Tiny Little Thing

  Lytle has handed me another glass and a Really? How so?

  Such a dishy fellow, Lytle. So easy to talk to. You can confide in a man like that; he knows exactly what you mean when you say something you can’t quite remember exactly, the morning after, but goes something like, They’ve forgotten all they ever learned at college, even if they went, and even if they learned anything to begin with. They haven’t got a single ambition of their own. They married fat successful men so they could be thin successful wives.

  Lytle has thoughtfully pulled me to the bar, where we can be comfortable. You think they all married for money?

  I have waved my hand expressively. Oh, I’m sure they’ll say they were in love, and maybe they were, but did they fall in love with high school math teachers and policemen and engineers? No, they did not.

  Lytle has seen fit to wonder why I’m here, then, if I despise events like this and people like this.

  I have then sighed and stared into my empty glass and said something like, Well, I guess I’m one of them, aren’t I?

  And then, on reflection, Besides, wouldn’t they just kill me if I asked for a divorce?

  And Lytle has said, Who? and I have said something like (hand waving to the dais), Them. Frank, his father. The whole damned Brahmin mob, and Lytle has said, Well, well. Aren’t you such a surprise, Mrs. Hardcastle, and I have said (looking up gratefully), Aren’t you such a dear, Mr. Lytle.

  So. Here I am, the elegant Mrs. Franklin Hardcastle, Jr., gloved to the elbows, savoring all these brand-new sensations, this pleasant sloppy lightness of passage, Lytle’s sympathy, the pretty faces and so on, and a large hand appears out of nowhere to cover the satin fingers that cover my guilty pocketbook.

  “Tiny,” says the hand’s owner.

  Now, two guesses. Does the hand in question belong to my devoted husband, Mr. Franklin S. Hardcastle, Jr., he of the burnished hair and the burnished smile? I’ll give you a hint: it does not. No, no. Frank Hardcastle has disappeared, poof, just like that, no burnished head to be found in this merry old ballroom at midnight. Cinderella the lowly campaign staffer seems to have disappeared, too, and her dainty glass slippers with her. Franklin Senior is working the crowd to my left—far to my left—and nowhere in that thick Boston fog of cigarette smoke and cocktail breath do I know a single friend.

  Except this one. Your second guess. Caspian, whose hand lies atop mine.

  In the slow and drunken moment that passes between his word—Tiny—and mine, I ponder the nature of that thought. Caspian, a friend? An hour or two ago, clean and sober, I wouldn’t have put those two words together. At most, I consider Caspian an unpredictable ally, bound to me by the accident of my marriage, our interests momentarily aligned. But I know for a fact—I know by solemn experience—where Caspian’s real loyalties lie. He’s a Hardcastle, and the family business comes before everything else. Including himself.

  Including me, if I should be so careless as to stand in opposition.

  “Caspian,” I say. “I thought you were long gone.”

  “Your father-in-law called my room.”

  “I can’t imagine why.”

  He turns to Jack. “Lytle, isn’t it?”

  Jack holds out his hand. “From the Globe. Loved your little speech. You have a gift.”

  “Not really. I’m just eager to see my cousin doing what God put him on this planet to do.”

  “A true believer.”

  “I’ve known Frank since we were kids, Mr. Lytle, and I can’t think of a better man for the job. And, trust me, I know a little bit about character, by now.” Caspian winks.

  “I’m sure you do. Three tours in ’Nam. Jesus. And then you come home to this.” Jack waves his drink.

  “This? This isn’t so bad.”

  Jack laughs. “Not here. Tonight. I mean the protests, the students. LBJ, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today. That kind of thing. Any rotten eggs thrown at your head yet?”

  Caspian’s face turns to stone. “No.”

  Another laugh. “Well, I don’t suppose anyone would dare. Still. You’ve heard what’s going on. What do you think?”

