Death in the Garden of Desire

By Richard Geha

1900—the Gilded Age! Stanford White, the world’s most renowned architect, creator of Madison Square Garden, falls in love with the exotic Gibson Girl, Evelyn Nesbit. They become dangerously involved with a demented millionaire, Harry Thaw. Amid a crowd of merrymaking theater goers, atop the splendid Madison Square Garden, another drama, a tragedy, explodes into the first and most gripping crime of the century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796040418

Richard Geha

Richard Geha is a psychologist and a psychoanalyst in private practice. He obtained his Ph.D. from Glasgow University in Scotland and his psychoanalytic training from the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research in New York City. He has published several articles in professional journals as well as published works of fiction, two collections short stories: Primal Scenes: Stories of Radical Witness and As Marilyn Lay Dying: Stories of the Primal Scene. A play of his was also produced in Manhattan.

Book preview

Two Artists Make a Woman (1901)

T wo friends, both artists, had been haggling all afternoon about the controversies vexing the art scenes in America and Europe, especially France. Jacob demeaned avant-garde movements as gutter-wallowing, while Paul extolled these as efforts to scour away society’s mendacious crust. Both spoke self-righteously.

At one point—since they enjoyed appraising each other’s work—Paul picked up several of Jacob’s recent sketches. The first three or four merely evoked smiles and nods of approval. And then one appeared that engaged Paul’s prolonged scrutiny. It featured a young woman, or no, perhaps a child, maybe thirteen, surely no more than fourteen.

What have we here … this winsome lass, Jacob?

Who? Oh, her. Nobody. I thought I’d tossed that one away.

Paul glanced at his friend and noticed that his complexion had instantly flushed. Thought you had tossed it away … I see. Why would you do that? It’s quite good … rather lovingly detailed.

Don’t be ridiculous, Jacob grumbled. A bit of fiddling … for God’s sake.

Fiddling, yes. Who’s this you’re fiddling with?

No one, really. A fatherless waif with a penniless mother. Poses as the angels I’m doing for Christmas cards. Jacob grabbed for the sketch, but Paul swiftly moved it beyond reach.

I’d like to see this Christmas card!

Well, of course, not that one, Jacob exclaimed, annoyed. I was just fooling about. As you do almost all the time.

Was she nude like this?

Certainly not!

Of course. No self-respecting angel would traipse about in the emperor’s new clothes. But you peeked through her attire, as we artists without permission freely do. And positioned thusly was she, like this … legs rather … what … akimbo?

I can’t recall. Perhaps she was, Jacob answered, lowering his head, seeming ashamed.

Quite lovely. Breasts a trifle small but blossoming. Very sexy. Did you put it there, or simply find it? Paul inquired, snickering.

What?

The sensuality.

She’s a child, innocent as the dawn, for Chrissakes.

Paul laughed. Not like any dawn I’ve seen.

All right, I’ve a filthy mind.

Yes, hasn’t everyone? Paul retorted.

You contaminate me.

It’s how we reckon with filth that matters.

For you, filth and evil totally infuse the world, Jacob snapped.

Not totally. But they’re often attendants of beauty, if it’s anything other than glitter.

Decadent beauty, you mean, French garbage? For you, a beautiful whore is the epitome of beauty.

One of the epitomes, yes, and your dirty mind, Jacob, has rendered this virgin quite lusciously desirable.

A virgin! Lusciously desirable? I don’t like the unctuous insinuation.

Then ignore it. Your angel does … well, does unsettle the groin and the heart and the imagination, and all at once. No mean feat for a child, or for anybody else, for that matter.

It takes so little to unsettle your imagination, Paul, and even less your groin. Nothing moves your heart.

Be that as it may, but before you unclothed her, she wouldn’t have excited a second glance.

Enough! Throw it away!

You’re probably right about her, you know?

Right about her?

Clearly, she met you more than halfway, my friend.

More than halfway to what?

Her defilement.

Dear God, a child, defiled. How proud you’ve made me.

Consider this: What can we do with innocence?

Enjoy it for what it is.

You didn’t. No one does, not for long.

A bit of harmless fun.

Please, stop apologizing. It’s so boring.

All right, I couldn’t resist undressing her. I confess. So shoot me!

Innocence isn’t meant to remain unblemished, Jacob. It probably doesn’t exist, anyway—a fairy tale, Garden of Eden hogwash.

Cynical as Satan—that’s you, Paul.

We arrived in the world blighted with sin. Who said that? Some saint. Canker in the bud. Right off, damned to hell most of us.

How do you live with yourself? Innocence is a disguise, then? I only disrobed this poor lass of her deceit … Did her a favor, did I?

Sort of. Scrubbed off this Victorian crap we’re encrusted in.

And left the earthy crap?

The earthly beauty, I’d say, as we find so admirably exposed here. Look at this luxurious hair … a fledgling Medusa.

The sight of her turns men to stone.

It could. What’s her name?

Jacob paused, shook his head, smiled, and replied, Evelyn Florence Nesbit—Evie.

Evie—how quaint. Eve of the Garden … now Evie. You made her … broke her cherry, old boy. Too bad she passed through that transformation obliviously. Or, maybe she didn’t.

Maybe she didn’t—meaning what?

Every woman would craft her own Pygmalion, if she could.

You—decadent to the core! How’d we become friends?

I’m your underside, Jacob, your unlived self, your very own Mr. Hyde. Don’t you recognize me?

The way you leer upon this sweet child … you should be ashamed.

Well, I’m not. It wasn’t I who drew this concupiscent nymph, although I wish that I had.

Your gaze befouls her.

You concede such power to me. The length to which you will resort to absolve yourself. The benefit of having me as a friend.

What benefit?

Allows you to dump your own smut at my door. I have defiled this angel. Well, she’ll become whatever is made of her. Paul held the picture between the two of them. Which of us, Jacob, can we say has truly made her?

"Frankly, it’s what she’s making of us—that troubles me."

Tonight, for dinner I’m meeting Stanford White in the Players Club.

White—a profligate!

You mean the world’s greatest architect, don’t you—a genius?

Jacob laughed. I mean that too … with a dozen bedrooms stashed around town for his fornications.

How would you know that?

He’s too famous to keep sex hidden.

What’s wrong with fornication?

Well, if you’ve a wife and a son, which he has, isn’t there some sort of morality somewhere worth observing?

