Fall Love

by Anne Whitehouse

  "Paul, you're wanted." The voice broke into her thoughts, calling him. It belonged to the man to whom she'd spoken about Paul.

  "Just a second," Paul replied, without taking his eyes from Althea or letting go of her. "I'm talking to my old friend."

  Althea heard a laugh, not Paul's. "Follow me," Paul told her, dropping one hand. He led her to the door by which he'd entered the lobby. He opened it, guiding her through, and closed it behind them.

  Though they were all alone, he didn't take her in his arms as she hoped he would. He stood facing her, making a space between them that had not been there in the lobby.

  "Where are we?" she asked, looking around. They were in a room furnished with chairs and a table. There was a pay telephone in an alcove. Several doors led into the room. They were all closed.

  "It's called the greenroom."

  "But it's not green."

  "That's a theater term. It's a anteroom offstage where performers wait, fretting or rehearsing or just horsing around until they go on. I've heard a story that the greenroom got its name because set designers used it to hold small trees and shrubbery."

  "Oh," she said. "I never knew you knew so much." She felt tongue-tied. Her awkwardness contrasted with his fluency. She sensed his growing impatience, as if he had brought her here for her to tell him something.

  "Thanks for inviting me. I wanted to see you dance," she said.

  "You did?"

  She was amazed at how the question lit up his whole face, making him seem more boyish than she'd known him. "I was very curious," she admitted.

  "You have a beautiful smile."

  "I'm serious."

  "I know."

  His words fell on a silence. Quietly he said, "You are very quiet."

  "Yes."

  Looking at him as if to ask what he wanted her to say, she saw the motion of a thought cross his face. It surprised her how certain she was she'd guessed its meaning, that he was in fact afraid of what she might say.

  Well, she felt a need to guard against him, too, but would have liked to prolong the moment, now past, when she'd felt his gaze absorbing her. As she thought of this, she noticed a slight shade of disappointment darken his face. She intuited the response he was waiting for. Yet she held back.

  "Paul, will I see you again?" Considering the past few months, this was a brave question for Althea.

  Their eyes met steadily. There was a brief pause like the exhale of a breath.

  "Why not?" he said. "Though my nights this week are taken up. What about tea on Tuesday afternoon? I better call to confirm, say, Tuesday morning."

  She heard the door open. It was the man she'd approached in the lobby. He looked at her curiously. She looked away.

  "I promise," Paul promised, but said it so automatically it sounded perfunctory. She was being dismissed, and the phrase was his concession. It pained her how Paul looked past her, who had called her beautiful just moments before. She felt her wish to detain him, how that was egotistical, impossible; how she would do harm to herself, forgetting the occasion was his.

  Or not acknowledging it. Because she knew how much approval mattered, she saw that it would be perverse of her to deny to Paul and to herself its satisfactions. If they had been alone in the room, she would have reached out to touch him.

  The man from the lobby said to Paul, "I'm calling our hosts to say we'll be at the party in about twenty minutes." Reaching the phone, he lifted the receiver, dropped a quarter in the slot, and proceeded to dial the number.

  Althea noted these preparations, the man's officiousness, her exclusion. She saw very clearly that there would always be occasions in Paul's life to which she would not be admitted. She would be ruled, or ruled out. She understood how it was required of her to leave with good grace. It was as if a principal lesson of her own life were being stretched out before her for her to read, whose truth was hard and solitary. She was convinced all over again, with such certainty that she could never have doubted it, that Paul's importance to her was out of all proportion to his actual presence in her life.

  "I loved your dance. Even when I didn't know what it meant, I thought it was spellbinding. Funny and literal, and mysterious and enigmatic. I think I'll continue to find surprises in it. It's like you."

  She was uncertain, at first, if he had heard her. She had spoken low so as not to reach the ears of the man engaged on the phone. But then she saw Paul's face redden, saw him blush beautifully.

  It touched her again, how affected he was. She thought, Perhaps it is simpler than I have suspected. She drew her coat around her, fastened the belt at the waist: specific, casual motions. She was leaving with his word, as far as he was inclined to give it.

