The Age of Desire

by Jennie Fields

  It is a beautiful almost-spring day when Anna boards the train from Le Havre to the Gare St. Lazare, and all along the route she views muddy devastation. Fields sit in foamy cocoa puddles. Houses are painted halfway up to their roofs with brown scum. And Paris is a slippery, miserable mess, just shaking the mud off the cobbles, coming back to life. Like a general, she waited in Le Havre to direct the crates of furniture to be packed into a cargo train before she boarded her own train. She is exhausted now, bone weary, and painfully aware that she is not a young woman anymore.

  The apartment house at 53, rue de Varenne looks more beautiful to her than she could have imagined. Climbing out of the motorcar into the courtyard, she breathes a sigh of relief. Cook helps her with her bags. All the way from the station, he’d caught her up about the flood. About how he brought the household food and how Gross cooked until the new cook was able to come. How the rowboats floated down the streets.

  “Mrs. Wharton will be so happy to have the furniture at last,” he says. “She said just yesterday that living in those empty rooms with the polished floors was like living in a ballet studio!”

  “Did she think I’d absconded with it?”

  “She said, ‘Anna is doing the sensible thing and waiting. I’m sure of it.’”

  Anna smiles to herself, pleased to be assured of Edith’s trust.

  At the door to the new apartment, she breathes a sigh of joy and relief. And when Edith hears the door open, Anna can hear her fly through the apartment to greet her.

  “You are here!” she says. “At last, a normal life can begin again.”

  Anna can’t fool herself into thinking that Edith is speaking just of her absence, and yet she knows there is a kernel of truth in that too. Edith embraces her like a soldier separated from a fellow combatant during battle.

  “Our new life,” she says. “Welcome to our new life!”

  When Anna reaches her glorious new room, on the bed (there is not another thing in the room but the bed), a letter sits unopened. Anna lifts it and sees that it’s from Germany. But instead of a man’s handwriting, as she was hoping to see, the new address is penned in a flowery hand. Could it be from her cousin? she wonders.

  Dear Miss Bahlmann,

  When we received your letter, we felt very sorry indeed that we didn’t write you sooner, for Father spoke of you often in the last year, and we should have let you know. There is no way to soften this information, so I will simply tell you: Father died last July of a heart incident. We had no idea he had a problem with his heart. It was a very sudden death. He ate dinner with us one night as usual, and read a book in his favorite chair in the library. And then he called Baldegunde and said he didn’t feel well and wanted to lie down, yet he was so weak, he could hardly move. The servants had to help us settle him into bed. The doctor was summoned, but it was too late.

  I know he cared a great deal for you. He told me once he hoped that you would soon become a part of our lives. We were so stunned by his death that we didn’t do our duty in letting you know. And I hope you will forgive us.

  Someday, perhaps, you will come visit us in Essen and we can meet the woman our father was so taken with. We would all enjoy that, and perhaps you would be curious to meet us as well.

  With great sorrow,

  Sabinchen Schultze

  Anna drops to the bed and stares at the spidery words. Her heart is bumping, and a weakness pours through her. She suddenly understands the meaning of the words “her blood ran cold,” for indeed, she feels as though every pump of her heart is sending out icy ichor—too gelid and thin to keep her alive. When she tries to conjure Thomas, she can’t see him. She will never look upon his face again. And she has no photograph to remind her. She is too empty and weak to cry. And so she sits. The sun drops behind the garden, and she doesn’t even have the strength to turn on the light.

  When the dinner hour comes, Edith knocks on her door, and receiving no response, she opens it.

  “Aren’t you joining me?” she asks, peering around the door. “This new cook is quite an improvement. . . . What are you doing in the dark?”

  When Anna doesn’t speak, Edith comes toward her.

  “Whatever’s wrong, Tonni?”

  Rather than explain, Anna just hands over Sabinchen’s letter. Edith finds the light switch and, standing by the bed, reads.

  She sits down beside Anna and slips her arm around her shoulders.

  “This was the man in Greece?”

