Summer’s End

26

“Good morning, Deanna.” Marc glanced at her as he settled himself in his chair. The usual assortment of newspapers was properly displayed, the coffee was hot, and Deanna was eating an egg. “Hungry this morning?” It had been weeks since he’d seen her eat.

“Not very. Here, you can have my toast.” She pushed the lacy, blue Limoges plate toward him on the table. The tablecloth that morning was also a delicate pale blue. It matched her mood.

Marc looked at her carefully as she played with her egg. “Are you still feeling ill?” She shrugged, then after a moment looked up.

“No.”

“I think perhaps you ought to call the doctor.”

“I’m seeing him anyway next week.” It had been three weeks since she’d seen him last. Three weeks since she’d run away the morning she could have had the abortion. Three weeks since she’d seen Ben. And there had been no news. She knew there wouldn’t be again. She’d run into him some day, somewhere, some place, and they’d chat for a moment like old friends. And that would be all. It was over. No matter how much either of them cared. She felt her whole body sag at the thought. The only thing she wanted to do was go back to bed.

“What are you doing today?” Marc looked vague but concerned.

“Nothing. I’ll probably work in the studio for a while.” But she wasn’t working. She was just sitting, staring at the mountain of paintings that had been sent back from the gallery, despite Ben’s initial protests. But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t let him sell her work and not see him at all. And she didn’t want him to see her pregnant that winter. She had had no choice. She had insisted to Sally that they be returned. Now they leaned against the walls of her studio, bleakly faced away, their mud-colored canvas backs staring at her blindly, except for the one portrait of her and Pilar, which she looked at for hours every day.

“Would you like to join me somewhere for lunch?” She heard the words as she walked away and turned to see him in his seat in the dining room, looking like a king. He was her king now, and she was his slave, all because of this unborn child that she was too cowardly to abort.

Again she shook her head. “No, thank you.” She attempted a smile, but it was barely a ray of sunshine in winter, less than a glimmer on the snow. She didn’t want to go to lunch with him. She didn’t want to be with him, or be seen with him. What if Ben saw them together? She couldn’t bear the thought. She only shook her head once more and walked softly to the little studio, where she hid.

She sat huddled there, clutching her knees, with tears pouring down her face. It seemed hours later when she heard the phone.

“Hi, kiddo, what are you up to?” It was Kim. Deanna sighed to herself and tried to dredge up a smile.

“Not much. I’m sitting here in my studio, thinking I ought to retire.”

“Like hell. Not after the beautiful reviews for that show you had. How’s Ben? Has he sold any more of your work?”

“No.” Deanna tried not to let her voice betray what she felt. “He-he hasn’t really had the chance.”

“I guess not. But I’m sure that when he gets back from London, he will. Sally says he’ll be there for another week.”

“Oh. I didn’t know. Marc got home three weeks ago, and we’ve been awfully busy.” Kimberly found that hard to believe; with the recent death of Pilar she knew that they weren’t going anywhere. At least that was what Deanna had told her the last time they spoke.

“Can I lure you away from your studio for lunch?”

“No, I… really… I can’t.”

Suddenly Kim didn’t like what she heard. She heard a tremor of pain in Deanna’s voice that frightened her, it was so raw. “Deanna?” But there was no answer; she had begun to cry. “Can I come by now?”

She was going to tell her no, she wanted to stop her, didn’t want her to see, but she didn’t have the strength.

“Deanna, did you hear me? I’m coming over. I’ll be there in two minutes.”

Deanna heard Kim on the studio steps before she could come downstairs. She didn’t want her to see the rows of paintings lined up against the walls, but it was already too late. Kim knocked once and stepped inside, looking around in astonishment, not understanding what she saw. There must have been twenty or thirty paintings lined up against the walls.

“What is all this stuff?” She knew it couldn’t be new work. As she pulled the paintings free of the others that hid them and saw familiar themes, she turned to Deanna with surprise in her eyes. “You’ve withdrawn from the gallery?” she asked. Deanna nodded. “But why? They did a beautiful show for you, the reviews were good. The last time I talked to Ben, he told me he’d sold almost half your canvases. Why?” And then she understood. “Because of Marc?”

Deanna sighed and sat down. “I just had to withdraw.”

Kim sat down across from her, concern furrowing her brow. Deanna looked godawful, wan and pale and drawn, but worse than that there was something tragic stamped in her eyes. “Deanna, I-I know how you must feel about Pilar. Or really I don’t know, but I can imagine. But you can’t destroy your whole life. Your career has to be separate from everything else.”

“But it isn’t. Because-because of Ben.” The words were muffled by her hands and her tears.

Kim moved closer to Deanna and took her firmly in her arms. “Just let yourself go.”

Without knowing why, Deanna did. She cried in Kim’s arms for what felt like days, for the loss of Pilar, of Ben, and maybe even Marc. She knew she had lost him to his mistress. The only thing she had not lost was the baby that she didn’t want. Kim said nothing to her, but let her spend her sorrow in her arms. It seemed hours before the sobs finally stopped, and Deanna looked up into Kim’s face.

“Oh, Kim, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened. I just…”

“For chrissake, don’t apologize. You can’t hold it all inside. You really can’t. Do you want a cup of coffee?”

