Summer Storm (4 page)

They were married the week after graduation in the church where Mary had been baptized, and there had been a reception for two hundred people on the lawn of the O’Connor family home. They were to go to Cape Cod for their honeymoon, but after they left the reception Kit got on the highway going west rather than east.

“Hey,” said Mary in a startled voice. “You’re going the wrong way.”

“No, I’m not,” he replied calmly. “We’re going to spend tonight in our own apartment.
We can leave for the cape tomorrow.”

“Good heavens, why did you decide to do that? We’re all booked into the cottage in Chatham.”

He gave her a sidelong glance that emphasized the remarkable length of his lashes. “I have no intention of driving five hours on my wedding day,” he said. “I’m saving my strength for other things.”

It took a minute for his words to register, but when they did she felt a strange shiver deep inside her. “Ah,” she got out, she hoped calmly, “I see.”

Their apartment consisted of a bedroom, living room, and eat-in kitchen. It was sparsely furnished, mostly from the O’Connor-family attic. The bedroom, however, did boast a double bed with a beautiful maple headboard, and it was to this room that Kit steered her as soon as they were in the door. He put their suitcases down with a thump and went to pull down the shades. When he had performed this task to his satisfaction, he turned to look at his wife.

She was wearing a blue seersucker shirt-dress and sandals. Her long hair, which reached halfway down her back, was tied loosely at the nape of her neck with a blue ribbon. She looked back at him, raised a black eyebrow and said, “Well? Are you going to show me what you’ve been making such a fuss about for the last six months?”

He tackled her. She was standing next to the bed, and his rush toppled her backward so she was lying on the white Martha Washington bedspread with him on top of her. She began to laugh. He growled and bit her ear. She laughed harder. “I love your subtle technique,” she got out breathlessly through her mirth.

“Oh, so you like subtlety?” He slowly pulled the ribbon out of her hair, dropped it on the floor, and bent his head to kiss her. Her mouth opened under his and her arms went up to circle his neck. Always before, she had put a barrier between them, always there had been the awareness that she would let him go so far and no farther. Today the barrier was gone.

When he raised his head and spoke, his voice was husky and his breathing uneven. “And now,” he said, “let me see what I’ve got here.” He began to unbutton the front of her shirt-dress. She lay perfectly still, gazing up at him out of darkened eyes. In a minute he had skillfully bared the upper part of her body; her skin was flawless, her breasts perfect. “Almighty God,” he muttered. “You’re so beautiful.” Very gently, almost tentatively, he touched the single small beauty spot that lay near the nipple of her right breast. His light touch sent an electrifying sensation through her entire body.

“Kit,” she whispered. “Darling.”

He bent to kiss the beauty mark and his hands began to move caressingly on her body. “My princess,” he said. “My beautiful Irish witch.” He unbuttoned the rest of her dress and then his hands were tugging on the elastic of her half-slip and panties. Instinctively she stiffened and he began to murmur endearments again while his mouth and his hands touched and caressed her. There was extreme tenderness in his voice and in his hands, and sweet cajolery, and the hypnotic quality of rising passion. When Mary’s body arched up against his, he released his hold on her only long enough to tear off his own clothes.

She clung to him, swept along on the tide of rising desire. Her brain, that sharp, critical, well-trained arbiter of her life, was swamped by the purely physical sensations Kit’s touch aroused. He was murmuring to her and blindly she obeyed his instructions, needing him desperately to assuage the throbbing ache he had created within her. He loomed powerfully over her and she held him tightly, heedless of the pain, stunned by the unexpected searing intensity of the pleasure. He was saying her name over and over; dimly she heard him through the waves of sensation that were sweeping her body. “I love you,” she whispered as she felt them coming to rest. “I love you.”

They lay still together for a long minute and she ran her hands over the strong muscles of his shoulders and back, feeling the light sheen of sweat that clung to him. His heart was hammering; she could feel the heavy strokes as she felt the heat of his body and the laboring of his breath. She was a little awestruck at the thought that she had been able to do this to him. And when she thought of what he had done to her....

