by Kitty Zeldis
She looked at him fondly, remembering how firmly wedded he’d been to his convictions, even as a boy. The Christmas he was twelve and she nine, he’d earnestly lectured their father about the need to treat the servants “like human beings” and insisted that in addition to the cash tucked discreetly into an envelope, each of them receive something of a more personal nature. But Tom had always made his own rules and paid a price for doing so; it was a price she’d never wanted to pay.
Tom reached for the check when it came, one of his inbred gallant gestures, and he hugged her tightly on the sidewalk as they were about to part. “I do assume that you’re sleeping with her,” she said.
“I don’t kiss and tell, sister dear.” He put his arm out to hail a taxi.
“Since when?”
But he only smiled and waved as she got in and the cabbie took off. Patricia waved back and settled into the seat. They had invited Audrey, Harold, and another couple for dinner this evening and she wanted to get home as soon as possible. Although it had been a relief to talk to Tom, their conversation had also stirred up disquieting feelings about Wynn. And about Eleanor. It was bad enough that Wynn had behaved so stupidly around the girl. And that her daughter kept pestering her about when Eleanor could come to visit, something Patricia was not keen to have happen.
“Why can’t I see her?” Margaux had asked during their last telephone call. “Or at least write to her?”
“I just don’t think it’s wise,” Patricia said.
“But you haven’t given me one good reason.”
That familiar—and irritating—whine had crept into her voice and the sound of it set Patricia on edge.
“Because I’m your mother and I say so,” Patricia snapped. “Now can we please talk about something else?”
“I’m just going to write her myself,” said Margaux. “You won’t know and you won’t be able to stop me.”
“If I have to ask the school to monitor your correspondence, I will.” Even as Patricia made this threat, it sickened her slightly. Was this the relationship she wished to cultivate with her daughter—adversarial and filled with suspicion?
“If you’d just tell me why you don’t want me to see her, maybe I could understand . . .”
Now Margaux had switched from the petulance of a child to the reasonableness of an adult.
“I know she was a wonderful influence on you.” Patricia tried to choose her words carefully. “And that she helped bring you out of your shell. But her role in your life ought to diminish now, not increase. Your dependence on her is . . . unhealthy. You need to find other confidantes, like your friends. Or me.”
Patricia had surprised herself with that. It made her sound, well, jealous of Eleanor. Which perhaps was true.
“I don’t believe you,” Margaux said. “I think you don’t want her to be my friend because she lives on Second Avenue and her family hasn’t got any money. And because she’s a Jew. You and Daddy—you don’t have any friends who are Jews, do you? So you don’t want me to have any either.”
Patricia had gone silent. Her daughter was growing more astute and more liable to lay bare motivations that Patricia would rather keep under wraps, even—no, especially—from herself.
“There may be some truth to what you’re saying, though I wouldn’t put it quite like that. But you need to trust that your father and I know what’s best for you. You’re not an adult yet, and you need to listen to us.”
After that, she found her feelings toward Eleanor had calcified and hardened: her name became a reminder of complexities Patricia didn’t want to engage with or face. And just today, barely an hour ago, she’d learned that Eleanor might actually become her sister-in-law. The news bothered her—it bothered her a great deal. And it would bother Wynn too—there was no doubt about that. She could just imagine the quarrels that would ensue if Tom went ahead with his crazy plan.
Patricia shifted irritably in the seat. Was she really bigoted and narrow-minded, as Tom had suggested? No—it wasn’t that Eleanor was Jewish, though that might have been the start. It was that Eleanor was part of a larger problem. Before her, their lives had a certain predictable flow. But she disrupted it, just because of who she was and what she represented. Patricia didn’t like the disruption, and felt she wasn’t equipped to handle it.
The cabbie came to a sudden halt and she was pitched forward, putting her hands out to brace herself against the impact. “Can you please drive a little more carefully?”
