ALSO BY FIONA DAVIS
The Dollhouse
The Address
The Masterpiece
The Chelsea Girls
The Lions of Fifth Avenue
DUTTON
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
Copyright © 2022 by Fiona Davis
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library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Names: Davis, Fiona, 1966– author.
Title: The magnolia palace: a novel / Fiona Davis.
Description: 1. | New York: Dutton, Penguin Random House, 2022. | Identifiers: LCCN 2021031241 (print) | LCCN 2021031242 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593184011 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593184028 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3604.A95695 M34 2022 (print) | LCC PS3604.A95695 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021031241
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021031242
Cover design by Christopher Lin
Cover photographs: (flowers) Oksana Hlianko / Getty Images; (woman) June 12, 1928. Brooke / Topical Press Agency / Hulton Archive / Getty Images; (building) Sandra Baker / Alamy Stock Photo
Book design by Laura K. Corless, adapted for ebook by Kelly Brennan
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author’s use of names of historical figures, places, or events is not intended to change the entirely fictional character of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Cover
Also by Fiona Davis
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
In memory of Ed Berkeley
Chapter One
New York City, 1919
Lillian Carter stood half naked, one arm held up like a ballet dancer, the other hanging lightly down at her side, and calculated how long she could avoid paying rent while her landlord was in jail. If Mr. Watkins was released right away, she’d have to avoid him until she pulled together enough money to pay for the one-bedroom apartment she leased in the crumbling, five-story tenement building on Sixty-Fifth Street. Not an easy task when Mr. Watkins and his wife lived off the lobby on the first floor. On the bright side, the Watkins couple had shouted each other to pieces in a terrible fight earlier that morning, the screeching carrying on for a good forty-five minutes before silence finally reigned. Not long after, as she left for work, Lillian had passed the police as they tramped up the front steps. Maybe they’d keep the tiresome man for a few days this time, as a lesson. Not that she felt any sympathy for his bulldog of a wife. Mrs. Watkins had hated Lillian on sight, especially after she discovered what Lillian did for a living.
“Angelica, your drapery has fallen. Again.”
Mr. Rossi waited, holding a boxwood shaper in one hand and a rag in the other. Even after six years of posing, Lillian had never quite gotten used to being called by her stage name, chosen by her mother, Kitty, to protect her family’s reputation, which was a real laugh. As if they were the Astors or something. Lillian pulled the silk up over her shoulder so only one breast was exposed. The material was slippery and refused to stay in place.
Mr. Rossi was a quick worker, and the clay figure in front of him was nearly finished. This would probably be her last day on the job, and she’d only been posing for an hour. So far today, she’d made seventy-five cents. A little over one cent a minute. She kicked herself for not charging more. Kitty, before she died in February, had told her to demand no less than a dollar an hour, one of more than a dozen pieces of instruction she’d thrown out at Lillian between coughing fits, as if she were trying to fill up a lifetime of parental guidance before she went. Lillian should have written these things down, but she had been too busy making tea and fetching blankets, calling again and again for the doctor, who was too busy with other patients stricken by the Spanish flu to come.
“Angelica. Please.”
The drapery had fallen. Again.
“It’s cold in here, I’m afraid my shivering is making it fall. Could you light the fire?”
Mr. Rossi’s bulging black eyes were punctuated by heavy brows, but any hint of menace was tempered by an unfortunately high-pitched voice. “I have nothing to light it with. It’s the first of October, not cold at all.”
“Well, you’re wearing clothes.”
“I’m sorry, Angelica. Do you need a break?”
He had been unrelentingly polite to her since she’d knocked on his studio door last week, asking if he needed a model. He’d let out a gasp, recognizing her instantly, and she’d pushed her way inside and talked nonstop until he agreed to let her pose. Since he’d only recently taken over a studio in the popular Lincoln Arcade building on the Upper West Side, he hadn’t had time to learn from the other, long-term tenants that she was, at the ripe age of twenty-one, washed up.
“No, I don’t need a break. It’s fine.” She was lucky to have this job, she reminded herself, only her second since February, a lifetime in the New York art world.
But instead of continuing, Mr. Rossi wiped his hands on his apron and approached the model stand. “Can you angle yourself a little more?” He pushed his right hip forward slightly, as an example. “And twist like this.”
Her body responded automatically, clicking into the desired position.
“Yes, that’s better.” But his face didn’t register approval. She knew why. Her hips and legs no longer resembled the earlier statues he’d seen of her. The clean lines once heralded as the classical idea of perfection were now more padded, to put it gently. Since Kitty’s death, she’d felt a consistent, gnawing hunger in her gut that would only be satiated with butterscotch candies and lemon meringue pie. Her skirts had hidden the ripples of fat at that first meeting. “Maybe let the cloth down, all the way over the legs.”
Her face burned with embarrassment. The irony that she was upset to have to cover her body, when most women would be filled with shame to have to reveal it, made her let out a nervous giggle.
Mr. Rossi regarded her. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, just a little tired. My landlords got into a rousing fight early this morning. I didn’t get much sleep.”