The Second Mrs. Astor

by Shana Abe

  “This is your fault. This is all your fault! You lured him to you. You seduced him. He would have never been on that ship if not for you.”

  “Oh,” she said coldly, “this again. I thought we had already addressed this particular stupidity of yours.”

  “You’re a terrible girl. A terrible wife. You left him behind to die, and I suppose you’ve gotten your wish now, haven’t you?”

  Madeleine lost her fragile sense of calm. “Why do you think I insisted we turn back the lifeboat?” she shouted. “Why do you think? We were one of only two boats to return to the people pleading for help, and I made that happen! I was searching for him in every face! Do you think I cared about any of those other men we saved? I would have tossed them back to the ocean in a heartbeat had I come across your father and we needed the room!”

  She covered her mouth with her hand, forced herself to lower it again. She shot a quick glance over her shoulder at the open doorway—still empty—then flexed her fingers, closed them into fists.

  The silk crêpe of her gown glistened in the sunlight, every shade of ebony, of unforgiving loss.

  “So, yes. I may be a terrible person, as you say. I may be selfish and terrible. But I loved him. I would have sacrificed my own life for his. I certainly would have sacrificed any of those other men’s lives.”

  He said nothing. He looked carved from stone.

  “I didn’t even know them,” she said, much quieter. “They were nothing to me. They were disappointments. Every time I helped haul them up into the boat, letting them crumple and bleed water along my feet, they were disappointments. I don’t care if that makes me a monster. I would have thrown any of them back for him. All of them. Feel free not to share that with the papers, and don’t you dare blab to anyone that I’ve been crying. Don’t you dare.”

  He sat down heavily into the chair. He propped his elbows against the rosewood desk and dropped his head into his palms, his fingers speared through his hair.

  “You don’t really mean that, do you?” he muttered to the desk. “That you would have killed another man to save him?”

  “I swear to God. I’ll swear upon any god you like.”

  He looked at her aslant. She wiped quickly at her eyes, then turned to the door.

  “Wait,” he said. She turned back.

  “Where will the ship—the ship with him. Where will she dock?”

  “Halifax.”

  “I want to be there.”

  She hesitated, imagining him splintering apart in public, lashing out. What a feast the pressmen would make of that.

  “There’ll be paperwork to fill out,” he said. “Legal matters. Forms to sign. I can do it instead of you. People will expect me to.”

  “I’ve already decided to send Captain Roberts in my stead. The Noma will be quicker than the trains. You don’t have to go. He can do whatever needs to be done.”

  “I want to go,” Vincent said. “Please.”

  It was the only time he’d ever said please to her.

  On the wall above his nightstand there loomed a large, empty space, a rectangle of aqua silk wallpaper just slightly brighter than that surrounding it.

  His voice came rough, not quite pleading. “Madeleine.”

  She hesitated a moment longer, then acquiesced with a nod, exiting the room.

  * * *

  John Jacob Astor IV, America’s richest man and newly minted hero, was to be given what amounted to two funeral services. His widow would have preferred only one, but the little church in Rhinebeck-on-the-Hudson, where Jack had been a warden, could not fit all the mourners who wanted to pay their respects, and in any case, the Astor family mausoleum was back in Manhattan.

  So, two separate services, one in the church, one graveside, all in the same day, and then he would be interred in the mausoleum above his father. Beside his mother.

  Other people made the arrangements. Secretaries, undersecretaries, even Vincent, emerged from his mania into a new, razor-edged composure that alarmed Madeleine some, because it seemed so waxen, so brittle. The complex machinery of the massive Astor estate had clicked into gear, grinding away, and at this juncture, there was no stopping it.

  But she did not want to stop it. The truth was, planning the details of Jack’s entombment had turned out to be more than she could manage. As Vincent had grown stronger, she had veered the opposite direction, her mind and spirit drained to the point where even the simplest of decisions perplexed her.

  They asked her about the flowers, and she had no answer.

