A Certain Age (13 page)

“I don't know.”

“But you must know, deep down. You must know what's missing.”

He lifts his hands from his knees and folds his arms against his chest. “I used to love flying, until the war.”

“But you don't anymore?”

“I didn't, for a long time. I didn't want to see an airplane ever again.”

“But you can't do that. You can't turn your back on the thing you love most.”

“I didn't say I loved it the most.”

“Still, it was a passion of yours, wasn't it? There was a reason you loved it, there was a reason you loved flying that had nothing to do with shooting down other airplanes and killing people. So that reason must still exist inside you, waiting for the—the—the tide to go back out.”

“I don't know,” he says. “I don't know.”

They lapse again into silence, and Sophie thinks that maybe she shouldn't have spoken so eagerly and so passionately. A fault of hers: her reckless enthusiasm for romantic causes, so out of temper with the times. Nobody
believes in romantic causes any more, especially not people who fought in the war, like Mr. Rofrano. In fact, it's telling and even absolutely symbolic of the modern cynicism that he has gone from jousting in the sky, like a medieval knight, to selling government bonds from the security of his telephone in his tiny office (or so Sophie imagines it) on the corner of Wall and Broad.

The taxi lurches into Thirty-Second Street, and Sophie, jolted to the present, opens up her pocketbook to hunt for the fare.

“Don't be silly,” says Mr. Rofrano. He reaches over and closes the pocketbook, and for just an instant their fingers tangle up, before Mr. Rofrano withdraws to open the door.

He walks her up the steps. Sophie thanks him and asks if he has the time. He looks at his wristwatch and says it's nearly two o'clock, and is anyone up to let her in? She tells him she has a latchkey and produces it from her pocketbook as proof.

Mr. Rofrano waits to make sure that the key works, that the lock isn't frozen and the door opens under her hand. “Thank you,” she says again, turning to face him. “I suppose it's good night, then.”

He takes her hand. “Good night.”

They stand there a moment, holding hands, peering at each other. The wind whistles against her left ear, and then dies away.

“Look,” he says softly, “what about going somewhere tomorrow?”

“I—I'm going to church with my family in the morning. Eight o'clock.”

“After that? Say, nine-thirty? I can meet you on the corner of Third Avenue, in my car.”

“I—” She glances up behind her, at the windows of the house. “I don't see why not, as long as I'm back for dinner. Where are we going?”

He releases her hand and makes a little sigh, as if he's been holding his breath all this time. “It's a surprise,” he says, and turns to leap down the stairs to the sidewalk, and the taxi waiting by the curb.

The New York Herald-Times, May 30, 1922

TIT AND TATTLE, BY PATTY CAKE

They like to start these things off with a bang, these Connecticut prosecuting attorneys, and regular readers of this column know that you can't get much more bang for your dollar than Miss Julie Schuyler. Or simply JULIE, as we like to call her, in big bold typeface, with or without an exclamation point.

Now, we all know what she was doing there in the witness stand, and we all know the likely nature of her testimony. So let's fix our attention on more important things: namely, how she looked. Why, ravishing, of course! She's gone and bobbed her pretty blond hair—a bit of a cliché, at this point, but the style really does suit her, unlike many of the girls who try out a little barber-shop rebellion. I've heard from some quarters that Julie is a reluctant witness for the prosecution, but she didn't look reluctant to me. Far from it. She answered the gentleman's questions with nothing short of aplomb, and let me tell you, aplomb isn't an easy thing to achieve when the mercury rises above eighty-eight degrees by ten o'clock in the morning. Even the judge was charmed, and in a race of digits between the mercury and the judge's age, why, I wouldn't want to lay down a bet.

