by Melissa Bank
Technically, Hugh wasn’t as handsome as Venice was beautiful. He had dark hair and always a few days’ worth of dark beard. His skin was bad—red and rough and maybe damaged from acne; there were scars. Yet this seemed to make him more attractive, as it never would a woman. Like Venice, though, Hugh was admired from afar, and he affected women as strongly as she did men, and maybe more deeply—not that he had any idea.
He lived off campus, in a dingy apartment with worn-out upholstered chairs and an olive vinyl sofa, but leaning against the walls were his own beautiful landscape paintings. The apartment had an unheated sunporch facing the lake, and Venice said he’d bundle up and paint out there, wearing his winter coat and gloves he’d cut the fingers off of.
The two of them were always inviting people over to his apartment before and after parties. He always offered Pimm’s—he’d been to London the year before and had brought back cases of it. If you wanted to drink something else, you brought it.
It was Venice who kept these evenings going. Hugh was no good at parties, even in his own home. He seemed older—much older—than his guests, almost grandfatherly. He reminded me of someone deaf, or nearly so; he had trouble keeping up with conversations, and contributed the non-est of non sequiturs. I once heard him interrupt a joke about Reagan to say that Millard Fillmore’s birthplace was in nearby Locke, New York. He didn’t seem to know how awkward he was, or if he did, didn’t care; I don’t think he cared what anyone except Venice thought of him. He trusted her opinions and sought them out; when she didn’t like something he said, he wanted to know why—he was really eager to hear.
They didn’t call each other Honey or Babe, let alone Flea or Cabbage; to each other they were Venice and Hugh. They hardly touched each other in front of other people. Their kisses hello or good-bye didn’t say, Sex. But there was something private between them, enviably private. They were a couple in a way that didn’t exclude anyone but seemed superior to every other relationship in the room.
. . . . .
I never saw Venice get upset. Even after her worst fight with Hugh—he’d read an aerogram from Georges—Venice just said, “Hugh’s being idiotic.” So it was shocking and terrible one afternoon to find her crying in our room.
I didn’t know what was wrong, and for a long time she was crying too hard to tell me. Finally, she got out enough words to let me know she’d gotten into Brown.
She hadn’t told me she’d applied to transfer, and I wondered if she’d told Hugh. Not that it would matter; Hugh was graduating, anyway, and Brown was closer than Rogers to Manhattan, where he was looking for a job.
“You don’t have to go,” I said.
She gave me a look that reminded me of the first night when she’d wanted a drink and I’d told her about the soda machine.
Then more tears.
I told her I’d do anything if she would just stop crying, and right away she said, “Play your fiddle for me.”
“Shit,” I said, but I got it out of its case and looked through my records for one to play along with. The only songs I knew were the cowboy and miner ballads of the variety called High Lonesome, but I put on the happiest one I could think of—one about a cowboy’s love for his horse.
I hadn’t played for anyone in a long time, and I wasn’t sure I could do it now. I had to stand with my back to her, which in itself was embarrassing.
When I stopped playing, Venice smiled—a huge relief, even though I wasn’t sure if she was smiling with me or at me.
. . . . .
That summer, Venice sent me a postcard a week from Europe. She’d seen Georges in Tuscany and described it in six languages, including pig Latin: “Elt-fay othing-nay.”
In late August, she called from Capri to invite me to spend Labor Day weekend on Long Island, where Hugh’s family had a house. I’d never gotten a call from Europe and wasn’t sure how expensive it was, and I found myself saying yes because it was faster than saying no, which would have required an explanation.
Hugh and Venice picked me up at the train, in his grandparents’ old station wagon. Venice gave me the front seat, and I looked out at the bushes of blue hydrangeas, the huge shade trees, and the houses with their silvered cedar shingles.
Hugh’s was on the bay side, across Dune Road from the beach. The house was big but shabby; his family had managed to hold on to the house but had no money to keep it up. You’d open a drawer and the pull would come off in your hand.
