01

That summer I learned that while I had amassed a colorful collection of early twentieth-century playwrites for my bookshelf, I had few connections in the world of the living when it came to theatre. Part of that was my fault, too many nights curled up from drinking or trapped in my own self critical spiderweb. I blamed the other part on the lack of direction from a university that was perfectly content to slam the door on me without telling me what other doors I should be knocking on. I’d recieved no audition slots or invites from any of the big Philadelphia theatre companies. Word was probably circulating about how I had been “difficult” at the student showcase a few months ago. So I took to the internet, like any millenial flung to the outside word, educated on the pitfalls of capitalism but totally unprepared on how to get a job under it. 

I managed to get a good stream of work as an extra up in New York City. If you were a warm body in the hot city, you could make a few bucks if you had twelve hours to kill and didn’t mind living off bagels. If you had a certain look, you could do even better. The thing that I had always been told would confine me was what now got me featured extra parts on weekly period dramas. Every week I’d take the train to Manhatten, camp out at a hotel, and bounce from set to set. One day I’d be in a fitting to be a fifties cocktail waitress, then off at four in the morning to be in makeup by five, being transformed into an eighteenth century debutaunte. Fifty dollars for fittings. A hundred and something dollars for eight hours. A few extra dollars for overtime, but never that much. It was backbreaking work. Most of my acting aquaintences couldn’t understand why I’d put myself through all that trouble, to exhaust myself without doing any “real” acting work. I didn’t see it as any diffrent then an internship that most got when they were first out of college. I was getting so much more. I got to watch the cameras roll, feel the hot lights over my head, see the ADs running back and forth. I loved going to the studios in Long Island City for the wardrobe fittings, great warehouse filled with racks and racks of fantasies. No other internship let you time travel in such a magical way. 

I enjoyed the temporary bonds we built with each other. For that one day, from the makeup people to the extras, we were deeply intimate. We could talk, flirt, discuss our innermost worries before getting our payslips and heading our seperate ways. Anyone I liked, I kept up with. I’d get their phone number. But I’d always come back from Lower Manhatten or Brooklyn with only one person to care for. Myself. No one else needed me to wake them up, to feed them, to make sure we got to set on time. I relished this independence most twenty-three year olds take for granted. All I needed was a hot shower, my backpack and a cool bed, and I was the happiest girl in the city. 

I hadn’t seen Preston since our graduation. My graduation. Preston had failed to meet his requirements, failing both his Intro to Film and his Jazz Age classes. He was allowed to walk during our ceremony, but he walked away with a blank piece of paper. But from what I’d heard, he didn’t seem motivated to obtain his diploma. Chelsea had moved him into her loft apartment, a fortress with a private dog park that overlooked the river. They were having a grand summer going to all the places I had stopped going to, that I had given up in our twisted seperation. It only floored me to keep getting work in New York. The more time I was on set, the less time I had to hear about the two of them covorting around, drinking at all the bars I had sought out for Preston and myself. I would have been perfectly happy to never hear about either of them ever again. 

Someone above had other ideas for the course of my life. 

I was on a break during a wedding scene when my phone rang with an unfamiliar number. A New York number. I snuck off to the bathroom, expecting that it might be an agency or casting director who had received one of my three thousand applications I’d sent out over the last three months. I prepared my most honeyed voice as I picked up. 

“ Hello? Yes, this is she.” I purr into the speaker. I get a vile cough in response. 

“This is Toddy Ketler.” 

I have to grab the sink to steady myself. In the mirror I see all the color drain from my face, ashen against my high collar, lavender, sixties bridesmaid’s costume. This was the great aunt. The great aunt. The great aunt Preston always had told me he’d introduce me to at one of the mythical, Ketler family functions.This was the woman who ruled their dynasty with an iron fist, who deemed you worthy or unworthy of entering the family. Preston had described her like a dragon, sat atop a pile of family heirlooms, protecting her lineage. I smell the smoke from her great nostrils coming through the phone, her great tail holding up the receiver. 

“Hello, Miss Ketler. What can I…do for you?” I float above my physical body, watching myself frantically try to get my shit together.

“My stepson gave me your number. The number from your professional website. Very purple, he said. You’re an actress?” Yes, my brain wants to say. Yes, I’m a world famous actress you’ve never heard of. Yes, I think your grandnephew is vile. Yes, I think you should shoot him behind the family cabin in Vermont. Yes, pigs eat everything, but not him. He’ll kill the pigs with all the drugs in his system. Yes. Yes. 

