Vixen

by Jillian Larkin

  It quickly became clear that Gloria was nowhere in the house or on the grounds. Mrs. Carmody rearranged seating plans while Archibald sent in a fresh round of hors d’oeuvres.

  By the time Clara rejoined the party, the house was overflowing with guests. A year before, Clara’s instinct would have been to shamelessly flirt with the good-looking waiter in the white tuxedo while nibbling the caviar canapés he carried. But the new Clara had responsibilities. Instead, she would have to curry favor with this witless battalion of girls and their fat mothers.

  “So you’re Gloria’s cousin,” the leader of the pack began. She was an angelic-looking girl, complete with dimples and blond ringlets. In her pink dress, she looked like a half-chewed wad of chewing gum. “How long are you planning on staying with the Carmodys?”

  “At least until I don my bridesmaid’s dress at Gloria’s wedding—which I’m sure you already know is the main reason I’m here,” Clara said. The girls murmured and shook their curls. “You girls must be the ones selected to compete in the Chicago beauty pageant that Gloria told me about.”

  Clara worried she was laying it on too thick, but the pink one tittered and asked, “Why would you say that?”

  “Why, because you are all such beauties!” And by beauties, Clara really meant: Have you ever heard of this revolutionary product called lipstick? Because you might want to try it out.

  But no matter: Each girl beamed as if Clara had offered the compliment just to her. In New York, Clara would’ve crushed them under the heels of her Mary Janes like the sugary rainbow Necco wafers they resembled.

  This was way too easy.

  “Believe it or not, we are just her friends from Laurelton Prep,” one of the girls said, hiccuping. No girl with that unfortunate sallow complexion should be caught dead near the color yellow.

  “Oh, Gloria has told me so much about you!” Clara said. “You must be—”

  “I’m Virginia—but you can call me Ginnie—and this is Helen, Betty, and Dorothy—but you can call her Dot, or even Dottie.” Ginnie made these introductions as she must have learned in etiquette class, leaving a two-second pause between names so each girl had time for a short curtsy. “Will you be joining us in school?”

  “I graduated last year”—a lie, since Clara had skipped most of her senior year—“from high school in Pennsylvania.”

  “Oh, I have a cousin who goes to Macy Plains School!” Betty (the blue one) chirped.

  “I have one who goes to the Grier School!” Helen (the peach one) exclaimed.

  “My family all goes to school … here!” Dorothy/Dot/Dottie added. “Not everyone has the grades for prep school!”

  Helen turned to her. “Dot, what are you talking about? You go to Laurelton Prep with us!”

  Dottie laughed. “Oh, of course! Silly me!”

  Clara had to bite her cheek to prevent herself from laughing at this round of boarding school name-dropping. They all blinked at her expectantly. “I went to public school in Mount Lebanon,” she admitted. “But during my freshman year, Scott and Zelda rented a cottage right down the road from my house.”

  This was true—only, Clara had been on Martha’s Vineyard for the summer, not in a suburb of Pittsburgh. Why would the Fitzgeralds bother with Pittsburgh? But she figured if she was going to lie, she had to lie big.

  “Wait! The Fitzgeralds?” Ginnie exclaimed, clasping her hands together. “You mean Scott F.? He’s the cat’s whiskers!”

  “Pos-i-lute-ly!” Clara said. Though it is F. Scott, you dimwit. She beckoned the girls closer. “They threw such outrageous, loud parties! One night, my father called the cops on them. And guess what the cops found?” The girls waited in eager anticipation. “Oh, I don’t know if I should tell you this—”

  “Tell us! Tell us!” they squealed.

  “They found an orgy. Right on the back lawn! And Zelda was only twenty!” The girls all gasped at hearing such a dirty secret about the most notorious debutante of all. The deb who’d gone completely flapper.

  Clara knew exactly who these girls were: Their version of rebellion was hearing the word orgy—whether they knew what it meant or not—right under the noses of their mothers.

  “Did you actually meet them?” Ginnie whispered.

  Clara was about to dive into some made-up details when the noise in the room dropped to a hiss.

  Lorraine had entered the salon.

