The Widow's Season (23 page)

“But every time I put it on I would feel the difference.”

“That sounds like a line from ‘The Princess and the Pea.’ ” Sarah shrugged. “But never mind. Please yourself.”

Nate stopped at a window where a trio of mannequins glittered in sequined snow. “When was the last time you pleased yourself?” He took her hand and led her inside. There, they were greeted by a wave of potpourri and a saleswoman who looked to be about twenty-two. Nate flashed her a charming grin. “My sister-in-law is looking for a new evening dress.”

“No,” Sarah said. “I’m not.”

Nate smiled again at the young woman, then tilted his head toward Sarah. “What are you wearing tonight?”

“The same dress that I wore to the show in Jackson.”

“You look terrific in that dress, but how long have you owned it?”

She hesitated. “Eleven years.”

Nate exchanged knowing glances with the saleswoman, then turned and looked directly into Sarah’s eyes.

“Indulge yourself,” he said. “Indulge me.”

Twenty minutes and five dresses later she was rotating before a semi-octagon of mirrors, wearing a sleeveless silk affair with a beaded skirt, looking like a Gypsy soaked in Merlot. She glanced over her shoulder at the back, where gentle oval folds rippled beneath her shoulder blades. Why had she been wearing jeans and sweatshirts for the past ten years? Was it a habit from graduate school, her preference for thrift stores? Now she was only satisfied when wearing a bargain.

But perhaps this was a bargain. She watched the beads shimmer as she swayed from side to side. So what if the price tag made Nate’s shirt look like a Target special? If a woman had a chance to buy a little happiness, wasn’t that money well spent?

When she stepped out of the dressing room Nate’s smile confirmed her thoughts.

“Perfect.”

The saleswoman nodded. “Have you got shoes to go with it? There’s a wonderful shoe store on the next block north.”

By noon Sarah found herself walking toward Dupont Circle with two shopping bags on her arm.

“I’ve never worn heels that high in my life.”

“That’s because you’ve spent your life in Birkenstocks.”

“I’ll probably never wear them again, after tonight.”

“Then you have a very limited view of your future.”

“So.” She stopped to consider the bookstores and restaurants. “Where to now?”

Nate surveyed the street. “I have an idea.” He hailed a cab and opened the door.

“Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise.”

They drove into Georgetown and emerged from the cab at a sign that read ROMAN HOLIDAY.

“A spa?” Sarah laughed.

“Why not? It’ll be my treat.”

The last time Sarah had tried a spa was early in her first pregnancy. Then, she had understood the old adage of the body as a temple, something to be polished and painted and filled with edible offerings. But with each new miscarriage the deities had abandoned her, until she felt that her unproductive flesh didn’t deserve to be pampered.

“I’ve signed you up for a Swedish massage and a manicure.” Nate spoke from the counter, holding up a leather-bound menu that resembled a wine list. “Is that okay?”

“I guess.”

“Try to have fun,” he called as an assistant led Sarah away.

She felt embarrassed, lying naked beneath a cotton sheet, her face pressed into a crushed-velvet halo while her eyes wandered a maze of purple veins along the marble floor. Beside her, an Asian woman with a cartful of bottles folded the sheet down to Sarah’s hips, and she felt the woman’s fingers run lightly across her sides and arms, tracing the form that was about to be filled in. Then she heard a tinkling of unstoppered glass, smelled a wave of lavender, and experienced the full pressure of the woman’s palms, oily smooth, kneading her neck in symmetric swirls. The hands worked one by one, progressing in a seamless spiral, so that Sarah couldn’t tell where one hand ended and the other began. From the base of her neck the waves pushed down, puddling at the small of her back and spilling onto the floor, until, unexpectedly, she found herself smiling. Let it all fall away, she thought. All the sadness and the guilt, the puritanical repressions. Fall, fall on the floor and disappear into the purple maze. She would enjoy this hour of peace, this entire decadent day. She would enjoy the dress and the shoes and the brother, her rewards for just being alive. Nate was a brilliant man; he had a genius for pleasure. She must remember to thank him.

