Bright Young Things (6 page)

He smiled faintly. “But how do you know I am not waiting for someone?”

“Are
you waiting for someone?” she asked, a hint of flirtatious challenge wavering in her voice. There was something about the way he said it that made her believe him and suspect one of the well-heeled ladies seated at the bar of biding her time until she left. But before he could answer, the waiter returned. Whatever they had been saying was lost among the placing of glasses on napkins, the administering of soda water, the relighting of his cigarette.

“To you, whoever you are,” he said, raising his glass once the waiter had departed.

She raised her glass just the way he‧d done, and touched his so that it made a sound.

“To a perfect moment. May it never end,” he concluded, and drank.

She drank, too, but not with his assurance. The sensation on her tongue was sweet and scorching at once, and when she swallowed the mouthful of thick, sugary liquid, she felt dizzy and had to close her eyes. The glass was still cool against her palm, but then she felt the warm sensation of his fingertips on her wrist.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied and opened her eyes. It seemed remarkable that only yesterday she‧d woken up in a very far-off place and now she was here, and then she heard herself say: “I grew up in Ohio, but in fact I was born here in New York. It‧s my first night back in town. I‧m here to find my father.”

All of that ought to be followed by a great deal of explanation, she supposed. Yet she was in no particular hurry. He had said he hoped the moment would never end, and indeed she felt that she might go on contentedly like this forever. The air was rich, and the drinks were cold. In every corner of the room, a gentleman or lady was watching or being watched, and Cordelia paused, taking in the crowd, until she realized that she was in fact one of the ladies being observed.

“Your father?”

Letty was standing over her, wearing a new shade of lipstick.

“But I thought we were here because …” The room had grown blurry, and Letty found she couldn‧t finish her sentence. Already tonight she had been accosted and then saved by a cigarette girl named Paulette, who had taken Letty aside and cleaned her up and made sure she understood that that kind of thing happened to everybody, and she needn‧t go to confession over it or quit the city before she even got a real taste. Paulette had then given her a swipe of red lipstick and a shot of brandy to calm her nerves. After that Letty began to see that good people could be found anywhere.

But that new sense of calm waned when she came to stand beside her old friend and overheard her saying something that didn‧t make any kind of sense. “I thought we came because I was meant to be a star,” she finally said, though it sounded foolish to her now.

Cordelia‧s cheeks had grown rosy, and her eyes were dark and mysterious. She sat up straight and then paused. The other Washborne girls had been absorbed by the crowd. Everything in the vast room swam toward Letty and away.

“My father—he‧s here.” The dim light accentuated Cordelia‧s cheekbones, as well as the haughtiness of which she was sometimes capable. She glanced back at the man she‧d been talking to, as if they shared something, though he‧d already looked away and begun to recede into the background. Then she turned the glass of amber liquid in a circle across the table and went on in a nonchalant tone. “Not here at the club, here in New York. I‧m going to find him.”

Letty‧s red mouth stood open, and the whites of her eyes expanded. Up until that moment she had believed she‧d known everything about Cordelia; now she wondered if she knew anything. She wanted to ask why her oldest friend had never told her of this suspicion before, or how she had come by it, and if it was the whole reason they had left everything they‧d ever known for a vast and fearsome city, or if Letty‧s hopes and dreams had played even a small role in the decision. But she was afraid that if she spoke again, she would begin to cry. Then she‧d have to be taken aside a second time and cleaned up again, and she already felt sufficiently humiliated.

Letty turned and hurried toward the exit.

“Letty, wait!” Cordelia yelled after her.

But Letty was pushing through clots of people, all straining in the opposite direction to be in the spot she had just vacated. Even in the entryway a raucous good time was being had, and she probably should not have been surprised that with all the shouting and revelry, her stricken expression went entirely unnoticed.

“Letty!” She heard Cordelia yell again once she had traveled halfway down the block. There were fewer people outside now, and the warm windows of a few brick houses illuminated the darkened street below.

Although Letty did not turn around, Cordelia‧s long strides soon brought the two girls side by side.

“Don‧t be angry,” she said.

