922
"Do you think Richard and Daddy will get us?" Tommy asked, his face pressed against the plate glass window of the train, his cow grasped in his chubby little hand.
Only her sense of decorum kept Clara from pressing her own face against the glass. Clara's jaw moved back and forth, thinking of how neatly she'd been coerced into spending the summer in Newport with Rose's family. Not that they hadn't been lovely, Clara thought, and not that she and Tommy hadn't both enjoyed it. But she hadn't seen her husband in three weeks, and it had been a month before that.
Even Rose had gotten to see Dennis more often than she'd seen Richard. Rose. Part of her had enjoyed feeling like young girls under the protection of Mrs. Levitz, but Rose was keeping something from her. Or, Clara thought as she chewed on her lip, she thought Rose was keeping something from her. But she couldn't trust her instincts, not anymore, not after a winter and spring of constantly feeling someone watching her in her bedroom.
A feeling she'd hid from Richard.
"I'm sure one of them will be waiting," Carolyn Rothstein said with a smile. Carolyn had spent her summer in Europe and had joined Tommy and Clara when they changed trains at Penn Station.
The train finally pulled onto the platform of a station that to Clara looked rather like a ramshackle cottage, where Arnold Rothstein stood. He kissed his wife hello while Clara looked around, hoping for Richard or Jimmy to appear.
"Clara, Tommy," AR said with a smile that made a shiver go down Clara's spine. Tommy moved a little closer to her.
She carefully maintained the smile on her face, even as Tommy's fingers sank into her leg.
"Mr. Rothstein," Clara said evenly. "Was Richard or Jimmy not able to come meet us?"
"I'm afraid your husband had business to attend to, and Jimmy will arrive with Meyer and Charlie later today. In fact, I need you to accompany Carolyn and me. Tommy can ride in luggage truck to the Brooks."
Tommy said nothing, but his grasp on her leg tightened.
"Mr. Rothstein, I'm sure you understand Tommy is only-"
"Those are the arrangements, Clara," Rothstein responded. "Don't worry, Tommy. Clara or Richard will be along shortly."
Clara kneeled in front of Tommy and tried to make it sound like riding in the luggage truck and being turned over to a maid he had never met was a grand adventure.
Rothstein asked Peter to stop the Rolls Royce as they approached the racetrack.
"You have what I asked for?" Rothstein asked while Carolyn looked out the window as if what was going on had nothing to do with her.
Clara nodded. She hadn't let the bag leave her hand. Now she reached inside to produce six bank checks, three diamond bracelets, and the largest wad of cash she'd ever personally carried. It was larger than the rolls her father typically whipped out of his pocket.
It was the collections Rothstein had asked her to undertake in Newport during the second half of the summer. She had handed over the collections from the first half when she'd been allowed to go home the last week of June.
What had surprised her most was the range of the debts men started paying to her. The lowest was fifty. The highest was over a hundred thousand dollars. Clara had the feeling they were all of equal importance to Rothstein. It made her wonder if Richard was carrying out similar but more dangerous collections, and she tried to push the thought away. Her fingers twisted into her skirt and she felt Carolyn's eyes on them.
"All but two paid, and you needn't worry about them," Rothstein said with a smile Clara thought was supposed to be pleasant. "Now I have another task for you. I'm going to ask you leave the car here, take this cash, and bet it all on Flying Goose to place."
Without a word, Clara tucked the money back into her bag and adjusted her hat.
Richard had inspected every inch of the Brooks over the summer, but he'd never actually spent any time on the top floor. Even with the windows open, it was stifling. His mask itched. It had itched so much the last few months he almost couldn't remember what it was like not to itch.
The room was filled with plain iron bedsteads and a few toys. A feeble attempt at a nursery for children of visiting gamblers. Right now occupied by just one little boy sitting in the corner with a small toy.
"So then Mr. Cow, the mermaid said..." Tommy continued before he spotted Richard. "You came! I don't like it so much here so you came!"
Tommy flung himself at Richard and continued chattering, telling Richard about swimming and that the cottage had shadows.
No one had chattered at him since Tommy and Clara left for Rhode Island. He'd forgotten how silent his life had been before them. The people around Rothstein only spoke to him when they had to, and much of the summer had consisted of standing behind Rothstein on Manhattan street corners while the man waited to accost someone who owed him. The rest of the nights were spent in the Hamptons or Saratoga, listening to the sound of roulette wheels, watching for anyone who could be dangerous to AR. Most mornings Richard ended up in his own bed in a silent apartment because Rothstein seemed determined to get back to Broadway as often as possible.
"I'm five now," Tommy finally concluded.
The idea of Tommy turning five in Rhode Island made no one happy, but AR needed him and Luciano was involved in something that needed Jimmy and so the boy had a birthday in a cottage that looked like a palace surrounded by Lady Rose's family and Clara.
The anniversary of Angela's death had passed quietly in the days following Tommy's birthday. He hadn't seen Jimmy-he didn't exactly know when he'd last seen Jimmy-but he wasn't sure if he could have said anything. His anniversary with Clara was in a few days. Perhaps they'd be allowed to spend it together.
