by Deeanne Gist
He said nothing.
“Your father never remarried?”
“Not until much later. And by then, well, I was sixteen and his wife was eighteen.”
An older couple holding hands glided by. It was something he didn’t see very often. Usually the man would take the woman’s elbow, or clasp hands in a promenade fashion. But holding hands. That was different. It spoke not just of love, but of companionship, familiarity, friendship, and ease. An ease unique to only those two.
“Why didn’t they let you skate?” she asked. “Your grandparents, I mean.”
He shrugged, following the couple with his gaze. “Same reason they wouldn’t let me go barefoot to school, even though everyone else did. Same reason they made me eat lunch at home instead of carrying it to school like the other kids. Same reason they forbade me from visiting the lending library—although they did eventually relent on that one.”
“Did you ever sneak out to skate?”
“I thought about it plenty of times, but the penalty had I been caught wasn’t worth it to me. So, instead, I watched them.”
“Watched them? But how did you do that if you didn’t sneak out?”
A cloud passed over the sun. He tightened the winter scarf slung about his neck. “The pond was right behind the house. I could see them from my bedroom window.”
She sucked in her breath, her stricken face making him regret his words.
“Don’t look like that,” he said. “I enjoyed it.”
She bit her lower lip. “But not as much as you’d have enjoyed actually doing it.”
“Perhaps.” Squinting, he noted Mrs. Holliday had found her sea legs and was moving across the ice with a bit more ease.
“Well, what do you say we do something about that? How would you like to go skating, Mr. Wilder?”
He cut his eyes to hers. “Right now?”
“Right now.”
“With you?”
“With me.”
Taking a breath, he held it for a second before letting it out with a gush. “No, I’m sorry. It’s . . . it’s not you, I just . . . I just have no desire to go skating.”
“I think you do. I think you’re dying to get out there.”
“Well, you’d be wrong, then.”
A teasing glint entered her eye. “I’m hardly ever wrong.”
“You might be surprised.”
“I’m hardly ever surprised.”
“I’m not going skating.”
“I believe you are.” Downing the rest of her cocoa like a shot of whiskey, she set down the cup, dusted off her hands, and stood. “Come on, now. Up we go.”
“No.”
She picked up his borrowed skates. “Strap these onto your shoes. And don’t worry, I’ll be right beside you the whole time.”
The sun came back out, making his eyes squint from the bright reflection of the vast pond and snow-covered grounds.
“I appreciate the invitation, but I prefer to watch.”
“All my eye and Betty Martin.” She wiggled the skates at him.
He snatched them from her. “God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason, Miss Jayne.”
Laughing, she twirled her finger, encompassing his feet. “Put them on.”
“I really—”
“Thou doth protest too much, methinks.” She propped a hand on her hip.
His jaw began to tick.
She leaned over and placed her face level with his. A hint of rosewater drifted about her. “I am not leaving this pond until you have at least made an attempt. Shall I put them on for you?” She began to kneel.
He grabbed her elbow. “Absolutely not. I can do it.”
She straightened with a self-satisfied smile.
Slamming the metal skate onto the bottom of his shoe, he strapped on the buckles, yanked them tight, and stood. “Well, don’t just stand there. Let’s get this over with.”
“You’re going to love it.” She cupped his arm as they stepped onto the ice.
He jerked it away. His feet immediately went out from under him, landing him on his backside in the snowdrift, its softness cushioning his fall.
She bit her bottom lip, her eyes playful. “So, now you have that over with. Everyone falls. It’s part of it.” She held out both hands. “Come on. Let’s try again.”
He stared at her, trying to decide if he’d give in to her or not.
She tilted her head. “I know and you know that you’ve always wanted to be out here. So you may as well let yourself enjoy it. Please?”
Deep down, he knew she was right, but he’d wanted to do it on his terms and on his time line. He wasn’t fighting it because he didn’t want to skate. He was fighting it because he’d been forced into it. And now she just expected him to snap his fingers and enjoy it simply because she wished it to be so.
Well, he’d go through the motions, but he wouldn’t enjoy it until he was good and ready.
After a slight hesitation, he took her hands and stood.
“Good. Now, I’m going to start going backward. All you have to do is keep your ankles locked and your blades underneath you.”
He gave a curt nod. For several yards he cut through the bumpy, rutted ice, determined to keep his balance.
“You’re doing splendidly. I’m going to bring us to a stop.” She’d taken them to the middle of the pond, where some stood and conversed while others tried trick moves.
“When I let go of you,” she said, “I want you to try to march—once you have your balance, of course.”
March? He looked around. No one else was marching. “I’m not going to march.”
She closed her eyes. “March, Mr. Wilder. Hup-to.”
He didn’t budge.
“The sooner you march, the sooner we can go back.”
He marched. She encouraged him, praised him, and steadied him when he began to fall. From there, she took both his hands again and skated backward as she taught him to push off with one leg while gliding on another.
Before he knew it, they were making slow loops together around the edge of the pond. It wasn’t anything like the brisk movements of all the others, but he was skating. He hadn’t yet decided whether he was going to enjoy it or not.
