Passion and Affect (20 page)

“You're married,” said Elizabeth.

“Bless my soul,” said Richard Mignon. “You don't often hear that in this day and age. Well, you're a very sweet girl to have put up with me, drunken as I am.” He gave her a courtly kiss in the vicinity of her forehead, put on his coat, and walked unsteadily down the stairs.

Two days later she received an elaborate note, in italic hand, apologizing for alcoholic behavior and inviting her to a publication party at the Renaissance Club for a book called
The Structure of Renaissance Florence
. He had done the maps. The postscript said: “Please, please be there.”

Elizabeth put her feet up on her desk and studied the note. It was written on thick, cream-colored paper. She showed it to Tom.

“What am I supposed to make of this?” she said.

“He thinks you're an attractive, intelligent girl and he wants you to come to his party.”

“But if I go, Tom, he'll think I'm flirting with him.”

“It's not against the law to flirt,” Tom said.

“It's pretty high on my list of sins,” said Elizabeth. “What's the story on him?”

“Katie says he's married to a harpsichordist and they have six daughters or five sons. A lot of kids. He's known for his bumptious charm.”

“But if I go to this party, it'll look as if I want him to come around.”

“Elizabeth, you have more scruples than the Book of Common Prayer. He's a nice fellow. You obviously find him interesting enough to think about. This doesn't put you on the line. Why don't you just go?”

“I don't like slight connections,” said Elizabeth. “These things don't speak well of me. Look at George.”

George was George Garzanti. He was a physicist, and the year before, he and Elizabeth had fallen in love at explosive first sight. They had met at a Christmas party and had been almost inseparable for about six months. There was no way, it seemed, in which they did not fit. Her best articles had been written at his kitchen table. They sat side by side, knees touching, in the library, looking up from their books to smile rhapsodically. George thought it was miraculous that they had met at all. These months filled Elizabeth with a joy intense enough to cause suspicion: nothing that luminous and sharp could last. George was recently divorced. He was moody and frenetic. Elizabeth waited for their situation to calm down, for some comfortable normalcy in which they could both relax, but George lived at a skittish and eruptive pace. He invented crises. He drove himself. Even his moments of concentrated tenderness were unnerving, followed as they were by panic and frenzy. It was hit and run.

Finally, there was a showdown. Love was getting in the way of work, George said, and since she didn't want obligation to fill the slot of affection, she let herself into his apartment one afternoon, collected her books, and left on his desk the books and clothing he had left at her apartment. Then she hung her set of keys on a hook by the door, and left, locking herself out.

She assumed that it was over, but George, who could not find a way of incorporating her into his life, was not about to let her go. He wrote and phoned, but he had no emotional vocabulary to explain his feelings with, and finally she asked him not to call.

The night before the publication party, the telephone rang and it was George. He said he had had a terrible dream about her, and wanted to know if she was all right. It knocked her backward to hear from him. She told him again not to call, and then cried herself to sleep.

The Renaissance Club was a series of formal rooms in a mansion off Madison Avenue. People moved from room to room, leaving their drinks on Florentine tables. A flat band of smoke extended above their heads. Elizabeth lounged against the wall, waiting for Richard Mignon, or anyone else she knew. The wall opposite her was mirrored and when she looked across, she saw herself in a silk dress, her ashy hair brushed to a shine, grinning. Then she spotted him. He was surrounded, and the strain of politesse looked as if it was strangling him. He was holding a glass of wine, standing sideways, restless, anxious to get over to her, gesturing.

Finally he was free, and dragged two chairs next to the window.

“Are you very bored?” he said.

“No. I always like looking around,” said Elizabeth.

“A lot of old stiffs here,” he said.

“If you don't see all that many stiffs, it's kind of a thrill.”

“You're making fun of me,” he said. “Why am I the target of everyone's mirth?”

“It's probably because your socks don't match,” said Elizabeth. He looked at his feet. One sock was green and the other gray. “I feel as if I'd been here for several months. I don't have to stay. Let's have a quick dinner.”

