The Theoretical Foot (20 page)

“No! No!” Susan cried excitedly. “I'm suddenly afraid of nobody!” Then she picked up the volume of the great yellow skirt and whirled around on her slender feet.

Honor now hurried down the first curve of the stairs. The house felt tight and strangely expectant as a house always will when people are in their own rooms shaving, dressing, deciding on colors and scents to wear as they come together again at the supper table. Honor liked this time as the shadows were not quite frozen into their night shapes and there was a quiet feeling of delight and hurry everywhere throughout the house.

She went cautiously on down the stairs, which were almost dark now, and out onto the terrace. She stood by the fountain, head bent, listening to its unwavering trickle in the still air. Its basin would be just long enough for her, were she to lie down in it, she saw, its shape exactly like a coffin's. She could so easily imagine herself lying there, looking beautiful and fresh under the cool mountain water.

Just then Daniel came running up the path from the meadow. “Oh, there you are,” he said. “I want to talk to you,” he added, and Honor heard that his tone was harsh.

ix

Honor looked at her brother for several seconds before asking, with exaggerated calm, “What's the matter with you? You look like you've seen a ghoulie.”

He laughed and stopped trying to hide his shortness of breath, now gulping noisily at the air like a fish. “I ran,” he was trying to say.

“Obviously,” she said. “But from what?”

“From nothing, my dear girl. There are no spirits in a high Swiss meadow that could faze this courageous young American, but I had an idea and I wanted to talk to you.”

Honor turned and began to walk slowly toward the edge of the terrace. “Come,” she said. “Let's walk a little.”

“I've been walking. In fact I just ran down to the lake and back in about six minutes flat. Honor, wait for me!”

As he caught up she stepped close to him and murmured, “Remember, it's summer. Windows open. People upstairs quietly dressing, if you're about to make your true confessions.”

He frowned impatiently. “True confessions?” he asked. “Stop being weighty, Nor. This is it, I've decided. You and I are leaving here tomorrow morning.”

They walked on slowly to the terrace's edge, their long legs falling easily into step.

“What makes you think so?” Honor asked.

“Because I think it's a good idea, that's all. And it would be fun for you and me to take a little jaunt together. We haven't seen much of one another this summer.”

Honor laughed. “But why this sudden need to be with me? I haven't noticed that it's kept you home for the last five or six years. What's this really about? Do you have a rendezvous with some little chippie on the Riviera and need me along for protection?'

“The
hell
with all that,” Daniel told her fiercely. “Stop trying to be so tough, Nor, as you're a pathetic flop at it. No, I have
not got
a rendezvous, as you so archaically put it. I simply think it would be fun to have a little jaunt together, maybe go to Milano or someplace. Anyway, Sara's fed up with all these people being here and our leaving would help her.”

“It's only the bitchiness that floats around in certain quarters that she doesn't like, if that's what you mean. In fact, you and I are a relief to her from having to worry about that sort of thing.”

“Well . . .”

“Our going away wouldn't make it any easier for her to take the digs and hints of that old . . . poor Lucy. But you cannot blame Lucy. This entire business is difficult for a woman who believes in adultery as passionately as Sara does.”

“Why don't you stand up for her? Go ahead, Nor! Lucy needn't have come here, quite aside from her being the most unpleasant old bag. She knew how things were and she came anyway.”

“Yes,” Honor said. “No doubt to protect Nan from everyone's wanton ways. And I knew she never dreamed that Nan would be happy, or anything aside from miserable. Lucy imagined herself as comforter—everyone loves that role. And poor Lucy was tricked by the fact that Sara isn't the common streetwalker she'd come to expect and that Timothy and Nan so obviously love one another. In fact, I feel terribly sorry for Lucy.”

“Apparently,” Daniel said savagely. “But I honestly hate her.”

The two again walked along the length of the terrace as they spoke and at the end under the apple tree that bent over the far end, beyond the lighted kitchen window, Honor stopped. Daniel stood by her side, watching the red crown of light flaring up from the casino far down the lakeshore at Évian.

“We were just there last night,” she said. “It seems such a long time ago. I do forget all about time here, don't you? It was fun last
night, planning to go up to bed but then sitting in the living room and talking 'til all hours . . .?”

