Chapter Thirty-Four
Mamma won’t hear me, won’t accept the fact that Art and I plan to marry.
She keeps peppering me with frantic questions.
“How could you be so ungrateful to Mr. Pierce? Did you forget all he’s done for us?
You’d throw it all away for some reckless frolic?
How could you run away like some fallen girl? Don’t you know better?”
But I do know—perfectly well—what I’m doing.
I’m not a fallen woman. I’ve fallen in love.
This “reckless frolic” is the first time I’ve been treated with actual love in years.
But Mamma merely insists over and over that Art will be our ruin.
My headache worsens, and it’s been a long day, so I flop into bed.
Tomorrow will be a new day, and I’ll slip out early to return to Art.
I wake with the sun and dress in the lilac light of the early morning.
Mamma’s bedroom door is shut—a relief. I slip a note under her door, telling her I love her.
That I am still her good and loyal daughter.
That I wish her to be at my wedding and in my life with Art.
And then, with my biggest garment bag stuffed with clothing, I tiptoe out.
The doorman stationed outside the Algonquin on the early-morning shift asks me if I have a reservation.
This gives me pause—I’m not used to being stopped outside of doors and certainly not here, where I’ve been living for the past week.
Why, this young man must know that I’m staying here with Art.
Surely he’s seen me entering and leaving on my fiancé’s arm.
“I am Mr. Darrow’s fiancée,” I say, squaring my shoulders, a touch of pique in my voice.
“Mr. Darrow is no longer staying with us.” Now the lad meets my eyes, and he does not match my irritation; in fact, there’s something else I see in his gaze. Pity?
“What do you mean?” I ask, laboring to keep my posture firm and upright.
“Mr. Darrow has gone.” The young man’s eyes float to the ground. “Late last night.”
“Gone? To where?”
“He didn’t say. Simply left in a rush, after his visitor came by. Didn’t even settle up his bill. Luckily Mr. Pierce saw to it on his way out.”
My heart could drop into my stomach, then keep tumbling, splattering on the street below me.
But I don’t allow myself to crumble. No.
Instead, I thank this man, and I turn on my heels, hailing the next hansom that speeds by and giving the driver the address of Stanny’s townhouse on Twenty-fourth Street.
I storm in, unannounced, catching Stanny in his god-awful parlor, surrounded by the nauseating dark red hues he loves so dearly.
He’s sitting on the upholstered settee smoking a cigar.
He looks up at me with a bemused expression, face relaxed and yet somehow expectant, as though he’s been awaiting this visit. “What have you done?” I demand.
He puffs out a lazy exhale, his face wreathed in horrid cigar smoke. “In all honesty, Evelyn, I didn’t have to do much at all. A huckster like that knows a good deal when he sees one.”
I yearn to slap the half smile off his features. “How dare you?”
“How dare I what?”
“Whatever you did to run Art out…like you’re some crime boss.”
He throws his arms out wide, affecting a look of exaggerated innocence.
“All we did was talk! Last night, I paid Mr. Darrow a visit at his nice hotel, and we had a frank conversation. Man-to-man.” Another puff on his cigar.
“He showed particular interest when I ran through the list of expenses necessary to keep you.”
“This is preposterous!” I shake my head, refusing to allow Stan’s vile words to take root. “Art does just fine for himself. We will be fine.”
“You really believed that?” Stan shrugs, gumming his cigar. “So he gets a dollar here and there for his little scribbles? Pin money for you, Kitten.”
“I’ve seen his family home. I’ve met his aunt.”
“Ah, yes. The aunt who has a son of her own and not much to leave for her little nephew Arthur? You know how much debt your guy had? Why, he hadn’t paid his hotel bill in over six months. You should have seen his relief when I offered to help him out of that hole.”
“I don’t care about any of that,” I say, my words sharp. I refuse to think of all those nights we ordered room service on credit—filet mignon and champagne. I refuse to hear—or accept—that Stan picked up that bill. “I don’t care about money.”
“Well, he does,” Stan replies.
“No, he cares about me. He loves me.” I say it with all the conviction I can muster.
But Stan’s straight, direct stare causes my heart to clench.
