Violet opened her mouth to say that it wasn’t quite true, they could marry and have the baby respectably, they could find a nanny and she could perhaps still carry on her work at the institute, they could find a way, for God’s sake, but she managed to clamp her lips down on the words and burst into tears instead.
Walter took her in his arms and drew her into the bed with him. “There, now, child. You see? You’re not yourself at all. Already this alien clump of cells has addled your orderly little mind. Nature’s way, I suppose.” He shook his head in sorrow. “Let me handle all this for you. Let me ring up Winslow, set up the appointment. I’ll take perfect care of you, and things can go on just as before. Haven’t things been wonderful since we began together? Haven’t I advanced your every interest? Are we not two beings of the very same mind?”
She snuffled a yes.
“Then you must trust me, Violet. I do know what’s best.”
Walter laid her back in the pillows and removed her nightgown, almost as if everything were normal again, as if her female organs had not betrayed them both, and the next afternoon called her into his office and handed her a slip of paper. He was smiling kindly. “Winslow will see you tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. You can take a taxi to my house directly after. Don’t worry about the bill; everything’s to be sent to me.”
Vivian
They say time is supposed to lengthen when you’re in shock, that your body shuts itself down, but I felt the opposite. I felt as if the seconds were racing by, sharp with unnecessary detail, the molecules of air pinging separately and rapidly against me. I heard Gogo introduce us, Dr. David Paul Salisbury, Miss Vivian Schuyler, and the way her voice tip-tilted the Schuyler as if she were making a private little joke. I saw Doctor Paul’s neat gray courting suit, his blue-sky tie, the individual locks of his damp hair brushed back from his face. I counted each tiny black lick of flame around Doctor Paul’s pupils as his eyes opened wide to take me in.
“You again,” I whispered.
“Vivs.” His eyes were dark; his face was pale. “You’re Vivs. Holy Christ.”
Gogo had danced off to find her coat and say good-bye to her father. I snatched Doctor Paul’s hand and hauled him to the library and closed the door.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing here? Proposing to Gogo?”
Shock. “I’m not proposing to her!”
“She thinks you are!”
He grabbed his hair and turned away. “God, no. Vivian, you can’t think—”
“You’re Suitor Number Ten. You’re Gogo’s Mr. Perfect. You.” I backed up a step, stumbled over the chair that Gogo had vacated earlier, and crumpled into the seat. I stared at his gray-suited back, the delicate wisps of hair at the base of his neck. The neck I had kissed Saturday night, the back I had gripped with my fingers for dear life.
I was going to hell.
On the other hand, so was he.
“You! You lying old son of a . . . of a dog of a . . . two-timing . . . rat! What am I, your bit on the side? Your afternoon snack? I’m supposed to be the mistress of my friend’s husband?”
“Husband!” He spun around. “Her husband? God, no. I was going to . . . Today, I was going to tell her it wasn’t working, that she was a dear girl but I—”
“You were going to break things off.” My head was pounding fury. My tongue was so dry I could hardly speak.
“Yes. What else?”
“You tell me.”
He found the table edge with his fingernails. “Vivian, you can’t think there would ever be anyone else. Not after Saturday night.”
“What about Saturday night?”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t feel it, too. Do not, Vivian, do not tell me that wasn’t the best thing that’s ever happened to you. To me. To us, together.”
“You are mighty confident for a two-timing rat.”
“I know what happened with us, Vivian. I know what that was, because I know it was always missing before. And you know it, too.”
Something buckled and collapsed, deep in my chest, some object I didn’t even realize I owned. I thought, Only in New York. A classic New York coincidence, all of us marbles rolling together in our box, the way the old gal sitting next to you at the luncheonette turns out to have grown up in the apartment right smack next to yours. The law of big numbers. You bring home a precious gift from the post office and you fall at last, at last, you peel off your leathery old skin and fall so hard in a leap of pure and uncharacteristic faith, and the bastard turns out to be practically engaged to your boss’s daughter. To the one girl in the world who tolerates you, the one girl who doesn’t think you’re out to hunt down her man with your acquisitive Schuyler claws.
I stood up. “Nothing happened with us. You are not going to break Gogo’s heart.”
He didn’t move.
“Loose ends. Sweet little Gogo was your loose end.”
He whispered, white-faced: “You’re killing me, Vivian.”
“You are going to march out of this room and take Gogo to lunch, and you are not going to break her heart.”