Tiny Little Thing

by Beatriz Williams

  Because you learn things when you talk to people, especially people who aren’t like you. You learn what a goddamned polyglot race we are, we marvelous human beings. Some people are friendly, some people are gruff. Some want security, others want independence. Some want the government to run things; some want to run things on their own. Some people need a helping hand, some people need a kick in the pants. Some want to live and die in the same small town; some want to ramble the wide world. Some are content with little; some cannot stop striving. Some want to lie beside a true love, to worship a single god; some crave a universe of loves, a universe of gods. I could go on and on, the differences between them, between me and you, between you and the woman sitting next to you at the hairdresser, wearing that dress you’d never wear in a million years, reading that book you wouldn’t touch. The genius of politics, of people like Frank, is to link them all, understand them all. To represent them all, not just the ones you agree with. The ones who think and act like you do.

  I don’t know. I couldn’t do it. But it was interesting, all the same.

  I’m just glad it’s over. This time, for good.

  At one o’clock in the morning, the highway is frozen and deserted. It’s just me and Dusty, holdin’ and squeezin’. I can drive as fast as I like, and I do. I race along the acres of bitter pavement as if the past itself is chasing me. The roar of the engine vibrates my marrow; the rush of speed lightens my veins. The salt wind invades my wool hat and numbs my ears. My eyes water a few cold tears. I almost wish I could keep driving forever, that I could draw this moment out to an infinite length. That I could spend the rest of my life luxuriating in the anticipation of what comes next.

  At last I round the corner of the drive, and the porch lights illuminate the trees. I’m not cold anymore. My blood is as light as air. A tall figure crosses the glow of the headlamps. He’s opening up the car door almost before I’ve stopped. He reaches inside, sets the brake with one hand, and lifts me up with the other. He places me carefully on the hood. Percy bays for joy at our feet.

  “You waited up,” I say.

  “You think I could sleep?”

  We kiss and kiss while the engine runs; we kiss as if kisses are going out of business. As if a new shipment of kisses has finally arrived, after two and a half years of empty shelves and rationing. Caspian’s warm mouth melts away the coldness in mine. He sinks into the driver’s seat, drawing me on his lap, and shuts off the engine. His fingers touch my cheek, my chin, as reverently as a pilgrim before his idol.

  “Let’s go inside,” he says.

  The electricity is off for the winter. Caspian’s made a fire in the living room and brought in blankets and pillows. It’s not the Ritz, he says, pulling me down, and I don’t need the Ritz, I say, cradling his face in my hands, I just need you. He says, And a nice hot fire? and I say, Well, that’s lovely too. And then we stop talking, because while we’ve seen each other regularly at campaign events, he in his uniform and I in my tweed suits and heels, we haven’t held each other, we haven’t kissed each other in two and a half years, and you can’t find any words to describe a longing that deep. You can’t find any words to explain what it means when you hold him and kiss him at last.

  Afterward, I get up and make cocoa on the gas stovetop in the kitchen, so Caspian doesn’t have to strap his leg back on. I settle in the crook of his shoulder and think what a pleasure it is, to make midnight cocoa for Caspian while he stretches himself like a wounded lion before the fire and watches me come and go. To hand him his mug, which he accepts gratefully, without any awkward shame. Percy, curled up on a square of red wool blanket next to the hearth, lifts his head from his forelegs, and I swear he smiles at us.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t come, after all?” I say.

  “No, I knew you would come. I just didn’t believe it until I saw the headlights.”

  I love his smell. I love the warmth of his skin beneath my cheek, the solidity of bone and muscle, the safe and soundness of him.

  “Is Pepper still here?” I ask.

  “She left today. She’s driving to Boston and loading it on the car train to Palm Beach, for the auction.”

  “How does the car look?”

  “Amazing.” He shakes his head. “I almost cried when she drove it off. The sound of that engine. I’ll hear it in my dreams. Loved that car like my own soul.”

  “Almost as much as you love me?”

  “It’s a close call.” He squints his eyes at the ceiling. “But, yes. Almost as much as I love you.”

