His skin was soft as a clean chamois. He was strong, he was lean. But he was not young. His heart had for so long been open only to bitterness and regret, but now his sexual passion, buried for so long, was once again wild in his heart.
She looked solemn, almost stricken. The bird sang sweetly. She kissed his cheek gravely and there she was. She was home.
The snow still lay around them as they rode home, and neither one spoke. His heart pounded in his chest. He wanted her. He wanted to know about his son, but he couldn’t speak or make a move. He wanted to say something, to remark about the difference between her first arrival, so wild, and this, so calm and peaceful. He wanted to be affectionate and familiar, but he couldn’t form a sentence. He fingered the faint scar on his forehead and stared straight ahead.
At home, they sat across from each other in front of the fire. Her dress was new. Her hair and her face had softened. He knew her news before she spoke it, because Antonio was not with her, and because he could see in her face that she wished it were otherwise.
“He’s not your son. He swears he’s not your son.”
“What do you think?”
“I think that what he says is all we’ve got to go on. Any more… there is no more. He says his name is Moretti. He says his parents run a restaurant in Philadelphia. He says he’s never seen you or heard of you or been closer to Wisconsin than Chicago. Malloy and Fisk say he’s not a nice man, without scruples or morals or decency. I… there wasn’t any farther to go with it. I tried.”
“What does he look like?”
She was careful. “He looks Italian. Exotic. He looks refined, like an aristocrat of some kind.”
“How does he live?”
“He plays the piano in… in a music hall, a cheap place. I never saw it. He likes it. I went to see him, to where he lives, to offer him anything to come home. He simply said it was not his home, he didn’t know what I was talking about. His rooms are done up like a circus tent. He dresses like a dandy. A fop.”
“What did his voice sound like?”
“Malloy and Fisk say he’s a useless, pretty object, good for nothing. They’ve followed him for months. They say he’s not worth the finding.”
“What do you think?”
“I think he’s your wife’s son and Moretti’s. I don’t know. He’s whatever you want him to be. I think he’s lying. I think he can’t forgive you and won’t come home. Not now. Not ever. I think he’s a lost cause. I wish…”
“Wish what, Catherine?”
“I wish I could have done more. I tried. I went to him. I saw a flicker on his brow the first time he heard your name, something that gave him away. Or so I thought. And I knew he was lying, and I went to him and offered him money. I talked to him for hours. I told him about your regret, that you were sorry. That you had never forgiven yourself. He doesn’t care. I gave him the ring from my finger. Your ring. He asked for it and I gave it gladly, instantly, but he laughed and handed it back. He won’t be persuaded. Even if…”
“Even if what?”
“Even if he is your son.”
“And you say he is.”
“I do. He doesn’t.”
“Andy.”
“He calls himself Tony.”
“He asked for your ring?”
“I gave it to him. He was teasing.”
She could see the agony on his face. He wanted the thing that frightened him the most, and the pain was terrible, worse than the wound on his forehead when she stitched him up. She hoped he believed her. She counted on it.
“We’ll move to the big house. We’ll move next week. Give this place to Larsen and his wife.”
“We don’t have to. There’s no reason. Now there’s no reason.”
“It’s been ready for him for years. Malloy writes that he’s greedy, that he never has any money. He’ll come when everything else has failed. We’ll move in and we’ll wait.”
She thought of her garden and the delight it would bring her. She thought of the high halls and the crystal chandeliers and the portraits of people unknown to her. She thought of herself, skirts trailing, walking the long halls of the upper galleries, and she knew it was what she wanted, that he was doing it for her after his own hope was gone.
“I’ve been happy here. We could go on.”
“I want a child. I won’t die without having a child. If you’re willing. If God is willing and you’d be so kind, I’d be grateful.”
“Of course.”
“It’s a house for children. A palace of adventures and secret staircases, and… I was a child when I built it, a spoiled, willful, stupid child. We go on, as you say.”
They ate dinner in silence, Mrs. Larsen bringing and removing the plates. They ate little. Even after her long train trip, Catherine respected Truitt’s sorrow, and her appetite seemed nothing to her. How could her heart not go out to him, knowing what she knew, steeled as she was?
He had no mechanism to discuss his sorrow. He had not had a single unmitigated joy in twenty years, and now a real sorrow had hit him, without explanation or protection, and he was just as mute. His lost son. The dream of his life, to save something out of all that terror, his own terrible behavior, and now even that gone.
And she, over coffee growing cold, she couldn’t resist speaking of it, as much as she felt for him.
“We saw him. In a restaurant. We heard him play.”
“How did he sound?”
“Charming. Sad. I’m no judge.”
“You play beautifully.”
“I’m no judge.”
I’ve lost everything, he wanted to say. I have denied myself and tortured myself and done every single thing that has been expected of me, and it was for nothing. My shirts are clean. My behavior is above reproach. And it means nothing. He was caught in the softest places of his heart, his gaze at her face, the beginnings of a fondness for her, because she came home and he was glad to see her, a bird in its cage, singing, and his anguished memory of the cruelties he had shown this boy who now denied his existence. It was too much. And he was struck mute.
The coffee was cold. The dinner was over, and it was late. When they went up the stairs, he asked her gently if she would like to sleep in her own room.
“Whatever for?”
“You must be tired from the trip.”
“You’re my husband.”
His glass of water was by the bed, a good night gift from Mrs. Larsen while they had lingered over their sad cold coffee. He went into the bathroom, to give her time to dress for bed, and knelt on the floor with his forehead on the cold commode until his fever had cooled. When he came back to the bedroom, he neatly undressed and folded his clothes for Mrs. Larsen to take care of, then turned back the sheets, shocked and aroused and touched to see that she was for the first time naked in bed, ready for him, waiting naked, knowing his need.
He made love to her with a ferocity that surprised him, that caused rivulets of sweat to run down his back and chest, his mouth on hers, his hand on the soft curve of her thigh, the thrill of his weight supported on his arms, his hands everywhere. Making love to her was like bathing in warm water. She washed over him. She was pliant and helpful, not forward, but helpful, and he was pleased that he could please her even as he pleased himself. To feel the action and passion and flesh of his body, his own sweat, his own manipulations of a woman’s desires, beyond speech, so that he became, in the end, pure movement, pure desire, obliterating his body and his business and his terrible agony and even her face and body until his own body and his need and his own mute sorrow were the only things in the whole wide world. He heard her soft moan of pleasure, and for a moment, for one moment, he felt at peace, his breath coming in long slow sighs, his hands stilled, his angers forgotten and his passions dissipated. He held her in his arms, his weight fully on her now. He smoothed the wild hair back from her forehead.