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  “This morning?”

  She nodded.

  “Wasn’t he going to work?”

  “Just walked out, without saying anything, and he didn’t come back and he hasn’t called. He said I never loved him because you don’t lie to someone you love. What does a lie matter, if you love someone? Love matters, that’s what matters.”

  I went to the phone and pushed the button that would connect me to Mr. Theo’s office.

  “I tried to tell him,” and tears were once again running down her cheeks. “I tried, but he wouldn’t believe me. If I didn’t love him, I wouldn’t care enough to lie to him. He said that was just the kind of argument he’d expect me to use.” She pulled out tissues.

  “I wonder if you might come home, sir,” I asked. “Miss Sarah is here, in some distress.”

  “He’s spoiled everything,” Miss Sarah wailed.

  Mr. Theo apparently heard that. “I’m on my way.”

  “We were like Romeo and Juliet,” she cried, “but he never loved me.”

  “Your brother is on his way, miss,” I promised her.

  That stopped her tears. “Theo’s why Brad hates me. I don’t want to see Theo. I don’t want him to come here.”

  “This is his house,” I reminded her gently. “He is your brother.”

  “But he doesn’t understand. Nobody understands.” She lifted her face. “I could learn how to dance. I could become a dancer.”

  “If I may say something?” I asked her.

  “As long as you don’t tell me you told me so.”

  “Romeo and Juliet,” I told her, “did not live happily ever after.”

  It was the wrong thing, absolutely wrong. Her expression crumpled into misery, her face fell forward onto the table, and she sobbed.

  Miss Sarah moped and wept for most of that day and the next, until eventually she arrived at sorrow, with an occasional backsliding into misery. I put her to work and by Saturday morning we were an efficient couple, I forming pâte à choux for profiteroles, she chopping onions and carrots and celery for the base on which I would roast veal.

  I did feel sorry for her. She was so young, and the young man was little older. I could see why certain societies married young women to older, more patient men; even though it established patterns for which all women were still paying the price, there was something to be said for it. Unless the society could learn to do better by its young men, unless society could come to see how little it makes of its men. Women, at least, are trying to look out for themselves.

  “You mustn’t cry like that, Miss Sarah,” I said.

  “How am I supposed to cry?”

  “Your mother will be sure to think there’s something wrong.”

  “There is something wrong. Everything’s wrong.”

  “Yes, miss,” I said. “But if you don’t want your parents to know, if you don’t want everyone to know, you’re going to have to do a better job of pretending.”

  “I know.” She took another carrot to hack at and hacked energetically. “I will try. Mornings are the worst, because it’s so…sad. I’m twenty and I’ve been happy for three weeks, and now it’s over. That’s sad, isn’t it? I’m never going to be happy again.” She scraped carrot chunks into a waiting bowl and took up celery. “I wish I’d never met him, I really do. He said he never wanted to see me again. How could he say that?”

  Mr. Theo entered on the question. “How could who say what?” One look at his sister answered him. “Oh. Brad again. Never mind, Sarah, you’ll forget him.”

  “Never.”

  “I don’t know what you saw in him anyway. He’s a stick and a prude and not nearly good enough for you. Is everything set for tonight, Gregor?” Mr. Theo was dressed for a game of tennis. He picked up a celery stalk and munched on it.

  “At least Brad’s not a—a womanizer. You wouldn’t find Brad getting phone calls from women who won’t leave their names.”

  Mr. Theo turned her around by the shoulders. “What phone calls?”

  “While you were out with your fiancée.” Miss Sarah purred, a kitten imitating a cat, “The Voice.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I just did. Mr. Bear.” Anger at least distracted her from her own sorrows. “It’s sickening, Theo. I have half a mind to tell.”

  “Don’t even think of it, Sarah.”

  “Anyway, I don’t think The Voice believed that I’m your sister.”

  “And I bet you did everything you could to convince her.”

  “Well honestly, Theo,” Miss Sarah pointed out, “she sounds…You know what she sounds like.”

  I put the laden tray into the oven and set the timer.

  “At least she’s no hypocrite,” he said.

