by Kitty Zeldis
“What we heard from London was . . . devastating. Being bombed—that must have been horrible.” Patricia knew they were lucky here, but morale had been low, what with the reports from Europe more and more dismal every week, and the cheerless rationing of just about everything. And all the young, or even not so young, men who were lost; Patricia was grateful that neither her husband nor brother had been one of them.
“We’re deep in the countryside, miles from London,” Maddy said. “So thank God we were protected. But of course we were aware of what was happening in the city . . .” Above her the skylight revealed the streaky gold-and-pink clouds, last remnants of the June day.
“How old are your boys?” Patricia had heard that Maddy had two sons. Or was it three?
“Maxwell and Roger are twelve. They’re twins. Charles is eight. We had another, Byron, but we lost him.”
“Maddy! I didn’t know.” Patricia used her free hand to grasp her friend’s.
“He was just four.” Maddy took a deep sip of her cocktail. “A bacterial infection. He was fine one day, droopy the next, burning with fever the day after that. He was gone within the week.”
“Oh God. I’m so, so sorry, Madeleine,” Patricia said.
Maddy dabbed at her eyes with her napkin. “I’m all right,” she said. “Having the others really got me through. God knows what I would have done without them.” She finished the drink and set it down. “But let’s not get all weepy. Not at a wedding.”
“No, not at a wedding,” Patricia agreed. “Especially not at this one. I’m so happy for Audrey. She hasn’t had an easy time of it.”
“So I hear,” Maddy said. “I’m surprised she stayed with him as long as she did.”
“It’s hard to disentangle yourself,” Patricia said. “Even from a bad marriage.”
Maddy put a hand on her wrist. “Here I’ve been rambling on and not letting you get a word in edgewise. How have you been? And that brother of yours? The Wandering Wolf?”
“Tom is—well, Tom.”
“You tell him I say hello, would you?” Maddy had been charmed by Tom. “Now tell me about your family. How old is your daughter?”
Patricia told her about the ordeal from which Margaux had emerged alive but not unscathed.
“But she’s all right then?” Maddy asked. “Over it completely?”
“Except for the leg, yes.”
“What about your husband? You haven’t said much about him.”
“He’s an attorney,” Patricia said, but didn’t add, who did not make partner and who has not stopped being bitter about it for one blessed minute. “Estate law.” He’d had to switch firms after the partnership debacle and oh, how his pride, his precious masculine pride, had suffered.
“Does he find the work . . . rewarding?”
Maddy had always been one to probe beneath the surface of things. That was part of her appeal. “I suppose so. We never really talk about it.” In Patricia’s view, Wynn’s days at work consisted of long, unutterably dreary hours sorting through the minutiae of people’s wills, the nuances of the ever-changing inheritance laws, and a parade of dissatisfied and dueling heirs. Fortunately, his salary was augmented by the ample money his father had left him. But even though Patricia had sympathized at first—Wynn’s work did sound stultifying—this turned to frustration, and eventually annoyance. Wynn just wouldn’t see where he’d gone wrong. He was certain that the reason he’d been passed over was pure spite, not because he went into work late and left early, or that he’d bungled a major account, causing the client to seek other counsel. It wasn’t his being passed over that had unmanned him in her eyes. It was his stubborn refusal to accept any responsibility for it.
“Men find it hard to talk about things like that. I sometimes think that’s our role.”
“Our role?” Patricia said.
“I feel it’s women’s job to help them understand themselves. They seem so ill-equipped for it.”
“Wynn’s not introspective. And he’s more interested in what he does outside the office—sailing, golf, things like that . . .” She found she did not have all that much to say about Wynn. Or rather, what she wanted to say, she couldn’t. Though Maddy had always been a good listener, and not one to gossip. “It’s just that—we’ve grown apart.”
“What do you mean?”
“I hate golf only slightly less than sailing. And the only time he talks about work is to complain.”
“So he’s not happy in his job.”
