Tiny Little Thing (15 page)

I took that envelope and hid it in my desk. (Mums never noticed.) All Christmas vacation it sat in the bottom drawer, stalking me through a half-inch layer of polished nineteenth-century mahogany, and I couldn’t open it. Couldn’t face the news. If I didn’t open it, if I didn’t see the awful ink with my own eyes, it wouldn’t be true. The agony of failure wouldn’t sear my belly. You know, like the old tree falling in the forest, with no one to witness.

You’re probably expecting me to conclude this little story with the usual tidy moral.
On the last day, just before I returned to school, I finally gathered my courage, opened that envelope, and faced the Awful Truth. And I became a stronger woman for it!
Well, I didn’t. I never did open that envelope. I believe it still sits in the bottom drawer of the desk of my old bedroom on Fifth Avenue, overlooking the park. I wonder if the grade was a B or a C, after all.

I open my eyes and unhook the clasp of my pocketbook. The manila envelope, still rolled into its snug little tube, sits at the bottom, beneath my lipstick and compact.

I set it on the windowsill and touch up my lips. Powder my nose. My eyes are tinted red at the rims, my skin a shade too pale. Is that what a hangover does? Reverses your colors? My pearl earrings nestle into my earlobes, matching the fat strand that dwarfs the bones of my neck.

Little Tiny has a big fat secret.

Perfect little Tiny is cracking apart.

The thing about a report card, though, is that it doesn’t matter. Who gives a cluck whether you got a B or a C instead of an A. It’s just your own pride at stake.

But
this
mistake. This one stupid mistake. It could ruin me. The whole world would see me unmasked, stripped bare, on the front page of the newspaper, if I ignore the contents of that envelope.

Of course, it could also ruin Frank.

The wide-eyed woman in the mirror stares back at me, terrified, reproachful. This is what happens, Tiny, when you walk off the pavement. When you let down your guard. Let this be a lesson. That impulse that slams into your body, has always slammed into your body, under the pressure of Caspian’s heroic hand?

Resist it.

I pinch my cheeks and reach for the envelope.

It’s a different photo from the first, a close-up. Caspian has caught the vulnerability in my huge brown eyes, beneath the bravado. Something about the light makes my eyelashes look twice as long as they really are. Every detail is so keen, every line of me so familiar, I can almost smell Caspian’s apartment. The warm sunlight on the sofa cushions. The thoughts in my head, the magnetic fizzle of anticipation in the air.

Probably the creep got his hands on the entire roll of film. The note says:

WHAT A GOOD GIRL YOU ARE

HOW ABOUT TWO THOUSAND THIS TIME

MAYBE YOU CAN SELL AN OLD JEWEL OR TWO

NEXT THURSDAY

DON’T BE LATE

I expect to feel fear at the physical sight of the photograph, at the sharp block letters of the note: the limb-melting kind of fear, a liquidity of terror. (Like the Eskimos and their snow, I have a name for each different type.)

Instead I’m assaulted by anger.

The scintillating kind. An electricity of fury.

I can scarcely control the shake of my fingers as I shove the photograph into the envelope and the envelope back in my pocketbook. I snap the closure like a rifle shot. The bathroom door nearly rips off its hinges as I march back into the hallway.

Josephine is just walking out of the parlor, smiling, hair swinging. I take her by the elbow.

“Had a nice evening yesterday?”

Her limbs are larger than mine, but my grip is stronger. She tries to pull her arm away. “Yes, I did, thank you.”

“Good.” I wink. “So did I. Frank is always so full of energy after these little affairs.”

I release her astonished arm and stalk like Pepper into the parlor, where the coffee is waiting and so is a grinning Jack Lytle.

•   •   •

I
don’t know what devil possesses me. Until now, I didn’t know the devil even bothered with the likes of me. I toss my guilty pocketbook on the table and pick up my coffee—Frank and Lytle are already drinking theirs—and say, “Jack! You recover quickly, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

He shakes my hand, still grinning. “Mrs. Hardcastle. So do you, if you don’t mind my returning the compliment.”