And the words that he lobs next are even worse: “Kitten, when I offered that stripling first-class passage to Europe, some dough to take a few drawing lessons in Milan, why, he hopped on my offer quicker than he hopped on…Well, let’s just leave it at that.
” Another exhale of putrid smoke as Stan’s eyes glow with satisfaction.
My legs give out beneath me, and I sit with a plop on the red armchair. “You are vile.”
“Evelyn, you should be thanking me.”
I shake my head again. This is all wrong. “Art wouldn’t just leave me.”
“Yeah? Then where is he?”
As I fumble to make sense of all this, Stan hits again: “Where’s the ring?”
“The ring?”
“Your engagement ring, Evelyn. Where’s your engagement ring?”
“It all happened so fast. We haven’t had the chance to—”
“That’s the first smart thing I’ve heard out of your mouth all day,” Stan says, his words as hard and direct as bullets. “It all happened so fast. Almost like you were, say, perfect strangers?”
“No,” I reply. “I know him.”
Stan arcs an eyebrow. “What do you know about him?”
“I know that he loves me. That he’s an artist. That he was there for me, and kind to me…. He told me that he fell in love with me the first time he saw me.”
“Of course he did, kid! Every man in Manhattan is in love with you. But that doesn’t make a fellow marriage material.
” A shake of his head. “I don’t doubt that he fell for you, kid.
Nor do I blame him. Trust me, honey, he wasn’t up to the task of keeping you happy, and even he came around to seeing that.
Naw, that isn’t the sort of fellow you want to throw your lot in with.
I offered you both a good way out. I’m glad that at least he saw reason. ”
I can’t stand a moment more of this, and I force myself to rise from the chair. “I’m not staying here. I’ll never go back to you…to—”
“I’m not asking you to.” Stan, for his part, does not make a move to rise. His posture is still one of total ease.
“You ruin everything,” I say, hoping it will hurt, though I doubt it will. I don’t think a man like Stanley Pierce can feel pain, only inflict it.
“Listen, in spite of what you may think, how you may feel, I have always cared for you, Evelyn. I’ve promised you from the start that I’d never let anyone hurt you.”
“Because only you are allowed to do that, right?” I turn to leave the room, storming away from Stan.
But his words follow me: “On the contrary, I’ve always taken care of you, doll. And I always will. Listen, you don’t need to stay in New York for me. But you can stay in New York for another reason. Something I think you’ll want.”
I pause at the doorway, in spite of myself. Without turning to look at him, I ask, through gritted teeth: “What are you talking about?”
From his reclined position, Stan declares, “Your mother wants to bundle you off to boarding school. Some place in the country.”
I laugh, a bitter rasp. “Mamma, who never lost a minute’s sleep over pulling me out of school and putting me to work. Now she cares about my education?”
“Not so much your education, I think, as your safety. She doesn’t want you…falling in love again. But I told her we should give you a choice.”
Now I can’t help but turn to see what he means. “What choice?”
Stan places the cigar down in the nearby ashtray. “You have two options. You can do as your mother says and go to boarding school. I would pay your tuition, if that’s what you want. Or you can accept the role of a lifetime.”
I cross my arms, staring at him. He has that look I know so well, that expression he makes when he’s about to offer me something he knows I’ll like. “Miranda, in The Tempest,” he says.
In spite of everything, in spite of the white-hot hatred I feel for Stanley Pierce, the confusion and heartbreak I feel over Art, Stan’s words do something in this moment that cause my heart to lift with the surprising but undeniable stirrings of hope.
The Tempest! My work. It’s been a fever dream of a summer, but it all comes back to me: I have long wanted to be a serious actress, and it doesn’t get more serious for a girl than to land the lead in Shakespeare’s beloved masterpiece.
This role would prove that there’s more to me outside of this room.
So much more than merely being Stan’s plaything or Art’s jilted lover.
I want the role. I want the opportunity. I won’t tell Stan right now. I won’t give him that immediate satisfaction. But I know I’ll say yes.
I turn to leave without a word. But as I’m slipping through the doorway, Stan calls out: “Someday you’ll see, Kitten, I haven’t ruined your life. I’ve just saved it.”