A Stranger in the Mirror

chapter 32
Europe was a succession of triumphs.

The night of Toby's opening at the Palladium in London, Oxford Circus was jammed with crowds frantically trying to get a glimpse of Toby and Jill. The entire area around Argyll Street had been cordoned off by the metropolitan police. When the mob got out of hand, mounted police were hastily summoned to assist. Precisely at the stroke of eight o'clock, the Royal Family arrived and the show began.

Toby exceeded everyone's wildest expectations. His face beaming with innocence, he brilliantly attacked the British government and its old-school-tie smugness. He explained how it had managed to become less powerful than Uganda and how it could not have happened to a more deserving country. They all roared with laughter, because they knew that Toby Temple was only joking. He did not mean a word of it. Toby loved them.

As they loved him.

The reception in Paris was even more tumultuous. Jill and Toby were guests at the President's Palace and were driven around the city in a state limousine. They could be seen on the front pages of the newspapers every day, and when they appeared at the theater, extra police had to be called out to control the crowds. At the end of Toby's performance, he and Jill were being escorted toward their waiting limousine when suddenly the mob broke through the police guard and hundreds of Frenchmen descended on them, screaming, "Toby, Toby...on veut Toby!" The surging crowd held out pens and autograph books, pressing forward to touch the great Toby Temple and his wonderful Jill. The police were unable to hold them back; the crowd swept them aside, tearing at Toby's clothes, fighting to obtain a souvenir. Toby and Jill were almost crushed by the press of bodies, but Jill felt no fear. This riot was a tribute to her. She had done this for these people; she had brought Toby back to them.

Their last stop was Moscow.

Moscow in June is one of the loveliest cities in the world. Graceful white berezka and Lipa trees with yellow flowerbeds line the wide boulevards crowded with natives and visitors strolling in the sunshine. It is the season for tourists. Except for official visitors, all tourists to Russia are handled through Intourist, the government-controlled agency which arranges transportation, hotels and guided sightseeing tours. But Toby and Jill were met at the Sheremetyevo International Airport by a large Zil limousine and driven to the Metropole Hotel, usually reserved for VIPs from satellite countries. The suite had been stocked with Stolichnaya vodka and black caviar.

General Yuri Romanovitch, a high party official, came to the hotel to bid them welcome. "We do not run many American pictures in Russia, Mr. Temple, but we have played your movies here often. The Russian people feel that genius transcends all boundaries."

Toby had been booked to appear at the Bolshoi Theatre for three performances. Opening night, Jill shared in the ovation. Because of the language barrier, Toby did most of his act in pantomime, and the audience adored him. He gave a diatribe in his pseudo-Russian, and their laughter and applause echoed through the enormous theater like a benediction of love.

During the next two days, General Romanovitch escorted Toby and Jill on a private sightseeing tour. They went to Gorky Park and rode on the giant ferris wheel, and saw the historic Saint Basil's Cathedral. They were taken to the Moscow State Circus and given a banquet at Aragvi, where they were served the golden roe caviar, the rarest of the eight caviars, zakushki, which literally means small bites, and pashteet, the delicate pate baked in a crust. For dessert, they ate yoblochnaya, the incredibly delicious apple charlotte pastry with apricot sauce.

And more sightseeing. They went to the Pushkin Art Museum and Lenin's Mausoleum and the Detsky Mir, Moscow's enchanting children's shop.

They were taken to places of whose existence most Russians were unaware. Granovsko Street, crowded with chauffeur-driven Chaikas and Volgas. Inside, behind a simple door marked "Office of Special Passes," they were ushered into a store crammed with imported luxury foodstuffs from all over the world. This was where the "Nachalstvo," the Russian elite, were privileged to shop.

They went to a luxurious dacha, where foreign films were run in the private screening room for the privileged few. It was a fascinating insight into the People's State.

On the afternoon of the day Toby was to give his final performance, the Temples were getting ready to go out shopping. Toby said, "Why don't you go alone, baby? I think I'll sack out for a while."

She studied him for a moment. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Great. I'm just a little tired. You go buy out Moscow."

