The Age of Desire

by Jennie Fields

  The train is soon slicing sweetly through fields of grain and beans. And before long they disembark at Senlis. Edith has seen it before, but knows that with Morton by her side, the great Gothic cathedral perched atop the hill will look more splendid, touch her more. There’s been no talk of an inn. Edith wonders if Morton has arranged for one, and realizes she will be disappointed if he hasn’t. Night after night since Montmorency she has been lying in bed re-creating the light-filled room they shared overlooking the courtyard of chestnut trees. The faded bedspread. The sky blue ceiling. The ivory blossoms crushing themselves against the window. Now there will be a new memory!

  The medieval granite of Senlis’s streets has been smoothed by thousands of pilgrims from afar seeking solace at the Notre Dame cathedral. Could a young girl from Nazareth have imagined this carved monument to her purity? And why should we worship purity, Edith wonders? Her own purity, or at least her blindness to the sensual, has happily and finally been removed like a stone from her shoe. An ocean can part her from Morton, and time can sway his heart from hers, but nothing can take away the power of the knowledge he’s given her or the exquisiteness of its memory. In time, taken out and remembered, perhaps the memory will grow worn and smooth like these streets. But it will never be torn from her heart.

  The cathedral is remarkably cold beneath the beating sun, and she shivers under its humbling vaults. Morton takes off his jacket and drapes it around her quaking shoulders. After the tour, she is happy to escape to the warm streets to view the complex frieze on the side of the church. And then they find a small restaurant just down the hill, where they are fortified by buckwheat crêpes and glasses of velvety red wine.

  “Let’s walk along the ramparts,” he tells her, taking her hand across the table. “The old Roman walls.” Again the mischievous smile, the twinkling eyes.

  “Yes. That sounds wonderful.”

  Full of luncheon and softened by the wine, wandering along the cliff-like ramparts holding Morton’s steady arm, she is suffused with a sense of peace completely foreign and delicious. She, who has spent a lifetime restless, is wrapped in syrupy calm. She revels in it. No one has cleared the land in years, perhaps ever. It is all natural and sunburned, full of hiding places and castlelike openings. And then they come upon a lilac bower, a shimmering wall of flowers.

  “Come,” he tells her and draws her in beneath the drooping purple tassels. “I’ve rented a room here.”

  The dappled shade is full of color. Blue shards of sky, lavender buds, an emerald bed of moss. The scent of lilacs is so heady Edith is drunk with it. Morton draws her down to the mossy cushion.

  “Lie down,” he whispers. “Lie down with me.” She drops to the cradle of moss, spreading her skirts out around her, then lays her head down, her heart thrumming. He settles in beside her and touches her face, traces her lips, her eyes. They have discovered utter privacy in nature’s arms. Yet just over Morton’s shoulder and through the flowers Edith can see the glittering belfry of the church. Morton slides his hand up under her skirt, whispering, “Come away with me. Come away.”

  Oh, the pleasures they find on their journey!

  Later, on the train back to Paris, the black velvet night brushing the windows, they hold hands in silence. The communion couldn’t be clearer. This is how animals in the fields speak to one another. How birds in their nests share their thoughts. Glances and air moving in and out of lungs and hearts beating side by side. Then, as they watch the fields gliding by, just striped shadows of charcoal and ebony, the sky is torn open at the very bottom and an orange flame appears. It rises, eerie, domed, and in a moment transforms itself into a yellow moon wavering in the earth’s last heat, moving upward like an illuminated balloon.

  Edith gasps, and Morton squeezes her hand.

  And just when the glory of the moonrise feels as if it’s enough to burst her heart, a nightingale’s aria wafts in through the open train window, its bittersweet melody echoing against the edge of the fields. The song clings to the train for a long, long while, as though, perhaps improbably, the bird has perched on the locomotive’s roof, stealing a free ride to Paris. At that moment, Edith perceives she’s never been closer to the essence of life. Never again will she know so much about sensation, about possibility, about love. One hour like this ought to irradiate a whole life, she thinks. At last, I have lived.

