The Age of Desire (22 page)

“I haven’t heard him say that sort of thing.”

“No, he might not say them to you. . . .”

“But he does to you?”

“He said if he were at The Mount and had his rifles near at hand . . .” Anna can barely set the words one before the other. Her voice, normally sweet and lilting, is heavy and slow.

Edith sets down her pen. “Tonni, he does it to get your attention. Like a child.”

“Are you so certain? I’ve never heard him speak this way before.”

“What should I do? What could I possibly do to help?” Edith snaps.

“He might see the doctor again. And you might spend less time with”—she clears her throat—“Mr. Fullerton.”

Edith hears her breath catch. She takes in Anna’s small, pinched face. Her once-soft lips are narrow now. Her reproachful gaze makes her look years older than Edith. Has Anna ever loved any man? Could she ever understand what Edith feels for Morton? How longing can alter a soul, change a woman forever? How a single kiss as passionate as his could change all expectations?

“What makes you think I spend time with Mr. Fullerton?” she asks in a measured tone.

“Cook told me,” Anna says.

“Am I being spied on then?”

“Spies are emissaries of an enemy. Could you ever think of me as your enemy?”

Edith is surprised how boldly Anna stands before her.

“If you are asking me not to see Mr. Fullerton, who has become my dear friend, then yes, you are my enemy,” she says.

“Edith . . . I have no right to ask anything of you. But Mr. Wharton is suffering. I believe he knows something. . . .”

“There is nothing to know.”

Anna closes her eyes, clearly not believing what Edith is telling her.

“That will be all,” Edith says. Has she ever spoken to Anna so curtly?

“All?” Anna asks with a gasp. She leaves the room, but her reprimand echoes for a long while after she’s gone.

Anna is shaking when she leaves Edith. It is nearly four
P.M
. She can’t imagine what to do with herself. She cannot go back to her room or even up to the servants’ common room feeling the way she does. She thinks about visiting Teddy, but in his sensitized state, he might well notice her upset and she wouldn’t know how to explain it. She stands against the wall in the main hall of the apartment and tries to breathe. She’s not the sort of person who confronts others, having learned long ago it could be a dangerous way of life for a person as peripheral as she.

Instead, when she is upset she finds comfort in putting things in order, cleaning everything that isn’t perfectly pristine. When she lived with Aunt Charlotte, she’d alphabetize all the old volumes by author, line up the spices from the most to least used, slap the lamp shades with a damp rag, forcing them to release their soft fur of dust. And most satisfying: she could kneel right down onto the hearth to scrub the tiles with soap and water and make them shine again.

“Anna’s got cleaning fever,” her cousins used to say. “Come to
my
room, Anna.” She soon got smart enough to demand a penny or two for her services. Aunt Charlotte was mightily pleased that all the children had suddenly become so neat.

Now Anna goes down to the kitchen where the cook and a scullery maid are peeling vegetables, chattering in rapid-fire French.

“Where’s Gross?” she asks. One by one, they shake their heads, make a moue, shrug their shoulders. So she opens up the butler’s shelves where a forest of Vanderbilt silver shimmers: candlesticks, jam jars, ashtrays, serving pieces. On the bottom shelf is a fat glass tub of silver salve and a stack of rags. Anna chooses a particularly tarnished divided dish engraved with a flourished V, and, retrieving a handful of newspaper from the trash bin, she lays it out on the scrubbed kitchen table and begins her task. The cook and the maid stare at her as if she is mad. Rubbing the dish’s voluptuous shoulders as hard as she can, the tarnish begins to melt. As the piece comes alive again, Anna finds it easier to breathe and not care that the Whartons’ entire world has been turned upside down.

