The Age of Desire (15 page)

“What do you say,” she asks after he’s lit her cigarette, “shall we go down and sit on that bank? There’s no snow right there.”

He nods, and she lifts the heavy plaid rug from the motorcar. The view from the bank is breathtaking. Indigo mountains braid the horizon; fallen and falling red and yellow leaves embroider the landscape. Snow sits in every crevice but the one they’ve intended as their perch. But before she sits down, she spots it.

“Look. What a sight!” she says, pointing as Fullerton lays the blanket on the ground. A beautiful little witch hazel shrub is shouting with fresh red blooms against the blue-white snow. Instead of the customary yellow flowers, tiny crimson rags undulate on its twigs, like banners of happiness. She crosses the sugary white to snap off a sprig. When she brings it back to Fullerton, he takes the stem between his fingers.

“The proverbial late bloomer, Mrs. Wharton,” he says. He glances at her and smiles.

Does he have any idea how empty her marriage is? Does he sense that she is beginning to wonder whether he is the one to fill that emptiness with belated beauty, so that her life might finally flower, like the beguiling and brazen witch hazel?

“I imagine the color of that witch hazel is not so different from the color of your hair as a child,” he says tenderly. “Am I right?”

“Yes,” she says. “It was red. It gave me no end of grief.”

“Well now, it gives
me
no end of pleasure. It’s the color of maple syrup,” he says. “I wish I could take it down and see it in the sun. Does it ripple?”

Edith feels herself blush. “Yes. It’s wavy when I take it down.” She’s forty-five years old. But in Morton Fullerton’s presence, she feels as sensitive and untried as an eighteen-year-old. Deliciously uncertain. She has spent her adult years working to be impressive, imposing, so that people might take her seriously. How has he torn it all down with a few impertinent words?

There is much noise up the hill as Cook and Eliot haul a second set of chains from the boot of the car and drop them in coils on the ground.

When Morton hands back the witch hazel sprig, his hand caresses hers. A silvery dart of pleasure pierces Edith just beneath the ribs, then runs like cold water to her very center. The air is punctuated by the sounds of winter birds and the stirring of fallen leaves.

She self-consciously tucks the sprig into the pocket of her duster, her hands shaking visibly. She’s relieved to see that Cook and Eliot are caught up in the job of running the chains beneath the car’s wheels and haven’t been watching.

While Fullerton glances away, she furtively takes in his strong profile and sky-tinged eyes. When those eyes turn to her once more, she doesn’t think she’s ever felt another’s gaze so keenly.

“If HJ were here,” he says, “I suppose he’d compose a fifty-nine-word, twelve-part sentence about this moment,” Fullerton says. “He’d say,” and he drops his voice, adding the slow exactitude that makes Henry’s voice a caricature, “‘Despite the late snow, and the air which was too chill to enjoy—though Fullerton chose to enjoy it nonetheless—and because of the company of the lady, a company which he would later recount to his friends with much pleasure, and think about in the quiet of his room, he felt an unfamiliar wave of gratification, which overtook him and made him suddenly note the slightest, most extraordinary detail of the assignation.’”

Edith smiles. “Fifty-nine or so beautiful words, Mr. Fullerton,” she says.

“Henry. Call me Henry.”

“Ah, but what would Morton Fullerton write about this moment?” she asks.

“I’d write . . .” His voice changes from playful to sincere. The shift is seismic. And his mouth, which a moment ago was pursed with irony, softens. “Mr. Fullerton was perfectly content in her company.” Then he glances away again, as though he recognizes he’s revealed too much. She imagines having a photograph of this very moment. A caption written in ink below would read, “Edith and Morton on a snowy bank in the Berkshires.” She envisions sliding it into the embrace of an etched silver frame, reaching for it on lonely nights.

“Contentment is underrated, isn’t it?” she says.

“Yes. It’s a very fine thing. One doesn’t know until one no longer has it.” She wonders: is he so malcontent with his life? Henry recently said Fullerton has much on his mind. How she would like to ease it.

She glances up the hill to see that Cook and Eliot have secured the chains around two of the tires. They seem to be having a fine time with the task. She rises, brushing the damp from her duster, then peers out over the shimmering valley. It seems to hold, like a cup, all the colors of the universe.

