Written on Your Skin (3 page)

“What?” Mama turned. Her eyes were reddened from crying. “Then what are you doing here? Go back into company. You play the hostess in my absence. And, my goodness, your hair! Have Jane fix that, if you please!”

Startled, she reached up to touch her coiffure. A bejeweled pin dropped loose into her hand. She cast it onto the carpet, a reward for whoever swept up the glass. “No, I’ve retired for the night. Mr. Monroe took ill, and Mr. Collins asked me to care for him.”

Mama frowned. Clearly, she disapproved of the order, but she would not dare to contravene it. “All right, then.” She reached up to fiddle with the locket at her throat. Her voice was thin from crying; she sounded resigned. “What’s wrong with him? Have you sent for the doctor?”

“Yes, but it may take him some time to come. Apparently, Mrs. Harlock’s baby doesn’t want to be born.” As her mother tightened her wrapper, preparing to stand, she added hastily, “Jane is with him right now—there’s no need for you to attend.” Mama tended to frailty; if Monroe really was contagious, there was no call to expose her.

Mama settled back, relief on her face. “Good. I should have hated to risk running into a stray guest.” She hesitated, then held out an arm. “Come tell me about it, then. Quickly, before you go.”

This show of interest was heartening. More and more of late, Mama seemed to move in a daze, as though her mind had detached from her flesh. Mina sat down on the chintz cushion and gave her a smile. “Well, I was speaking to Mr. Monroe—”

“No, start at the beginning. Were you the most beautiful girl at the ball?”

She rolled her eyes. “Must that always be the first question you ask?”

“I like to begin with good news, darling.”

“Well…” Mina considered the question, for in Mama’s view, it was never only a matter of looks. Her gown was costlier than any other she’d seen. The pearls at her throat would have paid for five copies of Miss Morgan’s. And the gentlemen had flocked to her; she’d been hard-pressed to sit out a dance. “Yes, I believe so.”

Mama nodded. “Miss Kinnersley is not in attendance, then?”

Mina pulled a shocked face. The Kinnersleys had recently transferred from Rangoon, where the daughter had been the reigning beauty. “Why do you ask? Surely you don’t think her prettier than me?” She leaned forward, squinting into her mother’s face with mock concern. The lines at the corners of Mama’s eyes seemed to have deepened recently. All her creams and potions would be for naught, so long as Collins drove her to cry so regularly. “So young to require spectacles!”

Mama laughed. “Don’t be silly.”

“I can’t help it. I’m a very silly girl.”

“Is she here tonight?”

“Yes, she’s here.”

“And what is she wearing? With whom has she danced?”

Mina shrugged. “Why does it matter? Are we in competition?”

“It is always a competition.” Mama’s hand on Mina’s chin drew her face around. “A woman has only three assets to trade on. Her beauty, her breeding, and, if she is lucky—”

“—her fortune, yes, I know.” Mina pulled free. Her eyes fell on the abandoned clock. The glass glittered in the dim lamplight, pretty as diamonds. No wonder people were often fooled by paste. “You’ve only told me a thousand times.”

“Well.” Mama shrugged. “In the third department, you’re outmatched, and you mustn’t forget it. That’s all I mean.”

If she had a penny for every time Mama had reminded her, she’d be wealthy by now and free to do as she liked, rather than primping herself like a prize at auction. “A pity Mr. Bonham doesn’t see it that way.”

Mama sighed. “I know you’ve gotten off on the wrong foot, but he’s a very likely gentleman, Mina. And he takes a very strong interest in you.”

Not in me, she wanted to say. In her face and figure? Of course. But she knew better than to say it. Mama would not have acknowledged a difference. Mama thought American girls terribly forward. A young lady is not meant to trade on her opinions. She could not understand the license New York society permitted its daughters. In England, a girl does not consort with gentlemen unchaperoned. It seemed that mothers made all the decisions in England, and what decisions they made were designed to crush the fun from life. If you had grown up in England, you would be drinking lemonade, not champagne. England sounded terribly tedious, and the girls there must be as boring as Sunday sermons.

