Beautiful Days (11 page)

“Only in emergencies, or to do an errand for my aunt. Not this kind of driving. Driving for the sake of driving, with nowhere in particular to go.” She turned to him and met his eyes. “I like this kind of driving.”

“You must miss her.”

“No.” Cordelia shook her head firmly. In the next moment, she began to worry that might sound too hard. “My ma died when I was little. I can't even remember her. My aunt thought it was her duty to care for me, but she didn't want me any more than I wanted her . . . but you must understand, aren't you an orphan?”

“I don't think of myself as one,” he said, and then seemed not to want to say any more.

Before she could think of another topic of conversation, they came around the bend and saw a filling station, and she pulled over for gas. She climbed out and walked around the hood toward the pump, but Max was there with his his hand on the nozzle before she could reach for it.

“And all this time I thought you admired me for being such a modern girl,” she exclaimed in amusement.

“I'm sure you are.” He gave her a serious look and then let his eyes drift down over her figure. “But I'll not have you ruining a pretty dress like that just to prove you don't need me. I suspect we're both too practical for that.”

“Are you sure it's practicality?” She leaned back against the car, crossing her arms over her chest and watching him pump gas with a playful light in her eyes. The air had that sweet, dusty smell that always comes just before it rains—she could tell rain was coming on, but it hadn't started yet. “But of course I wouldn't want to offend your sensibilities by accusing you of anything as pitiable as chivalry.”

He laughed—one long, flat laugh—and said: “I'll show you chivalry if you let me, Miss Grey.”

Her heart turned over at the way he went on watching her, even after he was done speaking, and she hoped she didn't blush. There was a way he had, of saying something and then being silent and still, that she found unnerving. When the tank was full, he went into the station to pay, and returned with two bottles of cola, which they drank as they continued to drive idly through the suburbs of Long Island, the fizzy sweetness teasing their tongues and settling their stomachs. It was not until they saw the filigree and turrets of the first tower of the Queensboro Bridge looming before them, its trusses silver against the black clouds, that she realized how long they'd been away, and that the wonderfully dizzy feeling she was experiencing might have as much to do with the fact that she hadn't eaten anything all day as with Max's company.

“I'm starving, aren't you?”

He murmured in reply—later she would wonder if that noise hadn't been intended to signal assent exactly, but already she knew where they should go. They sailed over the bridge and down into a city thick with men carrying their jackets laid over the crooks of their arms and women who had forgone the modesty of panty hose. Boys on the streets barked about fans, and policemen's horses swatted flies with their tails. Under a mauve sky that was heady with precipitation but as yet had declined to pour, Cordelia stopped the car. As she stepped out she handed the keys to one of the Plaza's liveried doormen.

She recognized the boy from the nights she and Charlie and Charlie's gang had been there, and she smiled her most winning smile as she told him, “Park her somewhere safe, will you?”

When she looked back at Max, she saw he was staring ahead blankly. For a moment she was afraid that he wasn't going to get out of the car. But then the bellhop jumped into the driver's seat, and he had no choice.

“Come on, then.” She laughed, and led the way up the big steps. A newspaper photographer was loitering there, and he lifted his big, black camera, and before Cordelia could think she'd turned her face toward him and smiled. The flash went off, blinding them both. In the next moment they had passed through the revolving doors, off the dirty street and into the plush red-and-gold lobby with its quiet aura of opulent tranquility.

“I'm sorry if this isn't exactly your style, Mr. Darby, but my family—my brother and I—we like to come here from time to time and get a private dining room. I promise not to push any juleps on you, if you will only indulge me in having a sandwich before we head back home . . .”

The concierge recognized her then, and with a flourish ushered them to the little room with hammered leather panels on the walls and potted ferns that Charlie always requested.

“Oh, dear, you hate it here, even without the juleps,” she said, once the waiter had taken their order for hamburgers and colas.

“No, I'm plenty comfortable in these kinds of places, on account of Mr. and Mrs. Laurel.” Holding her gaze, he lifted the napkin from the delicate china plate it sat upon, unfolded it ostentatiously, and lay it over the lap of his well-worn work pants. “I come here every night.”

She blinked, wondering if she'd insulted him by implying that he was somehow less fine than she.

“I'm kidding you,” he said after a pause, and grinned.

