An Inconvenient Wife Part 3

"Not good for me?"

"Yes," William said thoughtfully. "It's time you stopped being a daughter."

My head was pounding again. "Don't be absurd."

"I've thought it for some time, Lucy," he went on. "I think it's time you were mistress of your own house. One where your father can't come in whenever he wants and reduce you to a blathering girl. It's time we made our own life away from him."

I stared at him, bewildered. "I thought . . . you and Papa . . . you're like his own son."

"I'm not speaking of me, Lucy, but of you," William said impatiently. "You even think of yourself as DeLancey Van Berckel's daughter, not as my wife."

"Oh, good heavens, William. I do not. I'm Mrs. William Carelton. I know that."

He studied me so searchingly that I had to turn away. "Do you?" he asked. "I've wondered for some time if that house isn't the reason we haven't had a child."

"The house," I said, meaning to be light, to joke. "Yes indeed, it must be the house that holds such power."

William did not laugh. "We've seen so many doctors. None has found a reason. What else am I to think?"

I gazed out the window, at the bright lights of the hotels, the theaters. "That we aren't meant to have a child."

"I won't believe that."

"And you think a mansion on Fifth Avenue will change everything."

"I think it must," he told me.

"And if it doesn't?"

I refused to meet his gaze. "It must," he said, and I heard his certainty and his will and the words he left unsaid, the threat of Dr. Little's asylum.

Chapter 3.

I used to dream of Rome. When I was a girl, I read everything I could about the city. I had dreams of wandering through the Piazza, of suppers eaten in warm, sultry air scented with olives and oregano. I formed an attachment to Italian poets, hiding their books from my father, sneaking them into bed to read by candlelight late into the night. I dreamed briefly of painting there-the landscapes here were too muted, too familiar. My brush longed to depict Italian hills and golden sunsets, Italian flowers and swarthy Italian peasants. Rome. The word was magical to me, as if just its conjuring could enable my soul to fly.

But I did not see Rome until William and I honeymooned there. It was only one stop on a European Grand Tour, before Paris-William had insisted that I be fitted by Worth for next season's gowns-but it was the place I longed to be every moment I was somewhere else. I wanted to see it through the eyes of the poets I revered, through the misty, earthy colors of the artists. Rome. Surely there could be nothing bad in a world that harbored such a place.

I did not see Rome through my poets' eyes. Nor did I see it through the brushstrokes of any artist. When I finally saw Rome, it was through William's impatience, his longing to be farther on, in Paris and London, to finish business there, to have my hands modeled in clay, to see me dressed in Worth finery, to live up to my social obligations, which decreed that we should spend two months on our tour, and that it should include the places everyone went. There was no lingering at outdoor tables, breathing the scents of olives and oregano. There was no time to walk through the Piazza. The days were spent calling on friends of my father's, the nights dining at their tables. For me, Rome was just New York with different accents.

As William led me up the stairs to the Baldwins', I thought of Rome again, the Rome of my dreams, and how it had turned out nothing at all like I had imagined or wanted. It was impossible to believe that this life-the life of a wife, of a woman-had once been as intriguing to me as Rome.

The door was opened by a solemn-faced butler, and we went inside.

James Baldwin was a man who loved trees and forests, and the entrance hall was covered with pictures of landscapes, some by old masters and one by Millet that was greatly admired. Much was said of Ella Baldwin's decor, which was styled to match her naturalist husband's tastes, with pressed leaves imprisoned in gla.s.s, forever gold and red, and botanical studies kept immutable in tapestry and upholstery. I found it oppressive-nature forever inside, crushed by the ma.s.sive weight of feathers and sh.e.l.ls, stuffed birds preening on peeling branches beneath gla.s.s domes, wax flowers and paintings that echoed of what these things had forever left behind: the blessed course of life and death, nature at its cruelest and most sublime.

Dutifully, I admired a new painting, a landscape in the golds and browns of the Hudson River School, though to me it looked as if everything in the scene were dying.

