Fall Love

by Anne Whitehouse

  "Get whatever you like," urged Jeanne.

  They spent a few minutes discussing the appetizers and entrées before making their choices of salad and pasta. Althea ordered first: radicchio and endive salad with walnut vinaigrette and raditore in a smoked salmon and cream sauce. Jeanne selected arugula salad topped with shavings of Parmesan cheese and sepia linguine with wild mushrooms. Jeanne ordered a bottle of Chablis.

  As Althea sat studying the menu, Jeanne stole glances at her. To Jeanne, Althea looked beautiful, her expression lit by an otherworldly radiance. Was it really because she was inspired by 'The Art of Penjing'? Of no one but Althea would Jeanne have believed it. Althea was just strange enough, she thought. Yet, although she might make fun of Althea to herself, deep down she appreciated Althea's aesthetic sensibility, so well-developed and original.

  Today Althea's appearance seemed determinedly subdued to Jeanne. She had on no jewelry or make-up; her clothes were unobtrusive. Compared to Jeanne's red and black contrasts, Althea was in camouflage. Althea's influence on Jeanne was still so great that Jeanne found herself preferring Althea's subdued dress and questioning her own choice, though it had been made so carefully.

  Jeanne was unprepared for Althea's apparent self-command, which had been missing at the Joyce Theater last Sunday. Althea seemed to have arrived at the luncheon with a conversation already prepared, intended—Jeanne surmised—to avoid the personal.

  Althea spoke again about the Chinese exhibit, arranged outdoors on a brick patio against the backdrop of the Botanical Garden in its late fall aspect. She said, "On one of the explanatory cards in the exhibit was a poem that I liked. Since you're a reader of poetry, I copied it down for you. It sounds like haiku, but it's longer."

  Rummaging in her purse, Althea extracted a small notebook from which she read in a clear, nearly expressionless voice, "Loneliness. The essential color/Of a beauty not to be defined./Over the dark evergreens, the dusk/That gathers on far autumn hills."

  Though Jeanne didn't mention it, the poem seemed like a confession from Althea in spite of herself. "It's lovely, a perfect match of mood and atmosphere," Jeanne remarked instead and was about to add more but stopped herself, lest, in holding forth, she sound pompous.

  The wine was poured, the bread broken. "Let's drink," said Jeanne, raising her glass. "To our reunion."

  Between Althea's fingers, the stem of her wineglass trembled as she drank.

  It seemed to Jeanne that she could glimpse the movement of Althea's thought—not its content, but its direction—like the shining slip of a stream over its bed.

  A sip at a time, Althea tasted the wine. Its influence stole over her nerves. Perhaps I will get through this lunch all right, she thought, as she chewed sourdough bread spread with sweet butter. Making the connection to their shared past, she asked after Jeanne's family.

  Jeanne shrugged her shoulders vaguely. "All of us are absorbed in our own lives. I feel that we nod to each other and then move on, like ships in passing. I don't know why, but it's almost as if, when I left Greenwich, I ceased to exist on some level for my parents. Not that I'm dead, but that they don't consider me. For instance, they made Thanksgiving plans without me this year."

  "Is the situation the same with your brothers?" Althea wondered.

  "I'm not sure. We're not in the habit of consulting each other. I think this time my brothers decided first that they weren't coming. What are your plans?" she asked Althea.

  "The usual. Dinner at my aunt Joan's. I'll just go up for the day. At least your family is open to innovation. It seems to me that my family is horrified at the thought of making almost any change whatsoever. Habit becomes obligation, and it weighs heavily."

  Nevertheless, Althea's tone mocked her harsh words. Briefly Jeanne entertained the possibility that Althea might invite her to her family's Thanksgiving, but the idea did not seem to occur to Althea.

  Their salads arrived, the fresh greens dressed with vinaigrette. Gratefully, they began to eat. "I'm famished. Concentrating on art always makes me hungry," confessed Althea. Her salad was the more aesthetically composed, she thought, contrasting the deep magenta and white of the radicchio with the pale endive. Yet eyeing Jeanne's simpler salad of arugula topped with thin shingles of Parmesan cheese, Althea wondered if she might not have preferred to eat it instead. She suppressed the urge to ask Jeanne for a bite.

