The Chameleon (42 page)

“Pearls before swine.”

She lifted her eyes to stare astonished into his for any clue to his anger. She didn't have to wait.

“Spiros and half the world saw you and your unnatural lover. Only Americans would think they could be indiscreet at the Ritz.”

“Duccio, I … I promise you. I kept my end of the bargain.”

“You have never been a wife.”

It was true. She had been a wife in name only. But that had been the deal.

From her perspective, kneeling on the stone, he looked like a tall, angry column. She stood, letting the pearls fall like marbles from her fingers. “How dare you. I've kept my end of the bargain.”

“You've evidently kept meeting your lover.” He shook his head. “I am a man of the street. No finesse.
No gràzia.
Vulgarity is what I know. I know sexual satisfaction on a man's face. That was the look on the father-in-law's face the night I met you in England. Lust. You cannot lie to a liar.”

Claire smoothed her fingers down the silk faille of her skirt, carefully putting her characteristic smile back on her face. She rose to her full height. Fueled by her indignation, she spoke clearly, using her best Tuxedo tones to respond.

“While I've lived in your house I have honored your name.” No need to throw all of her husband's mistresses and girlfriends into his face; no need to wallow in his mud. She turned on her heel, her skirt swirling around her, and caught a smirking Spiros out of the corner of her eye. Spiros, whose advances she had once laughed away, was clearly enjoying her humiliation. In a flash, Duccio was at her elbow. Claire felt her stomach contort as she shied her face away to divert another blow.

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“No you're not. You stay here by my side. I might have need of you.” He grasped her arm and linked it roughly through his. She cringed at his touch.

He brushed his fingers through his oily hair. The volcano had been momentarily corked.
“Forse
now, you are not so high above me. I may have broken stupid laws, but you have broken morals.”

As much as Claire hated him at this moment, she now understood where his anger stemmed from: the most primal feeling in the world. Jealousy. So as Hollywood royalty and European society looked over its shoulder, the elegant Claire Harrison Duccio turned to straighten her husband's tie properly.

He spoke to her through his smiling clenched teeth even as he allowed her wifely gesture. “You should know the stories I learned in Calabria. You can bring a snake into your house, feed, pet, cover it with jeweled collars, but even if you give it a mouse to eat every day, once a month it will bite you. Because it is in the nature of the snake.” He shrugged, leaving a quietly trembling Claire to wonder which one of them was the serpent.

Harrison sat smoking a cigar in his office at the American embassy, rereading the letter he'd received from Claire. He had been surprised at her invitation to dine in Paris on August 6. An unimportant trade commission had brought him to the city before he left to pick up the children in Rome to return them to America for their annual Newport holiday. But there was no reason for a fashionable woman like Claire to be in the deserted French capital during the month when even the
boulangere,
the baker's wife, packed up her brood and left for the seashore. There was no reason other than to see him. In the formal letter she clearly indicated “dinner for two,” “discussing the children's future,” and “possible changes in her life.” He was hopeful that this might mean she was leaning toward the reasonable decision of allowing the children to spend more time in the States and receive a quality American education. He put out his cigar and then determinedly pushed the ashtray to the far side of his desk. He had been smoking far too many of these things a day. If he was going to get the chance to be a real father figure—or even a grandfather figure—to Six, he'd have to get himself back in competitive physical shape. He wouldn't want just to guide the boy, he'd want to do things, horseback riding, skiing, skin diving, all the things Six loved, with him. And his mother.

Claire had followed her invitation with a familiar R.S.V.P. absolving him of having to make an immediate decision, fending her letter with the same words he had used in hers:
If you can't make it I will understand.
It would take the outbreak of World War III to keep him away.

He assumed this was to be a very personal discussion, as she had forgone the traditional Ritz for the tucked-away Chez Emilon, an excellent restaurant well known for its cuisine but not frequented by the haute monde of Claire's world. Emilon prepared superb dinners, which he cooked himself for only a dozen tables generously spaced apart to allow for cozy tête-a-têtes. The restaurant also served as the dining room for the five or six suites in the gracious old family home that had been converted into a first-class inn; its private clientele frequented Emilon as much for its discreet location hidden away in a residential street on the Left Bank as for its charm.

