The Rose Garden Read Online Free Page A

His days were spent sitting in a window in his clubthere. This club, a massive, majestic building on upper Fifth Avenue, had been in Tom’s heart since the day in his eighth year when his grandfather had brusquely interrupted a peaceful afternoon at home to rush him there in a taxicab. Tom, at eight, was already accustomed to being taken into splendid establishments, and he waited confidently for his grandfather to conduct him up the broad stone steps and through the great iron door, where respectful servants would bow and take their hats and coats. But his grandfather, instead of going forward, grabbed him by the hand and proceeded around to the side of the building, which overlooked a narrow, luxurious street. There on the sidewalk, the old man stood beside his grandson and glared up at the second-floor windows, three of them, each framing a seated, apparently lifeless man. Heavy curtains hung about the windows, and the room within was lighted, but not brightly. It was a towering room. Tom could glimpse the dark, carved, curving ceiling and part of a glimmering chandelier. The men in the windows appeared very old to him, but perhaps they were only elderly. Two of them seemed to be drowsing. The third, a thin-faced, upright man with silver hair, stared icily into the street. Tom’s grandfather raised his stick and pointed upward in choler. “There he is,” he growled. “There’s the rascal who did me out of my rights. This is the only club in New York I’m not admitted to, thanks to him. He’s responsible. He got them to turn me down.” Turning his gaze on Tom, he shouted, “And you’ll never get in there, either, you little rat.” Tom loathed his grandfather, a self-made man who loved his grandson because he was his grandson but despised him because he was a rich little boy. When the old man was in a good humor, he liked to take Tom on his knobby knees and grin balefully into his plump, gloomy little face. “And what are you thinking now, dirty little boy?” he would whisper, and then, with a bellow of glee, he would part his knees and tumble his dejected burden rudely to the floor.
    Years later, Tom’s father became a member of the club his grandfather had been kept out of, and at twenty-one Tom, too, was admitted. The thin-faced old man Tom’s grandfather had pointed out to him no longer sat in the second-story window. Tom quickly appropriated his chair. He felt timid about doing this, but to his astonishment no one else seemed to want it. The elderly men and the middle-aged men had been seduced away, first by the club movie room and then by the new television room, and the younger men darted in and out, having no patience for anything. Tom felt with disappointment that club life had lost its grandeur. There was a rowdiness, unheard but felt, that Tom was sure was not consistent with gentlemanliness. He struck up no friendships with his fellow-members.
    Tom arrived at the club every day at ten o’clock. In the mornings, he sat in the chair by the window, reading the papers. At twelve-thirty, he made his way to the dining room and enjoyed a two-hour lunch, always eating alone, always at the same table. All the imagination and appreciation he was capable of were spent at the luncheon table. In the afternoons, he simply sat and watched the street. At five o’clock, he sent for his car, quartered at a nearby garage, and drove home to Liza.
    Early one October, Liza received a telephone call that disturbed her very much. The call was from Clara Longacre, who invited her to drop over for bridge the same afternoon. Clara, at thirty, was the recognized social leader at the Retreat—merely because, Liza often thought viciously, of having grown up there. Clara’s natural sense of superiority made it impossible for her to doubt herself. She knew she was better than anybody else. She was untouchable. Liza longed more than anything in the world to impress