Alison Lurie - Truth and Consequences

Alan’s first reaction was that the whole thing must be a hoax of some sort, a hideous joke by a former fraternity brother or business associate, for instance, who wanted to embarrass Wally Hersh. Or someone who had it in for Delia, some crazed fan. The announcement gave her age as fifty-one instead of forty-five, clearly a malicious lie. But then Lily Unger sidled into the Center, looking smug, and said she’d known it all along, or anyhow for a couple of weeks. She had even been invited to the wedding, and would have gone if it wasn’t so far and the planes so unreliable at this time of year.

“I predicted it. And of course I was the one who introduced them,” Lily said, preening. It was at this point that Alan had had to go upstairs and shut himself in his office, and try not to break anything that would show or make the kind of noise anyone could hear. He slammed his fist into the wall a couple of times, but Matthew Unger’s father had built well, and he managed only to dent the plaster and bruise his knuckles badly—there was still a dried smear of blood there by the window.

She was supposed to be working so hard she couldn’t see anyone or answer anyone’s letters,Alan thought. But all along she must have been writing to Wally Hersh and seeing him. Maybe, even probably, he came to the cabin in the woods, which Alan had only once seen a photograph of, but fantasized about often. He should have suspected it, or something like it. After all, Delia had betrayed Henry Hull with Alan, so what was more likely than that she would betray Alan in his turn? Of course she didn’t love Wally Hersh—she had married him for his three houses and his wealth, which (according to Lily Unger) was considerable. Maybe she really was fifty-one years old: the Times ought to know, they had files going back years to when she wouldn’t have wanted to lie about her age. Bitch, whore, liar.

And she never even wrote to tell me, Alan thought. She’s a coward too. Or maybe worse, she had just forgotten him and couldn’t be bothered. He recalled something his dealer, Jacky Herbert, had said. “Delia’s not capable of multi-tasking. When she’s working, she doesn’t notice anything that happens around her. Or if you manage to interrupt her, then she turns her attention on you—her complete attention, like a high-powered spotlight, though usually not for long. People are drawn to it like moths, they flutter frantically against the glass, and then the spotlight is turned off and they fall to the ground, scorched.”

The next few weeks were agony, both physical and psychological. For a while Alan allowed himself to indulge in fantasies of confrontation, accusation, injury, and even murder. But finally he realized that the only thing he could do now was to curse Delia as a liar and a bitch and a gold digger and then forget her completely—never think of her again. Easier said than done. His back pain flared up, he drank alone in the evenings, and slept badly, the first few hours in a drunken stupor, the rest of the night in nervous fits and starts. At three and four a.m. he stumbled into the kitchen and broke things, mostly glasses and plates, sometimes by accident and sometimes on purpose, while the lizard hissed and clawed in his back.

He couldn’t, of course, tell anyone what was the matter, but his friends noticed that he was looking ill and miserable; they suggested false causes and useless cures. The only thing that helped, finally, was work. Cursing Delia, he also remembered something she had said to him once. “It’s not important for an artist to be good, or to be happy. If you’re serious, you have to give all that up. If you don’t, if you keep wanting those things, every time you pick up a pen you’ll make the wrong choices.”

His back was starting to ache seriously; he needed another drink, Alan thought now, and he looked toward the house to see if anyone else was coming to inspect the tower up close. No—yes, a figure had just detached itself from the crowd on the terrace and was starting across the lawn: a blond woman in a long, filmy white dress. The declining sun was full in his eyes, and for a moment he thought it was Delia. Over the past six months he had imagined that he saw her so often—in New York especially, but also, stupidly, in Corinth. More than once in the past six months he had followed some innocent female stranger down a street or across campus. He blinked hard, impatient with the persistence of his illusion, his obsession.

Then, with a sensation of having been struck hard in the chest, he realized that this time it was not a mirage. Approaching him was the person in the whole world he most and least wanted to see.

While he watched, she came nearer, becoming realer and even more beautiful than he had remembered, with a kind of faultless elegance he had never seen before. The Delia he’d known had been always just a little untidy—her mane of golden hair loosely and seductively disordered, her trailing thrift-shop skirts and fringed scarves slightly creased or disarranged as if she had just gotten out of bed. Once he had quoted to her Herrick’s poem, which she of course knew, that begins, “A sweet disorder in the dress . . .” Now her hair had the braided and curled and puffed perfection of the Botticelli portrait he had been reminded of the day they met, and her dress was an elaborate designer’s confection of silk chiffon with layered floating pleats. As she came nearer Alan could see that she was carrying a wineglass in each hand.

For months he had rehearsed what he would say to Delia when and if they met, though the script had changed over time, from passion to interrogation to accusation to rejection. Now he could remember none of the lines, and stood tongue-tied.

“I brought us some champagne,” she said, holding out one hand. The familiar sound of her voice, the low, caressing Southern accent, broke Alan’s daze, and he struck out, knocking the glass onto the lawn. Almost any other woman—especially Jane, with her instinctive domesticity—would have exclaimed, would have stooped to pick up the broken pieces. Delia paid no attention—she merely set the remaining glass of champagne on a bit of artificial ruined stone wall and gazed at him with her dark-fringed gray eyes.

“Wh-what are you doing here, what the hell are you doing?” he stuttered.

“I came to see you,” she murmured. “I made Jacky invite me. I had to come, I had to see you.”

“Yeah, well, hell.” Alan swallowed. “You could have tried to see me before. You could have written, at least, to tell me you were going to marry Wally Hersh.” His voice had strengthened and he pronounced the name with all the scorn he could manage.

“I couldn’t, I didn’t dare. I was afraid you’d try to stop me. I knew you could stop me.” She gazed at him helplessly.

“Oh, shit,” Alan said with feeling.

“I thought—I hoped you’d understand.” Delia moved nearer; he could smell her subtly flowery, presumably expensive, perfume. “You have to understand. I couldn’t bear it if you didn’t.” Her voice wavered, and her huge pale eyes seemed to fill with tears. But Alan was unmoved. Yeah, maybe I could have stopped you, but you didn’t give me a chance to stop you, he thought. Or, more likely, the whole thing is a lie.

“You’re not going to tell me you’re in love with him?” he said.

“I’ve been so frightened, always,” Delia said, disregarding his question and thus, Alan realized, answering it. “You don’t know. All my life.”

“Yeah? Frightened of what?”

“Of everything. Of losing everything, being nothing and nobody.” She looked at him innocently, helplessly. But she’s not innocent, she’s not helpless, Alan reminded himself.

“That’s ridiculous. You’re famous. And you’re beautiful,” he said, painfully aware of how true this was as she stood before him, the tendrils of her hair and the thin gauze of her long sleeves fluttering in the wind.