Puddles Of My Mind

In the Here, the Now: I am sitting at the desk in the suite. It is roughly 11:06pm, and Jonathan and I have just returned from a night of dinner and theatre. We went to the Steppenwolf to see The Sparrow Project. It was a thrilling piece about neurotic rich girls encountering the real world and becoming frustrated by their own inability to manipulate it. In a way, such storylines bore me, and I feel a spiteful desire for the players to meet swift deaths. That is just me, however, and it was fairly enjoyable for what it was. Afterward we went to eat at the incredibly pompous Signature Room, a place totally unknown to the proletariats of Chicago, but a favorite of its Gold Coast trash –or so I hear. The view and food were as magnificent as reviews declare though. Jonathan declares I must come to bed immediately, but I tell him to give me a few more minutes... He turns on the television to drown out the sound of my typing.

I left off talking about school. School back then was very different, you know. Particularly for girls. But at the same time, it was much the same. Girls are mean and sneaky and know precisely how to make life seem interminably long for one another. I did my share of torture, to be sure, but I felt like I received a disproportionate amount due to the previously mentioned malady of being “common.”

Then, of course, there was the political turmoil. My family had done nothing but prospered under Napoléon, but as a little girl, there was something magical about the coronation of Louis XVIII. We were allowed, through the generosity of one of the girls’ mothers, to watch the procession from the windows of her drawing room. It was not the last coronation procession I was to see, and it was not the most glamorous. In fact, I don’t recall that there was much enthusiasm for the man at all. What I do recall is that some English girls came to our school shortly after. Anne, for example.

Anne was not the prettiest, but she was the niece of a Duke in England and was, for that reason, popular amongst the girls, at least on the surface. Behind her back, we all had pity for her disadvantageous looks. Even I, I was told, was prettier than Anne. The worst of it was the jealousy, I think. Because we all knew that Anne would marry better than any of us. If not some foreign Prince, than another Duke, and certainly no one below a Count. She would live the same life she had been born into, and there were not many others like that in Madame’s school. Understandably, Anne was also popular with Madame, and less understandably, so was I. So, to improve Anne’s French, I became her conversation partner, as mine was by far the best English from among my peers. That is, I suppose, how our friendship emerged.

Then the Emperor escaped Elba and Anne quickly vanished, not to return until we were both fourteen. Life at fourteen is quite different than life at nine, and although Anne and I had written one another during the Post-War years, she was much more polished when she returned and didn’t need my help with French. At fourteen, she had come to learn the arts, as that was all that was left to our educations. Anne and I danced and played and stitched and sang. In retrospect, it does not seem like a difficult life at all, except, perhaps, for the fact that I rarely saw my family. When Anne returned to school, it must have been several years since I had seen any of them. That year though, Charlotte became engaged to another merchant’s son, who was to inherit a booming shipping business in Antwerpen. It meant incredible wealth for my family, but for me it meant only the loss of golden curls and comforting arms. My feelings were considered inappropriate: I was meant to feel joy at my sister’s fortune. Besides, I would attend the ceremonies and spend one month at home. It was to be an unexpected holiday.