Living on Greene Street, as you do, amid a thousand prostitutes, would surely sully such rectitude.

Being a genius doesn’t prevent you from being degenerate. He killed … who was she? Johnson … somebody.

Susie Johnson, I guess you’re speaking of. She committed suicide.

Because of White’s Pie Girl party. Sickening!

I was at that party. Aside from two or three like myself, a gathering of elite intellectuals.

All whoremongers! Poor Susie Johnson!

She was too woundable, too raped by life to have survived for long.

And at that party good and raped she was!

Well, Stanford White stands far above you and me. Paul raised up the drawing. So, let me take Evie and show her to him, see what he thinks.

I’d rather dispatch myself to hell than commit a sin as grave as that!

The sin is to hide her beauty away.

To keep desire—like yours and White’s—from polluting her. Jacob paused, shook his head, smiled, then replied, All right, all right, take her to White, but only if you promise me to say that it’s your drawing.

Paul laughed. I’m flattered. A plagiarism, yes, I’ll freely own. I promise. He looked at his watch. My dear friend, it’s late. I must take my leave.

You could not take anything I would more willingly give, except—

I know—except your life, except your life. They embraced, and with Evie, Paul departed.

After-Words (1915)

T he woman’s knee touched the ground as two muscular Mohawk warriors viciously assaulted her. One of them gripped her right wrist and, with raised tomahawk, prepared to strike her in the face or chest. The other clutched her long yellow hair, bending back her head, obviously intending to scalp her. Fruitlessly she clasped his wrist. Seized firmly by her attackers, desperately she clung to them. On her upturned face lay a pleading expression. Dark trees loomed hugely in the background; a small distant blue spot of sky gleamed, and far off, a man (her fiancé) was racing forward. There was no way in the world this tiny figure could rescue his bride-to-be. By the time he arrived, she’d be a bloody mess, and these powerful savages would likely then slaughter him as well.

Heavenly light fell on the woman’s body, exalting it over the fiery orange and mostly naked physiques of her assailants. With outstretched arms and keeling like a supplicant, her posture suggested a crucifixion, womanly Christian virtue torn asunder by these pagan vitalities of nature. Everything about her, however, also proposed something rather antithetical to this. In a clinging, light blue dress, her body was wedged between the legs of the man with the raised hatchet, her head and open mouth set near his groin; her long hair, hanging straight down, enticed as irresistibly as Rapunzel’s. One of her swollen, half-bare breasts exhibited a nipple pressed out over her bodice, and the folds of a red waist sash furling between her parted, taut thighs accentuated the nervous energy pulsating around her vagina. A force not only bloodthirsty but clearly sexual surged about this virgin captive. Murder, rape—both poised here to explode.

The reporter studied the scene as he waited in the parlor of the boarding house for May Mackenzie. What a grim version, he thought, of The Rape of the Lock! He wondered how John Vanderlyn’s painting The Death of Jane McCrea had ended up in this room. Probably a copy, but certainly a good one. Extraordinary, he mused, the way things interconnected, the places they ended up. The reporter recognized the picture because of its considerable notoriety. In 1836, it had graced the wall of a brothel at 41 Thomas Street, the location of another gory ax murder, that of Helen Jewett. At the time, the owner of the New York Herald, James Gordon Bennett Sr., had noticed the painting and argued that its lustful rage may have incited Jewett’s murderer. An audacious supposition: that art could produce such shattering effects! (Indeed, Oscar Wilde, the reporter reminded himself, had declared that life imitates art.) The reporter worked for the Herald in the Herald building on West Thirty-fifth, which had been brilliantly designed in 1890 by Stanford White, one of the very gentlemen upon whom the reporter today hoped May Mackenzie would shed more light. Yes, things interconnected.

Gazing at the painting, he recalled Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn. An education at Harvard had bred in him an appreciation for artistic echoes. As with his recollection of Pope’s poem a moment ago in the ode, again he found the irony, here in several of the poem’s lines that he could recall: still unravished bride of quietness, What men or gods are these? What mad pursuit, Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought / As doth eternity. Yes, only here the blood of this still unravished bride would soon soak the sylvan dales of Arcady. Or no, held still in the immobility of art, she would never die. And here the reporter recalled another beautiful woman whose murder Bennett Sr.’s Herald had recounted in gruesome detail—Mary Rogers. He thought of the irony of all this as he recalled the role that art had ended up also playing there. It was Poe’s story The Murder of Marie Rogêt that had kept Mary Rogers, that very ravished bride, still alive in the public’s imagination.

How savagely men abuse women, a woman’s voice asserted.

Oh! the reporter said, startled from his reverie. Yes … well, yes, these two do.

"They’re the rule, not the exception. I’m May Mackenzie, and you’re the reporter from the Herald."

I am. I’m sorry I didn’t hear you enter, he replied as they shook hands.

I know, she said. I’ve often lost myself in that painting. It’s terribly disturbing. Please sit down, sir, and be comfortable.

Thank you, Miss Mackenzie, the reporter said, for granting me this interview.

I never thought of myself as granting anyone anything, except a little womanly confection that the fair sex will provide. Should I now say, ‘You’re welcome?’

I doubt that I’m very welcome since you’ve been so relentlessly besieged by reporters to tell us more about Nesbit, White, and Thaw.

Yes, to tell more, May groaned. Such insatiable fellows. Are you writing a book?

Who knows? Someday I might.

Send me a copy, if you do. You’d think that all the news coverage of the trials, and that would include so much of your own, should have exhausted this subject.

The reporter replied, Some stories are inexhaustible.

And this, you believe, is one of those?

It seems to be, he said and handed her an envelope. Here’s the fifty dollars that my paper promised for this interview.

Thank you. This is for one hour only, right?

Yes. I’ll watch the time.

So shall I. First, a question of my own.

Please.

The letter from your editor, Mr. Bennett, requesting this interview noted that you’re a graduate of Harvard College.

Yes.

What did you study?

Philosophy and literature.

Literature! I’m a lover of literature. Believe it or not, I read a great deal. Tell me, wouldn’t philosophy have destined you for … well, for—

For ambitions loftier than journalism? You might think so, but being a reporter connects you intimately, sometimes too intimately, with life. True, philosophers scrutinize life, but for me, they do so from too great a distance.

I see. What philosophers have impressed you?

Plato, certainly.

He’s pretty old.

Nietzsche—he’s more recent.

