“The manners?” Marcia sipped her martini.
“All right, the manners,” he acquiesced. “You and Edith were engaged in a tête-à-tête, when I came calling — unannounced and inopportunely, as I realized as soon as she opened the door. Do you remember that?”
Marcia gazed at him steadily from the other side of the table. Basilisk, the fearful alertness of the blue eyes behind her eyeglasses. “I’m not sure.”
“Then it doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t be able to restore the situation for you. It was way back in the twenties. So there’s no point to the question I wanted to ask you.”
“I remember being at Edith’s one evening with you and Lewlyn and your friend Larry.”
“No, Marcia, that must have been some other evening. Before this. I recall one of Edith’s soirées when you had just heard Heisenberg’s lecture on his theory of indeterminacy. You gave us the benefit of what you had heard.”
“I believed it implied the existence of free will in the universe. And gave indirect proof of Christian theology. It implied the Christian concept of a deity—”
“But that’s not what I’m coming at,” Ira wrenched himself loose. “The occasion I’m referring to was when you and Edith were alone. Or you had been until I arrived. And you just said something to Edith — as you were pulling on your gloves — about her having enjoyed Lewlyn while she could.”
“I remember reminding her that he was irrevocably pledged to Cecilia.”
“Was that it?” Ira prompted.
“Just to make sure she had no illusions her possible childbearing would alter the situation. I don’t think she did. I believe she said, ‘I’m going to miss him. He’s such a wonderful lover.’ And I said, ‘France is full of wonderful lovers, Edith.’ And she answered with a kind of pretend wistfulness: ‘But I’m not in France.’ Is that what you mean?”
“Ah, that’s what I remember! Her saying to you with a smile: ‘But I’m not in France.’ It seemed so apt.”
“Were you in the apartment at the time?”
“Inconspicuously. Behind a book or a magazine.”
“Strange. I don’t remember. I don’t have any blocks in my memory either. Lewlyn does. But I don’t.”
“Lewlyn does?”
“Oh, yes. Many.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I hope to see him soon.”
“I warn you, be careful. His memory has become very patchy. Do you have his address?”
“Yes, thanks. Anyway, there you both were speaking so casually, so lightly, as if over a trifling matter. Do you remember what you said to her on leaving?”
“Not exactly.” Marcia paused long enough for the waitress to set down the bowl of steak tartar she had been ordered to bring for her, and the omelette for Ira. “I may have said I’m afraid this will have the opposite effect: of terminating the interim affair.”
“Ah, then you did! That’s my point about different cultural nuances, the shock they transmit to the uninitiated on recognition.” Ira wagged his finger at her, conscious of the irony of seeming to enlighten the most celebrated social critic of their time. “Do you know what Edith did as soon as you said goodbye, and closed the door behind you? She burst into tears. I was never so surprised in my life. I felt as if I were profaning a rite — or being initiated into one. In my tradition, when feelings got wrought up to that pitch, imprecations were exchanged, insults hurled, sometimes blows. Here, antagonisms were so rarefied I never sensed them. Cultivated spoofing, I thought.”
Marcia’s countenance betrayed rue — not penitence — rue, that she might have caused undue distress to one who nevertheless merited reproof then, but was now dead. Marcia said nothing for a moment, but sank her fork into the rubicund mound of steak tartare before her. “I may have been a little forthright,” she said. “That’s quite possible. I’m not ashamed to admit I never did approve of Edith’s dealing with men. They were anything but restrained. In fact, very nearly, well, very, promiscuous. I suppose my resentment showed. We used to say that sex with Edith was an extension of hospitality.”
“You did?” Ira grinned at the neatness of Marcia’s epigram. Trust Marcia; she could epitomize things more pithily than anyone else. “I was once crude enough to recite to her a list of her lovers. She burst into tears. Boorish of me.”
“Why, she even seduced my younger brother,” Marcia said in a tone bordering on vehemence.
“Oh, she did?” Ira congratulated himself that his guile had paid off.
“It didn’t hurt him any. But I was furious at the time.”
Ira addressed himself to his omelette. “I must say that he wasn’t on my list.”
III
It was a raw, sodden afternoon in November when Ira left the shelter of the Christopher Street subway kiosk — and left behind the more prudent passengers, lingering on the top steps, anxiously studying the lowering outlook for some sign of abatement of the rain. He set out as fast as he could toward Morton Street and Edith’s apartment, driving himself through cold, slant flurries, and over street rill and puddle, yet he still arrived with shoes soggy and dripping, and topcoat drenched through to the jacket shoulder. Just as well he had decided to stow his briefcase in his locker for the day; would have been one more thing to lug through the rain. Tomorrow was Friday anyway, and he had only one class that day, Culture and Education. He would read the damned assignment sometime in the morning. Or try to. Enough to get by.
It was actually interesting stuff, if he gave it a chance, but he didn’t. He let his brain turn to concrete when he opened a text in education. He didn’t give a damn. How the hell was it that Larry could stand up in class and palaver with Professor Elkins minutes on end, as if the rest of the class didn’t exist, or was an audience, about the effect on the Renaissance of Vittorino da Feltre’s theories of education — with a bewitched Professor Elkins? Just the reverse of the way things had been in that elocution class long ago — everything seemed long ago.
In black-and-white herringbone skirt, and finely knit black sweater, a wanly smiling Edith admitted Ira into the apartment. But no sooner had she done so than she sat down with an air of constraint, hastily, in her usual place on the gunny-cloth-covered couch, her back to the wall. Perhaps it was the black sweater that made her look paler than usual, or it may have been after she told him about her condition that he thought so in a kind of instant retrospect. She was her considerate, solicitous self: “Heavens, Ira, you didn’t tell me when you called you had no umbrella and no rubbers. You’re soaking. You’d better take off as many layers of those wet clothes as you can. And your shoes and stockings.”
“I wear socks.” Dripping fedora in hand, he stood raptly before the fire in the steel basket of the fireplace. “Boy, you got a fire going, Edith. That’s really nice.” He removed his topcoat, approached the hearth. “Gee.”
“You’re sopping wet. Ira, please take off your shoes, dear. You’ll catch your death.”
“Yeah? I don’t mind.” He sat down on the wicker armchair — which snapped disconcertingly under his weight. “I mean, I don’t mind taking off my shoes. . my socks too. . What d’you call that kind of coal, those big chunks, do they have a name?”