Zoya (30 page)

“If it hadn't been for him letting me dance, we would have truly starved. There was nothing else I knew how to do,” she looked up at Clayton sadly, as he took her hand, remembering how hard her life had been then, the awful apartment near the Palais Royal, their almost nonexistent meals during the war, it had been a hard time, but it was long in the distant past, and she looked up at him with a smile. “And then there was you, my love….” She never forgot how he had saved her.

“Someone else would have come along.”

“Not someone I could have loved as I love you.” She spoke gently. He bent to kiss her, and they stood for a long time in the last fiery sunset of the summer. They were moving back to New York the next day.
Nicholas had to go to school, and Sasha was going to begin kindergarten. Zoya thought it would do her good to be with other children, although Clayton wasn't as sure. But he always deferred to Zoya on matters of that nature.

They had dinner with the Roosevelts again almost as soon as they got back. They had also just returned from their summer home in Campobello. And a week later, the Andrews gave a party to celebrate the onset of a new social season. Prince Obolensky came of course, as he always did, and a glittering cast of hundreds.

The month seemed to fly by with parties, theater, balls, and it was October before they knew it. Clayton was worried that his stocks weren't doing well, and he called John Rockefeller to have lunch with him, but he had gone to Chicago for a few days, so he'd have to wait to see him. And two weeks later, Clayton was too upset to have lunch with anyone. His stocks were plummeting and he didn't want to upset Zoya by telling her, but he had put all their assets into the stock market months before. He had done so well, he was sure that he could triple his family fortune.

By Thursday the twenty-fourth, everyone was dumping shares, and everyone Clayton knew seemed to be in a panic. But none more than he, as he went to the stock market himself. He came home in terror that afternoon, and things were worse the next day. And Monday was a day of fresh disaster. Over sixteen million shares were dumped, and by nightfall, Clayton knew he was ruined. The stock market closed at one o'clock, in a vain effort to stop the frantic selling of shares, but for Clayton it was too
late. The Exchange was to remain closed for the rest of the week, but he had already lost everything they had. All they had left were their homes, and everything in them. The rest was gone. Clayton walked all the way home, and he felt a weight on his chest like a stone. He could barely face Zoya as he walked into their bedroom.

“Darling? … what is it? …” His face was gray, as she turned to face him. She had been brushing her hair which she had grown long again because he hated the fashionable bobs so much, but he barely seemed to notice her as he walked into the room and stared into the fireplace with bleak eyes, and then slowly he turned to face her. “What's wrong?” Her brush clattered on the floor and she ran to his side. “Clayton … Clayton, what is it?”

His eyes reached into hers, and she was suddenly reminded of her father when Nicolai had been killed. “We've lost everything, Zoya … everything … I was a fool….” He attempted to explain everything to her as she listened with wide eyes, and she put her arms around him and held him as he cried. “My God … how could I have been so stupid … what will we do now?”

Her heart almost stopped, it was like the revolution again. But she had survived it before, and this time they had each other. “We'll sell everything … we'll work … we'll survive, Clayton. It doesn't matter.” But he wrenched himself from her arms and paced the room, frantic at the full realization that they were ruined, and his world had come crashing down around him.

“Are you crazy? I'm fifty-seven years old … what do you think I can do? Drive a taxi like Prince
Vladimir? And you'll go back to the ballet? Don't be a fool, Zoya … we're ruined!
Ruined!
The children will starve….” He was crying as she took his hands in her own, and his were icy.

“They will not starve. I can work, so can you. If we sell what we have, we can live on it for years.” The diamond necklaces alone would keep them fed and housed for a long time, but he shook his head miserably, he understood the situation far better than she. He had already seen a man he knew leap from his office window. And she knew nothing of the enormous debts he had allowed to accrue, knowing he had the money to pay them whenever he wanted.

“And who will you sell it all to? All the others who've lost their shirts? It's all worthless, Zoya….”

