Rules of Civility - Amor Towles [80]
On any given Saturday, if there was a party on the water in Westport or Oyster Bay, Wallace Wolcott was probably invited. But the first time he spread a selection of invitations on the table for my consideration, I could tell that his heart wasn’t in it. Pressed, he admitted that these sprawling affairs made him feel a little out of place. Lord knows, if they made him feel out of place, I wasn’t going to be much help. So we regretted. We told the Hamlins and the Kirklands and the Gibsons that we would not be able to attend.
Instead, on Saturday afternoons we ran Wallace’s errands in the Bentley: To Brooks Brothers, Michael, to pick up the new khaki shirts; to Twenty-third Street to get the pistols cleaned; then on to Brentano’s for a Spanish phrase book.
Olé!
Maybe it was my exposure to Mason Tate, but as we tackled these simple tasks, I found I had a burgeoning taste for flawlessness. Just a few weeks before, no detail of my life had been big enough to merit my attention. The Chinese laundress could have ironed a hole in my skirt and I would have tossed a nickel on the drum, thanked her kindly, and worn it to the church social. After all, where I came from the mission was to pay as little as one could without stealing, so on those rare occasions when you got home and discovered you had the unbruised melon, you had good reason to suspect you didn’t deserve it.
But Wallace deserved it. At least, as far as I was concerned.
So, if the color of a new sweater clashed with the color of his eyes, I sent it back. If the first four shaving soaps smelled too flowery, I told the girl at Bergdorf’s to bring four more. And if the porterhouse steak wasn’t thick enough, I stood right there at the counter and watched Mr. Ottomanelli swing his cleaver until he got it right. Taking care of someone else’s life—that may have been what Wallace Wolcott was running away from, but I found it suited me just fine. Then, with our errands behind us (having “earned” it), we’d cocktail at an empty hotel bar, dine at a nice restaurant without a reservation, and stroll back up Fifth Avenue to his apartment, where we could trade novels and divvy up Hershey bars.
One night in early August while having a late supper at the Grove—where the potted ficus were hung with little white lights—Wallace observed wistfully that he wouldn’t be home for Christmas.
Apparently, Christmas was a big holiday for the Wolcotts. On Christmas Eve, three generations spent the night at the Adirondack camp, and while they attended the midnight service, Mrs. Wolcott would put a pair of matching pajamas on every pillow. So in the morning, they all came down to the freshly cut spruce in matching red and white stripes or a tartan plaid. Wallace didn’t particularly enjoy shopping for himself, but he took pride in finding that perfect gift for his nephews and nieces, especially his young namesake, Wallace Martin. But this year he wasn’t going to make it back in time.
—Why don’t we shop for them now? I suggested. We can wrap the gifts, tag them with a Don’t Open Til Xmas, and drop them off at your mother’s.
—Better yet, I could give them to . . . my attorney. With instructions to deliver on Christmas Eve.
—Better yet.
So we shoved aside our plates and sketched a plan of action identifying each recipient, their relation to Wallace, their age, their character, and a potential gift. In addition to Wallace’s sisters, brothers-in-law, nieces, and nephews, the list included Wallace’s secretary, the chauffeur Michael, and a few others to whom he felt indebted. It was like a cheat sheet on the entire Wolcott family. What the girls in Oyster Bay wouldn’t have paid to get a look at it.
We spent a weekend shopping, then two nights before Wallace was to set sail, we planned a dinner for two at his apartment so we could wrap. As I looked through my closet that morning, my first thought was to wear my polka-dot