13
IN WHITE COVE THE SKY HAD TURNED FROM BLUE TO mulberry, which in that part of the world is synonymous with cocktail time. So it had been since the first American merchant decided to build himself a country castle there, and probably even before, for the local fishermen had an almost hereditary tradition of ending their days in the shacks that faced the sound. Astrid Donal had never set foot in anyplace like that, but she had attended plenty of gatherings that began in the late afternoon and stretched into the giddy hours following midnight. Many of these, like the party at which she was currently playing a somewhat unwilling guest of honor, had been hosted by her mother.
“Oh, yes!” the third Mrs. Harrison Marsh II was saying, as the skin of her eyelids squeezed ever tighter in a show of mawkish joy, to her neighbor and most closely held rival, Mrs. Edgemont Phipps, née Narcissa Beaumont. Mrs. Phipps and Mrs. Marsh had been debutantes together, but they both had decidedly more gaunt faces now. “We are so happy to have her back.”
Astrid, ten or so feet away, smiled faintly and gazed out the window. From the parlor on the first floor, one could see all the way down the drive to the inlet and the road that ran along the shell-strewn shore. Like her mother, she wore white; the dress was composed of a loose-fitting bodice with slender silver straps and a skirt that skimmed the hips and then flowed outward to the feather-lined hem at midcalf. Her mother?s gown was decidedly more décolleté, though it had been created with a touch of the same whimsy.
“She?s more like a lady every time I see her,” replied Mrs. Phipps, who was decked in severe red, which brought out all the other severe aspects of her appearance. Then she turned her back on Astrid, perhaps because her own daughter, Cora, was nothing to brag about in the looks department, and changed the subject. “What a summer we?re going to have! I can just imagine all the parties, I have so many ideas, and …”
Mrs. Phipps went on like this, but Astrid had moved away from the window until her voice became part of the symphony of ice cubes clinking against crystal and sotto voce gossip and smug laughter. The crowd was composed mostly of people who could afford to have begun their day long after noon. Astrid?s stepfather had opened up his booze larder, and their guests were all sipping from goblets of real French champagne or else tumblers of the latest intoxicating concoctions. Her mother had redone the parlor along with all the other rooms when she became the mistress of the Marsh mansion. There was a high gleam on the gold-inlaid palmwood furniture, and the neutral South American rugs underfoot suggested the classy minimalism of the house?s occupants. The white and black cloisonné floor vases were stuffed with pink flowering branches; the prevailing mood, as usual, was one of unhurried luxury.
“Miss Donal?” said a waiter, approaching her with a vast copper tray. She was not in a festive mood and had thought her mother might realize how unwelcome this party was if she noticed that her daughter was uninterested in drinking. But now Astrid saw that the rims of the drinks were frosted with powdered sugar and she couldn?t help but take a glass, before moving on across the floor.
She bent her head, which was encircled in a yellow haze of hair, and sipped. The sweet, exhilarating drink made her current circumstances instantly more palatable. Not that her situation was so very bad … but she was feeling distinctly left out. Her new best friend Cordelia had promised to be there early, but then had rung up a few hours before the party to say she wasn?t feeling well. The afternoon had brought many deliveries—from the florist and the grocer and the iceman—but the ringing phone was never Charlie calling for her.
“You don?t seem particularly thrilled.”
Over the sugared rim of her glass, Astrid glimpsed Billie, who was wearing black trousers with a high waist and a bejeweled little matador?s jacket, which she?d bought in Spain from a bullfighter she knew, for a cask of red wine, or so the story went. The house was large and so the stepsisters crossed paths less than one might think, and it was almost a surprise to see her now. No one would ever have called Billie pretty, but she certainly was handsome. Her dark hair was parted straight at the middle and smoothed down behind her ears, so slick with pomade that it appeared wet, and her tone was as dry as ever.
“No, I?m having a swell time,” Astrid replied.