  I set down my mug, half-finished, and kiss him again, and again we make love in the blankets, next to the fire, and by three o’clock in the morning, all the drapery is parted, all layers shed, and the nakedness is as good as I dreamed. Maybe better. He stays inside me and holds my hair in his hands, and he says, “I have a question. But you don’t have to answer it.”

  “Mmm.” I’m almost asleep. How could you not fall asleep, as warm and sated as that, as stretched and full, still throbbing deliciously in all your nooks and crannies? Anyway, I can’t imagine what question can possibly still lie between us. Like sweethearts separated by war, we’ve written to each other every day, we’ve explained and teased and vowed. Haven’t we already dragged all our furniture into the sunshine?

  He fills his palms with my hair, empties them, and fills them again. Weighs and measures me. “When I heard . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “When I heard you lost a baby. That September.”

  We lie on our sides, still connected. The firelight curls over his skin. I wrap my leg more securely around his hip. “No,” I say.

  “No, it wasn’t mine?”

  “No. I would never have done that. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, God knows. But I wouldn’t have married Frank if I’d been carrying your baby.”

  The fire pops behind me. I stare at the hollow of Caspian’s throat and wonder what he’s thinking. Whether he’s grieved, or relieved. Whether he wanted that baby, or not. Whether he—like me—is pondering the mysterious workings of biology, the possible inadequacies of my womb. Calculating our odds. Speculating what joy or hope or heartache still lies before us.

  And he has already lost so much.

  “I want to give you everything,” I say. “Everything you deserve. I don’t know what I’ll do if I’m not enough.”

  Caspian doesn’t tell me not to feel that way. He doesn’t tell me to be someone I’m not. Instead, he kisses my forehead and lifts himself up. He reaches out for one of the blankets and tucks it around us. The wool is thick and warm, a Black Watch plaid scented by decades of cedar. He gathers me back into his arms, facing the fire, and rests his chin on the top of my head.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he says. “We’re going to be all right.”

  • • •

  When I wake up, the fire is out and Caspian is gone. The room is filled with a slow gray light, the birth of dawn. I slide my hand into the hollow beside me, and I wish I could trap the trace of sacred warmth that remains there, to capture it in my flesh so I’ll never be cold again.

  I call out Caspian’s name, but my voice isn’t working properly yet, and the word only travels a few feet. Well, never mind. It’s hot and lovely underneath this immense weight of plaid blankets—there must be four or five of them, and I close my eyes and imagine Caspian layering them anxiously over me before he left—and besides, he’ll be back here soon. I’ll just sleep a little longer. God knows I need it, after a night like that.

  But there’s no undoing the dawn, is there? My mind tingles behind my closed eyes. I can hear the distant trickle of pipes, a muffled thump or two, the scratch of Percy’s loyal claws against the wooden floor, as Caspian readies the house and loads the car. Night has spun out, and we’ll be leaving soon, and haven’t I been waiting for this departure all autumn? All my life?

  I open my eyes and push b
ack the covers. The air freezes against my skin. I rise to my feet, gather a blanket around me, and pad softly across the living room to the terrace door.

  Outside, the world is gray and new and ice-cold, and the ocean is quiet. The sand numbs my feet. I tuck the blanket closer and watch the gentle white-tipped tide, the empty shore. The Hardcastle cousins are back at work and home and school, building the future. The footballs and sailboats and cocktails have been put away until next summer. Even Tom is back at work in his cramped office at Tufts, finishing up his folk studies, while Constance keeps house and swallows her happy pills. I rise to my toes, because the sand is so cold and because I want to dance, dance.

  The extravagant motion of my legs keeps parting the blanket, shocking me with cold, making me shiver, but I keep going anyway. I fight back. When I see Caspian’s tall figure crossing the terrace toward me, Percy dogging his heels, I finish off with a series of high-legged fouettés, just showing off. His smile is wide when he reaches me. “You’re nuts,” he says.

  “I’ll bet it turned you on.”

  “Sure did.”

  He’s carrying another blanket in one hand and a pair of coffee mugs in the other. He hands me the coffee and draws me up into his arms, facing the ocean, and he wraps the blanket around us both. The coffee is hot and strong. I sip it slowly.

