A Lady of Good Family (17 page)

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A
fter the meeting with the lawyers, Minnie stood even straighter, though there was a suggestion of wariness and pain in her face. “A lady does not give way,” I heard her say to herself more than once. There were no more damp eyes, no trembling hands, yet the grief was visible.

“Not today, dear ones,” she said when Beatrix and I tried to persuade her to attend some Parisian diversion with us, an
afternoon concert or event at the Louvre, and she sounded so like a woman in mourning that I found myself tiptoeing in her presence, afraid of making a loud noise.

Beatrix and I made our rounds alone, inspecting, it felt to my feet, every tree and plant and parterre in the area. She no longer made notes or sketches, but sometimes brought her camera with her, relying on that and her memory to record anything that needed to be recorded. We spent long days at Versailles, walking the impossibly straight allées. “Much too grand and formal for the New World,” Beatrix commented. At Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, Beatrix admired the way an old quarry had been planted as a pleasure garden, and at Parc Monceau we stood under a huge mass of exotic banana trees and pretended we could hear monkeys chattering.

On Beatrix’s fifth day in Paris, we returned from our investigations to find Minnie at her desk, feet propped on a stool, pen in hand. She looked up and smiled at us.

“I’ve had a letter from Edith,” she said, waving it at us. “She has begun writing a collection of short stories and wishes me to help her find publishers. I’m to be her agent. Beatrix, we will return home. I’ve made our bookings. I think we have both had enough of Europe.”

Minnie was again engaged in active labor. That was all she asked of life. That, and her daughter’s happiness.

Beatrix, though, was a study in conflict. Her face clearly reflected her great relief that her mother’s good spirits had returned. But to leave Europe meant leaving Amerigo. How could she leave what had not yet truly begun?

We none of us had the answer to that question. Maybe she would not leave with Minnie. Was that the likely outcome?

The next day, I had arranged to take Beatrix and Minnie to meet Princess Esterhazy and to see the moving pictures of Louis Lumière. This time Mr. Winters chose not to accompany me—rather, us—saying that the carriage would be too crowded, he would crush our skirts, and it was better to let “the ladies” have the afternoon to themselves.

There were plenty of gentlemen at the princess’s salon, however, and Beatrix caught many an eye. Oh, how she bloomed that season. When we took our chairs and the red velvet curtains were closed to dim the room, many heads turned in her direction, observing her under cover of the semidarkness.

The moving picture had just started with a strange crackle and whirring noise when there was a larger commotion in the foyer, a woman’s voice, the giggle of young girls, apologies being offered, the soft, noncommittal voice of a servant. Princess Esterhazy rose and went out of the room and came back a moment later with Mrs. Haskett at her side, the three daughters trailing.

“So sorry,” Mrs. Haskett apologized several times. “Mary couldn’t find her new gloves.” She waved a heavily ringed hand at the tallest of her girls.

Minnie, Beatrix, and I avoided looking at one another. The impossible woman had managed an invitation to the princess’s salon. We knew then the depth of her ambition.

We watched the moving picture several times . . . it was only a few minutes in length, and quite funny, but it was also very thrilling to see that something once completely static, a
photograph, now could move. It had time in its makeup as well as light and shadow.

“Like the difference between a silk flower that never changes and a rose that buds, blooms, then wilts and leaves a hip,” Beatrix whispered to me. “How marvelous.”

Over my shoulder I twice caught Mrs. Haskett staring at the back of Beatrix’s head, and I knew Beatrix had a dangerous enemy in this woman. I was more certain than ever that she had schemed to have Amerigo for herself. She wouldn’t have been the first wealthy woman to purchase a younger lover. So many things were for sale.

T
his part I must tell as a re-creation, based on many intimate conversations over the past years. Beatrix was and remains an intensely private person, yet even the person who is strongest in solitude occasionally needs to voice sentiments and emotions. That is especially true when speaking of one whom one has loved. Memories must be voiced now and then, or they begin to fade away, as pale as any ghost. It is a form of grave visitation, I suppose, another way to leave flowers or a memorial wreath, even if only imaginary, in salute to a lost one.