  Anna nods.

  “Thomas, yes?”

  “Thomas.” Just saying his name releases the tears that have yet to come.

  Anna feels foolish. For she is a sixty-year-old woman. A woman for whom no personal life was ever planned. She has spent a lifetime serving others. And it has been her choice. Her joy. But now she sees that her last opportunity for a life of her own is gone. She finds it almost impossible to breathe.

  “What sort of man was he?” Edith asks.

  “A formal man. But a kind one. He wasn’t young. But he didn’t look ill.”

  “Poor Anna. I wonder if you recall what you told me when my father died,” Edith asks.

  Anna shakes her head. It is hard to remember so far back. Edith was an uncertain young girl, not yet launched into society, when George Jones sickened suddenly from a stroke and shortly after died. The family had been on a long journey through Europe, a wonderful journey. They had to return to the United States abruptly. Anna came to help them, to calm Lucretia and set the house in order. Edith clung to Anna then, followed her about. Anna was the only person to whom Edith could express her sense of loss.

  Edith slips her hand into Anna’s now. “I remember it very well, Tonni. One day I cried to you about how I couldn’t imagine going on without Father. And you said, ‘Edith, your father will never really die as long as you can remember a single thing he gave you. Your love of books, for instance. Your patience. Your joy in flowers. Those things will live on in you.’ Your words were the only thoughts that comforted me. Because I knew you were right. I could recall my father perfectly when I remembered what we shared. So if you can think of a single thing that your friend Thomas gave you, then I expect you’ll feel the same way.”

  Anna closes her eyes and remembers the bright light in Thomas’s eyes when he called her “Unerschütterlich!” She remembers the gentle sweetness of his kisses. “He gave me . . . he gave me a chance to believe for a moment that I was a woman.”

  Edith’s mouth opens in surprise, and then Anna watches Edith’s eyes well up, as though Anna’s words have touched a nerve, shocked some similar truth inside of her. Edith stands.

  “Join me for dinner when you’re able. I’ll wait,” she says, her voice revealing its tremor. Anna watches her leave the room, wondering what she might be feeling.

  In just a matter of days, the apartment at 53, rue de Varenne is plumped and softened and fitted out like a home, graced with Edith’s linens and silver, familiar chairs and plush rugs. Anna works tirelessly, unpacking and washing, organizing, clearing. If her heart is broken, it isn’t apparent to Edith. She seems renewed by the simple joy of cleaning, readying and organizing. She has never seemed more in her element.

  Edith feels utterly happy to be making a real home in France at last. Since she was a child, she has always dreamed of being a real citizen of Paris. The thrill of saying, “I’ve taken a little apartment on the Rue de Varenne” loses none of its joy in reality. And without Teddy underfoot, she is truly, briefly happy.

  Her world is glowingly perfect until she thinks of Morton. Morton, as he warned, has a full agenda of activities that don’t include her. Foolishly, she telephones him, too often, probably. She can’t seem to help herself. She has discovered that at around four P.M., he seems to accept a moment’s break. Even if he doesn’t stay on long, just hearing him satisfies her. And she has so many
good things to report about the apartment. About her new life. Her joy has nowhere to go if she can’t share it with him!

  But at night, when Edith sleeps, her dreams are ragged with disturbing thoughts of Morton. In one dream, she returns from the theatre and encounters Anna, whose lips are white.

  “He’s in there,” Anna says, twisting her hands together, pointing to the drawing room.

  Rather than asking if she means Morton or Teddy, for these days, each could warrant the same ominous tone from Anna, Edith steps into the new parlor and there Morton sits: naked, cross-legged on the settee, wearing all of Edith’s jewels—her collar of pearls, her diamond earrings, his fingers decked with her rings. In fact, six rings per finger. He is laughing and says, “They’re mine now. You gave them to me. I have no intention of giving them back.” In another dream, he tells her that now that she’s moved to Paris for good, he’s decided to leave. “I really can’t bear to see you this often,” he says. He looks at her out of the corner of his eye, as though he can’t tolerate addressing her face to face. “And these telephone calls. I assure you, I loathe them.” She weeps and tells him that he isn’t worth her time or effort, that he’s a cad and a disappointment. And that no matter what Anna de Noailles told her, love should not hurt so much. When she wakes, she is exhausted. Why, oh, why, can’t she be happy at this happy time?

