But I suppose that’s the point of all this, these weeks we are taking to get to know each other, in the privacy of the Great Outdoors. If there’s one thing we’ve learned, the two of us, it’s that marriage isn’t always easy, and there will be times that try us without mercy. We will sometimes—maybe even often—disagree, and things and people and events will come along that test our courage and resolve, and that’s when we will turn to the memory of this precious time together, and the knot we are weaving to bind us into one. This language we are creating that belongs only to the two of us. Sometimes, when we are lying together at night, Octavian whispers in my ear a single word: Wife. And I know that word doesn’t just mean I love you. (We hardly ever say that anymore, because it’s so small and insufficient and unnecessary.) He means that I am his entire family, the source of his earthly happiness, the object of all the loyalty in his dear and faithful heart. That he will protect and adore me to his last breath. (The strength of his emotions sometimes awes me, and I think how strong I must be to receive and return them. He is not for the faint of heart, my Octavian.) You might say that all of our marriage vows are packed into that one marvelous little word.
And, in return, I tell him: Husband. And that’s that, really. It’s all we need to say before we go to sleep.
Sophie rests the notebook against her knees and lifts her arms to the night sky, stretching and stretching, linking her fingertips above her head. There is a continuous and friendly ache in her muscles these days—Octavian’s not for the faint of frame either—but she doesn’t mind that. She relishes this new awareness of her own body, the faint and decadent echoes of physical love. They remind her of her wedding night—or perhaps elopement is a better word—eighteen days ago, in an otherwise unremarkable hotel room outside of Philadelphia, and the gentle, patient way by which her new husband coaxed her into the intimacies of marriage. As it turned out, there was nothing at all the matter with her sex-instinct. It was all just a question of honing it properly! What a relief that was.
Sophie looks down at the page again, the careful and small-written lines in the light of the kerosene lantern. Does she really mean to send this letter to Virgo, after all? Or is it just for her, for Sophie: an ecstatic diary of her unconventional honeymoon, so she can read it one day and remember what it was like to be newly married, embarking on the open road in a forest-green Model T, starting a life and a business and a family together? Embarking from the abyss of grief, inch by inch, toward a new and promising future.
She puts the pencil back to the paper.
We held another funeral today. I don’t think I’ve mentioned those yet. Actually, I don’t know if funeral is really the right word. We did the first one somewhere in western Pennsylvania. Octavian was talking about France and one of his friends who was shot down and died behind enemy lines, the last day of the war, and I could see he was growing more upset, until he stopped talking altogether. So I said, let’s hold a service for him, and I got out the Bible from one of the trunks in the car and that’s what we did, and it seemed to help a great deal.
Sophie reading the service. Octavian sitting there on a rock with his head bowed, the moonlight spilling over his bare shoulders—it had been awful, though she didn’t write that down, my God how silent and upset and shuttered away—and when she closed the book he just took her in his arms and wept, and eventually they crawled under the blanket, into the most beautiful silence in the world, full of pain and joy and intimacy, the most astounding night, and afterward Octavian slept until nine o’clock the next morning, a thing he had never done before.
Tonight we had a funeral for Quentin Roosevelt. Octavian only knew him for a few weeks, but I think they had a kind of sympathy together. I think they were men of the same substance, though Octavian won’t have it, because he never believes himself to be nearly so good as he really is. I suppose
“Scribbling again?”
Sophie startles all the way to her feet, pencil flying.
Octavian laughs and hauls her into a bearlike embrace. “Sorry. I thought you heard me coming.”
“I usually do,” she says, into the skin of his chest, thinking how much she loves the sound of his laugh, and how much more often he’s laughing now. How much freer his movements now—imagine that bear hug on their careful and tentative wedding night!—and his words, too. “I was writing about the funeral.”
“Mmm. Come to bed.”
“But I’m not finished yet.”
“I can’t sleep alone.”
“Lies.”
He growls in her ear—hungry bear!—and lifts her off her feet.
“The lantern!” she exclaims, and he swoops it up, too, pretending to drop her as he does, and they stagger, laughing, to the blankets, where he drops her right smack in the middle and collapses by her side.
LATER, WHEN THEY’RE SETTLED IN, and Octavian’s arms hold her securely in place—No more running off tonight, now—she tells him that she was writing to Virgo about the funeral for Quentin Roosevelt.
“We can drive into Tulsa tomorrow, if you like,” he says. “See if there’s any word from her.”
“All right.”
“You’re not worried, are you?”
“Not yet.” She hesitates. “Are you worried?”
“I guess I am, a little bit. She’s my sister now, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is,” Sophie says firmly, snuggling deeper.
Octavian breathes into her ear, a terribly slow respiration.
“You know, if you want to do one for your father . . .”
“One what?”
“You know. Like we’ve done for my buddies.” (He doesn’t like the word funeral either.) “So, if you want to do it, I can read the service for you. The way you have for me.”
She finds his hand on the wool before her.
“Let’s wait for Virginia,” she says. “Virginia should be there, too.”
