At the Water's Edge (3 page)

My own ears buzzed from the champagne. I lifted both hands to investigate my hair, and discovered the curls on one side had come undone and were clinging to my neck. Reaching further around, I realized that the diamond hair comb given to me by my mother-in-law was missing. I felt a stab of panic. It had been a gift on our wedding day, a rare moment of compassion shown me by a woman who had made no secret of not wanting me to marry her son, but was nonetheless moved to give it to me seconds before Hank walked me down the aisle.

“I think we should do it,” Ellis said.

“Sure,” I said gaily. “We'll just hop on the next—”

“I mean it,” he said sharply.

I looked up, startled by his tone. He was grinding his jaw. I wasn't sure exactly when it had happened, but his mood had shifted. We were no longer playing a game.

He looked at me in irritation. “What? Why shouldn't we?”

“Because of the war,” I said gently.

“Carpe diem, and all that crap. The war is part of the adventure.
God knows I'm not getting near it any other way. Neither is Hank, for that matter.” He raked a hand through his hair, leaving a swath of it standing on end. He leaned in closer and narrowed his eyes. “You do know what they call us, don't you?” he said. “ ‘FFers.' ”

He and Hank were the only 4Fers in the room. I wondered if someone had slighted him when he'd gone to find drinks.

Hank took his flat-footedness in stride, as he did most things, but being given 4F status had devastated Ellis. His color blindness had gone undetected until he tried to enlist and was rejected. He'd tried a second time at a different location and was turned down again. Although it was clearly not his fault, he was right that people judged, and I knew how this chipped at him. It was relentless and unspoken, so he couldn't even defend himself. His own father, a veteran of the Great War, had treated him with undisguised revulsion since hearing the news. This injustice was made all the more painful because we lived with my in-laws, who had perversely removed any chance at escape. Two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, they cut Ellis's allowance by two thirds. My mother-in-law broke it to us in the drawing room before dinner, announcing with smug satisfaction that she was sure we'd be pleased to know that until “this terrible business was over” the money would be going toward war bonds. Strictly speaking, that may have been where the money was going, but it was perfectly clear that the real motive was punishing Ellis. His mother was exacting revenge because he'd dared to marry me, and his father—well, we weren't exactly sure. Either he didn't believe that Ellis was color-blind, or he couldn't forgive him for it. The nightmarish result was that we were forced to live under the constant scrutiny of people we'd come to think of as our captors.

“You know how hard it is,” he went on, “with everyone staring at me, wondering why I'm not serving.”

“They don't stare—”

“Don't patronize me! You know perfectly well they do!”

His outburst caused everyone to turn and look.

Ellis waved an angry hand at them. “See?”

He glanced fiercely around. To a person, they turned away, their scandalized expressions trained elsewhere. Conversations resumed, but in dampened tones.

Ellis locked eyes with me. “I know I look perfectly healthy,” he continued, his voice under taut control. “My own father thinks I'm a coward, for Christ's sake. I need to prove myself. To him, to them, to
me
. Of all people, I thought you'd understand.”

“Darling, I do understand,” I said.

“But do you?” he asked, his mouth stretching into a bitter smile.

“Of course,” I said, and I did, although at that moment I would have said anything to calm him down. He'd been drinking hard liquor since early afternoon, and I knew things could degenerate quickly. The carefully averted faces of those around us already portended a very unpleasant beginning to the new year.

My mother-in-law, who had missed the party because of a migraine, would surely start receiving reports of our behavior by noon. I could only imagine how she'd react when she found out I'd lost the hair comb. I resolved to telephone the next day and throw myself on Mrs. Pew's mercy. If the comb had come out in the snow, it was probably gone forever, but if it had fallen down the back of a sofa, it might turn up.

Ellis watched me closely, the fire dancing in his eyes. After a few seconds, his angry mask melted into an expression of sad relief. He leaned sideways to pat my knee and almost fell out of his chair.

“That's my girl,” he said, struggling upright. “Always up for adventure. You're not like the other girls, you know. There's not an ounce of fun in them. That's why Hank won't marry Violet, of course. He's holding out for another you. Only there isn't one. I've got the one and only.”

