Mood Indigo

by Ed Ifkovic

  The Maddox mansion was a four-story Italian Gothic townhouse that dated back to the last century. A gigantic gargoyle arched over the massive copper-lined Florentine double doors. Floor-to-ceiling leaded-glass windows. Thick draperies drawn against the sunlight. An anachronism, this building, evidenced by the awful shadows of nearby modern skyscrapers inching their way upward. Up and down the avenue the old-money mansions were disappearing as nouveau riche and entrepreneurial contractors demolished the venerable structures of the Vanderbilts and Astors, and replaced them with towering testaments to new money and privilege.

  The rich were moving to Park Avenue, living higher and higher, mansions in the clouds, while the upstart couturier Bergdorf Goodman planted its commercial self in the midst of old gentility. Lady Maud may have faced Central Park and gazed up at blue skies from her back veranda, but the awful shadow of the forty-seven-story Ritz Tower spelled doom for her world. As Noel told me, jesting, “The higher the building, the lower the morals.”

  As I rang the bell, I listened to the boom boom boom of a wrecking ball at the end of the block. The wheeze and thud of wood torn asunder, of bricks toppling onto a sidewalk. Lady Maud probably endured countless agonies as she listened to the end of her world. The death knell of aged-in-the-wood money.

  A doorman handed me off to a black maid in starched crinoline and lace cap, who in turn ushered me into a small room decorated with a burgundy velvet settee, mahogany tables, and a wall of curios illuminated by hidden light: doubtless Lady Maud’s collection of Bohemian art glass, iridescent pinks and sea blues and lavender that came together as a dizzying rainbow. On a teacart rested a tray of cookies and a small coffee urn. The tantalizing aroma of newly made coffee filled the small space.

  Lady Maud walked in and held out her hand. “You consented, dear Miss Ferber. A visit.” I nodded. “So many people refuse my impromptu invitations to have coffee.” She stopped, stared at the urn, and gently touched a bell on the table. In seconds the maid scurried in and poured coffee.

  “I see friends in this cozy room.” she went on. “So intimate, no?” Her arm flew out, drifted across the wall of art glass. “A collection from my world travels when I was younger. With my late husband. With little Dougie.”

  “Lovely.”

  “I wonder if you mean that.” She looked away.

  That startled me. “Why?”

  A thin smile. “People lie to rich women.”

  “I don’t.”

  She arched her neck and laughed lightly. “Which, my dear, is why you are here.” She sipped the coffee, nodded her head as if approving the taste, and nibbled on a cookie. “I should explain.” She watched me over the rim of her cup.

  “I’m assuming this has to do with Dougie.”

  For a moment her eyes flickered and her lips were drawn into a tight line. Putting down the coffee cup, she began fingering the sapphire-and-ruby brooch she wore on her lapel.

  Lady Maud was a rail-thin woman with her iron-gray hair pulled up in a French twist. Dressed in a snug pale blue satin morning dress with a brocaded filigreed jacket over her shoulders, she seemed a throwback to a Victorian era, tuffs of lace at the wrist, bands of Chantilly lace at the bodice. But the jewels—at this hour of the morning, no less. Yes, that sunburst brooch on her lapel, a spray of glistening, oversized gemstones. Similar rings on her fingers, ostentatious, luminous. Some diamond-studded barrettes tucked into her elaborate hairdo. I imagined an old-fashioned calling card placed on a silver plate by the front entrance: Lady Maud. At home. Thursdays. She saw me looking. “Gifts from my dead husband. Henry liked to see me sparkling. ‘I want you to compete with the sun,’ he said.” She laughed to herself.

  “I think you won.”

  She laughed a full, throaty laugh that broke into a cough.

  “When Henry died—what? ten years back, I think—I wept and wept. Alone in the world with my only son. Dougie a naïve young man, fresh from Yale, then at the Wharton School. People avoided me, dear Miss Ferber.” She looked away, but then shot a look into my face. “You doubtless have heard that behind my back they call me Lady Maudlin.”

  I nodded. “People are cruel.”

  An unfunny smile. “What bothered was not that. But the ‘Lady’ part. Of course, I’m not British aristocracy, to be sure”—she actually shivered as if accused of illegitimate birth—“but the implication that I was—snobbish. ‘There goes Lady Maudlin.’” She frowned. “Then Dougie started calling me Lady Maud as a joke, savoring it, thinking it funny, and suddenly there I was.” She half-bowed. “Lady Maud.” She wrinkled her mouth. “The snob.”

