The Secret Life of Violet Grant

by Beatriz Williams

  “Not badly.” He grasps the blade between the thumb and forefinger of each hand and splits it delicately apart. “To be perfectly honest, Frau Grant, I am concerned about you.”

  “Me.”

  “You are unhappy.”

  Violet does not reply.

  “I’m sorry. Am I too familiar?” he asks.

  “No. I’m grateful for your concern.”

  “And is it misplaced?”

  The white sun burns through the leaves of the apple tree from its zenith overhead. In a tiny channel between Violet’s stays and her skin, just to the right of her spine, a drop of perspiration trickles downward to disappear into the waistband of her drawers. The air is laden with ripe grass and fruit, toasting quietly in the still summer heat.

  “I don’t know how to answer that,” she says.

  Einstein continues to shred his blade of grass into fibers of minute width. “I have been thinking about the question you posed me, several weeks ago, just before one of Herr Planck’s little gatherings. Do you remember it?”

  “I do.”

  “You have an insightful imagination, Frau Grant. I took the liberty of looking into your latest article for the Journal. What a tedious task you have set yourself, and yet you cut no corners. Your observations were extensive, and your conclusions thorough.”

  “I think it’s fair to say, Herr Einstein, that the task is not one I’ve set for myself. I have another line of inquiry I’ve been pursuing . . .” Violet catches her breath. In the distance, she can see Walter and Jane and the Hahns walking against a golden-green hillside. The Hahns have stepped ahead, and Jane’s arm is linked with Walter’s beneath the shelter of her parasol. Violet can’t distinguish any details, but she recognizes Walter’s elastic stride, his confident movement, his body like a whip.

  “Yes, Frau Grant?” His gentle eyes are upon her face. “What sort of inquiry?”

  She looks at him. “I want to break apart the atomic nucleus and see what’s inside.”

  “Ah. Like your countryman Rutherford.”

  “Not my countryman. I’m American, you remember.”

  “But your husband is English.” Though he’s speaking in German, he says the word English in its native pronunciation, with great precision.

  “I am not my husband.”

  “Hmm. Yes.” He opens his palm and lets the fibers of grass drift to the hot carpet beneath their legs. A bottle of sweating lemonade sits next to his knee; he lifts and drinks. “Frau Grant, I would not have accepted your invitation to stay here this week, without the hope to find a private moment with you.”

  “Yes?”

  Herr Einstein is watching the progress of the walkers against the hill. A rare breath of wind stirs the wild hair at the back of his head. “I want to make clear, Frau Grant, absolutely clear, that I stand ready to write a letter of recommendation on your behalf, should you find yourself in need of one.”

  Violet blinks her eyes and looks down at her ringless hands, spread wide across the limp fabric of her linen dress. Her underarms are prickling, her heart beats relief into her chest.

  “Frau Grant?”

  She looks up and smiles into his somber face. “Herr Einstein, forgive me, but that is exactly why I asked you to stay.”

  • • •

  WAIT FOR ME, Lionel said, trust me, but Violet knows she can’t sleep another night in the villa. The afternoon deepens, and still no automobile growls up the long drive from the road. She must act for herself.

  She enters the warm acid-scented quiet of the laboratory and packs her notes; the apparatuses and materials she must leave behind. As she leaves, she stands at the door and casts her gaze about: the clean surfaces, the singular motes of circling dust. In the center of the room sits the black box with its scintillation screen, its aperture, its chamber lined with lead.

  • • •

  VIOLET BATHES and dresses for dinner. No sign yet of Lionel; he has disappeared into the thick Prussian summer. Through the plaster walls comes the clatter of pots and china, the distinct high laugh of the downstairs maid.

  Walter arrives as she’s sitting in the slipper chair, buckling her shoes. He’s still dressed in his summer linen suit, wrinkled from heat. “How are you feeling?” he asks, unbuttoning his jacket.

  She straightens and says coldly: “Well enough.”

  “Excellent.” He smiles, a slow and straight-edged smile in the middle of his neat beard. “I say, I was rather surprised when I happened to see the linens this morning.”