  It was a genuine brother-sister spat, the kind of fight you could only have with a brother or sister, saying the kinds of things you would only say to a brother or sister. If you said them to anyone else, it would be the end of the relationship. For the first time in fifteen years, I found myself thinking longingly of family life.

  “And just what do you mean by that?” Miss Sarah demanded.

  “You know what I mean. You know exactly what I mean. I mean calling a spade a spade. I mean calling it lust, Sarah. Not dressing it up and calling it love, marriage. Then sighing and weeping and doing this great tragedy act when it goes bad. You can mess up your own life, but don’t go messing around in mine.” He strode out of the room. We heard the front door slam.

  “But he isn’t being fair to her, is he, Gregor?”

  I didn’t see that it mattered but didn’t say so.

  “I don’t know why she’s marrying him anyway. She’s awfully nice, and Theo’s—he can be a bully.”

  “Perhaps she loves him,” I suggested.

  “I don’t think so. I think it’s more a matter of getting so old that it’s now or never for her. He won’t be faithful.”

  “Perhaps that isn’t what matters to her,” I said. “Besides, maybe he will.”

  “I’d die if I thought Brad—” She gulped, and started again. “But that’s what men do, isn’t it. Instead of crying all morning, they sleep around. He hasn’t called, and he could figure out where I am. So he doesn’t love me. Theo’s right. He never did.”

  She was reducing herself to tears again. I’d never been an older brother before, but I thought that since she needed one, I ought to attempt it.

  “Try to see it as he must, Miss Sarah. Imagine how humiliating it would be if you came to the rescue and rode off with the little goose girl—only to discover that she had never needed your help at all, and wasn’t even a goose girl. Some people don’t like being laughed at, miss.”

  “But I didn’t laugh,” she protested. “What am I going to do, Gregor?”

  “First, finish the vegetables, so I can start them browning. Then, spend the afternoon getting pretty, for dinner. It’s a dinner with your brother’s fiancée and her parents, and your parents, where you’re going to be young and carefree, and nobody will suspect how you really feel.”

  “I think I’ll wear black.”

  “Wear yellow,” I advised, “or something flowery, floating, or a bright blue. Remember, it’s a masquerade. The masquerade is that you are young and irresponsible and silly.”

  I’d captured her imagination. “I’ll try. I don’t think I can do that though.”

  23

  God as a Humorist

  Of course I know that if there is a God—or a life force, or fate, or any governing power else that human creatures perceive in hope or hope to perceive—he or she is not concerned with my personal history. But sometimes, when the ironies pile up, it seems as if he, or she, or it, must be meddling. Oedipus gouges out his eyes; Cleopatra takes an asp to her breast: I should have known, I said to myself. You should have known.

  There I was, my mind and spirit bent to the next evening’s possibilities, barely attending to the presentation of Mr. Theo’s dinner. There they were, the hosts awaiting, the dinner
guests arriving. There we all were.

  Miss Sarah, slim as a dancer in a red dress, watched at the window. “They’re here, Theo.” Darkly sartorial, he left to greet them by an open door. I set down linen cocktail napkins and the ice bucket. “If they use a limo in the city, it’s them. Yes,” Miss Sarah said, “with Allie in the middle like a sacrificial lamb. And Mummy’s with them, and Dad.” She went to stand beside her brother. “They’re so tan.”

  Returning to the kitchen to prepare the soup bowls, I was overtaken by a forceful female voice. “My daughter says she’s never seen your house, Theo. I approve of that. There’s entirely too much of this seeing one another’s houses before marriage. Marriage should hold some surprises.”

  It was the voice of a woman for whom marriage, and life, held few surprises, and that was the way she liked it. I felt a qualm of sympathy for Mr. Theo.

  Also, I admit it, a frisson of It serves him right. I was smirking over the madrilene, which I dished into chilled bowls, topped with a sprinkling of herbs and a lemon slice, then carried out to the table. The dinner party was disporting itself in the living room, not my responsibility; I poured iced water into goblets, after which I refilled the silver pitcher with ice and water and set it on the sideboard. A final glance around, to assure myself that everything was as it should be—the floral arrangements low enough so that they didn’t interfere with seated conversation, the bottles of wine ready, three rosettes of butter on each butter plate—and I went out into the living room, to announce dinner.

