The White Rose

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  Marian sleeps. She is—he pauses to note—very beautiful asleep, as not every beautiful woman is. In sleep, she abandons her self-conciousness and is merely herself, a woman of middle years with enough beauty, enough kindness, enough grace, and a superior mind. Watching her, Oliver finds her nearness almost unbearably poignant, and wants to wake her up to show her herself, but instead he walks quietly to the door and goes down the stairs.

  It’s different here from Marian’s other home. The beautiful surfaces and rich colors of Park Avenue are not present in this house, which retains elements of its former life: massive beams overhead, wide planks underfoot, and a half door to the kitchen. There is a large log cabin quilt nailed to one wall and, opposite, a great fireplace composed of fieldstones, each individually chosen and placed—Marian has explained—by an ancient Sicilian. Oliver finds it strange that the house, so much closer to his own taste than the Park Avenue apartment is, feels far more foreign to him, but perhaps it is because this place is so much more an expression of Marian’s intimate life with her husband. The New York apartment might be a home, even a primary home, but it accepts certain conventions of what an apartment on Park Avenue should look like, and so loses an element of individuality. This house, filled with Marshall’s military art and Marian’s books (all sorted by genre, then author, then publication date) and the fruits of their early, misguided (in Oliver’s opinion) passion for Bauer Ringware, belongs to them. With the discomfort that attends this realization, Oliver opens the sliding glass door to the backyard and steps outside.

  The night is hard with cold. It moves quickly through the woolen strands of Oliver’s sweater, finding his skin, but he decides against going back for his coat. He walks fast to get warm, first going to the end of the cobblestone driveway and then turning along Hedges Lane. On either side the privet hedges are so high he can make out only the tips of the houses they nearly obscure, but he has glimpses from the driveways as he goes by: shingled “cottages” grown massive on steroids, and modern conflagrations of steel and glass. Oliver walks quickly, parallel to the ocean, which crashes some distance to the right. Then he slows in wonder. On his right a building of baffling immensity is being assembled. Oliver gapes at it, trying to discern its purpose. Surely not an office complex? he thinks. Surely not here? The zoning must be airtight around this particular patch of soil, with its ocean view and its private swath of beach far on the other side of the rising shell. It must be a house, he understands, but how can something so large be a house? There will be enough room within its projected walls for each member of the largest possible family to have a house of his or her own. Oliver shakes his head and steps back from the fence. The Hamptons, as far as he can tell, have been conjured out of equal parts potato field and pretension, and for all of Marian’s rhapsodizing about the light, it is not light that mostly motivates the absent inhabitants of these houses. They don’t come here to bathe in it, nor even in the waves he now once again hurries toward, but to be wealthy and exclusionary in the company of other wealthy and exclusionary people.

  Not that he has anything against rich people. By the standards of most of the planet, after all, he himself has far in excess of his needs. What’s more, a world suddenly deprived of the wealthy would sweep away most of his friends, nearly all of his relatives, the majority of his clientele, and, not incidentally, the woman he happens to be in love with. Yet there are the rich people he loves and the rich people who need to build châteaux for their weekend use, and something certainly distinguishes the two groups from each other. He will not bring himself to call it class (Oliver stubbornly participates in the mass fantasy that there is no class in America), though this is the position his mother would take, were she here to argue the issue with him. On the other hand, he knows it isn’t really about money, either. People without resources can be astoundingly snobbish, while the wealthiest person he has ever met—the baffling heiress Klein—let him in at the service entrance wearing a half-buttoned flannel shirt.

  The ocean is close now. Oliver turns right at the end of the lane and half-jogs toward it. By this point, he has entirely lost his desire to see the water. The cold assaults him through his inadequate clothing with an icy wind, but he resists turning around. This expedition is all goal now, all mindless attainment. Oliver is too depleted to be really angry. He will merely stamp his way across the sand and insert one boot in the first wave that approaches, then turn and run back the way he came. With luck, he won’t remember any of it in the morning.

