The Second Mrs. Astor

by Shana Abe

I felt the sudden spark of the power of that, of making a man like John Jacob Astor laugh in genuine amusement. Of making him react. It rushed like lightning through my veins, hellish and bright. I think, from that instant, we were both doomed.

“Miss Force,” he said, his lashes lifting, and through the dusk she could see only that his eyes were darkened too, fixed on hers. “Please never doubt I’ll give you my honest opinion.” “Colonel Astor,” she replied, “please believe that I shall never doubt you.”

Madeleine understood then that, despite what she’d said to her mother, she knew she stood at the edge of a very steep cliff, and falling off of it would mean either flight or annihilation.

“If you won’t believe in your own worth, Madeleine, at least have the sense to allow other people to believe in it.”

it was fine that they sailed practically alone across the elaborate parquet as everyone watched. It was fine, because they were touching, they were dancing, they were together.

“I’ve always thought the best way to get the measure of a man is to observe how he treats his animals.”

If you dance in the limelight, it’s only natural that people will look at you. You can’t expect otherwise.”

“Because love is a tremendous gift, Maddy. A gift and a burden. Marriage especially is more than just hope and luck and a handshake. Marriage is work, enormous work, because it’s a living entity that needs everlasting attention. It will push you and bend you and test you, and if you’re not prepared for any of that, it will shatter you.

“Being in love makes all that work easier, but it does not make it go away. There will be necessary sacrifices. There will be pain. So I’ll ask you again: Do you think you’re in love with him?”

Each new gathering, each new luncheon or dinner held in our honor was conducted in rigid ceremony. Our mothers and grandmothers seemed to be warning us, Yes, once and for all, your childhood is over. Womanhood means you must not ever laugh or burp or break wind again. This is how you will marry well.

That was the sum and skill of her life now, it seemed. How to make herself alluring to this magnetic, just-out-of-reach man.

“It’s going to be this way, you know. Forever and a day, we’ll be watched and followed, studied and analyzed. I fear you’ll know no peace with me.” “Peace,” she scoffed, light—but her heart was pounding, fierce and strong. “What a tedious notion. Who requires peace, when one may have Colonel Jack Astor?”

“I would not have the world be cruel to you,” she emphasized. “I would not have Vincent Astor be cruel to you. But if—when—those things happen, I would not have you be cruel in return. Kinder hearts are stronger, I think.”

“I told him that I would not marry him, because we were too young, and I didn’t want to fall in love with the idea of love. I wanted actual love, not a looking-glass reflection of it. Not stolen kisses, or sotted promises. I wanted the truth of love, the pure molten core of it, because anything short of that was just a cheat.”

I don’t know. All those rapt, late-night conversations about Titanic. I think maybe they seeped into him like a poison.

“It’s plain as day Jack adores you. I think he adores you to the point that the thought of being without you terrifies him to the core. And for a man like Jack Astor, that is significant.”

“I just—oh, I just have the most frightful feeling about it all. I’m sorry! I’m not usually like this. But I have the most frightful feeling. Just the most foreboding feeling about getting on that ship.”

There’s no need to worry, madam. Titanic is the safest ocean liner in the world.” “That’s right,” agreed Margaret, but her eyes were distant once more. “Everyone says so.”

Titanic arrived eating up the flat horizon. Titanic arrived swallowing the waves.

A number of ill-mannered souls—reporters, of course—have dared, in these latter weeks, to ask me the best thing I remember about Titanic. About the ship itself. As if by telling them that, everything that followed might be negated. Rendered less.

“Madeleine, you can’t think only of me right now. There are three of us in our family, and at this moment, you comprise the most valuable two of our three. The finest honor I’ve been given in this world—that I will ever be given—is the task of safeguarding you and our child. Take the boat.” He touched her cheek. “You’re a mermaid, remember? The sea is your element. You’ll be fine, and we’ll all be together again soon. New York, at the very latest.”

I’ve mulled for many an hour on that, the compulsion to discuss what had happened again and again. I think now I’ve teased it out. If one breaks the horror apart, breaks it into all these little, smaller moments, perhaps it’s possible to reconstruct it in such a way as to make everything more . . . manageable. At any rate, it’s a better way to carry on than turning to laudanum.

Kinder hearts are stronger, her mother had once said. Maddy needed to be strong.

The nature of hope is curious to me. It can sustain us through the darkest of times. It can buoy us above every reasonable expectation of despair. Yet hope can shatter us just as readily as the darkness can. People refer to it as false hope, but I think that’s misleading, because the feeling itself is painfully true.

I became, overnight, the sweetheart of the world. From gold-digging social climber, I was transformed into the tragic “girl widow,” a fecund symbol of all that had gone wrong with society today. Man’s hubris and vice had left me—and other, less recognizable widows than me—stranded upon the shores of . . . I don’t know. Islands of hubris and vice, I expect.

I was young, I was wealthy, and I was famous. That was all they really knew, and that was all they needed to know. It was enough to sustain their fantasies.

At long last, I had managed to gain the world’s admiration and respect, and all it took was the loss of my husband. The felling of my heart.

With the carnelian necklace wrapped around her hand like a rosary, she rested her palm against the lid. The stone beads made the tiniest, tiniest clacking sound as they met the wood. She bent over. Through the fabric of her veil, she touched her lips to the mahogany. “Asalamu alaykum,” Madeleine whispered. “Goodbye, my heart, my guide. Goodbye, beloved.”

How awful that was, she thought, exhausted, remote. How wonderful. How awful and wonderful to feel him like this, above my heart, just where his father used to rest his head.