But Tommy was safe. Jimmy was alive. They owed that to Angela.
"I know. We have. A surprise for you. And Mr. Cow," Richard told Tommy. It was why he'd written to tell Clara to make sure Tommy had his cow.
"Mr. Cow gets to come?" Tommy asked, delighted.
It was still so easy to make Tommy happy, Richard thought, brushing the boy's hair off his face. He wondered how long that would last.
"Where. Is Clara?" Richard asked.
Tommy frowned. "Mr. Rofstein said Clara had to go with him and she said riding with the luggage would be fun but it wasn't and I don't like it so much here. I want to go home."
Jimmy slowed the Olds when he caught sight of a familiar blue dress.
"Need a lift?"
Before she saw who stopped, he watched her social mask slip over her face. It disappeared at once when she saw him, but there was something else there. Fear. Trying to be invisible.
"I know you aren't hiding from Richard," Jimmy said drily as she climbed in the car. Clara answered with a dirty look.
"Is he well?" Clara asked quietly.
"Sure. And I'm great, thanks for asking," Jimmy responded with a smirk.
"Have you been eating? Do you have clean socks?" Clara asked in a teasing tone of voice.
"Fuck you, Clara."
Clara smirked at him in response. Jimmy lit a cigarette and passed it over.
"Want to explain what the hell is going on?"
Clara carefully flicked her ashes out the open window of the automobile.
"You are walking back from the track. Rothstein has you making bets for him," Jimmy finally answered, as he felt a press on his chest that had at some point become commonplace, one that said he'd fucked up somehow and now someone he loved was in danger. "The fuck else does he have you doing, Clara?"
"Arranging introductions. Telling wealthy people about his gambling houses," Clara answered in a very even voice.
Jimmy shot her a look. "Richard might believe that. I don't."
The silence lasted. "What does it matter?" Clara finally asked, and Jimmy heard defeat in her tone. "Do you have another plan? Is there another way we could do this? Because all I can think about is how Rothstein is all that stands between us and my father. And whatever his plan is with Matheson."
Was there another way? His ma was constantly asking him to come home, to help her with her beloved Artemis Club. But Tommy...He could let Tommy go with Richard and Clara, let them disappear. But how could he let them go? And he could go with them, but how could he leave Rose?
How could he leave his mother?
He still wanted it. He still wanted it so much he could taste it. Sometimes he told himself he'd be happier with a simpler life, but every day he watched Lansky and Luciano assemble more power, more money, and all he could think about it was how much he wanted it. He was the one raised to take over a city, and yet he was the one living as a servant. The only way back was to gather his own power, reform his alliances, and how else could he do it than by serving out his time in New York? Chicago had worked out for him. New York would as well.
Richard thought Clara was an expensive wife, but Jimmy could only imagine what the keeping of Rose would cost. Not that he thought he'd ever have her. It was better for Rose that she remain Dennis's wife, with a barrier between Jimmy's world and hers. Nucky hadn't done a very good job keeping Clara behind the barrier, Jimmy thought, never pondering how he had drawn her deeper into their world.
Jimmy did know what a horrible job he did in keeping it away from Angela.
"Are you okay?" Clara asked finally.
Jimmy knew what she was asking. He had dreaded the anniversary, laying in bed night after night reading and smoking and thinking about every single decision he'd made last summer.
He shrugged instead of answering.
As he pulled into the drive of the Brooks they were spotted immediately by two people walking across the lawn.
"Skeezit," Jimmy said and he tried picking up Tommy to swing him around but his leg almost buckled under him.
Rothstein had seen fit to let Richard have the night off. It had been lovely to actually have dinner together, Clara thought, even if Richard had waited until everyone else was done to do more than push food around on his plate. He looked thinner to her eye. Had Kaity done what she said in regards to meals? Had Rothstein not let Richard have the privacy he needed to eat? It almost felt like a luxury to do something as mundane as worry about her husband's meals, a problem that she had no doubt she could correct.
Even if it was a symptom of the larger disease of their lives.
Jimmy was keeping Tommy in his room but apparently overseeing bathtime was a step too far. He'd waved her off with an 'I gotta check on something, Clara,' and so she'd gotten Tommy bathed and ready for bed in Jimmy's room. Anything was better than sending Tommy back up to that horrid nursery that Rothstein had put together while ruminating on how homey the orphanage in Dickens Oliver Twist sounded. But Clara knew she would have consigned Tommy to sleep there that night with a mild twinge of guilt and a determination to make it up to him the next day if she'd had no other option.
Their bedroom was empty when she returned and she worried for a moment Richard had been called away until she heard the sound of water.
The last time he'd been a tub he could stretch all the way out in he'd just been a kid. That could be because most rooms he'd lived in were smaller than this bathroom, Richard reflected before he heard footsteps echoed across the tile floors. Richard startled, his first impulse to cover his face until he recognized them. Clara, carrying a plate of grapes and dressed in her kimono appeared at the door. She smiled silently, sat down on the lounger, and arranged the small blanket over her feet.
"What. Are you. Doing?" Richard finally asked.