  I counted a heartbeat. “And are you?”

  She considered that for a moment, chose not to answer. Instead her fingers played with the gaudy brooch. That, I supposed, was my answer.

  Then, suddenly rattling her coffee cup, she raised her voice and pointed at me, “Yes, dear Miss Ferber, you are here because of Dougie.”

  I sat up, chilled. “I still don’t understand.”

  With a note of exasperation in her tone, she explained. “Of course, he’s mentioned you more than once, someone he likes, I know, but I told him I knew you from charity events, shared conversations, intimate almost.” She leaned in, confidential. “I am happy you have befriended him. A sensible woman, you are, Miss Ferber, a daughter of the Midwest, as myself. I was born in Topeka, the daughter of prosperous grain merchants, solid folks, stalwart, no-nonsense. Others”—she waved her hand toward the window—“others in this city are—you know how a city panders to base emotions. You are the stuff of—your So Big told me you value common sense, honesty, tradition, and…”

  I broke in. “I’m not following this.”

  She reached for a cookie but changed her mind. Her gray eyes darkened. “You and Noel Coward were at the theater last night. To see…Belinda Ross.”

  “Yes, we were. But I don’t understand.”

  She held up her hands, her bony fingers spread out, fanlike, menacing. “Dougie stopped in here late last night, which surprised me. We’ve been at odds, the boy and me. He was ranting, wild-eyed, furious. A disturber of my peace. Nonsense flowing from his mouth, profane even—never allowed. A Christian upbringing, God’s children. I’d been asleep but listened to his ranting, yet gleaned so little that made sense. This—this Belinda seems to have—I don’t know what she did. But Dougie stormed off, wandered the cold streets like a Hoover hobo, maybe, and then barged in here.” She breathed in, a thin rasp from her throat. “Chaos, Miss Ferber. A comfortable world upended, spilled over from the dirty streets of this godforsaken city.”

  I leaned forward. “I still don’t understand.”

  She lowered her voice, gentle, as if speaking to a slow child. “He mentioned you and—and Noel Coward, witnesses to his running amok.”

  I pursed my lips, furious. “And you want me to tell you what happened last night?”

  She seemed puzzled. “Oh, God no, Miss Ferber. I know what happened. I have my spies. I want you to help me stop his insanity. Help me to rid him of that gold-digging hussy.”

  I choked on my sip of coffee. “Lady Maud, if you think I…”

  Her voice a screech. “Listen a moment, dear. Let me tell you a story. Dougie is a child, Miss Ferber.” She shook her head back and forth. “I know, I know, he’s thirty-five. A man. But you know what I mean. An only child, spoiled miserably by an indulgent father. I was born rich, of course, a comfortable life, but a woman who married a man whose family had money dating back to—to the early republic. Tidewater Virginia properties—Washington. George. So the legend goes. Henry’s family is railroads, grain, oil, whatever. Old money. We moved into this…this mausoleum, and I made it a home. Dougie, like his father, had a head for figures—for money. For reasonable investment, grounded money, if you know what I mean. His father lived for money—and so did Dougie. To a point.” For a second she looked distracted, as thoug
h she’d lost her train of thought. “Yes, a chip off the old block. Wharton School, first in his class, he became a partner in Henry’s business.”

  An edge to my voice. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  Impatient, a click in her voice. “Let me get there. Dougie was—what word should I use? Myopic. When Henry died of a heart attack”—she pointed—“right outside this door as I laughed with a friend—Dougie and I became very close. A mother-son bond, unbreakable. He was all I had. I was all he had. We didn’t need others. He doted on me, favored me. I was on his arm everywhere. Through my long period of grief, unfortunately much of it public—my days as Lady Maudlin, yes—but beyond. He moved money around, clever. The Crash bothered us, but only a little. The world out there fell apart. Beggars everywhere. We had friends who jumped from expensive windows, who threw themselves in front of trains. One jumped off the Twentieth Century as it chugged into Chicago. Men who left their wives and children, who wept in last year’s clothing. But Dougie’s steel-eyed authority saved the day.”

