The Lone Pilgrim

by Laurie Colwin

  Elizabeth’s friends came down with measles, chicken pox, and mumps, but Elizabeth considered Nelson her childhood disease. As she got older, she began to feel that he had ruined her early years, but in her twenties she realized what an asset he had been. Without him she would never have learned to shield herself entirely from her parents. She learned from him how little it took to please: Nelson wrapped himself up warm when it was cold. He baked cookies for his mother’s birthday. He played chess with his father. That, it appeared, sufficed—a very instructive lesson that was not lost on Elizabeth, who felt that beneath Nelson’s clean, wavy hair lived a rat, a suck-up, a traitor to all children.

  Nelson had an older brother named James. James was eight years Elizabeth’s senior, and she regarded him as veritably ancient. James had been sent away to a progressive school for the brilliant and unmanageable children of the well-to-do. Here he learned to smoke, drive a car without a license, and play cards for money. When these traits became manifest, James was plucked from the libertine environment and sent to one of the nation’s oldest and finest establishments for one last crack at making him an eventual leader of men. In this setting he drank beer, set off cherry bombs in trash cans, and hung around with town girls. By the time he was ready to graduate, he added to this sort of hell raising a penchant for seditious literature and came home spouting Marx, Mao, and Huysmans.

  At college he learned a great many more bad habits, including how to spend money, drink wine, seduce young women, and break some bone or other right before Thanksgiving vacation called him back to his family. In spite of this, he did extremely well and graduated with honors. The night of his graduation he was arrested with some of his unwholesome friends for disorderly conduct and was made to spend the night in jail. This was meant to scare him. The next morning he was released, his fingerprints in a manila envelope that he might know the kindness doled out by the police to young men who will someday be their elected leaders.

  Elizabeth was kept abreast of James’s evil career by her parents, who said that James was killing Marshall and breaking poor Harriet’s heart. Nelson spoke of his brother as if he were some pathetic sort of animal.

  Over a game of Scrabble, which, of course, Nelson was winning, he commented on the arrest.

  “Poor Daddy and Mother. Jimmy got arrested, you know. They gave him back his fingerprints, but it will always be on his conscience, and if he’s ever asked if he’s been arrested, he’ll have to say yes.”

  “Why will he?” Elizabeth said.

  “Because it’s true,” said Nelson. “Besides, it’s adolescent and silly. It’s just as easy not to get arrested as to get arrested.” Nelson at the time was almost sixteen. He was a nice-looking, somewhat expressionless boy whom Elizabeth found more and more repulsive. All his clothes were clean. His hair was combed. Elizabeth knew that he underlined passages in books, a habit she found disgusting. When he read, he sat upright in his leather chair, under proper light with his book held at a proper angle. Elizabeth, who read under the covers with a flashlight, found his posture disgusting as well.

  After a brief contemplation of the Scrabble board, Nelson made an ingenious play using the word “vugh,” about which Elizabeth was doubtful but did not challenge. It was pointless to challenge Nelson. He was all-knowing and he never cheated. In fact, one of Harriet Rodker’s favorite stories about him concerned a point of honor. Nelson, at seven, told his father that he had stolen two gum erasers from Mrs. Williamson’s candy store. His father advised him to take them back. “But I can’t,” Nelson had said. “I was so upset about stealing them that I threw them away.” Marshall Rodker then asked his son how he intended to make reparation—if, of course, was never at issue. Nelson had said, “I’ll go to Mrs. Williamson and tell her what I did and pay her.” This he did, and Mrs. Williamson swore she never knew a better boy than Nelson Rodker. Elizabeth was sure this was a true story but for one detail. She was certain that Nelson had not thrown the erasers away; she knew that he had eaten them. She was convinced that when his parents were out he made mashed potatoes from the Joy of Cooking so that he could eat them with his hands.

