The Secret Life of Violet Grant

by Beatriz Williams

  Now. I did have Aunt Violet’s suitcase. But I didn’t have the key to its lock, and, furthermore, said lock might possibly accidentally have proved rustily resistant to the prodding of a skillful hairpin. Should said skillful hairpin have been applied to said rusty lock, say, last night before bedkins.

  “Vivian! There you are!”

  I detached my claws from the ceiling and dropped back to earth. “Haven’t I warned you about sneaking up on a girl?”

  Gogo’s eyes sparkled high. Oh, she had it all over, like a case of the chicken pox. “He’s here, Vivian! Come and meet him!”

  Mr. David Perfect. I had forgotten about him already.

  “Righty-o,” I said. “Let me just put this encyclopedia back on the shelf.”

  She took me by the hand and dragged me out the door. My head was still roiling with Grants and Violets and chairmanships and rusty locks. I thought, I should probably fix my lipstick, straighten my hair; he’ll practically be my brother, for God’s sake, and then we turned the corner and there he towered, Mr. David Perfect, tall of height, sturdy of shoulder, sun-streaked of hair.

  Doctor Paul.

  Violet

  Violet had expected Walter to react with shock and perhaps anger at the news of her possible pregnancy, but instead he was matter-of-fact. “Oh, the devil,” he said, propping himself against the white pillows and lighting his pipe. “What a damned nuisance. I suppose you’ll have to wait until we get back from Gstaad before having it taken care of.”

  “Taken care of?”

  “I can give you the name of a doctor. Discreet chap, very safe.”

  His meaning dawned on her. “Get rid of it, do you mean?”

  “Yes, of course.” He cast her a sidelong glance. “For God’s sake, child. What else were you thinking?”

  She sat up and pulled the sheet to the center of her chest. “Well, I hadn’t . . . I hadn’t thought about it at all . . . It’s only a possibility.”

  Walter set down the pipe. “How many days are you late?”

  “Three or four, I think. Perhaps five.” It was actually eight.

  “But you’re never late.”

  “It might be anything. The strain of travel.”

  Walter swore softly and rose from the bed. He was still as trim as ever, wiry and elegant. He sucked on his pipe and looked out the window. “You can’t possibly be thinking of bringing another creature into this overcrowded world, child. It’s immoral.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Obviously, you haven’t been douching properly.”

  “I don’t think it’s exactly foolproof. I’ve been reading pamphlets on the subject. I should have kept track of dates, too. We should have been more careful.”

  Walter swore again, even more softly, into the window glass. He took in a withering breath and turned to face her, and a gentle smile had appeared in the center of his beard. “Well, it’s just conjecture at the moment, isn’t it? Don’t give it another thought until we’re back home.”

  She promised she wouldn’t, but when every morning failed to bring the expected signs, when Walter looked at her with raised brows every time she returned from the lavatory, the conjecture expanded like a gas to fill the entire room, the entire universe of interaction between them. It was early April, and their Alpine village was still packed with snow, glittering and dripping off the eaves in the afternoon sun, an unutterably romantic landscape, but Walter made love to her only twice that entire week, and those times grudgingly, wordlessly, hardly touching her except where it was essential, as if her body and its possibilities disgusted him. He came to bed long after she had already retired, and she became accustomed to the sound of his bathing, his ritual cleansing before he would join her in the lavender-scented sheets.

  “Right,” he said, the morning after their return to Oxford, after she had rushed to the bathroom upon waking and returned, miserable and perspiring, to the bed. “You’ll have to see Dr. Winslow, that’s all. He’s got rooms in George Street. He’ll set you up directly.”

  “Walter, you’re not serious. It’s so soon.”

  “The sooner the better. You’ll be back to normal in a week.”

  “You must let me think. You must let me decide for myself.”

