His hand, Lavinia noticed, was trembling, and she watched him put it on the desk to steady himself during his outburst. For a moment, before she took the full force of his words to heart, she felt a pang of sorrow for him, a fleeting urge to put her hand on his to comfort him.
Then she felt the burn of tears begin to smart her eyes, and her throat constricted, making it impossible to reply even if she had had words with which to respond, and so she turned and left the room, without bothering to close the door behind her.
Years later in the back of her desk drawer Lavinia found the red leather diary that Grace had given her for a long passed birthday. The diary was almost pristine because Lavinia was embarrassed by the convention of addressing an object as an imaginary friend. As she thumbed the gilt-edged pages she found only a single entry.
“Dear Diary,” she had written, “Why are unwanted suitors always the most persistent?” Lavinia tried to think back to the particular gentleman who had inspired her to sully the cream laid pages of her otherwise untouched book. It had probably been Edmund Parks, who was slight and nervous and licked his lips too frequently.
He had refused to walk barefoot on the beach on the one afternoon they had driven out to Coney Island. She remembered him capering alongside the surf in which she waded, his voice thin with concern, imploring her to come back to the boardwalk, his spats soiled by the wet sand, and his forehead sheening with sweat. When he had asked her if he could kiss her she had said no, a little too emphatically.
Even so, Edmund continued to call on Tuesdays and Thursdays for several more months, during which Lavinia gave him no encouragement whatsoever and yet he lingered like a tropical malaise. It was only the announcement of her engagement to Shelby Sterling that finally dissuaded Edmund from arriving with predictability twice a week, just as the hall clock was striking five, carrying flowers that always looked, like their bearer, slightly wilted.
There had been a few scrapes along the way with men Lavinia might have been able to love, or even fancied she did, but somehow their interest in her never ignited into anything more than a mere spark, just bright enough to illuminate the inadequacies of her other admirers.
There had been a young doctor at the Home for Unfortunate Women, where Lavinia volunteered three days a week, assisting the staff in the nursery. Despite Dr. Doyle’s flirtation with Lavinia when she came to the infirmary, and despite the fact that he invariably sought her out in the cafeteria and had given her, for no particular occasion, a volume of stories by Washington Irving with woodcut illustrations, he had never called on her socially.
Dr. Doyle made her laugh and he frequently asked her opinions about local politics and current events and sometimes asked her to read his poetry, and he stood very close to her when she did. His poems were never about her, though. They were always earnest descriptions of nature, often clichéd and obvious but Lavinia found them stirring nonetheless.
Lavinia had also cherished a hope that one of her father’s junior partners, a fellow named Jonathan Wolsey, would take an interest in her. She had been stunned by his verbal elegance, a gift that utterly eclipsed in her eyes his unfortunate stoop and his discolored teeth. For a brief while, it appeared as if he might reciprocate her interest. Then inexplicably his visits waned and even his eloquence seemed to evaporate at the few functions where periodically she would encounter him.
By the time Shelby Sterling asked for her hand, Lavinia was thirty-five and she had long since abandoned any girlish notions she might have had about being in love. There were things about Shelby she found admirable; he had a sense of fair play and honor, both of which were virtues she had come to prize for their scarcity among the upstanding members of her social set. He was tall; his manners were impeccable, and she liked his voice, which was resonant and rich, and suggested a capacity for valor, or so she liked to think.
It was true that he interrupted her more often than he should have and that he had a querulous side that was fatiguing, but still she had grown deeply fond of his quirks. She liked the way he laughed—there was such a sense of abandon and delight that even when he was a tad too loud, she generously attributed it to his exuberance. Shelby read German poetry and collected glass paperweights and antique chess sets. He could be charming when the situation demanded and his hands were beautiful.
Sometimes, when circumstance allowed, he would take her unbeautiful hand in his and press it firmly. At first, that had seemed sufficient. It had been a relief to have a fiancé at last, and Lavinia was shocked to realize the extent to which her world now accorded her respect and welcome. On Shelby’s arm she entered drawing rooms that had been inaccessible before or opened to her only for gala events at which it was understood that the unattached women who were long past being debutantes would earn their invitation by entertaining the dowagers and visiting family no one else would suffer.
