The Ripper's Wife (38 page)

I tried to be sensible and think of my future like Mama said. I was no longer young and beautiful, and marriage really was the easiest route for a woman in my predicament. I had no practical accomplishments to fall back on that could guarantee me a living. God never intended me to be a seamstress or typewriter girl.... So I lay back, looking forward, listening to his spurs jingle-jangle as he mounted me—he kept his boots on, to give him traction, he said, and his big ten-gallon Stetson hat too, though for that he gave no reason. But he weighed
so heavily
upon me, crushing me like a great big writhing and snorting pink hippopotamus trying to attempt coitus with me, and it had been
so long
since any man had touched me that my body had forgotten how to give and receive pleasure. I was tight as a virgin down there, and it hurt
so much,
I just wanted him to stop. I kept telling him he was hurting me, begging him to stop—
“Please!”
I kept screaming and pounding his back with my fists and when that didn’t work planting my palms on his chest and trying to push him away.
“Please!”
My tear-filled eyes kept turning desperately to the vase of roses on the bedside table. I wanted to grab it and smash it over his head, but each time I saw terrifyingly vivid visions of him lying there dead and bleeding on the floor, policemen pouring in, handcuffing me, and dragging me downstairs crying and pleading every step of the way, and pushing me into the Black Maria, to await a second trial and condemnation, and I just
knew
that if that happened there would not be a second reprieve. If I went back to prison again I’d never leave it alive.

Later, when I was perfumed and presentable again in café au lait satin overlaid with black diamond-dusted Alençon lace, naked neck and wrists weighed down with diamonds and pearls, my big braided bun of a hairpiece straightened and secured again with diamond-tipped pins, and a rag stuffed in my drawers to sop up the bleeding, he sat me down to a gargantuan steak and lobster dinner, with potatoes bigger than my shoe, and opened a red velvet–lined box, flashing a diamond ring as bright as the stars at me. When I saw that it was shaped like a horseshoe, I blanched; I just
knew
it was a bad omen.

My mind flooded with pictures of Jim, remembering all the times we had both stroked the diamond horseshoe he always wore in his tie, caressing it like a pet; it had even been, at his request, buried with him when he died. I sat there like one lost in a trance, remembering all the good times, the smiles and laughter, excitement, dances, champagne, wagers, and nights of love we had shared with that horseshoe sparkling all the time, like the sparks of exploding diamond-white fireworks raining good luck down on us as we danced through life together. And I just couldn’t do it. I closed the lid on that great big gaudy sparkler and got up from the table without a word and walked out of my own room and just kept walking, on and on, wearing holes in the fragile soles of my black satin French heels, with the ghost of Jim always on my mind. In the darkness before dawn I found myself standing, shivering bare shouldered and bare armed without my fur, and staring down into the black river. I didn’t throw myself in; I didn’t even think of it. Instead, it was the chance the cattle baron was offering me, to again live a life of luxury and ease ensconced like a queen within the respectable and secure embrasure of marriage, that I threw away.

 

In 1908, when attendance at my lectures was growing alarmingly sparse and the booking bureaus were starting to look upon me as the Typhoid Mary of the lecture circuit, Mama and Mr. Wagner decided motion pictures were the answer. The flickers were so popular that if a photoplay was made of my story it would surely boost attendance to standing room only, my bookings would soar, as would my price—Mama and Mr. Wagner would see to that!—and I would soon be the darling of the lecture circuit again.

They made an appointment with the top man—“
we
don’t deal with underlings,” Mama said scathingly, and Mr. Wagner agreed—at the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company on East 14th Street and Mama and I duly arrived decked out in big hats and feather boas, with Mama carrying Napoleon, her fat and ornery Pekingese, and wearing enough jewelry to stock the front window of Tiffany’s.

“If we look like we don’t need it, they’re more likely to give it to us,” Mama said shrewdly. “An’ remember, Florie, mention our cousins the Vanderbilts ev’ry chance you get; nothing impresses these
movie
people more than knowing you are intimately related to someone rich enough to use dollar bills for matches. They will feel privileged that
you
are willing to
consider
lettin’
them
make a photoplay o’
your
life. Remember, it’s
you
doin’
them
a favor, darlin’,
not
the other way around, even if the idea originally came from us!” Then she looked me over good in my new lemon linen suit trimmed with bright green silk braid and fancy frogging fastening the front of the jacket and adorning the skirt and decided that I would do.

