Fallen Beauty (8 page)

“May I touch you?” I ask, as soon as he is out of earshot. She is startled. “I mean, your dress. May I touch your dress?”

“Oh, yes.”

I reach out and run my hand along the intricate brocade that frames her hip, feeling the warmth of her body seep through the material.

“I must know where you got this,” I say.

“My sister made it. Laura is the best seamstress. In the world,” she adds with a laugh.

My ears prick at the mention of her sister. I try to control my eagerness. “I see that. And is your sister here?”

I wait with delicious anticipation, but when Marie doesn’t answer, I turn to her and see that she has paled. “I’m afraid not.”

My disappointment is acute. To be so close to the woman from my imagination, just a family relation away, and not to meet her feels cruel. It is the whole reason I consented to come. I look around for Eugen and see him talking to the librarian Eleanor Perth, who has been to our estate for poetry readings, and think I’ll tell him that I want to go.

“Excuse me,” I say to Marie, and leave her.

I suddenly feel a cold hand on my arm. I turn and look up to see a regal woman with a crown of white hair smiling over me. At her side are a young raven-haired woman and a lean man who looks as if he could use a good night’s sleep.

“I’m Agnes Dwyer, the host of tonight’s event. This is my daughter, Darcy, and her husband, Daniel, a doctor at the hospital that will benefit from our ball. We are so happy you could come. We are all very curious about such a worldly literary sensation living so close to our small town. You do us an honor.”

This woman leers at me like a vulture. I mistrust anyone who refers to me as a literary sensation because it means they want something from me. I would have hoped the hefty price of admission would be enough. I stand as tall as my meager height will allow.

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” I say. “I need material for my new book of poetry, and the characters in this hall are good enough to eat.”

She tries to hide her shock at my words, and laughs while reaching up to cup her hair.

“We do have quite a town,” she says, “though I’m afraid we’re all probably too conventional for your tastes.”

I can see she is not afraid of me, and this piques my interest. I take the flask out of my purse and drink from it. She narrows her eyes, but the tight smile on her lips never leaves. I screw the lid back on and put it away.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I say. I inhale and glance around the room, letting my gaze touch Marie and Everette, the priest, Mrs. Perth, and, finally, Agnes Dwyer’s daughter and son-in-law. “I sense a smoldering undercurrent of passion and energy. There’s no telling what could happen if it ran unchecked.”

The smile leaves Agnes’ lips. The couple at her side shifts. I wink at her and walk away to join my husband.

He is not ready to go, so I align myself to him, allowing him to lead me through the room for the rest of the night. I stare openly at Marie, and her dress, and her husband. I learn that he is a rising politician. I hear the townspeople mention Marie’s sister, Laura. They wonder why she is not here, and then their voices drop in speculation. I deduce that Agnes is the head of the town because she is its great benefactress, and that moral order is important to her, and that makes the demon in me wish to shake it up.

I mention to many people that someday we will host a party on the mountain with actors and music and drink. I stir up the gossip. I touch my fire to their waiting matches. I end the night by telling Marie and Everette that I will be personally offended if they aren’t in my garden in the future, and I see they are greedy to come to me, to see what life is like on the mountain where there are no rules or naysayers, but only the pulsing energy of nature where it may run free.

LAURA

It was cruel to parade my sister at the ball in that dress where I knew he would be, but I gave in to my cruelty. An hour after she’d left, however, I hated myself and the monster I was becoming.

I thought that severing ties with him and destroying evidence of our love might help my state, so I burned his handkerchief, his letters, and the newspaper from the Follies. The flames bled the ink from his words before consuming them. It was a pity I could not destroy the triple-stranded pearl necklace, or let it go. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to give it to Marie to wear, fearing the questions it would inspire. The necklace lay in a velvet box lined in red satin in the back of my closet, and there it would stay.

November arrived and, with it, the inevitable discovery of my condition by the town.

