Not Our Kind

by Kitty Zeldis

  “Tom. I’m being serious. Eleanor Moss—”

  “You mean Moskowitz,” he interrupted.

  “Moss,” she continued, “is the first real ray of hope we’ve had since the doctors told us Margaux would live. If you say or do anything, and I mean anything, to jeopardize that—” Her eyes pooled.

  “Trish,” Tom said. He let his bags drop softly to the lawn and grabbed her by the shoulders. “I’m an incorrigible tease. But I would never do anything to hurt you. Or Margaux. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I do,” she said. Back when they were children, Tom had been her ally, her protector, and her occasional coconspirator. He often interceded with their mother on her behalf—Tom was her clear favorite—like the time Patricia longed to take a trip to Bermuda with a group of girls and her mother forbade it, saying she was too young. He, and not their father, had taught her to drive, and he was her most faithful correspondent, sending her twice-weekly letters at summer camp and later at Smith. Those early letters were especially precious, for they contained installments of his hand-drawn comic strip, Petunia in Wonderland, which featured a little blond girl who embarked upon the kind of adventures that Patricia could only dream of having.

  She tipped her head so that it touched his chest. “It’s been hard though.”

  “Well, it’s about to get easier,” he said. He released her and picked up his bags. “Tommy is here, and he’s here to stay.”

  Back on the sunporch, Tom decided against gin and tonics; he wanted to make sweet Manhattans instead. He was a stickler about their preparation, inspecting the vermouth bottle to make sure it was not dusty and insisting that the drinks be stirred and not shaken. “Shaking makes bubbles,” he said. “And bubbles change everything.” Patricia didn’t think she could have detected the difference but was willing to concede that the stirred Manhattans, with their slightly caramel flavor and hint of cherry juice, were delicious.

  “Can I have a sip, Mother? Please?” Margaux asked. She was seated on one of the wicker chairs, her walking stick on the floor nearby. Patricia hesitated. Had Wynn been there, she would have said no. But he wasn’t, and so she gave her daughter a taste.

  “It’s so good!” Margaux said, wiping her mouth crudely with the back of her hand. Really, since her illness, the girl’s manners had gone straight to hell. “Like drinking silk.” Patricia was mollified by the description. Margaux had her own distinctive way of looking at things, and there were moments when an observation of hers filled Patricia with a rush of pride. This was one of them. By the time they needed to leave for the train station, Patricia was in a very fine mood indeed.

  “Come with us?” Margaux asked her uncle. She had changed into a long navy blue skirt and white blouse. Her freshly brushed hair was held in place by a headband.

  “I’m going to take a shower before dinner,” Tom said. “Shake off the road dust. I’ll be all fresh and ready to meet your new tutor when you get back. Do you think she’ll make me a hat?”

  “Silly!” Margaux said as he hugged her. “It’s her mother who makes the hats.” Margaux returned the hug. Patricia’s eyes met Tom’s over her daughter’s head. Don’t worry, he seemed to be communicating. She’ll be all right. Everything will be all right. With Tom around, Patricia could almost believe this was true.

  As soon as Eleanor had arrived and settled in, they all sat down to a dinner of boiled lobsters, corn on the cob, and tomatoes from a farm stand down the road. Henryka passed around a stack of white dish towels, each bordered by a stripe of a different color.

  “It’s a bib,” Tom said, seeing Eleanor’s confusion. “Tuck it into your collar.”

  Eleanor nodded, but Patricia could see that she was even more daunted by the flushed and steaming crustacean set before her. “There’s a claw cracker right by your fork,” she began.

  “Lobster’s a down-and-dirty meal,” said Tom. “You’re supposed to get messy eating it. Let me show you.”

  He got up, and leaning over her shoulder, picked up the claw. The shell was soft enough to crack with his bare hands. Liquid squirted out and landed squarely on the bib. “Oh!” exclaimed Eleanor, clearly surprised. Tom handed her a napkin and she dabbed at the spot. “Good thing we protected you,” he said, using the lobster fork to extract the succulent meat from the broken shell. Tom dipped the morsel in butter and offered her back the fork. She chewed slowly. “Delicious,” she said.

