The Secret Life of Violet Grant

by Beatriz Williams

  I lifted my other hand and ran it through Doctor Paul’s too-long sunshine hair, darkening at the roots now as November took its toll on all of us. Morning nudged through the cracks in the blinds. I needed my coffee and cigarette, but I couldn’t dislodge my poor dear doctor, could I? I reached for Violet’s gold watch, where it sat always on my nightstand, and wiped the glass with my thumb. Perpetual seven-oh-three. When time stopped for Violet and Lionel.

  I said quietly, so I wouldn’t wake him: “I still don’t know when they began their affair. She mentions seeing him at a party at Jane’s apartment and that he’s recovering from an operation. And then he turns up in Wittenberg, where she and Walter rent a villa every summer. But it seems as if the more she likes him, the less she writes about him.”

  I looked down at Doctor Paul’s head, tucked into my neck like a child’s, and touched the delicate tip of his ear with my finger. “I guess I can understand that.”

  A plaintive gurgle emerged from my belly. I strained my neck to place a kiss on Doctor Paul’s peaceful head and then detached myself, limb by limb, from the tangle we’d gotten ourselves into. I tucked the bedclothes back around him, found my robe, and picked my way through the strewn clothes into the living room.

  No sign of Sally. Surprise, surprise. I started the coffee going and rummaged in the icebox. If the mingled scents of bacon and Yuban couldn’t rouse my sleeping stallion, nothing could. I whipped the eggs to a proper froth and started a batch of toast, and I was just jabbing the fork in the toaster when a pair of arms came around my waist and a pair of lips collided with my temple.

  “You again,” I said.

  “Like a bad penny. That smells fantastic. Are you sharing?”

  “I might, if you’re a good boy and find the plates.”

  He didn’t move. He’d put his pants back on but not his shirt. I felt his heart beat between my shoulders. I reached to flip the bacon on the back burner.

  He said, “I’m sorry about last night.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about.”

  “Are you . . . ?” Cleared the old throat. “I wasn’t too . . . ?”

  “Doctor. This is Vivian, remember? I’ll let you know when I’m not enjoying myself.”

  “Mmm.” Another kiss.

  He was making me right at home in his skin-scented middle. Ready to let the bacon burn and the eggs scramble themselves. “Mmm yourself,” I said.

  “So. Another thing.”

  “There’s more?”

  “Last night. In my primal haste.”

  “Hmm. Yes. We forgot a little something, didn’t we?”

  “A big something. My fault. I’m sorry, Vivian, I was just so . . . God, it was such hell yesterday . . . and there you were . . . I wasn’t thinking straight . . .”

  “I know. My fault, too. Heat of the moment.” I peeled myself from his arms and poured a cup of coffee. “Here. My magic beans will make you all better.”

  “I do feel better. It’s you I’m thinking about.” Sip. Soulful, worried eyes. “How close are you?”

  “Close. Not too close, I think.” Pretty damned hair’s-breadth close.

  “Jesus. It won’t happen again, I promise.” He stretched out his not-coffee hand and stroked my tumbled locks. “Or there’s the Pill.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “I do know this doctor. He could get you a prescription.”

  “Do you, now. Might be a good idea. If we’re planning to make a habit of this.”

  I tried not to grin. I really did. So did he. But.

  He said: “Thank you for last night. You saved me. You do know that.”

  “Anytime. And I do mean anytime.”

  He leaned forward and kissed the strands between his fingers. “I love this hair of yours.”

  Look, now. A man holds your hair in his hands and kisses it, the man who made love to you last night, and I dare you not to wrap your hands around his sweet skull and kiss him silly, until you’re crashing into the icebox together, spilling hot coffee everywhere, giggling and groaning, all choked up with mutual worship. And then he stops suddenly and crushes you into his bones—your robe’s come undone by now, naturally, and your bare skin attaches to his bare skin—and says, “It’s been magic. This month with you, it’s been heaven,” and what the hell are you supposed to say to that?

  “Yes.”

