The Carlton Club (33 page)

“No. Not now. But my friend may need your help. Will you be home for dinner tonight?”

“Sure.”

“Great. Will you tell Mother that I’m bringing a friend home for dinner, then?”

“OK. Eric, does your friend have a name?”

“Charlie.”

After Eric hung up, Charlie stared at him, her eyes full of doubt.

“Eric, I don’t want your father to know.”

“I won’t tell him, but I want you to think about telling him yourself. He’s a lawyer, and he’s a wonderful man,” Eric said proudly. “Charlie, I’m just afraid that this could all backfire legally. I just want to be sure that you’re not in trouble.”

“What if I don’t want to tell him?”

“Then no one knows but you and me.”

She watched him in silence for several moments, her eyes full of sorrow. She wanted to turn the clock back, back to dinner and to the wonderful feeling of laughter and joy.

Eric walked toward her, disturbed by the look, by the sadness.

“What are you thinking?”

“That I never wanted you to feel sorry for me,” she said.

“I don’t. I feel sorry about what has happened to you.”

“But you’ve invited me to dinner at your house to talk to your father.”

“I was going to ask you out again before any of this happened. I decided while we were eating pizza.”

“Really?” Charlie asked, brightening a little.

“Really,” Eric said, folding his arms around her.

“Who is Charlie?” June roared at the breakfast table the next morning. June was three years younger than Eric. She wrinkled her freckled nose. “Probably some yucky preppie friend of his.”

“I don’t know,” Robert said.

“I’ve never heard him mention a Charlie,” Florence, Eric’s mother, said a little skeptically. “When did Eric get home last night?”

“Late,” Robert said. “But he did call.”

Florence Lansdale’s skepticism increased the moment she saw Charlie. Charlie didn’t look like one of
them
. Her skepticism was instantly confirmed when June gleefully recognized Charlie as Charlotte, the lifeguard at the club. Charlotte was teaching June and her friends water ballet.

Robert Lansdale quietly admired his son’s taste, wondered about Charlie’s problem and made a vow to help her in any way that he could.

As soon as she met him, Charlie decided that she could trust Robert. He was a slightly older—old enough to be Eric’s
father?
—version of Eric. He had the same kind blue eyes. Unlike his son’s, Robert’s eyes had seen sadness and pain, they had been to war, but still they were unafraid, full of life and hope. And something else. Some thing that Charlie didn’t recognize, something she had never seen before. Robert Lansdale’s light blue eyes had the calm confidence of power.

Someday Eric would look exactly like Robert. His youthful good looks would mature into the strong handsomeness of his father. It made Charlie tremble a little in the way she had trembled when Eric kissed her last night.

After dinner, much to June’s and Florence’s annoyance, Robert, Eric and Charlie retreated into Robert’s study. Robert listened without obvious emotion as Charlie told him her story.

Inside, Robert’s stomach was churning with anger. How could a loving mother have done this? How could anyone do such a thing to this lovely, innocent, sensitive child? Charlie was so vulnerable, and this crazy scheme only made her more vulnerable.

“What do you think, Father?” Eric asked after Charlie was done.

“Charlie, I need to see all the papers. The will, the trust agreement, the guardianship documents. Everything. Can you get those?”

“Yes.”

“Bring them all to me. And any other documents you have. I’ll need to see them before I can decide what’s best to do,” Robert said firmly, concealing his own anxiety. Many laws had been broken. Mary’s attorneys were probably innocent victims just as Charlie herself was, but they were victims. It all had to be handled carefully and discreetly, with a minimum of damage.

It was lucky that Robert Lansdale was one of the best attorneys in Philadelphia. And one of the city’s most powerful men.

Over the next few weeks, while Robert studied the documents, made phone calls, persuaded various officials to find unorthodox solutions for their unorthodox dilemma, Charlie and Eric fell in love.

By summer’s end when it was time for Eric to leave for his freshman year at Harvard, a few momentous decisions had been made. Robert decided that, despite Florence’s protests, he would become Charlie’s legal guardian.

“She’s a
waif
, Robert,” Florence said. “And her mother—Well! There were stories about her when she kept the library open during the war.”

If pressed, Florence would have been forced to admit that the stories weren’t bad. Mary was known as a strange, but kind and generous woman. But Robert didn’t press her because during the past two months he had learned things about Mary that troubled him deeply. Things that Charlie didn’t know, that she should never know.