“…I am, Ma’am.” I say in a weak breath from high in my chest. I’ve never “ma’amed” anyone before. Even the centurian relatives deep down in the South don’t like being called ma’am. Makes them feel old, my mother says. But Toddy Ketler was a ma’am. Maybe if I adknowleged that about her, she wouldn’t eat me. “I’m working in New York now, actually. On a piece for HBO. It’s not very glamourous, but…”

“Have you ever been to The Pierre?” As she asks the question I hear a dog in the background. High pitched squeaking, a Pomerainan or some hypo-allergenic highbred. When I tell her I’ve never been, I hear the skittering of paws on a hard surface. 

“They’re redoing the tea room, unfortunately. Service is going on in the Rotunda tomorrow, quite unusal. But I do perfer the Rotunda. I think it’s a rather relaxing room. Will you be available? For two ‘o clock?” 

I feel the paleness of my face give way to hives. I’m having an allergic reaction. I’m allergic to confrontation, the mere thought of confrontation. I look at myself in the bathroom mirror. I pity the makeup team that will have to touch me up when we get back to places. I watch in the mirror as my lips move, but I don’t hear my voice. I don’t hear the sound of the “Yes.” Toddy tells me not to be late. The phone clicks. I run upstairs to spend the next six hours in a fixed smile. In this room, it’s a beautiful day in 1967. The camera glides over my face. My nose is blotted between takes, my hair fluffed. Below that smile is a sinking oceanliner, going down, down into the pit of my stomach. 

I take fifty bobby pins out of my hair, unleashing a teased lion’s mane previously in a flawless boufont. My skin is red and angry under the pastel eyeshadow and frosted lips. Its three-fifty seven in the morning. I realized I have no clothes, not clothes fit for a tea. I only had the gingham shorts and button down co-ord I was wearing, my sneakers, a sleep shirt, my bathroom kit and a change of underwear. Perfect for napping on the Amtrak home. Not what one would wear for tea with the matriarch of an American institution. I’d have to buy something new tomorrow morning, forgoing any meals I’d planned on purchusing. I had brought enough money to get a ticket home, despretely trying to save up anything I earned from extra work. The sad irony was that, back in my apartment hung a dress I had planned on wearing if and when Preston did introduce me to his family. I’d picked it out of my collection once I had done the impossible and impressed (so I thought) both of his parents. It was polka-dotted, teal and turquoise with a halter neck, knee length. I had low heeled slides with a spiraled pattern over the foot, silver earrings that curled in a smiliar shape. I would have worn my hair pulled back, sleek and modern the way Preston had perfered. 

I pass out on top of my nest of curls, too tired to tame it. If I look like a lion now, maybe I will still be a lion tomorrow. 

Five hours isn’t nearly enough sleep. My alarm goes off at nine-fifty, and I have to get busy. My time before going to the Pierre is to be used to meditate, caffinate, and consolidate. I also need to bet the tourent of tourists in Time Square if I have any hope of finding something appropriate to wear. In the lobby I’m nursed with free coffee before firing myself out the door into the chaos. I’ll never understand how so many people, so early, can brave this humidity just for a trip to the M&M store. They plod along, no regard for their bodies or the bodies of those trying to get around them on the street. But I manage to grit my teeth, running headlong into the massive Forever21. It’s cheap, but it’s the one place I can be in and out with an “ok” outfit for not much money. Going through the racks I reflect on a life of dress code violations. I’m a serial offender, even from childhood. I was always with a shawl prepared to cover myself in case my neckline is too low or my skirt is too high. I couldn’t afford to not get it right this time. I had to keep it together. I had to keep it refined, but also keep my signature, my “ness” as my dad likes to call it. I find two pieces in the sales section that are unripped and unstained. They match too, a cherry patterned skirt and blouse on white fabric. I snatch up a pair of fake pearl earrings from a bowl. Espadrilles too, not wanting to be denied entry to The Pierre for my sneakers. All in all, twenty-eight bucks. I pass by the Sephora for a small tube of perfume. I can at least smell wealthy, maybe I’ll throw her off with that so much she won’t notice the outfit. 

