And verily, a woman need know but one man well, in order to understand all men; whereas a man may know all women and not understand one of them.
—HELEN ROWLAND
THERESA
Monday morning, about ten o’clock or so
UNTIL THIS morning, I have never visited the Boy’s place of employment, but everybody knows where to find the Sterling Bates & Company building: right there at the intersection of Wall and Broad, coyly cornering the Stock Exchange.
I was the one who got him the job in the first place, after all. Well, that’s not quite true. I urged him to find himself a means of gainful employment, to keep himself busy during the day once the first autumn zephyr blew us all back into the city, like so many fallen leaves. Idle hands do the devil’s work, I reminded him, sometime in the tranquil center of August, and then I took said hands into my own and settled them right where they could do the devil’s work to my utmost satisfaction. It was the middle of the day, and we had been lovers for about a month by then, but I was already planning for the future. Already laying out a means by which the Boy could settle into a little nest at just the right distance from the Upper East Side—not too far for convenience, not too close for discretion—and I could pay him a visit or two, from time to time.
I knew, of course, that he wouldn’t allow me to keep him. He wasn’t that sort of Boy, then or now. Besides, he has a tendency to brood if left to his own devices, and I did have other claims on my time, loath as I was to face them in the middle of that summer of nineteen twenty. So. A job he must have, and a job he easily found, once I planted a little whisper in Ned van der Wahl’s ear. That houseguest of yours, that nice boy just back from France, the son of your old friend, don’t you think he’d make a fine new stockbroker at your firm? He seems to be perking up a bit. A career in finance might be just the thing for him. And what do you know? Ned had the same good idea as I did. He was just waiting for the end of summer to suggest it. The boy needed time to rest up a bit, after all he’d been through, and now that I mentioned it, he was perking up. He was perking up nicely. So off to Sterling Bates he went, except in bonds instead of stocks, because they happened to have an opening on the government desk at that exact moment. Kismet, or something.
You saved my life that summer, the Boy likes to tell me, and I modestly think he’s right. I have only to remember the sight of his face, that evening when he dropped me off at Windermere after Man o’ War’s race, to know how far he’s come since then. The triumphant elation of the racetrack had worn off by then, and we had driven most of the way in silence—two long hours of silence, just picture it—punctuated only rarely by observations on the weather, on the entertainment afforded by Ned van der Wahl to his guests, on the splendid race we’d just witnessed. That was how I liked it. I don’t go in for soul-searching, for this modern passion for psycho-analysis. Examining every last detail of your childhood, every last itch in your subconscious. Generally speaking, the less I know about the contents of a person’s soul, the better I like him.
Anyway. We pulled up in the exact apex of the tidy crescent drive at Windermere—we kept the gravel raked daily, as a matter of moral order, and still do—and I asked the Boy if he’d like to come in for a nightcap. Although there wasn’t much company, I was afraid. My husband was in the city that week.
A nice gilt-edged invitation, wasn’t it, and I fully expected him to accept.
He peered up the steps and back down to my face. His eyes were sick and dull. “No, thank you,” he said, and he got out of the car and opened the door for me, like a gentleman. He shook my hand good-bye and puttered off down the drive, and that was the last I saw of him for a week, poor thing. One hand on the wheel, clenched hard, and the other elbow propped on the doorframe. Stupid Boy, I thought, a little slighted and angry, but I couldn’t get that picture out of my head. The unhappy angle of his face.
Six nights later, having drunk a couple of martinis with a couple of friends at the Maidstone Club, having tried and failed to catch the Boy around town all week, I decided enough was enough. I stood up in the middle of someone’s sentence, tossed down the third martini, stubbed out my cigarette, and drove on over to Ned van der Wahl’s guesthouse to trap the Boy in his own lair.
But that’s another story, and anyway, the reason I’m thinking about all this, the reason I’m dredging up all this history, is because that ancient scenario bears a remarkable resemblance to my present situation. Unable to find the Boy around town yesterday, I’m driving downtown this Monday morning to ambush him at his office, and my fingers are trembling, my lips are clenched just as hard as they were back then.
