A-Splendid-Ruin(4)

Then, there was a knock on my door. Before I could answer, Goldie rushed in with an armful of billowing pink silk. “I knew it.” She dumped the silk carelessly on the bed. “Nick said your trunks must be delayed. You really cannot trust the trains these days! I knew no ball gown could fit in that tiny case of yours, so I thought . . . if you wished it, well, why not borrow something of mine? No one’s seen me in this in ages.”

I had no trunks. I did not know how to say that, nor how to tell Goldie that I had not lived the life she obviously thought I had. Not only that, but I was at least two inches taller than my cousin, and I could not come close to approaching her perfect figure. Yet I would have worn that dress for the rest of my life out of sheer gratitude.

“Thank you for thinking of it. I didn’t wish to embarrass any of you.”

She waved that away. “I shall send a complaint to the station on your behalf.”

She blew me a kiss and left me alone with the gown, which was beautiful, and finer than anything I’d ever possessed, but yes, it would have taken a magic corset to give me my cousin’s bosom, and the décolletage sagged horribly and far too low until I tucked an old lace fichu of my mother’s about my shoulders. It was ancient and tattered at the edges, but if I arranged it just so, the ragged parts were hidden. The gown was too short as well, but it was more elegant and beautiful than the fawn, and the pink did put color in my pale cheeks, and at least I looked dressed for a party rather than a sermon.

I spent a great deal of time on my hair, which was frizzy and unmanageable at the best of times, trying to coax it into something approximating Goldie’s stylish coiffure. I strained for the sounds of guests arriving, but I heard nothing. It was as if the bustle I’d witnessed earlier had completely vanished. I spent an hour deciding which of the many perfumes to wear, finally choosing the orange blossom.

I was starving, and I wished Goldie had not refused tea, but surely there would be food at the ball. I waited for someone to come for me. A knock on the door. A maid. Goldie or my uncle to tell me the party had begun. I went to the window and watched the carriages arrive through the densening fog, the nimbi of their lamps floating disembodied in the mist. Still, no one came. I wondered if there was some protocol for the guest of honor that I didn’t know. Should I arrive on time? Late? Did I make a grand appearance? In all my mother’s lessons, we had not discussed this scenario.

I opened the bedroom door and stood in the hallway—far too bright now, electric lights blazing, and soundless. How very strange. I would have thought there was no party at all had I not seen the guests arriving. I knocked on Goldie’s door, but there was no answer, and when I opened it to a waft of jasmine and a glimpse of gold and white, there was no one inside. She must already be downstairs. They were waiting.

I went to the top of the stairs and grasped the rail. I was holding up everything. The guests would be impatient. I closed my eyes, thinking of my mother taking my hand in the sitting room as she taught me the waltz. “The grandest dance of them all. A woman can charm anyone in the waltz, if she does it correctly.” That wistful smile.

“Remember who you are, May.” The balm of my mother’s oft-repeated words and the softness of memory banished my unease. I flew down the stairs to the party.





I was indeed late. The ballroom swarmed with more people than I’d met in my entire life. Many milled around a tall gilded statue of a lithesome—naked—woman in the middle of the room, but it was too crowded for me to get a good look. A small orchestra performed between pillars at the far end. Clouds of smoke obscured the gilded stucco decorations on the walls and hovered about the chandeliers, making a bright haze of the candlelight. Goldie had been right when she’d said she’d bought enough candles to light the street. Swaths of flame from tall candelabras and golden stands flashed on the studs in men’s shirt fronts, glittered on their watch chains, and sent sparkles onto the ears and throats and wrists of the women. Bouquets of white roses softened every surface, their perfume so thick one could almost drink it.

I had imagined such a scene a hundred times, but the reality was much different. I felt like the outsider I’d been all those times I’d stood on the street with other onlookers to watch the guests arrive at a Vanderbilt or Belmont party, angling for the glimpse of a gown or a famous necklace. I could not possibly belong here, whatever my mother had said. But at the same time, the excitement of being among them, one of them, made my fingers itch with the desire to claim the moment, to translate those colors, those lights, into something I could keep.

I was also hideously aware of the shortness of my gown. It seemed that everyone glanced at the hem, and the fichu was too old-fashioned. A waiter went by with a tray, and I recognized champagne. I’d had it once before. Mrs. Beard’s brother had brought a bottle one afternoon to celebrate the birth of his son, and I remembered the hot tickle of the bubbles in my throat and my wavering walk home and how I’d flirted with Michael Kilpatrick next door before Mama caught sight of me and ordered me inside. How at ease with the world I’d felt.

I wanted that feeling again now. I grabbed a glass and sipped with as much nonchalance as I could muster, trying to swallow my anxiety with it. My mother’s advice to remember that I belonged to this society fluttered uselessly at my ears. Goldie appeared at my side just as I finished the glass and gave it to a passing waiter.