The Age of Desire (44 page)

“I want to ask you to marry me,” he said. As though he were going by script. As though it was all planned out. “But before I say the words, I must tell you something. You know I have three daughters, Anna. But I haven’t told you about Tabita. It’s time to tell you about my daughter . . . because this trip, this respite, is for me just a prelude for what I wish to happen for us.”

“What about Tabita?” Anna asked.

“Unfortunately . . .” He cleared his throat. “She will be a girl all her life.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My other daughters, Baldegunde, Sabinchen, haven’t married, but I suspect they will. Though they are taking their time. . . .”

“I’m sure they will,” Anna says encouragingly.

“But you see, Tabita . . .” He opens his wallet and pulls out a small photo. The girl in the photo is clutching a doll to her chest so ferociously it is the first thing Anna notes about her. Because from what Thomas said, she is a teenager. And then Anna peers more carefully, at a moon face beneath pale curls. At eyes with an epicanthic fold that reads as Asian, and a mouth that is sweet and smiling but slack in its way, open.

“She’s . . . she’s a mongoloid,” Anna says, using the English word, not knowing how to say it in German.

“Yes, a
Mongoloider Krueppel
. You know about children like this?” Thomas asks.

“I knew a child like her once when I was young. I tried to help her learn to read.”

When Anna was living at Aunt Charlotte’s, there was a girl who lived down the street named Alissa with the same odd features and slack, happy smile.

“What’s wrong with her?” Anna had asked Aunt Charlotte after they passed her for the first time on the street and she had said, “Hello, Mrs. Bahlmann,” in a sloppy, soft voice.

“Oh, Alissa? She’s a mongoloid idiot,” Charlotte told her. Anna found the description perplexing. Charlotte was not a woman who called others names.

“Why do you call her an idiot?” Anna was indignant.

But Charlotte patiently explained. “
I
don’t call her that. That’s what the world calls people with her malady. Mostly, I just think of her as poor Alissa.”

Anna liked tiny Alissa, who was eager to learn and addressed everyone openly and without fear of looking foolish. Anna would try to find books in Aunt Charlotte’s library to show her. Together they sat on the steps of Alissa’s house, Anna pointing at pictures and the words beneath them. Alissa loved the books, and in time learned to identify the letters, and with a great deal of repetition began to sound them out. She loved Anna, wanted to follow her everywhere. It breaks Anna’s heart realizing that since Aunt Charlotte died, she’s rarely thought of Alissa at all.

“Can Tabita read?” Anna asks.

“I think if someone were kind and patient . . . as you are. We didn’t know if Tabita would live through childhood. But she has . . . ,” Thomas says gravely. “She outlived Agnes. I never thought that would happen. Miss Bahlmann, you’ve never met a sweeter child. And you, having been a governess . . . well, you seem the perfect person to help her. To be there for her when I’m not.”

“So you really want me as a governess, then? Not a wife . . . ?”

Anna shivers at the memory of that moment. She has no objection at the thought of helping the little girl in the photo. But the disappointment was dizzying. All along she imagined that Thomas might be falling in love with her, had chosen her for some unfathomable reason. But at that moment she knew with a chill what he really wanted.

How could she have believed that Thomas was falling in love with
her
? An old maid with gray hair and a tired knee. Not that he was a romantic hero. Aging. A bit stiff. He wrapped his napkin around his neck when he ate anything he feared might spatter. He rarely looked her in the eye. But for a few honeyed weeks, she had believed the stars had wheeled around in the sky and at last had dealt her a fate too good to be true. She should have known that stars can’t spin so far from their natural orbits.

“I am going to ask something difficult of you, Tonni. And I hope you won’t be angry about it. But you must take Teddy back,” Edith says. “You’re the only one I can trust to cross with him. Dr. Kinnicut says there are new treatments he’d like to try. Some serums. And Teddy’s getting worse by the day, don’t you think? I am at wit’s end.”