He did most of the talking over the meal, and Elizabeth surveyed him. His charm was obviously the result of considerable cultivation, but it worked. Besides, there was something about him that was as innocent as a kitten, and he seemed to be perennially baffled. After dinner they found themselves cramped into another taxi.

“This guy is trying to kill us,” he said, grabbing her shoulder, as the cab hurtled down the West Side highway.

Once in her apartment, they were as tentative as adolescents. In a crowd, he was civilization itself, but faced alone with a girl he was abashed, and it was contagious. They drank wine standing up in front of her fireplace, and they talked about the Renaissance Club. It was not what Elizabeth wanted to hear: she wanted to know about his home life, and what lead him to be standing in her apartment, and why his wife hadn't come to his publication party, but he kept such a tight rein on his conversation that any personal interjection would have been inappropriate, almost rude. When he finished his wine, he wound his muffler around his neck. It was midnight. She wondered if he were going to kiss her, and if so, how he would go about it.

Like a boy at the end of a prom, he kissed her at the door, holding her by the elbows. It was a light, shy, boyish kiss.

Then he looked at her intently. “Say something,” he said.

“This is meant to be a sin,” she said.

“Kissing?”

“Kissing a married man.”

He gave her a puzzled, dismissing look and then held her so close she felt that she was being impaled by the buttons on his Chesterfield. Then he gently pushed her away. She opened the door.

“If there were another boring party to invite you to, I would, but there isn't. I hope I'll see you anyway,” he said, and left.

Sometimes Elizabeth thought she would never get over George Garzanti, that he would stay with her like a splinter, sleeping under the skin. She wanted a life that was clear and straightforward, that made sense. George was like a tornado, or a random act of God.

That night, she thought of Richard Mignon. It was a balm of sorts to have a man pay court to her, but was she to Richard Mignon what George had been to her, urging on something she had no intention of fulfilling?

They met again, at a large, formal dinner party. The Rosenstatts were there, and Tom and Katie. Richard Mignon introduced her to his wife, Violet, whose dry hand she shook. It was a large enough party to get lost in: there were a series of tables and she was separated from him by the length of the room. After dinner, she sat with Tom, and Justin Rosenstatt, Katie's cousin. Richard Mignon stopped her at the door as she was leaving.

“Are you going, so soon?” he said.

“I've got work to do,” she said.

“We must see each other again,” he said.

She left in a kind of despair. George Garzanti occurred to her, sitting at his kitchen table, barefoot. Thinking about the intimacy they had constructed gave her a sense of loss as dizzying and palpable as an earthquake.

Outside, she breathed the icy air and realized that, for all her high-mindedness, she was curious to see how far Richard Mignon would go, how much effort he would make on her behalf. She knew exactly what her limit was, and, probably, what she and Richard Mignon needed was an emotional clinch, something to wrap some withered or disappointed affections around. They would cling to each other some night, worked up to a misguided longing, and turn it down in the name of honor and good sense.

Saturday afternoon, Tom and Katie appeared, bringing Becky, the spaniel, who was snappish from being in the park. Her paws were covered with shredded leaves. They dragged three armchairs in front of the fire and had coffee. Becky paced and snarled, and finally jumped into Elizabeth's lap, where she slept for the rest of the afternoon, leaving Elizabeth covered with dog hairs. Tom said:

“You seem to have captured Mignon's heart.”

“I haven't captured anything.”

“He's always talking to you,” said Katie.

“Is it noticeable?” Elizabeth said.

“It isn't noticeable to the general public,” said Tom. “But I'm for it, since this is the first time I've seen you in really good spirits since George.”

They leashed Becky and walked into the hall. “Because you are in fabulous spirits,” Tom said. “You really are.”

Elizabeth trusted Tom. She was mindful of her mental states, but she knew she was broadcasting something she was not aware of. She stood in front of the mirror trying to see how her fabulous spirits were manifesting themselves. The face in the mirror was grinning faintly.

On Sunday afternoon, Richard Mignon called her.

