Almost Perfect Read online

  Hanging up, annoyed by the burst of laughter with which her really serious question was greeted, Margot senses that all her earlier moments of happiness have evaporated like morning mists—and through no fault of her own!

  Andrew was so cross with her, and so mean, so selfishly preoccupied. And if he does get sick he would probably not even want Margot to take care of him.

  And with Stella’s father just dead, of course there can be no question of telling anyone about Richard’s big affair. It would be just too awful if it did get back to Stella, and naturally everyone would blame Margot, as though it were all her fault that Richard Fallon was a cheat and that Stella was too dumb to see it.

  12

  Bad Times

  The summer that Stella was later to remember as the summer when her father died (and when she had pneumonia, and when she broke with Richard in a way that seemed to be permanent)—that summer was also the coldest, darkest, windiest San Francisco summer that anyone remembered. Black fog billowed in through the Golden Gate, enshrouding the bridge, slowing early-morning traffic; blackness lay like a pall over all the trees in the Presidio—where Stella lived, and mourned, and tried to cheer up, to pull herself together and get well and get to work.

  But in the mornings as she left her dark string of rooms to walk to the bus stop, wind cut into her head like knives, exposing the hopeless, anguished muddle of her brain, where all was confusion: pain at the loss of her father, and hurt at his will; then pain at lack of love from Richard when she felt that she most needed love from him, and then his loss; and her prolonged, insufferable cold. And all those conditions seemed to fuel each other, each making the others more severe, more unbearable.

  Some years earlier—about ten years before the summer when he died—when Stella went out with her father in New York, everyone always stared, which vain Prentice interpreted in his own way: he believed himself to be both famous and handsome. Although, those days, in a comparative sense he was neither—especially at the Algonquin, where he liked to go for drinks; no one in that place was likely to have heard of him, and so many stars of varying degrees of beauty and fame had hung out there: rock stars, movie stars, handsome young writers—Prentice earned all those stares with sheer oddity: his sheaf of yellow-white hair, his ranging wild blue eyes. He looked very odd indeed in his battered old black clothes; there was always the possibility that he might be someone. But savoring all the attention, he leaned back in his leather chair and continued to lecture his erring daughter.

  “The point is,” he told her (often), “I know guys like Liam O’Gara, and you don’t. You just don’t. They use women up, those guys. To them a woman of twenty-one is old, a discard. We had guys like him in the Brigade, going crazy over very young Spanish girls, and I mean girls: those kids were all well under twenty, some of them only about fourteen or fifteen. Jailbait, we used to call them in the States. Liam thinks he’s some kind of an Errol Flynn. And I have to tell you, Stell, it’s downright embarrassing for me to have my daughter connected with his name. Not to mention pictures in a vulgar newsmagazine.”

  The vulgar magazine in question was Time, which had run a picture of Liam O’Gara “on location in Ásolo, north of Venice, with his current companion, unidentified.” Unidentified Stella, looking even younger than she was, in an old bathing suit that made her look undeveloped, childish, her long black hair in a single girlish braid. “They didn’t even use my name,” Stella told her father, for the dozenth time. “Who’d know? Who’d care?”

  “I, for one,” intoned Prentice. “The capitalist press at its worst. Always has been the most terrible magazine. The China lobby. Henry Luce. Look what they did to Paul Robeson.” Although his politics had predictably veered right, Prentice still sounded, usually, like a Thirties Stalinist.

  “Oh, Daddy, really.” The old childish name had slipped out; more often Stella called her father Prentice, which he preferred.

  “And my friends. They knew you. In fact a woman you’ve not even met, name of Alexandra, an exceptional type, asked me if that girl with Liam O’Gara could possibly be my daughter. Thought she saw some resemblance to some pictures I had around.”

