To Be the Best (15 page)

‘Yes…But I’ll never be able to thank you enough for all you’ve done for me. And for all you’ve taught me – especially about myself.’

‘You were always very special to me, my child,’ Sister Bronagh replied in a soft voice. ‘If I had not chosen this way of life, had not chosen to be in service to God, to do His work, and if I had married and had had a daughter, I would have wanted her to be exactly like you.’

‘Oh Sister Bronagh, what a beautiful thing to say, thank you, thank you so much!’ Madelana experienced a sudden rush of emotion as her genuine feeling for this woman rose up in her and there was the unexpected sting of tears behind her eyes and she blinked them away, not wanting to break down. She realized how much she would miss Sister Bronagh after the nun had departed for her new job in Rome.

Now Madelana said, ‘Your belief in me has been so important, Sister, it’s mirrored the belief my mother had in me. She encouraged me the way you have. I’ll try never to let you down.’

The sweetest of smiles brushed across Sister Bronagh’s pale mouth and she said slowly, to give greater emphasis to her words, ‘The important thing is never to let yourself down, Madelana.’

It was a long, hot ride uptown from the Residence Jeanne D’Arc to East Eighty-Fourth Street, and for the first time that day Madelana felt uncomfortably warm and damp when she finally alighted in front of the small apartment building where she lived.

‘Hi, Alex,’ she said, greeting the doorman breezily as he helped her out of the cab.

The doorman responded in kind, and there was an admiring look in his eyes as he watched her walk rapidly across the sidewalk with her usual ease of movement and gracefulness. She swung into the building before he could rush to open the door for her, and appeared to float across the lobby, her feet hardly seeming to touch the marble as she sped ahead.

She stopped to collect her mail and then took the elevator to the seventeenth floor. The phone was ringing inside her apartment when she put the key in the lock. It stuck, and she struggled with it, muttering under her breath, but finally she managed to get the door open and hurried in, and the phone continued its strident shrilling in the cool silence of the empty apartment.

Snapping on the light in the minuscule, almost non-existent entrance hall, she dumped her things unceremoniously on the floor and ran to pick up the nearest extension.

This was on the desk in the yellow-and-white living room, which opened directly off the tiny entrance hall, and snatching the receiver, she exclaimed, ‘Hello,’ only to discover that there was no one at the other end. All she could hear was the faint burring of the dialling tone; the
caller had obviously disconnected a split second before she had reached the phone.

Oh well, she thought, whoever it is will call back, if it’s important, and she dropped the receiver into the cradle with a shrug of her elegant shoulders.

Blinking in the shadowy half light that flowed in from the entrance hall, she switched on the desk lamp and swung around, making to leave the room, then hesitated, pivoted to look at the phone. She was on the verge of picking it up again, wondering if it had been Paula calling her, concerned with some last minute bit of business. Or about something they had forgotten. It was hardly likely, since it was almost ten o’clock. She immediately dismissed the idea of calling her boss at her Fifth Avenue apartment. That would be an unwarranted intrusion, and anyway, Paula always went to bed early when she first arrived in New York, in an effort to counteract jet lag.

Madelana shivered, becoming aware of the chilly temperature. The air conditioning had been running at its highest all day, and the apartment was like a freezer. But her body would soon adjust, and she welcomed the coolness after the humidity of the stuffy, airless streets of Manhattan.

She went to retrieve her things, and carried them back to the living room, sat down on the yellow-velvet sofa, and glanced at her mail. There was nothing of any importance and she put it on the glass-and-brass coffee table, rose, and went into the adjoining bedroom to change her clothes.

A second or two later she emerged, barefooted and wearing a long pink cotton caftan, and hurried into the kitchen to prepare a light supper for herself, before digging into the work she had brought home from the store.

The kitchen in her small apartment was long and narrow; it had reminded Madelana of a ship’s galley the first time she had seen it, just a year ago this month. And for this reason she had decorated it in various shades of blue with lots of white
and dashes of brilliant red. She had covered the walls with nautical prints, ranging from Boston whalers, nineteenth-century sailing ships and Mississippi riverboats to oceangoing liners and modern yachts. All were framed in brass, and there were other touches of brass in small accessories; and copper moulds hung above the stove and the sink, and these added their own sparkle.

