Evergreen (48 page)

She blinked herself back into the present. Theo was waiting for a reply, and so she said lightly, “It’s hard to see yourself, isn’t it? But—well, I like books; that’s the main way I’m like my mother. And I’m sort of, more than sort of, religious. Like my father.”

“Religious! You must know, that’s something quite new to me. We never thought about it at home. Nor in the house of my father-in-law, Eduard. Oh, you called him Eli, didn’t you? I forgot for the moment. Your Uncle Eli.”

“You think it’s ridiculous?”

“No, no, of course not!”

“Tell the truth. I won’t mind.”

“All right then, I’ll tell you. I find it rather charming, rather picturesque. Perhaps I’m even a little sorry that I have no feeling for it myself.”

“But you must have. Not the form, perhaps. And forms change, anyway. Like Papa being Orthodox and now he
goes to Reform; at first he was shocked by the thought, but now he likes it tremendously. So what I mean is,” she said earnestly, “it’s not the form but what you feel that counts. And I’m sure you must feel the truth of all the things we believe in!”

“Such as?”

“Well, you’ve seen better than I have what a nation without religion, that’s to say without morals, can do.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true. I just never thought to connect religion with those events.”

“I guess when you’re in the midst of—what you were in, you can’t do much thinking. You just want to live through it,” she said gently.

“You don’t even care much about living through it. One of the feelings I had, as a matter of fact, was guilt that I
was
alive.”

“I understand.”

“And then when it’s over and the world begins moving again, you start to feel angry. All that ugliness and waste of years! When you might have been—growing raspberries!”

“I hope you don’t still feel it was a waste … what you did, I mean.”

“No, I have a better perspective on it since I’ve been in America. All war is criminal waste, but in a purely personal sense I didn’t waste the years. I spent myself with profit. I fought back.”

He got up and walked to the end of the room, pulled a book from a shelf and replaced it. “So now, so now I just want to live. I want to work and listen to music, and to the devil with politics and getting ahead! I just want
real
things. Like looking at a woman with marvelous eyes and a lovely blue dress. That is a lovely dress, Iris. It’s the color of your name.”

“The New Look,” she said shyly. “My mother bought it.”

“Your mother buys your clothes?”

“Oh, no! This was a present. She knew I wouldn’t buy it,
I only shop when I have to. I’m not interested in clothes.”

“So? What are you interested in?”

What she had to say was so stilted, formal and dreary. Yet she knew nothing else to say. “I always thought I’d like to write. I tried short stories, but I got too many rejections and I’ve given up. I play piano too, but not well enough to do anything much with it. So I’ll say I’m interested in teaching, because it’s what I do best.”

“And you’re happy.”

“Oh, I like it. They tell me I’m good at it and I feel that I am. Except that these children don’t really
need
me. They’re so well cared for already; they have everything, and what I do for them is—” She was talking too much, and she finished abruptly, “I guess I really want to do something more important, only I don’t know what.”

“I am imagining you as a child,” Theo said irrelevantly, “a very solemn little girl.”

“I’m sure I was.” Still am. Solemn.

“Tell me about your childhood.”

“There’s nothing much to tell. It was very quiet. I read a lot. It was almost a Victorian life in the twentieth century.”

Why was she talking so much? This man drew the words from her.

“I sometimes think I should have been a Victorian. In the early part of the century, before the factories and billboards, when the world was still green and lovely.”

“It’s the factories that have made this beautiful house possible, you know. A hundred and twenty-five years ago you would have been living in a hovel, or a Polish ghetto more than likely.”

“That’s what my father says. And of course you’re right. I’m just given to silly talk, sometimes.”

“It’s not silly to reveal yourself. Goodness knows I’ve just been doing it.”

Theo laid his head against the back of the chair. She shouldn’t have reminded him of Europe and the war. The
rain began again, splashing on the heavy leafage at the window, and the room was quiet.

Presently he stood up and went to the piano. “I’ll play something jolly. Have you ever heard this?”

He played a teasing little waltz, played it with a sparkle, and swung around on the bench. “I’ll bet you can’t guess the title of that.”

“I’ll bet I can. It’s Satie. He wrote three of them, called ‘His Waist,’ ‘His Pince Nez,’ ‘His Legs.’”

They burst out laughing, and then Theo’s laugh broke off. He stared at her.

“You’re the most extraordinary girl!”

“I’m not. I happen to have a crazy kind of memory, that’s all.”

He stood up and came to where she was sitting. He took her hands and pulled her lightly to her feet. “Iris, I’m going to say it right out while I have the courage. Why shouldn’t we be married? Can you think of a good reason why we shouldn’t be?”

She wasn’t certain she had heard. She stared at him.

“Because I think we go so well together. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t been happy like this for so long.”

Was it, could it be, some sort of cruel wit, some kind of mockery that passed for a game in sophisticated circles? Still she didn’t answer.

“I’m clumsy. I should have done something before this to prepare you. I’m sorry.”

He was looking into her face, forcing her eyes to his, which were troubled and soft. She saw it was not a game. It was true.

She began to cry.

He put her cheek to his and kissed her forehead. “I don’t know what that means,” he said. “Does it mean yes or no?”

“I think—I think it means yes,” she whispered and felt her tears wet on his cheek.

“Iris, my dear, I want you to be sure. Tell me you are.”

“I am sure. Yes, yes, I am.”

He pulled out his handkerchief and dried her eyes. “Well be very, very happy. I promise we will.”

She nodded, laughed, and her tears kept pouring.

Theo, understand why I am crying: because I so hoped this might happen and knew it couldn’t; because of being almost thirty years old; because of the narrow bed in which I sleep alone. And now you are here.

