Great Big Beautiful Life(110)
“My mother stayed with me in Nashville for several weeks. Every time we left, there was the press, without any qualms about how their presence might make me feel. They were kinder at first, would bring trinkets and bouquets and teddy bears, gifts and apologies that meant nothing. They didn’t know him. They couldn’t miss him. I did. Every moment of every day.
“I wanted to punish them, honestly, but I couldn’t figure out any way to do it. The best I could come up with was giving them more spectacle, feeding their unquenchable thirst for drama. They wanted a madwoman, and that’s what I was. I ripped up our gardens and left all the flowers in trash cans at the gate. I left the house barefoot, and chopped off my hair with a pair of kitchen scissors. I wore the same dress I’d worn to our wedding to the burial, and I relished every headline about my deranged behavior, because at least it seemed like proof that I had some control over who they said I was. After a couple of weeks, that stopped soothing the ache and all I wanted was to be alone. To feel my pain completely, without interruption. I sent my mother home, paid the staff, and let them go. Then I shut myself away. For two years, the only person I saw with any kind of regularity was Cecil.
“He’d come to check in every week or so that first year. After that, he went back to Switzerland, to Laura. He’d call to check in on me sometimes. I wondered if it was at my sister’s request, but I never asked. He was my last connection to her, and deep down, I think I wanted to hold on to that.
“Two years after my husband’s death, my father urged me to move back to the House of Ives. I obliged but I couldn’t stand to be in the wing of the house where Laura and I had grown up together, and where Cosmo and I had spent so many nights, so instead I settled into Gerald’s old rooms.
“When my parents told me that Cecil and Laura were getting married, I almost broke and called her. They’d fallen in love slowly, over years of friendship. His kindness and patience were exactly what my sister needed. But any happiness I felt for her always turned into more pain after a minute or two. My parents and Roy went overseas to witness the private ceremony, in their home. I stayed behind, alone in my empty mansion.
“The worst part was the day I found out my sister had given birth to a baby girl. And I’d missed it. The pregnancy, the delivery, the whole thing.”
Surprise whizzes through me like a dozen bottle rockets. “She had a daughter? You’re not the last Ives?”
“I am,” she says firmly. “When I go, the name goes with me. Laura’s made sure of that, in every way she could. She and Cecil changed their surnames, and they raised their daughter in Europe, far away from us. Away from the Cosmo fans and the media circus. They stayed in touch with my parents, but at a distance. It was the only safe way. Sometimes, when my mother and Roy came for dinner, she’d ask when I was going to forgive my sister, but the truth was, it wasn’t a lack of forgiveness keeping me away anymore.”
I shake my head, not understanding. “Then what?”
She thinks for a minute. Then she heaves herself out of her chair. “Come with me, Alice.”
I follow her inside and down the hallway, to a shut door. She opens it to reveal a sparse office, with a desk, a computer, two chairs, and a thriving potted plant. In the corner, she opens the closet door, then steps back, gesturing toward a brown box on the top shelf.
“Oh. Sure.” I step forward and pull it down, handing it over. She places it on the desk and, with shaking hands, lifts the lid off.
“What is it?” I ask.
She waves toward it, inviting me to look. Nervously, I lean over, without one single guess at what I’ll find.
“Go on,” she says.
I carefully lift the stack of yellowed newspaper clippings out of the box and begin to skim them. All of them about her, some from before Cosmo’s death and some from after, but all of them damning.
The Ives Curse Claims Cosmo
“I Blame Peg,” Cosmo’s Childhood Friend Says
The Lies of Ives: How Peg Trapped Cosmo
There are dozens more. They call her Pushy Peggy and Me-Me-Me Margaret. They label her stuck up, sneaky, manipulative, catty. They accuse her of hating to share the spotlight with her husband. She’s never photographed leaving, but instead storming out. She doesn’t wear anything, but instead shows it off. They write about feuds with other beloved women in Hollywood, and in one especially sickening tabloid piece, an anonymous source says Cosmo was on the verge of leaving Margaret when he died. The headline reads: If I Can’t Have Him, No One Will.
My stomach turns. I stuff them back into the box. “Margaret,” I say gently. “You know all of this is bullshit, don’t you?”
“Says who?” she replies evenly.
“Stuck up? Manipulative? Come on,” I say. “These are all just old stereotypes about women. They might as well be calling you a Jezebel.”
“It’s just a story,” she says bluntly, lowering herself into one of the chairs. “That’s what I used to tell Cosmo. And I believed it. But after I lost him, and Laura…When you don’t have the people who love you around, reminding you who you are, that story feels bigger and realer than anything else. You lose yourself inside the character with your name and face.”
I want to reach out and touch her hand, or hug her, but I’m not sure she’d appreciate it.