The Age of Desire

by Jennie Fields

  The problem, she tells herself, is that once she expected nothing out of life. She knew that no good thing could come to her, and accepted her fate. Now that she’s tasted the opiate of love and happiness, she craves it, aches for it. And, denied it, she is left with a sense of misery so profound at moments she feels she can’t go on. Is it better to have loved and lost? To have discovered the one thing most worth knowing? To have shared her heart so selflessly? There are moments—like this one—when she doubts it.

  No! She must have more mettle than this! Where is her proud self? The one who lived on books and flowers and observations and words—a million words—that arranged themselves so satisfyingly? Where is the woman she’s worked so hard to become?

  Edith sends one of the maids to bring Anna to the drawing room for tea. Nervously, Anna seats herself in the needlepoint bergère across from Edith. She can’t even bear to look up, so she stares at her hands. But her eyes are unseeing. Her heart is rattling in her chest like a motorcar with a faulty engine.

  “Would you like a cake?” Edith asks.

  “No. I ate too much at luncheon.” In truth, she ate nothing.

  “The new cook is very good, isn’t she? I think the food is the best we’ve had here since we’ve taken up at The Mount.”

  Anna nods, still can’t look up. If she sees Edith’s face, will she see a Gorgon before her? Will she turn to stone?

  “Tonni, I want to offer you something,” Edith says. “A present, really. I hope you’ll hear me out, and be open to it.”

  Anna’s nerves keep her from sitting still. Her legs jerk as though they wish to run.

  “All winter while we were in Paris, you talked about how you wanted to get over to Germany, about your time there when you were young.”

  Anna nods but has a hard time remembering ever telling Edith that she wished to go back to Germany. Maybe she mentioned it once when they were talking about German poetry. But surely she didn’t speak of it all winter as Edith implies.

  “I want to give you a gift of a trip abroad.”

  “You . . . I don’t understand.”

  “We’re quite fixed for money these days. It’s rather stunning how well the books have done. Especially The House of Mirth. It’s such a success in France.”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to send you to Europe for the rest of the summer. Germany, Italy, wherever you like. I owe it to you.”

  Now Anna raises her head and gazes on the woman she has known best in all her life. She is expecting to see an ugliness in her familiar face, but Edith simply looks like Edith. She is pale, and her mouth is sweet and kind, as it was when she was a child offering Anna a flower she’d picked from the field.

  “You owe me nothing,” Anna says.

  “But I do. I owe you everything. In truth, I’m not much fun to be with right now. I’m not myself. I fear I’ve been unkind to you.”

  “I seem to irritate you,” Anna ventures.

  “It’s not you. Everything irritates me right now. I am suffering. And only you know why.”

  “But I don’t know why. You haven’t told me anything. . . .”

  “You know the source of my suffering. I don’t want to tell you what’s happened. You’ll only gloat.”

  “Gloat!” Anna is shocked. “I could never gloat at your pain.”

  “I talked to Teddy about it. And we both want to send you to Europe as a thank-you. If you want, you can come back in the autumn for a bit, and until we leave for France in the winter. Or, you could stay the rest of the summer and autumn and meet us in Paris. That’s another option. . . .”

  “You don’t owe me anything.”

  “I knew you’d be hard to persuade. I knew you’d fight me on this. But I want to do something nice for you. And I thought once you mulled it over, you’d be pleased. You needn’t tell me now. Think it over. Talk to Gross. You could of course go back to Missouri. That would be fine as well. I just want to give you something. A trip. A gift. Teddy does too. You were so kind to him when he was ill. Far kinder than I was. He reminds me all the time.”

  Anna says nothing. The offer lodges in her heart, radiating pain, and she’s trying to sort out why. Because Edith can’t bear the sight of her. How has it come to this?

  “What have I done to make you want me to leave?” Anna asks. There. She’s set it out for both of them to see.

  “Oh no. You musn’t think of it that way.”

