The Age of Desire (16 page)

“You are looking elegant tonight,” he proclaims. “The Paris Mrs. Wharton is very different from the country gentlewoman I spent time with in Lenox.”

“Just my wardrobe,” she says.

“No. Far more than that. I like both women especially well. But they are completely different. This Parisian woman is a more exciting, younger version of the woman who owns the big white house in the Berkshires.”

His interest drips over her like honey.

In the private red-velvet-curtained theatre
baignoire
, she feels the pressure of his knee against hers. It’s hard to ignore. The heat of his pulsing blood! However will she focus on the play?

“If you’ll allow me to say,” he says suddenly, intimately turning to her, “you and Teddy are a surprising match.” His voice is soft and quizzical.

It’s such an intimate comment. She blanches at its directness.

“Yes. We haven’t much to share. Except the dogs. And travel. He doesn’t read literature. He only tolerates light theatre. I guess we’re known as an odd pair.”

“That’s what others think. What do
you
think?”

“I think . . .” She looks up at his blue eyes. “I think I was very young when I chose him.”

He observes her for a long moment. “Henry said there never was . . . a strong bond between you. Never much of”—he clears his throat—“
anything
between you.”

It’s obvious what he’s implying. She’s certainly told Henry too much. Henry’s avuncular style makes one think he’s the perfect receptacle for confession. But a receptacle that leaks.

“Henry should learn to keep his confidences,” she says. Her voice must be too cool, for Fullerton shifts in his chair, stops questioning her and begins to read the program.

“You were very kind to him,” she offers after a while.

“Henry?”

“Teddy.”

“He doesn’t seem a bad fellow,” Fullerton said. “But tell me this: why is it our class is prone to naming men children’s names?” he asked.

“You don’t have a child’s name.”

“No. I put the kibosh on Willie long ago.” He smiles to himself.

“I think I shall call you Willie,” she says.

“If you do, I’ll call you Puss, the way Teddy does. And make sure everyone else does too. I see how it rankles you.”

She laughs. “Just try it.”

The lights dim. The play is wonderful, and Fullerton’s absorption in it thrills her. When he enjoys a line, or a part, he glances at her and they share the moment. Or sometimes he asks her interpretation of the Italian, especially when he can’t decipher the heavy Sicilian accent. His presence, his enthusiasm, his generosity in sharing it more than doubles her pleasure.

At one point in the play, Esmeralda, the young woman, finds herself so overcome with passion that she discovers she can’t send her lover away.

“That’s something,” Fullerton whispers to her, so close she feels his lips against her ear, “I’d wager you wouldn’t know anything about.”

She shivers and, not knowing how to answer him, glances into his eyes. He doesn’t flinch or turn away as most men would. He absorbs her gaze, invites it. And at that moment, with their eyes locked, Edith feels positively pierced.

That night when she gets home, nearly breathless with joy, she writes in her Line-a-Day diary, “Unforgettable hours,” and sleeps only fitfully, recalling the pressure of his leg, his scent, his smile and the sensation of those lips on her ear. Later, she thinks that it was the most intimate night of her life.

In the next few weeks, she invites him to lectures, luncheons, but he is busy, and only occasionally says yes.

One Thursday late in February, he attends Rosa’s salon. It’s an odd springlike day, and he arrives looking flushed. Edith hasn’t expected him and finds herself undone by his presence. She even loses the thread of a conversation she’s having with Rosa.

“Hello,” she says when he finally makes his way to her. “I had no idea you were coming tonight.”

“Nor did I,” he says. “I seemed to have been drawn by unseen forces.” He sparkles at her like a cut stone in the sun. He’s come to Rosa’s to see her! she thinks. But he doesn’t spend much time talking to her in the drawing room. Instead, he joins a discussion of the German policy toward immigrants. And when they’re called into dinner, he’s ushered to a chair on the other side of Rosa and too far away for eye contact. Worse, he’s seated next to Paul Hervieu’s attractive young cousin, a Frenchwoman, delicate and soignée, with large dark eyes, a slender neck and tiny, perfect white teeth. Though the dinner conversation includes, as usual, the whole table, Edith watches, her face growing hot as Fullerton bends to whisper things to Paul’s cousin. It’s the way he looks at the girl as he shares his asides that catches Edith in a grip of possessiveness. She knows she has no claim on him. Yet he’s gracing Hervieu’s young cousin with the radiant attention he had emitted that night on the terrace at The Mount. And in the baignoire during the Italian play. She tries to take her eyes off them. She attempts to join the conversation, to little avail.

That night, in bed, she feels grief-stricken. What had made her think that dazzling, handsome Morton Fullerton, younger, and unmarried, could ever see Edith Wharton in any other way than as a friend?

In the morning, she wakes with the same sense of mourning. And matters are made worse by Teddy, who is lately sinking deeper and deeper into a dolorous funk. This morning, he won’t get out of bed at all. Catherine Gross comes to her door literally wringing her hands: Alfred White is worried. Mr. Wharton is not himself.

