A Certain Age

by Beatriz Williams

  Madam does not, I tell him, but she should very much appreciate his taking a message upstairs to the suite currently occupied by Mrs. Fitzwilliam.

  The bellboy’s demeanor changes instantly from servility to suspicion, manifested in the adjustment of his cap an inch farther up his forehead, to reveal a pair of slim brown eyes. “I’m afraid that particular guest has asked not to be disturbed.”

  “My dear boy,” I say, “do I look like a reporter, or a member of the curious public? Tell Mrs. Fitzwilliam that Mrs. Marshall has a private matter to discuss with her. I assure you she’ll agree to receive me.”

  The bellboy bites his lip. Poor fellow. I expect he’s been hoodwinked already; these members of the press can be so damned devious.

  I tuck my pocketbook under my arm and tell him he’s welcome to discuss the matter with the manager before proceeding. I’ll be waiting right here.

  A discreet yet spirited discussion ensues behind the front desk while I settle myself on a chintz sofa and observe the tranquil comings and goings of the Pickwick set. Everybody’s got a country house in Greenwich these days; it seems to be the done thing, if you like horses and people who like horses. Elsie Rockefeller tells me that the town’s filling up with professional men who take the train into New York every day, leaving behind wife, children, and faithful hound in a handsome four-bedroom house with a half-acre yard. I sometimes envy them, these ordinary people of the professional classes. Maybe the husband’s not exactly behaving himself in the city, maybe the wife’s taking to drink when the kids are in school and there’s nothing left to do but join the bridge club and the charity committee and redecorate the dining room. But there’s a security to it, isn’t there? The boundaries of your life are neatly defined. You are not beset by mad passions for unsuitable objects. You don’t find yourself embroiled in murder.

  Or maybe you do. Why, I might appear perfectly normal to one of these linen-suited ladies passing across the lounge, just as normal and correct as they appear to me. I don’t suppose anyone’s fully immune to the temptation of a Boy. These days, nobody can say she will never get divorced, or go mad, or get murdered. Nobody can tell who’s who.

  “Mrs. Marshall?” It’s the manager, calm brown mustache and all.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Fitzwilliam asks me to escort you to her suite.”

  HOTELS, OF LATE, REMIND ME naturally of the Boy: an irritating effect at the present instant, as I’m trying not to think of him at all. The Boy interrupts my customary mental sharpness, the necessary detachment with which I arrange my worldly dealings. To remember the Boy, just now, is to remember that he’s spending his afternoon consoling the shocked and grieving Sophie, and to imagine just how he might be consoling her at this particular moment. Hardly conducive to mental sharpness, as I’m sure you understand.

  So. I shall ignore the frisson of anticipation that activates my lungs as I follow the gray-suited manager down the fourth-floor hallway of the Pickwick Arms, and I won’t consult my feelings on the subject of the Boy himself. I’ve got pressing matters, practical matters to conclude. Facts that beg my attention. Objects to pursue.

  That I am losing my Boy, inch by precious inch, bears no relation at all to the matter at hand.

  Do you know, after observing her for some weeks in the confines of that dreadful courtroom, I have come to feel that Mrs. Fitzwilliam and I might be real friends, if we can get past the fundamental incompatibility of our temperaments. She’s packing a trunk as I enter—no maid for her—and a little girl in a rosy pinafore plays with a set of blocks near the open window. Her daughter, I presume. I haven’t laid eyes on the rumored child until now. Pretty thing. I take Mrs. Fitzwilliam’s outstretched hand and thank her for taking a moment to see me.

  “Of course,” she says. “May I offer you some tea?”

  “Iced, if you don’t mind.”

  She addresses the manager, who still looms protectively near the door. “Mr. Simpkins, could you arrange for iced tea? And lemonade for Evelyn.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”

  When the door closes, she moves to the desk and busies herself with the articles there. She’s removed her jacket, but her neat patterned blouse and unexceptional navy skirt remain in place, terribly dignified. “I apologize for the heat, Mrs. Marshall. We don’t seem to be getting much air today.”

