The White Rose

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  “He’s late,” Oliver says, unsteady on his feet. “Sophie, you have to leave.”

  She gives him a look of dull forbearance. “No, not if Bart’s on his way. I need to talk to him.”

  “You don’t understand!” Oliver says, and his voice comes out so strained and harsh, he flinches. “He’s not coming to see you. Or me. He’s…meeting someone.”

  Sophie looks past him, and then, helplessly, he watches her take in the room: the champagne glasses and chocolates, the mercifully closed bedroom door…and then the open bathroom door, through which Olivia’s clothes are clearly visible; they hang from a towel hook, the heels placed modestly together, beneath them on the tile floor. Olivia’s wig sits waiting on the closed toilet seat. Oliver can almost hear the combination lock of her comprehension, clicking open. “That was you,” Sophie says in wonder. “On Commerce Street.”

  He shakes his head, but it’s pointless. He can’t even look her in the eye. And in any case, another car is driving onto the gravel of the parking lot.

  Oliver pulls her inside, and shuts the door behind her. “I’m sorry,” he tells her. “I’m so sorry. I told you I would take care of this.”

  “I shouldn’t have asked,” she says simply. “It was my responsibility. It was wrong of me to ask.”

  “It wasn’t wrong,” Oliver insists as the heavy inn door opens downstairs. “I wanted to. And I had…a plan,” he says stupidly. “It’s all going wrong. But I didn’t want you to have to see anything.”

  Sophie nods, as if, Oliver thinks, she is actually following the disorderly progression of his logic. From downstairs comes the murmur of voices: Barton, being directed to Olivia Nemo’s suite.

  “I’ve told my father,” Sophie says quietly. “Now I’m going to tell Bart. Is that him?”

  Oliver tries to glean the meaning of this, but the noises are distracting him—whining wood and human effort: Barton Ochstein sounds upon the stair. Undoubtedly Barton, now. That he could have taken Sophie’s step for this heavy, eager tread seems thoroughly absurd.

  “Oh-Liv-Vee-Yah,” Barton sings, tap-tapping with a knuckle.

  Sophie seems to go still, intent on the sound.

  “Is there a young lady at home?” Barton calls, sounding for all the world like a man who is not two days from his own wedding. They both stand where they are, listening.

  Tap-tap.

  “Will you…,” Oliver whispers, feebly, “could you wait in the bathroom?”

  She kisses him. It is not a passionate kiss, but resolute and lightning quick, on Oliver’s open mouth. “No,” says Sophie, and she walks to the door and opens it.

  Oliver can’t see what she sees. He sees the open door, and Sophie’s face in profile, the great knot of hair teetering at her nape. He sees her expression, not fond or angry or bereaved, but finally blank, as if she were looking not at her faithless fiancé but at some stranger on the subway. She has one hand on the doorknob still, and Oliver stares at it, riveted by the new information that she is no longer wearing her engagement ring. There is utter silence from the landing.

  “Barton,” Sophie says at last, “I think you should come in.”

  She steps back and he follows her, stumbling into the room, leaving the door ajar behind him. He is holding flowers, of course. Red carnations, commonest of the common, four days old and wrapped in…yes, cellophane. Barton notices Oliver and looks at him with incomprehension, then goes back to Sophie.

  “Well,” he begins, gamely. “This is a surprise.”

  “So I gather,” Sophie says. “Look, I suggest we skip over the part about what we’re all doing here and go right to the content.”

  Barton frowns. “Content,” he considers, perplexed.

  “I want you to know,” she says, “that I bear you absolutely no ill will. I mean that, Barton.”

  “Sophie!” Barton snaps to attention. “Please, don’t say anything more.”

  “There isn’t much more to say,” she tells him. “But this is the important part. I’ve decided not to marry you, Bart. I’m very sorry, but I don’t think I’d be happy as your wife. And actually, I don’t really think I’m what you’re looking for, either.”

