I check my watch for what must be the hundredth time, regretting last night’s rashness with every fiber of my being and wishing I’d had the sense to make some excuse when you invited yourself. At least I summoned the wits to refuse your offer that we drive out together, opting instead to borrow one of my father’s cars. No one asked where I was going when I left the house, and I didn’t volunteer. I’m lucky in that way. When no one cares about you, they don’t wonder where you are or when you’ll be back.
Another look at my watch. I’m edgy after the long drive from the city, still questioning my decision to come at all. I could have phoned you this morning and begged off, blamed it on the weather or a forgotten appointment. Goldie’s number would have been easy enough to track down, and she would almost certainly know how to reach you. But it would have felt like surrendering, and I find I’ve surrendered quite enough of myself lately. To my father, my sister, Teddy. I refuse to add you to the list. And so I’m here, waiting under the eaves, watching the rain fall, and waiting for the crunch of tires on the gravel drive.
I’ve always loved Rose Hollow, even on rainy days. I love the wide-open feel of it and the clean blue sky, the sprawling house of weathered gray stone with its chimneys and dormers and climbing roses. And farther out, past the stable and the apple trees, the rolling green ground where it rises up and then falls away, creating the shallow bowl where my mother used to take me sledding when I was little.
She used to love it here, too, away from the noise and the grit of the city. I’m like her in that way. In many ways, really. More than I knew back then and more than makes my father and sister comfortable. But it does me good to come, especially now that no one else does. It belongs to me now, by default if not by deed, though being here sometimes makes me sad. Perhaps that’s why my father stopped coming. Memories he can’t bear to own—of the days before he sent my mother away. I remember, though. Even if he wishes I didn’t.
I remember Helene—Maman, as I called her when we were alone. How she smelled of lilies and rainwater and spoke like a duchess with her soft French lilt. How her eyes—amber-brown like my own and always so sad—would close when she prayed. Strange prayers she taught me to say, too, with strange words that felt too big for my mouth. How she would thumb through the album of old photos she kept hidden under her mattress, the stories she would tell, stories meant only for us. And I remember how she was punished for all of it when my father found out—and how it eventually broke her.
Even now, my throat aches with her memory. She was too tender for a man like my father, too fragile for the kind of life he expected her to live. Shut off from her family in France and isolated from her friends in the States, she’d been left to flounder alone after the births of each of her children, mired in loneliness and depression. And the guilty abyss after the brother I never knew wandered away during luncheon at a friend’s home and stumbled into a pond. Ernest, dead at age four.
All of it had left her brittle, prone to weepy, sometimes debilitating bouts of melancholia, a character flaw my father had been unable to forgive. Tears are a waste of time, he used to say. A sign of weakness, of failure. He meant it, too, as I learned firsthand when I turned on the tears in response to his edict that I get myself engaged by year’s end.
He’s happy enough now, I suppose. Now that I’ve finally agreed to marry Teddy. I fought it as long as I could, but my father eventually won the day, as he always knew he would. I, however, am not happy—as you have somehow guessed.
I have no wish to become a shadow, which is what women in families like mine become: obedient, hollowed-out things who fade into the background the moment their usefulness as a bargaining chip is at an end. We see to the menus, raise the children, keep up with the latest fashions, grace our husband’s table when he entertains, and look the other way when a pretty young face turns his head. But I’ve always wanted more for myself. I imagined a life that actually counted for something, left something worthy in its wake. I have no idea what form that life might have taken. Something to do with the arts, perhaps, or maybe a teacher, but now, as Teddy’s wife, I’ll never know.
For an instant, I’m astonished to find my thoughts wandering almost wistfully to your Goldie with her newspaper empire and her unapologetic life. What might that be like? To captain your own ship and command your own fortune, to live unfettered by the opinions of others.
I’ll never know that either.
The realization lands me back to earth with a bump as I stare at the diamond on my left hand—an uncomfortable reminder. I’ll be married soon, which is all I’m expected to want. I’ll have a grand New York estate, a respected last name, and bear a brace of sons to carry it all on. My daughters will marry well, dutifully, as Cee-Cee did several years ago. As I will as well, as soon as I can bring myself to set an actual date.
Fin, as Maman used to say—the end.
But there’s no time to dwell on the finality of such thoughts. I’ve just caught the sound of your tires and my stomach does a little somersault. I look out over the lawn to see a car coming up the drive, and I realize that while part of me was hoping you wouldn’t show, another part hoped very much that you would.
I watch as you climb out of the car, a sleek and splashy silver thing with lots of chrome, and I know without asking that you’ve borrowed it from her. It isn’t your style, which feels like an odd thing to know about you, since I don’t know you at all.
You look relaxed in your Harris tweed jacket and loose wool slacks, a worn pair of brogues on your feet, and a hat perched at a jaunty angle on your head. These are your real clothes, I say to myself as you approach. This is who you really are. Not a member of the smart cocktail set but a country type, unfazed by the rain, at home in both your clothes and your skin.
I’m in traditional riding clothes, a jacket of gray flannel, bone-colored jodhpurs, and chestnut riding boots whose fresh-from-the-box sheen marks me out as a newcomer to the equestrian life. A gift from Teddy, who is very particular about things like riding attire. I don’t know why I bothered, really. The weather made it clear that there would be no riding today, but I felt obliged to put on a proper show. Members of our circle have a uniform for every occasion, preferably with the right label sewn in. We wear them not because they’re comfortable or even appropriate for the activity of the moment but because it’s what’s expected, and we must never veer from what’s expected.
You pull off your hat as you duck under the eaves, giving it a shake to dislodge the raindrops clinging to the brim. “Filthy day for a ride,” you say, grinning. “What shall we do instead?”
You look younger out of doors, more rugged shed of your expensive evening clothes, though I can’t deny that you manage to pull it off rather well. You’re something of a chameleon, I suspect, the kind of man capable of melting into his surroundings when he needs to. I find myself wondering why someone might need such a skill, then recall your eyes last night, moving methodically about the room, as if snapping photographs without a camera.
Of what or whom?
It occurs to me suddenly that this is the first time we’ve been alone. The boys who look after the stables have gone to lunch and the trainer called out due to the weather. There are no eyes on us now, no niceties to observe. Why that should rattle me, I don’t know, but it does. It’s not that I’m afraid of you. I’m not. Mostly. But I don’t feel quite myself when you’re near.