Fallen Beauty (18 page)

LAURA

The holy women’s choir produced an eerie sound. It undulated on the harsh November wind in the prematurely dark sky, bringing its sadness to the empty street. It seemed strange that just months ago Grace and I had taken walks under the trees on the cobbled stones after dinner. We’d skipped rocks along the stream banks while the woodcocks courted and flew across the rippling waters, making magical-wing noises.

I hesitated on the steps before continuing into the church to present the robes I’d nearly lost my sight over, sewing at all hours this long month. I hoped the Advent robes of rich indigo-violet would be a royal offering to show them I was worthy, to respect their place in the church and to inspire a little of my own. I’d had foolish fantasies that they would gasp, rub the fabric, and smile at me—real smiles that reached their eyes.

But, no, that was not to be. And I was shamed and humbled by the vanity in me that thought it might be so.

They did stop singing when I entered, but not to stand in awe of my creation. They looked on me as a contagion. No one made a move to take the heavy robes from my arms, ten of them, pressed, folded, and wrapped. I placed the box on the front pew while the women stared at me.

“I’ve finished,” I said. “Just in time.”

Agnes stood still in front of the choir, wearing her customary look of distaste. I could sense a sinking in her. She had wanted me to fail. I scanned their faces, some wrinkled, some pinched, some as young as mine. My peers would not meet my eyes. Lily Miller gave me a small smile laced with pity.

Agnes reached up to caress her hair while placing her baton on the music stand, and finally stepped toward the box, peering over the end of her nose as if she’d stumbled upon a pit of snakes. The rings on her wrinkled fingers clicked over one another as she rubbed her hands together. Finally, she lifted the lid.

The way she widened her eyes and leaned closer, I could tell she coveted the robes, but as soon as she allowed the emotion to run through her like a current, she shut off the switch and her face became stone.

“I’m sorry, Miss Kelley,” she said in a voice that held no apology. “I distinctly remember requesting silver piping and you’ve gone and used gold.”

I clenched my fists into balls and took deep breaths to steady the flare of temper that rose in me, willing myself not to strangle Agnes.

“Mrs. Dwyer,” I said through clenched teeth, “I am quite certain you requested gold to reflect one of the gifts of the wise men to the infant Jesus, and to complement this particular warm shade of purple.”

“Well, now, that’s part of the problem too,” she said. “This is not the hue I ordered.”

I could hear my heart beating in my ears. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t dare make me lose money on a month’s work. The choir had already paid a portion up front from their budget funds, but that wouldn’t be enough to feed us for the next month. She knew how we struggled to pay the rent, but I’d never dreamed she would deliberately act to set us back. Her anger felt personal.

I summoned the strength I possessed and willed it to help me change my tone. I unclenched my fists and tried to rearrange my features to appear less aggressive.

“I’m sure this is the shade you selected because it is the only shade of purple shantung from this manufacturer. Sissy, can you help me? You were there.”

Sissy looked from me to Agnes. I could sense her dread, and I regretted putting her in such a position. My heart lifted when I saw her take a step toward us, until Agnes lifted her hand.

“That won’t be necessary,” said Agnes. “I am quite capable of seeing what is before me without assistance.”

Sissy looked down at the floor.

“Let me make this clear to you,” said Agnes. “I did not choose that fabric and I did not select that color trim. It was probably left over from something else you made, and the fabric I ordered is probably wrapped in bolts in the back of your shop.”

“That is most certainly not so,” I said, my anger rising. “I have the purchase order at the shop, and it has all the information I need. I’ll just go get that and show you—”

“There is no need to do that because I won’t believe this is the fabric you will say I chose. It seems to me that the question arises as to whether or not the choir here at Our Lady of Grace would like to continue patronizing a seamstress who does lazy work, and I know what I think in response to this question, but being a democratic woman, I will put it to the group. What say you?” she asked, turning toward the women who looked like they would like to die. Mostly.

Lily spoke first in a quiet voice. “I would give her a chance to correct herself.”

“In the future we might consider the mail-order robes Sissy found in a catalogue last week,” said another.

My mind raced. How to keep this account? I could change out the trim. It wouldn’t look as striking as it did now, but those old hens wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, and if it meant appeasing Agnes, I knew I had to do it.

“I’ll change the trim,” I said. “It would be a terrible sin to waste all this material, whether it is correct or not, but I think I can find the right shade of silver to complement the purple of these robes.”