One afternoon, as I put the final touches on the baby’s layette, Agnes entered my shop. Instinct caused me to shove the sewing under the counter as I noted the group of community women with her, including her sister, Lily, and her daughter, Darcy. They’d been making these visits regularly since my father’s funeral. Agnes had started a meal calendar where church ladies could sign up to make dinner for Marie and me a couple of times a week in the months after my father had died and before Marie’s wedding. She had pinned it on the bulletin board in the church lobby, and written across the top: AGNES D., COORDINATOR. I couldn’t help but narrow my eyes every time I saw it. The meals had stopped, but the unannounced visits had continued.

It was rumored that in her early years Agnes had acted in plays, but that a religious awakening in her twenties—and being jilted by a handsome leading man—had taught her that vanity was the foundation of acting and that she must give up the stage at once. To Agnes, vanity became the root of all evil, and my father had often said that a family of beautiful girls making beautiful clothes irritated her. Rather than give up the stage, however, it would appear that it had expanded to encompass her entire life in town, with her and Darcy as the stars.

Agnes allowed the door to close behind her group; she was holding a loaf of bread wrapped in a red gingham napkin and made pretty with cinnamon sticks. Marie was supposed to call on me, but she was nowhere in sight, so I would have to stand to accept the bread. I glanced out the window, willing Marie into view, but she did not appear. I reached out my hands but Agnes raised an eyebrow and stood still across the shop, forcing me to rise and meet her.

I’d known this moment was inevitable, and I was glad the revelation would at least take place in my territory. What pained me most was how it would dishonor my father and mother. I placed my sewing on the table and tried to suck in my stomach as much as possible, but when I stood, a stabbing pain in my lower back caused me to reach behind and apply pressure to it, highlighting the outline of my pregnant stomach.

Agnes spoke seemingly before thinking. “My, it seems my effort at keeping you well fed has proven successful.” My face burned at her audacity, and turned a deeper shade of red when I saw her eyes reflect her realization. The women behind her set their gazes on my stomach, and then began to back away from Agnes, as if her rising outrage would engulf them. Pride gave me courage, and I straightened my posture, stepped forward, and reached for the bread, which she placed in my waiting hands as one would feed a caged animal. She snatched back her fingers once they were relieved of their offering and cupped the bottom edge of her clean white pile of hair.

That hair was her main source of vanity. The fifty-eight-year-old woman wore it like a crown and often petted its softness while she spoke, drawing attention to it like a preening bird. When her husband had died five years ago, she had risen to the stature she’d always craved: a blessed widow of the church, an elder, the choir director, entirely independent and free to reign however she chose, well cared for because of her late husband’s frugality and his investments in transportation and real estate. Her money fed the church, so Father Ash was indebted to her in a way that only Catholic priests could experience—the woman who said she loved you like a mother, ruled you with an iron fist, and no doubt fantasized about you like a prostitute.

And here she stood, unable to take her eyes from my stomach. I marveled at her rudeness. It would seem that with all of her genteel upbringing, someone must have taught her not to stare, but she stood transfixed. I turned away and placed the bread on the counter, and returned to my sewing table, where I sat, and finally found my voice.

“Yes,” I said, “your generosity is overwhelming.”

Someone sniggered, but stifled it when Agnes’ head whipped around. The women began to trickle out of the shop, first her sister, Lily, followed by the others, leaving only Agnes and Darcy, who couldn’t seem to tear themselves away. I dared to let my eyes meet Agnes’, and her cruel smile hurt me more than any glare could have, withering any courage I might have summoned. She stood leering at me for so long that fear crept into my heart. This woman looked as if she wished to do me violence, and I thought I might not have the strength to protect myself.

I heard the back door to the kitchen open and Marie entered. She stood up straight when she saw Agnes.

“Good day, Mrs. Dwyer,” said Marie.

She was greeted with the sound of the door slamming as Agnes and Darcy stormed out of the shop.

It was then that I saw silver flashes in my field of vision, and was overcome with fatigue and nausea. Marie was at my side before I fell, and I could hear her voice in a panic just before everything around me went black.

