Chapter Twelve, part one

The stately tennis club at the Newport Casino was just up Bellevue Avenue from the Breakers. It was a long, gabled, green-shuttered building that fronted a grass court with room for spectators on either side. When they arrived, Floyd ran off somewhere with the rackets while Sadie led Violet to an iron filagree table.

“Two lemonades,” she called to the hovering server as she and Violet sat. Sadie leaned forward. “Floyd may play a match later, and then we can cheer him on. He spent a fortune on his racket. Four hundred dollars! We played mixed doubles this morning and destroyed the Worths. Those kids may be fixed to inherit millions, but neither one of them can serve to save their lives.”

Sadie sat up as the lemonades were placed before them. “Thank you,” Violet murmured as the server faded away. It was startling to see how quickly Sadie had learned to talk like this Newport crowd, as if money was all that mattered.

“Floyd’s a real catch, don’t you think?” Sadie let her eyes trail away over Violet’s shoulder.

“He is,” Violet agreed cautiously. “And he seems very taken with you.”

Sadie’s smile bordered on smug. “That’s something I’ve been meaning to talk with you about.”

“Floyd?”

“No, goose—you. Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing, spending all of your time with Charlie. I get it. He’s good looking, anyone can see that. And he’s as safe as living out your life at Cold Lake. Or at Emma Willard’s. Or a mausoleum. Pal around with him, and you never have to risk getting to know someone who might actually want to marry you.”

“Marry me! What are you talking about? I like Charlie.”

“Sure you do. Like I said, you like him because he’s safe. Face it, Vi. He lives his life in a chair. Indoors. That’s not where real life is.”

“Since when have you been such a fan of the great outdoors?”

Sadie groaned. “It’s not the outdoors I’m talking about. It’s the whole world. You’re hiding. Missing all this.” She waved a hand around the tennis club. “Missing time with real boys with real futures. Boys like Earl.”

Violet shifted in her seat. She couldn’t decide whether to feel indignant on Charlie’s behalf (wasn’t he a real boy?) or resentful on her own (of course she wasn’t hiding! The nerve!)

“Pardon me, but I think it’s my decision who I spend time with and who I don’t. You don’t see me lecturing you about your choices of friends.”

“Well, no,” Sadie replied with a toss of the head. “My choices hold up under scrutiny. This set is the cream of society!”

“They certainly live a high life. Yachts and tennis, seaside mansions. You seem to be enjoying it.”

“Oh, yes, this is the life. I tell you, I could sure live this way every summer. Floyd’s family’s house is just a little west of here. He drove me past it. It’s divine.”

“Maybe he’ll invite you back next year. No one expects you to keep living in Cold Lake forever, not after you head back to Emma Willard in the fall.”

Sadie’s eyes darkened, and she leveled them on Violet. “Would you quit pretending I’m going back to Emma’s? Because I’m not. And not to Cold Lake, either.”

“But—where else would you go? And if you don’t go back to school, what’ll you do with yourself?”

“I’ve never wanted anything but this.” Sadie said, her voice thready as she gestured around them. “You were the one who kept making us go back to Emma’s instead of touring the world with Mother and Papa.”

“That Paris trip would have been insanity. You know that.” Violet heard the quaver in her own voice. How could Sadie not see the truth the way she did? “They came home flat broke. Do you know how much they must have spent each day in order to burn through their money that quickly?”

“No, I don’t. You’ve never told me about the money, other than to say that we were fine. What, do you think I’m too dim to grasp it?”

“Golly, no—Sadie, of course not! You come into your money next year when you’re eighteen. I thought I’d give you the details then. But I can tell you now if you like.” Violet felt queasy. What else was Sadie going to be suddenly angry about? Were there other things she hadn’t shared? There was that packet of letters in her travel bag…. “Here, let’s ask for a pencil and paper. I’ll write it all out for you.”

Sadie scowled, her face fringed with crimson. “I don’t want numbers.”

“Well, what do you want? Thanks to Grandfather, we’ll each have plenty enough to be comfortable. Mother and Papa could have avoided their money troubles if they hadn’t spent so wildly. Those polo ponies that Papa bought! The cars. Remember Mother’s thousand-dollar opera glasses? The ones with the diamonds on the side?”

“At least they were enjoying their lives,” Sadie said with a sniff.

