17
On the Steps of the Metropolitan
I am a hopeful person, I think. Hope doesn’t require belief, or even confidence. I hope the world will not explode into annihilation and self-immolation, and I ground that hope in the growth of international economic dependencies, so it seems to me reasonable. On that Sunday afternoon in April, I stood at the top of the steps of the Metropolitan Museum in a windy sunlight, full of hope. But not greedy: I hoped only that she would arrive.
When I saw her getting out of a taxi, I started down. The staircase stretched between us, a descent of shallow steps, impossible to run down. I don’t know what I thought would happen if I didn’t get to her on time.
She wore a pale, flowery yellow skirt and matching blouse, more little-girl Liberty prints. She stopped a few steps below me. Her expression gave me warning. “Hello,” she said.
“It’s good to see you.” I was openly eager.
“I almost didn’t come.”
Despite my effort, she had gone ahead and done it, leaving me no choice but the truth. “I was afraid of that.”
“But I decided it wouldn’t be right just to stay away. Just not show up.”
“I would have wondered,” I said. People moved around us but we stayed as we were, with the steps between us. “If I’d gone too far.” I gave her the opening.
“I didn’t want you to think I’m the kind of girl—woman, person—who is frightened off by reality. Sex. Or whatever. You know, that old cliché, the person who just wants some daydream. Or just to tease. I don’t think I am. But I thought I ought to come and say I wasn’t going to come.” Her hand shaded her eyes. Her skirt snapped against her calves. She had something more to tell me. I didn’t know what it would be, so I spoke with unmitigated neutrality. “That was thoughtful of you.”
She took a breath. “There’s a man, Gregor.”
And he wasn’t me. The Someone Else had entered the scene, and there was too much I didn’t know about her. It never crossed my mind that she might be lying in order to brush me off gently. It took me a while to ask, “Do you love him?”
“I used to.” Remembering made her smile, a little ironic lifting of the corners of her mouth.
I tried to understand what she was telling me. That her one true love still burned in her heart so that whatever she had to offer me was ashes from that fire? Or—she had used the past tense—that she was somehow still committed to the man? “Do you love him now?” I asked.
She thought of her answer, thought it over. I thought of what I knew about her: she was truthful, she was compliant.
“I don’t know,” she said, finally.
That was all I needed to hear. I moved down the steps.
“But it’s not as simple as that, you know it’s not.”
I knew then that she found me as attractive as I hoped.
“What’s your last name, Gregor?”
“Rostov.”
“Rostov like in War and Peace?” That amused her.
“Rostov like in War and Peace,” I agreed. If she wanted to ask questions, that was a good sign.
“Do you have brothers and sisters?” The wind blew her hair into her eyes and she raised a hand to hold it back.
“I’m one of four children.”
“Which one?”
“The youngest.” Lest she run out of questions, I gave her information: “I haven’t seen any of them for years.” Fifteen years, now I thought of it: a long time. An awfully long time, now I thought of it.
“Why not?”
“I left home.”
She was gathering information about me. “So you’re a self-made man,” she concluded.
“Yes.”
There was a long pause.
“I don’t know what to say,” she said.
“I don’t think expressions of sympathy are in order.”
And she smiled. “No.” The smile faded. “I know it sounds dumb but—I know I’m naive, and a cliché and—You aren’t a criminal of some kind, are you? I’m serious.”
I stopped laughing. “I’m not. Honestly.”
“Because I’m not very good at judging people. I live a fairly narrow life, and I’m never sure of my opinions. Or sure of myself, for that matter.” This worried her. “I sometimes think that’s why I keep going to school, because as long as I’m in school I don’t have to…But even there I’m not sure. I’m not so sure I’m smart enough. It could be just because of who my family is. Schools do that, hoping for bequests, and I don’t blame them. Everybody does it.”
I couldn’t, in conscience, argue the point.
“So I never know…”
It was time for me to make it easy for her. “You’re not married, are you?”
“No.” A quick answer for a silly question.
“Well then, we could go see this exhibit.” I gave her a little time to follow the non sequitur backwards. “Or,” I offered, “if I make you uncomfortable, you could go home.” I looked into her face. “I do like the way you lift your chin when you laugh, Alexis.”
She was relaxed again and would fall in with my plans. “I’m not uncomfortable with you,” she said.
Whatever the crisis was, I’d maneuvered her past it. “Then, after, we could have dinner and—I’ve been wondering what it would be like to dance with you.”
The wind pulled at her blouse. “I can’t—”
I interrupted her. “Not a disco,” I promised. “But foxtrots, and anything else based on the box step. Remember the box step? We might go as far as a waltz.”
I put my hand out to her, a gesture she could ignore if she wished to. She took my hand. “Yes,” she said to me. “I’d like that. Yes.”
We went back up the steps together, hands clasped. I didn’t mind if there was another man. I was looking for marriage, not love.
18
Romeo and Juliet
I had Alexis on my mind. I thought I understood how she saw me, what I was in her life. I needed to negotiate the merger of romance with marriage, and I didn’t kid myself that it would be easy. She did find me attractive; in my manhood, I attracted her. We talked easily; I could make her laugh; there was a savoring quality to her good-night kisses. If she would love me, it would go forward without a hitch, I thought.