The Sunday afternoon of her reunion with Amerigo, Beatrix could neither sit nor stand still nor eat, knowing a decision would be made that day that would affect the rest of her life, and she still did not know what that decision should be.

She did not wish to leave her mother alone. Nor did she wish to give up Amerigo, to sacrifice him and their feelings for each other on the altar of custom and family duty. She was, after all,
an American, an American from New York, where self-determination is one of the highest virtues.

The people of the New World were not accustomed to bowing meekly before the standards of the Old World.

Beatrix herself was constitutionally unsuitable for bowing and blind obedience to custom. She was not like her father or her uncle Teddy, who would have been happy to live just as their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers had lived. Why change? such people seemed to say. The scheme of things as they are has worked well enough for me. Leave well enough alone!

And then there are the Minnies and Ediths of the world arguing back: No, the scheme works only for a few. What about the rest of us? Why must we be silent, in the shadows? A new century was coming. Beatrix cast her vote with the new century, not the old one.

So now you must imagine. An elegant, passionate twenty-three-year-old woman who is experiencing for the first time the kind of emotion that requires one to defy sense and tradition. And believe this, Beatrix was passionate. She knew how to dress, how to serve a tea and guide a dinnertime conversation into safe lanes, avoiding the quicksand of religion, politics, and money. She attended church and wore gloves and hats and sat a horse perfectly. But none of those qualities interfered with her natural disposition, which was a wonder with the world and all its pleasures, a determination to be fully in the world. To love.

This passionate young woman, as new to love as a just-fledged bird is to the sky, sits alone on a café chair in the Bois de
Boulogne, waiting. The chair is strangely identical to the one on which she sat in the Borghese gardens, and just as in the Borghese gardens, there is a weed taunting her from the middle of the gravel path.

After months of travel and touring, she has learned to stare down that weed, hands folded calmly in her lap. For this, too, she must wait, to be at home in her own garden, where she is master and keeper and worker, all in one, and no one can eye her askance when she takes off her gloves and plunges her bare hands into the soil to tug away what is not wanted.

A group of children with their nurse pass by. Some women on horseback, their habits spread like blankets over the glistening chestnut flanks of their horses. A balloon seller, tipping his hat and tugging at the confetti-tailed strings of his wares. A quartet of young people, arm in arm, laughing, showing off their stylish summer clothes, followed by an elderly couple, walking so closely together, side by side, they seem a single entity.

The last, Beatrix eyes with some envy. The number of times she has seen a married couple so obviously content with each other can be counted on her fingers and toes. Perhaps simply her fingers.

She wonders if she will be coupled, and if that coupling will last. She thinks it strange to be sitting in a Parisian park on a late-summer day, thinking coolly about couples lasting or not, as she waits for the man she so patently loves. It is as if she is two people, not one. This happens sometimes in plants, especially in hybrid trees and shrubs. Something will stir underground;
perhaps lightning runs through the soil or there is too much or not enough sun. The hybrid becomes aware of itself and the fact that it has been manipulated. It snakes up through the ground a new shoot that refuses to follow the rules bred into the parent plant; it changes color or shape and the plant has, in effect, twinned itself.

If she were rude enough to take the little pocket mirror out of her purse, she wonders if she would see two reflections, not one, the passionate girl and the coolheaded one.

He’s late.

Another couple, one she recognizes though she can’t remember their names, strolls by. They nod at her but do not stop to chat. As they pass, she hears that one word, “divorced.”

