The Age of Desire

by Jennie Fields

  And then, as she says good night to him at the door of his room, he starts to shake and his eyes light with malice.

  “You make me a prisoner in this horrid place when I can only be happy fishing. Or with my animals. Why must I be here in Paris with you? I hate the very sight of you!” She shudders, sick that the neighbors might hear him. He’s never spoken against her this way, even when he was at his worst. And to think he begged Dr. Kinnicut to let him make the journey to Paris because he missed her. Before, when he was soaked in melancholy, there was always Anna to soothe him. Now, Anna mostly keeps her distance. Nannie is no good at all, running from the room the moment Teddy raises his voice.

  It’s fallen to Edith now, and she doesn’t like it at all. She doesn’t know how to speak to Teddy. Maybe she never did. While she ponders what to say next, Teddy suddenly snatches his bedside lamp, a Limoges vase that Edith had converted to give him light to read by, and, yanking its cord from the wall, flings it at her. The beautiful vase with its hunting gentlemen and slender ladies slams against the door frame, exploding into a thousand pieces, celestial stars of china spewing from a single center. She feels the spray against her skirt, the shock against her ankle, and, lifting her hem, sees three small roses of blood blooming there. Panicked, she gathers herself and escapes down the hall.

  “No, Puss. Don’t go. I love you desperately. Desperately,” he calls after her. “If only you loved me. Instead of that bounder.”

  She calls for White to go soothe him, warning him that Teddy has turned violent. One of the braver maids accompanies White to sweep up the mess. And Edith telephones the Paris doctor who diagnosed his ailment as gout in the head the previous year.

  “He’s gone mad, I think,” Edith says. She gingerly touches her bandaged ankle. “He wants to hurt me.”

  The doctor arrives in less than an hour, his black leather bag banging against his leg. His hangdog face observing her with irritation, accusation.

  “I did nothing to upset him,” Edith feels the need to declare. She holds up her hands like the victim of a bank heist.

  “Of course not, Madame,” the doctor says, his lips pressing together with doubt. He enters Teddy’s room with a nervous smile, and speaks to him in childlike English, asking questions that just seem to confuse him. How is he feeling? Is he very, very angry?

  “I’m not angry. I’m not angry,” he says.

  “I hear you threw a lamp at your wife,” the doctor offers.

  “I didn’t do that,” Teddy says. “It’s just not true.”

  “Ah, but you did! I see a piece right here.” The doctor bends down and lifts a small shard from the floor that the maid must have missed and holds it out to him.

  “I see there’s no lamp by your bedside. Perhaps this is part of it?”

  “It ain’t true. I didn’t do any such thing. They just want to make it look like I did. She makes me the villain, but it’s not so. It’s a setup.” Edith shrinks back into the hallway, shaken.

  Later, the doctor tells Edith he has theories, but no certainty. A brain malady, he declares. Perhaps a rest cure in Switzerland would help? Other than that, he is at a loss. The patient feels persecuted, misunderstood. The doctor wants to verify: did he really throw a lamp? Edith shows him her wounds, annoyed.

  When Teddy is finally asleep—Oh, thank God, he is asleep!—she writes Morton, telling him of the impossibility of her life. She hates herself for turning to Morton. But even as unpredictable as he is, she feels he understands her. If he would just pen one line about feeling sorry for her. Or wish her relieved of such a painful burden! Or worry for her safety.

  It should not surprise Edith that no response comes. Teddy grows rapidly worse, weeping, screaming, calling her names, sweeping things off tables. Thank heavens they are no longer at George Vanderbilt’s. At least here, when Teddy breaks things, the items are hers and she can replace them.

  Days pass. Weeks pass. Edith is tired and literally sick. Food won’t go down. Sleep won’t come. Just a word from Morton would be a salve. She writes again. And still receives no answer. When it comes to friendship, she tells herself, Morton is an eel, slipping away into the shallows at the first sign of a stir.

