by Susan Isaacs
By the fourth year of their marriage, the Tuttles had three sons, a house on Fifth Avenue, a farm in Fairfield County, Connecticut (which their grandson, Nicholas Cobleigh, would inherit), a hundred-acre camp on Taylor Lake in the Adirondacks, and a flat in Mayfair.
They were as happy as they deserved to be. Samuel was as dedicated to the Oratorio Society and Washington Heights Home for Cripples as he was to his own financial interests. In 1906, Maisie founded and funded the Greene Street Settlement House, built two blocks from the railroad flat where she was born. Unlike the new oil and copper and sugar kings, the Tuttles were confident enough to put their money where it wouldn’t be noticed.
In 1915, fifteen years after they were married, Maisie, even more startlingly beautiful than she had been as a young woman, with the grace and bearing of the New York society leader she had become, knocked on her husband’s bedroom door. “May I come in, Samuel?”
“Of course, my dear.” As he closed the door, she put her soft, slender arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth. “Oh, Maisie.”
And that night their fourth child, Winifred Lucinda Theodosia Tuttle, was conceived.
7
…But the editor, Elizabeth Rose, said “no matter what,” Harper’s Bazaar planned to run the three-page weekend wear spread Jane Cobleigh posed for two weeks ago.
—Women’s Wear Daily
Tall like her father with kinky orange-red Tuttle hair and a sinewy body, seventeen-year-old Winifred was most comfortable being sloppy and active and eccentric wearing her brothers’ sweaters and riding their big Arabian stallions at the farm, announcing her admiration for the New Deal to a shocked Thanksgiving table.
Her mother’s world—first nights and dress fittings—did not merely bore Win, it frightened her. On a tennis court she was all fluid grace, but on a dance floor, oafish, and she knew it. At seven or eight, she sweated through Miss Adeline King Robinson’s Wednesdays at the Plaza until her pink crepe de chine hung like a mildewed curtain. The little boys in their blue serge suits would bow, put their hand on her back, and make a face: ick. In her early teens, as a pre-subdeb at Middle Holidays, she observed even the least desirable boys, the ones afflicted with juicy speech defects and the rosy pustules of perpetual acne, tighten their mouths with resignation when it was their turn to be her partner. Sipping punch, she heard herself called “Old Horse Face” and overheard chaperones: “Look at that red hair! At least she’s living proof that Maisie didn’t have a lover.” “But my dear, even Samuel is better looking. Her hair is positively Nee-gro in texture.”
“I won’t!” said Win.
“You will!” said Maisie.
“Perhaps something less elaborate than Newport,” Samuel interposed. “My sisters came out at home.”
“At home.” Maisie sniffed. “Three violins behind a potted palm and white wine punch. Is that what you want for your only daughter’s debut, Samuel?”
“It’s perfectly nice, Maisie, really. Perfectly acceptable. Winifred isn’t the sort of girl who would enjoy five hundred people and a twenty-piece orchestra.”
“Perhaps I should hold my tongue. You must know best. After all, you’re a Tuttle born and bred and I’m just some girl you picked up from the gutter.”
“Oh, stop that, Maisie. You know you’re as fine as they come.”
“Then please trust my judgment. Frankly, Samuel, Winifred’s idea of a grand party is three horses and a clean pair of boots.”
“Mama, you make me sound so terrible. I’m not being unreasonable. I’d be willing—”
“This matter is not open to negotiation, Winifred. You must be presented, and since your brother and Polly have so graciously offered Breezy Point, one of the architectural triumphs of Rhode Island—”
“Mama, no one will want to go. Please, it will be awful! All the boys hate me, and the only reason they’ll be decent is because of—you know what I mean, of who we are, and they’ll laugh behind my back and say the only reason we’re in Newport is that no one in New York will have me—”
“Winifred! Stop that!”
“It’s true, Papa. And that you had to pay for a big husband hunt, and—”
“Win, baby.” Maisie reached over and smoothed the curly red hair of her daughter’s eyebrows. “You are a lovely girl. Marvelous looking. Tall and athletic and fine and elegant.”
“I’m not elegant.”
“You will be, Winifred. You’ll see.”
