Second Chances (32 page)

And then Alex begins to explain to her what they are to do.

Dear Edward looks better than he has for weeks. Celeste is so pleased to see that; it will make everything that she has in mind much, much easier, she thinks.

He has come for tea, a prolonged ceremony involving a great deal of Celeste’s best and thinnest china, her silver, plus lemons and hot milk, hot water, sugar lumps and small sandwiches, tiny cakes. Not to mention the pot of tea.

Celeste attended to all that alone; the maid is off, and Sara is up in San Francisco on some errand. But Celeste enjoyed all the effort, although admitting a certain element of bribery to herself: she “wants something,” as the unattractive phrase goes, of Edward.

And, as she carefully pours out for him, remembering his preferred strength, his hot milk first, his half lump, it occurs to Celeste that this is the first time of their having tea alone: no Charles, and now no Freddy. But today she finds this idea quite pleasing rather than otherwise, and she hopes that Edward does too.

As apparently he does. “Ah, dear Celeste!” he exclaims. “Such a real pleasure to be here.”

“You look so well,” she tells him, managing not to say “much better.” And then, as casually as she can, “What do you hear from Freddy?”

And oh, Celeste thinks, if only Edward could see the change on his own face, at that question, that name! All his cells, corpuscles—whatever skin is made of—come alive, and his eyes, and his voice, as Edward says, “Quite a long recent letter, actually. He seems to be feeling considerably better about everything. Great distress—still—down there, terrible problems about housing, people in hospitals, food and shelter, all that, but he seems to have managed to make himself somehow useful, poor dear boy.” And Edward smiles, expressing what he probably believes to be benevolence, avuncular concern.

The clear fact that Edward and Freddy are or have been lovers has never been specifically recognized in any way between Celeste and Edward. Which, Celeste now reflects, has been a little silly: this
pretense that Freddy is simply a sort of younger roommate, a housemate, a nice young pal. For her to say, as she now does, “It must have been hard on you, his going off” is unusual, between them.

For an instant Edward is startled; then, as quickly recovered, he tells her, “Actually it was terrible. Horrible. As though he’d died.”

Very gently Celeste queries, now that they are into it, “Almost worse, in a way? His choice, I mean?”

“Quite.” A strong, heartfelt syllable. And then, as though unleashed, Edward goes on, “But there’s no reason I can’t go down to visit—well, maybe next spring. A long time ago I visited in Cuernavaca—a woman I used to know had a charming house down there, all those flowers. And you know, so close to Mexico City. And so I could, uh, could …” He seems to run down at that juncture. “I could take a house in Cuernavaca for a while,” he unconvincingly finishes.

As Celeste thinks, But he can’t. Edward can’t take a house in Cuernavaca because he can’t afford to. Although she has no reason for this thought, she knows nothing whatsoever about Edward’s finances, his economic life. She must have not so much read his mind as received a powerful feeling, communicated to her by Edward despite himself, despite his habitual discretion.

And this message forces Celeste to postpone the speech that she is preparing, even as she bites into a watercress sandwich. She is still working out what to say to Edward, and how to say it.

Instead she tells him, “What an especially pretty tie, dear Edward. You’re always such a pleasure, visually.”

“Dear Celeste, you’ve seen it a thousand times.”

But he is obviously pleased, and somewhat bolstered by this view of himself as a visual treat. “I think there’s going to be an amazing sunset” is what he says.

And there is. After a cold gray day of November fog, as thick as rain, as wet, now in late afternoon the skies have cleared, and the sun, revealed, majestically red, descends into the sea, among huge and gilded clouds.

“Edward, I have something I would really like to discuss with you,” Celeste announces.

“Oh?” Edward’s old blue eyes flicker toward her, sad kindly old Edward, so bald, his face so vulnerable that Celeste almost loses courage. She almost dares not risk offending him.

But she must say it. “Edward, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and it seems to me that you should move over here. I mean, move over for good. To live with me. Sell your house.”

This speech has left her absolutely out of breath; breathlessly she stares across at Edward, as upright as she herself is, on his white linen chair, the duplicate of her white linen chair.

Whatever is written on his face is hard to read, as though he had willed instant opacity. But then he smiles, and Celeste thinks, Ah, thank God. At least I didn’t offend him.

