The Age of Desire

by Jennie Fields

  He does make a fuss about the dogs every time he comes. Holding and kissing them. Getting right down on the floor to play with them sometimes.

  One afternoon, rising from a rip-roaring session with Mitou and Nicette, he sits down in the chair across from Anna and looks her in the eye. She notices then that he is looking drawn and cheerless.

  “Truth is, I only feel settled these days when I’m around you,” he says.

  She is taken aback. “That’s very nice,” she says as neutrally as she can.

  The overexcitement of the summer, the alarming way his eyes used to glimmer with manic jolliness, is now fading to a heavy glare, a rounding of his shoulders, an undeniable sadness.

  “Edith don’t care for me. That’s what’s weighing on my mind, Miss Anna,” he tells her. “I don’t think she’s written me a single letter in two weeks. I bet she wrote you.”

  Anna says nothing.

  “She has, hasn’t she? Tell me.”

  “She does care for you,” Anna says. “You just need to see her again. When we reach France in February, you’ll be reassured.” But Anna knows it’s not true. Edith has written her a number of times. Nice full letters of her whirlwind tour of England. Why should she lie to him? Because he is too fragile to be slapped with the truth. She tries to talk with him about happier times, about things to look forward to. But for all her struggle to uplift him, his spirits seem to be sagging more daily, like a broken roof in the rainy season.

  One night in December, just as she is brushing her hair for bed, the bell rings. In a few minutes, Alfred White knocks on her bedroom door.

  “Mr. Wharton’s here. He insists on seeing you, Miss Bahlmann.”

  She pulls on her wrapper, shaking. She fears he’s bearing bad news from Edith. A car accident in France? A fire at The Mount?

  When she comes into the drawing room (Alfred insists on staying as well), she sees he’s sallow.

  “Mr. Wharton. Are you all right?” she asks.

  “Sit, Anna. That will be all, Alfred.”

  White leaves reluctantly; Anna still sees him peeking in from the hall where Teddy can’t detect him. The fire in the drawing room is just sputtering. It’s cold enough that the draperies are puffing out with the draft from the poorly sealed windows. She shivers even in the chair she chose, the farthest away from the window. Teddy hasn’t taken off his coat, or sat down. He’s pacing. He comes toward her.

  “I don’t feel safe when I’m not with you,” he says. “I wonder if I can’t move in here.”

  Anna gasps.

  “Mr. Wharton. You can’t possibly move in here.”

  “Why not? I own the place.” She stands to see him better, to not feel so small beside him, though even when she stands, she’s inches lower. She smells the liquor on his breath.

  “I think maybe . . . perhaps you’ve had too much to drink,” she says.

  “I haven’t. I haven’t.”

  “Sit. Sit down,” she says. He shakes his head. “Sit down, please.”

  He does finally, hunching in his chair. His coat still hangs about his shoulders. His lips are gray as they were last winter when she worried about him so.

  “You miss Edith,” she says in her most soothing voice. “That’s it, isn’t it? And yet it’s only a few weeks until we can go back to the Rue de Varenne. I know just seeing her will set you right. And the hunting trip. What happened to your hunting trip?”

  “I don’t care about the hunting trip. And I don’t want to go back to Paris. Damn Paris to hell. I’d rather die than go back to Paris.” Any words about dying shake Anna, knowing what she knows about his father. Shot himself in the face with a pistol. She feels her lips quivering.

  “But you’ll be near Mrs. Wharton. And when you’re together again, you’ll feel better.”

  “It’s not her I need. It’s you. I miss having you near,” he says. “I don’t feel myself. If I could just move in here . . .”

  Anna feels so unbalanced, she sits heavily in her chair, searching desperately for words.

  “You canceled your time in Hot Springs. We must make that appointment again. Allow me to do it for you. I know Dr. Kinnicut will be very disappointed you didn’t go. So we’ll set that right. Edith wrote me that Kinnicut urged you to go. We must make it happen.”

  “Anna . . .”