The smell of cooking sauces greeted Harrison as he arrived half an hour early for dinner. There was something pleasantly familiar in the inviting aromas, and he wondered how he could be reminded of his favorite pot roast in a four-star French restaurant. Although he couldn't remember ever being there before, the wait staff called him by name as they took his hat.

He found Claire already seated. She was dressed simply, in a soft silk blouse the color of tea leaves. The shadows from the real candles on the wall sconces sent patterns flickering across her shoulders. She lifted her head to look him straight in the eye. He thought she still looked young and unspoiled, as if she hadn't spent the last few years mired in nasty custody lawsuits and locked into a marriage with a brutish husband—a marriage he had arranged. She appeared untouched by any of the ugliness that had swirled around her. As the candlelight illuminated her fresh, heart-shaped face, her eyes shining sincerely beneath dark, full lashes, he thought for a fleeting second that he was back in Lake Como with the young woman he loved. She sat expectantly in the oversized armchair, her fingers resting on a slim little book, Anne Morrow Lindbergh's
Gift from the Sea.

“Did you bring your reading material along in case I might bore you?”

“No, in case you didn't come. I don't make a good drunk.”

“I thought
I
was early.” He glanced around the room at the empty tables as he took his seat. Evidently all of Paris had already left for their August holidays. They were the only people in the room.

She picked up a fork, holding it to her pale pink mouth like a big cigar, and cracked in a Groucho Marx voice, “bought out the whole joint, kiddo.” Then, in her normal voice, “So I could be alone with you.”

They both held their words until the waiter finished pouring the first glass of wine and presented the appetizer of raw oysters à la Rockefeller, his favorite. He felt flattered and a little embarrassed at finding himself in the middle of what looked like a classic seduction scene. He glanced around the room, on the lookout for a strolling violinist playing “La Vie en Rose.” But the way Claire kept nervously rubbing her shoulder implied that this wasn't about romance, and the resolute set of her mouth told him she had something weighty to discuss. They both knew each other's little habits too well for games.

“I feel like I'm on the receiving end of that old Washington strategy. First you feed ‘em, then you hit ‘em up for the favor. What's the favor? What's wrong?”

“I want to come home.”

The diplomat in Harrison knew he had to reflect a few moments before he responded. He took a sip of wine.

Claire practically impaled him with her unblinking gaze, waiting for his response.

“That's a pretty loaded request. Exactly where
home?
”

“Chicago, Washington … anywhere America. I want to get … mean …” The words tumbled out as fast as a child's list of Christmas wishes. “I want to divorce Duccio, move back home, raise our children, have you in our lives. I wasn't going to ask you until I plied you with a delicious dinner—they're making your favorite pot roast—but I need to know. Is it possible? Can I? Do I bring harm on you if I break the arrangement? My so-called marriage. Is Duccio such an important financial part of your life that I need to stay? I will if I have to. If I come home, will Ophelia sue me for custody?” Her entire face was a question mark.

“Hold on. What's happened?”

“It's time I make a life, not just run away from one.”

“Has he hurt you?”

She shook her head no, rubbing her hand across the slope of her shoulder.

“Let's take this step by step. What is it you really want to know?”

“Will Ophelia file a custody suit if I go back to America?”

“The minute your foot touches the shore.”

“Can't you stop it?”

He didn't even flinch. “No. The papers are already prepared in case you ever returned for a visit or if one of your aunts died and you came home for the funeral.”

“Why does it still matter so much to her? She has the children Christmas and August.”

“Ophelia, Harry, and Minnie … the Harrisons, on the legal document, have filed for full custody, on the grounds that you are an unfit mother, a European party girl, a Communist sympathizer and”—he hated to say this—”illegitimate.”

Claire picked up the small fork like she was going to charge the Bastille instead of her oysters on the half shell. Those accusations were crazy. “And you'd let that happen.”

“After I saw you and the children in Rome two years ago I hired the best team of lawyers to see if I could personally become their guardian. But according to custodial law”—he almost choked on these words—“I have no rights as a grandfather. And Harry is … their legal father.”