“I’ve been reading your articles,” she said, the breeze fluttering her collar.
“And you disagree with them.” He stiffened his ankles to keep them from bowing on the rough ice.
“Parts of them. I suppose it is natural enough to assume that since women have stayed home all this time and the world has gone on, that if women suddenly ceased to stay home, the world would cease to go on.” She shrugged. “It just doesn’t seem like much of an argument to me.”
“A warhorse and a fawn cannot be fitted for pursuits that are identical, Miss Jayne.”
They slowed down, then veered around a father holding the hand of his young son.
“I will give you that men and women differ,” she continued. “But it’s not a question of masculinity or femininity, it’s a question of humanity. Women are human, just like men. Therefore, we have just as much right to hold jobs as you do.”
“You talk about rights, yet when you took that job at Tiffany’s, you undermined more than a hundred men who were fighting for their rights. The rights to higher wages and shorter hours. Not only that, but they have families to feed. You’ve no one but yourself.”
“If women had the right to be members of the union, then perhaps we could have put up a united front, for I have no objection to those men getting fewer hours and higher pay. As a matter of fact, I’d love for them to receive everything they’re demanding. My filling in for them has nothing to do with that. It has to do with helping Mr. Tiffany achieve his dream, his goal.”
“Tiffany?” He scoffed.
“Everyone has dreams and goals. The strikers do, I do, and Mr. Tiffany does. It’s as if Mr. Tiffany is, I don’t know, one of the debutantes my mother sews ball gowns for.”
“Debutantes?” Wiggling his toes,
he tried to generate more feeling into them without losing his balance.
“Yes. The debutante and her mother put months, sometimes years, into planning the young lady’s presentation into society. If someone was to tell the girl she couldn’t go to the ball after all that planning and expense simply because, at the last second, her dressmaker refused to make her gown, well, that would be inexcusable. The girl would be crushed. She only has one chance, one opportunity for her coming-out. I can tell you one thing, if I were the girl’s mother, I’d knock on every seamstress’s door for miles and miles until finding whomever I needed to get the job done.”
He rolled his eyes. Leave it to a woman to argue labor laws by using dresses and debutantes as an example. “And Mr. Tiffany is no different from a debutante?”
“Exactly.” She smiled at him. “Only his presentation into society—into the entire world—is to be in the form of a mosaic chapel at the World’s Columbian Exposition. He plans to make a name for himself there. The men tried to snatch that away from him, his once-in-a-lifetime dream that he’d invested an enormous amount of time, energy, and money on.”
“He didn’t spend it on the workers,” Reeve mumbled.
She either didn’t hear him or pretended not to. “So I was happy to help Mr. Tiffany in any way whatsoever. If that meant walking through a line of picketers, being called ugly names, being abused by little boys and spit on by grown men, so be it.”
He sobered. “I didn’t agree with the way they treated you.”
“Neither did I.” Her voice was soft.
The cold had long since breached Reeve’s wool socks and his ears had turned all but numb. He slowed to a stop. “Mr. Tiffany has more money than he could possibly spend in a lifetime. He could have afforded to treat his workers better. If he had, he’d never have jeopardized his ‘debut,’ as you call it.”
“Have you ever met Mr. Tiffany? Visited with him?”
“I don’t need to. His actions speak loud enough.”
“As do the actions of the men who spit on me.”
He adjusted his hat. “Yes, well, thank you for the skating lesson, but I’m going to head back now.”
“Because I defended Mr. Tiffany?”
“Because I’m cold.”
“Oh. Well, just one last thing, then, before you quit.”
He sighed. “What’s that?”
Looking around, she turned in a small circle, so comfortable on her skates she didn’t even seem to think about what she was doing.
“There,” she said, pointing. “Do you see the warming hut?”
He followed the direction of her gaze to a small, white, four-sided structure. “Yes.”
“I want you to skate to it as fast as you can.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “So you can feel what it’s like to let loose and just go.”
“I don’t need to feel what it’s like to let loose.”
She lifted a brow.
“I don’t.”
“Maybe you do, maybe you don’t, but on the off chance that you are too stubborn to ever get on the ice again, I want you to know what it feels like to skate. I mean, really skate.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Miss Jayne, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’m just going to go back to my bench, take off my skates, and walk home.”
She touched his arm. “Please? You picked everything up so quickly. You’re a natural. I know you’ll be able to do it. Just do the same bend-push, bend-push, only a little faster.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?”
“I don’t know how to stop.”
She swooped her hand down in a don’t worry gesture. “Just skate into the snowbank. That’ll stop you.”
He had no interest in experiencing whatever it was she felt he needed to experience. He also had no interest in creating a scene with her in the middle of the pond if she didn’t get her way.
Mumbling to himself, he pushed off, making a direct line for the warming house. Bend-push. Bend-push. His blades scraped against the ice like a knife against a sharpening stone. Snowflakes melted on his face but stuck to his lashes. Laughter and conversations from those around him ebbed and flowed.