“No, it's not,” she said quietly. “We have each other and the children. When I left Russia, we left on a troika with nothing, with rags, with two of Uncle Nicky's horses and what jewelry we could sew into the linings of our clothes, and we survived.” They both thought at the same time of the misery of her Paris apartment, but they had lived through it, and now she had him and the children. “Think of what the others lost … think of Nicky and Aunt Alix … don't cry, Clayton … if they could be brave in the face of that, there is nothing we can't face … is there, my love….” But he only cried in her arms unable to face it.

That night they went down to dinner, and he barely spoke. She was trying to think, to make plans, to decide what to sell and who to sell it to. They had two houses, all the antiques Elsie de Wolfe, now Lady Mendl, had helped them find, her jewelry, paintings, objects … it was endless. It was like planning an
escape, as she made suggestions and tried to reassure him, but he walked upstairs with a heavy step, and as she talked to him from her dressing room while she undressed, she couldn't elicit an answer from him. She was desperately worried about him. It had been a terrible blow, but after surviving everything else that had happened in her life, she refused to be beaten now. She would help him fight, help him survive, she would scrub floors if she had to. She didn't care, and then as she listened, she wondered if he'd left the next room. He hadn't answered her in several minutes.

“Clayton?” She walked into the room in one of the lace nightgowns he'd bought her the year before in Paris. She gave a gasp as she saw him, slumped on the floor, as though he had fallen, and she ran to his side, and gently rolled him onto his back. But he stared at her with unseeing eyes. “Clayton! Clayton! …” She began to sob as she shouted his name, she slapped his face, she tried to pull him across the floor, as though anything she did might revive him. But he didn't move, he didn't see, and he could no longer hear her. Clayton Andrews had died of a heart attack, the shock of the crash too much, the prospect of losing everything more than he could bear, and as she sank to her knees and cried as she held his head on her lap, she looked down at him in disbelief. The man that she had loved was dead. He had left her. Desolate, and alone, and poor again, the dream that had become her life was suddenly a nightmare.

CHAPTER
31

“Mama, why did Papa die?” Sasha looked up at Zoya with her huge blue eyes, as they rode back from the cemetery in the Hispano-Suiza. Everyone in New York had come, but Zoya had scarcely seen them. She felt as though she were in a daze as she stared down at the child, her heavy black veil concealing her face, her hands in black gloves, with her children sitting in mute anguish beside her.

Nicholas had stood beside her at the funeral, a tiny man holding her arm, his own eyes filled with tears as the choir sang the agonizingly sweet “Ave Maria.” But there were others like him who had died in the past week, most by their own hand, but a few, like him, felled by the blow they couldn't endure. It wasn't fear, it was grief, but whatever it was, she had lost him.

“I don't know, sweetheart … I don't know why … he had a terrible shock, and … he went to be in heaven with God.” She choked on the words, as Nicholas watched her.

“Will he be with Uncle Nicky and Aunt Alix?”
Nicholas asked quietly, and she looked at him. She had kept them alive for him, but to what end? What did it matter now? Everyone she had ever loved was gone … except her children. She pulled them close to her as she left the car, and hurried into the house ahead of the chauffeur. She had invited no one to the house, she didn't want to see anyone, didn't want to have to explain, to tell them anything. It was going to be bad enough to have to tell the children. She had decided to wait a few days, she had already told most of the servants that they were free to go. She was keeping only one maid and the nurse, she could cook for them herself. And the chauffeur was going to leave as soon as she sold the cars. He had promised to do everything he could to help her. He knew several people who had liked Clayton's Alfa Romeo and the Mercedes she used, and the Hispano-Suiza had been coveted by all. She only wondered if there was anyone left to buy them.

Old Sava came to her and licked her hand as though she knew, as Zoya sat next to the fire in their bedroom, staring at the spot where he had died only days before. It seemed incredible that he was gone … that Clayton was no more … and now there was so much for her to do. She had called their lawyers the day after he died, and they had promised to explain everything to her.

