The effect of this statement on Polly was that of a roller coaster on a stomach. Wanting rushed from her head to her toes in a gush, making her dizzy. Instantly she realized that she had never wanted anything so much in her life. Of course, it was entirely impossible.
“Come for five days. You can fiddle it. Can’t you invent some seminar in Paris? Conchita can take care of the grubs.”
Conchita was the Demarest housekeeper.
“You could pull it off, Doreen,” Lincoln said. “Think of what a good time we’d have.”
“Not this I can’t pull off, Linky,” Polly said. She sat up and burst into tears. In the year since their love affair had begun, Lincoln had never seen her cry. Her big, creamy shoulders heaved. The Solo-Millers were tall and broad in the shoulders. Polly had long flanks, big shoulders, and a wide face. Her flesh was peachy and smooth. She had fine, strong hands and clear, green-flecked eyes. Polly was myopic, but her father did not believe in giving in to glasses. Polly kept her spectacles hidden away in her handbag and had spent her life squinting. Lincoln loved the smile of comfort and recognition that flooded her face once she got close enough to see what she was looking at, and she had made his heart stop one afternoon by putting on her glasses before getting into bed with him. This made him know how much she loved him.
Sundays made her more tired than she knew. Henry Demarest liked to stay in bed on Sunday morning and read the paper. Polly was up earlier than anyone. She gave the children their breakfast and took the Sunday paper and a cup of coffee to Henry. At her parents, she spent half an hour with her father who unburdened himself on one topic or another and then sat in the kitchen with Wendy who did not want any help on Sundays but had to be talked to. Then it was time to take the children to the park, or to bring them home and clean them up for lunch. Polly had fifteen minutes to herself in the study—to finish a cup of coffee, race through the paper, and be by herself. Now she was in bed with Lincoln Bennett, crying as if her heart would break.
“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” she wept. Then she collected herself a little. “I just can’t. Oh, Lincoln, I could just manage to get away with you for those three days in Vermont but I worried the whole time that my parents would need to get me, or we would run into someone one of us knew, or Henry would call.”
“Henry was in Brussels,” Lincoln said.
“That made it easier. But I really was so scared. What if something had happened to Pete and Dee-Dee? Oh, it was awful.”
“Awful?” said Lincoln. He put his arms around her. His darling, tactful Polly almost never slipped. It was very clear how miserable she was.
“No, it was heavenly, but it was difficult. No, I can’t do it. Leaving the country is just a little too drastic.”
“Then I won’t go,” said Lincoln. “They don’t have to have me there.”
“Linky, you must go,” said Polly. “You have to supervise the hanging and arrangement and everything. Oh, please, please go. I’ll feel so awful if you don’t.”
“I don’t really want to, much,” said Lincoln. “I’ll miss you terribly, Doe. I like my molelike life with you. I always hope that when the grubs go off to college you and I can astound everyone by running off together to India on a sketching trip. I want to always be with you like this, and when we’re in our middle fifties, we’ll run away.”
He kissed her on the cheek. She turned to him. Her eyes were blazing. “Oh, Lincoln,” she said. “I love you so very much.”
At five she called home to tell Henry that she was on her way. Lincoln watched her as she got dressed. He loved to watch her slip those thick, expensive, sober clothes over her tousled hair. He liked watching her transform herself back into a respectable matron. That she took her glasses off to go home had a symbolism that was lost on neither of them. Lincoln made her a farewell cup of coffee, and they arranged their schedules.
“What do you have on this week?” he said.
“Partners’ dinner tomorrow. Home Tuesday. Henry’s in Boston Wednesday. Thursday, we have Paul, the Peckhams, and the Sterns for dinner. Friday we’re going to the theatre with Mum and Daddy, Aunt Lila, Henry and Andreya. Saturday I can’t remember—something noble like dinner with a judge. Sunday’s brunch. What about you?”
“Nothing Monday, an opening Tuesday, you Wednesday, dinner with my father Thursday, and Friday I probably will go up to Gus and Juliet’s for the weekend.” Gus was Lincoln’s older brother. He and his wife Juliet were both architects. They had a little daughter Daphne, a dog named Jip, and a Persian cat called Max, all of whom Lincoln said were architects, too, and they had a house in the Connecticut Berkshires.
As usual, it was hard for them to part, but their relationship had never had that quality of insecurity that love affairs so often have. Lincoln and Polly had declared themselves at once. Neither was very experienced at romance and saw no reason why to hide their love from one another. Furthermore, they were both well organized and were always where they were meant to be in order to make and receive telephone calls.
They knew that their relationship was possible because Polly was married. Lincoln felt that he had been born for later life, not for youth, boyish as he was. He needed his solitude. The chaos of love affairs, engagements, marriage, nest building, and child raising were not for him. But he had a loving, ardent heart, and although he did not want to marry, he wanted the security of love. In Polly he had gotten exactly what he wanted.