  “I’m happiest when I’m helping you. You know I am.”

  “But wouldn’t you enjoy some time away? Some time to see your childhood places. You have cousins in Germany. Imagine seeing Weimar again. Goethe’s home. And Italy. You’ve always said you long to see Italy. We’ll pay for the nicest sort of travel.”

  Anna can see how beseeching Edith’s eyes are.

  “Do you really want me to go?” Anna asks. “I know you haven’t been happy with my typing.”

  “It’s not that. Heavens. It’s not that. That was me. Being absurd.”

  “You weren’t happy when I was gone last summer.”

  “Perhaps this time you could help me find a replacement. A temporary replacement that I could trust. If you were doing the choosing . . . well . . . the woman we had last summer was a nightmare. . . .”

  “You send me away from Paris for the whole spring, then you send me away again. Perhaps you are through with me. I’d rather you just say so. You’re not responsible for me. I could go back to teaching. I could find a place of my own in New York, like the apartment I had on Ninety-fifth Street. I’m not afraid.” Nonetheless, Anna can hear her voice quavering.

  “No!” Edith jumps up. “I couldn’t bear to lose you. You musn’t think that’s what I want. I just need time.”

  “It’s because I warned you about him. I wish I’d never told you what I knew.”

  “Oh Tonni.”

  “Why must he come between us? It isn’t right. It isn’t fair.”

  “It isn’t. But there it is.”

  Anna feels utterly exhausted. She would not have changed anything. Warning Edith was something she had to do. Sometimes friendships go bad, she tells herself. Relationships soften and rot like old fruit. They have their time, and then they shrivel and grow putrid. She feels her shoulders shaking. She doesn’t want to cry in front of Edith. She can’t.

  Edith comes to Anna, kneels down before her.

  “My beloved Tonni,” she says.

  Tears spill from Anna’s eyes, making it hard to take in the woman who once was her dearest friend, her very heart.

  Edith reaches up and wipes a tear from Anna’s cheek. “You are like a mother to me. But sometimes when we are at our most foolish, we don’t want our mothers to see. Don’t you understand?”

  Anna shakes her head. “I don’t judge you,” she says. “I worry for you. But I don’t judge you.”

  “I judge myself,” Edith says. “I feel like a fool. And when I see you looking at me the way you do . . . I . . . Take this trip. Do it for me. You will enjoy it, you’ll see. Perhaps one of your cousins can travel with you. Take this trip and make it the gift I intend it to be. Get away from me before I hurt you.”

  Edith reaches out and puts her arms around Anna’s waist, settles her head in her lap, just as she used to when she was a child and Anna was her savior.

  “Please,” she begs. “Do it for me.”

  Even with White’s help, there’s some difficulty getting a reservation on a ship. But it is done. Then there is the task of finding Anna’s replacement. Someone must take the position! Besides the task of typing and editing Edith’s daily pages, boxes of mail are arriving monthly from Edith’s publisher, full of letters from loyal readers—people saying that reading Mrs. Wharton’s books has stirred them, thrilled them, disturbed them or lifted them up from the drudgery of d
aily life. Someone must answer them all, and even with a mostly standardized note, the process takes time! Anna calls a secretarial service in New York City. Four women arrive one afternoon on the train. They sit on a bench in the downstairs reception hall waiting for an interview in the servants’ dining room. They are young and fresh and thrilled to seize the opportunity to work for the famous Mrs. Wharton. But none of them possesses the sensitivity, the learnedness or the patience that Edith requires.

  So Anna writes to her friend, Miss Fannie Thayer, and asks if she would consider taking the position for a few months. She has known Miss Thayer for twenty-five years. When they were young girls, they were great companions, enjoying the museums and the theatre together. Even skating in Central Park. They learned to be typewriters at the same school, and lived in the same boarding house, their rooms side by side. Sometimes at night, in bed, they would each knock the rhythm of a song on the wall and tell each other in the morning their best guess at which song the other was tapping.

