A Well-Behaved Woman Read online

  Consuelo mimicked, “‘Goodness, we simply forgot to pay, what with all the chaos of the upcoming wedding to Mr. Vanderbilt.’”

  “That ought to do it,” Alva said. “You should practice, Armide.”

  They were in the parlor, where Consuelo was teaching Alva a card game she’d learned in London and picking silly tunes on her banjo. Upstairs, Murray Smith rested and read, which was how he spent most of his days now. Anything more strenuous risked bringing on another heart episode.

  “And speaking of your wedding,” Armide said.

  “Let’s not,” Alva told her. “We’re having such a nice time.”

  Now that she’d secured her future and her family’s, practical truths were encroaching: she would have to leave home, which meant living apart from her sisters for the first time ever. The thought was strange, frightening—they’d been four lifeboats lashed together in a rough sea, and now her line was going to be cut.

  And Lulu, who had overseen Alva since birth, would no longer be there to tell her all the things she was doing wrong.

  And she would have a husband who would make “demands” of her, and while she wasn’t clear on the particulars of such demands, she knew close physical contact was involved and she dreaded it. She was supposed to dread it, at any rate, according to the Lady’s Book and according to her mother and according to God, and therefore she had persuaded herself that she did.

  Marriage also meant children, which meant pregnancy and childbirth, which meant untold agonies along with risk of death—and given the number of orphans in literature and life, that risk, as Mr. Shakespeare might say, was grave.

  Consuelo put her banjo aside. “No, let’s do. Have you settled on a design for your gown?”

  “Has anyone told you how poorly you take direction?”

  “All the time,” Consuelo said. “So, the gown?”

  “Mrs. Buchanan hasn’t had time for me yet. She’s doing a ball gown for Mrs. William Astor. She’ll see me a week from Tuesday, I’m told.”

  “Oh, well, of course,” Consuelo said. “One cannot delay Mrs. Astor’s order, because Mrs. Astor commands the moon and stars and the rain, too, I am fairly certain. As well as Mr. McAllister, of course. Her Lord Protector.”

  Ward McAllister, a fellow Southerner who hailed from Savannah, had been a fixture of their Newport summers, a happy drone flitting among the families, pollinating everyone with his enthusiasm and advice. He did this here as well, under doyenne Caroline Astor’s watchful gaze.

  “I rather like him,” Alva said.

  Consuelo nodded. “All the ladies like him.”

  “Mrs. Astor doesn’t command Mr. Astor,” Alva said. “Or perhaps she does.”

  “Does Mr. Astor actually exist?”

  “The papers speak of him often enough.” However, he owned a steam yacht and appeared to prefer life at sea over unending social commitments.

  Armide said, “Shall we mind our own business now?”

  “If we must,” said Alva.

  “Important as the wedding gown is,” Armide said, “what needs to be discussed is what happens on the wedding night.”

  Consuelo poked Alva. “When the gown is down, one could say.”

  Armide said, “I wish I knew more. What I do know, however, should keep you from entering the situation completely ignorant of what awaits you.” She paused. “You are ignorant?”

  “I prefer uninitiated,” Alva said.

  “It has to be just so with you, doesn’t it?”

  “Not always. Ignorant is pejorative, that’s all.”

  Consuelo said, “You should credit Alva, not criticize her; precision is the hallmark of success.”

  Alva said, “Success is the hallmark of success.”

  “Indeed it is,” Consuelo said. “Correct again.”

  “Precisely.”

  Armide said, “You should take this seriously.”

  “Who isn’t serious?” asked Alva. “I epitomize the word.”

  Armide tried again. “The purpose of marriage is, as you know, procreation—”

  “The purpose of my marriage is salvation.”

  Consuelo said, “Fairly certain you’re bargaining for both.”

  “Procreation ensures salvation, it’s true.”

  “Like money in the bank.”

  “Girls, please,” Armide said. “At least pretend to be serious.”

  They folded their hands in their laps and sat up straighter. “Proceed,” Alva told her.