  Spring lingers in New York. Soon, raging heat will cook all the odors of too many people and too much life into a devastating stew. Anna has spent enough summers in New York City to know it. But now, everything feels washed and new. In a very short time, Edith will be home. After these few weeks alone, with no demands on her time, Anna has reclaimed herself. She has taken on work as a tutor for some children down the street. She has spent a good deal of time at the library. She has visited her various friends around the city, climbing up to the elevated trains and, for the first time, down into the IRT subway, despite her rheumatic knees, which don’t hurt as much as they did in damp, cold Paris. Sitting on the wicker seats, she thrills at the speed of the underground trains, the subterranean breezes that blow in through the opened windows. She feels strong, and happy. Hopeful.

  Word of Mr. Wharton in Hot Springs is very positive. What a good idea it was to send him there! Though she doesn’t think Edith cares enough about Teddy, Anna can’t help but acknowledge she made a fine decision in sending him where he could at last find help.

  The pressure of her longing to see Teddy again is disconcerting. The thought that summer at The Mount will be filled with their closeness makes her feel suddenly ashamed, confused. Her dream of walking down to the new piggery to see him worries her. He is her employer. He is Edith’s husband. And no more. He never will be more. . . .

  And what will it be like to see Edith again? Will Morton Fullerton show up in Lenox with his perfect, starched French shirts? Cook told Gross in a short note that “Mrs. Wharton is never home. Always off somewhere with MF.” Anna fears that Edith will be even more impatient with Mr. Wharton. Unhappy without Fullerton. And maybe more impatient with Anna as well.

  When she speaks about her fears with Gross, Catherine shrugs.

  “What are we to do? Edith will do as Edith chooses to do. No one ever has had any sway over that woman.”

  The trunks once again are hoisted from the cellar of Harry’s house and set into Edith’s room. Just the sight of them sickens her. Food has no meaning. Sleep is insubstantial and often interrupted. By the middle of the week, Edith is already seasick before her journey has begun, terrified to return home: not just to the emptiness of life without Morton, but to the tyranny of boredom at her husband’s side, to the narrowness of a world she once deemed exciting. And to Anna. She’s thought a great deal of Anna. She’s pined to have her helpful hand. All one has to do is tell Anna what the gist of a business letter should be, and Anna presents it in ten minutes, crisply composed, neatly typed and ready to sign with two shivering carbon papers slipped between the copies. Edith has missed her quiet support, her point of view on her daily pages, and sharing books that have thrilled or interested her, because no matter what Edith likes to read, Anna appreciates the contents, provides feedback. But Anna’s recent censure of Edith’s behavior is painful. And as long as Edith is in love with Morton, that censure will surely stand.

  One night, tossing in Harry’s awful lit bateau, she dreams that Anna is standing by her bed with a dripping candle. She is younger, almost beautiful, the way she was when Edith first met her, with translucent eyes and braided straw-gold hair that Edith liked to twist and pet. Anna is smiling as she gazes down at her beloved charge, but at the same time, tears are flowing from her eyes, as in paintings of suffering Madonnas, whose goodness always shines through distress. When Edith reaches out to take her free hand, the vision disappears only to appear again at the foot of Edith’s bed, but this time Anna is weeping blood and it’s staining the ivory matelassé coverlet, ro
lling to a puddle on the floor. The memory of the dream is so real that in the morning, Edith has to check the blanket to reassure herself it was only a dream. What will she do about Anna? Talk to her? Tell her that her love of Morton isn’t going to go away? Confess to her? Fire her? Does she have a cold enough heart to do that?

  That morning on her breakfast tray a petit bleu from Morton announces that he has procured tickets at the bureau for an afternoon dress rehearsal of Albert Samain’s play-poem Polyphème. She won’t think of Anna—she tells herself—not until she returns home, sees her face-to-face. And then she’ll know, if their encounter is awkward, what she must do.

