The White Rose (40 page)

There is silence on the phone, but not the silence of hostility. Not the silence of consideration, either. The woman on the other end of the phone, thinks Marian, is merely formulating her response.

“Dr. Kahn—”

“Marian. Please.”

“All right. Marian. I think Soriah is terrific, and I would do a great deal to help her. I
have
done a great deal to help her, and I don't begrudge the time at all, because she's been such a rewarding kid to deal with. But my life is complicated. I've got three small children of my own, and a hellish commute. I live in Princeton, you know.”

“I didn't know,” says Marian, her heart sinking. She doesn't know anything about this woman, who has, after all, done far more for Soriah than she herself has done. And who is Marian, anyway, to ask such a thing?

“I couldn't take it on,” says Professor Reynolds. “Not because I don't care, but the red tape would do me in. Besides, my husband would absolutely refuse. I wish I could say otherwise, but I can't. I just can't.”

“I understand,” Marian says. “I'm sorry for even mentioning it. I'm just upset.”

“It's okay. I'm upset, too.”

They sit in silent communion for a moment.

“Well, it was nice talking to you, anyway,” Professor Reynolds says at last. “Soriah was so thrilled you answered her letter. And she loved your book, you know. So did I,” she says, with a small, embarrassed laugh. “Did I say that?”

“No. Thanks.”

“Look,” the woman says suddenly, “we can't fix it, you know? It's too big to fix. It never gets fixed. We just…I don't know…we do what we can.”

“I know,” Marian says. “Well, thank you. It was nice…meeting you.”

“You too. Good-bye,” she says sadly, and hangs up the phone.

Marian hangs up her own phone. She feels numb. She can't remember what she is supposed to be doing now, and she hopes it isn't very important.

I don't know the number here
, Soriah had said.

The phone rings.

“Soriah?” Marian says, snatching it up.

“This is Hilda Rodriguez,” a woman says, brusquely. “Returning your call.”

“Oh good! Thank you for calling me back so quickly. I really appreciate that!” Marian, to her own ears, is sounding hysterical. She swallows and tries again. “I phoned about Soriah Neal. I just heard what happened to her grandmother.”

“Soriah Neal…,” says Hilda Rodriguez.

“You just put her in foster care?” Marian reminds her in disbelief.

“Yes, I'm getting the file. Bear with me.”

“I'm sorry!” Marian cries. And waits.

“The grandmother died this morning,” the woman says, offhandedly.

Marian closes her eyes, hearing only the sound of her own breath. “That's terrible,” she manages to say, at last.

“Now what can I do for you?”

“I just… I've gotten to know Soriah this fall. I wondered if there was anything I could do.”

“I don't know,” the woman says mildly. “
Is
there anything you could do?”

“I…,” Marian sputters, ashamed and irritated in equal parts, “could I get in touch with her?”

“Are you a family member?” asks Hilda Rodriguez.

“No, I'm not.”

“I'm sorry, I can't give out her contact information if you're not a relative.”

“I'm a friend.”

“I'm sorry,” she says.

Marian bites her lip.

“What's going to happen to Soriah now? Will she stay with this foster family, or what?”

“I really have no idea,” the woman says. “We'll see how it works out. Sometimes you need a few tries to find the right place.”

“But…,” Marian says and takes a breath, “Ms. Rodriguez, I don't know if you're aware of this, but Soriah is very gifted. Academically. She needs a good school, and she needs stability, so she can continue to do her work. She's far ahead of her grade level, you know.”

There is a pause. “I don't have anything about that in the file,” she says finally.

“But it's true. I'm a college professor. I've been working with her. So has a professor from Fordham.”

“Well, I can assure you, she'll be in school, Mrs. Kahn,” the woman says, clearly offended. “Going into foster care doesn't mean getting taken out of school.”

“No, I know, it's just…this girl is really special.”

There is a groan from the other end of the phone. The unspoken rebuke—
They're all special
—passes between them.

“Ms. Rodriguez?” Marian says, “I've been thinking of trying to get Soriah into a better school. Maybe here in Manhattan.”

She has
? thinks Marian.
She has been thinking of getting Soriah into a better school in Manhattan? Since when
?

“Yes?” is the noncommittal reply.

“I was wondering…,” but words fail her here, and it takes a moment for Marian to discover what it is that she wants to say. “I was wondering, couldn't she stay with me for a while?”

The question falls like a great weight. Marian closes her eyes.
I said that
, thinks Marian.
I heard myself
.

“You're not a relative, you said,” says Hilda Rodriguez.

“No. Not a relative,” Marian agrees.

“Well, are you a foster parent registered with Children's Services?”

“No!” Marian says in alarm.

