The waiter brought their soup and put it down. Gillian picked up her spoon and began chattering nervously.
“You’d be surprised how many places don’t serve fried-won-ton soup,” she said brightly. “I once had a big argument with a Chinese waiter who told me there was no such thing as fried-won-ton soup, after I’d eaten it at least a dozen times. ‘Won-ton soft,’ he said. ‘Soft. All light, you fly won-ton, it get hard. You put it in soup, it get soft again. Why bodder fly it in first place? No such thing as fly won-ton!’ I almost hit him over the head with the teapot. Oh, this is good, isn’t it? They are crisp.”
“Yes,” David said.
She watched him and she thought, What do you want from me? What more can I give you than I’ve already given?
She knew. And when she was tied to the sacrificial stone, and when he drank her life’s blood and was nourished by it, and when he found himself somewhere in the maze of her body and her mind and her trust and her faith, what would be left of Gillian Burke? Silently, she weighed her love.
Nervously, she said, “Do you know the Orson Bean routine about the two Chinese who go to an American restaurant?”
“No.”
“It’s very funny,” Gillian said. “You know how he starts his act, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“He comes out and says, ‘How do you do, my name is Orson Bean. Harvard, forty-two.’ Then he pauses and adds, ‘Yale, nothing.’” Gillian laughed and looked at David, who remained silently pensive. “It’s really very funny,” she said, shrugging. “I guess I didn’t tell it well.” She lifted the spoon to her mouth. Her hand was trembling. He reached across the table suddenly, catching her hand. The spoon clattered to the table top.
“You see,” he said, “you’re the only person in the world who means anything to me.”
The time for decision was past. Perhaps it was past that night they met in the loft.
She covered his hand with her own and smiled. Gently, she said, “We must find a job for you, David.”
Matthew was certainly not keen on the idea of moving to the country. As early as last November, when they had made their first exploratory trip to Talmadge, he had stated in his most unsubtle manner, “I do not see, Amanda, why we should join the horde of migratory birds who are flocking out of the city. I happen to like New York. I find it exciting and interesting and convenient. Besides, I was raised in a small town, and I don’t think I’d like to live in one again.”
“I was raised in a small town, too,” Amanda had said.
“I know that. So how can you even consider—”
“Talmadge isn’t really a small town.”
“A town is either big or small. There are no in-betweens. Talmadge is a small town, Amanda. And it has the added disadvantage of being a university town. How can anyone possibly put up with screaming goldfish-eaters for the major part of each year?”
“Matthew, college students are no longer swallowing goldfish.”
“They’re sure to be swallowing something.”
“That’s their business, isn’t it?”
“Yes, of course. But my business is the law. And it will take me two hours to get to my business from Talmadge each day. And two hours to return.”
“Only an hour and a half.”
“Plus the ride from Grand Central to my office.”
“You could move your office. You said you were thinking of joining an established firm, anyway.”
“Not right now, Amanda.”
“You could do it now if you wanted to.”
“Yes, but I don’t want to.”
“Well, let’s not decide yet,” Amanda had said.
She had said the same thing in February after they’d walked through seven houses accompanied by a real-estate agent who spoke with a German accent and who wore a pencil stuck into a bun at the back of her head. She had shown them four colonials, two contemporaries, and a bastardized version of a Southern manor, which, she claimed, had been copied from a place called Monticello. She had also shown them acres and acres of undeveloped land, which, she proudly stated, were alive with dogwood and cardinals and were a definite steal at two thousand dollars an acre. In the car on the way home, Matthew had said, “I don’t trust that woman.”
“You don’t trust any Germans,” Amanda said.
“I don’t trust Germans who show me swampland at two thousand bucks an acre, that’s for sure. Dogwood and cardinals! Cottonmouths and crocodiles is more like it.”
“How did you like Monticello?” Amanda asked.
“Wonderful! But didn’t you think the slaves’ quarters were a little cramped?”
Laughing, Amanda had said, “Well, let’s not decide yet.”
It was April now, and the Talmadge countryside was in the midst of a seasonal clash. The sky was leaden, the trees were bare, a harsh wind scraped the rolling landscape. But crocus and jonquil and hyacinth had burst through the stiff upper crust of the soil, and the brilliant green of day-lily shoots lined the old stone walls of Connecticut. The forsythia were opening tentatively, palely yellow because of their sparseness, showing none of the riotous gold that would be theirs when the weather turned really mild. Here and there, a brave magnolia cautiously emerged from its fuzzy bud, the petals closed tight in pink-and-white timidity. The lawns patched the landscape uncertainly, faded brown merging with new brilliant green. The waiting spring cowered before the last chill blasts of winter. There was a look of desolation and expectation to the land.
She fell in love with the house the moment they saw it. The date was carved into a wooden crossbeam over the front door, and she could visualize a colonial gentleman watching a carpenter as he carefully chiseled the numerals into the wood. She followed the real-estate agent into the small cozy entry, saw the winding steps leading to the upper floors, the polished banister. Wide wooden planks, hand-pegged, richly grained, covered the floors, led to the large living room and the enormous stone fireplace with its baking oven set into one of the walls, its big iron pot hanging on a swinging black hook. The ceilings were low and stoutly beamed. Something primitive and elementary rose in her breast as she climbed the steps to the bedrooms, somehow familiar with the curve of the banister, feeling an immediate intimacy with the house, as if she had lived in it for years and was now returning to it after a long absence. The bedrooms overlooked a small garden and a rolling field, which promised springtime lushness. There was a brook and an apple orchard and an enormous tree that seemed painted against the sky in twisted silhouette.
“I want it,” she whispered to Matthew.
“It’s probably got termites.”
“I don’t care if it’s got rats.”
“We’ll see,” Matthew said.
They discussed it with the real-estate agent. Amanda was floating on a giant pink cloud, but Matthew was cautious and suspicious. He activated his lawyer voice, to Amanda’s secret amusement, and began asking learned questions about taxes, and mortgages, and existing liens on the property. What about Talmadge zoning? he asked. Two acres, three acres, or four? Was there any light industry in town? How far was it from the house to the railroad station? Were the public schools good? How much were the school taxes? And finally he descended into the mundane and asked the agent why there was a large damp spot on the cellar wall, was there a drainage problem? Didn’t the northeast corner of the house get a terrible amount of wind during the winter? Who lived next door? Was the town friendly to newcomers? He thanked the agent for his time at last, and they drove back to the city silently, Matthew balancing figures in his head, Amanda planning on where to fit her piano into the living room.