Tiny Little Thing

by Beatriz Williams

  I’m in the bathtub, taking a shower, curtain drawn tight, when Frank knocks on the door.

  “Tiny? Is that you?” he asks, through the wood.

  “Who else would it be?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m perfectly fine, Frank.” It’s not my usual day to wash my hair, but I’m shampooing anyway, scrubbing away on my second rinse, repeat. As if I could just wash everything down the drain and leave myself unstained. Lily-white. Error free.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Suit yourself.”

  The door squeaks. A pause of footsteps. The tinkle of rain on porcelain, and a deep Franklin sigh of relief.

  I lean back my head, let the suds fall away, and reach for the cream rinse. Through the patter around me, I hear Frank open the faucet of the sink. The shower is hot and delicious. If I could fall asleep like this, standing here as the water sizzles down the corrupt channels of my body, I’d do it.

  “Are you going to be out soon?” Frank asks, through a muddy foam of toothpaste.

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “Because the car arrives in half an hour.”

  I lift my head out of the stream. “What car?”

  The faucet goes off again. Whoosh whoosh. Frank spits into the sink.

  “The car to Newbury Street,” he says, all clear now. “For the interview.”

  • • •

  The front door swings open as we climb up the steps of our house on Newbury Street, Frank and I, his hand at my back in case I should stumble.

  Josephine pops into view. “Hello, there! Everything’s just about ready. Flowers everywhere, coffee’s brewing.”

  “Thank you. I’ll have a cup right now, if you don’t mind.” I hand her my gloves and hat and keep my pocketbook tucked safely under my arm. “A teaspoon of sugar and just a splash of cream.”

  She turns to my husband. “Can I get you anything, Frank? Coffee? I baked up a little cinnamon coffee cake, so the house smells welcoming.”

  “Coffee cake! I’d love a slice.”

  All the chirpy talk is jangling the interior of my skull. I skim through the hallway to the front parlor, which I left in spotless condition six weeks ago, lemon scented and beeswax polished, and everything remains exactly so, like fruit preserved in a jar, except for the fresh bouquets of yellow roses in my every available vase. A miasma of warm cinnamon invades the air, conquering the flowers.

  The Hardcastles presented us with the town house on Newbury Street right after our honeymoon. A little gift, they said, to start out married life on the right foot, which is to say well shod. The joint came complete with Mrs. Crane, who had worked for Granny Hardcastle for years and was probably a spy. Or at least, she started out that way; she’s surely given it up long since. I’m just too dull.

  Was too dull.

  I arrange my pocketbook on the table under the garden window, right in front of the wedding photos in their silver frames, and admire the geometry. The juxtaposition: innocent tulle against sultry leather.

  Tiny Hardcastle has a secret.

  Frank’s voice appears over my shoulder. “Are you okay, Tiny? You seem a little funny this morning.”

  “I’m fine.”

  He clears his throat. “Were you all right about . . . you know . . .”

  “Making love?”

  “I know it wasn’t very gentlemanly of me, but—”

  I pick up the pocketbook again and tuck it back under my arm. “Can I ask you a question, Frank?”

  “Sure.” He looks wary.

  “What time did you get to bed last night?”

  He shrugs his gray shoulders—he’s wearing a smart suit of light summer wool, the same color as a sky full of snow, above a pristine collared shirt and no tie—and shifts his vision to the window behind me. “I don’t know. Two o’clock, three maybe. You know how it is.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  His eyes return to mine, all blue and boyish, a bit bruised underneath the lower lashes. “But it won’t happen again. Never. I promise. This morning, when I looked over and saw you lying next to me—”

  “You promise, do you?”

  He holds up a hand. “Promise. You’re the most important thing, Tiny. We’re a team, aren’t we? The greatest team in the world.”

  “I don’t know, Frank. Are we?”

  “Don’t be sore. If you knew how sorry I am. I’m ashamed, if you want to know the truth. I acted like a spoiled kid instead of a husband.” He touches the pearls at my neck, smooths the skin of my collarbone. “Did you get back to your room all right without me?”