“I'm right near you,” he said. “Can I stop by, if you're not busy?”

“I'm not busy,” Elizabeth said. Outside it was bleak and foggy. From her window, the trees looked wet and gray, and the air was as thick as woodsmoke. She sat in front of the fire, toasting her feet.

The clothes he wore to visit were the clothes he always wore: elegant, but askew. He maintained a form of battered dandyism. He hung up his coat and sat down. She poured him a glass of sherry. The level of awkwardness in the room was dense. She threw another log on the fire and they embarked upon a scattered, unfocused conversation. When it was scarcely bearable, she went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea, and when she came back he was asleep. He had simply turned his head toward the crook of the chair and gone to sleep as easily as a child. He looked boyish and effortless. He was not being sociable, charming, or socially competent, but only asleep.

It was a comfort to have him there. It had begun to sleet. Ice sprinkled against the windows. It was calm and enclosed, the sort of day she loved.

“I've never been calm before,” said George Garzanti, long ago. “Only with you. You are the most level person I have ever met.” The thought of it was like a stitch in her side.

Richard Mignon woke himself up by shrugging his shoulders. Before he could collect himself, he smiled. Then he was horrified.

“Please don't be apologetic,” Elizabeth said. “Everyone falls asleep in that chair when there's a fire.”

He looked at his watch and scowled. “God, I'm boring. I come to visit you and I fall asleep. Now I've got to go.”

They stood up at the same time, and he took her hands. He looked tired and mournful. “Do I get to kiss you at the door?” he asked.

“Yes you get to kiss me at the door.”

“We're very sociable, aren't we?”

He kissed her on the forehead, and went down the stairs.

That night she went to Tom's to fix his typewriter. She had small hands, mechanical ability, and an interest in machines. Two of the keys were stuck and she fixed them with a tweezer.

On the way home, she stopped at an all-night grocery store to buy some milk. The aisles were filled with children. A little boy wearing yellow mittens and a snow suit was wandering among the shelves of biscuits.

“Hey,” he said to Elizabeth.

“Hey what?”

“Could you reach me those animal crackers?” They were on the top shelf.

“I like the tigers,” said the little boy when she put the package in his hands. “This is a bear. In the winter they go into their house and they don't come out till it gets to be springtime.” She was kneeling beside him, and they were head to head, examining the box. His mother, a blonde in a seal coat, appeared at the end of the aisle.

“Come on, Giles. I've been looking for you.” She looked at Elizabeth as if confronting a known kidnapper. “Your brothers are waiting. Now put those cookies back.”

“I can't reach, Mommy.”

“Giles, darling, you musn't go about picking up people. Now say goodbye to the lady who was nice to you.” She pulled him by the mitten.

“Bye bye. Thank you,” he said.

Elizabeth paid for the milk, and realized, after discarding several possibilities, that the woman was Violet Mignon.

Richard Mignon rang her doorbell the following Wednesday. It was snowing and he was wearing a ten-gallon hat.

“I never drop by,” he said. “But then, I never expected to find you home. I was right around the corner. I actually don't like it when people ring my doorbell.”

“Are you going to make a speech or come in?”

It was late, and she was tired. The article she had been working on was going badly and lay abandoned on her desk.

“What can I give you?” she said.

“I wish I knew.”

In the apartment across the hall, someone was playing the recorder. It was like the hum of a machine, thin, reedy, and monotonous. He untied the ribbon holding back her hair and watched it spill to her shoulders, turning her toward the light as if she were part of a still life he was arranging.

“I don't know what I want,” he said. His hands were on her shoulders.

“You better cut it out,” Elizabeth said. “I have the weakest flesh in town.”

“I don't know what that means,” he said, looking steadily at her.

“It means I'm very vulnerable, and this is unsuitable.”

“You let me in,” he said.

She looked back into his intelligent, catlike face.

“I'm very polite,” she said. “I try to keep my life in order, I like to know that what I do makes sense. I don't understand what sense this makes.”