A Hundred Summers (25 page)

“No, I’m terribly sober. You’re my last goddamned hope, Lily Dane.”

“Ask me again in the morning.” My half-unbuttoned dress sagged away from my breasts. I held it up with one hand and held Graham’s hand with the other.

“Will you say yes in the morning?”

“I might.”

“Say yes, for God’s sake, Lily. Nick’s married, you can’t have him. Take me instead.”

I knelt down to face him, holding up my dress, holding up his hand. “What do you really want, Graham? What are you really after? You only think you want me because of Nick. You don’t want a wife, not really.”

“I need a wife. Someone to keep me on the straight and narrow. I’m so fucking lost, Lily, you don’t even know how much. I need you, Lily. Why won’t you say yes?”

I put my arms around his neck. “I don’t know.” I kissed him. “I don’t know.”

Graham’s fingers spread across the bare skin of my back. “
I
know. Damn it all.”

We knelt there, clasped, breathing against each other, while my dress hung limp from my shoulders. The insects scraped their wings in the grass around us. Drop by drop, the tension drained away from my limbs, at the warm breadth of Graham’s chest against my cheek, the meditative trace of his hands on my back. A quarter-mile away, Nick lay on the bed in a guest room, ribs aching, head aching, someone waking him every hour. Budgie lay in their bedroom, in an intoxicated sleep, exhausted from hysteria. Both of them seemed very distant now, next to the solid dimensions of Graham Pendleton, muscular and needful, holding me in the darkness like an object of precious value.

Somewhere in my middle, physical desire began to tug and to melt at the series of barriers I had created there, piece by piece, each one nested carefully within the next. My breasts tingled. I lifted my head and reached high and kissed Graham, pressed my hips against Graham.

For an instant, he met me with passion, digging his fingers lower beneath the light cotton of my dress to encounter only the lace edge of my ivory silk step-ins. Changing my clothes in the oppressive heat of the late afternoon, in the hasty residual panic over Nick’s getting hurt, I hadn’t bothered with a girdle or stockings. I couldn’t even have fastened them with my trembling fingers.

“Jesus, Lily,” Graham muttered, wrapping his hands around my hips.

I would have given myself to him right there, in the grass, against the tree, any way he wanted it. I needed the comfort of sex, the reassurance of a man’s body over mine, inside mine. I needed connection, I needed touch and frenzy and release. I needed something to bring me back to life. I pulled Graham’s shirt from the waistband of his flannel trousers and tugged at the cotton undershirt beneath.

“Jesus, Lily,” he said again, and then: “No.” He pulled his hand from my dress, bolted to his feet, dug his fingers into his hair.

“Graham.”

“No. I swore, Lily. I swore I’d do this right. This one thing.”

“Graham, it’s all right. I want this, I’m ready for you. I am.” I held out my empty arms. I was burning. I was ready to beg.

He laid his hands on my cheeks. “Say you’ll marry me, Lily. Just say yes, and I’ll give it to you, any way you want. I’ll make it so good for you.”

I stared at him helplessly, body melting, mouth frozen.

“All right, then,” he whispered. “Another time.”

Graham Pendleton kissed me gently on the lips and walked away, a little unsteady, across the unfenced back gardens of Seaview Neck, while the lights of the mainland twinkled across the bay.

13.

MANHATTAN

New Year’s Eve 1931

T
he buildings slide past my eyes in a gray-brown blur. “Where are we going?” I ask, shrinking into my coat. My mother’s second-best mink coat. I can only hope she didn’t recognize it as we stole away through the crowd.

“My father keeps an apartment downtown, for clients and for nights when he works late,” says Nick. “We can see in the New Year there. If we make it.” He checks his watch with a flick of his wrist. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Only shocked.”

“I’ll say.”