And what if Teddy
were
to die? Edith suddenly wonders as Anna leaves her room. What if he were to take his own life, suddenly, cleverly, even here in Paris? There are a thousand seemingly innocent poisons all around them.
Or
, she thinks excitedly, what if melancholia isn’t the cause of Teddy’s excruciating head pain, but a tumor the size of an orange! No one could possibly guess it’s growing there. What if one moment from now he whispers her name and keels over and is released from his suffering! Edith is mortified to come upon these thoughts in her brain. Like fat toadstools growing on a manicured lawn. A spider slipping across a lacy pillow. What are these iniquities doing here? She doesn’t really want her husband to die, does she? And yet she cannot shake the idea of how it would feel to be free of his misery. She would make a fine widow, the sort everyone would gladly invite out. How proud they’d feel for effecting a charitable act. “Poor Mrs. Wharton. She’s been through so much. It wouldn’t hurt to have her to dinner.” They would call her brave. Applaud her unexpected good cheer. And she’d have endless time with Morton. Days and days to grow closer, to entwine like wisteria, and become one strong branch. For, after all, isn’t that all they need? Time. Alone. Together.

Oh, these cloven thoughts. Not worthy of her. And yet they linger. They wind and wind, all around her heart. If she had gone with Morton to the inn that day, would that have been more depraved than what she is doing now: longing and pining and dreaming of the death of the person to whom she’s pledged herself? Now she knows why she has closeted herself with books and secret dreams, caught in a cement of fear. How safe it was in that prison!

When Anna is feeling more like herself, lifted by the table of polished silver she’s left behind, she slips quietly into Teddy’s room to sit by his side for a while, allowing the nurse who’s been hired to have a moment’s respite.

“Miss Anna,” he whispers when she settles down beside him. He reaches out for her hand, and she gives it. He has unusually delicate hands for a man. Elegant, but freezing cold. She folds both her hands around his and rubs softly.

“Help me to die,” he whispers.

“I know you are suffering, Mr. Wharton. But you don’t want to die. You have a great deal of life ahead of you.”

“Edith doesn’t love me anymore.”

“Nonsense.”

“You don’t know,” he whispers.

Anna shivers. “You mustn’t speak like this.”

“You don’t know what I know,” is all he says.

“Tell me all about the pain in your head. Maybe together we can make it go away.”

“It feels like a horse is stepping on my brain. Right here.” He points to the place between his brows, just above his fine nose.

Anna reaches out and touches the offending spot. She rubs it in a soft circle.

“Imagine my touch is erasing that pain,” she says. “Just as you might erase a pencil error.” Anna imagines absorbing his pain through her fingers—how she wishes she could. She knows she could deal with it better than he. She is so much stronger.

“You can’t help me,” he says. “No one can help me.”

“I can. You have to let me. You have to give up your pain. Imagine just letting it go . . . up and out through my fingers.”

He groans, and she almost wishes she could kiss his brow as a mother might. Or hold him in her arms, the way she would hold her young students when they wept.

“Let it go,” she whispers. “Shhh, let it go, my friend. That’s it. I can see the pain is lifting. Can you feel it?”

“Yes,” he says, his voice rising. “It’s better. Don’t stop.”

“I’m right here.”

“Don’t stop doing that.”

“I’m not going to stop. We’ll make you better. And then you can go to The Mount. Can you imagine that good mountain air? You’re in the barn, in the room with all the saddles. The light burns golden through the window.”

“Yes.”

“The sunlight makes all the saddles glow. Choose one. Your favorite. The horses are waiting. Have you chosen one?”

“Yes.”

“Take it down off the peg. And after your ride, you’ll take the time to stop at the new pig house. Imagine it’s built now. We’ll visit all our lovely squealy fellows. They’re so happy to see you. They’ve missed you. Lawton misses you.”

“Anna, dearest Anna!”

“Shhh,” she whispers, her heart beating sweetly. “Imagine being there. Let’s make you better. Then we’ll all go to the mountains together. It will be a wonderful summer. Cool and beautiful and fresh.”

“We’ll go together,” he whispers.

In the morning, there is a petit bleu scrawled in Morton’s familiar, clear hand.

Dearest,

I accept your apology. Perhaps I should learn to be more tender with you, or more patient. But passion makes me a bounder. Still, I cannot blot out my desire for you. Perhaps if we weren’t in Paris . . . would that make a difference for you? An inn far away in a wood somewhere, where we could lie abed and hear the cuckoos . . .

I don’t know when I can get away next to travel so far, or stay away for long. My sister is coming to Paris soon, and the bureau is hell-bent on paralyzing me with endless, unmanageable assignments. But the day will come.

Yours with love,

Morton