“Who the whatty-what now?” said Hank, appearing from nowhere and crashing back into his chair. “Over here!” he barked, snapping his fingers above his head. A waiter set more drinks on the table in front of us. Hank turned back to Ellis. “Is she trying to marry me off again? I swear there's an echo in here.”

“No. She's agreed. We're going to Scotland.”

Hank's eyes popped open. “Really?” He looked at me for confirmation.

I didn't think I'd agreed, per se, at least not after I realized we weren't just joking, but since I'd managed to defuse the bomb and perhaps even save the evening, I decided to play along.

“Sure,” I said, gesturing grandly. “Why not?”

T
he next morning, I was startled awake by the telephone ringing in the downstairs hallway. It was exactly nine o'clock, which was the very earliest time considered civilized. I clutched the covers to my chin, paralyzed, as Pemberton, the butler, summoned my mother-in-law. I heard her determined footsteps, then her muffled voice, rising and falling in surprised waves.

I was entirely wretched—my head pounded, my stomach was sour, and it was quite possible that I was still drunk. While I remembered much of the night before, there were moments I couldn't recall, like getting home. The realization that I'd passed the point of being tipsy had come over me quite suddenly—I remembered being acutely aware that it was time to call it a night, but I did not remember leaving, much less the ride home. I had no idea how many—or few—hours I'd been in bed.

My ruined dress lay in a limp heap in the middle of the carpet, looking for all the world like a length of intestine. My shoes were nearby, one of them missing a heel. The white stole was flung over the edge of my polished mahogany dressing table, the fur spiked and
dirty. I'd dropped my strand of pearls in front of my jewelry box, and both earrings, cushion-cut rubies surrounded by diamonds, were nearby but not together. A very large champagne cork was planted squarely between them. I checked my finger for my ring and then, with a sickening feeling of vertigo, remembered the hair comb. I burrowed my face into my pillow and pulled its edges over my ears.

At noon, the housemaid knocked gently on the door, then opened it a crack.

“I'm sorry, Emily. I'm not feeling up to breakfast,” I said, my voice muffled by the pillow.

“I've brought Alka-Seltzer and gingersnaps,” she replied, which made my stomach twist again. It meant that not only had we wakened the entire house when we returned, but also that our condition had been obvious.

“Put it on the table,” I said, rolling to face the opposite wall. I didn't want her to see me. I'd fallen into bed without even removing my makeup, as evidenced by the streaks of mascara on my pillowcase. “Thank you, Emily.”

“Of course, Mrs. Hyde.”

She stayed longer than I expected, and when she left, I saw that she'd taken the dress, shoes, and mink with her.

The telephone rang sporadically throughout the day. With each call, my mother-in-law's voice became a little more resolute until finally it was brittle and hard. I shrank further under the covers with every conversation.

At nearly six thirty, Ellis staggered into my room. He was still in his pajamas. His robe was open, its sash dragging on the floor behind him.

“Dear God, what a night,” he said, scrubbing his eyes with his fists. “I'm a bit green about the gills. I could use an eye-opener. How about you?”

I suppressed a retch.

“Are you all right?” he asked, coming closer. His face was drawn, and there were dark semicircles beneath his eyes. I didn't even want
to know how I looked—Ellis had at least made it into his pajamas; I was still in my slip.

“Not really,” I said. “Look what Emily brought on my breakfast tray.”

He glanced over and guffawed.

“It's not funny,” I said. “It means they're all gossiping about us in the kitchen. And I lost your mother's hair comb.”

“Oh,” he said vaguely.

“Ellis,
I lost the hair comb
.”

When the gravity of this sank in, he sat on the edge of the bed and the last of his color drained.

“What am I going to do?” I said, curling into a ball.

He took a deep breath and thought. After a few seconds, he slapped his thighs with resolve and said, “Well. You'll have to telephone the Pews and tell them to be on the lookout, that's all.”

“I was going to. But I can't.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, I can't get near the telephone. Your mother's been on it all day. God only knows what she's heard. And anyway, I can't call Mrs. Pew. I can't face her, not even over the telephone.”

“Why?”

“Because we were
tight
! We rolled around in the street!”

“Everyone was tight.”

“Yes, but not like us,” I said miserably. I sat up and cradled my head in my hands. “I don't even remember leaving. Do you?”

“Not really.” He got up and walked to my dressing table. “When did you get this?” he asked, picking up the cork.

