Clara and Mr. Tiffany (17 page)

“No. He’s wild about you.”

“I’m not so sure now. Maybe he thinks poorly of me on moral grounds, he being so high-minded.”

“He’s a
man
, Clara!”

“A man doesn’t just walk off and leave his fiancée in a hotel room. He had to intend to escape.”

“But he didn’t take his coat.”

George pounded the railing once with his fist. “What we don’t know is whether he would have come here if you weren’t with him.”

I felt an unintentional stab of incrimination.

“Has anything like this ever happened before?”

It was the wrong time to ask. Sheriff Hollister was approaching the pagoda.

“Excuse me for interrupting. You the brother?”

“Yes. George Waldo.” He held out his hand.

“They’re going to drag the west part of the lake tomorrow. If they don’t find him, I’m afraid they’ll call off the search. The longer you wait, the less likely—”

“I know,” George was quick to say.

“It’s time to get a detective.”

“Let’s go.”

WE WAITED TEN DAYS
at Kaye’s Park while two detectives tried to track him. Time hung heavy on us. As the reality descended, we were careful not to say anything that might upset each other. We drifted aimlessly in
a rowboat some days, and George sketched in a desultory manner other days, until temperatures dropped dramatically and a storm blew in and stayed. Edwin was only in his shirtsleeves! I thought of the bard’s sonnet defining love: True love “looks on tempests and is never shaken.” I was shaken.

The detectives had traced Edwin passing through Clinton and Beloit, Wisconsin, where he inquired at a bus station how to get to Savannah, Illinois, but there they lost him. A week later they picked up traces of him in Dubuque and Davenport, and lost him again. George’s hope was fading. He cabled his parents in Connecticut.

An early frost had turned the maple leaves a deep, blood red vibrating in the wind, and the oaks a sallow yellow. Before breakfast one morning, I came to the parlor window and saw George hurling stones into the lake, one right after another, angrily flailing about, pitching them wildly until he exhausted himself and came in, shivering and embarrassed when he saw that I’d been watching.

During breakfast, a din of honking started the geese moving in agitated fashion on the lawns, stretching their wings. We left our plates and hurried outside. At a distance, one goose flapped its wings and lifted, no longer earthbound, honking wildly. Others near him followed, forming a
V
, their beautiful white underwings tipped in black, their necks stretched forward into the ether. Then the gaggle on the lawn where we stood lifted off the ground with a great thrumming of wings, and another flock became airborne off the water, and formed their
V
’s, each with the lead bird gaining height quickly. All over the lake and shore, the sky became full, the honking a deafening jubilation of flight, of freedom of movement, of instinct.

“A great drama of avian migration, Edwin would have called it,” I said.

We watched standing close together but separate in our sorrowful thoughts until the sky was full of mere specks. And then the vastness took them in.

Goose, oh, my wild goose, no longer earthbound, no longer mine. Do not fold your wings.

Still fixed on the sky, I abandoned caution and asked, “You never did answer me. Has he ever flown before?”

During an excruciating silence, George seemed to be at war with himself.

“Once. But that was ten years ago.”

“Tell me.”

George turned away to speak. “He was studying at Andover Seminary in Massachusetts. During the break between terms, he went south with another student, heading toward Charleston. Coming back north alone, he wound up here at Lake Geneva instead of returning directly to Andover. He had no recollection of how he got here. He didn’t remember anything after being on the train heading south. My parents didn’t miss him because they assumed he had returned to Andover after his trip with his friend, and he arrived there the day the new term started. Apparently he came to his senses on his own, here at the lake, and then went back to the seminary. It was years before he confessed it to me.”

“You knew that and you didn’t tell me? You just let me go ahead? Why didn’t you say something when he left Nutley like a madman?”

He cringed at my shrieking accusation.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

A long moment passed before he spoke to the empty sky. “Because
I
couldn’t have you as my wife. But
he
could.” His voice rose in pitch. “The prospect of having you in the family was irresistible.
And
I wanted so badly for him to have you, for him to be happy. He would have been a broken man if you had said no.”

A
T IRVING PLACE AGAIN AFTER A MONTH AWAY CAREENING FROM
happiness to anger, wrung by injury and sorrow, I unpacked, stopping often to stare at nothing and wonder what Edwin was doing right at that moment, whether he was suffering, hurt, lucid—or bewildered, like I was. The number of possibilities made my temples throb, my jaw ache. I nestled in my bed in this private crevice of the day to look for comfort from Emily Dickinson, and found not comfort so much as wisdom, with a bookmark at the page. One innocent day I must have thought the verse clever before I knew its truth.

Discerning and wry, yes, but not comforting. I doubted if she had ever sunk into a night of love like Isolde’s, or like mine. If she had, she would have been too controlled to lose her equilibrium, and I didn’t want to lose mine either. The words blurred, and that stinging feeling that comes just before tears swelled up around my eyes. I reached for Mr. Tiffany’s handkerchief, but not soon enough. Loss overwhelmed me. I had the handkerchief from Mr. Tiffany, the kaleidoscope from Francis, but what from Edwin? Nothing. He had given me nothing but promises. I was bereft of even a memento to clutch in private, desperate moments, like a soul-sick nun clutching a crucifix. What was wrong with me to lose one man after another?

