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Part 6/7 💜📸📝

“Hello, Mrs. Skeffington. I’m Dr. David Jaquith. I’m not sure if you remember me, your husband was the one who sought out my services, so we only met briefly in person once, but I was your daughter’s doctor when she was a girl. I got to know her very well while she was at Cascade.”

That Jaquith should come to her help in the difficult was the last thing she had expected. True, Fanny had written him, but there was a part of her that believed he wouldn’t or couldn’t come on such short notice.

“Of course I remember you, Doctor. Come in, come in. Do you still keep in contact with my daughter?”

“The occasional letter here and there. Other than that, Christmas cards and such.”

“Oh…and uh, did she…did she ever mention me in any of those letters and cards?”

Such a simple yes or no question on the surface. But, to Dr. Jaquith, its utterance brought with it memories of one of the more recent and lengthier letters you wrote to him, and the equally lengthy letter he wrote and sent you in response. There was so much you wanted to say, you could never hope to fit it all onto sheets of paper, no matter how many you filled with your writing. The doctor himself faced the same problem, and he wondered if maybe a phone call would’ve been better suited. But there again came the problem of time and always seeming to be short on it, on both your end and his.

November 1939

Dear Dr. Jaquith,

Spring, summer, now autumn again. I won’t say time flies, but it doesn’t crawl as it used to. I’ve been enjoying my time abroad. There’s a man here who’s been nice to me, a man I’ve known and traveled with for almost four years now. A man I can confidently call my best friend. In fact, he’s proposed to me. “Let us settle down,” he said, “For you own a part of my soul as I own a part of yours. That was settled the moment we met, the transfer happening by the hand of fate. I love you. I can live without you, yet every day there would be that pain of a piece missing, the piece I gave to you. It is a loss of part of the self, yet the greatest victory there can be. We won this spiritual lottery. We are free and bound. That is the way real love is. The bond forms and then we learn how to treat one another well, to bring happiness and health, to nurture and be strong in all weathers, protective and kind.” After hearing a proposal so moving, there are no arguments I can think of why I shouldn’t marry him. His name is Jim Masters. He may not have much in way of name, status, or wealth, but he is a fine man. He had a previous wife and has four grown daughters that he’s estranged from. It’s a long and complicated story, but I ask you to trust my judgment of his character. I know what I’m doing. By the time I receive your letter, I will no longer be Miss Skeffington. I will officially and legally be Mrs. Masters. Jim will be my husband, and I will be his wife. We’ve moved. More than once. For work stuff, for money stuff...you know how it goes. Don’t worry, we are still living together and everything is going well! I have a lot of friends here with me. They’re all real nice, and they’re always willing and trying to help.

I don’t know why I tell you this except I tell you almost everything. That’s why I feel I can confide in you about what’s been troubling me as of late. It’s about my family. More specifically, my mother. I wasn’t ready or willing to talk about it before, but I am now. It’s a long story, but with all stories, it’s probably best to start from where we last left off: When I left Cascade and went to Europe at the age of eleven, going on twelve…Mom and Dad…they did it for years…day…after day…after day. All lies… I have nothing against lies. I grew up around lies. Jim is a professional journalist now, more specifically, a travel writer. Making up lies to fit the facts… It’s what he does. It’s what all journalists do, to varying degrees. But now it’s time for the truth to come out, finally… And to do that, I want to tell you a story.

There was an invisible girl. Like everyone, she just wanted to run on the grass, ride a bike, swim in the lake in the summer. But her mother… Oh, her mother had other plans for her. What a beautiful shadow of her mother she had become, in her dark world made of silence and prayer. There shone only two stars: her…wonderful sister, Fanny, and her darling father, Job. Heavenly creatures who told her what a free and strong woman she would become one day. And they were both right. She was like that: Free and strong. At the time, the other kids and even the teachers didn’t understand her dyslexia…she didn’t understand what retard or kike meant…that’s what the other kids called her at school. Her sister, Fanny, wanted to protect her. But she couldn’t. She could hear her cry at night, could hear the bed creak from her father trying to hush and console her sister through whispered words of encouragement.

“Is there anything I could say to make it better?”

“No.” You sat up and your father sat next to you on the bed. You looked at your sister. You didn’t want her to see you like this. “Oh, just go. I mean it, go!”

“Perhaps you should go, darling.”

Fanny, though hesitant, left.

You flopped back on the bed with a new bout of tears. “Oh, Daddy.”

Your father leaned over you and covered your hands with his own as you sobbed. “You are being tested. And do you know what they say, my darling? Being tested only makes you stronger. It’s not theory on my part. I’ve been through it. I know everything you’re feeling. Every pain. But be fair to yourself.”

You squeezed his hands as hard as you could as you sniffled. “I don’t think it’s working with me.”

“Give yourself time. You’ll come through it.”

“Just as…just as you came through, Daddy?”

“Yes, darling. Just as I came through.”

“Here’s hoping I’m made of the same stuff you are.”

She and her sister used to worry about their looks too...when they were thirteen and all arms and legs. Her sister used to hate that brace she had on her teeth. She hated the acne on her face. But their father would always comfort them. “A woman is beautiful only when she's loved,” he’d say. One day, the invisible girl grew into a woman, a beautiful, luminous creature. And she met someone. A human being that saw her, for real. The beauty he saw in her was the beauty she forgot to see in herself. And what a beautiful reminder, that love was what would see them all through. Yes. And her sister, Fanny, instead became the invisible witness of what happened. A love, simply a love…nothing more…nothing less. But that love was too much and it would be punished. Who paid for that love? They did. We did. Dr. Jaquith— I mean, David, (Can I call you David? It feels so odd to address you by your first name but, since I haven’t been your patient for over ten years, it feels right.) I beseech you for your insight, your guidance. You know my history, you understand me, but I’m asking for your help and your opinion not just as my doctor, but as my friend. We’re still friends, aren’t we? I would hope that we’re close friends now. I know you’re a very busy man, but if you could find it in your schedule to hear me out and write back to me, it would be greatly appreciated. I’m once again at a fork in the road and I’m confused. I need you to show me which path to take.

Your friend,

Miss Skeffington (soon to be Mrs. Masters!) ooo

By the time he responded to your letter and mailed it out, Dr. Jaquith received a card with your wedding announcement. He could only assume you sent the same exact card to your sister and her husband.

December 1939

To our dearest friends and family,

Because your love and friendship have made us who we are, we are very happy to share the news with love in our hearts. We exchanged marriage vows in a private ceremony in Switzerland. While Switzerland wasn’t a complete bust the last time we were there, it was disappointing due to the unexpected storms. But now, getting married in the same country where we first met feels right, like everything has come full circle. As we have given and pledged our troth, each to the other, and have declared the same by giving and receiving a ring and by joining hands, the officiant pronounced that we are man and wife in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Afterwards, we held a small “reception” for ourselves at the inn. It was just us and dinner with cake and champagne. It felt too quiet, so Jim thought up a song and played it on the piano for me. I forget how it went but it was pretty. I am lucky to have him for a husband. Although we decided to celebrate our love only in the company of each other and you were not there in person, please know that you were there in our thoughts and forever will be in our hearts. We hope you’ll be there to celebrate with us when we renew our vows in the States at a later date.

With love,

Mr. and Mrs. Masters

December 1939

Dear Mrs. Masters (née Miss Skeffington),

I write on what I imagine must be a joyous occasion. Per your last letter, am I right to assume that you are newly married to a wonderful man and have taken his name? I have had more than a little time during my long days and nights at Cascade to consider your past and your family. Since you left for Europe with your father and sister, my thoughts have often lingered on your development and welfare in the ten or so years since we last met. Your marriage gives me much reassurance in this regard. I wish you and your new husband many happy years together. You are always welcome here at Cascade or to visit me and Charlotte in our home in Vermont, though I will understand of course if you cannot accept this open invitation. Now, to address what you spoke to me about in your last letter…

Now, I could tell you that perhaps restlessness has a genetic component. If so, emigrants would be expected to establish populations with more wanderlust in their DNA than those back at home. Scientists have identified one particular allele, called 7R, of our DRD4 gene that may fit this description; it has been linked to attention deficit disorder and attraction to novelty, earning its nickname: the risk gene. Research has documented that people with the 7R allele take 25 percent more financial risk than those without it. Tellingly, the allele tends to be more concentrated in recently established populations (in terms of historic human expansion): Most people in the Americas have it, a few in Europe do, and it is rare in parts of Asia. People with this “wanderlust gene” may be literally hardwired to seek new experiences. I could tell you that maybe you’re one of those very unique individuals. But I won’t bore you with textbook theories.

Sometimes the world around us and everyone and everything in it can move so fast, it feels impossible to keep up. It gives us whiplash. Our senses are overloaded and our brains can’t decide what to focus on. You can’t read a map, but you’re not lost. Consulting maps can diminish the wanderlust that they awaken, as the act of looking at them can replace the act of travel. But looking at maps is much more than an act of aesthetic replacement. Anyone who opens an atlas wants everything at once, without limits—the whole world. This longing will always be great, far greater than any satisfaction to be had by attaining what is desired. You’d rather be given an atlas over a guidebook any day. You’re pulled in all kinds of directions, always eager for the next discovery, the next adventure, the next landmark, that your brain and your body can’t agree on where to go next. But you’re intuitive, and you know that you must go. Somewhere. You often can’t describe the place you’re thinking of, because it’s intangible, but when you get to where you want to be, you’ll just know. But no sooner than that. You were born with full potential to become a great person of integrity. I know this as a psychiatrist. What any of your relations are, or were, means nothing about who you can be. We are built of our choices, tiny decisions in tiny moments. So wherever you are now is only the beginning.

Your mother would’ve accepted any plan that would’ve relieved her of the child who had always been a thorn in her flesh, though the lady would strongly protest if she heard me say so. And your father’s attitude was sympathetic and protective, possibly too protective for your good. Result? Resentment felt by your mother. Your absence from the home became desirable for all concerned. I was highly recommended to your father by a friend of his, so your father placed you in my care and I brought you to Cascade after one too many incidents of violent, emotional outbursts. At the time of your arrival, you had been isolated for sometime. You couldn’t see friends, nor reach out to your family for help as once you could have. If I’m honest, you had so many panic attacks at first, yet, over time, they grew further apart and disappeared. In isolation it was lonely, yet there was an art to surviving it in the best shape possible. Anger from your eyes showed the scared child within, the girl who was taught to fight and starved of the love she craved. I could see the pain beneath it and your soul drowning in this persona you’d carved to fit a world of indifference. But I couldn’t help someone like that, not unless the tears came and you realized what was really going on. And I couldn’t fight it. I wouldn’t. It would’ve taken such a toll on both you and me to do so. The best I could offer you was a void, to let you sulk, brood, meditate, or sleep in your shadow box until you craved the sunlight. When you weren’t picking at your plate, you were picking a fight. Your temper was the knife, a sword you’d fashioned in that wild childhood a part of you had never escaped. Your parents, peers, teachers, and nurses all said you had a temper, but not a soul ever asked why it had developed or what it protected you from. You were so sick of getting stabbed. You were sorry for becoming part of that sick cycle, for stepping into shoes you should have rejected. You could count on one hand the people that you’d lay down your arms for because they were worth it, worth trusting: Your sister, your Uncle George, your father, myself, and, now, Jim.

But eventually, you left your shadow box and came into the light. You found a new joy in nature, in the little things, reveling in bird song and the simple pleasure of warm sunlight upon the skin. It was so very challenging, yet you grew strong. You found that if you could be conscious of your choices and emotions, you could start to ask yourself to make more healthy choices for yourself and those you love. You could choose to dance to music instead of simply sit, or do some exercise instead of simply sleep. You found that if you baked bread rather than just bought it, it felt as if there was more love in your house - that you had a new hobby and the house had the aroma of a bookshop, so homey. Childhood ambitions are the rocket fuel for the rest of our lives when they come from our own curiosity and drive. They are the seeds of a passion that creates a life well-lived. The weird and novel weavings of childhood ambitions and interests, especially when they are a mismatch of glorious nonsense, are the very seeds of genius and invention. They are how our species specializes and discovers entirely new pathways. They are a needed part of a healthy brain. With it comes a healthy self that can make healthy relationships within a community that will come to need the skills they develop, even if they cannot see how at the time. It is these childhood ambitions that are our guide to the path that is ours to explore. Every lifetime comes with an adventure that is our lifeline, and our compass is built of curiosity and love. It is when the unknown becomes alluring and work becomes play. It is how a challenge becomes welcome and the resolve to achieve it arrives as if it were a prompt and well-scheduled train. So when we learn to trust these childhood ambitions and see them as the seeds of greatness, we grow and change.

Yet in all of that, in the seeking of positivity, it was equally important to acknowledge the lonely feelings you experienced, to walk the line between seeing them, feeling them, letting them flood in when necessary, yet then returning to affirmative actions. By learning how to do this, you became a blessing to others and you felt more mature, more self-confident. It was challenging though, very challenging. But by overcoming those challenges, you have reaped many rewards. It is challenging in the darkness to shine a light of your own, yet you have such a light. Your father told me you were born with it, and I’ve seen it for myself many times over since the day you first came to me.

When society functions well our own light is warmed by the lights of others, we are a happy flicker that is part of a communal flame. When society is broken that search for another spark of love isn’t easy at all. If your emotions feel as if they are a roller coaster, the best thing you can do is hang out with someone truly boring who loves you very deeply. In time your brain and body will correlate to their calmness and you will have the cure to your emotional pain. You will become stable, able to reach for emotional highs when you want to, yet in truth, happier because you can access the normal kind of “happy” that humans evolved for. So, love, in these times burns not brightly yet soft and mellow. You told me that you occasionally struggled with intense feelings, or that your once-burning flame of wanderlust was beginning to die down to a flicker. And when adventure begins to lose its appeal, it starts to feel more like adversity. So try to sit back. Wait for someone who shows you real love, the kind that is dependable, endurable, sustainable and - above all - kind. Then you can let your spark burn brighter, because they are truly supporting you, because they bring their own inner fire with which to love you.

Rather than add gasoline to a world in flames, let us together be in the water for a few moments. Imagine a pathway of light glitters out across the waves, from the boat’s prow to the red-orange sun, as it sinks below the world’s edge. The clouds are coral-pink in a darkening sky. Water ripples gently, and that is the only sound. You are taking this bath in life, as you see, floating in infinity, and you are at peace. Let’s just float in the water and look up at the sky above us. In our sessions, you often told me of your fears and anxieties. You expressed concern for how you were living your life, afraid you were somehow doing it wrong. “I don’t know. I think maybe I’ve been wasting my time, just doing nothing. My life is nothing but a repetition of waking up with nothing to live for. Not even a false hope to look forward to this time,” you said. And do you remember what I told you in response? I told you, “I don’t think so. When you find your quest, the reason for your birth - when the song of creation that calls directly to your heart and soul - your journey becomes your source of happiness rather than any destination. That’s the place to get to—nowhere.” One wants to wander away from the world’s somewheres, into our own nowhere. A certain kind of wanderlust can only be assuaged by the acts of the body itself in motion, not the motion of the car, boat, train, or plane. While you were in transit, being unattached was exhilarating, but the moment you stopped, so did the high. You started to feel the withdrawals right then and there. You’d replaced wanderlust with a human. You’d thought that was a terrible mistake. But it’s important to stand still sometimes. Think of it as a little rest in the long journey of your life. This is your harbor, and your boat is just dropping anchor here for a little while. After you’re well-rested, you can set sail again and go onwards feeling refreshed.

Don’t think of standing still as being grounded. Think of it as finding the perfect compromise between standing still and flying. There’s no shame in just taking the time to breathe, to rest, to float. The emotions ebb and flow, thus when they rush in we feel motivated and inspired. The opposite occurs when they recede, as they naturally will. So learn how to sit upon your own beach and watch that emotional tide from a little distance. Close your eyes, breathe deep, focus on what you hear, what you smell. It is a contentment that will come to you simply in the observance of nature, a song, or the chance to dance. You can hear so much more. Things that are great distances away and things that are very, very small, like a mouse’s heartbeat or the wings of a moth, the woosh of passing cars, or the trickle of a stream. Yes, it can be quite overwhelming at first, I must admit. All those sounds are coming at you from everywhere, but that’s perfectly fine. You will get used to that over time. It can be just what you need to keep yourself from going stir-crazy. Be okay with calmness and observing the mayhem others engage in. For in that slight perspective shift exists the ability for true endurance, still feeling your emotions yet knowing what they are and that your reality remains the same.

There is a compromise between passion and directed studying that gets easier as one ages. You were, and still are, largely driven by your own creative passions and curiosities. However, there can be things you need to have a solid comprehension of that fall outside of your “passion drive”. This is when self-control becomes more important. There are times that doing the right thing is the harder thing to do. You needed to be able to sit yourself down and learn a subject even though it felt more like work than play. This was all part of growing up, sure. Yet it was also part of becoming a master at what you do - building in supporting knowledge that is more peripheral to your central aim. So, while it is negative to let directed study suppress your innate passions and creativity - it is also a negative to let your creativity rule the roost and not inform it with study. Balance is key, as ever.

I can now say you’re so much more psychologically mature, that those brutal times built you into who you are today. You can reject hate. You can reject fear. You can accept chances to create loving bonds. You can learn how to see things from the perspectives of others, even those who are very different to yourself. In this, you can become a person of peace and begin to create the kind of world you deserved yet did not inherit. I know it hardly feels that can be true when you’re curled up on the bathroom floor with your heart beating a million miles per hour, but with time, with inner reflection, with the art of emptying the thoughts, even if for just a few moments at a time - a new self emerges. In isolation you will feel at times as if you caught on fire, yet after this, regardless of how broken you feel, I promise you that the phoenix stage will shine from inside your headlamps. So keep on driving. Tina once said to me that she used to take off her glasses while her father would drive on a highway and all the lights would go soft and smudged, a trail of amber behind her like a quiet afterthought. Imagine that, and keep being the best version of you for yourself. I hope you know that you are not alone, and in those hours when you feel that you are, just know there are other people out there - singing the same melodies of wanderlust, climbing over mountains in the dark, and waking in the night to stare at the moon, thinking of this large world and dreaming - just like you.

I hope that these words encourage you to find the best version of yourself and to have the courage to reject the shrill and tempestuous voices of a broken world. The world needs good people. People like you. I hope that in these words, dear one, that you find the encouragement you need, the kind that builds great mountains from pebbles over a lifespan. I hope these words encourage you in a way that is realistic, that helps you towards a sustainable emotional life and protects you from those who lost their spark and would seek to extinguish yours for little more than a toxic ego trip. Protect your flame, keep your inner light safe. If there’s anything else I can say or do to help you, please let me know. If anything urgent comes up and the post is too slow or you need to reach me as soon as possible, I’m just a phone call away.

Your friend,

David

“Yes, but we’ll get to that later. Shall we sit down and get started right away? I hope you don’t mind me saying so, Mrs. Skeffington, but you don’t look very good right now.”

“It’s because I haven’t slept all night,” she hastily explained, trying to hide that she minded.

What she didn’t say, was that she ended up being jostled awake in the middle of the night by you. You had a strange expression on your face, and were wearing a backpack over your shoulders. You were pushing your childhood stuffed toy into her hands, and speaking to her...but of course, Fanny couldn’t hear you. You must have realized that, though. Because you looked like you laughed a little to yourself, and then handed her a slip of paper that said: ‘I promise to write.’ Then you got up, walked out, and closed the door to her room.

“You see how important quiet nights are for women of your age,” he said.

“And for everybody, I imagine,” said Fanny haughtily.

“That is, if you don’t want to be an eyesore.”

An eyesore? Was he suggesting that she was an eyesore? She, Fanny Skeffington, for years almost the most beautiful person everywhere, and for about thirty or so glorious years quite the most beautiful person anywhere? She? When the faces of the very strangers she passed in the street lit up when they saw her coming? She, noble, lovely little Fanny, as poor Jim Conderley used to say, gazing at her fondly—quoting, she supposed; and nobody quoted things like that to eyesores. True, Jim had quoted a good while ago; and it was also true, now that she came to think of it—let her be honest—that people passing in the street had seemed to look at her lately with surprise rather than admiration.

“Will you have a cup of tea?”

“No, thank you. I had coffee on my way here.”

“Well, you see, Doctor—”

“One moment please.” Dr. Jaquith got up to open a nearby window.

“What is the meaning of that?”

“I have sensitive sinuses, and your perfume is a bit heavy for me, that’s all.”

Although she was sure Dr. Jaquith meant nothing by it, Fanny felt slighted. She was reminded of when she paid a visit to Dr. Byles. That odious doctor. His consulting room was fragrant—he called it reeking,—with over-perfumed women. “Oh, my God,” he would mutter under his breath, when a specially scented one came in. Because of the creatures, though, he was growing very rich, and it was worth putting up with their scents and their silliness to be well on the way to the top of his profession at thirty-eight. And every day, when his work was over, he would fling the window open to purge his consulting room of scent, and exclaim: “God, these women!”

“Get your head out of your ass, Mother. You already reek of hypocrisy, so why add notes to the fragrance? I think there’s a word for people like you, a hypocrissist: A narcissist who has their head so far up their ass they can’t hear the hypocrisy coming out of their mouth,” you interjected.

Of course, you weren’t really there. Just a hallucination. But a vivid one. Almost corporeal. If Fanny hadn’t known any better, she would’ve believed you were really there, in the flesh. In the beginning, for Dr. Jaquith to fully comprehend her predicament, she felt she had to tell him all about her illness, and Job, and her visit to Byles, and her fears for the future. She was as natural as it was possible to be with somebody whom one still, when one looked at him, didn’t seem to know very well. But this could’ve been circumvented by not looking at him; she could’ve been altogether natural when she simply listened to his kind voice. And he felt almost exactly the same about her, the difference being that when she looked at him she was sorry, and when he looked at her he was shocked.

“When you wrote to me, you said you’ve been having trouble sleeping, but you went further to explain that your case is not the usual insomnia, nightmares, or sleep paralysis. You believe there’s something else going on.” As Dr. Jaquith pointed out, “significant dreams are the ones you can’t forget—the ones you remember in great detail even after years pass. But beyond that, it really goes back to what you believe and feel is significant. This is one of those ways dreamwork often shows up in therapy: A client has a dream that leaves them feeling distress or confusion in such a way they need help unpacking the feeling. We can find out whether a dream is significant or not when we are deciphering meaning by exploring and unpacking our feelings around the event or image. So, even if at the end of the day, you decide the dream means nothing, you’re still processing the feelings that surround it. But ultimately, I believe that dreams are about what we make of them, the meaning we assign to them, and the attendant feelings that arise along with that meaning. It’s no secret that of the many dreams you may have throughout the night, you’ll typically only remember one or two, if any. Have you ever wondered why you keep dreaming about your daughter, someone you haven’t spoken to for nearly four years? Usually the context of the dream will give you more clues.” Dr. Jaquith took out a notepad and pen. “So, Mrs. Skeffington, can you describe to me the dreams you’ve been having?”

“Yes, Doctor. The beginning is sometimes different, but they usually end the same way. Just last night, my dream began with my daughters in their bedroom. I was just about to send for them, when I overheard their conversation…”

“I see why they gave you a scholarship.”

“Yeah, it’s a real tragedy, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is. You can be cold to Mother, that’s fine. But I didn’t do anything to you.”

“Won’t you admit that you did something?”

“I admit, according to you, I did something, sure.”

“You dimed me out.”

“I did not dime you out. When the sheriffs asked where you got the car, I said I didn’t know. I didn’t even know it was stolen. You’re blaming that on me?”

“You could have covered for me, huh?”

“You get caught stealing, it’s my fault. You’re resisting arrest, and it’s the cop’s fault.”

“He took a swing at me.”

“Get suspended from school, it’s the principal’s fault. Mother kicks you out of the house, it’s her fault. You can’t keep a job for two weeks, it’s every manager’s fault.”

“I’m surrounded by idiots.”

“So why did you come back? To piss Mother off?”

“Don’t you get it? You’re the good twin. I’m the evil one.”

“Grow up. You are so afraid to take things seriously. And suppose they telephone Mother?”

“Uncle George promised he’ll cover for me.”

“I feel quite nervous and I’m not even going. We must choose the clothes carefully, so you can take them on and off without any help.”

“Well, I’ll have his help.”

“Honestly, sister. You’d better hope I never write my memoirs.”

“There is one thing I’ve got to ask you, Fanny. I’m really sorry, but I must.”

“Go on.”

“I have to be sure there aren’t any...consequences.”

“What sort of consequences?”

“Well, you know.”

“No, I don’t… Oh. Oh, my God. I mean, I beg your pardon, sister.”

“But you see, I can’t just go into a shop and buy something. What if I were recognized?”

“But I wouldn’t know what to buy.”

“I’ve thought of that. I have a copy of Marie Stopes’ book. It tells you everything.”

“Well, won’t he take care of it?”

“I don’t think one should rely on a man in that department, do you?”

“But suppose I’m recognized?”

“But you won’t be. And even if you are, you’re married, with a living husband. Why shouldn’t you buy one?”

The scene did not change but fast forwarded, as if time had passed around Fanny in a blurry whirl while she stood still, unheard and unseen.

“I think I’ve put everything in. Your packet’s here, sister.”

“Thank you.”

“I don’t think there’s anything too difficult to fasten.”

“Jim can always help.”

“For the last time, are you certain you know what you’re doing?”

“I believe so. Fanny, the way things are going, life will be lived in much closer quarters in future. Our parents lived in vast rooms, surrounded by staff. If they disagreed, they’d hardly have known it. But it won’t be like that for Jim and I. I must be sure I’m right to want this man, as my companion, as my friend, as my lover.”

“But not your husband?”

“No. The point is I don’t want to marry, because I absolutely don’t want to divorce. I witnessed - and so did you - so many things a child shouldn’t when our parents were married and when they divorced. They only stayed together as long as they had for our sakes, but I don’t want the same for myself.”

“Well, I think it’s a big risk.”

“Please. I can’t be lectured this evening.”

“Well, I wish you luck, sister.”

