by Anita Shreve
Several doctors’ bills are clipped together—first, those of Dr. Franklin, then of a cancer specialist, then from the hospital. Was Merle supposed to pay these as she lay dying? There has to have been a will, accounts with a bank. Gene would know about these. It’s odd he never mentioned anything but the house.
She comes up with an invoice from Best & Co. in Boston for four dresses with detailed descriptions. “Satin belt with paste clasp.” “Navy wool skirt cut on the bias.” “Blush pink silk Fortuny skirt with thirty-six pleats.” “Mink hat, turban style, lined with royal purple silk.” Where did Merle go in these clothes? Would she have worn the Fortuny silk to a cocktail party? The skirt cut on the bias to play bridge? The satin dress with paste clasp to a winter wedding?
At the bottom of the pile are three bills clipped together, each dated a subsequent month, for a case of Edgerton pink gin.
—
O’Neill’s words swim on the page. Across from her, Aidan has on a striped shirt and a black V-neck sweater. She notes onyx cuff links. She catches these details in quick glances.
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out her cigarettes. She leans forward an inch to ask if he would like one, but then notes his pack, Camels, and a box of matches on the table next to him. She wishes she could read the name of the restaurant on the front cover. Is it from New York or St. Louis?
His shoe jiggles once. She takes a long drag. There’s so much she never noticed about this room. The Delft clock. An array of silver boxes atop a desk. A darkened portrait of an important man. No, a self-important man. But then, it was for the painter to say, wasn’t it? The man in the picture might have been told to stand with his chin elevated, his fingers inside his buttoned coat. In his other hand, he holds a book, a fact that changes her idea of both the man and the painter. A book, not a Bible, suggests learning as opposed to commerce. When she glances down from the portrait, Aidan is staring at her. She smiles slightly.
“Have you had a good day?” he asks.
“Yes. At least I think so. I can hardly remember it.”
“You’re a busy woman.”
“I suppose I am. I was looking at that painting and trying to decide what the man did for a living.”
He turns to examine the picture. “A reader, certainly. Perhaps a teacher who thinks a lot of himself. I suppose your husband must be related to the man.”
“What era do you think it’s from?”
“Judging from the clothes and mustache, mid- to late nineteenth century. He could have been your husband’s grandfather.”
“You’ll have your portrait done,” she says.
“Why do you say that?”
“You’ll be an important musician, and someone will want to do a painting of you.”
“A photograph for a poster, maybe.”
“I was thinking that there’s so much talent in your hands.” She has seen his fingers move so fast they created a blur as she watched.
“There has to be dexterity,” he concedes, “but they’re only producing what’s in the brain.”
“All that music in the brain. It must be full up.”
He laughs. “There’s room for plenty more.”
Grace tries her book again, but reads the same sentence three times. “Have you ever been married?” she asks, pulling a piece of lint from her powder blue sweater.
“No, my work doesn’t lend itself to marriage. I travel too much, work nights.”
Her hand trembles as she turns another page. She lays her fingers hard against the open book. Does she only imagine the connection between them? Not that of landlady and lodger, though they are that. Not that of mutual refugees from a catastrophe, though they are that, too. And not merely friends, or even friends, as she and Rosie are to each other. Grace is married. Why does she keep forgetting that?
She thinks that her body, if it could, might speak. Touch my hand. Let me touch your hand. Put your hand at the back of my neck. Nothing more. Her body can’t ask for more.
Her mother called him handsome. The straight brow and the eyes, a soft brown. His hair curls slightly and then doesn’t, as if it can’t make up its mind. His mouth is straight and hard, not cruel in any way, but…serious. Yes, she would say he has a serious mouth.
“I like this house,” he says.
“You do?”
“I’m a man of hotel rooms. This is grand, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so. It housed a woman who hated me, but I’ve come to appreciate it without having to think about her.”
“Even children couldn’t break the ice?”
“Apparently not.”
“Your husband must have been torn.”
“Yes, he was.” But was he? Maybe not.
How might her life have been different if she hadn’t married Gene? Would she be a secretary now? An unmarried daughter, living with her mother? Might she have met someone who truly loved her?
“What are you thinking?” he asks. “You look pensive.”
Should she tell him? “I was wondering what my life might have been like had I not met Gene when I did, but then I quickly realized I wouldn’t have my children as they are, and that was the end of that.”
He is silent.
“Do you imagine alternate lives for yourself?” she asks.
“No, not really. I can’t see having another life. I wouldn’t want one.”
“You’ve worked too hard.”
“Something like that.”
She watches him return to his reading. Do the words swim on the page for him? She lights a second cigarette. If she keeps this up, she’ll become a chain-smoker. A year ago, Grace discovered, during a hectic morning, that she’d left a cigarette burning on the edge of the bathroom sink while another was going in an ashtray in the kitchen, and the realization shook her. She vowed to be more careful. Again, she looks over at Aidan and discovers he is again staring at her.
She smiles, and he looks away.
She crosses her legs, aware of a silky rustle. She puts out her cigarette. She ought to go up.
“What are your plans for tomorrow?” he asks.
