Chapter Forty-Five
Christmas morning breaks over the city, cold and clear, as Hal stirs in bed beside me.
“Our first Noel as newlyweds, beautiful birthday wife,” he says, his voice still fuzzy from sleep.
He rises and draws open the thick velvet drapes.
He must have slipped in late, after I was asleep, for I didn’t hear him enter.
I’m glad to have this warm and tender moment, just us, before we must inevitably join his mother.
“Merry Christmas,” I say, flashing him a sleepy smile as I look out the window over the snowy grounds of the estate and, beyond that, Beechwood Boulevard.
As I stare at the wintry scene, I can’t help but reflect that it’s not in fact my first Christmas at Stonehurst, though it is certainly the first Christmas Day on which I have been invited inside.
I blink, pushing the vivid memory of Mamma and Kit and the cold front steps from my mind.
I need to dress, for his mother has warned us we are not to be late to the front pew at church for the early service.
By the time we are back at Stonehurst, where the hearths are blazing and the candles are lit, it’s time to sit down to Christmas dinner. “Not just Christmas dinner,” my husband remarks, helping me out of my furs. “Also the birthday dinner for my booful.”
Mother Thorne is visibly irked—she hates this affectionate name her son uses for me. Or maybe it’s the fact that she now has to share the birth of the savior with my own birthday, for my husband insists on celebrating me.
We sit down in the dining room, the three of us, at the table laden with enough food for a crowd of twenty.
But with Anne in England and Hal’s father gone, we are a small party.
This day is filling me with unpleasant nostalgia, the thought of another party of three.
Kit. I miss him with a deep, hollow ache.
And Mamma—well, there’s no hope of seeing her this Christmas.
I wonder if she opened the Christmas card I sent her, written on my thick new Thorne stationery.
Or the new silver candlesticks I sent with it.
“Booful?” The sound of Hal’s voice pulls me from my gloomy reverie.
“Sorry,” I stammer. “Yes?”
“I asked if you were ready for your present.”
“Now?” I shift in my seat. “Before we eat?”
“Yes,” he declares animatedly. “I can’t wait another minute to spoil you.”
“Hal, you’ve already spoiled me.” How many pieces of jewelry has he lavished me with?
There’s not a single item I can think of that I need; even just the thought of another thick necklace around my neck feels heavy.
But seeing his eager anticipation, I tell him, “How nice,” attempting to summon some delight.
Hal waves toward the dining room doorway, and a young male servant materializes with a large basket draped in a blanket and wrapped in a big cherry-colored bow. “What’s all this?” I ask, seeing that the parcel is not going to be another diamond or strand of pearls.
The servant gently lowers the large basket onto the floor at my feet and, with a flourish, pulls aside the blanket to reveal a small mound of fur.
I gasp, my hand flying to my heart, and now I do not need to pretend at happiness. “Is it…a puppy?”
Hal nods, looking thoroughly satisfied, as his mother makes a sound in the back of her throat.
I ignore her. “Oh, Hal, I love her.”
“Do you really?” Hal is eyeing me as I lean forward and take this adorable creature in my arms.
“How could I not?” I coo, breathing in her powdery smell. “Oh, hello, my darling girl.” This close, I feel her tiny heartbeat, its rapid pace telling me that she’s scared. “There, there, my dear. Nothing to fear. This shall be your new home. And I shall be your mamma.”
“So then, you are pleased, booful wife?”
“Oh, Hal.” I pull my eyes begrudgingly from the dog’s precious face and look to my husband.
I feel as though I could cry. “This means more to me than any gift I could imagine.” In fact, she’s the only gift that I could imagine making me happy in this moment, short of a revival of Kit or maybe an erasure of some of the memories of the past few years.
What I needed was some salve for my constant loneliness.
A companion. And my husband saw it and delivered.
“Your thoughtfulness, my darling,” I say, taking his hand in mine, giving it a thankful squeeze.
This tender moment is interrupted when another footman peeks his head into the dining room. “Pardon the interruption, Mrs. Thorne. Mr. Thorne.”
Both my husband and his mother turn to answer. Only I don’t, not even realizing until too late that I, too, am Mrs. Thorne.
The footman takes a tenuous step toward us, folding his gloved hands before his waist. “We’ve just received a rather large package.
