Fallen Beauty (15 page)

I tightened the measuring tape on her small waist, and as I did, my hands grazed her lower back. She again pulled in her breath and raised the cigarette back to her lips. Her skin began to flush, and I knew that this woman was working herself into quite a state at my touch. I felt curiously removed from the situation. Perhaps my separation from what I was doing allowed me to continue.

Twenty-two inches.

I moved the tape a bit farther down and allowed it to open around the swell of her hips. As I noted her perfect curvature, thirty-four inches, she reached over and stubbed out the cigarette, and then turned to me. Her eyes were half-open, and she was nearly breathless. A fine sheen of sweat glistened on her freckled neck.

“Put out your arms,” I said. She obeyed me and I measured their length. I knew I had to measure her legs, but I didn’t want to be at her feet with her naked over me. I went around the back of her again, and measured from behind, careful to keep my fingers away from any place that might further arouse her. The graceful curve of her back ignited an image in my mind of purple velvet outlining its slope. I could almost feel the material in my hands as I worked, and became dizzy.

“You have such a gentle touch,” she said. “Like wind moving over my body.”

I shook my head to scatter my fantasy, and walked over to my notebook, where I recorded her measurements.

“Once you’ve put on your robe, I’ll discuss my ideas with you,” I said, meeting her gaze. “But only once you’ve dressed.”

Her face fell, and she replaced her expression of drowsy anticipation with a sulking scowl. She looked like a lascivious child. I turned my back on her to hide my smile, pleased that I had won some control. Soon, she was at my side, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from her body.

“Can you at least tie my robe?” she said. “My hands are trembling.”

I gave her a look of annoyance, but decided to give in a little if it would mean that her breasts would no longer be poking out at me. I closed the negligee over her chest and tied it in a double knot. She could barely take her eyes off me, but managed to glance down at the sketchbook. She ran her hand over the purple gown, tracing the fur collar as if she could feel it. It made the hair on my arms rise.

“Yes,” she said. “This is exactly what I envisioned. Velvet. Ermine. You have a special sight.”

“No, Miss Millay—”

“Vincent.”

“Vincent, I simply listened to what was asked of me.”

“How much will it cost?”

“That depends on the quality of fabric—”

“The highest.”

“Then I imagine it will cost close to twenty dollars, payable up front, as soon as I have the exact figures.”

Millay walked over to the bureau in front of the window and opened the middle drawer, where she removed a white banking sleeve from under a pile of sweaters. She found a twenty-dollar bill and held it out to me. I longed to snatch it from her fingers and get as far away from her as quickly as possible, but I willed my composure and took the money gently, pressing it into my notebook, which I slid into my satchel.

“You are an innocent,” she said, almost to herself.

“I don’t think most people in town would agree with you.”

“You are wounded too. Deeply.”

I couldn’t argue with her there.

She reached out to touch my face, and I flinched.

“Forgive me,” she said, drawing back her hand. “I am very sensitive—to touch, to the environment, to the interior lives of others. You have a tempest in you at odds with your softness of feature and manner that I find irresistible.”

I did not answer her comment. I did not want to acknowledge her advances, though her boldness fascinated me. I was determined to keep my composure, although I’d begun to feel the same wrongness in the atmosphere that I had earlier, with the buzzing bees. I longed to get out of these rooms, which felt too close and intimate, and no doubt held the impressions of countless strange and promiscuous rendezvous.

“I should have the gown finished within several weeks,” I said. “Mr. Boissevain can pick it up at that time. On appointment, of course. We must be discreet.”

“Why don’t you bring it up to me?”

“I don’t have a car, and the trip is difficult by bike. Also, there’s my daughter.”

Millay sighed and started back through the bathroom to her bedroom. I followed her in, but instead of leading me out to the hallway, she walked to her bedside, lit a candle, and untied the knot on her robe, again letting the negligee fall to the floor. She leaned back on the bed and narrowed her eyes.

“I’m glad you came,” she said, stroking her hair and letting it fall across the tops of her breasts. She slid her hand down her stomach as I turned to leave. “Tell my husband to hurry back. I’ll be waiting for him.”

•   •   •

VINCENT

I
once told George we were doomed because our love began its bloom when there were no leaves on the trees for sighing under. No flowers for him to place in my waiting hands. No birds to christen us, no spring rains to baptize us, no sun’s blessing.

Bitter wind, heavy snow, gray skies cracked by black rooks were all we had.

He’d disagreed with me. He said that our winter love would grow like the fire’s ember, a cozy place against a battering storm. He said it would drink the melted snowdrifts until it burst open and coiled its roots and shoots out to meet the spring, where it would flourish.

