Gilded Age

by Claire McMillan

  “I’m working on a paper,” he said. “Sorry about the mess.” He looked at her for a long while. “Can I get you something?” he asked. “You look a little tired.”

  “You know, I never get sick of hearing that,” she teased.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  But she cut him off. “A glass of water would be great.”

  “Sit down or something,” he said. “Seriously, I’ll feel better.”

  While he was in the kitchen she looked at the piles of papers—letters from academic institutions, grading sheets, galleys of an article.

  She glanced at his computer and couldn’t help but see an open e-mail. After reading a few words, Ellie realized it was quite erotic. Glancing at the top, she saw it was from Diana and that she’d recently sent it. Diana wanted him back with all the longing and lust of the texts Ellie now carried in her pocket. The woman was dogged, that was for sure.

  Selden cleared his throat behind her, and she jumped.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  He walked quickly over to the desk, saw what she was looking at, and snapped his laptop shut.

  “You and Diana …”

  He smiled, closed his eyes, and shook his head.

  “But she’s writing you.”

  “She was, she still is, yes.” He said it with a quiet resignation, leaning against the cold fireplace mantel.

  “With no encouragement from you?” Ellie asked.

  Selden shook his head silently. She realized then that he was holding himself awfully stiffly. And when she looked up in his face she realized why—she’d embarrassed him. By snooping through his e-mails, by bringing up the relentless Diana Dorset, possibly by even coming here today.

  A tear slipped out then, partly because she was relieved he wasn’t in love with Diana, partly because she realized he felt guilty around her, and partly because he hadn’t called and here he was. Ellie brushed the tear away with the back of her hand.

  “You’re very tired,” he said, alarm at the edge of his voice. “Won’t you let me make you comfortable?” He took her hand and led her away from the desk to a chair.

  Two more tears slipped down her cheek, though she didn’t sob.

  He was scrambling now that he’d seen her cry. “Won’t you rest a minute?” he asked. “This chair is the best spot in the house, yeah?”

  She nodded, regaining control of herself, trying to discreetly wipe her eyes.

  “We need a fire,” he said. “Probably the last one before summer.”

  He stooped down in front of the fireplace, making adjustments to the wood laid there. It gave him something to do, she knew. He was nervous. She shouldn’t have cried.

  “You left so quickly,” she said to his back as he lit a match to the kindling. Did she see his shoulders stiffen?

  “The offer required it.” He stood up to face her.

  “Did you like Paris?” she asked.

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “When good Americans die …”

  “They go to Paris,” Selden said with a smile.

  “Oscar Wilde,” she said. “The wittiest.”

  Selden nodded at her.

  “You didn’t say good-bye,” she said quietly.

  Selden said nothing, looking at the floor. “I thought that best.”

  The smallest hum of anger rose in Ellie. “I didn’t,” she said.

  Selden shook his head. “Ells—”

  “You hurt me, you know. You reduced me to e-mails.”

  Selden said nothing.

  Her anger rose a little farther; she felt shaky from controlling her tears. “Apparently that’s what you do, I guess.” She gestured toward the laptop.

  “I was out of the country. It’s different.”

  “I would have come to see you.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I thought I explained why.” They were silent for a few beats. “You threw me to the wolves.”

  She saw something flash across his face then, anger, frustration, pain? “I didn’t throw you to the wolves. For God’s sake, you practically killed me. And that’s why I didn’t want you to come. You were just trying to save your reputation. If you had visited me, it would only have been to show that you weren’t having an aff—”

  “You think I’m that calculating,” she interrupted, her voice low. “I wanted to see you.” Her voice rose. “But now that you mention it, your leaving reinforced everything.”

  “I believe you’re saying it reinforced everything you’d already done,” he said in a whiplash tone.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

  “You know what I’m talking about.” His voice was low.

  “You’re talking about a bunch of gossip?” she asked, disbelieving.

  Selden pursed his lips and then said, “Randy Leforte told me himself that he fucked you on the desk in his office.”

  Ellie stood up.

  But Selden grabbed her arm, angry now. “He told me that night at the museum, the night you showed everyone your tit. It killed me. He knew it would too. And he told me you’d been screwing around with Gus Trenor. That he was about to move you into the apartment he keeps for his … for his …”

  “For his what?”

  “I saw you,” he breathed. “I saw you come out of there. Tell me it’s not true,” he said with his eyes closed.

  She sat back down in the chair.

  “Just tell me and I will tell them all to go to hell. The squash player, Leforte, Trenor. Just tell me it’s all lies.” He opened his eyes and kneeled down next to her chair.

  “I wasn’t dating you when I slept with Randy.”

  Selden let out a low groan.

  “And I am not even going to dignify you thinking I’d … with Gus …”

  Selden stood up and walked to a chair, flopping himself down, shaking his head. “Ellie, I can’t.”

  “What are you saying?” She was on her feet in front of him. “You’re a virgin? You only date virgins. I’m a completely grown woman. I’m not a girl.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “So I slept with someone and I regret it.” She kneeled down in front of him, trying to calm herself. “Haven’t you ever made a mistake?” She sounded pleading, even to her own ears, and it made her wince a bit.

