The Ripper's Wife(38)
I burst into tears and ran from the room and flung myself facedown on my bed, the big mound of pink roses on my bustle shaking with every sob.
Jim came and sat on the bed beside me and stroked my back. “Do pull yourself together, Bunny dear,” he said gently, “for the children’s sake as well as yours; if you keep on like this you’ll make yourself sick. You mustn’t let this spoil Gladys’s birthday. Come now, sit up and dry your eyes, dear, you’ll make your face all red and you won’t look a bit pretty, and everyone will know you’ve been crying, and you know how people talk. Come on now,” he coaxed, and when I did he daubed at my wet eyes with his own handkerchief. “That’s my girl!” He smiled. “My Bunny is so brave!” He kissed me. “And you must be braver still—Bobo thinks you are mad at him, that you won’t love him anymore without his curls. You must go and reassure him that that isn’t so.”
And that’s just what I did. I sent down to the kitchen for three of the little pastel-iced dainty cakes I had ordered and three little cups of grape punch and went back to my children. I knelt before my son and looked him straight in the eye and told him, “You know Mama would love you just the same if you were bald as an egg and ugly as a gargoyle!” I stroked his shorn head. “It was just a surprise, that’s all; I’d thought to have more time to become accustomed to the idea. We foolish mothers sometimes try to keep our sons little boys instead of letting them grow up as we should. Will you forgive your poor, silly mama?”
With a radiant smile Bobo instantly flung his arms around my neck and covered my face with kisses, giving me every assurance that all was indeed forgiven.
All smiles again, we sat on the floor and had a private birthday celebration all our own even with Nanny Yapp hovering over us like a black thundercloud warning this would spoil the children’s appetites and they wouldn’t enjoy the party as much if they couldn’t join their little friends for cake and ice cream.
“Well, if it does, it’ll spare you from having to worry that they’ll forget their manners and gobble like hogs!” I shot back at her. I smiled and snapped my fingers in her face and sang the verse from that song Edwin was always singing about a lady’s bird-tiny appetite when in public. Recognizing it, the children gleefully joined in:
“When with swells I’m out to dine,
All my hunger I resign;
Taste the food, and sip the wine—
No such daintiness as mine!
But when I am all alone,
For shortcomings I atone!
No old frumps to stare like stone—
Chops and chicken on my own!
“Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay!
Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay!
Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay!
Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay!
Ta-ra-ra Boom-Boom-Boom-de-ay!”
Nanny Yapp just glared at me as though it were my own manners that needed reproving and she wished she had the authority to do so, and said it might even make them feel compelled to try to keep up with their friends, who had not come to the party with their stomachs stuffed. Bobo and Gladys would surely overindulge and then be up all night with bellyaches, and if that happened we’d all know who was to blame. But I just smiled and sang that verse again. Bobo and Gladys cackled with delight, snapped their fingers at Nanny Yapp, and sang along.
After our cakes and punch, I helped Gladys into her fairy princess gown and fastened the amethyst heart around her neck.
“You look just heavenly, honey!” I said as I set the glittering crown atop her curls and handed her her silver wand. “You’ll be the belle of the ball!” I smiled and fluffed her big puffy sleeves and crinoline skirt.
Bobo was going to be my little maharajah. I’d had a sumptuous tunic made for him of gold-flowered red brocade, red silk trousers, and little golden slippers with turned-up toes. I hung ropes of glass pearls and big paste rubies around his neck and crowned his cropped curls with a golden turban covered with paste gems and a tall white feather rising like a plume of smoke from the top of his head. I knelt before him and playfully called him “Your Highness” as I slipped rings set with immense faux gems onto his fingers and buckled a bejeweled belt around his waist to hold a little saber. “Look.” I pointed. “It’s got a ruby on the hilt just like the Happy Prince’s! I hope you can walk,” I teased, “you’ve got so many jewels on you. Don’t you go outside and be falling in the pond now, darling, or you’ll sink right to the bottom and drown!”
Bobo giggled. “I promise I won’t, Mama,” he said, and hugged me again. I buried my face in his little shoulder, ignoring the rough gilt threads scratching my face, and shed another tear or two, not over his curls this time but because my boy was growing up. He was such a loving little thing, so affectionate, I dreaded the day that would most surely come when he no longer wanted to hug and cuddle and kiss and would declare such things foolish and unmanly. Rare are the ones who truly keep that sweetness all their lives and do not turn on sentimentality like prizefighters or learn to use affection, kisses, and kind words as bait to lure women into even greater intimacies.
Live only for today, I kept telling myself. Don’t even think about tomorrow. . . .
The children all seemed to enjoy the party. That should have been enough for me. After all, every detail was planned for their pleasure. But their parents quite spoiled it for me; after I saw their frowns and heard the whispers they fully intended for me to hear I just couldn’t see it all in the same happy glow anymore. I walked alone, with no friend at my side, through the crowded ballroom, forcing myself to go on nodding and smiling when inside I felt like crying. I heard the whispers—they wanted me to—about the vulgar American, the Dollar Princess, how everything was ostentatious and overdone, especially that “monstrosity of a cake.” I heard them mocking my Southern accent, turning my explanation about wanting every child to have a rose into a joke.