“I don't think I've ever heard you tell a joke before!” she replied, laughing. Then she mimicked him, shaking out her napkin self-importantly. “It scared me almost.”

Every interaction they'd had up till then had been characterized by speed and movement, and now that they were sitting quietly, with no one around and no chance of acceleration, she began to feel intimidated by him again. It was not in Cordelia's nature to be easily intimidated; she had learned at a young age to protect herself from her aunt's demands and slights by always holding her head high and keeping a private tally of her own strengths that she could call upon when she was told to stand in the darkened closet for hours in punishment or scrub all the floors. But Max's steadiness upset her own.

“I'm still not entirely convinced that this teetotaling of yours is sincere,” she offered with an arched eyebrow. “The arrangement you have with the Laurels certainly seems like a plum one, and I wouldn't hold it against you if you pretended to agree with their politics just to further the relationship,” she teased lightly.

“I don't lie about anything,” he replied sternly, but not unkindly. “Do you?”

“No . . .” Cordelia's breath was taken away by his directness. She felt as though she had been seen into, for though she was not exactly a moral girl, she had always been allergic to untruths. “I only meant, I wouldn't think badly of you, if that was the thing you had to do.”

Max nodded, taking this in. “That's kind of you.” His eyes rolled to the door as a tuxedoed waiter entered, carrying a silver tray aloft, and he did not speak again until the waiter had completed the elaborate process of laying out their lunch on the white tablecloth. “But I'm not just going along with Mrs. Laurel's belief in temperance. I've seen the evils that come from drink, and I'd rather stay far from it myself.”

While he spoke he loaded his burger with ketchup and mayonnaise, and when he was finished he cut it in half and ate one half in three hungry bites, as though he hadn't eaten in a long time.

“It's not because I don't like a good time,” he went on, wiping his hands on the napkin and then leaving it in a heap amongst the pompous table settings. “But my father was an airman in the Great War, and he came back from Europe with a ruined body and a mean spirit. He used to drink all day long and give my mama hell.”

“Oh.” Cordelia had taken one bite from her hamburger, and she set it down now and watched Max sympathetically. He didn't seem to be asking for sympathy, exactly—the way he told the story of his father was matter-of-fact. But she could see that the memory was awful. “That's terrible.”

“He's dead now.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I'm not.” Max picked up the other half of his hamburger, and began to eat again, though more slowly this time. “He did it to himself. I don't mean he was a suicide, but the way he drank in the end, it amounted to the same thing.”

“Well, he couldn't have been all bad, or you wouldn't have followed in his footsteps.” Cordelia took a sip of lemonade, and hoped he wouldn't recoil at the suggestion that he had something in common with his drunk of a father. “I'm sorry, I only meant—”

“No, don't say you're sorry.” He laughed ruefully. “You'll think I'm stupid, but I never quite thought of it that way. I guess you're right, though.” He met her eyes for a minute, and then cast his gaze back on the gleaming knives and forks, the flower arrangement on the embroidered white tablecloth, the gold salt-and-pepper shakers, and paused to work his jaw. “It's you who should forgive me. I'm not in the habit of talking to people familiarly, and I don't suppose I really know how to do it. But I like talking to you.”

This was perhaps the closest to a sweet thing that Max had yet said to her, and she softened all over at the sound of it. “I like talking to you, too,” she said, and then they moved on to other topics—the view of New York from above versus the view from below, the beauty of its lights pulsating at night, the strangeness of wanting hamburgers on a hot day, and on. They did not return to their childhoods, but there seemed to be no need—Cordelia felt that she knew where he had come from, and suspected that he had a similar understanding of her.

It seemed peculiar that, having traveled so far and with such desperate conviction to be part of a cosmopolitan milieu, she should find herself drawn to someone almost as plainspoken as John Field. But Max was not really anything like John, who in any event had been the only boy in Union to pay her attention. Once she'd caught his eye he became almost slavish to her.

“You're more interesting than the radio, I could listen to you for hours,” he'd told her, one freezing night back in February, after dinner at Dr. and Mrs. Field's table, as he walked her back toward her aunt Ida's through the snow white streets. And though she'd loved that he'd said that at the time, she now saw that she wanted a boy to do more than follow her in blind devotion. She wanted a boy to challenge her, to tell her about things she'd never thought of, to show her new points of view.