At one end, near the window, she had placed a small, dropleaf table and two bentwood chairs, an ideal spot for a snack. A small window box on the sill was filled with feathery spider ferns, and the kitchen had a gaiety and charm which owed more to her ingenuity and flair than to the amount of money she had spent.

One of the colourful yachting prints caught Madelana’s eye, and she smiled to herself, thinking of her friend, Patsy Smith. Patsy was a Boston girl who had lived at the residency at the same time that she had, and two years ago Patsy had invited her to the Smiths’ summer home in Nantucket for the long Fourth of July weekend. They had done a lot of sailing over those four glorious days, and Madelana had loved every moment she had been on the water. It had been a new and exhilarating experience for her, and much to her amazement she had discovered she had a great affinity for boats and the sea.

Perhaps one day I’ll do it again, she thought, turning to the refrigerator, taking out the ingredients for a salad.

The telephone on the wall behind her rang. She reached for it. ‘Hello?’

‘So, you’re finally home.’

‘Oh Jack, hi. Yes, I was – ’

‘You cancelled our date in order to work, or so you said,’ he interrupted rudely, sourness curling around the edge of his beautiful, resonant voice. ‘But you ain’t been home, kiddo, I’ve been calling you all night.’

Madelana felt herself stiffening at his tone, and she
resented the fact that he had obviously been checking up on her. But she took a deep breath, managed to muster a reasonable tone, to say evenly, ‘I had to go down to the residency. To see Sister Bronagh.’

‘I suppose that’s as good an excuse as any.’

‘But it’s
true,
and please don’t take this attitude with me. I don’t like it, Jack.’

‘You don’t expect me to believe that’s where you
really
were, do you? Visiting a nun?’ He laughed hollowly. ‘Come on, babe – ’

‘I’m not a liar,’ she cut in, bristling with anger. Her voice rose, and she added coldly, ‘Nor do I appreciate being called one.’

He ignored this remark. ‘Why won’t you tell me
who
you were with tonight?’

‘I
have.
I was with Sister Bronagh.’ She tightened her grip on the phone to steady herself. Her exasperation was running high, her patience growing thin.

He laughed again, this time more sardonically. ‘Sister Bronagh indeed! That’s a laugh. Come on, babe, don’t start getting holier than thou with me. It’s Jack you’re talking to.
Me. Jack.
Jack your lover, Jack the big man in your life. But is he the
only
man in your life? That’s the question.’

She realized then that not only had he been drinking again, but that he was, in fact, quite drunk. Although there was no slurring of his speech, she could recognize the signs these days. He became sarcastic, argumentative, aggressive and suspicious of her, and all of his insecurities started to show. And of course he enjoyed baiting her, which only infuriated her further. Jack was a bad drunk. In the last few months she had learned that firmness was the only way in which to deal with him, and that if she adopted the stern posture of a school teacher she could somehow get the upper hand. But she didn’t want the upper hand with Jack. She wanted an equal partnership, a balanced relationship in
which neither one of them was manipulating or controlling the other.

Sounding crisp and cool, she said, ‘Good night, Jack. Go to bed. I’ll call you in the morning.’

There was a sudden silence at the other end of the phone.

She heard him suck in his breath, as if he were taken aback that she was about to hang up on him.

She said again, her voice firm and colder than ever,
‘Good night.’

‘Hey, wait a minute, Madelana, how about dinner tomorrow night? A quick, quiet little dinner. At my place. Or yours. Or somewhere in your neighbourhood. Come on, say yes, honey,’ he cajoled, unexpectedly much less hostile, almost contrite.

‘You know I can’t, Jack. I explained earlier in the week that I have to pack on Friday night. In case it’s slipped your mind, I’m going to Australia on Saturday morning.’

