By Nightfall

(his beauty had deepened, hers had started to pale), but Peter knew they were simply aging into what had been a common-enough youthful courtship: she was a ravishing young girl who was not easily pleased, and he a handsome but scrawny boy who outadored his league of competitors.

Yes, reader, she married him.

It was not exactly a bad marriage, but it wasn’t a good one either. She was too much the prize, he too much the grateful supplicant.

And so, a never-ending, rather edgy conversation between them, an undercurrent of roiling sound that reminded them they were married, they had two sons, they were living a life, they had preparations to make and disasters to avert and a world to interpret, sign by sign, symbol by symbol, to each other, and that at this point the only fate worse than staying together would be trying, each of them, to live alone.

The Taylors of Richmond had no trouble with conversation, but its underlying purpose was different. Nothing was being perpetuated, nothing held at bay. This fundamental absence of nervousness seems to have affected all four of the children in that they were, each of them, many things but were, none of them, unsure. Mizzy’s got it, in spades—that Taylor way of unapologetically occupying space. It’s not so much about pride as it is simple, ordinary confidence, which is rendered extraordinary only by its paucity among the general population. Look at him, big ponderous book in his lap, watching the scenery, not aloof but calm as a prince would be about his right to be wherever he is, and if someone is responsible for providing amusement and diversion, it is clearly not he.

Peter says, “Hard to believe we’re half an hour from Cheever country.”

Mizzy says, “This must be the train he took into New York.”

“I suppose. Are you a Cheever fan?”

“Mm.”

That would be yes, and apparently there’s not much more to say on the subject. Mizzy continues watching the devastation roll past, and Peter wonders if he’s not only absorbed by the view but demonstrating, for Peter’s benefit, that firm-jawed, Roman-nosed profile. He’s, what, three years older than Bea? It might as well be thirty.

Bea—lost girl, all wised-up enmity and bitten nails, wrapped in that big cheap Peruvian sweater that promotes survival in what must be your barely heated apartment—you and I both know that you hate me in part because you came to believe I’d made you believe you weren’t beautiful enough. We haven’t told anyone, certainly not each other, but we both know, don’t we? I did my best, but yes, I frowned over the yellow tights you loved when you were four and I went chilly over the white-and-gold bedroom set you wanted at seven and yes, it’s true, I disapproved of that Nouveau-ish silver necklace you bought for yourself at a crafts fair with your own money, your first independent purchase. I turned away from what you loved and although I never said anything—I tried not to be a monster, I truly did—we had that telepathy, and you always knew. And later, when your hips broadened and your face broke out, and I swear, I swear, I loved you no less for your adolescent gawkiness, but it was too late by then, wasn’t it, I had a reputation, and there was nothing I could do, no attention I could pay, no protestation of love that would convince. If I’d hated the piss-colored tights and the white-canopied princess bed how could I possibly love the girl herself, now that her hair frizzled and her body had abruptly, at puberty, activated a hitherto-slumbering strand of DNA (mine, Bea, it’s not your mother who’s descended from dairy maids and lumberjacks) that said with terribly, fleshly finality: solid, earthbound, big womanly breasts and child-bearing hips, well before your fourteenth birthday. Your parents are slim and attractive and you, by some trick of genetics, are not.

I make you feel ugly. It’s terrible for you to so much as speak to me on the phone.

“How are you liking Thomas Mann?” Peter asks Mizzy. As a Harris, he can’t bear too much silence. He seems to believe he’ll disappear.

“I love him. Well, ‘love’ may not quite be the word for Mann. I admire him.”

“Are you reading The Magic Mountain for the first time?”

“Yes and no. There’s all these books I read in about five hours in college, just to keep up. I’m going back and reading them for real now.”

Peter says, “I never would have graduated without coffee and speed.”

And now, finally, Mizzy turns from the window and looks at Peter. Mizzy and Peter both wonder, silently: Why would Peter say something like that? Is he redeclaring his allegiance to keeping Mizzy’s secret? Is he just trying to be cool?

Consider the rouged and wigged old man Peter saw the other night on Eighth Avenue. Consider Aschenbach himself, rouged and dyed, dead in a beach chaise as Tadzio wades in the shallows.

No. This is my life, it’s not Death in Goddamned Venice (funny, though, that Mizzy has brought Mann along for the trip). Yes, I am an older guy who harbors a certain fascination for a much younger man, but Mizzy’s not a child like Tadzio was, and I’m not obsessed like Aschenbach (hey, didn’t I just the other day refuse to let Bobby dye my hair?).

Peter adds, lamely, “That was college, of course.”

“You’re going to tell her, aren’t you?” Mizzy says.

“Why do you think that?”

“She’s your wife.”

“Married people don’t tell each other every single thing.”

“This isn’t an ordinary thing. She’s hysterical on the subject.”

“Which is the main reason I haven’t told her yet.”

“Yet.”

“If I haven’t told her yet, it seems pretty likely that I’m probably not going to tell her at all. Why are you so het up about this?”

Mizzy emits another of those low oboe sighs, no denying that they remind Peter of Matthew.

He says, “I can’t have my family jumping all over me right now. I can’t. They think it’d be the right thing, they mean nothing but good, but really, I’m afraid it’d kill me.”

“That’s dramatic.”

A long, dark-eyed look. Practiced?

“Frankly, I’m feeling a little dramatic.”

Practiced. Absolutely. And yet, effective.

“Are you?”

Thanks, Mr. Diffident.

Mizzy cracks up. He does have this way of undercutting himself—he’s like a cartoon character who runs off a cliff and goes a half dozen strides in midair before he stops, looks down, looks back up at the audience with a mortified expression, and drops. He says something ponderous, then laughs at himself. It helps, too, that his smile is what it is, and that his laugh has that throaty, woodwind quality. Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo- hoo, a laugh deeper than his speaking voice, richer, as if it emanated from some core of humor that was, might be, his truest nature. As if all this tortured-young-man shit is a hoax, and the actual, inner Mizzy finds the whole enterprise hilarious. As if the actual Mizzy is goat-footed, horned, playing a set of pipes.

“Yeah,” he says laughingly, which is not the answer Peter had anticipated. Peter has the good sense, for once, to keep quiet.

“I’m fucked up,” Mizzy says. He is no longer laughing, but he’s kept a rueful smile on his face that imparts a new seriousness, a veracity, to what he’s saying.

“I’m a little crazy,” he continues. “You know that. Everybody knows that. The thing is.”

He looks out the window as if searching for some anticipated landmark. He turns back to Peter again.

“The thing is, it’s getting worse. I can feel it. It got very bad in Japan. It’s like a virus. It’s not so much in my head as it is in my body, like I’ve got a fever or something, like I’ve got some kind of flu but it makes you jumpy instead of tired. And, you know. What nobody understands, what nobody who really and truly loves me understands, is that right now I know what I need better than anyone else does. It’s not like I don’t appreciate their position. My family and all. But if I let them, I’m afraid they’ll kill me. With the very very best of intentions.”

“Can I be honest with you?” Peter asks.

“By all means.”

“This sounds delusional. This sounds like an addict talking.”