All That Is

5


ON TENTH



There was a front room and glass doors to a bedroom with a bed by the window. The kitchen was narrow but long and the dishes often unwashed; Vivian was indifferent to housekeeping and her clothes and cosmetics could be found all over. Still, a glorious being emerged from her preparations, even when abbreviated. She had the gift of allure, even when her lips were bare and her hair uncombed, sometimes especially then.

The apartment was on Tenth Street, where old New York families had long lived and which was still quiet but close to everything, together with the neighboring streets a kind of residential island, ordinary and discreet. There were the photographs Vivian had brought, framed and two of them on the dresser, photographs of her jumping, leaning forward close to the horse’s neck as they cleared, in a black rider’s helmet, her face pure and fearless. She knew how to ride, that was in her face, to have the great beast moving easily beneath her, ears pricked back to hear and obey, the leather giving and cracking, the mastery of it. She and Beverly and Chrissy Wendt, the three of them coming from the horse show, getting out of the truck, a little dusty, in their riding pants, Vivian with her striking face, blond and yawning grandly as if she were alone and getting out of bed. Twelve and carelessly natural, mischievous even.

At the age of eight, her small feet wobbling in her mother’s high heels and an imaginary cigarette in one hand, she appeared in the bedroom doorway. Her mother was at the dressing table and saw her in the mirror.

“Oh, darling,” Caroline said noticing also the pearls, “you look beautiful. Come and give me a puff.”

The joy of it. Vivian clattering in and holding her hand out near her mother’s mouth. Caroline took a drag and exhaled an invisible plume.

“You’re all dressed up. Are you getting ready to go to a party somewhere?”

“No,” she said.

“You’re not going out?”

“No, I think I’ll just invite some boys over,” Vivian said knowingly.

“Some boys? How many?”

“Oh, three or four.”

“You’re not going to favor just one?” Caroline said.

“Older boys. It depends.”

The age of imitation when there are no dangers although it depended. In the past, girls might be married at twelve, queens-to-be knelt to be wed even younger, Poe’s wife was a child of thirteen, Samuel Pepys’ only fifteen, Machado the great poet of Spain fell madly in love with Leonor Izquierdo when she was thirteen, Lolita was twelve, and Dante’s goddess Beatrice even younger. Vivian knew as little as any of them, she was a tomboy until she was almost fourteen. She loved make-believe with her mother. She loved and feared her father and with her sister quarreled constantly from the time they both could talk, so much so that Amussen had many times asked his wife to do something about it.

“Mommy!” Beverly cried out. “Do you know what she just called me?”

“What did she call you?”

Vivian was lingering and listening partway down the hall.

“She called me a horse’s ass.”

“Vivian, did you say that?” Caroline called to her. “Come here, did you say that?”

Vivian was resolute.

“No,” she said.

“Liar!” Beverly cried.

“Did you or didn’t you, Vivian?”

“I never said horse’s.”

It was not always fighting, but it might always come to that. When in time it became apparent that Vivian would be the one who was beautiful, their positions hardened and Beverly adopted her own raw-boned, caustic style. Vivian, in turn, became noticably more feminine. Nevertheless they grew up doing everything together. They had ridden in the hunt from the time they were seven or eight. Vivian, though, was the favorite of the field master. Judge Stump, well-versed in such things, admired her form. In her well-fitted riding clothes he imagined her as a few years older with certain unfatherly thoughts though he was not her father, only a good friend. That might properly exclude one thing but not another. To George Amussen, the judge habitually and easily said “your beautiful daughter” in a way, he felt, that was fond and respectful, that could almost be a title. His fantasy of himself and Vivian, well, then, was not entirely far-fetched, his experience and her freshness unexpectedly but appropriately combined. This idea—it would be wrong to call it a plan—made him behave somewhat more stiffly towards her than he might have and seem even older and more inflexible than he was. He could feel it, but the more he tried the less he was able to do about it.