I was worried that I’d feel awkward as the guest of Venice, as a guest of a guest, a guest once-removed. But Hugh introduced me to his mother and grandparents and sister as his “great friend,” and that was how I felt.
. . . . .
My favorite time of day was the late, late afternoon with the sun golding up the ocean and sand and sea grass and dunes. Venice said it was called “magic hour” in the movies. She knew because she’d read a few scripts by then, given to her by a director she’d met that summer.
One magic hour, after swimming, we got dressed on the beach in jeans and sweaters. We unpacked a dinner picnic of leftovers—cold crabs and cold corn on the cob and tomatoes Venice had flecked with fresh basil. Hugh made a fire, and we drank wine and stayed out there on the beach late into the night.
When we got back everyone was asleep, and Venice went off to Hugh’s bedroom, as she did every night. She’d come back to ours just as the sky was getting light, and sometimes I’d wake up and remember where I was and I’d feel as happy then as I ever had.
. . . . .
The three of us were happy as quahogs until Labor Day. It was overcast, and I thought that was what made the morning seem slow and thick.
Without much enthusiasm, Hugh suggested sailing.
Venice looked dubious; she noted the lack of wind. Then she said, “Our train leaves at four.”
Hugh said, “I know what time your train leaves.”
Venice seemed oblivious to his tone, and maybe she was at first. However upset she’d been when she’d gotten into Brown, I knew she was excited now about going. She wasn’t talking about it, but she radiated the exuberance you can feel about going to a new place or starting a new thing.
Hugh wasn’t going anywhere or starting anything; he hadn’t found a job yet.
Finally we went sailing, without any of us really wanting to. It was a little boat, not much bigger than a Sunfish, and it looked old. As I got in, I asked Hugh when it had last been used.
Hugh seemed to wonder himself for a minute, and I thought, Three drown in boating accident.
Both Venice and Hugh knew how to sail, and all I really did was watch them and the bay, lower my head when the boom crossed over, and look forward to going back to the house and taking one last outdoor shower before getting on the train.
The sky clouded over, and there was no sun at all anymore, and no wind, either. Finally Venice said, “We should head back.” Hugh didn’t answer, just turned the boat around.
They had to tack—zigzag—the whole way back across the bay. Hugh kept sighing, and he seemed annoyed. He was giving Venice orders, like, “Just get over there,” and she was obeying them. She didn’t seem angry or upset or embarrassed, as I would have been. I thought maybe the windlessness was more dire than I realized, and the two of them were following emergency sailing procedures, which included the captain acting like a jerk and his mate ignoring him.
But neither changed, even once we got close to shore and out of danger; again, I wondered if Venice was thinking less about where she was now than where she’d be later.
We were pulling the boat up onto the sand when I saw how wrong I was. Behind Hugh’s back, her face was full of sympathy. Venice knew exactly what he was feeling: The life he’d known was about to end; it would end as soon as she got on the train. She knew that he was scared of losing her and scared of not finding a job, and this was her way of telling him he didn’t have to be.
On the beach she did a cartwheel, and he did one, too, a failure, but she laughed and got him l
aughing.
Back at the house, Venice took the first shower. I was packing when Hugh came and stood in the doorway and said, “Why don’t you stay another night?”
I told him that my older brother expected me to spend the night with him in Manhattan.
“Stay with me,” he said, and his look let me know I would be doing him a favor.
. . . . .
At a restaurant on Main Street, Hugh and I sat outside, drinking scotch for dinner. We weren’t talking at all. I felt awkward and tried to think up topics other than the girlfriend who’d left and the job he didn’t have.
When he recognized someone he knew and called him to the table, I was overjoyed.
Hugh rose and said, “Have a drink with us.”
The guy tipped his head bar-ward and said, “I’m in the middle of something,” and his tone said, In the middle of some girl. Then he said hi to me, and, “I’m Michael Whitmore,” and I told him my name, and we shook hands. To Hugh, he said, “Call me at the office on Tuesday,” and was gone.
