The Seduction of Water

by Carol Goodman

  We all look then toward the new gazebo—the new chuppa. The roof, made of overlapping cedar shakes carved to look like feathers, undulates over a single long bench. On either end of the bench stand carved swans, their long necks curving up to form armrests. The whole thing looks like it’s poised to take flight.

  Harry Kron, who’s been standing on the edge of the crowd, comes forward to present Gretchen and Mark with their award money. The crowd shifts away from Brier Rose toward Wing and I notice that Joseph is slumping against the arch. I go over to him, but Natalie Baehr gets there first and helps him to sit down on the bench. I’m alarmed at how white his face is.

  “I think we’d better get you upstairs,” I say to Joseph. “It’s so hot out here.”

  “I’d like to sit in the garden a while longer,” he says, “but don’t worry, shayna maidela, I know you have your hands full with the big party tonight. Natalie will take care of me and there’s that nice Italian boy who’ll help me back up to my room.”

  I turn and see Gordon del Sarto coming across the lawn. I know he’s doing his big lecture tonight so I’m surprised he’s not in the library fussing with his slides. He steps into the gazebo and sits down on the bench across from Joseph, next to Natalie.

  “Did you bring it?” Natalie asks as soon as he sits down.

  Gordon takes a green flannel pouch out of the pocket of his seersucker jacket. “The buyer at Barney’s was loath to part with it. I had to promise you’d make another one for her.”

  “Barney’s?” I repeat. I’m confused enough by the fact that Gordon and Natalie seem to know each other.

  Gordon nods. “I had some dealings with the jewelry buyer there during our last auction. When Joseph told me about Natalie’s work I knew she’d be interested and she was. She’s commissioned a line from Natalie, but the real surprise came when I saw . . .” Gordon stops because Natalie is nudging him in the ribs.

  “You’re ruining the surprise,” she says, taking the flannel pouch out of Gordon’s hands. She hands it to me. “Here, I wanted you to have this, Professor Greenfeder. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t read your story.”

  I tip the soft pouch over and a cascade of bright stones falls into my hand like water falling into a pool. Even though I know it’s only made of glass and copper wire, I feel as if I’ve been given a Tiffany tiara.

  “Oh, Natalie,” I say, holding the strands up in the light so that the cut glass sends rainbows spinning around the gazebo. “You’ve given me my mother’s necklace!”

  I head up to my room soon after to change for Gordon’s lecture. I have to dress now for the ball afterward since I won’t have time in between. On the way up I pause on the second-floor landing to look at the large window that overlooks the terrace. Harry has ordered the chandelier that hangs above the window to be lowered into its center so that it will be visible from the terrace. It’s part of an array of lighting effects for tonight, including floodlights to light up the hotel’s facade and fireworks for after dinner. This particular chandelier was never electrified and my mother was always too afraid of fire to use it, but Harry has had it refurbished with candles. Paloma Rivera and two other maids have been cleaning the cut-glass pieces in vinegar since early morning. Each crystal drop shines in the last bit of sunlight. I can’t wait to see what it looks like all lit up from the terrace tonight.

  In my room I take a long bath. I use the new lilac-scented bath gel that arrived this week—along with tiny lavender bottles of shampoo and body lotion—all stamped in gold with the Crown Hotels logo. Then I stand in front of my closet in one of the new oversized bath towels with its Crown monogram, wondering what to wear. I’ve worn almost every dress my mother owned this summer, some so often that they no longer smell of cedar, but of my perfume and, if I press my face into the cloth, Aidan. I flick through them, the linen suits and chiffon cocktail dresses, the A-line shifts and cotton piqué sundresses, their delicate fabrics whispering against one another, their shapes belling out with air as I push their hangers along the rod, so that each one seems briefly animate, briefly embodied with my mother’s form. My mother balanced on the edge of a chair in the lounge as she told a guest she’d given up writing, my mother’s silhouette half glimpsed inside a gazebo with a man whose features I can’t make out, my mother walking the halls with outstretched hands, fingertips patting the walls for hidden sparks, fingertips tapping against the walls as if she were typing on the plaster. It’s all I’ve been able to remember of my mother from that last summer and I fear, now that this summer is coming to an end, all that I’ll ever know of her.

