“Ted” was his heart’s desire.
Whenever he met a stranger and they exchanged names, he would refer to himself as Ted. “Ted Duncan’s the name.” Because Ted could be a hero, Ted could be a captain, Ted could smile at girls confident that they’d smile back.
In school, he would sign tests and papers, “Ted Duncan.” Sometimes he would underline the “Ted.” When things were desperate, he would even draw arrows pointing directly at the name.
But he looked like a Theo.
He behaved like a Theo.
He had a Theo’s mind.
And sadly, a Theo’s body.
So “Ted” never took. To that small portion of the civilized world with which he had come in contact, he was then and now and forever, “Theo.”
“Theo is my genius,” Charlotte whispered then.
He believed that she believed it. “Morphy pales,” he said.
“Who?”
“Paul Morphy. The chess player. No matter what anyone says about the ones today, no one was as brilliant as Paul Morphy. Before he was ten he could beat the world. Before he was twenty-five, he went mad.”
“What a tutor my children have. What a blessing for them.”
He looked at her. She was no closer to total nudity than he. He understood how terrifying this must be for her. Just as he was a virgin, she had never before begun an affair. But there was something in her tone that indicated to him she was holding something from him. He asked her what it was. She replied he was imagining. He insisted.
“I just wanted to say,” Charlotte began; “I just wanted you to know that even if Mr. Stewart were to burst in on us now-—’ He had never heard her refer to her husband as anything other than that: Mr. Stewart. Did she, he wondered, in the bedroom? 4Oh that was lovely, Mr. Stewart, we just fit, thank you ever so much.’ “—even if he entered roaring and condemned me to a life of permanent humiliation, I would not regret an instant of our time together. Or what we’re about to do.”
It was certainly a confidence-building speech and it enabled him quickly to undress entirely and slip naked into the narrow bed with the rough sheets and wait for her to do the same. And while he waited, he faced the second truth which was this: Was there a reason he was untested when it came to feminine companionship? Why did he sometimes look at men with powerful shoulders? Was it simple envy or the never simple fact that he was different! That he, in other words, deviated from the norm. Should he have been born in ancient Greece when they didn’t mind that sort of thing? He lay in the narrow bed looking at her. She was half undressed now, her blouse off, and half turned away. But she was as glorious as he had prayed. And now he prayed again. Because he did love her. And if love meant, occasionally, penetration, he suspected the toughest test of his career might be soon upon him, and he would have traded all his college A’s for a simple C-plus now. Theo closed his eyes, please, he prayed, spare me this humiliation. Then he reached down and touched himself God clearly existed—he was already hard.
Charlotte heard him sink onto the mattress, so she knew that the time for this childlike dawdling was just about over. Still, she could not yet bring herself to take off her skirt.
Because it had to be perfect. Because Theo was a poet. Who saw the world with a poet’s eye. And there was nothing very poetic about the sight of her stomach. Doctor Willcox, though reputed to be the best at New York Hospital, had butchered the first Caesarean, and even though she shifted physicians, when she had her second child that same way, the damage was permanently done. Not so much the scar, bad as it was, long and ugly; discolored. Worse was that her stomach muscles never regained their tone. She was, and had been for ten years now, pot-bellied. Not in clothes. Dressed, she was today exactly what she had always been: the most coveted woman in any room she cared to enter.
She never had an awkward age as a child. By nature lazy, she had somehow been born into a bewilderingly bright family. Her father, Thomas Bridgeman, had been first in his class at Harvard Law and, relatively unusual for a person in that position, had gone into the practice of law. Often, the very top students stay on and teach. Precisely what her older brother had done; he was today professor of law at Harvard. Her younger brother, always the rebel, had all but unhinged the Bridgemans by shunning jurisprudence and was already, at twenty-seven, on his way to a first-class career in medicine. Even her mother had been, for a time, headmistress of a fine private school.
Charlotte was only beautiful.
And her size only made the beauty more startling. No porcelain child, this; she reached her final height, over five feet nine, before she was fifteen. Her weight, then as now, was always within a pound or two of one hundred thirty. She was naturally athletic, graceful, and terribly strong.
