Meanwhile — well, meanwhile, Peter had seen Holly regularly. She had come for dinner; she had accompanied Peter and Charlotte to the movies; she had asked them to come along with her to parties. Sometimes, Peter and she took a walk on a Sunday afternoon when Charlotte was working with Frau Schimmelfennig, her German tutor, sometimes following an aimless path through the streets, where they would do research for the coffee-table book they hoped someday to produce, The Tenement Cornices of Yorkville; sometimes they went to the museum, where they would also amble without much purpose, from the Etruscans to the South Pacific Islanders to Federal Americans. Holly sometimes said to Peter, “Come on, let’s go see your countess, the one with the beautiful gloves.” She was referring to a portrait of an Englishwoman that Peter had once mentioned that he particularly admired. Sometimes they just went to the park. Leaving it, all but deserted, at dusk, they made a loud scratchy noise when stepping on the dry leaves; the dim rocks rose from the ground like smooth, oblong whales; Holly’s face reflected the fading light and shone in the surrounding gloom. Peter liked these outings.
Sitting in his office, staring at McClernand’s contraption, and still smarting from his encounter with Thropp, Peter ruminated about his life. The Holly part, he couldn’t help it, made him smile. He would see her on Saturday night, when she came over to make dinner. Charlotte was leaving on Sunday, and the idea was that if Holly cooked, Charlotte could concentrate on her final preparations for her trip. Holly’s enthusiasm as a cook exceeded her competence, but it was a meal that Peter looked forward to.
Charlotte was sitting in the living room of her, and now Peter’s, apartment. After the wedding, Peter had given up his place near the East River and they were living at Charlotte’s until they bought something. This had made sense: her apartment was much nicer than his, and he could shed his shell far more easily than she, since his was so much lighter. He had never furnished his apartment with much more than a bed and a sofa and a couple of chairs. Books, CDs, squash racquets, and hockey sticks provided the only decoration. Saying that Peter never allowed her to see his apartment, his mother had once asked Jonathan what it was like, and Jonathan had said, “Ah, well, Mrs. Russell, ah, Peter’s apartment is what you might call minimally appointed.” She had laughed and said, “I knew he needed things!” Peter’s father, who was always one step behind a joke, especially when Jonathan was making Mrs. Russell laugh, had looked from one to the other like someone trying to identify a sound.
Charlotte’s case was different. Her apartment was part of her identity. She had the whole parlor floor of a brownstone — it was expensive, but her father helped with the rent — and no first-time visitor left without her docent’s account of the pocket doors, the mantel, the extensive molding, and other decorative details. Somewhere along the line, after the part about the social customs of middle-class New Yorkers of the nineteenth century and the parlor’s place in them, Charlotte would say, “And do you know what?” For some time, the eyeballs of her listener might have been rolling around on his or her lower lids, but stimulated by a new sharpness in Charlotte’s voice they would dart back into their accustomed place, as if pulled by a string. “And do you know what?” There would be a dramatic pause. “I have gargoyles.” This, clearly, was the climax of the performance and always provoked the outburst “Really!” Or sometimes “No! Really!” and even, from time to time, “No! Really! I can’t believe it!”
“I really do,” Charlotte would continue. “Right above both of those windows there. I don’t know what happened on this street, but they are both certainly very frightened-looking!” Then she would make a face like that of the gargoyles, with her mouth making an O and all her features drawn down. It was a mistake for Charlotte to make this face. While she hoped doing so would seem game and fun and cute and spontaneous and adorable, she actually made herself look too weird for comfort.