Letty did not at first glance up as they continued at a furious pace back toward the Washborne. “I didn‧t even know you had a father,” she said eventually. “You never told me. I tell you everything, and you never even—”

“Well, I don‧t know for sure,” Cordelia went on, in a placating tone, as they turned off the avenue and onto their own twisting street. Then she sighed as though she had stumbled upon an irritating but simple misunderstanding. “I know where he is, because he‧s famous. At least, I think he is. He‧s that bootlegger, Darius Grey. It‧s not coincidental that we have the same name. Aunt Ida always said that I should keep my father‧s name as a reminder of the sinful life that had begot me … And I‧ve read the papers: It would have been right around the time Mr. Grey had to leave Chicago for New York. He was small-time then, and that‧s what Aunt Ida always implied my daddy was: small-time and crooked. Of course, she doesn‧t keep up with the news. She doesn‧t know what he‧s become.”

“We came all this way because you think Darius Grey is your father?” Letty shrieked. Her body had gone cold, and the great distance between her and everything she‧d ever known felt suddenly more real and more painful than before. “You really believe he‧ll just take you in? He‧s a criminal. You think a man like that wants a daughter to take care of? You think he doesn‧t have a dozen forgotten children all over the country?” For a moment, Letty thought she might cry. Instead she heard herself wail: “You‧re deluded!”

“Me? You‧re the one who‧s deluded,” Cordelia shot back, just as quickly. “You think you can just show up in Manhattan, and instantly you‧ll be a star? There are thousands of girls trying to make it in this city.”

The night air was cooler than it had been during the day, but both girls had grown hot by now. They had ceased to notice anything about their surroundings, or whether any of the old men on stoops watched them. By the time they spotted the Washborne, Letty‧s throat was sore and all logic had gone out of her sentences.

“You‧re a liar!” Letty shrieked, her tiny mouth like a balled fist as she looked up at the girl who had once been her best friend. She placed a hand on the railing of the Washborne‧s steps.

“I am not.” Cordelia stared back, her eyes wide open and full of fire.

“What‧s this?”

They both turned, startled, and saw the housemother through the crack of the doorway, her hair in the same ornate arrangement, her body covered in a full-length dressing gown. The blood drained from Letty‧s face.

“What‧s what?” Letty asked, drawing herself up innocently. Overhead, the leaves of the trees rustled, but everything else was quiet.

The housemother‧s long fingers clung to the doorway, and she put her head forward to sniff the air dramatically. “Alcohol,” she said.

“Excuse me?” Cordelia replied.

But their faces were flushed, and there would be no convincing the housemother now. Her eyes had grown narrow, her mind hardened with conviction. “There is no drinking and no carousing in this house.” The old lady‧s nose pointed upward and the corners of her mouth turned down. “I thought you were good girls, but I was wrong. You‧ll have to be going now, before you corrupt the others.”

Of course, it was not their malignant natures that had gotten them in trouble, only their newness; had they lived in the city a few more days, they would have known how to fool the housemother. As it was, they were escorted to their room and watched as they packed their few things.

“But we‧ve paid for the whole week,” Cordelia protested, once they were back in the lobby.

“Perhaps God saw that and will take it as partial penance for what you‧ve done,” the housemother answered coldly, before slamming the front door against their faces.

Outside, the moon dressed the cobblestones in pools of white, and the air felt damp. Letty was so shocked and ashamed to have been put out on the street that she almost ceased to remember her rage. Almost. She stood watching Cordelia in the moonlight; her features and her stance were the same as always, but there was something strange about her. She had been cruel to Letty for the first time, and Letty found she wanted to be cruel back. “I don‧t know that I like you anymore,” she managed finally.

If Cordelia flinched, it was subtle. “I suppose you‧re on your own, then,” was all she said, and then she turned and walked alone into the night, her suitcase bouncing against her hip.

The city howled all around, and a chill settled into Letty‧s bones. She wanted to call out to Cordelia and beg her to stay, to tell her that she couldn‧t possibly survive alone. But over the course of that day, she had already felt her heart swell and sink, and then she‧d shouted with a fury she had not known herself capable of, and at that late hour, it seemed her voice was no longer up to the task.