Never heard of him.

Most people haven’t. At Harvard one of my professors, William James, often spoke of him.

Maybe you’ll tell me about Mr. Nietzsche sometime.

Gladly.

Not that I’ll understand a word. I’m a daydreamer.

So are most philosophers.

As a child, I imagined that someday I’d reign as queen in some exotic land—and look, she laughed, you see how near I am to that.

Perhaps there’s still time, he said, and laughed as well. What are you reading these days?

"She. Don’t laugh."

But he did laugh, and so did she. He said, Well now, there’s a queen of an exotic land, a woman with immense power. She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, as I recall.

Yes, and burned to death by her own passion, she said and paused, then asked, Are you here today, Mr. Reporter, to discuss one who resembles her?

Evelyn? Yes, I suppose so.

Okay … Time’s winged chariot hounds our heels. Let’s jump right in. Evelyn Nesbit—shall we begin there?

The reporter said, Excellent.

"I think of her as Nesbit, not Thaw. If ever a mismarriage existed, theirs was it. Not that money can’t buy love."

Did Thaw buy her love?

He bought her into believing that she loved him … you might say that. Bought her into forgetting, now and then, that she wanted to kill him.

He did a very good job, the reporter said.

He did. In the desperate game the three of them played … I don’t know, she probably meant for Harry Thaw to die, not Stanny.

Or for both of them to die, the reporter submitted.

Or both to die. Maybe so.

A regular femme fatale, quite a She.

Well, then, we’ve started with the femme fatale. What is it you don’t know?

I’m not sure. Probably a great deal. Just tell me things about her, anything … about the two of you … your friendship. At the trials, she insisted on your presence by her side.

Yes. We hadn’t known each other long before she proclaimed, ‘May Mackenzie, you’re my best friend.’ How it gladdened my heart to hear that. I’d never had a best friend.

Why were you friends? asked the reporter.

We liked joking and poking fun at men, and men, you must admit, make that fairly easy to do. We understood that sexuality led you gents about by the codpiece and turned you into real boars, at times. Why Circe would waste her precious potion transforming a crew of Greek belligerents into swine has always baffled me. Weren’t they that already?

"Circe … from the Odyssey?"

You’re surprised that I’ve read that book? Of course, surely I’m the only woman who ever has.

I’m sure you are.

"Some time ago, a friend of mine took my education—among other things—in hand, and on top of the reading list he placed the Odyssey. We should compel every young woman to read it. Nothing has taught me more about the viciousness of men. Except maybe this painting hanging on the wall, here."

As I recall, the reporter replied, the Greeks rescued Helen (a woman, no less), whom the Trojans had abducted, and returning home, they encountered formidable obstacles. What’s wrong with that?

I know they had their excuses for their wanderlust and for every drop of blood they spilt, for every freakish thing they did. Men always do. Look at those two savages butchering Jane McCrea. She nodded to the painting. "I’m sure they believe they know what a woman’s body is for, don’t you think so? By the way, I said something or the other to Stephen Crane about the Odyssey. He seemed never to have heard of the book. Later, he told me that having taken my advice, he read it and been much impressed. That’s why I credit myself with the writing of The Red Badge of Courage." She smiled.

Well, you have much to be proud of, the reporter granted, also smiling.

"Indeed! Well, you’ve not come to hear me expatiate on the Odyssey."

The reporter repeated, Expatiate.

I’ve half a dozen words that I throw around to make folks think I know more than I do.

Clever. I’ll try it myself.

Do. So, back to Evie. She and I, as I said, had to laugh at the shenanigans of you boys … laugh, when we weren’t weeping. ‘Young men will do it, when they come to it.’ I love that little jingle. Ophelia’s, wasn’t it? Another woman a man drove insane. So, that was something that united us. I mean no disrespect to you, sir. I’m speaking of men in general. It’s hardly your fault that Fate consigned you to such a despicable fellowship, May said and again smiled sweetly. But women love their tormenters; we’ve been taught to.

The reporter liked this person with whom he spoke. But despite her pleasant, even playful, manner, she was discernibly careworn. From the small amount she had already related, he could surmise that she had traveled a pretty tough road and had struck against too many obstacles on her own odyssey. Along the course that she had taken, evidently men had not always shown much kindness. She was quite attractive, and he wondered how much that had helped or hindered her. Her dress was pale blue (in fact like Jane McCrea’s), pretty but slightly threadbare and, in places, stained (like Jane’s). She also wore an expensive silk scarf on which colorful exotic cockatoos, perhaps eager for release, appeared poised to dart away. Had she, the reporter wondered, been given the scarf by some wealthy patron, smitten with her earthy but intelligent charm? This rundown rooming house, here in the Five Points section of the city, told clearly of how little money she had. But already in this meeting, the reporter could appreciate why Evelyn Nesbit felt such affection for May Mackenzie.

The maid entered the room and asked if they wished any refreshments. Would you care for coffee, Mr. Reporter? Fresh made.

That would be nice. Yes, I would.

Jeanne, be a darling, please bring us each a cup of coffee, she said, and after the maid withdrew, she continued. So … where was I? Yes, from the start, our friendship rested on that most basic of allures.

What is the most basic of allures, Miss Mackenzie? the reporter inquired.

When Evie came to New York—fifteen she was, and starry-eyed—she happened to catch my performance at Weber and Fields, chorus girls dancing a sexy ditty, and she thought I was a knockout. May chuckled, lowered her head, then raised it and looked intently at the reporter. Well, maybe I am. Others have said so, and sometimes I see what they mean. Do you see what they mean?

I do, indeed, the reporter answered. And he did. Yes, he liked her flirtatious, colorful, even bright appearance, her slightly risqué manner. At the two trials, she had always sat next to Evelyn (as her guardian angel, which he knew Evelyn had called her), and in the courtroom, this angel had appeared, to the reporter, like a blessed bit of luminance in a very overcast setting, and she highlighted vividly Evelyn’s somber beauty, somber because, here in New York City, it had been so precociously, albeit fabulously, ripened.

When the maid reappeared, a silence ensued while she nimbly placed the coffee before them and then left the room.

May said, "I’m pretty flashy, decked in my glad rags. I suppose right off, Evie saw in me what she sought to become—an eye-catcher. Poor dear—often rather a curse than a blessing, that is! Naturally, about her own beauty, no question existed in anyone’s mind, except hers. In beauty, she was very wealthy, but how little she understood her beauty, hadn’t a clue how to utilize it to serve herself well."

