Marrying Up - Part I
“Marrying Up” is a fictional story set in 1950s Manhattan revolving around Frances Riley, a difficult and ruthlessly ambitious young woman who moved from one social class to another—Irish immigrant off the boat to high WASP— when she married into the aristocratic Woolsey family.
THIS IS PART 1 of a FOURTEEN-PART STORY
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14
Image: Cottonbro (Pexels)
Frances first saw Jack in the winter of 1947 at a debutante party. He was with a blond-haired girl whom Frances later found out was his cousin, and who left him alone for most of the evening. He was a lot older than the others, twenty-seven or twenty-eight, and she noticed he walked with the slightest trace of a limp, and perhaps it was this that drew her attention to him. He looked elegant and mysterious with a constant cigarette held low between his fingers, and he didn't dance with anyone but his cousin, otherwise standing at the edge of the floor or at the bar as if the party were somewhat beneath him. From the cut of his clothes and the carelessness and arrogance with which he carried himself, Frances could tell he had money. She herself wasn't a debutante or anything close to one, but she was vivacious and fun and had worked very hard that year, her junior year at Vassar, to get in with the wealthier girls and be invited to their parties.
From then on she looked for Jack wherever she went that season, her heart going a little sour when she didn't see him slouching by the bar or at the edge of the crowd in his elegant clothes. She questioned the other girls about him: he was the only child of a wealthy horse racing family from upstate New York, had been wounded in the war, was shy and not very sociable. When she finally saw him again, at a wedding helping the same cousin out of her coat, she waited till he was by himself at his table before winding her way over, self-conscious and wishing she'd had another glass of champagne.
"You're Daisy's cousin, right?"
He blew out smoke, looked her up and down, gave a thin smile. His brown hair was brushed back from his fine, high forehead and she was smitten by the perfect form of his mouth and nose, the whiteness of his teeth, the faint, mysterious crinkles at the corners of his eyes.
"Right," he said. He went on smiling, but didn't ask her to sit down.
"I saw you a few weeks ago. You don't seem terribly interested in mixing."
"Maybe I'm not."
She didn't know what to say to that, so she started to walk away, keeping her body in its blue chiffon dress as straight as she could. His voice stopped her. "What's your name?"
“Frances Riley," she said with her back to him, aware of how 'Riley' sounded, flat and Irish and ordinary as a potato.
"Well, Frances, I'm Jack." She already knew that, of course, but pretended not to as she turned around and he stuck his cigarette between his lips and held out his hand, squinting against the smoke. "Jack Woolsey," he added.
Cover Image: Richard Kennedy