  Which is how Stella first heard of her new stepmother, Alexandra Minsky, an actress—even as she digested Prentice’s clear lie: he did not keep pictures of his daughter lying about. The stepmother-before-last, Rachel, had been visibly surprised to find that Prentice had an almost grown-up daughter. (Rachel, the antiquarian book dealer for whom Prentice had ditched Delia, mother of Stella.) Her father lied; Stella had known and reluctantly admitted that fact to herself for some time, and excused it in various ways: he’s a writer, he deals in fictions—or, his life has been disappointing, all his friends are more famous and successful than he is. But still, the sense that she could not trust him made Stella queasy; she was embarrassed for even his smallest lies. A man who fought in Spain should be a hero, Stella once believed. Or, having been heroic early, he should have remained so.

  As though he had read her mind and been amused by its stupid innocence, Prentice laughed. “Prentice the silly old Commie—is that how you see your old man? Although I suppose some might say that only a very strong father fixation would lead you to a jerk like Liam O’Gara.” He leaned back with a challenging, happy smile.

  “Actually you couldn’t be more different.” Blushing as she said this, Stella still believed it to be true, and often (to herself) she had cited instances of difference: Liam’s quiet, implacable self-assurance and his upright, severe Scottish conscience—perhaps as odd in a movie director as were Prentice’s quite opposite qualities in a hero. Stella had so often made this contrast that at times she wondered if Prentice and Liam could actually be two opposing halves of the same person, a classic schizophrenic.

  The room in which they sat and drank, with its low, inviting chairs and nice round tables, was crowded; Prentice, always inattentive to his daughter, kept craning his conspicuous old head around, always searching: there always might be someone. But turning back to Stella, he announced, “Well, if you don’t shape up, I just may stop making those insurance payments. Think of that—to have me kick off without any compensation!”

  “Oh, Prentice.”

  “But don’t you worry, my girl. I’ll keep up that rotten expensive policy until my dying day. Literally. And I want you to do something sensible with the money. Like buy a house.” He looked at his watch. “Well, time I was shoving along, old dear. I have to meet the aforesaid Alexandra even farther uptown.”

  Having imagined that they were to have dinner together (or did she imagine it? didn’t Prentice say dinner?), Stella gave a moment’s thought to the refrigerator of the friend with whom she was staying, also uptown but West Side: surely she saw some eggs?

  “I suppose you’ll be meeting Mr. O’Gara somewhere very grand.” This was a statement from Prentice, not a question.

  “Well, I guess not, not tonight.” This seemed hardly the time to tell him that she and Mr. O’Gara were through: the fact that he always, conscientiously, told her about his other, newer and younger loves (younger than twenty-one: Prentice of course was right) made them no easier to bear, Stella had finally, forcefully said to Liam.

  Prentice made these unseemly references to an insurance policy fairly often, along with instructions, which were sometimes facetious: “Your first face-lift, if you’re your mother’s daughter.” Or, more sensibly if much more extravagantly, “Buy a house.” The house advice surely suggested a lot of money, and the facelift less, but still, it meant something substantial.

  And now, on Prentice’s death, there had been the actual will—and nothing from an insurance company. A copy of the will, mailed out by Alexandra, stated clearly that all Prentice’s worldly goods went to his beloved wife, Alexandra Minsky Blake; or, should that wife predecease him, everything went to the Libertarian Party of New York, with a street address. (Libertarians! This seemed strange news indeed.) But all in all the will was painful to read; telling no one, Stel
la crumpled those papers into her garbage can, along with the kitty litter, dead flowers and coffee grounds.

  But after several weeks of no further word from Alexandra, much less from an insurance company (Stella had no idea how those things work), she said to Justine, “Prentice kept talking about this insurance policy. For me, I mean. What do you think I should do?”

  Laughing, Justine told her, “Honey, I think you have to know which insurance company. You can’t just write to them all. But there must be a policy around somewhere.”

  “You don’t know Prentice. I mean, there wasn’t necessarily any policy at all. Or he could have taken one out a long time ago in some manic fit and then not paid it.”

  Obviously, she would have to call Alexandra. Who told her, “Really, Stella, you know how Prentice was. Promises, promises. He thought big. Honestly, if I had a nickel for every imaginary present. Pie in the sky. Or, new stereo locked in the head of Prentice Blake. Naturally, if any insurance company comes around I’ll let you know, but, sweetie, I frankly doubt it.”