  Fannie is well over sixty now. She is rather large and heavy and wears silver-rimmed glasses. She reads incessantly. She particularly loves “the romantic poets,” Wordsworth and Shelley, and quotes their poems mistily whenever the occasion arises. She admires Goethe. Anna thinks Edith will love her.

  And knowing this, for a moment, Anna hesitates. Up until now, Edith’s had no one with whom to compare Anna. Except for the woman last year who was no competition. If Edith tries out Miss Thayer and discovers what it’s like to have someone better qualified . . . well, she already is sending Anna away. Things between them feel very tenuous indeed.

  But Anna hires her, coming to the conclusion that serving Edith is more important than protecting herself.

  Then she focuses on her trip. Letters must be written to her cousins. Trunks reappear in her room and give her a sinking feeling. She was so happy to unpack them just weeks ago. Now she must fold and hang everything again. She wishes she’d left half her books in New York after all. She’ll have to wrap them up for White to ship back to 882. And then she has a chilling thought: perhaps she will never be a part of this household again. Perhaps her trunks, on returning from Europe, will be sent to a room in a rooming house, and all the things she left at 882 shipped off to storage. And she will live in that rooming house for the rest of her life, alone.

  One afternoon in the hallway, she runs into Teddy.

  “Our intrepid traveler!” he booms, his eyes glittering. “Edith told me how much you’ve longed to travel abroad. I do hope you’ll spend all the money you can. We’ve got scads of it these days and I can’t think of anyone I’d rather give it to.” He beams at her and she can’t help smiling back.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  “You must send Puss passels of letters she can read to me. Will you do that? I love reading travel letters. Almost as good as taking a trip oneself.”

  “Of course,” Anna says. “Of course.”

  Then he does something absolutely unlike himself: he bends over and kisses her cheek.

  “I shall miss you, dear Anna,” he says. “You should be happy. You deserve to be happy.”

  His lips are cool and kind. She knows she will never forget the feel of them pressed to her skin.

  Edith insists on traveling in the wagon with Anna to the train station. She chatters as the roads slip by, about how she wishes she were on her way back to Europe, and how Anna must visit Munich and Tuscany. But by the time they are sitting together on a bench on the platform, it is as though they’ve run out of words. Anna watches as her trunk is hoisted aboard. Saying good-bye, they both wipe tears from their eyes, and hug and say how much they’ll miss each other. But as the train heaves itself from the station, Anna can’t but note Edith’s dear retreating face lighting with relief.

  FOURTEEN

  SUMMER 1908

  Eliot Gregory writes that he would “love a nice weekend in the country” and wonders if his “dear friend, Lady Edith” might accommodate him. Edith can’t bear the thought of having to deal with Eliot right now, with his baited questions, his puckish joy at throwing her off balance and his jaundiced view of Fullerton. But she can’t imagine how she can say no. If she tells him that her guest rooms are too full, he’ll know it’s a lie. If she cuts him, as she has mostly done since his dreadful taunting of Teddy at St. Cloud, he’ll make her life miserable, reveal God-knows-what to whom. So she writes yes, of course, he is most welcome to join her. She just has to hope that Teddy’s ebullient mood will stave off a disastrous encounter between the two of them. At the end of her note to Eliot, she writes, “Teddy’s been quite ill so extra indulgence on your part would be most appreciated. I know you understand.”

  Scheduled to arrive at the same time are Sally Norton, who can only stay for a short while since her father is ill, and Carl Snyder, whom Edith met the previous winter in Paris, a young oceanographer who is now living in Woods Hole studying fishery management and conservation. “We think the seas are so vast that we can’t make an impact on them,” he writes Edith. “But our hunger and greed as a species are far more vast. And will lead to devastation, I feel certain, of the creatures that now sustain us.”