  “People have a right to their opinions, Mr. Lytle, at least those of us lucky enough to be standing here in an American ballroom instead of a Vietnamese rice paddy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I haven’t had the pleasure of dancing with my cousin yet.” His hand slides up my forearm to grasp my elbow.

  “You can dance?” Lytle asks.

  “I can try.”

  Caspian leads me to the dance floor, which has grown looser and more dangerous since I left it an hour ago, jiving with couples dancing a little too close and laughing a little too loud. I shift the pocketbook to my left hand and clasp Caspian’s hand with my right. “Can you really dance?” I ask.

  “We’re about to find out.”

  “You don’t need to do this.”

  “I had to get you away from that reporter somehow.”

  We execute a turn, which Caspian manages better than most of the men around us.

  “I can handle myself,” I say.

  “Uncle’s orders.”

  “And we all know you do exactly what the family tells you to do.”

  I’m peeking steadily over his shoulder, watching the pleasant kaleidoscope pass by, because his face is too much. He’s too much, and I, Mrs. Franklin Hardcastle, Jr., have had much too much champagne.

  “In this case, yes.” His voice is low and rumbles from his chest, just a few inches from my ear. “But mostly, I just want to do what’s best for you.”

  “Oh, I see. And obviously this is what’s best for me,” I say bitterly.

  “This? This is your choice, Tiny. What you chose.”

  I step unsteadily back, away from his chest. The champagne bubbles have all died away. “I think it’s time I went to my room.”

  “I think that’s an excellent idea.”

  Caspian keeps my hand in his and threads me through the crowd to one of the double doors at the other crimson end of the ballroom. Down the corridor, the lobby opens like a new marble world, containing its elevator banks and its grand staircase, but Caspian steers me in the other direction. “Let’s get a little air first,” he says.

  Outside the cool breath of the air-conditioning, the courtyard is dark and hot, but the change in atmosphere does clear my head a degree or two. I put my hands on the railing and stare down at the pocketbook clenched between them. Wishing I had a cigarette inside. Something to do.

  “Can we clear something up?” Caspian says. “Just one thing.”

  “And what’s the point of that, exactly?”

  “Because we’re living side by side now. We can’t just keep avoiding each other.”

  “Then go back to Vietnam.” The words are out, sharp and awful. I bend my head to the railing. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

  He answers me far more gently than I deserve. “Why the hell do you think I stayed on in the first place?”

  “I don’t know. To save the world.”

  “Jesus. All right. Yes. To save the fucking world. Because anything was better than coming back to you and Frank.”

  “Then why are you here now? Go to your sister in San Diego. I’m sure she could use a man around the house.”

  “Because I’m needed here.”

  “Oh, yes. I forgot. Frank’s campaign.”

  Caspian’s hand finds my shoulder. I’ve forgotten how large his hand is, how thoroughly it covers my skin. “Tell me the truth. Why you’re unhappy.”

  Two years ago, I would have confessed to that voice. How couldn’t you confess to a voice like that? To a hand like that, steady and reliable on your shoulder?

  I made a mistake, Caspian. I’ve failed. My life isn’t quite so perfect as it seems. The bargain I made, it hasn’t quite turned out the way I dre
amed.

  Or better yet: You know those pictures you took? I need to know how they might have gotten in the hands of a filthy blackmailing scoundrel.

  But now? Confess all that? Now there’s a good one. To Caspian, of all people. Caspian with his direct line to the senior Hardcastles, Caspian who had been sent tonight to clean up the drunken mess of me by none other than Mr. Franklin Hardcastle, Senior. Uncle’s orders, he said.

  Sure, maybe he wouldn’t rat on me. The odds, I figured, were maybe fifty-fifty. But even sloppy with champagne, I wasn’t the kind of girl to take those odds.

  I certainly wasn’t the kind of girl to tell her problems to any old stranger.

  “I’m not unhappy. I am . . .” I curl my fingers around the pocketbook and draw it into my belly. “I am perfect. I’m perfect.”

