by James Salter
She agreed to come to dinner, but she was late and after twenty minutes of feeling more and more conspicuous at the bar, he realized she would not appear. It was perhaps her husband or a change of mind but in any case it excluded him. He was aware of his insignificance, even triviality, and then suddenly it changed as she came in.
“Sorry to be late,” she said. “Forgive me. Have you been waiting?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
The minutes of his unhappiness had instantly disappeared.
“I was on the telephone with my husband, having an argument as usual,” she said.
“What were you arguing about?”
“Oh, money, everything.”
She was wearing a suit and a black silk shirt. She looked as if difficulty of any kind was a remote thing. When they sat she was on a banquette against the wall and he was opposite, able to look at her all he liked and aware of the glamour she was bestowing on the two of them.
During dinner, he said,
“Have you ever fallen in love?”
“Fallen in love? Been in love, you mean. Yes, of course.”
“I mean fallen. You never forget it.”
“Funny you should say that.”
She had fallen in love as a young girl, she said.
“How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
It had been the most extraordinary experience of her life. She’d had a spell cast over her, she said. It was in Siena, she was a student, part of a group of a dozen boys and girls and she was not really aware of the intensity of … There was a Ferris wheel and you went up and up and sometimes stayed there, and that night, high above everything, the boy beside her began saying the most thrilling, impossible things, whispering madly in her ear. And she fell in love. There had never been anything like that night, she said.
Never anything like it. Bowman felt disheartened. Why had she said that?
“You know how it is,” she said, “how incredible.”
It was the past she was talking about, but not only the past—he could not be sure. Her presence was fresh, unspoiled.
“Incredible, yes, I know.”
She had hardly closed the door to her flat before he embraced and kissed her fervently, saying something she did not make out against her cheek.
“What?”
But he did not repeat it. He was opening the catch at the neck of her shirt, she did not stop his hands. In the bedroom she stepped from her skirt. She stood for a moment hugging herself and then slipped off the rest. The glory of her. England stood before him, naked in the darkness. She had been, in fact, lonely, she was ready to be loved. He was never more sure of his knowledge. He kissed her bare shoulders, then her hands and long fingers.
She lay beneath him. He was holding himself back but she showed he need not. They didn’t speak, he was afraid to speak. He touched the tip of his cock to her and almost effortlessly it went in, the head only, the rest held back. He was in possession of his life. He gathered and went in slowly, sinking like a ship, a little cry escaping her, the cry of a hare, as it went to the hilt.
Afterwards they lay until she slid from beneath him.
“My God.”
“What?”
“I’m drenched.”
She reached for something on the night table and lit a cigarette.
“You smoke.”
“Now and again.”
His eyes were now accustomed to the darkness. He knelt on the bed to drink her in. It was no longer preliminary to anything. He was not exhausted. He watched her smoke. After a while they made love again. He pulled her over him by her wrists, like a torn sheet. At the last she began to give a slight cry, and again he came too soon but she collapsed. The sheet was wet and they moved to one side and slept, he lay beside her like a child, in full contentment. It was different than marriage, unsanctioned, but marriage had permitted it. Her husband was off in Scotland. The consent had been without a word.
In the morning she was still sleeping, her lips slightly parted, like a girl in summer with cropped blond hair and a bare neck. He wondered if he should wake her with a touch or caress, but she was awake, perhaps from his gaze, and straightened her legs beneath the sheet. He turned her onto her stomach as if she were a possession, as if they had agreed.
He sat in the tub in the bathroom, a chalky tub of a grand size found in beach resorts, as the water thundered in. His eye fell on a slight pair of white underclothes hung to dry on the towel rack. On the shelves and windowsill were jars and small bottles, her lotions and creams. He gazed at them, his mind adrift, as the warm water rose. He slid further down as it reached his shoulders, in a kind of nirvana not based on freedom from desires but on attainment. He was at the center of the city, of London, it would always be his.
She poured tea in a pale robe that came only to the knee, holding the top of it closed with one hand. It was still early. He was buttoning his shirt.
“I feel like Stanley Ketchel.”
“Who is that?”
“He was a fighter. There was a famous newspaper story about him. Stanley Ketchel, the middleweight champion, was shot and killed yesterday morning by the husband of the woman he was cooking breakfast for.”
“That’s clever. Did you write that?”
“No, it’s just a famous opening. I like openings, they can be important. Ours was. Not easily forgotten. I thought … I’m not sure what I thought but part of it was, impossible.”
“I think that’s been disproven.”
“Yes.”
They sat silent for a moment.
“The thing is, I have to leave tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” she said. “When will you be back?”
“I don’t know. I can’t be sure. It’s presumably a question of work.”
He added, “I hope you won’t forget me.”
“You can be sure.”
Those were the words he pocketed and ran his fingers over many times, along with images of her that were as distinct as photographs. He wanted a photograph but prevented himself from asking for it. He would take one himself the next time and keep it between the pages of a book in the office with nothing written on it, no name or date. He could imagine someone accidentally coming across it and asking, who is this? He would without a word simply take it from their hand.
