I simply must find him a woman of his own. Encourage him to flirt with Alison or someone else, and soon. Jack is altogether an admirable man. I realize that it is hard for me"as well as Belladonna"to admit how true it is, considering that we view as loathsome nearly all male types overloaded with the testosterone I lack.
“That depends,” she snaps.
“Forgive me if I am intruding on your privacy,” Jack plows on gamely, “but I was wondering if I could do anything to make you feel better.”
“You can find them and bring me their heads on a platter,” she says. “I hardly consider that a personal question. You know what I want.”
“I’m trying. We’re all trying. You know I would if I could.”
“I know.” Her face softens, just a little.
“Belladonna"”
“Don’t, Jack. Please don’t,” she says. “Not now. Not ever.”
“You don’t know what I want to say to you.”
“I think I do. You’re the last person I want to hurt. Please, don’t make me say anything to cause you pain. You’re very dear to me, you know, whether you believe it or not. But that’s all you can be. You’ve become part of my family, ragtag misfits that we are. We couldn’t do it here without you. Truly.” She tries to smile, but she can’t. “There would be no Club Belladonna without you, Jack Winslow, at least not a successful one. I’ll never forget what we owe you. What I owe you. But I can’t give you more than my regard for you as part of my family, and my respect and devotion. I can’t love, Jack. It’s as simple as that. I’ve no heart.”
“I don’t believe you. You love your daughter. You loved your husband.”
“How do you know I loved my husband?” she asks, staring out to some unnameable place. “He saved me, he took care of me, he kept me safe. But love, as a husband and wife should love?” Her face is a blank. “And yes, I can say that I love my daughter, in my way. Tomasino and Matteo, too. But Bryony’s all that keeps me going. Without her, I’d be mad, I’m sure of it. If I let myself think about how she came into this world, who her father"”
“You don’t have to say anything more,” Jack interrupts.
“You’ve never asked me for the details,” she says, her face still that awful blank, “even though I think you have a right to have asked, considering how faithfully you work for me. You don’t know how grateful I am that you haven’t pressed me; it makes me trust you even more. I should have told you, but I can’t, at least not yet. All I know is that I’m almost ready to leave. I’m not ready to give up entirely, but knowing I have a place to escape to will help me cope. I can’t take much more.”
Jack is terribly startled, but he tries to hide it. “Where are you going?” he finally manages to ask.
“Virginia, of all places. Tomasino chose a plantation there. It’s perfect for my needs: a huge property, extremely private.” She sighs. “The houses on the property are in remarkably good shape, so the necessary renovations are minimal. I’ve found a good school for Bryony, and we’re moving after the holidays.”
“What about the club?”
“Close it, of course. Leave it empty and mysterious. Just like me.” She gives a bitter laugh. “I don’t think we can give notice to any of the staff, in case word leaks out, so we’ll continue to pay their salaries for a few months and hope that as many as possible will come back if we ever reopen. I simply don’t know yet. I can no longer face the thought of this going on and on and on. I haven’t the strength to do it.”
“You can’t give up now,” Jack says, even though he knows nothing he can say will make her change her mind once it’s made up.
“I’m not giving up,” she says fiercely. “I prefer to think of it as a retrenchment. The women who come to me have become more of a faceless blur than they were at the beginning. There’s no satisfaction in helping them, watching them find their way back to a measure of hopefulness. I can’t do it anymore.”
“You don’t need me anymore,” he says, staring down at the hands he’s clasped so tightly in his lap that even from my hiding place I can see that his knuckles are white.
“I didn’t say that,” she replies. “I need you more than ever, but you know I can’t ask you to move to Virginia. I don’t think it would suit you; you’d be bored silly in the country with nothing to look at but trees and horses. But I’d like it very much if you moved in here, to watch over my house. There’s always an endless pile of paperwork to keep the machine greased. And I’d also like you to set up an office somewhere else, for the foundation that will keep helping the women who write me. I think I know just the person to administer it. You’ll like her.”
