A Hundred Summers

by Beatriz Williams

  Daddy shrugs. His shoulders are still too thin under his jacket; all of him is still too thin, after last winter’s pneumonia. He’s had it twice before, and every time it gets worse. Though he never speaks of the war, I know from Peter van der Wahl that Daddy was gassed at Belleau Wood, that he hadn’t got his mask on in time, was too busy helping one of his men with a faulty strap, and of course your lungs are never the same after that. “I haven’t heard differently, poppet. Why do you ask?”

  I open my mouth, close it, and drink my coffee in a hard swallow. “Oh, no reason.”

  The telephone rings. Once, twice. Marelda’s voice murmurs through the walls.

  I reach for the orange juice and pour myself a glass. The pitcher quivers in my hand.

  The door opens from the living room. “Miss Lily, a telephone call for you. It’s . . .”

  “Thank you, Marelda.” I rise swiftly. “I’m coming.”

  Mother has a distaste for telephones, and ours is tucked away in a windowless nook between the living room and the study, with only an unforgiving wooden bench for comfort. It has the advantage of private acoustics, however, and for that I am grateful.

  “Good morning, Lilybird,” says Nick, in a glowing voice, warm and eager, dissolving all my doubts.

  “Good morning. Where are you?”

  “At home. How was your drive?”

  “Awful. Budgie nearly killed us at least three times.”

  “That Budgie. I should have driven you myself. Are you all right?”

  I lean back against the wall and close my eyes so I can concentrate on the sound of his voice. The plaster is hard beneath the knobs of my spine. “Yes, of course. I miss you.”

  “And I’m desperate for you. I’m looking across the park right now, wondering if I can see your building.”

  “You can’t. We’re in the middle of the block.”

  “Let’s meet somewhere. Are you dressed?”

  I look down at my robe. “Not yet. We’re having breakfast.”

  “Well, hurry and clean yourself up. I’ll meet you halfway, all right? Near the boathouse, say?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes. Perfect.”

  “But hurry, all right? You don’t need to fix yourself up for me. Just come.”

  I fix myself up anyway, just a little: a touch of lipstick, a dusting of powder, my best hat. I slip through the living room and out the door with a vague murmur about shopping. Outside, the fresh air strikes me in a welcome gust, rinsing me clean.

  When Nick sees me coming, he opens his arms, and I hurl myself at him with such force that he staggers back, laughing, closing his arms around me as if we haven’t seen each other in months. “There’s my girl,” he says.

  “In the flesh.”

  He hugs me even harder and gives me a little spin. “This is so marvelous, seeing you here. I can’t believe we shared a city all these years without knowing it.”

  “Well, we didn’t really, did we? I was away at school during the year, and at Seaview during the summer. Sometimes I feel like I hardly know Manhattan.” I haven’t lifted my head from his chest. I’m oddly afraid to meet his eyes.

  “Me too, I guess. But here we are, anyway. Where should we go?”

  We wander along the paths for a long time, walking slowly, staying within the boundaries of the park by unspoken consent. My arm loops snugly through his. At last I find the composure to look up at him, and he’s even better than I remember, his mouth smiling, his breath curling white in the frosty air. “New York suits you,” I tell him.

  “You suit me. Listen, Lily, I have so much to tell you. My head’s been full of plans the last few days. That long drive down from New Hampshire, everything became clear. I’m determined this time.”

  “Determined to do what?”

  “What you said that first morning. About following my own path.” He squeezes my arm even more tightly to his side. “I have so much to thank you for.”

  “I haven’t done anything.”

  “You’ve done everything. Tell me, what are your plans for New Year’s Eve?”

  The blood rushes about under my skin. “I don’t know. We usually stay home.”

  “Well, come on over to our place. We have a party every year, with masks and caviar and fountains of champagne, the absolute last word in vulgarity. You can meet my parents.”

  “How will they know me, if I’m wearing a mask?”

  Nick leans into my ear. “Because we unmask at midnight, you greenhorn. Right before I kiss you.”

  He’s flirting. I love flirting with Nick.

  “Really? And why is that? To make sure you’re kissing the right girl?”

  A group of young men approaches, talking loudly. One of them bounces a football back and forth between his hands, which are red and bare to the cold December wind. Nick waits until we pass them, and says: “For the others, maybe. I’d know your kiss anywhere.”

