She Walks in Beauty (27 page)

The corset? The corset supported it well enough. Too well, in fact. It was me who couldn’t support it.

“I remember how it was with my own debut. Do not worry; we’ve all been through it. You will learn what to eat and what you shouldn’t, and soon there will be no more mistakes.”

23

I MET LIZZIE the next day, out behind the hedge. It wasn’t our usual Thursday, but she’d asked me at her party to meet this day instead. She appeared, wan and pale, like a wraith or a spirit. The cold had left an imprint of color upon her cheeks, but her eyes did not reflect the vigor. “Wasn’t it amazing? The dinner party?”

“It was.” We leaned against the bushes, burrowed our hands deeper into our muffs. I tried to remain as still as possible, to move as slowly as I could in order to keep my head from spinning like a top.

She put a hand to her head for a moment. Closed her eyes. “Oh, Clara, I was so sick last night.” Her hand left her head to hover over her mouth. She closed her eyes once more.

“I was sick too.”

“Mama said it was the food.”

“That’s what Aunt said.”

She opened her eyes at last. “I’m never eating anything more than a leaf of lettuce again!” Her mood seemed to lighten. “Did you see Harry start to use his knife and spoon for the marrow shovel?”

“He said he never remembers it’s there.”

“Truly? I wish we’d sat him near me. He’s always so … comfortable. So easy to talk to.” She kicked at the knob of a root that was pushing up from the ground. Then she turned her face toward mine. “Thank you for rescuing me. At the piano.”

“Rescuing you?”

“I’m never quite sure what to say to him.”

“To Franklin?”

“Yes.”

She
could never think of what to say? “I would never have guessed.”

“Why do you think I always propose playing duets or dancing or singing?”

“You always seem as if you’re in high spirits with him.”

“Do I?” Surprise colored her words.

I nodded.

“That’s good.” She was silent for a moment. “You don’t think it will be like that for always, do you?”

“Like what?”

“I mean … after you’re married. To someone. Do you think it will be like that? Always having to think of something to do … because there’s nothing to say?”

Would it? “I don’t know.”

“It can’t be. Can it? Surely once you’ve married there are heaps of things to talk about.” She said it as if she were trying to convince herself.

“There must be.”

Lizzie laughed. “Otherwise … I’d run out of duets to play! And dances to dance! Surely once you’ve married it must be different. Otherwise … you’d have to travel. And keep giving parties. And moving houses. And … and … there aren’t enough things that can be done, are there? To escape from a man?”

I shook my head. There wouldn’t be.

“Well . . .” She lifted her chin and glanced off toward the gate. “Franklin’s not like that. He can’t be.”

“It’s not like that with your mother and father. Is it?”

Her mouth flattened as her eyes busied themselves with the foliage of the shrub. “I don’t see them much. Together. They must talk … sometimes. When I’m not around.”

“I’m sure they do. If it becomes too difficult with Franklin, just give me a sign. With your fan. You know I’ll come.”

She smiled, leaned close, and kissed my cheek. “You’re a darling. I know you will. And I’ll always come for you too.” She took a hand from her muff. Pushed back a branch to duck behind it. “I’m off now. We’re to go to McCreery’s. For another hat.”

She disappeared into the hedge and soon I heard the gate squeak open and then clang shut. She’d gone. Though her high spirits hadn’t; she’d left them behind like a sprinkle of fairy dust. But she’d left behind her troubles too. Because I knew I couldn’t always come for her. And I knew that she couldn’t always come for me.

Not once we’d married.

And what would happen then?

After my extreme indigestion the night of Lizzie’s party, a truce had reigned between Aunt and me concerning food. “If you don’t think you can manage the oysters, then don’t try,” she declared the night of the Schemerhorns’ party at Delmonico’s.

“I can’t. So I won’t.”

“Just remember: There is only a month left in the season. If it gets around that you don’t eat oysters, I don’t know if there will be time enough to fix the damage.” Though she frowned, Aunt refrained from saying anything further.

As my foot hit the pavement at the restaurant, I heard a familiar whisper run through the crowd.

“Miss Carter!” “Here? Where?” “Who is she wearing?” “Where is she going?”

I raised my chin and determined not to think about them, those unknown faceless masses that seemed to be waiting for me everywhere I went.

Once inside, once we had been delivered of our cloaks, we were shown into a private dining room. As we passed from the hall into the room, Aunt’s hand clutched at me. “Ward McAllister.” She said it with an undertone of great fear and great respect.

“Who?”

“Mrs. Jacob Astor’s social secretary. For heaven’s sake, please try to eat those oysters! If he decides not to like you, for any reason at all, you’re finished! You might as well just drop out of the season.”

As we took our seats at the table, I discovered that Mr. Hooper was among the guests. Thankfully, he was seated far down the table on my side. His malevolent stares would have to be directed at someone else. Mr. McAllister, however, was seated at my immediate left. And at my right, Aunt nearly swooned.

