Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [81]
“I didn’t invite the baby. I told Joe and Debby not to bring him. Honestly.”
“I believe you. Honestly.” Rosemary mimics Fred’s intonation, then gives him a butterfly kiss. “One can’t trust these hippies, they’ll do anything.”
Not wanting to break the mood, Fred refrains from explaining that the Vogelers are not hippies. He kisses Rosemary; she laughs softly and presses him closer. “Or say anything,” she adds; a little puckered frown appears between the feathery golden arches of her brows. “Your friend Joe, for instance”—her intonation subtly but definitely conveys that Joe is not and never will be her friend—”your friend Joe says that you’re going back to the States next month. I told him he was quite mistaken, that you’ll be here till the autumn at least.”
“I’m afraid he’s right,” Fred says reluctantly. “I’ve got to start teaching summer school at Corinth June twenty-fourth. I told you about that,” he adds, uncomfortably aware that he hasn’t mentioned it lately, or even wanted to think about it.
“Oh, nonsense,” Rosemary purrs. “You never said a word. Anyhow, you can’t leave then, we’ve got far too many lovely things to do. There’s Michael’s play opening, and I’m getting tickets for Glyndebourne. And then in July we start shooting the outdoor scenes for next season’s Tallyho Castle in Ireland—you’ll adore that. We always have such a good time: we stay at this perfectly delicious inn run by two of the most amusing old characters. They do marvelous meals: fresh salmon sometimes, and real Irish soda bread and scones. And of course it usually rains half the time, and then we’re free all day long.”
“It sounds great,” Fred says. “I wish I could come. But if I canceled out of summer school they’d be really pissed.”
“Who cares?” Rosemary ruffles his hair. “Let them rage.”
“I can’t. Everyone in the department would think I was irresponsible. It’d count against me in the tenure vote, I know it would.”
“Oh, darling.” Rosemary’s voice softens. “You’re worrying about nothing. That’s not the way it goes in the world. If you’re good, they’ll always want you. Look at Daphne: she’s absolutely impossible in so many ways, but directors are still falling all over themselves to cast her.”
“It’s not like that in academia,” Fred says. “Not in America, anyway. And anyhow, I’m not a star.”
Rosemary does not contradict him. Instead she sits up away from Fred, with her fair, fine hair tumbling over her face. “You’re not really going back to the States next month,” she says, with a half lazy, half threatening whispery intonation like the sound of his grandfather stropping a razor.
“I have to. But it’s not because I want—”
“You’re tired of me.”
“No, never—”
“You’ve been planning to leave me all along.” The blade is almost sharp now.
“No! Well, yeh, but I told you—”
“It was only an act with you, the entire time.” Her voice slashes at him.
“No—”
“Everything you’ve said to me, all those pretty speeches—” A half sob.
“No! I love you, oh, Jesus, Rosemary—” Fred pulls her back to him with force. “Don’t talk like that.” He rocks her against him, feeling again how soft she is, how feathery and fragile.
“Then you mustn’t frighten me.”
“No, no,” he says, kissing her face and neck through the light, fallen curls.
“And you’re not really going away next month, are you?” she whispers presently. “Are you?”
“I don’t know,” Fred whispers back, wondering what the hell he can possibly tell his department if he doesn’t. Rosemary’s crinkled pale-green silk dress has been pushed down over her creamy shoulders; his hands are on her naked breasts. “Oh, darling—”
But she twists sideways, wrenches away. “You think I’m a little fool, don’t you,” she says, her voice shaking in a way Fred has never heard before. “You think I’m a—what is it you said of your cousin, an easy pushover.”
“No—”
“And when you walk out on me next month and go back to America, you think that will be easy too.”
“Jesus God. I don’t want to go back to America. But anyhow, it’s not forever. Next summer—” Fred reaches