  I come to the last dress in the closet, still sealed in its cloth dress bag embossed with the name of the store where it was bought. Bergdorf Goodman, Fifth Avenue, New York. Pretty fancy for my mother, I think while unbuttoning the muslin bag; she usually bought knockoffs or had a dressmaker run up cheap copies of dresses she marked in the fashion magazines. When I push my hand inside the bag the dress inside slides off its hanger and slithers to the floor, a puddle of green silk around my ankles. I pick it up gingerly by its sheer chiffon straps and look for a zipper, which turns out to be cleverly concealed along a side seam.

  At first when I slip the dress over my head I think it’s not going to fit. It seems smaller than my mother’s other dresses and for a moment while I’m trapped inside the narrow column of silk, breathing in its sweet perfume—not my mother’s perfume, I notice—I feel panicky, but then the fabric slides down over my hips, swooshes sideways across my thighs, and flares out over my ankles. I turn to look in the mirror and see myself transformed. The green satin, cut on the bias, skims over every curve like water hugging a rock. A green chiffon swag drapes from the shoulders and pools at the small of my back. Twisting my hand around to the back I can feel that small weights have been sewn into the fabric to make it drape like this. The only thing wrong is the neckline, which is so low that my throat looks bare and exposed. Then I remember Natalie’s present. Noticing that I’m running late, I quickly pin my hair up and then fasten the necklace around my throat. It’s perfect, glittering but light, the green glass teardrop the exact same shade as the dress.

  I walk down the stairs—a dress like this deserves a long, slow entrance—savoring the swoosh of silk against my legs and the vaporish figure reflected in the darkened windowpanes that accompanies me. As I approach the second-floor landing the figure melts into a blaze of candlelight from the chandelier. Gordon del Sarto, just coming out of Joseph’s suite with a small painting tucked under his arm, looks up at me and gasps.

  “Iris, you look absolutely stunning. What an amazing dress. Who made it?”

  I shrug my shoulders, which makes the little weights in the chiffon swag shiver against my back. “I have no idea. It was my mother’s.”

  “May I?” Gordon asks, turning me around before I can answer and dipping his fingers down the back of my dress. I hardly have time to feel shocked or embarrassed. “Just as I thought,” he says, tucking the tag back under the chiffon swag. “Balenciaga. I saw one like it at the Met’s costume institute last year. This is very valuable, you know.”

  “Really? I can’t imagine how my mother came by it . . .” Then I realize that the dress must have been left behind by a guest, like the fake pearls my mother always wore, and knowing that makes the satin feel suddenly oily against my skin. “Maybe I shouldn’t wear it then . . . I mean, if it’s really a museum piece . . .”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” someone says from behind me. I turn and see that it’s Aidan. He must have been right behind me on the stairs. I hardly recognize him in his tuxedo and I remember now that Harry had suggested at the last staff meeting that he rent one for this event. “What’s the use of a dress like that if it can’t be worn by a beautiful woman?”

  “Exactly,” Gordon agrees, “it suits you. And Natalie’s necklace is perfect for it. And you can’t take that off because of the surprise.”

  I give Gordon a puzzled look.

  “You�
��ll see at my lecture, which we’ll be late for if we don’t go down now. Shall we?” Gordon offers me his arm. I turn to Aidan to see if he wants to escort me downstairs, but he’s got both hands in the pockets of his tux.

  “You go ahead,” he says, “there’s something I’ve got to take care of.”

  When we enter the library I still have my hand on Gordon’s arm and I see Phoebe’s eyes widen at the sight of us. Oh well, I think, she certainly went out of her way to tell me she and Gordon weren’t dating. Harry also seems startled to see Gordon and me together and I remember that Phoebe told me that her uncle was under the impression that she and Gordon were involved. Does he think now that I’m stealing his niece’s boyfriend? He certainly seems a little cooler to me. I’d expected that Harry, of all people, would comment on my dress, but he doesn’t. He asks me if I’ve checked on whether the fireworks have been set up on the ledge below the terrace. When I admit I haven’t, he looks annoyed and excuses himself to take care of it.

