A Certain Age (15 page)

Her hat catches the distant afternoon sun, and as she looks down at Mr. Rofrano, she feels as if she's bathing in it. Bathing in warmth, surrounded by a halo of sunshine. Look up, she thinks. Look up at me. Look at Sophie in the center of her irresistible sunshine halo.

But he doesn't.

He sighs, drops his cigarette on a flagstone, and rises to his feet. “Crazy dame.”

THERE USED TO BE A
wobbly window, he tells her. A sash, warped by the sun, that didn't fit perfectly in its frame, so the latch wouldn't slide into place.

“Where was it?”

He sighs again and looks up at the blue sky. “The breakfast room. But I'm sure they've had it fixed by now.”

They haven't. With a bit of muscular persuasion, the sash jerks right up. It's a nice big window, spacious and summery, and Sophie, lifted to the opening between Mr. Rofrano's two large hands, wriggles easily inside and tumbles to the floor.

“I'm all right!” she says brightly, and picks herself up. She unlocks the
French door to the right and lets Mr. Rofrano inside. “It's cold, though.”

“Of course. They would have turned off the boiler when they packed up in September.” He looks around, sliding his gaze up and down the walls, frowning. “This is a rotten idea.”

“It's a
wonderful
idea.” Sophie takes in a deep breath, filling her chest with the smell of wood and dust and camphor. “Show me your room. I want to sit exactly where you used to sit, looking out to sea. This
is
why you brought me here, isn't it?”

Mr. Rofrano's gaze falls on her, and in the dim and unlit room, designed to catch the morning light, Sophie loses the color of his eyes. She finds herself longing for this missing detail, the way you long for the saltshaker when it's disappeared from the table.

“I guess it is, after all,” he says quietly, and he takes her by the mitten and leads her out into a hallway and up the wide staircase. The house is whisper-still around them, except for the creak of the floorboards beneath their feet, and decorated sparsely with white paint and watercolor seascapes.

“Does it look the same?” Sophie asks.

“Not at all. My mother loved her flocked wallpaper and her oriental rugs. It's like a different house.”

“What a shame.”

“Actually, it looks better now. Lighter.”

If the house looks lighter now, Sophie thinks, how dark was it before? But she follows Mr. Rofrano obediently down the creaking hallway to the very end, past closed white doors and yet more watercolors, until he comes to a stop and rests his hand on a brass doorknob.

“Go on,” she says.

He straightens his shoulders and opens the door, and Sophie pushes past him and gasps. “How
beautiful
! Oh, Mr. Rofrano! How
lucky
you were!”

She rushes to the round turret at the far corner, rimmed by a creamy window seat topped with blue cushions, and presses her nose to the window glass. The view reaches right across the lawn and the shoreline, encompassing Long Island Sound and the island with the lighthouse, until it lands on the faint
winter-brown strip of Long Island and the blue sky above. A few white waves curl on the top of the water, appearing and disappearing in the cadence of the wind and current. Sophie lifts one leg and sinks her knee into the cushion.

“How did you ever leave this?” she says. “It must have been awful.”

There is a clink of metal and the elegant scratch of a matchstick, quite distinct in the undisturbed air of the turret room, as Mr. Rofrano lights another cigarette. He must be running out by now, surely? He crosses the room in slow footsteps that make the floor groan behind her, and comes to a stop just to her left, not quite touching her shoulder. If she concentrates, she can detect his breath on the lobe of her ear, on the edge of her jaw.

“There was a story about this house, you know,” he says softly.

“Really? What kind of story?”

“Not a nice one, I'm afraid.”

“A ghost story?”

“Something like that.”

“How awful.”

“It was. It was pretty awful,” he says. “It was a murder.”

“My goodness! Not while you were there, I hope?”

“No, no. It was the owner before us. The family who sold us the house, although they'd moved out a while before. It sat there for a couple of years. No one would buy it, until Poppa came along. By then the price was so low, he couldn't resist the bargain. And he wasn't a local, he wasn't one of them, so no one told him until later.”

“Of course they wouldn't, the rotten snobs.” She turns around and sits on the window seat. “What happened?”

Mr. Rofrano joins her, a decorous foot or two away on the dusty blue cushion. “They never knew, exactly. I finally heard the story from the neighbor boy. A servant found the mother dead one afternoon. She was on the floor, covered with blood. Her throat was slit.”

“How horrible! Was anyone else in the house?”

Mr. Rofrano lifts the cigarette to his lips. “Yes. Her daughter.”

“Oh, no!”

“She was two or three years old, I think. She was actually inside the room, with the body. According to the servant, the girl thought her mother was sleeping. She was trying to wake her up.”

