Chapter Twenty-One #3
That said, her stomach turned at the image of them together in Mina’s apartment, planning their deception.
She wondered what had gone through their minds when they learned Julia was in the Knickerbocker Theatre, if Pelham was still there when Mina came to the hospital to insert herself in the drama.
Julia had just enough self-respect to know that she would have to confront each of them in person at some point, but she was glad Mina was in New York and Pelham on another continent, as she felt far from ready to have those conversations.
Unfortunately, the gods had other plans. A week later, as Julia was packing to leave for Maine, she heard a knock at her door. She opened it to find Mina, in a smart scarlet day dress, belted at the hips, and a little matching cap over her bobbed hair.
“Hello, Duchess,” Mina said, entering without invitation. “I’m in town for Vera’s birthday. How are you getting around?”
“I’m fine,” Julia said coldly.
Mina peeled off her gloves and was doing her usual act of sniffing around the perimeter, like a dog. She stopped when she reached the framed Liberty Island illustration of the four girls looking up at the night sky. Margaret had given it to Julia before she moved back to her apartment.
“This really belongs to you,” Margaret had said, while Julia struggled to hold back her tears.
Mina cocked her head. “Hmm,” she said with a condescending smile. It was just a little sound, but like Grandmother Lillian’s half “ugh,” one that said so much. It occurred to Julia that Mina and Lillian actually had a good deal in common.
Julia still had said nothing, and Mina finally seemed to sense something amiss. She turned away from the picture. “Are you going to ask me if I’d like something to drink?”
“I learned that Pelham did not go back to New York the weekend of the Knickerbocker disaster. He stayed here with you.”
Julia did her best to appear calm, but her heart was beating wildly.
Mina knew how to give the appearance of owning up to faults and errors, but only with sufficient time to script her careless, tossed-off lines.
You know how dreadfully unreliable I am, duckie …
It was a dangerous business, confronting her unprepared.
Mina flushed, but she recovered quickly. “Julia, dear, you really must get past your absurd hang-ups about sex.”
“Being bothered about your friend going to bed with your boyfriend is a hang-up?”
“No, Duchess.” Mina smiled contemptuously. “I mean that one led to the other.”
“Ah! I would not go to bed with him, so you had to.” Louisa’s words echoed in her mind: They hate anything or anyone that tries to regulate their behavior.
“Julia, what did you think? You are very pretty, of course, and I am sure your hero worship was great fun for Pelham, but did you actually think the man would marry a spoiled, wealthy child? You could never be any sort of companion to him. If you were smart, you’d stop the playacting and find some nice fellow to marry.
” She nodded at the trunks on the floor. “Maybe up at the citadel.”
Julia held the door open. “Goodbye, Mina.”
After Mina left, Julia lowered herself into a chair and sat looking at Margaret’s beautiful illustration, wondering how she had gotten so off track.
She had gone to Barnard in hopes of immersing herself in the world of ideas. How thrilling it had been to learn that many people were asking the very same questions she had. But why? Why not?
Those early days, following Mina around Greenwich Village, had been all she hoped for. It was a wonderful spectacle, a joyful, boisterous exploration. People were open-minded, open-hearted.
Not all had taken the same dark turn that Mina and Pelham did, but Julia had never been more than a guest of one or the other. She was so dazzled by them, she failed to notice when their curiosity and exploration hardened into a dogma that was every bit as rigid as that which they had rejected.
By their unwritten rules, this beautiful illustration, and any pleasant thought Julia had about her own childhood, must be written off as naive and sentimental.
Under Pelham’s chosen theory, Julia was irreparably harmed by her family.
It was awfully convenient. What better way to get what he wanted from her than by casting a shadow over her childhood, over everyone she had known and loved?
No, Peter. I wasn’t scared, Julia had said that night in the Knickerbocker. I always felt quite safe. She recalled now the wave of sorrow she had felt upon uttering those words. Peter was talking about camping under the stars, but Julia was talking about much more than that.
Louisa, dear Louisa, had tried to set her straight. I don’t recall your needing protection, Louisa had said. You were a happy child. All children need protection, of course, but she was right that Julia had never felt a lack of it.
Father was set in his ways, and William and Grandmother Lillian had always been derisive, yet Julia had been a happy, thriving child. She was overwhelmed by the sense that the person responsible for that was the very one she had been hardest on in recent years: her mother.