  The dream reminds her to call Anna de Noailles. One afternoon, she takes la Comtesse through the new apartment, and afterward they sit and chat about love over tea laced with American whiskey, which the Comtesse has smuggled in by flask in her purse. How the woman can go on! Especially with the lubricant of alcohol. She speaks of her lover with a lush longing that Edith finds both unsettling and exciting. “Maurice? I torture him,” she whispers to Edith. “Sometimes I am wild for him, insatiable. I use him until he’s too exhausted to speak. And then I tell him I like him best when he is silent. He is a man of letters, so it drives him mad! Other times, dear Edith, I feign that I am bored. And of course, I often am. Men can be so boring, can’t they? Their minds are like greedy children. And how is your lover?”

  Edith shrugs.

  “You love him still?” the Comtesse asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Then make sure it is you making the choices, mon amie. What do they say in America: ‘calling the shots’? I like that expression.”

  When de Noailles leaves, Edith, noting that it is past four, sits at the phone in the library and calls Morton, and to her surprise hears herself saying, “I want us to be together. Together. Just as you’ve often suggested.” She tries to sound like de Noailles, lowering her voice, seductive. In control. She attempts to entwine a taste of the lascivious around her words. If the Comtesse can do it, why can’t she?

  “Together?” he asks. “Am I interpreting right?”

  “I think you know exactly what I mean, dear,” she tells him.

  Morton’s voice rises, sounds unsettled.

  “I would like that . . . but here in the city, you understand. With the bureau breathing down my neck, I have no time these days to go out of town.”

  “In the city. But discreetly,” she warns him.

  “Leave it to me.” She hears his chest puff like a robin’s. Extraordinary that this should be audible. Later, she hates herself for having instigated something so unacceptable to her in the past. But it is too late to call him back, to call it off.

  The small hotel that Morton chooses in Montmartre has a café that is reached through the lobby, so anyone seeing her enter might think she is heading for a cup of thé and a croissant. He was kind to think it through to this extent, at least. He is waiting for her in a chair by the front desk, smiling, impish. Just seeing him does lift her heart.

  Somehow, the places they visited in the country felt different, sacred even. But the lobby of this hotel, with its smeary-looking travelers, salesmen and a few women of questionable morals, doesn’t make her feel the least gleeful and she knows he senses it.

  “Are you sure about this?” he asks.

  She presses her lips together and nods.

  When he procures the key, he hands it to her discreetly by taking her hand in his and settling the key into her palm.

  “I will be there in a minute,” he says. “Not a good idea to go up in the elevator together.” How often has Morton traveled this elevator and sent a woman ahead?

  The room is simple and clean, and one can see the Sacré-Coeur from the window. Edith doesn’t know why it makes her feel so weary, so sad. He even knew which room to ask for. She sits on the edge of a bed, feeling out of her depth.

  When he knocks on the door, his face is kind, though. And he is smiling.

  “Will you hold me first for a while?” she asks, standing, coming to him.

  “Dearest,” he says, and pulls her close. He is a courtly lover. No one could ever accuse him otherwise. She drinks in the pressure of his compact body, the strength of his arms, the scent of lavender wrung from his clothes.

  “We’ll have to hurry. I can’t be away from the bureau too long . . . ,” he says.

  She wonders if she could be anyone to him. A rough acquaintance, a prostitute. His blackmailing landlady. His blue eyes flash greedily as he unwraps her clothing. But she can see that he is merely doing what is expected of him. He is hardly with her at all. His eyes are distant. His passion is merely a bodily function. And even if he is good at it, his heart is wrapped in batting. Lying naked on the bed, she does all the things he’s taught her to do. (He once told her she was a brilliant student of depravity—she laughed at the time, at his mordant choice of words.) But now, she feels nothing but the steady pound of her breaking heart. They are two separate hearts. Always will be. When he enters her, tears spill from her eyes and do not stop until he has satisfied himself.

