Acts of Love (7 page)

When he hung up, he refilled his glass from the bottle of Scotch that Martin had left for him earlier that evening and added ice cubes from the insulated ice bucket. “You'll be having dinner at home?” Martin had asked. “About eight,” Luke replied. “Something light.”

He reached for another letter, and the telephone rang again. “What the hell,” he said, and thought of letting Martin get it, but instead picked it up.

“Luke!” Claudia exclaimed. “Why are you home? You said you'd be at Joe and Ilene's, and then Monte's,
and then we had a date!”

Oh, Christ, he thought, remembering, and felt annoyed and resentful as he saw his private evening slip away. But at the same time he saw the humor in it: two women trying to drag him out of his home when all he wanted was to be alone with a third woman's letters.

“It's because you don't want to see me, isn't it? You never stay home; you're just looking for an excuse—”

“It has nothing to do with you.” It was amazing how people made themselves crucial to every event, he thought, seeing themselves as the cause of what other people do. He drained his glass and mentally shrugged. “I'll have a quick supper with you. Italia at nine. I'll see you there.”

He told Martin he would not, after all, be dining at home and asked him to call the restaurant to reserve a table. He poured himself another drink and took out the next letter. He had an hour.

Oh, what a magnificent gift! Dearest Constance, how wonderful you are, the necklace is absolutely the most gorgeous gift I've ever had. The cameo looks so rare and precious, and I love the silver chain, and I'm going to wear it forever, starting tomorrow afternoon with graduation and then the prom. Well, yes, I actually am going to the prom. I remember I told you I wouldn't date for the rest of high school and you said I'd feel as if I was in a play and got sick and my understudy went on and
nobody missed me.
You were absolutely right, so after a while I started going to parties and things and I even had a good time. Well, some of the time I did; do you have any idea how
young
high school boys are? They only have three or four things to talk about and then they start using their hands. You wouldn't believe it: one minute they're talking about the school football team or something else I couldn't care less about, and then all of a sudden their hands are all over the place, poking, rubbing, pawing . . . unbelievably crude! And sloppy! They have absolutely no finesse . . . they're like puppies, all panting and nuzzling. The problem is, once in a while lately I've started responding—well, my body has, anyway, and I think, oh, well, why not?—which I find totally embarrassing because there's nothing
romantic
happening, and then it all seems so dumb, and I tell whoever it is to take me home. But what happened about the prom was that a really handsome guy who just moved here, very smooth—lots of finesse!—asked me to go, and I thought, what a change, so I'm going with him. . . . He just called and asked me what I'm wearing so he could choose an orchid to match! I told him black. It has lace
barely
covering my front,
very
sophisticated—and can't you imagine how the cameo will look against black silk? More later, all of it in
great
detail.

Crude and sloppy, Luke thought. Puppies. He remembered himself in high school, all arms and legs, awkward and uncoordinated the minute a girl approached; his voice unreliable, his penis willfully springing to attention, obeying no master but itself. She doesn't know a damn thing about it, he grumbled. But then he chuckled, remembering that the letter had been written some twenty-three years earlier. Past history, he thought; she's learned a lot since then, and so have I. He opened the next letter and ran a casual eye over it, not interested in descriptions of a high school prom, but suddenly a sentence stopped him.

I'm so ashamed of the letters I've been sending you, so incredibly childish.

Something happened, he thought; she's changed. And it looks like it's been a long time since the last letter. He went back to the beginning.

Dearest Constance, your letter was forwarded to me here, at Yale, where I'm finishing up my first year. I'm sorry I haven't written, I think of you all the time but I just couldn't write. I'm so ashamed of the letters I've been sending you, so incredibly childish. I can't believe I ever was that person, so
young
and uncaring, never wondering if you had time in your life for a twittering teenager who kept throwing herself at you, demanding that you love her. I did want you to love me, for lots of reasons, but partly because I thought my parents didn't. Well, now they're dead and all I know for sure is that I never really knew them and that makes me so despairing that I think I'll explode with it because there's
nothing I can do about it.
I'm not sure I ever really looked at them, you know; it seems to me I was always looking somewhere else when they were in the room. So I never saw who they really were. They told me they loved me and wanted to protect me, but that meant keeping me in our little town, safely married, doing something with my drawing and painting—like interior design, or something—but I'd told them over and over that that was just a hobby. They never understood that New York means the theater and
you
and
life
to me, and all I wanted was to be there, and we quarreled about that and
now
I think of things I should have said, or things I should have said differently, or not said at all. I know they loved me and they weren't bad people . . . oh, it's crazy and scary to think that I'll never see them again or tell them all these things I've figured out how to say. They were driving to a movie and they stopped for a red light and a car rammed them from behind and pushed them into the path of a truck. I had nightmares about that for months, even after I came to Yale, and then I got sick and ended up in the infirmary. A psychiatrist, Dr. Leppard, came to see me, a wonderful man who reminds me of my father, and we talked for months, three times a week, and after a while I was able to sleep again. But I didn't care about anything; I felt like some kind of mechanical doll that makes all the right moves and passes tests in class and talks to people—everybody was so nice, but it was like they were talking to me from far away—I felt all empty inside—not alive. Then one day Dr. Leppard asked why wasn't I in the theater program? That was funny, because of course it was the reason I came to Yale and I hadn't even thought about it. So I went over to the theater and they were casting a play and I got a part right away. It was small, but it got me back on stage. But then the most awful thing happened. When I came to the first rehearsal and looked at all the empty seats in front of me and the rest of the cast all around me and the director sitting on the edge of the stage with the script in his hand, I started to cry. Because right then, for the first time, I really believed that my parents were dead and I'd never be with them again and it was as if I'd thumbed my nose at them the minute I walked out on stage. I mean, I'd chosen this other world that they didn't approve of and it was like a betrayal. Of course they'd never know it, but still . . . oh, I don't know, it was the most confused time in my life. Everybody came to help and I finally stopped crying, and afterwards I felt like I'd become somebody else. I wasn't my parents' daughter and I never would be, ever again. And I was alone. I didn't have anybody behind me, waiting for me to come home, keeping my bedroom ready and leaving the front door unlocked and the living room lamp lit. But after a while I remembered that I have you to write to, and your letters to read—I read them hundreds of times, did I ever tell you that?—and I knew that I really do have a family and a home and that's the theater. It's the one place I know I belong. I'm going to work as hard as I can, and I'll be the best of all—except for you, of course; but maybe someday I'll be as good as you—because that's what I want more than anything in the world. I don't want a family or children or any of those ordinary things that get so messy and hurt so much. I just want to act. Once I thought the theater was all I wanted; now I know it's all I can have. I miss my parents. I miss knowing they're at home, talking about what we'll do when I visit. I miss having them miss me. I hope you're fine and that you'll write to me again even if I've spent all this time talking about myself. Are you fine? What are you starring in now? All my love, Jessica.