  “Until,” I broke in, “he fell in love.”

  “Love! Really, Miss Ferber. How you talk! That isn’t love. That’s—here’s a man who never had need for romance in his life. Until now. Yes, we went to the theater like everyone else did. To the Metropolitan Opera House to hear Verdi. A lunch at Lorber’s on Forty-first, just across the street. Mother and son. Companionable. A table there reserved for us. Cozy, pink lamps and satin wallpaper. Elegant. Folks nodded at us. The museums. Teas. Boating at our country place in Connecticut. Of course. But suddenly Dougie is fascinated with Broadway. He invests.” She spat out the word. “A mistake.”

  “He invested in Tommy’s Temptations.”

  Her words snarled in a biting tone. “Exactly.”

  “Then the rest of the story is Belinda Ross.”

  Her voice broke. “Exactly.” She waited a moment. “We started to do battle, the two of us. Unthinkable. Words hurled back and forth, horrible, ugly words.” Her eyes got moist as she fished in her pocket for a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. “And then suddenly he takes rooms at the Stanhope Club—an old Astor carriage house a block from here—starts hanging around with an old Yale chum, this Corey Boynton, a respectable lad, I suppose, yes, though his family is among the questionable rich, but a bachelor on the town. The two of them. His rooms here, of course, intact, but so many nights—there. There. A stone’s throw from my door.”

  “I still don’t see…”

  “This Corey is a playboy.”

  “I’ve met him.”

  “I know you have. Dougie tells me everything, but I think it’s only to hurt me.”

  I softened my voice. “Lady Maud, it seems to me he still wants you in his life. His visits here…”

  She was shaking her head back and forth vigorously. “No, my dear. Gloating, as I see it. ‘Look at me.’ When he first met this Belinda, he brought her here. His first love—he was a stammering country boy. He expected me to be civil, to celebrate her, this—this Broadway dancer. I asked them to leave. A number of times my doorman calls—warns. It’s Dougie downstairs and he’s with Belinda. Otherwise he’d use his own key. It’s that he needs…approval to bring her into these rooms.”

  “And you refuse.”

  “Every time.” Her voice was laced with anger.

  “Perhaps that’s not wise.”

  “Perhaps I’ve lost focus, Miss Ferber.”

  “And that explains my visit here how?” I waited, looking into her strained face.

  She laughed. “I’ve looked into that girl’s history. A pretty girl arrived in this city with ambition. That ramshackle theater her brother runs on Eleventh Avenue, a failed enterprise. Brother and sister, schemers, charlatans. Fakirs. There are friends who tell me things.”

  “Buzzy Collins?” I threw out.

  That stopped her. “Whomever.” She held my eye. “Yes, Buzzy. Buzzy Collins, an otherwise useless hanger-on in society, a barnacle, tells me the story. An unlikely chance meeting of that old fool, Cyrus Meerdom, Belinda suddenly the darling of the Great White Way, then Tommy Stuyvesant, another fool, but both lacking the riches of the Maddox family. And then there’s Dougie, drool seeping out of his lips, drunk with the attention of that femme fatale.” She stressed her words, deliberate space between them. “Who follows after Dougie, Miss Ferber? Who? After she breaks his dumb heart? The other night he talked of—marriage.” She actually shuddered.

  “He’s a grown man, Lady Maud.”

  She stammered, “A babe in the woods, my son. You’ve seen her. A strumpet. Rouged up, half-naked, sparkling with costume jewelry. Dougie demands I like her. Impossible.”

  “At a certain time in a man’s life, he can say no to his mother.”

  Fiercely: “No, he can’t.” Then, her eyes slits, “There are ways of ruining that harlot’s life, Miss Ferber. I am a powerful woman.”

  Uncomfortable, I rustled in my seat, tugged at the sleeve of my blouse. I was ready to leave. “I still don’t understand my visit here.”

  She waited a moment, then exploded. “I blame Noel Coward, Miss Ferber.”

  I sat up. “Noel? How?”

  She sat back, her voice seething. “He met Dougie at some function, liked him, seems to like all young men, drew him into the world of theater. Actresses, backstage parties. A mistake. Yes, a brilliant raconteur, so they tell me, a playwright with smart and sassy chatter. Unfortunately, I’ve seen one of his—farces. Dreadful. British, Miss Ferber. An effete dandy, sashaying around in those tweeds and polo shirts and that ivory cigarette holder. I met him once, of course. That clipped voice. Terribly smart. We don’t talk like that in America.”