The scene changed. Fanny was putting on her glove, headed outside to the car waiting for the chauffeur to take her to a lunch date or something equally innocuous when she spied you and your sister talking in hushed tones in the garden out of the corner of her eye. Instead of getting in the car, she approached, but only far enough to eavesdrop without being noticed by either of her daughters…

“Well?”

“I couldn’t. There’s no point in freaking him out right now.”

“As opposed to when you find out you are pregnant?”

“Fanny, I’m not sure, okay?”

“I think you should have a conversation with him.”

“He’s been looking forward to this trip for months. I don't want to ruin it by starting a fight.”

“Darling, he’s not going to marry you. Mother won’t let him.”

“Who says I want to get married? Besides, I’ve been late before. When I know for sure, I promise to talk to him, okay?”

“It sounds to me like you’re afraid she and Jim are sexually active. That she’ll become pregnant and he’ll abandon her the same way he did his wife and daughters. Am I correct in thinking that?”

“Yes. I’m deathly afraid that’ll be what befalls her sooner or later.”

“It could be that your dreams are manifesting your fears as imaginary conversations between your daughters because they feel safe and comfortable enough to confide in one another. They trust and respect each other, and you want to be treated with that same level of trust and respect. But trust and respect aren’t things freely given between a child and their parent. They’re built. You’re her mother, yes, but if you wanted your daughter to trust and respect you, you had to put in the work, the time, and the effort, just like anybody else. Fanny put the work in to get her sister to trust her. Her father and I did the same. It wasn’t easy. It was a long process that often felt monotonous at times. Sometimes it felt as if every time we took one step forward, she took two steps back. But, although we couldn’t always see it or feel it, we were making progress. Good progress. So we kept at it. We worked and we worked hard to get her to trust us, and she worked hard to get us to trust her. We never gave up on her, even when she wanted to give up on herself. You? You never put that work in. Instead you were impatient, entitled. Instead of asking her any of the millions of questions swimming around in your mind, instead of opening up a discourse with her or inviting her to a civil conversation where you could be open and honest with each other, instead of letting her come to you in her own time, you went behind her back and read her diary. You suddenly decided you wanted to try to act as her mother after she was an independent adult already past her twentieth year. In doing so, You violated her privacy and betrayed her trust. If she had any in you to begin with, it’s completely broken now.”

One should trust more, Fanny thought to herself. One shouldn’t, as she had been doing lately, be in such a hurry to despair. But astonished as she was at the ways of providence, she was very nearly as much astonished at the ways of Dr. Jaquith. Who would have thought, she asked herself, that he could doubt her decency to the point of being in what he called a blue funk?

“You see, trust and respect have to go both ways or else there’s no stable foundation in the relationship and the entire thing falls apart. She had to be careful of you. You were the one person in her life who let ‘do as I say, not as I do’ seep into your character and, as she predicted, correctly, that you would, you almost certainly corrupted the trust she granted you. When was the last time your daughter came to you and said, ‘I need you’? When she threw her arms around you, wiping her tears on the shoulder of your blouse, and gave you a sincere ‘thank you’ through her sobs? Or perhaps a better question to ask is: When was the first time?”

“Doctor, I know what you must be thinking, but I did try to talk to her! Many times I tried to have a conversation with her, but she was never receptive to my efforts. She never had anything to say that wasn’t insults. I tried to get her to listen, to understand what I was feeling, especially when she said those hurtful things, but she was so angry and so stubborn that she wouldn’t listen. She shut herself off from me at every turn and wouldn’t let me in. No matter how much I approached her, no matter how I tried to get her to budge, she stood like a brick wall. Firm, unwavering, unrelenting.”

“She wouldn’t let you in, Fanny, because you never let her in. She’s seen that you are of those she can’t love because you don’t respect her and, in return, she doesn’t respect you. If you wanted your daughters to confide in you, to come to you whenever they were nervous, afraid, unsure, or otherwise needed help, you had to be transparent. You were always hiding behind layers and layers of makeup and a mirror. Maybe a part of you wanted to be involved, but you were held back by something or someone at the time. It could’ve been any number of things that acted as obstacles and barriers between you and your daughters. Your reputation, your beauty, your friends, your lovers and admirers, your neighbors, propriety, your upbringing, your beliefs, expectations made by others or yourself… that’s why you’re always the eavesdropper, the uninvited guest, kept at a distance and separated from your daughters, kept out of the loop of what’s going on in their lives. And now, when they seemingly no longer need you because they’ve outgrown you, you suddenly say you need them now more than ever!”

“What more could I have done?”

“I’m not entirely sure yet. I’ll tell you once I know more. For now, Let’s move on. Can you describe to me anything else from your dreams? Spare no detail. Anything you remember, even if it seems irrelevant and insignificant, could be important.”

“Yes, Doctor. In my dreams there are lights, too many to count, dancing on an ocean too vast to envisage. Each one is brilliant, each one unique. I want to look at each one for the marvel it is, for no matter how many there are, no two colors are the same. The light that comes from within is more pure than gold, more light than air - each one a small piece of Heaven. I try to reach out to them - who wouldn’t want to touch something so pure? - but the lights recoil in fright, they don’t even know who they are. They chant that they feel ugly on the outside and worse on the inside. I can’t understand until I take a look at the water, it looks fine but smells like something I wouldn’t want to drink. But they’re swimming in it, bobbing in it like it’s a fine day at the beach. I want to tell them it’s poison but they’ll never listen. They laugh and carry on just as before, each one just as beautiful as the last but disconnected even from their inner light and beauty…”

As Fanny recounted to Dr. Jaquith her dreams, she swore she could feel the salt on her lips and the roughness of rope in her hand, hear the loose flapping of a sail. The sail was as a sole that had journeyed upwards to many mountain peaks, worn and dirty, yet all the more beautiful for its travels and ready to ride the brine once more. Into the storm marched the sail in its own silent way, as if by catching the prevailing wind, by being captured within its own serenity, it contained a form of eternal hope. It made such progress atop of the dancing waves, amid the gay sea foam, that every fraction of every moment was the boldest of photographs. The ocean held so many memories for Fanny. It was where she sought solace after her brother’s passing, where she found peace during the devastating years of the last war and the current one. The wind had changed, and she had to turn and head to the shore before the storm came, the nets empty. She was back on the very same boat she was on when she went sailing with Johnny Mitchell. The very same boat where she contracted diphtheria.

“Johnny and I have a date to go sailing. You know, Johnny, if we’re going sailing, we’d better get started. It'’s over an hour’s drive to the sound.”

“Do we have to go? I mean, do you think we ought to? It gets chilly in the afternoon.”

“Chilly? Why, Johnny, you talk as if you were forty... fifty years old or something. But I love sailing. Certainly, we’re going sailing.”

“Hey, Fanny! Fanny! Come on back here. You’ll get soaked up there.”

“I’m loving this.”

“But listen...you’ll catch your death of cold.”

“Don’t you worry about me, Johnny.”

“Well, I do worry about you. Well, I’m heading for home, anyway. Fanny!”

And then Johnny was gone and, in his place, Jim was the one at the wheel, steering. Instead of asking him to explain his unpardonable intrusion of her sailing trip with Johnny Mitchell, all Fanny found she could do was to falter, “J-Jim?”

But he wasn’t looking at her. To him, it was as if she wasn’t even there.

Was it possible—she caught her breath—that he didn’t know who she was? That he, of them all, hadn’t an idea? Shaken by this dreadful suspicion, she didn’t know what else to do other than meekly call out once more, “Jim?”

Finally, mercifully, he turned his head towards her and acknowledged her presence. “Well, if it isn’t Mrs. Skeffington. I didn’t think you’d come. She mentioned her old man and a sister, but she didn’t say anything about her old lady. How come she didn’t mention you? She ashamed of you?”

“Who?”

“That’s funny. I forgot her name. It must be one of your daughters.”

“I have two of them.”

“Well, um… This one, if you stretched the point, you could call cute.”

“They’re both cute.”

“They both photographers and artists?”

“Oh, you must mean...”

“Now that’s the one. Chat her up.”

“Now, Jim, you are a little late. She’s out dancing with some young man who had no trouble remembering her name.”

“There’s a dame for you. Out dancing when she could’ve been with me.“

“Come to think of it, she did mention you. She said she had a sort of a date with a sort of a person.”

“Is that all she said about me?”

“That’s all I remember.”

“Sure she didn’t go into detail?”

“One sentence was all she devoted to. How long have you been here? How long have you been waiting for her?”

“Since we set sail. Well, no harm done. The night is still young. I’ll keep sailing onward and pick me up a mermaid yet. The truth is, I’ll stay in New York until she wants to run away with me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You’re too scared to admit it, but your daughter is in love with me.”

“I don’t understand. Why are you here? Why are you on the boat?”

“Because you want me here. When we are lost in emotional seas, we all need a steady captain and a lighthouse to guide our way home. We need outstretched arms to welcome us to the safety of rock so we can bid farewell to stormy waters. You’re lost, Fanny. I’m here to help you navigate these choppy and turbulent waters and find your way back… I will calm the waters back to temperate levels and this boat will provide shelter in your most distressing times, if you’ll let it. Listen. Do you hear that? The foghorn.”

“Yes, I hear it. But what does it mean? What does any of this mean?”

“That is me, your subconscious, trying to reach out. I’m signaling for you to pay attention. Will you? Or will you turn away again?”

By the time Fanny reached the beach, the moon was hovering high in the night sky, casting swathes of silver light across all of the open water. Its reflection wavered on the surface of the beach as Jim’s keen eyes were no longer looking at Fanny. Instead they searched for something else. Or someone else. He spotted you, gliding through the water, every stroke disrupting the liquid mirror around you. The ocean appeared to envelop your form, encompassing you almost lovingly. After a silence which seemed to last forever, the voice she hadn’t heard for nearly four years answered from behind her, very slowly and gently, as though groping its way down the long hull.

“I’m here.”

He was looking at you, and once more she was invisible, a ghost, a silent observer. You were bathed in moonlight, a silver gloss draping elegantly over your skin. Tonight, you appeared to Fanny like an ethereal ghost, distant and untouchable, a curiously beautiful and captivating goddess. Like the moon delivered you to her and had come back this night to steal you away. There were a million words and they were all in Jim’s eyes, for this was a story told at a deeper level. His eyes were filled with so much love that Fanny’s stomach lurched as if she was going to be sick and hurl over the railing. But this wasn’t seasickness. No. This was something far worse. The sickness that came with knowing she was wrong. Guilt. Regret. Stricken, Fanny stood motionless, leaning against the railing, pressed for support against the boat. You swiftly jumped from rock to rock through the water, desperate to reach Jim. Fanny looked back as you hopped your way over the last pile, your heavy-booted feet sinking into a narrow stretch of sand before starting over the next rock bed. Jim grabbed your hand so you wouldn’t slip and fall back into the water as you picked your way over a tricky stretch of kelp-covered rock as you climbed aboard, not seeming to have noticed her yet.

“Sorry I’m late, darling. I took a stroll down the beach and lost track of time. I swam here as quick as I could. It was good luck you weren’t very far out. Just like a foreign watch to stop when you need it the most. Can’t you tell time by the moon? A good sailor ought to.”

“It’s the sun you tell the time by. The moon’s just an ornament. Take the wheel for a minute, sweetheart.”

As soon as your hands were on the wheel, Jim let go and walked over a few paces and lowered the anchor so you wouldn’t drift aimlessly in the water from wind or current. He wrapped a fluffy towel around your shoulders like a shawl so you wouldn’t catch your death of cold and then took your hands in his own and pulled you towards him until your chest was flush with his, then you both lowered yourselves to your knees, then to laying down, leaning against the side of the boat. “You know, seeing you this way, natural face of the time, you look pretty good. Of course, it may be the moon that’s hitting you just at the right angle.”

“No. If the moon won’t tell you the time, it certainly won’t go out of its way to make a girl look beautiful.”

“Whatever it is, you look beautiful.” For a moment, you gazed into each other’s eyes. You both seemed to be thinking about something. The same thing. Jim leaned toward you and looked down at your lips. Surprised to see his resolve waning, you waited for him to give in, but he stopped himself and pulled back. “Ah, I wish I knew another story.”

You sighed disappointedly, “Oh no. You’re not gonna change the subject on me now.”

“What’s the idea?”

“If you’ll kiss me now, we’ll save a lot of time.”

He could take no more. Jim crashed his lips onto yours, feverish and desperate. You draped your arms over his shoulders, and pressed yourself tightly to him. Perhaps the gracious moon would allow the two of you to merge, to live out the remainders of your lives as one being, one body, one soul. Your form bathed in silver moonlight, you were glorious, mesmerizing. A bright star, fallen to earth so that Jim might marvel at your beauty, your mystery, before you ascended to your place carved out in the heavens once again.

You and Jim leaned in to share another kiss, and Fanny had to turn and look away. Although the kiss itself was brief and in no way improper, although none of what was happening was real and just a manifestation of her imagination, she felt it was a private moment between lovers and she would be intruding upon it if she had watched. Fanny began to wonder how different “real” love was from her imaginary affair. In any relationship there was both reality and the perception of reality. As long as she saw the other person as smart or sexy or handsome or good and as long as she could hang onto the feeling of loving and being loved then it was real. But somehow she was able to hang onto those feelings and beliefs even when objective reality diverged. Actions didn’t necessarily alter beliefs and beliefs mattered more. Before you fall in love you begin to imagine the other person. You create your lover by extrapolating on reality and dusting him or her with gold. You embellish to the point of perfection and then fall hard for the image you’ve made. Can one live up to their own expectations? Or are we all fated for hypocrisy? With all your traveling you may have spent more time imagining than others. But a huge amount of all love takes place in the head. In the middle of any relationship we can spend more time hour for hour thinking about the other person than we spend in his presence. And after any breakup there’s no telling how long we might pine for someone. Love itself is in the mind’s eye.

“You know, as you were telling that story, you didn’t impress me one bit. In fact, I wasn’t even listening.”

“It’s true, just the same.”

“Is it? Is it really?”

“Well…maybe I did exaggerate a little. C’mon, help me pull the net up, will you?”

Together, you and Jim climbed on your hands and knees to the large fishing net.

“Boy, Mother must be worried.”

“Why? Doesn’t she know you’re out with me?”

“No.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell her?”

“Mother likes you, but not as a companion for her daughter.”

“Well, Mother knows best.”

“Not her. She doesn’t know a thing about me, let alone what’s best.”

“Who would’ve thought I could make friends with the meanest croc alive with little more than a smile and a laugh. You made me work hard for your friendship, but it was worth it in the end.”

“Did you just compare me to a mean old croc?” you asked, the thread of amusement back in your tone.

“If the tough hide fits,” he said, but not unkindly.

You nodded and gave him a considering look. “True that,” you said, “but you must be misremembering. It was you who made me work for your friendship.” You then added, “Maybe I was trying to save my sister from her own friendly nature.”

“Out four hours. One underaged fish.” Jim held the small, slimy fish in his right hand.

“Oh, he’s cute.”

“Well, at least it’ll show I put the net in the water.”

“Oh, Jim, throw him back. Please.”

“Why?”

“Well, look at him. Doesn’t he seem to be appealing to you personally?”

“He’s barking up the wrong tree.”

“Well, it’d be different if you caught thousands of them, but one poor little fish. Why you snatched him away from his family and friends.”

“All right. Go back to Papa and Mama’s, stinker.” Jim threw the small and skinny fish back into the water with a splash.

“Thanks. Jim, look at us, how we naturally set sail and seek the wind to take us onward to new and pleasant shores. Jim, why don’t we just keep sailing onwards? We can dock someplace far away from here, leave the boat, and then just go from there.”

“Really? If we could sail off today, where would we go?”

You rung out excess water from your hair as you thought about his question. Your face took on a dreamy quality, and your answer, when it came, did not surprise him. “I would go everywhere. Oh, Jim, why do we stay in New York?”

“Your mother seems to think I’m too old for you, darling.”

“That’s the silliest thing I ever heard of.”

“Good. Then you’ll run away with me tonight.”

“I think you mean it.”

“I do. What you want, and what I want, it sounds like a beautiful dream, darling. But it’s not enough to wish, dream, hope. Even children know this. We must set sail into the sea of uncertainty. We must meet fear face-to-face. We must take our dreams as maps for a greater journey. Dreams, to come true, need a good story. So let’s go live one. I will not accept that all we’re meant to be are star-crossed lovers,” Jim stated passionately, his tone filled with a steady resolve. “I cannot accept it. Aren’t we more than just crossing tides?”

You contemplated this for a moment, before leaning your forehead against his. Beneath the cool sheen of water on your skin, Jim felt the heat of your blood flowing strong through your veins. Your strength, your poise in this painful time served as an example to him. He was always put together. You let him fall apart, without judgment. Jim could feel his composure fracture at your next words.

“I think we come from the same ancient waters,” you began, your hands coming to rest on either side of his face. “In some primordial sea, we rode the same tides. Perhaps someday, we shall again. But maybe this time around, we are only meant to flow together briefly, before we part.”

“This cannot be,” Jim whispered, voice wavering and tears beginning to roll down his cheekbones, “I feel your spirit ebb and flow inside of me. You inhabit me in a way that no one else ever has.”

“The sea will carry us to one another,” you began, tears trickling down your cheeks. “Time and again. I will find you, where our tides will be one and the same. I am with you, always. My soul is woven into every fiber of your being. And yours, mine.” With your exhale, warm tears flowed from your bright eyes. “Jim, I love you, body and soul.”

Jim leaned his forehead against yours, allowing his tears to fall freely. “My heart belongs to you, always,” he breathed. “You reside in me, sheltered and safe.”

“You will always find a home in my heart.” You pressed one final kiss to his lips. Your hand lingered in his for a moment, before it slipped from his grasp.

“When I drop you off at home, you go upstairs, pack your prettiest things. I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes. Now let’s be sentimental about it. We’ll stop by our secret hideout where we made our secret promise. Where I pledged myself to you, and you to me. And then we’ll keep driving, just like you want.”

Fanny was pulled from that painful thought when you turned your gaze away from him and looked off to the side. Your eyes widened and you suddenly scrambled to sit upright, having finally noticed her lingering there. She was somewhat apprehensive, but collected herself. Once Jim realized what - or more specifically, who - you were looking at, he followed your lead as you both stood up.

“How did you find us? How did you know?”

“Never mind that. At least nothing’s happened, thank God.”

“What do you mean ‘nothing’s happened’?” Jim looked at you as you spoke, worried and confused about what Fanny was implying. “I’ve decided to marry Jim, and your coming after me won’t change that.”

That was news to Fanny, news that washed waves of vertigo and anxiety over her. They threatened to drown her, pummel her into the silt and sand until she was nothing more than a smoothed over shell, tossed about in the surf. Fanny steadied herself, taking a deep breath, using your familiar scent, your warmth as an anchor to that moment. “This isn’t the way. Of course I will hate it—”

Jim stepped up beside you confidently. “Why should you?”

“Oh, pipe down. Darling, can’t you let me get used to the idea? Take your stand and refuse to budge, but allow me time. That way you won’t have to break up the family.”

“You would never give permission.”

“You don’t need permission, you’re in your twenties. But you do need my forgiveness if you’re not to start your new life under a black shadow.”

“Don’t listen. She’s pretending to be reasonable to get you home again.”

“Even if I am, even if I think this is mad, I know it would be better to do it in broad daylight than to sneak off like a thief in the night.”

“Better for me or for you? I knew I was going to leave. You all did. No point in breaking hearts.” You held her gaze more directly now, turning back slightly to look at her full on. “I might be a tough old croc, but I’m not heartless, unlike you.”

“I didn’t say—”

“You didn’t have to.” You opened your mouth, closed it again, then took in a slow, steadying breath, letting the deep salt tang tickle the back of your throat and the tart brine of the sea fill your senses. Anything to keep her unbearably strong perfume scent from doing that instead. “I have broken rules I don’t agree with all my life. But, as a rule, I don’t do goodbyes well. I know that about myself. I also know that I have the attention span of a sand fly. A well-intentioned sand fly,” you added, trying to inject a bit of humor, and mostly failing, judging by the unwavering look in your mother’s eyes. “So, given my wanderlusting, nomadic life, I learned early on to keep things friendly and light. Easy, breezy. I’ve made friends all over the world, but none so close that—”

“That missing them causes a pang,” Jim added. “Here maybe,” he said, pointing at his own head. “But not here.” He pointed at his chest, more specifically at his heart.

This was how you were, how you’d been from the start. Finishing each other’s sentences, following each other’s train of thought, even when the exchange of words was a bare minimum. You glanced up into Jim’s steady gaze and thought of when there’d been no words at all. That was why you’d worked so well together. And also why you’d had a tough time keeping your feelings for Jim strictly professional. You’d forgotten how threatening it felt, to have someone read you so easily. Most folks never look past the surface. Fanny—hell, the entire population of Charles Street—hadn’t even blinked at surface you before barreling right on past all of your well-honed, automatically erected barriers.

“Like I said,” you went on, “I don’t do goodbyes well.” You continued walking down the boat deck then, running your hand across the railing of the boat, clinging to it as you gazed up at the distant, twinkling stars above. Crickets chirped in harmony with the nearby ribbits of hot-footed frogs, hiding stealthily amongst the scattered lily pads near the shore. You knew you were avoiding continued eye contact, but it was unnerving enough that she was there, in your personal orbit, in your world. Your home world. Wasn’t that invasive enough?

“Would a postcard or two have killed you?” your mother finally asked your retreating back. “Not for me. I never expected one.”

You didn’t glance back at that, but just as you knew her too well, she knew you the same way. You heard that little hint of disappointment, of long-held hope. Of course the very fact that she was there, on your beach, was proof enough that she’d had hopes where you were concerned. And in that moment, you thought, to hell with this, and stopped. Running halfway around the world apparently hadn’t been far enough to leave her and all of what had transpired between you behind. So why did you think you could escape it along the span of one low-tide beach? “The sea breeze feels nice, doesn’t it? If nothing matters…then all the pain and guilt you feel for making nothing of your life…it goes away. You see it all, don’t you? You can see how everything is just a random rearrangement of particles in a vibrating superposition. But you see how everything we do gets washed away in a sea of every other possibility? You’re everywhere. You’re like me.”

“Please, I don’t care about the money. I don’t care about the engagement. I only care about my daughter. Give me back my daughter and I’ll leave you alone forever.”

“Sorry! No can do.”

“Why not?”

“I am your daughter. Your daughter is me. You can’t separate us. We are two halves of the whole.”

“No.”

“I have felt everything your daughter has felt. And I know the joy and the pain of having you as my mother.”

“Then you know I would do… Only do the right thing for her, for you.”

“‘Right’ is a tiny box invented by people who are afraid and I know what it feels like to be trapped inside that box.”

“No, it’s not like that.”

“You don’t have to hide behind a mirror anymore. You should feel relieved. I - we - will show you the true nature of things. You’ll be free from that box, just like me.”

“No, no. I’m not like you. You’re young and your mind is always changing. I still know who I am.”

“You have no idea what you’ve done. You’re stuck like this forever.”

“No, I’m going back with my daughter, to my family, to live my life. A happy life.”

You scoffed, “Okay. Good luck with that. I was just looking for someone who could see what I see. Feel what I feel. And that someone…is you.”

Jim intervened and put his hand on your shoulder. “Sweetheart, Go. Go.”

“But—” You stared directly at your mother, then looked between her and Jim.

Fanny’s cheeks were flushed and, when she opened her eyes once again, you could tell that she had been crying, though she shed no tears in front of you. She wanted to beg you to stay, to beseech the moon above and bargain that you might grace her just a little longer with your presence. What would it take for the heavenly bodies to allow her just a few hours longer with you? Fanny wondered if this would be the last time she was ever going to see you, a thought that pierced her heart like a vicious barb. She couldn’t help but notice the pile of bags and personal items that you left in the cargo hold, like you were prepared to travel a great distance.

“Go. I’ll take over and handle this from here. You’re beautiful and everything.”

“Okay. I love you and everything.” Jim held your hand and helped you as you stood up on the railing of the boat, very much in a position that looked as if you were going to jump. “Fuck.”

“What’s wrong?” Fanny asked. If she moved towards you, you’d lose your footing and fall. If she stayed rooted to her spot, you’d purposefully jump.

“I’ve been trapped like this for so long…experiencing everything…I was hoping you would see something I didn’t…that you would convince me there was another way.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Do you know why I actually painted those disturbing things when I was a child? Why I appear in your dreams? It wasn’t to destroy everything. It was to destroy myself. I wanted to see if I went into an almost trance-like state, if I dissociated hard enough, could I finally escape? Like, die, in a way. But not actually die. To experience death without the commitment. The closest thing we have to that is sleep. At least this way… I don’t have to do it alone.”

Fanny watched your form grow smaller and smaller on the horizon, before it disappeared behind the cliff sides as you let yourself fall over the edge of the boat and into the water. And like that, you were gone. She was left alone with Jim once again.

“I’ll tell her.”

“About my ex-wife and daughters, you mean? Go ahead. See where it gets you. You’re confident you can bring her around, aren’t you?”

“Fairly. I’ll certainly try.” She wondered if she’d reach you in time before the moon summoned you home again. Fanny turned to leave, but paused when Jim spoke again.

“It’ll be light soon, so I’ll say goodnight. But I can promise you one thing. Tomorrow morning nothing will have changed. Not between her and me, anyway. But her relationship with you? Perhaps, somewhere, someday, our paths may cross each other but aeons of separation would have altered us so much that, we may not recognize each other but just gaze upon each other as strangers. Our next encounter may resemble two ships passing in the night, momentarily sharing the same vast expanse, yet destined for separate destinations. My words no doubt seem strange to you, but they’re true. You won’t believe it yourself come tomorrow morning, until the illusion of dream relinquishes its grasp on your mind and body, instead replacing it with the embrace of reality. It will take hold as you awaken from your slumber and come to, and as you open your eyes, it’ll set in for you once more that your daughter is gone, and it’s all your fault.” Jim climbed up on the railing of the boat and, without looking back, jumped.