He picked up more speed, surprised to find it a bit easier to balance at this faster rate. Concentrated laughter and squeals came from his right. It was all the warning he had, and then they were there. A line of youths hanging on to one another by their waists, going full tilt and weaving about skaters in a game of snap-the-whip. Only, they didn’t weave around him. They cut right into his path.
“Watch out!” he cried. He had no idea how to stop. Options careened through his mind in the mere seconds he had to react.
If he fell and slid into them, his blades might slice someone’s ankles. If he dove, his fingers and face would be cut to smithereens. If he charged through them, he’d scatter them like a rack of billiard balls.
In the end, he bent his knees and attempted a ninety-degree turn, ice spraying, but he couldn’t manage it. Shocked faces turned to him right before impact.
He scooped up the boy he plowed into, then fought to regain his equilibrium and protect the child in his arms. Other youths fell like bowling pins, one spinning across the ice and directly into his path, tummy down, limbs outstretched.
Cursing, Reeve jerked to the left. It was too much. His legs whipped out from underneath him, cutting across the youth’s gloved finger and slamming Reeve onto his tailbone. The boy in his arms rolled off of him and jumped to his feet.
The youth Reeve had run over screamed. It was high-pitched and excruciating, traveling up and down the scale in agonizing sharps and flats.
Oh, God. Oh, God.
Ignoring his own pain, Reeve rolled onto all fours and scrambled to the boy, who looked to be about fourteen. Curling up his legs, the boy cradled his hand, screaming and rocking his body.
“Let me see.” Reeve pried the boy’s arm free and lifted it so it would be above his heart. Blood seeped through the glove.
“No! No!” The boy pulled back, tears pouring down his face.
Reeve held firm. Other skaters descended, surrounding them and talking at once.
Placing a hand against the boy’s head, Reeve tucked it against his chest “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “We need to get your glove off, son.”
“No,” he whimpered.
A commotion in the crowd drew Reeve’s attention.
“Let me through,” said a voice. “I’m a doctor. Let me through.”
The throng around them broke, allowing a middle-aged, portly man access. Kneeling beside them, he gave the boy a reassuring smile. “How you feeling, young man?”
“My finger.”
The doctor nodded. “I’m going to remove your glove.”
“No!”
Reeve held him fast.
“I’m not going to pull it off,” the doc said. “I’m going to cut it with my pocket knife.”
The boy stiffened.
“Shhhhh.” Reeve rested his cheek against the boy’s head. “It’ll be all right now. I want you to close your eyes, though, okay?”
The boy slammed his eyes shut. Reeve and the doc exchanged glances.
“You the boy’s father?”
“No, I’m . . . I . . .” Emotion stacked up against his throat. “I’m the one responsible.”
The doc began slicing the fabric of the glove with his knife. “It was an accident. That’s why it’s called that, because it’s unintentional.”
It might have been unintentional, but it was also preventable. He should have stayed on that bench. He had no business getting on the ice. None whatsoever.
The boy jerked, screaming again as the doc removed the part of the glove stuck to his injured finger. Reeve tightened his hold. The finger was still attached, thank the Lord, but it was cut to the bone.
“What’s your name?” Reeve asked.
“Paschal Smith,” he
whimpered.
The doc wrapped the finger, exerting pressure. Paschal screamed again. Reeve pressed his mouth against Paschal’s wooly cap and prayed. Don’t let him lose his finger. Don’t let him lose his finger.
“Paschal!” A burly man with leathery skin pushed his way through. “Paschal, what happened?”
“Papa.” His voice had weakened. “I don’t feel so good.”
“We need to get him to the warming hut,” the doc said. “I’ll stitch him up in there.”
Reeve would be of no help on skates, so he relinquished Paschal to his father. Several men surged forward to assist. They pulled the boy to his feet and headed toward the warming hut.
Reeve ripped the straps from his skates and freed himself, his hands trembling. The pain in his tailbone made itself felt for the first time. With care, he placed his feet beneath him and stood, grimacing. When he looked up, Miss Jayne stood a few feet away, hugging herself.
“Are you all right?” she asked, the distress in her voice audible.
He made fists so she wouldn’t see his hands shaking. “Stay away from me. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t even want to see you.”
Her face paled. “I’m sorry. I’m so—”
He cut her off with a slice of his hand. “Not one word. Not one.”
A tiny sound came from the back of her throat, but he hardened his heart. He was plenty angry with himself, but he was absolutely furious with her. Turning his back on her, he headed toward the warming house, the ice almost as difficult to traverse in his shoes as it was on his skates.
CHAPTER
24
Flossie paced in front of the parlor’s fireplace, berating herself for the umpteenth time. What had she been thinking to send Mr. Wilder off like that without teaching him how to stop? There was no excuse. None. And now a boy might lose his finger because of it.
She’d wanted to go to the warming house, but after Mr. Wilder’s directive, she didn’t quite have the nerve. She knew he didn’t mean what he’d said, that he was just reacting. Still, she felt it best not to push him until he’d had time to calm down.
The rest of the family at 438 had retired to their rooms for some quiet time before supper, but Flossie could not sit still. So she’d changed, then built up a fire in the parlor while she waited for him.