The Two Mrs. Grenvilles

by Dominick Dunne

  There she stood, looking more ravishing than ever: that smile, that look in her eye. Her eyes traveled down his splendid body.

  “Oh, my darling,” she said, entering the room, closing the door behind her, reaching out for him. It excited Billy that she liked to have her throat kissed before her mouth. She, in turn, found areas of his body to explore that he had not known were part of the sexual experience. It was not, she explained to him, with the patience of a teacher to her favorite pupil, an act simply to be gotten through. It was an experience to be savored and prolonged. There would be plenty of time for champagne and conversation later.

  Junior was bewildered by the contents of her dressing table; it could have been a makeup counter at Saks. He was further bewildered by the enormous amount of time she spent there, and he watched her, fascinated by her expertise and concentration.

  “I want you to meet my friend Jellico Bleeker,” he said.

  “How could anyone name a child Jellico Bleeker?” asked Ann, continuing to do her face.

  “Mrs. Jellico Bleeker could,” answered Junior.

  “His mother?”

  “His mother.”

  “Don’t any of you guys have names like Joe or Jim?”

  Junior laughed.

  “I hope you don’t call him Jelly,” said Ann.

  “No, he hates that. We call him Bratsie.”

  “And he likes that?”

  Junior laughed again. “It suits him,” he answered. “You’ll see.”

  “When will I see?”

  “I’m bringing him to the show tonight,” answered Junior.

  There was a silence. “To look me over, I suppose,” said Ann. “Check me out. Case me.”

  Junior Grenville was not in the habit of having to clarify his reasons. “He’s my best friend,” he said. “He always has been. I want you to know him and I want him to know you. That’s all. No big deal.”

  “Okay,” she said, turning from her dressing table, her beautiful face perfectly attended to, and smiling at him in the chair where he sat watching her.

  Miss Ethel Merman, performing rambunctiously, did not exist for the two young officers that night. Their eyes were riveted on the near-nude show girl gliding magnificently behind the star. Ensign Grenville looked proprietary. Captain Bleeker looked dazzled. Their applause was fervent, exceeding by far the extent of the show girl’s accomplishment.

  Amid a great deal of laughter the trio had supper in the Cub Room of the Stork Club, and Sherman Billingsley greeted the two young officers affectionately and sent them champagne. Ann, thrilled to be there, gazed at the two old friends, fascinated by their lifelong friendship, and listened to stories of Bratsie’s antics at bygone deb parties. Their faces shared the look of easy living and freedom from financial stress; it was a look she liked. Her bare shoulders moved to the Latin beat from the orchestra in the main room.

  “Junior, I want to dance with this beautiful lady,” said Bratsie, rising to do an elaborate mime of the rumba.

  “He may be little, Ann, but he’s some dancer,” said Junior about his friend.

  “Did you know the only part of your body that shouldn’t move when you do the rumba is your bowels?” asked Bratsie.

  “Bratsie!” shouted Junior, screaming with laughter. “You’ll have to excuse him, Ann. He’s just back from the front.”

  Ann was delirious when, dancing with Bratsie and following his dips, she caught a lucky balloon and was rewarded with a giant bottle of perfume. It seemed to her that life had never been so lovely, and she wanted to prolong the night with these young men for whom favors happened for no other reason than that they were who they were.

  “Bratsie’s a bona fide war hero,” explained Junior, building him up. “He’s downed all kinds of planes. Tell Ann, Brats. Explain your decorations to her. He’s the bravest man I know.”

  The merry young man, drunk now, looked sad suddenly. “It doesn’t have a damn thing to do with bravery,” he said. “I just don’t care, Junior. I never did.”

  They sat silent as more wine was poured.

  “I care, Bratsie,” said Junior finally. “I need you in my life.”

