over. He’d blow a fuse, she thought. But it was too late to change
things: already quarter to seven.
Richie arrived ten minutes later, with a spray of yellow roses and a
bottle of champagne under his arm. “I thought as long as we were doing
it, we might as well do it right,” he said handing them to her. He
looked very handsome in his dark suit. He was fair, like Page, but
heavier set and shorter. His features were fuller, more emphatic than
Page’s: one might say a little coarser, though coarse only by
comparison. He was a sensitive, intelligent man, and he was pleasant
company that evening.
The champagne eased Sunny’s apprehensions about Page and she relaxed and
enjoyed herself. Richie talked about himself at her insistence, telling
her about the medical school he had attended and why he had specialized
in obstetrics. “I just like women and babies, I guess,” he laughed. “Not
a very scientific reason.”
She laughed with him and listened with interest, and he found himself
growing expansive with her attention on him and the champagne in him.
“It’s a pleasure to talk like this,” he told her when the dinner was
over and they were drinking their coffee with Page’s prize Drambuie. “I
spend so damn much time every day listening.”
“That’s why you’re so popular,” she said.
“You think so?” he chuckled. “I used to have an old professor who
insisted the bedside manner was half the cure. Any time you want to let
me practice it on you, I’d be delighted.”
The time went much too fast. Sunny was surprised and disappointed when
Richie got up to go a few minutes past eleven.
“I’m afraid I kept you too long,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you really?”
“No,” she admitted with a little smile. “I’d keep you longer if I
could.” But when he reached toward her she added quickly: “But just to
talk. Nobody else can make me smile these days.”
He let his hands fall back. “When you take up medicine you give up
normal hours for the rest of your life,” he said. “You have to sleep
wherever you can and whenever you get the chance.”
She saw him to the door, getting his coat from the hall closet. There
was a clumsy little silence after he had put it on and stood there in
front of her, hesitating. She hoped, suddenly self-conscious, that he
would not try to kiss her.
But he only said, “Thank you, Sunny, for a beautiful evening. Everything
was perfect. Especially you.”
She surprised herself and him both by kissing his cheek, a swift, soft,
tip-toed peck. “That’s for taking such good care of me,” she said.
He couldn’t help kissing her then, and she wondered, while he held her,
what might have happened to her life if she had met him before she met
Page. It was idle conjecture, really; she loved Page with her whole
heart. But Richie Settick was a fine man; strong, intelligent,
attractive. And while he respected her feelings for her husband, he was
not sorry she admired himself and liked him and needed him. He would do
nothing to discourage her.
He squeezed her one last time. “I’ll call you tomorrow, after I’ve
talked to Brian,” he said, gave her one long look, and left.
* * * * *
Richie’s call came just five minutes after unpredictable Page had walked
in on his wife, and Sunny was so flustered on the phone, trying to warn
Richie without making Page suspicious, that Richie finally caught on.
“Is your husband there?”
“Extremely!” she said and he muttered, “Oh, God. Well, I’d better call
you back.”
“No, I’ll call you,” she said, afraid he might call again before Page
left. Or perhaps Page had no intention of leaving. She couldn’t guess
what he had come for.
Sunny hung up and followed Page into the kitchen, where he had gone
while she was on the phone. She found him with his head in the
refrigerator, sampling the previous night’s leftovers.
“Boy,” he mumbled through a full mouth. “Good, honey.” He waved a piece
of roast beef at her.
“Is that all you have to say to me?” she said, half-joking,
half-dismayed.
“No.” He glanced at her almost bashfully, and turned away, finding a
knife in the kitchen drawer to cut the meat. The sight of him with a
blade in his hand made her gasp.
“It’s all right,” he said hastily. “I just want something to eat. I
always thought I married a crackerjack cook.” He gave her a smile that
seemed more like a cover-up for something else. He was too casual, too
much the sophisticated spouse calling on his estranged wife to chat. She
half-expected a polite inquiry on the health of her lovers.
“How is your hand, darling?” she asked. The wound was one week old.
“Okay,” he said.
“I’ll bet it hurts a lot,” she said. “What did you do with the finger,
Page?”
He blinked, humiliated by the discussion. “Threw it in the garbage,” he
said briefly.
“But it was a part of you,” she protested. “I know it sounds silly,
but—”
“It certainly does,” he said, refusing to look at her and eating a chunk
of beef. “What would I do with the thing? Pickle it?”
“I guess not,” she admitted. She put a cautious hand on his shoulder.
