The Lone Pilgrim (24 page)

When her part in the conversation had been satisfied, Polly stood up. “Well, you all,” she said. “I've got another of those interminable seminars and I must dash. Henry, don't let the children eat another thing until I get home except for a glass of milk and a cookie at four. Goodbye, everyone.”

When she went to kiss her children, she found that they had taken off all the couch pillows and had themselves fallen into a heap. They were such darling children, so adorable, so kind to one another. They had fallen to sleep like kittens. In the elevator she was careful not to reveal to the elevator man, who had known her since she was a teenager, her immense relief.

Lincoln's studio was on a side street in a row of studios built for artists in the twenties. It was a narrow, cobbled street with warehouses on the other side. It was impossible to walk down this street without coming upon a stray cat. Some were feral and raced away, and some were lonely and followed you, crying mournfully. These lonely cats brought Polly almost to tears. She was tender on the subject of animals, but the cats reminded her of herself: so willing, so hungry for love.

Polly was used to understanding but not to being understood. In her family it had been her lot to sympathize with Henry if Paul was cruel to him, or with Paul if Henry hit him. She brought breakfast trays to her mother on those days when Wendy stayed in bed, and she had a drink waiting for her father in the evening when he would come home wiped out after a day of legal brilliance. She understood that she was less temperamental than the rest of the family. Therefore she could be counted on. It was Polly who willingly did the chores, gave up her concert tickets when friends of the family came in from out of town, who took little cousins to the park, who knew the food phobias, likes, and dislikes of every member of her family, as well as all their clothes sizes. She knew exactly how Henry Demarest wanted the dining room table to look, his shirts to feel, his children to behave. She had been made for accommodation, and she often thought that she was spread as thin as butter on a Danish sandwich.

But Lincoln understood her. He knew when it was right not to talk to her—to give her a big, strong cup of coffee, set her in his comfortable chair, stick the hassock under her feet, wrap her up in an afghan, and leave her alone. There Polly would recline, reading whatever novel she was reading while Lincoln worked. Often she fell asleep and Lincoln sketched her.

Seeing him, Polly realized, felt the same as coming home might feel to a sailor after a long voyage. She did not mean to feel this way but it was undeniable to her that she did. Once she had divided the world into the sort of women who had love affairs and the sort of women who did not. But now she, a woman who did not, did, and with considerable expertise. In her gravest moments she gritted her teeth and said: “I deserve this.”

“Hi, Linky,” she said as he opened the door.

He took her into his arms and kissed her all over her cold cheeks.

“I am a woolly beast,” Polly said.

“You are the most gorgeous, swell person that ever lived,” Lincoln said. “Get your coat off. Where's my smoked salmon?”

Polly took a paper bag from her pocketbook.

“That's not Solo-Miller salmon,” Lincoln said. “It's from that delicatessen, isn't it?”

“Oh, Linky, I tried,” said Polly. “Next time, I'm just going to make up a huge sandwich and when they ask what I'm doing I'll tell them: at these seminars I perform the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. This one sandwich is going to feed seventy-five reading technicians.”

“They'll never ask,” Lincoln said.

“Probably they won't,” said Polly. “That's the bliss of it. I never even have to lie. No one ever asks me what I do.”

“Well, come over here, Dora, and put your arms around me and tell me everything you've felt or thought since Friday.” He held her close.

“I really do love you to pieces,” he said.

“I love you to pieces, too,” said Polly. “Isn't it sad?”

Once she was securely in his arms and in bed under the covers, Lincoln told Polly that a gallery in Paris had offered him a one-man show.

“Oh, Linky! How wonderful,” said Polly.

“I'd have to be there for ten days,” Lincoln said. “I don't want to be away from you for that long.”

“You
must
go, Linky,” said Polly. “It's only ten days.”

“I want you to come with me,” Lincoln said.

The effect of this statement on Polly was that of a roller coaster on a stomach. Wanting rushed from her head to her toes in a gush, making her dizzy. Instantly she realized that she had never wanted anything so much in her life. Of course, it was entirely impossible.