  “Happened to see the linens.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “I had to tell you something, didn’t I? You weren’t going to stop otherwise.”

  “You shouldn’t have provoked me.”

  “I don’t recall provoking you.”

  “Hmm.” He walks across the room, removing his cuff links as he goes, and drops them into the silver tray on his chest of drawers. “You do have an astonishingly handsome figure, child. I believe your bosom is a degree or two fuller than when I first met you in Oxford. More womanly. Don’t you think?”

  “I was only nineteen then. I suppose it’s possible.”

  He removes his jacket and waistcoat and hangs them in the wardrobe. “No, I’m quite certain. I can picture you clearly, lying on my sofa like a newly opened peach. Those months afterward. Do you remember them?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I took excellent care of you, do you agree?”

  “You were attentive, if that’s what you mean.” Violet folds her hands behind her back, so Walter can’t see how her hands are shaking.

  “Of course I was. My God, what a fresh young child you were. Entrancing. To take a girl for the first time, it’s the greatest joy a man knows. And you were as innocent as a newborn. I could think of nothing else.” Trousers, shirt, drawers. Violet stands by the wall with her hands pinned to her back, watching her husband undress, willing herself not to look at her own wardrobe, in which her battered leather valise sits, packed and ready.

  “Yes, I was very young, wasn’t I?” she says clearly.

  He is naked and monstrously erect. He walks back to the chest of drawers and finds his pipe and his tin of tobacco. “Do you have anything to tell me, Violet?”

  Violet curves her fingernails into her palms. But her face is cool and without shame as she replies: “I kissed him.”

  Walter, unhurried, strikes a match and lights his pipe. He turns and leans one elbow atop the bureau, sucking carefully to start the flow of smoke into his lungs, one loving hand cupping the bowl. His gray hair, ordinarily in perfect order, has come disheveled, and the electric light casts his lean body into a relief so stark as to be emaciated. He blows out a long cloud of smoke and smiles. “Is that all?”

  “It was a lovely kiss. A tremendous kiss.”

  “I hope you’re not hiding something from me, Violet.”

  Violet rises from the chair, walks to the dressing table, and picks up the little pot of lip rouge she owns but rarely uses. “If there’s one thing I cannot abide about you, Walter, it’s your hypocrisy.”

  “My hypocrisy. And what do you think of a wife, Violet, who fucks another man and then refuses concourse to her own husband? Her husband who’s done everything for her.”

  “I’d say she was in love, for the first time in her life.”

  Walter’s image appears suddenly in the mirror, like an apparition, eyes narrowed and blazing. His hands close about her arms. The pipe nearly burns her skin. “You are an ungrateful idiot,” he says, between his teeth.

  “Go away, Walter.”

  “Do you think Richardson will stand by you? Do you think he loves you?”

  “I know he loves me.”

  “Do you know how many women he had in Oxford?”

  Violet’s teeth cut into her lower lip. “Not
as many as you, I’m sure.”

  “He’s already left, you know. Packed his bags and left. Since he had what he wanted.”

  Violet’s cup of rage runs over. In a swift jolt, she breaks one arm free of Walter’s enclosing hand and jams her elbow into his ribs.

  He grunts and falls back. The pipe drops to the floor. Violet flies to the bathroom, where Walter’s things have been laid out already by the maid: soap, brush, towel, scissors, the razor he uses to create the crisp borders of his beard. She grasps the straightedge, flicks out the blade, and whirls around just as Walter invades the doorway.

  He halts respectfully at the sight of the razor. “Violet, really. Don’t be melodramatic.”

  “I will if I have to.”

  “I’m your husband, Violet. I have your interests at heart. Richardson is a scoundrel.”

  He stands before her, wiry and watchful, smiling and aroused, muscles flexing gently. There is a curious light in his eyes, a primal excitement.

  What a fool she was. What a fool, to think that Lionel was the predator of which she must beware. She has never felt more hunted than this moment.

  Walter takes a step toward her. “Put down the razor, Violet. Don’t be ridiculous. Would I ever hurt you?”

  “You tried, last night.”

  “Because you refused me. After all I’ve done for you, Violet.”

