pictures.
Instead, pausing momentarily, she inspects a small carved desk, hers since childhood, and the only piece of furniture from that distant time. The desk was in fact brought out across the plains by her grandparents from Vermont, in post–gold rush days. Long ago Celeste had some trouble wresting it from her brothers, when both parentsdied in the flu epidemic of 1918. Finally, “It’s the only thing I want, I need to have it,” she told them, over the objections of a sister-in-law, who predicted, “You travel all the time. It’ll break.” “It won’t.” Celeste got the desk, and she did travel and move a lot, and the small desk remained intact, always perfectly polished. A lovely piece, which always seemed part of Celeste, an essential.
Now, though, it is piled with letters, so many, though neatly stacked. All something to do with Charles. And inside are more letters, and old photographs, snapshots from everywhere. For a long time now, Celeste has meant to go through them all: suppose she died and some interested person (Sara? Dudley? Edward? Those three first come to mind, as survivors)—suppose someone found all these pictures, these letters. “Well, how extremely interesting.” (She can hear this in Dudley’s voice, those loud implacable accents of the East Coast rich.) “Celeste seems to have grown up on some sort of
farm
, not terribly far from here, up in the Valley. And her first husband was a shoe salesman, can you imagine? With her big feet? Explains quite a lot, don’t you think?”
She has got to go through and get rid of most of that stuff, but is this the moment? She is very tired but she knows that she won’t be able to go to sleep. Not yet.
But—no. No, no.
She cannot go through letters and pictures now, any more than she can make any more long-drawn-out phone calls. She is
waiting for Bill to call
. And my God, thinks Celeste, to be doing that—
at my age
.
Sitting down abruptly on her bed, she even smiles a little to herself at this truly frightful irony, that she should spend her old age waiting for a handsome man (looking very much like a younger Charles, is the truth of it)—for a much younger man to call. She, who as a young woman never waited for anyone, never for a minute. Well, thinks Celeste, with a small involuntary lift of her chin, I never had to. Then.
At that very moment, though, the phone begins to ring. Her heart jolted, Celeste breathes deeply, for peace; she allows three rings before she answers. “Hello?”
At the other end is silence, but it is the whirring silence that signifies long distance, and signifies, to Celeste, not Bill.
“Hello?” she says again. To nothing.
After a minute or two she hangs up; she is shivering, although she is now less cold than she is tired, most terribly tired. Perversely, though, she begins again to walk about, to stalk.
From their bedroom she walks through her dressing room, through what was Charles’s study (more photographs, chronicling Charles’s long, highly public career: studies of Charles with important people, Roosevelt, Einstein, de Gaulle. But none of course of Charles with former wives). Celeste stalks on through the dining room and into the guest room, slated now for Sara.
Very quickly she passes through all these rooms, all unseeingly. And then back to her own room. Their room.
Outside, the night is very cold. And dark, and still. All the winds have died.
Celeste thinks, New Year’s Day. She thinks, 1985.
And then with no warning at all a great scream comes up from her throat. A small woman, old and thin and most elegantly erect, in a dark blue, heavy silk robe. She stands there in her beautiful bedroom, stands screaming. One syllable: CHARLES !
She screams, and screams.
THE PAST
1945
6
Dudley, at that time Spaulding, née Frothingham, and Celeste, then Finnerty, became friends in a very gradual way, beginning sometime in the early forties, in New York. And their friendship was unusual in having
Instead, pausing momentarily, she inspects a small carved desk, hers since childhood, and the only piece of furniture from that distant time. The desk was in fact brought out across the plains by her grandparents from Vermont, in post–gold rush days. Long ago Celeste had some trouble wresting it from her brothers, when both parentsdied in the flu epidemic of 1918. Finally, “It’s the only thing I want, I need to have it,” she told them, over the objections of a sister-in-law, who predicted, “You travel all the time. It’ll break.” “It won’t.” Celeste got the desk, and she did travel and move a lot, and the small desk remained intact, always perfectly polished. A lovely piece, which always seemed part of Celeste, an essential.
Now, though, it is piled with letters, so many, though neatly stacked. All something to do with Charles. And inside are more letters, and old photographs, snapshots from everywhere. For a long time now, Celeste has meant to go through them all: suppose she died and some interested person (Sara? Dudley? Edward? Those three first come to mind, as survivors)—suppose someone found all these pictures, these letters. “Well, how extremely interesting.” (She can hear this in Dudley’s voice, those loud implacable accents of the East Coast rich.) “Celeste seems to have grown up on some sort of
farm
, not terribly far from here, up in the Valley. And her first husband was a shoe salesman, can you imagine? With her big feet? Explains quite a lot, don’t you think?”
She has got to go through and get rid of most of that stuff, but is this the moment? She is very tired but she knows that she won’t be able to go to sleep. Not yet.
But—no. No, no.
She cannot go through letters and pictures now, any more than she can make any more long-drawn-out phone calls. She is
waiting for Bill to call
. And my God, thinks Celeste, to be doing that—
at my age
.
Sitting down abruptly on her bed, she even smiles a little to herself at this truly frightful irony, that she should spend her old age waiting for a handsome man (looking very much like a younger Charles, is the truth of it)—for a much younger man to call. She, who as a young woman never waited for anyone, never for a minute. Well, thinks Celeste, with a small involuntary lift of her chin, I never had to. Then.
At that very moment, though, the phone begins to ring. Her heart jolted, Celeste breathes deeply, for peace; she allows three rings before she answers. “Hello?”
At the other end is silence, but it is the whirring silence that signifies long distance, and signifies, to Celeste, not Bill.
“Hello?” she says again. To nothing.
After a minute or two she hangs up; she is shivering, although she is now less cold than she is tired, most terribly tired. Perversely, though, she begins again to walk about, to stalk.
From their bedroom she walks through her dressing room, through what was Charles’s study (more photographs, chronicling Charles’s long, highly public career: studies of Charles with important people, Roosevelt, Einstein, de Gaulle. But none of course of Charles with former wives). Celeste stalks on through the dining room and into the guest room, slated now for Sara.
Very quickly she passes through all these rooms, all unseeingly. And then back to her own room. Their room.
Outside, the night is very cold. And dark, and still. All the winds have died.
Celeste thinks, New Year’s Day. She thinks, 1985.
And then with no warning at all a great scream comes up from her throat. A small woman, old and thin and most elegantly erect, in a dark blue, heavy silk robe. She stands there in her beautiful bedroom, stands screaming. One syllable: CHARLES !
She screams, and screams.
THE PAST
1945
6
Dudley, at that time Spaulding, née Frothingham, and Celeste, then Finnerty, became friends in a very gradual way, beginning sometime in the early forties, in New York. And their friendship was unusual in having
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