The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine

by Alex Brunkhorst

  I stood up and walked over to the leaded-glass doors that opened to the vast grounds.

  “I was once in love with this girl,” I began. “She was the one I saw in New York. And I bought her these emerald earrings for her twenty-first birthday. They were tiny. Barely a fraction of a carat. But I had saved six months to buy them, so in my mind they were bigger than they were.”

  I looked to David, to see if he was engaged in the story. He was listening, but his face was impassive.

  “And so finally her birthday arrived and I couldn’t wait to give them to her. They had been sitting in my drawer for a few weeks by this time. I remember I had wrapped them in a paper decorated with zebras—rewrapped them twice, in fact, so the presentation would be perfect. And when it came time for the girl—Willa was her name—to open them, I waited for her face to light up. But it didn’t. It went dark.”

  Just then, in the distance, outside, I saw Matilda. She was walking across the vast lawn wearing a frilly white tennis outfit, a ribbon in her hair holding a ponytail that swayed back and forth with her girlie gait. The sun sparkled off her hair, and my heart stopped.

  I wanted to throw open the doors, to call out for her, to run to her—anything, just to show her I hadn’t given up. But I did nothing.

  “‘I don’t deserve these,’ the girl had said to me when she saw the earrings. And that phrase haunted me for all these years and I hated her for it. She was rich, so of course she felt she deserved nice earrings. But I hadn’t given her the benefit of the doubt. She had known I had saved months for that present, and she had known she was going to eventually break my heart. That’s why she didn’t deserve them. What she was trying to say is she was trying to do the right thing.”

  I paused as Matilda walked farther into the distance, down the croquet lawn. The sun haloed her, so she looked filmy instead of real, as if she were already a ghost.

  “I don’t deserve Matilda,” I continued. “It’s not that I’m not rich enough for her, or not good enough looking or smart enough, or any of those things—although maybe all that is true. But she deserves for her first love not to be her last love. Matilda deserves fifty first dates and fifty first kisses, and she deserves to be looked at with longing from across a room, to blush under someone’s stare. And, most of all, she deserves to grow up without being tethered to someone who she feels indebted to. Maybe it won’t be me, but it would break my heart to think of her alone—loveless—for the rest of her life.”

  Matilda passed the horseshoe pit and then rounded a bend and disappeared.

  I watched out the window for a moment longer, before turning my back to the outdoors.

  “I’ll go to New York. But you must make me a promise in return. You said yourself that lack of love is a tragedy. Don’t do that to her.”

  My words hung heavily in the air. I would not leave until I got my promise, and David knew it. Finally, he nodded.

  “I promise that,” he declared. “You have my word.”

  I leaned over and shook his hand. “Thank you. Goodbye, David.”

  “Goodbye, Thomas. I wish you the best of luck at the Times.”

  I considered David’s choice of words. It was exactly what he had said to me the first night we had met, when we had dropped him at the estate after his driver had fallen ill and the single upstairs window had been lit. It was a different Times he’d referred to then, and I reflected on how life had changed in such short order.

  I walked to the door, and then I turned around, looking at David one last time. He suddenly seemed tired. His life had been made up of a series of dramatic decisions, and I wondered if he ever regretted them, if he wished he had lived life differently.

  The butler escorted me down the hall and then outside, where I was greeted with the bright cadence of birds in spring. My car idled in the motor court, and I inhaled one last time, taking in the sadness—or was it glory?—of the estate.

  I got into the car and slowly pulled away from the house. I drove down the driveway and when I neared the tennis court I stopped. I heard the crisp sound of a racket hitting a ball. I heard her idiosyncratic laugh and the light pitter-patter of her soles on clay before she hit the next shot.

  She had already forgotten me.

  I paused, briefly considering stopping and walking down to the court. It was the city of the motion-picture business after all, and that’s what would have happened in the movies. On-screen, everyone seemed to get their happy ending. Instead, though, I continued onward, finally making my way out the gates. I took a left, weaving my way down the tight roads of the rich. I passed between the grand white pillars of Bel-Air and allowed my eyes to linger in my side-view mirror long after they should have, long after the sign had disappeared.

  Thirty-Two

  Two weeks later, twenty-four hours before I was to leave for Manhattan, I stood on the street where it had all begun. I needed to say goodbye once and for all, to let go of Los Angeles so I could embrace New York and embark on the rest of my life.

  The tinkle of an antique servant bell announced my arrival.

  The place was still a well-crafted mess, and I waited a few moments for Lily to appear magically from behind a piece of furniture.

  She didn’t. The shop was quiet. It was regular business hours, but there didn’t appear to be anyone there. It had always seemed to be a place light on customers, for those who did come were heavy on the wallet, but it was unusual for it to be totally empty.

  “Ethan? Lily?” I called out, to no answer.

  I glanced to my left and saw the candlestick in the shape of a bird. It pointed north. It felt as if it had been so many migrations since I had met her.

