The Age Of Desire: A Novel Part 36

Rather than explain, Anna just hands over Sabinchen's letter. Edith finds the light switch and, standing by the bed, reads.

She sits down beside Anna and slips her arm around her shoulders.

"This was the man in Greece?"

Anna nods.

"Thomas, yes?"

"Thomas." Just saying his name releases the tears that have yet to come.

Anna feels foolish. For she is a sixty-year-old woman. A woman for whom no personal life was ever planned. She has spent a lifetime serving others. And it has been her choice. Her joy. But now she sees that her last opportunity for a life of her own is gone. She finds it almost impossible to breathe.

"What sort of man was he?" Edith asks.

"A formal man. But a kind one. He wasn't young. But he didn't look ill."

"Poor Anna. I wonder if you recall what you told me when my father died," Edith asks.

Anna shakes her head. It is hard to remember so far back. Edith was an uncertain young girl, not yet launched into society, when George Jones sickened suddenly from a stroke and shortly after died. The family had been on a long journey through Europe, a wonderful journey. They had to return to the United States abruptly. Anna came to help them, to calm Lucretia and set the house in order. Edith clung to Anna then, followed her about. Anna was the only person to whom Edith could express her sense of loss.

Edith slips her hand into Anna's now. "I remember it very well, Tonni. One day I cried to you about how I couldn't imagine going on without Father. And you said, 'Edith, your father will never really die as long as you can remember a single thing he gave you. Your love of books, for instance. Your patience. Your joy in flowers. Those things will live on in you.' Your words were the only thoughts that comforted me. Because I knew you were right. I could recall my father perfectly when I remembered what we shared. So if you can think of a single thing that your friend Thomas gave you, then I expect you'll feel the same way."

Anna closes her eyes and remembers the bright light in Thomas's eyes when he called her "Unerschutterlich!" She remembers the gentle sweetness of his kisses. "He gave me . . . he gave me a chance to believe for a moment that I was a woman."

Edith's mouth opens in surprise, and then Anna watches Edith's eyes well up, as though Anna's words have touched a nerve, shocked some similar truth inside of her. Edith stands.

"Join me for dinner when you're able. I'll wait," she says, her voice revealing its tremor. Anna watches her leave the room, wondering what she might be feeling.

In just a matter of days, the apartment at 53, rue de Varenne is plumped and softened and fitted out like a home, graced with Edith's linens and silver, familiar chairs and plush rugs. Anna works tirelessly, unpacking and was.h.i.+ng, organizing, clearing. If her heart is broken, it isn't apparent to Edith. She seems renewed by the simple joy of cleaning, readying and organizing. She has never seemed more in her element.

Edith feels utterly happy to be making a real home in France at last. Since she was a child, she has always dreamed of being a real citizen of Paris. The thrill of saying, "I've taken a little apartment on the Rue de Varenne" loses none of its joy in reality. And without Teddy underfoot, she is truly, briefly happy.

Her world is glowingly perfect until she thinks of Morton. Morton, as he warned, has a full agenda of activities that don't include her. Foolishly, she telephones him, too often, probably. She can't seem to help herself. She has discovered that at around four P.M., he seems to accept a moment's break. Even if he doesn't stay on long, just hearing him satisfies her. And she has so many good things to report about the apartment. About her new life. Her joy has nowhere to go if she can't share it with him!

But at night, when Edith sleeps, her dreams are ragged with disturbing thoughts of Morton. In one dream, she returns from the theatre and encounters Anna, whose lips are white.

"He's in there," Anna says, twisting her hands together, pointing to the drawing room.

Rather than asking if she means Morton or Teddy, for these days, each could warrant the same ominous tone from Anna, Edith steps into the new parlor and there Morton sits: naked, cross-legged on the settee, wearing all of Edith's jewels-her collar of pearls, her diamond earrings, his fingers decked with her rings. In fact, six rings per finger. He is laughing and says, "They're mine now. You gave them to me. I have no intention of giving them back." In another dream, he tells her that now that she's moved to Paris for good, he's decided to leave. "I really can't bear to see you this often," he says. He looks at her out of the corner of his eye, as though he can't tolerate addressing her face to face. "And these telephone calls. I a.s.sure you, I loathe them." She weeps and tells him that he isn't worth her time or effort, that he's a cad and a disappointment. And that no matter what Anna de Noailles told her, love should not hurt so much. When she wakes, she is exhausted. Why, oh, why, can't she be happy at this happy time?

