Quiet Dell: A Novel (3 page)

Lavinia had opened the door to him, smilingly remarking that he resembled the Arrow collar man just then familiar from advertisements. No, he’d assured her, he made an honest living with the respected Dunnegan Company, and he held before him the newspaper in which Asta’s notice had appeared. “I am Charles O’Boyle,” he told Lavinia, “the gentleman roomer you seek.”

He became Asta’s confidant, her trusted friend.

They knew one another’s secrets. Asta was German, not Danish, brought up in London and schooled in Copenhagen. She’d met Heinrich at the Artists League and married into his secular Jewish family. The Eichers were moneyed, assimilated intellectuals, all of them passed away, save Lavinia, who managed an inheritance at the behest of her only son. They’d emigrated in luxury on the
Queen Mary,
a wedding trip: husband, wife, and the husband’s elegant mother, a kindly dowager whose every remonstrance to her new daughter was couched in compliments. Lavinia had purchased the Chicago apartment, then the Park Ridge Victorian with the expansive barn; she supported the growing family with deepest pleasure. The children didn’t know they were half-Jewish. It was collusion Heinrich had framed and sealed in his marriage to a Lutheran. Asta insisted on Lutheran religious education for her children; they’d chosen Park Ridge for its Lutheran community and the artisans’ collective husband and wife immediately joined, as much as for Heinrich’s ongoing insurance employment in Chicago. The inheritance wouldn’t last forever, though it might have ensured good schools for the children had Heinrich lived.

He had not. The Eichers were a charmed and beautiful village on which dark stars fell. Misfortune was common, of course, but the family persevered with such well-bred patience, and made of pretense a brave and moral art.

The holidays made much of celestial markers. Wonder. Light.
Royal beauty bright
. Charles had spent every Christmas Day, the past four years, in this house. Yes, it was that long now. Usually he arrived for tea, arms laden, and stayed for dinner. Good he’d allowed more time this year. Yesterday was calmer, time alone with
Anna to talk, observe. He hadn’t seen them since Thanksgiving. Lavinia had died that night, and he’d canceled his appointments, stayed on to help with arrangements, sleeping in the room he’d left two years ago. Yesterday, on his arrival, Anna made a point of directing Hart to “the guest room” with Charles’ bag. Annabel of course followed, carrying the parcels of presents, except for the very large one, which he’d left on the porch behind the wicker swing. Anna watched approvingly as the children clambered up the stairs. He’d glanced at her, surprised, and she nodded, indicating that yes, he would sleep in Lavinia’s room, undoubtedly the first “guest” to occupy it.

“Charles,” she said, and took his arm. “Let Hart settle you in. I’ll take your overcoat, and that lovely white scarf. There’s tea in the dining room.”

Perhaps, when they’d come to their arrangement, she would address him differently. My dear, she would say, and he would answer, My darling Anna, my dear Anna, for she was very dear to him. Making money, flying as though driven, he’d lost sight of what mattered, including her, and this home, even the idea of home. Sending the children souvenirs, postcards, valentines, from Mexico, Canada, California, as though to reserve what he couldn’t embrace, he knew his attentions pleased Anna; his every remembrance of the children was a gift to her.

He rose now from Lavinia’s bed, a strange thought, though everything in the room was changed. The closets were empty. Anna had told him she’d discarded the sheets and bedding, even the curtains and rug, warning Annabel days in advance. Her grandmother no longer needed a room; she did not need earthly things; a room was not a shrine. The floor was bare, the bedspread a simple muslin coverlet. Wooden half-shutters afforded privacy. The room could house a maid or cook. Or not yet. Let them all first adjust to other changes: to his permanent residence, to a marriage and sacred contract, and the easing of financial burdens. He would free Anna, fund her work, upgrade the studio barn behind the house, which was now so shabby and run-down.

Charles had resources. Yes, he must make that point strongly. He’d prospered, invested well, risen in his profession, and he wanted to protect this family, cosset them, as much for his own sake. Theirs was the only unspoiled world he’d ever encountered. He would give generously, gladly. Money should mean more than discretion and foreign hotels. Far from home, he pursued his indulgences voraciously but avoided youth who might attach themselves, and anyone who spoke English, never revealing personal information, or even his name. He returned dazed and satiated from these sojourns, plunging into a work schedule grueling enough to provoke exhaustion and dreamless sleep.

This Christmas was bitterly cold. The radiators hissed.

