Mr. Fox (26 page)

When it got dark, Mary Foxe came and sat by me with a candle. I’d gone so dead in my senses and my brain that I’d been expecting her, and it was actually nice to have a change. She closed the door so we’d have some privacy. I didn’t protest. “He won’t be coming up,” Mary Foxe said. “He’s probably going to go to sleep in there tonight.”

“Again. I know.”

She was naked, and not a bit self-conscious about it. She didn’t need to be. What I saw by candlelight made me sure that this was really going to happen—St. John Fox had dreamed himself up a nice little companion who wasn’t going to get old, and he was going to drop me and live with her. She looked younger than me, a lot younger than him—

“For God’s sake, put some clothes on, will you,” I told her.

“I don’t know where they’ve gone. I think I’ve annoyed him and he’s trying to punish me. I’m sorry if I’m making you feel uncomfortable. Give me any old thing to wear and I’ll put it on,” she said, in a very simple way. No guile, no false concern, just honesty. I couldn’t really be mad at her when she spoke to me like that.

I got out of bed. “Come on.” We went to my dressing room and I gave her a lilac shirtwaist to put on. I didn’t tell her, but it was my favourite thing to wear. I’d worn it in Buenos Aires on the first day of our honeymoon. There it was all over again, the first day, the first day, the first day, his hand in mine, all that woven into a dress. And there was no denying that Mary Foxe looked as cute as a button in my dress; its shade brought out interesting hues in her hair, or vice versa. I was glad we were the same dress size. It was something of a consolation to know that I’m nowhere near as fat as I sometimes think I am.

Mary Foxe sat in the chair at my dressing table and I stood beside the chair and she stared at me and I stared at her. It was just interesting to see what St. John wanted in a woman. Her hair hung over her shoulder in a wispy plait, clumsily done. Someone should show her how to plait her hair. I wondered what would become of me. I didn’t see him turning me out, not exactly—but I might be too proud to stay. He’d make me some sort of allowance, I suppose. I couldn’t go back to my parents, though. Pops would forbid Maman from giving me a piece of her mind, and she wouldn’t—not while he was there. But she’d give me that resigned look—
Messed up again, Daphne? Just what I expected.
The look I got when I quit college, only ten times worse. I should fight this, make some kind of threat. Greta would fight like a hellcat. Twice now, some girl has tried to get Pizarsky to fall in love with her, and each time Greta’s seen the girl off. She’s not above fighting for her man. How do you threaten someone like Mary Foxe, though?

“I’ve never seen you this close up,” Mary Foxe said. “I like looking at your face; it’s a good face.”

I couldn’t help laughing at her formality. I wanted to say I thought the same about her, but I couldn’t make myself do it. Greta would have risen up in my mind like a ghoul, sneering.
That’s right, pay her compliments while she replaces you.
I was always weak in the head—that must be it. I can’t seem to care anymore about what I’m supposed to do. This is not a typical scenario.

“What are you thinking about, Mrs. Fox?” Mary Foxe asked.

I laughed again.

“You’re thinking of something funny?”

“He said you were British.”

“Mrs. Fox,” she said. “I think I’m more like you than not.”

“How can you know that?” Anger began to kick in. “How can you know that?”

Mary Foxe looked up at me with big, thoughtful eyes. “I’m glad there isn’t a stapler around.”

Abruptly, I asked her if she knew whether I was pregnant. I’d cancelled my appointment with the doctor. It’d be a bad scene if I was pregnant and a bad scene if I wasn’t.

“You don’t look pregnant,” Mary Foxe said.

“Do you mean you don’t know? If you don’t, just say so.”

“I don’t know. Of course I don’t know. How could I know that? I’m not a doctor.”

“I thought you were . . . magical or something. Like a spirit.”

She opened her eyes very wide, wondering at me. “No, I don’t think I am.”

“Okay. Not magical and not a doctor. Got it.”

She was really too amusing. Now that I’d asked if she was magical, I could see her wondering whether she might be magical, after all. What was this, me finding myself wanting to look out for this girl, thing, whatever she was?

