by Amber Brock
“Have you seen it yet?”
“I haven’t.” Her mother pursed her lips. “How much did your father and I pay for you to go to Vassar? We may as well get some use out of your studies, don’t you think?”
Vera knew not to take the bait on that line of inquiry. “When do you want me to go?”
“Are you free tomorrow? The dealer phoned this morning, I told him I didn’t think you had anything pressing.”
Vera stifled a groan. She did have a luncheon with the ladies in her building, but her mother did not make requests. She mandated. “Who is he?”
“Fleming somebody. He’s apparently a French dealer with an established gallery in Paris. He’s just opened an offshoot in the city to better cater to his American clientele. I’ll give you the address. He’s a few blocks from here.”
Vera tried frantically to think of some way she could redirect her mother’s interest. The idea of traipsing through the city for a Dutch master her mother would not even really appreciate was not Vera’s idea of an afternoon well spent. “Surely his Paris gallery would have a better selection if he’s just setting up here. Why not wait until you’re there next?”
Her mother shook her head. “No way of knowing when that will be. Your father won’t go with me, and I certainly won’t travel alone. Unless you’d like to go with me?”
An hour in a local gallery seemed a less daunting prospect than a month in Europe with her mother, and Vera agreed to go see the painting. After they finished their meal, her mother wrote the gallery’s address on a card. They walked out onto the sidewalk to wait for their drivers to bring their cars. Her mother’s arrived first, and she waved a few fingers at Vera from the backseat. A hint of worry still lingered in her eyes, indicating she had not forgotten Vera’s confession.
After their first lunch together on the day they met, Vera and Bea ate together nearly every afternoon. At first, Vera had alternated between her usual lunch crowd and Bea. Once, she invited Bea to eat with her group, but the blend had not been a harmonious one. All Ella Gregory and Lillie Huntsfield could do was stare, and Bea had pronounced them “dull as flour, but with less taste.” After that, Vera adjusted her schedule to come in late enough that she and Bea missed her other friends entirely. The dreariness of her more appropriate friends could not compete with her new, vibrant friend from the South. Unfortunately, her lively lunches made dinner with her old crowd seem even more tedious. No one in her right mind would choose polite small talk and inquiries about her academic progress over Bea’s naughty asides.
Dinner seating was naturally trickier to navigate, since the evening lacked the casual atmosphere of lunch, and class schedules could not be blamed for interrupting the standing social appointment of the regular table. One night, emboldened by imagining what her new friend would do in her situation, Vera strolled through the dining room right past Ella and Lillie, nodding a greeting but saying nothing. The girls gave her stony looks but would never have dreamed of challenging Vera’s choice. She wove her way around the square, white-clothed tables to take a seat beside Bea.
“Not sitting with the Opera Board tonight?” Bea asked, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
Vera spread her napkin in her lap and scooted her wooden chair closer to the table. “They have each other. I thought you could use some company, too.”
“Maybe they do teach girls up here manners after all.” Bea leaned in and spoke under her breath. “You couldn’t take it anymore?”
“Not for another minute.” Vera laughed. “Your parents may have sent you up here for the good influences of the North, but you’ve been a bad influence on me, Bea Stillman.”
“Impossible. Girls like you are incorruptible.” Bea poked at the sliver of roast beef on her plate.
“I don’t know about that.”
“You’d rather be corruptible? I knew there was a sinner lurking inside you. Maybe now you’ll tell me more about your summer romance.” A familiar gleam brightened Bea’s eyes.
Vera wanted to reply that Arthur’s pursuit was hardly a romance, but she stopped. Of course, technically, it was a romance. He wouldn’t have visited her so often last summer if he hadn’t had marriage on his mind in some way. So why did Bea’s description seem so ill fitting? “Maybe I will,” Vera said at last. She had held off this discussion through weeks of lunches; it was probably time she gave her friend more than just a passing detail.
