“I don’t have any parents. They’re dead. At least my father is, and I suppose my mother is, although I don’t know certainly. She ran away from my father and me when I was a child. About two or three. I can’t even remember her.”
“That’s too bad. It must have made things difficult.”
“I don’t think so. According to my father, it rather made things easier. He was apparently happy to be rid of her, and I never felt any need for her later. My father and I got along fine. We understood each other, and he was very interesting to live with in spite of not being always responsible about things liks food and shelter and clothing.
“He was a kind of operator in this and that, whatever came up and looked like a good bet. Sometimes we had plenty of money and everything we wanted, and other times we didn’t have any money at all. We moved around a lot, and I went to many different schools and always managed to get along pretty well, although I can’t remember that I learned much.
“I kept thinking I might run off and try things on my own, but I never did. Finally, when I was nineteen, we were in this little town where my father had something going, and all of sudden he died. Fortunately we had had a fairly long run of good luck, and he had quite a lot of money — about five thousand dollars — that became mine.
“There was a little college in this town that wasn’t too strict about letting you in, and I didn’t have anything else to do, or anywhere in particular to go, so I thought I’d try it for a while. As it happened, I liked it. Not the studying, or anything like that, but just the general conditions.
“As I said, there are advantages to going to college. You can always find decent places to live for not much money, for it seems to be understood that college students don’t have much to pay, and you can eat well at the cafeteria or one of the places around the campus for less than you could eat elsewhere.”
“Are you saying that you’ve been going to college since you were nineteen?” Brad asked, incredulous.
“Not regularly,” she replied seriously, her fair features pretty and serene. “Off and on. I’d get tired of it and try something else for a while. But I always came back to it. I never carried a full load of classes, and so I didn’t get ahead very fast. Besides I was forever losing credits by moving from one college to another. That doesn’t matter, however, for I don’t particularly want a degree. I can’t see the value of it.”
“You certainly haven’t lived all this time, since you were nineteen, on about five thousand dollars,” Brad hastened to point out, his surprise and bewilderment growing apace.
“Oh, no. I didn’t say I had. There are always ways you can pick up money if you need it. You become quite good at it if you are forced to learn by circumstances. Besides, there is almost always someone who is willing to help if you approach him in the right way.”
Brad started to ask her how she had picked up the money and solicited the help, but then decided it wouldn’t be advisable. Watching her with a strange sense of fantasy, he assured himself that she was real, flesh and bones and the breath of life, but he found it incredible. It crossed his mind that she might be a constitutional liar.
Standing, he said, “It’s chilly sitting here. I must get back to the party, and I think you had better leave before you get into trouble.”
“Would you like to walk with me a way? I’d be pleased if you would.”
“I’d like to, but I won’t.”
“Why? Because you wife might miss you?” She asked, staring up at him.
“Not only that. There are others reasons.”
“I can’t think what they would be. You’re only making excuses.”
“Not at all. As you put it a few minutes ago, it might be unwise in view of what we may decide to do later.”
This was something he had not intended to say, and he wondered afterward why he had said it. On her face in the shadows, he thought, there was an odd little smile of satisfaction, as though he had said, intentionally or not, exactly what she had anticipated.
“Well,” she said, “You go on back, then. Never mind me. I’ll sit here a little longer, I think, before I leave. Do you mind? If I were to leave this minute, I’d have the feeling of being sent, and I wouldn’t like it. Perhaps it’s unreasonable, but I have the strongest feeling against being sent away from anywhere.”
She sat on the bench with her hands folded in her lap, smiling and not moving, and so there was nothing left for him to do graciously except say good night and rejoin the party, which he did.
When he looked behind the juniper a quarter of an hour later, she was gone. He felt, seeing the empty stone bench, a ridiculous urge to cry out her name and call her back.
10
Wednesday afternoon after classes, unable to delay any longer a second attempt to shed Cornelia, Brad went to see her in the small office behind her classroom.
This time he was compelled to accomplish, amicably or otherwise, what he had failed to accomplish by the abortive effort in her hotel room, for it was, of course, imperative to cancel the tryst for Friday next, and for all Fridays following.
He had chosen to see her in her office because he thought that the environment would impose restraints that had been lacking before. Surely, he reasoned, the bare and ascetic room would help to sustain a rational atmosphere that would be favorable to the renunciation of a mistress without excessive fuss and bother.
He found her, as he had half hoped he wouldn’t, sitting behind her desk in the pale light of a late sun that found entrance through a west window. She appeared tired and somehow apprehensive, the sunlight exposing pitilessly a fine pattern of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth. He had never visited her here before, and she was obviously surprised and grateful that he had come now.
Rising, she moved around her desk toward him, and he was afraid for a moment that she was going to be demonstrative and make things doubly difficult, but then she thought better of it, if she actually intended it, stopping instead and supporting herself against the desk in a position that was neither standing nor sitting and seemed a part of her vague apprehension.
“Why, Brad,” she said with a kind of mock brightness, “what a delightful indiscretion! What on earth has brought you here?”
“There’s something I must tell you plainly,” he said. “It’s urgent.”
“Oh?” Her mouth grew slack for an instant in lines of ugly bitterness and then resumed the shape of her terrible, bright smile. “What is so urgent that it couldn’t wait until Friday?”
“That’s what you must understand. We can’t meet on Friday. Not this week or any other week.”
“Is that so? How kind of you to let me know. Is this something you have decided all by yourself without considering me at all?”
“I didn’t simply decide, Cornelia. The decision was imposed on me. I had no alternative.”
“Imposed? Imposed by whom?”
“By Madelaine. She knows all about our meetings. She’s known for some time.”
“You’re lying. You’re only saying that to justify deserting me.”
“It’s the truth. I swear it is,” he declared, his voice rising.
“How could it be? How could she know?”
“She hired a private detective to keep me under observation. He’s been reporting to her weekly. All the details.”
“All? Not quite all. I’m sure of that.”
“Oh, well. You know what I mean. Enough to be conclusive.”
“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe there has been a detective at all.”
“Damn it, there has! What can I say to convince you?”
“Nothing, probably. If Madelaine has known about us for some time, why hasn’t she said or done anything before?”