The Wharton Plot, page 4
“I want to be with you,” he said miserably. “I’m unhappy when we’re apart. Just let me stay with you. Please. I can forget if you can.”
His hand tried to cover hers; she pulled it away.
The car stopped in front of the Belmont. Edith waited as Teddy paid the fare. They smiled good evening to the doorman, then proceeded through the crowded lobby.
Groping her way back to a place they shared, she said, “I was thinking, perhaps we might visit the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Have a look at our water bowls. Show Choumai.” She and Teddy were founding members of the organization; together, they had campaigned for water bowls to be placed on streets throughout the city so that dogs could be refreshed on warm summer days. The hot concrete was so brutal on their poor paws. Then she realized it was winter. The bowls would not be out.
Teddy said, “I am not talking of an afternoon or water bowls. I am talking … or trying to … about us.”
They had reached the elevators. Looking left, then right, she whispered, “I cannot help but feel we are easier when we have some time apart.”
“It is easier for you because you can be with him.”
Even in this crowded, public space, he had not lowered his voice. Glaring, she considered reminding him of their original understanding. Words were her domain. He must never expect to best her in argument. Already, she had her answer. Quiet and cutting, it would begin with real estate—that apartment in Boston. A gentle inquiry about the girl; how was she faring? Did Teddy mean to call on her on his way West? Had there truly been five others, as he once claimed, or was that rather a fantasy? Really, five, when he could not even manage one wife …
The elevator arrived. Getting on, they bid good evening to the operator. Waited, faces front, as they rose to the top floor.
Leaving the elevator, she moved a little ahead of Teddy. All she had to do, she thought, was get inside the suite. Then a swift kiss on the cheek, a we’ll discuss it tomorrow, and she could retreat to her room. Throughout their marriage, they kept separate rooms, even when traveling.
Later, she would scold herself: She had been hasty. No sooner had she heard the door shut than she turned and said, “I’m exhausted…”
He had a small crystal bowl in his hand. It had sat on a little table in the hall, a place for keys and coins and such. His jaw was thrust forward, his eyes afire. His arm shaking, he hurled the bowl past her head—just—and it smashed against the wall. Then he stared at her as if to say, Look what you made me do.
She answered his look: Is that such an achievement?
Then, in the steadiest voice she could manage, she called, “White.”
Teddy’s valet appeared at the door to his room. She understood that he had been standing there since they came in.
“Mr. Wharton is ill,” she told him.
“No,” said Teddy, instantly and jarringly contrite. He took a step toward her, and she flinched.
“Forgive me, Edith. I didn’t mean to…”
She said to White, “The green bottle.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
It was a hideously familiar scene. Hearing her instructions, Teddy dropped to his knees and hobbled toward her, liver-spotted hands outstretched. In her mind, the words Oh, for God’s sake clashed with Teddy, don’t, for your own dignity. It hurt her, having remembered him jolly, long arms swinging, to see him so shriveled. His hair was gone, his teeth irregular, the eyes confused and broken veined. Old. He was old.
Whining, he pawed at her legs, as if desperate to crawl into her lap. Putting her hand between them, she turned her head. She stayed thus as White pulled Teddy’s hands from her and lifted him to his feet. She waited until she heard the door shut and the sound of his voice had faded into the other room.
CHAPTER SIX
It was David Graham Phillips’s custom to work through the night. He wore a light gray overcoat, the sort a craftsman might use to protect his street clothes, and he wrote standing at a drafting table, what one friend called “his old black pulpit.” It was possible, he supposed, he did look like some sort of preacher. Certainly, he felt inspired of late. With his last book, he had experienced a glorious flow, the right words spilling onto the page without any conscious effort at all.
He fell into bed just before dawn and was awakened at eleven by the brilliant winter sun streaming through the window. Almost immediately, he heard the thud of the icebox door, the crack of an egg. The smell of coffee was already in the air. Incredible, he thought—and yet he should not be surprised by her knowledge of his habits. She had her own intelligence, he mused. Not the brittle kind that some called wit, nor the vicious kind that was only self-interest. Hers was tempered and gentled by the most important asset a woman could have: the capacity to truly love.
