T. Boyle - Riven Rock

Stanley didn’t offer his hand, nor did he bend forward to accept Mrs. van Pele’s; he just stood there, his face crimson, staring down at his feet and clenching his fists. “So nice to see you again, Stanley,” Mrs. van Pele said, settling into a chair with the assistance of the maître d‘, “and congratulations. I wish you all the best.”

“I’m so ashamed,” Stanley murmured, raising his head to address the entire table, the maître d’ and the waiter as well. “I don‘t — I, well, I’ve never told anybody, I’m so ashamed, but I was impure and violated my mother’s wishes and your hospitality too—” “

“Nonsense,” Nettie said, and her voice cracked like a whip. “Sit down, Stanley. You’ve nothing to be ashamed of.”

A silence fell over the table as Stanley slowly sank back into his seat. The tinkling of silverware and the buzz of voices became audible all of a sudden. Katherine was bewildered. She tried to take her husband’s hand, but he pulled away from her.

“Utter nonsense and rubbish,” Nettie said after a moment, as if for clarification. “You’ve just been married, Stanley. You have responsibilities now — you’re not a boy anymore.”

The waiter had retreated a few steps, wincing and sucking at his teeth, and Mrs. van Pele and Josephine began talking simultaneously, when Stanley stood again. “Excuse me,” he murmured, pushing back the chair, “I need to, well, freshen up — that is, I mean, I’ll be right back.”

“Sit down, Stanley,” Nettie said, peering up from beneath the armature of her hat.

Stanley didn’t listen. His face was heavy, his shoulders slumped. He looked round the table as if he didn’t recognize anyone there and then strode directly across the room, up the three steps to the entrace and out the door and into the street, and he never looked back.

Katherine didn’t know what to do. She looked at her mother, at the missionary’s wife, and then finally at Nettie: her husband, for some reason fathomable only to him, had just deserted her in a public place. On the third day of their honeymoon, no less. She was stunned. “Where could he possibly—?” she heard herself say.

Nettie said nothing.

“He’s probably just gone out for some air, dear,” Josephine said, and then she glanced over her shoulder and made a face. “It is a bit stuffy in here.”

Mrs. van Pele agreed. Wholeheartedly.

And now suddenly Nettie was on her feet, a short brisk square-shouldered woman of sixty-nine who looked several years younger, dressed in the latest fashions from the Parisian couturiers and as used to the prerogatives of command as any mere Napoleon or Kaiser. Her hat alone — a massive construction of felt, feathers and velvetta — could have inspired awe in any officer corps. “Adela, Josephine,” she said, “would you excuse me for just a moment — I’m sure Stanley’s quite all right; if anything it’s just the excitement of seeing you again, Adela, so soon after the drama of the wedding, and I see now that perhaps we shouldn’t have surprised him — but I do need a moment to speak privately with Katherine.” She gestured for Katherine to rise and follow her. “You’ll come with me into the next room, please? It’ll only take a minute.”

Puzzled, Katherine rose from the table and followed Nettie’s brisk martial form through the main dining area and into the ladies’ salon, where Nettie settled herself in a plush chair in front of an oval mirror in a gilt frame and directed Katherine to the chair beside her. There were two other women present, at the far end of the room, conversing in low tones. Katherine sank into the chair with an air of impatience — she was beginning to feel distinctly irritated, and who was this woman to think she could command her too?

“I’ll get right to the point,” Nettie said, drawing her mouth tight and staring into Katherine’s eyes. “I don’t pretend to know what’s upset Stanley this afternoon, but I will say this”—she paused —“change has been very difficult for him. He’s the best boy in the world, fine and bright and loving, but he suffers from a nervous condition. It’s his extreme sensitivity, that’s all, his artistic side coming out, but of course we’ve had him examined by a number of specialists because of his older sister, Mary Virginia. You see, Mary Virginia has been diagnosed as—”

Katherine cut her off. “Yes, I know. She suffers from dementia praecox. Stanley told me. Ages ago. But I really don’t see how that should affect him in any way.”

“Exactly. But he is delicate emotionally, and for some years now he’s had bouts of nervous prostration, and I thought I’d better just tell you what you’re in for, since you were so anxious to come between him and is family. He doesn’t need coddling, not at all, but he does need understanding, and he does have his moods.”

Katherine watched herself in the mirror, her face pale and eyes alert, the slightest movement of her hands and forearms duplicated as she smoothed the skirt over her knees. “I’m perfectly well aware of that,” she said, and her tone couldn’t have been colder or more final.

Nettie leaned forward, all the combative lines round her mouth and eyes drawn into fierce alignment. “I don’t know if you appreciate what I’m saying: we’re afraid his condition could worsen. We hope not — I pray every night for him — and the reports are encouraging, or at least most of them, but there is that possibility. Are you prepared for it?”

Katherine was already getting to her feet. “I don’t know what you think I am, but I’m no child and I resent being treated like one. I’m fully aware of Stanley’s neurasthenia and fully prepared to do anything I can to see him improve. It’s not as if he‘s—”

“Yes? Not as if he’s what? Crazy? Is that what you mean to say?”

“Of course not,” Katherine said, but even as she said it the idea was there in her head, ugly as a scab that refuses to heal. “I meant it’s not as if his behavior is cause for alarm, not to me, anyway, because I know him in a way you never will. He’s my husband, don’t you understand that? He’s not yours anymore — he’s mine.”

The old woman in the armorial hat just stared at her out of two eyes that were exactly like Stanley’s. It took her a moment, and then, in a voice so low it was barely audible, she said, “Yes. That’s right. He’s yours.”

They stayed a month in Paris, occasionally making overnight motor excursions in the Renault Stanley bought, and they switched hotels at Katherine’s whim — from the Elysée Palace to the Splendide to the Ritz. “I need a change,” she would tell Stanley as he staggered through the door with the bundle of string-bound parcels and hat boxes that represented the day’s removable offerings, but she never gave him a reason beyond that. The reason, of course, was Nettie. She was entrenched in her suite of rooms at the Elysée Palace like a fat swollen tick, sucking the blood out of everyone, and Katherine only wanted to get away from her — and to get Stanley away too. That was the important thing. That was essential. Because they’d be all right if she would just leave them alone, Katherine was sure of it.

But Nettie was tenacious. She insisted on lunching and dining with them daily and consulting on every purchase they made, from the andirons, vases and oil paintings that would grace their future home to the white fox tippet and muff and tourmaline bracelet Stanley picked out for his bride, and Katherine’s only recourse was to use her own mother as a buffer every step of the way. It was like a game of checkers: Nettie advanced a square and Katherine countered with Josephine. “Should we go to the theater this evening?” Nettie would propose at lunch, and Katherine, looking up languidly from a book or catalogue, would say, “Why don’t you and mother go? — Stanley and I are exhausted, aren’t we, Stanley?”