James Salter - All That Is

“Yes, she has a big place. She’s a friend of my father’s.”

“She’s still around?”

“Oh, very much around.”

There were a lot of stories about her, Vivian said. When they first bought their place, Longtree, that was the name then, she used to ride in from the hunt and let the dogs come right into the house. They’d jump up on the table and eat everything. After she got divorced, she calmed down a bit.

“Oh, you must know her, then?”

“Oh, yes.”

Vivian was eating somewhat carefully, not like a girl with a genuine appetite. The flowers, which Beatrice had moved to the side, were a lush backdrop for her, some young pagan goddess who had cast a spell over her son. Though it wasn’t entirely a spell, Beatrice had no way to measure how much in need of love he was and what forms that took—meanwhile he was absolutely certain of one thing, that he would never meet someone like Vivian again. He saw himself tumbled with her among the bedclothes and fragrance of married life, the meals and holidays of it, the shared rooms, the glimpses of her half-dressed, her blondness, the pale hair where her legs met, the sexual riches that would be there forever.

When he told his mother he hoped to marry her, Beatrice, though afraid it would prove nothing, protested how unalike the two of them were, how little they had in common. They had a great deal in common, Bowman a little defiantly said. What they had in common was more vital than similar interests—it was wordless understanding and accord.

What Beatrice did not say, but what she deeply felt was that Vivian had no soul, but to say it would be unforgivable. She merely sat silent. After a moment, she said,

“I hope you won’t rush into anything.”

In her heart she feared, she knew the things you cannot see when you are too young. She hoped that with a little time the infatuation would pass. She could only press his head against her in love and understanding.

“I only want you to be happy, truly happy.”

“I would be truly happy.”

“I mean in your deepest heart.”

“Yes, in my deepest.”

It was love, the furnace into which everything is dropped.

In New York at a restaurant called El Faro where the prices were low, in back, beneath the darkened walls, Vivian said, “Louise would love this. She’s mad about Spain.”

“Has she been there?”

“No. She’s never even been to Mexico. She was in Boston last weekend with her boyfriend.”

“Who’s that?”

“His name’s Fred. They went to some hotel and never got out of bed the whole time.”

“I didn’t know she was like that.”

“She was so sore she could hardly walk.”

The place was full, there was a crowd at the bar. Beyond the single window, across the street were second and third floors with large, lighted rooms where a couple might live. Vivian was drinking a second glass of wine. The waiter was squeezing past tables with their order on a tray.

“What is this? Is this the paella?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What’s in it?” she said.

“Sausage, rice, clams, everything.”

She began to eat.

“It’s good,” she said.

The crowded tables and talk around them gave it an intimacy. He knew it was the time, he must say it somehow.

“I love it when you come up here.”

“Me, too,” she said automatically.

“Really?”

“Yes,” she said and his heart began wildly.

“What would you think,” he said, “about living here? I mean, we’d be married, of course.”

She paused in her eating. He couldn’t tell what her reaction was. Had he misstated something?

“There’s so much noise in here,” she said.

“Yes, it’s noisy.”

“Was that a proposal?”

“It was pitiful, wasn’t it? Yes, it’s a proposal. I love you,” he said. “I need you. I’d do anything for you.”

He’d said it, just as he meant to.

“Will you marry me?” he said.

“We’ll have to get Daddy’s permission,” she said.

An immense happiness filled him.

“Of course. Is that really necessary?”

“Yes,” she said.

She insisted that he ask her father for her hand although, as she said, he had already had considerably more.

The lunch was at George Amussen’s club in Washington. Bowman had prepared himself carefully for it. He had gotten a haircut and wore a suit and shined shoes. Amussen was already seated when the steward showed Bowman in. Across a number of tables he could see his prospective father-in-law reading something, and he suddenly recalled the morning when he had gone to see Mr. Kindrigen, though that was long behind him. He was twenty-six now, more or less established, and ready to make the right impression on Vivian’s impenetrable father, who, sitting alone, hair combed straight back, at his ease, looked at that moment like a figure from the war, even someone who had been on the other side, some commander or Luftwaffe pilot. It was noon and the tables were just filling up.

“Good morning,” Bowman said as a greeting.

“Good morning. Nice to see you,” Amussen replied. “I’m just looking at the menu here. Sit down. I see they have shad roe.”

Bowman picked up the menu himself, and they each ordered a drink.

Amussen knew what the young man was there for, and in his mind he had laid out the salient points of his response. He was a methodical man of certain beliefs. One of the chief and unaddressed dangers society faced, he believed, was mongrelization, free interbreeding that could in the end have only dire results. He was a southerner, not from the Deep South but still from what might have been called Dixie, where the essential question was always, what is your background? His own was quite good. He had his great-grandmother’s silver and some pieces of her furniture, cherrywood and walnut, and he had raised his two daughters with as much attention to their ability to ride and present themselves in company as anything else. He had gone to college, to the University of Virginia, but had dropped out for financial reasons in his junior year, something he never particularly regretted. He’d gone to the University of Virginia, he would say if asked. His father had managed warehouses and been well regarded, and Amussen was a respected name, perhaps with the exception of a cousin near Roanoke, Edwin Amussen, who owned a tobacco farm and had never married. His real wife was a colored girl, they said, and it was true that he had a girl, Anna, who’d been seventeen when she first came to the house to cook. She was dark-skinned, deep in color, plum-colored, he said, but fragrant with full, knowing lips. Two or three mornings a week she would come up the back stairs to the second-floor bedroom, a large room with a shaded porch, where he had gotten up earlier to wash and then lain in bed for half an hour in the coolness hearing her at work in the kitchen below. The curtains were drawn and it was only partly light. After entering the room she would slip off her cotton T-shirt and lie, as if to rest her upper body, on the bed, forearms folded beneath her head. On her naked back with its two strong halves he would then place five silver dollars in a familiar pattern, one at the nape of her neck, one a little way below that, and a third further down, past the small of her back. The last two were by her shoulders like the arms of a cross. Without haste he would raise her skirt, carefully, as if preparing to examine it, and on these mornings she had nothing on beneath. She had made herself ready, sometimes with a little shortening, and let him slowly, at the pace of a summer evening or long afternoon, begin, often hearing him discuss food, what he would like for dinner the next few days.

This went on for five years, until she was twenty-two and told him one morning, afterwards, that she was getting married. No need to change things on that account, he said blandly, but she said no. Once in a while, however, since she still possessed freedom of the house, she would appear in the morning unbidden.