She thought bitterly of those who had wanted her. Condé Nast, back when she worked for Vogue. How many times had he chased her around his desk? And he was quite handsome for his age, she could now realize. Very trim, sharply chiseled features. But at the time she thought him absurd, old enough to be her grandfather.
And Serge! Serge Obolensky! She’d adored Serge, loved his passion, his exoticism—a real Russian prince!—yet he was so courtly. Quite old-fashioned, yet so dashingly handsome with that little brush of a mustache that tickled; suddenly Babe couldn’t keep still on her side of the bed. She squirmed, flexed her toes, stretched her hamstrings, turned over so that her pelvis pressed into the mattress, remembering how Serge kissed her one day, the two of them lying, entwined, upon a gorgeous velvet swooning couch in his apartment. A kiss so deep, stirring so many yearnings. And she would have given in to them, too, had she been able to stifle her mother’s voice in her head.
But that she could never do. “Sit up straight.” “Don’t fidget.” “Write a thank-you note the minute you receive a gift or return home from a party.” “Always have fresh flowers, no matter the cost.” “Clean gloves and shoes are the sign of a lady.” “Never let the help get the upper hand.” “Be discreet.” “Be above gossip.”
“Be a perfect little angel for Papa, because he’s so rarely home, and when he is, he wants to see only the very best of you.” “Be a perfect little debutante because sister Betsey is now married to the president’s son.” “Be a perfect little wife to Stanley, because he’s old money, Tuxedo Park.”
“Be a perfect wife to Bill, even if he is a Jew. Because that’s what he’s paying for, and if you’re not perfect, he’ll replace you so fast your head will spin, and then where will you be? Divorced twice, with four children and no money of your own.”
“Be perfect. Because that’s what people expect of you now. Because what are you, if not that? Who are you?”
Perfect. Babe must be perfect, in every way. She had been born to be a rich man’s wife, decorative, an asset. She never remembered being allowed to dream of anything else. When she was very small, Betsey and Minnie—Minnie nine years older, Betsey seven—allowed her to play at being a flower girl for their fabulously staged weddings. It was the only pretend play that her mother sanctioned. “Now let Babe catch the bouquet,” her mother would admonish her older sisters. “Babe has to catch the bouquet, so that she’ll be next.”
Babe didn’t want to catch the bouquet. She wanted to pretend that she was someone else—Odeal, that was the name she told her brothers and sisters to call her, while she pretended to be an ordinary scullery maid, dirtying her hands, calling them “m’lord” and “m’lady” in a terrible cockney accent. Odeal was an orphan, admired by all for her pluck and wit.
But her mother was so furious, she forbade anyone to talk to Babe while she was pretending to be Odeal. “Do not encourage her,” her mother hissed. “We can’t have that kind of behavior. What will people think?”
Babe gave up being Odeal, after a while. She couldn’t remember just when her imagination left her, flew away like a bird; she just knew she was happy being alone, in her own dreamy world, for a time. And then she was not; she missed her sisters telling her what to do, her brothers coaxing her along in their games. She burned with shame at the dinner table, when no one would speak to her or pass her the salt. So she gave it up, and accepted that she was Babe, only Babe. She would never be anyone else, anything other than what her mother wanted for her. She willed herself not to imagine or dream, because there was no profit in it. The only profit was in being the best, most perfect little girl in the world, then the best, most perfect debutante, then the best, most perfect wife. Because if she wasn’t perfect, precisely who others expected her to be, no one would talk to her. Or even acknowledge her existence. She would simply wink out, disappear like a vapor.