A Certain Age (24 page)

Between lovers, a little confession is a dangerous thing.

—HELEN ROWLAND

SOPHIE

East Thirty-Second Street, the thirteenth of June

F
OR SOME
reason, Sophie's surprised to find that the latchkey fits the lock, and the door to her childhood home glides open beneath her hand. Not even a creak. “Hello?” she calls, but there's no answer from Dot or Betty. They're probably out. Why would they hang about the house all day, with no family to take care of?

The hallway is strange in its familiarity. The black-and-white floor presents the same checkerboard she used to count when she was small, the same chipped and missing tiles, the same dark lines at the corners that no amount of scrubbing will lift. To her left, the old hat rack stands empty, except for a lingering umbrella beneath. The mirror hangs beside it, forming the same small oval, disfigured by the same pattern of tarnish to its silvering, and its dustless surface suggests that someone, at least, is doing her job faithfully.

Sophie removes her hat and gloves and puts them in their accustomed places: hat on the hook, gloves on the table. She isn't wearing a jacket—the heat returned like a bludgeon the other day—so the key goes back in her pocketbook, which she also leaves on the table. She takes in a deep breath—
home
!—and it smells different somehow, too much wood and not enough smoke, too bright with lemon polish to be its ordinary self.

But none of us is her ordinary self, anymore,
she thinks. We will never be ourselves again.

In a way, she's glad to find the house empty. She came here to be alone, after all, even though today is the kind of day you're supposed to share with your sister, with your dearest friend. You are supposed to commiserate, to mutually console, to hold each other's weeping hearts, to pour each other syrupy glasses of cordial and discuss—if you can bear it—What Is To Be Done.

Instead, Sophie has come here. Alone. And though Virgo didn't say so—of course she wouldn't—Sophie suspects that her sister is just as relieved not to have to support any company tonight. We are both hollow, she thinks, examining her wide and uninhabited eyes in the mirror. We are drained of words. We are drained of cordial. We are sans everything.

The eyes stare back, not blinking, until Sophie turns away.

The air is cooler than she expects, defying the immense and slow-moving heat outside. Dot and Betty must be keeping the curtains drawn, the lamps off, the oven unlit, the doors shut. At the end of the hall, the stairs tilt invitingly upward, padded by the stylish blue runner Virginia ordered last year, but Sophie cannot face her bedroom yet. Cannot face the tidy abandonment inside. Too many relics of the Sophie left behind. The half-assembled De Forest radio receiver, shoved under the bed. The inner workings of a clock decorating the surface of the bureau. The few well-thumbed issues of
Popular Mechanics
hidden among her books. The rose-shaped engagement ring in its box inside the drawer.

For a moment, Sophie continues to stand in the hallway, facing the stairs, hand resting on her pocketbook. She isn't conscious of the passage of time, only of the cool air on her cheek, and the blessed, invisible quiet. The way the contented motes of dust hang in the atmosphere, undisturbed, because no one is moving, no one is talking, no one even exists except Sophie. If she stands still enough, she can almost believe it. She can believe—like Prospero—that the entire course of the last four months is just a vision of her imagination, an
elaborate play enacted by her subconscious. An insubstantial pageant. Our revels now ended.

But the revels weren't ended. Outside these walls, the farce continued, and Sophie must play her part, mustn't she? Like everyone else. She must wake up again.

She gives her pocketbook a last pat and opens one of the double doors into the parlor. The drapes are closed to the afternoon sun, and the room is dark and smells of beeswax. Sophie pauses at the sofa table to pick up a photograph of Virginia in her Red Cross uniform, taken just before she left for France, and a throat clears in the corner of the room.

Sophie gasps and spins. The photograph slips from her fingers and lands softly on the rug.

“Miss Fortescue,” says Octavian.

He's standing before Father's favorite armchair, as if he's just risen from its comfort. For a shocked instant, Sophie imagines he really
is
her father, that today's events really
were
all a great mistake, an illusion, and Father's been released from prison and is somehow already home, wearing a pale suit and a striped necktie.

But the mirage ends in the next tick of the mantel clock, because the figure is too tall and youthful, and the voice—well, she knows that voice, even if the face is covered by shadow. She bends down and lifts Virginia's photograph and brushes the glass with her hand, not because it's damaged but because she doesn't want to look up.