Beatrix and Minnie understand there will be a required period of punishment. And then, if all goes well, they will eventually be welcomed once again, not in all parlors, not at all events, but at enough of them that they will not suffer permanent or complete exclusion. When a woman takes her destiny into her own hands, as Minnie has done, there is a price to be paid. But because Minnie is of good family, the price will not be more unbearable than the marriage itself had become. There is some justice in that, though Beatrix, who yearns for the new century, wonders why there need be a price at all.

In the garden, when you make a mistake, you dig it up and throw it on the compost pile. Just like that.

Still, he does not arrive.

Her chest begins to ache with a warmth that is not unpleasant yet makes her eyes itch, as if tears were starting. She wants to jump
up and leave, quickly, pretend this afternoon did not happen, but she knows she cannot. She is here, waiting, and she will wait.

Twenty minutes past the agreed-upon time, he appears, walking so quickly his coattails flap as if in a wind. His hat is askew, his face flushed. He has dropped a glove somewhere on his path and clutches the other so tightly the tawny kid leather has creased itself into pleats.

“Beatrix.” He doesn’t bow or tip his hat. Instead he throws his arms around her and kisses her, on the mouth, a long kiss that dances her head in sensual circles, a waltzing kiss that leaves her dizzy.

She should say no. Not here.

She doesn’t. She kisses him back, putting her arms around him as well.

People walk wide circles around them. Some pause and stare and chuckle. A woman harrumphs with disapproval, but the kiss goes on, ending only when both of them are panting for air.

“Come away with me,” Amerigo says. “Now. Leave a note for your mother, take an overnight valise, and come away with me. It is the only way.”

She knows what he is saying. This is not an improper proposal but a request that she become his wife, now and without family approval.

Her mouth opens to say yes. But the word won’t come. She lets herself drown in his gaze, but something holds her back from giving him that one simple word. She wants this more than anything, this vision of a quick flight followed by a lifetime together. Yet she cannot speak that word.

Instead, she closes her eyes and leans even closer to him. She
wants another kiss, like the first one, his mouth on hers, warm and moist, sending shooting stars into her veins.

“Maybe tomorrow,” he agrees, when they are sitting again on the bench, calm, admiring the fine day like any of the other hundreds of couples strolling and talking in the park.

The moment has passed.

“Not tomorrow,” she says. So calm, so cool, scheduling her elopement as well as possible around already made plans. “I must prepare her. I will not simply disappear.”

“You will tell her?”

Beatrix has never, before this tour of Europe, before Massimo, kept anything from her mother. Their conversations have been almost sisterly, open and intimate and trusting.

“Yes. I must. And are you telling your father?”

“I cannot.”

She thinks about this for a moment and all it implies. The space between them, those two or three inches of open air required by good manners in public places, now feels like a mile of distance. The sun blazes down, yet Beatrix shivers. A price must always be paid. What would hers be? “All the more reason, then, to tell Mother. We must have someone on our side,” she tells him.

“And she will be?”

“She wishes my happiness. And I think you are it. Amerigo.” She takes off her glove and reaches for his hand. Sometimes, at the Bar Harbor garden, she has been able to put a leaf between her palms, close her eyes, and feel the living vibrations of the plant, judge its vigor and determination to thrive. She places Amerigo’s hand between her two palms and closes her eyes. She
feels the blood flowing through his veins, the warmth of his living self, the mystical combination of flesh and spirit in the way his hand rests quietly between hers. Acceptance.

What does it mean? Is he accepting all he has required her to accept? To live among strangers, to brave the disapproval of those whose approval her safety and happiness most depend upon. Or is his a more passive acceptance, more responsive to commands than to choices?

A garden path is most interesting when one cannot see the end of it but must walk through the twists and turns and make the discovery, footstep by footstep.

•   •   •   •

T
he next day, Beatrix and Minnie were resting in their rooms when a page boy brought them an envelope on a silver-plated salver.

Minnie looked at it with dread. “I am quite tired of unexpected notes,” she said. “Let’s tear it up without reading it. What if it is from your father? What if he wants another meeting for some reason or other?”

