But there was something else. I didn’t warn him I was coming. I wanted to surprise him, to see what this American life he’s leading all the time now is like without him having the chance to cover anything up. I wanted to catch him out, get things out into the open, find some resolution to the way I am feeling.
I took a taxi from the airport downtown. Philadelphia was hot: thick, sticky heat, the kind of heat that feels more like syrup than air as you walk through it. The Intelligencer’s building is a solid nineteenth-century edifice on Chestnut Street, with columns and Latin mottos scraped into the stone. Neels has the top floor. I announced myself at the lobby and an attractive black secretary met me and ushered me upstairs. She was very friendly, showed me into Neels’s office and gave me a cup of coffee. His office looks much the same as it did last time I was in there a year ago. That old photo of me is still on his desk, I was glad to see, although that’s pretty sad, isn’t it? A wife checking up to see if her photo is still on her husband’s desk. There is one new photograph there, of Todd playing rugby, taken last year. Neels is proud of Todd’s rugby playing, and he’s pretty good, although he’s never going to be as good as his father was.
I sat there, on his sofa, watching the saturated air build into afternoon storm clouds over the city. The pressure was falling, I could feel it in my ears.
Then I heard Neels’s loud voice approaching. He was speaking in Afrikaans. A woman was answering him, a young woman. As they approached the doorway to his office, she said, “Oh, Neels!” He laughed and said something I couldn’t catch, except he ended it with the word “liefie.” Liefie means “darling.” But it means more than that, so much more than that. It’s what Neels calls me. It’s the one Afrikaans word he uses with me, the only one. He says it’s mine. He never used it on any of the children, not on Zan or Caroline; he once told me that he never used it for Penelope. Just me. And her. This woman whom I hadn’t even seen yet.
They came into the room. She was beautiful, of course. Blonde hair scraped back from her forehead, pale skin, strong angular face, smart business suit, perfect make-up. Only about twenty-five, maybe twenty-eight. And cool, oh so cool. Neels looked shocked to see me, but the woman smiled politely and held out her hand. “You must be Martha,” she said with a distinct South African accent. “I’m Beatrice Pienaar. Cornelius has kindly allowed me to work here for a couple of months.”
I took her hand and looked into her eyes. Blue, intelligent, calm, calculating. Her control was perfect, almost. But, as I watched, two tiny blushes of pink appeared on those fine alabaster cheekbones. She was betrayed by a dozen capillaries.
I’m not quite sure what happened next. Neels stumbled and stuttered before regaining his self-control. The Beatrice woman made her excuses and left. Neels got into his stride and talked heartily about his plan to buy the Herald. A rival buyer has popped up with a higher offer, but Neels thinks he will win. No mention of impending bankruptcy. No mention of the Laagerbond. He said how pleased he was that I had come to see him, how we’d have a great couple of days together. I smiled and nodded, still dazed, although I remember thinking that if I had interrupted him in a business meeting instead of flirting with his lover he would have been much less friendly.
Neels had lunch booked with the editor of one of his Ohio papers, and so he suggested Edwin take me out. We agreed I’d see Neels at the apartment at seven. I really don’t like Edwin. He’s only twenty-eight, but he’s so pompous in his little three-piece suit despite the ninety-degree heat. He acts like he’s forty-five, and the way he’s gaining flab and losing his hair he’ll soon look like it too. He’s so unlike Neels. But he’s not stupid, he’s a devious little creep. He doesn’t like me much either; I did steal his father from his mother, after all. But we’ve always been polite to each other. I think Edwin has a much bigger problem with Neels, but that’s another story.
I couldn’t face lunch with him, so once we were out on the sidewalk I shooed him away, and stood outside the Intelligencer offices with my suitcase, waiting for a cab. It had started to rain, one of those summer torrents that sends giant pebbles of water hopping all over the streets. I watched the rain for a quarter of an hour before a cab stopped.
I told it to take me to the airport.
I’m writing this on the plane to Minneapolis. There’s quite a bit of turbulence, the pilot said something about more thunderstorms, so it’s difficult to keep my pen on the page.
I feel terrible. I feel as if a giant hand has worked its way into my stomach, grabbed my guts and started twisting. And it won’t stop. That last sentence is blotted by a tear, not the vodka and tonic I’ve just spilled. That landed on my knee, staining my white pants. But I don’t regret going to Philadelphia. I had to know. And I didn’t want to find out by snooping around Neels’s stuff, or hiring a private detective, or asking our friends about the gossip. I’m also glad I saw her.
Glad? As I was standing in the rain waiting for a cab, I realized the obvious. She’s just like me, or like I was. I met Neels in exactly that way. I was her age when he suggested I work in his offices for a while. He was married then and I was tall, blonde, attractive, although I was never a cold-hearted bitch like her. But there’s a pattern.
I knew I was wrong to take Neels from Penelope, but I didn’t regret it. I told myself I had no choice: I was in love, and Neels loved me. She was an awful woman, already on the way to becoming an alcoholic. Mom and Dad didn’t approve. At first I think they thought I had gone off my head, marrying some apartheid-loving Afrikaner, but when they met Neels they recognized at least that he was a decent man, decent, but older, ten years older, and married.
My parents are good people. They forgave me. I think they even grew to like Neels. What am I going to tell them now? That he is the cheating philanderer they always assumed he was?
I need another vodka.
August 6
How I love my parents! My mother was so good. She knew something was wrong, of course, when I showed up at the door, half-drunk, my face dark with misery. Apparently Neels had called all agitated wanting to know where I was, why I wasn’t at the apartment in Philadelphia. Mom didn’t ask questions, she didn’t pressure me, she just welcomed me home. She called Neels back to tell him I was with them and I was okay, but I was too tired to talk to him.
This morning I’m sitting on the swing seat out on the porch looking out over the lake. I’ve called Caroline, she’s just gotten back from school and she’s fine. I feel bad about leaving her, but I know she’ll be okay with Zan and Doris for a few days.
I’m going sailing with Dad this afternoon. I hope he’s up to it. He looks a lot more frail than he did last time I saw him, which was when they came out to South Africa at Christmas. He’s over seventy now, seventy-two, and for the first time he looks it. Although Mom’s sixty-nine, she doesn’t act anything like an old lady yet.
I think I will talk to her about Neels. She’s the only person I really can talk to.