Lilac Girls (10 page)

C
hristmas Eve day, Paul and I made it over to the Fifth Avenue Skating Pond in Central Park. I loved to skate, having learned on Bird Pond near our house in Connecticut, but rarely practiced, since I avoided most activities that made me look taller than necessary. Plus, I'd never had anyone to skate with before. Betty would have rather swallowed live bees than be seen on skates. I vowed to take full advantage of Paul's time in New York.

It was perfect skating weather that day, clear and sharp with a stiff wind, which overnight had made the ice smooth as the finish on a billiard ball. As a result, the flag atop Belvedere Castle was up, the red sphere on a white field every skater coveted. Word that the ice was ready passed from doorman to doorman along Fifth Avenue, and the pond became thick with skaters as a result.

The first tier of skaters was already there when Paul and I arrived. The men, near professionals, performed their genuflections and whirligig spins, icicles on their beards and noses. Then the ladies arrived, two or three at a time, their heavy coats like sails blowing them across the ice. With a little practice, Paul proved to be a serviceable skater, and arms linked, we glided throughout the network of adjoining ponds. My old self never would have skated in such a public place, but I tackled the ice with vigor, and we soon found a nice rhythm together. Suddenly I felt like trying every sort of new thing.

We sailed under arched bridges to Beethoven's
Moonlight Sonata
and Waldteufel's
The Skaters' Waltz,
which couldn't have sounded lovelier, even transmitted through the skate shack's tinny speakers.

The ice grew more crowded, so we skated back toward the shack, the scent of warm chestnuts in the air. We were about to sit and change out of our skates when I heard my name.

“Caroline. Over here.”

It was David Stockwell. He skated to us and stopped with a sharp edge and a smile, posing like something out of a Brooks Brothers advertisement, drawing his jacket back with one gloved fist. How could David act as if nothing had ever happened between us, as if up and marrying an acquaintance after stringing me along for ten years was completely natural?

“Hey, who's this guy, Caroline?” David said.

Was that a flash of jealousy? David did seem small by comparison. Would he think Paul and I were romantically engaged? Slim chance of that. Paul was keeping his distance and gave off only friend signals, not even standing close to me. What if he did show David I was his? Thinking about that made me wish it were true.

Paul extended his hand. “Paul Rodierre.”

David shook it. “David Stockwell. I've known Caroline since—”

“We really must be going,” I said.

“Sally is over there lacing up. She'd hate to miss you.”

I'd had advance warning about Sally from Betty, of course. Her new sister-in-law was a petite girl whom Mrs. Stockwell had showered with a haute couture wedding trousseau the cost of which could have fed half of New York for a year. I gave David my best “we really can't stay” look.

He turned to Paul. “I'm with the State Department. Working to keep us out of the war. Heard about your speech at the gala. Seems you're working to get us into it.”

“Just telling the truth,” Paul said.

“It was our most successful event ever,” I said.

Paul skated closer to me and linked my arm in his. “Yes, darling, overwhelming, wasn't it?”

Darling?

David blinked, taken aback.

I moved closer to Paul. “Deafening applause. And the
donations.
Everyone's behind France now.”

Sally Stockwell skated toward us through the crowd. It was hard to ignore the
smallness
of her, maybe five feet two inches tall. She was done up in full skating costume, boiled wool A-line skating skirt, a snug little quilted Tyrolean jacket, and white fur of some kind at the top of her skates. The yarn tassle on the knitted cap she wore, tied under her pretty chin, swayed as she neared.

“You must be Caroline,” Sally said. She stretched a white angora-mittened hand out to me, and I shook it.

Sally was more Olivia de Havilland than Bette Davis and impossible to dislike, with a disarming honesty that made even the most trivial conversation awkward.

“David's told me everything about you. ‘Caroline helps French babies. Caroline and I starred in our first play together—' ”

“I was Caroline's first leading man,” David said. “Played Sebastian to her Olivia.”

Paul smiled. “They share a kiss, don't they? How were the reviews?”

“Lukewarm,” I said.

Sally skated closer. “Sometimes I think you and David should have married.”

“So good to see you both,” I said. “Sorry to run off, but we have to be going.”

“Yes, spending the whole day together, aren't we, sweetheart?” Paul said.

He was laying it on thick. That would activate the gossip mill, but I didn't care. It felt good to be loved, if only for show.

We said our goodbyes and waved to Sally and David as they merged into the flow of skating couples. How lovely it was of Paul to pretend to be my beau. He was not mine to flaunt, of course, but it was still nice to have someone in my life to show off, especially to David Stockwell, who'd so thoroughly trampled my ego.

After skating, Paul went back to the Waldorf to change, and I decorated the fat blue spruce Mother's bosom friend Mr. Gardener had brought down from the country and made coq au vin. Serge had sent down a winter vegetable soup from Connecticut, loaded with sugar parsnips, fat carrots, and gorgeous sweet fennel, for our first course.

That night the snow, which had hit Connecticut earlier, made it to Manhattan with a vengeance, leaving Mother stranded with Serge up at our country house. Paul arrived at my door with snowflakes in his hair and on the shoulders of his overcoat. His face was cold against mine as he leaned in to kiss me on each cheek. He'd gone heavy on the Sumare, once one of my father's favorite scents. I'd peeked in Paul's medicine cabinet at the Waldorf when I used his bathroom and seen the bottle there beside the blue jar of Noxzema.