Frank waggles back and forth between the two of us. “Did you two have a good chat last night?”

“We did indeed. Mrs. Hardcastle gave me her unedited opinion of the nice folks financing your campaign, Frank. She’s got a lot of spunk, your wife. I congratulate you.”

Frank nearly spits out his coffee. “Thank you.” The words tilt ever so slightly upward at the end, like a question.

“I have to say, I agree with her a hundred percent,” Lytle says, offering me a chair. “You just don’t usually hear it from the horse’s mouth, as it were. Not that Mrs. Hardcastle is anything like a horse.”

“No, no,” says Frank. “Not at all.”

“Well, maybe an Arabian.” Lytle slings himself into the opposite chair, while I cross my legs and raise my cup. “A fine white Arabian. Clever, beautiful, elegant. Minds of their own. Not afraid to let you know what they really think.”

Frank eases downward onto the sofa, next to me, and takes my hand. “Is that so.”

“Oh, you know how it is.” I lock eyes with Lytle. “When you’re speaking off the record, in a social setting, for background only.”

Lytle lifts his eyebrows. He really is a handsome man, even in daylight, better groomed than your average newspaper columnist. His eyes are darkish, some middle ground between brown and hazel, and his fingers contain the cup and saucer like a man who knew his tea from his coffee. He reaches for his inside pocket. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

I set down my coffee and hold out my hand. “Do you mind if I join you?”

“Don’t be silly, darling.” Frank squeezes my hand. “Mrs. Hardcastle doesn’t smoke.”

“She does among friends.” I take the cigarette from Lytle, place it between my lips, and lean forward for him to light it up. “And I consider Jack a friend. Don’t you, darling?”

Frank’s sitting next to me, so I can’t see where he’s looking, whether it’s me or Lytle. His legs shift. “Of course.”

“Allow me to say, Mrs. Hardcastle, that your husband intrigues me even more than you do.” Lytle lights his own cigarette and blows the smoke to the side. “How did the two of you meet?”

“At a Radcliffe mixer, when I was nineteen.” I turn my head to look adoringly at Frank. “We’ve been together ever since.”

“Indeed.” Lytle sends my husband a wise-eyed look, just between men. “I see.”

“What can I say? I looked at her and said to myself, Frank Hardcastle, she’s the one
.
”

“Any plans for kids?”

Frank catches himself and looks at me.

“Not yet,” I say. “We’re still so in love.”

Lytle winks. “Isn’t that how you end up with kids? If you’re doing it right, that is.”

“We certainly hope to have children soon,” Frank says hurriedly.

“Well, that’s good. Very good.” Lytle lifts his cigarette. “The perfect family man, then. Beautiful wife, kids on the horizon. Just a normal, happy, well-adjusted guy.”

Frank makes a self-deprecating chuckle to acknowledge the truth of Lytle’s words. “If you say so. I’m the luckiest man on earth, that’s for sure, and that’s why I’m eager to go to Washington on behalf of the people of Massachusetts, the people who work hard and—”

“And you, Mrs. Hardcastle? Normal, happy, well adjusted? Handsome husband, kids on the horizon?”

I lean forward to tap a bit of ash into the tray, to pluck my coffee cup and take a sip. Too much sugar, I think. “Well, now. That’s an excellent question, Jack.”

“What?” says Frank.

“Really?” says Lytle. “How so?”

“I mean, who’s really happy? Well adjusted, that’s a laugh. Now, I’m awfully lucky, I admit.” I wave my cigarette hand to indicate the roses and the polish. “And my husband certainly
is
handsome, isn’t he? The cream of the crop. No, I did well for myself. Top-drawer, absolutely.”

“Tiny—”

“But here’s the thing, Jack. Are we on the record or off?”

“Whatever you want us to be, Mrs. Hardcastle.”

He leans forward, and I lean forward, connecting over the tops of the yellow roses.

