She remembered. Her mother believed the secret to a long marriage was a long vacation, but she had been crushed to leave him in Dijon, mostly because he seemed so anxious to be alone. It was then he began writing the poem. In September, she returned, and their honeymoon was over.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Mary Frances said.
He braced his hand against the doorjamb, studying the frame, as if he planned to fell it. There was anger in him, but she could no longer tell if it was meant for her.
“I keep telling myself that,” he said. “I know.”
And so he loaded her bags into the Chrysler and drove her to the train. It was just a trip, he told himself, a last fling before they made their plans. He had not brought up the child again, but while she was gone, he would talk to some people, find out what their next steps needed to be. When she returned, she would be ready. He was grateful to Tim; they would not have this kind of opportunity again.
“You’ll write?” he said. “I meant to make it easy for you. Send some stamps and envelopes.” He laughed lamely. His chest was collapsing.
She reached into the satchel at her feet and pulled out a bundle of stationery bound with ribbon. She thumbed it like a deck of cards.
“One for every day, Al. Already addressed to you.”
At the station, he hefted her bags from the trunk to the porter, checked her tickets, escorted her to the platform to wait. She stood tall, she was so tall, with her hand folded sweetly in the crook of his arm, pale against his suit coat. He concentrated on that hand, the pale, slender fingers, the thin gold band. When the train pulled into the station, he passed her hand to the porter and watched the body of the train for a time, imagining her passage to her compartment, her hand once reaching out to steady herself before she found her seat, and was off.
She was writing as the train left the station, frantically, so as not to watch Al’s face, but god if she wasn’t writing to him. She couldn’t help herself—he seemed the only solid place to turn, and so she wrote him a letter then and there, how this was like a movie they were in, and this stretch of time just a memory that hadn’t happened yet. She would dissolve out with the steam and then back in a month from now, and they would continue. It was as honest as she could be. She loved him still, and she was unable to articulate the transgression she was about to make beyond that. She would go, and then she would return.
And so began another kind of honeymoon in France, the sort she will take until she is too old and frail to travel, the chance to slip away and see her life grow small on another coast and with it the impossible knots and complications. What seems unfixable can be fixed, if only by distance.
These days she keeps a suitcase packed beneath her bed and leaves the specifics to Norah.
There is no man waiting for her, here or there. There’s been no man for years, which has sharpened the effect of her letters and journals they’ve been sorting. These last several months have given her suddenly all the men at once. It will probably be good to get away from that for a time. She can feel the loose pieces rattling even when her mind is still.
The marmalade cat hears the knock before she does, bolting for the kitchen, her food bowls, and safety. Mary Frances stands, tucking the combs into her silvered hair, a smack of lipstick in the mirror by the door before she answers it.
It’s a man in his shirtsleeves with his suitcase, his face obscured by the long brim of his hat. There’s a familiar set to his shoulders, the peak of his chest, and the fine square hand he extends to stroke the marmalade cat, but Mary Frances does not know him. The marmalade cat pushes up to nuzzle the brace of quail he’s holding.
“I stopped in the village for directions,” he says. “When I mentioned your name, everyone had something they needed me to bring to you.”
She laughs. She knows the hunter who saves his quail for her, and from the pocket of the suitcase, her visitor takes a jar of olallieberry jam, a paper sack of dusty white salamis, a glassine envelope of powdered spice. She fixes on the folded birds, their bodies limpid, hung the way she’s told the hunter they do in France.
“How can I help you?” she asks, taking the quail.
He is from the library. He’s driven a van all the way across the country for the boxes, his suitcase full of her books rather than his clothes, her books for her to sign.
“If you don’t mind,” he says. “And then I can collect my parcels and be out of your way.”
“Oh, no,” she says. “You have to stay for dinner now. Who will help me eat these quail?”
“It’s not necessary, Ms. Fisher. I have a room waiting for me in town, and a long ride home.”
“And I don’t want to keep you working late. But still, it is a lot of quail.”
He seems to consider his options, his eyes warm and brown, his eyes not familiar, not the eyes she’s longing for, but still somehow related to this sifting through the past she has been doing. This man, now appeared, a kind of souvenir.
“I’d be honored,” he says.
She turns and leads the way inside.
Sea Change
Spring 1936
The train would be three days to Chicago, another to New York. The seats in her compartment were plush, the window wide, a berth the porter cranked down from the ceiling every night, a little johnnie in the corner with a curtain, a sink that unfolded from the wall. Each human concern fit neatly here, and twelve deep to a car, at least six cars of sleepers. It was like a tiny, efficient neighborhood, hurtling across the country.
The film of travel settled into her skin. The train rattled and swayed, loud and drafty, then blasted with heat so that her coat was always on and off her shoulders. The passengers talked endlessly about nothing, and when she went to the dining car, there was nothing she wanted to eat, and outside the window the red desert became the measureless bitter plains, the fields beaten back beneath the swollen sky, and then all was gray or darkness.
Mary Frances could hear a mother and child in the compartment next to hers, a toddler as given to words as he was to tears and thuds and crashes, and then his mother’s stroking voice. She couldn’t make out what was said; parenting remained something she spied on.
