The Age of Desire (36 page)

“I’d be honored,” Anna says.

“No,” Mr. Schultze says, tipping his hat, “
I’d
be honored. Eight
P.M
.? Table for two?”

Anna smiles and nods. Imagine what people will think when she shares a table for two with Mr. Schultze. She can hardly envision the stir!

And so for the rest of the journey, she dines with Mr. Schultze. She walks with Mr. Schultze. She sits on the deck and reads side by side with Mr. Schultze. Every night before she goes to her cabin, he kisses her hand with the graciousness of a bygone courtier.

“How nice that you have made friends with that older gentleman!” one of the ladies who had shared a table with her says when she passes her in the grand salon one morning.

“Yes, he’s very kind.”

“I do believe I see a blooming romance. Perhaps he will ask you to marry him.” The woman, who must be about forty, is the sort of long-nosed, gossipy soul that will pass on all she is told to the rest of the table, to the ladies with whom she plays whist, to the cabin maid and anyone else who is foolish enough to listen.

Anna laughs. “It’s nice of you to be interested in me. But it is a friendship, nothing more.”

“Well, we’re all cheering for you, Miss Bahlmann. He looks like quite a catch, although since no one can understand him, no one is certain who he is.”

“He manufactures steel,” Anna says. She is happy to pass this on to whomever Mrs. Brewer will grace with the tale.

“Indeed!”

“He owns four factories in Germany.”

“Well, that
does
make him sound quite prosperous. And aren’t you lucky that you speak German and can converse with him. It appears your journey abroad will not be for naught.”

Anna winces.

“My journey abroad will not be for naught, no matter whom I meet. I did not come to meet a man.”

“Come, Miss Bahlmann. Every single woman wants to meet a man. It’s what we women are made for, no?”

“I am made to aid in the writing of novels, Mrs. Brewer. To make my employer’s life simpler. And to teach. That’s what I was made for.”

Mrs. Brewer purses her lips. She gazes at Anna.

“And do you wish to tell me that even if you had the opportunity to marry a steel magnate, you’d turn it down to be a typewriter for some lady novelist?”

“Yes,” Anna says. “That’s precisely what I wish to tell you,” she says and then rushes away. “I have to meet my friend the steel magnate in the Palm Court.” She wonders how long it will be until her conversation is on the lips of everyone on the
Amerika
.

One night as Anna and Mr. Schultze stroll along the deck under a shimmering moon, he asks her, “Do you think while you are in Germany, you might come and visit one of my factories?”

“Do you really want me to?” she asks.

“Well, I don’t know whether you’ll be in Essen or Stuttgart. But if you are, I’d be so pleased to show you. My factories are dreadfully noisy, and I’m afraid that the smell of steelmaking isn’t very pleasant. But the energy there, the very
brawniness
, will excite you. I guarantee it.”

“Then I’d be very pleased to come if I’m nearby. I would like to experience the world that excites you so much.”

He reaches out and takes her hand in his, swings it subtly as they walk, and glances at her, smiling like a shy young beau. She notes the surprising softness of his skin, the sweetness of his touch. She thinks if she had met him thirty years ago, she might actually have fallen in love with him. She can imagine herself moving to Germany as a young bride, making a home for Mr. Schultze, setting his table with silver and laying out his clothes each day. She can imagine watching as he grew wealthy and important. But now, the thought of romance is a puzzle piece that no longer fits. She wishes to gaze on the house where Goethe was born in Frankfurt am Main and the house where he died in Weimar. To drink Italian wine overlooking a field of sunflowers. She wishes to meet many people from many lands and speak to them in all the languages that she knows. And then, she wishes most of all to return to Edith and Teddy, to Gross and White and Cook. To 882 and her books. To the life that has been kindly allotted her, that she does not wish to trade in, as flawed as it may suddenly be.

After Sally and Eliot have each been delivered to their trains to resume their own lives, Carl Snyder lingers in Edith’s. He spends afternoons perusing books that Edith has recommended, sitting cross-legged on a bench in the cutting garden. At night, after Teddy has gone to bed, he perches close to his hostess, telling her the books she’s given him are the education he never got, having been so caught up in science classes as a young man. He watches Edith with that sad, longing look he never loses. He’s taken to touching her hand often, kissing her good night. Once he embraces her before bed, and she feels his heart beating wildly against her chest. While Carl’s infatuation warms and amuses her, her misery over Morton’s inexplicable silence squeezes her every breath. She dreams about him. Nightmares every time. He is laughing at her. He is telling her he never loved her. He is dancing with Katherine.

