The Secret Life of Violet Grant

by Beatriz Williams

  No one made a sound. The word ass echoed its way around the room, nearly setting the champagne bottles to rattling. I could just see Gogo’s pink face at my periphery.

  “She was every young man’s dream.” Mr. Lightfoot exhaled the memory and drank down his bubbly in a single large-throated gulp. He turned to Agatha and gestured wide, as if he were presenting her to the Queen of England. “And now. Just look at her!”

  I looked obediently at Agatha’s shellacked head and paper hat and wide smile. I looked at the cherry-red tip of Lightfoot’s nose. I looked, for lack of anything better, at the enormous chocolate telephone in the center of the conference table: Congratulations Agatha! Forty Years of Service!

  A furious and rapid clapping exploded the stunned silence. “Brava!” said Gogo. “Brava, Agatha! Hear, hear!”

  “Hear, hear!” we murmured in chorus, and all at once, there wasn’t enough champagne in the world.

  • • •

  BY THE TIME we filed out of the conference room, I was far too tight to sit down with the precious confidential files upstairs. “I’ve changed my mind,” I said to Gogo. “I’ll go shopping with you after all. Just let me have a word with Tibby.”

  I called Doctor Paul first, from the telephone in the library, taking a chance he was between surgeries. He came on the line right away. “Vivian! Where are you?”

  “In the library. The Metropolitan library. I miss you, Doctor.”

  “I miss you, too.” Bemused, maybe. “Are you all right? You sound a bit—”

  “Tipsy? Yes, I am. Champagne and cake in the office today. It’s the receptionist’s forty-year anniversary with the magazine.”

  “Must have been some party.”

  “That doesn’t begin to cover it. Listen. I’m going shopping with Gogo this afternoon.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Don’t be so alarmed. I can’t just drop her, you know. She’ll wonder what’s going on.”

  He said something under his breath. “Are you going to say anything to her?”

  “About us, you mean? Of course not. Not yet. Why?” I doodled with the cord. I was feeling loose and champagney, not particularly worried about anything, even Gogo’s wounded heart, which seemed to be healing nicely anyway. “Do you want me to tell her?”

  “I guess not. Not if you don’t want to.”

  “All right. I won’t. But I think you’re right. I think she’s bouncing back. Our bouncing baby Gogo.”

  “Good. Good for her. I’m glad.”

  I kissed the mouthpiece noisily. “I’ll see you tonight?”

  “I’ll be late, I’m afraid. No rest for the weary.”

  “That’s why I gave you the key.”

  We said good-bye. Before I left, I went upstairs with Tibby’s super-secret key and unlocked the super-secret file cabinet, and what I found there made my tipsy jaw swing as low as a sweet chariot.

  I packed up the folders and put them in my briefcase. Which was, strictly speaking, forbidden, but when did that ever stop me?

  Violet

  Violet’s first rebellion occurred at the age of eleven, when, in the natural course of things, she was sent out of the nursery schoolroom on the third floor of the Schuyler town house on Sixty-third Street to attend a proper girls’ academy.

  Her mother had expected her to matriculate at Miss Porter’s School, where she herself had learned her copperplate handwriting, her English literature, her ladylike arts, her code of disciplined female conformity, but Violet had studied the course schedule with horror. She had already taught herself the essentials of algebra, startling the family governess, and had read most of the works listed on the curriculum. What she wanted was Latin and Greek, like her brothers, and advanced mathematics. And chemistry, and naturally German. So many of the great scientists were German these days.

  But rebellion never did arise easily in Violet. Smiles came her way when she was obedient and good; frowns and disapproval and exclusion came when she was not. For nights she wept in her bed, locked in struggle with herself. She must be bad, thoroughly bad, for wanting these things, and yet when she considered the misery of imprisonment in Miss Porter’s School, pretending to be like all the other girls, while her brothers sent careless letters home from Saint Paul’s describing this athletic triumph or that eminent instructor, she wanted to scream into her pillow. She did scream into her pillow.

