He likes things in their place. Even when his desk is buried under files he knows where everything is. Their apartment is perfect and neat and tidy, everything squared away. Even the books are sorted by subject, then alphabetized. There's never expired milk or eggs in the fridge. The ice tray always is filled. Even their nightstands are perfectly in order-three books on her side, three books on his, a freshly-filled carafe of water each night, the bed turned down for him. He admires how gracefully she lives, how gracefully it's allowed him to live. Everything is arranged to perfection.
She is very elegant, but not in an obtrusive or even especially noticeable way. It's… soothing, understated, and somehow speaks to generations living their lives in the exact same way. Obviously life is different now than it was even thirty years ago, but sometimes, in their apartment, he's hard-pressed to remember the stresses of the world and of their working lives. For instance, just as women like her would have done years ago, she uses the Social Register as a telephone book. She keeps the latest edition beneath the actual telephone book by the phone in the kitchen, the book marked and dog-eared within a day of its arrival.
This book is completely incomprehensible to him, with the endless abbreviations, the notations, and glossy pages at the front listing debutantes and weddings and deaths. Somehow she reads this language easily, and recently spent an evening reading aloud the announcements of her friends and acquaintances.
Their listing reads:
Stone MR & DR Benjamin L (Olivet Elizabeth G)
840 Park Avenue, 8F
New York, NY 10075
212-555-1234
Bnd'82. Cl'85. Uv. Ri. Bcs. Cly. Ihy. Mds. Ny. S. Cda. Dar. Jl. CUNY'63. NYULaw'67.
JUNIORS MISS Caroline G O
He likes looking at their listing, how neat and orderly it is, and the story that it tells. The order of the abbreviations is noted, almost as an afterthought, in the front of the book: College (Mrs.), Clubs (Mr.), Societies (Mr.), Clubs (Mr. & Mrs.), Clubs (Mrs.), Societies (Mrs.), College Clubs (Mr. & Mrs.), College (Mr.). So if one painstakingly referenced the list of abbreviations and their entry, one could determine that Elizabeth graduated from Barnard and received her Ph.D. from Columbia, that she belongs to the Bathing Corporation of Southampton, the Colony Club, Indian Harbor Yacht Club, the Maidstone, the New York Yacht Club, the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club, the Colonial Dames of America, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Junior League. One learns that he attended Hunter College and NYU for law school and belongs to the University Club. Their joint ventures are minimal: he is listed on Elizabeth's River Club membership and they have a one-year-old daughter.
Her parents' listing is even more unintelligible.
Olivet MR & MRS Nicholas P (Griswold Isobel van S)
Southerly
1 Contentment Island Rd
Darien, CT 06820
Bnd'50. Rc. Unn. Bcs. Cbc. Dbl. Ihy. Mds. Mt. Ny. Pr. Rby. Ri. S. Srb. Cly. Cda. Dar. Jl. Y'50.
Meaning: Isobel and Nick are members of the Bathing Corporation of Southampton, the Coral Beach Club, Doubles, Indian Harbor Yacht Club, the Maidstone, the Metropolitan Club, the New York Yacht Club, the Piping Rock Club, the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, the River Club, Seawanhaka, and the Spouting Rock Beach Club. Nick is a member of the Union Club and the Racquet & Tennis Club, while Isobel is a member of the Colonial Dames of America, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Junior League, and the Colony Club. She attended Barnard and he attended Yale.
It's incredible, he thought to himself the first time he looked through this, how many things people choose to belong to. His in-laws belong to four yacht clubs, four beach clubs, and five city clubs. How much money must they spend every year in dues? And do they really need to belong to two clubs on the North Shore when they only ever go to Long Island to go to the Hamptons? He supposes they do actually sail to Seawanhaka frequently enough to merit membership, but why do they need to belong to Piping Rock as well?
At least Elizabeth doesn't belong to as many clubs as her parents do, though their listing is disproportionately taken up with her memberships. Though perhaps it's not disproportionate, because she was the original listee.
