Girl in the Moonlight

by Charles Dubow

“Well, that’s about it.”

  “Did we have a fight?”

  “We did.”

  “What about?”

  “I’m not really entirely sure. I think it had to do with me wanting to leave and you wanting to stay.”

  She cradled her head in her hands. “It’s coming back to me. I think I owe you an apology.”

  “Don’t be daft. You don’t owe me anything.”

  “I think I was a bitch. I’m sorry if I was.”

  “Think nothing of it. Water under the bridge.”

  She finished the croissant and lit a cigarette. “I think we might need some more coffee,” she said.

  They missed their ferry. Traffic getting out of Paris was terrible, and then they were snarled by road works on the A1, taking them twice as long as Freddie had planned. By the time they got to Calais, it was too late. There was another ferry leaving two hours later, so they had lunch at a little café overlooking the harbor.

  “France doesn’t want us to leave, obviously,” she said, smiling. “Maybe we should turn around and go back to Paris?”

  “Or Venice?”

  “Yes, please. Let’s go back to Venice.”

  He smiled. “I wish.”

  They arrived in Lowndes Square after ten. A gentle rain was falling, and for the first time in days, he had to put up the car’s cloth top. It was his third straight day of driving. They both collapsed on his bed. Freddie still in his clothes. She would return to her flat tomorrow to sort her laundry, check her mail. For the second night in a row, they didn’t make love.

  In the morning, she let him sleep and slipped out to buy milk, bread, and The Sunday Telegraph. When he awoke, she had tea and toast waiting for him. “Morning, sleepyhead,” she said.

  “Morning.”

  “Better?”

  “Yes, much. Thanks. Lovely tea. Can’t get a proper cup anywhere but England.”

  Like Br’er Rabbit in his briar patch, he was plainly happy to be back in London. The gray autumn skies, the rain, the food all appealed to him, reminding him of home. Life resumed. They went out most nights. Dinners, the theater. Weekends in the country at friends’. One of his best friends from Harrow was a duke. In the fall they went shooting, and she watched with the wives.

  She had given up art school, and her future was now uncertain. She could go one way or another but didn’t know what she wanted. Already she felt dissatisfied. Small things annoyed her. She was all but living in his flat. She hated the red lacquered Chinese cabinets that had belonged to his mother. The salmon-colored walls and golden curtains framed the view over the square, in her opinion one of the dreariest in London. She felt oppressed by the Dresden figurines over the mantel. The rows of engraved invitations. The vintage cartoons in the guest loo. There was no youth here.

  She was getting bored, like a wild animal that has been domesticated but still sniffs the air, yearning for the ability to run free. She missed warmth, her family. When the phone rang often it was a woman asking, “Is Freddie there?” It was tempting to smash the receiver back on the hook. Her days drifted by in idleness. Waking late. Doing the shopping. Buying a frock on Bond Street or a book at Hatchards in Piccadilly. Going to matinees. Getting dressed for the evening. Occasionally she took the tube to the City and met him for lunch. But it was only at night that she felt alive, consumed by passion, and sometimes even that was not sufficient. She had few friends of her own. English women were very tribal, she felt. She was an outsider, with her American accent and exotic looks. Most of the women they knew were already mothers. Very few of them worked. They struck her as little more than brood mares whose lives were already half over. Leaving school at the age of sixteen and then working as an au pair or at one of the auction houses as an intern for a year or two while they trolled for a husband.

  And then it happened. She was late. To be certain, she waited a few days to confirm, but by then, there was no mistaking it.

  That night, when Freddie came home, he did just as he always did and threw off his jacket and gave her a light kiss, saying, “Hullo, darling.” Then, sensing her mood, asked, “What’s the matter? Why aren’t you dressed?”

  She was sitting on a chair in the bedroom, her feet tucked up under her. A cigarette burning. “I don’t feel like it,” she said. “You go without me.”

  “Are you sure? Don’t you feel well?”

