Free The New York Stories of Elizbeth Hardwick by Elizabeth Hardwick

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    Dear, darling Edgar! His silvery eyes, light and cool, revealing nothing except pure possibility, like a coin in the hand. His cheerfulness — in a soft voice he nearly always hummed a little tune, as other people vaguely chew, and with him one had the cozy feeling of a radio softly playing away in a corner. His generous, warm nature, immune to insult in a delightful fashion, quite disarming.
    What was I, my head happily pressed against his chest, criticizing in him? Everything! For his edification I took him apart nightly, as if his character were a bad novel. I seem to remember telling myself that it would be quite “dishonest” not to let him have it to the full. He would sigh and even sometimes fall asleep as I, incorrigibly driven to self-expression, would descend step by step from his soul to his clothes like a tired performer running out of material but unwilling to give up the stage. “The way you dress isn’t quite right, sweetheart! You’ve never really got the point of it all somehow. Only very good clothes grow more charming with age. A perfectly commonplace jacket from an old double-breasted suit just has to be thrown away when it’s old!”
    I have not seen Edgar for some years. When I think of him now it is always with pleasure, for the truth is that although I have met many nice and kind people I have never known anyone to be so nice to me . Recently I was reminded of him again when I came across some old scraps of fiction in which he figured, hardly disguised at all, and naturally not in what is called a favorable light. Reading these bits over I was struck by their remoteness from the truth. They are simply my lowest opinion. Perhaps even if I had wished to make Edgar sound less dreary a strange vanity would have prevented me from doing so. Nothing, says Valéry, so much gives a psychological air as the habit of depreciating.
    Here is one of my abandoned bits of “depreciation.” And now hard I worked on this little picture of Edgar and myself!
    “There were other young men around, all callow and boring, who reminded me that I was going to have a difficult time finding a husband. I judged people mercilessly and yet I had a sharp longing for an ideal companion or, when I was depressed and lowered my demands, ‘just someone to talk to.’ And of course there was someone. At eight in the evening I was dressed, a touch of cologne on my neck, red polish on my nails, and I felt excited and relieved that he was coming, my sweetheart , whom I honestly liked hardly at all. His name was Edgar Mason, a political-science teacher at the university. He had been coming in the evening for three years and everyone pronounced me lucky to have such a decent fellow in love with me, waiting for me to make up my mind, ‘not half bad-looking,’ quite popular. If he happened to be ten minutes late I found with surprise that this made me very impatient and unhappy, although when he finally arrived, when I at last saw his car driving up to my house, my mood changed horribly. As I went down the stairs I was overcome by such lassitude I could hardly manage a pleasant greeting. Fortunately, my suitor was not of a resentful nature. He took my moods as he took the weather, a subject for comment but not for emotion.
    “Edgar would be freshly shaved, wearing a white shirt and feeling inexpressibly attractive. He too smelled of cologne, or of some ‘sportsman’ talc. I would immediately notice his health and vitality and feel somewhat aggrieved by these qualities. When our eyes met I imagined a subtle exchange took place which made me less than myself and gave him the loss, just as if he had taken the lion’s share from a plate of chops. I was never so tired as when I was with Edgar and he was never so energetic and content as in my presence. I held his hand for a moment, enjoying touching his short, thick fingers and I sighed deeply as it flashed through my mind that it was nice to have ‘someone’ or perhaps I