The Great Depression put a crimp in the coming-out business, but as Win’s brother Jeremiah observed, “Gets rid of the marginals, you know. All those Ford dealers from West Orange sneaking their daughters into Foxcroft. Down, up, down in one generation, and good riddance.” Actually, Jeremiah was the stupidest Tuttle in five generations and his wife, the former Penelope (Polly) Czeki, was the daughter of such a marginal man; her father had made a fortune in his native Pittsburgh manufacturing industrial septic tanks and, in 1930, had bought Breezy Point, a Newport mansion owned by a Boston banker who had gone bankrupt. Mr. Czeki added tennis courts, stables, and a swimming pool overlooking Rhode Island Sound and bought a yacht, La Reine de Pittsburgh. Then he turned purple and died of coronary insufficiency, leaving his entire estate to Polly. Jeremiah, who loved tennis and riding and swimming and yachting and hated working, married her a year later despite Maisie and Samuel’s disapproval.
But Polly was at least twice as smart as her husband and hadn’t married a Tuttle for nothing. She wanted to be valued by the people who were merely polite to her. So, recognizing the social leverage of a first-class debut, she cultivated her in-laws until, exhausted by her sweet, relentless devotion, they accepted her—and her offer of an unforgettable evening at Breezy Point for Win.
Bryan Kendall Devereaux two-stepped into his cousin’s room at Harvard Law School cradling an imaginary girl in his arms. “‘I’m puttin’ on the white tie,’” he sang. “Jim, old pip, old poop, put on your dancing shoes. I’ve got you on the Boston list and we’re going to a fab party. Totally top drawer.”
“Hmm?” James Kendall Cobleigh was sprawled on his narrow dormitory bed, naked in the heat of Indian summer. A casebook lay open, face down, covering his genitals; he rested the constitutional law text he had been reading on his chest. “Hello, Bry. How are you?”
“How am I? Ecstatic. Mad with joy at my brilliance. My God, J. C., you are fortunate to have gotten yourself related to me. At this late date I have pulled the strings of some of the toughest, stringiest matrons in Boston and gotten you on the list. The list, Jim, for Christ’s sake. That which will get you invited to the best parties of the season, and already we’ve been asked to the best. Only the upper-upper of the Boston and New York lists, which is too bad because the girl is strictly lower-lower in the face and figure and personality categories, but at least we’ll get to see Breezy Point in Newport and she may have a friend or two or fifty who isn’t completely creepy and—for God’s sake, cover yourself up better, Cousin Jim. Just because I have to put up with your company doesn’t mean I have to go eyeball to—whatever—with your pecker every time I walk in the room. Now listen, it’s a major bash for Somebody Tuttle—I hear there are prettier prunes—so you will report to my suite at eight on the nose on Saturday, full dress.”
“Don’t these people ever worry what the rest of the country thinks of them? I mean, people are standing on bread lines. They can’t get jobs.”
“J. C., don’t be tedious. All the proles pick up the newspaper and positively devour the society pages. You know that. They want debutantes in unspeakably expensive gowns and French champagne. The bread lines are for bread and we provide the circuses. Really, it’s to everyone’s advantage. So get out your good duds and—”
“I don’t have tails, Bryan. I don’t even have black tie. I could manage a navy and red stripe, but—”
“Well, go out and buy tails. Oh, damn. I forgot you’re the poor relation. And you won’t fit into anything I have, with your flat ass. Can you rent one? Look,
I can lend you—”
“Maybe I’d better not go, Bry. I’ve never been to one of these things, and I’d probably just stand in the corner looking like a waiter from the caterer.”
“Of course you’re going. The Tuttles are crème de la crème of New York society, and Breezy Point is supposed to be totally sublime even though Pushy Polly—the sister-in-law of the debbie, the one who really owns the joint—is très, très nouveau. And there will probably be hundreds of gorgeous, rich, curvaceous girls just dying to surrender their virtue to an older man from Harvard Law School. Jim, with your looks you’ll get so many offers you won’t have to put on your pants for the next five years. I won’t take no for an answer. White tie, eight o’clock, and we’ll have a few thousand drinks and then off to Newport. There’s no reason not to go. You’ve got the bluest blood in Rhode Island swimming around your veins. Well, a little diluted, but blue enough. Come on, J. C. Let yourself live.”
