The Four Temperaments Read online

  In fact, it was Oscar's sickening connection to Ginny that kept Gabriel from racing back to New York right after he first met her, which is what he had wanted to do. But that day on the beach with his father offered him a new and frightening glimpse into his parents' marriage. Oscar unfaithful to Ruth. It was a vision he had done everything to obliterate from his mind ever since. Still, he replayed the conversation over and over: the salt-tanged air, Oscar's doleful look, the way he said “I know” and sighed, the angry, accusing words that came after, then stalking down the beach by himself alone, soles of his shoes smacking against the hard, wet sand, ocean spray wetting his cheeks and his hair. He began to run, past the house until he came to a flight of wooden stairs leading up from the beach. He climbed them, no longer running now, but still out of breath, and kept walking, toward town, until he found someplace open that would serve him a cup of coffee.

  When he finally returned to Caroline's house, he found his parents and Caroline chatting amiably in front of a fire. Several cats slept in various corners of the room; one cat's tongue was always sticking out, as if perpetually mocking the other felines and humans whom she was forced to endure. Caroline had explained that her two front teeth were missing, and the tongue just slipped through the open cavity it created, but Gabriel still wondered. Penelope and Isobel were nowhere to be seen.

  “Nursing again,” Caroline said in response to his query, and she pouted dramatically. “Penelope says that Isobel gets distracted by the cats, but we know she's just keeping that baby to herself!” His parents just nodded and smiled. Gabriel could not look at either of them, and abruptly went upstairs.

  Later, when he spoke to his mother, he would not permit himself to allude to the sense of betrayal she must have been feeling. He didn't want to face those dark places in his parents' marriage. Bad enough that he was facing them in his own.

  After the performance was over, Gabriel hurried out of the theater. He had planned to catch a cab to the hotel on Madison Avenue, but he had forgotten about the crush of people lining Columbus Avenue and Broadway who were also hailing cabs. So instead he started walking east. It was not a bitter evening and he inhaled the refreshing night air as he walked quickly along the street. In the end, whatever had gone on between his father and Ginny was not enough to stop him from coming here. Thinking about it, as he did endlessly in the weeks between that day on the beach and the moment he boarded the plane, he accepted that whatever had happened between them was over. That much was clear from Oscar's mournful expression. And if Gabriel had learned of Ginny's connection to his father before he had kissed her, maybe things would have been different. Maybe he wouldn't be striding across the city in the dark on his way toward her.

  It had been easy to get her telephone number from Directory Assistance, and he took care not to call from home. The first few tries didn't find her in, and the phone rang and rang in the empty apartment. No answering machine or cell phone for her. Then one morning he was in his office by six o'clock to reach her at nine, and there she was, groggily saying, “What is it?” on the other end of the wire.

  “It's me, Gabriel,” he said, feeling foolish but elated to have reached her at last.

  “Gabriel,” she said, quickly sounding wide awake. “Where are you? Are you in New York?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “But I will be.”

  That had been several days ago. As he now neared Central Park, he was stopped by the large display of flowers in front of a Korean fruit and vegetable market. Flowers. He wished he had thought to have ordered some for the hotel room, and then realized he could buy a bunch and have someone there arrange them in a vase. The selection was not great, but once inside the market, he bought two bunches of dark red roses and a couple of Toblerone chocolate bars, the ones shaped like prisms with bits of honey and nougat inside. He had watched Ginny eat, and he guessed that she would like them. He planned to feed them to her, actually, bite by bite, the melted chocolate from his fingers coating her lips. Then he stepped back outside and continued his journey.

  When he actually reached Central Park, he stopped again. He didn't think it was a good idea to walk across the park alone at this hour, so he tried again to get a cab. Several passed by with passengers already inside. He saw an empty one, but the off-duty light was turned on, and the driver did not stop. Finally, after about fifteen minutes, he was successful, and found himself hurtling through the darkness of the park, on his way to the hotel.

  He arrived in the lobby later than he expected—he had checked in earlier in the day, so at least he was not worried about losing the room—and realized that there would be no time to call Penelope. Damn. Then a movement—it was a woman, getting to her feet—caught his attention and he saw that Ginny was here already, waiting for him. He almost wanted to drop the flowers he was holding—the chocolate bars were nestled safely in his coat pocket—to crush her in his arms, but he was too aware of the hotel staff who stood by idly, watching them. Instead, he moved very close, so their conversation would not be audible.

  “You came” was all she said, but Gabriel knew that the delight painted on her face must have mirrored his own. She was wearing a very peculiar black coat that looked as if it had been new forty years ago. It had huge black buttons down the front and an enormous fuzzy collar. He could see that she had not taken off her stage makeup. No wonder the bellboys had been giving her the once-over. But Gabriel was dazzled by the dramatic blue and green shading around her eyes, the vivid lines of her painted eyebrows, the hectic stain of her cheeks, the wet look of her dark red lips. He was standing close enough to touch her now, and he shifted the flowers awkwardly under one arm before he reached for her hands, which were small and cold.

  “Let's go upstairs,” he murmured and she nodded. Her eyes gleamed in the low light and the pressure of her hands was strong. Together, they moved toward the elevator, which carried them swiftly and without pause up to the room.