Bea turned, eyes shining. “Finally. What does Arthur look like? He must be handsome. Is he rich?”
“He is terribly handsome,” Vera admitted. She ignored Bea’s last question, leaving a discussion of Arthur’s financial situation for a more private conversation. A maid appeared at her elbow, and Vera nodded. As the maid spooned green beans onto their plates, Vera tried to keep her voice low until the woman stepped away. “Tall, with dark hair. Not too slender. He’s about ten years older, and very sophisticated.”
Bea wrinkled her nose. “You sound like you’re describing a building. What are his eyes like? His lips?” She drew out the last word with relish, and Vera’s cheeks warmed.
“Goodness, does everyone in Atlanta talk like that in public?”
“Just me, as far as I know. Aren’t you lucky I came your way?” Bea chewed thoughtfully on a green bean. “So, dark hair. Tall. Promising start.”
Vera fixed a hard gaze on her food. “His eyes are lovely. They’re pale blue, like crystal.”
“Like forget-me-nots?”
“More silvery than that. I’ve never seen eyes like his.”
“Now, that sounds like something a lover might say. Much better.” Bea offered a quiet clap.
Vera glanced at the neighboring tables. “Do you have a beau?” she asked quickly.
Bea laughed. “You’ve seen the reaction I get from girls. Can you imagine what men think of me?”
“You’re pretty, outgoing, smart…I’d think your beaus would be tripping over each other.”
“If I meet a man I like, I’ll have you write me a letter of reference. My own mother wouldn’t be so complimentary.”
“I don’t know. It sounds like you get along well with her,” Vera said. Bea had described a soft-spoken, sweet woman with a wicked sense of humor that belied her poise.
“I do. Most of the time.” Bea shrugged. “But never mind her. What do you and Arthur do together? Hopefully more than sit in the parlor.”
“He took me to the soda fountain,” Vera said, with a hopeful lift in her voice.
Bea sighed. “I was hoping for something more interesting than the soda fountain.”
“Well…once we took a walk on the beach. He even took his shoes off.” Vera laughed at the memory, but the look on Bea’s face suggested the thought of a barefoot Arthur was not as funny to someone who didn’t know him personally. Her laugh died away.
Bea placed a hand on Vera’s arm. “As long as you like him, that’s the important thing. He sounds…he sounds very nice.”
“I do like him,” Vera said. She really did. There was something so solid about Arthur, like an anchor in rough waters. What better man to marry than one she could depend on? He might not be exciting, but Vera reassured herself there were qualities in a husband more important than being exciting. Anyway, as long as Vera stayed friends with Bea, she doubted she’d have to worry about a lack of excitement in her life.
The knots that gathered in Vera’s shoulders during every visit with her mother began to untangle as she headed home after lunch to the Angelus building. Her husband, Arthur, had built the Angelus in 1919, intending to make the other luxury properties springing up on Park Avenue look like tenement housing. He may not have shamed them to that extent, but there was no question that the building dominated the block, as he and Vera dominated the society within the building. Four golden angel statues topped the roof, their wings tucked, and they glared down at Vera as she left her car and went into the lobby.
She nodded a greeting to the elevator operator as she stepped on, and he t
ook her up to the twentieth floor. She let herself into the penthouse, her low heels clicking on the green marble floor of the foyer. A tall, silver-haired man in a dark suit came in at the sound. His long nose and pinched face always put Vera in mind of an eagle, fixed on some prey in the distance. She removed her gloves, and he accepted them with a nod of greeting.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Bellington.”
“Hello, Evans. Has my husband phoned?”
“No, madam.”
She did not know why she had asked. Still, arrangements needed to be made in case he did come home. “Please let me know when you hear from him. I’ll need to be sure Gertrude times dinner for his arrival.”
“Yes, madam. Would you like me to bring up some wine for you and Mr. Bellington?”