“You want me to travel alone with him?” Anna asks.

“We’ll send White, of course. You’ll need help. White’s strong and Teddy trusts him. I’m sorry to ask this of you, but Teddy wouldn’t even consider going without you.”

Anna thinks: why can’t
you
come along? Why must
you
stay in Paris? Fullerton is a rare visitor. She hardly hears his name anymore. So why can’t Edith start her summer when the Vanderbilt apartment is handed over in April instead of moving into Harry’s or the Hotel Crillon and flouncing to the salons and chatty lunches?

“But do you think Mr. Wharton can bear being away from you?” Anna asks.

“Me? You’re the only one who can settle him down these days. He’s angry at me. Or haven’t you noticed?”

Anna is baffled. She agrees that Teddy is sinking faster than she could have imagined. He hardly makes sense some days. She hasn’t told anyone, but more than once he’s called her other names: Nanny, his sister’s name. And a few times Pussy. And there have been a few violent episodes, such as the day he threw his food tray across the room right toward the little housemaid with the red hair who quit in a flurry of French, saying she couldn’t work for a madman. Or the evening he wandered into the salon while Edith was hosting an elegant old Faubourg clan—the Hermès family—and screamed at them that he couldn’t stand to hear another
frog
word from their lips.

“Your voices are the voices from
hell
! With your jabbering French! Get out of this apartment immediately!” Except for the youngest Hermès, they didn’t speak a word of English and had no idea what he said. But that was the last time Edith felt safe to invite people over.

“I need to stay in Paris,” Edith says. “I’ve already arranged to scout for an apartment of our own. A place I can lease so we can stay year-round. You, me, all of us. In the Faubourg, preferably. I’ve already leased The Mount out for the summer. We had a particularly good offer. And how could Teddy spend the summer there in
his
state?”

“But he loves it there. He’ll be crushed if he hears . . .”

“I’ve already told him and he didn’t say a word.”

“Are you sure he heard you?”

“He may be unstable. He’s not deaf.”

Anna is bereft. Who will look in to see fat Lawton in the pig house? Or stroll the beautiful new paths? Who will whisper to the horses and feed them sugar lumps and take them out on the trails? Strangers. The notion gives her an unsettled feeling, a pain in her ears. She can’t soothe Teddy anymore with tales about how they’ll ride together or visit the animals. What can he look forward to? His wife, whom he adores, can hardly bear him. He’s lost the one sanctuary that made him giddily happy.

“Don’t look at me that way, Tonni. I have no choice but to send you with him.”

“I don’t mind going with him.”

“Then what? What are you thinking? After all you and I have been through, it’s best you tell me. There have been enough misunderstandings between us.”

Misunderstandings? Is that what Edith thinks they were?

“I’m worried about him, that’s all. And, I’m worried about you.”

“About me? Why should you be? Without the burden of Teddy, I’m just fine.”

“That’s what worries me. It’s that you think you can just ship him off and be
fine
! I’ve never thought of you as cavalier! He’s your husband. In sickness and in health. Aren’t those the words?”

Edith’s face burns with anger. Her nostrils flare.

“And what could you possibly know about those words,
Miss
Bahlmann?”

Anna looks down at the floor. Edith’s right. What could she know?

But Edith has paled. She sighs. “I don’t want to be angry with you, Tonni. Why must you bait me?”

“I wasn’t baiting you. It just feels wrong.”

“You’re not my governess anymore. Right and wrong are concepts I create for myself.”

“Right and wrong are concepts
you
create?” Anna says, but so softly that Edith says, “What?”

There is so much Anna could say. But she knows she can’t change her old student at this point, or even her point of view.

“When will Mr. Wharton and I travel?” she asks.

“White will make arrangements. We’ll let you know.”

Anna nods and turns to leave the room, but Edith goes on.

“Sometimes . . . sometimes things become just too much. Sometimes we don’t do the things we think we should. We do the things we
must
.”

Anna turns to her.

