The Age of Desire

by Jennie Fields

  Edith knows that happiness is as rare and slight and fragile a thing as a Bernardaud teacup. One unfortunate tap can shatter it to useless shards, never to be drunk from again. For years, she’s sipped life from an ugly earthenware bowl. There was no pleasure in drinking from it. But no matter how often she dropped it, it did not break. In some ways, that was easier, for there was nothing at risk. Now that she’s held such blinding bliss in her hand, can she ever go back to supping from that heavy, ugly vessel?

  After her honeyed Saturday with Morton, Edith wakes from the dream of such rare happiness giddy and oddly nervous, lost in all but the simplest conversations, unable to read a word on a page (except for his gorgeous, wonderful letters—he writes full letters now, not just petits bleus), or work on her own writing with any momentum. Her writing time is consumed by lingering moments of blind staring, trying to recapture the rapture of their prismatic day together. And as the days of the week pass, she finds her joy exacts a toll.

  I am a little humbled, a little ashamed, to find how poor a thing I am, how the personality I had molded into such strong firm lines has crumbled to a pinch of ashes in this flame! For the first time in my life I can’t read. . . . I hold the book in my hand and I see your name all over the page! I always thought I would know how to bear suffering better than happiness, and so it is. . . . I am stupefied, anéantie. . . . There lies the profound difference between a man and woman. What enlarges and enriches life for one eliminates everything but itself for the other. Now and then I say to myself, “Je vais me ressaisir”—mais saisir quoi? This pinch of ashes that slips through my fingers? Oh, my free, proud, secure soul, where are you? What were you to desert me like this. . . .

  Anna, also, feels unmoored. Without Teddy to care for, worry about, she too has lost her focus. She can envision his face as she types Edith’s business letters, as she walks the streets of Paris. She carries this emptiness wherever she goes. It becomes a bubble through which she sees a faded world. The gay cafés of Boulevard St. Germain and the beautiful quiet parks near Les Invalides are softened and altered by this sad gray lens. She waits anxiously each day to hear if he has landed in the United States, whether he has arrived at Hot Springs and if the warm, flowing waters have given him relief at last. She even thinks of writing him herself. To remind him why he must get better: so that he can be there for the unveiling of the swine house at The Mount. So he can introduce her to dear fat Lawton.

  Once long ago when Edith wasn’t well and she was in Europe, Teddy wrote Anna a letter. He addressed her as Miss Anna. His handwriting was simple and blocky like a child’s. His spelling was execrable. She remembers he told her that he was concerned because Edith “don’t seem like herself these days,” utilizing for one of the first times that glib, ungrammatical way of speaking that irks her. That letter sits in a box on the top shelf of a cupboard in the house on Park Avenue, where Anna has stowed a cache of Edith’s letters too. She wishes she had Teddy’s short missive now, so she could trace her finger along the curls of his words to her.

  These days, when she asks Edith if she has heard anything about Teddy, she finds her in a softer and more amiable mood. Edith smiles at Anna more and her voice is light and generous, as it used to be, long ago when she was a wonderful, odd little girl. In those sweet years, Edith thought Anna the greatest authority on life and literature, the only one who truly understood her. Anna wishes she could understand Edith now. But how can she when nothing Edith does makes sense? When she chooses a bounder like Fullerton over a good-hearted, loyal, upstanding man like Teddy Wharton? And Edith’s feelings for Fullerton can’t be ignored. A woman in love is an ostentatious thing. If Anna is in Edith’s room when her breakfast tray arrives, Edith’s hazel eyes alight on the note that always seems to accompany her breakfast like a hawk landing on a mouse. She never opens his letters in front of Anna, but Anna knows it’s her cue to excuse herself, for from the moment the letter arrives, Edith seems to go deaf.

  “Do you think she’s gotten herself entangled with him?” Gross asks Anna with a look of dread when Cook tells them Edith is having lunch with Fullerton again. “I mean in the worst sort of way. She seems utterly changed.”

