The party was supposed to have
started at seven, and, by 7:45, he was terrifically bored. He was in love,
which was usually a cure for boredom, but Jane hadn’t arrived yet, which meant
he was spending the evening talking with people with whom he was most
decidedly, not in love. People with whom he was not in love had a greyness that
hung about them. They were vaguely put together of eyeglasses, mustaches, hoop
skirts, braided hair, balding. They had accents of varying degrees, often
talked of the weather, the latest hunting season, and novels. He did not
actively detest them as a group. In fact, he felt as though he didn’t have the
space or time to care much more about them than he did about a lamp or a book
written in French, which he assiduously did not read.
He crossed the room to speak with
his father, George. George was a kind and robust man. In the middle of life’s
way he had begun to expand ever so slightly, but in what can only be described
as a pleasant way. He had a large mustache that was greying from the center
out. He had a large head, and deep set eyes, which were almost always twinkling
in a way that made him appear as if he were enjoying some silent joke.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” he
asked, Daniel, placing his large hand gently on his son’s shoulder.
“It’s impossible not too with so
much pleasantness gathered in one room,” Daniel answered, peering around the
room and trying to find someone pleasant. His eyes alighted on his father’s old
business partner, Mr. Denby. Mr. Denby, unlike his father, had begun to be
whittled away as he aged. His legs were slender as was his waist. His voice was
thin, reed like and a bit nasally. He had a daughter, Charlotte—a cold girl who
spent most of her time up north with a fiancée whom everyone pitied for having
hitched himself to such an unpleasant girl.
The evening didn’t really start for
him until Jane arrived. Jane—a girl he’d grown up with, a girl he’d walked
through the fields with, named clouds, named stars. He’d been intending to
marry Jane for years. They’d grown up, as the children of close friends often
do, in close proximity. They’d played in barns, at funerals, at weddings. She
was quite beautiful, thin-boned and pale. She reminded him of a very beautiful
swallow. She was quick-witted and she laughed frequently. She threw her head
back when she laughed. She laughed with every fiber of her being.
She had the habit of swiping the
hair away from her forehead with her left hand, and tucking it behind her ear.
She was, as anyone who has ever loved can tell you, probably not as objectively
pretty as he thought, which was entirely beside the point because objectivity
and love are not strange bed fellows, they live in separate countries, speak
different languages, and would only ever hear of the other in the way that a
baby can hear the distant whine of a mower, thin and soft.
The house was large, as houses were
in those days. The front porch was adorned by a pair of red greyhounds, old
porphyry standing guard over the door. On the eastern side of the house was a
field, laden with wildflowers, buttercups, phlox, Queen Anne’s lace. In summer,
the children would take walks with their nannies through the field, chasing nut
hatches and hummingbirds through the thin reeds. Beyond the field was a brook,
which turned into something vaguely resembling a river in early spring. At its
height, it would overflow the banks, raising the groundwater, leaving the field
a treacherous collection of swamp and gnats. A sodden mess which the children,
whenever they’d discover it on their own, would run through with glee, for as
any child knows there is a real pleasure in getting dirty. It is something that
adults forget and will remember no more than ten or so times before they
expire. So much is left in the past.
When they were children he was not
much in love with her. He was in love with the sound the wind made slipping
through the branches of the elm. He was in love with the fish, silver flashes
in an otherwise dark pool. He was in love with the smooth stones embedded in
the rich loam that he sent skipping across the river. The good ones would
uncurl across the stream, up onto the other bank, scattering leaves in their
wake, disappearing into whatever world existed on the other side.
One afternoon that they both
remembered intently, they’d snuck away from their nannies and into the copse of
trees. Down by the water, which cooled their pink cheeks, they’d watched a
rabbit, trailed by four of her offspring, big-footed and yet tinier than anyone could imagine,
scurrying down by the water to forage for something. They’d wanted, as you or I
or anyone would want, to capture the little rabbits to keep as their own.
With this in mind they’d devised a
simple plan: Jane would flush the rabbits out of the burrow by stomping on top
of the ground, and he’d catch the tiny rabbits up in his coat. Tenderly, she’d
crept across the roots of the elm, stepping softly across the bits of sand and
gravel. When she’d reached the appointed place she began stomping, her small
feet raising flecks of mud that would have spattered had they not been landing
on other bits of the same.
Eventually, the rabbits bounded out
of the den, scurrying like tiny players across some unbounded stage. Daniel
couldn’t catch any of them. They moved like the wind. They moved like wraith.
They moved like the dream of rabbits rather than rabbits themselves. The two of
them were apple cheeked, breathless and happy. What pleasures they derived even
in failure.
When they stopped laughing they
could hear the nannies calling for them from close by, which only made them
laugh more. Beneath this sound though, she became aware of a faint whimper,
shallow and persistent. She got his attention and the two of them pulled aside
the bits of sand and gravel until they saw the body of one of the little
rabbits, curled in an unnatural position, gathering shallow breaths, its small
ribs rising and falling rapidly. Neither one of them were yet versed in mercy.
Their only thought was to cover
their crime as quickly as possible, so they heaped the dirt and sand back upon
the ragged little body until its thin breathing was hidden beneath the rush of
water, the sound of the wind through willows and elms. By the time their
caretakers arrive they couldn’t hear a thing.
Months later, when the leaves were
on fire with fall, they’d visit the dirt and dig up the small bones of an
animal, stripped clean that had lain there since summer. Who’s to say what
binds any two people together?
One
afternoon, they’d been reading a book together in the library, his feet
playfully placed on her lap, in the way of childhood friends. The book had
been, well, something by Sterne perhaps. The late afternoon light was hidden by
an oak. They sat in the dark, though not precisely the dark, but something like
it. She was reading from the book intently, her eyes flicking back and forth
like sunlight on water. Her eyes were green and deep. Everyone’s eyes are
little pieces of jewelry when you’re falling in love. And he thought that he’d
always remember the particular words that she’d been reading in Sterne the
moment that he realized that he loved her, though it wasn’t true. It dawned on
him completely as she was turning a page, her head lifted briefly, eyes half
shaded by a cascade of hair. I love her, he thought.
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