Love is the point where a woman balks. For a woman, marriage is a natural step after love, so she quite wisely hesitates at love. At this stage, everything I didn’t know about Alexis could make me ineffective, or could lead me into an error that would enable her to step back, clear of love, to step clear of me. I feared risking the error but also feared not seizing the chance.
I was debating this, once again, as I returned home with the ingredients for a coq au vin. Miss Sarah and her boyfriend occupied the stoop, where they seemed to have taken up permanent residence. This time, paper bags and plastic wrappers revealed a picnic lunch—eaten one-handed, since he seemed to have welded his right hand to her left. Miss Sarah slid even closer to Mr. Wycliffe to give me passage. “Hi, Gregor.”
She had the look. They both had it. They were aglow with happiness.
The young man stood up, brushing crumbs from his sweater. “Hello, Greg.”
Reluctantly, I was glad to see them so happy. I couldn’t imagine myself ever having looked so young and happy, even though I knew I had. I gave them fully half my attention. “I see you’ve eaten.”
“Brad has something he wants to ask you.” Miss Sarah couldn’t take her eyes off the young man.
“Yes,” he said. He reached down a hand to grasp hers again. “Yes. In point of fact, I want to marry your sister.”
That got my attention. “Mi—?” I stopped myself. “Sarah?”
“She’s the only sister you have, so I guess it must be her,” he said, and then laughed at his own humor.
“I guess it must,” I agreed. “Is this what you want to do?” I asked her.
“Oh, yes.”
I tried for wordless communication but she was unavailable, as i
f she believed in the fictional role she had herself created. What could I say to them? It wasn’t my place to say anything. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Your blessing is what we’d like. You’re not going to forbid it?” Mr. Wycliffe at least noticed the expression on my face.
“It’s all so sudden.”
“It doesn’t feel sudden to me,” he said. He thought he understood my hesitation and spoke from the heart, sincerity personified. “It feels to me as if I’ve known Sarah all my life, but I lost her. And now I’ve found her again.”
“Oh,” Miss Sarah breathed.
I myself had nothing to say.
“And I want to marry her,” he declared.
“I don’t know what Mr. Mondleigh would think.” I was asking her for help.
“What business is it of his?” Mr. Wycliffe asked.
“You know I’m twenty,” Miss Sarah reminded me.
“And don’t need anyone’s consent, is that it?” I stood thinking. Both watched me. “Well,” I said, deciding there was no harm in it, “you met, you fell in love, Brad proposed and you said yes, so now you’re engaged. I think I can give my blessing to that.”
“You sound pretty darned cool about it,” the young man said.
“Gregor,” Miss Sarah said, and she was the cool one if he’d only known, “we don’t mean getting engaged, we mean getting married.”
“Getting married?” There was no need to involve me. She might well be costing me my job, which didn’t seem to concern her.
“In Maryland,” she explained.
“We’ll have a honeymoon sometime later. I’ve taken so many vacation days this week—I couldn’t have concentrated anyway, but—We’ll be living at my place,” Mr. Wycliffe explained.
“Getting married today?”
“Tomorrow, actually.”
“It seemed like the best way to celebrate our first anniversary,” he told me, as soppy as she was.
“First anniversary?”
“It’s a week today that we met,” he said.
“What about your family?” I asked him.
“They’ll love Sarah. How could they not?”
I didn’t love her.
“I’m going upstairs, to pack,” Miss Sarah said, gathering up the remains of the picnic. She ran away, up the stairs and into the house, abandoning us together. I don’t know how she knew that I wouldn’t give her away.
“I can understand your concern,” Mr. Wycliffe said to me.
I clutched the grocery bag to my chest. “Can you?”
“Of course. But it’s all right, Gregor. My family is Wycliffe Industries. So she’ll be well taken care of, I can promise you. She’ll never want for anything.” I could only nod my head dumbly. “Greg, I never believed in love like this, just hitting you over the head and knocking you out. But now it’s happened to me, and—”
I cut the rhapsody short. “Would you think of waiting a little?”
“I won’t change my mind.”
“Your family might well object, and I can understand why they would.”
“Don’t you see? That’s why a fait accompli is the best way. Then they’ll have to band together, for the sake of the family, for family honor. They might be difficult, a little, at first. I won’t try to kid you about that, Greg. But I’m not worried. I promise you, I’m no Teddy Mondleigh. I don’t sleep around like he does. I’ve had only two serious relationships in my life, and this isn’t like either of them. With Sarah it’s different. If I’d known what the real thing is like, I wouldn’t ever—But I’m clean, Greg, I’m healthy. You don’t need to worry about that.”
I decided to try talking sense to Miss Sarah. “I think I’d like a word with my sister,” I said, and he nodded his chin at me, appreciating my need, approving of it.
I left the groceries on the floor in the hall and ran up the stairs. Miss Sarah’s room looked like the shirt scene in Gatsby, clothes all over the place. She had a small suitcase open on the bed. “I’d only have one suitcase, wouldn’t I?”