She swung over the edge of the berth and huddled in her nightgown, her bare feet dangling above the floor. During this interlude with Tim, whatever happened would be something discrete, a miniature life. She rolled her palms open in her lap and wished she had someplace to pray, someone to promise, but there was only herself. That hardly seemed like a promise she would keep.
Outside the window, the middle country raced by.
At breakfast in the dining car, she faced the mother from the berth next door, whispering to the boy as though they were alone. She bent to serve her son’s eggs, to pass the fork to his rosy mouth. There was no man traveling with them, and the woman wore no ring. Mary Frances thought of Anne, how frazzled and overwrought she would be traveling with Sean. The boy smacked his hands against the tabletop, sending spoons flying. His mother laughed, and the steward brought her more.
Mary Frances said, “Your son reminds me of my nephew.”
The woman smiled, brushing the crumbs from her lap. She spoke with such a thick accent it took Mary Frances a full moment to hear her words after she said them.
“Oh, Mum, he’s not mine. His parents are in New York a week already.”
“Oh,” Mary Frances said. “I just assumed.”
Now looking at the pair, she could chart no resemblance. But the woman beamed at the boy in a motherly fashion; she was patient, and she seemed to enjoy him.
“Have you always been his nurse?” she asked. It was too personal, but who was to say, on this train, what she should and should not do? It seemed, suddenly, important that she know.
“Since the morning he was born.”
The woman smiled at Mary Frances and turned her attention back t
o the boy, his fists now full of his breakfast and headed to the floor. Everything, Mary Frances thought, eventually came down. Both the nurse and the boy laughed about it.
Back in her compartment, the porter had yet to make up her berth, and so she crawled back inside, folded her hands beneath her head, and stared at the glossy capsule of the ceiling. She thought about how many lives it contained, just this single car, and how fast it was going, away from home.
* * *
At Penn Station, Tim was waiting on the platform.
He was lithe and elegant, dressed all in navy blue, a fine cashmere topcoat and herringbone muffler, his white hair waved back close against his head. He looked like a knife, like a hawk, a piece of dark blue open sky. Mary Frances took his gloved hand and tried to make her mouth work to speak. She could think of only the plainest things, hello, how nice to see you, how nice.
He broke her wrist back and brought it to his lips, a light, true kiss where her blood was pounding, and that was all.
He directed a porter to her trunks, her trunks to a cab, his hand steering her forward at the small of her back. They were nearly the same height. She could feel his breath on her temple, and with his hand, he was all through her, and there was nothing to say, nothing that could be heard over this.
The cab took them uptown, to the Warwick Hotel where he had reserved her a room. Watching his profile, the city racing past them, she realized he belonged here, amongst all this business and metal, noise and speed, or at least the man he was now belonged here. The thought plummeted through her. What else might she have to learn about him? What else might she have made up to suit herself in all this time they’d spent apart?
“Where is your mother?” she asked.
“She naps in the afternoons. Are you tired?”
It sounded like one thing made him think the other, and she shook her head, turning to the window. What if she was making a horrible mistake?
The taxi pulled to the curb, and Tim paid it, a fleet of doormen descending upon the car, her steamer and satchels full of books. She stood where she’d been escorted and watched her things stack up; why had she brought so much stuff? She needed the help of so many people.
Inside the hotel: the bellmen and the elevator operator, the examination of the room, tips passing hand to hand. Tim ordered tea to be sent up, and then finally they were alone. Mary Frances stood by the windows, her purse in her hand. Tim studied her, and she tried to meet his eye but lost her nerve. She had thought about this moment for months on end, a thousand different ways. Maybe the moment itself was tired now. She laughed.
“What?” he said.
“Oh. I suppose I am tired. Completely.”
“It’s all right. Really.” He did not cross the room. “My sister has a party planned tonight, for you and Mother. She’s been looking forward to meeting you.”
She was still looking, distractedly, anywhere but at Tim.
“Mary Frances?” he said.
“Of course.”
She felt as if she were waiting for something to crest between them, but Tim seemed so mild, so easy. It was never going to happen. She took a deep breath.
“Of course,” she said again. “I’ll meet you in the lobby, and your mother. We can all have a drink before we go, several drinks perhaps. Oh, Tim.”
She tossed her purse well shy of the desk, and Tim laughed. He was so much stronger than she’d remembered. He placed her key on the dresser.
“It’s all right. Get some rest,” he said, and he left.
She drew a bath. The tea came, and she took a cup, a pretty pastry with her to the tub, resting it on the lid of the commode. She poured yellow oils into the running water, the scent of violets. In a few weeks, she would have a few weeks behind her, and she would be in France.
* * *
On another floor of the hotel, Tim took the box from his pocket and set it on the secretary in his room. He lit a cigarette and sat before the window, the afternoon sky lost in the shadows of the buildings around the hotel, the trolleys clattering in the streets below. He had all this energy and nothing to do with it, energy enough to run laps in the street, to run flights in the stairwell. He just wanted to spend it, for chrissake, spend everything: his money, his time, his hard cock chafing in his pants. It had been a year since he’d seen her, and he had not accounted for the composure that year had made necessary.
