by Belva Plain
Curiously, Elena asked, “Does it—does he not haunt you anymore? I mean, you’ve never said so much to me about him in all these years.”
“You have to come to terms with reality.”
“I see. It’s good that you have. It means that you’re gradually forgetting. Or am I wrong, being terribly tactless, as I can sometimes be?”
“I don’t think much about what happened anymore, not consciously, anyway.”
Ah, but it was continuously with her! It was the albatross around her neck, hidden under her clothes and her smiles.
“Well, I’m glad. I do sense a new kind of lightness in you that I never saw before. And I repeat, you look lovely. I can’t get over your hair. I never thought you’d color it.”
“That was Claudia’s idea. She thought I should lighten it.”
“Well, it was a good idea. But I’m surprised. I wouldn’t have expected her to care about such things.”
“You don’t know her at all, Mama.”
“I know that she’s been good to you, and I accept that.”
Please let us not end with any strain or bitterness, however masked, thought Charlotte.
Apparently Elena was having the same thought, for she brightened her expression and, brightening her voice as well, said briskly, “I’d like an enormous late-afternoon tea right now, so I won’t have to tackle dinner on the plane. Let’s go down to eat. Then I’ll catch the plane, you take your train, and we’ll say good-bye till next time.”
The parting was to be, as it always was, a moving ceremony, symbol of this strange relationship woven out of dream and memory, hopeless opposites, and its own steady love.
In a way, Charlotte would have liked to tell Elena about Peter. Perhaps she had been too wary of possible comments, for Elena had once made a remark that had seemed cutting—although again, maybe it had not been cutting at all, but merely Elena’s singular brand of humor.
“I can see you married to a professor with leather patches on his elbows. You’d be snowed in somewhere in a town like Kingsley, except that there’d be a college on the outskirts. And you’d have parties on winter nights, with everyone sitting around earnestly discussing the world’s problems from a to z.”
On the other hand there was as yet not very much to tell about Peter. He was not a professor, but a young associate, one of the best she had ever had as a graduate student. In her first year she had taken his course on the History and Evolution of Architecture; she had been fascinated by Viollet-le-Duc, who had restored Notre Dame, by Le Corbusier’s pioneer “modern” cities, but most of all by Peter Frank himself.
He was red haired and expectedly, though only slightly, freckled. He was very tall, with a fresh, outdoor look, as if he had just come in from very cold weather. He had wit, used vivid adjectives, and moved his hands expressively, so that as he spoke, art and stone took shape in the air before him.
And he had not ever noticed Charlotte Dawes, who sat in the second row and worshiped him all through Architecture and Construction in the Modern World.
Then, six weeks ago, they had met in the cafeteria during that dead time between three and four in the afternoon when there is hardly anyone there. Charlotte had been holding a coffee cup in one hand, while in the other she turned the pages of a text. He came over and sat across from her.
“So you’re going to be an architect,” he said abruptly.
Finding the remark rather odd, she answered lightly, in a tone that revealed her surprise, “Why, yes, yes, I hope so.”
“I’ve been giving you A’s, and if there had been anything higher than A, I’d have given you that.”
As if she were standing outside observing herself, she knew she was hiding her feelings very well. “Oh, I have been designing houses in my head ever since I was in junior high school,” she said, laughing.
“Did you have that braid halfway down your back when you were in junior high school?”
“No, I had a ponytail.”
Then he laughed too. “I must tell you, whenever you turn your back as you leave the room, I have the worst temptation to pull your braid. It’s a Chinese man’s old-time queue, except that it’s blond.”
Quite astonished, she replied, “I had no idea you even knew I was in the room.”
“Oh, I knew very much that you were. But I make it a policy not to be involved with my female students. It’s a prudent policy. In fact, I’m surprised at myself right now.”
She said nothing. It seemed to her that she was hearing her own heartbeat.
“Where do you live?” he asked.