“I haven't a clue,” I replied.

On the main floor, the telephone rang yet again, and I cowered. Ellis came back to the bed and took my hand. This time, when Pemberton fetched my mother-in-law, her footsteps were brisk and she spoke in punctuated bursts. After a few minutes, she went silent again, and the silence was ominous, rolling through the house like waves of poisonous gas.

Ellis looked at my clock. “She'll come up to dress for dinner in a few minutes. You can call then.”

“Come with me?” I whispered, clutching his hand.

“Of course,” he said. “Do you want one of your heart pills?”

“No, I'll be all right,” I said.

“Do you mind if I…?” He let the question trail off.

“Of course not. Help yourself.”

At ten to seven, forty minutes before we were expected in the drawing room for cocktails, we crept downstairs, both of us in our robes, glancing nervously at each other and hiding behind corners until we ascertained that nobody was around. I felt like a child sneaking down to eavesdrop on a party for grown-ups.

I telephoned Mrs. Pew and sheepishly asked if she would please keep an eye out for my hair comb. After a slight pause, she said curtly that yes, she would.
As she had told me last night
.

When I hung up, I turned wordlessly to Ellis, who pulled me into his arms.

“Hush, my darling,” he said, pressing my head to his chest. “This too shall pass.”

At seven thirty, we met at the top of the stairs. I had bathed and repaired my hair as best I could in the available time. I had also put on a touch of lipstick and rouge, since my face was so devoid of color as to be nearly transparent, and dabbed some eau de toilette behind my ears. Ellis had nicked himself shaving, and there were comb marks in his wet hair.

“Ready?” he said.

“Absolutely not. You?”

“Courage, my dear,” he said, offering his arm. I curled my icy fingers in the crook of his elbow.

As Ellis and I entered the drawing room, my father-in-law, Colonel Whitney Hyde, raised his face and aimed it at the grandfather clock. He was leaning against the mantel, right next to a delicate cage hanging from an elaborate floor stand. The canary within was the color of
orange sorbet, a plump, smooth ovoid with a short fan of a tail, chocolate spots for eyes, and a sweet beak. He was almost too perfect to be real, and not once had he sung during my four-year tenure in this house, even as his quarters were reduced to help him concentrate.

My mother-in-law, Edith Stone Hyde, sat perched on the edge of a silk jacquard chair the color of a robin's egg, Louis XIV style. Her gray eyes latched onto us the moment we entered the room.

Ellis crossed the carpet briskly and kissed her cheek. “Happy New Year, Mother,” he said. “I hope you're feeling better.”

“Yes, Happy New Year,” I added, stepping forward.

She turned her gaze on me and I stopped in my tracks. Her jaw was set, her eyes unblinking. Over by the mantel, the ends of the Colonel's mustache twitched. The canary fluttered from its perch to the side of the cage and clung there, its fleshless toes and translucent claws wrapped around the bars.

Tick, tock
went the clock. I thought my knees might go out from under me.

“Better…Hmmm…Am I feeling better…” She spoke slowly, clearly, mulling the words. Her brow furrowed ever so slightly. She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair, starting with her smallest finger and going up, twice, and then reversing the order. The rhythm was that of a horse cantering. The pause felt interminable.

She looked suddenly up at Ellis. “Are you referring to my migraine?”

“Of course,” Ellis said emphatically. “We know how you suffer.”

“Do you? How kind of you. Both of you.”

Tick, tock
.

Ellis straightened his spine and his tie and went to the sideboard to pour drinks. Whiskeys for the men, sherries for the ladies. He delivered his mother's, then his father's, and then brought ours over.

“Tell me, how was the party?” his mother said, gazing at the delicate crystal glass she held in her lap. Her voice was completely without inflection.

“It was quite an event,” Ellis said, too loudly, too enthusiastically. “The Pews certainly do things right. An orchestra, endless champagne,
never-ending trays of delicious tidbits. You'd never know there was a war going on. She asked after you, by the way. Was very sorry to hear you weren't feeling well. And the funniest thing happened at the stroke of midnight—did you hear? People will be talking about it for years.”

The Colonel harrumphed and tossed back his whiskey. The canary jumped from one side of its cage to the other.

“I've heard rather a lot,” my mother-in-law said coldly, still staring into her glass. Her eyes shifted deliberately to me.