Billie raised a high, thin semicircle of an eyebrow and surveyed the crowd. “And why shouldn?t you? Same faces as always, same topics of conversation.”
“I suppose it should have been a party for you, too,” Astrid continued, after a pause. “You?ve returned from school as well.”
Billie batted the suggestion away with a breezy: “But I haven?t returned, really. I?ll be leaving for Europe in a few days, and anyway, I don?t like being the center of attention.”
“How dull!” Astrid returned, without particular animosity or even any certainty about which part of Billie?s statement she was responding to. She had spent a good deal of time in Europe as a little girl, in between her mother?s marriages, mostly waiting for ships to depart and trains to arrive, and her recollection of that continent was not overly rosy. She also believed it was a girl?s duty—if she was bright and good-looking—to try to be the center of attention at least half the time.
“I prefer to watch from the sidelines,” Billie went on, a touch wistfully.
Before Astrid could wonder what she meant, a loud guffawing drew their attention. They both turned toward the arched entryway to the ballroom. It was Harrison Marsh II, who shared with his daughter a fierce intelligence and a protuberant nose, but was a good deal thicker all over. He had an old sportsman?s physical breadth, and his considerable middle was currently stuffed into a paisley waistcoat. His face had gone red in blotches. Astrid?s stepfather liked to believe that he always knew more about everything than the person he was speaking to, and at this particular moment it would have been difficult for that not to be true, for Narcissa Phipps had glided into his orbit. From the way they were laughing, however, it was clear that the topic was not the cultural changes wreaked by the Great War, or Greek philosophy, or even Greta Garbo.
“Stop!” Mrs. Phipps was shrieking, in a manner that seemed conversely to insist that he go on saying or doing whatever it was he had just been saying or doing. “You?re too much, really! Oh, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
Twenty or so well-dressed bodies separated Mr. and Mrs. Marsh, although they all became noticeably quiet and subdued in the moments that followed this outburst. Surely these guests had registered the rather flirtatious pose that Mrs. Phipps had assumed, and the sharp quality coming into the eyes of the woman whose husband?s every word Mrs. Phipps was currently hanging on. In the next moment, Astrid?s mother gripped the young stranger who had just entered the parlor—he was handsome and overdressed, and he carried himself with a guilty slouch. The pair crossed the floor—the hostess with her eyes roving a little wildly, making sure everyone saw what she was doing, and her companion without looking up from his brand-new shoes.
“Have you met Luke?” Mrs. Marsh said, teeth bared, as she approached her husband and Mrs. Phipps.
Then the piano music from the next room picked up again, and the guests resumed their polite conversation.
“I wonder what they?re finding to talk about …,” Billie mused, watching her father and stepmother from the middle of the room. Astrid, still by her stepsister?s side, wondered no such thing. The tightness with which her mother?s bony arm had encircled her young companion?s, the way she was pressed against his side, the slightly unhinged manner in which she was glancing at everyone near her, made it perfectly obvious that she?d had more to drink than to eat that day, and that she now had a point to prove. All of which was more than Astrid had wanted to know in the first place.
She turned from the bristling scene—and what she saw outside the window made her preoccupations of the previous hours melt away. There was Charlie, wearing a suit, holding a bouquet of plain daisies.
“Should I come in?” he mouthed, putting a hand on the glass pane.
Astrid gave a slow, subtle shake of her head and then stepped away from Billie and the confrontation masked as light social discourse in which her mother and stepfather were currently engaged. Through the crowd she went, like a white bolt, turning her face right or left to offer a wink here and there. When she passed through the foyer, she couldn?t help but skip a little across the stone floor, and she bit her full lower lip to keep a giddy smile from fully forming.
The great front door was open to accommodate latecomers, and by the time she stepped through it, she?d made her smile vanish. Charlie was standing there, wearing a pale blue suit, his hands and the daisies hidden behind his back, waiting. Behind him the grounds rolled tranquilly toward the water, the foliage only slightly ruffled by the wind, the lower lawn populated by various species of automobile. Astrid leaned against the door frame and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Do I know you?” she asked.