“Tim and Sara are going to be married as soon as they can,” Daniel said. “He told me so.”

“He told me too,” she said, “but I can't see that it matters to people like them. But it will be simpler when people like Lucy can't make her nasty insinuations.”

“We're leaving tomorrow, Nor. I mean it.”

“Ah,” she said. “My masterful little brother. You just don't seem to be able to give me any reasons.”

He sighed and told her harshly, “All right. The truth is, Nor, I've come to the conclusion that Sara brings out our weakest side.”

She laughed, but with uncertainty. “Oh, you have, have you? What gives you that peculiar idea?”

“Look at us,” he told her in a sharp voice. Now he broke off a twig from the apple tree and bit it softly, his lips touching its smooth leaf, before going on:

“Look at us! I know that I'm being lazy in not finishing my course at Grenoble as the family wants me to. I want to, too, but here I am, lotus-eating.”

“Where does that hit me?”

“You're lotus-eating too.”

“I'd hardly call it that.”

“You're hiding here, Nor, if you want the plainer word. You know you've run away from Dijon. You didn't want to stay in Dijon because you've fallen in love with someone who's gone—at least you
think
you've fallen in love—so you come running home to Big Sister. Hide me, you're saying. Wrap me, please, in these nice soft layers of comfort and let me be lazy.”

They were each silent for a few moments then Daniel went on:

“We think we're grown up, Nor, and free and really the only place where either of us feels happy is when we're here with Sara. What are you and I, I'd like to know, aside from two fine cases of arrested development. And we now have to prove we can stand alone and make our own lives independently.”

“What real good will it do to hurt Sara's feelings and leave La Prairie now with the summer almost over? Don't you think it's a little late? And anyway I like it here.”

Daniel seized her arm and then abruptly dropped it. “That's just it,” he said. “We simply have to show Sara—Tim too—that we're strong and that we're free and that we don't just lie around all day. We have to act grown-up, Nor. We need to do this for ourselves.”

“I still think you want to go to escape from something. Maybe you've got someone in a family way? Is it François?”

Dan turned away. “What's the use, Honor. You're getting stupider—do you know this?—as you age.”

“Maybe,” she agreed placidly but now her voice grew softer. “I am sorry, Dan. Wait a minute. I've been thinking a lot about Sara, too, wondering if I will ever be able to think and act in a way that feels free of her influence. Is this what you mean?”

Dan hesitated then said, his face serious and frowning, “That's exactly what I mean,” stopping as if unwilling to go on, but now his voice quickened. “Yes, that's exactly it, that Sara dominates us both. This isn't her fault. It's simply the circumstance, the way she's made, as well. But we must learn to stand alone, apart from her. I'm leaving in the morning. I'll come back for a day or two, perhaps, before the boat sails.”

His voice cracked, he cleared his throat, then hurried on: “You'd better come, Honor. We can have some fun. We'll have to travel third all the way unless you have much more money left than I have, but it will be fun. It will!”

“Well, don't try so hard to convince yourself, like we're having to have an operation or something. All right. I don't know that you're entirely right but maybe you are so, yes, I'll come. We'll tell Sara in the morning, then catch the noon train somewhere.”

Honor was asking herself, But will this work? Will it do any good? I've escaped before, she thought, have made myself be rude to Sara, cruel to her, and ugly, and I've always come back. Will Daniel find that out or will he go on thinking that
this
time he'll
be able to find his freedom? Women simply know more about subjection than men do.

Lights came on now in the living room, shining softly in the wide squares on the terrace.

“Look at Sara,” Dan said. “She looks swell, doesn't she? You do, too, Nor. I meant to tell you. That's a nice-looking dress.”

“Thanks,” she told him dryly.

They stood watching as the tall woman walked dreamily about the long table, straightening silver, pulling at a flower, pushing in a chair. Daniel wondered why he so easily forgot what their sister looked like between the times when he could see her as sharply as he did now, when she was beautiful.

And Honor felt her own old self-depreciation seeping in: Sara looks so smart, she thought, so well groomed, how can I ever hope to even look decent beside her in this old green dress? Her hair's smooth, while mine's mussy. She'll talk wittily as I wonder why I even bother to open my mouth.