I leave the hotel around one-thirty, carrying all I have shoved in a Michael Kors backpack gifted by my parents at graduation. The blouse hangs a little off my shoulders in a Bardot style, giving me a reprieve from sweating too much as I walked. I used some of the bobby pins to corral my hair, pinning it up off my neck like a Gibson Girl. I tried some makeup, but not too much. No lipstick. I was already red enough from the heat. A few blocks from The Pierre I start to regret the espadrilles. Eight dollar shoes rarely feel great, but these are eating my heels with every step I take. My left foot is bleeding when I make it to the hotel. Inside is like an ice box. Everything is perserved, beautiful and frosty. Anything in this room would spoil if it had to exist in the modern world. I limp to the elevator, hitting the button that will take me to the Rotunda. 

With one touch, I assend to a higher plain. I lavitate to how the other half lives. 

I step into the floral enclousure that looks over the park. Plush sofas wrap around the circular room. Ornate white tables fill the rest of the room, topped with fragrent, pink flowers. A few people are spread around the tables, girls and their mothers, a few older ladies. Only one table holds a single woman, sitting beneath the central chandelier. Thomasin, “Toddy” Ketler is in her late eighties, perhaps her early ninties. Her silverly grey waves are pulled in a flawless bun that rests at the nape of her neck. She’s in one of those Chanel, tweed jackets, the emblem of the old guard of society ladies. Pale blue jewelry, iradescent in the light, match the pearl hints in her manicured nails. They drum against the tablecloth, waiting for me to arrive. She’s a large woman, a great Sultana overlooking her court. I forget about the pain in my foot or the makeup running down my chin as I approach her. 

“Hello. Miss Ketler? It’s me.” I watch her adjust as she lays her eyes on me. They’re navy, wide like Preston’s and his father’s. The skin around her features sags from a life under the sun, masking once was what an exquisite face. She goes through some internal motions, shifting from suprise to relief to fascination. She holds her hand out to me, nearly blinding me. That pearl in her ring is the size of a robin’s egg. 

“So it certainly is. So you certainly are. All in one piece, and quite nicely as well.” A waiter rushes to pull out my chair. I gracefully shove my backpack under the table, the high back of the chair hiding the oval of persperation in the center of my back. Another waiter arrives with two flutes of champange before I can take a sip of water. This isn’t going to be a “tea” tea. This is going to be one of those teas. Toddy sips at her flute like she’s done this a thousand times. I return the action, weary that I haven’t eaten any solids yet today. 

“Your acting job was a good one? A big part?” She asks. 

“Oh yes.” I lie. “It’s for a new show. Big wedding scene down in Lower Manhatten. A show about sixties New York. Lot’s of wonderful costumes. Period pieces are going to be really popular in the fall, so that’s when it will all come out. My family’s very excited.” I regret mentioning my family as soon as the tea trolley arrives. 

“I’m sure they are. You know I was around that time. Lots of stories from then. But for another time. Drink that up, dear. How do you take your gimlets? Vodka or gin? I think the situation is a gimlet situation.” Toddy waves the waiter over, loading her small plate with all the cucumber sandwiches. My own mother won’t drink gimlets in the afternoon, but I know that this isn’t going to be a white wine conversation. Toddy allows me a few moments to fill my own plate before the questions begin. 

The tea cakes arrive as we come to the end of the interview portion. I’m shocked Toddy didn’t bring flashcards. 

“So your mother is from what family? The Philadelphia branch, or the Georgian offshoot? What did your grandfather do? You traveled much as a child? Nantucket? How many summers? You went to boarding school, which one? Did you enjoy Prague when you went there? London? How long did you study there? Your father is a business man? Who are his people? The Midwest? Your mother rides? Do you ride, dear? Do you sail? Those are your real fingernails? Are you Catholic? Protestant? Episcopalian?” Toddy rocketed through those questions like she rocketed through two more glasses of champange and two gimlets. I’m hanging on by my fingernails, by some miracle managing to keep up with her. I hadn’t been drinking the way Preston and I used to drink. My tolerance had dipped, no match for the Ketler tolerance. I was greatful for the cakes, hoping the thick pastries would give me a base to catch the everflowing “tea”. 