She and Max talked a while longer, even after their empty plates had been cleared, and when they walked back into the lobby, he took her arm, seeming more at ease with her company and with the lavish surroundings. The rain had begun by then—it was a light rain, turning the streets sleek and the sky yellow, just enough to clear the sidewalks and keep people's heads down minding their own business, but not enough to make the roads unsafe. No one cared who they were as they made their way out, and when the bellhop brought the Marmon around, Max jumped forward and opened the passenger-side door for her.

“I hope you don't mind,” he said.

This made her glad that she had fixed her lipstick before leaving the hotel, and she gave him a broad red smile before stepping down from the last step and shielding her hair as she moved from the shelter of the overhang and into the car.

“I'll not get in the way of your chivalry, Mr. Darby,” she said as he started up the engine and turned the wheels in the direction of White Cove.

Chapter 11

DOGWOOD'S LAWN WAS FRAGRANT WITH THE RAIN THAT had driven the boys indoors. Mosquitoes swarmed in the light that pooled from the high windows, and the cicadas sang their summer songs. Everyone was inside the big house, but Astrid had found that on this occasion she didn't mind so much. It was festive, the boys playing pool on the second floor, breaking into the old stores of bourbon, hanging their soaked shirts from makeshift laundry lines in the hall. The sultry weather had infused everything, even her skin, and she felt incandescent with the notion that tonight she was going to do something that she had never done before.

She had decided, that morning, when she woke up in a blissful mood and realized that she couldn't wait for the wedding to prove that Willa was wrong about what it meant to be man and wife. If Charlie and she were such a different kind of couple, why should they not be allowed to do everything at a more modern speed? The notion frightened her, but the fear created a tingling in her fingers and toes that was not entirely unpleasant. She would make a romantic dinner for Charlie all by herself and serve it in the formal dining room, without even Milly's help, and Charlie would be very impressed with her, as well as himself, for choosing such an incomparable girl to marry. Later, when the dishes were cleared, she would lean over and whisper in his ear, telling him what final surprise was in store for him.

All day her expectations for the evening had grown, and her good mood had bloomed along with her visions of domestic triumph. She'd sent Danny out with a shopping list and turned the oven on and then dressed in a bias cut evening gown of raw black silk that dangled from her soft pink shoulders on delicate spaghetti straps and swayed down, loose and sleek, against her slender calves. When Charlie came upon her in the hall he'd looked her up and down with a carnal light in his eyes. He had been on his way out to do some quick business, and had kissed her hungrily and promised to return home soon.

Once the roast was in the oven, she went into the enclosed porch on the west side of the house and lay down for a quick catnap.

It was the smell that woke her. Astrid was not used to having to remember things—there was always a nanny or a servant or a social secretary to remind her that it was time to start getting dressed, and timetables had never been of any particular interest to her. She gasped and reached for her milky throat and a panic set in over the lost hours.

Night had come since she lay her head down.

“Damn!” she exclaimed for emphasis, before pushing herself off the couch and rushing from the library. The hall was already redolent with the strong odor of burned meat. The smell was stronger in the kitchen—but not strong enough, she was irritated to realize, to wake Len the cook, who was asleep on a chair, his real leg and peg leg splayed forward, his head tipped back, his several chins quivering with each snore.

“Oh!” she cried in frustration, as she pulled down the oven door and her soft skin was met with a blast of heat. She coughed, and then her heart sank at the sight of what was supposed to have been a very special dinner.

Len came lurchingly to. “What is it?”

“My roast! My roast!” Astrid reached forward to grab it.

“Careful.” Len came hobbling over and elbowed her aside. He pulled the pan out, using—Astrid couldn't help but notice, even at the height of her frenzy—an old and probably dirty white undershirt. “That'll burn you bad.”

“Well, why didn't you warn me it needed to be taken out?” she half wailed, half admonished.

Len chuckled, which only worsened her irritation. Otherwise he made no answer.

“Oh, it's ruined!” She balled her fists and stamped her foot like a child.

“No, no—it's not ruined,” he replied, still with more amusement in his voice than she thought necessary. He inclined his weight forward over the roast, and with a large knife began to scrape at the charred bits. Astrid watched him skeptically, hands on hips, but as the seconds passed, she saw he was right—the meat came to look merely browned soon enough, and even its odors began to seem more appetizing than otherwise.

