The Way of Beauty

by Camille Di Maio

  “Vera, will you marry me?”

  She nodded with what seemed to be her whole body and smiled so wide that it kept the tears at bay. Her fairy tale coming true. Different from how she might have imagined it, but everything came around exactly the way it was always meant to.

  This, at last, was right.

  She let go of a breath, feeling like she’d been holding it for too many years.

  “Yes, Angelo, yes,” she answered at last. She threw her arms around him as he pressed his lips against hers for the second time. Bolts of electricity shot through her as she responded in kind with more strength than she knew she had. This was so much better than she’d ever pictured.

  “And, my darling, we’re going to do this right. We’ll have my family there in the church, and you’ll look beautiful as you walk down the aisle to me.”

  “I don’t care about the details. Just come back to me; that’s all I ask.”

  They ignored the next whistles, which came not from the train but from the mass of sailors who had noticed the scene. Vera laughed, and Angelo kissed her fully and deeply and thoroughly until she felt as if his arms were the only thing that could hold her up. The stubble from his chin chafed her skin, leaving a sweet pain in its place. When at last he pulled away from her—the third and final warning had come from the conductor—she leaned against the stair railing and felt dizzy.

  “I have to go,” he said into her hair. He gripped it and then pulled away, holding on to her with nothing but his fingertips touching the end of a curl.

  She pulled him to her, not wanting to let him go. He couldn’t go, not after finally—finally—having this moment that was so many years in the making. She couldn’t send him overseas.

  What if he never made it back?

  “I’ll write to you,” he said as he stepped away.

  “I’ll write back,” she said. Such ordinary things to say on an extraordinary day. He turned around at last and made his way to the stairs of the train car. Catcalls from the men rained down on him, but he only grinned. As the wheels began their slow rotation, he tossed a small box at her, and she caught it.

  “I forgot to give that to you! I love you, Vera Keller! You have made me a happy man today!” He waved his arm in a high arch.

  She opened the box. The ring! Her heart pounded. This was really happening. It was no longer something she pined for as she slept alone in her bed. She slipped it on and held her arm in the air so he could see it as she ran after the train.

  “I love you, Angelo Bellavia. Hurry back!”

  Even as she said these words and watched his train disappear into the tunnel, she thought of the headlines and of all those sailors heading to Norfolk to train for a war that had already claimed millions.

  She breathed a prayer that the United States wouldn’t enter the war.

  And that if they did, that her Angelo would return home to her.

  To all of them.

  Chapter Sixteen

  April 1917

  War posters were plastered across the sides of buildings, creating a colorful backdrop to dreary times.

  From patriotic films to bond advertisements to larger-than-life women draped in flags to encourage enlistment, one could not pass a block without encountering a dozen of them.

  But the one that caught Vera’s attention the most shouted, “Sow the Seeds of Victory!” A woman wearing a red handkerchief on her head walked barefoot across rows of dirt, spreading seeds behind her. President Wilson had been saying, “Food will win the war!” and Vera felt that this was an opportunity to help, even in her small way.

  She wrote to the National War Garden Commission, and with Victor’s permission, she started a war garden in Madison Park. He’d encouraged her to create one on the massive rooftop of the house, but she thought that putting it in a public space would motivate others to participate in it.

  Besides, she didn’t need the food. What was provided at Pearl’s grandmother’s house was substantial, even in these times. What she grew could be given to others.

  What she had not anticipated was how it might also help William and Vater. Neither showed interest when she dirtied her hands burying carrot seeds, but when their lacy green tops began to peek through the soil weeks later, the old man and the young boy were keen to join her.

  Afternoons found the three of them in the garden, and before long they had a modest harvest. Vera thought that it was good for William to do this kind of labor, and Vater seemed to be almost himself when he sat outside with them.

  With this work, she also felt she was helping Angelo.

  Though war had not yet been officially declared, most felt it was imminent. American opinions about joining the fight overseas were divided. The Irish wanted to stay out of the war because involvement would only help the British. The Germans wanted to stay out of the war because it was an attack on their homeland. The hawks in Theodore Roosevelt’s circles wanted in because they believed they could save the world and spread democracy. President Wilson’s speeches were increasingly leaning this way.

  The suffragettes were split. Half sided with most women of the day, abhorring the idea of engaging in battle. But others saw it as an opportunity for women to prove themselves in the absence of men. With all the talk of freedom and liberation being bandied about overseas, they drew parallels to the oppression of women here in the United States, being denied their chance to have an equal say.

  For or against, it was a significant opportunity to capitalize on the issue.

  Politics meant little to Vera, as did the ocean that separated her from Europe. While Germany was the land of her birth, the United States was the home of her heart. And her heart belonged to Angelo Bellavia.

  Who, any day, would be crossing those Atlantic waters. She had not seen him in the months that had passed since his proposal, but they’d exchanged flurries of letters that rivaled any blizzard.

  All were full of the endearments that had been withheld for too long.

