Shadow of Guilt Read Free Page B

Jones or Sam Smith. I knew the idea of Ala going off to a week-end house party with a man, any man, would horrify Connie, but what the hell was wrong with it? What harm could it possibly do to give her a chance to find herself a little before Connie inexorably slammed the door of the wedding shut on her?
    “Okay, Ala,” I said. “If you really want to go…”

 
THREE
    I got back to Sixty-Fourth Street just before eleven. Connie had gone to Carnegie Hall with Milly Taylor, one of her committee secretaries who adored her. They arrived soon after me, Connie very grand and formal, Miss Taylor looking dowdy and, as always, a little too grateful.
    “Hello, dear.” Connie crossed to my chair and bent to kiss me. An instinct, born of frayed nerves, warned me she was going to run her hand across my hair, one of her few demonstrative gestures. I was right. “I’m so sorry we’re late. Have you been home for hours?”
    “Not too long,” I said.
    “I do hope you’re not exhausted. Ala’s out with Rosemary Clark. Thank God she’s got at least one sensible friend. Darling, do fix Milly a nightcap.”
    I fixed Miss Taylor her nightcap. Miss Taylor enjoyed her nightcaps. She settled down to it, babbling as usual about how wonderful Connie was. Around midnight, Ala dashed in exuberantly. Soon, with a smoothness which impressed me, she said, “Oh, Connie, Rosemary wants me to go out to Westport with her tomorrow for the weekend. Is that all right?”
    “Of course, dear,” said Connie.
    Soon Miss Taylor rose to leave, and Connie went out with her into the hall. Instantly Ala swept over to me.
    “George darling, come up in about five minutes. Please.” She ran out into the hall, calling, “Good night, Miss Taylor. Good night, Connie.”
    Connie came back into the living room.
    I said, “I’m beat. I think I’ll go up to bed.”
    “All right, dear. I’ll just straighten up down here. I hate leaving a mess for Mary in the morning.”
    I went upstairs and tapped on Ala’s door.
    Ala was still in the untidy stage. Not only were her jazz records scattered around the floor of the room, but there were all sorts of discarded garments strewn over chairs and tables. The chaos reminded me of how young she was—how absurdly young to be married in a month.
    “George.” She jumped up from the bed where she had been sitting next to a dreadful old wool elephant which I’d given her the first year she’d come to us. Her eyes were round and shining with the wonder of everything. “Oh, George, you do like him, don’t you?”
    “Don Saxby?”
    “He’s the most marvelous man I’ve ever met. George… I think I’m in love with him.”
    Although I’d had every warning, I felt an unaccountable stirring of foreboding.
    “How does he feel about you?”
    “How can I tell? He knows I’m going to marry Chuck. He’d never, never say anything.” She came to me, putting her hands on my anus, her young face tragic. “George, what am I going to do?”
    “About Chuck?”
    “I never told you. I wanted to desperately but something seemed to have happened between us. I felt kind of shy with you. George… I’ve never been really sure about Chuck. Oh, I like him, of course I do. I think he’s good and kind and I know he’s crazy about me. But—well, it was Connie really.”
    “Because she wants you to marry him so much?”
    “It isn’t that. It’s just—well, this sounds like a terrible thing to say, but I felt I simply had to get away from her. I couldn’t stand being bullied any longer and I thought if I did what she wanted and married Chuck at least I’d be free. That’s really why I was doing it—to be free from her.”
    I’d known, of course, that Ala chafed under Connie’s relentlessly Corliss guiding reins, but I’d never realized that she had felt as violently as this.
    As I stood looking at her, feeling a mixture of tenderness and guilt, she said, “George, tell me. What am I going to do? Marrying Chuck if I