The Age of Desire (11 page)

William’s face animates for the first time in months as he tells her stories of his childhood, of her brothers whom Anna barely knew, of the rainy night baby Anna was born, and how their mother wept, for at last she had given birth to a girl. Anna has never heard any of this before. She cannot even recall her own mother’s face. All her life, when people spoke of her mother’s death, they sighed. They said she died of rheumatism. But Anna knows it wasn’t so. Once, when she was fifteen, Aunt Charlotte told her that just months after Anna was born, when she was still being nursed, the flesh of one of her mother’s breasts developed a lump like the stone in a peach. By the time Anna was two years and two months old, her mother was gone. No one’s spoken the word. Cancer. Yet, what hurts her is that when they speak of Elise Rasche, it’s always about her untimely death, never about her life. No one seems to recall what she loved, how she laughed. Until now. “She read poems aloud to all of us. Even as a baby, you calmed down when she recited poetry.”

“You do not know what you have done for me,” she tells him as they both climb the stairs to bed, hours later. “You’ve brought Mama to life.” William laughs aloud.

“If only I could bring her back,” he says. “Mother and Lydia. And especially Lewis.” He closes his eyes when he says his son’s name. “If only I could bring them all back.”

“Tonight, Mother was in the room with us. Tomorrow, we’ll speak of Lewis.”

“I don’t know if I can bear to,” William says.

“It will help. I know it will,” she tells him. “It’s swallowing down the memories that turns the world so black.”

Before he heads for his room, he takes her hand. He looks as if he might speak. Instead, he squeezes her fingers and smiles faintly. It’s all she needs to know she’s made a difference.

“Papa’s so much better when you’re around, Aunt Anna.” Anna Louise tells her before she goes up to bed that night.

“Oh my dear Aennchen. Do not let your hopes rise too high. There’s a very long way to go yet.”

“But at least you’ve begun the journey. You will stay, Aunt Anna, won’t you? You will!”

The summer wears on for Edith as slowly as one of Henry James’s more recent tomes. So she’s overjoyed when Walter Berry arrives from Washington, D.C., for a visit.

Though she’s had guests throughout the season, all this summer they’ve felt like an intrusion. But with Walter, she feels nothing but relief. When his long arms enfold her, she is at peace. When he wanders the gardens each morning at dawn in his snowy linen suit, Edith glances down from her bedroom window, wondering what her life would be like if she could make a clean swap and trade Walter for Teddy. How beautifully he stands out against the kelly green grass and brilliant flowers! How regal his gait! But because she has a far-too-developed rational side, she recognizes the negative aspect of this fantasy: unlike with Teddy, she never could have hidden a thing from Walter. Could she ever have felt free? Even now she feels him watching her with concern.

“What is playing at you, Edith? Are you quite all right?” he asks one evening, wandering into the library after a dinner at which Edith wasn’t as talkative as usual. “Am I not the company you hoped for?” He pushes her feet aside and sits right down on the end of her chaise longue,
where she has escaped to bury her agitation in a book
.
How well they know each other!

“I’m fine. And you’re always the company I hope for, Walter. Always.” She looks at his long, sensitive face, his graying hair. She in fact wishes he could stay forever, take up residence in the guest room, filling it with his law books and ledger-shaped diaries.

“I’m worried about you,” he says. “At first I thought I’d caused some offense. Or you weren’t glad to see me.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not you.”

He waits for her to continue, raises his eyebrows to coax her to go on.

“I’m restless,” she says finally.

He smiles. “Chérie, you’ve always been restless.” It’s true. Edith has always had a restless mind and body. She learned long ago that in order to listen well, she needs to distract part of her too-active brain. So she’s learned to knit or smoke or tat, just to focus. Her desire for travel is another sort of restlessness. Her interest in new books, new authors, new thoughts: all a manifestation of her restlessness. But restlessness without bravery means dissatisfaction. She wants something, but is she willing to take the risk to find it? All summer, longing has haunted her. She is surprised at its ferocity.

“Cigarette?” She lifts the crystal and silver box from the table beside the chaise and offers it to him. Walter selects one, finds a match in his jacket pocket and lights her cigarette, then his own.

“Would you mind, dear, if I turned off the electric light?” he asks. “It’s so harsh and my eyes are tired.”

“Of course not.” She switches off the lamp for him. For a while they smoke in silence. How intimate it is to be so close to him in the dark. As her eyes adjust, she enjoys the platinum shadows lit only by the intake of their breaths reawakening the ash. She remembers how once Walter seemed so challenging, so intimidating. Now there is no one whose company soothes her more. He takes her free hand suddenly and enfolds it in his. How small her hand becomes in his large one. Through the open French doors the moon is huge, the color of a white-fleshed peach. A breeze blows the voile undercurtains, spilling ivory light onto the patterned rug.

“Come,” he says and draws her to her feet.

She has been sitting with outstretched legs too long, and her body aches as she rises, a reminder that she is no longer young. He leads her to the window, from where they can see over the terrace to the allée of lime trees, crisp and neat in the moonlight, and far away, the wispy glimmer of Laurel Lake.

“It’s a perfect late-summer moon,” he says. “The moon is never so pristine in Washington. It always looks like it’s got a scratched lens over it. Here in the mountains, it’s clean as a dinner plate.”

