The Age of Desire (46 page)

With Henry up front with Cook, she and Fullerton in the back (How fortuitous that she sent Gross off to Alsace to see her cousins as though she guessed Henry’s surprise!), they motor all through Essex, hunting down quaint little inns, traversing beautiful towns. Every night, after a full meal and good laughter, she and Morton find each other. In her bed. In his. It hardly matters. They want each other equally. Their pleasure seems endless, like a magic bottle that refills every time a glass is poured. Never in Edith’s life has she guessed that her body could give her such unceasing pleasure. With Henry as their buffer and chaperone, they don’t argue. There is no tussle for power. She cannot remember ever being happier. If she were to die tomorrow, she knows she’s tasted the sweetest morsels life could offer.

Having had Dr. Kinnicut’s second round of serum treatments, Teddy grows jollier by the day. One morning he leaves in the carriage and returns with a new car. Sitting behind the wheel, he swerves into the forecourt, spitting stones, screeching the tires, stopping just before the front door. The car is as shiny red as a candied apple. The roof is coal black stitched in crimson. And the steering wheel sports a sewn leather cover with tiny holes in it just like golf gloves. But what really captures Anna’s attention is that the car has a face. Its headlights are cats’ eyes. Its grille, an angry mouth. She has never seen a car that looks so feral.

The entire household crowds the front door to ooh and aah over the new vehicle.

“When did you learn to drive yourself?” Anna asks him.

“An idiot can do it, I tell you. You cannot possibly imagine how fast this little filly can go. You will swoon when I drive you at that speed.”

“I think I’d rather take your word for it,” she says.

She doesn’t like the idea of Teddy driving himself. Cars are for people with experience, experts like Cook. And Teddy is no expert. Lately, his happiness has again become giddy. Sometimes she hears him in his library laughing to himself as though he is too full of hilarity to contain it. He has begun to boast at dinner how his investing has netted the household a pretty penny. Soon Edith will have to acknowledge that when it comes to money, he is simply brilliant. “I may have quadrupled the money by summer’s end,” he declared just the night before last.

“White, what say we pull a bottle of the best champagne out of the cellar,” Teddy proposes now. “I want the whole household to toast our newest arrival.” He gives the fender a jaunty tap.

“The whole household, sir?” Albert says, his mouth barely opening.

“As I said.”

Anna senses the maids’ excitement. They skitter behind her, breathing through their teeth.

“I’ve never had champagne in my life,” one of them whispers. “Wait until I write and tell my mother!”

Later that night, White stops Anna as she climbs the stairs to her room.

“Are you still here, Albert? I thought you’d gone home.”

“Anna, I’m worried about him. Worried sick.”

She nods.

“He’s gotten a bit . . . a bit . . . out of control. And driving about by himself. Do you think we should tell Mrs. Wharton?”

“I don’t know,” Anna says. “Maybe we should keep an eye on him.”

“I’m afraid he’ll kill someone . . . or himself.”

“Even Mrs. Wharton wouldn’t be able to stop him from driving if that’s what he’s a mind to do.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” White says. “I don’t think I’ll sleep a wink tonight. Or maybe ever again.”

When the motor trip around Essex has come to an end, and Henry is dropped at Lamb House, Cook is sent ahead to Paris, and Edith and Morton cross the Channel alone, arriving in Boulogne in the early evening. There are many things to see in Boulogne, but there is nothing that can compete with the pleasures of a hotel room. Signed into the Hôtel des Fleurs as Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Selden—Morton’s idea, making Edith nearly choke with laughter when the bellman insists on taking “Mrs. Selden’s effects up to the room”—they bathe together in the giant cast-iron bathtub, eat cross-legged on the bed, lifting the silver domes of the dishes, trying to guess what’s beneath each, and lie naked in each other’s arms all night. When she blinks herself awake in the morning, the sun is pouring onto their skin as thick as honey. Morton has kicked off the covers, still asleep. She lets her eyes trace the landscape of his unclothed body: the hirsute expanse of his chest, the sharp blue knots of his shoulders, the sensual rise of his hip, the lazy slant of his penis. She knows she must imprint this moment on her memory like a painting seen at auction but bought by someone else.

She leans back into the pillows, sated and happy nevertheless. The room is peppered with the entwined aromas of sexual union and sweat. She has never breathed a sweeter perfume. She wakes him after a while to make love one more time before they must return to Paris. The only thing one can count on when it comes to Morton is that he is insatiable.

Teddy has started making regular trips to Boston, often not coming home at all. No one knows what to expect of him anymore. He may be gone two, three days, yet doesn’t call The Mount to warn anyone. No one knows what he will do on any given day. The cook prepares a meal each evening, but a good part of it goes uneaten.

“Is he visiting his mother, do you think?” Anna asks White. “When he goes and doesn’t return?”

White shrugs. “He’s never come back from visiting his mother nearly so jolly.”