  He took her by the shoulders. “That’s the trouble. You can’t think right now. You’re not rational. Are you actually thinking of having this thing, this baby? Giving up everything you’ve worked for? You’d have to leave the Devonshire, of course. You’d spend your days attached to some incontinent howling infant instead of putting that extraordinary brain of yours to its proper use. And the scandal, my God! You’re my student. It would bring me down, Violet. It would ruin me.”

  Violet opened her mouth to say that it wasn’t quite true, they could marry and have the baby respectably, they could find a nanny and she could perhaps still carry on her work at the institute, they could find a way, for God’s sake, but she managed to clamp her lips down on the words and burst into tears instead.

  Walter took her in his arms and drew her into the bed with him. “There, now, child. You see? You’re not yourself at all. Already this alien clump of cells has addled your orderly little mind. Nature’s way, I suppose.” He shook his head in sorrow. “Let me handle all this for you. Let me ring up Winslow, set up the appointment. I’ll take perfect care of you, and things can go on just as before. Haven’t things been wonderful since we began together? Haven’t I advanced your every interest? Are we not two beings of the very same mind?”

  She snuffled a yes.

  “Then you must trust me, Violet. I do know what’s best.”

  Walter laid her back in the pillows and removed her nightgown, almost as if everything were normal again, as if her female organs had not betrayed them both, and the next afternoon called her into his office and handed her a slip of paper. He was smiling kindly. “Winslow will see you tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. You can take a taxi to my house directly after. Don’t worry about the bill; everything’s to be sent to me.”

  Vivian

  They say time is supposed to lengthen when you’re in shock, that your body shuts itself down, but I felt the opposite. I felt as if the seconds were racing by, sharp with unnecessary detail, the molecules of air pinging separately and rapidly against me. I heard Gogo introduce us, Dr. David Paul Salisbury, Miss Vivian Schuyler, and the way her voice tip-tilted the Schuyler as if she were making a private little joke. I saw Doctor Paul’s neat gray courting suit, his blue-sky tie, the individual locks of his damp hair brushed back from his face. I counted each tiny black lick of flame around Doctor Paul’s pupils as his eyes opened wide to take me in.

  “You again,” I whispered.

  “Vivs.” His eyes were dark; his face was pale. “You’re Vivs. Holy Christ.”

  Gogo had danced off to find her coat and say good-bye to her father. I snatched Doctor Paul’s hand and hauled him to the library and closed the door.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing here? Proposing to Gogo?”

  Shock. “I’m not proposing to her!”

  “She thinks you are!”

  He grabbed his hair and turned away. “God, no. Vivian, you can’t think—”

  “You’re Suitor Number Ten. You’re Gogo’s Mr. Perfect. You.” I backed up a step, stumbled over the chair that Gogo had vacated earlier, and crumpled into the seat. I stared at his gray-suited back, the delicate wisps of hair at the base of his neck. The neck I had kissed Saturday night, the back I had gripped with my fingers for dear life.

  I was going to hell.

  On the other hand, so was he.

  “You! You lying old son of a . . . of a dog of a . . . two-timing . . . rat! What am I, your bit on the side? Your afternoon snack? I’m supposed to be the mistress of my friend’s husband?”

  “Husband!” He spun around. “Her husband? God, no. I wa
s going to . . . Today, I was going to tell her it wasn’t working, that she was a dear girl but I—”

  “You were going to break things off.” My head was pounding fury. My tongue was so dry I could hardly speak.

  “Yes. What else?”

  “You tell me.”

  He found the table edge with his fingernails. “Vivian, you can’t think there would ever be anyone else. Not after Saturday night.”

  “What about Saturday night?”

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t feel it, too. Do not, Vivian, do not tell me that wasn’t the best thing that’s ever happened to you. To me. To us, together.”

  “You are mighty confident for a two-timing rat.”

  “I know what happened with us, Vivian. I know what that was, because I know it was always missing before. And you know it, too.”

