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The Golden Cup

Page 25

by Belva Plain


  There came that flush again, the redhead’s typical flush, so bright on the pale skin.

  “Oh! It’s the most beautiful!” Her hands flew to her cheeks and fell again. “Thank you, thank you, but I can’t, really I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She raised her eyes. He hadn’t noticed before that her golden lashes had dark tips.

  “It wouldn’t be right.”

  “Not right … yes, I see what you mean. But, Anna, why can’t we damn the propriety? Here am I, a man who can afford to buy a beautiful hat, and here you are, a beautiful girl who can’t afford a hat—oh, for heaven’s sake, give me the pleasure! Wear it next Sunday when your young man comes.”

  “I shouldn’t.” The palm of her hand smoothed the delicate crown, around and around.

  “Listen here, you love it! He’ll love it on you too. It’s almost spring, Anna. Celebrate. We’re only young once.”

  He spoke almost roughly. He felt … he didn’t know how he felt.

  “Well, good night,” he said abruptly, and swung about and closed his door with a small hard thud.

  A dullness came over him. Spring had always been his time, but not this year. The days lengthened; boys played marbles on the street; from open windows came the tinkle of children practicing on the piano; there were ripe wet strawberries on the grocers’ stands. Clients came to the office with talk of summer plans for Biarritz, for the Adirondacks or Bar Harbor; their talk was full of sea winds, blue water, and music; still the dullness lay upon him. He sat at his desk with his chin in his hands and five telephone messages to answer, and did not answer them.

  “So? Your mind’s on the wedding, I suppose?” His father’s head appeared at the door, rousing him from his trance.

  “What?” It took another second before he registered what his father had said, and he could give the expected smile, the sheepish smile of the man “in love,” the bridegroom, butt of a hundred good-natured jokes. “Yes, the wedding.”

  “Your mother’s worried that she’s going to lose you forever.”

  “Lose me?”

  “Now that you are going to be married.”

  “I thought she was delighted.”

  “Oh, you know she is. She was only teasing because you hardly ever come home to dinner anymore. Or hadn’t you realized it? You’re almost always at the Mayers’.”

  “Well, they always ask me to stay.”

  “The food must be better over there, that’s what.” His father laid a hand on Paul’s arm. “All in fun, all in fun. We’re thrilled to see you so happy, wanting to be with Mimi, and, of course, we know we’re not losing you. Mimi will be a lovely daughter for us.”

  He felt dirty. His thoughts were dirty. That was why he avoided their dinner table, except on Wednesday when she was out and Mrs. Monaghan passed the platters. He had never known what obsession was, except for the dictionary definition, which could not begin to describe the horror of it. His inability to control his own thoughts was frightening. He hadn’t known that it is possible to think of two things at the same time, to read a headline in a newspaper and, while comprehending it, to see a lovely, thoughtful face under level brows; to sit in a room full of voices or, worse yet, to be alone with Mimi’s voice and at the same time to hear, quite distinctly, another one, with a musical foreign accent.

  Oh I want to see the whole world, I want to know everything.

  This, then, was obsession. A miserable condition, and when would it end?

  He met her in the hall one Saturday morning. He was coming up the stairs while she waited at the top to go down, so it was impossible to avoid her.

  “Well,” he said, conscious again of that foolish, jocular manner that his father took with her, “well, your young man—did he like the hat?”

  “I haven’t worn it yet. It’s too fine for any place we go.”

  “Really? Well, make him take you someplace. Out to tea and cake somewhere, when you see him tomorrow.”

  “Well, maybe. But not tomorrow. He has to work this Sunday.”

  The words came. He didn’t will them; the words just came of themselves.

  “Then I’ll take you to tea.”

  “Oh, no! Oh, no! It wouldn’t be right.”

  “Why not?”

  She was trying to go past him down the stairs, but he made no room.

  “What do you mean, not right? I’d like to sit down somewhere quietly and talk to you. There’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “But still, I don’t think—”

  “Nobody needs to know, if that’s what you’re worried about. If anyone sees us, I’ll say you’re the sister of one of my clients from out of town and I had to be nice to you. Will that do?”