No, she thought.
Stop that!
I am a grown woman. I am strong. I've been in love. I know as much as my sister does and I'm as good-looking as she is and my dress is newer and even more lovely.

“My God, it's late,” Daniel said. “Kelly will be in my room—he needs to borrow my razor. I need to see if Tim can give me new blades.”

He took a few steps toward the lighted house, then turned back. “It's a bargain, then?” he asked, his voice a whisper, his face both stern and excited.

“Bargain,” she said. “We'll tell her first thing in the morning. She probably won't even care. That's the worst thing about her but you never know. This time we'll show her.” And Daniel laughed.

5

One night he called to the woman. She stumbled, full of sleep, into the circle of his light and saw his face had been smoothed still by the opiate but that his eyes were now full of a strong surprise.

He took her hand quickly. He knew his leg was gone forever, ashes now or pickled in a laboratory, and he could not even remember what it had looked like. Had it been hairy, freckled, smooth, brown, all those years it was with him? Had the toes been straight or bent with hard nails? Was there ever even a callous on that heel? Had it always been theoretical?

My foot, my foot, gone now! Never shall I know!

He kissed the woman lightly on her sleep-softened cheek and closed his eyes to hide the feeling of his remoteness, complete and irrevocable.

i

Honor stood for several minutes in the open window, watching her sister move deliberately around the table in the center of the room. She saw with a kind of affectionate amusement how completely absorbed the older woman was in such things as the position of a leaf under its flower in the low pewter bowl, the distance between a fork and a plate. Would she herself ever know that dreamy concentration on such unimportant things, she wondered? Perhaps being the mistress of a house changed a woman's feelings toward knives and sheets and laundry. So far, Honor admitted wryly, it was beyond her understanding how a person as quick and lovely as Sara could let herself become so. Being in love might help . . . but Honor felt quite certain that living with a man like her Jacob would never teach her the pleasant spell of possession of such things as linen and fine cutlery. She smiled.

“Hello,” Sara said softly, as if she had heard. “I've seen you standing there. It looks nice, don't you think?”

She came over to the window and stood beside Honor, turned toward the lighted room.

“And you look lovely, little one.”

Honor almost caught her breath when she felt Sara's arm slip lightly over her hips and rest there. She could sense warmth from it through the fabric of her thin dress and knew just where the wrist lifted, where the palm lay almost flat over the sharp ridge of her pelvis. It was queer to have Sara touch her. Sara, who for years had
bathed her and knew her body intimately, and then suddenly to be grown up and to have never been touched and never looked at by her again. Sara had kissed her when she first arrived from America, it's true, and it was an almost violently loving kiss. But since then she seemed to deliberately avoid any physical contact with either Honor or with Daniel, or with anyone else for that matter. Had she ever even touched Tim in public?

Honor breathed quietly so the hand resting with such assuredness on her hip would stay there, unstartled.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “You do, too, look lovely. That dress is like smoke and the table is beautiful.”

Sara stood, still touching her—Honor could hardly believe it. Was this because of the party, that now certain barriers were down? She looked shyly at her, glancing sideways at the face so near her own. Sara was happy tonight. Honor knew this by the easy curves of her sister's small but voluptuously red mouth and the clear look of her brow, too slender under the wide height of her regal forehead. There was something gay and excited about Sara, in a misty way.

“Why are we having this party?” Honor asked, lips close to Sara's ear and her voice a near whisper. It was as if she were a little girl again.

Sara stared across the table into the long mirror and laughed. “Just
look
at us standing there, so tall.”

Then she added, “The party? Oh, I don't know. I thought it might be fun but just look at the two of us in the mirror!”

Honor could not look, thinking oddly that if she did, she'd see not herself standing with her sister, but with Tim Garton. I'm in love with him, she thought, and it isn't wrong because I only love and don't want him to be anywhere but in this woman's life, that of my beloved sister.

She felt Sara step a quick pace away from her, and where the long warm hand had lain against her hip it was now cold under her dress. Honor shivered, then looked into the veiled eyes of Sara.

