I went to the window as I heard the car pull into my drive. Paul opened the door for her. Her face was hidden in the shine blasting off the fender. I’d insisted they come for dinner as soon as she returned from New England—Newport, Rhode Island, as it turned out. On the porch she gave me a very un–New England greeting of a kiss on each cheek. And said, “I’ve been curious to meet you for years, Tom. You’re more corporeal than I imagined.”
“Should I be insulted?” I asked.
“You’re real,” she said. “I hope that’s no insult.”
Her name was Millicent. Her face was as patrician as her name, but her voice and laugh were easy and western. It seemed she had been born in the wrong place, but had been lucky enough to find the right one. California. Certainly the sun suited her skin. And the loose, blue-spotted dress she wore did not suggest temperance.
Dinner was nothing but pleasant. She and Paul could still make each other laugh, and often did, but I never felt excluded. She taught Theater Arts at UCLA, but her way was not especially theatrical. As Paul had promised, she knew quite a lot about the pictures and showed very good taste.
After dinner, just as daylight was leaking away, we went out to the back patio. It was too nice an evening not to, though I’d begun to avoid the patio when I was alone. It was hard not to look into the doctor’s yard. I’d seen his daughter once or twice, but, understandably, she ignored the garden. It thickened with weeds, and the flowers wobbled and shrunk. Since no one lived there now, I’d cut the last of the dahlias and put them on my own patio table. They looked rather miserable already, but Millicent complimented them nonetheless.
Of course, she would have paid the compliment to my wife if I’d had one. And it was easy enough to pretend that Faye was sitting right there, to use the small talk of couples on first dates with other couples. How did you meet? I asked. In Italy, wasn’t it?
“Don’t bore him, Millicent,” Paul said, but that was all part of their routine; in fact, Paul seemed to enjoy having mastered banal American small talk.
“I’m still not bored by it,” she said. “I’m sorry you are.”
They’d met, she said, in 1923, in a town called Sirmione on Lake Garda. She had been staying there with her parents—it was just one stop on the grand tour they’d given their grandly spoiled only daughter. In fact, Paul had met her parents first, during breakfast at the hotel, when she’d been too angry to join them. What was she angry about? She could no longer remember, but it had almost cost her the love of her life. She had promised herself that she would never marry a man her parents introduced her to. Then this Austrian with a drooping eye and impeccable manners joined them for dinner.
“You knew right away?” I asked.
“Hardly. At the time he looked like a foul ball.”
I laughed, and looked at Paul, who was smiling politely. He’d heard it all before. “What does that mean?”
“He looked like he’d been hit hard and in the wrong direction. And my father was far more impressed by his stories about the Hussar days than I was.” She touched Paul’s leg, but she was reassuring me, not him.
“I think I’ve heard a few of those,” I said.
“Have you heard this one? Paul once saw a peasant girl leaning from a train window as it pulled into . . . what was the station again?
“Budapest Kaleti,” Paul said, knowing his cues. “It was obviously the first time she’d been to the city, likely the first time she’d been anywhere outside her village. She was elated, terrified. The face we might make upon arriving on Mars.”
“That’s it. He could see all that just in her expression. And he also saw,” here, she began to mock his accent in a way I liked, “a profound beauty, having nothing to do with the paradigms of European culture. A vision of great solace as European culture was crumbling all around him.”
We all laughed. “I’m sure he never saw such a beauty again,” I said.
“Actually, he did,” she said. “In my face, if you can believe it.”
“Easily,” I said, because it seemed harmless to flirt with her. And I’d drunk a bit too much.
“Believe it or not, I could resist.” She cut her eyes at Paul. Her voice thickened. The smile slipped, somewhat. “Paul had the most transparently rote charm I had ever seen. He couldn’t have cared less if it made any impression.”
The practiced part of her story was obviously over. Paul opened his mouth, but in the end didn’t object.
“And why was that?” I asked.
“He was in love with someone else. And trying very hard to behave as if he wasn’t. That was what made him interesting.”
“That is interesting,” I said. Paul was looking off into the doctor’s tangled yard. It was too dark to see much.
“Of course, he denied it at first, but how long can you really deny something like that?”
“You’d be surprised,” I said.
“I’m sure I wouldn’t. But Paul only managed for an hour or so. We went for a walk around the lake at my parents’ urging, and half the time we talked about her.”
“What did he say about her?”
Millicent touched Paul’s leg again; the gesture clearly meant something different this time. She held her hand there. And while I waited for her to continue I wasn’t sure what to do with my own hands. My glass was empty. I’d left the kitchen lamp on, and the window was yellow, full of jack-o’-lantern light. “It doesn’t matter now,” she said. “Anyway, he never stopped making these old-fashioned romantic overtures, and I think he slowly began to mean them. At least I hope he did. But in the next sentence it was back to someone he’d never have. He really is quite an interesting man. But I never would have known that if not for this other woman. When we met, I actually thanked her.”
I would have liked to have been able to test my voice before I spoke again. “Met her where,” I asked. “In Bologna?”
“No. It was years later. After we moved to Los Angeles. She lives here.”