Though I hadn’t received word, I knew the baby was real. The previous doctor had all but told me it was an impossibility and yet I knew there was a child, Thomas’s child, growing inside me. I lay back on the bed. I had been so sure the letter would arrive and I’d hoped I could tell Thomas before Harry got to the Manor. I imagined, over and over, the look on his face when I would tell him. I would have a child with the man I truly loved, respected and admired. I knew he would be so happy. But then fear began to seep back in.
I began running over and over in my head what Jeanie might know. She could suspect, but was there any way she could know anything for sure? Once I was at the lighthouse Thomas and I let our guard down completely. During his time off we’d walk the grounds hand in hand. On the beach we had once gotten carried away and made love, telling ourselves no one was ever down that way. We took a picnic to the cliffs and drank wine and talked in the long grass. I had taken it for granted that when I was there I was safe, but maybe someone had seen us. Maybe one of the keepers talked at Shagwong’s. Maybe Jeanie had convinced George to tell her about the trips to the light. Maybe the bellboy who saw me sneak into my room at the Manor early that one morning had talked. Suddenly it didn’t seem I had been careful at all.
I had barely taken three full, deep breaths to pull myself together when there was a knock at the door.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am.” It was the porter. “I have a message from Mr. Bordeaux. He has arrived at the Manor and requests that you meet him in the lobby at seven o’clock for dinner.”
I closed and locked my jewelry box, splashed my face with water and began to dress for dinner. We continued to put on a show for everyone that our marriage was intact. When he was in Montauk he sent word for me to meet him and I met him, laughed when it was appropriate to laugh, smiled when it was appropriate to smile, and then at the end of the evening we’d go our separate ways.
* * *
It was a big dinner meeting with the Fisher investors and their wives. They were excited about the investment, their big plans for Montauk, about the ball, about the final weekend of summer. Many of the husbands had taken this last week off as vacation and would stay in Montauk through Labor Day Monday, when they’d pack up and head back to their city lives. There was a slightly drunken air about everyone even when we first arrived. Harry immediately assimilated and I was glad. If anything looked different about me, my fuller face, my anxiety, my slightly larger breasts, he would never notice
It was as if I weren’t there at all, as if my body was there, present, but my mind was at the lighthouse, finding Thomas engrossed in some task, fingers oily, hair pushed back from his face, and me standing there smiling, beaming, bursting at the seams before he asked me, “What is it?” And then I’d tell him, “I’m going to have your baby.” My thoughts were anywhere but on that dinner, making small talk with people I knew I’d never have to see again. I imagined myself back in the city on the Tuesday after Labor Day, waiting for Harry to go to work, making a coffee, then as soon as the door shut behind him I’d gather my belongings, only the things I really needed, then leave a note on the bed telling him I wouldn’t be coming back.
* * *
Harry summoned me again on Friday—an end-of-summer gathering at the Lobster Shack. I thought I couldn’t go one more day without seeing Thomas, but Harry wouldn’t let me out of his sight and I still hadn’t received the doctor’s letter. Harry was close to closing the deal and he wanted to appear the perfect family man, loyal husband, trustworthy investor, just the right man to hold the fate of Montauk’s tallest building in his hands.
After the Lobster Shack a few different dinner groups joined and mingled at the bar in the Manor. Perched on a red velvet barstool, I leaned against the long mahogany bar and lost myself to the sound of the band playing an excellent rendition of “My Reverie.” I sipped my martini, but it didn’t go down easy and the gin burned my throat. Then the singer with the beautiful voice sang “It Had to Be You.” I looked over to Harry sitting two seats down with an investor in a thick bluish-white cloud of cigar smoke.
“It’s the Jews pushing for us to get involved, I’m telling you,” the man said to Harry.
“Could be, but we’ll never do it; we’re not going to fight another country’s problems, not going to happen. We’ve got enough problems of our own.” Harry laughed.
“It could happen,” the man said, blowing another voluminous cloud of cigar smoke around the two of them. “There are seeds of war being thrown on fertile ground, my friend, very fertile ground.”
“You don’t think we’d really go to war, do you?” I leaned over toward them at the bar. I didn’t really want to join their conversation, but it was the first time I’d heard someone say, so emphatically, that it could happen.
They turned, annoyed that I’d interrupted. “I keep reading about Europe in the papers,” I said. “Seems like tensions are high. America will stay out of it, though, won’t they?”
Harry shrugged.
“Look at Japan; they are hungry for it and it’s like I said.” The man looked irritated that he had to repeat himself for the sake of a lady, even if I was Harry’s lady. “The only problem we’d have is if the Jews keep at it. They support war; they want us to go over there for the rest of the Jews. That’s the issue.”
“Do they? I don’t think they do.”
“Enough of all this miserable talk.” Harry knocked back the rest of his drink and turned away from me, getting into another conversation. Jeanie was walking toward me and we locked eyes. I regretted ever taking my eyes off my martini.
