Tiny Little Thing

by Beatriz Williams

  But I can’t quite shut it all off entirely.

  I lift up my chin. “Are you sorry for anything else?”

  There is a pause, a sort of expressionless instant that might mean anything, and then he shakes his head. “Everything seems to have turned out all right, after all.”

  “Oh, yes. Turned out perfectly.”

  “I was just thinking that, actually. At the exact second you knocked on the door. How well things turned out for you. How perfect you looked tonight. And Frank. The two of you headed for big things, exciting times, just as you always wanted.”

  “All’s well that ends well, as they say.” I hold out my hand. “No more hard feelings. You’re forgiven.”

  He gives my hand a single shake. His palm is dry and warm. “Forgiven. Good. Now, if you’ll excuse me?”

  I withdraw my hand behind my back. “Of course. Just . . .”

  He’s already turned back to the door, already placed his hand on the knob. “Just?”

  I haul in a deep breath and smash my hands together, in the small of my back. I say, in a rush: “The photographs. The ones you took. What did you do with them?”

  There is a small half-crescent window above the door, and the entry light spills through and falls on his brow, illuminating his forehead and nothing else. An eyebrow lifts, out of the shadow and into the glow. “The photographs? Why do you ask?”

  I shrug. “Just curious.”

  I watch his face carefully, but when did Caspian Harrison ever leave anything lying about unguarded? When could I ever have trusted the expression on the outside of him?

  He shifts his weight and turns his head to the beach. The sight of his profile hurts my ribs. His hand still rests on the knob. “I packed them up. Haven’t looked at them since.”

  “Really?”

  He looks back at me. “Really.”

  I want to probe further. Well, what did you do with the boxes? Are they sitting in a Hardcastle attic somewhere? Could anyone have found them? Broken in and stolen them? Sent one to me enclosed in a manila envelope, with a friendly note included free of charge?

  Or was that you, Caspian? The man I trusted once.

  Surely not. Surely Caspian would never do that.

  I press my damp palms against my dress and try one more time. “So you never looked at them? Never showed them to anyone?”

  “Jesus. Of course not.”

  “All right, all right.”

  The floorboards creak under his shifting feet. “Something going on, Tiny? Does Frank know something?”

  “No! No. I just . . . I was thinking. When I heard you were coming. Obviously it’s not something I’d care to have spread around.”

  “And you really think I’d do that? You think I’d goddamned tell about us? Breathe a single word?” He slams a fist against the doorjamb. Not too hard, but enough to rattle the frame a bit.

  I look downward, to the tips of his shoes. Slippers, actually. He’s changed from his shiny black dress shoes into worn gray slippers, scuffed in all the usual places.

  “No. I guess not.”

  “Okay, then. Anything else?”

  “No,” I say. “That’s all. Good night.”

  He hesitates, as if he’s about to say something more. My veins, my stupid blood lightens again, the way it did as I looked out the window this afternoon, the way it did just now on the beach, the way it did when Caspian held out his hand and introduced himself in the humid air of the coffee shop, eight million lifetimes ago.

  And then: “Good night, Tiny.”

  He slips back inside the house, as noiselessly as a six-foot mouse, and I am left alone on the porch, in the darkness, drenched in disappointment.

  • • •

  I return home through the terrace doors, patting my windy hair as I step over the threshold. The rooms are still, except for the distant crashes in the kitchen. Granny has probably gone upstairs to her cold cream and her Gothic paperbacks.

  As I pass the library entrance, however, I catch the rumble of a man’s voice, the faint smell of fresh cigarettes. I can’t hear the words. It’s a hushed sound, a compression of urgent words: the sound of someone who doesn’t want to be overheard. Frank’s voice. I push the door open.

  Frank stands next to the window, staring at the darkened beach, talking quietly into the telephone receiver. The box dangles from the opposite hand, hooked by his first two fingers, which also contain a nimble white cigarette.

