"The anxiety, which in this state of their attachment must be the portion of Henry and Catherine, and of all who loved either, as to its final event, can hardly extend, I fear, to the bosom of my readers, who will see in the tell-tale compression of the pages before them, that we are all hastening together to perfect felicity."
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (New York: Bantam, 1985), at p. 210 (1st Pub. 1804).
I'm Charles Morland. I go to Trinity School in Manhattan. Next year I'll be going Yale University. My dad is a lawyer. I guess I am just the typical New York kid. I live at the Anscome on the Upper West Side. I've seen through the whole party circuit at seventeen. I feel kind of jaded about life. I'm fashionably cynical, most of the time.
The most romantic thing happened to me about a week ago! I was with my family in East Hampton -- even though it is late in the season, we like to go there on some weekends -- and I met this amazingly beautiful woman (right out of "Gossip Girl"!) named Henrietta Tilney. She's twenty-three! Henrietta is an older woman. I was reading -- for maybe the tenth time -- Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. Henrietta just walked right up to me, looking so gorgeous that I stopped breathing, I may have peed down my leg, and she said:
"Hey, mister ... I got a little trouble and I need to hire a private dick."
I was, like, shocked and "dumb struck"! -- that doesn't mean stupid, just silent. They say that a lot in old books. People are always being "dumb struck." I love to read. Don't get me wrong, I don't look geeky or overly studious or anything. But I am pretty smart in a cool sort of a way. I didn't know what to say. And I am usually pretty witty. Then I realized what the perfect response would be:
"I'll need fifty bucks a day, plus expenses."
We both laughed. That broke the ice really smoothly. I can be really smooth with women. We exchanged e-mails and cell numbers. We started texting each other right away. We agreed to meet later that day to see "Grey's Anatomy" on her lap top at the local Starbucks. One thing led to another and we've become really good friends.
I also have a British friend named Highway, Charles Highway. I always say it that way, like "Bond, James Bond." We're known, rather predictably, as Charles and Charles. He's going to Oxford next year because he couldn't get into Cambridge. Anyway, Charles Highway lives with his sister about two floors below my apartment. We go to movies together sometimes, basketball games, things like that. Charles is reading Byron and all these Romantic poets. He wears Hogwarts scarfs everywhere, even in the summer. We both love Harry Potter books. We don't admit to Potter-madness anymore because it would be very uncool.
There's a party on Friday at Highway's place. Highway has invited Henrietta. All of these girls -- I mean, young progressive women -- are coming over. They've bought new clothes and everything. I thought it would be great to have a theme for this party, even though Charles' sister is getting engaged to this guy -- who is almost our age! -- and that's supposed to be the reason for the festivities. I said, "Let's make it a Noir party!" Everybody has to be dressed like the forties, preferably in Truman Capote-inspired black and white. I'm going to look like Humphrey Bogart playing Dashiell Hammett's "Sam Spade" in The Maltese Falcon. Highway is going as Dick Powell playing Philip Marlowe in Farewell My Lovely. It'll be "the cat's pijamas." They also say that in old books. "The cat's pijamas ..."
Henrietta couldn't stop laughing when she got the e-mail. Henrietta is going to our masked ball as Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep -- you know, the movie and not the book. In my room I have all of these genuine movie posters from the forties, fifties, all the way up to today. They're all about detective movies. I love the clothes in those old movies. The women were so beautiful then. Henrietta always talks to me about these books. I was amazed because she loves them too -- and she's a girl!
I mean Henrietta is a powerful and empowered progressive female concerned about "issues." We're both voting for Barack. I can't vote yet, but you know what I mean. I got one of those t-shirts at Urban Outfitters that have Barack's picture -- I mean Senator Obama's picture -- and that have .42 at the bottom, like it's a stamp or something. And Barack'll probably get a stamp, someday, with his picture (G.W. won't!), probably after he's dead. You can't get your picture on a stamp until you're dead.