“Sorry, lady,” the cabbie said. “But that guy was jaywalking and I had to stop or I’d have hit him.”
Patricia said nothing. The jaywalker, oblivious, continued across the street. The nerve of some people. But no one was hurt. No one had been hurt—or at least not badly hurt—on that June day when Patricia’s cab rammed into Eleanor’s. Yet she was still feeling the reverberations of that accident, right up to this very minute.
When they arrived at her building, Patricia’s watch said it was almost 5:00; her guests weren’t due until 7:30. She wondered whether Wynn would be home yet. Despite their separate rooms, they still continued to have dinner together most evenings, especially if she was expecting company. And it was Friday; he often left the office early on Fridays.
When she opened the door, she smelled roasted chicken. She had forgotten about this evening’s menu when she’d ordered at lunch; now she would have to eat chicken again. “Evening, Mrs. Bellamy,” Bridget’s clear voice rang out. Patricia sighed. She did not want to engage with the woman and she went directly into her room to change.
She’d just zipped up her dress—black satin with three-quarter sleeves and a square neckline—when Wynn came into the room.
“For you,” he said, handing her a bouquet of small, blush pink rosebuds tied with a black velvet ribbon. “I know you always order flowers for the table, but these are just for you.”
“Thank you.” She was surprised, and even touched by the gift. She also felt a little guilty for the harsh way she’d spoken about him at lunch. Patricia went to fill a round, cut-crystal vase with water and when she returned to her room, Wynn had gone. She continued her toilette, but when she was looking through her jewelry box for a pair of earrings, she saw the pearl-and-diamond pair Wynn had so crudely planted in Eleanor’s pocket and her moment of tenderness withered instantly. The evening would have to be endured somehow. She didn’t know how many more such evenings she could take.
But to her relief, Wynn was on his absolute best behavior. He told jokes, poured cocktails, flattered the men, lavished compliments on the women. Although he outpaced them all in the number of drinks he consumed—Patricia was keeping an eye on that—he seemed perfectly in control, and even charming. She relaxed and began to enjoy herself. She had felt cut off lately, her own doing of course, and it was good to have people in the apartment, laughing, having fun. Bridget’s dinner was exclaimed over, as was the Viennese Sacher torte that came from the bakery on Second Avenue Patricia had discovered when she’d visited Irina’s hat shop. So when Audrey excused herself to “powder her nose” and Wynn stepped out of the room a moment later, Patricia didn’t even think to connect the two departures.
It was only when Audrey returned looking a bit flustered that Patricia’s inner alarm began a quiet but insistent bleating.
She took Audrey into the foyer, on the pretext of showing her the new chandelier she’d just had installed. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes, I just need to fix my face.”
Patricia saw that her lipstick was smeared. But Audrey had just gone to the bathroom and she was holding her small evening bag. Why hadn’t she reapplied her lipstick then?
From her vantage point in the foyer, Patricia could see Wynn, who had come back into the room and was now holding forth about the recently implemented Marshall Plan in Europe. He spoke without hesitation, but she saw that telltale mottling of his cheeks. Audrey had gone into the bedroom and Patricia followed her.
“Audrey, you can tell me.
You seem—off.”
Audrey wouldn’t meet her eyes at first and when she did, her expression was pitying. “It’s nothing, really. I mean, we’re all used to Wynn’s wandering hands, only he used to be more . . . playful about it. Now he’s just getting, well, rather boorish.”
Patricia was speechless. They were joined by the rotund, bespectacled, and ever jovial Harold. “Who’s being boorish, precious?” He hovered close.
“Oh, just Wynn got a little too familiar, that’s all. I don’t want to make a scene, and I’m sure he didn’t really mean anything by it—”
“Didn’t mean anything by what?” asked Harold.
Audrey looked from her husband to Patricia, clearly deciding how much to reveal. “Wynn followed me to the bathroom and when I came out, he tried to kiss me.”
No wonder her lipstick was smudged.
