My Notorious Life (48 page)

Yours, &tc. —Madame DeBeausacq.

Charlie helped me only with the last bit, about persecution, and also suggested the word epistle, which was of a higher class than article, but otherwise the sentiments and locutions was mine alone, especially about their worse motives. What might those motives be? Greed and Jealousy. Dr. Gunning and his medical friends envied the money a midwife such as myself brought in and wanted it for their own. When they themselves was guilty of such subterfuge, wasn’t it preposterous that they should protest my right to only ride in a buggy?

—If they do not like my driving in the park, I said to Charlie, —imagine what they will write when we hold our Grand Housewarming.

—Invite them, he said. —They’ll come if only to get a peek inside Jones’ Palace.

*  *  *

Mr. and Mrs. Charles G. Jones request the honor of your presence
said the invitation. Within ten days, three hundred of New York’s social order replied
they would Accept With Pleasure, including every mother from Mrs. Lyle’s school—even those old legs of mutton Mrs. Gibson and Mrs. Van Zandt who snubbed me. Priscilla Lyle herself sent her acceptance on rose-colored stationery.
An honor,
she wrote.

My gown was ordered from Paris, midnight blue with silver brocade; flounces trimmed with silver cord and tassel; lined throughout with silver silk to match. In such a dress I was royalty. On Saturday, I delivered Mrs. Constable’s baby girl at five o’clock a.m., and at five o’clock p.m., I slipped my ballgown over my head, and Maggie pulled the laces tight. I took my jewels from the safe. Charlie watched as I selected a crown of diadems. Three diamond rings and jeweled bracelets for each wrist. Around my neck was a pendant, the big stone set with small sparklers, the whole works flashing and winkling like the secrets I carried and never would tell. At my earlobes were clusters of blue white drops, shaped like tears.

It was these same earrings she wore, the morning they found her in the tub. I took them off my own ears and placed them on hers. They were buried with her.

From behind the curtains on the second floor me and Charlie watched the carriages arrive in the dusk of the evening. The gold of their lanterns was a parade of fireflies to our door. The ladies dismounted and gentlemen in white ties and top hats extended their gloved hands as they climbed the stairs to the Grand Ball of the Joneses. The guests was all the swells, lawyers and physicians, brokers and financiers, aldermen and members of the political class. Too bad Mayor Havemeyer and his wife disdained the invitation. So did Mrs. Hottentot Astor and Mrs. Snoot Vanderbilt, and all the other old pedigrees: the Rhinelanders and the Stuyvesants, the Peter Coopers and the George Templeton Strongs. In the entrance hall we had a string quartet. Waiters in black coats circulated with flutes of champagne and caviar on crackers that was the style in Prussia. For the gentlemen, rosewood humidors full of cigars stood ready, and for the ladies there were finger sandwiches and cakes the size and delicacy of a daisy. In the great parlor on the fourth floor were banquet tables groaning under the weight of roasts and wheels of cheese, and étagères of small sweets, tarts and fruits spilling over.

At last we made our entrance. At the head of the stairs Charlie held his
hand aloft and I placed mine upon it. The hem of my blue gown trailed behind so elegant, as me and my husband proceeded down the grand staircase. The strings played a tune suitable for royals.

—There she is, somebody said. —Mrs. Jones.

The sea of faces was lifted. Eyes on me. There was many I recognized. Dorothea and Serena with their husbands. Dear Candace Wheeler my décor adviser, and my lawyer Morrill and his entire law firm with their wives. Mrs. Priscilla Lyle and Judge Crittenden came and Fanny Rheingold and our disreputable philosopher friends the Owens and the Arguimbeaus and Will Sacks. We made our way through the throng, and the guests all came to thank us. Oh our lovely home. Oh our charming hospitality. Oh the tasteful music. At the peel of a little bell rung by Thomas the butler, the guests made their way upwards to the feast and entertainments. And oh, yes, you can bet they did enjoy themselves, the gentlemen in the billiards room and the ladies in the parlors. On the first landing everybody admired the giant frescoes, a scene of cherubs frolicking by a pool, darling wee babies, so rosy-cheeked. Mrs. Webb and Mrs. Frelinghuysen discussed its finer points.

