A Certain Age

by Beatriz Williams

  I greet the doorman and the elevator attendant as cheerfully as I possibly can, and peace settles over me as we trundle upward to the fourteenth floor, which belongs entirely to us: twelve rooms and a substantial terrace overlooking the park, the most beautiful metropolitan sunsets in the world. I fish for the key in my pocketbook. The car arrives with a clank; the attendant opens the door and the grille and wishes me good night, even though it’s actually morning.

  I say Good night, Val.

  Inside, the apartment is quiet, the housekeeper and maid in bed, but to my surprise a light shines under the door in the library, as I pass by on my way to the bedroom. I push it open, thinking wildly that maybe one of my boys has come home at last, my God, maybe it’s even Tommy.

  But it isn’t Tommy, or his brothers. It’s Sylvo, who rises from his desk and kisses me tenderly, and then sits me down on the leather Chesterfield sofa, hands me a glass of cream sherry, and tells me he wants a divorce.

  CHAPTER 6

  In love, somehow, a man’s heart is either exceeding the speed limit, or getting parked in the wrong place.

  —HELEN ROWLAND

  SOPHIE

  A little earlier that evening

  SOPHIE SEEMS to have misplaced her fiancé. Well, it wasn’t her fault! One minute he was standing by her side, introducing her to some willowy pillar of society, and the next minute he’s gone, vanished, leaving Sophie to gamely invent small talk with a woman whose mouth looks as if it’s been washed in hot water and shrunk to half its original size.

  Five minutes later, Jay has not reappeared, and Sophie’s run out of observations on the weather—Brrr!—and the lady’s relationship to the host—cousins, always cousins—and that book everyone’s been talking about—indecent. At some point, Sophie realizes she doesn’t even know her companion’s name. She faintly remembers hearing Jay’s voice as he introduced them, but—oh, so horribly raw and tenderfoot!—she was fixing her attention too raptly on the face now before her, which bears such mesmerizing traces of former beauty that Sophie can’t quite figure out where it’s all gone wrong. Her skin is still smooth, after all, except for a few crinkles around the eyes. Her hair hasn’t gone gray. Maybe it’s that constipated mouth, from which the shrunken little words squeeze reluctantly, one by one; or else the fact that she isn’t wearing any cosmetics at all, not even a bit of lip rouge to pinken her conversation. Her colorless face just disapproves of them all. Even Sophie. Especially Sophie.

  “Oh, I didn’t find it indecent at all,” Sophie chirps back. “I thought it was wonderfully daring. After all, it’s only what everybody thinks inside, but doesn’t say out loud.”

  “I don’t think those things,” the lady replies, her longest sentence yet.

  “Maybe you’re only suppressing them.” Sophie smiles kindly. “You know, the very first requirement of mental health is—”

  “Why, Sophie, darling!” A pair of arms encircles Sophie’s waist, and a sticky kiss finds her cheek. “I’ve been looking all over for you, and here you are, all tête à tête with my own sister!”

  “Your sister?”

  “Yes! Isn’t it grand? Christina, Sophie’s going to marry Jay Ochsner, the lucky thing.”

  “So I understand,” says Christina, and now Sophie remembers where she heard that voice before: in the elevator of Bergdorf Goodman’s, full of marbles.

  Julie continues. “The thing is, I desperately need to borrow Sophie for just an instant, if you can possibly spare her. A friend of mine who won’t believe Jay’s engaged unless she actually sees the ring. Not that I blame her!”

  Christina’s mouth adjusts to a tense and insincere smile. “Not at all. A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Fortescue.”

  “A pleasure, Mrs.—”

  “Dane,” says Julie’s sister, just before she turns away.

  “You’ve got to forgive her, I suppose,” Julie says, as she drags Sophie in an experienced serpentine through the closely packed drawing room. “Her husband came back from the war an absolute wreck, and I can’t seem to persuade her to find a substitute. I don’t think she’s had any fun since nineteen seventeen.”

  “How dreadful for her!”

  “Isn’t it? Now you see what I mean about suppressing the sex-instinct. The damage it does to your psychology!”

