The Secret Life of Violet Grant

by Beatriz Williams

  Violet puts one hand to her hipbone. In the morning after Walter’s proposal, she had found two large bruises, one on either side, from the repeated concussion against the hard wood. She remembers viewing them in the mirror with pride: the sacrifice she had made for Walter’s pleasure.

  8 May. Morning at Tuileries. Feeling rather better about V as wife. She is an excellent companion, helpful at work, no ill humors in bed as most women, has never once refused me except when poorly. In afternoon, made first pot of tea for V according to receipt. Watched her for any reaction; none. Resolved not to have her tonight, just in case.

  Violet’s head remains clear, so clear she can hear the deep thud of her heart as it smashes into her ribs.

  11 May. Morning at Versailles, V very affectionate. Excellent dinner at hotel, tho V left twice to visit lavatory. V continued affectionate in evening, so managed short fuck before bed. Examined prick carefully afterward; nothing. Continuing tea with 2 additional grains.

  Violet turns a few pages with her cold fingers, until she reaches Berlin.

  18 May. Success!!!! V complained of pain in morning. Blood on sheets. Called doctor; confirmed miscarriage at five o’clock. V very low. Made her comfortable, poor thing. After dinner, went to Mme G—d’s, had two bottles of champagne and fucked dear little P—e until she could not stand!! By good chance met General von M—e there on way out, made appointment for tomorrow aftern . . .

  Violet closes the book. This is all she needs to know; to read any more would be little better than common espionage.

  She places the notebook in her pocket, closes the window, and leaves the office.

  Vivian

  I hadn’t set foot inside Lenox Hill Hospital since the day my nanny carried me out of it with my Baby Girl Schuyler tag still swinging from my ankle. I hadn’t missed much, it seemed.

  The feel of the place was familiar enough. God knew I’d spent more time in hospital waiting rooms (well, one in particular) in the past few weeks than in the rest of my twenty-two years combined. I sniffed the Lysol and floor wax, the bouquet garni of overcooked food and effluvia, and I’ll be damned if my shameless glands didn’t start churning out a Welcome Doctor Paul cocktail of desire. All this while I was hurrying down corridors and scrubbed blind alleys in a frantic hunt for my comatose great-aunt.

  “Coma. There’s Mums for you,” said Pepper, when I screeched to a huff-a-puff halt in front of the door marked HADLEY. (Half my trouble at the reception downstairs was remembering which ex-husband had come last.) “She knocked her head on the way down, and she hasn’t come out of it. The doctors are rather bored about it, really.” But Pepper’s face was long and grave. She looked like a different woman without her lipstick.

  “Did she hurt anything else?” I tried to peer through the oblong window on the door.

  “Ribs and things. They had to stitch up her forehead. She’s not going to be happy about that.”

  “Nothing her plastic surgeon can’t handle, I’m sure.”

  The door swung open, and my parents sallied forth. “Vivian! There you are at last!” Mums took me by the shoulders and burst into tears, as if Aunt Julie were her own mother instead of an in-law with whom she traded regular volleys across the DMZ of Madison Avenue.

  I patted her back. “There, there. Everything will be all right.”

  “At least your legs are covered,” said my father.

  “Your concern for your aunt steals my breath. Speaking of which, how is she?”

  “The same,” sobbed Mums. “Just lying there. With that bandage.”

  A doctor detached himself from all the boys in white coats. He held a clipboard in one hand. Thanks to Doctor Paul, I knew how to read a chart (oh, you dirty thing, you thought we spent all our time in bed?) and I snatched it from him with professional aplomb.

  “Hmm,” said I, clicking a ballpoint pen thoughtfully, next to my ear. “You must be a little concerned about that blood pressure.”

  “I understand her blood pressure is normally elevated. We’re keeping an eye on it.” Was that amusement?

  I pointed the pen at him. “Don’t get sassy with me, young man.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Other than that, her vitals seem stable.” I handed back the clipboard. “Why is she still unconscious?”