When Fanny rushed over to look over the railing, she could see nothing. Just the impenetrable blackness of the waves as the boat rocked gently, held in place by the anchor Jim was considerate enough to drop earlier. You and Jim would follow each other anywhere, even if it meant your bodies became lost in the sea’s endless depths. Fanny would always wake up, gasping for air and drenched in a thin layer of sheen sweat, her heart pounding, her alarm clock ringing in her ears with the intensity matching a foghorn, and the corners of her eyes stinging with unshed tears that tasted vaguely of the sea.

If ever a woman was adrift, Dr. Jaquith was afraid poor Fanny was. And she had always been adrift, he now saw, refusing to have anything to do with the innumerable anchors offered her, including—and with what entreaties!—his own. Paradise was always over there, a day’s sail away. But there came a moment when an anchor was essential to a woman’s comfort; he wouldn’t say happiness, because he wasn’t sure happiness existed in that very moment, but comfort. So long as she was young, she might toss about gaily enough on the crest of her popularity. But she wasn’t young anymore and her popularity had waned to practically nothing. It’s a funny thing, escapism. We can dream throughout both the day and the night, we can go far and wide and we can keep moving on and on through places and years, but we never escape our own lives.

“I have woken up from the dream many times, my heart pounding rapidly, and my vision turned into a hazy fog devoid of guiding light. I always wake feeling wretched for my mistakes, only for the blessed relief to come that I didn’t really do those things, it was just a dream. Then, though my heart feels wretched, at least I can face the day. When the dream ends, I’m never elated, just cozy, happy to stay at home. I don’t fear the dream, but… The dream comes often and only a few details change. But the outcome is always the same. I never win and always lose. I lose my daughter.”

“You lose because instead of staying true to the ones who love you and the ones you love back, you betrayed the love and trust of someone you love more than yourself. You may plainly perceive Jim as the traitor through his mask. He is well known everywhere in his true colors; his rolling eyes and his honeyed tones impose only on those who do not know him. People are aware that this low-bred fellow, who deserves to be pilloried in your eyes, has, by the dirtiest jobs, made his way in the world; and that the splendid position he has acquired makes merit repine and virtue blush. Yet whatever dishonorable epithets may be launched against him everywhere, nobody defends his wretched honor. Call him a rogue, an infamous wretch, a confounded scoundrel if you like, all the world will say “yeah,” and no one will contradict you. But for all that, his bowing and scraping are welcome everywhere; he is received, smiled upon, and wriggles himself into all kinds of society; and, if any appointment is to be secured by intriguing, he will carry the day over a man of the greatest worth. Zounds! These are mortal stabs to him, to see vice parleyed with; and sometimes your daughter feels suddenly inclined to fly into a wilderness far from the approach of other men. Even when the dream is bad you should welcome the message it brings. There’s a reason you chose that moment, the moment you contracted diphtheria in particular, to be the setting. Let’s delve deeper into it, discuss its significance. Dreams are symbolic of the self, so if you’re dreaming about your daughter and it seems rather random, then it’s likely that she’s representing some part of you. So ask yourself: What aspects of your daughter’s personality are you currently at odds or resonating with?”

“I don’t understand. What are you asking?”

“What he means, Mother, is that you’ve been dreaming about her on a near daily basis, so there’s likely a situation going on between you two that I, your subconscious, and Dr. Jaquith are trying to help you navigate. I’m not actually here. I’m not your daughter. She’s off galavanting across the world with her husband. I’ve merely taken her form because, whether you know it or not, you want me to. I’m you, a piece of your mind. I’m a fragment of memory, a reminder of an experience you had with your daughter or even a quality she possessed.”

“Well, understood through a more traditional psychotherapy lens,” as Dr. Jaquith put it, “a dream is a conversation between your conscious and unconscious minds—an opportunity to explore fears and the forbidden. Often, this happens when there are unresolved emotions or dialogues that need to be explored. In other words, It means there is unfinished or future business with her, your daughter—”

“—Since you’ve been unable to do this when you’re awake, the dream state, that’s me, has bled into your waking reality and has been stepping in to help you express yourself, resolve conflict, or release emotional baggage. The dream’s purpose, my purpose, has been to motivate you to get closer to her. Whether she is thinking about you or not is difficult to prove, but your confidence should be in the fact that your soul sees pursuit of your daughter as nourishing, to one or both of you. So there’s a good chance that if she’s not thinking about you, she might start thinking about you, if you reach out to her. So, Mother, are we going to sit down and finally have a civil conversation? A chance to explore our fears and feelings?”

Fanny, not realizing she was speaking aloud in front of Dr. Jaquith, turned to look at you. “Oh, Darling. Oh, God, Darling. To see your face again… How could you leave me like that? How could you do this to me? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me what a bitch I was being?”

Dr. Jaquith sat quietly and watched, letting the scene play out a little longer before he intervened. She needed this.

“But I did, didn’t I, Mother? You didn’t listen. ‘I know you to be a nasty, jealous, scheming bitch! You’re a bitch! Not content with ruining your own life, you’re determined to ruin mine! Go fuck yourself, you judgmental, self-righteous bitch.’”

“Well… I’m listening now, darling. In my dreams, Jim said something about reaching out. I have reached out, many times. All of my letters went unanswered and returned to sender.”

“It was uncharacteristic of me, wasn’t it? I mean, we’ve had fights before, haven’t we?”

“Yes. I just…in the first and last letter you wrote to me after you left home, you told me you were sick of it. Sick of me.”

“And I was. I was so sick of you. And now that sickness has polluted the seawaters in your dreams. Only we can purify them.”

Dr. Jaquith’s voice brought Fanny back to the present moment and she turned to look at him as he spoke. “Am I correct to assume you were talking with your daughter just then, Mrs. Skeffington?”

“Yes. She’s just there, by the window. But you see, Doctor— I’m not crazy, it’s just that—”

“I never said you were. But in your letter, you said you’ve been having hallucinations again, that this happened once before. Before your husband came home, you had hallucinations of him. Now you’re having hallucinations of your daughter. When did these begin, Mrs. Skeffington?”

“I didn’t start to experience hallucinations of her specifically until after Fanny wrote to me, telling me of her sister’s nuptials. Since then, I’ve been most distressed about my daughter. On the same night I read Fanny’s letter, when I shut my eyes, my other daughter suddenly appeared. Then as time went on, even if I didn’t shut my eyes, she appeared. Standing beside me or in front of me, sitting around all day, staring at me...with those soulful eyes of hers. But not just staring like Job did. She’d talk to me, admonish me. She’d say the meanest, vilest things. Dr. Jaquith, I wish you’d write to my daughter and ask her to stop. I find it very disconcerting.”

Light quickly dawned on Dr. Jaquith. Mrs. Skeffington’s husband was home, they had reconciled, made amends. But she was still being haunted. She had you, her daughter on her conscience, and you were behind the new onslaught of hauntings. She couldn’t get you out of her mind because of doubts, and thoroughly well-founded ones, in his professional opinion, as to whether she hadn’t been too hard on you once upon a time. So she had been, and for entirely discreditable reasons. It wasn’t, Dr. Jaquith was sure, from any strictness of principle or wounded love that she had divorced Job, but simply because the opportunity was too good to be missed for getting rid of her little Jew. Then another opportunity came, an opportunity to marry off her vagabond daughter, but that plan backfired horrifically for her. Now she was being punished. Now her conscience, awake at last in a life grown suddenly empty, was gnawing at her. Fanny was soft. Nobody who was hard had a conscience which gnawed. Anyone could see that this woman was living a nightmare. Except that she went through her daily life wide awake, knowing that she could relive her mistakes at any moment.

“I see. You see, Mrs. Skeffington, when the dreaming brain struggles to solve the problems it needs to process it expands its ‘department’ into areas of consciousness, hence the hallucinations. Thus the most logical longterm treatment is a world of less stress, be it auditory, visual, or both. But first, we must get to the source of your stress. How is your daughter? Have you heard from her?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know. She ran away that night, I’m not sure to where. And I never saw her again. I haven’t seen her for years and I’m worried about her. I’ve written her many letters with no answer. At first, I thought maybe she couldn’t possibly have had time to write, that she’s been too busy traveling the world, that she has befriended a French captain or Spanish ambassador or Greek criminal. No doubt Jim is showing her the ways of the world. But now… She does write, as she promised she would, just not to me. If it wasn’t for her frequent correspondence with Fanny, and occasional letter or postcard to George, I would’ve assumed she was dead months ago. This time I have a bad feeling. I’m almost sure my daughter’s dying.”

“Is she sick?”

“She won’t speak to me, so I don’t know. You know that my daughter can be a bit…unpredictable.”

True, you had been home to welcome her when she came back from the rest home after recovering from her illness, and dined with her—once only, though, now that Fanny came to think of it. The first and last time you actually sat down with her at the dinner table was the very night when she told you about your engagement and dismissed Jim from the house. Since then, you always had a tray sent up to your room. And then you broke your engagement and there was that horrible display upstairs in your room as you and she had the row of the century. You left and, since then, she hadn’t once set eyes on you or heard your voice, your excuse being that she was well again and you saw no reason to delay your travels anymore. And now there was always something keeping you away from home, away from her. Art exhibitions, your Uncle Fred, teaching children to paint and draw, the war. Or—her thoughts, before Dr. Jaquith’s fixed and coldly appraising eye, hesitated—was it really all those things that were keeping you away?

“It’s the worst, isn’t it? The not knowing,” Dr. Jaquith’s voice interjected. “Now that Johnny Mitchell and Fanny are married, she has two families who support her life choices now, you know, regardless of their own wants or desires or opinions. She has Fanny and Johnny’s family, and her and Jim’s family. She’s with that husband of hers now and, no matter what anyone says, two people are enough to make up a family. She’s left your life and you’ve been left to wonder about her. Where do she and Jim live? What are they doing? Are they happy? And these kinds of dreams can be the answer to those questions because they give you a snapshot of your daughter, the person you once knew, and insight on how her life is going. The very nature of wondering about her can mean that you feel guilty or miss her… Do you miss your daughter, Fanny?”

“How can you miss someone who’s right beside you?” you said sarcastically.

“Does her leaving hurt you?”

“You hurt me so fucking bad, Mother. You reached into every single insecurity, every single wound you know I have, and poked the fuck around. Sorry, sorry. I shouldn’t use such language. I’ve just grown so used to hating you lately. Those times, just before John and I broke our engagement, and our last conversation we had before I left, you were so hurtful. So hateful. You weren’t the only one left with a broken heart when I left. All of those things I said… They needed to be said. But still, saying them… Leaving the house, leaving you that way… It killed me inside.”

“And our falling out killed me too, darling. Was this all because I made a mistake? A mistake we could’ve so easily rectified?”

“Of course, the saddest thing about the mistakes of one’s youth...is that they can never be rectified. Or can they? It must all be so confusing.”

“I…I wasn’t prepared for all this. I thought I’d led a simple life. I thought this would be easy.”

“It’s never easy. Everyone has secrets. Even John. You’d think he’d be the most boring guy in existence, but he had a lot of skeletons in his closet, let me tell you.”

“And what about John?”

“I’m not here to talk to you about John. Dr. Jaquith and I are here to talk about your favorite person: Yourself.”

“It’s been a sort of a long-distance love, hasn’t it, Mrs. Skeffington? Not dissimilar to how it was during her childhood.”

“That’s not kind of you, Doctor. I never wanted my daughters to leave me. The court even said a child should stay with its mother.”

“Never mind what the court said. What did you say?”

“Well, I thought a child should. It was just that…Well, it was just that...It was just that... Well, they weren’t going to be very happy staying with me. They loved their father so much more. We knew perfectly well that if either of the girls were miserable, I would be miserable too.”

Dr. Jaquith didn’t speak for a while then, well aware that he’d added to the guilt and fear Fanny was already feeling. She supposed, if he were being brutally honest, she’d earned a bit of the guilt where it concerned not staying in touch with you or Fanny as she’d promised, but the rest… Well, it was all water under the bridge now. Or so she thought. He glanced uneasily across, not so much at her as at the chair she was sunk in. It seemed to have grown. Always big enough for two, it now seemed big enough for three. When last he saw her, muffled up in fur, he hadn’t realized how little of her there was left. Poor Fanny, he thought, unable, whenever his eyes rested on this wraith-like parody of the past, to prevent a slight shrinking away, she is like a painted ghost. Was it fair, he asked himself, while again she watched him, her head on one side,—was it fair to give anyone who looked so exactly like an invalid a shock? Hadn’t he better wait till she fattened up a bit? Or at least till she didn’t just happen to have had what she told him was a trying day? No, what he had come for couldn’t wait; what he was doing was, anyhow, so outrageous that there was nothing for it but to plunge ahead and see it through.

“Don’t play the innocent with me.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do. You know exactly what I mean. Your reasonings for your actions may seem all very logical and selfless if anyone who doesn’t really know you were listening, but I know you, and I know my field of expertise. My dear lady, the entire basis of psychoanalysis is truth, so don’t lie. Not to me. You can lie to yourself, but not to me. I usually make a show of these things, but if you still insist on playing the fool, I’ll just come right out and tell you what your trouble is. You can’t stop ruining things! For your daughter, for yourself! You’d pull in the sky if you could! Anything to make you feel less frightened and alone!”

“You don’t want to understand me—”

“You all but ruined her life that day!”

“I didn’t mean t—”

“How many lives are you going to wreck just to smother your own misery?”

And then she was on her feet, standing quite close to him, rather like a little girl forced to say a difficult lesson not yet really learned, to a judge she knows will be severe. What she had done seemed to her now, alone with Dr. Jaquith, wholly unpardonable. But then, when she thought of you— Having gulped down the tea, watched by Dr. Jaquith curiously while she gulped, she went on quickly. “I refuse to listen! Is this the tone you encourage? Dr. Jaquith, my constitution simply will not stand this sort of thing.”

“You asked for it.”

“How?”

“Sit down and I’ll tell you.”

“I’ve a dreadful headache, Doctor. This isn’t what I wanted to discuss with you at all. I find all this very distasteful.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Skeffington, but your daughter and I have headaches too and I think ours precede yours by quite a few years.”

Fanny turned to look at you, as if gaging how she should respond based on your reaction to Dr. Jaquith’s words. You were leaned against the wall, not looking at her or the doctor. Your eyes didn’t even glance up from the newspaper you were “reading”. “Reading” was an understatement. You were too busy looking at the comics section like you always used to do when you lived in the house. It was the only section of the newspaper you ever bothered with. You didn’t say anything, but you made a hum that couldn’t be interpreted as anything but agreement.

“From the look in your eyes, I can tell you probably want nothing more than to have the pleasure of throwing me out, but I haven’t earned my fee yet.”

“What could you possibly have to say after that?”

“Oh, he has a great deal to say, Mother. You should hear him out. He only wants to help you in the same way he helped me. It shouldn’t be too difficult for you. You should be accustomed to just sitting and listening to men say their piece by now.”

“What I have to offer you is sound advice, and you’ll be grateful for it. Did you want to consult a gentleman or a doctor?”

“You know, there’s a female in this opus who is really not entirely unlike yourself,” you remarked, pointing at the comic, though she couldn’t see it.

She needed a true friend’s advice so badly. Who could give it better than Dr. Jaquith, one of her daughter’s oldest and, certainly for the last three or four years, quite one of her dearest friends?

“All right, I’ll listen quietly. What do you want to discuss with me?”

“Well, for instance,” he said after a moment, diffidently, “this business about your poor daughter.”

You, poor? You, that expert in traversing the great world, seeing and experiencing new and exciting things every single day? Really, she couldn’t believe it. You might be relatively poor money-wise, especially compared with what you used to be, but not actually— Silence. She, trying to believe it. She, struggling with a thought which, if she did believe it, would have an instant effect on her own future. You, poor? That was hard to believe. But Dr. Jaquith wouldn’t lie. Then, that being so, it must be true that you were in a bad way. Fanny sat trying to take it in.

“Why ‘poor’?”

“I expect by now it might fairly describe her. When she first came to me, her heart was an injured thing, pain covered her like skin. She didn’t trust this world or anyone in it. She was completely turned in on herself and, like all of her hound, had to go on living in the strange limbo of an increasing detachment and isolation. I wondered if she had come to know more about herself and shrank, consequently, from association with you, her mother, the It Girl of New York. She couldn’t have been anything but lonely when she was a child. Often the stronger the maternal bond the harder the teenage years are for a daughter, but that wasn’t true for her. What you didn’t understand was, she always felt like a bird in a cage. There were times when you clipped her wings to the point where she was at a serious social and developmental disadvantage. If we were meant to stay in one place, we would have roots instead of feet. She wanted to be without roots. A person does not grow from the ground like a vine or a tree, one is not part of a plot of land. Mankind has legs so it can wander. What a funny old world you once lived in, thinking you could cage her, and make her fear her future.”

“I didn’t want to cage her or make her fearful for her future, I wanted to protect her and keep her safe from—”

“Regardless of intent, I’m afraid that’s exactly what you ended up doing. She sought to break free, to prove who she is, that she is her own person and no replica of you, her mother. And as she grew older, that separation was a trauma she hid within animosity, misread as teenage angst. She leaned toward Mr. Skeffington, the father. Separated by gender there was no danger of confusion between who is who. You may have lost her nearly four years ago, Fanny, but she lost you long before you and Job ever divorced. She rattled around this huge house, growing more and more used to being on her own, resenting your presence and that of whichever gentleman you permitted into the house on any given day more and more, even if they only came back for the weekends or while your husband was away, she felt like you and your lovers were invading her space. Under your own roof, your own nose, you became like strangers, ships that pass in the night, not able to agree on anything, not having any common ground. In time the rift should’ve healed, when she was confident, when she was truly an adult. Then she might’ve returned to you, her mother, and you would’ve become more than any two friends could ever be, the love returning to the surface for each of you. But that hasn’t happened, has it?”

“No. I thought her leaving would be temporary, that maybe if I gave her time, gave her space to blow off some steam, she’d come to her senses and come back home. But months went by, then a year, then…”

“Apparently you didn’t know her well enough. This house was never a home to her. It was a cage. A cage that gave her wings to fly, and she flew the nest the first chance she got. Now she has Jim and is surrounded by people every day, but she can’t be anything but lonely at her age, considering the circumstances of her departure, having lost her family and been barred from her childhood house all in one day. Leaving a house is easy, but leaving a home is so very, very hard.”

“Does no one want to know the truth here, Mother? The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!”

“It must be noted that she is a sympathetic character: You, her mother, were biased and ineffective, which left her alone. She went largely ignored by you, which might be why you put so much effort in trying to impress people. After your divorce, she was forced into the company of others because her father could not leave her or her sister alone in Mexico or Europe. It was frightening, but it was liberating, because she no longer had to suffer the comparisons between your beauty and her own. She began to enjoy herself and moralized over every morning.”

“You speak with such eloquence for a psychiatrist. Maybe you should’ve been a poet instead, Doctor.”

“Don’t try to change the subject.”

“But you make an already dreadful situation sound even worse and I find it even more dreadful to listen to you. I hope you’re not going to suggest—”

“I’m going to suggest many things about your daughter, I’m afraid. My concern is not just for you, but for her as well. It’s all wrong that you should be seeing her in this way.”

“It’s dreadfully wrong, and most upsetting.”

“It shows your nerves are in a very bad state.”

“Yes, Dr. Jaquith. Just what I’ve been suspecting myself.”

“And perhaps a complete change of scene—”

“Well, I did go to Claridge’s.”

The ghost of a giggle, the faintest little sound of rather wry mirth, rose to her lips at the pictures that flashed into her mind; though indeed all this was very serious for her. Adorers had played a highly important part in her life; the most important part by far, really, giving it color, and warmth and poetry. How very arid it was without them. True, they had also caused her a good deal of distress when, after a bit, they accused her of having led them on. Each time one of them said that, and each in his turn did say it, she was freshly astonished. Led them on? It seemed to her that, far from having to be led, they came; and came impetuously, while she, for her part, simply sat still and did nothing. Apparently snug and enviable in her rosy, cozy cave, she lay thinking about those adorers, so as not to think of you.

“Fanny, you must be serious.”

“Good heavens, do you suppose I’m not? I went there to visit my cousin, Martha, and her family and I was…searching for something.”

“Searching for what?”

“I don’t…know exactly. But I found…something. I can’t make heads or tails of it.”

“Then will you listen while I tell you what I really think?”

“Oh, all right. But I can assure you, she’s had many very good reasons for being grateful,” said Fanny, more doubtfully; for to be one of a crowd of miserables, each thinking he was the very man to help her with her particular daughter, and taking up his time, didn’t seem so good. “And Doctor—” she frowned—“I’m not poor and suffering, and I’m quite well off.”

At this he paused. Beneath a lamp he paused in order to face her. “Well off, Fanny?” he inquired. “You think yourself well off? Let me tell you,” he solemnly assured her, “that you are positively poverty-stricken. All of those beautiful things, those pretty presents you gave your daughters… Material possessions could never amount to a mother’s love, which is all they ever wanted from you. But love was something which couldn’t be bought, so you didn’t know how to give it to them. Everything you ever gave them came with strings. And I don’t just mean pretty ribbons and bows.”

But even this only pleased her. How very understanding of him, she was thinking. He wasn’t, after all, completely padded inside. By poverty-stricken he meant her starving soul, and her uneasy, groping mind, and her heart that was well on the way to becoming a skeleton now that you had gone—all the parts of one that begin, evidently, to give trouble after fifty. He had guessed this. He knew it instinctively. Living sexlessly before his marriage to Charlotte, she reflected, he had probably developed feminine intuitions. Pleased, she smiled at him, the light from the lamp overhead glaring down pitilessly on her face.

“I’m so glad,” she said.

“Glad?” he repeated, surprised. “Do you in the least know what I mean?”

“Yes. That I’m a poor, drifting, more or less lost soul” —curious, he thought, how much women liked to be told their souls are poor and lost— “and so you’re going to help me. You can, you know, David. It’s my daughter. She’s worrying me to death. She badly needs something done about her.”

“Mrs. Skeffington, everything that needed to be done about your daughter has already been done at Cascade, with success. I’ve known your daughter since she was nine. I know things about her that even you don’t know. And I know things about you that you don’t know I know.”

“Like what?”

“Like how happy, how relieved you were to be free of the encumbrance of your two children and your Jewish husband. When you discovered your husband’s infidelity, you seized the excuse to divorce him, conveniently ignoring your own behavior. You were a hypocrite, Mrs. Skeffington. Hypocrisy often begins at home.”

As much as she hated hearing it, Dr. Jaquith’s words rung true. Fanny well knew that her reactions to Mr. Skeffington’s infidelities weren’t at all the proper ones, but she couldn’t help that. She was perfectly aware she ought to have gone on growing angrier and angrier, and more and more miserable; and instead, things happened this way: Obliged to forgive the first typist, such was his penitence and such his shame, the second one, though humiliating, didn’t distress her quite so acutely. Over the third she was almost calm. The fourth made her merely wonder there should be so many young persons liking him enough for that sort of thing, but she supposed it must be his money. She went out and bought some new hats. The fifth, Miss Morris, she earnestly inquired of the alarmed and shrinking creature what she saw in him. And after Miss Morris, Job left. Left, and never came back. Left, and she beheld him no more till they faced each other in the Divorce Court. Since then she hadn’t set eyes on Mr. Skeffington, except once, not long after the final kicking free, when her car—his car, really, if you looked at it dispassionately—was held up in Pall Mall at the very moment when he, walking to his club, chanced to be passing. There she sat, such a lovely thing, delicately fair in the dark frame of the car, obviously someone everybody would long to be allowed to love, the enormous hat of the early summer of 1914 perched on hair whose soft abundance he had often, in happier days, luxuriously stroked, and was so completely already uninterested in him that she hardly bothered to turn her head. Wasn’t this hard? Now, wasn’t this terribly hard? Mr. Skeffington asked himself, his whole being one impassioned protest. But Fanny, sideways through her eyelashes, did see him, saw how he hesitated and half stopped, saw how red he grew, thought: Poor Job, I believe he’s still in love with me, and idly mused, as she was driven on up St. James’s Street in the direction of her attractive house—his attractive house really, if you looked at it dispassionately—on the evident capacity of men to be in love with several women at once. For she was sure there were several women in Job’s background at the very moment he was hesitating on the pavement, and turning red for love of her. He couldn’t do, she now thoroughly well knew, without several—one in his home, and one in his office, and one God knew where else; perhaps at Brighton, whither he was so fond of going for a breath, he used to explain, of sea air.

So that when he offered her those repeated chances of honorably getting rid of him, though she began by being outraged she ended by being pleased. How angry those typists had made her, till it dawned on her that what they really were were gates to freedom. When at last she saw them in their true light, as so many bolts shot back and doors flung open, she left off being angry, and began instead—strictly speaking, she did’'t suppose she ought to have to rejoice. No, she oughtn’t to have rejoiced; but how difficult it was not to like being without Mr. Skeffington. And she asked herself, as she went into her flower-filled library—the quantity of flowers that arrived for Fanny every day at this period had to be seen to be believed—and found Jim Conderley of Upswich, an elderly (she thought him old, but he was, in fact, under fifty) and impassioned admirer, waiting to take her out to lunch—she asked herself what other woman would have been such an angel of forbearance. Or was it, really, not so much forbearance as that she didn’t care? Yes, thought Fanny, who was an honest girl, and liked to see things straight, it wasn’t being an angel; it was because, after the third lapse, she simply hadn’t cared. Being an upright girl, who believed in sticking to her marriage vows and giving as good as she got. She, too, had been very kind. Her heart, however, hadn’t been in it. At no time had she enjoyed her marriage. She was very sorry, but really she hadn’t.