After Fullerton’s visit, and Edith’s trip to Connecticut, Anna notes a change in Edith’s routine. Usually she doesn’t wake until Agnes, her maid, arrives to rouse her, but now Agnes reports she finds her each morning sitting up in bed, already littering her bed with pages. Ethel, the cook, mentions that Edith seems to have stopped eating. Her plates return to the kitchen seemingly untouched.

“She didn’t eat any breakfast at all today, and I made her pancakes . . . which she never fails to eat. Is she ill again?”

“Are you coming down with something?” Anna asks. “Are you feverish?” She places her own cool hand on Edith’s forehead.

“No. I’m quite well. Why on earth do you ask?”

“I just thought perhaps you’re feeling queer,” Anna ventures.

“Not in the least,” Edith snaps.

“It’s not your allergies?” Anna asks. “Sometimes this time of year . . .”

“It’s nothing, Tonni. Stop fussing over me.” Her words are stern, but she finishes them with a smile. She is certainly smiling more often lately.

A few days later, intent on a scene in her book, forming her lips around the dialogue, Edith looks up and Anna is standing there with the mail. Scribner’s writes that early sales of
The Fruit of the Tree
, her first novel since
The House of Mirth
, are not as promising as Edith had hoped. Another letter is covered with Sally’s spidery penmanship, and then there is a thick cream envelope postmarked “Brockton, Massachusetts.” Edith waits for Anna to leave before she slices it open. A sprig of witch hazel slips from the envelope. A rare scarlet, just like the bush on the hillside. The note from Fullerton is simple and gracious—about how much he enjoyed his stay at The Mount, the aroma of the pines and the game of fetch in the snow. And how deeply honored he feels to have had the chance to become truly acquainted with a woman as brilliant and special as Edith Wharton.

Later, Edith pulls down a bound book of blank pages that was given to her many years earlier. She tears out the five leaves of a diary she began long ago, and then, sitting at her desk, takes up her pen and writes:

The Life Apart (L’ame close.)

The Mount. October 29th, 1907

If you had not enclosed that sprig of wych-hazel in your note I should not have opened this long-abandoned book; for the note in itself might have meant nothing—would have meant nothing to me—beyond the inference that you had a more “personal” accent than week-end visitors usually put into their leave-takings. But you sent the wych-hazel—& sent it without a word—thus telling me (as I chose to think!) that you knew what was in my mind when I found it blooming on that wet bank in the woods, where we sat together & smoked while the chains were put on the wheels of the motor.

And so it happens that, finding myself –after so long!—with someone to talk to, I take up this empty volume, in which long ago, I made two spasmodic attempts to keep a diary. For I had no one but myself to talk to, & it is absurd to write down what one says to one’s self; but now I shall have the illusion that I am talking to you, & that—as when I picked the wych-hazel—something of what I say will somehow reach you.

Then she picks up the still-crimson sprig between her fingers, twirls it in wonder and settles it into her newly begun journal.

SIX

LATE AUTUMN 1907

A
gainst Teddy’s wishes, Edith arranges for the household to return to Paris far earlier than planned. They aren’t even going to enjoy Christmas at The Mount—a tradition only recently established, but that she and Teddy have enjoyed so much. Still, the thought of Christmas in the City of Lights thrills her.

“I wonder if it will feel quite like Christmas,” Anna says hesitantly. “All it does is rain in December in Paris.”

But Edith’s eyes glitter. “The shops will be filled with holiday specialties.
Bûche de Noël
. Christmas patés. We’ll bring with us a whole apronful of pinecones to throw on the fire at the Vanderbilts’! It will be the best Christmas we’ve ever had.” Anna admits to herself that she’s looking forward to reuniting with her friends in the common room, and settling back into her own sunny garret beneath the eaves with its comfy bed, cherry eiderdown and rooftop views.

Edith dreams of Tuesday-night salons at Rosa’s, café lunches graced by Paul and Minnie Bourget’s comic banter, a return to the grandeur of George Vanderbilt’s apartment.

Most of all, she envisions Morton Fullerton arriving for tea. She can see him at the door of 58, rue de Varenne, in his full Paris dress, radiant with joie de vivre, his fingers casually caressing hers as he bestows on her the perfect nosegay—a fragrant bunch of early violets. Their eyes will meet with knowing communion. This is her chief fantasy, and nothing strikes her as a more blissful tableau.