Florence did not win the guardianship argument, but she successfully drew the line at allowing Charlie to move into her home. Robert only relented because Charlie herself insisted on staying in her tiny house on Elm Street.

“I am comfortable there, Mr. Lansdale. It’s a safe neighborhood. I’m established at the high school. I would prefer to stay there,” Charlie said, convincingly, sensing how Florence felt about her.

“We have to maintain close contact, Charlie,” Robert said.

“We will, Father,” Eric said. “I’ll be home every weekend to see Charlie.”

“Not every weekend,” Robert said mildly.

Weekly commuting would be too disruptive to Eric’s studies.

“Maybe not. On the weekends that I’m not home, Charlie can meet you for lunch downtown. Something official like that.”

Then there was another momentous decision: Eric would see Charlie as often as he could, and she would apply to Radcliffe so she could be with him next year, as soon as she graduated from high school.

Charlie made a decision of her own too. She decided to be a lawyer, like Robert. In the hours she spent with him that summer, carefully going over all the papers, listening to his explanations of the law, of how the law could be applied and interpreted, Charlie felt happy. Law was real, tangible. It required thought and reason. It was open to interpretation but free of fantasy. It was a game of intellect. It stimulated her, and it couldn’t get her into trouble. As a lawyer she would be unlikely to lapse into a world of delusion.

Charlie was so afraid of becoming like Mary.

She told Robert about her decision at lunch on Saturday the following spring. Eric was in his dormitory room at Harvard, studying for midterm examinations. Charlie had just received her acceptance from Radcliffe.

“I’ve decided what I’m going to be when I grow up, Mr. Lansdale.”

“What, Charlie?”

“A lawyer. Like you.”

“You think you’d like to do what I do?” Robert asked, obviously pleased.

“I think so.”

“You’d make a wonderful attorney, Charlie. You have the right kind of mind,” Robert said.

“Thank you, Mr. Lansdale.”

“Can’t you call me Robert?”

“No,” Charlie said smiling shyly, “I can’t.”

“Maybe someday? Maybe when we’re working on a case together?” he asked.

“Maybe then.”

Eric’s and Charlie’s first year together in Boston was blissful. By the second year, they began to have arguments. The arguments were bitter and damaging. Eric and Charlie had only two issues on which they disagreed, but they were major ones. The first was sex. The second was Charlie’s career.

Charlie would not make love. She had promised herself that she would be a virgin until her wedding night. It was a promise she made the day she read Mary’s letter, a letter from an unwed mother who was too ashamed to admit the truth to her daughter until after her own death. Charlie would not make the mistakes her mother had made. She would not live in a world of make-believe.

And she would not make love before she was married.

“Charlie,” Eric would say, sometimes gently, sometimes in a rage of frustration. “I want to marry you. I plan to marry you. We could get married now.”

“And I could give up my virginity and my career in one simple step?”

“Charlie, we have been more intimate than most married couples ever are.”

It was true. Charlie was sexually uninhibited, eager, curious, loving. They had a perfect sexual relationship except that they didn’t do
It
.

“So? Isn’t that enough for now?” Charlie asked.

“It’s just that it’s so silly. Saving your so-called ‘ultimate closeness’ after all the other things we’ve done.”

“It’s just the way I feel, Eric. You know it. I don’t see why you can’t respect it.”

“I
am
respecting it, Charlie. But it is getting damned difficult.”

At the beginning of Eric’s senior year—Charlie’s junior year—the issue of Charlie’s career became a source of friction. Eric told her that he planned to return to Philadelphia when he graduated from Harvard to get his Master’s in Business Administration. That way he could spend his spare time at InterLand, Robert’s company, while he was getting his degree. Robert decided that as soon as Eric completed graduate school he would assume the presidency of InterLand. That would permit Robert to devote more time to his true love, the practice of law.

“Why don’t we get married in June right after I graduate from Harvard? We can spend the summer in Europe and get back to Philly in time to settle in before school starts.”

“Eric, what about me?”

“What do you mean?”

“I want to go to law school.”

“That’s fine, Charlie.”

“I want to graduate from Radcliffe and go to Harvard Law School. You’re asking, no, you’re
telling
me to transfer from Radcliffe at the end of my junior year, spend a year in school in Philadelphia and apply to law school there.”

