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Haydon stood at the front door and watched Dystal’s car move away on the cinder drive and leave through the iron gates into the boulevard. He watched long after the car had disappeared beneath the unbroken canopy of oaks that stretched the length of the street, his eyes seeing nothing but the shifting mottle of morning light that made him think of Monet.
As he turned and started back toward the hallway, Nina came down the stairs, her hair now in the familiar chignon, her sandaled feet showing slightly from beneath the cream percale skirt with each descending step. He waited for her.
“It was good seeing him again,” she said.
Haydon nodded, and they walked across the hall and through the wide arched doorway into the living room. High ceilings enhanced the light, airy feeling of the white room, as did the tall windows that looked onto the circle drive.
Nina went to a pale titian sofa and sat down as Haydon crossed to the windows and looked out. He turned after a while and wandered over to stare at a red conte drawing. It showed well by the late morning light and was one of several he had bought over the years. They hung throughout the house, mostly nudes. After a moment he returned across the sisal covered floor and sat near the opposite end of the sofa from Nina. He turned toward her and crossed his long legs as he leaned back with his shoulders in the corner.
“Well, I guess I’m going back,” he said.
She looked at him. “What’s the matter? Is it something special?”
He told her everything Dystal had said, as well as his own suspicions about the administration wanting to make peace with him, which was why he suspected Dystal was able to get away with such an unorthodox request. The lieutenant’s visit seemed legitimate. He simply wanted to get to the bottom of the case, and he felt Haydon was the best man to do it.
“He probably assumed that whatever I might have decided to do at the end of five months would not change substantially at the end of the sixth,” Haydon said. “He’s probably right.”
“You’d already decided to go back?” Nina asked. She took one of the sofa pillows into her lap and started picking at a loose thread. “We never talked about it.”
“No. I hadn’t given the decision much thought at all. I’ve thought about everything else, I guess, but not really about whether I would quit, or not quit, when the time was up.”
“What about . . . all your other interests? The things you’ve gotten involved in over the past five months.”
“I didn’t develop any interests I didn’t already have,” Haydon said.
“I know,” she said. “It’s just that I’d hoped you might find something related . . . something that might hold your interest exclusively.”
Haydon’s eyes wandered around the room. He was uncomfortable with her going at it obliquely like this. It didn’t sound like her. Evasiveness was his forte. But he didn’t have to listen to it very long. When he didn’t respond, Nina confronted the issue head on.
“Stuart,” she said evenly, “do you think you’re stable enough to go back?”
He let his eyes rest on his mother’s baby grand, which glistened black in the bright room, its top laden with family pictures in an assortment of silver and tortoiseshell frames.
“What kind of word is that?” he asked. “Stable.”
“How would you phrase it?” Her voice was calm.
“Not like that.”
She waited, then said, “Stuart, during the past five months you’ve grown more relaxed, less distant, less secretive. I hate to see you go back.”
“You want me to quit?” It wasn’t a challenge. He really wanted to know.
“I don’t want you to change. That work changes you. In the past I’ve never come right out and said I wanted you to quit. I didn’t want to put you at odds with your work and with me. That’s one conflict I knew you didn’t need. But now, yes. I wish you wouldn’t go back. I don’t think it’s worth it. It takes so much out of you, and it takes so much away from us.”
Haydon waited a moment and then uncrossed his legs. He leaned forward and tossed the cigarette box on the low table of burled rose wood that sat in front of them. He put his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together, staring at them.
“Nina, I need to do this. I’ve had enough time to pull myself together. Now I’m ready to go back” He stopped. He wanted to choose his words carefully. “I need the work, Nina. This work I wouldn’t feel right about turning away from it now. Not after all these years, and not like this. God knows I’m aware of the psychological . . . problems in it for me. If I could explain it for you, I would. I’ll have to learn to handle the problems better.”
“You can’t, Stuart.” Her voice was flat. She was stating a fact, a stark fact. “For you this work is destructive.”
“That’s a strong view.”
“It’s not a ‘view.”‘
“I need to do it,” he said. “If it’s a strain I’ll just have to live with it. I don’t know what else I can do about it.”
“You could quit, Stuart.” She put down the pillow and sat forward on the sofa too, leaning toward him as she spoke. “Be available on a consultancy basis for special cases, but not every homicide that comes your way day in and day out, week after week, month after month. You’re not made for that kind of nonstop pressure.”
“The other men do it. They all live with it.”
“You know better than to give me that kind of justification,” she said.
“Dystal is offering me a special arrangement. I’ll have only this one case, and I really want to look into this one. There’s something especially interesting about it.”
Nina looked at him a long time. “Do you have any idea how many times you’ve said that about a new case?”
Haydon didn’t know how to respond to that. He just sat there.
“Okay, Stuart, let’s get to the heart of the problem.”
He looked at her, knowing what was coming.
“I don’t know how many more times I’m going to cover for you, for the times you simply disappear when the pressures get too great. I’m not unshakable, Stuart. Don’t expect too much of me; don’t assume too much. One day those episodes are going to break one of us. I used to think it would be you, but I don’t know anymore. I don’t know what you go through when you’re away, but I know what I go through. Stuart, don’t ask me to give to you until I’m empty. Share this thing with me, whatever it is. Give me a reason for doing what I’m doing.”
He studied the expression on her face, acutely aware that he was responsible for its being there.
“It won’t happen again,” he said.
Nina was at a loss. She simply stared at him.
“It won’t happen again,” he repeated. “I told you, the leave of absence was what I needed. It gave me time to pull myself together, decide how I was going to live with the stress of the job. It’s not impossible. I can do it. I’m not going to ask you to go through another one of those episodes. I’m not.”
That was it. He looked away from her, but he could feel her eyes on him as he stared out the window to the green lawn scribed by the gentle arc of the driveway that led to the gates. He felt her pulling at him like a magnet, and he hated himself for what he couldn’t give her. Suddenly, all the intensity seemed to drain out of her, and she reached back and did something with her chignon. It took her a long time to adjust whatever it was she was adjusting, her eyes diverted. Haydon turned to her and noticed the slight color in her cheeks. Finally she finished and dropped her arms and looked at him again.
“I shouldn’t have gone into it,” she said. “We’ll leave it here, Stuart. I won’t take it any further.”
There was a tone in her voice that made him uneasy. And it wasn’t only the tone that disturbed him, but the fact that once again it was Nina who conceded in the face of his implacable silence. But this time, there was a subtle difference. In acquiescing now, in this way, she clearly had placed the security of their relationship in his hands. He was responsible for the consequences. It was obvious that she was willing to withdraw into her own silence to avoid an argument that neither of them wanted to engage in, but in doing so she gave him the lead to honorably diffuse the tension. He should have leveled with her. He should have discussed with her his reasons for going back to a job that had driven him to a nervous breakdown, not once but several times: breakdowns from which she alone had nourished him to recovery, and which she alone had kept secret without his having to ask her to do so. In spite of this, he continued to hold back. His deep reserve was a dividing rift, a crevasse as frightening for what it represented as for what it concealed. During the past five months he had wanted to change that by telling her everything. He had wanted to, but he didn’t.
Not then and not now.