The Four Temperaments (7 page)

“White
is
a color,” Penelope explained patiently, as if to a child. “Why does it bother you so much?” Gabriel had to stop to consider that.

“It's not that I don't like white,” he said, trying to be tactful. “I think we need some contrasts, that's all. Some stronger visual interest. Instead of all this uniformity.” He felt as if he were talking to a resistant, shortsighted client.

“I don't like contrasts,” Penelope said. “They make me, I don't know, nervous.” Gabriel looked at her clutching the wrappings to her chest, the intensity of her expression a little unsettling.

“Well, I certainly don't want you to feel nervous,” he said, backing down. A few times lately, he had seen Penelope dissolve into pools of luxuriant and sorrowful tears when she felt something he said had wounded her. He had no desire to experience another of these episodes at that moment.

And so it continued. Sheer white drapes that lined the windows; thin, white bone china plates and saucers and cups to fill the cabinets in the kitchen. Gabriel began to feel the need to wear sunglasses inside the apartment, but said nothing. Instead, he went off to work in the cool, damp mornings, and without mentioning it to Penelope, ordered a crimson rug and several tall, faceted blue glass vases for his office.

Then, all at once, the decorating stopped, replaced by the kind of listlessness he had never seen in her before. This, as it turned out, was even more worrisome than her obsessive activity. “Do you think we should buy some furniture for the terrace? If you can wait until Saturday, I'll go with you,” said Gabriel in an attempt to rekindle her enthusiasm for something, for anything.

“More furniture?” she said, sounding tired. “Don't we have enough?” It was early evening when they were having this conversation, but she was already undressed and in her bathrobe. It occurred to Gabriel that she might never have taken it off. He wanted to ask her what she did today, but felt it would sound as if he were interrogating her. Which he was. So he tried something else.

“Let's go out to dinner. We haven't been out in a long time.” And he realized this was true. Penelope loved to cook and spent a great deal of time and energy on their meals, so they hadn't really wanted to. But now he wondered when she last went out. Or got dressed. It seemed as if she had been in that robe for days. And the apartment had become so dirty. Thick, velvety layers of dust on the windowsills, crumbs on the kitchen counters, newspapers littering the sofa, the table and the floor.

“Can't we order in?” Her eyes looked so big and sad that Gabriel was truly frightened for her.

“Nel,” he said, sitting beside her on the whiter-than-white couch. “What's wrong? Can I help?” All at once she was sobbing, wetting the front of his shirt with her tears. Gabriel was mystified, but sat stroking her hair and back, hoping to calm her. Eventually, her crying subsided.

“I want a baby,” she declared suddenly, raising her still-wet face from his shirt and staring directly into his eyes. “Let's have a baby. Please, Gabriel.” He was a bit surprised, but not totally. They had talked about it before, and laughed together at Ruth's not-so-subtle hints on the subject. But they had been waiting: for Gabriel to finish school, for his career to take off, for the move to be completed. And, secretly, Gabriel knew he had been waiting too for some indefinable thing in Penelope to take shape, take root, take anchor. But maybe she was right, maybe they should have a baby. She seemed to think so.

“If that's what you want . . .” he said hesitantly.

“I do.” She stood up, and untied her robe. It fell away easily, and there she was, white, white, white and as desirable as ever.

“What are you doing?” he said with a smile, as he caught her hand and pressed it to his face.

“Getting started, of course.”

Pregnancy seemed
to give Penelope a sense of purpose again; it had a galvanizing effect, and as Gabriel watched her make lists, buy and read books, attend prenatal exercise and labor and delivery classes, he remembered, as if in a bad dream, the stupefied languor of only weeks before. Now, she was up early and had herself on a strict schedule. She started cooking again, but with a new and sterner eye toward nutrition, and, of course, she shopped both for the baby and the room it would inhabit. Gabriel decided not to worry that everything she bought was white or cream or ivory; so what if she didn't like colors—“They jar my senses” was what she said—as long as she was happy.

And she seemed happy with him again too, happy that he had given her this unborn baby that stretched and distended the formerly slender outlines of her stomach, thighs and hips. She reveled in her new shape, preening naked before the mirror, rubbing her hands over her swollen belly like Aladdin with the magic lamp. “You did this,” she said, fairly purring with contentment. “And this too,” she added, offering him her breasts, now full and swollen. Everything, thought Gabriel as he reached for her, was going to be just fine.