"It is Father's new favorite," said Antoinette Baldwin-the pretty eighteen-year-old daughter-as she led us to the dining room, which was laid end to end with china and gla.s.sware that sparkled and twinkled in the light from a lily-globed gasolier. Candles had been lit as well, and the scents of wax and smoke and gas were heavy in the small room.

"There you are, Antoinette, darling!" Daisy Hadden was coming toward us, fluttering in deep rose lace, her new diamonds glittering blindingly in the candlelight. She touched Antoinette's arm and said in a low voice, "Your mama's asking for you, my dear."

Antoinette gave us a pretty smile and hurried off. When she was gone, Daisy said to William and me, "How nice to see you both. Lucy, how deliciously pale you look this evening. That gown is so bold against your skin."

William gripped my arm. "She has the headache. The opera was a trial."

"Well, yes. This season . . ." Daisy waved her hand languidly and lowered her voice. "This dinner should be just as wretched, of course. A pity Ella has such a lamentable cook. Although I suppose the good doctor might save us. Did you know he was here tonight? I thought Harry Everett might call him out last week. I quite imagined pistols at dawn."

"Doctor?" William asked. "What are you talking about? What doctor?"

Daisy looked surprised. "Why, Dr. Victor Seth. Don't tell me you haven't heard of him? I would have thought after all dear Lucy's trials . . ."

"I'm afraid not," William said.

"Oh." She seemed nonplussed. "But then I suppose the two of you have been in the country these last few months. Seth has become quite notorious recently. The guest du jour." She laughed. "They say he's a Jew, but you would hardly know it to look at him. He's very controversial, you know. He quite gives one the chills. Something about his eyes. But Ella swears by him. He's just over there."

I had barely heard her words, but there was something about Daisy's surrept.i.tious curiosity that made me follow her gaze through the crowd to a man who stood near the back of the room, surrounded by Ella Baldwin and a group of our friends.

I had never seen him before. He was nearly as tall as William and of a similar age. His dark hair was thick and brushed into smooth submission. He wore a thin mustache and a Vand.y.k.e beard. Even from this distance, I felt how commanding he was. It surprised me not to have sensed his presence the moment we'd stepped into the room.

"He's a doctor, you say?" William asked thoughtfully.

"A nerve specialist," Daisy said.

"A nerve specialist?"

Daisy nodded. "Or something of the sort. I understand he wrote some brilliant paper, though there are some-Harry, for one-who say he's a charlatan. He has some new theory-Ella explained it all to me, but you know how I am, I can hardly grasp these things. Mesmerism or phrenology or something."

"Those are hardly new," William said.

"Well, then something like them." Daisy glanced back at the doctor. "He does seem to work miracles, though. And I suppose he's very charming. Why, look what he's done for Ella Baldwin-she was an invalid the entire summer, but you'd hardly know it now."

I hadn't known that Ella was ailing, but it was certain she was no longer. She was smiling brightly at the doctor, hanging on his every word, and with dismay I felt William's sharp interest in this man.

I touched his arm. "Darling," I said softly. "I'm quite parched."

"Yes, yes, of course," he said, forcing his eyes away from Dr. Seth, patting my hand. "Let's find you something to drink."

We left Daisy, and William's fascination with the doctor waned and disappeared as we made our way to the buffet. He was cornered by Richard Martin, who involved him in a conversation about bonds, and I was relieved.

We sat down to dinner so late that my head was spinning. It was the first time since we'd arrived that William and I were separated from each other, and even then there was only the width of the table between us. He had been seated next to Daisy Hadden, while I had to suffer the cruelly dull Hiram Grace, with his overgrown graying mustache and his ceaseless talk of Western Union, where he spent his days making so much money that his four daughters were perpetually dressed in Worth gowns. Dr. Victor Seth sat a good distance down the long table, involved in conversation. Far away from William, I was glad to see.

There was wine. I sipped until I no longer felt the pressure in my chest, despite William's warning glances.

"I hear you're about to join the others on Fifth Avenue," Hiram Grace said to me between the lobster bisque and the roasted partridge.

I reached again for my gla.s.s. "Ah yes. How quickly word spreads. William has decided to build. We've a plat on East Sixty-third."

