A Wife of Noble Character (3 page)

“Safe from what?”

She paused, her eyes beyond the room. “I don't know. From being alone?”

Preston disagreed with her on so many fundamental levels that he wished she would keep talking so he could come up with a response. And he felt badly for her. She underestimated herself. It was hard to get sentimental about Vivienne, though, when you thought of the money and all that money could do.

He shouldn't have said anything to begin with. He was in no position to discuss marriage, but it was fun, sometimes, to pretend he was as grown-up as he should be by now. Like Vivienne, he'd always imagined that at thirty he'd already be married. Certainly not living on loans, alone in a garage apartment. But thoughts like these never ruined his day. He could trace the fact that he was single to a cause. He'd made the choice not to get serious with anyone yet. He'd always known he wanted to be an architect and that he'd have to be broke in order to do it. He wondered about Vivienne, though—why hadn't she married yet? Sitting across from him, tugging at a loose thread in the quilt, she looked a little lost.

“Want to share a cigarette?” he said. “I promise I only smoke when I have guests.” Vivienne glanced at him with a moment's reluctance in her eyes and then, just as quickly, composed her face into a picture of gladness. The transformation was strange but unsurprising. Wasn't it her job, in a way, to adapt to the various scenarios life presented and, by her loveliness, make those scenarios pleasant for the other people involved? She did it well, but Preston detected a flicker of effort, which he attributed to himself. He'd stuck a fork in her gears.

He found the cigarettes in his kitchenette junk drawer. He kept them to share with girls, but he hadn't brought a girl home in so long that the pack had yet to be opened.

They went to the open window. Vivienne rested her back against the frame and peered down the driveway. Somewhere in the neighborhood a car alarm was going off. Farther away, ambulance sirens. When the car alarm stopped, a pair of mourning doves could be heard cooing in the oaks.

“The Blanks' Memorial Day party is in two weeks,” she said, taking the cigarette he offered.

“The annual blowout rivaled only by the GOP convention,” Preston said. “I'll bring my rifle in case you forget yours.”

Vivienne brought the cigarette to her lips and pulled. “You always tease me,” she said, exhaling. She didn't pass the cigarette, but he didn't mind. He didn't even want it. He just wanted to watch her smoke. “You know what's funny? I have no memory of ever talking to each other in high school.”

“That was on purpose,” he said. “I tried hard to be invisible to pretty girls in high school.”

She smiled. “I heard you designed Karlie and Tim's addition.”

Preston shrugged. “I didn't design it. I interned for the firm that designed it.”

“I don't know why they needed an addition,” she said. “Unless Karlie is planning on having a baby soon.”

“Because bigger is better. You know that.”

“Does it scare you,” she said, “not knowing when you'll be able to afford more than an apartment?”

Preston was amused at being put in his place. “Not at all. I'm one of the noble peasants.”

“The fact that you'll have to work all the time and find a job—does that worry you? That you won't be able to move around?”

“Well, yeah, with all the parties I'll miss at Waverly's ranch.”

She rolled her eyes. “They're honest questions.”

“They're also snotty questions,” he said.

Vivienne took a final drag and scowled. “Cigarettes are gross.” She tossed it out the window.

Preston made a mental note to find it on the driveway later and throw it away.

She leaned forward, gripping the windowsill, hesitating, focused on something above the tree line. “Whenever I see you, I end up wondering what you think of me.”

“Probably because you think I'm so wise.”

She shook her head and laughed. “Time for me to go.”

He stepped aside so she could make her way through the passage between the furniture to the door. “Do you remember how to get back to your car? I can walk you.”

“I'm fine on my own.”

He felt divided between wanting more time with her—something seemed unresolved—and relief that she was leaving. He let the moment pass and didn't insist. They shared a brief hug at the threshold. She felt small in his arms, her breasts a single, solicitous cushion against his chest.

“You should come to the ranch for Memorial Day,” she said over his shoulder.

“Maybe,” he said. He knew without a doubt that he would.

He waved goodbye as she made her delicate way down the stairs, watched her from the doorway as she paused on the last step to slip into her heels.

