A Certain Age

by Beatriz Williams

  “Tell me something, Boyo,” I say, staring at my tell-tale veins. “What did you want to tell me tomorrow?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You had something to tell me. And then I jumped on in with my own news, awfully rude of me. But now it’s your turn.”

  His lips part, but nothing comes out.

  “Did it have anything to do with your whereabouts yesterday? I tried to telephone you, again and again, but there was no answer.”

  “I was out. Out for a drive.”

  “Yes, so I guessed. I actually went down to your apartment and asked at the garage. They said you’d left early.”

  “I drove to Connecticut. Back to my old haunts.”

  “By yourself?”

  Another pause, even tinier than the one before. But at least he has the guts to look me in the eye. “No. I took Sophie Fortescue with me.”

  “Did you? Another man’s fiancée?”

  “You asked me to find out more about her.”

  The coffee is tepid now, but I drink it anyway. “And did you?”

  “I don’t know. I think so, yes.”

  “Anything scandalous? Anything I should know about?”

  “No,” he says, a little too fiercely, and my heart, my God, I think it actually stops for an instant or two. Freezes right up in my chest. Chokes and sputters like an engine that won’t start properly. The coffee rises in my throat, and I swallow it back.

  “Good,” I say, just as fiercely. I lift a cinnamon bun from the plate between us and bite down hard. The waitress stops by with the coffee pot. Refills us both. I stir in the cream and the sugar. The Boy takes his black. He lights another cigarette and opens his mouth to say something. I jump in first.

  “It’s a funny thing, Boyo. I was just thinking—as I drove down here in the taxi to tell you the good news—I was staring out the window and remembering that first time I showed up at your place in East Hampton. Ned van der Wahl’s guesthouse. Do you remember?”

  “Of course I do, Theresa.”

  His voice is soft with compassion, and I hate the sound of it. I hate the sound of his compassion. I hate that habitual stillness of his, the way his fingers, after a brief and singular nervous interlude at the beginning of our little chat, have once more acquired an extreme economy of motion.

  I say sharply, “You were drunk, as I recall.”

  “I’d been drinking. I drank a lot that summer.”

  “Well, of course you did. We were both drinking a little too much than was good for us, weren’t we? I was half-drunk myself, I think, or I might never have had the nerve to turn up at your virtuous door at a quarter to midnight in the middle of summer.” I turn my head to the window and the curious absence of traffic on the sidewalk outside. Maybe it’s the cold. A lone man walks by, huddled inside his overcoat, his scarf wound up to his nose: just a faded black bundle topped by a worn felt hat. Across the street, a luncheonette waits for the noontime crowd. HOT SOUP 5¢. There are a lot of restaurants in New York these days. They’re popping up all over. Everyone’s eating out; no one wants to stay at home and cook dinner anymore.

  “You didn’t look that nervous,” the Boy says quietly.

  “Well, I was. I was scared as hell. I was forty-two years old and I’d never done that before. You were my first, Boyo. My first affair in all those years. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “No.”

  “I’m almost ashamed to admit it, really. But there you are. And there I was. And there you were, all young and strong and perfect, and I’d never wanted anything so much as I wanted you. Just to see you, that night, just to see the color of your eyes and the—the—well, you’ve got this skin, Boyo, this utterly delicious skin. It’s so firm and fresh, even after a drink or two.” A couple of girls walk by. They’re wearing smart clothes, cheap but up-to-date—you’ve seen them around, haven’t you, those new coats with the dropped waists, the straight mannish silhouettes?—and their heads are bent together, all sharp and smiling beneath a pair of identical small hats. Twenty-two, twenty-three. About the Boy’s age, I suppose. Secretaries? Typing pool? There’s a shimmer of business around them, an industrious energy. They’re going to conquer the world, one typewriter key at a time. I say, in a whisper now, “I just wanted to see you again, that night. That’s all. That would have been enough. I never thought you would actually fall for an old bird like me.”

  “You weren’t old, Theresa.”

