The Age of Desire

by Jennie Fields

  Morton looks into his wineglass, then takes a large swig, as if for courage.

  “You can think what you like.”

  Edith knows precisely what to think. If any woman lived life with the sexual abandon of Morton Fullerton, what name would they attach to her? She’s heard Fullerton called a “boulevardier” by Anna de Noailles. She’s heard rumors from Eliot. But she never imagined his conquests were so haphazard. Or so incautious. She realizes that one of the authors of the love letters, the politician, must be a man. Maybe the royal figure as well. What would a letter revealing that do to a public figure? What did it do to Oscar Wilde?

  “Are you still romantically involved with the landlady?”

  Morton shakes his head. “Not at the moment.”

  “No, at the moment you’re sitting in a café. . . . And the letter writers?”

  “Heavens, no. I have no idea where they are anymore. Either of them.”

  Impetuously, she reaches out and grabs his hand.

  “Let me help you, then,” she says.

  “Help me? How?”

  “What do you owe her? I have money. If we could lift this terrible weight off your shoulders, things might be different.” Between us, she can’t help thinking. But why, oh, why, does she want him so, when every word out of his mouth reveals him to be a cad? If only the heart weren’t so capricious, so unable to absorb logic!

  Morton stares at the tablecloth for a moment, traces the jacquard pattern with his finger. When he looks up, his face has reddened.

  “I am perhaps not the most honorable of men, Edith. But I don’t think I’d stoop so low as to take your money.”

  Edith feels relieved at his words but presses on.

  “Why not?”

  “Because then I’d be beholden to you. I’d be trading one trap for another.”

  Edith finds herself aghast, half-standing with outrage. “That’s the most odious thing you’ve ever said to me!”

  “I didn’t mean that. It just came out wrong. Sit. Sit down. I’m not saying you’re trying to trap me. I can see that’s what you might have thought I meant. I just don’t want to feel that our relationship is based on my owing you money, that’s all. I’m already struggling with the very same situation.”

  “It’s not the very same situation,” Edith says, venom in her voice. Edith wonders—could he possibly see her as no better, no more desirable, than his landlady? A lonely woman who is turning to him for pleasure. She feels sick to her stomach. A burning has begun in her throat. Oh, the irony that she, a woman who has always detested surprises, swerves in the path, has chosen as her only lover a man who delivers nothing but bolts of lightning. She shakes her head, turns toward the door.

  “I have places to be,” she says.

  “We haven’t eaten.”

  “That’s never stopped you from leaving a meal.”

  His eyes become childlike, pleading. He grabs her hand. His silken touch shakes her. “Sit down, dearest. Won’t you?”

  She does. She doesn’t know why. He has an undeniable power over her.

  “Is this . . . this situation why you didn’t write me this summer?” she asked.

  “Yes. I was in much worse shape in the middle of the summer. I’ve paid off some of my debt to her now. I thought if I stopped writing you, you might stop writing me. I didn’t want her to get hold of your letters.”

  “But why didn’t you just tell me? If you’d explained . . .”

  He shrugs. “Perhaps I should have.”

  “Yes. You should have.”

  “Ah, but what would you have thought of me?”

  “It was what I thought of myself when you didn’t write that hurt so much.”

  The meal comes and she can barely swallow for the aching in her throat. She has wanted to know for months and months what mystery has separated him from her. But hearing all that he’s told her, she thinks the mystery is far more complicated than she imagined. What sort of man would get involved in such a scandal? Walter, for instance, would never have allowed such a thing to happen.

  But how different Walter is from Morton. Brilliant Morton. Childish Morton. In some ways, he is hardly more than an adolescent. A creature so beautiful that persons of all sorts wish to possess him: men, women. Who could resist him?

  Against her will, as she shreds the blanquette de veau with the tines of her fork, she is suddenly in that chestnut-shadowed room in the inn, wearing only her bloomers, or cradled by the moss beneath the lilacs, entirely naked. These memories are so visceral. So real! How dangerous he seems to her at the moment. And the hurt she’s had to bear from him is too fresh. Yet she can’t help wondering, can’t help praying that their affaire de coeur isn’t over. Over before it’s barely begun.

