Carla

Chapter Five

Carla’s hands were shaking slightly as she alighted from the MG and walked to her door. The whole world seemed imperceptibly different. Charles was so skillful, so perfect and sure of every gesture. She felt whole and complete, and at the same time she couldn’t shake of an irrational feeling of guilt over the whole affair. She had made a cuckold of Ronald with a friend of his, and this fact disturbed her so deeply that the fulfillment of the afternoon could not totally counteract the sense of guilt and betrayal.

She opened the door and entered her house, hoping desperately that Lizzie wouldn’t see the satisfaction in her eyes or hear it in her speech. She had heard or read somewhere that it showed in a woman’s eyes, that a person who knew what to look for could see that a woman was or was not sexually satisfied. Lizzie was sharp. Would she be sharp enough to notice?

If Lizzie did notice anything, she was clever enough to keep herself inscrutable. She only smiled a hello and told Carla that there had been a call for her.

“Who was it?”

“A man, Mrs. Macon,” Lizzie replied. “He wouldn’t tell me his name, but he said he’d call later.”

Carla walked into the living-room and sat down in a soft armchair, wondering who in the world the caller could be. It certainly wasn’t Charles; they had already decided that he would never call her again, but that she would be the one to phone him. But who could have called this afternoon?

She pushed the incident out of her mind, and in a few moments it was forgotten. Ronald was home for dinner and took her out for the evening to a Broadway show on tour. All through dinner and at the show afterwards she was especially careful to act the same as ever toward her husband.

At first she tended to be more affectionate than usual, to let her lips linger on his when he kissed her hello at the door. But she quickly realized that this would serve to arouse suspicion if anything. The best course of action was perfectly natural behavior, so that Ronald would have no cause to suspect she was deviating in any form from her normal activity.

That night she slept more perfectly than she had since she was married.

Ronald had told her about his latest case, one which promised to lead to a genuine courtroom battle. His client was involved in some charge of fraud in government contracts and the case looked like it would turn out to be one of Ronald’s biggest and most crucial. He emphasized that any one of a group of minor factors could be enough to sway the jury either way. A scandal involving any party would turn the trick.

Carla had listened eagerly as usual. Ronald’s cases always fascinated her, since his keen mind and quick wit was well shown off in his business activities, and because she knew how much he appreciated her interest in his work. But it was not until the following morning that she realized the full implications of what he had told her.

She realized later what this signified. If a scandal would sway the jury, she had to be more careful than ever to keep anyone from uncovering the affair she was having with Charles. If Ronald’s opponents discovered and let the news leak out, the case would be lost — and so would her marriage. In addition, she gathered that a good deal of Ronald’s capital was invested with his client — and the loss of the case would greatly cut down his fortune.

Besides all this, another of her hopes was dashed. She had thought from the beginning of the possibility of divorcing Ronald and marrying Charles. Ronald would give her a divorce; of that she was relatively certain. And, if she knew anything about men, Charles would marry her. But now a divorce was out of the question for the time being. It would ruin Ronald, and that was not her intention at all.

However, these facts didn’t worry her to any great extent. She had enjoyed her interlude with Charles tremendously and planned to repeat it regularly, but she could go on without marrying him.

At least that was what she thought.

That afternoon, however, she wasn’t so sure. She had expected to be more accustomed to Charles’ lovemaking and less moved by it the second time, but quite the reverse was true. Every touch, every measured caress was even newer and more thrilling than before. Her passion mounted to a new peak and the fulfillment came to her with an almost audible explosion, moving and shaking her and bringing her an overpowering sense of relaxation and joy.

Afterwards, she lay in the bed holding him to her breast. Suddenly struck with the desire to unburden herself, she found herself telling him everything about her. She talked of her slum childhood and of the first time she gave herself to a boy, and she spoke of every important event in her life from that time until they had met. All that she omitted was the one incident with the garage attendant. It seemed too trivial to mention, and the memory of it stirred her a little and frightened her.