There was one night, though, when the other part of Penelope, the dark side, as he privately thought of it, emerged again. They were sitting in bed, each propped up by several pillows. Gabriel was reading a magazine; Penelope pored over a book of baby names. They had had all the tests and although they told no one else in the family, they knew that she was carrying a girl. He had seen Penelope's little lists scattered about the apartment, along with her editorializing comments:

Grace—Right idea, but too Christian
Amber—Golden, but overdone these days
Jade—Does this mean a loose woman?
Allegra—Lovely, but now an allergy medicine. Think mucus & sneezing

All at once, she snapped the book shut and dropped it on the floor.

“Is something wrong?” Gabriel asked.

“Useless! That book is useless,” she said. “I don't want her to have an ordinary name.” Penelope said “ordinary” as if she were saying “loathsome” or “disgusting.” “I want her name to be special.”

“We'll find something you like,” he soothed, preparing to go back to an article that he had been meaning to finish for days. Two people at work had asked what he thought of it; he wanted to be able to tell them.

“But I'll have the final say, right?” There was an edge to her voice that made Gabriel put down the magazine.

“You already have the name, don't you?” She nodded. “But you're worried I won't like it?”

“You have to let me pick it!” she said, sounding more shrill than she had since she became pregnant.

“Why don't you start by telling me what it is?”

“Isis.” There was a long pause, while Gabriel tried to absorb the idea of raising a little girl in San Francisco, a little girl with Penelope's white skin and dark hair and eyes who when asked would say, on the playground, at nursery school, in day camp, that her name was Isis. Gabriel didn't think he could stand this, so he closed his eyes, and thought instead of what he could say that wouldn't make his wife burst into tears.

“It's different,” he said finally.

“You hate it, don't you?”

“It's very different,” he said.

“I know. That's part of what I love about it. No one else will have her name. And of course I love all the associations.”

“Associations?”

“To the goddess,” she said. “And all the things she stands for: water, the bounty of the earth. Life. I want her to be all that. Have all that.” As if a name, that name or any other, would insure anything, thought Gabriel, but he did not say it. Instead, he put the magazine on the nightstand and retrieved the book of baby names from the floor.

“Can I look at this with you?” he asked. “I'm kind of curious.”

Several months
later, Penelope gave birth to a six-pound, six-ounce baby girl. Gabriel was there during the delivery—“Not like the old days, with the men pacing in the waiting room,” Ruth had commented. Of course, Oscar didn't pace, not any of the three times. When Gabriel was being born, he sat up at the nurses' station, raptly listening to the Brahms string sextet that happened to be on the radio; the other two times he was home tending their other child, or children, while the baby was making its way into the world. Not that Ruth minded; there was, after all, something superfluous about husbands during a birth anyway.

But Gabriel was there, with all Penelope's instructions neatly written out in a series of lists that he kept in different pockets. There was the list of breathing patterns, another of baby names, still a third list of people to call as soon as the baby was born. There was also the cool washcloth, the bag of lollipops, the cup of chipped ice on which she could suck, the snapshot of her childhood cocker spaniel, Candy, that was meant to soothe and focus her throughout the birthing process. Gabriel was so worried about Penelope—what she was going through—that the birth of the child was almost an afterthought. It is only when they handed him the swaddled bundle—the baby felt as warm and reassuring as a loaf of just-baked bread in his arms—that the point of all this strenuous exertion became real. He looked down into her face, which was puffy and rather yellow, and tried to peer into her eyes, which were still swollen and so not fully open. She had a soft coating of dark hair and the most delicately arched eyebrows he had ever seen.

“Hello, Isobel,” he said softly.

“You've just named her,” said Penelope, capitulating in an instant. “I guess we can't change it now.” Isis became her middle name, a compromise that Gabriel at least felt was viable. A middle name was easily dropped or called into service, depending on the mood of its owner. Baby Isobel would have plenty of time to decide what to do.

Ruth flew
out to San Francisco almost immediately. Although she and Caroline were quite different in style and substance, they became united in the presence of the baby, the princess, the angel, that was Isobel. Isobel herself seemed quite unaware of all the stir she was causing, and Gabriel supposed that was normal for a baby, though what did he know about it? The women kept him at arm's length; they were utterly focused on the baby and always attending to something she needed: diapering, dressing, cleaning, bathing. They did not want his help; they did not seem to need it. He turned to Penelope, but she too was otherwise occupied. Ruth and Caroline hovered around her, waving her back into a chair or bed when she tried to get up—the obstetrician had been required to sew several stitches, the sight of which made Gabriel avert his eyes—and she was still in some pain. Gabriel felt banished and hurt, which was not what he expected, but was what had happened. He went back to work after a couple of days, and he distinctly felt their relief: he had performed his function and he was not wanted there anymore. He imagined it would be different when his mother and mother-in-law returned to their respective homes. Then he would get to know his infant daughter. Then he would become reacquainted with his wife.

