CHAPTER 32
I hid in the mansion. Society began to caper on without me. At first, it was a relief; I’d had my fill of people already at the services, and honestly, it’s no great hardship to hide in here. You’ll find out about that. It’s rather like being a princess locked in a tower, only the tower is made of money and bereavement, and the dragon keeping you inside it is the unending obsession of everyone else in the world.
Instead of the masses forgetting about me, as a teenaged-widowed-almost-mother, I became even more of a fascination. There were still so many articles being printed about me, about unborn you, about Jack. I received letters and telegrams practically every day from absolute strangers. Some were genuinely offering their condolences and good wishes.
Some were worse. Some were from other survivors （so they said）， usually people from Titanic’s third-class, telling me that they, too, had lost their loved ones. That they had lost everything. These letters would invariably conclude with the authors begging me for financial support.
Some were worse still. At least three different sailors claimed to have found a piece of Titanic’s drifting debris—a plank of wood, a portion of a deck chair—incised （perhaps by a knife or a nail） with a final message from Jack to me, or to his children, which they would be pleased to deliver to me in person for only a modest fee.
I told Vincent it was a waste of time. That it was ridiculous to suppose any of these stories to be true and that, if Vincent gave in, he would be handing money to the most vile of men. Frauds, hucksters. Opportunists willing to blackmail our grief.
I told him the night had been too dark for scratching out messages. The deaths had come too relentlessly quick.
But Vincent, you know . . .
I do believe our shared sorrow has changed us both, reshaped us. Linked us, even, in a way neither of us anticipated. I don’t think your brother despises me quite as he used to do.
But neither was he willing to listen.
Of course the messages were hoaxes. One was signed “John.” One spelled “heaven” as “hevin.” And one addressed me as “Madie,” which your father never would have written, not even while dying.
*
There was one day that I did not hide, and that was the one during which I hosted a luncheon for Captain Rostron and Doctor McGee from the Carpathia, to thank them for all they’d done. I have to admit that it was not my idea, but it was a good one. Marian Thayer telephoned me, suggesting that she be the hostess and I one of the guests. But I told her candidly that I wasn’t up for leaving the house yet, and that there was still an army of newspapermen camped outside, so that anywhere I went, I would be towing chaos directly behind me. I suggested my home as an alternative, and she readily agreed.
It was to be an informal affair, just our guests, me, Marian, Eleanor Widener, and another widow who had been in our lifeboat, a friend of Marian’s. At the last moment, Eleanor pleaded illness and had to cancel. She had lost both her husband and her son to the ocean, and no one minded the abrupt change of plans.
I sent her flowers afterwards.
May 31, 1912
Manhattan
At some point after his divorce, Jack had decided to renovate the Fifth Avenue chateau. When he and Ava had lived in it with Jack’s mother, it was actually two separate residences, two separate households, that shared a common exterior. They also shared the entranceway, but once inside the main hall, it was necessary to aim either right or left, depending on who was visiting whom. Twin grand staircases curled up opposite walls, leading to either the Mrs. Astor, or else to her son and daughter-in-law.
After Lina’s death, Jack had combined the homes, replacing the twin staircases with just one, even more grand and frilled. But it wasn’t until after Ava moved out that he’d added the finishing touch, a ten-foot-high marble fountain situated in the middle of the bronze-and-glass entrance hall, constantly, softly splashing.
Dolphins danced on their tails at the top, spat water from their mouths. Fat baby sea nymphs, complete with golden tridents, frolicked in rows below them, shiny and dripping.
In the wide bottom basin, goldfish swam in silent circles around and around, slender orange wisps with translucent long tails, fed twice daily by a dutiful kitchen boy.
Madeleine stood beside the goldfish to receive her guests. She was not the late Mrs. Astor; she didn’t need to greet anyone while lurking beneath a giant portrait of herself—there was no portrait of her, anyway, giant or otherwise.
Nor was she Mrs. Astor the first, that glamorous Roman goddess who would never step foot in this house again.