  They asked her about the eulogies, and she had no answer.

  They asked her about the hymns, and she said any but “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” because by now everyone knew it was the song the orchestra had been playing as the liner went down. It was that final hymn she had heard from the lifeboat, thin and melancholy and ghostlike, undulating across the water.

  He was likely still alive then. She couldn’t stop thinking about that. He had likely heard it too. Even ripped apart, they shared this one last bond, and it haunted her, imagining him on the boat deck, in the panic, hearing that hymn. And then her imagination would take her down dark, dark paths: had he tumbled from the deck as the ship split in two? Had he jumped into the ocean? Had he been one of those cartwheeling figures she’d seen? Had he struck his head, had he drowned at once, had he suffered, how terrible was his pain—

  All she knew, likely knew, was that Jack had heard that hymn with her. And that, however differently they had ended up in the same place, they had still ended up in the same place: adrift beneath the shooting stars.

  * * *

  Ferncliff, that rambling, Italianate mess of a mansion, was where her husband had been born. And here was another odd thought that haunted her—she was surely sleeping now in the same master chamber where he had drawn his first breath.

  It was a creaky, drafty room. In the winter, it was a beast to heat, as the stone chimney never seemed to draw well, no matter how often it was cleaned. But it was May now, and the days and nights had warmed into a humid temperance. She slept with two of the windows cracked so that she could smell the grass and trees and a beguiling hint of the Hudson River, flowing wide as the Nile nearby.

  Her family was scattered throughout this house, pampering her, preparing her for what was to come. Vincent had wired from Halifax; he and Roberts and the Noma would be here this afternoon, and Jack’s body would be here, and then, in two days, the service at the church, followed by the one in the city.

  She told herself the first service wasn’t even going to be a real goodbye, because then they had to go back to Manhattan to do it all again, so she shouldn’t . . . break here. She must not break. Not yet.

  * * *

  She walked alone along a dirt trail that wove through the woods, listening to the robins calling from the branches above her. Every now and then, a liquid flash of light would reach her through the trunks and sun-flecked shadows, but from here the river was mostly obscured. The forest was only green grass, green ferns and shrubbery. Thick, green, mossy trees. Even the air tasted green, leafy and dense.

  Beneath a hemlock gnarled and bent with time, a long-ago someone had constructed a crude stone bench to face a meadow. Madeleine sat there, listening to the robins, taking in the sloping view. A squirrel chittered at her from two oaks away, its tail twitching. A cluster of wildflowers, she didn’t know what kind, swayed near her feet, dainty pink and violet bells on long thready stems.

  She’d walked here with him a few times—not often, because it was some distance from the house, but enough for her to remember this particular meadow shaded with a different season, with golden autumn instead of green spring. Wrapped in a shawl, holding his hand. Sitting on this bench together, a bit chilled but not too bad, her head on his shoulder as he told her about the trees, how their leaves soaked in the sun and transformed it into life, how all the rabbits and mice and squirrels would burrow in the winter, curled up and warm beneath the white snow. She’d never me
ntioned to him that she knew these things already, these facts about trees and snow and woodland creatures; she was spellbound by the molasses of his voice, the cadence of his sentences. Sitting there with him, with the leaves changing and the river flashing, Madeleine could have listened to him forever.

  But it was spring now, not autumn. The sky was azure, the world was alive.

  She closed her eyes, thinking only of that.

  “Ah-ha,” said her sister, coming up on soft feet. “I’ve found you at last.”

  “It’s a good hiding spot,” Madeleine said, not opening her eyes. “Although not too good, I guess.”

  “One of the policemen on the patrol told me which way you went. I lost the path a few times. But what an idyllic place to become lost.”

  Katherine dusted the debris of old leaves from the stone slab, eased down beside her.

  With the breeze bumping up against them, they sat without speaking, and at last even the squirrel gave up its scold. Far away, as far as the river perhaps, geese began to honk, a brief, harsh fluster of noise that quickly faded.

