The Age of Desire (48 page)

She describes the beauty of their trip, the thrill, the charm of everything they’ve seen. When she posts it, she allows Anna’s eyes to gaze at the address. Why not be open with Anna? She knows.

“I miss him terribly,” she tells her.

“I wish he could be here with you instead of me,” Anna says. “I know it would be more for you with him.”

Edith squeezes her arm. She doesn’t want to lie. And how generous Anna can be.

“It’s been splendid with you,” she says, at ease with the truth.

One evening, in an elegant restaurant in Munich, Edith glances up and says, “I’ve been meaning to ask you forever, Tonni . . . with whom did you travel in Greece?”

“Oh . . .”

“I’ve often wondered. A yacht. So suddenly leaving Italy like that. I can’t believe I’ve never asked.”

Anna can’t help but smile when she thinks of the Parthenon shimmering in the heat, the parched fields of the Peloponnese.

“With a man named Thomas Schultze.”

“A man!” Edith shakes her head with wonder. “What sort of man? You just took off with a man, Tonni? You do astonish me!”

“We were shipmates coming over from New York. He’s a very wealthy steel magnate, it seems.”

“Really! And he asked you to travel with him?”

“You needn’t be shocked. There were others on board.”

“Did he have . . .
feelings
for you?”

Anna pauses for a long time before she answers, looking into Edith’s green eyes, wondering what they’re anticipating. And then she simply nods.

“He asked me to marry him.”

“What!” Edith can’t help but let her mouth fall open. “I’m stunned! And did you not like Mr. Schultze?”

“I liked him very much.”

“But you did not love him.”

“I might have loved him . . .”

Anna can’t press back the wave of feeling that comes over her when she reflects on Thomas and their days together. Hamburg. Venice. Athens.

Edith is taking the news rather comically, pressing her hand over her mouth as though suppressing her amusement.

“Well, I’m not one to pry, but do tell, Tonni. Why on earth did you turn him down?”

“I told myself it was because he had a grown child who needed special care . . . and I feared he was only wooing me because he thought I was the one who might give it to her. I didn’t want to marry to be an unpaid governess. . . .”

“But that wasn’t the reason?”

“The reason, I guess . . . is so that I wouldn’t miss . . . this,” she gestures to the restaurant, to Germany, to the trip that has pleased her so. “So I wouldn’t miss you, Edith. The fact is: I like our life.”

Edith’s eyes cloud over as though she’s read a complex passage she doesn’t quite comprehend. She doesn’t say anything for a long time.

“Our life? Really?” she says. Anna is uneasy. Edith probably never thinks in terms of “our life.” Edith’s life is hers. And Anna, most of the time, is just a facilitator. Someone to help Edith’s days grind along more smoothly. But Anna’s words are released, pigeons sent to take wing where they may. She can’t beckon them back.

“You turned him down because of me?” Edith whispers. “Dear Tonni.” And suddenly Anna knows that Edith hasn’t rejected the thought that they have an interlocked life. She’s touched. “Do you know, my own mother wouldn’t have turned down any gratification for my sake. I don’t think she ever did.” Edith’s eyes are shimmering with tears.

“Maybe that’s why, dear friend,” Anna says, resting her eyes on Edith’s oh-so-familiar face. “Maybe that’s why I do it with pleasure.”

The very night they return from Germany, Teddy, weepy, miserable, drunk, confesses to Edith that he has done something terrible. That she will never be able to forgive him. And that he’s contemplating suicide.

“Can it be so dreadful?” she asks him drily. After such a lovely, floating trip, she is dismayed to have to entertain this tiresome man. She sits down wearily in the velvet bergère, crosses her arms and waits for him to enlighten her.

He nods, doesn’t meet her eye.

She is annoyed. Will he make her drag it out of him?

“Just tell me, Teddy,” she says. “What odious thing have you done?”

“I’ve pinched some of the money from your trust fund.” He says it so softly, she wonders if she heard him right.

“Pinched it? Pinched my money? What do you mean?”

“I bought an apartment house in Boston.”

“Without even discussing it?” Edith asks. “What on earth for? An investment? Do you wish to live in Boston?” She tingles at the thought. Maybe Teddy will go back to Boston, and she’ll be free in Paris to do as she pleases!

“I’ve made some bad choices, Puss.”

“Such as . . . ?”

“Such as taking up with someone you might not approve of. . . .”

“I . . . I don’t understand.”

“Her name . . . her name is Maisie.”

Edith doesn’t say anything for a long while, and when she does speak, it comes out crackling, her voice as deep as Teddy’s, and far more thoughtful. “I see . . . ,” she says.

“She’s a pretty thing. I set her up in an apartment—in the house I bought. I wasn’t myself this summer. . . .”

Edith tries not to gasp, or scream, both of which she would like to do. Does everyone in New York know what she doesn’t know? Information flies so easily from Boston to New York. Does Nannie know? Edith shudders.

“And do you wish to marry this . . . Maisie?” Edith asks, trying to sound equanimous. But she is rocked. She always knew that Teddy must take his pleasures elsewhere, but she’s rested for years and years on the notion that he is wise enough not to make a spectacle of himself. No one has
ever
found Teddy Wharton interesting enough to gossip about.