At ten at night, six footmen dressed in the blue and gray livery of Breezy Point stood before its Ionic facade and began welcoming the first of five hundred guests to the “small dance” Polly Tuttle had arranged. From inside the ballroom, strains of “What’s a Girl to Do?” and “Boom-Diddy-Boom,” played by Cappy Caplin and his twenty-two-piece orchestra, spilled out and flowed over the drive and across the ten-acre lawn.
A warm, humid breeze blew in off the Sound and into the house, and as she stood receiving beside Maisie, before a trellis heavy with pink flowers and white ribbons, in the massive pink marble foyer, Win felt her hair—which the maid, supervised by her mother, had ironed straight a half hour before—kinking up, rising from where it had lain softly on her shoulders into a red arc around her face, like a cartoon character who’s received a violent electric shock.
There was something about Newport, something in the air that made everyone else glow, that was poison for her, Win thought. She had never looked so putrid before. Her freckles probably looked like disfiguring blotches; the boys would titter that her shoulder, bare in her Grecian-cut gown, looked like a leopard’s skin. Her hair, always a problem, had never been this hideous; she had gone riding in the rain, played tennis on the muggiest August mornings, fished in mountain streams so obscured by dawn fog that she couldn’t see where her line entered the water, and her hair had been uncontrollable but bright, right for her. And her skin had felt as soft as a butterfly’s wing.
“Stop fussing with your hair,” Maisie finally whispered when the relentless waves of guests subsided for an instant.
“But, Mama, it’s—”
“Winifred, darling,” Maisie crooned, “you remember Mrs. Peterson, don’t you?”
The room felt hellishly hot. Win could not understand why all the guests were not red-faced and dripping. She extended her arm, steaming inside its long white glove, and shook hands. “Of course. How do you do, Mrs. Peterson.”
“And Mr. Peterson!” Maisie, welcoming the three hundred and fiftieth guest, was as cool and gracious as she had been two hours before, when the first arrived. An instant later, still smiling, she turned to Winifred and murmured, “Stop behaving like a neurasthenic, darling. You look absolutely lovely.” And then louder, “How do you do.”
“Bryan Devereaux, Mrs. Tuttle. From Providence. And my cousin, James Cobleigh.”
Cappy Caplin crooned “‘Conchita, give back my heart’” and James peered down at Ginny’s mahogany hair. Or maybe it was Valerie. He had danced with six or seven girls who were—according to Bryan—the pick of the year’s crop of debutantes, and though each was supposed to be a beauty in her own right, he could not tell them apart. “‘Conchita, with your wicked eyes,’” Cappy sang, and Ginny or Valerie rubbed against him, trying to locate his erection with her pelvis. “‘With your breathless sighs.’” But despite the permeating, seductive scent of hundreds of thousands of flowers, the sexual wail of the brass, the moan of the reeds, the high exhalation of the strings that filled Breezy Point, these eighteen-year-olds did not arouse James; good bones and knowing how to eat snails were no longer enough to interest him. He had been through several post-pubescent socialites during his first two years of college and found they had an annoying tendency to chat during lovemaking. And these debutantes, with their white gowns and white shoes and gleaming hair, seemed as frivolous and asexual as the others he had known. They looked like nurses on the evening shift of some terribly formal hospital.
“Were you at Harvard as an undergrad?” asked Ginny/Valerie.
“No. Brown.”
“Oh, a Brown man. You must be sublimely wicked.”
He remembered now. Her name was Philippa. “That’s me. Evil personified.”
She giggled and tossed back her head the way all the debutantes seemed to be tossing heads, with a fast uplift of the chin so her glossy hair flipped and reflected the ballroom light. So did her platinum and diamond bracelet. It could bring enough money to feed a family of four for a year or to put him through law school. Slowly and suggestively, she ran her tongue over her lower lip. James sighed. “Do you do terrible things to poor innocent girls?” She rubbed her breasts against his chest, and his starched shirtfront made a scratchy retort.
Fortunately, Cappy and the trumpets joined for a mighty “‘Conchita, I’m yours!’” and James stepped back and bowed in the slightly graceful, slightly mocking way he had observed the other young men bowing.
“Excuse me for just a minute, Philippa.”
“Philippa? I’m Priscilla.”