  “You were up early,” I say.

  “I couldn’t wait any longer.”

  “Car’s all packed?”

  “Whenever you’re ready, Tiny.”

  His arms are thick, his voice is steady. After a minute or two, the shivering melts away, and only my feet are cold. Percy settles on them with a sigh. We stand there wrapped in a shared blanket, drinking coffee, not saying anything.

  Waiting for the wondrous day.

  Pepper, 1966

  The Florida sun sits in her bones, and Pepper Schuyler doesn’t want to move. Doesn’t want to flick a single fingertip, in case she might disturb the cocoon of heat that surrounds her.

  Funny, you’re supposed to get all hot and bothered when you’re pregnant, aren’t you? Pepper’s sure she heard that somewhere, that your body temperature rises by a degree or two, or something like that. Well, she feels the opposite. She hasn’t been warm, really warm, since August. As if the greedy little fetus inside her is sucking up all the heat and energy she can possibly manufacture, leaving nothing for poor, elegant Pepper to live on.

  “Mrs. Schuyler?”

  Pepper cracks open a reluctant eyelid.

  The white-jacketed attendant doesn’t look pleased to see her. “Mrs. Schuyler,” he says again, in a way that implies he isn’t fooled by the Mrs., not one little bit. Maybe it’s the absence of a ring on her finger. Anyway, even worse: “There is a gentleman to see you.”

  “A gentleman?” Pepper opens the other eye. Her heart smacks against her ribs, gathump gathump. “What does he look like?”

  The attendant frowns at her moxie. Moxie is not a quality to be admired within the pale-walled sanctuary of the Breakers, even when the sun pours down and the cocktails are served. “He is of medium height, madam, wearing a blue suit and carrying a briefcase.”

  Pepper nibbles her lip. The attendant is quite tall. “What color were his eyes?”

  “I’m afraid he was wearing sunglasses.”

  “What color was his hair?”

  “Gray, I believe.” The attendant’s eyes shift for just an instant to the gentle golden summit of Pepper’s belly, rising between the two halves of her pink bikini.

  Pepper releases a long sigh.

  “He insisted the matter was of pressing urgency, Mrs. Schuyler, or I wouldn’t have bothered you.” The attendant’s eyes return to her face, carefully bland.

  Pepper reaches for her robe. “All right.”

  She rinses off her feet at the edge of the beach and slips on her Jack Rogers sandals. She stops at the front desk to see if she has any messages. “Just one,” says the clerk, handing her a slip of paper. “A telephone call.”

  Pepper squints at the brief white square and crumples it in her palm. “Thank you.”

  By the time she’s changed into her green Lilly shift—two sizes bigger than her usual and one of the only things she can fit into at the moment, short of some hideous maternity tent—and made her way to the porch, the gentleman’s brow is damp with perspiration, and his fingers are tapping with impatience around his trickling lowball glass. He rises quickly to his feet and removes his sunglasses. “Mrs. Schuyler?” he says, glancing at the dancing green monkeys that stretch across the middle of her dress.

  “You’ve found me.” She holds out her hand.

  “I’m Daniel Thorne. From the auction company.”

  His palm is damp. She withdraws quickly. “Oh, of course! Have you seen the car? Is anything wrong?”

  Mr. Thorne motions to the wicker armchair opposite. Pepper settles into the cushion and crosses her long legs. At least she still has her legs, even if the rest of her has gone to hell. Big belly, big breasts. Even her cheekbones are starting to disappear. Thank God there’s plenty of cheekbone to spare.

  “Nothing’s wrong. Nothing’s wrong at all. Quite the opposite, actually. We were all stunned when the vehicle was delivered. Everything we’d dreamed. Really a most remarkable—er . . .” He trails off, distracted by her stomach. What is it with people? Pepper wants to scream: It’s a baby, for God’s sake, it’s just a baby, we all started out like this!

  “Yes, I know,” she says. “Really remarkable.”

  “And the provenance.”

  “Fascinating, isn’t it? It took us some time to find the papers, as you know, but I think everything’s in order now.”