  “Not at all. The city’s worse, believe me.”

  “Evelyn, darling,” she says, addressing the tyke, “would you mind going into the bedroom and fetching your toys? Mama’s packing our suitcases now.”

  Little Evelyn rises to her little feet—evidently Mama is a figure of some authority, a fact I can appreciate for the miracle it is, these days—and trundles off to the door on the opposite wall, leaving the two of us alone in the parlor.

  “Did you have something particular to communicate, Mrs. Marshall? Or merely sympathies?” She flutters back and forth between desk and suitcase, and I suspect she’s trying to disguise a little untoward trembling. (It’s a trick I employ myself, from time to time, when confronted by an immovable Boy.) She continues, arranging papers, not looking at me, “I’m afraid my sister isn’t here, at the moment. She wanted a little privacy, after the shock this morning, and went back to our house in the city.”

  “Yes, I know.” I set my gloves and pocketbook on the sofa table. “Is there anything I can do for you? You seem distressed.”

  “Do I? Actually, I feel quite calm. I suppose it will all sink in shortly, and then I’ll be in pieces.” She sets the papers in a leather portfolio and the portfolio in the trunk. “Did you say you knew that Sophie’s in the city?”

  “Yes. Mr. Rofrano has gone to meet her there.”

  That stops her. She turns to me, hand on waist, eyes rather wide-ish. “Mr. Rofrano?”

  “Yes. Do you mind if I sit down? The heat.” Rather than wait for permission, I allow a chintz armchair to absorb me into its thickets.

  “Mr. Rofrano,” she says again. “Do you think that’s wise?”

  “If you’re asking whether I trust Mr. Rofrano, I do. He is my fiancé, after all, and while you may question his judgment in that regard, I challenge you to question his honor.”

  She studies me without embarrassment, nods, and turns back to the desk. Someone’s been busy there; it’s covered with reports and folders and stacks of correspondence held together with plain black string. There is also a slip of paper that looks dangerously like a telegram, not that I’m snooping. I wonder, not for the first time, about Mr. Fitzwilliam. Whether he actually exists. She’s wearing a ring, but you can buy a ring anywhere, can’t you? Seduced and abandoned, the old story.

  “Very well,” she says, “but that’s not why you’re here, is it?”

  “No. I have a keen interest, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, a very keen interest in your father’s acquittal—”

  “Then I’m afraid you must have been terribly disappointed this morning, when he was convicted of the crime.”

  “I was as shocked as anyone. Or perhaps bemused is a better word. Why the jury would convict him, when the courtroom was clearly consumed by a titillating flame of reasonable doubt. I suppose the dear fellows figured someone had to pay, and it might as well be him.”

  She turns her head. “You don’t believe he killed her?”

  “You speak so dispassionately, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. These are your parents we’re talking about. Do you really believe your father capable of murder?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so, no. But I don’t necessarily consider myself an infallible judge of human character.”

  Aha! I think, just as a knock strikes the door, and the refreshments arrive. This minute clue into Mrs. Fitzwilliam’s past gives me far more satisfaction than it should, and perhaps a grain of hope that she might, after all, be inclined to confide in me.

  I sip my iced tea decorously while the waiter leaves and Mrs. Fitzwilliam settles Evelyn in the bedroom with her lemonade and cookies. A breeze at last makes its way throu
gh the open window, scented very faintly by the sea. I rise and carry my drink to the view, and it’s not my fault if the desk rests along my path, and the telegram lying atop the desk, and I so happen to notice the words Cocoa Beach at the beginning of the typescript before I direct my gaze virtuously out the window.

  The Pickwick Arms occupies a commanding position at the top of a hill, and if I strain my eyes through the haze, I believe I can make out a sliver of Long Island Sound, and Long Island beyond. I’m consumed with a passionate longing for Windermere. For the dunes and the crashing ocean. The boys, sunburned and salty, digging channels in the sand with their tiny shovels. The sun crawling over the infinite sky.