  “As I understand it, men, well, they have particular needs that have to do with…” Armide paused. “Think of the pegged planks that made the walls of Grandpa’s slave quarters, remember? The wife is the plank and the husband is the peg. That is, he, um, he has a peg. All men do, where we have our—”

  The other two burst out laughing. “A peg!” said Consuelo.

  “I’m merely illustrating—”

  “But it’s made of flesh, obviously,” Alva said. “Is it … is it like a finger? With bones inside it, I mean. Or one bone, perhaps?”

  Armide frowned. “I don’t know. I suppose it must be.”

  Alva imagined something like a tiny elephant’s trunk. She’d seen an elephant once, at P. T. Barnum’s Hippodrome. Did elephant’s trunks have bones? She said, “Can a man move it at will?”

  “Alva, really.” Armide’s face was crimson.

  “Don’t you wonder?” she said. “How long is it? Does it get tucked down against a man’s leg when he isn’t … um … engaged in … construction?”

  Consuelo erupted in laughter again while Armide said, “Never mind. He’ll know how it works and how to proceed. What I do know—and this is important: you mustn’t act as though you like whatever he does to you. I used plank as a metaphor deliberately. Keep your arms still. Don’t … don’t writhe.”

  “Don’t writhe!” Consuelo said.

  Alva frowned at her sister. “Honestly, Armide. I’m not an animal.”

  But she was an animal. How else to explain what she’d done when she was younger? Meandering through her school’s parklike grounds in Neuilly-sur-Seine, lying facedown on a fallen log for the sensation she got when pressing herself against it. Secretly riding her pony unsaddled with her legs astride its back. Washing herself in the bath, deliberately rubbing that place she knew better than to touch except in strict necessity. Maman had been adamant about the way a girl would ruin herself if she indulged such filthy impulses. Alva didn’t want to be ruined. But she couldn’t help herself; the sensation was glorious, and as no one seemed to see any difference in her, she had kept doing it. Until the day her mother came into the bathroom and caught her at it. She’d yanked Alva from the tub, and, not even allowing her a bath sheet, made her place her hands on the washstand while she raised a hairbrush—

  Are you some kind of animal? (Smack!)

  I will not have a daughter of mine behave in such filthy ways. (Smack!)

  Lustfulness is a sin. (Smack!)

  Do that again and no decent man will ever marry you. Do you understand?

  Alva understood.

  Armide was saying, “It’s only that when men get with women in this way, they can succumb to their baser instincts. They want to … to rut. It’s your job to prevent that.”

  “Rut?”

  They all looked at each other helplessly. Then Armide shrugged. “That’s what I heard Madame Whitaker say.” Madame Whitaker had been a neighbor of theirs in Paris. Armide attended her Wednesday evenings at home, when many fashionable ladies and men, too, gathered to drink Cognacs and Madeiras and to gossip about whoever wasn’t immediately within earshot.

  Armide said, “Let’s suppose it means behave basely.”

  “And basely in this context would be…?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know! It doesn’t matter. I’m only telling you this part because you’re sometimes unladylike, asserting yourself the way you do, and—”

  “What nonsense!” Consuelo said. “These are modern times—”
/>   Armide put her hand over Consuelo’s mouth. “Alva, if you give your husband any signal that makes him imagine you are less than virtuous—”

  “I won’t,” said Alva. “I’ll be a plank.”

  “Because she’ll be scared stiff!” Consuelo laughed.

  Armide said, “Who wouldn’t be?”

  * * *

  A few days later, a somber William came by to say that his niece, little Alice, had unexpectedly succumbed to a fever. The family was stunned; the doctor had said her ailment was nothing serious. She had declined so quickly that there wasn’t even time to send for the clergyman. Even as Alva sat there, stricken, listening to him, heartbroken for the child’s parents and anxious about her own situation because the wedding would have to be put off, another very different (and guilty) feeling overcame her: relief.

  The gown need not come down—not for a little while longer, anyway.

  V

  ALVA’S RELIEF LASTED precisely as long as the mild weather and their meager store of summer produce did. Come January, getting by on two meals a day so that Jenny and Julia, still growing, could have more to eat, Alva no longer cared what might occur on her wedding night or any night afterward. Her stomach gnawed at her all the time. Her collarbones and cheekbones grew prominent enough that at church one Sunday, Mrs. Washburn took her aside and said, “Miss Smith, you’re so thin and pale! I must ask: are you tubercular?”