He always was a silly poet.

But thoughts of George always mingle with those of Elinor.

While I recline in my bed, my eyes fall on the empty bottle of wine that I was to share with Elinor Wylie before she passed. I think of that night I was to read, when just a breath before I went onstage I was told that she had died. As I walked out before the audience, I could not hear their welcoming applause. A thousand smiling faces behind two thousand clapping hands were like actors in a silent film. They made no sound. I could only hear the rushing of blood in my ears, pumped from my vital heart, reminding me that my life had no power to infuse her life any longer. I had recited her poetry that night, instead of my own, until I could barely stand. Then I wrote to George.

It seems our love was born in the death of that time, a phoenix rising from Elinor’s ashes. I can’t think of Elinor’s death, her stroke at such a young age, without it being followed by the way George pierced my heart.

I am overcome with a little poem, a neat stack of words that will be my dedication. I will dedicate my sonnets to Elinor; the essence of what I felt for her will be a prelude to my love with George. It will be a perfect marriage, more perfect than this marriage in which I now exist.

The last word in the dedication is
grief
. My pencil clings to it like a magnet. I am suddenly trembling.

I look down and see that I am still naked. My breasts are heavy and sore with my coming courses. My belly is swollen. How I wish one of them could be here to see me, ripe like this. Full as the moon. As soft and open as I’ll ever be.

LAURA

Eugen dropped me off behind the cemetery, just as I’d asked. Once he had pulled away, I walked to the stone in the wall and dislodged it. There was no lover’s note, of course. He hadn’t left one in years, and I hated that it still hurt me. I began to press the stone back into place, but decided to put an end to that hope. I searched until I found a large rock, which wasn’t difficult being so near the mountains, and brought it down on the stone, cracking it into pieces. Smashing it felt exhilarating, and I was smiling to myself as I turned to the homeward path, only to halt in surprise when I came face-to-face with the sculptor Gabriel walking toward me. His hat hung low over his eyes.

“Feel better now?” he asked.

“I do,” I said, trying to hide my embarrassment. “You should try it sometime. It would do you good.”

He laughed. “I’ll start tomorrow, as a matter of fact. With the marble, that is. The first strikes can be free and careless. Not as much after that.”

“I’ll have to bring my daughter to see you work. She’s dying to see the lady in the rock. If you don’t mind an audience.”

“I don’t have much choice, being out in the middle of town, do I? But it’s what Michael wants. And I’ll take your daughter over those other women any day.”

He must have meant Agnes and her friends.

“Father Ash is an old friend?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.

“We were in Italy together during the war. Michael’s a great man. A brave man.”

I tried to think of Father Ash outside the context of our town, framed in a different window from the one in which I often found him watching over the street, but I could not. I couldn’t picture him with a group of men, sharing insults or injury. He seemed solitary to me. An island. I wondered if Gabriel was the same.

A novel suddenly came to mind—
A Farewell to Arms
by Ernest Hemingway. Mrs. Perth had snuck it to me after it was banned from the library. I’d loved it, but had been devastated by it. What if Gabriel’s heartbreaks were like those of Frederick Henry’s? Whom had he loved and lost in the war?

“Michael wants the town to see the transformation of a crude rock into a pure, holy being. To show what we are all capable of becoming in spite of our sin. To show what God does with us. Those are his words, not mine.” He sounded cynical.

I was further embarrassed to feel tears spring to my eyes. “I must be going,” I said, and continued on the path away from him.

A breeze sent a shower of leaves falling over me and the sun warmed me as I hurried back to my home, to my daughter, to my sister, who waited for me. As I walked, I prepared in my head the lies I’d tell to hide my betrayal, and it hurt me deeply in light of the symbol on display in the center of town that was meant to change me—to change all of our dark hearts.

•   •   •

M
arie didn’t ask me a single question about my outing. I supposed her preoccupation with herself had its benefits.

She complained about her aching back, her distaste of Everette’s new approach of simpering remorse, the way winter seemed to be coming down early from the mountain. I stifled a smile at that comment, remembering how I’d said just those words to Eugen, but she did not notice. She kissed Grace on the head, kissed me on the cheek, and was market-bound before I could get a word in edgewise.

The next day, I was glad I’d thought to prepare the fireplace with kindling and logs the night before. Winter had arrived, and the sharp cold had made its way under the door, around the windows, and through the floorboards. I set the rice pouch I’d made for Grace by the fire. My mother had shown me years ago how to sew a flannel pouch, fill it with dry rice, and warm it on the hearth. This little sleeve provided comfort on cold winter mornings and in bed at night. Grace loved it. She called it her rice baby.