“Luke, what in the world is the matter with you?” Claudia exclaimed. “We're
waiting
for you!”

Luke looked up and met the patient gaze of the sommelier, looking as timeless as the murals of Pompeii and Herculaneum on the walls and the antique draperies at the windows. “Sorry.” He ran his eye down the wine list he had been staring at, unseeing. “We'll have the Conterno Poderi Barolo if you still have the '90. And ask our waiter to bring us an order of calamari to start.”

“What
were
you thinking about? Or should I say,
who?”

“An eighteen-year-old girl whose parents were killed in an automobile accident.”

She stared at him. “Who is it? I didn't know you knew any eighteen-year-olds. Oh, is it the new play you've just started working on? You haven't told me anything about it.”

“No.” The sommelier brought the wine and Luke sat back and looked at Claudia. She was wearing a dark blue dinner suit, beaded at the deep cuffs and collar and cut with such dramatic angles that it was almost a costume. She wore it with style, attracting glances. But they were brief, because her beauty was the kind that left people feeling puzzled, wondering why they were not drawn to such perfection. Her face was a perfect oval framed by straight black hair that swung smoothly when she turned her head; her black eyes were spaced perfectly, her cheekbones made gentle shadows in her smooth, lightly powdered skin. Her mouth . . . well, that was one of the problems, Luke thought. Her mouth would have been perfect but for the tiny tug of dissatisfaction at each corner, like a perpetual complaint that the world was not living up to Claudia Cameron's expectations. And then there was something wrong with her perfection itself: she always looked a little as if she were lacquered, her features unmarked by warmth. Even when she smiled, her eyes were watchful and a little suspicious.

Once, Luke had been overwhelmed by her beauty, when he was young and beginning to be noticed. He knew she would help him to be noticed, and she did: they were such a striking couple that their photographs appeared in magazines more often than couples with greater fame and more impressive credentials. And Claudia helped him in other ways. She was an amiable hostess who followed Luke's directions perfectly in hiring caterers, florists and valets; she tolerated unexpected guests with a bright smile; and she could talk lightly and amusingly at parties of ten or a hundred for an entire evening without saying one word of significance or making one remark that anyone could construe as controversial.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked, having held her pose for several minutes so that he could gaze at her without interruption.

Luke nodded to the sommelier to pour the wine. “What a good hostess you are.”

“Oh, was. I don't entertain anymore. There doesn't seem to be any point. Is the eighteen-year-old real, or is she in a play?”

“She's real.”

“Who is she?”

“An actress.”

“At eighteen?”

“She's in the theater program at Yale.”

“And fired up with ambition? That's what you find so attractive about her?”

“Do I find her attractive?”

“Enough to make you forget I'm sitting here.”

“I didn't forget; I was distracted. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

Claudia beckoned to the waiter.
“Ravioli alla quattro funghi,
” she said, “and the
tre colore
salad to start. Keep the dressing on the side. What are you having, Luke? Maybe the same thing? You always did like mushrooms.”

An old trick, Luke thought, remembering all the ways Claudia had tried to bind them into one when it was clear their marriage had failed to do that. “Lobster risotto,” he said to the waiter, “and the same salad as the lady.” He turned to Claudia. “Is it money again?”

“Oh, Luke, how crude you are.”

“You're right. I'm sorry. But you did say you had to talk to me.”

“Well, I am.” He made a gesture of impatience that she recognized and she said hastily, “It's just that I need to talk. You know that, Luke. All these years and I haven't found one person who understands me the way you do. You know there's more to me than people think. I
was
a good hostess, wasn't I? People always talked about our parties; some of them would have killed to get invitations. I loved being your hostess; I remember every party we ever gave. Remember the time that prince, the short one, what's-his-name . . .”

Luke drank his wine and welcomed the arrival of his salad and then their dinners. It became increasingly clear that Claudia had nothing particular to talk to him about or, if she did, was putting it off to another night, to make sure there would indeed be another night.

“. . . and of course it was such fun, all those people telling you how wonderful you were, and I was part of it. Nobody notices me now; do you know how awful that is? No, how could you? It's the worst thing in the world; it's like I've disappeared.”

“You have at least five hundred friends; you're busy every night.”

“Well, thank God; that's what keeps me alive. But, you know, Luke, those are acquaintances; they're not really friends who truly care about me. I mean, they think I'm somebody because I was married to you and I still see you, I mean, we still date once in a while, but when you come right down to it, you know, there is absolutely nobody waiting for me when I get home at night. Just that empty apartment.”