“What a lovely thing to have a place like this,” Ellie called to him.
After some banging and clanging, Selden came in the room with a squat glass of tequila with a lime, a pot of tea, and a plate of pears with honey for dipping.
“Women have been known to have their own houses,” he said, handing her a cup of mint tea. She noted that he’d not even offered her a real drink. Apparently her stay in Arizona was already public news in Cleveland.
“Everyone says don’t buy a house if you want to get married. You’ll look too set in your ways, too grounded …”
“A lot of bullshit.”
“Mmm,” Ellie hummed. Selden was typical, she thought, professing not to care if a woman had a life, had a place of her own. But her mother seemed to think that men really did care about that. That a young woman in possession of her own house, her own space in the world, intimidated a man, left him emasculated. Perhaps a man felt he had nothing to offer if he couldn’t offer shelter? Absurd. Or did a man want someone with no past of her own?
She sighed and dipped a slice of pear into the honey. “How did you think of this?”
“Enjoying the last of the season.”
She held her palm under her hand as she guided the dripping fruit to her mouth, the sweet ooze of honey on the grainy pear. “You’d think it’d be gilding the lily, but it’s delicious.”
He smiled, and she noticed that he was watching her mouth.
Ellie leaned back in her chair and sipped her tea, sweet and sharpish on her tongue. “Working hard?” she said, gesturing to his desk.
He turned toward the desk as if seeing it for the first time and rumpled a hand through his hair, ending with it resting on the back of his neck. “I’m prepping for a new class I’m teaching next term.”
“What’s it called?”
“?‘Decline, Decay, and Death,’?” he said with a slow smile.
“Light.” She nodded. “That will have them preregistering for sure.”
He laughed. “They do. I have wait lists.”
“Yes, but it’s not because those undergrads want to depress themselves.”
“There are some serious students.”
“It’s the chance to look at you for fifty minutes twice a week, you sweet ding-dong.”
“They can find better views than that,” Selden said, suddenly turning toward the windows.
Ellie looked out the heavy leaded windows too. “Maybe.” So here was William Selden’s passion—a lot of old books, descriptions of love, death, and loss. She wondered if he actually had experienced true love or passion in his life, or if he was content to merely read about it. Looking at him now, she couldn’t decide.
As she sat there watching him, wondering if he’d ever loved someone more than himself, she wished, not for the first time, that she’d pursued something in her life. She’d gone to a mediocre college and received mediocre grades, and afterward she counted herself lucky to land an internship at a fashion magazine in New York. She remembered those days fondly now, though at the time she’d felt panicked. She’d fetched coffee and copies for mercurial men who wore bronzer and opined about sequins. It had seemed exciting for about six months, and then she’d started to wonder what was next. She was living in a tiny apartment with four other girls. In her life of late nights drinking and exhaustion, of being constantly surrounded by gay men or other women, there were no straight male prospects inhabiting her fashion orbit.
She didn’t have the grades or the interest for graduate school. At the time she’d rather have died than return to Cleveland and her mother’s house. She started to think about marriage, preferably to a Wall Street type in a bespoke suit with a classic six on the Upper East Side.
“What about you?” Selden asked her.
“What about me?” Ellie started. She’d lost track of what they were talking about.
“Any proposals forthcoming? Any news you’d like to share with me?” His eyes were glinting, back to joking.
She rolled her eyes. “You act like marriage is the only thing on my mind.”
“Isn’t it?” He smiled.
“No,” she said petulantly, though she forgave Selden for saying this. It was what everyone thought of her, wasn’t it? Her marriage to her first husband was deemed brilliant by those around her. Alex was the son of an old New York family. Their engagement announcement was written up in the Times with ample mention of her husband’s background and little mention of her provenance. Their large town house on the Upper East side, all five floors, was a gift from his family. They spent weekends at his family’s farm upstate.
All the togetherness, the demands of his family name, used to grate on him. He complained about the expectations. So it seemed natural he would blow off steam. Yes, Alex had enjoyed a good time. What she hadn’t understood was that she was not supposed to enjoy herself equally as much. If he dabbled in a few controlled substances here and there, well, so did she.
Ellie had spent so much of her life being attractive, leading up to the ultimate test—catching a husband. Landing Alex had practically been a military campaign complete with complex strategy, precision, and subterfuge. One night, nine months into her marriage, she’d come to bed and found him passed out, his breathing shaky after a forty-eight-hour bender, a wad of blood-streaked tissues on the bed stand next to an orange prescription bottle. She watched him, making sure his breathing steadied, that he was all right. She wondered, for the first time since she’d started dating at fifteen, the first time in her life, really—did she even like this guy? The answer that night was, she wasn’t sure.
Over the next weeks as she observed his red eyes, his greasy hair, his complaints about the lazy housekeeper, his constant texts to his source, his bitching about his parents, his manic chattering about politics, she decided she didn’t. It wasn’t exactly fair; she’d admit that. She’d known what she was getting into. She’d changed, not him.
Anyway, he didn’t stop, and she spent nights with either a maniac or a zombie. Could she really be blamed for taking up with a more attentive and lucid young man only tangentially in their New York circle?
Apparently she could.
“You should get a place like mine,” Selden was saying.
“If you ever think of selling, call me.” She leaned forward and took another piece of pear off the low tray. “What about you?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you be settling down by now?”
He tilted his head, looking at her quizzically.
“You’re very civilized, William Selden,” she said, teasing him. “Very domesticated. You need a wife to complete the picture.”
To her surprise he blushed and drained the last of his tequila. “Cigarette?” He opened a wooden inlaid box on the table, and she took one and then took a few more for her purse.