  I smiled broadly. “Vanity Fair termed them Noelisms, you know. Jazzy chatter. I find…”

  She would have none of it. “I don’t see why you find him so companionable.”

  “We like each other.”

  “He called me…darling.”

  I laughed out loud. “He calls everyone darling.”

  “It’s not funny. I’m nobody’s darling.”

  “I assume that.”

  “He’s taken a liking to my son, advising him, he says. I don’t like the British.”

  “You’ve already mentioned that.” I paused. “Noel is a good friend of mine—and a good friend to Dougie. I think your son needs someone to confide in, to share…”

  Again, the raised hand in my face. “Miss Ferber.”

  “No,” I went on forcefully, “there is no way I can help you, Lady Maud.”

  “Your influence.”

  Now I raised my voice. “No, this is preposterous.”

  “I would have thought you’d sympathize.”

  I bristled. “Then you would have thought incorrectly. You don’t know me, madam. I value my friendship with Noel.” Blindly, I went to lift my coffee cup, but my hand shook. The cup dropped back into the saucer. The sound of chipped porcelain.

  Her eyes on the broken cup. “Dougie is impressionable.”

  “That may be. Yes, Dougie strikes me as a trifle immature, especially grating in someone who’s thirty-five and educated.”

  She spoke quietly. “The problem, Miss Ferber, is that Dougie is too trusting. A little naïve, despite Horace Mann, and Yale and Wharton and…”

  I stood up. “He has to fashion his own life.”

  She looked up at me. “You’re a sensible woman, Miss Ferber.”

  “That I am, Lady Maud. And my senses tell me this is not a place where I care to be right now.”

  Her eyes glazed over. “You sound so harsh.”

  “Good. Then my vocal chords are working as I want them to.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Good-bye, Lady Maud.”

  “I’ve offended you,” she whispered, though her tone was not apologetic. If anything, it was—baffleme
nt.

  I said nothing but stepped away.

  To my back she hissed, “I thought you were a different person.”

  I swung back to stare into her face. “That news is oddly comforting to me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Thank you for coffee, Lady Maud.”

  As I stepped out of the room, I nearly collided with the maid, standing at attention, listening. She looked afraid. From behind me, Lady Maud yelled, “That Coward man has brainwashed my son. He keeps telling him over and over that he has a right to be”—she paused, seemingly at a loss for words—“interesting. That he’s something he’s not. Interesting.” Wonder in her raspy voice. “Now why would he tell him that?”

  Chapter Six

  I stood on the icy sidewalk, nodding thanks to Lady Maud’s doorman. My mind swam, a kaleidoscope of anger and awe and confusion. What had just happened in there? Why had Lady Maud invited me? To sabotage her son’s romance? To get Noel Coward to back off a budding friendship? How did that imperious woman view me—the interloper, the buttinsky, the crusher of someone’s dream life?

  Belinda Ross and her brother. I flashed to the disturbing image of Jackson Roswell shuffling up the sidewalk last night, hunched against the wind, angry. A schemer? Lady Maud’s condemnation: fakirs, both of them. Brother and sister.

  Impulsively, I hailed a cab and told the driver to head to Eleventh Avenue. The cabbie was chewing on the stub of a noxious cigar, so I cracked the window. Cold air seeped in, delightful. “Ma’am,” he looked back, “it’s winter, you know.”

  “It also reeks of decaying bodies.”

  He grunted and tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

  The cabbie sped through Times Square, past busy movie houses. A lively street, this time of day, crowds gaping at the colored Christmas lights strung in windows, the dim-wattage neon of a bright but freezing afternoon. A large truck, angled into a corner, dispensed sandwiches and coffee to a line of homeless souls. A cheap movie house, the Rivoli, had a line snaking up the block. With their evocative soundtracks—the voice of Greta Garbo wowing the world, echoes in the dark—movies had wooed theatergoers away from live performance, pushed the legit theaters to the side streets. Times Square pulsed and throbbed, the heartbeat of Manhattan, though perhaps that heartbeat missed a few beats.