  Darling Vera, some would start. There is almost no corner of me that you do not know, but my days on the ship are teaching me new strengths that I would not have known myself capable of. How it feels to swelter inside metal walls even as my uniform is drenched from being in an overturned raft during a training exercise. The extent to which I can go without eating and still feel like I can perform the duties required of me. They are testing us—how far our limits are—and giving us a foretaste of what they expect we’ll see in Europe.

  Dearest Angelo, she would respond. I have never imagined leaving New York, having been happy enough in my small world. But with the very idea of you crossing the waters you crossed as a young boy, seeing the continent of both our births, something awakens in me. I wish you could see it all under better circumstances and that I could see it with you. Perhaps one day. Keep yourself safe, I beg you. And maybe someday we’ll pass over the Atlantic and you will bring me to taste gelato in your Piazza Navona.

  She hoped that letters would be able to come through once he got there—wherever he was being sent. Each letter, each postcard, each touch of his handwriting was more precious to her than any treasure she could have been given.

  News from Pearl was equally worrisome.

  She’d just been arrested for the third time. Apparently, authorities in Albany didn’t appreciate it when you chained yourself to the fence of the capitol building.

  Some women were arrested for vandalism. Reports of burned mailboxes and shattered windows made headlines, but letters from Pearl insisted that those activities distracted from the very important work they had to do.

  The suffragettes had gained tremendous ground as women like Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt outdid the efforts of their hallowed predecessors by creating an organized structure across the country to mobilize women from sea to sea with the same message.

  Efforts ranged from the awe-inspiring to the tragic.

  Just a few months ago, when President Wilson sailed across the New York Harbor in the pr
esidential yacht to switch on the first electric lights in the Statue of Liberty, a fleet of female pilots took off from Staten Island in biplanes. They crisscrossed the sky over the mighty boat, back and forth, showering him with leaflets that said, simply, “Votes for Women.”

  But when that was not enough to get his attention, they turned to more drastic measures.

  Resisting arrest at demonstrations.

  Jail sentences.

  Hunger strikes.

  Pearl had participated in all of them, and Vera could not have been more proud of her.

  But her joy was dimmed by the fact that Pearl languished in a prison cell in the state capital, and that her letters had come to a sudden stop. Vera longed to take a train to see her and determine whether there was anything she could do to help, but she was needed elsewhere. Little Will had just turned six years old. And she didn’t want to ask Victor or the rest of the staff to watch over Vater so she could go off.

  Lady Pilkington, who had just returned after an extended stay in California, had not given Vera and Vater the reception that Pearl had promised.

  She’d arrived only last night, prompting Victor to recommend that Vera put William to bed early so that he didn’t run around the house and disturb Lady Pilkington. She’d told her staff that she would retire to bed to recover from the long journey and was not to be bothered. But after breakfast this morning, she summoned Vera to join her in the morning room.

  Vera slipped into Will’s room, then Vater’s, listening to the peaceful breathing that she heard from each of them as they slept. Then she walked across to the north wing and knocked on the door. Her stomach tightened at this beckoning and what it might mean.

  Victor opened it, and Vera thought she saw a look of despair on his face. But perhaps it was only a mirror of her own.

  “Good luck, Miss Keller,” he whispered before holding the door open for her and then slipping outside himself.

  “Don’t dawdle, young lady,” an old voice said. Vera quickened her pace, though she wanted nothing more than to draw out the steps to the desk in the alcove. Even a delay of a few seconds would allow her to continue the fiction that everything was going to be all right.

  Lady Pilkington sat surrounded by candles despite having spent a fortune on wiring the house for electric lights. Pearl had once told Vera that her grandmother preferred the candles because they were not harsh on her waning vision. The scene created a glow around her, as if she wore a halo. An intentional effect? Vera doubted it, but it remained unnerving.

  “Sit in that chair there.” The old woman pointed with a cane to a seat across from the large, scrolled desk.

  Vera did as she was told and fought the temptation to let her eyes wander around this room that she had never visited. It seemed to be one of the most beautiful of all, with wispy white curtains embroidered with butterflies. But that was as much as she could see, staring straight ahead.

  Lady Pilkington leaned forward, and the effect of the candles shifted from halo to jack-o’-lantern as they lit her prunelike face. Vera squeezed her hands together on her lap to keep them from shaking.

  “Sit up now. You young girls have learned terrible habits, and I’ll not have bad manners or bad posture in my home.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “If there was one thing I appreciated about the years I lived in England, it was their social graces.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Lady Pilkington displayed the kind of countenance that demanded obedience. Vera had never met anyone quite like her.

  The jack-o’-lantern face peered forward as Lady Pilkington adjusted her glasses.

  “You have been living under the roof of my generosity for far too long. I was happy to indulge my granddaughter when she pleaded for a friend who was in need, but I never intended for it to become a permanent situation. I myself was ill and recuperating at my home in California, so I overlooked it for the time being. But now that I am here and have my strength back, I find two strangers in my home without the company of my granddaughter, who has gotten herself incarcerated. I am forced to evict you.”

  Panic rose in her throat. Where would they go?

