A Certain Age

by Beatriz Williams

  “All right, all right.”

  “That’s my good brother. Make sure she’s all right, won’t you? And get her home intact, for heaven’s sake.”

  There’s no reply, just the satisfying click of the line going dead, and I replace the receiver and reach for the drink. I’ve finished half of it before I become aware of the faint breath of wind at my neck.

  I turn, and the white-shouldered ghost of the Boy stands before me in the bedroom doorway. The muscles of his face are clenched in shock, and I don’t suppose I shall ever forget the agonized shape of his eyes.

  “You’re awake,” I say softly.

  CHAPTER 11

  A man’s heart may have a secret sanctuary where only one woman may enter, but it is full of little anterooms which are seldom vacant.

  —HELEN ROWLAND

  SOPHIE

  At the Christopher Club, the next instant

  THE BARTENDER has a sympathetic face. When at last Sophie lifts her gaze from the telephone, she finds it regarding her, only a few feet away: slim brown eyes and crescent mouth. “Drink, miss?” he says, and then: “On the house.”

  Sophie considers the offer. “What do you suggest?”

  “A nice girl like you? I can make something up.”

  The nod she sends him is probably numb. Certainly the rest of her is numb, a nice thick absence of feeling that coats her skin from scalp to pinkie toe. The film seems especially thick over her ears, but that might be because of the racket from the jazz band in the corner, or the buzz from the telephone receiver. Sophie had taken in the words on the other end, but the woman’s voice still seems to be vibrating the bones of her inner ear, instead of penetrating to the gray matter beyond.

  He’s fast asleep.

  Well, but didn’t the lady in the Sterling Bates foyer say something similar? He’s gone home for the day, I’m afraid, in an awfully professional voice, deflating Sophie’s buoyant pink-cheeked hopes just like that. So now Octavian was asleep. Probably he’d had a hard day at work, or maybe—oh, dreadful thought!—maybe he was sick! All that cold air yesterday. Sophie made him sit outside, while the winter wind blew straight on from Long Island Sound, turning an incipient cold into full-blown influenza, and likely pneumonia as well. Poor Octavian!

  But the numbness in Sophie’s cheek and jaw suggests otherwise. Though her mental faculties seem to have taken on the sluggish syncopation of the music playing behind her, they still retain the sense to wonder why, if Octavian had the ’flu, his female companion should seem so unconcerned for his health—the little dear, she said—and, above all, why she should have the unquestioned right to wake him from his slumbers.

  Sophie knows the answer to that question, of course. She isn’t stupid, nor half so naïve as she has the right to be. But the gray matter is nonetheless reluctant to accept this obvious explanation. The gray matter would rather remain numb, thank you very much. Numb and unreachable. She accepts the drink from the bartender and arranges her lips around the rim. Not so bad, if you remembered not to breathe.

  She smiles her thanks, and the bartender’s mouth makes a hesitant movement, as if he’s thinking of asking a question. But the music is loud and shrill, and a gaggle of clamorous patrons has just burst through the door, and he shrugs and walks away instead, wiping his hands on his dishcloth.

  The bartender. The bar. So forbidden and masculine, an unimaginable place for a nice girl to find herself—alone!—until now. Until suddenly girls and boys are going to saloons together, and they aren’t called saloons any more. A whole new vocabulary is springing up overnight, it seems, like mushrooms or crocuses, all clustered around the underground slaking of illegal thirst, and it seems the more illegal the thirst is, the more ordinary and acceptable it’s become to slake it in mixed company, among strangers. And the vocabulary has something to do with that, doesn’t it? Hooch, speakeasy, blotto. Silly words, trivializing the laws they’re breaking. Trivializing everything in the world. Sophie lays her palm on the dented brown surface before her. The wood is slightly tacky, as if someone’s spilled a drink or two. Something as sugary as the concoction in Sophie’s other hand.

  Down the length of the bar, the newcomers are giggling and screeching. Three men and two women. The women are dressed in black satin trimmed with feathers and glittering beads, and sequined bands run across their foreheads like midnight canals. Their lipstick is so red, it’s almost black, and Sophie finds herself mesmerized by the graphic movement of their mouths. Realizes, as she does so, that she doesn’t belong here. She’s not one of them. She’s not a member of the tribe. Maybe she can repeat a remembered password and gain entry, maybe they won’t throw her out because they remember her from Saturday, maybe a girl has just as much right to a glass of bootleg liquor as a boy, if she wants one.