Paul held a bottle of Burgundy and a nosegay of crimson glory roses wrapped in white paper. I would need to keep my wits about me and watch my wine intake. I was relieved he'd dressed up, in his aubergine jacket, for I was wearing a dress and silk stockings.

He slid the bottle, heavy and cold, into my hands.

“
Joyeux Noël.
It's the last of the case my cousin sent from his vineyard. Hope you don't mind, but I left your number with the Waldorf operator in case I need to be reached.”

“Of course not. Worried about Rena?”

“Always, but it's just a precaution. I spoke with her this morning and gave her the visa update. Roger says he'll know in a few days.”

Rena. It was as if she stood there with us.

Paul stepped into the living room. “You could land an airplane in here. Just us tonight?”

“They can't get out of the driveway up in Connecticut.”

“So I'm your only amusement? Such pressure.”

After dinner, I left the dishes in the sink and sat on the lumpy horsehair sofa, sharing a bottle of Father's cognac with Paul. That sofa had belonged to Mother's mother, whom we called Mother Woolsey. She'd gotten it to deter Mother's beaux from lingering.

It grew chilly once the fire reduced to embers, for we kept the heat low in the apartment. Paul heaved a birch log onto the grate, and the blaze went full tilt, licking the firebox, so hot I could feel it on my face.

I kicked off my shoes and tucked my legs up under me.

“Someone's been drinking the cognac,” I said, holding the bottle to the firelight.

“Maybe it is just the angel's share,” Paul said. “That's what they call the part that evaporates from the cognac cellars.”

He stabbed at the log with the iron poker, face somber in the firelight. Why were men so serious about fires?

Paul came back to the sofa. “I feel like everything's ahead of me when I'm here like this. Like a child.”

“Somewhere in a corner of our hearts, we are always twenty,” I said. How many times had Mother said that?

Paul tipped a slosh of cognac into his glass. “Your old boyfriend is a beautiful man.”

“He'd agree, no doubt.” I held my glass out for more cognac.

Paul hesitated.

“Man, being reasonable, must get drunk,” I said. Why was I quoting Byron? It made me sound two million years old.

“The best of life is but intoxication,” Paul said, as he poured cognac into my glass.

He knew Byron?

“How come you never ask me about Rena?” Paul said.

“Why would I?” That was the last thing I wanted to talk about.

“Oh, I don't know. Thought you might be curious how I can stay away so long.”

“The show, of course,” I said. The amber in my glass glowed in the firelight.

“We don't have much of a marriage now.”

“Paul. Such a cliché.” Why could I not stop talking to men like a schoolmarm? I deserved to end up alone, sent out on an ice floe as the Eskimos do with their elders.

“Rena's so young. A lot of fun—you'd like her, I'm sure—but we could never sit here like this and talk about life.”

“What does she like to do?” I said.

The fire popped and whined as it consumed a drop of pitch.

“Dancing, parties. She's a child in many ways. We got married very soon after we met. It was great fun at first, and the bedroom time was incredible, but soon she grew restless. I've heard she's had some attractive boyfriends.”

Incredible bedroom time? Heavenly, no doubt. I flicked a bit of lint off my sleeve.

“By the way, in this country, men don't talk about their bedroom exploits.”

“In this country, men have none to speak of,” Paul said. “They get married, and their exploits shrivel up and fall off. Rena is a wonderful girl, but according to her, we are just incompatible. Believe me, I've tried.”

He fiddled with the fire some more and came back, this time sitting closer to me on the sofa. For such a virile man, he had a lovely mouth.

“Is anyone compatible anymore?” I said. “My parents are the only couple I've ever thought were truly in sync.”

“How did your father die?”

“I've never talked about it before. I was eleven, and back then one didn't discuss such things.”

“Was he a good father?”

“On weekends he came up from the city to Connecticut. He exchanged his starched collar and waistcoat for khakis and pitched to us, endlessly, at the baseball field Mother had made at the far end of our property.”

“Was he often sick?”

“Never. But the spring of 1914, one day he was sequestered in his bedroom here, out of the blue. Only Dr. Forbes and Mother were allowed in. By the time I was sent to relatives with my valise packed, I knew something was terribly wrong. The maids stopped talking when I came into the room, and Mother's face had a hunted look I'd never seen on her before.”

“I'm so sorry, Caroline.” Paul held my hand in his warm and soft one and then released it.

“Five days later I was allowed to come home, but no one would look me in the eye. As always, I got my best information hiding in the dumbwaiter just off the kitchen, peeking through a crack. We had four Irish maids living in at the time. The eldest, Julia Smith, filled her coworkers in on the big event as she shelled peas at the kitchen table. I still remember every word. Julia said, ‘I knew Mr. Ferriday wouldn't go down without a fight.'

“Mary Moran, a skinny new girl, was pushing a dirty gray squid of a mop back and forth across the black and white tiles. She said, ‘Pneumonia's the most wretched way to die. Like drowning, only slower. Were you in the room? Better not have touched him.'

“Then Julia said, ‘One minute he was laughing like a lunatic, and the next he was clawing at his chest saying it was too hot and crying for Dr. Forbes to “Open a window, for God's sake.” Then he started asking for his daughter, Caroline, and it just about broke my heart. Mrs. Ferriday kept saying, “Henry, darling, don't leave me,” but he must have already died, because Dr. Forbes stuck his head out the door and told me, “Run get the undertaker.” '