At the scrape of a key in the lock, which signaled the return of Martha from wherever she had been waiting out this interview, Gretchen immediately stood up and Jean sensed herself dismissed.
The two women stood shoulder to shoulder on the front step to wave her off, or perhaps, Jean thought, to block the doorway against her return. She left with a strengthening resolve. Gretchen had forfeited all claim to Howard through her own recklessness and engineered his friendship with Jean for her own selfish ends. There was no need for any agonies of conscience on her part.
If he reached out to her in his loneliness, she would be ready.
25
Dear Howard,
I went to see Gretchen today as you asked. She was grateful for the money and touched by your kindness. I tried to make her see reason but, as you said, she seems set on this path. She was of course full of anguish at the thought of having caused you pain, as well she might be. She sent her love and will contact you soon—tomorrow—to discuss plans for Margaret.
Her address is 16 Luna Street, Chelsea.
You are in my thoughts constantly. If I can be of any further help you have only to ask.
Your friend,
Jean
Having labored over this note for far longer than its brevity warranted, Jean tore it up and started again. It had made her sound needy and emotional and a little too eager to step into Gretchen’s shoes.
Dear Howard,
I have been to see Gretchen today and given her the money, for which she was grateful. She sent her love and will contact you soon about her plans for Margaret. Her current address is 16 Luna Street, Chelsea.
I hope you are well, in the circumstances.
Yours,
Jean
She was surprised and disappointed to receive no reply, even to acknowledge her effort, and as the days passed she began to wonder if she had all along misread his feelings for her. But she had surely not mistaken the connection between them. It had been there in that pledge of silence when he had given her the emerald brooch weeks before Gretchen’s desertion. He couldn’t now be bound by vows that had been so violently broken.
Each night before bed she would take the brooch from its velvet pouch and contemplate its careful and loving workmanship. Then she would close her eyes and replay the still-fresh memories of the day at Aunt Edie’s, when their love was unspoken, real and perfect. Tomorrow, perhaps, he will call, she thought, like any lovesick girl, but tomorrow came bringing nothing.
“What’s wrong with you? Are you going down with something?” her mother said, watching Jean prod listlessly at her dinner of roast heart and mashed rutabaga.
“I don’t know,” she said, laying down her fork, the food untasted.
The least squeamish or fussy of eaters, tonight she found the sight of lambs’ hearts, the valves and chambers still visible in all their anatomical detail, suddenly repulsive. Her throat bulged with the effort of not retching.
“I think I’ll just have some bread and margarine.”
She stood up and wrenched open the refrigerator door, feeling the gust of cold, sour air on her hot cheeks with relief.
“I wonder if you’re going through the change,” her mother mused. “It takes some women badly.”
“I’m not even forty,” Jean said into the fridge, her teeth gritted. “Surely not.”
“You’ve not been yourself since Lymington.”
Jean, who took pride in her ability to conceal unruly emotions, could still on occasions be surprised by her mother’s acuity. She was not, then, as inscrutable as she liked to think.
“I suppose I was a bit out of sorts,” she conceded, scraping margarine across the heel of a white loaf. “The weather didn’t help.”
“You haven’t seen much of those friends of yours lately. The Jews.”
“They’re not Jews. I said he was a jeweler. Gretchen’s a Catholic, I think. Lapsed.”
“Them, anyway. I wondered if you’d fallen out.”
“They’ve been away.”
Although the temptation to talk about the Tilburys in any context was almost overwhelming, and it would have been a pleasure just to say Howard’s name aloud, she felt an odd instinct to protect Gretchen from the criticism that would surely follow. And she had no wish to expose Howard to either pity or scorn, the only foreseeable responses to his predicament. So she said nothing and the moment for confidences passed, unused.
“Perhaps you need a day in bed with a hot-water bottle,” her mother suggested, her remedy for every kind of feminine complaint.
“I can’t take any more time off work,” Jean replied. “It mounts up.”