“I’m sorry. I won’t stay on long. I just needed to talk to you. I’m at the house.”

“Are you holding up?”

“I don’t know. I think I’m numb. It’s all like a circus. I even had to fight them about an open coffin. Thank God, at least that battle I won.”

He didn’t like the sound of her voice. She sounded nervous, tired, and strained. But it was hardly surprising under the circumstances. “When are you coming back?”

“Sometime in the next two days, I hope. But I’m not sure. We’ll discuss it tonight.”

“Just send me a wire when you know.”

She heaved a small sigh. “I will. I guess I’d better get back to the ghoulish festivities now.”

“I love you, Deanna.”

“So do I.” She was afraid to say the words, lest someone walk into the room, but she knew he’d understand.

She went back to the fifty or sixty guests who were milling around her mother-in-law’s rooms, chatting, gossiping, discussing Pilar, consoling Marc. Deanna had never felt as much a stranger as now. It seemed hours since she had seen Marc. He found her at last in the kitchen, staring out a window, at a wall.

“Deanna? What are you doing out here?”

“Nothing.” Her big sorrowful eyes looked into his. He was actually looking better. And day by day she seemed to look worse. She wasn’t feeling well either, but she hadn’t mentioned that to Marc, or the fact that she had fainted twice in the past four days. “I’m just out here catching my breath.”

“I’m sorry it’s been such a long day. My mother wouldn’t have understood if we’d done it differently.”

“I know. I understand.”

Suddenly, looking at him, she realized that he understood too, and that he could see what a toll it was taking on her. “Marc, when are we going home?”

“To San Francisco?” he asked. She nodded. “I don’t know. I haven’t given it any thought. Are you in a hurry?”

“I just want to get back. It’s… harder for me here.”

“Bon. But I have work I must complete here. I need at least another two weeks.”

Oh, God, no. She couldn’t survive two more weeks there under her mother-in-law’s roof-and without Ben. “There’s no reason why I should stay, is there?”

“What do you mean? You want to go home alone?” He looked distressed. “I don’t want you to do that. I want you to go home with me.” He had already thought about it. It would be too hard for her to face the house alone: Pilar’s room, all her things. He didn’t want that. She’d have to wait for him.

“I can’t wait two weeks.” She looked frantic at the idea, and he noticed again how exhausted and overwrought she was.

“Let’s just see.”

“Marc, I have to go home.” Her voice trembled as it rose.

“All right. But first, would you do something for me?”

“What?” She looked at him strangely. What did he want? All she wanted was to get away.

“Will you go away with me for two days? Anywhere, for a weekend. Some place quiet, where we both can rest. We need to talk. We haven’t been able to here, and I don’t want you to go back until we do talk. Quietly. Alone. Will you do that for me?”

She waited for a long moment and looked at him. “I don’t know.”

“Please. It’s all I ask. Only that. Two days, and then you can go.”

She turned away to stare out at the rooftops again. She was thinking of Ben and Carmel. But she had no right to rush home to him just to make herself feel better. She owed something to their marriage, even if it was only two days. She turned to look at Marc and slowly nodded. “All right. I’ll go.”

20

“Merde alors! What do you expect of me? My daughter dies three days ago, and you want me to announce to Deanna that I want a divorce? Doesn’t that seem a little hasty to you, Chantal? And has it occurred to you that you’re taking unfair advantage of this situation?” He felt torn between two women, two worlds. Once again he felt an odd kind of pressure from Chantal, a kind of emotional blackmail that told him there would be tragedy if Chantal suffered a loss. Both women wanted him to make a choice, a painful choice. He’d realized that all the more this week. Deanna seemed as though she would be only too happy to leave him right now. She had yet to forgive him for what she had seen at the airport the night of Pilar’s death. But he didn’t want to lose Deanna. She was his wife, he needed her, he respected her, he was used to her. And she was his last link to Pilar. Leaving Deanna would be like leaving home. But he couldn’t give up Chantal either-she was his excitement, his passion, his joy. He looked at Chantal now with exasperation and ran a hand through his hair. “Can’t you understand? It’s too soon!”

“It’s been five years. And now she knows. And maybe it isn’t too soon. Maybe it’s the best time right now.”