Edward says, “What an extremely interesting idea, dear Celeste. But you must agree, I would have to think about it?”

“Darling Edward, of course. I didn’t mean tomorrow. But what I did think was, Sara will be off quite soon, and as you know her room has a private entrance. And so I thought—Well, you see, it might actually work out quite well.”

In a gentle easy way Edward laughs at so much babble, from obviously nervous Celeste. “I am glad you have it all planned,” he tells Celeste, with the mildest possible irony.

An ambiguous remark, as Celeste thinks of it over the next several weeks—weeks of hearing nothing whatsoever, in any form, from Edward.

This is a letter to a friend, which friend is never specified, that Dudley imagines writing, with a certain wry pleasure, but that she does not, finally, ever write.

“It’s quite a lot like adolescence, very early adolescence, that is. As though Brooks were some boy at St. Paul’s, say, and I was still at the Winsor School. We write a lot of notes, and make plans to see each other, a great many of which are aborted by forces beyond our control, as plans used to be by grown-ups, and teachers. Or is it we who abort them, we the grown-ups? God knows at this stage of our lives we can’t blame teachers. And then when we do get together it’s not quite as wonderful as it should be. We find that we don’t have an awful lot to say. Mostly we neck a great deal, and sometimes we ‘do it.’ ”

Or, it could be an article—also not to be written.

“Does old age, then, form a repetition of adolescence? The same bodily awkwardness, though for somewhat different reasons. The same unfocused but passionate energies.”

This might in fact be the nucleus of something interesting, something that Dudley indeed might write: a sort of counter to the recently much-touted joys of geriatric sex, the revelations that the very old still screw like rabbits, or most of them, or some of them, sometimes.

So far, though, all this writing has existed only in Dudley’s lively mind. She is thinking in this way partly in an effort to calm herself as she waits for Brooks, as she waits and feels both agitated and unfocused.
She describes what will in a couple of hours be actuality, or so she believes.

The weather so far in these early days of December has been spectacular: clear, deep blue winter skies, a warmth that is indeed unseasonal. The sea is calm and flat and blue and shining. Dudley has been taking walks with Sara and also with Edward (both of whom, as she thinks of them now, have seemed unusually preoccupied). But the weather, or something, has been wonderfully beneficent for Dudley’s arthritis; she has barely a pain or a creak.

When the phone rings—always such a terrible shrill sound when one is engaged in any sort of waiting—Dudley thinks, Brooks. Something’s happened. And is surprised to find herself registering a certain relief.

However, it is instead Celeste, who asks, “Do you have a minute? There’s something sort of odd I wanted to tell you.”

Not saying, I’m waiting for Brooks and we’re going out to lunch—in a welcoming way Dudley says, as she always does, “Of course. What’s up?”

“It’s about Edward,” Celeste tells her. “I hadn’t heard a thing from him for several weeks, and then in the village this morning I got the strangest news of him. Edward is
selling his house
.”

“No—” Dudley is more shocked, more deeply shaken, really, than she could have believed to be possible. Although she herself has recently, more and more often, thought of selling her own house, somehow the idea of Edward selling his is even worse, more deeply upsetting.

And she understands then, or begins to understand, the sense in which she has imagined or felt all their houses to be joined, her house (hers and Sam’s); Celeste’s; Polly’s; Edward’s. All joined as though by blood vessels, or veins, so that the loss of one house would be experienced as a wound by all the others.

“Of all places, in the grocery store,” Celeste is continuing. “Where I heard it. That clerk, the one I can’t stand because he always talks so much, he’s so darn friendly. And Dudley, Chinese!”

“What?”

“The house. To a Chinese doctor. I just don’t know—”

“My God.” “Letting them in” is the phrase in Dudley’s mind, as
involuntarily she imagines hordes of Chinese (“horde”: a racist word if she ever heard one, how
can
she?). Vietnamese, Cambodians. Boat people.

Severely she begins to castigate herself for this automatic and entirely unacceptable (to her) reaction. One Chinese doctor and his family are not hordes, she scolds herself. And even if it were, why do you—why do we deserve such expensive privacy as we have had here? Such precious privilege, when we can’t even afford it anymore?

“Who knows what’s in Edward’s mind,” Celeste continues, but in a tone of winding up their conversation.

“You don’t know where he’ll live?”

