The Age of Desire (18 page)

“For life. Perhaps. But have you gone through life with no bodily desire whatsoever? I suppose the point of men choosing snow-white women is that they can be the ones to awaken desire in these women. But I’ve always believed a woman has the capacity for desire. Or she doesn’t. I wonder if you do.”

“Are you being purposely vicious?”

“I’m being honest. Straightforward. Which I believe is far more respectful than flirtation and innuendo. You’re a grown woman. I can speak candidly, can’t I?”

“But you’re accusing me of being bloodless.”

“It’s been said of you.”

“And do you speak of me with others? What right do you and Henry . . . Henry, of all people . . . ?”

He shakes his head. “What do you want from me, Edith?” He stands to face her. They are the same height. Eye to eye.

Edith finds herself completely speechless. Until she finally stammers, “I’d like . . . I’d like you to leave.”

“Are you certain that’s what you want from me?” he says. He looks so cool, so amused by her anger. Even in shirtsleeves, he is polished and self-possessed. Perhaps it is better to spend an evening with Teddy. He would never rile her so. “I’ll ring Alfred for your coat.” Her voice is quavering. Absurd.

Edith has a horrible sense that he might go home and laugh at her. She wouldn’t mind any other reaction. But to be laughed at! To be derided!

“My dear,” he says in a suddenly soothing voice, “you are a very proud woman. And you have good reason to be. You may be the brightest woman I’ve ever encountered. I am painfully drawn to you. But passion and pride rarely occupy the same space. And that makes me hesitate.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I’d like to,” he says. He strokes the tender insides of her elbows for a moment, and looks into her eyes, flashing her a soft, thoughtful smile. “Am I wise to go against my better judgment? I wonder if you are courageous enough to find out what’s hiding inside you.”

When he releases her, she feels as though she is falling down a well. The door closes behind him and she is safe again. Safe. Is that really what she wants?

She writes in her diary, “You hurt me. You disillusioned me. And when you left, I was more deeply yours. . . .”

“Perhaps we can spend the day together Saturday,” she writes him. “I have always wanted to see Montfort-l’Amaury. Have you ever been?” She wonders whether, after their last conversation, he will be willing to spend a minute more with her. But he sends her an immediate petit bleu saying he would be very happy to have a chance to spend a whole day together.
Nothing would suit me better.

Her immediate sense of elation alarms her. She checks herself. What if he expects that his desires will be instantly met? But an entire day together in the country with the only human being in the world who has the ability to make her happy! How can she not revel in the possibility of it! I will speak to him with a
coeur ouvert
, she tells herself. I will tell him how afraid I am. I will put myself in his hands. . . .

Possible scenes etch themselves on her mind. A tender walk in a field, holding hands. A country churchyard with a thousand clues among the gravestones. Morton picking wildflowers that he tucks in her hair. He touches her cheek. He runs his fingers along her collarbone. These scenes carry her forward toward Saturday, fill every waking moment.

And then Friday night, she receives a wire:
ON MY WAY HOME FROM CURTISES’ EARLY. STOP. STILL VERY BAD. STOP. TRAIN TO ARRIVE SATURDAY LATE MORNING. STOP. TEDDY.

SEVEN

WINTER 1908

A
nna comes into the room to see Edith with her face in her hands. It’s been years since she’s seen Edith cry. Early in her marriage there was a great flood of tears. Many of them soaked Anna’s breast.

“Nothing good will happen for me,” Edith used to moan. “I am doomed.” Anna knows not to openly soothe Edith when she’s miserable. One must merely be present and silent. Edith is nothing if not dramatic. And when wrapped in her own misery, she doesn’t wish to be jollied out of it. As a child, Edith’s tears rose from frustration or anger. But now, somehow, Anna can read that these tears rise from sheer despair. What could be making her feel so?

“Edith?” she asks softly.

Edith raises her pale face. She looks as though she’s been caught doing something unspeakable.

“Oh. Tonni,” she says wearily. “You have my pages?” Her eyes are swollen. Her lips thin and pained. Anna hands her the typescript and steps closer.

“Do you wish to talk?” she whispers. How long since Edith really confided anything in Anna? Though once, she confided everything.

Edith shakes her head. And then, sheepishly, she lifts the yellow sheet from her desk which contains the wire.

Anna takes it and knits her brows. “Does it make you so sad just to have Mr. Wharton return?”

Edith closes her eyes and shakes her head. “He’s no better,” she says.

“You know it takes time for him to get better. Especially when he’s so melancholy. Last time it took months. He needs your patience.”

Edith’s nostrils flare. “Nothing I do seems to have any effect.”

