Skinny Island (3 page)

Her glimpses of Washington Square—a reference to a blue sky, a child with a hoop, a beggar, a shaft of winter light along red brick, the toll of a bronze bell—were exquisite.

A russet dawn; a shoulder-shuddering chill. Neighbor Matthews to wed today. Will he go to his office first? And then, at noon, open his gold watch to check the hour, nod, cover his ledger, and rise with that rusty cough? His entry: "Wind north northeast. Snow flurries. S.S. Persia still missing. Married Emily Hadden."

Cousin Laura here. How faded the poor dear! Adrian says she was always so, but now you can't tell what color she first was. Spoke of the admitting doctor at Bellevue where she had her operation. Had she ever had a baby? That stare! "You must have misread my name, sir. It is
Miss
Temple."

The passage that I knew awaited me, the one that had induced Philip to give me the diary, was written only two weeks before my darling expired.

It is leaving Adrian that gives me the greatest pain. Men are such idealists, and he the most of all! I sometimes think that half New York society is in a conspiracy to seem to be what Adrian deems it. Once they have glimpsed the beautiful conception in his mind it seems too terrible to let him even suspect the truth. For if he did, if that bright picture ever dimmed, might not some of their light go out as well? New York may have always been a shabby place, but isn't it a touch less shabby if there's an Adrian Peltz to believe in it? Oh, my darling Adrian, if you could only go first, with all the beauty of your young republic still intact in your nobly conceiving imagination, how patiently would I lie up here until it was time to join you!

I have now written out and reread my account of the events of New Year's Day, 1875. My first plan was the right one. This
is
the place to end my diary.

M
ISS JANE LYLE
had continued to occupy the tall stooped brownstone, Number 11 West, on the north side of Fifty-seventh Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, ever since the death of her mother a decade before, in 1889. It was not a large house, being of the same size and shape as the others in the block, except, of course, for Mrs. Vanderbilt's version of the Château of Blois at the corner, and it could be comfortably run for the old lady by three Irish maids, though even these would have been a drain on her slender resources had not her four brothers, who had prospered as the American agents for Coats thread, been willing to help out. No. 11, after all, had been the home of the old parents whom their sister, sacrificed in the Victorian tradition, had tended to the end. The male Lyles, cognizant of their obligation, were also glad to provide for their sister's summers with annual bids to their villas in Newport, Narragansett and Bar Harbor.

There was a sentiment among the brothers and their families that Jane's life had been a union of sadness and gallantry. She was pictured as treasuring the memory of young Phineas Howland, killed at Antietam and of holding high the lamp of ancient patriotism in a tarnished modern world. Jane was perfectly willing to accept this tribute. What did it matter that she could not precisely recall the features of Phineas Howland or that he had never definitively proposed to her? No doubt he would have, had he come back from the war. And was it of any significance now that the parents whom Jane had so conscientiously nursed and whom she was supposed still tenderly to miss, had become senile invalids whose demises, within a year of each other, had been a blessed relief? Jane had learned the importance of allowing people to keep the image of oneself that it pleased them to keep.

And, after all, she too had an image of herself; indeed, it was that which floated her soul. She was the spirit and rallying point of the whole Lyle clan, her four brothers and their multitudinous descendants—some sixty of them, including in-laws. It was septuagenarian Aunt Jane whose straight, tall, rather massive figure in dark brown or black, and square, strong-featured face with soberly staring eyes, had become familiar to every denizen of Fifty-seventh Street. It was she who gave the Christmas tree party, who led the singing at family song fests and who maintained the famous "treasure drawer" into which every Lyle descendant under the age of fourteen was entitled to reach and "grab" on a call to the venerable relative. When the good lady appeared on the street on her sedate journey to the park, or to the neighboring house of a sister-in-law, or to the Plaza Presbyterian Church, she provided reassurance in the stability of urban society to the passer-by who might reflect: "Well, so long as we have people like Miss Lyle..."

