And then she was laughing. “Oh God,” she choked out. “Fifteen cents. Can you imagine? I get carried away. So carried away. I wanted to show you this but now what? Henry, what in the world am I going to do with them?”
And he looked again at the flowers and slowly said, “You know, perhaps I have an idea.”
“And what would that be?”
He touched her laced fingers and gently took the flowers from her. “Come along,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
He found the apartment easily and led her up the stairs, Lydia following silently and stood in the ill-furnished but attractive old rooms as she inspected, standing a long time by the tall windows. Finally she turned and said, “I like it. It’s just right for you, I think.”
Henry was going through the scantily stocked cupboards and found a pair of old jars to fill with water for the flowers.
“I love the windows,” she went on. “So peaceful. But it’s not the Dam. I love the bustle there. When I look down, I feel I’m at the center of the world. But those jars? Do you intend to steal my flowers?”
“I’d thought to offer to take them off your hands. Since you were so overcome and spending so wildly.”
“Stop it. A housewarming gift.”
“No, no. That’ll come later. I’ll pay you back.”
“You’re a terrible man. How did I ever get mixed up with you?”
“I’ve wondered that myself.” She had pulled apart the oversized bouquet and was dividing the stems between the two jars and she glanced at him quickly, for a moment her face perched on a serious question and then she smiled.
She said, “This is a good place you’ve found, Henry Dorn.”
The afternoon before the slender stock of supplies he’d laid in were limited to a bottle of Montrachet and sacks of fresh cherries and strawberries, hard bread and cheese. A block of chocolate dark and dense, wrapped in waxed white paper. They sat on the floor with the food spread between them, the windows heaved up for air and rising neighborhood sounds. A quiet, speckled afternoon.
When most all was gone but the last of the wine she lay back, her head on his lap, stretched out, her shoes kicked off and one ankle up over the other knee so her dress slid down her long thighs and pooled in her lap. She said, “I’m growing rather fond of you.” Other than during sex the only admission she’d made. However intimate their conversations they’d yet to speak of themselves as joined.
“Are you sure about that?” He stroked her face, her cheeks and nose and forehead, last running a finger against her lips. He half expected her to nip him then but she didn’t.
“It’s a bit overwhelming.”
“How could it be otherwise and be worth anything at all?”
She reached and took a flower, pulled yellow and black petals loose and let them drift onto the stomach of her blouse. “Yes,” she said. And closed her eyes.
After a bit he realized she was asleep. He sat, his legs going to sleep, holding her. Still terrified and with absolutely no other place he wanted to be.
Three months later she was gone. And two months after that he lay, still waiting sleep’s restless wandering.
Three
Spring 1921 came early to Elmira so by mid-May the daffodils and tulips were failing and well-placed lilacs were rioting in bloom and the grass greened and men in overalls were out pushing mowers, the spinning blades leaving clippings that for a brief period each afternoon smelled like fresh-cut hay. On a Thursday afternoon in the third week he left his office exactly at six and crossed the campus to the house. Girls hurried past with either downturned heads or quick bright smiles—both gestures reassuring and meaningless at once— they invested more power over their academic and personal futures in him than was true but only he knew that—they must believe otherwise to excel. He gave this little thought that afternoon—he’d made this same walk easily a thousand times. Perhaps closer to five. Mostly he was enjoying the summerdream of the day. Examination week was quieting everything except the twelve hundred anxious brains and then there was the week of steady hoopla and stern pronouncements of graduation and another week of letter writing and meetings with faculty and then he and Olivia would take the train north to summer at the Lake. Both of their daughters would come for visits with their husbands and young families and there were the uncertain weeks when his son Robert would come, most likely checking some girl into a hotel in Watkins Glen where he would spend most of his time from late afternoon on each day, showing up at the cottage mid-morning still hungover when father and son would circle slowly with taut jabs of language and cast eyes within the iron circle of protection erected for her son that Olivia produced. Striding with purpose, breathing the flowered spring air, the truth was simple and long known to him; he loved his three children but struggled with his son and almost always had. There were many reasons for this, starting he supposed from the beginning with the age difference between the boy and his much older sisters although even this was problematic—it seemed to Henry that he and his little man had been close as his own dreams until the frightening bout of whooping cough when the boy was eight. Although even that seemed long ago and unlikely.
Henry was holding his shoulders a bit too tightly as he walked toward dinner with his wife. And perhaps his son. There was no telling. And as frustrating as this was he knew, as he approached the tennis courts and heard the thock of a ball and saw the two young students, done with their examinations or taking a much needed break, calves flashing below their skirts, the red clay softened with the evening sun, that once he rounded the courts and passed the small clump of Lombardy poplars and his own house came into view, knew if his son was lounging on the porch or steps for the last of the sun— Henry could see him, in his golfing knickers and argyle stockings, a sweater tied over his shoulders or if it was a harder day the young man would be wearing his puttees and uniform, the swagger stick cane drifting through his fingers like a baton, even then, Robert would toss back his whiteblond hair and smile at his father and Henry’s own surge would leap for a moment as his face broke to smile. How close they’d come to losing him.
It was almost as if he’d had two families. The girls born little more than a year apart, Alice first within a year of marriage and Polly fourteen months later—Polly tall like her father and willowy even yet with her young daughter, fiery, determined, even and easily pugnacious while Alice remained ever his firstborn with a game cock to her eye and mind that kept her nimble. Alice was a reader and would argue books with her father. And while she made no overt claim to peacemaker she alone could turn a conversation without anyone realizing she’d just done so. Even after almost ten years he missed her presence in his house and looked forward, most of all, to the few weeks or month she and her family would be at the Lake.
On the other side of the balance sheet were the four hundred young women he loosed upon the world each spring, each imbued with everything he’d worked his life for. For which purpose his life seemed designed. Even as undoubtedly some of these girls would lose within months or years what they had gained. He could not change the world.
It was a beautiful day. A fine afternoon for tennis. Healthy bodies. Shadows stretching but the air still warm. He looked forward to shirtsleeves over his meal. He could now smell pork roasting, the smell of food from the house still hidden, mixing with the newmown grass—the same campus workmen who were mowing earlier that week had taken down the storm windows and doors and fitted the screens. He was a breakfast and supper man. Lunch was light, always, even in winter. Midday food clouded the mind. And the evening meal was supper. Dinner was on Sunday, the early afternoon roast joint after chapel or church and then a short nap. He would stay up late that one night of the week, composing the next week’s study plans when the rest of the house was already asleep. It made perfect sense to him—the day of rest being over but for sleep.
He rounded the clump of poplars, their slender intertwined branches