“Tiny—”

“Jack, the thing is, while I believe absolutely in my husband’s ability to represent the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to fight for justice and opportunity, et cetera and so on—”

“Jesus, Tiny—”

“I really sometimes wonder whether the whole system is broken. Because, really, isn’t it all for show? Isn’t everything just for show? The donors last night, they were putting on a show for us. They were putting on a show for one another. We were damned sure putting on a show for them. The all-American candidate and his all-American wife, clean as a whistle, the good-looking masquerading as the good. And what in God’s name does any of
that
have to do with natural law and civil rights, with the conflict in Vietnam and the larger problem of the spread of Communism and nuclear capability, with what we believe and who we are as a country, and the right way forward on any number of critical issues . . .”

Frank stands up and calls out to the crack in the pocket doors. “Josephine! How about bringing in that coffee cake?”

T
iny spoke into his shirt, still laughing. “You should have seen the look on your face.”

“You’re going to hell for this.” His relieved mouth had somehow found its way into her hair, at the edge of the monogrammed handkerchief that held it all back. He kissed her there. She’d never know, right?

“I’m already going to hell for this. Didn’t I tell you?” She stopped laughing and lay there, pleasantly slack, her hands tucked up between his chest and hers. “Did you get enough pictures? Or should I keep going?”

The camera.

He put his hands around her arms and set her away. The camera sat on the floor, a few feet from his knee, miraculously intact. “I think that’s plenty,” he said. He picked up the camera and examined it knob by knob, giving it his full attention. His heart had resumed beating by now, though at an unnaturally quick pace, throbbing in his neck.

“Can I see them?” There was a brief scratch as she lifted the needle away from the record, interrupting an arpeggio in the second movement.

“I’ll have to develop them first.” He got up and went to the darkroom—a closet, really, the old boxroom where steamer trunks and other bulky clutter used to be kept, perfect for his purposes once he’d hired a plumber to run a pipe in for running water—and there in the utter darkness, as he worked by touch, unspooling the film from the roll, loading it onto the reel, lowering the reel into the film tank, his heart returned to normal. His breathing slowed. He flipped on the lights and went through each methodical step, until the negatives hung drying from the rack and he returned to the living room.

Tiny had made coffee. She gave him a cup and curled up on the sofa, still wearing his shirt, her long bare legs tucked up beneath her. He wanted to join her, but instead he went to the window and stared down at the sporadic pulse of traffic, the motionless trees. A woman walked by, leading a small and reluctant poodle. He could see the long, straight part of her hair, all the way up here. When he turned to speak to Tiny, her head had fallen back on the sofa, and she was asleep.

•   •   •

T
iny slept quietly, as still as a bird. He tried not to watch her, but as he read his book in the chair across the room, his eyes kept lifting away from the page, as if to reassure himself that she was still breathing. The minutes ticked softly by. He checked his watch, set aside the book, and rose to his feet.

She must have felt the vibration through the floorboards. Her eyes opened. “What are you doing?”

“The film should be dry. I’m going to process the negatives.”

“Can I help? I’ve never seen pictures developed before.”

“If you like.”

He headed for the darkroom without looking back.

He told himself he didn’t want her to follow, but when she stepped inside the room right behind him, he admitted that the warm feeling in his chest was one of elation, not despair. Yes, he was happy she was there. Just her presence, nothing more. What was wrong with that?

“Close the door,” he said.

“Oh! Of course.”

He switched on the red lamp and pulled the film from the drying rack to examine the negatives.

“I thought this was a darkroom. You know,
dark
?”

“The black-and-white paper isn’t sensitive to red light.” He held up the negatives and peered carefully, one eye closed.

“I see. And you only work in black-and-white?”

“I like black-and-white. You can fiddle with light and shadow more. You can see things that color obscures.”

“Like what?”

“Details.”

Usually, the process of selecting the right negative to develop was fairly straightforward. In an entire roll of film, he might have two that looked promising. Two that might be worthy of the trouble of printing, if he were lucky. As he scanned the long strip of film, his pulse ratcheted upward. One, two, three. Okay, not four. Five maybe. Six. Oh, God,
seven.
Eight. She was turned the wrong way in nine, but even there, if he cropped it . . .