In Virginia that first fall, the weather for the races was rainy and cold. There was mud underfoot in the fields and the grass was matted flat where people had driven and walked. Spectators in bulky clothes lined the fences with children running about and dogs. Along the row of cars where people stood drinking in small groups came a stocky figure in an Australian army hat with one side pinned up, the brim dotted with water and a braided cord beneath his chin. It was the judge, who shook hands with Amussen, greeted Vivian courteously, and nodded and muttered something to Bowman. They stood in the rain talking, the judge talking only to Amussen while horses and riders, very small in the distance, galloped steadily across vast green slopes. The judge had not come to terms with Vivian’s marriage. When lovely woman stoops to folly, he thought, but he stood where he could see her in the normal course of things and at one point caught her eye with what he felt was a fond look, water dripping from his brown hat.

By the time they got back to New York, Vivian had a fever and ached in every limb. It was the flu. Bowman filled a hot tub for her and carried her in a white robe to bed afterwards, watching her as she lay asleep with a damp, untroubled face. He slept on the couch that night so as not to disturb her and went to work but came home two or three times during the day to look after her. Her illness seemed to draw them closer, strangely affectionate hours as she lay, too weak to do anything, and he read to her and brought her tea. The two middle-aged men, neighbors, who lived together on the floor below stopped him on the stairs to ask about her. That night they brought her some soup, minestrone, they had made.

“How is she doing?” they asked solicitously at the door.

They could hear her coughing in the bedroom, Larry and Arthur, they were veterans of the musical theater, alcoholic and living under rent control. Vivian liked them, Noël and Cole, she called them, they had met in the chorus. The walls of their apartment were covered with framed theater programs and signed photographs of old performers. One of them was Gertrude Neisen. Gertrude, she was so fabulous! they cried. They had a piano they sometimes played and occasionally they could be heard singing. When Vivian began to recover they brought her a fluted glass vase with an arrangement of lilies and yellow roses from the flower shop on Eighteenth Street owned by an elegant man Arthur had once been involved with, Christos, who was friends with both of them. He, too, loved the theater and everything about it. Later he opened a restaurant.

The flowers lasted for almost two weeks. They were still there the evening of dinner at the Baums’. Bowman had never been to their house and Vivian hadn’t met them. She was preparing for it, fastening her earrings with her face reflected in the hall mirror above the glamour of the flowers.

Baum’s private life Bowman knew only by conjecture, it was European, he guessed, and secure. A doorman had been instructed to send them right up and as they walked down the short hallway a dog behind someone’s door began barking. Baum himself showed them in. The first impression was of density. There was comfortable furniture and layered oriental rugs with books and pictures everywhere. It did not seem the house of a couple with a child but rather of people who had ample time for things. Diana rose from the couch where she had been sitting with another guest. She greeted Vivian first. She had very much wanted to meet her, she said. Baum made drinks from a tray filled with bottles on top of a low secretary. The other guest seemed very at home. Bowman at first took him to be a relative, but it turned out that he taught philosophy and was a friend of Diana’s.

At dinner they talked about books and a manuscript by a Polish refugee named Aronsky who had somehow managed to survive the annihilation of the Warsaw ghetto and then of the city itself. In New York he had found his way into literary circles. He was said to be charming though unpredictable. How, the question was, had he gotten through? To this he answered he didn’t know, it was luck. Nothing could be predicted, a thing as small as a fly could kill a mother of four. How was that? If she moved to brush it away, he said.

They’d been joined by another couple, a wine writer and his girlfriend, who was small with long fingers and hair that was thick and absolutely black. She was lively and wanted to talk, like a wind-up doll, a little doll that also did sex. Kitty was her name. But they were talking about Aronsky. His book, as yet unpublished, was called The Savior.

“I found it very disturbing,” Diana said.

“There’s something wrong with it,” Baum agreed. “Most novels, even the great ones, don’t pretend to be true. You believe them, they even become part of your life, but not as literal truth. This book seems to violate that.”

