The Secret Life of Violet Grant

by Beatriz Williams

  “He’s ferociously intelligent. And not a rote thinker at all; he has a way of looking at every problem in a new way. An original way. Often wrong, of course, but sometimes startlingly right.” Walter lays a black disc upon the Victrola’s plate and turns the switch. He bends over to place the needle just so. “And yet he was absolutely conventional in his habits. Rode to bloody hounds all winter, boxing and shooting and every last thing. Built like a prizefighter, as you saw. I expect he votes Conservative.”

  “Good God.”

  Walter laughs. “Don’t be afraid, child. It was years ago. He’s a soldier now. Gets all that barbarism out of his system by legitimate means.”

  The opening notes of the Pastorale explore the room in scratches and pops. Violet’s muscles clench in response, her arms and legs and jaws, her heart. As if to bolt. She forces herself to breathe. “I suppose I’m not surprised. I know his sort.”

  “He’s not a bad chap. Only unenlightened.”

  “Did you hear what he said?” Violet deepens her voice into a mocking English cadence. “I’d expect I would be her life’s work. I wanted to smack him.”

  Her husband turns to lean against the dresser and folds his arms across his chest. His teeth flash yellow-white in the glow of Violet’s lamp. “He might have liked that.”

  “Brute,” she whispers.

  “Ah, child.” Walter, smiling, approaches the bed and opens the nightstand drawer, where his tissue-thin made-to-order sheepskin condoms wait in their ivory case. The violins swell into a tinny chorus through the Victrola’s curving horn. “All men are brutes.”

  Vivian

  Gogo was already wearing her carnation polka-dot pajamas when I arrived for visiting hours at a quarter to seven, or maybe she’d never dressed to begin with. Her eyes were rabbity pink, and her long hair was wrapped up in an improbably cheerful green-and-yellow Hermès headscarf.

  “You look like an Easter egg.” I kissed her cheeks.

  She managed a giggle. “I’ve eaten nothing but chocolate all day. I even drank chocolate. Mummy calls it her cure.”

  “Mummy should know,” I said. Gogo lived with her mother, the original Mrs. S. Barnard Lightfoot III, who had about as much luck with her next two husbands as she had with her first. She was now engaged to an aging bon vivant who was probably homosexual. Hope springeth eternal, as the gentle rain from heaven.

  Or maybe that was mercy. Droppeth.

  “Poor Mummy. Do you think it runs in the family?” Gogo didn’t wait for an answer, but took me by the hand and led me past fluffy pastel furniture and Mummy’s antique doll collection until we arrived at her bedroom, decorated abundantly in Early American Princess.

  “It’s just possible.” I sat down delicately on my usual gingham armchair while Gogo threw herself on her usual tissue-strewn bed. “You know, this is all feeling strangely familiar.”

  Gogo clutched Rufus to her chest and stared at the ceiling. “It’s different this time, Vivs. I really loved him. I really did.”

  “He’s a handsome one, that’s for sure. A shiny specimen. Naturally you’re snowed. But—”

  “It wasn’t just that. It was the way he looked at me, Vivs. As if he understood me. As if he could see past all this”—she waved a hand dismissively up and down her fashion-plate figure—“and saw everything inside. Do you know what it was like?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  She turned her head to look at me. Her eyes were brimming with teary goodness. “Like the way you look at me. As if I’m a human being.”

  “Oh, honey.” I leaned forward and propped my elbows on the mattress. “How can you be the way you are, Gogo? The way you trust people. The way you see the beauty in everything. I don’t understand you, not a bit.”

  “Yes, you do. I’m not complicated, like you are. I’m as simple as simple can be. All I want is someone to love me, a family to take care of, a house to fill up. The way things were when I was a little girl. I . . .” Her eyes filled anew. “That’s it, isn’t it? I’m boring.”

  “You’re not boring.”

  “I wish I were more like you, Vivs. I wish I had your . . . I don’t know what it is. That spirit of yours. You’re so modern and brave.”

  “I’m not brave at all. Brash, maybe.”