He didn't realize what he was getting into when they began their relationship. He'd known, in an abstract sense, that she came from money. That was confirmed when he came to her apartment for the first time. But he hadn't expected everything else-the trappings of it, the fact that it was old money, and a lot of it. He hadn't realized that, in some ways, she was very much her mother's daughter. He hadn't officially met her parents until after they were engaged, and in some ways he wishes he'd had, because he would have known her better.
He was foolish to think that the woman he'd known and worked with for years-the polished, serene psychologist-was only the sum of her parts.
She took him home-to her parents' home-for Christmas the year they got engaged. He'd been invited to spend Thanksgiving with her family, but he'd gone to San Francisco to see his daughter and her husband, and when he returned he proposed, and then it was Christmas and he found himself sitting next to her on the train up to Darien. She was wearing a mink coat he'd never seen before, carrying expensive, well-used Mark Cross luggage, and he felt, for the first time, that she had depths he hadn't begun to suspect.
Her father picked them up from the station. She smiled at her father, kissed him on the cheek, and introduced them.
'Daddy, this is my fiancé,' she said, 'Ben Stone.'
Her father's handshake was warm and firm. 'It's a pleasure to meet you,' Nick Olivet said. 'Welcome to Darien.'
And then he picked up Elizabeth's bags and his own, and followed her father to the ancient Volvo station wagon. Elizabeth had told him to take the front and she sprawled in the back, using her mink as a blanket as she gazed out of the skylight.
Elizabeth told him at the Campbell Apartment, waiting for the train, that her father was quite shy and that her mother was the one who ran everything in the house. Miranda, she continued, was the vivacious one, and Peter was quiet, too, like her father. That was borne out during the ten minute drive to the house, when Elizabeth carried the conversation aloft on her slender shoulders. Sitting next to her father, he glanced back at her from time to time, admiring her beauty. She looked so young during that ten minute drive, buried in her fur, and he felt the fifteen years between them more keenly than ever.
She sat up when they turned onto a very narrow road with a view of the Sound. He glanced back at her; her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were sparkling. He remembers thinking, my God, my God. How did I get so lucky?
'Avenue fever,' Nick said, speaking for the first time on the drive. 'It's what Isobel's grandparents called it.'
He felt it himself, a nervous twisting in his gut. And then Nick turned the car onto a long graveled driveway and then, at last, the house-grey shingled and beautiful, decorated for Christmas. The front door opened and Elizabeth tumbled out of the car and into her mother's arms, hugging her tight.
Looking at Isobel was like looking at a photograph of Elizabeth thirty years in the future. Her auburn hair was lightly streaked with silver and she had only a few lines on her face. She was a beautiful woman-and not a woman who you would say was once beautiful. Her beauty was a fact, not a footnote in her history.
After releasing her daughter, Isobel extended her hand to him. 'I'm Isobel,' she said politely. The large sapphire of her engagement ring glimmered in the afternoon light. He took her hand and shook it gently under her intense scrutiny.
'It's a pleasure to meet you,' he said, and Elizabeth smiled at him.
'Let's go inside,' Nick suggested.
'Yes,' Isobel said, still scrutinizing him. He had the odd feeling then that he was being found wanting. 'I'll have Nina bring tea. Elizabeth, will you show Ben to his room?'
He remembers his heart sinking at the clear message that they would not be sharing a room. Elizabeth merely nodded and gave no outward sign that she was displeased with the arrangement.
'He's in the Blue Room,' her mother continued.
'All right,' Elizabeth said. He collected the bags from her father and followed Elizabeth into the house and up the stairs.
'I'm here,' she told him, indicating a closed door. 'And you are just next door. Mummy will have tea in the South Room ready in about fifteen minutes. I'll knock on your door in ten, if that's all right.'
She felt so remote from him in that moment. He nodded and she smiled gently and he went into his room-a comfortable one, furnished with beautiful antiques, overlooking the sea. But he wasn't with her.