Jane was aware that she was to some extent an actress playing a role, but she did not think that this was either undesirable or uncommon. She had seen her mother play the role of the brave invalid. She had also seen that role become a reality, which had given her confidence in the future of her own chosen part of indomitable old maid. Each passing year provided another layer of protection against any return of the silliness of a youth filled with disappointments both bitter and unrecognized by her family. She had wanted to marry, but had never been sure that she was sufficiently in love, and had finally attributed her lack of assured ardor to a heart lost to the corpse on that Maryland battlefield. She had wanted to write and publish inspired poetry, but her sole appearance in print had been in a slender, paper-bound packet entitled
Sylvan Moods,
paid for by a kind but condescending father. She had wanted, finally, in her late thirties, to go to England and study nursing after the example of Miss Nightingale, but her brothers had persuaded her that a more immediate and pressing duty was to their mother, already afflicted by the mysterious malady that would take so many long years to bring her to the tomb. But now all that was behind her, well behind her—the gushing, the flushing, the hysterical tears, the rushing upstairs to her bedroom, the slamming of doors—now there was calm and sense and no mystery. Everyone knew, including Jane Lyle, just where Jane Lyle stood.

Yet having assurances did not mean that she was averse to an occasional surprise. Having placidity did not mean that she had eschewed all excitement. Jane was looking forward now, with an almost uncomfortable intensity, to a visit from the Reverend Gordon Muir. She was very devoted to this young man, whom she allowed to address her as "Aunt Jane." Gordon was the assistant to the golden-tongued minister of the Plaza Presbyterian Church, and his ardent passion to visit the Holy Sepulcher had inspired Jane with the still secret and feverishly debated notion of using her small hoarded savings to send him there. But the real motive for this proposed generosity she found more difficult to face, and each time that she caught herself avoiding the mental confrontation, she had to remind herself: "Jane Lyle, don't be an old fool! Why can't you, in the privacy of your own mind, ask yourself if Gordon Muir isn't in love with Mrs. Bullock? If he's not, thank your God. If he is, the trip to Jerusalem might be just the thing he needs to give him the strength of soul to overcome Satan!"

Gordon was a plump, short, pale young man, but he had large lustrous brown eyes and thick blond curly hair that reminded Jane of a cherub. She liked to think of him as a Byronic poet; the intensity of his enthusiasms more than made up for any physical shortcomings. As Mr. Bullock had confided once to Jane: "That young man cares almost too much for God." If this sounded irreverent, Jane could still see what he meant. When Gordon led the congregation in prayer, his eyes tightly closed, his head flung back, he seemed to be almost in a trance. When he loudly sang a hymn, following the choir with Mr. Bullock down the aisle in the processional march, he might have been striding to a martyr's death in the arena. But when he assisted Mrs. Bullock at her tea table this same fervor seemed to emanate from a less spiritual source: the raven hair and sullen black eyes of the pastor's wife, who, incidentally, was just half the pastor's age. Jane might have been willing to attribute her suspicion to what her nephew, Tom, who liked to play the "outrageous Lyle" (another role), called the "erotic daydreaming of the dirty Presbyterian mind," had it not been for a certain complacency in Mrs. Bullock's demeanor.

When Gordon came that day, however, they had an unexpected discussion so upsetting to Jane that she didn't have the force to reveal to him her plan for his future.

The subject of marriage had come up. Jane, who often sought advice from her ministers on theological subjects, had asked his opinion about a Lyle cousin, a hitherto seemingly unconsolable widow who had just contracted a respectable but surprising second matrimonial alliance with her late husband's business partner and closest friend.

"Will they all three find themselves together in heaven?" Jane wanted to know. "I should think it might be rather embarrassing."

But Gordon was categorical. "There is no marrying or giving in marriage in the next world."

"I know that is believed by many. And in the case I mentioned it may be just as well. But in other cases it might be hard. My brother Adam, for example, and his wife Beth. They are so close, so touchingly dependent on each other. I can hardly bear to think of them as being separated through eternity."

"But they will not be separated!" Gordon exclaimed with what struck Jane as an unwarranted agitation. "They will be very much together. All people who love each other truly will be together. It's simply that there will be no marriage."

Jane frowned. "That doesn't somehow seem quite ... well, quite proper."