“Well, then…”

But
, she wants to say,
I'm rich! I live on Park Avenue! Don't you understand what I'm offering
?

“I don't see how I can help you, Mrs. Kahn.”

“Wait!” says Marian. “How do you get to be a foster parent? Do you have to get a license or something?”

It can't be much, thinks Marian frantically. Like a driver's license. A wedding license. You show your birth certificate and have a blood test. How big a deal can it be? Aren't they desperate for people? Aren't they always saying so?

“Yes,” Hilda Rodriguez says, “there is a licensing process. There is a training program and there are evaluations, leading to a license. Foster parenting is a paid service, you know.”

“Oh,” Marian insists, “I don't need the money.”

She doesn't
want
the money, she thinks, and in consideration of that, won't they just let her take the girl?

“Well, you'd still need to undergo the training and evaluation, Mrs. Kahn. I'm sure you appreciate that.” There is silence. Then she seems to relent. “Look, Mrs. Kahn, I know you're trying to do something for Soriah. It's all any of us is trying to do. Sometimes we get overwhelmed, is all. I mean, I've got eighty-six active cases right now. I don't want to discourage you if you're serious about taking her to live with you. Are you serious?”

Are you serious
? This is precisely what Marshall will say—will shout—when she tells him. She has not said very much to Marshall about her young friend from the Bronx. She has not, for instance, mentioned Soriah's incarcerated mother, nor her own recent trip to Bedford Hills prison. And she has never hinted at the possibility of bringing this, or indeed any, child into their home, even years ago, when the idea of it might not have struck him as quite so absurd. So is she serious now?

“I am,” she tells Hilda Rodriguez. “I would like to find out more.”

The world does not stop. The walls do not come crashing in. Marian sits, waiting, but oddly peaceful after all.

“Okay,” the woman says. “I'm going to have Gloria Hernandez call you, from foster care. She'll set you up with an orientation session and then, if you want to go forward, we'll start on the home study and a background check. Let me…right, I've got your number here. Okay, Mrs. Kahn. Give me a call if anything comes up.”

If I change my mind, in other words
, Marian thinks.

“Thank you, Ms. Rodriguez.”

After they have hung up, Marian remains in her chair, looking at the ceiling of her office. It is painted a warm rust color and studded with inset lights that rise and fall on a dimmer switch. Her desk is an antique, English, bought from Sotheby's in the eighties, and Marian has always appreciated its bowlegs and well-used pine surfaces. She will have to move it now, she thinks, perhaps to the little alcove near the master bath. She will have to move the low chaise that takes up most of the rest of the space, to where she has no idea. And the stacks of books, the wig that got her through the months she was bald from chemotherapy and mourning the children she would never have, and the boxes and boxes of Lady Charlotte letters filling the room's little closet, jammed in behind its shuttered accordion doors—she will have to get rid of it all.

The rest of the room is not as dark as the ceiling, but it's a somber red. Something must be done about it, thinks Marian, vaguely considering: yellow, blue. A child with a newly dead grandmother and an imprisoned mother should not be expected to live with such sad colors. And something must be done about the light, because there isn't enough light, really. A lamp on the wall over the bed is needed. This room, her office, typical of the maids' quarters in this type of New York apartment, is not large, but it has been large enough for her. And it will be large enough for Soriah.

She thinks of her friends. Will they whisper that childlessness has finally caught up with her? Will the few who know about her cancer shake their heads knowingly? Will the others be critical—another career-obsessed woman who forgot to have children, and now look what she's done? What will Caroline Lehmann, her oldest friend, make of Soriah Neal? What will Oliver Stern, her oldest friend's son, her lover, make of Marian for taking her in, a girl he has never even heard her mention?

Marian closes her eyes.
I want this
, she thinks.
I have been a good person, if not a good wife. I have not asked for many things
.

When she opens her eyes, she is surprised to find herself utterly calm.

I can't fix it
, Marian thinks.
It's too big to fix. But I can do this
.

She reaches, again, for the telephone, and presses the buttons.

“Mr. Kahn's office,” says Jennie Phillips, his assistant.

“Hi, Jennie. This is Marian. How are you?”

“Oh, Mrs. Kahn. It's nice to speak with you.”

“Tell me something,” Marian says evenly, “what does Marshall's afternoon look like?”

“Ooh, let's see,” says Jennie. “Not too bad. He'll be out of here by six, I think.”

“Is there anything absolutely crucial?” she asks.

This question does not compute, and Jennie is silent. Marian imagines the bafflement on her sharp little face.

“Ah…”

“Anything that can't be rescheduled?”

“Rescheduled?” Jennie asks. “For when?”