  Anna looks over at the hallway to see if Alfred White is still standing there, and finds it worrisome that she can’t see him, nor his shadow. She could call out for him if need be. But why is she afraid? It’s just Teddy.

  “You can’t move in here. It wouldn’t look right, whether you own the house or not. Or we can move out. Gross and I and Alfred. And you can move here. But if you stay at the Knickerbocker, you can visit. As much as you like.”

  His face is stupid with inebriation. He looks like he might cry.

  “You should go now, Mr. Wharton. Take a taxi to the Knickerbocker Club. Sleep. That’s what you need.”

  He bites his lip.

  “You’re wearing my locket,” he says. His voice is so broken, so childish, it’s wounding to hear. She reaches for the soft oval. Her clothes always cover it. But tonight the wrapper has displayed it to him. Her secret. She feels her cheeks burn. She might tell him she wears it always. That she cherishes it above all other personal treasures. But wouldn’t that be the worst thing?

  “It was a very kind present,” she says. “Come. White can help you find a taxi.”

  “White!” she calls out. She knows her voice belies the panic she’s feeling.

  White comes soon enough for her to recognize that he was standing nearby all along.

  “Come now, Mr. Wharton,” he says. He escorts Teddy out to the street. She pulls aside the curtain and watches White standing in the street, a hero in shirtsleeves, waving down a taxi, gently helping Teddy in. She cannot calculate her relief as the hansom drives off in the direction of the Knickerbocker Club.

  Should she call Dr. Kinnicut? He must be back in town. Maybe if she asks his opinion, expresses her concern for Teddy. It’s Edith’s place to do so, not Anna’s. Yet how can she bother Edith when she’s finally enjoying herself so much in England? So she writes the doctor and awaits his answer.

  “I’m worried about him,” she tells Gross.

  “He certainly seems attached to you,” Catherine says.

  “I’m sympathetic to him. That’s all.”

  Catherine flashes a dubious look.

  “Should I tell Edith? Should I? And ruin the only happiness she’s had in a while?”

  Gross shrugs her shoulders and with a downturned mouth and cocked brows, she leaves the room.

  The doctor writes back that he will hunt down Mr. Wharton at the Knickerbocker Club—being a member himself—and talk to him casually, then report back. And so Anna waits.

  A few nights later, no word from the doctor, she is lying in bed thinking of Thomas. She can almost conjure his face, which seems to fade more each day like an unfixed photograph. If only she had a photograph of Thomas. Would he look old to her? Would his smile seem kind or forced? For the last month, she has found it painful to think of him at all. Even with all the good moments they shared. Oh! the time they had walking dusty Cretan roads hand in hand to rumored ruins in empty fields. They’d scan the expanses, see nothing at all. And then the surprises would reveal themselves. A fallen column in the grass. A handful of potsherds amidst the clay. In Greece, so warm and dry, Anna’s knee didn’t ache at all, felt like a new joint: young and strong and uncomplaining. She could crouch in the field and gather bits of stamped Roman redware in the basket of her outspread skirt, colorful painted shards of Cycladian amphorae, matte pieces of glass bubbled and effervescent like soda water. Thomas would hunt too, patiently weighing his pockets with treasures. Once he found a ring, the shank golden and no longer
round, set with a tiny stone the color of dusk. Glass? A gem? Neither knew. He gave it to her: took her hand and slipped it on her finger. He looked so proud as he viewed it there, turning her hand this way and that in the sun.

  At night, Anna and Thomas would spread their treasures out on the table between their wineglasses, commenting on them, trading them. When the night aged enough that the men began to dance on the tables, they would slide the whole stash into Anna’s drawstring bag. In her room on the yacht, she had a dresser-top covered with their shared loot.

  During the day, they’d pause to watch women returning from town wells, peasant blouses pulled low, balancing tall slender vases of water on their golden shoulders. How graceful they looked in their labor—living tableaus of the sort that inspired romantic paintings over middle-class American spinets. She and Thomas were happy together then.