  Selden ran a hand through his hair. “Not like that,” he said with a snort.

  “Like what?” she asked sharply, on her feet again.

  He looked at her, holding her eye. “It disgusts me.”

  “You’re a snob,” she said, awareness dawning, turning away from him. “I had no idea. I thought you were so free, so disdaining of …”

  Selden said nothing and shrugged. “He taunted me with it. He told half the town.”

  Ellie shook her head, tears again stinging her eyes. “I cannot believe you care about my past. I can’t believe you give a shit what Cleveland thinks of you.”

  “Don’t you?” he asked.

  “You taught me not to.” She rose then, ready to leave. She took the folded papers from her pocket. “Here,” she said, dropping the texts in his lap. “I’d hate for Cleveland to find out about these.”

  He let them fall on the floor, not touching them.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “You’re a coward,” she said, heading for the door, wanting to be out of his house before she started crying in earnest.

  • 27 •

  The Botanical Gardens

  In keeping with his contrition, one Friday night in June Jim took me down to University Circle. Friday nights the museums and the gardens stayed open late, and there were bands in the grass of Wade Oval. It stayed light until nearly nine thirty, and I think he hoped that being around a lot of people would make us feel festive.

  I’d engaged the babysitter and put on my new black dress, and I was expecting a fun evening. But everything he did got on my nerves: trolling for a parking place so he wouldn’t have to pay, not taking my hand when we got out of the car
, complaining about the loud music, wondering about the cost of the extra police the city engaged for the evening. I was silently fuming when Jim asked me where I wanted to go first. Even this added to my ire as I imagined he hadn’t sufficiently planned the evening.

  We went to the botanical gardens first. I admired the herb gardens, staffed as they were by an army of volunteers who kept the beds more tidy than a Brazilian bikini wax. I was admiring the plants, trying to ignore Jim, hoping that my bad mood would pass, that my sourness would lift. And not knowing how to lift it myself, other than just waiting, I replaced Jim in my mind with Cinco. I was convinced Cinco would never have kissed Ellie. And then, as if I’d summoned them, I saw them.

  Cinco and Corrine were standing away from everyone in a corner of the formal rose garden next to a huge incongruous ornamental asparagus that grew like a topiary behind a boxwood hedge. She looked down at the gravel path, arms crossed in front of her. His hand was tangled up under the hair at the nape of her neck, and she nodded frequently at something he was saying. Her eyes still gazed down as he kept murmuring, and then he tipped her face up to his and kissed her.

  He looked protective. And I couldn’t help but sigh a little at their intimacy. I knew then that whatever struggles they might have, and I knew there’d been some, they’d never be apart. I know it will sound strange to you, but in that moment I understood Ellie just a little. Not that I wanted to take Corrine’s place. I didn’t want Cinco. But I wanted what he had, what they had. What I wanted was some of his calm, his ability to make something out of where things stood. He did it, or was doing it. I wondered if I could do it too.

  I saw them part and walk arm in arm out of the garden. Jim was leaning over, trying to read a sign next to a hellebore. When he saw me watching, he stood up and smiled.

  “You want to get a drink?” he asked, taking my hand and steering me toward the exit. He’d not seen the Van Alstynes.

  I shrugged. “Whatever you want.”

  “Or are you hungry? Do you want dinner?”

  “No, I’m not hungry.” I knew I shouldn’t punish him, but I was having the worst time with it.

  “Do you just want to go home?”

  I shrugged again. “Whatever you want.”

  This was too much passivity for him, and he dropped my hand. “That’s probably best then,” he said, faultlessly polite, but pissed nonetheless as we got in the car.

  He made a few more attempts at conversation on the way home, all met with one-word answers from me. It was an unexplainable thing, my provoking him. Perhaps I wanted to see how far I could push him after he’d pushed me as far as he had.

  He paid the sitter, who was surprised we were back home so soon, while I fixed myself a bourbon and water. Jim showed her to the door and eyed me when he came back in the room.

  “Since when do you drink bourbon?”

  “Since now.”

  “Is that okay?”

  “Henry’s out. He won’t be up ’til morning.”

  He looked at me, the nursing mother with the red lipstick smudged on her glass.

  “It’s fine,” I said, drinking about half my drink and reaching again for Jim’s bottle.

  “Allow me,” he said, sloshing a huge pour into my glass, his lips a tight line. “Are you going to talk to me?”

  “Course,” I said, lifting the glass slowly so it didn’t spill. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Why you’re so pissy.”

  “I’m not.”

  We were silent.

  “So talk,” I said, turning my back on him and walking slowly into our little library.

  He stood on the threshold and shrugged. “This is about the squash tournament.” He wasn’t going to say the word “kiss,” and neither was I.

  “It’s not.”

  He leaned against the doorjamb. “What then?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re married now,” he said.

  “No shit.”

  He winced. Southern gentleman that he was, he never liked it when I swore. “That means you have to talk to me,” he said.

  “That’s what being married means?”

  “Yes,” he said patiently.

