The Way of Beauty

by Camille Di Maio

  She far preferred the height of their apartment. She could make out the faces—just barely—and imagine where they might be going. She and her grandfather liked to make up stories.

  She pointed out a lady who she could see just alighting the steps.

  “Look, Opa. See the woman in the mauve hat? Where do you think she’s going?”

  “The mountains.” This was a frequent answer of his. He’d never been to any, as far as she knew. Maybe he remembered them from Germany.

  “The mountains?” she repeated. “Maybe the Poconos. Do you think she might be going to meet a lover in a remote cabin on a lake?”

  “Die Burg!” he shouted, repeating his answer.

  She sighed. “Yes, Opa. She must be going to the mountains.”

  On his best days, he played along with her embellishments, and on very rare days he contributed to them.

  “Apple?” she offered, taking one from her bag. The word sounded the same in both English and German.

  His eyes lit up. Apples were one of his favorites. As he finished it, she wiped the juices from his beard and then led him to his bed.

  She knocked on the neighbor’s door. The widow there could always be counted on to watch Opa if they were away as a means of making a little extra money.

  She had to go find Emmett.

  It was six thirty. Alice hoped with everything she had that Emmett would somehow be early and she could tell him that she couldn’t be a part of his plan for tonight.

  She stood under the clock in the grand concourse and glanced at every midheight man who came near. None had eyes so blue or a presence that made her pulse race the way that he did. But he wasn’t there. She hurried past the platforms that took soldiers away to war, but those trains had already left for the day, and there was nothing to photograph except for businessmen catching the commuter rides back to Connecticut and Long Island.

  Bertie! Maybe she could leave a message with him, but she could not find him anywhere, either. Figured. The one time she needed him, a fixture almost as permanent as the enormous statue of Alexander Cassatt, and he was nowhere to be seen. She stopped by their newsstand, hoping that Emmett would think to look for her there. If she left a note, she could explain that unexpected plans with her family had come up.

  The metal gate to the newsstand was already closed. She dug through her purse and found an old receipt from a bookstore on Twenty-Third and a half-used lipstick.

  E—I have to cancel our plans. Please understand. Try again soon?

  Alice wished that her words didn’t need to be so stilted, but in the unlikely event that her parents would see it, she did not want to raise questions that she didn’t know how to answer.

  She slipped it into a slot in the metal grate.

  She only hoped that Emmett would find it.

  Alice’s detour to the train station meant that she wouldn’t be able to join her parents and William for the car ride. Maybe that was best. They had much catching up to do about a time before she’d ever been born.

  She arrived at the narrow entrance of Delmonico’s on the street side and saw the trio step out of a long maroon car with a body so glossy that she could see her distorted reflection from the corner.

  Her mother noticed her first and waved to her, but it was William, currently holding the door open, who walked over to greet her. She took a deep breath. Despite her vacillating emotions of just a few hours ago, she was definitely fascinated by William Pilkington in person. To his credit, she’d always thought he looked a little uncomfortable in photographs. Like he lived in that world but wasn’t really a part of it.

  William held out his arm, and she took it.

  “I hope you’ll do me the f-favor of letting me call you Alice and dispense with the formalities, g-given our unusual association. ‘Miss Bellavia’ sounds so stilted after all the stories your parents just regaled me with on the way over.”

  She felt herself blush. “They didn’t tell you—”

  “About the t-time you painted the toilet seat when they’d given you some watercolors because you said that made it p-prettier?” He grinned. “No. No, they didn’t tell me that. Or about the time you pretended to run away b-because you didn’t want to eat the cooked carrots on the plate, but you were really just hiding in the b-bathtub and they knew it all along? No. They didn’t tell me that story, either.”

  She put her hand on her forehead. “I can’t believe they would say those things to a stranger.”

  Alice was a little surprised that they’d spent that time talking about her and wondered if William felt put out that they weren’t asking all about him. She would have understood. She’d experienced those pangs over the years. But now that she’d met him, those silly worries that had nagged her as a child all but disappeared.

  He tightened his hold on her arm, and she felt the luxurious wool of his coat against her skin. There was something comfortable about him. “I’m not a stranger to them, Alice. It is only you and I who are. And we’ll remedy that over d-dinner.”

  She nodded. “I suppose we will.”

  He turned just as they arrived at the entrance. “I don’t want to have the upper hand here. H-how about this—for every embarrassing childhood story they tell me about you, I’ll make sure to match it at some time in the f-future with stories of my own for you. Believe me, there are plenty.”

  How good-natured he was. She heard herself agreeing to this bargain.

  When William held the door open for her, Alice was enveloped in a scent that was possibly the most delicious she had ever smelled in her entire life. It was as if the spirits of filet mignon, onions, wine, and chocolate haunted the space and collaborated to create a place unlike any she’d ever been in.

  She’d heard of Delmonico’s, of course. It would be Tiffany if it sold diamonds. Bergdorf Goodman if it sold clothing. But they sold food. And not just any food. Banquets for gods.