‘That’s
right! Of course!
I keep forgetting that you’re the little career girl dedicated heart and soul to work. Or should I say
big
career girl. Much more appropriate, no? And yes, indeedy,
big
career.
Big
job.
Big
ambitions. But tell me one more thing, babe, is work going to keep you warm in bed on cold nights?’ He laughed thinly. ‘I doubt it. You don’t need a
big
career, babe. You need a
big
man. Like me. Listen, I’ve got a great idea. Why don’t I come over right now and – ’

‘Y’all’ve had too much to drink, Jack Miller! Why you’re drunker than a skunk that’s been suckling at the moonshine barrel!’ she cried, inadvertently slipping into the idiom of her Southern childhood, as she sometimes did when she was angry or overly excited. ‘Go to bed,’ she instructed fiercely, ‘I’ll call y’all in the morning.’ She replaced the receiver quietly, even though she felt like slamming it down hard. She was humiliated by his attitude towards her, and resentful and angry.

I hate the way he makes me feel these days, she said under
her breath, opening the cupboard, taking out a small metal strainer. Furiously, she tore the lettuce apart, dropped it in the strainer standing in the sink, let the tap water run on the broken leaves.

She stared morosely at the wall, her mind intently fixed on Jack Miller.

He’s a jerk, she thought, and I’m a bigger jerk for continuing to see him. I’ve known for weeks that the two of us are not making it together. We’re going no place fast. I can’t tolerate his possessiveness, jealousy and accusations, and the drunken scenes he’s been creating lately are insupportable.

She ran her hand through her hair distractedly. I can’t cope any longer. I just know I can’t. He makes me madder than a wet hen in a thunderstorm. Damn it, why do I take this from him? Well, I’m not going to, and I’m not going to aid and abet him in his own self-destruction!

Opening a drawer, she took out a sharp chopping knife, began to slice the tomato. But her hands were shaking so much she put the knife down, for fear of cutting herself.

Leaning against the sink for the longest moment, she endeavoured to still her fulminating anger.

It’s all over between us.

As this unexpected thought penetrated her brain like an arrow hitting its given mark, she felt her tension lessen. And very slowly the shaking began to subside.

It was true. There was nothing left. At least, not for her. Even her sexual desire for him had diminished. His bad behaviour was turning her off ever more frequently. I’ll break up with him when I get back from Australia, she decided. There’s no point in wasting my time with him. I must get on with my own life. I can’t baby-sit Jack Miller, which is what I’ve been doing for several months now. No, I’d better tell him tomorrow. That’ll be much kinder than waiting until I come back. Now, why am I trying to be kind
to
him?
That dude’s led me a real merry dance of late.

Madelana expelled a wearisome sigh. Jack seemed to want to punish her these days. Or was it someone else he was punishing? Himself, perhaps? He had been out of work for several months, and that was proving extremely hard on him. When he worked he was a different man. A whole man. He stopped carousing in bars with his friends and never touched a drop of liquor.

Poor Jack, she thought, the anger unexpectedly falling away. He has so much. Good looks and charm, talent and even brilliance. But he’s wasting it all, letting it drain away down the neck of a bottle. It was the boozing that troubled her; and it was the boozing that had come between them. Invariably, he was full of chagrin afterwards, and apologetic, but this did not take the sting out of the way he had behaved, the hurt he had inflicted.

It struck her then that he needed her pity more than anything else. Broadway actor, almost but not quite Star, he was a virtuoso performer who could have made it very, very big if he had wanted, gone to Hollywood, conquered the silver screen as he had the legitimate theatre, which was his
forte.
His clean-cut handsomeness and silver-gilt hair and those marvellous baby blues were arresting and made him impossibly photogenic. And he even had movie star charisma – when he wished to exercise it. He could have been another Paul Newman, or so his peers constantly informed her. It was always on the tip of her tongue to ask, ‘Then why isn’t he?’, but she never did. Yes, his friends were most admiring of Jack Miller…he was an actor’s actor, they said. The best. In the same class as Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson. But to her way of thinking, there was something missing in him, something gone askew in his character. If only he were different of temperament.

It seemed to her that Jack wasn’t driven, and certainly he
wasn’t ambitious enough. Maybe that was the reason he was always jabbing at her, why he resented her career…because she had an over-abundance of ambition, while he had none. Maybe he had had it once, but he didn’t any more.