But the mothers left, and still Penelope kept him away. For one thing, she was nursing Isobel, and that was something Gabriel admittedly could not do. When she held the baby to her taut and abundant breasts, a drugged, peaceful look settled on her face, as if she and the child had entered some kind of private trance that excluded him entirely. She would not let him hold the baby for more than a minute before she demanded her back and she insisted on attending to all of Isobel's incessant physical needs herself—the soiled diapers, spit-up cloths that needed replacements, tiny ears and nostrils that required irrigating. She asked him only to do the more peripheral chores: shop for food, tidy the apartment or fold the organic cotton diapers, for she would not allow the disposable kind next to Isobel's skin. Eventually, they hired someone to clean the apartment, since Penelope no longer had the inclination or the time; after that, Gabriel felt he had nothing at all to do in his own home. His sense of exclusion continued to grow, though no one else seemed to notice.

Still, the baby appeared to thrive. From his second-class position, Gabriel could see her fill out, losing the yellow and puffy look that followed her birth. Her eyes remained a clear, true blue, and her skin was as creamy and fine as Penelope's. She gurgled, she kicked, she reached, she grabbed. But Gabriel watched all of this as if from a distance, as if Penelope and Isobel were someone else's wife and child; lovely, but not his. And before she had turned a year old, she was taken aboard the airplane to New York City, where she spent her first Thanksgiving with her grandparents, Ruth and Oscar, and where her father fell head over heels in love with a skinny young ballet dancer by the name of Ginny Valentine.

OSCAR

O
scar was
aware that something terrible happened during the Thanksgiving dinner that Ruth had so painstakingly prepared, and to which they had both looked forward—in different ways, for different reasons—for weeks. He didn't know what the something was, only that Ruth's face, which just moments ago was so animated, now looked entirely different. Drained of color, contracted into a worried, tense scowl, it seemed a different face entirely, one that was older, and more desolate than he would have believed possible.

No one else seemed to have noticed this change when she came back into the room, still holding Isobel. The others were talking, arguing about something. Well, at least William was not playing the piano, not yet anyway, and Oscar didn't have to listen to Rodgers and Hammerstein or, worse, Stephen Sondheim. Penelope immediately reached for the baby and Ruth handed her over with a quick, perfunctory gesture that by itself would have made Oscar suspect something. But that face. How was it that no one else saw it?

He stared hard, trying to catch her eye, but she seemed determined not to let this happen and busied herself with plates and cups of coffee. Oscar kept watching, though, and when she headed for the kitchen, he found it easy enough to follow her without anyone noticing anything. “Ruth,” he said quietly when they were alone. “What's the matter?”

“I can't tell you now,” she said in an urgent whisper, and her face looked as if it were in danger of breaking apart entirely. “Oscar, please, go back to the other room.” So he did, rather sheepishly, carrying out a fistful of spoons that he dropped to the table with a clatter. No one paid attention.

“I'm ready for some music,” said Ruth's sister, Molly, loudly. Good old Molly, thought Oscar. Depend on her to get those ivories tinkling. For the first time he could remember, he was actually grateful for the way they all clustered around William, calling out the names of songs, and singing them—cheerful, off-key and with the wrong words, no doubt—as he played. Oscar sat down heavily on a chair, wondering how this day got ruined—for ruined it surely was—and how he would get through the rest of it. His eyes roamed around the room, looking for solace in the faces of his family. William, bent over the piano, happy to be the center of attention; Betsy, anxiously biting her lip as she watched him; Ben with his new bride; the baby Isobel held by her beautiful mother. His cousin Henry, whom he had always liked, and whom he hadn't seen in years. Molly, now a widow, and her daughter, the one who caused her mother so much grief when she shaved her head that summer they all took the house together on Cape Cod. The daughter's roommate, though Oscar could not remember her name. Suddenly, he was aware that something was missing from this picture. Gabriel was not in the room. And neither was Ginny. But before he could add the two and two that inevitably made four, Ruth returned.

“Who wants dessert?” she called out. She had reclaimed herself in some way, Oscar could see that as she set out the apple and pecan pies, the bowl of whipped cream. There was fresh lipstick coating her mouth and some pinkish tint in her cheeks. Only her eyes—steely, ever so slightly crazed, and much too bright, as if unshed tears were making them glitter—gave her away.