  “Oh, is that so, Casanova? Care to drag me up against a tree and prove it?”

  “I don’t need to drag you up against a tree,” Nick says, and he wraps his wool-covered arms around me and lifts me up and kisses me right there, in the gravitational center of the path, in the gravitational center of New York City, his mouth hot against my cold skin. Someone hoots at us, and the football thumps against Nick’s broad back.

  His lips pull away. “Novices,” he mutters. He dips down, swoops up the football, and shoots it back with the force of a striking torpedo.

  Ow! comes a distant yell.

  Nick hoists me up again and sets back to work, and by the time he’s finished, my skin is no longer numb, but warm and alive.

  “Now that’s what I call the last word in vulgarity,” I say, wiping the faint pink smear of my lipstick from his face.

  We walk along for a minute or two, mittens clasped together, intimacy surrounding us like a fog. Our feet strike against the frozen pavement; the green benches pass by in silent rows. “So that takes care of meeting my parents,” he says at last. “And yours?”

  “I’m sure . . . I’m sure they’d love to meet you.”

  “You haven’t told them, have you?”

  “Mother wasn’t up yet this morning.” As the words leave my mouth, I’m struck by their strangeness. Mother never sleeps in. She may keep to her room for hours, writing letters and making lists, but she’s up with the sun.

  “I see.”

  “Don’t say that. She wasn’t up, Nick. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Of course. I understand. There’s plenty of time.”

  “We can walk over to my apartment right now.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “No, really. Right now. I’ll prove to you, I’ll show you . . .”

  “Lily.” He stops, turns, and takes me by the elbows. “It’s not necessary. You don’t need to prove anything.”

  But his face is set and tense, as if every muscle, relaxed in delight to see me, has coiled itself back up again. His pride is laid in long lines across his forehead.

  I touch the corner of his mouth with my woolen mitten. “Nick, please come home with me. I want you to meet my parents. I want them to know you, to see how wonderful you are. Please come.”

  He exhales slowly, warming my fingers. “All right,” he says. But his expression remains stiff, warped with tension.

  We leave the park at Sixty-sixth Street and walk awkwardly up Fifth Avenue and down Seventieth, not speaking. Nick’s arm is rigid beneath mine, as if he would like to withdraw it but doesn’t know how. I can almost feel him expanding next to me, acquiring height and breadth; if I look at his eyes, I know they will be narrowed and blazing.

  He’s going into battle, I realize helplessly.

  I stop him outside the entrance to the building. “You’re angry. Don’t be angry.”

  “I’m not angry at you. It’s everything, it’s all this . . .”

  “Stop. Don’t.” I put my hands to his cheeks. “Please. If you’re angry, it will be a disaster. Look at me, Nick.�
��

  He looks at me.

  “It’s me, it’s Lily. I’m on your side. I stand by you, Nick.”

  We stand there like a rock, with the stream of sidewalk traffic eddying around us. Someone bumps into us, swears, looks up and up and up at the towering glowering edifice of Nick, and hurries on.

  “I know that.” He kisses my forehead. “I know that.”

  Our building is not the smartest on Park Avenue, not by a long shot, but I like its shabbiness, its ponderous elevators and its monosyllabic doormen. One of them presses the call button for us. In silence, Nick and I watch the arrow above the elevator inch downward, pausing to reflect at every floor, until it reaches the lobby with a thunderous clang.

  “You trust your life to this machine?” Nick asks dryly, as the doorman closes the grate behind us and the doors stagger shut.

  Despite my brave words of solidarity, my stomach is lurching with anxiety. What will Daddy say? I have no idea. He knows Nick’s father, likes him, but it’s one thing to shake a man’s hand and enjoy his company and another to contemplate him as a father-in-law for your only daughter. But Daddy is fair-minded, gentle. I know in my heart that he will like Nick, that he is far too well bred to display even a trace of disappointment in his daughter’s choice, at least in public.

  But Mother.

  My fingers curl inside my mittens. Maybe she won’t be home. Maybe she’s still in bed. Maybe she’s ill, maybe it’s flu.