10
CORNERSVILLE
Caroline Amussen was living, as she had for years, on Dupont Circle in an apartment the furnishings of which, not particularly fashionable to begin with, hadn’t changed in all the time she’d been there, the same long sofa, the same easy chairs and lamps, the same white enameled table in the kitchen where she sat smoking and drinking coffee in the mornings and, having finished the paper, listening to the radio and her favorite host, whose witticisms she repeated to her friends in a voice that had become slightly hoarse, a voice of experience and drink. Various women, divorced and married, were her friends including Eve Lambert, whom she’d known since they were little girls and who had married into the Lambert family and loads of money—she was still invited pretty regularly to the Lamberts’ and occasionally went sailing with them although Brice Lambert, broad-faced and sporting, didn’t often go sailing with his wife but with another party, it was said, a young reporter who wrote for the social column. The boat afforded absolute privacy and the rumor was that Brice had his girlfriend spend the day of sailing naked. So it was said. But how would anyone know? Caroline thought.
With her friends, she had lunch and often, in the afternoon or evening, played cards. She was still the best looking of them and except for Eve had made the best marriage, the others had married, in her opinion, either lower-class or uninteresting men, salesmen and assistant managers. Washington could be dull. At five every afternoon the thousands of government offices would empty and the government workers would go home having spent the whole day wasting George Amussen’s hard-earned money, as he always complained. The government should be abolished, he said, the whole damned thing. We�
�d be better off without it.
Caroline’s rent was paid by Amussen, no real burden for him since his company managed the building and he could take care of the rent by including it in other things, general expenses. Her alimony was $350 a month and she received a little extra from her father. It was not enough to give parties with or gamble, but she did bet on the horses now and then or dressed up in nice weather and went to Pimlico with Susan McCann, who had almost married a Brazilian diplomat, should have, but there had been a disastrous weekend in Rehoboth during which, she would afterwards confess to Caroline, she had been too narrow-minded and he later began seeing another woman, who had an antique shop in Georgetown.
Caroline, for her part, was not unhappy. She was optimistic, there was still life to think about, both what had been and what might be ahead. She had not given up the idea that she might marry again and had been involved with several men over the years, but none of them was right. She wanted a man who, among other things, would make George Amussen wonder if he’d made a mistake if they happened to cross paths with him, which was bound to happen sooner or later, although she was still angry and didn’t care what he thought.
In her becalmed life she knew she was drinking too much, though a drink or two made you feel more like yourself and people were more lively and attractive when they drank.
“Anyway, you feel more attractive,” Susan agreed.
“It’s the same thing.”
“Are you still seeing Milton Goldman?” Susan asked offhandedly.
“No,” said Caroline.
“What happened?”
“Nothing actually happened.”
“I thought you liked him.”
“He’s a very nice man,” Caroline said.
Which he was and owned property on Connecticut Avenue a little further out, but she remembered very well the photograph of him as a child in what was almost a dress and with long curls along the side of his head like the men in black hats and coats that you sometimes saw in New York. It made her realize that she couldn’t be married to him, not with the people she knew. She was thinking of Brice Lambert and also, though she was no longer part of it, of life in Virginia. But her own life went on, one week very much like another, one year following another, and you began to lose track.
Then one morning a bad thing happened. She woke unable to move her arm or her leg, and when she tried to use the phone her words had lost their shape. She couldn’t make them sound right, they filled her mouth and came out deformed. She’d had a stroke, they told her at the hospital. It would be a long, slow process to recover. Ten days later she boarded a plane in a wheelchair and flew to her father’s house near Cambridge, Maryland, on the Eastern Shore. Beverly had arranged it and taken her to the airport and settled her aboard, but having three children prevented her from doing more, and now Vivian would have to help.
The house was actually in Cornersville on a quiet road, a beautiful, half-derelict old brick house dating almost from Civil War days that Warren Wain, Caroline’s father, had bought to restore and spend his retirement in, but the restoration had proved to be more than he could handle, even with the help of his son, Cook, Vivian’s uncle. Warren Wain had been an architect in Cleveland, well regarded, and though some of his essential quality and good looks had come down to his daughter, less had come down to his son, who had also studied architecture but never gotten a license. For a long time he had worked in his father’s office and his father in essence had supported him. He had few friends and had never married. He had gone with a divorced woman for four or five years and finally asked her to marry him. He did it by commenting that maybe they should get married.
“No, I don’t think so,” she said calmly.
“I thought you wanted to get married. Now I’m asking you.”
“Is that what it was?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Anyway it wouldn’t work out.”
“It’s worked so far.”
“That’s probably because we haven’t been married.”
“Just what in hell do you want?” he asked. “Do you know?”
She didn’t answer.