“Is there anything wrong with going to school in Philadelphia? I’m getting my MBA there, remember? Besides, InterLand, which happens to be the company that I am going to own and run, is in Philadelphia. Charlie, that’s where we’re going to live. That’s where you’re going to practice law. That is, if you plan to marry me.”

Charlie did plan to marry him. She loved him deeply, passionately, and he loved her; but on these two issues they made each other very angry.

“InterLand could be headquartered in Boston,” Charlie said sullenly.

Eric glowered at her. She was right of course.

“Is that what you want? You’re right. I can have Father move the whole company to Boston. I can get my MBA here. But what do we do if Charlie doesn’t get into Harvard Law School after all?”

“I’ll get into Harvard Law School.”

“So, shall I tell Father that my first official act as president will be to move the company?”

“Yes!” she yelled. Then she said, “No. Eric, I don’t know. It’s just that you never even considered what I wanted in all this. Never even asked me.

“I thought you wanted to marry me. I thought you wanted to spend your life with me.”

“I thought you wanted to marry
me
, spend your life with
me
, too.”

By the middle of autumn quarter of Eric’s senior year, the arguments became almost constant. Although she agreed to get married in June
and
to move to Philadelphia, Charlie still fought it. Fought something.

They would argue bitterly about her career. Then they would collapse, finally, in each other’s arms, needing love and comfort. But Charlie’s determination not to make love would propel them almost immediately into another bitter argument.

By November, they argued more than they laughed, glowered more than they smiled and pushed each other away more than they held each other.

“We’ve reached an impasse, Charlie,” Eric said one night, exhausted, defeated. “I don’t know what’s really wrong, but I know that this is no good.”

“I agree,” Charlie answered hotly.

“Let’s spend some time apart. A few weeks to cool off.”

“Fine,” she said, leaving his dormitory room, slamming the door behind her, tears flowing from her eyes.

I don’t know what’s really wrong either, she thought as she stumbled across Harvard Square in the darkness. Except that it’s something wrong with me, not him.

Eric had known Victoria Hancock for years, from the pool at the Oak Brook Country Club, from dances and debutante balls, from dinners arranged by her mother and his. Victoria was the closest to a real girlfriend that Eric had had until he met Charlie.

That November when Eric returned to Philadelphia for a long weekend, to escape from Harvard and Charlie, he called Victoria. He needed someone to talk to; someone to laugh with; someone who would remind him of the carefree summer days at the pool, like the summer days when he met Charlie.

Eric had no intention of making love to Victoria when he called her. But it happened. It happened that weekend. And again at Thanksgiving. And again at Christmas.

Eric tried to reconcile with Charlie in early December. It worked for two weeks. Charlie was soft and loving. They talked about their wedding and their honeymoon. Eric didn’t try to make love with her.

“Why aren’t you pressing me to make love with you?” she asked, teasing, one night.

“I thought we were saving the
ultimate closeness
until June,” he answered quickly. Too quickly.

“I am,” Charlie said quietly, “but are you?”

Eric didn’t answer her. His silence was answer enough.

“You made love to someone else?”

“Yes, Charlie. When we weren’t together.”

“I spent those weeks agonizing about what I had done wrong, how I could change to make our relationship better, and you were sleeping with someone else?”

“Charlie, it meant nothing. Besides, you’re the one who has reservations about our relationship, not me. I agonized, hoping you would find out what was really wrong.”

“You didn’t agonize. You played. You had sex with someone else!”

“It meant nothing. I missed you.”

“So you found a surrogate? Is that what’s going to happen every time we have a fight for the next fifty years?”

“Don’t be irrational.”

“I hate you, Eric,” she yelled. Irrational. Mary was irrational. “Get away from me.”

Eric spent Christmas in Philadelphia with his family. Charlie refused to speak to him, except to admit, angrily, that she was planning to spend Christmas in the mountains. Eric decided that there was no way he could force her to spend the holidays in Philadelphia with him, but it worried him to think about her being alone at Christmas. Whatever was wrong, whatever made her so afraid of getting married, would not be solved by her spending Christmas alone in the mountains hating him.

Victoria called Eric on December twenty-seventh, chiding him gently for not calling her. She had heard that he was home alone. She convinced him to go skiing with her the next day.