"Getting comfortable," Clara said with a smile. "You don't want my feet to get cold, do you?"
She ate the grapes calmly as Richard looked around wildly.
"Why?"
Clara shrugged. "The blanket? It's so you don't get cold while the maid does your hair. See, you only think I take forever to get ready in the evenings. It could be much worse. Thank goodness for bobs."
His mouth twitched as he thought of her sighing impatiently back in the guest cottage the summer before as she pinned her hair up.
"Why. Are you. In here?"
"It's been a long summer. I thought I'd watch."
"Me. Take a bath?"
Clara slowly ate another grape. "I missed you," she responded when she was done. "Thought I'd enjoy this ridiculous bathroom."
"My other. Room. Wasn't like this," Richard answered.
"Well," Clara said, "All those people I invited from Newport need to think I'm also a guest instead of a hired hand."
The tone in her voice worried him, as did the fact she'd left Tommy alone in a new place. "Is Rothstein. Asking-"
Damn it, Clara thought. She hadn't meant to let that interfere with this moment. She pushed aside the thought. Tommy was with Jimmy, and no one needed them. If she could keep her focus, if she could keep the bad thoughts away, they could have the night just for them.
"I don't want to talk about Rothstein. Do you know what I want to talk about? That we only have days left to be newlyweds, that I've missed you. I've missed bathtubs."
She wanted to bite her tongue off when he looked at her with worry. He knew she had avoided bathtubs since the...the asylum. Except for the couple of times she'd climbed in with him she'd only taken showers.
"There's. Room," he offered.
"I thought you'd never ask," Clara said. As she walked toward him she saw a slight crust of blood laying against the cuticle of one finger and that one of his knuckles was slightly purple.
These violent delights, Clara thought, and couldn't stop herself from shuddering. She'd been angry, terrified, thrilled over what Rothstein had her do. What had Richard done over the summer? What did those acts make him feel?
As her kimono hit the floor he started to look away before remembering he was allowed to look as much as he wanted. Her arms and legs were brown from days spent at the shore. The deep pitted chickenpox scars started under her left breast and softened as they went down her torso.
He realized she was staring back at him, with a vacant look he'd never seen before last summer.
"Clara?"
"I missed you," Clara repeated and pushed aside all other thoughts as she climbed into the bathtub.
Clara had carried out another of Rothstein's requests. And even though she felt bad for Richard, of course she did, she couldn't deny she enjoyed it.
Plus fours and a sweater vest were a very good look, after all. Goodness, but his legs looked miles long! Clara wondered if she could manage to be back in their room when the game was over, or she'd still be entertaining Rothstein's guests.
She knew Richard would take these clothes off as fast as he could. She'd like to be there when it happened. Last night had been like eating at a very good restaurant. Delightfully satisfying, but left her with a deep desire for a return visit.
"You love a cap, darling, and this is a very nice cap. And it is a lovely game, and you've improved so much. Truly it's just a pretty walk with a little sport thrown in."
The look Richard shot her was almost petulant and Clara bit her lips to hide a smile. Poor thing, it was hard for any man to look intimidating while wearing short pants and knee socks.
Charlie and Meyer came down to join them in the lobby. Clara had to admit Charlie was made to wear sports clothes. He could be a sketch for an advertisement. They also suited Meyer well, although his face was just as unhappy as Richard's.
"Goodness! Won't you all make an attractive group on the greens."
Charlie gave Meyer an appreciative up and down so obvious it made Clara look around to make sure no one else was around them and saw most of the rest of their party coming down the stairs.
Tommy walked slowly and quietly until he got to the last step, and then ran across the lobby. "Does Mr. Cow get his treat today?"
"Tommy," Richard and Clara said in unison.
"Sorry," Tommy said.
Tommy looked rumpled-he looked like Jimmy had dressed him, Clara thought with annoyance- but before she could lean down to straighten Tommy up Richard did it.
Golf was one of many things he did not because he enjoyed it but because the benefits outweighed the costs. A miserable afternoon in a ridiculous outfit typically resulted in improved relationships and a sense of comradeship with people he wanted something out of. Not that there had been many golf invitations outside of Jersey lately. Nucky frowned, thinking of when he had been turned away from the Quogue Field Club earlier in the summer. Invitations were drying up from certain quarters altogether. Was it the bootlegging? Were the same people who were happy to buy his wares hesitant to be seen with the supplier?
He internally made a note to think about it later. Today he was on the golf course to benefit his relationship with Arnold Rothstein. What Nucky couldn't quite determine was what Rothstein's plan was. Matheson hadn't been invited, something Nucky knew he would hear about later, but James, Harrow, Lansky, and Luciano had joined Rothstein's party along with Draper Daugherty, Lady Rose's husband and uncle, and a host of others. People weren't shying away from Rothstein.
James had always been an excellent caddy and an excellent golfer. Picked up the game quickly, like he had done with all sports when he was a kid. For a moment Nucky forgot, and he felt the familiar burst of pride and sadness that always came with James doing well. Standing there in his flannels he looked as much at home at the Saratoga Golf and Polo Club as Daugherty or Levitz. Nucky expected to feel anger, anger at all James did and all he threw away, but instead he just felt...longing.
