“Anywhere they’ll let me near a stage.”
I could accompany you. She said it with her eyes.
He turned to leave, then turned back. He pulled her up from the piano bench and hugged her. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to feel the warmth of Gershwin’s body, the prickle of his unshaven cheeks, the pressure of his hands.
There are hugs and there are hugs. Some represent closure—so nice to see you—while others fling open doors. This hug was one of the latter. He held her tightly, with unanticipated conviction. It was brief but as expressive as some of his best songs. As if to say, don’t worry, this is just the beginning.
The door closed with an irrefutable snap of metal against metal. A vault swinging shut in a tomb. She felt the air being sucked out of the room and gasped. As she stood staring at the closed door, Jimmy sauntered in.
“What was that piece you were playing?” He smiled as if to say, nothing has changed, there’s still plenty of air in here, take a breath.
“Oh, just a little something I’ve been, you know…” she told him.
“Can I hear it again?”
Kay sat at the piano and again played through her composition. Jimmy listened, his arms crossed.
“Katharine… Kay… That is lovely.” Jimmy took a moment to collect his thoughts. “To be that gifted and get no recognition.”
She looked at him sideways.
“I’m not due back at the office until Thursday,” said Jimmy. “What do you say we ride up to Bydale for a few days? I swear I was dreaming about that place the whole time I was abroad.”
“In the middle of winter?”
“I’ll have Fairchild heat the house. Let’s get it in tip-top shape for spring.”
She appreciated her husband’s self-mastery. He knows he did this to himself. And yet, she no longer wished to nourish feelings of resentment. Jimmy loved her composition. She appreciated that—even if, deep inside, she knew he was wrong. And George was right.
She smiled. “Why not?” A break to Bydale might do them both some good.
Jimmy smiled back, tousling her hair.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lionel reserved a train car. He and Olga secured five trunks of provisions to the luggage ties. Miss Louisa and Miss Lainey brought coloring books, story books, and crayons but April and Andrea ran up and down the car hiding behind seats, shouting, and occasionally falling down. Jimmy joined in their mischief and when he caught one of them, pinned her to the bench and tickled her. Jo, the nursemaid, rocked little Kathleen on her knee.
Kay smoked Marlboros and watched the scenery, reliving her evening with George. First, Fats Waller’s rent party, then the Cotton Club, then home, feeling his closeness in bed. And finally, his fervent hug.
Jimmy returned to his seat. April and Andrea settled, pointing out the window and babbling. Kay showed them pictures from Raggedy Ann’s Alphabet Book, her mind still elsewhere.
At the station a man named John Becker awaited them. His beard reached the top pocket of his overalls. He drove a Model T flatbed. The children and their caretakers jostled and shivered in the back.
The woodburning stove at Bydale radiated heat, which spread through the house. While Miss Louisa and Miss Lainey escorted the girls to their bedrooms, and Lionel and Olga stocked the larders, Jimmy and Kay consulted in the front room with John Becker, who opened a large sketch pad in which he had drawn the house and property. “Tennis court.” He pointed to an open area and added charcoal strokes. “Swimming pool.” He pointed again. “Corral. How many horses?”
“Two, for now.” Jimmy glanced at Kay.
John nodded. “Barn.”
“You’re a builder,” Kay deduced.
“Landscape architect,” Becker corrected her.
“John studied classics at Harvard,” added Jimmy. “We took Ovid and Virgil together, then he moved on to Petronius while I lingered in Hades.”
“Which turns out to be not too shabby, from what I can tell,” said Becker.
“Landscape architecture was an afterthought, right John?” said Jimmy. “But don’t worry, Katharine—”
“Kay,” she corrected her husband. Katharine now felt like a discarded dress, ill-fitting and out-of-date.
“Don’t worry,” said Jimmy. “John’s meticulous in everything.”
“Especially in my genitives and ablatives,” said Becker.
“Ah, yes, Latin grammar,” said Kay. “Such a fond memory.”
“You studied Latin?” asked Becker.
“Of course,” said Kay. “Early church music and all that. I remember precisely three words. In vino veritas.”
“Just one sentence,” Jimmy told Becker, “but she learned it well.”