  Nelson and Elizabeth went to brother-and-sister schools where Nelson distinguished himself. He won the Latin prize, the good citizen’s award, the math medal, and scholar of the year. Meanwhile, James Rodker had dropped out of what little sight he permitted his parents by going to England, where it was thought he was studying economics or history. Only the Leopolds knew how scanty information was about James. At dinner parties his name and the subject of economic history were twined, but during Rodker-Leopold bridge games all was revealed. As Elizabeth stood with her ear to the library door, she learned that whenever the Rodkers went to London to see him, they found that he had just gone abroad, or, if he was in town, he turned up with Hindu or Oriental girls who were clearly his mistresses. Elizabeth longed for these bridge parties. James’s career filled her with admiration. With Nelson constantly held over her head, it was hard for her not to have outright affection for anyone who behaved like a punk.

  The beautiful daughters of the nervous well-to-do are tended like orchids, especially in a city like New York. Elizabeth was not allowed to take a public bus unaccompanied until she was thirteen. Her friends were carefully picked over. The little O’Connor girl was common; that her father had won a Pulitzer prize was of no matter. The little Jefferson boy was colored. It made no difference that his father was a diplomat. And so on. The only one of Elizabeth’s friends Mrs. Leopold approved of was Holly Lukas, whose mother was an old friend. Holly was the only one to be dignified by a first name. Thus, Elizabeth never brought her real friends home, since, with the exception of Holly, they were all wrong: the children of broken homes, the sons and daughters of people with odd political or religious preferences or of blacklisted movie producers. Elizabeth learned the hard way that these children would not be made comfortable in her house. This might have put a crimp in Elizabeth’s social life except that none of her friends wanted to entertain at home. They knew early on that the best place to conduct a private life was in public.

  And then there was the Fifield Riding Academy incident. Like most girls her age, Elizabeth became horse crazy. She did not want to share this passion with her parents, who felt riding once a week was quite enough, so she made a deal with the stable that, in exchange for a free lesson, she would muck out the stalls on Tuesdays. This, however, was not known by her mother, who had her expensively outfitted. These riding clothes Elizabeth carried in a rucksack along with her real riding clothes—an old pair of blue jeans and a ratty sweater.

  It was soon discovered that Elizabeth was coming home late one extra afternoon each week stinking of horse. She was made to remove her jodhpurs at the service entrance and, when these garments were found to be relatively horseless, a search was made and the offending blue jeans rooted out. Mrs. Leopold then sat down to question her daughter. Elizabeth was mute. One word about manure and her riding days were over. But manure was not on Mrs. Leopold’s mind and, in fact, when she learned that her spotless baby spent one weekday in the company of a pitchfork, she was much relieved.

  She said, “Who works at the stable?”

  Elizabeth said, “You know. Mr. Fifield. That girl, Franny Hatch, and some boys.”

  “What boys?”

  “Oh, you know. Douglas Fifield and Buddy, the one who takes the little kids around the ring.”

  The questioning continued until Mrs. Leopold finally asked what she was really after. “Did this Douglas or this Buddy ever try to touch you?”

  Elizabeth was fourteen at the time, and it was clear that boys were not what worried Mrs. Leopold. It was Elizabeth herself. What wanton impulse would lead a girl to spend her time working in a stable?

  Besides, parents of the time believed in companionship with their children. When Elizabeth discovered bird walking or skating, stationery embossed with birds or skates was ordered in case she wished to write to her relatives. This invasion of privacy, w
hich radical students would later call cooption, looked harmless and well-meant and was practiced by most parents.

  When Elizabeth went to college, she had her first taste of freedom. While similarly restrained girls went wild, Elizabeth reveled in being left alone and staying up late at night reading anything she liked. The Leopolds were not against reading, but Elizabeth’s reading habits contributed to eyestrain and bad posture and, besides, all that reading made one lopsided. One must also sail, dress well, speak a foreign language, and be good at tennis. Since Elizabeth had never had the luxury to read undisturbed in her own house, she had little time at college to drink to excess or become promiscuous.