  One night, with still no word from him, she paces her room. She locks her door at night now, leaving the key in the lock so Teddy can’t jimmy his way in. As she walks from one side of the room to the other—such a beautiful room—she sees her life as the most ironic of stories. At last she has her foothold in Paris. After all these years, a dream realized. She has finally known what other women know. She has tasted passion. She has loved, truly loved! She should be ecstatic. Her days should be bursting with promise. Instead, her hopes lie near death, the weight of each breath almost too heavy to lift.

  Morton. Once her solace, again her anguish. And everything she’s feeling focuses on him. Her hopelessness, her frustration. Who is more dangerous to her: Morton or Teddy? Teddy is no longer in his right mind. She expects nothing of him. But Morton should be there to soothe her, to hold her, to care and worry. Even as a mere friend! Barefoot, shivering, for rain is singing coldly against every pane, she nervously unlocks the door and, listening for movement from Teddy’s room, pads down the dark hall to the library, lights the lamp and finds a pen, a handful of paper, and begins to write. She inscribes the first line slowly.

  I am sad and bewildered beyond words.

  She runs her index finger across the sentiment, knowing this is where Morton has brought her. To a desert of wordlessness. A woman who has spent the best part of her life, against all odds, shaping a respectable living from words! She could stop now, crumple the paper and throw it away. Wait for him. Wait on and on for this mercurial man to come to her again. But she can’t. She writes for two hours. Considering every line. It must be said. It must be shared. She is worth more than this pain. More than this disappointment.

  I am sad and bewildered beyond words. And with all my other cares and bewilderments, I can’t go on like this!

  I seem not to exist for you. I don’t understand if I could lean on some feeling in you—a good and loyal friendship, if there’s nothing else!—then I could go on, bear things, write, and arrange my life.

  I understand something of life, I judged you long ago, and accepted you as you are, admiring all your gifts and your great charm, and seeking only to give you the kind of affection that should help you most, and lay the least claim on you in return.

  I have had a difficult year—but the pain within my pain, the last turn of the screw, has been the impossibility of knowing what you wanted of me, and what you felt for me—at a time when it seemed natural that, if you had any sincere feeling for me, you should see my need of an equable friendship—I don’t say love because that is not made to order! But the kind of tried tenderness that old friends seek in each other in difficult moments of life.

  My life was better before I knew you. That is, for me, the sad conclusion of this sad year. And it is a bitter thing to say to the one being one has ever loved d’amour!

  She finds an envelope, seals and addresses the letter and sets it out on the table in the hall where White collects the mail each morning to hand to the postman. And then she goes to bed. Her sleep is instantaneous and dreamless.

  In the night, as Anna is sleeping, there is a timid knock on her door. At first she wonders if she’s dreamed it. She pulls on her wrapper and, moving close to the door, whispers, “Yes?”

  “Miss Anna, let me in.” Anna shivers at the sound of Teddy Wharton’s voice.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Wharton? Can’t we speak in the morning?” Most nights, there is a nurse watching over him. Or White. Or someone. He’s too unpredictable. Dangerous. Strange. And she has avoided him. He is no longer her charge. He is not the man she thought he was.

  But tonight, his voice is sweet. A whisper.

  “Dear Anna, plea
se . . . I must speak to you.”

  What would it hurt to speak to him? she thinks. She cracks the door just enough to see him standing in his nightshirt, barefoot. The moonlight from a window paints his shadow long, allowing it to fill the entire hallway. Why hadn’t he put on a robe, slippers? It’s not like him.

  “Are you ill, Mr. Wharton?” she asks. “Shall I call the doctor?”

  “Why can’t you forgive me?” he asks, his voice as innocent as a child’s. “Why?”

  Anna can smell the liquor on his breath. The servants have been told not to bring him liquor, to lock the cabinet and hide the key beneath Edith’s blue hat in the front hall closet. The liquor only exacerbates his condition, roils the gout in his head, makes him impossible. But somehow, he has cadged a bottle. Brandy. She knows the scent.

