The Four Temperaments (9 page)

“You did?” she asked, hardly caring about that, but instead thinking, We're going to be alone together. They walked down the hallway toward a bedroom—actually, she remembered it quite well, because it was where Oscar had put her to sleep on that other night she had been there, the night nobody knew about—and Gabriel opened the door. Here was the narrow bed, here was the teddy bear. And, yes, here was Gabriel—thank you, sweet Jesus!—pulling her into his arms and kissing her as if he would never stop. They stood like that, arms around each other, kissing, until the door must have opened—neither of them heard it—and there was Ruth and the baby gesturing toward Gabriel.

Of course, the rest of the afternoon was ruined. Ginny didn't trust herself to look at Gabriel and she could only glance—for a few embarrassed seconds—at Ruth. Ginny felt awful when she saw the older woman's glittering eyes, her pained mouth. But he kissed me, she wanted to tell her, to tell all of them.

When she was finally able to leave, she forced herself to say a cheery good-bye to everyone in the room. Then she turned to Ruth.

“Thank you so much for inviting me,” she said. On impulse, Ginny hugged her. Though she knew Ruth wouldn't believe it, Ginny was sorry for what she had seen, sorry for having hurt her. The older woman went rigid in Ginny's arms but was too stunned to push her away.

“Thank you for coming,” Ruth managed to get out. Ginny left. From the hallway where she waited for the elevator, she could hear more good-byes; she must have started the exodus. She didn't want to have to talk to any of the other guests in the elevator, so she found her way to the stairwell and hurried down.

Ginny walked back to her apartment slowly, trying to make sense of the strangest afternoon of her life. Could this really be her, Virginia Louise Valentine, consumed by desire for a man she had just met? A man who was the son of the man she had just stopped sleeping with? Before, whatever passion there was in her had been reserved for her dancing; she burned to execute entrechats quatre as sharp as knives in the air, arabesques that grazed the sky. She understood that being a classical ballet dancer was rigorous and awful enough that in order to even hope to succeed, she had to want it more than anything else under the sun. And she had. Now she wanted Gabriel with what felt like an equal intensity. It scared her.

Soon she reached her street, but instead of heading into the building, she kept walking. West End Avenue was quiet on this holiday afternoon, with the dark just starting to settle in. The warmth had seeped from the air when the sun set, and her hands felt cold, so she shoved them down deep into her pockets. That's when she felt it: the smooth, folded bit of paper. She pulled it out and found a small white square that hadn't been there when she had left her apartment. She opened the note quickly, and read the words again and again:

I'm leaving New York in a couple of days but will be back soon. Will you see me?
Gabriel

Did he need to ask? It all slipped away then: Ruth's face, Oscar's gloom, Penelope, the baby. She knew it was wrong, but she also knew she couldn't help it. Gabriel wanted to see her again and Lord she wanted to see him.

Ginny looked left and right; only a handful of other people were in the street. Although she hadn't had class that morning, hadn't warmed up at all, she did a leap—a large, joy-filled, I'm-in-love kind of leap—across the empty pavement. It felt so good she did another and another until the few pedestrians who were out began to stare and only then could she bring herself to stop.

GABRIEL

G
abriel sat
in the first tier of the New York State Theater, trying to shield himself with the
Stagebill.
Not that he really thought anyone would see him and wonder what he was doing there. He knew, of course, that his father was there, buried somewhere deep in the orchestra pit, though Oscar would not be able to see Gabriel so high above him, even if he were looking. Which he surely was not. But still. So holding the little booklet in both hands, he positioned it at eye level and tried to bury his face in its pages. Soon, the theater's lights—which looked like outsized, imitation gems—would dim, and he could relax. At least a little. If a man who had intentionally lied to his wife and flown to another city for the express purpose of making love to someone else can be said to relax. It wasn't as if he didn't know that he was betraying Penelope. And it wasn't as if he didn't care. But that kiss had been his undoing.

Gabriel was no stranger to this theater, the place where his father had made music for so many years. His mother used to bring them all here when they were little. William and Ben liked
Stars and Stripes,
with its big Sousa marches and even bigger American flag emblazoned across the backdrop of the stage. Also
Western Symphony,
which they called the Cowboy Ballet. This made Ruth smile and ruffle their hair with her fingers. Gabriel, though he didn't like to admit it, preferred the more overtly romantic ballets, the ones where the dancers wore flowing, diaphanous costumes, or short, starchy-looking tutus which gave them an endearingly comic appearance. He liked the way the dancers looked altogether, their supple, slender arms moving in time to the music his father made, their delicate necks held so erect and yet so mobile. For a time, he would develop a crush on this or that particular ballerina, and he had even stood at the stage door a few times waiting to get his program autographed. Of course Oscar could easily have done this for him, but Gabriel didn't want to tell Oscar—or anyone else—about his secret loves. The programs were then stored in a fireproof metal box under his bed to which only he had the key. But the phase passed, and eventually he and his brothers stopped going to the ballet.

