The Love Season (10 page)

They were lovers. Marguerite adored the word—implying as it did a flexible, European arrangement—and she hated it for the same reason. Despite all the days of their idyllic summers, Porter could not be pinned down. When autumn arrived, Porter went back to Manhattan, back to work, back to school, back to his brownstone on West Eighty-first Street, back to his life of students and research and benefits at the Met, lectures at the Ninety-second Street Y, dinners at other French restaurants—with other women. Marguerite knew he saw other women, she suspected he slept with them, and yet she was terrified to ask, terrified of that conversation and where it might lead. On a spring afternoon in Paris, she had given him the word
free
, and she felt obligated to stick with it. If Porter discovered that freedom was not what she wanted, if he found out that what she craved was to be the opposite of free—married, hitched, bound together—he would leave her. She would lose the beautiful summers; she would lose the only lover she had ever had.

Marguerite’s childhood contained one lasting memory, and that was of her ballet lessons with Madame Verge. Marguerite took the lessons in a studio that had been fashioned in Madame Verge’s large Victorian house in the center of town. The studio was on the second floor. Walls had been knocked down to create a rectangular room with floor-to-ceiling mirrors, a barre, and a grand piano played by Madame Verge’s
widowed brother. Marguerite started with the lessons when she was eight. For three years, on Friday afternoons, she ascended the stairs in her black leotard, pink tights, and scuffed pink slippers, every last strand of her hair pinched into a bun. Madame Verge was in her sixties. She had dyed red hair, and her lipstick bled into the wrinkles around her mouth. She was not a beautiful woman, but she
was
, because she was completely herself. She wanted all her girls to look the same, to hold themselves erect, shoulders back, chins up. Feet in one of five positions. She did not tolerate sloppy feet. Marguerite could easily picture herself as a girl in that room on a Friday afternoon—some days were muggy with autumn heat; some days had ice tapping on the windows. She stood with the other girls in front of the mirrored wall, deeply pliéing as Madame Verge’s brother played Mozart. She danced. There was a sense of expectation among the girls in Madame Verge’s class that they were special. If they kept their chins up, their shoulders back, if they kept their feet disciplined, if their hair was caught up, every strand, neatly, then they would earn something. But what? Marguerite had assumed it was adoration. They would be darlings; they would be cherished, loved by one man for the rest of their lives; they would become someone’s star.

Free
, Marguerite had told Porter. But she had been lying, and the lie would cost her dearly.

During the first autumn of Porter’s absence, Marguerite traveled to Manhattan to surprise him. She showed up on a Wednesday when she knew he didn’t have classes. It was November, chilly, gray; the charms of autumn in the city were rapidly fading. Marguerite had paid a king’s ransom on cab fare from LaGuardia; she was dropped in front of Porter’s brownstone just before noon. The brownstone was beautiful, well kept, with a black wrought-iron fence and a mighty black door. On the door was a polished brass oval that said:
HARRIS
. Marguerite rang the bell;
there was no answer. She walked to the corner and called the house from a pay phone. No answer. She called Porter’s office at the university, but the secretary informed Marguerite that Professor Harris did not teach or meet with students on Wednesdays. Once Marguerite revealed her identity, the secretary disclosed the fact that on Wednesdays Professor Harris played squash and ate lunch at his club. These lunches, the secretary said,
sotto voce
, sometimes included four or five men, sometimes got a bit out of hand, sometimes lasted well into the evening. Marguerite hung up, thinking,
What club?
She hadn’t even known Porter belonged to a club. There was no way to locate him. She set about entertaining herself with lunch at a hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese restaurant while reading the
Post
, followed by a substantial wander around the Upper West Side. She was sitting, hunched over and nearly frozen, on the top step of Porter’s brownstone when up strolled Himself, in his camel-hair coat and Burberry scarf, his bald pate revealed in the stiff breeze, the tips of his ears red with the cold. Marguerite almost didn’t recognize him. He looked older in winter clothes, minus his tan and aura of just-off-the-tennis-court good health. Porter, under the influence of who knew how many martinis, took a bumbling step backward, squinting at Marguerite’s form in the gathering dark.