•   •   •

VINCENT

T
he moon is full and round—a harvest moon, a time of new beginnings, of birth.

After my reading at the University of Chicago, I stare in the dressing table mirror and see my husband and the student reflected back on either side of me. My Eugen is more than a decade ahead of me, the student more than a decade behind. He introduces himself in a gentle Southern voice.

“George Dillon.”

At once, I feel the woes of Cressid unearthed as I see my destiny before me, one that will try to make room for both and will fail. This boy will either destroy my marriage or my heart. This I know, but I also understand, in fidelity to my vocation, that I must accept the experience and all of its consequences. I must lay my undoing as a gift on the altar of poetry, and she will snatch it with her bloody fingernails and leave not a scrap for me.

George’s cherubic innocence combined with his ripe curiosity overwhelms me. I reach out my hand and Eugen places the flask in its comfortable resting place before I bring it to my lips and drink, never taking my eyes from George’s eyes in the mirror. I counsel myself that he is just one of the procession—like one of Helen’s suitors—but the way the air changes between Eugen and me, I know deep in my heart’s soul that this will be different. I understand that George is the one whom Sappho intends for me.

It is you who are my compass for the rest of this night. I allow you to lead me, the poet star, clad in black—not of mourning, but of darkness as in a womb, a place of comfort and safety where our love may begin. I look up to your great height and listen to your poetry when they ask you to read. I see your eyes dart to me throughout; you cannot believe how we have switched places, admiring each other from an audience on the same night. You cannot understand how the man who has come with me, my husband, has fallen into the background to allow me the satisfaction of this impulse.

When you finish and I’m so breathless I think I’ll faint, I find a little piece of paper and scribble a note telling you where you should meet me the next day for lunch.

That night I do not allow Eugen to come to me. I shut him out of my body, resurrecting my virgin self. I bathe in lavender soap, and I write sonnets by candlelight in a white dressing gown. I can barely keep up with the words as they color my notebook—words for you and for me. By dawn, I am nearly hysterical with ecstasy. When I see you come into the dining hall, I can barely speak, so I slip you a poem. I run my finger along your wrist. I don’t know if we eat or drink at the table, but we feast on each other afterward. I could live on your soft, wet kiss alone, if the rest of my life depended upon it.

As the days pass, you allow Eugen and me to lead you, bewildered, through the city. We torture you by not answering your questions with words, but by showing you that it is all right for you to hold my hand and nuzzle my neck and place your self inside a woman whose lawful man reclines one room away. You can’t control your desire, but you hate yourself for it. I want to delight in your torture, but every time I force a smile at your lack of control, my insides want to bleed for you, for the innocence I steal from you, for your blood I can almost see on the sheets after that first consummating fire.

Oh, how I ruined you—how I felled the angel.

And I can foresee my own ruin reflected in you, but I am powerless to stop it.

LAURA

I awakened with my dress soaked, in excruciating pain, and with Marie leaning over me in hysterics, her tears falling on my face.

“Laura, wake up!”

I blinked and felt a deep ache in the back of my head where it must have hit the floor. I had momentary relief from the pain in my abdomen and attempted to sit up. Vertigo forced me to close my eyes and lie back on the floor, just as it felt as if a large rubber band began squeezing my stomach. I gasped from the force of it, struggling to find my breath, as if drowning. When the pain again subsided, I allowed Marie to help me to sit up. I opened my eyes and stared at the floor around me, slick with amniotic fluid and blood.

“I think it’s too soon,” I said, and began to cry.

“All right,” said Marie, wringing her hands. “It will be okay. We have to find someone, though. Tell me who he is. He needs to be here.”

I shook my head. “No, he’s dead.”

“Dead?”

“Dead to me. Nothing. Never again.”

“Laura, now is not the time to be stubborn.”

“He’s dead!”

Marie stared at me and then nodded. “I’ll see if I can find Dr. Waters.”