“Mr. Octavian Rofrano,” I tell the secretary out front, just as crisp as can be. (I might have telephoned him from the box on the street below, of course, but it seems to me that a woman standing in the reception area inside your place of employment is much harder to ignore than a woman standing in a telephone box on the street outside your place of employment.)
“Do you have an appointment?” she inquires, as pert as can be. She’s wearing the latest suit and a bobbed haircut, and she thinks she’s awfully smart. Smarter than a Fifth Avenue matron of a certain age, at any rate, however attractive the matron’s figure and however expensive her dress.
I administer my most dragonly stare, the one that used to set my boys all a-quiver when they were guilty little sprouts. “Just tell him Mrs. Marshall is here to see him.”
“Yes, ma’am.” (Meekly.)
A moment later, the Boy strides free from the interior doorway and wheels to a stop in the middle of that plush marble reception area. His eyes are wide and alarmed, and his shoulders are just the way I like them, inside that suit of dignified gray charcoal for which I measured him myself. “Mrs. Marshall!” he exclaims. “Is something the matter?”
I rise from my chair and straighten my gloves on my wrists. “Indeed there is, Mr. Rofrano. Shall we find somewhere for you to buy me a cup of coffee?”
THE BOY TAKES ME TO a coffee shop a few blocks away, making rather endearingly furtive glances all about us. He orders coffee and cinnamon buns and lights me a cigarette, and I notice that his hands are almost as nervous as mine.
“Couldn’t this wait until tomorrow?” he asks. “I was going to talk to you about something, when you came over.”
“Not really.”
He lights his own cigarette, but he doesn’t do anything with it, just holds it between his fingers and stares at the burning end. “You do know that everyone’s going to hear about this, you coming to see me at work.”
“Oh, never mind that. Everybody already knows about us.”
He looks up. “What do you mean?”
“I mean secrets don’t last long in this town. Didn’t you know that?”
“Nobody ever said anything to me.”
“Darling, nobody ever would. Anyway, it doesn’t matter any more.” The waitress arrives bearing coffee and buns, and I utilize this natural pause in the conversation to gather my thoughts and—I suppose—my courage. After all, it’s a bold thing I’m doing, isn’t it? And not the kind of bold thing I usually do.
“Why not?” says the Boy, as the waitress steps away.
I add cream. “Why not what?”
“Why doesn’t it matter?” He grips the coffee cup and leans forward. His face is all pink, his bones practically jumping forth from behind his smooth young skin. I adore his skin. I adore him. His eyebrows knit anxiously together as he continues: “Are you ending this?”
“Ending this?” I stir in the sugar and lift the cup with both hands, so it doesn’t shake in my fingers. The coffee is just right, sweet and creamy. “No, Boyo. The opposite. I’ve changed my mind entirely.” Set down the cup, fix him in the eye. “I’ve decided to accept your offer of marriage, after all.”
From the shock in his face, I can tell this is the last thing he expects from me. I believe his eyes actually change color—or is it continents?—from Mediterranean to Antarctic. The pink drains away from his skin.
“I don’t understand,” he says, in a voice like the spray of fine gravel at the apex of a crescent-shaped driveway.
“I’ve changed my mind, that’s all. I’ve thought about it long and hard, and I realized you’re right. All this sneaking about, it’s bad for the soul. Manhattan’s bad for the soul. We should go away together and start over, and—well, maybe we can have a baby after all, it’s not altogether impossible, and—well.” I blink once or twice—it seems my eyes are stinging, maybe someone’s cutting up an onion in the back—and lift the coffee again. “Anyway. What do you think?”
The shock is still present, or rather the color’s still absent. The Boy fidgets with his cigarette, sips his coffee, and says, without looking at me, “What about your husband? The boys?”
