James Salter - All That Is

The apartment was on Tenth Street, where old New York families had long lived and which was still quiet but close to everything, together with the neighboring streets a kind of residential island, ordinary and discreet. There were the photographs Vivian had brought, framed and two of them on the dresser, photographs of her jumping, leaning forward close to the horse’s neck as they cleared, in a black rider’s helmet, her face pure and fearless. She knew how to ride, that was in her face, to have the great beast moving easily beneath her, ears pricked back to hear and obey, the leather giving and cracking, the mastery of it. She and Beverly and Chrissy Wendt, the three of them coming from the horse show, getting out of the truck, a little dusty, in their riding pants, Vivian with her striking face, blond and yawning grandly as if she were alone and getting out of bed. Twelve and carelessly natural, mischievous even.

At the age of eight, her small feet wobbling in her mother’s high heels and an imaginary cigarette in one hand, she appeared in the bedroom doorway. Her mother was at the dressing table and saw her in the mirror.

“Oh, darling,” Caroline said noticing also the pearls, “you look beautiful. Come and give me a puff.”

The joy of it. Vivian clattering in and holding her hand out near her mother’s mouth. Caroline took a drag and exhaled an invisible plume.

“You’re all dressed up. Are you getting ready to go to a party somewhere?”

“No,” she said.

“You’re not going out?”

“No, I think I’ll just invite some boys over,” Vivian said knowingly.

“Some boys? How many?”

“Oh, three or four.”

“You’re not going to favor just one?” Caroline said.

“Older boys. It depends.”

The age of imitation when there are no dangers although it depended. In the past, girls might be married at twelve, queens-to-be knelt to be wed even younger, Poe’s wife was a child of thirteen, Samuel Pepys’ only fifteen, Machado the great poet of Spain fell madly in love with Leonor Izquierdo when she was thirteen, Lolita was twelve, and Dante’s goddess Beatrice even younger. Vivian knew as little as any of them, she was a tomboy until she was almost fourteen. She loved make-believe with her mother. She loved and feared her father and with her sister quarreled constantly from the time they both could talk, so much so that Amussen had many times asked his wife to do something about it.

“Mommy!” Beverly cried out. “Do you know what she just called me?”

“What did she call you?”

Vivian was lingering and listening partway down the hall.

“She called me a horse’s ass.”

“Vivian, did you say that?” Caroline called to her. “Come here, did you say that?”

Vivian was resolute.

“No,” she said.

“Liar!” Beverly cried.

“Did you or didn’t you, Vivian?”

“I never said horse’s.”

It was not always fighting, but it might always come to that. When in time it became apparent that Vivian would be the one who was beautiful, their positions hardened and Beverly adopted her own raw-boned, caustic style. Vivian, in turn, became noticably more feminine. Nevertheless they grew up doing everything together. They had ridden in the hunt from the time they were seven or eight. Vivian, though, was the favorite of the field master. Judge Stump, well-versed in such things, admired her form. In her well-fitted riding clothes he imagined her as a few years older with certain unfatherly thoughts though he was not her father, only a good friend. That might properly exclude one thing but not another. To George Amussen, the judge habitually and easily said “your beautiful daughter” in a way, he felt, that was fond and respectful, that could almost be a title. His fantasy of himself and Vivian, well, then, was not entirely far-fetched, his experience and her freshness unexpectedly but appropriately combined. This idea—it would be wrong to call it a plan—made him behave somewhat more stiffly towards her than he might have and seem even older and more inflexible than he was. He could feel it, but the more he tried the less he was able to do about it.

In Virginia that first fall, the weather for the races was rainy and cold. There was mud underfoot in the fields and the grass was matted flat where people had driven and walked. Spectators in bulky clothes lined the fences with children running about and dogs. Along the row of cars where people stood drinking in small groups came a stocky figure in an Australian army hat with one side pinned up, the brim dotted with water and a braided cord beneath his chin. It was the judge, who shook hands with Amussen, greeted Vivian courteously, and nodded and muttered something to Bowman. They stood in the rain talking, the judge talking only to Amussen while horses and riders, very small in the distance, galloped steadily across vast green slopes. The judge had not come to terms with Vivian’s marriage. When lovely woman stoops to folly, he thought, but he stood where he could see her in the normal course of things and at one point caught her eye with what he felt was a fond look, water dripping from his brown hat.

By the time they got back to New York, Vivian had a fever and ached in every limb. It was the flu. Bowman filled a hot tub for her and carried her in a white robe to bed afterwards, watching her as she lay asleep with a damp, untroubled face. He slept on the couch that night so as not to disturb her and went to work but came home two or three times during the day to look after her. Her illness seemed to draw them closer, strangely affectionate hours as she lay, too weak to do anything, and he read to her and brought her tea. The two middle-aged men, neighbors, who lived together on the floor below stopped him on the stairs to ask about her. That night they brought her some soup, minestrone, they had made.

“How is she doing?” they asked solicitously at the door.

They could hear her coughing in the bedroom, Larry and Arthur, they were veterans of the musical theater, alcoholic and living under rent control. Vivian liked them, Noël and Cole, she called them, they had met in the chorus. The walls of their apartment were covered with framed theater programs and signed photographs of old performers. One of them was Gertrude Neisen. Gertrude, she was so fabulous! they cried. They had a piano they sometimes played and occasionally they could be heard singing. When Vivian began to recover they brought her a fluted glass vase with an arrangement of lilies and yellow roses from the flower shop on Eighteenth Street owned by an elegant man Arthur had once been involved with, Christos, who was friends with both of them. He, too, loved the theater and everything about it. Later he opened a restaurant.

The flowers lasted for almost two weeks. They were still there the evening of dinner at the Baums’. Bowman had never been to their house and Vivian hadn’t met them. She was preparing for it, fastening her earrings with her face reflected in the hall mirror above the glamour of the flowers.

Baum’s private life Bowman knew only by conjecture, it was European, he guessed, and secure. A doorman had been instructed to send them right up and as they walked down the short hallway a dog behind someone’s door began barking. Baum himself showed them in. The first impression was of density. There was comfortable furniture and layered oriental rugs with books and pictures everywhere. It did not seem the house of a couple with a child but rather of people who had ample time for things. Diana rose from the couch where she had been sitting with another guest. She greeted Vivian first. She had very much wanted to meet her, she said. Baum made drinks from a tray filled with bottles on top of a low secretary. The other guest seemed very at home. Bowman at first took him to be a relative, but it turned out that he taught philosophy and was a friend of Diana’s.