  I think to follow him, but then Jack comes in talking to Natalie Baehr, and they both simultaneously wolf-whistle at my dress. Gretchen Lu and Mark Silverstein follow and they also make a fuss over me. By the time everyone finishes complimenting me I feel more self-conscious than flattered and it’s time for the lecture to begin. I take a seat near the open French doors, hoping to catch a breeze from the courtyard. It’s a stifling night and I’m beginning to sweat under the heavy silk.

  “Our story begins not in the war-torn Europe of six decades ago, but nearly six centuries in the past, in quattrocento Italy . . .”

  I remember that the last time I heard this introduction I was glad I’d have enough time to get upstairs to Harry’s suite to “borrow” the registration book. Now six centuries seem a lot to get through before dinner.

  Gordon covers the fifteenth-century background—the guilds, the rich merchants, increased interest in fashion and jewelry—and then calls for the first slide, Botticelli’s Allegory of Spring. As soon as the lights go out I feel something brush against the back of my neck. I flinch, imagining that a bat has blundered into the room, but then I realize it’s Hedda Wolfe, in the row behind me, smoothing the chiffon swag hanging down my back.

  “Nice dress,” she says.

  I sigh, tired of the damned dress. No wonder I don’t remember my mother wearing it. It’s the kind of dress that wears you.

  In my irritation, I’ve lost the thread of Gordon’s lecture. He’s describing the headdress popular in the fifteenth century, the ferronière. Instead of the stiff crowns worn in the fourteenth century, the ferronière was a loose band, usually of pearls but sometimes mixed with other gems, that held the hair back and draped over the forehead. He shows us a slide of a Filippo Lippi Madonna who wears a single rope of pearls on her forehead. The pearls and the Madonna’s skin are equally translucent.

  Her image fades into the screen, replaced by a portrait of a noblewoman by an artist whose name I miss. She’s wearing a lavish pearl headpiece, pearl earrings, and ropes of pearls at her neck. Even her dress is studded with pearls.

  “The ferronière was often part of the bride’s parure. Pearls were seen as the perfect adornment not only for the Virgin Mary but also for brides, because they represented purity and chastity. A pearl ferronière might be handed down as part of a bride’s dowry, traveling, therefore, from mother to daughter. Such a gift was given to Catalina della Rosa, the only daughter of wealthy Venetian nobles in the late fifteenth century.”

  The richly adorned noblewoman disappears and the thin, stern face of a child takes her place. She isn’t wearing any jewelry.

  “This is Catalina at age ten. Although the child of one of the richest men in Venice she had already, at this age, pledged herself in secret to the convent of Santa Maria Stella Maris. Unfortunately for Catalina, her parents had other plans for her.”

  Gordon goes on to show us portraits of Catalina’s father, her mother, and the Venetian gentleman she was betrothed to at age fourteen. I’m so caught up in the plight of poor Catalina—who studied Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in secret and wore a hair shirt under her silk dresses to mortify the flesh—that I don’t at first notice Phoebe standing outside the French doors hissing my name. I try to ignore her, but she just gets louder. Afraid she’ll ruin Gordon’s lecture, I get up and step into the courtyard.

  “That’s my mother’s dress,” Phoebe says as soon as I’m outside. “I want to know where the hell you got it.”

  I’m about to hotly deny Phoebe’s allegation when I remember that it had occurred to me earlier that the dress could have been left behind by a guest. Vera Nix did stay here. Still, Phoebe’s tone annoys me. She’s speaking to me as if I were a maid caught wearing her mistress’s clothes.

  “What makes you think that? You could hardly remember it; you were an infant when she died.”

  Even in the dimly lit courtyard I can see Phoebe’s face turn red. I hadn’t meant to offend her—after all, it’s not her fault that her mother died when she was still a baby—but I realize that when Phoebe speaks about her mother she manages to create the impression that she knew her. Maybe she feels as if she did, having worked so closely with her journals, and the reminder that she really didn’t know her mother diminishes her role as her biographer. I’m beginning to see how seriously Phoebe takes that role and I’m also beginning to wonder if I want to become as obsessed with my mother as Phoebe is with hers.

  “There’s a picture of her wearing it at The Stork Club,” Phoebe tells me, resting a hand at her throat protectively, almost as if she’s feeling for the pearls a woman would wear with such a dress, only her neck is bare. “And it’s described in a society column. I believe it’s a Dior.”

