“Oh, Rebecca, mind your manners.” Josephina let out a nervous titter, waving away the request in a way that reminded me a little of Mother, always telling me to be a lady. Rebecca cast her eyes down, back to her plate.
The rain had stopped and the air from the open door wafted in, heavy and humid and filled with the sounds of crickets preening in the distance. If Rebecca went to see the ponies, then this awful dinner could be over and I could go upstairs and still read Pammy a story before she fell asleep. Then I could get into bed myself. Exhaustion had settled over me, somewhere between the talk of Josephina’s peonies and the azaleas. I was so very tired now, I wondered if I might sleep all through the night, for the first time since we’d come to Lake Forest.
“Tom,” I said his name loudly enough that he stopped his conversation with Harold, midsentence. “Rebecca wants to see your ponies, darling.”
Tom made a face; I couldn’t quite tell if it was disdain or amusement from so far away down the table. He finished off his whiskey and stood, slapping his hands on the table. “All right then, let’s all go see the ponies. Harold, Josephina, will you join us? Daisy?” Now he was smirking, like he was thrilled by the prospect of trapping me into finally going out to his stables, and even more thrilled that I’d brought it upon myself by interrupting his conversation.
Josephina glanced at me, as if for permission. “I’m going to excuse myself to go put the baby to bed,” I said. “But you all go on ahead without me.”
“The nurse will put the baby to bed,” Tom said, quickly.
“Pammy likes it when I do it,” I said. Josephina nodded, cast me a knowing smile. Tom frowned deeply—he hated it when I chose Pammy over him, always reminding me that we had staff to look after her, to care for her every need. He didn’t understand the way that holding her, reading her a story, kissing her good night each night, feeling her soft skin and smelling her baby girl powder smell quieted the restlessness inside of me for the smallest of moments. Sometimes it felt like I needed Pammy more than she needed me. “Anyway”—I stood—“it was so nice to meet you, Buckleys. I hope I’ll see you again soon.”
I could feel Tom’s disapproving eyes on me as I stood and walked away. And later, when I awoke restless again, at midnight, he wasn’t in bed.
* * *
WE WOULD NOT see the Buckleys again soon, thank goodness. Or at least, I wouldn’t.
Tom played polo with Harold still, but in the months that ensued, we looked elsewhere for social engagements. We began going into the city for parties at least once a week, and there we found a younger crowd, a wealthy crowd—friends Tom had known from Yale or boarding school who’d moved back. But still, they were Tom’s friends. They had wives, and they had girlfriends, but I wouldn’t say I really became friends with anyone on my own right in Chicago. There were other women I talked to at parties—we compared diamonds and pearls, and stories about baby nurses. And one time in September we were at a soiree so gay, we ended up all taking our clothes off and diving into the cool waters of Lake Michigan sometime just before dawn. Tom lifted me up in the water, and I was laughing, and the world felt all at once bright and surreal. But he was so drunk that night that back at home, he slept for two days straight and still had a hangover and a frown on his face the following Sunday.
Still, I lived for those parties. Dressing up and going into the city on Tom’s arm. Lake Forest was too quiet. We were far enough from the city that I only went in for a specific engagement. At least in Cannes, I had the beach to while away my days. Here it became almost too unbearably cold to spend much time outside, even by the end of September.
Tom played polo most days, and I was left behind at home with only the staff and Pammy. Sometimes I wondered if everything might be better if I took Pammy’s care all onto myself. She would keep me endlessly busy, and being with Pammy always made me feel happy in a way nothing else did. But when I mentioned it to Tom, he said he wouldn’t hear of his wife being a nursemaid.
I desperately missed Jordan, missed having a friend and a companion to brighten up the house and my days. I was hazy on the details, because she didn’t share them with me. But I knew there had been some kind of scandal in the golf tournament a few months back, and that Jordan had left it for a little while, gone to New York City to stay with her aunt. But I also knew she barely knew her aunt and didn’t like her much either. I wrote her letter after letter, imploring her to come to Lake Forest, to stay with us. She wrote back only once and simply said she wasn’t feeling up for parties. No parties, I promised her. We’ll stay in the house and just talk and talk the way we used to back in Louisville. But that letter got me no response.
I got so desperate for companionship that I wrote to Mother in late October, inviting her to come stay with us for a spell. She said she didn’t relish the cold winters in Chicago, and that maybe we could come to Louisville in the spring. What neither one of us wrote, what sat there unwritten between us, was that it was almost December. Almost the four-year anniversary of the train crash that took Daddy and Rose from us. And we Fay women were just superstitious enough that neither one of us was willing to travel that same exact train route at the same exact time of year.
And then maybe it was being in Chicago. Maybe it was the bone-chilling cold that rolled in with November, the thick layer of ice that turned the lake white and inhospitable. Maybe it was that I was lonely and friendless and increasingly uncheered even by the parties I continued to go to with Tom. But I missed Rose more desperately than I had in years, since the months around when the accident first happened.
* * *
ROSE CAME BACK to me again in my sleep.
One night, she appeared in my dream. She was dressed in her white Communion dress, her pretty blond hair tied back with a pink ribbon. She was Rose before the polio had hit, no limp and no trace of illness in her lungs.
She ran fast across our Lake Forest yard, not even out of breath, laughing, imploring me to follow her. She ran and ran and I chased her, and then she ended up at Tom’s stables, and she beckoned me to go inside with her.
She unlatched the door and walked in, and I followed after her, watching her pet the ponies on their heads, cooing to them. I was fully aware that it was my first time entering Tom’s space since we’d moved to Chicago, but that didn’t bother me in my dream. What bothered me was, I couldn’t catch Rose. No matter how fast I walked, she was one step ahead of me. I longed to touch her, to hug her, to hold her, for just one more moment. But she was just out of my reach. Even when I started running, I couldn’t quite catch her.