Going into town for news. Stay here. Trust Mama.
(Then a brief space between lines, inside which I can picture him frowning, chewing on the end of the pen, pressing his thumb into his temple. Searching for words to express this delicate, newborn understanding betwixt Ginger and Anson.)
Trust me as well.
Yours, A.
18
IN THE living room, a plate of sandwiches rests on the cocktail table, thoroughly stale. From the look of it, Anson snatched a couple of them on his way out. I imagine Mrs. Marshall in her long, feathery dressing gown, observing the state of the door to the bedroom, setting the plate down silently. Floating back out into the night, wearing a private smile. She’s that kind of woman, I do suspect.
I eat three sandwiches without stopping for breath, regardless of crumbs, and then I lean back on the sofa—counterpane still wrapped about my shoulders—and contemplate the last line of Anson’s little love note.
Trust me as well.
Now, a reasonable person—you, for example—might well point out that I have no reason whatsoever to trust this man. Didn’t he meet me under false pretenses? Present himself by a false name? Withhold vital facts, all for his own particular purposes? How could any girl forgive a man for such a plan of deceit as he has practiced upon me? Forgive him, moreover, in such a manner as I have done during this night, fulsome and irrevocable?
I, who have never yet trusted another human being on this earth?
I’ll leave you to mull that one for yourself. In the meantime, I’ll rise up from the sofa and dust the crumbs away from the counterpane—discard the counterpane entirely, for all that the air is just as chill in the early March afternoon as it was during the dead of March night—and amble back into the bedroom, naked as a shorn lamb. I’ll discover my cami-knickers down the other side of the bed and slide them back into place, and I’ll do the same as regards my blouse and skirt at rest on the armchair. My jacket. The overcoat given me by the Coast Guard captain. As for that instrument of torture my brassiere, I’ll toss it into a drawer.
Now. I don’t know about you, but I could use a cup of coffee, after all that hard work.
In the kitchen, I find a kettle and a miraculous tin of java. Boil myself a potful and pour the liquid into one of Mrs. Marshall’s expensive porcelain cups, careful not to disturb the spent grounds settled at the bottom of the kettle: a trick taught me by none other than Duke Kelly himself, when I was but small. (The cup, in that case, was made of tin instead of porcelain, and lest you imagine Duke was impelled by the selfless spirit of instructing the young, let me make clear that he intended the coffee for himself.) As I sip the resulting brew, which ought to fill me with pleasure, I am invaded instead by a slow, black-edged melancholy. By the unforgiving light of day, I stare at my hand and imagine not the heart that beat underneath, a few hours ago, but the terrible blood running from the busted skull of Carl Green, and I startle in such haste, the coffee spills painfully over my knuckles and the tears follow, a regular damn flood, because I’m alone, hidden, trapped in an expensive little hut at the tip of Long Island, and I cannot see a way out, howsoever mightily I am loved inside it. Howsoever mighty the man who loves me, who has gone into town in search of news.
19
THE TEARS do run out, however. Don’t they always? You can’t cry forever. I dry my face and freshen myself up in the bathroom, ignoring the bloodstained bandages in the wastebasket. Finish my coffee and hunt inside the pockets of my suit jacket until I find the small packet of papers my mama bequeathed unto me.
Yes, those. Have you forgotten? I surely haven’t. I’ve carried them everywhere, work and play, nestled against my ribs where I can actually feel them. The only place I haven’t conveyed that packet is the open air. I have not broken the string that holds the brown envelope together, nor yet read a single paragraph of what lies inside. I can’t say why. Only that the thought of those words fills me with dread. The possibility of perhaps seeing my father’s own hand, the contents of his private mind, his opinion on the subject of my mother and maybe even me, sets my stomach to vomit.
As I said, I can’t say why.
