Glass Mountain

by Cynthia Voigt

  It was too late, of course, and I knew it.

  Luckily, there were diversions. There was much to be done, in preparation for and celebration of events. A wardrobe to get ready, groomsman gifts to be engraved and wrapped, wedding presents to receive and log in, then pack up to be sent out to Connecticut. There was the house to keep and a final family dinner to look forward to. There was the social calendar to be kept abreast of. I forwent my usual days off. Mr. Theo—himself occupied with preparing his office for an extended absence, with preparing an itinerary where he could be reached immediately in case of urgency—gratefully offered me the use of the house while I was settling on my next employment. Miss Sarah had undertaken me as adviser and confidant. Together we considered whether it was necessary for her to withdraw to Lake George, and how the solitude might affect her, and who might share it with her. We discussed what she might do after the baby was born, where she might live, and in what style. We talked about doctors, natural childbirth classes, nutrition, layettes.

  With so much to do, the days passed.

  As I was rolling out the puff pastry which would be the final course of my final dinner, the doorbell summoned me. The house was empty. I had no choice but to answer the door, probably to receive some last-minute gift, which would have to be hastily sent to the country to take its place in the display rooms, an inconvenience to everyone.

  Brad Wycliffe waited outside. He wore office dress, a gray suit with deep-blue pinstripes, a striped tie, a clean-shaven face.

  “Gregor.” He was stern, manly.

  “Sir?” I was imperturbable.

  “Is my wife at home?”

  I placed myself in the center of the open door. “She’s not here.”

  “I called Connecticut,” he told me. “They told me she’s staying with her brother.”

  “She’s out.”

  He looked over my shoulder. There was no reason for him to believe me. “Out where? Out with who?”

  “Out shopping with Miss Rawling.”

  There was no sound, no movement for him to catch inside the house. “When do you expect her back?”

  I added a few hours, thinking that it would give Miss Sarah time to think. “Around five.”

  Mr. Wycliffe stepped back and eyed me suspiciously.

  “If there’s nothing else, sir?”

  He charged at me and pushed. I considered having the battle but decided against it. “I’ll just see for myself,” he announced, hurtling past me.

  I waited by the inner door while he satisfied himself, downstairs, upstairs, in my lady’s chamber.

  “All right, she’s not here,” he said, from the landing. “So I’ll wait.”

  I maintained motionless disapproval. His face had the sullen righteousness of youth aggrieved, and I wondered what had brought him here. He might as well, I thought, meet Miss Sarah here as elsewhere. It would do her good to see him in the house he’d sworn never to enter. “Very good, sir.”

  “And I’ll have coffee, while I’m waiting.”

  “Very good.”

  I withdrew, to grind coffee and heat water. I was pouring water through the top of the Chemex when Mr. Wycliffe stormed into the kitchen, brandishing a small white bottle. He rattled the bottle at me. “I found these in her room. Do you know what they are?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Vitamins,” he announced.

  “Vitamins,” I echoed.

  “Maternity vitamins.” He rattled them again. “She’s pregnant, isn’t she? Don’t bother lying, Gregor, you were in on the game all along. I’m sure she’s told you. I’m the one she couldn’t be bothered to tell.”

  He sat down and slammed the bottle on the table. “A doctor’s office called this morning. My secretary took the message—my secretary.” His fists were clenched. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

  “Sir?”

  I poured coffee and set it down before him. “Cream?” He shook his head. “Sugar?” He shook his head again, jaw clenched.

  “It was some nurse, calling about prenatal classes. I must have sounded like a real chump. I had no idea what she was talking about. The nurse, she must have thought…But you knew, didn’t you?”

  “I knew.” What I didn’t know was how the doctor knew to call Mr. Wycliffe.

  He took that further blow to his pride. He sipped his coffee and felt worse. “What are they off shopping for, bassinets? Diapers? Baby blankets?”

  “They’re picking up the bridesmaids’ gifts, Miss Rawling’s stationery, Miss Sarah’s shoes.”

  “I’ll have to take her back now.”

