I’d dressed carefully for dinner that evening, understanding for the first time how very thin I had become when my black mourning dress had to be pinned so that it did not hang unattractively loose. Mary combed my hair, twining it in a thick chignon that I thought made my newly thin face look much older than my fifteen years.
I will never forget the start it gave me when I entered our dining room and saw the two place settings—Father’s, where he had always been at the head of the table—and mine, now placed at Mother’s spot to Father’s right hand.
He’d stood and held Mother’s chair for me. I was sure as I sat that I could still smell her perfume—rose water, with just a hint of the lemon rinse she used on her hair to bring out the richness of her auburn highlights.
George, a Negro man who served our dinner, began ladling from the soup tureen. I’d worried that the silence would be terrible, but as Father began to eat, so, too, began his familiar words.
“The Columbian Exposition Committee has joined collectively behind Burnham; we are supporting him completely. I wondered, at first, that the man might be a touch mad—that he was attempting something unattainable, but his vision of Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition outshining Paris’s splendor seems to be within reach, or at least his design appears to be sound—extravagant, but sound.” He’d paused to take a healthy mouthful of the steak and potatoes that had replaced his empty soup bowl, and in that pause I could hear my mother’s voice.
“Is not extravagance what everyone is calling for?” and didn’t realize until Father looked up at me that it had been I who had spoken and not, after all, the ghost of Mother. I froze under his sharp, dark-eyed scrutiny, wishing I’d kept silent and daydreamed the meal away as I had so many times in the past.
“And how do you know what everyone is calling for?” His keen, dark eyes were sharp on me, but his lips lifted slightly at the corners, just as he used to almost smile at Mother.
I remember feeling a rush of relief and smiling heartily in return. His question was one I’d heard him ask Mother more times than I could begin to count. I let her words reply for me. “I know you believe all women do is talk, but they listen, too.” I spoke more quickly and more softly than Mother, but Father’s eyes had crinkled in the corners as he showed his approval and amusement.
“Indeed…” he’d said with a chuckle, cutting a large piece of bloody red meat and eating it as if he were ravenous while he gulped down glasses of wine as red and dark as the liquid that ran from his meat. “But I must keep close tabs on Burnham, and his gaggle of architects, close tabs indeed. They are grotesquely over budget, and those workmen … always a problem … always a problem…” Father spoke as he chewed, dribbling bits of food and wine into his beard, a habit I knew Mother had loathed, and often rebuked him for.
I did not rebuke him, nor did I loathe his well-engrained habit. I simply forced myself to eat and to make the proper noises of appreciation as he spoke on and on about the importance of fiscal responsibility and the worry that the frail health of one of the lead architects was causing the board in general. After all, Mr. Root had already succumbed to pneumonia. Some said he’d been the driving force behind the entire project, and not Burnham at all.
The dinner sped quickly by until Father had finally eaten and spoken his fill. Then he had stood, and, as I had heard him wish uncountable times to my mother, he’d said, “I shall retire to my library for a cigar and a whiskey. Have a pleasant evening, my dear, and I shall see you again, soon.” I remember vividly feeling a great warmth for him as I thought, He is treating me as if I were a woman grown—a true lady of the house!
“Emily,” he’d continued, even though he’d been rather wobbly and obviously well into his cups, “let us decide that as we have just begun a new year, it will mark a new beginning for the both of us. Shall we try to move forward together, my dear?”
Tears had come to my eyes, and I’d smiled tremulously up at him. “Yes, Father. I would like that very much.”
Then, quite unexpectedly, he had lifted my thin hand in his large one, bent over it, and kissed it—just exactly as he used to kiss Mother’s hand in parting. Even though his lips and beard were moist from the wine and the food, I was still smiling and feeling ever so much like a lady when, holding my hand in his, he met my gaze.
That was the first time I saw it, what I have come to think of as the burning look. It was as if his eyes stared so violently into mine that I feared they would cause me to combust.
“Your eyes are your mother’s,” he said. His words slurred and I smelled the sharp reek of his breath, heavily tainted by wine.
I found I could not speak. I only shivered and nodded.
Father dropped my hand then and walked unsteadily from the room. Before George began to clear the table, I took my linen napkin and rubbed it across the back of my hand, wiping away the wetness left there and wondering why I felt such an uneasy sensation deep in my stomach.
* * *
Madeleine Elcott and her daughter, Camille, were the first of the social calls I received two days later. Mr. Elcott was on the board at Father’s bank, and Mrs. Elcott had been a great friend of Mother’s, though I’d never truly understood why. Mother had been beautiful and charming, and a renowned hostess. In comparison, Mrs. Elcott had seemed waspish, gossipy, and miserly. When she and Mother sat together at dinner parties, I used to think Mrs. Elcott looked like a clucking chicken next to a dove, but she had the ability to make Mother laugh, and Mother’s laughter had been so magical, it had made the reason for it unimportant. I’d once overheard Father telling Mother that she would simply have to do more entertaining because dinner parties at the Elcott mansion were short on spirits and courses, and long on talk. Had anyone ever asked for my opinion, which of course they did not, I would have agreed wholeheartedly with Father. The Elcott mansion was less than a mile from our home, and looked stately and proper from the outside, but the inside was Spartan and, actually, rather gloomy. Little wonder Camille so loved visiting me!
Camille was my best friend. She and I were close in age, she being only six months the younger. Camille talked a lot, but not in the cruel, gossipy way of her mother. Because of the closeness of our parents, Camille and I had grown up together, which had made us more like sisters than best friends.
“Oh, my poor, sad Emily! How thin and wan you look,” Camille had said as she rushed into Mother’s parlor and embraced me.
“Well, of course she looks thin and wan!” Mrs. Elcott had moved her daughter aside and stiffly taken my hands in hers before she’d even shed her white leather gloves. Remembering her touch, I realize now that she’d felt cold and quite reptilian. “Emily has lost her mother, Camille. Think of how wretched your life would be had you lost me. I would expect you to look just as terrible as poor Emily. I’m sure dear Alice is looking down on her daughter in understanding and appreciation.”
Not expecting her to speak so freely of Mother’s death, I felt a little shock at Mrs. Elcott’s words. I tried to catch Camille’s gaze as we moved apart, settling ourselves on the divan and matching chairs. I’d wanted to share with her our old look, one that said we agreed how sometimes our mothers could say terribly embarrassing things, but Camille seemed to be looking everywhere but at me.
“Yes, Mother, of course. I apologize,” was all she muttered contritely.
Trying to feel my way through this new social world that suddenly was very foreign, I breathed a long breath of relief when the housemaid bustled in with tea and cakes. I poured. Mrs. Elcott and Camille studied me.
“You really are quite thin,” Camille said finally.
“I will be better soon,” I’d said, sending her a reassuring smile. “At first I found it difficult to do anything except sleep, but Father has insisted that I get well. He reminded me that I am now the Lady of Wheiler House.”
Camille’s gaze had flicked quickly to her mother’s. I could not read the hard look in Mrs. Elcott’s eyes, but it was enough to silence her daughter.
“That is quite brave of you, Emily,” Mrs. Elcott spoke into the silence. “I am sure you are a great comfort to your father.”