Chocolates for Breakfast Page 21

  “No,” Janet said, staring out the window at the murky city. “I’ve had breakfast.”

  There was another silence.

  “What’s wrong, Jan? Didn’t you enjoy seeing Marshall again, and the deb party and all?”

  “The deb party was deadly,” Janet said. “And Marsh was in a lousy mood. So we left early and went to his house.”

  “Did you stay there last night?”

  “Yes,” Janet said. She turned in confusion to Courtney. “He refused to make love with me,” she blurted out. “It was awful. It was so late I didn’t want to come back here and wake up your mother, and I kept thinking if I stayed he would shape up. Finally he told me about this girl in Newport that he’s known for years, a real drip, who cooks him dinner and all that crap. He asked her to marry him, and they’re going to announce their engagement next month. Next month.” She smiled to herself. “Everything happens next month. Marshall gets engaged and I make my lousy debut. I don’t know what the hell I’m coming out to. I don’t even want the debut now.”

  Courtney was silent. She didn’t want to tell Janet what her mother had said. What a lousy break this was.

  “He slept on the couch,” Janet said suddenly. “On the couch, for Chrissake!” She started to laugh, and laughed hysterically, burying her head in the pillow as the laughter gave way to tears. “Why is it always this way?” Her words were muffled and Courtney couldn’t understand the rest of what she said. Nervously, Courtney lit a cigarette.

  Finally, Janet sat up, a little composed. “Now what do I do,” she said hopelessly.

  “Do you want a drink?” Courtney suggested.

  “Ten in the morning. What the hell.”

  Courtney brought Janet a glass of brandy and had a cup of coffee for herself.

  “That’s better,” Janet said after a little while. “I guess I was an idiot to let this guy mean so much to me. What the hell, there are lots of other men. But now I’m hung; everything seems so confused. I can’t stay here forever.”

  I might as well tell her now, Courtney thought.

  “Mummy threw a fit this morning,” Courtney said. “She’s been in a lousy mood, and she just blew up. She said—”

  “She wants me to leave?” Janet asked.

  “Yes,” Courtney said, relieved. She watched Janet’s face closely, but could see no emotion.

  “I wondered when she would,” Janet said dully. “I never am very popular with parents. Not even my own,” she smiled.

  “I’m glad you aren’t upset, sweetie,” Courtney said. “You know I don’t want you to go.”

  There still was no reaction on Janet’s face.

  “I really think your father will be all right,” Courtney continued. “He should have shaped up by now.”

  “Is it all right if I stay here until tonight?” Janet said aggressively, as though waiting for rejection.

  “Of course, Jan. I haven’t any date tonight. You stay for dinner, and go home later. Maybe your father will be asleep, so it’ll be easier.”

  “Maybe,” Janet said.

  Janet was strangely silent all that day, as she packed her clothes. Courtney noticed that she did not return the bras and the slip, but still said nothing. Janet had had enough for one day. Thank God, Courtney thought, Marshall had broken off with her. Now she didn’t have that to worry about. Janet would go home, peace would be made—or at least armed truce—and Courtney’s life could return to normal. It almost seemed that what her mother maintained, in her Irish philosophy, was right—all things did work out for the best. But wasn’t that Voltaire? Anyway, it was all right, and Courtney breathed easily as the problem of Janet was taken off her hands.

  She was bothered, though, by Janet’s silence. Janet never gave in to depression, unlike Courtney in her Irish fluctuation of mood, yet this silence was very like depression. Depression, as Courtney knew it from her mother and herself, was violent and stormy, but Janet’s listless, passive acceptance of the sudden reversal of her plans and the fact that she was again forced to return to her father was new to Courtney. This was the sullen acceptance of misfortune of a tired, middle-aged woman, a mood Courtney had never seen in Janet. Janet’s resentment was harshly vociferous, screaming at her father, getting drunk. Her new silence perplexed and worried Courtney, presenting the only cloud in Courtney’s bright, newly washed sky.

  Janet carried her silence even to the dinner table, and her mother was as affected by it as Courtney was. Sondra felt that it was an expression of resentment toward her, because Courtney had put the responsibility for asking Janet to leave on her.