  “I think you’ve been drinking,” she says. “You really should go back to bed.”

  But he doesn’t budge. He leans close to her door, his words low and intimate. “You loved me once, Anna. You have no idea what it meant to me. When Puss gave up on me, you still stood by.”

  His voice is so inviting, it rocks her. She takes a deep breath, stalls. What can she say to him? Once she knew exactly how to soothe him, how to settle him. She wracks her mind for her next move. Yes, she did love him. But she doesn’t now. Can’t say it. Won’t say it.

  “We all . . .” She tries to be brave, steps into the hall. Taking his elbow, she hopes to direct him back to his room, just next to hers. “We all . . . just want to see you get better. Come, let me walk you back to bed.”

  “Will you lie with me there?” he asks. His voice is not sweet or childlike, but sly.

  She looks at him sharply. “Certainly not.”

  “But you want to, don’t you? You want to feel me against you. You’ve always wanted me.”

  Keep breathing, she tells herself.

  “You’re mistaken, Mr. Wharton.”

  “A man knows these things. I’ve always known. . . .”

  “Go to bed!” she says. She uses the voice she reserves for recalcitrant children, but he doesn’t seem to hear it.

  “Say you love me.”

  “No, Mr. Wharton. Go to bed.”

  “Anna. Say it.”

  “No. I won’t say it. And you need to go to bed!”

  Suddenly, his voice is harsh, terrifying.

  “Say you love me,” he barks.

  “I . . . I . . . don’t love you. I care that you get well. . . . we all . . .”

  But in the middle of her sentence, with no warning at all, he turns and grabs her wrists and pins her to the wall. She is so small. He is so much larger in every way. Pressing himself against her, she can feel his round belly, his massive chest.

  “I want you,” he says.

  “No. Please,” she begs. “You’re hurting me. Let me go.” She squirms. She kicks. Still, he holds her fast.

  “Why should I? Isn’t this what you want?”

  She has never known the animal in herself. But her animal instincts emerge now. She twists wildly until her hand is free, and, reaching out, she claws at his face in one awful murderous swipe. He jumps back, touching the wound in horror. She sees the gash of red she’s inflicted, and runs. Slipping into her room, she slams the door before he can stop her. Where is the key? Where is the key? She must lock it. Where is her key??? But he isn’t trying to open her door. She hears him in the hall. Weeping.

  “Y . . . You loved me once,” he is saying. “You bitch. You loved me once.”

  She finds the key, but doesn’t sleep all night. In the morning, she feels a quaking in the pit of her stomach that doesn’t stop even after breakfast. When she hears from Catherine that Mr. Wharton got into a bottle of brandy last night and hurt himself—scratched his own face, imagine that!—she doesn’t refute the story. How could she tell anyone what he said? What he did . . .

  For the next two days, Anna washes and washes her hand. Tries to obliterate the feeling of his flesh beneath her fingernails. But the misery won’t retreat.

  Ever after, she won’t walk into a room if Teddy is there alone. She wedges her dressing chair beneath the doorknob at night. She believed in Teddy, but now she can’t help but see him as utterly and irreparably mad. And in her darkest moments, it is painful knowing that Edith, whom she loves more than herself, is the one that drove him there.

  Weeks pass and still no answer from Morton. Edith is too numb to be hurt. Teddy is causing scenes almost every night. Morton is absent. Some mornings she can hardly bear to wake. At night, she falls into bed exhausted and hopeless.

  Lately, she has taken to asking Anna to sit with Teddy and her in the parlor after dinner. At least they can speak to each other, for often Teddy is mute. Better he should be mute than raving!

  One night, when Teddy finally goes off to bed, Edith looks up to see her old friend quietly, studiously knitting.

  “At least there were no scenes tonight,” she says.

  “Yes. It’s a relief.”

  “Dine with us tomorrow, Tonni,” she begs. “Every night from now on, please. I swear I’ll go mad if I have to have another silent meal with my husband.” How sarcastically she says the words. Her husband. How is it that this man could be considered anything to her? This man who hates her. Who threatens her.