“You’ve told him that he’s going back? You’ve warned him you’re sending him away?”

“I have. Or I think I have. You can reiterate it.”

“Edith . . .”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want us to be at odds either. . . .”

“Then stop taking Teddy’s side.”

“There are no sides,” Anna says, leaving the room. “He’s not acting this way on purpose. He’s in pain. He’s
ill
.”

“I know that. I’m not good at helping him. You know I’m not. You are. I’m turning him over to you.”

Anna wonders if turning Teddy over to her strikes Edith as a compliment.

“I understand,” Anna says, leaving Edith, now sitting at her desk, eyes closed, head down, as penitent as Anna’s ever seen her.

Anna writes to Thomas that they cannot meet in Europe, that she is due to sail back to America with her ailing employer’s husband and doesn’t know when she’ll return. She worries that Thomas will think she’s avoiding him, or even escaping him. So she adds at the bottom of the letter.

Please understand that I would be happy to see you again and hear what you have to say. Perhaps I will be back in Paris by summer. I will be sad to miss the spring here which I consider very beautiful.

She thinks to sign the letter “Anna Bahlmann” but stops at merely “Anna.”

EIGHTEEN

EARLY SUMMER 1909

E
ven without Teddy in Paris, Edith is at loose ends. Living at the Crillon with no secretary at all to sort out the burgeoning pages of
Custom
, she’s set it down and turned to writing poetry and short stories. She wants closure and they provide it. She needs something to show for the hours she’s spent with a pen in her hand, and they are much more easily tied up with a bow. Besides, sharing herself with Undine Spragg was taking its toll. Undine has far too clear a sense of entitlement, often seems too big for the page, when Edith herself feels that she owns nothing: her passion for Morton is folded up in tissue paper. She is walking away from the house she built to hold all her dreams. (How those dreams have fallen to pieces!) And now she doesn’t even have the ease of the Vanderbilt apartment.

The afternoons and evenings she spackles over with gay lunches and teas. And salon dinners. And long walks just to repress the sense of restlessness that has again arisen. I’m icing a very badly formed cake, she thinks. A smear of gaiety over crumbling uncertainty. She looks at apartments to lease, but hasn’t found one to her liking.

Morton will occasionally stop by unannounced, a book or box of sweets in his hand. He has finally signed the contract with Macmillan agreeing to write the Paris guide and has pocketed the money and ostensibly given it to his blackmailer, though somehow she still lingers on the sidelines, tormenting him.

“Have you begun to outline the book?” she asks.

“All in good time,” he says.

“You’ve been given an advance. They won’t wait forever.”

He shakes his head and smiles at her.

“Yes, Mother.” Often, he tries to kiss her lips when they part, taking her by the shoulders, drawing her against his chest. And she pulls away with a pained smile. She doesn’t trust him. She doesn’t know what he wants from her. She doesn’t want to be just one of many women who find him irresistible.

“Not now,” she says. “Please, not now.”

Come May, Edith decides to return to England, where she found happiness the previous fall. She knows she will encounter overlit rooms (Oh, those sparkling just-washed chandeliers of London!), gaiety and spontaneity. Also an air of reticence and even untruth. Ah, the English! But truth is not what she wants or needs right now. What she longs for is pastel-colored distraction. Wit!

When she tells Morton she’s crossing in late May, he asks that she wait until the beginning of June. He’s had word that his father, the Reverend Fullerton, is ill, and he’s booked passage from Southampton to America.

“We’ll cross together. We can see Henry, then I’ll catch my ship.” She can’t help feeling sorry for him. He looks worried and worn. Desperation molds his mouth, his brow. The June liner is the first reservation Morton can find at his price, now that his money is funneling to his landlady.

Edith debates. Should she go ahead of him? Since withdrawing her affections, he has grown more insistent, more interested. The game of cat and mouse irritates and stimulates her all at once. A struggle for power that she’s never known before. The worry about his father makes him more vulnerable, more reachable. More desirable.

