way. However, at the sight and then the touch of a gray silk organza coat, very sheer, Florentine, impossible to pack, almost involuntarily Celeste cries out, “Oh, if only you could wear this!” Already she feels that she misses the coat, in which she has looked, she is quite aware, spectacular.
Polly laughs—the dreaded snort. “Wrapped around my old bald head? Or just over fat old naked me?” She laughs again, seemingly enjoying this imagined picture of herself. (But how can she, really?)
Since her cancer surgery two years ago (her recovery has been astounding, an amazement to her doctors) and her subsequent baldness, Polly has been given to this awful form of humor, so distressingto her friends, and especially to Celeste, who now murmurs, “Oh, Polly.”
At which Polly laughs, or snorts again.
A long time ago (Celeste is quite sure of this) Charles and Polly had some sort of love affair: Celeste has simply, infallibly deduced this. And neither of them, neither Charles nor Polly, knows that Celeste does know. Which makes it all the more interesting for Celeste to watch. Not upsetting, really on the whole not upsetting. They were such very different people then, Charles and Polly. They were not her adored almost husband and her almost (after Dudley, now that Emma is gone) dearest friend. (In fact, both Emma and Polly were mortally ill at the same time, diagnosed within weeks of each other, so that Celeste was flying back and forth, from coast to coast, trying to care for her friends. And then Emma died, and Polly, against every prognosis, got well.)
But Polly’s “relationship” with Charles must have taken place when he was married to Jane, Celeste (correctly) believes, when he was in Paris. Probably, they actually saw very little of each other—and how perfectly inappropriate, how entirely unsuitable a match! Warm handsome sociable Charles, who is nearly a clotheshorse (more like an Edwardian dandy, actually), with his silly jokes, little songs that he hums, his flirtatious ways. And serious, heavy Polly.
Although certainly Polly was very beautiful at one time, with those pale, brilliant burning eyes, and her heavy hair, and great huge breasts. Well, she still has the eyes, and the breasts, although of course large breasts are not nearly as attractive in an older woman, as Polly now is.
These are Celeste’s thoughts concerning Charles and Polly in the daylight hours, possibly when she is with one or the other of them; at those sunny moments she will have these somewhat disbelieving, these less than kind thoughts. However, at lonelier hours, at night, she cries out against this atrocious—this almost obscene—historical fact: the love affair between Charles Timberlake and Polly Blake.
How could they?
she inwardly screams, as though she herself had been present at the time, in Paris—the location, she imagines, of their love.
She has even had to ask herself, Is the love affair with Charles what truly draws her most to Polly? Otherwise it is surely an odd-lookingfriendship. But if that is true, thinks Celeste, how perverse and horrible. I am then a sort of voyeuse, oh
dear
.
“Well, anyway,” Celeste now says to Polly, with her customary briskness, as she holds up a rose-colored taffeta New Look skirt (Lord, almost twenty years old), “Anyway, no one alive could have any use for this old thing.”
“Incredibly enough I remember having one made in Paris that was quite a lot like that” is Polly’s startling response.
“Did you, darling Pol? So odd, I often forget that you were there at all.”
“Well, actually I didn’t spend much time in Paris,” Polly tells her as she has before. “I was traveling a lot. Ah, youth. But I just for some reason needed a party skirt. Oh, ‘needed,’ ” she snorts.
“Well, you certainly don’t have to be so apologetic about it,” Celeste almost snaps. (
Why
must Polly keep insisting that she really wasn’t there, was not really in Paris?) “All young
Polly laughs—the dreaded snort. “Wrapped around my old bald head? Or just over fat old naked me?” She laughs again, seemingly enjoying this imagined picture of herself. (But how can she, really?)
Since her cancer surgery two years ago (her recovery has been astounding, an amazement to her doctors) and her subsequent baldness, Polly has been given to this awful form of humor, so distressingto her friends, and especially to Celeste, who now murmurs, “Oh, Polly.”
At which Polly laughs, or snorts again.
A long time ago (Celeste is quite sure of this) Charles and Polly had some sort of love affair: Celeste has simply, infallibly deduced this. And neither of them, neither Charles nor Polly, knows that Celeste does know. Which makes it all the more interesting for Celeste to watch. Not upsetting, really on the whole not upsetting. They were such very different people then, Charles and Polly. They were not her adored almost husband and her almost (after Dudley, now that Emma is gone) dearest friend. (In fact, both Emma and Polly were mortally ill at the same time, diagnosed within weeks of each other, so that Celeste was flying back and forth, from coast to coast, trying to care for her friends. And then Emma died, and Polly, against every prognosis, got well.)
But Polly’s “relationship” with Charles must have taken place when he was married to Jane, Celeste (correctly) believes, when he was in Paris. Probably, they actually saw very little of each other—and how perfectly inappropriate, how entirely unsuitable a match! Warm handsome sociable Charles, who is nearly a clotheshorse (more like an Edwardian dandy, actually), with his silly jokes, little songs that he hums, his flirtatious ways. And serious, heavy Polly.
Although certainly Polly was very beautiful at one time, with those pale, brilliant burning eyes, and her heavy hair, and great huge breasts. Well, she still has the eyes, and the breasts, although of course large breasts are not nearly as attractive in an older woman, as Polly now is.
These are Celeste’s thoughts concerning Charles and Polly in the daylight hours, possibly when she is with one or the other of them; at those sunny moments she will have these somewhat disbelieving, these less than kind thoughts. However, at lonelier hours, at night, she cries out against this atrocious—this almost obscene—historical fact: the love affair between Charles Timberlake and Polly Blake.
How could they?
she inwardly screams, as though she herself had been present at the time, in Paris—the location, she imagines, of their love.
She has even had to ask herself, Is the love affair with Charles what truly draws her most to Polly? Otherwise it is surely an odd-lookingfriendship. But if that is true, thinks Celeste, how perverse and horrible. I am then a sort of voyeuse, oh
dear
.
“Well, anyway,” Celeste now says to Polly, with her customary briskness, as she holds up a rose-colored taffeta New Look skirt (Lord, almost twenty years old), “Anyway, no one alive could have any use for this old thing.”
“Incredibly enough I remember having one made in Paris that was quite a lot like that” is Polly’s startling response.
“Did you, darling Pol? So odd, I often forget that you were there at all.”
“Well, actually I didn’t spend much time in Paris,” Polly tells her as she has before. “I was traveling a lot. Ah, youth. But I just for some reason needed a party skirt. Oh, ‘needed,’ ” she snorts.
“Well, you certainly don’t have to be so apologetic about it,” Celeste almost snaps. (
Why
must Polly keep insisting that she really wasn’t there, was not really in Paris?) “All young
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