  Entering the living room, plumped out with the success of both of my roles…It was the ring I saw first, emeralds flanking the marquise diamond, heavy on the little hand, and by the time I realized I recognized the hand, and the woman, I had already announced dinner. I didn’t look at her, I didn’t have to. I felt the shock with which she heard my voice. It seemed to me that the air between us congealed. It seemed to me that her head must have snapped up, snapped around.

  Some men might have gotten angry, some might have wept, some might have gouged out their eyes, and some—like me—would have stood in the kitchen, rictus sardonicus. You should have known, I said to myself. Then I canceled thought.

  When the buzzer summoned me, I entered the dining room to clear the soup bowls. Seven people were ranged about the table: Alexis sat at the far end, opposite Mr. Theo, the two men sat side by side so that Mr. Mondleigh could sit at Alexis’s right, and the three women sat across from them, so that Mrs. Rawling could sit at Mr. Theo’s right. Miss Sarah was tucked into the middle, like a child. I latched the swinging door open, to move more unnoticeably. Conversation went on; my presence made no difference to the assembly.

  At formal meals I carried platters and bowls of food around, bending down confidentially at the left shoulder to enable each guest to serve himself. Or herself. Host and guests talked on, as I cleared the soup course, brought warmed plates out and set one at each place, offered food around, and then poured wine into each glass. On such occasions, I was a long time in the dining room.

  “It took them a while, Martin,” Mr. Mondleigh remarked, “but they did us right, in the end.”

  “Congratulations, you two,” Mr. Rawling seconded, looking from one end of the table to the other. The two fathers, side by side, could have been clones of one another, for all the surface differences. Two well-satisfied men.

  “We wish you all the best.” Mr. Mondleigh raised his glass, first to his son, then to his son’s fiancée. “Don’t we, Elaine?”

  “Yes, of course.” Mrs. Mondleigh raised her own glass obediently. “Although…”

  Mrs. Rawling leapt into the caesura. “Not too quickly with some of that, such as children.” She had her daughter’s direct mind, as well as nose and deep eyes. Both she and her husband had unusually unlined faces; Alexis would wear well, I thought. She would probably keep, as her parents had, that wonderful porcelain skin well into her later years.

  Mr. Rawling cleared his throat, importantly. “Allie will maintain her holdings in her own name, of course. You might not guess it, Theo, but my little girl has a good business head on those pretty shoulders.”

  The pretty shoulders were not visible, underneath a white dress bordered at the high collar and long sleeves with pink and blue embroidered flowers, as if she were some eighteen-year-old debutante. With her head lowered, her hair covered her cheeks as I put a dinner plate in front of her. I was pretty sure she didn’t look at me to see that I wasn’t looking at her. Her hands rested in her lap, still.

  “Of course, Martin, I wouldn’t have it any other way. My firm will draw up the nuptial agreement. Not that we expect these two to need it.”

  “What about our wills?” Mr. Theo asked. His voice sounded sincere but his nostrils were flaring slightly. “You haven’t forgotten about wills, have you, Dad?”

  “Don’t tease your father, Theo,” Mrs. Mondleigh counseled.

  Mrs. Rawling dismissed all this. “Tonight, of all nights, is not the time to discuss property. You two can settle that on your next round of golf.” She helped herself to a serving of veal, spooning sauce over it generously. “Allie isn’t thinking about that at all, are you dear? Of course you aren’t.”

  I didn’t dare to think what Alexis might be thinking.

  “Allie has a wedding to think about,” Mrs. Rawling announced.

  I set the meat platter on a sideboard and went into the kitchen for a bowl of rice, which I bore out into the dining room.

  Mrs. Rawling still held the floor. “Only half a dozen attendants apiece, maybe ten, a smallish wedding, as intimate as possible. Ask Sarah,” she instructed her daughter.