“Page? Why are you here?”
“To see you.”
“Don’t be so damn matter-of-fact about it,” she cried. “This is the
first time you’ve come to see me since this thing happened. Page, put
that meat down and _talk_ to me.” She snatched it from him and
re-wrapped it in aluminum foil.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“What did you come for?” She faced him with her hands folded over her
bosom and he knew he would have to do battle to get them down again. She
wasn’t going to give him any help.
He made a fuss over his sticky hands and spent some minutes cleaning
them up.
“How are you feeling?” he said lamely. “I mean, what does the doctor
say? I mean you scared me last week. You were so thin and white. You
looked so beautiful, honey, but too damn skinny. Are you all right?”
He delivered this halting speech, full of love and embarrassment,
without looking at her. She decided not to answer till he looked at her.
Eventually, in the ensuing silence, he had to.
“Darling?” he questioned softly. “Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not.”
He paled. He blushed easily when he was self-conscious and conversely
went white with alarm. Sunny’s reactions were identical, and it touched
her to see the trait in Page, even though it was another physical proof
of their blood tie. “Are you really sick or are you trying to scare me?”
he said.
“I’m really almost sick. Dr. Settick says I have to get out of New York
for a while. He doesn’t want me to see you any more.”
She hadn’t stopped to think that her words would be antagonistic. She
meant to spite him and instead infuriated him.
“You tell that bastard he can take a flying jump at the moon!” he
exploded. “Who is he to tell you if you can see your own husband?”
“My _ex_-husband,” she reminded him. “Be consistent, Page. He said it
because I get so upset he’s afraid it will affect the baby’s health. And
mine. He said if my depression lasts he can’t answer for the baby’s safe
delivery. He said it would be on your conscience.”
She hadn’t intended to tell him that. She meant to slip away on her trip
and leave him a reassuring note. No recriminations. But the way he
gnawed on that roast beef, maligned Richie, avoided her, with such a
show of casual sophistication, incensed her. She knew he was trying to
hide his love, to prevent a burst of uncontrollable desire for her. But
it made her want to tear down his cool self-righteousness.
“Page, I wish I could make you come to me on your knees,” she cried. “I
wish I could make you feel what I feel when I crawl to you and beg you
to kiss me and need me and—” She broke down and cried.
Watching her, his anger melted. “Don’t go away,” he began. “Please,
Sunny. I couldn’t live in this town if you weren’t here. Just knowing I
can see you if I have to—”
“If you have to!” she shouted. “That’s too big an ‘if,’ Page. Either
live with me as my husband or consider the annulment official and leave
me forever. Make up your mind.”
“Darling, I can’t. Don’t force me—”
“Well, which is better?” she asked brokenly through her tears. “This
piecemeal love-making? This frantic once-a-month stuff that exhausts us
both? Or making up our minds we have to have each other anyway, and so
living together? Page, I can’t take this and neither can you.
“You say it’s wrong for us to sleep together because we’re brother and
sister. Well, why do we do it, then? Why don’t we say good-by and get it
over with? This installment-plan passion is just as immoral as living
together and a lot more agonizing. You say you have principles. All
right, stick to them!”
She finished with a small cry of dismay. She had delivered an ultimatum
to him by mistake. All the pent-up wrath of the preceding months boiled
out of her and she couldn’t stop it.
“That doctor’s been brainwashing you!” he said.
“He’s been telling me the truth.”
“He’s trying to turn you against me! And he’s probably in love with
you.”
“Yes, he is!” she fired back with vindictive pride.
“Oh, God!” he cried. “And I suppose you’ve invited him over here—to _my_
apartment—”
“_My_ apartment,” she corrected him. “You forfeited your right to it
months ago.”
“I suppose that roast beef was for him.”
“You don’t think I’d cook all that for myself, do you?” she said in a
voice made unsteady with tears. “He’s a lot better company than you are,
too.”
“Don’t you leave this city,” he warned. “I’ll have that bone-picker
jailed for alienation of affections!”
“Can you sue if the affections belong to your mistress, not your wife?
Since we’re getting technical, let me remind you as you keep reminding
me: we’re not married. And I’m no more sleeping with Richie Settick than
you are with your secretary.”
They stared at each other. Page dared not relent for fear of crushing
her in his arms and forgiving her everything, even the things she only
did in his imagination—and those were the worst of the lot.
“You think I let him make love to me, don’t you?” she said.
“No,” he said and the admission surprised her almost as the sudden quiet
of his voice. The starch in him washed out suddenly.
