Coming of Age by Deborah Beatriz Blum

Author:Deborah Beatriz Blum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

18

HOTEL PENNSYLVANIA

Margaret, we must have a little child together someday. In or out of wedlock. I just feel the mystical necessity.

—EDWARD SAPIR

July 1925

While they were at dinner they discussed the offer she’d received to work as an assistant curator at the museum.

“Goddard says it’s mine,” said Margaret. “It would start in the fall, after I get back from Samoa.”

“Somehow,” said Edward, “I feel it in my bones that you should refuse that offer.”

“You would be opposed to anything Goddard had to say. For my part, I can’t see how I could do much better for the next two or three years.”

Edward shook his head. “I say it on perfectly compelling, intuitive grounds.” Reaching out, he took her hand. “But I can see you have no intention of refusing it.”

They traveled up in the elevator, standing apart, as though they did not know each other.

When they’d entered the room and closed the door, she fell into his arms.

She didn’t know she could feel like this with a man.

* * *

The next morning he was in the bathroom shaving, a towel wrapped around his waist. Sunlight came in through the blinds. On the bedside table was a little box that held the ring he had given her the night before. The ring had been Florence’s wedding ring. Lying on her side, watching him, with the sheet pulled up over her chest, she started to laugh. “I think you left your razor strap at my parents’ house.”

“That’s where it is!”

“My mother told me ‘Dr. Sapir’ left something here.”

“Dr. Sapir?” He laughed. “You think it’s funny, don’t you?” Walking back to the bed, letting the towel drop, he pulled back the sheet and climbed in next to her. “You thought it was funny when she found us in the barn.”

“That’s not true.”

She rolled toward him, grabbing his arms and pinning him down. He tried to push back but she wouldn’t let him. They wrestled for a minute but he still couldn’t break free.

“You’re so strong,” he said. “Where does that come from?”

“I love you,” she said, still not letting him break free. “I love you.”

Afterward, while they were lying side by side, he said to her, “Margaret, we must have a little child together someday.”

She didn’t answer.

“In or out of wedlock. I just feel the mystical necessity.”

She looked up at the ceiling, studying a crack that ran across the white plaster.

“Do you agree?” he asked.

“Yes.”

They were in each other’s arms, her head on his chest. “My beloved,” she said.

When she was dressing he came up behind her and stood looking at their reflection in the mirror. “Are you happy? Is the nervous tension lessened?”

“Yes,” she said laughing.

“What are we going to do about Luther?”

“Luther?” She turned to look at him. “Why do we have to do anything about Luther?”

* * *

Ruth sat at the back of the small auditorium, listening to Edward’s lecture on patterns in language. He certainly had no trouble commanding the room. Many of his students were enthralled, especially the young women.

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