It was Edith’s habit to work in the morning. She rose early but stayed in bed, where she wrote until noon, using blue paper and black ink because she found it easier to read. She wrote in her favorite silk gown and cap, trimmed in lace, her writing board balanced on her legs, the inkpot poised on top. Finished pages were tossed on the floor, where her secretary would retrieve them, typing them up so Edith could review and revise as necessary.
Two days after the Vanderbilt musicale, she woke at her normal hour and began to write. She delighted in order. Simply because she was in a hotel did not mean she had to alter her routine; the smallest change in her day left her scattered. It was only when she dropped a completed page to the carpet that she remembered: Her secretary was not here to pick it up. Her secretary was in Paris because Edith had expected herself to be in Paris far sooner than it now seemed she would be.
Infuriatingly, the doctor was ill. Yesterday, news had come that the illustrious Dr. Francis Parker Kinnicutt, whose clients so valued his advice, they sent private railway cars to Lenox, Massachusetts, to fetch him, had come down with influenza and would be unable to travel for days. Teddy’s family would not tolerate his being sent off without official sanction from his physician. And so Edith was stranded in New York until the doctor arrived. She had spent her birthday fuming.
The dinner had humiliated her; the fight with Teddy had exhausted her. And she was still feeling bruised from her encounter with David Graham Phillips. But she told herself, if the Vanderbilts made her feel conspicuous and gossiped about, if Phillips made her feel feckless and passé, and her birthday, ancient, there was only one thing for it, and that was work. Her whole life, she had been able to summon that mystical state where she knew nothing of the world but the story she was telling. It was a glorious realm, one where she was at once all-powerful and consumed in the wonder of what she called making up.
But this morning, it was all … sticky. Every word felt dredged up as if she were snorting phlegm from her sinuses. Looking over yesterday’s work, she saw writing that merely pretended to wit, much like Undine Spragg, the heroine of The Custom of the Country. The name for the hotel, the Stentorian—she had thought it so clever when she first brought it into being. Now it seemed like the clumsiest of satire, the sort that reveals the defects of the author more than her target.
From the other room of the suite, she could hear White inviting Teddy to put on his overcoat. She had assigned them a visit to the Museum of Natural History; Carl Akeley would show Teddy the plans for his proposed Hall of African Mammals. Science interested Teddy not at all, but animals did, and it was the best she could manage. Yesterday, they had avoided each other entirely, slipping in and out of doors only when they were certain the space was unoccupied. But, last night, as they put him to bed, she had promised that she would go with him to the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals later in the week.
Now, hearing footsteps, she went still. She could feel Teddy’s remorse through the oak door. Then White murmured, “If you’re ready, Mr. Wharton,” and she heard the soft sigh of dashed hope, the door of their hotel suite as it opened and closed.
Squaring her shoulders against the headboard, she confronted the page. She couldn’t improve on what didn’t exist. Brownell wanted Custom; she would work on Custom. Willing herself into the mind of Undine Spragg, she wrote, “‘Friday’s the stylish night, and that new tenor’s going to sing again in Cavaleeria.’”
She read the line over. Did it sound false because the character was putting on airs? Or because her creator was reaching for the voice of an ambitious young woman from the Midwest … and failing?
What could you possibly know about the American woman of today?
Odious Mr. Phillips. It would be long past Easter before she forgave Brownell. She guessed there were only a few years between herself and Phillips, but if he died tomorrow, people would call him “young.” Whereas people never stopped marveling that she had written her first novel at the decrepit age of forty-three.
Unable to concentrate, she considered what else she might do. There were letters to answer, phone calls, invitations to this and that. She wasn’t even supposed to be here, and yet people had found her. Alice Vanderbilt summoning her to that Fifth Avenue mausoleum. Elsie Goelet asking, would she like tea? Yes, but not with Elsie Goelet. Even darling Minnie in Washington Square. She didn’t want to see any of them. They would all have their questions and she couldn’t face it.
