calls and his total lack of faith in her ability to get a degree. It had all been too much, and finally she decided to abandon her plans of becoming a lawyer and became a legal secretary instead. Edward began to make visits, taking the Metroliner from New York to Washington; one day he turned up with a dark-haired, dark-eyed young woman who wore a bit too much jewelry. Soon after that they were married. The “and family” part of the gift card referred to her daughter from a previous marriage. Charlotte had never met the child.
Charlotte looked out the back window. Horatio was in the yard, sniffing the wind. Nicholas had stopped on the way south and bought a stake and a chain to keep Horatio under control during the visit. Actually, the dog seemed happy enough, and wasn’t very interested in the birds or the occasional cat that turned up in Charlotte’s yard. Right now, Nicholas was upstairs, talking to Andrea on the phone. Someone throwing a life ring to a drowning child could not have been more energetic and more dedicated than Nicholas was to the girl.
Charlotte poured another bourbon, into which she plopped three ice cubes, and sat on the stool facing the counter, where she kept the telephone and pads of paper and bills to be paid and whatever odd button needed to be sewn back on. There were also two batteries there that were either dead or unused (she couldn’t remember anymore) and paper clips (although she could not remember the last time she used a paper clip at home), a few corks, a little bottle of Visine, some loose aspirins, and a broken bracelet. There was a little implement called a lemon zester that she had bought from a door-to-door salesman. She suddenly picked it up and pretended to be conducting, because Nicholas had just put on Handel upstairs. He always played music to drown out his phone conversations.
“For the Lord God omni-potent . . .” She had forgotten to get back to the Tazewells about Father Curnan’s birthday party. She had promised that she would find out whether Nicholas would come, and then call back. She had meant to ask Nicholas at breakfast but had forgotten. Now she suddenly saw that Horatio might be her salvation. Whenever he came indoors he ran through the house in an excited fashion, and if that happened to get Nicholas off the phone, who would blame her? She went outdoors and, shivering, quickly unhitched the dog and led him in. His fur was soft and cold. He was glad to see her, as usual. The minute they were inside, he bounded up the stairs. She stood at the bottom, listening to Horatio’s panting outside Nicholas’s door, and then, sure enough, the door banged open. Nicholas was at the top of the stairs, staring down. He did look as if he had been rescuing a drowning child: disheveled, with not an extra second to spare. “What’s he doing inside?” he asked.
“It’s cold out,” she said. “Nicky, the Tazewells are having a dinner for Father Curnan’s birthday tonight. Will you go with me?”
The sopranos soared in unison. She must have looked alarmed—surely he noticed that she had suddenly put both hands on the banister railing—and perhaps that was why he quickly nodded yes and turned away.
Back in the kitchen, with her boots off, Charlotte stroked the dog with one stockinged foot, and in response he shot up and went into his little routine, his famous trick. Almost complacently, he sat and extended his right paw. Then he rubbed his snout down that leg, put the paw back on the floor, and lifted and rubbed the left paw in the same fashion. He sneezed, turned twice in a circle to his left, and then came over to be patted. The trick meant nothing, of course, but it never failed as a crowd-pleaser. Sometimes Charlotte had even come into a room and found him doing it all by himself. “Okay, you’re wonderful,” she whispered to Horatio now, scratching his ears.
She heard Nicholas’s footsteps on the stairs and called, “Where are you going?” It dismayed her that he kept to himself so much. He stayed upstairs most of the day studying, or he talked on the telephone. He already had on his coat and scarf. Instead of hanging them in the hall closet, he kept them up in his room. He kept everything there, as if he were forever on the point of packing up for some quick journey.
“Back to the garage,” he said. “Don’t get upset. It’s no big thing. I asked them yesterday if they had time to line the rear brakes, and they said they could fit me in this afternoon.”
“Why would that upset me?” she said.
“Because you’d think the car was unsafe. You’ve always got your images of disaster.”
“What are you talking about?” she said. She was addressing Christmas cards, trying to convince herself that there might be some truth to Better late than never.
“When I had the broken thumb, you carried on as if I was a quadriplegic.”
He was talking about the year before—a bicycling injury, when he’d skidded on some icy pavement. She shouldn’t have flown out to Indiana, but she missed him and she hated the idea of his being hurt. College was the first time he had ever lived away from her. She hadn’t made a scene—she had just gone there and called from a motel. (It was in the back of her mind, she had to admit now, that the trip might also be a chance for her to meet Andrea, the off-campus student who had begun to turn up in Nicholas’s letters.) Nicholas was horrified that she’d come all that distance. He was fine, of course—he had a cast on his left hand was all—and he had said almost angrily that he couldn’t tell her anything without eliciting a huge overreaction.
“You didn’t forget the dinner, did you?” she said now.
He turned and looked at her. “We already talked about that,” he said. “Seven o’clock—is that right?”
“Right,” she said. She began to address another envelope, trying to pass it off.
“It will take approximately one hour at the garage,” he said.
Then he left—the way his father so often had left—without saying good-bye.
She wrote a few more cards, then called the florist’s to see whether they had been able to locate bird-of- paradise flowers in New York. She wanted to send them to Martine, her oldest friend, who had just returned from a vacation in Key West to the cold winds of the Upper East Side. Charlotte was happy to hear that someone had them, and that a dozen had gone out. “I thought we’d have good luck,” the woman at the florist’s said. “If we couldn’t locate some paradise in New York, I don’t know where paradise
The Tazewells’ sunken dining room was done in Chinese red, and against the far wall there was an enormous glass china press edged in brass, illuminated from within in a way that flooded the cut glass with light. The shelves were also glass, and their edges sparkled and gleamed with a prism-bright clarity. Charlotte was not surprised to see that Martin Smith, who ran the Jefferson Dreams catering service, was there himself to oversee things. People in Charlottesville followed through—even fun wasn’t left totally to chance—and Charlotte liked that. Edith Stanton, the host’s cousin, almost Charlotte’s first friend when she had moved here to Charlottesville (she could remember their first lunch together, and Edith’s considering gaze above the seafood salad: was this nice-looking new single woman who was working down at Burwell, McKee going to
