One Brief Shining Moment

004. 𝐀 𝐑𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐌𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐬

Ailsa Mellon, Elizabeth's mother (to give you an idea of what Elizabeth might look like)

July 12th, 1963

"Yes, well as I was beginning to discuss the matter with Prime Minister Macmillan when the first heart attack struck me..."

I pushed the food around on my plate sullenly, not doing an entirely good job of pretending that I was enjoying myself. Father was in deep discussion with the men at the table, going on in detail about the inter-workings of the British government. Robert listened in carefully, knowing enough not to butt in with his own opinions, but soaking up as much information as he could. Every now and again, Bobby would make a remark about the legal aspects of some trade act, and Robert would slide himself in appropriately with his knowledge from recent schooling and his current work. I could tell my father was pleased, since he was engaged in to the conversation and had yet to check his watch. 

The only time he ever did that was when he wanted the conversation to end. 

Nicholas had been sent off to send time with the maids, too young to dine yet, and Sasha and I had been delegated to the other end of the table, I towards the middle sitting next to Robert. Mrs. Kennedy and the other wives were sitting near Evangeline, asking Sasha about Mrs. Porter's and how she liked it. Fred and Ed were a ways down, conversing with Teddy Kennedy about something which I could not pick up on. It must have been very funny, since Teddy nearly spit out his wine in laughter. Fred and Ed both wore rakish grins, saying things to each other quietly as the conversation went on. 

So I sat there quietly, sipping my wine and trying very hard not to sigh. Sasha had been commanding the conversation, speaking at great lengths about her deep love for Miss Porters School and all the wonderful things she was involved in at the school. I could not help to crack a rueful smile at the mention of the school's newspaper, which Sasha was now a writer for. I had been the Lead Editor my final year at Miss Porters, and had gotten in a fair bit of trouble for purposely publishing a story admonishing an administrator for drinking on school grounds. I'm sure there was an attempt to suspend me at the very least, but they were unsuccessful. 

After all, Father paid the school quite a bit of money in donations. 

Mrs. Kennedy had caught my eye a few times during this conversation, no doubt interested in hearing about my time at our shared alma mater, but I would simply nod politely to her or smile. But no matter how many times she tried to slyly inject me into the conversation, I evaded it with equal precision. The other wives seemed almost wary of me, as if my aura was emitting a dangerous energy across the table.

I was very good at making people not want to talk to me. 

This was a trait that Father said I had inherited from my mother. She was a prickly woman, he told me, and the scorn she gave men in her hay day was something of an infamous tale amongst the Pittsburgh elite. A rose with a million thorns, as Father would have said. I suspect that this is what drew him to her, it was a challenge that he refused to lose. And eventually he had managed to woo her. Perhaps those walls of thorns had been something alluring in the beginning, but in the end it was their marriage's downfall. They had been married for nineteen years when they divorced in 1945. Nineteen years of commitment, of a family's happiness, squandered. My mother had been the one to file for it, and he father agreed to it without argument. He had married Evangeline three days after their divorce. 

I was only two. 

No one was really the true culprit of the divorce, however. In my mind, they were both equally guilty. My father was never emotionally there for my mother (preferring the company of other women at times, namely Evangeline), and so she shut her herself up in her work room most the time, drawing and paint and developing photographs. She was a lover of photographs, her favorite medium of art to work in. So when she left us, she put together a collage for each of us with photographs of each of us with her. It was a cruel sort of goodbye, how she left us with such a vivid memory of her, but never came around to see us. Last I had heard, she had re-married.