The dream reminds her to call Anna de Noailles. One afternoon, she takes la Comtesse through the new apartment, and afterward they sit and chat about love over tea laced with American whiskey, which the Comtesse has smuggled in by flask in her purse. How the woman can go on! Especially with the lubricant of alcohol. She speaks of her lover with a lush longing that Edith finds both unsettling and exciting. "Maurice? I torture him," she whispers to Edith. "Sometimes I am wild for him, insatiable. I use him until he's too exhausted to speak. And then I tell him I like him best when he is silent. He is a man of letters, so it drives him mad! Other times, dear Edith, I feign that I am bored. And of course, I often am. Men can be so boring, can't they? Their minds are like greedy children. And how is your lover?"

Edith shrugs.

"You love him still?" the Comtesse asks.

"Yes."

"Then make sure it is you making the choices, mon amie. What do they say in America: 'calling the shots'? I like that expression."

When de Noailles leaves, Edith, noting that it is past four, sits at the phone in the library and calls Morton, and to her surprise hears herself saying, "I want us to be together. Together. Just as you've often suggested." She tries to sound like de Noailles, lowering her voice, seductive. In control. She attempts to entwine a taste of the lascivious around her words. If the Comtesse can do it, why can't she?

"Together?" he asks. "Am I interpreting right?"

"I think you know exactly what I mean, dear," she tells him.

Morton's voice rises, sounds unsettled.

"I would like that . . . but here in the city, you understand. With the bureau breathing down my neck, I have no time these days to go out of town."

"In the city. But discreetly," she warns him.

"Leave it to me." She hears his chest puff like a robin's. Extraordinary that this should be audible. Later, she hates herself for having instigated something so unacceptable to her in the past. But it is too late to call him back, to call it off.

The small hotel that Morton chooses in Montmartre has a cafe that is reached through the lobby, so anyone seeing her enter might think she is heading for a cup of the and a croissant. He was kind to think it through to this extent, at least. He is waiting for her in a chair by the front desk, smiling, impish. Just seeing him does lift her heart.

Somehow, the places they visited in the country felt different, sacred even. But the lobby of this hotel, with its smeary-looking travelers, salesmen and a few women of questionable morals, doesn't make her feel the least gleeful and she knows he senses it.

"Are you sure about this?" he asks.

She presses her lips together and nods.

When he procures the key, he hands it to her discreetly by taking her hand in his and settling the key into her palm.

"I will be there in a minute," he says. "Not a good idea to go up in the elevator together." How often has Morton traveled this elevator and sent a woman ahead?

The room is simple and clean, and one can see the Sacre-Coeur from the window. Edith doesn't know why it makes her feel so weary, so sad. He even knew which room to ask for. She sits on the edge of a bed, feeling out of her depth.

When he knocks on the door, his face is kind, though. And he is smiling.

"Will you hold me first for a while?" she asks, standing, coming to him.

"Dearest," he says, and pulls her close. He is a courtly lover. No one could ever accuse him otherwise. She drinks in the pressure of his compact body, the strength of his arms, the scent of lavender wrung from his clothes.

"We'll have to hurry. I can't be away from the bureau too long . . . ," he says.

She wonders if she could be anyone to him. A rough acquaintance, a prost.i.tute. His blackmailing landlady. His blue eyes flash greedily as he unwraps her clothing. But she can see that he is merely doing what is expected of him. He is hardly with her at all. His eyes are distant. His pa.s.sion is merely a bodily function. And even if he is good at it, his heart is wrapped in batting. Lying naked on the bed, she does all the things he's taught her to do. (He once told her she was a brilliant student of depravity-she laughed at the time, at his mordant choice of words.) But now, she feels nothing but the steady pound of her breaking heart. They are two separate hearts. Always will be. When he enters her, tears spill from her eyes and do not stop until he has satisfied himself.

"You didn't enjoy that, did you?" he says after a while, lighting a cigarette.

Edith says nothing, lies on the miserable, stiff bolster and traces a crack on the ceiling with her eyes.

She hears him sigh. "I don't know what to do for you. What would you have me do? Marry you? If that's what you want from me . . ."

"That's hardly what I want."

"Then what? You called. You wanted this."

"I want nothing from you but . . . for us to be of one mind."

"Oh," he says, his voice vibrating with irony. "Is that all?"

"We were once. We often have been. We are so much alike in thought. . . ."

"We are nothing alike," he says. His voice isn't cruel; in fact, it's almost sensible. "I am a creature of desire. And you . . ."

"A creature of intellect?" she offers.

"And yet you have the ability, the capacity to desire all that I do. You've been unafraid. You have an appet.i.te for pa.s.sion just as I do. It's been a revelation. And yet you cut it off. You bury it. I don't understand you."

"I'm tired," she says.

"Of me?" he asks, sounding almost hopeful. "Most people tire of me after a while." He wants her to be tired of him. He wants to move on.

"Of everything," she says. "Maybe it's best if we are just friends again."

"Ah."

"I have never known, since the very first day, what I am to you."