  “Sophie, now listen,” Barton counters anxiously. “This is all—”

  “You’re a kind man. I appreciate that. And my father has very warm feelings for you. I hope you’ll want to see him, still. He would like that, Bart.”

  Oliver watches her, stunned and moved. She seems to ascend in place as she speaks. She is, it comes to him, magnificent.

  “Sophie!” Barton says sharply. “This is…someone called me to say…my…I have a cousin. Olivia. She is here for the wedding,” Barton announces. “I was coming over to see her. This is not at all what you evidently have decided it is.”

  “Bullshit,” Oliver says, but under his breath, as if, having abdicated his role, he is reluctant to reenter the drama.

  Barton seems to really notice Oliver this time. At first, he doesn’t hold Oliver’s eyes, but then, almost immediately, his gaze flickers back. Then back again. Then he begins to glare. “Who are you?” he says, finally. “Sophie, who is this?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says, shaking her head and sounding tired. “It isn’t about him, really.”

  “About…” Barton trails off. “Why is this man here?”

  Sophie looks at Oliver. She seems, for a long moment, to need reminding about why he is here.

  “He’s here,” she says, “because I love him. And…” Then, unaccountably, she smiles. “Also, he’s doing the flowers.”

  “Flowers?” Barton says. “You.” He lifts the carnations in accusation. “Tell me your name.”

  “You know my name,” Oliver says.

  “He does?” says Sophie.

  “You’ve known it for months. Tell her.”

  “I’ve never seen him before,” Barton announces, desperation edging his voice. “Sophie, this is preposterous. A trick has been played on us, and we should joke about it. I have a good sense of humor about these things, you know. That’s one thing you know about me,” he says heartily, managing even to produce a short laugh. “There’s no need to take it all so seriously. Let’s go downstairs and talk about this, right now. You know how fond of you I am.”

  “I do know,” she says kindly. “But I’m not going to do that.”

  “Sophie,” Barton says, more angrily, “this…person…clearly is taking advantage of you. I never want to see that happen to someone I care about.”

  “Tell her my name,” Oliver says to him, enraged. “Tell her about all the phone calls you made to me, and all the invitations. And the flowers you’ve sent. Hundreds of dollars’ worth of flowers. Which you’ve never paid for!” he can’t resist adding. “Talk about taking advantage!”

  Barton, with sudden understanding, begins to shake his head, frantically. “Utterly untrue!” Barton tells Sophie.

  “Utterly true,” Oliver says bitterly.

  “You’re a deceitful…!” Barton bellows. A deceitful what, he doesn’t say.

  “You know him?” Sophie asks Oliver quietly.

  “Oh, sure,” Oliver nods. “He’s the kind of guy who stops on his way to a romantic assignation to pick up carnations, all wrapped up in cellophane and tied with a red ribbon. What else is there to know?”

  Sophie turns to face Oliver. “I don’t think it’s fair to hold that against him,” she says. “Not everyone’s as invested in the beauty of flowers as you are.”

  Barton, dazed, regards the carnations he carries. “This is…,” he says feebly. “This is…not for…” He draws himself up, recovering from his outrage. “An…assignation, Sophie. I was merely stopping here to see my cousin Olivia. Then I was on my way to the farm. This bouquet was intended for you, Sophie.”

  “Bouquet,” Oliver says in disgust. “Naturally. Bouquet!”

  “You know”—Sophie shakes her head—“some people like carnations.”

  “Impossible,” Oliver states with
repelled authority. “No one likes carnations. They’re inherently despicable.” He stops, a matter of great significance now occurring to him. “You don’t…like carnations. Do you?”

  She gives this sober consideration and duly locates her answer. “No,” she sighs.

  “No?” Barton asks, baffled.

  “I’m afraid not,” she tells him. “It was a nice thought, though.”

  “It was bullshit,” Oliver says. “There’s no cousin Olivia. He only has one cousin. And her name isn’t Olivia, is it, Barton?”

  “You seem to know quite a bit about my cousin,” Barton says menacingly.

