A-Splendid-Ruin(98)
Stephen Oelrichs seemed surprised that I would ask. “Of course I will. You’re a Van Berckyl. You belong to us. We protect our own.”
And so that afternoon I learned the true significance of my mother’s words, “Never give Them a reason to think you don’t belong.” She was not only talking about etiquette and manners, but about something more amorphous, an entire state of being, membership in a tribe of which I was now a part, simply by virtue of the right name. “You’re a Van Berckyl.”
But again, I could not ignore the frisson of discomfort through my relief, or the echo of my cousin’s reassurance more than a year ago, which turned out not to be reassurance at all, but something else entirely. “You belong to us.”
Dante and I sat on the stoop. The paint of the little house had blistered in the fire, and I picked at it while he wrote feverishly in his notebook. The sun was setting, the fog of his cigarette smoke became tinged with the gold-gray light of sunset, and the evening breeze tickled the loose hairs dangling from my braid and made me shiver. The view was not beautiful, nor was the sunset. It was desolate and hostile, and it stank of smoke and sewage and an oily harbor sea. And yet, I thought I would keep this memory for the rest of my life. The day I took hold of my identity and my destiny.
One would think the world would be colored differently. Or that I would feel it so. But everything felt the same. I had a father—he was dead. I had a family—which didn’t want me. I had a fortune—not quite yet. Nothing had changed and yet everything had, and the truth was the life that had felt so new that morning was already sliding away from me, borne on a breeze sweeping out to sea, dissolving in the mist. I wanted desperately to clasp and hold this moment, breathing in the foul smoke of Dante’s cigarette, listening to his pencil scrape irritatingly across the page.
Tomorrow I would become the guest of Stephen Oelrichs and his mother until I could settle my affairs. They had insisted I stay with them tonight, but I had begged off, saying I needed to collect my things, which consisted precisely of what I wore and the metal rod in my pocket and my sketchbooks. Once Stephen—yes, Stephen now—had contacted my family in New York and had the papers drawn, we would go to the bank. Then, money in hand, I would be free to be anything I wanted. I would no longer be a poor relation. I would no longer be dependent on anyone.
It was time to start the life my mother had promised me.
Dante glanced up from writing. His hair had fallen into his face, and he pushed it away. “You’ll be glad to get away from this shack, I imagine.”
“I’ve rather got used to it.”
He laughed. “A few days with a maid and a cook, and you won’t miss this time at all.”
I put my chin in my hand and stared out at the horizon, the fog bank rolling in, obscuring the line of color. “You know that’s not true.”
“In no time I’ll be watching you at balls and entertainments and you won’t even notice me.”
“That won’t happen. I know who you are now. You won’t be able to hide from me.”
He, too, stared off at the incoming fog. “You’ll have all kinds of new friends among that set. You’ll be too busy with them to think much about me.”
“I’ve already lived that life, you know. I doubt I’ll find it any more amusing now.”
“Yes, well, you felt you didn’t belong to the Sporting set, and you were right, you didn’t. You’re at the top of the ladder now. It might be different this time.”
“Maybe. Anyway, you won’t be watching me. You won’t be the society reporter after this.” I tapped his notebook. “Older will move you to a different beat and you won’t be attending society balls.”
“Here’s to that, at long last.”
But there was nothing to toast with, and I think that neither of us felt much like toasting, despite the successes of the day. Melancholy rolled in with the fog, a missing for something not yet gone, and I thought he felt it too, and then I knew he did when he set his pencil down on the stair, where it rolled to the dirt below, and he braced his arms behind his back. I leaned against his shoulder, and we sat like that for a long time, watching the fog and darkness sweep over the hill and the campfires flare to life, one after another, until it got too cold to stay, and we went inside.
We spoke no more of it as we went to bed. Even as we made love, I felt a tentativeness that had not been there before, an ambiguity we could not touch or address. What would happen was impossible to know. We’d found in one another a haven in disaster; together we’d gained what we each wanted. But how to make those wants fit together, and whether we should even try . . . The world was too new, as yet unformed and grasping. We hardly knew it, and so the question hovered between us unspoken, cautioning that we make no promises: What now?
What now?
I was to be at the Oelrichs house by noon, but when I woke the next morning, Dante was nowhere to be seen. He had promised to go with me, but as the hours passed and he made no appearance, it was clear that I was going to have to go alone.
There were pencils everywhere, in all stages of wear, and so on the margin of a copy of the Bulletin, I wrote: Off to Stephen’s, thank you for everything. See you soon!—too little, too glib, but anything more would be too much, and I could not think of what else to say. I left it where he would see it, and told myself it was not goodbye. We still had plans. There was still the story that he was writing about the Sullivans, which we hoped would be the thing to destroy them once and for all. There was still the bank and my taking back my inheritance and settling things with China Joe and Shin. But those reassurances didn’t make me feel any better as I packed up my things and closed the door behind me and contemplated the long walk to the Oelrichses’ on my own.