Spirit Lost (2 page)

But they had gone past all that now in their marriage and knew how completely they were bound. Suddenly his proud decision had seemed a foolish one—or perhaps it was just that the time was right, now, for him to try to get serious about his work.

He had come home one night in the spring and told Willy he wanted to quit his job, that he wanted to spend a few years at his art. Willy had been completely supportive; more, she had been thrilled. They had spent excited nights sitting up late, talking, brandies in their hands, planning, scheming, dreaming. They had discussed John’s desires and needs and how to fulfill them and how Willy could keep happy during the enormous change.

They had been pleased with each other for coming to the agreement that it was all right to live off Willy’s money for a good five years—what else, as Willy said, was money for? John loved Willy for her easy, generous commitment to him; Willy loved John for his ability to agree to use the money, for his lack of any stupid machismo that would have kept him stuck at his job and made them both miserable.

John wanted to move, away from Cambridge and Boston and the ad agency and their friends, away from everyone who knew and judged him in all the slight and oblique ways that people judge. He didn’t even want to see the people he knew from passing them on his jogging route, who after so many months would nod hello or ask if he’d been sick, they hadn’t seen him jogging lately. He wanted freedom from everyone’s opinion and a complete break from the pressured, active, glittery world he had made his own, a world of commerce and hype and pretense and parties and innuendo and slickness. He wanted a major change, a physical move that would symbolize the finality and significance of his decision.

All spring and summer they had made weekend trips to Nantucket, where Willy had vacationed as a child, to Maine, to certain artistic spots in the New England countryside, looking for the perfect place for John to work, a territory and a house that would
feel
right. They settled on Nantucket because it was so far from the mainland, so cut off, literally, by thirty miles of ocean, from the world they knew. They had bought a wonderful old house filled with atmosphere—and they would be moving there this week.

During these past few months, their marriage, which had always been strong, became, once again, after eight years, exciting. Willy and John had gotten comfortable with each other, companions; with the move, they became best friends, conspirators,
caught up in a secret that linked them against the world, and they became obsessed with each other, with their plans, their bravery. For months they went through the day as they had when they first met and married, counting the minutes until they were with each other, needing the other as much as they needed air, feeling complete, alive, safe, happy, only when they were together. It was not the sort of mood a marriage could sustain for a long period of time; it was too intense. But it would carry them along a while more, until they were established in their new home.

So pretty Erica, who was rubbing along the wall, closing in on John, wasn’t any kind of threat at all to Willy.

Not that she could ever have been. A few years ago, when in the doldrums of his career, making a lot of money for what he knew was mediocre work, painstakingly doing line drawings of refrigerators, John might have been more grateful for Erica’s flirtations. Oh, he wouldn’t have
done
anything; he didn’t want anyone but Willy and, for all the world, would never have done anything to hurt Willy.

But in his heart he knew he might have liked to see how Willy would react, to see if she would have been shaken up a little.

“So like I’m thinking maybe I should leave the agency, too,” Erica was saying now, “see if I can, you know, be a serious painter. You know, you really like inspire me.”

John looked over Erica’s thick black hair, which tonight was combed rooster fashion up and backward, making her look both ridiculous and sensational. He caught Willy looking at him from where she sat curled on the living room floor, her back to the fire. She grinned at John, obviously amused. He grinned back. They were cohorts.

But a few years ago he might have found that grin of Willy’s insulting. He certainly would have found it frustrating. If the truth were known, many things about Willy frustrated him, many things that were all part of the same thing: Willy’s incredible ease in the world.

He didn’t wish his wife ill, but he often did wish that she had some idea of what it was like to have to struggle for something, to have to fight a bit to get what she wanted. She was so serene. Things came to her so easily. There was all that money she had, and there was her embroidery work.

