A Well-Behaved Woman

by Therese Anne Fowler

  Alva swallowed a sob.

  Throughout the lengthy ceremony, her eyes leaked in a steady trickle that at the pronouncement of marriage briefly became a stream.

  She had done it.

  It was done.

  Her daughter was forever protected from fortune-hunting playboys, from seeing opportunity pass her by while her friends went off gaily to (sometimes) better fates. Consuelo Vanderbilt had in the space of mere moments, in a single sentence uttered by a man she might never see again after today, been transformed into a living piece of history.

  Alva spent the remainder of the morning in a daze. Certainly she left the church, boarded her carriage, traversed the avenues and arrived at her home, where she hosted the wedding breakfast, accepted congratulations, talked, laughed, ate. Her awareness of it later, though, was a scene as viewed through fog. How suddenly came the time for the newlyweds to go. How rapidly the duke and his just-anointed duchess were exiting the house in a shower of rice, off to Italy and Egypt.

  Alva watched from a window. Consuelo waved to her. Alva waved in return. Possibly in this moment both of them had the same thought: What in heaven’s name did I just do?

  X

  ON A COLD day shortly before Christmas, Oliver surprised Alva by appearing on the Marble House veranda, where she’d been standing with her face tilted up to the sun.

  The last she’d heard from him, he was with Bryan taking meetings in Cincinnati, where he had also been to the zoo “visiting Harold’s elephant,” he’d written, the Grey Crag partnership having been dissolved in the wake of William’s poor behavior. Oliver had placed many of the animals at the zoo in Cincinnati.

  Though she had wished for him to stay nearby after the wedding, she couldn’t begrudge his purposeful travel. In fact she was proud of him. He might easily have done as most of the men in their class did: use all his resources for his own amusements (cf. William K. Vanderbilt). He might have taken a pretty young wife. Why hadn’t he taken a wife? Theories ranged from his being irreparably broken by Sallie’s dismissal to his being secretly in love with a society matron with an unrhymable first name. Alva was aware of the speculation as regards her role in his drama. How nice it would be if those gossipy ladies were correct, for a change!

  He had, however, remained steadfastly platonic in their interactions. Whatever had once motivated his love for her was gone. He said now, “Mrs. Evelyn told me you’d run away and joined up with Barnum’s circus.”

  “And so I did,” she said, turning toward him. “Trapeze. But when Mr. Barnum put us on holiday hiatus, I thought I would benefit from a little time here.”

  “Very sensible. Quite the year it’s been.”

  “Quite.”

  “Last year this time, you were convinced I was the enemy.”

  “And would have remained convinced, had you not been so thoughtful as to come see me on Christmas Eve.”

  He said, “How are you now, having conquered society on both sides of the Atlantic?”

  “I’m well,” she replied. “My world has been righted after all—though getting it there took everything I had. I’ll confess, though: this year I’m a little forlorn with my daughter away in England and my boys off with the rest of the Vanderbilts to see George’s new estate. Biltmore, he’s named it.”

  “The house is done, then?”

  “Sufficiently enough to allow visitors, William says. Richard’s sons took it over to finish the job. I hear it has a bowling alley and a swimming pool indoors. No wonder it gave Richard fits.”

  “Not unlike my having horses living in Belcourt.”

  “Belcourt was no chore to build, I’m certain.”

  They stood side by side, squinting out at the whitecapped water. Alva said, “What are you doing up here, anyway? I thought you’d closed your place for the winter.”

  “I told you before: I don’t like to think of you being lonely. You weren’t in New York and I was worried about you.”

  She laughed. “You truly are as mad as they say.”

  “Madder, probably; how does one appraise these things? That said, I am not the one who has been standing outside of a perfectly good, warm house on a frigid day.”

  “If I had any manners, I would invite you inside.”

  “I am hopeful you have none, because then you’ll more easily forgive me for this,” he said, then put his hand on the back of her head and kissed her. She could not have been more surprised if he had sprouted wings and lifted himself in flight.