  “Good girl!” he said. “That’s the spirit.” Eleanor lifted her fork to her mouth for another piece. “Have you ever had steamers? Or oysters?” Tom was working on the other claw now. She shook her head. “Henryka, did you hear that?” he called out. “Miss Moss has never had oysters. We have to remedy that. Can we add your incomparable oyster stew to the menu anytime soon?”

  “I make for you, Mr. Tom,” Henryka said, coming in from the kitchen with a basket full of dinner rolls. “I know you like.” She placed the rolls on the table right in front of him.

  “Not like, Henryka, my love. I crave your oyster stew. It’s my all-time, flat-out number one favorite. Do you know that I was raving about your oyster stew when I was in Paris?”

  “Oh, go on now,” Henryka said, but she was all smiles and her cheeks had turned pink. “You teasing me.”

  “I’m not teasing,” Tom said. “Every last word is true.” He stopped his dissection of Eleanor’s lobster long enough to seize Henryka’s hand and kiss it. Henryka giggled, an unexpectedly girlish sound.

  Patricia watched as Henryka—widowed, in her sixties, the mother of three grown daughters—basked in the warm pool of Tom’s attention. And she was equally aware of how Eleanor, her lobster meat temporarily forgotten, was looking up at him with a similarly besotted expression. That was Tom, all right. Always enjoyed chatting up the ladies, young and old. Couldn’t help himself. He had started with their mother and widened his circle to include Patricia, all the female teachers he’d ever had, the mothers and sisters of his school chums, Margaux and her friends, both past and present. And then of course there were the women he actually dated. Lord help them all.

  But Tom was, in his own words, a gentleman. True, there had been Candace, but that was a long time ago. And there was that woman in Paris, though according to Tom she had been the one to end their liaison. Besides, all that happened on another continent; Tom’s French affair was not likely to be known or talked about here. Argyle was different though, and she’d have to trust Tom to remember that. As she looked at Eleanor’s face, the slightly parted lips and shining eyes, she realized that she’d have to make doubly sure that he did.

  Nine

  Eleanor and Margaux quickly settled into a pleasant summer routine: three mornings a week they worked on English, history, and the rudiments of Latin; the two other mornings were devoted to math, science, and French, the latter subject aided and abetted by Tom, who had lived in France and was fluent. After lunch, they engaged in some nonacademic pursuit, like drawing, which Margaux enjoyed. Or Tom would drive them to nearby Lavender Lake, where Margaux would swim, an activity at which she still excelled. She refused to swim at the club, despite its attractive, glittering pool; to do so would mean to expose her leg to the pity and curiosity of the other members.

  By contrast, the lake was deserted and quite lovely. Cattails and marsh grass ringed its perimeter; the water was still and clear. Sitting on one of Patricia’s old blankets in her polka-dot swimsuit, Eleanor saw geese, ducks, and on one memorable occasion, a regal pair of swans skimming the tranquil surface. The next day, Tom brought along binoculars. While Margaux played by the water’s edge, they looked for birds or sat and talked. Tom had been so many places, seen so many things; Eleanor felt quite provincial in comparison. But it was also not entirely clear to her what he did, at least apart from meeting fascinating people in a variety of exotic settings. Curiosity finally won out over discretion, and she asked him flat out.

  “What do you mean by do?” he said, tilting his head as if he’d gotten water in his ear.
>
  “You know—for a living,” she said.

  “Ah, that . . .” His head resumed its ordinary angle and he smiled. “Well, the fact is, I don’t have to earn a living. So I’m free to do what I want.”

  “Which is?”

  “I meet with people—artists mostly. I look at their work and talk to them about it. I give them advice—only when they ask, of course. But plenty of them do. People seem to think I have an eye. They trust me. And I help them sell their work. Or at least I try to.”

  “So you’re a dealer of sorts.”

  “Not exactly,” he said. “But does it matter? Do I have to be any one thing or another? Why put a label on it? Why not just live?”

  “Because you do need to put a name to whatever it is that you’re doing,” Eleanor said earnestly. “By naming it, you’re laying claim to something. To yourself.”