“I most certainly do not.” Celeste sounds unaccountably severe. “For all I know he’s chasing off to Mexico after Freddy.”

“Such an odd way to find out anything” is Dudley’s comment. “What on earth is going on with Edward?”

“I can’t imagine. You tell me. Well, dear, I’ll let you go.” And Celeste with her customary briskness rings off.

Leaving Dudley deeply upset, and sad, and confused (and guilty: what a horrid streak of instant racism to uncover in one’s self, never mind that the feeling quickly passed, yielding both to better impulses and to reason).

But it is as though their lives were almost over, she can’t help thinking that.

Which of course they are.

Is this a sign that she should sell her own house? That is one of the first things that Dudley wonders. But should she, and if she did where would she go?

The phone rings again. Surely, this time, Brooks?

No. Celeste again, who very rapidly, in a queerly apologetic tone, tells Dudley, “I felt a sort of dishonesty, leaving out what I did about Edward just now. The truth is, the last time I saw him I suggested that he move in here with me. Well, it seemed a good idea at the moment. Actually I’d thought it through. But apparently he panicked. Sort of like Bill,” she snorts.

“Oh, Celeste. Not necessarily.”

“Well, that’s how it looks to me.”

“For one thing, Celeste, the grocery-store rumor could be quite wrong.”

Hanging up, frowning to herself, Dudley tries to sort out reactions to this further bit of news. She is aware of vying voices within herself, all clamorous. And one of them, she is forced to admit, insists, Why not me? How come Celeste did not even suggest that I be the one to move over there? Not that in the least I’d ever want to, of course not, but it does seem odd.

And that is about all she has time to think before hurrying off to the diner, where she is to meet Brooks for lunch.

His eyes are indeed (more than most eyes) close together, which is slightly odd with his rather wide mouth; nevertheless Brooks (by most reasonable standards) is quite an attractive man. “Well preserved” is probably applicable. He is dapper and very trim, in his invariable blazers and snowy shirts, his heavy silk striped ties. Bankers’ gray flannel slacks. Dudley takes all this in, and thinks of it, as in some not-far-distant recess of her mind there appears fat rumpled Sam, with his wide-apart, slant green eyes. He appears there and he stays, and stays.

As always, Brooks’s manner with Dudley is ceremonious, rather formal. Seeing the two of them together, one would not guess at all the amorous wrestling, the frantic, messy kissing that habitually they do. In public, Brooks chastely kisses her on the left cheek, his lips barely grazing her skin.

“You’ll have a glass of wine?” he asks as they settle into their booth.

“Yes. Thanks.”

And David’s replacement, an entirely bland, blond and plump young man, takes their order, without telling them his name.

“Well!” says Brooks. “This most beautiful fall weather. Though I suppose one should say winter, actually.”

Smilingly Dudley assents. God knows it is easy enough to fall in
with this sort of conversation. “I’ve had some wonderful walks,” she tells him. “By the sea. It’s really my favorite thing to do.”

For some reason Brooks seems not to like this particular bit of non-information. “We’re not terribly far from the sea in Ross,” he tells her. “Though no one seems to think of driving over. Some people do go to Inverness, I believe, and you get some fine sea views from there.” And then he says, “I do hope you’ll come up to Ross quite soon.”

About this visit of Dudley’s to Ross, to his house, Brooks has so far been curiously coy: the plan is hinted at, remarks are made about how nice it would be to see her there, presumably among his friends—and then it is all more or less withdrawn. The projected visit simply does not happen.

This is mildly annoying to Dudley, although she does not (she is sure she does not) cherish a burning wish to visit Ross, a pleasant enough, quite pretty enclave of the mostly elderly and very rich, she believes. Brooks’s people. But perversely she decides to force the issue, trivial as she believes it to be. “We must set a date for that,” she tells Brooks, feigning silliness, a silly “social” manner. “Otherwise the whole idea will just get lost, what with bloody Christmas, New Year’s, all that.”

Brooks looks as nonplussed, as taken aback, as Dudley has ever seen him, sitting there stiffly against the back of his chair, his mouth slightly open but soundless, his eyes small and round and blank. So that at first Dudley imagines that her “bloody” was a serious mistake; no doubt Brooks has feelings about Christmas that are strong and positive—are even religious, possibly.