Charles listened to it all without commenting. Then, when she had finished, he began to tell her about himself. The difference in their backgrounds was astounding. While she had been continually deprived, he had enjoyed an abundance of everything.

“How many women have you made love to?” she asked suddenly.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Too many, perhaps.”

“Tell me about the first time.”

“Well, I was terrible young at the time. Just 14. We had a frightfully attractive serving-girl, a brunette with sulky eyes and huge hips and breasts. I was just starting to think rather deeply about sex, and I suppose she noticed the way I kept looking at her from time to time.

“At any rate, she came to my room one evening when the rest of the family was sleeping. I was half asleep myself and I thought I was dreaming. God knows I dreamed enough about her! She walked right over to my bed, slipped off her robe, and climbed into bed with me. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.”

“Was it... good?”

He kissed her breast tenderly. “It was wonderful, Carla. She was much better than I was — I shudder to think how gauche and inept I must have been. But she was back the next night and the night after that, and I suppose I must have learned rather rapidly.”

“What happened to her?”

“She left after a while. I learned a few years later that Dad had hired her for that purpose and I hadn’t seduced her at all. He paid her a few hundred dollars a week to accommodate me and let her go when he figured I was broken in. Why are you laughing?”

“Because it’s funny. He must have been quite a man.”

“He was a fool,” Charles said softly. “But in some respects he was a very wise man.”

He fell silent then and began to kiss her with an increasing intensity, his hands roaming over her body and exciting her. And then he took her a second time, almost violent in his lovemaking, hurting her delightfully and driving her to the very limits of human pleasure.

As the days passed, Carla began to realize that she was falling in love with Charles. The realization came as no surprise. Bit by bit she was depending more and more upon him and responding still more fervently to the artistry of his lovemaking. For the first time in her life she felt that she was genuinely in love. She had given herself to men before and wanted men before, but she had never cared so deeply about an individual as she did about Charles. All of her being was wrapped up in him and all her day was centered around the few hours they were able to spend together each afternoon. She was unable to imagine living without him. The memory of the days without end when she did nothing but stay at home or ride around in the MG was unbearable. She couldn’t lose him.

At the same time, for the first three days of her affair with Charles she continued to receive phone calls when she was not at home. Each time it was a man calling, and each time the man refused to leave his name but said that he would call back. Probably some jerk selling something, she decided — but the jerk stood a good chance of getting her in trouble. If he called often enough Lizzie would begin to suspect something, and that would be pretty ironic — since Charles never called, and she would be discovered because of the phonecalls of someone else entirely.

She tried to figure out who the mysterious caller could be. Not one of her old friends, certainly, because she was never close enough to anyone back in her old neighborhood. Besides, they didn’t know she was now Mrs. Ronald Macon.

Who else? Probably a salesman or someone soliciting for a charity, but could it be anyone else? The only man she had met lately was that grease-monkey at the gas station, and he didn’t even know who she was.

No, it couldn’t be him.

Each day the calls disturbed her just that much more. Not only was it a nuisance to keep missing a phonecall, but in addition the possibility of discovery became increasingly unattractive. Ronald’s case was occupying the bulk of his time and leaving him so tired each evening that he seemed almost at the point of collapse. Carla could see that he was completely wrapped up in it, seeing it as representing not only his fortune but the professional reputation he had established. If he could win the case, his career would be crowned with success. Carla knew how Ronald always drove himself harder than was necessary. He had inherited the bulk of his money, and he found it necessary to continually prove to himself that he could have done all right on his own. He felt guilty over having inherited the greater part of his wealth through no effort on his part, and by excelling in his profession he was able to assuage these guilt feelings.

But, as he said more than once, this case was one which could go either way. He maintained that his client was in the right; proving this, however, was another matter. And one breath of scandal could ruin everything completely.

Carla was constantly alert, trying to detect some sign that her love affair was noticed by somebody else. Try as she might she was unable to detect a clue. Lizzie seemed to be acting a bit differently lately, but this didn’t seem in any way connected. Ronald’s only change was the attitude of detachment which always went hand in hand with total absorption in his work.