  “I never thought of it that way,” he said. He seemed to be regarding her in a fresh light.

  “If you really were a dealer, what would you do?”

  “I suppose I might rent a space and show some of the older work I’ve collected. And the newer work I champion.”

  “That sounds intriguing. Exciting even.”

  “It would be, wouldn’t it? I’d love to have a space where I could show the work . . .” He was musing now. “My apartment is so . . . crowded. If I had an uncluttered, well-lit space, the work would be seen to greater advantage. That would help the artists too.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You,” Tom said, “are an enthusiast. Are you always such an ardent cheerleader?”

  “When I like someone, yes,” she said.

  “I’ll consider that a compliment,” he said, eyes steady on her now.

  “It was meant as one.” Her own look did not falter, but stayed locked on his. He had dark brows, like his sister, and his cheeks were sun kissed and pink. Eleanor yearned to reach out and touch him—

  “Eleanor, Uncle Tom, look what I found!” Margaux came lumbering up from the edge of the water, one hand on her walking stick, the other clutched around something that turned out to be a butterfly she’d captured. The mood was broken, but only temporarily. Something had shifted between them.

  And the next day, seated on an old blanket near the water’s edge, the glassy surface of the lake reflecting back the sky and clouds above, Tom returned to the conversation as if they had only paused a few minutes earlier.

  “You take things seriously, don’t you?” he said, reaching for her hand. “Very seriously, it seems to me.” He began to tap out a quick rhythm on the inside of her wrist.

  “Yes, I do.” The touch of his fingers against her skin was tantalizing and hypnotic; she didn’t want it to stop.

  “There are already a bunch of galleries on East Tenth Street. It might be a good idea to rent a place there. And I can think of at least four artists whose work I’d want to show.” Tom looked at her. “I’d need someone to help out though. A person to sit at the front desk and to handle some of the office work. What about you, Eleanor? Are you up for another job?”

  “You’re teasing, right?”

  “Not exactly, no.”

  “I have a job, remember?”

  “But it won’t be forever. Margaux should go back to school at some point.”

  Eleanor knew that was true. Still, working in a gallery? “I don’t know much about art,” she said.

  “You’d learn. You’d be a natural, I can tell.”

  Eleanor studied his face; he seemed sincere. And he was right: she could learn if she chose to—about color and line, brushstroke and technique. Hadn’t she always been a good student, one of the best in fact? If she set her mind to it, she would learn about painting the way she’d learned calculus and Latin, the puzzling variables and cumbersome declensions resolving themselves into perfectly balanced equations and graceful tropes and similes. Of course, that was assuming she wanted such a job, which she was not at all sure she did. Teaching was more than a job for her; teaching felt like a calling. But she liked that Tom wanted to share his world with her; he was inviting her in.

  They stayed later than usual that day, neither one wanting to pull away and leave. When they finally did, Eleanor felt as if she were cocooned in a soft glow, even as she was helping Margaux into the backseat of the car and then climbing in to sit beside her.

  “I think you should come to live with us when we get back to New York City,” Margaux said, jolting Eleanor from her thoughts. The girl rested her head—the blond hair dark and saturated with lake water—lightly on Eleanor’s shoulder.

  “Live with you?” Eleanor said, straining for a neutral tone. But the remark alarmed her.

  “I’d really like that,” Margaux said. She withdrew her head to study Eleanor. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course I would,” Eleanor said. “But I don’t think it would be the best thing for you.”

  “Why not?” Margaux asked. “I’m doing really well with my work, aren’t I?”

  “You’re doing beautifully,” Eleanor said. The car window was open and warm air rushed in. “It’s not about that at all.”

  “Then what?”

  “I think you need to go back to school,” Eleanor said. “Maybe not right away. But soon.”

  “I don’t want to go back,” Margaux said.

  “Why not, pumpkin?” Tom, who had been quiet until now, spoke without turning around. “If Eleanor says you’re ready, I’m sure she’s got a good reason for saying it.”

  “I’ll be a cripple. Everybody will make fun of me. I can’t stand it.”

