The Friend of Women and Other Stories (7 page)

“I'll talk to him. If he'll see me.”

Ralph did see me, and he gave a sullen consent to the change in his wife's life more easily than I had expected. I supposed that even he had come to realize how badly he had misjudged his bride.

I didn't much like Cora's working for Eliot, whom I deeply distrusted, but knowing how much he resented his wife's ownership of the periodical and how little he must have liked her imposing an employee on him, I could hope only that he would give Cora a fairly wide berth. At any rate, things seemed to work themselves out, and in the next year the reverberations from the Larkin household appeared to have ceased. Cora was happy in her new job and told me that Eliot had even asked her to help him with the periodical.

The Bernards's magazine had originally been devoted to articles on politics and foreign affairs, contributed by supposed experts, but Letty and Eliot had greatly expanded its coverage. It now contained reviews of books, Broadway openings, musical events, and art shows, in addition to pieces on current events both national and international. Eliot had started a woman's page, with topics ranging from civil rights to fashion, and it was to this that he had had the keenness to promote Cora after a brief time in the files.

It seemed to Cora like a godsend. All her rather scattered wits appeared to focus in this new assignment. She had needed a cause to pull her disordered life together, and she now found it in women's rights. Perhaps Ralph had come to symbolize for her everything in the male sex that kept women down, while Eliot had become the shining light of Ralph's diametric opposite. A shabby peace had been replaced by a heroic war. She read everything about discrimination and the failure of equal treatment for women in every walk of life and came to work with shining eyes.

“I'm becoming another Carrie Nation,” she exclaimed to me with a cheerful laugh. But all this came to a shuddering halt. One early morning, while I was still at breakfast, a pale and haggard Cora appeared on my doorstep. Ralph, she announced in shrill tones, wanted to divorce her, and on grounds of adultery, too! Would I accompany her to a session with his lawyer in the latter's Wall Street office? The lawyer wished to present her with Ralph's terms for a consent divorce. When I protested that she needed her own lawyer and not an old schoolteacher, she insisted that she could get hold of counsel later, that this was simply to hear Ralph's demands. She wanted a friend to be with her, someone, so to speak, to hold her hand.

So I went.

The lawyer, Stanley, I think his name was, received us in a large, threatening paneled office with a million-dollar view of the harbor for any who had the heart to look at it. I had not. He was the sort of grave, staring attorney who took pleasure on behalf of a rich client to “crush the serpent with his heel,” a legal John Knox who carried his stern morals into his practice whenever his high fees allowed it.

“I take it that Mr. Hazelton is here as your friend but not as your counsel,” he opened, eyeing me with evident disapproval. “However, there is no reason why I should not outline for you both your husband's proposal. It will also be contained in this memorandum, which you may deliver to your attorney.”

The horrid man then proceeded to air his horrid client's conditions for submitting to the jurisdiction of the state of Nevada, where he chose to establish her temporary residence. This was clearly intended, without stating it, to indicate his client's willingness to consent to a plea of incompatibility in a Reno court. Mr. Stanley now went on to give us an idea of the evidence that his client's detectives had gathered. There was no mention of a corespondent's name, nor did Cora ask for one. Her only alternative, the lawyer implied, to a thunderous scandal would be to sign a separation agreement waiving her rights to any settlement and apply to a Reno court for a divorce on grounds of incompatibility.

She and I left the office without commitment. Despite the early hour, I took her to a bar and ordered two whiskies.

“Of course you'll fight it,” I muttered.

Slowly, she shook her head.

“Tell me he's bluffing, Cora!” I begged.

“I can't tell you that.”

I dreaded to hear her mention Eliot's name. I knew that he and Letty had been having difficulties about the running of the magazine. He had made little secret of his growing restiveness at her stubborn retention of the veto power that she had in the publications and foundation that her father had created. I had never trusted Eliot since the business over Alfreda's baby; indeed, I actually detested him. He had not hesitated to make himself the lover of one of his wife's most intimate friends. Could he possibly have had it in mind to add the second to his collection? Could a man really be so wicked? And why?