“Pretty much the same as today. I thought I’d start looking for work, but they say the storm we’re expecting will be a bad one. I don’t want to leave my mother with the kids alone.”
“I’ll be here,” he says.
“Thank you, but I think I’ll start looking on Monday. Fresh start.”
He rolls his sleeves, and she can see from the dial on his watch that it’s well after nine. She would stay until one in the morning if he asked her to. He does want her to stay, she can feel it.
But after another minute, Aidan says, “I suppose I’ll take my book to bed now.”
“Good night then,” she says.
He stands and is careful not to brush against her.
She feels bereft even before he has left the room.
—
Grace lies on her four-poster, the children asleep in the room with her. She stares at the ceiling and feels heat rise and then drain from her face. She wants to put her mouth to Aidan’s skin. She wants him to run his fingers through her hair. That’s all. Does there have to be more? There must, because she wouldn’t feel like this. She understands that the act might be wrong, but the desire for it is not.
—
In the morning, Grace bundles the children into their winter woolens, and together she and Claire walk down the gravel lane. Grace shows Tom, in her arms, the ocean. She wonders if he remembers it from the night of the fire, if he will always carry with him a vestigial love for or fear of the sea. What will the hideous night do to Claire? Or did the fact that their mother held them tight through the natural horrors give them a protective coating that will serve them well?
The snow crust has grown soft, which makes walking easier. Grace reminds Claire to look both ways before they cross the coast road, even though there hasn’t been a vehicle on it for half an hour. On the other side, they struggle over low prickly bushes, cut grass, and mo
unds of snow-covered sand. Claire loses a boot, which Grace finds and puts over Claire’s wet sock. Because the tide is low, the beach gravel and the sea’s leavings are plentiful. When she was a girl, Grace used to search for sea glass among the pebbles. She shows Claire what to look for and notes as she does that there are hundreds of emeralds strewn among the debris. When she bends to look, she discovers they are small bits of emerald sea glass, each the size of a stone in a ring. There are no other colors that day, no other shapes. It’s not a configuration she’s ever seen before. What caused this unique and even offering?
“Claire,” she says, “see these little bits? They’re sea jewels. Very valuable. Let’s look for them and put them in this handkerchief, and when we go back, we’ll make jewelry.”
Claire’s eyes widen. She has seen the strings of jewelry hanging from her mother’s dressing table. Grace sets Tom on a tuft of sand right next to them, and as she searches for emeralds herself, she keeps a close eye on Claire. But her daughter seems to have intuited that jewels are not to be eaten. She can’t pick the emeralds up with her mittens so drops the knitted items where she stands and grasps as many bits of color as she can find. When she hands the treasures to her mother to put into the handkerchief, there are just as many pebbles as pieces of sea glass. Tom has a shell that occupies him. Grace stands to stretch her legs and glances up at the house on the hill, which she has never seen from this vantage point. She catches Aidan, hands in his pockets, looking at her and the children. She waves. She kneels next to her daughter.
When they have collected all the gems that will fit into the handkerchief, Claire’s fingers are red with cold. Grace ties up the bundle and puts it into her pocket. “Let’s get your mittens on and go up and make some jewelry. We’ll ask Grammy how to do it.”
Tom, who has poured a shell full of beach over his face, has sand stuck to his nostrils and tongue. Grace hefts him into her arms and glances up again at the turret window. Aidan isn’t there.
—
In a drawer of odds and ends in Merle’s room, Grace finds an old brooch, most of its seed pearls missing. When she brings it downstairs, she asks her mother if she has come across any glue. Her mother knows of some in the sewing basket upstairs. Grace and Claire bend over the brooch, gluing the emeralds that haven’t stuck to Claire’s fingers against the silver backing. While they are working, Aidan enters the kitchen to pick up a sandwich that Grace’s mother has made for him. Aidan asks Claire what she’s doing, and Claire answers she’s making “julie.” Grace smiles.
—
In the afternoon, Aidan asks Marjorie if it would be all right if he practiced through the afternoon. She says yes, especially if he’ll help her get the children’s beds up to the third-floor nursery, where they will sleep better. Grace, who has been listening from the bottom of the stairs, watches Aidan carry first the collapsible playpen, then the crib across the landing. Her mother follows with bedding.
Sitting out of sight of Aidan, Grace listens while he plays. It’s the same piece he was practicing when she entered Merle Holland’s house, and she has physical sensations similar to the ones she had that day. Occasionally, Aidan breaks off and repeats a passage or he trills up and down the piano, practicing scales. Then he launches into a later part of the concerto. Grace lays her head against the back of the chair and travels with him.
—
After Grace has finished the dishes and put the children to bed, she hesitates as she descends the stairs. In seconds, she’ll walk into the sitting room with her book. Does Aidan look forward to these evenings as much as she does? When she turns the corner and sees him sitting in his usual chair, her relief is almost audible.
“How did the brooch come out?” he asks as she sits.
“Pretty good. Well, you know…Did you hear anything back from your inquiries?”
“Yes, I did.”
Grace looks up.
“I have an audition with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.”
A fist strikes her chest. “That’s wonderful news. When did you hear?”