Jill hesitated. Toby looked pale. When this tour was over, she would see to it that Toby had a long rest before he began his new television show. "All right," she agreed. "Take a nap."

Jill was walking through the lobby toward the exit when she heard a man's voice call, "Josephine," and even as she turned, she knew who it was, and in a split second the magic happened again.

David Kenyon was moving toward her, smiling and saying, "I'm so glad to see you," and she felt as though her heart would stop. He's the only man who has ever been able to do this to me, Jill thought.

"Will you have a drink with me?" David asked.

"Yes," she said.

The hotel bar was large and crowded, but they found a comparatively quiet table in a corner where they could talk.

"What are you doing in Moscow?" Jill asked.

"Our government asked me to come over. We're trying to work out an oil deal."

A bored waiter strolled over to the table and took their order for drinks.

"How's Cissy?"

David looked at her a moment, then said, "We got a divorce a few years ago." He deliberately changed the subject. "I've followed everything that's been happening to you. I've been a fan of Toby Temple's since I was a kid." Somehow, it made Toby sound very old. "I'm glad he's well again. When I read about his stroke, I was concerned about you." There was a look in his eyes that Jill remembered from long ago, a wanting, a needing.

"I thought Toby was great in Hollywood and London," David was saying.

"Were you there?" Jill asked, in surprise.

"Yes." Then he added quickly, "I had some business there."

"Why didn't you come backstage?"

He hesitated. "I didn't want to intrude on you. I didn't know if you would want to see me."

Their drinks arrived in heavy, squat glasses.

"To you and Toby," David said. And there was something in the way he said it, an undercurrent of sadness, a hunger...

"Do you always stay at the Metropole?" Jill asked.

"No. As a matter of fact, I had a hell of a time getting - " He saw the trap too late. He smiled wryly. "I knew you'd be there. I was supposed to have left Moscow five days ago. I've been waiting, hoping to run into you."

"Why, David?"

It was a long time before he replied. When he spoke, he said, "It's all too late now, but I want to tell you anyway, because I think you have a right to know."

And he told her about his marriage to Cissy, how she had tricked him, about her attempted suicide, and about the night when he had asked Jill to meet him at the lake. It all came out in an outpouring of emotion that left Jill shaken.

"I've always been in love with you."

She sat listening, a feeling of happiness flowing through her body like a warm wine. It was like a lovely dream come true, it was everything she had wanted, wished for. Jill studied the man sitting across from her, and she remembered his strong hands on her, and his hard demanding body, and she felt a stirring within herself. But Toby had become a part of her, he was her own flesh; and David...

A voice at her elbow said, "Mrs. Temple! We have been looking everywhere for you!" It was General Romanovitch.

Jill looked at David. "Call me in the morning."

Toby's last performance in the Bolshoi Theatre was more exciting than anything that had been seen there before. The spectators threw flowers and cheered and stamped their feet and refused to leave. It was a fitting climax to Toby's other triumphs. A large party was scheduled for after the show, but Toby said to Jill, "I'm beat, goddess. Why don't you go? I'll return to the hotel and get some shut-eye."

Jill went to the party alone, but it was as through David were at her side every moment. She carried on conversations with her hosts and danced and acknowledged the tributes they were paying to her, but all the time her mind was reliving her meeting with David. I married the wrong girl. Cissy and I are divorced. I've never stopped loving you.

At two o'clock in the morning, Jill's escort dropped her at her hotel suite. She went inside and found Toby lying on the floor in the middle of the room, unconscious, his right hand stretched out toward the telephone.

Toby Temple was rushed in an ambulance to the Diplomatic Polyclinic at 3 Sverchkov Prospekt. Three top specialists were summoned in the middle of the night to examine him. Everyone was sympathetic toward Jill. The chief of the hospital escorted her to a private office, where she waited for news. It's like a rerun, Jill thought. All this had happened before. It had a vague, unreal quality.

Hours later, the door to the office opened and a short, fat Russian waddled in. He was dressed in an ill-fitting suit and looked like an unsuccessful plumber. "I am Dr. Durov," he said. "I am in charge of your husband's case."