Iris has done something wonderful. There is a murmur of flattering laughter all through the house. Celeste carries in the packages of gifts, the silver and the crystal in their tissue paper wraps. Her mother works at her desk and on the telephone over the menus, the invitations, the bridal veil. (It is an embarrassment to be dressed like a teen-age bride at an age when other women are taking their children to kindergarten.) At least, her mother will keep things fairly simple, although not as simple as Iris wants. Papa would have her come riding in on a white elephant, its howdah embroidered in brilliants. He is so happy, engrossed with his plans for Theo’s new office. The blueprints are spread on the big desk in the round room; Theo and Papa confer over them after dinner. Papa is ecstatic because she is marrying a doctor. A doctor from Vienna! And now there will be a son in the house again, vigorous and bright and full of hope, as Maury was once. Our Maury, so long ago. Poor Papa! Poor good Papa!

It is almost as if Theo were a trophy she has won. She is ashamed of the joy in the house. She is ashamed of herself for begrudging them their joy. Her heart beats faster almost all the time now.

Sometimes she thinks she is dreaming the whole thing.

They lay on the sand. It was a perfect, silken Florida afternoon.

She had thought, when they were alone in that first room together, that she would fail. She had read so much, had bought and hidden marriage manuals and Havelock
Ellis. It seemed there was so much to know about what, after all, had been done long before books were written!

Her mother had asked, while looking at the floor, “Is there anything you want to know?” And had been relieved when Iris had told her there wasn’t.

It had seemed from the reading that there were so many ways in which you could please or displease, succeed or not; and if she failed, if she did not satisfy, what then?

But she had not failed. It was the marvelous delight, the most total merging of spirit and flesh that could have been imagined, and she had certainly imagined it enough! To have waited so long! That was the only pity, to have waited so long!

Theo said lazily, “You look pleased.”

“I am. Pleased and proud. Smug and proud.”

“Proud?”

“To be your wife.”

“You’re a darling, Iris. And puzzling, in a very nice way.”

“What way?”

“I’d thought, you see, you gave the impression that you might be hesitant or timid in bed.”

“And I’m not?”

He laughed. “You know very well you’re not! I’m a very, very lucky man!”

He took her hand and they turned over to burn their backs.

“This day is too perfect to know what to do with it,” Iris said.

“It seems to me you know quite well what to do with it. And with the nights too,” he answered.

“When I was a little girl,” she began.

“You still are a little girl.”

“No, but really, listen, I want to tell you. I was about seven and there was a doll that I had been wanting. It had a pink velvet coat with white fur, and long, dark curls. I remember it exactly; it was the incarnation of doll. Do you know what I mean? And I had been wanting it so long.
Then on the morning of my birthday, when I found it sitting on my chair, I had such a queer feeling, not disappointment, but a kind of ebbing away.… It was so perfect! I didn’t want a speck of dirt to touch it, and still I knew that it would, that with each second some of its perfection was passing away.”

“Such sorrowful thoughts on a day like this!” Theo protested.

But she persisted. She wanted him to understand. “I’m not sorrowful. It’s so wonderful that I want to keep it, remember it always. Theo, someday years from now well look out on a soggy winter street and well talk about how we lay here in the sun predicting how well be looking out on a soggy winter street—”

“You’re thinking about years from now and I’m thinking about tonight. I’m hoping they serve that fish soup again. It’s the best I ever ate.”

“Theo, darling, tell me again, tell me you love me.”

“I love you, Iris. I do love you.”

She raised her arm toward the sky. Her skin was turning reddish gold.

“What are you looking at? Your ring? I wish you hadn’t insisted on a plain band. Let me at least buy a diamond one for evening.”

“No.”

“Is it because you think I can’t afford it? I can.”

“It’s not that. It’s just that I’m never going to take this one off.”

“Never?”

“Never. I know it sounds superstitious or something, but this is the one I wore when we were married and now it’s like another part of myself.”

“That’s primitive.”

“Maybe. All I know is, something happened to me when you put that ring on my finger. And I know that if the ring ever comes off all of my life will come loose and I shall be left floating, without an anchor.”

“All right, then, no diamonds.”

The clouds moved slowly; the sun poured on their joined hands.

“I’m falling asleep,” Theo said.

Iris closed her eyes. Sparks whirled through her lids, a Catherine wheel of ruby, mauve and peacock blue. So beautiful! Life, and the vibrating earth! I want to have it all, see it all, be everywhere at once. I want to hear all the music ever written and never die. Let Theo never die, just stay like this in the sunlight, forever and forever and forever.

Cousin Chris stowed the oars, letting the boat dance of its own will. There was something different about him today and it disturbed Eric. Usually when Chris came it was so jolly. He didn’t visit very often; he had a wife and children and a job, although you wouldn’t think it to look at him. He seemed too athletic and quick, just too young for all that sort of thing. Still, he had been Eric’s mother’s favorite cousin, so he couldn’t really be that young. They’d used to have great adventures at Chris’s house in Maine when she was a girl. Like the time they’d got caught in a fog on the bay—

But Chris had no stories for Eric now. He bent forward, his sober face looming large, while behind his head, far at the end of the lake, the hotel buildings and the golf course lay spread like a toy village on green felt.

“So I told your grandmother. We had a long talk last night—”

“I heard you downstairs,” Eric said.

“You heard what we said?”

“No, just your voices. But I knew it was something serious. I thought probably you were talking about me.”

“Yes. Well.” Chris had anxious, troubled eyes. He began speaking fast, as if he wanted to get all this over with. “You’re thirteen, almost grown-up. I told your grandmother you’re old enough to handle the truth. Women never think you are, but—”