Bachelor Girl

by Kim van Alkemade

  “Oh, Jerry and Jake would have done anything for each other. He would have raised his daughter like his own if I’d asked him to, but I never did, you know. He couldn’t have loved her more if she’d been his own flesh and blood. I didn’t see the point in saying anything, not while he was alive.” She drew a handkerchief from the front of her blouse and blew her nose. “I guess you’ve known about Helen’s father for a while now, haven’t you, Albert? I assumed Jake told you the truth at some point.”

  “Not in so many words, but yes, I figured it out, about the Colonel and your husband.”

  She sighed. “Good. I’m glad we got that out in the open. It’ll make it so much easier for me if you could break it to Helen. After all these years, I don’t know if I have the courage to tell her the truth about her father.”

  “Of course, if you want me to.” I reached across the table and took her hand. “She won’t think any less of him, I’m sure of it.”

  “I hope not.” Her lips started to tremble as the tears returned. “I wanted him to tell her himself, while he was still alive, but he’d lived with the lie for so long I suppose he just couldn’t do it. Or maybe he figured she already knew. Do you think Helen does?”

  I’d lost the thread of her words. “Does what?”

  “Know Jake was her father.” She choked up saying it. I helped her complete the thought.

  “Her father’s lover, you mean.”

  Teresa’s face scrunched up as if trying to read type too small to see. “What on earth are you talking about, Albert?” Then she looked at me like I’d walked into her house with shit on my shoes. “What, you think Jake was like you, that he did this for Jerry? They weren’t perverts, Albert. They were normal men, both of them. After Jake got me pregnant, I married Jerry so fast he had no idea Helen wasn’t really his. Jake didn’t believe in marriage, that’s true, but he was no queer.”

  I sat in stunned silence as the movie of my life spooled backward through my mind. Every assumption I’d made, every conclusion I’d come to, had been wrong. The Colonel had recognized me for what I was while I had reinvented him in my own image. That kiss he placed on my black eye wasn’t to show me we were the same, but to keep me in line. We each had secrets, sure, but they were entirely different ones. For years I’d imagined us sharing a silent understanding, a bond so deep it didn’t need to be put into words. It seemed impossible that I had been such a fool. I wouldn’t believe it, not entirely, without hearing her say it one more time.

  “You’re telling me, Teresa, the Colonel was Helen’s natural father?”

  A glass shattered, shards skittering across the kitchen floor. I swung around in my chair to see Helen in the doorway, her hand still in the shape of the glass she’d been holding.

  Chapter 43

  I knew it was true as soon as I heard the words. I stumbled backward, my arms outstretched, as if finding my way blindly through an unfamiliar house. I shut myself in my bedroom, locking out my mother, whose pleading voice seeped through the keyhole. “Give me a chance to explain, Helen,” she begged. But there was only one question I wanted the answer to.

  “Did Daddy know?” I rested my ear against the closed door to hear her answer.

  “No, Helen, I swear to you. But even if he had, he would have loved you just the same. Now let me in. I need to talk to you.”

  I told her to go away. There was nothing she could say that would change the fact my whole life had been a lie. It was so obvious now, I felt like an idiot not to have figured it out before. But I hadn’t been looking for the truth because I had no idea I was being deceived by my own mother. By both of my parents, I corrected myself. I felt sick, as if my own skin were an ill-fitting suit that itched and pinched. The room was stifling. I had to get out of there. I gathered some garments from the dresser drawers, threw them willy-nilly into a suitcase, and yanked open the door. My mother fell forward, and I had to catch her. I remembered how I used to look up to her, when I was a girl. She seemed so small now. I pushed her aside and grabbed Albert’s hand. “Let’s go.”

  The reporters had finally gone. We were able to get to the curb and into a taxi without being mauled. “Just drive through the park for a while,” I told the cabbie. I stared out the window as streets and sidewalks gave way to meandering walkways where pigeons pecked at snowbanks and squirrels scurried across bare tree branches. Jake had given me so much, while he was alive and in his will, too, but in that moment I imagined trading it all in for the chance to call him Dad. I turned to Albert, looked him square in the eye. “Did you know?”

  He rolled up the partition so the driver couldn’t hear us. “No, Helen. I had no idea the Colonel was your father. I thought—well, I thought something else entirely. I’m as surprised as you are.”

  “They lied to me, both of them. But why, Albert?”

  “I don’t know, Helen. He lied to me, too. At least, he let me believe a lie.” Albert seemed shell-shocked. “I hardly know which way is up anymore.”

  “What’s the use of finding out now, when it’s too late to do anything about it?” I thought of those anniversaries my mother and I would observe, the date of Daddy’s death magnified in our memory. She saw what it did to me to have lost him. How could she not have said I had another father waiting in the wings to understudy the role? But Jake was the one who’d chosen not to play the part. “Maybe I wasn’t good enough to be known as his daughter.”

  Albert took my hands. “That’s impossible, Helen. You were wonderful to him. If anything, he’s the one who didn’t deserve to be your father.”

  The taxi circled Harlem Meer and emerged onto Frawley Circle. The cabbie knocked on the partition. “You want I should go around again?”