  “Goodness, no, I’m quite well,” Alva assured her. “It’s bridal nerves, that’s all.”

  “Still, you’ve got to eat!”

  Yes, she needed to eat—and did, in vivid dreams of steaming hot meat pies and thick stews and pastries straight out of the baker’s oven, only to cruelly wake again to a breakfast of a single egg or cup of porridge, weak coffee, and Julia grousing, “Why did that child have to die?”

  Alva scolded her. “Have you no sympathy for anyone beyond yourself?”

  “She’s already dead; my sympathy can do nothing for her. I’m hungry. The house is always cold. Daddy’s room gets all the coal—”

  “Would you have your invalid father freeze to death?”

  “We’re cursed,” Julia said. “We used to live so nicely, and now I have to sleep in a room where I can see my breath and have to share a bed with Jenny.”

  Alva said, “I should think her a benefit in wintertime.”

  “Her nose whistles when she breathes. What happened to us? Why did everything have to go so wrong? When will Daddy be well again? He’s not going to die, is he? I won’t be able to stand it if he dies, too. It isn’t fair.”

  Alva could not endure three more months of this. She might ask William to advance them a portion of her settlement; undoubtedly he’d be glad to assist them this way. Was it not bad enough, though, to be undertaking the marriage solely for his money, without begging for his aid even before she’d bound herself to him? Nor did she wish to beg from Mr. Yznaga or any of her distant uncles. Leaving aside the embarrassment it would cause her father, she did not wish to always be turning to some man or other for solutions to her troubles. As helpless as so many of her sex preferred to be, she was determined to be the opposite. All these ladies of privilege, pale feathers drifting on the breeze. No. She would aid herself.

  * * *

  To save coal, her father had taken to staying in bed with hot water bottles, pillows, and quilts tucked around him. Alva found him lying on his left side (the doctor having said it was best for his blood circulation) with his mouth hanging open, exposing the dark gaps where his molars once had been. Even in sleep, his breath was shallow and labored. As she set his tray on the bureau, she heard him rouse.

  “Is that you, my dear?”

  “It’s Alva,” she said, turning to face him. “I’ve brought your lunch.”

  He propped himself on one elbow. “You can tell your father I agree. I’ll do it.”

  “What are you saying, Daddy?” The stramonium bottle on his bedside table lay on its side, empty. The Fowler’s solution was empty as well. She put the bottles in her pocket. “Did you have another episode? Are you in pain?”

  “I’ll give up the law and work for him in Mobile. It’s what you want. Though God knows I’m no salesman.”

  She kneeled down next to the bed. “Daddy, it’s Alva. Your daughter.” She reached for his wrist to measure his pulse.

  He pulled his arm away. “You shouldn’t be in here, Phoebe. Go on, before someone comes along and sees you.”

  “Stop it, Daddy, I’m Alva. Maman’s gone. It’s 1874—”

  “Go on, won’t you,” he hissed. “If my mother finds you here, you’re ruined. Please. Go.”

  “All right.” She fought back tears as she stood. He was puffy and his color was terrible, save for the hectic pink of his cheeks—which in its way was awful, too. He might not have four months left in him. He might not have four days. “I’m leaving.” She went to the bureau and took a box from the bottom drawer, then hurried out of the room.

  The narrow blue velvet box, which Maman had called her treasure chest, was decorated with gold thread filigree. It held eight items, all of which had been promised to the girls, two apiece, as their inheritance. Their mother liked to take out each item and unwrap it tenderly, laying it on her dressing table while the girls gathered around her. A short string of pearls. Three gemmed brooches. A diamond-and-ruby ring, emerald earbobs, a gold bracelet encrusted with opals, and a stickpin with an enameled peacock design. Its eye was a small but vivid diamond, and its tail feathers had arrays of colored gems. Each girl had her favorite, though Julia was forever changing her mind. It didn’t matter; they didn’t believe the jewelry would ever come to them, because to get it they had to lose their mother, and such a loss simply wasn’t possible. When later they were forced to face that loss, Armide put the box away. “Maman said to keep it for our weddings—one piece each, and then the second at the birth of our first child.”

