“Oh, Marv isn’t so bad. Just windy, that’s all. Anyhow, he doesn’t actually have an Aunt Lucy. Aunt Lucy is just someone who stands for anyone who is sadistic enough to write a letter for some poor postman to peddle.”
“I see. What’s his solution? Slaughter Aunt Lucy and sell her to the glue factory?”
“No. Nothing so drastic. He only wants to charge her a dollar for a stamp.”
“That figures. In Marv’s little mind, almost anything figures. Did we get a letter from Aunt Lucy?”
“Not Aunt Lucy. Avery Lawes.”
“You don’t tell me. Has he got himself cleaned out? Wasn’t that the way he put it?”
“Yes, that was the way. Apparently he’s done a damn good job of it in a pretty short time. He’s married.”
“Is that so? Good for Avery. Blessings on him and everything.”
“You don’t seem very surprised about it.”
“Why the hell should I be surprised when a man thirty years old gets married? It’s something that could have happened any time.”
“I mean, Avery being what he is and all. Or was. Or seemed. You remember what I told you about the night I took him home last November.”
“That hocus pocus about the Mexican musician? How long does a man go on brooding about something that happened when he was a kid?”
“Maybe the Mexican business was just part of it. Incidentally, Avery and his wife are in Mexico City right now.”
“Yes? Do you suppose there’s a psychological reason for Avery’s going back there? Something like a criminal returning to the scene of his crime? Well, maybe he’ll stray off and have a female Mexican musician for himself, and that will fix everything up. Sort of cancel out the other time.”
“That would be very neat.”
“Wouldn’t it? I like things to work out neatly. Do we know his wife?”
“No. Her name was Sheridan. Lisa Sheridan. She comes from Midland City.”
“That close? It’s funny, isn’t it, how two people so near each other have to go all the way to Miami to meet?”
“I guess so. Lots of people go to Miami in the winter, though. The ones who can afford it.”
He moved up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. She stopped fooling with her lipstick and tipped her head back and looked up at him through her lashes.
“Sautéed chicken livers, you say?”
“Yes.”
“Just keep them in your mind. Concentrate on them. Keep thinking about chicken livers, and you’ll be perfectly all right. Darling, you’re not concentrating.”
“I’m trying, but it doesn’t seem to be working.”
“Damn it, Em, you’re messing me up.”
“Chicken livers, chicken livers, chicken livers. Why doesn’t it work, Ed? What is this sudden madness that will not submit even to the thought of chicken livers?”
“Really, Em! After all this hard work! Oh, well, if you’re going to do a job, you might as well do a good one. Mess me up good, darling...”
Section 2
In the established cycle of measured time, January came to February, February came to March, and Mr. and Mrs. Avery Lawes came to Corinth. For the purpose of presenting the new wife, there was a party in the brick house on High Street to which people came who moved in the level of society that included the Laweses, which was top level and did not include Mr. and Mrs. Emerson Page. Not that Avery would have objected to including them or have had the slightest hesitation in inviting them if he had thought for a moment that they would have wanted to come, but he knew very well that they would not. He did not know Ed Page well and had no particular feeling about her one way or another, but for Emerson he had a natural liking that was stronger than any feeling he had for any other living man.
Avery had not entertained since becoming master of the High Street house, and the party limped, and the dissecting of Lisa proceeded with quiet deadliness and complete inaccuracy, and after the guests had crawled into their Buicks and Chryslers and Lincolns and Cadillacs and driven away, Lisa went upstairs to her room, and Avery got some ice and two glasses and a bottle of Scotch and followed her. He knocked on her door, and she told him to come in, which he did. It was the same room in which his father had once told his mother that it would possibly be a good idea to kill her.
“I thought you might like a nightcap,” he said.
“I would,” she said. “I would like one very much.”
She sat erectly on the edge of the bed while he fixed the drinks. When he handed her one, she took it and held it in both hands, the hands cupped around the glass, and lifted it to her lips as if it were something very heavy. With his own in hand, he sat down carefully in a chair: and stretched his legs and thought, looking across at her, that her appearance of frailty was even more pronounced than usual and that she was surely, beneath her superficial surface rigidity, on the verge of collapse. She was still wearing the dress she had worn at the party, a white dress pinched in at her tiny waist and cut low in the bodice to reveal partially the upper slopes of her small breasts, and she looked very young, and he was very sorry for her.
“It was rather deadly, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. I’m afraid I won’t be very good at entertaining. Will we have to do it often?”
“No. Not at all if you don’t want to.”
“I will try to do it once in a while. I don’t want to keep you from your friends.”
“Nonsense. I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. The truth is, I don’t like this kind of thing myself. Are you very tired?”
She thought of the depressing party and, beyond the party, of the arid, passionless, exhausting Mexican nights that had achieved nothing, and she was certain that it would have been impossible for anyone to be more tired than she was at that moment.
“Yes,” she said. “Are you?”
“Rather. I’ll finish my drink and go away and let you rest.”
“Don’t hurry. You are welcome to stay as long as you like.”
“Do you feel like talking a little?”
“If you want to talk, I’ll talk.”
“Tell me. How do you feel about it now? Now that we are settled in the house and you have met some of the people you will know?”
“Honestly?”
“Yes, of course. Honestly.”
“I feel just as I have felt from the first. Just as I told you in Miami and later in Mexico City. I feel that I have done you a great harm that you did not deserve and that I have taken the first step toward ruining your life and that I had better leave before I ruin it entirely.”
“That’s really a joke, Lisa. That part about ruining my life. You have no idea how big a joke I find it. I’ve tried and tried to tell you that this thing which is impossible between us does not matter. It is simply of no importance. Without it, we can still make something for ourselves that will be solid and secure and good for both of us. Can’t you understand that?”
“It is you who don’t understand.”
“Perhaps not. If I don’t, I wish you would try to make ft me.
“I can’t. It is something I simply can’t do.”
“Do you really want to leave me? If you really want it, I won’t try to stop you, but I wish that you wouldn’t.”
“No. I remember what I promised you that particularly horrible night in Mexico City. Do you think I have forgotten? I promised that I would try for a year, and I will keep my promise. I will try sincerely.”
He stood up and finished his drink standing, pretending a certainty that he did not feel.
“Good. It will work out for us in a year. I’m sure of that. I’m very fond of you, Lisa. Really I am. I should hate to lose you.”
“I’m fond of you too. I’m rather surprised that I am, to tell you the truth, but nevertheless it is so. You are kind and patient and much too good for me.”