Sissy spoke. “Honestly, it would save the church money to just go through the catalogue for our linens. We can get almost two robes for the price of one of these. We should be good stewards of our funds.”

No, no, no. I was in charge of sewing the linens, the robes, the vestments. I needed this account.

“Please,” I said, aware that I was begging but unable to see the alternative. “I can offer a discount because of the confusion, and I can have them resewn by Sunday.”

What was I saying? I had two days and a child to care for, and I was supposed to unstitch and resew ten robes?

Agnes softened her glare and turned to the choir. “Ladies, as much as I know we are right, we must indeed be good stewards and not waste these robes. I vote that we allow Laura to restitch the robes, but we must have them by Sunday.”

I knew the task was impossible, but I found my voice. “All right.”

The women of the church looked from Agnes to me and back again. It was particularly painful to see that most of them wore looks of shame. They sided with me but wouldn’t speak up. The injustice made me dizzy. I needed to get away before I was sick on Agnes’ patent leather pumps.

I pressed the lid onto the box, lifted the package, and walked down the church aisle, holding my head as high as possible. In spite of the cold night, I felt liberated to be free of those women. I stood on the stairs, taking deep gulps of breath, when I soon had the feeling of being watched. I gazed down the shadowed street, but saw no one there, so I turned back to the rectory and could have sworn the curtains of an upstairs window snapped shut and the light went out in the room. I imagined that Father Ash watched the square at all hours of the day and night, and wondered if it was him I saw in the window. As I turned back to go home, I ran into Darcy’s husband, Dr. Dempsey.

“Excuse me,” I said, as I tried to push around him.

“Are you all right?”

I gave him my most withering glare. “Yes, I’m just fine. As fine as I can be in my present circumstances, and having to remake ten robes in two days because your mother-in-law wants to torture me.”

He looked at the doors of the church and back at me. “I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

What did he expect me to say? Was he going to take off from his shift at the hospital to help me sew robes? Or perhaps I could ask him and Darcy to watch Grace for me. I wanted to say those things, but it felt too cruel, even for my savage mood.

“No,” I said, my tone full of ice.

I walked away from him on the sidewalk and toward my store, feeling the weight of his gaze on me. I glanced up and again saw a curtain in the rectory twitch. Another set of eyes on me. Always, eyes watching me.

•   •   •

I
could not bring myself to mutilate the robes. That’s what it would be: mutilation for the sake of humiliation. I decided at midnight that night that I would not remake the robes, no matter what the consequences. But I also knew that I would win this battle because I’d take it to Father Ash himself, and in front of Agnes if possible. He would love the robes because they were not only beautiful but also liturgically correct, and because it had been an act of charity on his part to commission them from me.

On Sunday, I brought the robes boxed and ready to church, ten minutes before Mass. I instructed Grace to sit in the back row, where we always sat, and strode up the aisle toward the choir where they were rehearsing, and where Father Ash was lighting the candles. I could see that Agnes thought I had remade them, and she looked triumphant. I could barely contain my satisfaction.

Father Ash smiled at me when he saw the large box I carried, and hurried over to relieve me of my burden. He placed it on the pew in front of the choir, and I lifted the lid. With a great flourish, though my hands trembled, I raised one of the robes and shook it out.

“This is marvelous,” he said, running his hands along the gold trim.

Agnes gasped, as did several of the choir women. Father Ash turned to them.

“Do you see, Miss Kelley?” he said. “Even they are speechless. You have outdone yourself.”

“Thank you, Father,” I said in my most humble voice. “It was my pleasure to sew for these holy people in honor of God.”

I felt a little ashamed for my theatrics, but I couldn’t help myself. Perhaps I’d confess later if it became a burden. I didn’t look at Agnes, but I felt her hatred.

Father Ash placed the robe back in the box and I helped him carry it to the sacristy. I placed my hand on his arm. He seemed to shrink from my touch, so I withdrew it.

“Thank you, Father Ash,” I said quietly, now truly humble. “You have done me a great kindness.”

His face turned red, and I felt bad for being so familiar in a sacred place. “It is you who have done the church a kindness. You have great talent.”

“Thank you.”

Being alone with him became uncomfortable. We made quick work of hanging the robes. When I turned to leave him to prepare for Mass, I saw that Agnes was waiting in the doorway, watching us. Her eyes had a wild look in them, and her neck was blotchy and red. Her anger prevented me from fully enjoying the moment, and my courage failed. I put my head down and walked past her to where my daughter sat alone in the back of the church.

