The Two Mrs. Grenvilles

by Dominick Dunne

  The sign in her window said two dollars for the reading, but she suggested that for five her work would be more detailed, and he agreed. He was confused and lonely in Tacoma, Washington; the strenuous routine of his training at the naval station did not erase from his mind his unpleasant departure from New York, estranged from both Ann and his mother. When, to soothe his troubled mother, he asked Ann to wait for him until after the war, she refused. It pained him to hear that the very next night she was dancing at El Morocco with Arturo de Castro. For the first time in his life he fought bitterly with his mother when she pointed out to him that Miss Arden’s instant defection to a former beau showed, more than any words of hers ever could, exactly what kind of person Miss Arden was. Except for Cahill and Gibbs, only Cordelia saw him off.

  “There is beautiful lady I see,” said Madame Sophia, laying out her soiled cards on the table.

  “Yes, yes,” cried Junior eagerly.

  “Her hair yellow.”

  “Golden,” said Junior only the briefest second before Madame Sophia said “yellow.”

  “Blue eyes,” she went on as if there in her shabby card she had conjured up his glorious lady and feasted on her beauty in agreement with him. From his attitudes she read his story. From his despair she told him they had fought and parted (Yes, yes.) From his longing she told him that the beautiful lady longed for him also. (Are you sure?) From his worry she told him that the obstacles in their way (Were there not obstacles? Yes, yes) were only there as a test to prove their love. From his ecstasy at her revelations she told him that happiness was his.

  “Is there anything else you would like to ask me?” she asked, warming to him for his enthusiasm for her powers, noticing in his transformation from despair to ecstasy how extraordinarily handsome he was.

  “Yes,” he answered. “There is.”

  She looked at him and waited for him to ask.

  “This will seem awfully stupid to you.…”

  “Just ask,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Will I be killed in the war?”

  She laughed, quite kindly, and shook her head again, and a feeling of relief began to flood his body.

  “No,” she said, moving her cards.

  “When?” he asked quietly.

  “When what?” She looked at him.

  “You see, I’ve always had this feeling that I would die young.”

  “Not in the war,” she repeated.

  “But when?” he persisted. Their eyes met. From his pocket he took a twenty-dollar bill and placed it on the table. She looked down at the cards in front of her. Then, unexpectedly, she pushed the twenty-dollar bill back at him across the table.

  “Please,” he said, pushing it back toward her. “It’s very important that I know.”

  “Five, five, five, five,” she said finally, wanting to be done with what she was doing.

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “The fifth day, the fifth month, 1955,” she said.

  The date she gave him, twelve years in his future, seemed, at that moment of his youth, so far distant that he was filled with exuberance over the postponement of the inevitability of his early demise. It was a date to be filed away for years to come. Then, there, in that shabby room in Tacoma, Washington, the vise of anxiety that the war would finish him was unwound.

  Babette Van Degan, her hands behind her head, lay back against the leopard-skin pillows on the sofa of her mirrored living room and commiserated with the miserable Ann.

  “That mother. Those sisters,” she said, acknowledging the root of the problem. They, daughters of adversity, had been through the story over and over.

  For Ann, her sense of loss over the departed Junior Grenville was overwhelming. She had gone from the heights of ecstasy to the depths of despair in a twenty-four-hour period and remained in the latter. There was a perception of missed opportunity that might not ever come her way again, at least in the elegant packaging that Junior Grenville presented. She was sure she would have loved him if he were less affluent, she thought, but the sight of his life had aroused in her a passion for him that she had not expected in herself.

  Even with her natural acceptance of hard facts, the thing she most feared in life was poverty; she had experienced it. She knew, nearly always, that she had within her the means to go beyond, by far, the life into which she had been born, and she merely passed through the first eighteen years of it in anticipation of moving out of it, leaving no traces. Although it was Fredda Cunningham as Cecily Cardew and not Urse Mertens as Gwendolen Fairfax who was remembered in the Pittsburg High School senior class production of The Importance of Being Earnest, it was then she had decided for sure that the stage, when she got to it, would be the means for her to experience the kind of life she knew was waiting. In the meantime, after high school, she and her mother had moved to Kansas City where, in due time, she had modeled for several years at Swanson’s Department Store. She enjoyed being looked at and had a natural ability for walking down a runway, turning this way, turning that, removing gloves, removing coats and jackets, with what Miss Rose, in Couture, called real class. In no time, half the eligible men in Kansas City, and a few ineligible married ones, had heard about and were in pursuit of Miss Urse Mertens. Ethel Mertens was delighted with her daughter’s popularity, and she and Urse, always close, spent many an hour discussing the relative merits of Mr. Barney, or Mr. Hasseltine, or Mr. Stackpole. The only bad fight the two ever had was when Billy Bob Veblen, from Pittsburg, appeared on the scene, and Billy Bob Veblen (Ethel Mertens was the first one to say), was headed exactly nowhere in life. His finest moment, she claimed, had already been played four years earlier in his celebrated eighty-yard run against Hugoton. So Urse continued to see Mr. Barney, and Mr. Hasseltine, and Mr. Stackpole, to please her mother, but, in secret, she sometimes saw Billy Bob Veblen too when he drove up to Kansas City.