  I sighed and put my glass down, sick of the liquor burn in my throat. “What do you want me to say? I’m still upset. I don’t know what to do about that any more than you do.”

  “You’re this upset about something pretty …”

  “Pretty what?”

  “Innocuous.”

  This angered me. “It might seem trivial to you. It’s not to me.”

  “It’s not trivial to me,” he said.

  “You’re acting like it is.”

  And it was then, I guess, that he’d had enough.

  “It could have gone farther, do you understand that?” He took a step toward me, his voice rising. “I’ll take my beating because I kissed her, and it was wrong. If you’d done something like that I’d be out of my mind. I’d have beaten the shit out of the guy.”

  Some small part of me, a part I’d never admit to, thrilled to hear him say that, and another part scowled at his hypocrisy.

  “But you do understand,” he continued, “that it could have been worse? You can’t be this naïve, this innocent. I was in a tailspin, and I pulled back. Do you know why? Because of you. Because I love you. Because in a drunken minute I leaned too far forward and kissed her. And then in that second, it only confirmed that I want you, only you.”

  I rolled my eyes, but I wanted to believe him.

  He held my glance. “Why is that so hard to believe? I didn’t want to hurt you, and I didn’t want to sever us because I know that’s what would have happened if I let it go farther.” He saw the disbelief on my face. “I have some personal integrity. I’m not going to be sneaking in and out of someone else’s bed on you.” I smirked, but he kept looking at me. “You know that. At least admit you know that.”

  “I guess I believe that.”

  “Of course you do. And it could have gone farther with her, you understand? All I had to do was lead her upstairs. But I left and came home. She wound up taking that guy up to bed, seriously, almost young enough to be her son.”

  “Please,” I protested.

  “He was twenty-two.”

  “If she was a teenage mother—”

  “She’s getting to that point in her life where she’s starting to look like Mrs. Robinson. That’s what I’m saying.” He took a step closer.

  “Why did you do it?” I asked quietly. “Had you always wanted to do that?”

  “Look,” he said. “It was a shitty, shitty thing.” He shook his head. “And I’m sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am. But you have to forgive me.”

  He’d not answered me. “Have you always been attracted to her?”

  He crossed his arms and leaned over me. “Of course not.”

  This answer, I thought, was total bullshit. Then again, Jim wasn’t stupid.

  “Then why?” I asked.

  “I haven’t been pining for her, if that’s what you’re asking. If you think I’m a dog who slipped his leash, then why do you want me—”

  “Then why?”

  I waited, tensed as if for a blow. Waited for him to say he’d always loved her, or he’d never loved me, that I’d ignored him in favor of the baby, or that he wasn’t attracted to me anymore.

  But he didn’t say any of these things. He leaned over me. “You just have to forgive me. I can’t stand it if you won’t. It’s killing me.”

  Killing him, I thought. But looking in his face, I thought for an instant that he might cry.

  I realized then that he’d never answer me. That I could ask, but he was never going to let me into that moment. Perhaps he was trying to protect me. And I wondered how awful the truth really was, and if I really wanted to know what led up to the kiss. Attraction, excitement at the forbidden, desire for freedom, raw lust? Hadn’t I felt some of those things too since I’d been married? I’d not acted on them
. Under the right set of circumstances, would I?

  Why is it both the easiest thing and the hardest thing to forgive those closest to you? Easiest because you love them, hardest because it cuts deeper, I suppose.

  I realized then there are things that you can choose, if you’re strong enough, to not get upset about. Things you know you should be mad about, things you are justified in holding on to that you just don’t want to expend energy being mad about. In the end it was just a kiss. I would never forget. It would always be there between us, that betrayal. But maybe I could let it go, just for right now.

  Because in that moment I wanted my husband to kiss me the way he had before he kissed Ellie, before we had a baby, before we moved back to my hometown. The way he used to kiss me in New York when I’d walk up the block and find him waiting for me, leaning outside the door to my building on a Friday after work—his tie loosened, a wolfish smile on his face, and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot by the neck in his hand. He’d pull me toward him, his mouth at my ear; “So fucking beautiful,” he’d whisper. I had a flash of Cinco and Corrine in the garden. That was what I wanted back.

  It was, I suppose, how I was going to get past this thing—memory, attraction, shared history, the belief that the man I fell in love with was still in there.

  So I stood up and kissed him. He was tentative, surprised I think, and then enthusiastic, with one arm around my waist pressing me to him. The thought crept in—had he kissed Ellie like this? And in keeping with my new control I pushed the thought from my mind.

  So this is the work part of marriage, I thought when he released me. Until then, marriage had been easy for us. The first year that everyone says is such a huge adjustment left me feeling smug. But now I understood that the work would come. Illusions get shattered. Naïve romantic visions become too fragile to hold up under day-to-day ordinariness. I thought of Cinco then and that if I really wanted what he had, then maybe I should try to make a little of it myself.

  Jim took my glass, drained the last of my drink in one gulp, put it down, grabbed my hand, and leaned his head toward the stairs. “Come with me,” he said, pulling me gently, though he didn’t need to.