  The kiss was tender at first, then forceful. When they parted, both of them were breathing hard, their commingled breaths making a cloud around them. “There, I’ve broken my promise,” he said, “and I am not sorry in the least.”

  Alva couldn’t speak.

  “What’s more,” he went on, “I am determined to do it again.”

  And he did. When he released her, she said, her voice full of wonder, “But I thought you didn’t—that is, that you had ceased to—”

  “Oh, no, I do. I always have. And dare I hope that your response suggests a mutual affection? Unless I am badly mistaken, in which case I offer my most ardent apology. I’ll go right now, straight back to the depot—”

  “No! No, you’re not mistaken. It is mutual. It always has been.”

  “I felt it was! Despite everything. Though you hardly indicated—”

  “How could I?”

  “No, of course. Yet it was always there. An affinity. A kind of chemistry between us. The tether of gravity, I would say, no less powerful than the moon to the earth or the earth to the sun.”

  Alva had to laugh. He was quite pleased with himself.

  Really, this was impossible to fathom. Even had she attempted to conjure such a scene, she would not have known to make it so joyful.

  So this was love.

  She said, “A man of science and a poet now, are you?”

  “A man of all interests and trades. A man of the world. Alva’s man, now, if she is so inclined.”

  “I hardly know what to think! Except that I think we had better get warm and, I don’t know, discuss this further, I suppose.”

  They went to the Gothic Room and seated themselves near the fire. This room was his favorite, just as it was Alva’s. It was more austere than the other rooms, more intimate. A space for quiet reflection—though what was happening inside her mind was very much the opposite. Oliver Belmont had kissed her passionately! Everything was different and strange. What came next? What were his intentions? She might as well be a virginal maid of fifteen for the tumult going on inside her. Was one never beyond the capacity for feeling so desperate and ill about love?

  Oliver said, “So you aren’t scandalized by my actions?”

  “Scandalized? Me? You’ll have to try much harder than that.”

  The one maid she kept on staff in winter brought in a tray with coffee and biscuits, then discreetly hurried out as Oliver was saying, “When you and Vanderbilt separated, for the first time I thought my long shot could actually pay. It has been difficult to bide my time. I have been dying to take action.”

  “I’m delighted the action occurred to you at all.”

  “Oh, I am full of such occurrences,” he said.

  He poured coffee for them and handed Alva her cup. She liked his hands—the length of his fingers, the tidy squares of his fingernails, the calluses on the pads of his fingers, a result of so many years holding reins. Was there a tremor in his grip as he handed over the cup? She concentrated on keeping her own cup steady, letting the heat warm her palms, thinking only of that and not her rabbit-fast heartbeat. Not the recollection of his lips against hers. His warm mouth. Oh—she was thinking of those things, wasn’t she? She was thinking of those things and of the sensation in her center, a warm and urgent feeling she had rarely addressed, and never without some shame.

  She was beyond that shame now—or if she wasn’t, she was determined to be.

  She said, “Am I awful to admit I suffered and wished that you suffered
along with me? I was thoroughly committed to my marriage—foolishly, I know now—and yet I still—”

  “Yes, awful. Irredeemable, in fact.” He stood up and extended his hand to her. “Therefore, no harm in indulging every level of corruption. Is anyone besides the maid about?”

  “Only downstairs,” she said, taking his hand.

  Now her heart was pounding so fast she feared she might collapse or faint or who knew what before she saw this through to wherever he meant it to go. Ridiculous! She was too old to be so fearful, giddy, eager—except that she was, in fact, all of those things and therefore must not be too old.

  Oliver kept hold of her hand, leading her up the staircase and to her bedroom where, once inside, he closed and locked the door.

  “Now,” he said, backing her against the wall.

  She attempted to gather her wits. “Oliver, I’m…”

  “What?”

  “Not so young as I once was.”

  He looked at her severely. “Do you want me to kiss you?”

  “And it’s been a very long time since—”

  “Will you let me kiss you?”