  “I know you made a pass at her assistant, right under her nose. I know you couldn’t care less about her. I know she’d be horrified if she knew what you’ve been up to.”

  “Are you talking,” says Sophie, struggling to follow, “about Marian Kahn?”

  “Marian Warburg,” Barton says, pausing amid the general absurdity to assert his preferred nomenclature.

  “Marian Kahn!” Oliver shouts. “Jesus, you don’t know the first thing about her, do you? You pay all this lip service to your family name, but you don’t give a damn about your real family.” Then he can feel, in some detached way, Sophie’s cool hand at his wrist, and the bitterness slips from him. He is here after all, with Sophie, who is here with him. The rest is noise. “I have nothing against you,” he says. “I only wish…”

  But he stops. His wishes are not for the likes of Barton.

  “Sophie,” Barton says. “I really think this matter is for us to discuss. Alone. Whatever this person has told you, there are genuine feelings between us.”

  “There are,” Sophie agrees. “But they’re not enough. Please, Bart. Let’s just finish it now.”

  “I—” Barton begins, already disagreeing, but then all three of them fall silent. There is a disturbance just outside: the displacement of air, a sound on the landing. Then the door opens wide, swinging into the room and against the wall, where it silently stops. Oliver looks up. What he sees makes him want to disappear.

  Marian stands in the doorway, her face drawn and sad, and his first thought—before the disbelief and the humiliation and the wave of deepest regret—is that she looks so young. Like a girl, younger even than himself, wrapped up in a white bathrobe with her hair loose to her shoulders and her feet bare, as if she has just been awakened, which—Oliver now understands—she undoubtedly has been. Behind the DO NOT DISTURB sign, all this time. But how?

  “Marian,” Oliver asks quietly, “how can you be here?”

  She looks at all three of them, then only at him. “I came for the wedding,” she says simply. “I was sleeping. But then I heard someone call my name.” She seems to consider this, almost languidly. “Was it you, Oliver?”

  “Oliver!” Barton says, outraged.

  “Oliver?” Sophie says, her hand now heavy on his wrist.

  Oliver shakes his head, speechless and bereft. “Marian,” he hears himself say, “this is Sophie.”

  “I know who she is,” Marian says. She comes into the room, her eyes on Sophie, her hand offered. It slips from inside the thick robe: a fragile wrist, long fingers, unpolished nails. She takes Sophie’s hand. Oliver can only look at her. He can’t recall ever having loved her as deeply as now, when he can see so clearly what he has already lost. She is very lovely. They both are: lovely women, women he loves. He is so ashamed he can barely stand.

  “It’s a good thing you’ve come, Marian,” Barton says, rebounding. “I don’t think you have any idea what your friend here has been up to.”

  She turns from Sophie, but reluctantly. Along the way, Oliver watches her notice everything else: the women’s clothing in the bathroom, the champagne flutes. By the time her gaze rests on Barton, nothing has eluded her.

  “Does it really matter?” she asks her cousin. “I think we all end up in the same place.”

  “Of course it matters!” he sputters, clenching his carnations.

  “Barton,” Marian says, sighing, “isn’t it time for you to leave?”

  “No, no,”—he shakes his head—“no, it’s all a mistake. Really, Sophie, we’ve been horribly abused tonight. A terrible thing has been done.”

  “Barton,” Marian says wearily.

  “I reject this!” he cries. “I find this behavior reprehensible.”

  “Barton,” Marian says, her voice sharp, “you are not listening. You need to know when a thing is over.” And she looks, unavoidably, but for the briefest instant, at Oliver. “It’s over now.”

  “Sophie,” says Barton, pointlessly.

  “I’m sorry, Barton,” says Sophie.

  At last he goes, taking his horrible flowers away with him, clomping loudly down the stairs. For a moment, no one speaks.

  Sophie’s hand isn’t on his arm any longer, Oliver notes. He has failed to mark its departure, or even its absence, until now. What does that mean? he wonders. Who is with him? Who loves him?

