The Echo of Old Books(19)
How, Belle? After everything . . . how could you do it?
How??? After everything—you can ask that of me?
Forever, and Other Lies
(pgs. 1–6)
August 27, 1941
New York, New York
A girl isn’t supposed to fall in love at her own engagement party.
She isn’t supposed to, but I did. But then, for a skilled pretender, I was easy prey. And you were quite skilled, as I soon learned.
But I won’t rush ahead. I must set the stage first, if I’m to tell it properly. And that’s what this is about. Telling it properly—as it really happened, rather than how you have reinvented it in your pretty little book. And so I’ll begin at the beginning, on the night the whole thing started, in the ballroom of the St. Regis Hotel.
I had accepted a proposal of marriage from a young man I more or less grew up with. Teddy, whose father was one of the wealthiest and most prominent men in New York and a business associate of my father. It was all rather tidy. Or so my father thought when he arranged it. A merger of our families’ fortunes.
Oh, I fought it. I had no wish to marry anyone in those days. I was barely twenty-one—still a child in many ways—and had seen my sister obediently married off, had watched her wither under her husband’s heavy hand and the incessant needs of the children she produced at alarmingly regular intervals.
Cee-Cee was a prominent figure in my childhood, particularly after my mother’s death. Nine years my senior, she wielded a firm hand in raising me, but then in those days, she wielded a firm hand in just about everything. She ran my father’s house with astonishing efficiency, managing the help, planning meals, and at the age of seventeen, assuming the role of hostess when he entertained. She became, in my eyes—and in my father’s, too, for a time—the lady of the house. But I saw how marriage diminished her, leaving her smaller somehow, less visible and less valuable.
As far as I could see, my sister’s chief contribution as a wife was that of a broodmare, and I found the prospect appalling. I wanted a life of my own: school, travel, art, adventure. And I meant to have it too. So you can imagine my surprise at finding myself in the ballroom of the St. Regis, standing at Teddy’s side in a new gown by Worth, being toasted by a veritable Who’s Who of New York society. But then, my father can be very persuasive when he’s made up his mind about a thing. And he’d made up his mind about Teddy.
“To the happy couple!”
The collective cry rings in my ears after yet another toast. I lift my glass when I’m supposed to, smile when I’m supposed to. I’m my father’s daughter, after all, and have been well trained. But inside, I’m numb. It’s as if I’m peering through a window, watching it all happen to someone else. But it isn’t. It’s happening to me, and I can’t imagine how I’ve let it.
I slip away as soon as I can manage it, leaving Teddy to talk polo ponies with his club cronies, and search out a quiet corner. The heat of too many bodies combined with the whir of conversation and music is giving me a headache. But really, I’m nauseated by the thought that I’ll soon end up like my sister. Bored. Bitter. Invisible.
Teddy isn’t George, I remind myself as I grab a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and toss it back. Teddy is athletic and dashing, highly accomplished by masculine standards—which I’ve learned are the only standards that matter—and is considered a worthy catch by just about every woman in New York. The problem, I realize as I glance about for another tray of champagne, is that I don’t want to catch anyone. Parties and dinners and bland conversation. Holidays at all the fashionable places and endless changes of clothing. God help me.
Malleable, my father once called Cee-Cee. Because she understood things like loyalty and duty. It was the day he informed me that I was to marry Teddy. When I said I wasn’t interested in marriage, he explained with strained patience that sometimes we must do what’s required for the greater good. He was talking about his greater good, of course, protecting the less-than-tidy empire he’d managed to build when the Volstead Act was passed.
Teddy and his pedigree were meant to help with that, our marriage a strategic alliance intended to advance the collective family cause and remove the stench of new money and a decade of illegal Canadian whisky. But marriage should be more than an alliance. Or so I naively assumed. I’m fond of Teddy, the way one is fond of an unruly puppy or clumsy cousin, but I feel nothing when he kisses me, nothing warm or stirring.
My experience with men at this point in my life has been limited—which is as it should be for a young lady only three years out of an all-girls school. But somewhere along the way, I picked up the idea that there should be more to the business of men and women than submission and duty, something visceral connecting us, something chemical and elemental.
These are the thoughts running through my head as I glance around and see you for the first time. I look away, startled by my own thoughts and the creeping heat I feel moving up my throat and into my cheeks. But after a few more sips of champagne, I look for you again. And there you are, tall and dark-haired with a longish face and piercing blue eyes, still watching me. The hint of a smile tugs at the corners of your mouth, as if you’re amused but would rather not show it.
There’s a mocking quality to your expression that makes me self-conscious, and makes me a little angry, too, an audaciousness that causes my skin to tingle. I meet your gaze, willing myself not to look away, even as you begin to walk toward me. I swallow what’s left in my glass as you come to stand at my side.