  And oh, what an entrance it was! With her dark, smudged eyes and black false lashes, she looked like a scary sorceress. She was wearing a sleeveless white frock, decorated at the bottom with a wild red geometric pattern that called attention to its knee-baring length. Atop her head was a sparkly black cloche hat, a thick fringe of stick-straight bangs peeking out, and draped carelessly around her shoulders was a shiny black mink stole.

  It was obvious she was tipsy. Lorraine pushed past Archibald at the door and staggered into the room, her rhinestone bangles and fake pearls clinking and clanking and her pointy-toed red high heels clacking.

  “Well, would you look at what the cat dragged in,” Ginnie said under her breath.

  Betty agreed. “My mother would never let me out of the house looking like that. Not that I would even try such a stunt.”

  Helen snorted. “Lorraine, always good for a laugh.”

  “You know what they say,” Dot said. “Laughter is the best medicine.”

  Oh no, Clara thought as Lorraine made a beeline straight for her. Everything she needed to know about Lorraine had been revealed last night at the Green Mill. A girl that desperate to be the center of attention could never be trusted.

  “Fancy meeting you here, mes chéries!” Lorraine double-cheek-kissed each girl in the circle, pausing when she got to Clara. “I take it you all have met our new addition, straight from the pumpkin patches?”

  “You are so … amusing, Lorraine,” Clara said.

  “Where is the guest of honor?” Lorraine asked, casting her gaze around the room.

  “I’m right here.”

  “Ha. I mean Gloria. The real guest of honor.”

  Clara sipped her lemonade. “I thought you would be able to tell us. But it’s clear you don’t know anything more than we do.”

  Lorraine’s eyes narrowed. “I’m sure she’ll turn up.”

  “Clara was just telling us about Pennsylvania,” Betty said.

  “Oh, I know! Isn’t it just horrid? Can you imagine going to a public school, where everyone is the unwashed child of a farmer or factory worker? It’s just simply beyond imagining!” Lorraine laughed. “We had to take her shopping the second she arrived, just to get her some proper clothes, poor thing.”

  “Since Lorraine is obviously the expert in that department,” Clara said, motioning to Lorraine’s zany dress.

  Lorraine ignored her. “You should have seen this one last night,” she said.

  “Oh, I didn’t see you at the country club dinner dance!” Dorothy exclaimed, her mouth filled with some type of puff pastry.

  Lorraine snickered. “No, we were at the … oh, it’s too big a secret.”

  “Tell us! Please,” the girls begged.

  “If you promise not to tell a soul,” Lorraine ordered. Which Clara knew meant they should tell as many people as humanly possible. “We went to the Green Mill. Me. Gloria. Marcus Eastman,” Lorraine said, snatching a glass of seltzer with lime from a waiter. “And Clara. She came, too.”

  The girls goggled. They looked at Clara with fresh eyes and began a succession of rapid-fire questions:

  “Did you drink gin?”

  “Did you meet any hard-boiled gangsters?”

  “Did that rake Marcus Eastman try to seduce you?”

  Before Clara could answer, Lorraine chimed in: “You should have seen poor little Clara—the whole point of going to a speakeasy is to get sloshed, and this one wouldn’t even touch the stuff! Must be traumatized from all the pig slaughtering back on the farm.”

  “You might have been better off following my lead, Raine,
considering what Marcus said about you,” Clara said.

  That shut Lorraine up fast. “He said something about me?”

  Clara took a slow slip of her drink. “Something about how if Lorraine feels the need to fake drunk, she probably fakes everything else, too.”

  The girls giggled.

  Lorraine looked as if she’d taken a bullet to the heart. She opened her handbag and withdrew a silver flask.

  “Lorraine!” Ginnie, Betty, Helen, and Dorothy all exclaimed. Which Lorraine clearly interpreted as disbelief—not as a warning that Mrs. Carmody was standing right behind her.

  Lorraine laughed nastily. “Well, that little killjoy doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about!”

  Mrs. Carmody pried the flask from Lorraine’s hands. “Girls, dinner will be ready in just a moment.” She smiled politely but kept her grasp firmly on Lorraine’s arm. “May I speak with you, please? Outside?”