But I do take comfort from the presence of that lump, nestled next to my heart. The square edges and stiffness of it, like a passport or a checkbook, an object that testifies to my origins and importance, to the incontestable fact that I have a father at all—or, at the very least, a flesh-and-blood fellow who took the trouble to sire me. I stare now at the brown paper, the faded red twine that binds the envelope at each edge, and the usual bile sloshes queasily in my belly.
Now, you may think that I lay claim to a long and undistinguished history of immoral dalliance, from Anatole up to the present day. I guess I can’t blame you for that conclusion. After all, I’m the kind of girl who accepts money to bare her naked bounty to the gaze of thousands of strangers, aren’t I? Moreover, I admitted young Billy to my bed, and now Billy’s brother, and that’s just the lovers I’ve taken the trouble to mention.
But the fact is—believe me or no—my personal roll of dishonor is less populous than the fingers of one hand. And what is more, upon every occasion except the one just past, I have paid the most rigorous attention to ensure that nothing more derives of these unions than pleasure and friendship, if you know what I mean. Why, I lived in the utmost fear for two months after my departure from River Junction, supposing I might be laid under sentence of life; I then paid utmost attention to the hush-hush chatter of the girls on their lunch breaks, learning how such a possibility might be prevented. And when I lay with Anatole that very first time, I inquired after the matter, and then I made myself explicit. I might have been naïve, but I knew where babies came from. Because why? Because that was how I came into the world, that’s why. That was how my mother returned from the wicked city in a state of disgrace, and enslaved herself to the likes of Duke Kelly, to be laid out upon her rack of penance. And now, in our enlightened modern day, just about every drugstore on every corner of Manhattan Island will sell a fellow a state-of-the-art vulcanized rubber condom with no questions asked, and in that case I’ll be damned if I pay for my sins as my mother did. I’ll be damned if I return to River Junction in a state of disgrace, and enslave myself to the likes of Duke Kelly.
Except this past night. Except when Oliver Anson Marshall curved his broad back and hollered my name into the darkness like a man at revival, wearing nothing whatsoever but a white bandage about the middle of his chest: an omission for which I have no sensible excuse. No conceivable explanation. Only the recklessness that comes of tossing your heart over the moon, the audacity of love.
And maybe this act of foolish trust has something to do with the way I pluck my fingers upon the string holding my mama’s treasured papers together, like Bruno plucks his fingers upon the strings of a double bass to elicit some kind of noise. Maybe the night before gives me some inkling as to the possible innards of this plain brown envelope. Maybe I do glimpse why my mama might have acted so reckless as she did, when the century was new and full of hope, and so was she. Maybe if I part these strings and open this envelope, I will discover the story of how I came to be.
And it will be beautiful instead of squalid. Right?
20
THE BROWN paper packet bequeathed to me by my mama contains a series of pages, all folded up snug, likely notes or letters. Certainly they have the feel of notepaper, the expensive kind, trim and glossy, each one identical to the next. There are no envelopes at all. I don’t know if that’s because they were lost or they were thrown away, or because they never existed at all. Maybe the United States Postal Service bore no witness to the commerce of my parents.
Now I spend too much time altogether in running my fingers over said notepaper, like I am Sherlock Holmes trying to discover somebody’s age and employment and history of sickness from the quality of the stock and the angle of the folds. Sip my coffee and swallow back the bile wanting to rise from my belly. It’s only a few letters, after all.
A few letters written by some Manhattan cad to my poor dead mama.
I finish the coffee and unfold the topmost.
Best-beloved,
All morning I have been staring out the window, at a busy metropolitan street that cares nothing at all for my little sorrows. I can see only your darling face and your soft hair and the delicate skin of your legs which I kissed again and again in such rapture! Thank you for ever, darling girl—for the privilege you have at last afforded me—for an ecstasy more sublime than any mortal man deserves to know—for (above all else) that pure jewel with which you so generously presented me—the most fortunate man alive—a sacrifice for which I shall always honor and venerate you. I returned to the apartment—I now reserve the word home for that sweet nest I departed in such regret—as in a kind of dream. Have the flowers yet arrived? I am picturing your face as you bury your dear nose among the blooms. And then my imagination wanders into more secret gardens, and a bed upon which those flowers are artlessly strewn, and you lying atop all—your exquisite pale limbs open to my embrace—your fragrant breasts crested by petals of infinitely greater fascination. I am wild to see you again—wild to clasp you once more—wild to press my lips in worship upon your beauty! This separation of our two souls, which was once only painful, is now intolerable. This very moment, I am forming plans for our reunion—a meeting which, I promise, shall know no such cruel end as oppressed us this dawn.
