Private Lies (2 page)

Unfortunately, Ken was rarely cooperative and the
follow-through usually fizzled after a few encounters. The objective for Maggie
was always to have "couple" friends, so far a fruitless endeavor. Ken
was not a natural friend-maker, although he was forced by circumstances to
allow a truncated form of friendship with some of his co-workers at the agency.

Carol, in keeping with a genuine memory lapse, sincere
nonrecognition, or an obvious determination not to acknowledge her past, barely
looked toward Ken during the aperitif session. Mostly, this was filled with the
small-talk and information exchange of new acquaintanceship. Ken, as if he were
consciously exercising some form of spite, maintained a deliberate silence
while Maggie and Eliot carried the main dialogue and Carol answered only questions
put to her by each of them.

But while Ken's façade might have seemed to register a shy
reticence, inner turmoil persisted and he listened carefully to the exchange.
The Butterfields lived in an apartment on Fifth Avenue in the Seventies facing
the park, which usually meant old money and big bucks. Wasps, of course, never
ever acknowledged such crass numerical facts.

Maggie, on the other hand, always volunteered their own
circumstances, which were hardly lavish but seemed so in the recounting. The fact
was that they had been living above their means for years and, after deducting
private-school tuition for their daughters, their high co-op fees, designer
clothes, entertainment expenses, and other "necessities" of the New York life-style, they were forever in debt.

"Mother's place in Maine suits us fine when the thirst
for change of place seizes us," Eliot pointed out with a nod toward Carol.

"Wonderful," Maggie volunteered in response.
"We seem to be running counter to the second-house trend. We don't have a Connecticut house or a place at the beach."

She hadn't said it in a resentful or whiny way, but Ken,
nevertheless, felt a twinge of shame, as if somehow it characterized other
shortcomings as well. He offered no response, suffering through the revelations,
knowing he was helpless to offer any refutation. Any comment of his would be a
surrender to recognition.

He simply had to live with the fact that Maggie and Eliot
had undoubtedly exchanged such surfacy social information during breaks from
their computer consultations. Again his stomach churned with the realization
that Eliot, on the basis of Maggie's information, would simply have dismissed
him as hardly worthy of any real interest. Was it possible that he had conveyed
this to Carol?

Maggie had told Ken what Eliot "did."

"He researches, offers papers, is active in
organizations that promote his wide-ranging interests. Mostly he is a
thinker."

"Nice work if you can get it," Ken had said
sarcastically. Her enthusiasm over Eliot had rankled him.

"Eliot doesn't work, not for money," Maggie had
explained. "He is an independent. As I told you, he thinks."

"Profound thoughts, no doubt?"

"Quite profound," Maggie had countered patiently.
"Alternatives to war. Disintegrating ecological systems. The preservation
of wildlife. This is his most pressing and fervent cause."

"Man included?" Ken had asked, not without a
twinge of intimidation. The man, after all, was independently wealthy.

"He has a very brilliant mind. The breadth of it is
extraordinary. That's why the computerization process is essential. We are
creating a vast data bank."

"Of thoughts?" Ken had responded, snickering over
the idea that a man could have the bent, leisure, and gall to label his
occupation "thinker." Later Ken had suspected that the source of his
irritation was his jealousy over the man's ability to do this. If he had the
wherewithal, not forced by circumstances to pump water uphill like oxen on the
Nile, he could use that leisure to truly create, articulate the great stories
lying just beneath the surface of his mind, like mining some valuable mineral
deposit.

"As long as he pays you on time," Ken had
muttered.

Maggie, wisely, avoided any response to his sarcasm.
Evasion was her weapon of choice. Actually, Ken preferred confrontation, but he
rarely got that kind of a reaction out of Maggie. Just evasion. But from
Maggie's description of Eliot he had concluded that the man was both an
intellectual snob and a prig. Then he had been guessing, and yet now, studying
Eliot across the table, he was certain he had been on target. But to Ken the
real mystery of the man was how in the world he had landed Carol Stein.