Charlie did not spend the Christmas holidays in the mountains. She spent them in Philadelphia in the little green house on Elm Street. She had decided to sell the house. She spent the cold days of Christmas week filling boxes with the bittersweet memories of her childhood. Most of the boxes, most of the memories, would be thrown away. Charlie kept all of Mary’s books, including the copy of
Rebecca
and the photograph album of Charlie’s childhood that Mary had carefully, lovingly, maintained. Charlie kept the album because it contained a few rare photographs of her mother.

Charlie met with real estate agents and put the house on the market at a below market value.

Charlie wanted to sell it quickly. She might need the money for tuition at Harvard Law School.

On December twenty-seventh, Charlie met with Mary’s doctor. Maybe he could give her the answers she was looking for.

“After she died, you told me that she was very ill. What did she have?”

“I don’t have a name for what she had. She was very troubled. She lived in a world of make-believe. She was delusional, sometimes even paranoid. She had periods of profound depression. Medications didn’t help. She didn’t fit into any specific psychiatric diagnosis. She took wonderful care of you. She was dysfunctional in many ways, but she cared for you. And for her library,” the doctor said, his voice gentle as he remembered troubled, loving, frightened Mary.

“But why did she die? What killed her?”

“Nothing killed her,” he said carefully, watching Mary’s daughter. Everything killed her, he thought. Life killed her. “She killed herself.”

“Oh
no
.”

As Charlie spent the evening thinking about her mother, she was filled with a strange sense of peace. Finally she had her answer. Finally she knew what was wrong, what it was that made her fight her marriage to Eric, fight making love, fight anything that might cause her to have children or a family.

She had to let Eric know. She had to set him free, to let him know that she had found out in time.

She dialed Eric’s home number early the next morning.

Florence and Robert were eating breakfast. Eric and Victoria had already left to go skiing.

“No, Charlie, Eric is away for the day,” Florence said. At the mention of Charlie’s name, Robert moved quickly beside Florence. He had watched Eric’s suffering as he worried about Charlie. Robert worried about her, too.

“Let me speak with her,” Robert said reaching for the phone. Florence handed it to him. “Charlie, it’s Robert. Where are you?”

“At the house,” she said. Her voice was flat, lifeless. Its tone worried Robert very much.

“Charlie, I need to see you.”

“Why?”

“Business. Minor details from the trust.”

“Oh. All right. I’ll tell you what I needed to tell Eric since he’s away.”

“Are you leaving?”

“Yes. This evening.”

“I’m coming over to the house right now, Charlie,” Robert said firmly and hung up.

“What’s wrong?” Florence asked.

“I don’t know. She sounds strange,” Robert said as he rushed past Florence and out of the house. Maybe Charlie has found out, he thought, depressing the accelerator a little more.

As soon as he saw her, Robert knew. Her eyes were clouded with hopelessness and resignation.

“Hello, Mr. Lansdale,” she said quickly.

Robert, he thought.

“Hello, Charlie. You look as if you’ve had some bad news.”

“It’s bad and good. It’s good for Eric and you. And your wife.”

“What is it?” Robert asked gently, already knowing all of it.

“As I’m sure you know I’ve been struggling about the marriage. I made my career, and even sex, seem like obstacles. Eric and I couldn’t make sense of it, but it had nothing to do with Eric. It was all inside me and now I know what it was.”

“What do you know?”

“That I shouldn’t marry him.”

“Why not?” he asked carefully.

“Because my mother was crazy. She killed herself,” Charlie said simply, without emotion. Then she sighed and added, “And I am my mother’s daughter.”

“No!” Robert said with such energy that Charlie jumped. “No, Charlie. You aren’t crazy. You can’t inherit what your mother had.”

“How do you know what my mother had?”

“I know, honey. Maybe I should have told you. I would have if I’d known how much it worried you. I spoke with her doctors. And I spoke with teachers, school counselors and doctors who knew you. They all agreed that you are fine. Healthy. Normal. You’re not at all like her. You never will be.”

What Robert said was mostly true. They all agreed that Charlie was a remarkably well-adjusted, mentally healthy child. But no one could guarantee that what Mary had wasn’t hereditary. How could they? They didn’t know what it was.

Still, they all believed that Charlie was and would always be perfectly healthy.

“You knew she killed herself?” Charlie asked, amazed. “Does Eric know?”

“No.”

“Sometimes I feel crazy,” she said urgently. She wanted to believe what Robert had told her.
But
. “I’ve felt crazy these past few months.”

