by Diana Forbes
Then Edgar came up from behind me and pushed me hard against the animal. I could feel Edgar’s legs press against mine from behind and his immense torso cradle my back. He moved my long, red hair to one side, and placed his lips against my neck. His mouth scalded me like a branding iron. He kissed my neck. Then he started to count aloud as he kissed me. “One.” He kissed me once. “Two.” He kissed me again. He kissed my neck six hundred and sixty-six times. Each kiss he planted left a searing mark along my neck. The sting of tears filled my eyes, and I hung my head low as I succumbed to his passion. He yanked my hair hard, as if it was a set of reins, and commanded me to trot in place.
“Now, get dressed,” he cried. “And remember, I own you, and you will do as I say.”
I nodded. As I buttoned my dress, his full lips traced my face and his tongue plunged into my mouth. “I own you,” he murmured between kisses, his face looming larger and larger until his features dissolved into gray.
The sheets were soaked through. My forehead felt feverish. I ran my hand up and down my neck, checking for kiss bites or welts. There weren’t any. I ran to the mirror in the bathroom to be certain. The morning light was as harsh as a gossip’s tongue. My neck and face were redder than a geranium.
He’d kissed me in public, flirted with me in front of his wife, and invaded my dreams. I needed to exorcise him from my life.
Friday, June 2, 1893
As it turned out, I was on Mr. Daggers’s mind as well—much more so than I had previously feared. It was 5 p.m., the hour when most residents of Newport set aside whatever was pressing to enjoy a cup of tea. But in our family, the ritual had been all but forgotten in the flurry of excitement generated by the afternoon mail.
First, I heard Bess hurry down the hallway, calling for my mother. Bess was heavyset, shiny-skinned, and had a trick leg that was still no match for the rest of her when she had news to impart. She poked her head into the open door of the Navy Blue Den, where Lydia and I sat at the piano, then raced away. Soon Mother’s knitting needles clattered down the hallway floor as she emerged from the Sewing Room, screaming for my father. As usual, he was outside, no doubt hiding near the crocus bed at the furthest edge of our property. Jesse was dispatched to go find him. Minutes later, Father dashed inside to find my sister, who was doing her best to make Bach sound like Beethoven as she took her turn during our piano practice. Father commanded her to stop torturing the keys.
“Go horseback riding,” he ordered. “Now.”
We both stood up.
“No,” he said. “Only Lydia.” He pointed at me. “Penelope—come.”
Something terrible must be afoot. Had Father learned that Mr. Daggers had kissed me?
“Let me ride with Lydia,” I offered helpfully.
“She’s perfectly capable of riding alone,” Father said.
“Oh, yoo-hoo, Penelope,” Mother called out from two doors down.
Father and I barreled into the emerald drawing room. The walls of the room were so dark they swallowed the few gaslights. There were no beverages laid out, no biscuits, nothing to temper my feeling of impending doom.
Father joined Mother at the dark oval table where my students ordinarily sat. I took a seat at the small wooden teacher’s desk and kicked its clawed feet.
“Curious,” my mother commented brightly. She held two letters. “It’s as if one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing.”
She donned her tortoise-shell reading spectacles and reread the two letters in her hands. One was penned on yellow linen stationery, the other on light rose.
“Either way, she’s going to New York,” Father said. He slipped on his own iron-rimmed spectacles, peered over her broad, rounded shoulder, and carefully reread both notes.
“I am not going to New York,” I said.
I hated this dour makeshift classroom where I had been forced to teach. My future had diminished into nothingness. Even from where I sat, I could tell the two letters were ominously connected.
“But of course you are,” Mother said, a smile tugging at her cheeks. “Mr. and Mrs. Daggers both cordially demand that you visit them.” She waved the rose piece of paper back and forth like a victory flag. “Mrs. Daggers says she’d like to arrange an introduction to Miss Clara B. Spence who’s just started a boarding school for young ladies in Manhattan.”
