Second Chances (6 page)

“Darling Polly, how good you are,” Celeste would tearfully say. “It’s just that—well, since I’ve so much loved him, in that way, you know—”

“Of course, I really don’t mind,” Polly told her.

Once, startlingly, when Polly was administering to his needs, alone with Charles in the hospital, he suddenly spoke to her, saying, as before, “But, Polly, you don’t love me anymore.”

“But, Charles. Yes, I do.”

He smiled. “But not in the old way.”

“Well, not quite, Charles.” Smiling back.

After Charles died, it was hard for Polly to believe that that exchange had actually taken place, and certainly she spoke of it to no one, ever, for no one in San Sebastian (California) ever had a hint of Polly and Charles as lovers, which would have struck them all as quite preposterous.

And now, in her almost old age, Polly has yet another clandestine occupation, unknown to her friends and to the world at large. Clandestine, infrequent, and sometimes quite frightening.

It goes like this. First, as though she were being observed, with
extreme caution, from a hidden compartment (a narrow oblong slot) behind the creaking bottom drawer of her desk, she extracts a large package of hundred-dollar bills. Not counting them out, she subtracts a considerable sheaf from the pile, puts the rest back into hiding, then wrapping the sheaf in foil.

Polly then envelops herself in heavy sweaters, a sheepskin coat, some thick scarves; carrying the folded bag, pushing it into the pocket of her coat, she goes outside, out into the cold, the densely fogged and starless night—not locking the door behind her. From the falling-down garage she brings out her latest bike. (Always bought secondhand, they are probably “hot,” as Polly likes to put it to herself. Neither Celeste nor the rest of the local friends would find this funny.)

And then she is off, down the rutted, familiar, quite precarious road (although this is not really the dangerous part, a broken head or a collarbone or an ankle being all that is risked, at this point, in Polly’s view). She is headed toward the town.

But I know it’s silly, Polly sometimes remarks, inwardly, of these nocturnal forays. I know it’s silly and probably doesn’t do much real good or so little considering the general terribleness of life for most people, and I know it’s fairly dangerous, some scared farmer might assume I’m a thief and shoot me. A shrink might say I’m trying to recapture Spain, all that danger. A repetition, I think they call it. I know all that really better than anyone. But it’s what I like to do, or not actually the doing of it, I don’t like the actual fact but I like to think about it, and if it does even the slightest good—well, so much the better.

Having said all that to whatever fantasized person, the person who had just told her that she was being silly, or that what she did was totally, entirely useless (it is sometimes her friend Freddy, or Edward or Dudley or Sam; it used to be Charles, quite often, but it was never, curiously, Celeste)—having said or verbalized all that, Polly has arrived at her destination: a small (about the size of her own house), overpopulated, crumbling stucco cottage, with a rich, thick garden, great flares of flowers, fanned-out leaves, and a large dog that is chained (she hopes) in its packing-crate house. A steel fence. A house that Polly has scouted out on several innocent-looking daylight excursions. A house in which there lives a Portuguese family, the Pessoas, whose apricot trees were devastated by a freakishly violent
winter storm. And whose land is on the verge of being taken over by a major conglomerate in Salinas. (Polly has spent the weekend in various forms of research, getting all this clear and accurate.)

It would not do simply to throw the package into the yard, in a random way; a dog could carry it off, a sudden rain could camouflage the foil with mud. Once about a year ago, by mistake, a defective throw, Polly did just that; she watched the money land some feet from the door of the González family (a tubercular child, a medflyruined crop) on soft grass. Failing to convince herself that it would be all right there, that they would soon come out and find it, Polly then had to scale the fence, not high but difficult, with no footholds. She kept slipping, falling back, in the wet black night, and she was so frightened, her heart and every other muscle strained to capacity.

After that night she spent two full days in bed with an actual fever, shaking from panic.

Now, though, at the crisis moment she is not afraid. And she makes a perfect pitch. The money package hits the Pessoases’ front door with a loud, resounding thud, and Polly hurries back to her bike, which she has hidden behind a conveniently spreading mulberry tree. As she hides herself, she can hear the front door being opened behind her. And a blast of exclamations, at first quite fearful: is this thing a weapon, a bomb? But mostly they sound surprised. In another moment they will note the innocent, slightly tattered, domestic-looking foil; they will dare to open it and will find the money. The several thousand dollars that at least will serve to cheer them for a while.