“Oh, they’ll get used to the idea. The boys have their own lives now, after all, and Sylvo . . .” I rattle to a halt, because I can’t lie. I can’t lie to my Boyo. “Sylvo wants a divorce.”
“A what?”
“A divorce, of course. We can’t get married without one, can we?” I laugh; or rather, I intend to laugh. The resulting sound comes out more like a particularly repellent giggle, the kind that no red-blooded man would want to shackle himself against for eternity. “Sylvo’s finally decided to move with the times and marry his mistress. Isn’t it precious? So we’re free, darling Boyo. There’s nothing in our way. I’m sure he’ll settle plenty of money on me to keep things quiet, enough to buy us a fine new start somewhere. What do you think about California?”
He’s never thought about California, I can tell. California is the furthest thing from his dear little mind. He reaches out and touches my hand. “When did this happen?”
“When did what happen?” My voice is still far too high.
“When did Sylvo tell you he wanted a divorce?”
“Oh, that? I believe it was Saturday night. Yes. Saturday night, after I got home.” Tap, tap in the ashtray. “He was awfully nice about it. I didn’t know you could say a thing like that so nicely.”
“Oh, Theresa.”
“My goodness, you don’t think I’m upset about it, do you? It’s sensational news. We’re free! It’s what we’ve always wanted, isn’t it? A gift on a silver platter, engraved Mr. and Mrs. Octavian Rofrano, Junior, just exactly the way you signed all those naughty hotel registers. We’ll be respectable at last.”
“Theresa,” he whispers.
“Nothing too fancy, of course. I think a City Hall wedding would be adequate, don’t you think? A small party afterward, just a few friends. Jay will have married his little woman by then. They can serve as witnesses, I suppose. What’s the matter, Boyo? You’re not saying much.”
“I’m sorry. Just a little shocked, I guess. A week ago you turned me down flat. I thought it was hopeless.”
“Well, things have changed since then, haven’t they? All the obstacles are gone, and do you know something? I’m glad. I’m glad Sylvo was brave enough to part with the old ways. It’s a whole new world, and divorce isn’t such a scandal anymore. If two people aren’t suited to each other, haven’t been suited in some time, why, they should shake hands as friends and find someone else.” I brush his knuckle with my thumb. “And we’ve certainly established how well we’re suited, haven’t we?”
He looks up from his coffee. “There’s more to marriage than that, Theresa.”
“Of course there is. But sex is fundamental, that’s what all the scientists say. Sylvo and I haven’t gone to bed in years, and how can you call that a marriage? Say!” I put down my cigarette and snap my fingers. “We can have a double wedding, can’t we? If the divorce comes through quickly enough, I mean.”
“A double wedding?”
“You and me, and Jay and little Sophie.”
The Boy releases my hand and sticks all ten fingers in his hair.
“What’s the matter?” I ask. “Is something wrong?”
“No. Nothing. I mean—I’m sorry, I just—I’m taking it all in, that’s all.”
“Is this about Jay? Have you found out something awful about that girl?”
“Damn it, Theresa,” he mutters.
“Because it doesn’t matter. I don’t give a damn anymore. Her father can be a convicted felon, for all I care. They love each other, and that’s all that matters.”
He pulls his hands out of his hair and stares at me. “Do they? Love each other?”
There is something about the way he asks this question. Something about the slant of his eyebrows, or maybe the color of his eyes, which seem to be moving north again, to warmer climes.
I crush out my cigarette in a kind of rolling motion, clockwise, taking my time. “Why, Boyo,” I say. “Why do you care?”
The tiniest pause. “I don’t.”
It appears my fingers are cold. They seem cold, anyway, as I take careful hold of the coffee cup. I don’t lacquer my nails. That would be vulgar. But I do trim them nicely, a little longer than I used to, and they’re really quite elegant, poised against all that cheap white ceramic. It’s just the rest of the hand that troubles me. The veins that pop out in awful sea-green profusion whenever I lower my claws below the level of my heart. The lines around my knuckles. The excess of color in my capillaries. Most of the time, you can hide all this mess under your gloves, but when you’re smoking and drinking coffee in a joint like this, the gloves come off. You sit naked before your companion. Your age is written on your hands, plain to read, and there’s nothing you can do about that, is there?