“Oh, I do,” said Molly, who was out of her seat and moving toward the table.

“Who said dessert?” Oscar glanced over and saw his beloved Ginny walk back into the room, followed by an abashed-looking Gabriel. Ginny and Gabriel? It wasn't possible. Oscar felt sick even thinking about it.

Since that
ecstatic, guilt-provoking night in her arms, Oscar had made love to Ginny only one other time. This took place in her laundry-littered apartment—had she never heard of a hamper?—on sheets that probably hadn't been changed in a month. He had insisted on seeing her home after a performance, and she had, rather halfheartedly, he could tell, invited him up. As soon as they were alone and the door was locked, he grabbed her in an insistent, clumsy embrace that seemed to embarrass more than arouse either of them.

“Oh, Oscar!” She laughed, but she hardly looked pleased. Oscar knew he was making an ass of himself, but he couldn't help it, and he began to kiss her face and neck until finally she said, “All right, all right. Let's at least go lie down somewhere we can be comfortable.” So they did, and it was all over in minutes, and she seemed glad of that and much more interested in talking about
The Nutcracker,
which was standard winter fare for the company, and which they would start performing very soon.

“I think I may be getting a new part,” she confided. “Even though the season has started.” She was still naked as she said this, knees drawn to her chest and slender arms wrapped around them.
The Nutcracker,
for God's sake. Oscar had been playing that saccharine score for so many years, the thought of it made his teeth ache. But he said nothing, just watched and drank in the scent, the sound, the sight of her. She talked on, cheerful and confident, apparently oblivious to his distress. She seemed ready for him to leave and it was only when he got to the door that something seemed to open in her and she reached out to squeeze his shoulder.

“Good night, Oscar,” she said. “I love you.” Then the door gently closed. Love you! Oscar was astonished. What could she mean by this? Why then had she fairly pushed him out of the apartment? He stood there for a long while, staring at the closed door.

Though he knew it was hopeless, Oscar began to behave like a besotted suitor—he sent pale yellow roses on long stems to the dressing room after a performance, bought her expensive imported chocolates (he was certain she would like these) and a pair of garnet and pearl earrings (these he was less sure of, but wanted to buy them anyway)—trying to win an elusive lover. Ginny never seemed to take any of his offerings seriously, and after a while, he stopped. He felt wounded and foolish, but her lack of interest was all too clear and Oscar wouldn't bring himself to beg, though he was tempted to, many times.

Soon, they reverted to their former relationship, the one that seemed to resemble that of a kindly, generous uncle with his fond and grateful niece. Once they were no longer lovers, Ginny was indeed again grateful for all his help: she seemed more genuinely pleased by his gift of a huge shrink-wrapped package of individual cartons of iced tea that he had seen in the window of D'Agostino's and which reminded him of her (“Oh, you remembered that I really am a southern girl at heart! I love iced tea!”) than by the chocolates or the earrings. For days after that, she kept one or two of the little cartons in her ballet bag, and when she pulled out the straw and stuck it in, she raised it toward him, as if in a toast. Still, Oscar would make do with whatever crumbs she offered: he was that hungry for her.

The rest
of the day passed at an infuriatingly slow pace. Fortunately, William's singing and dessert wine brought by Ben and his wife made the assembled group merry and not all that discerning. Oscar kept looking at his son and at Ginny, searching for evidence. And he found it. Just a slight, subtle thing that he wouldn't have noticed had he not been looking so hard. But there it was, a glance that was at once shy and bold, that passed between them, and suddenly Oscar understood what it was that Ruth had seen.

Gabriel and Ginny. So that
was
it. Oscar was consumed by a feeling of jealousy and humiliation unlike any he had ever felt before. Not only had Gabriel married a beautiful and rich woman, now he had somehow managed to steal the one girl in all those years for whom Oscar had actually risked his own marriage. Goddamn him.

The wretched
day finally drew to a close. Coats were fetched from the bedroom, hugs and kisses were exchanged at the apartment's door, parcels of food pressed into willing hands. William's wife offered to stay late and help clean up, but Ruth shooed them out. Oscar knew this too was a sign: ordinarily, Ruth would have leaped at the chance to spend more time with one of her daughters-in-law. He knew that she felt hurt that neither of these young women, for whatever reasons, had become close to her. Maybe Ben's new bride would be different. Just then, Oscar didn't feel too hopeful about anything. He tugged at the belt that encircled his expanding waistline, and braced himself for the storm that he knew would break as soon as he was alone with his wife.