“You told me, Hubert, that if I married Ralph for the reason I did, I'd be wicked. I sneered at the word. But you were right. I was wicked, I am wicked. And, as you predicted, I've been in hell.”

“But you've been working, Cora. You've been doing a job, and doing it darn well. What happened?”

“Everything was all right until Eliot started paying attention to me. He didn't at first. He was even standoffish. I think he may have disliked Letty's pushing me on him. But gradually he began to talk to me. And then one day he took me out to lunch. It seemed perfectly natural. Everyone in the office knows that Letty and I are best friends. She usually works at home, but she has an office at the magazine, of course, and never comes in without speaking to me. And after Eliot assigned me the job of helping him with the new column, we lunched together frequently to discuss it. And then... and then...” Her voice trailed off, and she ended with a shrug.

“Oh, Cora, how could you? With your dearest friend's husband?”

“Well, I did, Hubert.” She wiped the sudden tears from her eyes and faced me. “You know how winning Eliot can be. And I'd never had a real lover in all my life! I tried to convince myself that Letty wouldn't care that much. I certainly resolved that she should never know. And if I helped myself to one little piece of happiness after all my years of frustration, was it really so wicked? Yes, I suppose it was.”

“How did Ralph find out?”

“I don't know!” She gave a little cry of pain. “He must have been trailing me for weeks and hoping against hope that he'd catch me in something like this. And now I must accept his humiliating terms!”

“I'm afraid it's going to cost you a pretty penny.”

“Anything is better than having Letty know! I couldn't bear to have Letty know that I'd betrayed her.”

For a moment, I was rendered speechless by such a sacrifice. For even in a successful divorce for adultery, a husband might have to give his wife more than Ralph had offered. “That's very big of you, my dear. I haven't a fortune, but what I have will always be at your disposal. And when I die I'll leave it to you. Alfireda and Letty will hardly need it.”

Cora took my hand. “That's darling of you, Hubert. But don't forget. I still have my job. And Letty is very generous with her staff.”

“Your job? You mean you'll go on with Eliot? After what's happened?”

“Certainly. We mustn't do anything to make Letty suspect.”

“But you won't...?” I couldn't finish.

“Carry on the affair? Oh, that's over and done with.”

“How did that come about?”

“Because I found out that he didn't give a damn about me. I was only another tart to him. He had these terrible depressions when he would tell me that. And he was always ranting about Letty. He was obsessed with her!”

“You mean because he really cared for her, after all?”

“No! Because he really hates her!”

“Oh, my god! What makes you think that?”

“I feel it! He hates her because she owns all the things he thinks should be his. Because his successes are all really hers. Because she's
him!
And he was screwing me only to screw her. He's a fiend, Hubert!”

“Perhaps something simpler than that.”

“Anyway, I'm terrified that in one of his blinding depressions he may tell Letty to get back at me for ending the affair. And to get back at her for being her. To destroy our friendship and knock her to bits. He'll tell her about Alfreda's baby, too.”

“Oh, you know about that?”

“He told me. The man's capable of anything. Can't you do something about him, Hubert?”

“I can't think of what, but I can certainly try.”

“If you think I should quit the magazine, I will.”

“Certainly not. That's the one thing in your life that makes sense. Let's not throw everything away. But don't go to work today. Too much has happened. Why don't you go home now and have a nap and then meet me for lunch at Lutèce, where we'll talk only about pleasant things.”

In the first six years of their marriage, the Amorys seemed to be accomplishing everything that Elias Bernard had expected of their combined efforts. Eliot reduced his practice of law to a minimum, though retaining his partnership at a much smaller share of the firm profits, and devoted the bulk of his seemingly inexhaustible energies to the management of his late father-in-law's interests. He and Letty as coeditors of the magazine turned it into a major periodical of political and literary significance with a national circulation. Letty's securities swelled in value under Eliot's expert supervision, and the great ranch became a model for new techniques in the breeding and raising of cattle. With two fine little daughters, Letty and he appeared to be sitting on top of the world.