—Two Italian artists took a year to paint this, can you imagine?

—Ten thousand dollars for one fresco alone.

—And this carpet is lovely, said Mrs. Webb, as we proceeded into the parlor.

—An Aubusson, I said, with proper pronunciation. —Three thousand dollars it cost. I had the satisfying impression that they’d never heard of such a price for a carpet. Mrs. Candace Wheeler had once suggested to me that it was not refined to discuss the cost of things in public, but I said to her that was c**p, for what was the point then of having money?

There in the throng now greeting us was Greta and her husband Mr. Alfonse Sprunt. He was a man who looked like his name, a sprout of a runt, in need of a barber, with tufts of hair like cattails in his ears and his thumbs hooked on his waistcoat pockets. They greeted me and Charlie with twin crooked smiles, so it was plain they both were cupshot already. Greta laughed and embraced me, calling me Axie.

—Remember when ve vass hauzmaids? she said, mashing the words with drink.

—Greta, dear, you’re tipsy!

—
Sturzbesoffen,
MADAME. She laughed and stumbled off dancing, so I rolled my eyes and worried over her. Greta had taken a chance marrying her Mr. Sprunt, who was sour and mean now to little Willi, though while he was courting her he’d brought the boy presents, tops and tin whistles. From the corner of my eye I watched the merry Sprunts empty a pair of champagne flutes.

In the ballroom, Mr. Morrill approached us and exchanged pleasantries. —And what do you think of this terrible new law? he said.

—What now? said Charlie. —No cigars after dinner?

—Worse. It is now a crime to send or receive certain materials through the mails. So called obscene matter.

—My thoughts may be obscene, sir, said Charlie, —but my mail is always clean.

—Charlie’s pamphlets are educational, I said, —as you well know, Morrill.

—This law is sure to impact you unfavorably, Morrill warned. —It aims to punish the possession or sale of any articles to prevent . . . ahem. Conception.

—Says who, pray tell? I said.

—Mr. Comstock, he replied. —It’s called the Comstock Law.

—Who is Comstock?

—A species of Postal Inspector, by special appointment, replied Morrill. —Mr. Anthony Comstock.

Thus it was in the swirl of the party that I first heard the name of My Arch Enemy. And do you know, reader, I yawned at it? It was a midge on a summer night. For the moment I would pay no more mind to Morrill’s warning. I swatted it away and placed my gloved hand across my mouth. A postal inspector. Who cared? Music like a waterfall spilled down the stairs. Alcohol bubbles caused a fizzgig in my veins. I drank champagne like sipping stars and whirled around the dance floor under the woozy sparkles of my chandelier, in the arms of all the many gentlemen who requested a turn. It was a night of nights and it did not end till the small hours of the morning.

The papers were full of the spectacle, especially the
Polyanthos
:

A certain Madame X, who needs no naming in these pages, infamous as she is for her nefarious practices, held a Ball last evening for the cream of the New Money Classes. Not an Astor or a Vanderbilt could she lure to her door, but members of the shoddy aristocracy were there in abundance. Mrs. Candace Wheeler the society decorator was one who did attend, no doubt proud to defend the occupants’ choice of such tasteless floral window shades as adorn the mansion on Fifth Avenue. The interior of the house is a marvel of sumptuousness and unexceptional taste, full of curios, bronzes, statues, clocks, and two life-sized white marble busts of Washington and Franklin, surmounted by American flags.

—They noticed George and Ben, I cried to Charlie. —They noticed the flags!

—What so proudly we hail, he said.

Proudly, yes. For now it was published in writing for the world to see: the Jones family was righteous wavers of the flag and lovers of the liberties and justice for which it stands. It was not for nothing we had those flags and our busts of Washington and Franklin. We were patriots, and proud of it.

*  *  *

But no flag could serve as a defense against a steamroller like what was barreling towards us then. Mr. Comstock was over two hundred fifty pounds, while I was only two more than ninety. It was not a fair fight from the word go.

—You’re in the news again, Mrs. Jones, said my husband very ominous at breakfast not long after our Grand Ball. He handed me the paper. —The
Herald
has dared Mr. Comstock to come after you. They call him the Roundsman of the Lord, while he calls himself the Chairman of the Society for the Suppression of Vice.

The expression on my husband’s face was wary. I read the article with a knob of fear in my chest.

Public decency demands that the state protect citizens from so-called “medical practitioners” who are no better than quacks. Thanks to the efforts of the crusading Mr. Anthony Comstock, the current pages of the Herald no longer contain advertising from such vile sorts, but these medical imposters continue to operate unhindered. The most notorious, Madame DeBeausacq alias Mrs. Ann Jones, of Fifth Avenue, is a case in point. She was locked up some years ago in the Tombs but escaped Justice, and who, if Justice were done, would now be in State Prison, instead of the owner and occupant of one of the finest dwellings on Fifth Avenue. Let Mr. Comstock bring his crusade not only to silence the smut peddlers of our city, but to go after such Hags of Misery, and shut down her evil den.

—They mean to come after us again, I said, a weakness in my legs.

—Tell Maggie and Greta to be careful who they let in the office, Charlie said. —Life could change again with just a knock on the door.

And it did, it did. But not as Charlie thought it would.

—Madame, there is a lady at the front, who refuses to go down around to the office, said Maggie.

—If she won’t come in the business end of the place then send her away, said I.

—I tried, Madame. She insists I let her in.

—Likely she’s one of those Females from the Moral Reform Society. —Tell her to find herself a real sinner.

—But she claims she knows you as a friend. Maggie dug in her apron pocket and brought out a calling card. When I saw the name engraved there, it floored me like a steam train.

Mrs. Eliot VanDerWeil, the card said.

—She’s very grand, said Maggie. —She insists and insists.

The room fell away, and Maggie’s voice was a garble beneath the roar in my ears.

Mrs. Eliot VanDerWeil.

—Are you all right, Madame? You are quite pale.

—Send her in, I said, so weak.

—Yes ma’am.

My heart was clutched by a fist in my chest. My hands were lost things patting the air, smoothing the sides of my skirt, touching at my face to see was it real? The air was sharp and clear as ice water. I waited, freezing, till after a minute, the click of boot heels echoed off the marble in the hall.

—Mrs. VanDerWeil, Madame, said Maggie.

And there she stood. I was drained of blood.

It was her and not her. She had a bosom. Her face was sculpted now, with cheekbones like you find on a statue. Lord she was a creature. Black lashes like a scallop of feathers against her flushed white cheeks. She took off her hat, blinking slowly, and fixed the blue lanterns of her eyes on me.

—Oh Dutch, I whispered.

—Axie?

We were in each other’s arms. The smell of Lily of the Valley clung to her hair. Twenty years gone in a spray of perfume. I felt her stiff and formal, ladylike. When I reared back to look at her, her eyes were chips of the summer sky that had fallen into her face to rest there.

—Is it really you? my sister said. —Is it?

—I don’t know. Let me pinch myself and see.

She laughed and I remembered her laugh. She bit one of her fingernails.

—You still bite your nails, you dirty cat, I said, to tease her.

—Oh. She removed her hand from her small white teeth like it was burnt. —Mother has always hounded me about that wicked habit. Not our mother, I meant—

—Shh. Never mind, Dutchie. Oh look at you. You’re a fine Chicago lady.

—If so, then I don’t know why your maid would not admit me!

—Maggie’s a sly little cooze, so she is.

—I beg your pardon?

—Excuse my Portuguese. I explained it was Maggie’s job to send anonymous callers round to the office door. —And to her you seemed to be anonymous.

—I see.

We stood so strange and awkward in the parlor while the sun poured in the windows off Fifth Avenue and shattered in the prisms of crystal dazzling above our heads. Patches of light dappled our faces. This could not be my sister, could it? She remained an eight year old girl in my mind’s picture of her, and here was this lady twenty six years of age. Dutch pressed the palms of her hands together in front of her mouth and looked at me in disbelief. I stared, gulping down the vision of her.