More often than not, Anna eats alone in the servants’ dining room, late, because she wants to be available for Teddy if he does arrive. When he doesn’t, she finds herself as irritated as a scorned wife. Was her company not enough for him? What is drawing Teddy away to Boston with such a siren song? She longs for those earlier summer evenings spent so companionably in the drawing room. She is ashamed that she misses how he made her feel, just for a shimmering moment, like the lady of the house.

During one five-day disappearance, Anna worries he’s in the hospital, injured in a car accident. In a drawer at the Boston morgue. She pads about the house with growing unease, thinks to call the Boston police, Sally Norton, anyone who might have clues to find him. She sits down at the servants’ table, and puts her head in her hands. What will she tell Edith?

“You could eat upstairs, Miss Bahlmann,” Mrs. Cotton, the housekeeper, tells her, drifting into the dining room. “No one would mind serving you there.”

“Oh.” Anna raises her head. “I couldn’t,” she says. “It wouldn’t feel right. It hardly feels right as it is, but Mr. Wharton insists on my company when he’s around. . . .”

“Do you mind my joining you here?” Mrs. Cotton asks. “I ate already. But I was hoping to talk to you. Edna, bring Miss Bahlmann her supper.”

The roast beef is brought, the mashed potatoes, the spinach. A pretty plate. Anyone would enjoy the meal. But with worry over Teddy, Anna has no idea how she will get it down.

“The thing is . . . I’m sorry to tell you this,” Mrs. Cotton says, leaning forward, biting her lip. “And maybe I oughtn’t say anything. But Lonnie, the parlor maid, had a day off yesterday. She went up to Boston to see her beau and they were in the Common. You know how young people like the Common. Well, I certainly did in my day. Such a romantic place for a stroll, right in the heart of a city, no less!”

Anna leans back and hears herself sigh impatiently. What does the woman want to tell her?

“And she says . . . well, she reported to me that she saw Mr. Wharton there . . . with . . . with a woman.”

Anna sets her fork down, feeling herself blanch.

“Well, we don’t know who that might have been . . . maybe his sister?” Anna’s voice is very level. When others are in a panic, one must keeps one’s wits. She learned this long ago in the days when Lucretia would fly off the handle at Mr. Wharton, and Anna would softly, sweetly draw Edith into another room.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this. But I know you and Mr. White have been worried about him. Lonnie says they were making a bit of a spectacle of themselves, if you get my meaning. She sure weren’t his sister! And she was not the sort of woman anyone would expect to see with a gentleman like Mr. Wharton.”

Anna doesn’t want to hear more, can’t tolerate more complication in their already complicated world. Teddy with a questionable woman? And here Anna is again: in possession of information that will upset Edith. Why does this fly ash of disturbing information always land on her ears, forcing her to consider whether she must be the bearer of bad news? It’s her curse!

Anna scrapes her chair from the table, having lost her appetite.

“I have things to attend to in my room,” she says. “Excuse me.”

“I’ve offended you,” Mrs. Cotton says, rising, grabbing Anna’s elbow. “Please. I debated all day whether I ought to tell you. I’m sorry. I should have waited until you were through with your supper at least.”

Anna shakes her head. “I’m glad you told me, Mrs. Cotton. The thing is . . . I don’t know what to do about it. He’s not himself these days. And I feel it’s my job to look after him. Mrs. Wharton
counts
on me to look after him.”

“You have an elephant on your shoulders with
that
task,” Mrs. Cotton says.

Anna feels tears welling in her eyes. Is she emotional because she is caught in a storm, no shelter in sight? Or is she hurt? It had all been too pleasant. Too easy. Everything she could have wished for, for a brief, extraordinary moment. She feels mortified, ashamed that she wanted that ease and intimacy with Teddy so much—something that will never truly belong to her.

Oh, but it’s more. It’s that Teddy Wharton has disappointed her profoundly. Her friend. A vulnerable man she has defended so unceasingly. She believed in Teddy even when no one else did. She never expected it could come to this.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers as she draws up her skirts, willing her tears to wait until she gets to her room.

Mrs. Cotton nods and lets Anna pass.

Edith lands on the perfect apartment at last. And to think it’s just across the street from the Vanderbilts’ on the Rue de Varenne. But bigger, and newer, with its own guest suite and servants’ quarters and steam heat! Unheard of in Paris. And what makes it so extraordinary is that the rooms are luxuriously spacious and overlook a small but elegant garden. A garden! It’s all she could want in space and light. Precisely in the part of the Faubourg she loves. Of course, it wants work. The walls and floor are worn, though it can’t be more than a few years old. And since it is to be leased empty, there is so much to purchase to make it a home. Edith is thrilled to throw herself into the task of finding objects and furnishings that express her own taste. Because since their arrival back in Paris, having once enjoyed such a perilous, delicious, inimitable closeness with Morton, she has written him almost every day, and received little in return.