  Katherine said, “Mr. Dobbyn and his associates asked me to tell you that the arrangements for the private train have been completed. It will leave Manhattan Saturday morning with the mourners for the service in town here, and take us all back to the city for the service at the cemetery in the afternoon. No one has to come here, to the house, unless you wish them to.”

  Madeleine opened her eyes. “All right.”

  “But . . . we could have a buffet or something prepared, if you like. Just in case. If you do want to pause a while to have people over. It’s a lovely old house.”

  “It’s a rickety old firetrap,” she said. “We’ll go straight to the train station from the church. That’s all there’ll be time for, in any case. How many limousines will there be?”

  “Twenty.”

  “That should be enough, I think. Isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  The belled flowers swayed in place, left, right. Katherine had plucked an acorn from the grass at their feet and was slowly rolling it between her index finger and thumb.

  “It’s a rickety old firetrap,” Madeleine said again, “but it’s one I thought I would be sharing with him for the rest of our lives.”

  Her sister threw the acorn across the meadow, a hard, clean arc that scored the sky and ended in a patch of brambles.

  “I know, Maddy. I know.”

  CHAPTER 31

  The first time I met your half-sister was the morning of the funeral in Rhinebeck. Isn’t that peculiar, that I’d never seen your father’s daughter before? She endured the entire ordeal swaddled in mounds of black taffeta and ruffles, one elfin hand emerging from the folds of her dress to clutch the hand of her governess. Ava herself had not bothered to attend.

  (They’d arrived from England a few days earlier on a German liner. When a reporter sent a note to Ava’s cabin asking for an interview, she sent it back, writing on the reverse of it that she had nothing to say and signing it Mrs. John Astor, which burns at me still.)

  To this day, I have not met her. I expect I never will.

  Alice was ten. Vincent sat beside her throughout the service, once or twice murmuring something into her ear; I suspect he was telling her to stop swinging her feet. She wore a constant pout. Her brother’s face, as ever, remained inscrutable.

  So many people. So many of the Four Hundred and the locals pouring into that pretty country church, overflowing it, offering their words of comfort. For the sake of tradition, I’d come in my widow’s weeds and installed myself in the front pew, ready to be seen. Mourners pressed my hands in theirs and went on and on about God’s will and redemption and fate and whenever that happened I honestly don’t know how I managed to hold my tongue.

  God, I wanted to snap at them, had had nothing to do with Titanic. Jack’s death was entirely the work of men.

  But I kept silent. I only sat in my designated place and let my mouth curve into a downward bow, twisting my wedding band around and around, waiting for the damned service to end.

  Ah, but what bruised me, though, was that one little girl, swinging her feet above the church floor, her bottom lip thrust out.

  In other times, under other suns, I would have attempted to lure her into friendship, even if her mother didn’t approve. (Maybe especially so.) It pains me to mention it here, but no doubt you’ll catch wind of it sooner or later, anyway—there are rumors that Alice isn’t Jack’s child at all. Which I suspect made me search her features extra carefully, although I tried to conceal it.

  Perhaps she had his nose. Perhaps she’d been graced with the extravagant length of his eyelashes. But mostly, I think, she just looked like herself.

  Beneath her floppy black hat, Alice Astor had the sweetest, saddest scowl. I couldn’t believe her mother wouldn’t accompany her to either of Jack’s services, but she didn’t.

  We managed it ourselves.

  May 4, 1912

  Manhattan

  She would learn later that over six thousand people lined the funeral route from the train station to the cemetery, tenuously restrained by squads of policemen. It was only a handful at first, people stopped and staring at the polished hearse, the five horse-drawn carriages strung behind it in a solemn line as they left the 158th Street Station. Men removed their hats. Women held handkerchiefs to their hearts.

  Madeleine, in the first carriage, sat beside Alice, both of them trying not to slide around on the slippery leather squabs. Vincent and Dobbyn sat opposite. None of them spoke.

