Margaret was momentarily stunned by Michael’s bold questions but didn’t want to dampen the mood of the lunch. She drew in a breath and confessed that her love life was not at all good. She said she was waiting on an old buzzard and then giggled anxiously and lapsed into nervous chatter. It dawned on her as she rambled on that her love life was entirely uncertain. Bill was legally separated but far from getting a divorce. Margaret waited on his calls, waited for him to show up at her door, waited for him to propose.
She brightened, though, as she told Michael that her work life was going very well. Almost everything she wrote for children was snapped up. Her social life, too, was shaping up. She was still active with the Buckram Beagle Club and had made some new, interesting friends through Rosie Bliven’s son, Bruce. Bruce was an erudite writer who was freelance writing for half a dozen major magazines. Basil and Roberta had moved to teach at Vassar, so she was now hosting her own dinner parties. She told Michael that she was no longer seeing people she didn’t want to see. Michael sniffed. She never saw people she didn’t want to see.
She asked Margaret how Bill Gaston was. Margaret considered her response before speaking. Michael had just come from visiting Bill in Maine, so Margaret knew that Michael had a very clear sense of how Bill was doing. Why was she asking? Margaret replied that she and Bill had mostly a telephone relationship these days. Michael chirped that Bill called her, too. In fact, she supposed he sat in his house overlooking the sea, calling women all morning long. She loved him dearly, Michael confessed, but he was such a rascal. She wished she could be a fly on the ceiling of his bedroom, watching him squirm to get away from women after he slept with them. They cling to him, then he never calls them again, she reported to Margaret.
For a moment, Margaret wondered if she had been wrong about Michael and Bill having had an affair; the way Michael was talking made her relationship to Bill seem more like that of an older sister or an old friend. Margaret defended Bill weakly; he made business calls, too, she supposed.
Michael leaned across the table and spoke in hushed tones that drew Margaret in. Michael’s voice was musical, and her laugh was rich and deep. Her black eyes moved swiftly around the room every so often, then fell back on Margaret with such intensity that the rest of the room fell away. Margaret couldn’t help but feel she and Michael were alone in the restaurant. Waiters brought food, people came and went, but Margaret barely noticed.
“Bill drinks too much,” Michael reported. “He gets sad and drinks until all he feels is the warmth of alcohol. Then he surrounds himself with women who are terrible for him, like last weekend. The most horrid woman was there, an actress with a terribly shrill voice that he couldn’t possibly be interested in. He was as virtuous as a vestryman with a jackal’s morals,” Michael said.
Margaret kept her emotions in check. She knew better than to discuss what happened between her and Bill or Bill and other women. Michael was friends with gossip columnists, and Margaret already dreaded being named as a party to Bill’s divorce proceedings.
Margaret changed the subject by asking Michael about her work. She told Margaret she was preparing a series of radio shows in which she would read great works of literature set to classical music. She also was working on another book of poetry. Margaret should give up writing all those silly furry stories and write something worthwhile.
Years ago, when Michael had been married to John Barrymore, he was too drunk to go onstage one night, so Michael, an occasional actor, stepped into his role. She had relished the limelight. Reluctant to step back into her husband’s shadow, she began wearing suits that matched his. He, too, basked in the attention their attire drew. After their divorce, Michael continued to wear clothes that were considered masculine, but tailored to accentuate her feminine body. Many of her society friends were polite to her, but whispers trailed her through a room. The mavens of the Social Register never stripped Michael of her standing in their social club because she was vaguely Austrian royalty. She had always been a curiosity to her friends. Her dark eyes and thick brown hair made her exotic in that crowd. Her rapid wit, pranks, and preening intellect were not, though, considered appropriate female behavior. When she was young, her parents had sent her off to a European boarding school. At seventeen, she returned somewhat tamed and then married into a prominent Philadelphia banking family. But from the moment she met John Barrymore, propriety was forgotten. Michael’s book of poetry was a bestselling book. Every society boudoir had a copy, and the nom de plume of Michael Strange on the cover fooled no one. Her divorce from the banker, her marriage to John, and the birth of their daughter, Diana, made headlines around the world. So did their drunken brawls over the next few years, and their divorce.
She was now married to Harrison Tweed, a respected lawyer in Manhattan. They lived in one of the most prestigious addresses in the city, 10 Gracie Square, and flitted from social events in the United States to royal parties in London. It had been years since she was famous for anything but being married to a screen legend. She wanted to write poetry again, but her literary muse had abandoned her long ago. She sat at her desk for hours yet at the end of the day had no worthy words on paper.
They should travel across the country together in a caravan, Michael proposed to Margaret, who was immediately reminded of the rickety wagons pulled by old, bony horses in Ireland. The memory of those poor people who made a living by taking dead or dying horses to slaughter brought a look of horror to Margaret’s face. Michael sat back, and Margaret regretted diminishing the frivolous mood, but soon realized that Michael was referring to a motor home. Michael laid out a grand plan in which they would travel west like the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath and pretend to be migrant workers for a couple of hours. They could see if people were really treated that cruelly, then confess they were really society women.
Margaret laughed along with Michael, not quite sure what to make of this incongruous woman. She was drawn to Michael’s bravado and enticing androgynous looks. She understood why men like Bill were so attracted to her.
Eleven
1941
If you pursue me
I shall become a fish in the water
And I shall escape you.
And if you become a fish
I shall become an eel
And I shall eat you.
If you become an eel
I shall become a fox
And I shall escape you.
If you become a fox
I shall become a hunter
And I shall hunt you.
If you hunt me
I shall be buried deep, deep in the ground
And you will never have my love.
If you are dead, dead and buried
I will be the dust on your grave
And I will marry you, dead or alive.
“LES MéTAMORPHOSES”
Proven?al French ballad translated by Margaret Wise Brown