“Oh, no. Oh, no. The poor thing.”

“Yes. The other daughter was older. She was still at school.”

“And her husband? He was at work?”

“That's what he claimed at the time, though as he worked alone, in a garage, for hours on end, no one could actually vouch for him.” Mr. Rofrano says all this deliberately, in a dispassionate voice, as if reciting evidence in a courtroom.

Sophie waits for him to continue the story—Did the husband do it? Was there an arrest, a sensational trial?—but he only goes on smoking quietly, staring at a collection of framed photographs hanging from the opposite wall, which is painted in buttercup yellow and trimmed with cream. She nudges him with her elbow. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“What happened next?”

Mr. Rofrano rises from the window seat and walks to the washstand. He tips a long crumb of ash into the soap dish. “They disappeared.”

“What?”

“The entire family. They just disappeared. Left the house and the furniture inside it, about a week after the funeral, and nobody heard from them since.” He turns around and leans against the washstand, crossing one leg over the other, studying Sophie carefully.

“But that's crazy! Why would he disappear, if he didn't do it?”

“A good question. I always wondered.”

Sophie looks around wildly. “My goodness! It wasn't
this
room, was it?”

“No, no. It happened in the kitchen. The neighbor boy told me this was the little girl's room. She'd just been moved out of the nursery, you see, because the mother was seven months gone with another baby when she died.”

Sophie covers her face with her hands. “Oh, no.”

The floorboards groan again, and Sophie feels the cushion stretch to accommodate Mr. Rofrano's bony frame, back in place beside her.

“The neighbor kid told me it was a baby boy,” he says, “but I don't know if that's true. Sometimes kids make things up.”

“But the rest of it is true?”

He nods. “I looked it all up in the newspapers. It was big news around here. But then it settled down eventually, when they couldn't find the family.”

“I hope they're all right,” Sophie whispers. “Those poor sisters.”

“I always hoped so.” He leans his head back against the window and examines the ceiling. His hands curl around the edge of the window seat, one on each side of his legs, as if he's holding on for balance. When he speaks, his voice is hardly more than a whisper: just clouds of frosty breath dissolving into the dry winter air. “I used to lie in my bed here and think about that little girl, you know? The one who found her mother's body. The one who slept in this room. Sometimes I almost thought I could feel her with me, like she was still playing there, with her toys. Waiting for her mother to wake up again.”

Sophie touches his hand. “Oh, Mr. Rofrano.”

“Kind of silly, I guess. But I didn't have any brothers or sisters. There was only me. So maybe I just . . .”

“Just what?”

“Nothing. Anyway, I never forgot that girl. I just kept thinking about her and thinking about her. They had her picture in the newspaper, and I clipped it out and kept it in my wallet. Kept it in my pocket, when I was flying.” The cigarette is gone from his fingers—maybe he left it in the washstand—and he stares down at Sophie's hand that covers his own. “Something about her eyes. Like she was looking right into me, from her picture. Right into my heart. I know that sounds stupid.”

“Did you ever try to find her?”

“I thought about it, when I got back from France. I meant to, actually. And then I got busy with other things, and I guess I just put it all behind me. In the past, you know, with Poppa and Mama and everyone else.” He stands up and pulls her with him. “Come along. I'd better get you back to New
York, before your father figures out you're not gadding around with Julie Schuyler.”

Sophie keeps his hand and folds her other mitten over the top, like a sandwich. “Do you know what I think?”

“I wouldn't dare to guess, Miss Fortescue.”

“I think you should find this girl.”

He stares down at her and breathes without sound. “Why do you say that?” he says at last.

“Because I think she's the
one,
the one you're meant for. I think it's fate. I think you've been missing her all your life.”

“I've never even met her.”

“Yes, you have. In your dreams, you have. You lived in the same room, you breathed the same air. You're
connected.
” She pauses. “But you already know that, don't you? You've carried her in your pocket all these years. I'll bet you've looked for her in every single face, every single woman you've ever met. Haven't you?”

“God in heaven,” he whispers.

She squeezes his fingers between her palms. The mittens are thick, but she can feel the ridges of his knuckles, the heavy lines of his bones, and the weight of them fills her with certainty. “Go find her, Mr. Rofrano. Go find her and make her happy. You belong to her.”

Again the soundless breathing, the mature consideration. The house creaks faintly, the wind hoots around a corner. Mr. Rofrano lifts his other hand and touches the corner of Sophie's mouth with his thumb, a swift swipe, like she's left a crumb behind or something.

Or
something.

“Oh, I
do,
do I?” he murmurs. “To
her
?”

