For many years—so many years—he had wondered if there was something not just amiss with him but deficient within him. It was not that he was not invited to the same parties as John and Eden; it was what happened at them. This was back when they were younger and simply known as the Bingham siblings, and he was only identified as the eldest, not “the bachelor” or “the unmarried one” or “the one who still lives at Washington Square”： They would enter the party, ascending the low, wide stone steps of a recently built Park Avenue manse, Eden and John first, her arm looped through his, he bringing up the rear, and upon entering the glittering, twinklingly lit space, he would hear what sounded to him like a cheer, as John’s and Eden’s faces were kissed by well-wishers sighing in delight at their arrival.
And he? He would be greeted as well, of course; they were well-brought-up, their acquaintances and peers, and he was a Bingham, and no one would dare be anything less than cordial, not to his face. But for the rest of the party, he would feel strangely elsewhere, as if floating above the room, and at dinner, where he would be seated not with the bright young things of the gathering but, rather, among their parents’ friends and relations—the father’s sister, for example, or the mother’s elderly uncle—he would feel the full force of his undeniable otherness, how what he had striven to conceal had been recognized and accounted for by everyone in their circle. From the other end of the table would occasionally come gusts of laughter, and his seatmate would shake his or her head indulgently, before turning to him and commenting on the irrepressible frivolity of the young, and how one must allow them such latitudes. Sometimes after saying this they would realize their mistake, and hastily add that he, too, must have his moments of mirth, but other times they would not; he would be aged before his time, cast from the island of youth not by his years but by his temperament.
Or perhaps it was not temperament at all but something else. He never had been jolly or lighthearted, not even as a child. He had once overheard his grandfather remarking on his somberness to Frances, adding that it was because he was the eldest, and therefore his grief had been the most intense when he and his siblings lost their parents. But the qualities that often attended his sort of inwardness—a studiousness, a seriousness of purpose, a scholarliness—were absent in him. He was attuned to the dangers of the world but not to its delights and joys; even love, to him, was not a state of elation but a source of anxiety and fear: Did his beloved actually love him? When might he be abandoned? He had watched first Eden and then John in their courtships, had witnessed their returning home late in the evening, their cheeks pink with wine and dancing, had seen how quickly they snatched letters from the tray proffered by Adams, tearing open the envelopes even as they hurried from the room, their lips already lifting into smiles. The fact that he had not experienced the same kind of happiness was a source of both sorrow and concern; of late, he had been beginning to fear that it was not just that no one might love him but that he might be incapable of receiving such love, which seemed altogether worse. His infatuation with Edward, then, the awakening he felt within him, was not just transporting for the sensation itself but intensified by his sense of relief: There was nothing wrong with him after all. It was not he who was damaged; it was only that he had yet to find the person who would rouse in him his full capacity for pleasure. But now he had, and he was at last experiencing the sort of transformation that love had visited on everyone he knew but that had always eluded him.
That night, he had a dream: It was years in the future. He and Edward were living together in Washington Square. The two of them were sitting, side by side, in chairs in the parlor, where a piano now stood beneath the window that overlooked the park’s northern boundary. At their feet lay three dark-haired children, a girl and two boys, reading picture books, the girl wearing a scarlet velvet bow atop her glossy head. There was a fire burning and boughs of pine arranged atop the mantelpiece. Outside, he knew, it was snowing, and from the dining room came the fragrance of roasted partridge, and the sounds of wine glugging into glasses and of china being arranged on the table.
In this vision, Washington Square was not a prison, or something to dread—it was his home, their home, and this was their family. The house, he realized, had become his after all—and it had become his because it had become Edward’s, too.
VII
The following Wednesday, he was leaving for his class when Adams hurried to the door. “Mister David, Mister Bingham sent word from the bank this morning—he requests you be home precisely at five o’clock today,” he said.
“Thank you, Matthew, I’ll take it from here,” he said to the valet, assuming the box of fruit he was bringing for the students to draw and turning his attention to the butler. “Did he say why, Adams?”
“No, sir. Only that he asks for your presence.”
“Very well. You can tell him to expect me.”
“Very good, sir.”
It was politely stated, but David knew it was no request but a command. A mere few weeks ago—a few weeks! Had it only been a scant month since he had met Edward, since his world had been redrawn?—he would have been frightened, anxious about what his grandfather might have to say to him （for no good reason, as his grandfather had never been unkind to him, had rarely rebuked him, even in childhood）， but now he felt only irritation, for it meant that he would have less time with Edward than he otherwise might. After class, then, he went directly to Edward’s, and it seemed as if in no time at all he was having once more to dress and leave, with a promise he would soon return.
At the door to Edward’s room, they lingered, David in his coat and hat, Edward wrapped in his horrid scratchy blanket.
“Tomorrow, then?” Edward asked, with such unabashed yearning that David—unused to being the party who would provide the affirmative answer upon which another’s happiness would be determined—smiled and nodded. “Tomorrow,” he agreed, and finally Edward released him and David tripped down the stairs.
As he climbed the steps to his house, he found himself nervous to see his grandfather in a way he never was, as if this were to be their first encounter after months of distance, rather than less than twenty-four hours. But his grandfather, already in his drawing room, merely received David’s kiss as he always did, and the two of them sat with their sherry and chatted about topics of little consequence until Adams came to announce dinner. It was only as they were going down that he whispered to his grandfather. But “After dinner,” his grandfather replied.
Dinner, too, was uneventful, and near its conclusion, David found himself experiencing a rare resentment toward his grandfather. Was there no news, nothing for his grandfather to relay? Was this only a gambit to remind him of his own dependency, of the fact—which he knew very well—that he was indeed not the master of this house, that he was not even an adult but someone who was allowed only in theory to come and go as he pleased? He heard his answers to his grandfather’s inquiries become curt, and had to correct himself before he crossed from being taciturn into being rude. For what could he do, what could he argue? It was not his house. He was not his own man. He was no different from the servants, from the bank’s employees, from the students at the institute: He was dependent on Nathaniel Bingham, and always would be.