It was an account, almost official in its tone and lack of metaphor, of the life of Reinhard Heydrich, the long-headed, bony-nosed SS commander who had been second only to Himmler and one of the black-uniformed planners of the so-called Final Solution. As head of the police he was as powerful and feared as any man in the Third Reich. He was tall and blond with a violent temper and an inhuman capacity for work. His icy but handsome appearance was well-known, along with his sensual tastes. There was an episode when, coming home late at night after drinking, he had suddenly seen someone in wait in the darkened apartment, pulled his pistol and fired four shots that shattered the hall mirror in which it was he who had been reflected.

The truth of his past had been carefully hidden. In the town where he was born, the gravestones of his parents had mysteriously disappeared. His schoolmates were afraid to remember him, and his early records as a naval cadet had vanished, there was only the story that he’d been dismissed over trouble with a young girl. What was concealed, incredibly, was that Heydrich was a Jew, his identity known only to a small circle of influential Jews who relied upon him to both inform and protect them.

In the end, he betrays them. He betrays them both because he is perhaps not Jewish and because he ends up as they do, in death, all engulfing. He has been made governor of occupied Czechoslovakia and is ambushed in his touring car near Prague, an act ironically encouraged by unknowing Jews in England, where the assassination was planned and organized.

The book was compelling in its authority and in details that were hard to believe had been invented. The floor of the hospital he had been taken to and the naked torso of Heydrich on the operating table as they tried to save him. Hitler had sent his own doctor. There was chilling authenticity. The Czech assassins who had been parachuted in escape but do not survive. They are trapped in the basement of a church and, surrounded by overwhelming German forces, take their own lives. The village of Lidice is selected for reprisal and all of its inhabitants, who had nothing to do with it, men, women, and children, are executed. There was no sound on earth, wrote Aronsky, like a German pistol being cocked.

Baum did not believe it, or if he did it was with reluctance. It was not that he had heard guns being cocked himself, which he had, but that he suspected the motive. He hadn’t met Aronsky, but he was troubled in a deep way by the book.

“Its neatness,” was all he managed to come up with.

“Heydrich was assassinated.”

“I simply don’t believe that he was Jewish. The book never makes it clear.”

“One of Hitler’s field marshals was partly Jewish.”

“Which one?” Baum said. “Von Manstein.”

“Is that really a fact?”

“So it’s been said. He’s supposed to have admitted it in private.”

“Perhaps. The thing is, I believe the book can confuse a lot of readers. And to what end? It can have a long existence even if it’s eventually exposed as fiction. My feeling is that, especially on this subject, you have to respect the truth. Someone is doubtlessly going to publish it, but we’re not going to,” Baum said.


They went home in a taxi. Bowman was exhilarated.

“Did you like Diana?” he asked.

“She was nice.”

“I thought very nice.”

“Yes,” Vivian said. “But the wine guy …”

“What about him?”

“I don’t know if he understood we were married. He was making a pass at me.”

“Are you sure?” Bowman said.

He had a feeling of satisfaction. His wife had been desired.

“He thought I had fabulous cheekbones. I looked like a Smith girl,” she said.

“What did you say?”

“Bryn Mawr, I told him.”

Bowman laughed.

“Why’d you say that?”

“It sounded better.”

Dinner at the Baums’. It was admittance into their life, to some degree, into a world he admired.

He was thinking of many things but not really. He was listening to the small sounds in the bathroom and waiting. Finally, in familiar fashion, his wife came out, switching off the light as she did. She was in her nightgown, the one he liked with crossed straps in back. Almost as if unaware of him, she got into bed. He was filled with desire, as if they had met at a dance. He lay still for a moment in anticipation and then whispered to her. He put his hand on the swell of her hip. She was silent. He moved her nightgown up a little.

“Don’t,” she said.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” he whispered.

It was impossible that she did not feel as he did. The warmth, the satisfaction, and now to complete it.

“What’s wrong?” he said again.

“Nothing.”

“Do you feel sick?”

