She closed her arms around him and tried not to cry, “Hove you too, Nicholas … I love you so very, very much….”
He bent closer to her then and pressed something into her hand without a word.
“What's this?”
It was a gold coin, and she knew how proud of it he was. Clayton had given it to him only a few months before, and he had showed it to everyone for weeks. “You can sell it if you like. Then maybe we won't be quite so poor.”
“No … no, my love … it's yours … Papa gave it to you.”
He stood very tall then, fighting back his own tears. “Papa would want me to take care of you.” Zoya only shook her head, unable to speak, as she pressed the coin back into his hand, and holding him close to her, walked him back to his room.
CHAPTER
32
The Wrights had lost their money too. Cobina and her daughter had formed a supper club singing act, wearing frontier garb and funny hats. She and Bill were getting a divorce and the house on Sutton Place had been sold for almost nothing. Other women were selling their fur coats in hotel lobbies, and polo ponies were being traded for quick cash. Everywhere, Zoya saw the same kind of panic there had been in St. Petersburg twelve years before, but without the physical threat of the revolution.
Their own house on Long Island sold for barely more than the price of the cars kept there, and Clayton's attorneys told her to grab it. “Cholly Knickerbocker” reported fresh outrages almost daily. The column was actually written by a man named Maury Paul, and the fates he described now were beyond belief, society ladies becoming waitresses and shopgirls. Some remained unaffected by the crash, but as Zoya looked around Sutton Place now, it seemed almost deserted. Her own servants were all gone, save the nurse who had looked after the children. Sasha still didn't seem to understand why Clayton was gone, but Nicholas had grown thoughtful and quiet, and asked Zoya constant questions about where they would live, and when they would sell the house. It would have driven Zoya mad, except that she was so sorry for him. She remembered her own fears in Russia during the revolution. His eyes were bottomless green pools of pain and worry. And he stood looking like a sad little man, as he watched her pack her more practical dresses in her bedroom. There seemed to be no point taking her elaborate evening gowns, all the Poirets and Chanels and Lanvins, and Schiaparellis. She wrapped those in bundles and gave them to the nurse to sell in the lobby of the Plaza. The indignity of it would have been crushing, but she was too worried to care. They needed every penny they could get to live on.
And in the end, she sold the house with the furniture Elsie de Wolfe had bought for them, the paintings, the Persian rugs, even the china and crystal. It barely managed to cover Clayton's debts, and gave them enough to live on for only a few months.
“Won't we keep anything, Mama?” Nicholas looked around so sadly.
“Only what we'll need in the new apartment.” She pounded the pavements for days, in neighborhoods she d never seen before, and finally she found two small rooms on West Seventeenth Street. It was a tiny walk-up apartment, with two windows looking into the back of another building. It was small and dark and there was an almost overwhelming smell of garbage. For three days, she moved things in herself, with the help of the nurse and an old black man she hired for a dollar. They brought in two beds, and a desk, the settee from her boudoir, one small rug, and some lamps. And she hung the Nattier painting Elsie de Wolfe had recently brought them back from Paris. She dreaded bringing the children there, but in late November, the house on Sutton Place sold, and two days later, they tearfully kissed the nurse good-bye, and standing in the marble hall, Zoya watched her kiss Sasha as they all cried.
“Will we ever come back here, Mama?” Nicholas looked at her, trying to be brave, his chin trembling, his eyes full, as he looked around for a last time. She would gladly have tried to spare him the pain of it, but she took his small hand in