  “Well,” she said. And there was that entrancing smile again, on the very brink of laughter.

  “That settles it, then. Tomorrow.”

  He took her to the Plaza, where they sat in a corner behind a screen of palms. A waiter brought tea and wheeled a little cart from which they chose cakes.

  “You look beautiful, Anna. Especially in that hat.”

  “My shoes don’t go with the hat.”

  He was puzzled. “Shoes don’t go with the hat?”

  “They’re not fancy enough, but they have to go with my uniform every day. I can’t have two pairs, can I? They cost two-fifty.”

  He glanced down to where her skirt had risen to expose a clumsy high-laced shoe. Anna, following his glance, pulled her skirt down.

  “They’re all right,” Paul said. “Your skirt hides them.” And confused, he corrected himself. “Not that they—I meant, they’re very nice.”

  She laughed. “You know they’re not!”

  And laughing, too, he had a delightful sensation of understanding and of being understood.

  “You’re the prettiest woman in this whole place, do you know that?”

  “How can you say so? Look at that one coming, the one in the yellow dress—”

  “Never mind her. She’s just another pretty woman, the city is full of them. But you’re different. You’re alive. Most of these others wear a mask, they’re tired of everything, while you’re full of wonder.”

  “Wonder—that means?”

  “It means that you love life, you’re not bored with it.”

  “Oh, bored, never!”

  “And you’ve already done so much with your life.”

  “I? But I’ve done nothing! Nothing!”

  “You’ve come across the ocean alone, and learned a new language, you’re supporting yourself. While I—I’ve had everything done for me. Given to me. I admire you, Anna.”

  She made a little gesture of deprecation with her hands. He saw that he had embarrassed her, and said no more, but sat back and watched her eat the pastries with a child’s greedy pleasure.

  “Try the raspberry ones,” he said, “and these are good, they’re called meringues.”

  The violins began to waltz.

  “How I love the sound of violins!” Anna cried.

  “You’ve never gone to a concert or the opera, Anna?”

  Foolish question! When, where, or how could she have done so? And when she shook her head, he thought of something.

  “I will get you an opera ticket. We all have subscriptions.” By “all” he meant, naturally, his own family and Mimi’s. “The very next time we have one to spare, I’ll see that you get it. It will be a great thing for you, your first time.”

  There is a limit to the amount of tea one can drink. They came out to the sidewalk and stood for a minute watching the slow procession of Sunday walkers passing the statue of General Sherman. Sunlight glittered on the metal back of the proud horse; it touched the new green leaves in the park; it washed the clouds, and lighted Anna’s lovely white face. It was still the middle of the afternoon, and the soft spring day had hours to go.

  “We could ride uptown on the el,” Paul proposed. “It’s not a bad ride.”

  It was neither luxurious
nor scenic, but it was nevertheless a place to sit, something to do, and an excuse to stay a little longer. They walked westward toward Columbus Avenue, climbed the stairs under the black iron gloom, and came out onto the empty platform. Shortly, a train came rumbling down the track.

  “The express,” Paul said. “We can ride as far as we want. If we like it, we’ll just keep going. It will be breezy.”

  She made no response, but sat where he indicated. On the narrow seat, their shoulders touched; she could have moved away from the contact by leaning toward the window, but did not, and so they started off. When the train lurched around the corner, her whole body from shoulder to knee moved lightly toward his and back again.

  The light fragrance that he had noticed before came from her again; not flowery like perfume or scented soap, it was more like the healthy sweetness of grass, or of washed air after rain. He was certain it was the natural fragrance of her hair and skin. Very faintly, he heard her breathing; was he imagining it, or was her breath really quickening as his own was?

  The contact silenced him. It silenced them both. He had never been so conscious of the nearness of another human body. Or perhaps it was only the roar that kept her silent? he thought, for it was hard to be heard over the grind of the wheels and the rush of the wind. And in a kind of numbness, almost a trance, he sat without moving, mechanically reading the billboards that ran past: KELLOGG’S CORN FLAKES sprang out at every station.