He blows a cloud of blue smoke and settles his wrist over his eyes. He looks as though he is about to answer her, but the bells of Sacre-Coeur ring out joyously, a full-hearted song of devotion, interrupting any attempt he might have made to speak. By the time they have completed their concert, if he was going to answer, he's forgotten.

He suggests she leave the hotel first, exiting via the cafe, and he lies still with his eyes closed as she dresses. She notes the purple hollows beneath the arc of his lashes. The pinch of exhaustion at the corners of his mouth. How she cares for him. Even when she's angry, or feels betrayed, it's unthinkable that she can ever stop loving this man. Before she steps into the hallway, she says, "We should be friends now. Nothing more. I'm convinced it's best that way."

He shrugs. Looks at her blandly.

Walking through the cafe, pa.s.sing tables of relaxed friends, openly romantic lovers, she is flooded with a bitterness, realizing that she will never have the single thing she wants most in the world.

When Teddy returns with Nannie in tow, he is a frightening specimen. He stares gla.s.sily and doesn't ask questions. While in the States, he saw Dr. Kinnicut again, who wrote Edith a note of extreme caution. "Of course you will be careful about being alone with Ted with n.o.body within call. You cannot tell what mental tensions have been acc.u.mulating since you've seen him, nor how explosive they may be." She has thought many negative things about Teddy over the years, but never did she imagine he might actually be a danger to her. Still, shouldn't she have seen it when he raised that b.u.t.ter knife to Eliot at St. Cloud? Shouldn't she have expected this? My punishment, she thinks ten times a day. I have brought this on.

So, introducing him to the new apartment, she uses a kind and even tone as one might use to soothe an easily spooked and dangerous animal. It is the voice Tonni used with him when he was ill. She points out the things she thinks he'll like: how his room is near the library; how the light pours into the drawing room from the garden. Teddy's always loved houses, but she wonders what he can see or take in. At their first dinner together, he exhibits an empty stare like a man who has been given a sedative. He speaks only when spoken to. And then just a syllable or two, as though he is too weary to generate more. The primary sound at dinner is the clatter of silverware. He doesn't even answer the maid as she serves meat to his plate, asking him how much, and piles up the potatoes a.s.suming he'll stop her when she's given him enough. And so his plate is groaning with food, which he barely touches. Afterward, Edith walks him out in the garden, which sparkles with pansies and late tulips all honeyed by the early evening light. Despite his love of gardens, he doesn't say a word.

And then, as she says good night to him at the door of his room, he starts to shake and his eyes light with malice.

"You make me a prisoner in this horrid place when I can only be happy fis.h.i.+ng. Or with my animals. Why must I be here in Paris with you? I hate the very sight of you!" She shudders, sick that the neighbors might hear him. He's never spoken against her this way, even when he was at his worst. And to think he begged Dr. Kinnicut to let him make the journey to Paris because he missed her. Before, when he was soaked in melancholy, there was always Anna to soothe him. Now, Anna mostly keeps her distance. Nannie is no good at all, running from the room the moment Teddy raises his voice.

It's fallen to Edith now, and she doesn't like it at all. She doesn't know how to speak to Teddy. Maybe she never did. While she ponders what to say next, Teddy suddenly s.n.a.t.c.hes his bedside lamp, a Limoges vase that Edith had converted to give him light to read by, and, yanking its cord from the wall, flings it at her. The beautiful vase with its hunting gentlemen and slender ladies slams against the door frame, exploding into a thousand pieces, celestial stars of china spewing from a single center. She feels the spray against her skirt, the shock against her ankle, and, lifting her hem, sees three small roses of blood blooming there. Panicked, she gathers herself and escapes down the hall.

"No, Puss. Don't go. I love you desperately. Desperately," he calls after her. "If only you loved me. Instead of that bounder."

She calls for White to go soothe him, warning him that Teddy has turned violent. One of the braver maids accompanies White to sweep up the mess. And Edith telephones the Paris doctor who diagnosed his ailment as gout in the head the previous year.

"He's gone mad, I think," Edith says. She gingerly touches her bandaged ankle. "He wants to hurt me."

The doctor arrives in less than an hour, his black leather bag banging against his leg. His hangdog face observing her with irritation, accusation.

"I did nothing to upset him," Edith feels the need to declare. She holds up her hands like the victim of a bank heist.

"Of course not, Madame," the doctor says, his lips pressing together with doubt. He enters Teddy's room with a nervous smile, and speaks to him in childlike English, asking questions that just seem to confuse him. How is he feeling? Is he very, very angry?

"I'm not angry. I'm not angry," he says.

"I hear you threw a lamp at your wife," the doctor offers.

"I didn't do that," Teddy says. "It's just not true."