  “It could be a number of things, but the most likely explanation is that the brain is simply healing itself. She sustained a concussion, a serious one, but we’ve found no sign of a depressed fracture or intracranial bleeding.”

  “What about fluid pressure?”

  “A bit above what we’d like to see. We’re monitoring it carefully.”

  “How many sutures in her forehead?”

  “Twelve. Quite a gash, really, but superficial. She also broke three ribs, as you may have heard. When she wakes up, she’ll be in a great deal of pain. I’ve prescribed something to help with that.”

  “Have you, now? She’ll like that. Intravenous, of course?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “When can I see her?”

  He gestured to the door. “Now, if you like. We’ve just finished checking her. Back in half an hour for further assessment.”

  I gave him the Vivian special. He’d earned it. “Excellent, Doctor . . .”

  “Miller. James Miller.”

  “Dr. James Miller.” I widened my smile. “I’m Vivian Schuyler. That will be all for now.”

  “Any time, Miss Schuyler,” he said, meaning any time you like, you just crook your little finger, ask for me by name, I’ll be right there like Buck Rogers in hyperwarp.

  And that, I thought with satisfaction, would ensure my great-aunt Julie the finest care available at the Lenox Hill Hospital this dark November night. God knew, she would have done the same for me.

  Only then did I become aware of the awestruck faces surrounding me. “What the hell was that?” said Pepper, as we filed into the room.

  “Oh, just a delightful little trick known as flirting for favors,” I said.

  “Well, that much was obvious. I meant the intracranial jabberwocky and the fluid pressure. What sort of Greek is that?”

  “Dear Pepper. Don’t tell me you’ve never slept with a doctor before.”

  But I sobered up at once at the sight of Aunt Julie, just lying there (as Mums had promised) with that bandage. The room had been darkened, and the gauze glowed a dim white just above her left eyebrow, or what had been her left eyebrow, sculpted and spidery, before the doctors had shaved it. Poor Aunt Julie. She’d be appalled when she woke up and looked in the mirror. No makeup, her hair flat and matted against her skull, her fashionable clothes replaced with the indignity of a blue open-back hospital gown. No cosmetic barrier of any kind against the unkind eyes of the world around her. She didn’t look old, exactly. Just tired.

  I touched her forehead with my fingertips. “It’s Vivian, Aunt Julie. Vivian’s here. I’ve given your doctors a good grilling. They’re going to take excellent care of you. Back on your feet in no time.”

  Not a whisper of a reaction, not a flicker.

  “She’s been like that for four hours now,” whispered Pepper.

  “Sleeping Beauty,” I said. “You’re like Sleeping Beauty, aren’t you, Aunt Julie? I’ll go round up a prince to kiss you. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of volunteers.”

  Don’t humor me, young lady. I could almost hear her say it.

  • • •

  IN THE WAITING ROOM, Mums had regained her composure and was handing Dad a cup of coffee. He accepted wearily. Mums turned and watched me settle in a chair like a horse to the knackers. “Where were you all this time, Vivian? We were trying to reach you for hours.”

  “I was at the Lightfoots’ house. Dinner.”

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She poured the
coffee from the urn in the corner and gave it to me. I was surprised that she knew I liked it black. I took a sip. “It was an engagement dinner for Gogo, in fact. You’ll never guess whom she’s marrying.”

  Mums sat down next to me. “I can’t imagine. Wasn’t she seeing that nice young man, what was his name . . .”

  “She’s marrying Doctor Paul, Mums.”

  She plucked an invisible speck from her dress, next to the knee. “Your Doctor Paul? From the post office?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  I drank my coffee and considered how much to tell her. “So sorry. I can’t divulge the sordid details, Mums. Let’s just say that if you and Mr. Lightfoot had ever married, the two of you, you’d be living in the White House by now.”

  “I see.” You could have cracked an egg on those two words.

  “Well, you know how it is, Mums. You win some, you lose some.” I stretched my arms above my head, coffee and all, and smothered a yawn in my throat.

  “Is that so.”