“What do you want, Mary Foxe? My husband?”

“I believe in him,” she said slowly. I wondered if she’d ever told him that, and if so, what he had to say about it. Someone you made up turns around and tells you they believe in you—what response could you possibly make? The scenario is just plain weird. And really kind of impertinent on her part, too. If it happened to me I think I’d be speechless for the rest of my life.

“I love him,” she added. That simple tone again; she thought this was something that was all right to say to me.

“That’s nice. So do I.” We sized each other up again.

“Mrs. Fox.” Mary put a hand on my arm, and we jumped away from each other in a hurry. The static, the awful static of her touch, it was exactly the way I imagined I’d feel if I ever brushed against an electric fence. My knees knocked together in a frenzy.

“That caused an unpleasant sensation and I won’t do it again,” said the little comedian across the room.

“Good. Well, you were about to say something. Go on.”

“I wondered if you had eaten today.”

“No, I haven’t. What’s it to you?”

“I wondered—I wondered if we could go out to dinner together. Someplace fancy. And if I could wear a nice hat.”

She wondered if we could go someplace fancy for dinner and whether she might wear a nice hat. One of mine, I suppose, since there weren’t any other hats to hand. For all her shapeliness, this wasn’t a woman I was dealing with. This wasn’t the M. I’d pictured when I’d looked over that list of things in her favour. She seemed a girl barely in her teens, mentally speaking. What if I worked on her a little, taught her a difficult attitude and sent her back to her master with it?

“I know a place,” I said. “Let me just get dressed.”

She turned her back while I dressed. Then we tried all my hats on and I got caught up in the excitement of taking someone new—a brand-new person, almost—out to do something new. She got the giggles and so did I, so loudly that I thought St. John was going to hear from all the way downstairs and come up to see what was going on. He didn’t. She decided on a hat. Then changed her mind. And changed her mind and changed her mind. Very indecisive about hats, that Mary Foxe. Maybe she’d tire of St. John and slope off somewhere. Maybe she’d vanish the moment I set foot in the restaurant and asked for a table for two. How foolish I’d look. But I was prepared to risk it. I wanted to see a smile on her face—some people make you want to see them smiling. And I like a project. I do like to have a project.

After about twenty minutes of hat changing, I’d insisted she stick with the black cloche hat she had on. She pinned on a brooch of mine and moved this way and that so it glinted at her in the mirror, eager magpie of a girl. We rang for a taxi, and I let her give our address—she recited it carefully, and looked so excited. She waited out on the porch, hopping, though she said she’d try to be patient, and I knocked at the door of St. John’s study.

“Daphne?” he called out. But not at first. He had begun to say “Mary” and stopped himself. I went in, stayed near the door. He dropped his pen and stood up, strangely gallant. What for? It was only me.

“You’re really something, you know that?” I told him. That wasn’t what I’d meant to say, it just came out. It was the audacity of what he was doing, and the fact that I couldn’t fathom how the hell he was doing it.

“Well, so are you,” he said, and looked admiring, turning his reply into a comment on the way I looked tonight. Our exchanges always seem to turn into whatever he wants them to. I don’t think any woman can get the better of him. Keep things brief, Daphne, keep things brief, and you’ll get out with your head still on your shoulders. This man is a deadly foe.

“I just wanted to say I’m going out to dinner at the Chop House.”

“Great. We haven’t been there in a while, have we? Let me just finish my sentence, and—”

“Oh, no, you take as long as you need. I’m going with Greta.”

“Oh, then don’t worry about my dinner, I don’t need feeding at all. I get by on liquor and flattering notices in the newspapers,” he said evenly. A dark man, my St. John, tall and broad-shouldered and full of force he doesn’t exert. I’m only just starting to see him clearly.

“Stop it. She asked me centuries ago.”

He inclined his head to show that he had heard. He mumbled something. Against my better judgment, I asked him what he’d said.