Charles went to the window in his nightclothes, glimpsing the backyard outbuildings through denuded trees. The playhouse windows were partially shuttered. The studio behind, an expanded barn, sagged visibly. Quite an operation in its time, a thriving, part-time cooperative, numerous artisans forging Eicher designs marked with the lovely inverted EAE. He remembered Anna working when he’d roomed with the family, small pieces, but she couldn’t support her design business after she was widowed.

He’d thought Lavinia’s death a release for the family, as well as a sorrow, that her resources would go to Anna and the children. Now he knew that Lavinia’s funds were exhausted. Years ago, she’d purchased the Cedar Street property with the understanding that her son would support her. Anna had mortgaged the house to pay expenses, and used Lavinia’s savings to pay for medical bills and private nursing those last months. Charles should have known. He’d worked from home half a year, supervising his mother’s care. But Anna had no income. And so this decision to sell her house, the only home her children had known, and do what?

His breath fogged the glass, and he placed his hand upon it. Instantly, the condensation withdrew and the laden pines appeared, their limbs piled with snow near the window. A few strands of metallic tinsel, tangled in the branches, blowing wildly, no doubt bespoke Annabel’s attempts to decorate the playhouse. Heinrich
had built it when Grethe was a baby, anticipating the lively daughter she might have been. Now the starlike fissures in the playhouse window glittered with ice. Heinrich’s death, yes. Sudden. Away from home, Charles recalled. An accident—a streetcar, a rail station. Exactly as might happen to anyone, to Charles, tomorrow or in ten years’ time, and no one to care or bury him, unless he made a change.

He opened Lavinia’s window wide and leaned forward onto the sill, chest deep in cold suspended air. The silence seemed doleful, eerie and total, the air very still. He fancied he heard, distantly, the jingling of bells. No, it was the dog, the skittering click of the terrier’s nails as Duty made his way across floor and carpet runner, from Grethe’s room to Hart’s, to Charles’ room, the guest room, for Charles was a guest.

The dog nudged his door, waiting. Charles shut the window and admitted his visitor. Duty walked briskly to the bed and jumped up, settling against the pillows before peering at him attentively. The baleful, slightly walleyed gaze seemed disconcertingly human. Charles leaned down to stroke the dog’s short, alert ears and wondered guiltily if his leave-taking two years ago, necessary as it was, had contributed to Anna’s present financial crisis. Selfishly, visiting on the odd weekend, he hadn’t noticed the leaner look of things. Anna had sold most of the silver, Heinrich’s designs and her own. The clocks from the mantels were gone, the German music box with the bell jar casing, and the lovely Danish cabinet with the blue tiles. Charles himself had purchased a tea set with classic, masculine lines, an early piece of Anna’s she obviously valued, when he moved back to Chicago. He would bring it home; it belonged here. He could not restore what Anna had surrendered, but he could assure her safety.

He must shave. Go down early and speak with Anna, before the children wakened. The dog yipped at him once as though in reproof, and settled closer against the pillows.

•   •   •

Charles lathered his face, regarding himself in the mirror. Hart had arranged Charles’ mug and shaving brush, just so beside the soap, as though to make him welcome. It wasn’t ideal, a lone boy among women. And Hart, so aware he was the man of the house, would struggle in future to mitigate the needs of three females whose characters and requirements were so disparate.

Charles understood, especially on this day. Christmas moved, saddened, excited him. He’d loved the holiday as a child. All of Chicago lit up. Mother took him skating before Christmas tea at one of the fine hotels, and he was confirmed near Christmas, an altar boy whose priest spoke of “our Father who will never forsake us.” Mother adored Father Kerrigan and urged her son toward him, the better to supply Charles with good and holy influence. Innocently, Charles accepted the priest’s attentions; he learned subterfuge, hypocrisy, secrecy at Father Kerrigan’s knee, at his hands. He learned to hate the man’s diminutive physical stature, his peppermint smell. The sound of his footsteps, the rustle of his vestments and surplice, provoked a sick, gnawing shame. Charles left the Church at fourteen, embraced academics, track, archery. Later, throughout the years at Notre Dame, he avoided services except at Advent and the Festival of Epiphany. The words of the Latin hymns, so familiar from childhood, made betrayal seem universal, his own confusions relative and unimportant.

Gaudete! Gaudete!

Christus est natus ex Maria virgine!

Gaudete!