Willy designed and embroidered tablecloths and matching napkins, bedspreads, curtains, baby clothes, cotton blouses, negligees, in a variety of styles ranging from floral to art deco, but always vividly colored, with a splendid and unusual mixture that only
Willy would think to put together. What she made sold for a fortune in the few select Boston shops, but Willy worked too slowly and painstakingly to make a living from her craft. And she did only what she wanted to do, when she felt like it, for she didn’t need to make a living. She didn’t need to compromise or skimp or rush; she did only what she wanted, and not two pieces of her work were exactly alike.

The amazing thing to John was that Willy didn’t seem to care whether or not her work sold. She was pleased when she got letters or phone calls raving about her work, but she forgot about the praise instantly; that didn’t matter. Her pleasures didn’t come from outside. It was all interior, all in the work itself. She was satisfied with her work and didn’t care if it sold.

So of course it sold. It won high praise. Willy was written up in newspapers, in magazines. And Willy did bother to cut out the articles, intending to put them in a scrapbook, but only this week, when they were packing, John came across them, covered with coffee stains, stuck between some old letters.

Willy’s parents were dead before John met her, but he learned from what she told him and from what he could glean from friends of the family that her family had been one of those lucky, eccentric, wealthy, educated, fascinating families that finds everyone outside of the family just a little uninteresting. So there was bred in Willy, John thought, a kind of gentle, unassuming snobbery. Willy was so self-sufficient. So self-satisfied. So content. John never doubted that Willy loved him, and yet he often wished he could break through that serenity of hers somehow, that he could make her look at him not with her clear, peaceful gaze but with the fierce glare of need he felt he often directed at her.

“Well, I think you should think seriously about it before leaving,” John said now to Erica. “It’s a hard thing to do; it’s like stepping off the planet into outer space. But then you’re young, Erica. It’s been
years
since
I’ve
really tried to paint. Since I’ve even thought seriously about what I would like to paint. I’ve been too busy with other things. Now I’m bound to be rusty. And of course, I’ll miss Boston, the action, the agency—”

“Will you really, old boy? Miss all of us, that is? How touching!”

Donald Hood came up behind John just then and wrapped his arm around John’s neck. Partly a gesture of affection, this also served to stabilize Donald, who was already pretty well sloshed and found John a convenient hold in a wavering world. Donald was the artistic director at the agency, a likable man even when breathing scotch in one’s face.

“Of course I’ll miss you, you old lush,” John said. Then realizing just how
unsteady Donald was, he turned, aiming himself and his friend toward the dining room. “I’m starving. Let’s get something to eat.” He looked back at Erica, grinning to excuse his rudeness. She smiled back, understanding. Everyone in the office took care of Donald.

John’s entry into the dining room got everyone else headed for the table, and soon the room was crowded with people leaning against the walls, plates in hand. There were almost thirty people at this party, and everyone but Anne and Mark and Willy worked at the advertising agency known in Massachusetts as the Blackstone Group. When Anne said she wanted to give the Constables a going-away party, John had made up his guest list and realized that all his friends—except for Mark, who was a lawyer, and Anne—worked at the agency. And Willy realized that the only friend she really cared about leaving was Anne, and so she didn’t bother to invite anyone else, not the managers of the various stores that sold her embroidery work or the various friends scattered around the city whom she had known for years but rarely saw. Besides, she liked the idea of this party being especially for John, a real and symbolic good-bye.

Harrison Adder, the president of the Blackstone Group, came up to Willy as she sat on a wing chair by the living room window, her plate next to her on a side table. She had just taken a bite of buttery corn bread, which crumbled deliciously in her hand and down her front, and Harrison leaned down to give her his usual patronizing, pretentious kiss. Harrison was good at this, at catching people with crumbs on their mouths and bosoms; he loved being elegant and superior. White haired, impeccably dressed, slender, he always made Willy feel like a cow next to a gazelle, and Willy sensed that he enjoyed this—so he was not the true gentleman he seemed.

Willy gulped down her corn bread and wiped her mouth, brushed her bodice with her napkin. “Harrison, hello,” she said. “Won’t you join me?” She gestured at the companion chair on the other side of the table. “Have you eaten?”