She didn’t reply. He waited, for too long it seemed, his blood trembling, everything going bitter. She turned and kissed him briefly, as if dismissing him. She was suddenly like a stranger. He knew he should try to understand it but felt only anger. It was unloving of him, but he could not help it. He lay there unwillingly and sleepless, the city itself, dark and glittering, seemed empty. The same couple, the same bed, yet now not the same.





6


CHRISTMAS IN VIRGINIA



It had snowed before Christmas but then turned cold. The sky was pale. The country lay silent, the fields dusted white with the hard furrows showing where they had been plowed. All was still. The foxes were in their dens, the deer bedded down. Route 50 from Washington, the road that had been originally laid out in almost a straight line by George Washington when he was a surveyor, was empty of traffic. On the back roads an early car with its headlights came along. First the trees, half-frosted, were lit, then the road itself, and finally the soft sound as the car passed.

They had Christmas at George Amussen’s—Beverly and Bryan were not there, having gone to visit his parents—and the next day was to be dinner at Longtree, Longtree Farm, more than a thousand acres running almost to the Blue Ridge. Liz Bohannon had gotten Longtree in the divorce. The house, that had burned down and been rebuilt, was named Ha Ha.

Late in the afternoon they drove through the iron gates that were posted with a warning that only one car at a time could pass through. The long driveway led upward with evenly spaced trees on either side. At last the house appeared, a vast facade with many windows, every one of them lit as if the house were a huge toy. When Amussen knocked at the door there was a sudden barking of dogs.

“Rollo! Slipper!” a voice inside cried and then began cursing.

In a mauve, flowered gown that bared one plump shoulder and impatiently kicking at the dogs, Liz Bohannon opened the door. She had once been a goddess and was still beautiful. As Amussen kissed her, she said,

“Darling, I thought it was you.” To Vivian and her new husband, she said, “I’m so glad you could come.”

To Bowman she held out a surprisingly small hand that bore a large emerald ring.

“I was in the study, paying bills. Is it going to snow? It feels like it. How was your Christmas?” she asked Amussen.

She continued pushing away the importuning dogs, one small and white, the other a dalmatian.

“Ours was quiet,” she went on. “You haven’t been here before, have you?” she said to Bowman. “The house was built originally in 1838, but it’s burned down twice, the last time in the middle of the night while I was sleeping.”

She held Bowman’s hand. He felt a kind of thrill.

“What shall I call you? Philip? Phil?”

She had beautiful features, now a little small for the face that for years had allowed her to say and do whatever she liked, that and the money. She was loved, derided, and known as the most dishonest horsewoman in the business, banned at Saratoga where she had once bought back two of her own horses at auction, which was strictly prohibited. Keeping Bowman’s hand in hers, she led the way in as she talked, speaking to Amussen.

“I was paying bills. My God, this place costs a fortune to run. It costs more to run when I’m away than when I’m here, can you believe that? No one to watch. I’ve just about made up my mind to sell it.”

“Sell it?” said Amussen.

“Move to Florida,” she said. “Live with the Jews. Vivian, you look so beautiful.”

They went into the study, where the walls were a dark green and covered with pictures of horses, paintings and photographs.

“This is my favorite room,” she said. “Don’t you like these pictures? That one there,” she said pointing, “is Khartoum—I loved that horse—I wouldn’t part with it for anything. When the house burned in 1944, I ran out in the middle of the night with nothing but my mink coat and that painting. That was all I had.”

“Woody won’t eat!” a voice called from another room.

“Who?”

“Woody.”

A man with his hair combed in a careful wave came to the doorway. He was wearing a V-neck sweater and lizard shoes. He had a look of feigned concern on his face.

“Go tell Willa,” Liz said.

“She’s the one who told me.”

“Travis, you don’t know these people. This is my husband, Travis,” Liz said. “I married someone from the backyard. Everybody knows you shouldn’t, but you do it anyway, don’t you, sweetheart?” she said lovingly.

“You mean I didn’t come from a rich family?”

“That’s for certain.”