The door to his mother’s room opened.
“Well?” she said.
“She’s resting. A long trip.”
“I’m just glad she’s arrived. All that way from California. I don’t know what you people could have been thinking.”
“She’s traveled a great deal, Mother. I’m sure you’ll find she’s able to handle the toughest situation.”
“Still,” his mother said.
She saw the box on the table, obviously a jewelry box; her eyes settled on it, but she didn’t ask. Tim felt as though he’d swallowed a lit match. His mother had always been a hoarder of details, an amateur detective. Everything was suspect until proven otherwise.
“Mother.” Tim stubbed out his cigarette and took her hand, pressing it between his cheek and shoulder. “Would you like to go for a walk, or is it too cold? A carriage? Tea?”
Mrs. Parrish patted his shoulder. “I’m fine,” she said. “I thought I might write a few letters before we sail.”
And she began ticking off the things and people she needed to write, the process of a letter decidedly unsilent for Mrs. Parrish, rather a one-sided conversation that had to meet the air before she could commit it to a piece of paper. Tim stood to give his mother the secretary, slipping the box back into the breast pocket of his jacket before she got up the words to ask about it.
He’d wanted to give her something.
In the time it took to loose himself from Gigi, he’d remembered all kinds of things he used to like about pursuing women: elaborate dates, veiled letters, the slow unpinning of a twist of hair, endless buttons, whatever clasped at the back of the neck. So much depended on preparation and rate of speed. He could fill an afternoon with a search for a pair of silk stockings. He’d followed a woman two blocks through the theater district the other day, watching the spindle of darker fabric extending from the heel of her shoe to the seam that arched her calf. Cuban-heeled stockings; not the sort of thing you could buy for another man’s wife. He’d chosen a bracelet instead, a wide swath of gaspipe chain with a pavé clasp, but Mary Frances had seemed at such loose ends, he hadn’t given it to her. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so easy.
“Would you write a letter for me?” he asked. “For Alfred Fisher.”
The sound of his mother’s pen started across the page.
“‘Dear Al. Can’t say how glad we are that Mary Frances is here. I have missed her and you both, and know Mother will be all the more comfortable for her presence abroad. Bought her a gift today, your wife, walking to meet her train. Couldn’t help myself, a little bauble to mark our time together here. Very excited, and grateful to you, old man.’ And that’s all. I’ll sign it.”
His mother passed the stationery over her shoulder, and Tim beat it dry in the air. She looked up at him, her face soft with years. There was no cause to worry her if he could help it. There was no cause to worry anyone.
* * *
In the lobby, Mary Frances telephoned Al.
“You’ve arrived.”
“In body, I guess. Such a trip! What time is it at home? I feel made of taffy.”
“It’s two.” He cleared his throat. “I’m having a sandwich.”
“You’ll be living like a bachelor by Sunday, won’t you.”
There was a long silence, static, maybe something else.
“Al?”
“I’m here.”
“I posted letters from the train, five already. I hate to spoil them by telling y
ou everything now. I just wanted to say hello. I wish you were coming with us. It won’t be near the same without you.”
“I’m sure you’ll have a good time.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said, though, about how it’s time to put away our distractions and live our lives. I think we would make good parents, Al. I always have.”
“Do you mean that?”
She did, for how it squared them up for this time apart, and the enthusiasm in his voice was some kind of permission, reassurance, absolution all in one. She thought of the boy and his nurse on the train, the way he patted her cheek when she dipped the fork in his direction, the soothe of her whisper through the compartment walls.
“What kind should we ask for, Al, a boy or a girl?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I haven’t thought about it.”
“Well, do. Please do. I think we should.”
He told her he loved her, and bon voyage, and he hung up the phone before she did, the dead line buzzing in her ear. If she’d promised him the moon, it would seem more possible, and yet she’d have promised him anything. She looked down at her lap, the swath of russet silk, the dress Edith had bought her the previous Christmas. It somehow had become part of all this, her costume.
Across the lobby, Mrs. Parrish stepped out of the elevator on Tim’s arm, hunched and delicate in a ruffled velvet cape, a bee working at a flower. Mary Frances stepped out of the telephone booth and into their oncoming path.
“So lovely you could come, dear.” Mrs. Parrish brushed her cheeks with her own.
“I was just calling Al. He is sorry he can’t be here too. I’ve promised him an absolute account of everything we do and see, a letter every day.”
“Oh, goodness!” Mrs. Parrish beamed at Tim. “When Dillwyn was a boy, I used to take the children all summer to the seashore with my sister. If my husband never got a word from me, he was a happy man.”
But Mary Frances could tell she’d pleased her, perhaps even put her at ease. It was important that her feelings toward Al always be clear. She repeated that to herself as they walked to the bar, three abreast, and repeated it again as Tim ordered the drinks, vermouth for his mother, a Gibson for her, and again in the taxi, on the way to Claire’s apartment uptown.
The Arrangement Page 14