  After the play, Edith and Morton, reveling in the dappled daylight on their faces, walk side by side through the Tuileries. They stroll past the carousel and the Grand Bassin, where children are crouching, pitting their wooden boats against one another and stop to admire Marqueste’s sensual statue of a centaur abducting a nymph.

  “I am your nymph,” she tells him. Morton smiles but says nothing.

  Finding a stone bench overlooking the river, she wishes she could take his hand but knows it would be foolhardy in the heart of Paris where friends might pass. At the moment, Edith wishes she weren’t so conventional.

  “Will you miss me?” she asks, ashamed she needs to.

  “Of course.”

  “What will you do when I’m gone?”

  “What I always do. Go to the bureau, write stories, eat at the restaurant, go home, sleep in my bed.”

  “Will you remember Senlis? Will you think of Montmorency?”

  He looks at her out of the corner of his eye.

  “Do you really think I haven’t been touched by what we’ve shared?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I wish I knew.”

  A breeze is rising from the Seine, scented with river water and warm mud. She puts her face into her hands. She doesn’t want to feel bereft. In just a few days, she will be gone. Why spoil the precious time they have together?

  “Stop,” Morton says, “you musn’t,” and tugs on her arm, encouraging her to sit up. He takes out a cigarette and lights it, hands it to her, then lights one for himself. She sees her future, alone in the Tuileries, gazing at the suggestive Marqueste statue with longing, resting on this bench alone, reflecting, Once we were here together. She doesn’t want her memory of this moment to be sad. He blows a puff of smoke, his eyes directed at the river. She follows his gaze, to the flat-bottomed boats gliding toward distant locales. And the tourist barges, filled with festive sightseers. She remembers how Teddy wanted to take one of those boats with her. She shivers.

  “A week from now, I’ll be halfway across the ocean,” she says.

  “In a beautiful cabin with champagne and silk bedspreads. On your way to your perfect summer house where cool breezes blow. A week from now, not one thing will have changed for me. Paris will be steaming. Everyone will escape. I’ll still be here, soaked and sorry with all my worries.”

  But Edith hardly hears him. All she can imagine is standing on the terrace at The Mount, looking across the gardens at the lake. All alone. And all that’s been awakened in her—the passion, the animal frankness she is just coming to know—will be forced back to sleep. She blinks back tears before they can fall. She doesn’t want him remembering her weak and miserable. She wants him to remember the cheerful, game woman she’s tried so hard to be. So she turns her face and smiles at him. He beams back, and she tries to note every detail of his face. Even the tiny mole on his cheek, the uneven edge of his eyetooth that must have been chipped in childhood. She tucks each detail into the hole in her heart.

  When Edith arrives home, a letter is waiting on the front hall table. She lifts it. Seeing Anna’s familiar penmanship gives Edith’s heart a queer little jerk, and for a moment, she’s lost in a flood of affection.

  Dearest Edith, [How much it matters that Anna still cares to write “dearest”]

  It has been a most beautiful, early spring here in New York. Flowers have appeared in all the parks and in front gardens all around town. I had forgotten that New York can be so beautiful. Like you, I had come to think of it as a trial more than a joy. But my walks have been sweet and satisfying, and it is very nice to renew acquaintances all up and down our block. Mrs. Van Peebles has given birth to a new baby, with a head of fine yellow hair like a fuzzy chick. And Lillah Bennet, the youngest daughter at 892, is engaged to be married to a very handsome young man. I have taken work tutoring the Lawndale children in 942 for a few weeks before school begins. They have read nothing of value, it seems. I do not know what is taught in school these days, but it is shockingly lean.

  In the midst of all this, Gross and I escaped for a week to Virginia where we visited Mrs. Schultz, the mother of one of my old pupils. You met her once, and though she is very old, she is just as plucky and funny as she ever was. Gross fell in love with her and said we should adopt her like an old dog—which was a very unkind thing to say but struck a chord with me. She is indeed the sort of person so endearing and unique you wish you could pack her home with you.

