A Cup of Tea: A Novel of 1917 (11 page)

J
ane convinced herself it was out of concern for Rosemary that she would finally tell her what she knew, true friendship, as it were, that Rosemary ought to know the facts, so that she could protect herself and do what she had to to hold on to Philip. Jane couldn’t bear the thought that Philip had returned and Rosemary was at risk of losing him again.

She stopped and bought Rose flowers, a small arrangement of irises and bluebells that looked slightly patriotic. She found her in her bedroom, wearing a volunteer nurse’s uniform, just sitting down to tea.

Jane held the bouquet out to her. “I brought you flowers.”

Rosemary grabbed a small purple vase and disappeared for a moment to fill it with water. “They’re beautiful,” she said as she came out of the bathroom. “A little touch of spring.” She set them on a table on the far side of the room, then sat down and poured herself a cup of tea.

“How are you?” asked Jane.

“Excellent,” said Rosemary. “I feel like life has righted itself again.”

“How’s Philip?”

“Distant. God knows what he went through. They say it’s normal. I don’t care.” She jumped up and began to slip off her uniform and button herself into a more stylish but comfortable dress. “He’s home now and nothing else matters.”

“I thought maybe we should have a party,” she said. “Not big. A dinner party. Tomorrow night. Spontaneous.” She sounded a little wistful. “The way we used to. Can you come?”

“Of course I can come,” Jane answered. And then added, with a bit of an edge. “How are
you
, Jane? Did
you
have a nice day?” She hadn’t meant to say it. It just slipped out. But Rosemary was so one-sided in the way she saw things, often missed what was
going on around her, needed so badly to be shaken up.

Rosemary looked at her startled. “Have been I been self-obsessed lately, Jane. I’m sorry.”

“No, I shouldn’t have said that,” said Jane. “I’m sorry. I have something to tell you, Rose.”

“What?”

“Remember that—girl you picked up?”

“Yes, I remember,” said Rosemary smiling. “Eleanor Smith. She sent me back the money that I gave her. As if it were a loan. Maybe I actually made a difference.”

“I think
we
might have,” said Jane.

“We?” said Rosemary. “What do you mean, ‘we’?”

And then Jane confessed to her. “I followed her that night,” she said. “I didn’t feel right about sending her into the street. She was such a pretty girl. She looked as though no one had ever taken care of her.”

Rosemary stared at Jane. It was hard to know which startled her more—that Jane had done something altruistic or that she’d kept it from her. Jane continued. “I gave her the address of Dora—Whitley, you know, my friend, the woman who owns the hat shop. I thought that she might work for her.”

“Dora did the hats for my wedding,” Rosemary said in crisp staccato tones, as if she were insisting that it wasn’t true. “I never saw her there.”

“Philip did.”

Rosemary cut her off. “I don’t want to hear this.”

“But you must. You have to hear this.”

“No, I don’t have to hear this, Jane. I don’t want to hear it. It was all so long ago, wasn’t it? Over a year. I mean, since the wedding. It has been the longest year. It’s not still going on, is it—whatever was going on? I don’t—want to hear this. You’ve always been jealous of me.” And then she turned on Jane with surprising force. “I was all the dreams you never had,” she said. She was almost screaming. “You’ve never really wanted my life to be all right. You’ve never had your own life, Jane. All you’ve ever done is meddle in other people’s lives.”

“That’s not true. I’ve had a life. You’ve never chosen to be part of it. You only let me in to your part.”

“Do I owe you an apology, Jane? Perhaps I do. But I don’t want to hear this other part.”

“No, I’m sure you don’t,” said Jane. “She has a child. I’m sorry,” she said, as if an apology could make any of this fine again. “I thought you should know.”

In that moment, Rosemary seemed nearly implacable. She retreated, into her manners and breeding, and became so remote and distant and formal that it was impossible for Jane to do anything except excuse herself and leave the room.

“I
’ve had the oddest talk with Jane,” said Rosemary that night when Philip was lying in bed. She was sitting at the vanity with her back to him but she could see him in the mirror. He didn’t answer her.

“In a way, she’s the most alone person I know,” said Rosemary as she continued to brush her hair.

“Is she, Rose?” asked Philip.