Dissatisfaction rising, she felt the need to reject something and set aside the only thing to hand: her writing desk. Intrigued by the motion, hopeful for attention, Choumai leapt up from the floor and attempted to scale the bed. She lifted him up and placed him in the center of the yellow satin coverlet. For a little while, she watched as he explored, making heroic efforts to clear the hurdle of her legs to get to a small plate trimmed in green, which bore the last of her breakfast, a smear of egg and some toast crumbs. This he lapped up and, with renewed energy, went stomping across The New York Times.
Laughing, she said, “Shall we read the news?” She held up the front page, enchanted by the way his curious little gaze followed.
She enjoyed the mania of American newspapers, their cheerful obsession with crime, always announcing horrific events in the boldest and brassiest of terms as if assault and murder were spectacles on par with a baseball game or balloon races. Now she read to Choumai: “‘Boy kills playmate.’ One wonders what the playmate did. ‘Murdered in berth of a sleeping car.’ Well, that was in Chicago, and we shan’t go there. ‘New York Senator Chauncey Depew wishes to run again.’ Dear God, and no thank you. Oh! Choumai—Prince Fürstenberg’s been stranded overnight at a train station in Le Landeron without his valet. They had to lend him a blanket. Do you think they’d lend me a blanket? I would give it to you. Yes, I would.”
Then she turned the page again, and instantly, her good humor vanished. In the top right corner of the page was an enormous, eye-catching advertisement. It was bordered in black like a mourning notice for royalty, and it blared to the public:
THE HUSBAND’S STORY
The explosive story of one woman’s ruthless desire for fame at her husband’s expense!
THE EXCITING NEW NOVEL FROM DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS
The publisher had even paid for the cover to be featured, and it was quite the cover. A beautiful drawing of a louche brunette in a splendid hat, picking daintily at her purse, placed cunningly at the intersection of her thighs. Only the awareness that it would frighten Choumai prevented her from tearing the newspaper to shreds. This—she wrung the paper as if it were Charles Scribner’s neck—this was precisely the sort of advertising she had wanted for Fruit of the Tree. How dare they blame her for poor sales—how dare they? She had labored over it, finished it, delivered it to excellent reviews, all so the laggards of Scribner’s could drop it into a few bookstores in Outer Mongolia and other far-flung, sparsely populated regions, settle back into their leather armchairs, and say with a yawn, The public just wasn’t interested, I’m afraid.
The shrill command of the telephone interrupted her mental tirade. Snatching it off the table, she said, “Yes?”
“Mrs. Wharton? I am dreadfully sorry to telephone, I know it’s your writing time.”
“Mr. Brownell,” she said, surprised.
“I wanted to tell you before you read it in the papers.”
She went still. Teddy had done something. Been strange in public. The newspapers had gotten hold of it …
“It’s David Graham Phillips.” In his agitation, Brownell overexplained. “The writer who joined us when we had tea. He was rude, you didn’t like him…”
He had written something about her, she thought. Wealthy women who ride in motorcars and divorce their husbands because they think too much and love too little. The ridiculous bombastic advertisement caught her eye; yes, she could see it: His Agony, the story of a good man ruined by an ambitious woman. For a moment, she contemplated the unspeakable pleasure it would give her to club Mr. Phillips over the head with the telephone in her hand.
Then she heard Brownell say, “I’m afraid he’s dead.”
“What?” Brownell must be speaking in metaphor.
“He was shot yesterday,” he told her. “Outside the Princeton Club.”
Bewildered, she called to mind the full arrogant figure of the man: dark hair, cleft chin, blazing eyes. That person, dead? He seemed entirely unkillable.
“The Princeton Club?” she echoed. “Isn’t that Stanford White’s old house.”
“… I believe so.”
She was being idiotic—she did realize that. Focusing on the things that could not matter less because the word shot left a gaping, ragged hole in her understanding of things and it was difficult to see anything clearly except tiny, irrelevant fragments. She struggled to put the matter squarely before her: David Graham Phillips, yes, she saw him clearly now drumming his middle finger on the tearoom table. That deeply unpleasant man was dead. And it wasn’t disease or a motor accident.