“No, he isn’t. But he doesn’t do anything to make it better. He seems to . . . luxuriate in self-pity.”
“And what about your love life?” That was Maddy—probing again.
Patricia waited a beat before answering. “Well, after so many years of marriage, what can you really expect . . .”
“Listen, Tricia. If things are all right in the bedroom, then you see all the other failings through a different lens. But if they’re not all right in the bedroom, they’re not all right anywhere.”
Patricia knew her friend was right but couldn’t bear hearing it. “Well, there’s not much I can do about it, is there?” She was sorry she had allowed this conversation to take this turn and wished she had another drink to fortify herself.
“Darling,” Maddy said, “that is where you’re dead wrong.” And she proceeded to give Patricia a detailed plan for all the things she might indeed do. Both fascinated and supremely embarrassed, Patricia nonetheless drank in every word. When Maddy finished, she stood and the two women embraced. “Come and see us, why don’t you? It’d be like old times.”
“I’d love that.” Patricia indulged in a brief fantasy: She, Wynn, and Margaux, walking through the English countryside. Drops of dew clung to fat roses that draped over low stone walls; in the distance, cottages with thatched roofs and sheep dotted the fields. In this fantasy, Margaux was as nimble as a goat, no walking stick in sight.
“I’ve got a book in the works,” Maddy continued. “You should come when it’s out. We’ll be having a party to celebrate, and I’ll be conducting a little tour of the house.”
“Book? Tour?” Had Patricia missed something?
“I didn’t tell you?” Patricia shook her head. “There are a few very fine portraits in the house. Some of them go back to Elizabethan times. I started to do some research—just for fun, you understand—but then I found out a few interesting tidbits, so I wrote an article for a local journal that a publisher happened to see and the next thing you know, I had a book contract. It’s nothing really but Phillip’s so tickled. Feels it does the family name honor and all that.”
“Maddy, that’s wonderful!” Patricia was able to summon the requisite enthusiasm but inside, jealousy pelted her like hail. Maddy had her husband, her children, her horses—and look, she still found time to research and write a book, and then say it was “nothing really.” In comparison, Patricia felt herself to be useless and idle.
“There you are!” Tori stood at the doorway. Patricia was so relieved to see her. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you two.” Maddy took Tori’s arm and Patricia followed behind. The discussion about Maddy’s book was mercifully over.
The three women took the elevator down and walked into the dining room. This was the most elaborate of all, with crimson drapes, ornate plasterwork, and a ceiling’s worth of frescoes that could have rivaled those in a Roman palazzo. The Metropolitan was, and had always been, unapologetic about its ostentation. Two hundred–odd guests took their seats at tables swathed in yards of white linen; crystal vases of flowers—white roses, white lilacs, gardenias—scented the air, and the lights from the wall sconces shone brightly. The guests ate, chattered, and smoked; blue-gray wisps hovered above their well-coiffed heads.
After the meal, the party moved to the front hall. As Tommy Dorsey and his band played “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You,” Audrey’s new husband led her in the first dance. When it was over, Patricia and Wynn joined the others on the floor. Despite his bulk—he ha
d played football at Yale and his solid heft had only grown heftier—Wynn was an expert dancer and Patricia enjoyed the showy flourishes he added. In his arms, she became reacquainted with an old tenderness she used to feel; she had always loved dancing with him.
“We don’t need a wedding,” she whispered to Wynn when the song ended. “Let’s go dancing for no reason at all. Sometime soon.”
“You want to go dancing?” he asked, still holding her close. “I’ll take you dancing. Just name the day. We can dance until your slippers are worn right through and you have to dance barefoot.” He nuzzled her neck.
Patricia thought of her conversation with Maddy in the library. She wanted to recapture the feeling she’d had about Wynn when they were newlyweds. They’d gone dancing all the time then; he used to call her Silver Slippers.