  She laughed. “I will.”

  And he did. He pushed against her. Their breathing grew ragged.

  “How many years?” he said, putting his mouth against her neck. His teeth grazed her earlobe. His tongue traced higher. “So many years, waiting for this.”

  “Yes,” she said, to all of it.

  He stripped her gloves from her hands and dropped them at their feet. Then his hands were on her shoulders, her neck, her breast. Undoing her hooks and buttons. Shedding his coat and jacket and shirt. Pushing her bodice off her shoulders, stroking her bare skin. Unbuttoning her skirt, pushing it down. Unhooking her corset and tossing it aside. Pulling her toward the bed and then down onto it with him.

  He asked, “This is no accusation: Has there been anyone other than William?”

  She shook her head. “And it was never … That is, I didn’t…”

  He shifted so that he was leaning on one elbow. “Let’s begin here,” he said, moving her chemise strap off her shoulder. “I intend to spoil you in ways I suspect you haven’t even imagined. You deserve to be spoiled.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. “Suppose I let you down?”

  “Then I’ll toss you back like a cankerous fish.”

  This made her laugh again. “Fair enough.”

  He said, “In some parts of the world, young men are trained up to put the desires and pleasures of their partner before their own. This has always seemed to me not only fair but wise. Happy companionship using every capacity God has given us. I’ve read up on this a good deal.”

  “Oh, you’ve read up on it,” Alva said.

  Kissing her forehead, he said, “You are the only woman I’ve ever truly wanted.”

  He pushed the strap farther down and his mouth followed his hands. Then his hands found her waist, her ribs, her breasts. He stroked her neck, loosened her hair and combed his hand through it. He kissed her jaw, her chin, her mouth.

  When he said Kiss me, she did, and when he said Touch me, she did that, too, and when he put his hand where she’d once been forbidden to put hers, when he murmured, Just allow yourself to feel it, she was no longer nervous or scared. His fingers stroked her, he pressed his hips to her thigh, desire plain, and when she cried out, he moved onto her and she pulled him in. “I want this,” she said, looking up at him.

  He smiled. “And you shall have it.”

  The sensation was familiar and yet so strange. He was deliberate, kissing her, watching her, asking, as he shifted her leg or his, pushed up from her or pressed her down, Is this good? It was good, and it went on, and intoxication overtook her, her mind so full of this, of him. He moved sensuously, his mouth at her ear, his words praising, enticing, encouraging her. And then she was gasping, then calling out, and after he did, too, she burst into hard, happy tears of surprise and gratitude and wonder.

  “Will you marry me?” she said.

  Oliver laughed. “Finally! The lady comes to her senses.”

  He raised himself up to look at her. “I’m going to run for the U.S. House. Would you want to be a congressman’s wife?”

  “Only if you want to be a congressman.”

  “Do you feel the children will approve of our pairing?”

  “They have always loved you. I think that will bear out.”

  “Then I accept. Be my wife and partner in all things, Alva. The world will be our oyster.”

  “Feed me,” she said.

  * * *

  The day after their marriage in January, she and Oliver went to dine at Sherry’s, and there in the foyer saw Laura Davies and her husband. Laura Davies, the selfsame woman who had turned her back on Alva at the charity meeting two years earlier and hadn’t acknowledged her even one time since, was saying now, “Why, it’s Mr. and Mrs. Belmont! May we offer our congratulations? What happy news.”

  Alva said, “You may. And I am so very happy about it myself that I won’t remark further.” She nodded to the maître d’hôtel to show them to their table. There she said to Oliver, “That woman snubbed me for two years.”

  “For two years, you weren’t married. Now all is right again. Everyone is in her correct place.”

  “Well, I can’t disagree with that.”

  * * *

  Not long afterward, Willie brought the news that after a round of stubborn fighting with Neily about Grace Wilson, Corneil woke the following morning, ate breakfast, went to his study, and slumped over in his armchair, completely insensible. The doctors said it was a stroke.

  Alice blamed Neily. Neily married the girl just the same, and Corneil didn’t die from the insult.

  While Corneil was recovering, Alva and Oliver went to Long Island to buy a home site in East Meadow, on which they would build a new house. Already they had Classical, with Marble House; with Belcourt, they had Gothic; why not try Colonial Revival this time around?

  While the new house rose, Corneil’s health worsened. While Alva was gaining the trust and friendship of Oliver’s man, Azar, and overseeing alterations to Belcourt so that it would better accommodate a married pair, Alice, having seen Corneil through a second stroke, was reacquainting herself with strong, efficient nurses whose job it was to get her husband out of his bed, into his wheelchair, into and out of the bath.

  While Alva was in England seeing her first grandson born, while she was in Newport encouraging Willie to court and marry Tessie Oelrichs’s youngest sister, Birdie, while she was on the Upper East Side of New York City scouting locations for the townhouse she and Oliver wanted to build near Central Park, Alice was fretting over Corneil’s decline. Alice was being awakened, early one morning, by her husband calling out from his bedroom next to hers, “I think I’m dying!” He then proved himself correct.

  While Alice was donning the black she would wear for the rest of her life, Alva was starting hers over again. She was very sorry for Alice, but she was not otherwise sorry.

  * * *

  “Will you help me with this chain?” Alva asked Mary. She was seated at her vanity table, dressed and nearly ready for the night’s festivities. One of the great pleasures of this new life had been the chance to fully cultivate Mary as a friend.

  Mary came to stand behind her and took the necklace from her hands. “I do like that now you have to ask.”

  The necklace was simple in design: a silver chain with a cameo of Oliver in profile. Alva had it made especially to imitate the buttons they would distribute to every guest at tonight’s New Year’s celebration—and not an ordinary one: tonight marked the final hours of the nineteenth century.

  At the button’s top border were the words For Congress and at its bottom, Oliver H. P. Belmont. A photograph of him in profile filled the center of the button. He looked distinguished. Congressional.

  “There, all set,” Mary said.

  Alva put her fingers to the cameo. “My Oliver is hands
ome, isn’t he?”

  “He is. It’s a shame women can’t vote.”

  “A shame for so many reasons,” Alva said, standing. “Look at you! You are a beauty yourself.”

  Mary, who showed her age only in the lines around her eyes, stood before the cheval glass and smiled at her reflection. “I am rather fine. Which doesn’t mean your other guests are going to be thrilled to have us here.”

  The us of Mary’s reference consisted of Mary and her husband of three years, Caleb Taylor, an attorney whose practice was in San Juan Hill.

  Alva said, “If they aren’t thrilled, they’re not Oliver’s voters—and they’re not friends of mine, and they can leave.”

  “You’ve made an art of cutting your losses, I have to say. I always knew you could do it, I just wasn’t ever certain you would.”

  “May the burning of my bridges—if indeed any more are burned—light the way for others!”

  “Alva, you do know it’s only me here.”

  “I’m rehearsing,” Alva said.

  “For tonight? I thought it was Oliver who’ll be speaking.”

  “For eventually.”

  * * *

  That Alva had found love and was so wholly content did not mean she was going to spend all her days eating éclairs and reading stories by Edith Wharton, say (though the stories were quite good). Alva commended her old friend, the former Edith Jones, for taking action with her talents. She did admire women who took action—which was why she could not spend all her time reading. They had a campaign to launch and a House seat to win, and if it was unfortunate that the only way she (or any woman) could do this was through a man—well, every tree had to start from a seed, did it not?

  She and Oliver had hired a ten-piece orchestra, as well as the new chef from Delmonico’s. They would have three hundred revelers in attendance. Now Alva found Oliver standing before the orchestra as the men warmed up their instruments. He faced them, his hands clasped behind his back. On his head was a shiny tin crown.

  “King Oliver, I presume.”

  He turned. “Ah, my lovely queen!” He assessed the fruit-and-flowers garland she wore, and grinned. “You look delicious.”