•   •   •

VINCENT

I
am disgusted by the suited men who run our country.

Pale, bloated things without hearts.

They called me an anarchist. What a laugh. Anarchists are optimistic beings, those who believe the goodness of humans should allow them freedom to rule themselves as they will.

I am no anarchist. Men are not good. They might do good things, but they are fundamentally cruel, selfish, and murderous. I know more than anyone because I fight these impulses with my every waking breath.

I stare at this box of papers I’ve saved over the years. I’m stuck on the periodicals published after the executions of the Italian immigrants, two innocent men framed for murder because they were different.

The silence in the Berkshires sometimes feels the same as the quiet that night in August of ’twenty-seven when we all waited to hear if the governor would pardon them in light of so much spotty evidence, the mountains of reasonable doubt.

I think that night was the night it all started changing. It was the night my youth, my freshness, my joie de vivre was choked. I have been dying a little with every breath since. It permeates my work, and try as I might, I cannot change that. I can only testify to it.

If my life was a quilt, there would be squares I’d want torn out. I’d unstitch the block where I learned of the doomed immigrants. I’d use my teeth to tear out the square where I allowed Laura’s brother-in-law in my bed. I’d cover George Dillon’s square with another color to hide him away so no one, not even my Eugen, could know about him.

But the past cannot be unmade, and I suffer for it.

LAURA

As November turned into December and the darkness and the cold grew more oppressive, I began to receive letters two and three times a week from Millay. Some begged, some commanded, and some didn’t have anything to do with her request at all. I found those letters the most unsettling—about the weather, her mother’s poor health, her nerves, the houseguests visiting her and Eugen—because I thought she must be lonely to write to me, a near stranger. Receiving the letters gave me a strange thrill because they seemed forbidden, and I was only human, and just as tantalized by secrets as the next person.

The silence of the shop’s bell gave me ample time to consider her requests, constantly deciding for and against working for her. I’d also begun designing in secret. Millay had been enclosing samples of her sonnets as they were published in
Poetry Magazine
,
Harper’s
, and
The Saturday Evening Post
. As much as I wanted to resist her, I found the sonnets entrancing.

They were about an ill-fated love, captured in mythological language but clearly written from her heart. They were intensely personal, even disguised in their elevated vocabulary and ancient imagery. At places cruel and aloof, at others the poems exuded a vulnerability that spoke to me. I hated to admit it, but I felt I was reading about my own failed love, and I was inspired.

My hand seemed to have a mind of its own as it flew over page after page, drawing frocks representing emotion through color, texture, and form—costumes that I realized came from my own pain amplified by a woman who knew how to chisel emotion out of black marks on a white page. Thinking over my lost love and also about what Millay must be feeling—no matter how sordid—connected me to her. I stopped trying to resist it, and indulged in the thoughts because of the beautiful designs they yielded.

When Marie came into the shop, I stashed the book away and helped her with her crib sheets and baby blankets. I made new clothes for Grace and her dolls, and I took long walks down by the pond with her, where I could avoid Gabriel and the ever-changing lady in the rock, who had now begun to emerge in startling clarity. Sometimes at night, while Grace slept, I’d venture out to see the statue up close in the moonlight. The tent kept her face in shadow, but the rays struck the hem of her dress, giving it a cold, clear blue befitting the robes of the Blessed Mother.

The horizontal line Gabriel had made that day had become a snake under the foot of the Virgin. I loved the imagery of this calm, lovely woman with full power over evil, this new Eve crushing that old devil. And it was in the dark of night where I felt most at home, unjudged and free to do as I pleased.

One evening in mid-December, after being cooped up in the house all day, I had a wish to walk in the anonymity of the crisp, dark night to restore my calm. Even down by the streams meandering out of Borden’s Pond, I could peek at my house for quite a while to be sure Grace was safe, so I felt no misgivings about leaving her. She slept like Rip Van Winkle at night, and mostly had since she had been six months old. After checking her one last time, I went out the back door, locked it, and headed for the pond.

The water made barely any noise at this time of year, frozen from the edges inward. In a few weeks, we’d be able to skate on it, but now the soft whisper of the current continued. Last night’s slick rain had turned to snow, encasing the empty branches in glittering shells of ice and dressing up the woods in white. As much as I hated the chill in my bones, I loved the beauty of the winter landscape in the moonlight, and it loosened the knot inside me.