“Yes.”

“Well, maybe she doesn't want me. Maybe she doesn't need a fellow like me, all broken up and scarred. What if she's already got someone to make her happy?”

“Then you should cut him out, of course. She'd be much happier with
you, in my humble feminine opinion. Scars and all. She'd be the luckiest girl in the world.”

“I see.” He presses her fingers. “But what about
you
, Miss Fortescue? Aren't
you
the luckiest girl in the world?”

“Who, me?”

“Yes. Don't you belong to Jay Ochsner?”

The question interrupts all that lovely certainty warming her belly. The mystic alchemy of this seaside turret bedroom, by which she, Sophie Fortescue, seems somehow transformed from her leaden East Thirty-Second Street self into the girl in Mr. Rofrano's picture, the girl he loves, the
one.
Jay Ochsner? She hasn't thought about Jay in hours, and his intrusion into this intimate winter idyll strikes her as—well, intrusion. Where he doesn't belong.

“I guess so,” she replies.

“You guess so?”

“Yes! I mean, of course I do. We're engaged to be married, after all.”
Married:
what a clang that word makes, in the frigid air of Mr. Rofrano's childhood bedroom. Another intrusion.

“That's what I thought. Since I was the one who popped the question, after all. And I can still hear the sound of your voice saying
Yes.
You were pretty certain about that.”

“Yes, I was.”

Mr. Rofrano plucks away Sophie's mittened fingers, opening the sandwich, so that the two of them, Sophie and Mr. Rofrano, are left standing there in the middle of the room, linked at both hands, staring absurdly at each other. Like a couple at the altar, she thinks. His lips are pink, parted just a crack, as if he's about to say something. Ask a question. Say
I do.

Wouldn't that be crazy?

“I guess we'd better get back to New York,” Sophie whispers.

“I guess we'd better,” Mr. Rofrano agrees.

But he doesn't let go.

And verily, a woman need know but one man well, in order to understand all men; whereas a man may know all women and not understand one of them.

—HELEN ROWLAND

THERESA

Monday morning, about ten o'clock or so

U
NTIL THIS
morning, I have never visited the Boy's place of employment, but everybody knows where to find the Sterling Bates & Company building: right there at the intersection of Wall and Broad, coyly cornering the Stock Exchange.

I was the one who got him the job in the first place, after all. Well, that's not quite true. I
urged
him to find himself a means of gainful employment, to keep himself busy during the day once the first autumn zephyr blew us all back into the city, like so many fallen leaves.
Idle hands do the devil's work,
I reminded him, sometime in the tranquil center of August, and then I took said hands into my own and settled them right where they could do the devil's work to my utmost satisfaction. It was the middle of the day, and we had been lovers for about a month by then, but I was already planning for the future. Already laying out a means by which the Boy could settle into a little nest at just the right distance from the Upper East Side—not too far for convenience, not too close for discretion—and I could pay him a visit or two, from time to time.

I knew, of course, that he wouldn't allow me to keep him. He wasn't that sort of Boy, then or now. Besides, he has a tendency to brood if left to his own devices, and I did have other claims on my time, loath as I was to face them in the middle of that summer of nineteen twenty. So. A job he must have, and a job he easily found, once I planted a little whisper in Ned van der Wahl's ear.
That houseguest of yours, that nice boy just back from France, the son of your old friend, don't you think he'd make a fine new stockbroker at your firm? He seems to be perking up a bit. A career in finance might be just the thing for him
. And what do you know? Ned had the same good idea as I did. He was just waiting for the end of summer to suggest it. The boy needed time to rest up a bit, after all he'd been through, and now that I mentioned it, he
was
perking up. He was perking up nicely. So off to Sterling Bates he went, except in bonds instead of stocks, because they happened to have an opening on the government desk at that exact moment. Kismet, or something.

You saved my life that summer,
the Boy likes to tell me, and I modestly think he's right. I have only to remember the sight of his face, that evening when he dropped me off at Windermere after Man o' War's race, to know how far he's come since then. The triumphant elation of the racetrack had worn off by then, and we had driven most of the way in silence—two long hours of silence, just picture it—punctuated only rarely by observations on the weather, on the entertainment afforded by Ned van der Wahl to his guests, on the splendid race we'd just witnessed. That was how I liked it. I don't go in for soul-searching, for this modern passion for psycho-analysis. Examining every last detail of your childhood, every last itch in your subconscious. Generally speaking, the less I know about the contents of a person's soul, the better I like him.