  The room itself seemed like it was an antechamber to some old Tudor estate. Dark paneling adorned the walls and ceiling with discreet embedded lights. Alice caught her reflection in a mirror and noticed that it created a glow on her skin that made her look better than she looked in the harsh lights of their apartment.

  She thought one could live in such light and appear beautiful for many decades beyond their youth. Seeing herself this way, she felt not merely pretty but elegant.

  Did the fashionable people who dined here come because of the food? Or because they looked their most captivating inside its doors?

  The maître d’—Alice had read that this was the name for such a person—bowed to William.

  “Mr. Pilkington. How wonderful to see you again. We have your preferred table ready.”

  He led them to a corner table that had its own three walls so that it looked like a private cave just for the four of them. William pulled out chairs first for Vera, then Alice, then Angelo. The menus were delivered, bound in leather.

  Vera took William’s and Alice’s hands in each of her own. She looked back and forth at them and then at her husband.

  “Angelo, can you believe that this is real? So long we’ve hoped that our Will might come back to us, and here he is along with our sweet Alice, the four of us together.”

  Alice saw a new kind of smile on her father’s face. “It’s a miracle. God only knows how my wife has tormented herself over losing you.”

  “It’s not as if anything could have prevented it,” said William. Alice saw the look of regret on his face that matched that of her parents. Would he really have wanted to trade all he had for a third-story walk-up on Thirty-Third?

  Vera put a handkerchief to her nose, and Angelo spoke for her. “She would have left the city and gone into hiding if she had known that they would be there that day to take you.”

  Alice held up an empty water goblet, all that was at her disposal since they had not yet looked at the wine menu. “Here’s to the future, then, where all is restored to what it should have been, and the new memories to be had.”<
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  “Hear, hear,” said the group, repeating her gesture.

  “Oh, please indulge me just one more thing,” Vera said when they’d returned the goblets to the table. “I just wanted to thank William for bringing us all here. Will, you may not know this, but the only other time I’ve ever eaten at an establishment like this was with your mother.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yes, it was called Maioglio Brothers, although now they’ve moved to another part of town and renamed it Barbetta’s.”

  “I know the place,” said William.

  “They had the first espresso machine in the city, and Pearl encouraged me to try some. I nearly shot up to the moon with the jolt of it.” She smiled with that thin look that remembered both fondly and sadly. “It was the first day of our friendship. She was the sun and I was in her orbit and I never really understood what she received from me, but I was grateful for the warmth she brought into my life.”

  Angelo raised his empty goblet this time. “To Pearl.”

  “To Pearl,” they repeated.

  Courses of oyster stew, sautéed beef kidneys, and broiled Deerfoot sausages continued as William regaled them all with stories of having grown up with his English relatives and finishing his education at Cambridge. He was now working in his grandfather’s business, learning everything from manufacturing to exports.

  Cambridge. Vera felt a shiver move up her spine. To actually go to school at such a place! New York was no slouch as far as cities went, but she wanted to see so much more. Her parents were content enough, but she ached to see something beyond the borders of the East and Hudson Rivers.

  William ordered four Delmonico’s steaks for them, as well as their famed mashed potatoes topped with Parmesan cheese and toasted bread crumbs.

  Alice could never remember eating anything this delicious in her life.

  Bread-and-butter pudding was brought out next. There were black speckles of vanilla bean in the sauce and a touch of rum to the taste. Alice was quite sure she would burst right through her buttons, but it looked too delicious to be ignored. By this time she’d determined that William had inherited whatever gravity his mother must have possessed, for they all found themselves enraptured by him.

  Especially her.

  “I remember when you wanted to be a train conductor,” Vera said as she laid her spoon next to her now-spotless dessert bowl.

  William sat back in his chair and set his napkin on the table. “I still do. But I’m af-fraid that’s not really an option for me.”

  “Why not?” asked Alice, and then she bit her tongue. Of course he couldn’t do that kind of thing. Certainly there were rules that the rich lived by.

  He sighed. “Neither the p-poor nor the w-wealthy get to be exactly what they’d like to be. The poor must work to survive, and the wealthy are limited by things like legacy and d-duty. And please d-don’t misinterpret that I th-think one equal to the other. I understand th-that I am very l-lucky.”

  Alice was willing to trade long hours of working on her feet for whatever confines William thought money put on him. But she didn’t hold his view against him—she supposed that people of all kinds had their own type of problems, and nothing was to be gained by arguing the comparison.

  “To that regard, I am t-t-trying to get our board to p-pass a philanthropic measure to fund a new school in the lower part of Manhattan, to serve the tenement community better. If they say n-no, as I th-think they will, I hope to find another way.”

  Vera put her hand over his. “How very good of you, William. That’s just the kind of thing Pearl would have done.”

  “I am not as g-good as my mother. She gave her life for noble pursuits, and I have not yet found my way with it all.”

  Angelo spoke up. “You only returned from Europe a little more than a year ago, right?”

  “Yes. I still have f-family in England, and it’s become a tradition to g-go to school at Cambridge. My grandmother was reluctant to let m-me, due to the w-war, but my grandfather and I insisted.”