“What’s wrong?” asked Tiny. She stood against the door, hands folded behind her back, in stock-still observation.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“You’re frowning.”

“I’m concentrating. They’re all good, actually. They’re amazing.” Forget ten. But eleven and twelve. Fourteen. Sixteen, seventeen. Christ, she was good. “I’ll be up all night.”

“Um . . . I’m sorry?”

He turned to her and grinned. Elation again. “Don’t be sorry.”

“A smile! Finally. I was beginning to think you’d run out of them.”

He stepped to the cutting counter and picked up the scissors, slicing the negatives into strips of five. “I’ve got a few left in here.”

“For the photographs, or me?”

“Both. Now look here. These are the negatives, see?” He held up a strip and beckoned, though in the warm confines of the darkroom she was only a couple of steps away. “I go through these and decide which ones are good enough to print, except in your case, they’re all good.”

She pushed herself from the door and joined him. “Can you really tell which ones are good? I can hardly see what they are.”

“I’ve had practice. Look for yourself.”

She took the strip from his fingers and held it against the red darkroom light. Her eyes narrowed. Cap watched her irises flick from image to image, the little purse of her lips. She came to the end and shook her head. “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.”

“Well, take this one right here, for starters. You’re filling the entire frame, a nice arc to your body, your face half-turned to the camera. You can see a good balance of light and dark areas. Those are some of the things you look for. So you take the negative and move over here, to the enlarger . . .”

She watched with apparently avid interest as he showed her how to create the image, how to focus and enlarge until it was just right, exactly as it should be, and how to make a test strip on photographic paper, to find the correct exposure. In the red wash of the light, her lips disappeared, and her eyes looked even larger than before, like a young animal’s. The top button of her shirt had come undone, baring a triangle of volcanic skin that pointed downward to the slopes of her breasts. He managed resolutely to ignore the provocation. They moved to the chemical baths.

“Oh, I see!” she exclaimed, when the test strip emerged from the developer. “Oh, look! There I am!”

“There you are.” He held up the strip to examine the prints. “I think the second one is about right, don’t you? Ten seconds of exposure, maybe eleven. I want these really light. Almost overexposed. I want to grab the radiance.”

“Radiant, am I?”

He sank the test strip into the fixer bath. “You know you are.”

When she didn’t reply, he looked over his shoulder. She stood with her back against the cutting board, her fingers curled around the edge of the counter. It was hard to tell in this light, but she might have been crying. Or else holding the tears back. Suffocating in them.

He said, “Can you give me a hand over here? Rinse this off in the last tub?”

“All right.”

She took the test strip from him and plunged it into the rinse bath with the tongs, tilting her face downward so he couldn’t see her expression. He stepped back to the enlarger and opened the box of photo paper. From behind him came a careful sniff, a woman gathering her composure.

“What are you doing now?” she asked.

“Making a print.”

“I think this is rinsed off. What should I do with it?”

Without turning his head, he said, “Grab one of the clothespins and hang it on the line above your head.”

A pause. “I can’t quite reach.”

“Oh. Sorry about that.”

He reached above her, careful not to touch so much as the edge of her shirt, the tender curve of her ear, and clipped the test strip to the drying line.

“Caspian . . .”

He returned to the enlarger, made a final adjustment. “Count with me,” he said, and opened the aperture. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”

She joined in softly. “Four . . . five . . . six . . .”

Seven. Eight. Nine.

Her voice was breathy, full of exercise and emotion. Before him, her image soldered invisibly to the photographic paper, her body stretched into a promising white curve, elastic control, sexy as all burning hell.

Ten. Eleven.

He closed the aperture and handed her the paper. “Now put it in the developer.”

“I really don’t—”

“Go ahead. It’s your picture. Just hold it by the very edges with the tongs.”

She took it from his hand. “All right. But you have to tell me when to take it out.”

