A Certain Age (17 page)

“She hasn't got any other affairs, Sisser. It's all part of her charm.”

I settle myself in the chair and offer my brother a guileless smile. “Are you
quite
certain of that?”

“Of course I am. I hope you're not suggesting otherwise?”

“Not at all. As long as you're confident of her, why should I be otherwise? I'm sure her outing yesterday was entirely innocent.”

He chokes on his drink. “What's that?”

“Her outing. Yesterday. Surely she's told you all about it?”

“I—that is—yesterday, did you say?”

“Yesterday. Sunday. The day after Saturday night, when the two of you attended that party together? Philip Schuyler and his little secretary wife? I presume you saw her home yourself, of course.”

Ox's face turns a rather sickly shade, not that it bore all that healthy a tint before. “Not exactly.”

“No? But of course you entrusted the care of your precious darling to someone—well, trustworthy?”

“I—I can't honestly remember. But she did get home all right. I'm quite sure of that. I sent around flowers the next morning, and—and—” His face screws up into an object resembling nothing so much as a crumpled tissue.

“And she replied? She came around to your place in gloves and Sunday bonnet, and administered her healing hand to your troubled brow?”

“Now, see here, Sisser,” he says, gathering up strength again, “if you've got something to say, say it.”

“Oh, you know how it is, Ox. A woman in my position hears so many things.”

“Nothing against Sophie! I'd smash the face of any fella who said a word against her. She's as innocent as an angel.”

“No doubt at all.” I lengthen my gaze to consider the tarnished silver cigarette box on the lamp table, next to Ox's pink ear. “Still, she's a human being, isn't she? A young lady.”

“Well, yes. Of course she is.”

“And like all young ladies, she appreciates a little attention from the man
who's supposed to admire her. The man she's going to marry. She likes to be wooed, and adored, and made much of.”

Ox considers this, frowning. He rubs his forehead with his thumb, as if to ignite the gray matter inside.

“Ox,” I say tenderly, “you can't just ignore her, just because she's agreed to marry you. Until the vows are exchanged—and
soon,
God willing—she's still free to back out of the deal. You've got to remind her, and remind her, and
remind
her, what a wonderful man she's getting.” I reach over and pat his knee. “You've got to
woo
her, darling, or someone else will.”

“Say. What are you getting at? Are you suggesting she was stepping out with some other fella yesterday?”

“I'm not suggesting anything. She's a sweet girl. I'm sure she wouldn't do anything to betray you. But she's so young, Ox. So young and inexperienced. These pretty girls, their heads are turned so easily, and men can be such awful
cads
these days.” I examine my fingernails. “Really, if I were you, I'd scrub myself up and head down to Thirty-Second Street, flowers and chocolates in hand, and I wouldn't leave her side for an
instant
until she gives you a wedding date. An
early
date. A handsome devil like you, I'm sure you'll secure her enthusiastic cooperation in no time.”

“Well, naturally.” He straightens himself against the sofa and contemplates—guessing from the look on his face, anyway—the possible daring boundaries of Sophie's enthusiasm. Perhaps, at this point, I ought to mention that my brother remains in a state of what we once politely called
dishabille
. His pajamas are rumpled, his green silk dressing gown is untied and open across his chest, and his lovely golden-brown hair runs greasily amok across his skull. I should charitably describe his face as bloated. To scrub himself up, as I suggested, might take him the greater part of the day's remains. Not that he seems to have plans for any better occupation. (His actual occupation included.)

I remove the glass from his hand. “I'm quite serious, Ox. You're about to become a married man, if you're lucky enough to persuade her to the altar itself. It's time to start acting like one.”

“Well,
I
haven't seen all that many married men dance constant attendance on their wives.”

I tip back the glass and drain what remains. “I expect most marriages would be a good deal happier if they did.”

Maybe I said it too bitterly. Maybe there was something in my expression. Or maybe it's just Ox: as thick as two planks in ordinary life, but nonetheless attuned by some primeval blood instinct to the rippling of my unhappiness in the ether. He lifts his eyebrows and leans forward, and a lock of his untidy hair drops across his forehead. He pushes it back and says, “Something going on with you, Sisser?”

“If you must know, I'm getting a divorce.”

The words pop out before I can consider their wisdom; or maybe I've been wanting to say this all along, since that moment early Sunday morning when Sylvo closed the front door behind him, in a singularly echoing thump, and left me in a stunned and lonely heap on the library sofa, clutching a glass of cream sherry. To throw myself on my brother's chest and surround myself in his wordless understanding. I finger the empty tumbler and fix him with a bright and expectant smile.
Getting a divorce
. How modern it sounds.

Ox sneezes messily and pulls out his handkerchief. “Gadzooks, Sisser! Say it ain't so.”

