The Four Temperaments (14 page)

OSCAR

O
scar sat
on the terrazzo floor, carefully studying its flecked surface. There was something solid, well made and, yes, even elegant about it, despite the fact the apartment building—a modest one on Seventy-first Street—had been never intended as a luxury dwelling. He reached out to press his fingers against the heavy metal door of the apartment; he inspected the thick molding that separated the floor from the walls. Everything he touched had that same well-made feeling. Oscar felt as if he knew this building, and so many of the buildings like it, that lined the streets and the avenues of the Upper West Side. They were good, substantial and dependable structures, places where a person could comfortably lead a life. All the sweet and humble domestic pleasures—making dinner, making love, raising children—could be contained in spaces like this. Oscar loved them all.

Of course, since the real estate market had shot up beyond imagining, this building had become expensive, much too expensive for the sort of modest life he was conjuring up, the life he and Ruth had led when they moved here all those years ago. These apartments had become high-priced cooperatives or condominiums, affordable only to wealthy couples who worked on Wall Street or in Park Avenue law firms. This very building was a condo; Oscar knew the owner of Apartment 6B, in front of whose door he now sat. The clarinet player from the orchestra used to live here until she retired and moved to Scottsdale. She had bought the apartment years ago, and now rented it out. Oscar was able to secure its lease for Ginny, and it was Ginny for whom he now waited, seated and patient on the chilly terrazzo. He could have waited in the lobby, he knew that, but he had no desire to endure the speculative glances of everyone who entered or left the building tonight. Ginny had given him the keys to the apartment; he used one to let himself in downstairs, though somehow he couldn't bring himself to actually go into the apartment without her. So instead he sat here by the door, looking only occasionally at his watch, and waited.

The performance had been over for quite some time, but since she had that solo role, he suspected that she was enjoying a newfound bit of celebrity with her fellow dancers. He thought of the review in which the critic had raved about her dancing. Oscar had read it silently and offered no comment. What could he say? That he agreed with what the critic had written? That he believed in this girl's talent, and was awed by her furious cultivation of it? That this was one of the things he had loved about her? That despite everything, he loved her still?

But Oscar was not a cruel man, nor a stupid one. There was no life for him with Ginny, no future other than the one painted in such vivid hues by his imagination. His place was with Ruth, and he was grateful, more grateful than he could express to her, that she had forgiven him. He knew that preserving Gabriel's marriage to Penelope was the most important thing in the world to her right now, so here he was, his immediate plans unclear but motivation firm and unwavering. He must talk to Ginny about Gabriel and, if at all possible, he must extract from her a promise that she would not see him again. He listened carefully to the sounds made by the elevator as it rose and descended. So intent was he on trying to determine if the elevator would stop at the sixth floor that he hardly noticed the light tapping of footsteps on the stairs. But then he intuitively knew who it was, and when he looked up, there, standing over him, was Ginny.

“Oscar,” was all she said when she saw him. In the soft light from the fixture above them, her hair—loose and spread out now over her shoulders and back—gleamed pale, almost blond. She was wearing a nubby black coat with a fluffy black collar. It was absurd, of course, the way all of her sartorial choices were, but endearing too: it made her look like some small animal, a rabbit, perhaps, or a kitten. Oscar got to his feet with difficulty, as he had been sitting for a while and the cold floor had made his legs stiff.

“Here,” she said matter-of-factly, giving him her arm. “You might as well come in.”

The apartment was as cluttered and disheveled as he remembered; as he took off his coat, he gingerly tried to avoid stepping on a large mound of towels. Ginny, meanwhile, dropped her own coat on the table. Oscar kept his in his arms.

“I needed to see you,” he said. “I suppose you know why.”

“It's about Gabriel.” Oscar nodded, looking around in vain for somewhere to sit. Ginny watched him. “We can go in the bedroom,” she said. So Oscar followed her dutifully, still clutching his coat. He noticed a small, potted Christmas tree in a corner. Next to it were three gaudily dressed dolls posed on what appeared to be a staircase. Oscar couldn't place the dolls, though he felt he had seen them before. Hadn't Molly's daughters played with such things, years ago?