  The bedroom door closes softly behind me. I say, without turning, “What was she like? Your mother.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Believe it or not, my dear, I am here to help you. I was the one who dug up Mr. Magnifico, did you know that? I want nothing more than a happy conclusion to this awful matter.”

  “But why? Why do you care?”

  I turn, holding my wet glass close to my chest, and smile sincerely. “Why, because of Ox. I’d do anything to help my brother.”

  She looks amazed. “But they’re not engaged anymore. Sophie hasn’t worn the ring since February. I presume she means to return it, now that the trial’s all over.”

  “Ah, but you see, my brother is still deeply in love with her. He wants to marry her, whatever happens. But he’s been awfully worried about how all this is affecting her. If there’s a shred of hope that Mr. Fortescue—”

  “Faninal.”

  “—that your father’s innocent, why, Ox wants—we want—to keep on laboring in pursuit of justice. For your father’s sake, and for yours.”

  “And because you want Sophie beholden to you. You want her to feel as if she’s obliged to marry the man who rescued her father from the gallows.”

  “There’s no such things as the gallows anymore, dear. They’re quite outdated.”

  I am sorry to say that Mrs. Fitzwilliam doesn’t appreciate my little quip. I heave a suffering sigh in the face of her disapproving gaze. She hasn’t got the pretty blue eyes of her sister; hers are more pale and washed of color. Gray, I should call them, though I’ve never been satisfied with that description. It’s more of a blue that didn’t have quite enough will to bloom.

  “My mother’s character, Mrs. Marshall,” she says, after delivering me that chiller, “has been thoroughly dissected in a public courtroom over the past two weeks. I can’t imagine what else you need to know.”

  “But is it true, all of it? Was she really so bad?”

  “For what it’s worth, I don’t think she was bad. I think she was ill. I knew she was ill, even when I was a child, and I didn’t understand.”

  “Do you mean she went mad?”

  She returns to the desk. “No. But she changed, after Sophie was born. I was six years old. She was like Sophie before that, all full of sunshine and love. And the light went out of her. I don’t know why. My father didn’t know what to do. He started spending more and more time in his workshop. They both had some family money, so he didn’t really need to work, but—well, I guess it was just easier for him. He doesn’t like to be helpless. He likes to fix things when they’re broken, and my mother refused to be fixed, like one of his machines, and he got—angry, I guess. You know how people hate things they don’t understand.”

  I don’t know what brought on this lengthy confession. I’m not the kind of person in whom most women choose to confide. I imagine they think I’m like Mr. Faninal, that I’ll set about trying to fix them, and I believe most women—like poor Mrs. Faninal—don’t really want to be fixed. Or (more likely) they understand the impossibility of really fixing a person, the way you fix a car or a rusty hinge. They just want someone to share the burden. Fair enough, I suppose. So I stand there quietly by the window and allow Mrs. Fitzwilliam to share her burden with me—it’s not unlike what she said in court, under oath, except that somehow it is—without interruption. I have the idea that she won’t tolerate any leading questions, she’s far too clever for that, so when she pauses for breath, I simply say, “I guess we’re all guilty of that, from time to time.”

  She’s looking down at one of those bundles of correspondence, tied so snugly in waxed black string. She picks up the telegram, folds it in half, and slips it inside. “I don’t know about all those other men. I never saw her do anything wrong like that. Or maybe I just don’t remember. I was so young.”

  “It’s a shame your sister doesn’t remember anything.”

  “A shame? I’ve always thought it a blessing.”

  “Yes, of course. For her peace of mind. I only meant from the practical point of view. Finding out exactly what happened, that morning.”

  Mrs. Fitzwilliam sets the bundle of papers in the trunk and turns to me fiercely. “Well, you haven’t had to live with this all these years, have you? You haven’t spent fifteen years trying to bury it all. Everything you knew, everything you were. Every possible suspicion.”

  She speaks softly, because of the little girl in the room next door, but her intensity—the tautness of her face, the force of her words—pins me to the window, speechless. Another hot breeze strikes the small of my back. I curl my left hand around the wooden frame.

