“Sounds pretty boring to me.” Gail shrugged, “at least he's cute.” He was that, but not in a way that appealed to Anne. She thought Bill the most handsome man in the world, and going home in a cab that night, Vanessa shook her head, as she talked to Jason about it.

“I don't understand that kid at all. She's practically a child, and there she is married to that old man, running around in diamonds and a mink coat.”

“Maybe those things are important to her.” Jason couldn't understand it either but he had always thought she was a nice girl. Not as intelligent or interesting as Van, but maybe that was hard to say. She was so young and so withdrawn it was hard to know what she was.

But Vanessa was shaking her head. “I don't think they are important to her. I don't think she gives a damn about any of that stuff. He just wants to give her all that, and she probably wears it to please him.” She was right on that score, she knew her sister that well, the only one in the family who would have loved the glitter and the furs was Val, and eventually Greg would have liked the good life, if he'd lived, the others had simpler tastes, and their parents did now too, contrary to their early life. But it had no importance for them anymore, hadn't for years, Van knew. “I just don't see what she sees in a man his age.”

“He's awfully good to her, Van, and not just materially. He can't do enough for her. If she's thirsty, she has a glass of water in her hand before she can speak up, if she's tired he takes her home, if she's bored, he takes her out to dance, to Europe, to see friends … you can't beat that.” He smiled at the girl he loved, suddenly wishing he did more for her. “A guy his age thinks of all that stuff, he's got nothing else to do,” he teased and she laughed.

“That's no excuse. You mean I don't get a diamond ring the size of an egg?”

He looked at her soberly as they walked into the house. “Is that what you want someday, Van?”

“Nope.” She sounded sure of it and she was. She wanted other things in her life. Like him. Maybe a couple of kids one day, eight or ten years down the road. Stuff like that.

“What do you want?”

She shrugged pensively as she threw her coat on a chair. “Maybe to publish a book one day … good reviews …” She couldn't think of anything else, and she didn't want to tell him that she might want him and a baby or two. It was too soon to think of that, let alone talk about it.

“That's all?” He looked disappointed.

She smiled at him, softening, “Maybe you too.”

“You've got that now.”

She sat down on the couch and he lit a fire. They were comfortable here, with their books and papers all around, the Sunday Times still spread out on the floor tangled with his sneakers, and her shoes, his glasses on the desk. “I really think this is all I want, Jase.”

He looked pleased. “You have mighty simple tastes, my friend.” He held her close, and then, “Are you serious about the book?”

“I hope so. After I finish school and get a job.”

He sighed. “It's so damn hard to write them.” He knew that only too well. “I still think we should collaborate on a play.” He looked at her hopefully and she smiled. He had always felt that their styles would mesh well.

“Maybe one day.” They kissed and he lay her back on the couch and slipped a hand into her blouse. It was a far cry from the scene between Bill and Anne at the Pierre. She was lying on the satin bedspread wearing a marabou-trimmed peignoir as his tongue ran lazily up her thigh, and the diamonds on her hand sparkled in the dim light, just as he touched her where she liked it most, and she arched her back with a moan, as he pulled the peignoir from her and it drifted slowly to the floor. But the feelings were the same. The love, the desire, the commitment to each other through thick or thin. It was all the same, in sneakers, or marabou.





CHAPTER 39




In May, Bill and Anne went back to New York for a few days. Anne wanted to see Gail, and he had business there. They stayed at the Pierre again, and he took her to the jewelers he liked best, and insisted on buying her some new things. The weather was beautiful, and she had just bought a beautiful white dress and coat at BendeI's which she wore to lunch with him at Cote Basque, and he was so proud of her as she walked into the room. She was still totally unaware of herself, and she moved like a doe as she approached him across the room, seeing no one stare at her, seeing only his eyes smiling at her. But he saw something else, that same empty, nervous look that had been there for months. He hoped it happened soon, and he knew why it was so important to her. He wanted a baby too, but not as desperately as she did.

“How was Bendel's today?”