“Come for five days. You can fiddle it. Can't you invent some seminar in Paris? Conchita can take care of the grubs.”

Conchita was the Demarest housekeeper.

“You could pull it off, Doreen,” Lincoln said. “Think of what a good time we'd have.”

“Not this I can't pull off, Linky,” Polly said. She sat up and burst into tears. In the year since their love affair had begun, Lincoln had never seen her cry. Her big, creamy shoulders heaved. The Solo-Millers were tall and broad in the shoulders. Polly had long flanks, big shoulders, and a wide face. Her flesh was peachy and smooth. She had fine, strong hands and clear, green-flecked eyes. Polly was myopic, but her father did not believe in giving in to glasses. Polly kept her spectacles hidden away in her handbag and had spent her life squinting. Lincoln loved the smile of comfort and recognition that flooded her face once she got close enough to see what she was looking at, and she had made his heart stop one afternoon by putting on her glasses before getting into bed with him. This made him know how much she loved him.

Sundays made her more tired than she knew. Henry Demarest liked to stay in bed on Sunday morning and read the paper. Polly was up earlier than anyone. She gave the children their breakfast and took the Sunday paper and a cup of coffee to Henry. At her parents, she spent half an hour with her father who unburdened himself on one topic or another and then sat in the kitchen with Wendy who did not want any help on Sundays but had to be talked to. Then it was time to take the children to the park, or to bring them home and clean them up for lunch. Polly had fifteen minutes to herself in the study—to finish a cup of coffee, race through the paper, and be by herself. Now she was in bed with Lincoln Bennett, crying as if her heart would break.

“I can't, I can't, I can't,” she wept. Then she collected herself a little. “I just can't. Oh, Lincoln, I could just manage to get away with you for those three days in Vermont but I worried the whole time that my parents would need to get me, or we would run into someone one of us knew, or Henry would call.”

“Henry was in Brussels,” Lincoln said.

“That made it easier. But I really was so scared. What if something had happened to Pete and Dee-Dee? Oh, it was awful.”

“Awful?” said Lincoln. He put his arms around her. His darling, tactful Polly almost never slipped. It was very clear how miserable she was.

“No, it was heavenly, but it was difficult. No, I can't do it. Leaving the country is just a little too drastic.”

“Then I won't go,” said Lincoln. “They don't have to have me there.”

“Linky, you must go,” said Polly. “You have to supervise the hanging and arrangement and everything. Oh, please, please go. I'll feel so awful if you don't.”

“I don't really want to, much,” said Lincoln. “I'll miss you terribly, Doe. I like my molelike life with you. I always hope that when the grubs go off to college you and I can astound everyone by running off together to India on a sketching trip. I want to always be with you like this, and when we're in our middle fifties, we'll run away.”

He kissed her on the cheek. She turned to him. Her eyes were blazing. “Oh, Lincoln,” she said. “I love you so very much.”

At five she called home to tell Henry that she was on her way. Lincoln watched her as she got dressed. He loved to watch her slip those thick, expensive, sober clothes over her tousled hair. He liked watching her transform herself back into a respectable matron. That she took her glasses off to go home had a symbolism that was lost on neither of them. Lincoln made her a farewell cup of coffee, and they arranged their schedules.

“What do you have on this week?” he said.

“Partners' dinner tomorrow. Home Tuesday. Henry's in Boston Wednesday. Thursday, we have Paul, the Peckhams, and the Sterns for dinner. Friday we're going to the theatre with Mum and Daddy, Aunt Lila, Henry and Andreya. Saturday I can't remember—something noble like dinner with a judge. Sunday's brunch. What about you?”

“Nothing Monday, an opening Tuesday, you Wednesday, dinner with my father Thursday, and Friday I probably will go up to Gus and Juliet's for the weekend.” Gus was Lincoln's older brother. He and his wife Juliet were both architects. They had a little daughter Daphne, a dog named Jip, and a Persian cat called Max, all of whom Lincoln said were architects, too, and they had a house in the Connecticut Berkshires.