He had won the war, protected his kingdom, but at that moment he admitted that it was rather a hollow victory. It had cost him Eli, still locked away, and James, off in New York working for Rothstein. Margaret had turned against him. And in the end, it had cost him Clara. She was never going to understand he did what he had to do to try and protect her.
Nucky regarded...his son-in-law. Jesus Fucking Christ, he thought. All that money and effort so Clara could marry into a political dynasty or fine old family and this was what she chose. Dressed-he assumed Clara had obtained the outfit-in golf clothes the man could almost pass for a damaged officer. Could almost be just a slight twist on what he had planned for her.
A contretemps up ahead distracted him. Jesus, the Luciano kid couldn't hit for shit. Took out a slice of lawn. That guinea temper was flaring, he looked like he wanted to take the club and beat that mick Lady Rose married to death with it. For some reason, Irish was all over Lansky. There was some angle there and it bothered Nucky he couldn't see what it was. James was earning Luciano's neverending ire (pissing people off was the boy's specialty) by offering suggestions on how to send the ball flying instead of launching the grass into the air. Nucky had to admit they were good suggestions. Luciano wasn't in a receptive mood.
Harrow's jaw was working back and forth as he watched the other men. It had been a year, Nucky recalled, since Clara's preferred pastime had morphed into screaming at him that she loved Harrow. Then this morning, when he walked downstairs, he saw them leaning over little Tommy Darmody and having an intense conversation regarding, apparently, a cow, of all fucking things. Clara was wearing a white tennis dress (speaking of wasted money, all those lessons and her game was still atrocious), and when they stood up to talk to each other he felt like he was looking at a Clara he'd never seen before.
But he'd seen that face before. At that moment she'd looked like Mabel. Mabel, when Clara and James had been young and Mabel still thought she was going to get everything she wanted out of life.
"Shame this club doesn't allow for mixed parties. This crew could use Clara."
For a moment Harrow didn't respond. The man seemed to look around trying to see who Nucky was speaking to. This was hard going, Nucky thought, and his whole successful life was in his ability to talk to anyone.
"She's an excellent golfer. Takes after her mother. Mabel grew up playing in Philadelphia," Nucky lit a cigarette and smiled. "The Atlantic City club opened a few weeks before Clara was born. Didn't stop Mabel. Only twelve holes were finished, but she played all of them in her condition. Would have carried her own clubs if I hadn't stopped her. The whole time all I could think was that she was going to have that baby, have Clara, in a sand trap."
Harrow's movable eye kept darting over to look at him. So disconcerting. How did Clara ever know where to look?
"I know. She's a good. Mmm. Golfer. She taught me," Harrow finally responded. With agonizing slowness, of course.
Mabel had taught him, one Sunday afternoon in Philadelphia. So young and pretty in her white dress, healthy still and mocking him for how very bad he was at the game.
In the background, there was the distinctive sound of wood splintering and a mix of Italian and what Nucky swore sounded liked Yiddish as Luciano's ball rolled into a stand of trees and the man broke his wooden club in his hands.
"Try this one," James said drily and handed Luciano an iron.
Lansky put his hand on Luciano's shoulder and was trying to get the man to calm down. It was a wasted effort.
"Is she well?" Nucky asked finally.
Harrow's club spun in his hands for a few moments. Nucky waited.
"She says. She's happy," Harrow finally answered. "She has. Nightmares. About that place."
"Everyone made mistakes last summer," Nucky responded. "I made some miscalculations."
"Everyone. Did," Harrow responded, to Nucky's surprise.
Nucky sighed. James had told some joke and everyone was laughing. Even Lansky had a (terrifying, but still) smile pasted on his face. Everyone, of course, but Luciano. James should sleep with one eye open.
Something had been worrying him-well, since Clara hit adolescence, but certainly since New Year's. It was why he had to broker peace with Harrow, no matter how distasteful he found the task.
"As I learned at New Years, I was wrong about the nature of your relationship with Clara."
Nucky took great enjoyment in the look of utter discomfort on the good side of Harrow's face. It made him feel better about the intense amount of discomfort he was currently experiencing.
"Even if," Nucky continued, "No father ever wants confirmation about their daughter's marriage quite like I got. But listen, Harrow. She's still my daughter. When the inevitable happens don't be proud. What has all of this been for if I can't pay for all the medical attention, all the nursing, anything we can get to protect Clara as much as possible? After everything with her mother..."
"I can. Take care. Of her," Harrow insisted.
'Don't be foolish, Thompson,' Jeffries had said. 'My daughter can't live like this. Take the money.'
Jeffries would love this, Nucky thought, pushing away the thought that Jeffries had left Clara money enough so that she wouldn't be dependent on either father or husband before he took it.
He still found Harrow repulsive, of course. Jesus, who but James and Clara wouldn't? Mabel. Mabel wouldn't have, he knew. She'd managed to implant that into the children. It made him feel ridiculous, it seemed like something out of one of the poems Clara used to publish in the newspaper, but there was an air of tragedy that clung to Harrow. Clara had experienced enough tragedy in her life.