“I hope so,” he replied in a tone less joking than hers had been.
She cocked her head. “Hard to say for sure—if I do know you, it?s been just ages, hasn?t it?”
He stepped forward, dropped the daisies, and bent his knees, wrapping his arms around her thighs and lifting her off the ground, as though she were light as a rag doll. “I?m sorry, baby. There?s been trouble,” he said, resting his chin against her belly, staring up into her face. “Otherwise I would?ve called sooner.”
“Put me down.” She set her hands against his shoulders and pushed away from him, struggling showily.
Once he had, she averted her eyes and fussed with her skirt to make sure he hadn?t wrinkled it. He leaned toward her face, aiming his lips for hers, but she twisted so that instead the kiss landed on her cheek.
“Don?t be like that! I?m here now, ain?t I?”
“But here is exactly where I don?t want to be,” she answered, her haughty, humorous veneer breaking midsentence.
Charlie grinned and grabbed for her hand. She was so charmed by that grin that she could not help but lay down what remained of her defenses. “Come on, then,” he said. “Let?s get out of here!”
They ran across the lawn, through the small city of parked cars to Charlie?s own. By the time he had reversed out onto the road that ran along the shore, she had forgotten that she had ever been angry with him, and she was only vaguely reminded when he asked, “What was the party for?”
“Why, for me, of course!”
“Was it? Think they?ll miss you?”
“Naturally.” Then she laughed and threw her arms around his neck and planted kisses up and down his neck. They were going fast along the bumpy one-lane road now, and she found she didn?t mind that he hadn?t realized the party was in her honor, and that she was simply grateful to have been rescued. “But I don?t miss them at all. I have never been so glad to leave a party in my life.”
“Yeah?” Charlie held the wheel with one hand and lit a cigarette with the other. “Well, where?d you rather be now?”
“Oh, I don?t care.” She sighed and leaned her head against his shoulder, curling against him.
So they did what young couples everywhere—in the city and the country, couples whose daddies went to the same prep schools and couples who grew up on opposite sides of the tracks—do when they wish to be alone and unsupervised. They just drove. Drove up and down hills, away from the water and toward it again. They delighted in the chill on their ears and the jostling that the car afforded them and the cool fizzing of the sodas they bought when they stopped at the filling station. Neither said very much. They passed great chestnut trees that were older than they were and dunes that grew smaller by invisible increments every year. Just as the sun slipped away beyond the horizon, Charlie parked by a dock and they settled into the backseat of the car.
“Aren?t you starving?” she asked, some minutes later, after he?d pulled down her silver strap several times in a row and she?d grown tired of putting it back in place.
“Yes,” he growled, and put his mouth back on her neck.
“Don?t be a boor!” she cried, and pushed him away. To underscore her point, she scooted to the opposite side of the backseat.
“Well, what would you like to eat, then?” Charlie asked after clearing his throat.
“Oh, I don?t care …” Astrid sighed and pursed her lips as she examined her face in the compact. The water beyond the worn wooden platform was still and black and reflective, and she felt little urgency to be anywhere in particular. “Let?s go to your house.”
“Now you?re talking,” Charlie said, climbing into the front seat of the car and starting the engine so quickly that she was thrown back against the seat when it lurched into motion.
“Careful!” she squealed in delight as she clambered back into the front. The wind whipped her hair horizontally. She almost lost her footing, and the idea of the awful consequences of falling out of a moving car gave her a queasy sensation of being very keenly alive.