  I’ve missed you and thought of you often, and am saddened for how we parted. I do not know if you think of me, dear Edith. If I have not been supportive of your choices of late, I ache for it. I thought it would be good to let you know this before you return: that I wish to be a good friend to you in all ways, even if we are not of one mind.

  I hear from White that Mr. Wharton is improving every day, and I am so relieved and grateful to you for finding an answer at last to his terrible misery. Some days I worried so about him, I imagined you sent him away because you did not wish to have him near. How could I have thought such a thing? You had his best interests at heart and the happy results speak for themselves. I know Mr. Wharton will be traveling from Hot Springs to Boston any day to see his sister and mother. I don’t know if he’ll stop in New York. I will feel so joyous to see him recovered if and when I do see him.

  I’ve always wished to be of service to you, not a trial. I know I have been a trial of late and I ask forgiveness for your old friend and servant,

  Anna

  Edith tucks the letter into a drawer in her trunk, hopeful that, if nothing else, seeing Anna will ease her battered heart, not aggravate it. Dear Anna. Dear good Anna.

  On the last day before Edith sails, she stands in the pink room, surrounded by flirtatious dresses, satin-lined cloaks, gauzy tea gowns, ready to be pinned into tissue and hung in the trunks. Each one enfolds a memory for Edith. From the black velvet gown with the delicately stitched bodice that she wore on their first outing together (Will he like me in it? she’d worried when she put it on, turning this way and that in the mirror), to the navy serge with the white modesty panel and pleated skirt she donned the day they found shelter and privacy beneath the lilac curtain under the ramparts of Senlis, their last moment of ecstasy together. The dresses are a compendium of her “coming out” year. She will never don one again without breathing in a sweet memory from the months that have changed her life. She steps to her desk and lifts the diary, where she has written about Morton, and holds it close to her. It documents every twist and turn of her heart.

  I will give this to him tonight, she tells herself. He can hand it back to me tomorrow. She isn’t afraid. Maybe if he sees it from her point of view, if he knows that what she’s wanted from him is exactly what he’s given her—love without commitment or long-term expectations—his love for her will grow. He’ll admire all that she’s tried so hard to be: unselfish, grateful, open, giving.

  They meet for one last dinner at Antoine’s, a restaurant just across the Seine from the Faubourg. He’s waiting for her when she arrives.

  “You look peaceful,” he tells her.

  “Maybe that’s what a man feels when he stands before a firing squad. There is nothing one can do to delay the inevitable, and so i
t’s best just to stand tall.”

  Morton laughs. “You are a brave soldier,” he tells her.

  “I want to give you something,” she says. “It’s a diary I’ve written for you.”

  “Isn’t a diary meant for the writer’s eyes alone?”

  “Yes. But this was written to you, from the moment you came to The Mount last summer.”

  “Really,” he says, and looks intrigued. He holds out his hand and takes the leather-bound book, pages through it.

  “I want you to read it, and give it back to me at the ship tomorrow. Can you? Will you? I must have it back.”

  “If you like,” he says. “Will it make me blush?”

  She laughs. “You don’t strike me as the sort to blush.”

  “Will it describe in graphic detail everything I’ve done to you? . . .” He raises his eyebrows comically.

  “Done with me,” she corrects him. “No,” she says, feeling heat rise to her ears. “It won’t do that.”

  “A pity,” he says. “I’d like to see how the great Edith Wharton might describe that. . . . We could take a room tonight, you know,” he says. “At that little hotel I told you about. We could have one last time. Together. In each other’s arms. If you pay for it. I’m afraid I’m rather low on francs.”

  She looks at him, so guileless, so greedy, like a little boy. She shakes her head. “I’d rather think back on Senlis. Or La Châtaigneraie. I don’t want to soil the memories with a mean little tryst. We’re more than that.”

  He shrugs. How long will it be, she wonders, until he finds someone else? Until someone younger, more beautiful or more willing comes along, and he forgets how they once felt about each other? Surely, he will remember her through the summer? Maybe into the fall . . . and then? She picks up the menu and bites her lip, gathering all her stored strength just to say, “So, what shall we order for our last supper?”