  “Margaux, don’t ever use that word about yourself,” Eleanor said.

  “Why not? Other people do. Even Daddy called me that once.” Her hair, now dry, was blowing around her face; she gathered it in her hand and formed it into a loose knot at the nape of her neck.

  “He did?” Eleanor’s eyes sought out Tom’s in the rearview mirror.

  “Yes, when he and Mother were having an argument.”

  “I doubt he meant it,” Tom said.

  “Oh, yes he did,” Margaux said.

  “Well, I’m with Eleanor on this one,” said Tom. “It’s an ugly word. If your father used it, he must have been upset. But you shouldn’t use it about yourself. And as for going to school—”

  “I told you: I won’t go back there.”

  “What about a different school?”

  “You mean one for cripples?”

  “Margaux!” Eleanor said. “Your uncle is right. You need friends.”

  “I have you,” said Margaux, taking Eleanor’s hand and squeezing it.

  “Friends your own age,” Eleanor said. She returned the gesture, and kept Margaux’s hand—tanned from the sun, nails bitten painfully short—in her lap.

  “I’ll think about it,” Margaux said in a way that clearly indicated she would do nothing of the sort. They had reached the house. She yanked open the car door and, putting her walking stick on the pebbled ground first, got out. Then she moved with impressive alacrity toward the door. Eleanor stepped out and watched her go. Tom followed and came to stand by Eleanor. He said nothing, only placed his hand on her shoulder. Eleanor did not acknowledge the gesture in any way. But his fingers against her bare skin were so pleasurable that she remained where she was, not ready for the sensation to end.

  Two nights later, Eleanor sat alone in her room in the guest cottage, fountain pen poised over the letter she was writing to Ruth. I think I’m in love with Tom Harrison, she wrote in her clear, firm hand. I love him with all my heart. There, she’d admitted it to herself, and now to Ruth too. Then she read the words over again. What a clichéd and foolish pair of sentences. She wadded up the sheet of paper and dropped it in the wastebasket.

  She did want to tell Ruth about Tom though. She could describe him: his height, the fine shock of blond hair that spilled over his forehead, the skin that burned so easily. And she could tell her friend how she loved the impish, mocking look in his eyes, the sound of
his laughter. Also, about their idyllic trips to the lake, the perfect cocktails he mixed, the small offerings—a bit of sea glass from the beach in Maine, jagged edges worn smooth and color muted by the water’s erosion—with which he surprised Margaux, the amusing anecdotes he culled and read aloud from the local paper, the way he regaled them with stories of Paris, which he said was dirty and dilapidated but also beautiful and alluring, if in a tragic, ruined sort of way. Eleanor could tell Ruth all that.

  Was that love though? Wasn’t it just a great big schoolgirl crush, even if she was a little too old for such a thing? Eleanor thought of Ira. Had she loved him? They had avoided the word, as if by tacit consent. She’d liked Ira, and had thought he’d make a good husband: serious, practical, kind. What she had loved—and she admitted this only to herself—was what he did, with his hands and his lips, to her body. Was that the same as loving him? She didn’t know and had no one to ask. Her mother had met her father when she was eighteen; he was two years older and her brother’s best friend. They were married within three months—Irina’s mother wouldn’t allow him to spend time with her daughter unless he had serious intentions.

  “Did you love Papa?” Eleanor had asked Irina.

  “I learned to love him,” Irina said. “That’s even better.”

  Eleanor looked at the sheet of paper, still blank. It was almost midnight and she was alone in the cottage; Tom and the Bellamys had gone off to the club for drinks and dancing, Henryka was in her third-floor room, and Margaux had gone to bed about an hour ago.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to join us, Eleanor?” Patricia had asked before they left; just last week she had asked Eleanor to use her first name and Patricia had stopped using Miss Moss except when introducing her to someone new. Her employer had looked especially pretty in a silver voile dress and a cluster of black and crystal beads knotted at her throat, covered with a shawl made of the same material as the dress. “There’s plenty of room in the car, isn’t there, Wynn?” Wynn had hesitated just a beat too long before saying, “Of course there is. The more the merrier.”