Oh ho, my darling Belladonna, you are a bigger matchmaker than I am. I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought Alison and Jack would be a perfect couple.
“Don’t patronize me,” he says.
“I hope you’ll never think that of me,” she says. “I wouldn’t fob just any woman off on you to assuage my conscience. If I had a conscience.”
They sit in silence for a few minutes.
“What about Matteo and Tomasino?” Jack asks finally.
“I think Matteo’s going to get married to Annabeth, and if he does he’ll have my blessing. Much as I’d want him with me, I can’t be so selfish that I’d deny him a chance for the happiness I’ll never find.” She sighs. “If they decide to stay in New York I’m going to have to learn to get along without him. But then you can continue to work together. Tomasino is coming with me.”
That’s because I am ever so indispensable.
“You love Tomasino,” Jack says.
“Not the way you want to be loved,” she says, “or the way you deserve to be loved. He’s become a brother to me, and he’s been damaged, too. It’s as if he’s my masterpiece of ruined civilization. A constant reminder of what brought me here. Do you understand?”
“No,” he replies. “I’ll never understand you.”
“That’s as it should be, Jack. I’m beyond understanding. I am a creature of the imagination, nothing more. He molded me. They warped me. I am hanging by a thread, and there’s nothing I can do now to undo it but find them and make them suffer,” she says, her voice low and harsh. “To torture them the way they tortured me.”
Jack looks her full in the face. “I don’t care about what you’re saying to me now. I still feel the way I do. I still love you, whoever you are. Whatever happened to you.”
“Don’t ever say that to me again,” she says after a few agonizing moments of silence, her face as hard as the masks she wears in the club. “You must promise me never to say that again, or I shall go mad.”
Jack shakes his head no.
“Swear it,” Belladonna says, her voice a hoarse whisper. “Swear it.”
“I swear,” Jack whispers back, tears in his eyes as he watches her get up and leave the room without a backward glance.
Afterward, it is as if that conversation had never taken place. Belladonna takes to her room with a stomach ailment, she tells us, and stays out of the club for nearly a week. When she does return, it is for our Night in the Casbah costume ball, one we had long prepared for. We pour hundreds of thousands of rose petals, both silk and real, on the floor, so guests will sink ankle-deep in them. Yards and yards of parachute silk are draped from the ceiling to give the illusion of a grand pasha’s tent; the air is scented with frankincense and myrrh; and all our staff are wearing glistening turbans in addition to their usual masks. There are a lot of turbans tonight, actually, along with veils and swirling robes and extra bolts of chiffon, seen on guests too lame to think of anything but costumes copied from Rudolph Valentino films.
Belladonna is clad in an unusually sober costume, a chador, worn by devout Muslim women. Except theirs aren’t dyed a deep crimson, or accessorized with endless loops of pearls. It hides the shapeliness of Belladonna’s body and nearly all of her face. Only the faintest glint of her eyes can be seen burning intensely in the dusky light of the club.
Tonight, this glimmer is dark and disturbing. Belladonna had been fitted with brown contact lenses to mask the unforgettable color of her eyes. The lenses are thick and uncomfortable and hurt after being worn for more than fifteen minutes, but she doesn’t mind. The discomfort keeps her focused, and we can’t risk anything that might give her away, not one hint of who she had been. Not now, not after all our waiting and planning and plotting.
Pretty teardrops in her eye.
Tonight, Belladonna is unfathomable. That’s because her faithless cousin June is sitting at the next table, gobbling down drinks with her husband. June has curled her hair into blond wisps, rouged her apple-dumpling cheeks and nails, and squeezed herself into what she must think is a flattering embroidered and gold-tasseled number, her bosom swelling like the storm surge during a hurricane.
Jack has joined the gleeful couple for their wonderful evening, and all the staff have been alerted that under no circumstances should he be recognized or acknowledged by any of them. He’s just the nice Jack who met and befriended the Hauxtons in Kansas City several years ago, who’s been kindly showing them the sights of Manhattan on their whirlwind visit.