“I'm coming down,” Marian says. “I want you to cancel whatever you can. I'll be there in half an hour, and I need some time with him. If you can't cancel his appointments, try to put them off till after five. Okay?” she says, trying for a cheery lilt.

“Is everything all right, Mrs. Kahn?”

“Oh, fine,” she says. “And tell him that, would you? That everything's fine. I'm on my way.”

“But—” the tiny voice erupts. Marian puts down the phone and picks up her coat, and then she is through the door, closing it behind her.

O
n Thursday afternoon, after a solo lunch in a corner of the Beekman Arms's dim tavern restaurant—and she does have to admit that the food is excellent—Marian addresses the ladies (and token gentleman) of the Rhinebeck Historical Society in a paneled room off the reception area. In the two years she has been giving some version of this talk, she has come to note a pattern of strained proximity in her audience, a historical version of celebrity name-dropping, in which Charlotte Wilcox's latter-day admirers attempt to persuade Marian that they have crossed spiritual if not physical paths with their heroine. Someone hails from Brund, Derbyshire, home of the Forter family. Someone's ancestor was a thief, incarcerated in one of the London prisons. A man once visited Northumberland House while on a walking tour of the border country. A young woman, who had detoured into a master's degree in women's studies before deciding to go to law school, had actually read
Helena and Hariette
in the rare book library at Stanford.

Marian finds these encounters pleasant, if not precisely enthralling. For someone working in the past, it is always invigorating to see people look backward and measure their own experiences against the long-ago experiences of others. In Rhinebeck, moreover, the members of the local historical society have an actual claim on Charlotte Wilcox—who after all began and ended her life on this general patch of earth, and whose bones lie buried not five miles to the north—and their interest in her is as affectionate as it is proprietary. Several members of this group, Marian is touched to learn, have taken it upon themselves to care for Charlotte's grave in Rhinecliff, even writing and printing a pamphlet for visitors with a map of the site, including other graves of interest in the churchyard. “We did it ourselves,” says Betty Evans, the president of the group and the author—she informs Marian—of two pamphlets about the Roosevelt estate up the road. “We started to notice cars parked by the roadside. They were tramping over everything looking for the grave. We thought, Well, it's good they're coming, but let's make it easier for them and try to point them to some other interesting people.”

“I hope it hasn't caused too much trouble,” says Marian.

“Oh, not at all! Come for the past but stay for the present—that's what we say around here,” she chortles. “Anyway, it's wonderful for us. The chamber of commerce ought to give you a citation.”

“It's my pleasure,” Marian says graciously. “After all, I enjoyed the time I spent in Rhinebeck doing research. Wish I'd stayed at this inn,” she says. “You were right about the food.”

“New York chef,” comments the token man, in a tone that implies this is not necessarily a good thing.

“It was finding those letters that really made her come alive for me,” Marian says. “Before that, I felt like I was following a ghost, but when I read those letters, I heard her voice…It was an amazing feeling.”

“Still,” the man goes on, homing in on his true theme, “I was hoping you'd delve more deeply into Alice Farwell's family. It's quite an illustrious family in its own right, you know.”

“I didn't know,” Marian says politely. Charlotte's correspondent of so many years, who faithfully preserved her precious letters and gave her friend a home at the end, had not gotten much of Marian's attention, it was true. But after four hundred pages of dense historical biography, Marian had been anxious not to add more heft to her book.

“Well, her daughter married into the Wharton family. And her granddaughter married into the Danvers family. Henry Wharton Danvers was her great-grandson. You've heard of him, I assume?”

Marian, who has just gone numb, nods her head. “Henry Wharton Danvers? Who built The Retreat?”

The man positively glows. “Yes, precisely. He was my own ancestor, actually.”

“That's amazing,” Marian says, floored and shaking her head. She does not care that he is, of course, misinterpreting her response, that he thinks it's his own direct link to the Lady Charlotte story that has Marian so obviously awestruck. Let him think as much, Marian decides, as the man goes on to tell her all about his own myriad accomplishments as self-published chronicler of the Millbrook Hunt and a fly fisherman of national stature. She nods, careful to keep her gaze steady on his face, her thoughts wandering far. Oddly enough, what preoccupies her most is regret at not having made more of her connection to
Barton
, of all people. Might some remnant of the Farwell family have remained at The Retreat? And could she have found it? Were there descendants of Alice Farwell who might have had their own inherited stories about Alice and her lifelong friend? Marian had spent the past two years making light of her readers' attempts at narcissistic connection with Lady Charlotte Wilcox. Was it possible that she was now grasping at her own?