But when the last guest was gone, and the door clicked shut for the final time, Ruth was suddenly nowhere to be found. Oscar looked around the dining room. The plates were still on the table; the cups filled with the dregs of cold coffee hadn't been touched. He moved to the kitchen, calling her name. He saw the large white ironstone platter with its turkey carcass still sat on the counter; pots of various sizes covered all the burners of the stove. There was a large sticky patch on the floor—gravy? wine?—that no one had wiped. And still no Ruth. He backed out of the kitchen and headed toward their bedroom, the very one he had defiled with Ginny's presence, but that too was empty. He was about to really worry, to panic even, when, all at once, he heard her voice—low and dull—calling out, “Oscar. I'm in here.”

Oscar hurried to the back bedroom, now the guest room. Ruth was lying stretched out on the twin bed, one of the boys' old and battered teddy bears cradled in her arms. She stared up at the ceiling, and the expression on her face made Oscar pause. He did not feel wanted in this room, and he remained on the threshold until there was a sign from her that he was welcome.

“I saw them kissing. Right in here. Not on the bed, thank God—standing up.” Oscar did not have to ask who she was talking about. He wanted to say he was sorry. But then he would have to tell Ruth all about Ginny, and he was not ready to do that. “Oscar, she frightens me. It's as if she was born without something—a heart, a conscience, I don't know. But I do know she's going to ruin Gabriel's life. And when she does, Penelope isn't going to be as understanding as I am.” Oscar stood very still as an ugly flush that started somewhere on his neck slowly rose to his face. Ruth shook her head, and the tears she had struggled to hold back seeped from the corners of her eyes. “Did you really think,” she said, her voice breaking only slightly, “that I didn't know you were sleeping with her?”

“Only twice!” he asserted, feeling dumb and ashamed. “And if you knew how sorry I was, how sorry I am—”

“Not as sorry as you're going to be,” said Ruth. “Not as sorry as we're all going to be. Because I hope you understand that this is happening to
all
of us.” She pulled herself up and looked at him steadily. “You'd better come in and sit down. There are some things we ought to talk about. If Penelope finds out . . .” She didn't need to finish the sentence. Even without knowing all the details, Oscar could guess at the fragility of his son's wife. He knew the story about his granddaughter's name—thank God Gabriel had prevailed on that—and the rejected baby clothes. Today he had seen how oblivious to everyone Penelope seemed, everyone except Isobel, of course. And then there was the eating. Penelope was a vegetarian, and Ruth was happy to prepare a soy casserole and to make sure there were lots of vegetable dishes for her. But today she refused cooked food altogether. “It's too greasy or something,” she explained to Ruth. “I don't know. It seems fermented or rotten to me. Do you have any raw vegetables?” Oscar, who watched all this, knew that Ruth was hurt, but she graciously tried to hide it.

“I could grate you some carrots,” Ruth said. “And some cabbage. Oh, I also have some plain lettuce left from the salad.”

“Cabbage! No cabbage, please. But the lettuce and raw carrots would be perfect,” said Penelope.

“What about the baby?” Ruth had asked. “Can she have some of the rice pilaf? Or the cooked carrots? She loved how I made them when I came out to visit you.”

“No, no, that's all right,” said Penelope. “I brought food for her. She'll just eat what Mommy brings,” she said, and nuzzled Isobel's nose with her own.

“What can
we do?” Oscar asked Ruth, feeling helpless. He was ashamed of asking Ruth this; he realized that he was the one who had brought Ginny into their lives. Why should his wife help him now?

“I'm not really sure,” Ruth said slowly. “But we ought to do something.”

“How much longer are they going to be on the East Coast?” Oscar asked.

“Only a couple of days. They're making it short this year.”

“Thank God for small blessings,” he murmured.

“We should see them before they go. I told Penelope we'd go up to Greenwich for the day. They're staying with Caroline.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow. I think you should find a way to be alone with Gabriel. Tell him to stay away from Ginny.”

“Why should he listen to me?” Oscar said. “He never has before.”

That night,
Oscar lay stiffly next to Ruth, not daring to touch her, even in the most casual way. Still, he was keenly aware of her presence next to him in the dark. He was sure that she was awake too. He wanted to talk to her—about Gabriel, about Penelope and, most of all, about Ginny. But how to begin? Then there was a loud, long sigh from Ruth. Oscar opened his mouth and said her name very softly.