All He Ever Wanted

  “I think I am rather good at interpreting,” Ferald said.

  “You were not in your tutorials!” I said before I could stop my mouth.

  Ferald smiled. “No, I was not,” he said. “A weakness for which I was severely rebuked, as I recall. With a failing grade. An F. Which caused me to have to repeat the second term of my third year.”

  “A student must accept the consequences of his shortcomings,” I said.

  “As must a professor,” Ferald said, shutting the folder. “If you don’t withdraw your candidacy, Van Tassel, I shall reveal this indiscretion to the corporators.”

  “You cannot…”

  “But if you withdraw, no one shall hear of this, and you may stay on at the college.”

  I blinked. Stay on at the college?“What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Keep your job is what I mean,” he said. He worried a vertical line on his forehead. “This isn’t to say that we might not want to review, at a later date, your suitability for the chairmanship of your department.”

  I shook my head. I needed time to think. I unbuttoned my suit coat. “This is monstrous,” I said.

  Ferald shrugged as if to say, This is scarcely of any importance.

  “And all this because I once failed you in a Scott tutorial?” I asked.

  Ferald stood. “I’ll announce your withdrawal at the December fourth meeting,” he said, tucking the aged folder under his arm. He studied me for some time.

  I would have stood with him, but for the moment I could not. My arms were quivering with shock, and my mouth was dry.

  “Did you enjoy your tour?” he asked.

  “Tour?” I asked, unable to think. “What tour?”

  “Of my house.”

  I wanted to undo my collar. “I have no idea what you mean,” I said.

  “The night of my party, Van Tassel. I’m told reliably by a servant that you had a tour of my house.”

  “I…”

  “The pool?” he suggested.

  I retrieved my handkerchief from my pocket and wiped my brow.

  “The conservatory?” Ferald asked. “The night of the reception?”

  “I…I had lost my wife,” I stammered.

  Ferald smiled. “Had you indeed,” he said.

  I forced myself to a standing position, though I had to put my hands on the table for balance. I cleared my throat.

  “I assume you are aware that Phillip Asher is a Jew,” I said, a man playing his trump card long after all the other players have left the room.

  For a moment, Ferald was silent.

  “A Jew,” I repeated.

  Ferald regarded me curiously. “Good day, Van Tassel,” he said.

  I hardly remember my drive to the college. I parked the motorcar on the lawn and made my way into Chandler Hall to my classroom. I entered the populated chamber (I was late) and sat with weakened legs at my desk. After a time, I glanced up at the young, expectant faces before me.

  I did not recognize a soul, not a single one of the astonished visages.

  I sat in an attitude of perplexity for some time, the baffled students waiting for a pronouncement. I could think of no words with which to address them. Had I had a stroke, I wondered? Had an occlusion of a blood vessel caused this hideous memory lapse, this quaking in my limbs?

  A figure stood in the doorway, and I turned my head. It was Owen Ellington, a junior faculty member. He carried a cup of tea and he, too, looked somewhat perplexed, though kindly so.

  “Professor Van Tassel,” he said. “What a pleasure. What can I do for you?”

  I may have offered a greeting. I stood and collected my briefcase. Ellington moved aside, and I stepped out into the hallway. For an uncertain moment, I did not know in which direction to head.

  With deliberately careful strides, I went in search of my own classroom. I could think of little but the humiliating scene I had just endured at Ferald’s house. What recourse did I have? Could I not tender an appeal? Yes, I thought, I could do that. I would do that at once. Surely I had more respect than Ferald did among the faculty. And yet… and yet…to bring such an accusation to the notice of the college might end in catastrophe for me. I leaned against a wall. I knew only too well what such a revelation might do to my career.

  I found my classroom and entered it. I walked to the desk and sat in the chair. I looked up at my restless and impatient students, who doubtless wondered how it was that Professor Van Tassel had aged so much since just the week before.

  As I drove to the settlement house, I felt strangely calm. Familiar with both the Stevens-Duryea and the road, I felt as if I reached Norfolk Street in no time at all. It was not my intention to go inside Baker House, however, or even to make myself known. What I sought that day was invisibility.

  I parked in a clearing behind a stand of oaks that had not yet lost their leaves. I did not believe I could be seen from the house, since I could barely make out the building itself; nor did I think I could be detected from the road. I did not want Etna to know that I was there.

  A boy on his bicycle and a man in a rough tweed coat and cloth cap walked past without seeing me. Apart from these two souls, I noted no other person during the hour or more I waited in the clearing. Exhausted from the events of the morning as well as my sleepless night, I believe I may have dozed off for a time. I started when I heard a faint sound: a voice, two voices, one of which I recognized. Sitting up, I saw that Etna had emerged from one of the front doors. I watched her call good-bye to a person who remained behind and then walk to her coupe.

  I had not thought beyond this point, nor did I know how I should behave. Was I now to follow my own wife like a common detective? And how was this to be accomplished without her knowing I was behind her? The absurdity of this venture pressed itself upon me, and I nearly got out of the car to call to her as I saw her reversing out the driveway. It did not matter now about the strange cottage, I thought. I simply needed to speak with my wife. She would know what I should do in the matter of Edward Ferald and the post. At the very least, she would comfort me.