  “You’ll be a hero pretty soon yourself,” said Bratsie. “It’s swell, but it doesn’t change what’s wrong. We still have our father’s banks to come back to after the war and those proper marriages. My mother would die happy if I married Junior’s sister and Junior’s mother would die happy if he married one of the English princesses.”

  Junior, embarrassed, blushed. “That’s only a family joke, Bratsie.”

  “A thick fog of gloom is surrounding this table all of a sudden,” said Ann. “I think we should dance again or go to El Morocco and sit at John Perona’s Round Table or think up something festive to do.”

  “Right you are,” cried Bratsie. “Let’s hit the road. You lucked out with this lady, Junior.”

  “It means more to me than anything that you two like each other,” said Junior.

  They got into Bratsie’s Cadillac convertible and began touring the nightclubs of the city. Bratsie, buoyant again, regaled them with tales of mad adventures and drunken behavior.

  “You ought to write a book, Bratsie,” said Ann.

  “What would I call it?” asked Bratsie.

  “Remembrance of Things Pissed,” she volunteered.

  “Ah, a rare literary allusion from Miss Arden,” said Junior, delighted with her, and the three screamed with laughter, and the festivities continued, finally winding down at an all-night diner on Second Avenue with the implicit but unspoken understanding between them that Ann had passed the test of Bratsie’s approval with flying colors.

  “My mother would like you to come to tea,” said Junior abruptly, catching Ann unaware.

  “How does your mother know about me?” asked Ann.

  “I’ve told her. She knows I’ve been seeing someone every night of my leave.”

  Bratsie watched the interchange.

  “Did your mother ask to meet me or did you ask her to?”

  “Somewhere in between, I suppose,” answered Junior. He smiled at her.

  “This I’d like to see,” said Bratsie.

  “You come too, Brats,” said Junior.

  “I’ll be gone the day after tomorrow,” said Bratsie.

  The waitress, tired, pounced on them with orders of scrambled eggs on thick chipped plates and noisily distributed them. Pouring coffee, she slopped it over into the saucers, an irritation for Ann, for whom it had associations. She did not allow herself to remember that she had once, briefly, been a waitress in a coffee shop herself. Now she concentrated on applying paper napkins to the soaked saucers as Bratsie, who took advantage of every situation, loudly slurped his coffee directly from the saucer, to Junior’s delight. Ann’s heart was beating rapidly. She did not understand what her feelings were exactly, somewhere between triumph and fear, and she did not wish either emotion to register on her face.

  “Will you come with me?” she asked finally, her chore completed, bringing the conversation back to where it had been before the interruption.

  “I’ll be there already. It’s where I live.”

  “Will there be others?”

  “Perhaps a sister or two. They usually drop in at that time to see Mère.”

  “Is that what you call your mother? Mère?”

  “We always have, yes.”

  The French word seemed to make him more remote from her, another thing to accentuate their differences. “What will I wear?” she asked.

  “I think this white fox jacket you have on and an orchid corsage,” said Bratsie, holding up the fur that Arturo de Castro had given her. It was not lost on Ann that it was her wrongness that made her so eminently suitable in Bratsie’s eyes as a companion for his rigid friend.

  “And high-heeled shoes and socks,” he went on.

  Junior put his hand over Ann’s and leaned over and kissed her gently. “You’ll be fine,” he said, and she felt reassured by his tone and hi
s protectiveness, and the tension in her body abated. He enjoyed holding her hand and calming her in moments of nervousness. Protected always himself, he felt strong in his role of protector. She understood his kiss and his role. By now, she loved him, but what she understood was that he loved her even more.

  After sending little Dickie and his nanny off to Central Park for the afternoon, Babette Van Degan lay on her sofa in a relaxed manner hearing the latest developments in her friend’s story. On Ann’s finger was Babette’s nearly flawless emerald-cut pink diamond, a Van Degan treasure, over which Ann never did not exclaim and which she often tried on.

  “I want all the colors someday,” said Ann matter-of-factly, handing back the ring. “Red and green and blue.”