“I have an apartment with two friends, five blocks up the avenue.”
“I’m out that way too. If you’re going home now, we can walk together.”
That was the start of it. So far “it” had meant a few art exhibits, movies, long dinners, and long walks, all of these curtailed by heavy snows and Christmas vacation. They had had no privacy because of Charlotte’s roommates and the other tenants in Peter’s house. Nevertheless, there had been between them a quivering excitement with promise of more.
This was Charlotte’s first experience of hot emotion. Her social life all through college and up to the present had been just that: social. She went out in groups. Men and women both liked her, for she was likable, a good dancer and tennis player, interesting, a thoughtful friend, and, as she could scarcely help knowing, more than averagely attractive.…
The train went rattling toward Philadelphia through the night. Along the track, the little suburban towns and the little houses scattered in developments bare of trees were buttoned up against the cold. By turning her head in their direction she could avoid the intermittent glances of a man across the aisle. His interest was unmistakable. The new crimson coat, bought this week with Elena’s money and at her insistence, was attention-getting. And her long, thick braid, she thought, chuckling at the memory of Peter and the braid, was even more so.
Charlotte was accustomed to men’s glances, accustomed to their expectations and their propositions. Yet, she was still a virgin. (The thing that had happened to her did not count, and must not count.) Virginity in the last decade of this century was an astonishment to virtually everyone she knew. She explained to herself that she was fastidious, perhaps overly so. A friend had told her once that some of the men in their group, intending no malice because they were fond of Charlotte, had labeled her “the untouchable” and made joking bets as to who might be the first to touch her. Some said that she was obviously frigid. She did not think she was.
She thought sometimes about Claudia and Cliff. Despite all their trouble there was such an aura of sensuality, a thrilling tenderness, between them! Once when she was still in school, she had come upon them embracing in the kitchen and been astonished. She had never witnessed much affection, let alone desire.… That was how it should be, and with Peter, it would be. Even though they had not yet touched upon the physical, she knew that it would be.
Without a break, without a moment’s hesitation, they had come together. Their conversations were long and deep, so that by now, in these few weeks, they had reached the point at which two people are almost able to read each other’s thoughts.
She had told him everything about herself except the one thing that was never to be told to anybody. Now and then, as time passed and in certain moods, she asked herself why not. The answer always came with a shudder: What if you had a hideous wound in a hidden part of your body? Would you want to display it, even to someone you loved? No, a thousand times no. You would not.
He knew how she felt about each of her parents. He knew that it was Claudia who had urged her to go away for graduate study; Dad’s hope, which he tried to conceal, was that she would stay near home. He knew that she was a virgin, and he knew about her ambition.
“I want to build. I want to see something that began in my head and was roughed out on paper by my hand turn into steel and stone, or brick, or wood, that you can touch, walk through, and see in its outline against t
he sky. And one day—please don’t laugh—I’d like to build something in my hometown, sort of a monument, to take the place of the mill that used to be the heart of it. I don’t know what it would be or whether I’ll ever do it, but it’s kind of fun to think about. I can even see the bronze plaque with my name on it: Architect, Charlotte Dawes. I’m aiming high, Peter. I hope I don’t sound pompous to you.”
“You are far from pompous. The fact is,” Peter had said, becoming abruptly serious, “you are going to be a great success. I feel it in my bones, as both my grandmothers used to say about a thunderstorm coming on a sunny day. Don’t laugh, it always did. As for me,” he went on, “I’m a teacher, that’s all. I like to talk about the history of buildings and what they’ve meant within their cultures. I don’t think I’m capable of putting up a building and keeping it from falling down. I’ll never get rich. I’m not much interested in money, anyway. I shall be very pleased to remain just where I am now.”
There had never been any money in Peter’s family. He was one of eight children, and his mother was expecting a ninth. He had slept three in a bed on a farm in Oklahoma, and via a scholarship to the university there had worked the rest of the way to where he was now.