  “Yes, you are brave.” She took my hand and pulled me onto the bed next to her and put her polka-dot arms around me. She smelled like Johnson’s baby powder, pink and perfect. “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “You can tell me anything.”

  “The moment I knew I was in love with him.”

  I breathed carefully around the knot of building pressure in my chest. I found it helped to dig my fingernails into my palms, as hard as I could bear.

  She went on in her soft voice: “It was at the end of vacation. He was going home in a few days. We went out to dinner and drinks and I had . . . well, I had a little too much champagne. I guess he did, too.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  “And we went back to my room—Mummy was still out with Gilbert—and we . . . we were kissing and . . . things . . . and I decided I would do it. I would . . . you know . . . with him.”

  There was no breathing now. I was suffocating on the hard knot lodged in my lungs, I was sinking irretrievably into the squish of Gogo’s mattress.

  Gogo was stroking my arm. Her fingers found the skin beneath the elbow-length sleeves of my black-and-white checked jacket, my snug little wonder of a female business suit. “So we took off our clothes and we were on the bed and . . . well, it felt so good, Vivs, the way he touched me. Really, really good. Is that bad of me?”

  “No. It’s not bad of you.”

  “Because Mummy always said . . .” She hesitated. “But it felt so good, Vivs. He was so gentle. And we were about to . . . you know . . . and I told him . . . I told him I’d never done this before. And he . . . he . . . Oh, Vivs.”

  “What did he do, honey?” I whispered. My eyes were watering from the cut of my fingernails into my palms. My body was too hot in its wool suit and silk stockings. I toed off my shoes and let them tumble to the fluffy pink carpet. “Did he hurt you?”

  She moved us both with her sigh. “He stopped.”

  “He stopped.”

  “He stopped. He said we should wait. He said it should be special, my first time. Well, I told him that it was special, that it was, you know, perfect. I told him I really wanted to do it. And I did! I really did! But he said no, we should wait.” She made a sad little giggle, a brokenhearted noise. “I thought that meant he wanted to wait until we were married. That it was a sign, you know, that the reason I’d always been disappointed, the reason I’d been saving myself all this time, was for him.”

  “You’d think.”

  “Anyway, that was when I knew it was real. That he was a true gentleman and I loved him.”

  “Of course it was.”

  “Do you think it was wrong of me? Going to bed with him like that?”

  I withdrew my claws from my palms and curled my fingers around hers. “No, Gogo. You were in love with him. You wanted to show him. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “I thought he loved me. I really did. Why else would he stop like that?”

  Why, indeed.

  I stared across the room at the gigantic antique dollhouse against the wall, a relic of Victorian girlhood, flawless in every gingerbread detail. It had been Gogo’s mother’s dollhouse, and she had given it to Gogo for her eighth birthday. Gogo once told me that she, Gogo, wanted to put it away in storage somewhere—she was twenty-two years old, for heaven’s sake—but she didn’t want to hurt her mother’s feelings. She had been reclining on this very bed at the time, staring at the ceiling, dressed in a white nightie and fluffy white slippers, which she propped up against the wall, one slender ankle twined around the other. She’d just wait until she got marrie
d, she said, and give it to her own daughter. She’d name her daughter Vivian, she said, and then the little girl would be just like me.

  Well, in that case, her little girl might not have much to do with dollhouses, I’d pointed out. Gogo had laughed and said yes, but she’d play with it anyway, just to humor her mummy.

  I wondered, sometimes, if Gogo didn’t understand me better than anyone.

  “Can you stay with me tonight?” Gogo asked.

  “I’m sorry, hon. I have a lot of work to do. I’m working on a gig for the magazine.”

  “The one you told me about on the telephone?”

  “That’s the one.” I swallowed and went on. “You know what? I found out today that Aunt Violet knew all the most eminent physicists of her time. They were all there together at this scientific institute in Berlin, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut, before the war. Einstein was there. Max Planck. Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner. They used to get together at Planck’s house for musical evenings, after they left the laboratory for the day. Einstein played the violin.”

  “Einstein. Really.”

  “Can you imagine? All those brilliant minds in one place. A real bash.”