She dipped the paper into the developing bath. Cap stood nearby, just close enough to feel her without touching her. Above her collar, her dark hair escaped from his handkerchief to lie in wisps against her long red-tinged neck.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

“Why?”

“You’ll see.”

She closed her eyes. “When do I take the photograph out?”

“Thirty seconds.”

“But I haven’t been counting.”

“I have.” He reached around her and closed his hand about her wrist. Next to the tongs, her image materialized like a ghost on the white paper.

“Caspian?”

“Keep your eyes closed.” He was counting in his head, holding on to his sanity in the slow tick of numbers. Her bones were light in his hands, her body stiff. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Her anxious metacarpals shifted beneath his fingertips.
“Shh,”
he said.

Twenty-nine. Thirty.

“Now take it out,” he said, guiding her hand, “and dip it in the fixer.” He nudged her sideways within the cage of his arms and pressed again with his fingertips, quite gently, and she followed him downward until the photo was fully immersed in the fixing solution. “Eyes still closed?”

“Yes.”

“I’m amazed.”

“Well, I trust you. Besides”—she laughed, a shallow laugh—“it’s fun, really. Like when my sisters and I would blindfold each other and stick our hands in all sorts of disgusting messes from the kitchen to guess what they were. Vivian once put my fingers in a bowl of macaroni and cheese and told me it was brains. I almost believed her.”

“You have a strange idea of fun, you and your sisters.”

“Why? What do boys do?”

“Cowboys and Indians. Stickball.” He lifted her hand with the tongs out of the fixing bath. “Now the rinse.”

They moved like dancers to the last tray, which was equipped with running water to clean all the chemicals away from the photograph. He set aside the tongs and moved her hands about in the tray, showing her how to rinse the paper thoroughly, but mostly to enjoy the gentle sway of their fingers in the water, the way her shoulders had now relaxed into his ribs, just above his heart.

“Can I open my eyes now?”

“Almost.” He lifted her hands, until the photograph hovered dripping before her face, and then he released her. “Now.”

She gasped, a wondrous little intake of air.

“That’s you. Look how strong you are. How beautiful. Look at your arms, the way they’re curved. That muscle there, in your calf. Your fearless eyes. Your mouth.”

“It doesn’t look like me.”

“Yes, it does. It looks exactly like you. The real you. The true Tiny. Radiant. The way I picture you, when you’re not in front of me.”

She shook her head.

“So you have to promise me, love, that
whatever
you do with yourself in this life,
whoever
you do it with, you won’t stop
this.
All right?” He tugged the picture from her fingers and hung it up above her head with a clothespin, next to the test strip. “You won’t stop dancing.”

“Caspian,” she whispered.

He looked down.

She stared right back up at him, a few inches away, bathed in red. Her eyes brimmed, luminous, about to spill over. She lifted her hands and cradled his face, and before he could react to this unexpected caress, before he could even bring his own hands down from the drying line to grab her waist or her shoulders, to pull the handkerchief from her hair and anchor his fingers in her, she dragged him to her lips and kissed him.

She kissed hard but not deep, as if she were afraid of opening him up, of opening herself up. The tip of her nose brushed the tip of his nose, and her breath tasted like coffee. His hands hovered around the back of her head, at the place where her hair curled away from the handkerchief, slippery as old silk, radiant with the warmth of her scalp. He tried gently to open her mouth a little more, but she pulled away and dropped her fingers away from his face.

“Come back here,” he said, reaching for her. Soft in his head. Hard as stone down below.

Her chest moved quickly. “Thank you. Thank you for this.”

“Tiny—”

He reached again, but she moved too fast. She cracked open the door of the darkroom and slipped through in a flash, shutting it behind her, and he needed to follow her, he needed to take her back and make her stay, but what right did he have to her? None.

What right did he have to stop her going? Not the slightest.

Only the longing in his chest, the longing in his belly, the longing in his balls. And that was his problem, not hers.

He reached for the next negative and fit it into the enlarger, and when he heard the front door open and close a moment later, he knew she was gone.