Henrietta smiles and laughs a lot when she talks to me. Girls -- empowered females -- are like that. They laugh and look at you with this tenderness, sometimes. There's this weird sparkle in their eyes. Henrietta's father is a retired general. Her mother had a lot of money from oil or something. Mrs. Tilney was really rich, then she died. You'd never know it because Henrietta's really nice to everybody, not snotty at all. Henrietta just graduated from Brown University, which is a really good school. Really. She's going to England to study history of art. We go to the MET Museum a lot. Henrietta will probably wind up as an art history professor. After the party, Henrietta said that she would like me to come to her family's place in Vermont for dinner and spend a weekend, around Thanksgiving maybe. I said, "sure." I'd love it.
Henrietta lives in this big building on Park Avenue, "The Northanger Arms," which has a dark and kind of gothic look to it. Henry James might have lived in this building or created a story with characters who lived in the place -- a story titled "The Purloined Aspern Papers" or something. It would have been really great if Philip Marlowe had been called to their apartment, going into the library to be hired by the old man, who appears sitting in a wheel chair, hoping to find his missing daughter -- that could be Henrietta, who has a great smile and small nose that wrinkles up when she laughs. Marlowe could have said to the butler: "I'll have a drink with my fifty bucks a day, plus expenses."
The party was great. Only a few people puked, except it was in the sink of the big bathroom. Charles is really pissed. I found this gray hat -- with a "stingy brim" -- that's what they call it. It must be from the fifties because in the forties the brim was wider on most hats. I found these great pants, definitely from the forties, in a thrift shop, and an old white tuxedo jacket that Don Ameche might have worn in the movies. I look pretty amazing for a total expenditure of $9.00.
Highway says that I was "overcharged." Whatever. I think he's jealous. Highway buys all these expensive and very "posh" clothes at Brooks Brothers because, since he's going to Oxford, he's memorized sections of Brideshead Revisited and wants to look like an Evelyn Waugh character. As a joke, Henrietta wants to get him a teddy bear at F.A.O. Shwartz, like the one Sebastian carried around in the story. I said that would jinx him because Sebastian was a tragic figure. Besides, I refuse to pay $75.00 to $100.00 for a stuffed animal. What kind of a moron would do that? Maybe for a girl or something. Empowered females like romantic stuff like that, sometimes.
The best clothes at this Noir party were worn by Holden and Esme -- these kids that go to my school -- who went as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers. They looked perfect with the tux (worn by her) and the dress and high heels (worn by him). Mad cool.
I went up to Henrietta's place in Vermont. It is really beautiful. In November, the whole state looks like a postcard -- leaves falling and gray skies. We spent a lot of time together. Henrietta's father is a tough kind of a guy, brisk, business-like at all times. I think he looked like one of those gangsters in books. He has an office in their house in Vermont and another in their New York apartment. Henrietta doesn't really know what he does. Plus, he's always talking to politicians on the phone. If this were the Prohibition era, he'd be planning to get shipments of booze into the country from Canada. Henrietta agreed. When I stayed at their place in Manhattan, I noticed the shadows that would extend along the floor, long silences and strange guys, old friends of the general in dark suits would stop by the house. Something didn't seem right. I should investigate to make sure Henrietta is safe.
Orson Wells would have filmed my adventure in black-and-white celluloid, from low angles and descending cameras to convey a sense of distorted perspective. Think of it as The Big Sleep in the visual language of Citizen Kane. We had this great conversation one night when we were all alone. I was having something they call, "mulled cyder." It's apple cyder, except it's hot and sweet -- like me! -- great on winter evenings in a place like Vermont. I never heard of it, then I had some "mulled cyder." I am going to have "mulled cyder" whenever I am on a skying weekend with attractive friends in sweaters, like in commercials. Apparently, people in New England have a lot of this stuff. If I get a cat, I'll call her "mulled cyder."
"Imagination is really the essence of intelligence," I said, defending novels against science. Henrietta agreed on the importance of imagination and creativity in the reinvention of the big questions that we can't help asking.
"I am sure that scientists and scholars in the humanities are after the same thing, but they don't talk to each other very much."
Henrietta loved these conversations about everything. She says most guys are morons.
"And I believe that it's the same for women. They're concerned with career and success only because they're convinced early in life that this will get them recognition as the equals of men at last. It's like you with your discovery of mulled cyder. These tokens are associated with a kind of life that's really a Madison Avenue invention, Charles."