  He glances at me, and I can’t decide how to read his expression. Startled? Guilty? Annoyed?

  “Sorry. I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later. Yes. Me, too.” He settles the receiver back in the cradle and returns the telephone to the round table next to the armchair. A faint brrring echoes back from the startled bell. Frank smiles. “Campaign staffer.”

  “They must be hard workers, taking phone calls at this hour.”

  “Campaigning’s a twenty-four-hour job, these days.” He takes a swift drag on his cigarette and stubs it out in the ashtray next to the telephone. “Drink?”

  “No, thank you.”

  He heads for the drinks tray anyway and pours himself a neat Scotch in a lowball glass. The ice bucket is empty. He takes a sip and turns in my direction, and it seems to me that his face is stiffer than it should be. That his brow is hard with tension. “You’re quiet,” he says. “Something wrong?”

  I fold my arms and laugh. “Other than your cousin starting a fight at his own celebration dinner?”

  “That Tom. Jesus.” Frank shakes his head and laughs, too, a dry laugh. “I don’t know what Connie was thinking when she married him.”

  “She was in love, I guess. We can’t always choose whom we fall in love with.”

  He finishes off the whiskey and clinks the glass down on the tray. He stares at it for a second or two, bracing his fingers on the rim, like he’s expecting it to do something, to sprout legs and jump off the tray and run down the hall to the kitchen for Mrs. Crane to clean. He says softly, “No. That’s true. I’m just lucky I fell in love with you, I guess. All those years ago.”

  “We’re both lucky. Lucky to have each other.”

  “Sweetheart.” Frank approaches me and puts his hand behind my head. He kisses me on the mouth. His lips are soft and smoky. “Going upstairs?”

  “Yes.”

  He follows me to our bedroom, footsteps heavy and quiet on the stairs behind me. When we reach the door, his arm stretches out before my ribs to turn the knob. The room is dark and warm, a little stale with the dregs of the afternoon.

  “Could you crack open a window?” I ask.

  Frank heads for the window. I reach for my earlobes and turn to the mirror above the dresser. Frank’s reflection appears behind me. He unfastens my necklace; I take off my earrings. When the jewelry is safely stowed in the inlaid mother-of-pearl box in the center of the dresser, Frank puts his hands around my shoulders. The warmth of his skin shocks me.

  “I was so proud of you tonight,” he says. “You looked so beautiful. So composed. You handled everything perfectly.”

  “Oh, I have my uses.”

  “You certainly do. You’re a miracle. My one true love.” He bends his head and kisses me, first in the hollow where my throat meets my collarbone, and then another kiss an inch farther down, and then once more, right at the neckline of my dress. I sift my hand through his sun-brushed hair, while he lingers on me, holding his warm mouth against my skin for an age or two, like a lover tasting his mistress after a long absence. My belly blossoms. A final kiss, and he looks back up to study me in the mirror. “Happy?”

  I gaze at Frank’s mouth. The safe, familiar dent above his upper lip. “Of course I am. Dear Frank.”

  “Good,” says Frank. “Anyway, I thought I’d take a walk for a bit. Clear my head. Are you all set? Any zippers needing attention?”


  “Just the one in back.”

  He unzips my dress, fondles my waist, kisses my temple. “Good night, then, darling. I’ll try not to wake you up when I get back.”

  • • •

  When I startle awake the next morning, seized by a newborn determination to confront Caspian about the photograph, Frank grunts and throws an arm across my middle, enclosing me in a haze of stale booze and dried-up ocean. Percy’s face regards me hopefully from the edge of the bed.

  The beach is deserted at this hour. I remove Percy’s leash and watch the exuberant pattern of his paw prints form on the flat damp sand, the receding tide. It takes me two miles up the beach and back to screw up the necessary courage, but on my return I march up to the door of the old Harrison cottage and knock, bang bang bang.

  There is no answer.

  At breakfast, Mrs. Crane tells me that Major Harrison already left, that Fred drove him to the station at dawn, both suitcases packed, wearing plain civilian clothes.