Violet slid her hand over her sister’s. Being at the Breakers was stirring up memories in Sadie just as it was in her. “Were they?” she asked quietly. “Were they really happy?”

A single tear ran down Sadie’s cheek. Then the moment of tenderness passed. “I know you’re going to try to trap me again. Cold Lake. Emma Willard’s. It’s all the same. Frozen away from the world, drying up like an old beetle. If you want that for yourself, that’s fine. But don’t go forcing me into it. I won’t have it. Not anymore.”

--

Violet, hot-faced and reeling after this talk with Sadie, was relieved when Earl saw her rising from the table and offered her a lift back to the Breakers. She slid into the front seat of his red Pierce Arrow, her stomach swirling. She hadn’t been this upset since—well, since they found out about Mother and Papa. Sadie couldn’t really believe that a year in Paris with them would have been fun, could she? Drunken nights and miserable mornings? Getting shipped from their lodgings when the money ran out? The fights over who spent how much and on what? Violet shivered. If Sadie called staying safely home “hiding,” then hiding was bliss. Hiding was a chance to study and learn something more than whether taffeta was still the rage.

I am not an old beetle!

Earl’s car was a convertible with the top pushed back. “You’d better hold onto your hat,” he said, pressing the electric starter. They peeled away, the tires chewing gravel and kicking up dust.

For Pete’s sake, I’m only twenty-two, Violet sputtered to herself. Old beetle! Just because Sadie didn’t see value in the suffrage movement. In study. In hard work. Clearly Violet wasn’t drying up and wasting away. Twenty-two!

Earl took the corners hard. Violet gripped her hat and leaned against the door.

Besides. Had she asked to become the head of their little family? Overnight? The one who hired attorneys and hunted for nonexistent wills? The one who learned to write checks so she could pay the bills. The one who had to write to the dressmaker, the New York landlord, the stables, and Papa’s club to tell them Mother and Papa had died and that she was now the one to contact with questions. The one who’d had to figure out how to sell Papa’s cars so they could save the expense of storing them in that garage.

The wind blew indignation into Violet’s eyes, making them run.

“Mind if we take the scenic route?” Earl took a hard right onto Ruggles Avenue. He pulled up behind a slow-moving Model T and laid on the horn. “Tourists,” he muttered. “Seems like it gets worse every summer, though Father says this is nothing compared to what it was like in the nineties.” He gestured to the coast ahead of them. “They come for the ten-mile drive and to gawk at the cottages. Funny form of entertainment, if you ask me, ogling at other people’s houses.” He veered sharply around the Model T and gunned the engine while Violet continued to seethe.

And why drag Charlie into the whole thing? He hadn’t done anything to anyone. Least of all to Sadie. Was it his fault that he couldn’t see? His fault that he’d been gassed while trying to rescue dying men? He was a bona fide hero! And he was hardly monopolizing her time. If anything, Violet had been seeking him out.

Though—that was Sadie’s point. But what was so wrong with it? Charlie was interesting. He asked questions. He was considerate, smart, nuanced. And, yes, he was heart-stoppingly handsome. When his hair was tousled, and he had that thoughtful look on his face…. She pressed her palms together. So why not spend time with him? He was her friend. Couldn’t people be friends?

Earl, having passed the Model T, pulled a sharp right onto Halidan. “This is our cottage.” He drove up a paved drive, flanked by emerald-green lawns. “My grandparents built it about five years after Alva built Marble House. We call it Woodhouse.”

They drew up outside a gleaming French chateau with red roofs and a grand entry, rose bushes tidily grouped on either side of the house. Cottage, indeed. Violet glowered at the roses. How had Sadie confused their parents’ endless cycles of shopping sprees and crushing debt with happiness? Maybe parties and galas brought more joy to other people than they did to Violet, enough to outweigh the intervening months and weeks of chaos. Sadie’s temperament wasn’t the same as Violet’s; she knew that. But still. Anyone, surely, would find predictability and calm to be a haven after the chaos of their childhood home.

“Do you want to go in?” Earl was saying.

“No, I’d rather not.”

“All right. Let’s drive on then. If you don’t mind taking a few extra minutes, we can take the ten-mile drive back. The best coastal views in Newport!” He roared out of the driveway.