  I was about to leave when I decided to walk through the store, to the back. There was a small garden, some gravel and a single chaise with a table beside it. Lily stood in garden gloves, with clippers in her hand, carefully removing thorns from a pale pink rose.

  She didn’t look up from the flower.

  “Darling, Thomas. I missed you something terrible.”

  “How did you know it was me?” I asked.

  “The sound of your footsteps. You’re wearing the shoes I brought you from Boston.”

  Lily turned around then, and she first focused on my shoes, to be sure she was right, which she was. She then took a long and hard look at me. I wore an outfit crisp as bills from the bank, and her face registered satisfaction with it.

  In the months since I had last seen her, Lily Goldman had turned larger than life, as a dream often does. But now, in person, I remembered how slight and small she was, with the lightness and frailty of a bird.

  I avoided her eyes, because they were Matilda’s eyes, too, and they were painful to look at.

  “Did you miss me?” she asked.

  I didn’t respond because I didn’t know the answer myself.

  Lily put five roses in a vase of water so their flawless tops shot out in different directions like a star.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, abandoning the roses for a moment and stepping closer to me. She made a small adjustment to my collar. “You look pallid, Thomas.”

  “It hasn’t been the easiest of months,” I said, as an understatement.

  I tried to read Lily’s face for emotion, to see what she knew. As always, she gave away nothing, so I continued, “I’m here to tell you I’ve decided to take a job with the New York Times. I wanted to say goodbye, and I wanted to thank you for all you’ve done for me. In so many ways you’ve changed my life, and for that I’m very grateful.”

  “Manhattan can be a very intoxicating woman, Thomas. Just remember she breaks the hearts of even the best of men.”

  “So does Los Angeles,” I responded.

  Lily snipped a thorn off a final rose and it pricked her finger before falling to the ground.


  “I am aware that you know our secret. And before you leave, I think it’s important that you understand something,” Lily said. “It was a terrible secret that grew and grew. It was never meant to happen this way. My father fell for Carole when she was a teenager. She was the sister of the man who ran our stables.”

  When Lily spoke of him, even now, she seemed overcome by sadness.

  “The whole thing was terribly inappropriate, but complicit. There was nothing illegal or forceful about it, and Carole would say the same thing if she were sitting here. Carole adored my father—she was absolutely besotted with him. He was very handsome and very charming, and he had this uncanny ability...” Lily stopped herself then and gazed into the distance.

  “Some men—powerful men—make you feel like the world revolves around you, like you’re the brightest star in the sky, even if it’s just for a moment. My father wasn’t like that. He kept you in the waiting room, with no food or water or compassion until you scraped and clawed at his doors, dying to be allowed in. My father kept you thirsty, that was his secret. He did it in his business, with my mother, with Carole, with me.”

  “How could you look at him after what he did?” I asked. “She was seventeen, for God’s sake.”

  “My father and I had a very complex relationship,” Lily said. “He could be a tremendously good person, though he was capable of evil. I grew up in a world of powerful men who were very fallible, and I loved them anyway.”

  “And what about Carole?”

  “Carole ruined my life just as much as my father did. We were incredibly generous with her. Her mother was an alcoholic who had given birth to Carole’s brother when she herself was sixteen. Carole has never even met her father, and Carole’s mother abandoned her children and my father took them in. They lived at our equestrian estate. Carole knew her brother and I were very much in love and supposed to marry. My father was inappropriately older than she, certainly, but she was manipulative, even then. She knew my father wanted anything he couldn’t have, and she used it to her advantage. Girls nowadays grow up getting it wrong. It’s the women who have the power in a relationship.”

  “Why did you remain friends with Carole? You must have hated her for what she did to your family.”

  “I’m older than you, Thomas, and much wiser. No offense.”

  “None taken. I prefer to be younger without the wisdom.”

  “Carole may have seduced my father, she may have destroyed my greatest chance at love, but there was never a single day I would have traded places with Carole Partridge. Imagine.” Lily caught her breath, and her eyes turned glassy. “Imagine the terrible sadness that burdens her every single day. Her whole life has been bound with confidentiality clauses, and she lives blocks from a daughter who never knew she existed—until now. I know Carole well, better than anyone else knows her. I think in the beginning she thought her daughter was a fair trade for the extraordinary life my father gave her in return. But quickly she would’ve given every penny, all the fame, the beauty, just to have Matilda back.”

  “She does now,” I said. “Right?”

  “Yes, so you’ve done a good thing. Inadvertently perhaps, but wayward intention never diminishes a good result in my eyes.”

  “You know I never would have betrayed you like that. I wouldn’t have published that story.”

  “I know,” Lily said. “You’re far too good a man for that.”

  It was a brilliant blue day, no clouds. I looked up, toward the heavens and my mom. I thought of how much my life had changed since the first time I had walked into Lily’s shop. The past few months had been the most difficult of my life, but they had been preceded by the most glorious.

  “Thomas, love. Is there something you’d like me to tell Matilda? A message before you fly off to Manhattan?” Lily asked. At the mention of her, still, I felt as if the sky turned a bit less blue.