  "Till tea, then," she said, "if you like."

  "Oh, I always do as I like." Paul's sentence was spoken lightly, but it rang oddly in Althea's ears afterwards, like a protest, or Paul's swan song.

  * * *

  At five minutes after eight Jeanne had arrived by cab at the Joyce Theater. She hurried inside, and was quickly dispatched to her seat in the third row of the right section. Directly in front of her was a space, so that her view of the stage was unobstructed and close. As she watched Alchemy, she pictured herself interrupting Paul, speaking to him from the audience, bringing the dance to a halt. The fantasy was vivid enough to upset her. She remembered how she had made love to Paul at his urging on the stage of the Green Heron Theater. She thought, With Paul you must enter into his fantasies.

  The alto saxophone repeated a three-note theme. Paul's body was like a bow strained to its bent, supple and taut. Then, as if the invisible arrow were released, he began to vibrate in gradually diminishing arcs.

  In the pause after the dance, Jeanne jotted in her program, "A force restrained—Paul in white, with streaks of silver." She spent the intermission writing him a note. Folding the slip of paper in the envelope he had mailed her ticket in, she crossed out her own name on the front and wrote in his. She asked an usher to deliver the note, and he promised he'd try his best.

  As she watched Paul in his solo, she reflected, The distance from the sublime to the ridiculous is really very slight. She was impressed by the way the dance moved between vision and parody. I have to grant him this, she thought, he's amazing to watch.

  Judging his dance critically, she felt remote from him. Yet her appreciation grew as the dance progressed, and her pleasure was all the keener, because it was tinged with an egotistic, possessive pride. When the dance was over, she listened for the applause as anxiously as if the production were hers, in order to gauge the audience's enthusiasm.

  The sound of clapping rose and fell. She saw the roses sailing through the air just before they landed on the stage. They seemed to come from the center of the orchestra. She turned, craning her neck, but couldn't make out the source in the darkness. When she faced forward again, Paul was placing the flowers on the stage. A dramatic gesture that costs him nothing, she thought, because he'll get the roses back.

  After the performance and the other offerings of roses, Jeanne waited while the people around her departed. In the note to Paul, she had written that she hoped to catch him after the show. He's probably still backstage, she thought, as she slipped on her coat.

  She joined the last stragglers up the aisle, following them through the doors from the theater and around to the passage overlooking the lobby. Casually she peered over the ledge, wondering if she'd spot any of the dancers.

  They weren't out yet. They're probably showering and changing, she realized. She decided to wait. She saw people retrieving their wraps from the lockers, going to and from the lounges. Other people stood in clusters, apparently waiting as she was. Her eyes passed over them all hurriedly. Then she stopped. Below her in the lobby was Althea.

  Jeanne saw her first from the back, a tall woman in a beige coat, her shoulders squared and resolute, her blond hair drawn tight and shining into a twist. It wasn't until Althea turned and retraced her steps that Jeanne realized she was p
acing the floor. From the balcony, Jeanne stared down at Althea. She looked like a changed woman. Jeanne couldn't mistake the expression of pure crisis in her face. The skin seemed stretched taut over her bones, her mouth was set grimly. The pale gray eyes looked wide and unseeing, focused inward. Jeanne had never seen Althea appear so unearthly. She seemed entirely oblivious to any impression she made.

  Jeanne had a strange sense that she was observing a private drama, unplanned, accessible only to her. Althea, pale and light in her beige trenchcoat, which hung open to reveal the bright blue stripe of her dress, projected an aura. Even in distress, she seemed undeniably beautiful.

  Jeanne thought, He's breaking her heart. Although she hadn't laid eyes on her for months, Althea seemed transparent to Jeanne. She recognized Althea's love, she saw the pain it had caused her, and she pitied her for suffering for Paul.

  Had she imagined that Althea would reach such depths? She considered how she, too, had played a part in this. It was as if she and Althea had come to a crossroads and then had parted. Now she looked back. She did not see herself pacing in Althea's place.