The waiter came with the wine and poured it into Eliot's
glass. He picked it up, whirling the liquid around the glass with a flick of
his wrist. Then he sniffed it, sipped, and seemed to gargle with it. Ken
thought for a moment that he was about to spit it out, as he had observed
connoiseurs do at various wine-tasting events. The only receptacle for such an
act was the centerpiece of flowers on the white tablecloth. He was relieved
when Eliot, after a long gargle, swallowed finally. Then he nodded his approval
to the waiter who then poured. Ken covered his empty glass with his palm. He
would stick to his double Gibsons.

So Carol had married a man with a lot of money who had
pretentious tastes, thought profound thoughts, and wanted to save wild beasts
and mankind, Ken reflected as he fished with his fingers among the slippery ice
cubes of his drink for the last onion. Snaring it, he popped it in his mouth,
then washed it down with the liquid dregs. He caught the waiter's eye and
signaled for another one. He'd need the extra jolt to get him through this
dinner.

"So it's advertising, is it? I suppose it's a
necessary evil," Eliot said, chomping a breadstick. Ken had dreaded the
revelation, although the quick rush of the vodka was already working its
dulling magic.

"Ken contends that it gives people choices,"
Maggie said, a bit too quick to defend him.

"We could argue the merits of the choices," Eliot
said. Was it his imagination or did Ken note a slight twitch of the nostrils as
if a distasteful odor had been detected.

"Ken practically invented Slender Benders,"
Maggie volunteered. "You know, 'the splendor of slender benders.' You've
seen the commercials where the candy does these complicated acrobatics.
Probably win an award. Actually, it's a whole new way to market low-cal
licorice."

"Christ, Maggie," Ken sighed, sipping his drink.
Again he resisted looking directly at Carol. An advertising man? You've sold
out for
that
, he imagined her saying to herself. He had decided, halfway
through his first drink, that she had indeed recognized him but was faking it
for her own secret reasons. But why? Had he changed that much? Or was she being
kind? Sparing him?

"Always hides his light under a bushel," Maggie
said, shaking her head. Ever-nurturing Maggie. Was she really as proud of his
career as she made out? Admittedly, her unflagging support of him had made it
easier to rationalize his predicament, but was it real, or, like her
lovemaking, merely practical and efficient, but undeniably nurturing. It was as
if she had been built for that, with high, large, billowing breasts that hadn't
drooped, the kind that could envelop and soothe a man.

Her belly had stayed flat and her buttocks full, flaring
out from solid hips down to legs that were sturdy and well turned. To lie
between them also offered a comforting quality. Yes, Maggie's body and emotions
had a compatible Earth Mother quality. Often, he thought of her as a place of
refuge. Freud, he knew, could do wonders with these secret images, especially
considering that he had lost his beloved mother early, before he was out of his
teens.

Seventeen years before, he had crawled into Maggie's warm
cocoon and had learned how to preserve hope. Now that the vodka had partially
restored his courage, he had the urge to explain this to Carol, to say that he
had, indeed, kept his dream alive and that someday, when all this prologue is
over, he would become the great writer of his earlier aspirations and his
mother's unshakable prediction. He had merely postponed. Not failed. He held
his tongue, having at least the insight to understand that the drinks had given
him only Dutch courage, not real courage.

"Advertising has its place, of course," Eliot
said. "In the system as it is now constituted, consuming goods and
services keeps our society afloat."

"Like Slender Benders," Ken said, his hand
reaching out to grasp the drink the waiter had just delivered. "Makes
their teeth rot." He felt a ball of irritation begin to form deep inside
himself, expanding painfully in his gut. "Then we sell them toothbrushes,
pastes, powders, mouthwash. Good for dentists, too. Dental equipment..."

"And gold," Eliot interjected with a soothing smile,
as if he had picked up on the sarcasm and was determined to avoid any alarming
response that would create a distasteful scene. "Remember gold."

"And mines."

"Exactly," Eliot said. "Which nature created
and is also finite." He was unstoppable in his pedantry, Ken decided,
determined to attempt some repression of darker feelings. The fact was that
what he had finally determined was that Carol's deliberate snub was making him
angry.