Toddy selects a lemon bar from the sumptulous spread of macaroons and minature confections. Pleased with my answers, the conversation turns to her own family. I’m treated to a little backstory, that she’s been married three times, the last one in secret. She had a child from her first marriage, Nicholas, along with her two stepsons from Sammy, the secret third husband. Theodore, Preston’s grandfather and her eldest brother, had been as much of a shit as his son and grandson. Bernard, or “Bebe” as Toddy affectionately remembered, was a sweet man who remained solitary after he’d returned from Korea. He would have been an incredible father, she tells me, fiddling with one of her many rings. Its a gold band enlayed with three emeralds. It was her mother’s, she tells me, an anniversary gift that celebrated Toddy and her brothers. Preston had told me about that ring. It was Black, Starr & Frost, a line favored by his great grandmother. All the Ketlers hung on that ring, waiting to see who it would be left to. 

“I’d like to show you something, if you don’t mind.” Toddy goes to her purse, taking out a few photographs. She lays them out, the glossy paper making a “flick” noise as she places them in a line.

“I hold a gathering at my house every year for Easter. All the family comes. We’re not too familiarly inclinded, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. But it’s a very pretty day. We do our best to catch up. My stepson Jonah is quite the photographer. I told him to bring his best camera, because a little birdie told me about a guest Preston was bringing. Of course Emily isn’t really a little birdie, she’s more of a vulture. But she told me all about her son’s wonderful girlfriend who had a wonderful family, how she grew up in the country, and what a sparkplug she was. She’d just returned from London, which was why she couldn’t come to our Christmas service up in Vermont. I was so excited to meet this girl who Emily swore was “the girl”. I was so happy that PJ, that’s what we called him as a baby, found a girl that not only made him feel alive, but made him want to be alive. There they are.” Toddy points at one photo but I don’t want to look. I can’t look. All while she was talking, I felt like I was going up a roller coaster. I knew the drop was approaching, the sick, twisted drop that was up there with the cruelest things Preston had ever put me through. 

There they are. Like a Town and Country layout, they stand in the middle of Toddy’s beautiful home. Preston’s wearing the paisley tie I bought him for his birthday two years ago. Chelsea’s waist is so tiny in that pale pink, Celine ready-to-wear dress. Her bracelets are thin, gold, delicate like she is. She’s wearing my story, my accomplishments, easily slipped on like those fucking ugly bracelets. She’s so beautiful that nobody would ever question that she’s done none of the things she and Preston cooked up together. She looks every bit the prep school, liberal arts, globe trotting American princess. I sit there in my cheap shoes and my sweat stained skirt with the warped cherries, looking every bit as cheap as I feel. I’m confronted with the ugly reality that Christmas Mass, Easter lunch, and beautiful things will never pressed into my fat, heat swollen hands that they are into Chelsea’s thin, sophistocated ones. 

Toddy pats my hand in that comforting but firm way, the way old ladies do that tells you covertly “buck up and don’t cry in public”. It’s the same why my mother pats my back when she tells me to sneak off to the bathroom and wash my face. She pushes their photo in front of me, her manicured nail tapping agressively on Chelsea’s face like she’s trying to chop her head off. 

“I’m going to take a wild guess that you know this girl. You do, don’t you? It’s such a Ketler male tradition to shit where you eat. Another wonderful Ketler tradition is lying. 

 My other guess is that, Preston, in all his infinate shittery, stapled your accomplisments to this girl’s forehead and brought her into my house thinking I wouldn’t notice. Jonah is going to make a wonderful journalist one day. He found me the most adorable article about your Mother and her interior design business. You’re a deadringer, dear. Then there was your professional website, headshots, photographs from your high school drama department, even a particularly charming writeup about rescue beagles done by your father. People who love animals truly are the better people. People like that are your people, who you really are, dear.” She holds on to my hand as the check comes, squeezing it tightly. Her hands feel the same way my grandmothers felt, velvety. Even though her hands are weak, my skin retains the marks from all her jewelry. 

Out of The Pierre, Toddy suggests I see her back to her apartment. Such a WASP tradition, to “walk it off”. Drink too much? Walk it off. Eat too much? Walk it off. Your ex boyfriend told everyone his new/old girlfriend is actually you so they don’t find out she was arrested in Texas, dabbles in black magic, and has a habit of stealing perscription medication? Better walk that shit off, honey. So we walk along Central Park, sheltering in the shade of the trees hanging low over the stone walls. Toddy moves pretty quickly for such a short, stout woman of her age. She holds my arm for balance. I’m getting dragged behind her as she continues along. She tries to cheer me up with Easter stories, all the little indiscretions Chelsea made. 