Emerging from his room, he came up behind her. She was a fine cook, but she had a habit of overfrying the eggs.
Raising a hand to hold him off, she said, “I know. Eggs not too hard. Now sit.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said obediently and sat down at the kitchen table. In a few minutes, she set out two plates—eggs, bacon, toast, just as they had eaten as children in Indiana.
He said, “I told you, no bacon. Animal fat clogs you up.”
“I’m sorry.” She removed it from his plate and hers, then returned to the table with a smile. “What are your plans for the day?”
He stretched. “… Stop by the club, pick up my mail.”
At the word mail, she frowned.
“It’s just a crank,” he reminded her.
He had made it clear to her several times: The notes meant nothing. He’d received too many in his career to let such things bother him. The thieves must be drawn into the light and destroyed. Writing about them—truthfully—was the only way to do that. Of course they were angry. Of course they made threats. If they didn’t, he wasn’t doing his job.
But she was sensitive. And this time, there had been phone calls. Late at night, the shrill, invasive ring shattered her sleep and his concentration. Once, she had come out in her robe. Hand at her throat, she had whispered, “Perhaps you should take care not to make so many enemies.”
“Some enemies are worth having, don’t you think? What’s the worst that can happen?”
“They’ve threatened to kill you.”
For a long moment, they had stood in the dark hallway. He had wrestled with his disappointment in her; she, of all people, was supposed to understand. His mind had gone to that reassuring stack of pages in the other room; briefly, he wondered how his enemies had learned of the book’s existence. No one had read it except himself and his editor. Supposedly.
“Let them try,” he told her. “If I were to die tomorrow, I would be six years ahead of the game.”
The next day, he had shown her one of the notes as they left the house, laughing as he held it out so she would know to laugh as well. This was nothing to be feared, he told her. And she had laughed—a little.
Now he forked up the rest of his breakfast. “The pages go back to the publisher today.”
“When will it be out in the world?”
“A matter of months. Once it’s in print, there’s not much anyone can do about it.”
They both knew there was much that could be done, by certain people.
“I’m proud of you,” she told him.
He felt the tickle of a blush on his cheeks, said gruffly, “Well, when you read it, I hope you like it.”
He had already bathed once, but he bathed again before leaving the house, just to be sure. Their apartment was at the National Arts Club Studio, which had been built five years earlier as a space where artists could work and live. For a man who made no distinction between the two, it was ideal, and he had been one of its very first residents. Located on Nineteenth Street off Park Avenue, the building was only a block away from Gramercy Park and a few blocks from his destination, the Princeton Club. Her faith, an excellent breakfast, and the prospect of sending the book to his editor had put Phillips in a jovial mood.
It had snowed during the night. On the street, the snow had been trampled to dark slush, but the trees and pathways of Gramercy Park retained the perfect pale softness of winter’s blanket. Every point of the wrought iron fence that protected the two-acre garden was topped by a frosty white cap. The benches were lined with snow, giving them the look of stout dowagers in ermine. Every so often, the wind shook the trees, causing flurries to fly through the air. The paths were smooth and pristine. No footsteps pocked the surface; no eager hands had raked the drifts to fashion snowballs. Few children were allowed here and certainly no dogs. In fact, most people were not allowed inside this paradise. Only the residents of the thirty-nine buildings that ringed the park were given the keys to its gates. David Graham Phillips had never been inside. And he did not regret that.
It was a short walk. The Princeton Club was on the corner of Twenty-First Street and Lexington Avenue. The building had a notorious history, and as he approached, Phillips relished its fall from grace. The brownstone had once been the home of Stanford White. Virtually no surface—floors, ceilings, walls—was left unadorned by looted wealth. Some might say the house was unlucky; certainly it was not paid for. White was in serious financial difficulty when the rabid Harry K. Thaw put three bullets into the rapacious architect. No sooner had the plaster dried on White’s death mask than his widow auctioned off his possessions to pay his debts. The house and all its luxurious contents—the lions and lutes, Delft tiles and marble fountains—went on the block. The house itself, the first item sold, was bought by Princeton University.