  “The thing is,” he says, “I don’t know when I can clear things up. I really have no idea how to find that sort of money.”

  Edith forces herself out of the delicious lost memories and into the noisy café again. “Did you never pay her rent? How long have you lived there?”

  “For years.”

  “And for years you didn’t pay rent?”

  “She didn’t ask me to.” She stares into his guileless eyes and is disturbed by what she sees.

  “Ah . . .”

  He sets down his fork, looking satisfied and full. The bill lies between them, fluttering in a breeze from the door.

  “I need to go,” she says suddenly. “I have guests staying with me.”

  He makes no move to lay out money, to pay.

  “This one’s yours, Morton,” she says, standing up. “I wouldn’t want you to feel trapped by my generosity.”

  “Edith . . .”

  “I take it you have a few francs in that wallet of yours,” she says.

  He nods guiltily.

  Then she pulls her wraps crisply and leaves the restaurant without looking back.

  “Miss Bahlmann, let me put it plainly.” Dr. Kinnicut has finally telephoned. And Anna has risen from the dinner table to speak to him. “Very simply, he’s fallen into melancholy again, a serious depression. And he’s starting to have the old problem with his teeth. And the pain in his head as well. He’s barely been out of his room, which is why it took me so long to see him. I finally knocked on his door.”

  “But what are we to do?” Anna asks. “We’re to leave in just a week’s time for France. The whole household.”

  “Yes, he told me. And I think you should all go. A change may do him good. He wants to go. I’ve given him some medicine. I rather doubt it will do much but keep him rather numb. Alleviate some of the pain. He never did go back to Hot Springs again, did he?”

  “No.”

  “He should have.”

  “Should I insist he go now? I don’t know that he would listen if I urged him to go.”

  “He wants to be with his wife. He said so. Even though he’s not keen on Paris. He also told me he wants you nearby. You seem to make him feel secure. He spoke of you continually.”

  “I’ll be traveling with him,” Anna says, feeling the shock of the doctor’s words to her fingertips.

  “Well, as much as possible, keep an eye on him.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll be sure to do that.”

  “And whatever you do, Miss Bahlmann, don’t let him wander out on the deck alone. Many a hurting soul has given in to the lure of the sea.”

  Dr. Kinnicut’s words make her stomach tighten.

  “No, sir. Good advice.”

  “Have you warned Mrs. Wharton?”

  “I was afraid to upset her. She seems to be so happy right now. . . .”

  “No. Don’t disturb her. Pull her aside when you arrive and explain what I said. The poor woman’s suffered enough through his ups and downs. Last I saw her, it was taking a to
ll on her.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Is she sleeping better?”

  “She writes that she is.”

  “Between you and me, I fear Mr. Wharton is a very sick man. When he had his episode last year, and then the cure in Hot Springs, well, I felt it was an isolated incident. Now, seeing him like this two years running is very disturbing indeed.”

  It is a terrible crossing. Winter crossings are always the worst. Iceberg warnings. Large waves. No need to worry about Teddy wandering the deck when the air is so frigid and the winds so intolerable. Anna visits him every day in his cabin, as do Gross and White. They take turns, even draw up a schedule so he’s rarely alone. He won’t come to the dining room, feeling so ill. So they make sure food is delivered. And flowers. And sweets. Nothing seems to alter his dark mood. And with the high waves, even intrepid Anna isn’t feeling quite herself. She can only pick at the food when it’s set before her in the dining room. I must be unerschütterlich! she tells herself. Thomas would expect it of me! She thinks longingly of their dinners together on the Amerika, sharing Wiener schnitzel and Moselle wine. How the whole upper class dining room watched the two of them and wondered. That crossing feels like years ago.

  “Just sit here and talk to me, Anna,” Teddy tells her when she visits his cabin with Nicette in her arms, hoping that the little dog will cheer him up. “Talk in the old way. About the things we both care about.” She settles the Pekinese in her lap, and Teddy reaches out and pets the golden creature’s delicate turtle-shaped head, then lets his hand fall with exhaustion.

