The bottom where I’d started, he meant.
No amount of fame or money had made me respectable. Only his name had done that. Even at the height of my celebrity on the stage, flush with cash, I couldn’t buy a new house without the town forming a committee to keep me out, saying they didn’t wish their neighborhood to be soiled by an actress and divorcée. It was only when I tearfully explained that I was soon to marry William Astor Chanler that they relented.
Willie made everyone in that neighborhood pay for their small-mindedness. For years afterward, he rubbed their faces in it, throwing lavish parties for members of the playhouse, forcing snooty society matrons to mingle with my theater friends. I’d loved him for that. Still, it had also been a harsh lesson that no success of my own—no accomplishment, honor, or merit—would ever open as many doors for me as Willie’s name.
I knew that if I divorced him, all those doors might slam shut again, but he was breaking my heart. “Even a scandal would be better than continuing this way.”
Willie lowered his voice to condescension. “My dear, I’m afraid it simply would not be in your best interests to divorce me at this time.”
“Don’t ruin my ridiculous faith in your good character,” I warned. “You know the boys are best off with me. Moreover, I shall take steps to economize so that you will not resent a divorce agreement.”
He waved this away. “Perhaps, in a short time, you’ll find that things have changed such that no agreement shall be necessary.”
I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was hinting at.
He leaned forward. “Be a good girl and do as I say. Go home and content yourself with motherhood, theater projects, and charity dances. If you begin divorce proceedings, I shall contest it.”
Never mind throwing a drink in his face; now I had the urge to dump the whole bucket of iced champagne over his head. He wouldn’t give me a divorce and yet also wanted me gone? Well, I wasn’t budging. “I’m staying in Paris until summer. Someone has to help the Chapmans see Victor. And I have work to do for the war besides.”
“I’m sure the war effort can do without tea service at the hospital.”
So he was keeping tabs on me and mocking my efforts. Since there was no point in explaining the work we were doing with Marie-Louise LeVerrier and Clara Simon to house refugees and get supplies to the front lines, I drained my champagne, then stood. “Do you know something, Willie? It would serve you right if there was another man. I could bat my eyelashes and have my pick. American industrialists, British noblemen, French artists. Maybe one of each!”
Only slightly chastened, Willie began, “Listen, I’m going to Switzerland, and then—”
“You can go to hell for all I care.”
With that, I stormed away from the table.
And he did not follow.
SIXTEEN
MARTHE
Chavaniac-Lafayette
September 1941
I’m waiting for the Baroness de LaGrange, pacing back and forth on the parquet wood floors of the blue salon—part of the suite of rooms that were once Adrienne Lafayette’s apartments. The tapestried wall panels, drawings of songbirds, and furnishings of the castle aren’t thought to be original, but the restored crystal chandelier and gilt-edged upholstered chairs evoke the Louis XVI style of Adrienne’s day. It was the baroness’s idea to move her bust up here from the museum room, and as she sweeps in, she says, “I think La Femme Lafayette is more at home now, don’t you?”
What I think is that a few months in America has done wonders for the baroness’s vitality, and she’s not so severe-looking with a little plumpness in her cheeks. “I can do better now,” I say, more critical of my sculpture than ever. “I could carve a life-sized bust of Adrienne, maybe even in marble . . .”
“Hmm,” replies the baroness, a sign she’s unsure of my artistic abilities and worried about the expense. “Yes, well, I’ll think on it. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to your sketches. We have a lot of walls in this chateau to decorate.”
I unveil my best work so far—la femme Lafayette in a series of maternal tableaus, each in lifelike dishabille. Adrienne staring bleakly into the middle distance after her long-absent husband. Adrienne’s hair falling in ringlets as she stoops over a cradle, dark eyes lit with faith. Adrienne’s anguish over a child in her arms as death separates them forever. It’s this last that makes the baroness cover her mouth. “Oh, Marthe . . .”