From the Carnegie family.” The name causes all three of us to sit just a bit straighter in our chairs.
The Carnegies are another wealthy Pittsburgh family—steel. “Shall I have it brought in?”
“Yes,” Hal answers with a wave of his hand. A few moments later, two young fellows are hauling in a massive wooden crate branded with the lettering and art of Haudenshield’s Butcher. A place I know well.
“It is sausages, salami, sweetmeats, and cheeses, they’ve told us,” the footman announces, as all three of us admire the gift.
And that’s when I see it—the image emblazoned along the front of the crate.
A girl in a German dirndl, her glossy dark hair falling in two thick plaits over her otherwise bare shoulders.
Her head tips back, red lips parting in an impish smile.
It’s me. I remember posing for the advertisement, years ago.
Mother Thorne gasps, noticing the image at precisely the same moment. I look to her and see that her face has gone sheet white. Then she turns to her son, speaking as though I’m not even in the room: “How can you bear it?”
Hal rolls his eyes, but I can see the scarlet flames that now tint his cheeks. “Mother, please.”
“In our home!”
“Mother, I’m warning you, watch your—”
“Evidence of her pollution in plain sight.”
“How dare you!” Hal roars, pounding a fist on the table, sending several crystal glasses tumbling sideways as he does so.
I wince, and so does the puppy in my arms. I’ve never seen my husband yell like that.
And over me, no less. All in the name of my honor.
Or, as my mother-in-law would surely say, my dishonor.
All three of us fall silent at the table as, in my lap, the puppy lets out a small whimper.
It’s all too much. I can’t stay here, in this room, with my face smiling up from the wooden crate, my mother-in-law’s pale horror, my husband’s flushed rage. I cling tight to the puppy in my arms, rise from my seat, and flee the room without a word.
Back in my bedroom with the door shut, I pace the large space.
My heart races, but my mind goes even faster.
I’m thinking back to that day when I posed for the Haudenshield’s advertisement.
How much it had meant to me, as I could remember only too well the days when I never would have been able to afford a cut of meat from Pittsburgh’s most popular butcher.
Posing for their advertisement felt like a triumph.
And now my image is being used on Christmas gifts from the likes of the Carnegie family.
It would be considered by so many—including me, until only recently—to be a stunning rise.
But Hal’s mother will never see me as anything but fallen.
—
Hal comes to me, hours later. I’m in bed, clutching the puppy.
I hear the groaning of the heavy door, my husband’s footfalls on the carpet, and I pretend to be asleep.
But he doesn’t take note. Or else, he doesn’t care.
Instead he approaches the bed and yanks on the bedcovers, rending them from the mattress. “Evelyn?”
I groan as though still half-asleep. “Evelyn?” he repeats my name, more insistently this time.
“Yes?” I turn to face him, squinting in the dark.
I can make out his outline as he places a nearly empty glass down on the bedside table and climbs into bed, his movements clumsy and graceless.
I can smell the wine on him. I realize, with a mounting sense of unease, that he’s reaching for me. He intends to make love.
I wish to grimace, to push him away, to tell him no, but his movements are less than tender.
Earlier he was angry with his mother at the dining room table, but now it seems he’s angry at me.
And yet the anger only seems to fuel his desire, for he pulls me toward him with an urgency I’ve never before seen.
Mercifully, it is over quickly.
After, as he lies panting beside me, he’s still angry; I can feel the anger seeping off him. As though our lovemaking has sated his desire but not his rage. He gets up to go, I know not where. And I do not ask, because the truth is that I’m relieved to have him leave me.
Once he has shut the heavy door, I pull the puppy back toward me and I cry. I weep into her soft fur, feeling as though she is the only thing anchoring me to this world.
I’ve had some terrible birthdays on wretched Christmas Days.
My mind spins through many of them now—memories of missing Daddy, crouching in the alleyway, starving, hunting for the butcher’s scrap droppings.
Begging outside this very house, seeing the rich red drapes through the windows, imagining the rooms inside, so grand and warm.
Here I am, inside this house now, being gifted crates of sweetmeats with my own image on the box, never again at risk of having to go hungry.
Just as I once clutched the stray cat, now I clutch my puppy.
And I ask myself, as I lie tucked into my warm bed on Millionaire’s Row: Why am I wishing I could be back in that cold alleyway?