A Certain Age (20 page)

“Oh, Theresa,” the Boy says, and he sets down the drink and gathers my poor sobbing self into his arms, against his chest, which is so much larger and warmer and substantial than my own, a thick rock shelter of a chest. “Oh, Theresa,” he says again, caressing my back while the tears continue to fall, inexplicable and unchecked and entirely—I swear it—unstudied. “You'll be all right. We'll be all right.”

YOU MAY OR MAY NOT
have believed me this morning, when I told the Boy he was my first love affair. Regards the truth, I'll let you decide for yourself. But I will say this, beyond all doubt: I was the
Boy'
s
first lover.

He didn't actually say so, of course, and I didn't ask. (One doesn't ask a man a question like that, if he doesn't volunteer the information beforehand.) But I couldn't help noticing the hesitant way in which he unfastened my dress
for the first time. The wondering way in which he beheld each new fragment of exposed skin, as if he were translating an ancient and unknown poem into his native language, with the aid of a secret dictionary. Why, he hardly even knew how to kiss, at first. I had to nudge his lips open and demonstrate the tender inner workings of the caress, though—to be fair—he caught on like lightning, once he got the general idea.

I unwrapped him carefully, like the gift he was, and he shuddered when my fingertips encountered his skin, as if he thought I might hurt him. I don't think either of us said a word. The bedroom was hot and quite small—I can't quite remember how we got there—and I sat down on the bed and kissed his stomach, and that was when his muscles convulsed. That was when he came, helpless, into my possession. The moon was full and blew straight through the window onto his skin, and I thought I had never seen anything so new and perfect, so utterly clean, as the naked Boy before me. I kissed his ribs and the scars on his chest, I rose on my knees and kissed his ropy shoulders and warm neck, while my hands slid downward to encompass the curve of his buttocks.

He's mine, I thought.

I told him to open his eyes, and he did. The pupils were dilated, the encircling irises gray in the moonlight. I took his hands and showed him where to touch me, and how to touch me, but when his poor starved fingertips shook against the tips of my breasts, I could see he wasn't going to last another minute. So I drew him down on the bed and opened my merciful legs, and here's the funny thing about Nature: the Boy knew what to do with me after that. He found the rhythm in an instant, he drove and drove in the manner of a tender machine, watching my face the whole time, expression of wonder and torture, and my God, I can still feel the way my flesh hurtled at last. I can still perceive the dampness of his skin. I can still hear my cry, and his.

Afterward, in the silver quiet, I knew regret, the way you feel when you walk across a field of snow and ravage its immaculate surface, and yet your regret cannot quite swallow your primitive pleasure in the act of desecration. I suppose it helped that the pleasure was mutual. When at last he lifted
his head, I was relieved to see that he was smiling.
Thank you,
he said, and I replied—what else?—
Any time.

Any time
turned out to be fifteen minutes later, and then twice more before the early midsummer dawn. By then he was practically an expert. Immensely pleased with himself, like the Boy he was. Immensely pleased, too, with the snowy multitude of footprints now corrupting his formerly pristine skin, and when I woke, rather groggily, I discovered that the smell of bacon and coffee had roused me. A new day had crept over the horizon, and the Boy was making me breakfast.

BUT MIDSUMMER IS LONG PAST,
and now it's the middle of winter. The cold drives us under the covers, and the Boy's shirt still dangles from his shoulders as he hovers above me, eyes closed, in the familiar old rhythm. The silence afterward isn't because there's too much to say, but because there's too little.

Still, I nestle myself into the warmth of his side. The heaviness of his arm comforts me. There's no smell on earth I love more than the scent of his skin, and the tobacco that burns at his fingertips into the solemn air of the bedroom, and I cannot lose all this. I cannot lose the Boy, because then there will be nothing left of me.

I suppose we fall asleep. I'm considering how hungry I am, and how I can't possibly move, can't willingly extract myself from the Boy's embrace in order to rummage dinner from the shelves of the kitchen. A terrible conundrum. Then I'm opening my eyes, and the air is much darker than it should be, and that sound in the other room turns out to be a ringing telephone.