Many would contend that she served herself quite well, the reporter said.

Yes, one easily sees why they would. But to me, in some odd way, she resembled Harry Thaw—each abused by wealth, different sorts of wealth, of course. And, perhaps, Stanford White also suffered from abundance.

How do you mean? the reporter asked.

I don’t know. Maybe the gods bestowed on him more talent than he could handle. Wealth in any form is death. She frowned and then moaned, "But oh God, please, please make me rich!

Anyway, Evie … how infected with a low esteem of herself, as was I. As she and I have always been. Come from childhoods where you’re poor, as she and I did, you come quickly to believe you’re worthless. Do you know what I mean?

Yes.

Later in life, she and I were blessed with some physical attraction, that only glossed over the low self-regard that lurks beneath the surface. Do you know what I mean?

Yes.

So living here in Five Points how worthless the surface has obviously become. She laughed. "Well, not entirely because I have a story a reporter from the Herald wants to tell!"

He laughs. Yes, you’re valuable to me.

So, what I’m saying is she and I shared much common ground. You never cleanse the self-doubts, no matter how gleaming your beauty is. Don’t worry, I won’t drag you into my self-pity. Is the coffee all right?

It’s very fine, thank you.

You must be tired after hammering on my door all night. She again chuckled.

Well, that was a couple of years ago. By now, I’m fairly rested up. I’m sorry we all behaved so boorishly. Stories like this don’t come along every day.

No, I’m sure they don’t. Anyway, artists and photographers grabbed baby Evie up like chocolate-coated cherries. She even posed for Charles Dana Gibson, you know, the inventor of the Gibson Girl. She showed me the sketch. Have you seen it?

I have, yes. Gibson presents her as a question mark. It was not a sketch that had impressed the reporter. It too much resembled all Gibson’s other girls, so many of whom regularly appeared in Scribner’s and Collier’s Weekly, girls as chaste and wholesome as a spring morning—girls, young ladies, in their demeanor so lithe and so conspicuously intelligent, so untouched by care, so weightless in their step upon the earth that they seemed like visitors from another planet, aliens whom the women of this planet strove mightily to emulate. But ethereal as Gibson’s visions seemed, they nonetheless enticed as sexually as any siren possibly could. And yet to lay a finger on one of these radiant creatures—Gibson meant to admonish you—would be like placing your hand in a fire. Not that Gibson’s friend, Stanford White, didn’t go heedlessly ahead and do exactly that, applying his fingers all over them! But yes, the reporter had seen Gibson’s question mark.

A question mark … well, isn’t she? May asked. "That’s why you’re here, isn’t it—because she’s a question mark? Anyway, how quickly she became a showgirl, one of Florodora’s sextet, at the Casino Theater. More details that you already know. Fifteen years old, as high-kicking and flaunting of her bountiful delights as a lass could be. Now, Mr. Reporter, beauty matters greatly in the world (beauty is truth, all ye need know … that sort of thing) but in the theater, certainly at the level which she and I plied our trade, it’s the only stuff that counts, and at that level, beauty and sex appeal become totally squashed together. So that too contributed to our mutual allure."

I’m not sure I follow.

We loved looking at each other, loved touching each other too. When we met, I instantly reached out and stroked her cheek and said, ‘What a lovely, dangerous face.’ The touching … I couldn’t help. You couldn’t have, either. We both giggled, neither realizing the foreboding embedded in those words. Yes, we looked at each other, sometimes secretly, and it amused us whenever one caught the other stealing glances. Is this of any interest to you?

Yes, very much.

After a pause, May Mackenzie pointed her finger at him and said, You know, I think you were infatuated with her.

Excuse me! the startled reporter replied. Infatuated with Evelyn Nesbit?

Yes. Were you? He hesitated long enough for her to add, Perhaps you still are.

Why would you say this?

"First, because who didn’t fall in love with her? But besides that, the stories you wrote about her, dear boy, were so, so sympathetic. They read like encomia to a goddess."

Encomia! My goodness. Not a word ever heard.

And does it make you think I know more than I do?

No, it merely confirms the great deal that I know you know. But all right, I suppose you may count me among Evelyn Nesbit’s besotted admirers.

An admirer, naturally, but not a victim … or at least I hope not. Am I embarrassing you?

I’m afraid you are, a bit.

"Well, we’re together in the same tub. I’m one of those who envied her, envied the power of her beauty. Although I don’t believe the use to which she turned that power impressed me. Or maybe it did.

"Anyway, I was saying … what was I saying? Oh yes, occasionally she and I openly posed for one another. Playful … mostly. I believe neither considered the other a serious threat. Amazing, because we both maneuvered to waylay some wealthy gent, and we often haunted the same crowds, especially the sort of company that gathered around Stanford White and Harry Thaw. Sportsmen, as they’re called—philanderers, with gold spilling from their trousers. Believe me, in those circles, for a woman, beauty served as the only bait to land a catch, even if only temporarily. Did I say beauty? I meant sex adorned beautifully. With that precious sort of appeal, Evie hooked White and Thaw. She thought the world lay at her feet, that she stood atop a golden mountain. I thought so too. But oh, those golden mountains … slippery as polished glass."

How was she so successful? the reporter asked. Lots of attractive women fooled around with those guys.

She had a way of finding the darker sexual streams that course through men’s veins.

Don’t many women discern that?

"Of course, because you men make that easy to do, don’t you? But there are currents within men that even they aren’t always privy to, currents darker, more … oh, more subterranean, perverse, I might even say, and those she especially divined and then dove deeply into. A brave or foolish swimmer. That’s my opinion, anyway. A regular Circe, gifted as a sorceress she was, perhaps, but not a wise one.

I saw trouble advancing a mile off, as soon as Harry glued himself like a leech to Evie and started soliciting my services as a spy, paying me to report every grimy morsel I could dig up on Stanny. A pretty sleazy undertaking, I admit, but I rather enjoyed it for a while.

Why’d you do it?

"For the least of commendable reasons. First, the money. (Did I say, ‘Thanks for the fifty’? Are you watching the time? Okay. Good, ’cause I’m not.) And second, I’ve always been a gossipy bitch, a trait which eventually qualified me to write that column for the Morning Telegraph—signing myself Marion the Maid. You’ve read my work, I do hope."