“No. I’m married to you! I’m in love with you. I was angry, I guess,” he says.

“Angry at
me
?”

“You were always making me feel not up to your standards. And last year . . . when you took up with your . . . your
friend
,” he says the word so distastefully, it raises the hair on Edith’s arms, “Maisie made me feel . . . appreciated.”

Edith tells herself to breathe, to wait, to sound solid even if she doesn’t feel it.

“I’m sure she appreciated you if you bought her an apartment house.”

“She makes her own money. She wasn’t asking me to do it. She’s a dancer in a show. She’s practically famous. . . .”

“A famous dancer?”

“Well, not ballet or anything. The follies. I filled the rest of the house with her friends from the show. . . . Made a little money back.” He looks momentarily proud, and then his shoulders inch up around his ears. “At least I did that. . . .”

Edith starts to laugh, can’t help herself. Her throat opens and laughter coughs up like bile, no matter how she tries to suppress it.

“Couldn’t you have been more original?” she says. Her voice is so icy it sends a claw up her own spine. “A chorus girl. Teddy . . . And did you parade little Miss Maisie all over Boston?”

“I wasn’t myself, Puss. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Edith puts her face in her hands for a moment, sick with the news.

“And how are you going to clean up this mess?”

“There’s more,” he says, his voice sepulchral. Edith thinks that there never were two more horrifying words.

“Yes?”

“I pinched . . . actually . . . I borrowed more of your money. . . . I invested . . . not as wisely as I thought. I was maybe a little
too confident
. I was, I guess, too confident about many things last summer.”

Edith’s mouth is now so dry she can’t speak. She gets up and pours herself a glass of Teddy’s brandy. She’s never liked brandy. Can hardly stomach it. But if she ever needed it, she needs it now.

“How much money did you lose, Teddy?”

Teddy licks his lips before he speaks. Like a snake. He
is
a snake!

“On or about . . .”

“On or about?”

“Fifty thousand dollars . . .”

“
Fifty thousand dollars!
” Edith gulps the russet-colored fire, which burns all the way from her throat to her stomach.

“I wasn’t myself, Puss. You know I wasn’t. . . .” Teddy’s voice is so small, he might be six years old.

“Please leave my room,” she says.

“Maybe I should kill myself. I’m not fit to be married to you. I know it. I
do
know it.”

“Please leave my room,” she repeats.

“I . . . you can’t know . . . I can’t help it. I get these flights of fancy, these times when I think everything is going along swimmingly and then . . .” Tears are running down his red face and dripping off his mustache like rain off a roof.

“If you don’t leave, I’ll . . .” but Edith can’t think of a thing with which to threaten him. What a fool she was to let him handle her money, even after she knew he wasn’t acting himself! Kinnicut tried to warn her. Anna too. She knew if she took the responsibility for her money away from him, he’d be furious. And so she let him go on. Still, she should have cut him off months ago. It’s her own fault. And that’s the thing that aches inside her: she hasn’t been paying attention. Hasn’t wanted to believe that she was married to a madman. But could anyone but a madman have compiled such a list of outrageous actions at her expense?

This is her punishment for having loved Morton, she tells herself. For trying to live a fulfilled life at last.

Teddy lingers by the door, twisting anxiously like a homely debutante praying to be asked to dance. “Get out!” she yells at him. In all these years, she can’t remember raising her voice to Teddy. “Get out!”

Without shutting the door, he skulks down the hotel hall. She slams it, then squeezes her eyes so tightly she sees pinpricks of violet light. When she opens them, she drinks down every last drop of the terrible burning brandy like poison. What she’s feeling is a noxious mix of grief, bewilderment and, worst of all, a sense that it was all inevitable. That she has finally—and oh so neatly—met her just rewards.

“Did you know?” Edith asks Anna. “Did you know he was keeping a woman in Boston?” Anna feels the color drain from her face. She has feared this moment ever since arriving from America
.
I was lucky to have that time in Germany, these months without Edith knowing, she tells herself. She stands glued to the spot, staring at the floor, speechless.

“Don’t worry. I don’t blame you, Tonni. Sit down. Tell me: what did you know?”

“Mrs. Cotton said one of the maids saw him in Boston with a woman. That’s all I knew. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t bear to spread what I hoped was just a rumor. Is it true then? There was a woman?”

Edith nods. Anna feels her stomach squeeze tight like a fist. She had called upon the gods to make it false gossip. To no avail.

“What will you do?”

“He’s embezzled money from my trust fund as well, Tonni. A great deal.”

“I . . . I didn’t think him capable of such deceit.”

Edith looks up at her, shakes her head. “Didn’t you? No. You’ve been his greatest champion all these years.”

How accusatory it sounds! Anna feels her chin quivering.

“I excused him, Herz, for the boasting and fast driving and staying out all night . . . because he’s been sick. But I didn’t think he would ever steal money . . . from
you
! You, who have been so generous to him all these years! I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I just knew he was bragging about his investments and terrorizing the pedestrians of Lenox.”