"Hmmph. Going to tear down those shanties, is he?"

"I imagine so."

"You'll have a time of it, won't you? All that stuff females love: upholstery and paint and statuary and such."

"Oh yes." The damask tablecloth wavered before me as I set my gla.s.s down.

"So you'll leave Was.h.i.+ngton Square to your father?"

"It is his home," I said. "Though lately you would not know it, he spends so much time at the club."

"Got to give the newlyweds some room, don't you know." Grace lifted his gla.s.ses and wiped at his rheumy eyes. "Still and all, no doubt he'll sell that, too, before long. He's getting along in years, isn't he? Seventy or so?"

"Seventy-three," I said.

"Ah. I tell you, it makes me sad, all these good men pa.s.sing on."

"Papa will outlive them all," I said.

"No doubt you hope so," Grace said. I did not attempt to enlighten him. "Even he can't stave off the march of progress."

"None of us can, Mr. Grace."

"That's so, that's so. They just keep coming in, don't they?"

"I'm not sure I take your meaning."

"Well, look at what happened to Lafayette Place and Tompkins Square. Nothing but immigrants. The Germans have settled only a few blocks from Was.h.i.+ngton Square-they'll take it next, you mark my words. We keep moving uptown to get away from 'em, and they keep following."

Gwen Sanders, sitting on Grace's left, chimed in. "It's bad enough to have to hire them. Why, Daisy was just saying that she already feels overrun with Iris.h.!.+ But what can one do? It's impossible to keep a maid longer than a few months, and to find a decent girl-"

"It's not in them to be reliable." Grace seemed unperturbed as he wiped at his mustache with a damask napkin. "No point in asking the impossible. They have smaller skulls, that's a proven fact. The Negroes and the Irish and all the rest haven't got the brainpower."

William spoke up from across the table. "All one must do is see how they live. Had they our intelligence, certainly they would better themselves."

My gla.s.s was nearly empty. I signaled for the serving girl.

On William's other side, Harrison Everett said thoughtfully, "Then you don't believe that all this talk of slum reform will make a difference?"

"How could it?" William asked. "These people haven't evolved enough to understand the consequences of vice. If you clean up the tenements, they will fall back into degeneracy. As Hiram said, it's in their nature."

Harrison persisted, "But if they were given jobs and decent places to live-"

"How can a change in environment possibly counteract generations of heredity?" William asked.

"Why, I'm not sure it can. But as the superior species, shouldn't we be expected to protect those less evolved?"

William laughed. "Good G.o.d, Harry, don't tell me you're one of those radical humanitarians."

Harrison smiled thinly. "I'm afraid so. You should be careful, Will, it might rub off on you if I stand too close at the next Glee Club practice."

"Gentlemen." Gwen put her long fingers to her forehead. "You're quite spoiling my appet.i.te. Can't we discuss something better suited to such a delicious supper?"

William smiled at her, then at me-a smug, self-righteous smile cloaked in civility and refinement. "Forgive me," he said. "Perhaps we should change topics, gentlemen. We can't expect the ladies to partic.i.p.ate in such indelicate conversation."

"I was finding it all quite interesting," Antoinette Baldwin said. She lifted her chin as if expecting a challenge and flushed the rosy pink that only the young can. She reminded me of myself at her age, forever wanting more, making myself heard, thinking I could change the world and my place in it. I was sorry for her and horribly sad for all the ways she would be shoved into silence, and the emotion overwhelmed me so that I dropped my newly filled winegla.s.s, splas.h.i.+ng wine all over the tablecloth, sending droplets scattering across the table to dot William's pristine white s.h.i.+rt like blood.

"Oh my, I'm so sorry." I got to my feet and wiped ineffectually at the spreading stain with my napkin.

The servant pushed in beside me. "Please, ma'am," she said, and I stepped back to let her clean it up. The wall was too close, and I crashed into it. I saw the doctor look up, his dark gaze sharpening; the others were staring at me oddly, the conversation fallen into disrepair. I shoved at a loosened hair and tried to smile.