I suppose, in the eyes of the self-righteous, we have done something wicked. But how can acts so sacred signify anything but goodness? God will forgive us—He must forgive us—for He alone reads our hearts and knows what is written there. On mine, there is nothing but love, now grown a thousandfold for my dearest, dearest girl, who has bound herself to me more securely than any bride. Wait for me. Believe in me.
Your own,
Tiger
The strangest feeling steals over me as I read these lines once, and then—because words like that sort of swim in your eyes, the first time—read them again. I think, first of all, What nonsense. Nobody writes a letter like that, certainly not anymore; words like clasp and venerate and rapture, ideas like sacred and honor, have been trampled over and soiled in the mud of French battlefields and modern science, and after such a terrible mucking, you cannot ever retrieve such words again, not in poetry and not in prose, not letters nor conversation.
I think, Mama, you poor sucker. You didn’t stand a chance, did you? Not a chance against a swell fellow like that, with such language at his command. You must have thought he meant it. You must have thought he actually cared you were a virgin, that he really did imagine your innocence as a pledge of trust instead of a prize to be captured.
And then I think, Haven’t I just committed the same damn act? Haven’t I just fallen for a swell fellow, opened my exquisite pale limbs to his embrace, because I thought—like Almighty God Himself, I guess—I could see what was written on his heart?
I rise from the sofa and make my way to the bedroom, the bedside table, where I lift Anson’s note and hold it next to the one written by the man I must presume to be my father: a man apparently known to my mama by the interesting nickname Tiger. The authors are likely separated by about a quarter century, so near as I can judge, and I reckon it’s been a real doozy of a quarter century, because these two letters might as well belong to different eons. Different wings of a museum on the history of the epistolary arts. One trailing long vines of floral verbiage; the other one … well. Anson.
Nothing alike at all, except perhaps for the final lines. Trust me. Believe in me. Yours. The old story.
My breasts ache, my stomach churns. I sink my bottom onto the edge of the mattress, atop the twist of bedsheets and the mess of pillows. Rest my hand on the spot where Anson’s head lay. Where, not twelve hours ago, hot of skin and tingling of nerve, I settled him carefully back in the comfort of his mama’s pool house mattress and told him not to strain himself, not to risk those brand-new stitches holding the side of his hide together. Where I mounted high and sank him deep inside me; all in the dark, all without seeing, only feeling the tremor of his muscles at each fresh stroke, each beat of the rhythm that held us together. I confess I used him hard as he used me; I held his fingers to my hips and showed him how to carry us both to the shivering brink. At the instant of culmination, his ecstasy was mine. His holler of sacred joy came in chorus with my own, rising directly upward to the ears of the Almighty. And I sank down upon his slick chest, skin for skin, pant for pant, and his hands, now free, roamed over me as if in worship of this beautiful sin we had just committed, this act of trust, this sacrifice of a pure jewel, for which I would always venerate him.
Because there does exist one singular difference between my mother and me, in our reckless orisons, besides the letters our lovers wrote us afterward.
The virgin in my bed wasn’t me.
21
AT WHICH point, the door bangs open in the living room, and I spring to my feet, drying my eyes, tossing aside my opposing letters.
“Anson!” I cry, bounding through the bedroom doorway and into the other room, where I stop so short, I liketa tumble over my own feet.
“Well, now,” says the platinum goddess standing there in the sunshine. “I guess that’s the last time I’ll bother to give any poor girl the benefit of my well-meaning advice.”