Another year of silence passed before Hugh said, “I should’ve majored in economics.”
It reminded me of how I’d felt applying to college. Night after night, I sat with my father in his study while he read aloud from Barron’s. He’d read the name of the college, the number of men and the number of women, and a description in guidebook prose; then he’d say, “How does that sound?” and I’d think, Sounds just like the last one.
It took me a few nights to realize that my father was reading only the colleges that I had some chance of getting into—not Brown but Bowling Green; not Wesleyan but Ohio Wesleyan; not Williams or Smith, but William Smith. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that my grades and test scores over the years were anything more than individual humiliations; I hadn’t realized that one day all of them would add up and count against me.
My father was waiting to hear my reaction to whatever college he’d just read me the description of. He looked over at me. “What is it?”
“I wish someone had told me,” I said.
“Told you what?”
I hadn’t answered. I’d already figured out that not understanding my failings was another of my failings.
Now I wanted to convince Hugh that whatever prevented him from finding a job was not a failing but a strength. “You’re a painter,” I told him. “I don’t even know why you’re looking for a job in investment banking.”
He said, “I need to make a living, Sophie.”
“Maybe you could do something with art, though,” I said.
He asked if I had any idea how much private-school tuition was.
“No.” I waited for him to make his point. Then I realized he already had. He was talking about the cost of educating the children he planned to have with Venice.
I told Hugh that I didn’t think Venice cared too much about money, but as I said it I realized I didn’t know.
“She doesn’t care about it,” he said, “because she doesn’t have to.”
. . . . .
I worried about Hugh, but there was no need: He got a job in Michael’s bank, and ended up moving into Michael’s apartment.
Venice didn’t like Michael, and I was there the night Hugh asked her why. “Just tell me,” he said. “I want to know.”
She shrugged.
“Because I sleep in the living room?” Hugh said. “Is that it?”
“No.”
He said, “It’s his apartment.”
Venice reminded Hugh that he paid half the rent.
He asked her once more what she had against Michael. When she wouldn’t answer, he said, “Michael’s a good friend of mine.” His voice was serious, even stern.
She gazed at him—loving him, I think, for his loyalty to his friend—and then she said, “Okay.”
. . . . .
Venice spent almost every weekend in Manhattan, and the weekends I came in the three of us stayed at her parents’ apartment, their pied-à-terre, on Seventy-ninth Street off Park. Friday afternoon, I’d take the bus down from Klondike, and Venice would take a train from Providence.
We’d meet near the apartment, at the Toy Bar. It was small and cozy, and you could ask the bartender for dominoes or checkers or practically any board game—Risk, Life, Operation, Parcheesi, Monopoly, even the Barbie Dating Game. There was a model train set, too, and a few times a night the bartender would press a switch and the train would clack and whistle around the track above our heads. The engine had a light on it.
We’d spend an hour or two there—Venice always made time for us to talk by ourselves—and then Hugh would join us. Sometimes she mentioned a party she knew of, though we rarely went; Hugh’s awkwardness at parties had begun to bother Venice.
Hugh was obviously relieved to have a job, but I don’t think he liked the actual work—selling bonds, I think; at least he never talked about it. When I asked him about his job, he’d say, “It’s fine, fine,” and his double fine made me think it was totally unfine. He was working hard, though. There were nights when he couldn’t meet us until very late.
. . . . .
Thanksgiving break was the first time Venice mentioned Anthony. He was from England, and she pronounced his name not with a th but a T and a breath, as in Antony and Cleopatra.
We’d decided to walk all the way from her parents’ apartment to Penn Station, where I would get the train home to Philadelphia and she’d meet Hugh for the one to Long Island.
Anthony was “incredibly smart,” she said, and “incredibly charming,” and “incredibly fun.”
I said, “He sounds incredible.”