I heard something, however, that caused me to stop walking—a noise that had not come from an animal. I looked back at my home and wondered if I should return, but I picked up a wisp of a melody, and crept along the path until the music grew louder, and I could make out voices, male and female, in song. The noise was joyful, and as I rounded a bend, I saw a group, upstream, sitting on logs around a blazing fire.

The men and women laughed, and sang, and drank steaming liquid from tin cups. Warmth emanated from them, and I was intrigued to see several children playing at the group’s periphery. A striking woman with shiny brown hair and big brown eyes led the song, while a young man with long, curly hair and a bowler hat played the guitar, wearing fingerless gloves. A heavyset man used a ladle to refill cups, and a tall, fastidiously dressed man played the fiddle. There were others—a woman with a blond bun under a woolen cap, who kept an eye on the children; a middle-aged woman with a great mass of curling gray hair, who played a flute; and a young colored man with a harmonica. They looked like a band of Gypsies, and I wondered what Agnes would say about a group like this in the woods so near town.

As fascinated as I was, I knew I’d been away from Grace for too long, so I forced myself to head home, and hoped that these people would return so I could listen again to their music.

•   •   •

T
he Gypsies did return. Each night I waited until Grace fell asleep, and then crept out into the woods to watch the singers. Members of the group came and went, but there remained the same palpable joy, the camaraderie, and the hot drink. I began having fantasies of joining them. I started to recognize some of their songs, and hummed along to myself while I sat in the foliage of a fallen tree. What would they say if a single woman emerged from the trees to join them? Something told me I’d be welcome.

I watched on and off throughout the weeks on the nights I wasn’t too tired and the weather wasn’t too cold. I had recently missed three nights in a row, due to Grace having a cough, but she was soon well again, and I planned to go back. I put a pot on the burner to make tea to take with me. While the kettle heated on the burner, I went to the front of the store to close the curtains and saw a figure coming toward my house on the street. Who was out walking so late at night? As the man drew closer, I noticed that he held a bucket in his hands. He passed directly in front of the store, and I moved back so he wouldn’t see me.

It was Gabriel.

He looked at my store, and then continued around the side, heading toward the woods.

I rushed to the kitchen window in the back, and saw him cross the field. My heart sank because I wanted to watch the musicians, but I couldn’t risk running into him alone at night. And what was he doing carrying a bucket into the woods?

The teakettle whistled, and I poured the water over my tea bag and returned to the window, but Gabriel was out of sight.

I had been looking forward to the “show” all day, and I didn’t want to let Gabriel’s presence in the woods deter me. After all, I knew the paths well enough to hide if I saw him, and I wasn’t afraid of him anyway—not at all.

I thought for a few more moments while I checked to make sure Grace still slept, and then put on my coat, hat, and gloves. I picked up my thermos, locked the back door, and headed across the field to the woods.

A light snow fell and stuck to my eyelashes. I realized that Gabriel would see my steps in the fresh powder if he returned this way, but I didn’t care. I was tired of worrying about others all the time. His footprints led straight to the path I took to the musicians, and before long, I heard their music reaching out to me, bringing a smile to my lips.

As I crept to the bend where I could watch unnoticed, the smile froze on my face. I was shocked to see Gabriel withdraw a set of drumsticks from his pocket, and join the group in their music making. The beautiful singing woman kept looking at him, and he returned her gaze once or twice, but he mostly talked to the man who I presumed was the leader of the group.

When had he met them? How did he know to come here? Did he know them from before, or had he stumbled upon them?

A lot of kids were playing that night, and I wondered where they went to school and why they were allowed to stay up so late. I tried to check my judgment and just enjoy the show, but I couldn’t. The idea that Gabriel could walk up and join these people, even if he stayed quiet most of the time, mesmerized me. It seemed so unlike him.

When the music making ended, the beautiful woman walked over and sat next to Gabriel. He kept his eyes on the fire, but spoke to her. She seemed at ease and graceful, and not at all intimidated by the brooding stranger. She placed her hand on his arm, and I could have sworn he flinched, but he did not pull away.

She rose to get two cups of cider, and brought one back for him, and while she went, he watched her walk away. My loneliness was more acute here on the periphery than it ever had been, especially when she made him laugh. I stayed longer than usual, and as they began to pack up, and Gabriel stood with his bucket, I realized I needed to hurry home so he wouldn’t discover me. I walked as quickly as I could along the path, and broke into a run when I reached the field. Once home, I locked myself inside and watched out the window for a while, but I never saw Gabriel return the way he had come.