  A week before Violet’s departure for Farmingham, after Mrs. Schuyler and the housekeeper had already begun to count her linens and line her shiny new trunk with lavender-scented paper, Violet had walked into her father’s study and told him that she wanted to attend the Haddam Young Women’s Academy instead, a new school where young ladies were subject to a rigorous academic schedule in preparation for college, and where the chemistry laboratory in particular was as well-equipped as that at Saint Paul’s.

  She would never forget the way her father’s warm smile of welcome had cooled and frozen, the way her ribs had ached at the sight of his hard eyes. But Violet had made her decision, she had crossed her Rubicon, and the pain of standing her ground before her father’s disapproval was now nothing to the pain of going back across the river to strand herself in the desolation of her old life. So she stood her ground, she went to Haddam, but though the ache had faded it had never really gone away; it settled for years around her lungs and heart like a dark hole that could not be filled.

  This was the consequence of rebellion, the price that must be paid for crossing the invisible line.

  As Violet lies wobbly against Lionel’s chest in the rose-scented summer evening, she can’t decide what terrifies her so: the act of betraying Walter, or the unknown territory that lies beyond.

  Or perhaps, she thinks, listening to Lionel’s reassuring heart beat into her ear through the stiffness of his shirtfront, this is not terror but anticipation.

  “Shh,” he says again, and his fingers rise from her neck into the tiny strands of hair that have escaped from the careful knot at her nape. The action is soothing, a gesture not of sexual suggestion but of reassurance, of acceptance, and Violet closes her eyes, which are useless anyway in the darkness. Lionel’s body seeps warmth into hers, filling the void around her heart and lungs, and the shock under her skin smooths away into quietude.

  He speaks into her hair. “Violet. Is it really you?”

  “Yes.”

  “My Violet.”

  From any other man, those words would sound possessive, but in Lionel’s voice they lack the necessary dominion. He is neither stern nor fierce. He’s stating a fact, that Violet and Lionel are one, that they have been held together by invisible sutures since he walked into her laboratory room and sat sharing her burden in the darkness; or perhaps even before, in some unseen laboratory of fate. He might as well say Your Lionel. His other arm wraps around her waist, fastening her against him. She can’t escape now, even if she wanted to.

  “Isn’t it a joke,” he says. “The greatest damned joke in the world. Why you, Violet? Of all women. I don’t understand it.”

  “It had to be someone.”

  “No. It could only be you.”

  Violet’s blood is stirring now, propelled by the solid promise of Lionel’s body against hers, by the precious architecture of his bone and sinew beneath her arms and cheek and breast. Beneath the smooth black wool of his formal tailcoat, beneath his white shirtfront and sharp bowtie, lies Lionel. She listens to his heart beating, the proof of him, and tilts her face upward.

  “You’ll kill me,” he whispers, but he kisses her anyway, less gently than before, cupping the curve of her skull with his hand. He leans back against the trellis, bringing her with him, mindless of thorns, still kissing her, and Violet is gone, gone. Above them, dislodged by the weight of Lionel’s body, a ripened rose scatters its petals into her hair.

  “Let’s go,” she says, between damp kisses.
“Let’s go tonight. We’ll go back to Berlin in your motor.”

  Lionel lifts his mouth away. “Go?”

  “Yes, go. How can I stay, after this?”

  Lionel is still, except for the heavy rise and fall of his chest. “Tonight,” he says at last.

  “Yes, tonight. I can’t sleep another night next to him, not now.”

  “I thought he slept with Jane.”

  Violet’s face grows warm. “No, he . . . he usually comes in around midnight.”

  Lionel doesn’t move, but Violet can feel the hardening of his limbs around hers. “I see.”

  “It isn’t like that. He hasn’t touched me, Lionel. Not since Berlin. He’s in love with her.”

  “Christ.”

  “That’s what I meant. Let’s go tonight, there’s nothing to stop us, you have your motor. I’ll pack a few things, I’ll leave a note.” She presses her mouth into his, mad urgent kisses. “Let’s go.”

