Charles’s wife, Agnes, remained oblivious of her husband’s love for Dorothea Deverell. Or, if suspecting, had made up her mind not to care. She had become with the years one of those women, not uncommon in tightly knit social circles, who exudes an air of disappointment and irony like a pungent perfume assailing the nostrils of others. She dressed expensively but carelessly; her skin was sallow and unhealthy, and her eyes puffy-lidded; her round stolid face was a defiant pug’s face, with the liverish cast of a being of action who has for mysterious reasons refused to act, so that her energy, her very life, had backed up in her, choking her. It was not known in Lathrup Farms whether she drank because of chronic ill health or whether her chronic ill health was the result of her drinking; whether she was “difficult” because she drank or drank because she was “difficult,” trusting to alcohol to free instincts that social decorum would otherwise have suppressed.
In the many years of their acquaintance, Dorothea’s only intimate encounter with Agnes Carpenter had been an embarrassing one. She had come upon the woman in a powder room one evening at one or another party, the wife of her lover, whom she envied, and feared, and hated, and often pitied, and there was Agnes Carpenter in a gold lamé pants suit leaning and swaying over a sink, so drunk her eyes were squeezed shut and her skin had gone a dead doughy ghastly white, and when Dorothea offered to help Agnes pushed her hands away blindly, crying, “Don’t touch! Don’t touch!” but then, a moment later, she begged, “Oh, God, help me please—” turning and staggering as Dorothea caught her in her arms and, in one of the toilet stalls, held the poor woman’s shoulders while she retched into a toilet bowl, vomiting in long shuddering heaves. The bout of sickness had lasted perhaps ten minutes, during which time other women, venturing into the powder room, discreetly backed out again, leaving Dorothea Deverell to the task: which of course she acquitted ably, like a nurse’s aide, hardly seeming to mind (though of course she minded terribly) that her black silk dress with the countless shimmering pleats was splashed with Agnes Carpenter’s foul-smelling vomit while Agnes Carpenter’s gold lamé came through unscathed. And after that unfortunate incident Agnes Carpenter’s public manner with Dorothea Deverell was distinctly formal, if not chill.
Telling Ginny Weidmann about it (for she’d been, for all her scruples, unable to keep it to herself), Dorothea had said with a nervous laugh, “Now the woman is my enemy for life!” and Ginny had agreed, though not laughingly. Ginny said, “Agnes Carpenter is the kind of person you wouldn’t choose for an enemy, any more than you’d choose her for a friend.”
At the Weidmanns’ elegantly set dining room table, amid the flutter of candle flames and the sparkle of silverware and the rich fragrance of rack of lamb and vegetables, Agnes Carpenter sat in a pose of polite attention, not swiftly but methodically draining her wineglass and allowing it, as if absentmindedly, to be refilled by Martin Weidmann. Talk ranged up and down the table—politics, a local art exhibit, mutual friends, a best-selling novel, the latest real estate development scandal—while Agnes Carpenter fussed unconvincingly with the food on her plate, cutting it up, Dorothea noted, into small pieces, and mucking the pieces about and leaving most of them. If Charles saw he naturally gave no sign; but perhaps, caught up in the conversation, glancing frequently at Dorothea, he did not see, exactly—for what after all could he do? She is a strong-willed woman, Charles had remarked to Dorothea once, rather vaguely, and Dorothea had not disagreed. Though thinking, What of me? Have I no will at all?