  And so, probably, neither a face-lift nor a house. Nor a paying off of debts. Doctors and dentists, Macy’s, credit cards. Much less a trip to New York.

  Stella tried very hard not to mind, but she did mind. She felt as though she had received a posthumous letter from Prentice, saying, I never cared about you at all. I didn’t love you. I only pretended sometimes.

  She told herself, It’s only the money. Or alternately, It isn’t really the money that I mind. But she did mind about the money; she could have used even a small amount. And she minded even more what she felt was the message of uncaringness from Prentice.

  Her cold got worse.

  And Richard acted worse.

  * * *

  One night he arrived at her house for dinner a little after seven, already drunk. A big lunch with clients, he said. His new Germans. His face was red and swollen, and he blinked a lot, as though trying to focus. He looked ugly, and threatening.

  “You know, I don’t really feel too well,” Stella whispered. “Maybe … I just don’t feel like making dinner. Could you … do you think …”

  “Oh Christ.” He stared at her, enraged, his face bull-red and coarse. “I think you’re asking me to leave. You don’t want to have dinner with me, I can tell.”

  “I guess not,” she whispered.

  “Well, in that case.” He lurched to his feet. “But you don’t have to worry about the Germans anymore,” she heard him say. “All gone.”

  Instead of rushing over to him, as she sometimes did, to cling to him and beg him please to stay, Stella leaned back against the sofa and closed her eyes. She was so vastly tired, she ached all over. Dimly, from behind closed lids, she heard Richard heading for the door. The opening, the slam.

  And that time, instead of anguish and hysteria, her usual response to Richard’s departures, what Stella felt was mostly physical in nature: heat, and an ache in her heart, and some tightening of her breath.

  “Richard and I have broken up,” she announces to Justine the next morning, on the phone, partly to test the saying of this sentence: Is it true? have they in fact broken up? “He was so drunk and terrible,” Stella says to her friend. “But you know, this goddam cold that I have is so bad that I really don’t care. Odd logic: I think when I get over the cold I’ll be over Richard too.”

  “Honey, I think you should call your doctor. Honestly, though, this weather is enough to put anyone under. So cold, and the wind. Days like these, I think more kindly than usual of Texas.”

  Neither her cold nor the pain of breaking with Richard seems to diminish. Stella can barely make it to work; she sniffles and coughs all day, and her chest hurts. In bed at night she finds it hard to breathe.

  Piercing memories of Richard make sleep impossible. He seems then, at night, to exist in her mind more vividly than in actual life; she can hear his voice, can see his face, smell his skin more sharply than if he were actually there. And crazily, all that she recalls of him is good; the only Richard in her mind is loving and warm, and kind and laughing, strong and passionately in love with her. And saying so, all night.

  Finally she does call her doctor, who says that he would like to see her. That afternoon. And in his office, after listening to her chest, checking pulse and heart rate, he tells her, “I just don’t much like what I see. And from what you say, this has gone on for much too long. The hospital. Tests. Check in as soon as you can. I’m sure your insurance. I’ll see you there around six.”

  Stella calls Justine, arranges for some sick leave from the office (“God, I hope he’s right about my insurance”) and arranges for Mr. Wong to feed the cat, pretty Eve. (Mr. Wong has turned out to be a secret lover of cats; he is crazy about Eve—or so Richard once reported. Richard who himself was getting very thick with Mr. Wong.) And Stella, even more sick than she is terrified, checks into the hospital, which is not far from where she lives.

  For several days (and nights: the nights are terrible) she does not get better at all—despite a barrage of drugs, and tests, and doctor visits. What she has, she is told, is a particularly resistant strain of pneumonia. (What people used to die of, Stella thinks.)

  During those nights, in her noisy, low-lit room, Stella becomes a total prey to terror. She dreams of, or half imagines, giant wild animals, rustling down the corridors. She hears the mammoth wheels of plundering tanks, smells the killer world of night.