The musicians took a break when it came time for the bride to cut the first slice of wedding cake, a white, multitiered affair sprinkled with bits of coconut and studded with candied violets, which she of course fed to her groom. Then the servers took over, and sent thin slices all around the room. Wynn insisted on feeding Patricia, and though she was not in the least bit hungry, she appreciated the romantic gesture and went along with him. Through it all, Maddy’s advice was going through her mind. Men are really little boys at heart, she’d said. They yearn for novelty. Or at least the illusion of it. You have to seduce your husband over and over again. Pretend each time is the first time.
While Wynn waltzed the wife of the Yalie around the floor, Patricia went off in search of a glass of water; she felt parched from all that champagne and dancing.
“Is that—Patricia Harrison?”
Patricia turned to see Candace Cummings. Patricia and Candace had been friends at Smith, but unlike Maddy, with whom the rift had been geographically determined, the falling-out with Candace was abrupt, shaming, and painful.
“Hello, Candace,” Patricia said. Suddenly, she was sober.
“Long time,” Candace said. She stood there with her own drink, looking as voluptuous as she had at twenty. Her hair, an uncommon shade of auburn, had been styled into an omelet fold, parted at the back and crisscrossed into an intricate pattern. There were emeralds at her ears and throat, and her dress, a brilliant green figured satin, set off her fair skin. Patricia had heard that she’d married well.
“It has been,” Patricia agreed. “At least fifteen years.” She made no move to embrace Candace.
“I haven’t seen you since graduation.” Candace did not drink from the glass she held, but pressed it to her cheek. “How have you been?”
“Not too bad. My daughter, Margaux, was sick, you know, but she’s better now, all better, and she’s gotten so pretty . . . Wynn’s been busy, terribly busy, at work. It seems like there are so many people dying these days! It’s wills, wills, nothing but wills.” She was babbling, idiotically, to cover her discomfort.
“And your brother, Tom—how is he?”
“Oh, Tom is just Tom.” The question felt like an assault. “Maddy was asking about him too.”
“Was she?” Candace’s expression conveyed disdain but not surprise.
“Anyway, that’s enough about me! How are you? I heard you left New York.” Wouldn’t anyone come to rescue her? She looked around, hoping her desperation was not visible.
“I’m fine. My husband is from Georgia, and we’ve been in Savannah for the last several years.” She moved the glass away from her cheek to consider its amber contents but she still did not drink. “I have no children.”
“Tricia, Maddy’s leaving and she wants to say good night.” Here was Tori, heaven-sent to save her. Filled with relief, Patricia turned. “Excuse me.” She grabbed Tori’s arm in a way she knew to be unseemly but she couldn’t help herself. “It was good running into you.” She turned away, so she could not see the lie register on Candace’s face before she and Tori moved toward the door.
The summer after junior year, Patricia had invited Candace up to their summer place in Maine for the month of August. Although Tom was already romancing a girl—or two—in town, he had not been immune to Candace’s shining hair and the sight of her lush white body poured into her modest black bathing suit. He dropped the other girls and the two of them had quickly become a couple. When September came, Candace let it be known that Tom would soon ask her to marry him.
But when October and then November brought no word, she’d grown sad and withdrawn. Soon it was apparent why: Candace was pregnant. When she confronted Tom with her news, he offered sympathy, the name of a reputable and discreet doctor, and money. He did not, however, offer her a ring. Patricia had been furious with her brother. “She’s in love with you, Tommy,” she said. “You’re breaking her heart.”
“If I end things now, she’ll get over me,” Tom said. “But if I marry her without loving her, then I’ll turn her life—and mine—into a nightmare.”
“You got her pregnant,” Patricia had said.
“If you’re thinking I seduced and then abandoned her, you’re dead wrong,” Tom said. “It happened only once. I knew it was a bad idea, but she—she was one determined girl. And like a fool, I went along with it. But one foolish night isn’t worth a lifetime of misery.”