I ought to nudge the Boy awake, but he's sleeping so peacefully I haven't the heart to disturb him. (Or so I tell myself, anyway.) I lift his arm away and rise from the bed, taking the dressing gown from the chair as I go, and the telephone is still jangling by the time I reach the living room.

“Hello,” I say, just that single word, and the first thing I notice is the sound of jazz in the background, a tune with which I'm familiar. The band
at the Christopher Club plays it all the time. The trumpet player—a man I much admire—favors that very riff, up and down a minor scale, ending in a mournful question.

Somewhere inside the music lies a sweet young voice that hesitates before it replies. “Hello? Hello? I'm sorry, I think I have the wrong connection. I was trying to reach SPRing 5682.”

I wrap the cord around my hand and stare out the window at the purple twilight, the small and desolate lights flickering from the surrounding buildings. “No, you have the right number.”

She hesitates again. “Is this Mr. Rofrano's residence?”

“Yes, it is. But I'm afraid he's fast asleep at the moment, the little dear. Would you like me to wake him for you?”

“No, thank you.”

“Shall I give him a message?”

“No! No, thank you. Good—good evening.”

The line goes dead, and I replace the handset in the cradle. The lamp is still burning on the nearby table, and beneath the lamp sits my drink, golden, untouched, the ice chips melted away. The bedroom door stands ajar, about a foot of black space.

I cross the room and close the door.

When I return to the telephone, I lift the handset and wait for the operator, ever so patiently.

“Exchange and number, please.”

“ATWater 2203.”

My brother answers right away, for which mercy I thank God. I speak softly. “Ox, darling. I don't suppose you've got your armor all shined up, have you?”

“My armor?”

“Because there's a damsel in great distress down here at the Christopher Club, probably crying into her juice this very instant, and I think you'd better ride on in to rescue her at the earliest possible opportunity.”

“A damsel? Do you mean
Sophie
? At the
Christopher
Club?”

“It's my best guess, I'm afraid.”

“But how—”

“
How
isn't the point at the moment, darling. The poor little thing. What's important is that someone rescues her, the sooner the better.”

“All right, all right.”

“That's my good brother. Make sure she's all right, won't you? And get her home intact, for heaven's sake.”

There's no reply, just the satisfying click of the line going dead, and I replace the receiver and reach for the drink. I've finished half of it before I become aware of the faint breath of wind at my neck.

I turn, and the white-shouldered ghost of the Boy stands before me in the bedroom doorway. The muscles of his face are clenched in shock, and I don't suppose I shall ever forget the agonized shape of his eyes.

“You're awake,” I say softly.

A man's heart may have a secret sanctuary where only one woman may enter, but it is full of little anterooms which are seldom vacant.

—HELEN ROWLAND

SOPHIE

At the Christopher Club, the next instant

T
HE BARTENDER
has a sympathetic face. When at last Sophie lifts her gaze from the telephone, she finds it regarding her, only a few feet away: slim brown eyes and crescent mouth. “Drink, miss?” he says, and then: “On the house.”

Sophie considers the offer. “What do you suggest?”

“A nice girl like you? I can make something up.”

The nod she sends him is probably numb. Certainly the rest of her is numb, a nice thick absence of feeling that coats her skin from scalp to pinkie toe. The film seems especially thick over her ears, but that might be because of the racket from the jazz band in the corner, or the buzz from the telephone receiver. Sophie had taken in the words on the other end, but the woman's voice still seems to be vibrating the bones of her inner ear, instead of penetrating to the gray matter beyond.

He's fast asleep.

Well, but didn't the lady in the Sterling Bates foyer say something similar?
He's gone home for the day, I'm afraid,
in an awfully professional voice, deflating Sophie's buoyant pink-cheeked hopes just like that. So now Octavian was asleep. Probably he'd had a hard day at work, or maybe—oh, dreadful thought!—maybe he was
sick
! All that cold air yesterday. Sophie made him sit outside, while the winter wind blew straight on from Long Island Sound, turning an incipient cold into full-blown influenza, and likely pneumonia as well. Poor Octavian!