•   •   •

VINCENT

T
he cottage where my dear old lover Lulu and his wife, Alyse, stayed with us last fall is empty. I wish I could fill it back up with them. With Mother. With my sweet, terrible George. Perhaps I will have them back, and take Lulu like I did in the past.

But I don’t want Llewelyn, not really. I want what he symbolizes.

I want to reclaim the twenties in Greenwich Village.

I walk into the empty guesthouse and it is as if their ghosts rise around me. The year slips away and I remember.

We were endlessly drunk. There were sleigh rides and fancy meals, but also regret, a feeling of playacting what we all thought this time together was supposed to be, creating stories to tell our other friends and ourselves about what fun we were having.

From a full revolution of the earth, a complete passage of seasons, I can see now that the fun was hollow, shadowed, underscored by spirits like me and Lulu thinking of lovers we had elsewhere—me of George, and Lulu of a poetess he left in Dorset. Alyse plagued us for her own reasons. Eugen was high and low like I’d never seen him. We all must have sensed an explosive end to all the recklessness, but we couldn’t stand to look straight at it.

I now sit on the bed of our guesthouse, where our visitors read and slept, and made love, and I stare out the window at the gnarled tree limbs. I am reminded of the trees that grew from the sidewalks in Greenwich Village near our place in December of 1920.

I ruled the Village then. They called me the Great Queen.

My lovers, Edmund and John, escorted me up Christopher Street. We were a merry threesome—or, rather, I was merry. The young men tolerated each other because they knew I only wanted them together. Edmund saw a display of my poetry books in a window, and a woman with scarlet lips lifted a copy of
Figs from Thistles
from its stand. There were none left.

“They can’t keep you on the shelves,” said Edmund, with the enthusiasm of a child.

“Like we can’t keep her between us in bed,” said John.

Dark and light, yin and yang, my boys appealed to different aspects of my character, and together, we were a force. But I began to tire of them. They were becoming too attached. It’s why I preferred to take married men as lovers. They never pestered me when we were apart.

A writing assignment for
Vanity Fair
became the answer to my wish for freedom. I was sailing for Paris in a few days to start my new life, the next chapter. But all great stories should end with fresh moments, and I found mine in an English writer we called Lulu.

“What sweet goddess is this?” he’d said.

I’d been reclining on a settee in a midafternoon salon, indulging in a rogue ray of sunlight that had pushed between buildings and winter clouds to find me. I turned to look at this new man, a gentleman by the tailoring, and allowed him to kneel beside me and grasp my hand. My peers were already drunk, but I hadn’t yet begun. In truth, I’d been ill in my nerves and my belly, and the touch of his graceful fingers seemed to permeate my chill, and send warmth through my body. I knew the sunlight must have turned my hair a hundred shades of copper, and brought out the gold in my green eyes, and I gave him my softest, most welcoming gaze.

“Finally, a man who knows how to treat me,” I said.

“Don’t fault them,” he said, gesturing to the room behind him. “Mortals don’t know how to behave in the presence of angels.”

“Ha!” I laughed. “A fallen angel, perhaps, but I think goddess would be more appropriate.”

“Or Jezebel.”

“I consider that a high compliment.”

“You won’t be good for my soul,” he said.

“Then put it on a shelf while I attend to your body.”

I thought he would die of pleasure, and for the next few days, I let him learn all about me. This man almost ten years my senior was a child in my willing hands, moldable like clay, a puppet without strings. I allowed him to stoke his obsession of me because I knew I’d be leaving him soon, but I had to teach him to be like me. Otherwise, he’d be in for a lifetime of devastation. He still would, no doubt, but a healthy dose of distance from love might save him some heartache.

We lay in a steamy tumble of limbs on the last night I would bring him in my bed, and I unthreaded myself from him, and sat up to light a cigarette. He gazed at me as if trying to memorize my every feature.

“Lulu, I command you to take control of your senses,” I said.

“I can’t. I don’t want to. I only want to adore you.”

“And you have, but this swell of feeling must be stifled. Step away from this room in your head. Look in on it. What do you see?”

“The very definition of beauty, animated by cruelty.”

“Good,” I said. “At least you see the dark with the light. Move farther out. What is there?”

“The poor man who can see nothing else beyond the beauty, whose heart is about to be torn from his ribs.”

“Excellent. Now go farther away. What’s the view now?”

“A building of young people, exploding with ideas and creativity. Revolutionaries, artists, and poets at the start of a movement, getting high on each other.”