“Well, she doesn’t have anyone except her mother and who knows how long that will last.” She got up and sat beside Philip on the bed. “If something happened to Papa,” she said, “I don’t know what I’d do.” She looked at him waiting for some response. “Of
course, I have my own family now.” She put a hand lightly on his forehead. “If something were to happen to you…”

“You?” said Philip. “You’d be fine.”

“Would I, Philip? You just think I’d be fine.” Did she want him to reassure her? Did she want him to tell her that he’d never leave her…She leaned in and kissed him as if in that moment she could shut out the world.

E
leanor was sitting on the grass in Central Park, a Victorian picture of sorts, her long skirt spread about her, all her attention focussed on Tess, who was lying on a blanket, playing with an ivory and silver teething toy in the shape of a bell.

“Yes,” said Eleanor, “that’s good grabbing.” She reached her hand in and helped Tess shake the bell. “See, if you shake it like this,” she said, “it makes a sound.”

The baby’s face broke into a smile as Eleanor reached in and turned her over on her back and began to tickle her. The noonday sun felt warm on her back.
And then she was aware of a shadow on the grass, a woman’s form.

Rosemary had shown up first thing that morning at Jane Howard’s door. Jane was still in her dressing gown having stayed up much too late the night before drinking wine. She offered Rose coffee, which she refused. “No, I won’t come in,” she said. “You’re giving me Eleanor Smith’s address.” And Jane complied, writing it on a piece of note-paper from a tawdry midtown hotel where she had recently spent an afternoon with a young woman she had met at the make-up counter at Best & Co.

“I can’t tell you to be gentle with her,” said Jane as she handed her the address, “because I don’t think that’s what she deserves.”

Secretly, she was pleased because she’d expected Rose to fight for this.

Eleanor wasn’t at the apartment. Rosemary was told by Josie Kennedy who answered the door that she had gone to the park. The park. Of course. That’s where you went with a baby. Philip’s baby lying on the quilt.

And then she was aware of a shadow on the grass, a woman’s form
.

She looked up and saw Rosemary looking down at her.

“Did I do something to you?” asked Rosemary. “I’m trying to understand this. I brought you home
for tea. I gave you money. It was an act of kindness. I thought—it was an act of kindness.”

Eleanor was too startled to answer her.

And then as suddenly as she was there, she was gone, and the shadow on the grass had become sunlight again. Eleanor sat there for a moment alone on the quilt with her baby.

W
hen she got back to the lobby of her building, there was a man standing, leaning against one of the marble pillars. She recognized him at once. She braced herself and pushed the baby’s carriage toward the elevator.

“What is it,” she asked as she passed him, “family day? I just saw your wife.” Philip barely reacted as he was trying to register what he hadn’t known before, that he had a child.

“Is it?” he asked looking at Tess.

“Your baby?” she said immediately. “I don’t know. With girls like me you never can be sure. Of course, it’s your baby.” She was almost crying.

Philip stepped into her. He started to kiss her face and smooth away her tears with the palm of his hand.

“I didn’t know,” he said. “Believe me when I tell you that I didn’t know.” He realized he respected her more because she’d never told him, that she would never ask him for anything, that any decision he would make would have to be his own.

He lifted her hair softly and kissed her on the nape of the neck. “Believe me,” he said again, softly, “when I tell you that I didn’t know. Shh. I’m here now.” He kissed her on the cheek and then the mouth. “And I’m not going to leave you.”

Before he left, he promised her that he would come back to her that night. He could no longer live with Rosemary…but he had to tell her. Had to make her understand that she would be better off without him, better off with someone who was much more like her kind. In time, he reasoned, she would forgive him. She would find someone else. But how was he to tell her….

He reached in and picked up the baby, his baby, from the carriage and held her to him and then leaned in and kissed Eleanor again.

I
t was dark when he came home. The steps to the house looked steep, ominous, as though there were more of them than there had been before. There was no easy way to do this, no good time to do this. He stood on the street for a long time considering how he would tell her. And then let himself into the house.

He practically walked into Gertrude who was carrying a silver tray of hors d’oeuvres into the living room. “Damn!” He’d forgotten they were having a dinner party. He went to the living room and poured himself a drink. Charlie Miles, the piano player from the club, had been hired for the evening
and was sitting on the bench at the piano. He was dressed in a tuxedo with a ruffled shirt and a 2-cent carnation in his lapel and his arms fairly hung below the seat of the piano bench as he sat there as relaxed as if he were a rag doll.