  The road ends in a broken parking lot. Oliver steps onto the edge of the sand and his boot sinks. The effort of motion increases instantly. He can hear his breath in tandem with the waves. The night is unlovely, overcast and dull, the sand and water gray. He moves his arms in an exaggerated pump, like a power walker intent on the finish line, and crosses the beach by the briefest possible route. There is no pleasure for him, and—when the wet moment finally comes—not even any sense of accomplishment, but when he turns around, he is rewarded by the surreal skyline of houses, postmodern and glassy black, arrayed at the edge of the beach as far as the eye can see. No one is home, he understands. In all the Hamptons there is only himself and billions of dollars’ worth of vacant real estate. It is the loneliest thing he has ever felt. And it is so cold.

  Then, quite suddenly, he is not alone. Headlights flick to life in the distance, far down the road he now faces, coming nearer. Oliver stands uncertainly, and then with growing unease. The car, he now sees, is a police car.

  The car stops. A man steps out on the passenger’s side.

  Oliver lifts a hand in tentative greeting, then walks toward him. “Good evening!” he hears himself call, with false heartiness. “Good morning?”

  “May I see some ID?” the humorless cop says.

  Oliver reflexively reaches for his back pocket, but there is nothing there. He has not thought to bring his wallet on this ridiculous excursion.

  “I left it at the house,” he says, hoping “the house” will, at least, establish his validity.

  “What house, sir?” the man says. The “sir” is especially disconcerting. The guy is about Oliver’s age, but huskier, with jowls.

  “My… a friend’s house. On Hedges Lane.” He can’t make out the man driving the car. There is a sheen on the windshield. “I couldn’t sleep. I thought I’d walk to the ocean. I should have brought a coat!” he says, trying for humor. “My name’s Oliver Stern.”

  The man leans over and speaks into the open door. Then he straightens again. “Let me have the name of your friend, and the address on Hedges Lane.”

  “It’s…,” Oliver begins. Then he stops. What would Marian want him to do in this situation? He thinks frantically. The idea that something might come of this, that any complications might ensue from these incredibly stupid circumstances, horrifies him. “Look,” says Oliver, “I’m here for a few days with my friend. I’m willing to give you the information, but can I ask you to be discreet about it?”

  The guy gives him an incredulous look. “This isn’t a cocktail party. Give me the name and address.”

  So Oliver does, cringing. He can’t remember Marian’s number on Hedges Lane. Sixty-something? Ninety-something? “It’s near where they’re putting up that colossal house,” he offers, trying to be conversational, but the cop only stares at him and then goes back to the car, and—he can just make out—to the small computer screen on the dashboard. Is it against the law to go for a walk in the Hamptons? Oliver thinks bitterly, arms crossed tightly over his chest. He hates it here. If they let him out, he promises never to return.

  “Mr. Stern,” the cop says, “I would like your own address. If you can remember that.”

  Oliver bites back his first response, then gives his address. He gives his telephone number, his social security number, his mother’s maiden name. He is asked to wait while a phone call is made. A phone call to whom? The FBI? His mother?

  “Please get in the car,” the cop says, and Oliver stares.r />
  “You’re kidding. I was just walking!”

  “Please get in,” he repeats.

  “But… Listen, I just came to see the ocean!”

  “Hey!” A voice comes from across the car. Deeper voice. Older voice. Oliver instinctively stops. “Get in the car now.”

  “Look,” he says desperately, “I’m not a criminal! I—” He stops, stunned to realize that he has been on the point of saying, I went to Brown. Then he is so ashamed of himself that he climbs into the car.

  In the backseat there is a cloying smell, borderline offensive. Oliver sits stiffly, his hands on his thighs, trying not to think about what might happen next, how he is going to explain himself to Marian. Freedom Summer scenarios needle away at him, and it takes real effort to allay them: will some rash of beachfront break-ins be laid at his feet? Is there some even more nefarious crime wave under way in the Hamptons for which he has just volunteered himself as a suspect?