“Tell me something, Boyo,” I say, staring at my tell-tale veins. “What did you want to tell me tomorrow?”
“What’s that?”
“You had something to tell me. And then I jumped on in with my own news, awfully rude of me. But now it’s your turn.”
His lips part, but nothing comes out.
“Did it have anything to do with your whereabouts yesterday? I tried to telephone you, again and again, but there was no answer.”
“I was out. Out for a drive.”
“Yes, so I guessed. I actually went down to your apartment and asked at the garage. They said you’d left early.”
“I drove to Connecticut. Back to my old haunts.”
“By yourself?”
Another pause, even tinier than the one before. But at least he has the guts to look me in the eye. “No. I took Sophie Fortescue with me.”
“Did you? Another man’s fiancée?”
“You asked me to find out more about her.”
The coffee is tepid now, but I drink it anyway. “And did you?”
“I don’t know. I think so, yes.”
“Anything scandalous? Anything I should know about?”
“No,” he says, a little too fiercely, and my heart, my God, I think it actually stops for an instant or two. Freezes right up in my chest. Chokes and sputters like an engine that won’t start properly. The coffee rises in my throat, and I swallow it back.
“Good,” I say, just as fiercely. I lift a cinnamon bun from the plate between us and bite down hard. The waitress stops by with the coffee pot. Refills us both. I stir in the cream and the sugar. The Boy takes his black. He lights another cigarette and opens his mouth to say something. I jump in first.
“It’s a funny thing, Boyo. I was just thinking—as I drove down here in the taxi to tell you the good news—I was staring out the window and remembering that first time I showed up at your place in East Hampton. Ned van der Wahl’s guesthouse. Do you remember?”
“Of course I do, Theresa.”
His voice is soft with compassion, and I hate the sound of it. I hate the sound of his compassion. I hate that habitual stillness of his, the way his fingers, after a brief and singular nervous interlude at the beginning of our little chat, have once more acquired an extreme economy of motion.
I say sharply, “You were drunk, as I recall.”
“I’d been drinking. I drank a lot that summer.”
“Well, of course you did. We were both drinking a little too much than was good for us, weren’t we? I was half-drunk myself, I think, or I might never have had the nerve to turn up at your virtuous door at a quarter to midnight in the middle of summer.” I turn my head to the window and the curious absence of traffic on the sidewalk outside. Maybe it’s the cold. A lone man walks by, huddled inside his overcoat, his scarf wound up to his nose: just a faded black bundle topped by a worn felt hat. Across the street, a luncheonette waits for the noontime crowd. HOT SOUP 5¢. There are a lot of restaurants in New York these days. They’re popping up all over. Everyone’s eating out; no one wants to stay at home and cook dinner anymore.
“You didn’t look that nervous,” the Boy says quietly.
“Well, I was. I was scared as hell. I was forty-two years old and I’d never done that before. You were my first, Boyo. My first affair in all those years. Did I ever tell you that?”
“No.”
“I’m almost ashamed to admit it, really. But there you are. And there I was. And there you were, all young and strong and perfect, and I’d never wanted anything so much as I wanted you. Just to see you, that night, just to see the color of your eyes and the—the—well, you’ve got this skin, Boyo, this utterly delicious skin. It’s so firm and fresh, even after a drink or two.” A couple of girls walk by. They’re wearing smart clothes, cheap but up-to-date—you’ve seen them around, haven’t you, those new coats with the dropped waists, the straight mannish silhouettes?—and their heads are bent together, all sharp and smiling beneath a pair of identical small hats. Twenty-two, twenty-three. About the Boy’s age, I suppose. Secretaries? Typing pool? There’s a shimmer of business around them, an industrious energy. They’re going to conquer the world, one typewriter key at a time. I say, in a whisper now, “I just wanted to see you again, that night. That’s all. That would have been enough. I never thought you would actually fall for an old bird like me.”