With the ballast of a fiancé, Lavinia discovered her opinions had new weight at dinner parties and in the living rooms that lined Fifth Avenue. Finally, Lavinia was no longer relegated to being a spectator at social gatherings. Now her views were solicited even by the men who previously would have let her erudition and wit go unacknowledged rather than risk having its appreciation misconstrued. In her evening shoes, Lavinia was five feet seven inches tall, and confident enough to present herself as an equal. The attention she now garnered at dinner tables was not a source of pride for Shelby, however, but one of friction.
“I hope you won’t let your need to opine overwhelm your understanding of what is becoming in a woman,” Shelby said at the end of an evening at Justice Weston’s house, as he adjusted his hat in the chill night air before offering Lavinia his arm. Lavinia noticed he did not have the courage to look at her while he delivered his injunction and, moreover, his left hand was clenched in an anger she could not fathom. From the side, his face was implacable and his pale skin seemed almost luminous with righteousness, though Lavinia knew it was really just the street lamp bestowing its glow on her betrothed.
Before he jammed his left hand in to the depths of his coat pocket, she saw his fist open and close in rapid succession, pumping like a small heart, and Lavinia had the queer feeling that she was seeing something secret, something essentially sordid in the way his beautiful hand fluttered involuntarily as if it were the only part of him sensitive enough to register emotion or disobedient enough to display it.
But Lavinia said nothing. She had, in the years she had spent in the company of her brothers and her father, accustomed herself to the capricious way in which words could be used like a lash on the most convenient target. Lavinia had learned that by presenting an impassive façade she could shield herself against the full force of the sting. If she concentrated elsewhere, she could limit the extent to which the insult penetrated the dark corners where it would remain like a virus, waiting to be activated by forces she couldn’t control or predict.
Lavinia would often focus on some small flaw, a mole on her father’s neck, the chicken pox scar that marred Shelby’s high forehead or the unattractive way his nostrils flared in anger, revealing more of the interior of his nose than anyone would want to see.
But if Lavinia distracted herself with the petty comfort of critical observations, she was also quick to recall the compensatory quirks and endearments that softened her impulse to distance and distain. She would recall the boyish way Shelby would pull on her earlobe when he felt affectionate, and the pet names he had for her which he would whisper when he held her, albeit awkwardly, in his arms, “Cricket” and “Mouse-cake” being the two he used most often.
There was no one to whom Lavinia could mention, even tentatively, the alarming and ironic truth of the situation: she occasionally felt greater loneliness in the presence of her betrothed than she did in his absence. Miss Kaye would have been the likely repository for that confidence but she had long since returned to Ireland. Miss Kaye had retired to keep company with a widowed sister and a nephew, a large-boned fellow about whose rabble-rousi
ng Miss Kaye had sometimes expressed concern on the rare occasions she’d spoken of her relatives. It had been easy, during the years they had shared a home, for Lavinia to forget that Miss Kaye had a family of her own. Now, when Lavinia’s need for Miss Kaye seemed at its greatest, she was dismayed to find herself jealous that she no longer had a claim, that she had been replaced in Miss Kaye’s life by persons bound to her by blood.
It seemed to Lavinia a breach of loyalty to discuss the hollowness that filled her chest when Shelby discussed their future together, laying out before her, with the confidence of a general marshaling his men, the sweep of years that would take her to her dotage. Once Lavinia had broached the subject with her mother, who had looked at her blankly and then pretended not to have heard her daughter’s question, as if the only polite response was to ignore it the same way the passing of gas in public would be strenuously unobserved. Grace, on the other hand, had laughed, and said dismissively, “You’re just getting the jitters. Everyone gets them, though it probably is worse if you marry in your thirties. But look at your magnificent ring if you’re nervous. An African-mined, round-cut, two-karat diamond should calm you.”