One of the things that Polly counts on entirely is families not telling each other about these strange events, cash money thrown into their lives in the dark of night. And in this assumption she is very likely correct: she knows these proud poor people, their superstitiousness, their iron clannishness. Their eternal suspicions. To tell anyone outside would jinx their luck, they would reason—“outside” meaning anyone not living in their house, in their immediate family. If they told about it, the person who threw it on their doorstep—no doubt by mistake, they might think—that person would come back and try to claim it.

That at least is Polly’s reasoning, her reconstruction of reactions to her clandestine presents.

*  *  *

Remounted on her bike, Polly pedals as long and as hard as she can, remounting her hill. Then she gets off and pushes the bike along, avoiding the ruts as best she can. The fierce damp cold has penetrated the layers of clothes she wears, despite her exertions. She looks forward to her house, to warmth. To her cats.

Dumping the bike on the floor of her garage, with no energy left to pick it up and prop it, properly, she approaches her own door. And she hears, from within, the first ring of her telephone, and she thinks, almost saying the name aloud, Oh! Celeste.

Celeste is possessed of a small and perfectly proportioned body, on long thin perfect legs. Large hands and feet, about which she once was sensitive. First coming to New York, in the early thirties (after the demise of her first and only pre-Charles marriage, to a man named Bix Finnerty), Celeste worked briefly as a dancer; she was (very briefly) what was called a chorus girl, a phase of her life that she never talks about. But she has retained a dancer’s walk: a tall stride, rather aggressive.

Her nose too is imperious, high-bridged, impressive. Once, after a love affair whose ending coincided with her fortieth birthday, Celeste considered having her nose made shorter and smaller. “I’m tired of having such an impressive nose,” she wrote to her California best friend, Emma (mother of Sara). And Emma, still in San Francisco, involved in labor strikes, wrote back, “For God’s sake, forget the size of your nose. The world is much uglier and larger than your nose.” And so Celeste did forget it, almost for good.

As a very young woman, back in the days of Bix, Celeste had fine silky pale red hair, and fine white skin. Dark, dark large eyes. Shy-looking, even frightened eyes, despite such beauty. “Doe eyes,” Bix Finnerty used to say, as did quite a few others, later in her life.

What Celeste was most clearly to remember from that on-the-whole-dismal first marriage, which took place when she was only eighteen, was a curious trick that Bix played on her—and on his mother.

Having left her family on the farm, near Sacramento (that farm, along with the chorus and a couple of other minor autobiographical facts, went unmentioned, ever, by Celeste), Celeste took the train to Oakland, and then the ferry to San Francisco, where she was to be met by Bix’s mother, Mrs. Finnerty, Bix being at work selling shoes at that particular hour. Almost immediately Celeste spotted a woman of about her own height, but round, a jolly type with the red plastic cherries on her hat that her son had described. But why was she looking up into the air, as if for someone tall? Celeste went up to this woman anyway, who was indeed Mrs. Finnerty, who greeted her effusively and giggling with pleasure—she adored this only son. She very soon apprised her new almost daughter-in-law of the wonderful prank: what Bix had written to his mother was “She’s tall and blonde and terribly beautiful, of course.”

“But of course I knew right away it was you,” laughingly lied Mrs. Finnerty. “The terribly beautiful part. I’d have known you anywhere.”

For an instant, then, there at the Ferry Building, Celeste considered going right back to Sacramento, even back to the farm, and taking up that life again; but she did not. Although “in love” with Bix, she did not think this funny at all. It struck her as very mean to them both, to herself and to Mrs. Finnerty. Also, she was more or less aware of the wish contained within the “joke”; Bix wanted a tall blonde wife. Small wiry Bix, whose hair was a brighter red even than her own.

The only person to whom Celeste ever described this scene of her windblown, apprehensive young self in search for red plastic cherries on a hat was her early best friend, Emma, when the two of them were “office girls,” after Celeste’s divorce and before her move to New York. “Once I caught on, I thought, Oh, then he really doesn’t like me,” Celeste said to Emma, back then.

“I think men are better at what they call love than liking,” Emma told her. “But, Celeste, you are terribly beautiful, really.”