“You see, she never goes out. She told us she was supervising a party. For orphans!” I have to shout, above the noise of the engine and the wind. The streets are remarkably empty for New Year’s Eve in the city. Everyone must be at a party already, or at home, waiting for midnight. “But I suppose . . . well, with Daddy the way he is, maybe she wants to kick up her heels once in a while, and doesn’t want him to feel . . .” My voice drifts.

Nick reaches out his hand and takes mine. Our masks are off now, and as the streetlamps flash against his face, one by one, I catch a glimpse of his expression: tender, inquiring. “Do you want to go home? We can go back, if you like. I just thought . . . well, it would be a shame to ruin the evening. Are you warm enough?”

“I’m fine.” I turn to him and smile. “Actually, it’s sort of funny, isn’t it? There I am, sneaking away from my parents’ apartment to a party, thinking how naughty I am. And there’s my mother, right there, doing the same thing.”

“Shocking, I agree.”

I look down at the seat between us, where our hands clasp together atop our discarded masks, white and black. “And the thing is, Nick, I thought she looked beautiful. I never thought about that before. She always looks so ordinary to me, so
matronly
, wearing her suits and her hats. I feel like I was seeing her for the first time, really
seeing
her. And she was lovely, and I didn’t recognize her.”

“Well, of course she was lovely. Look at
you
.” He laughs. “Anyway, we’ll have our own party now. Just the two of us.”

“I like that.” I slide over in the seat and snuggle next to him, and he wraps his arm around me, moving it only to change gears as we stop and start for lights.

Nick’s father’s apartment isn’t really downtown. We roll up near a discreet building in Gramercy Park, where Nick parks the car and hands me out. The park itself looms darkly across the street, behind its iron railings. My heart beats a butterfly stroke. If stealing away from my parents’ apartment to a masked party on Central Park West felt naughty, this is scandalous. I am walking into a Gramercy apartment with a man not my husband, on New Year’s Eve. Champagne still courses illegally through my veins, and my dress glitters beneath my mink coat.

“Are you certain?” asks Nick, squeezing my hand.

I look up at him, at his strong regular features crossed by the light of the nearby streetlamp, and his hair dipping into his forehead beneath his hat. His trustworthy shoulders block the rest of the sidewalk from view. This is Nick, I remind myself. Nothing could be wrong, nothing could be wicked with Nick.

“Absolutely.” I slide my arm through his.

The apartment is on the eighth floor, overlooking the park. Nick lets me in first and switches on the light in the foyer. I halt in shock. The space is sleek and white, filled with mirrored surfaces, furnished simply. On the wall hangs an enormous abstract painting in bright red, with no visible frame, existing in a different universe from the Audubon prints on the wall in my parents’ apartment.

“Thank God the heat’s on,” says Nick. “Let me take your coat.” He slides it off my shoulders, kisses my neck, and ushers me into the living room. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll bet there’s champagne in the icebox. Dad always keeps a bottle or two handy in case there’s a deal to celebrate.”

I drift about the room in a haze, picking up the few tortured modern objects, thumbing through books, trying not to think about the bedroom that lies beckoning down the hall. The windows are curiously dark, as if the light from the streetlamps and the nearby buildings can’t quite find its way to us. There is a lamp on a small tripod table next to the sofa; I switch it on, and a circle of golden light pushes away the dusk. In the kitchen, Nick rattles away with glasses and cupboards. The soft pop of a champagne cork carries through the air.

“Here we are, darling,” Nick says, handing me a glass. “Cheers. To an enchanted nineteen thirty-two, only”—he glances at his wristwatch—“twelve short minutes away.”

“Cheers.” I take a long drink.

His hand closes around mine. “You’re shaking. What’s wrong? Nervous?”

“A little.”

He pries the glass from my fingers and sets it down next to his on the mirrored surface of the table. “Come here, Lily.”

“Come where?”

“Just here.” Nick draws me onto the sofa. “Am I moving too fast for you? Be honest, Lily. You can tell me the truth. Tell me exactly what you’re thinking.”

“No. You’re not moving too fast.” I look at our hands, entwined on Nick’s knee.