Teddy, on the other hand, is furious she’s moved up the date of their departure.

“Without even consulting me, Puss? Have I no say in your plans? You at least used to pretend I did.”

“Well, we
did
discuss it. You just choose to forget.”

“I remember perfectly. And when you brought it up, I said no. I didn’t want to go early. You’re the one who’s chosen to forget.”

“A few more winters in Paris, and you’ll feel just as at home there as you do in New York.”

“Oh really?” he says. “Will they all have learned to speak English by then?”

He slams his book closed, sets it down and leaves the room. She lifts the tome from his ottoman.
Basic Pig Husbandry
.

There’s one more reason Edith wants to leave.
The Fruit of the Tree
has been such a disappointment. Its initial printing of 50,000 copies sold out at once, but the next edition of 30,000 seems to be gathering dust. Since it’s a drama about a mill, about working people, it’s apparently not what her newly minted fans expected after
The House of Mirth
. They want “another glimpse into upper-crust society,” her publisher tells her—a society, Edith notes, that excludes most of them.

“I’ve already written
The House of Mirth
, she laments to Sally when Miss Norton comes for a short visit. “Why must I write it again? Why must one be hung on the same peg forever?”

“It’s reassuring for people to hang their coats on the same peg every time,” Sally offers.

“Be that as it may, I am
not
an old coat.”

Despite Teddy’s grumbling, the Whartons set sail on December 5 replete with servants, dogs and trunks. As soon as they are settled at 58, rue de Varenne, Edith is swept up in her old routines. Tuesdays at Rosa’s, café lunches with the Bourgets, just as she imagined. A walk in the Faubourg with Paul Hervieu. Tea with the Abbé de Mugnier. She feels as though she is coming alive after months in mothballs. Even though
The House of Mirth
is just beginning its run in the
Revue de Paris
, it is instantly an extraordinary success—perhaps the most unexpected triumph the
Revue de Paris
has ever had. It helps Edith forget about the poor reception for
The Fruit of the Tree
.

Anna de Noailles writes that she is in the midst of reading Edith’s “tour de force” in the
Revue
.

Dear Mrs. Wharton, you have robbed me of two nights of sleep already, for which I may never forgive you. As a rule, I only allow lovers to compromise me in such a cruel way.

And then there is Fullerton.

Two weeks in a row, he does not appear at Rosa’s salon. So Edith writes and invites him for tea.

“Mightn’t we see you? You must catch us up on your adventures.” Though she had been certain after the witch hazel sprig that a vigorous correspondence would have arisen between them, all through the autumn he has written only one more vague letter, the sort one might write a very distant acquaintance.

He doesn’t answer for two painful days, but at last she receives a petit bleu—a note sent through the magically fast pneumatic tubes of Paris—that he has been quite busy at the bureau, but can spend an hour with her on Monday. The weekend seems four days long, but at one
P.M.
on Monday, Morton Fullerton arrives at the Whartons’ door as dapper as she had imagined. A breath of lavender emanates from his person as he shrugs off his coat. If he has been overworked, he is nevertheless looking more than well: his cheeks are cheerily stained from the cold. Instead of flowers, he proffers a pale green box of gleaming pastel macarons from Ladurée, the pastry shop on the Rue Royale. “I don’t know why, but I was passing by and the macarons called out to me,” he said. “Maybe I was thinking of HJ. He would have stopped in his tracks for these. Coming here made me think of him. I hope you like macarons.”

“Like a rainbow!” she says, pressing back the flap and glancing with a smile at the tenderly tinted treats. She calls the
bonne
and hands over the box so the delicacies can be arrayed on a plate to serve with their tea.

Edith has dressed as carefully as a bride for Fullerton’s visit. Choosing pearls because she thinks they reflect kindly on her face, and a shirtwaist the color of crushed roses because it makes her feel young, and a soft, and a flattering gray flannel skirt. She often deems herself harsh looking, and she wants to look anything but.

In the drawing room, they sit in a wash of afternoon light. She expects somehow that he will reach out to her, touch her, or speak to her with the familiarity that had marked their last conversation on that bank in the Berkshires. Instead, it’s the more formal Fullerton who graces her sitting room. He doesn’t even meet her eyes. And he speaks mostly of himself. Perhaps he is nervous, she thinks. She offers him one of his macarons, and after some deliberation he chooses a framboise as rosy as his cheeks. But he holds it in his hand without eating, and begins to tell her how disappointed he is with the way things are going at the
Times
. He thinks he should be next in line as bureau chief, and yet no promises have been made. Some days he feels he should just gather his things and leave. She tells him he should write a book.