A marriage, she found, with someone of a different breed is fruitful of small rubs. Among other things, he was a Jew, and she wasn’t. Not that that would have mattered, since she was without prejudices, if he hadn’t happened to look so exactly like a Jew. It wasn’t a bit necessary that he should. Lots of people she knew had married Jews, and none of them looked so exactly like one as Job (Mr. Skeffington’s name was Job, a name, everybody agreed, impossible to regard as other than unfortunate). Still, he couldn’t help that, and certainly he had been very kind. And she, who was a believer in one thing at a time, fell to considering her patience, her positively angelic patience, over his lapses. Five lapses, before she did anything about them. Why, she might have divorced him, completely justified even in her mother’s eyes, who was all for wives sticking to their husbands, after the second lapse, and started on her delicious career of independence at thirty-seven instead of forty-two. Then she would have had five whole years more of it, with everybody bent on making up for his shameful treatment of her, and for what it was imagined she must have suffered. Five years her patience had cost her; five years of happiness. But that was a long while ago. It didn’t seem long, but it was. Then she was forty-two. Now she had just turned fifty-four. A generation had passed, indeed had flashed by, since she saw Mr. Skeffington that morning on the pavement of Pall Mall, and where were they now? In the parlor where she and Dr. Jaquith sat across from each other, reappeared the flowers, perhaps, or grass that had been eaten by sheep, sheep that could be found in Scotland. Scotland, where you and Jim were. Everything, looking back, had dispersed and vanished, to reappear as something else - This new onslaught of hallucinations. though, had only happened in the last few months, and she was sure would soon, like when she was quite strong again after her illness, pass.

You threw your head back and laughed. Not a charming little ghostly giggle, but a guttural guffaw that broke her out of her concentration. “Hypocrite? Ha! Yes, of course you’re a hypocrite, but then there are two of you. There’s your conscious mind with its high ideals and your subconscious that just wants to ensure the survival of me and you. I pity those who aren’t hypocrites, because all they hear is the screaming of their conscious minds day and night, survive, eat, fear, danger. They have no range of morals to be hypocritical about.”

Fanny looked at you for a few seconds, hands in her skirts. It wasn’t the response she’d been hoping for. She wanted you to walk back your talk and instead you were set on carrying on just the same as those without your insights. One more sheep in the paddock. Or maybe you just saw too much, and how can anyone fix all that?

“You weren’t sure your daughters wouldn’t be a hindrance to you, so when they expressed a desire to live with their father who they loved so much and who were loved by him so much in return, you seized that opportunity too, to be rid of them. After all, you were still young and beautiful. You had a difficult choice to make. You couldn’t be both a beauty and a mother. And every summer, one letter, half a page dedicated to meaningless apologies for not being able - no, not being willing - to see your daughters, hollow declarations of loving and missing them, was all you committed to.”

You began to recite your mother’s letters back to her, making a show of impersonating her as if you were a vaudeville actress. “Scene: The summer of 1929. ‘My darling daughters, I’m terribly sorry that Mother will be unable to see you this summer, but...’ Scene: The summer of 1931. ‘My darling daughters…where does the time go? I thought I could surely see you this summer.’ Scene: The summer of 1933. ‘My darling daughters, it is terrifying to think...that so many years have passed and we still haven’t seen each other...but Mother misses you, and...’”

“You were more than capable of seeing them. You just didn’t want to. You had much better things to fill your days with. As soon as that letter was sealed in its envelope to be mailed, you spared no more thought to your daughters until the next year. Your daughter didn’t listen to you because no matter what you preached, your preaching became hypocrisy. If you are still unhappy now, I dare say you have only yourself to thank.”

“Unhappy? How can you be? What richness! Why, this is a palace! Oh, it’s marvelous! So roomy and so full of things! Oh, and look at the flowers. They’re lovely, absolutely lovely. I call this splendor, I really do! Mother, you ought to be the happiest creature alive!”

“Well, it just looks like a room to me, and it certainly doesn’t make me happy. Don’t be insulting. It isn’t fair.”

“‘It isn’t fair’, ‘it isn’t fair’. You say that so often, Mother. I wonder what your basis for comparison is. Three, almost four years and you still haven’t grown up? Really?”

“If anything in life isn’t fair, Mrs. Skeffington, you must put the work in to make them fair. Justice and fairness didn’t mean much to you before, but they mean a great deal to you now, don’t they? I know of only two alternatives to hypocrisy: perfection or honesty. You must envy your daughter.”

“How do you figure envy?”

“The liberty she has with her thoughts. However misshapen they may be, she has no shame in sharing them. When faced with the choice between perfection and honesty, you chose perfection every time, either because you couldn’t or wouldn’t choose the latter. Your daughter, in contrast, chose honesty every time, no matter how ugly it was. You were pedantic and conceited. You gave up on your daughters quite early on. With their father, however, it was a different story. From the day she and Fanny were born, their father doted on them, far more than he ever doted on you. He read to them, bought them books, games, but he also talked to them, listened to them, played with them, treated them like independent people capable of developing their own thoughts, instead of interchangeable decorative objects or extensions of you or himself… truth be told, you were a bit jealous of all the attention he was lathering on them. You know, Mrs. Skeffington, envy is often a sign of insecurity, yes, but so is longing to be envied.”

“Are you saying I am insecure? That I have shame?”

“How else do you explain your jealousy and need for attention?”

“Maybe I knew... I knew that Jim took an interest in her because she was just like him. But jealousy is a strong creature. It quickly devoured my mind. Soon, anger took control of me. And I just needed someone to be mad at other than myself. Even after she left, anger stayed. It devoured me whole. I envied her happiness. I envied his happiness. I envied Fanny for marrying Johnny Mitchell. I hated Jim Masters. If Manby had a lover, I would’ve despised him too.”

“And the lies you told about not being able to see your daughters when you so very easily could’ve. In nearly ten years, you never once shed a tear while your daughters were living with their father in Europe, yet you were a wet mess, nearly inconsolable and suffocating from your crying when both of your daughters left home again after only living here for a few months. Why hide that from them? Dishonesty breeds dishonesty.”

“They sit in judgment. My daughters were the only ones to say it to my face, but I know Job and George thought it, too. The Trellis wealth was a legend, but it became a myth when my father died nearly thirty years ago. He did leave a considerable estate...but, you see, Trippy insisted on managing it and, within four months of my father’s death, he ran it into a swamp. Trippy and I were stone broke. He went through our fortune and was starting in on Job’s. The house, servants… Everyone was under the same impression... Even the creditors. There was no chance of the money being returned. if I didn’t do something, Trippy would’ve been prosecuted by the DA and we would’ve lost the house and everything in it and—”

“You don’t need to defend yourself to me, Fanny. I know what you went through to keep your family ignorant in their comfort. But seeing your daughter comes out of a subconscious desire to see her. A need for her.”

It was she this time who interrupted abruptly, stung too badly to remember discretion. “And how, pray,” she inquired, flushing and lifting her chin— a gesture which instantly fixed his cold eye on those parts which Henri had said could be enormously helped, “how, pray, do you know? How do you know I’m not relieved to be free of her at this very moment?” For after all, you would come flying to New York any moment, husband or no husband, if she simply lifted a finger. Or—once more her thoughts faltered before that steady eye—wouldn’t you? “What you say is ridiculous. I have no desire to see my daughter. And I’m sure she has no desire to see me.”

“Oh, my poor lady,” was all Dr. Jaquith said to that. He looked as if he wanted to say more, but he stopped himself short and waited.

Then there was silence, while they stared at each other, he with his clean-shaven lips sardonic, and his fingertips neatly fitted together, she too badly stung to speak. Outraged, she stared at this dreadful Jaquith who was daring to pity her, but even while she stared her doubts were beginning to grow more insistent, and crept, like the cold fog outside, into her heart. Suppose now, just let her for a moment suppose, she said to herself, trying to face things sensibly—that the man was right, and she was indeed simply a poor lady deluding herself. Suppose everything that had made life so warm and happy was soon going to be over for her, was perhaps already over; what then? What did a woman do then?

“Well, Dr. Jaquith?” pressed Fanny. “What were you going to say?”

“That you should go off and travel for six months.”

“What? Be put to flight by my daughter? Never.”

“It seems to me she has put you to flight already. Ousted you from your home.”

“Claridge’s isn’t flight. I can go back at any minute.”

“The world is full of travelers. Once in a year go to someplace you have never been before. You will meet confused seekers, hopeful wanderers, enthusiastic storytellers, happy families. Look into their eyes and stuff your own eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead any moment. Look at the world. It’s more beautiful than any dream you’d have ever seen. Make the most beautiful travel diary and open it up for your daughters someday, so you will all understand each other in ways you’ve failed to in the past. If you dislike that idea, I’m rather inclined to agree with—”

“Not with Byles? Don’t tell me you agree with Byles? That man, that Byles man, whose every word was like a slap in the face?” she exclaimed, standing still and facing him.

“If your daughter is behaving like a ghost, she should be laid,” Dr. Jaquith said with decision.

“Laid?” she repeated. “But that’s what Byles said, about Job.”

“Well, he wasn’t far out, I think, when he suggested it,” said Dr. Jaquith, his voice chilling because she was facing him, and he had to look at her. Really she shouldn’t, he thought; really she should not paint so much. “Nevertheless, what I say is true. Talk to her. Ask her to come over for the wedding.”

“No, I can’t. She’s in California, in the countryside somewhere. That’s a six-day train trip. She’d say I was imposing.”

“Ask her to come back, even if it’s just for the day. You can size her up, and she can size you up. It’s obvious you know nothing about your daughter at all. Talking is the foundation for every relationship. If you don’t talk, you drift apart. There’s so much to say when you don’t have a lot of time to say it. So talk to her. It’s your only hope.”

“But, David—” she protested. And staring at him, and at his dark eyebrows, and changed sunken face, she asked herself what right he had to give her advice; any advice; and especially fantastically silly advice. Byles. George. Job. Jim, and now David. The pack of them were being idiotic about you, that castaway daughter of hers. Still, when Fanny thought of what she had done, and where you were at that moment, tact and prudence seemed poor things compared with courage, and out kept coming those damned beads on her forehead. She certainly seemed to be perspiring a good deal. She had positively perspired with fear lest she should fail you. “What ought I to do? Things like that are simply not done,” she said.

“My dear, after a certain age everything is done. There’s no ought about what you should do,” he answered.

“Yes, I forgot. I keep on forgetting how old I am. How old Job and I both are.”

She thought how very disturbing it was if being older, besides its many other drawbacks, included freedom to do what one used to be protected from by the proprieties. For Fanny one thing was true: The heat of summer was not nearly as stifling as the formality of her life. With every passing day the feeling grew stronger. At Dr. Jaquith’s provocations, she was coming closer to the end of something and moving towards the beginning of something new. Change was in the air. It was only a question of when. If what Dr. Jaquith was saying held any shred of truth, she could, then, if she liked, go off alone now with anybody who wanted her to, to Paris or the other places one went off to, just as you had done, and nobody would say a word.

“I keep forgetting she’s gone. I see things in the paper that would make her laugh. I come inside to tell her that her favorite flower is in bloom and then, suddenly...” Fanny had to stop, in order to swallow. Her throat felt all dry and choky. She could hear the clanging of the teacups as she stretched across the table, seized the teapot, and poured herself out some more tea.

Why, what a cold, naked world, with no fences left. How miserable everything was. It had been bad enough for your figment to pervade her life, upsetting her nerves almost into fits, but what was a figment compared to an actual body? The decent impulse she had had of repentance, of asking for forgiveness, went curdled within her. Dr. Jaquith wanted her to make it a warm thing. To make it a kind thing. To talk it over with you. According to him, she had to see you herself, in the flesh. But how could she?

“Say that to your daughter. Please.”

“She doesn’t want to hear it from me.”

“If you don’t, you're a coward, Mrs. Skeffington. Like all bullies, you’re a coward. Knowing the truth is so minuscule compared to having the nerve to say it…and even more to live it. I’m sorry to have to be so uncharacteristically blunt, Mrs. Skeffington. Really, I hate to do it. But I must. You’re most seriously ill, Mrs. Skeffington.”

“Do you hear that? The doctor says you’re sick, Mother. What with? A bad case of Sitzenlust. Chronic. The opposite of wanderlust. Wanderlust is like itchy feet. It’s when you can’t settle down. But Wanderlove is much deeper than that. it’s a compulsion. It’s the difference between lust and love. It’s a diagnosis often shared between at least two people.”

“And she is most seriously distraught.”

“My daughter is?”

“Thanks to you.”

“Did you say—”

“My dear Mrs. Skeffington, if you had deliberately and maliciously planned to destroy your daughter’s life, you couldn’t have done it more completely.”

“How? By exercising a mother’s rights?”

“A mother’s rights? Twaddle. A child has rights. A person has rights to discover her own mistakes, to make her own way, to grow and blossom in her own particular soil.”

“Are we getting into botany, doctor? Are we flowers?”

“No. But if we were, you would be the rose, and your daughter would be the thorn in your flesh. And vice versa, if I were to ask your daughter how she feels towards you.”

“I am the rose and you the thorn, so I bear these scratches and you smell of perfume. After all, we grew together of the same roots, part of the same blessed garden. Yet as the seasons shift and I grow taller and blossom, we both heal, you and I,” you said as you picked at your fingernails and sucked on your thumb, as if soothing the sting of getting pricked.

“If you’re only here to reprimand me about my daughter, please stop. I’ve already torn myself into strips.”

“Why did you do it?”

“I don’t know. She was so… I never meant to—”

“Yes, you did. Who do you think you’re talking to? One of your suitors? Your maid?”

“How was I to know she w—? Anyway, I’m sorry now.”

“You should be.”

“With her, I just say things and then they can’t be unsaid.”

“She believed you were unhappy. That’s why you lashed out as you did. As much as you’d like to believe otherwise, she’s not the only one who inherited remnants of Trippy’s temperament.”

“Look, if this is about Jim Masters, you should be clear he hasn’t much to offer. Sir John Talbot was a loss, but not Jim. He isn’t well-born, and there’s little money and no position. He grew up in the city in Sacramento.”

“He shoots.”

“Yes, he shoots. Like every social-climbing banker shoots.”

“Well, let’s leave his credentials to one side for a moment and concentrate on what’s important.”

“Which is?”

“She says that he is in love with her, and that she is in love with him.”

“Do you believe her?”

“Do you deny it?”

“Oh, for you of all people to talk as if Jim’s qualifications don’t matter. I don't mean to sound snobbish, but I didn’t want my daughter to marry down.”

“That doesn’t sound stiff or grand at all,” Dr. Jaquith remarked sarcastically.

“I didn’t want my daughter to be grander than her husband. Or richer. If you’re really here to help me, you’d agree with me.“

“It may surprise you, but I agree it’s important to be balanced, that one should not be far stronger than the other. I just don’t think it has much to do with money or position. Was it serious? Was Sir John so very special in that way?”

“He was the owner to Talbot Castle and the surrounding acres of land, and a prominent and well-loved member of his community, he was attractive and nice, and—”

“What I’m hearing is that Sir John Talbot had all that you could wish - birth, money, looks - but he didn’t suit her.”

“No.”

“No, he wasn’t clever enough. He wasn’t strong enough. Jim Masters is both. You see, Mrs. Skeffington, there is no such thing as ‘marrying down’. When you love someone, really love someone, you see them as ‘the one,’ the greatest person you ever met, a divine blessing, a person to cherish for always. Thus, any sense of superiority is a poison to the relationship and there should be no marriage in such cases…because that isn’t love, that’s vanity, ego, pride…that’s vice. I’m not saying everything will be easy for them, but who has a life where everything is easy? Not us. And God knows not her. We simply can’t abandon ship every time we encounter a storm in our marriage. Real love is about weathering the storms of life together. After all, what’s love without a few tribulations?”

As he spoke, her eyes focused on his hands and, for the first time since he’d arrived, she saw the ring that adorned his left hand. Of course, she knew that he was married. She knew it when he first came to the house all those years ago. But it wasn’t until that very moment that she really saw it, and not just with her eyes. Upon his finger was a simple wedding band, an elegant platinum thing. Dr. Jaquith’s wedding ring was the perfect blend of elegance and craftsmanship. But Fanny thought to herself that he probably would be a marvelous lover and husband, and Mrs. Jaquith, whoever she was, was very lucky in love to have him. So his advice wasn’t just coming from textbooks. He was speaking from his heart, from his own personal experiences as a married man.

“Is that how she feels about Jim?”

“To you, she has everything and he has nothing. She’s the great lady, and he’s the man without a home, the man who drove the cars. Even if you never said so before, you immediately thought Jim and your daughter wouldn’t have a lot to talk about, wouldn’t have a lot in common. But that isn’t true for them. She obtained nothing higher because she didn’t think she could do better than Jim. She’s content to be the wife of a former chauffeur and nomad, and to be considered a star in the society of the wayfaring strangers. And that’s what matters. Listen, Mrs. Skeffington, isn’t it about time we started talking a little sense? What is it exactly that’s bothering you?”

“All right, it’s not his poverty. It’s not even his past.”

“Then ask yourself: What’s the issue? Is there some sort of disagreement between you two? If that’s the case, well then, ask yourself: Is there something you’re angry about in regards to your daughter or your relationship with her?”

“You hid your deepest feelings so well you forgot where you placed them. And again, It’s time to wake up, Mother...”

Oh, so boring; oh, so senseless. Should she go in for good works? Or attend lectures? Or learn languages? Or interest herself in the European situation? Bleak, bleak. But wasn’t the alternative even more bleak, indeed grisly, to dribble idly into old age by slow stages of increasing depression and discontent, punctuated—what fun!—by things like rheumatism and being deaf? And she pictured herself turning gradually into her own caricature, an unkind caricature—more than unkind, a highly malicious parody of what she used to be—still going to parties because she couldn’t bear to be alone, and when she got to them hardly able to keep her eyes open, still snatching at invitations and ordering new frocks; an old woman who would be explained to the indifferent young ones as somebody who once was much more beautiful than they could ever hope to be.

“Difficult as it is to imagine,” she could hear the explainer saying, “that old lady over there in the corner, Lady Frances Skeffington—yes, the old lady with the stick, whose head won’t keep still—used to be a celebrated beauty.”

Beauty; beauty. What was the good of beauty, once it was over? It left nothing behind it but acid regrets, and no heart at all to start fresh.

“I couldn’t be alone. I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. I’d always hoped Job would give me a divorce. But then when it happened… After my illness, all my suitors, all my friends, people who I thought loved me left me without so much as a phone call or goodbye note. People that I surrounded myself with for years, who I thought were loyal to me… They all just dropped out of my life and moved on as if I were nothing. They were never my friends. They only loved what I looked like, never me at all. But you know what I say? It’s called unlovable bitches like me…make the world go ‘round.”

“That’s not true. You’re not unlovable.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There is always something to love.”

“I feel nothing. I…I feel…I feel…”

Doctor Melton had assured George that Fanny was unconscious of the change in her face, that women never did know when their beauty left them, that it was a great pity, and that someone ought to tell her about it; and he had believed him, and taken comfort in the belief that his darling cousin was at least spared what must, to any woman once so beautiful, be a torment. Now, to Dr. Jaquith, it appeared that she hadn’t been spared, and that she was perfectly aware of what had happened to her. Pity washed away the last traces of his anger. She knew all about her darling face. Then Fanny was really angry. She’d been seeing some of the others, some of the ones who used to think they loved her agonizingly too. It should’ve been nice to get all her old friends together at the party that night, for them all to come back after almost twenty years and carry on just like the good old days. But none of them could figure out why she got them together. And when they saw her standing on the stairs…they one and all recoiled. Every man-jack of them. Had she changed much? That is, very much? Her past paramours, they all played dumb and tried to dodge answering the question. But they knew perfectly well in what way, knew perfectly well what she meant. So she pushed for them to answer, claiming that it was so difficult to see oneself as others saw one. Still, they danced around the question, stalled for as long as they could so they could come up with something to say that wouldn’t hurt her too much or put them in the wrong.

“Well, Fanny, you mustn’t forget you were still almost a girl when we were friends. And, of course, since then you’ve grown up,” they said. So they thought she changed. But she knew that already. So she expressed her wish for them to tell her what they really thought. But when they did, all they said was, “You always were and always will be...enshrined in my memory...as the nearest thing to perfect loveliness that I have ever known.”

As if it came from a poet’s pen, it sounded pretty, but very hollow. It was pure vanity. A desire in these waning days of hers to feel the assurance of beauty again. But she found one should never look for admirers...while at the same time one was falling to bits. Her friends were as vapid as the winter snow was cold. An unpleasant nest of nasty, materialistic and aggressive people, careless of the rights of others, imperfectly democratic at home though quick to see the minor slaveries of others, and greedy without end. Their love extended only as far as a telegram, stopping abruptly at the front door of the house. “She used to be so beautiful,” “Simple case of wrong diet,” they said behind her back when they thought she was out of earshot. Their smiles of yellow teeth matched their little yellow faces, and they stopped coming whenever her world fell apart, which was often. From their announcements, their lives were one constant party, wine and meals in fancy establishments. Every newspaper article fed her loneliness, hacked at the tenuous emotional connections she nursed. She remembered a version of herself untrammeled by expectation, unimpeded by ego. She had suffered in the many years since then, seeking to return to that original self, if, in fact, it ever existed. And yet, she was helpless but to regard that unmistakable fear that gripped her in her dream as a sign that her unevenness lent her now to utter incongruity with this specter of past. She used to only feel the cruel bite of isolation in crowds, now it followed her home, an ever present reminder that she was a failure on every front. She had enough of recoilers. She wasn’t going to add you, her poor daughter, to them. After all, you deserved a little extra consideration. That was the only reason she wouldn’t see you— Simply because, if she saw you, you would at the same time see her. And despise her.

“Job was gone and I was afraid that if she left, Fanny would follow suit and I’d lose both of my daughters. Then I’d have no one. I’d have no one. I’d have nothing. I’d have nothing.”

“So you were still afraid Fanny would want to start acting like her, just as you feared when they were nine. Does she know this?”

“I was afraid to tell her. I’m still afraid. If I tell her now, then she’d feel she should give it up, but I don’t want that. She’d resent me.”

And now, Dr. Jaquith realized, they came down to the root of Fanny’s dreams. She dreamed of a boat, of sailing, not just because it was the setting of where she lost her beauty, but because she envisioned her worst fears: You on the rocks, and she with power to rescue you, but you refusing so much as a handout from the likes of her, even if it was a life preserver. She wanted to be kind, and warm, and personal with you, her poor shipwrecked daughter, and she couldn’t, she couldn’t, because it was unbearable to her that you, who had so abjectly despised her, much like the men who once worshipped her beauty, and the women who envied it, should see her as she was now. She was afraid because you hadn’t seen her face for nearly four years. But that didn’t matter.

“You are the only woman I know who likes to think herself cold, and selfish and grand when most of us spend our lives trying to hide it.”

“Oh, please don’t lecture me anymore on sentimental virtues. I don’t think I can stomach another pretty speech, winding up with a bow.”

“I’m sorry if all of that hurt and confused you. But it needed to be said, for your sake as well as your daughter’s. In order for you to get better, Fanny, I must do whatever it takes to make it so. I didn’t say all of that just to make you feel bad.”

“I know,” she said. “But I do, all the same.” She shifted in her seat so she was angled more toward him. “Oh, Dr. Jaquith, I didn’t mind really. Whatever happens between us, I’d like it if— Do you think she’d still want to hear from me?”

He nodded immediately. “She's got a huge heart, as you know, and she misses you greatly. She may not be over the moon, but she’d be hesitantly optimistic. And don’t worry, don’t worry, I believe in rules, and traditions and playing our part. Well, there is something else.”

“And what is that?”

“I believe in love. I mean, brilliant careers, rich lives, are seldom lived without just an element of love.”

“Oh, David, you do surprise me.”

“Oh, I am glad. So my trip wasn’t wasted? I’ve come to address a most pressing matter, but our time is running short so I’ll speak as plainly as I can, foreswearing accustomed frills that decorate my speech. You know where you went wrong, Fanny. We needn’t dwell on that here and now. But even so, you’ve been given a chance of redemption.”

“My daughter would consider…forgiveness?”

“She would consider what she considers to be forgiveness. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy, but it’s a vice that can be forgiven like any other. I would only say this: First, make peace with your daughter and her husband. And then, make peace with yourself. Do you remember that morning during our first meeting, I referred to a poem, remember?”

“Oh, yes, Robert W. Service’s.”

“I had it looked up and typed out on a slip of paper for you. If old Robert didn’t have you and your daughter in mind when he wrote this, he had lots of others like the two of you. He’s put into words what I’d like to say to the both of you now, and far better than I could ever express it. Read it. Bye.”

Jaquith was certainly, from what she had heard, a highly pleasant person, and equally certainly he had broken the ground by that suggestion about reaching out to you, so all she had to do was to feel her way along those same lines with tact and prudence. She found his manner most refreshing. After the sleek, soft ways of the doctors she used to go to, he was infinitely bracing. She loved going to see him. She came away feeling incredibly brisked up, and ready for anything. As hard and taut as prize-fighters she felt, after a two hours’ scrap with Dr. Jaquith. Divine, she agreed, not to be mewed over, but given a clean, straight sock—her very language, after being with him, was virile on the jaw. After Dr. Jaquith said his goodbyes and left, Fanny looked at the crisp white card stock he had given her, and read aloud the poem printed on it in bold black lettering.

There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,

A race that can’t sit still;

So they break the hearts of kith and kin,

And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and rove the flood,

And they climb the mountain’s crest;

Their’s is the curse of the gypsy blood,

And they don’t know how to rest…

Fanny walked slowly down the hallways, headed for Job’s study. Like the Kingdom of Heaven, she wasn’t going to be taken by violence. So justly angry with herself was she, so rightly revolted by her manner, that as she hurried upstairs, it was not till she reached the last step did she remember that she couldn’t possibly show herself to him as she was now, and pulling up short was on the point of turning around and going downstairs again. When she stood in the doorway, she watched as Job gave Miss Cartwright an envelope to mail out.

“Would you to see to it that the postman gets this? Place it directly in his hands if you have to.”

“Certainly, Mr. Skeffington.”

“Thank you, Miss Cartwright.” While Miss Cartwright left, Fanny entered. Job had become attuned to the sound of her footsteps and could recognize them immediately. “Did you and Dr. Jaquith have a productive session?”

“Yes, during his visit, there were lots of things he said that— Well, I won’t go into detail, but he offered me plenty of things to chew on. The most important being that I need to work things out with our wayfaring daughter.”