  At home on holidays she was correctness itself. At twenty, in the middle of her first love affair, she was grown up enough to restrain herself from calling her beloved in Vermont, lest her parents find him on the telephone bill. Elizabeth’s parents set great store on adult behavior. Had they known what sort of adult Elizabeth had become, great would have been their dismay. Elizabeth smiled beautifully and behaved in a flawless manner.

  Her mother was not entirely happy. She felt, as mothers will, that her daughter was not telling her the sort of things a daughter ought. She was vexed that Elizabeth was far away and none of her college chums could be conned. Mrs. Leopold knew she would have to wait for something to break: Elizabeth would want to go abroad to study, or to go to Africa, or she would turn up engaged to an awful boy. But Elizabeth did none of these things. She was graduated from college, came back to New York, and got a job.

  Her decision to live in New York was not easily come by, but she loved New York and she wanted to enjoy it finally on her own terms. She went to her father’s bank, and using as collateral a diamond-and-sapphire bracelet left to her by her grandmother, she borrowed enough money to rent an apartment on a little street in Greenwich Village and live until she had a salary. Through a friend of the O’Connor girl’s Pulitzer-prize-winning father, she found a job at a publishing company and went to work.

  Her parents were puzzled by this. The daughters of their friends were announcing their engagements in the Times, and those who joined the Peace Corps or had gone to graduate school were filed under the heading of “Useful Service,” as if they had entered convents or dedicated themselves to the poor, following the example of Jane Addams, who had after all come from a nice, rich family. Elizabeth further puzzled them by refusing to take a cent of their money, although Mrs. Leopold knew the truth: what you dole out to the young binds them to you. To have Elizabeth owing nothing was disconcerting, to say the least.

  To even up the side, she called Elizabeth to see if she was comfortable in her little cramped apartment that doubtless had insufficient heat. In the summer she was sure Elizabeth was suffocating and offered an air conditioner. She worried that the cleaners in that part of town did shoddy work and brooded to Elizabeth about what young girls had for dinner.

  Elizabeth was in a state of bliss. She could flop down on her bed with no lecture notes or required texts and read. Her friends, who had discovered many dangerous and exotic ways in which to cherish their freedom, found Elizabeth a little pathetic in this respect, but having the power to read what she liked was the ultimate liberty. Staying up all night exhausted her. Drink made her dizzy, drugs either disoriented her or made her sick, and she did not have a promiscuous nature. She did, however, have a lover.

  The lover was her next-door neighbor, Roy Wayne Howard, a large man with an Edwardian moustache. Roy was from central Ohio, and he was a fund raiser for the Center for Union Democracy. To this end he tried to hustle money. He found lawyers willing to donate their services. He had once been a hooded witness at the trial of some goons who had threatened an insurgent rank and file. Elizabeth, who was crazy about him, found him heroic.

  Elizabeth had run into Roy in the neighborhood. They introduced themselves at the all-night grocery store. One evening Roy appeared at her door with a bottle of whisky and two glasses. He drank most of the whisky while he and Elizabeth sniped at one another. After several evenings of this sort, plus several afternoons watching football games on television and a meal at a crummy Spanish restaurant, they became lovers, and from then on they were on and off. When they were on, they went to prizefights, to bars, and to the jazz clubs Roy loved. After a month of this Roy ceased to appear. Ringing his doorbell and confronting him turned out to be useless. Weeks would go by until they bumped into each other again and were on.

  This kept up for a year. Elizabeth was in love with Roy, and this on-again, off-again business upset her. She discussed it with Holly Lukas.

  “I can’t bear it,” Elizabeth wailed. “Why does he do this to me?”

  “I would tell you,” Holly said, “but you don’t want to know.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Holly, who was a great fan of Roy’s, explained: “For a smart girl, Elizabeth, you have a very selective intelligence. You’re like your mother. You like to see a situation in the light that does you the most good. You think Roy is afraid of intimacy, which is a stylish thing to say, but the truth is that Roy is a little too fond of you, and when it occurs to him that there’s nothing in it, he pulls back, for both your sakes.”

