Chapter Forty-Four
“How was your morning, Mother?” I do my best to summon a chipper tone, looking up as Mary Thorne struts into the gloomy family parlor where I have been sitting alone.
“Fruitful,” she replies, lowering herself with a swoosh of her skirts into the uncomfortable mahogany chair opposite me. She’s turned out in black and white pinstripes, reminding me of a peppermint stick that’s been sucked of all its color. “We were preparing food baskets at the church.”
“How good of you, Mother.” I splay the leather-bound Thorne family Bible across my lap, intent on her noticing my selection of such suitable reading material, and fix the most benign smile I can muster to my face as I sigh.
“Yes, well…” She waves an imperious hand across the room, and a well-trained servant slips from sight to fetch her beloved brew of warm water with lemon; nothing so sinful as caffeine would cross her pristine lips. She’ll take this hot drink with me for a few minutes and then be off again.
I’ve come to learn that Mother Thorne’s days are usually occupied with a full agenda of good works: organizing the upcoming parish bazaar, raising money for the new organ, meeting with the minister, or, as she was today, collecting and arranging foodstuffs.
Otherwise, if she’s not gadding about with her clique of fellow Presbyterian goodwives, she’s off by herself, closeted in her drab bedroom, praying on her knees beside her massive bed.
While Hal works, or takes meetings, or goes out to join the gentlemen at the club for golf or drinks, Mother Thorne is my one companion.
I see my husband in the early morning and in the evening if he gets home before I’ve retired.
I receive the occasional letter from Penny with her seemingly unenthusiastic updates on yet another show she’s singing in.
But the gaping maw of my day is otherwise unfilled.
The footman reappears, carrying Mother Thorne’s hot drink on his tray.
He strides briskly into the room and lowers the cup onto the table before us, and Mother takes a napkin in her lap without acknowledging the fellow.
As he is turning to go, I thank him and flash a smile.
He nods, but does not meet my eyes, leaving us without a sound.
I cannot get the household staff to speak to me or even look me in the eye.
Not even the chambermaids, who appear to be about my age.
Why, couldn’t one of them be a friend? But no, it’s as though they’ve been ordered not to make a noise, let alone initiate any communication with a member of the exalted Thorne family.
So, no hope of making any friends there.
As my mother-in-law sips her drink, I drum the wooden arms of my uncomfortable chair.
I could cry, I am so bored. This cannot go on; I simply must find ways to fill the hours, or I will go numb from the dreariness of it all.
“Mother, I was wondering…one of these days, when you go to the church, may I join you?”
Mother Thorne sits up even straighter in her seat, staring down at me over her thin, patrician nose. Pinching her cup of hot water between her fingers, she asks, “You feel that you are ready?”
“To help you with…with your food baskets and such? Yes, I’d like to join.”
Hal’s mother tips her white-haired head to the side, still surveying me. “Would your soul be in the work?”
Would my soul be in the work of stuffing food baskets?
Why, I don’t see why not. What my soul longs for, more than anything, is to see people.
To get out of this quiet, cavernous house and break up the dull and dreary monotony.
What I can’t tell Mother Thorne is that being plucked from my life on Broadway to end up here, where there is no color, no sound, no art, no company of any kind—why, it’s like my soul is being starved.
But I say only, “I wish to be worthy of the Thorne name.”
This remark lands well enough, in spite of the fact that it’s my sinful lips that utter it. I can see that my mother-in-law is pleasantly surprised. She tilts back in her chair, thinks for a long moment, then seems to land on a decision, declaring: “I shall host a series of at homes.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“At homes.” Mary doesn’t even try to conceal her disdain as she rolls her eyes. “Honestly, where did he find you?”
Broadway, I wish to say. Your son found me on the stage of Broadway. And find me, he did. He came for me, a relentless pursuit. But I bite my lip because this feels like perhaps some progress, minuscule as it may be.