“So what are you going to do about our wayfaring daughter?”

“That’s still a hard task. Dr. Jaquith said I should invite her to the wedding, ask her to come back even if it’s only for the day. I’ve been objecting her relationship with Jim for a long time. Too long. In doing so, she has been avoiding me. I haven’t been a good mother, but I want to be there whenever she needs me from now on. I’ve been resisting change for so long, but now… I don’t want things to go back the way they were. I’m ready to say I’m sorry. But why should she want to forgive me?”

Soon after that she began to wonder at herself for having behaved so badly like that, and a few miles farther on had arrived at the stage of being thoroughly ashamed. By the time Dr. Jaquith left she was quite overwhelmed by compunction, and decided that never in her life had she heard of conduct more disgraceful. Talk of being inhuman and numb! It was she who had been inhuman, and utterly numb to the feelings of others, only intent on getting away and not caring how many lies she told. Just because she was bored and tired; just because, having stupidly said something bound to rouse you, she felt she couldn’t go through any resulting scene. She was glad Job couldn’t see the look on her face, for she had been thinking, how on Earth had he managed to be so fond of me all these years if the whole time, in his heart, he had never been sure I would behave honorably when put to the test? Doubly astonished, her breath quite taken away by these sudden revelations, she stood looking at Job, unable to say a word, listening in a silence she took as boding no good to what she began telling him about you. The only remaining string your bow would come in, and she would appeal to your pity; and if that was no good, then…then… She didn’t know.

With the help of his cane, Job got up, went around his desk to her, leaned on the edge of it, and put his arm around her. He bent down and kissed the top of her head. This was not only to show he loved her and sympathized with her, but also so that he might have a second or two to think what he ought to say next. She was in great stress of mind. Fanny was still his darling wife, and he was worried about her. “Although it’s painful, you do have a point there, Fanny. Our daughter is well within her rights to never forgive you. But I also agree that she won’t respond to or even read any letter written and sent by you. That’s why, while you and Dr. Jaquith were talking, Miss Cartwright was helping me to write a letter to our daughter. We finished it just before Dr. Jaquith left. Miss Cartwright has just gone to send it out. If she won’t listen to you, hopefully she’ll listen to me and be here for our wedding.”

“Oh, Job. Thank you. Thank you s—”

“Don’t thank me just yet, Fanny. I’ve only done the first step for you, but I can’t help you any more beyond that. The rest you’ll need to do yourself. If she comes, she’ll undoubtedly bring Jim with her, and it’ll be up to you to begin the process of repenting for your past mistakes and making amends with the both of them. It may not be as easy as an apology. It may be a long road. It’s my hope, and your hope too, that she and Jim will forgive you. But you’ll have to be ready for anything, and I do mean anything.”

April 1940

My darling daughter,

I remember a time when I was seventeen and going with Trippy and our parents to my Great Aunt Sophie’s house, someplace where I had never been, and the question of what to wear was a weighty one. I knew it was in the mountains, but was it really cold or just cold for New York? On the other hand, the drive up would probably be on the warm side. What to put on? I finally settled for an olive-green gabardine dress. Once the choice had been made, I considered it inspired and went happily off to the train station and, from there, we were to assemble and be driven up to her house by her chauffeur, who she had waiting for us. Alas, my complacency was short-lived. For as long as I could remember, no matter how pleased I may be with my clothes when I am ordering them, no matter how successfully I may feel they have turned out the day they come home from the shop and are lifted from their boxes, I have only to walk into a restaurant or the theater or a friend’s house to be instantly convinced that every woman there is more appropriately and becomingly dressed than I. That day at my Great Aunt’s house was no exception. I arrived in my gabardine, Great Aunt Sophie was in distinguished tweeds, and my heart sank. Of course, I thought, tweed. Even I, dope that I am, should have known enough for that. Correct and smart. Naturally. And far better cut than this sacking I was draped in. I spent the entire first day in the mountains plunged in gloom and self-disgust. Later that afternoon, Great Aunt Sophie asked me to have a drink with her and her much younger husband. In the course of the visit, I remarked that I liked her dress and that it was the perfect thing for a grand house in the Rocky Mountains. She looked at me in pleased disbelief. “You think so?” she asked. To which I answered, “Yes, of course. I only wish I had one to wear up here.”

She burst into the unrestrained laughter which was characteristic of her. “My God,” she said, “that’s funny. I’d been debating what to wear and I finally settled for this, then you walked in. I took one look at you and thought, of course, Fanny’s no fool. Gabardine. That’s what I should have on! I damn near went back up to my room to change.”

Another celebrated woman who suffered from clothes insecurity was Miss Gretchen Lesnicki, the daughter of one of my Great Aunt’s neighbors, and I got to know her. Miss Lesnicki, to the innocent beholder, was smart as all get out, but she, too, apparently viewed her own reflection with a soured eye, once she had spied the other entrants in the social arena. Moreover, she was harassed by a further ailment common to the fashion-conscious. She had only to see an outfit she had sold or given away worn by someone else to be instantly aware of its outstanding chic and to be moved by a strong impulse to kick herself for having got rid of such a becoming and durable garment. I knew what she went through. During the rest of our stay at Great Aunt Sophie’s house, the clothes problem no longer troubled either Miss Lesnicki or myself, for we were wearing dresses designed for us by “the best of the best” (in Great Aunt Sophie’s words). We had several days of radiant weather, and when not engaged in a ball, dinner party, or any other important outing or social obligation, I used to lie on the grass in her garden and look up through the glittering leaves of the trees or through the dark gleaming needles of the pines, deep up into the sky where the little clouds drifted. I was trying to apply a lesson I knew well but which was hard to put into practice, and that is not to let personal unhappiness blunt for us the loveliness of the external world. When we do, we are a little less civilized. Unhappiness spreads a scar tissue over our perceptions and we rob ourselves of our most intimate wealth, the awareness of nature. Love was my trouble and my woe was unconfined. An emotional orgy is momentarily gratifying to the emoter, but it is sterile and any performance is the more impressive as well as more sincere if there is evidence of intellect. Besides, this sort of sentimental suicide is futile; since we will survive anyhow; we will not induce love where love does not exist and we cheat ourselves out of countless delights by coddling our misery. All this I knew.

Putting it into practice I found virtually impossible, yet my sense of degradation was partially alleviated by the kindly understanding of Dr. Jaquith. Seeing me tearful, he asked what was the matter. Between laughing and crying I told him I was ashamed of myself but that I waited for word which didn’t come. I waited without humor and without courage. I knew I was behaving with self-indulgence and with a marked lack of common sense, with my experience and at my age... I continued to castigate myself, but faster fell the tears. Dr. Jaquith laughed, but his laughter was gentle. “My dear,” he said, “I am many years older than you but I am still capable of disappointment if a letter I am hoping for doesn’t come. Don’t count on age to get you over that one. Realize that when your feelings do not dull you are the more alive. It’s painful but it’s worth it.” Dr. Jaquith is a nice man. I was at Great Aunt Sophie’s only a few days and it was in the season of my discontent, but owing, in large part, to his understanding, I remember with delight the sky and the water and the dark, strong color of the pine trees like a canvas freshly painted. When I was seventeen, for the first time, I saw the world as you see it. It had been so long…so many years passed between the first and last time I went to her house… I had forgotten…what it felt like.

Love,

Your mother

Weeks passed. The wedding was tomorrow, yet not a word was heard from you. Not a letter, a phone call, a postcard, nothing. You hadn’t said anything to your sister either, which was most unusual, since you told her almost everything. Fanny was much happier to marry Job this time around than she was twenty odd years ago, but she was still down in the mouth about your silence. She really hoped Job’s letter would’ve been moving enough for you to break your vow of no-contact. She was really hoping to hear from you, even if it was to tell her of your decision to decline attending the wedding.

“Why so glum?”

“I could use some sleep. I’m not glum, Manby. Just tired. Even a woman of my amazing energy…”

“Go ahead and go to bed. We want you to look beautiful tomorrow. Anybody who says you aren’t, we’ll fight ‘em.”

“I like to think of myself as distinguished looking rather than just beautiful. Goodnight.”

#Jim masters x reader #mr Skeffington #now voyager #daughters courageous #claude rains #bette davis #crossover fic #crossover #crossover au #pls tag me if you’re inspired by this #I’d love to read it

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Part 2/7 💜📸📝

“I didn’t like the way he stared at her.”

“Who? Oh, Mr. Masters? I didn’t notice.”

“Well, I did. He’s still looking.”

“Who, Fanny?”

“Mr. Masters.”

“Don’t look at him, then.”

“Do you think he’s after her, George? I rather hope not, if I’m honest.”

“Why? He has a bit of money. And he’s clever.”

“But is he just looking for a wealthy socialite?”

“Well, he seems quite taken by your daughter’s beauty, and he wondered—”

“Why? I mean, why should he wonder?”

“He wondered if there was anybody— Well, that is, anybody she liked.”

“Did he ask you to find out?”

“Who, me? No, no. I just—”

“Well, you may tell him that we don’t like anybody in our house. That is, we like a great many people, but we don’t like men. Oh, we like men, too, but don’t like men who wonder about who else we Skeffington women like. My daughter is too young and far too clever to bother about who wonders about her. It’s ridiculous, that’s all. Ridiculous.”

“Why don’t you ask Mr. Masters to dinner? You can look him over and learn the worst. Give him a real chance, and perhaps you’ll like him even more than Sir John Talbot.”

“That won’t be necessary. An agreement between Sir John and I has already been reached.”

“Still invite him. You can size him up and he can size you up. If you don’t invite him, Fanny, then I will.”

You got eyes for Jim Masters, the chauffeur. Fanny had her suspicions, but there was some part of her that didn’t want to believe it. Manby said when you told your stories, Jim always made everyone be quiet so he could hear well. Jim was super likable. Everyone liked everything about him. You couldn't stop smiling when Jim started talking. The smiles you gave him made your mother want to puke. You smiled as if your relationship with Jim meant much more than the one you had with her. She’d never seen you smile like you smiled when you were around him. She told you to bring him to the house for dinner but you said he wouldn’t come because he was too shy and wouldn’t have time between his work, but Fanny wondered if that was the truth. Something changed. She felt it. It could have been so simple only if Jim didn’t get in the way. Both you and Jim kept saying nothing was going on between you. But she wasn’t about to believe everything was just rainbows and butterflies. In her eyes, Jim was using you to fill his sad, empty life. Fanny knew she had to do something. You’d been growing the idea of leaving New York since you came back from Berlin. Living with her didn’t help much with you being attached to your hometown. She and you never got to talk about it seriously, you didn’t really want to, but every time you hinted about leaving, Fanny tried so hard to ignore what it meant for her. Even those pictures in the morning newspaper were laughing at her... They were making fun of her impending doom. They were all saying,

“Ha ha ha. See? You’re gonna die alone here.”

She couldn’t let that happen. Then she remembered. Jim wrote secret letters to you. Manby got hold of the most recent one and gave it to her. In it, he was asking you to meet him. She locked it up so you wouldn’t ever read it. You weren’t allowed to see Jim of course and if you never saw that letter maybe you would think he didn’t like you anymore and maybe you would stop liking him. Your father would’ve known what to do. Fanny wished he was here. Unbeknownst to you, she knew where you kept your diary and letters. But they had no special meaning for her. Until curiosity got the better of her. What if you wrote something about Jim in your diary? What if your diary had something to do with Jim’s existence not just in your life, but in hers? She started digging. The first few pages were nothing outstanding. Just about your new school.

August 1932

When you live in one place your whole life, your next door neighbor is kind of like, your default friend. And Jeremy only got weirder over the years. With Janie Clarkson as his mother… I can’t put him completely at fault for how insufferable he was when he was a kid. Moving away has been a good excuse to...not see him anymore, but he did say he had plans to move out when he turned eighteen... I wonder if he’s going to follow through with those plans. Maybe he was just saying it because he was sick and tired of his overbearing mother and wanted to separate himself from her. Whatever his decision, hopefully the years have done him some good and he’s freed himself from his mother’s clutches. Hopefully he’s grown out of whatever his mother’s influence did to smother his individuality and corrupt his personality and behavior when we were in school together. Can’t say I don’t empathize with him. He and I share the same sentiment about our mothers. Maybe I'll give him a call to see how he’s doing.

September 1932

Starting at a new school is a right of passage at certain ages, yet when you are the only new person you feel that there is a spotlight on you. But in that attention there is a chance, right? There is a chance to find new friends to connect with. Going in with a positive attitude is easier said than done, but when you make a great leap, you have to commit to it, right? That's how you land with grace on solid ground. So this new school, I’m gonna make it be okay. I can do that. Starting at a new school is a chance to start over, to have a reboot of who I want to become, a chance to make new friends. On this first day of school I’ll go to meet my other family, the one I will spend years learning with. I will gain new brothers and sisters from various walks of life. I will become part of their community and begin that journey of growing into the fine lady I am destined to become.

October 1932

[…] As for now, I’m just gonna leave those POI on my ‘To Do List’ which is already filled with a crazy amount of homework. I now know why youngsters of Zurich will try their best to get as far away from school as possible after class: to escape from choking on the pressure that teachers give them! Even on weekdays, pretty girls like Stephanie will have their boyfriends give them a ride, and others make use of the power of PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION to get to the more crowded part of town. It does feel too quiet since I’m no longer in public school, but at least I don't feel as lonely as I did in New York. At least I don't have to watch everyone I know turn their faces away like I’m some kind of a demon spawn. At least I don’t have to be reminded how fucked up things can be in a single moment.

November 1932

[…] but people in this town see graffiti as nothing but trashy doodles. I want to show the hidden side of girls—their impulses, their urges. What are YOU hiding inside…? Fanny, Uncle George, Father… they all tell me, “Don’t worry about what people think. Be proud.” How could I ever be proud of myself…? My classmates talk about me…

“Well! I don’t think you suffer as I do. You don’t have to go to school with impertinent girls who label your father just because he’s Jewish.”

“If you mean libel, then say so, and stop talking about labels as if Father was a pickle bottle.”

“I know what I mean. And you needn’t be satirical. It’s proper to use good words and improve one’s vocabilary.”

“Vocabilary?”

Father told me that it’s important to have goals in life. I wonder what life goal I should have. I wonder what Father’s goal is. Might not be a bad idea to leave town, actually… The great thing about graffiti is, the world’s your blank canvas, your home, begging for you to paint it with your hopes and dreams. I can have fun anywhere. Maybe that should be my goal. I’ve decided that’s what I want to do with my life. I’m going to travel the world, painting, photographing, and documenting my own finds! Well, as soon as I’m old enough to escape Mother, that is. There was an explosion in my brain... the good sort... the type that carries more possibilities than I could be conscious of... but there were hundreds of ideas there in that buzz of electricity... I could feel it. It was the calling card of adventure, of paths awaiting my feet.

Fanny kept flipping through the pages, until she found what she was looking for. It wasn’t even a challenge. She saw just how far back your and Jim’s affiliation went. It was beautiful. She found the perfect story, all she had to do was fill in the ending.

September 1934

So funny to find this diary again! I must have forgotten it at the bottom of the drawer during my travels. I still remember how innocent I was then... So many years ago... I remember being thirteen going on fourteen. I wanted to learn photography, so Father hired Rupert to be my tutor. At first, I thought he would be too old to teach. Plus, his techniques were probably too ancient. But when he came, I was surprised that he was a very humble person. Despite our age differences, we talked for hours. I felt comfortable around him. Then he showed me the photos he took. They were beautiful. It was around that point that I figured out that Rupert was perfect as a tutor, that I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge the old man. I'm glad Rupert was my teacher. I spent nearly five years under his tutelage and it’s paid off! Though I am only eighteen going on nineteen and will never get a degree in photography, Rupert said I’m a professional in my own right!

September 1934

Today I climbed a great pine tree at Wakeforte Park to try to get a shot of something. I can’t remember what I was even trying to photograph, but I didn’t realize how far up I had climbed until I fell out of the tree! I met a kind man when I hurt my leg. He rushed over and helped me, asking if I was okay and if anything was broken. Luckily, nothing was.

You know that feeling where the first moment you see someone, it's like they have a big gold star around them, and you have to get to know them? Well, there's this man. I had no idea how I would ever, like, have an excuse to talk to him... until he opened his suitcase to take out some bandages and I noticed all the pictures, stickers, and souvenirs that decorated both the outside and inside of it. He was a seasoned traveler from the looks of it and, when I mentioned it, he said he just came back from a trip in Hong Kong a month ago and he was now visiting Switzerland. Just passing through, really. Maybe I should have been frightened of him. This older man who saw that I was alone, who possibly felt like I owed him something, which was the worst thing a man like that could feel. He looked grim, all right. I could see how his face might frighten a lot of people, but I couldn’t imagine being afraid of him. Somehow, I... I rather liked him.

“You have a very bad habit of climbing trees. This is no place for children.”

“You think of me as a child? Well, you’re wrong. I am much younger than that!”

“You think my face frightens people, do you?”

“Did I say that out loud?”

“Yes. So you must’ve been thinking it.”

“Yes... sir. Frankly, I do. You understand, I don’t think you mean to frighten them, but your face— Well, you asked me, sir, and, yes, I do think so. But you don’t frighten me. You intrigue me. You’ve been to Hong Kong, huh?”

“My girl, there’s no spot on this earth I haven’t been.”

“Tell me about your time there. What was it like? What did you do?”

“Well, I confess once in Hong Kong when I was desperate I sold a relic of which I was only a part owner.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm. Being a citizen of San Francisco I sold my share of the Oakland ferry to an Australian who wished to make a gift of it to his fiancée. And a very lovely fiancée. You know, she had the most beautiful… Well, that’s another story.”

“I’ve bet you got a satchel full of stories.”

“Mhm. I got the stories, all right. Trouble is, finding somebody who’ll listen.”

“Well if there’s a couple of bottles of beer around, I might be persuaded to lend an ear.”

“If there isn’t any, I’ll make some. Drink up, my good woman. The Earth’s a savage garden.”

“…It was the third day. I had fallen in with a group of Moorish travelers. One of them was suffering, struck with the curse of Scrofula, so I prayed with them for her fortitude, that she might reach the Cave of the Mother with all speed. They told me that a temple was within two day's journey, should all go well. Yet there was an obstacle still to overcome. The path went through the demesnes of one Idris Hannachi, a robber-baron of the Ottoman people. Pilgrims had to pay a heavy tithe to use his water, and to travel the mountain pass. I had spice, and three thalers left. I prayed it would be sufficient…”

“…Nigh a tenday I’d gone without honest fare worthy of the name - drank naught but what the sky offered for my thirst. Why, some bread, cheese, and a cup of wine would’ve appeared unto me a feast! Surely those fine people wouldn’t begrudge me a mite of rest and repast before I got ‘out with it’? Fine, fine. I turned a deaf ear to the clarion calls with which my scorned stomach beseeched me. Graver matters were at hand. Plenty to digest, after all. A good deal to stew over, if you will. Words ladled with import should be savored so as to better absorb their meaning, wouldn’t you agree?”

“…And so I drank the native wine, signifying eternal friendship. It was a touching scene as I bade the Mahabus farewell. For eight years, I said, I’ve been your chief. I give you modern plumbing, surrealist art, and a smattering of air conditioning. I hope that in time you forgive me. And so I leave you, before I bequeath you any more of the horrors of civilization.”

“I’ve listened to you for two hours. And two hours more solidly packed with bologna I’ve never listened to in all my life.”

“Well…perhaps I did lie a little. I like my stories. Like to hear myself talk. I like a little drama, I do. Mind you, lately there’s enough of it about. Do you know, my dear, as you grow older, you’ll find there’s nothing fuller than the truth. The whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

“You’ve kicked around the world all this time and you got nothing out of it at all. I wanna see this world too. That’s all I care about. I wanna get out of this hole. But it’s not wanderlust with me. Who cares about what New York or Copenhagen or Singapore looks like? They probably all look like Sacramento.”

“They all do. Except Sacramento.”

“What’s going on in this world? Things are happening all around us. Why are they happening? You ever seen so much hate in one universe? Well, who sets it off and why? You read this in the papers and that. One person tells you one thing and another person tells you something else. Well, who’re you gonna believe? They all got an axe to grind. I’m shut up here. I know from nothing. But I’m gonna find out. I’m gonna find out for myself. And let me tell you one thing. They won’t keep me in the dark.”

“Well, listen. Don’t take it out on me. I’m not keeping you here.”

“I’m sorry. I get too excited. Let me tell you another thing. When I find out, I’m gonna do something about it.”

“Okay by me. And with that, you rather like me, do you?”

“Yes, I do. I really do, in spite of everything.”

“And I like you.”

“What is your name, please?”

“Don'’t you think secrets are fun? Just refer to me as a wayfaring stranger.”

“But I owe you so much for coming to my aid. I should pay you back somehow.”

“You are paying me back by lending an ear. I want to know who’s letting me talk her ear off. You haven’t told me your name either.”

“Don’t you think secrets are fun?” you parroted his words back to him with a smile. “Just refer to me as an ambitious tree climber.”

“It sounds so mysterious. From where do you come?”

“I am of the wind whose sound is heard, yet none can tell from whence it comes or where it goes.”

“Well, the next tour group gathers within the hour. Try not to blow away before then.”

When I was a girl, Dad always told me to not trust strangers, especially men, but I’m a woman of eighteen, soon to be nineteen now and I don't think he’s a bad guy. If he was, why would he go out of his way to help me? They do say we sometimes become friends with those who are at the opposite ends, so maybe it's not such a weird thing. I’m exhausted but hyped up beyond my limits. I can’t sleep. How can I when the whole day just feels like a dream? Maybe if I meet him again at the park, I can tell him stories of my own.

October 1934

I’m finally focused on my studies, so I think I might pull an all-nighter. It won’t be good for my skin (I can just hear people calling me "troll" and "nerd"), but I don’t care. I have to make it to college. Dad is counting on me to do well. I’ll make him proud by getting into my first choice. All right, time to hit the books till morning! My future isn’t in Switzerland or New York, it’s wherever college life is waiting for me. Everything’s riding on my entrance exam next year. I have to get out before I go stir-crazy.

February 1935

Today I went to Wakeforte Park again, and he was there! I raised a hand to wave and he spied me in an instant, sitting by the water fountain as I was. His face split into the grin I had imagined him to wear often. Then he came over in fast, easy strides and took my offered hand in his two, shaking and squeezing. I hadn’t seen him in over four months. I thought I was imagining him at first, seeing things. But it was him! I told him about the book I read last night. It was about the species of plants and flowers and that even now not all of them are discovered! I told him I want to be the one to discover them, but I’m not good at science. Then he said if I don’t give up, I can do it. I’m happy I told him. It was as if no time passed between us at all and we picked up right where we left off. He finally told me his name - Jim. Jim Masters. I like being with him. I can be myself in front of him. He doesn't judge me, or tell me what to do. He cares about what I think. He makes me happy. He talks a lot to me recently, and I feel comfortable whenever he’s around. I can be myself in front of him. He said we could meet here at Wakeforte for as long as we’re both in the area. I wonder if this is what friends are like.

“Where were you born?”

“The corner of Market and Cherry Street. Same hospital my father was.”

“Market and Cherry? Where's that?”

“Foot of the East River. It's about ten miles, I should say, from the nearest governess.”

“How do they call you?”

“Skeffington.”

“Curious name. Skeffington. That’s a strange name for Market and Cherry.”

“You mean, is that my real name? Yes and no. When my father was a child and he came over with my grandparents, the immigration official on Ellis Island wasn't a good speller...and ‘Skeffington’ was the closest he could get to Skevinzskaza. That’s my father’s real name. But Skeffington is what he goes by, so it says Skeffington on my and my sister’s birth certificates.”

“Market and Cherry… That’s in New York, isn’t it?”

“It is. I grew up on Charles Street.”

“You are far from New York, Miss Skeffington. Do you miss your family back home?”

“There’s not much of a family to miss. My father and sister are here, and my mother and Uncle George are back in New York. There’s my aunt, Martha Tintagel, but she lives in London, so I’m not very close to her. I’ve only seen her face on Christmas cards and such and have never heard her voice or met her in person. She’s a Lady and has a husband and three children - two boys and a girl. She’s a happy mother, always wrapped up in them. She loves being tied up, and is sure she can’t stand five minutes on her own feet unassisted. My other aunt, Nigella Pontyfridd, is wife to my Uncle George, but she kept her maiden name and they have no children. She doesn’t mind, though, because her heart is full to the brim of Uncle George. They’re not really my aunts and uncle, though. They’re my mother’s cousins. We’ve just always called them that for simplicity’s sake. As for everyone else… They’re dead. And they died before my sister and I were born, so we never knew them. Anything we know about them comes from the word of others. I miss Uncle George and Aunt Nigella, but my mother…”

Sensing that you didn’t want to talk about it, Jim changed the subject. “You have quite an art studio here. Did you bring all these art supplies from America?”

“A few of them.”

“May I look at them?”

“Of course. I even painted something for you to take with you on your journeys. Something to remind you of me.” You showed him the painting. It was small, a miniature portrait really, but the detail was exquisite. It was a painting depicting the exact spot you met, more specifically, the tree you fell out of and the surrounding area.

“This is beautiful. Looking at this, I can feel as if I’m actually there. You know, some works are so familiar. Looking at them is like being home again.”

“That's a nice music box you got there.”

“Most of my belongings I could bear to leave behind. I sold almost everything I owned to get my passage to come here, but this… Never. It's one of the few things I brought with me from the States. I will carry it with me everywhere I go.”

“What’s that little song playing?”

“Do you like it? A man composed it for a young violinist he once knew, a girl of infinite beauty and sensitivity. So far apart in age, yet a pair of misfit beauties they were. I can see why they both ran to the other. As for this… A remarkable painting by the hand of an even more remarkable painter.”

“You flatter me, sir. But I’m so happy you like the painting. I was thinking of you when I painted it. I knew you’d be able to tell.”

“Why do you always call me ‘sir’? You know my name.”