“For whom? For you? Dammit, Chantal, just be a little bit patient. Let me sort things out.”

“And how long will that take? Another five years, while you live there and I live here? You were supposed to go back in two weeks, and then what? What about me? I sit here waiting for two months until you return? Et alors? I was twenty-five when we met, now I’m nearly thirty. And then I’ll be thirty-five, and thirty-seven and forty-five. Time passes quickly. Especially like this. It goes much, much too fast.”

He knew that was true, but he was simply not in the mood. “Look, could we just put this away for a while? Out of simple decency, I’d like to let the woman recover from the loss of her daughter before I destroy her life.” For a moment he hated Chantal. Because he did care, because he didn’t want to lose her-and because that gave her the upper hand.

And she knew it. “What makes you think your leaving her would destroy her life? Maybe she has a lover.”

“Deanna? Don’t be ridiculous. In fact I think you’re being absurd about this whole thing. I’m going away for the weekend. We have a lot of things to discuss. I’ll talk to her, I’ll see how things are. And in a while I’ll make the right move.”

“What move is that?”

He sighed imperceptibly and suddenly felt very old. It had come to this. “The one you want.”

But as he hailed a cab two hours later to go back to his mother’s apartment where Deanna was waiting, he found himself wondering. Why did Chantal have to pull this on him? First the arguments over Cap d’Antibes, then that terrible night he had returned to find her gone-perhaps forever- when she had stopped taking her insulin. And now this. But why? Why now? For an odd reason he did not understand, it made him want to rush back to Deanna and protect her from a world that was about to be very cruel.

They left for the country in the morning. Deanna was strangely quiet as they drove out of town. She sat lost in her own thoughts. He had wanted to take her some place neutral, where there wouldn’t be a cascade of memories of Pilar. They both had enough of that to deal with at his mother’s house. A friend had offered his country house, near Dreux.

He glanced over at Deanna distractedly and then shifted his concentration back to the road, but he found himself thinking of Chantal again. He had spoken to her that morning before they left:

“Will you tell her this weekend?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to see. If I drive her to a nervous breakdown, it won’t do any of us any good.” But Chantal had sounded petulant and childish. Suddenly, after so many years of patience, she was getting out of hand. Still she had been the mainstay of his life for the past five years. He couldn’t give her up. But could he so easily give up Deanna? He glanced over at her again. Her eyes were still closed and she hadn’t said a word. Did he love her? He had always thought so, but after the summer with Chantal he wasn’t as sure. It was impossible to know, to figure it out, to understand- and damn Chantal for pushing him now. He had promised Deanna only two days ago that he would end the relationship with Chantal, and now he had made the same promise to his mistress about Deanna.

“Is it very far?” Deanna’s eyes fluttered open, but she did not move her head. She felt weighed down by the same exhaustion that had plagued her for days.

“No. It’s about an hour. And it’s a pretty house. I haven’t stayed there since I was a boy, but it was always lovely.” He smiled at her. There were circles under her eyes. “You know, you look awfully tired.”

“I know. Maybe this weekend I’ll get some rest.”

“Didn’t you get some sleeping pills from my mother’s doctor?” He had told her to the last time the man had come to the house.

She shook her head. “I’ll work it out for myself.” He made a face, and for the first time, she smiled.

They arrived before she spoke again. It was indeed a beautiful place, an old stone house of considerable grandeur and proportion, almost in the style of a château, surrounded by magnificently manicured gardens. In the distance were fruit orchards that stretched for miles.

“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” He said it tentatively, and their eyes met.

“Very. Thank you for arranging this.” Then as he reached for the bags, she spoke again, barely audibly. “I’m glad we came.”

“So am I.” He looked at her very cautiously, and they both smiled.

He carried the bags into the house and set them down in the main hall. The furniture was mostly English and French Provincial, and everything in the rooms was faithful to the seventeenth century when the house had been built. Deanna wandered down the long halls, looking at the beautifully inlaid floors and glancing out the tall windows into the gardens. She stopped at last at the end of the corridor, in a solarium filled with plants and comfortable chairs. She sat down in one and stared silently out at the grounds. It was a while before she heard Marc’s footsteps echoing down the hall.