“When I went to the post office this afternoon.”
“Oh,” she says, registering the implications of the audition. “When is it?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? So soon?”
“They need someone right away.”
She closes her book. “That’s why you were practicing all afternoon.”
“I hope I didn’t keep the kids from their naps.”
She notices that he didn’t bring his book to the sitting room. “They were fine.”
“Grace, I’ve enjoyed my time here.”
Stop, she wants to say. She hates his elegiac tone, his building up to a farewell. He stands and begins to pace. He walks the length of the sitting room and back again.
“How will you get to Boston?” she asks.
“By train.”
“It might snow tonight.”
“It might.”
“It looked like it this afternoon,” she adds. “If it snows tonight, the trains might not run.”
“Perhaps not.”
Only the reading lights illuminate the room. When he walks to the far side, she can barely see him. Time and time again, he returns to her. When he’s tired of pacing, he leans against a wall. “I don’t want to leave here,” he says. “I don’t want to leave you.”
She says lightly, “Maybe I’ll come to one of your concerts.”
“In a fur coat,” he says.
She’ll never go to one of his concerts. She can barely afford the bus fare to look for work, never mind a trip to Boston. And she could hardly take the kids with her. Nor would she ever dare to wear one of Merle’s furs. She’s done enough damage to her mother-in-law’s closet. Besides, isn’t it now her role in life to wait for her husband to come home?
“Maybe I’ll get back this way,” he says.
When? In three months? Six? A year? Two?
Her head is bent, and she knows he’s studying her. She’s afraid to look up; it will be her undoing. She bites her lower lip.
“If I play the piano softly, will I wake your mother?” he asks.
“They’re back up on the third floor tonight. After hauling all the equipment up there for the naps, it seemed too much trouble to bring it all back down.”
He takes her hand and leads her into the turreted parlor. She sits on one of the “audience” chairs.
His playing is subdued, so as not to wake anyone. The notes tickle her skin and soothe her mind. He’s trying to tell her something, and she understands it, she does, though there aren’t any words attached. Music doesn’t translate. She feels the chords envelop her, but not in the way a mother might hold a child.
Four sconces light the room. She imagines Aidan on a stage in evening clothes. That will be his world—this man who will make men and women sit up and listen.
The music is both commanding and sensual. No child could ever make sense of this embrace. It’s something she’s longed for, longs for even now. The music rises to a crescendo and then falls as softly as a pillow. She closes her eyes and lets the piano take her somewhere she’s never been.
This is what they will have, these next several minutes, these next few measures. She knows she’ll remember it always, that if in the future she hears a snippet of this music, she’ll be transported to this room, this evening. She opens her eyes and studies him as he plays. His gaze seems to be focused on a distant point out to sea, and only occasionally does he glance at his hands.
She wants to absorb every note, every combination of notes. She wants it all, especially the intimacy of it. It’s not the god-awful joy that Rosie once spoke of, but it must be close. Or perhaps this is an even grander sensation, one she will never be able to explain to her friend.
Grace wishes she and Aidan had never spoken, from the first day she met him until now. How wonderful if they had communicated only by music every one of the nine days they have had together. She wouldn’t have seen that he wa
s good with the children or that he could make her smile with his charm; she wouldn’t know who Dvořák was. But every night, he would have done this to her as she sat in her chair, helpless and spellbound.
He plays, and she drifts along the curvature of the earth.
He plays, and her body is flooded with gratitude.
He plays, and she understands that the end is coming.
When he stops, she can’t speak. Words will break the trance, will sound trivial and trite. She’d have to wish him good luck, and he’d return the phrase. Perhaps he’d tell her that he would write to her. And everything they had just experienced would be punctured by the commonplace.
When he walks by her, he holds out his hand.
—
Wordlessly, in the dark of the library, he lights a candle by the bed. The music has already undressed her, so that the removal of the sweater and skirt, the brassiere and slip, the girdle and her stockings, seems unremarkable. When she is naked, he gazes at her in the low light, and she isn’t ashamed. He drapes the sheets back, and she slides into the bed, the sheets silky and smooth. She does what she has wanted to do for so long, she bares her neck as she drapes herself across his body, and he kisses her there, allowing her to kiss his skin. He touches her everywhere, sliding his hand down her calf to her foot; running his hand from her breast down her flank. Neither says a word.
Inside her head, the music is still playing, or perhaps this is an entirely new piece, one with more urgency, the beat faster, the fingers flying. He pauses to protect himself, to protect her, and he slides into her with ease. As he raises himself up by his arms, his eyes scan her face. She shifts her hips and arches her back to take him in. She grips his back. Another man might say that he loved her, but Grace doesn’t need that. Aidan is slow, holding back, and she experiences the buildup of a different kind of crescendo. She feels it rise up through her toes to the insides of her thighs, a crescendo with many more notes in it than any piece of music, one than continues to climb, and she knows that he can see the moment of her intense pleasure, which feels like liquid flooding through her veins. She’s certain she said something, an ecstatic word in a language all her own, a word that causes him to focus on his own crescendo. His eyes fix on hers. He makes his own sound and bends his head.