"How clumsy I am." I tried to laugh, but the sound came out like a snort. I felt ridiculous tears start at my eyes, and I couldn't stop them. "And after such a lovely evening . . ."

Dr. Seth began to rise. "Madam, are you quite all right?"

William took his napkin from his lap quite deliberately and stood. "Thank you, sir, but I think it best if my wife and I excuse ourselves." Such a calm, even voice-I was quite sure no one but I heard his underlying disappointment. "Forgive us, James, for interrupting your supper. Lucy has had a headache all evening. No doubt we should have taken ourselves straight home from the opera."

James Baldwin nodded shortly. "Of course. I confess I've come home with more than one headache from this season's program." He glanced at me. "Do get some rest, dear Lucy."

I nodded, but I seemed unable to move from the wall. "I'm sorry," I whispered, and I could not find other words as William came around the table and unstuck me by putting his arm around my shoulders. I felt the doctor's gaze, unwavering, starkly curious, and then William was leading me away from the solicitous murmurs as he would a child. At the door, he took my cape from the butler and wrapped it around me. He shrugged into his own coat and hat, and we went out into falling snow.

I paused on the steps, feeling the snow melt on my skin, such a delicious cool, so that I lifted my face to it. "It's snowing," I said. "Oh, look, William."

"You've had too much wine," he said, pulling me down the steps and out to the waiting carriage, bundling me ungently into the dark, cold coc.o.o.n. He got in and sat silently, disapprovingly beside me.

The carriage jolted to a start, and I was flung against him. I could only burrow into his side, into the warmth of his sleeve. "I'm sorry," I whispered, too weary to move, wanting nothing but to fall into a deep, abiding sleep uninterrupted by midnight yearnings and vague dissatisfactions. What did that even feel like? Why could I not remember?

William sighed. "Ah, Lucy. What am I going to do with you?"

The next morning William went to the Exchange, and I laid in bed until noon. I'd instructed Harris that I wouldn't need the carriage; I was too ill to go calling today, as I usually did. Even when I did get out of bed, I lingered in my room, wrapped in my dressing gown, surrept.i.tiously watching the snow fall on Was.h.i.+ngton Square from a crack in the rose brocade drapes. I remembered how, as a child, I had raced my nanny to the park despite her calls-"Slow down, Lucy! There's a good child! This is not ladylike behavior!"-and plopped myself down to make angels in the snow. She had laughed when she caught up with me, but that good humor was not enough to keep her from reporting my lapse to my father, who forced me to stay abed with a copy of Lydia Maria Child's The Girl's Own Book that afternoon instead of going with him to visit my cousin Hattie.

"Young ladies do not make snow angels in Was.h.i.+ngton Square," he said to me. "How glad I am that your mother is not here to see such a spectacle."

I could no longer recall the joy of that small defiance. I wondered: Had I felt the cold of the snow? Had I tasted it? Had the dull punishment of social catechism been worth that moment? There must have been joy. Or had I been then as I was now? Had the days always stretched so drearily before me that I could not rouse myself to step outside my bedroom doors?

But no; I remembered Antoinette Baldwin and the dull pain I'd felt at the antic.i.p.ation of her impending womanhood, the knowledge that I had once been like her. To think of Antoinette, how trapped she was, how her wings beat so futilely against bars she could not see and did not even know were there, made me want to cry.

I turned from the window, too saddened to look at the snow, and my gaze went to the brown bottle on my dressing table. The rush of future days washed over me, the constant threat of Dr. Little's asylum.

I was hardly aware of going to it, only that it was in my hands, hard and smooth, the satisfying pop of the cork, and then the sweetness of it on my tongue, the bitterness after. I took more than I should have, but once I tasted it, I wanted more-a few hours of peace, surely that was not too much to ask? Only a few more hours.

William came to me through the haze of my dreams. I heard the door opening, more sharply than it should, and his exhalation of disbelief and anger. I felt him pus.h.i.+ng at me: Lucy, Lucy, d.a.m.n it, what have you done? I batted at him with my hands to leave me alone, and then he was gone.