Someone had killed him. His life had ended. On her birthday, of all days.
Finally, an intelligent question came to her. “Who shot him?”
“What?” Brownell was still a bit lost. “Oh! They don’t know. The fellow ran off.”
“And no one stopped him?” At last certain of the rightness of her reaction, she let her voice rise. “Have we truly reached the point where one man might shoot another outside the Princeton Club in New York City and just walk away?”
Alarmed, Choumai skittered to the end of the bed.
“I … I don’t know,” said Brownell. “In any event, I wanted you to hear it from me. I understand the funeral will be held tomorrow.”
“Really?”
“Yes, why?”
Tomorrow, she had promised to spend the day with Teddy. A thing she wished very much not to do. She could not admit to herself that the funeral of Mr. Phillips provided an excuse for postponing their journey and that the prospect of not being with Teddy unleashed a feeling of relief so intense it bordered on the physical. But she was aware that she would rather spend the afternoon with the corpse of a man she detested rather than her living, breathing husband.
She asked, “Will it be open to the public?”
“I should think so. He was well regarded, with many friends within the literary community.”
“So it wouldn’t be awkward if I attended.”
She felt the astonishment over the line. Then Brownell said, “Forgive me, I thought you despised the man.”
“Despise,” she said airily, implying he was overstating things.
“You said you wouldn’t forgive me until next year.”
“Well, I forgive you now,” she said promptly. “And I want to attend the funeral.”
When she had hung up the phone, she smoothed Choumai’s fur and apologized for her loss of temper. She thought of calling White to take him for a stroll. Then remembered White had taken Teddy for a stroll and would not be back for some time. She thought of tomorrow’s funeral. Had she brought anything suitable? Yes—thank God it was winter. Her wardrobe for the trip was mostly dark and somber.
There was, however, something else she needed. Someone else. She couldn’t attend the funeral on her own. She needed someone to go with her.
No. She had written badly enough for one day. Be truthful, she told herself. Be precise.
She needed him.
There were others she could ask. But Henry had had enough of funerals lately, and Walter would only ask why she wanted to go and then tell her that she shouldn’t.
Which brought her to Morton Fullerton. The man for whom the desire to do something was reason enough to do it; in fact, the best reason of all.
She smoked two cigarettes before calling. She lifted the receiver, then set it down again. Several times, causing the hotel operator to become sharp with her. Did Mrs. Wharton wish to make a call? Mrs. Wharton, Edith answered, would make such calls as she wished in the time she wished to make them.
She smoked another cigarette. Asked Choumai if he thought she was making a mistake. The dog regarded her gravely, which she thought meant yes.
Rapidly, she stubbed out the cigarette, took up the phone, and informed the snipe at the switchboard that she wished to be connected. Giving the number, she waited.
As she so often did with him, she considered her voice. She should sound … light. But not overly so. She should give the impression that there was a purpose to the call. And he would hear the falseness of overt gaiety. She knew that much from past failures. It struck her, how carefully she chose her words now with the man she had once considered a twin soul. But so much depended on the right words.
At one point, she had believed all you had to do was express need and the other person would respond—in honor of what had been shared, if nothing else. And when the response was silence, you were forced into the dreadful, grinding cycle of But he said he loved me. If he loves me at all, he must care that I am unhappy. I will ask this way. I will ask that way. I will withdraw. I will be candid. I shall be distant. I shall be passionate. Something, something I do or say, will bring him to me. You gathered the courage to say things you had spent a lifetime not saying. But still, he did not answer. Which brought the terror that you had been wrong to say those things or said the wrong things. Been difficult and blaming. Small wonder he stayed away! And so, the apologies, the begging, the demonstrations that you knew you were impossible, not lovable, how tremendous of him to even try to love you. The subversive, selfish hope that self-abasement would bring him back …
A woman’s voice. “Yes, hello?”
She felt it as a blow, just above her sternum, slightly to the left; the heart, of course. From there, the misery worked a slow, tortuous path down her middle, digging deep into her belly and collapsing her until she was unable to breathe.
She cut the connection.