Love In the Air

by James Collins

  “It was,” Peter said, “when I asked you to marry me.”

  Charlotte just nodded. Then she moved her face toward Peter’s. He reciprocated, and they kissed.

  6

  In southwestern France in October, the saffron blooms, and the purple of its blossoms matches the purple on the rim of the horizon when the sun has just set. Each evening, Julia watched the sun set from her flagstone terrace, and she loved to see that rim appear. She loved her house, and she loved it in this season, when the trees and grasses were green but on the cusp of their turn to gold. It was still quite warm during the day, although damp and chilly at night, especially if you lived in an old stone house heated only by fireplaces. Previous owners had put in plumbing and electricity, and she and Dick had often vowed to heat at least part of the house, but her heart had not been in it, so this was never done. (The cold bothered Dick quite a lot, and one effect of their failing to modernize was that Julia was able to spend more time here alone.) She loved the house. She loved eating trout and perch and walnuts and plums. She loved the friends she had made; she loved M. and Mme. Gorotiaga, the couple who worked for her. She loved the landscape with its outcroppings of limestone and the rows of erect poplars. She loved the nearby castles, villages, churches, ruins, dolmens, and caves. Layers of civilization had been laid down here over tens of thousands of years, so, sitting on her terrace watching the sun go down, Julia felt she was part of something very ancient. It was a moment not only of pleasure but also of awe and exaltation.

  When Julia stayed at her house in France in October, her day would typically go something like this: She woke up at about six, when the three knife-edged shafts of light came through gaps in the curtains, and luxuriated for a while in the warmth of her duvet. Almost invariably, since Dick didn’t like to come at that time of year, she was alone. Julia, meanwhile, would never even consider spending the night here with someone else. M. and Mme. Gorotiaga would be scandalized. More important, it simply wasn’t something she wanted. This was her own queendom (only nominally shared with Dick) and, like Elizabeth I, she did not want to taint or complicate it with the presence of some man to whom she was beholden. She hated the idea of someone feeling he was her equal here and that he had been initiated into the mysteries of the place by virtue of what had transpired between them. The second that a man began to act as if the house were his own—leaving stuff around, giving an order to Mme. Gorotiaga, helping himself to what was in the refrigerator—she would want to have him shot. She didn’t want to see dried shaving cream with whiskers in the sink. And she didn’t want to experience, here, the emotional instability and vulnerability that would accompany a covert romance. Here she wanted to be Her Most Serene Highness, to be calm, the mistress of herself and her estate. She loved having friends stay, but a man on the sly who’d share her bed? No. And yet every morning, as she stretched and sighed and felt so satisfied in her aloneness, an undercurrent ran in exactly the opposite direction. These thoughts only occasionally rose to the surface, but they were always present. How happy, how happy, how happy she would be if there were someone next to her whom she loved, who loved her, and with whom she would exult in sharing this place. Seeing them through his eyes, her pleasure in every tint of light, every stone, every petal, would be doubled—no, brought to the second power. Who was this man? Oh, right, she would recall, he didn’t exist, and love didn’t either.

  Rousing herself, finally, she leapt out of bed and dressed as quickly as she could; there was always that moment after she had taken off her nightgown when her whole body was covered in goose bumps. And despite the rugs that lay overlapping everywhere, she always put her bare foot down on stone, which felt like a cold puddle. Her toilet consisted of splashing cold water on her face (the water took forever to become hot). Then she ran downstairs and headed for the kitchen and its fiery hearth. Mme. Gorotiaga would already be cooking something. But passing a set of French doors, she hesitated and then stepped outside for a few minutes to see what kind of day it was, breathe the air, and get even colder.