  “I just . . . Almighty God, Vivian, I love you so much. I just need you to know that. When I fall short of you. Give you less than you deserve. I love you, you can’t imagine. You’re the world to me.” He said it violently, into that hair of mine he said he loved. In another second, he’d be proposing.

  “Great guns,” I said. “I think the bacon’s burning.”

  • • •

  DID I MENTION today was a Wednesday? Well. Today was a Wednesday, and what with all the bacon and the shenanigans, I slunk like an alley cat into the Metropolitan offices well past my usual hour of lateness. And I am not, as you may have noticed, the world’s earliest alley cat to begin with.

  But. I had lateness privileges now! Everyone knew I was now among Lightfoot’s chosen. Even Agatha did no more than snap her Wrigley’s at me as I waved my cheeriest and whipped around the corner before Gogo could triangulate my position from her radar station outside her father’s office.

  “Hello there, Vivs!”

  Gogo was perched atop my desk, right smack between the telephone and the empty fact-checking box, gams crossed, topmost footsie bounce bounce bouncing. Her face wore a brilliant pink smile.

  She knows.

  Gathump gathump, went the old heart. I swung my briefcase into place. “Hello there, honey. What’s cooking?”

  Who told her? Where did she see us?

  “You are. You’re cooking. Look at that dress! And your hair. It’s all . . .” She motioned.

  I coughed. “New style.” The Salon Doctor Paul Deluxe. “You like?”

  “Mmm. I want one just like it.”

  “Wouldn’t suit you at all, dearest. So. What are you up to this morning? Don’t you have some advertisers to charm?” My heart was slowing from a gallop to a trot. There was not a drop of guile in Gogo. If she knew about Doctor Paul, she wouldn’t go about confronting me all sideways like this. She would come at me straight, with bathtubs of tears and that lost-koala expression that did me in, every time.

  Gogo laughed. “Not today. I’m doing the decorations for Agatha’s anniversary party, and then I’m going shopping for a new dress.”

  “Nothing beats shopping to heal a broken heart.”

  A bit of sparkle in the eyes. “Absolutely.”

  Doctor Paul had been right about Gogo. After a week or so of despair, she’d begun to bounce back nicely. She’d returned to work, the smile had reappeared on her face from time to time, the old sunshine had begun to beam out from her baby blues. Maybe she was stronger than I thought. Maybe I was in the clear.

  It didn’t make me feel any less squalid as I stood before her, though.

  I could meet her eyes. Just. But I couldn’t return to girly intimacy with her, I couldn’t lean forward across her bed and share secrets. What if she could see right through my eyes and periscope downward to the guilty depths of my hippocampus? What if she could see the memory of Doctor Paul and yours truly, locked together on a sofa, against a wall, atop a kitchen counter, asleep in his bed in a Gordian knot of perfect accord?

  She took my hand. “Come with me. I miss you, Vivs. You’ve been working so hard.”

  “I miss you, too, Gogo. But I can’t come with you this afternoon. Some of us have a real job, you know.”

  “Then come tonight to Daddy’s place. Please? We’re having dinner together. I want you to be there, Vivs. I asked Daddy. He said it was a wonderful idea. He wants you there, too.” A bit of the old lost koala to the eyes, a bit of plaintive quiver to
the voice.

  Dinner with Lightfoot. The chest quaked. Did he know something? He couldn’t confront me with his own daughter right there, could he?

  I could proclaim I was already engaged this evening. But what had Paul said this morning, as we rushed down the stairs together, all tardy-faced and laughing? He couldn’t get away until midnight. He’d meet me at my place. So. I couldn’t say I wasn’t free.

  Unless I lied.

  I couldn’t lie to Gogo. I know, I know. Everyone says that once you involve yourself in the Big Lie, the little lies line up behind like ducklings, until they just paddle effortlessly out of your mouth, one by one, sometimes two at a time. Not the case with me. Instead, since I began playing alley cats with Doctor Paul, I knew an unstoppable compulsion to accord myself with scrupulous honesty everywhere else. As if that could somehow atone.