But she was determined to enjoy herself. As always, at the Weidmanns’ table, the atmosphere was lively, exclamatory, irreverent, a bit loose at the edges, punctuated by Ginny’s interruptions—“You did what? You said what?”—and by Martin’s braying laughter. The food was superb, the wines delicious (and expensive); in twin etched-glass bowls at the center were pale yellow rosebuds that gave off a muted fragrance. In addition to the Weidmanns, the Carpenters, and Dorothea, there were three other guests: a striking Cleopatra-looking young woman in her late twenties named Hartley Evans, a new friend of Ginny’s who worked for a Boston television station; a youngish jowly man named David Schmidt, who worked, as he rather too frequently mentioned, for a prominent brokerage firm in the city; and Jerome Gallagher, Dorothea’s dinner companion for the evening, a tax lawyer whose habitual expression was sharply quizzical, as if he were hard of hearing, and whose bald head shone fiercely in the candlelight, like polished stone. We have all been brought together for a purpose, Dorothea thought, but what is the purpose? Is life, even in a world of couples, too lonely otherwise? Tonight she felt more than ordinarily on display since she and Charles were seated almost directly across from each other and obliged either to talk or, pointedly, not to talk to each other; and there was the distraction of Jerome Gallagher, Ginny’s eligible bachelor of the evening, introduced to Dorothea with the aside, “You two have so much in common, I envy you!” So blunt a prognosis had the temporary effect of making them both tongue-tied, frowning Mr. Gallagher in particular, but, after some awkward false starts, Dorothea at last asked the inevitable question, “What sort of work do you do?” And Jerome Gallagher proceeded to tell her. She knew she could relax for the duration since as a female listener she was hardly required to respond except in monosyllables of agreement, enthusiasm, or wonder. Except for Charles Carpenter, men never asked Dorothea about her work.
Mr. Gallagher talked and Dorothea half listened, observing Charles and thinking how odd, how ironic; in the man’s actual presence she often felt estranged from him, as in her reveries (indulged in daily, or rather nightly) she did not, even as she acknowledged his attractiveness: that angular fine-boned face, the light splash of freckles like raindrops, the alert intelligent eyes. And he dressed inconspicuously well, not stylishly but decently, wearing, Dorothea saw to her pleasure, a beautiful silk necktie she’d given him (and which Charles had had to mention to Agnes as an impulsive purchase of his own) and a fine bluish-gray pinstripe suit that fitted his tall lean frame elegantly. A man one might kill for, Dorothea thought, if one were that sort. That morning Charles had said he would rather have stayed home, except for seeing her, but he seemed to be enjoying the dinner party as much as anyone at the table, having struck up a spirited debate with Schmidt, a very vocal and opinionated young man (conservative, Republican, scornful of “federal restraints”), and the exotically made-up Hartley Evans (inky black hair smooth and synthetic as a wig, enormous blue-lidded eyes wide in perpetual surprise), in which Ginny Weidmann participated and to which Agnes Carpenter made a perfunctory pretense of listening, using the excuse of a change of plates to light a cigarette: parchment-colored cigarettes, Egyptian, which gave off a sharp acrid stench and within seconds drifted to Dorothea’s sensitive nostrils and eyes. If Agnes had eaten little she had drunk much; her fleshy face seemed about to shift its contours; she laughed for no specific reason and raised a chunky hand to her brow—her enormous dinner ring, a square-cut jade bordered with diamonds, catching the light aggressively. Her damp derisive gaze shifted to Dorothea’s face without taking hold, as if Dorothea’s place were empty.
Why will you not give him up? Dorothea silently pleaded. When you don’t love him? When you are standing in the way of others’ happiness?
Then, to Dorothea’s horror, conversation at the table shifted suddenly, like a landslide, and within seconds the subject was the “power struggle” at the Brannon Institute, in particular the unconscionable tactics employed by a new member of the board of trustees named Roger Krauss, in promoting a protégé of his while systematically denigrating Dorothea Deverell—from the position of being, as Krauss insisted, not at all antiwoman but antifeminist. Krauss, who had been named to the board the previous spring, had taken public exception to several of the programs Dorothea had scheduled, most notoriously (for he had published an attack in the Lathrup Farms weekly paper) a traveling exhibit of women’s sculpture; he was condescending or outright rude to Dorothea when they were thrown together, talked behind her back to
other members of the board and to the director, Mr. Morland. That Krauss had his own candidate for the directorship, a nephew-in-law currently working at the Whitney Museum, was part of his campaign against Dorothea, but he was clever enough to present it only as a part; his real objection to her taking over the directorship, he said, was ideological. He would not trust her, he’d several times declared, not to “subvert” the Institute for her own political ends.… Dorothea laid down her fork in dismay, felt her face go painfully hot and her heart beat sullenly against her ribs. This was the very topic she dreaded their taking up, and the worst of it was they were obviously not so much taking it up as reverting back to it, as if, before Dorothea’s belated arrival, they had been discussing it, and her, at length.