“I shall inform the town that I will be at home for an allotted day and time and willing to receive,” Mother Thorne explains, making plain her displeasure at having to do so. “At least, I shall be willing to receive those to whom I send invitations.”
The allotted day and time arrive, Wednesday at three o’clock, and I sit beside Mother Thorne on our hard-backed chairs of carved mahogany.
Outside it’s a gray day, with steady raindrops slapping her tall windows, but I don’t doubt that her crowd of Presbyterian goodwives will turn out to answer the Widow Thorne’s summons, in spite of the inclement weather.
Hal has made himself scarce, fleeing for his club with a quick kiss atop my head and the words “Have fun, beautiful wife.” He was hopeful for me, knowing how lonely I’ve been feeling of late.
“Good posture, remember,” Mother Thorne chides me as the clock strikes three and the butler presents her with a silver tray already bearing the cards of her first callers.
“Your friends are prompt,” I note.
“Why shouldn’t they be?” She scowls. “Tardiness is for the slothful and indolent.”
I manage to sit up even straighter, as if the corset she’s had me laced into would allow me to slouch for an instant.
She’s picked out my entire outfit: a cream-colored day dress with black frogging along the neck and sleeves, gloves, white boots, not a drop of perfume or makeup.
My only jewelry is a pair of tasteful pearl earrings, a gift from her son, and my wedding rings.
Mother Thorne and I sit side by side, presiding over a dull spread of bland tea sandwiches on white bread, as dry as the white shirtwaist she wears, which has been starched to the texture of flint.
Today I am her charity project. Her philanthropic burden.
In spite of the mortification she clearly feels at having to tolerate me in her home, today she will show me off to her dozens of church friends.
The bride whom her prized son, who could have had anyone, has taken on.
And I can see that that’s precisely how she’s going to spin it—I am yet another charity case that she, in her boundless piety, has been willing to take in hand.
Her first guests enter, prim ladies who look as though they’ve plucked their own stiff shirtwaists right off of Mary Thorne’s ironing board. Is it some sort of Presbyterian uniform? I wonder. Does it come with a hair-shirt lining?
“Ann, Ruth, Helen, welcome,” says my mother-in-law. In they stride, reminding me of the pigeons in New York City who all move together, bodies coordinated in wordless collaboration. “May I offer you some juice or tea?”
I can see their eager stares. All three of them, in spite of their better judgment, are simply desperate to take in the sight of me.
My mother-in-law has warned that I am never to speak of my past; it’s been washed clean, like my soul.
But as the hour wears on, as more and more of Pittsburgh’s finest ladies file into this parlor, helping themselves to tea and finger sandwiches and furtive glances at my face and figure, I come to suspect that every single one of them knows about me.
Not only me, but my past. Dancing on Broadway, posing for artists.
And perhaps, given their lingering, inquisitive stares, perhaps even Stanley Pierce.
My suspicion is confirmed forty-five minutes into our “at home” when I overhear a snippet of Mary’s conversation a few feet away from me. “My son believes he can save the girl,” Mary says, her voice low but dripping with displeasure.
“He’s always been such a good boy,” the friend replies, her own tone sugary, if a bit sorrowful.
“That may be so, but the poor girl…As I told my Hal, some people are simply beyond salvation.”
My entire body clenches as I feel my heart hammer angrily against my ribs. It strikes me as I look around the room that I now feel even lonelier than I did when all the rooms in this house were empty.
As the ladies depart at the end of the afternoon, making their obedient reverences to Mother Thorne, each one quits the room with parting words that indicate just how much they fear for my soul, or pity the Thorne family that has taken me in.
“We are praying for you.”
“Your mother-in-law is a fine lady.”
“We shall keep you in our prayers.”
I hear these words of woe and concern over and over, from each lady who departs. And as I glide back up, alone and drained, toward my bedroom, I feel further than ever from my hopes of making a new friend or feeling at home.