  “Violet.” His hands close around her upper arms. He sets her back. “Wait. I can’t, not tonight. I’ve got . . . There’s a matter or two.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He pushes her away and takes a few long strides down the arbor.

  “What do you mean, Lionel?” Her voice is rising in pitch; she pushes it down. “How can we stay? How can you make love to me and then send me back to his room, to his bed—”

  “I haven’t made love to you, have I? We’ve kissed, that’s all.”

  That’s all. The warm evening air ripples around Violet’s ears. She feels as if she’s falling, except that the beaten path remains solid beneath her feet, the roses hang motionless next to her cheek. She longs to reach out and grasp the wooden slats of the trellis. Instead she says, coldly: “I see. Then I suppose I should thank you for your time and wish you a pleasant evening.”

  “Violet.”

  She smoothes the floating chiffon layers of her dress. “It’s good of you, of course, to be strong for the both of us—”

  “Stop it, Violet.” He turns. “I’m thinking, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting this, not tonight. I’ve got to think.”

  “Think, by all means.”

  He steps back and pulls her against him. “Violet, for God’s sake. It isn’t as simple as you imagine. You’re talking about leaving your husband, you’re talking about . . . What, exactly? Leaving your place at the institute? What will you do?”

  “I’ll find a place elsewhere. I’ll find something. The point is to leave. The point is to get away from him.”

  “And me?”

  “You can do what you like,” she says defiantly.

  He breathes into her hair, her forehead. “No, I can’t. Where you go, I’ll follow, I’ve got no choice anymore. But for God’s sake, Violet . . .”

  Violet’s chest begins to move again, to take the heavy air back into her lungs. “I’ll find something for us. I’ll ask Planck and Einstein to write letters for me. I know they will. We can go to England—”

  “For God’s sake, not tonight.” He kisses her forehead. “Please. Not tonight. Give me that, won’t you? A day or two, that’s all.”

  “Why?”

  “A day or two, that’s all.”

  “Is it . . . is it all this . . . Austria and Serbia . . .” She tries again to picture the map of Europe, the tangled and meandering borders, the crosshatch railways, the red lines of disputed frontiers. This murdered Archduke: what was his name? What right had he to determine her life, the lives of millions? Surely it would come to nothing. She whispers: “Do you have to report to your regiment?”

  “Shh. Go back to the house now, Violet. Wait for me. Trust me, do you hear?” His hand finds hers and squeezes her fingers. “Look at me.”

  “I can hardly see you.”

  “Do you trust me, Violet?”

  “Yes, I trust you.”

  “Good.” Another squeeze, a long kiss, and he releases her hand. “Go back to the house. Be ready for me, do you hear?”

  “Yes.” Her fingers find his cheeks, his strong neck, his shoulders scattered with petals.

  “And Violet?”

  “Yes.”

  He seizes her close and whispers in her ear. “Don’t let him touch you.”

  “No, never. Never again.”

  “Good. If he touches you now, by God, I’ll kill him.”

  • • •

  WHEN VIOLET arrives in the room she shares with Walter, she’s relieved to find it empty. She looks in the mirror at her flushed face, the scarlet petals in her hair. She plucks them out, one by one. As she confessed to Lionel, she keeps no diary; instead she tucks the petals into a folded sheet of stationery and places them in her drawer, among her underthings.

  Violet takes off her clothes and returns to the enormous cheval glass in the bedroom. She now looks no different than before. Her face has composed itself, her skin is even, her lips innocently pink. Only her breasts give her away, puckered like raisins at the tips, despite the turgid warmth of the bedroom air.

  A door slams distantly, making her start. She washes her face and teeth; she changes into a long and shapeless nightgown and crawls into bed, to the furthest possible corner, and switches off the lamp. Her last thought is that she’s too giddy to close her eyes, too elated for sleep.

