At a certain point Alice realized neither she nor Mrs. Van Laar had said a word for the better part of an hour, and no one else seemed to notice or mind, and she had the sudden realization that she was a consumable good being evaluated for purchase by the two men at the table, with Delphine as auctioneer. That the less she said, the better. The notion that some decision had been made already on her behalf began to settle onto her shoulders toward the end of the meal.
It wasn’t unpleasant.
It let her return, in fact, to her preferred state of being: dreamy unavailability, a cultivated air of mystery that she hoped might mask the lack of intellect that she accepted as a fact about herself.
Every so often she saw Peter Van Laar gazing at her. More and more she allowed herself to meet his eye. Her pulse increased. She was a child.
She asked herself three questions: Could she live away from the city? Could she live here, in this wilderness, for part of every year? Could she marry a man like Peter?
Her mother had known her father since childhood, but not well; she’d been eighteen on her wedding day, which took place soon after their first date.
Her sister and George Barlow had known each other for two months before they got engaged.
She looked out the window, toward the lake. There was something hypnotizing about it—something charmed. It was eight in the evening now, but it was July, and the last light of day shone powerfully off the water. Tall eastward-facing windows let in the warm calm breeze. The pines outside them stood still, watching her, awaiting her response.
Yes, and yes, and yes, she thought. Every answer would be yes, if he were to ask her these questions.
• • •
He did. In September of that same year, after two more visits to the city—the second time with his parents—Peter Van Laar had sought her hand in marriage, with the approval of her father.
He had selected a ring from his ancestral cache.
He had gone with her mother to have it resized, and bought a second one as well, something new from Van Cleef & Arpels, and a tennis bracelet to match.
She had accepted, grateful to have something about her life decided, uncertain what else she would do.
Her wedding gown had been duchesse satin with a full skirt and a sweetheart neckline. She was married at Saint John the Divine, two days after her eighteenth birthday, with a reception at the Pierre.
She had no bridesmaids. She had never had close friends. And in those days, having a matron of honor—as Delphine would have been—wasn’t considered correct.
There was no honeymoon. Only a departure for Albany, to a home she had never before seen, an echoing city manse with cold marble floors and windows that rattled in winter.
• • •
Nine months later—and one month early—Peter IV was born. Bear, he was called, because his Christian name was in so much use among the Van Laars already, and because he was plump, and because of the down on his head that reminded everyone who touched it of the pelt of some baby animal.
• • •
How many hours did she spend watching him? The silk of his hair. The weight of him on her chest, as she dozed in the bedroom of the Albany house, or the sunroom of Self-Reliance. The warm fragile weight of her son. She pictured his bones inside him, suspending the rest of him with their careful architecture; the miniature lungs that lifted and lowered the back; the small limbs that twitched as he settled into deep sleep; the whole infant body somehow an impossibility in its scale, in its smell, in its composition, in the way it induced a sort of calm in her that—the conviction landed on her one day like an anvil—she would never again feel in her life.
Alice
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975
When Alice tried to be objective, she could acknowledge that there were one or two very good years at the start.
Before and after Bear’s birth, she was treated by Peter as the child she was. This meant of course that he laughed at her; but his eyes were warm as he did, and he sometimes laid an affectionate hand on her head when she displayed what he termed her lack of common sense, and sighed, as if contemplating the magnitude of all that he would have to teach her. She didn’t mind; she felt protected, which—at that time—was what she believed she needed.
But at some point, Peter’s reaction to her mistakes began to morph from amusement to annoyance. When she was eighteen, and learning how to host a dinner party, Peter had smiled as he gently corrected misspellings on the place cards, or vetoed calla lilies on the table; five years later, he scowled, and sometimes yelled.
The one thing they agreed upon, always, was the value of their son, whom Alice loved immediately and intensely. Peter, she knew, loved him too—but his love sometimes felt to her like an investment, something to be given on the condition that there would be a return for him later.
They would have no more children, Peter said; one boy was enough. The implication, Alice understood, was that to have more than one boy would complicate matters when it came to passing on the bank. For four generations in a row, there had been only one boy. Only one Peter Van Laar. Sometimes Alice had the feeling that her prompt production of a boy—and such a fine one, at that—was the only thing she had ever done that pleased her husband.
• • •
The summer months at Self-Reliance were when the three of them were most often together. There, Peter taught his son to sail and ride and play chess and shoot clay pigeons out of the sky. He was a good teacher—patient, even—a quality he altogether lacked in other areas of his life. From a distance, Alice watched, contented, feeling something like pure love for her husband for the first time in her marriage.
It helped that Bear was good at everything he put his hand or mind to. He was quick with numbers; he was early to read. He was a big tall boy like his father—a relief to Alice, who had feared he might inherit her short stature.
Despite these gifts, there was no arrogance about him; he had none of the contempt that his father showed from time to time. Instead, he greeted everyone he met with a smile, learned the names of everyone who worked the house and the grounds, no matter their station. In this way he reminded her of somebody she could not name, until she realized with a jolt one day that it was her own sister. Delphine.
Tessie Jo, the groundskeeper’s daughter, held him in a special thrall; four years older than he was, she treated him kindly, doted on him. In return he followed her everyplace she went, calling out for her, Tessie, Tessie. It was a joke between Peter and Alice: that Bear was in love with the girl. One of the few jokes they had together.
• • •
During the other three seasons of the year, Peter was hard at work, often staying at the office until eight or nine o’clock. Often in Manhattan for meetings with prospective clients.
In Albany, Alice would have been lonely, if not for her son. She had no friends to speak of. She was a bad conversationalist.
About this last point, Peter agreed. He said this frequently, matter-of-factly, the way he said everything, as if he were in possession of no opinions, only facts.
“The thing is, Alice,” he said, “you’re boring at parties. A drink or two will help you be more fun.”
She had been twenty the first time he said this. She had been holding two-year-old Bear in her arms. She opened her mouth to respond, but no words came out. Peter frequently offered her criticisms, always couched as advice. And the thing was: usually she agreed with him. She was boring at parties. She knew nothing of current affairs. She was not well traveled, and she had no hobbies. She was not brilliant and witty like her sister. She had unkind thoughts about others, at times, but she had never mastered the art of expressing them in a clever mischievous way: in other words, she was not skillful even when it came to gossip. What she thought about most in the world in those days was Bear, and her all-consuming love for him. She sometimes felt that becoming a parent had revealed to her the existence of another dimension or another sense.
“And put that boy down,” said Peter. “He’s becoming a barnacle.” He reached out for Bear, who refused him, burying his head in Alice’s shoulder, clinging ever more tightly to her.