  Jeanne tasted the tangy flavors of her salad. Once they would have been too strong for her, she reflected, but now she savored them with pleasure.

  As she ate, her thoughts wandered to the past. "When we were growing up, I often wondered how you could come from such a conventional family," she remarked to Althea. "I always thought your parents never had a clue about you."

  "Even now I don't think they do," admitted Althea, shaking her head.

  "I remember how upset they were when you transferred from Brown to the Rhode Island School of Design after sophomore year. As I recall, they gave you a hard time about it."

  "I was lucky that my education was being paid for by a trust created by my grandmother's will," replied Althea. "Otherwise I couldn't have done it. My parents wouldn't have paid the tuition, and I couldn't have afforded it. But why are you bringing up all this now?"

  "I don't know. I suddenly remembered it." Jeanne went back to her train of thought, "You really liked The Rhode Island School of Design, didn't you?"

  "It wasn't everything I'd hoped it would be, but on balance the positives outweighed the negatives. At Brown I felt so frustrated. I wanted to concentrate on art, and I wasn't allowed to. At 'Risdy,' I began to conceive of myself as an artist. That's what it did for me, and it's not insignificant. I thought like an artist before I became one."

  "I was so studious when I was in college," Jeanne recalled. "I wanted to learn as much as I could. I took five courses every semester when the typical load was four, because it cost the same, and I was determined to get my money's worth."

  "That sounds like you," commented Althea. "You had a sterling reputation in my family, but you lost it when you didn't go to law school," she added, to provoke Jeanne.

  "I'm devastated," replied Jeanne, mocking her. Remembering when their friendship was less complicated and compromised, Jeanne felt closer to Althea. "I haven't seen your mother in ages. Is she still so bubbly and wholesome, with that blonde hair?" she asked Althea.

  "You mean like mine?" asked Althea.

  "No, not like yours. Hers was dyed."

  Jeanne saw Althea suppress a smile. "I remember one Christmas vacation when I came over to your house," Jeanne went on, inspired. "We were planning to take the train into the city, go to a museum, hang out. We were wearing jeans, workshirts, and baggy sweaters. Our coats were down parkas. Your mother took one look at us and exclaimed, 'How are you two girls ever going to catch husbands if you go around looking like that?'" Jeanne laughed at the recollection.

  But Althea neither laughed nor looked amused. "I didn't think that was funny then, and I don't now," she said sharply. "What's your point, Jeanne? That my mother was right?"

  "I wasn't thinking of that, but I guess she was."

  "Is that your goal? To catch a husband?" Althea glared at Jeanne. She pushed her plate aside; she was done with her salad.

  "Obviously not. You've missed the point. I wasn't adopting your mother's tone; I was critiquing it."

  "I just don't find it pleasant to be reminded of it."

  Althea's cheeks were flushed. Jeanne felt the unpleasantness between the two of them growing; she had known it was there, under their silence. She had feared and dreaded it; now the realization of it paralyzed her.

  "I'm finding it hard enough already," Althea went on, her voice breaking a little.

  Jeanne stared Althea straight in the face. "I know," she said. Her voice was like a breath.

  But Althea did not want Jeanne's intimacy or her understanding. She looked away from Jeanne's gaze, her eyes cast down at her place. "I doubt it."

  I should back off,
Jeanne thought, but I don't want to. This was why, after all, she had scheduled the lunch—to bring things between them to a head, and to examine them together, in the open. She believed that they were still kindred spirits, deep down. She guessed why Althea was upset.

  The waiter came and took their empty salad plates away. He brought their plates of pasta, warm and fragrant. He replenished their glasses with wine.

  The tension between them eased as each tasted her dish.

  "How's yours?" Jeanne inquired.

  "Excellent. And yours?"

  "It's delicious. Would you like to try it?"

  As they carefully passed each other their laden forks, Althea thought of how she'd wanted to sample Jeanne's salad, too. Just a few days ago, she had desired a taste of Paul's pastry, but hadn't dared to ask. A sense of sadness swept over her.

  "What did you think of Paul's performance?"