  At the same time he was thinking: What is the matter? Everything that is solid and certain is speeding away, as if the train were careening toward a precipice and there were no way of stopping it.

  Grime and pieces of cinder from the locomotive flew in at the windows and stung their eyes. Anna probed her eye with a handkerchief.

  “This is no good,” Paul said, “we’ll have to go back.”

  No good. In all the city, in all the sprawling city, no place where two people could sit in peace for any more than an hour at the most.

  They came down onto the street. From there it was only a short walk home, where she would go back into the uniform of a maid and the distance would loom between them. He looked about desperately, and suddenly remembered.

  “There’s an ice-cream parlor up the avenue. We’ll go there,” he said, not “Would you like to go?”

  Still silent, although free of the elevated’s roar, they walked together. Her heels clicked twice on the pavement to each step of his until, apologizing, he slackened his pace.

  Still without speaking, they sat at the counter on the swiveling stools. Paul ordered two cherry phosphates, and the silence fell again. He read the placards stuck in the curved mahogany frame of the enormous mirror: BANANA SPLIT, CHOCOLATE SUNDAE, VANILLA SHAKE. His eyes traveled down the row and went back to the beginning—BANANA SPLIT—and caught Anna’s image reflected in the glass. She had been looking at him.

  “Well,” he said. “Well. This is somewhat different from the Plaza.”

  “Yes. But I’ve never been in such a fancy one.”

  “Never been in an ice-cream parlor?”

  “Oh, yes, downtown on Sundays. But not as fancy as this.”

  On Sunday. With that fellow, her “young man.” Paul had gotten a glimpse of him once as Anna and he were going in together at the basement door. Anna had murmured both their names, and the fellow had pulled off his cap, a workman’s cap, in acknowledgment. A stocky fellow he’d been, with an ordinary face, nothing you would remember, except perhaps that he looked serious. Sober. What sort of man might he be? Did she allow him to kiss her, or— And Paul felt suddenly, terribly, angry.

  Anna, having finished, leaned on the counter, tracing with her fingernail the swirls in the marble, white on brown, and when she saw that he was watching her hand, said, smiling, “It’s like coffee and cream. Beautiful stone.” Her mouth caressed the beautiful

  “Marble. The best comes from Italy,” he answered, and thought how fresh and moist her mouth was, with her lips parted like that over the strong teeth.

  He became aware that he was staring into her face, and she was looking back with widened eyes, as if they were astonished at each other or at themselves. So they held the look. There was a drumming in his head.

  Suddenly he was terrified. The sensation he had had in the el of rushing, rushing toward a precipice and being unable to stop, caught at him; his heart pounded, and he stood up.

  “We’ll go,” he said, his voice sounding unnatural in his ears. “Now. It’s really late. We’ll go.”

  Mimi would be of age this week and then the machinery that had been held back would be released: the birthday and simultaneous engagement, then the wedding.

  Oh, Mimi, Mimi, how dear you are! But I don’t want to marry you, not now, not yet.

  When, then?

  Oh, I know I must. I will, but just give me a little time.

  It’s not Anna you want to marry? Anna? How can that be?

  I don’t know.

  What do you mean, “you don’t know”? Are you in love with her?

  I don’t know … I think so … I can’t stop thinking about her.

  You know you’re in love with her. Why don’t you admit it?

  All right … all right … I’ll admit it. And so, now what? Tell me that.

  He needed so badly to talk to someone. But to whom? Any one of his friends would counsel him not to be a fool. You’ll get over it, they’d say, and slap him on the back, make a joke of it, even. Your family’s maid, after all! It doesn’t mean anything, happens to us all, this sort of thing; in no time you’ll be over it. He thought of Uncle Dan, a man to whom you could talk about anything; and then, remembering his way with women, was pretty sure Dan would assume this was the same sort of thing and wouldn’t see it as it was. He thought of the old man, Uncle David, who had once been wise and was so no longer. He thought of Hennie, dismissed the thought, came back to it and dismissed it again.

