The Magnolia Palace

Chapter Three

1919

As a young girl, Lillian would often rise out of bed on hot summer nights, sweaty and irritable, to find her mother standing nude in front of a window, staring out into the empty city street, her body silhouetted by lamplight. To Lillian, the female form was neither beautiful nor obscene. It was just skin and breasts and the moles that dotted her mother’s arms, a constellation that Lillian would trace with her finger.

Her father had abandoned the family when she was a baby, and she and Kitty had moved to a boardinghouse in Providence, Rhode Island, where Kitty worked in a silverware factory. Kitty rarely spoke of her life before Lillian was born, but she knew that her mother had been raised in one of the smaller Newport mansions—“a glorified carriage house, really,” she’d said once—before falling in love and eloping with a man who was not of her class. Despite being cut off from both her family and her inheritance, she’d insisted on raising her daughter with a soupçon of what was required in good society, from the correct utensils for the game course to the proper way to cross a room.

Desperate for culture, Kitty would bring Lillian to see whatever shows were playing at one of the five theaters in town, sitting her on her lap until the managers insisted that Lillian was old enough to have to pay for a separate ticket. Her mother’s earnings went straight into Lillian’s education at the local Catholic school, which was chosen not for the religious education but for its extensive arts offerings. The school provided its students music and singing lessons, which Lillian quickly took a shine to, performing for the other roomers at the boardinghouse every Friday night. She eagerly lapped up the attention, and it was her idea to move to New York City and try for a career on the stage. Kitty gave her notice at the factory within days, explaining to anyone who asked that Lillian was on her way to stardom as an actress.

They moved when Lillian was fourteen. A year later, Lillian landed a job in the chorus for a Broadway show at the New Amsterdam Theatre called Pretty Girls. The newspaper advertisements appalled Kitty, who threatened to pull Lillian out. Pretty Girls, the ads read. Sixty of them. None of them Twenty. None of them Married.

“It’s disgraceful,” said Kitty, giving the newspaper a sharp snap.

“It’s Broadway,” answered Lillian. “Besides, think of the weekly pay.”

She was allowed to go on.

After each show, the stage door was mobbed by young men hoping to take one of the chorus girls home. Kitty made sure that never happened to her daughter, knitting in the dressing room during the performance before escorting Lillian through the gauntlet with a firm grip. Her presence also discouraged the other performers from becoming friends with Lillian, though, and she was never invited out after. Not that she would have been allowed to go.

One night, Lillian found a note stuck in her dressing room mirror. It was from an artist, or so the man purported, asking if she’d model for him, for money.

Lillian had begged her mother to consider the request, not ignore it. She’d asked around and been told that the artist, a Mr. Isidore Konti, was the real deal. “We both know the show’s not going to last long,” she’d said to Kitty. “And consider Mabel Normand.”

“The actress? What about her?”

“She was an artists’ model for illustrators like James Montgomery Flagg, and now she’s Charlie Chaplin’s leading lady. This could be a lucrative stepping-stone, and better money in the meantime.”

Lillian’s chorus girl wages from Pretty Girls were going to the overdue bills that had accumulated in the year since they’d relocated to the city. They’d celebrated her first paycheck with a small cake from a bakery on Columbus Avenue, but other than that, they were still scrimping.

“Better money, maybe,” conceded Kitty. “But what else will he be expecting?”

She finally relented after Lillian hounded her for a full week, provided Lillian stayed quiet and let her do all the talking. “He’ll see soon enough what he’s up against.”

The man who showed them into his West Side studio didn’t come across as lecherous in the least, and Lillian breathed a sigh of relief when he didn’t balk at Kitty’s presence beside her, and gently offered them tea. While he made it, Lillian looked around. The studio was a haphazard mess of clay-smeared workbenches and tool cabinets, the disarray softened slightly by the northern light spilling through the steel casement windows.

She didn’t know then that the mess was the sign of a true working artist, versus the imposters who were trying to lure in stupid girls by appealing to their vanity. Eventually, Lillian and Kitty would turn around and leave if the artist’s studio was too clean, if it featured a smattering of Persian rugs draped across the floors or candles glowing beside pristine velvet settees.

“More like a bordello than a workshop,” Kitty would say loudly on their way out the door.

When he returned with the tea, Mr. Konti addressed Kitty, not Lillian. “I don’t usually go to the theater.” He was in his late fifties, and had a soft Bavarian accent and a graying beard. “I was brought by a friend, and struck by your daughter’s expressive face.”

“What is it exactly you’re working on?” Kitty asked.

“A piece for the Hotel Astor, called Three Graces. Grace, Charm, and Beauty, with the same woman figure representing all three.”