He went to her, hesitant and ashamed of his outburst, expecting the
frigid reception he deserved. But she moved toward him and he caught
her, holding her tightly as if he meant to keep her there forever.
“Every time I shout at you I get myself in trouble,” he said unhappily.
“I’m so damn jealous I’m acting like a five-year-old. If I can’t have
you I don’t want anyone else to. But you see Settick too much and you
like him too much. No wonder he’s in love with you. He’d have to be
blind not to be. And he’s too damn available.”
“But darling, the man I want is so _un_available.”
He kissed her mouth, long and tenderly. She only said one word when he
released her: “Stay.”
But he wasn’t ready; not yet. He was thinking, he was suffering, he was
even softening. But it was still beyond his courage to commit himself.
He left her moments later. Sunny didn’t beg, she didn’t cry. She sensed
a new attitude in him, a new gentleness, and she didn’t want to frighten
it off. He was trying to control the emotions that had mastered him so
often in the past, and, for the first time, he was taking a cautious
look at her side of things.
An hour later she called Richie Settick back on the phone.
“You have a reservation on a jet flight to Los Angeles for Thursday,
honey,” he told her. “Tessa, Brian’s wife, will pick you up at
International Airport. She’ll have an apartment for you, too; something
small, near Brian’s office. They wanted to take you in themselves, but I
told them no. They have four little kids and it’s a madhouse.”
“Thanks a million, Richie,” she said. “I’d better let my parents know
where I am.”
“Wait till you get out there,” he said. “And don’t let them tell Page.”
“I’ll say it’s a trial separation,” she said. “They don’t even know I’m
pregnant and they’re awfully fond of Page. They’d be heart-sick if they
thought we were breaking up.”
“This won’t be half as bad as you think, Sunny,” he comforted her. “I’ll
drive you out to Idlewild Thursday.”
“Thanks, Richie.”
“Now get yourself packed and get your money from the bank,” he said.
“And don’t do it all at once and wear yourself out. That baby’s still
got almost three months to go, and we don’t want him coming early. Might
louse up my vacation.”
She obeyed him; she was too tired to argue. Richie was efficient and
strong and he simply took over, helping her pack, running last-minute
errands for her, getting things in order. She told him about Page’s
visit.
“And you told him you were leaving? You shouldn’t have done that,
Sunny.”
“I don’t know why I did, except that he made me so angry. I wanted to
see him really afraid of losing me.”
“But my God, he’ll be after you all the time,” Richie said. “I’m
surprised he hasn’t barged in already.”
“Not that boy,” she said with weary sarcasm. “I told Page I was leaving,
yes,” she added. “But not when or where. I’ve stuck it out all these
months and he just figures I won’t leave now. And I wouldn’t, except for
the baby.”
She sat down glumly on a suitcase. “Maybe I ought to stay,” she
whispered, almost to herself. “He really tried to understand a little.”
“A little isn’t enough. Now forget it. Don’t think about him,” Richie
ordered her. “Think about that instead.” He indicated her small belly.
“I don’t see how there’s room for a _mouse_ in there,” she mourned,
looking down at herself, “let alone a baby.”
“Some of the smallest girls have the biggest babies,” he said.
“But they stick out, don’t they?” She lifted her sad face for his
reassuring reply and he kissed it instead. She murmured wryly, “Enter
Page, twirling mustache. Sunny screams. Gallant doctor draws pistol and
defends virtue of wronged damsel. Duel follows. Everybody drops dead.
Justice is served. Fanfare. End of story.” She glanced at Settick.
“Maybe we’d all be better off dead,” she said.
“The hell with that noise,” he retorted cheerfully. “Nobody’s better off
dead.”
“Not even the screwballs? The queers and the criminals?”
“Not even them. Not in my book.” He was kneeling with one leg on her
other bag, forcing it shut. “There’s always a chance the square peg will
find a square hole.”
“How about the people who make love to corpses? Or their own sex? Or
their own brother?”
There was a small bemused pause. “You have a morbid imagination, honey,”
he said, smiling.
“You mean you condone all those things?” she said, feeling an almost
compulsive need to talk about it. “Murder? And sodomy? And—incest?”
“No,” he said calmly. “I don’t condone. And I don’t condemn. I try to
correct. I had a patient a few months ago—can’t remember which one, they
all ask questions—who wanted to know about incest.” His look made her
heart skip.
“What did you tell her? Sure, go ahead? Incest is better than nothing?”