  “And the pastels, too,” added Babette. “Some of the pastels are nice.”

  “No, no, I don’t care about the pastels,” said Ann. “Just the ems and the saffs and the rubes, thank you very much.”

  “Has Junior given you anything yet?” asked Babette.

  “No,” answered Ann. “Except roses and champagne and lunch at the Plaza and supper at the Stork Club, first cabin all the way, that sort of thing, but no gifts, no.”

  “Even that tango dancer gave you a white fox jacket,” said Babette.

  “But Arturo’s so ugly. He’s the only man I ever met that I’d rather go down on than kiss.” They laughed. “Wait until you see Junior. He’s beautiful.”

  “They’re all tight, though, those rich kids,” said Babette. “Mama probably controls the purse strings.”

  “Mère,” corrected Ann.

  “What?”

  “They call her Mère, not Mama.”

  “Jesus.” They laughed again. Babette helped herself to another chocolate from the huge box on her faux-malachite coffee table.

  “You’re going to get fat, Babette, if you keep eating that candy all the time,” said Ann.

  “No, I’ve got some great diet pills,” she answered, shrugging off the suggestion of fat. “Have I told you about Dr. Skinner?”

  “I don’t know what to wear. I was thinking of that green suit I got at Bergdorf’s, and white gloves, and a hat. I thought I might buy a new hat at Hattie Carnegie, and I thought maybe you’d lend me your lizard bag.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “I feel like Kitty Foyle,” said Ann nervously.

  “Kitty Foyle was a typist, honey. You’re a show girl,” answered Babette.

  “Which is better? Or worse?”

  “Neither one is what Alice Grenville has in mind for Junior. Let’s put it that way,” said Babette, reaching for another chocolate.

  * * *

  As she took a five-dollar bill from the lizard bag she had borrowed from Babette Van Degan, Ann looked up at the Grenville house from the interior of the cab. A six-storied limestone château with balconies, it appeared larger than she remembered from her previous expedition.

  “That’s some mansion,” said the driver, leaning over to look up himself. “That must be one of the Vanderbilts’ houses, I think.”

  “Grenville,” Ann corrected him.

  “Who?”

  “It’s the William Grenville house,” she repeated, while making the transaction for change and tip.

  “Probably related to the Vanderbilts,” insisted the driver. “I wonder what it’s like to live in a pile like that.”

  She wondered if he was talking to her as if he assumed that she didn’t know any more about it than he did, and she terminated the momentary cordiality. For reassurance she opened her compact and appraised herself favorably. She got out of the taxi, breathed deeply the February air, and walked across the street to the iron-grated front doors that opened into the entranceway. Up a half-dozen stone stairs were the glossy black double doors that opened into the front hall. Almost immediately after her ring, the door was opened by a butler. They eyed each other. He was almost elderly, and there was a quiet elegance about the dark uniform he wore, less formal, she noticed, than those of stage or screen butlers.

  “I’m expected,” she said, acting expected. She thought Junior would be there to greet her. “I’m Miss Arden.”

  “Good afternoon, Miss Arden,” the butler said, widening the opening as she passed into the hallway. Where was he? She saw, while experiencing his absence, that the floor was black-and-white marble in a geometric pattern, that the hallway was circular, that a stairway of vast proportions ascended upward flight after flight. Above her was an enormous chandelier with hundreds of prisms tinkling from the momentary blast of cold air. Her heart beat with excitement for being where she was and concurrently beat with fear at the possibility of abandonment. Unexpectedly self-conscious, she felt suddenly stiff and clumsy.

  “What?” she replied, aware of having been asked something.

  “Your coat,” repeated the butler.

  “Yes,” she said, allowing herself to be helped in its removal. At least she was not being turned away. Where was he? She needed, she knew, a mirror to look into to check the extent of her flush. She would know in an instant if it reflected high color or panic.