“The maid let me in,” continues Octavian, when she doesn't reply. “I hope I'm not intruding.”

Sophie looks up and lets out an astonished breath that might once, in an earlier Sophie, have been a laugh. “Isn't that exactly what you're doing?”

“I'm sorry.” He reaches for his hat, resting beneath the lamp. “I'll go, of course, if you want me to. But your sister told me you were coming home this afternoon, and I thought—well, I haven't had a chance to speak to you since January.”

“I didn't think we had anything to say to each other.”

The brim of the hat beats softly against his chest. “Sophie—Miss Fortescue—”

“Faninal,” she says coldly.

“You have every right, I guess, to be angry with me. But I want you to know that all this—the way things turned out, what happened today in that courtroom—it's the last thing I wanted. I would have taken it all to my grave, if I could have.”

Sophie fixes her gaze on the rhythm of that hat brim over his heart, the nervous flex of his finger joints. Her eyes are growing accustomed to the dusky light, so that the details become visible, one by one: his suit is gray, the stripes on his necktie are blue, the pressed creases of his trousers are softened by the heat. She thinks his fingers are more tanned than before, but they're otherwise familiar in each tiny hair and crescent nail; more familiar than the room around them, more familiar than the house itself. Except that they're moving, beating that uneasy hat, a most peculiar feature.

“I know that,” she whispers.

The hat stops moving. “I was hoping you would.” A deep pause. “I knew you would.”

“Of course I knew. But I can't forgive you for it.”

“No. I suppose that's fair.”

He gives the hat a spin, puts it on his head, takes it off again. A bizarre flurry of moment. By contrast, Sophie feels as if she's turned to stone. If she wanted to move, if she wanted to step toward him or away, if she wanted to turn and open the curtains and flood the room with hot summer light, she couldn't. Even her eyes are disinclined to blink.

He bursts out, “What happened today in court—”

“No! I don't want to talk about it.”

“I just want to say how shocked I was. I thought things were going the other way. We were all convinced about the gardener. Your father's lawyers did a brilliant job of—”

“Please, Octavian.” Sophie lifts a tired hand, palm outward. “I can't even think about it.”

“Sophie—”

“Please, Octavian. Mr. Rofrano.”

Octavian runs his fingers over his head, as if he's surprised not to find his hat resting there. His polished black shoes stand a little apart, preparing to carry him to the door if she tells him to leave, knowing he's got no reason to stand there. No right to stand there. And she
should
tell him to leave. She
will
tell him to leave. In just a few more seconds, when she can summon the will.

“What will you do now?” he asks.

“I don't know. My father's just been convicted of murdering my mother, Mr. Rofrano, by an impartial jury of his peers. He's not planning to appeal. I suppose they're going to sentence him to death shortly. We are to hold ourselves at the court's pleasure. No doubt the lawyers will telephone me when I'm needed.”

“But you can't be staying here alone!”

“Why not? The servants are here.” She moves at last, sinking into the sofa, and it feels unexpectedly luxurious, to sit on a sofa instead of a hard bench. She takes a deep breath, and the air tastes of dust. The sofa cushions, apparently, haven't been so well tended as the plane surfaces. “Anyway, I'm tired of people. I don't want to talk to another human being, as long as I live.”

“I'm sorry.” He puts the hat on his head, this time with decision, and steps away from the armchair. “I shouldn't have come. I'll leave you in peace.”

“No!”

He pauses.

“I'm sorry. I mean, you can leave if you wish. If you need to leave now.”

“Do you want me to stay?”

Now that she's used to it, the room doesn't seem cool anymore. An intolerable warmth squeezes her temples. Her fingertips, pressed together in a web over her knees, stick damply in place. She imagines a glass of lemonade, tall and choked with ice, sweating into her hand. She imagines the springtime she's missed, the tulips she never noticed, the blue sky outside that beckons everyone but her.

“I—I don't know.” Sophie looks, at last, into Octavian's face. He's
tanned, and more tired and lean than before, but his eyes are large and soft with compassion.
Real
compassion, not the synthetic kind that squishes the faces of all those people in the courtroom, as they steal glimpses of her, snatches of her, the tragic Daughter of the Accused. A compassion that's really curiosity, morbidity, the way you manufacture sorrow for someone struck by a streetcar, or someone two houses away who has just received one of those awful War Department telegrams. A compassion that makes her sick to her stomach.