  A mixture of perceptions mingled in Jeanne's mind. She thought of how Althea would hate to be approached now, but she didn't think she could remain without doing so. Then as she gazed longer at Althea in her mute agony, she couldn't bring herself to interfere. This evening, she knew, she would leave the field to Althea, if Althea could claim it.

  Jeanne believed she was being beneficent, and that she could afford it, as Paul had come to her before without Althea's knowledge. However Althea had happened to be here tonight, Jeanne thought, she seemed divided and tormented now. Yet this was strangest of all to Jeanne: why, as she observed Althea so clearly weakened, did Althea seem to gain by it, and she herself to lose? For even as she pitied this once close, now distant friend for a passion that made her tread so blindly back and forth, even as Jeanne considered herself fortunate and counted on her strength to bolster her further, as she chose to forego an encounter that might have been to her advantage, she felt her new sense of herself—effective, dynamic, forceful—slipping from her grasp.

  She was left with her realization from ever so long ago, on the cusp of childhood, of a capacity in Althea that she lacked, not for industry or for cleverness—in these she was Althea's match, or more—but for obsession. Althea was miserable, but in her desolation she could still inspire Jeanne's awe. In her obliviousness to her surroundings, it seemed to Jeanne that Althea acquired a greatness beyond them, and she appeared almost as an allegorical figure, or a goddess imprisoned by inner turmoil.

  She remembered how even as a girl Althea had been fierce, shy, and passionately stubborn. She hadn't endeared herself to their teachers. In consequence, Jeanne had felt protective and proud of her, and privileged to be her friend. But while she had adored Althea, she had also been afraid of her.

  Jeanne glimpsed the shade of that girl in the passage of the woman below her. Even in suffering, she thought, Althea was obdurate. Whether from pity or fear or love, Jeanne fled unnoticed from the Joyce Theater, suppressing her desire to greet Paul and leaving him no other message than the note whose intentions she didn't follow.

  Jeanne didn't know herself if her behavior was a further example of her girlhood deference to Althea or proof that finally her girlhood was over. Just before she hurried ahead into the November night, she glanced back at the theater's entrance, at the thin stripes of pink neon running through the glass bricks. Once outside, she didn't feel freed, but plunged deeper into emotional confusion.

  After having capitulated to Althea and fled, she began to regret it. She felt herself hardening towards her friend, growing defiant, her sympathy constrained. As she arrived home and brewed a cup of tea, no resolution of the difficulty immediately occurred to her except for a devout desire to be safe from the contaminations of broken hearts. She wished she could forget what had happened between her and Paul and Althea. I'm going to have to grow up all over again, she realized, grow up—that euphemistic term.

  Her telephone's startling ring broke into her heavy thoughts. It was late, close to midnight. Who would be calling her now? she wondered. As she picked up the receiver, she imagined—she hoped—it might be Paul, who had been wondering why, after her note, she hadn't tried to see him.

  "Hullo, Jeanne?" The clipped voice belonged to Rob. "Sorry to be calling so late. I didn't wake you? No? Are you ready for tomorrow? Good. That's why I phoned. I'm afraid I won't be able to make it. O'Malley's in town—you know—the playwright, and I must see him in the morning. You'll have to wing it on your own. Don't worry, I trust you. Make no promises and take good notes. I know you'll ask all the right questions. Why don't you bring Martin, the new intern, with you for company? It'll be a learning experience for him."

  "For me, too," said Jeanne, caught off-guard, her mind whirling. Then she assured him, "It's fine, Rob. I'm sure I can handle it."

  "After you arrive, they'll show you around the estate. There's one meeting scheduled for Monday evening and another for Tuesday morning. The foundation's Board of Directors, the architect, and the historic preservation people will be there, and I don't know who else. Afterwards, you'll drive back. Mrs. Fayerweather, one of the board members, has offered to put you up."

  "That name conjures a picture of sherry served in tiny glasses."

  "Just be your charming self," said Rob.

  "Probably it will be like college teas with alumnae," Jeanne mused aloud. "Genteel New England ladies making polite conversation."