When she awoke, I gave her the heated rice baby, boiled a pot of water for the percolator, and used what coffee I didn’t drink to make gravy for the biscuits I’d saved from yesterday morning. Once we’d eaten our fill, the fire had warmed the downstairs, so we hurried upstairs to wash our faces, brush our hair, and put on dresses, then return to the toasty room.

I kept an eye on the door, knowing Marie would come through at any moment. She wanted to work on the layette for the baby, but I was eager to place fabric orders for Millay’s gown. I kept the samples in the back room and told Grace to call when Aunt Marie arrived. As I flipped through the velvet samples, I reveled in their softness. I couldn’t imagine spending so much money on fabric, but I was glad someone else could.

I filled out the order form, and placed the money for the electric company in an envelope to run to the post office. While I waited for Marie, I tidied the storeroom, and prayed that someone would come in with more business for us. After a short time, I heard the bell on the front door. Someone did enter the shop, but he was not looking for business. Gabriel staggered into the room holding his hand, which was covered in blood. His pasty skin glistened with sweat.

“I had an accident,” he said.

It was jarring to have a man in this shop, especially one who required my assistance. My impulse was to feel guilty, and I looked over his shoulder to see if anyone on the street had seen him enter. Gabriel squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then opened them halfway. He looked like he was going to pass out. I dispelled all thought of the townspeople, and hurried to help him to the sink, where I instructed him to put his hand under the faucet. He looked at me from inches away, before returning his gaze to his hand. Once the blood had gone down the drain, I could see his thumbnail smashed and bloody where he must have struck it with the mallet. He leaned his elbows on the sink’s edge and put his head down.

Once the blood had been cleared, the injury didn’t look very serious, but he seemed quite affected.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I guess,” he said. “I hate when I do that.”

“Do you do it often?”

“Yes. Common sculpting injury,” he said. “Don’t you often poke yourself with the needle?”

“Daily,” I said. “But I don’t turn green over it.”

He gave me a half smile as Grace came into the room.

“Ouchie,” she said.

“Yes,” said Gabriel.

“Here.” She held up a strip of pink cloth with tiny purple violets in the pattern.

Gabriel turned off the water, wiped his hands on the towel at the edge of the sink, and reached for the cloth. He looked at it a moment with a furrowed brow, then held out his bloody thumb, and wrapped it with the material.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Thank you, Gracie,” I said. “But let’s get him something a little thicker.”

As we walked back into the shop to my cloth basket, Marie entered with Everette at her heels, holding her baby fabric. They were arguing, but when Gabriel stepped into view, they both stopped and looked from him to me. Marie’s face was unreadable, but Everette, ever the politician, broke into a smile that didn’t touch his eyes. He put the layette cloth on the counter, and came toward Gabriel with an extended arm. Gabriel gave him his good hand.

“You’re the sculptor,” said Everette, his voice tight and too loud for the small space we all occupied. “I’ve heard all about you from the ladies at church.”

“I am. I’ve never eaten so many baked goods in my life.”

“They feed those they want to devour,” said Everette. Marie smacked him.

“Ouchie,” said Grace, pointing to Gabriel’s hand.

Gabriel smiled at her, and then turned his attention to us. “I’d better get back. I left all my tools sitting in the square when I ran in here.”

“I wouldn’t worry about them getting stolen,” said Everette. “You’ve come to a pretty sleepy town.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Marie. “People steal all kinds of things around here.” She glared at Everette and I kept my head down. I wished she didn’t have to stir up trouble while strangers were in the room. Marie pushed around Gabriel and headed to the kitchen, leaving Everette clenching his jaw.

“Pregnant women,” he said. “So volatile.”

I wanted to strike him for his comment. Instead I handed Gabriel a thick cutting of cotton cloth and bade him farewell as he walked to the door. “Good-bye. I hope your thumb heals quickly.”

“Thanks.” He nodded and closed the door behind him. Everette watched Gabriel until he was out of sight.

“He seems nice,” he said in an icy voice. “I haven’t found out much about him though, so you might not want him in your shop with Grace.”

“Do you have any reason to suspect a problem? He’s friends with Father Ash.”

“No, but there’s something about him that sets me on edge.”

You enjoy being the center of attention,
I thought.
Gabriel’s a threat.

“I doubt he’ll have any reason to come back,” I said.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

Marie walked into the room with red eyes, and Everette rearranged his face to look contrite. He went over to her and put his arms around her.

“Focus on the baby,” he said. “Look forward. Make his clothes—”

“Or
her
clothes,” said Marie.

