Tiny Little Thing (12 page)

•   •   •

I
dance with the financier first, while Frank dances with his wife. I smile and flirt and thank God for the wine. Then we switch partners, and Frank asks me if I’m enjoying myself. “Very much,” I say.

“How did I sound up there?”

“Perfect. You hit all the right notes.”

“Cap did all right. God bless him. People were practically pulling out their checkbooks as he spoke.”

“Yes, the
Globe
reporter was awfully impressed.”

Frank leans in. “Have you been smoking?”

“Just one.”

The orchestra is playing an old standard, and we dance automatically. Frank’s eyes wander the crowd around us, the people standing at the edge. A high pitch of energy surrounds him, a pitch I recognize from other nights, other events. I suppose we all recognize it, we wives of performers (and that’s what politics is, isn’t it—performing, I mean): celebrity or charisma or plain old razzle-dazzle, a brilliance that you might call artificial, a masquerade, but really it isn’t. The mask is part of the person. That’s why it’s so compelling. I grasp his chin and tug him back to face me. “You should be careful, though. Lytle said that it almost looks like Caspian should be the candidate.”

Frank frowns down at me. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Just that he’s very impressive up there. He’s a natural leader.”

“I can hold my own against fucking Cap.”

“Shh
.
”
I glance to either side. “Of course you can. But you don’t need to have him following us around at every fund-raiser, either.”

A flashbulb pops nearby, and another.

“Not that you weren’t wonderful up there,” I say. Smiling.

“Cap’s loyal. Cap’s not going to burn me.”

“Of course not. Politics is the last thing he’s interested in.”

“How do you know?”

“You know how I can size people up.”

Frank looks past my ear, over my shoulder to the rim of the dance floor. “Well, you’re right. Cap doesn’t know jack about politics.”

“Not like you,” I say, but it’s too late. My husband’s arm is stiff around my waist, his hand touching mine only at the necessary fingertips.

The music concludes. Frank leads me to the side, where Josephine waits, talking and laughing with the financier from our table. Her hair is much longer than mine, a shiny loose auburn mess that hovers casually over her bare shoulders. The bangs are pulled back into a sparkling clip at the top of her head, very mod. The thick kohl around her lids reminds you of Bardot, or maybe Fonda. She seems remarkably self-possessed for such a young woman, just out of college, twenty-two years old. Where did my husband find her?

Frank’s smile breaks out. “Ah, Jo! There you are. How are we doing tonight?”

She looks up at him like he’s Moses. “
You
, Frank Hardcastle, are a
star
. You had me in tears.”

“All credit to my crack campaign staff.”

“Hardly.” Josephine reaches up and caresses the diamond stud in her left ear. I can’t quite be certain in this light, but I think she’s blushing.

My husband holds out his arms. “Dance?”

Off they go. “She’s a pretty thing, isn’t she?” says the financier.

“She’s very good at her job,” I say. “Frank does have an eye for talent.”

“I’ll say.”

I open my mouth to change the subject, but someone addresses him from the other side, and he turns away, leaving me suspended and solitary at the edge of the dance floor.

You know, it’s funny. When I first met Frank at a Radcliffe mixer seven years ago, he was dancing with another girl. A blonde, that time, but otherwise a lot like this one: swollen of bosom, smoky of eye. The hair was perhaps a few shades too bright for credibility. She wasn’t even a Radcliffe girl at all; she was somebody’s friend or cousin, I found out later. A ringer. Anyway, he caught my eye, because how could Franklin Hardcastle not catch your eye when you’re nineteen and he’s twenty-one, and you’ve never kissed a boy and he’s the handsomest man you’ve ever seen? All that razzle-dazzle. I turned away. He went on dancing, and then the two of them disappeared from sight for an hour or so. When I saw him next, his hair was tousled, his skin was a little flushed, and I was struggling with my coat in a dank linoleum hallway, preparing to head back to my dormitory before curfew. A pair of hands appeared on my sleeves, helping me in, and I looked up and there he was, Franklin Hardcastle, Harvard senior, radiant in blue eyes and sandy tousled hair. A smooth brown tweed jacket cradled his shoulders. He said,
Who’s the lucky fellow?
and I said,
Who do you mean?
and he said,
The one you’re hurrying off to meet,
and I said,
Nobody, actually, just heading to my dormitory
, and he said,
You’re Tiny Schuyler, aren’t you?
and I said,
How did you know?
(heart galloping), and he said,
Because I’ve spent the last six months hoping I’d run into you like this,
and I said,
Well, here I am,
and long story short, I never saw that other girl again, though I saw plenty more of Frank.