  “I wish it wasn’t so,” Anna tells her, biting her lip.

  “Can’t you talk to her, warn her?” Though she is the more outgoing of the two, Gross is never one to confront her mistress.

  “What could I possibly say more than I have said? What?”

  They both know through Cook that Edith and Fullerton have gone on an outing to some far-flung locale and disappeared for hours by themselves. And there are those lunches a few times a week. If Edith weren’t acting so fluttery, Anna might not pay attention to it. She’s always had male friends—from the great Henry James to much younger fellows with keen eyes and nervous laughs. But this one is different. Anna’s known Edith too long not to be sure of it.

  One day, after luncheon, a letter arrives for Anna from Kate Thorogood, Sally Norton’s housekeeper. Anna looks forward to Kate’s monthly missives. They are always newsy, wise, full of quotes from poetry and thoughtful sentences. When Anna and Edith visit Sally Norton at Shady Hill, Anna spends as much time with Kate as possible.

  Kate’s letter tells of worry over Sally’s bronchitis and the miserable wet weather they’ve had to bear this spring in Cambridge. She writes of people that Anna’s been introduced to in the past, and then, surprisingly, her letter mentions Morton Fullerton.

  Since Miss Norton has said that Mrs. Wharton is now great friends with Will Fullerton, I suppose you know about his odd engagement. It’s rather the talk around here. At first, I heard through my friends that there was quite an uproar in his family over it. He went down to Bryn Mawr last summer and just up and asked the girl to marry him. But now his family is telling everyone that a marriage will soon take place, and his mother is planning his wedding breakfast.

  The facts of it are rather more than I can fathom. I mean, to be engaged to one’s own sister! Perhaps I’m just not modern enough, but it makes me gasp. Of course, she is not really his sister but his cousin. Still, they were raised together as siblings (as you and I were with our cousins) and I can’t help but find it an outrage. Can you imagine marrying one of your cousins? Do you know if Mrs. Wharton is invited to the wedding?

  The letter begins to shake in Anna’s hand and Anna feels as though she’s holding a lit explosive. Her heart is racing, her mouth is so dry she can’t swallow. Could it possibly be true? Fullerton engaged . . . and to his sister! Why, just a few weeks ago Edith dined with Fullerton’s sister, didn’t she? Edith and she talked about how remarkable it was that the girl taught college . . . at Bryn Mawr. But she didn’t say a word about an engagement. Could she possibly know?

  Anna heads straight for the kitchen, which, happily, is empty. Too late for luncheon, too early for dinner preparation. Rather than seek out Catherine, who will only laugh at her when she tells her what she has in mind, she heads straight toward the silver cupboard and pulls out the largest, most tarnished tray she can find. Anna thinks it must be ten pounds. Its repoussé rim boasts oranges and apples, artichokes and corn cobs. And in between them are crevices as deep as a woman’s little finger is long: all nearly black. The V in the center is elaborately carved. Anna scoops the tarnish cream in a great greedy blob onto her cloth, spackles it onto the V and begins to polish. She rubs so hard her wrist soon burns.

  If she tells Edith that Fullerton is engaged to his sister, Edith will think it just a clumsy plot to discredit Fullerton. Because who could ever believe such madness?

  Eliot Gregory would probably love to be the bearer of such shocking gossip. Let someone else break the information to Edith.

  Anna stands in front of Edith at her writing desk, her hands clasped, feeling all energy and intent drain from her. When she came into the study, Edith was writing a letter, and Anna’s intrusion made her turn it upside down on her desk with
childlike furtiveness.

  “What on earth is the matter with you, Anna?” Edith asks. “Just say what you’ve come to say.” Her voice is not harsh, her eyes not truly angry. But her brusque words send Anna even deeper into the morass of silence that provoked them.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” she says to Edith. “But maybe it would be best to come back later.” She steps backward toward the door.