I have. And enjoyed it very much. This was true. The column was sassy, informed, its style bright, like her behavior right now. In her writing, she dropped quotations from everywhere, as though she (a woman!) had been to college. Obviously, she had read a few books, a few of which, as he had learned today, some gentleman of her past had recommended. (Was it a lover? he wondered.)

He thought: Marion the Maid … did everyone in this society entertain a side of himself (or herself) that lived a life beneath an alias, each another version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

You enjoyed my column. How kind of you to say so. I wrote everything off the top of my head. That’s why some of it sounds so scatterbrained.

Not at all.

I’m amenable to flattery, always have been. Well, it’s laughable now. Dear God, who did I think I was? Be that as it may, Thaw enlisted the ideal person as his spy (not that he hadn’t a legion of others). As for Stanny … well, as far as the ladies went, what a satyr. This obsessed Harry. One of the delicacies that Thaw salivated over was that Pie Girl scandal. Do you recall it?

I do … somewhat. Pretty sensational at the time, helped immensely by Pulitzer’s fanning of the coals, I believe. Ten or so years ago, wasn’t it?

Yes, 1895, to be exact. To Harry, it represented an event in infamy, an illustration of White’s ruination of women, especially virgins. He ordered me, along with a couple of his detectives, to get ‘the rotten scoop,’ as he termed it. He wanted to convince Evelyn of what a voluptuary Stanford was. For Harry, it was the most sublime fodder.

I can imagine, but fill me in, the reporter said.

More of what you’ve heard.

I’m not sure. In any case, it’s vague. The girl … Susie Johnson, right?

"Yes. To begin with, not a virgin! Yet with Harry Thaw, so much did, for some unearthly reason all his own, seem enviably to begin and end there: Is she virgin? Anyway, I think I got the rotten scoop."

Sounds important.

Well, it does, at least in hindsight, appear to have presaged doom. But in hindsight, doesn’t everything?

Please, let’s hear.

Harry knew about the Pie Girl fling, May said.

A lovely little scandal, not casting Stanford in a very pleasing light, the reporter remarked. His fame rests on this genius as an architect, not sexual peccadillos.

Peccadillos? No, sex was more than that to him. It got him killed!

It got him killed!

The Pie Girl (1895)

S tanford White called it a birthday bash that he was throwing for his friend John Elliot Cowdin. Of course, Susie Johnson didn’t know Mr. Cowdin; Mr. White simply told her that he was a very nice man.

She had been invited to dance. But by evening, she was fairly exhausted, after having practiced most of the day, and fretted about how well she’d perform. She presumed that Mr. White expected some sort of striptease, although that had not been made perfectly clear. Just do a little dance, he had said. So she had worn herself out rehearsing a little dance. Going to a party, she sighed, and I’m half dead. Also throughout the day, images kept flashing before her eyes of her dead father scowling at her as he always did before he beat her. Yes, she saw him as though he were actually there. Her mother used to say that she hallucinated, and sometimes she did. She had done so very many things disapproved of by Mother and Father.

The day had been unsettling enough, but tonight walking to the party (she hadn’t money for a cab), she passed through Five Points, and at the corner of Pearl and Centre streets, she happened to hear a street preacher stationed in front of a brothel, ranting and frothing at the mouth, proclaiming the coming, in merely a matter of days, of Christ. The Savior would arrive arrayed in flames, with swords sticking out of his mouth, wading through a sea of blood, chopping to pieces these whores of Babylon. Angrily, this man of God stabbed his finger at Susie and shouted, You’re one, ain’t ya? An abomination, a fornicator of kings … mother of harlots! You—astride that stinking beast with seven heads! Six, sixty-six engraved on your forehead. Satan’s fingered you! She thought he said sex, sexy sex. Haranguing as he was in front of a brothel, that made some sense. But what he then repeated was senseless: "Six hundred and sixty-six! Repent, repent ’fore yer father damns you irrevocably to hell." She didn’t know what irrevocably meant, but mixed with such wrath, it couldn’t be good. She didn’t know what most of what he said meant. She ran from the man, thinking that her father had already damned her, and probably irrevocably.

Arriving at the address, breathless and nervous, Mr. White took her hands, stepped back, and inspected her with concern. He frowned. Have you been running, my dear?

No, I … I don’t think so, she mumbled and blushed at the foolishness of her reply.

Just excited, he said. Well, so are we. He smiled and hugged her briefly.

The party was at the photography studio of James Breese, and Mr. White immediately presented Susie to Mr. Breese, who asked her how old she was, and when she answered, Sixteen, he said, Ah, just a cheery, then. May I photograph you sometime? This flattered her so much she couldn’t speak, and Mr. Breese said, "Oh, that interested, are you?"

Her face flushed. You’re right, Jimmy, Mr. White noted, red as a cherry! He paused then said, I envy you photographers, Jimmy, that instrument of yours that captures cherries.

Captures them, yes, Mr. Breese sighed, but leaves ’em pure as we found ’em.

Mr. White sighed too. There’s the hell of it, Jim. Susie didn’t understand this exchange, but she smiled knowingly anyway because she surmised it implied something sexual. She recognized well enough the winks and leering grins that attended the remarks.

Mr. White and Mr. Breese guided her into a large room crowded with men. A piano, a drum, and a flute accompanied someone who was singing something from an opera. How very beautiful, Susie said and asked shyly, Who is he?

Could be Caruso, Mr. White responded. But no, Enrico sent regrets. Other pressing engagements. Again he winked at Mr. Breese.

Mr. White introduced her to some person named Gus Saint-Gaudens, then to a Nicola Tesla, then to an Edward Simmons, and then to others, all undoubtedly very famous, but none whom she had ever heard of, until—what an exciting moment!—she met Charles Dana Gibson, the artist who had invented the Gibson girl, that image of the ideal woman whom every woman sought to imitate. Mr. Gibson patted her hand gently. Susie Johnson, I’m delighted. The living image of one of my girls. Not a treasure discovered often enough beyond my sketch pad—a dream girl.

She stammered, Thank … you, too overwhelmed in his presence to even perceive whether or not he had paid her a compliment. Did he mean that she was a dream girl?