But the numbness in Sophie's cheek and jaw suggests otherwise. Though her mental faculties seem to have taken on the sluggish syncopation of the music playing behind her, they still retain the sense to wonder why, if Octavian had the 'flu, his female companion should seem so unconcerned for his health—
the little dear,
she said—and, above all, why she should have the unquestioned right to wake him from his slumbers.

Sophie knows the answer to that question, of course. She isn't stupid, nor half so naïve as she has the right to be. But the gray matter is nonetheless reluctant to accept this obvious explanation. The gray matter would rather remain numb, thank you very much. Numb and unreachable. She accepts the drink from the bartender and arranges her lips around the rim. Not so bad, if you remembered not to breathe.

She smiles her thanks, and the bartender's mouth makes a hesitant movement, as if he's thinking of asking a question. But the music is loud and shrill, and a gaggle of clamorous patrons has just burst through the door, and he shrugs and walks away instead, wiping his hands on his dishcloth.

The bartender. The bar. So forbidden and masculine, an unimaginable place for a nice girl to find herself—
alone
!—until now. Until suddenly girls and boys are going to saloons together, and they aren't called saloons any more. A whole new vocabulary is springing up overnight, it seems, like mushrooms or crocuses, all clustered around the underground slaking of illegal thirst, and it seems the more illegal the thirst is, the more ordinary and acceptable it's become to slake it in mixed company, among strangers. And the vocabulary has something to do with that, doesn't it? Hooch, speakeasy, blotto. Silly words, trivializing the laws they're breaking. Trivializing
everything in the world. Sophie lays her palm on the dented brown surface before her. The wood is slightly tacky, as if someone's spilled a drink or two. Something as sugary as the concoction in Sophie's other hand.

Down the length of the bar, the newcomers are giggling and screeching. Three men and two women. The women are dressed in black satin trimmed with feathers and glittering beads, and sequined bands run across their foreheads like midnight canals. Their lipstick is so red, it's almost black, and Sophie finds herself mesmerized by the graphic movement of their mouths. Realizes, as she does so, that she doesn't belong here. She's not one of them. She's not a member of the tribe. Maybe she can repeat a remembered password and gain entry, maybe they won't throw her out because they remember her from Saturday, maybe a girl has just as much right to a glass of bootleg liquor as a boy, if she wants one.

But maybe she doesn't want one.

Maybe Father's right. Maybe all this freedom doesn't make you any happier, after all. Maybe, if you take a chance, if you break out of prison and ride an ocean liner all the way across the Atlantic to a war-battered continent, all you get is a husband lost in Florida and a baby with a fever. Maybe, if you take a chance, if you break out of prison to track down the man you might be falling in love with and throw your vulnerable new heart into his hands, all you get is a worldly female voice on the other end of the telephone line, telling you you're too late.

Sophie rises from the stool. The drink is only half-finished, but she doesn't want any more. If she had a dollar bill, she would place it on the sticky wood next to the glass, but she doesn't have a dollar bill. She doesn't have a dime; that's why she came here, because she left her father's house this afternoon without even the money for a public telephone call in her coat pocket.

Virginia and Father must be frantic by now. Darkness has fallen over Manhattan, and Sophie's thirty blocks from home, and she will have to walk. Home seems awfully nice, just now. Home doesn't seem like a prison at all, next to this sweaty, cacophonous medicine cave down a narrow staircase in Greenwich Village.

The bartender appears, like magic. “You leaving?”

“Yes, I'm afraid so.”

“You can't go out by yourself. Lemme call you a taxi.”

A taxi sounds heavenly. Except she's broke.

“No, thank you. I can manage.”

“On the house?” He smiles at her hopefully, the nicest bartender in the world. Weren't these speakeasy men supposed to have Thompson machine guns hiding under the counter? This one looks as young as she is, as fundamentally decent as a newspaper boy, except he's selling the demon liquor instead of news.

Sophie hovers. Opens her mouth. Says—

“
Sophie
! Darling. There you are.”

