Carol smiled grimly. There was no power on earth that could pry her loose.
But what Greta might do to Max was another problem. She tried to tell herself that this way might be best, that Greta’s honesty would make disillusion quick and clean. Max was young enough, at twenty-five, to bounce back, possibly find a new outlet for his intensely creative energies. She wished that she had gotten Greta’s letter in time to write back a white lie that would cancel the visit. Probably Greta had guessed her reaction and had timed it in just that way.
“Why so somber, old lady?” Max asked.
She tilted her head to one side and smiled up at him. “Old enough to know better,” she said. It was a game they played, question and response. Yet she knew that she did not feel older than Max. She thought, with a certain smugness, that Greta might be more than mildly astonished to find a Carol with a younger figure, a younger face than when Charles was alive. It was odd. Charles had always seemed to expect a matronly dignity, and so you became what he seemed to want. And with Max you could be forever young.
Now she knew she would have to be young enough to fight this thing with him, to help him withstand the sharpness of disappointment, to help him find a new direction for his life.
She thought it most odd that Max should have such a blind spot. And she knew that she was not wrong. The modern schools were no mystery to her. Subjective art did not appall her, and she could look at formlessness in an unselfconscious attempt to find decorativeness without implication. But Max’s work, with the ripened flesh of flowers, or gray stumps in a harsh chrome-yellow sea, with backgrounds like flashlight rays converging on swamp grasses — it was not representational, nor subjective, nor anything classifiable. It simply made her feel tense and confused and oddly frightened.
Max glanced beyond her toward the house and said casually, “The top brass has arrived, I think.”
She jumped up, turned and saw Greta, tall and slim, getting out of a blue sedan parked in front of their house, on the far side of the narrow gravel road. Carol snatched up the blanket and cigarettes and hurried toward the road. She was suddenly conscious that the bathing suit Max had bought for her was more extreme than any she had ever owned before.
“Greta!” she called.
Greta turned from the front door, shading her eyes against the sun. “Carol? My goodness, it is Carol!” Greta’s lips were cool against her cheek, her thin hand strong on Carol’s arm. She turned those level eyes on Max. “If you’re Max I’m going to ask you what you’ve done to her. She looks seventeen.”
“Sixteen,” Max said firmly.
They all laughed and some of the tension was gone. They went into the house. Greta sat on the edge of the bed and talked to Carol through the half-open bathroom door as Carol changed. Max, still in swimming trunks, was making a great clatter in the kitchen, fixing rum Collinses.
Carol came out of the bathroom, zipping her dress at the side. “Hope you still like spaghetti. Max taught me his way to make the sauce.”
“Love it! Your Max is quite an overpowering guy, Carol. I didn’t expect him to look like that.”
“I suppose,” Carol said distantly, “you expected an oily little type with a waxed mustache and a beret.”
“Oh, come off it, lady,” Greta laughed. “Ex-roommates don’t have to spar. Actually I’m eaten up with jealousy. Not over Max, but over how slim you are and how your complexion looks and how your eyes shine.” Her voice sobered. “You must be very happy.”
Carol turned quickly away. There was no sane reason for the sting of tears in her eyes. “I am happy, Greta. Happier than I knew anyone could be.”
“I will report that in all the proper places. Everyone will be suitably enraged, and just as jealous as I am.”
Carol lowered her voice and said hastily, “Max will want you to see his work, Greta. I’d never ask you to do anything that would not be completely ethical, Greta, but if you could—”
Max came to the bedroom door. “Gabble and yadata-yadata. Is a man to drink alone?” He had showered out in back, changed to soft gray slacks and a black, short-sleeved shirt.
“Here we come,” Greta said, giving Carol an odd, questioning glance.
“Get her suitcase from the car, Max,” Carol said, wanting time to finish what she had started to say.
“No, please,” Greta said. “You can twist my arm for drinks and a very early dinner, but I must be out of here by seven-thirty at the latest. That’s for sure.”
“Lucky you,” Max said. “The guest mattress is stuffed with coral and driftwood.”
They took the drinks out onto the small side porch that faced the gulf. Max dropped the rattan blinds against the sun which slanted directly in at them. The sound of the surf sixty yards away was like the slow pulse of a great heart.
In the silence Max looked over at Greta and said, “You don’t look a Saint Bernard.”
“My goodness! What do you—”
“With a keg tied under your chin,” Max said, grinning.
“What? Oh, I get it,” Greta said. “Rescue mission. I should ask you how you guessed, but maybe it was pretty obvious. Maybe I was wrong. Long-distance impressions aren’t too valid.”
“Agreed, Greta,” he said. “I wasn’t going to show you my work. I had it all decided. I’ve read some of your stuff. You make sense.”
“Oh, thank you, sir!” Greta said.
“Children! Please!” Carol said.
“You stay out of this.” Greta said. “I’m about to use a left hook on him.”
“And I’ll bet it’s a beaut,” Max said solemnly. “Just one thing I want clear. I’m not hungry yet. I’m not even ready for one of those reviews beginning ‘I found the most exciting new talent in Florida.’ ”
“Is it exciting? Or even talent?” Greta asked.
Max stared at Carol. “That was the left hook she mentioned.” He turned back to Greta. “I’m not saying this well. I didn’t want you to see the stuff because your opinion didn’t matter to me one way or the other.”
“And now it does?”
“Because I like you. Is that a silly reason?”
“Not entirely,” Greta said. “Shall we go look at this exciting new talent?”
“Oh, not yet!” Carol said, trying to sound casual, yet knowing that the strain in her voice was too evident. “Let’s do it after we eat, shall we?”
She saw them both stare at her. Max said. “And miss the daylight?”
Greta interrupted smoothly, “She’s being a good wife, Max. Never show pictures to a critic with hunger pains. But I would like to see them now.”
“Let’s go,” Max said. They walked ahead of Carol, through the kitchen. The sauce was bubbling on the back of the stove. She bit her lip hard and blinked back the tears. More than anything else she wanted to run, to hide, to do anything but watch Greta’s cool and devastating dissection of Max’s work. But now was a time to stand by Max.
She hurried after them down the hallway to the studio. Greta sat near the window. Carol stood near the door. Max set the empty easel in place, then bent over the canvases stacked against the wall. He whistled thinly between his teeth as he sorted through them. Carol watched him for some sign of nervousness and could see none. Max and his confidence! Suddenly it seemed pathetic.
Carol moved just a bit so that she could watch Greta’s face. Max selected one and put it on the easel. It was one of the early ones, done before she had met Max. Greta did not change expression, but Carol thought she saw one hand tighten.