She picked up the sheet of yellow stationery and continued. “But Mr. Daggers says his wife can arrange an introduction to Miss Graham of Miss Graham’s Finishing School. That’s very impressive, darling. Miss Graham’s!” She beamed at me as if somehow I’d solved the Panic of 1893 all by myself, and then continued reading his letter, occasionally sharing the important bits. “Furthermore, Mr. Daggers promises that even if Mrs. Daggers can’t arrange an introduction to Miss Graham, the happy couple will be pleased to employ you as a governess for his wife, who is with child. How lovely. I bet they’ll have such a handsome son or daughter, don’t you think, dear? Either way, you need to pack your bags without delay.”
A child? How dare he. “I’m staying here,” I gritted out between clenched teeth. “I have no interest in teaching classes at a girls’ school, and teaching at a finishing school holds even less appeal.”
Mother slowly pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Then, maybe you should become their child’s governess,” she pressed, pursing her lips together. “It would likely be only for a year or two, and then Mr. Daggers could probably arrange something better for you. The Daggerses are very powerful, and have ways of getting what they want. And it looks like they both want you very much.” She blushed crimson with triumph.
He would compromise me every night, and right under his wife’s eyes—his pregnant wife’s eyes. I pictured him making love to his wife, and it made me sick. I pictured her enjoying it, and it made me sicker. I imagined him telling her that he loved her and her repeating it back to him. Why allow myself to be drawn into their twisted game? A triangle was a contorted shape, not a solid foundation for anything—a house, a carriage, or a relationship. I hated triangles, I’d never liked math, and I really detested the Daggerses.
My father, who looked as if he had aged ten years in the past few weeks, crossed to the far side of the room and closed the heavy oak door. He returned to the table and sat down heavily. His forehead creased with deep ridges. His gray eyes were rimmed with red, almost as if he’d cried.
Pausing, he took a deep breath as if air were a precious commodity. “Your mother and I must remain here, to pay off creditors, settle the estate, and handle a thousand other details you shouldn’t have to worry your head about.”
He tapped the oval table. “Your young sister, while not gifted with your keen intelligence, looks like she’ll blossom into a young bride. We’ll be able to find someone for her of good stock—hopefully before our family reputation is ruined.” He turned toward me, using his folded-up glasses as a pointer. “You, with your prized intellect, can be most helpful to us in New York. Perhaps you can secure a job there as a schoolteacher and eventually find a rooming house where you can live. We ask only that you send us a portion of your wages to help us in this crisis. It would all be considered a loan, of course, one I would pay back in full with interest when I recapture my money.”
“I’m happy to give you all of my earnings here,” I said.
“It’s not a request,” said Father softly.
“Good.” I gripped the teacher’s desk with both hands until my knuckles turned white. “Because I’m not going.”
“No, I mean, it’s an order. I’m your father, and you will heed me in this matter.”
I slammed the teacher’s desk with my fists. Mother directed her eyes at me as if to remind me not to maul the furniture. The object of her concern was an heirloom dating from before the American Revolution. I was certain it could withstand my righteous anger. Had it not held up admirably all these years to other people’s?
My fists thrashed against the desk again. Who were these Daggerses to direct my
course in life?
My father seemed determined to ignore my tantrum, which was the antithesis of the New England stoicism he admired. He scratched his cheek and waited, perhaps thinking my temper would pass like an ill trade wind. “You’ll earn far more working for a school than you will teaching classes here. There’s no comparison. And you’ll gain the credentials needed to obtain even more lucrative jobs down the road.”
“Frankly, I’m not supposed to be the breadwinner. I’ve never heard of a daughter sending wages to support her family.”
“Yes, I know,” he said, flashing his stormy eyes in my mother’s direction as if this strategy was sinking faster than one of his ships. “But you have talents, which can be rewarded. Your sister Lydia isn’t fit to work. Let’s be honest—who’d ever hire her?”
I could feel my teeth grind against each other. “I’m deeply distressed to hear of your woes. But moving to New York will ruin my life. I have no desire to live there. I hate teaching. I abhor the Daggerses. I won’t do it for all the money in the Bank of New York.”