  “Please, no.” The words escaped Vera’s lips, even as she knew that it was fruitless. She could tell that this was the type of woman who might donate grand amounts of money at benefits and galas to do her part for charity, but who would not tolerate the unfortunate landing on her doorstep. Or sleeping in her bedrooms.

  That was not meant to discount Vera’s appreciation for having stayed here.

  “This is not a poorhouse, as you have well noticed.”

  “But Pearl said—”

  “I have no interest in what my granddaughter might have told you. She once had my support in her pursuits on behalf of women, but we diverge in our ideas on how to go about it. She had the chance to use her standing in this community to bring about change in a dignified way, and instead she has chosen to marry a ragamuffin—two times over—and has continued to demonstrate her appalling lack of judgment. I’m washing my hands of her concerns.”

  Blessed are the meek. Mama used to read the Bible at night and explain to Vera what the words meant. Turn the other cheek. She’d explained to her daughter that these phrases were examples of how to live life as a gentle woman. But in this moment, Vera began to see how she had clung to these phrases not as a guide but as an excuse. It was all well and good in times of peace to live by these principles, but how did they promote change in an increasingly unfair world?

  Meekness would bury the United States under overseas aggressors. She was understanding more and more why Angelo joined the war. Why Pearl rallied for rights.

  Turning the other cheek wouldn’t give women the right to vote. Neither would it protect her father or Will. And calling her beloved Angelo a ragamuffin or dismissing Pearl’s very real heroics lit a raging fire in Vera where there had been only a flicker.

  She stood up and placed her hands on the desk.

  “I owe you a great debt for having allowed us to stay as long as you have. So I mean no disrespect when I say this, but you are gravely mistaken in your description of Pearl, who at this very moment languishes in a cold jail cell not out of disregard for your family but because she has the courage to sacrifice herself rather than remain cozy in surroundings where teas and lunches bring about lovely conversations about the idea of betterment for women but don’t produce any actual results.”

  Lady Pilkington rose to her feet, supporting herself on her cane until her hands lay on the opposite side of the desk and her eyes were level with Vera’s.

  But Vera no longer felt afraid.

  “I will not tolerate such impertinence in my household.”

  “Well, as you are evicting me anyway, I have nothing to lose. This has to be said. Pearl Pilkington is a hero. A legend. I will not stay in a place that insults her so.”

  “Then off with you. You and your lunatic of a father.”

  That word stripped away every last vestige of propriety that Vera had been inclined to maintain. She felt alive in a way that she hadn’t known was possible.

  “I believe I’m correct in assuming, Lady Pilkington, that you arrived back in New York by train. And if that is so, then I’ll have you know that it was my father and other sandhogs like him who gave their lives and their youth and their health to build tunnels so that women such as yourself could arrive in the city in the comfort of your posh train car rather than navigate the unreliable waters of the Hudson River.”

  She might have hoped for a flinch—the slightest flicker of emotion at this—but the woman across from her stood like stone.

  Vera leaned farther, moving her hands closer, feeling a brazenness that had, up until now, belonged only to Pearl. But it was time for other women to step up and discover their own strength. “I am grateful, Lady Pilkington, for the very real generosity that you have bestowed on us. But I quite agree. This mansion is no place for us. I have grown too comfortable here when girls my age ar
e working themselves to the bone just blocks away. So my father and Will and I will pack up our things and be out by tomorrow.”

  She expected to receive ire from the formidable old woman, but it was not forthcoming. Instead, Lady Pilkington smiled a grim smile, and her eyes shone with something that made Vera tremble more than she already was.

  The old woman folded her arms. “You and your father and my granddaughter may go do whatever it is you like. But you will not be taking William with you.”

  Oh. Vera felt as if she’d been punched. She’d never considered that Lady Pilkington would see any kind of ownership in Will’s care.

  Panic rose in her throat. She could not lose Will. She’d say and do whatever Lady Pilkington wanted to keep that from happening.

  Vera had been his constant companion every day when he returned from school. She knew his favorite animal at the Central Park Zoo. She knew that he liked strawberry gelato rather than chocolate. She knew that he slept in the shape of an X at night and that he was afraid of spiders.

  Lady Pilkington would never know or care about these kinds of things. William would probably be packed off to some kind of boarding school, where his little spirit, the one he’d inherited from Pearl, would be mutated into some uniform mold of what a proper little rich boy should be. Pearl would rather die than see her son raised like that.

  And so would Vera. She needed to think of a plan. But as much as she wanted to continue this rant, it would only be detrimental to Will to continue that course. She changed her tone to one of docility.

  “I understand why you might want to keep him here, Lady Pilkington. But I am like a second mother to him. And it was the express wish of his actual mother that he remain in my care until she returns.”

  But the woman did not retreat. “My granddaughter has given up certain privileges with the choices she’s made.” She tapped a leather-bound folder. “I have here the legal documents that were drawn up by my lawyers to establish custody of William. He is a Pilkington, not a pauper, and he will not be leaving with you.”