Ninety minutes more and she was sipping an Evian, her right hand spread on a piece of cloth while a manicurist rubbed oil into her cuticles.

“How was your massage?” Nate asked from behind a copy of
Fortune
.

“Heavenly. I feel like I could slide right into the floor. Did you have one?”

“Yes.”

“A beautiful girl with a cartful of bottles?”

“No. A big thug who pounded the crap out of me. I feel like a pulverized steak.”

“You requested that?”

“Absolutely.”

“I thought you would have chosen an Asian woman with eucalyptus oil.”

Nate smiled. “That doesn’t relax me. That arouses me.”

“Ah.” Sarah watched her thumbnail disappear beneath a layer of crimson. “Enough said.”

 

 

 

That night, they arrived at the Kennedy Center five minutes before the downbeat. Inside the concert hall, their seats were midway down the tenth row.

“So close,” Sarah murmured. “The one time David and I came, we sat in the cheap seats.”

The mention of David’s name left a silence between them, and Sarah opened her program in search of a prompt.

“Oh, look! Colleen Britain is singing soprano.”

“Wonderful.” Nate rested his program on his knees. “A feast for the eyes, as well as the ears.”

“She has the perfect voice for this. Sweet and clear and young.”

“Good,” said Nate. “I hate listening to hefty, fortysomething sopranos belting out the lines of adolescent virgins.”

The concert began with a few orchestral preludes from the twentieth century. Then, with a rustle of fabric and footsteps, the chorus flowed in from the right and left—a choir of young boys in the middle, surrounded by altos and tenors who spread sideways, while the sopranos and basses rose to the top. A round of applause marked the soloists’ entrance. First came Colleen, sweeping across the stage in purple velvet that shimmered against her coffee-colored skin. She was followed by an alto in an ankle-length golden dress, and a tenor and bass in modest tuxedos. All smiled and nodded. They stood before their chairs as the young conductor trotted on stage, his arms spread wide toward the musicians. Spinning around to the audience, he fell into a low bow, long black hair brushing at his cheeks. He jerked upward and stepped onto the podium, while the chorus opened their folders and the soloists took their seats.

The conductor lifted his baton, and at stage left, in a mirror image, the timpanist raised his mallet to an equal height. A moment of exquisite silence followed, as the two arms remained frozen, then the baton and mallet fell simultaneously, the deep boom of the timpani sounding at the bottom of the conductor’s stroke, and on the upbeat of his arm, the full chorus and orchestra exploded in a fortissimo chord:

They held the last note while the conductor stood with both arms raised, his hands shaking, until the sound ended as abruptly as it had begun. The brasses and percussion fell silent, the hall still ringing with the aftershock, while the chorus and strings launched into a hissing pianissimo. They whispered about the cruelty of fate, the whirling wheel, how happiness melts into misery as the moon waxes and wanes. The bassoons and cellos maintained one low pulse, letting the violins press forward in an agitated pizzi cato, and at the third verse the music erupted again, with a gong crashing into each measure. As the chorus held the last note there was a brief orchestral frenzy—a crash of cymbals, a roll of timpani, and the trumpets double-tongued a staccato pattern that landed on one long exhale, cut off by the flick of the conductor’s baton.

That was the first song. There were twenty-two to go. Sarah settled her mind into a medieval frame, imagining a time of lords and ladies wandering dark castles. A baritone sang in a boyish voice,
Omnia sol temperat
, and she opened her program notes: “The sun warms everything/pure and gentle . . . the soul of man/is urged towards love.” Now the chorus echoed the call, “A wretched soul is he/who does not live/or lust/under summer’s rule,” and soon the music began to dance, the language changing from Latin to German:
“Wol dir Werlt,/daz du bist/Also freudenriche!”
Two hundred singers hailed the joyous world, pledging their faith to all its pleasures, and Sarah was ready to join them. But first she listened to the baritone’s cautionary despair:

The first section ended in a tavern, with a male chorus singing in praise of Bacchus:

“I think I want a beer,” Nate whispered at her cheek, but Sarah was lost in a mute state of sublimity. It seemed that every line was written expressly for her—the arbitrariness of fate, the solace of alcohol, the desperate need for companionship. Especially in the Court of Love, when Colleen sang with a choir of boys, her voice high and sweet:

How well Sarah knew that sense of missed pleasures, the dark night of the soul, extended, in her case, into three years of festering gall. And now the soprano was lost in an ecstatic vision:
“Stetit puella/rufa tunica,”

Each exclamation was a sweetly descending melody. The baritone was wooing her, “Come, come, come,” and Colleen was giving way in a quiet lullaby: “I submit my neck to the yoke;/I yield to the sweet yoke.”

Colleen lifted her voice two octaves for the climactic
“Dulcissime!”
—winding the line down a small flight of tonal stairs. Then suddenly she leaped to an even higher pitch—“Ah! I give myself to you totally!”—and in a few more minutes the music came to its conclusion, ending with a return to the crashing gong, the wheel of fate, and the clatter of the audience’s applause.

Sarah remained seated when the crowd rose to leave. She wondered if Nate was familiar with the text; he hadn’t been reading the translation. She wondered if he knew that this entire piece was an extended call to love, building toward a woman’s high-pitched orgasm. But of course he must know. For what else was this day, except one long, elaborate seduction?

She didn’t care. It felt good to sit in a concert hall with a handsome man, her bare arm pressed against his jacket’s soft cashmere. It felt good, in the lobby, to slip her arms into her coat while Nate held the collar. It felt even better, after the concert, to take a cab to a Georgetown café and share a chocolate mousse, their silver spoons clicking as they leaned over the table.

The girl without a lover/Misses out on all pleasures,
she thought as they walked arm in arm across the Mayflower lobby.
She keeps the dark night/Hidden/In the depth of her heart.
When Nate thanked her for the evening and turned toward his adjoining door, she took both of his hands and placed them in the small of her back. Lifting her crimson fingernails, she undid his necktie, letting it dangle from his collar. Slowly she unbuttoned his $180 shirt, placing a kiss on his throat, his chest, his stomach. An end to restraint, she told herself. An end to renunciation. She would dedicate herself to the pleasures of the moment.
I submit my neck to the yoke,
she thought.
I yield to the sweet yoke.

Hedonism was easy in a hotel room, in a city with ten thousand Sarahs, where no one knew her history or her husband. Within this modern-day Mayflower Sarah imagined that she could sail to a New World. She could become a different woman, a fertile woman, a woman with a lover who dwelled upon her fingers, her belly and lips with infinite tenderness. And after all, wasn’t Nate the brother she had always wanted? Or was it only that this room, with its neutral carpet, beige walls, and anonymous art, made all identity fade into a blessed haze?

Early Sunday morning, when the sun began to filter down Connecticut Avenue, Sarah rose and pulled the curtains tight. She wanted to prolong the time before their noon checkout. Twelve o’clock loomed like Cinderella’s midnight, but for the next five hours she was determined to be happy.

“What time is it?” Nate murmured from the bed.

“Not morning yet,” she lied, and returned to his arms.

 

 

 

That evening, when she arrived at her house and turned on the lights, every picture of David was a silent rebuke. She walked from room to room, pulling photos off the piano, the refrigerator, and her bedside table. She didn’t want to face his accusing eyes, or to detect, on his lips, the slightest hint of a threat. In taking Nate as her lover she had crossed an unforgivable line, and there would be a reckoning. There was always a reckoning.

Sarah tucked the pictures away in a dresser drawer inside the guest room. It was time to concentrate on herself, not on images of David. One by one she lifted the mirrors from the guest bed and returned them to their empty walls in the hallway and bedrooms. Last of all she found a screwdriver and reassembled her vanity, then sat in front of its dusty glass and assessed her face. For the first time in many months, she liked what she saw. When she smiled she looked younger; she would have to smile more.