Well … this was certainly a dream of her own, with all these fabulous men gathered here eagerly waiting to gaze upon her, as though nothing else in the world existed for them other than she. She feared now, as she had feared all day, that she would fail in this, the star-role of her own dream. Oh, how could she possibly do well, feeling—as she did—half dead. And it made matters worse for her to remember that she must enact a part more in line with the dream of these men rather than any dream of her own.

The two glasses of champagne Mr. White had encouraged Susie to drink made her a little woozy, and although it did relax her sufficiently to stop her teeth from chattering, she still felt awfully jittery. Mr. White wanted to cheer her; observing what a fun time it would be, Bully, he said and, with a sparkling wink, whispered, It’s quite a bit of money for you, child—fifty dollars—and if you wish, perhaps you can make even more afterward. Absolutely nothing to fear, he assured her. Don’t worry, sweetie pie. I’ll take good care of you. Nothing bad will happen.

But fearful she was nonetheless. For one thing, she worried that her nose might start to bleed, which it did sometimes when she was nervous or sometimes for no reason at all that she knew of. Usually it would bleed for maybe a minute and then mysteriously stop. Although on occasion, it didn’t stop so quickly. But how could that happen with Mr. White treating her so soothingly? He was such a famous man, Susie Johnson could only stare at him, mesmerized. Dear God, he had built Madison Square Garden, on top of which that statue of some naked goddess revolved, whom men would stand in the street and gawk up at, resembling statues themselves: statues gawking at a statue!

Susie knew that other than sex, she had nothing that Mr. White and all these other glorious gentlemen would want from her. She supposed that she was attractive because young men, and older ones too, had told her so, often remarking on her figure (hourglass, as two or three had called it), and quickly she had learned how much men did desire this hourglass. Well, whatever its value, it was, she soon concluded, all she possessed of any worth. So, yes, her presence at this party had only to do with sex. But what sort of sex did these men have in mind … just looking … touching … or something more? They didn’t consider her the whore of Babylon, did they? That whore to whom that madman on the street had referred. Being unable to answer this frightened her. Although she wondered fleetingly whether this might be exhilaration swirling through her, not, or not only, fear. These two sensations she sometimes found virtually indistinguishable.

After ten or fifteen minutes, a maid escorted her to a back room to help her undress, and because she felt a bit lightheaded, Mr. White himself kindly assisted. Embarrassed by his solicitous concern, her face reddened quite noticeably. Yet because Mr. White appeared to enjoy her embarrassment, she felt some sense of importance; perhaps only of small importance, but nevertheless this grand gentleman was busying himself with her, granting her his attention.

Mr. White and the maid draped over her a black, gauzy gown, transparent and light as air. It resembled a scarf more than a gown, and Mr. White called it a Veil of Salome. She didn’t ask what he meant. Was Salome another whore of Babylon? If so, Susie preferred not to hear more about that. Anyway, a veil this flimsy, she knew, was made to fall off with the slightest movement.

Mr. White asked her to turn around slowly. The glint in his eye and his broad smile revealed how pleased the sight of her made him, even before he said, Oh my, how delicious, my little cherry. Everyone will adore you.

The maid giggled. Susie didn’t ask why. However she did ask, How many are there, Mr. White?

In your audience? About forty. Most of them artists who love beauty. That’s why they’ll love you, Susie. So, nothing to fear.

It did seem that she had nothing to fear, especially not with Mr. White himself standing by her, supervising the arrangement of every detail. Somewhere, she had heard how fatherly he could be. He even aided the maid in delicately braiding into her hair a velvet ribbon that for this affair he had himself styled as a blackbird. He said, There! A crown just for you. Then two servants carefully placed and covered over a whole bunch of noisy canaries around the perimeter of a space where—Mr. White explained—she would be squatting. Seeing her perplexed and surprised, Mr. White stroked her cheek and then actually kissed her—kissed Susie Johnson!—lightly on the lips.

Okay, it’s into the dessert—a cherry for the heart of the pie. Excellent! In we go, he said jovially. Then he and one of the waiters lifted her into the large bowl-shaped cavity setting on the tabletop. With his own hands, he then arranged the cardboard pie crust that covered her. The nervous birds fluttered and screeched noisily, obviously as scared and confused as she was. A rim around the pie kept the birds from touching her.

You all right in there, darling? she heard him inquire, in a tone he would, no doubt, use to comfort a child in a dark room.

Yes, Mr. White, I’m fine, she called back, without knowing at all what she meant by that. She was fine? What was she doing in here?

Okay, love, sit tight. Remember, wait for your cue—‘snipped off her nose’—and then spring up … dance, dance, dance and leave ’em stymied, turned to stone.

Stymied, turned to stone—what did that mean? What else could it mean then spring up out of this pie, loaded with birds, and dance! How bizarre! But okay. Obey! Do as you’re told! Her own father’s harsh voice resounded from deep within her.

A few holes had been cut in the crust so it wasn’t entirely dark, and even though some air also seeped in, it was rather hard to breathe, and being so scrunched down in such a snug, stuffy enclosure enhanced to the dizzying effect of the champagne. It would be impossible to tolerate this for very long. Buried alive. It would drive her out of her mind, she feared. In fact, at times in her life she had gone out of her mind. Ever since she was a child, she would sometimes wake in terror from a nightmare, crying and screaming, continuing to see things even after she woke, monsters … often her father bearing down on her monstrously. Her mother would shout at her, "Nothing’s there! Stop acting crazy! Her mother would assert, You’re insane! Even when her father beat her, Mother would shout, Stop screaming!" Out of her mind … yes, she did occasionally see things as really there that were not—like today, now and then, the cruel countenance of her father.

She felt the pie tray raised and herself moving. Abruptly, the birds ceased chirping and fluttering, as though, she fancied, they wished to hear the song that this man (who wasn’t Caruso) was singing. He finished his performance to loud applause. My, my, would they applaud like that for her? She worried they wouldn’t.

She now heard boisterous singing: Sing a song of sixpence, / A pocket full of rye; / Four and twenty blackbirds / All baked in a pie.

These were canaries not blackbirds in here with her … smaller and, she thought, cuter than blackbirds. But what did it matter? A heavy sense of aloneness enfolded her, enfolded only her, she believed, because far off, outside the crust of this pie, she heard the merriment going on in the next room, going on over there, out there where all the illustrious men were gathered to play, artists with gobs of money, artists—people who make things up to suit themselves and please others.