“No. She wasn’t committing it, she was asking about it,” he said.
“How do you know?” Sunny felt as if she were playing dangerously near
the cliff of confession: one slip and over she’d go. Or was confession
unnecessary? Had he already guessed? She didn’t think so, because she
felt he would have asked her about it if he had.
“Well, come to think of it, I don’t know whether she was or not,” he
answered. “Stranger things have happened.... There you are, all packed.
We have three hours to get the plane.”
“What did you tell her, Richie?”
“About the incest? She wondered if it would affect the children. Why?”
“Maybe it was her own baby she was worried about.”
“Maybe it was.” He stared at her. “My God, maybe it was. Why am I so
dense about these things? Damn. Takes a woman to see through another
woman, I guess.” He kept staring at her and she had the sudden
premonition that he would remember at any second.
She got up lightly. She was sweating nervously and longed for him to
drop the subject. He did, at once, almost as if he knew it embarrassed
her. If she had trusted herself she would have dismissed it with one
last silly crack, to throw him off. But her composure was riskily thin
and she was afraid it showed.
Just don’t let him put two and two together, she prayed.
* * * * *
He drove her out to the airport. They didn’t talk much until they got
there and checked her bags and went to have a drink.
“Do you really want me to have a martini?” she said.
“Sure. One won’t hurt you. Might do you some good.”
When their drinks came, Sunny said, “Richie, Page will find out I’ve
gone sooner or later. I didn’t leave any note or address, but he knows
your name. And it won’t take him long to find you, once he knows I’m not
in New York. It might be tomorrow or a month from tomorrow, I don’t
know. But I do know he’ll think it’s all your fault.”
“Don’t worry about it, Sunny. I can handle him. If he really loves you,
I’ll use his love to convince him. After all, you aren’t leaving
forever. Once the baby is safely delivered and you’ve got your health
back, there’s no reason why you can’t see him again. He wouldn’t hurt
you, would he? Physically?”
She shook her head. “I feel as if I’m dreaming,” she said. “This place,
those big planes roaring out there. I’ve never even flown before. Did I
tell you that?”
“It doesn’t scare you, does it?” he asked.
“No. I feel sort of numb. I’m glad; I don’t know if I could go through
with it otherwise.”
He took her to the gate and handed her ticket to her. She turned to
thank him, with the wind whipping her hair, and found herself crying.
Richie put his arms around her and held her so hard she thought he meant
to crack her ribs. But she returned the embrace without protest. At last
she lifted her head and said, “Thank you.” It was all she had composure
for, but he could see in her face how much she meant it.
“I wish I were free to tell you how much I love you,” he said.
But she put a restraining finger on his lips and gave him a warning
smile. “When you see my frantic husband—and he’ll be pretty frantic,
believe me,” she said, “—will you please tell him for me that I love him
... very much?”
“I’ll tell him,” he said, as if to atone for his declaration of a moment
before. “And remember, Sunny, no matter what happens, I’m going to
deliver that baby. I’ll see you in a couple of months. Take care.”
Sunny smiled. She went through the gate and walked to the plane, up the
ramp, and inside.
Settick stood and watched her disappear, then found her when she took
her seat by a window toward the back, and stood with his hat in his
hand, waving and cursing silently the name of Page Pringle, until she
vanished in the clouds.
14
“So you finally lost track of them, then?” Mr. Winkler asked Jack
disappointedly, accepting a sandwich from Laura. It was after three A.M.
In a little while the summer streets of Chicago would be light again and
hot with the June warmth that had scarcely abated in the dark hours.
“No,” Jack said. “The Rothelis called us and filled us in a couple of
weeks ago. They were trying to find the Pringles to tell them where
Sunny was. June thought we’d have their phone number. She told us Sunny
was in Los Angeles. She thought Page and Sunny were headed for a divorce
and she was pretty worried.”
“Then she still didn’t know the truth? I mean, that Page was their lost
son, Roger?”
“No. She told us all she knew and we guessed at the rest.”
Winkler’s face was tired but no less interested. The sandwich revived
his energy and he listened carefully, like a student at a lecture who
would write a paper on the subject as soon as he got home.
And Jack, by this time, was speaking to him with the familiarity of long
acquaintance; long only in hours, but deep in perception. Jack now knew
who Winkler was. It made him feel safer and easier in relating the
story.
* * * * *
Page brooded silently for four days in New York until he could stand it
no more. His jealousy was full-blown; his loneliness made all the days
seem gray.
