Dorothea had seen her lover, however, the night before last, briefly, and had several times this week spoken with him on the phone. He had been very kind and understanding about what he called, with an air of mild repugnance, the “Krauss affair”; had not pursued the subject with Dorothea, as if sensing (ah, Charles knew her so well!) how she would have begun to feel guilty about it. (Though why should she feel guilty?) And there was the tantalizing, one might say unnerving, puzzle of the Christmas presents: the one Charles Carpenter had indeed sent her (a kidskin jewelry box trimmed in sterling and tortoise) and the one Charles Carpenter had not sent her (the white lace jacket and matching skirt). The little jewelry box had been gift-wrapped and mailed from a prominent Boston jeweler’s with a card enclosed, Love always, C., and this Dorothea had discovered on Monday evening when she opened the remainder of her mail. Two presents, then? She had been, in her absence, the recipient of not one but two Christmas presents? “If you gave me the jewelry box, then who gave me the—other?” Dorothea had asked, for a moment almost frightened; and Charles Carpenter said with a careless, hurt laugh, “If you don’t know, Dorothea, how the hell should I?’
But Dorothea had not wanted to guess.
Just as she was preparing to leave the Weidmanns’, for the others were going on to dinner at a local restaurant and she did not care to join them, there appeared, belatedly, with boyish smiling apologies, Ginny’s nephew Colin Asch, in the company of the glamorous Cleopatra-looking girl, whose name, for the moment, Dorothea could not remember; and she understood, suddenly, by way of her absurdly pounding heart, that it had been an error for her to have come here. For here, so abruptly, was the boy—the young man—Colin Asch: with his uncannily lapidary features, like a brash Renaissance archangel come to life, the shock of his white-gold hair, his beautiful crafty eyes … looking at Dorothea Deverell with a curious intimate intensity, as if they were old, very old friends, or blood relatives, or a kind that scarcely need greet one another in public. But there were handshakes all around, there were introductions, for not all of Ginny’s guests had met her nephew—“really my grandnephew”—nor had they met Hartley Evans, who was, it quickly developed, the new anchorwoman for the weekday evening news on WWBC-TV, thus locally known, and the object of immediate and spirited attention. Dorothea Deverell, on her feet, meaning to leave, had nonetheless to linger, to smile and listen and disguise the queer emotion she felt at the sight of seeing—ah, so companion-ably! so easily!—Colin Asch with Hartley Evans, or Hartley Evans with Colin Asch (the young woman was standing close beside him, had entered the room with her arm conspicuously linked through his, as if to proclaim they were lovers)—these tall, attractive, radiantly happy young people who, by contrast merely, made everyone else in the Weidmanns’ living room appear dimmed and middle-aged. Dorothea Deverell felt a stab of—was it envy? jealousy? simple dismay? or a vicarious sort of pleasure, harsh and unexamined, in the young lovers’ very physical presence?
Both were buoyant, nerved up, like performers who find it difficult to leave the stage; or perhaps they’d been recently quarreling—or making love. Dorothea, smiling, looked from one to the other. Hartley wore more jewelry than, even, she’d worn on the evening of the Weidmanns’ dinner party, and her glossy black hair framed her face perfectly, sleek as a helmet; her eyes and eyebrows were elaborately traced, her eyelids shadowed in pale silvery blue; her fleshy lips a perfect luscious crimson. And her skin, her young skin—in the lamplight, at least, it was virtually poreless: perfect. Yet the surprise of the evening was Colin Asch, who had had his long hair cut and styled, perhaps with an eye toward television performance, and who wore not his slapdash late-adolescent’s outfit but a camel-hair blazer with gold-glinting buttons, a creamy-beige turtleneck sweater, impeccably creased navy-blue trousers. On his right hand was the gold signet ring, on his left wrist a handsome platinum-faced watch Dorothea had not seen before. Studying him as, for the moment, he stared smiling at Hartley Evans (who was entertaining them all with an anecdote about having met recently, and interviewed, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger), Dorothea began to feel uneasily that something was wrong: or was not, in any case, altogether right; for how could this young man—healthy, energetic, eyes shining with scarcely suppressed excitement, fingers twitching as if in rhythm with an interior music—have stepped from that other young man, Ginny Weidmann’s “tragic” nephew, who had seemingly washed ashore at the Weidmanns’ home back in November, barely two months ago? That evening, Colin Asch had been a lost soul: dazed, bedraggled, sallow-skinned, quixotically idealistic. (Is he still involved so passionately in animal rights? Dorothea wondered. She’d heard no word of it from Ginny in some time.) Now he looked supremely like a young professional man, confident in his own abilities but respectful—even, seemingly, reverent—of his elders. The two cannot be the same person, Dorothea Deverell thought, amazed.
