“Of course I do, daahling.”
“So that’s the point and — hey, I know what I’ll do.”
“Okay.”
“Well, ask me, huh?”
“What’ll you do?”
“I’ll be Pope. Hah! Got you that time, Kleinman. We got to keep laughing, right? Right?”
Things swam back into focus. Mark was saying her name. She was on the sofa, her arms folded over her breasts, and he was at her side, half seated, half crouching, his hand on her shoulder.
“I’m all right,” she said.
“Are you sure? You scared hell out of me.”
“Did I pass out?”
“I don’t think so. You just seemed to go blank for a minute there. There wasn’t very much time involved. Baby, are you sure you’re all right?”
She nodded. “My mouth’s all dry.”
“I’ll get you some water.”
“I can get it myself.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
She sat there, still hugging herself, while he went to the kitchen and returned with a tall glass of cool water. She drank it all down in little birdlike sips, pausing to glance up at his broad face. When the glass was empty he asked if she felt better and she assured him that she did.
“I’m going to call Lerner,” he said.
“Oh, don’t do that. I feel fine, honest I do.” She cupped a hand over her abdomen. “Everything’s fine here, Mark. You don’t lose a baby by emotional shock. It only happens that way in the movies. If I fell down or something, but I was sitting right here the whole time, wasn’t I?”
“Just let me call him.”
She waited while he made the call from the kitchen. When he had confirmed what she had said herself, it was her turn to make some telephone calls. She didn’t know where to start, who to call first. The Alumnae Bulletin didn’t tell you anything, really, “It is with deep sadness that we report the death in New York City on July 17th of Winifred Crispin Welles. At the time of her death, Winkie was employed as an assistant features editor for Holiday Magazine. Previous positions included a stint as researcher at Time-Life, Inc.”
That was all you had to know, really. That Winkie had lived and was gone. But you felt you had to know more.
She was on the phone for an hour, spending most of that hour trying to reach people, and when she put the phone down finally she had learned what she now felt she had somehow known all along. Not a hit-and-run driver, not an unspeakable disease, not a mugger in Central Park. Winkie had killed Winkie.
When she put the phone down for the last time she turned to tell Mark what she had learned. But he’d overheard enough of the conversation. “You’d better sit down,” he told her. She said she was all right but she sat down anyway. He made her a drink and told her it was just what the doctor ordered. “Literally. ‘Give her a big drink and tell her to take things a little easier.’ Here’s your big drink. And please take things easier.”
“I couldn’t take things much easier.” She extended one hand, fingers separated. “God, look at me,” she said. “I’m shaking again.”
“I’ve never seen you like this.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been like this.”
“Well, it’s a shock.”
“I never knew anyone who killed themselves. I hardly ever knew anyone who died. Winkie was the first in my class. No, wait a minute, there was a girl who died of a brain tumor about six months after graduation and one a couple of years ago in an automobile accident. But I never really knew either of them. I never really experienced a death before.”
“What about November?”
“November? Oh, Kennedy. But I didn’t know him. You know something? That was so immediate, having a front-row seat, and now this. It happened two months ago and I never knew it until now.”
He had picked up the Bulletin again and was scanning the notice. “It doesn’t mention a husband,” he said.
“She wasn’t married.”
“Winifred Crispin Welles?”
“Crispin was her middle name. Her mother’s maiden name.”
“There’s a custom I’ve never understood. I suppose it’s all right with a guy but with a girl it’s confusing. It makes an unmarried girl sound married.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Also, what’s the point of it? With a man it’s a way of carrying on the name from the mother’s side of the family, but with a girl she’s going to drop her middle name when she gets married.”
“I suppose so.”
“‘Jeremy Kleinman Benstock.’ Nothing against your name, but I’m not wildly crazy about the sound of that.”
“I don’t think it works with Jewish names.”
“No, I’ve got to admit it works better with something like Crispin. The goyim have a distinct advantage over us. Are you feeling any better, baby?”
“Much better. But also worse, because it’s soaking in now. Winkie’s really dead. It’s funny, I haven’t thought of her middle name in years. Crispin. She said once that they tried to give her ‘Crispy’ as a nickname at Foxcroft but it didn’t stick. I can understand why, although I don’t think I could explain it. ‘Winkie’ seemed to suit her.”
“Was she a very good friend?”
“Well, she was the best friend I had at Bryn Mawr. There were really only two girls I was close to. Winkie and a girl named Dana Giddings. The three of us roomed together and of the two I was much closer to Winkie.”
“You’d think they’d have been closer to each other.”
She looked at him. “Why?”
“Well, they were both gentile, weren’t they?”
“Oh.”
“Or maybe it didn’t matter.”
“It didn’t.”
“I wonder why she killed herself. Unless it was accidental.”
“She took pills. Can you do that by accident?”
The question had been rhetorical but he nodded in response. “You sure can,” he said. “It happens frequently, from what I understand. You take a couple of pills and you don’t fall asleep and then you’re so groggy you forget you’ve taken them so you take some more. Before you know it you’ve knocked off the whole bottle. And alcohol, they can combine with alcohol and it magnifies the effect. Did she drink?”
“Everybody drank.”
“So you can’t be sure. Unless there was a note.”
“I don’t know if there was a note or not.”
“Well, in that case—”
“Look, what in the fucking hell is the difference? She wasn’t some Catholic, she’s not going to have to be buried in sacred ground. She wouldn’t have had an accident. She didn’t do things by accident.”
“Honey—”
“She killed herself, for God’s sake.” He looked at her and after a moment she averted her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Nothing to be sorry about.”
“I just don’t want to talk about it.”
“Sure.”
“Let me get dinner on the table.”
Remembering Winkie:
“Tell me something, Andrea Beth. Do I look positively terror-stricken?”
Winkie at the wheel of her crippled Plymouth coupe, her long hair bound up in a scarf, eyes hidden behind large round-lensed sunglasses, one hand draped casually over the steering wheel, the other coiled in her lap.
“No. Not at all.”
“Are you absolutely certain of that?”
“You know what you look like, Winks? First World War flying ace. Veteran of countless missions.”
“Nerves of stainless steel?”
“Absolutely.”
“An old hand at crash landings?”
“Now you’ve got it.”
“Yeah, I’ve got it, all right. And we’re on our way to get rid of it, and I’m not flying around in my Sopwith Camel after all. I’m scared, can you believe it?”