Having finished reading the
Stagebill
from start to finish—program notes, where he first turned just to find Ginny's name listed for her small solo, restaurant reviews, advertisements for estate jewelry and custom furriers—Gabriel ventured a look around at the theater itself. The architect in him found something uninspired about the place, with its gaudy round lights and cheesy gold curtain. Like the inside of a candy box, he thought, remembering theaters he had seen in Europe—the Maryinsky in Saint Petersburg, the fantastic blue-and-gold marvel in the Châtelet in Paris. Theaters where there was a sense of majesty—this place was just too damn democratic for Gabriel's taste. Much pomp but no splendor here. No romance either. Though Ginny said it was a wonderful place to dance, with a specially engineered floor and all sorts of other dancer-friendly innovations. “Some places have you dancing on concrete,” she told him that day in his parents' apartment. “Can you imagine what that does to your knees?” He could imagine what he would like to do to her knees, her thighs and any other parts of herself that she offered. He could not remember feeling so excited by a woman in his entire life.

Ginny was the reason he was here after all, the reason he had left his wife and child, lied to them too, with that story about the clients in Santa Barbara. Penelope scarcely seemed to care when he told her he was going. And despite the long plane ride, he planned to stay only a single night, so as not to arouse her suspicions. He would call her later, after the performance, but before he met with Ginny. Ginny who was coming to the East Side hotel where he had booked a room, a room where he would finally get to hold her, pull off whatever ridiculous clothes she was wearing and devour her fierce, vibrant and anything but pliant body.

Finally, the lights dimmed and the curtain rose. There on the stage before him were the Victorian parlor and shining snowflakes of
The Nutcracker,
and Gabriel was lost again in memory, reliving something he hadn't thought of for years. This time, he was quite small and he and Ruth were here alone—William was a baby and Ben not even born. In fact, Oscar had not started playing in the orchestra yet. But Ruth had this idea about
The Nutcracker
being something all New York children should see, and she took him to it by herself, on the subway, one winter afternoon. She had a coat of some camel-colored wool, which made Gabriel think of caramels and butterscotch, and because he still felt chilly when they got to the theater, Ruth draped it around his shoulders and knees as he watched. It had her scent, whatever light, floral cologne she wore, and some other indefinable but infinitely reassuring quality too. Sitting in the dark, Gabriel was dazzled by the performance, the toys and candy that came to life, the Christmas tree that grew—like an ogre or a giant—to dominate the stage. He drank it all in as he dreamily sucked his thumb and nestled in the warmth of Ruth's arm, which she had placed around him.

And now he was back again, back with the snowflakes and the flowers that danced and, finally, there was Ginny, dancing the Coffee variation. She wore something that could have belonged to an odalisque, at least one painted by a voyeuristic nineteenth-century Frenchman like Ingres or Delacroix. The abbreviated top left her midriff bare, scarlet fabric fringed in gold was wrapped around her slim hips. Nude colored tights and pointe shoes gave the illusion that her legs and feet were bare. The costume must have been trimmed with bells or metal coins; there was a musical tinkling when she moved. Her hair was pulled back tightly, the way they all wore it, and he was more aware than ever of her long, pale neck, her eloquent shoulders. She moved with an electricity and a precision that to Gabriel seemed astonishing. He did not know the names of the steps, though he knew he would ask her about them later. But he could appreciate the sense of attack in her movements, the bright, crisp way her body silently moved through space to command and dominate it. All this happened in mere minutes; her appearance on the stage seemed achingly brief and he felt abandoned when it was over. Only the sound of the applause after she had stopped let him know that his vision of her was one that other people shared and not entirely colored by his desire.

The rest of the ballet was pleasant if anticlimactic. His mind wandered over the program again, and back to San Francisco and Penelope. It would be after five o'clock there now, which meant that she would be feeding Isobel one of her organic concoctions.

“Can't she
start eating some real food soon?” Gabriel asked one day as he watched her spoon some rather unappetizing-looking greenish-brown mixture into Isobel's small, open mouth. He had a sudden desire to take the child on his lap and feed her chocolate chip ice cream, a bagel whose cream cheese she would use to decorate her face and hair, tiny bites of pizza and buttered toast. But Penelope would have none of that. “Do you want to start poisoning her already?” she demanded when he suggested this. “Do you have any idea how fragile her immune system still is? There are toxins that exist today that hadn't been dreamed of when we were babies. It scares me even to think about it.” So Gabriel backed off, as he always did, retreating to his world of work, the lines on paper and the shapes in space that he patiently conceived and designed. At first, after Isobel's birth, the world of work was infinitely soothing and appealing to him. Here was a place where he still had some effect. But as the months wore on, and Penelope remained as preoccupied as ever, he grew restless. How could she so completely have lost interest in him? Wasn't he the father of this miraculous life that held her so in thrall? Didn't he count?