She didn’t compare him to Hugh directly, but she let me know that it was nice to be with someone who could hold his own at a cocktail party.
“Are you seeing him?” I said.
“God, no!” she said. “We just go to parties together.”
I gave her a look: Are you sure?
She said, “He’s a total lothario,” and by then I felt comfortable enough with her to ask what a lothario was. “A seducer,” she said. “A womanizer.”
I had a bad feeling about him, but I didn’t want to say so. What I said was, “Would I like him?”
“I think he’d intrigue you,” she said. “But I’m not sure you’d like him.”
We were in the Thirties on Fifth Avenue when someone handed us flyers for a sample sale, and Venice looked at hers. She said she’d heard of the designer and the showroom was on our way and, “Let’s go.”
Venice hated shopping, and I thought maybe she wanted to go to the sale to avoid more questions about Anthony.
On the elevator up, I said, “Does Hugh know?”
She said, “There’s nothing to know.”
Then we were in the frenzy of the sale, and Venice asked me to keep an eye out for a floor-length gown she needed for a formal party Anthony had invited her to—“a ball,” she called it.
She found one, in cobalt silk, with a low, drapey back.
There were no dressing rooms—we had to try on our dresses in an aisle between racks—and no mirrors, either, so we had to rely on each other’s judgment.
Venice said, “Don’t be kind.”
The cobalt dress looked fantastic on her, but I said so hesitantly; it occurred to me that if I could talk her out of the dress, maybe she wouldn’t go to the ball with Anthony.
She didn’t seem to hear me. She was staring at me and what I was wearing—a strapless black taffeta cocktail dress with a tight, boned bodice and a skirt that flounced and swirled to my knees.
Her voice was almost awed when she said, “Sophie.” Then: “Take your bra off.”
I looked at her, Really?
Her look said, Obviously.
I did as I was told, and she nodded.
I looked at the tag. “It’s four hundred dollars.”
She said, “These dresses go for thousands,” and asked if I had enough in my checking account to cover it.
I said, “Are you k
idding?”
She said, “Do you have a credit card?”
I did, but my father had given the card to me with specific instructions for its use—emergencies, and once a week I was to take myself and a friend out for a good dinner. I had, but never Venice; I’d been afraid she’d order a lot of drinks or an expensive bottle of wine, and then the big bill would go to my father, and he’d know I was turning out wrong.
I said, “I’m just supposed to use it for emergencies.”
“This is an emergency.”
I unzipped the dress.
She said, “Have I ever told you to buy anything before?”
We’d only shopped together once, at the Salvation Army thrift shop in Klondike, where she’d tried to talk me out of a sweater. “Of course it’s not perfect,” I’d said. “It’s a dollar.”
Now I said, “Name one place I could wear it.”
She said, “I’m going to buy it for you if you won’t.”
I said, “Name one place.”
She said that maybe I could go with her and Anthony to the ball. She thought for a minute. “You can wear it anywhere as long as you show up late. People will think you’re coming from somewhere else, a gala or whatever.”
I reminded her that I wasn’t the kind of gal who went to galas.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “This is your one perfect thing.”
When I told her it was just too expensive, she said that hers cost twice as much.
We were in line for the cashier before I thought of the ball she was going to with Anthony. For Hugh’s sake, I said a doubtful, “Is yours a perfect thing, do you think?”
She said, “Perfect enough.”
. . . . .
That night, at home in Surrey, in my childhood bedroom, I tried on the dress and looked in the mirror.
What I saw was so foreign to me that I couldn’t take it in at first. In the dress, I was glamorous. I was elegant. I was a movie star, there in my bedroom with its canopy bed and Bob Dylan posters.
Venice was right: The dress was perfect, and it was perfect on me. The low-cut bodice accentuated my large breasts and made my waist appear tiny and my hips merely full. I wasn’t used to seeing my bare shoulders, and especially not the flesh above my breasts, which even at a standstill called to mind the word heaving.