“Pretty good.” She still talked like a child sometimes, but she didn't look like one anymore. She was wearing her hair down, and he had had a woman he knew in L.A. teach her how to put makeup on, and suddenly she looked more like twenty-five than eighteen. Gail had noticed it too, and had obviously approved. She had a new boyfriend now, and was loving New York. Bill still insisted that she stay at the Barbizon, but she was threatening to move out by fall and get her own place, and Anne had been assigned to work on him. “I just bought this today.” She waved at the dress and coat with a perfectly manicured hand, and he noticed that she was wearing the new pearls he had just bought her in Hong Kong. They were huge and almost didn't look real. “You like?”

“I love.” He kissed her gently on the lips, and the waiter took their order for drinks. He had wine, she had Perrier, and they both ate a light lunch. She loved the quenelles at the Cote Basque, and he had a spinach salad and a steak. They weren't really doing justice to the exquisite cuisine, but he had another meeting to attend, and she was off to Bloomingdale's, and then she was going to meet Gail at school.

Bill wondered sometimes if she should be going to school too, she needed something more to do than get her nails done and shop and wait for him to come home at night. She needed something more than keeping her temperature chart every day. She had to think of something else, but he was afraid to tell her that. He just kept reassuring her it would happen soon. They had both had one child, so they knew they were each capable of it, it was just a matter of time, the doctor had told her that too. “Have you called your sister yet, sweetheart?” She shook her head vaguely, playing with the cookie she had taken from the tray. “Why not?” She still avoided most of the Thayers, even Lionel, whom he knew she had once loved so much. It was as though she wanted to shut them all out of her life now. She had him, and she wanted nothing else, but he didn't think it was right. It would have broken his heart if Gail had done that to him, although he knew that the Thayers had never been as close to her as he was to Gail.

Anne shrugged. “Mom said she had exams when I talked to her last week.” It was obvious she had no interest in calling Van. And she never called Valerie in L.A., she hadn't talked to her in months.

“You can still give her a call. She might have time for a quick drink.”

“I'll call her tonight.” But he already knew she would not. She would lie around, thinking, counting forward and back … fourteen days from … and the next morning she would wake up at the crack of dawn and take her temperature again. He wanted her to stop and just relax about it all. She was getting so uptight about it she was losing weight. He was thinking of taking her to Europe in July to take her mind off things, and he wanted Gail to come too, but she had a summer job with Pauline Trigère, and she refused to go anywhere.

“What do you think, sweetheart?” They were strolling up Madison Avenue toward where his meeting was, and he was trying to interest her in the European trip. He had to interest her in something. What if a baby never came, or it took years, she couldn't spend her whole life waiting for that, and it was beginning to dim the pleasure they had shared. It was all she could think about, all she could talk about sometimes, as though she could replace the baby she'd given up. And he didn't dare tell her that she never would, no more than he could replace his wife. He loved Anne just as much, but it was all different now, and once in a great while, there was still that empty ache of missing her, just as he knew that Anne would always regret that child. He would always remain a lonely void for her, which no one could fill, no husband, no child. He looked at her tenderly. “St. Tropez would be fun. We could rent a boat.” She smiled at him then, he did so much for her, and she was always aware of it.

“I'd love that. And I'm sorry I've been such a drip. I guess we both know why.”

“Yes, we do.” He stopped right on Madison Avenue and took her in his arms. “But you have to let Mother Nature take her own sweet time, and besides, it's fun trying, isn't it?”

“Yes.” She smiled at him. But he still remembered how she had cried when she got her last period, and the angry scene they'd had when she told him it was all Faye's fault. That if it hadn't been for her she would have had a three-and-a-half year-old son now, and Bill had looked so hurt…. “Is that what you want?” he had asked, and she had screamed, “Yes, it is.” He felt so sorry for her, he had even suggested they adopt a three-year-old boy, but she wanted their own. She wanted to have “her own baby” again. It was pointless to try and tell her she could never replace the one she'd given up. And she was determined to have a baby by Bill, immediately, if possible. Her mother suspected that when they had lunch one day, and the veiled look in her eyes accused Faye just as they had for years. She had never forgiven her, and possibly never would.