  Almost immediately, however, I lost sight of Etna. I was confident I could again find the cottage, but in this I was mistaken. In trailing her in the rain the day before, I had apparently taken two turns I had not remembered. Thus I discovered myself on an unknown road in a heavily wooded area. I stopped the car and got out to look around, thinking there might be a clue in the clear afternoon. There was nothing, and I had no choice but to travel on, hoping to encounter a farmer who could tell me where I was. I did this for another twenty minutes, until I happened upon a small house set a bit back from the road. I knocked at the front door and was told by a slightly startled woman that I was in Vermont. Vermont! When had I crossed over the Connecticut River? The woman wasn’t entirely sure how to direct me onto the main highway, but she was able to give me directions to a general store at which I received further directions. My nerves frayed to the point of disintegration, I crossed back over the river and made my way to Drury, the town in which I had seen Etna at the cottage.

  It took me nearly half an hour more to find the estate. I should have to buy a road map, I determined. I parked as I had done the day previous and approached the house, walking not as boldly as I had done before, but rather keeping to the edge of the woods. I slipped silently toward the cottage, in plain view should Etna have happened to glance out the window. But she did not.

  She was once again sitting at the small, wobbly table, this time reading a book that she had flattened against the table’s surface. She had on a black silk dress with a rose collar, and pink glass beads at her throat. She was bent over the volume, her hands clasped in her lap. As I watched, she leaned her elbow on the table and put her fingers to her forehead, much as I had seen Clara do when studying for her exams. Etna turned a page and put her chin in the palm of her hand. She shifted slightly on the ladder-back chair on which she sat (it cannot have been very comfortable) and crossed her leg over her knee, a gesture she would neve
r have made in public, or even with me in the parlor. Once again, I had the sensation that I was watching a thing set apart, someone who had nothing to do with me. She stretched her arms over her head.

  I walked to the front door and entered the room.

  She stood and knocked against the table, toppling a saucer to the floor. “Nicholas,” she said.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, spreading my arms.

  She moved so that the ladder-back chair was between us. “It is my own,” she said.

  “What do you mean it is your own?” I asked, taking another step.

  She put her hands on the top rung of the chair. A deep flush, in competition with her pink collar, rose to her cheeks. “It is mine.”

  “Etna,” I said, “I do not understand you.”

  “I own this cottage,” she said.

  She owned this cottage? That simply wasn’t possible. I took a step toward her. She gripped the chair rung but held her ground. “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “I bought it,” she said.

  I listened as if to a foreign language I had neglected to study.

  “With what?”

  A sudden, if faint, sheen of perspiration popped up on her forehead. “I inherited a painting,” she said.

  “Then there was a painting,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “How did you find me?” she asked.

  “I followed you,” I said. “Yesterday.” I threw off my hat, heedless of where it landed. “I never saw a Claude Legny.”

  “It was in the attic of my sister’s house,” Etna said. “She brought it to me, at my request, last year.”

  “Last year? How long have you owned this?”

  “Since January.”

  I tried to think. That was eleven months ago! “You have been coming here all this time?”

  She didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to. The answer was plain enough in the domesticity of the scene, the tidied garden at the side of the cottage. She had come to this place in the winter, when snow was all around, and in the spring, when someone had planted phlox by the side of the house. She had come here all during the summer and the early fall, when I had walked beneath the fiery canopy of Wheelock Street. Did the children know about this? Had they ever been here?

  I stepped farther into a room that was perhaps twenty feet long and thirty feet wide. As I did so, I noted objects I hadn’t seen the day before: a dress form in the corner, books in shelves under a window, a Chinese grass chair. Under the chandelier, there was a small Persian rug. An area near the kitchen was covered with linoleum. On the shelf over the kitchen sink, there was a glass jar of sugar. I looked up at the ceiling.

  “The chandelier,” I said. “You lied about that as well. The day the bill came.”

  Etna’s grip tightened on the chair.

  “You are my wife,” I said.

  “I have been a good wife,” she said.

  “A good wife with a secret.”

  She bent to pick up the pieces of the saucer. “It did you no harm,” she said.

  “No harm?” I asked incredulously. “No harm?”

  She stood, the china shards in her hand.

  “What do you do here?” I asked, gesturing to include the entire room.

  “I do …” She looked all around her. “I read. I sew. I write.”

  “Does anyone else know of this?”

  “No,” she said. “Does anyone come here? A lover?”

  “No,” she said again, seemingly shocked at the suggestion. “Of course not.”

  I put my hand to my forehead, as if in doing so, I might be better able to think. “How can I believe anything you say?”

  But, in truth, I did believe her. I believed — and still do — that on that day she told me the entire truth; that, in fact, the experience was akin to a sudden torrent of tears — liberating for her and full of relief.

  “You have had me all these years,” Etna said quietly. “You have had the children. I have given you a home. I have been faithful. I have been dutiful.”

