The Life She Wanted: A Novel(57)
Harley really was a good husband. Other men wouldn’t be interested in the new house until they moved in.
“The reception rooms have all been painted,” she said eagerly. “The most beautiful shade of topaz.”
She adored the color that the interior designer recommended. It reminded her of the showroom at Tiffany’s.
Pandora couldn’t put off telling him any longer. She twisted her wedding ring.
“I decided we should furnish the nursery next, before we do the upstairs study or the gymnasium.”
Realization at what Pandora was saying set in. Harley turned white as a sheet. His body stiffened, and he placed his glass on the coffee table.
“A baby, so soon?” he stammered. His eyes were wide, and a sheen of perspiration formed on his forehead.
“I saw Dr. Bancroft today. The baby will be born in February.”
Pandora searched Harley’s face for some kind of doubt about the timing. She could only hope that he knew less about conception and having babies than she did.
He walked to the French doors leading to the balcony. His hand went to the doorknob, and Pandora was afraid he’d open the door and bolt across the lawn. Finally, he turned and walked to the sideboard. He poured a fresh drink, barely finishing it before he picked up the pitcher and poured another.
“I’m thrilled, of course. I just didn’t know it would happen so fast.” He sat beside her. “If it’s a boy, as soon as he’s born, we’ll put his name down for Princeton.”
Harley kept talking, as if the sound of his own voice was keeping away his panic.
“You can’t put off opening your boutique. We’ll get a baby nurse and a nanny.”
Pandora glanced at Harley. He was acting strangely. As if he was anxious to move the conversation away from himself.
Pandora nodded. “I already started looking at spaces in Hyde Park.”
Harley squeezed her hand. He put his arm around her and kissed her.
“Then I couldn’t be more delighted.” He gulped the sidecar. “I told you we’d have everything. A beautiful home and a family and each other.”
She stared at the almost empty pitcher and felt a pinprick of fear.
“You’re right,” she agreed. “We’re going to be so happy.”
Chapter Fourteen
February 1928, Hyde Park, New York
Pandora was due in two weeks. She had given up wearing corsets months ago. Adele took her to Lane Bryant on West Thirty-Eighth Street, but even the maternity dresses were uncomfortable. Every month she grew bigger, until she couldn’t see her ankles and felt like she was going to burst.
In October, Pandora and Harley had moved into Summerhill. Pandora spent the first month wandering from room to room imagining a life there with her baby. As a wedding present, Adele commissioned the interior designer Ogden Codman to furnish the downstairs. Ogden had designed the Rockefeller mansion in Mount Pleasant and Edith Wharton’s Park Avenue townhouse.
Pandora couldn’t decide which room she loved most. The living room had hand-painted wallpaper and parquet floors and a blue-and-white patterned rug. She adored the music room with its Steinway piano and the dining room with its Regency-style pedestal dining table and russet-colored upholstered chairs. And the gardens in the fall had been spectacular. The maple tree outside her bedroom window turned a brilliant orange, and a whole patch of dogwood trees turned a dusky red purple.
Today she was going to have lunch with Millie in New York. She had seen Millie a few times since Millie took the secretarial job. On every visit, Pandora was more impressed. Millie should be running her own company instead of taking dictation and picking up William Corning’s dry cleaning. But Millie seemed happy. The last time she saw her, Millie couldn’t stop talking about the dollhouse she’d put on layaway at FAO Schwarz for her daughter and the baseball mitt she’d bought her son.
Pandora drove herself into New York. She and Harley didn’t have a chauffeur, and the train took too long. She had something important to tell Millie. If she didn’t tell her now, she might not see her until after the baby was born.
Corning & Sons was located in one of the gleaming new office towers that had sprung up east of Penn Station. Pandora and Millie agreed to meet in a diner on the building’s ground floor. Millie was already seated when Pandora arrived. She wore a navy dress with a white collar and navy gloves. Her hair was cut in a bob that made her look younger but more sophisticated at the same time.
“You cut your hair!” Pandora said, waddling over to the table. She took off her coat and lowered herself onto a chair.
“I had to, all the young girls at the office are doing it.” Millie touched her hair. “Your hair is blond and glossy; you should never cut it. Mine is so fine, and it’s the color of a dirty tea towel.”
“The style is perfect on you; I never noticed your face is heart shaped,” Pandora said. “I’ve stopped looking in the mirror.”
“I was the same when I was pregnant,” Millie recalled. “I was afraid my stomach would never go back to normal.”
Pandora insisted on paying for Millie’s lunch. They ordered French onion soup and stewed veal with stuffed potatoes.
“I couldn’t wait to tell you,” Pandora said after the waiter brought their plates. “Harley’s bank closed a deal with a developer on an apartment building in Brooklyn Heights. It will have a playground and a school. Only tenants with steady incomes will qualify. If you lived there, you’d have more space, and you wouldn’t have to share a bathroom with other families.”