The earpiece was made of a soft, cushiony foam and once she’d figured out how to put the cassette in the right way, made the mistake of rewinding and then fast forwarding—so many buttons—the music blasted into her ears and she dropped the little bit of marijuana cigarette she had left. She had to search for it in the dewy grass, and when she stood there were wet spots on the green silk. The new Veronica laughed. There was no way those cheapskate East islanders, like Binnie Mueller, would be buying her beautiful dress at the charity shop. No way, José.
She lit the short stub (what did they call it again?) and took a few deep inhales—the smoke thick and sweet. She pressed Play and it was as if the music were inside her, filling the empty space where her breasts had been. The violins swelled. The cellos crooned. She sang along. La-di-da-da-daa-da-da. She lifted her arms and imagined handsome Captain Smith was holding her. No, Julius was there. All dapper in a tuxedo with tails. She waltzed across the grass, one-two-three, one-two-three, just as Master Marco of the Serenade Dance Company had taught her so many years ago in preparation for her wedding. Her hands sheathed in tight white elbow-length gloves as Master Marco twirled her until she was nauseated. So when she and Bob had their first dance—she hadn’t chosen the song, Bob’s mother had done all that—she wouldn’t embarrass the Pencotts.
There had been so many lessons to learn. Elocution lessons to eliminate what Madame Bouvier, her chignon-topped vocal coach, called Veronica’s regional twang (“so-der” pop instead of “so-dah”), replaced by the la-di-da transatlantic accent that was taught to actors at the time. There were hours of measurements at Bergdorf and Bonwit Teller for gowns made of silk, satin, lace, trimmed with fur, hung with capes and trains, and dotted with sequins, crystals, and beads. So outrageously formal that when she stepped onto the velvet pedestal and looked in the mirror she couldn’t help but giggle. Like a girl playing dress-up. She was made over once, twice, three times—Mother Pencott sending her back to the beauty parlor to be dyed a different shade of blond so by the time she settled on a platinum a dozen shades lighter than Veronica’s natural honey-gold, her hair was brittle to the touch.
She tried to remember what it felt like—to radiate the way Maddie did now. To be so visible that men, and women, couldn’t tear their eyes away. She remembered missing the attention after her monthly bleed stopped and every part of her—her skin, hair, between her legs, grew dry and she became what people politely called older. But all she’d had to do was throw a formal party at White Eagle—festoon the marble eagles with twinkling lights (Bob had wanted German shepherds when they’d built the house but she’d talked him into a fiercer option inspired by Admiral Marshall’s own pair) and have the help use a ladder to construct a Champagne fountain taller than all the Grudder men. Oysters on the half shell and lobster tails and filet mignon steaming under heat lights. A line appeared at the door as the orchestra played Big Band tunes which lent an air of buoyant nostalgia to the scene. Tall ramrod-straight officers in their crisply seamed navy blues and Grudder’s head honchos in tuxedos, each wrapped in woodsy aftershave, bowing, taking her hand and giving it a soft kiss. Their wives were there, of course, but on those nights, it was the other women who were invisible, beholden to her. Mrs. Robert Pencott, the first lady of Avalon Island. Her only competitor, the newly widowed Mrs. Marshall, sat alone in her grand castle through the dark woods, refusing to attend what, in her Catholic obstinacy, she’d called hedonism.
Those nights, her bosom straining against the satin of her favorite gown—a teal floor-length Valentino she’d picked out at Saks on a trip to the city—flashes of color accompanied the Champagne glasses clinking, the rustle of taffeta skirts, the booming laughter of men who believed themselves invincible. Sound danced with color until her plane of vision was an exquisite canvas more lovely than any of the Old Masters’ works she’d seen on her trips to the Louvre.
Perhaps, she thought now, she could have had one of those men. Or several. Hadn’t they glanced longingly at her diamond-draped cleavage? Captain Gunderman certainly. And Lieutenant Colonel McCafferty. He, with the full shock of red hair and the wandering eyes. So why hadn’t she? She feared her husband. The hot stripe of his palm after a party where he’d caught her talking to another man, laughing, her hand on the man’s dress uniform sleeve. Bob stumbling drunk (calling her a whore—she, who’d only ever been with one man) but his aim was always spot-on, punching her in places that would not leave visible marks.
She thought of Maddie the other day in the sunroom after Oprah—the girl was blind to her own beauty. Just as Veronica hadn’t been able to see her own. And now it was too late. After she’d come home from her first formal at sixteen, her dance ticket full of boys’ names, scrawled in their nervous chicken-scratch, her stepmother had smelled the youthful vanity on her, had knocked her down, with phlegmy disgust, Lookie here, it’s Grace Kelly, but with cow manure between her toes. She must have told Bob that story, she realized now for the first time, and he’d been slinging it back in her face for decades.
As she’d entered those matronly middle years, forty-five to sixty-five, it was like she moved through life draped in a magic cloak. A vanishing act. But now, in her eighties, she’d circled back to infancy. She was cute. A cute old lady who received uninvited smiles from young women at the beauty parlor. As if, she imagined, they were thinking how sweet and sad it was—an old lady trying to make herself pretty.
But with Dom’s magic Wonderland cigarettes, she could at least feel beautiful. La-di-da-da-daaaa-da-da. The hem of her dress grew heavy as it soaked up dew. And still she danced. She could dance all night. She closed her eyes and dared to keep them shut as the symphony swelled to its crescendo. Perhaps, she thought, she’d waltz off the edge of the lawn and into the moonlit sea. There were worse ways to go, no?
Maddie had given her a gift. A book filled with inspirational quotes from Miss Winfrey. The kind of thing people read on the toilet. She’d memorized all of Queen Oprah’s words. So go ahead. Fall down. The world looks different from the ground.
35.
Maddie
She walked into a dark, silent house and straight into the kitchen, where she knew her father waited. She had already accepted what was about to happen.