“He’ll want a bottle of the cabernet, will you fetch that? Not the ’02, the ’07.” Vera brushed a hair from her forehead, then checked her chignon to make sure there were no other escapees. Everything in its place. “Oh, and please send Marguerite to my room,” she continued. “Tell her I want to change into the black silk with silver beading for dinner.”
“Yes, madam.”
“Thank you, Evans. That will be all for now.”
Evans bowed slightly, then turned and went back through the door to Vera’s right, which led from the foyer to the servants’ rooms in the rear of the apartment. The three other huge oak doors on the semicircular foyer led to the library, the dining room, and the drawing room, and above them rose a dual staircase that led to the private areas of the home.
Vera took the right-hand staircase up to the hall, her steps muted by the thick red rug that ran up to the second floor. The door to the bedroom she shared with her husband, when he was not out of town for business, was the fourth one on the left. There were six bedrooms in all, although Vera toyed with the idea of turning the conservatory into a seventh; they never used it, after all. But then they hardly used the other bedrooms, either. Though they entertained regularly, they did not have overnight guests often.
The master bedroom held a huge brass bed, and one wall had a floor-to-ceiling window with a spectacular view. Off the main room were Vera’s dressing room, Arthur’s dressing room, and a black-and-white marble bath. Inside the bathroom was a claw-foot tub Vera had purchased in France before the war, an item she was especially proud to have found. She went into the dressing room and sat on the stool at the vanity. While waiting for her lady’s maid to bring her gown, she began removing her few items of day jewelry.
In the moment of solitude, Vera’s conversation with her mother pushed its way back to the front of her mind. She wished she had not mentioned feeling lonely, but then lonely was not the most precise word. Her mother had been right; there were her so-called friends, there were charities. Though her mother failed to mention that most of Vera’s time spent on charitable causes was limited to writing checks. The constant stream of dinner parties, teas, and luncheons meant Vera rarely had any time not occupied by other people. Arthur’s work had kept him away from home throughout their marriage, so that was nothing new. Other women she knew had become mothers well before Vera’s age, but the time never seemed to be right for her marriage to transition naturally to a family, so she had waited. Still, she wanted more from her husband, and more in general, and lately the need tugged harder at her. So perhaps the word she wanted was not lonely, but neglected. Or isolated. She wondered what her mother would have thought of that.
The maid, a slight girl with wispy blond hair, slipped into the room. She held the dress Vera had requested. “Good afternoon, madam.”
“Ah, Marguerite,” Vera said. “Thank you.”
Marguerite hung the dress from a bar on the wall, spreading the sleeves to avoid wrinkles. “How was lunch?”
“You’ve met my mother.”
The girl allowed herself a small smile. “Would you like me to arrange your hair for dinner?”
Vera patted her dark bun and adjusted a white enamel comb. “No, thank you. It still looks lovely. I will ask you to look at my calendar, though. I need a few hours set aside tomorrow to run to a gallery for my mother. It may mean calling Bessie Harper about the luncheon.”
“Of course.” Marguerite helped with the small buttons at the back of her neck, and Vera shimmied out of the yellow dress before pulling the black one over her head. The maid zipped her up and handed Vera a pair of black heels to slip on.
“Thank you, Marguerite, that will be all for now. Oh, and will you please tell Evans I’ll be in the library? For when my husband phones.”
After Marguerite closed the door behind her, Vera sat on the stool once more and began to pick through the jewelry she kept in a lacquered box on the vanity. Dismissing a pair of ruby earrings, she chose understated diamond studs and decided against a necklace or bracelet. Arthur thought it distasteful for a woman to wear a lot of jewelry at home. He really only considered a display of jewelry appropriate for the theater or dining at a restaurant. He would never chide her directly, but a well-placed remark a few days later might indicate his true feelings.