The brief silence had allowed Mama to recall her troubles. She pressed her lips together and fumbled in her lap for her handkerchief.

“Did he throw the clock at you?” Mina asked softly.

Mama pressed the hankie to her eyes, then drew a hitching breath. “Of course not.”

“But he threw it, didn’t he?”

No response. Well, what did the specifics matter? If he’d thrown things away from her tonight, there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t adjust his aim tomorrow.

Mama’s shoulders trembled. The handkerchief muffled her sob.

Take her in your arms. But Mina’s muscles wouldn’t permit it. They balked and contracted like hardening clay. “I fear for you,” she said.

“Oh—” Mama cast down the handkerchief and came into her arms. She held still, feeling tears slip down her chest, under her bodice. Mama’s body shook with a grief that seemed too powerful for her frame. The cotton batiste of her nightgown disguised nothing; every bump and knob in her spine translated clearly to Mina’s fingertips. They were of a height and could wear each other’s dresses, but Mina always felt so much larger, so much more solid in comparison. It worried her, how fragile Mama felt.

She tightened her hold. The angle was terribly awkward, the two of them sitting side by side on the bench with their knees knocking. The tears soaking her bodice made her feel clammy, claustrophobic in her clothes. Mama could weep more copiously than the marble angels in the Rockefellers’ garden, the ones with the fountains hidden inside.

Her own impatience shamed her. She shifted a little, trying to make herself comfortable. But as she drew a breath to start the routine—reassurances (he did not mean it), denials (he will not leave you), promises (he will never leave you), for God’s sake all the manufactured optimism, the lies—she could not muster much feeling beyond exhaustion. You are not meant to cry in my arms, she thought. You are my mother. I am meant to cry in yours.

She tested herself. “It’s all right,” she murmured, and marveled at how kind her voice sounded. Yes, she could do it again, after all. “Shh. It’s all right.” She set her chin atop Mama’s head and stared out the window. White petals floated down from the camellia trees, eddying like snow in the moonlight. Down the mountain, along the path taken by the warm wind, the harbor lights were dying as Hong Kong settled to sleep. The sails in the bay rocked gently, like clusters of strange white flowers caught in the breeze.

The sight pulled something strange from her, cold and fragile as a strand of ice. Loneliness, perhaps. The champagne had left her mouth dry. She always hoped these nights would go differently. “Stop crying,” she whispered. “It will be fine.”

“No. It was a…horrible fight. He is so angry with me! Sometimes I think…he hates me.”

“Don’t be silly. Of course he doesn’t hate you.” She could not quite bring herself to finish the equation. She could not say, He loves you. It seemed too close to speaking well of him. “He’ll say he’s sorry soon enough.”

“Not this time. He means it, this time.”

She closed her eyes. So many times Mama had scared her with this sort of talk. Mina would lie awake with worry, fearing for their safety, envisioning all sorts of horrors for the morning to come: Mama’s eye blackened, her arm broken, Collins’s guards waiting to throw them onto the street. If only we had money, we would not need to worry. How awful it was to be helpless. On such nights, Jane tried to calm her, but it did not help, because Jane had family in New York who would care for her, and letters of reference and a profession, whereas she and Mama were as useless as those stupid Ming cups Mama collected. Tossed from the china cabinet, they would roll about aimlessly. Soon enough, someone would step on them.

“He will apologize,” Mina said. Certainly he would. It all looked very black right now, but experience had taught her better. Tomorrow she would go down to breakfast and find Mama and Collins smiling at each other. And later, in the hallway, Mama would draw her aside and whisper, He apologized, darling. He realizes how badly he behaved. He’s simply mortified by it. We’ll forget it ever happened. Apologies cost nothing, so Collins found them very easy to give.

Perhaps he shouldn’t even be blamed for it. If a woman’s broken trust could be healed with a few words, then maybe he was right to think it worth nothing at all.

She swallowed her anger. It felt as though it was directed at Mama, which made no sense, like wanting to kick a puppy.

Mama spoke in halting jerks. “I don’t even know what I did.”