  I poured myself a cup of coffee and put the marble slab with pastry on it back into the refrigerator, selecting my words. “Take her back?”

  “Well, she’s pregnant, I don’t have any choice. Pregnant with my child. That at least I’m sure of.”

  “Congratulations,” I offered.

  “Don’t get funny with me.” He drank again. “I put her on a pedestal, I wanted to give her everything, and she was just—laughing at me. I bet you got a good laugh out of it too. But a man doesn’t abandon a pregnant wife, and Sarah’s so young. Immature. She didn’t even leave me a note; she never called to say where she was, nothing. She could never raise a child. You’ve seen the irresponsible way she acts.”

  “Ah, yes,” I mumbled into my coffee.

  “So I have to take her back. Do you know what harebrained scheme she’s cooking up now?”

  “You’ll have to ask her about that yourself.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” He didn’t sound entirely displeased at the prospect. My guess was that he welcomed this excuse for confrontation, for a meeting. “It’s not the way I thought things would turn out.”

  “It never is,” I assured him.

  “Look, Gregor”—his anger had spent itself—“go ahead with whatever it is you were doing. I’m just going to wait.”

  I removed the marble pastry slab from the refrigerator and went back to rolling out a circle of dough.

  “When is this wedding anyway?”

  “The day after tomorrow. Tonight’s a family dinner, the two families.” I spoke with my back to him. “Tomorrow’s the rehearsal dinner, at the Club. In Connecticut. Then the wedding, Saturday.”

  “I guess I’ll be making an appearance, since I’m a member of the family now. I guess I’ll be eating a little more crow. I tell you frankly, Teddy Mondleigh is not my idea of what I want in a brother-in-law, and I can just imagine the kind of girl he’s marrying. Some bundle of sticks with blood so blue you could dye cloth with it, that’s for marriage. For pleasure—he’ll take that where he finds them, and you can be sure he’ll find them. You wouldn’t catch him marrying for love. And if I had it to do again…If only Sarah hadn’t gotten pregnant.”

  I forbore all the obvious responses. Carefully, I moved the rolled dough from the marble slab onto a baking tray. I took the remainder from the refrigerator and began rolling it out. “You know,” I said, looking at the young man over my shoulder, “I don’t think I’d tell Miss Sarah I felt that way.”

  “And how am I supposed to feel, after the way she tricked me?”

  I took it as a genuine question, and I think it might have been. “It’s not every man who could keep something like that to himself.”

  “Oh, I can keep my own counsel. If it comes to that. What I don’t like is being forced into a lie. That puts me on her level.”

  I didn’t argue the point. I left him to his own thoughts and concentrated on my dough.

  When we heard doors opening, he was out of his chair like a shot and ahead of me down the hall. I followed quickly.

  Alexis entered first, and she gave me the quick, inattentive smile she had made a recent habit of. Miss Sarah was behind her and saw only the young man. “Brad?”

  “I forgot how—” he said, stock-still, blocking all movement.

  “Brad,” she said. Her face answered any doubts I might have had. His face should have answered all of her
s.

  “Come on, Sarah, let’s go home,” he said. “I’m taking you home.”

  Alexis looked at me. I tried to appear reassuring.

  “You’re what?” Miss Sarah said. “I won’t. I have my life planned out.”

  “Without me in it.”

  “You said you were never setting foot in this house. You said.”

  “I know where I am,” he told her. He’d have done better to simply take her into his arms, but he was too young to know that.

  “So?” she demanded.

  “So…so…So you’re my wife and you’re—you’re my wife.” He turned to Alexis, without interest, then focused his hostility on me. “Can I talk to my wife in private?”

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  Alexis tried reason. “Shouldn’t you at least hear what he has to say?”

  “He doesn’t mean what he says.”

  Once he’d achieved the right forceful tone, Mr. Wycliffe carried on with it. He took shopping bags out of Miss Sarah’s hands and passed them to me. “Take these, Gregor. We”—he stood before her, determined—“are going to have a talk.”