At this moment Colin Asch glanced at her as if, indeed, he’d heard her speak; and their eyes held; and, feeling a wave of faintness suddenly, Dorothea Deverell explained that she was leaving—was already late for her next engagement. Colin Asch said, simply, “I’ll walk you to your car, then, Miss Deverell—I mean Dorothea,” taking her elbow gently and escorting her from the room, turning away with such unstudied abruptness from his girlfriend and her charming banter that one had the sense, a rather chilling sense, that he hadn’t been listening to her at all, or to anyone. He was vivacious, keyed up, as if pleasantly intoxicated, and indeed Dorothea smelled alcohol on his breath; he was chatting of cheery inconsequential matters, complaining funnily about WWBC-TV and the “media mentality” with which he had to contend, but they were anxious to keep him, promising him he’d be broadcasting soon, but maybe he’d quit anyway, go to work for a competitor—“That’d shake them up, the buffoons”—glancing at Dorothea with a sudden liquid look. “But you don’t watch television, do you, Miss Deverell? Dorothea? And why should you, with your superior sensitivity, your mind on other things?” Dorothea laughed, as if with fond familiarity the young man were teasing her, parodying her high-flown cultural pretensions, but of course he was not; he spoke with absolute sincerity.
In the Weidmanns’ foyer Colin Asch helped Dorothea on with her coat, the heavy gleaming beautiful old stone marten fur, and she prepared nervously to explain it to him, the fact of it, an inheritance from an aunt—for she herself did not believe in the cruel custom of raising and slaughtering animals for their skins—but he was humming happily, as if taking no notice; then he broke off to remark that he hadn’t seen her in a very long time he missed her sort of he’d liked that lunch that day he’d been disappointed Dorothea hadn’t been able to come to his birthday party of course it was planned at the last minute and why Aunt Ginny hadn’t called Dorothea sooner he didn’t know, that’s about the only thing in Aunt Ginny’s character that could stand some improvement—“Her habit, you know, of tossing things together at the last minute, telephoning people, as I guess she did yesterday, to invite you all over.” He was standing behind Dorothea, tall and suddenly very still, his hands on her shoulders. “But it was very thoughtful of you, Dorothea. That card. That birthday card,” he said quietly. “I’ve kept it, I’m treasuring it. I won’t forget it.”
Dorothea laughed again, uneasily, and their eyes met in the mirror beside the door, and she thought, He is the person who sent me the present—of course; but at the same instant two facts were unmistakably clear: she had not the courage at this moment to mention the present to him and to ask for an explanation, and Colin Asch, sensing that she knew, was too tactful, or too crafty, to bring it up himself. Our secret remains our secret, he might have been thinking, smiling dreamily into the mirror.
Colin Asch walked Dorothea Deverell out to her car, which was parked in the Weidmanns’ circular driveway, fresh-shoveled snow on all sides; his step was ebullient, and he was whistling the opening bars of a familiar melody—hauntingly familiar—was it a song of Schumann’s? He hadn’t troubled to put on hi
s topcoat but he’d placed jauntily atop his head a black lamb’s wool astrakhan hat—“Do you like my new hat, Dorothea?” he asked with a boyish hopeful smile. “I just bought it, at a post-Christmas sale, in the village—one of those fancy men’s shops where Aunt Ginny buys things for Martin.”
An excess of information seemed, here, to be proffered; yet Colin Asch’s manner was wholly ingenuous, and Dorothea said, as if praising a child, “Yes, I do like it, it’s very—handsome.”
“You know, Dorothea,” Colin said, opening the door of her Mercedes, mimicking a bow from the waist, “I sort of thought you might like it.”