6

THE TOWN OF WHITE COVE HAD BEEN FOR SOME generations unyieldingly small and outrageously expensive; it was close enough to the city to attract a great deal of wealth, but offered enough natural beauty and quiet that one could go there with his secrets and count on seclusion. The grand houses were surrounded by buffers of hedges or high gates or arboretums, and were either completely invisible to their neighbors or only willing to reveal themselves in coy parts: a few white columns here, a tiled roof there, a lap pool reflecting the orange and pink glow of sunset above. To Astrid, reclining in the spacious backseat of a Daimler that did not belong to her, it was a sky deliciously reminiscent of sherbet.

So,
she thought, as they proceeded through the gates and up the long gravel path,
it is not to be a small party after all.
The narrow public road that connected the estates did not look like much—pine trees and intermittent pavement—and the whole stretch on either side of the Greys’ place was lined with automobiles, pulled to the side so that their right tires were in the ditch. Guests in willowy dresses and lightweight suits strolled through the gates, where they were observed by discreetly out-of-view gunmen, before venturing up the lawn. They did not have to be told that only known vehicles were allowed on the property.

“Mr. Charlie says I should bring you ‘round the side,” the driver announced when they had almost reached the house.

Astrid smiled and said nothing.

Her forehead was mostly covered by the band of a turquoise and silver beaded headpiece, which skimmed over her ears and was fastened at the back of her skull under a curve of rich yellow hair. Her lips were very red, and the skin of her eyelids was shaded deep purple; the dress she wore was made up of exquisite diamond-shaped pieces of silver-colored silk, with a rather low neckline supported by whisper-thin straps. Charlie had given it to her on her seventeenth birthday; he had delivered it to her at school himself, along with a hundred white roses. Only girls were allowed on the campus, of course—it was still a mystery how he had managed it without getting caught.

The fading day had cast the grass the color of straw, and the guests were trailed by their own long shadows as they ascended toward the vast white tent, strung up with tiny lights, where a band had already begun to play. But Charlie wanted Astrid to be dropped not at the tent or even on the grand stone steps of the house, but around the side, and she couldn‧t help but wonder, as she often did with Charlie, if it wasn‧t because there was some treat in it for her: a bracelet he wanted to slip on her wrist before the party, or a room filled with the smell of hyacinth, or baskets laden with pink grapefruit shipped all the way from Texas. So she went on smiling, and once they‧d come to a stop, she let the driver help her out of the backseat and up to the side entrance. She shivered—it was almost a premonition of the chill that would really come only late at night—and wondered if Charlie hadn‧t chosen a new fur for her. It was hardly the right time of year for it, but that would be just like him.

She went through a darkened spare room and then into the gothic library with its showy, uncut books. When she saw Charlie, she stopped. His back was to her, the broad expanse of it crossed by dark suspenders that held up light brown pinstriped pants. As often happened when she entered a room and saw him for the first time after a matter of hours or weeks, she found that she had forgotten how unusually tall he was, and had to let her heart calm a few seconds. She loved the size of him. She wondered if it was possible to love someone as much as she loved Charlie.

Beyond him, in a stuffed leather chair by the window, was Elias Jones, who always seemed to be in Charlie‧s father‧s wake, doing him some discreet and loyal service. He was probably in his late thirties, and he had a long horse‧s face capable of only a few expressions. His gaze rose slowly to assess Astrid, and then Charlie turned. When she saw his eyes, she knew there was no gift for her.

“Thank you, Elias,” Charlie said. There was fury in his tone.

Elias rose and gave Astrid a gentlemanly nod. When he opened the door, the twinkling voices of a few women and men—particular guests of the Greys who mingled in the glass-enclosed west porch, having a first cocktail of the evening—carried in the air. He left the room.

“Hello, mister.” Astrid put a flirtatious hand on her hip and smiled at Charlie with one corner of her mouth.

“Don‧t try that with me,” Charlie snapped as he took several long steps toward her.

“Try what?” Astrid asked innocently.