As usual, it was hard for them to part, but their relationship had never had that quality of insecurity that love affairs so often have. Lincoln and Polly had declared themselves at once. Neither was very experienced at romance and saw no reason why to hide their love from one another. Furthermore, they were both well organized and were always where they were meant to be in order to make and receive telephone calls.

They knew that their relationship was possible because Polly was married. Lincoln felt that he had been born for later life, not for youth, boyish as he was. He needed his solitude. The chaos of love affairs, engagements, marriage, nest building, and child raising were not for him. But he had a loving, ardent heart, and although he did not want to marry, he wanted the security of love. In Polly he had gotten exactly what he wanted.

Polly could never have been married to Lincoln, that she knew. She wanted family life, although now she had learned that she wanted privacy as well: Lincoln was her privacy. Lincoln believed that Polly's own family protected her from her Solo-Miller family, but the truth was that the fact of Lincoln protected Polly, although she would never have thought of it. And Lincoln singled her out, as no one except her children had ever done, not for what she could do, but for what she was. Lincoln truly loved her for her spirit.

Sometimes at night, in her comfortable bed, under the blue and white early American quilt that Henry Demarest's sister Eva had given them for a wedding present, Polly thought about Lincoln and her heart was full of fear. He was so adorable, so talented, so attractive. He had enough money and came from a good family. Surely some day he would find some beautiful, adorable, talented, and attractive girl with enough money and a good family and he would fall in love with her and marry her. The nice, full life that Polly led had not prepared her for this sort of pain. At these moments she would turn to Henry Demarest who wore English pajamas and liked to read English mystery novels. He was so big, so good-looking, so safe. She was married to him, after all, and she loved him too. Didn't that thought ever cause Lincoln any pain? After these reflections it was not unusual for Polly to go into the bathroom, press her face into a large bath towel, and cry so that no one could hear her.

Lincoln's trip to Paris coincided with a long business trip of Henry's—Henry was gone the entire week. Polly went to work, took her children to their grandparents, gave dinner to her brother Paul, had her parents for dinner, and spent the rest of the time alone or with her children. Toward the end of the week it rained and sleeted. Pete and Dee-Dee and Polly sat in the kitchen and ate deviled chicken, corn sticks, baked squash, and pineapple rice whip. After the children were in bed, she had the house to herself.

She was not prepared for the violent onslaught of missing Lincoln. It was the most terrible thing she had ever undergone. Without him she felt alone on the planet, needed but understood by no one. Without Henry her life was not normal. Without Lincoln, her life was not natural. He made the Polly everyone doted on visible to Polly—there was no way to thank someone for such an amazing gift.

On Sunday Polly took the children to her parents' for brunch. The spring weather had turned cold and bright. Wendy had filled the house with vases of quince, forsythia, and white lilac. There was a little more silence than usual without Henry Demarest who was a true social asset. Pete and Dee-Dee had been given their lunch earlier and had been sent to the library to take naps. Polly, Henry, and Andreya were going to take them kite flying in the afternoon.

As usual, Polly sat in the library for half an hour with her father, and sat in the kitchen with Wendy who talked at her. She attempted to talk to Andreya who said “yes,” “no,” and “of course” vigorously.

At lunch she worked hard to keep the conversation flowing—it was one of her skills. But when she was not called upon to talk, she settled back and thought of Lincoln. She carried on with him, when he was not with her, an unending conversation in her head. Stirred from that conversation, she looked up to see that he was not sitting at the table. For an instant she was surprised. It was so natural that he should have been. There was her family. She looked like them. They were her tribe, her clan, her flesh. Wasn't it odd that not one of them knew anything about what was closest to her heart?

After lunch, the children were bundled up, and Henry, Andreya, and Polly took them off to the park. Henry liked a plain, ordinary kite. He bought them at the toy store and made them more aerodynamic at home. Andreya flew a box kite. For each of the children they had a Japanese kite—one in the shape of a dragon for Pete and a fish for Dee-Dee. Polly stood on a little rise and watched. In her handbag she had the love letter Lincoln had written her from Paris. In three days he would be home. Henry Demarest was due home that evening. He had called every night, as he always did when he was away.