“Well, perhaps if I saw you oftener than once every two or three months. When you happen to be passing through.”

“If you think it’s on my way, you’re mistaken. When I left Spain my tour required I proceed direct to Paris. So…you see?”

“Then take me with you, please. You promised.”

“My dear, an attractive woman doesn’t go to Paris. She lets Paris come to her.”

“Meaning you, I suppose? You are so wise and so clever. Paris is a good place for a new life. I believe Paris is where you go to reinvent yourself. Will you be returning to Sacramento, Mr. Masters?“

“For God’s sake. Jim. Call me Jim. Please. Mr. Masters was my father.”

“Jimmy,” you said teasingly with a smile to match.

Jim laughed but then turned serious. “No. Jim.”

“All right. Jim,” you said, liking the way his name sounded on your tongue. “I better get going. My sister, Fanny, is waiting on me. Goodbye, Jim.”

“And when may I have the pleasure of seeing you again?”

“When Paris no longer comes to faith,” you teased him again before walking off.

Since he was heading out soon, he offered to give me a tour of the city.

“I was just going.”

“I’ll walk home with you. I’m afraid I’ve neglected my gentlemanly duties too long. Maybe I ought to go in and say goodnight to your old man and sister, huh?”

“Now listen. If you’re going to come around here to see me, you’ve got to promise to be friendly with my father, but not too friendly with my sister. While I want her to like you just as much as I want Dad to, she’s the pretty and sweet one of the two of us. We’re twins, but we’re nothing alike, you see. I wouldn’t be surprised, but I’d be greatly disappointed in you if you fell in love with her at first sight.”

“Who says I’m coming around to see you?”

“Who says you’re not?”

“Are you a natural brunette?”

“Practically. A chocolate rinse now and then.”

“I’m taking the boat out tomorrow at six. The main wall.”

“I’ll be there.”

“If you’ve got a good book, stay home and read it.”

“I don’t like reading. I was never much good at it in school. I couldn’t stand the snobs with impeccable taste. Still can’t. These people say: ‘I'd rather a good book than a shallow person’. They could cry over the plight of a fictitious character but they shamelessly insult real people because real people are ‘shallow’ and according to snobs these ‘shallow people’ don't deserve to live.”

“You don’t like reading? But last time we met, you told me about a science book you liked.”

“That was an exception to the rule. I can read, but only because of the efforts of my former psychiatrist, David Jaquith, and his wife, Charlotte. Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before. I prefer spending my time doing something and actually experiencing it, instead of reading about it in some book. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think so. In that case, I guess…I guess I should let go of this. I won’t need it after tomorrow. Just one final reminder of bad memories I can do without. You can take this. I've already read it. If you read this and tell me what you think of it, that bad memory will become a good one.”

You looked at the cover. “Pulp horror fiction?”

“Yeah…sorry.”

“No, not at all! It’s my guilty pleasure.”

“Mine too. This one's great, You ever heard of Henrik Creighton?”

“I can’t say I have.”

“Oh! Well he—”

“Wait, we’re getting off-topic. Why did you mention taking the boat out if you don’t want me there anyhow?”

“All right, all right. Be there. Make that five instead of six. And uh, better bring your book along.”

“I’m sure there’ll be no need. You’ll have plenty of stories to tell me.”

“Don’t forget my jacket! It might get chilly later on,” Fanny called after you just as you were about to rush out the door for your…outing…with Jim. You didn’t want to call it a date. It wasn’t a date. Just a tour around town with a friend.

“You’re a darling. Wish me luck.”

“Aren’t I going to meet him?”

“What? And have him wonder why he picked me? No, you’re much smarter and better looking than I am. I’m only the intuitive one. We’re going out for dinner afterwards, so you don’t need to wait up for me.”

“I’ll wait up. If I want to.”

“And what will you tell Father when he asks?”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll handle him when he gets home. Although you might have to tell him something when you get back. The truth, preferably. I might not wait up for you, but he undoubtedly will.”

“I don’t know why I’m making such a thing of it. You’re right. I could tell him the truth and he wouldn’t mind very much. He’d be happy I have a friend here.”

“We better not waste any more time dawdling. Isn’t Jim waiting for you outside?”

You gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “You’re right! Gotta go!”

Out the window I could see the weird gigantic hill that was also visible from Jim’s motel room. He revealed that it's his secret base of some kind since few people actually visit Wakeforte Park and the surrounding area. He jokingly said he could take me there when I’m old enough. After dinner, Jim dropped me off at home and drove off. The second I went inside and closed the door behind me, Fanny was there waiting for me. She was sneakily watching me and this mystery man of mine from the window and now had a million questions. It was impossible to keep anything from my sister.

“Yoo-hoo! Hey, anybody home? Fanny, where’s Father? Isn’t he home? Is he asleep?”

“No, he’s still in Kreuzberg. There was a mixup and he has to take a later train. He called to tell me he’d be home tomorrow and to let you know. Lucky you!”

“Fanny, don’t tease.” Your admonishment was more playful than serious and Fanny knew that.

“Why, darling sister, who is he? Where’d you meet him?”

“Look, Fanny. I met him five or six months ago, but I’ve really only known him for two weeks at the most. He travels a lot. When we do meet, it’s mostly by chance. Well, he just came back last week. He's so handsome.”

“Where’d you meet this time?”

“He was with Mr. Hunneker. He drove up in a great, big, gray car.”

“Mr. Hunneker? As in Hamilton Hunneker, the Polo player?”

“That must’ve been the one.”

“Sister, you say the handsomest...”

“Well, make that the most distinguished.”

“Is he tall?”

“Well… Yes and no.”

“Is he young?”

“He’s young enough.”

“And he’s rich?”

“He is as poor as one might imagine an itinerant philosopher to be. Yet, as the hours go by I see that he is unfailingly generous to me. I am grateful to have a friend.”

“What did you say his name was again?”

“Jim. Mr. Jim Masters.”

“He can’t be so very rich.”

“He’s comfortably moderate in his money, But he’s rich in knowledge and experience. He asked me to go sailing with him Friday night. I accepted.”

“You didn’t?”

“I did.”

April 1935

I got some materials from my first choice in the mail today! I really want to be a college freshman at the Roski School of Art and Design in Southern California! If I got in, I’d be so, SO HAPPY! Dad, I’m going to work my ass off and be the best daughter ever! Thank you so much for everything!!!

May 1935

I’m so stupid sometimes. I was telling Jim that I was applying and hoping to get into my summer college program thing, and I was all making plans, telling Jim he should come visit me, stay in my dorm room. But he said, “Darling, I leave on June 6th.” I was like... “leave? You’re going? To where?” He said, “To Peru! What did you think I was doing all that stuff for?” I guess he’s been planning to continue his journey. And I guess he’s really going to do it. So I said, “I’m just... never going see you again?” He said, “Let’s just have fun while we can.”

May 1935

I asked Jim what he had to do to get ready for his trip to Peru. He said, “Not a lot, really. As a rule, I don’t allow myself to bring too much with me— the more I carry, the more slowed down I become. I have only a few possessions, but unlimited contact with the outside world while I’m…on the road, so to speak. I just wander every day. And then I keep on wandering from there.” So.. he’ll just go away. To Peru and then… to who-knows-where. The other side of the country? The other side of the world? My mind can't process it. That he’s really going to be... gone. Just gone.

June 1935

Jim had his going-away party with me tonight. He’s so incredible... When he was telling his stories, I could practically forget...everything... That we only had forty-eight hours left... That I don't know what comes next... That I can’t live without him. Then, he dedicated the last story...to me. And I couldn’t take it. I was out on the curb in the alley, sobbing till my ribs hurt. I would follow him anywhere. But I can’t, not where he’s going. After a long time he found me. He said he was sorry. He said, “I wish things could be different. I just wanted to make you happy.” I said, “I don’t think you can anymore.”

June 1935

We agreed our last night together would be our happiest ever, and we’d forget tomorrow was going to come at all. It worked for a while— We had a good time seeing Gabriel off, then ran up to the attic to look through our photos, to find one for Jim to take with him...and looking at them, I realized they were all in the past, and there wouldn’t be any more, and I didn’t know what I was going to do, and I cried, and he held me. He said he knew it was hard, but life would move on. I said I didn’t want my life to keep moving without him. That’s when he cried too. I was so exhausted, I must have fallen asleep like that, in his arms. In the morning, I woke up, and I was finally alone. I thought I found my happily ever after, but it was all a dream. I have to get out of here. I want to disappear. But where would I go? This is all a bad dream. This is all a bad dream. This is all a bad dream.

Darling,

Meet me at our secret place in Wakeforte Park. You know where. I need to see you one last time before I go to Peru. From there, I’ll go to Greece to make myself worthy of you. Be assured, my darling, it is you I want, and not your family. Please, do not do anything we will regret. Just in case I’m held up and can’t get away to meet you in time or something, I will leave a message for you with your sister so she can give it to you. It’s a puzzle, a sort of belated birthday gift for you. In that puzzle, you’ll have to visit both yours and my favorite locations in Switzerland. In each location lies a clue that I had written on the wall of the building exterior. The clues, when put together, will point to you the location of your gift. I thought it was a neat idea. I like vexing your brain, because when you are thinking real hard, like when you’re trying to capture the perfect shot or drawing the perfect subject, you are more beautiful than anything in the world. You’re always drawing in that sketchbook, looking so intense. While I’m gone, you can keep busy by looking for what I hid. Start by using this piece of paper to mark where all the rock pictures are. They will tell you what to do next. Your favorite flowers, start keeping them in mind too. Find my hidden treasure, darling. It’ll explain everything better than I could before.

Your friend,

Jim

June 1935

Dear Miss Skeffington,

After carefully reviewing your application, we regret to inform you that we are not offering you admission to Roski School of Art and Design. We realize that this decision may come as a real disappointment. We also hope that you will understand the decision as a reflection only of the extraordinary talent represented in our applicant pool, not a judgment about your own abilities. This year’s pool of applicants was the largest and most accomplished we’ve ever received, making our decision very difficult. Although we’d like to extend admission to all our applicants, we have limited space in each admitted class. Of the more than 19,000 individuals who applied to Roski School of Art and Design, most are fully capable of doing successful work and making a unique contribution to the Californian community. It is painful to us that we must turn away so many superbly talented students. You may be tempted to ask what was lacking in your application. In truth, it is usually difficult for us to point to obvious weaknesses, when so many applicants have demonstrated real achievement and potential for the future. Our decisions say far more about the small number of spaces available and the difficult choices we make than they do about a candidate’s personal and academic promise. While regretting that we were not able to respond positively to your interest in Roski School of Art and Design, we want to wish you every success in your educational pursuits. Experience suggests that regardless of our decisions, most of our candidates will be welcomed by other outstanding colleges. We acknowledge the time and energy put into your application and congratulate you on your academic accomplishments. We invite you to reapply in the future and extend our best wishes for the coming year.

Best regards,

Roski College Admissions Team

All that hard work was for nothing?! No way! I can't stay here! I can't be stuck here in New York with Mother!

June 1935

Jim is gone, and I can’t stop reminiscing on the time I spent with him. It all happened so fast. I was outside in the park reading when Jim appeared out of nowhere (again). He said “hello” and I started telling him how I actually enjoyed the book and how I never read the same book twice in my life.

“Well, I’ve come to entertain you. I’ll read aloud, and you can listen. I do love to read aloud.”

“I’d rather just talk, if you don’t mind.”

“But this is German romantic philosophy! We throw off all our constraints and come to know ourselves through insight and experience. But it got out of fashion now.”

“Not in the Skeffington family, I’m afraid. It’s just that there comes much emphasis on perfecting oneself.”

“Ah! This gives you a problem?”

“I’m hopelessly flawed.”

“If only we could be ourselves without perfection, like your poet, Walt Whitman, who rides up and down the streets of Broadway all day shouting poetry against the roar of the carts. ‘Keep your silent woods, O nature. Your quiet places by the woods. Give me the streets of Manhattan.’ I think we are all hopelessly flawed. Oh, no. I love to talk, too. Very well. Let’s talk.”

Ten minutes later we were passing Bess’ Bakery. Home of the world famous Belgian waffles. “You’d find no better waffles than in Belgium itself,” said Jim.

There was also a gym across the diner. Fanny hated those kinds of places because they were teeming with creeps. I found my own POI: a bookstore! It was weird seeing a bookstore and a gym standing side by side though. At the end of the tour I finally got to taste that sweet Belgian waffle Jim worshipped. I miss Bess’ Bakery. Fanny never shut up about its doughnuts when we were children. The doughnut shop was her MUST GO TO place. Personally, I enjoyed the blancmange we’d get at another little shop. It was soft, so it would slide down easily. So tasty. But the doughnuts DID taste sweet. Just like Jim’s heart. Each bite was another memory to savor. But just like a doughnut, it had an expiration date. It turned cold and bitter. I miss its warmth. I miss its sweetness. I need it. I need to eat it up.

Why? Because after all those months, I just can’t forget about what used to be the light of my life. (I know. Overdramatic, much?) Resonating with Jim as much as I did is bound to leave that big chunk of residue. Let’s just say this diary is what’s left of our relationship. I miss him. Even when I’m with him. I see him. Even when he is not looking. As the time we spent together grew longer, one question kept on growing with it. What does the ME in Jim’s eyes look like? Does he see me as I see him? Does he see me as I see myself? Does he see me as I want him to? Things were so much easier back then. Jim could just say, “Hello”, and I would say “Hello”. Nothing but spending time together after that, with the occasional visit to Wakeforte Park. We had such a good thing going.

Every time I was around Jim, my head spun faster than a tornado. I didn’t “get” Jim sometimes. Like, his walk and his talk and everything were all “anti-authority,” but he said he was in JROTC and did drills in perfect formation, following orders, no question. He went to join the Army and had to lie about his age, about who he was. He said, “they didn’t need to know what they didn’t need to know,” like it was no big deal. This coming from the man who punched a man so hard the poor bastard was knocked out cold to defend my honor... I learned when to stop arguing though. I don't think Jim “gets” Jim sometimes. The person I saw depended on who he was talking to and what he wanted. He could be everything from invincible to vulnerable, albeit with a new story of each new situation. He had an infinite number of childhoods. His parents were happy, divorced, fighting, abusive, or dead. His father had been a banker, a road digger, a burglar, or unemployed. His mother had been a drunk, a politician, a Sally-home-baker, or a tart. He was an only child, the last of eight, brought up in a foster home or the heir to a fortune. Part of me wanted to walk away, but I was the only one he could tolerate. Why? Because I never asked to see behind his ever-changing disguise. Inside that body was a kid, a kid locked in at some emotional age far younger than his forty-something exterior. I’ll never know what happened to him but, whatever it was, it just stopped his development at that age. It was a one-way friendship, I knew that, but he needed someone.

July 1935

At night when I kneel to say my prayers I rest my elbows on the hope chest Uncle Fred gave me for my eleventh birthday. “We’re going to make a family someday, just you and me,” you’d said. Inside that chest are our dreams, Jim. I’m keeping them safe on my end, so you do your part over there and we’ll be right as rain soon enough. Moving on won't be easy but as long as I keep myself busy it won't be that hard. As for my weekend plan... I’ll just improvise in the morning. Write you later!

“Doesn’t it feel odd to have the rooms back? And only asked to sit in them. I suppose we’ll get used to it.”

“I don’t want to get used to it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know what it is to travel now. To walk around for a full day, to be tired in a good way. I don’t want to start dress fittings or paying calls or standing behind the guns.”

“But how does one escape all that?”

“I don’t know yet. Oh, Fanny, truly I don’t know if I could ever be good like Father. I rather crave violence. But I’m not dreaming of hitting anybody. I’m just unhappy.”

"Then you’d better have your tea while it’s hot.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said before. You’re not just as shitty as them. It’s just that I feel very lonely and overwhelmed. But I love you. I’m just unhappy, indeed,” you sniffed. “If only I could do like Father did and go to war and stand up to the lions of injustice.”

“And so Mother does in her own way. And Uncle George, with his charities.”

“Yes. But I want to do something different! I don’t know what it is yet, but I’m on the watch for it.”

“You’ll find it. And thanks for the apology, sis. I know it isn’t ideal living in this house… But I’m here for you, no matter what.”

“No matter what, huh? Let’s both go back to bed, Fanny. I’m tired.”

“Sure. Goodnight.”

July 1935

Let’s see, Dad. I hope your dear friend can help a girl out. Come on Corporal Mark Pearce, I’m counting on you. Ahem. ‘Dear Miss Skeffington, my dear, I remember your father well and am forever in debt to his many sacrifices in the name of freedom. He was a frank man, so you’ll forgive me for being frank when I say that he'd have a conniption if he knew I put his sweet girl in the line of duty.’ W-what? Fa-Father would be proud of me! I’ve had more conniptions in my first twelve years of life than Father has had in his entire lifetime! Oh, well. No point in having one over the first rejection. If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Back to the drawing board.

July 1935

Aha, the WASPs! Boy, I’d like to slip into the cockpit of a Twin Beech! ‘Thank you for your interest in the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots. Unfortunately, all of our WASPS must be at least 21 years of age, at least five feet and two inches tall, in good health, in possession of a pilot’s license and 500 hours of flight time. Our records show you do not meet all of these requirements.’ Well, that’s just FOOLISH! I’m a fast learner and… Oh. No use crying over spilled milk! Once more unto the breach!

August 1935

From the office of Harold Perkins. Oh yes, the fellow from the local recruiting office. Surely they’ll have something for me to do overseas. ‘Dear Miss Skeffington, We appreciate your numerous requests to be placed in the field, but believe me when I say the most action you’ll see is from behind a desk.’ Excuse me? ‘I’m sure you’re a top notch typist, so why don’t you come down to the Boston—’ Typing? I wonder what an itchy trigger finger would do to a girl’s word-per-minute. Oh, cheer up! Miss Skeffington, you’ll get there yet. No point in being all down in the mouth. Mother might begin to suspect something. She almost did at dinner. “Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk. You’ve barely touched your plate, my love. Go on, have some more,” she said. She’s got a point. My body needs the vitality for action.

August 1935

To trust yourself when all doubt. To lead from a danger only you can see clearly. To explain enable the blind to see. To give people the power to hear the extraordinary in the ordinary, the everyday and normal encryption of the spoken word. To show them the messages and conversations that happen all around us to different levels of the brain. That’s quite the challenge. That’s quite the challenge when, until you can prove it, they will think you mad and threaten you with the consequences that come to the insane. To speak and risk the twisting of the knaves of sophistry. That is what they ask. Last time I complied I almost died. I almost lost everything for nothing. So, tell me again why, tell me why this is the time, because even if it is now or never, I won’t act unless I can win. I know more than most what these adventures into the world of the saviors costs...and the cost is never to myself alone. You know what? I do trust myself. I do. It’s every other bastard out there I don’t trust. This is a world of monsters. So many monsters.

Those bastards. Kraut…bastards. You don’t belong over there. I do! When I find that gun I’m going over there and there will be hell to pay! Oh, for Heaven’s sake, where is that gun? Now, Dad, don’t you fret. I’ll find that gun lickity split. No soldier worth his salt ought to carry those shoddy government-issued pistols. Plastic handles? Pshaw! Give me checkered walnut any day. Practice, practice, practice. I don’t need fancy tools to disassemble a gun. See the cartridge here as a screwdriver. Just like Uncle George showed me. Next time, we should get a stopwatch and have some fun.

September 1935

Women’s Army Auxiliary Corp, you’re my last hope. ‘Dear Miss Skeffington, thank you for your enthusiasm. While we are always eager for more Women’s Army Auxilary Corp, we are unable to offer you—’ …malarky! Fine. Let’s see what I can do at home. At the very, VERY least. I won’t— I won’t be deterred. Perhaps I could appeal again to Mark. He might listen to reason.

September 1935

Here it is, my last shot. Come on. ‘Dear Miss Skeffington, I’m not sure what you mean by being “ready and able” to fight. You’re five foot nothing, and a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. How could you ever hold your own against a German brute? Think about holding down the fort instead. Think of the good you can do with a victory garden and a can drive. I’m sure a nice girl like you could certainly help out at the…women’s club bake sales downtown…’ Why won’t anyone give me a goddamn chance?

September 1935

I haven’t really been in a good mood since this morning. I got a letter at breakfast, but I didn’t have time to read it or even see who it was from since my schedule for the whole morning was filled. I left it in my dresser drawer to read later, and didn’t think much of it. It was midday by the time I got back. I’ve tried to lose myself in my art, but I’m not feeling it. Maybe it’s because Mother and I argued this morning? Probably not. We’ve clashed before. I’ve known for a long time we value different things. I just couldn’t stand Mother’s preaching attitude so I yelled back at her. I know I shouldn’t have done that but I’m so frustrated. She said that I’m not trying hard enough. What does that mean? I pressed her to keep talking, but she wouldn’t tell me anything after that. Is it because the Orwood girls teased me? I doubt it. They don’t know me. They’re just taking their issues out on someone. As awful as this morning was, this afternoon is looking up! Jim has written to me, and he’s coming to New York - more specifically, to Charles Street! Thanks to me, he heard about Mother’s advertisement for a new chauffeur that was put in the paper. Also thanks to me, the position still hasn’t been filled. Fingers crossed neither of us fall at the last hurdle and Jim gets the job!

Miss Skeffington,

It seems my luck has finally turned around. I received a phone call from the Silver Star Line, and it turns out I won a trip…to New York. I’ll be boarding the flagship Silver Star next week, and will soon be crossing the ocean to come see you. Or rather, your mother for a job interview. Hang tight, I’ll be on my way in no time. I can’t wait to see the look on your face when you see me!

Your friend,

Jim Masters

“Mr. Masters calling on Mrs. Skeffington. He’s here for an interview.”

“Oh, for the chauffeur position. Of course. Won’t you come in, Mr. Masters?”

“Thank you, I will. Hello, Mrs. Skeffington.”

“Hello. Let Clinton take your coat.”

“Thank you.”

“Let’s have some tea. How many lumps?”

“Uh…two, please.”

“Well, Mr. Masters, now do tell me all about yourself. Of course, I know all about your school and how you ran away to join the army. But before that, what?”

“Well, I used to live in San Francisco with my parents—”

“San Franscisco? My cousin, George, lives around there. I went to California when I stayed with him, you know.”

“Really? When?”

“During my pregnancy. Of course, at the time, I didn’t know it would be twin girls.” The mere mention of it brought forth a memory to the forefront of Fanny’s mind. A memory of Job. She tried to think of something or someone else but, once it began to play out, she couldn’t stop it.

“You’re laughing at me again. I suppose I’m just as fond of children as anybody else. Well, it’s just that... It’s just that babies grow up, and everybody expects you to grow up with them.”

“You’re not afraid of growing old, are you, Fanny?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, babies stay young for quite a long time.”

“Other people’s babies, never your own. Do I look puffy yet?”

“You look beautiful, Fanny.”

“I don’t know why. My face is all tear-stained.”

“Just enough to be becoming.”

“Well, I wanted to keep on crying, but I didn’t have the strength. You see, the sedative the doctor gave me made me very drowsy. Job, George is going to California in a week. I want to go with him and have my baby there.”

“You don’t want to have your baby in this house?”

“No.”

“But, Fanny, you love this house so much. Why, when we were married, you made me give up my home and live here.”

“Of course I love this house, but it’s too close to my friends. Soon, I’ll be all swollen and puffy and ugly. I don’t want anybody to see me like that. I couldn’t bear it. I won’t have them see me all swollen and ugly.”

“You’ll never be ugly, Fanny. And I don’t care how swollen you look. Fanny, a woman is beautiful when she’s loved. And only then.”

“Nonsense. A woman is beautiful if she has eight hours' sleep and goes to the beauty parlor every day. And bone structure has a lot to do with it too.”

“But I’m so busy in New York, and California is a six-day train trip. I won’t be able to see you very often.”

“I’ll write you every week, Job.”

“Fanny, that’s not the point. I want to be near you.”

“I’m so sleepy.”

“All right, Fanny. You can go to California if you want to. Fanny, aren’t you really happy about having...?”

Wanting to dispel the visions of Job and his sad, brown puppy dog eyes from both her mind and her sight, she quickly changed the subject back to what it was before. “Did you and your parents get on?”

“Yes, we got on very well. I’m an only child and, after my father died, I started to work for my mother as a sort of companion. Oh! And what a nervous, fidgety soul she was, too. Well, anyway, my mother had rheumatism, and the doctor thought, baths. Oh-ho, not that she hadn’t got baths. She had a very nice one in her house. Did you go to the baths while you were in California, Mrs. Skeffington? I mean, for your rheumatism.”

“I haven’t got rheumatism.”

“Oh, neither have I, but, you see, I figured baths wouldn't do me any harm, that is to say, while I was there. But I’ve always wanted to go to Europe. Not for the baths, of course, not at all, but for my writing. It's so good for writers. You see, my mother— Oh, but you don’t know my mother. What were you going to say, Mrs. Skeffington?”

“I wasn’t going to say anything. And I’m not Mrs. Skeffington. Not really. My husband and I divorced years ago, but I still go by his name.”

“I see. Well, Mrs. Skeffington… How are you getting along without him?”

“Oh, fine, fine, once I got used to it.”

“And your daughters?”

“You know, my daughters are... Well, they’re all right.”

“But they could be better?”

Around thirty or so minutes later, Jim emerged from your father’s office. You had been loitering outside, pretending to keep busy with drawing in your sketchbook so the servants wouldn’t question or bother you.

“How did it go? What did she say?”

“Your mother asked if I would like to be the chauffeur. She said your last driver wants to spend more time with his grandchildren, and is planning to retire. I have by the end of this week to decide.”

“And?”

“It’s a good opportunity. I’d get a raise in salary and I’d get to travel around the country. I think I’ll say yes.”