 

II

I am insane
, Vivienne thought. She straightened her shoulders and strode down the driveway, ignoring the blisters burning her heels. It occurred to her that she didn't entirely remember the way back to her car, but she knew it wasn't far. Better to be lost than to slip further into insanity at Preston's. This time she blamed herself; she'd invited it. Just as she was turning the corner—it was a left from the driveway, that much she remembered—a bicycle materialized in the corner of her vision and swept past, nearly catching her dress and pulling her down.

Vivienne whipped around. The bicyclist braked, not to check on her but to park. It was a girl riding with an armful of books. She dropped her kickstand and started up the driveway.

“Excuse me!” Vivienne said.

The girl turned around. She was clearly a student, with her books and frumpy jeans and T-shirt.

“You almost ran me over!” Vivienne felt hot in the face.

“Sorry,” the girl said, with obvious apathy.

She gave Vivienne a curious stare and continued on her way. Vivienne watched her. She had pretty hair. It was perfectly straight and shiny, the hair Vivienne longed for. Now she was standing at Preston's door, knocking. Annoyed afresh, Vivienne crossed the street and went to find her car, without turning back. The thought that another girl was coming over to his little apartment seconds after she'd left it, to occupy the same chair, the only chair, and probably to talk about books, which Vivienne wasn't good at talking about, was exceptionally annoying, because it made her feel less special, less set apart from the rest. It was as if all her efforts to charm Preston had been for naught. Surely he found books more charming than her own brand of charm, and the girl had an armful of them.

Her mind felt ablaze. It might have been the cigarette, but it was probably Preston. He was always jabbing her, questioning her, finding fault with her desires. It was the same last time she ran into him, a few weeks ago, at Bladimir's birthday party. They were at a poorly lit bar, sitting around a sticky wooden table with a bunch of people she didn't know. It wasn't her kind of place, and it hadn't been clear to her if it was a gay bar, despite the fact that Blad was gay. She didn't ask Blad or Preston about it, because she was embarrassed that she didn't know.

She and Preston had had a conversational wrangle about reality television, Preston declaring it yet another terrible thing about the world. He'd been a little drunk and was endearing because he got so passionate about his arguments, but Vivienne mainly remembered feeling stomped. She'd only been arguing that reality television was entertaining. Preston had wanted her to
justify her position
. All she could say, over and over, was that she personally found it entertaining. Preston claimed this was
insufficient justification
. She tried to get drunk, but the men weren't offering to buy drinks, and no one had seemed impressed with her, except for Preston, but she never could tell with him.

Preston probably didn't remember that night, which didn't come as a shock, because one of her most firmly held convictions was that men never remember anything, and if they do, they remember very little and always the wrong or unimportant things. Sometimes she felt this worked to her benefit, but mostly it impeded her. If she was in the mood to hear Bucky, whom she was currently dating, tell the story of when they first met, she was forced to ask, “And did you think I was beautiful?” To which he would reply, “Of course I did, baby.” All he really remembered was what he ate for dinner that night. It wasn't such a romantic story; Karlie introduced them at a Prayerwood church benefit three months earlier and they exchanged soft conversation over barbecued quail, but she thought he should indulge her in a little exaggeration.

Vivienne's dreams were full of men who remembered. They remembered their eyes falling upon her in bountiful detail; they remembered exactly the words they'd spoken regarding marriage and children, even years out; they remembered in juicy specificity stories about other women they had dated. They even asked Vivienne about things they hoped she remembered, and in her dreams she'd luxuriate in not remembering anything at all.

Preston only seemed to remember the things about her that he disagreed with, which she responded to with her charm, a technique that hardly worked on him, she thought now. This woolly feeling in her brain—was she the one who'd been charmed? The way he looked at her with lifted brows and sideways smiles set her flirting all off course. The apartment with its handmade quilt, and Preston with that curious glint in his eyes and the messy way he rolled up his shirtsleeves. He was the gear around which the whole place worked. It had all been so disarming that she'd had to raise a white flag and leave immediately.

She oriented herself from the Menil and was crossing the museum's lawn barefoot, her heels hanging at her side from two fingers, when she heard an unfamiliar voice call out her name—a man's voice. It was jarring, the sudden sound of her own name. She heard it as if she were underwater. The second time, the voice was louder. She had only a second to breach the surface and to turn and face it with a valiant smile.