And there was so much of Mabel in Clara, more than he ever realized. A slight shiver went down his spine. Nucky fervently hoped (he wasn't quite hypocrite enough to pray) that there just wasn't too much of Mabel in Clara.
Clara had snapped at Rose before for looking at her "like a nurse" so she snuck a glance while Clara was busy with Tommy. Clara looked healthy, pretty, and fit in her tennis dress. Healed. Recovered.
"We haven't been able to spend this much time together since we were girls," Rose said when Clara looked up.
"I know," Clara said with a smile. "Since the war, we've always had a clock ticking our minutes together away."
They took turns batting balls off their racquets for Tommy to catch. When he ran off to find an errant ball Rose drew up her courage.
"Do you speak to Richard about it?" Rose asked in a low voice.
"Rose, please don't start-" Clara began, and Rose thought she could see her friend's walls come down as she spoke.
"No, it's just...Dennis doesn't understand. He can't. He spent the entire war in an office. It's not..."
"It wasn't the same for me, either, you know. You were over there for years, for longer than any of us, really, and I was just there-"
"Please don't do that," Rose said. "Watching you crawl across that field was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. I didn't think you were coming back."
They were silent.
"I don't talk about it. I don't, because I don't think it compares to what he and Jimmy went through. And I don't because," Clara's voice cracked so Rose looked away. "Because there has to be an after, because we have to be more than...than that. I have to believe that it's something that happened to us once, but it's over, and..."
Rose nodded. "I want to believe that too, but then, Clara, I'll see something as innocent as wine spilled on a tablecloth and I'm standing in a field hospital again. I can hear the planes whizzing overhead, I can smell the...or I'll wake up in a cold sweat because I think I'm there again, I think it's never going to end, I'll always have my hands in some boy's chest trying to make the blood stop..."
Clara's fingers brushed softly against hers. "I know," Clara whispered.
"Do you..."
"No. My nightmares are about other things. But Richard, sometimes. Sometimes its enough that it wakes me up, but usually he's so quiet, I'll just wake up and he's..."
Clara turned, ostensibly to get another ball. No one knew what was at the heart of any marriage, Rose thought. Certainly knew no one what was at the heart of hers.
"Jimmy too," Clara said, her voice still uneven. "But we all hear Jimmy's."
"German," Rose responded quietly.
"Yes, at first..." Clara began as Rose flinched.
Rose wished for a second that Clara had realized what she said, but Tommy came back and they resumed hitting balls to him.
At the moment, Charlie was equally annoyed by the way Dennis Malley acted and the fact Jimmy god damn Darmody beat him on the golf course. Little viziato bastardo was like something from a picture show. Knew what club to use for every stupid little play. Looked like he'd been born with a fucking club in his hand.
"Used to caddy for Nuck and his crew," Jimmy had said. Fuck him. God damn bastard had been learning a wood from an iron when Charlie had been fighting for his fucking survival on the streets. There was a chance his temper had gotten the best of him, Meyer certainly hadn't held back from letting him know he thought so, but...
Jesus, Malley got under his skin. That didn't exactly make Malley special. Charlie thought Draper Daugherty was a piece of shit in a hundred-dollar suit, but Malley just got to him. Charlie threw back his drink and went walking. Couldn't stand it when Meyer was annoyed with him.
"You wear sporting clothes so well," a lilting British voice said. Had to be fancy fucking Lady Rose. God damn, did he have to listen to her fall all over Malley?
"Had 'em since Princeton," Darmody answered, much to Charlie's surprise. "How'd your game go?"
"I beat Mrs. Daugherty, Clara. We played with Tommy a little bit, just to get him used to it,"
Darmody laughed. Laughed! "God, I hope you showed him more than Clara did. She's a horrible tennis player."
Charlie knew exactly what the next noise was. Finally, they broke apart.
"We have to find time," Rose said breathlessly.
"Clara insisted Tommy go in my room," Darmody answered. "Don't know why."
Jesus, Charlie thought, 'cause he's your fucking kid. Clara likes jumping Harrow, she don't know you've been jumping her fancy friend.
Charlie smiled for real. He didn't have to worry about getting back at Darmody. Clara was going to do it for him.
"Mr. Harrow, Mr. Darmody, wait please?" Carolyn called out.
"How can we help, Mrs. Rothstein?" Jimmy answered.
"Mary, one of the maids, came down with chicken pox. With Tommy being so young..."
"Ah, nothing to worry about. Tommy had it in January of '20. First time I ever met the kid he had 'em all over his face."
Richard stood silently as Carolyn walked away. "Tommy. Had chicken pox?"
"Yeah, he's such a tough little kid. Got over it fast. Poor Clara, though. Couple of weeks later she came down with a bad case. I'd gotten them when we were kids, but it was one of the times Mabel had locked Clara up in the house 'cause she was..."
Jimmy stopped talking and lit a cigarette. "Anyway, she had them the night Prohibition became the law. She missed Nuck's party, missed all of it. I'd go see her when I checked in to work. Clara said the misery was worth it because it meant she got weeks away from Darcy. Christ, she couldn't stand him. At least the scars..."