After a while she murmured, “Do you know, this is the first time I’ve ever understood Anna Karenina?”

He laughed, a soft dark sound deep down in his throat, and raised his head to gaze into her face. The look he gave her was brilliant, full of amusement and triumph. “I hope you’re not planning to throw yourself under a train?”

Her lips curved and she felt her heart turn over with love. “You know what I mean.” She traced the outline of his mouth. “I never understood what love of a man can do to a woman.”

He kissed her fingers and then her throat. “You’re so generous, Princess. It’s one of the reasons I love you.”

They lay quietly together, content and peaceful. Then Mary whispered, “I ate hardly anything at the reception and I’m starving.”

He yawned and sat up. “Great minds think alike. I’ve just been contemplating calling out for a pizza.”

“Yum.” She sat up as well. “With sausage.”

“With sausage.” His eyes narrowed a little as he looked at her. “I warn you, though, the pizza is just an interlude. I haven’t finished with you by a long shot.”

“Oh?” She opened her blue eyes very wide and looked limpidly back at him. “You sound very sure of yourself.”

He leaned closer. “Shouldn’t I be?” There was a hint of laughter in his voice, and more than a hint of confidence. He looked like a man who knew what he wanted and knew also that what he wanted he would get.

It was unnerving, the reaction that look and voice produced in her. She waited a minute before she replied, very softly, “Go call for the pizza.”

They left for the cape the following day and stayed for a week. It was a blissfully happy honeymoon followed by a equally happy summer spent in their small apartment, painting the walls and making the rounds of tag sales to find furniture. They were deeply in love and deeply happy.

It was a happiness that lasted exactly seven months. They both worked hard and they had practically no money, but they had each other. “I’m going to write my doctoral dissertation on ‘One Thousand and One Ways to Cook Hamburger Meat,’“ she would say as she dished up another plate of their staple food.

“What’s wrong with hamburger?” he would demand. “It’s nutritious, it’s tasty, and it’s cheap. The perfect food. You’re a genius to have discovered it.” And they would laugh and eat their dinner and fall into bed.

The idyll ended on January 6 when she went to the doctor and found out she was pregnant.

“But I
can’t
be pregnant,” she had protested to the doctor, a gynecologist who was a friend of her father’s. “I’m on the pill.” On some issues, Mary was
not
more Catholic than the pope and this was one of them. Both she and Kit had agreed that children were something to be put off for the future.

The pill was not infallible. Dr. Murak told her gently, and she was most definitely pregnant. About three months along, actually. He told her not to worry, that he would be glad to take care of her. She was Bob’s girl, after all, and there would be no charge. He had known her family for years and did not make the mistake of mentioning an abortion.

Kit was not so perceptive. After five minutes of incredulity, anger, and general agitation, he suggested that she get an abortion. Nothing in her entire life had ever shocked her more.

“But, Christ, Mary, we can’t
afford
a baby,” he stormed angrily. “I don’t have a dime to my name. I work crazy hours—and so do you. What’s going to happen to your fellowship if you have a baby? You’ll have to give it up.”

“Then I’ll give it up,” she had replied grimly.

“I don’t want you to give it up!” he shouted. “I didn’t marry you to make you give things up!”

“Would you rather make me a murderer?” she shouted back.

He thrust his hand through his thick hair, causing it to fall untidily over his forehead. “It isn’t murder,” he answered in a more controlled voice. “It’s a perfectly legal operation.”

“Oh God,” she said, pressing shaking hands to her mouth and staring at him with horrified eyes. “How can you say this to me? You’re talking about
our baby.”
And she began to cry, harsh wracking sobs that hurt her throat and chest. After a minute he put his arms around her.

“It isn’t that it’s not important to me,” he said, a note of quiet desperation in his voice.
“It’s that it’s too important. A child needs security and he can’t have security if there’s no financial stability.”

She was stiff within the circle of his arm, refusing the comfort of physical contact that he was offering. “Money isn’t that important.” She sobbed.
“It’s love that matters.”