Since everything external had come so easily, had always been present, she took it for granted. She had little ego about her appearance. It was just there. The laziness, which would have gnawed at her parents in a son, presented no problem in such a daughter. They seemed proud and pampered her unmercifully. At the age of eighteen, Charlotte was done with school. It bored her, she had no particular aptitude for it. College would have been an overpowering waste. The idea of work bored her too, and though doubtless she could have gotten a job through her father’s contacts, keeping one was not a test anyone seemed anxious to put her to.
In total then, she was, at the age of-eighteen, in all ways, a perfectly beautiful and perfectly useless ornament. Which was, in all ways, precisely what Mr. W. Nelson Stewart was in the market for.
“I want you to pay attention now,” her father said. “Sit down, Charlotte. This is going to be fairly important.”
Charlotte sat in the chair across from his desk. She already knew it was going to be important. Her father rarely asked her to come down to his Wall Street office. She looked at him now. He was slightly taller than she was, and his hair was going fast. But he had a tiny dark mustache that twitched when he was excited, and his eyes were always bright, and she adored him.
“I would like you to consider marrying Nelson Stewart,” her father said.
“Why isn’t Mr. Stewart asking me?”
“Mr. Stewart is not keen, at this stage of his life, to face rejection.”
“Can I reject him? Do I have a choice?”
“Every choice. But I do want you, as I said, to consider. There are positives and there are negatives. May I list some of them for you?”
“You do what you want, Daddy.”
“Charlotte, for the duration of this crucifyingly important discussion, please stop calling me ‘Daddy.’”
Charlotte promised to do her best.
“I know this must strike you as being horrendously old-fashioned, a talk like this. And I urged Nelson to have it with you himself. But he’s simply too shy. That is one of his positives, Charlotte. He is shy around you because, to be frank, he is smitten with you. Since I am his lawyer and have been for twenty years,
I think I can vouch for his character. This is a decent man, my darling; a bit of a violent temper, true, but only in matters of business and only when he has been lied to. Or in other ways cheated. He has never raised his voice to me and will never, I’m sure, be anything but a gentleman with you.”
“But he’s so old.” ‘
“I’m still dealing with the positives, darling, now don’t interrupt again. As you know he’s involved in the stock market, which is not unlike my saying the Rockefellers are involved in the oil business. I exaggerate, of course, but you get my point.”
“But we’re not poor or anything.”
“No, dear, but we’re not rich or anything either. Not rich in the sense that I’m talking rich. All right: he can support you, he reveres you, his character is for all intents and purposes flawless, plus he’s known you all your life. When you were a baby, he used to play on the floor with you. He’s watched you grow, has a month ever gone by that you haven’t spent time with Nelson?”
“I don’t know, is that important? The negatives
are what I want to hear, if you don’t mind,”
“All right. You mentioned age, and with reason. Nelson isn’t ‘old’ but he certainly is not exactly of your generation—”
“—he’s fifty—”
“—darling he’s forty-four—”
“—he looks fifty—”
“—Nelson is more than aware that he isn’t a matinee idol—”
“—and I hate those rimless glasses—”
“—Charlotte, we’re not talking about his rimless glasses, we’re talking about your life!”
She could tell by his tone they were nearing the end.
“He’s never married, he wants to marry now, he wants a lot of children, you’ll make a splendid mother.” He smiled.
“What?”
“I was just thinking: if your children have just half of your looks and half of Nelson’s brains, they’ll own the world.”
Was that a compliment? Charlotte wondered. She decided it was.
“There are all those positives and but three negatives: he is not beautiful, he is not young, and you don’t love him.”
Wasn’t that last alone a good enough reason to say no? Charlotte wondered. (Her father’s bright eyes burned.) Charlotte decided it wasn’t.
The courtship was perfunctory but totally civilized. He wanted nothing physical from her. At least now. He talked of the children he wanted, his visions for them. Occasionally, when he took her hand she wondered if it was preparatory to a more serious maneuver but it never was. Had it been, she would have been dutiful. Charlotte suspected that Nelson Stewart was never going to be inflamed with passion. Well, the same could be said for her. So far, at any rate. Sex was a duty and she knew when the time came she would prove competent.