A moment ago she had felt such expectation and excitement over being Charlie‧s special guest, but now she wanted nothing so much as to be with those others down the hall.

“Acting sweet to cover up the things you done.”

Astrid‧s smile dissolved. “What things?”

“You know exactly what things,” Charlie replied hotly.

Now it was her turn to speak angrily. “I certainly don‧t, and if you think I enjoy playing silly guessing games with you, then you are sorely mistaken.”

“That tack may work with your teachers at your fancy school. But it ain‧t gonna work with me. I know you been flirting with strange men in your own home, eating breakfast in the kitchen with ‘em and God knows what else.”

Astrid returned his accusation with a cool stare. Honesty had never been a point of sentimentality with her. “You‧re crazy,” she said. Then she brushed past. She was almost to the door when she felt his grip on her arm.

“I see everything you do.” His breath was on her ear—unpleasant with whatever he‧d eaten for lunch, and she disliked him irrationally for it.

She glanced back at his face, at its high, taut plains, at the constrictions of his neck. His fingertips were pressing into the white skin of her pale, soft arm; her eyes darted from the red irritation growing there and back to meet his.

“Your jealousy tires me,” she announced, allowing a decided lightness to creep back into her tone, before shaking him off and striding on, in the direction of the voices, toward the safe clinking of glasses and excited murmurings.

Astrid moved through the crowd in the enclosed porch, ahead of Charlie, toward the edge of the room, where she could look down at the girls in slinky dresses on the lawn below and the men trying to get up the courage to talk to them. She knew Charlie had followed her, but she was still jarred when he put his mouth near her ear and spoke again.

“Well, if you weren‧t flirting with him”—his voice had now grown a little plaintive—“who was he, and what did you want with him anyway?”

“If you are so determined to bore me, I may just have to go home.” Astrid sighed carelessly. “What a shame, when I am wearing such a pretty dress.”

“It‧s only that I‧d hate to rough up a man who doesn‧t deserve it,” Charlie—becoming gruff again—shot back.

Down below, Astrid noticed a boy, who would have been handsome except for his unfortunately large ears, whisper something to a long, thin girl with straight blond hair, which made her blush. Astrid‧s heart softened, remembering how involuntarily pink a girl could become. When they were first in love, Charlie used to make
her
blush all the time. Suddenly she was sick of always being this way with Charlie—of adoring him and hating him, of promising each other everything one moment and tearing each other down the next. She twirled to face him.

“Oh, let‧s not be quarrelsome!”

But by the time the words had lifted off her tongue, Charlie had already turned, his attention caught by something near the door, and before she could help it, the softening in her heart had ceased. A moment ago, she would have done anything to win back his goodwill, but his distraction angered her, and she drew herself up, hard and proud, and decided not to give him any more of her attention.

Some minutes before Astrid and Charlie‧s hushed altercation, a dusty pickup slowed to a stop down on the main road, in front of Dogwood.

“Right here is fine, sir,” a very different sort of girl announced.

“Here?” The farmer looked away from her, toward the wrought-iron fence and the row of cars along the side of the road. His brow was rippled with misgiving. “Are you sure, honey?”

Cordelia took a deep breath and smoothed the skirt of her light blue dress. “Yes.” It was the only explanation she felt it necessary to give the old man, who wore overalls just like all the old-man farmers where she came from and had the same deep lines in his face.

She was not without trepidation, but she had no intention of showing it. Anyway, whatever doubt she felt was overcome by the strength of her desire to prove that Letty was wrong, that the connection between Cordelia Grey and Darius Grey was not fantastical in the least.

“Thank you,” she added, and then she slipped down from the worn green vehicle and slammed shut the door. For a moment she left her hand on the metal side, feeling the warm shaking of the engine.

“You take care, now,” the man said, and then he gave the truck gas and went on down the road.

She stood still, her limbs heavy, until the smell of exhaust and dust faded. It had been a long time since she‧d slept. She‧d moved through the night and the morning with a single purpose. Of course—as she had discovered at about dawn—she had been going about finding her way to White Cove all wrong, and her feet had taken her instead to the southern tip of Manhattan. If her peregrinations had delivered her to some other place, she might have grown angry, but the smell of the sea was new to her, and she had been able to see—through the freight and masts—piers and houses across the water, sparkling at the beginning of the day.