“Yes, yes,” Harrison said, pinching up his trousers as he sat so that the crease stayed put. “Very pleasant meal. When do you and John actually leave, dear?”

“The movers come tomorrow, and we’ll spend the night here with Anne and Mark,” Willy said. “Our boat reservations are for the day after tomorrow.”

“Quite a change,” Harrison remarked, watching Willy carefully. “Must be quite an ordeal for you.”

“Oh, I don’t think ordeal is the right word at all!” Willy exclaimed. “This is really
an adventure, Harrison. I’m excited! I’m looking forward to it all.”

“I’m so glad, dear,” Harrison said. “Tell me about your new home. I’ve been to Nantucket, of course.”

Willy was careful as she talked. She was never sure what it was that Harrison wanted from her. John had told her many times to be wary of him, for like many elegant men he had a bitchy side to him. As president of the Blackstone Group, Harrison was perfect in almost every way; his smooth elegance, his old-money style, won clients over easily. And he was a fine executive, good at finances and at dealing with his employees. But he always seemed to be trying to score points off his best people, John included, in some kind of unspoken game to which only he knew the rules.

“It’s a lovely old house,” Willy said. “Greek revival style, with steps up from the sidewalk to the front and back doors. Shingled, of course, you know Nantucket and its gray shingles—oh, Harrison, would you excuse me? Anne is clearing the table and setting out dessert, and I really should help her.”

“Of course, my dear,” Harrison said, rising. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“You know, you could add a log and stoke up the fire,” Willy said. Never capable of telling anyone off, she had become good at smooth escapes. “That would be so nice of you. It’s been neglected.”

She scurried off into the kitchen, plates and glasses in her hand. At the sink, with running water obscuring their words, Willy said to Anne, “That man! Have you talked to him? He’s like Satan, I swear, all polished and silky on the outside but full of malevolence beneath. I don’t know how John managed to work with him all these years.”

“At least he puts on a pleasant front,” Anne said. “You should meet Mark’s newest partner in the firm. He’s brilliant, everyone says, but so caustic, so aggressive, always ready for a fight. It’s just part of the rat race, isn’t it, putting up with these people.”

Anne and Willy cleared the dining room table of the main course and took their time in the kitchen cleaning up. Two other women at the party, a receptionist and a copywriter from the agency, came into the kitchen with plates, gravitating to where the women were. The four stood around discussing clothes and periods and Anne’s pregnancy. Erica did not come in; she always made it a point to stay away from women and kitchens.

“We’d better get the dessert and coffee out on the table,” Anne said at last.

The chocolate mousse, trembling on its silver platter, the fresh fruit, arranged in a pretty pattern and sprinkled very lightly with powdered sugar, and the silver pots of coffee and decaffeinated coffee were set out on the long dining room table. Once again the party moved back into the dining room, and conversation slowed as everyone ate. Willy and Anne moved around the two front rooms, setting out trays with liqueur glasses and a selection of after-dinner drinks that glistened like liquid emeralds, rubies, and topaz in their bottles. The fire blazed in the living room, throwing off dancing lights, and Anne and Willy stood together a moment, smiling at each other, appreciating the splendid moment. Laughter came from the dining room, and then the sound of conversation picked up, and people began drifting into the living room, jovial now, replete.

“This is a lovely party, Anne,” Willy said.

Anne looked at Willy, and her smile faded. “Something’s going to happen tonight, Willy,” she said.

“What?” Willy asked, startled.

“Nothing
bad
—I don’t think,” Anne said. One of her guests was approaching her with open arms, wanting to give her a big hug of thanks for the delicious meal. Anne looked back at Willy. “Just be prepared,” she said. “I think it’s okay.” And then, to the man who was hugging her, “Oh, Scott, I’m so glad you enjoyed it.”

Willy moved around the room slowly, puzzled. John came up behind her and put his arms around her. Willy was a tall woman, and John, short for a man, could just nestle his chin into her shoulder.

“Having a good time?” he asked.

“Lovely,” Willy said. “John—” she began, wanting to tell him what Anne had said, but she was interrupted.