Kitty sat up a little straighter, and Lillian’s hopes rose. The Hotel Astor was an elegant anchor of Times Square, with a thousand rooms. “Where in the hotel would it be located?”

“In the ballroom.”

Even better.

“However, the muses will be lightly draped.” Mr. Konti shrugged when Kitty gasped. It was a simple fact of the job. “She’ll get paid forty-five cents an hour, and the work may take several months.”

“Lightly draped?” Kitty gripped her purse tightly, like she was about to bat Mr. Konti about the head with it.

“I imagine two of the muses will be bare-breasted, one will be covered. You can see, looking around at my work, that there is nothing unsavory about my art.”

Although Lillian wasn’t entirely confident about posing in the nude, she had to admit that the studies around the room were beautiful, even to her untrained eye. His work had a languid elegance, and in the faces of his figures, she recognized glimpses of her own features, the long, straight nose and narrow jaw. She didn’t know then that she had the ideal body for the times: slim shoulders, narrow waist, shapely hips that tapered down into long legs.

“You can decide, yes or no.” Mr. Konti finished his tea. “We can start today. Or not at all.”

“Not at all.” Kitty rose, shushing Lillian’s protestations. “My daughter is only fifteen, far too young for you.”

“For me?” Mr. Konti wasn’t angry, only amused. “What I do is not for my own gratification. It is to bring beauty forth in the world at large.” He pointed a finger toward the door. “That sordid world, the city outside that’s teeming with people whose lives are full of toil and trouble. If they walk by one of my statues and look up and see something beautiful, an idea or person who inspires them, then I have done my job. I do this not for me. It’s for humanity.”

“Grandiose, I must say.” Kitty grabbed Lillian’s arm. “We are leaving at once.”

Outside, Broadway was indeed teeming with a rush of workers heading home after a long day. Kitty’s face was red, and Lillian wasn’t sure if it was from Konti’s proposal or the afternoon heat that shimmered up from the concrete sidewalk.

“Mother, are you all right?”

Kitty leaned on Lillian, panting slightly. Lillian pulled her back into the shade of the building, out of the way of the pedestrians.

“I’m fine.”

Lillian thought back. Her mother hadn’t had breakfast with Lillian, saying she’d eaten before Lillian woke up. At lunch, she’d said she wasn’t hungry as Lillian had finished up a generous helping of beans on toast.

Kitty began to step forward, but Lillian held her back. “You haven’t eaten at all today, have you?” She didn’t let her answer. “One hour with Mr. Konti equals a dozen eggs, some milk, and a loaf of bread. Think of it that way. I’ll earn breakfast for both of us in one hour.”

Her mother swallowed. She was hungry.

“I’m fifteen, that’s not a baby anymore, and you’ll be with me the entire time. Did you see his work? It’s beautiful. Imagine, I’ll be there inside the Hotel Astor ballroom. Fancy folks will look up and see me and think it’s art. In fact, they’ll see three of me!”

Her mother’s tone was dry. “That’s three pairs of breasts.”

“Only two. He said one muse was clothed.”

In spite of herself, her mother laughed. “You are a sly one, Lilly.”

The unflappable Mr. Konti didn’t appear surprised by their return. He didn’t chide Kitty, or make her feel foolish about her change of mind. They came to an agreement, with Kitty speaking in soft, measured tones as if she were arranging the details for a garden party. Lillian would pose for four hours a day, six days a week, until the piece was finished.

Lillian had figured modeling over the course of an afternoon would be far less difficult than having to learn choreography and lyrics. The first session, he’d begun with the middle figure of the three, and told her to sit looking down and off to the left, everything from her chest down draped by a thin layer of silk. After thirty minutes, when he told her to take a break, it was all she could do not to collapse in a heap. Her neck cricked when she straightened it, and her arms were sore from being extended outward. Even her fingers ached.

She soon learned the best way to avoid the physical toll was to go deep into her thoughts while the sculptor worked. She’d lose herself in the details of the dress her mother had promised to buy her after the job was over: a sleeveless gown of Georgette crepe from Bonwit Teller. She imagined slipping it over her head, the feel of the material on her skin, the joy of twirling around and letting the layers of the skirt float up in the air.

After a few weeks, Mr. Konti asked her to pose for the second figure, whose drapery fell below her breasts. By then, Lillian was comfortable with his stare. He observed her musculature and tendons and bones: he was looking inside her, not at her. After five minutes she didn’t feel odd at all being half naked in front of him. His age worked in his favor, as he came across as a gruff grandfather, not a potential lover. At that first exposure, Kitty, who was seated in a corner with her knitting, seemed to clack the needles together faster and louder, but slowly even she became used to her daughter sitting unclothed, collecting the payment at the end of each day with a businesslike nod.

