them. In fact, Adam had climbed the steep stairs, making their aged wood creak, and he’d entered the bedroom with its slanting ceiling, but only to help Marina paper the walls. He’d fixed drips in her bathrooms, upstairs and down. He’d offered to caulk the windows and would surely have done so before the first frost of that year, except he’d been killed in midsummer.
What is the romance of a Marina Troy, for her married female friends?
She supposed it must be her aloneness . Women who couldn’t bear a few minutes’ solitude in their lavish homes, who frantically telephoned friends through the day and filled up their calendars with dinners, cocktail parties, luncheons, tennis dates, excursions into the city, charitable organizations; women who collapsed when their children departed for college, or for summers abroad, or even for summer camp; women who panicked at the possibility of divorce, yet also at the possibility of spending a quiet weekend alone with their husbands; women who kept lengthy, annotated lists of individuals who “owed” them and whom they “owed,” and to what degree, nonetheless spoke of admiring Marina, and of envying her. Yet they were keen to contaminate her aloneness . They invited her to their continuous stream of parties, not minding that, though she owed everyone in town, she rarely reciprocated; they took care to seat her beside such eligible bachelors as Adam Berendt, who, it seemed, had never been married; and Roger Cavanagh, whose marriage had dissolved, leaving him witty and ironic, handicapped as with a wizened or missing limb. These women, most of them beautiful well into middle-age, spoke kindly of Marina’s
“unique” beauty; her “patrician” profile; for a woman prized by their circle could hardly be plain.
Marina wore striking clothes, quite unlike her Salthill women friends who shopped exclusively at designer stores; but these were “striking” perhaps by accident. Long hobbling skirts, often with alarming slits in the sides; velvet jackets wearing out at the elbows, and too tight in the shoulders; expensive but water-stained leather boots to the knee; curious carved-looking shoes with or without heels, or black running shoes with floppy black shoelaces. She was known to be one of Salthill’s “runners”; it
J C O
was a matter of common knowledge that she and her friend Adam Berendt went hiking together, on ambitious treks. She wore shorts, trousers, slacks, jeans; often these were a size or two too large; and cable-knit sweaters that looked as if they were hand knit, but were not. In fact, Marina was not very domestic. When at last she couldn’t avoid it, and invited friends to dinner, the meal tended to be hastily prepared; often, she hauled it home from Chez Hélène, Salthill’s premiere food shop. (If Marina’s friends sighted Chez Hélène containers in her kitchen, they passed along the good news to one another: “We’re in luck tonight.”) Marina’s dread of domesticity had a darker side. She feared opening that vein, for what if she bled to death?
It was seven years before Adam’s death she’d been introduced to him by an older Salthill couple, the Hoffmanns. Fondly it would be recounted how at that meeting Adam Berendt had shaken the young red-haired woman’s hand and fixed her with his critical left eye and loudly, lavishly declared she was a contemporary Elizabeth I—“You know, the Hilliard portraits.” Impulsively Adam lifted Marina’s hand to kiss the knuckles, even as Marina, the abashed Rapunzel, stared at him in astonishment.
Who on earth is this man?
She’d avoided Adam for the remainder of the evening. The mere sight of him provoked a blush like a hemorrhage into her face.
But she’d been touched with pleasure, too. For she was a vain woman, at heart. Marina Troy, Virgin Queen .
In fact, the celebrated Hilliard portraits of Elizabeth I, which Marina sought out the next
What is the romance of a Marina Troy, for her married female friends?
She supposed it must be her aloneness . Women who couldn’t bear a few minutes’ solitude in their lavish homes, who frantically telephoned friends through the day and filled up their calendars with dinners, cocktail parties, luncheons, tennis dates, excursions into the city, charitable organizations; women who collapsed when their children departed for college, or for summers abroad, or even for summer camp; women who panicked at the possibility of divorce, yet also at the possibility of spending a quiet weekend alone with their husbands; women who kept lengthy, annotated lists of individuals who “owed” them and whom they “owed,” and to what degree, nonetheless spoke of admiring Marina, and of envying her. Yet they were keen to contaminate her aloneness . They invited her to their continuous stream of parties, not minding that, though she owed everyone in town, she rarely reciprocated; they took care to seat her beside such eligible bachelors as Adam Berendt, who, it seemed, had never been married; and Roger Cavanagh, whose marriage had dissolved, leaving him witty and ironic, handicapped as with a wizened or missing limb. These women, most of them beautiful well into middle-age, spoke kindly of Marina’s
“unique” beauty; her “patrician” profile; for a woman prized by their circle could hardly be plain.
Marina wore striking clothes, quite unlike her Salthill women friends who shopped exclusively at designer stores; but these were “striking” perhaps by accident. Long hobbling skirts, often with alarming slits in the sides; velvet jackets wearing out at the elbows, and too tight in the shoulders; expensive but water-stained leather boots to the knee; curious carved-looking shoes with or without heels, or black running shoes with floppy black shoelaces. She was known to be one of Salthill’s “runners”; it
J C O
was a matter of common knowledge that she and her friend Adam Berendt went hiking together, on ambitious treks. She wore shorts, trousers, slacks, jeans; often these were a size or two too large; and cable-knit sweaters that looked as if they were hand knit, but were not. In fact, Marina was not very domestic. When at last she couldn’t avoid it, and invited friends to dinner, the meal tended to be hastily prepared; often, she hauled it home from Chez Hélène, Salthill’s premiere food shop. (If Marina’s friends sighted Chez Hélène containers in her kitchen, they passed along the good news to one another: “We’re in luck tonight.”) Marina’s dread of domesticity had a darker side. She feared opening that vein, for what if she bled to death?
It was seven years before Adam’s death she’d been introduced to him by an older Salthill couple, the Hoffmanns. Fondly it would be recounted how at that meeting Adam Berendt had shaken the young red-haired woman’s hand and fixed her with his critical left eye and loudly, lavishly declared she was a contemporary Elizabeth I—“You know, the Hilliard portraits.” Impulsively Adam lifted Marina’s hand to kiss the knuckles, even as Marina, the abashed Rapunzel, stared at him in astonishment.
Who on earth is this man?
She’d avoided Adam for the remainder of the evening. The mere sight of him provoked a blush like a hemorrhage into her face.
But she’d been touched with pleasure, too. For she was a vain woman, at heart. Marina Troy, Virgin Queen .
In fact, the celebrated Hilliard portraits of Elizabeth I, which Marina sought out the next
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