“That‧s Brooklyn,” an old bum had told her.

“Brooklyn,” she mouthed to herself. She knew, from the maps she used to collect and study, that Brooklyn was part of the city but also on Long Island. There was something whimsical and genteel about the word—not at all like Manhattan, which had the bravado of a conquering Indian—and it gave her courage. She remembered how, when she and Letty went to the movie theater in Defiance, they would walk along the road with their thumbs extended for a ride, and she figured that New Yorkers might not be such a foreign race that they didn‧t use that gesture, too. She had hitched with several different people, of all types, and she had walked a good deal of the way, too. It had taken her all day, but now, at dusk, she found herself on the road that snaked by the famous bootlegger‧s mansion.

The gates stood open, but for a moment she was paralyzed by the notion that she was standing on the threshold of the place she‧d been yearning to see for so many years. There remained, ever since the conversation with Letty, a great angry knot inside her. It insisted that with a few graceful hand gestures, she could make logical the strange history of her origins. How her mother, the younger of the two Larson girls of Union, Ohio, had been spotted on the front porch of her parents’ Elm Street home during the long, hot summer of ‘09, by a young man working as a driver for a Chicago gangster who was well known in those days but whose name is now forgotten. Fanny Larson had been sixteen at the time, and the driver knew at a glance that he had to have her. He had told her father as much, but the Larsons were God-loving people and didn‧t want their daughter mixed up with that unsavory element. But Fanny had never seen a display of romantic feeling like what this young man showed her. She left that same day and went east to live with him.

Sometimes they had a good deal of money, and sometimes they had none, but nothing was ever so perfect as that summer day when they first laid eyes on each other. It was when Fanny realized she was pregnant that she began writing home again and came to regret the choices she had made. This according to Aunt Ida, who burned all the letters. Of course Aunt Ida would never do harm to a Bible, and so when Cordelia was given her mother‧s copy, she found the love letter buried deep in its pages with the signature
D.G.
That was the year Cordelia started working in Uncle Jeb‧s shop, and the legend of Darius Grey was just beginning to spread west, and she began to put the two stories together.

Soon after giving birth to her only daughter, Fanny fell ill, and there was no money for a doctor, and they had run out on their bills when the baby came, so there was no goodwill, either. “The only sensible thing your mother ever did,” Aunt Ida used to enjoy telling her niece, “was telegramming me when she knew the end was near. I came immediately and took you away from the bad man who was your father, and brought you back home. And he
was
a bad man, an evil man, even—and I think he would have stopped me by whatever violent means, had he not been so weak with drink when I found him.”

Cordelia was certain that he had only been distraught, and if he had not been laid so low by her mother‧s death, he would certainly have made sure his daughter wasn‧t taken from him. He wasn‧t a bad man, she had assured herself in the silence of Aunt Ida‧s hall closet, where she was made to stand in the darkness when she had broken a rule, or sent to bed when she was not yet tired enough to fall asleep. And now it was plain to her, as she looked across the sprawling lawn at the parallel rows of lindens that ran along either side of a gravel driveway, at the soft curve of a hill that obscured all but the sparkling roof of a grand house—for no one truly evil could live in a place as beautiful as that.

People whose whole bodies were dotted with bright and colorful ornaments, and who seemed already to have drunk in some joy that evening, were moving in twos and threes along the side of the road and through the front gates.

“Darling, have you never been to any of Grey‧s parties?” said a voluptuous girl in pink flowered chiffon, which at that hour proved see-through.

“Isn‧t it shaming?” replied another.

“Yes!” cried the first, and afterward the whole lot of them shrieked in laughter.

Cordelia had that itchy sensation as though she were being watched, and her eyes darted to a little guardhouse on the edge of the property. It appeared empty, but she couldn‧t shake the suspicion of a presence there. Still, she kept close enough to the well-dressed group she was trailing to conceivably be one of them, and she held her old trench folded over her arm, the way she had seen New York women do it.