“Hurry.” A contraction cut off my breath and I leaned over, squeezing my abdomen while it cramped and hardened. Sweat plastered my hair to my face, and I felt panic. I did not want to have this child on the shop floor. Once the pain stopped, I got on all fours, and Marie helped me to stand. I held on to the counter and squeezed my eyes shut until the room stopped spinning. Then I staggered to the stairs and began to climb them with Marie’s support. We had to stop midway up while I cried through another contraction. I also had a terrible sensation between my legs that urged me to push, but I knew I could not. The contraction ended, but the burning sensation of the baby poised to get out did not.

“Oh, God, I don’t know if there will be time to get anyone,” I said.

“Oh,” Marie whimpered, beginning to cry herself. She urged me up the stairs and nearly carried me to the bed. I curled on my side and tried to breathe through the pressure, but it would not go away.

“Can I go get the doctor?” said Marie, a note of hysteria in her voice. “Can you hold it?”

Before I could answer, another gush of fluid poured out of me, and an urge to push that I could not resist.

“No,” I said, as I turned onto my back. “Help me.”

Marie stared at my open legs in horror for a moment, but set her face with determination and came to me at the bed.

As evening bled into night, the pain nearly made me lose my senses. Minutes or hours passed. There was confusion. I seemed to remember a knocking on the door, but no visitor. Each contraction brought the face of my lover to me, and when I pushed, I imagined thrusting him as far away from me as possible until I almost couldn’t see him any longer. I didn’t know what time it was when the pain gave way to great relief, as Marie placed the screaming infant on my chest, crying and laughing at the monumental thing we had just accomplished together. Marie pulled up a fresh blanket to cover me and my girl, who had started to calm down and blink her swollen eyes. She gave a tiny sneeze, and Marie and I laughed and cried some more.

Shortly after the birth, Marie fetched Dr. Waters, our family physician. He would help finish what we had started, and would check the baby. He was serious but kind, and praised Marie for assisting in a safe delivery. If he was shocked to see me with a child, he did not show it, but once we were clean and attended to, he sat with his heavy girth on the side of my bed and removed his glasses. Marie had gone to my father’s old room to sleep, so it was only us. He rubbed his eyes and then his white hair before putting his glasses back on, and he did not look at me when he began to speak.

“What now?”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Shall I take her away?”

“I don’t understand.”

He turned to me. “Do you want me to take this baby away? Or did you plan on keeping her?”

I pulled the infant close to my chest and trembled. “I’m keeping her, of course. She’s mine.”

He stared at me until I had to drop my gaze to the quilt covering me.

“Don’t think you are the first woman this has happened to,” he said. “You are brave and maybe foolish to try to raise her alone.”

I was not able to speak, though my mind raced at the idea that there were others who had gone through what I had, and maybe in this very town.

“I’ve been a doctor for many years, and I have seen quite a few bastards born.” I flinched. “No one without a husband has ever kept those children.”

I stared at him again, shocked by what he was saying. I sat up in the bed as straight as I could.

“I’m not like them,” I said, defiance in my voice. “Times are changing.”

He looked away this time, and rose to get his bag. He zipped it and started for the door, but paused before leaving. “I hope you don’t regret your decision, Laura. Good luck.”

The baby began to fuss. He looked at her and left.

Once I heard the door downstairs close, I opened my nightgown and attempted to feed her. She latched greedily onto me, but her sucking brought me toe-curling pain. I pulled her off and tried again without better results.

Over and over again, I tried, but I could not seem to get her in the right place, and no milk came out of me. I wondered if it took time or if the milk should be here now. I wondered if feeding her would ever stop hurting.

Exhausted and terrified, I was finally able to soothe her to sleep with the tip of my knuckle, but I knew this couldn’t be a permanent solution. I stared around my room and out the window, feeling so alone. I must have fallen asleep, because when I awoke, the dawn was just reaching in, turning the room a warm shade of pink. The light bathed the baby’s face and caused her to open her eyes. I was filled with a rush of love for her and knew she was my grace, and I called her by that name.

I positioned her at my breast while she was calm, and this time, her feeding didn’t hurt.