Dorothea Deverell gathered her skirt around her—it was a multipleated hunter-green jersey-wool skirt, a rich beautiful fabric hardly at all eroded by time—and slipped into the car. She was breathing rather quickly, like a girl; and Colin Asch, not unlike an impetuous suitor, leaned on her car door and peered down smilingly at her. His breath steamed and faded, steamed and faded. His lips seemed to twitch involuntarily, lifting upward in a white wolfish grin. As if they’d been quietly talking about this subject, he said, “Yes, it’s strange how, sometimes, a despicably evil person who doesn’t deserve life has it taken from him. As if there were after all justice in the world, as certain of our great visionaries and poets have believed.” He paused, and added, “As if.”
Dorothea shivered and fumbled in her purse for her car keys. Were they talking now of Roger Krauss? She nodded vaguely; she murmured a vague assent. Thinking to change the subject, to make a kind of closure, she said, almost gaily, “You and your young woman are a very striking couple—you seem so happy together.”
“Do you like that type? Really? Ah, I see you’re being polite, Dorothea.” Colin Asch was leaning over Dorothea’s car door, pensive, quizzical, arms dangling. The astrakhan hat gave him an exotic, foreign look and had slid forward on his head, as if it were a size or two too large for him. In a lowered voice he said, “She imagines that she is in love with me—wants to have my child, and all that! She’d suck my life from me if she could. The marrow out of my bones.”
This sudden unsolicited confidence left Dorothea Deverell nonplused. What to say? Why was Colin Asch looking at her so oddly, as if inviting complicity? She had begun to feel rather nervous, wishing that this strange young man would step back from her car and allow her to drive away. He was gazing down at her at such an angle, he had all the advantage; Dorothea could only crane her neck and squint uncomfortably up at him.
“I don’t take the flesh that seriously, to tell the truth,” Colin Asch said with a negligent shrug of his shoulders. “Only the spirit. The soul.”
Pointedly, Dorothea lifted her car keys out of her purse; her smile had grown strained.
“But you, Miss Deverell—Dorothea—is there someone you’re in love with?” Colin Asch asked suddenly, impulsively, as in a headlong plunge of unconsidered words. “That no one knows about—except him?”
Dorothea flinched, as if the impetuous young man had reached out to strike her.
He added quickly, “Look: you can tell me. You can trust me. I can keep a secret.”
Though she was inwardly trembling, with fear, with indignation, with simple shock, Dorothea managed to say quietly, “I don’t divulge secrets promiscuously, my own or anyone else’s. Now may I close my car door? I must leave.”
Like a hurt, obstinate child Colin Asch persisted. “I can keep a secret, Dorothea. No force on earth can pry a secret out of me.”
Dorothea Deverell made no reply, switching on the car engine. She was terrified suddenly that Colin Asch would touch her—would reach down gropingly, like a blind man, and stroke her hair.
Instead he sighed, and settled the hat more firmly on his head, and said apologetically, moving to shut Dorothea’s door, “The primary thing is, you are happy—these days—with the coming of the New Year and all that? You are happy, Dorothea?”
“Yes,” Dorothea Deverell said, almost angrily. “Very.”
For so, after all, she was.
6
It made him happy if she was happy if those were the valid signs of happiness observed in her face.
But she seemed not to trust him yet, fully—he had not proven himself to her all the way.
After he was promoted at the station maybe, or quit and got a better job somewhere else. Maybe. After he moved into the new apartment. Champagne celebration! Black tie! A limousine to bring her! And she’d wear the beautiful clothes he bought her, dazzling white, pure, perfect on her. “La Belle Dame sans Merci.” (Which Mr. Kreuzer read to the class slowly mesmerizingly so you could feel the beat, the diminished stress in the final line of each stanza, and his eyes had drifted out to young C.A. slouched in his seat by the window staring down at his hands impassive, transfixed, I saw their starved lips in the gloom, / With horrid warning gaped wide, / And I awoke, and found me here, / On the cold hill’s side, and after the last words faded there was a silence so tense so haunted he wanted to scream to scream to scream to destroy it utterly but he’d only stared, impassive, at his hands.)
But should Colin Asch do the preparation of the food himself, or should he buy it? The greatest chefs in the world were men; it required a special touch. Not just any asshole could prepare gourmet food or even make the wine selection. Or should he order it from a caterer? His aunt would know. There were places like that all over in the well-to-do suburbs: food caterers. Thriving businesses. “The fuckers have so much money out here they have to eat it, shit it.” One thing was certain, they wouldn’t cheat him.