“I'm sorry,” she said, with some difficulty, twisting her engagement ring on her finger. By the second utterance, she found it easier to say. “I'm
so
sorry,” she gushed, “this is new to me, you know, cooking roasts and all, and I really should have asked for your help in the first place!”

“Oh, that's all right,” Len said in a slow, amiable way, grinning wide to reveal an incomplete set of teeth. “My first piece of advice,” he continued, turning and hobbling toward a small closet, “is that you put this on.”

When he returned he was holding a long white cotton apron, which he put over her head. Astrid, smiling gratefully, tied the strings behind her back.

“Now, what else had you planned?”

“Baked potatoes and a salad of romaine hearts with Russian dressing.” Her voice had been proud until she saw his frown. “Is that bad?”

“No, no. The salad will be easy. It's only—baked potatoes take an hour maybe. You haven't started them yet, have you?”

She shook her head, and for some silly reason found herself wishing that a fat old man with a leg and several teeth missing would not look so terribly disappointed in her.

“I tell you what we do. I'll show you how to cut them real thin, and then we'll fry them—they'll be ready before you know it, and Charlie'll think they taste better, too.”

“Thank you!” She beamed and followed him to the big butcher block under the window. After a minute, her gratitude waned slightly—she found that potatoes, when she sliced them, oozed strangely and slipped under her inexperienced fingers, and that she had a difficult time cutting them as thinly as Len was cutting his. After a moment she stepped aside and let her imagination drift to her tall, handsome man, his big, impressive features, and what a nice thing it was to be his little woman, waiting for him at home. . . . It was all very well for Cordelia to be running around opening speakeasies and Letty to be preparing herself for a life onstage. Evenings spent in the crook of Charlie's arm seemed like just exactly enough for her.

Before she knew it, Len's pudgy hands had turned a bag of potatoes into a high pile of pale slivers. “I'm sorry! Now you've done everything.”

“I don't mind, ma'am.”

“I know, but you see, I was utterly convinced that I would show you I'm not just a spoiled girl who can't do anything for herself, and now I've just gone and proven it to you!”

“I think you're perfect just as you are, ma'am.”

“Keep saying things like that,” she said, leaning forward and breathing in the thick air that rises up from anything being fried, “and you'll have to contend with me in your kitchen every night.”

“Here,” he said, handing her the frying pan's handle and showing her how to thrust it forward so that the potatoes sailed into the air and then landed, miraculously, just as they had been, except flipped to the other side. Gamely she tried it, although a few potatoes were lost in the process, and none of them landed quite so neatly. “There, see, you ain't so bad a cook. You keep an eye on that, I'll make your Russian dressing. No need to flip again—just make sure they don't stick to the bottom, all right?”

“All right.”

As he moved across the kitchen and began taking things out of the icebox, she bent again and watched in amazement how quickly the potatoes had become pretty and golden. Only a few minutes ago they were just pasty unappetizing things, but already she had made them look so crunchy and delicious. It pleased her to think that soon they would be on one of the elegant china plates she had borrowed from Marsh Hall, and that Charlie would be eating them and marveling at what a tasty supper she had made him—he would be proud of her, and she would be proud of him, and they would drink champagne and waste away the evening in their favorite company. Perhaps she would have a little too much to drink so that he would have to carry her upstairs, and then . . . a shudder went up her spine at the thought.

Smiling daffily to herself, she reached into the pan, grasped a hot sliver, and popped it in her mouth. But the bite burned her tongue, and it didn't taste as good as she'd hoped. She reached for the saltshaker that rested on the back of the oven, and tipped it over the frying pan.

“Oh!” She drew in her breath when the top came off entirely and a white pile fell over the potatoes.

“What is it?” Len called from across the kitchen.

“Nothing!” She moved so that her body hid her mistake. She recapped the salt and shook the pan the way he had shown her. To her relief, the salt quickly mixed in, adding only a rough, glistening surface to the golden circles.

When she heard the sound of car wheels against gravel, she smiled involuntarily at the notion that Charlie was nearby, and she looked over her shoulder toward the hall, her fluffy blond hair brushing against her jawbone in expectation. The naked skin of her shoulders became alert. She wiped her hands on a damp cloth that was hanging from a nail on the wall and stepped away from the stove.

