The Secret Life of Violet Grant by Beatriz Williams

dearest of the dear, but some might say she lacked a certain
je ne sais
sense of adventure.
    â€œWell, Gogo? Don’t you think it would make a perfect story?”
    â€œOf course I do, Vivs,” she said loyally. “But you know . . . you aren’t really . . . you’re not one of the writers yet. Not officially.”
    â€œOh, I know I’m just fetching old Tibby’s coffee for now, but this is large change. Really large change. And you know I can tell a story. Your father knows it. I can do this, Gogo.”
    â€œI’ll talk to him about it.”
    â€œMix him a martini first. You know he loves your martinis.”
    â€œI’ll do my best, I promise. But never mind all that! I want more about this boy of yours. What’s his name? What does he do?” She lowered her voice to a whisper of guilty curiosity. “What did he do last
night
?”
    â€œOh, my twinkling stars, what
didn’t
he do.” I straightened from the cushion. “But I don’t have time now, Gogo. Sunday lunch starts at twelve sharp, or I’ll be heave-hoed out of the family. Which is a tempting thought, but I’ll need my inheritance one day, when my luck runs out.”
    â€œI want
details
tomorrow morning, then. Especially the ones I shouldn’t hear.”
    â€œYou’ll have your details, if I have my afternoon in the archives.”
    Despairing sigh. “You’re a hard woman, Vivian Schuyler.”
    â€œOne of us has to be, Gogo, dear. Go give that boy of yours a kiss from me.” I
mwa-mwa
’d the receiver, tossed it back in the cradle, and stared at the ceiling while I finished my coffee and cigarette.
    Was I speculating about Violet, or recalling my mad honey-stained hour of excess with Doctor Paul?
    I’ll let you decide that one for yourself.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    NOW, you might have assumed that my mother named me Vivian after herself, and technically you’d be right. After all, we’re both Vivians, aren’t we? And we’re mother and daughter, beyond a doubt?
    It’s a funny story, really. How you’ll laugh. I know I did, when my mother explained it to me over vodka gimlets one night, when I was thirteen. You see, she went into labor with me ten whole days before the due date, which was terribly inconvenient because she had this party to go to. Well, it was an important party! The van der Wahls were throwing it, you see, and everybody would be there, and Mums even had the perfect dress to minimize the disgusting bump of me, not that she ever had much bump to speak of, being five-foot-eleven in her stocking feet and always careful not to gain more than fifteen pounds during pregnancy.
    Well. Anyway. There I inconveniently arrived, five days before the van der Wahls’ party, six pounds, ten ounces, and twenty-two gazelle inches long, and poor Mums had no more girl names because of my two older sisters, so she left unchanged the little card on my bassinet reading Baby Girl Schuyler, put on her party dress and her party shoes, and checked herself out of the hospital. Voilà! Disaster averted.
    Except that when the nanny arrived the next day to check me out of the hospital, they needed a name in order to report the birth. I don’t know why, they just did. So the nanny said,
hmm
, Vivian seems like a safe choice. And the nurses said, Alrighty, Vivian it is.
    Oh, but you’d never guess all this to see us now. Just look at the ardent way I swept into the Schuyler aerie on Fifth Avenue and Sixty-ninth Street, tossed an affectionate kiss on Mums’s powdered cheek, and snatched the outstretched glass from her hand.
    â€œYou slept with him, didn’t you?” she said.
    â€œOf course I did.” I sipped delicately. “But don’t worry. He practically asked me to marry him on the spot.”
    â€œPractically is not actually, Vivian.”
    I popped the olive down the hatch.