Heart Troubles (6 page)

“Did you read it?”

“Well,
most
of it. I thought it was—very interesting.”

“You may not be ready for Baudelaire,” he said with a little smile. “I have another book for you—a very special book that I picked out for you in my library this morning.”

“But how would I get it back to you? Well, I could mail it, I guess.”

Mr. Fiedler hitched his chair over closer to her. “If you promise to come back next summer, I may let you keep it,” he said.

About half an hour later Dolores was saying, “Freddie's different because he's funny. He's the only boy I've met who could say funny things, things that I really wanted to laugh at, and he's the only person that I've met who hasn't wanted to take me seriously.”

“Including me?” said Mr. Fiedler.

Dolores looked up from where she lay, on her stomach on the terrace with her chin in her hands, her half-filled glass in front of her. “Of course not including you,” she said. “You're different, too. You're a friend, and—well, a special kind of friend.”

He leaned toward her, his glass pressed between his hands. “Special? In what way?”

“Well …” She drew a vague pattern on the stone with her index finger. “I don't know.” She paused. “I guess it's because you treat me like an equal. Like an adult. My parents have never
thought
of treating me like an adult. Why, you even offer me a drink—even though I don't drink! And you offer me cigarettes. And besides, you're very interesting to talk to.”

“Perhaps I see the woman you're capable of being.”

“Yes. But you know, it's funny,” she said. “And I don't mean
funny.
But I wonder.”

“What do you wonder?”

“Well, it seems so
unusual
that a person like you—a great intellectual, really—should have given up jobs at some of the most famous girls' schools in the country, even Burneyside—and come way up here to Maine to live, to this dinky town, miles from everywhere, and live year round.…”

“What do you know about Burneyside?” he said.

“Nothing—except that you taught there, didn't you? And—”

“Next thing,” he said, raising his glass to his lips, “you're going to tell me you suspect I was dismissed from my job at Burneyside.”

“No, I don't mean that,” she said. “But—well, it does seem strange.”

“I pursue my researches up here,” he said a little crossly. “In peace.”

“I know, I know. But don't you ever miss—”

“Never,” he said. He took a swallow of his drink.

“Do you know something?” he said quickly. “A little bird has just whispered something in my ear. A little bird tells me that somebody has been talking to you about me, somebody in town, saying such things as—”

“Oh, don't be silly! I just meant—”

“Saying that I live off a rich, sick wife? Hmm? Things like that? Am I right? Did my little bird tell me true, because this little town is notorious, my pet, for—”

“No, no. I've never talked to
anybody
about you, except—”

“Aha!” he said, leaning forward again. “Except whom?”

“Well, except Freddie, of course.”

“I see.”

“But Freddie's never said anything about
you.
You see, I think Freddie's a rather special kind of person, too. I think you'd like him if you got to know him. He's very witty. Do you know he's the only person who can keep me laughing all the time? Not just because he says funny things, but the way he says them, you know, that's so funny?” She put it as a question and then laughed. “I guess I don't know what I mean,” she said, “but you understand. I like to talk things over with you. Today, when we were riding, he just suddenly reached over and grabbed my hand and said, ‘A person doesn't need to have a memory to remember what you look like.' I'd told him I was leaving on the fifteenth, you see. But wasn't that—I mean, wasn't that a sweet thing to say? And I didn't know what to answer, so I just laughed. And then
he
started laughing, and I was honestly afraid I was going to laugh myself sick, I laughed so hard. And do you know what he said New York is? He said New York is a place where the farmers are Democrats instead of Republicans. I asked him if he'd ever been to New York, and that's what he said. Don't you think that's funny?”

“Ha-ha,” said Mr. Fiedler.

“And it's like that with everything—everything he says. Why, the other day—”

“He's never said anything about me?”

“Of course not,” she said. “Why should he?”

“And your mother—or father?”

“I don't have to discuss
every
thing with my parents, do I?” she said.