  PENELOPE

  Penelope loved her mother, but it was her father she worshiped. With his fine, sand-colored hair, sparse brows and quiet voice, he had a gentle and at times ethereal quality that always soothed her. She could almost believe that he put his head into the clouds to talk to God. When she asked him about this once, he laughed.

  Penelope was a little hurt; she hadn't meant to amuse him, she really was curious. Most of the time, though, he didn't laugh at her, but listened carefully to whatever she had to say. He talked to her too. Of course her mother also talked to her, though what she said was much more predictable: don't bite your nails, brush your hair, make your bed, stop procrastinating and go to sleep. Whereas her father's conversations tended to surprise her. Did she dream in color? he wanted to know. Would she rather be an ocelot or a raccoon? Did she know that it was possible to crush rose petals, make them into jam and eat them?

  There was ample time for them to have these conversations. Penelope's father was a professor who taught in the English department of a small, private Connecticut college; his classes met only two days a week. There were occasional faculty meetings and meetings with students, but he spent a lot of time at home writing or with Penelope: driving her to school and horseback-riding lessons, reading her stories, putting her to bed. None of her friends' fathers spent so much time with their daughters. Mostly, they took the train into the city every day, where they went to offices. They came home at night tired and irritable, looking for a drink and the newspaper, not their children. Penelope knew she was privileged, but she never took it for granted.

  “He certainly doesn't have to work very hard” was the comment Penelope overheard one of her aunts make. “He must have tenure.”

  “Better than that,” the other aunt said. “He married money. A different kind of tenure.” They both laughed.

  Penelope was puzzled. How could her father be married to money when he was married to her mother? And, besides, a person couldn't marry money anyway. It made no sense. She asked her father about it, hoping that she would cause him t
o burst out laughing, uttering that irrepressible yelp of glee that she sometimes elicited. But this time he did not laugh. He looked unhappy and frowned.

  “Who said that?” he asked.

  “I don't remember,” Penelope lied, wishing she hadn't brought it up.

  “People are jealous,” he said, as if that explained anything. When he saw she didn't understand, he continued: “Your mother comes from a family with a lot of money. I don't. Some people think that I married her so I could have that money. But you know that isn't true. You know how much I love your mother, sweet pea. And how much I love you.”

  This reassured Penelope. He did love her mother, she could tell by the way the two of them held hands and gave each other those grown-up glances when they thought she wasn't looking. Still, Penelope didn't mind because her father loved her too, and she loved him back.

  Then her father got sick. Penelope didn't understand at first why he was so tired, why he couldn't play, read to her or put her to bed anymore.

  “Daddy's resting,” said her mother. “I'll read to you tonight.” Penelope shook her head no and pressed her face into the pillow, which was uncomfortably warm and creased. Her father always knew to turn it over, so that the smooth, cool side touched her heated cheek. But her mother didn't know that Penelope wanted her to do this. Instead she said, “All right then. Be selfish and spoiled,” and she got up from the bed, leaving Penelope alone in the dark room.

  It seemed her father needed an operation for which he had to go to the hospital. Penelope was sad that he had to leave. She made him a special picture of a deep pink heart bordered by a white, scalloped ruffle. Inside the heart she wrote “I LOV YOU,” which looked wrong to her, but he was the one she always asked about spelling and she wanted this to be a surprise. Penelope gave the heart to her mother, who looked at it for a moment before tucking it into the bag she was packing for the hospital visit. “It's a beautiful picture,” said Penelope's mother. Penelope was shocked to see tears in her mother's eyes.

  After the operation, her father came home, but he was still not better. “No, Daddy can't read to you tonight,” said Penelope's mother. Penelope took the book back to her own room, where she carefully and quietly ripped out all the pages, one by one. Not only couldn't he read to her, her father couldn't do much of anything else either. He stopped teaching his classes at the college, stopped taking bicycle rides and going out for dinner with Penelope's mother. Instead, Caroline had to drive him to the doctor's office every week, for something called chemotherapy. Penelope was not allowed to go along; left with a baby-sitter, she sat by the window downstairs, waiting for the car to pull up. When it did, she raced out to greet her parents, but when she saw her father—gaunt, pale, knitted cap covering his now-bald head—she stopped. It was the hair loss that frightened her most. She knew that losing your hair meant you were getting ready to die, and she so desperately did not want her father to die.

  But he did anyway. Penelope was not in the house when it happened, and by the time she got home from school, the body had already been taken away. There was only the empty hospital bed, blankets still turned back, sheets still bearing the imprint of his wasted form. Penelope's mother gathered her in her arms, weeping, but Penelope did not cry. Nor did she cry at the funeral, which took place a few days later.

  She wore a new dress that was much too warm for the mild spring day, but her mother explained that she had had a hard time finding a black dress in Penelope's size. Many people attended the funeral. Some of them Penelope recognized, like the aunt who said her father had married money, while others—students and faculty members from the college—she did not. The casket was closed, so she could not actually see her father's body lying in it and she almost believed that he was not inside at all, but had disappeared, back into the clouds, where Penelope was convinced he belonged. At the cemetery, there was a big, gaping hole in the ground. Strangely enough, the sight of the raw, open space gave her some kind of comfort; it looked like the hole that was now in her heart.

