Chapter Thirty
MILLY
Lloyd called early on Sunday and announced that he’d be returning home that afternoon.
He insisted that Milly not go to any trouble making dinner, but she was immediately filled with panic.
She busied herself by cleaning and tidying the house, bathing the children, and baking a cake, but it didn’t stop the constant loop of questions and confusion running through her head.
How could they return to normal after he’d dropped this bomb on her?
How could they ever live as husband and wife again?
When he’d confessed his affair, with a man, in Los Angeles, Milly had stood up and stormed out of his apartment, running down the stairs, catching her dress on the rough concrete step, and ripping it free until she got into the safety of her car.
A man, she’d screamed into her steering wheel.
He’d been having an affair with a man? Handsome, charming Lloyd, who’d proposed to her, who’d asked for her father’s blessing, who’d impregnated her twice—he was having sexual relations with a man?
She felt not only betrayed but utterly dejected and horrified.
Had she driven him to this, or was this always his disposition?
And if he was always this way, why had he taken a wife?
Why had he wanted children? She pictured him kissing a suit-clad, blank-faced man and began to sob.
In her mind the man looked in stature and style exactly like Lloyd, two Lloyds in love with each other, and she pounded her fists on the steering wheel.
After fifteen minutes, twenty, maybe even more, her breath had begun to slow and she was able to think again. She had wiped her eyes dry and put on her sunglasses. She couldn’t leave, not yet. She feared that if she did, she might never see her husband again.
She returned to Lloyd’s apartment, door still ajar as she’d left it, Lloyd still sitting on the chair. His eyes were red and puffy like hers.
“Tell me everything,” she said quietly as she sat back down on the couch. “I might not understand it, but I will try.”
And he did, to the best of his ability.
“He was an actor that we had on contract; you wouldn’t know him,” he said.
“Are you in love with him?”
“Does it matter?” he asked.
“To me it does,” Milly said.
“Yes, I think so, but I don’t know. It’s all so confusing. I love you, Milly, I do. You have to believe me.”
Milly shook her head and looked away.
“I do love you, Milly, but not in the way you hoped I would. I am horribly ashamed of what I’ve done and of how I feel, but the truth is, I’ve felt this way my whole life.”
“Then why did you marry me?” Milly said loudly now, standing.
Lloyd got up to close the apartment door.
“I thought I was doing the right thing. I didn’t know how else to survive. I’m so sorry.”
“The right thing? For who? You used me. You stole my youth. I didn’t finish college because of you. You used me up and spit me out.”
“You deserve better and I’m sorry. I will make it up to you, I promise.”
“How?” Milly asked, incredulous. How could he possibly make this up to her?
“I’ve got to get out of here. The studio, they found out and fired me instantly. It’s a crime, Milly. They’re terrified of being put on a list, and so am I. McCarthy’s put the fear of God into all of them, the politicians too.”
“McCarthy’s over,” Milly argued. “He lost his influence two years ago with those army hearings. Him and his Red Scare—it’s finished; everyone knows that.”
“OK, the hunt for Communists may be over, yes. But the fear he put into the public about homosexuals—easy to blackmail into turning against their government—that’s stuck.”
“He’s just a drunk now, Lloyd, a laughing stock.”
“I’m telling you, Milly, it’s not about him anymore; it’s about what he sprinkled, convincingly, in the public consciousness.
Men at work don’t go out for a drink in pairs anymore.
They’ll be suspected. They only go out in groups.
Haven’t you heard Dirksen calling homosexuals ‘lavender lads’?
He and his pals want to purge politics, government, Hollywood.
… They say the ‘lads’ have secrets and can’t be trusted. It’s real, Milly.”
Milly had heard about it, but she’d never paid it much attention.
Now it was all she could think of. What would happen if Lloyd were reported?
What if the studio had already turned him in?
What would that mean for Milly and the children?
She shuddered to think of how her children would be ostracized if the truth came out now.
As she relived the conversation, waiting for his return to their family home, she vacuumed faster, dusted more frantically.
Every time he’d touched her must have been an act, a forced gesture.
Everything inside her felt as if she were being squeezed, crushed, with the realization that anytime he’d held her hand, kissed her, or worse—when he’d made love to her—he was simply doing his duty.
It was never what his heart had desired.
She was never what his heart had desired.
At noon his car pulled up, and Milly was so anxious about seeing him she thought she might vomit.
“Where are my little monsters?” he called out as he walked through the door, and the children went crazy, running wild as Lloyd pretended he was going to eat them for lunch.
After the initial excitement had calmed down, Jack didn’t leave his side, playing next to his feet as he sat on the sofa, or curling up next to him.
That afternoon he suggested they go to the club, and she was sure it was either to make his presence known and seen or that he didn’t want to be alone with her in the house.
Since she felt the same way, she agreed.
They walked in together, Lloyd all smiles.
It was as if she hadn’t visited him in Los Angeles just a few days earlier, as if he hadn’t admitted that their whole marriage was a farce.