  She wakes when Walter enters, some untold time later, not because of the sound of his entrance but because of the impatient energy that bursts into the room with him. He strides about, silent and coiled, bathing and changing in a thick cloud of brandy. When he enters the bed, he reaches for her, for the first time since leaving Berlin, even though her back is turned and her body is quite still.

  Violet’s skin shrivels away from his touch, but she doesn’t move. She imagines herself a stone, though her heart thuds beneath Walter’s searching hand.

  “Violet.” His voice falls downward on the last syllable, like a warning. He turns her on her stomach.

  “Stop it, Walter,” she mutters.

  His fingers scrape against her legs, lifting her nightgown.

  “No,” she says, more clearly, pushing against him, thrashing to lift herself, but his body lies like a rope atop hers, forcing her chest and face into the pillows.

  His hands grip her legs. He’s too strong, there’s no fighting him, her limbs can find no purchase in the soft mattress. He hisses in her ear: “Lie still, child.”

  “Walter, I’m . . . I’m poorly,” she gasps. “My poorliness.”

  His body suspends above her.

  “It . . . it started this evening, just after dinner.” Violet lies clenched, dragging for air, praying Walter does not put his hand between her legs to demand the nonexistent proof. She can feel him panting atop her, smell the brandy as it seeps from his mouth. Is he counting up the weeks? Does he remember? Is he too drunk? Does he notice the rhythm of her female calendar at all anymore?

  Walter swears in her ear and falls away.

  Violet lies limp, unable even to shake. When Walter’s pants subside into regularity, she curls herself into a slow ball at the edge of the bed and stares at the wall with eyes that will not close.

  Vivian

  By the time I’d finished shopping with Gogo and dragged myself up the sour-smelling stairs to my apartment, I was sober enough to study the Metropolitan files at length. What I didn’t have was time. I had to dress and head back uptown to the Lightfoot mansion on Seventieth and Park.

  I tried calling Aunt Julie, but there was no answer. I called Cousin Lily instead.

  “You’ve been holding out on me,” I said.

  “I have not. Is this about Violet?”

  Tap tap tap went my suspicious finger. Sniff sniff sniff went my . . . well, you know about my nose. “Ha! You are holding out. Otherwise those two sentences would have gone in reverse order.”

  “Vivian, why would
I hold out on you? I’m on your side.” So guileless.

  “Because it has to do with your own mother.”

  “Trust me, Vivian. In the annals of my mother’s crimes, this is nothing.”

  “Alrighty, then. Why did one Christina Schuyler Dane write to one S. Barnard Lightfoot, Junior, in the fall of 1914 and ask him to purge any mention of Violet Grant in the magazine’s records?”

  An extensive pause. “That, I don’t know. Did he?”

  “Not exactly. It all just went under lock and key. But what were you thinking about?” In the background behind her, I heard a faint drawn-out Maa-maa from Baby Number Five. (No longer a baby, I need hardly add, but a somewhat imperious young lady on the verge of adolescence.) In the foreground, there was hemming and hawing.

  “Lily,” I said darkly.

  “I might have another letter for you.”

  “Might? Or have?”

  Maa-maa! Like a singsong goat. Closer now. Would Doctor Paul want five children? I hoped not. On the other hand, he’d look as adorable as Nick Greenwald did, holding the little cherubs against his shoulder.

  “In a moment, honey. Have a letter. You see, you finally got me looking through Mother’s old letters, which, being Mother, she kept strictly organized by sender. I thought you had all of them, and then . . . well, I don’t know if she misfiled it on purpose or by accident. Probably on purpose, knowing her.”

  “And?”

  “Weellll.” The word stretched doubtfully. “I think you’d better see for yourself.”

  “You read it?”

  “Of course I read it, Vivian. I do have some curiosity left. Can I bring it by your office tomorrow?”

  “Better yet. I’m heading uptown in half an hour. I’ll stop by your apartment on the way.”

  “That’s perfect. Vivian?”

  I was already standing, telephone cord stretched to the limit. The cells of my skin were fairly popping with eagerness. “What, Cousin Lily?”