"The unfortunate part," Eliot went on, "is
that the entire process is based on perpetual motion. A never-ending spin. At
some point it will run down. The environment simply won't support it."

"And we'll all be charcoal when the ozone layer goes
kaput," Ken muttered.

"Exactly," Eliot agreed. "The tragedy of it
is not that it's inevitable if we follow our present course. We all know that.
The tragedy is that we're not going fast enough to replenish ourselves before
Armageddon arrives."

"That bad?" Ken said.

"Problem is we're all connected. All life interacts on
all life." Eliot whirled the wine again, sniffed, sipped carefully, then
swallowed. "Environment deteriorates," he went on, looking into his
glass. "No grapes, no more wine."

"Heavy stuff," Ken said, feeling somewhat
belittled by the man's smooth sense of confidence and annoyed at his own resort
to sarcasm. Rather than risk offending, he resorted to silence.

"And you, Carol?" Maggie asked, filling in the
gap. "Eliot tells me you're a dancer." Eliot had undoubtedly informed
her of that and it provided the kind of status worth repeating.

Had it happened? Had she become a prima ballerina? Ken
wondered, remembering Carol in her leotards and warm-up stockings practicing at
the bar for hours on end. Loveliness and grace in human form. God, there was
beauty there. And obsession. Like his. No room for love and loving getting in
the way of that avalanche of intensity. After all, a writer wrote and a dancer
danced. Everything else was extraneous to that, trivial. Loving, too.

Not once during the conversation with Eliot had Carol
turned his way. His reaction was to respond in kind, relying on his peripheral
vision to study her.

"Were you with a ballet company?" Maggie asked,
not one to leave a loose end.

"Principal ballerina, the Ballet Company of Sydney, Australia," Eliot volunteered.

"For a bit. A few seasons only," Carol added
quickly. "I had this injury."

At first Ken decided she was merely being considerate,
self-effacing, sensitive to his own predicament. Hadn't she really danced
longer than a few seasons? He was suddenly ashamed, searching himself for its
source. Actually, he was happy for her, felt good for her. So she had made it
and this, he decided, might be at the heart of her not acknowledging him. She
had seen into his heart and was sparing him. Only a caring person could do that.

"A tough business, ballet," Eliot said.
"She's still at it. Practicing for hours. We've got a studio in the
apartment where she gives lessons."

There had been a time when he had pored over names whenever
a ballet was reviewed and had failed to see hers, leading him to believe that
she might have changed her name or gone abroad, which apparently was the case.
Why hadn't he tried to find her? He did not have to dig too deeply for the
answer. Simply put, he felt diminished by his defeat and too devastated to
reveal his surrender. That was it. Or was it because he feared that she had
been successful? He a failure; she a success. Could he have coped with that?

Well, now he knew. His reaction surprised him. He hadn't
expected himself to have such generosity of heart. Good for her, he thought. He
picked up his drink and silently toasted her.

Maybe such generosity was stirred by her self-effacing
comment "for a bit." All right, it wasn't worldwide celebrity. But it
was a victory of sorts, a vindication of one's talents and hard work. Better
than he had done. What had come of his efforts? A few hundred pages worth of
manuscript and an outline that went nowhere. His solace was to convince himself
that he was a talent unrecognized. He had even devised a litany of logic to
explain it: bad timing, changing tastes, American culture's downhill slide, and
the usual cast of knaves, fools, and idiots who couldn't tell a diamond from a
zircon but had the power to bar the door. But he also knew, emptying his glass
again, that those excuses had worn thin over the past two decades.

The waiter, a slim actor type, appeared with the inevitable
catalog of specials, spoken with serious and well-trained intensity. Ken barely
listened. He detested this ritual of the specials, a process that Maggie
adored. There was something promotional about it, manipulative. Like
advertising. It was a firm policy of his, whenever possible, to avoid buying
anything that was advertised.

Carol kept her eyes hidden behind the menu. Ken noted that
she had barely sipped her wine. Years of bodily discipline had apparently
become second nature. Time, too, had been especially kind. She would be exactly
forty now, four years younger than he was. She looked ten years younger,
perhaps more.