UPON HEARING THAT LILY had moved back into the apartment, hope sprang up in Harry. Perhaps she had reconsidered. But she quickly disabused him of his illusions. “This has nothing to do with us, Harry. The reason I’ve come back is to try to salvage some kind of sense of myself—but I’m going to do it by myself. I’m sorry.”
Harry finally realized that she meant what she said. Their marriage was over. In flat-out despair, he turned back to the only solace he knew—his writing. For once, he was devoid of ideas. The first day he sat down to his typewriter again, he stared at it as though it had brought him all the unhappiness he had ever known. But after an hour of gazing blankly at the white paper in the carriage and smoking an endless chain of Camels, he finally found himself typing out the words “Chapter One.” It was a time of sheer agony. Never had writing been such a process of grinding it out. But finally an idea began to take shape. This time his story was set in Ireland, the green and lovely land torn by three hundred years of Irish passion and British arrogance.
As the familiar routine of research and writing began to reestablish itself, he began to find, if not solace, at least a measure of forgetfulness.
The year that followed was a strange one for Lily. She had expected to be lonely, unhappy, without a sense of purpose. But surprisingly, her new life began to give her both peace and fulfillment. Harry stopped his pleading calls, so she was spared that torment. Drew still refused to go back to Harvard, but he had found a job as copyboy on a newspaper. Lily didn’t object, thinking he would do well to have a little experience of the real world. Melissa, on the other hand, had ignored her parents’ counsel. She had dropped out of her Swiss school in the middle of the year to move to Paris. “I’ve had enough of school; I’m going to be a model,” she announced flatly.
“But darling,” Lily said. You’re much too young to live on your own.”
“I’m going and you can’t stop me!” she had returned defiantly—and they had been forced to admit she was right.
If Melissa was determined to have it her way, Lily was equally determined to see that she fared well. Lily flew to Switzerland and helped Melissa move to Paris, even going so far as to help her find a room in a respectable pension on the Left Bank. Before bidding her daughter farewell, Lily dropped in on her old friend Colette, who agreed to keep an eye on young Melissa.
Upon her return, Lily threw herself into volunteer work with renewed vigor, thanks largely to Ellis’s gentle prodding. She helped at the March of Dimes and at Ellis’s pet organization, the Historical Landmarks Society. Soon Lily branched out to a few special areas—she volunteered at a home for unwed mothers, she read to the blind.
Lily was back in the thick of things. She had blossomed again, just as Ellis had hoped. Even more important, she became a crucial figure in the groups in which she became involved. It should have come as little surprise when, over lunch with Joan and some of her other friends, Joan broached the subject of the upcoming Spring Ball.
“Lily, there’s something we want to ask you. The Spring Ball has never been so successful as the year you were in charge. Is there any chance you’d sign on as chairman again?”
Lily instantly demurred. “Oh, Joan, you flatter me.”
But Joan persisted. “Now, Lily, you know perfectly well that Alicia made a perfect botch of last year’s affair. We’re really looking for someone to revive our success. Please at least consider it.”
“Yes, Lily, do,” the rest of them chorused, and she held up her hands in mock dismay.
“Okay, okay, I’ll think about it.”
That afternoon, she called Ellis to invite him for dinner.
They had slipped into the old relationship, an easygoing friendship, and saw each other several times a week, for lunch or dinner, an occasional theater production, or the ballet.
Ellis was once again her best friend and confidant, and tonight, after they had finished their dinner and adjourned to the living room for their coffee, she asked his thoughts on the chairmanship.
“What do you think? They really seem anxious to have me.”
He looked at her, thinking what a difference so little time could make. Last time this subject had come up, he had practically had to browbeat her into accepting. Now she seemed to require only his gentle nod.
Soon her divorce from Harry would be final. At that point, maybe she would at last be ready to close that chapter in her life.
Ellis, as ever, cheered her on. “I think that you would be magnificent, my dear. It’s true what they said, the Spring Ball was never more successful than the year you were in charge.”
She smiled at the memory of it. “So you think I should accept?”
“Absolutely.”
She took a deep breath and said, “Okay, then, I’ll do it.”
Leaning forward, he kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Wonderful.”
For once he truly felt things would be, and not just for Lily alone, but for the two of them.