He was going to say at the least the scars weren't on Clara's face. He didn't know how she missed getting them, she'd been so covered in pox they were even in her eyes.
"The scars. Aren't. Mmm. On her face," Richard said with agonizing slowness, vocal ticks slowing down each syllable.
"Rich? You okay?"
Jimmy saw there was something Richard wanted to say, but Clara appeared in the hallway just then.
"There you two are! We need to get down to dinner."
"Carolyn stopped us to say some Colleen has the chicken pox," Jimmy answered.
"Oh, thank goodness Tommy already had them," Clara answered.
"You had. Them. In 1920?" Richard asked.
Clara smiled up at him. "You know where the scars are! I was still recuperating when a bunch of sour pusses celebrated outlawing liquor for the good of us all and James here decided to go for a walk in the woods."
"I thought. You had it. As a child," Richard said quietly, but Clara was distracted by the other guests in the hallway.
Well, that was odd as hell, Jimmy thought.
Carolyn surveyed the dining room with some satisfaction. Through the wall, she could hear the roulette wheel spinning. The time gaps between spins were small so the house was winning. That was good for Arnold. Good for them.
Sometimes she thought these moments were when Arnold came closest to experiencing true happiness. The wheel spinning in the next room and being surrounded by a carefully curated collection of society's darlings and discards. All parts of his collection were equally interesting to her husband.
More interesting than she was, at any rate.
There was an undercurrent to this party, though. Like the air before a summer storm. Most of the unrest was coming straight from Charlie, whose face looked like a summer storm.
At the moment, he was paying an inordinate amount of attention to Clara Harrow, who was staring at her friend Rose with a frown.
"Ain't you and Harrow been married a year now? Bout time you start acting like a regular wife and start having a little excitement on the side..."
"Enough, Charlie," Clara hissed. "I'm not Mrs. Longworth!"
It was Malley, Carolyn decided. Malley, who acted like his sole purpose in life was charming...Meyer and Charlie didn't like it.
Oddly, Lady Rose either didn't care about or didn't notice her husband's fascination with Meyer. Could be because the woman's attention was solely focused on Jimmy Darmody. Carolyn didn't see the attraction.
Perhaps it was the influence of the man who raised him that she found off-putting. Nucky Thompson sat at her right, plying her with attention and a particular form of oily charm.
She liked the attention, even if it was from the Atlantic City Toad. Mostly she liked the thrill she got from the way Arnold glared from the foot of the table at them, distracting him from laying on the charm with Harold Levitz.
Lady Rose's uncle was a man of quite extravagant means. Carolyn knew her husband planned on adding the man's wealth to his own coffers.
"Does he ever have a normal conversation?" Nucky asked.
Carolyn looked down the table to Mr. Harrow, who was staring at his wife with a look that was almost haunted. He had acted strangely when she'd stopped to tell him and Jimmy about the maid who had the chickenpox.
"My father-in-law didn't approve of our marriage. He sat shiva, made Arnold's mother participate."
"My father-in-law wasn't thrilled, either," Nucky replied after a moment.
"Didn't stop you, though." Carolyn said. "Didn't stop us."
Thompson exhaled. "You have children, you want things for them. A better life, an easier life. Children...they don't want what they should."
Carolyn laughed. "They want things like you, me, Richard Harrow."
It wasn't his daughter Nucky was staring at, though, but Jimmy Darmody who was doing his best not to stare at Lady Rose.
Other than Mr. Harrow, the person staring (no, Carolyn thought, glaring) at Clara was Elsie Daugherty. Elsie had earned Clara's wrath with a comment about Richard. Clara had earned an enemy when she'd used her friends to get Elsie removed from the best clubs and women's groups in the city.
Elsie was so busy planning how to get back at Clara that she didn't notice her own husband, Draper, was busy flirting with Ivy Wells. There was a familiarity there. Ah, the little birds who lived in Arnold's nest. Did Thompson think he was the only one who brought worms?
Not that Thompson noticed. He was too busy staring at his children.
Everyone wanted what they didn't have, Carolyn thought. Even Arnold, always so possessive when someone else looked her way.
She maintained eye contact with her husband as she lowered her voice and smiled for Nucky Thompson.
What Meyer wanted to do was watch AR's rich guests waste their money in the casino. What Meyer was doing was looking for Charlie so he could smooth things over. Charlie's display of feeling on the golf course...it hadn't been smart. What was the upside of letting people like AR or Thompson or Levitz see him lose control like that? And over nothing. Meyer knew what Charlie thought about Dennis Malley. Charlie made his thoughts very clear. It was nonsense. Nonsense. He had to make Charlie see that, because what was the upside in indulging in fantasies? There was none. That was why Meyer refused to indulge in the fantasy of a life without a wife. It was the difference between wanting and needing. He wanted Charlie. Eventually, he would need the veneer of normalcy a wife would offer.