  It occurred to me, as I absorbed the message in those three frigid words, which might best be summed up as Very Bad News for Mr. S. Barnard Lightfoot III, that maybe Mums wasn’t such a bad sport after all.

  A tiny smile elbowed its way past the wreckage of the past six hours to prop up the corner of my mouth. A smile, of all things. Horrors. Up with the coffee cup, on the pronto.

  “Why are you laughing?” asked Mums.

  I gave her a shove, shoulder to shoulder. “I was just thinking. You as First Lady.”

  • • •

  AT TWO O’CLOCK in the morning, Dr. Miller walked into the waiting room. Our slumped bodies snapped to attention.

  “Vivian Schuyler?” He looked at me. His face hung with fatigue, but he was smiling. “She’s asking for you.”

  • • •

  AUNT JULIE WAS PALE and blinking and smelled of medicine, but she was awake.

  I brushed her hair away from her bandage. “Don’t do that again, all right?”

  “Goddamned stairs.”

  “What was that, Aunt Julie? I can’t hear you. Something about watching your step next time?”

  A raspy harrumph.

  I smoothed my hand over her sheets, white and crisp as any good hotel. “How do you feel, Aunt Julie? Do you want more morphine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Rephrase. Do you need more morphine?”

  Her eyes were fluttering shut. Dr. Miller stepped forward with a penlight and did his thing.

  “All right. I’m all right.” Her voice was only the dry husk around the usual Aunt Julie snap and crackle.

  “You should rest, Aunt Julie. You need to heal. We’re just glad you’re back with us.”

  She made an impatient movement of her chin. I couldn’t blame her. I’d have done the same thing if she said that to me.

  “Max,” she said, or something like it.

  “What’s that?”

  “Her. Vivian. I mean Violet.”

  I leaned in. “What did you say?”

  “Violet.”

  My heart delivered a few hard smacks against the wall of my chest. I stroked Aunt Julie’s hair with my fingers, nice and slow. I counted to three, and I said: “What about Violet?”

  “Max. Maxwell.”

  Dr. Miller, soothing voice: “I know you mean well, Miss Schuyler, but we really shouldn’t encourage her to talk just now. She’s not thinking clearly anyway. It’s probably just nonsense.”

  Only I, simpatico, could have caught the flash of indignation in Aunt Julie’s eyes.

  “Never mind, Aunt Julie. You can tell me later.” I leaned forward, making busy with the tucking and the stroking, and as I brushed past her ear I said: “Maxwell who?”

  Aunt Julie’s pale and cracked lips moved: “Institute. Paris.”

  • • •

  I STAYED with her a long while, as the others filed in and back out again. When I returned to the waiting room, everyone was asleep except Dad, who sat in a stiff chair with Mums’s head in his lap. He was stroking her hair. He turned his head as I entered and raised his finger to his lips, and I thought, that’s odd, he looks ten years younger.

  I knelt next to him and spoke in a whisper. “She’s fine. Resting now. But I think she’ll be all right.”

  Dads nodded. “Thank you.” He mouthed the words.

  I rose and kissed the top of his head and went to my own chair. I gathered up my coat and gloves, my hat and pocketbook. Dad cast me a curious look. I pointed to my watch and whispered, “Work.”

  I opened the door and bumped straight into Lily Greenwald. “Vivian! I just found the telephone message. How is she?”

  “Awake now, thank God. Gave us a little scare. They’re all sleeping now.” I nodded to the room behind me.

  She pressed her hand to her chest. Her cheeks were all flushy-peach, all luminous Lily. “Oh, thank goodness. The note said something about a coma. Scared me to death.”

  I laughed. “That’s just Mums. She had a knock to the head, but she’ll be just fine, if I know Aunt Julie. Go wake up Pepper. She’ll clue you in.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to London, Lily.”

  Her head made a satisfying little jerk. “London!”

  “Research, you know.” Sophisticated working-girl wave of the fingers. “I’ve decided it’s time to find out more about this Lionel Richardson.”

  “I see.”