  No, he didn’t say where he was going. Or if he’d be back at all.

  Caspian, 1964

  When Cap was five years old, his family moved abruptly from some foreign posting (Frankfurt, maybe? He had a vague recollection of a corner shop selling German candy) and returned to Boston, to the handsome brownstone on Marlborough Street that had been his parents’ wedding present from the Hardcastles.

  He still carried a vivid memory of driving down the street in the middle seat of the moving van, next to his father in the passenger seat. “There it is,” Dad had said, lifting Cap onto his lap, and Cap had caught sight of his mother waving joyously from the stoop, bundled in a blue coat, holding his three-year-old sister’s woolly hand in hers. Dad was smoking his pipe, and somehow the smell of his tobacco burrowed its way into the memory of that afternoon, so that even now, as Cap opened the front door and followed the carpeted stairs stretching to the upper floors, as he smelled the familiar combustion of warm plaster and old wood, he thought of Dad and his pipe and his clean-shaven jaw. A sense of rightness stole over him, of impending happiness, just out of reach.

  The happiest days of his life.

  When he’d returned to Boston on furlough a month ago, he’d recognized the old place the instant he’d turned the corner and beheld it in the afternoon light. It was home. It was childhood, those few precious years between, say, five and eight, when they had all lived there together and Mother was alive. The large bay window on the parlor floor, overlooking the street, where Mother kept the piano. The paneled pocket doors to the dining room, endless fun. Dad’s study. Cap’s old bedroom on the third floor, at the back, which had been let out for years, like the other floors, bringing in money that he didn’t really need, money that went straight into his savings account, zeros adding up magically to some sum he refused to acknowledge.

  Now, of course, in the hindsight of adulthood, he knew that they had returned because of his mother’s sickness, and that his father had been granted some sort of compassionate leave. That was why they had all lived with such furious domesticity in those years, such determination to love every moment together, to squeeze the day of every last drop of joy.

  He led Tiny up to the fourth floor, his own floor, the attic floor. A tidy little bachelor pad with plenty of light: the old boxroom converted to a darkroom, a kitchenette in the corner, a sofa in the front room, and his own bedroom in the back. “It’s not much, but it’s home,” he said, opening the door, flinging his hat on the stand, conscious suddenly of the mismatched furniture, the walls covered in thumbtacked black-and-white photographs.

  Neat, of course. Military neat. The bed made in hospital corners, the furniture exactly squared, the floor bone clean and smelling sternly of soap.

  Tiny wandered to the window like a woodland deer. Her eyes were huge and glossy dark as she swiveled her head about, taking in the details of her surroundings. Her pocketbook dangled from her hand, the cardigan slung between the straps.

  He set down his camera bag in the hall. “What’s your poison?”

  “I don’t mind. Whatever you’ve got.”

  Not much. He preferred to do his drinking elsewhere. Still, there was vodka, there was lime juice in the ancient Frigidaire. He poured out a pair of gimlets and carried them into the living room.

  Tiny stood with her hands braced on the windowsill, staring at the green-leafed tips of the trees that lined the sidewalk below. The slanted sunlight just touched the back of her neck. He could trace the perfect arcs of her shoulder blades through the material of her dress, the flex of her calves, and he realized she’d taken off her shoes and risen up high on the balls of her feet.

  There were a thousand questions he wanted to ask her, a thousand things he wanted to know about her. He advanced across the old wooden boards and placed the drink on the sill, next to her long-fingered hand. “What’s he like?”

  “Who?”

  He was close enough to smell the faint perfume on her skin, to detect the movement of her back as she breathed, the whisper of fabric. Close enough to realize, in shock, just how small she was, how delicately made, each bone and curve of her tuned in fine precision. “The man you’re marrying.”