The blood rose to my cheeks.

“So, there we all were,” Ellis continued bravely, “counting down to midnight, when all of a sudden there was a positively
huge
explosion. Well, even though we're a continent away from the action, you can imagine what we thought! We nearly—”

“Silence!”
roared the Colonel, spinning to face us. His cheeks and bulbous nose had gone purple. His jowls trembled with rage.

I recoiled and clutched Ellis's arm. Even my mother-in-law jumped, although she regained her composure almost immediately.

In our set, battles were won by sliding a dagger coolly in the back, or by the quiet turn of a screw. People crumpled under the weight of an indrawn sigh or a carefully chosen phrase. Yelling was simply not done.

The Colonel slammed his empty glass down on the mantel. “Do you think we're fools? Do you think we haven't heard all about the
real
highlight of the party? What people will
really
be talking about for years? About your
disgraceful
, your
depraved
…your…
contemptible
behavior?”

What happened next was a blur of insults and rage. Apparently we had done more than just get drunk and make fools of ourselves, and apparently Ellis's moment of temper had not been his worst misdeed. Apparently, he had also crowed loudly about our decision to go monster hunting and “show the old man up,” stridently proclaiming his intentions even as Hank was using a foot to shove him into the back of the car.

The Colonel and Ellis closed in on each other across the enormous silk carpet, pointing fingers and trying to outshout each other. The Colonel accused us of going out of our way to try to embarrass him, as well as being loathsome degenerates and generally useless members of society, and Ellis argued that there was nothing he
could
do, and for that matter the Colonel did nothing either. What exactly did his father expect him to do? Take up a trade?

My mother-in-law sat silently, serenely, with a queerly calm look on her face. Her knees and ankles were pressed together in ladylike fashion, tilted slightly to the side. She held her unsipped sherry by the stem, her eyes widening with delight at particularly good tilts. Then, without warning, she snapped.

The Colonel had just accused Ellis of conveniently coming down with color blindness the moment his country needed him, the cowardice of which had caused him—his
father
and a
veteran
—the greatest personal shame of his life, when Edith Stone Hyde swiveled to face her husband, bug-eyed with fury.

“How
dare
you speak of my son like that!”

To my knowledge, she had never raised her voice before in her life, and it was shocking. She continued in a strained but shrill tone that quavered with righteous indignation—Ellis could no more help being color-blind than other unfortunates could help having clubfeet,
didn't he realize
, and the color blindness,
by the way
, hadn't come from
her
side of the family. And speaking of genetics, she blamed
her
(and here she actually flung out an arm and pointed at me) for Ellis's downfall. An unbalanced harlot
just like her mother
.

“Now see here! That's my wife you're talking about!” Ellis shouted.

“She was no harlot!” the Colonel boomed.

For two, maybe three seconds, there wasn't a sound in the room but the ticking of the clock and the flapping of the canary, which had been driven to outright panic. It was a haze of pale orange, banging against the sides of its cage and sending out bursts of tiny, downy feathers.

Ellis and I looked at each other, aghast.

“Oh, really?” my mother-in-law said calmly. “Then what, exactly, was she, dear?”

The Colonel moved his mouth as though to answer, but nothing came out.

“It's all right. I always suspected. I saw the way you used to look at her,” my mother-in-law continued. Her eyes burned brightly with the indignity of it all. “At least you weren't foolish enough to run off with her.”

I was almost compelled to defend the Colonel, to point out that
everybody
had looked at my mother that way—they couldn't help themselves—but knew better than to open my mouth.

My mother-in-law turned suddenly to Ellis.

“And
you
—I warned you. As embarrassing as it was, I probably could have tolerated it if you'd just wanted to carouse, to sow some wild oats, but no, despite all the other very suitable matches you could have made, you snuck off to marry”—she paused, pursing her lips and shaking her head quickly as she decided what to call me—“
this
. And I was right. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. It's positively shameful the way the two of you and that beastly Boyd fellow carry on. I despair of the grandchildren. Although, frankly, I've nearly lost hope in that regard. Perhaps it's just as well.” She sighed and went calm again, smoothing her forehead and staring into the distance to revel in her victory. She'd successfully dressed down every other person in the room and thought it was now over: game, set, match.