He suppressed a groan when he recognized the woman further down the hallway. Any wife would bring complications. In the two years he had known her, never had Clara done anything other than making things worse. She'd certainly made Harrow's life more difficult. It galled him to think that's what he needed. Someone educated, wealthy, connected. Jewish, of course. Someone who would run his home and raise his children.
Just without Clara's mouth.
"Meyer, have you seen Jimmy?" Clara asked with a forced smile.
From a card room down the hall, they both heard the sound of furniture smashing against the floor. Clara got to the door first. Inside was what Meyer expected.
Charlie and Jimmy.
"Are they fighting?" Clara asked, disbelief in her voice.
Meyer didn't quite have the term for what they did. It wasn't fighting, not exactly. Jimmy was almost as fierce a fighter as Charlie. If they wanted to bust each other up, they would. This was... Anyway, how did this woman manage to always be exactly where she shouldn't be? Could she not take up needlework like a proper lady?
"I've seen better playground brawls!" Clara continued. "Goodness, I've been in better playground brawls!"
He didn't doubt her.
"This sometimes happens between them," Meyer finally said as Charlie was twisted Jimmy's ear while Jimmy half-heartedly slapped Charlie's cheek.
"Jimmy's hit me harder!" Clara said. "When you say this happens..."
The first time when Darmody visited New York in February of '21, Meyer thought. Jimmy and Charlie sniped at each other during that unfortunate summer where they tried to be partners. But it was once Darmody started working for them that the...well, fighting began in earnest.
"A few times a week," Meyer finally answered.
"Like...this?" she responded in disbelief.
Meyer nodded, his mouth tight.
"I can't watch this," Clara muttered to herself.
Meyer relaxed slightly, glad she was going to leave. He could talk Charlie and Jimmy down, and then...
Clara was across the room so quickly Meyer didn't have time to react. Neither Charlie nor Jimmy noticed her approach. She pushed Charlie back and slapped Jimmy with quite a bit more force than either man had been using.
"What is this?" Clara said to Jimmy, ignoring Charlie.
"None of your goddamn business, Princess!" Charlie snapped at her.
"Don't fucking talk to her like that!" Jimmy said, and Meyer worried that, as par for the course, Clara had just managed to turn a spat into a brawl.
"For gods sakes, Jimmy!" Clara began.
"So protective of your sister, ain't ya, Darmody? But ya ain't told her your shtupping her best friend, have you?" Charlie snarled.
The room fell silent.
"Clara," Jimmy said, and Meyer heard the desperation in his voice.
"I knew, I knew there was something. Rose knew about your nightmares," Clara answered so softly Meyer barely heard her. "She saw how much Matheson looked like you, she kept finding reasons to say your name..."
"It's..."
"You fucking liar. How long, Jimmy, how long? It wasn't enough with Angela, you had to ruin Rose's life?"
"How many times you think he ditched the kid on you and Harrow so he could go..." Charlie cut in.
"He never thinks of Tommy. Not ever. Not since the first moment he learned of his existence. God damn you to hell, Jimmy."
Clara flew from the room, knocking over another chair on her way out.
"Yeah, well, fuck you, too, Clara! You aren't the only one who gets to be happy!"
Jimmy turned and kicked the shit out of one of the chairs littering the floor.
Harrow walked through the door just then. Thank god, Meyer thought. Harrow could deal with the Atlantic City disasters.
"You need to find your wife."
"She's going for Rose," Jimmy told him as they went up the stairs.
Not to Rose, Richard noticed. For Rose. Clara and Jimmy had fought, that was obvious from Jimmy's demeanor, and had done so in front of Lansky and Luciano.
"She found out. About Rose and me. Fucking Luciano told her."
Richard had known since last year. He didn't mean to keep so many secrets from his wife, he didn't, but...
Clara's chickenpox scars came from 1920.
Clara's voice echoed down the hallway. "Just how long have you been lying to me?"
"I never meant to lie to you, I thought I was protecting you," Rose answered, sounding like she was holding back tears.
"Protecting me?" Clara asked incredulously.
Rose nodded. "You don't understand, you were...I'd never seen you like that. I watched other people break over and over, but when you arrived from America you seemed so strong and..."
Richard's mouth was dryer than usual and he felt sick. Like he was on a train that stopped far too suddenly.
"You mean last summer?" Clara asked.
"Well, yes, last summer. I should have thought the summer before but it sounded so impossible, and from your letters..."
"An emergency tracheotomy," Lady Rose had asked, standing in the beach house, as Richard tried to work out who could have taken Clara...
"It wasn't until the fall," Jimmy muttered.
Rose looked over Clara's shoulder, seeing both of them. Richard felt her eyes on him, the way she looked at him was always so piercing, but never with any hint of fear or judgment.
She looked at him like a nurse.
"Rose, I don't understand..." Clara said, and he heard the frustration and anger in her voice. He wanted to go to her, he did, but he couldn't quite move.
"Clara, believe me, neither do I! When I tried to explain to Romola she thought I'd lost my mind."
"You didn't go to Chicago to meet Jimmy? Because of Clara?" Rose had asked him on the train to Cincinnati.
"Romola knows?" Clara breathed out.