  “Well, this dress is a Balenciaga,” I tell her, “but I’d be happy to discuss the dress’s provenance after Gordon’s lecture . . .” I use the term provenance to make her see how silly the whole issue is, but I’ve forgotten how humorless she is.

  “It’s not the only thing your mother stole from my mother,” she says, “which I believe you’ll see when you find your mother’s third book . . .”

  “I’m beginning to think there isn’t a lost manuscript,” I tell her.

  “Maybe you just haven’t looked hard enough because you’re afraid of what you might find.”

  I sigh, exasperated by the argument. “Phoebe, if you’re so sure there is a manuscript, why don’t you look for it. I’d grant you free run of the place but you’ve already given it to yourself.”

  Phoebe’s eyes widen and for a moment I’m afraid I’ve gone too far, that she’ll ruin Gordon’s lecture with a scene, but she turns without a word and leaves the courtyard. Apparently she has no intention of sitting through Gordon’s lecture.

  Back in the library I try to pick up the thread of Gordon’s narrative, but he seems to have strayed from the story of Catalina della Rosa. Instead he is discussing a seventeenth-century painting depicting The Marriage of the Sea—a Venetian festival celebrating Venice’s conquest of Dalmatia and subsequent maritime dominance. I lean back, thinking that perhaps I can get Hedda to tell me what happened to Catalina. Was she forced to give up her Latin and Greek to marry the Venetian nobleman? But Hedda’s chair is empty.

  Before I can scan the room to see where she moved, the sound of Catalina’s name draws my attention back to Gordon.

  “Catalina’s marriage was to be celebrated at this festival. Here I usually show the bridal portrait of Catalina in her full parure, but tonight I will beg of you your patience and forbearance. I have a little surprise planned.”

  Gordon tugs on the right end of his bow tie and the right side of his mouth lifts in a half smile as if it were connected to his neck apparel. I notice that he exchanges a quick look with Natalie, who is seated in the front row, beaming proudly at Gordon. Perhaps this is why Phoebe is in such a state—she’s jealous of Natalie, not my dress.

  “Catalina’s marriage ceremony was to take place directly after the nuptials between Venice and the
sea, the culmination of which occurred when the reigning doge tossed an elaborate wedding ring into the waters off the Lido, reciting as he did the formula ’Desponsesumus te, mare, in signum veri perpetuique dominii.’ Which translates to ‘We wed you sea, in the sign of our true and perpetual dominance.’

  “Imagine,” Gordon says, pausing to look up at his audience, “the crowd’s surprise when the young bride, Catalina della Rosa, rose from her place of honor beside the doge and, tearing her costly ferronière from her hair, tossed the pearls and diamonds into the sea, uttering in flawless Latin ’Spondeo me, Domine, in signum tui veri perpetuique dominii.’ A slight variation from the original formula, which means ‘I pledge myself, Lord, as a sign of your true and eternal dominion.’ And then—” Gordon pauses again, laying his hands flat on top of the lectern and leaning forward. “—she threw herself into the sea.”

  A rustle moves through the audience, like wind moving through trees, as we all imagine the young girl, so desperate to avoid an arranged marriage, drowning herself. I can almost picture the heavy silks dragging Catalina down to the bottom of the sea, and I find myself tugging at the tight seams of my dress and brushing the chiffon swag off my back where it clings to my hot skin. There’s something too, almost familiar about the story, something about that image of pearls sinking under the water . . .

  “Much to Catalina’s disappointment, however, she didn’t drown. She was fished out of the water rather ignominiously and packed off to the family palace where she suffered no more than a bad head cold. The fact that their daughter would rather drown than marry the man they had chosen for her failed to impress the della Rosas. Plans for her marriage continued apace until a remarkable incident—a miracle, many believed—occurred. On the day Catalina’s marriage was to take place the pearl ferronière washed up at the convent of Santa Maria Stella Maris—the very convent Catalina had pledged herself to in secret. When the mother superior of the convent told Catalina’s parents of this miracle Catalina was finally granted her wish. She was able to enter the order of Benedictine nuns, where she lived out her life in scholarly pursuits, the details of which would require more time than we have tonight.