Becker laughed as April came bounding down the stairs. Little Andrea followed, shouting. Miss Louisa tromped after them but they were faster. Andrea ran to Kay and grabbed her skirts, cringing.
Kay clapped her hands. “Girls!”
Andrea stopped in her tracks. So did Miss Louisa.
“You can be down here,” Kay told them. “But no wildness. The grown-ups are trying to have a conversation.”
No sooner had she uttered these words, however, than the wildness resumed. Andrea jumped on a bench, shouting. April tried to grab her.
Miss Louisa struggled to calm them. “Now, Miss Andrea, you know that’s naughty.”
Jimmy walked across the room, took Andrea in his arms, and placed her on the floor, kissing her forehead. “Let’s go into my office,” he suggested to Kay and John.
They closed the door of the bedroom that Jimmy had designated as his office. Kay and John sat on a leather sofa. “Kay, why don’t you take charge of the décor,” proposed Jimmy, settling into an armchair. “Make this place your sanctuary.”
“We need a piano,” said Kay. “A Steinway.”
Becker scratched his head. “Not an easy find around here. New York. Maybe New Haven if you can abide a serviceable secondhand instrument from Yale. But first we refinish the floors, paint the walls.”
She looked at her husband. He nodded. Your call. “Let’s prioritize the floors, then,” said Kay. “I’ll try out pianos in New York.”
* * *
Jimmy walked briskly these days. Kay took long strides to keep up as they trudged together through the naked, frozen woods, talking about their plans for the house and considering Becker’s suggestions.
“What’s the hurry?” she asked, panting.
“Race up the hill, beat the chill,” said Jimmy.
She looked down. Don’t fall in the gorge. Don’t fall for George. “It’s just that… I remember when we used to stroll more andante. When walking wasn’t just about getting there.”
“Andante, I don’t recall,” said Jimmy. “Maybe andantino. Or rubato, on occasion.”
“Andante,” insisted Kay. “Even largo. When you still wanted to be a poet.”
“Who says I gave up on that?”
They looked out over the frosty, leafless landscape, a study in shades of brown and gray with patches of white. She remembered the spring day when she had first come to Bydale with Jimmy, the bright leaves shimmering in the breeze whispering of rebirth and expectation. Now those leaves were gone and the birds had winged their melodies to a warmer climate. Yes, we age, the trees told her. Our leaves fall and the birds no longer chirp in our boughs. But we’re still standing. She mentally mocked her cheerlessness. Silly, sentimental trees! She was far too young to be attributing such long-suffering, mawkish ponderings to the vegetation of her Connecticut getaway. Her skin was still smooth, her step sprightly. For the young, life was not supposed to be about resignation, but dreams.
Jimmy rubbed his arms to warm himself. “Do you imagine,” he asked, “that because I’ve managed to find merit in my banking activities, I’ve lost my sensitivity to language, or beauty?”
“You don’t talk about poetry, these days. Or opera, for that matter.”
“I’ve been focusing on providing you and the c
hildren with a certain quality of life.” He offered her a weary, accommodating smile. “But let’s see if we can’t invite poetry back into the mix.” She thought her husband courageous and stoical. “My poetry and yours,” he added.
“Mine?”
He nodded. “You have an enviable talent, Katharine. Kay. What you need is exposure. You’ve written enough music to fill an evening. The problem is, no one has heard it. Why don’t we rent a stage? The Grand Ballroom at the Hotel Astor has excellent acoustics. We can post an ad in the Times. You’ll perform your best pieces and two or three classics, and we’ll see what kind of response we get.”
His offer moved her, more for its intent than for the opportunity. She took his hand.
That afternoon their distant neighbor Benjamin Fairchild drove up with a salted ring-necked pheasant. Olga stewed it with puréed carrots, which she served with rice, baked asparagus, and a stout Bordeaux. Jimmy and Kay decided to allow the children at the dinner table. “After all,” said Jimmy, “the family that eats together—” he searched for a rhyme.
“Cheats together?” tried Kay.
Jimmy shook his head. Not quite what I was going for.
Jo snuggled the sleeping infant, Kathleen, in a rocking chair. Andrea picked at her rice. April refused to eat altogether. “I hate pheasant.” She rose to look in the pantry. “Do we have cookies?”