  Something buckled and collapsed, deep in my chest, some object I didn’t even realize I owned. I thought, Only in New York. A classic New York coincidence, all of us marbles rolling together in our box, the way the old gal sitting next to you at the luncheonette turns out to have grown up in the apartment right smack next to yours. The law of big numbers. You bring home a precious gift from the post office and you fall at last, at last, you peel off your leathery old skin and fall so hard in a leap of pure and uncharacteristic faith, and the bastard turns out to be practically engaged to your boss’s daughter. To the one girl in the world who tolerates you, the one girl who doesn’t think you’re out to hunt down her man with your acquisitive Schuyler claws.

  I stood up. “Nothing happened with us. You are not going to break Gogo’s heart.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Loose ends. Sweet little Gogo was your loose end.”

  He whispered, white-faced: “You’re killing me, Vivian.”

  “You are going to march out of this room and take Gogo to lunch, and you are not going to break her heart.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “What does that mean? She’s expecting a ring, you idiot, you son of a bitch, and you were planning to say thanks for the memories, but I’m in love with your friend? Do you know what that would do to her?”

  To Gogo. To her delight, like a fizzy pink cloud around her head.

  To me. To my career. My beloved battered desk in a Metropolitan corner, my box full of rotten facts, my ambitions poured daily into a coffee cup, sugar, no cream.

  “You cannot be suggesting that I propose to her!”

  I clenched my hands. “No. But you’re not . . . You can’t—”

  “Can’t what, Vivian? What can’t I do?” His eyes weren’t dark anymore; they were incandescent blue, lighter than light, alive enough to burn.

  Indeed. What couldn’t he do? What should he do? For once, I couldn’t think. Something messy had spilled in my brain, short-circuiting the orderly hum of logic. I had lain naked in bed with this man, I had taken him inside me, I had known every inch of him. Except this inch, the Gogo inch, the most important inch of all. Gogo and Doctor Paul. I couldn’t bear it.

  “Just have lunch,” I said. “Tell her how sweet she is.”

  “I can’t believe you’re saying this.”

  “Believe it.”

  “Vivian, I’m in love with you.”

  My hands. Cold.

  “No, you’re not. We spent twelve hours together. We had a little fun.”

  “Don’t tell me what I’m feeling or not feeling. Don’t tell me that was just a little fun. Margaux is a sweet girl, a wonderful girl, but it wouldn’t be fair to her, it wouldn’t be right to continue things with her after—”

  “If you break her heart, Paul Salisbury, I’ll never speak to you again. Never.”

  As if the air shattered into pieces. We stood in a vacuum, Doctor Paul and I, staring at each other, unable to breathe. Never speak to you again. It had the weight of a death sentence.

  “Go. Go to lunch.”

  “We will discuss this later.”

  “Take her to lunch, Paul.”

  The door crashed open. Gogo. “Oh, my goodness! Everyone thought you’d run off together!”

  I turned, shiny-bright as a counterfeit new penny. “I was only administering the Vivian test.”

  “Ooh!” She gazed at my Doctor Paul with a look of such tremulous and unadulterated adoration, I had to glance away. “Did he pass?”

  I stepped forward and took her hand, and I hooked it over Doctor Paul’s strong and competent right arm, the arm that saved the lives of dying children, the arm that had stripped away my old leathery skin and held me in place while his body filled mine.

  “I’ll let you know.”

  • • •

  I STAYED in the library after they left. I didn’t want to think about the two of them sharing an intimate table at 21 or the Peninsula, leaning into each other, Doctor Paul telling beautiful Gogo how sweet she was, as I had instructed. The bottle of chilled wine—champagne, perhaps. The trout meunière, the new potatoes gleaming with butter. A salad to cleanse the palate. Dessert: something chocolate. Gogo loved chocolate. Gogo, I’m sorry I haven’t been attentive lately. I’ve been busy. It isn’t you. You’re a sweet girl, a darling girl. The perfect emerald-eyed girl. Look at your heart face, your blistering blondness. As good as gold. He takes her hand. She blushes, she’s so happy, she’s so in love with the handsome young doctor sitting across the table.