  “Like college all over again. Don’t you miss college, Vivs? We had such laughs. Do you remember that time we stayed up late, talking about that book, what was it . . . the heiress whose husband had to take her name, except his family wouldn’t let him . . .”

  “Cecilia. Fanny Burney.”

  “I liked that book.” She picked at her pajamas. “Sometimes I wish we didn’t have to grow up like this. Daddy used to say that to me, all the time, you know that?” She deepened her voice into the Lightfoot growl. “Don’t grow up, sweetie. Stay just the way you are. And he was dead right, wasn’t he, like he always is. Being a grown-up is the pits.”

  I gave her hands a little squeeze and sat up. “I should really be going.”

  “Do you have to?”

  “Yes, I really do. I brought a couple of biographies with me. Einstein and Meitner. I’ll read them tonight.”

  She padded after me through the ghostly Easter-egg rooms of her mother’s apartment. I found my pocketbook and briefcase in the hall and turned around to hug her good-bye. “You’ll be all right, won’t you? I can stay if you want.”

  “I’ll be fine. Daddy’s calling every half hour.”

  “Good. I’ll call you at bedtime.”

  Gogo’s blue eyes went round. “Oh, Vivs, I completely forgot! I’m such a selfish little thing. Your boy, the one you met over the weekend. I never even asked about him!”

  I picked up my briefcase. “Oh, it was nothing, really. I woke up Monday and realized I could live without him. End of story. Fun while it lasted.”

  “Really, Vivs?” Her soulful look, searching me out.

  “Really, Gogo.”

  She shook her head. “Gosh, Vivs. I wish I could be you.”

  That one, I had no answer for.

  • • •

  A LETTER in the mail slot. I almost didn’t open it, I almost chucked it into the bin right there in the vestibule, but I am who I am. A curious animal.

  I read it at the table in the living room. I tend to get too sentimental in the bedroom. Too much like Gogo.

  Dear Vivian,

  I’m writing this between surgeries, so excuse my haste. I just wanted to let you know that I’m thinking of you all the time, you’re like a low and constant hum at the back of my brain, even when I’m working, and when I have a moment to myself with a cup of coffee, you rise up and stand before me in electric Vivian color with that smile on your face, the one that got me in the chest right from the start. I try not to waste a second, so I pick some scene from the weekend—the coffee shop, or the library, or when we stood in front of the Balto statue in the park and read the inscription together, and you wouldn’t look at me afterward, and I knew you were crying. Well, that brave old dog made me tear up, too, just so you know. I try not to think about what happened afterward, at my apartment. How perfect it was. I’m saving that for when I’m really down.

  Not giving up, Vivian. Ever.

  Yours,

  Paul

  Oh, Jesus. Oh, my ever-loving Christ.

  Here’s what I would do: I would think about Gogo and Doctor Paul in that Los Angeles hotel bed together. I would think about Gogo naked and him naked, and fuse the two images into one entwined whole, and the nausea that followed this thought would work like a reverse Pavlovian response, until every time I remembered Doctor Paul, I’d feel that same curl of nausea. I would be cured.

  A little fun, he’d said. A few kisses, maybe a little more.

  Liar, liar. Pants on fire.

  I crumpled the letter into a ball and tossed it into the basket. I thought about making dinner, but I wasn’t hungry, still had that ball of nausea in my stomach, so instead I carried my briefcase into my bedroom and changed into my favorite blue-stripe pajamas. I took out the Einstein biography, propped myself on the pillow, and focused my eyes on the dry words before me.

  Violet, 1914

  Violet has only to survey the interior of the Plancks’ comfortable electric-lit music room to remind herself how much she owes to Walter.

  Of course, Walter himself is not present this evening. But Herr Planck is there, mixing drinks in the corner, and Otto Hahn and his wife, and Lise Meitner. Herr Einstein already sits in his favorite chair, listening intently to his violin, adjusting the strings. Isn’t it worth any personal humiliation, any number of dark-haired beauties copulating with your husband atop an antique French escritoire, to be creating music shoulder-to-shoulder with Einstein himself?