  All I’d wanted those months without her was a chance to tell her that I loved her, that I would always love her. But I had made a promise, and I was a man who kept my promises.

  “You can tell her goodbye for me,” I said. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  “That’s all? That seems rather brief for a man of words.”

  “Yes, that’s all. And thank you again, for everything.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  I walked toward the tall French doors into the shop. I placed my hand on the brass knob, then turned back in Lily’s direction.

  “Lily, there’s one last piece of the story that needs answering,” I said. “I know you invited me to that first dinner party because you wanted me to write a flattering piece about your father. But what about after that? Why did you invite me to dinner parties and the art opening? Why did you orchestrate stories for me with my boss? What was it? Was it all an elaborate plan to bring Matilda and me together?”

  “It was nothing of the sort. I never thought you’d meet,” Lily said. “The truth is that you reminded me of the man I was supposed to marry. You were both so innocent, so sweet. I know plenty of men who were born into wealth and have no potential. You were both the opposite—born into little means but with so much ahead of them. I felt when I was with you—well, that I still had a part of him. He was twenty-seven when he left me. And he reminded me so much of you.”

  “Do you still love him? Even after all these years?”

  “I’ve never loved anyone since him, not even a little bit,” Lily said. “You know something? I haven’t so much as uttered his name since the day he left. I never once asked after him, and Carole never brought him up. Michael—that was his name. Such a strong name.”

  For a moment, Lily seemed to drift away in a daydream. “There’s a part of me... It’s a terrible thing to say, but there’s a part of me that hopes he’s dead at this point, because it seems an easier cross to bear than thinking of him someplace in a world without me in it.”

  I could have told her Michael was alive, that he lived in a decrepit and lonely ranch tucked into the side of a volcano in Hawaii with a single horse. I spared her, though, because Lily Goldman didn’t deserve that. Lily had once told me her father had been a gambler and Lily had been, too. She had bet on me, and now it was up to me to decide if her wager had been a winning one.

  “I’ll call you from Manhattan,” I said.

  And with that, I walked out.

  The servant bell announced my departure.

  Thirty-Three

  When the plane took off, we headed west, over the ocean, and for a moment I fooled myself into thinking I was on my way back to Hawaii. I glanced beside me, hoping to see Matilda, but there was only a vacant seat with a television that played for no one. I ordered a beer and pulled out the morning’s Los Angeles Times.

  We took a U-turn then and we headed over the city. I could see the expansive green lawns of Bel-Air—a place where the houses were as fastidious as movie sets, the cats were exotically bred and where Matilda was at this very moment. We passed over the compact downtown area, and there was the Hollywood sign, perched regally at the top of its mountain, a beacon for dreamers as I had once been. There were the movie studios; the hills of Forest Lawn Cemetery, where Joel Goldman was buried with his secrets; and the grassy knolls of Hidden Hills, where Lily Goldman had once ridden her horses and fallen in love.

  We passed the mountains and it all disappeared behind us, just like that, as if it had never been there to begin with.

  Somewhere over the Rockies, I closed my eyes and fell asleep. My dreams transported me to a memory so vivid I would have bet my paltry savings it was real. It was a fall evening, and the hot Santa Ana winds blanketed Matilda and me between the cashmere throw below us and the twinkling stars above. Matilda leaned close to me—so close I could smell her shampoo—and she pointed to Orion’s starry belt buckle flickering in the sky. When she did she whispered
in my ear, so her breath tickled the back of my neck:

  Someday you’ll know exactly where to find me. I’ll be twinkling for you.

  The dream played over and over again in my mind like a motion picture, and I was so deep into slumber I only awoke when the pilot announced our final descent. I peered out the window and saw Manhattan below us, once again inviting me into her wide and seductive embrace.

  * * *

  My apartment was a modest walk-up in the East Village. It was a worse place than Silver Lake, if that was possible. There was no view of the mountains in the distance; instead, I faced a brick building. There was no swimming pool here, and even the sky seemed at a premium. I found myself homesick for Los Angeles.

  The next morning I woke up to the unmistakable sound of a city. I dressed in an outfit that Lily had given me, and I headed for the subway. In Los Angeles people look you in the eyes, straight to your soul. In New York people avoid your eyes. They looked around you.

  It was a font recognized around the world, and when I arrived at the Times building, I was awestruck.

  The New York Times. It had been my dream from that ripe age of fifteen when I had decided I wanted to be a journalist. It was what I had gone to Harvard for, why I had been studying on the Charles when I had met Willa. The Wall Street Journal was supposed to have been a stepping stone to it, but instead, what had happened there had quashed the dream of it completely—or so I had thought.

  I imagined Phil Rubenstein standing beside me, encouraging me forward, and I smiled.

  I walked through the lobby and then was escorted up the elevator. The editor in chief approached me dynamically, hand out, as if I was the important one.

  “Thomas Cleary,” he said, shaking my hand with authority. “David speaks so highly of you—which is a compliment of the highest order, since we all know he’s stingy in the compliment department. Welcome to the New York Times. We sure are glad to have you.”