  Mother will not approve of Nick at all. Mother’s eyes will grow round, and then they will narrow. She will behave with excruciating correctness, asking Nick if he would like coffee or tea, begging him to take some of Marelda’s lemon cake. She will ask him about his parents, about his friends, about his schooling, each question designed to expose some flaw or invoke some telling revelation. She will refer to the Dane ancestry with casual ease, will drop her own hallowed maiden name into the conversation. By the end, it will have been made plain to Nick and to me that we are not suited, that I am as far outside his circle as the sun’s orbit to the moon’s.

  She will shake his hand and close the door behind him, and she will turn to me and say: “Well! What a nice young man. Such a shame about his father, or else I might really have liked him for you.”

  The elevator rises in fits and starts, past the eighth floor, past the ninth. Nick stands patiently next to me, watching each number light in turn. His sleeve brushes mine. In the closeness of the cubicle, I can smell the wool of his coat, his soap, his breath.

  I am twenty-one years old now, and nearly finished with college. I don’t need my parents’ approval for anything. If I want Nick, I can have him.

  The elevator reaches the twelfth floor, sighs deeply, and stops. The doors slide. Nick reaches out and opens the grille.

  “I’ll be on my best behavior, I promise,” he says.

  “Don’t worry. They’ll love you.”

  I fumble for my key in my pocketbook, take off my mitten and fumble a little longer, until the key spills into my palm. “Got it,” I mutter.

  “Hi, Lily!”

  The cheerful young greeting makes me jump. “Oh, hello, Maisie,” I say. “On your way down?”

  Our building contains two apartments on each floor, and Maisie occupies the other with her parents and her two older brothers, whose names I can never keep straight. She looks back and forth between me and Nick, brown eyes wide, and in ten-year-old awe asks: “Is this your boyfriend, Lily?”

  “I . . . well, he . . .”

  “I sure am, Maisie,” says Nick, holding out his hand. “Nick Greenwald. Is that your apartment?” He nods across the elevator landing, where the Laidlaws’ door stands ajar.

  She shakes his hand. “Yes, it is. We’re going Christmas shopping, as soon as Mama finds her pocketbook. Have you been down to Bergdorf’s yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “They’ve got a tree and a train in the window, and the train is full of toys and goes around and around the bottom of the tree.” She moves her hands in circles to demonstrate. “What are you getting Lily for Christmas?”

  Nick laughs. “It’s a surprise.”

  The Laidlaws’ door bursts open, and Mrs. Laidlaw, looking harassed, barges through in a sensible brown wool coat with her elusive pocketbook dangling from her elbow, filling the stuffy air with the scent of freshly applied powder. “Maisie! There you are. Oh, hello, Lily. Back from college?”

  “Yes, yesterday. How are you, Mrs. Laidlaw?”

  “Oh, you know how it is this time of year. Busy, busy.” She’s taking in Nick from the corner of her eye.

  “Mrs. Laidlaw, this is Nick Greenwald, a friend of mine.”

  “He’s Lily’s boyfriend,” says Maisie importantly.

  “Mrs. Laidlaw.” Nick holds out his hand. “A pleasure.”

  Mrs. Laidlaw’s eyes have gone round, and her mouth forms a magenta O of surprise. She allows Nick to move her limp hand up and down. “I . . . yes. How nice to . . . Greenwald, did you say?”

  “Nick Greenwald.” Nick’s hand drops to his side.

  Mrs. Laidlaw looks at me, looks at Nick, looks at me again. Her right hand grabs the strap of her pocketbook. “Well, well. How . . . how nice to meet you. I . . . well.”

  The elevator makes a jolt, as if someone’s pressed the call button on another floor. Nick flings out his arm to stop the door. “Going down, right?”

  “Yes. Thank you. Maisie?” Mrs. Laidlaw bundles Maisie into the elevator and presses the button. Nick closes the grille, and the doors slide shut before her white face.

  “Well,” says Nick grimly, “that went well.”

  I look down at the key, still clutched in my right hand. “I think she’s just surprised to see me with a man on my arm, that’s all.”

  “No doubt.”

  Nick stands back silently while I turn the key and open the door to the apartment. “Mother! Daddy!” I call. “I’m home.” I turn to Nick. “Come on in.”

  Marelda appears around the doorway.

  “Oh, Marelda. Where are my parents? I have a friend with me.”