The waters of Narragansett Bay were one shade deeper than the sky, and for once Violet forgot to cringe when she saw it. Sunlight winked off the top of each wave. The smell of early heritage roses, blooming in garden after manicured garden, sweetened the air. It was a beautiful day for feeling so rotten. Violet sighed. Earl was saying something. She supposed she ought to listen.

“…he’s a character all right. An absolute demon at roulette, they say. It’s lucky he’s a Vanderbilt or he’d have lost all his money eons ago.” Ah, he was talking about Reggie. “He has the best cars and polo ponies on the East Coast. Nine cars in his garage, each a sweeter ride than the last. That’s living!”

“It can’t be all good times, though, being him,” Violet said.

“No. No it can’t. They say he took his wife and daughter to France and left them there. Four years ago!” Earl slapped the steering wheel, chortling. “But seriously, he has had hard times. My mother heard he isn’t well. And—you must know about the accidents.”

“Accidents?”

Earl shrugged one shoulder. “Car accidents. They say he’s hit a number of people. Two of them died. No one in our set, of course, but…”

He trailed off, and this time when Violet saw the ocean, she shivered automatically. “Good night!” she murmured. “Not all good times, indeed.”

“Aw, don’t waste too much of your sympathy on him. He has all that money to balance it out. More than he can spend.”

“But does he seem happy?” She thought of the shadow that hovered over Reggie’s face during meals, when he hardly ate but knocked back milk brandies like popcorn.

“Happy? Who’s happy? Listen, my mother’s been married three times. Each time, she tells me she’s about to be wildly happy, and two years later she’s as bored as she ever was. Complaining that she’s lonely. I tell her to redecorate the house. That’s always worked for her before—for a while, anyway.” He downshifted for a corner. “Throw a party. Buy a dress. I don’t know. My father seemed to like his work pretty well. He liked making money. Though I was never quite sure if he liked going to the office or just wanted an excuse to leave all of us at home. Now he’s chucked it all to drift around Europe, so maybe it was about escape all along.”

Violet stared at the dashboard, seeing nothing. When Earl got bored of his wife and his yacht and his car, what would he do to pass the time? Spend ten years breeding racehorses? And after that? Visions of her father welled up—Papa tapping his fingers on the breakfast table, jumping up to don his suit without saying where he was going. There was an air he had, a crease around the eyes, when his friends arrived for supper or a whiskey, the air of a restless man.

She thought back to Alva’s comment that married women couldn’t exactly move to New York or Washington on a whim to work for the CU. Sadie seemed to think Earl was interested in more than being friends. She glanced over at his profile—sunny and full of expectation—and tried to picture a life with him.

“You said once that men only use their yachts to house mistresses. Do you expect to do that as well when you’re married?”

Earl let out a low whistle. “Jeepers, you cut right to it, don’t you?” He looked at her. “I don’t plan on it. Our generation’s cut from different cloth, I think.”

Is it? Violet had to wonder. “Maybe happiness is a bit much to ask for,” she agreed. “But fulfilment. Your father probably got that from work. The joy of working hard at something and seeing it succeed. That may be what your mother’s lacking. She could join the suffrage movement—there’s plenty of work to be done. Small tasks, large tasks, and everything in between.”

“Oh, no. She’s not political. Besides, what does a woman of her social set really have to complain about? Her life is parties and balls and oysters in Paris. She should take up sailing, is what she should do.”

“Except,” Violet sat forward, the back of her blouse suddenly itchy. “Parties and balls are fun in the moment, but they’re hardly satisfying. It’s like eating only sponge cake and never having a meal.”

He raised an eyebrow. “People love sponge cake.”

“You know what I mean. I’m sure you want more for your life than parties and balls.”

“Of course, I do.”

“Then why wouldn’t you think your mother wants more?”

“Because…” He grinned at her rather than finishing his thought.

Because she’s a woman.

“Besides,” he went on, stretching his arm across the back of the seat, “my mother’s old! You don’t have to fret over her lonely life. You’ve got all the fun ahead of you. Courting and planning a wedding. Babies.”

“Decorating the house.”

She’d said this with one eyebrow raised, but Earl pounced on it.

“Exactly! Say, we should get up some dancing tonight. What do you say? You and I haven’t had a dance yet.”

“I’m sorry, Earl, but my head’s pounding. Would you mind just getting me back? I don’t think I’ll be fit for anything tonight.”