  Sondra was greatly relieved when, late that evening, Courtney accompanied Janet downstairs and put her in the cab which would take her home.

  “Well,” Sondra said as Courtney came back, “thank God that’s over with. Shall we have a drink and celebrate the liberation of our home?”

  Courtney made the drinks and handed her mother her Scotch. She sat on the couch and lit a cigarette.

  “Don’t tell me you’re angry with me, too,” her mother said, “because I made you kick out Janet. I don’t have to put up with your mood, too, do I?”

  “No,” Courtney smiled. “I’m actually just as glad Janet finally left. It will make my life a lot easier, too, and I never would have had the initiative to do it by myself. I’m worried about Janet, though. She was in such a strange mood, not angry, not really depressed. She just sort of accepted the whole thing as though she expected to be rejected by me, too.”

  “Darling,” her mother said as she put her hand on the back of her daughter’s neck, “Janet is not your problem. Neither is your father, neither am I. You’re only seventeen and you have enough to worry about just thinking of yourself.”

  Courtney looked up, surprised.

  “What prompted all this?” she smiled.

  “I had dinner with your father last night,” Sondra said, “and we had a long talk about you. Don’t think that we aren’t aware of what’s happening to you.” She sat down. “You have a lot in your own life to resolve, things that you can only resolve by yourself. We haven’t said anything to you, because we have no right to interfere. That’s the hell of being a parent,” she mused. “Someday you’ll find that out for yourself. You don’t want to see your child hurt, you want to take the pain and make the decisions for them. But you can’t do that. You have to let them work out in their own stumbling way what you learned a long time ago—what you could tell them in fifteen minutes but what takes years for them to find out for themselves.”

  Courtney studied her mother’s face, the sleek hair, the skin that still looked young from careful care, the knowledgeable, self-assured expression that people who didn’t know her called arrogance. How much she knew that Courtney took for granted, the years of living and fighting her own way in a harshly competitive world. Because Sondra had never made a success of her own personal life, Courtney assumed that she could do it so much better, and fought her own way through the tangled web she spun about herself. She had underestimated her mother; she had assumed that her parents were deceived by her careful explanations of her actions. So they knew, so they had known for a long time, but had never said anything because they, wiser than most parents, had known there was nothing they could have done. Courtney studied her mother’s face with a new respect.

  “Don’t think your father and I haven’t been aware of the wall you have put up around yourself. This estrangement, your fumbling attempts toward becoming an adult. Children are so foolish, insisting on doing all this themselves, refusing their parents’ help.”

  “I have to do it myself,” Courtney said finally. “You wouldn’t want me to let you live my life for me. I’m sure you have more respect for me as a person because I make decisions by myself.”

  “I suppose so,” her mother said. “But this discussion gets us nowhere; it’s the eternal discussion between parents and children. There is one thing your father and I can do, though, and that’s what we talked about last night.
I haven’t told you before, but there is a very good chance that I can get a part in a Broadway play this fall.”

  “Oh, Mummy, how marvelous!”

  “This is no pipe dream, like the Nick thing. The producer and the director are both people I have worked with before, before I went to Hollywood. They know me very well, and they know my work. I think this is the break we’ve been waiting for. If I get this part,” Sondra continued, “—it isn’t a big part, but a decent featured role—your father has just gotten that raise, and I think when we have to move out of here in September we can move into a place on Fifth Avenue, with your father’s help. I really owe you a lovely home again, and I think we’ll be able to manage it.”

  “Everything happens in September,” Courtney mused.

  “What?” her mother asked.

  “Nothing,” Courtney said. “I was just thinking.”

  Everything happens in September, Courtney repeated to herself. Janet finally makes her debut, and she’s living at home after all. And our life finally gets back to what it used to be. Funny how everything really does work out for the best.

  And several blocks north of the apartment where Courtney and her mother sat talking, Janet Parker and her father were standing at opposite ends of the living room. Janet’s suitcase, still unopened, sat in the hall with her raincoat thrown hastily across it.