  "You know, I believe that the estate was at one time a girls' school."

  "Is that so?" commented Jeanne, pleased. "Imagine that. I was just woolgathering."

  "It's all set then? You'll take your car? I'll reimburse you for the gas, of course. And you'll call Martin?"

  "Yes," she said.

  * * *

  Martin Walsh, the intern, was a theater student at Juilliard, who was taking a year off from school. Jeanne found his company agreeable on the drive up, as they gossiped about the small Green Heron staff and Rob in particular. Martin imitated Rob so accurately he made Jeanne laugh. He wanted to be an actor. She chose not to tell him that she had started at the Green Heron as an intern herself.

  It was a beautiful autumn day, clear, sunny, and brisk. They rolled down the windows when they left the Taconic Parkway for country roads, and the cool, fragrant breeze blew through the car. After they reached Lenox, they found the estate off a narrow road and pulled into the gravel driveway.

  The docent, Mrs. James, took them on an exclusive tour through the house, which had been built by Edith Wharton, as Jeanne had guessed. Mrs. James was well-versed in her subject and eager to display her information. "Edith"—she referred to her familiarly, by her first name, as if they were acquaintances- "took the greatest interest in decoration, furnishings, and landscape design. The original property was a hundred acres. 'Cottages,' they used to call them back then, rather coyly, I think. However, Edith's plan for The Mount, emphasizing privacy and symmetry, was never completed. Her marriage was unhappy, and it was here that some of its most pathetic scenes were played out. When she divorced her husband, she sold the estate and moved to Europe. She never returned."

  Mrs. James spoke matter-of-factly. She had said all this before. "That's why we have none of the original furnishings," she continued. "They were sold." She described how the property, divided, had diminished in its passage through various hands. In the late forties the house became a girls' private school. "I'm an alumna," Mrs. James said proudly. "Many of us involved in the restoration are. The school was old-fashioned; it taught young ladies to be accomplished. I wouldn't say the academics were too rigorous, but we had fun. The girls who had horses were allowed to board them in stables on the grounds. It was nice." She sighed nostalgically. "But we were hard on the place. You know, young girls. We knew the house had once belonged to a famous writer named Edith Wharton, but that was all we knew."

  Listening to her, Jeanne th
ought of how odd it was that Edith Wharton's house became the kind of school she would have hated, preparing girls from good families for lives in society, which, in its elite form, was what she rebelled against all her life—its circumscription of men and women, its neglect of the intellect, the hypocrisy of its values. But Jeanne didn't say this to Mrs. James. Isn't it even odder, she wondered, that women educated in such a school are now guiding and financing the restoration?

  "Times change," Mrs. James said. "Our daughters weren't interested in attending the school. They wanted to be with the boys, and I can't say that I blame them. If they're going to be competing with the men, they need to have the same education.

  "The school closed its doors about ten years ago. Already shabby, the house deteriorated. Finally, a group of us alumnae got together and decided to do something about it. But it takes years and lots of money. The restoration's still far from complete. We're doing it bit by bit."

  Jeanne had been making encouraging murmurs to Mrs. James as she listened. Upstairs, reminders of the school were still in evidence, in a row of institutional sinks and in the scuffed linoleum floors.

  After the tour and before the meeting, Jeanne went outside for a breath of air and quiet. She stood on the terrace behind the house and looked down a vista of sloping green fields: a valley and then a rise in the distance. It was late in the afternoon. The sun had descended, the landscape was darkening, but the sky was still clear.

  She strolled on the grounds, through what had once been a walled Italian garden, now in ruins. Next to it, tall trees had grown up, reclaiming the lawn. She wandered in the other direction, following the depression of the land until she came to a pond. On its surface swam two swans. By a trick of the fading light, the pond was a mirror, clear, still, and dark, with scarcely a ripple to mar its surface. She watched the disappearing trail left by the paddling swans. They swam toward each other, but paused before they met. Jeanne observed them, beautiful and imperial, their proud whiteness and its reflections held perilously in the liquid blackness. Behind her she heard the slip of a footstep on the grass and assumed it was Martin.