  In the daytime, awakened for tests, for gurney trips down to X-ray, she thinks, This is more than an illness, I am obviously having some sort of breakdown. Prentice dying, and then the breakup with Richard, and this pneumonia—everything at once has been too much.

  And she does not succeed in separating out those elements; too often she lapses back into tears, and panic, an awful debilitation.

  Sometimes during the day she has a few rational moments, though. When Justine comes to visit she even speaks more or less rationally about Richard. What happened. “It’s lucky we weren’t together much longer,” she says. “The addiction or whatever it was could have got worse. And I’m sure it would have.”

  “That’s probably true,” says Justine.

  A pause, and then Stella asks, “How’re things at work?”

  “About the same.” Justine relates some gossip, a few new rumors of takeovers, dismissals.

  “And you and Collin?”

  Justine laughs, very shortly. “About the same.”

  But after that visit Stella notes that she is better.

  Margot arrives with a great sheaf of purple flowers. She tells Stella their name, but Stella instantly forgets it.

  Even in her own unreal state, Stella can see that Margot is not herself; she looks older, and distracted; even her hair is awry, disheveled. And she talks in a brittle, unconvincing way (as though she were trying not to cry, it occurs to Stella).

  There is even some chatter about feminism, vaguely linked to Justine, that Stella, befogged, has trouble following. “Feminists don’t really seem to have things sorted out any better than the rest of us,” Margot babbles. “Oh, darling, of course I know you are one, but not like Justine, she can be awfully strident. And I asked her the simplest question, and she had absolutely no feminist answer. Well, let me try it out on you.”

  “Okay.” Stella finds that she very much wishes Margot would just go away, or just be quiet.

  “Tell me, if you were involved with some guy who was cheating on you, would you want to know about it?”

  Half understanding the question, but having grasped that Margot herself is very disturbed, Stella says, “No, I don’t think so. But, Margot, are you okay? You just don’t look … like yourself.”

  Evidently unused to sympathy, Margot bridles. “Why? You must mean my hair. I know it’s a mess, but Andrew called just as I was doing it, and he can be so upsetting. Honestly, he’s such a hypochondriac.”

  “I hardly know him,” Stella whispers; by now she is truly exhausted. Dimly she is glad that she has not tol
d Margot about Richard. Breaking up with Richard. Richard gone.

  She must have fallen asleep, for when she next is conscious Margot is gone and the purple flowers are drooping in their vase. And a nurse is waking her up for another test.

  That night she dreams, or imagines, or hallucinates, that Richard is there in the room with her, at some unreal past-midnight hour. Richard is standing at the foot of her bed, holding three pale, very full-blown roses. She can even smell the roses, so vivid is this dream. But Richard’s voice is strange, as he tells her, “Oh, Stella, I’ve been so terrible, I never meant to. I love you, I love you, you can’t imagine how much I love you. Stella, please don’t leave me, I need you.” Was he crying? Was this Richard?

  He comes toward her, in this incredible dream, he stands beside her and bends down to kiss her forehead. He even laughs! “Christ,” he says. “Hospital smells. I’ve got to get you out of here. I love you!”

  Stella seems then to fall asleep, and when she wakes again Richard is gone. Of course he is; the dream is over. Stella sleeps again, very soundly; her best sleep for weeks.

  She sleeps until she is awakened by a nurse, who is saying, “What lovely roses you have here. Honey, can you smell them? Lovely! But they’re so full, the petals are falling off.”

  13

  Happy Days of Love

  Richard does not exactly move into Stella’s house, and at no time do they ever admit to each other that they are living together; but after Stella comes home from the hospital—Richard collects her there, bundling her and her clothes and flowers into his open car and handing her out like a prize—he is always at her house. Living there.

  In the late afternoons, usually, Stella hears him call out, “Anybody home?” and the sound of his saying that always makes her smile: Where else would she be but at home, expecting him? But she rushes to where he is, in the entranceway.