Once in the other room, he sat down carefully on the bare mattress. He could see that the dirty sheets—were they the ones that were on the bed when he was last here?—had been dumped on the floor but he did not see any clean replacements. Maybe there were none, and she would have to sleep wrapped in her soft, dark coat all night long. Ginny bounced more than sat down, and the bed springs bent slightly beneath her weight. “Look,” she told him earnestly, “I know how awkward all this is. I mean, because of what happened between us. And because he's married. But what I have or want with your son—” she stopped for a deep breath—“has nothing to do with you.”

“That's not true,” said Oscar slowly. He was having trouble concentrating on the task at hand. Under the coat, she was wearing a very tight black Angora sweater. Beneath its deeply scooped neck, he could see the outline of her tiny breasts; above, the long, eloquent line of her neck. Her scar seemed to smile at him. Suddenly, Oscar felt he had nothing to say, nothing to demand. All he wanted was to reach out, grab her slender arm and pull her down under him on the quilted blue surface of the mattress.

“Oscar,” Ginny said gently. “Oscar, wake up.” She smiled and Oscar felt an overwhelming urge to weep. “I know how you feel about me.”

“You do?” he said. But then his wanting her was so obvious, of course she saw it.

“Because it's just how I feel about Gabriel.” She wrapped her arms around herself, as if she were cold. “But you don't have to worry. No one will find out.”

“Ruth and I already have,” Oscar pointed out.

“I'm sorry about that. Really I am. Can't you pretend that you haven't? It would be so much easier.” Oscar stared at her, remembering the girl who criticized his playing that first night. Could she really be in earnest? Or was she mocking him?

“No,” he said finally. “I can't pretend.”

“All right, then. It's up to you. Look, I know what a bad idea it is to get involved with him—”

“Then don't,” Oscar said.

“I can't help it,” Ginny said. “And neither can he.”

“There's nothing I can say that will make you stop? That will make you leave him alone?”

She shook her head, still holding herself tightly.

“Can you leave me alone? Didn't you come here tonight knowing what a bad idea it was? Aren't you sitting here on my bed right now”—she uncoiled one arm and patted the mattress—“wishing you could get me in it?”

“I came because of Gabriel,” Oscar said, but he felt as if he were sinking, drowning in his desire for her.

“Really, Oscar? Just because of Gabriel?” Her arms moved down to her sides now, and she splayed her small hands against the mattress. This caused her back to arch, just a bit, and the subtle movement pushed her breasts—her maddening, lovely little breasts—up and out. Oscar could contain himself no longer. He reached across the quilted expanse that separated them, pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Surprisingly, she neither pushed him away nor resisted; instead, she kissed him back. Oscar's mind was reeling, but he didn't let go. Tentatively, he moved his fingers up the furred front of her torso until—finally—they cupped her breasts. Only then did she move back, place both her hands on his heaving chest and disengage herself.

“You see?” she said, almost sweetly. “No matter how wrong, how crazy it is, you still want me. And if I hadn't stopped you . . .” She didn't have to finish. Oscar knew she was right. Despite Ruth, despite Gabriel, Penelope and Isobel, he would have let himself fall, all over again, right into her arms. He didn't look at her because he couldn't.

“Maybe you'd better go now,” she said. Oscar said nothing, but started to look for his coat, which he had let drop when he embraced her. Ginny walked him to the door.

“You have no clean sheets,” he said stupidly, for want of anything else to say. “How will you sleep tonight?”

“Don't worry about me,” she said as the door closed. “I'll find something.”