As Phillips crossed at the corner, he dodged an automobile as it rattled down the street. He felt a flash of outrage. Here was another way for the wealthy to separate themselves, leaving the mass of humanity to walk while they sped recklessly ahead on energy they had not generated but bought.
Now within sight of the club, he saw two fellow members coming out. He knew them vaguely and raised his hand in greeting. They drew up short, as if alarmed by the gesture. He searched his mind, unable to recall any argument he had had with these gentlemen. Then thought, oh, yes, he did remember a quarrel. Last week. The one with the moon face had it entirely wrong about the effects of an income tax …
Someone darted in front of him, blocking his view. A fleeting comprehension: But I know you. Then the first shot, which he understood as both a sound—firecrackers in January?—and a shove that left him stumbling. The firecrackers continued, recalling summers in Indiana, the smell of gunpowder. Also, snowball fights, being pelted over and over, and it hurt because they’d packed it hard, into ice, so it didn’t explode and dissolve harmlessly when it hit.
His legs useless, he staggered, found the iron gate that surrounded the club and clung on to it. Vaguely aware of people behind him shouting, running. It occurred to him that he must present a pathetic image—cringing, unable to stand. And yet another snowball. No … baseball. To the belly. Hard. Hurting. Knocking the breath from him.
As the two men who had left the club helped him to the pavement, he looked up at the gentleman with the moon face and was pleased to recall, Davis, Frank Davis. Pleasant fellow. Too pleasant really. Easy to back him down in an argument. Thinking he looked distraught, Phillips thought to say he held no grudge over the quarrel—truly. But when he tried to speak, he found no air, just the taste of copper, for some reason.
It was now very hard to breathe. And his wrist was in agony. Looking down, he saw blood on the concrete. He let his eyes dart over his body, laid out before him. More blood. Below the trouser line. That was bad. He knew that was bad. He looked up at the house that had once been Stanford White’s. How funny that they should finally get him here.
“Graham,” said Davis. “What’s happened?”
“I’ve been shot,” he managed, desperately hoping the pleasant, anxious face of Frank Davis, a man who never knew what was happening and needed men like himself to tell him, would not be the last he saw.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was Edith’s habit to work in the morning. She rose early but stayed in bed, where she wrote until noon, using blue paper and black ink because she found it easier to read. She wrote in her favorite silk gown and cap, trimmed in lace, her writing board balanced on her legs, the inkpot poised on top. Finished pages were tossed on the floor, where her secretary would retrieve them, typing them up so Edith could review and revise as necessary.
Two days after the Vanderbilt musicale, she woke at her normal hour and began to write. She delighted in order. Simply because she was in a hotel did not mean she had to alter her routine; the smallest change in her day left her scattered. It was only when she dropped a completed page to the carpet that she remembered: Her secretary was not here to pick it up. Her secretary was in Paris because Edith had expected herself to be in Paris far sooner than it now seemed she would be.
Infuriatingly, the doctor was ill. Yesterday, news had come that the illustrious Dr. Francis Parker Kinnicutt, whose clients so valued his advice, they sent private railway cars to Lenox, Massachusetts, to fetch him, had come down with influenza and would be unable to travel for days. Teddy’s family would not tolerate his being sent off without official sanction from his physician. And so Edith was stranded in New York until the doctor arrived. She had spent her birthday fuming.
The dinner had humiliated her; the fight with Teddy had exhausted her. And she was still feeling bruised from her encounter with David Graham Phillips. But she told herself, if the Vanderbilts made her feel conspicuous and gossiped about, if Phillips made her feel feckless and passé, and her birthday, ancient, there was only one thing for it, and that was work. Her whole life, she had been able to summon that mystical state where she knew nothing of the world but the story she was telling. It was a glorious realm, one where she was at once all-powerful and consumed in the wonder of what she called making up.