But Octavian's compassion isn't sick-making. His compassion knows her, understands what she's suffering, comprehends the dangerous state of her nerves. Octavian's compassion makes her veins rustle, makes her heartbeat double. Restless. Reckless. She wants to ask,
Where is Mrs. Marshall?
But instead she shrugs. “If you
want
to stay . . .”

“No. I don't want to stay
here
.”

“Then you should go.”

He holds out his hand. “But you shouldn't stay here either. Come with me.”

Sophie begins to laugh, high and hysterical. “Come with
you
?”

“Why not?”

“After what happened last time?”

“Nothing happened last time, did it? Nothing would have changed, if we had or hadn't gone.”

“But it was wrong of us. I had Jay, and you had—you had someone, too. I fooled myself into thinking we were just taking an innocent ride together, but it wasn't innocent.
I
was innocent, that's all.”

But Octavian is shaking his head. “You're still innocent, Sophie. You don't know what corruption is, and that's why there was nothing wrong with what we did. There still isn't.”

Something about the firmness of his voice. She wavers.

He curls his fingers invitingly. “Come on, now. You could use a little fresh air.”

“There isn't any fresh air, not between here and the equator.”

But she rises anyway and, after an instant's hesitation, places her naked
hand against Octavian's naked hand, and it seems, despite the firmness of his voice, he's just as damp as she is. Just as afraid.

ONCE THEY'RE UNDER WAY, RUMBLING
eastward along Thirty-Second Street in the familiar Ford, Sophie inquires, as a matter of duty, after the whereabouts of Mrs. Marshall.

“Theresa's back at the apartment, I believe.”

“Yours, or hers?”

Octavian slows the car to negotiate the crossing of Second Avenue. “Hers.”

“Does she know where you are?”

“Yes. I told her I was going to look in on you. Make sure you were doing all right, after what happened today.”

“What did she say?” Sophie asks relentlessly.

“If you're asking whether she
cares
we're together, I suppose she does. But she understands. She agreed I should go.”

“I see. We have her permission.”

“It's not like that.”

“Yes, it is.”

Octavian falls silent. He doesn't want to fight with her, she thinks, but maybe he understands why she
does
want to fight. Why she's spoiling for a bit of spat. Sophie turns her head and watches the houses slide by, the little striped awnings above the shops, the pavement blistering under the sun. The leaves on the trees are still pale and new, drooping in exhaustion. Summer has begun too early. The draft blows hot against Sophie's face, filled with exhaust and rot. She holds her hat brim to keep the shade steady over her face.

“Where are we going?”

“Long Island. A little place I've been visiting lately. I hope you'll approve.” He speaks loudly, belting his words over the draft and the engine's roar, and Sophie thinks how stupid this is, stupid and reckless, driving to Long Island with another woman's fiancé. Look what happened the last time.

But that was another Sophie, another girl, innocent and undamaged. This Sophie has so much less to lose.

OVER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE. THROUGH
the ragtag streets of Brooklyn, then the orderly rows and yards of Queens, then open space, the air a little fresher, the smell a little greener. Sophie has lost interest in any possible destination. Whatever it is, she never wants to get there. Just ride and ride, the wind blowing in your face, the silence long and comfortable between you and your driver.

Maybe he's taking her to the beach. Maybe he's taking her to a seaside hotel. Maybe they're going to have a love affair, discreet and smoky, ending badly, like a modern novel. Sophie doesn't care. When your father has stood up in a court of law that very morning, all smart and polished, eyes heavy and unslept in, and received a verdict of
guilty
on a charge of murder in the first degree; when the crime is of a most bloody and nerveless nature; when the victim in the case is none other than your own mother . . . well, why on earth would you ever care about anything, ever again? The shock. Yesterday the final statements were made, the defense had outlined once more its minute and carefully wrought rebuttal to the prosecution. The jury was supposed to head into the deliberation room piled high and thick with reasonable doubt, and the newspapers were supposed to report the wan yet optimistic expressions on the faces of the accused and his family. Acquittal: you could almost smell it in the air.