“All right.” He kisses her temple. Touches the parting of her hair. Adds, quietly: “Wife.”
She closes her eyes and tucks his fingers close, right where they belong.
“Husband.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I experienced a weird and probably inappropriate childhood. From the tender age of five, I was regularly exposed to the uncensored lewdness of Shakespeare at the summer festival in Ashland, Oregon, and I distinctly remember watching Don Giovanni (“Daddy, what’s a mistress?”) at the Seattle Opera when I was seven years old. The orchestra was on strike, and a pair of pianos accompanied the singers. When I was eight, a bomb threat interrupted a perfectly good performance of Lucia di Lammermoor.
It was all downhill from there, really—social ostracism, a humiliating memory of enacting Desdemona’s death scene on the living room sofa for the amusement of dinner guests. If a torrent of sexual passion runs through all my books, you can just blame my parents for that Live from the Met broadcast of Manon Lescaut in which a young and exceptionally hot Placido Domingo topples into bed with Renata Scotto. Imprinting starts early, folks.
You can blame them for this book, too. I don’t know exactly when it occurred to me that Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier might work as a novel set in 1920s Manhattan, but the idea took root and refused to wither. In my defense, there’s some logic attached. First performed in 1911, the opera enacts a struggle between old and new—old money and new money, physical maturity and youth—in lyric, bittersweet music that itself clashed with the dissonant modernism then in fashion. Audiences ate up the eighteenth century Viennese setting, the sensual opening scene in the Marschallin’s luxurious boudoir, the angsty rivalry between a beautiful young ingénue and a lady of a certain age.
And if the Roaring Twenties were about anything, it was the conflict between youth and age, between tradition and modernism, between old and new.
Of course, I soon realized that Strauss’s opera hasn’t got enough plot to support a modern full-length novel—the good old Scheming Servants storyline doesn’t pack the same pu
nch as it did a hundred years ago—so I had to invent a murder mystery to drive the action along. Purists, I hope, will forgive me for the embroidery.
No need, however, to embroider the wonderful wit of Helen Rowland, a journalist and humorist who—a century ago—wrote a popular column called “Reflections of a Bachelor Girl” for the old New York World newspaper. As usually happens, I stumbled across Helen’s ironic wisdom while researching something else, and not only did I adore her turn of phrase, I felt as if I’d discovered a clear and sharp-edged window into changing social customs in the early decades of the twentieth century . . . and, for that matter, an insight into how much has remained the same! I have a feeling Helen would find plenty to say about the contemporary state of love and marriage.
As for the horse race that brings Theresa and Octavian together, you can blame my horse-mad daughter, who insisted I write the legendary Man o’ War into a novel set at the beginning of the 1920s. I was happy to oblige. The 1920 Dwyer Stakes was one of the great races of the age, and the eighth pole at the old Aqueduct was preserved and dedicated to Man o’ War when the new track opened in 1959.
It still stands there today.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A Certain Age marks a homecoming: to my very first editor, Rachel Kahan, now of William Morrow, who fell in love with the manuscript of Overseas several years ago and introduced herself in a memorable phone call that marked the start of my career as a professional writer. I’m so grateful to have her passion and expertise in my corner again, along with the tremendous energy and enthusiasm of her colleagues. And I’m grateful as well to my dear friends at G.P. Putnam’s Sons for five books in four fabulous years, and for helping me make the transition with so much grace and goodwill.
The one and only Alexandra Machinist guides my professional affairs with such energy and commitment, I feel like every book rides out the door atop a truckload of thanks to her and to the entire terrific agency team at ICM. I can’t imagine my career without you.
I am always humbled by support of family and friends, in-laws and outlaws, and above all my endlessly wonderful husband, Sydney, and our four children. As we up sticks and move along the coast to more rural climes, I want to send out special thanks to all those dear friends in Greenwich who touched our lives in every way: from the Starbucks baristas who let me sit and write for hours in the corner table, to the waitresses at the Putnam Diner who kept my coffee cup filled, to my fellow moms and dads at Julian Curtiss School who cheered me on from the first book, and to everyone in between.
Readers! Booksellers! Bloggers! Author buddies! A final thanks to you, who make it all possible. I love your messages and your tweets, I love meeting you on the road, I love your passion for books and your breathtaking support. Putting a book out in the world is a naked, dangerous journey, and you give me clothes and shoes and shelter. I can’t hug you enough.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA from Columbia, BEATRIZ WILLIAMS spent several years in New York and London hiding her early attempts at fiction, first on company laptops as a communications strategy consultant, and then as an at-home producer of small persons, before her career as a writer took off. She lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore.
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ALSO BY BEATRIZ WILLIAMS
Along the Infinite Sea
Tiny Little Thing
The Secret Life of Violet Grant
A Hundred Summers
Overseas
CREDITS
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover photograph by ILINA SIMEONOVA
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A CERTAIN AGE. Copyright © 2016 by Beatriz Williams. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-240495-4 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-06-245400-3 (international edition)
EPub Edition JUNE 2016 ISBN 9780062404978
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