After This

Professor Wallace stepped forward to take the cat from his arms. A

“Thank you, darling,” he said. Side by side, the extremes of their physical beauty were startling. Professor Wallace all hooked nose and bun, white skin and black hair, David soft and warm-hued. One to be photographed, the other painted. Professor Wallace turned, spi

The girls exchanged a look. Grace, with her whiskey, had not allowed herself more than the last six inches of the sofa’s seat and so sat somewhat hunched over her knees, more curved than she needed to be. She touched her glasses, of course, as she said, popping up a bit like a good student, “Neither of us.” She touched her sweater. “I’m from Buffalo,” she said. “A

“Well, good,” he said. He had picked up another piece of loo paper and was holding another glass up to the golden lamplight. “We’ve had two Americans from Binghamton here in the past two weeks and I think I’ve learned all there is to know about the place. State University,” he said. “Three hours to New York.”

“That would be Lydia,” said Grace, the good student. She touched her index finger to her cheek, tapped it, raised her eyes to the shadowy ceiling, pantomiming thought. Then Grace pointed the index finger at Mr. Wallace. “And Kevin Larkin,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows. “Right you are,” he said. “Kevin. Rugby player, all taken up with Rupert Brooke.”

Grace popped again. “That’s right,” she said.

“And Lydia,” he went on. “Pretty girl. Mad for Wordsworth.”

“Yes,” Grace said, warming to the conversation. He was, after all, more or less sitting at her feet. A

“But Buffalo,” he said. “I’m not sure we’ve had anyone from Buffalo yet. What’s it like?”

Grace was now clutching the stubby glass in both hands, leaning toward him. “Boring,” she said and barked a short laugh, the ends of her blunt-cut hair swinging forward along her chin and then swinging back. She touched her glasses, returning to the more successful serious student guise. “No,” she said. “It’s nice, I guess. My parents like it. I have a lot of family there.” She hunched a little more. Her head snapped to the right for just a second. It was a curious little tic A

Examining the row of glasses before him, Mr. Wallace raised his eyebrows when she said Dick Diver, and then placed his hands on his brown corduroy knees. It was likely that he was somewhat younger than his wife. He leaned toward her, rolling on his haunches. “And is it Fitzgerald you’re mad for?” he asked. “You wouldn’t be the first American to come to England to study Fitzgerald, or Hemingway. You’re all mad for Hemingway as far as I can tell.”

But Grace sat up a little straighter. It might have been in imitation of Professor Wallace-as much as a girl like Grace could aspire to imitate Professor Wallace. “I’m not, really,” she said. And then added, “I love Spenser.” She touched her glasses again and took another nip at her whiskey.

What a smile he had. While his wife’s had been thin-lipped and wry, forgiving, insightful, his was warmly amused, reservedly delighted. He had, A

Suddenly she found herself both fully enchanted and heartsick. To live, as these two did, in a comfortable, warmly lit room full of velvet chairs and old books, with cats and, yes-she was only just hearing it, or perhaps Professor Wallace had just put it on in another room-classical music playing softly somewhere, low enough for conversation, loud enough to add romance to the air. To reach over your knees at the end of a day, the book falling from your lap, to take such a man’s handsome face into your hands. It was a life from a novel. It was a still life, beautifully arranged. It was a life she’d never attain. When he turned to her and said, “And who’s your man?” she said, “Edith Wharton,” without thinking and without an inkling of truth in it, her only impulse being that she should name a woman, since the life she wanted-their life-was all unattainable and she must begin to prepare herself to be a woman alone.

She glanced quickly at Grace to see if she would contradict her, but Grace had the glass to her lips again, her eyes on David Wallace. A

Professor Wallace swept into the room with a large, tufted footstool held high in her hands, like a farcical English maid with a tea tray. “Edith Wharton?” she said and then spun a little, her long skirt flaring, her little leather boots. “How interesting,” and then, “David, my love,” in that way she had of speaking in soft asides, “you’ll have to move your glasses and your loo paper so I can put this down.”

With a kind of salute, he stuck the roll of toilet paper under his arm. Leaning forward, he moved a few of the glasses, one at a time, as if they were chess pieces, to the side of the couch, and then gathered up the rest in his hands, the crystal clinking, and placed them and the paper on a side table. “Careful,” she said. “Always,” he told her. And then, so smoothly, he was on his feet again, taking the stool from her hands.

He lowered it to the ground. It was a maroon upholstered footstool with four wooden, turnip-shaped legs and on it were half a dozen small plates, black cloth napkins, a silver bowl of olives and celery, and a small black crock containing what Professor Wallace a

“It appears she wrote Ethan Frome while in the midst of a girlish middle-aged passion. Which has always struck me as curious, given the short shrift she gives poor Mrs. Frome, with all her middle-aged ailments.”

Professor Wallace spun around again in her soft little boots and then took the other corner of the couch. Grace was smiling at her, ogling, A