It had never failed to amaze Lavinia that her sister, Grace, took such a devout interest in jewels. From the age of three, Grace had exhibited a precocious attraction to precious stones, often startling guests by asking to try on the rings and bracelets that her mother’s friends wore to the house. By the age of seven, Grace cut pictures of jewelry from magazines and saved them in a wooden box she kept under her bed.
Only twice had Lavinia merited the privilege of being allowed to sit cross-legged by the footboard of Grace’s bed for a viewing in which Grace spread across the counterpane all the photographs and drawings of famous gems, both set and unset, that represented her collection. As an adult, Grace knew arcane information regarding the provenance of certain gems, or with which family a famous brooch or prized tiara currently dwelled.
“You’re right,” Lavinia replied. “It’s a lovely ring. And beauty is always a comfort,” she added, taking her niece, Hadley, in her arms now that Grace had finished mummifying the baby in lace swaddling. Hadley was the fruit of despair: she followed four miscarriages and a stillbirth. Her conception occurred long after Grace had given up the hope of ever having a child.
Lavinia had not expected to have the baby thrust at her so abruptly, and it annoyed her. Momentarily, she wanted to squeeze the baby too tightly, as if to take from the daughter what she never could extract from the mother: the catharsis of tears, either the satisfaction of provoking them or the fulfillment of comforting them.
But instead, she leaned her face into the baby’s until their noses touched, and she breathed in the chalky smell of milk the baby exuded, reminding Lavinia, with unexpected tenderness, of the nursery she had once shared with Miss Kaye. That was the end of Lavinia’s attempt to discuss her concerns with her family.
Of the various explanations for her increasing discomfort at the prospect of her impending marriage, the notion that disturbed Lavinia the most was the thought that there was something wrong with her, something fundamental, something preventing her from claiming the happiness others found, and that now eluded her in the company of her betrothed. There was much to admire about Shelby Sterling, but the fact that Lavinia found herself having to anxiously catalogue his virtues at night, as she lay in her bed watching the shadows play across her ceiling, mitigated the reassurance the list might otherwise have provided. Moreover, the list she was reluctant to review, enumerating Shelby’s failings and faults, seemed to swell with alarming alacrity.
She caught herself involuntarily wincing when she heard his voice booming up from the vestibule, announcing his presence as he handed the housemaid his hat, or when he cupped her elbow to steer her through a crowd, or when he told an anecdote she was required to appreciate. Sometimes she felt a rising panic she had previously known only in dreams, in which she was suffocating in a small space, or trying to run from a terrible danger but her legs were unaccountably disabled.
Shelby was oblivious to Lavinia’s growing distress. When he let his arms linger around her shoulders as he helped her on with her coat, he mistook her stillness as feminine acquiescence, and when she busied herself with her gloves if he broached the subject of the honeymoon, he took it as an expression of virginal shyness. If at times Shelby found her accomplishments in the drawing room unseemly, verging on masculine, he took comfort in her modesty when he kissed her cheek and she looked surprised.
“Come here, Cricket,” he would say, pulling her against his chest, and she would sigh and avert her eyes and he could almost forgive her for being taller than he would have liked, and more assertive.
“When we are married,” Shelby liked to say, sometimes patting her hair reassuringly, “you’ll see that I am right about this.” It hardly mattered to Lavinia what subject he referred to: as confident as he was of her future enlightenment, Lavinia’s doubts continued to deepen.
Shelby was treated by his mother to lavish attentions that seemed to Lavinia to border on the amorous. Mrs. Sterling treated Lavinia as if she were a rival who could not be openly attacked and had to be fought through subterfuge. Sunday luncheons at Mrs. Sterling’s home were therefore long and taxing. Lavinia was embarrassed by Mrs. Sterling’s effusively affectionate way of greeting her son, positioning herself in the doorway to embrace Shelby and simultaneously turning her back on Lavinia for an awkwardly long interval.