When she was satisfied with her outfit, Vera left the bedroom and went back downstairs to the library. She liked the cozy feel the wood paneling gave the room, and the phonograph made it the perfect place to enjoy a pre-dinner cocktail. Her favorite paintings from her collection also hung in that room, and she enjoyed the opportunity to admire them as she relaxed after the day’s social visits. A colorful pastoral landscape hung above the piano. Beside the fireplace, a portrait of a sad-looking young man in Edwardian garb. Near the tall window, a few delicately posed ballerinas.
There was even a portrait of Vera herself, done right after she and Arthur moved into the Angelus. She sighed as she crossed to the liquor cart. The portrait was her least favorite, and she frequently thought of taking it down. It was unlikely anyone would notice if she did. She was convinced she was the only one who ever so much as glanced at any of the works that graced the walls, but she could spend hours looking them over, standing close enough to see each brushstroke, each gradient of color. No matter where she found herself, a well-chosen piece had the ability to make her feel more at home. She was of the opinion that good art lent a kind of dignity to everything.
Evans would have mixed her a drink if she had used the bell to summon him, but she preferred to pour her own. She placed an opera recording on the phonograph and had just lifted the crystal decanter when the phone rang in the distance. Her pulse quickened, but she continued mixing her cocktail, waiting for word that the call was for her. After a few moments, Evans stepped in.
“Madam, Mr. Bellington regrets he will be unable to dine at home this evening. He has an important meeting with clients.”
Vera’s heart sank. The question Again? bounced against the inside of her mouth, but she did not let it out. The butler was hardly the man to bring into her personal troubles. She brought her gin and tonic to her lips to give herself a moment for composure. When she finally spoke, her voice remained pleasingly calm. “Thank you, Evans. Please tell Gertrude we’ll only need one plate tonight.”
“Yes, madam. Will you take your dinner in the dining room?”
She hesitated. The thought of eating at the long table by herself for one too many nights in a row, with no sound but the scrape of her fork on her plate, was daunting. “You know, on second thought, I had a good bit to eat this afternoon,” she lied. “I’ll call if I want anything.”
The butler inclined his head, then left the library. Vera, cocktail in hand, sank into a maroon leather chair. Around her the music swelled, accompanied by the occasional clink of ice in her glass, as she studied her paintings, alone and hungry.
Vera startled at a knock on her dorm room door. She hadn’t expected company, and had even hung the placard on the door to indicate that she was studying. She slid a ribbon between the pages in her history text and stood, smoothing the loose strands of her hair back. The person on the other side of the door, still determined to ignore any wish for pri
vacy, turned the knob.
“Vera, are you there?” Bea popped her head into the room, her blue eyes shining.
“Yes, you ninny, what did you think the ‘studying’ sign was about?” Vera dropped back into her desk chair.
Bea frowned at the front of the door. “Oh. That. I didn’t notice.” She stepped into the room, holding a silver tin aloft. “I had an important delivery to make.”
Vera accepted the tin and pried the lid off. A dark, sugary smell burst out from the soft-edged squares inside. She closed her eyes and drew in a breath. “You lovely dear. I have been thinking about fudge all week.”
Bea lolled on Vera’s bed, her legs dangling off the side. “Why else would I have brought it? You haven’t been thinking about it, you’ve been delivering entire sermons on it.”
“Because it’s heaven.” Vera took a bite, letting the chocolate melt on her tongue. The sweetness seemed to curl through her mouth and into her chattering brain, pushing away the names and dates she’d spent the past hours trying to cram in. She let out a sigh.
“That good, eh?” Bea sat up. “Maybe I ought to have kept it all for myself.”
Vera held the tin out of Bea’s reach. “Well, you didn’t, so now you’ll have to share.”
Bea laughed. “And by ‘share,’ you mean I’ll get the crumbs left when you’re done.”
Vera ate another chunk, then pointed at Bea. “Why aren’t you studying?
“I’m a natural genius, didn’t I tell you? I don’t study for anything.”
“And the essay for English?”
“How did you know about that? You’re not even in that class.”
“Ella Gregory mentioned it after dinner a few nights ago. Have you started?”