There was, of course, no sex during these months. In the beginning, he was tender and solicitous; he had seen her labor through childbirth and knew how her body had been stretched and torn. But surely, all these months later, she must have healed? He wanted to ask her, but the whole subject seemed to leave her cold. “You want to put what where?” she had said, half-mocking, a couple of months ago when he had nuzzled up to her on one of the rare nights that Isobel was not in their bed. That was another thing: the baby slept with them nearly all the time, and the pale dye-and-resin-free natural hardwood crib his parents had bought, at her specifications, remained mostly unused. “She's so tiny,” Penelope would murmur when Gabriel tried to suggest that maybe Isobel could start sleeping in her own room. Or she would say, “It's so much easier to nurse when she's right there next to me.” Which of course was true. But Isobel was a restless, noisy sleeper; her small body and limbs rotating, like the hands of a clock, in the bed so that Gabriel would wake with her heel wedged between his neck and shoulder or her fist in his eye. And the sounds she made! She didn't so much snore as hoot and wheeze through the night. Then she woke wailing, and only Penelope's breasts—ripe with hormones and milk and denied to him—would quiet her. Often, Gabriel would just take his pillow and curl up on the sofa. Soon, he stopped even trying to sleep with his wife. Penelope didn't seem to mind.

He spoke, tentatively at first, and then with greater candor, to some of the other men in his office who also had young children at home. Most treated the subject with patient resignation or mildly hostile humor. All of them agreed that a new baby had turned their once lovely and loving wives into unrecognizable mommy-pods. But none of the wives Gabriel heard described seemed quite so exclusive, even obsessive in their focus, as Penelope.

Not that this was justification for what he was about to do, he knew that. His present situation was merely the jumping-off point for some leap he may have been destined to take, no matter what was happening in his marriage. He only knew that the force of his feelings for Ginny—the pull, the draw she exerted—was something he couldn't resist.

The performance was over, the curtain coming down on the enchanted winter world below him. There was more applause, many curtain calls, and flowers were delivered to the stage. Ginny curtsied and Gabriel clapped so hard his palms stung. Sometimes, Gabriel knew, if there had been a particularly beautiful or complex musical solo, one of the musicians might be invited onto the stage for a bow. Tonight was not one of those nights and Gabriel was glad. Oscar was already too present in this situation; Gabriel had no desire to see him.

In fact, it was Oscar's sickening connection to Ginny that kept Gabriel from racing back to New York right after he first met her, which is what he had wanted to do. But that day on the beach with his father offered him a new and frightening glimpse into his parents' marriage. Oscar unfaithful to Ruth. It was a vision he had done everything to obliterate from his mind ever since. Still, he replayed the conversation over and over: the salt-tanged air, Oscar's doleful look, the way he said “I know” and sighed, the angry, accusing words that came after, then stalking down the beach by himself alone, soles of his shoes smacking against the hard, wet sand, ocean spray wetting his cheeks and his hair. He began to run, past the house until he came to a flight of wooden stairs leading up from the beach. He climbed them, no longer running now, but still out of breath, and kept walking, toward town, until he found someplace open that would serve him a cup of coffee.

When he finally returned to Caroline's house, he found his parents and Caroline chatting amiably in front of a fire. Several cats slept in various corners of the room; one cat's tongue was always sticking out, as if perpetually mocking the other felines and humans whom she was forced to endure. Caroline had explained that her two front teeth were missing, and the tongue just slipped through the open cavity it created, but Gabriel still wondered. Penelope and Isobel were nowhere to be seen.

“Nursing again,” Caroline said in response to his query, and she pouted dramatically. “Penelope says that Isobel gets distracted by the cats, but we know she's just keeping that baby to herself!” His parents just nodded and smiled. Gabriel could not look at either of them, and abruptly went upstairs.

Later, when he spoke to his mother, he would not permit himself to allude to the sense of betrayal she must have been feeling. He didn't want to face those dark places in his parents' marriage. Bad enough that he was facing them in his own.

After the
performance was over, Gabriel hurried out of the theater. He had planned to catch a cab to the hotel on Madison Avenue, but he had forgotten about the crush of people lining Columbus Avenue and Broadway who were also hailing cabs. So instead he started walking east. It was not a bitter evening and he inhaled the refreshing night air as he walked quickly along the street. In the end, whatever had gone on between his father and Ginny was not enough to stop him from coming here. Thinking about it, as he did endlessly in the weeks between that day on the beach and the moment he boarded the plane, he accepted that whatever had happened between them was over. That much was clear from Oscar's mournful expression. And if Gabriel had learned of Ginny's connection to his father before he had kissed her, maybe things would have been different. Maybe he wouldn't be striding across the city in the dark on his way toward her.