  After five years in New York, Ann—renamed by Chet Marx, who told her the name Urse Mertens had to go, honey—knew that she had striking good looks, but that her talents as a dancer and an actress were modest. The stage was for her a means to an end. She danced away the nights of her life in the nightclubs of the city with rich South Americans, dress manufacturers, and some second-string producers from Hollywood. She bestowed and received, waiting for fame or marriage, whichever came first, but all previous perceptions of her unfocused dream paled when Junior Grenville came into her life.

  “Did I ever tell you what my father, the milkman, used to say?” asked Babette of her grieving friend.

  “No,” replied Ann.

  “ ‘If he’s got the cow’s milk, why buy the cow?’ ” quoted Babette.

  “That sounds like Willimantic, Connecticut,” said Ann.

  “That’s probably what Alice Grenville said to Junior. Some Social Register version of that,” said Babette.

  Ann wondered if she had given too much.

  When his orders came to be shipped out, Junior called Ann in New York and pleaded with her to fly out to Tacoma and marry him. Joyously she agreed. She knew for sure that she loved him and wanted to be his wife. The contract for the film with Humphrey Bogart had come to naught—a couple of evenings at El Morocco, one of them culminating in a drunken fight over a stuffed panda bear; her name narrowly escaped being mentioned in Walter Winchell’s column, a thing she had once craved.

  “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” she cried.

  “I am so happy, my darling,” he said.

  “When do you want me?”

  “As soon as you can get here.”

  “Listen, Junior,” she said.

  “I’m listening,” he answered.

  “I don’t want to be married to a man called Junior.”

  “But I’ve always been called Junior.”

  “That doesn’t mean you always have to be.”

  “What’s wrong with Junior?”

  “It’s a boy’s name. I want to marry a man.”

  “They called my father William
.”

  “I don’t want to call you William either.”

  “Bill?” he asked.

  “Billy,” she answered.

  She suspected she might be pregnant, although she did not go to see a doctor about it, once she agreed to marry Billy, because, if it was true, she wanted to get the news at the same time he got the news so that it would not be a condition of the marriage.

  “No one is ever going to claim I trapped him with the old pregnancy routine,” said Ann to Babette when she related the news to her.

  “I think you really love this guy,” said Babette.

  Ann did not call, or call on, Alice Grenville before she left New York to tell her of the plans, leaving that for Billy to do.

  Somehow he was able to book a suite in the finest hotel in the city for an indefinite period of time, and it was there that she lived during the week before the marriage. He left all the wedding plans to her, as he was mostly confined to the base, and was delighted that she chose to be married in a religious ceremony in the Episcopal church instead of by a justice of the peace. Each, independently, was thinking of Alice and her beloved St. James’. “North, East, South, West,” thought Ann, “Episcopalian is the best.”

  She went to St. Andrew’s Church rectory and asked to speak to the minister. As always, she was carefully dressed, wearing the same green suit meant to impress Alice Grenville, and gloves, and hat. The ancient housekeeper informed her that the Reverend Dr. Tiffany was in the church. She was invited to wait in the rectory but decided instead to go into the church so as to see what it looked like. The minister stood on the altar performing a service for himself alone. Ann slipped into a pew to wait. After a few minutes the minister became aware that there was someone in the church and turned and saw her in the front pew watching him.

  “May I help you?” he asked.

  “I would like to speak with you, Reverend Tiffany,” replied Ann.

  “Can’t you see that I am in the middle of a service?”

  “I meant when you have finished,” said Ann.

  “What is it concerning?”

  “A marriage.”

  “Are you a member of this church?”

  “No.”

  “Is it a military marriage?”

  “Naval. My fiancé is stationed at the base.”

  “There are chaplains at the base,” he answered and turned back to the altar to complete his service. He was unobliging and ungracious, but she was determined not to be dismissed by him as if she were a gob’s girl friend. She continued to sit there, fingering her pearls, as if they were real, in the manner she had seen Alice Grenville finger hers when she was vexed, until Dr. Tiffany completed the service.

  “Are you still here?” he asked when he had finished and was about to go around and turn out the few lights that were on.

  “The family of my husband-to-be are long-standing members of St. James’ Episcopal Church in New York City, and Dr. Kinsolving of that church suggested to us that we come here to this church to marry,” said Ann, having prepared her sentence and her exact tone of voice, firm but courteous, to achieve the utmost effect.

  “Come along, come along,” he said, his manner changing. “Let’s go back to the rectory and talk a bit. Tell me, how is Dr. Kinsolving? I’m sorry if I appeared brusque before, but there are so many people from the bases who come here wanting a church wedding when they have no interest whatsoever in the church, do you see what I mean? What is the name of your fiancé’s family?”