Polly could never have been married to Lincoln, that she knew. She wanted family life, although now she had learned that she wanted privacy as well: Lincoln was her privacy. Lincoln believed that Polly’s own family protected her from her Solo-Miller family, but the truth was that the fact of Lincoln protected Polly, although she would never have thought of it. And Lincoln singled her out, as no one except her children had ever done, not for what she could do, but for what she was. Lincoln truly loved her for her spirit.
Sometimes at night, in her comfortable bed, under the blue and white early American quilt that Henry Demarest’s sister Eva had given them for a wedding present, Polly thought about Lincoln and her heart was full of fear. He was so adorable, so talented, so attractive. He had enough money and came from a good family. Surely some day he would find some beautiful, adorable, talented, and attractive girl with enough money and a good family and he would fall in love with her and marry her. The nice, full life that Polly led had not prepared her for this sort of pain. At these moments she would turn to Henry Demarest who wore English pajamas and liked to read English mystery novels. He was so big, so good-looking, so safe. She was married to him, after all, and she loved him too. Didn’t that thought ever cause Lincoln any pain? After these reflections it was not unusual for Polly to go into the bathroom, press her face into a large bath towel, and cry so that no one could hear her.
Lincoln’s trip to Paris coincided with a long business trip of Henry’s—Henry was gone the entire week. Polly went to work, took her children to their grandparents, gave dinner to her brother Paul, had her parents for dinner, and spent the rest of the time alone or with her children. Toward the end of the week it rained and sleeted. Pete and Dee-Dee and Polly sat in the kitchen and ate deviled chicken, corn sticks, baked squash, and pineapple rice whip. After the children were in bed, she had the house to herself.
She was not prepared for the violent onslaught of missing Lincoln. It was the most terrible thing she had ever undergone. Without him she felt alone on the planet, needed but understood by no one. Without Henry her life was not normal. Without Lincoln, her life was not natural. He made the Polly everyone doted on visible to Polly—there was no way to thank someone for such an amazing gift.
On Sunday Polly took the children to her parents’ for brunch. The spring weather had turned cold and bright. Wendy had filled the house with vases of quince, forsythia, and white lilac. There was a little more silence than usual without Henry Demarest who was a true social asset. Pete and Dee-Dee had been given their lunch earlier and had been sent to the library to
take naps. Polly, Henry, and Andreya were going to take them kite flying in the afternoon.
As usual, Polly sat in the library for half an hour with her father, and sat in the kitchen with Wendy who talked at her. She attempted to talk to Andreya who said “yes,” “no,” and “of course” vigorously.
At lunch she worked hard to keep the conversation flowing—it was one of her skills. But when she was not called upon to talk, she settled back and thought of Lincoln. She carried on with him, when he was not with her, an unending conversation in her head. Stirred from that conversation, she looked up to see that he was not sitting at the table. For an instant she was surprised. It was so natural that he should have been. There was her family. She looked like them. They were her tribe, her clan, her flesh. Wasn’t it odd that not one of them knew anything about what was closest to her heart?
After lunch, the children were bundled up, and Henry, Andreya, and Polly took them off to the park. Henry liked a plain, ordinary kite. He bought them at the toy store and made them more aerodynamic at home. Andreya flew a box kite. For each of the children they had a Japanese kite—one in the shape of a dragon for Pete and a fish for Dee-Dee. Polly stood on a little rise and watched. In her handbag she had the love letter Lincoln had written her from Paris. In three days he would be home. Henry Demarest was due home that evening. He had called every night, as he always did when he was away.
The wind took the kites right up. Henry’s, being more aerodynamic, went much, much higher than the others. Andreya’s bobbled nicely and then floated in the sky. Polly thought of Lincoln’s kite which hung on the wall of his studio. It was black and silver, in the shape of a stingray, with a black and silver tail. She could never give Lincoln up, she knew. His ten days away had taught her that her love for him had become another fact in her life, like the fact of her husband and children.
The children’s kites zigzagged into the sky. The dragon’s tail rattled in the wind and the fish wriggled. At the sight of those jaunty, ornamental kites Polly felt blinded by tears—of love, of missing Lincoln, of expectation. The dragon had been made so it would swoop, and when it did, Polly felt her heart break open, to love and pain. No kite, of course, had been given to her to fly, but she felt as overexcited and grateful as if it had.
A Biography of Laurie Colwin
Laurie Colwin (1944–1992) was an American novelist and short story author, most famous for her writings on cooking and upper-middle-class urban life.
Colwin was born on June 14 in Manhattan, New York, to Estelle and Peter Colwin. She spent her childhood in Lake Ronkonkoma, Long Island; Philadelphia; and Chicago. During her time in Philadelphia she attended Cheltenham High School and was inducted into its hall of fame in 1999. After graduation she continued her education at Bard College, the New School, and Columbia University.
