Three weeks before the wedding, Michael’s mother disappears from Bliss House, and her body is found deep in the woods. When Michael calls to tell me, I try to convince him that my mother and I should come up to help him and be with him. But he tells me it’s better that I don’t. When I do see him, there is a new sadness in his eyes and he tells me that he has found morphine in her room, that everyone thinks she died of a heart attack, but he fears she was an addict. It’s deeply shocking, and I cannot reconcile his words with the kind woman who had already welcomed me as a daughter and pressed several pieces of her elegant jewelry on me. I have heard of people becoming slaves to morphine and opium, but I have never known anyone personally. My father wants to call off the wedding because her death is a bad omen, but my mother says that I must decide. I tell her that there is no reason at all that I shouldn’t marry Michael Searle, though I’m not sure if I am marrying him because I care about him, or because I pity him.
The wedding is my mother’s day. Her triumph is twofold: that, at twenty-four, I am still a virgin; and I will marry into great wealth. My bosom friend from childhood, Margaret, who is lately married herself, has tears in her eyes as I hand my fragrant sweet pea and rose bouquet to her to hold at the altar.
Michael Searle finally comes to me our first night on the SS Leviathan. On the train, and at the hotel in New York, we had separate rooms. I didn’t understand, and was too shy to ask why. My less-than-demonstrative parents have always shared a bedroom, a bed. I’m not na?ve. I raised rabbits to sell for meat. I have seen cows and bulls in the fields. My dearest Margaret told me what happened on her wedding night, how she’d been alarmed at first, but then was happy. So very happy.
I fear I will never have children.
He asks me at dinner if he can come to my cabin. We wear our traveling clothes, still, as is the custom for the first night of a voyage. My costume is from Paris, a gift from Michael Searle’s mother, who was so much more stylish than my own mother. I wear the peacock brooch she gave me as well. Very precious. Very expensive. I think it impressed my mother, as so many things about the Bliss family do.
We sit side by side on the banquette, looking out at the room at all the guests. I scorn my mother because of her affection for rich things, but I am dazzled by the long ropes of pearls, the beauty of the women, so many so daring in their very short dresses. I have finally bobbed my hair, against my father’s wishes. But I am a married woman and I have left his house forever.
Michael Searle touches my hand beneath the table. He has kissed me more than once. Timid but lovely kisses that, indeed, rouse something in me even though I don’t swoon when I see him, as dear Margaret tells me she does whenever she has been separated from her Roger for more than a day. When Michael Searle slides his hand onto my thigh beneath the table, I reach for it, scandalized but thrilled, and I find it trembling beneath mine. “May I come to your cabin tonight?” he whispers. “Please?” His breath hints of the bourbon he’s poured into our Coca-Colas from his flask (the ship is dry, and we have both bourbon and wine hidden in our trunks) and cigarette smoke, which by no means repels me. I am a secret smoker like so many of my friends. He didn’t know it about me until I asked him for a cigarette on the train. We are strangers in so many ways.
Michael Searle is shy and kind. He never bullies or shames me. Is it any wonder that I was happy to leave my father’s house, even to enter some other form of bondage?
Each of the preceding nights, I’d put on the delicate ivory silk nightgown and feather-trimmed robe my mother bought for my trousseau. Waiting. Eventually I fell asleep, to awaken to a faint knock on my door from the train matron or the hotel maid, suggesting breakfast. This night, I have sprinkled it with a bit of the precious Chanel No. 5 Michael Searle gave me for my birthday.
Now that it will happen, I am nervous. My stomach and my head feel light, as though I haven’t eaten dinner at all. When the light tap comes on the door, I startle.
Michael Searle is calmer, much less agitated than he was at dinner. And also, like me, perhaps a little drunk. We sit on the tiny sofa beneath the porthole and drink wine, talking about the dinner, the music, what we will do when we get to England and Paris. The Great War has been over for several years, but neither of us has been to Europe and we aren’t sure what to expect.