It’s Edouard. Thank God.
My father bounds over to him, extending his hand. “Adam Zelle,” he says. “Margaretha’s father. You must be her director. My M’greet, the star. Did she tell you she was born in Caminghastate?”
“Papa,” I whisper.
“The world deserves to know! That’s why I’ve written a book about you.”
I could kill him.
My father looks between me and Edouard, sensing tension. “Don’t you think I deserve a little of the success I helped you achieve?” he asks, belligerence creeping into his voice. He makes his way over to a table and picks through some crackers and cheese.
I’ve had enough. I don’t remember my wedding ceremony beyond recalling that it was short, hot, and full of people I didn’t know. But I do remember the banquet we held afterward, at the Café Americain. My father and a dozen of his friends were there, all men from the bottle factory dressed in suits that had fit them better twenty years earlier. It didn’t surprise me that he would miss the ceremony and bring his own guests for the food, but I was ashamed that Rudolph’s family had to witness it. I saw myself through their eyes, a harlot in yellow, a girl who answers ads in newspapers. They didn’t know the beautiful house my family once owned, the servants we’d hired, the fountains that had trickled musically on our lawns. They didn’t know the man my father once was. They only saw poverty masquerading as wealth, marrying into it, and I couldn’t blame them for hating me.
I stand swiftly. “Edouard, please. Get him out of here.”
I hear them on the stairs, in the street—my father, my knight in shining armor, reduced now to a little man making a scene.
*
The next night the owner of the Odéon is in the doorway of my dressing room, his mouth tight. “You will encore.”
“I will not!” I fling my brush across the room, watch it smack into the wall with a satisfying thud. “I encored twice yesterday and three times the day before. I’m done tonight. I’m done for every other night. No more encores.” I grab my cloak and slam the door behind me. In the cold December street, I can still hear the crowd in the theater, chanting Mata Hari! Mata Hari!
I search the busy streets for a cab. The night is a swirl of red and gold lights, a child’s dream of Christmas trees and carolers. And what have I spent it doing? Dancing naked for men who lie to their wives about where they’re going. Inside the shops, the cheerful lights remind me of the way my family decorated our house; of how, on the Feast of Sinterklaas, my brothers would jump on my bed before dawn to wake me so we could creep down the stairs together and spy on the presents that were waiting for us. How different my life was before my mother died and I was sent to the Haanstra School for Girls.
The holiday I spent at that school was difficult. We girls gathered together under the mistletoe at the end of November to draw names for a gift exchange to celebrate the Feast of Sinterklaas. No one wanted to pick Hendrika Ostrander’s name.
“No one wants her,” Naatje whispered.
Adda shook her head. “Last year, someone bought her a comb.”
When Mrs. Van Tassel held the red hat in front of me, I fished out a name: Hendrika Ostrander.
We exchanged gifts in the drawing room. From Georgiana I received a thick scarf. Adda was given an exquisite silver bangle, with tiny etchings and a clasp. Naatje’s present was a leather purse made in Italy. All the girls were rapt as Hendrika opened her gift from me. There was the sharp intake of breath when the girl who was Mrs. Van Tassel’s designated toilet cleaner held up a rabbit’s fur bonnet for everyone to see. It had cost me two weeks’ wages.
Hendrika’s eyes were red. “Thank you,” she whispered to me and I nodded back.
Everyone deserved a little beauty in their life, I thought. Even Hendrika.
A black taxi pulls up next to the curb. Edouard is spending the evening with his mother; she is hosting a Christmas party. I want that. To have a mother who expects me every Christmas. Instead of a lying father.
“Where to, mademois—Mata Hari!”
I look out at the carolers. Last night Edouard invited me to his mother’s party. I told him no. Now I change my mind. “Madame Clunet’s,” I tell him. “On la Rue Jacob.” An hour’s drive.
*
I wrap my fingers around the silver knocker and bang twice. The house is exactly as I imagined it, with cozy lace curtains and potted flowers.