  “Brave young man. I’m sure it will take time to establish yourself in your family’s company. But I agree with my wife. I see a lot of your mother in you.”

  William pulled a wallet from his pocket and laid some large bills on the table, more than Alice had ever seen at one time. “Well, if for now that m-means that I can treat my loved ones to a meal such as this, then I am especially g-grateful for what I’ve been given.”

  He stood, and they all followed his lead. Angelo had long ago mastered walking with his crutches and having Vera take his arm. William held his out to Alice, and she took it. The ride back to their apartment was brief at this time of night. It did not escape Alice’s attention that William stole glances at her as streetlights cast their glow through the windows.

  Weeks ago, this might have made her blush. Not because he was the kind of man whom heiresses would be pleased to know but because he possessed the kinds of virtues that her parents had always valued—kindness, generosity, joviality. In one word, William Pilkington was—good.

  But there was a quickness to her pulse when she thought of Emmett Adler that no one—not even William—could provoke. And it could not be dismissed so handily.

  When they arrived home, a flurry of embraces and promises to see one another again passed among the four of them. Alice couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her mother so radiant. As if a candle inside that had been extinguished was now a roaring fire of joy. Now that William was no longer a vague name of lore but a real and likable man, Alice harbored no envy toward him. How wonderful it was to see her parents so thoroughly happy tonight.

  She turned to follow Angelo and Vera up the stairs to the building, and William cleared his throat. She looked at him, and he stepped forward.

  “I b-believe I still owe you several embarrassing stories about myself. May I take you to dinner next Friday evening to pay that debt?”

  A thought of Emmett passed through her mind. What had he thought when she hadn’t shown up at the station? What was he doing right now?

  “Yes,” she found herself answering, though. “And thank you for tonight. You made my parents so very happy.”

  “I owe them everything. You know, I didn’t say this to Vera, but it was no c-c-coincidence that I found her at the counter at Macy’s.”

  This surprised her. “What do you mean? She said that you were shopping for ladies’ gloves and recognized one another.”

  William shrugged. “Well, in truth, I hired a private d-detective to help me find her. And when I discovered that she worked there, I thought it m-might be the best place to make an appearance. I was j-just going to send a n-note, but I was too impatient.”

  “So why didn’t you tell her all this?”

  He smiled. “You should have seen her face when I introduced myself. She went on about how p-providential it seemed, the coincidence of finding each other there at Macy’s, and I didn’t want to spoil what seemed, well, kind of m-magical to her.”

  Alice agreed. “That was a kindness upon kindness. How considerate of you.”

  “You know, she was all I had for a time in my young l-life. It was too brief, but very meaningful to m-me. I think it showed me the kind of man I try to be.”

  “That and the genes of your actual mother.” Alice hoped it wasn’t too forward to say that, but she’d always looked up to Pearl as some kind of guardian angel. Especially now that Alice was at the beginning of her own womanhood. She was going to be able to vote in her first presidential election in a couple of years, and her fingers tingled with excitement at the very thought of it.

  “Without a doubt. Although to hear my family talk about Owen and Pearl, they were s-s-selfish s-socialists whose memories have been wiped under the rug along with the d-dust that they don’t dare see.”

  “Isn’t ‘selfish socialist’ a bit of a contrary phrase?”

  He laughed. “You’re right. I suppose that does sound backward.”

  Willi
am looked down at his hands and then up again at Alice. He had the countenance of a man but the gaze of a small boy hidden within. “I—I hope to ask Vera more about my mother, but I don’t want her to feel as if my curiosity diminishes what I know she did for me as w-w-well.”

  Alice reached out and held his hand, a gesture that surprised her, but there was a childlike vulnerability in the man in front of her that nearly demanded an action of tenderness.

  “William, to hear my parents—especially my mother—speak of Pearl, you would think that she should be a candidate for canonization. I know she would love to have a chance to talk about her.”

  He nodded in a way that included his shoulders. “Thank you for that. It means everything to have found her and Angelo—a-a-and you.” He whispered that last part. “You were unexpected, b-b-but I am so glad to have met you, t-t-too.”

  She noticed his stutter becoming more pronounced. Did that mean he was nervous around her? Alice bit her lower lip to avoid smiling at the thought.

  But then an image of Emmett raced through her mind again. It pricked her conscience, though she had made no promises, no commitments to him. But he hovered there, dueling for her attention.

  William took her hand and kissed it once again. “It was so nice to meet you, Alice Bellavia. I can pick you up here on F-Friday evening at seven o’clock. Until then?”

  “Until then,” she said.

  She felt like the shuttlecock of a badminton set, tossing back and forth between sides. When she was with William, there was a comfort to it that felt as easy as breathing.

  But when she was with Emmett, she felt alive in a way that she hadn’t known was possible.

  And it was only beginning.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Bertie might have lost the use of his legs, but his eyes, mind, and ability to snoop were in perfect working order.

  In this instance, it worked to Alice’s advantage.