A knock at my door rescued me from at least this bout of self-pity.

“It’s me. Alice!”

I flung open the door.

“I live here now,” she said. “I took your advice. West Fifty-seventh was too far from Tiffany’s.”

We fell into each other’s arms. “You couldn’t have picked a better time. Your face is sunshine after rain.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

“Then you know?”

“In a general way. No details. Chatty Miss Owens is cautioning everyone not to be too inquisitive, then leaves them with innuendos, which only makes them more curious.”

By now the Lesser Furies at the other dining table had probably discussed it thoroughly, making speculations, leveling judgments. At my table, the only one I had to brace myself for was Mrs. Hackley.

I sat back against the iron headboard and patted the quilt next to me, an invitation to get comfortable.

“He just disappeared. Bolted. One night of love, a glimpse of him out the door the next morning, and then he was gone. Poof. A master of irony.”

“What irony?”

“He had promised me adventure and surprise. Who would have thought that by this bizarre surprise he would throw me over? If he had come back the next day or the next week and I had married him, he would have done me the honor of keeping me in perpetual anxiety over another disappearance, or other aberration on his otherwise solid veneer.”

“Don’t be sharp, Clara. I expected you to be upset and sad.”

“I
am
upset. I’ve been racked with worry for him. It’s that responsibility issue torturing me again. What did I do or say that made him run off?”

“Maybe nothing.”

“Sad? Of course I’m sad. Deeper than that. Heartsick. That I may have caused him some catastrophe.”

“Do you have any idea where he might be?”

“No. Nor how he is living. If I only knew that he was all right.” My
throat constricted, and my voice was pinched and high. “I’m afraid, Alice.”

She wrapped her arms around me. “Oh, no, sweet. He’s a man. He’ll be all right.”

“I’m afraid for me too. I’m afraid I’ll never know what happened. I may have to live the rest of my life not knowing.”

“Shh,” she crooned, rocking me.

“I still have so much to sort out. My feelings, I mean.”

I could not hold with the idea of his willfulness in hurting me. I could not believe in deceit. Instead, I could believe in mystery. Even in tragedy.

“He may be dead, for all we know. His brother has diminishing hopes.”

I had been furious at George for not warning me before I threw my life at someone who had the stability of a child’s top. I had screamed at him, which only made him clam up and pout in remorse. During those silent hours on the train with him I began to realize that for him to take that risk to ensure my presence in his life had not been an act of flippant mischief, like Puck’s, only reckless love. But what love doesn’t have something of the reckless in it? Both of us were guilty of that. My anger began to melt, and probably his too, in the new knowledge that in some crippled way, we did have each other in our lives. But that was too complicated to get into now with Alice.

“Is his brother named George?” she asked. “The George that everyone talks about here?”

“The same. He takes his meals here and lives in his studio next door. You’ll see him at dinner tonight.”

“I knew him at Art Students League. A funny fellow.”

“On the surface.”

His funniness and frivolity had dissolved in those days at Lake Geneva. As we waited in the parlor during the storm that had made our worry excruciating, the man I saw allowed a depth of feeling to emerge. Before this, George was an innocent. The simplicity of his nature prevented him from knowing that people hurt even their loved ones by orchestrating their lives.

“He’s a little … The men here, don’t you find them …?”

“Alice, don’t be naïve. This building isn’t Greek Revival style by accident.
Not all of them. Not Mr. Booth, the Englishman; and not Mr. Bainbridge, the actor; or Dr. Griggs; or Mr. York, an industrial designer, a quiet sort but a good fellow. He smokes sunflower leaves so as to keep the air fresh for the rest of us. And Dr. Griggs has helped everyone here with potions and pills and bandages at one time or another.”

“Do I need to be concerned about the others?”

“No. It’s safer here than in any other mixed boardinghouse that I know of. Dudley’s a cream puff, and Hank would do anything for me. Once when I was sick, I had to get a drawing to Mr. Tiffany right away. Hank delivered it himself. Of course, that got him into Tiffany’s studio, which he loved.”

“I haven’t met any Englishman here, but the others are nice enough.”

“Don’t try to figure out who’s matched with whom. It will drive you crazy trying to pick up on clues. Just think of it as fluid, interchangeable, communal, and let it be.”

“Are you coming back to work?”

“Of course, at whatever toll my embarrassment takes. I have struggled out of widow’s weeds to gather a wedding trousseau, and now I’ve packed it in some attic of my mind in order to wear again the garb of the working woman—shirtwaist, tie, and lace-up shoes.”

Alice patted my hand.

With the absorption of work and the love of a few good friends, I felt I could solder the brittle pieces together and take up my old life again.

After brief, embarrassed condolences all around, dinner that night was awkward and tense. With dark circles under his eyes, George sat between Dudley and Hank, and I think he drew strength, if not peace, from being in their presence. It was sweet to see the way they made sure he ate. Dudley cut out the choicest morsel of his lamb chop and laid it on George’s plate. George and I stole mutual glances to check how the other one was bearing up, and I caught glimpses of Alice checking on us both.