And what about furniture for the apartment? Didn’t you have to order it weeks ahead of time? Months? It was going to be tricky getting more $$$ from his several sources when he hadn’t made a move to repay any of it. The $$$ from K.R.’s wallet (for so in the Blue Ledger he was officially recorded) was a nice surprise but hadn’t gone far, and the credit cards were worthless in such a circumstance; you’d have to be high on crack or coke or some other kind of shit to try it, like the black guy they picked up, poor sad dumb motherfucker asshole what’d he think—it was manna from heaven? and the fancy suede gusset-sleeved jacket too? There was H., and there was S. (whom he’d just met, out here in Lathrup Farms in the village bookstore), and there was X, Y, Z; he’d never lack for ways of picking up small change, but G. was getting worried, drawing out cash for him (last time $1,500: for the camel-hair jacket, shirts, merino wool sweater, decent haircut—it hadn’t gone far) on her credit card, fearful of writing another check though she had her own personal account: “Now don’t breathe a word of this to Martin, please!” she’d warned, as if C.A. of all people required warning. In childlike gratitude he’d smiled, lifting the old girl’s hand with its glittering diamond ring; he’d pressed his forehead against the back of her hand in childlike fucking gratitude, Don’t know what I would do without you, dear aunt, you saved my life when I came here and you took me in, not like the others: there is no one like you in all the world. Oh, dear Aunt G.
Now if M. died, one of these days? Mugged in the street, shot in his car, not in the vicinity of Lathrup Farms however—you wouldn’t want anyone to think it had anything to do with his home. Even breaking and entering, and he’s shot defending himself, because G. too might be involved and you wouldn’t want that; no, that was out, or at least that was somewhere ahead in the future. Too many things to think at once.
Also, it’s always riskier where there is a blood relation, where they can figure out motives. XXX uncontaminated by desire is the highest achievement. But emotions intrude. Like with K.R., he’d hated the fucker so, by the time he got to him. And other things too. Other things intrude.
“I saw that.”
“Saw what?”
“You and her. The one you’ve got a crush on.”
“What—?”
“You know!”
“No, I don’t know. You tell me.”
“That woman with the pale moony face—the stuck-up one. Your aunt’s friend.”
“What
about her?”
“What’s her name?”
“Never mind her name, what about her?”
“I said I saw you. You and her.”
“Saw what, cunt?”
“You and her! You and her! You never look at me like that!”
Colin Asch stood tall as if on stilts, cracking his knuckles that were suddenly very bony, and sort of magnified: first the left, then the right. Eyelids slid over dry achy eyes. They were high—but rapidly descending. All that $$$ and the bitch was bringing them down. As she’d done, stupid cunt, too many times. Wild wet hurt eyes that looked almost crossed, and the mascara blurring. And the nostrils wet with liquidy snot. And the wet red mouth dribbling.
“Sweetheart, I look at you like that all the time.”
“Fuck that! Fuck you! I want you out of here!”
Colin Asch began suddenly to whistle. It seemed the necessary response. Head thrown back and lips pursed as for a sucky sucky kiss of the highest order. Whistling “The Bolero”; otherwise there was the danger of something happening. They tempt you with loss of control. It is that above all to be RESISTED.
He’d lied to her about where he was the night before and why he’d missed work—the third or was it the fourth time he’d failed to show up, and who got blamed but her? Was there another woman, was it that woman? “She looks old enough almost to be your mother.” And what about the apartment he was looking for, why wasn’t she being kept abreast of what was going on? Or was he planning to move and not inform her?
Her voice went on and on, beyond “The Bolero.” He stripped to his underwear, he was so fucking warm. Beads of sweat on his forehead, trickling down his sides. She was saying, laughing angrily, “Sometimes there’s a part missing in you, Colin; sometimes you scare me, you’re so—” though he’d explained it all smoothly and satisfactorily, he thought, and now in her wildness the cunt was mucking it up again, which he could not allow to upset him. His thumbs deftly pressing against the big bluish throbbing arteries in her neck … or maybe he’d take hold of her shoulders and slam her against the wall, the floor, the doorframe, anything hard enough to crack her skull. At a certain point of spiritual intensity all becomes unbearable—or bearable. It is that point that must be reached.