Opposites attract, Charlotte thought, and was very happy.
The train slowed down and entered the station. In a sudden rush to get home she ran down the platform and up the steps to find a taxi. There would be telephone messages; the one that left no name but only a promise to call again would be Peter’s. They had both agreed that it was just as well to keep their affair—could you call it that yet? she wondered—private.
* * *
“Next weekend,” Peter said, “the house will empty out. There are five of us faculty there. All of them except me belong to the same fraternity that’s having a convention out of town, so we can have the place to ourselves for two days.”
In class now Charlotte moved to the back row. There was such a sensual, such a tense, expectancy between them, all the more voluptuous for not yet having been defined in words, that it would have been impossible there in public to meet each other’s eyes. When alone, she thought, with a touch of amusement, that this state of her mind was surely what an old-fashioned virgin bride must have felt just before her wedding.
Amused or not, like such a bride, she made preparations. On leaving home after her last visit she had hesitated to take back with her some of Elena’s more frivolous presents, such as chiffon nightgowns, a silver-fitted dressing case, or a quilted satin bed jacket. Elena’s extravagant choices had never suited Charlotte’s way of life, and yet it was against the frugal streak in her nature to ignore them entirely.
“Take the bed jacket,” Claudia, who was helping her pack, had advised. “Some freezing night when you’re still studying for a test at two A.M., it’ll come in handy. And while you’re at it, take a couple of the nightgowns too.” She had laughed. “You never know.”
Now Charlotte was glad she had brought them. The white with the black lace would be the right one; it was innocent or it was seductive, depending upon how you looked at it. Her scuffed bedroom slippers would never do, so she went out and bought slippers with heels and marabou. She packed perfume and a new lipstick. At bedtime, when she undid her braid, she lingered before the mirror to appraise her face in its frame of long, loose hair. On Tuesday it seemed unbearable to have to wait until Friday.
And yet, on Wednesday, a troubling cloud, a nasty memory, a quiver of fear, passed over the glow. What if something were to go wrong? But what possibly could “go wrong”? And she fought the memory, despising it for its absurdity. What did that old horror have to do with this joy, this splendor? Nothing.
“We’re going to break the bank on Friday night,” Peter said. “We’re going to have the fanciest dinner in the city. Believe it or not, I’ll be wearing a jacket and tie.”
When they met at the entrance to the restaurant, they startled each other. She had never seen him wearing other than campus clothes, and he had never seen her in the urban dignity of fitted crimson coat and slender dark blue dress. For an instant they stared as if each had seen a solemn metamorphosis.
At dinner this mood lingered. Here their eyes could frankly meet, and hold without concealment. There was no need for them to speak aloud what they were feeling, and indeed, they, whose talk was always vivacious, spoke very little. Now and then their hands reached out for a quick clasp across the table.
In this same state of gravity they rode in a taxi to Peter’s house, one of a long, monotonous, dark-brown row. He fumbled with the key, fumbled to find the light in the hall, and broke abruptly into fumbling speech.
“I’m afraid you’ll find it pretty dreary. No feminine refinements here, just a masculine hodgepodge. I’m sure it was different in the 1890s when some rich merchant gave plush parties under the gas lamps.”
He was nervous. Perhaps, she thought, it is because it is my first time and he thinks I’m nervous. Or it’s because he has never had an inexperienced woman before me. And on impulse she flung her arms around him.
“I’m not at all scared,” she whispered, “in case you’re thinking that I might be. Not scared and not shy.”
He kissed her. Their lips and their cheeks were cold. Still wrapped in their coats, they stood in the center of the room, fastened together, swaying a little, unable to let go.
Presently, his fingers undid the buttons on her coat. They moved to the sofa and rested, lying back in a prolonged kiss. She felt his heartbeat. Naturally she had read everything about foreplay, tenderness without hurry, prolonging the sweetness. For an instant she thought how unnecessary all this talk was. As if you needed instruction books.… Maybe some people did.… But not I, not now.