“You weren’t old, Theresa.”
“But I wasn’t in the first bloom of youth, was I?” I turn back to him and smile. “Although I do think I’ve aged rather gracefully. I’ve kept myself up.”
“You’re a beautiful woman, and you know it. Don’t pretend you don’t.”
“I’ll never forget the sight of your face, when you opened that door. You were wearing blue-striped pajamas and a blue dressing gown. Dark blue, with little brown paisley swirls. And a cigarette in your hand, just like that one.” I gesture, a flutter of my fingertips. “You didn’t look a bit surprised to see me.”
“Well, I was.”
“Do you remember what I was wearing?”
He rubs his thumb along the edge of the saucer. “You were wearing a red dress and a diamond necklace. And your shoes were dangling from your left hand.”
“It was a hot night, after all.”
I allow that to sink in for a moment. I can see he’s remembering; his gaze has dropped straight into his coffee cup, and his lips are parted a little. Regards the Boy, you have to pay attention to the small clues, the minute movements that allow you some glimpse into the workings of that immaculate mind of his. His breath seems to be a little shallow. That’s good. Let him remember. God knows I can’t forget. Even now, my heart starts to find that same thudding tempo, and my nerves tingle anxiously on my arms and between my legs, all because of a single indelible memory: The Boy, like a lean, hard rope all wound up inside that dark blue dressing gown, and the tender hollow of his throat just visible at the parting of his pajamas, which he’s neglected to button all the way up.
“Good evening, Mr. Rofrano,” I said.
And he looked me up and he looked me down, and he looked me right back up again, landing softly inside my forehead. “Good evening, Mrs. Marshall. It’s a little late, isn’t it?”
His voice was just a little slurry, just enough that I knew he’d been drinking. I placed my palm against the doorjamb and asked if I could have that nightcap now. What nightcap? he wanted to know, and I said the nightcap I’d offered him a week ago, after he brought me home from the racetrack. I was still thirsty, I told him.
So he thought about this. Motionless. Fixed as a pillar of salt. I don’t think he even blinked. He just stood there, considering me, considering the offer before him. The seconds passed, the mockingbirds sang in the tree by the door. And I could tell when he gave in. His lips parted a little—the way they’re doing now—and the skin beneath his eyes sort of relaxed (if that’s the word) in such a way that only then, at that instant, did I realize he’d been tense to begin with. That my appearance at his door had constituted an unexpected test of his resolve, and that his resolve had just been defeated by my red dress and my bare feet, and by the abyss of loneliness that split him open from stern to bowsprit, and maybe by the half-empty bottle of skee just visible on the table behind him.
He stepped back from the doorway and said, “Help yourself, Mrs. Marshall.”
So I did.
THE BOY FINDS ME A taxi on Broadway and promises to leave work early. Good, I tell him. I’ll bring dinner. We can celebrate.
He doesn’t look much like celebrating. His face is still and heavy as he opens the taxi door for me and waits while I settle myself inside. I lift my gaze to thank him and the shock of his expression travels all the way through my belly to the soles of my feet.
“What’s the matter, Boyo? You look as if I’ve passed you a sentence of death. It’s only marriage, after all.”
He’s got one hand braced on the door of the taxi, one hand braced on the back of the seat, behind my neck. The taxi sputters and rattles impatiently around us. The Boy angles his head to my ear and says, “Was that the truth, back there?”
“I always tell you the truth, Boyo.”
“I mean that you’d never had an affair, before that night. That I was the first . . .”
He leaves a word dangling, and I supply it for him.
“Lover. Yes, Boyo.” I find his hand, the one on the back of the seat, and kiss the backs of his leather knuckles. “You were my first lover, and my last.”