  “Yes. Fine. Your father sent Caspian to make sure I behaved myself. I’d had a bit too much champagne, apparently. Caspian made me drink some water and take an aspirin.”

  “Good old Cap.” Frank smiles the old smile and puts his hand on my shoulder. “So that’s what the problem is? A bit hungover?”

  “Oopsy-daisy.”

  “Poor Tiny.”

  “Poor little me.”

  His fingertips rub the back of my neck. Tender itty-bitty circles. “Well, try not to let it happen again, okay? You don’t want to get a reputation.”

  “Oh, my goodness, no. God forbid that. If you’ll excuse me, I’m just going to freshen up before the reporter gets here.”

  “Good idea.” Frank leans forward to kiss my forehead. As I turn to head down the hallway, he delivers my bottom a friendly conjugal pat.

  The bathroom is clean and white and free of cinnamon, thank God. The door must have been closed while Josephine was baking her coffee cake in my oven. A bowl of yellow roses sits on the windowsill, quietly perfuming the room. I lean against the wall and draw deep gusts of air into my lungs. The pocketbook is clutched to my stomach. There are no cigarettes inside, just a manila envelope, still unopened, with my name on it.

  You know how it is in families. Vivian was the smart daughter, Pepper was the beautiful daughter. I was the good daughter. Not that Vivian isn’t gorgeous, and Pepper isn’t terribly clever; not that I’m a dunce or a plain Jane. It’s just the division of labor. On the other hand, Vivian, the soi-disant smarty-pants, got Bs and Cs all the time, and once a horrifying D (it horrified me, anyway) which she taped to the wall of her bedroom in a place of pride: I hated that teacher, I would have gone ahead and flunked, except I’d have had to take the damned class again.

  Me, though. My report cards were perfect, perfect, an uninterrupted column of A A A A into the distance. Except one quarter. My junior year at Nightingale-Bamford. I wrote an essay on a nice safe subject, Jane Austen and the marriage of convenience, boilerplate and elegant, not a word out of place, and the teacher returned it with a red letter C disfiguring the top margin. Not original, she wrote beneath, as if originality were the only thing that mattered. She wasn’t particularly impressed with my insights into Thackeray and Trollope, either, and when I returned home from school on the last day before the Christmas recess and saw my report card in its envelope (unopened, of course, since Mums couldn’t care less about things like grades, though I brought her my flawless reports every quarter, with a freshly shaken martini on the side) I knew that uninterrupted column of As would contain a most unwelcome intruder. Maybe a B, if I were lucky. More likely a C.

  I took that envelope and hid it in my desk. (Mums never noticed.) All Christmas vacation it sat in the bottom drawer, stalking me through a half-inch layer of polished nineteenth-century mahogany, and I couldn’t open it. Couldn’t face the news. If I didn’t open it, if I didn’t see the awful ink with my own eyes, it wouldn’t be true. The agony of failure wouldn’t sear my belly. You know, like the old tree falling in the forest, with no one to witness.

  You’re probably expecting me to conclude this little story with the usual tidy moral. On the last day, just before I returned to school, I finally gathered my courage, opened
that envelope, and faced the Awful Truth. And I became a stronger woman for it! Well, I didn’t. I never did open that envelope. I believe it still sits in the bottom drawer of the desk of my old bedroom on Fifth Avenue, overlooking the park. I wonder if the grade was a B or a C, after all.

  I open my eyes and unhook the clasp of my pocketbook. The manila envelope, still rolled into its snug little tube, sits at the bottom, beneath my lipstick and compact.

  I set it on the windowsill and touch up my lips. Powder my nose. My eyes are tinted red at the rims, my skin a shade too pale. Is that what a hangover does? Reverses your colors? My pearl earrings nestle into my earlobes, matching the fat strand that dwarfs the bones of my neck.

  Little Tiny has a big fat secret.

  Perfect little Tiny is cracking apart.

  The thing about a report card, though, is that it doesn’t matter. Who gives a cluck whether you got a B or a C instead of an A. It’s just your own pride at stake.