As Lillian posed for the final muse, the drapery dipping dangerously below her hip bones, she learned the one unspoken rule of posing for a neoclassical work of art. After taking her place on the stool, she made the mistake of offering up a full smile. Konti admonished her, explaining that a nude model retained her dignity only if her lips remained closed. She might offer up the hint of a smile, but never a full one if she wanted to be successful. Lillian was not a commercial product, neither a Gibson girl nor a Ziegfeld girl. She was the vision of perfect woman, the embodiment of beauty. An angel.

“Angelica.” Her mother came up with Lillian’s model name that same session. “We’ll call you Angelica.”

Lillian knew Kitty had done so to avoid any detection by her family back in Newport of their rather unorthodox venture, and the moniker stuck. She didn’t need a last name. More and more sculptors reached out requesting Angelica, and soon the only person who still called her Lilly or Lillian was Kitty, and only at home.

Instead, she became the belle of the Beaux Arts ball, the architectural and design movement sweeping the City of New York.

She became Angelica.

“No sleeping here. Move along.”

Lillian startled into an upright position, rubbing her ankle where the policeman looming over her had given her a light thwack. The bright sun in her eyes was disorienting. Why was she outside and not in her bed? Where was her mother?

The harsh reality seeped back, like a thick mudslide. Yesterday, after fleeing her apartment down the fire escape, she’d made her way to Central Park, wandering through the Ramble, where few park-goers ventured and thick foliage provided some measure of protection. She needed to figure out what was next, but as the sun set and her stomach grumbled, she’d eventually settled on a park bench and fallen fast asleep.

“Sorry, Officer.” She avoided looking at him directly, not wanting to be recognized, and scurried up the hill and behind a forsythia, where she checked her bag, the contents of which were intact.

She reopened the most recent letter from the producer, the one she’d shown the policeman, holding it firmly so the breeze wouldn’t flutter it out of her hands. Mr. Broderick would be delighted to meet her. She just had to figure out how to get to him.

In the city, Lillian and Kitty had gone to the movies every weekend they could, just as they had regularly attended the theater in Providence. Silent films enchanted Lillian. In the hushed darkness, she became immersed in the story, choking up as the camera swooped in for a close-up of a heartbroken young maiden, or laughing out loud at a pratfall. Along with Mabel Normand, she adored the acting of Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish, and figured if they could make it in Hollywood, so could she. It was only a matter of time.

An ailing Kitty had excitedly shared an article in the newspaper about a film producer named Mr. Broderick who was searching for an actress with the “beauty and malleable expression of Angelica, the greatest model of our day” to cast in his next film. Lillian had immediately mailed off a letter saying she was Angelica and enclosing a photo. Months later, after Kitty had died, Lillian had received a warm response from Mr. Broderick, saying that while many women had written to him claiming to be Angelica, he could certainly see a resemblance. Lillian wrote back that very day, swearing that she was, and including a detailed list of some of the statues and artists she’d posed for as proof. His next letter, the one she’d shown the policeman, had included the invitation to see him.

The sooner she could get in front of Mr. Broderick, the better, as being associated with a big Hollywood studio might provide some protection from her current troubles. Even now, it didn’t feel real that Mr. Watkins had killed his wife, that Lillian was any part of this sordid mess.

But that hand, Mrs. Watkins’s hand. It had reminded Lillian of the work of a sculptor, lifelike yet entirely devoid of life. The artists always said that hands and feet were the most difficult parts of the human anatomy to reproduce, no matter with ink or paint, clay or marble. She glanced down at her own hand. There was dirt under the nails, and her fingertips were grubby.

She went into the public bathroom and washed up as best she could, tossing some cold water on her face and giving her hands a good scrub. A woman at the sink next to her—an obvious denizen of the park—gave her a toothless smile. Lillian didn’t respond, leaving as quickly as she could, heading east.

If only she had a friend to confide in. Kitty’s strictness had ruined any chances of becoming friends with her fellow chorus girls, and once she began modeling, she had few opportunities to meet other girls her age.

Still, it would have been lovely to have someone to run to right now, the safety of a confidante. Mr. Watkins had taken advantage after her mother was no longer present, saying kind things and rubbing her neck as Lillian cried. She put her hand on her neck now, remembering that day. Maybe she had arched slightly against the pressure. But not because she liked him in that way. Because at first she thought it was a paternal gesture, the way a father might reassure a child. She’d never known that kind of touch, so had no capacity to judge it.