“You should stay longer.”

“No. I’m needed in Washington. I shouldn’t have left at all, but I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

She shakes her head at the word. “Needed. I think I don’t know what it’s like to be needed,” she says.

“You? There are many people who find you indispensable, my love,” he says. “Henry James would fall into a heap if you should disappear. As would Teddy. And I most certainly would.”

“Walter,” she begins. “Do you think there will be any more . . . surprises in my life?”

“Surprises?”

“I’ve come to believe I’ve used up my store of surprises.”

“Ha.” He chuckles softly. “As though we’re all allotted a certain precious set. But, Edith, you hate surprises.”

“I used to.”

“Dearest,” he scolds, “you’re like your gardens.” He gestures out toward the perfectly trimmed moonlit hedges. “You like things just so. Surprise-free. It’s what drives us mad about you. And mad for you. It’s the Edith we love. And the devil incarnate.”

“Maybe so. But now, I feel like I would like my life to grab hold of me and give me a good yank.” She thinks of the weeds in her garden. Is she like one of those weeds, in a place she doesn’t belong?

Walter laughs. “Really? A good yank? If life did that to you, you’d spank its backside and send it home.”

“No,” she says. Her fists rise to her waist, her feet planted wide. “You don’t understand. It’s insulting that you should laugh at me.” Her cheeks burn.

He places his large hands on her shoulders, shaking his head with kind, narrowed eyes.

“Dearest. I am not the enemy.”

“I didn’t say . . . I didn’t think . . .”

He leans forward and kisses her brow. His lips are cool and tender. She hears his breath catch. What is he feeling? How sweet his touch! Her heart pounds and she is ashamed to realize she desperately wishes he’d take her chin and kiss her lips too. She would part her lips. She would draw in the sweetness of his mouth. She would be unafraid. Instead, he steps away with a sigh, finds the ashtray on her desk and stubs out his cigarette.

“Well,” he says, “it’s late, dear. And I have to travel in the morning.”

“I wish you didn’t.” She tries to control the quaver in her voice.

As he leaves the darkened library, desire for him cuts through to her marrow. Later, bound with craving, she finds herself wandering down the hall to his room. She is wearing only her nightgown, barefoot. Her hair is loosened. It is a warm night, and she can hear the crickets rasping outside. Urging her on. Perhaps it is better to risk and make a mistake than to do nothing. She has spent a lifetime doing nothing. Living in a ghostly marriage. Watching other women bloom amidst the spoils of a life she will never know. If she just knocks on his door. If she just whispers, “Before you leave in the morning, do let us be closer. . . .” What is the worst that can happen? She wants to be fearless like Anna de Noailles. At his door, she stands for a long while before she raps. Two knocks. The crickets scream. The clock downstairs chimes. She can taste his lips, feels his arms. . . . But there is no answer. She raps again. And nothing. Is he so soundly asleep already? Is he somehow not in his room? Or is he simply disinterested? She is middle aged, has never been beautiful like so many of the women Walter has escorted. Her heart sinks. How foolish she feels wandering back down the hall to her maiden bed to spend a forlorn night tangled in longing.

When William naps in the afternoons, Anna takes advantage of her stay. She spends time out of the house, exploring the neighborhood. Could she live here? she asks herself. Would she fit in? She walks the boys to the park, and starts to teach them German. She befriends the librarian, Jessie Toibin, who shares books with her that she thinks might reinvigorate William. Though not a single new book has arrived in years—it’s a quaint old library—Anna finds many things that please her. On a cushioned window seat in the back of the library, overlooking a wooded knoll, Anna sometimes sits to read and finds solace.

One day, she and Jessie Toibin strike up a conversation.

“What is it you were doing in Paris all winter? I’ve seen pictures of Paris. And imagine! You’ve actually been there.”

“I’m a secretary,” Anna tells her. “For a writer.”

Jessie, who is in her early forties, biscuit plump, with steel-rimmed glasses and a sweetheart candy of a mouth, leans forward with interest.

“A writer? Someone I may have heard of?”

“I don’t know if you’ve heard of her. Edith Wharton.”

“Oh my!” Jessie sits right down on the window seat next to Anna and puts her hand over her mouth. “Edith Wharton!”

Anna raises her brows. “You know of her? But you don’t have her books. I’ve looked.”

“We don’t have any books that didn’t arrive before you and I were born. But I read every word of
The House of Mirth
in
Scribner’s Magazine
. I read it twice! I saved it!” She grabs Anna’s arm. “You know her? You worked with her on this book?”

Anna nods, a bit uncomfortable at Jessie’s enthusiasm.

“What’s it like being part of something so . . . so important?”

Anna beams. “I hardly know what to tell you.”

“Is she a nice lady, Mrs. Wharton?”

“Oh yes. She is my closest friend.” Anna feels herself blush with pride.

“And to think I know you . . . and you know her. When nothing ever happens around here but new paint on the walls once a decade. And you come along just like that to
my
library!”

From that day on, every time Anna enters the library, Jessie gets up from her desk and gives Anna a hug. And if others are in the library, she is sure to tell them what Anna does “in her real life”: “Why, she works hand in hand with the greatest lady writer that ever was!”