"But, dear Aunt Jane, there's no propriety or impropriety in heaven! There will be no flesh, so how could there be sin? Love, true love, will always be allowed. Between any two souls that wish to unite!"

"But supposing there were, say, two male souls that were attracted to one female soul—"

"There are no sexes in heaven," he interrupted.

"But you talk about love. Love as it exists between my brother and sister-in-law. I don't quite see—"

"We shall all be free to love all!" Gordon leaned forward excitedly in his chair, almost dropping his teacup. "There will be no rivalries, no jealousies, no monopolies. Except that perhaps two souls, which love each other supremely, ineffably, eternally, may be allowed a special kind of union. Which no other soul will take umbrage at. Oh, yes, I like to believe that!"

Jane shook her head dubiously. "I'm not sure how everyone would like that. Suppose, for example, that the soul of a dead wife developed this ineffable love for a soul that wasn't her living husband's soul? How would he feel? I mean the husband, after he died, and found the other two together in heaven?"

"Well, of course, he wouldn't mind because it would be heaven, don't you see? You can't 'mind' things in heaven. And, anyway, Aunt Jane, how otherwise would people like you and me have a chance to be happy?"

"What do you mean, people like you and me?" She marveled at the idea of a common denominator between her dry antiquity and his golden youth.

"Why, unmarried people, of course."

"You, dear boy? But you will certainly marry. And before very long, I should hope."

"Never! I shall never marry!"

Jane was shocked by his vehemence. She changed the subject, but she could not change it in her mind. Could it be that this dear young man was endangering his precious soul with the prospect of a posthumous bliss with Mrs. Bullock? It seemed uncanny, ridiculous, but she could not rid herself of the idea, and she noted grimly, the very next time that she saw Mrs. Bullock, at her sister-in-law Beth's house, that Gordon did not quit the side of the pastor's wife throughout the tea party.

Certainly the Reverend Mr. Bullock did not appear to harbor any suspicion. A vast, hearty, cheerful man, pleasantly proud of his unassailable reputation as a preacher, comfortably adored by all the female members of his congregation, he seemed to take quite for granted that his young assistant should act as a constant equerry to his silent, unfathomable young wife. He might even have insisted on it! Mrs. Bullock was neither easy nor popular, and people wondered why a rich widower should have married her, though she was certainly pretty. She had none of the social qualities needed for the wife of the pastor of so important a congregation; she behaved more like a truculent daughter reluctantly comforming herself to the pattern of a father's life than a consort who had presumably chosen her part with eyes wide open.

There had been no one in whom Jane dared confide, but there was one person whom she thought she could indirectly sound out, her favorite brother, John. A huge man with a large belly who had once been handsome and was now imposing, John had a way of barking out banalities in response to questions he hadn't really listened to, but she knew that if she kept at him he would eventually be sympathetic and even kind. He used to take Jane for walks in Central Park on Sunday afternoons when the weather permitted, and on one such outing she asked.

"Gordon Muir told me an odd thing the other day. He said he would never marry. Why do you suppose an attractive man his age would be so sure of that?"

"Oh, plenty of young bucks are that way. I was myself. We imagine there's nothing in the world like a man's independence. But then Flora came along and put a stop to that nonsense. Same thing will happen to young Muir. You can bet on it."

"And yet he struck me as being almost passionately sincere."

John did not reply; he was too busy clearing his throat, a serious and noisy business. She waited until he had finished.

"I said he seemed so sincere, John."

"Sincere? Who?"

"Gordon Muir. About never marrying."

"Oh, fiddle. Lot of nonsense. He probably imagines he's sweet on Mrs. Bullock."

Jane was so aghast at this abrupt and casual confirmation of her most dire suspicions that she did not trust herself to say another word on the topic. Back home again, she found herself positively indignant with her favorite brother, and her indignation spread rapidly to all gentlemen of his age and class. It struck her now that they were apt to show a throat-clearing (half belching, really), skin-scratching indifference to all the necessary order of a moral society, that they liked to retreat after dinner to their dark libraries and drink whiskey and brandy out of decanters and tell off-color stories, leaving the drawing room and the ladies and civilization itself to fend for themselves.