The doorman at the Tiffany glanced knowingly at her each afternoon, but she discounted him quickly enough. She knew that she was by no means the first woman to visit Charles in his apartment, and she guessed that the gray-haired doorman ought to be used to that sort of thing by now. The management of the Tiffany didn’t care about the private behaviour of their residents — not as long as the rent was paid and the residents were fairly discreet. Charles had told her that there was a lesbian couple on the fifth floor, and an interior decorator on the fourth floor who continually brought various men to his room for private parties. Considering this, Carla decided it was strange the doorman even gave her a second glance.

The thought of marriage to Charles began to prey on her mind until there were times when she could think of nothing else. It would be so completely different, waking up every morning with her lover beside her, eager to take her into his arms. Then too, there was the fact that she was beginning to fear losing Charles if she didn’t have a firm hold on him, the type of firm hold that only marriage could give her. Although he seemed to enjoy their lovemaking just as she did, she thought at times that she detected an inner restlessness in the man, a sign that he would eventually look around for new worlds to conquer. Sometimes she would be talking to him and he would stare off into space, hardly seeming to hear a word she said. Moments like that made her nervous and worried that he might leave her. And that was one thing she felt unable to bear.

Yet she was afraid to broach the subject of marriage directly. She knew that such a step could scare off any man, particularly an accustomed and comfortable bachelor like Charles. At the same time, she couldn’t help trying to work the idea into the conversation.

“Charles,” she said on their fourth afternoon together, “how come you’ve never married?”

He looked up. “Why do you ask?”

“I just wondered.”

“Hmmm. I don’t know exactly. I’ve never wanted to, I guess.”

“It’s strange,” she went on.

“How so?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’d think a lot of women would have wanted you to marry them.”

“I suppose a few of them did.”

“And you weren’t interested?”

He shook his head. “Never, Carla. I’ve never thought of a woman in terms of things like marriage and babies. It just hasn’t seemed proper to me. I’m happy, you see, and the thought of any curtailment of my freedom or end to my happiness automatically repels me.”

“Does marriage have to end a man’s freedom?”

“Maybe not,” he said, smiling, “but it almost invariably does. Look at the average marriage — a ‘trust’ based on suspicion and a delicate system of checks and balances rivalling the working of international diplomacy and leaving a man more thoroughly bound than a serf under the feudal system.

“But even that isn’t the most important thing. Carla, look at the sort of relationship we have. It’s one that endures simply because it’s healthy and alive. As soon as one of us tires of the other, the relationship will end with no hard feelings on either side. No strings, no ties that bind — in short, nothing but mutual attraction. A relationship between a man and a woman can be a beautiful thing, but it remains beautiful only so long as it remains free and permissive.”

“I guess I understand.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, darling.”

He lifted her chin in his hand. “Then why so sad? What did I say to make you unhappy, Carla?”

“Nothing.”

“There must have been something,” he said, shaking his head. “Goodness, you’re almost in tears! What is it, honey?”

“It’s... oh, I just wish you wouldn’t talk about anything like us breaking up!” She clenched her hands into little fists to keep from crying.

He smiled. “Poor baby,” he said, stroking her cheek. “Poor little baby. You’re so young in some ways and so old in others that sometimes I forget about the young part of you. In time you’ll come to realize that everything has to end sometime, but now you love me and I love you and it’s no time to think of such things, is it?”

She shook her head, unable to open her mouth without crying.

“I understand,” he said. “It’s no time to talk about break-ups or endings or anything of the sort. Come here, Carla. Kiss me.”

She kissed him — gently at first like a child, then fiercely with the hunger and desperation of a woman who suddenly has realized that love can be a transient affair. His arms tightened around her in response to her passion and he forced her back unto the sofa. His hand closed over her breast and held it like a dove.

The world turned into a ball of fire and spun madly before her tightly-lidded eyes. Time and space ceased to matter. Only the moment was important.

She cried out once, sharply.

And then all was still.