  Lorraine had the decency to look ashamed. “Oh, Mrs. Carmody, I’m so sorry—”

  “Now, Lorraine,” Mrs. Carmody said. She handed the flask to Clara. “Dear, will you dispose of that? Discreetly?”

  “Of course,” Clara said. She plucked a fanned napkin off a nearby table and wrapped it around the flask.

  “But, Mrs. Carmody, it’s my father’s liquor!” Lorraine protested.

  “That’s enough, Lorraine.” Mrs. Carmody led the girl from the room.

  “I would not want to be her right now,” Ginnie remarked once Lorraine was gone. “Mrs. Carmody is the worst when it comes to social faux pas. She’s like the high-society Grim Reaper.”

  But Helen didn’t seem to care at all. She looked at Clara with renewed curiosity. “Did Marcus Eastman really say that? To you? I am so impressed.”

  Clara couldn’t believe it: Marcus was like Charlie Chaplin to these girls—they were reduced to a bunch of drooling teenagers at the mention of him. “He’s supposed to be here tonight, too, but he’s late. When he comes, I can introduce you all, if you’d like.”

  “Yes!” the girls burst out in unison.

  Just then, a fat little fellow in a too-tight tuxedo—Mrs. Carmody’s “man,” Archibald—stepped into the room and rang a silver bell. So pretentious. “Dinner,” he intoned in his fake British accent, “will now be served.” Then he bowed.

  Ginnie and Betty linked their arms in Clara’s, leading her toward the dining room.

  “Oh, Mother!” Ginnie exclaimed, spotting a heavyset woman who looked identical to her save for an uncountable roll of chins. “You must meet Gloria’s cousin!”

  Clara curtsied. “I could have sworn you were Virginia’s older sister!”

  Mrs. Bitman beamed, running a finger over her pearl necklace. “How sweet you are,” she said, with a heavy Southern drawl.

  “Mother, we must invite her to my party next week,” Ginnie said, then added to Clara, “Maybe you can even bring Marcus Eastman!”

  “Why, he would be a delightful addition to your party.” Mrs. Bitman grinned warmly at Clara. “Aren’t you a dear for thinking of him for my Ginnie?”

  “Of course, Mrs. Bitman,” Clara said. “Marcus was saying to me just the other night that he longs to find a girl from a family of quality, and Ginnie is obviously a young woman of real breeding and gentility.”

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Bitman said. “Though it appears that Pennsylvania is doing its fair share to add truth and beauty to the world.” She turned to a group of nearby guests. “Did you all hear? Miss Knowles here is trying to make a match between my Ginnie and Marcus Eastman. Certainly the type of gentleman caller I approve of!” A girlish ooooh rose up from the assembled mothers.

  “It’s my pleasure,” Clara said. Gentleman caller? Seriously? Had Mrs. Bitman grown up on a plantation? Probably. In the hall, Mrs. Carmody was once again directing traffic, her face now as white as her pearl earrings.

  “I do hope you seated your niece near us!” said Ginnie as she passed Mrs. Carmody. “She’s the berries!”

  “Yes, the kitten’s purr!” Betty added.

  Mrs. Carmody looked at Clara with warmth in her eyes for the first time since her arrival. “Clara, why don’t you sit in Lorraine’s spot, which is closer to the other girls? Since she won’t be joining us.”

  “My pleasure!” Clara said, then was carried past Mrs. Carmody into the dining room by a crush of chattering girls.

  Clara had seen this room before, of course—it was the largest room on the ground floor, but one that the Carmodys rarely used. Mostly it sat empty, dark and full of dust and heavy furniture lurking in the shadowy depths. But now it had been transformed.

  Shutters Clara hadn’t known were there had been thrown open, and all the heavy furniture had been taken away. In its place were a dozen round white tables, each surrounded by nine finely wrought white chairs. In the center of each table was a gaudy explosion of flowers—gladiolas and tulips, zinnias and hydrangeas, phlox and carnations and roses and more. A few flowers might have been nice, but these big piles of blossoms? Tacky. Clara looked away.