“Kiss you!” Harold seemed distinctly less jovial.
“Audrey, I’m so very sorry,” Patricia managed to choke out. Mortification had swallowed her whole. “He’s been drinking, and when he drinks he can get a little—”
“I know how he can get. But he stuck his hand right down my dress too.” Audrey gestured to the bodice of her low-cut brocade that exposed a generous swath of cleavage.
“How dare he.” Harold’s arm went protectively around his wife. “Patricia, you don’t have to see us out. And I’m sure you’ll understand why we’ll never come back here.” The look in his eyes was scalding.
Patricia said nothing as Audrey adjusted her shawl and touched her hands to her hair, trying to envision how she could patch together the ruins of the evening. But Wynn came over and intercepted them at the door. “Leaving so soon?” He let his hand rest lightly on Audrey’s shoulder and the disdain with which she shook him off could not have been lost on Joan and Cameron Barlow, whose seats in the dining room gave them a full view of the foyer.
“Please keep your hands off my wife,” Harold said coldly.
“Excuse me, old man.” Wynn retreated. “No offense meant at all. I just thought we were among friends here.”
“We thought so too. But you haven’t behaved like a friend. Or a gentleman. You’re just lucky I’m not a violent sort or else I’d punch you.”
Wynn’s expression looked bemused, but his face was now a riot of splotchy red patches.
Harold gave Patricia a quick peck on the cheek before taking Audrey’s elbow and ushering her out. Patricia stood at the door for a moment with her back to Cameron and Joan. She couldn’t face them, she just couldn’t—
“Whose drink can I freshen?” Wynn said loudly. No one said anything. When Patricia finally turned around, she caught the look that passed between the Barlows and within minutes, they were saying how it was late, and that they needed to be going.
After the Barlows had left, Wynn refilled his own glass and offered to refill hers. Patricia just shook her head. She’d sent Bridget home, and asked her to come in early to do the cleaning up tomorrow. For the last fifteen or so minutes, she’d been trembling with anger, and the effort of containment caused a pain that was almost physical. But now that she and Wynn were alone, her anger evaporated and she was left hollow and spent. “Why?” she asked.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “If a woman walks around half naked like that, what can she expect?”
“That her host will have the manners and self-control not to go sticking his hand down her dress or his tongue in her mouth.”
“Maybe if her host’s own wife had a shred of passion or even affection for him, he might not have to resort to the charms of strangers.”
“Oh, so this is my fault.”
“In a way—yes.” He downed the drink quickly and poured another.
“You’ve had enough,” she said. How many had he had? She’d lost count.
“Since when did you become Carrie Nation? I notice you never criticize your brother when he ties one on—”
“Because my brother doesn’t ambush the dinner guests outside the bathroom.”
“No. Just the tutor.”
“That again? She hasn’t worked for us in months.” He didn’t answer. “You embarrassed me tonight. I’ll never be able to invite them here again. And don’t think they won’t tell everyone we know. You’ll be banned, and I’ll be banned right along with you. I should file for divorce.”
“You’d never do that.” His voice was quiet but mocking. “Never.”
“That’s what you think. But I may surprise you yet.”
He shook his head. “Oh no. We’re done with surprising each other. All done.” He finished his drink and walked out of the room.
Once he was gone, Patricia poured herself a drink and sipped it slowly, so that the ice in the glass began to melt and the scotch turned from deep amber to a pale and watery yellow. It must have been very late—two or three o’clock in the morning—when she finally went into her bedroom. The cluster of pink rosebuds had opened and she could smell their sweetness as she approached her dressing table. She opened the window—it faced the back of the building—and picked up the crystal vase. There were a few seconds of silence, and then a flooding of satisfaction when the vase crashed to the pavement below.