“Hello, Beatrice,” she said, sauntering toward me. She was wearing a black feathered cape around her shoulders that on anyone else might have looked astounding, but on her it looked severe and reminded me of the geese. “Nice to see you spending some time with your husband.”
“Yes,” I said. “He’s been here for a few days.” Harry was just steps away, engrossed in conversation with investors.
“Say, I stopped in and paid a visit to that nice lighthouse keeper the other day.”
The palpitations began. I could reach out and touch Harry if I’d wanted to; that’s how close we were. I was sure he wasn’t listening, but Jeanie’s voice seemed to go up a notch or two in volume.
“What a handsome man he is, lovely, just lovely.” She gazed off into the distance and sipped her drink as if she was imagining some romantic moment they had shared. I knew exactly what Thomas would think of her. And lovely was probably not the first impression people got from him either—aloof, stoic, skeptical, maybe, but lovely was what you discovered only later if you were lucky. “Anyway, I asked him to present the stage at the ball.” She grinned at me and I wanted to shrink inside of myself. I couldn’t believe we were talking like this, about the man I loved, about the man whose child was a speck of life inside of me, the man who had been a secret, until now, and here we were speaking of him within ear’s reach of my husband. “He agreed, of course.”
He agreed? I could more imagine Jeanie repainting the outside of the lighthouse than I could see Thomas speaking publicly on a stage in front of several hundred dressed-up guests. “Of course I had to convince him,” she said. “I reminded him how important it was that he be a good sport.” I tried not to let my expression change. “And it’s just popped into my head, perhaps you should present it with him—since you seemed to have a hand in the stage being built. Am I right?”
“Me? No, I mean I just mentioned it in passing and some of the local gentlemen built it.” The words sounded rapid and shaky as they came out of my mouth.
“Anyway, let’s meet tomorrow before the ball, the three of us, you, me and what’s his name again? Oh yes, Thomas.” She said it seductively, letting the name roll off her lips and down her bosom and out into the room. “To discuss the announcement.” She winked and turned back to her husband, leaving me standing there alone, staring at the back of her dress.
“Well, actually, Jeanie.�
� I grabbed her arm maybe just a little too firmly. She turned abruptly, looked down at my grasp with disgust and pulled her arm away. “I was thinking about the check we’re going to hand to the school principal at the ball.” She raised her eyebrows. “I know you’ve been busy with other aspects of the preparations, but if you wanted to present the check with Clarissa and me that would be fine.”
Maybe if she felt more involved with the charity she could be buttered up. But she just laughed mockingly. “Oh, how generous of you,” she said. “Thanks for the formal invitation. I was already planning on it.” She turned and ordered another round at the bar.
She seemed tipsy and uninhibited. She could say something about me and Thomas at any moment, and I was grasping at anything I could possibly do to pacify her.
“I mean, maybe you could be the one to actually announce the amount we raised, it’s quite significant, and since you’ve been coming out here longer and know more people.”
“I sure do,” she said.
“Well, then, what is it that you want, Jeanie?” I pleaded in a low whisper. “Seems like you want something from me, but I have no idea what.”
She tapped the side of her martini glass with a red-painted nail. She looked away with a slight smile as if she had to consider this for a moment, but the silence was painful.
She took out a long, slim cigarette, placed it in her holder and waited. The bartender leaned over the bar and lit it for her. She inhaled deeply, then shot a column of smoke up to the high ceiling.
“I’m going to be the one heading up Winthrop’s March of Dimes chapter back in the city. Not you, not anyone else. I’m ideal for the job,” she said coldly. “I need to make sure it’s clear to him, and you can help me with that.”
“How on earth can I help with that?”
Jeanie took another drag of her cigarette. “How did you manage to get that photograph of you and Dolly in the East Hampton paper? And why is a New York City newspaper so interested in us all of a sudden?” She glared at me suspiciously.
“That was Dolly’s doing, not mine; she knows the photographer.”
She stared at me for what felt like a long minute and a drop of sweat trickled down the back of my neck. “Well”—she began to turn away—“if you’re not going to help then I suppose I’ll chat with the gents.” She turned toward Harry.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said quickly. “I’ll talk to Dolly about her friend who works for one of the papers in town.”
She slowly turned her eyes toward me, but not a muscle on her face moved to give any indication if I was heading in the right direction. “Go on,” she said.
“And I think Clark might also have some connection to the New York papers. What if I were to ask around and contact someone to ask if they’d write about your charity work, would that make you feel better?”
Summer was days away from being over. My writing about Montauk life was sure to end with it, and by the time anyone was able to put two and two together about my role in it I’d be out of that life for good and living a very different existence.
She raised one eyebrow ever so slightly. “A profile with a picture would suffice, and a mention that I’m considering taking the March of Dimes role,” she said. “I can provide the photograph.”
The thought of submitting something like this to Mr. Rosen made me cringe. What he’d liked was my honesty. I’d be betraying his trust and my own instincts, but I couldn’t risk her ruining everything when I was so close to starting my new life.