  Mme. Gorotiaga made coffee and warmed milk, and Julia poured them into her bowl. She used lots of sugar, and as she drank she ate bread with butter and jam. (At home her breakfast was austere, but she couldn’t get bread and butter and jam like this at home.) Sitting at the old kitchen table with its foot-wide planks, Julia ate and listened to Mme. Gorotiaga, a stout, tobacco-colored woman in her sixties, retail the gossip of the town—who was sick, where someone’s son had moved, how the newest English couple was regarded, who was paying court to a widow. Mme. Gorotiaga asked about the friends of Julia’s who had visited, particularly that very pretty blond mademoiselle who came so often. This was Julia’s best friend, Anna. How was her son? Would she ever marry again? “She can’t find the right man,” Julia would say, and of course Mme. Gorotiaga would tell her that if every woman waited to find the right man no woman would ever get married. “She once had her heart broken very badly,” Julia would answer. “I’m not sure she ever recovered, and I guess she’s afraid.”

  The kitchen was dark usually, but in this season at this time of day, if the sun was out, light did come in from a pair of windows to the right of where Julia generally sat. Julia loved the textures that the light revealed, the old wood, the worn tiles, the rust on the stove and the bristly iron even where there was no rust, Mme. Gorotiaga’s hands and woolen scarf, the lumpy wall. The only thing in the whole kitchen that was smooth, Julia noticed one day, was a glazed yellow bowl with a blue stripe that held some Majorcan pears. The brown pears’ fur filtered the light, whereas it slid around the yellow glaze. (One morning Julia had suddenly been beset by panic. Oh God, she thought, this looks like a picture in an interior design magazine! But she reassured herself by noting that there were a couple of appliances from the seventies that no design editor would tolerate.)

  After breakfast, Julia set out upon her day. She went on long walks with the dogs, she rode, she worked in the garden, she went to the markets, she read, she visited friends. She passed entire days doing she didn’t know exactly what. Sooner than seemed possible, evening came. She watched the sunset. Then, after a supper of cassoulet or roast chicken or fish in one of Mme. Gorotiaga’s buttery sauces, she got into bed with a novel and a hot water bottle. It might be only nine o’clock. She kept a small fire for a while and lay in bed drinking a last glass of wine and read. Under the covers she felt warm, and the fire created some warmth, but the room had an ambient coldness, and she enjoyed this contrast. Sometimes the side of her face near the fire would be hot and the other side would be cold, and she would turn her face to warm up the latter, feeling it tingle and feeling the other side begin to cool. One window would never close completely, and through it came a plume of damp, cold air with the smell of wet straw. She thought she could smell the cold stone too.

  The bed linens carried the scent of the sun and air; after washing them, Mme. Gorotiaga always hung them outside to dry. They were thick, slightly coarse, and extremely costly. Fortunately, Mme. Gorotiaga took great pride in her ironing, so every night, before Julia mussed them, they looked like a rich man’s writing paper. Julia did not care very much about luxuries (except clothes, of course), but she had always wanted a life in which she slept on very good sheets every night. It was a pleasure she had enjoyed only sporadically before she married Dick. The stone walls gave her the feeling that she was at once sheltered and also within nature, and with her wine, her bed, her fire, and her novel, and the plume of fresh air, Julia was content. She fell asleep thinking about how cold the room would get when the fire died down completely, and how warm she would be under her duvet.

  So on a typical day in a typical year when she was staying at her house in France in October, this was Julia’s routine. During this particular October, however, it was being varied somewhat. This time, things were a bit different.

  For example, Julia’s bedroom was not cold when she awoke, for M. Gorotiaga crept in before dawn to lay and light a fire. By the time Ju
lia stirred, the room had warmed up nicely. Also, while she certainly ate her usual breakfast, she did not go down to the kitchen to get it; during this particular October, Mme. Gorotiaga brought it up to her on a tray.

  As Julia awaited Mme. Gorotiaga, she sat up in bed and enjoyed the fire. She smiled, for she was happy. In fact, she was in love! She laughed at that thought, but it was true! She moved her hand to her belly and then lightly rubbed it. Her pregnancy was showing clearly now. There would be no dodging questions anymore. In fact, like someone in love, she wanted the world to know, she wanted to cry it from the rooftops. The baby kicked once, twice. “Oooh. Someone else is waking up, is he?” Julia said this in a high, goo-goo-ish voice that also made her laugh. Imagine, her, a woman who spoke perfect French, who for many years had felt far more emotion in buying a handbag than in any human intercourse, imagine her talking the most egregious lisping baby talk. “Good morning, liddle boy, thweet liddle boy. Oooh! Thweet liddle boy ith doing hith Royal Canadian Air Forth calithenicth.” She was waking up with a man! And she was in love with him.