"Ah, but you did! I see a piece right here." The doctor bends down and lifts a small shard from the floor that the maid must have missed and holds it out to him.

"I see there's no lamp by your bedside. Perhaps this is part of it?"

"It ain't true. I didn't do any such thing. They just want to make it look like I did. She makes me the villain, but it's not so. It's a setup." Edith shrinks back into the hallway, shaken.

Later, the doctor tells Edith he has theories, but no certainty. A brain malady, he declares. Perhaps a rest cure in Switzerland would help? Other than that, he is at a loss. The patient feels persecuted, misunderstood. The doctor wants to verify: did he really throw a lamp? Edith shows him her wounds, annoyed.

When Teddy is finally asleep-Oh, thank G.o.d, he is asleep!-she writes Morton, telling him of the impossibility of her life. She hates herself for turning to Morton. But even as unpredictable as he is, she feels he understands her. If he would just pen one line about feeling sorry for her. Or wish her relieved of such a painful burden! Or worry for her safety.

It should not surprise Edith that no response comes. Teddy grows rapidly worse, weeping, screaming, calling her names, sweeping things off tables. Thank heavens they are no longer at George Vanderbilt's. At least here, when Teddy breaks things, the items are hers and she can replace them.

Days pa.s.s. Weeks pa.s.s. Edith is tired and literally sick. Food won't go down. Sleep won't come. Just a word from Morton would be a salve. She writes again. And still receives no answer. When it comes to friends.h.i.+p, she tells herself, Morton is an eel, slipping away into the shallows at the first sign of a stir.

One night, with still no word from him, she paces her room. She locks her door at night now, leaving the key in the lock so Teddy can't jimmy his way in. As she walks from one side of the room to the other-such a beautiful room-she sees her life as the most ironic of stories. At last she has her foothold in Paris. After all these years, a dream realized. She has finally known what other women know. She has tasted pa.s.sion. She has loved, truly loved! She should be ecstatic. Her days should be bursting with promise. Instead, her hopes lie near death, the weight of each breath almost too heavy to lift.

Morton. Once her solace, again her anguish. And everything she's feeling focuses on him. Her hopelessness, her frustration. Who is more dangerous to her: Morton or Teddy? Teddy is no longer in his right mind. She expects nothing of him. But Morton should be there to soothe her, to hold her, to care and worry. Even as a mere friend! Barefoot, s.h.i.+vering, for rain is singing coldly against every pane, she nervously unlocks the door and, listening for movement from Teddy's room, pads down the dark hall to the library, lights the lamp and finds a pen, a handful of paper, and begins to write. She inscribes the first line slowly.

I am sad and bewildered beyond words.

She runs her index finger across the sentiment, knowing this is where Morton has brought her. To a desert of wordlessness. A woman who has spent the best part of her life, against all odds, shaping a respectable living from words! She could stop now, crumple the paper and throw it away. Wait for him. Wait on and on for this mercurial man to come to her again. But she can't. She writes for two hours. Considering every line. It must be said. It must be shared. She is worth more than this pain. More than this disappointment.

I am sad and bewildered beyond words. And with all my other cares and bewilderments, I can't go on like this!

I seem not to exist for you. I don't understand if I could lean on some feeling in you-a good and loyal friends.h.i.+p, if there's nothing else!-then I could go on, bear things, write, and arrange my life.

I understand something of life, I judged you long ago, and accepted you as you are, admiring all your gifts and your great charm, and seeking only to give you the kind of affection that should help you most, and lay the least claim on you in return.

I have had a difficult year-but the pain within my pain, the last turn of the screw, has been the impossibility of knowing what you wanted of me, and what you felt for me-at a time when it seemed natural that, if you had any sincere feeling for me, you should see my need of an equable friends.h.i.+p-I don't say love because that is not made to order! But the kind of tried tenderness that old friends seek in each other in difficult moments of life.

My life was better before I knew you. That is, for me, the sad conclusion of this sad year. And it is a bitter thing to say to the one being one has ever loved d'amour!

She finds an envelope, seals and addresses the letter and sets it out on the table in the hall where White collects the mail each morning to hand to the postman. And then she goes to bed. Her sleep is instantaneous and dreamless.

In the night, as Anna is sleeping, there is a timid knock on her door. At first she wonders if she's dreamed it. She pulls on her wrapper and, moving close to the door, whispers, "Yes?"

"Miss Anna, let me in." Anna s.h.i.+vers at the sound of Teddy Wharton's voice.

"Are you all right, Mr. Wharton? Can't we speak in the morning?" Most nights, there is a nurse watching over him. Or White. Or someone. He's too unpredictable. Dangerous. Strange. And she has avoided him. He is no longer her charge. He is not the man she thought he was.

But tonight, his voice is sweet. A whisper.