  And so they would. First, however, Alva would pawn it and get as much money as she could bargain for. Then once she and William were married, she would repay the pawnshop from her own household account, reclaim the jewelry, and tell her sisters she had packed the box away with her belongings when preparing to move to her new home. An inspired plan, if she did say so herself.

  Dressing to go out, she pushed the box into the balding fur muff she’d been using for as long as she could remember. As she passed the parlor on her way to the front door, Armide said, “Where are you off to? It’s terribly raw out there. Icy rain—”

  “I have to go to the druggist’s,” Alva said, turning back to the parlor doorway, the box hidden inside her muff. “Daddy has gone through his medicines. And then I am off to Mrs. Buchanan’s, finally.”

  Armide pulled her shawl close around her neck and set her book aside. “Oh, the wedding gown—I had forgotten that’s today! I’ll get my wrap—”

  “No, you have to stay. Daddy’s not well, and Lulu’s out with the girls.”

  “I hate to think of you going there on your own. What of Consuelo? Might she go with you?”

  “She’s still in Cuba with her mother. You’re sweet to worry, but I don’t mind. Truly.”

  “You should be chaperoned—”

  “It’s just town.”

  “Now is not the time to be risking your reputation.”

  Alva said, “You worry too much. Everything will be perfect. Keep a listen for Daddy. He’s … well, he mistook me for Maman. You might bring him a coffee, help him clear his head.”

  Armide’s alarmed expression was the response Alva was aiming for. Her sister would shift her concern to their father and Alva could carry on without interference.

  Outside, the rain clouds were beginning to lift. The wind carried scents of wet wool and acrid smoke. Glimpses of sun amid rolling clouds did little to offset the wind’s bite. Alva wondered if William might like to spend winters somewhere warmer, perhaps Marseille. The food in Marseille was itself worth the trouble of getting there. Bouillabaisse …
lapin à la provençale … pieds et paquets …

  After seeing the druggist, Alva caught the horsecar for downtown. Working-class girls coming from the shantytowns eyed her from beneath untidy hats and hair, contempt plain in their expressions. She turned her gaze away.

  The streets were thick with carts and carriages, the cobblestones wet from the rain. Shopkeepers were extending their awnings. Chairs and tables were set out in front of cafés in weak approximations of a Parisian street. What she wouldn’t give to be in Paris, with the Seine in the sunlight, accordion music and le français filling her ears, an adoring husband, chaussons aux pommes and café au lait, a charming wrought-iron balcony on her pied-à-terre from which she would watch the beautiful rigs with their beautiful passengers …

  At Chambers Street the trolley lurched, the team balking as a cart overturned ahead of them. The cart pulled its horses with it, mud and manure flying, the intersection blocked, men yelling, people rushing to get a better look. A child wailed. The girls near Alva stood up and made for the exit. “Best stay put,” one said as she passed. She sounded Russian. “Don’t want to get yourself dirty.”

  “Da,” said her companion. “Too precious for this street.”

  Too precious? My, how outward appearances could deceive. Yet Alva said nothing; she had no rebuttal: her fiancé’s father had a monthly dinner date with the president.

  She waited for them to go, then got up and followed them off into the crowd.

  Pushing through, she struggled to make her way to the far opposite curb. The fallen horses were screeching in pain or panic. People rushed past and around, bumping and shoving and calling out. Alva’s hat went askew and she reached up to protect it, finally seeing the curb ahead as she did.

  What a relief to find the sidewalk, to be out of the mud and chaos and wind! As she stood in front of a tobacconist’s, she used both hands to secure the hat while she scanned the storefronts for a pawnshop—

  Both hands.

  “No!” she yelled, startling a pair of men nearby.

  She must have dropped the muff in the commotion of getting through the crowd.

  Back into the melee she went, pushing and bumping, her gaze on the street … nothing.