  Jeanne's sudden question struck a nerve. Althea was numbed. She watched herself put down the fork. As she raised her eyes to face Jeanne, she seemed to be moving in slow motion. "I had thought you might be there, but I didn't see you," she said.

  "I left as soon as it was over. I had to go to Massachusetts the next day."

  As she spoke, Jeanne was aware of the deliberate falseness of the position she was creating for herself. She made it sound as if the event was a diversion to be fitted into a busy schedule, instead of the revelation it had turned out to be. She would not mention to Althea that she had observed her and fled. "What did you think of Paul's dance?" she inquired again, as casually as if she were discussing a movie.

  "You sound as if you didn't like it," accused Althea.

  "No, I did." Jeanne spoke slowly, as if she were just figuring it out. "I guess I thought that parts of the dance were a little ponderous."

  "I didn't. I loved it," Althea proclaimed. She sounded defiant, embarrassed by her emotion and at the same time proud of it. "I liked where the dance went, the risks it took, the shape of it. I'd like to see it again."

  "Well, you can. Tonight's the last performance."

  "Oh, I don't know."

  Shrugging her shoulders, Althea seemed to dismiss the idea. Not for the first time, Jeanne wondered what had happened after she'd left the Joyce Theater. She was torn between wanting to ask Althea and thinking the better of it, between wanting to confess to Althea about her autumn involvement with Paul and wanting to keep it a secret. She sat tongue-tied, eating her pasta.

  Faced with Jeanne's suggestion, Althea realized that, although she would have liked to watch Paul perform again, tonight she was not prepared to repeat the experience of being in the audience and debating whether she ought to try to see him afterwards or not, particularly when he hadn't invited her. She realized that she didn't want to slip in and out unnoticed; she wanted to mean something to Paul. And, as she often had during the autumn, she wondered about Bryce: why hadn't she spotted him in the theater or in the lower lobby afterwards? Had he been there?

  "Did you see Bryce at Paul's performance?" she asked Jeanne impulsively.

  "What? Who's Bryce?" asked Jeanne.

  Is Jeanne for real? Althea wondered. "I can't believe you don't know."

  "I never claimed to know a lot about Paul's life."

  Was Jeanne as disengaged from Paul as she made it sound? Althea couldn't decide what to believe. Is it because I care so much that I find it hard to believe that Jeanne cares so little? she wondered. Perhaps I ought to take Jeanne at her word. Yet I sense that Jeanne is hiding something from me, and I’ve known her a long time.

  What difference does it make to me now? Althea asked herself. She had no hope of Paul; she never had, and now she had to face it. In her mind she saw the tarp falling between them in the street and Paul urging her to go away. Looking deep within herself, Althea discovered that perhaps she didn't really want Paul. She considered that she might never be able to adjust to life with him: he was profligate, and she was so careful. What attached her to him, she realized, was that he had revealed to her a part of herself that she hadn't known existed. It was a sexual self, and it frightened her, but she couldn't deny its power. She remembered how she had felt Paul's eyes on her when she lay with Jeanne. She had wondered then, and now she wondered again what he was thinking. He knew something about her that no one else knew.

  Except for Jeanne, which made it harder for Althea. She didn't mind what Paul knew about her because she suspected him of worse, but she minded very much what Jeanne knew and—more than that—was part of. Paul's scrutiny was something quite different from Jeanne's. She wanted to open herself up to Paul's attention, but with Jeanne her impulse was to hide. She had acted against that impulse on Block Island; she had let the other impulse take over.

  Althea guessed that Jeanne wanted to discuss this secret, too; it waited behind the scenes, like the subject of Paul, to be brought up. She thought to herself, I can't take it back, but I don't have to discuss it.

  But now they were broaching another topic, which she had brought up. How her thoughts had wandered from Bryce! Althea noticed that Jeanne was looking at her curiously.

  "Paul and Bryce live together," Althea explained to Jeanne. "They're a couple. I thought you knew."

  "No," replied Jeanne, shaking her head. She felt a shock of surprise, as much at Althea as at Paul. If Paul was half of a couple, then why had he come to Block Island alone? she wondered. Why had Althea asked him? Why had he been so intent on making love to them? And why had Althea let herself pine so much for him?