  She was so happy. But, alas, in the very temple of Delight veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine. After her ecstatic session of baby talk, Julia usually felt the presence of darker emotions, as when one swims into a cold spot in the ocean. Slowly and then very quickly, her mood changed, and she became utterly depressed and distraught. What had she done? She was bringing a person into the world for no other reason than to make herself happy, to give her life some kind of purpose, to heal the scars from her own childhood. A child who would have no father. And a child whose mother had never had any real attachment to anyone, who was selfish, vain, spoiled—and broke. The egotism. The self-loathing. Whichever. Both. Time and time again she had rationalized that she had known Jonathan when they made love; not only had she talked to him, she had read his books—one book. They had had a connection. Surely that counted for something? Certainly she knew him better than she would a sperm donor. But even a sperm donor, in whatever weird or corrupt way, intends that a baby will result from his donation; and obviously the women who are sperm-bank clients have the same belief. Copulating with Jonathan, the most vagrant act of lust, was less meaningful even than that. She had been insane not to have terminated her pregnancy the instant she had become aware of it, as she had done twice previously.

  Terminate her pregnancy? Terminate the darling little boy who was growing inside her? Those other times, she had been so young and had known nothing of the world (whatever she had thought of herself), and she hadn’t been capable of love or self-sacrifice. She was capable of them now, wasn’t she? She was, oh, she was. They might struggle in some ways, but think of all the advantages they would have compared to so many others in the world, and no matter what, she knew she would love her child. She knew it, and if she gave the child love, nothing else mattered, did it? But would her love last longer and go deeper than any infatuation? How could she be sure it would when she had never bestowed such love before?

  Up and down she zoomed, when she did not manage somehow to be up and down simultaneously. The impressions came all jumbled: the baby’s sonogram; her childhood; her final encounter with Dick; her one true love (sort of); her first encounter with Dick; her life in New York pre-Dick; money—dear God—money, money, money; her mother, her father; her stepfather, her stepmothers; the past, the future, the present. The baby!

  How did I get here? she asked herself. And where am I going to end up? Searching for answers to such questions, she always found that she had to start at the beginning.

  Julia had been an only child, and she didn’t even have any half siblings, despite her parents’ several marriages. Her mother, Clare, was a great beauty (one of three beautiful sisters, but she was the most beautiful) who had come east from St. Louis for college, afterward going to New York. There she met Julia’s father, Billy Dyer, a dark, taurine stockbroker highly skilled at golf, backgammon, and cards. Julia was lucky, she got all her looks from her mother (and like any copy, she was inferior). Her father had the big head and tough, snub-nosed face that on a man can look dynamic and attractive but are disastrous when inherited by a daughter. As a little girl, Julia was quite scared of him. He was loud and big and always seemed to be baring his teeth either laughing or shouting. When he gave her a piggyback ride or swung her by the arms, he was too rough, too fast, and he hurt her with his grip. He drove fast, too, scaring her.

  Julia’s parents divorced when she was seven. They had been living in a perfectly nice but quite small apartment in a big building on Park Avenue. A Scottish woman of indeterminate age lived with them, to care for Julia and to cook. Julia spent a great deal of time in Margaret’s tiny room in the back of the apartment; when her parents were out, she liked to sit with Margaret and watch TV. Margaret bathed her, picked her up at school, and watched her play in the park. One of Julia’s earliest memories was of Margaret giving her spoonfuls of sweet, white tea from her cup. But after the divorce, money was tight, and Julia’s mother told Margaret that she would have to let her go and would not listen to her protests that she would rather work for nothing than leave her little girl. Julia’s mother had decided not to say anything about Margaret’s departure until after she had gone, which she did one morning. Julia was surprised and pleased that afternoon when her mother appeared to pick her up at school. They went to a diner (long since disappeared) nearby and Julia had a milk shake while her mother drank tea. Then they went to a shoe store and bought Julia a new pair of school shoes, a new pair of party shoes, and her first pair of penny loafers, which she wore out of the store. After that they went to a store that sold dollhouse furniture, and Julia’s mother bought a canopy bed for Julia’s dollhouse! As soon as her mother had opened the front door of the apartment, Julia ran to the kitchen to show Margaret her loafers and the new canopy bed.