“Daisy?” he said. She stood up, feeling cold, tired, and utterly stupid. He opened his arms and she went to him, but his embrace felt different; it felt brotherly. “What on earth are you doing here? You should have called me.”

Of course he was right—she should have called. But she had wanted to take him by surprise; it was a test, of sorts, and she could see right away that he was going to fail or she was or they were.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” he said. “How long can you stay?” The
question contained a tinge of worry; she could hear it, though he did his best to try to make it sound like excited interest.

“Just until tomorrow,” she said quickly. In truth, she had packed enough clothes for a week.

His face brightened. He was relieved. He wheeled her toward the front door and held on to her shoulders as they trudged up the stairs. “I have just enough time for a celebratory drink,” he said. “But then, unfortunately, I have to make an appearance down at Avery Fisher. I can’t possibly get out of it. And I don’t have a spare ticket.” He squeezed her. “I’m sorry, Daisy. You should have called me.”

“I know,” she said. She was close to tears, thirty-three years old and as naïve as she had been at eight, with her knobby knees, standing in front of Madame Verge’s mirrored wall. She felt she would break into pieces. Did he not remember the one hundred days of their summer? The one hundred nights they had spent sleeping together in the rope bed? They had made love everywhere in that cottage: on the front porch, on the kitchen table. He was always so hungry for her; those were his words. The only thing that kept Marguerite together was the keen interest she felt when the door to his brownstone swung open. This was his home, a part of him she’d never seen.

Porter’s house was all she imagined. It was both classic and eclectic, the house of an art history professor—so many books, so many framed prints, and a few original sketches and studies, perfectly lit—and yet scattered throughout were Porter’s crazy touches: a vase of peacock feathers, an accordion lying open in its case.

“Do you play the accordion?” Marguerite asked.

“Oh yes,” he said. “Very badly.”

Marguerite wandered from room to room, picking up
objets
, studying photographs. There were two pictures of her and Porter: one of them in
Paris in their wigs at Père Lachaise Cemetery (the picture was blurry; the boy who had taken it had been stoned) and one of them in front of Les Parapluies on its opening night. There were pictures of Porter with other women—but only in groups, and no one face appeared more than any other. Or was Marguerite missing something? She didn’t want to appear to be checking too closely. Porter appeared with a drink, a flute of something pink and bubbly.

“I’ve kept this on hand for a very special occasion,” he said, kissing her. “Such as a surprise visit from my sweet Daisy.”

She wanted to believe him. But the fact was, things were stilted between them. Porter, who had never in his life run out of things to say, seemed reserved, distracted. Marguerite tried to fill the void, she tried to sparkle, but she couldn’t quite capture Porter’s attention. She talked about the restaurant—it felt like the only thing they had in common but also sadly irrelevant, here in the city—then she told him she’d been reading Proust (which was a bit of a stretch; she’d gotten through ten pages, then put it down, frustrated)—but even Proust didn’t get Porter going. He was somewhere else. As the first glass of champagne went down, followed quickly by a second, Marguerite wondered if they would make love. But Porter remained seated primly on the divan, halfway across the room. And then, he looked at his watch.

“I should get ready,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “By all means.”

He vanished to another part of the house, his bedroom, she presumed, and she couldn’t help but feel crushed that he didn’t ask her to join him. They had showered together under the roses; he had washed her hair. Marguerite finished her second glass of champagne and repaired to the kitchen to fill her glass a third time. When she opened the refrigerator, she found a corsage in a plastic box on the bottom shelf.

“Oh,” she said. She closed the door.

A while later, Porter emerged in a tuxedo, smelling of aftershave. Now that he was about to make his escape, he seemed more himself. He smiled at her, he took her hands in his, and rubbed them like he was trying to start a fire. “I’m sorry about this,” he said. “I really wish I’d had a moment’s notice.”

“It’s my fault,” Marguerite said.

“What will you do for dinner?” he said. “There’s a bistro down the street that’s not half-bad with roast chicken. Do you want me to call right now and see if I can reserve you a seat at the bar?”

“I’ll manage,” she said.