  Julie’s fingers bite into Sophie’s hand as they writhe through the crowd, reaching a pocket of air at last. She lifts a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and hands it to Sophie. “Here you are, darling. You look as if you need it. That was really unhandsome of Jay, leaving you with my sister like that, all tender and unarmed. Was she perfectly awful to you?”

  Champagne at last. Sophie tilts her chin and takes a long sip, and it’s just as lovely as she remembers, tickling her throat and her brain both at once. “Not too awful,” she says, thinking of Mrs. Dane’s tragic husband and her suppressed sex-instinct. Would Sophie turn out like that, some day soon? After all, the sex-instinct doesn’t seem to run high in her, either, except perhaps during those first kisses, or when reading indecent novels, which hardly counted. So maybe her unconscious suppression is already so steely that—

  “You’re too sweet, darling. Say what you think. My sister’s a sad old Mrs. Grundy, and you’re indebted to me for rescuing you.”

  “Rescuing me?”

  Julie’s found her own champagne by now, and she gestures with the glass. She’s beautifully dressed in a shimmery low-waisted frock that flatters the modern angularity of her figure, and her lips are a dark and dangerous scarlet. The exact symmetry of her blond curls leaves Sophie feeling faintly frizzy. “With my mythical friend, remember? The one who wants to meet your engagement ring.”

  “Oh! I’d forgotten about her.”

  “It doesn’t help that you’re keeping the pretty bauble under wraps like that.”

  Sophie examines her left glove. “I already had to show it off once this evening, to Jay’s sister.”

  “Oh, to the great Mrs. Marshall! Do tell.”

  “Tell what?”

  “Well, what was she like? I’ve never met her, though I’ve seen her from afar. The Queen Vamp.”

  Sophie peers between the beautiful bodies and says absently, “She’s very lovely. Much kinder than your sister. She’s going to throw us an engagement party.”

  “There you are, then. An engagement party on Fifth Avenue! You’ve arrived, my darling, truly arrived.” Julie looks one way and another. “Where’s the lucky fellow, by the way?”

  “Actually, I haven’t the slightest idea. He disappeared about half an hour ago.”

  “Even better. You’re coming along with me.”

  “Where to?” says Sophie, following Julie’s immaculate blond curls once more, thinking they’re headed for another room, more private; or else a terrace of some kind, overlooking Park Avenue, where Julie could indulge in a cigarette or a cocktail without any matronly disapproval dampening the experience. Not that much disapproval circulates in the Schuyler drawing room at the moment. Giggles, lipstick, tobacco, juice of juniper. But not disapproval, as if the new modern tempo has even beat its syncopated rhythms into the salons of the Upper East Side, and nobody gives a damn about anything any more.

  Julie turns her head just enough to display the neat ripple of her hair, winging past the upper curve of her ear before it meets the knot at her nape. “Downtown, of course. I’ve fallen in love again, sweet Sophie, and I’m in desperate need of a chaperone.”

  THE THING ABOUT JULIE, SHE doesn’t give a damn. Sophie, who grew up inside the claustrophobia of the house on Thirty-Second Street, hardly dreaming of escape, can’t quite comprehend the audacity with which Julie departs from Park Avenue, hails herself a taxi, and drags Sophie inside: never asking for permission, never bidding farewell to her hostess, never informing Sophie’s luckless fiancé where they’ve gone.

  “He deserves it, for abandoning you to my sister,” Julie says, when Sophie raises this point of etiquette, above the sputtering en
gine of the taxi.

  “That’s true.”

  “Anyway, you’re not joined at the hip, just because you’re engaged. That’s the old way of doing things. It’s a new world out there, kiddo, waiting to be explored.” She taps the window of the taxi with her short, lacquered fingernail.

  “But why?” asks Sophie. “Wasn’t the old world good enough?”

  “God, no. Look at our parents. Look at the war they foisted on us, all that nonsense about honor and duty and sacrifice. What did that ever get anybody? Dead, that’s all. Dead with nothing to show for it. Or else like my brother-in-law, coughing up each poor lung, bit by bit, trying to get the poison out. We’re free now, Sophie, free. We’ve got the vote, we’ve got cars and jobs and freedom.”

