“Forget that money. You don’t want the rap that goes with it.”
“More dirty blackmail money?”
“It smells like it to me. What was said on that tape?”
“I don’t remember too well. It was a couple of people, a man and a woman. It sounded like they were arguing in bed.”
“How long ago did you hear it?”
“Just last night. I went down and got it out of the office last night. The way my brother talked, it was worth money, like you said. So I rented a machine and put it on, but I couldn’t tell who the people talking were. Who is it worth money to?”
“Me.”
“How much money?”
“I’d have to listen to it first. Is it here in the house?”
She did some quiet writhing. “Yeah, I have it here. I hid it in the kitchen.”
“Let’s play it over.”
She went out to the kitchen; I heard her moving pans. She came back with the tape, handling it as if it were made of platinum; put it on the recorder and set it for playback. I sat on a hassock beside the coffee table. After a rustling silence, Trevor’s voice spoke from the machine:
“That was Phoebe, you know. In that car.”
“I didn’t see her,” a woman’s voice said.
“I did. And she saw us.”
“Does it matter so much? She’s old enough to know the facts of life. Christ, I had her when I was two years younger than she is now. As you well know.”
“I wish you wouldn’t swear.”
“Listen to the man. Are you getting religion or something? Is Helen making a Christian out of you?”
“We won’t get off on Helen. I simply dislike hearing a woman swear. Especially in bed.”
“You like women to do other things in bed.”
“Not women, just you. But we’re going to have to be much more careful in future. If Phoebe goes to Homer with this–”
“She won’t. She’s got more brains.
“But what if she does?”
“I wouldn’t give a damn.”
“I’d give a very big damn, as you choose to put it. I have a lot to lose.”
“You’d still have me.” There was wistful irony in the woman’s voice.
“You, and nothing else. Helen would take everything. Naturally I’d lose my job. At my age, with my health record, I’d never get another one on my own level.”
“We could make do. I could get money from Homer.”
“For the two of us to live on? Don’t fool yourself. Even if he did give you a settlement, I wouldn’t live on Homer’s money.”
“You’re living on it now.”
“I work for the money I live on,” he said sharply.
“Money, money, money. We wouldn’t need money if you loved me enough. We could go to Mexico or Tahiti and live very cheaply.”
“Sure, and rot away into the landscape. We’ve been into that romantic fantasy before. I’m not Gauguin and neither are you.”
“I suppose this is your idea of real romance.”
“It’s all there is,” he said.
“But don’t you want to live with me?”
“It’s too late.”
“Yah, it was always too late for you. The trouble is that you don’t love me enough. Sometimes I think you don’t love me at all, that you’re just using me to scratch an itch.”
“People who love each other use each other.”
“No.”
“Yes,” he insisted. “I love you better than anything or anybody.”
“Except your goddam job and your goddam income and your goddam house and horses and for all I know that goddam frigid wife of yours. You’ve stuck with her long enough.”
“That’s my business.”
She let out a laughing cry. “Business is the word for Cully. Poor cautious Cully, he wants to eat his cake and keep it, too.”
“Satirize away. I’ve been poor, remember. I intend to go on keeping what I’ve got.”
“Even if it means losing me?”
“I don’t intend to lose you. Let’s not quarrel, hon. We have to do some thinking.”
“This is a hell of a time and place to do some thinking.”
“It’s the only time and place we have.”
“Or ever will have.” She said after a time: “I wish the two of them would go off on a plane together and crash or something.”
“Homer and Helen aren’t the type. They’ll outlive us both.”
“I know. I almost wish you’d never come back to me, Cully. When I’m away from you, I want you all the time. And then when we do get together, you want to talk about money and problems and things.”
“I didn’t make this problem.”
“Who made it if you didn’t?”
“All right, we made it together. The fact that we’re both in it doesn’t help much. The overriding fact is the fact that Phoebe saw us tonight, in compromising circumstances.”
“So I’m compromised. Again.”
“You don’t seem to get the picture,” he said urgently. “Everything is on the point of blowing up in our faces.”
“Let it blow.”
“No,” he said emphatically. “We have to keep the situation as it is.”
“Why do we have to keep it as it is?”
“For the sake of everyone concerned. Not just you and me, but Phoebe too.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to her.”
“What can you say?”
“She might as well know the truth. If I tell her you’re her father, that ought to head her off.”
“Tell her that she’s a bastard?”
“Bastard is just a word. I think of her as a love-child. I’ve wanted to tell her that she was our love-child ever since she got old enough to understand. This seems like a good time to do it.”
“I absolutely forbid it,” Trevor said. “If Phoebe is told, if anyone is told, the whole thing’s bound to come out.”
“What if it does?”
“It’s not going to. I’ve lived a split-level life for twenty years, suppressing my real feelings, covering up. I’m not going to let you make nonsense of it now.”
“You want her to inherit the money, don’t you?” she said softly.
“It’s a reasonable wish for my daughter.”
“Always money. Haven’t you learned it isn’t that important?”
“You can say that because you’ve had it.”
“I haven’t always had it, any more than you. Anyway, she could inherit the money, whether or not I told her who she is.”
“You’re wrong. You don’t know Phoebe.”
“I ought to, she’s my daughter.”
“She’s my daughter, too,” he said, “and in some ways I know her better than you. In the long run she’s incapable of lying–”
“So we go on doing her lying for her?”
“I’m certainly not going to let you tell her the truth about her parentage. The truth is supposed to make you free, but it doesn’t. The less people know of the truth, the better for them.” He spoke with a kind of dry and abstract anguish.
“Okay, Cully, don’t tie yourself in knots. I won’t tell her. We’ll let things lie. Let them lie.” She seemed to savor the doubleness of the words. “Now let’s think happy thoughts for a change. Shall we?” She waited. “Think about me?”
“I think about you every day of my life.”
“That’s better. And you really love me, don’t you?”
“I love you passionately,” he said without much passion.
“Show me, Cully.”
The bed creaked. Sally Merriman bent forward and switched off the recorder. Her eyes and mouth were bright.