“Perfection pays off,” he said with a practiced smile.

Travis Gates was a lieutenant colonel in the air force but with something vaguely fraudulent about him. He’d been in China during the war and liked to use Chinese expressions, Ding hao, he would say. He was her third husband. The first, Ted Bohannon, had been rich, his family owned newspapers and copper mines. Liz had been twenty, careless and sure of herself, the marriage was the event of the year. They had already slept together at a friend’s house in Georgetown and were wildly in love. They were invited and traveled everywhere, to California, Europe, the Far East. It was during the Depression and photographs of them in the papers, on shipboard or at the track, were an anodyne, a reminder of life as it had been and might be. They also went a number of times to Silver Hill to visit Laura, Liz’s younger sister, who worked as a club singer, usually on a small stage in a white or beaded dress, and was also an alcoholic. She took the cure at Silver Hill every few years.

One night during the war, the three of them were stranded in New York when there was trouble with the car. The hotels were all full but because Ted knew the manager they were able to get a room at the West-bury. They had to sleep three in the bed. In the middle of the night Liz woke up to find her husband doing something with her sister, who had the nightgown up under her armpits. It was the tenth year of the marriage that had begun to be stale anyway, and that night marked the end.

Meanwhile the telephone was ringing.

“Shall I get that, Bun?” Travis said.

“Willa will get it. I don’t want to talk to anyone.”

She had picked up Slipper and was holding her cradled against her breasts as she showed Bowman the view from the window, the Blue Ridge Mountains far off with only one or two other houses in sight.

“It’s starting to snow again,” she commented. “Willa! Who was that?”

There was no response. She called again.

“Willa!”

“Yas.”

“Who was that on the phone? What are you, going deaf?”

A lean black woman appeared in the doorway.

“I’m not going deaf,” she stated. “That was Mrs. Pry.”

“P. R. Y?”

“Pry.”

“What did she say? Are they coming?”

“She say Mr. Pry afraid of coming out in this weather.”

“Is Monroe back there in the kitchen? Tell him to bring out some ice. Come on,” she said to Bowman and Vivian, “I’ll show you some of the house.”

In the kitchen she paused to try to coax words out of a mynah bird that was missing some tail feathers. It was in a big bamboo cage where it had made a kind of hammock for itself. Monroe was working at an unhurried pace. Liz took an all-weather coat from a hook.

“It’s not that cold,” she said. “I’ll show you the stables.”


Amussen was seated on a large upholstered couch in the living room, leafing through a copy of National Geographic and occasionally reading a caption. A young girl in jodhpurs and a sweater came in and sat carelessly down at the far end of the couch.

“Hello, Darrin,” Amussen said.

She was named for an uncle but didn’t like the name and preferred to be called Dare.

“Hi,” she said.

“How are you feeling?”

She looked at him and almost smiled.

“Screwed out,” she said, stretching her arms lazily.

“You always talk like that?”

“No,” she said, “I do it for you. I know you like it. Did my father call?”

“I don’t know. Anne Pry called.”

“Mrs. Emmett Pry? Graywillow Farm? I went to school with her daughter, Sally.”

“I guess you did.”

“I rode all her horses and the grooms rode her.”

“How’s your momma?” Amussen said, changing the subject. “She’s a sweet woman. Haven’t seen her for ages.”

“She’s feeling better.”

“That’s good,” Amussen said, putting down the magazine. “I see that you’re feeling fine.”

“Up every morning, no matter what.”

“How old are you now, Darrin?”

“Why are you calling me Darrin?”

“All right. Dare. How old are you?”

“Eighteen,” she said.

He rose and got a glass from a bar that was among the bookshelves. He continued looking for something.

“It’s in the cabinet underneath,” Dare said.

“How’s your daddy?” Amussen asked as he found the bottle he was looking for.

“He’s fine. Fix me one, too, will you?”

“I didn’t know you drank.”

“With some water,” she said.

“Just branch water?”

“Yes.”

He poured two drinks.

“Here you are.”