  “I hope you’ll be a bridesmaid, Sarah,” Alexis asked.

  “Sure,” Miss Sarah said. “Thanks. I’d love to.”

  Mr. Theo was gazing off over his fiancée’s head, his thoughts elsewhere.

  “Yellow for the church,” Mrs. Rawling went on, “we thought, with lime green for emphasis color. Then we’ll do the clubhouse in lime green, with yellow for emphasis. A daffodil yellow, rather pale.”

  Nobody had anything to say. I offered rice. Nobody could find anything to say, so Miss Sarah offered, “That sounds nice.”

  “There should be no trouble putting up the out-of-town guests. We both have room, and there’s also your parents’ house, David—it’s empty, isn’t it?—where we thought the ushers might stay, and their families, if any are married. Are any of your ushers married, Theo? Will there be any children?”

  Mr. Theo brought himself back to attention. Before he could answer, his father did. “The old house won’t be available.”

  “Oh?” queried Mrs. Rawling. She was a little offended, or rather, she was prepared to be a little offended.

  “Oh, hell. I wasn’t going to tell you yet, Theo, but I guess this is as good a time as any. We’re giving you your grandfather’s house as a wedding present.”

  “That’s handsome,” Mr. Rawling said, “I must say.” The two men faced each other, satisfaction washing between them like water trapped in a tub. I offered asparagus.

  “What do you think of that, Allie?” her mother demanded. “What do you say?”

  “We’re giving Allie title to the house on Lake George,” Mr. Rawling announced.

  Mr. Theo wanted to laugh. This gave his voice a choked quality, as if he were deeply moved. “That’s very generous, Mr. Rawling.”

  “Call me Martin, son.”

  “Have some asparagus, Miss Sarah,” I murmured. Her hands clutched at her napkin, and her mouth pulled down at the edges. I thought I knew how she felt, just about.

  “You’ll want a place to get away to. To be by yourselves,” Mrs. Rawling explained.

  Miss Sarah smiled bravely at me.

  “Allie’s always loved the lake,” Mr. Rawling explained. “From when she was just a little girl. Haven’t you, sweetheart?”

  “Yes,” Alexis said.

  “It’s awfully…” Mrs. Mondleigh began.

  “Generous,�
� Mrs. Rawling finished the thought. “Considering the price of land on Lake George. But she’s our only child, after all. When you’ve only the one child, you want to give her everything.”

  “Nothing’s too much for our Allie,” Mr. Rawling echoed.

  “But”—Mrs. Rawling cut short the display of parental fondness—“there’s so much to decide, and they’re only giving me six weeks. You’ll be doing the same yourself, before long, Sarah. This will be good practice for you.”

  I offered the plate of asparagus to Mr. Theo.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t worry, Elaine, with Sarah at school abroad,” Mrs. Rawling said.

  “Worry about what?”

  “So far away, and out of touch, didn’t you worry that she’d meet someone?”

  “That was the point,” Mr. Theo said. “Wasn’t it, Dad? To broaden her horizons.”

  “What if she’d wished to marry over there?” Mrs. Rawling asked.

  Mr. Mondleigh answered. “With Sarah we’re more afraid she’ll never settle down at all.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that, David,” Mr. Rawling assured him. “Sarah will catch someone’s eye, no fear for that. You’ll meet the right man. Girls do,” he promised her. “Especially pretty girls.”

  “But how could my parents be sure he wouldn’t be Swiss, this right man?” Miss Sarah asked. “Or Hungarian?”

  “You’re making fun of us,” Mrs. Mondleigh observed.

  “He could have been, of course,” Mrs. Rawling said. “It’s possible, of course. Just not likely. Luckily for my peace of mind, Allie has never had much desire to travel.”

  “Oh no!” Mr. Theo clapped his hand against his forehead. I filled the glasses with wine. “What about the honeymoon?”

  Mrs. Rawling was not to be put off. “You know what I meant, not travel for travel’s sake.”

  “Is that true, Allie?” Mrs. Mondleigh asked. “I thought every young person wanted to…”