Romola, sitting on that odd sofa in her father's house "And you didn't know each other then, correct? It seems like you have known Jimmy and Clara forever but you met him in Chicago after the war?"
"Who else could I tell, Clara? The first time I thought about was at Dorothy's wedding, but it was so outlandish..."
When Clara went to Rhode Island for the wedding, when he kissed her goodbye behind the Ritz, never planning to see her again because it was becoming too much. The pain. The conspiracy. The nightmares. And the dream came back...
...the dream that predated Odette. The dream that made him hesitant to take the personality assessment the veteran's hospital asked him to complete, the one that led to meeting Jimmy. In the dream, he's hurt. His face is unbearably hot, and the field hospital is in chaos. Suddenly, there's a girl with him. She's blind, and her eyes are bandaged. It's from mustard gas. He doesn't know why an American girl was near enough to the front line to get gassed. What he does know is the nice nurse, the one with the English accent who would tell him stories about growing up in Yorkshire with her sisters when the doctors debrided his face, gave the girl morphine enough for both of them, and told her to take care of him. Outside the war raged, and when his dreams started she woke him by stroking his hair and telling him stories about mermaids. She climbs up on the gurney with him when the sounds of battle draw closer. Suddenly, he hears the shelling and throws them both under a nearby table right before the room explodes around them.
"...but it was when I went to Atlantic City in August that I thought I knew for sure."
"After Angela died?" Clara said.
'Richard says he doesn't know about mermaids, but he does, Clara,' Tommy had said the morning after Clara took him from Gillian...
"Well, yes, when you were..."
"When my father locked me in an insane asylum," Clara said
Clara, always fearful of losing her grip on reality as her mother did. Clara, who came out of the asylum thinking people were watching her from the walls.
"There was no British officer, Clara," Rose said quietly.
It never felt like a dream. They knew they were going to die. They were young, and inexperienced, and bandaged, but it was the first time he'd ever touched a woman's breast. It was the first time he'd ever felt the inside of a woman's leg slide along the outside of his own. It was the first time he'd ever felt a woman's hand close around him. And so on.
"What are you saying, that I hallucinated-"
Clara, laying on a blanket next to the car. "I've been with someone before, but it was hurried and during the war and. Well."
"No, Clara, that's not what I mean. You..."
Clara, with her dress unbuttoned, lay in rubble under that table. The darkness began to blend memories of Clara, his flesh and blood girl he dreamed about for so long, with the dream girl whom he had only wished to be flesh and blood. Slowly his memories of being with Clara were tainted. The chickenpox scar under the left breast, Clara or the dream? (Clara. He had to check multiple times to be sure.) He felt like he was losing his mind.
But Clara hadn't had chickenpox until after the war.
"Is this what you and Jimmy do? Think of ways to embarrass me about this? To convince me I'm crazy?"
Jimmy, standing in the ruins of the beach house. Clara, freshly his wife, furious about the destruction. Capone looking on. "See, Rich, while you were getting shelled in a tree and I was getting my leg blown to pieces do you know how sweet, pristine, butter wouldn't melt in her mouth Clara did her bit for the war effort? After all her conniving to get to Europe, do you know how she contributed? By spreading her legs for some injured officer. Did you even know his name, Clara, or did you..."
There was something between Clara and Rose. Friendship, he thought, even though he could tell it was different from Clara's relationship with Angela. But it was also different from their relationship with Romola.
It was a bond like people who have been to hell and back together share.
"You didn't tell me. You were in Europe. During the war."
What else hadn't he and Clara told each other?
"Jimmy? No, Clara. Clara, listen. You thought he was British because...because that's what I told you."
"Jesus Christ," Jimmy breathed out. "Am I going fucking crazy? Is Rose saying-"
Rose looked over Clara's shoulder at Richard. "I thought I was doing the right thing, I did, please believe me. Clara, he was American. He was enlisted. He was a sharpshooter. He had shrapnel embedded in the left side of his face. They had to do a tracheotomy on the field and it damaged his vocal cords. He-"
"This is what you do? I find out you've been lying to me for months and-"
Mostly what he smelt was the burn of his flesh in the remains of his nostrils, the dirt, the antiseptic, the pervasive stank of illness and death. But on the girl, underneath it all, he remembered...
"Oranges," he finally managed to get out. "You always. Smell like oranges."
Author's Note: Okay. Well. So I've always planned this twist. There's so much magical realism in Boardwalk Empire, and this how I wanted to use it in T3/H3. There's clues all through T3, a couple of you figured this out. Please believe me this isn't a "they were fated to be together, happy ever after" twist. Almost everything in italics is lifted straight from T3. Also, the original idea came from the fact that Richard doesn't actually say he's a virgin, he says *they ask* when he first meets Jimmy and talks about the psychological assessment. For a long time I feared something had happened with his sister (the morphine!). And then I realized it was a beautiful hook to explore a whole bunch of stuff.
*All the casino stuff is from Carolyn Rothstein's memoir
*The slap fight is based off the ridiculous fight Jimmy and Charlie have early in season two
I love you all! Happy Holidays! Obviously I want to hear all your thoughts!