“I'll be right back,” she announced, and passed out of the kitchen without looking back. Her eyes were focused on the front door and her sense that she was about to see Charlie was so strong that she did not at first notice how unhurried and light, how unlike Charlie's, were the footsteps outside.

“Oh, Charlie, there you are!” she said happily as the door opened. But it wasn't Charlie. It was the new man, the one with the long, dark lashes, and his features were not as relaxed as usual. His name was Victor—she had not wanted to know it, but he had rudely insisted on telling her that day he drove her back to Marsh Hall.

“Something's happened.” He looked away from her and shook his head as though he were disappointed.

“But where's Charlie? I'm making him dinner,” she said indignantly. Her lips trembled and her brow knitted up, but she went on with conviction: “A roast!”

“Something's happened,” he repeated.

“What?” she shrieked. “What's happened?!”

“I'm sorry.” He gave her a smile that was wavering but warm. “He told me not to leave your side tonight.
I'll
have dinner with you.”

She took a few small steps toward the door as though she might see Charlie out there and be able to harangue him into staying with her. When she thought of what she had planned to give him, the humiliation began to build inside her. All of her fear and anticipation fizzled with the realization that her gift wasn't even going to be acknowledged, much less appreciated. “What about my roast?” she wanted to demand of him again, but she knew that would sound childish.

Victor lingered on the threshold another moment as the last car left the property at breakneck speed and the tall iron gates were sealed shut. “Damn,” he muttered.

“Well, I don't much like it either!” Astrid crossed her arms over her chest and pressed her lips together in a pout. The dress was silky against her bare arms, which only reminded her what a special evening it was to have been, and of which she was now deprived.

He turned slowly, lingering in the doorway, his blue work shirt tucked into denim pants, and assessed her with his shrouded eyes. The face he wore seemed to indicate that something had been taken from him, rather than from her, and for a moment she forgot to be mad at Charlie and was mad instead at the man he'd left to babysit her. She let out a small growl of frustration and twirled round and stomped back into the kitchen.

“Everything is ruined, we'll have to—” She broke off when she realized that Len was not in the kitchen. Behind her she heard the door swing open, and knew that Victor had followed her. The muscles of her shoulders tightened in fury, and she paused, waiting for him to say something so that she could throw it back. He was silent, however—she couldn't even hear him breathing. After a few seconds she began to doubt that he was there at all. But her pride would not allow her to turn and look, so instead she strode forward, across the well-worn planks of the kitchen, and into the formal dining room that was to have been the setting for her last evening as a virgin.

“Len!” she gasped in surprise when she saw the one-legged man in the dining room, grinning over the table setting. Two china plates piled with handsome cuts of roast and beautifully browned potatoes sat with a bowl of green salad and a silver gravy boat between them. The candles she had earlier placed in silver candelabras had been lit, and the flowers that she'd sent Danny out for that morning were still in the white ceramic vases, just as she'd arranged them. It was a gorgeous table—just as pretty as her hopes—and this made her sense of abandonment that much more acute.

“It's all ruined.” Her tone had transformed from anger to defeat.

Len's grin faded and his voice got grave when he said, “Something's happened?”

“Oh!” she screamed in frustration. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

Victor came in behind her, and this time she knew for sure because he collided with her—gently, but nonetheless knocking her off kilter when he met her shoulder. This only worsened her humiliation.

“What's happened?” Len asked him.

“What's happened is that the young lady has lost her dinner date.” Victor's manner had changed since that low curse on the threshold of Dogwood a few minutes before—he sounded ingratiating now, almost ready to laugh.

Len, sensing Victor's intentions, smiled again, and said: “Well, there is a fine meal here, and two young people to enjoy it. Should I get you kids some champagne?”

In fact, Astrid would have liked a glass of champagne at that particular moment, but she was no dumbbell, and she could tell when she was being pandered to. They were both eager to keep Charlie's girl happy, to keep her in line so that the boss could go on doing whatever it was he did, and this knowledge infuriated her even more. She would rather not have made a scene, but more than anything she wanted not to shed tears in front of Charlie's toughs—particularly not in front of the grizzled old cook—and the vision of all her labors and the knowledge that they would go to waste were conspiring to choke up her throat.