Tapestry of Fortunes A Novel - By Elizabeth Berg Page 0,106
out just a little; probably they used to embarrass him, but they seem distinguished to me, senatorlike. I also like Thomas’s white mustache and the deep wrinkles in his forehead, reminding me of the beautiful lines you’ve seen from an airplane window, etched in the earth. It is such an intimate history I see here on Thomas’s forehead. This is worth something, isn’t it?
Maybe I should consider dating much older men. What’s it like to love an eighty-year-old? When Thomas and Lydia go to bed together—and I know they do—what’s it like? It must be so slow, it must be so exquisitely tender. I imagine a gentle old hand on my neck, sliding down my back, acknowledging each vertebra. I would not be bothered by any of his age spots; I would let in an older lover’s touch like sunshine on a winter day, yes I would. And with an old lover, I could feel so young! You’re so beautiful, he would say to me, oblivious of my recent need to hold small print away from myself. My darling, he would say. I pull Thomas’s photo closer, close my eyes, open them to the blurry sight of his smile. I kiss it. Then I sigh, wipe my marks off the glass, put the picture carefully back on Lydia’s dresser.
Oh, I envy Lydia her whole correct life: drinking tea out of her blue-and-white bone china cup every morning, dressed for the day in a wool skirt and white blouse, a pin with an elegant luster at her throat. She has a woman friend named Katherine who visits her regularly, who always wears a hat and gloves with her dark coat—button galoshes last time, too, defense against an early, thin layer of snow. She carries an old-fashioned purse and I love when she reaches in to get her hankie, or compact, or her candies in their flowered tin. I imagine a heavy fountain pen in that purse, the ink a peacock blue. I imagine an address book with gold-trimmed pages, each entry done in perfect Palmer script. A jeweled pillbox, a tortoiseshell comb. No Day-Timer. No Mace.
Katherine and Lydia have been friends for more than sixty years, Lydia told me, exchanging recipes and child care and patterns for padded-shoulder suits in their early years; now going to museums and flower shows, to downtown department stores to share sandwiches for lunch, and to hospitals to visit friends—or, occasionally, each other.
Outside, I see a vein of lightning stab the sky, and then I hear the low rumble of thunder. A wonderful sound when you are in bed with someone you love. I watch the rain come down, hear how the sound changes from tapping to drumming. The urgency! It should be snow; but for this freakish run of warm weather, it would be snow. I wish it were. I wish the season would change definitively. I slip off my shoes and lie down on Lydia’s bed, turn out the light, pull her beautiful rose-colored quilt over myself. I will sleep here, wrapped in the comfort of someone else’s life, far away from those rings I left behind me.
I lie still, my hands folded across my stomach, listening to the anchoring sound of my own breathing. Sheets of water cascade down the window. Inside this house now suddenly too big, my boy and I lie down in our separate places and give ourselves over to the quiet repair of sleep. Outside, the sky weeps and weeps. Or so it seems to me. Times like this, everything in the world becomes personal.
10
It takes me a few days to tell Rita what happened. And when I do, she is her usual Sagittarius self. “I can’t believe you made such a fool of yourself,” she says.
“Oh, I shouldn’t have told you. I knew I shouldn’t tell you. I don’t need recriminations now. I need support.”
“I can’t support you in something so stupid. What are you begging him for? Getting rid of him will be good for you!”
“Yeah, it’s been great so far.” I get out of bed, slide my feet into my slippers. “I have to go. I have to get dressed.”
“It’s noon there!”
“I’m well aware of that.”
“I thought you were getting dressed first thing, these days.”
“That didn’t last. Martha Stewart is crazy.”
“Well, we all know that. I don’t know why you would ever take a suggestion from her in the first place. Everything she tells people is just a set-up for failure. She’s a misanthrope.”