A sudden burst of panic struck her in the abdomen. She strained to suck in air. What if she never got out of this cage? My God, what if the pie’s release latch failed, or she lost her mind and forgot how it worked? What if she really were buried alive inside a pie with dozens of canaries? Baked in a pie. Briefly, she recalled reading about a magician, Houdini, who knew how to get out of straitjackets, jail cells, and graves. Had Houdini ever been buried alive inside a pie? How the thought of death terrified her usually … because sometimes it attracted her, and that terrified her too—that death, like a lover, could entice so sweetly, promising an escape from any misery that was otherwise impossible to escape. Ensconced in this hole, she felt hopelessly alone, even with all these darling feathered companions nestled so near.

Inside the dim, almost airless enclosure, the lilac perfume that Mr. White and the maid had stroked into her skin, forced into her nostrils a pungent and cloying aroma. Bent over as she was, she could scarcely breathe. She didn’t want to breathe this air, didn’t want to have to breathe it … the smell of herself. No, she wanted … what, what did she want? Oh, if only someone would embrace her completely—would breathe for her. For a few seconds, she held her breath. Her nose tickled. She touched it. Was it bleeding? Please, God, don’t let that happen! It felt damp, but she told herself it was so hot in here, doubtless her whole body perspired. No, her nose was fine.

Susie felt sorry for the pitiful, suffocating birds clustered around her, all of them so silent, so motionless. Oh, how awfully bewildered they must be. She vaguely recalled something about using canaries to detect deadly gases in mine shafts. Had this scent of her, meant to arouse men, asphyxiated these cute little birds, all of them so beautifully colorful in the light but perhaps now as dead as the blackbird of that very peculiar crown which Mr. White had laced into her hair?

The pie tray rocked slightly as she was transported toward the room of powerful men. They were singing: When the pie was opened, / the birds began to sing; / Wasn’t that a dainty dish / to set before the king?

Stooped in the dark, she held in her damp hands the cord that she must yank to release the cage cover and liberate the birds and herself. She wondered what sort of mechanism Mr. White had designed for this to work. She was to pull the cord right before she rose up, breaking out of this monstrous pie, like … well, she guessed, like some kind of sexy bird-woman. Yes, as soon as the singers concluded this nursery rhyme, she would break open the pie crust, and the birds (if any remained alive!) would flare frantically forth, and she, Susie Johnson, would begin twisting her way sensuously upward to then commence dancing across several tables that would have been placed together, like a stage. Mr. White had told her, Pour all the sex you got into it, child. I’m counting on you. It’s your big night.

Pour all the sex! Leave ’em stymied, turned to stone. Well, sexual dalliance was not something of which Susie Johnson was bereft. Truly. She had already, as they say, gone and forked it over. These men tonight had called her cherry. She—Mr. White’s cherry! She knew what they implied, of course. Men liked cherries, but she hadn’t been one of those since she was thirteen. She knew society placed a high premium on virgins and on staying one until you were married. She had never really appreciated why this mattered so much, but she knew enough to always pretend that she was a virgin. Some men didn’t believe her; others, however, did—others who believed that not all cherries necessarily bled. Well, if Mr. White and Mr. Breese and Mr. Cowdin and Mr. Gibson chose to view her as a cherry, she hoped she wouldn’t have to bleed for them. A crazy thought, almost comical, came to her: Would a nosebleed be sufficient?

Her big night? She never asked Mr. White if he meant that this night was the first of other big nights to come or that this one was the first and last of its kind. In any case, she wasn’t finding the fun that evidently everyone else was; for her, so far, this birthday bash hadn’t proved at all bully. Her big night. Well, she supposed that this night she would certainly remember until her dying day. And afterward, would any of these men recall anything of her? No, she supposed that by tomorrow she would have been forgotten. Nonetheless, it afforded her some pleasure to think that she—Susie Johnson (a nobody, really)—would for a short while engage the attention of all these renowned gentlemen. Would Mr. Breese’s camera eye be winking at her? Would Mr. Gibson (and the other artists who were here) be consumed enough with the naked sight of her to even think to sketch her? Ah yes, for her, a few minutes of power … and this to last until her dying day … or no, to linger only as a memory, maybe too faint to hold.

Honestly, she didn’t fully understand this party. Music, delicious food and drinks catered by Sherry’s, cigars (enough smoke to choke you to death), and nearly nude waitresses (allowing men to stroke their bodies) … well, she suspected that all of this these rich and powerful men found commonplace. But the canaries, a nude woman, apparently baked in a pie (they wanted her as hot as that, she supposed), a silly, meaningless nursery rhyme that she had heard only children sing … well, it was stupid. Besides, hiring her to excite this crowd of jocular males also seemed rather silly because from the racket they had been making all evening—blaring music, shouts, raucous, drunken laughter—they sounded quite excited enough without her naked intervention, accompanied by a flock of poor birds, hopefully not more dead than alive. But who was she to question any of this? Sixteen years old, poor as dirt—hardly more than dirt herself! Do what you’re told! After all, these were adults, these were men, and powerful, distinguished ones to boot. Probably, someday, it would all make sense. After all, nothing in the world was obliged to make sense to somebody who was a nobody in that world.

The king was in the counting-house, / Counting out his money.

Suddenly, assailed by confusion, a longing swept over her to talk to her mother, to ask Mother’s advice about … about everything. (Mother, tell me what the world’s about. Will anything ever be okay forever?) But, oh no, no, Mother might ask where that stupid question came from. She would kill her if she caught her here—a pie filling, a dainty dish for these kings. She’d already caught her a couple times half clothed, kissing boys and a bit entangled with them, too. Yes, Mother practically killed her. That was dreadful. Mother had called her a whore too, although not of Babylon. Susie had always wanted so desperately to please Mommy, Daddy, everybody—wanted so desperately not to be beaten. Getting beaten, however, did mean that she was at least getting a good deal of attention, very passionate attention too. Yes, Mother would kill her, but so many wealthy men were here tonight and hadn’t Mother directed her to lay hold of one of these for herself, because her mother had warned, ‘Less you land a rich geezer, you’ll git a pauper’s grave’ … just like I’ll git?