  We were stopped for the moment at a red light. I turned to Albert. “Let’s get out of town, go up to Eagle’s Rest. It’s as much yours as it is mine, I hope you know that.” He said it was a fine idea, but that there’d be lots of legal matters requiring my signature in the coming weeks. I simply couldn’t stand the thought of sticking around Manhattan. “If I gave you my power of attorney, would you take care of it for me?”

  “Of course I would, Helen, if that’s what you want.”

  We had the taxi take us back to the lawyer’s office. By the time all the necessary papers were signed, the short winter day had turned dark as night. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Neither had Albert. Without having to discuss it, we went to our favorite restaurant. The maître d’ had never asked us who we worked for or how we knew each other. As far as he was concerned, we were just that nice couple who’d been coming into his place every month or so for the past twenty years. He must have observed that neither of us wore a wedding band. I supposed he thought we were just friends. Either that, or we were having the longest affair in the history of the world.

  It was too late by the time we finished dinner to catch a train to Eagle’s Rest. Instead, I went home with Albert. I carried my suitcase into the room we both thought of as mine. He brought me a blanket and a pillow for the chaise lounge and we said our good nights. As I changed into the nightgown I’d packed, I studied myself in the mirror. There it was, written all over my face. The shape of Jake’s chin. That same crease around the mouth. His jaw. No wonder I’d mistaken that photograph of Cornelia for my own. Was that why he’d made me an heiress, because I reminded him of his sister? But no, I realized—when it comes to inheritance, daughter trumps sister.

  I stepped back, considered the length of my body. No one would mistake me for a young woman, but I’d aged well. Never having birthed a child had kept my hips from spreading and my breasts from sagging. I’d always been vigilant with a tweezer, and lately I’d been having my hair colored at the salon at Macy’s—charged to Jake’s account, of course. Even so, my body wasn’t what it had been back when Harrison took me to bed. But that wouldn’t matter to Albert.

  I let myself into his room. His light was on, but his eyes were closed in sleep, a book tented on his chest. I moved it aside, switched off
the light. He woke as I got under the blanket. I lifted his arm and settled my head against his shoulder. There was warmth where our skin touched but no heat. I pressed my ear to his chest and listened to the throbbing of his heart, its murmur a little hiccup between each beat.

  In the dark, Albert’s whisper was so quiet I could only think he hoped I wouldn’t hear him. “I could try, if you want me to.”

  I nuzzled against him. “Don’t worry, darling. This is all I need.”

  He relaxed and placed a careful kiss on the crown of my head. “Sweet dreams, Helen.”

  I wished him the same. I felt the weight of his arm increase as he fell back to sleep. A soft rasp in the back of his throat accompanied each breath, rhythmic as a lullaby. For the first time in all my life, I slept through the night in a man’s arms.

  • • •

  My picture in the morning papers wasn’t terrible, but still I hated to see my face staring at me from the front page. At least I wasn’t recognized at the train station, the early-morning commuters too caught up in their own concerns to notice me standing on the platform, my suitcase hanging heavily from my hand. Albert promised to join me once all the legal matters were settled. He worried about me up at Eagle’s Rest all by myself, but I reminded him I’d hardly be alone: besides the caretaker and his wife, there was the zookeeper and his family, not to mention all the animals. I’d have to hire a housekeeper, too. I never had learned to cook for myself, and the last time I’d done laundry I was just a girl.

  It was strange being at the estate in winter. The caretaker hadn’t been expecting visitors, and the furnace was stoked low. There was enough heat circulating through the radiators to keep the pipes from freezing, but it would be a few hours yet, he told me when he picked me up at the station, before the mansion felt warm. Even with my coat on, my joints ached as I wandered from room to room. The chandeliers, draped in sheets of linen, hovered like ghosts over the dusty furniture. I felt like an intruder. I had to keep reminding myself Eagle’s Rest was mine, that my father had given it to me.

  Father. My mind still went to an image of Daddy in his garage when I thought of the word. I forced myself to picture Jacob Ruppert in his place. But no, Jake could never replace him. I may have only had him for the first eleven years of my life, but Jerry Winthrope had stamped me as his daughter as clearly as if I’d been molded from his own flesh. He’d encouraged me, included me, valued me, praised me. Somewhere inside myself I still carried that little girl who believed she could fix everything, do anything, become whatever she wanted to be. Jake had supported me, sure, but as the years went on he’d weaned me from my career, narrowing the scope of my ambitions until he was the center of my life. He didn’t need to trick me like that, I thought. If I’d known what he was, I would have gladly devoted myself to him. But he hadn’t given me the choice. Instead of letting me be his daughter, he’d shortchanged us both by casting me in the role of employee.

  The caretaker’s wife brought me a hot lunch from her own kitchen. She lingered while I ate, pretending to keep me company but really satisfying her curiosity about Jake’s funeral. “I read in the paper there were fifteen thousand people at the procession. Is that true, Miss Winthrope?” I told her there might have been even more. People lined Fifth Avenue from 93rd Street all the way down to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, spilling into Rockefeller Center. “And his coffin carried by Mayor La Guardia and Senator Wagner, and our old governor Al Smith.”