The house was in sad disrepair. Bricks were piled at one side of it and the walkway to the front door was only half-finished, part brick and the rest dirt. Inside there was unpainted drywall that had been put up to replace the old plaster. Panes in the small windows to the cellar were broken and Vivian could see a pile of empty bottles in there. They were Cook’s, she found out. There were also, not yet known to her, many checks that had been made out to the liquor store in Cambridge and others to “Cash” on which Cook had signed his father’s name. The old man knew about them but hadn’t confronted his son. His arthritis was painful and now, with his daughter there invalided and unable to take care of herself, the tasks of daily life were almost more than he could handle. But he loved the country. They were near a large open field where you could see the weather, the sun rippling and sometimes the wind. On an inlet nearby he had seen a white goose that lived with the ducks there. Whenever a plane passed overhead, the goose looked up, watching and talking as he did. He watched it all across the sky.
Vivian was sleeping in the unfinished room that was intended to have been her grandfather’s study. She stayed for two weeks the first time, cooking, taking her mother to doctor’s appointments and once a week to the hairdresser to cheer her up. She was attentive and sympathetic to her mother but she was her father’s child. Her father had taught her to ride and hunt and play tennis. She had taken to all that more than Beverly had, and in all likelihood loved her father more, too. He was a man who represented so many things, a little stubborn perhaps but beyond that all you could wish for.
Caroline, though she was unable now to do much more than mumble, rolled her eyes whenever Vivian mentioned Cook. That was one of the clearer signs of what she was feeling. There was an inane smile on her face and a mouth full of struggling sounds, but her eyes had an expression of knowing, knowing and understanding. Tick, the black labrador that was Warren Wain’s, lay peacefully at her feet, knocking the floor with his thick tail when someone would approach. Like the rest of the household he had seen better days. He moved a little stiffly and his muzzle had flecks of white but he had a good nature. Cook, not bothering to shave and wearing a shapeless sweater, took him for walks.
“How are they getting along?” Bowman asked when Vivian came back to New York.
“Cook is spending all the money and the house is a wreck,” Vivian said.
“How’s your mother?”
“Not very good. I don’t think she’s going to be able to stay there for long. They can’t take care of her. You have to help her dress and other things, well, you know. I’ll have to go back down there.”
“Should she be in some kind of home?”
“I don’t like the idea, but she’ll probably have to be.”
“Can Beverly help? She’s a lot closer.”
“Beverly is having some trouble herself.”
“What is it? Her children? Bryan?”
Vivian shrugged.
“With the bottle,” she said. “It runs in the family.”
When she left for Maryland again, it was with the understanding that she might have to stay a few weeks longer, and when she arrived in Cornersville things seemed to be worse, for reasons that she soon understood. The bank account was overdrawn, and the old man had to do something. In his slippers and bathrobe at the breakfast table while Vivian was doing the dishes, he finally said,
“Cook, listen, I need to talk to you.”
“Yes?”
“I have to say this, but have you been signing my name to anything?”
“Signing your name? No. What for? I signed it a couple of times,” he said.
“Only a couple of times?”
“Twice. Two or three times is all.” He was becoming uneasy. “When you were too busy on account of Caroline to do it.”
“To do what?”
<
br /> “Go to the bank,” Cook said.
Wain sat quietly.
“You know, when I was in France, during the war …”
He could hardly remember the war, sitting in the unfinished house across from his failed son. He could hardly construct how he had gotten from there to here. Cook’s face was bored and defensive.
“In the winter when it was cold,” the old man said, “we’d pour a big circle of gasoline on the ground and light it and then jump in to warm ourselves before we flew. They said, what are you doing that for, aren’t you afraid of getting burned? We’d probably be dead in an hour anyway, so what difference did it make?”
He’d been an observer in the flying corps and had some photographs of himself in uniform. He realized he’d gotten away from the point.
“I don’t understand,” Cook said.
“What don’t you understand?”
“The point of it.”
“The point is, I’ll be dead and the bank account will be empty. There’ll be nothing left. The house will fall down around you and you’ll have Caroline to take care of, and that’ll be the end.”
“It was only a few checks. Just saving you some trouble.”
“I wish you knew how to,” Wain said.
The week after arriving, Vivian, sitting at her grandfather’s dark desk against the wall in the unfinished study, wrote a letter. Dear Philip, it began.
She always wrote Dearest Philip. Was this an unintentional lapse or was it something more? Bowman felt a kind of foreboding, a chill going through him as he read the strangely unfamiliar words. No one could possibly know what had happened in London. That was in another world, another completely. Nervously he read on. Caro is about the same. It’s very hard for her to talk and I feel like she gets tired of trying to make herself understood and she gives up, but you can tell things from her expression. It’s mainly me who takes her out, me and grand-dad. Apart from that we watch tv or she sits in the kitchen with me a lot. Nothing much gets done on the house. Cook is really useless. He’s in town doing what, I don’t know, or back in the shed. But that’s not why I’m writing.
