As we move on, Puss can’t get over the gilded garlands along the ceiling and the fountain with its bronze accents. Peggy is enamored of the tapestries, and Tessie is clearly impressed by the sienna marble throughout. Just when we think it can’t get any more grand, we see the luster of the twenty-two-karat-gold walls and ceiling in the ballroom. It’s Mamie Fish who goes up to Alva and laughs as she says, “Leave it to you not to go overboard and make this place too gaudy.” We’re quite certain that coming from Mamie, Alva takes this as a tremendous compliment.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Caroline
NEW YORK, 1893
It was a frigid January afternoon, eight months after William’s death, and a chilly draft seemed to permeate the entire house. Caroline was at her desk, tending to her daily correspondence, when Charlotte walked into the room. While warming her hands before the marble fireplace, Charlotte announced that she was moving back to Europe.
Caroline set her pen aside and looked at her daughter nonplussed. “Whatever for?”
“There’s nothing here for me in New York.” She wrapped her shawl closer around her shoulders. “I mustn’t attend any suffrage or political rallies. I mustn’t go anywhere, do anything. I’m bored to tears here. I haven’t been invited to a single ball or a dinner party in months.”
“That’s because you’re in mourning.”
“That’s not the only reason, and you know it.”
Caroline did know it. After William’s death, Caroline had sent a very reluctant Charlotte back to Coleman, instructing her daughter to beg his forgiveness. But Charlotte’s jilted husband would have none of it, and no matter how much money Caroline offered, it wasn’t enough to appease him. Coleman had filed for divorce, claiming adultery and desertion, leaving Charlotte without custody of her children and her reputation tarnished.
Charlotte dropped into a chair opposite Caroline’s desk and laughed bitterly. “How terribly ironic. I never even liked going to those things. I never cared and now, I’d give anything for an invitation to one of their silly affairs.”
“I know this has been a difficult time for you,” Caroline said to Charlotte, “but you can’t run away. And especially not while in mourning. That will only stir up more talk.”
Charlotte folded her arms, her shawl slipping off her shoulders. “Very well then. I’ll stay until we’re out of mourning. But then I’m leaving. I’m going back to England.”
What about your children? You’ll never have any hope of seeing them again if you leave. But Caroline held her tongue, taking some comfort in knowing that at least this time, Charlotte wouldn’t return penniless and end up living in a hovel. Despite William’s threats to disown Charlotte, in the end, he couldn’t do it. At the reading of his will, it was announced that William had left the house on Fifth Avenue to Charlotte, along with $850,000, the same amount he’d left to Helen and Carrie. Jack, his only male heir, had received the balance of William’s $50 million.
A log in the fireplace crackled, spitting red-hot embers that soon turned to ash when they hit the marble floor. Caroline looked at Charlotte, exasperated, and finally said, “You’re a grown woman. I can’t stop you. But I urge you to consider what you’ll be leaving behind—your own flesh and blood.”
“But I need to get away from New York. I need to go someplace where I can put all this behind me and start over.”
Caroline was still discussing the matter with Charlotte when Thomas knocked, announcing that she had some visitors. He stepped aside and in walked Jack and Carrie.
“What brings you here?” Caroline asked, pleased at first to see them until the expressions on their faces made her sit up, her heart beating faster.
Carrie closed her eyes, and her shoulders began to shake. Caroline couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying. Then Jack stepped forward, placing his hand on his sister’s arm, as if to say, Let me.
“Mother,” he said, “I’m afraid we have some terrible news.” Jack wiped his eyes with his fingers and pressed a fist to his mouth—just the way William used to do whenever he was choked up. Jack was pale, and watching his eyes glaze over sent a chill up Caroline’s back. “It’s Helen. She’s—”
“Not Helen.” No. It couldn’t be Helen. She’d just seen her.
“I’m afraid she’s gone.”
She had a cold. A simple cold. A bad cough was all . . .
“We just came from Rosy’s. She died this morning.”
Hearing it out loud made Caroline gasp. She felt she was falling and gripped the arms of her chair, holding on. Everyone was talking all at once. Someone was crying—she wiped her cheek, her fingers dry. Everything was happening outside her, and she didn’t know if time was standing still or moving too fast to grab hold of. A pool of blackness was spreading across her desk. When did my inkwell spill? She wanted to sop up the mess and began opening drawers, frantically searching for a rag that she knew would never have been stored there. Cleaning up that mess was all she could focus on. But she could no more put that ink back inside its bottle than she could bring Helen back.
* * *
—
Caroline had been shattered by the news of Helen’s death. She’d nearly collapsed that day, and after they told her, Thomas and Jack helped her to bed, where she’d stayed for days, barely able to eat, unable to think of anything but losing another child. It wasn’t natural. Children weren’t supposed to die first. Carrie and Charlotte checked on her the next day and the day after. Caroline was inconsolable.
After Helen’s death, Caroline experienced a kind of anger she’d never before known. Emily. William. And now Helen. She was convinced that God was punishing her. Her family was cursed. She feared she was destined to repeat her mother’s hell and knew she couldn’t bear another loss. For two years she dressed each day in black, her body cloaked in grief.
The first winter seemed to last forever. The long cold nights blurred, one right into another. Sleep was unheard of, and though she recalled Thomas reading to her, later on she would not be able to remember a single book, the characters or plots. Spring came, then summer, but the warmer weather only spelled longer days to endure before the cycle repeated.
It was the finality of death that she wrestled with the most. It was so permanent. Her loved ones were gone, gone forever. Looking back on those dark days, she had no idea how she’d managed to get through them. She hadn’t been living, she’d only been marking time.
Losing another daughter had certainly caused Caroline to reexamine her priorities. Life was so fleeting, so fragile, and in the grand scheme of things, what difference did it make if someone used the wrong fork, or served the wrong wine? So what if her daughter was divorced? Was it better for Charlotte to have lived a life of misery? In the end—did any of this matter? Maybe William had been right all along—society was frivolous. And yet, she was so conditioned by it, she didn’t know how to be any other way. Still, in her darkest hours, she wondered if Helen knew she would die young. When Emily passed away Helen had said, If this happened to Emily, it will happen to me, too.