Last Night - James Salter [21]
And Billy, with huge pleasure, would turn the radio on and off, on and off. How to explain why this worked? It was the power of a poet or maybe even a trick.
On Anna’s birthday, at about noon a beautiful arrangement of flowers, lilies and yellow roses, was delivered. They were from him. That evening we had dinner with some friends at the Red Bar, always noisy but the table was in the small room past the bar. I hadn’t ordered a birthday cake because we were going to have one back at the house, a rum cake, her favorite. Billy sat in her lap as she put her rings, one after another, carefully over separate candles, each ring for a wish.
— Will you help me blow them out? she said to Billy, her face close to his hair.
— Too many, he said.
— Oh, God, you really know how to hurt a woman.
— Go ahead, Des told him. If you don’t have enough breath, I’ll catch it and send it back.
— How do you do that?
— I can do it. Haven’t you heard of someone catching their breath?
— They’re burning down, Anna said. Come on, one, two, three!
The two of them blew them out. Billy wanted to know what her wishes had been, but she wouldn’t tell.
We ate the cake, just the four of us, and I gave her the present I knew she would love. It was a wristwatch, very thin and square with Roman numerals and a small blue stone, I think tourmaline, embedded in the stem. There are not many things more beautiful than a watch lying new in its case.
— Oh, Jack! she said. It’s gorgeous!
She showed it to Billy and then to Des.
— Where did you get it? Then, looking, Cartier, she said.
— Yes.
— I love it.
Beatrice Hage, a woman we knew, had one like it that she had inherited from her mother. It had an elegance that defied the years and demands of fashion.
It was easy to find things she would like. Our taste was the same, it had been from the first. It would be impossible to live with someone otherwise. I’ve always thought it was the most important single thing, though people may not realize it. Perhaps it’s transmitted to them in the way someone dresses or, for that matter, undresses, but taste is a thing no one is born with, it’s learned, and at a certain point it can’t be altered. We sometimes talked about that, what could and couldn’t be altered. People were always saying something had completely changed them, some experience or book or man, but if you knew how they had been before, nothing much really had changed. When you found someone who was tremendously appealing but not quite perfect, you might believe you could change them after marriage, not everything, just a few things, but in truth the most you could expect was to change perhaps one thing and even that would eventually go back to what it had been.
The small things that could be overlooked at first but in time became annoying, we had a way of handling, of getting the pebble out of the shoe, so to speak. It was called a give, and it was agreed that it would last. The phrase that was over-used, an eating habit, even a piece of favorite clothing, a give was a request to abandon it. You couldn’t ask for something, only to stop something. The wide skirt of the bathroom sink was always wiped dry because of a give. Anna’s little finger no longer extended when she drank from a cup. There might be more than one thing you would like to ask, and there was sometimes difficulty in choosing, but there was the satisfaction of knowing that once a year, without causing resentment, you would be able to ask your husband or wife to stop this one thing.
Des was downstairs when we put Billy to bed. I was in the hall when Anna came out holding her finger to her lips and having turned off the light.
— Is he asleep?
— Yes.
— Well, happy birthday, I said.
— Yes.
There was something odd in the way she said it. She stood there, her long neck and blond hair.
— What is it, darling?
She said nothing for a moment. Then she said,
— I want a give.
— All right, I said.
I don’t know why, I felt nervous.
— What would you like?
— I want you to stop it with Des, she said.