I thought of Dr. Waters’ words and knew that no matter how hard it would be, I would never regret keeping my child.

Never.

•   •   •

VINCENT

S
ince the birth of our love, time has never moved so swiftly.

November 2, our birthday. The genesis of our love, which burst forth that night at the reading, has brought me to throbbing heights of ecstasy in my flesh and with my pen, such as I have never before known. Our love is the well I needed, and I nearly drown in the water, the abundance of life-giving fluid that pours forth from our loving cups.

I am drunk on George. His sweet, merciful philter is the antidote to all the pain from death—Elinor has died!—to all of the pain of life I have ever experienced.

George’s presence in my home represents the perfection Eugen and I always knew could come from freedom in love. George is troubled, bewildered, but open, so open to what is in our grasp.

“Pass the wine,” I say, as he sits at my table, dressed for dinner.

George and Eugen both reach for it, but my husband laughs and allows George to fulfill my request. His hand trembles as he pours my drink, and the red liquid spills over, staining the tablecloth.

“I’m sorry,” George says, jumping to stand and blot the red, but I grab his arm and instruct him to sit. We have dismissed the help during his stay, and we can attend to the mess later. The heat of George’s skin is too much for me. I can’t breathe.

“George, take me to bed.”

Eugen’s face is dark, but he tries. He remains seated when his impulse is to rise. He nods at George as George gets up and stumbles over to me. He pulls out my chair, and I stand. He follows me up the stairs.

I can feel George though we do not touch. His energy is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I want to prolong this delicious sensation of waiting. I close the door behind him and lock it, and instruct him to go to the bed and remove his clothes.

I drop my dress to the floor and stand naked before him. He whimpers.

“Please,” he says.

“Are you begging me to pardon you or come to you?”

George swallows. “Yes.”

I smile, feeling wicked.

I rush to him and he attacks me, and hours pass in a frenzy of lovemaking.

Then days pass and he continues to drink from my well, and from the well of us all.

Then George is gone, and I am wounded like never before.

Weeks pass and there is not a word from him. I demand his return, but he stays silent. I know George hates himself, and I want to convince him that it is all right, but then I turn cruel. I berate him. I apologize. I abuse George again.

And then George returns, and the cycle repeats itself.

Ecstasy followed by anguish.

Summer followed by winter.

He leaves and I am ferocious.

Months pass and Eugen and I leave for Europe to escape him and what he has done to us, but George drags along behind us, shadows our every conversation and coupling with his damned presence.

The summer comes again and I know that trying to resist him is impossible and perhaps even ungrateful to Sappho, so I beckon George back.

I invite him and as many as I can find to a party, a celebration. I invite people from the town, from Greenwich Village, from Vassar. I invite theater groups, poets, friends, and enemies, and when all arrive, I am determined to dominate.

George is contrite, but not enough as far as I’m concerned. When I see the politician and his wife, the eager conventional people who think they want to dip a toe into this pool, I decide I’ll pull them in until they are drowning. I will give them something to take back to their town and I will do it at the cost of George.

I hand Eugen the bottle of absinthe we brought back from Paris, and stand between the trees while he coaxes Marie to try the Green Fairy. She is charmed by the name, the color, the process. She takes one glass, then another. It is while she drinks the second that I see its effects. Marie stops and looks around her as if seeing the world for the first time. She laughs and says she sees the laugh, and reaches up into the air to claim it with her fingers.

Eugen leads her to the rose garden, where a group has disrobed.

“You are in Eden,” he says, when he sees her wide eyes.

All she can manage is, “Oh.”

She sits on a tree stump, staring at this strange garden, and while she does, I make sure George sees me stalk her husband. I slide between the trees and coerce Everette to follow me. I feed him from my own cup and brush George with him as I pass, leading Everette by the hand into the house. George follows us to the bottom of the stairs, but I turn and burn him with my eyes to let him know he may not come to my bed. Instead, I will take this average mortal, this wordless, artless, animal creature over George to inflict the cruelest kind of punishment I can.