  Miss Sarah’s cheeks were pink and her eyes sparkled. She would enjoy the occasion, however it went. “Oh, all right.”

  I turned around to return to the kitchen. Alexis followed me. Once she realized we were alone together, she became uncomfortable.

  “You must be tired,” I offered. “I’ve got fresh coffee.”

  “Thank you. What are you making?”

  “Puff pastry.” I poured out coffee and handed her the cup. She didn’t sit down. “For tonight. For pithiviers.”

  Then she did sit down. I remained standing, took the bowl of chilled filling out of the refrigerator, took up a wooden spoon.

  “I was afraid it was for beef Wellington,” Alexis said.

  “Only gluttons eat beef Wellington.”

  “No, only gluttons eat it more than once,” she corrected me. I didn’t turn around to see if she was in fact smiling. It was enough to hear that she might be. “It’s the kind of thing—you have to try it once in your life.”

  I shaped the filling, set the top pastry round over it.

  “He knows, doesn’t he?” she asked.

  I took a little knife, to scallop the sides. “Who?”

  “Brad.”

  “Knows what?” I turned the baking sheet, cutting scallops.

  “That she’s pregnant. How did he find out?”

  “Apparently, the obstetrician’s office called to set up childbirth classes. He was furious.”

  “That means she gave them his name. And address.”

  “The office address,” I pointed out.

  “I wonder why.”

  “She’s divorced him,” I reminded her.

  “But that was before she knew about the baby. Now it might be different. And if he was only looking for an excuse…Men need an excuse to justify love.”

  “And women use love as an excuse to justify any action.”

  I shouldn’t have said that. I knew it, but I said it anyway.

  “I don’t love him, Gregor; you know that.”

  But I hadn’t known if she knew it.

  “It was never love I was looking for,” she said.

  “What were you looking for?”

  “Oh, who knows,” and she smiled at me. “Some reason to get out of bed in the morning.”

  Then we were laughing, both of us. Miss Sarah burst into the room. “What am I going to do, Allie?”

  Immediately, she had all of Alexis’s attention. “Did you tell him about the baby?”

  “No—so maybe he does love me? But I don’t know if I still love him. Nothing like I’m going to love the baby.”

  “About the divorce, Miss Sarah,” I asked. “Did you tell him about the divorce?”

  “That’s none of his business, if he couldn’t be bothered to be around.” She thought. “I told the doctor Brad is the father. Now I wish I hadn’t. What should I do?”

  She was asking Alexis to decide for her. Alexis obliged. “Why don’t you and Brad go up to Lake George. Spend some time together, tell each other the truth. Give yourselves a chance.”

  “Oh,” Miss Sarah breathed. “Oh, Allie. That’s so smart. You do love Theo after all, don’t you? You must, or how could you know that?” She leaned down and kissed Alexis on the cheek. I could have done the same. I looked at Alexis’s mouth and longed for the right to kiss her.

  “There’s going to be one more at dinner, Gregor,” Miss Sarah told me. “I bet Mummy’ll be surprised. And Daddy’ll be furious. I can barely wait to tell them.”

  Alexis looked after her, even after the door had swung shut. “With any luck—”

  “Alexis, is that what you think?” My guard was ready to go down at the slightest glimmer of hope.

  “I don’t know what I think.” She sounded tired, and impatient with me. She rose from the table. “There’s tonight’s dinner, and the rehearsal tomorrow, another dinner, then a luncheon, then the wedding.”

  I didn’t know who she was reminding about that. “And then?” I asked.

  “And then the rest of my life, I guess. What about you?”

  “I’ll take a few weeks’ vacation, then look for another position. I’ll be gone before you get back.”

  “I’ve asked Theo to find a couple to replace you,” Alexis said. If she’d been wearing gloves, she’d have been drawing them onto her hands. “I’ll see myself out, Gregor. I know you have a lot to do.”

  “Yes, miss,” I answered. I knew I was in a trap of my own devising, the Minotaur walled into a labyrinth of my own design. Thinking I was so clever. But how was I supposed to know I would love her?