The nice Jack who’s an expert in cattle futures. The nice Jack who’s about to devour George’s company and leave him bankrupt. The nice Jack whose accomplices have begun to whisper appalling allegations about George’s financial shenanigans and June’s shameful betrayal to the pious members of her beloved Groveside Country Club. The nice Jack who will not sleep until the Hauxtons are reduced to social pariahs in their insufferable little world.
Let them find out what it’s like to be cast adrift, to have no one to save you, to not understand why the world has betrayed you.
Let them find out what it’s really like to suffer.
Seeing June and George makes me remember the afternoon when we sat on Leandro’s terrace with the Pritch, as he downed one grappa after another and told us of Mr. Winslow and Kansas City and Camp Minnetonka and two young women who went off to London.
Another world away, a lifetime ago.
Belladonna says nothing when they come in. Clad in her chador and her veils, she resembles a cloaked statue, and the aura around her is so fraught with weirdness that no one dares approach her, even to thank her for such a splendid party.
“You wouldn’t believe the problem we have with our cats,” June, the brilliant conversationalist, is telling Jack with a giggle. “Sandy is the worst"she’s so spoiled. Why, she won’t come down to meals unless we’re all ready for her in the dining room, and George rings our dinner bell. It simply must be the Lalique. Then she sashays in with her tail up and deigns to eat. It’s too precious.”
People are so utterly banal sometimes I despair of them entirely.
“That reminds me of a cat story. I had a friend during the war who was recuperating from surgery to amputate his little toe,” Jack says. “From frostbite, I think. He was a bit of a showoff, so after his operation he took to reclining on a pile of cushions and receiving visitors who’d be dripping with sympathy and black-market goodies. He forgot to warn his visitors that his little toe would be reclining on a Limoges plate at his side, surrounded by flowers. A sort of makeshift shrine to his brave stoicism in the face of adversity.”
June’s smile fades and George’s fingers tighten on the stem of his glass.
“Well, just as we’re about to toast to my friend’s health, his cat comes bounding in, pounces on the lovely Limoges plate, and runs off with his toe.”
Now June looks positively green. George puts down his drink.
“Not every pet finds its master good enough to eat,” Jack adds, ignoring their discomfort.
Belladonna bursts out laughing, so loudly and so very near to hysteria that the guests around us stop talking all at once, speculating about what’s going on and what prime piece of gossip they might have missed.
“You sir,” she says, pointing her fan at Jack. “Do join me. And your friends, too.”
This is the cue. This is it.
Face-to-face after eighteen years.
They will come to you if they don’t know who you are.
I study June’s eagerly flushed face as I stand up and move aside to let her sit next to Belladonna. I can easily imagine what she looked like that London spring in 1935, her hair waved like Jean Harlow’s, wearing bias-cut chiffon dresses that did not suit the round, flabby slope of her belly and bosom, her features soft and girlish. So eager to find herself a husband and a tiara that she’d do just about anything to get rid of her pesky, smarter, more beautiful cousin with the immense green eyes and alluring manner. Now, June is just a corner shy of blowsy, while Belladonna is ageless. There is nothing soft about her.
“I’m very pleased to meet you, madame,” Jack is saying.
“Please, call me Belladonna,” she says. Jack can’t help a small smile. That’s what she said to him the first time they met.
“And these are my friends, June and George Hauxton.”
“Oh, I’m so excited to meet you,” June gushes, “we’ve"”
Belladonna cuts her off with a pert snap of her fan, and June shuts her mouth. I wave one of the waiters over and he brings us a bottle of champagne.
“Here’s to a night in the Casbah,” I toast the table. We clink glasses, and I see Belladonna studying June intently as her cousin sips and tries not to hiccup with the bubbles.
“Tell us where you’re from,” I say.
“Kansas City,” George says, puffing up with pride.