  Carl is a dreamy, thoughtful young man. More romantic than a scientist has a right to be. He and Morton attended a series of lectures together on the future of the seas, and Edith finds pleasure in imagining a late-night chat with Carl about the secrets of the oceans or his new topic of interest, the origins of life. Whatever the topic, it will no doubt be esoteric enough to send Eliot yawning to bed. Edith imagines she and Carl alone in the drawing room, all the French doors open to the terrace to let the cooling breezes in. Their talks would naturally turn towards the lectures Carl and Fullerton so enjoyed in Paris, and then to Morton himself. Just hearing Morton’s name from Carl’s young lips would make Morton more real to Edith, and how desperately she needs that right now! Living in this letterless limbo, she can hardly believe some days that Morton ever existed, ever loved her. Ruddy young Carl can conjure him up again for her, recalling the best winter of Edith’s life. Oh, how she longs for it!

  Sally arrives first and Edith is sorry to see she has grown stouter and her hair has silvered. Even her clothes are looking shabby and out of style. Alone in her house with no one but a desperately sick father and an ailing sister to fill her days, poor Sally seems suddenly older than her years. Edith wishes they would have more time alone so she could comfort her. No one was kinder to Edith when she was first married and ill and afraid. No one stood by her more solidly than Sally.

  “I’m worried with everyone coming, we won’t have enough time alone,” Edith tells her.

  “No, it’s what I need.” Sally smiles and squeezes her friend’s arm. “It’s been so long since I’ve been social,” she says. “Being with a house full of people will do me good.”

  Eliot arrives next with too many trunks, a manservant whom he’s brought from Paris, and his own special tea, which he declares he must have four times a day to remove the poisons from his body and preserve his “youthful appearance.”

  “I can leave some for you, Edie,” he says with a wicked smile.

  “Oh, do share some with me,” Sally says. “It might provide just what I’m missing.” Eliot sits right down beside Sally and they start chatting as if they were the best of friends.

  “You wouldn’t believe what’s been going on in Paris these days, Miss Norton,” he tells her and she lights up with interest. Edith is relieved. Perhaps the two least likely people of the house party will fit together like the pieces of a crazy quilt.

  When Carl arrives, looking scuffed from the train but displaying his charming, boyish grin, she couldn’t be happier.

  “I’m so honored you’ve invited me,” he says, taking off his crushed hat and holding it to his chest. “What a ridiculous train schedule. I spent hours in Boston. I don’t suppose Mr. Fullerton is her
e?”

  “Oh no, he has his duties in Paris,” she tells him. But she thrills at Fullerton’s name. And without any coaxing on her part at all! “There are plenty of others upstairs for you to meet, once you’ve settled in, of course. I do hope we’ll have lots of time to chat during your stay. Tomorrow I’ll take you through the gardens.”

  Dinner goes well. Teddy is full of chatter about the pigs and the hens and the new horse he’s just purchased. He doesn’t even seem to remember the exasperating incident with Eliot last year. He loves Sally and has many kind things to say to her about her father, whom he’s known for years. He likes Carl well enough, since Carl loves all animals and shows interest in Teddy’s menagerie. The houseful of people helps Edith too. With their chatter and needs, she can momentarily forget her misery over Fullerton, and her worry about how he might respond to her cable—which she now wishes she hadn’t sent.

  But when Teddy goes up to bed, Eliot begins his mischief.

  “Lady Edith was quite the belle of gay Paree this winter, you know, Miss Sally,” he says. “See how her cheeks glow? This is what comes from the wild life she’s been leading.”

  “Oh really?” Sally says. She perks up, no doubt not having the least concept of what Eliot’s alluding to.

  “Eliot, stop!” Edith says. “Or I’ll have to take you out to the woodshed.”

  “You know, Miss Norton,” he says, ignoring Edith altogether, “to look at her, you’d think butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Look at that prim little smile of hers. You’d think all the dear girl does is read all day and write her novels. But she is a changed woman in Paris, let me just say.”