Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“ Prego ,” he answered, and left the table.

“Who else but Italians would go around boiling milk?” Gillian said. She pulled the pitcher to her and poured. “You’re still in television, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Producing.” She nodded. “I saw your name on some shows.”

“I saw some of the work you did, too,” he said.

“Really? Which?”

“Oh, some television stuff. And a movie once, I think. It was hard to tell because you weren’t on the screen very long. But I was sure it was you.”

“The roller coaster?” she asked.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“The roller coaster,” she said, and she nodded. “Well, anyway, here we are.”

“Yes.”

“Alone at last.” She laughed quickly and nervously, caught the laugh before it gained momentum, and sobered immediately. The table was suddenly silent. “I’m glad we ran into each other, David.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.” She looked down at her coffee cup. “Are you different now?” she asked.

“Different how, Gilly?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged, her eyes refusing to meet his. “Now that you’re successful? I’m different, I know. I feel different, and I look different, I...” She paused. “Have you changed?”

“I guess we all change, Gilly.”

“Yes.”

They sipped at their coffee silently.

“It was a very happy time for me, David,” she said at last.

“And for me, too.”

“There’s been so much in between,” she said. “Will I see you while you’re in Rome?”

“Would you like to see me?”

“Yes. Yes, I would, David.” She raised her eyes. “We shared so much, you see. I’d hate to think...” She shook her head. “I always cry easily. This is very hard for me, sitting here with you. Maybe I’m not quite as grown up as I thought.”

“Shall I get the check?”

“Yes, I think so. I have the feeling... I feel so odd all at once, David. I feel... I wish I hadn’t seen you again. I think... I have the feeling something is ending. I feel so very sad. I’m going to start crying in a minute.”

He signaled for the waiter. They were both silent while he added up the check. David deciphered it and paid him, and then helped Gillian into her coat. The old man with the hanging white mustache had ordered another dish of sherbet.

They went out into the rain. The bell over the door tinkled again. The yellow table tops were still there. Up the street, the cabs were still lined up. Nothing had changed. Everything was still the same.

“Will you walk me to a taxi?” Gillian asked. She thrust her hands into her pockets, and he took her elbow. “Sunny Italy,” she said. They walked silently. As they approached the hack stand, she stopped. “I’m staying at the Excelsior,” she said. “If you want to, you can call me there.”

“Do you want me to call, Gillian?” he asked.

She waited for a long time before answering. Then she said, “I want you to come with me now, David.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Yes,” she answered. “I want you. It’s as simple as that.” She hesitated and then said, “Hasn’t it always been as simple as that, David?”

She was a young girl again, trembling with need and anticipation, as innocent as she had been that first time so long ago, trembling on the brink of discovery. He kissed her gently and with infinite tenderness, and her mouth formed to accept his kiss, curving to fit the mold of his lips, pressing his mouth in tentative exploration, softly, gently, lips that were old friends greeting each other anew and with freshness, partially suspicious of the ardor of an earlier time, filled with wonder at the endurance of memory, the persistence of training. She pulled away from him suddenly and looked directly into his face, her eyes meeting his, touching his nose with curious fingers, and his mouth, and his cheekbones, and then back to his mouth again.

“I wanted so much to kiss you in the rain,” she whispered.

“I love you, Gillian,” he whispered.

“Yes, yes, I love you.”

“You’re so beautiful, darling.”

“Yes, call me darling.”

“Darling, darling. Gillian, my darling.”

“Yes, please. You say it with such love. You do love me, David, don’t you? You do love me still?”

“Yes, I do love you still.”

“Yes, and I love you. Would you kiss me, darling? Would you please kiss me again?”

He kissed her, and she suddenly hugged him fiercely. “Oh, it’s so good to be with you again,” she said, holding him tight. “Oh, David, it’s so damn good.”

His hands were upon her again, remembering again with a memory of their own. Her mouth closed upon his, they moved together with the precision of meshing gears, there was, he could hear his watch ticking in the stillness, a breath-holding, clumsy, time-suspended moment when they joined irrevocably, flesh claiming flesh, and suddenly she began sobbing.

She turned her head into the pillow and began sobbing, and he stumbled on the sudden tears, the world stopped dead with her tears, time stopped, she twisted her head, wrenched it from the pillow, looked into his face and his eyes, her own face tear-streaked, and whispered angrily, whispered in confusion and despair and puzzlement, whispered, “Where did we lose it, David? Oh, David, David, where did we lose it?”

He looked at her, startled for a moment, holding her in his arms and staring at the misery on her face, and then he seized her close in fear, held her trembling body close to his because he did not want to let her go now that he had found her again, didn’t she realize they had found each other again? Didn’t she know they hadn’t lost anything? Held her desperately. Clung to her, frightened. Held her, held her, and shook his head, tried to shake the truth from his head, realizing it was the truth, and thinking, Good old Gillian, straight to the point, and then nodding with a weary sort of resignation, nodding, and releasing her, and accepting it as something he had known all along. He had known it on the steps after the first shock of recognition, known it when he took her hand and ran down the street, known it as they sat strangers to each other while the old man spooned sherbet into his mouth. And again when they declared their love feverishly, when they desperately whispered, “I love you, I love you,” they could still say the words, the words were always and ever the same, “I love you, I love you,” but it was done and finished, drowned by time, and now there were only the words and the empty motions, but nothing more.

And nothing more to say, really.

Nothing.

“I’m sorry.” She was sobbing into the pillow. She kept one fist pressed to her mouth and sobbed. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Gilly, Gilly.”

“I hate endings. Oh God, I hate things to end. I’m sorry, David. I’m so terribly sorry.”

He kissed her gently, and he cupped her face with his hands and pushed her hair back behind her ears, and she smiled wanly and said, “You know I don’t like that, David.”

He released her hair.

He felt a terrible need to leave quickly. He felt he was suddenly in danger. He could accept the fact that it was over, he could accept the knowledge that their love had changed, that it was gone, that there was really nothing for them any more. But he had the feeling that if he stayed longer he would discover their love had never been. The idea frightened him. He did not think he could bear that knowledge. He had to maintain the belief that they had loved each other once, had loved each other completely and magnificently, had to believe that time could not obliterate memory — it could change people, yes, but it could not destroy what they once had shared.