“April,” Kay said, “come back to the table and eat what we offer.”
April rejoined them but crossed her arms refusing to eat. Andrea threw a bread roll at her, laughing.
“Miss Louisa. Please,” said Jimmy, giving up.
Miss Louisa removed the children to the upstairs den. Jimmy refilled Kay’s wine glass and rose to place a record on the Victrola.
“Ah,” said Kay raising her glass as her husband regained his seat. Rachmaninov’s swelling strings might not be a panacea, but they were a damn fine Band-Aid.
That night, Kay and Jimmy again shared a bedroom. This time, though, Bydale failed to shine its magical torch upon them. He desired her with an earnestness she had not experienced in years. She acquiesced. It amounted to playacting but it was also a release.
Their lovemaking left her feeling torn and guilty. Torn, because she had married Jimmy with hope in her heart and retained a remnant of that optimism. Guilty, because she visualized another man. She lay on her stomach, but he noticed her shaking as she burst into a muted sob, her face in her pillow. “What is it, love?” He stretched his arm over her trembling shoulders.
She turned onto her back. He ran his index finger over her cheek. “Oh, darling,” said Kay, “I fear I’ve been a terrible wife. And mother. I’m so sorry.”
Jimmy moved his finger to her lips. “Hush. You’re every bit the wife I had in mind. And our children are receiving a first-class upbringing.” He stroked her hair.
Kay peered into the darkness. She tried not to think about the failure that the evening’s dinner en famille represented. She tried not to think about George Gershwin. About his embrace, that twinkle in his eyes, and the way he used the piano as an extension of his soul.
She tried.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
APRIL 1926
Desire, it seemed to Kay, was like a chocolate Grand Marnier soufflé: given enough heat and alcohol, it would expand and satisfy, but it had to be savored warm. Allowed to cool, it would collapse. If she ignored her emotions and waited, they would deflate.
On her twenty-ninth birthday Jimmy invited his wife out for brunch. On their way to the restaurant, their driver stopped at Cartier on Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Second Street. The doorman admitted them to an elegant room dressed à la Française in white with gold trim, mirrors, and chandeliers. Not a watch or necklace in sight. This place is not about commerce, the room whispered. Heavens, no. We are about urbanity and refinement. Any business that is consummated here is entirely incidental. A distinguished gentleman with a pencil moustache looked up from his walnut marqueterie secretary. “Monsieur, Madame.”
“Jules Glaenzer?” Jimmy glanced around. “He’s expecting us.”
“De la part de… If I may ask?”
“Mister and Misses James Warburg.”
“Naturally, Monsieur Warburg. Would you care for a Flor de Naves? Perhaps some claret?” Even in these times, Cartier offered complimentary wine to select customers.
Jimmy glanced at Kay, who shook her head. “No, thank you.”
“Of course. If you please.” The man escorted them down a carpeted hallway to Jules Glaenzer’s office. His accent and manner, and the scent of lilac-oiled wood, smacked of theatricality. Kay loved it, she had to admit.
Julie Glaenzer lumbered around his French Empire desk to greet them. “Katharine.” He kissed her hand. “Jimmy.” Glaenzer shook Jimmy’s hand. “Here to collect my gambling debt, I presume?” A slight British accent coated his Brooklyn inflections.
“You presume well, Glaenzer.”
“Jimmy slayed us last Tuesday,” Glaenzer told Kay. “Woollcott’s poker party.” He opened a drawer in the wall revealing a diamond-and-emerald necklace on velvet and removed it carefully. “Let’s have a look at this, shall we?” He moved to Kay’s back. “If you don’t mind.” She lowered her head for him to fasten the clasp. Glaenzer held a mirror to her face. The necklace sparkled on her milky skin above her square-neckline dress.
Jimmy grinned. “Happy birthday, Kay.” And to Glaenzer: “We’re even, pal.”
“Delighted to be acquitted,” replied Glaenzer. “I so despise gambling debt. I dare say, you have quite the diabolical poker hand.”
Jimmy chuckled. “I assure you, that was chance.”
Glaenzer cocked his head skeptically.