Did I ever think I had been wrong? Of course not. Alas, I had only apprehensively to wait.

***

Letty discovered an early infidelity of her husband's through a domestic incident overused in the trite chronicles of marital betrayal. Her shock and indignation were tempered with disgust at the banality of her experience. Checking the pockets of a jacket that Eliot had left on his bed for the cleaners, to be sure that no keys or other possessions had been carelessly forgotten, she had come across a scented epistle with an amatory greeting as crude as the letterhead was elegant. She did not hesitate to read it. It might almost have been placed there in order that she should do so. She had suspected such dalliances before, but had had no grounds for a spoken reproof. What should she do with such evidence? After much powerful cogitation, she decided to do nothing.

The first thing that struck her as she analyzed her reaction, with all the care and clarity of one who had devoted a quiet lifetime to the goals of objectivity and detachment, was that jealousy played the smallest part. She didn't give a damn about the woman who had written the letter—whom she easily identified as a researcher on the family foundation. She was quite able to recognize that her love for Eliot—if it really was love, and if not, what else was it?—was compatible with his taking an occasional roll in the hay. Suppose, for example, she had come into his bedroom and caught him masturbating? Ugh! But wasn't it basically the same thing? Didn't she share all that was best in Eliot: his brain, his ambition, his daughters, his everyday life? Or did she? Why should she feel that this letter in a jacket pocket was a long delayed challenge to the position she had so proudly taken as his partner? His
equal
partner. Ah, was that it?

So she did nothing, but she watched him much more closely than she had before. And in only a few weeks' time, she was startled to find that she was beginning to observe slight changes in his appearance of which she had to have been previously aware but which she had presumably brushed aside as irrelevant to herself and to her welfare. His waistline was filling out, and his hair was faintly but noticeably receding. He was still a fine-looking man, but he was not the apollo she had once deemed him. All that, of course, was nothing, but mightn't it somehow correlate with the increasingly autocratic tone he was now taking at editorial meetings of the magazine and the sharper note of his reproval at any defective service by their household staff?

She became even more acutely conscious of this at a meeting of the foundation to discuss a grant to a small and struggling new art museum. Letty had wanted to make the gift conditional on the widening of the extremely limited hours of public admission that the donee, too intent, in her opinion, on access to scholars, was proposing.

“What is art if it's not
seen?
” she asked of her board. “This business of restricting it to scholars obsessed with the concept of ‘influence' can be overdone. We're always reading about the influence of X on Y, of Monet on Manet, or money on Monet, as if no great artist could ever think for himself! And if it's not that, they're fixed on reattribution. I don't really give a damn if some kid in Rembrandt's studio painted the
Polish Rider.
It's still a great picture. And all I want is to look at it!”

“Letty, you're showing yourself a perfect philistine,” Eliot retorted testily. “How can you compare all those bleary-eyed tourists who drag protesting children past masterpieces because they're told it's the thing to do with students willing to give their very lives to the cause of art? What does the public learn by shuffling past great paintings? Can they tell the difference between a sentimental daub by Bouguereau and a Madonna by Raphael? They might secretly prefer the former, but they're too awed by the critics to say so. Hang an old straw hat full of holes on the wall at the modern art museum and they'll respectfully gape!”

Letty had learned to be patient at such outbursts, which seemed to be increasing. “It's all very well for you to be snobbish, my dear,” she replied. “But a foundation shouldn't be, and I'm afraid I'm not going to change my mind.”

Eliot looked at her now with an expression she had never seen, at least as directed at her. She sensed something ominous in it. Where had she noticed it before? Was it when one of the editors of the magazine had effectively criticized a too violent column of his?