Oh, Papa.
Oh, Ned.
Oh, Marjorie Merriweather Post, you fool.
How could they have done this to me? Both of them—these twin betrayals. A pair of cuts so deep that they could never truly heal. Why had the two men I loved most proven to be the worst men of all?
Chapter 32
Palm Beach, Florida
All that had once been beautiful and bright, everything in my world that had seemed to me lovely and joyous, pure—fair and right—all of it went black. Grief and shock and embarrassment bled together in a blotting brushstroke that darkened everything I saw. Everything I had known.
Melancholy. That’s what Papa had named it. Others called it malaise. World-weariness. Doctors now had a term of their own for it; they called it depression. They could call it whatever they liked; I knew of the menace that lurked all around me, an inheritance bestowed on me not only by Papa but by Mother as well. It was grief, plain and simple; crippling, blackening grief, and it threatened to swallow me whole if I did not fight with everything I had to keep it at bay. Depression. Great in its enormity, terrible in its depth. America was in the midst of it, and so was I.
Not since Papa’s death had I felt such a consuming pull of grief that made it hard to emerge from under my thick covers. But even then, when I’d lost Papa, at least I’d had a fight into which I could pour myself—the fight with Leila for my family’s company and my daddy’s legacy and fortune. This time, what was there to rise and fight for? Where would I find the strength to claw my way out of this primal morass of heartache?
The answer came, as always, from right within my own home. My girls. Yes, they were older. Yes, Adelaide and Eleanor were both married in households of their own, and Deenie was off at boarding school, where she was changing from girl into young woman, growing less dependent on her old mom with each passing day. And yet their hearts still needed me. I was, and would always be, their mother, and they would turn to me as they navigated their own respective swells of joy and pain.
And for my Adelaide, one such swell loomed that winter as my eldest girl faced the indisputable fact that her own marriage was doomed. After years of discord, Adelaide had finally accepted a hard truth of her own: that her husband, Tim, was an unrepentant philanderer and spendthrift. She wept to me that she longed to sue for divorce. What could I do but hold her and reassure her that she was correct in her decision? Promise her that her life would go on. That she was not a failure simply because her marriage was over. That she, somehow, would manage to survive. Not only survive but, someday, stitch back together all of the pieces that suddenly felt so fractured and lost to her.
The truth was that I needed those words then more than ever, particularly as I began to read every few days in the society pages about Ned and the brand-new Mrs. E. F. Hutton. I read about how eager Dorothy was to start a family. I read about how Ned Hutton couldn’t keep his hands off his glamorous young bride while they danced all night uptown at the Cotton Club or swallowed down steaks and martinis at The “21” Club.
Men. Even the good ones turned out to be rotten. They hurt me, and they hurt those I loved most. I loathed the thought of bumping into Ned or Dorothy. I dreaded the thought of seeing friends and acquaintances around town, even the most well-meaning among them. Such run-ins were inevitably accompanied by whispers behind gloved hands. The darting of eyes and lifting of eyebrows when I entered the room. Even the sympathetic grimaces of people who wished me well—I wanted none of it.
So, that winter, I remained in Palm Beach, where I could lose myself in Mar-a-Lago’s lush embrace. Where the sounds of surf and birdsong could distract my listless thoughts, and sunshine and warmth could nurse my bruised heart. Ned had griped about all the money we’d spent—my money—to build the place, but now look at how things were fixed: he was gone, but the house remained. And in that sorrowful season, it was my refuge.
I didn’t much feel like playing the society hostess that season. I kept Mar-a-Lago’s gates shut and remained largely cloistered within the sprawling grounds of my waterfront retreat. I slept. I swam. I walked the beach. I studied the landscaping and the flowers with my gardeners, picking the mangoes and oranges that went into my breakfast and lunch. I turned to my faith, finding some comfort in the belief that there was a higher power that understood the mad way of things, even though I myself could not. I spent quiet evenings at home, accompanied by the moon and the ocean, calmed by the sounds of the tree frogs and the doves as the water lapped my shores with its rhythmic and timeless lullaby.