When we stepped into the studio’s office, early despite Mama’s insistence that we be late, Mr. Wagner, who was to meet us there, hadn’t arrived. We were greeted by the
sweetest
boy, soft-spoken and somewhat shy, not chatty or cheeky like the bellboys at the hotels we stayed at whom Mama always likened to “Satan’s imps in training.” He had a film can and the menu from a nearby restaurant tucked under one arm and was holding a broom in his other hand, and a torn costume was draped around his neck, all of which he immediately set aside as he took the time to greet us, see us seated comfortably, and ask if he could get us anything while we waited.

Acting for all the world like Catherine the Great sitting on her throne, twiddling her pearls and stroking her Pekingese, Mama imperiously demanded sauerkraut juice, watermelon relish, sweet potato pie crowned with pink whipped cream two inches thick, a bottle of champagne, caviar, and a dish of creamed chicken hearts and livers for Napoleon. She’d already told me that whether I actually appeared in the picture or was only on the set in the capacity of a consultant I should “constantly endeavor to tax the ingenuity an’ resourcefulness of the go-for boys an’ keep ’em runnin’,” as it would make these theatrical types respect me more. “Bein’ demandin’ keeps you from bein’ treated like a doormat, Daughter!”

But at the startled look on the boy’s dear little face I quickly intervened and assured him Mama was just teasing, at which news he seemed greatly relieved and quickly offered us coffee or tea instead, assuring us that both were freshly brewed.

I have a spot in my heart soft as a marshmallow for sweet boys with dark hair and brown eyes, especially ones at ages I missed being with my own boy, and there was
something
about this one that just tugged at my heart. This licorice-whip-skinny boy didn’t have Bobo’s breathtaking beauty or his vibrant vivacity, but there was
something
there.... I simply could
not
take my eyes off him. I wanted to cup his face in my hands and drink him in, and my arms
ached
to reach out and hug him and never let go. I reckoned he was about fourteen, the age Bobo had been when he’d taken his stance about the photographs. Looking at him, I practically had to sit on my hands not to reach out and smooth back the brown hair falling carelessly over his brow, and before I even knew what I was doing I was already reaching for my handkerchief, thinking to wet it with my mouth, to scrub away the smear of green paint staining his left cheek. Mama read my mind and yanked the hanky from my hand and barked at the boy that tea would be fine, “with milk, sugar, lemon, an’ cream if you please! An’ some little cakes would not be unwelcome! Bake ‘em if you have to, but don’t keep us waitin’, boy!”

While he scurried off to see to our tea—I think he just wanted to get away from Mama, and maybe even me, the way I kept looking at him like I wanted to
devour
him—I stood up and wandered over to the window, to stand before it without actually looking out and just be alone with my thoughts. I wanted to block my ears to Mama’s stinging cat-o’-nine-tails tongue castigating me about “that longing look” I got sometimes and could never hide whenever a boy possessing a certain coloring and quality came along to remind me of what I missed most of all. Restlessly I turned from the window to the desk. It was then I saw the stack of schoolbooks bound with a leather strap and the violin case lying beside them. He must have come straight from school. My fingers reached out to caress them and the gray cap lying beside them, my fingers lingering, lovingly tracing over the herringbone pattern of the tweed.

It was then that I
really
started thinking and realized that I could
not
make this movie no matter how much Mama and Mr. Wagner wanted me to. What if my son and daughter saw it? Some pretty young blond actress up there on the screen pretending to be me, reliving the whole sordid, scandalous, and sensational spectacle, not as a valentine to their dead father or validation of their mother’s innocence but as an
advertisement
—that’s really
all
it amounted to—for my book and lectures, both of which I
loathed!
I just
couldn’t
do it! Mama and Mr. Wagner just kept stirring it all up, bringing it back to a full roiling boil, when all I wanted was for the flames to die out. I didn’t want to be remembered or reminded! Why couldn’t anyone understand that?

