Inside the hoteclass="underline" the bellmen and the elevator operator, the examination of the room, tips passing hand to hand. Tim ordered tea to be sent up, and then finally they were alone. Mary Frances stood by the windows, her purse in her hand. Tim studied her, and she tried to meet his eye but lost her nerve. She had thought about this moment for months on end, a thousand different ways. Maybe the moment itself was tired now. She laughed.
“What?” he said.
“Oh. I suppose I am tired. Completely.”
“It’s all right. Really.” He did not cross the room. “My sister has a party planned tonight, for you and Mother. She’s been looking forward to meeting you.”
She was still looking, distractedly, anywhere but at Tim.
“Mary Frances?” he said.
“Of course.”
She felt as if she were waiting for something to crest between them, but Tim seemed so mild, so easy. It was never going to happen. She took a deep breath.
“Of course,” she said again. “I’ll meet you in the lobby, and your mother. We can all have a drink before we go, several drinks perhaps. Oh, Tim.”
She tossed her purse well shy of the desk, and Tim laughed. He was so much stronger than she’d remembered. He placed her key on the dresser.
“It’s all right. Get some rest,” he said, and he left.
She drew a bath. The tea came, and she took a cup, a pretty pastry with her to the tub, resting it on the lid of the commode. She poured yellow oils into the running water, the scent of violets. In a few weeks, she would have a few weeks behind her, and she would be in France.
* * *
On another floor of the hotel, Tim took the box from his pocket and set it on the secretary in his room. He lit a cigarette and sat before the window, the afternoon sky lost in the shadows of the buildings around the hotel, the trolleys clattering in the streets below. He had all this energy and nothing to do with it, energy enough to run laps in the street, to run flights in the stairwell. He just wanted to spend it, for chrissake, spend everything: his money, his time, his hard cock chafing in his pants. It had been a year since he’d seen her, and he had not accounted for the composure that year had made necessary.
The door to his mother’s room opened.
“Well?” she said.
“She’s resting. A long trip.”
“I’m just glad she’s arrived. All that way from California. I don’t know what you people could have been thinking.”
“She’s traveled a great deal, Mother. I’m sure you’ll find she’s able to handle the toughest situation.”
“Still,” his mother said.
She saw the box on the table, obviously a jewelry box; her eyes settled on it, but she didn’t ask. Tim felt as though he’d swallowed a lit match. His mother had always been a hoarder of details, an amateur detective. Everything was suspect until proven otherwise.
“Mother.” Tim stubbed out his cigarette and took her hand, pressing it between his cheek and shoulder. “Would you like to go for a walk, or is it too cold? A carriage? Tea?”
Mrs. Parrish patted his shoulder. “I’m fine,” she said. “I thought I might write a few letters before we sail.”
And she began ticking off the things and people she needed to write, the process of a letter decidedly unsilent for Mrs. Parrish, rather a one-sided conversation that had to meet the air before she could commit it to a piece of paper. Tim stood to give his mother the secretary, slipping the box back into the breast pocket of his jacket before she got up the words to ask about it.
He’d wanted to give her something.
In the time it took to loose himself from Gigi, he’d remembered all kinds of things he used to like about pursuing women: elaborate dates, veiled letters, the slow unpinning of a twist of hair, endless buttons, whatever clasped at the back of the neck. So much depended on preparation and rate of speed. He could fill an afternoon with a search for a pair of silk stockings. He’d followed a woman two blocks through the theater district the other day, watching the spindle of darker fabric extending from the heel of her shoe to the seam that arched her calf. Cuban-heeled stockings; not the sort of thing you could buy for another man’s wife. He’d chosen a bracelet instead, a wide swath of gaspipe chain with a pavé clasp, but Mary Frances had seemed at such loose ends, he hadn’t given it to her. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so easy.
“Would you write a letter for me?” he asked. “For Alfred Fisher.”
The sound of his mother’s pen started across the page.
“‘Dear Al. Can’t say how glad we are that Mary Frances is here. I have missed her and you both, and know Mother will be all the more comfortable for her presence abroad. Bought her a gift today, your wife, walking to meet her train. Couldn’t help myself, a little bauble to mark our time together here. Very excited, and grateful to you, old man.’ And that’s all. I’ll sign it.”
His mother passed the stationery over her shoulder, and Tim beat it dry in the air. She looked up at him, her face soft with years. There was no cause to worry her if he could help it. There was no cause to worry anyone.
* * *
In the lobby, Mary Frances telephoned Al.
“You’ve arrived.”
“In body, I guess. Such a trip! What time is it at home? I feel made of taffy.”
“It’s two.” He cleared his throat. “I’m having a sandwich.”
“You’ll be living like a bachelor by Sunday, won’t you.”
There was a long silence, static, maybe something else.
“Al?”
“I’m here.”
“I posted letters from the train, five already. I hate to spoil them by telling you everything now. I just wanted to say hello. I wish you were coming with us. It won’t be near the same without you.”
“I’m sure you’ll have a good time.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said, though, about how it’s time to put away our distractions and live our lives. I think we would make good parents, Al. I always have.”
“Do you mean that?”
She did, for how it squared them up for this time apart, and the enthusiasm in his voice was some kind of permission, reassurance, absolution all in one. She thought of the boy and his nurse on the train, the way he patted her cheek when she dipped the fork in his direction, the soothe of her whisper through the compartment walls.
“What kind should we ask for, Al, a boy or a girl?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I haven’t thought about it.”
“Well, do. Please do. I think we should.”
He told her he loved her, and bon voyage, and he hung up the phone before she did, the dead line buzzing in her ear. If she’d promised him the moon, it would seem more possible, and yet she’d have promised him anything. She looked down at her lap, the swath of russet silk, the dress Edith had bought her the previous Christmas. It somehow had become part of all this, her costume.
Across the lobby, Mrs. Parrish stepped out of the elevator on Tim’s arm, hunched and delicate in a ruffled velvet cape, a bee working at a flower. Mary Frances stepped out of the telephone booth and into their oncoming path.
“So lovely you could come, dear.” Mrs. Parrish brushed her cheeks with her own.
“I was just calling Al. He is sorry he can’t be here too. I’ve promised him an absolute account of everything we do and see, a letter every day.”
“Oh, goodness!” Mrs. Parrish beamed at Tim. “When Dillwyn was a boy, I used to take the children all summer to the seashore with my sister. If my husband never got a word from me, he was a happy man.”
But Mary Frances could tell she’d pleased her, perhaps even put her at ease. It was important that her feelings toward Al always be clear. She repeated that to herself as they walked to the bar, three abreast, and repeated it again as Tim ordered the drinks, vermouth for his mother, a Gibson for her, and again in the taxi, on the way to Claire’s apartment uptown.