Charlotte had many acquisitions, and each came with a story. In London she had come across a French treatise on dance from the eighteenth century; a friend was studying the history of dance, and Charlotte bought the book thinking her friend might want it; it turned out that this was a cheaper, more popular edition of a fairly rare book that was in the library the friend was using, and so she didn’t have any need of it. Charlotte thought that the engravings were quite nice and decided to cut some of them out and frame them (she had a framer she was crazy about) and she really thought they had turned out well. “This little set of prints is by an Italian friend. That’s a watercolor — isn’t it pretty? — that I bought years ago, when I was on a college program in Devon . . . It’s a Ghanaian mask, really quite ferocious, don’t you think? They wore it when making . . . Oh, come on, now, what is it? Oh, I forget, it’s a sort of fermented drink, in gourds . . . The little horse from Spain . . . the figurines, also Spanish . . . the fourth-century bust from Turkey, amazing how cheap . . .” And so it went, until a guest had had the entire catalogue.
Invariably, the tour ended with what was obviously the finest piece in the collection. Over the mantel hung a medium-sized landscape painted in a postimpressionist style — hills, houses, grass, trees, sky, clouds (a couple of very beautiful clouds). The setting was, a viewer could guess, the South of France. The frame would have been old-fashioned when the painting was made. Although the artist was minor, it was a very good painting. Not that this consideration counted much with Charlotte, but it was also worth several tens of thousands of dollars. It was a real painting, by someone who knew what he was doing, who had excellent taste and who had put something precious and indissolubly his own into the work. As it should have been, the painting was Charlotte’s pride and joy. She told the story: it was a present from her father and her stepmother for her twenty-first birthday. Her father had first bought a painting by this artist when he was spending a year in Paris before going to law school. It was a tiny still life and it was “far more than I could afford.” Then one day a few weeks later a note arrived for him from the artist’s daughter asking him to tea: she was very curious to meet this young American who had taken an interest in her father’s work. The dealer, it turned out, had mentioned the sale to her and given her the address. Charlotte’s father went to see the woman, who was in her sixties, and he found her “utterly charming.” She was so cultivated. She had never married, but she had had many lovers. Her house was in a suburb of Paris and they had tea in her garden, which was now almost wild. And the house! It was so very dark and musty and so cluttered, full of paintings by the woman’s father and his friends (some of whom were well known). Charlotte’s father and the woman got along tremendously well, and he continued to see her and to buy paintings by her father until her death. He had taken Charlotte’s mother to see her once; that had not gone well. But she had lived into her nineties, and she and Julia had gotten to know each other and became great friends. Charlotte loved this story. She loved to tell it. She loved her father for having such a connection and providing such a story. Indeed, she loved all this almost more than she loved the painting itself.
On this evening, while Peter was off playing hockey, Charlotte was sitting on the rug in the living room and she had her laptop in front of her. Spread out before her on the rug, in concentric semicircles, were piles of papers. She stretched and looked at the time. Holly would be arriving soon to cook dinner. Charlotte wore a comfortable long skirt and had taken out her contact lenses. She was wearing her glasses, and she wondered if, with Holly coming over, she should put her contacts back in. She decided to do so and to do something about her hair. She would brush it and maybe pull it back? There wasn’t time to wash it. That was scheduled for later tonight.
Charlotte liked Holly. She did. But she did not feel at ease with her, and she almost wished that Holly were not coming over. Charlotte and Peter could have just ordered something. She could not have declined Holly’s offer, though. She knew that Holly wanted to do something for them and that Holly’s grief had made her restless, eager to find ways to dissipate energy, and she k
new that Holly was lonely. Finally, she knew that Peter would want to indulge her. So when Holly had called, Charlotte sounded enthusiastic and grateful. Charlotte did appreciate the gesture.