  Until he told her about his daughter. Until she realized it wasn’t love he was after. Or was it? It all felt clear to her back then: that he had other reasons for being drawn to Anna. But now nothing is clear at all.

  She is tossing in bed, invoking the night that Thomas grabbed her hands and pulled her up from her chair begging her to dance with him. The music—the pear-shaped bouzoukis, the hourglass-shaped doumbek drums—set down a beat no one could resist. She danced in Thomas’s arms like a rag doll. Completely unsure where to put her feet or how to use the music. He whirled her around until she was dizzy. But she was exhilarated, stunned by a sense of juice, of life, flowing through her. Her main thought was, “I have never felt this way before. I will never feel this way again.” Was it that night he told her about his daughter, Tabita? Was it that night that everything came crashing down?

  She is jolted from her reverie by the doorbell.

  Anna hears Alfred pulling open the creaking front door, talking. She gets up and pads to the staircase to hear better.

  “It’s far too late to see her. She’s gone to bed.”

  Teddy again. Who else could it be? She descends a step or two so she can hear more, barefoot, in her nightgown. The stairwell is cold, filling with air from the open door.

  “I’ll just wait in the living room,” Teddy insists.

  “She won’t be up until morning.”

  “I said I’ll wait here.” She can hear the agitation in his voice.

  “But sir. It’s past midnight. And we all want to go to bed.”

  “I don’t care,” Teddy says.

  Anna doesn’t know what to do. If she goes to bed, she knows she’ll toss and turn, unsettled by his presence in the room beneath hers. If she goes down now, Teddy will begin to think that he’s welcome at all hours. Or maybe he already does. And then she sees Albert climbing the stairs toward her. He doesn’t seem to notice the state of her undress.

  “He’s downstairs again, isn’t he?” she asks.

  “He is,” Albert says.

  “Should I go down to him?”

  Albert sets his hands on her shoulders, looks into her eyes. “He’s drunk. Let him sleep it off.” Anna can sense how much he wants to protect her.

  “In a chair? He can’t spend the night in a chair!”

  “Miss Bahlmann. . . . Anna.” Anna doesn’t think White has ever spoken her Christian name before. “He shouldn’t be here at all. Maybe if he’s miserable all night . . .”

  He doesn’t have to finish. She understands.

  “Yes, you’re right.”

  “Good night, then,” Albert says.

  He passes her on the staircase, and she follows him. Anna finds her bed in the dark room, glad for the warmth of her hot-water bottle, her comforter. But even settled beneath the sheets, even trying to think of Greece again, sleep is a distant land.

  In the morning, she finds Teddy sprawled on the sofa, his shoes still on his feet (and no doubt soiling the cushions—her cushions! Her sofa from her apartment long ago.) His mouth is open, his coat is still buttoned. Anna thinks she might cry. Teddy has never been a dignified man. That would be an erroneous description of who he is. And yet she has never seen him look more foolish. She decides she must let him wake on his own.

  An hour later when she returns to the parlor, he is gone, a ghost of his form still denting the cushions.

  With Howard Sturgis and the Babe in tow, Edith finds herself at last at the Vanderbilt apartment. She had been looking forward to arriving back in Paris, to settling into the rooms she has come to consider her spiritual home. But how unexpectedly sad she feels wandering its elegant halls. For this was where she and Morton first fell in love. Where he brought her a box of pastel macarons. Where she would come back from a day in his arms, thrilled and aglow. Was it love? Or maybe it was just love on her part. Since arriving in London months earlier, she has been sleeping beautifully. And writing better than ever. Having requested back the pages she sent in of The Custom of the Country, she is rewriting it. So much better than before, she thinks. The words seem to fall from her pen. But now, staring out at the empty echoing Rue de Varenne, she feels unsteady again. And the nights loom long.

  She remembers something Henry told her the last time she saw him at Lamb House. “I can’t deny it any longer. Morton is weighed down by an evil which only he can reveal to you. I urge you to ask him. Insist he tell you. It’s the only way you’ll discover the truth.”