Mother glared at me as if I had committed blasphemy. The Bank of New York was one of her favorite institutions, on par with the Episcopal Church and the Ladies Bridge and Mahjong Society. How could I have been so insensitive—to the lovely, gracious Bank of New York?
“Why not?” Father pressed. “Most people would be overjoyed to associate with people as socially connected as the Van Alen Daggerses. You’d be living with them.” I shuddered, imagining him knocking on my door every time his wife refused him.
Father stood up and paced the room. “The Daggerses are scions,” he continued, sniffing around me like an attorney who already knew the answer. He walked over to Mother, picked up the rose-colored stationery, and tossed it toward me. It fluttered to the ground. “Why this aversion?” he asked. “Did Evelyn Daggers do anything to insult you?”
His eyes narrowed, and I could picture him guessing the truth if I didn’t intervene to steer him away from it—fast. He hadn’t risen from lowly clerk to president of his bank without developing a keen intuition. And just because he was bankrupt did not imply that any of his senses were impaired. I’d learned early on not to underestimate him.
“No, of course not.”
“Or Edgar Daggers?”
“Preposterous.”
Our eyes dueled.
“Are you certain?”
“Quite.”
“Because if he did, I’ll—” He punched the air with his fist.
He strode over to inspect my face, as if I’d have more difficulty lying to him if he were in close proximity. But once I’d made the decision, I had no choice but to stick to it. My friend Marie had made the mistake of telling her father when she was accosted. He’d sent her to a reform school in California for wayward girls, which supposedly had “improved” her by teaching her the domestic arts. Now, instead of going to college, she was a chambermaid in a Poughkeepsie flophouse.
Reputations were irreparable once shattered. Why should one errant kiss on my part destroy all that my parents had worked so hard to build?
“No one insulted me.”
I felt like a reluctant witness at a trial. Were we really quarreling over my right to decide my own future? To me, this was a person’s prerogative: an inalienable right, like breathing.
His eyes speared me. “You’re having an odd reaction to an extremely generous offer. They met you only twice, yet offer you full employment. And during this Panic, when bread lines grow hourly and no one has a job.”
Mother clapped her hands. “They’re philanthropists,” she warbled, “and it looks like you’re their latest cause.”
“Father and Mother, hear me, please.” I stood up, moving the teacher’s chair backwards. It whistled across the floor, as my parents both covered their ears. I paced back and forth. “I have no desire to move to a strange city, far from home, with complete strangers, pursuing a career path for which I have no passion. Other women my age attend college, something that ordinarily I’d lobby you for. I understand that path is forever closed to me. But you can’t force me to live with Mr. and Mrs. Daggers. I won’t do it. That’s too much of a sacrifice.”
Mother shook her ashen bun from side to side, no doubt secretly blaming the genes on my father’s side for my truculence. Certainly no revolutionary tendencies had ever sprung from her side of the family, solid bankers all.
“Smart people don’t ignore the wishes of people like the Daggerses,” she quipped in her now familiar refrain.
“If I say you’re living with the Daggerses, you’re living with the Daggerses!” Father yelled.
“They don’t own me,” I cried. “I’m not a slave.”
Mother’s eyes darted past the oak door of the drawing room. I knew that look, the nervous glance to make sure that neither Jesse nor Bess lurked in the shadows. “Of course not, darling. There are no slaves anymore,” she whispered.
Thankfully, the door remained closed. Jesse and Bess were very much a part of our family, and I loved Bess almost like a second mother.
Mother crossed over to my teacher’s desk and picked up a small fountain pen. Then she reached into her dress pocket, probably to search for smelling salts just in case she chose to faint. She was prone to spells when she quarreled with me although she never fainted when she was around Lydia. That was because the two of them never fought about anything: they were both in such perfectly perfect accord.
“I won’t bend to their will,” I said.