  Things seemed to go back to normal after that. There was still school and riding lessons, though now it was her mother and not her father who drove her back and forth. There were visits with friends, trips to the dentist, birthday parties and Christmas celebrations. The year Penelope turned eleven, her mother bought her a horse. It did not come to live with them in their large backyard, as Penelope imagined it might, but remained at the stable where Penelope went for her riding lessons.

  “There, darling, isn't he beautiful?” said her mother as she circled slowly around the enormous brown animal. Penelope said nothing. She had never said she wanted a horse. The horse swished his thick, coarse tail and blinked his large brown eyes. “Let's give him a treat, shall we?” her mother continued, and pulled a carrot from her bag, which she handed to Penelope. Penelope placed the carrot on her open palm and extended it, as she had been taught. The horse moved first his lips and then his huge, stained teeth around the proffered food. Penelope's hand was wet with saliva, which she vigorously dried on her riding jacket.

  “Don't do that,” her mother chided. “Where is your handkerchief?” She shook her head and turned from Penelope to the owner of the stable. “It will be good for her,” Caroline told the other woman. “Give her something to hold on to. A sense of responsibility. An outlet for her feelings.”

  As it turned out, the horse, whom Penelope refused to name, did none of these things. She had no interest in feeding, washing or grooming him, though she could see how the other girls who boarded horses at the same stable reverently performed all these tasks. She continued to ride him, because she had been riding horses for a while now and saw no reason to stop. But the horse was not hers in any real way, nor would he ever be. It was her mother who finally named him. “We'll call him Touchstone,” she told Penelope. “After the fool in As You Like It. Daddy would have loved that.” Penelope didn't care. In fact, she found it galling, even obscene, that this stupid animal, with his big haunches and rank smell, should be alive at all, while her father was dead.

  The lessons continued, and Penelope developed into an able rider. Though she still had no feeling for the horse (in the privacy of her own thoughts, she did not deign to use the silly name her mother had thought up), she liked the feelings he permitted her to experience: speed, control, mastery, power. She liked taking the crop to him and reining him in tightly, to show him who was in charge. When Kelly, the riding teacher, told Penelope that they were going to start jumping, Penelope was excited. She wanted to feel the speed burning under her, smoldering and igniting like a flame, until the horse reached the hurdle and in a single flash cleared it. Caroline was pleased that Penelope was taking an interest in the sport; the lessons increased to twice and then three times a week. “Best thing I could have done for her,” she told Kelly as together they watched Penelope and Touchstone canter around the ring.

  The only thing that annoyed Caroline was that Penelope still refused to clean and care for the horse. Nothing Caroline said had any effect. Penelope was disgusted by the fine cloud of barn-smelling dust that always emanated from his coat, the large and odoriferous droppings he left behind, the wet look of his eyes. At first, Caroline tried to make her take an interest. “After all, he's yours, darling,” she would admonish. “You need to take some responsibility for him. Like any pet.” When this failed to work, she switched her tactics. “I'll sell him, Penelope, honestly I will.”

  “Fine,” Penelope answered sullenly. “See if I care.”

  This stymied Caroline, who really did think the horse was doing her daughter good. Though it had been several years now, Penelope never seemed to have gotten over her father's death: though intelligent, she was an indifferent student, prone to doodling and staring out the classroom windows, and she had few friends. No, the horse had to stay, Caroline decided, and she eventually hired another young girl from a nearby town to take care of him. Although she said nothing, Penelope reveled in her victory. She would be the one to choose what
she would and wouldn't do. Let her mother get used to it.

  Penelope had been jumping for about a year when Kelly suggested that she enter one of the local horse shows. “I think you're ready,” she said. “Do you want to try?” Penelope nodded. Yes, she wanted to try. Not only because she wanted to win but because she wanted the audience. She wanted to be watched as she commanded the horse to jump high, then higher and higher still, an obedient servant to her will. Caroline worried a bit about the jumping competition, thinking it would put too much pressure on Penelope—“I don't want you to get hurt” was what she told her daughter—but eventually she came round to see the event as the natural and appropriate consequence of all Penelope's hard work. “She can do this. She's thirteen,” Kelly assured Caroline more than once. Caroline had only to look at her daughter on Touchstone's back—poised, erect, serious as a soldier—to be convinced.

  The morning of the competition arrived. Penelope wore a cable-knit Shetland sweater under her tweed riding jacket and fine silk long johns under her jodhpurs. Her boots were polished and her long dark hair plaited into a thick braid. She didn't have any appetite for breakfast, though she wished that Caroline would have let her drink a cup of strong, black coffee. As a compromise, Caroline gave her a cup of tea with only a trace of milk.

  The other girls who were competing seemed to know each other; Penelope saw them talking with great animation, gesturing to their horses, adjusting one another's hard velvet hats. No one said anything to her, but she didn't care. She looked at the horse, whose huge head was turned away from her. His ears were erect with concentration.