  I trudged through the stacks. I followed every possible lead, I scoured the index of every book the Metropolitan owned on the subjects of chemistry and physics (for the record, there were three) but I could find no mention of Violet Grant. Even the paragraphs devoted to Dr. Walter Grant never once referred to her. She was invisible. If it weren’t for her wedding announcement in the Times, she might never have existed.

  I closed my last hope and reshelved it next to the Einstein biography. I checked my watch. One-forty-five. Gogo and Doctor Paul would be back from lunch any minute.

  Time to secure a strategic alliance.

  I straightened out my snug little suit, girded my sleek little loins, and prowled like a lioness into Tibby’s office.

  He was delighted to see me, as ever. “Make it quick, Miss Schuyler. I’m busy.”

  I came to a dramatic stop before his desk, placed my manicured fingertips on the august battered wood, and leaned forward. A shame he wouldn’t appreciate the view. “I have a story,” I said.

  The skeptical eyebrow. “A story.”

  “A humdinger, Mr. Tibbs. Murder, sex, high society.”

  “Been done a million times.”

  “It never gets old.”

  He acknowledged this truth with a minute twitch of his lips and a lowering of the skeptical eyebrow. He set down his black Cross fountain pen next to the blotter—a gentleman of the old school, Edmund Tibbs—and leaned back in his chair. “Pitch me.”

  I swung myself into the leather armchair facing him and crossed my legs. Unlike most of the editors at the Metropolitan, Tibby didn’t smoke, and I drew in a good clean breath of leather and ink before I began.

  “It all starts with a suitcase, Mr. Tibbs. A suitcase sent to my apartment last Saturday from Zurich, Switzerland, containing the effects of my great-aunt, Violet Schuyler, who was last seen in Berlin in the summer of 1914.”

  Pause, for effect.

  “Go on,” said Tibby.

  “It turns out that Aunt Violet left home in 1911 to study as an atomic physicist at Oxford. She married her professor, the head of a prestigious institute, and they moved to Berlin, where he was found in his apartment, murdered, just before the First World War broke out.”

  “Who murdered him?”

  I raised my finger. “That, you see, is the mystery. No one was ever found guilty. But Aunt Violet disappeared with her lover into that hot July night, and I, Mr. Tibbs”—I stabbed my finger into the wo
oden armrest—“I intend to find out what happened.”

  Tibby knit his hands together over his professorial waistcoat. “And you plan to do this how?”

  “First, I want access to the Metropolitan archives.”

  “Continue.”

  “Second, I happen to have the contents of Aunt Violet’s suitcase.”

  “Which are?”

  My brave finger crumpled against the armrest. “I haven’t opened it yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “The lock’s a little rusty.”

  No one held a silence like Tibby. His pale eyes examined the pores of my forehead, the whites of my eyes, the tenor of my thoughts. “Fair enough. Continue.”

  Damn it all, my palms were damp. I prided myself on my dry palms. I opened my hands a crack to let the healing air inside. “I will proceed with my research based on the information I discover in the suitcase.”

  “Who was her lover?”

  “Her lover?”

  “Violet’s lover. Who was he?”

  “I don’t know. You perceive they would have kept the affair secret.”

  “May I humbly suggest, Miss Schuyler, that the name of the lover might prove a logical fact with which to anchor your research—”

  The heart soared. “Absolutely, Mr. Tibbs. The highest priority.”

  “—if I were to commission this story. Which I am not.”

  The heart crashed. “You’re not? But you just said—”

  “I would suggest, Miss Schuyler, if I were to commission. The conditional tense.”

  “Why not, for God’s sake?”

  Tibby picked up his pen and dipped it into an antique ink pot of purple-tinted glass. “Because, Miss Schuyler, you’re a fact-checker, not a writer.”

  “I can write. I can write this story.”

  “Nevertheless. I need you to check facts, not invent them.”

  I bolted to my feet. “You’re making a mistake.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “This is a good story, Mr. Tibbs. A great story, and I’m the only one who can write it. I’m the only one in this office who can find out what happened, the only person anywhere.”