  “Yes.” Her arms fold across her chest. “Just imagine that for a moment, Mrs. Marshall. Just imagine growing up with that suspicion.”

  “I wish”—my throat is dry, making speech difficult—“I wish I could relieve you of that.”

  She stalks to the desk. More papers. An ebony pencil case. “You can’t. It’s already done. He’s been found guilty, and he hasn’t objected to that verdict, either to Sophie and me or to the public, and now I have only to regret that I didn’t take Sophie away with me when I could. That I left her alone with him when I went to France.”

  “You believe he committed the crime, then?”

  “Oh, yes. Father never testified. He never actually claimed he didn’t do it, did he? And he doesn’t lie,” she says, with a bitterness that might mean all kinds of things. She chucks the objects into the trunk. “And here’s something else, something I didn’t tell them in court, though I probably should have.”

  Ask the girls, Giuseppe said. The girls know.

  The hair goes all electric on my arms. A tingle makes its way down the column of my spine, and back up again, and I set my glass on the windowsill—the ice is beginning to clatter about, betraying my nerves—and say, “My goodness. Why ever not?”

  “Why not? Did you ever have a father, Mrs. Marshall?”

  “Not that I can recall. He died of a corrupted liver when I was seven. Lost his fortune in the panic, I’m told, and naturally turned to drink, as a gentleman should.”

  “Well, I’m sorry about that,” she says, a little mollified. “But if he had lived, and he were sitting there in the courtroom, watching you as you testified, and no one asked you that specific question, no one thought to ask it. Because of course, nobody imagined . . .”

  “Imagined what?”

  She perches on the edge of an armchair, next to the trunk. A leather portfolio rests in her hands. She looks into the empty fireplace, or maybe the set of irons next to it; hard to tell, from this angle. Her hair is soft and waving, just covering her ears, and my goodness if she doesn’t look appealing. What a cad, this soi-disant husband of hers. I’ve a mind to track him down myself, real or not, and give him a good shaking.

  “That he was in love,” she whispers.

  I wait for her to go on, but she doesn’t oblige me. She’s thinking very hard now, biting her lip. Wondering if she can trust me.

  I had a daughter once. Don’t you remember? I knew she was a girl, growing there in my womb; she just felt different, somehow, from the boys who preceded her. I went so far as to decorate the nursery in pinks and laces, to make unbearably frilly clothes for her with my own two hands. Sylvo thought I was crazy. Maybe I was. Anyway, t
hey let me look at her, after she was born. She was so clean and white and peaceful, such a lovely pure little thing. You would hardly know she was dead. Her fingernails were like pearls. I touched her fist for a moment, slightly curled upon her pillow, and her hair, which was light brown and still damp from the delivery, and then her miniature round nose. Then they took her away to ready her for burial. Before she was put in her casket, I made them dress her in one of those frightful pink frocks I sewed for her, in the ecstasy of my anticipation. The rest I gave away to the foundling hospital, except for a small knit cap, which I kept in my drawer. From time to time, I took that cap from its hiding place, and I imagined the little girl she would have been. I would think, Let’s see, she is two years old now and starting to talk in sentences, she is six years old and reading her picture books, she is seventeen years old and falling in love for the first time, probably with some unsuitable lad. Just like her mother.

  And if she has some confession to make, some burden in her heart that needs sharing, I will settle myself next to her and take her cool, soft hand between mine, and say something like:

  “In love with whom, dear?”

  And, in a dry, heartbroken voice, she will tell me the truth.

  CHAPTER 19

  Don’t waste time trying to break a man’s heart; be satisfied if you can manage to chip it in a brand-new place.

  —HELEN ROWLAND

  SOPHIE

  Roosevelt Field, Long Island

  AN HOUR later, when Octavian has landed the airplane and brought it neatly back in line with its fellows; when he has removed his helmet and goggles and Sophie’s helmet and goggles and put them back in the hangar; when he’s run his hands a last time over the fuselage, the way you check a horse’s legs for soundness, and exchanged pleasantries with the mechanics; he turns to Sophie and suggests a cup of coffee at the airfield café.