“He was patient with you, all those years you were ill. He was kind to you. Remember how he brought you flowers every day and books, and cheered you up? Again and again . . . unfailingly. He’s a good man, Edith.”

“Don’t lecture me.”

“I don’t mean to lecture. I meant to remind you.”

Edith nods. “Sometimes I think nothing good will ever happen for me.”

“I know, Herz. But nothing good is happening for Teddy right now either, and he needs your patience. Your loyalty.” Anna places her hand on Edith’s shoulder but Edith turns her face away, a signal that Anna should leave. Still, she stands there for a moment, waiting to see if Edith will say more, will reach out to her again. Instead, there is only silence.

Perhaps I was too harsh with her, Anna worries all through the evening. But she feels angry too. How could Edith be so selfish to find distaste in her own husband’s return? That night, Anna’s lovely soft bed beneath the eaves feels as though it’s made of nails, her pillow of hardwood. When she gets up, her bones aching, and goes to the window to look out over the roofs of Paris, she sees a bat circling and circling over the hammered silver moon. She closes her eyes, allowing the cool moonlight to paint her eyelids, feeling far too small to make her dent upon the world.

Edith, unable to sleep, sits close to the fire. Having finished a terse pneu to Morton—“Cannot join you as planned”—she now sits with the new diary open on the desk and composes a poem on a separate piece of paper.

L’Âme Close

My soul is like a house that

Dwellers nigh can see no light in.

“Ah, poor house,” they say,

“Long since its owners died or

Went their way.” Thick ivy

Loops the rusted door-latch tie.

The chimney rises cold against the sky

And flowers turned to weed down the

Bare path’s decay . . .

Yet one stray passer, at the shut of day,

Sees a light trembling in a casement high.

Even so, my soul would set a light for you,

A light invisible to all beside,

As though a lover’s ghost should yearn and glide

From pane to pane, to let the flame shine through.

Yet enter not, lest as it flits ahead

You see the hand that carries it is dead.

When rereading the poem brings tears to her eyes, she carefully transcribes it into the diary she has begun for Morton, then turns off the light and searches blindly for sleep.

With Teddy home and confined to his bed, bellowing and complaining and clearly furious at his wife for not having joined him on his journey, Edith gives up any hope of comforting him, grabs her wraps and, without the slightest notion of where she might go, leaves the house. Paris is perfumed with a surprising spring breeze. There are men strolling down the street, cloaks in hand, though it is far too cold not to wear them. And a parade of babies slides by, aired in their carriages by nannies and mothers while the weather is cooperating. It would have been the perfect day to explore Montfort and Edith’s disappointment is bitter. What has Morton chosen to do today instead? she wonders. She hadn’t the heart last night to explain to him why she must cancel their plans. It was too wounding to even think of what she’d miss. And describing Teddy’s illness makes her feel weak and compromised. He already questions her for staying with Teddy all these years. His pneu back sounds bewildered and a touch angry. “As I recall,” it says, “you were the one who asked me to come. Perhaps you were not able to locate your courage after all.”

With nowhere to go, Edith decides to see if the Bourgets are home. It’s entirely unlike her not to phone or write first. But the Bourgets never mind surprises, and if they are out, Edith will take a long walk—stride across the length of Paris and back if she must—to dispel the feeling of corrosion that courses through her veins.

At their neat sunny apartment on the Rue Barbet de Jouy, Minnie welcomes her, book in hand, wearing a light blue tea gown and the softest expression.

“I’m so sorry to come unannounced,” Edith says. “But one more minute in the presence of Teddy’s misery and I thought I would do damage to myself. He’s grouchy and toxic and not fit for anything.”

“Paul is out,” Minnie says. “But you couldn’t have come at a better time.”

Edith notes as she comes closer that the softness in Minnie’s face is the aftermath of tears.

“Whatever’s wrong, Minnie?” she asks. She lays her hand on her friend’s arm, and Minnie motions for Edith to sit.

“I’m not sure I can speak about it,” she says. “It’s too early for tea. Have you had luncheon?”

“You don’t need to serve me anything. I merely came for company. Tell me what’s troubling you.”

“I wonder if I can trust you to keep a confidence,” Minnie says nervously. Minnie is the most even person that Edith knows. She sails through life with grace and good humor. Tears are the last thing Edith expects from her.

“You can trust me with anything,” Edith says.

Minnie nods and worries her bracelets for a moment—a pair of old Etruscan-work snakes, wrapped tight about her left wrist. “I believe Paul is
seeing
a woman,” she says.

“No . . . are you quite sure?”