“Sammy, my husband loved that show, what’s it called? Mad Men. She looks just like the wife, the first wife. But she acted like her too, like a little snob. I’m too old to treat people like that. You give as good as you get in this life. My staff has been with me for years. She acted like we were still in the forties. He stood right next to her, saying nothing, like he was proud. God I’m glad you didn’t marry him. I wouldn’t inflict my family on any poor girl, but those two? They deserve each other. Here we are.” Toddy points up as we round the corner away from the park. I’m at a loss for words. All that time on sets lurking around in the shadows, I’m standing in front of the real thing, the thing set designers dream of. We go up the stairs, past the Georgian colums and window boxes. I grin when I see the color of her front door. 

“It’s haint!” I exclaim. “You have a haint blue door? I’ve only ever seen the color in the South, and never the doors.” I admire the silver doorknocker, a brilliant piece with a smiling bird in the center, his tail feathers the knocker. 

“It keeps out the negativity. My second husband was a stockbroker from Louisiana. Adorable man. He redid the entire place. You’ll see it once we go inside. I have his card somewhere around. He and your mother would have a lot in common. He comes over when Sammy makes his Hannakuah dinner. He and his husband play in a jazz band out of Soho.” Toddy lets us in to a welcoming, cool blast of AC. This is what a New York townhouse should be. It’s lush carpets lead into rooms filled with ancient yet comfortable furniture. There’s warm wood everywhere, accented by expensive art and priceless family photos. Toddy excuses herself to the kitchen, for her pills, she says. I’m left in the front hall, alone with a staircase lined with generations of Ketlers. Amoung those soured faces, one portrait looks out at me, crooked smile with shaggy blonde hair. He looks just like Preston. His hair is darker, his eyes browner and his jaw less pointed, more square. But he’s got that same, inticing beauty. Old American, like a classic car.

“That’s Nicholas. Good looking kid, wasn’t he?” An old man in a Berkley t-shirt looks down at me from the landing. He holds a glass of ice tea. The glass clinks against the chain around his neck, a small, Star of David. “Are you one of Toddy’s? Young Friends of the Metropolitan? No…Daughters of the American Revolution. I could go all day guessing. I can barely manage an appointment to the dog park.” 

“You’re Sammy.” I hold my hand out as he descends to shake it. He’s every bit a grandpa, the silly kind that gets on all fours to play horses. I can understand why Toddy stuck with this one. Third time must really be the charm. He’s the antithasis of a Ketler. Sammy looks along the wall, following my gaze. Every few frames he’ll tell me all I need to know about that person in a grunt. 

“I take it you’re our almost Easter guest?” Sammy asks. I nod, containing a smile. Another grunt. “Toddy told me not to make a scene, but you do that where I grew up? I’d have tossed them both out by their ears. That’s not her style. I’m less ruthless then she is. One of the things I love about her.” Sammy sips at his iced tea as Toddy rejoins us. The pills seem to be fast acting, as she’s got a glint in her eye that was present earlier in the day. 

“You’re bothering the guests?” She asks. 

“The dogs are napping. I’m doing security. She checks out.” Sammy kisses her as Toddy takes my arm, bypassing him on the stairs. She leads me to the second floor, where two longhaired dachshunds are napping at the end of the hall. 

“I never get to show anyone this. I double bolt the door when family comes over.” Toddy whisks me through her bedroom, and I think I’m having a stroke. Walk-in closets like this don’t really exist, do they? Is this place really same size as my studio apartment in Philadelphia? I stand with my mouth open, taking it all in while she sits at the dressing table. It’s a dressing table, inside the closet. I mentally take in all I can. My mother’s going to hit the roof when she hears about this closet. As I twirl, I spot something that doesn’t seem to fit with the hanging gowns and hat boxes. A child’s armchair, maroon and monogramed, looks back at me from the corner. It bears the letters “NGB”. 

“It was Nicholas’s. When I was getting ready in the evenings, he would sit by me and practice his reading. His father, my first husband, thought it would make him soft. Sammy met him when he was sixteen. Those next ten years he’d always call him in here so he could tell us both about his day. Once a week he’d read us a poem, sitting in that little chair with his knees up to his ears. When he passed I couldn’t part with it. Sometimes I catch Sammy talking to it when he picks out his suits in the morning.” From a key on her bracelet, Toddy unlocks the top drawer of the dresser. Inside is a series of wooden boxes, some long and flat, others deep and square. She beckons me to sit beside her, selecting one of the long, flat boxes.