“Just Greta?”

“What do you mean, ‘Just Greta’?”

St. John sat down again, scanning the page he’d just been working on. As he read he began to look baffled, as if someone else had snuck in and scrambled his sentences while he’d been talking to me. “Wondered if she’d make Pizarsky tag along, that’s all.” He attacked his page with short, exasperated scratches of his pen, crossing out. He didn’t seem to like a single word he saw.

“Oh, J.P.—such a funny little man, isn’t he?” I said. “So short and squat. And I hardly know what he’s talking about half the time.” St. John didn’t stop crossing things out, but his lips twitched; I think he was happy I’d said that. But I felt terribly guilty, because that isn’t what I think about John Pizarsky at all. I honestly think he rescued me yesterday, and showed a sweet side I didn’t know he had. And while it’s true I’m not quite sure what he meant to tell me, it helped. It did help, and I’m grateful to him. I’d let J.P. down; I knew it in the pit of my stomach, but I told myself he’d never know that I’d talked about him like that. I’d make it up to him. I’d read that book he lent me six months ago, and I’d discuss it with him and pretend it had changed my life.

That thing he’d told me about Lady Mary conquering Mr. Fox just by telling him what she’d seen in his house . . . telling him right to his face in front of all the guests at that ghastly betrothal breakfast. And all Mr. Fox could do was stand there denying it, his denials getting weaker and weaker as her story got more detailed.
I know what you’re doing—I know what you are.
She had power after that, the knowing and the telling—power to walk away, or stay, save his life, order his death. I don’t know what I’d have done in her place. It’s easier to picture Greta in that kind of situation—Greta would’ve blackmailed him, for sure. Just for fun, and pocket change.

Mary caused quite a stir at dinner, and I was glad to be there. She was a little sad to have to take the hat off indoors, but she ate and drank and touched the knives and forks and spoons and her wineglass with such delight, you couldn’t help but watch her. And she watched everyone, and told me what she thought of them. A group of four men moved tables so that they were in our line of vision, and whenever Mary looked over at them they toasted her. She got quite mischievous about it, and made them drop their cutlery at least ten times as they scrambled to lift their glasses. “It’s kind of like a jack-in-the-box,” she said. She was blushing because of all the attention, her cheeks a gorgeous shade of pink, and I said, quoting something I’d read, “Modesty is more effective than the most expensive rouge.” Then I realised I hadn’t read it anywhere and I’d just made it up. “Modesty is more effective than the most expensive rouge,” I said again.

“Hey, you should put that in your book,” Mary said, with a smile of approval. Two couples St. John and I knew, the Comyns and the Nesbits, came over to say hello and get an eyeful. I introduced Mary to them as “a second cousin of St. John’s’,” which seemed to satisfy them, and they shook hands with her without any difficulty, though I was very worried that there would be. Mrs. Nesbit is the yelling kind, and alarming her in any way is a surefire route to notoriety. The Nesbits and the Comyns were as nosey as they could be in a few brief minutes, and Mary told them she’d just come out of finishing school in Boston. She was a fluent liar, and really warm with it, really personal. If I hadn’t seen her come to life before my very eyes I’d have believed her.

“You must come to dinner next week,” Mrs. Nesbit said, before they left the restaurant. And Mary said she’d absolutely adore to. I began to foresee a disgustingly sociable future, then tried to see the three of us out for the evening; Mary, St. John, and I, and that jarred me out of my speculation.

“Mary . . . what was that about a book? What do you mean, my book?”

Mary poured us both more wine, fixed me with a suddenly keen gaze. “Aren’t you going to write one?”

I’d won a couple of prizes for essays and things at school, and a prize for a short story. But that was all so long ago. And it wasn’t hard to shine at that sort of thing at my school; no one really studied hard because it was so unnecessary when you were going to marry well. Even so, maybe I would try. It could well go the way of the watercolor paintings, and the clay pottery, and the botany. But there would be many lonely hours ahead for me, and I thought it would be good to give them purpose.