“You can say that,” he answered grimly, “because you’ve never known what it’s like to need money and not to have it.” She was trying desperately to control her sobs and her body shook with the effort of containment. He held her for a minute and then said wearily, “All right, sweetheart, please don’t upset yourself like this. We’ll have the baby. I don’t know how the hell I’m going to manage it, but I will. Somehow, I will.”

They had patched the quarrel up, but a bitter seed had been sown. And then in March he got an offer to test for a role in a new film being shot by one of Hollywood’s leading producers.

“He was in New Haven three weeks ago and saw me in the Tennessee Williams revival we’re doing. He’s making the movie version of
The Russian Experiment
and he wants me to test for the role of Ivan.”

“Oh, Kit, how marvelous!”
The Russian Experiment
had been the blockbuster novel of the previous year, and they had both read it. It was a sophisticated combination of suspense, intrigue, and political and metaphysical speculation. Ivan was a young anarchist whose brooding and bitter presence had been a thread woven throughout the entire fabric of the novel. It would be a fabulous part if Kit could get it.

He had gotten it. The producer had liked his test and, with much hullabaloo about “discovering a new Brando,” had signed him to a contract.

He had gone to California to make the movie and she stayed in Connecticut.
He didn’t want to take her away from her fellowship and then there was the baby. They both agreed it would be far more sensible for her to wait until the summer, until after the movie, after the baby, after the papers and finals, and then they would decide what they would do and where they would live. They closed up their apartment, stored their furniture in her mother’s attic, and she went back home to live.

The female star of
The Russian Experiment
was Jessica Corbet, an actress of international repute. She was beautiful and talented, and at thirty-two had gone through two husbands and several highly publicized affairs. According to the papers, she began a new one with Kit.

At first Mary didn’t believe it. She was sophisticated enough to know that ninety percent of the gossip blazoned across the headlines of movie scandal sheets was untrue. If Kit had been more faithful about calling her, if he had written with any regularity, perhaps she would not have begun to doubt.

It was a terrible experience for her. She had been brought up in a close-knit, loving, and supportive family, and all her relationships had hitherto been deeply secure and unquestioned. When once the first trickle of doubt about Kit had been let in, it seemed as if the entire foundation of her marriage began to crumble. He hadn’t really, wanted to marry her, she thought. She had forced him into it by refusing to sleep with him. He didn’t really want a wife. And he certainly didn’t want a baby. He had made that very clear.

There was never any mention in the scandal sheets or the gossip columns that she read so feverishly of the fact that Christopher Douglas had a wife. It didn’t occur to her that he might be trying to protect her. It did occur to her that he didn’t want her anymore, was embarrassed to admit that America’s hottest new sex symbol had a pregnant wife at home.

Whenever he called, which was not very frequently, he sounded distracted and very very distant. She couldn’t ask him about any of the things she was reading in the paper. She could only be polite and cool and distant herself.

She finished her term at school and got, as usual, high honors. At the end of June, three weeks early, she went into labor. Her mother and father took her to the hospital and then tried to get hold of Kit. He wasn’t at his apartment. He wasn’t at the studio. Finally Mrs. O’Connor got his agent on the phone. Kit had gone off to Jessica Corbet’s ranch for the weekend, he told Mary’s distressed mother. He would see if he could contact him.

After 8 hours of labor, Mary’s baby was born dead. The cord had caught around his neck during the delivery and he had strangled. Dr. Murak was devastated. “There was nothing I could do,” he kept saying to Dr. O’Connor. “Nothing, Bob. It was just one of those freak things.”

Mrs. O’Connor finally got hold of Kit at his apartment a day later. He flew into New Haven on the first flight, but when Mary opened her eyes to see him standing at her bedside, she had said only, “Go away. I never want to see you again.” And she hadn’t, until
Personality
had discovered her existence and precipitated his arrival on her doorstep.

The rain had stopped and she looked up at the gray Nantucket sky and saw a patch of blue over the water. The storm was passing over. She lifted her head, her wet black hair slicked back, and stood for a long time, staring at that blue sky. The storm always passes, she thought, if one only has the fortitude to wait it out.