Tallis' Third Tune

by Ellen L. Ekstrom

  I emerged from the tunnel and found myself in a crowd of passengers and their friends and families exchanging the happy greetings one usually sees at airports. I got to be a part of this scene, for I saw Donovan standing off to the side.

  He had a bored expression until he glanced around and saw me and I was pleased that his face lit up. He motioned to the man standing beside him and they started moving against the flow of foot traffic to get to me. The man was holding a bouquet of flowers that he was trying to keep from getting crushed as they walked forward. As I approached Donovan took the flowers from him and the man stepped back respectfully, nodding in greeting.

  “I like these kinds of surprises,” Donovan murmured between kisses.

  “I have others – but they can wait until I get to the hotel.” I winked and then batted my eyelashes seductively.

  “Hotel? No, you’re staying with me at the brownstone. Here, these are from my mother.” Donovan handed off the bouquet and motioned to the other man. “This is Phillip, Mother’s driver; he’ll take us home.”

  Home was a colonial brownstone in an upscale neighborhood of Providence. It reeked of privilege and old money and if it looked stately and a bit foreboding from the street, inside was like a museum. I stood in the middle of the bedroom and wondered if I could sit anywhere, certain that every chair and stool, the four-poster bed, was authentic Chippendale. Phillip nodded again as he brought up my suitcase and disappeared as quickly. Donovan entered next with a vase for the flowers, which he placed on a vanity table.

  “I’d have you stay in my rooms, but Mother is coming from Newport for the weekend.”

  “You could stop by to tuck me in, I suppose.” I patted the bed and he took the bait, tumbling me onto my back and fumbling with buttons.

  “You could start wearing things with zippers!” he teased.

  I wriggled out of his arms and reached for my purse, taking two envelopes from the outside pocket. “Are you ready for the first surprise?” I asked.

  “Only if we get to celebrate tonight.”

  “Deal. Here.”

  He took the envelope and chuckled when he saw the return address. “Well this is no surprise, but congratulations, Doctor Martin!” he exclaimed. “Top ten in your class, too! I was never so ambitious. So? How does it feel?”

  “I guess I’ll get used to the title.” I gave him the second envelope and he whooped in delight when he opened it.

  “You didn’t tell me! You were here last week?”

  “If I had said anything it would have ruined the surprise. That’s why I’ve come on such short notice. I’ve got an interview with the head of the History department on Monday – final interview. I made it through the preliminaries.”

  Donovan sat up and leaned against the bolster, bringing me with him as he read the letter. “Well, if anything, it means one thing.”

  “I have a shot at a chair no man or woman my age or with my level of expertise ever had in the past?”

  “No. The committee’s intentions were academic and honorable.”

  He looked at me with the most serious face I’d ever seen and then we both burst into laughter, remembering our date in Verona. It wasn’t long before we were between the sheets and celebrating as only we knew how. We were both contented in yet another afterglow when the grandfather clock chimed six in the evening. Donovan swore softly and dragged himself out of bed and threw on his jeans.

  “Mother will be here in an hour – she’s taking us to Camille’s.”

  “Geez, I don’t know if I brought anything suitable for that place,” I sighed as I wrapped myself up in a sheet and went into the bathroom to start a bath – and then remembered my other news.

  “You’re gorgeous and you’ve got a great sense of style – anything you wear will do,” Donovan answered as he headed down the hall to his rooms.

  “Donovan, wait!” I called.

  He turned in the hallway, smiling, glancing over the balustrade at the maid who was on the next landing with a carpet sweeper and waved her off. She disappeared when I followed him out, dragging the sheet.

  “You are so beautiful,” he whispered, kissing the smooth bare skin of my shoulder, then my neck. “Don’t tempt me, lovely Alice; it’ll be difficult enough tonight with Mother here!”

  “Donovan, I’m pregnant.”

  He released me as if I was made of kryptonite, actually recoiling, and pulled me back into my room. Once the door slammed shut he paced the braided carpet several times, not saying a word. I sat on the bed dejectedly, sighing, “Your reaction doesn’t surprise me…”

  “Well, it was going to happen anyway,” Donovan murmured. “I was hoping for more time, though.”

  “Pardon?”

  Donovan looked over at me. “You’re sure?” he asked quietly.

  “I took two pregnancy tests, just to be sure. I went to the doctor. I’m about six weeks along.”

  Now he looked at me differently, as if seeing something different, something new.

  “Wow,” he whispered. He sat next to me and took my hand. “Are you okay?”

  “The doctor says I’m fine, healthy. The only thing I’m worried about is my shot at the History department chair. A pregnancy might put a crimp in my plans to work at the university…”

  “Do you want to keep it?”

  I paused and sighed. “I’ve had time to think about it. Yes. It’s our child. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “We’ll just get married,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Married? Now?”

  “Married!” Mrs. Arielle Trist exclaimed delightedly when Donovan announced our news at dinner that night. I glanced sideways at him, noting the smug look on his face and didn’t hazard a guess why that was all she would hear – for the time being.