  “Just a little off. Women troubles.”

  “Ah, right. You don’t want me to stay?”

  “No, you go on ahead.”

  For a week she carried around her secret. Staring into the water of the Thames. Sitting in Green Park. Feeling the rain on her face. She called him at work. “Can we cancel our plans tonight?” she said. “I want to have dinner. Just us.”

  He knew something was wrong. She had been distant for days. They sat at the table in their regular Italian, a glass of wine in front of each of them. He told little jokes, filling up the awkward pauses, waiting for her to start.

  “I’m late,” she said.

  “You mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did it happen? I thought you were . . .”

  “I am. Sometimes it just happens.”

  He sat there for several seconds digesting the news, his face a blank. “But that’s wonderful,” he said eventually, breaking into a smile.

  She looked at him. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Sorry? What for?”

  “I don’t want it.”

  His head jerked back slightly, his eyebrows lifted. Even more surprised now. “What?”

  “I said I don’t want it. I don’t want to be a mother yet. I want to get rid of it.”

  “Are you absolutely sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “My God.”

  “I want you to understand.”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “I want you to find a place. Where I can get rid of it.”

  His face was pale. He couldn’t look her in the eye.

  “Will you help me or not?”

  “I—I don’t know. Do you have any idea what you’re asking?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it doesn’t bother you—or how I might feel about it?”

  She looked away. “Either way I’m going to do it. If you won’t help me, I’ll go to New York.”

  He slumped in his chair, staring at his now empty glass, his mouth compressed. “Don’t I have a right? It’s my child too, after all.”

  “Of course it is. But it’s my life, and I am not ready yet. Please don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.”

  “I’m sorry if I am making your life so damned difficult. This all comes as rather a blow.”

  “I know. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you. Maybe I should have just taken care of it by myself.”

  “Maybe you should have.”

  “Look, will you help or not?”

  “What if we got married? Would that change things?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “No to what exactly? Getting married or changing things?”

  “Both.”

  “I see.” He sat, absorbing the shock. “I love you,” he said finally.

  She said nothing.

  “Do you love me?” he asked.

  She looked away, saying nothing. “Right,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not half as bloody sorry as I am.”

  She reached out her hand to take his, but he drew away. For several seconds, she left her hand in the middle of the table, but it remained there untouched.

  “Okay,” she said, picking up her purse. “I’ll spend the night at my flat. Tomorrow I’ll send round for my things. I’ll leave your key.”

  She stood.

  He looked up at her, resenting her.

  “Good-bye, Freddie,” she said and walked out of the restaurant.

  All night and the next day, she sat in her now unfamiliar flat staring at the telephone, waiting for it to ring. That
it would be Freddie, saying, “I’m sorry, darling. I understand. Of course you’re not a monster. There’s no point in rushing things. We have plenty of time. I’ve found a doctor. I’ll pick you up, and we’ll go there together.”

  But he never called. Within a week she was back in New York. Within two weeks she was in Amagansett, recovering from her operation, wrapped in a blanket, her toes in the sand, watching the night descend over Gardiners Bay.

  She did not know it was possible to feel so empty. But not for a moment did she regret it, any of it. Her mother waited for her inside. So did her grandfather and grandmother and Carmen. She did know that she needed her family. There was really no one else. She finished her glass of wine, dropped her cigarette, and went back inside.

  13

  BY THE END OF MY FRESHMAN YEAR AT COLLEGE, CESCA had become a healed wound where only a scar remained. To touch it was to remember. It was best to forget.

  To my family’s and my disappointment, I had not been accepted by Harvard. Despite good grades and success rowing, there had been, as my genial college adviser put it, “too many qualified candidates.”

  Instead I had enrolled at my second choice, a very respectable, albeit small, liberal arts college in New England. One of the attributes that drew me to it was that it had boasted a reputable fine arts department. However, I had seriously discussed with Paolo and Esther if they thought it made sense for me to go to art school instead since at that time I envisioned my eventual career as one of a painter. We were sitting outside under the shade of their willow tree. In the background two of their grandsons were playing soccer.

