“Oh, I know,” Blanche said, blinking her long, dark lashes as she nodded. “I didn’t decide to marry Edward until after I’d met his sister-in-law. She made my decision easier.”
I laughed, feeling my cheeks grow warm. I had said I was jealous of Blanche in her choice of sister-in-law, and it was true. But as I took a sip of my cool lemonade, I noticed how it tasted bitter in my mouth. And that was, I realized, because I was also a bit jealous of this woman for the easy warmth and casual caresses that her adoring husband offered her.
After my parade party, I stayed home to oversee the dismantling of the stands, directing the servants and chatting with the girls before their bedtime. Eddie went out with some of his Columbia friends to continue the celebrations. I was not awake when he returned home, nor did I know what time that was. We had not shared a bedroom since his return from France.
The next morning, I joined him at breakfast. I noticed how his features sagged, pale and weary, no doubt made so by a night of countless gins and scotches. How, as he sipped his coffee, the china cup trembled in his unsteady hands. I glowered. Should I say something? Oh, but what was the point? I wasn’t going to change Ed Close, no more than I was going to allow Ed Close to change me. Once more, I could not help but think back to the slow and winnowing decay of my parents’ union. How I had always been put squarely in between them. And then, when they had finally split, I had been a young woman about to embark on my own life and my own romantic relationship—it had been the absolute worst time to see their marriage, and my family, fall apart.
I would not do that to my own girls. I would not dwell in resigned apathy, no longer feeling that words even mattered. I would not ask us all to endure years of frosty unhappiness—a false peace—not when I already knew where it was headed. I’d cut it off now, while they were young and I could protect them.
Divorce. I’d once been so shattered by the word. So cowed by how big and ruinous it had seemed. And yet, here I was, choosing it for myself. For our family. That morning, not touching my breakfast, I sucked in a long gulp of fortifying breath, and I told Ed Close that our marriage was over.
Sadly, quietly, but with his cool, somber, well-bred dignity, he agreed. He’d known, just as I had, that this was coming. He packed up a suitcase and he and his valet left, checking in to a suite at his club. Now it was up to our attorneys to work out the details.
I willingly offered him a generous sum in parting. Was it to assuage my own guilt? Perhaps. I would keep my home with the girls in New York. “Where will you go?” I asked him, but I already knew the answer. He would finally be able to return to Connecticut. I felt no pang of envy at his taking that territory as his own; Greenwich had always been Eddie’s domain, the domain of Mrs. Edward Close. I was Miss Post once more.
Nevertheless, it did sting when I heard, first through my daughters and then even more through the gossip of the society pages, how quickly Ed began stepping out with someone else. We’d only just signed the attorneys’ papers, but already the newspapers were filled with the details. Who was this new lady in my ex-husband’s life? Her name was Elizabeth Taliaferro, and she was a brown-eyed beauty from Texas. Texas! I could not help but gasp, recalling the image of my husband sitting on a cactus, groaning: My God, why did I ever agree to this?
My daughters met this lady after a weekend trip to their father’s in Connecticut, and they reported back that Miss Taliaferro had been perfectly nice, arriving for the introduction with sweets and a new doll for each. Well then, she seemed serious about Ed, I noted, if she was also willing to pay court to his eleven-and nine-year-old daughters. I smiled good-naturedly as they told me about her, as they giggled about the way that their father had held her hand when they walked as a foursome down the sidewalk in Greenwich, on their way from the Episcopal church toward Sunday brunch. I was adamant that my pain did not become theirs.
I was stunned anew when, after the briefest of courtships, Adelaide informed me over the telephone that her father had become engaged to this Miss Taliaferro. It hadn’t served him well the last time, marrying a girl he’d known so briefly. I’d certainly learned my lesson, but it seemed that he had not.
Oh well, I wished him nothing but happiness in his second time through. He was, after all, always going to be the father of my two girls. And he was a good man, Ed Close, even if not the man for me.
But I was even more determined than before to avoid Greenwich. The new Mrs. Close would no doubt be presiding over society out there in no time. Just as well, I thought. I, Miss Post, had never liked it there. I had considered the destruction of The Boulders to be a sort of blessing. Botched wiring from the start—in the house, in the marriage. I was building anew and excited to do so. The end of the marriage even brought with it a feeling of relief, of a burden sloughed off. Now I answered only to myself, and as myself. I didn’t see any appeal to remarrying. That was what I believed. That was what I told myself. Oh, how wrong I was.