  I squeezed her hand. “I can make it. What time?”

  “Seven o’clock sharp.” She popped off my desk and gave me a sticky pink kiss. “Don’t be late!”

  • • •

  BACK IN THE STACKS. I loved the stacks. They suited my newfound need to hide myself in obscurity, among people who no longer existed. The truth was, though, I’d reached a bit of a dead end, as I told Tibby when he walked in without warning through the Furniture Repository door at—I checked my watch—one o’clock in the afternoon.

  “Miss Schuyler. How is your research progressing?”

  I looked up the patrician line of his nose. “The truth is, I’ve reached a bit of a dead end.”

  “It happens.”

  “Would you like to sit down?”

  “No. I came to tell you that you’re wanted downstairs. Miss Brown’s fortieth anniversary party. Everyone’s required to attend.”

  “Miss Brown?”

  “Our receptionist, Miss Schuyler. Miss Brown? Miss Agatha Brown?”

  “Oh! Agatha! Forty years, is it?” I whistled. “Certainly, a party’s in order. Knees up, I say.”

  “Indeed.”

  I leaned back in my chair and crossed the shapely legs. “And you haven’t got better things to do than to come and fetch me personally?”

  “I’m the only one with a key.”

  “Now, now, Mr. Tibbs. I can tell when a man wants to have a private word with me.” I motioned to the other chair, which, in fairness to Tibby, might or might not remain intact under the weight of human hindquarters. “Do sit.”

  His professorial vest squeezed out a sigh. He sat. “You’ve exceeded your three weeks. As I’m sure you’re aware.”

  “It’s been a little rougher seas than I imagined at the outset.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Well.” I looked down at the letters before me, the stack of biographies, the folder from the Metropolitan archives marked BERLIN 1914. “I have Violet’s letters home. There aren’t many, and they’re all to her sister Christina, who evidently wasn’t privy to her innermost thoughts, if you know what I mean. I know she met this Lionel Richardson in May of 1914, and he stayed with them at their summer villa in Wittenberg, along with Jane and her son. It seems the whole crowd from the institute joined them at the end. Einstein, even. Einstein!”

  “All this, with war in the air? Wouldn’t that be aiding and abetting the enemy?”

  “Walter seems to have been the cosmopolitan sort. And anyway, the war took everyone by surprise. As you know. But I suspect Violet and Lionel began their affair there in Wittenberg, because here”—I pointed to the next-to-last letter—“Violet stops mentioning him at all. And then, poof, there’s nothing, not a single letter, except for this.” I picked up the final missive, a postcard, and handed it to Tibby.

  “‘Having a lovely excursion. All well. Will write more soon. Violet.’” He looked up. “I see what you mean.”

  “But look at the date on the postmark. July twenty-sixth. That’s before Walter was supposedly murdered in their flat in Berlin. So obviously they, the two of them, the three of them, Lionel and Walter and Violet, they all left Wittenberg for some reason. The question is why. Possibly because the political situation was worsening, but from all I’ve read, the final declaration of war came as a shock. It wasn’t until the mobilization order went out that people, the man on the street I mean, believed they were actually going to fight. I suppose the shrinks would call it denial. Everyone thought that civilization would prevail.”

  Tibby took his reading glasses out of his pocket and squinted. “I can’t read the name of the town on the postmark.”

  “Neither can I. It’s too smudged. But I’ll tell you one thing: it’s not Berlin.”

  He removed his glasses. “Are the archives any help?”

  “They might be, if there were any correspondence from Berlin after July twenty-fifth, when Austria declared war on Serbia and set the whole thing going. I suppose everyone was leaving the country by then.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Why ‘hmm’?”

  “Because it’s odd. Because you’d think there would be a flood of chatter. Any good journalist would stay until the bitter end.” He looked back at the rows of wooden cabinets. “Have you looked in the confidential files?”

  “The what?”

  “The confidential files. The ones containing particularly sensitive information. The real dirt, as they say.”