When the alleged descendant of Alice Farwell and Henry Wharton Danvers has at last exhausted his litany of claims, Marian finally is able to begin disentangling herself from the group in the Beekman Arms. It is nearly four, and she has begun to feel that heaviness in her legs and arms, a signal of weariness. Between today's lecture and the coming weekend's ordeal, she can only hope for a wedge of sleep and privacy, and she thinks ahead to the romantically named Black Horse Inn with longing. But first there is the matter of finding the place—which, given the complexity of her driving directions, threatens not to be straightforward.

Marian thanks Betty Evans for her hospitality, and the chronicler of the Millbrook Hunt for making her day, and retrieves her car from the parking lot behind the inn. The light is beginning to sink, and there is the faintest hint of pink at the wintry edges of the sky. With one hand, she scans the radio for NPR and finally finds a station playing Mahler, but the Mahler is too lush, too soothing, so Marian cracks a window to let in the cold air, and it rushes through the interior. She has not driven the car since that day with Oliver, and she is struck by the bittersweet thought that her last remnants of him—of his breath, of miscellaneous, left-behind filaments—are thus being scattered away. She will call him when she gets back to the city, Marian thinks, to say all of those end-things she wants to say, and that she loves him, which will be better over the telephone, anyway. Marian can't see him yet. She's in too much danger for that. But there is no good in this silence between them, especially now, with Caroline coming home, and the certainty of their meeting in the future. What Marian will do is find the precise, internal location of her sadness about Oliver, and fix it to the spot with stones, like a cairn at a roadside. The sadness—she will know it's there, but she will not visit it to peek between the rocks or listen to see if it's stirring. It is over. With love, absolutely, but over.

Marian turns east along the rural roads, passing great estates with grazing horses and baronial entrance gates. At Rock City she pulls over to get gas and asks the attendant if he knows the way to Stanfordville, but he's never heard of the place. The Black Horse Inn? she tries, but this, too, draws a blank. Marian squints at her scribbled directions. “What about Bangall?” she asks, and that, finally, draws a glimmer of recognition.

“Hey, Bill?” the attendant says, evidently to his boss. “Which way to Bangall?”

The boss comes over, examines Marian's directions, pronounces them useless, and begins a litany of rights and straights, including a description of a big oak tree where she is meant to make a “hard, sharp left. Like, a hairpin turn, yeah?”

Marian nods dully. She pays for the gas and sets out, resigned.

Ten miles and forty minutes later, she finally reaches the crossroad of Stanfordville and sees, at last, the sign for the Black Horse Inn. It's a little place, but it has about it an air of purposeful obscurity and serious wealth, from the impeccably landscaped parking area behind the building to the heavy wooden door she opens, stepping into a pretty, wood-paneled parlor. There is a rack of boots, walking sticks, and hats in one corner, an open bar on the opposite wall, and a good smell coming from somewhere. “Hello?” Marian calls, setting down her bag on the stone floor and shutting the door behind her.

“Yes!” someone says. “Just coming!”

He comes, a wiry man with receding blond hair, holding an open red ledger.

“Hello there!” He reaches immediately for her bag. Marian recognizes his voice.

“I made it,” she says. “I think we spoke on the phone.”

“Yes, probably. And you are either Ms. Kahn or Ms. Nemo.”

“Kahn,” Marian says. “But that's funny.”

He looks up from his ledger.

“Just…Nemo. That means ‘nobody,' doesn't it? In Latin?”

“Does it?” The man smiles. “Well, it's just you and Nobody tonight, though as I said, we'll be full of wedding guests tomorrow. You're here for the wedding, I think you mentioned.”

“The groom is my cousin,” Marian says. She looks upstairs, hungry for her bed.

He leads her up the wide stairs onto a landing furnished as a parlor. There are doors on either side, and he opens one for her, showing her into a small sitting room with a fireplace. Marian looks around, silently crediting Valerie Annis for her good taste. The only things standing between herself and utter contentment, she thinks, are a hot bath and a good nap.

When she's alone, she sets down her bag and unpacks the toiletries, opening the taps on the long, claw-footed bathtub and turning down the bed. She carefully hangs up her dress from Bloomingdale's in the wardrobe and takes down the inn's white bathrobe from a hanger—Frette, she notes with guilty pleasure—and gets out of her clothes. The bathroom is full of lavender-scented steam. Marian puts up her hair. She stops the water and is about to step into the tub when something in the bathroom window catches her eye, and she steps close to look. It is not afternoon any longer, but it isn't yet night. Marian smiles. That thing is happening outside, that sudden flush of color, so imponderably rich it seems to saturate the world. She wants to hold up her hands and catch it, but it's so fast, she can never be quick enough, and then it's gone and the evening floods in to replace it. Aubergine Time, thinks Marian, jubilant. Then she climbs into the bath and lets the hot water close over her.