When she said this, she was wearing one of those big, baggy old sweaters that I could tell had been worn from high school, jeans, and socks so thick that they looked like boots. No make up, her light chestnut-colored hair (charmingly) falling over the side of her face. The fire in her big dark townhouse was down to embers. Henrietta stirred the flames. I tossed in some more of this special aromatic wood.
"I think that life should be like one of those great Raymond Chandler novels." I said this knowing that she would laugh. "We have this scary adventure, then fall in love."
Henrietta agreed. "Falling in love is the great adventure -- and scary."
Her eyes had a look that was different from what I saw in the girls at my school. For women, there's a big transition between seventeen and twenty-three. The tenderness and concern in her expression -- also the slow touching of my face, as her eyes did not leave mine -- revealed understanding and sympathy, also desire and need. My emotions were overwhelming. It could not be the non-alcoholic mulled cyder. There was something so frail and yearning about her. Henrietta is child-like and womanly.
This paradox between vulnerability and strength, in equal measures, is the most universal quality in women I find both seductive and elusive. This enigmatic quality defines great movie stars -- like Marilyn Monroe or Kate Winslet. I saw Kate's picture on a magazine cover. Those lingering eyes that seemed to look into me are so beguiling. Kate always remains beyond the viewer's grasp. No one -- including Kate Winslet -- will ever decipher Kate's infinite mystery and the camera sees that ambiguity.
Kate Winslet seems to be planning her escape wherever she is, also she is fully present. I don't know how she does it. Many women are like that. I know that some part of Kate would discover that magazine on a newstand and wonder about the woman on the cover. "Who is that?" She'd ask herself: "Wouldn't it be great if I really looked like that in my own mind?" That has to be weird.
There is a master secret to figure out about each woman -- a simultaneous presence and absence of her persona -- which requires your cooperation if she is to achieve happiness and meaning. A woman needs a special kind of freedom, a space surrounding her that is recognized, even by the man who loves her and the gift of his absolute trust. Never try to control her. Never keep her in some kind of box. Open all the doors and windows. Just be "there" when she needs you. Never make it necessary for her to ask for privacy or solitude -- nor for your company -- you must know how and when to be present "for her." You have to be that magazine cover for Kate. You have to reflect back to her all of the beauty and intelligence that you see in her and that she may not see in herself. When she looks at you, she must see herself as beautiful and smart, funny and good, the way you see her. This is especially important when the rest of the world tells her that she is the opposite of those things.
"Romance may prove your point." Henrietta said this with the saddest smile that I've ever seen. I remember this story by Ford Madox Ford: "This is the saddest story that I've ever heard." We were happy and closer at that moment than we have ever been. Who is The Good Soldier in Henrietta's life? Not her dad, for sure. I sensed distance and coldness in her relationship with her father. I felt that there was something terribly wrong about that relationship, but it wasn't my place to comment.
Henrietta fears a sort of transformation into her father, a contamination, I think, due to complicity in whatever defense research or other evil stuff General Tilney does for the government. This is the kind of thing that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe that was part of her curiosity or interest in me. I was the opposite of her father.
I am a reminder, for Henrietta, of a childhood and adolescence now quickly disappearing into the past. The loss of these things -- the small territory of innocence and carefree play given to women -- is often the surrender of their futures, of all their dreams of limitless possibilities which the culture connects, exclusively, to women's youthful physical beauty. Women must surrender their futures at age 40 -- when they mostly disappear from movie screens and are expected to vanish from life, becoming the person who enters the room from the kitchen bringing everybody a sandwich.
Henrietta allowed me to understand feminism in a visceral, kick-in-the-balls way. I was angry and outraged that this fate and much worse was prepared for Henrietta before her life really began. I still feel that way. I won't let it happen. Henrietta is always the star of the movie when I am around. A woman you love should feel that way when she's with you. She's a glamorous movie queen at the Oscars; you're just the escort who steps back so the cameras can go off. Some guys can't handle that. It doesn't bother me.
Loss of youth and innocence always means that death has entered a woman's life as a companion, a reality to live with, in exchange for the god-like power to bring life into the world. I am sure that sexism is, partly, the result of some highly macho men's envy of this life-giving feminine power.