In between witty asides and some very elegant eyebrow-raising, Miss Schuyler managed to convey that she had become friends with the accused's daughter in the hat department at the Bergdorf Goodman emporium on Fifth Avenue in October of 1921, and despite numerous luncheons, teas, shopping excursions, and goodness knows what else in the company of Miss Fortescue, she never met the Patent King himself. Why? Because he didn't want to be met, apparently. In fact, Miss Schuyler believes herself to be the first friend of Miss Fortescue's acquaintance, for Miss Fortescue was kept under strict lock and key for the first nineteen years of her life, in the manner of Rapunzel, and the far greater part of the Fortescue-Schuyler antics were undertaken without the knowledge or permission of the accused.
Why?
inquired the prosecution, and Miss Schuyler shrugged her elegant shoulders and said she couldn't imagine.
Try,
said the prosecution, in so many words, and naturally the defense sprang to its feet and objected—
Conjecture, Your Honor!—
and His Honor stirred himself to agree. So. Off with Miss Julie Schuyler, to the great regret of the court.

Next to be called was that far less bewitching, but more informative figure: the infamous Downstairs Tenant, Mrs. Kelly, she of the soda bread. You will not be surprised to learn that she Never Trusted That Man (here she narrowed her eyes and cast a steely one at the accused, who made no response) and feared very much for the safety of Those Sweet Girls (here a gaze of maternal softness at the Patent Princesses, also unacknowledged) under his care. In order to confirm her suspicions about his character, she crept one evening to his place of work, a small garage nearby where the great inventor did his incomprehensible things with his inconceivable gadgets, and she searched through his private papers. Instead of ordering her arrested on the spot for criminal trespass, the prosecution was moved to ask her what she discovered. Nothing of note, she replied, shaking her head, but she was interrupted in her midnight work by none other than the accused himself, who threatened her with a sharp instrument and swore he'd make her rue the day if she ever returned. Naturally, she ran home, packed her things, and gave notice by way of a basket of soda bread. (At this point in her testimony, she indicated a basket she had left behind her on the bench, with which she invited the court to refresh itself.)

I shall spare you, dear readers, the remaining details of Mrs. Kelly's hour in the witness box, and the recess which followed, because I should be very unhappy if you stopped reading at that point and missed what I have to say about the final witness of the day, Mr. Philip Schuyler, who (you may speculate, and you would be correct) is related in some way to Miss Julie Schuyler. They are cousins, and both handsome in that rakish blond Schuyler manner, but Mr. Schuyler is a lawyer of some repute, and his testimony was perhaps the most anxiously awaited of the day, not least because it was the last.

By the time Mr. Schuyler took the stand, the temperature had reached its considerable zenith, and we—audience and jury—were not especially moved to tolerate a lengthy recital of unimportant details. The prosecution, perhaps sensing this collective mood, cut straight to the chase. In what capacity was Mr. Schuyler acquainted with the accused? He had done some legal work for Mr. Fortescue,
some years before, when the first of his patents came to be registered. In particular, Mr. Fortescue was concerned about the legality of his patents, since he did not possess a legal birth certificate, nor proof of identification. They had been lost in a fire. Mr. Schuyler had then assisted Mr. Fortescue in reconstructing his lost identity, and helped him form a corporation by which his patents could be registered and licensed, without Mr. Fortescue's personal privacy being disturbed.

Had Mr. Schuyler, at any time, felt that there was anything more suspicious behind Mr. Fortescue's lack of identifying paperwork?

Mr. Schuyler paused before he answered. No, he told the court firmly. He had not.

At this point, Mr. Schuyler's testimony came to an end, and upon cross-examination he revealed nothing new.

So it is left to Mr. Octavian Rofrano, ladies and gentlemen, to provide some fireworks for our entertainment tomorrow. As one of the prosecution's key witnesses, he is expected to electrify us, much in the manner that he seems to have electrified the lovely and discerning Mrs. Marshall.

That is, if tonight's expected thunderstorms don't anticipate him in the task.

The woman who appeals to a man's vanity may stimulate him, the woman who appeals to his heart may attract him, but it is the woman who appeals to his imagination who gets him.