On the thirty-first, a stack of correspondence arrives in the afternoon post. A postcard from Anna from the
Amerika.
How joyous she sounds! She says she has made a wonderful friend on board, and is grateful for the beautiful stateroom that Edith has given her. She describes the women in their jewels and the color of the sky at sea. Edith misses her. She cringes at having sent her away to protect her from her own bad temper.

And then Edith lifts an envelope of heavy woven paper. Even before she sees the handwriting she knows who’s sent it. She feels surprisingly angry and thrilled in equal measure. If Morton only
knew
how much he’s made her suffer. For a moment, she is afraid to slice it open.

It’s better to know, she finally tells herself, remembering with an ache the elation she used to feel slipping her knife into his petits bleus each morning. How connected she felt to him back then, as though a glistening strand of spider silk always shivered between them, stretching when they were apart, turning when they turned. Now there is far more than Carl’s vast ocean parting Morton’s heart from hers.

My dear,

I have just received your cable. I am sorry to have worried you. Simply put, I thought it best, seeing as you were suffering from the distance between us, not to write. You did, after all, tell me not to write, and I took you at your word. I felt it better for your new novel if you had no thought of me. And after all the good true moments we’ve shared, I want you to be as joyous as you were beneath our curtain of lilacs. (Every second of that hour for me was but the promise of dearer moments to come.) I did not want to think of you miserable and pining for someone far away who could give you no peace.

You see, there have been worries with me I can’t share with you at present. I count on being able to tell you by autumn that these dreadful problems have sorted themselves, and that I am no longer worried. And then I will be kinder to my dearest friends. It is difficult to be generous when one is under a cloud of anxiety, n’est ce pas? But after your year of concern over Teddy, you know whereof I speak, chère.

Last night I saw
La Princesse de Clèves
at the Theatre des Artes and thought of you and how you would have enjoyed it. It is too hot here, and the theatre was steaming. Two women fainted. It hasn’t rained in three weeks and with this heat, the Seine has never been lower. I fear for the fully filled tourist boats. I imagine they will scrape the bottom and stick there like ugly wads of American chewing gum stick to streets where tourists have dropped them.

You said you couldn’t bear the dwindling and the fading of our feelings for one another, and though my feelings have not faded, I thought I was doing your bidding. But if it was only a moment of misery that made you write it, then I am yours,

Morton

He is
mine
, she thinks, and smiles at the thought, touches the very words.
I
am yours
. All this time he says he didn’t write her because he thought it best, and yet . . . is he being honest? How can she be sure from thousands of miles away?

Teddy comes trudging into the library in his socks, perspiring, panting.

“No shoes?” she asks.

“I was mucking out the pigpens. My shoes were covered in mud. I left them downstairs for Laurette to clean. Dear little Lawton always looks sad when I leave. Won’t you come down and see him? Carl has. He says he’s the finest pig he’d ever seen. I do believe I love Lawton as much as our little babies.” He lifts Nicette from the floor and cuddles her against his sweat-soaked shirt. “You have competition, Lady Nicette.”

“You should take a bath,” Edith says. “You smell of the pigpen.”

“Nicette likes it. Don’t you, girl? You like it that I stink!”

“Put her down and take a bath,” Edith says, quietly attempting to push Morton’s letter beneath the newspaper that came with the afternoon post.

“What are you up to?” Teddy asks, looking over at her desk.
Up to?
Does he suspect? Or is it just an innocent question? These days, she hardly knows how to read him.

“Just reading through my mail. Go wash yourself. You make the whole room reek.” She envisions his belly, which, with all his drinking, has recently become ridiculously globular, poking out of the bathwater.

“What is that? A postcard from Anna?” he says, grabbing Anna’s card with his free hand, turning it over, reading it. Edith pushes Morton’s letter even farther beneath the newspaper.

“She’s having herself a fine time already. Happy to see it. Dear woman. Do you want to read it, Nicette? It’s from Miss Anna! No. You just want to eat it. That would be rude. What? Don’t look hurt. It just doesn’t belong to you. It was addressed to your Mama. Nicette, Nicette, Nicette, I do love you!” He buries his damp face into her fur-muff back.

And then he sets her down and heads for the door.

“All right then, au revoir, Pussycat!”

Edith shivers at how wrongly he pronounces the French. “Oh Rev-oy-er.” She hears him pad down the hall. Good God, the man leaves a trail of stench behind him. Edith closes her eyes, wishing she never had to open them to Teddy Wharton again.