“I’ll let you get to work on that.” She began to turn away again. “Oh, and it should happen fast, appearing in print immediately after Labor Day weekend so that everyone sees it as soon as they get home from the summer vacation.”
“Jeanie, that’s only a few days away.”
“You’re a smart girl, Beatrice, and you’ve already proven yourself to be very, very resourceful.” She let out a taut, fake laugh and looked to Harry, then back to me. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out.” Then she turned and walked away to the other end of the bar.
“I Won’t Tell a Soul” rounded out the band’s set and I knocked back the last half of my martini in one gulp. I pushed my empty glass away from me, picked up my pocketbook and went up to my room.
34
It was the day of the ball and the Manor was transforming. In the main room workers laid down a dance floor, set up tables and dusted the enormous crystal chandelier, making it sparkle more than ever. They placed huge bouquets of hydrangeas around the room and polished candelabras with long candles positioned on almost every available surface. Luscious greenery intertwined with ribbons and flowers was secured down the staircase, making the Manor look even grander than it already was. They decorated smaller rooms for entertainment—fortune-tellers, magicians and various other forms of distraction. The décor committee placed and replaced centerpieces and table cards, making sure that the right people were seated together, according to the seating chart. There was an excitement in the air like that for an elaborate wedding.
Teams of women moved in groups around the Manor with intense, focused expressions as florists brought in more arrangements so tall they required several men to carry them in.
Mary Van de Coop walked up to me with a huge smile, her hair in spring-lock Bobett curlers, her makeup pristine and her “working clothes” clearly thought out.
“Isn’t this just fun?” she said, putting her face close up to mine. “And hard work, too,” she added, dabbing her perfect brow with a tissue.
“Your perfume,” I said instinctively; it was so overpowering I had to step back. My sense of smell had heightened and some smells, however lovely before, turned my stomach now.
“Vol de Nuit,” she said, grinning big, as if it were some big secret. “By Guerlain, that perfume has gotten me many things in life.” She ran her hand along her collarbone and rested her fingers on a cluster of diamonds that sparkled and dipped down into her robust cleavage, even on setup day.
“Oh, Mary,” I said, trying to laugh.
“It’s true, honey.” She linked her arm in mine and began to walk me over to her station. “If you want I can drop a hint in Harry’s ear for you. I’m telling you this perfume can change your life.”
“That’s okay,” I said. I had to turn my head away as I walked with her. “Where are we going?”
“I want you to look at the greeting table,” she said.
“Really?” I wasn’t used to the women caring about my opinion about this type of thing, but a few of them had shown a little more respect since the fundraising efforts, or maybe it was since I stood up to Jeanie.
“We need a lot of space because we’ll be handing out masks as the guests arrive.” She led the way to the front door.
“Do you think people will actually wear the masks, or do you think they’ll find it all a bit silly?”
She looked at me stunned, as if I’d asked if the guests might all arrive in the nude. “Well, of course they will wear them, honey; why on earth wouldn’t they? This is going to be the most fun we’ve had all summer. Oh, and for the locals, it will be the most lavish party they’ve ever attended.”
I couldn’t wait to see Thomas in just a few hours and he’d be dressed up and handsome.
“Don’t you think?” Mary nudged me. “They’ve never been to a party like this.”
“I’m sure they know how to throw a good party themselves, Mary, especially in the off-season when they’re not catering to us city folk all the time.”
“I doubt it.” She patted my arm. “So should we have the table here right inside the doorway, or back here, more in the main room?”
I looked at the space. “Probably right by the door, so that people can put on their masks.” There was a short hallway that led from the dramatic Tudor-style front entry to the main room of the Manor. “In fact, if we could put up some sort of curtain here”—I pointed to the end of the hallway—“then we could ensure that everyone is properly disguised befo
re they enter.”
Mary clapped her hands. “Yes, red velvet curtains, great idea. Also,” she hushed her voice to a loud whisper, “we want to see who they are before they put on their masks and enter the party, make sure we don’t have any uninvited guests.”
“Oh, Mary, I don’t think we have to worry about that kind of thing.”
She ignored me. “I’ve seen some curtains in the Manor somewhere; I’m going to ask if they can be set up here.”
There was something thrilling about it all. I’d spent the entire summer with all of these people and then the thought of drinking and dancing and talking with guests we might or might not know felt very mysterious. To think of Thomas and me together in a room full of people, able to talk, to brush past each other, in full sight—I willed the hours to pass faster. But in the next moment my excitement turned to anxiety when I thought of Harry. Foreboding filled the space that had been warmth.
Outside, a few of the men directed the workers on the front lawn, where the party would inevitably expand. They pointed out where cocktail tables should be arranged and orchestrated where the bar should go. The stage was stacked in large pieces and more workers were beginning to assemble it on the lawn. None of the Manor folk were doing any of the heavy lifting. Harry was smoking a cigar, observing.
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