His breath is white and steady. He bends down to kiss me good-bye, and his lips are warm. “I’ll see you tonight, then.”
“Don’t be late.”
The Boy nods and takes his hand back. He slams the door shut and turns away, and the driver says, “Where to, ma’am?”
For some reason, the word ma’am makes me wince. I lean back against the seat and stare at the Boy’s diminishing body as it strides up Broadway toward Wall Street, all business, one more charcoal overcoat, one more snug fedora hat bobbing among the others, down the cold gray January canyons of downtown Manhattan.
I give the driver my brother’s address on Park Avenue.
YOU KNOW, WE’RE REALLY QUITE close, Ox and I, despite our obvious differences. Our mother retired to her fainting couch soon after his birth and hasn’t really risen from it since, so I had the raising of him. I couldn’t do much about his lack of brains, but I made sure he minded his manners and learned to ride a horse properly, and I kept him from eloping with the showgirl who kindly relieved him of his virginity and his allowance when he was seventeen, the summer before he left for Princeton. (No easy feat on my part, I assure you; Ox can be remarkably stubborn, where women are concerned.)
And it was Ox who delivered me the news of Tommy’s death, two days after the Armistice. I was staying with an old Westover friend in Boston at the time, and the War Department telegram had naturally gone to Fifth Avenue. Sylvo was too broken-up to tell me himself, I suppose, so my brother jumped aboard the next train and reached me that evening, just as we were about to leave for dinner. (To celebrate the war’s end, ironically enough, and our own immense relief at having been left personally unscathed by its horrors.) There I stood in the foyer, laughing, all dressed up in blue silk and gloved to the elbow, when the heavy brass knocker fell on the door—clunk!—my God, I can still hear the exact metallic clang it made, key of G minor—and we fell silent, the three of us, my friend and her husband and me. Terrible silence. The butler opened the door, and I knew what had happened, the instant I saw Ox’s face. Maybe even before.
I screamed, Tommy!
And Ox. Dear Ox. He leapt forward, just in time, and held me up against his chest. He said that it was ’flu, that Tommy had fallen ill during a weekend’s leave in Paris; that he had died at the American hospital in Neuilly on the same day as the Armistice itself. Just awful. Just an awful damned unlucky break. I don’t remember much of the next day or two, but I remember Ox was there the whole time, and Sylvo wasn’t. Sylvo stayed home in New York and made all the arrangements, bringing back the body and where to bury him and so on. Important details, of course, and I was grateful not to have to take charge of them myself. But it was Ox who kept me alive, in those first forty-eight hours of the rest of my life.
And I think to myself, as the taxi lurches slowly uptown, how uncanny it was that he should have been so compassionate. I mean, Ox! He hasn’t got a child of his own, after all—at least one we’re aware of—so he couldn’t have known that particular passion that takes up residence in your heart, when you first have a baby. Of course, he knew and loved Tommy. Who couldn’t love Tommy, that lovely gilded child, that laughing and brilliant boy? My golden one, my darling twinkle-eyed son, who looked so inexpressibly fortissimo in his second lieutenant’s uniform on the morning he left for France. But Ox’s love was an uncle’s love for his nephew, a different thing entirely. Tommy did not inhabit his soul. Tommy did not run inside Ox’s blood and lay himself down along the bones and muscles of Ox’s chest, so that the loss of him sometimes impeded Ox’s ability to breathe.
But somehow Ox had understood. God knows why.
NONE OF THIS GOES ANY way to explain why Ox should be at home in his Park Avenue bachelor digs at Monday lunchtime, nor why I should expect to find him there. Call it instinct. Call it feminine intuition. Call it a sister’s intimate knowledge of her brother’s slovenly ways.
“Shouldn’t you be at work, brother darling?” I inquired, as I plucked off my gloves and tossed them on a Louis Quatorze commode, the gilding of which had seen better centuries.
“Ridiculous question.”