Mr. Fiedler chuckled softly. “In addition to its charming flora and fauna, this village is noted for its malicious gossips,” he said. “They delight in spreading ugly stories about anyone who—how shall I say—who seems to be a bit different, or perhaps better, than they are.”

“Oh, I'm sure they do!” Dolores said.

“If what's-his-name—your young Freddie—ever did say anything … or if anyone else did … you wouldn't believe it, would you? Any more than you'd believe that patently obvious line he's handing you?”

“It isn't a line. It's—”

“How can you tell? How old are you? Seventeen?” Mr. Fiedler's voice was very hard. “Give yourself a few more years to find out, pet.”

Dolores looked at her fingernails. “Please don't be cross with me for telling you. I—”

“That's okay.” Mr. Fiedler stood up abruptly. “It just makes me sad—literally ill—to hear you talking the way you've been about this—this red-necked young riding instructor. You don't know what love is.”

Dolores made a steeple of her fingers and rested her chin on their tips, flattening her elbows against the stones, and as she did so her white blouse came untucked around her waist.

“You see?” he said, standing above her. “You yawn, you stretch, you laugh, your blouse comes prettily out of your jodhpurtops. You're young, you see, and—”

“Huh?” Dolores laughed and reached around to tuck in her blouse.

“Dolores,” said Mr. Fiedler. He knelt on the terrace beside her.

“What?” Dolores laughed again, but this time the laugh was briefer. “You're a funny person,” she said. “You say the strangest things …”

“Can you keep a secret?”

She sat up abruptly. “No.”

“Why not, Dolores?”

“Because I don't want to. I'll betray it if you tell me, so please don't.”

“But I want to.”

“No, no …”

Mr. Fiedler stood up once more. “Let me have that glass,” he said. As he reached for it, his hand trembled. “I mean just don't say you're in love with him. How's the arm?”

Dolores showed it to him. “I think it's gone away. What time is it?”

“Nearly seven.”

“I've got to go.”

“Please stay,” he said tensely.

“I really must—”

“You're just a little dear in those jodhpurs, Dolores.”

“Am I?”

“Yes. A little beauty. Here, let—”

Dolores jumped to her feet. “You should save those things for your wife,” she said. She picked up the green jacket.

“You don't know what it's like, Dolores, living with a woman like that.”

Dolores shivered. “Why do you—” she began.

Mr. Fiedler seized the girl's shoulders, and turned her around to face him. “Why do
you?
Why do you behave so foolishly? Don't you know that
I'm
not poison? Do you want a cigarette?” He fumbled in his slacks pocket for a pack.

“No, thanks. I must—”

He still gripped her shoulders. “‘The poet—'” he said in a hollow voice “‘—the poet is like a prince of the clouds, who haunts the tempest and laughs at the archer—exiled to the noisy earth, his giant's wings—'” He dropped his hands suddenly, and his voice caught as if he were choking. And he turned his head sharply away from her. When he spoke again his voice was a whisper. “‘Whose giant's wings keep him from walking,'” he finished. “Baudelaire. That was Baudelaire. Do you ever see what I'm talking about, Dolores?”

“I don't think so.”

Once more he reached for her arm, but this time she stepped away from him. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Please. Look. Oh, God, I'm sorry if I—but listen,” he said, “just listen a minute, can't you? Do you want to know what it's like? You asked me, didn't you, how I endured this place? Do you want to know? Do you want to know what it's like to be a man who never, not once in his life, has ever achieved a single thing he's wanted? Do you? Even at Burneyside, when they said I—
Wait!
” he said, as she took another step away from him.

Across the terrace someone called, “Dolores!”

“It's Freddie,” Dolores said. “He wants to walk me home. I have to go.”

She pushed her arms into the sleeves of her jacket. “Thanks for the huaraches,” she said, kicking them off. “I'll walk home barefoot. Coming, Freddie!” she called.

“Wait a minute—I'll get that book.”

“I'll—I'll pick it up some other time.”

“Wait. You'll catch your death walking that way. Tell him to—”

Dolores laughed nervously. “Please,” she said. “I'm sorry. Please tell Mrs. Fiedler good-by for me, and—”

“That boy isn't worth it.”