Twenty-Six
Living alone was everything Eleanor had thought it would be. Every time she turned the key and walked in, she thought, Mine, mine, mine. How good that felt. How right. This place was both sanctuary and oasis. She invited her college friends over to show it off. They oohed and aahed as they drank the martinis she’d made and looked around at her secondhand Louis XIV reproduction armchair, the diminutive marble-topped table she had lugged home from the curbside, the cloudscape by Ansel Adams that had been a gift from Tom. Two of these girls were still living at home, and one of them was engaged. Another was living at the Barbizon Hotel for Women on East Sixty-Third Street and she too was engaged. Not one of them was on her own in the way Eleanor was—not transitional, not finite, but open-ended—and Eleanor could tell her solitary living arrangement, an arrangement that challenged the norm, was puzzling to them. Somehow, that pleased her too.
Even Ruth, another visitor, acted like Eleanor’s decision to live alone was a temporary aberration, and that Eleanor would soon assume her designated roles in the familiar female pageant: fiancée, bride, wife, mother. “Maybe you’ll be next,” Ruth said. “That Tom sounds like a dreamboat.”
“He hasn’t asked me to marry him,” Eleanor said. “And even if he did, I’m not sure I’d say yes.”
“But you’ve slept with him.” Ruth looked down at her hands, where the infinitesimal diamond sparkled on her finger.
“Haven’t you slept with Marty?”
“Yes, but that was after he’d proposed.”
“So my sleeping with Tom means I have to marry him?” Last summer, Eleanor would have said yes to that question.
“Well, no, but, if you . . .” Ruth looked very uncomfortable.
“Sleep with a man you’re not going to marry then you’re a tramp?” Eleanor knew that was what Wynn Bellamy thought. And that his assumption, incorrect at the time, that she was sleeping with Tom meant that she automatically would be available to him too.
“I never said that, I only meant that your reputation—” Ruth vainly tried to retrieve the situation.
“It’s all right,” Eleanor said. “Really it is. Now tell me again about the dress.”
Happy to leave the topic behind, Ruth launched into the relative merits of floor versus tea length, taffeta versus moiré.
That evening, she had a date with Tom. They had dinner at his place and then strolled east, to Fourth Avenue, which was lined with secondhand bookstores. A few were still open, and they wove in and out of the shops. Tom drifted toward the art books and Eleanor toward the poetry, where she found, on a bottom shelf, a small, clothbound first edition of A Few Figs from Thistles—poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay. She blew the layer of dust off the top and opened it up.
We were very tired, we were very merry—
&n
bsp; We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
Tom came up behind her and read over her shoulder. “Is she one of your favorites?”
Eleanor nodded. “She was a Vassar girl, you know. And she came up to do a reading while I was at school. It was—enthralling.”
“We should do it,” Tom said.
“Do what?”
“Ride the Staten Island Ferry together. That’s what inspired the poem.”
“Actually I’ve never been on the Staten Island Ferry.”
“And you call yourself a New Yorker?”
“Born and bred.” She smiled.
“We have to fix that. Immediately.”
“You want to ride the ferry? Now?”
“Why not?” he asked. “It’s Friday. They leave every thirty minutes.”
“All right,” she said, caught up in his sense of adventure. “Let’s do it.”
Tom bought the book—“We’ll read stanzas of the poem to each other on the boat,” he said—and then they took the subway down to the terminal, where they were able to board almost immediately.
“It’s such a nice night,” said Tom. “Let’s go stand outside.”
Eleanor followed him up the wide metal stairs that led to the deck. The Manhattan skyline unfurled as the ferry slowly pulled away from the dock, tall buildings lambent against the darkened sky. There were three sharp bleats and a colony of seagulls fluttered and then settled on the worn wooden pilings that lined the waterfront. Tom put his arm around Eleanor and she could feel the edges of the book, which he had tucked in his pocket. Up above, the moon shone bright as a dime.
“I have some good news for you,” Tom said. “I rented a gallery space. It’s not on East Tenth Street though. It’s on Hudson Street.”