  “Yes,” Janet was saying, “I did come back. But it wasn’t because of you. I didn’t want to come back any more than you wanted me back. But you might at least pretend that you’re glad to see me.”

  Mr. Parker said nothing, but stared down at the drink in his hand.

  “Your mother left,” he said. “When you went to that girl’s house, she was hysterical. I called her psychiatrist and he said it would be best to send her back to the sanitarium.” He stared at the girl, dressed in the simple black dress which fitted close to her body, her mouth full and petulant, anger and contempt in her eyes. “How can I be glad to see you? You’ve destroyed your mother, you’ve destroyed me.”

  He set down his drink and walked across the living room to her. His eyes were cold and totally without emotion. For the first time in her life, Janet was afraid of her father. She held her ground, refusing to move as he came up to her. Coldly, with the full force of his body, he slapped her. She fell back a step and suddenly, she didn’t know why or how, something deeper and more basic than emotion took command of her and she found her hands around his neck in anger, and she knew that she wanted to destroy him, this man whom she loved and so hated, her father. He fell upon her and forced her onto the couch and lay above her as a lover might, and she was terrified. This was too strange and too strong for her, her father lying on her body in control of her. Emotion left her in a sudden exhaustion and she turned her head away and wept. As her body went limp in his arms he rose and walked over to the window. Thank God, she thought. Thank God he got up. He leaned against the window sill in shame and hatred of himself and buried his face in his hands. The intermittent and lonely sounds of the taxi horns and a train leaving Grand Central deep beneath the street rose to the window from Park Avenue. Dazed, Janet got up and ran into her room, locking both doors. To fill the awful silence of the apartment she turned on her victrola to its full volume. The one record on the victrola, Stan Kenton’s “Capitol Punishment,” filled the room in unreal cacophany, as the girl lay on her bed, beyond tears, beyond emotion, in the starkness of what had happened.

  The record played over and over and finally Janet rose and walked to the window. She looked down at Park Avenue in the early evening. She watched the cabs travel down Park, the cabs that had carried her to mid-town bars and restaurants, each a world in which she had found, for an evening, the illusion of companionship and warmth. This was the hour when the city stood up, brushed the soot from its shoulders and waited, tense and expectant, for the night. This was the loneliest hour in the day. She knelt on the window sill, beyond fear, beyond emotion. For a moment she hesitated, but there could be no hesitation, no emotion. With a single, simple thrust, she flung herself toward the street below.

  Chapter 22

  The rain had stopped during the night, and as Courtney turned in bed and looked out her window at the fresh, clean-washed morning sky, and then at the empty bed beside her and the room in some semblance of order, she lay back on her pillow with a great feeling of relief. Janet had finally gone home, and Courtney could pick up her life where she had left it two weeks ago. She got up, eager to start the day, and put on her bathrobe. Before she went into the dining room, she stopped and picked up the Times. Her mother, sitting at the breakfast table in her white robe, looked up as she came in.

  “Good morning, darling.”

  “Good morning, Mummy,” Courtney said brightly.

  “You’re in a good mood this morning.”

  “I’m in a wonderful mood. Marie,” she called into the kitchen, “could I have some scrambled eggs and toast and some orange juice? I picked up the Times from the door,” she said to her mother.

  “Isn’t it wonderful,” her mother said, sipping her second cup of coffee, “to have the house to ourselves and life back to normal? What does the world have to say for itself this morning?”

  “ ‘Fair and warm today,’ ” Courtney read. “Somebody attacked the administration—the Mau Mau are raising hell—some Park Avenue girl—”

  Courtney stopped and read it again, a story in an obscure corner of the front page:

  Janet Parker, Park Avenue socialite, jumped or fell to her death last night . . . her parents could not be reached for comment . . . to make her debut in a month . . .

  “What is it, Courtney? What’s wrong?”

  Courtney put down the paper and stared, shocked and bewildered, at the window across from her. Suddenly she got up and ran into her room, slamming the door behind her, as her mother picked up the paper.

