All That Is

by James Salter

  “Has she been there?”

  “No. She’s never even been to Mexico. She was in Boston last weekend with her boyfriend.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “His name’s Fred. They went to some hotel and never got out of bed the whole time.”

  “I didn’t know she was like that.”

  “She was so sore she could hardly walk.”

  The place was full, there was a crowd at the bar. Beyond the single window, across the street were second and third floors with large, lighted rooms where a couple might live. Vivian was drinking a second glass of wine. The waiter was squeezing past tables with their order on a tray.

  “What is this? Is this the paella?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s in it?” she said.

  “Sausage, rice, clams, everything.”

  She began to eat.

  “It’s good,” she said.

  The crowded tables and talk around them gave it an intimacy. He knew it was the time, he must say it somehow.

  “I love it when you come up here.”

  “Me, too,” she said automatically.

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” she said and his heart began wildly.

  “What would you think,” he said, “about living here? I mean, we’d be married, of course.”

  She paused in her eating. He couldn’t tell what her reaction was. Had he misstated something?

  “There’s so much noise in here,” she said.

  “Yes, it’s noisy.”

  “Was that a proposal?”

  “It was pitiful, wasn’t it? Yes, it’s a proposal. I love you,” he said. “I need you. I’d do anything for you.”

  He’d said it, just as he meant to.

  “Will you marry me?” he said.

  “We’ll have to get Daddy’s permission,” she said.

  An immense happiness filled him.

  “Of course. Is that really necessary?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  She insisted that he ask her father for her hand although, as she said, he had already had considerably more.

  The lunch was at George Amussen’s club in Washington. Bowman had prepared himself carefully for it. He had gotten a haircut and wore a suit and shined shoes. Amussen was already seated when the steward showed Bowman in. Across a number of tables he could see his prospective father-in-law reading something, and he suddenly recalled the morning when he had gone to see Mr. Kindrigen, though that was long behind him. He was twenty-six now, more or less established, and ready to make the right impression on Vivian’s impenetrable father, who, sitting alone, hair combed straight back, at his ease, looked at that moment like a figure from the war, even someone who had been on the other side, some commander or Luftwaffe pilot. It was noon and the tables were just filling up.

  “Good morning,” Bowman said as a greeting.

  “Good morning. Nice to see you,” Amussen replied. “I’m just looking at the menu here. Sit down. I see they have shad roe.”

  Bowman picked up the menu himself, and they each ordered a drink.

  Amussen knew what the young man was there for, and in his mind he had laid out the salient points of his response. He was a methodical man of certain beliefs. One of the chief and unaddressed dangers society faced, he believed, was mongrelization, free interbreeding that could in the end have only dire results. He was a southerner, not from the Deep South but still from what might have been called Dixie, where the essential question was always, what is your background? His own was quite good. He had his great-grandmother’s silver and some pieces of her furniture, cherrywood and walnut, and he had raised his two daughters with as much attention to their ability to ride and present themselves in company as anything else. He had gone to college, to the University of Virginia, but had dropped out for financial reasons in his junior year, something he never particularly regretted. He’d gone to the University of Virginia, he would say if asked. His father had managed warehouses and been well regarded, and Amussen was a respected name, perhaps with the exception of a cousin near Roanoke, Edwin Amussen, who owned a tobacco farm and had never married. His real wife was a colored girl, they said, and it was true that he had a girl, Anna, who’d been seventeen when she first came to the house to cook. She was dark-skinned, deep in color, plum-colored, he said, but fragrant with full, knowing lips. Two or three mornings a week she would come up the back stairs to the second-floor bedroom, a large room with a shaded porch, where he had gotten up earlier to wash and then lain in bed for half an hour in the coolness hearing her at work in the kitchen below. The curtains were drawn and it was only partly light. After entering the room she would slip off her cotton T-shirt and lie, as if to rest her upper body, on the bed, forearms folded beneath her head. On her naked back with its two strong halves he would then place five silver dollars in a familiar pattern, one at the nape of her neck, one a little way below that, and a third further down, past the small of her back. The last two were by her shoulders like the arms of a cross. Without haste he would raise her skirt, carefully, as if preparing to examine it, and on these mornings she had nothing on beneath. She had made herself ready, sometimes with a little shortening, and let him slowly, at the pace of a summer evening or long afternoon, begin, often hearing him discuss food, what he would like for dinner the next few days.

  This went on for five years, until she was twenty-two and told him one morning, afterwards, that she was getting married. No need to change things on that account, he said blandly, but she said no. Once in a while, however, since she still possessed freedom of the house, she would appear in the morning unbidden.

  “Trouble at home?” he asked.

  “No. Jus’ habit,” she said, laying her upper body on the bed.

  “You get six,” he offered.

  “No room for that extra.”

  “Here.”

  He put it in her hand, into her palm, which he loved.

  No one knew of this, it existed by itself, like certain feverish visions of saints.