  “Am I not allowed a choice? I thought we had a partnership. A marriage of equal minds.”

  Walter’s fingers twitch. “You can’t lie with Richardson in the grass like a whore, and deny your own husband in his bed. That is a fact, Violet, the bedrock of our agreement. Did I ever neglect you, whatever my other adventures?”

  “I see. Then it’s all right if I take lovers, as long as I let you have me, too? Perhaps we should all get in bed together. Wouldn’t that be daring and modern!” The metal razor warms in her hand, light and agile. She wonders why Walter doesn’t simply turn around and leave her alone.

  “Violet, my dear. You’re being ridiculous. Put down the razor.”

  “You cannot touch me, Walter. Never again.”

  “Trust me, child. Put down the razor. You’re overwrought.”

  “I am not—”

  But Walter strikes in a flash, knocking the razor from her hand. He pins her hands neatly behind her back and forces her from the bathroom. She struggles against him, but his hold on her is expert, perfectly placed to lever her across the bedroom, as if he’s done this sort of thing before. He turns her over the bed and places his knuckles in the small of her back, atop her kidneys. He smells of sweat.

  “You’re a brute.” She locks her legs together, but he inserts his knee exactly in the center of her thighs and forces her open.

  “You do not refuse me, Violet.” Walter’s breath invades her ear, and she braces herself, shuts her eyes and mouth, shuts down every sensation and thought in her body so she will live through the next two minutes.

  Because of this, because she’s concentrating so hard on severing her mind from the workings of Walter’s brusque hands, she doesn’t hear the knock on the door, the rattle of the locked knob. She hardly notices the crash of wood as a booted foot forces it open.

  Then Walter is gone: his hands, his heavy body, his sweaty breath. Shouts, thumps. A hard grunt. With effort, Violet pushes herself up and turns around, bracing herself on the mattress.

  Walter lies on the floor. Lionel stands above him, rumpled and unshaven, rubbing his fist. “Christ, Violet.” He turns and pulls her against him. He is as thick as a pillar, as solid as a tree. “I’m sorry, Christ, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Did he hurt you?”

  “Not . . . not yet.”

  “I’m sorry. Christ. What an idiot. I’m sorry.”

  “Is he dead? Is he dead?” Violet shoves her nose into his scratchy tweeds, full of outdoors and automobiles and Lionel. Her nerves jump, her head spins.

  “Dead? No, damn him. If I’d had my revolver he would be.”

  She pushes away and stumbles over Walter’s body to the wardrobe. “Is your motor outside?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Take me to Berlin.”

  “Violet, wait—”

  “Now, Lionel. Before he wakes up.” She finds the valise and yanks it out from behind her dresses with a spring of her electric muscles. Her brain is a blur, coalesced around a single overriding thought: flight. “For God’s sake.”

  “We can’t just leave . . .”

  She drags the valise across the floor and drops it at Lionel’s feet and takes his jacket into her fists. She stares up at him to communicate the desperation in her babble of words. “We can. We can. We can. Jane will take care of everything. Take me to Berlin, Lionel. Now. We can. We can.”

  Lionel’s hands find her elbows. His brow is worried, his cheekbones pink with a sunburn that disappears under the new prickles of his beard. The skin around his eyes is heavy with exhaustion.

  He looks down at Walter and back at Violet. She wants to touch his face, but her fingers have stiffened around Lionel’s lapels, the only way she can hold herself still, and she doesn’t dare open them.

  Lionel releases her elbows and pries her hands from his jacket. He keeps one firmly in his palm and reaches down for her valise.

  “Right, then. Berlin.”

  Vivian

  Anyway. I’m not going to bore you with a long and self-indulgent description of the scene that followed, there in the orchid-scented Lightfoot mansion that fine November evening, a week before Thanksgiving. I’m sure you can imagine it for yourself. To be honest, I don’t even remember most of the details.