“A man with your clarity and discrimination could write anything he put his mind to,” she says. He smiles and visibly relaxes in the warmth of her encouragement. He finally bites into the macaron and sighs.

“My favorite taste in all of Paris, to be honest,” he said dreamily. “It wasn’t really because HJ likes these that I stopped and bought them,” he says. “Or for you, dear Edith. In truth I bought them for me.” He looks up at her, and for the first time their eyes reflect each other’s mirth. “I’m a very selfish man,” he says.

“Are you?” she asks. “I can imagine you might be.”

“Women tell me so.”

For a moment, she can see the little boy in him. She’s glimpsed this before: a too-vulnerable, injured child tucked neatly behind the sophisticate. She knows that he might soon conceal this weakness. Yet, while it’s in sight, this side of him elicits feelings in her that she finds strangely stirring.

In short order the look, the openness, is tucked away, and he’s back to complaining about his job. Still, his willingness to let her into his personal worries says he trusts her, wants to be close. Yet when Fullerton consults his pocket watch, stands and says he needs to leave—less than the hour he’d promised her—Edith wonders: has she been wrong about him? Was that sprig of witch hazel nothing more than a kind gesture of remembrance? Did he see her just as a friend, or even worse, a motherly figure? She needs to know.

So, two days later, she invites him to the theatre.

Dear Mr. Fullerton,

Do you care for the Italian theatre—& if yes, will you go with me on the 13th to see La Figlia di Iorio? I am going to as many performances as possible, & as my husband objects to the language, I am obliged to throw myself on the charity of my friends.

We should be very glad if you would dine with us first at 7:30.

Sincerely Yrs.

E. Wharton

It’s true. She’s gone to play after play since she arrived, sometimes with Matilda Gay, who gushes about each and every production she sees no matter how dreadful, or Minnie and Paul, who make fun of the actors afterward, imitating their voices, their walks, their most memorable lines. Once Edith even went with Rosa, whom she had to persuade to leave her house—how rarely Rosa goes out! Rosa told her it was the highlight of her month and Edith made a note to draw her out more often. But to go with Fullerton! And to this particular play! A play about a man who falls in love with his son’s lover—a play that mingles anger and passion, loyalty and betrayal. She senses that although Fullerton says he doesn’t like D’Annunzio, he’ll appreciate the simple drama of this scenario. She desperately wants to share it with him even if it means finally exposing Teddy to him at dinner. It must happen sooner or later.

But that afternoon, Teddy isn’t feeling well. He’s having trouble with his teeth—a throbbing in his back right molars that no dentist can fix, that creates a terrible ache behind his right eye.

“I’m having a deuce of a time determining a specific problem, Monsieur Wharton,” the dentist told him. “But we will pull all the teeth back there, to be safe.” Teddy refused. He doesn’t trust French dentists (or doctors, for that matter). Even the few who speak English. And Edith doubts it will make a difference anyway. She thinks the phantom pain is just a part of Teddy’s melancholia. She’s seen it before: the slow misery that overtakes him. Winnowing into his teeth, his joints. More each day. Until he ends up in bed, writhing. Too miserable to get up. She fears it.

“If you took a walk, got a little fresh air, wouldn’t that help?” she asks.

“What would you know about it?” he barks. The melancholia is always accompanied by a desire to inflict misery on her as well. So she stays away from him as much as she can. She worries how he might act toward Fullerton. But by the time their guest arrives, Teddy is already anesthetized by three glasses of brandy, and is jollier than usual.

Fullerton is ingratiating to Teddy, sitting by the fire with him and giving him almost seductive attention, paying very little consideration to Edith. At dinner he asks question after question about the stables at The Mount, about hunting, about Teddy’s early summers in Bar Harbor and Newport and the people they might know in common. Teddy seems to drink up every moment of his presence. By the time they are to leave for the theatre, Edith is glad to steal Fullerton away for herself. Only in the motorcar does she begin to feel the full beam of Fullerton’s interest.