  “But you don’t have a job.”

  “Well, I could have one. I should.” Julie reaches into her pocketbook and produces a cigarette case. “I’ve been thinking about it, actually. It’s all the rage, don’t you know, having jobs. Cousin Philip’s a lawyer. I’m thinking of asking him to take me on.”

  “But you haven’t studied the law, have you?”

  “Oh, I imagine he’d find me something.” She lights the cigarette and hands it to Sophie, who shakes her head. “The only trouble is you’ve got to be awake so awfully early in the morning. But that’s not a problem for you, is it?”

  “Me? But I’m getting married.”

  “All the more reason. It never does any good to sit around the house, waiting for your man to arrive. That’s the old rules.”

  Julie crosses her legs, displaying an extraordinary amount of stocking. Sophie thought that hemlines were supposed to be going down again, after the shocking excess of the past couple of years, but Julie’s calves don’t seem to care what the fashion editors say. Her stockings aren’t white or decorous black, but the color of skin.

  “I can’t imagine what I could do,” Sophie says. “I didn’t learn anything especially useful at school, just English and French and mathematics and all that, and Father wouldn’t hear of sending me to college.”

  “No, I imagine not. But you have lots of interests, haven’t you? What do you especially like?”

  “Well, I—nothing, really. Nothing I could make a living at. Books and art, mostly.”

  “But there’s something else, isn’t there? You hesitated.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  Julie takes her hand. “Darling, you’ve got to learn to let these things out in the open. You’re going to fester from within, and then where will you be? An old festering housewife, like my sister.”

  “I like machines.”

  “What’s that? Don’t mumble it, like a ninny. Say it out loud! I . . . LIKE . . .”

  “MACHINES!”

  “Machines?” Julie’s so surprised, she drops Sophie’s hand into her lap, kerplonk. She points out the window, where a nearby taxi putters alongside. “Do you mean . . . well, engines?”

  “Not just engines, I guess. Everything. I like . . . well, I’ve always liked to figure out how things work. Since I was a child.”

  “Like a . . . a mechanic?” As she might say prostitute.

  “Like my father.” Sophie makes a watery laugh and returns her fingers to her own lap. “I used to help Father in his workshop, when I was younger. He showed me how to fix the car and that kind of thing. He said I had a knack for it.”

  “A knack for it? How very . . . well. Why not? Apples not falling far and that kind of thing. Only . . . really? More than, say . . . oh, magazines?”

  “I wanted to be just like him when I was little. I didn’t have a mother, you know.”

  “Oh, your mother! In that case, it makes tremendous sense, now that I think about it. A withdrawal of maternal attention can have the most awful effect on your subconscious. You attached yourself to your father instead, and—well, goodness me, it’s a wonder you weren’t dressing yourself up in short pants.” She opens up her pocketbook and rummages inside. “I suppose that’s awfully useful, though. A little oily, maybe, but useful. Do you go about the house, fixing things?”

  “No. Father does all that, and anyway, he doesn’t let me help him anymore. A thing of the past.”

  Julie produces a cigarette and lights herself up. “Because it’s not ladylike, I suppose?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well.”

  “Yes. Well.” Sophie laughs again. “Not really a suitable job, is it? Can you just see Jay’s face? I’m off to the garage, darling.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t have to be a garage, would it? Dirty things, garages. What about a nice clean . . . you know, a place where you could still”—Julie twists her fingers about, fitting some imaginary bolt—“but without the . . . well, without spoiling your hands.”

  Sophie turns to the window. The lining of her chest is raw, as if she’s swallowed a sword or a blunt razor. “Never mind. It’s just an old hobby, that’s all. I’ve grown up now.”

  “Yes, you have, thank God. Still, it’s a talent, isn’t it? I’ll ask around and see what I can find for you. Maybe a place with an architect, or—well, those men who design things.”

  “An engineer.”

  “That’s it.”

  “But I really—”

  “No objections. It would do you all kinds of good.” Julie waves away the smoke with her elegant, ungloved hand. “You can start when you’re back from your honeymoon.”

  “Honeymoon?”

  “Yes, honeymoon. Everybody takes them now. You should go away for two or three weeks at least, get it all out of your system.”