“All three of you?”
“Not I,” says Jack. “I’m based in New York, but it seems I’m always on the road.”
“And your line of business?”
“Hauxton Enterprises,” George says, still beaming. “I specialize in investments, cattle, this and that.”
“Is it risky?”
“Not if you know what you’re doing.”
“I take it you know what you’re doing,” I say doubtfully. My tone of voice zings right over his head.
“I sure hope so,” he says with a raucous, self-satisfied laugh.
Oh ho, you fine upstanding Presbyterian, you’re just about to find out all about the meaning of risk.
“Do you have children?” I continue.
“Yes, two daughters,” June says. “Helen, she’s sixteen. And our little Caroline is fifteen. They’re both in high school.”
“Not so little,” George says, emptying his glass. “Why, Caroline eats like a horse! They’re eating me out of house and home!”
“George,” June chides him.
“They’re both charming girls,” Jack says.
“Why, thank you, Mr. Winslow,” June says, trying to play coy as she studies the ruby and pearl rings dangling from Belladonna’s gloved fingers. Dramatically effective, June decides, just the trend to start with her bridge club. They’re going to be positively sputtering with jealousy! Why, June is flattered beyond all reckoning that the magnificent Belladonna has allowed her, June Hauxton from Kansas City, Missouri, to sit at her very own table.
“Do you have any other family?” I ask June.
“Just my parents,” June replies. “They live in Minneapolis.”
“Are they hale and hearty?”
If June is surprised to have been asked such a peculiar question in a nightclub, she doesn’t show it. Obviously, we’re talking about her favorite topic"anything related to herself.
“Oh, that’s so kind of you to ask,” she says. “Unfortunately, they’re both not well. My mother has, well, female problems. And my father has heart trouble. We’re so worried about them.”
Yes, we know all about troubles of the heart.
“I’m ever so sorry,” I say. I’m sure you’re ever so worried about what they’re going to leave you in their will.
“You approve of my rings?” Belladonna asks June suddenly, her voice cold.
“Oh, yes,” June gushes ecstatically. Belladonna is actually talking to her! Just wait until she gets home t
o tell everyone in the Groveside Country Club about her magical evening and the wondrous Belladonna talking to her! “They’re marvelous.”
“This one opens,” Belladonna says, extending her hand as she lifts the hinge of one of her rubies. “You see? Most convenient cache for essentials.” She dips her scarlet-clad pinkie in what appears to be powder, then licks it. “If you ingest an infinitesimal amount of poison every day, eventually you develop an immunity to it. Even if there is no antidote.”
She snaps the hinge shut, stands up, and strolls away without another word.
“Well, whaddaya know,” George says. “That dame’s one egg short of a dozen.”
“George,” June admonishes.
I am trying not to laugh. June and George are completely oblivious to Belladonna’s hostility. They’re too busy gloating about their night as members of Belladonna’s harem.
More like the Empress Theodora’s harem on the Bosphorus, I want to tell them. The harem with only one exit: in a weighted sack, hurled into the sea to sink without a trace.
An hour or so later, George doesn’t feel so hot. His face is flushed and his pulse is racing. “I need to get outta here,” he moans to his wife. “What did that dame do to me?”
“Oh, George, don’t be ridiculous,” she says, annoyed. “Why would Belladonna want to poison you?”
“Why indeed?” Jack says blandly. “But do allow me to drive you home.”
June trills her thanks, thrilling to the feel of Jack’s steady arm as he leads her out to Josie, then into the crowd on the street. George is straggling on uneven feet behind them. Jack murmurs to one of the doormen, and his car quickly materializes. Had June been paying attention, she might have thought that a tad unusual. But June is not what I’d call a particularly observant type.
George slumps on the front seat, while June sits in the back and prattles on to Jack about her fabulous night. The car turns a dark comer and stops for a red light. Without warning, the doors open. “Hello, George,” someone says before decking him with a swift chop in the jaw.
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