  Henry has a tendency to be dramatic: he overstates most things. Evil? She can’t imagine. But one day, while Howard and the Babe have gone to see a play she’s already seen (and found overwrought), she scribbles off a petit bleu:

  There is one question I must clear up. Is it possible for you and I to meet tonight?

  In the very next post, he proposes a café and time.

  He is smiling when she walks in. A great improvement over their last meeting. And his eyes seem to twinkle as they used to.

  “Wonderful to see you,” he says.

  “Is it?” she asks.

  “Absolutely. Especially seeing you looking so well. What have you done to look so . . . so healthy, so rested?”

  She can’t help being pleased to see herself through his eyes as improved.

  “Good travel. Good writing,” she says. “England was a wonderful place to begin my year.”

  He leans forward. “I’ve missed you,” he says. ‘You are exceptionally special to me, you know.”

  She would like to feel outraged, after all he’s put her through. But God knows she’s pined for him. She hasn’t felt so brimming with life since last spring.

  With menus to shield them from each other, they order dinner, and she peers around at the other diners. Mostly couples, huddling over their candles. Some laughing. Most talking.

  He doesn’t ask her what it is she wanted to ask him. Just like him to have so little curiosity. At last, she knows she’s the one who must broach the subject.

  “Henry says I must ask you to tell me . . .” How can she put it? “He says an ‘evil’ is weighing you down, and that I must insist you tell me what it is.”

  Morton smiles faintly, says, “Oh.”

  “Perhaps he shouldn’t have told me. But I’ve felt there was something you’ve been hiding for a long time. If you just could tell me . . . Will you? Please.”

  He nods. She shivers, wondering suddenly whether she indeed wants to be enlightened.

  The waiter comes between them with a basket of bread, fills their water glasses. Morton waits until he has crossed the room toward the kitchen.

  “Don’t tell me later that you wish I’d never said a word,” Morton says.

  “I won’t.”

  “I’m . . .” Morton leans forward and whispers. “You won’t like this, and . . . I’m not proud of it.”

  “Say it, Morton.”

  “I’m being blackmailed.”

  Edith expels a lungful of air all at once, and fin
ds it hard to form any words. Morton doesn’t speak. He does nonchalantly nod at someone across the room, however.

  “Who is blackmailing you?” she asks at last.

  “My landlady.”

  “And why would your landlady try to . . . extort money from you?” Extort somehow seems a less odious word to Edith.

  “I owe her rent,” Morton says. He’s not blushing. Not looking embarrassed. He almost looks proud. It ripples the hair on the back of her neck.

  “And what is she holding as ransom?”

  “She has letters of mine.”

  “Letters?”

  “Personal letters.”

  “I didn’t think they were business letters,” Edith says huffily. “Why are they so . . . valuable?”

  “Valuable to no one but the people who wrote them. I want you to understand they’re old letters from two people. . . . Both are, I guess you’d say, public figures. One is something of a royal figure. A royal married figure. The other . . . a . . . politician.”

  “Go on. Who? You may as well tell me.”

  “And if I told you who they are, what would prevent me from tattling about you with others? My affairs are my affairs. And best kept to myself. All of this happened a long time ago. . . .”

  “I see,” she says, though still fails to see, and now is uncomfortably curious.

  “It’s why I was uneasy when I saw you before Christmas. My landlady said that she was watching me then. I do believe sometimes she was following me. You’re becoming well known too, Edith. I didn’t want her to hunt for your letters. She’s away right now. Down in Nice.”

  “And you’re still living in her house?”

  Morton nods.

  “But why don’t you move out, for heaven’s sakes?”

  “She’d retaliate. Besides, I . . . she’s not a bad person, per se.”

  Suddenly Edith knows. Knows more than she wants to know.

  “You’ve been intimate with them all, haven’t you? The two who wrote you letters. They’re love letters. And this landlady. You’ve had a relation with her as well?”