  I climbed to the tippy-tips of my four-inch heels. “WHAT DID YOU SAY? NOBODY TOLD ME THERE WERE CONFIDENTIAL DAMNED FILES!”

  Oh, he smiled at me, old Tibby, with the patience of a governess instructing her charge. He fished around in his tweed jacket pocket, produced a set of keys, and dangled one in front of me. “Someone is telling you now.”

  Violet

  The villa in Wittenberg is seething with guests, the way Walter likes it. Jane and Henry have joined them, and Lionel Richardson, who goes out shooting with Walter every morning. Violet never realized Walter knew how to shoot, she presumed that sort of thing went against his principles, but off he goes, shotgun slung under his tweedy arm, like an English squire, while Henry and Violet retire to the makeshift laboratory in the carriage house and Jane lies in bed, writing letters. Lise and Albert Einstein and Otto Hahn and his wife are expected later tonight in Hahn’s automobile; they telephoned from Treuenbrietzen at four o’clock to say that they had been delayed by a number of unlucky flats and would probably miss dinner.

  In the meantime, a pair of German officials have come to dinner, and Jane is acting as hostess. If the arrangement seems odd, nobody appears to notice. Violet, sitting in nominal wifely state at the opposite end of the table, the quiet end, is happy to let Jane direct the conversation from Walter’s left hand, flirting first with one German official and then the other, while Violet answers stilted questions from the officials’ wives and passes the salt. Jane has ordered candles instead of the harsh electric lights, and the scent of burning wax reminds Violet of childhood, when she would peer through the doorway and watch her parents host their long and ponderous dinner parties.

  “But surely it won’t come to war,” says Jane, sounding more amused than alarmed.

  Herr von Karlow throws a nervous glance at Lionel. “Nobody wants war, of course, madame. It is simply a matter of obligations.”

  “Obligations.” Jane laughs. “Surely, Herr von Karlow, you can’t possibly suggest that Germany would allow herself to be dragged into defending Austria from the colossal threat of poor little Serbia?”

  Lionel has finished his duck and now calmly plucks a plum from the display at the center of the table. He lifts his knife to slip out the pit. “But it isn’t just poor little Serbia, is it? Russia will rush in to defend her fellow Slavs from Austria’s outrage. That’s the point. Serbia can defy Austria because she counts on Russia, and Austria can defy Russia because she counts on Germany. A neat little arrangement, which is supposed to keep everyone from fighting at all.” He cuts the plum int
o slices and pops one into his mouth.

  “Russia should not interfere in Austria’s affairs,” says Herr von Karlow, pale-faced. “Austria has every right to avenge the murder of her prince.”

  “Well said.” Lionel eats another section of plum. “And I have every confidence that Austria will do all in her considerable power to ensure that other nations are not dragged into such a local dispute. Because if Russia goes to war, then France must mobilize in her defense, and then all Europe comes to Armageddon.”

  His easy words bring the table to stillness. Someone’s knife clinks musically against a Meissen plate. Violet looks out the window, where the air is still light and hazy, the sunset still hours away. The green lawn lies at peace beneath a pale blue sky; beyond the cluster of linden trees, Violet can just see the corner of the tennis court. A lugubrious hot summer: how could war possibly interrupt it?

  The other German speaks up. “Naturally Germany should deplore a general war.”

  “Naturally,” says Lionel.

  • • •

  DUSK SETTLES SWEETLY. Violet has stolen away to the laboratory after dessert—something is nudging the edge of her mind, some beginning of an idea that will not let her rest—and when she steps at last through the French doors to the terrace, the air is flat and indigo-quiet, scented with cigarettes and with the jasmine that grows in a neat row along the side of the house.

  A faint noise drifts into her right ear, a male noise, a chuckle perhaps. She knows it belongs to Lionel. She cannot resist turning her head, and she sees him at once: a midnight shadow tucked against the lindens, feet crossed at the ankles while he speaks to the solid height and heft of Herr von Karlow. The smoke from their cigarettes whorls ghostlike in the darkness.