  “But I wasn’t in the first bloom of youth, was I?” I turn back to him and smile. “Although I do think I’ve aged rather gracefully. I’ve kept myself up.”

  “You’re a beautiful woman, and you know it. Don’t pretend you don’t.”

  “I’ll never forget the sight of your face, when you opened that door. You were wearing blue-striped pajamas and a blue dressing gown. Dark blue, with little brown paisley swirls. And a cigarette in your hand, just like that one.” I gesture, a flutter of my fingertips. “You didn’t look a bit surprised to see me.”

  “Well, I was.”

  “Do you remember what I was wearing?”

  He rubs his thumb along the edge of the saucer. “You were wearing a red dress and a diamond necklace. And your shoes were dangling from your left hand.”

  “It was a hot night, after all.”

  I allow that to sink in for a moment. I can see he’s remembering; his gaze has dropped straight into his coffee cup, and his lips are parted a little. Regards the Boy, you have to pay attention to the small clues, the minute movements that allow you some glimpse into the workings of that immaculate mind of his. His breath seems to be a little shallow. That’s good. Let him remember. God knows I can’t forget. Even now, my heart starts to find that same thudding tempo, and my nerves tingle anxiously on my arms and between my legs, all because of a single indelible memory: The Boy, like a lean, hard rope all wound up inside that dark blue dressing gown, and the tender hollow of his throat just visible at the parting of his pajamas, which he’s neglected to button all the way up.

  “Good evening, Mr. Rofrano,” I said.

  And he looked me up and he looked me down, and he looked me right back up again, landing softly inside my forehead. “Good evening, Mrs. Marshall. It’s a little late, isn’t it?”

  His voice was just a little slurry, just enough that I knew he’d been drinking. I placed my palm against the doorjamb and asked if I could have that nightcap now. What nightcap? he wanted to know, and I said the nightcap I’d offered him a week ago, after he brought me home from the racetrack. I was still thirsty, I told him.

  So he thought about this. Motionless. Fixed as a pillar of salt. I don’t think he even blinked. He just stood there, considering me, considering the offer before him. The seconds passed, the mockingbirds sang in the tree by the door. And I could tell when he gave in. His lips parted a little—the way they’re doing now—and the skin beneath his eyes sort of relaxed (if that’s the word) in such a way that only then, at that instant, did I realize he’d been tense to begin with. That my appearance at his door had constituted an unexpected test of his resolve, and that his resolve had just been defeated by my red dress and my bare feet, and by the abyss of loneliness that split him open from stern to bowsprit, and maybe by the half-empty bottle of skee just visible on the table behind him.

  He stepped back from the doorway and said, “Help yourself, Mrs. Marshall.”

  So I did.

  THE BOY FINDS ME A taxi on Broadway and promises to leave work early. Good, I tell him. I’ll bring dinner. We can celebrate.

  He doesn’t look much like celebrating. His face is still and heavy as he opens the taxi door for me and waits while I settle myself inside. I lift my gaze to thank him and the shock of his expression travels all the way through my belly to the soles of my feet.

  “What’s the matter, Boyo? You look as if I’ve passed you a sentence of death. It’s only marriage, after all.”

  He’s got one hand braced on the door of the taxi, one hand braced on the back of
the seat, behind my neck. The taxi sputters and rattles impatiently around us. The Boy angles his head to my ear and says, “Was that the truth, back there?”

  “I always tell you the truth, Boyo.”

  “I mean that you’d never had an affair, before that night. That I was the first . . .”

  He leaves a word dangling, and I supply it for him.

  “Lover. Yes, Boyo.” I find his hand, the one on the back of the seat, and kiss the backs of his leather knuckles. “You were my first lover, and my last.”

  His breath is white and steady. He bends down to kiss me good-bye, and his lips are warm. “I’ll see you tonight, then.”

  “Don’t be late.”

  The Boy nods and takes his hand back. He slams the door shut and turns away, and the driver says, “Where to, ma’am?”