Her eyes snatched at Charles’s, seeking solace. He was staring down at his plate as if sharing her discomfort. It pained Dorothea the more, wounded her in her pride, that her lover had learned of her predicament before she had explained it to him, before she had transformed it into a dryly amusing little anecdote, to mitigate her shame. Ginny was saying angrily, “It just seems to me so outrageously unfair that Dorothea, who has done a damned good job at the Institute, should be obliged to defend herself after all these years—and to defend herself against such spiteful attacks!”
Martin agreed, and so of course did Charles, who was still staring down at his plate, his lips pursed; the new people—David Schmidt, Hartley Evans, Jerome Gallagher—looked thoughtful if rather neutral; but Agnes Carpenter, exhaling smoke through both nostrils in a lavish gesture, said, “But Roger is excessive. It isn’t his nature to do things by halves.”
Ginny said, “A scorpion has its nature too!”
Unperturbed, Agnes Carpenter said, “Scorpions aren’t required to be lovable. Only to be scorpions.”
At this rather unthinking remark there was a startled silence; then Martin Weidmann came gallantly to Dorothea’s rescue, and Charles said something impatient, and Ginny, excited, held forth at some length, the words unfair, unjust, outrageous, misogynist flying about Dorothea’s head like crazed wasps. She tried not to listen; tried to smile, as if not minding in the slightest; wondered how it would be received if she simply rose from the table and left the room and stayed away until the subject was changed. The problem of Roger Krauss and his heartbreaking campaign against her was one Dorothea dealt with by not thinking about it at all: simply blanking the horror out, as a dirtied wall is whitewashed, crudely and expediently.
Social life! Dorothea glanced at her watch and saw that it was only five minutes to ten. It seemed much later. There was a salad course yet to come, probably cheese and fruit, and of course dessert, coffee and liqueurs, and the rest, another hour at least to be endured before she could slip away home to fall exhausted into bed to dream of one day marrying Charles Carpenter and living a normal blessed life in a lovely old Lathrup Farms house, with a walled garden perhaps, and in cold windy weather Charles would build a fire in the fireplace, applewood for fragrance, and they would sit close together on the sofa clasping hands staring mesmerized at the dancing flames thinking How lucky we are! How happy we are! How did such good fortune befall us? Dorothea’s eyes flooded with moisture as if flames were indeed singeing her eyeballs. Beside her Jerome was saying stiffly, “This fellow Krauss sounds like bad news. You might think about bringing a lawsuit against your employer, you know, if they do ease you out, if there really were promises made about advancement. Women are doing it all the time, these days.”
Dorothea excused herself and hid away in the Weidmanns’ gold-wallpapered little guest bathroom as long as she dared, and when she returned to the table, thank God, the subject of Krauss had been dropped and a fresh subject taken up. The salad course was just being served, and Martin Weidmann was opening another bottle of wine, and Agnes Carpenter was lighting up another parchment-colored cigarette and exhaling smoke through her nostrils. Dorothea thought of Toulouse-Lautrec, who dined frequently at the Eiffel Tower, and who said, “One place I do not have to see the Eiffel Tower is inside the thing.”
And then the doorbell rang. And everyone went silent. And Ginny cried, “Who can that be?” as if, her table being full, no one else could possibly turn up at her door.
They listened as Tula went to answer.
“What a surprise! What an enormous, lovely surprise!”
The unexpected visitor was a great-nephew of Ginny Weidmann’s named Colin Asch: a tall too-thin boy with shadowed eyes, a delicate-boned asymmetrical face, lank pale hair that fell nearly to his shoulders. Dorothea, quite taken by his appearance, would have put his age at twenty-three or -four. He wore a soiled sheepskin windbreaker with a broken zipper, khaki trousers, a black cashmere sweater badly stretched at the neck, and no shirt beneath; his skin was sallow as if with fatigue, and his chin and cheeks were lightly stubbled; pulled reluctantly into the dining room to meet his aunt’s friends, he blinked, and frowned, and squirmed, like a nocturnal animal rudely confronted with light. With a maternal solicitude in which delight and accusation contended, Ginny several times exclaimed, “But we were expecting you last week, Colin! Weren’t we, Martin? Where on earth were you last week? Of course it’s all so vague, the way you young people live your lives!”