  Next to her, Henry Mortimer’s serious gray eyes are shining with the afterglow of the day’s work in the laboratory. “I’ve read all Dr. Grant’s articles, of course, but it’s astonishing, isn’t it? Like looking inside the actual atomic nucleus.”

  “It isn’t, though. Not really. You’re only seeing the results of one proton colliding with another.” They are sitting on the piano bench. Violet opens up her leather satchel and takes out a few sheets of music, the Bach and the Dvořák, as they had agreed. Her movements are brusque and efficient; she has done this so many times before, and she wants to communicate that fact to Mr. Mortimer, that the sheer wonder of scientific discovery grays quickly into the drudgery of endless repetition, getting nowhere in particular, persevering out of sheer goat-headed stubbornness.

  As she has.

  “Exactly. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” Henry holds up the bow of his violin. “A billion atoms form the tip of this bow, and I’ve seen the collision of a single component of a single nucleus. It’s the heart of matter, the beating heart.”

  “You’ll grow accustomed to it.”

  Henry twirls his bow around his thumb and forefinger. His hands are long and patrician, the nails neatly trimmed into razor crescents at the tips. He tilts his head, watching her with his quiet eyes, his ancient composure. “I only want you to know how much I appreciate your taking me on this summer, Mrs. Grant.”

  Violet skims her hand along the top of her satchel and turns to Henry. He must look a great deal like his father, she thinks, because there’s very little of the Comtesse de Saint-Honoré in his narrow face, in his small mouth and grave eyes. Only the lashes recall his mother, thick and excessive, a bristle of black around the lighter gray of his irises. He sits there twiddling his violin bow, looking at her expectantly, a thick curl of his overlong hair drooping into his forehead.

  “In the end, it was my husband’s decision,” she says.

  “Well, I appreciate it. It’s the most tremendous opportunity. I—”

  “Here you are, Frau Grant. Are you sure you’ll only have water?” Herr Planck stands kindly before her, every eminent inch of him, offering her a crystal tumbler.

  “Yes, thank you. Just water.” She takes it from h
im.

  “I’m sorry your husband couldn’t be with us tonight.”

  How she hates that look of sympathy. “I’m afraid he had another engagement. And Walter would rather listen than play, I’m afraid.”

  There is the briefest of awkward silences, as everybody looks away, except Henry, who lifts his violin to his chin and plays a few notes.

  “Shall we start with the Bach?” says Lise cheerfully.

  Dear Lise. How might Violet’s life be different, if there had been an English Lise Meitner at the Devonshire Institute? Like her, Lise has fought for her place at the institute. Unlike her, Lise has the encouragement and financial support of her intellectual Viennese parents, and she remains unmarried. She works with Otto Hahn in the basement of the chemistry building, patiently discovering the isotopes of various radioactive elements. At present they are investigating thorium. What does Frau Hahn think of this arrangement? Violet can’t imagine, because Lise is an attractive woman, dark-haired and large-eyed, and a distinct air of kinship fizzles between her and Herr Hahn.

  Violet turns to the piano keys behind her, and Henry rises to his feet, violin still at his chin, and makes his way to an unoccupied chair. Henry has all the notes by memory; Violet has never seen him study a sheet of music.

  They start with the Bach. In its elegant symmetry, its intricate phrases, the Violet of laboratory and matrimony soon dissolves. She’s been playing with her colleagues for months now, and sometimes it’s the only thing keeping her alive, the only thing keeping her whole, this music in which she creates and participates, free from Walter’s sharp eyes and his neatly clipped fingers stroking his neatly clipped beard as he reads over her latest laboratory notes, her frustrating lack of progress. The last movement ends, and a sweet silence arrests the air of Max Planck’s music room. Beyond the windows, the summer night is falling at last.

  A maid arrives with tiny glasses of schnapps. This time Violet accepts one and sips it delicately. Otto and Lise are laughing together at some miscue in the second movement. A few yards away, Herr Einstein’s thick, dark head is bent over his violin. Violet takes another sip, another, sets down her empty glass, and approaches him.