  “What do you mean, both our sakes?” said Elizabeth, who was reaching for her handkerchief.

  “Roy is wonderful. Anyone with sense would love Roy. But Roy drinks too much. Roy dresses badly. Roy wants to be a solitary hero. Roy told you that his idea of happiness is to go off to an island in Lake Michigan with a transistor radio and a case of Scotch. You will never marry Roy, and Roy will never marry you. Since you’re both old-fashioned, that’s bound to catch up with you.”

  “Yes,” said Elizabeth. “It’s true. And if I hang around with Roy, I don’t have to marry anyone else.” Holly had told her this before.

  “Absolutely,” said Holly. “If you married Roy, both of you would be miserable. Face the fact that you’re having a love affair that isn’t unhappy but will not lead to anything.”

  Elizabeth knew the truth when she heard it, but still she went to prizefights and to bars with Roy intermittently.

  Meanwhile, once every three weeks or so she had dinner with Nelson so if her mother said, “Aren’t you seeing any nice young men?” she could truthfully answer, “I see Nelson.”

  Nelson called on a Wednesday to ask her out for Saturday. He always appeared in an elegant sports jacket and beautiful trousers. It was hard for Elizabeth to admit that he was good-looking, but he was. One night Nelson, who had been first in his class at law school, mentioned his volunteer prison work.

  “You go into prisons looking like that?” she asked.

  “Yes, and I wear my watch, too.” Said watch was heavy and gold, a Rodker family relic.

  “Those cons must really love you.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, they do, because they get the services of a first-rate lawyer for free. And why should I change what I wear to go into a prison? I’d feel very condescended to if someone did that to me.”

  This prison-reform business was hard on Elizabeth. None of Nelson’s attitudes were wrong and, worse, he never bragged. How she wished that he had turned out to be a corporate lawyer, voting Republican and talking about the creeping menace of socialism. Instead, he made a lot of money and did good works. There was nothing Elizabeth could pin on him.

  Nelson always took her to a good restaurant and always paid for the meal, but he explained, “I’m told you’re living on what you earn and, since what I earn is about three times what you earn, it’s silly for you to split the check. If you wanted to be fair, you’d invite me for dinner. Your mother told my mother you’re quite a good cook.”

  This was a sore subject with Elizabeth. She had invited her parents for dinner, after concealing any incriminating thing in the house. Any trace of birth control was locked away. Any book her mother might pick up and say, “Darling, are you reading this?,” was hidden from view. All but several bottles of liquor were placed under the sink. No
bottles would mean that Elizabeth had no social life Too many would mean that she was either drinking to excess or hanging around with those who did.

  Mrs. Leopold, who referred to these meals as “Elizabeth’s bohemian dinners,” said to her daughter, “I don’t know where you learned to use spices in such an original way.” Implying that Elizabeth never could have learned from her—and also that spices were common, and that real food, eaten by real people, was either plain American or French.

  So Elizabeth had no intention of being fair and inviting Nelson for dinner. She figured he was probably a spy. Still, these dinners with him were not unpleasant, but after the pleasantest of them Elizabeth made sure that when Nelson left her at her door she changed her clothes and went next door to Roy Howard.

  In early December Roy Howard moved away. He promised he would stay in touch, but Elizabeth began to cry. Roy said, “I love you in my own way but not in any way that will do any good.” Then he gave her a kiss, and she knew he would continue to turn up intermittently. However, his moving brought her very low. She saw Nelson rather more often. He took her for drives in the country, or for walks, or out for dinner. He talked to her about her work and his own. He was an excellent time filler, and Elizabeth began to think of him as an old friend, one of those friends who connects you to your past. During a drive one afternoon he revealed to her that James was coming home for Christmas.