—HELEN ROWLAND

SOPHIE

Sunday morning, bright and early

T
OO BRIGHT,
really. Last night's paltry fall of snow has given way to a sky made of blue ice, and a brilliant sun fixed at its eastern end.

But Sophie is looking west, not east: down Thirty-Second Street toward Third Avenue at thirty-two minutes past nine o'clock in the morning, the sun at her back. Her leather half-boots clatter along the sidewalk, echoing the clatter of her heart, which seems to be in the grip of some sort of irrational worry. Some kind of panic. Two minutes late! What if he's one of those punctual military men who can't abide tardy women? What if he's like her father, whose silence has just blighted the entire Sunday morning routine of breakfast and church, because Sophie arrived in the dining room—bleary but clean-scrubbed—at four minutes past seven o'clock instead of six-fifty-nine?

But then she sees her cavalier, standing between a lamppost and an old Model T, dressed for the countryside in a brown Norfolk suit and a wool
cap pulled down over his forehead. He lifts his arm and waves, and Sophie thinks,
Whatever you do, don't run to him.

She runs anyway.

“I'm sorry for being late!” she gasps, holding down her hat with one hand, so she won't try to touch him. “Father always insists on sitting down together after church, and I had to make a ridiculous excuse to get away, since it's Sunday and the shops are closed. I hope you haven't been waiting long.”

“Not too long.” He opens the door for her—the car is pointing north—and goes around front to crank the engine. “Mind switching the ignition for me? Where the key's sticking out, by the wheel.”

Sophie knows how to start an old Model T. After all, her father only got rid of theirs a couple of years ago, trading it in to buy a secondhand Oldsmobile, which he parks in a garage across the street from his workshop—it used to be a livery stable—and pays the boys there a dollar a week to keep it shined up and away from the other cars. But that old Ford was Sophie's responsibility. Father had shown her how to clean the paintwork, how to change the oil and the tires, how to keep the engine running, how to drive it. (In comparison to the boys at the garage, she received only a dime a week for these services.) In consequence, Sophie's something of an expert when it comes to the pre-war Model T. She reaches over and pulls out the choke, and turns the ignition switch as Mr. Rofrano's shoulder pumps up and down, priming the engine. At his signal, she turns the key in the starter to magneto. Another quick movement of Mr. Rofrano's shoulder. The engine coughs twice, hovers precariously, and then catches.

Mr. Rofrano lifts his head and sticks up his thumb in victory, and beneath the shadow of his cap brim his smile is wide and happy. Sophie's absurdly proud of herself. She slides back over to the passenger seat and returns his smile when the door opens and he swings into place beside her, bringing with him the smell of fresh soap and cold air. His left hand eases the spark retard lever, until the pistons purr happily.

“Off we go,” he says.

“But where?”

“Connecticut.”

“Oh.” Sophie's elation ebbs just a bit. Connecticut—well, there's nothing
wrong
with Connecticut, she's heard it's a perfectly
pleasant
place, but it's not exactly known for adventure, is it? (She almost adds the word
romance,
until she remembers, just in time, that she is someone else's fiancée.)

On the other hand, unless she was perhaps expecting Mr. Rofrano to whisk them off to an ocean liner waiting on the west side piers, there isn't much choice for a Sunday morning outing within easy driving distance of the center of Manhattan. Long Island, maybe? New Jersey?

“What's in Connecticut?” she asks.

“You'll see.”

Even on a Sunday morning, the traffic has already cleared away the snow that fell in the night, and anyway, it wasn't much of a snow. It's too cold to snow properly, Sophie says.

“Well, I'm glad it didn't, or it would have spoiled our plans. Are you sleepy?”

“No.”

“I thought you might be sleepy, going to bed so late. You can lie down, if you like. It's going to be a couple of hours at least.”

Sophie doesn't think she's ever going to want to sleep again, not the way her nerves are dancing now. But maybe Mr. Rofrano's right, maybe she should rest for an hour or so, so she'll be fresh for whatever it is they're going to do, up in Connecticut in the middle of the bitter January cold.