  “Miss Lily. Your father’s in the study, and your mother . . .”

  But Daddy steps forward, with a book tucked under his arm. “Lily, there you are. I thought I heard your voice.” He is tremulous, nervous. The relative steadiness of the morning has deserted him. His eyes are desolate.

  “Oh, Daddy.” I step forward and touch his hand. He’s shaking. “Daddy, are you all right? Where’s Mother?”

  “I’m fine, poppet.” He gathers himself. I want to embrace him, to hold him against me and still the trembling of his body, but I don’t dare. “You’ve just missed your mother, I’m afraid. She’s dressed and gone out. Some last-minute Christmas shopping, I’m sure.”

  I laugh. “Well, you know Mother. Everything has to be perfect.”

  “But you have a visitor.” His voice is so falsely bright, it hurts me.

  “I do.” I pull myself away from Daddy with a final squeeze of his hand. “This is Nick, Daddy. Nick Greenwald. He’s a friend of mine. I met him during the fall. He’s at Dartmouth.”

  Nick steps forward and offers his hand. “Mr. Dane, it’s a very great pleasure to meet you. Lily speaks of you with such love.”

  Daddy’s body grows rigid. He looks at Nick, looks at me helplessly. His palm goes out, in reflex, and accepts Nick’s handshake. “Greenwald,” he says. “Nick Greenwald.”

  “Yes, sir. You may have met my father. Robert Greenwald.” Nick speaks with a confident mixture of firmness and respect, betraying not the slightest hint of hesitation.

  I turn back to him, and my heart glows with pride. He stands there in the foyer, just as I imagined him, tall and straight and handsome, his hair picking up the light from the wall sconces. His hat is tucked between the fingers of his left hand, and his right hand slides away from my father’s gentle grasp to rest at his side. On his mouth he wears a smile, and no one but Lily Dane, who knows him so perfectly, could detect the tension ab
out the corners of his lips.

  For a moment, for a beautiful fleeting instant, I think, It’s going to go splendidly, Daddy’s going to love him, how couldn’t he love him?

  “Yes, I know Robert Greenwald,” my father whispers. His eyes shift in my direction. “Is that what you meant this morning? Greenwald and Company?”

  I am taken aback. “I . . . I . . . well, yes, in a way . . .”

  “Is this man . . . I don’t understand . . .” Daddy’s lips keep moving, stuttering. He puts his hand behind his back, and then around again to the front, then up to his head, raking through the tarnished hair above his ears, as if searching for his spectacles. “This man . . . Greenwald . . . he has insinuated himself with you?”

  Nick takes a step forward. “Sir.”

  Daddy holds up his hand as if to ward him away. “No. It’s not possible. Not my daughter.”

  “Daddy, please.” I move between them and take my father by his shoulders. “Daddy, you’re distraught. Let’s sit down. Let me get you some tea. I’ll call Marelda, she’ll bring tea and cake . . .”

  “I don’t need tea.” He looks at me and away. Perspiration wells up from the pale skin above his lip. “I need . . . I don’t understand. Why him, darling? Poppet, why?”

  “Let’s sit down. You’re not feeling well, you’re having a spell, you’re not thinking clearly. Marelda!” I call out. I look over my shoulder at Nick, who watches us with a mixture of astonishment and anger. “It’s not you. I swear it’s not. He’s only having a spell. He has them all the time. Please, Nick.”

  Nick springs forward. “Sir, let me help you. You need a chair.”

  “No.” Daddy pushes me away with such force I stumble backward. “I don’t need a chair. I don’t need tea. I need to be left in peace. Why can’t you leave me in peace, for God’s sake?”

  Nick catches me around the shoulder. “Lily! Careful!”

  “Daddy, please . . .”

  Daddy’s voice cracks through the air like a whip. “Take your hand off my daughter, sir!”

  “Daddy!”

  Nick turns me gently. “You’re all right, Lily?”

  “I’m fine. Daddy . . .”

  Daddy points his finger at Nick’s chest. His face blazes with resolve. His voice is like I have never heard it: decisive, commanding, the way it might have sounded at Belleau Wood, before the Germans lobbed their canisters of yellow gas into the cratered mud outside his trench. “Young man, I asked you to take . . . your . . . hand . . . off . . . my . . . daughter.”