“You can make yourself
feel
crazy. Anyone can. Everyone does at some time. But you’re not crazy,” Robert said emphatically. He continued gently, “You’ve just been troubled by some understandably troublesome questions. And now that you have the answers, you should feel relieved.”

“I was relieved, in the opposite way. Because I could set Eric free.”

“Don’t you dare. It was fair for you to be angry about giving up your dream of Harvard Law School. That wasn’t crazy. My son needs to be reminded of his egocentrism at times. He talked to me about moving InterLand to Boston. We can do it, Charlie. We
will
do it.”

“You really think I’m not crazy?” she asked, still wanting to be sure, wanting to believe him, barely hearing anything else he said.

“I know you’re not crazy.”

“And you want me for a daughter-in-law?”

“Desperately. And a law partner. Even if it means I have to take the Massachusetts Bar,” Robert said laughing, relieved to see the clarity and sparkle begin to return to her eyes.

“I don’t mind moving here. Penn has turned out some pretty fine attorneys,” she said, teasing him about his own alma mater.

“Are you really leaving tonight?” Robert asked, noticing the almost empty house for the first time. All his attention had been focused on her.

“No. I guess I should see Eric. When is he returning?”

“This evening. He’s gone skiing for the day. Why don’t you spend the day with me? See what being an attorney’s really like,” Robert suggested.

He didn’t want her to be alone today. Not in this house after what she’d been through. A fine guardian he’d turned out to be. He should have insisted that she see a counselor, someone to help her after her mother’s death. He should have anticipated her anxieties. Maybe he should have simply told her what he knew about Mary.

He had planned to, eventually, when she was older. But it was the fragile, sensitive little girl who had needed to know the truth and had suffered needlessly because she didn’t know.

As Robert waited for her to finish packing, he hoped that Charlie’s suffering was finally over and that she and Eric could have the happy life they deserved. And Robert hoped that his son wouldn’t bring Victoria home with him that evening.

When Eric returned at nine, exhausted from a day spent in bed at Victoria’s parents’ ski cabin, he was alone. Charlie greeted him at the door with a smile that made him wish he had never seen Victoria in his life. Charlie told him what had happened, what she had learned and how Robert had helped her; how, gently and patiently guided by Robert, she had come to believe she really was fine. She had just been so scared. She had almost been a victim of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“I inherited a lively imagination from my mother,” she said sadly, “But maybe, hopefully, that is all.”

Except I hope I inherited her boundless capacity to love and to give and to understand, Charlie thought as Eric held her. She knew he had spent the day with that girl, whoever she was. I have to try to understand it, she thought, succeeding a little,
enough
. She could see the regret and guilt in Eric’s eyes.

“I love you so much, Charlie,” he whispered.

“I love you, Eric. Make love to me.”

“No.”

“Yes. Tonight. Tomorrow night. Every night.”

“No. On our wedding night. The reason I wanted to make love to you so desperately was because I was trying to get even closer to you, to find out what was really wrong. Now we know. Now I can wait. You really do want to wait, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

In the middle of February, Victoria telephoned Eric’s room in Cambridge. Charlie was there with Eric. She saw the horror on his face and heard his words.

“We talked about it. You said you were taking the pill. . . . You’re you sure it’s mine? . . . What do you want to do?”

Victoria was pregnant. Almost three months. It must have happened at Thanksgiving. Yes, she was taking the pill, but that wasn’t one hundred percent effective. The baby was definitely his.

For the next two weeks, Eric and Charlie talked about it, cried about it and tried to find a way to make it right.

There was only one way.

“The baby has to have its father,” Charlie said from a belief rooted deep in her soul. She hadn’t had a father. Babies needed their fathers.

“All I know, Eric, is that the joy of watching your child grow is the greatest joy in life,” Robert said, aching for Eric and Charlie but remembering his own joy when he saw his tiny son for the first time. Even now as his beloved son’s life was altered, exactly as his own life had been altered, by a senseless moment of lust, Robert believed that the pain would give way to pleasure as soon as the baby was born.

Eric would be happy. Victoria would be happy. The baby would be happy.

Florence was already ecstatic. Eric and Victoria were meant to be together. Charlie had been all wrong for Eric.

Eventually they would all be happy.

Except Charlie. Charlie would suffer, as she had before, an innocent fragile victim. Charlie might never recover. Robert lay awake at night worrying about Charlie. He would call her often, he decided. He would see her when he could. He would try to help her through this great loss. This other loss.