“All right,” she says, and she curls as tight as a kitten on the seat, just touching Mr. Rofrano's woolen leg with the top of her head, and she must have gone straight to sleep, because the next thing she knows, the car is bouncing to a stop and the engine cuts off into silence.

AS FAR AS SOPHIE KNOWS,
she's never been to Connecticut. She's been to Europe, but not Connecticut—isn't that strange? Her life, until last sum
mer, was circumscribed by a certain number of blocks around the narrow brownstone house on Thirty-Second Street, a realm that contained a butcher and several grocers, a bakery and a dress shop, a church and a magnificent public library: who could want for more, really? Until graduating two years ago, she attended a nearby girls' academy, but her father never encouraged any friendships with her classmates, and expected her to return home directly after classes were finished, clutching Virginia's firm hand.

Virginia had a little more freedom. Virginia joined the Red Cross at their church, and when a call went out for volunteers in France, Virginia had asked their father if she could go. To Sophie's surprise, he had said yes, after a period of silent consideration. And Virginia had gone. For eighteen months, she had lived in France, and she came back pregnant, wearing a slim gold ring on her finger, and her husband was going to join them just as soon as he could settle his affairs. Then Evelyn had been born, and the husband hadn't arrived. Only letters, and then even those had ceased, about a year ago. He was in Florida, Virginia said. In Florida with his brother, recovering the family fortune by the age-old method: land speculation. There's a rush on, after all, and as soon as he can make things suitable for a wife and a child, he'll send for them.

Well, Sophie hasn't been to Florida, either, and she isn't sure she wants to. But she
did
want to go to Europe, as Virginia had, and when Evelyn turned a nice safe two years of age, Sophie asked if they might go, and (again, to her surprise) her father said
Yes
. So off they went, in a pair of first-class cabins on the magnificent brand-new RMS
Majestic
, keeping to themselves, and they were gone two months and saw everything that wasn't wrecked by the war. They went to Paris and Rome and Florence; they went to London, though for some reason they didn't look in on Virginia's husband's family. And they came home and resumed their lives, but Sophie hasn't quite felt the same since. She feels as if Europe has changed her a little, has made her impatient with her familiar twenty blocks on the eastern side of the island of Manhattan, and that was her state of mind when she met Julie Schuyler. That she hadn't seen enough, not nearly enough. That there's a beautiful,
glimmering world from which she's been shielded until now, and she wants to see it. She wants to see what glories it contains.

She wants to see Connecticut. Only thirty miles away from the middle of Manhattan Island, and she's never been there, not once that she can remember.

“THERE IT IS,” SAYS MR.
Rofrano, setting the brake.

Sophie springs up and peers through the windshield at a winter field, on the other side of a weathered gray-brown fence. The grass is the same color as the wood: dull and shorn, dusted by a thin film of snow that settled more thickly in the hollows. “Is this Connecticut?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“It looks bleaker than I thought.”

“Well, it's winter, isn't it? Put on your hat and mittens.”

He opens the door and climbs out, and Sophie finds her hat and mittens and wraps her muffler snugly about her neck. Mr. Rofrano opens the passenger door and helps her out, and the blast of air that accompanies him is so bitterly frigid that she gasps.

“All right?” says Mr. Rofrano, and his breath makes clouds in the air.

“It's awfully cold!”

“Do you want to stay in the car?”

She takes her hand from his and shoves it inside the pocket of her coat. “Well, of course not.”

“I didn't think you would.”

As compliments go, it's rather spare—hardly even recognizable, to the naked eye, as a compliment at all—but Mr. Rofrano smiles as he gives it to her, and his eyes are so warm with approval that the atmosphere itself seems to thaw by several degrees, and the wind blows more gently on her cheeks.

Sophie turns. “Where are we, exactly?”

“We're in Avon. See this field in front of us?”

“That's a field?” she says disdainfully.