“It's so.” I shrug helplessly. “I'd had enough, I guess. All the other women and the—well, the lack of understanding. We haven't been man and wife in years, really. Not since Tommy died.”

“Yes, but—
divorce.
”

“Everybody's getting divorces these days, Ox. Nobody cares about the old rules anymore.”

“Still.” He blows his nose, shakes his head. “I thought some things were sacred. I thought the two of you would soldier on and grow old together.”

“Ox, we hardly even
talk
to each other any more. We're like strangers occupying the same apartment, and not all that often at that.”

“I suppose it doesn't help that you're in love with that kid of yours.”

I drop the glass on the rug.
“What?”

“That Rofrano kid. Come on, Sisser. You think I didn't know?”

“I don't know
what
you're talking about.”

My brother sighs and rises creakily to his feet: stuffing the silk handkerchief back in his silk pocket, swooping up the fallen glass as he goes. “Well, I'm sorry you're throwing in the towel, that's all. It's a damned shame, the way you two can toss away a quarter of a century of marriage like that.”

“My God. Listen to you, the moralist.”

“Like you said, I'm getting married myself. I've got to be a moralist, haven't I? I've got to believe in what I'm doing, or what's the point?”

He turns and walks to the kitchen with the empty glass. I hear a ceramic clink, the squeak of the faucet, the rush of running water, and I call to him: “I'll just let myself out, then.”

“Do that,” he calls back.

I should march straight out the door, after that remark. I should march straight out and find a taxi. But where would I go? Sylvo's back at our apartment, packing up. He's already rented a bachelor apartment of his own, in accordance with the terms of the legal separation that necessarily precedes a legal divorce. Everything's in motion, like a train chugging inexorably out of the station, and I'd really rather not head to the platform at the moment and watch it leave. Watch Sylvo leave.

I follow my brother into the kitchen and place my hand on his shoulder.

“Ox,” I say softly.

He doesn't turn. “Sisser.”

“I meant what I said. Clean yourself up and go pay attention to your fiancée. And do me a favor, brother dear?”

“What's that, Sisser?”

“Don't ever stop.”

A bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever.

—HELEN ROWLAND

SOPHIE

Earlier that day

T
HE FLOWERS
stand in the middle of the breakfast table, in a tall and unfamiliar crystal vase. Sophie counts at least a dozen red roses, six fragrant stargazer lilies, and four hydrangeas of the most delicately perfect blue. She adds cream to her coffee and says, “My goodness. Who sent the flowers? They must have cost a fortune at this time of year.”

“Your fiancé sent them,” Virginia says. “They arrived at lunchtime yesterday.”

“
Jay
sent them? Did he stop by?”

“No. Just the flowers.”

Virginia's attention is directed not at Sophie or the flowers, but at her daughter, who's attempting to clean up a spill of egg yolk with a slice of buttered toast. Father's already at his workshop; he left even before Sophie came down this morning, chased by a resolute slam of the front door that seemed—at least to Sophie's guilty ears—to promise a reckoning later. Due to a pair of flat tires, she hadn't arrived home until well past dinner, by which
time Father had already retired. Only a note remained of him, pushed under her door that morning, the contents of which made her stomach drop.

I presume you will have ready a reasonable explanation for your absence last night by lunchtime today.

“Did Father see them?”

“Of course he did.”

“Did he say anything?”

Virginia straightens at last and turns to Sophie. Her expression is both harried and compassionate, and rather startlingly pale. Or is it the morning sunshine, slanting at last through the window to whiten her face? She says, tilting her head, “Did you think he would?”

Sophie glances at Evelyn's dark head, bent listlessly over her breakfast. She lowers her voice almost to a whisper. “Was he awfully upset last night?”

“You know he never gets upset, Baby. But he was very, very worried. You should have tried to find a telephone.”

“We did! The man in the service station let us use his. But the operator couldn't seem to connect the call. I think she was drunk.”

“Where was this service station?”

Sophie hesitates. “Connecticut.”

“Connecticut!” The teaspoon drops from Virginia's hand and hits the edge of the table, before landing with a soft thump on the rug. Virginia makes no move to recover it. “What on earth were you doing in Connecticut?”

What, indeed?

Sophie lifts her coffee and drinks long, and when she can't put an answer off any longer, when she can't think of a suitable half-truth that isn't an outright lie, she sets down the cup in the saucer and says, “He was showing me the house where he grew up.”

“Sophie!”

“What?”

Virginia looks at Evelyn, whose small, flushed face is buried in a cup of weak tea fortified with milk: her favorite drink. She bends down and picks up the spoon, laying it carefully above her plate. “We'll speak about this later,”
she says, in a voice Sophie recognizes from her own childhood, when Virgo was more a mother to her than a sister.