He lived on Fifth, in what Charlotte thought a perfect place to begin married life, but he felt it was far too small. So he bought an enormous house on Gramercy Park, with an added small place in the back that would be fine for staff. The house had many bedrooms, each child would obviously have his own. (He wasn’t crazy to teach daughters the ways of the Market.) And the private park across the street would make life easy for Charlotte when pram time came each day.
During this period, she realized certain things her father had told her were true. Nelson Stewart was indeed shy. Remarkably so for a man of his power. The Market was everything, and he did all that he could to keep distractions to a minimum. Example: his clothes. He bought them only from Brooks Brothers. (He put great faith in brand names. Brooks was impeccable, you could trust the place. And at the start, he insisted Charlotte frequent Lord & Taylor for the same reason: trust.) And when he shopped at Brooks, he had his own salesman whom he would contact before his visit and outline his needs. So as he reached the store, all was in readiness, shoes, shirts, suits, whatever else. Laid out in one special area, his salesman hovering. Nelson would enter, always exactly on time, enter, pick, and be gone. He had a fine wardrobe but it was doubtful if he ever spent more than ten minutes in the store at any one time.
Their wedding was dutifully covered by the Times. A city the size of New York is obviously too large to have such a thing as a Most Eligible Bachelor. But on any list of five, W. Nelson Stewart would have properly belonged. So there was publicity, even though he shunned it when he could.
They honeymooned in Europe for almost a month, during which time they had sex weekly. Charlotte did her best to pleasure him, but she was always slow to moisten while he was always quick to come, something of a problem.
Life in the ensuing months was almost entirely quiet. Nelson Stewart liked his home life that way. He was a Bostonian and never really enjoyed the pace of Manhattan, but if you were in the Market, Boston simply wasn’t good enough, not if you had skills such as his. So they rarely went out. The only restaurant he frequented was Sweet’s, the great old place on Fulton near the river. He went there because he felt it was easily the finest fish house in town. And also because, he said, it somehow reminded him of home.
Before their first year was out, Charlotte gave birth to W. Nelson Jr., the event damaged only by the hack work of the surgeon. Charlotte never realized, until months later when she had done her best to get her stomach flat again, the extent of her vanity. She exercised relentlessly after her firstborn.
But alas.
The next year Burgess (named after the father’s father) came along but after that there would be no further children. It was simply not medically sound. That news obviously saddened Nelson—he would never have his brood now—and he turned more than ever toward his empire.
Charlotte mothered the boys.
Or tried to.
Wanted to.
But there were always so many servants in the way. There was never the least question in Nelson Stewart’s mind that his children would be outstanding. He insisted on it. They were, after all, Stewarts.
It came as something of a shock to him when he perceived that they had inherited his beauty and his wife’s brains. They were pudgy little things, sweet enough natured, but dreadful at sports and always behind in their studies at Columbia Grammar. At first he did nothing. Then, when the boys were seven and eight, the tutors began. And the basement of the great home was turned into a gymnasium.
Charlotte watched it happen. That was all she did really, all she could do. Watch. Oh, at first, she tried reasoning with him. Too much pressure on the boys too soon. That kind of thinking.
He would have none of it. He had waited so long for children that when they disappointed, there was no remedy other than immediate action. And in truth, by the time the boys were eight and nine, there was evident improvement. They were still prone to heaviness, true, but they could box now, and no one their age mocked them anymore. And not most but all of their Columbia Grammar teachers saw the change in their academics. Their grades were better than good, edging toward excellence.
Charlotte began to drift.
She had no real interests. Oh she tried. She mentioned one evening that she’d always wanted piano lessons as a child and the next week what should be in the library awaiting her but a Stein-way grand. She read the Sunday Times dutifully, occasionally visited the natives in Central Park and Washington Square. And she fought her way as often as she could through the Metropolitan Museum.
But she had no true passion for any of it. It was as if somewhere along the line she had checked her heart and forgotten to pick it up.
When she was twenty-nine, when the boys were nine and ten, when she was still as big and beautiful as a dozen years before, except for the stomach scars, Charlotte had, for her, a rare moment of insight. The dead-leaves road that was to be the rest of her life momentarily illuminated itself to her and, much to the astonishment of the children, who were finishing their roast beef, and Mr. Stewart, who had already finished his, she broke at the dinner table. Facing as quickly as she could away, she fled the table and raced ail but blind toward her bedroom.