  I laid my hand on her blue-woolen arm. “You’ll take care of them while I’m gone, won’t you?”

  Lily took the hand and squeezed it. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll keep you posted. Just . . . well, enjoy yourself.”

  “Enjoy myself?”

  “If that’s the word. You’re so young, Vivian. Just try to step back a bit and enjoy yourself.”

  A trolley clattered behind us, a murmur of voices. Rounds of some kind. I breathed quietly and allowed Lily’s dark blue Schuyler eyes to draw me in, to connect with me. “I will, Cousin Lily.”

  “Good, then.” She smiled and gave my hand a last squeeze.

  “Oh. Wait. Lily. One thing.”

  “Yes, Vivian?”

  “The Maxwell Institute. Paris. Ring a bell?”

  The brow wrinkled. The eyes squinted. “Maxwell Institute? I don’t think so. Why?”

  I hoisted my pocketbook on my shoulder and smiled my Mona Lisa. “No reason.”

  • • •

  I STEPPED outside and found that dawn was breaking all over Manhattan, the kind of fragile pearly pink sunrise that makes you want to climb on board a jet airplane and start a brilliant new life.

  I looked down at my shoes, sensible old sneakers for once, the first ones that had come to hand when I left my apartment in a blurred rush seven hours ago.

  Maybe I’ll walk home, I thought. Five or six miles of therapeutic New York City sidewalks, as good as an afternoon with a shrink. I could buy my airplane ticket on the way.

  A long walk. Just the thing.

  Violet

  Violet walks and walks. She reaches the outskirts of the city where the buildings begin to knit with one another and the patches of green to shrink and disappear. The sun burns the crown of her small hat, the perspiration wets her back and chest. She discovers she’s hungry, and stops for a fat bratwurst from a vendor on Hohenstaufenstrasse. Perfectly cooked, the skin crisp beneath her teeth, insides rich and meaty. She washes it down with a bottle of cold lemonade and wipes her fingers on her handkerchief.

  Her head remains clear. She is the old Violet, the scientific Violet, without emotions to cloud things over, to make her heart crash and her skin tingle. She searches for clues to Walter’s behavior, for the little signposts that should have warned her. At this point she should
have guessed that; with that sentence she might have guessed this; such-and-such action of Walter’s should have instead provoked such-and-such reaction from her. All the myriad instances of her blindness and willful self-delusion: she catalogs them all in her orderly mind.

  Her feet guide her to the Tiergarten. She sits on a bench near the Victory column, where the massive white columns of the Reichstag rise imperviously behind her. A restless crowd of Berliners mills about her; discarded newspapers litter the ground. The Balkans situation, she supposes. The little diary in her pocket is of no interest to these people. They are thinking about war, about treaties and mobilization orders, the course of history.

  How long she sits there, she can’t say. At one point she grows thirsty and buys another bottle of lemonade, which she drinks quickly and holds in her hand, rolling the smooth glass between her fingers. She is so young, and her fingers look so old. When did that happen?

  The sun begins to darken and sink, flashing across the sharp points of Victory’s wings. The crowd thickens, like a sauce does when it begins to bubble.

  A shout: Violet, my God, there you are!

  Four o’clock. Lionel was going to meet her at the institute at four o’clock. What time is it now?

  Before she can pull her gold watch from her pocket, Lionel has reached her. She stands and takes his outstretched hands and looks into his familiar face, made unfamiliar by the hair in black disarray, by the heat in his cheeks and the almost maniacal wildness in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I lost track of time.”

  “What the devil, Violet! What happened?” His hands grip hers with extraordinary strength, as if he’s holding himself back from some disastrous display of emotion. “They said you’d left hours ago, just walked out the door. I’ve been like a madman. I tried the flat, I tried the Adlon. I was on my way to the Reichstag to find—”

  Violet wriggles her hands free. “I’m quite all right. I went for a walk, that’s all.”

  “A walk! But why? What’s the matter?” His empty hands rake his hair and land on his hips. His face is desperate. “Tell me. Second thoughts? You can’t imagine what I’ve—”