  She lay on her bed for several minutes until she finally could believe what had happened and then she began to cry against her pillow, cry hysterically. The door opened behind her and her mother came in silently and sat beside her. She put her hand on Courtney’s head.

  “Get out of here!” Courtney shouted into the pillow. “Get out of here!”

  “Courtney, you don’t blame me—”

  “No! No, I don’t blame you!”

  “I know what Janet meant to you, but no one could have helped—”

  “Don’t talk to me about her! You have no right to! You’re a parent, Goddammit, and it was parents—oh, let me alone and don’t you dare to mention her name! You’re none of you worth one of her! You destroyed her, all of you, and you’ll never admit it! Get out of my room!”

  Her mother left, shutting the door quietly behind her. She went into the kitchen.

  “Marie, don’t bother about Courtney’s breakfast. She’s very upset this morning, and I don’t want her disturbed.”

  Then Sondra went to the phone and called Courtney’s father.

  Early that afternoon, when Courtney finally came into the living room, she found her mother and father sitting there, waiting for her.

  “Do you want a drink, Courtney?” her father asked quietly.

  “Yes, I think so,” Courtney said. She turned to her mother. “Mummy, I’m sorry about what I said to you this morning. It didn’t have anything to do with you, you understand that.”

  “Yes,” her mother said softly. “I understand that. Not completely, I don’t suppose I can. But I understand a little.”

  Her father handed her a drink, and made one for Sondra and himself. Robbie was always there in a crisis.

  In the week that followed, Courtney saw no one but her parents. Somehow she felt that she shared the guilt for Janet’s death; there must have been something she could have done. She had no desire to see anyone of Janet’s generation. She did not want to be reminded. Both Anthony and Charles called, but Marie said that Courtney was not in.

  Her parents understood, and determined to give her a new life, in the
only way they knew—by making more money. Sondra began to make rounds, which she loathed, but she could no longer afford to wait for producers and directors of the fall plays to call her. Courtney needed more security than Sondra could give her with TV work, and Sondra could not let her pride stand in the way of Courtney’s welfare.

  Courtney did not expect her mother to get a part. She no longer allowed herself to believe that her world could be made better. As the weeks passed without success, Courtney sat in her room and was not surprised.

  The weather grew crisp as fall came upon New York. Courtney’s windows were closed against the September air, and her room was filled with cigarette smoke as her mother swept in.

  “Courtney darling!” Sondra announced. “I got a part!”

  Courtney looked up. “No reservations? Are you really certain of it?”

  “Yes,” her mother said, excited as a child. “We’re starting rehearsal in a week! Isn’t it marvelous?” Her mother sat on the bed and took Courtney’s hand.

  “Everything is really working out for us, darling. I called the real-estate woman and told her to start looking for our apartment, and I called your father. He’s coming over this evening to celebrate with us.” She looked at Courtney. “You must wear that lovely new cocktail dress, and you must come out of hiding. Really, darling, this moping around the house is no good for you. I know what a blow this has been for you, but you really must see someone. One of those attractive young men. Your father is taking us to dinner at Sardi’s and you must ask someone to go with you.”

  “Mummy, I really don’t want to. I’ll just go with you and Daddy.”

  “No,” her mother said with finality. “You simply must get yourself an amusing date. That’s all there is to it.”

  “All right,” Courtney said wearily.

  “I’m so glad, darling. That makes everything just right. Now, you get on the phone and call one of those boys you’ve been avoiding.”

  As her mother left the room, Courtney looked out at the early September afternoon and lit a cigarette. Her mother was right as usual. She had been in hiding. She had been in hiding from a world that was suddenly too brutal and harsh for her. A world that had destroyed Janet, and yet didn’t even care. She rose and went to the window. There were many things that Janet’s death had asked her to face, which she had not faced. For so long her life had run a parallel to Janet’s. Janet’s death left her a legacy, a promise which she must fulfill. It was strange, the way she felt about it. Somehow she had to go on where Janet had failed and had given up, almost as though Janet had pointed the way for her. She had no right to withdraw from life now. She had almost an obligation to go on, to make something of the life Janet had fled and which, for so long, Courtney had fled.