“Peter Connors is here, too. You know him, don’t you?”

“I don’t know if I do.”

“He’s my boyfriend.”

“Well, good.”

“He follows me around. He wants to marry me. I can’t think what he imagines that would be like.”

“I guess you’re old enough.”

“My parents think so. I’ll probably end up marrying some forty-year-old groom.”

“You might. I don’t think it would last long.”

“No, but he’d always be grateful,” she said.

Amussen made no comment.

“That’s a nice sweater,” he said.

The sweater was not snug, but still.

“Thank you,” she said.

“What is it, silk? It looks like the things they used to have in that little shop over in Middleburg. You know, the one Peggy Court ran, what’s the name?”

“Patio. You’ve probably bought a lot of things there.”

“Me? No. But your sweater looks like Patio.”

“It is. It was a gift.”

“Oh, yes?”

“But I prefer Garfinkle’s,” she said.

“Well, you don’t always get to choose where a gift comes from.”

“I generally do,” she said.

“Dare, now you behave.”

They sat drinking. Amussen looked down at his glass but could feel her eyes on him.

“You know, my daughter Vivian is older than you are,” he remarked.

“I know. And my father’s going to call here, probably, and want me to be getting home.”

“I guess you’ll have to do that.”

“I wish Peter’s father would call him.”

Amussen looked at her, the riding pants, her calm face.

“Where are you in school, now?” he said.

“I’ve quit school,” she said.

He nodded a little, as if agreeing.

“You knew that.”

“No, I didn’t,” he answered.

“Daddy’s after me to go back, but I don’t think so. It’s a waste of time, don’t you think?”

“I didn’t get that much out of school, I guess. Want a refill?” he asked.

“Are you trying to get me drunk?”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Amussen said.

“Why not?”

Her boyfriend, Peter, who had red lips and crinkled blond hair came into the room just as she spoke, and smiled as a kind of admission of interrupting. He was a student at Lafayette and headed for law. He could sense that Dare was somehow annoyed. He knew little enough about her except for the difficulties she presented.

“Uh, I’m Peter Connors, sir,” he said, introducing himself.

“Nice to meet you, Peter. I’m George Amussen.”

“Yes, sir, I know.”

He spoke to Dare,

“Hi,” he said, and confidently sat down beside her. “It looks like it’s snowing.”

It was snowing, harder now, blowing along the fence rows, and the light was beginning to fade.


In the master bedroom with its oversized bed, medicines and jewelry on the night table, and clothes draped over the backs of chairs, Liz was talking to her brother, Eddie. The radio was playing and all the lights including the bathroom lights were on. Written in pencil on the wallpaper above the night table were various names with telephone numbers, first names for the most part, but also doctors and Clark Gable. Eddie lived in Florida, it was the first time she’d seen him since her marriage to Travis. He was her older brother, three years older, and had the handsome face of someone who had never done much. He had bought and sold cars.

“You’re getting gray,” she said.

“Thanks for the news.”

“It looks good.”

He glanced at her and didn’t reply. She reached over and rumpled his hair affectionately. There was no reponse.

“Oh, you’re still beautiful. You’re as good-looking as when you got all dressed up in your tuxedo for the DeVores’ party, remember that? You were there on the steps smoking a cigarette and hiding it in case Daddy was looking. You were hot stuff. That big car.”

“George Stuver in his daddy’s LaSalle.”

“I was so jealous.”

“The Stuvers’ LaSalle. I was with Lee Donaldson in the backseat that night.”

“Whatever happened to her?”

“She had a hysterectomy.”

“Oh, Christ. I hate doctors.”

“You can’t tell the difference from the outside. You have anything to drink up here?”

“No, I try not to have it around. I don’t want it to become a problem.”

“Speaking of that, where’s the fly-boy? And how’d you get involved with him?”

“Sweetheart, don’t start on that.”

“He’s a prize. Where’d you meet him?”

Eddie had liked Ted Bohannon, who he felt was his kind of man.