  But this mistake. This one stupid mistake. It could ruin me. The whole world would see me unmasked, stripped bare, on the front page of the newspaper, if I ignore the contents of that envelope.

  Of course, it could also ruin Frank.

  The wide-eyed woman in the mirror stares back at me, terrified, reproachful. This is what happens, Tiny, when you walk off the pavement. When you let down your guard. Let this be a lesson. That impulse that slams into your body, has always slammed into your body, under the pressure of Caspian’s heroic hand?

  Resist it.

  I pinch my cheeks and reach for the envelope.

  It’s a different photo from the first, a close-up. Caspian has caught the vulnerability in my huge brown eyes, beneath the bravado. Something about the light makes my eyelashes look twice as long as they really are. Every detail is so keen, every line of me so familiar, I can almost smell Caspian’s apartment. The warm sunlight on the sofa cushions. The thoughts in my head, the magnetic fizzle of anticipation in the air.

  Probably the creep got his hands on the entire roll of film. The note says:

  WHAT A GOOD GIRL YOU ARE

  HOW ABOUT TWO THOUSAND THIS TIME

  MAYBE YOU CAN SELL AN OLD JEWEL OR TWO

  NEXT THURSDAY

  DON’T BE LATE

  I expect to feel fear at the physical sight of the photograph, at the sharp block letters of the note: the limb-melting kind of fear, a liquidity of terror. (Like the Eskimos and their snow, I have a name for each different type.)

  Instead I’m assaulted by anger.

  The scintillating kind. An electricity of fury.

  I can scarcely control the shake of my fingers as I shove the photograph into the envelope and the envelope back in my pocketbook. I snap the closure like a rifle shot. The bathroom door nearly rips off its hinges as I march back into the hallway.

  Josephine is just walking out of the parlor, smiling, hair swinging. I take her by the elbow.

  “Had a nice evening yesterday?”

  Her limbs are larger than mine, but my grip is stronger. She tries to pull her arm away. “Yes, I did, thank you.”

  “Good.” I wink. “So did I. Frank is always so full of energy after these little affairs.”

  I release her astonished arm and stalk like Pepper into the parlor, where the coffee is waiting and so is a grinning Jack Lytle.

  • • •

  I don’t know what devil possesses me. Until now, I didn’t know the devil even bothered with the likes of me. I toss my guilty pocketbook on the table and pick up my coffee—Frank and Lytle are already drinking theirs—and say, “Jack! You recover quickly, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  He shakes my hand, still grinning. “Mrs. Hardcastle. So do you, if you don’t mind my returning the compliment.”

  Frank waggles back and forth between the two of us. “Did you two have a good chat last night?”

  “We did indeed. Mrs. Hardcastle gave me her unedited opinion of the nice folks financing your campaign, Frank. She’s got a lot of spunk, your wife. I congratulate you.”

  Frank nearly spits out his coffee. “Thank you.” The words tilt ever so slightly upward at the end, like a question.

  “I have to say, I agree with her a hundred percent,” Lytle says, offering me a chair. “You just don’t usually hear it from the horse’s mouth, as it were. Not that Mrs. Hardcastle is anything like a horse.”

  “No, no,” says Frank. “Not at all.”

  “Well, maybe an Arabian.” Lytle slings himself into the opposite chair, while I cross my legs and raise my cup. “A fine white Arabian. Clever, beautiful, elegant. Minds of their own. Not afraid to let you know what they really think.”

  Frank eases downward onto the sofa, next to me, and takes my hand. “Is that so.”

  “Oh, you know how it is.” I lock eyes with Lytle. “When you’re speaking off the record, in a social setting, for background only.”

  Lytle lifts his eyebrows. He really is a handsome man, even in daylight, better groomed than your average newspaper columnist. His eyes are darkish, some middle ground between brown and hazel, and his fingers contain the cup and saucer like a man who knew his tea from his coffee. He reaches for his inside pocket. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  I set down my coffee and hold out my hand. “Do you mind if I join you?”

  “Don’t be silly, darling.” Frank squeezes my hand. “Mrs. Hardcastle doesn’t smoke.”