“You did nothing.” Collins criticized her for the strangest things. Your long face is depressing me. Or God above, can you not make ten words of intelligent conversation? Always it started with something trivial. But these inconsequential complaints seemed to trigger something in him; very quickly, his rage inflated. And her mother, who as a young widow had led a string of admirers by their noses through the grandest ballrooms in New York, could do nothing but cower before him and make herself sick with apologies. I am sorry, I did not mean to, I did not think I was being so, I never intended to—

“Unless…” Mama drew a broken breath. “Unless it has to do with Mr. Monroe? But that is not my fault. How can it be?”

“Mr. Monroe?” Mina pulled away, just far enough to wipe a wet strand of hair from her mother’s eyes. “His illness, do you mean?” But no, that couldn’t be. There’d been no sign of it until this evening.

Mama shook her head. “No, Gerard ran into someone this afternoon at the club, some American freshly arrived from Chicago, who claimed not to know Mr. Monroe. All I said was that perhaps he travels a great deal. I was only trying to smooth over the discomfort. But it was clumsily done, I suppose. It must have seemed that I was contradicting the gentleman.” She retrieved the handkerchief, dabbing at her eyes. “I did not mean to embarrass him. I never used to be so clumsy.”

“You aren’t clumsy.”

“I cannot please him.”

“Then leave him.”

Mama froze.

So did she. She had not meant to propose this right now. But the words felt right to her. Her lips felt powerful for speaking them. In fact, she wanted to speak them again. Leave the brute. “In Connecticut,” she said very softly, “they will grant you a divorce for common cruelty.”

“Don’t…” Mama drew away to the end of the window seat. “Don’t be foolish.” She spoke so quietly that Mina could not make out her tone. “We would starve in the streets.”

“We could ask Uncle Edward for help.”

“My brother!” Mama laughed bitterly. “He would be glad to see me in the gutter. He says I’m already there, anyway.”

“I could take a job—”

“You? A job?” Mama’s laughter started bitterly, but ended on a sigh. “And anyway, Gerard would never allow it.”

Mina felt her heart quicken. This, the heart of the matter, she could address. “You’re right, maybe he wouldn’t.” She hesitated, then grasped Mama’s cold hand where it clenched the little button sewn into the seat cushion. If Mama was trying to hold herself down, she did not need to. They could fly—tonight, even! She had been saving for it from her pin money. A meager amount, but enough to book passage to San Francisco. And there was the small trust from her late grandfather, which she came into on her next birthday. “California, then. He would never think to look there. I have researched it.” She tightened her grip and spoke over Mama’s gasp. “All you need do is publish an announcement in a local paper. You need never even tell him your intention! Some newspaper in a small California town, which he would never see—”

Mama ripped her hand away and stumbled to her feet. “Stop it! Do you hear what you’re saying?”

She should never have mentioned the research. It bespoke too much forethought. She dug her knuckles into the cushion. Mama was staring at her in horror, as if she’d just proposed they light a candle for the devil. A weird embarrassment touched her. But there was no need to feel ashamed. This was the modern way to handle such difficulties. “Mama, he—”

“Divorce.” Mama pulled the wrapper tight around her body. She looked peaked, as if the word itself were enough to nauseate her. “Do you hear yourself? That is what you mean. Well.” She gave a short laugh. “You take after your father, no doubt. An American through and through. But Peppins honor their marriage vows. Do you know—have you any idea what people would think? And if Robbie were to hear of it, good Lord!”

Mina knew a sudden, powerful urge to rip the button straight from the cushion. It was incredible. Robbie, some twopenny Englishman whom Mama had jilted twenty years ago, was going to guide her actions? “What does he care? He forgot about you decades ago! Who cares what anyone in England thinks? You yourself said it—they would be glad to see you dead in a gutter!”

“Stop it.” Mama stalked to the dresser to grab a comb. She smoothed her hair with an angry hand, twisted it up, then stabbed in the comb to hold it. “I am shocked by you.” As she pivoted back, her chest rose and fell on a long breath. “That you dare to speak such things to me…. It’s clear that I’ve failed you somehow. He is my husband, whom I vowed before God to love and obey. And as his daughter, it is your duty—”