Age by Hortense Calisher Read Free Book Online Page A

and said no. So we didn’t understand until the next morning. When we saw—more of the residents.’
    ‘Understand what?’ I said.
    ‘Nurses are called Sister in Britain, Gemma,’ Kit said. ‘You’d love them.’
    ‘That the place is a hospice.’ Sherm said. ‘For the dying.’
    There was a strange light around Gemma. I hoped to God I wasn’t about to see one of those parachutes. Retinal images, I suppose. One of my fritillary umbrellas, as I know think of them. But maybe it was only Gemma’s intensity.
    ‘Is she dying?’ she says. There’s a wry smile on her face.
    Sherm shrugged. ‘They let her in.’
    ‘Who is this “she” you’re talking about?’
    I could hear my own irritation. When I’m fending off one of my episodes I always can. Fear sounds fretful.
    One can tell also when people look at one too tenderly. Gemma doesn’t. She braces me instead.
    ‘Gertrude—’ she says.
    ‘She’s here,’ Sherm says. ‘She came over partly because she wants to see you. They encourage them to see the family if they can.’ He coughed. ‘She seems to regard you two as family now. Her only one.’
    ‘ Here?’ Gemma says. ‘With you?’
    ‘At the Plaza,’ Sherm says. ‘Naturally, she needs a—an aegis.’
    ‘Aegis?’ Gemma says, as if it’s some form of medication. Even now I’m often not sure whether or not she knows the meaning of some fancy words.
    Kit is biting her thumb and looking at Sherm with venom. ‘ We are staying with her. That last man of hers did her rather well. Still does. Though he won’t see her.’
    Then of course I know who they are talking about. There’s nothing like old rage to clear the head. I had had to do the same with her as that man. Refuse.
    What a gaffe though—the way I said it.
    ‘Oh—Gertrude. My wife.’

W HEN OUR DOWNSTAIRS BUZZER rang, I had the wild thought that she might be already down there in the hall. She must be ambulatory. Sherm and Kit were not the sort to encumber themselves with a complete invalid, even in order to stay at the Plaza for free. Or she would have a nurse, maybe one of the Sisters from the hospice whom she would have enticed away—perhaps to let them see how we handle death in the States. According to what Rupert told me long ago, Gertrude had always been able to find what Sherm calls an ‘aegis.’ Often she ran several at once, all of them vying for her attention. ‘As if she was saddled with us,’ Rupert had said, ‘and she was only seeing how we would do. The candidates will always change. But she will never lack for them. And the attention she gives them is—well—professional. For a long while I didn’t see that I was serving Gertrude. I thought I was learning how to live my life.’
    And in a way, he had. Once, when I referred to her as a femme fatale, he said, no, that soiled old phrase, which reminded one of flashy art-nouveau women in monkey fur or grand courtesans riding the Bois in Klimt poses, would not describe what she was or did. ‘She knew how to attract men with the fatality already in them. Men about to brim over with success. Or just losing a religion. Or just finding one. Like me.’
    Her pretexts were always reasonable and solidly grounded. So, any nurse would no doubt learn what Gertrude had promised she would. Would some one of Gertrude’s many former contacts provide—as payment for not having to meet again with Gertrude herself?
    I of course have never met her. But among Rupert’s friends, the crowd into which I married, Sherm and Kit among them, she was a constant topic, often at parties to which she had not been invited, where there was the fear or expectation—that she might after all turn up. A rumor that she might, could make certain people—women too—uneasy enough to want to leave, yet too fascinated at the prospect of Gertrude to depart. Still, she must have, known where she wasn’t wanted, for she never came. But kept them guessing? ‘Yes, that was her quality,’ Rupert said.