Randal Stanley.

“Hello, little lady!” he said. He always used cowboy language, overcompensating for the fact that he wasn't really from Texas.

“Hi, Randal,” Vivienne said pleasantly. He was about ten feet away on the path and advancing, which gave her enough time to extend her hand and evade a hug.

“Quite a handshake there,” he said, grinning. A woman in a knee-length pencil skirt and silk blouse, both black, and a pair of slim black stilettos, which Vivienne might have selected for herself, was right behind him. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, and she held a leather-bound folder to her chest. Out of instinct or habit, Vivienne instantly pictured herself through this elegant woman's eyes—and wilted beneath the image. Her hair was loose and flat, her dress frilly and too white. And, worst of all, she was short. Vivienne dreaded standing before a taller woman. She was five-four, not even very short, but she'd been caught unarmed, flat-footed.

She stepped lightly onto the path and restored herself into her own heels. “My heels were sinking into the ground!” she said. “Isn't it a pretty day?” Sufficiently buoyed, it occurred to her to wonder what was going on, Randal with this woman.

“It is now!” Randal said. He was a midsize man who made no effort to conceal his furriness. A throw rug grew beneath his black-and-floral Rockmount shirt. Yet Vivienne could see he'd taken pains to mask his withdrawing hairline. His hair was sideswept and stuck in place. “Whatter you doin' over here?”

The other woman looked at Vivienne serenely, too serenely. Vivienne had a terrible thought:
Do I look like I've been out all night? Does this woman feel sorry for me?
The idea of being pitied coupled with the prospect of Randal Stanley thinking she was on her way home from a one-night stand was too much. He'd no doubt share his false assumption with as many people as possible. It was too complicated to explain being at Preston's. Why would she be here in heels and a dress before noon? Funny that the actual explanation—that she'd come to the neighborhood to see a museum—was, she felt, the most unbelievable.

Vivienne thought fast. “I came by to check out the space for Waverly's rehearsal dinner.” An inspired fiction. She mentally patted herself on the back.

“How about that?” Randal said. “I didn't know this was Bracken's kind of show. He's not a big art guy.” Bracken—Waverly's father—was indeed not an art guy. How could she forget that Randal was courting Bracken's friendship? The museum didn't align with the Blanks' ranch tastes whatsoever.

“Oh, it was Waverly's idea,” Vivienne said, sweet as pie. “I'm her maid of honor, so I thought I'd take a look for her.”

“The museum would be delighted to host the Blanks,” the placid woman said.

“This lovely lady works here,” Randal said. “I'm gettin' involved and she's showin' me the ropes. She's gonna to teach me about art.”

The woman nodded in acknowledgment of his riches. “Mr. Stanley has been very generous.”

Vivienne should have guessed that one immediately: Randal Stanley, Museum Donor. There was no other explanation for this sort of giraffe-like woman paying any attention to him.

“She's about to give me the private tour,” he said. “Why don't you come along? The place is closed up just for us. Me and two pretty women.” He winked lecherously, calling to mind every reason she couldn't stand him. His boots were as slick as his teeth. He was like a snake, always nearing in. That he probably thought she found him handsome was enraging.

“I'd love to, Randal, but I have to go meet Waverly,” she said, smiling. “And now that I think about it, you're right. This isn't really the Blanks' taste for a party.”

“Aw,” he said, “don't turn sour.”

Vivienne kept smiling and refused the invitation again. The frustrating thing was that she would have liked to go into the museum, especially when it was empty and she wouldn't have to deal with other people hogging all the space in front of paintings, but Preston had zapped her museum energy with his sad Rothkos, and there was no way she was going in there with Randal Stanley and a giraffe. She could probably get a private tour of her own if she dropped her aunt's name. But if she accepted now and endured his company, she could defuse Randal's hurt feelings. He probably sensed her evasiveness—he was a slippery man but not a dumb man. If she joined him, he'd be so happy he'd forget the way he was looking at her right that very moment, with wet, loutish skepticism. No doubt he was concocting a way to penalize her for not giving him what he wanted.