  For some reason, the word ma’am makes me wince. I lean back against the seat and stare at the Boy’s diminishing body as it strides up Broadway toward Wall Street, all business, one more charcoal overcoat, one more snug fedora hat bobbing among the others, down the cold gray January canyons of downtown Manhattan.

  I give the driver my brother’s address on Park Avenue.

  YOU KNOW, WE’RE REALLY QUITE close, Ox and I, despite our obvious differences. Our mother retired to her fainting couch soon after his birth and hasn’t really risen from it since, so I had the raising of him. I couldn’t do much about his lack of brains, but I made sure he minded his manners and learned to ride a horse properly, and I kept him from eloping with the showgirl who kindly relieved him of his virginity and his allowance when he was seventeen, the summer before he left for Princeton. (No easy feat on my part, I assure you; Ox can be remarkably stubborn, where women are concerned.)

  And it was Ox who delivered me the news of Tommy’s death, two days after the Armistice. I was staying with an old Westover friend in Boston at the time, and the War Department telegram had naturally gone to Fifth Avenue. Sylvo was too broken-up to tell me himself, I suppose, so my brother jumped aboard the next train and reached me that evening, just as we were about to leave for dinner. (To celebrate the war’s end, ironically enough, and our own immense relief at having been left personally unscathed by its horrors.) There I stood in the foyer, laughing, all dressed up in blue silk and gloved to the elbow, when the heavy brass knocker fell on the door—clunk!—my God, I can still hear the exact metallic clang it made, key of G minor—and we fell silent, the three of us, my friend and her husband and me. Terrible silence. The butler opened the door, and I knew what had happened, the instant I saw Ox’s face. Maybe even before.

  I screamed, Tommy!

  And Ox. Dear Ox. He leapt forward, just in time, and held me up against his chest. He said that it was ’flu, that Tommy had fallen ill during a weekend’s leave in Paris; that he had died at the American hospital in Neuilly on the same day as the Armistice itself. Just awful. Just an awful damned unlucky break. I don’t remember much of the next day or two, but I remember Ox was there the whole time, and Sylvo wasn’t. Sylvo stayed home in New York and made all the arrangements, bringing back the body and where to bury him and so on. Important details, of course, and I was grateful not to have to take charge of them myself. But it was Ox who kept me alive, in those first forty-eight hours of the rest of my life.

  And I think to myself, as the taxi lurches slowly uptown, how uncanny it was that he should have been so compassionate. I mean, Ox! He hasn’t got a child of his own, after all—at least one we’re aware of—so he couldn’t have known that particular passion that takes up residence in your heart, when you first have a baby. Of course, he knew and loved Tommy. Who couldn’t love Tommy, that lovely gilded child, that laughing and brilliant boy? My golden one, my darling twinkle-eyed son, who looked so inexpressibly fortissimo in his second lieutenant’s uniform on the morning he left for France. But Ox’s love was an uncle’s love for his nephew, a different thing entirely. Tommy did not inhabit his soul. Tommy did not run inside Ox’s blood and lay himself down along the bones and muscles of Ox’s chest, so that the loss of him sometimes impeded Ox’s ability to breathe.

  But somehow Ox had understood. God knows why.

  NONE OF THIS GOES ANY way to explain why Ox should be at home in his Park Avenue bachelor digs at Monday lunchtime, nor why I should expect to find him there. Call it instinct. Call it feminine intuition. Call it a sister’s intimate knowledge of her brother’s slovenly ways.

  “Shouldn’t you be at work, brother darling?” I inquired, as I plucked off my gloves and tossed them on a Louis Quatorze commode, the gilding of which had seen better centuries.

  “Ridiculous question.”

  “Someone has to ask it. I presume the partners at Willig and White are more indulgent than I am, or you wouldn’t have a job at all.”

  “Job is such a crass word, Sisser.” Ox lifts his feet from the sofa cushion, in order to make room for me. He’s holding a quilted bag to his head with one hand, and a tall glass of hair of the dog in the other.

  “Most of life’s inescapable necessities are crass,” I observe, dropping a kiss on my brother’s forehead. “That doesn’t make them any less necessary. Are you really expecting me to sit on this?”