  "He certainly didn't act like half of a couple," Jeanne commented.

  "No, he didn't," Althea agreed.

  "If Bryce exists, then where was he when Paul was on Block Island?"

  "Don't you remember, Jeanne? You're the one who told me. In that letter you sent to Block Island, you wrote that Paul had left me a message on your machine that he and Bryce were postponing a dinner party because Bryce was out of town."

  "I remember he left you a message, but I don't recall the substance of it. Remember, I didn't know who Paul was then." Jeanne paused. "But if that's true, it makes even less sense than I thought it did."

  Feeling judged, Althea said nothing. She felt that Jeanne wanted her to justify herself, and she couldn't.

  "Paul never told you about Bryce, and you never saw Paul's apartment?" Althea asked Jeanne.

  "The answer is no to both questions."

  "Then you haven't seen Paul all autumn?"

  "I didn't say that." Jeanne surprised herself by intimating what she'd intended to keep secret. Next, she realized, she was going to make a confession.

  Hearing Jeanne's reply, Althea grew tense. Did I expect this? she wondered. She was so upset that it was all she could do to keep her face frozen in a neutral expression and her voice noncommittal. "What have you come to tell me?" she asked Jeanne.

  Jeanne smiled, full of the secret she was about to reveal. "For a while, after we got back, I didn't hear from him, just as I didn't hear from you. Then one evening he showed up at the Green Heron Theater, and a few weeks later he asked me to go away with him." Though she tried to, Jeanne couldn't stop smiling. She'd triumphed over Althea, and she couldn't prevent herself from enjoying it.

  "Where did you go? When was it?" Althea's voice, through the lump in her throat, came out as a whisper.

  "To an inn in Connecticut. Over the Columbus Day weekend."

  "You're gloating, are you?" observed Althea. To Jeanne, Althea's voice sounded deadly quiet, like the stasis—Jeanne thought—in the eye of a storm.

  Jeanne took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "It really wasn't so much, Althea. Just overnight. Then Paul went to join his dance troupe on tour, and I came back to New York by myself. Actually he didn't tell me where he was going then, only that he wasn't returning with me. Nor did he ever hint of someone named Bryce in his life."

  For the moment Althea's curiosity got the better of her anguish. "How strange," she commented. "But they must still be together."

 
"How do you know that for sure?"

  Althea realized that it was only because Paul hadn't seen her that she'd assumed he was with Bryce. She had no evidence. "You're right, I don't," she said. "You say he went on tour after Columbus Day?"

  "That's what he wrote when he sent me the ticket to the dance. I assume you could verify the information if you wanted to," Jeanne added.

  Althea chose not to acknowledge Jeanne's sarcasm. "So he's been away for the past month?" she inquired.

  "Almost six weeks."

  "You're right, I don't know if he's with Bryce or not. I don't even know if he's still living on my block. I haven't ever run into him. Maybe he moved out of the penthouse."

  "The penthouse?"

  Suddenly they were no longer rivals trying to get the better of each other, but allies sharing information. How had it happened? Althea couldn't say. She began to tell Jeanne what she knew of Bryce, how he came from Mississippi, was a lawyer by training. How he suffered from a physical handicap whose cause she was ignorant of. She described Bryce's fabulous penthouse and the garden, thinking of the contrast with her studio apartment. She told Jeanne the impressions of Bryce gleaned from her one visit on that gold-and-green-lit May evening long ago. The occasion had come to seem almost mythical.

  "Even without knowing Bryce or knowing whatever happened between him and Paul, I feel sorry for him," Jeanne commented.

  Althea nodded. How arrogant of you, she thought to herself. With her fingernail she idly sketched a figure into the tablecloth—an abstract pattern of curving, intersecting lines. She shocked herself by what she said to Jeanne next. It came out before she had a chance to reconsider. "You went away with Paul, and you don't even love him. It's not fair," she protested. "I should have been the one to go." Biting her lip, Althea fought back tears of frustration and self-pity.

  "Maybe that's why he didn't ask you."

  "What do you mean?" Once again, Althea's curiosity was aroused.

  "He knew how you felt. He wanted a diversion, and he didn't want the attachment to get messy. He knew I would let go."