“Nor, will you get the sherry glasses and the decanter and the almonds and all the stuff and things and put them on the terrace?
It's time we started. Did you notice François's flowers? He grew them, he says, but of course he's a liar. Still I love him.”

Sara was speaking amicably, impersonally.

Honor, moving carefully toward the terrace with the heavy tray in her arms was now listening to her sister's voice through the open windows and felt a flash of exasperation that was almost pain. It was cruel of Sara—yes, cruel—to wrap Honor in such a quick cloak of tenderness, then suddenly begin again treating her as if they were two well-bred strangers meeting at a tea. Who the hell did Sara think she was to lift Honor up then run off leaving her to fall down to ordinariness by herself? The only way to be, Honor told herself savagely, is completely cold to all. But she knew that the next time Sara showed one of her rare flashes of intimacy, no vows of coldness would be able to keep down the passionate gratitude within. Damn her, Honor said, as she put the tray down heavily on the iron table so roughly that all the glasses jingled. But soon she'd tell her that she and Daniel were leaving, that they were escaping from her and all her autocratic demands on their emotions. Then, she thought, she'll perhaps realize we're no longer children to be tormented, that we are human beings with feelings and dignity and so on.

Honor sighed knowing Sara would probably be polite and say nothing, do nothing to show she was hurt by their departure.

She ate several salty almonds, feeling hopeless, and tried not to think of that one dream in which she was screaming at and hitting her sister.

On the two steps down into the living room, Susan Harper stood watching Honor, thinking she'd never seen such a tall and beautiful girl as the one out there on the terrace in the afterlight. The mountains across the lake, blue-black, outlined like cut stone the fine boney silhouette of her long body and made the shadows under the girl's breasts and the sharp curves of her waist and haunches as clear as marble. Her dark hair and her skin seemed hard, too, and the silver leaves around the end of the skirt glinted in the light from the windows. Then the girl moved her shoulders in a human way and lit a cigarette.

Susan moved her own thin shoulders uneasily. She had never in her life worn such a beautiful dress as this. She knew that Nan Garton must have paid hundreds of dollars. She knew, too, that it had never before been worn, which made Sue a little uncomfortable. But when she moved and felt the cloudy silk folding effortlessly around her and looked down at herself shimmering there in all that delicate gold, she knew, too, that she somehow had a right to this dress.

Laughing softly, she drew her toes up away from the cold floor. Would anyone guess she was barefoot? Would Sara Porter disapprove if she knew?

Susan made herself as tall as she could and let a faintly scornful look come over her face as a shadow. When Sara turned from the window where she'd been looking out at Honor, she wouldn't be able to tell that Sue was still a little frightened of her. I'll be Mosca the Gadfly again, Sue decided. It had worked at lunch and at least I'm not sniffing. Sara Porter will like me and be glad when, later tonight or in the morning, I ask her advice about what I'm going to do. Of course, I do know already, but it will be best to talk all this over with an older woman. Then Joe will believe me when I tell him I must go home. He won't try to kiss me and make me change what I've decided.

Sue pulled herself tall and leveled her face with her chin tucked in, walking silently across the cool polished floor and over the softness of the rugs, lifting herself on each step so the great golden skirt swayed about her lavishly.

“Good evening,” she said, as Sara turned quickly. She had been watching Honor. Her small mouth now drooped so it looked like she'd lost something and Sue saw that she looked wistful.

Now she stared for a minute at the girl who peered up at her, then Sara became warm and alive again, laughing excitedly. “Why, Susan, how lovely you are! Oh, that dress is
beautiful
!”

She put her arm lightly over Susan's shoulders and called, “Come look, Nor! Susan is the Golden Fairy! Oh, it's lovely. She's like in that book we used to have, do you remember?”

They all then laughed together and felt gay, suddenly, and when Sara poured the sherry they each touched the others' glasses as if the three of them had a great secret they were keeping from everyone else.

Nan Garton felt it as she stood in the window of the living room watching the three of them. It was their youth, she knew, and she cried out fiercely to herself, Their youth binds them together in possibility. But now I don't care, she thought. I can see clearly now and I know how very little such things as beautiful and firm rosy cheeks actually matter. I am now free from all that, she thought. I am free of Timothy and am no longer timid or afraid.