“Someone has to ask it. I presume the partners at Willig and White are more indulgent than I am, or you wouldn’t have a job at all.”
“Job is such a crass word, Sisser.” Ox lifts his feet from the sofa cushion, in order to make room for me. He’s holding a quilted bag to his head with one hand, and a tall glass of hair of the dog in the other.
“Most of life’s inescapable necessities are crass,” I observe, dropping a kiss on my brother’s forehead. “That doesn’t make them any less necessary. Are you really expecting me to sit on this?”
“It’s a perfectly respectable sofa.”
“It’s a disgrace. You need a wife, Ox. The sooner, the better.”
“That is the plan, after all.”
“Really? How soon?”
He removes the bag from his head and takes a sip from his glass. “As soon as possible, so far as I know. She’s supposed to give me the happy date upon consultation with Papa.”
I manage, after some effort, to discover a chair that isn’t already inhabited by crumbs and spills of one kind and another. “Hasn’t she consulted with Papa already? Or is she too busy with other affairs?”
“She hasn’t got any other affairs, Sisser. It’s all part of her charm.”
I settle myself in the chair and offer my brother a guileless smile. “Are you quite certain of that?”
“Of course I am. I hope you’re not suggesting otherwise?”
“Not at all. As long as you’re confident of her, why should I be otherwise? I’m sure her outing yesterday was entirely innocent.”
He chokes on his drink. “What’s that?”
“Her outing. Yesterday. Surely she’s told you all about it?”
“I—that is—yesterday, did you say?”
“Yesterday. Sunday. The day after Saturday night, when the two of you attended that party together? Philip Schuyler and his little secretary wife? I presume you saw her home yourself, of course.”
Ox’s face turns a rather sickly shade, not that it bore all that healthy a tint before. “Not exactly.”
“No? But of course you entrusted the care of your precious darling to someone—well, trustworthy?”
“I—I can’t honestly remember. But she did get home all right. I’m quite sure of that. I sent around flowers the next morning, and—and—” His face screws up into an object resembling nothing so much as a crumpled tissue.
“And she replied? She came around to your place in gloves and Sunday bonnet, and administered her healing hand to your troubled brow?”
“Now, see here, Sisser,” he says, gathering up strength again, “if you’ve got something to say, say it.”
“Oh, you know how it is, Ox. A woman in my position hears so many things.”
“Nothing against Sophie! I’d smash the face of any fella who said a word against her. She’s as innocent as an angel.”
“No doubt at all.” I lengthen my gaze to consider the tarnished silver cigarette box on the lamp table, next to Ox’s pink ear. “Still, she’s a human being, isn’t she? A young lady.”
“Well, yes. Of course she is.”
“And like all young ladies, she appreciates a little attention from the man who’s supposed to admire her. The man she’s going to marry. She likes to be wooed, and adored, and made much of.”
Ox considers this, frowning. He rubs his forehead with his thumb, as if to ignite the gray matter inside.
“Ox,” I say tenderly, “you can’t just ignore her, just because she’s agreed to marry you. Until the vows are exchanged—and soon, God willing—she’s still free to back out of the deal. You’ve got to remind her, and remind her, and remind her, what a wonderful man she’s getting.” I reach over and pat his knee. “You’ve got to woo her, darling, or someone else will.”
“Say. What are you getting at? Are you suggesting she was stepping out with some other fella yesterday?”
“I’m not suggesting anything. She’s a sweet girl. I’m sure she wouldn’t do anything to betray you. But she’s so young, Ox. So young and inexperienced. These pretty girls, their heads are turned so easily, and men can be such awful cads these days.” I examine my fingernails. “Really, if I were you, I’d scrub myself up and head down to Thirty-Second Street, flowers and chocolates in hand, and I wouldn’t leave her side for an instant until she gives you a wedding date. An early date. A handsome devil like you, I’m sure you’ll secure her enthusiastic cooperation in no time.”
