To Paradise

“You asked me earlier why I wanted Mister Griffith for you, and I answered you honestly: because I sensed from Frances’s report of him that he was someone who would not harm you, who would want nothing from you but your company, who would never abandon you. You are intelligent, David; you are perceptive. But in this matter, you are unwise, and long have been, have been since you were a boy. I cannot take credit for your gifts—but I can protect you from your deficiencies. I can no longer send you away, though if you would, if you cared to, I would gladly do it. But I can warn you, with everything I have, to not make the same mistake again.”

He had not thought, despite his grandfather’s earlier allusion, that he would mention the events of seven years ago, the events that, he sometimes thought, had changed him forever. (And yet he knew that was wrong: It was almost as if what had happened was preordained.) He had been twenty-one, just out of college, taking a year of art school before joining Bingham Brothers. And then, one day early in the term, he had been walking out of class and had dropped his supplies, and when he knelt to retrieve them, there was someone by his side, a classmate of his named Andrew who was so sunlit, so effortless in his charm, that David, upon registering his existence the first day of class, had not spent any further time observing him—he was so far beyond the kind of person who might ever want to know him. Instead, he had talked to and made efforts to befriend the men like him: the quiet, sober, mouselike ones, the ones who, in recent weeks, he had succeeded in meeting for a cup of tea or a lunch, where they would together talk about books they’d read, or works of art they were hoping to copy as they became more skilled. These were the people to whom he belonged—usually the younger siblings of more dynamic elder sisters or brothers; competent students but not distinguished; pleasing in looks but not exceptional; able but not memorable conversationalists. They were, all of them, heirs to fortunes that ranged from good to extraordinary; they had, all of them, moved from their parents’ houses to their boarding schools to their colleges and then back to their parents’, where they would remain until a marriage could be arranged for them with a suitable man or woman—some would even marry one another. There was a group of them, artistic-minded and sensitive boys, granted a year of indulgence by their parents before they would be sent back to school or join their parents’ companies, as bankers, as shippers, as traders, as lawyers. He knew this, and he accepted it: He was one of them. Even then, John was first in his class at college, studying law and banking—though he was only twenty, his marriage to Peter, also his classmate, had already been arranged—and Eden the head girl at her school. His grandfather’s annual midsummer party was crammed with their friends, rafts of them, all shouting and laughing beneath the net of candles that the servants had hung earlier across the garden.

But that had never been David, and he knew it never would be. He was, for most of his life, left alone: His name had protected him from abuse and harassment, but he was largely ignored, never sought, and never missed. And so, when Andrew had, that afternoon, first spoken to him and then, over the successive days and weeks, talked to him more and more, David had felt himself becoming unrecognizable. Here he was, laughing out loud, in the street, like Eden; here he was, arguing petulantly and being thought adorable for it, as John did when he was with Peter. He had always enjoyed being intimate with others, though he long had been too shy to pursue it—preferring to visit the brothel he had been patronizing since he was sixteen, where he knew he would never be rejected—but with Andrew, he asked for what he wanted and received it; he was emboldened, elated with his new understanding of what it meant to be a man, a person in the world, young, rich. Ah, he remembered thinking, so this is it! This is what John felt, what Peter felt, what Eden felt, what all his classmates with their merry voices, their echoing laughter, felt!

It was as if he had been seized by a madness. He introduced Andrew—the son of doctors from Connecticut—to Grandfather, and when, afterward, Grandfather, who had remained mostly silent during their dinner, a dinner through which Andrew had been at his sparkling best and David had smiled at everything he said, wondering at his grandfather’s silence, had told him he thought Andrew “too studied and pert,” he had dismissed him, coldly. And when, six months later, Andrew became vague in his presence, and then stopped calling on him, and then began avoiding him altogether, and David began sending him bouquets of flowers and boxes of chocolates—excessive, embarrassing declarations of love—only to receive no messages at all, and then, later yet, the chocolate boxes returned with their ribbons uncut, his letters still sealed, his packages of rare books unopened, he ignored his grandfather still, his kind inquiries, his efforts to distract him with offers of the theater, the symphony, a trip abroad. And then, one day, he had been desultorily pacing around the perimeter of Washington Square when he saw, their arms linked, Andrew with another man he knew from their class, the class David had stopped attending. He knew the man by face but not by name, but he knew that he was from the kind of people to whom Andrew belonged, and from which people he had strayed to spend time—from curiosity, perhaps—with David. They were alike, two spirited young people, walking together and chatting, their faces bright with happiness, and David found himself first walking and then sprinting toward them, falling upon Andrew and crying out his love and yearning and hurt, while Andrew, at first agog and then alarmed, tried initially to appease him and then to push him away, his friend swatting about David’s head with his gloves in a scene made more ghastly by the passersby who had gathered to watch and point and laugh. And then Andrew gave him a mighty shove, and David fell backward, and the two ran away, and David, still desperate, found himself in Adams’s arms, Adams, who shouted at the gawkers to get away as he half carried, half dragged David back to the house.