  A few days later, a free opera ticket became available because of a family funeral; Paul took it for Anna. The opera was Tristan and Isolde. Would she find Wagner somewhat heavy for a first experience? On the other hand, it was a love story of such poignance …

  All that afternoon, knowing the timing of the opera as well as he did, he kept imagining her. Now it’s the first act, with the ship and the love potion; now the second; now, finally, the soaring, the heartbreaking love-death, and would she be moved by it as he had been and was, every time?

  He waited for her on the landing when she came upstairs that evening. He had meant only to ask: Was it what you expected? But the words stopped in his mouth. In the dim light from the wall sconce, she was radiant with happiness and awe. She glowed. She trembled and waited.

  So there, in the quiet house, they came together. Quite simply, as if it were the most natural thing in the world—and, of course, it is, he thought, the thought fleeting through a luminous haze, a warmth of desire such as he had never known—they held one another. He kissed her hair, her eyes, and then her mouth. Her arms circled his neck, her fingers moved in his hair. She was soft and firm, strong against him, and so tender …

  How long they stood so, he could not have said.

  “Oh, Anna. Sweet, sweet, beautiful.” And he thought he said, murmuring into her fragrant neck, her hair, her eyelids, he thought he heard himself say, “I love you.”

  They could barely stand. For God’s sake, pull away … pull away before it’s too late.

  He released her. “Go to your room. Go. My darling.”

  And he went inside to his own room and lay facedown on the bed until the blood stopped pounding in his ears. Then he took a book, but could not read, turned out the light and could not sleep.

  Somehow, he would have to shape the inchoate swirling in his head, to give it a form and words.

  “My God, I’ll have to talk to someone,” he said aloud into the room, that dear space that had been his almost all his life, where now, in a sullen dawn, the Yale banner, his books, and his riding boots emerg
ed like accusing strangers out of the darkness.

  He started up. Tomorrow—no, today! It was Mimi’s birthday and the family dinner and oh, no, please! Not the announcement …

  I’ll have to see someone. Hennie. I’ll see Hennie.

  He sat on the sofa with his hands dangling between his knees and his head bent. He had been there for more than an hour in Hennie’s parlor.

  “Are you horribly shocked?” he asked now.

  “Surprised, not shocked,” Hennie said hesitantly. “I have always thought it tragic when a person does something he desperately doesn’t want to do, out of fear of hurting someone else. I don’t mean ordinary things, but something to do with your whole life, what you are and what you want to be.”

  Paul raised his head. “Mimi’s such a fine girl,” he said into the vacant air at the dead center of the room.

  “One can see that.”

  “The wedding ring is ready. Before she died, my grandmother Werner gave it to me to have for my bride. It’s awfully old-fashioned, but Mimi’s pleased to take it.”

  Hennie made no comment.

  “All the preparations they’ve been making! I didn’t realize, I suppose a man never does.”

  Riding back down Riverside Drive from the Claremont Inn, Mimi had asked him to come inside and see the linens.

  “I know men don’t care about that sort of thing,” she had appealed, “but it’s going to be your home, too, and everything Mama bought is so beautiful. Do come up for just a minute.”

  And he’d gone in to be shown piles of linen, damask tablecloths, dozens of them, thick enough to last for generations, with her initials and his entwined in fine embroidery, permanent as a seal on a document and regal as a crest.

  Mr. Mayer had come in the room and put his hand on Paul’s shoulder, man-to-man, father-to-son, and remarked on the charming foolishness of women with all their folderol. But he had been pleased, all the same, proud to provide these good things for his daughter.

  “She has gotten all the linens ready,” Paul said now, miserably.

  “Linens,” Hennie said. The innocent noun was scornful, and Paul knew she was thinking: A ring and a few yards of expensive cloth. For such trivia to stand in the way—

 

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