  Anna prattles about how happy the dogs will be to see Edith again. “As will you,” she says. She reminds Teddy about the horses he bought near the end of the summer.

  “You can ride them next summer,” she tells him. “Just imagine you’re on one of those leafy paths that lead to town. There you are on your horse, warm breezes just kissing your face. Perhaps you and I can have a sumptuous picnic on Laurel Lake. We’ll ride the horses there.”

  “But you don’t ride.”

  “I haven’t ridden since I was a child in Massachusetts. But you could teach me again. I imagine you’re a very good teacher.”

  His mouth softens into a hazy smile. “I think I might be.”

  The man needs compliments, appreciation. And who has offered him any all these years?

  “Will you teach me to ride? I would look forward to that. But you’d have to be patient, of course.”

  “Of course,” he says.

  It is comical to imagine herself on a horse. An old lady with gray hair doing something so foreign.

  He reaches out and grabs her hand.

  “Anna, hold me,” he says.

  “Mr. Wharton!”

  “As a friend. As a friend! It would make me feel so much better. It’s all I’m asking.”

  She sets Nicette down in her chair. The little dog curls up and yawns. Then she leans over Teddy, gray-faced and miserable, slumped in his bed, and she slips her arms about his shoulders. With a surprising violence, he clutches her to him so tightly she gasps. And then she understands he’s sobbing against her. His whole body trembles in her arms.

  “There, Mr. Wharton. No need for that.”

  “Hold me,” he calls out.

  “I won’t let go,” she tells him.

  When he sobs himself to exhaustion, she finally lays him back on his pillow.

  With his eyes closed, tears splaying his pale lashes, his voice just a whisper, he says, “If I die, Anna, you can tell everyone that you were the only one who made me want to live.”

  SEVENTEEN

  SPRING 1909

  “It,” Edith writes Walter. “Teddy has arrived in worse shape than ever. And if it wasn’t for dear Anna, I swear I’d go mad. She somehow can tolerate him, sits at his bedside and talks to him of the most inane things. I have come to realize that I am not, by nature, a tolerant person.”

  Edith had imagined that the arrival of the household in Paris would bring one difficult task: to apologize to Anna, or in any case to repair the fence that has sprung up between them. Instead, Teddy has pilfered all the focus. He barely could manage the steps up to the Vanderbilts’ apartment. His face was the color of a hospital corridor.

  “Dear God. What’s happened to you . . . ?” Edith said, seeing him for the first time in the entry hall.

  Anna, coming up the steps behind him, grabbed Edith’s elbow and pulled her aside while White helped Teddy to his bed.

  “He’s as bad as he was last winter. Gout or melancholia, whatever it is. Dr. Kinnicut says . . .”

  “You spoke to Dr. Kinnicut?”

  “I was so worried . . . I had to see what he recommended. And he was so kind. He went to visit Mr. Wharton at the Knickerbocker Club. As a friend. As a member of the club. He did it at my behest. I don’t think Mr. Wharton suspected . . .”

  “You never said a word to me. . . .”

  “You seemed so happy. I didn’t want to worry you.”

  Edith looked into Anna’s eyes.

  “Bless you,” she said. “I didn’t know I was leaving you with such a heavy burden.”

  “I didn’t mind,” Anna told her.

  So days pass and Edith has yet to take Anna aside and apologize to her, reassure her. They are back to being good friends and helpmates. Is there any point in bringing up the last miserable year at all? Edith’s fresh writing pages are lifted from her doorway every morning and returned in the afternoon, neat and edited for typos. Anna always asks good questions: “Edith, I just have a few . . . queries,” she might say, standing in the hall looking even smaller than usual.

  “Yes.”

