“Have you considered onanism?”
I gave Betty a helpless look, shaking my head. “Joe,” I said, pleading to be understood, “you don’t understand. I have commitments back here now, I can’t just—”
“Of course,” he said, “as Marx once pointed out, the bourgeoisie had to invent adultery to keep from dying of boredom.”
“I realize that, Joe,” I said desperately.
“Or was it Lenin? One of those commies.”
“Well, how long would it be for?”
“The point is, maybe what you need is a hobby. Jigsaw puzzles, for instance.”
“The thing of it is, Joe,” I said, being confidential with him, “I’ve got a girl now, back here in the East”
“I don’t doubt it for a second.”
“It’s, uh, it’s serious, Joe. If I came out, I’d have to—”
Again I appeared to be interrupted. Both Nikki and Betty looked shocked at this suggestion that I was being asked to go to California. Meanwhile, Joe was saying, “Maybe you’d like to grow plants. Vines and things. Tell them all your little secrets, and watch their leaves fall off.”
“Joe,” I said, “how can I explain that to my girl?”
“If anybody can, Art,” he said, “you can.”
“I see what you mean,” I said, but I didn’t sound happy about it I said, ‘The doctors really think so, huh?”
“They sure do,” Joe said. “They think you’re a nut”
“Thanks, Joe,” I said. “I’d appreciate that. Be better than a hotel.”
“Do you get the impression,” he asked me, “that we’re talking at cross-purposes?”
“I don’t see how I can promise anything,” I said.
“Go ahead and promise, baby.”
I nodded slowly, listening. Logic, duty, friendship, my own moral sense, all were clearly conspiring to make me agree to something about which I was extremely reluctant “You’re right, Joe,” I said.
“Why, thank you,” he said.
“I’ll work it out somehow at this end,” I said, “and I’ll get out there as soon as I can.”
“Don’t you dare,” he said.
“Sure, Joe, I know,” I said, “and I appreciate it So long.”
“Is it soup yet?” he asked me, and I hung up.
Betty said, “You’re going to California?”
“It’s—” I stopped myself, glanced at Nikki, and said, “You can take the phone back now, Nikki.”
“Yes, Mr. Bart.” Off she went, no doubt to hide behind the draperies and listen to me tell my tale.
Betty was showing understandable impatience. “For heaven’s sake, what is it?”
“A girl,” I said. “Her name’s Lydia, we used to go together when I lived in L.A. For a while, we even talked about getting married.”
“And?”
“We broke up,” I said. “I hadn’t seen her for two or three months when I left. In fact, that’s part of the reason I was so glad when Art called and wanted me to go into the card business with him. I was ready to come back.”
Her impatience was not appeased. “And?”
“She tried to kill herself.”
“Bosh,” Betty said, sitting back, and suited the old-fashioned word with an old-fashioned expression of disbelief and contempt “It’s a silly ploy to get you back.”
“I don’t think so, I really don’t think so. She drove her car off a cliff, up on Mulholland Drive. I mean, it wasn’t a sleeping pill thing or head in the oven, one of those tries with rescue built right into it. She really did try to kill herself.”
“Well, what are you supposed to do about it? Go back and marry her?”
“Go back and see her,” I said. “Her doctors think she’s idealized me or something, that if she sees me as I really am, if we have a talk and she sees the reality of it she’ll snap out of it. She made another try in the hospital, tried to drag herself to the window.”
Sympathy for this unknown victim of heart’s blight finally began to seep into Betty’s expression, mixing with the impatience and the annoyance there. “Don’t they have her under restraint or something?”
“They can’t leave her like that forever.” I reached across the table, taking Betty’s hand in both of mine, and gazed sincerely into her eyes. “Betty,” I said, “this thing is ghastly. I wish I didn’t know a thing about it. But I do know, and how can I turn my back? What if I refused to go out there, said it wasn’t my problem, and—”
“It isn’t your problem.”
“What if she tries again, a third time? What if she makes it? Could I have that on my conscience the rest of my life?”
“She might try it anyway, even if you do go out”
“But at least I’ll have done what I can. Betty, how could I face myself if I didn’t at least make the try?”
Her arguments were failing, and she knew it. “This is so inconvenient,” she said, looking away at the darkness of Central Park. “I’m not sure I could get away now.”
“Betty, you can’t come with me. Don’t you see what a shock that would be to her, rubbing her nose in it, I show up with—”
“You mean you’ll go out by yourself?”
“Just for a day or two,” I said. “Joe offered to let me stay at his place. You have the phone number, we can be in constant contact.”
Briskly dismissing that, Betty said, “She wouldn’t have to know I was anywhere in the state. We could stay at the Bel Air, I could visit friends while you were at the hospital, there wouldn’t be any problem.”
“You may think I’m silly,” I said, “but I couldn’t do that. It would just be on my mind all the time, as though I were flaunting my own happiness in the face of her misery. Let me do this my way, Betty. It won’t be for long, and once it’s over it’ll be over for good.”
She frowned. “How do you know she won’t do it again a year from now? An annual event, like the tulip festival. Lydia’s leap.”
“Even if it happened,” I said, “I wouldn’t feel obligated any more. Once is all I owe her, but I do owe her that. And besides, you wanted our marriage kept a secret. How could we travel together, stay at a hotel, visit your friends out there, do all of that and keep the secret?”
She glared out over Central Park, with its viaduct of taxi headlights and the dim lamps gleaming uncertainly along the blacktop paths. She considered arguments, rejected them, went back to them, thought out the potentials and the implications, and at last irritably shrugged her shoulders and said, “All right. Do it your way. I suppose I should be happy I have such a straight-arrow husband”
“And I’m delighted,” I told her, squeezing her hand, “that I have such an understanding wife.”
24
The next plane to Los Angeles was not, as I’d already known, until nine-thirty the following morning. Betty and I rode out together to Kennedy in the Lincoln, Carlos at the wheel. A good if arrogant driver, Carlos delivered us to TWA’s concrete-bird terminal earlier than anticipated, and we had a cup of coffee together before saying good-bye. “I’ll call you from Joe’s place the minute I arrive,” I promised.
“I’ll be waiting.”
“And remember,” I said, “you be sure to call me if there’s any problem at all. You’ve got Joe’s number?”
“I have it,” she assured me.
“Good.” And if she called, Joe would tell her I was at the hospital or out to dinner or whatever the time of day suggested, and would then call me, and I would then call Betty. Considering some of the scrambling I’d already done this month, the Bart-in-Hollywood device was child’s play. Miniature golf.
At last the moment came for departure. “Our first separation,” I said, clutching her to me.