And now as she walked toward them she felt her entire body swimming easily in its own flesh. She had never before felt as quiet physically as she felt herself feeling tonight. She smiled at them and when their faces glowed as they looked toward her in the light coming from the living room, the pleasure and the love she saw filled her with calmness. Never again, she knew, would she care whether people looked at her with more admiration than they did others. Never again would she care whether they looked at her at all. This was a wonderful feeling. It felt like she was shedding an old and ugly skin.

Sara and Honor stood very straight in their long slender dresses and the golden sherry in their glasses glimmered with the same color as the threads in little Susan's dress. Nan was pleased—deeply, warmly—to see the lovely creatures. She felt benevolent, and the sight of a stranger in the dress she'd designed and had made then kept secret as something for her brother's pleasure was like honey to her soul. Susan Harper was a beautiful child. She glowed tonight like a golden moth in Nan's long guarded dress, and the older woman felt her skin prickly with sheer delight at watching. How her brother would love the sight of it, she knew, and she then flushed proudly at her own wishing this other woman well.

She walked out upon the crisp gravel listening to her own steps. She knew she looked well. Just before she'd come downstairs she'd stood for a moment longer before her glass and had seen the lovely
person who looked back at her and knew she'd never looked better. It is because I am free now, she thought. I am no longer enchained to my own brother's dominance. I am, instead, now me.

Now, as she walked lightly toward the three girls she heard Sara calling to her with her breathless voice and saw the shining eyes of Susan and the dark smiling eyes of Honor and she thought, Why, they love me! They love me and I don't care. Soon I shall tell Timothy that I am free and everything will be just as it's meant to be.

She took a glass of sherry from Sara. It was brown and heavy under its even dryness, not at all the kind recommended to her by her wine man in Philadelphia. Was it correct? she wondered, then laughed into the glass as she'd almost choked. She touched glasses with each of the girls in turn.

She now heard herself as she talked to them, watching their faces in the soft light from the house, without knowing what she was saying, nor caring, as it all seemed interesting and merry.

When Dan and Football Joe stepped onto the terrace from their room, she watched as their faces lit with pleasure and didn't care that they either were or were not excited to see her as she stood with the younger women. Timothy was all that mattered.

But even if his coming was unimportant to Nan, to Daniel Tennant she was the most beautiful sight in the world as he stepped from the sill of his room. All that mattered to him was seeing Nan there in the faint light with the lake almost black behind her and her hair blowing softly around her small square face. Her eyes were wide and pale and they looked haunted. Her full skirts lifted, blue and a damask green, like weeds in a river tide. She held a round glass of sherry in one tiny delicious claw.

Dan looked at the others standing with her. Honor was tall and looked scornful but he knew that any man who was not her brother would find her beautiful. Little Susan tickled him almost physically, nearly made him laugh aloud, so much did he want to lift her up into the air and to whirl her around as they laughed and laughed. And Sara was beautiful even in her brother's eyes.
He frowned, knowing it was from her he and Honor would have to make their escape.

But it was Nan whose image really penetrated past his superficial sight, his outer vision, until he felt the lines of her inside his brain, and within his heart. She was delicate and mysterious, like a celestial monkey. He smiled then looked quickly at Joe.

Joe was staring at him. They each quickly dropped their eyes, with mutual irritation. Joe could hear Daniel clear his throat, pompously, as they walk toward the women and then was furious to hear himself do the same thing. What was he, a damned rubber stamp? Joe demanded of himself savagely. What would that girl standing there in her long green dress think of him?

He looked on her as he walked toward her. She was a clear one. She hated him. And he hated
her
with the fastidious little mouth so like Sara's, and her supercilious ways. He'd like to rip that dress off her and make her see herself as a woman, a real woman ready to love him. He could make her follow him around the world. He knew it. And he knew suddenly that he would follow her around the world. Hell, to either heaven or to hell. Joe almost groaned aloud.

Susan ran toward him. She looked smaller. Was it because his eyes were so full of the slim height of Honor Tennant? His girl looked prettier than he'd ever seen her before. Was that, perhaps, because his heart rocked with the beauty of the dark-haired snob? He felt his love's hand like a squirrel's upon his arm.