MRS. MARSHALL IS TERRIBLY REASSURING.
“I've telephoned my brother,” she says, slipping off one leather glove and then the other. “He'll be
right
down to fetch you.”

“I really don't need—”

“Darling, he
wants
to.” Mrs. Marshall touches the back of her hand. “He's thoroughly in love with you, you know.”

“Is he?”

“Of course he is. Why, look at you! How can he help it? Octavian.” She turns to the man sitting quietly to her left. “Wouldn't you fall just
headfirst
into love with our Sophie, if you weren't already going to marry me?”

How friendly she is. Of course she's laying her claim—Sophie can't fault her for that—but she doesn't seem to bear Sophie the slightest bit of resentment for having telephoned this handsome young fiancé as if she has a right to. (Another emblem of the modern new world, that you could have a husband and a fiancé at the same time, and admit that paradox publicly.) How much does Mrs. Marshall know about yesterday's drive to Connecticut? Does she know about yesterday at all? In her cheerful voice and unworried forehead, there's no sign.

As for Octavian? Who knows. Who cares. Sophie won't look at him. She hears him reply, polite and faintly agonized, but she tips up her drink to block him out. Something's building in her head, ringing in her ears, and she's afraid that if she sees Octavian's face, the thing will ignite. Maybe even explode, messily and prematurely. “There was no need for both of you to come,” she says. “Especially since Mr. Rofrano was
asleep.
”

“Oh, the telephone woke him up, I'm afraid. And of course he wouldn't
hear
of leaving either of us without some sort of protection, at this hour. What on earth were you thinking, my dear, coming to the Christopher Club all by yourself?”

“I didn't have any money for a telephone,” Sophie mumbles.

“Dear me. Are you in trouble of some kind?”

“No.” Sophie looks up and smiles. “Not anymore. Just a little quarrel with my father, and I've realized he was right, after all.”

“Good girl. Fathers usually are, you know.”

What was that about the cold? Sophie is as hot as blazes now. Perspiration trickles down her back, between her breasts. Her cheeks are glowing. The backs of her legs are damp in their stockings, molding her to the round wooden seat beneath her. She can't look at Octavian, but she doesn't need to: he just sits there drinking and smoking and not saying anything. Waiting for her to acknowledge him. Waiting, no doubt, to telegraph some kind of mute apology from those fabulous chameleon eyes of his.

Waiting for her to say something. Waiting for her to toss her drink in his face and scream,
How could you? She's as old as your mother! How could you go to bed with her, after what happened between us yesterday? How could you love her? Her, Mrs. Marshall, of all people?

Well, she won't. Sophie can be a grown-up, too. Sophie can play grown-up games, if she puts her mind to it.

“By the way, my dear,” Mrs. Marshall continues, “I was absolutely serious about that engagement party. Next Saturday, I think. Or perhaps the following week, just to give ourselves enough time? We want to be sure everyone can come. Things are a bit messy because of my divorce, but we'll
put our best face to the world, won't we? That's the only thing to do, when the world thinks it's caught you flat on your bottom.”

Sophie says, “That sounds delightful, Mrs. Marshall.”

“I'll make you the toast of the town, Sophie dear. Manhattan could really use a bright new face to rage over, and yours is both terribly bright and terribly new. I expect you'll be on a first-name basis with the society page and someone will name a dessert in your honor. Or a cocktail.”

Octavian makes a noise in his throat, almost inaudible, and finishes his drink.

“And you
must
call me Theresa,” Mrs. Marshall continues. “We're going to be sisters, after all. The best of friends.”

A welcome draft hits Sophie's cheek, and she turns hopefully to the door.

“Jay!” she exclaims, and she springs from her seat and throws her arms around his astonished neck and kisses him, right there in front of everybody, in front of Octavian and Mrs. Marshall and the bartender and the whole world, until the women in their black feathers and sequined headbands start laughing and applauding, and the band, just returning to the instruments after a break, breaks out into a jazzy trumpet rendition of Mendelssohn.

“Don't forget!” calls Mrs. Marshall, as a beaming Jay leads her out the door to his waiting car. “The first Saturday of February! The party of the year. I promise.”