For a moment she wondered, had she somehow made that up, dreamt it, hallucinated?
But no, it was seared into her mind. Lloyd opening the door unshaven and unkempt, his head in his hands as he told her his truth.
She couldn’t have made that up. Her imagination didn’t even have the capacity for that.
The children splashed in the pool while Milly and Lloyd sat poolside and ordered lunch, she a Cobb salad, he a Reuben sandwich.
“So,” Lloyd said to Milly after the waitress brought them drinks and a bread basket with soft dinner rolls and salted butter. “Have you been liking it here? Have the kids been swimming much?”
“Yes, they like it” she said, unable to believe they could have polite conversation about daily goings-on. It felt so hollow. Maybe he’d always resorted to that. And yet, what else could they do? “And I’ve been taking tennis lessons,” she added, glad to have something real to tell him.
“Really?” Lloyd said. “You—tennis?”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I never thought of you as a sporty kind of gal,” he said.
She wanted to come back with some snide remark, that he clearly never thought of her at all, or that all he ever thought of her was as a prop to conceal his dishonest ways, but she stopped herself.
“Well, as I said, I’ve been taking lessons, from our neighbor Adele, on the next street actually; she works here.”
“A lady coach?” Lloyd asked.
“Yes, it’s quite astonishing what a woman is capable of these days.” She couldn’t help herself.
“Hey, Milly,” he leaned in and took her hands. She resisted the impulse to pull them away. “I know you’re angry with me. But can we talk?”
She nodded, though it was the last thing she wanted to do.
What could he possibly say that would change this?
Everything she’d ever known was a lie, and she had merely been a ploy, a facade for him so he could live his deceitful life while appearing to be the perfect family man.
It made her sick to think she’d been so naive, so stupid, playing house for a man who never would be, never could be, attracted to her.
She picked up her iced tea and took a gulp, feeling nauseated but desperate for something to do with her hands other than be held by his.
“I’ve been offered a job,” he said.
“A job?” Milly said flatly. She was glad he would be employed again—they had a mortgage to pay and children to feed and clothe—but it was hard to gather up much excitement or enthusiasm for him.
“It’s in New York.”
She stared at him.
“I know, it’s a long way from home but it’s a good job, a promotion, increase in salary. They’re offering a nice signing-on bonus.” He lowered his voice. “And they don’t appear to know anything about the scandal.”
The scandal? That’s what he was going to call it? New York? She could hardly follow what he was saying.
“It would be a fresh start, away from all of this. It would be a clean slate, as a family.”
She was dumbfounded. Speechless. How could they possibly have a fresh start?
He was in love with a man, not her, not his wife.
And no, she didn’t want to go to New York.
She didn’t want to start all over just for him to start this up all over again with someone new, some man on the East Coast!
She was furious that he would suggest such a thing, and yet, in her anger, she felt the acute sense of powerlessness, as if she were falling backward into the deep end of the turquoise pool with nothing to hold on to, nothing to reach out and grab.
This was happening to her whether she wanted it or not.
What choice did she have? He was the father of her children; he was her husband.
He was the breadwinner. She didn’t have money of her own to pay for this house, this life.
And even if she did, she had her children to think of.
“Mommy, Daddy,” Jack called out, his floatation belt wrapped around him. “Watch me!” He jumped off the side of the pool, curling himself into a ball as he leapt and splashing water everywhere.
“Cannonball!” Lloyd called out.
“Daddy, watch me again,” Jack said, swimming back to the side of the pool and climbing out. Lloyd clapped his hands as Jack repeated the maneuver.
“Look, it’s a lot to think about, I know,” he said, leaning back into his chair as if he belonged here, as if he hadn’t left them for several weeks to fend for themselves, as if he could just slip right back into their lives, as if nothing had changed.
“Why can’t you just get a job at a new studio in L.A.?” she asked, though she knew the answer. He looked at her as if she should know better.
“I’m in a tough spot, Milly; I think you know that.” He leaned in again and lowered his voice. “Once word spreads, I’m not going to be able to set foot in Hollywood again.”
She looked out to her children playing happily in the pool.
Their innocence overwhelmed her. She wished they could stay that way, blissfully naive.
She closed her eyes and allowed her mind to drift to Wes, the ease of it all, his warm embrace, the way he wanted her.
She wished she could get lost in all of him.
“I have to go,” she said, standing suddenly.
“What are you talking about, Milly?”
“I need to get some air,” she said, grabbing her purse.
“We’re sitting outside.”
“I need space to think,” she said. “When the kids are ready, you can bring them home. I’ll walk.” She pushed in her chair and walked away.
It took everything in her power not to walk straight to the marina.
Wes felt like an escape, a powerful magnet pulling her toward him.
Feeling claustrophobic and trapped by her marriage, she had trouble catching her breath.
Wes would ease her mind, soothe her, temporarily take away her pain, but he couldn’t fix anything, not really.
She had to deal with her real life in front of her, to think of her children.
So she put one foot in front of the other, and she slowly walked back home to start on dinner.