Alison Lurie - Foreign Affairs

Weeks passed in this way without his making any significant progress. Rosemary had to be courted in the old-fashioned manner, and over a length of time that most of Fred’s friends back home would have found irrational. Roberto Frank, for instance, would have roared with disbelief if he knew that it had taken Fred nearly two weeks to get to first base with Rosemary and that after over a month he still hasn’t scored. Yeh, well, he isn’t in Convers playing sandlot baseball now, Fred says to the imaginary grinning figure of Roberto. This is England; this is the real thing.

Though he was often frustrated, Fred didn’t become discouraged; instead the principle of cognitive dissonance began to operate: the very difficulty of the undertaking ensured its value. Since he had gone through so much for Rosemary Radley, she must be worth the effort; his feelings must be serious. And indeed, the more he saw of her the more entrancing, the more attractive she seemed.

Part of Rosemary’s attraction, Fred realizes, is her being in every way the opposite of his wife. She is small, soft, and fair; Roo large, sturdy, and dark. She is sophisticated, witty; Roo-relatively-naive and serious, even a little humorless by London standards. In manner and speech Rosemary is graceful, melodious; Roo by comparison clumsy and loud-in fact, coarse. Just as, compared with England, America is large, naive, noisy, crude, etc.

As he persisted in the chase, and slowly began to gain on his quarry, other national-and possibly class-differences appeared. Fred’s courtship of Roo could hardly be called a pursuit, since she was galloping just as fast in his direction. They circled each other, snuffling; then rushed together just as the horses they had ridden that first memorable afternoon might have done. What had happened in the abandoned orchard on the hill wasn’t a seduction, it was a collision of two strong, sweaty, eager young bodies, rolling and panting in the long grass and weeds.

The images Rosemary suggests are not animal but floral. Recalling their first meeting, Fred imagines her as a pot of hyacinths, or some other more exotic flowering plant: fragile, fine-leaved, of some species that quivers and folds up tight at any clumsy touch or cold breeze, but if tended gently and patiently, opens at last into full glorious bloom. And in fact, only two days ago, after six weeks of trial and error, Fred’s efforts were almost wholly rewarded: the last soft, creamy, many-layered pink-and-white petals unfurled, revealing the delicate calyx. Tonight, if all goes well, he will have his desire.

As he paces impatiently in the theater lobby, thinking of Rosemary and of Roo, Fred understands for the first time the power of what at Yale is referred to as retrospective influence. Just as Wordsworth forever altered our reading of Milton, so Rosemary Radley has altered his reading of Ruth March. In his mind he sees Rosemary standing on a height that is probably the city of London. In one hand she holds a powerful arc lamp of the sort used in the theater, and from it a cone of white light streams back across time and space three years and more to Corinth, New York.

In this light, Fred’s memory of Roo under the apple trees, with the imprint of twigs on her sweaty brown back and butt and bits of dried grass in her thick untidy chestnut hair, seems crudely staged, garishly colored, hardly civilized. Roo’s rapid and enthusiastic sexual surrender-which he once believed a warranty of passion and sincerity-seems unfeminine, almost uncouth. Compared with Rosemary’s delicate lingering butterfly kisses, Roo’s embraces had a greedy animal urgency that should, Fred thinks now, have warned him of her lack of control, of the exhibition-to make a sour pun-that was to come.

Before Fred had known Roo a fortnight she had not only made love with him many times but had lost all sense of modesty-if in fact she ever had any. She told him everything she thought or felt-including details of previous love affairs he could have done without. She showed him everything: from the first she slept naked beside him, or when it was very cold in a sexless red-flannel nightshirt that tended to bunch up under her arms. She walked about her (later their) Collegetown apartment naked at all times of day, not always remembering to lower the blinds. In his presence she blew her nose, picked her teeth, cut her toenails, washed her cunt, and even, if she was in the midst of an interesting conversation (and to Roo most conversations were interesting) used the toilet. Because he was in love with her, Fred had repressed his embarrassment, even denigrated it. He had defined himself as an uptight preppie, and Roo’s behavior as natural and free.

For Rosemary, on the other hand, to yield sexually is not to give up her privacy. Instinctively she surrounds herself with the intimate mystery that preserves romance. She prefers dimmed lights: two tall white candles on the dressing table, or a silk-shaded lamp. She bathes and dresses alone; Fred has never yet seen her completely naked. Psychologically too she doesn’t overexpose herself: she is silent about her own history and doesn’t demand to learn Fred’s. It is only from a phrase dropped here and there that he guesses, for instance, that Rosemary’s childhood, though luxurious, was unhappy and disrupted as the result of her parents’ frequent changes of partners and residences.

Now and then, it’s true, Rosemary carries a good thing too far. Though he doesn’t want to invade her physical reserve or her reticence about the past, Fred wishes he could see further into her mind. She is whimsical, impulsive, contradictory: when he tries to speak to her about something serious, he often feels-or is made to feel-like some intrusive insect trying to burrow its way into a prize hothouse rose and finally giving up, dizzied by fragrance and baffled by the continual flurry of pale petals.

It is nearly seven o’clock now. The lobby has filled with people and is beginning to empty in the direction of the auditorium. Fred has been waiting for forty minutes, and Rosemary still isn’t here. He is also very hungry; but even if she does arrive there won’t be time for the sandwiches they had planned to have before the play.

He has almost given up when a taxi door bursts open and Rosemary comes running, almost flying, into the theater, her pink wool cape blowing out behind her like some Rococo angel’s wings.

“Darling!” Out of breath-or perhaps only affecting to be so?-she puts a soft white hand on his arm and looks up from under feathery lashes. “You’ve got to forgive me, the taxi simply wouldn’t come.”

“Okay, I forgive you.” Fred smiles down at her, though not as readily as usual.

“Are you absolutely starving?”

“Not quite.”

“Don’t be cross. I’ve arranged for us to eat after the play with Erin. He knows a very good place near here, and I’ll buy you a lovely dinner to make up… Oh, Nadia! I didn’t know you were back; how was loony Los Angeles?”

“You mustn’t do that,” Fred says; but his words are lost. The resolution remains, however. He doesn’t want to waste his time alone with Rosemary sitting in a restaurant with some actor from the play they are about to see. Besides, she’s bought him too many expensive meals lately. When he protests she gives different excuses: the sale of a TV play she’s been in to Australia, a favorable interview in some women’s magazine, whatever.

“Rosemary, I want to say something,” he begins as soon as they are alone and making their way to their seats.

“Yes, darling…” She stops to wave and smile brilliantly at someone across the theater.

“I don’t want you to take me to dinner tonight.”

“Oh, Freddy.” She looks up at him, widening her fringed azure eyes. “You’re cross because I was so late, but I absolutely couldn’t help it, that wretched taxi service-”