  “Wylie Coyote,” said Paolo, after thinking carefully. “You should go to college.” He pronounced it “co-lage.”

  “But you didn’t. You went to art school,” I retorted.

  “Yes, but I was an ignorant peasant boy. All I knew was that I had to get out. I won a scholarship and I went. Pah! Beato me! Lucky me! I learned how to draw better maybe. I learned how to paint better. But it didn’t make me smarter. There was no Plato, no Descartes, no Tolstoy! Reading makes you a better artist than taking a life drawing class, no?” He laughed, showing his radiant smile.

  I listened to Paolo. I knew he was right. I could always go to art school later if I still wanted to. But secretly, mistrustingly, there was the doubt in my heart that maybe Paolo was letting me down gently. That he was saying in the most diplomatic way he knew that I lacked the talent to succeed as an artist and that college was my best option. I burned to ask him what he truly thought of my abilities but knew that he would only wave away so direct a question. He would have told me it was impossible to know. It was like predicting the weather years in advance or winning the lottery.

  So in the end I went to college. I was reasonably happy there. Dated a girl from Scarsdale. Took Painting 101 from a Russian woman whose family had emigrated years before. Broke up with the girl from Scarsdale. Drove into New York many weekends. Hung out on the Lower East Side. Went to Save the Robots, the Holiday, the Pyramid. I made friends. In the spring, I rowed crew. To make Paolo happy I took philosophy.

  In the summer after my freshman year I traveled to Europe for the first time with two friends from prep school, Nelson and Brady. We hit the usual spots: London for a few days, Paris, Florence, carrying backpacks, using Eurail passes, staying in cheap hotels and pensiones. We had introductions to family friends. We were even invited to a few parties. I went through several sketchbooks during the trip, spending hours in the Tate, the Louvre, the Uffizi, and the Scuola Grande di San Rocco.

  My friends had only just so much interest in museums. Brady, who had a nervous laugh and a wicked sense of humor, had a cousin in London who took us to a nightclub in Soho where all the beautiful women onstage were men.

  “I’m telling you,” insisted the cousin. “That’s not a girl. Bloody confusing, what?”

  In Paris we visited the Ritz Bar, feeling like the spiritual heirs of Hemingway, shocked by the prices and ending up having only one drink apiece. In Venice we slept the first night in the central square outside the train station along with hundreds of other young people, clustered in small groups like remnants of an exhausted army. Also in Venice, I had my first Campari and surreptitiously drew a portrait of a lovely girl with dark hair sitting in a café on the Riva degli Schiavoni while she stared out over the Grand Canal. I never spoke to her, but whenever I look at the drawing, which is one of the few I still have, I wish I had. My friend Nelson, who was very handsome, the grandson of a bishop, ran into a girl he knew, a relative of the poet T. S. Eliot whose name was Eliot. We made plans to meet up with her and her friends in a bar later that night near Saint Mark’s, but they never showed up.

  From Venice we went to Barcelona, where we saved money by staying with Aurelio, who was delighted to welcome us. I loved the city from the first. Its palm trees, its architecture. The energy on the streets. It was my favorite of all the cities we had visited. More than Paris, more than Venice. Maybe it was because I knew it was where Lio lived, the city he loved best. He revealed it to me, like a secret. He knew where to find the best cheapest coffee, the cheapest bread. He walked down the Ramblas, greeting people by name, stopping and chatting. It was a procession of pretty girls, young men on motorcycles with dark glasses and long hair, cafés and bars, each one more interesting and welcoming than the last. In the evenings, magical sunsets with Montjuïc in the background silhouetted against the sky. Even the occasional wave of stench from the sewers merely added to the ambience. Everywhere people seemed happy, content in the knowledge that they lived in such a special place.