  But maybe she doesn’t want one.

  Maybe Father’s right. Maybe all this freedom doesn’t make you any happier, after all. Maybe, if you take a chance, if you break out of prison and ride an ocean liner all the way across the Atlantic to a war-battered continent, all you get is a husband lost in Florida and a baby with a fever. Maybe, if you take a chance, if you break out of prison to track down the man you might be falling in love with and throw your vulnerable new heart into his hands, all you get is a worldly female voice on the other end of the telephone line, telling you you’re too late.

  Sophie rises from the stool. The drink is only half-finished, but she doesn’t want any more. If she had a dollar bill, she would place it on the sticky wood next to the glass, but she doesn’t have a dollar bill. She doesn’t have a dime; that’s why she came here, because she left her father’s house this afternoon without even the money for a public telephone call in her coat pocket.

  Virginia and Father must be frantic by now. Darkness has fallen over Manhattan, and Sophie’s thirty blocks from home, and she will have to walk. Home seems awfully nice, just now. Home doesn’t seem like a prison at all, next to this sweaty, cacophonous medicine cave down a narrow staircase in Greenwich Village.

  The bartender appears, like magic. “You leaving?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  “You can’t go out by yourself. Lemme call you a taxi.”

  A taxi sounds heavenly. Except she’s broke.

  “No, thank you. I can manage.”

  “On the house?” He smiles at her hopefully, the nicest bartender in the world. Weren’t these speakeasy men supposed to have Thompson machine guns hiding under the counter? This one looks as young as she is, as fundamentally decent as a newspaper boy, except he’s selling the demon liquor instead of news.

  Sophie hovers. Opens her mouth. Says—

  “Sophie! Darling. There you are.”

  MRS. MARSHALL IS TERRIBLY REASSURING. “I’ve telephoned my brother,” she says, slipping off one leather glove and then the other. “He’ll be right down to fetch you.”

  “I really don’t need—”

  “Darling, he wants to.” Mrs. Marshall touches the back of her hand. “He’s thoroughly in love with you, you know.”

  “Is he?”

  “Of course he is. Why, look at you! How can he help it? Octavian.” She turns to the man sitting quietly to her left. “Wouldn’t you fall just headfirst into love with our Sophie, if you weren’t already going to marry me?”

  How friendly she is. Of course she’s laying her claim—Sophie can’t fault her for that—but she doesn’t seem to bear Sophie the slightest bit of resentment for having telephoned this handsome young fiancé as if she has a right to. (Another emblem of the modern new world, that you could have a husband and a fiancé at the same time, and admit that paradox publicly.) How much does Mrs. Marshall know about yesterday’s drive to Connecticut? Does she know about yesterday at all? In her cheerful voice and unworried forehead, there’s no sign.

  As for Octavian? Who knows. Who cares. Sophie won’t look at him. She hears him reply, polite and faintly agonized, but she tips up her drink to block him out. Something’s building in
her head, ringing in her ears, and she’s afraid that if she sees Octavian’s face, the thing will ignite. Maybe even explode, messily and prematurely. “There was no need for both of you to come,” she says. “Especially since Mr. Rofrano was asleep.”

  “Oh, the telephone woke him up, I’m afraid. And of course he wouldn’t hear of leaving either of us without some sort of protection, at this hour. What on earth were you thinking, my dear, coming to the Christopher Club all by yourself?”

  “I didn’t have any money for a telephone,” Sophie mumbles.

  “Dear me. Are you in trouble of some kind?”

  “No.” Sophie looks up and smiles. “Not anymore. Just a little quarrel with my father, and I’ve realized he was right, after all.”

  “Good girl. Fathers usually are, you know.”

  What was that about the cold? Sophie is as hot as blazes now. Perspiration trickles down her back, between her breasts. Her cheeks are glowing. The backs of her legs are damp in their stockings, molding her to the round wooden seat beneath her. She can’t look at Octavian, but she doesn’t need to: he just sits there drinking and smoking and not saying anything. Waiting for her to acknowledge him. Waiting, no doubt, to telegraph some kind of mute apology from those fabulous chameleon eyes of his.

