The Butler(12)
A year later, as the affair continued, he moved her into a much nicer apartment on the East Side. It was still a walk-up, but the building was clean and nice. It was in a family neighborhood and George Lawrence paid the rent. On her meager budget, she turned it into a love nest for them. He loved it. They rarely went out after that. They had no reason to. They spent most of their time in bed. He told her that she invigorated him. Tragedy had struck him before they met. He had lost an eighteen-year-old son in a boating accident, and hadn’t written a word since then. The first manuscript he had given Margaret to read had been written before his son died. And with her tender, gentle, loving ways, and nurturing, he began writing again, and claimed it was the best work he’d ever done. He insisted that they were soul mates and told her he couldn’t survive or write without her. Her boundless love made it possible for him to tolerate his loveless marriage. Margaret actually made it possible for him to stay married.
Two years after they met, she became George’s editor, at his insistence. She had talent, and helped him polish his books until they shone. There was a purity to them after she entered his life, and a strength that she didn’t have as a person but was able to wield with the written word. He only worked with her from then on. And by tacit agreement, she entered into a life where she only lived and breathed for him. She waited for him night and day, he appeared for rapid lunches they spent in bed, late-night dinners they never ate. They made love in her office. She spent every weekend waiting for him when he could get away, and holidays alone, while he went to Palm Beach, Aspen, and skiing in Europe with his wife and children. Margaret was always there when he returned, faithful, loving, never complaining. In her own mind, she didn’t exist except when she was with him. Her own personality faded into the mists, and she became a ghost for him, a mirror, a non-person, living in the shadows, always available to him. They managed to keep their affair secret for a while. Margaret demanded nothing of him, always impressed by who he was, thinking and acting as if he was some kind of god. She convinced herself that she was lucky to be with him and derive sustenance from the crumbs from his marital table. The center of his life was still at home.
She had been editing his books for a year and was twenty-seven years old when she realized she was pregnant. She was going to have an abortion, not knowing what else to do. George begged her not to. She was convinced that he loved her. And he wanted her to have his child, as a symbol of their love. He promised to support her and the baby, and she thought that with a baby of their own, he might get divorced and marry her after all. Somehow it all began to make sense, she thought George was her destiny, and went ahead with the pregnancy. When she was seven months pregnant, she told her parents. They accused her of gross immorality, told her she had disgraced them, nearly disowned her, and refused to see her and the baby until Olivia was five years old. She faced Olivia’s first five years alone, with visits from George. He paid for the babysitters she used, so she could continue working as his editor.
Olivia was born when George was in Tuscany with his wife and children for the summer, and Margaret gave birth alone. Olivia was two months old when her father first saw her. Margaret had gone back to work editing his books by then. He was bowled over by how beautiful Olivia was, and she became the cement between them as soon as she was born, and the excuse for Margaret to never have a life again. She spent her spare time, when she wasn’t working, waiting for him, when he could get away from his wife, for an hour here and there. Margaret and George agreed that it was too sensitive a subject to tell Olivia who her father was. They decided to tell her when she got older that her father had died in a car accident right before she was born. George was to be portrayed as a family friend who was loving and supportive and referred to as Uncle George.
He saw Olivia often, and gave her generous gifts. She truly believed he was just their friend, just as Margaret said. He improved their living situation as she got older with an apartment on York Avenue in the Seventies in a better building, close enough to where he lived to be convenient for him.
He set up a trust fund for Olivia, not comparable to those he was leaving his legitimate children, but it would be adequate to pay for her education and related expenses later on. He didn’t want to create a situation that his wife and children would fight when he died and put Margaret in an untenable legal situation.
As Olivia got older, George was her champion. He helped her with math homework, gave her the gifts she wanted most, and wanted to get her a dog, which her mother wouldn’t allow. He was the bestower of all bounty, and paid for private school for her, although Olivia didn’t know he did. She often thought how lucky she was that they had an attentive, generous friend like him, when she had no father. They never told her the truth. Margaret continued to work for the publisher so she could edit his books at home, and wait for him in their apartment, long after his children were grown. He remained married to his wife, and they continued taking family vacations together. The subject of his marrying Margaret never came up anymore. She never mentioned it and accepted their situation as it was. She lived in suspended animation, waiting for George, and only came alive when he was with her, and faded away again when he left.
When Olivia turned twenty, her mother was forty-seven, and George was seventy-three. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It was their last chance to tell Olivia the truth before he died, so she could have an honest conversation with her father. But they didn’t. They missed their chance. He felt ill and went home early one night. Within a short time, he was tended to by nurses and bed-bound at home. His wife had known about Margaret for years by then, and they had gone on pretending that it wasn’t happening and his love child didn’t exist. Margaret was forty-eight when George died at home, with his wife and children at his side. He hadn’t seen Margaret in two months, or even been able to call her in the final weeks to say goodbye. Margaret had spent half her life with him by then. Olivia was twenty-one, a junior in college at Columbia, when her father died, and her mother explained to her about the trust fund he had left her.