  Arielle was a Daughter of the American Revolution and an icon of a previous era, the time when women swept the floors and made pies wearing perfectly pressed shirtwaist dresses, pearls, and a pair of heels, or had a maid or cleaning woman do the housework. Sex waited until after the marriage vows had been sworn and ‘conditions’ like mine were never spoken of. Due dates were always calculated to somewhere near ten or eleven months after the honeymoon.

  She insisted on propriety and upholding standards and traditions, family values. No scandal would ever taint her to the first degree – nor would she allow it to shatter the façade if something did happened to cast aspersions on the perfect, charmed life she presented to the commons. Arielle proved as much when, within hours of a news story of Senator Trist’s affair with a congressional aide broke and photographs of visits to Bangkok whorehouses surfaced in People and The New York Daily News she filed for divorce and took him for every penny, making sure her name and family were spotless. When Donovan’s bachelor escapades made the local and national news, however, she turned a blind eye and always blamed the girl. It was no wonder Donovan only told her part of our truth.

  Now Arielle turned her attention to me. Her porcelain features and eyes reminded me of Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara but the resemblance ended there. She was warm, affectionate and attentive – to her son. A thousand men could be in the room, and she would only have eyes for her only child, her “Little Man,” as she called him. It was somewhat amusing, if not disturbing, that Donovan didn’t seem to mind.

  “We’re thinking August,” Donovan said, lighting up a cigarette.

  “We are?” I kicked him under the table.

  “Wonderful! Oh, I’ve always wanted to do a wedding – well, other than my own, of course. That’s the one sad thing about having an only child and son; no trips to the bridal salons on Fifth Avenue. May I help with the planning and arrangements, Alice? I know you don’t have family.”

  I ignored the sideways glance Donovan offered. “I have a brother who is very good at these things. He designs menswear, and if Donovan told you anything about me, other than having a History degree I’ve got a background in theater and make a living designing theatrical costumes.”

&nbs
p; “But it would be so much fun to do it together – like I said, I never had a daughter, and well…” Arielle looked wistful now and played with her napkin, then summoned a waiter over to pour wine all around.

  “I haven’t given the wedding plans any thought, what with work and interviewing for positions. There’s a chance I’ll get the position in the History department here at Brown, so there it is.”

  “When Donovan said he’d found a beautiful girl from Berkeley, I wasn’t expecting such a poised and demure young woman or one so accomplished.”

  “She was expecting a hippie,” Donovan quipped brightly. “You should have seen her face, Alice, when I told her how we met in Verona.”

  “Like Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday!” Arielle crowed.

  “There’s always room for disappointment,” I replied, taking a drink of wine and remembering that that wasn’t a good idea. I did note that Donovan had refilled his glass and mine and had asked the waiter for another bottle. It was my turn to give him a look.

  “This woman is amazing, Mother,” Donovan said, nuzzling me affectionately. “Ph.D., author, artist, incredibly beautiful, incredibly sexy.”

  “Well,” Arielle tittered, “it’s a good thing the wedding’s set for August. Who knows what might happen?”

  Indeed.

  I was bemused when it did. When Donovan came to visit that March I waited a day before telling him and he looked disappointed, which was something I did not expect.

  “Here’s the doctor’s report if you don’t believe me.”

  Donovan turned from me and started making coffee, moving quietly and economically in my kitchen, as if brewing something in the coffee maker was a lab experiment.

  “It was a cyst. I’ve had them before, but this required an out-patient procedure. Some cauterizing, antibiotics. I’m going to be okay despite everything. That’s if you care.”

  He looked down at the papers and frowned, turned towards me now with a look of shock on his face.

  “Alice, what are you thinking? I didn’t say…”

  “That’s just it. You haven’t said anything one way or the other. That silence could be interpreted many ways.”

  “Well, it’s a shock. I wasn’t expecting…I’m worried about you.”

  “You’re not angry?”

  Donovan put down the coffee cups and took my hands, drawing me close. “It’s not something I choose to be angry about. All I can think about right now is how to please you and make you happy, Alice.”

  I drew a breath. “What would please me most right now…” I paused. “What would make me happy, Donovan, is slowing down the pace.”

  “Pace of what?”

  “The wedding.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “It’s logical, isn’t it? Maybe we can slow down a bit and not rush to August. I’m starting the job in Providence in September and before that, I’ve got the summer seminar at St. John’s York. You’re going back to Petra, so what’s a few months more? That way we can plan something really special.”

  I went to the living room and switched on the stereo, put on an album – Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis – and stood there listening when Donovan followed me in and settled onto the sofa with his papers and notebooks.

  “Are you saying you don’t want to get married?” he finally asked.

  “No. I just don’t want to rush things. There’s no reason, is there? And you said you wanted more time.”

  “I could deal with the whispering and embarrassment of calling off the wedding, but my mother – Alice, we might as well go through with it.”

  “It’s not a driving test or a root canal, Donovan!” I burst out angrily. “It’s our lives together! If we did this just to please someone other than ourselves – you know what I mean. Why can’t we just live together for a while?”

  “It’s not something my family does. It’s not something I do! That’s for hippies and beatniks, people who don’t care about what’s really important…”

  “Sounds like you’re talking about me,” I stated quietly.