Except that Ginny’s arm was linked through his, the boy looked as if, in a paroxysm of embarrassment, he would have liked to run out of the room. Dorothea felt sorry for him, hauled like a prize of some sort into his aunt’s dining room, exhibited to her friends. (Ginny’s own grown children, about whom Dorothea heard a good deal, were well adjusted, happy, moderately successful, and not in much need of their mother’s fervent attention.) The boy stammered an apology and said he hadn’t meant to interrupt a party, but by now Martin too was on his feet and insisting Colin should join them at the table; it was unthinkable that Colin not join them, plenty of room and plenty of food and surely Colin had not eaten: “You look,” Martin said jovially, “as if you haven’t eaten in weeks!”
“But maybe Colin would like to freshen up a bit first,” Ginny said, belatedly noticing her nephew’s disheveled appearance and the look of pained pinched fright about his eyes. “Would you, dear? And then have a little something to eat? Why don’t you take him upstairs, Martin? He can change, if he’d like to, into something of yours.”
With a desperate shoulder-squirming maneuver the boy wriggled free of Ginny’s grasp, repeating that he hadn’t meant to interrupt a party; he never went where he wasn’t invited; he’d see them again some other time.
“But you are invited,” Ginny persisted.
And Martin, laying a heavy paternal arm across the boy’s narrow shoulders, said warmly, “You can’t run away when you’ve only now arrived!”
Colin Asch stammered and resisted a bit longer, but the Weidmanns, united, were clearly too much for him, too practiced at this sort of benevolent bullying. Though Dorothea exchanged a swift amused look with Charles—how like Ginny and Martin this scene was!—she felt relieved at the outcome: that this lonely appearing melancholy young man should be cared for, at least temporarily, and made to join their company. There was something striking about him, his eyes, his face, his very stance, to which she could not have given a name, yet which seemed to her both exciting and familiar. In any case his presence in the Weidmanns’ overheated dining room would give the evening a distinct note of validity.
In a flurry of excitement Ginny and Tula laid another place at the table, close beside Ginny at the head, and in a dramatic undertone Ginny said, “The poor boy! Poor Colin! He has had such a tragic life!” All her guests leaned forward expectantly; Ginny glanced toward the foyer and the stairs, as if to reassure herself that Colin and Martin were safely out of earshot.
“The first thing, which some of you may have read about, or I’ve told you about, years ago—it must have been fifteen years ago—Colin’s parents’ death and the way they died; it was too ghastly! Too terrible! My niece and her husband and Colin, who was twelve at the time, were in their car, my niece
’s husband was driving, and it was raining, and they were going over a bridge in the Adirondacks, just south of Lake Placid, one of those metallic-mesh bridges, or whatever you might call them—you know the kind, so particularly slippery—and this bridge was narrow and not in good repair and there was another car coming from the opposite direction and somehow my niece’s husband lost control of his car—I really do think the other driver must have been speeding, or driving dangerously, but that was never established—and struck the railing, and the railing broke, and they plunged into the river. The boy managed to get out and swim to the surface, but his father and mother were trapped inside the car, in only about eight feet of water, so the boy tried to save them, diving back down trying to get the doors of the car open, trying to pull his mother free, and then his father; he’d dived back into the water a dozen times by the time police arrived, isn’t it just hellish to imagine? My poor niece, who was so sweet! Her poor husband! But the poor boy most of all, to endure such a nightmare! Because he’d tried to save his parents and he’d failed, and”—here Ginny’s voice dropped tremulously, and she glanced again back toward the stairs, one beringed hand pressed against her breasts—“and they said he’d been raving and delirious when the police came; he’d fought the police, insisting his parents were still alive and he could save them; the poor child, imagine, only twelve at the time and always so sensitive—he had musical talent, a lovely soprano voice, he had a talent for drawing and painting; my niece herself was an artist, she’d taught for a while at Holyoke—and it was said that Colin had gone mad in those minutes, that his mind simply shattered.”
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