  “Yes. The law is quite clear on the subject of abandoned property. There’s no difficulty there, I assure you.” He takes a drink and pats his forehead with his handkerchief.

  “So what is the difficulty, Mr. Thorne? Or have you interrupted my afternoon sunbathing just to congratulate me?”

  He drops yet another panicked glance to her belly. “Congratulate you?”

  “On the car, Mr. Thorne.” Pepper smiles and gazes longingly at the drink in his hand, which perspires luxuriously onto his fingertips.

  “Oh, yes. Of course. The thing is, Mrs. Schuyler, we’ve had an offer for the car.”

  “An offer? But the auction isn’t until Saturday.”

  “Sometimes, in the case of an automobile this special, we receive private offers before the public sale. A sort of preemptive strike, when the buyer is particularly keen.”

  “Oh, really? From whom?”

  “The buyer wishes to remain anonymous. She’s made the offer through her lawyer.”

  “She?”

  “A woman, yes. That’s all we know.” He finishes the drink and reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket. “The offer is substantial. I don’t mind saying it’s the most generous offer we’ve ever received.”

  “Well, it’s an extraordinary car.”

  “Indeed it is.” He hands her a folded piece of paper. “But I think you’ll agree, a number like this is hard to pass up.”

  Pepper accepts the paper between her manicured forefinger and her manicured middle finger. She unfolds it, stretches out her arm until the ink stops swimming, and reads all the zeros.

  “Jesus Christ,” she says.

  Mr. Thorne laughs. “That’s what I said.”

  Pepper stares and stares. She squints and holds the paper a bit farther away, just to be sure. Three hundred thousand dollars.

  Take the car and sell it, Tiny said. It’s yours. Sell it and start your new life. They won’t dare object. Mums has them by the balls.

  But three hundred thousand dollars? Who on earth would pay three hundred thousand dollars for a car, a hunk of metal and leather, no matter how extraordinary? A woman, Mr. Thorne said. A woman who wants to remain anonymou
s. A woman who has that kind of money to throw around, she might be anyone. She might be pulling a trick of some kind. She might have her own reasons, just like Pepper has hers.

  Pepper reads the number again, zero by promising zero, taking her loving time with each one. Three hundred thousand dollars. You could start a hell of a new life, you could go somewhere and raise a baby in the sunshine, somewhere no one could find you. You could become an entirely new woman, the woman you maybe always wanted to be.

  Or it might be someone’s way of paying you off, when you’ve refused to be paid off, again and again. Someone’s way of keeping you delicately under his thumb, safe and sound.

  Between the columns of the long Breakers porch, the ocean gathers and crashes. The surf is busy today. The tide is on the point of turning.

  She looks back up at Mr. Thorne’s sweating face.

  “I accept.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In The Secret Life of Violet Grant, Vivian Schuyler dismisses her oldest sister in a few lines: “Neither of us could politely stand Tiny, who by the grace of God had married her Harvard mark last June, and now lived in a respectably shabby house in the Back Bay with a little Boston bean in her righteous oven. God only knew how it got there.”

  As soon as I wrote that paragraph, I knew that perfect little Tiny was hiding a very big secret, and that my next book would be about her. I am enormously grateful for the entire team at Putnam who not only went along with this impulse, but cheerfully encouraged it to fruition. Many thanks to Chris Pepe and Laura Perciasepe, editors extraordinaire, for their enthusiasm and expert advice, and to Ivan Held for his eternal commitment to putting our best book forward. I can’t say enough about publicity and marketing wizards Katie McKee, Mary Stone, and Lydia Hirt, who make every release seem like the only book in the world, and to Meaghan Wagner, who keeps everybody on the same page. You are the unsung heroes, and I appreciate your passion more than I can say.

  Special thanks are due to my crack team of author buddies, who have made my life so much richer, and who have offered cheers, advice, and commiseration in perfect measure. Karen White, Lauren Willig, Eloisa James, Linda Francis Lee, Bee Ridgway, Susanna Kearsley, and all you other dearies, near and far: I love your talent and your kindness, and most especially how they exist side by side.