  “I didn’t mean…”

  “Yes you did, otherwise you wouldn’t have said it. Your mother thinks I’m a freak from California and all wrong for you.”

  “No! You misunderstand her! She’s used to the girls in Newport, the Vassar and Mount Holyoke types. You’re – different. You know, Alice, I don’t care what others think!”

  “You do.”

  “No, I really don’t.”

  “Yes, I think you really do. You put on this front of being free spirited, not caring about the world and what’s going on, but deep, deep inside, you really care about appearances and others’ opinions. You seem…conflicted, confused. Maybe that’s why you drink.”

  Not what I said in 1978…

  “When did you get a psychology degree, Doctor Martin?” Donovan’s words were icy, if not downright sharp enough to wound.

  I watched the storm raging outside, the rain and wind lashing at the window, and fought tears. “I’m asking to slow it down a bit. Let me have some time to get used to a new life in Providence.”

  “Why don’t you just admit you don’t want to marry me?” he fired back.

  “That’s not what I’m saying!”

  When I turned to face him, I was in the Curiosity Shop, standing at the window watching the traffic on the high street, looking over at the church, the shops, surprised that the sun was always shining here, and it never seemed to rain unless my tears had something to do with it.

  “That was what you were saying. There’s no doubt of it!” Eleanor of Aquitaine said as she brought me a new bottle of Diet Pepsi.

  “Why is it that men never listen?” Joan of Arc sighed.

  “We do; we just never respond with what a woman wants to hear,” Richard the Third spoke up, receiving murmurs of assent from Tyrone Power and Sigmund Freud.

  “If we had just waited!” Tears started to well in my eyes.

  “You were trapped,” Joan of Arc stated. “It became a marriage of convenience when you couldn’t rekindle the love – happens all the time.”

  “No, a marriage of appearances,” Cecilia Tornabuoni chimed in. “He didn’t want the façade taken away. He needed the support of Newport society to fund his enterprises. If it looked like he couldn’t manage and hold on to an artistic, intelligent…”

  “And beautiful,” Richard the Third added.

  “…woman like you, Alice, could he manage his life and career? Take control of the work at Petra or any other place?”

  “Or was it lust pure and simple that you mistook for romantic love?” Athena asked. “Just as powerful and sustaining, I think. We are all born with the drive and it needs to go somewhere. Loneliness is a cancer.”

  “She had to choose between loneliness and uncertainty and the devil she knew,” Richard the Third commented and snapped his fresh copy of The New York Times as if to ward off opposition and folded the page to the crossword.

  “Explain that to a family counting on the wedding of the century and one that wouldn’t brook disappointment,” I groused. “Shaken or stirred, you have a very impossible situation that has no winners. Except Arielle.”

  “It’s very sad when people are together for a long while before they marry and the love starts to die, so they marry, hoping to relive moments, hours, of passion, the laughter and happiness,” Marie Antoinette mused, bringing over a plate of pastries and setting them before me. “Sometimes it works; many more times it is a dismal failure.”

  But what if you haven’t been together more than a year, I thought.

  “Or did something else happen to make her change her mind and settle?” the Proprietress spoke up.

  “Ah, but of course! And look where it led her,” Marie Antoinette crowed. “Madame Alice, time for another journey!”

  Marie Antoinette spun the brochure rack and pulled out two theater tickets when it stopped and she all but shoved them in my face.

 
; “A concert!” I exclaimed, and looked up at Donovan, holding the tickets before me with a goofy smile on his face. We stood in the kitchen of the three-story brownstone in Providence, a bag of groceries in my arms, Donovan home from work and burdened by books, files and a briefcase. All of these were dumped on the kitchen table, except the tickets.

  “Mother says paper is for the first wedding anniversary. These look like paper to me,” he said teasing me with them as I tried to snatch them away. “We could make a weekend of it – go down to New York for the concert, dinner maybe – without my mother or the senator and his new wife?”

  “Sounds like a wonderful idea – thank you!”

  “You didn’t have anything planned, I hope?” he queried, brows raised anxiously.

  “I was thinking a romantic dinner at home, but this is infinitely more romantic. I haven’t been to New York since our wedding.”

  I snatched the tickets from him and was rewarded for my persistence with a kiss.

  The spontaneity was fleeting, for as he did every evening, Donovan draped his coat on one of the chairs, reached for the bottle of scotch out of the cupboard over the range, a shot glass from the shelf to the left. I was ready to say something but decided against it. We would talk about his drinking and breaking his promise another time. Why spoil a happy moment, I thought as I watched him pour a shot, toss it back then wash the glass, put it back on the shelf, and return the bottle of scotch to its cupboard. Then he picked up his briefcase, books and files, and walked through to the stairs.

  “The last concert I attended was the Rolling Stones in 1970. Denny, Harry, some friends,” I called after him while putting away groceries. “We’re not going to Paul McCartney’s concert are we?”

  “Look at the tickets, Alice…” he called in a sing-song over his shoulder.

  I glanced at the tickets I’d placed on the table.

  The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra With Tarquin Radcliffe Conducting – First American Appearance.

  I felt as if something was pushing on my chest – my God, I was twenty-seven and having a heart attack!