  30

  Toasting Marriage

  After that long last dinner, four long courses long, I served coffee and set out glasses for champagne. It seemed to me that I had begun this meal at the dawn of time and there was an eon yet to run before its end.

  I poured Dom Pérignon into the long-stemmed crystal glasses and gave the table a final glance, assuring myself that now I could withdraw. The candles burned, the linens gleamed, and the few remaining pieces of silver shone. The company was seated in pairs. Mr. Theo, plump with bonhomie and self-satisfaction, had the head of the table with Alexis on his right. Beside her, her father and mother wore the expressions of a couple whose begonia has taken first prize at a show—expressions of hard work justly rewarded in this best of all possible worlds. They frequently caught one another’s eye and touched hands and were glad together.

  The Mondleighs shared no such gestures. He faced his son, down the length of the table, sternly satisfied, allowing perhaps himself and certainly his son no greater pleasure in the occasion, a weighty presence, stabilizing. His wife shone quietly at his side, despite his efforts to dampen her spirits. She seemed to be in a world of her own; she had smiled her greeting to me, incandescent as a bride.

  Miss Sarah and Mr. Wycliffe were fully occupied, on this their first public appearance, with being taken as acknowledged adults. They concealed their affection and appetite for one another and gave most of their attention to Mr. Mondleigh, as the most significant person at the table.

  I finished pouring and set the champagne bottle down on the sideboard. It had been a long evening. “Take a glass for yourself, Gregor,” said Mr. Theo.

  A generous gesture. I took a glass, filled it, and waited. Mr. Theo stood up.

  “This is the last quiet time we’ll have together, so I want to take the occasion to propose a toast, to my bride.” He raised his glass and we all drank to Alexis. “And to her parents”—they were surprised and pleased—“and all happiness to you, Sarah,” he concluded. He sat down again. The three toasts had emptied his glass and depleted others; I took up a bottle and filled them all again, as Mr. Mondleigh tapped with his spoon on his water goblet.

  “I didn’t mean to initiate a round, Dad,” Mr. Theo said. “You don’t have to—”

  “I want
to,” Mr. Mondleigh silenced his son. He stood. He cleared his throat. “Life,” he announced, “doesn’t usually come up to expectations, but this occasion fulfills my hopes. I propose a toast to the bride and groom.”

  We drank to the bride and groom.

  Mr. Rawling wanted a turn. He pushed his chair back and stood, his glass raised in one hand, his wife’s hand held in the other. “I’ll keep it simple because—because it seems simple to me. Anyone who doesn’t know how much Allie means to her mother and me doesn’t know much of anything. So we want to toast Theo, our son-to-be, and also neighbor-to-be, golf partner—and maybe even investment counselor. We wouldn’t give her over to just anyone, Theo.” Mrs. Rawling’s head nodded in vigorous agreement.

  We drank to Mr. Theo. Mr. Rawling sat down. I went around topping up glasses as conversation recommenced, with Mrs. Rawling at once asking Mr. Theo about an usher’s family and Mr. Mondleigh grilling Mr. Wycliffe in yet more detail about his law firm. When Mrs. Mondleigh tapped her spoon against her goblet, conversation didn’t falter. She tapped again. I picked up my own glass from the sideboard.

  Mrs. Mondleigh continued her gentle tapping.

  “What are you doing?” Miss Sarah asked. “Mother? Women aren’t supposed to—”

  “Pipe down, Sarah,” Mr. Theo said. “This is the era of equality.”

  “Don’t encourage her, Theo,” Mr. Mondleigh told his son.

  “Am I going to have to make a toast?” Mrs. Rawling demanded. “Nobody said anything about the mother of the bride making a toast.”

  Mrs. Mondleigh tapped again.

  “Whatever you’re thinking of, Elaine,” Mr. Mondleigh said, “I’d be grateful if you’d change your mind.”

  “Go ahead, Mother, if you want to,” Mr. Theo exhorted.

  “I only want to…” Mrs. Mondleigh began. They finished the sentence for her.