Once in
the street, Oscar saw many vacant cabs heading uptown but he didn't stop to hail any of them. He was not sure how he would face Ruth, and he needed some time to compose himself before he did. Instead of going toward West End Avenue, where he lived, he turned the other way, toward Central Park West, and walked along its edge, the side that actually bordered the park. This was inviting trouble, he knew, as it would have been all too easy for a mugger to demand his wallet and disappear into the dark sanctuary of trees. Still, Oscar continued on, soothed somehow by the bare, delicate branches, almost indistinguishable from the night sky, and the throb of life—unseen and mysterious—that lay beyond the park's low stone walls. Birds and rodents lived there; also stray cats and maybe some stray dogs too. Snakes. Frogs. Once, years ago, he saw a group of parrots squawking companionably in a pine tree. A whole world that neither included nor excluded him, but existed on its own plane, parallel to the one that was his. Why this made him feel better, he didn't know, but it did, and by the time he reached his own apartment door, he had regained some sense of equanimity.

He understood that he had been spared, though he could take no credit for it. Had Ginny been willing, he would have done anything she wanted. But she had said no, and in so doing, she had set him free. Oscar realized just how lucky he was. He could face Ruth with a clear conscience, because in fact nothing had happened. His desire remained just that; there was no action, no consequence that he need feel ashamed of. He would not seek Ginny out again, because he knew just how frail his resolve really was. But if he could avoid the transgression by avoiding the temptation, well, that was something. Something he could hold on to.

“Oscar?” Ruth called out as he slipped his key quietly into the lock. “Oscar, is that you?”

“Yes,” he was able to say with some real assurance. “Yes, it's me.”

GABRIEL

I
t was
only as Gabriel guided his car into the parking space that adjoined the back of his apartment building that he remembered he had not called Penelope. The trip across town had taken so long; there hadn't been time. And he hadn't wanted to do it when he was actually with Ginny. Later, it had seemed wiser to just come home and not call too much attention to his whereabouts.

The car, which was dark green, new and imported from Europe, glided smoothly into place, stopping precisely and immediately within the painted lines. He had never owned such a car before, and were it not for Penelope's largesse, he would not have owned it now. Why did this make him angry? She hadn't offered any objection to his buying it. But he was nonetheless always aware that his own salary could not provide him with this kind of luxury. For that, he depended on Nel. And while he could truly say that money was not the reason he had married her, he also had to admit that he didn't like the prospect of giving it up should their marriage end. Not that he wanted it to end.

He still loved Penelope, although her sickness—there, he had said it—made that love a burden rather than a joy. Couldn't Ginny be his antidote? Maybe the affair would actually help keep his marriage together rather than pull it apart. Gabriel knew that this was an indefensible rationalization. But he couldn't help making it all the same.

Pulling the key from the ignition, he checked his appearance in the rearview mirror for any telltale sign of betrayal. There was none—he looked the same as always. Penelope would have scarcely noticed that he was gone. She was so wrapped up in the baby, she wouldn't even have missed him.

Once the car was parked, he picked up the small bag he brought with him and walked to the elevator. The ascent was slow—this was an older building, after all—but steady and quiet. He took this as a good omen as he set down his bag.

“Nel?” he called out tentatively, trying to open the door. “Nel, I'm home.” Why wouldn't the door open? He manipulated the key around in the lock and then realized the lock was fine, its brass tumbler smooth and fluid. There was something blocking the door, that was all, though he wondered what it could be.

“Penelope,” he called again, beginning to feel annoyed. “Let me in.” He kept pushing, first with his hands and then harder, with his shoulder. There. The door finally gave way, at least a bit, so he could peer inside to see what in fact was obstructing his entry. At first, he couldn't see anything, but as he looked down, he noticed it. The pile of straw? Fabric? No—paper. There were mounds and mounds of shredded paper wedged under and around the doorjamb—that was why it wouldn't open.

“Shit,” he said softly as he dropped to his knees. He slipped an arm through the door's small aperture and began digging, like a rodent, through the mess. He thought he could recognize some of the fragments. Wasn't that a page from this week's
New Yorker
? Who had done this? And why?

He began to feel frightened. Was there someone here, a burglar, a rapist, a killer? Could someone have broken in, hurt Penelope and Isobel, and then left this pile of debris as a cryptic message for whoever found them?