  Not that I dragged myself through dinner in a trance. No siree. No no no. Not Vivian Schuyler. I was the life of the damned party. You should have seen me! You’d have been so proud. The way I kissed Gogo’s cheek and hailed Doctor Paul with a vigorous congratulatory handshake; the way I exclaimed over the height and breadth and brilliance of the engagement rock that perched precariously atop Gogo’s slender finger. The way I turned to Lightfoot and began to flirt as I’d never flirted before. Nothing vulgar, mind you. Just the nulli secundus of elegant flattery, the ne plus ultra of sparkling admiration. I knew how to pirouette along that slender line without losing my balance.

  I’d learned it from a master, after all. I out-Mumsied Mums herself at dinner tonight.

  Oh, and what a dinner! Lightfoot had pulled out all the stops for his treasured daughter. The crispiest champagne, the meltiest foie gras. Tournedos in perfect meaty circles, served with a dollop of creamy Béarnaise. I don’t remember the trimmings. I think there was a salad. Waldorf. A fine Bordeaux, really top-drawer. As I ate, I watched the sparkle of Gogo’s finger while it went about its business. (I couldn’t meet her face, not yet.) Knowing Doctor Paul’s salary as I did, I imagined Lightfoot had selected Gogo’s engagement ring with the same consummate deliberation as he had selected the fiancé himself, and I wondered whether the cost had been subtracted from the half-million-dollar engagement bounty. Whether the money had changed hands yet, or whether Doctor Paul would have to wait for his cold hard cash until the announcement actually appeared in the New York Times.

  Oh. Doctor Paul! You’re probably wondering about him. Well, he didn’t say much. His face never quite regained its color, though he ate heartily enough for three fiancés. I watched his strong throat move as he drank his champagne (I couldn’t quite meet his gaze, either) and his capable surgeon’s hands as he dissected his filet. A splendid animal, Doctor Paul. A prime specimen to fertilize the Lightfoot breeding stock. Worth every penny.

  Well, that was lovely, I said, after the last graceful bite of bombe glacée, but I really must head home. Work tomorrow, you know! Bright and early!

  The gentlemen rose. I felt Doctor Paul’s pleading eyes like an attractor beam from an enemy starship. But I slid right over his gaze, skated right past his despe
rate ocular apology with a laugh and a Now, you two behave yourselves tonight, you crazy kids, you’re not married yet! I kissed Gogo again and told her she’d better make me her maid of honor, or else.

  Then. May I kiss the groom? I daringly asked, and Gogo laughed and said you’d better do it quick, before I get started, I might never want to stop, just look at him! Laugh laugh. Oh, how we laughed.

  I leaned in and laid one on Doctor Paul’s terrified cheek, a big fat see-if-I-care to Mr. S. Barnard Lightfoot III. And then I . . .

  Well, damn. Here I am, going on like this, after I promised not to indulge myself.

  Anyway. Et cetera, et cetera. Good-bye, good-bye. You get the idea. The Lightfoot door slammed behind me, leaving me in the dark void between two pale streetlights, and I trudged down Seventieth Street to Lexington Avenue and two blocks to the subway entrance. I didn’t want to take a taxi. I wanted the rattle of New York around me, I wanted stink and strangers and the sour dank air of the IRT clutching me to its bosom. I wanted hustle and bustle. I wanted to know that millions of lives were playing out on my doorstep, and not one of them gave a damn about my little problems.

  I took the local train down to Union Square and trudged the beaten path west by southwest. The air had hardened, and a flake or two blurred past me to disappear into the rotten gray pavement. I thought, how magical, the first glimpse of snow. By March I would be sick of it, but here in this November instant those tiny flakes swirled with the unspeakable purity of a divine gift.

  The storefronts were all closed and barricaded in metal. I passed fruit stands and bookstores, dry cleaners and travel agents. The snow was picking up, filling the air. I felt it ping the back of my throat as I breathed. I turned the corner of Bleecker and Christopher Street, where the crowd at the Apple Tree was just getting started. A man in a thick black overcoat stood against the lamppost just outside, smoking a cigarette, staring at the snow. I might have passed him right by, if the light from one of the windows hadn’t fallen on his face just so.

  I stopped. Took a few more steps. Stopped and turned.

  “Didn’t know you smoked, Mr. Tibbs,” I said quietly.