In other words, Sophie's in trouble. But it was worth it, this trouble, wasn't it? And when she explains everything to Virginia—the frozen airfield, the beautiful turreted house in Greenwich, Octavian himself—then her sister will understand. Virginia believes in the same things Sophie does. Virginia will advise her. Virginia will help her do what needs to be done.

But until then. That awful note under her door. Father's never been the warmest of parents, but the brief and arctic quality of his message—even the letters looked stiff and frigid, etched onto the page with an ice pick—destroyed all the feather-edged euphoria that had dusted her off to sleep last night, all the anticipation that nudged her awake this morning. And oh! The memory of that moment when Octavian had almost kissed her, there in the turret bedroom while the winter sunset was just beginning to soften the horizon, and then decided against kissing at the last instant, in such a tender, longing way that was almost as good as being kissed in fact. (Certainly lovelier than being kissed by a corked Jay Ochsner in the back seat of a taxicab, reeking of peppermint hair oil.)

He had gazed at her for maybe a half a minute longer, and it was the quietest and most eternal thirty seconds of Sophie's life. His eyes were flattened of all color and still beautiful. He hadn't even blinked, he was so still, and yet she could hear every thought in his head.
Not now. We'll make things right first
. We'll do this right, because this thing that lies between us is too perfect, too transparent to darken with the slightest tint of sin.

“You're smiling,” he said at last, though not smiling himself.

“Of course I am,” she replied, and he released one of her hands and led her out of the room by the other, down the stairs and out the front door, which they had to leave unlocked. Oh, well. They hadn't said a word. He tucked her into the Ford and they started the engine together in a wordless synchronicity of action, and about fifty yards back down the unpaved road the first tire went flat.

At the time, it hadn't occurred to Sophie that this might be an omen. After all, tires went flat regularly.

But then another tire had blown out, badly enough that they had to limp into a service station, and by the time it was fixed the sun had gone down, and they had found a nearby chophouse for dinner. He had called her Miss Fortescue and she had said he could use her first name now, if he liked, and he had smiled—at last!—and told her that in that case, she would have to call him Octavian. Only fair.

“It's an awfully grand name,” she said. “Don't you have a nickname?”

He hesitated. “No.”

“Then Octavian it is. Sophie and Octavian.”

Thinking about it now, she realizes that was a bold thing to say, but it didn't seem bold at the time, over pork chops and fried potatoes on the post road, while the sunset died and the stars popped out in the navy sky. Bold enough that they were sitting there at all, the two of them; bold enough that it was well past nine o'clock by the time they rolled down Third Avenue and around the corner of Thirty-Second Street. He gave her a piece of paper with a number written on it. His telephone exchange—SPRing—followed by 4892. “If you need anything,” he said, and those were the last words she heard from him. Not
I'll swing by tomorrow at lunchtime,
or
Let's meet again soon
. Not even
Good-bye, Sophie
or
Gosh, I had a swell time today
on the steps, while she slipped inside the front door. No more words at all. As if he'd lost the ability to speak. She looked back over her shoulder, but he'd already turned and hurried down the sidewalk to the Ford, which was parked by the empty curb, a few houses down.

But words aren't necessary, are they? Sophie knows what he couldn't say. And against the awful might of Father's note, Sophie has that scrap of paper with the telephone number tucked inside her pocket right now, resting against her leg, like a talisman. It's going to give her the courage to tell her father she can't marry Jay Ochsner, after all. It's going to give her the courage to explain this change of heart to Jay himself.

And when she's done all these things, well, that paper's going to give her
the courage to pick up the telephone, ask the operator to connect her, and tell Octavian that yes, in fact, she thinks she does need something.

She needs him.

FATHER DOESN'T ARRIVE HOME FOR
lunch, which isn't unusual on its own. Sometimes, when he's especially absorbed in one of his new gadgets, he won't come home all day and all night, and it's Sophie's job to bring him a hot meal in a covered dish and a bottle of milk—he doesn't drink any kind of liquor—and to make sure the cot in the workshop has clean blankets.

So Sophie sits down to lunch in the kitchen by herself. Evelyn's earlier fretfulness has turned into a fever, and Virginia now hovers anxiously over her daughter's bed in the nursery upstairs. The house has taken on that edgy, nerveless atmosphere of the brink of collapse. Sophie eats her soup and places her left hand on top of her pocket, while the cook bustles around the range. Maybe she should telephone Octavian now. (But isn't he at work?) Maybe she should put on her coat and hat and gloves and take the train downtown, to find the office where he works and tell him she absolutely must speak to him, she couldn't bear waiting around any longer for things to happen to her. Waiting to ask permission, when she knows what Father's answer will be:
No
. Sophie should stick to her word. Octavian Rofrano is just a boy, a boy with a slight job and no family and nothing but future before him. Jay Ochsner can take care of her. Jay Ochsner can protect her, the way Father has protected her so carefully all these years.