November 1935

It’s been almost two months since Jim first began driving for us. Instead of getting a taxi, Jim drives me. I know how to drive, I have my license, but this is one of the few times we can be together. Though we planned this scheme together, and I recommended him for the job under false pretenses so Mother would be none the wiser, it still feels strange that he’s the chauffeur and is technically below me. Social status serves as an invisible barrier between us when we’re in the company of others. As he’s driving, we talk freely as we always do whenever we’re alone together. I’ve been opening up more to him, telling him about the struggles I’ve been faced with, my rocky relationship with Mother, how I really dislike the confines and limitations of high New York society. I expressed that, despite having a successful art career, I felt empty and tired. Jim said that he wished he could do more to comfort me, since I’m going through so much right now. Sometimes, he will give me some suggestions when I ask what I should do. Other times, I just want someone to listen to me. Mostly, I am just happy to be with him. If only we could confess to everyone how much respect we have for each other, how much we admire each other. We’ve confessed to each other every opportunity we get, in different ways. I wish we didn’t have to hide, but keeping our friendship in secret will have to be enough for now.

“Hey, look, who’s taking you to dinner tonight?”

“Jeremy Clarkson.”

“Well, couldn'’t you speak to him?”

“I guess I could.”

“And who’s driving you to town tomorrow?”

“Matthew Jones.”

“Well, couldn’t I speak to him?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“And who’s taking you to dinner tomorrow night?”

“Brenda Jenkins. But nobody has to speak to her. We don’t like each other, so she probably won’t want me there, either. She was probably pressured into sending me an invite.”

“In that case, would you like to have dinner with me?”

“Oh, I’d be delighted.”

“Shall we go to the Waldorf?”

“Not the Waldorf. That’s where I’m not having lunch with Brenda Jenkins and her friends.”

November 1935

I told Mother and Uncle George that I was going to a double feature with Ann Lemp and that I wouldn’t be home till the morning. That’s only the half-truth. I did go to a double feature, but it wasn’t with Ann. Only Fanny knows who I was with. Afterwards, Jim and I crashed at a nearby motel. There was only one bed to sleep on, so we shared it. We kept our clothes on, only taking off our shoes and jackets so we’d be comfortable. He slept on top of the covers while I laid under them. The lights went out... I was turned toward him... My eyes started to adjust, and then I could see he was looking at me, too. In the dark, he smiled. My heart was beating so fast. I rolled over, I felt so... I don’t know, nervous? After a minute he put his arm around me and turned me back to face him, and he was so close, and whispered in my ear, “I really do love you, you know. In a way I thought I’d never love again.” I just nodded my head and I really hope he could tell. I really hope...that he meant what I think he did.

“Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in.”

“Oh, Fanny! It’s only you. You startled me.”

“How was the double feature?”

“It was good, though I don’t remember most of either film, to be honest. We got distracted.”

“It’s past lunch time. You must be starved.”

“What makes you think I didn’t have any dinner or breakfast?”

“Well, you were out with Jim Masters. If you got potato chips, you were lucky. I saved you some leftovers. Turkey leg’s in the kitchen. If you’re hungry.”

“It’s beautiful. Can’t be Manby’s work. It’s too neatly arranged.”

“Manby did the cooking. I did the assembly.”

“Thanks. Mother very much worried?”

“No. I told her you’d be a little late because you had gone to Selena’s to do some shopping this morning. You called while she was out, and since it’s Sunday and the servants’ day off, I answered the phone.”

“I don’t understand. Why did you lie?”

“Mostly from force of habit. Although I did rather gather that Mother wouldn’t be too pleased if she knew that you were out with Jim.”

“I see. I can understand Mother’s attitude, though. You can’t grow very fond of a daughter you’re always trying to keep on a leash and out of trouble. She keeps herself separated from the servants, always strictly professional and impersonal. She expects the same of us. She doesn’t know Jim the way I do.”

“Of course not.”

“You saved this food for me, and you lied for me, and you like Jim. You sure nobody’s home?”

“Nobody.”

November 1935

A week passed since my movie night with Jim. Fanny and I were looking out my second story bedroom window at Jim, who was out on the driveway, working on one of the cars.

“There he is. Fanny, stand back a little. Well, I'm glad he's a man. Certainly would like to know a man for a change and have a little fun.”

“Don’t let Mother hear you say such things.”

“Hello! Good afternoon!” Jim called up to you, raising his arm to wave at you.

“That dreadful man, he waved back.”

“You’re every bit as bad as he is.”

“I know. I wonder how I could get to know him. I wish we had a dog or a cat, and it would get lost and he’d bring it back, then we’d get to talking...”

“I don’t think that’s very romantic.”

“Who said anything about romance? I’m going to go down. I’m going to talk to him.”

“And if Janie Clarkson or one of her friends catches you? What will they think? Stopping to talk with the chauffeur.”

“I don’t care. Anyway, Janie and her friends weren’t very friendly to Jim. They wouldn’t even say ‘good afternoon’ or ‘hello’ to him whenever they saw him when they passed by our house.”

When I came out the front door and walked down the driveway to meet Jim, he was wiping his hands off with a cloth.

“Miss Skeffington. Why do you sit at your window looking out at me when I’m working on the driveway or in the garage?”

“It’s my family’s property, and I can look out as much as I like.”

“I saw you. I waved to you, but you didn’t wave back.”

“I was embarrassed you caught me. It's rude of me, I know, but you always seem to be having such a good time. When I watch you work on cars, it’s like looking at a picture and I want to commit it to memory. I wish you could come inside. Then you’d be a part of the picture. But Mother mightn’t approve. She doesn’t believe Fanny or I should be too friendly or overly familiar with the staff. How muscular your arms are when you roll up your sleeves, your skin glistening with sweat from the summer sun as you comb your hair back from your forehead with your fingers while you pop the hood of a car to tinker with an engine…”

“Miss Skeffington.”

“Oh no. Did I say that last part out loud?”

“You did.”

“I’m sorry. My mouth has run away with me again.”

“No, Miss Skeffington. It’s your mouth that has me hypnotized.”

“Watching you just reminds me of when we were in Europe. You asked me to see a wrestling match with you and stay over at your friend's place in the city after. That was a lie-to-Mom-and-Dad situation. But it was sooooo worth it. The men in the arena were just so big and muscular and sweaty, and everybody was moving together like one intricate dance. Between two matches you leaned over and said, ‘how do you like your first wrestling match?’ I was so happy I felt tears starting in my eyes, and then you up and hugged me. I think you could tell I was crying.”

“I could, but I didn’t want to say anything and ruin the moment.”

“Sometimes you just have to lie to Mom and Dad, just like we did last week. You know, I’m going to tell you something. Everybody in this neighborhood likes you, except for Mother and her followers.”

“Isn’t your mother and her followers practically everybody?”

“Exactly my point. In fact, there’s a popular front against you. Mother formed it last night, and it’s made up of her circle of so-called friends, lovers, and their envious wives.”

“Guess I deserve it.”

“I don’t know about that. Maybe you do and maybe you don’t. But I don’t feel the way Mother does. If you ask me, I think you’re all right.”

“Do you?”

“I’ve always had a lot of fun talking to you. You know, you’re not such an ogre after all, no matter what they say.”

“In fact, I have a couple good qualities if you look deep.”

“You certainly do. You’re very understanding and you like Fanny and Dad. That definitely shows a lot of character. I wouldn’t be surprised if we became more than good friends after a while.”

I’ve felt like a shook-up can of nerves ever since. I hope we have a chance to talk again before I explode.

December 1935

Mother wasn’t home, something about doing some Christmas shopping, so Jim made an excuse and came into the house today. He came into my room and said he had a note for me from Fanny, just something to get past Soames. I told Soames I could manage from there and dismissed him, and then Jim and I were left alone. But everything was...different. He was sitting at my desk chair while I sat on my bed. He wouldn't look at me. Finally I asked him what was going on. He said he felt like he’d done something wrong that night in the city, that I must think... But I said no, there was nothing wrong. I just wanted to say... But I couldn’t find the words. I felt like I was going to cry, but I wasn't sad. He got up and sat next to me on the window seat. I looked at him. “Jim... do you...think...you could ever...” And that’s when he kissed me. A kiss should be the simplest thing in the world. Not this gentle stirring, like wind through the underside of leaves, inexorable as the glacier grinding behind us. So hot and yet it doesn’t scorch. No, with every breath, with every touch, his kiss carves.

January 1936

It’s different now. I mean, we still see each other all the time like before. But now when no one else is around...well, you know. So you COULD say we’re dating. But it’s secret. Secret dating? I don’t know. I mean I guess that’s the real difference: Now, when we get off the phone, or go home for the night...or it’s just quiet and we’re alone...we say, “I love you.”

March 1936

Mother’s birthday is next Thursday, the 12th. Instead of celebrating on the day, she’s hosting a birthday ball at the house this Saturday. Probably to ensure she’ll have the largest turnout possible. She’s invited everyone, even me and Fanny. Weird that she sent for us so she could tell us this HERSELF instead of having Soames, Clinton, or Manby do it for her. Even weirder is that she wants either of us there. Surely she wouldn’t want us, reminders of Father, to be there? I was expecting her to ask us to go to the theater again or make some other excuse to get us out of the house so that we wouldn’t take any attention off of her. Heaven forbid one of us talks to a man for more than five minutes while she’s in the same room. We’re her daughters, yet we’re seen as competition to her. Normally whenever she sent for us, she recited the same script along the lines of, “I wanted to explain to you and your sister, Fanny... l’m giving a dinner party on Thursday for some very old friends of mine. And I’m sure it would be a frightful bore for both of you. You understand? Why don’t the two of you go to the theater? I hear there are some very good plays now.” and we’d take that as our cue to make ourselves scarce. We’d always say, “Oh, yes. Yes, of course we do. All right, Mother.” After all, I reasoned that Mother, who considered herself a very sensible woman, was soon going to have a fiftieth birthday, and on reaching so conspicuous, so sobering landmark in one's life, what more natural than to hark back and rummage, and what more inevitable, directly one rummaged, than to come across Father? Perhaps it was the highly unpleasant birthday looming so close that set her off in these serious directions.

“Good morning, Mother.”

“Good morning, girls. Come in. What sweet dresses.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“You don’t think, perhaps, they’re a little old for you?”

“You sent for us, Mother?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I wanted to explain to you, girls...l’m giving a birthday ball on Saturday for myself and some very close friends of mine. And I’d like you and your sister to attend.”

“Would you really, Mother?”

“Yes, very much. A lot of my friends have sons and daughters that are around your age. It’d do you both some good to mingle a little, make friends. Do you understand?”

“Yes, of course we do.”

“Mother, do I really have to go? There’ll be all those people,” you asked, your voice laced with anxiety.

“Oh, it would hurt my feelings if you stay in your room or go elsewhere. Besides, dear, you must learn not to be afraid of people.”

March 1936

St. Mary’s is an old school and very well respected. Though Mother didn’t care for it. She wouldn’t, even if it was where Georgia O’Keeffe herself learned to paint. I teach nice young ladies to paint. What could be more respectable? I only kept it a secret because I knew she’d be angry and/or disappointed. She found out about it the same afternoon as Uncle George, so she thought my contempt for them both was at least consistent. But I don’t have contempt for anyone. “George, why didn’t you stop her?” she asked, to which he asked in return, “Me? What could I have done?” It doesn’t seem to bother Uncle George that I teach at the school, or Fanny. Mother tried to tell me that the people in charge at the school feel sorry for me, that’s all. She’s wrong. Not everyone is as cruel and mean-spirited as her. I said as much. “Is it cruel to mind it when you stamp on our name and drag it in the mud? Now, get out of my way!” she huffed, and stormed off. Neither I nor Uncle George made a move to stop her. She just needed time to cool off and get used to the idea. I suppose in any other circumstance, I’d have to drop it. But I won’t. I’ve given my word to the headmistress, and I’m not going to break it. Things may be uncomfortable, but so what? I won’t be put in a cage! Soames came in and asked if everything was all right. He heard our shouting, which is unusual in this house. It... It was unusual, yes. But every now and then, I wonder if it isn’t good to shout a little and let off steam.

“Masters, when you’ve finished unloading, run down to the school and remind my daughter that we expect her here for dinner. And tell her I mean it. Really. She’s working herself to death like a canary in a coal mine.”

“I think she enjoys it though.”

Fanny turned around to put him in his place. “Please tell her to come home in time to change.”

Jim nodded grimly and returned to the car.

“I can’t possibly come! Really, Mother is incorrigible!”

“It’s not poor Masters’ fault.”

“But what is the point of Mother’s soirees? What are they for?”

“Well, I’m going out for dinner tonight and I’m glad. Is that wrong?”

The sudden act of courtesy was enough to leave me frozen. But to think of it, a self-conscious beauty queen like her would love showing off how ‘tolerant' she could be. I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness. I’d prefer celebrating quietly with her in her room, but since the party is practically being held for her and she is my mother, I thought it would be somewhat rude of me to not be there. Maybe I can use this birthday party as an opportunity to sneak away out the back door and spend more time with Jim. He has been nothing but sweet on me since Mother hired him, so the least I could do is show up, make my rounds of saying hello and exchanging pleasantries and engaging in idle chitchat with a few of the guests, then make my move. It’s not like anyone would miss me. I know Mother especially wouldn’t. Maybe…just maybe I could even piss Mother off if I manage to strike conversation with Jim. A Skeffington spending the entire evening with the chauffeur? Mother would be beside herself, fuming about how I mess up her ecosystem. No peer pressure, Miss Skeffington. Just clean drinks and hopefully some casual talk with Jim. What could possibly go wrong?

You finished your hair as Fanny entered.

“Mother said you were honoring us with your presence at dinner.”

“It’s easier there in the school. And I can always get changed back into my painting clothes if I need to. This stuck-up thing. Oh, dear. It shows.”

“I don’t know what you’re going to do.”

“I’ll blend it right in. I can do it with just a few strokes of the brush. Splendid. I’ll stick to every chair in the place.”

“I thought if I pinned this bow over it—”

“A bow? There?”

“I’m sorry, darling, but you’ll just have to sit on it.”

“Sit all evening?”

“You could stand if you’d keep your back to the wall.”

“You’d better hurry, girls,” your mother said as she came in to check on you. “Guests are arriving.”

“Oh... Oh, how I hate to be elegant.”

“Oh, how I detest rude, unladylike girls.”

“And I hate affected, niminy-piminy chits.”

“Oh, the dress is lovely, darling. Just lovely.”

“Oh, thank you, Mother, for letting me wear your velvet and pearls.”

“They’re old, but you’re young and very pretty.”

“Oh, thank you, Mother. Well, my shoes are too tight, and I have nineteen hairpins sticking in my hair and a curling iron burn mark on the back of my dress, and I feel dreadful.”

“Where are your gloves?”

“Here. They’re stained with lemonade. I don’t think I’d better wear them.”

“Why, you must. You can tell a lady by her gloves.”

“Not this lady.”

“A lady barehanded? You have to have gloves. You can’t dance without them.”

“Ha! I can’t dance and keep a back to the wall anyway. I’ll crumple them up in my hand.”

“At least wear one of my nice ones and carry one of your ruined ones.”

“Oh, all right.”

“Don’t stretch it. Your hands are bigger than mine. Don’t eat too much. Wait until you’re asked. Don’t be afraid, darling. Have you and Fanny got clean handkerchiefs? And don’t put your hands behind your back or stare. Don’t stride about or swear. Don’t use slang words, darling. Vulgarity is no substitute for wit, and wit is very fashionable at the moment.”

“All right.”

“And please don’t talk about Europe all the time. And especially don’t mention Cascade. You’ll embarrass me and yourself.”

Though she didn’t bring it up by name, I could tell she was referring to that infamous dinner party, when my unpleasant characteristics became especially evident, where I, unknowingly to myself, embarrassed her by singing and playing badly. I was only a child then, and was regarded as the plain-looking sister. Though much more sensible than my mother, I was still considered to be very silly by her peers. Despite the fact that my father was studious and once described as the most accomplished in the neighborhood, I lacked genius and taste.

“And stop whistling. It’s so boyish.”

“That’s why I do it.”

“I just want to make things easier for you.”

“For me or for you?”

“Don’t disappoint me, darling. Not now that you’re here.”

“Not to worry, Mother. I’ll be prim as a dish. Let’s be elegant or die!”

“Oh, so boyish.”

“Mother, you’re perfect.”

“Oh, thank you, darling. And you. Aren’t you the pretty one? Walk toward me, darling, that I may appraise you. Go on. Walk to me. Stand up straight. Turn around. Shh. Mm, yes. Oh, it’s quite as I expected,” she said. “You know, you’re very tall for your age.”

“Really? But, Mother, I’m nearly... Well, yes, perhaps I am.”

She placed her hand under your chin to cup your face. “You possess a woman's chin. Skin is a little dull. Have you not noticed? Observe her mouth, Fanny. And as for you, darling, now that you turn up your hair, you should realize you’re a young lady. My daughter...a woman. She’s beautiful, isn’t she? She’s going to be a stunning woman, don’t you think, Fanny?”

“Yes, she’s going to be.”

“I’m not! And if turning up my hair makes me one, I’ll wear it down or in two tails till I’m ninety. I won’t grow up and be Miss Skeffington. I won’t wear long gowns and look like a China aster. Oh, I’ll never get over my disappointment of not being a boy, and look at me! I’m dying to go and fight like Father did in the last war. Fine soldier I’d make. And here I am sitting and knitting like a poky old woman.”

“Knitting. Bless me. Poor you. Almost a lady. You must spend less time with the neighbor boys, and more time with me.”

You’ll never guess who I bumped into as I left the party that night. Oh, Fanny, it was meant to be. It was so perfect. There I was, weeping on the terrace, and there he was, Jim. He waited outside so he could give me some time without going too far.

Jim heard heels clicking on the garage floor and glanced up from the car engine. He did a double take as he saw you in your evening gown. You tilted your head shyly, waiting for him to say something. It was the first time you wore a dress since you were a baby.

“Don’t you dare laugh.”

“You look very fine.”

“Everything I own is trousers and shorts. Too boyish, according to Mother. Usually if I have to wear a dress or a skirt, Fanny lends me something. Mother lent me this dress from her season before the previous war. It’s very old, but she wants me to try to wear it out. If you ask me, it’s already there. Yards of fabric and I still feel naked.”

Jim continued to check you out.

“Where have you been all day?”

“Nowhere. I’ve just been busy.”

“I thought you were avoiding me.”

Jim walked purposefully forward. “Of course not.”

“But you haven’t come up with an answer yet, have you?”

Jim ducked his head and stared at the floor. “Not yet, I’m afraid. I know you want to see the world and play your part in its troubles, and I respect that, but… I have a lot weighing on my mind, and I need to sort it out before I can make a decision about us just yet. It won’t be long until I give you an answer. So, will you wait?”

“I’d wait forever.”

“I’m not asking for forever. Just a few more weeks. Darling, there’s something you should kn—”

“I’ve been thinking about us lately. Of course, I don’t want Mother to know that I deserted her so quickly so, if anybody’s around, you don’t mind if I act sort of cool and distant? To keep up appearances. Do you know how it is?”

“I certainly do. I understand perfectly.”

“Why are you smiling? I thought you’d be angry.”

“Because that’s the first time you’ve ever spoken about ‘us’.” Jim smiled with a sigh of relief and leaned forward to kiss you, but you held back.

“Yes, you can kiss me, but that is all until everything is settled.”

“For now, God knows, it’s enough that I can kiss you. The rest will be worth waiting for.”

You smiled at his reply and shared a kiss.

“In the meantime, you act as snippy as you like toward me so your mother and everyone else will think the front is still on.”

“Good. We’ll just act as if we never had that talk or shared that kiss. You know what I mean?”

“I know what you mean.”

“This can be good enough for us. It has to be good enough for us. I envy you. I feel so flat after the rush and bustle of the last two or three years. They were all sighing for the old days at dinner, but all I could do was think about how I wish everything could’ve gone back to the way it was in Europe, about how much more I want from life now than I did then. I wish I knew how an engine worked, for example.”

“I can teach you, if you like. But it’s very late. I think you’d better go back inside now, sweetheart.”

“Oh, please. Please, I can’t go back inside. It's dull as tombs in there. This is by far the most boring party I’ve been to in the last seven or eight years. Every time I go to one of these, l ask myself: What the hell am I doing here? I hate cocktail and dinner parties and all the schmoozers that come here.”

“Well, it’s a chance for all those people who admire your work to meet you.”

“No one gives a damn about art. All they care about is how much money they're gonna make out of it. They’re here for Mother and only Mother.”

“Are you sure it’s not too chilly for you out here?”

“Oh, no, I’m quite comfortable, thank you.”

“Does your mother know you’re here?”

“No.”

“Won’t she and the others worry?”

“They’re all so excited, they won’t care where I am. Come on, let’s have a drink! All the excitement of this whole thing has made me thirsty, so I brought a little pick-me-up. Shall we have a nightcap?” You pulled out the bottle you had stashed and hid underneath your dress skirts. Dresses could have their usefulness, you supposed.

“Scotch, neat as usual?”

“No. Bourbon.”

“Okay! But you know what your doctor would say...”

“Yeah... Well, he can kiss my ass! I’m old enough to choose my own medication.” Forsaking a glass, you took a small sip straight from the bottle, not caring how unladylike it looked, and then passed it to Jim as you leaned against the hood of the car together. You looked up towards the night sky from the open garage door.

“Why the fuck did I come back here?”

“Here?” Jim was, of course, referring to the garage and looked around. “To…drink?” He took a drink and handed you the bottle back.

“Back to New York.” You took another sip. “I spent the first twelve years of my life trying to get out of this place. And I succeeded. I should’ve stayed in Guatemala even after that school program ended. Sure, they got volcanoes and kudamundis everywhere…”

“What’s a kudamundi?”

“It’s like a little raccoon thing. They get into shit. People hate them.”

Jim took a swig when you passed the bottle. Instead of passing it back, he held onto it. “So is that what drove you back to New York? Kudamundis? Up in your shit?”

“No. It was the unrest in Germany. Dad thought maybe Fanny and I’d better come back here to Mother. We wrote her we were coming, from Berlin. But she never received the letters. I guess the censors must have confiscated them. We wrote her what we thought about the Nazis.”

“The Nazis. Yes, of course. Did your father come with you? I haven’t seen him, so I did wonder…”

“No. He’s still in Berlin. The Nazis don’t frighten him, but they frighten us, so...”

“So here you both are.”

“Here we are. It’s not at all the way I pictured it. It’s been done over, hasn’t it? Fanny and I were the last people Mother was expecting to see. Fanny…” you grabbed the bottle from him and took a long swig. “She’s the good one. When we were twelve, she got this binder where she planned out her whole life, and I swear to God, she’s going to stick to it. Bullet point by bullet point. Job, husband, house, kid. And when one sister is so on top of her game, it almost demands the other become a fuck-up, right?”

“What is ying without yang?”

“That’s how I see it. In Europe, she was off, doing life. And I was doing…something else. Backpacking, mostly. Surfing couches. Bumming around.”

“You did good getting off that boat when you did. St. Louis is dull as dishwater.”

“Jim, do you ever think of the old days there in Wakeforte Park?”

“Now and then, in the shower or in the car.”

“I felt quite at home there. More than I do here. Even back in New York, Fanny and I… We’re still like we were when we were kids. She will invite me places every once in a while. For the big events. Wedding. Baby shower. I’ll always say, ‘Sorry, sis. I’ll get the next one.’ But I never attend any of them. Too awkward. Too ashamed.” You took another swig. “I came back for Dad, and I’m staying for Dad. It’s weird living in someone else’s shadow. When the light shines on your life for the first time, it doesn’t look too good. Here I am. Nearing twenty. No roots anywhere. Except New York. So I figure I’ll make something of myself. I apply for college, hoping I can enroll somewhere to get a degree, then I tried to enlist in the war effort by applying to every branch and organization that accepts women... I wanted to do something my dad would be proud of… but I got rejected by all of them…” You trailed off and nearly fell asleep on your feet. Jim had to steady you before you collided face-first with the concrete floor of the garage.

“Um... You probably had enough to drink for tonight. A bit too much. My darling, you must be very weary to have drank so much. I’ll get you some water, help you to your room…”

“No, I can’t go to bed. Not yet.”

“You must, darling. I brought you a gift.”

“A gift?” His words had your attention for about three seconds, but you turned towards the sound of the front door opening. “There’s Mother and Manby now. Must be time for cake and presents. I better get out of here.”

“Let me walk you to the door at least.”

“It’s not that far. I can make it. Goodnight, Jim.”

“Goodnight.” He then stopped you for a moment so he could whisper in your ear, “And I give you leave to look in at me whenever you like.”

After you went inside with your mother, Manby walked towards Jim with a raised eyebrow. “I guess that irresistible charm of yours didn’t work on Miss Skeffington.”

“I’m saving it for you, Manby.”

March 1936

Oh, man… everything’s gone wrong! All my senses are screaming in pain. I don’t even remember drinking that much booze! Am I really such a lightweight? I had a tray sent to my room and slept in, but the pain only escalated the moment I came down after breakfast and Jim asked me, “Are you feeling okay?” No, I was not okay, and WHY IS JIM ASKING ME THIS? Did I do something to him?? It’s so unfair how because he’s a man and his body is built differently, he has a higher tolerance for alcohol than I do. He drank more than I did, but isn’t affected by it at all! According to Jim, I went from being quiet to crazy-happy and cute (his words, not mine) real quick. I was so close to being the center of the party that he had to bring me back to my room when Mother asked him to. We went upstairs to my bedroom and I wanted to wait it out, to make my triumphant return to Jim after Mother’s friends had left and everyone had retired for the night and fallen asleep. But my body had other plans, because I fell asleep minutes after my head hit the pillow. I didn’t even bother to change out of Mother’s dress and pearls. Why can’t I remember any of this??? Congrats, Miss Skeffington! You’ve reached a new low in life! Shit, is this how I die? I sincerely asked Jim if there was a good place to kill myself before I died of embarrassment. He said, “Maybe now would be a good time to show you my other secret hideout. Consider it an early birthday present,” since I passed the test by showing the whole room of Mother’s admirers and “friends” a different me. Is he seriously going to take me to another secret hideout of his?? I’m going to the Red Fern Gardens, the so-called most romantic place in New York with Jim (according to him). There’s something in my head that’s keeping me awake. And it’s not the hangover.

