Fallen Beauty (9 page)

1930

SECOND FIG

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand: Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

—Edna St. Vincent Millay

LAURA

Damn the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.

I left my bicycle against a tree and climbed the hill to Millay’s house, mentally replaying my speech. I’d hoped to spit back at her some of the bitter poison she’d injected into my sister’s marriage by seducing Everette at that cursed summer party. I wished to humiliate, intimidate, and shove her costly words back in her face.

It seemed just yesterday that Millay’s husband, Eugen, the strapping Dutchman, strode into my shop with a young, pretty man on his arm, surprising me with his presence. Revelers at Steepletop usually had no need of wool and thread.

“My sweet seamstress,” Eugen had said, addressing me as the mayor would, “I need a purple cloth for Dionysus here, stained by the ink of grapes like wine to wrap him in. And please make a costume for yourself so you may join us.”

I’d narrowed my eyes, wary of Eugen and his unsmiling friend. It had been months since anyone had come into my shop. My daughter’s existence had done exactly what I knew it would to my reputation.

The young man had looked as if he would rather be anywhere but in the grip of Eugen. What had led him to Steepletop when he was so clearly ill at ease?

Eugen had spotted plum rayon on the wall display. “Ah! George, look. Just the cloth for gods or men, freshly stained from the vine.”

George smiled a little at Eugen’s colorful language, and I watched with surprise as Eugen lifted the entire bolt and placed it on the counter. I tried not to snatch the cash waiting in his fingers as I tallied the total. When I looked up, they were both staring at me.

“Seamstress, please consider coming,” said Eugen. “The poet-goddess wishes it, and she does not handle denial well.”

I looked from him to George. My daughter, Grace, began crying from upstairs.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s impossible.”

“Bring the child.”

A spark of pleasure stirred in me that he had been so ready to accept her—to accept us—but I suppressed the feeling, and sent them on their way.

It had come as a shock to me when Marie had told me she and Everette were going to the party. It hardly seemed like the kind of place for two well-respected members of the community. Marie said she wanted to keep her visit a secret since Agnes had gotten word of the celebration. Apparently at the last ladies’ tea, Agnes’ condemnation of the bacchanalia had done little to hide her bitterness at not having been invited.

“Then why would you go?” I had asked Marie. Public approval meant a lot to my sister. Going against a woman like Agnes seemed suspect, especially when Marie already had the stain of an unwed sister with a baby.

“Everette says it would be rude not to, since we all but told her we’d go at that ball in ’twenty-eight when we first met her. We’ve been waiting a long time for an invitation. There will be people from New York City there. Not to mention that it never hurts to break bread with the wealthy, especially in times like these.”

Marie hadn’t met my eyes during our conversation, and had seemed shifty about her involvement. Her neck had even turned red when she spoke of it. Marie’s remarks felt like posturing, and though she tried to pin their attendance on Everette’s ambition, I had sensed that Marie wanted to go.

When the weeklong party had ended, and Marie had shown up at my back door in tears, telling me that the revelries were everything bad I could have imagined and more, and that Everette had slept with the poet, my shock had given way to anger. I felt anger at Marie for going, at Everette for his terrible deed, and mostly at that poet for being able to live in any way she pleased in the mountain above town, while allowing her corruption to trickle down and poison others without having to face the consequences. Marie’s pain spoke to my own—that of a woman having to bear a burden alone, and with the perpetrator left to carry on as if nothing had happened.

Marie had taken to sleeping at my shop away from Everette, having screaming fights with him in my kitchen, spending hours crying, lamenting the fact that she had ever allowed him to encourage her to go. Just when I thought Marie might actually leave Everette, she learned she was pregnant. She had returned to her home, but still hadn’t forgiven him. My anger had been building in me for months, but Marie’s latest crying fit had sent me over the edge.

The long uphill bike ride to Steepletop had left me panting, so I had to stop and rest against a poplar to catch my breath. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with my arm and stared up at the top of the autumn tree that towered over me. Its posture reminded me to stand up straight, so I drew in my breath and continued up the driveway.