Gabriel could feel his heart beating heavy and hard in his chest. He kept digging, clawing really, and found more glossy magazine pages that had all been neatly and methodically shredded. “Penelope!” he called, louder now, an urgent note rising in his voice. “Penelope, are you all right?” Stupid question, but he could think of no other. There was no response. Gabriel kept working, grabbing bits of paper, pulling them through so that they littered the clean, polished floor of the hallway, or stuffing them back into the apartment, far enough away from the door to prevent its remaining stuck. He was sweating with exertion now, for he worked quickly, and with mounting panic. Finally, there was enough space cleared so that he could push the door open to get inside.

“PENELOPE!” he shouted and went tearing through the hall, scraps of paper like mounds of snow gathered around his ankles, impeding his motion. Gabriel could see that the paper filled the entire hallway, and much of the living room. He kicked at it clumsily as he made his way toward the bedroom, in search of his wife and child. He saw more pictures from architectural magazines, the ones that were usually stacked neatly on a nightstand by their bed, but then he saw something else too: smaller pages from what appeared to be books. He reached down to pick up a crumpled sheet from the floor and smoothed it out. It was a page from a now out-of-print volume by the architectural historian Vincent Scully, one that Scully autographed and gave to Gabriel when he guest-taught a course at Yale. Gabriel put a hand up to his eyes, feeling momentarily sick. When he took the hand away, there was Penelope.

“Welcome home,” she said.

“Penelope! What happened? Where's Isobel?” he demanded.

“She's asleep. Unless your yelling woke her up.”

“What happened here?” he asked, but as he looked at her calm face, it was suddenly clear. “You did this,” he said, in a voice filled with amazement.

“I did it,” she repeated in a flat, dead tone. The sound of her voice scared him. He looked around at this sea of paper, paper that she had carefully ripped, crumpled and left, like a sacrificial offering at his feet. He didn't ask her why because he already knew. Silently, he sunk down to the floor, where the paper covered his feet and knees.

“I didn't go to Santa Barbara,” he began.

“I know that,” she said, still in the same dead voice.

“I went to New York. To see a woman,” he said. “I made love to her,” he continued, eyes lifted to her face now, “but it was you I thought of the entire time.” Gabriel was amazed at how easily this lie slipped out of him, and how easily Penelope seemed to accept it. Her eyes suddenly lost that opaque flatness and he could see something register in her face.

“You did?” she asked, and her voice was no longer dead, but small and childlike now, infused with something like hope. He nodded, and reached out his hand to her. She waded across the paper that separated them and took his outstretched palm in hers. The paper rustled as she dropped down beside him. “Why?”

“I missed you,” he said simply. “You're never here for me anymore. Everything is the baby, always the baby. This woman that I met—”

“Who is she?” Penelope asked quickly, ready to pounce.

“Her name is Solange. Solange Roussel.”

“She's French?”

“Canadian. From Quebec.”

“You met her when you went there for that conference?” Gabriel nodded, and it all came together in his mind, this imaginary woman he had never met, her imaginary problems with her imaginary husband, their imaginary plans to meet in New York for a very real tryst. During the recitation of all this, he was both grave and humble, the very model of a repentant husband asking his forebearing wife for another chance. He kept her hand tightly clasped in his, hypnotically caressing the space above her wrist over and over again as he talked.

“It was a huge mistake,” he told her. “I never should have lied to you, never should have gone there.”

“Maybe I drove you to it,” said Penelope, leaning her head against his chest.

“Do you think you can forgive me?” he asked. Her mouth quivered but she nodded. Gabriel tilted her face toward his and kissed her. “Isobel is . . .?” he murmured.

“Sleeping,” she said. “Really.” They made love there on the floor, with the torn paper beneath them as a mattress.