But I do think of her often, that platinum ringer at the Radcliffe mixer, and I think of her now as I watch my husband wing around the dance floor with his campaign staffer. Josephine. I turn the name over in my head, as her bright head revolves in and out of sight, twenty or thirty yards away from me. Frank’s arm is around her back, his hand is splayed wide at the far quadrant of her back, so that the extreme tips of his fingers curve around her trim young waist. His gold wedding ring gleams against the silver halter. They are both smiling.

“You look as if you could use a drink,” says a male voice at my elbow, and for an instant my heart gallops, but it’s only Lytle from the
Boston Globe
, handing me a glass of champagne.

“Thank you.”

He watches me gulp it down. “A hell of a life, isn’t it, for a nice girl like you.”

“How do you know I’m a nice girl?”

“Just a guess. Dance?”

I place the empty glass on a nearby table and take Lytle’s outstretched hand. The song is just ending, so we hang on into the next. He’s an easy man to talk to, John Lytle—“Call me Jack, Mrs. Hardcastle”—really terribly personable.

He delivers me back to my seat and I reach for my pocketbook, a smidgen unsteady, and that’s when I notice the manila envelope tucked underneath the raspberry satin, with my name, MRS. FRANKLIN HARDCASTLE, JR., printed in black block letters, a quarter-inch high, in the corner.

•   •   •

I
’m Tiny Schuyler, I’m Mrs. Franklin Hardcastle, Jr., and for the first time in my whole square life, I’m thoroughly drunk.

I have had several too many. (I couldn’t give you an exact count, but
several
should cover it.) I have rolled up the manila envelope into a stiff little tube and shoved it into my raspberry satin pocketbook, and I have marched to the nearest waiter and taken a glass of champagne and bubbled it merrily down my throat while that dear Jack Lytle tagged affectionately along behind me. I have had a sophisticated conversation with him, while smoking the remaining cigarettes in my pocketbook.
They’re all bores, you know. Rich, contemptible bores. The women are the worst.

Lytle has handed me another glass and a
Really? How so?

Such a dishy fellow, Lytle. So easy to talk to. You can confide in a man like that; he knows exactly what you mean when you say something you can’t quite remember exactly, the morning after, but goes something like,
They’ve forgotten all they ever learned at college, even if they went, and even if they learned anything to begin with. They haven’t got a single ambition of their own. They married fat successful men so they could be thin successful wives.

Lytle has thoughtfully pulled me to the bar, where we can be comfortable.
You think they all married for money?

I have waved my hand expressively.
Oh, I’m sure they’ll say they were in love, and maybe they were, but did they fall in love with high school math teachers and policemen and engineers? No, they did not.

Lytle has seen fit to wonder why I’m here, then, if I despise events like this and people like this.

I have then sighed and stared into my empty glass and said something like,
Well, I guess I’m one of them, aren’t I?

And then, on reflection,
Besides, wouldn’t they just kill me if I asked for a divorce?

And Lytle has said,
Who?
and I have said something like (hand waving to the dais),
Them. Frank, his father. The whole damned Brahmin mob,
and Lytle has said,
Well, well. Aren’t you such a surprise, Mrs. Hardcastle,
and I have said (looking up gratefully),
Aren’t you such a dear, Mr. Lytle.

So. Here I am, the elegant Mrs. Franklin Hardcastle, Jr., gloved to the elbows, savoring all these brand-new sensations, this pleasant sloppy lightness of passage, Lytle’s sympathy, the pretty faces and so on, and a large hand appears out of nowhere to cover the satin fingers that cover my guilty pocketbook.

“Tiny,” says the hand’s owner.

