Chapter Four Beverly
Chapter Four
Beverly
Bernice brings my mail in on the new bone-inlay tray that my mother found in an antique store on Park Avenue. That gaudy shop with the jewel-encrusted cheetahs guarding the way as you walk in. I talked her out of buying those, at least. Lordy, this apartment doesn’t need any more ostentation than it already has.
There are six letters today in as many colors. Five of them are invitations—I can tell by the size and the carefully written script. I recognize two of them and can guess what they contain. Pamela’s handwriting slants to the left, just like her politics, and she’s surely including me in her twenty-first-birthday party that will no doubt be held at the Plaza. A brunch in the atrium, the same place she had her twentieth birthday and her nineteenth and her eighteenth. Pamela has an abundance of money and a dearth of originality.
Suzanne’s handwriting slants right, just like her politics. Perhaps there is a psychological meaning to be found there, but that is for me to ponder and someone else to analyze. Her printing is so precise that it seems as if it was produced by a machine. No doubt it’s an announcement for her annual gala raising money for the cause du jour and landing her a spot in the society pages pretending that she is deeply concerned about clean water in countries she’s never heard of. Because God forbid she set foot in a place that doesn’t have a five-star hotel and chilled mimosas at breakfast.
All of the invitations are jarringly alike, rote copies of those that arrive at our penthouse apartment regularly. But if the sixth envelope contains what I hope it does, I’ll be able to send my regrets to all of the above because I will be leaving all this opulence behind—with few actual regrets at all.
New York City is the only home I’ve ever known, and for better or worse, I am one of these girls that I am casually disparaging. But my soul is restless for something else. It always has been. And I don’t know why.
I slip the last envelope out from under the others. The address is typewritten, and the blue Pan American logo sits in the top left corner. The blue meatball , as I’ve heard it called. A pedestrian nickname for such an illustrious company.
The envelope is thick.
Does that mean what I think it does?
What I hope it does?
I am nervous despite all evidence that I am everything they say they are looking for in a stewardess. Check the boxes: education bought and paid for at Marymount School of New York, housed, unsurprisingly, in a mansion built by the Vanderbilts. Cosmetics purchased at the Bergdorf counter. Figure carved during daily laps in our rooftop swimming pool. French taught by private tutors.
Raised to be the perfect society wife.
Except that’s not what I want to be.
I don’t know what I want. I just know that I won’t find it here.
I’m twenty-two years old, and my whole life has been charted out for me since that disappointing moment in which they learned I wasn’t the boy Mr. Wall Street expected. (After the New York Times ran a feature piece about my father, giving him that moniker, it’s what I call him behind his back because, jeepers, Daddy doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.)
If the gossip pages are to be believed, and Mr. Wall Street is to be mollified, I’ll have a ring by spring courtesy of Frederick Bahr, and though his name bears a close resemblance to the romantic professor of Louisa May Alcott’s tales, this one is a junior version of my father through and through. Down to sporting tailored wool suits from Brooks Brothers. Pinstripes, of course.
If my father took to wearing purple clown shoes, his illustrious protégé would no doubt follow in his comically large footprints.
They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, don’t they?
I do have one thing to thank young Mr. Bahr for, however. It is because of him that I’ve learned my own power. A walk, a glance, a pout, a smile. The mere possibility of what might be ahead should the match go forward transforms him, especially in the few moments we find ourselves alone.
Frederick is a handsome one, I’ll give him that. And there are a dozen girls at every party who are green with envy that I’m the one on his arm. Don’t think that doesn’t give me a small thrill, or that I am some kind of villain for thinking so. Whether we admit it or not, we women are so used to being underestimated and overlooked that we welcome any chance to win approval.
We all think it. I’m just honest enough to say it.
I know there are worse things than getting engaged to a tall, attractive man whose pulse shoots to full speed ahead every time he sees me. If he were some kind of weasel or troll or reprobate, some would understand. The fact that Frederick Bahr is considered such a very, very good catch will make it even more shocking that I plan to refuse him if he asks.
Oh, I’ll do it kindly. I’m not cruel, and I’ll get no thrill from turning him down. I’m just not made of the stuff that would give us a happily ever after. It’s for his own good. He’ll see that someday.
Marrying him—or anyone here in New York for that matter—would only perpetuate the sameness that has slowly wilted me for years. I will have the same friends that I do now. I will shop in the same fine stores. Summer in the same idyllic Hamptons playgrounds.
Carve the same path for the daughters we might have.
Wish that they were sons so that they might have a better chance at something different .
I don’t presume at all to compare my woes to the many who have to worry about where their next meal will come from instead of who will prepare it and what they will place on the china plate before me. So I’m not seeking sympathy where it’s not warranted.
And yet, once the hunger of the belly is satisfied, a new hunger rears its head—the bone-deep ache to find out what you’re capable of.
I yearn to discover who I am on my own instead of settling into a definition that I’ve inherited by the lottery of my birth.
No matter the cost.
And it may cost me everything.
Father has threatened to cut me off if I turn Freddie Boy down once he gets around to asking. His father’s in shipping and mine’s in trading, and somewhere in there is a strategic partnership that I care nothing about. If it were simply about the money, I could learn to get over that. But I know that Mr. Wall Street merely has to say the word, and every door in New York will close in my face.
And as much as I want to leave, as scant regard I have for the people in his circle, it is the only life I’ve ever known. To walk away is not to say that I wish to discard it forever.
I worry, though, that his considerable influence may extend beyond the confines of Manhattan. Christmas cards arrive every year from Juan Trippe—the founder of Pan American, having met my father when they were aboard the Hindenburg on what was hailed as the Millionaires Flight twenty-six years ago. Yale alum both, and though my father was seven years behind Mr. Trippe, it was nevertheless enough to spur the annual correspondence.
If I cross my father, will he retaliate by making the call that could derail my career before it gets a chance to start?
It’s why I’ve kept my interview secret thus far.
I look up in the mirror and pull my hair back to tie it into a bun, imagining myself in the fitted uniform, the pert hat. Thinking about the adventures that await. I purse my lips in an attempt to convince myself of my determination.
It works.
I will not be stopped.
Inside, my blue blood runs red.