The reasons that Charlotte felt ill at ease with Holly were various. To begin with, they would never have been people who had a natural rapport, regardless of the circumstances in which they knew each other; some ineffable qualities of their natures prevented them from feeling an instant bond, as occasionally happened with people who had friends in common, and in this case, as in others, the explanation was a mystery. But there was more to it than the fact that their keys did not fit each other’s locks. To take one aspect of the problem, Holly was very pretty, and this caused Charlotte discomfort. Charlotte was less pretty and, in fact, the degree to which she was pretty at all was, to her mind, a matter of debate. In the presence of a certifiable beauty, Charlotte began to question her own looks, a process that could cascade endlessly. At the same time, she searched for a way in which she could “count,” since she believed that in any social setting, a beautiful woman made everything else irrelevant. Beauty was the unavoidable factor. When a beautiful woman joined a group in conversation, the ecology changed, and Charlotte found herself transformed from a bird flying through the air reasonably well into a bird struggling to take off. Once or twice in her life she had had the experience of joining a group and feeling its entire tone shift, the film going from black-and-white to color, once or twice in her life when she was looking her best. She had wondered a billion times what it would be like to be the kind of person for whom that happened every day.
How often had Charlotte studied herself in the bathroom mirror! She moved her chin up, down, to the left, to the right, holding up a hand mirror to show her profile, testing the angles she could test (and it was frustrating that she could not see herself from all possible ones), trying to decide, seeking the definitive answer. Was she pretty, was she pretty, was she pretty? Sometimes she thought that of course she was very pretty, and it was only her insecurities that prevented her from seeing it. But she knew that wasn’t true. From a certain angle, her face looked so narrow and her nose and chin stuck out so much; there was a suggestion of witchiness. At best she had one of those faces with character and appeal even if they were not conventionally attractive. But that wasn’t true either. She was better-looking than that. The question would never be settled, and she sometimes wished she were frankly ugly so that it would be.
Alone with a beautiful woman, with no one else to carry the conversation, Charlotte always felt that she was alone with a she-leopard: what do you say? Charlotte was a witness, standing there watching the beauty, but she wasn’t participating in the same world. When Holly’s hand touched the saltcellar, it would be a different saltcellar from what it was when Charlotte touched it. Holly wasn’t a pure, absolute beauty, but she was beautiful enough. The natural thing for Charlotte to do would be to fall into the role of the Plain One to the other girl’s Pretty One; the Plain One was supposed to be friendly and eager, almost grateful to be in the Pretty One’s presence. Well, Charlotte had too much pride for that, and she wasn’t that plain.
Then there was something else that made Charlotte uncomfortable in Holly’s company: Charlotte felt jealous of Holly romantically. The other party in this triangle was Jonathan. He had turned Charlotte’s head from the moment she had met him. She had always known that any involvement with him was impossible; in fact, even if neither of them had been attached to others, she knew that Jonathan was too beautiful and swift a beast for her to manage, or complement, or deserve. When he walked into a room, or she and Peter joined him and Holly at a table, Charlotte felt as if she had lost control of a car. She blushed and her heart beat faster. There were a couple of times when she found herself alone with him and she had suspected he was flirting with her and she had had the fleeting thought — but no, that would have been impossible. This attraction to Jonathan had made Charlotte feel jealous of Holly and uncomfortable with her when Jonathan was alive, and that remained true now.
Then, finally, Jonathan’s death had added another layer of awkwardness: it was such a big thing for two people who didn’t know each other well to go through and so made it even harder to talk to Holly in a superficial way, but going deep down into the tragedy didn’t seem like an option either. Charlotte felt embarrassed by what had happened, that her wedding had been the scene of something so dramatic, and that she had reacted as she had. Jonathan’s death had certainly not brought them closer; rather, they were like two acquaintances in a tragedy who, after all the leads had died, had to stay onstage and talk about the weather.
It was just about time for Holly to arrive. Charlotte wondered when Peter would get home. Peter was so good with Holly. She had certainly needed him in the months since Jonathan’s death, and, Charlotte was quite sure, Peter had certainly needed Holly. Peter had a good heart, and Charlotte knew he was devastated by the death of his friend. Being with Holly helped. She didn’t begrudge them the time they spent together. Soon enough, she expected, Holly would move on to another life. That there should be any attraction between Peter and Holly had never occurred to her: she never imagined that Peter, good, solid Peter, would feel misbegotten passion, or that Holly, beautiful, swift Holly, would tarry for a domestic animal such as he.