  “It’s a perfectly respectable sofa.”

  “It’s a disgrace. You need a wife, Ox. The sooner, the better.”

  “That is the plan, after all.”

  “Really? How soon?”

  He removes the bag from his head and takes a sip from his glass. “As soon as possible, so far as I know. She’s supposed to give me the happy date upon consultation with Papa.”

  I manage, after some effort, to discover a chair that isn’t already inhabited by crumbs and spills of one kind and another. “Hasn’t she consulted with Papa already? Or is she too busy with other affairs?”

  “She hasn’t got any other affairs, Sisser. It’s all part of her charm.”

  I settle myself in the chair and offer my brother a guileless smile. “Are you quite certain of that?”

  “Of course I am. I hope you’re not suggesting otherwise?”

  “Not at all. As long as you’re confident of her, why should I be otherwise? I’m sure her outing yesterday was entirely innocent.”

  He chokes on his drink. “What’s that?”

  “Her outing. Yesterday. Surely she’s told you all about it?”

  “I—that is—yesterday, did you say?”

  “Yesterday. Sunday. The day after Saturday night, when the two of you attended that party together? Philip Schuyler and his little secretary wife? I presume you saw her home yourself, of course.”

  Ox’s face turns a rather sickly shade, not that it bore all that healthy a tint before. “Not exactly.”

  “No? But of course you entrusted the care of your precious darling to someone—well, trustworthy?”

  “I—I can’t honestly remember. But she did get home all right. I’m quite sure of that. I sent around flowers the next morning, and—and—” His face screws up into an object resembling nothing so much as a crumpled tissue.

  “And she replied? She came around to your place in gloves and Sunday bonnet, and administered her healing hand to your troubled brow?”

  “Now, see here, Sisser,” he says, gathering up strength again, “if you’ve got something to say, say it.”

  “Oh, you know how it is, Ox. A woman in my position hears so many things.”

  “Nothing against Sophie! I’d smash the face of any fella who said a word against her. She’s as innocent as an angel.”

  “No doubt at all.” I lengthen my gaze to consider the tarnished silver cigarette box on the lamp table, next to Ox’s pink ear. “Still, she’s a human being, isn’t she? A young lady.”

  “Well, yes. Of course she is.”

  “And like all young ladies, she appreciates a little attention from the man who’s supposed to admire her. The man she’s going to marry. She likes to be wooed, and adored, and made much of.”

  Ox considers this, frowning. He
rubs his forehead with his thumb, as if to ignite the gray matter inside.

  “Ox,” I say tenderly, “you can’t just ignore her, just because she’s agreed to marry you. Until the vows are exchanged—and soon, God willing—she’s still free to back out of the deal. You’ve got to remind her, and remind her, and remind her, what a wonderful man she’s getting.” I reach over and pat his knee. “You’ve got to woo her, darling, or someone else will.”

  “Say. What are you getting at? Are you suggesting she was stepping out with some other fella yesterday?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. She’s a sweet girl. I’m sure she wouldn’t do anything to betray you. But she’s so young, Ox. So young and inexperienced. These pretty girls, their heads are turned so easily, and men can be such awful cads these days.” I examine my fingernails. “Really, if I were you, I’d scrub myself up and head down to Thirty-Second Street, flowers and chocolates in hand, and I wouldn’t leave her side for an instant until she gives you a wedding date. An early date. A handsome devil like you, I’m sure you’ll secure her enthusiastic cooperation in no time.”

  “Well, naturally.” He straightens himself against the sofa and contemplates—guessing from the look on his face, anyway—the possible daring boundaries of Sophie’s enthusiasm. Perhaps, at this point, I ought to mention that my brother remains in a state of what we once politely called dishabille. His pajamas are rumpled, his green silk dressing gown is untied and open across his chest, and his lovely golden-brown hair runs greasily amok across his skull. I should charitably describe his face as bloated. To scrub himself up, as I suggested, might take him the greater part of the day’s remains. Not that he seems to have plans for any better occupation. (His actual occupation included.)