avalanche of free evenings. The program director from the local IBC station came backstage after the second production and offered her a television job as a Weather Girl. Her first impulse was to turn it down, until he realized it would give her something to do every day.
She took her job seriously. She watched television, especially the network shows. She went to a diction teacher every day and her improvement was swift. After six months she was promoted to the news department and a daily half-hour show of her own. It was called Maggie About Town. She did interviews with celebrities—local and national—covering everything from fashion to politics. Within a short time she became a personality in her own right. Heads turned as she entered a restaurant or theater with Hudson. His attitude toward her success was one of scornful amusement.
He had replaced Sherry with a girl named Irma who worked in his office. He no longer bothered with elaborate excuses on his evenings out. Yet he methodically made love to her three times a week. She submitted with impassive silence. More than ever, she wanted a child.
So the marriage had stretched out—for almost three lifeless years. But she did not get pregnant even though all the tests proved she was thoroughly capable. She sometimes wondered if they could just go on drifting like this. Something had to end this aimless relationship.
It came about by accident. For months the Man of the Year dinner had been extensively planned. It was scheduled for the first Sunday in March. As a local celebrity, Maggie was on the committee and required to sit on the dais. The mayor would also be there, and Judge Oakes who was about to retire was to be honored. Robin Stone had been booked as guest speaker.