I halted when the tall yellow grasses at the roadside parted and Millay emerged, a waifish imp with a tumble of fiery hair. She wore a white muslin robe, and cradled several apples in her arms like a newborn baby. Her golden green eyes caught sight of me, looked me over, and seemed to approve of what she saw. At once, I understood how a man like my brother-in-law had been ensnared. I took a step backward, but Millay’s voice stopped me from moving an inch more. Mesmerizing me with her deep, melodic intonation, she said this:

“I came down a hill, back from raping the earth of her treasures, to see a nymph waiting for me, breathless, angry, uncertain, and I felt the sorrow of seeing the wounded pierce my heart more than she could know.”

In spite of all I’d rehearsed, I couldn’t find any words. I remembered the day I had first come in contact with the poet, on my sister’s wedding day, and sensed that we shared a secret understanding. Now I felt only confusion.

Millay walked to me, into my shadow—for I stood many inches taller than she—and pressed the apples into my hands. She then stood on tiptoe and kissed my cheek. I recoiled as though I’d been slapped. She smiled a wicked smile at me, then pivoted and walked into her house, leaving the door open behind her.

A woodpecker knocked a nearby tree, and the fragrance of a patch of late-blooming anise surrounded me with its intoxicating odor. I could not reconcile the beauty of my surroundings with the anger in my heart. I looked back at the open door, but I did not follow her. Instead, I shook off the spell, walked back down the hill to my bicycle, carrying the apples, dropped them in the basket, and pedaled home like one drunk or deprived of sleep.

What had I really come for? To avenge my sister’s pain? Or was my motive selfish, morbidly curious? Did I just want to see the home of one who lived outside convention? No, I told myself that I had come to defend Marie, to insist Millay never again have anything to do with my family. But instead I hadn’t said a word, and had allowed Millay to kiss me like some damned Judas.

I wouldn’t speak of this visit to my sister. Marie said Millay had mesmerized her and Everette, gotten them drunk, and corrupted them, along with many others. Marie said her reason had slipped, then her control, then her own husband, and she understood why Agnes feared and hated the poet. She’d mumbled something about wishing she could burn her at the stake.

One thing was clear to Marie, and maybe to me.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was a witch.

•   •   •

I
passed my old lover on the road back into town, my hair plastered to my forehead and neck with sweat, my cheeks flushed, dust on the hem of my plain dress. Every time I saw him, it seemed I was unkempt, ill at ease, fumbling through an errand, soothing a tantrum. Did he ever wish to help me? Did he ache to be with our daughter? Or did he see me and think,
Thank God, I didn’t leave my life to join hers
.

Marie looked up when I walked into the shop, her face drawn and haggard, and her frame gaunt except for her swollen belly, which held her child. Her blond hair was drawn into a careless knot at the base of her neck, and her skin was pale as the moon.

I pointed upstairs and crept to the second floor to check on Grace. I watched her tiny chest rise and fall. Her golden hair stuck to her face in sweaty curls along her forehead and cheeks, and her arms were raised over her head on the pillow as if she’d fallen backward into sleep. Her little glasses nearly teetered off the edge of her bedside table. How like her to leave them in a careless place.

I crept in and moved the glasses to the center of the table, and looked back at her. Her sleeping form blurred as tears stung my eyes. The day’s frustrations had been heaped onto my other troubles, and I felt the familiar sting of pain that my almost-two-year-old girl would be an outcast like me because of our situation. She was so like me in every way—from the tangle of blond curls, to the blue eyes, to the quick temper. There was not a shred of her father in her, at least in looks. That was our one blessing.

Grace turned on her side, now facing me, and exhaled. I crept out of the room so she could continue napping in peace, and walked down the staircase and over to my sewing pile, averting my eyes from Marie’s.

“Did you finish your errand?” she asked. Curiosity and suspicion infused her voice, and I pricked my thumb with the sewing needle. I brought my thumb to my mouth, tasting the metallic sharpness.

“Yes,” I said. “I did. Thank you for sitting with Grace.”

“Of course.”

The ticking clock punctuated the silence. Marie held no mending on her lap, worked on nothing, made no attempt to occupy herself. I knew she wanted to talk, but I didn’t know if I had the energy.

I rubbed my aching eyes and tried to refocus on my project: a Christmas dress for Mrs. Perth, the only woman left in town who patronized me, aside from my sister. The abandonment had been swift and painful. Agnes and Darcy, Lily Miller, the rest of the choir, Mrs. Winslow. One by one, the accounts went cold, the bell on the door fell silent, and my bank account dried up like a puddle in the sun. Even Mrs. Perth, a progressive woman by our town’s standards, slipped into my store after dusk fell and hurried away as if she did not want to be seen in my company. Her husband continued to work as a hand at Steepletop, and I said a silent prayer of thanks that I hadn’t run into him on my rash and poorly executed visit.

I looked up at Marie to complain about the lack of business, and saw her crying. Her pain cooled my anger and distracted me from self-pity.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Will I ever be able to stop thinking about him and that woman in bed?” Marie shook her head as if to clear it of the terrible image.

I seemed to catch the thought like a virus, and it made me tremble all over again with fury. I slammed my sewing on the counter.

“Do you want me to kill her?” I asked.

Marie looked horrified, and then smiled when she saw the evil glint in my eye.

“I could make a nylon doll in her image and poke it with pins,” I continued. “I’d use the cheapest material, and start on her fingertips so she couldn’t write anymore.”

Marie shook her head. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have gone to that party in the first place.”

I’d never heard Marie acknowledge that she shouldn’t have gone, and her words both satisfied the dark place in my heart that wanted to say
I told you so
and softened my judgment of her.

“It was such a time, though,” Marie said. “If Everette hadn’t strayed, I would fondly recall the wonderful, terrible freedom of it all.” Her wistful words poured out before she could call them back. I felt the strangest tug inside myself. Though I knew it was ludicrous, it felt like jealousy.

It was the word
freedom
that had triggered my envy. When Grace came, born from the first thing I’d done only for myself, and as much as I’d fantasized about finding a new town where the shadow of the sin wasn’t forever on me, I couldn’t tear myself away from the torture of always being near her father without being able to have him. I wanted him to see her even if he couldn’t raise her. But I hated what I’d become: a bitter, angry, frigid, trapped woman. Trapped by others and by myself as if in stone, and only twenty-one years old. Most people’s lives were just beginning at this age, and mine felt as if it was over.

A noise at the top of the stairs called me from my thoughts, and I saw my little imp scooting down on her bottom, her hair in knots and her glasses askew. She gave me a sleepy smile and crawled into Marie’s lap. The light from the window framed the girls, and I felt my love for them like a fire in my heart.

•   •   •

T
hat night, Marie invited me to dinner at her home. I noticed that she had grown bolder in her invitations since Everette’s infidelity. Before he’d strayed, she’d respected his wish to disassociate from me as much as possible, and had us over only when he was out of town or at meetings. Now she did as she pleased, and while it heartened me to see more of my sister, a part of me wondered if these dinners were more to punish him than to improve our relationship.

I helped Marie prepare dinner, and kept catching Everette’s eye. Did he feel a new bond with me because we’d both fallen? I could sense his guilt reaching out to me, silently begging for my forgiveness so I could help turn my sister’s heart, but I couldn’t yet give him that assurance.

The window behind where he sat lay open to the night, bringing whispers of the wind to us. The curtains I’d made flapped in and out, brushing along the sill and reaching to touch the empty canvas on the easel Everette had bought for Marie’s last birthday. The brushes from the accompanying art set had hardened into fans like miniature brooms, and the paints had long since dried into parched deserts of blue and ocher along the surface of the jars.

Grace sat on the floor near the kitchen, combing her doll’s hair and refastening the buttons on the tiny pink overcoat I’d sewn for it. She chattered at the doll, and her high voice seemed to aggravate Everette’s unease. After he finished his cigarette, he rose to turn on the radio, and its sharp, loud crackle filled the room.

“Last night, the musical
Girl Crazy
by George Gershwin and Walter Donaldson opened at the Alvin Theater in New York City. Among the rocking-good performances, twenty-one-year-old Ethel Merman is sure to be a big star after knocking out the audience with her number, ‘I Got Rhythm.’ Other standouts were the graceful and talented Ginger Rogers, and the lyrics of the incomparable Allen Kearns, whose ‘Embraceable You’ had the lovers in the audience mooning starry-eyed over each other. . . .”