  Waiting for her to say something. Waiting for her to toss her drink in his face and scream, How could you? She’s as old as your mother! How could you go to bed with her, after what happened between us yesterday? How could you love her? Her, Mrs. Marshall, of all people?

  Well, she won’t. Sophie can be a grown-up, too. Sophie can play grown-up games, if she puts her mind to it.

  “By the way, my dear,” Mrs. Marshall continues, “I was absolutely serious about that engagement party. Next Saturday, I think. Or perhaps the following week, just to give ourselves enough time? We want to be sure everyone can come. Things are a bit messy because of my divorce, but we’ll put our best face to the world, won’t we? That’s the only thing to do, when the world thinks it’s caught you flat on your bottom.”

  Sophie says, “That sounds delightful, Mrs. Marshall.”

  “I’ll make you the toast of the town, Sophie dear. Manhattan could really use a bright new face to rage over, and yours is both terribly bright and terribly new. I expect you’ll be on a first-name basis with the society page and someone will name a dessert in your honor. Or a cocktail.”

  Octavian makes a noise in his throat, almost inaudible, and finishes his drink.

  “And you must call me Theresa,” Mrs. Marshall continues. “We’re going to be sisters, after all. The best of friends.”

  A welcome draft hits Sophie’s cheek, and she turns hopefully to the door.

  “Jay!” she exclaims, and she springs from her seat and throws her arms around his astonished neck and kisses him, right there in front of everybody, in front of Octavian and Mrs. Marshall and the bartender and the whole world, until the women in their black feathers and sequined headbands start laughing and applauding, and the band, just returning to the instruments after a break, breaks out into a jazzy trumpet rendition of Mendelssohn.

  “Don’t forget!” calls Mrs. Marshall, as a beaming Jay leads her out the door to his waiting car. “The first Saturday of February! The party of the year. I promise.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The hardest task in a girl’s life is to prove to a man that his intentions are serious.

  —HELEN ROWLAND

  THERESA

  Returning home, a moment later

  I DON’T know why you’re so disgruntled,” I say to the Boy. My arm is tucked securely inside the corner of his elbow, but I can tell he doesn’t want it there. I can feel his skin recoiling from mine.

  “She’s just a girl, Theresa. You’re toying with her, like a cat.”

  “I’m not toying with her. I wish her nothing but joy. I’ll do anything to make certain she’s happy with Jay.”

  He doesn’t reply. We emerge from the building and into the open air. It’s past eight o’clock, and the streets are settling into quiet, the Manhattan sort of quiet, in which taxis rattle past and people hurry down the sidewalk, but at a lessened pace, a reduced volume. You can breathe a little, even if the air is dank and sour and oily, and smells of rotting garbage.

  I stop in my tracks and pull the Boy around to face me. “Listen to me,” I whisper. “Look at me. Do you think I’d wish a marriage like mine on any girl? Do you think I’d wish that kind of heartbreak on her? Grief and divorce and everything in pieces?”

  He looks sorrowfully into my face. “No.”

  “Of course not.” I place my hands on his cheeks and savor his warmth through the leather. A nearby streetlamp gives off a gaseous yellow glow. “She needs out of that house. She needs a husband to give her a loving freedom, and a friend to guide her through the thickets. I’ll be that friend, Boyo, I swear it. I’ll keep my brother on the straight and narrow, I’ll make sure he’s a good husband. Whatever she needs, I’ll give it to her.”

  That’s all. That’s all I can say to him, because I’ve run out of oxygen. I’ve burned it all up in honesty, and the back of my throat is scorched. I suppose you don’t believe me. But I assure you, I’m no villain. I’m well aware that I’ve taken something our sweet Sophie wants, because I happen to need it more, and because a girl like that can’t possibly appreciate a Boy like him. But I want to repay her. Maybe there’s nothing I can give her to make up for the loss of the Boy, no possible gift in my possession, but I’ll try. I’ll give her what I can.

  And maybe the Boy, looking down on me like that, in such a terrifying way, doesn’t understand all this. Maybe he does. Either way, he’s not telling.

  But he does bend down and place a chaste kiss on my lips, and we continue next door and up the stairs to his apartment, where he lets me in with his key.

  CHAPTER 13

  Before marriage, a man declares that he would lay down his life to serve you; after marriage, he won’t even lay down his newspaper to talk to you.