“What we are trying to say,” Father interjected with an exasperated look, “is that the Daggerses have enough money and social clout to save you…to save us all. So, it would behoove you—”
“Then you grovel to them!” I shouted. “I’m not leaving.”
And with that, I stormed out of the drawing room.
“I’m writing the acceptance note to them right now,” Mother sang out. “We must keep the Daggerses happy and interested!”
Chapter 5
The Power of Denial
Saturday, June 3, 1893
Once my mother got a notion into her head, there was no dislodging it. Moreover, if she couldn’t persuade me to her viewpoint, she had enforcers. When I tried to leave the house the following morning, Old Bess was stationed at the front door, blocking it.
“Nuh-nuh,” she said, as I attempted to scoot around her. Her large arm stopped me like a sentry. “Your mother demands you in the Sewing Room. It’s about some dress.”
“But I promised Lucinda I’d see her this morning.” I could feel my eyes starting to tear up. Dress fitting took hours, and for what? My parents wanted me to leave, not stay.
Bess laid a firm hand on my shoulder. “Pull yourself together,” she said. “You need to stay strong, now. We’re in troubling times. Your mother’s strong, and you take after her.”
“Don’t you think my father’s strong?”
Bess’s long silence was strange. She grasped the black amulet charm hanging from her neck that supposedly protected her from evil spirits.
“Rub it,” she whispered. “For luck.”
She and Jesse had been born in the South, and they both believed in Louisiana voodoo. With its pagan rites and terrifying charm bags, it was one practice I wished had stayed down South.
She placed the dark charm in my hands.
Trembling, I rubbed its shiny surface. Then I took a long, fortifying breath, turned around, and soldiered into the dreaded yellow Sewing Room.
A certain person ruled this area of the house with a velvet glove and an unbendable set of directives. That person was my mother. Somewhere on the scale between fashionably plump and downright Rubenesque, her larger-than-life presence made her comfortable weighing in on all matters on which she considered herself an authority. But to be fair, her extra mass was also part of a greater philosophy. Ever since the Panic of 1873, she had shunned deprivation and devoted herself to the axiom, “More is more.”
Around her sprawled long lengths of tulle,
silk, poplin, and other fabrics in pastel colors—considerably more than we could ever use, of course.
Mother also adhered closely to a guidebook when it came to matters of dress and decorum: the Ladies Home Journal.
No one took their ludicrous fashion dictates more seriously than she.
Magazine in hand, she perched in the room along with an elderly dressmaker who made all our gowns. The dressmaker had worked up several different dresses that were almost completed.
“I thought we were in a Panic,” I said.
“Hush, Penelope,” Mother countered in an exaggerated whisper. Her index finger flew up to her lips. “Servants are near, and we wish to circulate no rumors.”
“When should we talk about it? Would that be after you and Father ship me off to New York? Surely you can’t expect any meager wages I might earn to pay for—” I stared at the dresses. There seemed to be three in Lydia’s small size, and one in a very large size for my mother.
Off to the side I noticed an emerald poplin outfit in a medium size with puffed-up sleeves and a fullness in the back that looked weighty.
My mother thumbed her Ladies Home Journal until she found the page showing the identical fashion plate. She lifted up the picture in triumph.
“That’s much too full in the back for me,” I said. The outfit looked like it was designed for a hippopotamus.
Half ignoring me, she lifted the LHJ fashion bible to read it aloud. “But it says right here, ‘At eighteen, your dresses for the City should have heft in the back.’”
“First of all, I am seventeen. Secondly, the suit will swallow me whole. I won’t be able to sit down in it.”
The dressmaker, a small, wizened octogenarian with pins in her mouth, nodded at me in obvious agreement.
Mother shook her head doubtfully. She hated to disobey whatever the Ladies Home Journal dictated. “You’re young, dear. How often do you really need to sit? What if you simply remain standing? You can stand! Young people these days need never sit down. Anyone with eyes can see there’s far too much sitting going around, which only leads to lethargy. I won’t have the Daggerses thinking you can’t afford a City Suit over a little fullness in the back.”