“What, then?”

His heart beats underneath my ear in measured thuds, through the stiffness of his shirt panels. I count them, one after another, steadying myself.

“Lily. It’s
me
, it’s Nick. Whatever it is, I’ll understand.”

I whisper: “It’s just that I feel so much. I want so much. And I can’t . . . I’ve never done this . . . I feel like a child still, not ready, not
enough
for you . . .”

“Ah.” He sits there, stroking my fingers with his thumb. “You said something to your father, in the foyer, two weeks ago. It’s all that’s kept me going since. Do you remember?”

I do. Still, I ask: “What was that?”

He leans near my ear. “You said,
I love him
.”

“
Hmm.
Well, you know, I was a little demented at the time.”

“Are you feeling demented enough to say it again?”

I laugh. “Nick. Of course I love you. Do you even need to ask?”

His warm body shifts around me. “I wanted to ask you something earlier, Lily. Before we had to flee in terror.” His hand, which has been fishing around in his pocket—the inside pocket of the same tailcoat that he’d torn off so hastily in his bedroom an hour before—emerges and rests on my lap. When he withdraws it, a small box lies there, tied with a white silk ribbon.

“What’s this?”

“Your Christmas present, a week late. Do you want it, Lilybird? Will you accept it?”

I touch the corner with my finger. The square edges blur and refract through the tears in my eyes. “Yes.”

MIDNIGHT COMES AND GOES,
and 1931 passes invisibly into 1932, but we don’t notice. We lie on the sofa, I on my back and Nick hovering next to me on his side. His arm curls around my head, just grazing my hair; his ring sparkles on my finger. We talk about the future.

“We’ll get married right after graduation,” Nick says. His tailcoat lies discarded on the floor, and his white satin waistcoat hangs from his shoulders, unbuttoned. He dribbles his fingers down the front of my dress. “We’ll go away on our honeymoon and stay all summer. Maybe forever. What do you think?”

“What about architecture?”

“We’ll go to Paris. You can write for the
Herald Tribune,
or study, or whatever you like. I’ll find someone to take me on as an apprentice. What better place for me to learn my trade than Paris?” He kisses me. “We’ll find a garret somewhere, overlooking the rooftops, and fill it with books and papers and cheap wine and secondhand furniture. You don’t need anything fancy, do you, Lily?”

“Not if I’m with you.” His hand is so large, it seems to enclose my entire hip. He dips his head and kisses the tops of my breasts, above the neckline of my dress. My fingers find the studs of his shirt and slip them free. I want to investigate him, to uncover Nick. “We’re engaged,” I say. “I can’t believe it. Engaged to
you,
Nick.”

“We have six months to convince your parents. But we’ll do it anyway, won’t we, Lily?”

“Yes. I don’t care what they say. I’m all yours.”

He doesn’t reply, and I look up to find his face leaning into mine, blurry and intent, scalding me with intimacy. “Nick?”

“Where did you come from, Lily? You’re like a miracle.”

“
Your
miracle
.
”

He kisses me deeply, raises himself above me, tugs aside the shimmering vee of my dress and exposes my breasts to the lamplight. I think,
I should be shocked, I should push him away
, but instead my back arches upward to his gaze.

Nick whispers, “Lily, you’re perfect. More than I dreamed.” He brushes his thumb across the very tip of my breast. The slender contact makes me gasp.

“All right, Lily?” he asks, looking up.

“Yes.
Please.
Don’t stop.”

“Not unless you want it, Lily. I promise. Only if you say so.” His eyes are dark and serious.

“I want it, Nick. Everything. I do.” My skin chafes against his shirt. I can feel every thread, every seam of him. I strain for more, for the knowledge of Nick’s skin, Nick’s flesh, anything and everything he wants to do to me. I want every secret made plain between us.

Nick closes his eyes. The lamp shines on his eyelids, which are tinged with purple at the rims, like a bruise. His lashes fan out below, unexpectedly and endearingly long.