She shook her head but then brightened a little. “Maybe a cup of tea.” Kim picked up the phone and rang the kitchen.

“And maybe afterward we could go for a walk. How does that sound?”

“What about you? Did you give up your job, or just take the day off to play shrink to me?” Deanna smiled through her red, watering eyes.

“Hell, if you can withdraw from the gallery, maybe I should just quit. It makes about as much sense.”

“No, you’re wrong. I was right to do what I did.”

“But why? I just don’t understand.”

Deanna was about to tell her something to put her off. Instead, she simply looked at Kim. “I don’t want to see Ben anymore.”

“You’ve ended it with Ben?”

For a long moment everything stopped in the room as the two women looked into each other’s eyes. Deanna nodded.

“You’re going to stay with Marc?”

“I have to.”

She sighed and brought in the tray Margaret had left outside the door. She handed Kim her coffee and sat down with her tea, taking a tentative sip before she squeezed her eyes tightly shut and finally spoke again. “Marc and I are having a child.”

“What? Are you kidding?”

Deanna opened her eyes again. “I wish I were. I found out when I was in France. I passed out in some country church a few days after the funeral, and Marc insisted on taking me to the local hospital. He thought I had something terminal, but we were both so hysterical at that point, who knew? All they found out was that I was two months pregnant.”

“That makes you how pregnant now?”

“Exactly three.”

“You don’t look it.” Still looking shocked, Kim lowered her gaze to Deanna’s still totally flat stomach zipped into jeans.

“I know I don’t look it. I guess I’m just small this time, and I’ve been so nervous that I’ve been losing a lot of weight.”

“Jesus. Does Ben know?”

Deanna shook her head. “I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that. I was thinking of-of having it… aborted. And I tried. I had it all set up, but when they got me on the table I just couldn’t. Not with two dead babies, and now Pilar. No matter how much I don’t want this child, I just can’t.”

“And Marc?”

“He’s ecstatic. He’ll finally get his son. Or a replacement for Pilar.”

“And you, Deanna?” Her voice was painfully soft.

“What do I get? Not much. I lose the one man I truly love, I get locked into a marriage that I’ve discovered has been dead for years, I have another baby who may or may not live-and if it does, it will be Marc’s and he’ll turn it against me again, make it two thousand percent French. God knows, Kim, I’ve been through it. But what are my choices, what can I do?”

“You could have it alone, if you want the kid. Ben might even want it, even if it isn’t his.”

“Marc would never let me go. He’ll do everything in his power to stop me.” It seemed a nebulous threat but she looked terrified by her own words. Kim watched the pain in her friend’s eyes.

“But what could he do?”

“I don’t know. Something. Anything. I feel as though I could never get away. If I tried to make it on my own, he’d do everything he could to stop me. And somehow he shakes my self-confidence, he convinces me that I can’t.”

“Tell me something, Deanna.” Kim looked at her long and hard. “Are you painting these days?”

Deanna shook her head. “What’s the point? I can’t show.” She gave a small useless shrug.

“You didn’t show for twenty years and you painted anyway. Why did you stop now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because Marc told you to? Because he thinks it’s foolish, because he makes you and your artwork seem very small?” Kim’s eyes were blazing now.

“I don’t know, maybe… He just makes everything seem so trivial and pointless.”

“And Ben?”

Deanna’s voice was suddenly very soft, and there was that light in her eyes again, the one Kim had so rarely seen. “It’s very different with Ben.”

“Don’t you think he could love that baby?”

“I don’t know.” Deanna came back to reality and she looked long and hard at Kim. “I can’t ask him. Do you realize that I was pregnant with Marc’s child the whole time I was sleeping with him? Do you have any idea how outrageous that is?” Deanna looked for a moment as though she hated herself.

“Don’t be so goddamn uptight for chrissake. You didn’t know you were pregnant. Did you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“You see? For God’s sake, Deanna, it might even be Ben’s!”

But Deanna was shaking her head. “No. There’s a discrepancy of a month.”

“Could they have made a mistake? You ought to know.”

“Yes, I should, but it’s a little hard to tell. I’m irregular. That makes things very confusing. I have to rely on their theories, not mine. And they say I got pregnant in mid- to late June. It could still be Ben’s… but it’s not very likely.”

Kim sat silently for a long time, watching her friend, before she asked the one question that seemed to matter to her. The rest really did not. “Deanna, do you want the baby? I mean, if none of this existed, if they both fell off the face of the earth, and there was just you, would you want this kid? Think about it for a second before you answer.”

But she didn’t have to. Dr. Jones had asked her the same thing. She looked up at Kim with a small tender light in her eyes. “The answer is yes. Yes, I’d want it. I’d want it to be my baby. Mine.” She looked away with tears in her eyes. “And I could always tell myself it was Ben’s.”

Kim sighed and put down her cup. “Then for God’s sake, Deanna, have it. Enjoy it. Love it. Be with it. Thrive with it… but have it alone. Leave Marc, so at least you can enjoy this child.”

“I can’t. I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

She hung her head as though in shame. “The bitch of it is that I don’t know.”