“You know as well as I do,” said Jimmy, “Woollcott’s card games are just a way he fundraises for his literary ventures, without overtly begging.”
“All of which is predicated on his presumption of poker superiority, which we are supposed to reinforce,” laughed Glaenzer, regaining his seat behind the desk.
“I tried to lose,” said Jimmy. “Just as you did, I’m sure. Instead, I broke the bank. The goddess Fortuna played a trick on all of us.”
Glaenzer leaned forward, folding his hands. “What is not chance?” He turned to Kay. “Where did the two of you meet, if I dare ask?”
“Oh, do dare,” said Kay, still looking in the mirror. She turned to face him. “His father’s country estate. I was the piano girl.”
“There you have it. Chance. You could have been anywhere. But one thing led to another and voilà. You certainly do justice to this piece, Kay.” He smiled.
“You look splendid.” Jimmy kissed her forehead.
She wore the necklace as they exited Cartier for the Waldorf-Astoria. “If I ever forget your kindness and generosity, Jimmy Warburg, please lock me up,” she said as they took a table.
“And why would I do that?” He nodded to the waiter, who poured coffee. “If marriage robs us of freedom, what good is it?”
She smiled. But she was thinking: If freedom robs us of marriage, what good is that?
* * *
In preparation for Kay’s performance at the Hotel Astor, Jimmy’s secretary purchased advertisements in the Herald Tribune and the Times. It disappointed Kay to learn, two weeks prior to the event, that Jimmy had to leave again for Germany. A new automobile manufacturer, Daimler-Benz, was planning its first factory and hoped M. M. Warburg & Co. might contribute to the financing. In such ventures Jimmy invested a great deal of energy. Perhaps, if the German manufacturing sector regained ground lost during the Great War, Germany’s economy could be saved and further social decay avoided. “You don’t need me at your recital,” he assured Kay. “I already know how brilliant you are. Let’s keep that seat for someone who doesn’t.”
“Of course.” She nodded. His change of plans would not affect her performance. She studied the fast third movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. The very piece she had performed so many times, with disastrous results
, in her recurring dream of her father’s One-Lock Adjustable Reamer factory. Perhaps, if she mastered the Moonlight, its misshapen dream avatar would stop harassing her.
She tried her hand at her own compositions, old and new. The most recent were perhaps salvageable, but needed work. She fiddled with them. Played them faster, slower, and upside-down, in different keys. Why do they sound unconvincing? Did they always sound that way? Have they changed, or have I?
Gershwin was right. Something was missing. More than that: she concluded that her old compositions were unsalvageable, the lot of them. She crumpled them, one page and then another, and tossed them into the trash. Years of work. Rubbish.
You just have to listen, he had told her. She lay on the sofa and listened. She heard nothing other than muffled street sounds and an occasional creaking of floorboards, and eventually, she fell asleep.
When she awoke she remembered imagery of water, fragments of melody, and an unfamiliar feeling—a vague sense of imminence. She hurried to the piano but when she sat down, those melodic bits escaped her.
Her fingers searched the keyboard until she recovered them—or invented melodic twists, dips, stretches, and curves that resembled them. Something unusual was happening, an interaction of imagination and memory predicated not only on resolve, technique, and energy but also on relaxation and openness and dreams.
It reminded her of the long mornings she had spent reading in bed as a young woman, before she married Jimmy and life became more complex. Of Debussy’s “Rêverie” and visions of Greek gardens, Aphrodite and Adonis.
She toyed with the musical figures she had rediscovered, fitting them together this way and that, or one on top of the other, or inverting them. A new piece began to take form. It came out raw but she heard something in it. Something she never would have imagined composing. Something not entirely her own. A gift.
She spent hours and days revising. When it was finished, and polished, and then burnished, it glowed. She titled it “Something Different.”
The evening of the performance arrived. She had instructed Lilly, Jimmy’s secretary, not to inform her about ticket sales. Numbers don’t matter, she told herself. She was steeling herself. She hoped to elicit the fervent audience response she had witnessed at Lady, Be Good! But as she approached the Grand Ballroom of the Hotel Astor on West Forty-Fifth Street her heart sank.
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