  The scent of lilies seemed to hang over her, trapped behind her long lace veil. She felt suffocated with it, had to flip the material back over the brim of her hat (like a bride, a bride at a funeral) to take a clean breath.

  The baby kicked, just once, against her ribs.

  “Who are all those people?” Alice asked, peering out the window.

  Madeleine and Vincent glanced at each other.

  Voyeurs, she wanted to say.

  “Voyeurs,” said Vincent.

  Alice turned her big, dark eyes to him.

  “Those are people who have come to let us know that they admired your father,” Madeleine said, as the carriage crept along.

  “But why are they here? Why are they staring at us?”

  “Because we are as close to him as they will ever get,” replied Vincent.

  The nearer they came to the Trinity Cemetery gates, the thicker the crowd grew. The carriage’s windows were not tinted; Madeleine replaced her veil. She’d rather suffer through the reek of lilies than lose the thin protection of the black lace.

  “Look!” Alice began to wave at the window. “They’re up on the rooftops, too. Some of them have climbed the trees!”

  Madeleine raised her eyebrows at Dobbyn.

  “They won’t get in,” he assured her. “No one will be allowed in without an admission card. Captain Kreuscher has assured me he has enough men assigned to keep control.”

  He was correct. The horses drew them past the gates, and suddenly all the people on foot around them were gone—although, as she exited the carriage, she could still see the ones on the neighborhood roofs beyond the walls, stick figures gawping.

  She moved away from the carriage, from the horses, standing in the shade of a large elm. The other carriages rolled up, her family, Jack’s family and friends climbing out one by one in their funeral attire, a procession of ebony crows. They made their way as a group toward the mausoleum, walking along a wide gravel path.

  A choir began to sing from the chapel nearby, low minor tones that lifted and fell; a flock of birds abandoned the elm at the same time, scattering against the blue.

  The iron doors marking the entrance to the vault already stood open, gaping.

  Like it’s hungry, Madeleine thought, involuntary. Eager for its latest meal.

  She stared down at the ground, repulsed, a little dizzy, as Jack’s coffin was removed from the hearse. Mother came up, took he
r arm and led her to one of the folding chairs set up in rows along the grass. She sat, still not looking up, wreathed in lilies, always lilies, and tried not to retch.

  In her hands, she carried a black handkerchief—also lace; it did nothing to absorb tears, actually—and her strand of carnelian. She kept her chin tucked, ran her fingers over the stones.

  People settled in beside her, behind her, the Vanderbilts, the Huntingtons, the Rockefellers. People who, before Titanic, were loath to even shake her hand.

  The rector began to speak.

  Reluctantly, Madeleine lifted her eyes. The casket was right before her, trapped in a mountain of flowers, a rich show of mahogany and brass blazing in the late afternoon sun.

  She found she couldn’t look away from it.

  He was in there. He was inside there. She hadn’t been brave enough to view his body, but others had, and Jack was in there, when he had been right beside her only just days ago, warm and alive and smiling at her, teasing her about the name of their baby, kissing her lips and neck and belly. Filling her with his taste and scent and soul.

  How could he be gone now? How could it be that she would never see him again?

  How could a life so giant, so strong and bold, just . . . end?

  The rector had fallen silent. Everyone was looking at Madeleine. She rose out of the chair, walked the few steps it took to stand before the coffin. With the carnelian necklace wrapped around her hand like a rosary, she rested her palm against the lid. The stone beads made the tiniest, tiniest clacking sound as they met the wood.

  She bent over. Through the fabric of her veil, she touched her lips to the mahogany.

  “Asalamu alaykum,” Madeleine whispered. “Goodbye, my heart, my guide. Goodbye, beloved.”

  * * *

  She could not sleep. It was amazing that she couldn’t; as she’d prepared for bed that evening, she felt as if she struggled through air as thick as cotton wool, dragging her slower and slower, pushing her down toward the center of the earth. Her eyes burned red and dry. Her skin felt too tender, the flannel of her nightgown rough as burlap.