She did not discover the truth of her hunger until she was all the way in Charlie?s oak-paneled bedroom, situated cross-legged on one of the great, worn-leather club chairs that occupied the corner nearest the windows, and eating a hamburger that the Greys’ cook had prepared for them off a folding tray. She was very happy to be fed. Charlie, who always ate in great gulps, had already finished his, and he had put a phonograph on, and was in the chair next to hers listening now to the sorrowful swaggering of a trumpet. His napkin was still stuffed into his collar, his big arms were folded up behind his head, and his toes were wagging. The windows were open onto the verandah, and a leafy breeze reached them in the lamp-lit room.
“Done yet?” he asked, without opening his eyes.
“No.” She took another nibble, chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, and then put her thumb in her mouth to suck the ketchup off.
“Do you like the record?”
She nodded. To her, it sounded like every other record he owned, but music was something she trusted Charlie to know about and understand, and that she only half paid attention to. When she grew weary of working her way slowly through the meal, she put down the remainders of her hamburger and sighed.
Charlie opened his eyes and turned to her. “Done now?”
“Yes,” she replied.
He stood and moved the tray out of the way, and then, hovering over her, waited until she pushed up to kiss him. Her arms hung round his neck as their mouths met. For a few minutes she teased him, pulling away and then sweetly bringing her lips back to his, until he lowered himself down against her. His fingertips circumnavigated her long naked arms, sending little pleasant tremors across her skin. The music, meanwhile, grew faster and more heady; there was a rat-tat-tat from the phonograph that was closely echoed by the accelerated beating of her heart. Charlie?s kisses became more intense, too, and his hands moved down along her ribs to her waist. She was having trouble getting air, and as he pressed closer against her, she felt the nudging of something forceful and unyielding on her thigh, the grown-upness of which made her go sad all of a sudden.
“Charlie!” There was a loud knocking at the door, and she felt a surge of relief when she knew the intensity of the moment was passed.
“What is it?” he called inhospitably, as he drew back and turned his attention to the door.
She averted her eyes and pulled her skirt down over her bare legs. The skin of her cheeks was hot.
One of Grey?s men stood in the hallway, and he said a few hushed words that Astrid couldn?t hear. Charlie glanced back at her, and though she widened her eyes irritably, she was glad when he followed the man out of the room.
Once he was gone, Astrid tiptoed to the white-tiled bathroom and washed her hands and splashed water on her face. This helped a little, but when she stared at her reflection, she still found a disheveled girl staring back. Her hair was a mess, her lipstick was smeared around her already ample lips, and her pupils were big and black. She pressed her lips together in a way that hollowed her cheeks, and wondered at what hour her mother had noticed her absence, if at all, and also if the party was still going. She jerked open one of the drawers of the cabinet, looking for a brush to smooth her appearance.
Instead she saw a single dangly earring of black jet beads. She froze, staring at this feminine object, unfamiliar to her and odious in equal measure. Immediately a picture of the kind of woman who would wear that sort of bauble began to form in her mind.
Holding the earring in a tight and furious fist, she stormed back through Charlie?s bedroom and into the hall. As always at Dogwood, the distant sounds of low male voices emanated from somewhere in the house. The great hanging light in the front entryway created silvery pathways along the polished floor of the otherwise dark third-story hall. Astrid had taken several angry steps without any particular intention when she noticed that the door to the Calla Lily Suite was ajar and began running in that direction.
Earlier, she had been disappointed when her new friend had said she wasn?t feeling very well and couldn?t come to the party, but now she was glad there would be someone to talk to about the hateful earring and the hateful girl who had left it there.
“Cordelia!” she cried, as she crossed onto the carpeted floor inside the suite. “Cordelia?”
But there was no answer. As she stepped out onto the suite?s verandah, she saw a car start up and drive toward the gates of Dogwood, and she knew that it was Charlie and that he was leaving. A few minutes ago, she had felt frightened of him and wanted him gone, but now she needed him to be back, whether to shriek at him or be held by him, she wasn?t sure.
After a minute, there was nothing to look at but darkness and trees. She stood there with her white arms wrapped around herself, wondering why, on a night that a party was thrown in her honor, she felt so stupidly alone.