Charlie Miles started to play a melody with a bass-line that was early speakeasy, haunting, Victorian, but with a hint of blues to come.

Rosemary was upstairs dressing; that is, she had spread four dresses out on the bed and was trying to figure out which one to wear, as if she could reinvent herself and it would all be fine.

She sat down at the vanity. She started to put kohl under her eyes but she was too nervous to sit. She walked back to the bed and picked up a pale blue taffeta dress that was off the shoulder. She was holding it up to herself in the mirror when Philip walked into the room. “Hi, I was—getting worried about you,” she said. “You’re so late. You need to change. You’ll be late for dinner. The Portervilles are coming and the Fergusons…”

“Rosemary,” said Philip trying in vain to stop her going on.

“They have a new baby,” she said. “A boy. I told
them not to bring him. I can’t stand it when everyone stands around goo goo over a new baby. It just stops a dinner party cold. And Jane’s coming, I think.”

Philip just stood there looking at her. “Rose, I have something to tell you…” he said.

“Which dress do you like better, dear?” she asked him holding up a beige silk gown that was cut on the bias.

“Rose, stop!” he said more forcefully than he meant to. “Shall we discuss where to put the chair or which necklace you should wear? Or better yet where I should sit? Or where you should place me like that porcelain box over there.”

She put the dress down. “I don’t think of you as a fixture, Philip,” she said. “Sit down, dear,” and then she stopped realizing she’d just directed him again. “I’m sorry.”

He stood there looking at her. “I think you are the one who ought to sit down, Rose,” he said finally. They both continued to stand.

She knew what he was going to tell her
.

“I can’t—I can’t live here anymore, Rose,” he said.

“What do you think of New Orleans?” she asked immediately. “I hear it’s a nice—” But she realized this wasn’t going to play, it wasn’t the city he was referring to. “It isn’t true, Philip.” She turned on him. She knew she sounded hysterical. “It isn’t true,
Philip.” She took a deep breath. “We—we ought to have gone away when you got back. We needed some time away. We never had a honeymoon.” She knew she sounded desperate but it didn’t matter to her.

“Don’t do this, Rose,” he said. “It isn’t you. Since I’ve been back I’ve—your life is perfect, Rose. It’s me that doesn’t fit into it.”

“Did I do something…?” she asked almost as if she hadn’t heard anything he’d said to her. “I—can change. I can be anything you want me to be. It—isn’t true, Philip.”

“Since I’ve been back, I’ve tried,” he said. “Maybe I haven’t tried as hard as I should have…”

He reached out to touch her hair and somehow the softness of the act infuriated her, as though it were evidence to her that he did love her. “It isn’t true,” she said again.

But he went on. “But your life—our life would never have made either of us happy.”

She walked away from him. She walked over to the vanity and looked at herself in the mirror. Her voice got deeper. “I know I can be cold,” she said. “Sometimes I’m so involved in—I’ll be better, Philip.”

“It isn’t any use, Rose,” he said. “There isn’t anything
you can do. I’ve fallen in love with someone else.”

“You just think you have,” she said and the sound of her own voice frightened her. She hardly heard the next few things he said to her.

“I know it isn’t fair…”

“I know you think I can take care of myself,” she interrupted him.

“I know I made a vow to you,” he said.

She spoke on top of him. “I know you think I don’t need anything. But it isn’t true. When I thought you were—” She was hysterical now, “but I knew you were never. I knew you were coming back to me.” And then she was almost screaming. “What makes you think that she can make you happy? She can’t make you happy. Because she needs you to take care of her?”

She’d gone too far for Philip. He turned to go.

And she went after him. “What makes her think that she can have what’s mine!” Her left hand closed over the handle of the letter opener on the vanity. “She can’t have what’s mine.”

She touched him on the shoulder and when he turned, in one swift motion, in a mixture of rage and anger so precise that her aim and movement were unavoidable as he raised his arm to defend himself
a moment too late, she stabbed him in the throat.

He gasped as his hand went to his throat and then fell to the floor.

From downstairs, she heard the sound of the front door closing as the first of the guests arrived. And the beginning strains of piano music from the party below.