  But everywhere she looked, it got worse. The walls had been draped with swags of pastel bunting, and on each wall hung charcoal portraits of the couple laughing or dancing or having fun of some sort: doing things they would never have done in real life. Worst of all, in the center of the room stood a giant ice sculpture of—could it be? Clara winced—yes, icy figures of Gloria and Bastian Grey atop what looked like a big glass box. A skyscraper? A cake? Who cared.

  How much money had Mrs. Carmody squandered on this circus of awfulness? Didn’t she realize how desperately nouveau riche it was to be so showy?

  Clara swallowed and excused herself from her new “friends” to go to the powder room. But really, she just needed a moment to herself.

  She closed the door and leaned back against it, breathing easy for the first time in an hour.

  It had been a blessing in disguise that Gloria had gone missing, otherwise Clara might not have had the opportunity to win over this crowd. And Lorraine, too—Clara owed her—though, seriously, what was the girl thinking?

  As sheltered and shallow and irritating as these girls all were, they made Clara miss her best friends back in New York.

  She left the bathroom and was about to descend the stairs, when she was intercepted by Archibald. “A note arrived for you, Miss Knowles.”

  When she saw the handwriting on the envelope, her entire body turned as icy as that sculpted Gloria in the dining room. “Who gave this to you?”

  Archibald shrugged. “Just a messenger boy, miss. One of the maids signed for it.”

  “Thank you.” She took the envelope, dread dropping swiftly into her stomach.

  The ghosts of the past were supposed to stay in the past, not haunt her in the present. The only question was: Which ghost was this? And what did it want from her?

  With quivering fingers, she pulled the cream-colored paper out of its gold-foil-lined envelope. The inky black letters stared up at her.

  I’m coming for you

  LORRAINE

  Every flapper knows that a fashionably late entrance must always be matched by a fashionably late exit.

  Unfortunately for Lorraine, her exit wasn’t by choice. But so what? The last thing she wanted to do was waste her precious time faking pleasantries with all those dumb Doras from prep school. She could barely stand them during the school day—they were the type of girls who shared a passion for those prudish Jane Austen books, in which the promise of a sexless marriage always tied a girl’s problems up with a neat little bow, and then everyone had tea.

  Lorraine hated bows.

  What had she done wrong except show up in a fabulous outfit, take out a flask (as if no one in the room had ever seen one before!), and add spark to the dull conversation? Mrs. Carmody should be thanking her, not banning her from dinner! If Lorraine’s own mother had known (or cared), she would have been indignant! Maybe. And maybe even on Lorraine’s behalf.

  This whole unfortunate situation cou
ld have been avoided had Gloria been there. Lorraine didn’t know whether she was more upset because Gloria had left her to suffer alone with those cows, or because Gloria had disappeared. So unlike Gloria. Or rather: So unlike the Gloria she used to know. Her best friend had withheld yet another secret from her, and Lorraine knew that when individual secrets began to add up, total deception was not far away.

  Now she had to wait outside for her driver to pick her up.

  Ugh. She would have driven the spare car herself if the party hadn’t been the show-up-with-a-chauffeur sort. It would take him a while to get here, so she went for a stroll. Around the side of the house lay the perfect English garden—rows and rings of flower beds and fountains and, at the edge of the greenery, a wall of towering cypresses.

  It should have been peaceful. But Lorraine was in turmoil.

  From the direction of the house came the clatter of dishes and the faint laughter of girls. She couldn’t imagine any of them saying anything funny—except maybe some little snubs between the country club debs and country mouse Clara. And even that joke was growing stale.

  Because Clara was sharper than she appeared. Oh, she pretended to be sweet as blueberry pie, batting her lashes over those big doe eyes as though surprised by everything she saw. Then she’d open her mouth and make a comment that cut like a knife. She was sharp, that Clara was. And charming. In the short time Lorraine had been at the party—she winced a little at the memory—it had become clear that Clara was charming everyone. She had totally won Mrs. Carmody’s favor by being a boring good girl.

  Just like Lorraine used to be. There had been a time not that long ago when it would have been Lorraine who became the party favorite, Lorraine who effortlessly charmed society’s elite, Lorraine whom the boys looked for and longed to talk with.

  But something had changed. And now Lorraine was being outwitted by dim little hicks like Clara, her best friend was pulling away from her, and she was alone.