But this morning, it was all … sticky. Every word felt dredged up as if she were snorting phlegm from her sinuses. Looking over yesterday’s work, she saw writing that merely pretended to wit, much like Undine Spragg, the heroine of The Custom of the Country. The name for the hotel, the Stentorian—she had thought it so clever when she first brought it into being. Now it seemed like the clumsiest of satire, the sort that reveals the defects of the author more than her target.
From the other room of the suite, she could hear White inviting Teddy to put on his overcoat. She had assigned them a visit to the Museum of Natural History; Carl Akeley would show Teddy the plans for his proposed Hall of African Mammals. Science interested Teddy not at all, but animals did, and it was the best she could manage. Yesterday, they had avoided each other entirely, slipping in and out of doors only when they were certain the space was unoccupied. But, last night, as they put him to bed, she had promised that she would go with him to the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals later in the week.
Now, hearing footsteps, she went still. She could feel Teddy’s remorse through the oak door. Then White murmured, “If you’re ready, Mr. Wharton,” and she heard the soft sigh of dashed hope, the door of their hotel suite as it opened and closed.
Squaring her shoulders against the headboard, she confronted the page. She couldn’t improve on what didn’t exist. Brownell wanted Custom; she would work on Custom. Willing herself into the mind of Undine Spragg, she wrote, “‘Friday’s the stylish night, and that new tenor’s going to sing again in Cavaleeria.’”
She read the line over. Did it sound false because the character was putting on airs? Or because her creator was reaching for the voice of an ambitious young woman from the Midwest … and failing?
What could you possibly know about the American woman of today?
Odious Mr. Phillips. It would be long past Easter before she forgave Brownell. She guessed there were only a few years between herself and Phillips, but if he died tomorrow, people would call him “young.” Whereas people never stopped marveling that she had written her first novel at the decrepit age of forty-three.
Unable to concentrate, she considered what else she might do. There were letters to answer, phone calls, invitations to this and that. She wasn’t even supposed to be here, and yet people had found her. Alice Vanderbilt summoning her to that Fifth Avenue mausoleum. Elsie Goelet asking, would she like tea? Yes, but not with Elsie Goelet. Even darling Minnie in Washington Square. She didn’t want to see any of them. They would all have their questions and she couldn’t face it.
Dissatisfaction rising, she felt the need to reject something and set aside the only thing to hand: her writing desk. Intrigued by the motion, hopeful for attention, Choumai leapt up from the floor and attempted to scale the bed. She lifted him up and placed him in the center of the yellow satin coverlet. For a little while, she watched as he explored, making heroic efforts to clear the hurdle of her legs to get to a small plate trimmed in green, which bore the last of her breakfast, a smear of egg and some toast crumbs. This he lapped up and, with renewed energy, went stomping across The New York Times.
Laughing, she said, “Shall we read the news?” She held up the front page, enchanted by the way his curious little gaze followed.
She enjoyed the mania of American newspapers, their cheerful obsession with crime, always announcing horrific events in the boldest and brassiest of terms as if assault and murder were spectacles on par with a baseball game or balloon races. Now she read to Choumai: “‘Boy kills playmate.’ One wonders what the playmate did. ‘Murdered in berth of a sleeping car.’ Well, that was in Chicago, and we shan’t go there. ‘New York Senator Chauncey Depew wishes to run again.’ Dear God, and no thank you. Oh! Choumai—Prince Fürstenberg’s been stranded overnight at a train station in Le Landeron without his valet. They had to lend him a blanket. Do you think they’d lend me a blanket? I would give it to you. Yes, I would.”
Then she turned the page again, and instantly, her good humor vanished. In the top right corner of the page was an enormous, eye-catching advertisement. It was bordered in black like a mourning notice for royalty, and it blared to the public:
