A-Splendid-Ruin(3)
“Alphonse Bandersnitch?”
“He writes the best society column in town.”
We reached the next floor, the green runner abruptly ending at a carpet of orange and red and gold flowers. The pale blue walls wore stucco flourishes, and mirrors in gilded frames ran the full hall, bouncing reflections back and forth, endless Mays walking with endless Goldies. A hall table teemed with more china angels and gold-spotted fawns worshipping a large marble cupid with a harp.
Goldie stopped at a door. “This is your room. Mine is just on the other side of the bath. I decorated it, so I do hope you like it. Papa is hopeless. You would have had boring gold stripes if it were up to him.”
Which might have been more restful than the mauve wallpaper blooming with pink and red roses and bluebirds making nests in tangled green vines. Pink cabbage roses clustered the carpet. Two sets of pink curtains, one lace and one velvet, opened to reveal a view of fog peppered with the tops of buildings and ships’ masts. The room was also as full of things as had been the drawing room. Perfume bottles and gilded lamps, enameled boxes and glass bowls and porcelain cherubs in all manner of poses. I could only stare at the almost aggressive profusion.
Idly, Goldie picked up one of the cherubs, stroking its gilded hair. “I suppose you couldn’t go to many parties while your mother was ill. Was she sick for a long time?”
Her question distracted from the decor. “No. She wasn’t ill. Her death was very sudden. Her heart—”
“Oh? But her letter made it sound quite expected.”
Even more confusing. “She wrote to you?”
“To Mother. How else do you think we found you? Mother had never mentioned you at all.”
How had I known nothing of this? Nothing of a family. Nothing of a letter. The questions that had bedeviled me since I’d received my aunt’s summons returned, along with a familiar flicker of anger. “But why? Why did they not speak of one another?”
Goldie shrugged. “Who knows?”
“You never asked?”
“No.”
“Did she say anything in the letter about my father?”
“Your father? No, not at all.” Goldie glanced away. “Well, I’ll leave you to get ready.”
It was an obvious evasion. I’d had enough experience with Mama to recognize a deliberate change of subject. Perhaps I’d been too eager. That I had family at all was such recent news that I still had trouble believing it. One sister in San Francisco, the other in New York. The distance would have been enough excuse for a lack of knowledge once. But distance was nothing now. A train could bridge the gap in days. A telegraph in no time. If Mama had sent a letter, then she’d clearly known about her sister’s location, as well as her wealth. Why, then, had she never mentioned my aunt?
So many, many secrets. A lifetime of them. “I made a promise to your father, May,” she’d told me, “and what are we if we cannot keep our promises? He will not forget his debt to me, or to you. He was a good and honorable man.” Honorable? Honorable to whom? Certainly not to us. And what had Mama promised in return? Had it something to do with why we’d been so poor? Mama had refused to answer my questions, telling me only that he was a member of New York City society, one of Mrs. Astor’s famous Four Hundred families, the social elite, and that “he would love you if he knew you.” Why, then, did he not know me?
What I saw was that Mama refused to ask him for help, and he didn’t care enough to find us, and I wore boots with cardboard soles that dissolved in the winter slush and threadbare coats donated from charity organizations managed by sanctimonious women of my father’s class. But Mama never wavered in her conviction that he would keep his end of their bargain, whatever it had been. Oh, how she believed and believed and believed. She would not hear a single word against him, and I soon learned to keep my criticisms to myself. I thought that he’d lied to her and abandoned us both, and I had long since grown tired of waiting for whatever he’d promised—and impatient and angry with my mother’s faith in an obviously faithless man.
At twelve I’d insisted upon being taken out of school so I could work. Every spare hour we had together, Mama had schooled me in etiquette and French, dancing, and watercolors. I had always been poised between two lives: the one I lived daily in Brooklyn, and the one my mother had promised me, “One day you’ll want for nothing. You don’t belong here. You are meant for something finer than this.”
But no rich society father had materialized upon her death. Perhaps this was the life she’d been promising instead, with my relatives. Perhaps her promises to my father had something to do with Aunt Florence and San Francisco. But, then, why never mention the Sullivans? What had she written to them? When? I’d never known anything about an illness.
The answers had gone to the grave with my mother, and I told myself, once again, to be patient. No doubt my aunt knew. For now, I wanted to enjoy everything. So I ignored the twitchy prick of discomfort that this was all some terrible mistake. I was to go to my first ball tonight. My life had so suddenly changed for the better that I didn’t want to ruin it with old dissatisfactions.
I had no ball gown, of course. My Sunday best would have to do. It was a decent fawn-colored mousseline, and I’d been complimented on it many times in church and knew it became me. Still, when I put the dress on, the room itself seemed to mock me. I had no jewelry, but Mama had always said that a proper lady did not depend upon ornamentation. Yet my poverty had never been so evident. I looked a poor church mouse in a gilded, bejeweled box.