In 1965 Colwin began her career working for Sanford J. Green burger Associates, a literary agency in New York City. From there she went on to work at several leading book publishers, holding editorial positions at Viking Press, Pantheon Books, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, and E. P. Dutton. Most notably during this time, Colwin worked closely with Isaac Bashevis Singer, winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize in Literature, editing and translating his works.
An aspiring writer all her life, Colwin sold her first short story to the New Yorker in 1969 at the age of twenty-five—an auspicious start. Over the course of the next few years, her work appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Allure, Redbook, Mademoiselle, and Playboy. Many of these early stories were included in a collection, Passion and Affect, which was published in 1974.
Food and the act of cooking played an influential role in Colwin’s life from early on. During the Columbia University campus uprisings of 1968, she famously cooked for student protestors occupying various buildings. “Someone put a piece of adhesive on the sleeve of my sweatshirt that read: KITCHEN/COLWIN,” she wrote in Home Cooking, published in 1988. “This, I feel, marked me for life.”
As Colwin began crafting her short stories, she also became a regular food columnist for Gourmet magazine, and many of her columns were anthologized in Home Cooking. The release of this work secured a fan base of up-and-coming casual gourmands who loved Colwin’s unfussy, personal style and who remain devoted to her long after her death. Later in her life, even as she wrote about privileged Manhattanites, Colwin continued to volunteer and cook for homeless shelters in New York.
By the late seventies, Laurie Colwin was writing full time. Her first novel, Shine On, Bright & Dangerous Object, was published in 1975, and in 1977 Colwin received the prestigious O. Henry Award for short fiction. Her second novel, Happy All the Time, was received with much critical acclaim in 1978. By the time The Lone Pilgrim—a short story collection—and the novel Family Happiness were published in 1981 and 1982, respectively, Colwin had solidified her reputation as a writer to watch. She became known for her entertaining wit and wonderfully complex protagonists, whom readers understood immediately.
Colwin’s story collection Another Marvelous Thing was published in 1986, and the next year, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1990 she published Goodbye Without Leaving, the last novel that would go to press before her untimely death.
Laurie Colwin died of an aortic aneurysm in her Manhattan home on October 24, 1992, at the age of forty-eight. She was survived by her husband, Juris Jurjevics, a founder of Soho Press, and their daughter, Rosa.
In 1993 A Big Storm Knocked It Over and More Home Cooking were published posthumously, serving as final invocations of Colwin’s distinct voice and the New York characters she loved.
The author’s parents, Estelle Colwin (née Wolfson) and Peter Colwin.
The Wolfsons, Colwin’s mother’s family, lived in Philadelphia and congregated there for the holidays. Colwin (at front), her older sister, Leslie (at upper left), and their father, Peter, pose by a statue in Rittenhouse Square, Thanksgiving, c. 1950.
Colwin at age seven or eight. As a child and teen, she did print modeling work at her mother’s urging.
Colwin receiving an award at Ronkonkoma Grade School.
Colwin as a teenager. Childhood friend Willard Spiegelman, a writer and professor, recalls that Colwin often held “salons” in her bedroom.
By the time she was a teenager, Colwin had developed a keen interest in art. Here, she sketches with charcoal, obviously impressing her companion.
Colwin as a counselor at Camp Burr Oaks in Wisconsin. She had also attended as a camper in earlier years.
Colwin’s Cheltenham High School graduation photo, 1962.
After graduating from high school, Colwin traveled to Europe by boat. Her mother (at right), saw her off at the dock.
A rare moment as a dinner guest rather than host.
Cats and fancy dinnerware were two of Colwin’s favorite things. Chloe, her beloved Maine coon, sits atop a shelf that displays some of Colwin’s prized pieces.
These objects, sketched by Colwin herself, were prominent fixtures on her desk for years and years. Several, including the Callard & Bowser tin of pencils, patterned cup and saucer, and champagne lamp base, remain family treasures.
Colwin used her wit not only in her writing, but also in her drawings and paintings. Here, “MacLehose” refers to publisher Christopher MacLehose, who was a friend of Colwin and her husband, Juris Jurjevics.
Colwin was known for making her own baby food for her daughter, Rosa, pictured here in 1985.
For many years Colwin and her husband lived in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, where their daughter was born and raised.
As a writer, Colwin was able to leave office life behind and become a work-from-home mom. Ice-skating with her daughter, Rosa, age six in this photograph, was a favorite winter activity.
A soup recipe Colwin created for Rosa.
This gingerbread recipe was “a hit” according to Colwin—words of high praise she used throughout her food writing.
A crowd-pleaser from More Home Cooking.
Colwin loved
to tinker with baking recipes and routinely combined elements and flavors not cited in the original versions.
Summer food delighted Colwin, and she loved to eat outside, especially in the evening.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1981 by Laurie Colwin
Cover design by Mimi Bark
ISBN: 978-1-4976-7376-2
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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The Lone Pilgrim Page 19