When Edith steps into Teddy’s room, he’s slumped in bed, awake but with his eyes at half-mast. He’s hardly eaten for days, though Edith has hired a new cook and asked her to try some of his favorite American dishes. His skin has taken on a gray cast, which makes his reddish mustache look enormous and pinned on. His eyes, through their lowered lids, glisten like those of a cornered animal. Gripping the covers tightly, his hands look mottled and dry. He says he can’t get up. It’s his gout. But she knows it’s the same neurasthenia, which overtook him four years earlier: nervous depression, exhaustion and general hopelessness.

“Then you needn’t get out of bed at all,” she tells him soothingly. “We’ll have the maid deliver lunch on a tray. And you simply stay here and rest.” Not struggling against his moods is what finally pulled him out of his neurasthenia last time.

She finds herself wishing to go back to bed herself. Concern over Teddy looms between her and her fiction this morning. So she writes Henry and Sally, each of whom would be sympathetic to her tale of woe, and then grabs an umbrella to go out in the rain for a walk. Every fiber of her is restless and pained. This is her life: Teddy’s misery and the rain, the failure of
The Fruit of the Tree
, a sense of homelessness: she no longer can live in New York, The Mount has lost its shimmer and Paris seems tainted now by her misinterpretation of Fullerton’s interest. What a fool she’s been to believe that for once she could have a real life!

The following day, she suggests that Teddy travel to Cannes on the train: the Curtises, longtime acquaintances, have invited them both for a week at their villa near the sea. She is relieved that he has some enthusiasm for the plan. In the past, Edith would have left Paris with him, even fussed over him, though it would have meant giving up her own plans. But this time she tells herself he’ll be happier without her impatient presence. The Curtises think he’s an entertaining fellow, a good sport. Even though it’s too cold for the beach, they’ll get him out for a walk on the promenade and ply him with good wine. They’ll make him forget his complaints. She imagines him returning with color in his cheeks.

“Do you really not want to come, Puss? I don’t know why you want me to go off without you.”

“I’ve made promises to people here. And I want to see you get better. A nice visit will do you good. You don’t need me along. I’ve got my book to write. And Anna’s here. If you want, I’ll ride with you to the train station.”

He nods grimly. “As if that’s a reasonable substitute.”

Teddy knows he’s being sent away. When she loads him onto the train, she feels she is shipping her recalcitrant child off to boarding school. He leans shyly out the train window to wave good-bye as the train glides away, until they can no longer see each other and she is alone. She takes a deep breath and stands quietly until she is the last person on the platform.

Alone in the motorcar, she feels weightless, gutted. What will she do with herself? At least she can work on her book. She thinks of Undine Spragg; what would
she
have done having unloaded a husband? Found herself another.

Back on the Rue de Varenne, Edith pursues her own answer: a petit bleu is waiting. She opens it without taking the time to find her silver letter opener, tearing it, much to her dismay.

Dear,
[Oh, his neat, tight, perfect handwriting!]

You left the Comtesse’s the other night without saying good-bye. I trust you are all right?

WMF

It took two days for him to write. But he has addressed her as “Dear”! She charges down the hallway to her desk, then pulls out a blue slip and writes him back,

Cher,

Thank you for your concern. I needed to get back to Teddy, who is still doing poorly. I’m sorry I didn’t take the time to part more gracefully. I have just this morning sent him off to Cannes where he can get some rest with friends.

Do you know the village of Herblay? Where our dear friend Hortense Allart raised her mighty pen? Since I am on my own for the next few days, I wonder if you would like to explore it with me. Saturday, perhaps? Shall we hunt for the house where she served up her womanly wiles? Cook will drive us and we can make a fine day of it—HJ will be wildly jealous.

Yrs. EW

Henry and Morton and Edith and nearly everyone in Paris have been simultaneously reading a newly published biography of Hortense Allart. Like George Sand, and also from the first half of the nineteenth century, Allart lived a life of free love and still managed to pen histories of Florence and Athens, essays on religion, openly sexual novels and sizzling erotic letters. She did as she pleased, refused to marry, slept with French literary lights such as Chateaubriand and Sainte-Beuve and gave birth to two children by two different men. Later in life, she finally married—an architect who tried to control her in every way and made her weep daily. “A lesson to us all,” Henry wrote. “Of course, Fullerton and I have already heeded this by avoiding the altar altogether.”

It’s a blustery February day when Edith and Morton set out for Herblay. Paris is festooned with ice, and even with travel rugs tucked in around each of them, the motorcar is so chilly they sit close in the backseat to preserve body heat. At one point, their gloved hands, pressed down onto the seat, accidently touch and he wraps his pinky finger around hers. It feels innocent and kind, something a child might do to express affection. And yet his merest touch infuses Edith with heat and hope.

They pause for lunch in a small town along the way at an inn called Au Bon Coin. It is indeed a good corner. Edith thinks she has never tasted anything better than the hearty chicken in red wine, tarragon and tomato sauce, though she is so sated by Morton’s presence she can’t eat more than a few bites or drink more than a few sips of wine. His appetite seems unaffected. Digging into his boeuf, he talks at length about their “dear friend Hortense,” and how it would be wonderful if only she would break through the walls of time and greet them at Herblay, “a baby at each breast.” Edith laughs. She feels again like a girl in her teens, self-conscious and glowing with feeling, full of stinging desire.