“In the summer, it is. It's the infield of a racetrack. We're parked on the track itself, if you haven't noticed.”

Sophie looks around them in surprise, and discovers that he's right. The dirt under her boots stretches in a track on either side, before curving around the fence and disappearing. Behind her there's a small wooden grandstand, mournfully empty.

“But why are we here? There can't be any races.”

Mr. Rofrano nods at the field before them. “That's where I saw my first airplane. They held a big air show here, back in 1911, when I was a kid, just before I left for school. Poppa took me. It was September, a gorgeous clear blue-skied day. You could see for miles. They took off from the infield right here”—he nods again—“and went up in the air and did all these acrobatics. Looping the loop, that kind of thing. I just stood there by the fence with my mouth open.”

“My goodness.” Sophie tries to picture this barren landscape covered with green grass and clean white airplanes, with spectators in sunlit dresses. Those beautiful big hats everybody used to wear, before the war shrunk everything down, hats and dresses and lives.

“Poppa asked if I'd like to go up in one, and I said,
Boy, would I
.” He laughs. “So Poppa went up to the man who was promoting the thing and asked how much it cost to take a ride. I don't know how much, but Poppa was pretty flush back then. Came out all right after the panic, somehow. Anyway, up I went. It was only about ten minutes, but it changed my life. I thought I'd never been so happy. I looked down at the earth beneath us, and it looked so small and pretty, the people on it so inconsequential. And yet somehow, you know—this is the paradox, I guess—it was all the more dear and precious for being so tiny. You couldn't see the flaws. You felt protective of it all.”

“Like a child with a dollhouse.”

“I don't know. Something like that. Anyway, I fell in love, not just with the beauty of it but the freedom, too. The speed and the wind and the elemental thrill. The summer before college, I got a job as a mechanic at an air field, and I learned from the inside out. By then it was nineteen seventeen,
we were in the war at last, and I couldn't wait to get out there. I was in college for about a month before I turned eighteen. I quit the next day.”

“And you enlisted in the Air Service.”

“Yes.” He draws in a long breath, and as it comes out, bit by bit, he reaches inside his pocket and brings forth a shiny cigarette case, an expensive one. “Mind if I smoke?”

“No, of course not.”

He lights the cigarette and smokes quietly for a moment. Sophie's toes are frozen inside her boots. She stamps her feet a couple of times, trying to get his attention, to wake him out of his trance. When that doesn't work, she takes his arm. “Show me the place,” she says.

“What place?”

“The place where you stood, watching the airplanes.”

He nods. “Right over there.”

“Come on, then.” She tugs his arm and drags him to the fence—drags, because his steps are reluctant—and when they arrive she removes her hand from the crook of his elbow and leans against the topmost board. “Lean with me, like this,” she says, and he obeys her. “Now close your eyes and pretend.”

“Pretend?”

“All right.
Imagine.
Is that a better word? Imagine you're ten or eleven again, and you're watching an airplane go up into the sky for the first time. Imagine you're climbing inside for the first time—”

“This is ridiculous.”

“Because it's so cold out?”

“Not because it's cold out. Because I'm not eleven years old any more. Because it's not September, it's January. Because . . .” He allows the word to hover there, in its own little cloud of vapor, containing any number of obstacles. Any number of heartbreaks that Sophie, living quietly and predictably inside her twenty square blocks of Manhattan Island, knows nothing of.

“Then why did you bring me here?” she asks.

“I don't know. Why did you come?”

“Because you asked me to. You needed me for something.”

The cigarette is nearly finished. Mr. Rofrano drops the end in the dead grass and grinds it thoroughly with the toe of his shoe, and then he turns to face her, propping his lean body on the fence with his right elbow. “Maybe I did. But that doesn't mean you should have agreed.”

“Why not?”

“You're engaged to Jay Ochsner, for one thing. For another, you hardly know me. You get into a car with me and let me drive you off alone, without a chaperone or anything like that, for hours into the countryside. I might be anyone.”