“Oh, I suppose.” Meaning: Yes, I guess so, but what good does that do me? Meaning: So far, being beautiful has only brought Bix Finnerty in and out of my life.

Celeste’s eyes indeed seemed to gain in intensity, in depth, as she
aged. They became more passionate, or more passion showed in her eyes. “In truth they are the very mirrors of your soul,” said bantering Charles Timberlake, in his cups, early on in their love affair.

Celeste’s voice too is passionate, a vibrant alto, even as she now only says, “But, Polly, child, I worry about you.” There are almost tears in her voice.

From the white plastic receiver at Celeste’s left ear come Polly’s breathy sounds of reassurance: “… just for air, it gets so stuffy in this house, you mustn’t fuss. I wasn’t out long.”

Celeste is sitting upright, legs crossed before her. A semi-lotus, on a bed that another might have sprawled across. It is in fact just where Charles did often sprawl, and that is one of the visions at this moment foremost in Celeste’s mind: tall lean lanky Charles all sprawled, all those long fine bones gone limp. Celeste fights off that picture.

An expanse of fine gray linen with borders of heavy lace is pulled taut across the bed, evidence of no one sprawling.

Celeste tries to laugh, and succeeds in a sound that is just a little unreal. “Oh, I know it’s selfish, my wanting you home,” she says to Polly. “But I like your being so near. I like everyone around me, you and Dudley and Sam and dear Edward. And Freddy. I guess I really want all of you home all the time available to me.” And she laughs again, this time with somewhat more success.

“But tell me about Edward and Freddy,” she demands. “Do you think they’re still getting along? You don’t notice any new, uh, tensions? I couldn’t bear it if they got a divorce.” A small, perfunctory laugh. “I can’t bear it when friends divorce—or, for that matter, when they die.”

A pause, during which she listens somewhat perfunctorily as Polly reassures her about Freddy and Edward, the permanence of their connection.

Celeste’s various despairs are genuine enough, but so is her odd, very clear wish to prolong this conversation, despite her definite sense that Polly is tired and would like to get off the phone and into bed—with a good book, probably. And, despite all Celeste’s intended and unintended conversational gambits, Polly does manage to get off the phone quite soon, with kindly affectionate good-nights, but still leaving Celeste all alone, and leaving her waiting.

*  *  *

What Bill quite clearly said was “I’ll call you New Year’s Night.” Which is surely now, tonight?

Why does he so often not do precisely what he said he would do? Why does he seem to forget what he so clearly said?

Or, for that matter, why did he in the first place follow her out of that antique shop on Jackson Square (
he
followed Celeste, an old woman), out to her car, and insist on having her card before handing her into the Jag? He seemed very excited, almost “high.” And then all those flowers, that lovely mass of spring flowers, and the invitation to dinner? It can’t have been the sheer coincidence of their having met earlier that day in the horrible, dingy IRS office (where Bill seemed to work) where they did not talk; he only passed her along to someone else. But, “Fated,” they both said of it, laughing to each other, that afternoon in the store.

Why then the long, romantic and extremely expensive dinners, the great interest in everything she said about Charles? About Sara? And then between those dinners the broken dates, the waiting for calls? Is this what it’s like, an “involvement” with a handsome, younger man?

Celeste knows the answers to none of this, and is fairly sure that she never will.

In the meantime she does have friends, and what are friends for, if not an occasional phone call?

Dudley (so gratifying!) answers on the first ring.

“Darling Dudley!” Celeste exclaims. “Happy Happy New Year! It doesn’t really seem like New Year’s, does it? Well, actually I’m fine, barring the usual aches and pains that we all find so boring. I am somewhat apprehensive about Sara, though. I mean, I’ve been so selfish. Frankly I’ve only thought about how much I need her here, or I think I do, and now I really wonder if she’ll enjoy herself. Find things to do.”

This conversation—or, rather, this monologue of Celeste’s, with small polite but warm murmurs from Dudley—all this talk is a considerable success. Dudley reassures Celeste that Sara will love being in San Sebastian: walks, all that. And after all if she gets restless there
is always San Francisco, so near. And Dudley is reassuring too about Edward and Freddy, describing her morning walk with Edward, during which he seemed perfectly fine. Not worried and assuredly not sick.