“Ever since
Un Divorce
opened, he has been a different man. He struts around like a peacock. He is everyone’s darling. ‘The play of the year,’ they call it. But it started even before then. His absence in this past year, well, I assumed it was the play . . . the stress of the play, not who’s . . .
in
the play.” Minnie grows crimson about the ears, but her lips pale. “I found a petit bleu in his pocket last week that said, ‘Saturday at noon?’ and nothing more. And at a quarter to noon, he darted out the door with a very guilty, happy look on his face and his most flattering suit.”

“But it could have been from anyone.”

“I know who it’s from,” Minnie says huskily.

Edith shakes her head. “Someone in the play? An actress in the play?”

Minnie closes her eyes very tightly as if trying to block out an image.

“You don’t mean Mrs. Davreau?” Amélie Davreau is the most beautiful woman in Paris. Her hair is the color of butter, and her figure like that of a china figurine.

“I don’t wish to say. . . .” Minnie’s voice cracks at the end and Edith knows she’s spoken the unspeakable name. Amélie Davreau is so beautiful, she is the only actress on the Paris stage who wears no heavy stage makeup. Her dark-lashed lavender eyes can be read across the entire theatre. Even Edith fell in love with her during the play. Her grace and her modesty were so unique for an actress, so appealing.

“But how do you know it’s from this . . . woman?”

“When he speaks of her, his voice changes. I’ve wondered for a long time what might be going on between them. Men have no idea how sensitive a woman can be to the smallest clues. When we are all three in the same room together, it’s as though I’m not there, even when I am. She is slender and fine. The very opposite of me. He hangs on her every word. He quotes her when she’s not around just to hear himself say her name. She’s married. Why should she want my husband as well?”

“Some women get no pleasure from their own husbands . . . ,” Edith says. Minnie glances over at her with a clouded eye. Can she read what Edith is thinking? She blinks at her for a moment, and Edith feels the heat of her own wayward desire.

“I know you are unhappy with Teddy. But it isn’t as though you would simply stomp off and have a love affair with another man.”

Edith can’t swallow. She wishes now that Minnie had called for tea.

“I try not to be old-fashioned,” Minnie goes on. “But I guess I’m not as modern as I profess to be. Or as Parisian. I do believe one should honor one’s vows. And if that’s old-fashioned, then I’m happy to be.”

Edith puts her hand to her face to cover up what must be a painful flush. But Minnie is looking out the window, paying no attention to Edith’s distress.

“You’re not a bit old-fashioned,” Edith says, just to keep Minnie talking until her blush has subsided. “But perhaps they are merely friends? Perhaps nothing’s . . . happened at all? Sometimes men just set their hearts on other women and do nothing but pay them attention.”

“You see, that’s the point. Does it matter? I don’t think it does. It’s that he has feelings for another woman that hurts the most. I know men think that if they are physically faithful they are in the clear. But it’s not so for me. It’s that he desires her. That he thinks of her when he’s not with her. I watch him. I see him. He’s a man who loves women. Who desires women. I fell in love with him for that, really. I have no patience with men like Paul Hervieu, who would rather read poetry and pick flowers. So if he has been faithful or not, he’s wounded me. I thought I would always be the one he desires the most.” Minnie pulls a crumpled handkerchief from her sleeve and dabs her tears, which are falling too quickly to catch.

“You don’t know it’s not so.”

“I know his world has shifted. A woman knows when she’s no longer the center of someone’s sphere. It’s just cruel, Edith. If you loved someone, how could you hurt them like that?”

“Maybe if you spoke to him. Maybe if he knew that you knew . . .”

“When a person has a different sense of right and wrong, what does it matter? When the man I love no longer thinks I am enough, what does it matter? When we live in a time where sin is more delicious than loyalty, what does it matter?”

“Perhaps,” Edith says, as evenly as she can, “sin has always been more delicious than loyalty. . . .”

“Not by people who are guided by what they believe in, rather than by a fleeting urge. . . .”

Edith feels as though Minnie is speaking directly to her. She closes her eyes. But the bright sunlight of the day she was meant to spend with a man she longs to love, a man who is not her husband, burns her.

For two days, there are no notes between Edith and Fullerton. She wishes to explain to him what caused her to cancel their day together, but after her talk with Minnie, she feels chastened and unable to pick up a pen.

When Minnie writes that she’d like Edith to accompany the Bourgets to the Renaissance Theatre that night, Edith is more than happy to say yes. She is relieved to leave the house. Teddy has not improved. But, happily, Anna says she will stay with him. Teddy is more himself with Anna anyway. What is it about Anna that everyone finds so consoling? Small children, miserable old men find her a balm.

Knowing that Teddy’s in good hands and off her own, she’s curious to see how the Bourgets will relate to each other. And she wonders if Minnie is inviting her to see for herself the change in Paul.