He stood in the middle of his living room, trying to ignore the phone.
At last he grabbed it with a sort of sideswipe, pretending he wasn’t
quite aware of what he was doing and that would make it all right to
call her, just as it’s all right to do outrageous things in your dreams
because it isn’t the real you doing them.
He dialed her number, rehearsing his speech. It shocked him severely
when the operator broke in after a couple of rings to ask what number he
was calling. He told her.
“That number has been disconnected, sir,” she said.
He hung up without answering, standing perfectly still and saying to
himself, She did it because she doesn’t want to hear from me. She did it
because she wants me to think she doesn’t have enough money in the bank.
She’s only trying to scare me.
And Page was frightened. He rushed downstairs and hailed a cab, driving
over to her apartment with his heart pounding in his throat. Her windows
were dark, though it was nearly eight o’clock. Perhaps she was at a
movie. Or out with the doctor.
The small entrance hall was faintly lighted and he went up the stairs to
her rooms with noisy carelessness. He still had a key and put it to the
lock. But it didn’t fit. _That’s going too far!_ he thought angrily.
Chagrined, he shuffled down to the basement in search of the janitor,
whose room was behind the furnace.
“Hello, Mr. Pringle,” the janitor said amiably, opening his door.
“Hi. Say, I seem to have lost my key,” Page said, hoping his
embarrassment didn’t show. “Could you let me in my wife’s apartment?”
“That lock’s been changed, boy.” The janitor gave him a curious stare.
“And anyways, she ain’t there.”
Page felt like hitting him. “Where is she?” he asked.
“How should I know? Just left, without no address.”
“Did she go—alone?”
“Had some young fella to help her. Blond, like you, but not so tall.
Seemed to think a lot of her.” He smiled the lecherous grin of the aged
and impotent.
“Settick!” Page said.
He turned and ran up the stairs with the janitor’s evil laughter
floating after him. He raced to the nearest drug-store with a phone
booth. In a moment he had Dr. Richard Settick’s home address in his
pocket, and in another moment he was in a taxi on the way there.
It was about eight-thirty when Richie Settick answered the ring at his
door. He opened it with a wide friendly sweep, the way he usually did,
and froze. He was confronted with a strange tense man whose face was
bafflingly familiar.
Page was holding himself together by a strict effort of will, as if he
feared letting go and blowing to bits in front of this rival. For a
moment Settick thought he had a crackpot on his hands.
“What do you want?” he said.
“My wife.”
And Richie knew immediately who he was facing. Whatever else he knew, or
guessed, he didn’t say. Page was trembling, and the little twitch around
his eyes gave warning of the rumbling violence inside him.
“Come in, Page,” Richie said, and such was Page’s emotional state that
he never stopped to wonder how Richie recognized him without having seen
him before. Richie, on his guard, stepped aside to let Page pass. He had
expected a noisy, threatening bully. Instead Sunny’s husband was stiff
and silent.
“Where is my wife?” Page said.
“She’s on a little trip,” Richie told him. “Sit down, Page.”
“I want Sunny,” Page warned, ignoring Settick’s invitation with a
darkening face.
“I had to send her away.”
“Don’t you understand English? Where is my wife?” Page was shaking
visibly. Richie judged, being smaller and not having the advantage of
anger, that he’d get a shellacking unless he betrayed Sunny. So it took
some courage for him to declare, “I can’t tell you where she is. If you
find her she’ll have that baby on the spot. It might kill her, Page. And
not many babies survive such a premature birth, either.”
“No one can say that for sure. You’re trying to bluff me,” Page said in
a strong, urgent voice in spite of his shaking. He had pride, like
Sunny, and he would not let himself come apart in front of this man she
admired. Settick was calm and forceful, well-informed, a man to respect.
Page could appreciate it without liking it. He was ready to hate this
man who had persuaded Page’s wife to leave him. But he knew Sunny would
not listen to an ordinary man. Accordingly, in spite of his bitterness,
he was curious, and he felt no contempt for Settick.
“I’m a doctor. I know when a pregnant girl is in trouble,” Richie told
him. “If Sunny loses that baby you’ll have yourself to blame, not just
for the baby’s death but for what happens to Sunny because of it. And
it’ll be rough, I can promise you that.”
Page watched him, suddenly recalling his mother, June Rotheli, and
Pringle’s story of how she had tragically lost her mind when he, Roger,
was born. Sunny might do that if she lost her child. She was a lot like
her mother. The thought made him weigh Settick’s words.