  —HELEN ROWLAND

  SOPHIE

  Returning home, a quarter of an hour after that

  JAY KEEPS his hand on the small of her back, all the way up the front steps. Just let me do the talking, he said, on the way over, and she lets him do the talking.

  “Here she is, safe and sound!” he announces cheerfully, and Sophie is smothered by a sudden descent of arms and kisses. “We had a grand time.”

  “All that time, she was with you?” Father says.

  “Yep.” Jay nods with vigor, and then his face turns beautifully puzzled. “Wait a minute. You didn’t know she was with me?”

  “She didn’t leave a word behind.”

  Jay turns a reproachful gaze on Sophie. “Darling. Your poor father.” Back to Father. “She came running after me, when I left. We went out to tea and had a long talk. I guess we lost track of time.”

  What a brilliant liar, Sophie thinks. His face so open and guileless, the untruths slipping so glibly from his mouth. The funny thing is, she rather admires him for it. Maybe this talent of his doesn’t bode well for married life, but there’s something so alluring about a man who can pull the wool over Father’s eyes—Father’s eyes!—without even troubling to blush.

  In the middle of Sophie’s present misery, it’s the only small joy.

  “Well,” Father says, “all’s well that ends well, I guess.”

  “Indeed it is, sir. But there’s more good news. I’m delighted to say that Sophie’s agreed to a Valentine’s Day wedding, and what’s more, my sister’s going to make it all official with a grand party at her apartment, the first Saturday of February. Isn’t that right, Sophie darling?”

  “Yes, it is,” Sophie says.

  And Father’s slapping Jay’s back, and Jay’s tolerating it manfully, and the air buzzes with masculine congratulation and relief. Sophie takes a kiss on each cheek, and she even slips her arm around Jay’s, just to be a good sport.

  Only Virginia remains quiet, near t
he stairs, and her face is heavy with some expression that might, or might not, be the anxious exhaustion of a mother tending a sick child.

  Don’t worry, Sophie wants to tell her. I know what I’m doing. Just you wait and watch me.

  But Virginia doesn’t wait. She turns and treads back up the stairs, back up to Evelyn’s little room on the top floor, and Sophie turns back to her fiancé and keeps her secrets to herself.

  The New York Herald-Times, May 31, 1922

  TIT AND TATTLE, BY PATTY CAKE

  As promised, the scrumptious Mr. Octavian Rofrano climbed into the witness box of the Trial of the Century this morning, electric and refreshing as one of those thunderstorms that tumbled over the horizon late yesterday afternoon, breaking the heat at last.

  Much to everyone’s disappointment, he showed no sign of the wounds he sustained early last February, when the whole affair came to the attention of the public and the police department. His refusal to press any charges against the accused, you remember, has remained one of the most celebrated (and speculated-upon) facts of the whole case. Nonetheless, here he is, called as a witness by the prosecution, so I suppose he had a greater scheme in mind.

  Mr. Rofrano is one of those rare specimens, a very young man—he was one of our greatest aces in the late war, counting eleven enemy planes to his credit—who has the self-possession of the middle-aged. I would not actually call him handsome. His face is a little too lean and hungry for my drawing-room taste. But his eyes are an arresting shade of aquamarine blue, his hair is dark and glossy, his complexion is somewhat swarthy, and he exudes a great deal of energy without moving an inch. There you have it.

  He answered the attorney’s questions with ready honesty, if not exactly an excess of words. As a friend of the lucky Mrs. Marshall, he told us, he was asked by that lady to do a little quiet investigation into the nether branches of the Fortescue tree, because not every girl, however dazzlingly wealthy, makes a suitable bride for a family so old and august as the Ochsners, who have led New York society since the Revolution. (This last observation is mine, by the way: Mr. Rofrano answers all questions with utmost economy and no opinions whatsoever; the prosecuting attorney, like a surgical dentist, is made to work hard for every fact he draws out.) He undertook his appointed task in the usual underhanded manner, by insinuating himself into the friendship of the Fortescues, until he was able to discover that they were not, in fact, Fortescues at all. That Mr. John Ephraim Fortescue was really none other than Mr. Montague Charles Faninal, who had disappeared from public notice sixteen years earlier following the murder of his wife in the family home in Greenwich, Connecticut.