The first course was oysters. In ice. Not on, but in. Each of the guests was given a plate holding a small block of ice sitting atop a napkin and surrounded by parsley and lemon. I spied an oyster fork as part of my utensils, but no ice pick. Further inspection revealed that a cavity had been created in the ice and the oysters placed inside it.

Beside me, Mr. McAllister took up an oyster fork and fished one from his block of ice, deftly squeezed a bit of lemon juice onto it and then swallowed it whole. He turned to me as I was trying to decide what to do with my own oysters. Perhaps if I removed them, one by one, I could hide them between the sprigs of parsley. “I have been admiring your beauty from afar this season, Miss Carter.”

“Your words are very kind.”

“I speak the simple truth.”

I leaned toward him. It was especially important that Aunt not be able to hear what I was going to say. “Then you wouldn’t fault a girl for being truthful in return?”

He stroked his mustache for a moment. “Absolutely not, though I must say that I find the thought of anyone here speaking the
simple
truth quite incredible.”

Glancing around the table at the women wearing gowns that blazed with color and dripped jewels, I smiled. “The truth, Mr. McAllister, is quite simply that I could not eat an oyster if my life depended upon it.”

“Does it?”

“Does what?”

“Does your life depend upon it?”

“Some might think so. Especially since I am sitting here, next to you, at Delmonico’s, where the whole point, the whole goal even, is to be seen eating oysters.”

He poked a fork into his ice, stabbed an oyster, and then lifted it to his lips.

I closed my eyes for one brief instant. When I opened them, the oyster had vanished.

“Yes. You’re right. The whole goal at Delmonico’s is to eat oysters. But there
are
finer things than oysters that may be eaten.”

“Finer things?”

“Yes. That’s what you intended to say, wasn’t it?”

I nodded. What else could I do?

“And in that opinion, I am in total agreement.” He leaned back and crooked a finger at one of the waiters.

The waiter reported instantly to Mr. McAllister’s side.

The distinguished gentleman whispered into the waiter’s ear, nodded once, and turned his attentions back to me. “Yes, my dear, I am in total agreement. And how marvelous to have found a kindred spirit in a city so lacking in true conviviality. Why eat oysters when one can dine on caviar?”

T
HE
N
EW
Y
ORK
J
OURNAL
—S
OCIETY
F
EBRUARY 2, 1892

Our Miss Carter has done it again: She has started a new fad among the young, fashionable set. And was clever enough to do it under the benevolent, approving eye of Mr. Ward McAllister. Oysters at Delmonico’s? How outmoded—caviar’s the thing!

Just reading about it made me feel green again. At least Mr. McAllister was now an avowed admirer. That was worth something, in Aunt’s opinion. I had seen Mr. Douglas lurking in the hallway just as the waiter was bringing the dish of caviar to the table. And if I was not mistaken, he had sent a wink in my direction.

Caviar!

I would as soon eat oysters.

T
HE
T
ATTLER
F
EBRUARY 2, 1892

. . . and who is trying to insinuate herself into a certain social secretary’s good graces? Here’s a word of advice to all who are tempted to follow that leech’s lead: It takes one to know one.

Harry found me at a musical performance the next evening. He raised his eyebrows at me as Aunt and I took our seats. And then, during the intermission, he came to talk to me, Lizzie on his arm.

“I’ve heard you dine on caviar.”

Lizzie giggled.

I felt myself color. I didn’t know Harry read
Society
. “The truth is that I prefer not to eat oysters. I … retch as soon as I smell one. Mr. McAllister misunderstood what I was telling him and took it to mean that I’d rather have something else.”

“Caviar?”

“Yes.”

Harry began to laugh as well. But it was no laughing matter! The more I thought about it, the queasier my stomach became. “Don’t tell another soul.”

“I won’t.”

Lizzie fixed her sparkling eyes on me. “We promise.”

Harry laid his hand atop Lizzie’s, which was resting on his arm. “We won’t. I can’t stand them myself. I only ever eat them because Mother used to tell me I had to. It’s the worst part of Christmas: oyster stew. But it’s tradition. Of course, Franklin loves them, so he always took a good share of mine.”

I could just imagine the De Vrieses’ table, filled with people and suffused with laughter. “And what else do you do? At Christmas?”

“Christmas? We sing. We sing till our lungs burst. Mother has always been a songbird. But Franklin and Katherine and I rebel now and then. Mother taught us to sing in thirds, but every now and then we pretend we’re tone deaf and try to sing in seconds.”

I cringed at the thought.

“It’s truly terrible. But it’s also very difficult. Have you ever tried to sing off-key?”

I shook my head.

“Try.” He started humming a tune that I recognized in an instant: “With All Her Faults I Love Her Still.” It was only thanks to Miss Miller that I knew it, or any other popular tune.

I joined in on the third measure, matching my alto to his baritone.

“And even though the worlds should scorn;
No love like hers, my heart can thrill,
Although she’s made that heart forlorn!
Tho’ other hearts have won her love,
I bear for her no dreams of ill.
Her face to me still dear shall be,
With all her faults I love, I love her still!”