The Light of Paris(26)

Ashley gave a smoothly polite introduction to the speaker, a local author who took the podium and droned endlessly. There’s something about ballrooms that sucks the personality out of everyone at a microphone. As she spoke, the servers darted in silently with our salads, the dressing in tiny silver cups on the side, of course. I picked out the dried cranberries and contemplated flicking them at Ellen O’Connor, who was wearing an angora sweater the exact color of the berries and might not even have noticed their addition.

“Jesus, what a bunch of bullshit,” Sharon whispered loudly, walking up from behind us and throwing herself into the empty chair next to mine. She tossed her purse underneath the table, making it shudder. I rescued the coffee cup I had balanced at the edge only to have it spray three tiny, perfect, milky drops across the hemline of my dress. Of course.

“Hi,” I whispered back, stilling the table and putting my coffee cup back. Sharon handed me her glass of water and I dabbed some on my skirt. “I didn’t know you were in the Ladies Association.”

“Occupational hazard. These ladies have houses to buy and sell, and they are rich. What’s your excuse? You don’t even live here.”

“Peer pressure.”

“Yeah, well, if I were on vacation I certainly wouldn’t be spending my time dealing with these bitches,” Sharon said. She turned to the table of our classmates and flashed them a hundred-watt smile, as though she hadn’t just called them all bitches, and then folded her arms and turned toward the speaker, slouching in her chair like we were back in geometry class and she was daring the teacher to call on her.

I looked over at the table where the women from Country Day were sitting, at Ashley and Ellen and Emma and Audrey. I’d gone to dances and on school trips with them. We’d worked on school projects together. We’d been in the same sorority in college, and after graduation we’d attended one another’s weddings and met up for brunch in groups.

And now, looking at them, I felt—emotionless. I wasn’t angry, I held no childhood grudges, I didn’t think they were bitches. They were perfectly nice, most of them. Instead, as I watched Ashley and Audrey sip at their unsweetened iced tea and dip just the tips of their forks into the salad dressing before spearing a single, wretched lettuce leaf, I felt an unfamiliar surge of sympathy. I had always been focused on the litany of ways I didn’t meet the demands being forced on me. But I had never stopped to consider that every other woman in this room was being asked to fit the same mold, and just because they made it look easy on the outside didn’t say anything about how it felt on the inside.

And it broke my heart that we would never be able to talk about it, that none of us would ever be able to break through the rules and traditions and ossification in order to have an honest conversation. The thought gave me a heavy ache in my heart, and I wanted to stand up, to burst through the ballroom doors and run out into the sunlight, break free of every tender silk ribbon holding all of us prisoner to some outdated, uncomfortable set of values I couldn’t imagine any of us agreeing to. But I couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t look right. Turning toward my own plate, I lifted my fork and dipped the tines into the dressing.





six





MARGIE


   1924




The ship was leaving from New York City, so Margie and her mother and an unwieldy collection of luggage all took a train up and stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria for a few nights while visiting with Evelyn and her family. It had been a whirlwind few weeks, and Margie’s mother had been forced to compromise on all sorts of things—the number of new dresses that could be fitted and made, the purchase of a new coat, how many books Margie was allowed to take. But Margie suspected her mother’s greatest disappointment was that she hadn’t had time to create an entirely different daughter before shipping her off.

Aunt Edith, Evelyn’s mother, gave them a lengthy list of sites and museums to visit, though she had never actually been to Europe. Margie thought, looking at her aunt across the dinner table, her gown cut a little too low, her hair bobbed (a woman of her age, if you can imagine!), the lights of the room low to allow the candles to take over, that Aunt Edith’s heart was breaking, not over saying goodbye to her daughter, but over not to be going herself, not to be nineteen again with her whole life ahead of her.

Margie, who had spent the afternoon with Evelyn, supposedly shopping for gloves but really sitting and reading in a tearoom while Evelyn smoked and talked to the ten million people who stopped by the table, wanted to tell Evelyn’s mother she was welcome to go in her stead. She was feeling particularly mean about Evelyn, who, when they had come back without gloves, had lied and announced that they hadn’t been able to find any because Margie’s hands were so terribly large. Margie had to fight the urge to use one of her terribly large hands to land a terribly enthusiastic punch on Evelyn’s terribly lying face. Perhaps the worst part of it was, Margie realized, as her mother poked her under the table repeatedly while they discussed Evelyn’s beaux and plans for the trip and, upon her return, how grand her debut ball would be, that she was being sent on this trip as much to learn from Evelyn as to keep her out of trouble. And Margie wondered, given Evelyn’s behavior the moment she was out of sight of any adult, how she was going to do that.

Their mothers installed them in their stateroom, the trunks and baggage having been delivered the day before by porter. Standing on the dock, staring up at the immense ship, my grandmother felt a shiver of anticipation pass through her. She didn’t think about the endless, inevitable conflict with Evelyn lying ahead, and she didn’t think about Mr. Chapman or the disappointment lying behind her. She was going to Europe. She was going to explore the Tower of London and write a story in a café in Paris and see the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and she was going to be someone different, someone adventurous and glamorous. They stood on the deck of the ship underneath a brilliant blue sky, all the promise of summer before them, all the promise of a continent filled with treasures and history and stories to be discovered, all the promise of people who didn’t know dull, plain Margie Pearce, and she shivered with delight.