The gossip at school said that over Thanksgiving break, Candace’s mother whisked her off to that hush-hush doctor on Long Island to “take care” of her problem. She took a medical leave, and when she came back for the new term in January, she was a different girl, her buoyant shape deflated, her face wan. Even her wondrous hair seemed dull and lifeless. Before this, she’d been a chemistry major and talked of becoming a nurse or even a doctor. Then her grades slipped and she fell to the bottom of the class. One day in late spring of their senior year, she came up to Patricia on East Quad and said, “You should have warned me.” Then she walked away and they had never spoken again. Patricia had been so mortified that she never told anyone—not Tom, and not even Wynn.
Patricia felt unsettled by her run-in with her former friend, and after she had said good night to Maddy, she went right up to the bar. “I’ll have a vodka,” she said. “Straight up.” She downed the drink as if it were medicine, and by the time the evening was over, she’d reclaimed herself. What had happened between Tom and Candace was not her fault and she was not going to let this encounter ruin her plans. Candace was not the only one who’d been hurt by life; everyone had their own little plot of hell that they learned to navigate.
Wynn was in a fine mood on the taxi ride home. He’d made plans to meet his Yale pal for lunch and there had been the hint of some work being thrown his way. The meal—prime rib with haricots verts amandine, mashed potatoes, and gravy—had pleased him enormously and he had considered the champagne “first rate.”
“See, the Metropolitan isn’t so bad after all,” Patricia said, snuggling closer in the backseat. She was going to match his mood, whatever it took. In lieu of an answer, he squeezed her hand.
The apartment was quiet and dark. Henryka and Margaux were asleep, though Henryka had thoughtfully left the new Emerson fan on in their room. Wynn had already started undressing—the detested bow tie was tossed carelessly to the floor—when Patricia slipped into the adjoining master bath with the words, “Wait up for me.” Behind the closed door, she hurriedly got out of her dress and undergarments, taking the time to appraise herself in the mirror. She was still attractive; her breasts did not show evidence—or at least not much—of that perilous descent so common to women after thirty. Her waist and hips were trim, her skin soft.
She undid her hair, shaking it out and running her fingers through it to give it more volume. A few sprays of perfume at certain strategic spots. Then she slipped her gold evening sandals back on, and added a heavy gold chain she rarely wore; it had been a gift from her mother and she’d always thought it overpowering and even a tad vulgar. But right now it seemed just the thing. What would her excruciatingly reserved mother have said if she’d known how it was going to be used tonight? Patricia smiled at
the thought.
Naked except for her evening shoes and necklace, she stepped back into the bedroom. Wynn, stripped down to his boxer shorts, was stretched out on his side of the bed. She felt a rush of tenderness—he loved her, he was her husband and the father of her child. Into her mind floated a story he’d told her about the first—and only—time he’d gone hunting with his father, and how he blubbered like a baby when he picked up the bloodied carcass of the duck he’d shot. After that, he would go fishing but refused to pick up a gun ever again.
Right now, Wynn’s eyes were closed but she did not think he was sleeping because when she approached, he opened them right away.
“Tricia,” he said, clearly surprised. “What’s all this?”
“Do you like my outfit?” she said coyly. She felt silly; she felt excited. She’d been taught never to initiate, but to let her husband take the lead. Now here she was, breaking all the rules.
“I like it very much.” He ran his hands lightly up and down her thighs. To her surprise, she actually felt a thrum of the old thrill she had felt so often during their courtship but seldom during their marriage.
“I’m glad,” she said. She stood while he caressed her for a few minutes but when he tried to pull her down beside him on the bed, she held back. “What’s the rush? We have plenty of time.”
“What’s gotten into you anyway?” he said. But he was smiling and he allowed her to prolong things, even getting into the spirit of her game. Then he truly surprised her by shifting their bodies so that she was on top of him.
“I want to look at you,” he said. “I want to touch you.” And as he thrust inside her, he stroked her until she was convulsed by a wave of pleasure unlike any she could remember.
When it was over, he let one hand lazily caress her back while the other held a lit cigarette. Patricia was practically purring. But her work was not done; this triumph had conveniently paved the way for the next phase of her campaign. She just had to choose her words carefully.