Mother would now and again smack her hard, and when her father drank, which was frequently, he also smacked her. In fact, he seemed to relish beating her and hearing her cry like a baby. It was during one of those episodes that her first nosebleed occurred. Susie sensed her father’s sexual attraction for her, especially during these whippings. He would sometimes strike her breasts or punch her between the legs. Once he demanded that she climb into bed with him. Without hesitation, she complied. All he did was take her breasts and roll the nipples about tenderly for a minute and then cup one of her breasts in his hand and fall asleep, and she fell asleep as well. The next morning, she rose earlier than he. His hand still lay on her breast. It was strange; evidently throughout the night neither father nor daughter had stirred. Neither ever mentioned the event, and he even appeared unaware of what had taken place. It seemed harmless enough to her. Indeed, given whatever more he might have done to her, she felt it was better than being beaten. Mother and Father asserted that they administered these chastisements out of love, to make her do right. So for her, love became compounded with the inflicting of pain. Of course, Susie had also encountered pain that was quite unmixed with love of any sort.

Inside this pie, her thoughts raced wildly. Don’t beat me! I’ll do right! She saw her mother’s glowering face, her father’s face too. Please don’t beat me! I’m going mad, she whispered, perhaps to the birds, with the fugitive hope that they would rescue her, as though they were magical beings in a fairy tale. (Viewed from inside this pie, everything easily resembled a fairy tale.) A book her mother used to read to her when she was ten or eleven came to mind, the story of a girl named Alice who somehow walked through a looking glass. Alice’s grotesque adventures scared Susie, gave her nightmares, but they amused her mother, who laughed and mocked her daughter’s fear. Be good or the Red Queen’ll chop off yer head, Mother giggled. But during these readings, Mother did sometimes let her frightened child cling and nestle into her. And for this closeness and because she so loved her mother reading to her, fear actually seemed not too high a price to pay. Tonight she must have passed through a looking glass and into a pie full of birds.

Even though Mr. White gave no indications that he’d be angry with her over anything, Susie nonetheless worried that for some reason he might get angry and to prevent that she would submit to whatever he desired. If he wanted to roll her nipples around, he could. Please, please don’t beat me, she silently pleaded, as though before a king or a red queen.

The Queen was in the parlor / Eating bread and honey.

Susie Johnson now remembered once curling up in her mother’s lap. When was that? Oh, years and years ago (probably as an infant), and oh how enveloped by Mother’s soft warmth she had been. In Mother’s lap, baby Susie had closed her eyes—as she was closing them right now, all these years later—and she must have, back then, imagined herself inside Mummy’s tummy, just as she was imagining that right now. But imagining it now only briefly because such peacefulness scared her; that sort of bliss, a kind of sleep, a dangerous attraction—so like Death beckoning with an invitation nearly irresistible. Well, inside Mummy was definitely not now the place where she lay.

Eating bread and honey.

How terribly alone, gasping, her sweating body painfully bent, alone with all these birds, themselves scrunched, still and silent as stones. So inextricably did this situation bind her to these little birds, she felt akin to them, felt as one of them.

God in heaven, what was she doing here? I’m counting on you, Mr. White had confided. What? What exactly did he expect? Dance, he had said, just dance. Don’t worry. Oh, only that! But she didn’t really know how to dance very well. So, what was she supposed to do? Dance, he had said. It doesn’t much matter. Do as well as you can. Anything’s okay. Oh, he meant just let the veil drop and squirm about, just be naked. Yes, she guessed that was it. Sex, sexy sex—that was what she heard. Oh, how could that alone suffice to amuse such distinguished gentlemen, to leave such kings stymied? Oh, and wasn’t she the opposite of all those gorgeous Gibson girls … or was she what these gorgeous girls all amounted to beneath their fancy clothes? Oh, she hoped Mr. Gibson wouldn’t be mad at her. For what? For showing girls uncovered. But all right, she’d do her best, dance as well as she could. She could, at least, be naked as well as anybody.

Nothing to fear.

Her nose tickled again. Was it bleeding? Was it bleeding? Please—no!

In the counting-house, counting out their money.

Nothing to fear. No! These gentlemen, every one a genius, merely wanted Susie Johnson to strut about naked as a jaybird. Having their own … their own what? Who was that exotic dancer causing such scandal whom Susie had heard spoken of? Yes, having their own Little Egypt. (Doubtless another whore of Babylon. They were everywhere!) Yes, with their superior minds, these artists would transform little Susie, even if after a single dance step she faltered, transform her into their own Little Egypt. These kings in their counting-house. If they could make money seemingly out of nothing, they could make anything, like Susie Johnson … make her into something out of nothing. Men loved making women. Yes, leave everything to them … place herself into their hands, into their minds and they would melt and mold her to accommodate their burning desires. To be made by these desires for her, what exciting prospects! Such men baked their women in a pie. Make anew … a Gibson girl, she’d be reborn. Whose birthday was this, anyway? Mr. White had promised they would adore her, no matter how well she performed. Impossible to fail.

But oh, Susie Johnson was tired. Maybe she had even fallen asleep for a second. She inhaled the thick perfume. She was sweating. She believed that the smell of lilac had thickened the air practically enough to kill her. It burned her nostrils and filled her lungs as water would a drowning swimmer. Her head spun; again she feared that she might faint or go mad, or that her nose might begin to bleed. And she continued to fret over how well all the other occupants of this chamber were faring. Poor things, in this sweltering, airless furnace … not a single chirp, neither from any of them nor from her. Everything in here was half dead, more than half.

It’s your big night, my child, Mr. White had exclaimed so encouragingly. Show yourself off. She—Susie Johnson (nobody, really)—Mr. White’s child, his cherry …

Oh, don’t be mad at me! Don’t beat me!

Unless you love me.

Yes, she’d turn it on, stymie ’em, turn ’em to stone.

Just don’t be mad!

She felt a slight jarring as the servants, having now delivered her, set down the pie tray. The birds rustled—evidently alive. For half a second, she felt happy for them. Okay, everybody in here was poised to go, unless she was still too scared to move. Her muscles were so cramped. No, no, she trusted that all these small precious creatures would move and so would she. Gladly! Yes, burst from this oven … yes, she—Susie Johnson—a cherry in the mouth of everybody. Wait … wait … wait …

Just don’t beat me.

Mind me or the Red Queen’ll chop off yer head.

Waiting for the song’s last line to end: The maid was in the garden / Hanging out the clothes; / When down came a blackbird / And snipped off her nose!

Now! This was it! The maid in the garden … She yanked the cord. Instantly, the pie crust cracked open. Then! Then, amid a gushing flurry of wings darting deliriously off in