When they did, it was grim. It was as bad as Clayton had feared, and perhaps worse. His debts were absolutely enormous and there was no money left at all. The lawyers advised her to try to sell the house on Long Island at any price, with everything in it. She took their advice, and they put it on the market for her. She didn't even go back to get her things. She
knew she couldn't have faced it. Everyone was doing much the same thing, the ones who weren't committing suicide, or abandoning their homes in the middle of the night, to avoid bills and mortgage payments.

And it was Saturday before she could bring herself to face the children. She had been taking her meals with them, but she had been moving like a machine, moving from room to room, and speaking only when she had to. But she could hardly think. There was so much to do, so much to pack, so much to sell, and nowhere to go once they sold it. She knew she had to get a job but she couldn't even think of that yet. She couldn't think at all as she looked at them with anguished
eyes.
She knew Sasha was still too young to understand, but she had to tell Nicholas and she could hardly face the pain in his eyes as she tried. In the end all she could do was hold him close to her as they both cried for the husband and father they had loved. But she knew she had to be strong, as strong as her grandmother had been for her, their circumstances had been even worse. She even thought of going back to Paris with them, life might have been cheaper there, but people had their own troubles there too, and Serge Obolensky had told her that there were now four thousand Russians driving taxis in Paris. And it would all be too foreign to them. They had to stay in New York, Zoya decided.

“Nicholas … my love … we're going to have to move.” The words seemed wooden and strange as he looked up at her with confused eyes.

“Because Papa died?”

“Yes … no … well, actually, because …” Because now we're poor … because we can't afford
to live here anymore … because … “because these are going to be difficult times for us. We can't stay here anymore.” He looked at her seriously, trying to be brave, as Sasha played with the dog, and the nurse quietly left the room in tears. She knew she would have to leave them now too, and it broke her heart to leave the children she had cared for since they were born. But Zoya had told her the day before. There was no hiding from it now.

“Mama, are we going to be poor?”

“Yes,” she was always honest with him, “in the way I think you mean. We're not going to have a big house or lots of cars. But we're going to have the important things … except Papa …” She felt a lump rise in her throat,“… but we have each other, sweetheart. And we always will. Do you remember what I told you about Uncle Nicholas and Aunt Alix and the children when they took them to Siberia? They were very brave and they made kind of a game of it. They always knew that the important thing was to be together, and to love each other, and to be strong … and that's what we have to do now,” the tears were running down her cheeks as she spoke, but Nicholas was looking at her solemnly, trying desperately to understand.

“Are we going to Siberia?” He looked intrigued for the first time and she smiled.

“No, darling, we're not. We're going to stay here in New York.”

“Where will we live?” Like all children, he was interested in the simpler realities.

“In an apartment. I'll have to find a place for us to live.”

“Will it be nice?”

She thought instantly of Mashka's letters from Tobolsk and Ekaterinburg, “We'll make it nice, I promise you.”

And then with sad eyes, he looked at her again, “Can we take the dog?”

Her eyes filled with tears again as she looked at Sava playing with Sasha on the floor, and then back at him. “Of course we can. She came all the way from St Petersburg with me” She choked on the words but she looked into his eyes reassuringly, “we're not going to leave her now.”

“May I take my toys?”

“Some of them … as many as we can fit into the apartment. I promise.”

He smiled, a little mollified, “Good.” And then his eyes grew sad again, thinking of his father and the fact that he would never see him again. “Will we go soon?”

“I think so, Nicholas.” He nodded, and with a last hug for her, he took Sasha and the dog and they left the room, as Zoya sat on the floor, watching them go, praying that she would be as strong as Evgenia had been for her, and as she thought of her, Nicholas tiptoed slowly back into the room and looked down at her where she sat.

“I love you, Mama.”

She closed her arms around him and tried not to cry, “Hove you too, Nicholas … I love you so very, very much….”

He bent closer to her then and pressed something into her hand without a word.

“What's this?”

It was a gold coin, and she knew how proud of it he was. Clayton had given it to him only a few months
before, and he had showed it to everyone for weeks. “You can sell it if you like. Then maybe we won't be quite so poor.”