“When I was around your age, my mother took me to a luncheon on Park Avenue. I met Barbara Hutton there.She was the most fabulous woman I’d ever seen. So graceful, so lithe. I wrote her a letter after that. She wrote me back a few months later. She didn’t have much when she died. She’d given most of her collections away. But she did keep a few things.” She unlatches the box, revealing a sparkling constellation of jewelry. Stars don’t shine as brightly as these do. Toddy lifts a strand of opals up to catch the light, one of Barbara’s favorites, she tells me. She goes on about the letters, locked in her personal safe, that spanned twenty years between her and Ms. Hutton. More boxes come from that drawer, now part of Toddy’s own collection. Each piece has a story. I would have sat there for months and months to hear them all. The jewel in her crown is in it’s original, midnight blue box. I had walked past the store on Fifth Avenue where they came from, those coveted boxes in the window behind the gold and black gate. Toddy lifts it up, tenderly as if it were an infant. 

“I’ve seen these in magazines.” I whisper, in reverance for the iconic necklace. 

“None like this.” Toddy assures me. “It was custom made. See how the diamonds have that lilac shade to them? Very rare. From Columbia. It look years to make, but my father wanted all of the diamonds to have that color, my mother’s favorite color.”

I’m not used to being surrounded by all this, all of these beautiful things. My head is spinning I’m at a loss for words. I begin zoning out, overloading at the thought that one of those tiny boxes holds the equivelent of my student loans, maybe more. 

Cold metal touches my neck. I jerk back to reality as she places the wreath around my neck. Before I can say anything, the clasp snaps into place. Twenty-four hours ago I was eating bagels from Kraft services and being ordered how to stand so the lead actress could walk past me without crowding her. Now I have a Harry Winston wreath dangling from my sunburnt neck. Toddy lifts my hair to see the full effect in the mirror. 

“Like a movie star.” She stands up, putting her hands on my shoulders. I smell her perfume, older and fragarent. “Your neck is a little short for something so grand, but its all right there. Some boy’s going to have to work extra hard to catch up with you, get you some good earrings. You have good ears.” She pats my shoulder the same way she patted my hand. But this time she shakes. I feel the tremour in her fingers. In barely a whisper, she says she would have been proud. Proud to have me in her family, as a new, more evolved type of Ketler. 

Toddy tells me she will take a nap once I leave. The Harry Winston wreath is returned to it’s padded box and locked away. The key to her treasure chest dangles from her bracelet as the dachshunds escort us to the stairs. Toddy uses the medical chair attached to the railing to make her way down, one of the dogs hitching a ride in her lap. Sammy bumps around in the kitchen out of sight, not wanting to disturb us. Once at the bottom of the stairs, Toddy suggests it would be better if this were our last meeting. 

“Family is still family, however unfortunately that is for me.” She says was she walks to the chair where she left her purse. That wall is up again, that Ketler wall I’ve come to know so well. Family is family. Family comes first. Everything for the sake of the family. From her purse she takes out her wallet. Into my hand she places fifty dollars. On her doorstep I stick the money into the small, side pocket of my backpack. I fell sorry to leave her. Even though there’s Sammy and the dogs, and to some extent Nicholas, I worry about all those cold figures haunting the house. I worry about their cruel eyes following her around behind their wooden frames, constantly watching her every move. I wonder if her whole life has been that way. I wonder if she’s ever truly been free. 

“There aren’t alot of people like you left, Ms. Ketler. Good ones. The real ones.” I turn to look at her one more time. Standing in her doorway, highlighted in haint blue, she really is an institution. I don’t get a response as she closes the door. But I do get a smile, and a twinkle from the eye that might have been a tear. I head back to Penn Station with a detour to the park. I put my sneakers back on and the espadrilles are left in the trashcan by the Alice in Wonderland statue. Even when I get to Penn, get my ticket and my seat, I still feel weight on my neck. I feel the phantom presence of the Harry Winston wreath, and Toddy’s hands holding on to the clasp. My neck may have been too short to wear the real one, but the feeling is the one thing I wish I could wear every day.