Margaret and my grandmother go through my wardrobe once or twice a month, weeding out the bad apples: the clothes I’ve worn more than twice to a public event, a style that no longer suits me, a designer who is no longer in vogue. Then we make a trip to Neimans, or more often, our stylist just comes to us, accompanied with racks of garments. I haven’t lost touch with reality. I understand that for many people, these luxuries would seem spell-binding and intoxicating, or at the very least exciting, but a gilded cage is still a cage.

No.

I snap the lid on that thought, angry with myself for letting it fester for longer than usual. With haste, I add the Cartier watch to my wrist and pick up the clutch, repeating to myself how grateful I am for my life and everything I have until the words actually seem sincere.

There are dozens of private clubs in Boston, but only two of them truly matter, and my grandmother frequents both. The Somerset Club is the most exclusive, formed in 1826. Members are granted access only through legacy status. Legend has it that when a fire broke out in the 1940s, firemen were forced to use the service entrance to extinguish the blaze so as not to disturb the members who were dining in the front room. The Algonquin Club is new by the old guard’s standards, having only opened its doors in 1886. It hosts speaker series, member receptions, private dinners. Because it has slightly less stringent membership policies, in addition to presidents, heads of state, foreign dignitaries, and preeminent locals, I’ve seen my fair share of celebrities there. It’s where we’re headed tonight. Professor Rasmussen, an eminent botanist from the University of Copenhagen, is scheduled to deliver a lecture on orchids. My grandmother and I arrive early enough to have a drink in the lounge, and the room is crowded with faces I recognize right away. Names are drilled into my head, families of importance especially.

I’m sitting beside my grandmother, sipping a dirty martini. The conversation has turned to the Brahmins, which were to Boston as the Four Hundred were to New York City, prominent old families that seem to be forever on the lips of people in this room. Why talk about the present when you can dredge up the dead?

I keep quiet and listen, amused more than anything.

“She was absolutely abhorrent.”

“Who?”

“Isabella Gardner.”

“You all do realize that had John Lowell Gardner Jr. not given her entrée into Boston society, we would all be better for it, right?”

“Where was she from originally?”

I’m shocked they don’t already know the answer. I swear we’ve had this conversation a dozen times.

“She was a New Yorker whose father was considered the last of the East India merchants.”

“Why was she so bad?” someone asks.

My grandmother’s eyes practically bug out of her head. “She was a spectacle. An eccentric. She drank beer instead of tea, and there was a rumor that she used to walk down Tremont Street with a leashed lion.”