  Caspian’s hand remains on my shoulder. I can feel his fingertips in the hollow. I can count each one.

  “All right,” he says. “I’ll take you upstairs.”

  I turn, dislodging the hand. “I can find my own way.”

  “I promised your father-in-law I’d make sure you got to your room safely.”

  “That’s noble of you.”

  I try to walk past him, but he starts first, drawing my hand into the crook of his elbow, and owing to some failure of backbone, some surfeit of champagne, I let it stay.

  Caspian takes me up in the metal service elevator, tucked out of sight. I can’t blame him. I suspect my lipstick is askew, my hair disturbed. I wonder if my face has taken on that florid quality I regard with such pity in other women. Beside me, Caspian is utterly still. I look down at our feet, lined up in a row, in and out of focus.

  “I’m sorry about your leg,” I say.

  Caspian reaches forward and presses the emergency stop. We stagger to a halt. I throw my hand out to the wall to steady myself, while an alarm bell gives off two demented rings.

  “It’s just a leg,” he says.

  An ominous quiet fills the car. An absence of hydraulics. I have never noticed how noisy elevators are until now. Caspian’s body dwarfs mine, filling up all that silent space, and the impression—Caspian’s reliable size, his quiet fortitude—is so familiar, I stare at our aligned feet and think, It doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter why we fell apart two years ago. He’s here now. He came back.

  I say softly, “That’s what I told myself, when I heard the news. I thought it was a fair trade. I told God he could keep the leg, as long as you came home alive.”

  “You could have saved yourself the trouble. At the time, I didn’t care one way or another.”

  His shoes are black and polished, rounded at the tips, almost liquid in their military perfection. Identical in every detail. You would never guess, if you didn’t already know, that one of them contains a mechanical contraption, a bang up-to-date marvel of bionics or whatever they called it, instead of a living human foot.

  If I were his wife instead of Frank’s, I’d weep for that foot. Weep that I’d never have a chance to see it wiggle next to mine, to feel it curl around my leg at night, to rub it when it’s weary, to tickle its sole, to kiss every toe. I’d mourn forever for Caspian’s lost foot. Where were its remains, anyway? Did they cremate amputated limbs? Throw them out with the trash? Where were the rotting molecules that had once been Caspian’s beloved left foot? So lurched my champagne-drenched thoughts, in the grim-bright metallic interior of the hotel service elevator.

  “How are they treating you, Tiny?” says Caspian. “The family, I mean.”

  “Just fine.”

  “Because I’ve been wondering. I’ve been hoping they’re making you happy. That they appreciate you, the real you.”

  “I’m happy.”

  “If you need me, you know, I’m right here.”

  “Yes. Yes, indeed. You’re right there.”

  He persists, in a gruff voice: “I’m not going to get in the middle of your marriage. I’d never do that. I’m just . . . well, if you ever need help, that’s all. Help of any kind.”

  “What makes you think I need any help?”

  “I just have a hunch. I guess I knew you pretty well, for a few days.”

  “For a few days, yes. You did.”

  The intercom explodes. “Everything okay in there?”

  “Yes!” Caspian barks. “My mistake. Just turn us on again.”

  There is a static curse and a grinding noise, and the elevator lurches into motion. I stumble out of alignment with Caspian’s feet, and he puts out a hand to steady me.

  “You probably think you can’t trust me,” says Caspian, watching the numbers light up above the door, “but you can, Tiny. You can trust me. I’m on your side.”

  I tighten my hands around the pocketbook. “Since when is that?”

  “Since always.”

  The car bangs to a stop. The doors kick open. Caspian’s hand touches the small of my back, urging me forward, and I step onto the worn crimson carpet of the service hallway. My feet totter and ache in their pretty raspberry satin shoes.

  I tuck the pocketbook bravely under my elbow and turn to Caspian. He regards me with the same expression he once wore inside the sacred rectangle of his Marlborough Street living room, as if he would like to surround me with his long limbs and burrow through the pores of my skin and invade me.