  “She does among friends.” I take the cigarette from Lytle, place it between my lips, and lean forward for him to light it up. “And I consider Jack a friend. Don’t you, darling?”

  Frank’s sitting next to me, so I can’t see where he’s looking, whether it’s me or Lytle. His legs shift. “Of course.”

  “Allow me to say, Mrs. Hardcastle, that your husband intrigues me even more than you do.” Lytle lights his own cigarette and blows the smoke to the side. “How did the two of you meet?”

  “At a Radcliffe mixer, when I was nineteen.” I turn my head to look adoringly at Frank. “We’ve been together ever since.”

  “Indeed.” Lytle sends my husband a wise-eyed look, just between men. “I see.”

  “What can I say? I looked at her and said to myself, Frank Hardcastle, she’s the one.”

  “Any plans for kids?”

  Frank catches himself and looks at me.

  “Not yet,” I say. “We’re still so in love.”

  Lytle winks. “Isn’t that how you end up with kids? If you’re doing it right, that is.”

  “We certainly hope to have children soon,” Frank says hurriedly.

  “Well, that’s good. Very good.” Lytle lifts his cigarette. “The perfect family man, then. Beautiful wife, kids on the horizon. Just a normal, happy, well-adjusted guy.”

  Frank makes a self-deprecating chuckle to acknowledge the truth of Lytle’s words. “If you say so. I’m the luckiest man on earth, that’s for sure, and that’s why I’m eager to go to Washington on behalf of the people of Massachusetts, the people who work hard and—”

  “And you, Mrs. Hardcastle? Normal, happy, well adjusted? Handsome husband, kids on the horizon?”

  I lean forward to tap a bit of ash into the tray, to pluck my coffee cup and take a sip. Too much sugar, I think. “Well, now. That’s an excellent question, Jack.”

  “What?” says Frank.

  “Really?” says Lytle. “How so?”

  “I mean, who’s really happy? Well adjusted, that’s a laugh. Now, I’m awfully lucky, I admit.” I wave my cigarette hand to indicate the roses and the polish. “And my husband certainly is handsome, isn’t he? The cream of the crop. No, I did well for myself. Top-drawer, absolutely.”

  “Tiny—”

  “But here’s the thing, Jack. Are we on the record or off?”

  “Whatever you want us to be, Mrs. Hardcastle.”

&nbs
p; He leans forward, and I lean forward, connecting over the tops of the yellow roses.

  “Tiny—”

  “Jack, the thing is, while I believe absolutely in my husband’s ability to represent the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to fight for justice and opportunity, et cetera and so on—”

  “Jesus, Tiny—”

  “I really sometimes wonder whether the whole system is broken. Because, really, isn’t it all for show? Isn’t everything just for show? The donors last night, they were putting on a show for us. They were putting on a show for one another. We were damned sure putting on a show for them. The all-American candidate and his all-American wife, clean as a whistle, the good-looking masquerading as the good. And what in God’s name does any of that have to do with natural law and civil rights, with the conflict in Vietnam and the larger problem of the spread of Communism and nuclear capability, with what we believe and who we are as a country, and the right way forward on any number of critical issues . . .”

  Frank stands up and calls out to the crack in the pocket doors. “Josephine! How about bringing in that coffee cake?”

  Caspian, 1964

  Tiny spoke into his shirt, still laughing. “You should have seen the look on your face.”

  “You’re going to hell for this.” His relieved mouth had somehow found its way into her hair, at the edge of the monogrammed handkerchief that held it all back. He kissed her there. She’d never know, right?

  “I’m already going to hell for this. Didn’t I tell you?” She stopped laughing and lay there, pleasantly slack, her hands tucked up between his chest and hers. “Did you get enough pictures? Or should I keep going?”

  The camera.

  He put his hands around her arms and set her away. The camera sat on the floor, a few feet from his knee, miraculously intact. “I think that’s plenty,” he said. He picked up the camera and examined it knob by knob, giving it his full attention. His heart had resumed beating by now, though at an unnaturally quick pace, throbbing in his neck.