A Fortune of Sand

The next morning, Marjorie puzzles over Bonafante’s parting words. While fetching the newspaper, she finds an article reporting that a woman named Winifred Dixon was arrested on a roof, claiming to be a Christmas tree and identifying herself as Ivy Boughs. The article states she was taken to Eloise Asylum. Realizing this is her friend Ivy, a horrified Marjorie rushes to find Dock.

His basement apartment is empty, but in a back office, she discovers a wall file labeled “RESIDENCY.” She finds folders for all four residents—Georgina Godlin, Bernice Tessin, Winifred Dixon, and herself—each containing an “Alleged Diagnosis.” Marjorie’s is “Chronic Imaginative Derangement” (197) and Ivy’s is “Delusional Insanity.” Shocked, she finds another bolted door that leads up a dark staircase. Following the sound of music, she enters a room on the top floor and is confronted by a strange scene of people dancing and behaving erratically. She spots Dock trying to calm a woman and making notes on his clipboard just as Juliette appears and pulls her away.

Juliette takes Marjorie to a private parlor and explains that the first-floor residency is an “evaluation program” for women being evaluated before possible institutionalization. Juliette reveals her own traumatic past: Her father had locked her away for years, believing she was possessed, until her mother and young brother Charles together devised a plan to take her to a dentist, where an impacted tooth pressing on a nerve was discovered; after it was removed, her troubling behavior subsided. She says the program is hers and she has worked hard on it, presenting it as a way to protect women from being institutionalized without proper evaluation.

Marjorie accuses her of deception. Juliette clarifies that while the downstairs residency is free, the upstairs extended residence is paid for by families, some of whom don’t want the women back. She also reveals that Bernice does not know about the evaluation program and believes she simply completed an artistic residency. She reveals that Ivy’s husband refuses to take her home. Most shockingly, Juliette tells Marjorie that Bonafante arranged for her family to discover the residency brochure after hearing her father planned to send her to Eloise Asylum for “imaginative derangement.” Juliette states that their evaluations and Dock’s reports indicate that Marjorie “absolutely [has her] wits about” her (203). Furious at the manipulation, Marjorie tells Juliette she will not keep her secret and leaves.

Enraged by the betrayal, Marjorie furiously packs her belongings to leave. She realizes Dock is a doctor and feels that she has been treated as a clinical study, making her feel like a charity case for Bonafante. Overcome with anger, she lifts the fainting swan and heaves it into the clock and decides to drive home to confront her family, not to the cottage as her brother Graham had suggested. She also plans to contact the reporter Hank to expose the entire operation.

While loading her car, she discovers a brown leather suitcase in the trunk. Inside, she finds baby shoes of various sizes. Picking one up, she is surprised by its weight and turns it over, causing a stream of jewels to pour out.

Graham tells his sister Chet that he saw their grandfather, Gramps, speaking with Charles Bonafante. The siblings wonder whether Gramps knows more about Marjorie’s residency than they do. Graham explains that he thought the residency would protect Marjorie from their father’s plan to send her to Eloise and distance her from the siblings’ own scheme, but he now suspects there is more to it. Gramps later told Graham that the newspaper is “closing in” and preparing an exposé. Graham wants to pause their secret plan to kill their father, but Chet refuses, revealing she has already contacted Houdini’s widow in Graham’s name to further her obituary scheme. She also discloses she has found a new supply of a substance used in taxidermy, and states that once their plan is complete, an embalming must happen immediately to prevent an autopsy.

The conversation grows tense as Graham confronts Chet about her preoccupation with death, suggesting it stems from the anguish of finding their mother. He worries she is more connected to death than to life. Chet defensively retorts that their plan is necessary to save the family business from their father’s ruin, which is what their mother would have wanted. She then kicks him out of her room. In the hall, the housekeeper, Ina, reassures Graham by joking that the servants’ betting pool has him, not Chet, as the first of the Lennox children to die.

Marjorie drives to Eloise Asylum in Nankin Township to find Ivy. At a gas station, an attendant tells her the institution is known as the “haunted hospital” and that being sent there is a “double shame” because people assume something is wrong with the person and that they are poor. Arriving at the massive complex, Marjorie reflects on stories Granny told her about women being unjustly committed by their husbands.