“It’s not Father or the lawyer.” Nor Amerigo, Beatrix thought. “I believe it is from Mrs. Haskett.”

“Ignore it.” Minnie had a presentiment.

“Can we do that?”

“I can,” Minnie said, tearing the envelope and its single interior page into long strips and crumpling them.

They sat for a while, drinking tea, breaking their morning roll into crumbs, but neither of them eating.

“He has asked me to go away with him,” Beatrix said. “An elopement.”

Minnie looked at her daughter, at her radiant face, feeling that tug at her heart that mothers feel, wanting to love and protect, yet knowing they must set their child free, all at the same time.

“I think I expected this,” was her response. “What was your answer?”

“I told him he must meet with you first, that we needed your approval and goodwill.”

“You know that I wish only what brings you joy and fulfillment.” What else could a loving mother say? She had not forced Beatrix to marry when she came of age, as most mothers did. She certainly would not now require her daughter to stay unmarried. They sat in an even longer silence as mother and daughter adjusted to the new reality, the old dreams on the verge of being abandoned, all sureness evaporated as surely as the sun dried up the dew in the hotel garden.

“Does he have his father’s approval?” Minnie asked, realizing they must now discuss practical matters.

“I think not.”

She is the daughter of a divorced woman, Minnie thought. This is terrible, terrible timing. If only they had met a year or even six months earlier. If he were Protestant American rather than Catholic Italian, they might have had a chance. Now there would be no approval from the father; they would begin with a black mark against them.

“You could live half the year in New York and Maine, and the other half in Rome,” Minnie said. Both of them, in their thoughts, had moved on to the next difficulty.

“That would give me only half a year for my work, wouldn’t it? Even if Europe were ready for a female landscape designer, my languages aren’t good enough for me to be able to discuss plans with clients.” Beatrix put down her teacup and leaned her chin into her hands, looking young and lost.

“Do you love him enough to risk that?”

“Yes.”

“Then all other plans must start from there. You will work it out. I have faith in you.” But Minnie was heartsore, thinking that from now on her daughter would be lost to her for much of the year. Ceres herself could not have been sadder, thinking of Persephone, gone from her to the other world. But it must be borne.

•   •   •   •

A
merigo, realizing that the only way to win Beatrix was to also win Minnie, asked to meet with them, and Minnie agreed. I saw him the day before, when I was walking in the park with my little girls, and he looked like a man about to jump from a ledge.

“Have you slept?” I asked, worried about the shadows around his eyes, the feverish quality of his complexion.

“Not much,” he said. “I see Beatrix tomorrow. And her mother.”

“Ah.” What else could be said? Wish him luck? Great matters were at stake.

On Thursday, Beatrix and Minnie stayed in their hotel, waiting for him, as arranged. The best tea service had been sent up, flowers put in vases, lamps lit since it was a cloudy and dark day. Beatrix was nervous about so many things. What if he was late, as he had been that day in the park? Minnie admired punctuality. What if he behaved too informally or, worse, too stiffly? It was imperative that Minnie like him, approve of him.

Minnie was exhausted and worried. She looked often at Beatrix, opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it again upon a confused and anxious silence.

At a quarter to three someone knocked at the door and was admitted. Early? thought Beatrix, confused. Why has he come early?

But it wasn’t Amerigo. Their maid ushered in Mrs. Haskett.

Beatrix and Minnie shared the same thought: something was about to be stolen away from them. A perilous journey had led them to this one single moment, and there would be no turning away from it.

Minnie tried, though, for her daughter’s sake. “I can’t ask you to stay,” she said, rising and politely offering her hand. “We have an engagement.”

“You will want to hear what I have to tell you,” Mrs. Haskett insisted. Uninvited, she took a chair by the window so that she was backlit. A dim, fuzzy light seemed to emanate from her so that she seemed otherworldly, more ghostly than angelic. Her hat had two bows on it and they stuck up like monstrous ears.