  “Dutiful,” I said. “You have been cold.”

  “Yes, I have. And I have said I am sorry for that. But that has nothing to do with this.”

  I walked over to the apothecary cabinet and touched the white tin cake box. Etna took a quick breath.

  “When you would ask me for money, at the breakfast table, it was for this?” I asked.

  “I had money from the painting.” She put the pieces of the broken saucer on the drainboard beside the sink. “It was worth more than I thought it would be.”

  “This is madness,” I said.

  “It is my price,” she said quietly.

  “Your what?” I asked, certain I had not heard her correctly.

  She raised her chin. “My price,” she said.

  “Your price for what? I know of no other wife who exacts a price.”

  “Perhaps they do not,” she said.

  I shook my head. “Has it been so painful to be married to Nicholas Van Tassel that you must exact a price?” I asked. “Has it been so distressing that you have needed a place to hide?”

  “I do not hide,” she said simply.

  “Then why have you not told your husband about this?”

  “Because it would not then be my own,” she said.

  “I do not understand your logic, Etna.”

  And, truly, I did not. Had it been a man who maintained a separate dwelling, I might have understood. A dwelling for his mistress, perhaps. One might not condone the action, but one could at least grasp the idea. But for a woman to have such a thing! It was unthinkable.

  “This is not meant to be logical, Nicholas.”

  “You had a lover before me!” I said explosively, no longer able to keep this accusation to myself.

  In the silence between us, I could hear geese honking overhead. A motorcar along the road. Etna’s eyes slid away from mine. She took a long breath that may have contained a faint shudder.

  “Who?” I asked, even as I braced myself for the answer.

  She leaned against the porcelain lip of the sink. “It is not important,” she said.

  “I demand to know,” I said, summoning all of the putative power of the husband.

  She turned and looked out the small window over the tap. “And I shall not tell you,” she said.

  My eyes took in the room once again, alighting on now-familiar objects: the tin cake box, the Gothic window frame, the chandelier. I spread my arms wide. “Why?” I asked.

  She turned back to me. “This is a thing apart, Nicholas. It is separate. It has nothing to do with you.”

  “There can be nothing separate in a union,” I protested.

  “If you were wise,” she said, “you would stop these questions.”

  “We had a bargain,” I said.

  “Yes. And I have kept my end of it.”

  I sat heavily on the ladder-back chair. Etna moved away from the sink. “Do you have a lover now?” I asked.

  “No, I do not.”

  “Why else would a woman need a cottage that her husband knows nothing about?” I asked. “This is what everyone will think.”

  “No one will think anything if they do not know.”

  I leaned my arms on the wobbly table. “You would have me become part of your deception?”

  She appeared to think a moment. “No, I would not,” she said finally.

  I gestured in the direction of the larger house. “Who lives there?” I asked.

  “The woman who sold me the cottage.”

  “This isn’t her property?”

  “The driveway divides the two properties.”

  I stood and walked to the window, and from there I could see what in the rain the day before hadn’t been apparent: the cottage was bordered by a low fence. “How did you discover this?”

  “I saw a notice in the newspaper.”

  I walked to an oak wardrobe to one side of the entry a
nd opened it. Inside were two dresses, a smock, and a garden hat. The sight of the dresses and the hat unhinged me, I who was a door waiting to fall from its frame. I swung my arm across the wardrobe and swept the clothing from its hangers. I flailed, a wild boar after all. I moved away from the wardrobe and tore a linen drape from its window.

  “Nicholas,” Etna said.

  I kicked over the enameled bucket, sending dried hydrangeas skidding across the floor. I ripped a small picture from its hook. Etna slid away from me, inches from my grasp.

  “Nicholas, stop!” she cried.

  Would I have hit my wife? No, I do not believe I would. I wished only to violate that room. I opened a cabinet and took out a plate and flung it against a wall. Etna made a sound, and I turned. There was an expression of such alarm on her face that it brought me to my senses. I stumbled forward and collapsed on the davenport, amazed that it held my violent weight.

  I put my head in my hands.

  I had been cuckolded by a house.

  “I will not get the post,” I said.

  “Nonsense,” Etna said.

  “I have been told.”

  “When?”

  “This morning. By Edward Ferald.”

  “Nicholas,” she said, moving toward me.

  “Don’t,” I said, putting up a hand. I didn’t want her sympathy. Her coldness I could just about bear. But her pity? Never again, I told myself. Never again.

  Etna stopped and crossed her arms over her chest. “I am so very sorry.”

  “Tell me your lover was not Phillip Asher.”

  “It was not.”

  “But you knew him.”

  “Hardly at all. I’ve told you this.”

  I sat forward on the davenport. “It was his brother, then. Samuel. He was your lover.”

  Etna briefly closed her eyes. When she opened them, I saw that she was crying.

  “Did you know that Phillip Asher was coming to Thrupp?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I knew nothing until I heard his name at the reception.”

  “Ferald’s reception.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s why you dropped the champagne glass.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “It’s why you shut yourself away all those weeks. You haven’t been grieving for William; it is grief for some other.”