So plans are made to travel in June. Cook will drive. They’ll cross on the ferry. She doesn’t speculate what will happen.

The crossing is brutal.

“A green crossing,” she tells Fullerton, for they all feel bilious being tossed about by the waves. Though it is rainy and cold, the two of them climb the stairs to the deck where at least they can see the horizon and settle their inner ears. Gross has spent the entire crossing vomiting into a spittoon in their suite. Cook has disappeared, perhaps enduring the same fate.

Standing in the dark gray mist on deck, shivering, at least they feel less seasick.

“I’m afraid to go home,” Morton tells her after a while, throwing his cigarette into the waves. “I’ve rebelled against my father my whole life, Edith. If he dies, I know I’ll feel unmoored.”

She looks at him, hunched over the rail, pale and miserable, rain caught in his lashes.

“When my mother died, I felt free,” she tells him. “And terribly guilty about it. I couldn’t discuss it with anyone. Dying is so sacrosanct. But when she was alive, she stepped on me. Made me feel less than I was. Perhaps your father does the same?”

Morton closes his eyes.

“Actually, once, he was my champion. He always said I was the brightest in the family. Now I’m his biggest disappointment. The last time I saw him, he called me selfish and amoral. Undisiciplined.”

He is, Edith thinks, but feels for him, longs to take him in her arms, press her face against his. There is no one else on deck, and who on this miserable afternoon would mind? But the nausea shoving up under her throat is too strong. And Morton looks like he wants to endure his misery alone, the way he hunches, folds his shoulders inward.

“Perhaps,” she says, “when you see him, you can tell him how much it pains you to have disappointed him. Ask what he wishes for you. Tell him you will try to be what he wants you to be.”

“A reverend. That’s what he wishes me to be. Or a monk. A dried out scholar . . .”

“I doubt he wishes any of that,” she says.

“Have I given you something of value?” he asks suddenly.

“I don’t understand. . . .”

“Has our . . . our friendship touched you, mattered to you, been of
value
to you?”

“I . . . of course. You know it has.”

“Then I am not as useless as he says I am. I give people pleasure. I soothe people. I understand what people need. . . .”

“That you do,” Edith agrees. She reaches over and gently takes his arm into her hand. Feeling his biceps beneath the coat, she remembers the pleasures of his flesh. Her longing for him rises. Unwraps itself. Against her will.

“God, when is this journey going to be
over
?” he cries out.

“This crossing? Or your journey?”

“Either. Both.”

“I know,” she says. “Soon.”

Arriving in the sodden dark in Folkstone, they all feel so dismal, they only want to sleep. Edith is glad they planned to stay there by the ferry rather than travel up to London.

“Sleep well,” she whispers to Morton in the hall as he enters his room and turns to shut the door.

“As though I can,” he says. Her room is just down the hall. And a few times in the night, she wonders if he will knock at the door. She wakes thinking she hears him. But it’s just the wind shuddering the windowpanes.

The next day the sun is shining again as they head up to London, where Morton can catch the train to Southampton. He’s booked a hotel for himself a few blocks from Edith’s. A sooty, redbrick and terra cotta pile right above the train station, Victorian, haunted looking, with trains running directly beneath.

“It’s all I can afford,” he tells her when they drop him off. “I’ve stayed here before. It’s serviceable.”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” she assures him, wondering.

Henry, coming up to town from Rye for dinner, has arranged to meet them at Peppers, a restaurant half a block from the entrance to his club.

Henry’s gained weight in just the months since Edith’s seen him. He’s added an extra chin, his skin is looking hepatic, but when he sees Morton he breaks into a joyous smile.

“My dearest friends. Together again. This is a marvelous occasion.” He hugs Morton like a drunk might clutch a bottle of whiskey.

They argue. They dine. Morton orders plate after plate as though he is sure he’s having his last supper.

“I will have to lend you my clothes after this supper, young man,” Henry tells him.