“Miss Sarah—”
“I know what you’re going to say and you can save your breath, Gregor. Can’t you understand? If I had to, I’d trade the whole rest of my life just to have the night with him.”
If she was going to be that way about it, there wasn’t much I could do. I tried anyway. “Has it occurred to you, Miss Sarah, that you seem to rush around headlong?”
“I love him.”
“Not enough to tell him the truth about who you are,” I pointed out. But I didn’t know why I should worry about it, worry over it.
“I will. I intend to. When it’s the right time.” As long as she got her way in the present moment, she was willing to promise to be reasonable at some future time.
“What about your parents?”
“I’m not a little girl. I can’t spend my life pleasing my parents, the way Prune has, and I don’t want to. Look at what her life is like. You’ll tell Theo for me, won’t you?” She held up a nightgown, lace and silk. “Does this look too expensive? Just for my wedding night, it isn’t, is it? Would a man notice?”
“I couldn’t say, miss,” I told her. After all, I thought, I might have better luck talking sense to Mr. Wycliffe. I went down the stairs, slowly.
“I can’t help thinking you’d be wise to wait,” I said to him. “Just another week or two, not long. I can’t help thinking you don’t know one another very well.”
He laughed and clasped my shoulder in a fraternal gesture. “You don’t expect me to give her up, do you? Relax, Greg. You see her like a brother. You probably can’t imagine how I feel about her.”
That at least was true. He was not, however, to be moved. I went back inside, back upstairs.
“What if I tell him the truth?”
That got her attention. “No, Gregor. Oh, please don’t. Don’t you have any sympathy for me? Haven’t you ever been in love? It’s not as if he’s the wrong kind of man—He’s someone they’d want me to marry, if they knew. Isn’t he?”
“But not this way, miss. Suddenly. In secrecy like this. Leaving everybody else out of it.”
“That’s the way love has happened to us.”
Love answered everything.
“Will you take my suitcase down?”
“If you were my sister—”
“But I’m not.” She was tired of the game and eager to be on her way. “I’m your employer’s sister. I’ll deny it, Gregor, if you say anything. I’ll deny it and he’ll believe me.”
I followed her down the stairs.
Outside, Mr. Wycliffe took the suitcase from me, as tenderly as if it were Sarah herself. “My car’s around the corner, Sarah. Well, Greg, I look forward to knowing you better.”
He meant it. He just didn’t know what he meant. “Thank you, sir.”
“Good-bye, Gregor,” Miss Sarah said. “Wish me well?”
The girl should have gone into acting. “I wish you all happiness,” I said, an appropriately ambiguous line. She stood up on tiptoe to kiss me on the cheek. It was prettily done.
I watched them walk away, arms around each other. They had already forgotten me. I couldn’t imagine what Mr. Theo would say, when I had a chance to tell him the news.
“She what?” Mr. Theo demanded.
I had told him as plainly as possible. He had been sitting at his desk, looking at the mail.
“They what?” On the last word, he rose. His nostrils flared.
I passed him his scotch on the rocks. “Yes, sir.”
“What is she thinking of? She never met him before, did she?”
“No.”
“It’s only been a week, then.” He drank and sank back into his chair. “For God’s sake. Why didn’t you tell me she was seeing him?”
I didn’t say anything.
“You should have stopped her.”
“I did try, sir.”
“Not very hard, apparently.”
I left the room. Butler I was, cook, valet, h
ousekeeper, occasional chauffeur—but not scapegoat. By the time Mr. Theo came out into the kitchen, I was making a salad, the greens spread out on the counter, crisp romaine, dark spinach, soft-leaved Boston. He brought me a glass of wine, a peace offering.
“I’m sorry, Gregor. She’s my responsibility, not yours.”
It was handsomely done, and I took the glass from him.
“The parents were wild enough that she’d left school. This will about finish them.”
He watched me chiffonade the spinach. He lifted his glass and drank, with the muted sound of ice on heavy crystal.
“ I don’t know how Wycliffe could do this, after the crap he threw at me about his sister.”
“He thought she was my sister,” I told him.
“How could he think that?”
“It came about because of what you told her not to say, that first night.”
“It just gets worse and worse,” Mr. Theo said. “But what can I do?”
I couldn’t advise him.
“Why did they elope? Why elope?”
“It’s faster.”
“What’s their hurry?”
“Love, they said, sir.”
“Love, my left foot. It’s sex and they just don’t know any better.” He paced the kitchen. “Oh well, there is a bright side. It’s not as if she’s run off with some rock star or the chauffeur or some weedy Frenchman after her money. And do you know what I did today?”
I turned to look at him, to shake my head. He might as well have asked if I cared what he’d done. Looking proud and foolish, he pulled a small, square velvet box out of his pocket. He opened it and held it out for me to take. It was impressive, the diamond probably three or four carats, the emeralds that flanked it at least two each, I don’t know very much about gemstones. It glittered and shone.
“I’m going to do it,” Mr. Theo announced. “Propose. This weekend, if I get a chance.” His face was resolute, Saul after Damascus. His voice was firm, ready to hear the doctor’s diagnosis.
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