“Well, naturally.” He straightens himself against the sofa and contemplates—guessing from the look on his face, anyway—the possible daring boundaries of Sophie’s enthusiasm. Perhaps, at this point, I ought to mention that my brother remains in a state of what we once politely called dishabille. His pajamas are rumpled, his green silk dressing gown is untied and open across his chest, and his lovely golden-brown hair runs greasily amok across his skull. I should charitably describe his face as bloated. To scrub himself up, as I suggested, might take him the greater part of the day’s remains. Not that he seems to have plans for any better occupation. (His actual occupation included.)
I remove the glass from his hand. “I’m quite serious, Ox. You’re about to become a married man, if you’re lucky enough to persuade her to the altar itself. It’s time to start acting like one.”
“Well, I haven’t seen all that many married men dance constant attendance on their wives.”
I tip back the glass and drain what remains. “I expect most marriages would be a good deal happier if they did.”
Maybe I said it too bitterly. Maybe there was something in my expression. Or maybe it’s just Ox: as thick as two planks in ordinary life, but nonetheless attuned by some primeval blood instinct to the rippling of my unhappiness in the ether. He lifts his eyebrows and leans forward, and a lock of his untidy hair drops across his forehead. He pushes it back and says, “Something going on with you, Sisser?”
“If you must know, I’m getting a divorce.”
The words pop out before I can consider their wisdom; or maybe I’ve been wanting to say this all along, since that moment early Sunday morning when Sylvo closed the front door behind him, in a singularly echoing thump, and left me in a stunned and lonely heap on the library sofa, clutching a glass of cream sherry. To throw myself on my brother’s chest and surround myself in his wordless understanding. I finger the empty tumbler and fix him with a bright and expectant smile. Getting a divorce. How modern it sounds.
Ox sneezes messily and pulls out his handkerchief. “Gadzooks, Sisser! Say it ain’t so.”
“It’s so.” I shrug helplessly. “I’d had enough, I guess. All the other women and the—well, the lack of understanding. We haven’t been man and wife in years, really. Not since Tommy died.”
“Yes, but—divorce.”
“Everybody’s getting divorces these days, Ox. Nobody cares about the old rules anymore.”
“Still.” He blows his nose, shakes his head. “I thought some things were sacred. I thought the two of you would soldier on and grow old together.”
“Ox, we hardly even talk to each other any more. We’re like strangers occupying the same apartment, and not all that often at that.”
“I suppose it doesn’t help that you’re in love with that kid of yours.”
I drop the glass on the rug. “What?”
“That Rofrano kid. Come on, Sisser. You think I didn’t know?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
My brother sighs and rises creakily to his feet: stuffing the silk handkerchief back in his silk pocket, swooping up the fallen glass as he goes. “Well, I’m sorry you’re throwing in the towel, that’s all. It’s a damned shame, the way you two can toss away a quarter of a century of marriage like that.”
“My God. Listen to you, the moralist.”
“Like you said, I’m getting married myself. I’ve got to be a moralist, haven’t I? I’ve got to believe in what I’m doing, or what’s the point?”
He turns and walks to the kitchen with the empty glass. I hear a ceramic clink, the squeak of the faucet, the rush of running water, and I call to him: “I’ll just let myself out, then.”
“Do that,” he calls back.
I should march straight out the door, after that remark. I should march straight out and find a taxi. But where would I go? Sylvo’s back at our apartment, packing up. He’s already rented a bachelor apartment of his own, in accordance with the terms of the legal separation that necessarily precedes a legal divorce. Everything’s in motion, like a train chugging inexorably out of the station, and I’d really rather not head to the platform at the moment and watch it leave. Watch Sylvo leave.
I follow my brother into the kitchen and place my hand on his shoulder.
“Ox,” I say softly.
He doesn’t turn. “Sisser.”
“I meant what I said. Clean yourself up and go pay attention to your fiancée. And do me a favor, brother dear?”
“What’s that, Sisser?”
“Don’t ever stop.”