After she puts Morton on his train in the morning, Edith will spend a few days in London, then a week or two with Henry. She has so looked forward to that part of her journey. But, laughing at the table with the two of them, she’s sad to think that Morton won’t be part of the company.

Not wanting Cook to have waited while they dined, they walk Henry to his hotel. He holds Morton in his arms for a long while before he goes in.

“Have courage, my boy,” he says. He has never sounded more avuncular. “I’ll see you soon, my dear,” he tells Edith.

And then Edith and Morton step into the street to wave down a cab.

“Will you come to my hotel with me tonight? Say you’ll be with me tonight,” Morton says.

She turns to him in the streetlight. She has never seen him look more serious. More sincere.

“What are you asking?”

“You
know
,” he says, taking her hand. “Please. I am desperate to hold you. To have you. It’s been too long. And I know I’ve disappointed you. In so many ways. But if you only would. If you only would say you’re willing. I can make some of it up to you. Show how I feel about you.”

Show how I feel about you.
The words have special resonance for her.

When the cab is secured, and they step inside, she merely says, “Yes.”

Morton’s room is small and dark with a tarnished brass bed, a soiled chintz spread over a hammocked mattress, an armchair whose cushion shows the impression of too many weary travelers. He lights the single lamp, a small mushroom of ruby glass whose glow is like a steady jeweled eye. The trains move beneath their window, howling into the spring night.

It is not the room she would ever have chosen for lovemaking. Nothing like the pristine inn laced in chestnuts. Nor the bower of lilacs where she knelt before him naked and thrilled. But when Morton takes her face into his hands and presses his lips to hers, she doesn’t care where they are, wonders why she has resisted all spring. The sweetness of his mouth sends shockwaves through her. His touch, his presence make her giddy, but not too giddy to take it all in. He helps her with her wraps, and without words, begins to unbutton her dress.

“Morton . . .”

“Hush. We don’t need to speak. We need each other, my love. We need each other.”

She sees the two of them in the old-fashioned looking glass by the wall. A slender woman, a smallish man. They could be any age. But their passion, their desire to touch is undeniable. How many lovers have spent a moment captured in that glass? How many lovers, escaping crushing lives, marriage, sadness, have found peace in this threadbare room? Have allowed passion to rise and wash their miserable existences away? Morton moves behind her and, turning her toward the mirror, draws her dress from her shoulders.

“Look how beautiful you are,” he says. “How I’ve missed seeing you!”

In the soft red light, she is transformed, her lips full and flushed, her breasts creamy and plump above her corset. He loosens the laces, kissing the back of her neck, sending hot and cold thrills all through her.

“Look in the glass. See that woman. I have wanted that woman more than I can say.”

The heat of passion is more than Edith can bear, seems more urgent than she has ever imagined. Tearing off the bedspread, he lays her down onto the sheets and undresses before her, showing off his body to her hungry eyes, his taut chest, his boyish hips. He lifts his swollen manhood for her to approve, reaches for her hand, inviting her to take him into it.

“See how much I want you?” he says, pressing his own hands around hers. He slides down next to her on the bed, holding her and kissing her throat. The trains below rattle the bed, cry out into the night, allowing her to call out too with the pleasure of his exploring, his touching. How sweet it is to release the deliciousness, the agony of her ardor into a sound like a song. There is so much fondling, kissing, teasing, it must be an hour before he slides inside her, a sensation she knows she will relive again and again. Keen as a freshly honed knife, opening her petal by petal, a blooming flower. And even then, he takes his time, beckoning her to the brink, stopping just when she wants more, hurrying when she wants him to slow. Maddening her with his control, his understanding of her needs. Denying them. And then giving her all she could want. And when that dizzying spinning thrill comes to her again, she allows it to become her. Tonight, she doesn’t care who hears. She calls out full-voiced along with the howl of the trains. And calls and calls as the night spins around them, pulling them both into a pool of dark silence.