Now, two guesses. Does the hand in question belong to my devoted husband, Mr. Franklin S. Hardcastle, Jr., he of the burnished hair and the burnished smile? I’ll give you a hint: it does not. No, no. Frank Hardcastle has disappeared, poof, just like that, no burnished head to be found in this merry old ballroom at midnight. Cinderella the lowly campaign staffer seems to have disappeared, too, and her dainty glass slippers with her. Franklin Senior is working the crowd to my left—far to my left—and nowhere in that thick Boston fog of cigarette smoke and cocktail breath do I know a single friend.

Except this one. Your second guess. Caspian, whose hand lies atop mine.

In the slow and drunken moment that passes between his word—
Tiny
—and mine, I ponder the nature of that thought. Caspian, a friend? An hour or two ago, clean and sober, I wouldn’t have put those two words together. At most, I consider Caspian an unpredictable ally, bound to me by the accident of my marriage, our interests momentarily aligned. But I know for a fact—I know by solemn experience—where Caspian’s real loyalties lie. He’s a Hardcastle, and the family business comes before everything else. Including himself.

Including me, if I should be so careless as to stand in opposition.

“Caspian,” I say. “I thought you were long gone.”

“Your father-in-law called my room.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

He turns to Jack. “Lytle, isn’t it?”

Jack holds out his hand. “From the
Globe
. Loved your little speech. You have a gift.”

“Not really. I’m just eager to see my cousin doing what God put him on this planet to do.”

“A true believer.”

“I’ve known Frank since we were kids, Mr. Lytle, and I can’t think of a better man for the job. And, trust me, I know a little bit about character, by now.” Caspian winks.

“I’m sure you do. Three tours in ’Nam. Jesus. And then you come home to this.” Jack waves his drink.

“This? This isn’t so bad.”

Jack laughs. “Not here. Tonight. I mean the protests, the students.
LBJ, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today.
That kind of thing. Any rotten eggs thrown at your head yet?”

Caspian’s face turns to stone. “No.”

Another laugh. “Well, I don’t suppose anyone would dare. Still. You’ve heard what’s going on. What do you think?”

“People have a right to their opinions, Mr. Lytle, at least those of us lucky enough to be standing here in an American ballroom instead of a Vietnamese rice paddy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I haven’t had the pleasure of dancing with my cousin yet.” His hand slides up my forearm to grasp my elbow.

“You can dance?” Lytle asks.

“I can try.”

Caspian leads me to the dance floor, which has grown looser and more dangerous since I left it an hour ago, jiving with couples dancing a little too close and laughing a little too loud. I shift the pocketbook to my left hand and clasp Caspian’s hand with my right. “Can you really dance?” I ask.

“We’re about to find out.”

“You don’t need to do this.”

“I had to get you away from that reporter somehow.”

We execute a turn, which Caspian manages better than most of the men around us.

“I can handle myself,” I say.

“Uncle’s orders.”

“And we all know you do
exactly
what the family tells you to do.”

I’m peeking steadily over his shoulder, watching the pleasant kaleidoscope pass by, because his face is too much. He’s too much, and I, Mrs. Franklin Hardcastle, Jr., have had
much
too much champagne.

“In this case, yes.” His voice is low and rumbles from his chest, just a few inches from my ear. “But mostly, I just want to do what’s best for you.”

“Oh, I see. And obviously
this
is what’s best for me,” I say bitterly.

“This? This is
your
choice, Tiny. What you chose.”

I step unsteadily back, away from his chest. The champagne bubbles have all died away. “I think it’s time I went to my room.”

“I think that’s an excellent idea.”

Caspian keeps my hand in his and threads me through the crowd to one of the double doors at the other crimson end of the ballroom. Down the corridor, the lobby opens like a new marble world, containing its elevator banks and its grand staircase, but Caspian steers me in the other direction. “Let’s get a little air first,” he says.

Outside the cool breath of the air-conditioning, the courtyard is dark and hot, but the change in atmosphere does clear my head a degree or two. I put my hands on the railing and stare down at the pocketbook clenched between them. Wishing I had a cigarette inside. Something to do.

“Can we clear something up?” Caspian says. “Just one thing.”

“And what’s the point of that, exactly?”

“Because we’re living side by side now. We can’t just keep avoiding each other.”

“Then go back to Vietnam.” The words are out, sharp and awful. I bend my head to the railing. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”