  “You didn’t enjoy that, did you?” he says after a while, lighting a cigarette.

  Edith says nothing, lies on the miserable, stiff bolster and traces a crack on the ceiling with her eyes.

  She hears him sigh. “I don’t know what to do for you. What would you have me do? Marry you? If that’s what you want from me . . .”

  “That’s hardly what I want.”

  “Then what? You called. You wanted this.”

  “I want nothing from you but . . . for us to be of one mind.”

  “Oh,” he says, his voice vibrating with irony. “Is that all?”

  “We were once. We often have been. We are so much alike in thought. . . .”

  “We are nothing alike,” he says. His voice isn’t cruel; in fact, it’s almost sensible. “I am a creature of desire. And you . . .”

  “A creature of intellect?” she offers.

  “And yet you have the ability, the capacity to desire all that I do. You’ve been unafraid. You have an appetite for passion just as I do. It’s been a revelation. And yet you cut it off. You bury it. I don’t understand you.”

  “I’m tired,” she says.

  “Of me?” he asks, sounding almost hopeful. “Most people tire of me after a while.” He wants her to be tired of him. He wants to move on.

  “Of everything,” she says. “Maybe it’s best if we are just friends again.”

  “Ah.”

  “I have never known, since the very first day, what I am to you.”

  He blows a cloud of blue smoke and settles his wrist over his eyes. He looks as though he is about to answer her, but the bells of Sacré-Coeur ring out joyously, a full-hearted song of devotion, interrupting any attempt he might have made to speak. By the time they have completed their concert, if he was going to answer, he’s forgotten.

  He suggests she leave the hotel first, exiting via the café, and he lies still with his eyes closed as she dresses. She notes the purple hollows beneath the arc of his lashes. The pinch of exhaustion at the corners of his mouth
. How she cares for him. Even when she’s angry, or feels betrayed, it’s unthinkable that she can ever stop loving this man. Before she steps into the hallway, she says, “We should be friends now. Nothing more. I’m convinced it’s best that way.”

  He shrugs. Looks at her blandly.

  Walking through the café, passing tables of relaxed friends, openly romantic lovers, she is flooded with a bitterness, realizing that she will never have the single thing she wants most in the world.

  When Teddy returns with Nannie in tow, he is a frightening specimen. He stares glassily and doesn’t ask questions. While in the States, he saw Dr. Kinnicut again, who wrote Edith a note of extreme caution. “Of course you will be careful about being alone with Ted with nobody within call. You cannot tell what mental tensions have been accumulating since you’ve seen him, nor how explosive they may be.” She has thought many negative things about Teddy over the years, but never did she imagine he might actually be a danger to her. Still, shouldn’t she have seen it when he raised that butter knife to Eliot at St. Cloud? Shouldn’t she have expected this? My punishment, she thinks ten times a day. I have brought this on.

  So, introducing him to the new apartment, she uses a kind and even tone as one might use to soothe an easily spooked and dangerous animal. It is the voice Tonni used with him when he was ill. She points out the things she thinks he’ll like: how his room is near the library; how the light pours into the drawing room from the garden. Teddy’s always loved houses, but she wonders what he can see or take in. At their first dinner together, he exhibits an empty stare like a man who has been given a sedative. He speaks only when spoken to. And then just a syllable or two, as though he is too weary to generate more. The primary sound at dinner is the clatter of silverware. He doesn’t even answer the maid as she serves meat to his plate, asking him how much, and piles up the potatoes assuming he’ll stop her when she’s given him enough. And so his plate is groaning with food, which he barely touches. Afterward, Edith walks him out in the garden, which sparkles with pansies and late tulips all honeyed by the early evening light. Despite his love of gardens, he doesn’t say a word.