"I want to know how he is."

"Sit down, Mrs. Temple, please."

Jill had not even been aware that she had stood up. "Tell me!"

"Your husband has suffered a stroke - technically called a cerebral venous thrombosis."

"How bad is it?"

"It is the most - what do you say? - hard-hitting, dangerous. If your husband lives - and it is too soon to tell - he will never walk or speak again. His mind is clear but he is completely paralyzed."

Before Jill left Moscow, David telephoned her.

"I can't tell you how sorry I am," he said. "I'll be standing by. Anytime you need me, I'll be there. Remember that."

It was the only thing that helped Jill keep her sanity in the nightmare that was about to begin.

The journey home was a hellish deja vu. The hospital litter in the plane, the ambulance from the airport to the house, the sickroom.

Except that this time it was not the same. Jill had known it the moment they had allowed her to see Toby. His heart was beating, his vital organs functioning; in every respect he was a living organism. And yet he was not. He was a breathing, pulsating corpse, a dead man in an oxygen tent, with tubes and needles running into his body like antennae, feeding him the vital fluids that were necessary to keep him alive. His face was twisted in a horrifying rictus that made him look as though he were grinning, his lips pulled up so that his gums were exposed. I am afraid I can offer you no hope, the Russian doctor had said.

That had been weeks ago. Now they were back home in Bel-Air. Jill had immediately called in Dr. Kaplan, and he had sent for specialists who had summoned more specialists, and the answer always came out the same: a massive stroke that had heavily damaged or destroyed the nerve centers, with very little chance of reversing the damage that had already been done.

There were nurses around the clock and a physiotherapist to work with Toby, but they were empty gestures.

The object of all this attention was grotesque. Toby's skin had turned yellow, and his hair was falling out in large tufts. His paralyzed limbs were shriveled and stringy. On his face was the hideous grin that he could not control. He was monstrous to look at, a death's head.

But his eyes were alive. And how alive! They blazed with the power and frustration of the mind trapped in that useless shell. Whenever Jill walked into his room, Toby's eyes would follow her hungrily, frantically, pleading. For what? For her to make him walk again? Talk again? To turn him into a man again?

She would stare down at him, silent, thinking: A part of me is lying in that bed, suffering, trapped. They were bound together. She would have given anything to have saved Toby, to have saved herself. But she knew that there was no way. Not this time.

The phones rang constantly, and it was a replay of all those other phone calls, all those other offers of sympathy.

But there was one phone call that was different. David Kenyon telephoned. "I just want you to know that whatever I can do - anything at all - I'm waiting."

Jill thought of how he looked, tall and handsome and strong, and she thought of the misshapen caricature of a man in the next room. "Thank you, David. I appreciate it. There's nothing. Not at the moment."

"We've got some fine doctors in Houston," he said. "Some of the best in the world. I could fly them down to him."

Jill could feel her throat tightening. Oh, how she wanted to ask David to come to her, to take her away from this place! But she could not. She was bound to Toby, and she knew that she could never leave him.

Not while he was alive.

Dr. Kaplan had completed his examination of Toby. Jill was waiting for him in the library. She turned to face him as he walked through the door. He said, with a clumsy attempt at humor, "Well, Jill, I have good news and I have bad news."

"Tell me the bad news first."

"I'm afraid Toby's nervous system is damaged too heavily to be rehabilitated. There's no question about it. Not this time. He'll never walk or talk again."

She stared at him a long time, and then said, "What's the good news?"

Dr. Kaplan smiled. "Toby's heart is amazingly strong. With proper care, he can live for another twenty years."

Jill looked at him, unbelievingly. Twenty years. That was the good news! She thought of herself saddled with the horrible gargoyle upstairs, trapped in a nightmare from which there was no escape. She could never divorce Toby. Not as long as he lived. Because no one would understand. She was the heroine who had saved his life. Everyone would feel betrayed, cheated, if she deserted him now. Even David Kenyon.

David telephoned every day now, and he kept talking about her wonderful loyalty and her selflessness, and they were both aware of the deep emotional current flowing between them.

The unspoken phrase was, when Toby dies.