My father’s a millionaire. Why?
My God, it was a sultry day. August in France. The heat was immense, the air full of dust and exhaust and misery, the hot blue sky meeting the ruined, busy earth. I couldn’t hear the distant war boom above the noise of the road, but as I drove, I felt the familiar shock of artillery striking the earth, vibrating the tires and the metal frame, traveling through the steering column and into my fingers. The sensation of battle. The armies were moving now, moving at last out of their trenches and into the shattered woods and the open ground, first the Germans pushing us back through the spring and early summer, and now us returning the favor at last. Fresh American boys in their millions feeding the tide. I squinted at the road ahead, dust-white and rimmed by the splintered remains of the linden trees that had once shaded travelers. It doesn’t matter, I told myself; nothing else matters compared with this.
But it did.
Don’t tell anyone, Sophie had begged, in her most recent letter, almost as if Sophie knew that her sister had someone to tell. Father says it’s supposed to be kept secret. But the pneumatic oxifying drill—whatever it was—had proven a smashing success, a complete revolution in a certain specialized section of mechanical design, and some cunning lawyer had made certain that he didn’t sell the patent outright but instead negotiated a series of licensing contracts to several manufacturers: licenses that had already banked a million and a half dollars, with more to come, on and on into the future. (Sophie had only learned this by inadvertently opening a gleeful letter from the lawyer in question, which she thought was a bill from the butcher, since they shared the same last name.) Don’t tell anyone, Sophie had begged, and I had gone and done just that, in a fit of—what? Jealous pique? Wanting to stick it in Samuel’s eye. Wanting to prove myself better, somehow, than Lydia Fitzwilliam, than Simon’s wife, as if money actually made you better than your fellow man. As if the fact of my father’s strange new riches made any difference at all. As if Simon would care how much money I had.
Because of course Samuel had lied to me. For one thing, I knew Simon had begun the divorce proceedings—he had told me all about the sordid arrangements for the woman in the hotel, and the private detective—and the meeting with his lawyer. The outrage of all four parents at Simon’s apparent perfidy: I found myself almost overcome with a desire to laugh, when I was called on the carpet to explain my appalling behavior. Didn’t I know such things were to be kept discreet?
For another thing, I knew Simon. His tender concern for my welfare, his anxiety that I might be engaging in something I really didn’t want. You don’t have to meet me like this, Virginia. We can make everything proper. We can wait until the divorce comes through, and get married.
And of course I had told him that he was ridiculous, that I had no need or desire for marriage, that I was perfectly satisfied with our relations as they stood. That was what I said out loud. What I thought was this: I can’t go on without the hope of seeing you again in a few weeks, a few months: this reassuring contact, this wordless expression of devotion, this intimate physical connection between two human beings that keeps the dread from my window. I cannot stop and say, let us be married before we come together again. Don’t make me stop. Don’t make me give everything up.
And in between those few precious rendezvous, when I woke alone in my cot in the nurses’ hut, I had poured my soul into the war. I had taken on extra shifts, I had volunteered for every special duty, I had filled every possible moment with work. My zeal had won special commendations from the head of the service, who was astonished by what he called my inhuman devotion.
But that was the easy part. Devotion was easy. Self-control I had in spades. So I couldn’t understand what had possessed me in that café, when the bitter lies of Samuel Fitzwilliam made no difference to my future. I had actually bragged—that was human, perhaps. But what was worse, what was unforgivable, was that I’d exposed such a vital secret about myself. About my father, about my family. Worst of all: to a stranger, a venal man who couldn’t possibly be trusted. Why? What was wrong with me?
Either Simon’s lying to you, or I am.
And then: Why would I lie? Why, indeed.
Was that it, then? Had Major Fitzwilliam actually wedged some kind of chisel into my outrage, producing a crack of doubt?
I remembered my father’s stricken face as he opened his front door to discover his missing daughter on the stoop, in the company of a grim-browed officer of the New York Metropolitan Police. Before me the road curved ahead, hot and shimmering in the August sun, choked with dust from a train of supply trucks up ahead. I eased back the throttle to give myself a little more room, because the German bombers were getting desperate now, trying anything, dropping ordnance in full daylight on the Allied supply lines.
Why? Why had I done it? Exposed myself like that. Pulled apart my ribs and shown this man, this stranger in his uniform, the heart that beat inside. Given him a piece of precious, vital information, a club that he could wield, if he really wanted revenge against Simon.
You’re better off without us. Was that the nature of Samuel’s revenge? A love for a love? Steal my lover, and I will drive away yours.
My chest shook as I gripped the wheel. The dust cleared, but my eyes remained clouded and wobbly, and I realized that they were wet. I reached up to brush the corner of my eye, and at that instant a light exploded before me, like the flashbulb of a newsman’s camera, and I’m afraid I really don’t remember anything more.
June 28, 1920
Darling V,