Inside the psychiatric facility, she gives a false name, “Sandra Claus,” and is directed to the fourth-floor women’s ward. After handing over the items she has brought for Ivy to be inspected, she walks down a disturbing hallway filled with sounds of distress. She finds Ivy in a large day hall, looking pale and sedated in a drab dressing gown. As Marjorie kneels beside her, Ivy’s eyes flutter open. Seeing Marjorie, a tear rolls down her cheek as she whispers a greeting.

Ivy, though heavily sedated, tells Marjorie her story. Her “daddy” is actually her husband, Luther, a much older man who married her when she was 13, after taking her out of Michigan, where the minimum marriage age was higher. The night of Cecile’s party, inspired by her time with Graham, she went home to demand a divorce but found Luther with another woman. She climbed onto the roof to confront him, and he called the police, telling them she was behaving irrationally and yelling for Santa.

Ivy says her diagnosis is “mourning and melancholia” and explains that she mourns her lost innocence and that her fixation on Christmas stems from her last happy memory with her mother (219). When Marjorie brings her the rabbit-fur rug and a red blanket from the Nightingale, Ivy’s spirits lift. Marjorie vows to hire a lawyer to free her, but Ivy despairs, comparing herself to a broken toy. Thinking of the jewels, Marjorie says she may have access to funds. Before Marjorie leaves, Ivy reveals that the ruby necklace their sister Cecile wore at the party was stolen from Ivy’s neighbor six months prior.

Driving from the asylum, Marjorie has an epiphany. Connecting Ivy’s story about Cecile’s stolen necklace with her family’s glass factory, she realizes that Lou, who works at the factory, would have the talent and resources to make fake glass gems, deepening her suspicions about Cecile and Lou’s possible involvement in the jewel thefts. She immediately drives to an advertising firm where she believes her old friend Peter Howell now works.

At the reception desk, she asks for Peter Howell, but the receptionist asks if she means “Jack Howell.” Marjorie agrees and gives the fake name Winifred Dixon. The receptionist retrieves a man who freezes in shock upon seeing Marjorie. It is Peter. He attempts to flee out the back of the building, but Marjorie cuts him off, blocking his escape.

Peter, looking drab and frightened, confirms Marjorie’s suspicions. He reveals that her father blackmailed him into swapping glass replicas for the entire Frederick K. Stearns jewel collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Her father orchestrated the blackmail, with Lou delivering the threat and photographs of Peter and his male friend with whom he had an intimate relationship to enforce cooperation.

After a second heist went wrong, a terrified Peter confessed everything to his parents. To protect him from charges, they had him accept a psychiatric diagnosis and sent him to a facility. His father then hired a “fixer,” whom Peter describes as a “high-level blackhander” from Grosse Pointe, to make the entire scandal disappear. After his stays at the psychiatric facility, it was agreed that Peter would use his legal first name, Jack. He was also forbidden from ever contacting Marjorie again—not because she was a bad influence, but because the fixer warned that she was in “such danger.”

Before Marjorie returns to her family home, Glen Arden, feeling disgusted by her family’s cruelty, she transfers the jewels hidden in the baby shoes into her own suitcase and replaces them with rocks, planning to inspect the jewels and possibly sell them if she needs money to escape. Her grandparents, Gramps and Granny, greet her with effusive warmth, but she is now suspicious of their sincerity.

In her room, she finds a small stack of mail. One envelope has no postmark and is addressed only with her name. Inside is a typed invitation to dinner at Windmill Pointe the following night. Marjorie wonders whether the invitation is connected to the Grosse Pointe “fixer” Peter mentioned. Her thoughts turn to Bonafante, and despite her anger and distrust, she is still drawn to him and decides to accept the invitation, determined to uncover the truth about him.

Marjorie hides the jewels from the suitcase inside the removable, acorn-shaped finials on her four-poster bed. Needing money to help Ivy and Peter, she sneaks into her mother’s suite to take cash from the secret “play fund” hidden beneath a false bottom in the top left drawer of her mother’s dressing table. There she also finds several opened letters addressed to Slorah, each containing a second envelope addressed to her mother and holding a love letter from a man.

Her mother, Lilah, enters, and Marjorie quickly hides the letter and cash in her bra. Lilah speaks with surprising candor about her unhappiness in her marriage, her regrets, and the restrictive nature of a woman’s life. She encourages Marjorie to pursue independence and use her talents to build her own life. After their conversation, Marjorie examines the stolen envelope more closely and notices the postmark: Barbados. With a jolt, she realizes the man writing intimate letters to her mother is not a local tennis partner but the only family member in Barbados—her father’s younger brother, Uncle Jamie.