Anyway. We pulled up in the exact apex of the tidy crescent drive at Windermere—we kept the gravel raked daily, as a matter of moral order, and still do—and I asked the Boy if he'd like to come in for a nightcap. Although there wasn't much company, I was afraid. My husband was in the city that week.

A nice gilt-edged invitation, wasn't it, and I fully expected him to accept.

He peered up the steps and back down to my face. His eyes were sick and dull. “No, thank you,” he said, and he got out of the car and opened the door for me, like a gentleman. He shook my hand good-bye and puttered off down the drive, and that was the last I saw of him for a week, poor thing. One hand on the wheel, clenched hard, and the other elbow propped on the doorframe. Stupid Boy, I thought, a little slighted and angry, but I couldn't get that picture out of my head. The unhappy angle of his face.

Six nights later, having drunk a couple of martinis with a couple of friends at the Maidstone Club, having tried and failed to catch the Boy around town all week, I decided enough was enough. I stood up in the middle of someone's sentence, tossed down the third martini, stubbed out my cigarette, and drove on over to Ned van der Wahl's guesthouse to trap the Boy in his own lair.

But that's another story, and anyway, the reason I'm thinking about all this, the reason I'm dredging up all this history, is because that ancient scenario bears a remarkable resemblance to my present situation. Unable to find the Boy around town yesterday, I'm driving downtown this Monday morning to ambush him at his office, and my fingers are trembling, my lips are clenched just as hard as they were back then.

“Mr. Octavian Rofrano,” I tell the secretary out front, just as crisp as can be. (I might have telephoned him from the box on the street below, of course, but it seems to me that a woman standing in the reception area inside your place of employment is much harder to ignore than a woman standing in a telephone box on the street outside your place of employment.)

“Do you have an appointment?” she inquires, as pert as can be. She's wearing the latest suit and a bobbed haircut, and she thinks she's awfully smart. Smarter than a Fifth Avenue matron of a certain age, at any rate, however attractive the matron's figure and however expensive her dress.

I administer my most dragonly stare, the one that used to set my boys all a-quiver when they were guilty little sprouts. “Just tell him Mrs. Marshall is here to see him.”

“Yes, ma'am.” (Meekly.)

A moment later, the Boy strides free from the interior doorway and
wheels to a stop in the middle of that plush marble reception area. His eyes are wide and alarmed, and his shoulders are just the way I like them, inside that suit of dignified gray charcoal for which I measured him myself. “Mrs. Marshall!” he exclaims. “Is something the matter?”

I rise from my chair and straighten my gloves on my wrists. “Indeed there is, Mr. Rofrano. Shall we find somewhere for you to buy me a cup of coffee?”

THE BOY TAKES ME TO
a coffee shop a few blocks away, making rather endearingly furtive glances all about us. He orders coffee and cinnamon buns and lights me a cigarette, and I notice that his hands are almost as nervous as mine.

“Couldn't this wait until tomorrow?” he asks. “I was going to talk to you about something, when you came over.”

“Not really.”

He lights his own cigarette, but he doesn't do anything with it, just holds it between his fingers and stares at the burning end. “You do know that everyone's going to hear about this, you coming to see me at work.”

“Oh, never mind that. Everybody already knows about us.”

He looks up. “What do you mean?”

“I mean secrets don't last long in this town. Didn't you know that?”

“Nobody ever said anything to me.”

“Darling, nobody ever would. Anyway, it doesn't matter any more.” The waitress arrives bearing coffee and buns, and I utilize this natural pause in the conversation to gather my thoughts and—I suppose—my courage. After all, it's a bold thing I'm doing, isn't it? And not the kind of bold thing I usually do.

“Why not?” says the Boy, as the waitress steps away.

I add cream. “Why not what?”

“Why doesn't it matter?” He grips the coffee cup and leans forward. His face is all pink, his bones practically jumping forth from behind his smooth
young skin. I adore his skin. I adore him. His eyebrows knit anxiously together as he continues: “Are you ending this?”

“
Ending
this?” I stir in the sugar and lift the cup with both hands, so it doesn't shake in my fingers. The coffee is just right, sweet and creamy. “No, Boyo. The opposite. I've changed my mind entirely.” Set down the cup, fix him in the eye. “I've decided to accept your offer of marriage, after all.”

From the shock in his face, I can tell this is the last thing he expects from me. I believe his eyes actually change color—or is it continents?—from Mediterranean to Antarctic. The pink drains away from his skin.

“I don't understand,” he says, in a voice like the spray of fine gravel at the apex of a crescent-shaped driveway.