  She picked up the drink and turned her face away from the window glass to sip. She made a little moue, swallowed, and sipped again. An amateur. “He’s lovely. Handsome and brilliant. Harvard. He’s a lawyer, going into politics eventually. Or that’s the plan, anyway. Big things.”

  “A real catch.”

  “I like to think so.”

  “How did you meet?”

  She drank again, more deeply this time, and moved away from the window. “Oh, you know. I was at Radcliffe. We met at a mixer, my sophomore year. He was a senior.”

  “Fell in love?”

  “Yes, I guess. If that’s the word. Fall in love.” She shook her head and reached for her pocketbook, which was slung over the arm of the sofa.

  “Well, you love each other, don’t you? That’s why you’re getting married.”

  She took out a pack of cigarettes and a slim gold lighter. “Do you mind?”

  He shrugged. “It’s your funeral.”

  “Oh, a clean liver. My fiancé would approve, when he isn’t out enjoying a smoke himself, on the sly.” She set down her drink to light the cigarette. “Don’t tell on me.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me.” He leaned back against the windowsill and crossed his arms. “You didn’t answer my question, though.”

  She blew out a slow cloud of smoke and waved it away with her hand. “Look, can we not talk about the wedding for a single damned minute? I’ve been living and breathing it for the past six months.”

  “All right. What did you want to talk about?”

  She was wandering the room again, in quick little strides, searching him out. A bundle of nerves now, Miss Tiny Doe, her hair ruffled, her drink and cigarette in hand. A current of restless energy surrounded her, vibrating with possibility, with the potential for a rare and shattering explosion, a shower of sparks, the Fourth of Tiny July.

  She stopped by the wall of photographs and touched the edge of one with her finger, which was manicured in berry red, matching her dress. “Yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re very good. This one here, the vagrant, with the sunlight glittering on his stubble. Very good. Are you a professional?”

  “It’s just a hobby. I’m a soldier, actually.”

  She turned her head. “I might have guessed. That, or an ex-cop. The way you acted in there. What branch of the service are—?”

  He snapped his fingers. “Yeah, that reminds me. So about what happened today. Any particular reason you gave them the slip?”

  “Who?”

  “The police, Tiny.”

  She stared down at her cigarette. “Do you have an ashtray?”

  He sighed and heaved himself away from th
e window to the kitchenette, where he found one of his mother’s teacups at the back of the shelf, an old-fashioned red-hued pattern, chipped and scarred. “You can use this,” he said, turning the corner to hand it to her.

  She took it without looking at him and dropped a long crumb of ash inside, just in time, followed by a single wet drop.

  “Oh, Jesus.” He touched her elbow. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes!” She jerked her elbow away and turned her shoulder, but it was all a lie. She wasn’t all right. The tears tracked right on down her pristine cheeks, to be whisked instantly away in furious strokes of her fingers.

  “Shh. It’s okay. It’s done. You’re okay here.” He rested his hands on the balls of her shoulders.

  “Stop it. I don’t— I never cry—” She tried to juggle the drink and cigarette and teacup, and the drink lost out, dropping in a wet crash to the wooden floor. “Oh, damn, I’m so sorry—”

  “Forget the drink. Jesus. You can cry. Cry all you want. Here’s my handkerchief.” He pulled it out of his jacket pocket and held it out to her, but she still had the cigarette and the teacup left. He took the smoke from her unresisting fingers and crushed it out in the teacup, and he set them both down on the floor next to the broken glass. “Come here, before you cut yourself.”

  “I’m— I’m all right. I’ll get a—get a—cloth or something. Clean up. I’m sorry. I’m a—such a klutz—”

  He picked her up and carried her to the sofa, where she hiccuped and buried her head in his shoulder and cried in earnest, soaking his jacket and the shirt beneath. His hand absorbed the tremors of her back. He closed his eyes and sat absolutely still, waiting out the storm, tracking its arc in the strength of her sobs, the pace, until bit by bit she blew herself out, ebbing and ebbing, a final gust, and quietude, except for the low parabolic roars of the passing cars.