New York City, 1998
ELLA FELT the strangest sense of déjà vu as they throttled down the Long Island Expressway, having just parted company with the eastern edge of Queens. Not because she’d been making this exact journey every month for the past three years—ever since Cousin Lily finally booted Aunt Julie out of her Gramercy duplex for the crime of strolling through a baby shower in the living room in order to pour herself a gin and tonic, wearing nothing but a negligee made of sheer peach silk—but because of something else. A memory she couldn’t quite pin down. Fleeing the city, dirty tenements skidding past the windows. A March rain clicking on the glass.
In the front seat, her mother and Aunt Viv were talking about summer plans. Aunt Viv’s youngest was getting married over July Fourth weekend at the beach place in East Hampton, and the two of them were scheming to pull in as many cousins as possible for a family reunion—Before everybody kicks off, Mumma said cheerfully—that sounded as if it was going to last a week at least. The problem was accommodation. Too many cousins.
“But I don’t think half of Tiny’s brood will make it,” Aunt Viv said. “They hardly ever do. She never should have moved to California.”
“Honestly, Vivs, can you blame her? Those in-laws of hers.”
“The Horrid Hardcastles. I know. But children should grow up with family near. It’s just wrong, Schuylers heading west like forty-niners.”
“Her husband’s sister is out there. Plenty of cousins on his side.”
“That doesn’t count. I need more coffee. Actually, I need a Bloody Mary, but you always make me drive.”
Ella’s mother unscrewed the lid on the nearest Thermos. Sniffed. Replaced the lid and opened the other one. “It’s your country, out here. I never liked the Hamptons.”
“Speaking of family traitors.”
“Well, it worked out well, didn’t it? At least we didn’t have to fight about who got the summer place when Mummy died.” Aunt Viv held out her ceramic commuter mug, and Mumma unscrewed that lid and refilled it from the Thermos. She glanced in the rearview mirror. “Everything all right back there, darling? You’re awfully quiet.”
Ella met her aunt’s familiar tip-tilted blue eye in the mirror. That beautifully arched eyebrow she’d always envied. Ella’s brows were thick and straight; she’d somehow missed the Schuyler genes in that respect, as in so many others. Her own eyes tilted downward at the ends, instead of upward. Hooded instead of deep-set. Only their color matched the irises of the two women in the front seat, except that her blue eyes took on a lighter shade, like someone had mixed white paint into the can. “I’m always quiet,” she said. “Especially when you tw
o glamour-pusses take the stage.”
Aunt Viv smiled back in the mirror. “Oh, we’re just a couple of old broads now. Aren’t we, Pepper? Husbands and kids and grandkids crawling around.”
“You’ve got grandkids,” Mumma said.
There was a little silence. “Darling,” Aunt Viv said in a low voice.
Ella turned to the Labrador sitting on the blanket beside her and caressed a pair of soft, chocolate ears. The dog looked up and sighed. There were several new gray hairs around her eyes. Ella touched them with her finger. “Poor Bundle. She’s looking old.”
“Like all of us, I guess,” Aunt Viv said.
“Speak for yourself, Granny,” said Mumma. “Ella? How’s your apartment? Have you finished unpacking yet?”
“Sort of.”
“Sort of. What’s the latest on that dishy fellow upstairs? The musician.”
“I never said he was dishy.”
“Not in so many words. Well?”
“Mumma, we’re just friends. He has a girlfriend.”
“And? Is he happy with her?”
“Mumma!”
“Well, is he?”
“It doesn’t matter, okay? He has a girlfriend. He’s off-limits.”
“Darling, what a terribly sexist thing to say. As if he’s just some helpless being who can’t resist temptation. He’s got a right to make that decision on his own. To choose between the two of you.”
“Yeah? And how does that make me any better than the women Patrick slept with?”
The Wicked City: A stunning love story set in the roaring twenties Page 29