  I’m not sure whether the fluttering in my belly is champagne or melancholy, flirtation or guilt. Anticipation or dread.

  “Well, then. Can I trust you to walk me to my door, Major Harrison?”

  Caspian, 1964

  This time, Caspian climbed the three flights of stairs at a run, while his camera bag banged against his hips and his heart banged against his ribs. He could hardly resist the urge to shout Honey, I’m home! as he threw open the door, knowing that Tiny existed beyond it, waiting for him to return.

  He’d pushed the whole dilemma out of his mind all day. He’d focused on his camera, on picking out subjects, setting scenes, considering light and angle and perspective. It was too much to think about, really: the ethics of making his move on another fellow’s girl, even a girl who’d taken shelter under his roof and asked for his help. Once she’d written that letter, was she free? Was he free, considering he was leaving for the other side of the world in two weeks? The honorable thing was to wait until he was back from his tour, alive and whole, the both of them having had time to consider things rationally, to write a few letters, to get to know each other better. In her case, to get over this fiancé of hers, to maybe date a guy or two on the rebound, to settle herself in her newfound life. Then they’d see how things went. Try each other out. Inch by careful inch into intimacy.

  But he didn’t feel rational—let alone honorable—by the time he threw open the door to his apartment and cast about for Tiny’s sun-draped shape to rise from the sofa. He only knew that he had two weeks, fourteen days left, before he put eight thousand miles between the two of them, and he had to touch her, he had to kiss her, he had to leave some physical imprint on her, and she on him, or he couldn’t possibly endure the lonely year ahead.

  When he stepped through the doorway, though, Tiny didn’t rise from the sofa, sun-draped or otherwise.

  The room was empty.

  He dropped his camera bag carefully to the floor and called out her name.

  No answer.

  He looked around the corner of the kitchenette, not really expecting to see her. He walked down the hall and glanced inside the darkroom, which lay untouched and acrid.

  The door to the bedroom was closed. A sliver of light showed beneath. Cap felt the blood rushing in his veins, the wind in his lungs. He placed his knuckles against the old wood and knocked softly. “Tiny?”

  He didn’t hear a reply, but the door was thick, a hundred years old, solid chestnut like they didn’t make anymore. Once, his father said, you could crawl from Boston to Washington
across the limbs of giant American chestnut trees, but the Japanese blight took care of that romantic notion a generation or two ago. He turned the knob and pushed it open, inch by careful inch.

  “Tiny?” he said again.

  She sat in the middle of the bed, neatly made, with her knees tucked up under her chin and her dancer’s arms wrapped around it all. A few papers lay in front of her, and a ballpoint pen with its cap on.

  “Are you all right?” he said.

  “Not really.”

  He pushed the door open the rest of the way and walked into the room, light with relief that she was talking, at least. That she was there, sitting on his bed. He lowered himself into the wooden chair.

  “Did you write the letter?”

  She picked up the pen and hurled it against the wall. The cap broke away on impact. “I can’t do it. I can’t. I couldn’t even find the words.”

  He didn’t know what to say. Something was crushing his shoulders, a metal safe with a ton of precious bullion inside. “All right.”

  “All right? Is that all?” She stuck her hands in her hair, which was fully disheveled, a shining brown mess. “I tried, and do you know how it sounded? Vain. And weak. And self-centered. I’ve got no earthly reason to break off this engagement, have I? It’s everything I ever wanted, isn’t it? An important life, the wife of someone extraordinary. And I knew what the trade-offs were. I knew what to expect. I was bred to expect them.”

  “What trade-offs, Tiny? What are you trading off?”

  She moved her head from side to side. “After all this time, pretending to be happy, pretending to be the perfect wife to be. All my life. My mother. The look on her face. I can’t stand it, I can’t! She’s pinned everything on me, her perfect little virgin daughter, her last hope for redemption, so she can believe . . . she can think that she did something right at least . . .”