“We met in Buenos Aires,” she said. “In the embassy. He was the attaché. It just happened that he came along. I was lonely, you know I don’t like living alone. I was down there for three months.”

“Buenos Aires.”

“I got so sick of South America,” she said. “Nothing is clean there, no matter where you go. They’re so lazy, those people. It just burns me up to see the money we’re throwing away down there. They have enough money of their own, my God, they have money. You should see the ranches, they have a thousand people working for them. You have to see it with your own eyes. They told us that Perón made off with over sixty million. And then they ask us for money.”

She was silent for a moment.

“The man I really wanted to marry was Aly Khan,” she said, “but I never got close. I’d have been perfect for him, but he married that Hollywood cunt. Anyway, promise me something. Promise me you’ll try and get to know Travis. Will you promise that?”

Outside the window the snow was pouring down in the early darkness. The room was comforting and secure. She was reminded of feelings of childhood, the excitement of snowstorms and the joy of Christmas and the holidays. She could see herself in the mirror in the bright room. She was like a movie star. She said so.

“Yeah, but a little older,” Eddie said.

“Promise me about Travis,” she ordered.

“Yeah, but there’s something you could do for me.”

He was a little short of money, it being Christmas and all. He needed something to tide him over.

“How much?”

“Tit for tat,” he said pleasantly.


At dinner where they sat rather far apart at the big table the talk was about the storm that was raging and roads being closed. There was plenty of room for all of them to stay over, though, Liz said. She took it as a given that they would.

“There’s plenty of bacon and plenty of eggs.”

Eddie was talking to Travis.

“I’ve looked forward to meeting you,” he said.

“Me, too.”

“Where are you from?”

“California, originally,” Travis said. “I grew up in California. But then the war, you know. The army. I was overseas for a long time, almost two years, flying the Hump.”

“You flew the Hump? What was that like?”

“Rugged, rugged.” He smiled like a poster. “Mountains five miles high and we were flying blind. I lost a lot of good friends.”

Willa was serving. Monroe had been sent upstairs to make beds.

“Do you still fly?” Eddie asked.

“Oh, sure. I fly out of Andrews at the moment.”

“I hear you have a nigger general in the air corps,” Eddie said.

“It’s the air force now,” Travis said.

“I always heard it called the air corps.”

“They changed it. It’s the air force now.”

“Does it really have a nigger general?”

“Darling, shut up,” Liz said. “Just shut up.”

Willa had gone back to the kitchen, closing the door behind her.

“It’s hard enough keeping good help,” Liz said.

“Willa? Willa knows me,” Eddie said. “She knows I’m not talking about her.”

“What branch were you in, Eddie?” Travis asked him.

“Me? I wasn’t in a branch. The army wouldn’t take me.”

“Why was that?”

“Couldn’t pass the physical.”

“Ah.”

“I rode in the Gold Cup, that’s what I did,” Eddie said.

Afterwards they went in to have coffee by the fire. Liz sat back on the couch with her bare arms along the top cushion and kicked off her shoes.

“Slipper me, darling,” she said to Travis.

He stood up without a word and got them for her but stopped short of putting them on her feet. She bent with a slight groan to do it herself.

“You are the limit,” she said to Eddie.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re the limit.”

Peter Connors, who had said very little during dinner, managed to speak briefly, alone, with Amussen. He was hesitant about it, he needed some advice. It was about Dare, he was in love with her but couldn’t be sure of where he stood.

“You were talking to her this afternoon, I mean she got quiet when I came in. I wonder if it was about me. I know she looks up to you.”

“We weren’t talking about you. She’s a spirited girl,” Amussen said, “they can be hard to manage.”

“How do you go about that?”

“I expect she’d let you know if she didn’t want you around. I’d say, be patient.”

“I don’t want it to seem I don’t have any backbone.”

“Of course not.”