“Or
hers
. That will make you happy.”

She looked up at him with doubtful eyes, but allowed him to kiss her on the cheek.

“Don’t stay too long and tire yourself out.” Everette nodded at me and patted Grace on the head. “Bye, girls. Don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone.”

The door opened and closed, bringing in a sharp gust of wind. I crossed the room to tend the fire.

“You can count on it,” said Marie.

•   •   •

A
n hour later, Marie and I looked up from our sewing, surprised to see Agnes and Sissy, a fellow choir woman, walk through the door. Agnes glanced with distaste at Grace, who sat at a small table pretending to feed her dolly bits of jellied toast. I cringed when I saw that Grace had jelly all over her cheeks and fingers, and must have touched her hair, because the left side had pulled out of its barrette. I jumped up and hurried to the kitchen, where I wet a dishrag, and returned to wipe Grace’s face and hands so she wouldn’t appear so unkempt. Marie welcomed the women and I heard the three of them discuss Marie’s impending arrival, as Grace squirmed under my grooming.

“I’m so delighted for you and your
husband
,” said Agnes, emphasizing the last word. “It is so nice to see such a fine family rising to political prominence.”

I laughed inwardly at Agnes’ assessment of Marie and Everette’s family situation. If she only knew that the junior politician had so recently spent time in the bed of the Jezebel poet on the hill, how her mouth would have dropped. My mind raced with spiky barbs I wished to throw at Agnes, but all that ever came out were polite responses to questions and resolute acceptance of her cruelties.

“What can we do for you today?” I asked, trying not to appear too eager.

“I’m afraid I’ve come with a rather impossible errand, but Father Ash insists, strangely, so I’m afraid I must ask it of you. It seems that he wants the choir to have new robes for Advent, less than a month from now. Ten of them. Why he is so insistent on this and the creation of the statue in town at this time is beyond me, but he is absolutely firm.”

My spirits sank over the impossible task. The time it would take to complete this job and the other I’d promised to do stacked up in front of me. On the other hand, Father Ash had given me the job as a kindness, and we needed the business. Perhaps I could persuade Marie to sew a robe or two while I worked around the clock.

“I’ll do it,” I said. “I mean, I would be glad to try.”

I found it coincidental that I had been commissioned to create robes for a witch and for saints in the same color, and thought that Millay would appreciate the irony, though this thought startled me. Millay was the enemy, just as Agnes was. How strange to think of Millay as an old friend with whom I might share a laugh.

“Of course you will,” Agnes said. “I don’t really think you have a choice. It’s been awfully dark here in the evenings. You aren’t without electricity, are you?”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “I mean, we had a mix-up, but that’s all taken care of.”

Grace stared between us, and I wished my daughter were not here to witness my cowardice. I hoped she was too young to understand. I caught Sissy peering at Grace, and it unnerved me.

“I’m so glad to hear that,” said Agnes. “In any case, the choir budget will allow for a small down payment for materials, and we’ll pay the balance upon completion of the work.”

“I usually require half up front to cover some of the labor in addition to materials,” I said.

“But that is not what has been approved in our budget,” she said. “And time is running short. I had assumed this would be a suitable arrangement. If you don’t think you can do it, however, one of the ladies has come across a catalogue where we might order exactly what we want, with a due-date guarantee. I’m sure I can persuade Father Ash.”

“No,” I said. “Please, no. I’ll be able to get your robes to you. I agree.”

I knew the church could be relied upon to pay me in full, especially if Father Ash had suggested me, so I agreed to her terms, wrote up a work order, and led Agnes and Sissy to the large table to select materials for the robes. Agnes picked out warm purple shantung with complementing gold trim that looked festive enough for the coming liturgical season. Sissy nodded in agreement with everything Agnes said. Sissy was in awe of Agnes—the woman fond of big, public gifts followed by the recognition of bigger ceremonies and plaques. Half the public buildings in town had her name bolted to their facades—the library children’s wing, the firemen’s living quarters, the church for the stained-glass windows she’d financed. It was a shame that a better person wasn’t behind such philanthropy.

Marie thought that I was too hard on Agnes and that in spite of her haughtiness she was very generous. Marie would also remind me of the rumors of Agnes’ early heartbreak. But every time I had tried to give Agnes the benefit of the doubt, she had insulted me. I knew that she saw my unusual family situation as a threat to the moral order she wanted in her town. I also knew that Darcy was the center of her life, and ever since our school days, I had sensed Agnes’ general disdain for me and any other girls with good looks or talent. She had a terrible need to be best.