“I AM ALWAYS RELIEVED TO SEE IT SHRINK.”
Diana Holland turned her hatless head of abbreviated curls, which had become completely wild in the wind high above the Lucida, to see a girl of about her own age, well dressed, utterly unpretty but nonetheless possessed of some quality that wanted to be looked upon. “When what shrinks?” Diana asked.
“New York,” the girl replied, not unkindly but as though it were obvious, and then went back to watching the figures, their handkerchiefs aloft, growing blurry, indistinct, minuscule as the ship pulled out into the river. In another moment Diana found that amongst a multitude of emotions, she too was experiencing a kind of relief. Of course there was a humming exhilaration as well, and a bruised longing for Henry, and for the other things she had loved well and given up. She had watched him for a while, standing on the dock in his slim-fitting black clothes, gazing up at the ship as though it might somehow explain to him what he had lost. She believed he was still there now, but it was impossible to be sure, once he had become so small and the churning white wake behind the ship had grown so big. For some time she told herself it all would have been bearable if she had still had his hat, but then she realized that from a literary perspective it was far better that she had lost it then, on the docks, and not later on in the years to come, when she would be moving from one garret to another and always misplacing things of sentimental value.
They would be restless years packed with mistakes and ardor. She would mend her broken heart, only to find it broke easily again. Different men loved differently, she would discover, and every one would leave her a little older, a little wiser, and with more feeling to translate into the pages of her notebooks. She would receive letters from Henry over the years, and though the strength with which he urged her to return would wane over time, he would never lose that tone of regretful desire. She had not lied on the pier — he would always be her first love.
Diana lingered on the saloon deck and examined the passenger list, for among them would be notable people who might invite her to parties in her new city, or provide little stories to telegram Davis Barnard about. There were several names she knew, and others that she recognized — all occupying finer cabins than she. Among them were Governor Roosevelt’s niece, Eleanor, who was born the same year as Di ana and was on her way to finishing school in England. There was also the prince of Bavaria, traveling with the countess de Perignon and her daughter, who was said to be about Diana’s age, and not remotely the same flavor as Penelope. And though Diana felt no joy at this denouement, she couldn’t help but smile wanly. For no matter how worldly the former Penelope Hayes believed herself to be, she still had a particularly American naïveté, and it was a good joke that she had been so blinded by her desire to bed a royal that she had allowed herself to be completely taken advantage of. It was fitting, really, like the ending of a good story. That girl’s fate was to go on, married to the handsome husband she had wanted so badly at eighteen. They would never be completely faithful again, or understand each other for any very extended period of time. They would appear together at parties and occasionally share a laugh, and they would betray each other again and again, in that curious mating ritual of their kind.
Perhaps it was the weather up high on the open ocean, or maybe the little tremors over what she had done, but Diana was experiencing a heightened sensitivity to everything at just that moment. She believed it to be born of a profound relief that this kind of marriage was not her own fate, in the way that colors appear especially bright to a person who has just cheated death. Of course, Elizabeth’s marriage would not be like that, for she had finally found herself with someone so entirely devoted to her that his eye would never wander and his tongue would never be capable of cruelty. They would have a child, Keller Cutting, and then several more. They would use the Holland oil windfall to decorate beautiful homes in New York and Newport. There would be grand parties, to rival Mrs. Schoonmakers’, with whom Mrs. Cutting would maintain a wary, knowing camaraderie. The columns would always refer to them as rival hostesses, although in truth Mrs. Cutting never took the socialite part of her life so seriously again.
That world was over, anyway. The most talked-of parties of the coming years would be those thrown by the Broad sisters, Claire and Carolina, whose humble origins everyone was happy to forget under a great swell of champagne and exotic party favors and the sort of antics that become calcified into legend almost as they occur. Names like Holland and Schoonmaker and Hayes would soon sound old-fashioned amongst that new, fast set.
But those stories are in the future. The city of Diana’s birth grew miniature in the distance, like a diorama for schoolchildren. It was manageable that way; she could explain everything she had seen and done there. In time, she would: There would be intricate novels of drawing room betrayals and love that couldn’t be. Her brain was beating with them. From far away, on a clear day, she saw how all those mighty mansions were only temporary delusions, and how fashion would march on, and the chateaus and palazzos of American merchants would fall to the wrecking ball so that department stores might rise above.
Slowly the sky turned from the color of cornflower to that of hyacinth, and the Ferris wheel at Coney Island appeared like a ring of diamonds against the twilight. New York — that city made of canyons between tall buildings, and ornate houses filled with glittering things that might trap a girl forever — was nothing more than a few dots on an infinite landscape. The atmosphere was crystalline and afforded her a perfect view. Only from this place was she able to see how limited the city was, after everything, and how wide open the world could all of a sudden become.