In a way, that was the impression he was afraid he gave, at odds with his hopes and desires. And dreams. He didn’t imagine anyone having dreams like his. She was in them, they were about her. She was naked and sitting in an armchair, one leg thrown carelessly over an arm. He is near her in a cotton robe that has fallen open. She seems indifferent but accepting, and he kneels and puts his lips to her. He lifts her and holds her up by the waist, like a vessel, to his mouth. He can see himself as they pass a dark silvery mirror, her legs dangling, beginning to kick as he hardens his tongue. She is leaning backward as in one smooth movement he sets her, in the dream and to an extent in life, on his unholy hard-on and as he does, comes in a flood.

After a while, except for Liz and Travis who were playing cards, they had all gone to bed. The snow went on falling though sometime in the early hours it stopped and stars appeared in the black sky. Also it became even colder.


In the morning through windows that were half-covered with frost the great white expanse of fields could be seen, not a footprint on them, not a flaw. The whiteness reached into the distance, into the sky. Two of the dogs had gotten outside and were flying over the snow, throwing up a white trail like comets as they ran.

One by one they all came down to breakfast in the dining room. Liz and Dare were among the last. Bowman and Vivian were just finishing. Amussen was still at the table.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning.” Liz’s voice was a little hoarse. “Look at the snow,” she said.

“It finally stopped. That was a real storm. Don’t know if the roads will be open. Good morning,” he said to Dare as she took a seat.

“Morning.” It was almost a whisper.

“Your daddy already called,” Willa told her as she brought coffee.

They sat eating bacon and eggs. Travis joined them. Peter was the only one who didn’t appear.

A terrible thing had happened during the night. After everyone had gone to bed and it was finally quiet, Peter, who had waited as long as he could, stepped out into the hall in his pants and undershirt, carefully closing the door behind him. The light was subdued. All was silent. Quietly he walked to Dare’s room and put his face close to the doorjamb. He whispered her name.

“Dare.”

He waited and whispered again, more intently.

“Dare!”

He was afraid she was asleep. He called again and then, overcoming his fear, knocked lightly.

“Dare.”

He stood there, despite himself.

“I just want to talk to you,” he was going say.

He knocked again. Just as he finished, his heart leapt as the door opened slightly and revealed George Amussen, who said in a low, authoritative voice,

“Go on to bed.”


Liz all morning had been on the phone deciding whether or not to go to California. She wanted to go to Santa Anita and was asking about the weather there and if her horse would be running. Finally she decided.

“We’re going.”

“You’re sure, Bun?”

“Yes.”

Eddie watched it all without comment. Later he said,

“He won’t be around for long. She’ll marry someone else.”

It would not be Aly Khan, who had been divorced and was planning to marry a French model when he was killed in a car crash. Liz read it in the paper. She had never really stopped thinking about being married to him. It was always a fond dream. They would be in Neuilly in the morning, watching the horses train, the early mist still in the trees. He’d be in Levi’s and a jacket and they would walk back together to have breakfast at the house. She’d be the wife of a prince and converted to Islam. But Aly was dead, Ted had gone on to marry someone else, and her second husband had moved to New Jersey. Still she had lots of friends, some made one way, some another, and she rode.

Vivian had liked Christmas and being home. Liz, she could see, took to Philip, and even her father, who was in an amiable mood that morning, seemed to accept him more. They all said good-bye, Amussen said good-bye to Liz and then to Dare, whose boyfriend wasn’t feeling well, rubbing a bit of egg from the side of her mouth as they talked briefly. He did it with his napkin in a fatherly way.

“Is Liz Bohannon really your father’s cousin?” Bowman asked afterwards.

“They just call each other cousin, I don’t know why,” Vivian said.

The world was still white as they drove back to Washington, snow rushing across the road like smoke. Currently twenty-two degrees in downtown Washington, the radio said. The highway was disappearing in bursts of wind. The fur was up around Vivian’s face in the cold, the smooth miles passing soundlessly beneath. Good-bye to Virginia and the fields and strange feeling of isolation. He was taking Vivian home—in fact that was not what he was doing but it was what gave him the sensation of happiness.