  “You must send him away,” Anna says. Her voice is so small, Edith must lean forward. She’s stunned by what she hears.

  “You’ve given up on him entirely?”

  Anna nods.

  Edith raises her eyebrows, looks into her face.

  “But he’s not well, Tonni. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  “He knows. I knew he was ill. But now I think he’s evil. He threatens you. Me as well.”

  Edith observes Anna, head down, her heart-shaped mouth set with bitterness, and sees something she does not expect: utter heartbreak.

  “Has he threatened you?” Edith asks softly. “But you alone always believed in him.”

  Anna’s lips quiver, though it is clear she is trying without success to look neutral. Her needles clack. Her eyes swim with unrestrained tears.

  “Has he hurt you?” Edith asks, alarmed.

  Anna doesn’t speak. But her silence says everything.

  “If he is dangerous even to you,” Edith says, “my God, maybe there is no hope.” How is it that Anna hasn’t spoken a word of this? What has Teddy done to her? And yet, there she sits by Edith’s side. Stalwart. Loyal. How ironic that a friendship so unwavering is the one most easily taken for granted.

  Edith leans over and grabs Anna’s tiny hand. “I’m so sorry,” she says.

  Anna drops her knitting but can’t seem to meet Edith’s eyes. Outside or through the walls, one can hear someone playing Chopin études. Beautifully, without a mistake. The piano arpeggios swoop and swing, exuding joyous simplicity. “Tonni . . .” Edith notes that her own voice is trembling. “I want you to know . . . that I blame myself for what’s happened to Teddy. You think I’ve been blind, that I didn’t care . . . but . . . I know that my . . . my friendship with Morton . . .” She shakes her head, can’t go on.

  Anna looks up, tears pouring now down her face. “I don’t suppose you felt you had a choice, Herz. Or you wouldn’t have done it.”

  Edith nods. How bitter she feels. In fiction, consequences are the results of missteps. Shattering, wrong choices. What was it that Morton said so long ago about Lily Bart? About the seductive glow of wrong options.

  But in real life, despite what she wrote to Morton, she cannot truly believe that loving him was the wrong option. If she had turned him away the first time he kissed her, the first time he touched her, she would have gone on living an airless, antiseptic life, knowing nothing of desire, nothing of love, nothing of pleasure. She would have died never having lived.
Wouldn’t that too have been a tragedy? Perhaps there were no right options. Perhaps there never are.

  For a long time the women are silent, both of them crying for something lost. With the étude complete, the clock ticks, the steam heat clanks, laughter rises from the Rue de Varenne.

  “We’ll keep each other company, Tonni. What do you think? Two old ladies with handwork and poetry, watching out for one another?”

  Anna looks up, her eyes both sad and grateful.

  “Yes,” she says. “Just you and me. We’ll keep each other company.”

  Epilogue

  SUMMER 1916

  Edith leans to one side in her chair by the window, more weary than she knew possible. By leaning, she can just see the little back garden—once her favorite aspect from this apartment—now choked with weeds. Ever since the war, she has refocused her life. No time for gardens, nor servants available to keep hers in order. Healthy men are at the front. And everyone else is entangled in the war effort.

  “Do you write as a woman, about women, for women?” Anna de Noailles once asked her. Back then she felt defensive. She did not see herself like other women. She did not see herself as a champion of women. But Edith’s greatest war effort has been for members of her own sex.

  With saved money, Edith has founded workrooms so that French women whose husbands have left to fight, or died in battle, can sew and make an income for their hungry children. The goods are then sold to wealthy Americans shielded from the war, thereby raising more money to help more women.

  She’s opened hostels where refugees, mostly women and children and the elderly, can seek out food and shelter, shoes for their bare feet and comfort from people who care. She has taken in orphans from the bloody fields of Flanders and the pale, exhausted nuns who walked them for days on their journey to safety. Edith’s money is being used for something irrefutably good. And it has mended her heart at last.