  “I take it the wedding is off,” Marian says at last.

  “It’s off,” says Sophie. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry.” She gives a faint smile. “I had to be in Rhinebeck today, anyway.”

  “No,” Sophie stumbles. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” says Marian. Then she looks at Oliver. Then she goes, shutting the door behind her.

  Sophie drifts away from him. She crosses the small room and sits, facing the fireplace, almost disappearing into the wings of the armchair. He has no idea what to say to her, or whether there is any point in explaining, or even what his explanation might be, and so he stands pointlessly, pondering and then discarding the few ideas he has. The fact that he is about to lose everything is abundantly clear to him. All that’s left are details.

  When he finally steps closer, when he finally gathers enough courage to crouch down beside her, he can see that her eyes are closed. From first one, then the other, single tears emerge and descend. She looks, he thinks, as bereft as that other day, the day he understood that he loved her, the day she asked for his help.

  “That day at Columbia,” Sophie says, jolting suddenly into his thoughts. “You weren’t there to see me at all, were you?”

  Oliver considers. “I think I was,” he says. “I just didn’t know I was.”

  She shakes her head.

  “I’m sorry,” Oliver says, reaching for her. “I don’t know what to say. It wasn’t a casual thing. I really loved her.”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” Sophie says, biting her lip. “You never lied to me. You told me you were involved with someone. And even before you told me, Bell told me, so I knew. If I convinced myself otherwise, it’s entirely my fault.”

  “No!” says Oliver, grabbing for her hand.

  “I want you to know that I don’t expect anything from you. You helped me, out of kindness. As a friend.”

  “No, no!” Oliver says. “I mean, yes, as a friend. And I am your friend. But I did it for myself, too, not only out of kindness. Because of what I want for myself.”

  “And what do you want, Oliver?” says Sophie. “Now would be a good moment to tell me.”

  But now is the moment he hears, from across the landing, the unmistakable creak of the old floorboards, and a door shutting. Marian is there, and he needs to say something to her.

  “I’ll be right back,” he tells Sophie.

  Outside, the landing is empty. The DO NOT DISTURB sign swings gently on the door handle on the opposite room. Oliver tears down the stairs, but he doesn’t find her in the foyer, or in the lounge. Only the tap of a heel on stone draws him to the back door, where she stands, her suitcase at her heel, shrugging on her coat.

  “Marian, wait,” Oliver calls, and she stops where she is.

  At first, he can only look at her. When he finally speaks, it’s to state the obvious.

  “You’re leaving.”

  “I’m going to drive back to the city,” she says quietly. “I don’t rea
lly feel like spending the night here.”

  “Marian,” Oliver says desperately, “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t…I didn’t decide to fall in love with someone else. I couldn’t control it.”

  “I know that,” Marian says, impassively. “But I need to go, Oliver.”

  And they stand again in their mutual sadness.

  “I don’t regret it,” Marian suddenly says, looking surprised at her own emotion. “I wish I’d spent less time worrying about everything and more time just appreciating you.”

  “I felt appreciated,” says Oliver. “I know you loved me.”

  She nods. She has one hand on the door. The other holds closed the lapels of her coat.

  “I think,” he says, “I’ll always feel some of it.”

  “All right,” she agrees. “Me too.”

  “And you’ll know I do, if we see each other. Even if I don’t say so.”

  “Okay,” Marian nods. “Good-bye, sweetheart.”

  He rushes to her: one step, two steps. It takes forever to get there. Then it takes forever to let her go.

  “She’s very pretty,” Marian says, her face slick with tears.

  “Marian,” says Oliver, who is also crying, “you’re so good.”

  Then, to his great surprise, she laughs. A genuine laugh.

  “The last person who said that to me was Valerie Annis,” she says, shaking her head. “Isn’t that funny?” Marian picks up her suitcase. “Now go back upstairs,” she tells him, and opens the door, and goes outside.

  But he can’t do that yet. Long minutes will pass before he can do what she says.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Here Saw Nothing to Regret