Lillian stopped at the edge of the park and stared down the expanse of Fifth Avenue. Over the past twenty years, the wealthy families had relocated their homes from the more commercial lower Fifth Avenue to the tree-lined stretch across from Central Park. Mrs. Astor had been the first, in the 1890s, trading her Thirty-Fourth Street residence with its famous ballroom that fit four hundred guests for a French Renaissance–inspired château in the East Sixties. One after the other, New York’s elite—the Carnegies, the Goulds, the Clarks, the Vanderbilts—had all followed. The craze had even coined a new word, Vanderbuilding, where each family vied to outshine the others with their fantastical mansions. Lillian had followed the stories in the newspapers, caught up in the gossip of a world she had no part in, but couldn’t help being mesmerized by.

“Angelica!”

Her heart dropped at the sound of her name. Lillian turned around to see a newsboy hawking copies of The World.

“The star witness in the West Side murder has disappeared! Angelica, the most beautiful woman in the world! Read about it here.”

Star witness? Lillian looked around. Luckily, the sidewalks were fairly empty this time of day. She approached, keeping her chin down, her hat pulled low. “Can I see the front page?”

“No, miss. You gotta buy it. Two cents.”

She found the coins in her purse, then snatched the paper and walked away quickly, back to the safety of the park, where she sat on a bench and read through the article. It hinted at a nefarious relationship between Mr. Watkins and one of his tenants, the bohemian artists’ model known as Angelica, who the police wanted for questioning regarding the death of Mrs. Watkins. Even worse, it included an illustration of a work she’d posed for a few years ago, where most of her body was on full display. It didn’t matter that the statue had won esteemed prizes for its artistry. In newsprint, it came across as utterly indecent.

Just as the policeman had predicted, she’d become infamous. She was ruined. A bohemian, the paper said. The innuendo—that she was a loose woman, immoral—was more than implied. She’d already been tried in the press and found guilty.

But she had one thing in her favor. Angelica wasn’t her legal name, and her last name, Carter, was fairly common. Thank goodness Kitty had insisted on keeping “Lillian” under wraps.

She had to get to the film producer in Los Angeles, and as far away from New York as possible. In California, she could start a new life, a new career. Once the studio was behind her, she’d have some power to fight these silly charges. She just had to cobble enough money together to buy a train ticket out of Grand Central.

A few years ago, she’d done some work in a studio nearby, a former carriage house on East Seventieth Street, off of Madison. The sculptor had tipped her generously. She’d go by and ask him for a loan, explain that her grandmother was sick and she needed to get to her immediately. That she’d pay him back right off.

She located the carriage house easily, but was dismayed to see that the name on the doorbell wasn’t the same as the sculptor’s. He must have relocated. Still, she hit the button and waited. No one answered.

The day was warming up, and she wished more than anything she could have a glass of water, something to drink. There was a water fountain in the park, back where she’d come from, but just before she reached Fifth Avenue, a figure carved above the entrance to a three-story mansion stopped her in her tracks. It was a reclining nude, leaning on one elbow, chin and gaze pointed down, as if assessing the respectability of anyone who dared pass beneath. Lillian had had to don a ridiculous headdress with two long braids as she’d posed for the artist, Sherry Fry. The figure’s stomach rippled with muscles that did not exist in real life, and the shoulders and arms were meaty. Kitty hadn’t liked the final outcome at all. “If he’d wanted a man, he should have had one pose for him,” she’d declared, before allowing that the breasts were quite well done.

“What are you doing, just standing there?”

A woman appeared beneath the archway to the mansion’s porte-cochère. She wore a plain, dark day dress and had one of those faces that made her exact age difficult to guess, with a thick brow and loose jowls.

Lillian braced herself, expecting to be shooed away, but instead, the woman drew close, lifting one hand. It shook slightly, as if affected by some kind of nerves.

“You’re early,” she said with obvious disapproval. “Go in through the servants’ entrance, there.” She pointed to the right, where a passageway between an iron fence and the front of the residence descended into a stairway. “Through the basement. The cook will give you a cup of tea while you wait. She’s not ready for you yet.”

A cup of tea had never sounded so appealing.

Before Lillian could say anything, the woman turned and disappeared into the shadows of the arch.

Lillian’s stone likeness smiled calmly down at her, as if curious as to what she was about to do next.

The woman thought she was someone else. A messenger picking something up, perhaps. Or a scullery maid. Lillian could at least get a cup of tea out of it, until they figured out their mistake. She’d apologize and leave, but until then, why not? These big houses were filled with servants; probably no one would pay her any mind. Luckily, she was very rarely recognized from the statues themselves. Each artist she’d worked with had put his own spin on her visage, playing up whatever features he admired most, making her unlikely to attract attention from strangers when she was out and about in the world.

She’d drink her tea. And then disappear back into the streets.