  The two cops in the front seat murmur, their conversation indistinguishable. Oliver hears beeps from the computer console, static from the radio, and the sounds of the engine. Oliver feels ignored, as if they have moved on to other matters. He does not know how to respond to this, or what to think about his circumstances. He has never been in trouble before. Is he in trouble now?

  The car moves. They back up and turn, driving away from the ocean. Neither of the two men in the front seat says a word to Oliver. They go up the road, then left on Hedges Lane. They slow as they near Marian’s house, and then the police car turns in, driving over the familiar cobblestones. Oliver feels a surge of buoyancy, then, seeing Marian ahead in the doorway, wrapped in one of Marshall’s heavy flannel robes with a phone in one hand, his buoyancy is replaced by abject humiliation. Are they going to deliver him and leave? Are they going to give him a talking to? Are they—oh God—going to give her a talking to?

  Oliver closes his eyes. He would very nearly prefer arrest, he thinks, to Marian’s expression, which—now that he is close enough to see it—is a piteous amalgamation of indignity and dejection.

  The passenger-side cop opens his door and walks across the courtyard. Marian clutches her robe at the throat. She nods. She speaks too softly for her words to carry. She nods again. And then it is over. The men barely look at Oliver again as his door is opened and he scrambles out, and they drive off without either apology or explanation, as if he is no longer worth the effort of acknowledgment. Watching them go, Oliver feels his heart drum with rage.

  “I was just going for a walk!” he shouts after the car. “Jesus fucking Christ!”

  “Oliver,” Marian hisses. “Don’t do that. God, I hope there isn’t going to be a report.”

  Forgetting that he has had the identical thought only minutes before, Oliver yells, “Well, so what, Marian? Maybe that’s what we need. What you need.”

  He is standing outside the threshold. She stands just inside. Cold air rushes past them both into the living room.

  “I hate this fucking place,” he goes on. “How can you like it here? How can you relax in a place where you’re Ted Bundy if you go for a walk?”

  “Come inside,” she says tersely. “Stop shouting.”

  “No, seriously. Tell me. What kind of people come all the way out here and never bother to go look at the shore? That doesn’t strike you as strange?”

  Marian seems to consider her response. “You’d better come in now,” she says quietly. “Or you might find the door locked.”

  Oliver, suddenly deflated, looks at his own feet. “I couldn’t sleep,” he says, morosely, as if this admission ranks with the most shameful. “I didn’t want to wake you up.”

  “I wish you had,” she says, stepping back inside and holding open the door. Oliver, at last, walks past her and collapses on one of the couches. The room is gray with light from upstairs and from the kitchen. He is, without warning, exhausted. Finally.

  “Oliver,” Marian cries, as if the strain of the past half hour has just caught up with her, too, “what were you thinking?”

  He shrugs.

  “Did you do it to… Were you trying to push me?”

  Oliver looks up. She is sitting across from him, stiff, her knees together. She is absolutely miserable.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I can’t rule it out.”

  Marian shakes her head. “Why didn’t you say something if you were that unhappy? We could have talked about it.”

  “Talked about it! Are you kidding? We’ve done nothing but talk about it since we met. I’ve been straightforward with you from the first day, Marian. But here I am, all these months later, sleeping in somebody else’s house. In somebody else’s bed. With somebody else’s wife.”

  “That may be all I can offer you,” she says carefully. “I never suggested you had to be satisfied with it.”

  “Are you satisfied?” Even to his own ears, Oliver sounds unnecessarily harsh, almost punishing. “Is this enough for you?”

  Marian looks at him. “This? You mean the twenty-year-marriage this? The beautiful home—two beautiful homes—this? The thriving career this?” She glares at him. He refuses to answer. “Which part of this am I supposed to find deficient, Oliver? I have a hell of a lot to be thankful for. Some might even think that having an affair with the son of my oldest friend is not the most appropriate way to show my gratitude!”