  “I wanted to be here when you arrived!” came his blessed voice from above. She looked up. Dressed in his uniform, he ran down the stairway several steps at a time to greet her. “You look”—he paused before completing his sentence, taking her in—“ravishing.” She liked the word at once.

  He could tell by the look on her face that she was nervous. Except for Bratsie and a few others like Bratsie, it was a look he had seen on the face of everyone he had ever brought into this vast house for the first time.

  “Did you meet Cahill?” he asked, turning to include the butler in the conversation. “This is Miss Arden, Cahill.”

  “Miss Arden,” acknowledged Cahill.

  “Cahill knows all the family secrets,” said Junior charmingly. “At least all mine.”

  “I’ve known Mister William since he was this high,” said Cahill, holding his hand to a very low level over the marble squares. Ann smiled.

  “Let me put your coat in here,” said Junior, leading Ann to a sitting room off the hall that looked out on the street.

  “Is this the living room?” she asked, looking around.

  “They call it the reception room,” said Junior. “The living room’s upstairs. That’s where Mère is.”

  “What is this room used for?”

  “It’s where people wait before they go upstairs, or sometimes Mère meets people here who come on business.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s where my father’s casket was. I suppose it will be where mine is as well.”

  “What a curious thing to say.”

  “I don’t know what made me say it.”

  She looked up at the portrait of the three young ladies in long white dresses.

  “That’s by Sargent,” he said.

  “My word,” she answered. “Is one of them your mother?”

  “On the right.”

  “And the other two are her sisters?”

  “My mother was a triplet. Did I tell you that?”

  “No.”

  Suddenly she felt unprepared for the event at hand. “Junior,” she said in an uncertain voice.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve never been in a mansion like this before.”

  “Listen.”

  “What?”

  “Just say ‘house.’ Don’t say ‘mansion.’ It’s a silly thing, I know, but it’s just not a word we use.”

  “You don’t say ‘mansion’? It’s one of my favorite words.”

  “Not in this mansion,” he answered, and they both laughed. He pressed up against her, kissing her on the cheek. “I hope you don’t mind my correcting you.”

  “Not at all,” replied Ann quickly. “I don’t want to make mistakes. You’ll find I’m a quick learn. You won’t ever have to tell me twice.”

  He smiled. “I like you better and better.”

  They moved back out into the hall, and she looked aroun
d her again.

  “How many servants does it take to run a place like this?” she asked, lowering her voice.

  “Fourteen, I think it is,” answered Junior.

  “Imagine.”

  “Used to be twenty-one when my father was still alive.”

  “Cutting corners, huh?”

  “The war.”

  “Oh, yes, the war.”

  She knew she was delaying going up.

  “Where do they all sleep?” she asked.

  “The top floor. There’s seven or ten rooms up there. The chauffeur, Gibbs, sleeps in his own apartment over where the cars are kept a few blocks away in the old carriage house.”

  “My.” They looked at each other.

  “We’d better go up,” he said. “The elevator’s over here.” He started leading the way.

  “Oh, no, no,” she replied. “I want to walk up those stairs.”

  “This house had the first private elevator in New York,” he said, as if that way up were preferable.

  “I still want to walk up those stairs,” she said, heading for them. As he always did when passing beneath it, Junior glanced up at the great chandelier, remembering.

  “What a beautiful chandelier,” said Ann, looking up at it as she ascended the stairs, a hand on the banister. She could imagine Marie Antoinette having danced beneath it.

  “It fell once when I was a little boy, and a man was killed,” said Junior. “Did I tell you that?”

  “No,” she answered.

  On the landing they stood outside the glossy white panels of the drawing-room doors and looked at each other.

  “What a lot you have to tell me,” she said, and he heard a whole future in her sentence.

  “You’re swell,” he said, turning to open the door. As he did so, voices from behind were heard in relaxed conversation.

  “Guess who’s getting married?”

  “Who?”

  “Cheever Chadwick. It’s in the Times.”