Decisively I crossed the room to stand before Mama. If at fourteen my son could decide he didn’t want to pose for photographs anymore, at forty-six I could certainly put my foot down to quash every notion of this photoplay!

“I’m sorry, Mama,” I said. “I know you want this, you think it’s in my best interests, but I don’t. I won’t do this, and you can’t make me!”

I was walking toward the door just as the boy came back in with a heavily laden tea tray. God bless his eager to please little heart, he had even found some cake somewhere. He politely stepped aside to make way for me. With a nervously trembling hand, I dared reach out and lightly caress his cheek, smooth and baby soft, such a sweet, endearing face, and brush back the fall of dark hair tickling his brow.

“Thank you, darling; the tea looks delicious. I wish I could stay and have some. I’m sorry we put you to all this trouble for nothing,” I said, turning away quickly as the tears caught in my throat and overflowed my eyes.

What was it about
this
one? There had been boys before, briefly glimpsed, who had caught my fancy and become my adored-from-afar objects of obsession, only to be forgotten when I moved on and the next one came along, but this one was different.... I already knew he was going to be haunting my dreams for a
very
long time. As much as I wanted to stay and try to figure out why, I
had
to leave.

“Florie, you get back here!”
Mama shouted after me. “We have an appointment; you
can’t
just walk out! I didn’t raise you to be so rude, inconsiderate, an’ ill-bred! Remember who you are! One o’ your ancestors acted as ring-bearer when Marie Antoinette married Napoleon! An’ I assure you, he didn’t attain to that high honor by actin’ the way you are now!
Get back here!
”

“I’m sorry, Mama.” I turned briefly on the threshold, just in time to see Mama, struggling with Napoleon, who had entangled himself in her feather boa and caught his claws in the lace yoke of her bodice, exasperatedly fling him aside, actually throwing the poor animal through the air, shouting, “Here, boy—hold Napoleon!” so that the poor lad had no choice but to drop the tea tray or have his head slammed into the wall by a fat, flying Pekingese.

I had said all that I had to say; I didn’t want to talk about it. I was afraid I was too much of a coward to stand my ground if I actually had to stay and stand there. I hitched up my skirts and ran out into the street, with Mama hot on my heels. She turned back only long enough to tell the boy, who had managed to catch Napoleon and was holding him against his chest, stroking him soothingly, while standing with the ruins of our tea on his shoes and spattering his skinny legs, that the diamonds on Napoleon’s collar were real and they’d best still be there when she got back if he knew what was good for him and she meant to count them—all 117 of them.

Poor thing! I almost went back to comfort him. The very idea that that darling boy would ever pry diamonds out of a dog collar was too absurd for words! For God’s sake, there was a
rosary
dangling out of his pants pocket! I had been tempted to tuck it back in so he didn’t lose it, but I knew boys that age could be a trifle skittish about being touched so familiarly by strangers and I didn’t want to scare him. But if I went back . . . that would mean facing Mama and having to go through with the appointment, with both her and Mr. Wagner, when he arrived, and maybe even the motion picture man, if he liked the idea, all against me, all talking and shouting at once, badgering me until I gave up and gave in and turned my poor brain back around to their way of thinking, and, as much as I wanted to see that child again, I just
couldn’t
do it. I
had
to keep moving, running as fast as I could, away from there, turning my back on yet another chance.

Without even looking, ignoring the blaring horns, screeching tires, and shouts of angry drivers, I darted out into the street and dived into the first cab I saw.
“Drive; just drive! Get me away from here!”
I shouted at the driver.

I flung myself back against the seat and wept; I never thought a day would come when I would run away from Mama. She was the only one who had never abandoned me, and
this
was how I repaid her, by leaving her standing on the sidewalk stamping her feet, snorting like a mad bull, and shouting at the top of her lungs outside a movie studio. I’d made her so mad she’d actually thrown her precious Pekingese into the air! As ornery as Napoleon was, I was glad the boy had caught him.
I’m sorry! I’m sorry!
I kept sobbing hysterically, beating my fists against the leather seat, but in my heart I knew I really wasn’t, I had done the right thing, and that, peculiar as it sounds, only made me feel worse.