  “Marian—”

  “No! I know you don’t like to hear this, but when you get to my age—”

  “Jesus,” says Oliver.

  “When you get to my age”—she is gasping now, choking it out—“you see. How little people have. How hard their lives are. How much pain they get handed. And me! I’ve never gone hungry. I’ve never been without a home.”

  “Marian, what the hell are you talking about? Without a home?”

  But she is off, galloping through parts unknown.

  “I always had enough. I had teachers who appreciated what I could do, and a husband who let me do it.”

  “Let you!” he says scornfully.

  “Which wasn’t nothing when I was your age, Oliver!” Marian shouts. “And maybe it’s never crossed your mind that I might not have been the ideal wife, either. Maybe there were things Marshall wanted that I couldn’t give him, and he forgave me for that.”

  “Forgave you!” howls Oliver. “This is getting worse and worse! It wasn’t his job to forgive you! It was his job to love you and be your partner.”

  She shakes her head. The light from the kitchen makes her cheeks glisten. Wet, he sees. She is crying.

  “Not true,” says Marian. “Well, true, but not entirely true. You’re very young, you know.”

  “Fuck you!” he explodes, pushing off the couch and crossing the room so quickly that he arrives even before the awareness of what he has just done. An instant later, though, that arrives, too. “Oh,” says Oliver helplessly, hovering above her. “Oh, no. Oh Marian, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” she says, her voice flat.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he says. Useless, pointless.

  “No,” agrees Marian, in a falsely bright tone of voice. “Well, I’m going to bed.”

  And she leaves him, wavering above the place she is no longer sitting, torn between dragging her back and letting her go but frankly too depleted to do either. Instead, he takes her place on the sofa and pulls a blanket from the armrest to cover himself, though he isn’t really cold anymore, and sits, not feeling anything. At the top of the stairs, the bedroom light goes out.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Diner That Time Forgot

  In the morning, they are not angry with each other, or not outwardly angry, but they are careful—overly courteous, intent on not touching the bruises of the night just past. Marian makes coffee, Oliver goes to the Sagaponack General Store for the Times, and they sit at the kitchen table, reading and sipping and building a wall around what has happened, at least while they can.

  Outside, the new day mirrors th
eir shared mood: dank and chilly gray, promising no warmth. Marian retrieves a student’s thesis chapter from her bag and begins to read, marking somberly with a fountain pen as she completes each page, her reading glasses slipping down her nose. Oliver itches to reach across the table and nudge them up, but she always beats him to it without once distracting herself from her reading. After the first several times he understands that she is not ignoring him; she has simply been absorbed by something else.

  Oliver wishes he could follow her, if not to wherever she is then to some place of his own, some place equally absorbing. Instead, he is jittery, agitated, his unease unsourced and ambient. He wants to get up, stay still, start shouting, but there is no apparent object for his blame. Besides, he has that vaguely ill feeling from having gone without sleep, and he does not trust himself to say anything right now. He turns the pages of the Real Estate section, the Sports section, trying to focus. Marian finishes her chapter and methodically retrieves another project, a draft of her paper for the AHA, and sets it on the table.

  “When do you want to go back?” she says suddenly.

  Oliver looks at her. “Weren’t we…I thought we were staying another night.”

  “Oh,” she says carefully. “I have a departmental meeting. I can’t get out of it. I’m sure I said so.”

  “I don’t remember that, Marian.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sure I told you.”

  “But you didn’t.” He hates this. He hates the way he sounds. Why does he have to sound like this? “It isn’t…Marian, I’m so sorry about last night.”

  “No, no,” she shakes her head. “No, sweetheart, don’t worry. I overreacted. I mean, they overreacted.”

  She says this, but she does not look at him. She looks past him, out the kitchen door, at the dormant garden.