The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [14]
A check arrived within the first five days of every month. Vann’s attorney drew it, signed it, and mailed it. The monthly check was the extent of Harold Vann’s contact with either Robin or her mother. “He never wants to see either of us,” Gretchen had said. “Never wants to know anything about Robin, how she’s doing, anything. He told me once that he felt a certain responsibility to Robin because he should have had the sense to have me sterilized. I can still hear him saying it. I suppose he was right.”
But he wasn’t, Peter thought. Gretchen and her unknown lover had accomplished a minor miracle, producing through their loveless coupling a precious and perfect child. Such a child justified a great deal. Among other things, it justified his staying with a woman with whom it was literally impossible to live.
Well, suppose he just picked up the kid and went? He doubted that Gretchen would go to the police. It was not even inconceivable that she would fail to notice Robin was gone. And he could see the two of them off somewhere, some little farm somewhere in New England or Nova Scotia, and he would raise enough food for the two of them, earn a little money with handcrafts, bring the kid up in the open air with animals to play with, teach her everything he knew, just the two of them off by themselves and—
No way.
He sighed, focused a baby spot, softened the footlights. No way, he thought. It was a beautiful fantasy trip but would not, could not happen that way. The little cabin in the woods, with or without Robin, would involve running away from more than Gretchen, more than New Hope. It would mean running away from aspects of himself which he could not ultimately outrace.
Nor, he admitted, would Gretchen be all that easy to leave, Robin or no Robin. There was something there that he still needed. And he wondered, not for the first time, if his love for Robin was not at least in part an excuse that enabled him to stay with a woman he did not love and often could not bear.
He made himself concentrate on the stage.
Warren Ormont scrubbed at the last of his makeup and peered solemnly into his mirror. He was altogether quite satisfied with what he saw there. Several years ago his hairline had begun a rapid climb and now had crept just slightly past the midpoint of his head. What hair remained was silver-blond and hung almost to his shoulders. The recession of his hairline had appalled him at first, but as his hair fell out in front and grew longer in back, he recognized that it was just the sort of thing his particular face required. His features—a strong beak of a nose, bright and intense blue eyes, a small precise mouth—were somehow drawn together and reinforced by his partial baldness.
Now, when he popped out the contacts he had worn on stage and replaced them with a pair of rimless spectacles, he bore an unmistakable resemblance to Benjamin Franklin. His awareness of this resemblance had prompted the original purchase of the rimless glasses two years earlier. If one were going to look like anyone at all, he had considered, one could do worse than look like Benjamin Franklin.
“You were marvelous tonight, Warren,” someone said.
“Yes, wasn’t I?”
He combed his long hair carefully back. No complaints about the face, he decided. One could have done worse. It was a face that seemed to be improving with age, a face which would wear well for the foreseeable future. Altogether a better face than he would have predicted for himself twenty years ago.
An arm draped over his shoulder and a small cheek pressed against his. Tanya Leopold’s gamin face looked out of his mirror at him. “Can I get in on this picture, man?”