“All these clothes,” he murmured.
“Yes. Where shall I—”
“If you want to go in the other room—”
They were speaking in broken sentences, as if they were barely able to speak at all.
It occurred to her as she stood in the bedroom, an ugly room of the sort called Spartan, with its narrow bed and chair and chest, that he might have wanted her to undress while he watched. You really are inexperienced, aren’t you, Charlotte? Well, not altogether.… But for God’s sake, that was something else. Stop recalling it. Stop.
In the semidarkness her shoulders gleamed out of the mirror over the chest. He would smell the rich scent of gardenias upon them. Her hands, trembling with excitement, almost ripped her clothes off and slid the white chiffon over her head. Let him first see her in its transparent folds; let him be the one to remove it himself.
In the kitchen, an alcove about as large as an oversized closet, he was standing, still only half undressed, doing something at the counter.
“I’ll be with you in a minute,” he called.
Waiting, she was conscious of an incredible joy. That they were really alone together, behind a locked door, undisturbed! And but for the tray that he was carrying, she would have run again into his arms.
On the table in front of the sofa, he set it down and looked at her.
She watched his eyes travel from her face to her breasts and along the fall of the sheer white cloth to her feet in their feathered slippers.
“How beautiful you are!” he cried.
She watched his eyes travel back upward again and smile and gleam.
“Sit here. I’ve made a rum punch, just right for a winter night. We won’t need to warm the sheets.”
On the tray there were a pitcher, two glasses, and a plate of English biscuits. He filled the glasses, touching his to hers, and gave a toast. “To all things beautiful. To you. To us.”
The liquid heat went quivering toward some hollow, some deeply hidden pit inside Charlotte that she had never even known she possessed. She heard a sigh, a long intake of breath—her own and his; she heard an inarticulate murmuring—her own and his; avid lips met hers, a determined hand moved beneath her skirt—Something incredible happened. Through Charlotte’s head,
and all around her, a fiery illumination flared. Sofa, table, glasses, plate, man, were all there in full color; the winter night was the summer afternoon, the biscuits were a slab of leftover chocolate cake, the unkempt brown room was flowery and green, the man was a lunging weight upon her; his lips smothered her and his hands tore at her.
She was in total, crazy panic. What was she doing here? She knew nothing about the man who was so tightly holding her, knew only that this could all end in terror and pain. The delicious throb and surge in her blood, all that tremendous pulsing of desire, were gone, simply flooded away.
Closely pressed as they were, Peter felt her powerful shiver and, mistaking it for passion, pressed closer.
Calm. Calm yourself, she said without making a sound, while her eyes filled with uncontrollable tears.
This is Peter. You wanted to be here. You wanted to do this. For God’s sake, you’ve been wanting it for the last two years.
“What is it?” he cried out as she pulled away.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I feel well.”
He stared. “Are you feeling pain somewhere? What is it?” he cried again.
She understood that he must be totally shocked and afraid of what he was seeing. “Maybe it’s the rum,” she whispered foolishly.
“Of course it isn’t. What hurts you? Show me. Do you need a doctor?”
“No, no. Please,” for he had started across the room as if to reach the telephone. “No, don’t!”
“But why the tears? What can I do for you?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.”
Bewildered, he came back and stood over her, still staring while a large tear slid down her cheek into her mouth.
“It can’t be ‘nothing.’ Why won’t you speak? Can I do anything for you? Do you want to lie down?”
“No, no, I’ll be all right. I’m sorry.” And she set the glass back on the tray.
“That’s strange. Are you sure you don’t want to lie down?”
“I don’t know. No. I’ll be all right. I’m sorry.”
Theater of the absurd, she thought. A woman in a fancy nightgown and a man in his underwear shorts, she wishing herself to be out of this place and not sure how to get out, while he stood helplessly and surely deflated. All passion spent, as in Sackville-West’s famous novel.