  “Is this about Teddy?” Edith asks. “Because I’ve heard from him, just this morning. He’s arrived in Hot Springs.”

  “Is he there at last? I’m so glad.” She feels a breathtaking weight lifted from her, imagining Teddy bathed in warm, soothing waters.

  “Of course, there’s no word yet, but I have great hopes they can help him.”

  “Oh, I dearly hope so. He’s so despondent, in so much pain.”

  “Yes, so he tells me again and again,” Edith says. It hurts Anna to hear how dismissively she speaks of her husband. “What did you come to say, Tonni?”

  Again, this morning, Edith didn’t leave Anna a single page to type. Not one. And Gross said she didn’t touch a bite of her luncheon. She looks high in color too. Keyed up.

  “I’ve heard something,” Anna finds the courage to say. “About Mr. Fullerton. I didn’t want to tell you, but I decided you shouldn’t . . . wouldn’t want to hear it from others.”

  Edith’s eyes fly to Anna’s face. “What about him?”

  “I got a letter from Kate Thorogood. Do you remember her?”

  “Kate . . . Thorogood?”

  “Miss Norton’s housekeeper.”

  “Oh, your friend Kate. She wrote about Mr. Fullerton?”

  “She said that he’s . . .” Anna looks at her shoes, which need polishing. When she is done with this misery, she can polish her shoes. Then scrub the shoe polish from her fingernails. She would like to scrub the very skin from her hand. Edith will hate her when she reveals what she knows. Why did she embark on this terrible path?

  “He’s what?”

  “He’s engaged to be married.”

  “What?” Edith bursts out laughing. “Mr. Fullerton? That’s absurd. To whom? To whom does Miss Thorogood think he’s engaged?”

  “To his sister.”

  Every ounce of color drains from Edith’s cheeks.

  “That is not a funny joke.”

  “I didn’t think so either. His sister was adopted by his family. She’s a cousin, in fact. And last summer when he was at Bryn Mawr, he asked her to marry him.”

  “That’s . . . why, that’s impossible! He came to The Mount right after Bryn Mawr. He didn’t breathe a word.” Edith’s nostrils flare.

  “His parents objected at first. But now they are telling everyone there will be a wedding. Kate asked if—seeing as you’re such good friends with Mr. Fullerton—you’re invited to the wedding.”

  “There’s a misunderstanding.”

  “I hope so. It did seem odd to me. . . .”

  “Odd? It’s grotesque!”

  “I was just going to write her back and say there had been some mistake. But I thought I should speak to you first, in case you knew something.”

  “If he were engaged, I’d know,” Edith says. Her voice is cold with confidence, but her eyes betray her. They dart about the room, full of question.

  “I’ll go now,” Anna says.

  “You don’t like Mr. Fullerton, do you? Why?”

  “I hardly know him.”

  “But you’ve already told me that you don’t approve of our relationship.”

  “I merely said that it would be good if you spent less time with him—when Mr. Wharton was here, it upset him.”

  “The simple truth is,” Edith’s hazel eyes narrow and, when they catch the light, flash yellow. “The simple truth is you don’t want me to be happy because you’re not.”

  Edith could not have hurt Anna more if she’d slapped her across the face. The words hang in the air like gunpowder, sulfurous, volatile. Anna tries to find her composure, but the pain addles her. And when she does speak, each word comes out on its own, slowly, devastatingly. “All I’ve ever wanted is happiness for you,” Anna says.

  When Edith was little, Anna called her Herz. Heart, in German. Edith used to sign her letters to Anna “Herz.” All these years, Edith has held Anna’s heart. But where is Edith’s heart?

  “And you think my happiness will ever come from an imbecile like Teddy Wharton?”

  “Please! Please don’t call him that. You can’t see who he is anymore. You’ve forgotten how good he is.”

  “I can’t bear being with a man as flat as a piece of paper. . . .”

  “If you just gave him some sign you still loved him . . .”

  “I never loved him.”

  Anna gasps. “Edith . . . you don’t mean that.”