She looked down, pushing a slippery oyster around in its shell with her fork, as if she were looking for its pearl.

“I'm only with Duccio because
you
sent me.” She pushed her plate away.

The diplomat laid both hands on the table. “I think I'd better explain the situation to you. I've become an unwelcome guest in my own home. Ophelia and I don't speak. We have nothing to say to one another. She asks nothing of me but that I appear on the family Christmas card, and I expect nothing of her except to forward my mail. I live at the Waldorf when I do business in New York, but, louse that I am, I do go home for Christmas and August.”

“To see the children.” She understood. She had just returned from a tense holiday with Duccio off the coast of Corsica, where they had been spearfishing. The children were tanned and sun-kissed, and fit. At least she could take some strange pride in sending them back to Ophelia almost heroically beautiful. “But you could've come to us.”

“As what? The man who came to dinner? Duccio can be very hot-tempered and play a ruthless hand in business when he's crossed. I would never want to put you in the way of his jealous nature. I've seen a side of him you haven't.”

Claire held her fingers against her lips as if she were trying to keep something from escaping.

It suddenly occurred to him that he had put her in jeopardy simply by sending her away from him and into Duccio's lethal arms. He felt old and pathetic. Why hadn't he been man enough to stand up to his wrathful wife to protect Claire and his second son?

“How obligated are you to Duccio? Would I mess up your finances if I left?” Having been a Harrison, she was taking the practical approach to the problem.

“Of course not. Excuse me for insulting your husband, but I do more for him than he's done for me.”

Both of them looked lost in thought as the pot roast, a plume of steam curling from its ceramic platter, was placed before them. Ordinarily he would have been delighted at seeing his favorite food so perfectly prepared, but his appetite was dulled by the battle between love and duty that was being waged in his honorable head. He had been awarded every plaque, title, and honor due a man who tripled a family fortune and channeled his passion into public service. And if Claire had never walked into his house, perhaps that would have been enough. But ever since he had tasted the simple riches of unselfish love and love unselfishly returned, it made all his accomplishments appear like the monogrammed silver bowls that lined his mantel: empty vessels of self-aggrandizement. Now sitting across the table from him was his last hope for happiness.

“Would you be offended if I held your hand?”

She had to lean forward to hear his words, they were so quietly spoken. She observed that their fingers were already only inches apart. When their hands finally touched, all the old feelings rushed through her veins, making it harder to decide what really mattered. No, she
always
remembered what was important to her: her children and Harrison.

“Claire, I want you to consider something very carefully. Would you and the children live with me, marry me if you could consider it? I'm going to fly home in the morning and demand Ophelia give me a divorce.”

For years she had waited to hear these words.

When they walked through the narrow hall to the room she had taken for the night, Claire and Harrison left Tuxedo, Washington, and Rome behind them. Traveling light, they brought along only the memories of their fingerprints on one another's bodies. To Harrison, Claire was a mythic land to be returned to at any cost, and to save himself he would cross any bridge to get there. The valleys of her body, the deep gorge below her neck, the smooth terrain of her thighs, were the familiar places he pined for. She was simply his world. When he embraced her, his emotions were as sea-pitched as hers. Would he be able to please her as much he had before? He pressed the anxious warmth of his mouth against the soft fullness of hers and laid his hand to rest on that spot on the back of her neck, the center of her sensuality, his Isle of Capri. When he put his lips there where they had wandered so many times before and cupped her breasts with his hands, he felt he had come home after a long journey during which jealous gods had conspired against them. Why shouldn't they be in love? Theirs was neither a sin nor unnatural, just a divergence from a steel, rigid norm. The hard facts of their situation turned evanescent and drifted away as Claire and Harrison were filled with longings as soft as Claire's tea-colored blouse. They both knew they could never return to the notion of traditional Home ever again; no, they had committed themselves, breaking ties, burning bridges, and from now on they would be welcome only in one another's arms and in the love they would engender. They could breathe life into their own “Italy,” making a geography of their own, leaving behind those who had blown gales in their direction and stirred up tempests. He promised her they would create their own Sardinia by the sea, or Isola Bella in Lake Como, an island of their own to harbor them and the children.