  “Get what out of my system?”

  “Darling,” Julie says pityingly. “Sex.”

  Sex. A year ago, Sophie hadn’t even thought about sex, and now it’s all around her, right out in the open. It’s all anyone can talk about. The films are full of it, and so are the books and theaters. It’s as if a dazzling new color has suddenly been added to the rainbow, and you didn’t realize what you were missing before, except that sometimes it’s a little too dazzling, isn’t it? You sort of wish that the landscape would calm down a bit, from time to time. To give your eyes a little rest. To think about something else. But nobody else seems to feel the way Sophie does. Nobody else seems to want to rest their eyes a single minute. Nobody wants to think about anything else.

  They arrive at their destination, a plain brick-fronted house in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Julie trips right up to the door and rings the doorbell, and a few seconds later a small window slides open and Julie leans forward and says something across the dark rectangle. Sophie shrinks inside her coat. The air is terribly cold, colder even than it was when they left Park Avenue, and tiny snowflakes are swirling like dust beneath the streetlamp on the corner. The door opens, and Julie drags her inside.

  By now, Sophie’s familiar with the procedure. At first, there’s just an ordinary hallway, bare and damp, like any boardinghouse or tenement on just about any street in Manhattan. Somebody shows them down a narrow flight of stairs, smelling like urine, and opens an unpromising door at the bottom. And bang, poof! Out comes a burst of jazz and laughter, and cigarettes and fun. Julie swoops inside, and Sophie follows her, straight to a small round table in the corner where a man sits waiting for them, arms crossed, nursing a lowball and a smoke and a few empty glasses.

  “Peter, duck! I knew I could count on you.” Julie drops a kiss on the man’s cheek and turns to drag Sophie into range. “Darling, this is Sophie Fortescue, Jay Ochsner’s brand-new fiancée. Sophie, this is Peter van der Wahl, a friend of the family.”

  Peter van der Wahl sets down drink and cigarette and rises to greet her. He’s a man of modest proportions: hair brown, eyes blue, face pleasantly well-bred. He doesn’t seem a bit sauced, despite the empty glasses standing before him. He smiles politely and tells her how pleased he is to meet her. Sophie likes him at once, but she can’t quite encompass the idea that Julie Schuyler’s fallen in love with this fellow. Just like that.

  “I’m
always happy to meet another friend of Julie’s,” she says warily, and Peter pulls out a chair for her and makes a signal in the direction of the bar, which takes up most of the rest of the room.

  “Oh, I’ve known Peter all my life,” says Julie. “It’s one of my earliest memories, isn’t it? When one of the Bouvier boys kicked over my sandcastle—well, it wasn’t much of a sandcastle, I was only two or three—and Peter came in and punched him in the nose. How old were you, darling? Six?”

  “Five.”

  “An older man.” Julie winks. “We’ve been friends ever since. He does my bidding and doesn’t complain, and I reward him whenever I can.”

  Sophie looked back and forth between the two of them.

  “Give a girl some of that ciggy, Peter,” says Julie, and she helps herself. “Hasn’t he arrived yet?”

  “Not yet. He had something to do first, he said.”

  The world begins to right itself. “Hasn’t who arrived yet?” Sophie asks.

  “Why, the fellow I’ve fallen in love with.” Julie hands back the cigarette. “My goodness, you don’t think I meant Peter, do you?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “My God, that would be like kissing one of my brothers.”

  A waitress arrives, bearing a tray of loaded highball glasses, which she sets on the table, one by venomous one. From the expression on Peter’s quiet face, Sophie guesses that Julie’s sentiments aren’t returned in quite the same fraternal flavor. Poor man. Wouldn’t it be just awful, to be hopelessly in love with Julie Schuyler?

  Julie selects one of the glasses and examines it—not that carefully—against what light she can find. “No, it just so happens that Peter’s acquainted with the object of my affections, and he’s kindly offered to make the introduction for us.”

  “You haven’t met him yet?”

  “No. I’ve only seen him from afar. He walked into the party tonight and murdered me from across the room.”

  “Murdered you?”

  Julie places a hand on her heart. “Murdered me.”