  “I mean it,” she says, her voice so icy it wraps crystals around Anna’s heart. Anna can taste tears on her tongue. Her throat burns. It is the kind of silenced inward weeping only a woman who lives a tangential life could know. Poor, dear Teddy!

  Anna takes a deep breath and tries to find the even tone she used to use when her students provoked her. “He loves you. He counts on you. You made a vow. You have a responsibility. If we all pursued nothing but happiness, the world would crumble. The ill, the old would be alone with no one to care for them. We’d be adrift in a sea.”

  “Look at me,” Edith says. “Do you see me before you? Well, it’s a miracle, because I’ve been dead for years,” Edith says. “Like a ghost. I’ve been snuffed out by my sense of duty toward Teddy Wharton. I am finally tasting life. How can you ask me to spit it out?”

  Anna sits down in the chair by the desk, singed by Edith’s incendiary gaze. What can she say? What can she do? She is not equal to the task. “Is Fullerton the sort of man you can trust?” she asks softly after a while.

  “He wouldn’t lie to me. That’s why I know he’s not engaged to anyone. I’ve never met a man more gentle, kind or giving. You don’t know what I know about him.”

  “No,” Anna says. “I don’t know anything about him.” She stands shakily, starts toward the door, then stops. “You should ask him,” she says, turning. “Ask him about the engagement. He should know what people are saying about him, even if it’s not true.”

  “Please go,” Edith says. “I want to be alone for a while.”

  Suddenly Anna can’t wait to be out of the room. The air in the hall is cool, inviting.

  “Tonni?”

  “Yes?” She turns back one more time, hoping for an apology, a softening word. Instead she sees that Edith’s chin is tilted upward, her face as defiant as ever.

  “I deserve to be happy,” Edith says. “Even you can’t tell me I don’t.”

  Anna stares at her for an icy moment before she pivots and escapes.

  Dearest, can I see you in the morning around 9:30? I don’t wish to be a bother, but perhaps I can be of use in carrying you to your ministère and we can talk en route. Do say honestly if this is inconvenient.

  E

  Edith is disappointed to see that Morton is not in one of his better moods. She knows immediately, even before he speaks. His mouth looks pleasant enough beneath the dark arc of his mustache, but the appearance of two parallel grooves between his brows spell annoyance. She’s sorry to catch sight of them now.

  “It was good of you to let me see you,” she begins in her most cheerful voice.

  “What was the hurry?” he asks.

  “I didn’t think you’d mind a ride to the Times.”

  “It throws me off. I’m used to the walk. It’s my time to sort myself out, to think.”

  “I’m sorry then . . . I never want to be a bother. . . .”

  “I doubt you wanted to see me j
ust to provide a conveyance.”

  He told me he’s never good in the morning, she thinks. I should have waited. Why didn’t I wait?

  “No. It’s just that I’ve . . . well, I’ve heard something . . . ,” she says. “Something very odd about you . . . And I wanted . . . I needed to ask you about it.”

  “Go on. . . .” There’s malice in his voice. He is not so beautiful when his expression is pinched with annoyance.

  “I heard that you’re engaged to be married.” Edith watches his face carefully, and what she sees unnerves her: his mouth twitches, he swallows before he speaks and he doesn’t even break into a smile, as she expected.

  “And who am I supposed to be engaged to?” he asks carefully.

  “Katherine.”

  He closes his eyes for a brief moment. As one might when confronted with one’s worst fears. And then his face completely transforms, and the change is even more unnerving because it is so patently false, so nonchalant.

  “To Katherine? That’s absurd.”

  “Is it?”

  “Where did you hear this?”

  “It hardly matters. It came from someone who knows your family in Massachusetts.”

  “You know how news gets perverted as it travels. . . . Didn’t you play that whisper game as a child?”

  “I heard that Katherine’s not really your sister.”

  He licks his lips. “Well, that’s true. At least the gossips got that right.”

  “But she is your cousin?”