March 1936

Oh my god! Jim actually took me to the Red Fern Gardens. The hideout he mentioned was on a hill and had a wonderful view of the city. The whole place under the golden sunset. The best part of this spot was that it is quite hidden and unsafe. You could easily roll down the hill if you are careless or drunk, and no one could find you for days (how awesome is that?). Luckily, enough time had passed and most of the Bourbon had left our systems. I could tell the worst of its effects had worn off, but I still felt a lingering tingle or warmth in my blood. But being drunk in that wonderful moment didn't cause any accident, though. We sat there for less than an hour but it felt like an eternity. I can't even remember what we talked about. I do remember, saying how beautiful The Red Fern Gardens are and Jim being all indifferent about it. I guess you can get fed up with views like this too. There’s a motel nearby, so we have decided to make it our secret hideout from now on. That’ll turn it from something ordinary to something really special. Mother is uninterested in me, which should keep Jim and I safe. She won’t ever know that we are secretly meeting.

Today’s only regret is that I failed to bring the true essence of the Red Fern Gardens back with me (Photography can only capture so much. There’s so much more that can be seen with the human eye). At least the close up shot of Jim was not half as bad. When I came back down from the hill, it became clear that my life just became a bit more messed up now. I know because I really want to talk to Jim again soon. I know I promised myself to stay away from people, stay away from the drama. But when I look at Jim, when he talks to me, it feels like, maybe, just maybe it’s okay to have a little drama for myself. I'm not ready to define what this feeling is, but for now, I’m going to label it as ‘looking for a hand to hold' and just shove it under my bed just like the pictures I took. Help me get to sleep quickly today, Diary.

March 1936

Mother passed the crisis last night. Manby called Henri’s Beauty Salon to get Mother everything she’d… ”need”. He’s very familiar with Mother’s hair, so he’s made wigs for her. He’s also given her a face pack, muscle oil, wrinkle cream, tissue builder, massage cream, eyelashes, and astringent. She’s home now. She looks so…so…different.

“That must be Mother now.”

“Welcome home, Mrs. Skeffington.”

“Thank you, Clinton.”

“Darlings. Fanny, dear.”

“Hello, Mother.”

“Georgie, I had no idea that you were here. You know, it's heavenly to be back home again. Manby, shouldn't you go and see that the luggage is taken care of?”

“Yes, Mrs. Skeffington.”

“Georgie. This is such an unexpected pleasure.”

“Fanny, my dear.”

“Welcome home, Mother.”

“Thank you.”

“We’ll have some tea, Mother.”

“Oh, I think that would be delightful. Oh, this looks so cheerful after that depressing rest home.”

“Notice how Fanny arranged the flowers?”

“Oh, how sweet of you, Fanny. They’re perfectly lovely.”

“Sit here, Mother. Let me help you with your coat.”

“All right. You know, I’m not really such an invalid. Well, wasn’t it just like me to contract a child’s disease? Georgie, I look dreadful, don’t I?”

“Fanny, you could never look anything but adorable.”

“You’re lying. I know perfectly well how I look. But after a few weeks' rest I’ll be quite recovered.”

“Of course you will.”

“Henri saved my life. I don’t know what I would have done without him. He’s so clever. Of course, here I am, chattering on about myself. Fanny, what have you been doing?”

“Oh, nothing very much, Mother.”

“Have you seen Johnny Mitchell?”

“Yes, I’ve seen him.”

“How is he?”

“Oh, he’s just fine.”

“And what are you up to, darling?”

“Nothing much. Drawing and photographing. I don’t have time to get up to anything else.”

“Only, Fanny and I were talking about you. You know, the other day.”

“Oh?”

Your sister looked at you, just as caught off-guard as you were. She hadn’t spoken to your mother once throughout her illness. From across the couch, she looked at you with wide confused eyes and mouthed, “I didn’t say anything.”

“Yes, you see, sometimes in war, one can make friendships that aren’t quite…appropriate. And can be awkward, you know, later on. I mean, we’ve all done it. I just want you to be on your guard.”

“Appropriate for whom?”

“Well, don’t jump down my throat, dear. I’m only offering friendly advice.”

“Darling, I never said anything to Mother, honestly.”

“I believe you, Fanny. How could you have done? She didn’t want any visitors. But why did she suddenly start talking about inappropriate friendships out of nowhere? Could she be hallucinating?”

“She thinks you must have a beau, and if we don’t know about him, then you have to be keeping him secret. It’s just Mother being Mother. Don’t make such a thing of it.”

“Fanny, you know how Mother is not exactly... super open-minded about things. It feels like every minute I don’t spend with Jim, I spend worrying about her finding out about us. And what would happen if she did...”

April 1936

I don’t get it. Why would Mother suddenly forbid me to be around Jim? Is it because he’s not rich? Or because of our age difference? Is that why she also forbade us from seeing each other? Mother is so judgmental and hypocritical! She doesn’t want me to be near Jim, saying that I should find someone who is closer to my age and of the same class as me. What does that even mean?? Who determines what class Jim is in? Did she find out about us? Does she know we’re in love? Did she talk to her friends? Did those odious women say something to her and get into her head? Jim didn’t say anything to me about it. Maybe he doesn’t love me anymore? Or maybe he doesn’t know about what Mother said yet? I feel so confused.

I’m not too young. You’re just jealous and angry. You’re so accustomed to hogging all the men, but now that they’ve all left you with no thought to return, you can’t stand seeing me happy and in love with a man of my own choosing. If you can’t have a man who loves you, I can’t either, Mother? Is that it? This is all your fault. Everything. You're a heartless bitch. You STOLE my only friend from me, my place in this world, ALL of it. And you don’t even care. I’m invisible to you. I fucking HATE you. You’re not talented! You’re not special! You wasted your life away, and then came out of nowhere, suddenly decided you wanted to try your hand at parenting and ruined EVERYTHING! FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF!!! Get the fuck out of my life, you puffy, over-perfumed PRIMADONNA!!

I hate Mother for trying to stop me from seeing Jim. And I hate her even more for going so far as to drag John into it. John doesn’t deserve to be mixed up in this mess that she’s created. None of us do. She must be out of her damn mind if she thinks I’ll ever walk down the aisle or say “I do”. My engagement with John is just for show. I know it, John knows it, Jim knows it, and Mother knows it. When I mentioned to Jim that she seems to be really bothered by the name Nan or Nancy, he tensed up. I could tell by the way his hands gripped the steering wheel and flexed. When I asked if he knew her, he told me he did, and that he’d tell me about her and about himself, but not now, not in the car. It’s a conversation that requires the both of us sitting down. I let the subject drop for now. Nothing he could tell me could stop me from loving him.

Jim was there. He’s always been there. When you cut your knee from falling out of a tree, when you sobbed at night in a room you didn’t recognize, and when…you kissed him in the garage during her birthday party. You had no interest in men whatsoever and suddenly now you’re staying out late into the wee hours of the morning with a man more than twice your age?? That moment, Fanny got tired of doing nothing. You were in trouble. Jim was not for you. She didn’t know how to explain it, but…his presence here added to his enchantment. Somehow you thought your father’s charm glowed in him. It wasn’t George’s fault, but his stamp of approval was on Jim. If he stayed here, you’d run off with him, she was sure. And then he’d do to you just what he did to his first wife. Somewhere out there, there was Nan, Fanny thought, another woman who felt like she did that day she discovered Job’s infidelity with his secretaries. Nan was young and stupid when she married Jim and when she divorced him. It happens. She’s not the first girl to have been taken in by words that evaporated as soon as they were said, but it still hurt Fanny to see you, her daughter, potentially put yourself in the same situation. Did you even know about his past? Could you even begin to comprehend what life was like for Nan and those four girls after he scooted off? Jim was the cause of that woman's anguish. What do you—

She was sure you were headed for the same misery even now she couldn’t bring myself to describe, and you would assuredly wind up with a broken heart yourself because of him if you carried on as you’ve been doing. Fanny knew she couldn’t prevent that and, if Jim were to break your heart, you might not be as strong to cope with it as Nan was. But if your heart was to be broken, it wouldn't be because of her. She’d do the pleading now with Jim. If he really loved you like he said he did, he had to leave. Leave, and never come back. Only then you would know your place. It was looking more and more like George might’ve been right. She had to invite Jim herself. As you and Manby were downstairs in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on a meal that you would undoubtedly take most of the credit for, Fanny knew she had to make the best of it. You were all going to have a wonderful dinner, and you would appreciate what she had done, even if you didn't know the half of it.

“Masters— that is, Jim... I must see you. Will you come to the house tonight? You needn’t stay but ten minutes. I must talk to you.”

“Anything wrong, Mrs. Skeffington?”

“Maybe. I don’t know yet. Could you come over for dinner tonight?”

“Whose invitation? Yours or your daughter’s?”

“Mine this time. Say, seven o’clock?”

“All right.”

“Good.”

As soon as Jim set the phone down, he heard a knock at the door. Who could that be? It couldn’t possibly be you, and you were the only person he would’ve expected. When he looked into the peephole, he was taken aback and took several steps backward. What was she doing here? He hadn’t seen her since… He thought that maybe if he didn’t answer, she would go away. But when she continued her persistent knocking after a few minutes of silence, he was proven wrong. It seemed that she would wait him out, no matter how long it took. Having no other possible escape route and no other choice, he took a deep breath and braced himself before opening the door.

“Hello, Jim.” She stepped past him into the room. Jim said nothing as she looked around, only stared at her in silent astonishment, disbelieving that she of all people was really there. “You’re awfully quiet, which is so unlike you. Don't you recognize me, Jim? Look hard. Look into my eyes. You called them the most beautiful you'd ever seen once, a long time ago.”

“I’m afraid you’re making a mistake.”

“No, Jim.”

“My name is—”

“Don’t pretend. I know who you are.”

“And who am I?”

“You’re Jim Masters, My ex-husband.”

“Your ex-husband? My dear woman, Perhaps if you’ll tell me who you’re looking for…”

“Oh, stop it. I saw the picture In the newspaper announcing Miss Skeffington’s engagement to Sir John Talbot. But I couldn’t help but notice you in the background, looking at the couple, or more specifically, her, your eyes filled with jealousy and longing and…something else I dare not name.”

“Nan. What are you doing here? You’re an awfully long way from California if you’ve only come to see me.”

“I had to come to see if it was true. It is.”

“What are you talking about? What’s true?”

“I can’t explain it. I only know it’s happened.”

“What’s happened? Nan, what are you implying?”

“You’re going to marry someone else, and leave her, just like the way you left me.”

“Oh, Nan. Nan. You misunderstand. We’re not—”

“Jim, it’s wrong. You can’t go on hurting people.”

“Nan—”

“I can’t let you marry her, Jim.”

“Nan! Would you just listen to me for a second? I know what you must be thinking but, as I said before, you misunderstand. Miss Skeffington and I aren’t getting married. Not anytime soon, at least.”

“You’re not? But you love her.”

“Yes. And she loves me.”

“And you want to be with her.”

“Yes. And she wants to be with me.”

“So, what do you have in mind?”

“Nan, this is hardly the time and place—”

“No. You must have something in mind. Otherwise you would not be conspiring to run away with her.”

“How do you know about that? Who told you?”

“Nobody. I just know you, Jim. It’s the kind of person you are. Flighty, running away from responsibilities… So what will you do to make a living? Do you think you’ll go on ringing doorbells trying to sell streamline refusCans and she will wait till you’ve scraped enough pennies together so you can be married?”

“If you must know, yes, we do have a plan. I’ve got a job on a paper. I’m a journalist now, but I’m not a fool. I’ve got brains. I could go into business. She could pursue her art career and work on commissions, sell sketches and paintings for money. She could have everything she wanted.”

“Young men’s talk. Oh, you would still want to give her those things. But you don’t know Mrs. Skeffington if you think she’d let you do it.”

“Of course she wouldn’t want me to run away with her daughter. Would you, if you were in her shoes?”

“No.”

“I’ll stay here at the inn until she’s ready to make her departure. I don’t want to cause her unnecessary stress by pressuring her to get a move on. She has important matters to attend to involving her family and Sir John Talbot. Loose ends to tie up.”

“Loose ends to tie up or ties to sever?”

“Nan, don’t be cruel. You can insult me all you want, I know I deserve it and more after everything I put you through. But don’t insult Miss Skeffington’s intelligence and independence by insinuating that she has no idea what she’s getting herself into. She may not be very book smart, but she’s an emotionally intelligent woman who can make up her own mind. She’s not a mindless doll to be molded into what I want her to be, only to get thrown away as soon as I get bored of her. I’m many things, I’ll admit it, but I’m not her puppetmaster, stringing her along and playing with her feelings. I’m not manipulating her thoughts or actions in any way, shape, or form. She knew very well the risks of carrying on with me. It took a long time, but eventually we built trust between each other and finally there came a day when I felt I could tell her everything. So I did. About you, about our daughters, about what my lifestyle has been for the past twenty years, what a life with me would truly entail. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I urged her to think through the implications, and I gave her all the time she needed. She listened intently the entire time. She thought about it long and hard and, in the end, she realized the pros far outweighed the cons. She’s made her choice. I did nothing to sway her one way or the other. So don’t for a second imply that I’m forcing her to give up her family. If they want to cut her off, that’s their decision. It’s not her doing, it’s not her fault. Nor is it mine. I know nothing I can say can convince you of my sincerity. To you, I’m a monster. But to her, and to myself, I’m a man. I’m just a man who’s in love and who is loved in return. Everything I feel for her, and everything she feels for me, is genuine. As soon as she comes to me, as soon as she lets me know she’s ready, we’ll go.”

“Go where?”

“I don’t know yet. Anywhere. It doesn’t matter. We’ll figure that out when we get there. The point is, we’ll be together.”

“So she’ll live with you? Unmarried?”

“Sure, why not? Nan, we’re not in the 1920’s anymore. The world has changed. People have changed. Many unmarried couples live together nowadays and nobody bats an eye at them. It’s much more practical, and not just from a financial standpoint. Don’t go clutching your pearls and acting aghast as if it’s too scandalous of a prospect. Many couples do it now as a sort of compatibility test, to see if they can actually stand living together before marriage. I’d never do anything to jeopardize Miss Skeffington’s reputation or put a black mark on her.”

“But this plan of yours… The worst of it is, you’d never know her disappointment. She’d never reproach you by a word or a look. But you’d always know what you’ve done to her life and so would she.”

“Well, let’s look at the other side of the picture, Nan. You say I can’t be with her. I’ll get over that, I suppose. But what about her? She gets excited about all my crazy dreams, but what happens to her dreams?”

“Well, you can run away if you want to. But listen, Jim. You couldn’t make her or anybody else happy. Do you know why? Because there’s only one thing in this world you’re good at. And that’s making people miserable.”

“Ahh. Don’t give me any of that paper cover philosophy. You listen to me. I quit selling whale’s teeth because of her. I wear ties because of her. I watch my English because of her. Well, look, I even went to work because of her. She has reformed me, and I’m not giving her up. Thank you for coming, Nan. Though I wish your visit had been under different circumstances, it’s good to see you. And thanks for all the things you didn’t say. You might’ve pointed out the beautifully poetic justice of a man deserting his family twenty years ago and being deserted by them in turn. Or you might’ve thrown together a few matsims, sins cast upon the waters, coming home to roost. Or you might merely have reminded me this is my past catching up with me. A final accounting. A case of delayed bookkeeping. You might’ve said all these things. But you didn’t. I don’t know if my prayers get much attention in Heaven, but they’re not just for Miss Skeffington. Of course, I thank God every day for how He made her, but I still have prayers for you and Sam, and the girls and their families. But I think it’s best you leave now. As much as I’d love to stay to chat and reminisce on our shared past and what we used to be, I have an engagement this evening.”

“What sort of engagement?”

“I have been invited to dinner by Mrs. Skeffington. Goodbye, Nan. I’ll give your regards to Chief Mahabu when Miss Skeffington and I are on the other side of the world.”

Instead of driving to the Skeffington residence, Jim instead opted to walk there. It wasn’t very far from the hotel, and Nan’s unexpected visit, though he wouldn’t go so far as to say she was right in her arguments, had still managed to shake him up. Though he hated to admit it, he was having second thoughts and could use the air to clear his head. But while he was walking, he could see a group of women up ahead, a circle of friends no doubt gossiping amongst themselves as he passed by them. Janie Clarkson was among them, and she had her legs crossed and was tapping her fingers on the armrest of the porch swing she was sitting on. Her hair was even neater than usual and her dress was new. She looked up from her magazine, smiling in that tense way she did when she was about to vent. She put her magazine down gently and smiled just the same way she did for her friends. They never knew the difference, but Jim did.  “Did you hear about Rodger?” she began, her attempt to keep things light already waning.  “Oh, no. What about him?” Mrs. Ridgefield took another sip of her coffee, trying not to lose all of her lipstick on the rim. “He got his PhD last week, he called me, all excited. Those three letters just mean he wasted three years of his life and is massively in debt.” Then, despite the rising tension in her voice, she snickered. “What a fool, eh?” Mrs. Ridgefield pursed her lips. She'd known Rodger a good deal longer than Janie and he'd always been a sweetheart. Not her type, but as far as friends went, he was a keeper.

With no other alternate route available to him to avoid the women, Jim squared his shoulders and kept walking forward towards the Skeffington residence, straight into Janie’s line of sight. As expected, as soon as she and her friends noticed him, she, though she didn’t greet him with so much as a “hello” or “good evening”, changed the subject to him. She was none too subtle as she purposefully spoke at a volume that let Jim know she wanted him to hear her conversation.

“Look, Gladys, Sir John Talbot is being announced.”

“He would be punctual.”

“That’s his car. Isn’t it a beauty?”

“It looks paid for. I’d still like a white horse.”

“Gee, Vera, an open car. It will muss Miss Skeffington’s hair up every which way.”

“No, it won’t. If she’s sensible, she’ll wear a scarf.”

“Well, what do you think of that man of hers? Miss Skeffington’s friend who's coming for dinner, Mr. Masters?”

“I’ve heard about him.”

“You have? I see. And have you reached a verdict?”

“Yes, I have. I think— Never mind. I’ll be quiet again.”

“I don’t like the way my color looks plain. Has anybody got a bright red lipstick? Mine’s grown anemic.”

“Here, I believe this is for the lips. Make yourself beautiful for Alan.”

“Oh, I didn’t think of that. Maybe I better blacken out a couple of teeth. Now what do you think of him?”

“We all know what to think of him. The problem is how to get rid of him.”

“Why? Is he staying? Say, Fanny isn’t going soft on him, is she?”

“I don’t think so. She didn’t say a word about doing such a thing.”

“But Fanny must be planning to accept him, make him one of the family.”

“You’re talking nonsense. Miss Skeffington is engaged to Sir John Talbot.”

“Do you think Mr. Masters is interested in her too?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Instinct.”

“Fanny’s also got it into her head that he’s interested in her daughter.”

“Mr. Masters seems to like her enormously. I think he may be, but I question his motives. He hasn’t been here for a while, has he?”

“No, he hasn’t.”

“And I know why.”

“Are you going to enlighten us?”

“She must be planning to dissolve her daughter’s engagement to Sir John in favor of Mr. Masters.”

“I’m not so sure. Miss Skeffington is determined on a love match for herself. She wants to be happy. But Fanny has big dreams for her daughter. If she was going to dissolve the engagement, why announce it tonight all of a sudden? She would never put Masters in the class with Sir John Talbot. She will be a very rich young woman with him. If I was in Fanny’s shoes, I would have felt very guilty selling Miss Skeffington to that Masters. She deserves better than a fortune hunter. Or shouldn’t I say that?”

“You can say it to us.”

“And if anyone plans to marry her for money, he’ll need much more to offer than Jim Masters.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I know his kind like a book. He’s the ‘I-sold-papers-when-I was-a-kid-now-look-at-me’, type. I’ve got Miss Skeffington’s type neatly cataloged, too. Any bets? At any birthday party, she’s the sort that always piped up with: ‘I-never-had-a-birthday party-or-got-a-present’. Isn’t that right?”

“From what I can find out, he must be a fine one. It was a pity he backed off when Fanny had that trouble with her illness.”

“Maybe he thought she’d be too busy to bother with him.”

“You mean he wasn’t sure she’d survive the scandal.”

“Why? What’s he done?”

“I heard he has a daughter by his former maid that he refuses to provide for. Sent the maid and the child away to fend for themselves and live off scraps before the girl even popped.”

“Who?”

“That Masters.”

“Ha! I didn’t know the old fusspot had a child. Was it really born out of wedlock?”

“Mm, that’s not true. You’re talking nonsense. That’s quite enough on the subject.”

“You really think Sir John Talbot is worthy of all this here fuss?”

“Why sure he is, honey-child. Sir John Talbot has got money and lots of it. What Fanny wanted when she married was butlers like the Rawlings, with servants to order around. Now she wants the same for her daughter.”

“Then why allow another man in the house? I know the choice of husbands is eccentric in that family. They already claimed a Jew and soon they can boast a chauffeur, but even so—”

“Did anyone notice his eyes? They’re rather nice. Blue.”

“What are you doing? Defending him? Give me a piece of tissue.”

“Just because I happened to say he had nice eyes. Read your history. Some of the foulest people had the nicest eyes.”

“Well, I noticed them. They’re only fair.”

“Besides, they’re not blue. They’re brown.”

“Well, you’re crazy. They’re blue—”

“Oh, why are you always—”

“Now wait a minute. We’re not getting any place. What we need is a plan in case he intends staying.”

“Why does he stay? A man who’s wandered around the world all his life. You’ve got too much powder.”

“Whether he plans to stay or not, we’ve got to get rid of that-that indescribable monster as soon as possible.”

“Right.”

“Now wait a minute. I’m still not trying to defend him, but after all, I don’t think we ought to call him an indescribable monster. We don’t really know him.”

“All right. If you want me to, I’ll describe him. But the hair will be blue.”

“I dislike him just as much as you all do, but didn’t he fight in the last war?”

“First he ran away from his family.”

“That's the bravest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

“They couldn’t trace him anywhere. When they did find him, he was in an army hospital, wounded. He’d joined up under another name and lied about his age.”

“How perfectly splendid.”

“All right. That entitles him to one more night’s lodging. That better?”

“Much better.”

“But if you ask me, he’s got to go.”

“We don’t need a definite plan. All we’ve got to do is show him that he’s not wanted. We’ll freeze him out.”

“Freeze him out? Not with a man who’s been to Siberia.”

“It’s agreed then. We’re to keep the popular front against him ongoing, with or without Fanny. And nobody weakens.”

“Nobody. Gladys?”

“Nobody.”

“And in case anybody does begin to feel sorry for him, remember our motto: He shall not pass.”

“Well, I should be off.”

Jim entered the drawing room purposefully. Everyone stared.

“Yes?”

You tensed in anticipation.

Jim looked at your mother. “I’m here.”

Your mother got up and walked over to Jim. “I don’t think this is such a good idea. We mustn’t worry Manby.”

“You’ve asked me to come, and I’ve come.”

“Would someone please tell me what is going on, or have we all stepped through the looking glass?”

“Your maid has as much right to know as anybody else.”

“Why don’t I find that reassuring?”

“Miss Skeffington. How well you look.”

“Er, John. This is Masters, our chauffeur. Masters, this is Sir John Talbot.”

“Hello, Sir John.”

“Hello, Mr. Masters. Miss Skeffington never told me you were coming.”

“I didn’t know he was.”

“Well, the thing is, I was driving down from Rye and I suddenly realized I’d be passing the neighborhood.”

“What were you doing in Rye?”

“Oh, I was doing various car things.”

“I see. How do you know Miss Skeffington, sir?”

“Well, I don’t. Not really. But, uh, I want to. Very much.”

“We cannot always have what we want,” your mother mumbled.

“Oh, Mother, John, Masters is teasing. You know, before he was our chauffeur, Masters was our neighbor.”

“Or at least, my grandfather was. I was saying to Miss Skeffington, we should all see more of each other.”

“Maybe. Have you brought a dinner jacket?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you were very well-equipped to do your ‘car things’ in Rye.”

As John and Jim talked amongst each other, you went over to your mother and pulled her aside, speaking in a hushed tone so the men wouldn’t hear. “Did you plan this?”

“I might have said if he was coming from Rye, then he’d be driving quite close.”

“Rye is an hour or more from here. Don’t think I’m amused. I dislike my hand being forced.”

“No one’s forcing anything.”

“Just send John away! As quick as you can. For all our sakes.”

Instead, she then turned towards Jim and John, and raised her voice to grab their attention. “Now you’re here, Sir John, I hope you’ll stay the night at least.”

“Perhaps John is in a hurry to get home.”

“No, no, I’m not.”

“It’s settled then. Clinton, will you please tell Manby to set up a room for Sir John and to set a place for Masters at the table? He’ll be joining us for dinner tonight. And ask someone to unpack for Sir John.”

“Don’t tell me that Manby is the cook again tonight, Mrs. Skeffington.”

“Indeed, and why not?”

“Well, I think it’s time that I tried Miss Skeffington’s cooking.”

“Don’t worry, you will. Well, shall we sit down?” you said. Once John and Jim went into the dining room, you turned to your mother and hissed under your breath through gritted teeth, “This is so precisely not the way to win me over!”

Dinner that evening was an uneventful and uncomfortable affair. Nobody remembered anything about it except that time seemed to slow down to an unbearable slog. It was so unbearable that you, sick and tired of putting on the pretense, snapped. Whatever you said didn’t matter. What mattered was that you openly displayed your frustration as you threw down your silverware with a loud, metallic clatter and abruptly scooted your chair back. It made an irritating squeak against the fine wooden flooring as you threw your napkin on your plate and left, retreating to your room. Your plate was barely touched but your wine glass was emptied. You were so stressed that you had no appetite and were afraid that eating more than three bites would cause you to be sick and throw it all back up.

#Jim Masters x reader #mr Skeffington #now voyager #wolf man #claude rains #bette davis #x reader #daughters courageous #crossover au #crossover fic #crossover #pls tag me if you’re inspired by this #I’d love to read it

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