“I've changed my mind, that's all. I've thought about it long and hard, and I realized you're right. All this sneaking about, it's bad for the soul. Manhattan's bad for the soul. We should go away together and start over, and—well, maybe we can have a baby after all, it's not al
together
impossible, and—well.” I blink once or twice—it seems my eyes are stinging, maybe someone's cutting up an onion in the back—and lift the coffee again. “Anyway. What do you think?”

The shock is still present, or rather the color's still absent. The Boy fidgets with his cigarette, sips his coffee, and says, without looking at me, “What about your husband? The boys?”

“Oh, they'll get used to the idea. The boys have their own lives now, after all, and Sylvo . . .” I rattle to a halt, because I can't lie. I can't lie to my Boyo. “Sylvo wants a divorce.”

“A
what
?”

“A divorce, of course. We can't get married without one, can we?” I laugh; or rather, I intend to laugh. The resulting sound comes out more like a particularly repellent giggle, the kind that no red-blooded man would want to shackle himself against for eternity. “Sylvo's finally decided to move with the times and marry his mistress. Isn't it precious? So we're free, darling Boyo. There's nothing in our way. I'm sure he'll settle plenty of money on me to keep things quiet, enough to buy us a fine new start somewhere. What do you think about California?”

He's never thought about California, I can tell. California is the furthest thing from his dear little mind. He reaches out and touches my hand. “When did this happen?”

“When did what happen?” My voice is still far too high.

“When did Sylvo tell you he wanted a divorce?”

“Oh, that? I believe it was Saturday night. Yes. Saturday night, after I got home.”
Tap, tap
in the ashtray. “He was awfully nice about it. I didn't know you could say a thing like that so nicely.”

“Oh, Theresa.”

“My goodness, you don't think I'm
upset
about it, do you? It's
sensational
news. We're free! It's what we've always wanted, isn't it? A gift on a silver platter, engraved
Mr. and Mrs. Octavian Rofrano, Junior,
just exactly the way you signed all those naughty hotel registers. We'll be respectable at last.”

“Theresa,” he whispers.

“Nothing too fancy, of course. I think a City Hall wedding would be adequate, don't you think? A small party afterward, just a few friends. Jay will have married his little woman by then. They can serve as witnesses, I suppose. What's the matter, Boyo? You're not saying much.”

“I'm sorry. Just a little shocked, I guess. A week ago you turned me down flat. I thought it was hopeless.”

“Well, things have changed since then, haven't they? All the obstacles are gone, and do you know something? I'm glad. I'm glad Sylvo was brave enough to part with the old ways. It's a whole new world, and divorce isn't such a scandal anymore. If two people aren't suited to each other, haven't been suited in some time, why, they should shake hands as friends and find someone else.” I brush his knuckle with my thumb. “And we've certainly established how well we're suited, haven't we?”

He looks up from his coffee. “There's more to marriage than
that,
Theresa.”

“Of course there is. But sex is fundamental, that's what all the scientists say. Sylvo and I haven't gone to bed in years, and how can you call that a
marriage? Say!” I put down my cigarette and snap my fingers. “We can have a double wedding, can't we? If the divorce comes through quickly enough, I mean.”

“A double wedding?”

“You and me, and Jay and little Sophie.”

The Boy releases my hand and sticks all ten fingers in his hair.

“What's the matter?” I ask. “Is something wrong?”

“No. Nothing. I mean—I'm sorry, I just—I'm taking it all in, that's all.”

“Is this about Jay? Have you found out something awful about that girl?”

“Damn it, Theresa,” he mutters.

“Because it doesn't matter. I don't give a damn anymore. Her father can be a convicted felon, for all I care. They love each other, and that's all that matters.”

He pulls his hands out of his hair and stares at me. “Do they? Love each other?”

There is something about the way he asks this question. Something about the slant of his eyebrows, or maybe the color of his eyes, which seem to be moving north again, to warmer climes.

I crush out my cigarette in a kind of rolling motion, clockwise, taking my time. “Why, Boyo,” I say. “Why do you care?”

The tiniest pause. “I don't.”

It appears my fingers are cold. They
seem
cold, anyway, as I take careful hold of the coffee cup. I don't lacquer my nails. That would be vulgar. But I do trim them nicely, a little longer than I used to, and they're really quite elegant, poised against all that cheap white ceramic. It's just the rest of the hand that troubles me. The veins that pop out in awful sea-green profusion whenever I lower my claws below the level of my heart. The lines around my knuckles. The excess of color in my capillaries. Most of the time, you can hide all this mess under your gloves, but when you're smoking and drinking coffee in a joint like this, the gloves come off. You sit naked before your companion. Your age is written on your hands, plain to read, and there's nothing you can do about that, is there?