The Impetuous Mistress. George Harmon Coxe
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car was parked out front she would drive round again.
“Right,” he said. “Just keep your fingers crossed and think positive thoughts. I’ll handle Frieda.”
2
WHEN Rick Sheridan had turned on some lights in the living room he saw that the clock on the mantel said it was five minutes of nine, and suddenly he was no longer so sure of himself. A new nervousness was working on him, and when he realized he was pacing back and forth he went to the kitchen and brought back the brandy bottle and two miniature snifter glasses.
He poured a tot and swallowed it slowly and by then he could face the fact that during the past several years Frieda had become rather difficult for anyone to handle. She was no longer the girl he had married but, viewed honestly, he was not the same man either. Fourteen years was a long time. He was twenty then, finishing his junior year at college and the war was yet to be won. Frieda was six months older and eager for the elopement that would take her away from the dominating ways of a father who had wanted a son and insisted on treating her like one. What he had to face now as he heard the car stop outside was a self-centered and officious business woman with a calculating mind and a conscience she could turn on and off whenever she found it troublesome.
“Hello,” she said as he opened the door for her. “I didn’t see your car.”
“Nancy has it.”
There was no reply to this as she stopped just beyond the entrance to examine the room she had never seen before. “You’re quite cozy here. Do you still play?” She indicated the battered upright in one corner and Rick said: “Yes,” because he knew what she meant.
In college he had belonged to a small, informal singing group that had no connection with the glee club. Its primary aim, aside from close harmony, was social, and they sang mostly for those whose wealth and position made it possible to put them up for the night or the week end. There were always girls and always there was a time when the piano became the center of attraction. Rick was no musician but he had a nice way with a piano. His left hand was better than most, he had a good memory for melody once exposed to it, and he could fake a fair accompaniment. Frieda liked to sing. . . .
He closed his mind to such thoughts and watched her move round the perimeter of the room, examining this and that and stopping for a moment or two before the framed samples of his work on the walls.
He waited, inspecting the simple white dress and the scarf which had contained her blond hair and now hung knotted about her neck. On the tall side, she no longer had the softly curving figure he once knew so well. Instead she had acquired the planes and angles that characterized the sleek and curveless bodies of the high-fashion models currently in vogue. Her facial make-up was perfection itself, her tan was smooth and even, her manner superior even in repose. This, Rick knew, was a woman who knew what she wanted, and for a long time now it had not been him. He saw she was again looking at the piano and now she said:
“Same two keys?”
“C and G?” He grinned then, surprised that she should remember. “Just the same. More clinkers now though because I don’t practice much. . . . Would you like a drink?”
She looked at him then, her blue eyes steady. She shook her head. “Not now, thanks.” She sat down on the edge of the divan and crossed brown legs. She put her expensive-looking straw bag on one knee and propped her elbow on the bag.
“About this divorce business,” she said, all business now. “I’ve been thinking. Until now the separation agreement we have has done well enough. You want to marry the Heath girl. I haven’t any immediate plans but I might have some day so maybe it’s not such a bad idea. Just what do you propose?”
Such phrasing disconcerted Rick because he had not been prepared for it. He sat down opposite her, a frown puckering his brows and his brown eyes uncertain.
“What do you mean, propose?”
“Well, there has to be some agreement, doesn’t there? Some meeting of the minds?”
“I thought—” Rick hesitated, recalling the one page separation agreement they had signed more than two years earlier. “Unless you’re talking about alimony—”
“I shan’t need alimony.”
“Then what’s wrong with the agreement we have? I’ll educate Ricky and pay whatever you think I should for his support.”
“That’s all well and good but the custody terms will have to be revised.”
“Oh?” Rick remembered her reference to stipulations and now he felt a mounting uneasiness that was akin to fear. “Why?”
She shrugged one shoulder and her brow arched. “Because I don’t think it’s equitable. My time for having Ricky is when he’s in school. You have him for vacations.”
“He was always in school of one sort or another even when we lived together.”
“That’s beside the point I want the vacation time.”
“You or your father?”
“Don’t quibble, Rick.”
Rick sat down opposite her, his throat dry and an unwonted anger beginning to stir inside him.
“All right, Frieda. What exactly do you want?”
“I want Ricky. I want custody. So he can be with me—or Father, if you insist—when I want him.”
He stared at her an incredulous moment, hearing the cool concise phrasing and understanding every syllable. Yet even then he could not accept the statement. She had not moved, and her small face was smooth and unlined. Except for the fact that she was not dressed for the city she might have been sitting in her office discussing a book contract with a writer, as befitted her position as a partner in the book publishing firm of Brainard & Eastman—Brainard being her maiden name.
“Oh, no, Frieda,” he said.
“Naturally you’ll have reasonable visitation rights.”
“When it’s convenient for you.”
“Those are your words, not mine.”
He took a breath and glanced at the brandy bottle. He had to work this out without stripping his emotional gears, and yet he knew he could not match her assurance and present self-control because she was talking contracts and rights and he was talking about a twelve-year-old, tow-headed boy who was never very far from his thoughts, a boy who returned his love and admiration and still thought his father was a real great guy.
He tried again, unaware that his inflection was growing caustic, not knowing that what he considered simply a lack of affection for his wife was in reality a well-developed dislike.
“Since when have you taken all this interest in motherhood?”
For the first time annoyance flickered in her blue eyes.
“What do you mean by that? I am his mother.”
“You bore him, if that’s what you mean. But what about the other things a child needs? He was three months old when I got back from France and even then you had a full-time nurse.”
“Why not? I could afford it then. Does that imply—”
He cut her off because the things in his mind could no longer go unsaid.
“Once he stopped being a baby how many times did you tuck him in bed or listen to his prayers or read to him or tell him stories? It was always me or the nurse, wasn’t it? From the time he could toddle you had him in nursery school. He came home to a nurse. You didn’t have the time; you couldn’t be bothered—”
“Oh, shut up!”
He stood up, avoiding her glance, knowing that her temper, like his, was getting frayed and unpredictable. He stepped to the table and poured some brandy into the glass, swished it absently and gulped