  Eventually, Julia and her mother went to live in an apartment in a much newer building located farther to the east. In some ways, it seemed fancier than their old one. Instead of needing a man to run it, the elevator had buttons. The lobby had lots of mirrors and gold. Their apartment had lots of windows. The faucets in their bathrooms looked as if they were made out of gold! But Julia missed the feel of the thick spokes on the ceramic handles of the old faucets. Even at her age, Julia sensed that somehow this new place they were living in was not as nice as the old one; she would hesitate to ask friends back, and as she grew older this reluctance would become more and more conscious. Julia’s mother always seemed preoccupied. She was impatient with Julia and tried to maintain the same kind of distance that had existed before, when they were physically more separate and there was someone else intervening. Julia’s mother did not like disciplining Julia, she did not like it when Julia got out of bed at night. A few years later, she married a heart surgeon, a widower, who was quite a bit older than she. He was a stern, powerful, self-assured person who intimidated Julia, but her mother seemed to draw confidence from these traits. Materially, their lives certainly improved. They lived in another apartment on Park Avenue, but this one was bigger than the one in which they started out, and the building was smaller and Julia could tell it was nicer. Once again, a cook lived with them. Julia’s mother could now have people for dinner. She went out for lunch and never had to push to the limit the time between her visits to the hairdresser. As she became more secure, more matronly and serene, and so regarded Julia from a more august height, she also became more judgmental. By the time Julia had turned thirteen they were having fights, which her stepfather could not abide. Everyone was happy when she went to boarding school.

  As for Julia’s father, after the divorce he married a woman with two children of her own and moved into her enormous house on Long Island. She was nice to Julia. “I’ve always wanted a daughter,” she said with a smile. Sometimes when Julia was visiting for the weekend, Billy and the sons would watch a football game (Billy had played football in college) in the paneled study, so Julia’s stepmother would take her into another room and
they would do needlepoint; if Julia had started on something weeks earlier, her stepmother would have saved it. On Sunday evenings Julia’s father drove her to the station. In the course of the weekend, he would have played golf, shot skeet, driven miles to see a man about a sports car, invited friends in for a drink, gone to a dinner party, and slept late on Sunday. But as the train pulled in he suddenly became tender. He squatted down so that his head was level with Julia, and he kissed her cheek and hugged her. She felt small and frail clasped in his big arms and pulled to his broad, thick chest.

  “Good-bye, Puss,” he said. “You be good now. See you in a couple of weeks.” Then he hugged her more tightly. “Love you.” There were times when Julia felt moistness on her cheek from a tear he had shed.

  Her father and first stepmother were eventually divorced, and he married a brassy real estate agent. In marrying Billy she was able to achieve her two greatest ambitions in life: to own a brand-new, full-sized, foreign luxury sedan with her initials on the doors and to become a member of Billy’s country club. That marriage lasted ten years. Then, when a friend of his took over one of the firm’s branch offices in Florida, Billy moved there. Within six months he had married again. He had met his new wife at a car dealership, where she worked as the receptionist. Lori was thirty-eight, had been married twice, and had three children, one in the service, one living with his father, and one living with her. When Julia first met her it was all she could do to mask her shock at the ampleness of Lori’s bosom; it was almost unfair because one tended not to notice Lori’s sweet features and pure complexion. “Hey, Julia, this is your stepmom,” she would say when she called. Something had gone wrong at the firm, and so Billy retired abruptly. They moved from the lake and were now living in a stucco bungalow in a neighborhood that had been developed during one of the booms early in the century and that hadn’t changed. Rust stains beneath the shutters streaked the outside walls. Air conditioners drooped from the windows like sagging rear ends.