He kissed her nose, like she was a child. Marguerite nearly mentioned the corsage, but that would only embarrass them both. He would pick up flowers on the way.

That night, afraid to climb into Porter’s stark king-size bed (it was wide and low, covered with a black quilt, headed by eight pillows in sleek silver sheets) and afraid to use one of the guest rooms, Marguerite pretended to sleep on the silk divan. She had purposefully changed into a peignoir and brushed out her hair, but when Porter came home (at one o’clock? Two?) all he did was look at her and chuckle. He kissed her on the forehead like she was Sleeping Beauty while she feigned deep, peaceful breaths.

In the morning, Marguerite knocked timidly on his bedroom door. (It was cracked open, which she took as a good sign.) He stirred, but before he was fully awake, she slid between the silver sheets, which were as cool and smooth as coins.

I want to stay
, she thought, though she didn’t dare say it.
I want to stay here with you
. They made love. Porter was groggy and sour; he smelled
like old booze; his skin tasted ashy from cigarettes; it was far from the golden, salty skin of summer. He wasn’t the same man. And yet Marguerite loved him. She was grateful that he responded to her, he touched her, he came alive. They made love; it was the same, though he remained quiet until the end, when a noise escaped from the back of his throat. Might she stay? Did he now remember? But when they were through, Porter rose, crossed the room, shut the bathroom door. She heard the shower. He was meeting a student at ten, he said.

For breakfast, he made eggs, shutting the refrigerator door quickly behind him. While Marguerite ate all alone at a dining-room table that sat twenty at least, he disappeared to make a phone call. Corsage Woman? Marguerite was both too nervous to eat the eggs and starving for them; she had skipped dinner the night before. When Porter reappeared, he was smiling.

“I called you a car,” he said. “It will be here in twenty minutes.”

What became clear during Marguerite’s scant twenty-four hours in Manhattan was that she had broken some kind of unspoken rule. She didn’t belong in Porter’s New York; there was no niche for her, no crack or opening in which she could make herself comfortable. This wounded her. Once she was back on Nantucket, she grew angry. She hacked at the driftwood mantelpiece with her favorite chef’s knife, though this effort ended up harming the knife more than the mantel. She had closed the restaurant for the winter; there weren’t enough customers to justify keeping it open. Without the restaurant to worry about and with things as they were with Porter, Marguerite ate too much and she drank. She had bad dreams about Corsage Woman, the woman who sat next to Porter at Avery Fisher Hall. He held her hand, maybe; he bought her a white wine at intermission. She was slender; she wore perfume and a hat. There was no way to find out, no one to ask, except perhaps Porter’s
secretary. Marguerite gave up on Proust and started to read Salinger.
An education makes you good company for yourself
. Ha! Little had she known when Porter said those words how much time she would be spending alone. She considered taking up with other men—Dusty from the fish store, Damian Vix, her suave and handsome lawyer—but she knew they wouldn’t be able to replace Porter. Why this should be so she had no idea. Porter wasn’t even handsome. He was too skinny; he was losing his hair; he talked so much he drove people mad. He farted in bed; he used incredibly foul language when he hurt himself; he knew nothing about football like other men did. Many people thought he was gay. (No straight man was that educated about art, about literature, about Paris. No straight man wore pocket handkerchiefs or drank that much champagne or lost at tennis so consistently.) Porter wasn’t gay, Marguerite could attest to that, and yet he wasn’t a family man. He didn’t want children.
What kind of man doesn’t want children?
Marguerite asked herself. But it was no use. Marguerite was a country Porter had conquered; he was her colonist. She was oblivious to everyone but him.

Porter, meanwhile, called her every week; he sent her restaurant reviews from
The New York Times;
he sent her one hundred daisies on Valentine’s Day. His attentions were just enough to sustain her. She would make up her mind to end the relationship, and then he would write her a funny love poem and go to the trouble to have it delivered by telegram. The message was clear:
It’s going to work this way, Daisy
. That was how it went the first winter, the second, the third, and so on. He promised her a trip each spring—to Italy or a return to Paris—but it never worked out. His schedule. The demands on him, he couldn’t handle one more thing.
Sorry to disappoint you, Daisy. We still have summer
.