"Whenever the gods give you a gift," Truman Capote said, "they also give you a whip." For women, birth is the gift and death is the whip. Death is a roomate, copilot, classmate, always there. Women are closer to life, birth, or loving, also to death. This awareness of mortality is O.K., usually, provided that memory takes care of that childhood bliss for them, keeps it somewhere safe. This way she can pull her innocence out of the drawer -- like an old photo album. But it's not so good when memory is a wound bleeding uncontrollably, all the time. Memory can be something lost, taken from any of us in exchange for ... Alpo Dog Food commercials or shopping at the mall.
Imagination is a weapon against all of that glittering nothingness, like Philip Marlowe's .38 caliber police special. Imagination allows you to recreate the world in your terms in order to share that world with someone special. Imagination is the real key to a woman's heart.
That brings me back to falling in love which is all about imagination and creativity that allows you to see the truth in a woman. All the radical and really cold people who hate romance can't wait to fall in love themselves. Every one of them have relationships when they warm up -- if they can warm up. They buy candy and flowers for lovers, plus everybody likes sex that is "meaningful." We have a problem these days because love and romance have been totally cheapened by advertising and both good as well as bad movies. Everybody has seen Titanic fifty times. (I have a Leo and Kate shirt that I wear when nobody is around!)
Women sometimes invite men -- as a special challenge or quest -- to discover (then, reveal) that hidden place inside themselves, the magic castle where they really live, also to share that territory with them. Most men are too stupid to appreciate that invitation. Women sometimes need a surrogate keeper of memory, a cherisher of their earlier selves, who will appear when they doubt or suffer in response to death's entrance into a room or when they are hit with the sense of time's passage. Women need that keeper of the grail (the grail which is themselves) to say -- "No, you were and are, you always will be, beautiful. I'll always remember you."
Without that keeper of memory, the forced surrender of their futures may be accompanied by the loss of their pasts. This is a prescription for spiritual suicide. Yes, at around age forty in America, women are expected to die.
Every woman is a princess in a tower. You have to figure out how to reach her. There is no entrance to the tower. She may wear her hair short, no steps or ladders, all kinds of defenses and dragons obstruct you. Somehow, you must reach her. Find a way to show her the tower, within herself, in order that she may escape it, so as to reenter it at will. If you do that -- like Philip Marlowe getting a girl out of danger -- then you are always welcome to return to the magic tower. The tower is the only place where the two of you can be free, the hidden place in the center of herself, the place where she keeps the mirror of her love.
I kissed Henrietta. This may have been the first real kiss in my life. I sensed something weird and important that was happening to me that was not just sexual. This role of memory's keeper must be played by only one other person, the lover, for some wounded women -- he or she, this lover -- must become a fellow conspirator, a private eye contra mundus, whose loyalty and devotion are enlisted in the cause of rescuing innocense as well as hope, her infinite possibilities, along with the slim chance for a real future. I think there are Tarot cards that spell this out.
The "Princess in the Tower" holds the key to her prison. She does not know it. She must discover her lover, the person who can discharge this awful mission. Will it be this one? Or that one? Maybe he or she has always been standing next to you, except that you could not see that love. The only way the key works is if you hand it to someone you love, man or woman.
Henrietta let down her hair. We met again in New York, after the holidays. There was a terrible fight with her father. Henrietta decided that she could not go home again. I arranged for her to stay with me. I decided to put off Yale for a while, in order to travel with her to London. Henrietta needs a private eye to take care of her. Highway will be at Oxford in September. He suggested that we join him at "Michaelmas Term." He has been reading Waugh. I had some words with the old man. He's cutting her off, which is fine by us. He called me "a son of a bitch." That's o.k., I've been called worse.
"All right. I don't care anything about that. I've been called that by people of all sizes and shapes, including your little sister. She called me worse than that ... . I've got five hundred dollars from your father, which I didn't ask for, but he can afford to give it to me. I can get another thousand for finding Mr. Rusty Reagan, if I could find him. Now you offer me fifteen grand. That makes me a big shot. With fifteen grand I could own a home and a new car and four suits of clothes. I might even take a vacation without worrying about losing a case. That's fine. What are you offering it to me for? Can I go on being a son of a bitch, or do I have to become a gentleman, like that lush that passed out in his car the other night. ... "
I always wanted to say words like that from Chandler's The Big Sleep. It's a shame there's so little romance these days.