“It's been too long . . .” he said softly, but although he could still be aroused by Penelope's dairy-fresh skin and abundant dark hair, these things no longer bound him. His senses had been altered—tainted, even—by Ginny's heated and intoxicating touch, and it was her image that burned in his mind, even as he gripped Penelope's lovely shoulders. Later on, they found scraps of paper stuck to Penelope's back and legs, and as he helped her peel it off, they actually managed to laugh. Then Isobel awoke and Penelope went in to nurse her, so Gabriel was left with the job of cleaning up.

He found a box of large plastic garbage bags and began, slowly, to fill them full of paper. Magazines, books, many of them out-of-print and hard to come by, had been destroyed, but still their loss caused little pain compared to his sense of relief, of elation, at not having really been found out. The fictive Solange had served her purpose and could be deposited, like the shredded paper he now handled, in the trash. His true secret was safe and he intended to keep it that way. He had been sloppy, thinking Penelope was too absorbed by Isobel to notice. Next time—and Gabriel had no doubt there would be a next time—he would be more careful.

After he had filled all the available garbage bags with paper, the floor was still covered with it, so Gabriel decided to go out and get another box. Or two. On his way out, he hauled some of the paper-filled bags with him, because there were too many to leave in the incinerator room. He ran into the superintendent of the building, who eyed his massive load with a smile.

“Spring cleaning?” he asked.

“Something like that,” said Gabriel, returning the smile.

After this,
Gabriel experienced a halcyon period of calm with his wife and daughter. Penelope was, of course, overwhelmingly involved with Isobel, but she now sometimes allowed Gabriel to enter the charmed circle as well. There were family baths in the scooped-out melon of a Jacuzzi tub Gabriel had installed for her when they first moved into the apartment; there were shared outings to the playground, where he stood behind Isobel in the black, hard rubber baby swing and Penelope stood in front, and together they pushed her back and forth, back and forth, while she opened her baby mouth in a wide O of delight. And if Isobel was sleeping soundly enough, there were moments when Penelope shimmied out of the soft white cotton nightgown she wore and turned to him in the night.

Gabriel was grateful for all of this, basking in the newly restored attention of his wife, but all the while he knew it was too late: something had changed in him that was beyond mending, and the something was Ginny. The memory of their night together was like a bright secret hidden deep in his pocket: the way she laughed out loud when he repeated a dirty joke he'd heard (he would not even have tried it on Penelope), the way she listened so avidly to everything he said, the way she touched him, held him, the glorious way that she ate. She couldn't have been more different from Penelope, whose various and ever-multiplying anxieties had slowly permeated their life together. Penelope was the moon—remote, distant, beautiful—while Ginny was a star—a supernova, exploding again and again with a white, fiery heat.

Gabriel knew she would be in San Francisco that summer; she told him that when they were together. That was months away, he realized, but he could wait. Wait and plan. It would be easy enough to get a schedule for the ballet; perhaps he would suggest to Penelope that they get tickets, or even a subscription. He had told her how much he loved going to the ballet when he was young. She might remember that, and like the idea.

Carefully, slowly, he made his preparations. He phoned his mother again, managing to make her believe that he told Penelope about his indiscretion. He didn't mention that Penelope believed he came to New York to see a French-Canadian woman named Solange Roussel, not the ballet dancer Virginia Valentine. There was no reason to. Ruth was very relieved to hear this, though she had trouble believing Penelope had really and truly forgiven him.

He hung up the phone and fairly panted with relief. He had been so stupid, such a fucking self-centered teenager about all this—kissing Ginny in his parents' apartment, flying off to see her with such a pathetic alibi—and look what pain it caused. Penelope, his parents—each of them had been hurt by his behavior, although Gabriel had no desire to hurt anyone. This feeling he had for Ginny was his alone. If he could keep it that way, no one need be hurt again.

Lying in bed with Penelope beside him, he stared at the mute, white curve of her shoulder. Was she dreaming? He remembered a recurring nightmare she used to have, one that always made her wake in tears. He couldn't recall the substance really, only that she seemed so grateful for his comfort. She never told him about her dreams anymore. Maybe she no longer believed he could comfort her. Maybe she was right.