  In a bar near his apartment, we talked about his family. Cosmo’s triumphs. He was becoming a successful musician. There was talk of an album. Unlike me, Carmen had been accepted at Harvard. Her ultimate goal was medical school.

  “And Cesca, how is she?” I asked cautiously.

  He laughed. “Cesca is Cesca. Plus ça change . . .”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She is engaged again.”

  “To whom?”

  “He’s a cousin of some kind, apparently. Somehow related to Bushka’s side of the family. He’s a successful businessman, too.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Gavin. Gavin Oppenheim.”

  “Have you met him?”

  “Years ago. When I was a kid. He was already an adult.”

  “So he’s older?”

  “Yes, he’s got to be at least forty now.”

  “How’d they meet?”

  “I think it was when Cesca went skiing in Switzerland earlier this year. Gavin lives in Switzerland. She looked him up. One thing led to another and bang.”

  “Ah well, that’s great. Really great.”

  In a way, I meant it. The thought of Cesca being married soothed me. It had been so long since I had seen her I had almost forgotten the hold she had over me. It was like avoiding a street that held certain memories. By not turning down it I was safe. But streets so often have more than one way to access them, and suddenly, without thinking, it is possible to enter from a different direction and find oneself once again among the familiar sights and shopfronts. That’s when it all comes rushing back.

  We lingered in Barcelona, not wanting to leave. It was a place where I would have gladly lived. Waking every morning to paint. Long talks into the night with Lio and his friends. On our last night there, we all got very drunk and got home late. After we had all gone to sleep, Aurelio woke me whispering, “Come upstairs. There is something I want to show you.”

  I was still drunk and only half-awake. For a moment, I hesitated, remembering the night on the beach.

  He sensed what I was thinking and chuckled. “No, nothing like that. I want to show you something. I wasn’t sure I was going to, but I want you to see it.”

  He led me up the spiral staircase. There was an easel turned to face away from me holding a large canvas. “Tell me what you think,” he said, indicating that I was to walk around to se
e what was on the other side. “I hope it won’t upset you.”

  It was Cesca’s nude. The nude. Seeing it was exquisite torture. He had captured her perfectly. It was like showing a painting of a forgotten feast to a starving man. Each morsel deliciously rendered, tantalizing in its verisimilitude. I remembered that body. For a brief moment in time it had become as familiar to me as my own. Now it was just a memory—but a memory stirred to life by Aurelio’s skill. I could not take my eyes away.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  I told him I loved it. It was true. The painting was a masterpiece. He grinned with satisfaction. “I thought you’d like it,” he said slyly. “My sister’s a beautiful woman. Loving. Fierce. Honest. But also dangerous. I think I’ve captured that. This is no mere housecat. This is a lioness. She can strike at any minute. Do you see?”

  I said I did.

  “Of course,” he said. “You know better than most what her claws can do.”

  “It’s all in the past,” I lied. Inwardly, I felt the old ache at her absence.

  “Bo,” he said. “Good. I am very happy with it. But it is also very private, very personal to me. I will never sell it. I think I am going to give it to Cesca, and if she wants people to see it, then she can show it. If not, she can keep it hidden somewhere and, when she is old, go back and remind herself of how beautiful she had been.”

  14

  I RETURNED TO EAST HAMPTON A FEW DAYS BEFORE I WAS due back at college and drove over to the Bonets’. I was sure they would want to hear about the time I spent with Aurelio and that it would be pointless to telephone ahead and so just decided to show up. It was a perfect late August afternoon. The sky was endlessly blue.

  I took the back roads, past the potato fields, to avoid summer traffic. I hadn’t been for a year, but it was all instantly familiar to me. The long driveway, the large white neoclassical clapboard house where Izzy and Ruth lived, the various outbuildings, the tennis court, and the infamous tree. And beyond it all was the slender cobalt ribbon of Long Island Sound stretching endlessly eastward.

  I knew Aurelio would not be there, so I bypassed his studio and went straight to the pool, where I found Kitty and Randall sunbathing.