On a Cold Dark Sea(46)
“It’s awful to admit, but I saw the sinking as a sign that Charlie and I were meant to be together. If everything had gone as planned, we would have said goodbye in New York, and I’d have gone back to my boring life with Hiram, and Charlie would have been matched up with some heiress or another. We’d never have seen each other again. When Charlie appeared at that window—when he helped you into the boat—it felt like fate. Hiram wasn’t even dead yet, but I felt like my true husband had been saved.”
Esme was startled to feel her eyes tingle with tears. Whatever her private heartaches, Mrs. Esme Van Hausen never made a spectacle of herself in public. She forced down a spoonful of soup, steadying her breathing.
“And then we were rescued, and you can guess the rest. Charlie and I corresponded, and it wasn’t long before we were talking about marriage, and I know some people said we moved too fast, but I didn’t care.” Esme tried to block out an image of Hiram’s sister, her face rigid with a forced smile. “The sinking made both of us determined to follow our hearts. If you could die tomorrow, why not live today?”
It was one of Charlie’s favorite sayings, one Esme had been happy to live by in the early years. It hadn’t been quite so inspiring later, when Esme was pregnant and exhausted and Charlie announced he was taking flying lessons or going on a weeklong hunting expedition with friends. As if he’d had a premonition of early death, Charlie had packed more than his share of adventure into his forty-three years.
“All the papers in England ran stories about your wedding,” Charlotte said. “Seemed your picture was everywhere.”
“Did you write about it?”
“‘My Night with the Titanic Sweethearts’?” Charlotte said scornfully. “No, I didn’t tell anyone I’d met you. Hardly anyone I work with knows I was on the Titanic, to this day.”
“It was sort of fun to be famous.” Until the gossip started and Charlie began ripping up the papers whenever a new story appeared. Charlotte didn’t need to hear about all that. “I enjoyed setting up house, talking to Charlie over dinner each night—we were always laughing, not quite believing it was true. It seemed like I’d finally gotten everything I ever wanted.”
That first year had been magical, every day beginning and ending with kisses. The excitement of throwing their first parties, Charlie’s delighted surprise when Esme told him she was expecting. It felt like a very long time ago, so long that all the emotion had seeped out from her memories. Esme could see their faces, their gestures, their affectionate looks. But they were frozen images, nothing more.
“I couldn’t expect things to stay magical forever, of course. Charlie was so impulsive—it was one of the things I loved about him—but it was hard on me, sometimes. He hated his job, so he was grumpy when he came home, and he’d want a distraction, but I’d be tired after a day with the children . . .”
Having felt the loss of her own mother so keenly, Esme was determined to be an active, visible presence in Robbie and Rosie’s lives. They had a nanny, as did every other family they knew, but Esme was the one who woke up with the children and fed them breakfast. She was the one who sang them to sleep. She’d never have dreamed, back then, of locking herself away from them, as had become an all-too-frequent habit. Off Charlie would go to Long Island for the weekend, or his cousin’s house in Boston, leaving Esme on her own, a young mother for whom the 1920s never roared. She wasn’t sure when Charlie started cheating on her, only that he grew less inclined to hide it. Maybe he thought she wouldn’t care, after what she’d done to Hiram. But it hurt, far more than he knew.
“I got to feeling pretty sorry for myself,” Esme told Charlotte. “I’d wonder where we’d gone wrong, and I started to think I was being punished, for how I’d treated my first husband. That made me think about Hiram, and I realized I’d never really given him a fair shake. We were so different, and I thought he was such an old fogey, but he never would have treated me the way Charlie did. He’d never have gone off to Florida on a whim and forgotten to tell me for three days. He wouldn’t have left me alone when Rosie had a fever and I was scared sick. He had a steadiness I used to find boring, until I was living with the opposite. It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? There I was, finally married to the man I thought was the love of my life. And I’d never been so unhappy.”
Charlotte’s sympathetic silence encouraged Esme to go on.
“Once I accepted my misery, things got easier.” Esme attempted a laugh, but it came out wrong. More like a cough. “I put my energy into the children and charity work. Entire days would pass when Charlie and I were both at home but didn’t speak. And it wasn’t entirely his fault. I’d known what he was like from the very beginning—the kind of man who makes a pass at another man’s wife. Why should I have been surprised that marriage bored him?”
In a perverse twist of their earlier romance, Esme found the best way to capture Charlie’s attention was by hurling insults and wine glasses across the dining room. Dramatic scenes were the only way they ever ended up together in bed. As the children grew older and Esme grew wearier, she began sleeping in one of the guest rooms. It was potently satisfying to slam the door and shout “I hate you!” without having to look at Charlie’s face. Wouldn’t that make a swell story for the papers?