After allowing a proper composure time, W. Nelson Stewart entered and observed that it couldn’t have been anything he’d said since he hadn’t said anything. Charlotte was abjectly apologetic. How could he dream it was anything of his doing? He was a superb provider, and kind. What, then, he wondered? You know how I get this time of the month, she tried. Ahh, he said; ahh, of course. He asked then when she was due and she replied perhaps the next day, perhaps the day after.
That night he returned, naked under his robe. She was surprised, feigned pleasure at his mounting. She was dry and he came too quickly, but they knew their roles so well by then that they got through it without much pain.
He was, he told her, proud of her. As she was of him, she said, and in truth, was. I’ll let you rest, you must be tired, he said, and with his robe on, left.
Charlotte stared the night away.
Soon after, the boys turned ten and eleven. And Charlotte turned thirty. And the new tutor arrived from Oberlin…
Before she was prone, before she had a chance to do or say a thing, he had turned his b
ody toward her and she could feel he was hard while she was dry and for a moment she wanted to push him away so they might begin again, but now his mouth was on hers, his hands were firm on her big shoulders and he jabbed his tongue at her with such force she knew he was panicked, was acting out of lack of knowledge, was so in need of her tenderness because that was the true meaning of manhood, the ability to forgo force as a path that led nowhere, so Charlotte made a sound she hoped indicated pleasure, because the last thing she wanted was to crush him now, and then she broke the kiss and immediately began another, and this time it was her tongue doing the probing, only soft, gentle, and she made the sound again, hoping it indicated now increased pleasure and it must have, because when his tongue came back it was without the previous almost anger. But the fear was still with him, she could tell as he went next for her wondrous breasts, too too hard he went, kneading them as if they were somehow not connected with the rest of her body, like mounds of dough on a marble table, and she made another sound, and kissed his mouth again, managing to break his hold on her bosom, and when she’d tongued his mouth gently, she lowered her head slightly, tongued, again gently, his tiny male nipples, and they became hard quickly; he was a quick learner, this blessed Theo of hers, he had to be, poets understood, for now he was sucking her nipples and it was their turn to be hard. He was trying to penetrate her now but she wasn’t yet moist and if there was ever an ultimate rebuff that was it, to be a man, pulsing and anxious only to find the entrance shut, so she touched him there briefly, briefly kissed his breasts again, tongued his mouth, made her sounds, praying there was nothing wrong with her—she was in bed with that person in the world she most wanted to be in bed with yet how could he know that except by words, and bed is not a place for words except words after. “Such a bad boy,” she whispered, but he kept trying to force himself on her, so she said, “Bad boys must be punished,9’ and she began to roll him off from his position on top of her and of course he resisted but that didn’t make her stop and in a moment they were tussling there in the small bed, and Charlotte was bigger and heavier and as it began to turn out, stronger; he resisted, tried to, did his best, but slowly, she got the better of it; they were side by side for a moment but only briefly, before she forced his hands down and got astride of him. She held his hands to the mattress and he resisted more than before until suddenly he stopped, pushed up his head, for there waiting for him was a breast, and he suckled it almost as if he had a fever, and the only reason he released it was to wrap his mouth around her other breast, and Charlotte was losing control now, and her legs widened for him and in and up he moved, and minutes later they were still like that, still like that, and she had read of such things, had heard of such things in the schoolyard when girls told stories, it was possible, they said, it was truly possible if there was love that a man and a woman might, a man and a woman might, if there was genuine love between them they might actually climax, climax both of them as one and Charlotte could hear his time was near and Jesus, dear sweet Jesus, so was hers, and his arms went around her and his eyes shut tight and he cried out as did she cry out, her eyes shut tight, and their bodies rhythmed, first with spasms almost violent, then, slower, then slower still, and when it was done, when they were done rather, Charlotte kissed his eyes and worried that her weight might tire him, and rolled alongside her Theo, telling him only that she loved him, and she didn’t expect more in return than the fact that he felt the same, but when what she got was silence she glanced at him and saw he was looking at the ceiling, and frightened suddenly that the experience she had just been through was not a shared one, she repeated that she loved him, a bit louder.