  The fluttery white curtains in the rectory reminded her of Fredda Cunningham’s living room in Pittsburg, Kansas. He asked her if she would like a glass of sherry. She declined, but he took one and then another. He talked on and on. She realized that he was considerably older than she had at first thought him to be in the darkened church. He asked her questions and then did not wait for answers, although he seemed considerably impressed with Dr. Kinsolving and the grand church on Madison Avenue that he oversaw.

  Ann discussed flowers and talked over music that she wanted played, asking specifically for a hymn that Billy had told her had been his favorite hymn at Groton. The service was set for eleven o’clock the following Saturday at the side altar. He took another sherry, and she wondered if he was getting senile or perhaps drank a bit, but decided that it was the war. He was long past retirement age and all the younger ministers were away being chaplains. He had a confused look in his eyes; she was not sure if he had the plans straight and thought she would call him again the next day and doublecheck them. To ensure that nothing would go awry, she opened her purse and took from it several large bills, which she handed him as a contribution to the church, telling him that her husband-to-be would be making a further contribution to the church at the time of the wedding. She asked him if he would join them later at their wedding celebration at the hotel where she was staying. When she departed, he called her Miss Grenville instead of Miss Arden.

  In another part of the city, in the area known as the country-club district, a murder occurred. A young girl of good family had been strangled by a former suitor, a soldier, with whom she had broken off a romance. For several days the story remained on the front pages of the Tacoma newspapers while the soldier was apprehended and arraigned. Pictures of the lovely-looking girl appeared in the papers with accounts of her family background, her education, her accomplishments.

  Ann, with little else to do during the days, became avidly interested in the story, shuddering at the thought of a young life ending in so violent a manner. She took a taxi out to the address given in the papers to look at the home of the parents of the victim and felt even sorrier for her when she saw the impressive house and grounds where the girl had lived.

  When Ann returned to the hotel, she saw that Billy’s bags for their three-day honeymoon and a case of liquor from the PX for the wedding reception had been dropped off at the suite by a friend of Billy’s from the naval base. She could not bear to have things out of place, and the sight of the bags and case in the center of her sitting room disturbed her sense of symmetry. When she moved the bags into a closet, she noticed for the first time that there was a manila envelope containing unopened mail that the friend had dropped off as well.

  She was drawn to one particular letter like a moth to a flame. Although she had never seen Alice Grenville’s handwriting, she would have known it was hers—tall, slender, strong, privileged—even if the address of the house in New York had not been thickly engraved on the rear of the paleblue envelope. She felt snubbed by it, just as she knew its contents concerned her. Long before she did what she did, she knew what she was going to do. She stared at it as if it were an enemy. She wished that the suite had a kitchenette so that she could boil water and steam open the envelope. Instead, she bolted the door of her room and locked the door of her bathroom. Breathing heavily, standing in front of the mirror, she ripped open the envelope and read Alice Grenville’s letter to her son. She read slowly. Had she been observed, her slowness would have been exasperating, but it was dread that slowed her.

  “My darling son,” the letter read. “I am heartsick that we have parted on such dreadful terms. I cannot bear that you go off to war like this, and I beg you to call me once you have received this letter. I know you think you are in love with Miss Arden, but it is an infatuation. I beg you not to marry her. If your father were alive, he could explain things to you that it is difficult for me to say. Yes, yes, she is lovely, vivacious, witty, all the things you say she is, but she has a past, Junior, other men, older men, many men, all rich. Perhaps she is what you need for this moment in your life. Perhaps your life, as we have brought you up, has stifled you a bit, and you need to flap your wings. Flap them, my darling, but do not marry her! Through Mr. Mendenhall at the bank, I have engaged a private detective. She is older than you think, and Ann Arden is not her real name. There was a party several years ago given by Earl Jones and Freddie Strawbridge, at the Waldorf, in a private suite, for Teddy Mander’s bachelor dinner, and Miss Ar
den was drunken and disorderly and nude—”

  The telephone rang in the outer room. She realized it might have rung before she became aware of its ringing. The sound startled her from her furtive work. She felt it must be Billy. Her armpits felt moist. Her face looked bloodless. In an instant, without finishing reading, she savagely tore the paleblue pages into small pieces and flushed them down the toilet.

  By the time she got to the telephone, it had rung four more times. By the next ring the person on the other end would have hung up.

  “Hello?” She was out of breath.

  “Miss Arden,” the voice said with relief. “I was afraid you were not there.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Dr. Tiffany.” A pause. “From St. Andrew’s Church.”

  “Yes, yes, Reverend Tiffany. Forgive me. I have been distracted. So much to do still, before tomorrow.”

  “I have made a terrible error, Miss Arden.”

  “Error?”

  “I have booked a funeral at the same time that I booked your wedding, and I must ask you to postpone your wedding for an hour or two.”

  “No, no, no, no,” she cried. “Eleven o’clock. That is when my wedding is going to be. I will not change it.”

  “But you see, it is the funeral of the unfortunate young Wentworth girl.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “She is the girl who was murdered by the soldier. Her family are regular members of my church. The error is mine. I ask you to bear with me. It is to be an enormous funeral, and the hour has been sent to the papers and cannot be changed.”