“Having a time of it, J. C.?” Bryan Devereaux demanded. His moon face was flushed and glazed with perspiration. “Whew! That little sugarpuss, that Rosemary, loves to be whirled around, makes her lose her center of gravity or her virtue or some such thing. I’ll let you know. She has cousins in Boston and what d’ you know, next weekend she just happens to be visiting them, so I’ll whirl her around a few more times and see what develops. And what was developing with you and Prissy McGuiness? Hmmm? I hear little Prissy’s not so prissy. In fact, I hear Daddy McGuiness may have to endow the McGuiness Home for Embarrassingly Wayward Girls—and fast. Little Priss has worked her way up Park and Fifth and there’s nothing left but Central Park West. I mean, the girl’s a human welcome mat. But r-i-c-h, J. C. Daddy’s daddy’s daddy got a little nibble of Standard Oil, and the rest is history. Oh, sweet bloody Christ, will you look at that!”
“What?”
“There. Just past the French doors, Titless Tuttle’s getting twirled to death by that gorilla from Dartmouth, what’s his name—Paget Trent. He’s really giving her the business.”
Paget Trent had buck teeth, a prominent jaw, tiny eyes, and an unusually low hairline, and actually looked more like a Neanderthal than a gorilla. He had known Win since dancing class days—where he had once dipped his hand into the punch bowl, withdrawn a few floating strawberries, and given Win a friendly slap on the back, rubbing the cold, mushy berries into her dress. Now, perhaps egged on by his friends, he was twirling her around faster and faster and faster. He spun her into smaller and smaller circles until they were whirling in one fixed spot.
“Paget, please,” Win breathed.
“Giving up?” he demanded and spun her even faster.
Win did not believe he would be deliberately cruel. He was just being silly. She smiled at him and fixed her eyes on the flat bridge of his nose. He spun faster still, and she prayed that focusing would steady her, like staring at the horizon on a rough sea.
“Paget.” They were whirling like a top gone wild and she was dizzy. And then sick. Oh, Lord, if the music stopped and he didn’t wind down slowly she would fall on her face and—it was inevitable—throw up. At her own ball.
Bryan twisted his mouth into a sneer. “Jesus Benevolent Christ, would you just look at her? Smiling with those big teeth. All she needs is a bit and a harness. You know what she’s saying to Paget Trent right now? ‘Neigh.’ I mean really, she—”
“She’s not so bad,” James said. She was tall, and while her broad should
ers bulged beyond the chiffon drape of her white gown, and her bright red hair seemed too garish for this sleek crowd, he found her the classiest person in the room. She was not meant for elegant evenings, but he bet she glowed in sunlight: horsey and homely, long-limbed, wide-striding, upper class. James Kendall Cobleigh knew what Winifred Tuttle was. Top drawer.
“Not bad? Are you kidding? J. C., I’ve ridden prettier mares. Really.” James said nothing, but he heard the music slow a little, and he edged away from his cousin. “Pinch her ass, J. C.,” Bryan continued, louder. “She’ll whinny.”
She didn’t belong in this expanse of marble and gilt and crystal. It may have been the best American money could buy, but around her it looked merely gaudy. James rubbed his hand over his clean-shaven cheek. He felt silly, intrigued by the girl the stag line was laughing about—a plain, awkward girl who looked ready to bawl on the happiest night of her life, a girl who, with luck and her father’s money, would wind up marrying someone socially acceptable, a timid academic or a drunken yachtsman who would never make love to her properly. Paget Trent spun her even faster and bent over her, so her back arched and her head hung backward.
Clean. She looked so clean and healthy and strong. James stared at her. He thought if he smoothed back that crazy red hair and sniffed the dark little pocket under her earlobe, there wouldn’t be the dank, suspicious odor so many girls had. And no misleading perfume, no jasmine or musk. And the rest of her would be clean too. And strong. He ran a practiced check of her body. Her legs were long, her breasts small but high and firm. And a wonderful tight backside. He began to smile.
From where he had been left, Bryan called to him. “J. C.?” James moved on.
A clarinet moaned, but it was quickly countered with a happy Ta-da! The song ended. Paget Trent yanked his drippy right hand out of its clasp with hers; a second later, he dropped his left and grinned. Winifred felt herself swaying, first to one foot, then the other. Falling. She was falling and everyone was watching and she was going to go flat on her face and break her nose and the blood would gush all over her gown and her parents would rush across the ballroom floor to her—and now she was really falling. Backward. There was nothing she could do, and—