  In 1928, at a dinner party in Washington, George Amussen had met Caroline Wain who was twenty with a slow manner of talking and a provocative smile. She had grown up in Detroit, her father was an architect. Four months after Amussen met her, they were married, and some six months after that, their first child, Beverly, was born. Vivian came a year and a half later.

  Life in the country was pleasant for Caroline. She smoked and drank. Her laugh became hoarse and a small seductive roll of flesh slowly appeared above her girdle. She lay in bed with her daughters and sometimes read to them on rainy days. Amussen drove into Washington to work, occasionally coming back late or even spending the night, and his attention to Caroline, in a way that was important to her, dwindled. She brooded on this.

  “George,” she said one evening over a drink, “are you happy with me?”

  She was not yet thirty but her face was a bit puffy beneath the eyes.

  “What do you mean, darling?”

  “Are you happy?”

  “I’m happy enough.”

  “Do you still love me?” she persisted.

  “Why are you asking that?”

  “I just want to know.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Yes, you love me? Is that what you mean?”

  “If you keep asking it, I don’t know what I’ll say.”

  “That means you don’t.”

  “Is that what it means?”

  There was a silence.

  “Is it that there’s someone else?” she finally said.

  “If there was, it wouldn’t amount to anything,” he said.

  “So, there is.”

  “I said, if there was. There isn’t.”

  “You’re sure of that? No, you’re not, are you?”

  “Why don’t you listen to what I say?”

  With that, she suddenly threw her drink in his face. He stood and brushed himself off, taking out a handkerchief to do it.

  Sh
e threw a drink in his face at a party in Middleburg that fall and wept in the car on the way home from several others. She became known as a drinker, that was not so bad—drinking, even too much, was an aspect of character, like courage, in their society—but Amussen became tired of it and of her. Her angry moods were like a disease that couldn’t be treated, much less cured. She had taken her pillow and was sleeping in the guest room. By the tenth year of their marriage they had separated and soon after, divorced. Caroline went to Reno for the divorce and left her two daughters, eight and ten years old, with her husband so as not to disrupt their schooling and routine. Although she retained custody of them, she did not exercise it strictly, and Amussen was content to let things continue this way, as they were.

  Bowman met Caroline Amussen—she kept the name, which was worth something—in her apartment in Washington. She was wearing bedroom slippers but she had a somehow gallant air and was warm towards him. She liked him, she said, and later said it privately to her daughter. Bowman forgot the fact that girls, in time, became like their mothers. He felt that Vivian took after her father and would become her own woman.

  The waiter came to take their order.

  “How is the shad roe, Edward?” Amussen asked.

  “Jus’ fine, Mistuh Amussen.”

  “Do you have two orders of it?” he asked. “If you’d like to have it,” he said to his guest.

  Bowman assumed it was a southern dish.

  “Do you do any fishing?” Amussen said. “Shad is bony, generally too bony to bother with. The roe is the best part.”

  “Yes, I’ll have it. How do they make it?”

  “In a pan with some bacon. They brown it. That’s right, isn’t it, Edward?”

  It was at the end of lunch, when they were being served coffee, that Bowman said,

  “You know, I’m in love with Vivian.”

  Amussen continued stirring his coffee as if he had not heard.

  “And I think she’s in love with me,” Bowman went on. “We would like to get married.”

  Still Amussen showed no emotion. He was as calm as if he were alone.

  “I’ve come to ask for your permission, sir,” Bowman said.

  The “sir” seemed a little courtly but he felt it was appropriate. Amussen was still occupied with stirring.

  “Vivian’s a nice girl,” Amussen finally said. “She was raised in the country. I don’t know how she’d take to city life. She’s not one of those people.”

  He then looked up.

  “How do you plan on providing for her?” he said.

  “Well, as you know, I have a good job. I like my work, I have a career. I earn enough to support us at this point, and whatever I have is hers. I’ll make sure she’s comfortable.”

  “She’s not a city girl,” Amussen said again. “You know, from the time she was just a little thing, she’s had her own horse.”

  “We haven’t talked about that. I suppose we could always make room for a horse,” Bowman said lightly.

  Amussen seemed not to hear him.

  “We love one another,” Bowman said. “I’ll do everything in my power to make her happy.”

  Amussen nodded slightly.

  “I promise you that. We’re hoping for your permission, then. Your blessing, sir.”

  There was a pause.

  “I don’t think I can give you that,” Amussen said. “Not and be honest with you.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t think it would work. I think it would be a mistake.”

  “I see.”

  “But I won’t stand in Vivian’s way,” her father said.

  Bowman left feeling disappointed but defiant. It would be a kind of morganatic marriage then, politely tolerated. He was not sure what attitude to take about it, but when he told Vivian what her father had said, she was not disturbed.

  “That’s just Daddy,” she said.

  The minister was a tall man in his seventies with silvery hair who couldn’t hear very well, having fallen from a horse. Age had taken the edge from his voice, which was silken but thin. At the prenuptial meeting he said he would ask them three questions, the ones he always asked couples. He wanted to know if they were in love. Next, did they want to be married in the church? And lastly, would the marriage last?

  “We can definitely answer yes to the first two,” Bowman replied.