“Tell her I'm—”

“She knows. She's upstairs.”

“Upstairs? But I thought—”

“She's upstairs whenever I'm downstairs. Do you see what I mean?”

“Yes. Well—good-by. Thank you so much for—”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes. That is, I will if Freddie—” She broke off. “I hope so, really. Well, good-by, and—”

Mr. Fiedler tried to take her hand. “Good night,” she said. She picked up her gloves and riding crop from the terrace and, taking a boot in each hand, ran barefoot across the stones and across the lawn toward the trees.

When she met Freddie, Dolores said, “Let's run!” And they started running along the ocean's edge, flat-footed, across the rocks and stretches of pebbly beach, between the clumps of sand grass and juniper. Just before they reached the cottage, she stopped suddenly.

“Wait!” she said. “Wait till I get my breath.” She knew there were tears in her eyes. “I don't think I like him now, really. In fact,” she said, “I was kind of scared. It was funny, Freddie … he was so queer tonight.… I—I feel so odd, scared and excited, as though I've avoided something, or outgrown something. Do you see …?”

“Sure,” he said. “I see.”

“You're so wonderful, Freddie!” Quite impulsively, she clutched his arm and pressed her fingers into his sunburned flesh to feel the heat and the muscle and the strength of it. “You
do
understand! Oh, Freddie, do I look older? Do I look like a woman at last? Do I?”

After watching Dolores, Mr. Fiedler went into the house, down the steps into the pine-paneled living room, holding his cigarette, unlighted, looking for a match. Martha was across the hall, in the dining room, setting the table. “Martha?” he called. “Where are the matches?”

“I'm sure I wouldn't know,” Martha said.

Mr. Fiedler raised his voice. “I said where are they! Please get them for me immediately! I want a match for my cigarette! Didn't I tell you to put matches in all the bowls?”

“That's not my job,” said Martha. “I've got other things to keep me busy, thank you.”

Mr. Fiedler rushed into the dining room. Martha was putting silver on the table, and the silver candlesticks on either side of the centerpiece were moist and perspiring in the warm air. “How dare you?” he screamed. “How dare you to speak to me like that? Get out! Get out of this house!”

“I take my orders from Mrs. Fiedler, sir.”

Mr. Fiedler ran back into the hall and halfway up the stairs. “Louise!” he screamed from the landing, his voice becoming higher and shriller and harsher with every syllable. “Get that woman out of here before I kill her! Louise!” And when she didn't answer, he cried, “Don't worry! It's safe! Everybody's gone, nothing's happened, it's safe! You can come down now!”

The Partly Joined

THE BACKGAMMON TABLE

It was made of pink marble. Irene Silton called the color antique pigeon's blood and was convinced, from some hieroglyphics scratched on the underside of the stone, that it was very old—at least a hundred and fifty years old, she thought—and had been quarried in Algeria. Standing where it did, on a slim wrought-iron pedestal in their living room, it seemed to drink in the winter sunlight from Seventieth Street, and to reflect this light back from some interior place. The stone's veins and clouds seemed deeper than the polished surface, as though a whole landscape of ridges and arroyos lay crystallized and buried there beneath a flat and glassy layer. Often, when she was alone in the house, Irene would go to the table and stand gazing into this wild and sunlit country, her fingertips resting on the table's cool, smooth edge, dreaming of what it must be like to live among such frozen mountains and caverns.

Justin and Irene had been taking a walk when Irene had spotted the table, covered with dust and clutter, in the window of a shop on Lexington Avenue. It was an odd little shop, full of what nots and gimcrackery, full of lamps with beaded shades, pockmarked pewterware, crazed Staffordshire plates, and bronze statues of fat and leering cherubs—a confused and totally unmemorable little shop. In fact, it was quite surprising that she had even looked in the window; it was not the sort of shop that usually interested her. But she had looked in—her eye drawn to it by something—and there, with its pedestal base wrapped in yellowed newspaper and tied with cord, its top piled high with empty picture frames, it was.