He could, almost, rejoice, and his mother stood beside him, proud of his success, his excellent marks, his athletic prowess. A sprinter, he sailed over hurdles at all-conference meets, an acknowledged champion whose long legs flashed like blades. His mother had relocated to Bloomington and displayed his trophies there before their return to Chicago and the start of his career. But that home was gone, and Charles’ apartment was not a home.

He ran the water hot, filling the small room with steam and shaving the lather from his face. He was needed here. He could have children. Not squalling infants but these very well-brought-up girls and boy with their European manners and courtesy, children whom he already regarded as family, like nieces and nephews. He would never interfere, of course, or presume to take their father’s place, but Charles was not a stranger. Surely they’d accept him as their mother’s husband, someone to care for her, and he did, truly. Grethe, at fourteen, was adolescent now; she would need protection, someone to see she met the right sort of man someday, or no man. Let the three of them go on happily, Asta, Charles, and Grethe, as Hart went off to school, and Annabel, the charming minx, opened a theater company. Joking. Perhaps she could become a librarian, settle her head-in-the-clouds sensibility. She was still young, chunky and solid, but would grow slender and tall, like Grethe, who was plain, thank God. Annabel, though, would be lovely, quick: that round, catlike face and high cheekbones, and sparkling hazel eyes.

Charles leaned into the mirror. He was still virile, attractive, but he’d torn himself on one shoal after another these last years, and righted the wreckage, never obvious, considerate of his job, his position, yet he’d aged, his face was fleshier, while Anna looked exactly as she’d looked five years ago. As she would look five years hence.

The age difference was not so great. He was nearly thirty-seven. Anna was forty-five.

He bent to wash off the last of the soap in the basin and thought of Hart, learning to shave soon, taught by whom? Charles knew the reality of widows and children, families drawn closer by the dampened fire. Perhaps it was why the Eicher home had so appealed. He’d recognized the tenor of feeling immediately. Intent on becoming a man of means, he’d arrived on Anna’s doorstep, an aging orphan whose inclinations set him apart.

Inclinations: Anna’s word. She saw his desires, his compulsions, as inclination, nothing more. Years ago, she’d spoken to
him frankly, understanding all he didn’t say.
Charles, you’re getting older. The senses bank their fires. Other things grow more important.
Her dear, good face, her strength, her lovely gray eyes! And then she’d touched his wrist and whispered, beseeching him:
You must be careful. Promise me you’ll be cautious.

Amazing what women knew if they cared for one.

Anna, what depths were yours? What tortured you? He would know. She would tell him as they lay side by side, her hands in his. He would install his gramophone on the large corner table in her room, his record collection on the shelf below, and play for her all those sweeps and phrases that set his mind aflame. He was certain he could perform if called upon. Yes, why not? If that was what she wanted.

A man was not one thing.

The pathology of hiding and shame was the harmful element. The Greeks had not regarded love and morality within modernity’s narrow frame. And he carried Catholicism’s weight. He’d not told his mother of his experience, his helpless anger, but she knew or suspected, or she’d never have accepted his lapse of faith, his refusal to enter any sacristy. He’d walk her to confession if he was at home, and sit smoking outside on the broad bench beside the street. He imagined that boys coming and going from services glanced at him, and once a tall young priest met his eyes openly, then turned away without speaking. Charles’ temples burned, thinking of it.

The risks he’d allowed himself. The devastation he’d narrowly escaped, or not entirely. But that was past, must all be past.

He bathed his eyes in the water once more and toweled his moist skin dry. He’d taken care. None of it would follow him, but he could not combat his tendencies alone, nor trace the confusion to one cause. He must gain focus, stability, reason to live differently.

Now he stood at the bedside, listening. The dog yawned and stretched on the coverlet, watching him. Charles chose a pleated shirt with French cuffs from his open suitcase and dressed carefully in a suit made for him in the Loop by a London tailor. He thought
of Anna in her room, awake, he was certain, lying still before the tumult of the day. Snow was falling steadily. Last night, after Anna went up, he’d placed his presents for them under the lavishly ornamented tree, retrieving the large one from the porch. He’d purchased a fine gold locket for Anna, and a set of tortoiseshell combs, but he wished he’d bought her a ring, an engagement ring. Better if he’d planned his proposal, rather than reacted to news of her rash plans. No—best to be completely honest. He could say, honestly, that they were the only family he knew, that he loved her deeply and more devotedly than any mere paramour could or would, that he cared for her children as she did. He’d no idea her circumstances were so dire. He would make it up to her, to the children, to himself.