When at last Evelyn Sterling broke away from her theatrical reunion with her son long enough to acknowledge Lavinia, it was only to remind her of how lucky she was to have found Shelby, which Lavinia found decreasingly persuasive the more aggressively it was presented. Evelyn Sterling had another son but they were estranged; he had had the temerity to marry a woman who failed to pay homage at the domestic hearth over which Evelyn ruled. That son was rarely referred to by name after he moved with his wife to another city, a safe distance from Evelyn’s capacious grasp.
Shelby, however, was happy to occupy the position of primacy in his mother’s life now that she was a widow. He was flattered by his mother’s coquettish fawning and basked in her admiration. Lavinia watched him relax and grow expansive as if only under his mother’s adoring gaze was he able to be the man he aspired to being. His face would don a boyish eagerness that softened his features and caused the corners of his thin mouth to crinkle impishly and Lavinia would feel a tenderness that was easily mistaken for love. Nevertheless, it galled her that she was not the Penelope of his Odyssean epic; listening to the quotidian events of his day elevated to heroic stature, it was painfully evident that it was his mother to whom he unfailingly returned.
Evelyn was a smiling dragon of barbed innuendos, a vain and meddlesome woman with too little education or insight to be interesting, but too much self importance to relinquish control of conversation. Exacerbating these flaws in her personality was her inclination for alcohol. The prospect of consigning the rest of her life to the company of Evelyn made Lavinia reflect on her ability to forebear. Lavinia realized with surprising detachment how well she had been primed for the task, how her childhood experiences with two bullying brothers had taught her to withstand certain kinds of pain, while from the women of the house she had learned to shield herself against the sting of frostbite.
Evelyn sometimes went too far in her bibulous provocations and then she would make a solicitous gesture of reconciliation which often included the gift of a bauble, a pair of earrings she no longer wore, or a ring with a missing side stone, something easy to part with. However, even these tokens of friendship or apology were often revoked under one pretext or another. Lavinia came to dread her generosity. Too often it was a harbinger of a future insult greater than the one the gift was meant to erase. Indian-giving, cheating at games and breaking one’s word were taboos Lavinia found particularly low. All breaches of trust were inconsistent with her understanding of integrity, but those motivated by self-interest and disguis
ed as friendship were especially distasteful. It was hard to even mention it to Shelby, but when she did, Shelby defended his mother.
“Don’t be so greedy, Cricket,” he would scold. “They’re just things—the substance of materialism. Haven’t you more than enough already? You can’t wear more than one bracelet at a time, now can you?”
It was clear that Shelby did not wish to recognize that the right to revoke makes the act of giving meaningless or worse, offensive. But Lavinia was practical. She had learned the anodyne effects of discipline and distraction and, if those failed, the refuge of resignation. During her long engagement to Shelby, Lavinia became a dervish of activity, swelling her calendar with luncheons and causes, appointments with the seamstress and drawing classes at the Ladies League. She read Gibbon and tried to learn Italian. She resumed the piano lessons she’d abandoned as a young teen, only to conclude a second time, two decades later, that she had neither the gift nor the inclination to pursue an instrument. She taught herself to type and transcribed all of the letters her grandfather had sent home during the Civil War, collecting them for a privately printed edition she gave her father.
Lavinia joined a women’s lecture series on Wednesday afternoons held in the basement of St. Thomas’s Episcopal church, an institution she otherwise eschewed. But it was there in the back of the basement, at the end of the last row, separated from the rest of the audience by two empty rows, that Lavinia met Mavis Gelhardt.
The Gibbs family would have called Mavis a “trouble-maker” if they had ever had the chance to meet her, but Lavinia knew better than to let that happen. Mavis Gelhardt was a former suffragette who still wrote political tracts, dressed in men’s flannel trousers, and smoked Turkish cigarettes openly, on the street, the way prostitutes did. Mavis was swarthy, with arresting blue eyes, and a strawberry mark on her brow she referred to as the kiss of the devil. Mavis had large, capable hands with which she hooked the most delicate lace doilies Lavinia had ever seen.
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