He washed his face and hands, hung up his suits, and looked in the mirror. He thought he looked perfectly presentable, even if he felt nervous and a bit overdressed. He was wearing a navy blue suit, he remembered, and he changed quickly into khakis, a white oxford, and a navy blazer. Nick had worn something similar, with a sweater instead of a blazer, and Isobel was in a pale blue wool dress. They dress formally-Elizabeth did too. When she knocked on the door it was revealed that she had changed too, into a navy cashmere turtleneck sweater and a tweed skirt.
'You look very handsome,' she said, smiling. 'Are you ready for tea?'
'Yes,' he told her, and let her lead him downstairs.
After tea she gave him a tour of the house and he'd been surprised, then, by just how elegant it was. Her apartment was too, of course, but this was on a completely different scale. It felt like he'd stepped into a feature in Architectural Digest or Country Life. Isobel and Nick's two golden retrievers, Harry and Slim, were constantly at Elizabeth's heels. She told him that her parents loved To Have and Have Not and had named them after Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall's characters. The dogs looked at him once and then promptly turned away; she'd apologized. In the intervening three years, they haven't changed their opinions, though they love Caroline and spend all their time either with Elizabeth or watching over his daughter. It's touching, he'll admit. But during this first visit he was embarrassed that the dogs didn't like him.
After dinner-an elaborate affair for just the four of them, with five courses and candles in their elegant dining room-he had a scotch with Nick in his study while Elizabeth and her mother began the wedding planning. After a scotch and very little conversation Nick had excused himself and he'd joined Elizabeth and her mother.
They were in the drawing room, Elizabeth curled up on the sofa with one of the dogs resting its head in her lap, the other at her feet. She had a glass of wine in her hand and was dictating a list of guests to her mother, who was at the opposite end of the sofa, wearing reading glasses, writing in a leather notebook.
'Audrey and Charlie, of course. Jane Clarke. Sally Fowler. Nick.' She paused when she saw him and smiled. 'Hi, Ben.'
Isobel turned and lowered her glasses to look at him. 'Ah, Ben. We were just creating a guest list. How many can we expect from your side?'
'Ah. Well, I assume that Elizabeth and I will have quite a lot of overlap with guests…'
'We are at fifty right now and haven't yet reached your colleagues,' Isobel interrupted, then sighed at the obvious surprise on his face. 'We'll resume this tomorrow, then, darling,' she said, turning back to her daughter. 'Good night.'
'Good night, Mummy,' she said, leaning forward to kiss her mother's cheek.
'Good night, Ben,' Isobel said, passing him.
'Good night,' he said, waiting until she left the drawing room before taking her seat on the sofa. 'Fifty guests already?'
She shrugged. 'We'll narrow it down. This is more of an exercise than a final list.'
'But still!' he exclaimed. 'Fifty people?'
It was the wrong thing to say. She said stiffly, 'I have a large family. My mother's nephews, for one, and then my father's nieces and nephews… and then my friends, too.'
He reached out and took her hand, trying to placate her. 'Of course. I'm sorry, I was just… caught off guard.'
She sighs. 'I know. I'm sorry too, I'm just exhausted. Do you mind if I turn in?'
'Of course not,' he said with reluctance. 'I'm tired too.'
She smiled. 'All right. Let's go upstairs, then.'
He nodded and followed her up after she deposited her wineglass in the kitchen. At her door she stopped and kissed him goodnight.
'Wake up whenever you'd like,' she told him. 'Just knock when you're up. Sleep well.'
'I love you,' he told her, wanting her to remember that she was to be his wife.
She smiled. 'I love you too.'
She went into her room and he went into his, feeling off-kilter.
That week-long visit provided real insight into his wife-to-be. They came together once, when she got more than a little tipsy on Boxing Day and backed him up against the wall in the South Room, begging him to take her there, now. He wanted her very badly but not there, so she sighed and led him up the back stairs to her bedroom, pulling him down on the bed, telling him just how much she wanted him and what she wanted him to do.
God, remembering that now… since the advent of her pregnancy their intimate life had dwindled and they were never that passionate any more. He misses her… maybe he should take the leap, whisk her away somewhere, let his in-laws watch the baby for a week so that they can go to Paris…
She arranges their lives so beautifully. He should help, too. He makes up his mind and goes to the phone to call the travel agent.