Charlotte looked again at the time. She saved her work on the laptop and closed it (she had been tweaking a chart that showed the yearly caloric production per hectare of French Guiana); she would have to leave the papers where they were, because she had a map of her work in her mind and they represented the terrain. It would make the apartment look messy, but Holly wouldn’t mind about that. She got up and put in her contacts and brushed her hair and decided to leave it down; assessing her attire, she found it suitable. She spent a moment looking at her face in the mirror. Then the intercom buzzed. Charlotte took another look at herself in the mirror; what she saw did not displease her, but it didn’t please her so much, either. She had to answer the buzzer, but she lingered at the mirror for another moment: her heart sank, anxiety and irritation fluttered in her breast; she felt as if it had become occupied by a swarm of dirty flies. She went to the intercom and said, “Holly?” “Yes, it’s me!” came the reply. “Great! Come on up!”
Charlotte pressed the buzzer. In the lag before Holly arrived there was plenty of time for a swirling galaxy of thoughts to form. Charlotte stood by the intercom thinking: What, what, what could she claim as an attribute in which she was superior to Holly? Looks? Cleverness? Success? Husband? Grace? Charm? Happiness? Social status? Wealth? Taste? Charlotte ran all these categories through her mind, searching for Holly’s weak points; she was like a rock climber desperately searching for a crevice into which she could insert her fingertips. Teaching Latin to private-school girls? That wasn’t very major. Charlotte remembered her own teachers and how insignificant they now seemed. Charlotte’s work was international in scope. Meanwhile, the gods had ill-favored Holly, as evidenced by the tragedy she had undergone, a tragedy that was so public and odd that it made her an object of unwelcome curiosity. Also, Charlotte was more sophisticated about, well, lots of things. She knew it was small of her, but she felt better.
Holly arrived carrying shopping bags made of thick brown paper and with fat cords for handles. She had gone to one of the fancy food shops nearby. The end of a baguette stuck out of one of the bags, like a phallus.
“Charlotte! Hi!” Holly said.
“Holly! Hello!” They kissed. “Wow, did you buy out the whole store?” Charlotte asked. “Here, let me take one of those.” She leaned in to take a bag.
“Thanks,” said Holly. “You know, you get into one of those places and can’t resist things. I probably overdid it. But I’ve got the menu all planned.”
“Great!”
Holly followed as Charlotte led the way to her kitchen, a small space where there would barely be enough room on the counters for all the viands that Holly had produced.
“All o
f this looks so good,” Charlotte said, unpacking the bags. “It’s really nice of you to do this. I’m in a state of near panic.” Charlotte had intended to say this with genuine appreciation and friendliness, but it came out singsong and fakey; and, at the same time, that wasn’t an effect she altogether regretted. Holly had been studying a jar in her hand. When Charlotte spoke she looked up and smiled at her.
“I’m so happy to do it. And anyway, you know that you are really doing me the favor. I don’t know what else I’d be doing tonight. I’m really glad to have the company and to be busy doing something.”
Charlotte did not say anything to this.
Holly looked at the jar again. “The problem with these recipes,” she said, “is that they always call for two tablespoons of whatever, so you run out and buy a whole bottle of grapeseed oil, which you won’t have any reason to use ever again in your life, and so the bottle will stay in your cupboard, and probably move with you several times.” She looked over at Charlotte with a smile.
“Yes,” Charlotte said. “I find that’s true with . . . with . . .” She couldn’t think of anything, so she just repeated, “I find that’s true.”
Holly removed the baguette, butter, olives. “I hope this turns out all right,” she said. “You can’t ruin loin of pork, can you?”
“We’ve had delicious dinners at your place!”
Holly rolled her eyes. “That’s nice of you to say. I’ve been trying to learn from my father over the past few years. I usually have to call him when I’m about halfway through.”
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