The soup is half-finished, but Sophie isn't hungry. She stands up and sets her napkin next to her bowl. “Thank you, Dot,” she says to the cook, and she turns and walks up the stairs toward the hall, and later on, she's never certain whether she meant to visit her father's workshop first and inform him of her decision, or whether she intended to go straight to Octavian.

Because the instant she reaches the landing, the brass knocker comes crashing down on its plate, and—in the grip of some sort of fantastical hope, maybe—she bounds to the door and throws it open.

And what do you know? Jay Ochsner himself stands there under the steely clouds, cheeks pink from a recent shave, bearing a box of chocolates in one hand and a bunch of crimson roses in the other.

“Darling.” He steps forward and kisses her on the lips. He tastes like oranges and cocktails. “I've missed you like crazy.”

THE FUNNY THING IS, SHE
can't quite put her finger on
why.
Why a man who seemed so dashing and amusing and well-ironed and attractive a few days ago, so incontrovertibly
right
a fellow for a girl to marry, now seems so unquestionably wrong. It's not as if he's changed. Not a bit! He remains exactly the same, in every indivisible detail, as the man who first kissed her in the library of the Ochsner town house on Thirty-Fourth Street. His smile is still toothsome, his manners carelessly well-bred. Is she really so fickle as that?

They sit on the sofa. Betty brings tea and cake, the cake Sophie didn't eat for dessert. The flowers are dispatched downstairs to be placed in a vase. Virginia staggers through the doorway, smoothing her dress, face all haggard. “Mr. Ochsner! What a lovely surprise.”

He stands at once and takes Virginia's hands. (He's a terrific gentleman, Sophie reminds herself, trying to be fair.) He looks into Virginia's eyes and says, “Why, is something wrong, Mrs. Fitzwilliam?”

“My daughter's a bit ill this morning, that's all,” she says. “A touch of fever.”

“My sympathies. Terrible ordeal. My sister used to go distracted whenever her boys were poorly, though I assure you it always came out right in the end.” He pauses and catches his breath, as if remembering something.

“Well, thank you. That's reassuring,” says Virgo. “I'm a trained nurse, which ought to make me steadier, but it seems I'm just as hopeless as any mother.”

He smiles and gestures to an armchair. “Come sit down and have some tea. I was just talking to Sophie about setting a date. Maybe you can help us.”

“I don't know about that. Isn't this between the two of you?”

Jay waits until Virginia's settled herself in an armchair before resuming his own seat at Sophie's side. “She can't seem to decide.”

Virginia pours herself a cup of tea and offers Sophie an inquisitive eyebrow.

“I'd like to talk to Father first,” Sophie says.

Virginia sets aside the strainer. “Well, it isn't as though we have a great many conflicting engagements. Doesn't Father want the wedding as soon as possible?”

“My thoughts exactly!” exclaims Jay. He seizes Sophie's hand and kisses the knuckles. “The sooner the better. I know you young ladies like to savor a long courtship, but I've waited long enough to be a married man. I'd like to be off on our honeymoon before springtime, wouldn't you?”

“I—I really hadn't thought about that.”

Another kiss. “Where would you like to go, darling? Somewhere warm, I think, don't you? What about South America?”

South America. In fact, Sophie would love to visit South America; just not with Jay Ochsner. She tugs her hand away and reaches for a piece of cake, though she still isn't hungry. She might never be hungry again, at this rate. Her face is hot, her stomach tight. South America with Jay Ochsner. In a flash, she sees the luxuriously overheated stateroom of an ocean liner, skimming past an Amazonian jungle, while Jay reclines in a deck chair wearing a silk dressing gown, like an aging Rudolf Valentino.

“No,” she says, “I'd rather not, really.”

“No? What about Africa, then? We could go on safari. Always wanted to go on safari.” He makes a motion, as if firing a rifle into the clock above the mantel.

“Mr. Ochsner,” Virginia says gently, “let's consider the wedding first.”

“Oh! Right. Getting ahead of myself, aren't I? There must always be a wedding before a honeymoon, mustn't there?”

Virginia stirs in a spoonful of honey. “Naturally.”

The first bite of cake makes Sophie feel sick. She sets it aside on a tiny new plate and picks up her tea. “Either way, I don't think we should consider any of this without consulting Father first. I suppose he'll be paying for everything, after all.”

That stings. As well it should.

Jay coughs into his hand and presses his fingers together, on top of his knee. “
Well.
”

“
Sophie,
” says Virginia, in a low voice.