  “On page 91 here, would Peter Van Degen really say that? It sounds like something Ralph Marvell would say instead. And here. I thought the child was in the room. What happened to him?” Edith is grateful to have Anna as her first reader, thankful that they seem to be back into the old rhythm. Fannie Thayer had done a good job in Anna’s absence. But she wasn’t dear, thoughtful Anna. The only sign that anything is amiss emerges when Fullerton’s name is spoken, and then Edith notes the subtle hitch of Anna’s fragile shoulders, the pressing of her lips. All so restrained that no one but Edith could detect it. Still, Edith appreciates her restraint. These days, in truth, the thought of Fullerton makes her own shoulders hitch. Blackmail. Lovers. She is still absorbing it all. An indigestible meal that doesn’t want to go down.

  One night, lying in bed, Edith realizes she’s never even taken a moment to ask Anna about her trip, about the mysterious detour to Greece and with whom she traveled. “I’ll bring it up tomorrow,” she resolves. She has so firmly imagined that it must be another maiden lady endowed with family money, traveling for “adventure,” that Edith has even named her: Imogene. Imogene with a felt hat and men’s shoes, a tweed jacket with leather pockets. And a voice like a parrot. But when morning comes, Edith’s resolve to find out more about Anna’s summer is as cold as ashes. Other urgent matters push their way to the top: a short story idea that crystallized while she slept, a need to answer a letter from Walter, the desire to leave the house early so she doesn’t have to spend too much time with the ailing, impossible Teddy.

  Edith doesn’t see Morton much that spring. At first, he writes, “Can we be together this Saturday?” and she pneus him back to say she’s got plans. He stops by without warning, gifting her with the same Ladurée macarons that pleased her so last year, and she sets the box in the entryway, doesn’t even ask for the treats to be laid out on a plate for him; if he wants them so badly let him buy a box for himself! She finds herself cold, inarticulate, the impossible woman he wooed last year. Later, she feels guilty, writes to apologize, but oh, how she hates the war that ensues inside her: she wants him and she fears him. Wouldn’t it be better—safer!—if they were close friends like they
were before he became so much more. She is comfortable as the older woman, sharing her experience, her counsel. Morton, whose desire to charm endows him with a chameleon’s ability to read cues, to shape-shift, begins to consult her about his blackmailer, implores her to give advice. How easy and right it feels to write back about how he should handle this woman, “a person you believe to be half-mad.” It is easy to forget that “this person” might not be so different from herself. Oh, she would never blackmail, but the desire for any leverage to maneuver a man as recalcitrant as Morton certainly has its dark appeal.

  “Then listen to me, dear, when I say don’t go on Saturday. Why should you be ordered about in that way?” she writes. Or, “When the interview does take place, why should it not take place before witnesses? Have you not a friend who would go with you? Or could you not take an homme d’affaires if there are business matters to be settled?”

  One March night, when they unexpectedly meet at Rosa’s salon, he is seated next to her, and beneath the table, he grasps her hand, resting his on her thigh. She can hardly bear the sensation: it enters her. It eddies and sings and sparks in a spot just above her pubic bone, a holy nexus that just last year she didn’t know existed. She can’t bear the ecstasy. The way it whips up her long-stored desire like a windstorm excites every particle of dust on a desert street. She rises in the middle of a conversation and rushes into the red drawing room to sit a while, to catch her breath. Later, she tells Rosa it was a touch of asthma, and Rosa doesn’t question it. But Morton, smiling quizzically at her before he leaves, appears unsettled. Let him remain so, she decides, turning her face away. The next day, he writes another letter, begging her advice, flattering her.

  “You always tell me the right things to do. I listen to you because you see so clearly what I cannot see.” She smiles but keeps her distance. For the moment, it is the only safe thing to do.

  Sharing her cautious mood, the season arrives slowly. Buds huddle in knots on the trees for weeks before opening. The lawn of Les Invalides waits to awake, a faded, straw-colored carpet. And she is heartsick much of the time, for last spring her life did indeed spring open like a jack-in-the-box after a lifetime of a metallic, insistent melody. But this year, she is wracked with doubt. Morton Fullerton was her whole world. And now she thinks she was just one of many to him. Nothing he does or says seems quite sincere.