  “Ah,” the minister said, “yes.” He was absentminded and had forgotten the order of the questions. “I don’t suppose it’s so important to be in love,” he admitted.

  He hadn’t shaved, Bowman noticed, there was a white stubble on his face, but he was more presentable at the wedding. Vivian’s family was there, her mother, sister, brother-in-law, and some others Bowman had never met and also friends. There were fewer on the groom’s side, but his Harvard roommate, Malcolm, and his wife, Anthea, were there, and Eddins with a white carnation in his buttonhole. It was a bright, cool morning, then afternoon, passing in an excitement that made it hard to remember. He was with his mother beforehand and could see her during the ceremony. He watched with a sense of victory as Amussen brought Vivian down the aisle. He put any misgivings aside, it was like a scene from a play. During the vows he saw only his bride, her face clear and shining, and in back of her Louise smiling, too, as he heard himself say, With this ring, I thee wed. I thee wed.

  Eddins proved to be very popular or anyhow well-remembered at the reception, which was held at Vivian’s house—her father had wanted it to be at the Red Fox, the old inn in Middleburg, but had been persuaded otherwise.

  The bar was on a table covered with a white tablecloth and tended by two bartenders, reserved but polite, burnished somehow by inequality. In a bow tie and with the round face of good fellowship, Bowman’s new brother-in-law, Bryan, came up to him.

  “Welcome to the family,” he said.

  He had small, even teeth that made him seem friendly and worked in the government.

  “Very nice wedding,” he said. “We didn’t have one. The pater offered us three thousand dollars—actually he offered it to Beverly—if we’d just go off and get married. He was probably hoping I’d run away with the money. He as much as told me so. Anyway, we eloped. Where are you from?”

  “New Jersey,” Bowman said. “Summit.”

  He was from the east, too, Bryan said.

  “We lived in Mount Kisco. Guard Hill Road—they used to call it Banker’s Row, every house belonged to a Morgan partner.”

  They had a four-car garage. Actually there were three cars and a chauffeur.

  “Redell was his name. He was also the cook, very spooky kind of guy,” Bryan said amiably. “He used to drive us to school. We had a Buick and a Hispano-Suiza, huge monster with a separate chauffeur’s section and a speaking tube. Every day at breakfast, Redell would ask which car we wanted to take, the Buick or … The Hissy, the Hissy! we’d say. And then when we got away from the house, we would drive.”

  “You would drive?”

  “My brother and I.”

  “How old were you?”

  “I was twelve and Roddy was ten. We took turns. We made Redell do it. We threatened him. We said we’d claim he tried to molest us. Death rides, we called them.”

  “Where’s Roddy now?”

  “He’s not here. He’s out west. He works in construction in the West. He just likes it, the life.”

  Beverly joined them.

  “We were talking about Roddy,” Bryan explained.

  “Poor Roddy. Bryan loves Roddy. Do you have brothers or sisters?” she asked Bowman.

  “No, I’m the only one.”

  “Lucky you,” she said.

  She did not resemble Vivian. She was bigger and somewhat ungainly with a receding chin and a reputation for being outspoken.

  “So, what do we make of Mr. Bowman?” she asked her husband afterwards. She was eating some of the wedding cake with her hand cupped beneath to catch any pieces.

  “He seems like a nice-enough guy.”

/>   “He’s from Hah-vud.”

  “So?”

  “I think Vivian made a mistake.”

  “What have you got against him?”

  “I don’t know. It’s my intuition. I like his friend, though.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one with the flower. He’s nervous, look at him.”

  “What’s he nervous about?”

  “Us, probably.”

  Eddins was on his second drink but in Virginia he felt more or less at home. He had talked to an ex-colonel and to a not unattractive woman who had come with a judge. Also to Bryan, who mentioned the cars they used to have before the family lost their money and had to move to Bronxville, which was a real shame. Eddins had been watching a good-looking girl who was standing behind the judge and he finally walked her way.

  “Do you come here often?” he asked as a try at wit.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Her name was Darrin, she was the daughter of a doctor. It turned out that she exercised horses.

  “Horses need exercise? Don’t they do that themselves?”

  She regarded him somewhat scornfully.

  Eddins tried to cover it up by talking.

  “They said there might be thunderstorms today, but it looks like they’re wrong. I like thunderstorms. There’s a wonderful one in Thomas Hardy. Do you know Thomas Hardy?”

  “No,” she said briefly.

  “He’s English. An English writer. You can’t top the English. Lord Byron, the poet. Incredible. The most famous man in Europe when he was still in his twenties. Mad, bad, and dangerous to know, I’m trying to model myself after him.”

  She failed to smile.

  “Died of a fever at Missolonghi. They put his heart in an urn and his lungs in something else, I forget … supposed to end up in a church but they got lost. His body was sent back to England in a coffin filled with rum. Women came to the funeral, former mistresses …”

  She was listening without expression.

  “I have some English blood,” he confessed, “but mostly Scottish.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Wild, unbridled people. Wash their clothes in urine,” he said.