  “Mr. Kramer was one of the pallbearers, too,” I reminded her, but she wasn’t impressed.

  “It was no more than the Colonel deserved, I’m sure. I can take that if you’re finished, miss.” She picked up my plate and cleared her throat. “If you don’t mind my asking, miss, do you know what’s to become of the estate?”

  “Didn’t Mr. Kramer explain when he telephoned to say I was coming up?”

  “Just that you’d be arriving and would be staying for a while.”

  Apparently the morning papers hadn’t made their way to the caretakers’ cottage yet. “Colonel Ruppert left it to me. Eagle’s Rest is mine.”

  “Yours?” There was disdain in the gaze she swept over me. “Why would he do that, miss?”

  I knew what she was thinking. I opened my mouth to tell her the truth, but the words never got past my lips. All his life Jake had kept me a secret, even when I was standing right next to him. Was that why his nieces acquiesced to his wishes and left me an uncontested heiress—to protect the Ruppert name from scandal? My God, I thought, had his family known all along? My uncle and aunt, my own cousins, all of them closing ranks and paying me off to maintain the mystery of my paternity. It was horrible to think of it this way, but unless I wanted to ruin Jake’s reputation and antagonize his family, I’d have to get used to people assuming I’d been my father’s mistress.

  The mansion was warming up, steam clanging through the radiators. I went upstairs, entering Jake’s room straight from the hallway instead of through the pocket door. In his dressing room I opened every drawer and closet. Three-piece suits in gabardine, shirts of Egyptian cotton, enough silk bow ties to stitch into a quilt. I ran my hands along the fabrics, dipped my fingers into dozens of pockets. I gathered a jacket in my arms and hugged it, imagining what it might have been like to have embraced the man who wore it, knowing he was my father. He’d denied me that chance, and for what? Scandal never touched the summers we spent at Eagle’s Rest. In these rooms we had our own little world, our play within the play. If only there had been a fairy to dab Jake’s eyes with magic juice so I could have heard him say he loved me once before he died.

  I stepped back from the wardrobe. They were nothing to me now, these empty rags. What would I do with them all? I wondered. The answer came easily. There were thousands of men lining up at soup kitchens all over New York, their once fine clothes worn to tatters. I’d simply contact the local relief agency. By tomorrow, Jake’s tailored wardrobe would be on the backs of a hundred hobos. I picked out a few things to save: a bowler hat he often wore, a coat I thought Rex might like, a set of gold cuff links I wanted Albert to have. In Jake’s bathroom I smelled his soap—he’d never worn cologne—and lifted the lid on a jar of peppermints he kept on the windowsill. It wouldn’t do to make a museum of his room, I decided. Once I’d cleared it out, I’d move in myself. Albert could have my old room, and between them we’d always keep the pocket door open.

  When I heard the telephone ring, I knew before I picked up the receiver it would be my mother. I cut through her apologies. “Tell me, how did it happen, Mom?”

  The line was silent for a long time before she began to speak. “Do you remember on your visit to Linwood, Helen, seeing the cove by the old mill? Such a beautiful place. I used to swim there on my mornings off. Jake did, too, it turned out. He was in the middle of the cove when I swam out to him.” I imagined them circling each other in the water. Was there romance, I wondered, talk of love? Had the woman who was my mother and the man who was my father created me from their irresistible but forbidden passion? “You know how these things go, Helen. He needed comforting. I needed to be noticed. I was young, but I wasn’t a virgin. We met there every morning for a month or so. He was so handsome back then. It’s surprising, really, you weren’t more of a beauty.”

  I hung up. She’d call again, I knew, that night or the next day, though I could already piece together most of the story she’d tell. When my mother realized she was pregnant, she was smart enough to know Jake would never marry a Protestant housemaid, not after the way his parents had disowned his sister for marrying a divorced Jew. She’d taken care of it by finding a man who would make her his wife, and count himself lucky for it. One thing I’d never fault her for was her choice. Jerry Winthrope was as kind and good a father as any girl could wish for. If he’d lived, my mother might never have told Jake I existed. But Daddy hadn’t lived. I remembered, now, how she’d taken Jake aside after his funeral, how they’d turned to look at me. Jake always takes his responsibilities serio
usly—that’s what she told me, and hadn’t I seen the proof of it a thousand times over the years.

  The winter light was beginning to fade. A truck from the Bronx Zoo would be coming for the monkeys in the morning, so I put on my coat and went out to say good-bye to the rhesus female who’d been so fond of Pip. They never did breed, that pair. She extended her hairy arms, beckoning me closer. I let her hug me, our foreheads touching through the space between the bars. Unaccountably, I started to cry. What had been the point of capturing them from their jungle home? I wondered. Jake had caged them here for years so he could occasionally be amused by their antics, and now they were off to another set of cages. I supposed that’s how he thought of me, too: a prized part of his collection. I hadn’t known my value while he was alive, but he’d shown me with my inheritance what I was worth to him.

  I went back past the barn. It was a lonely place now that the Saint Bernards were gone. Lonely, but big. Bigger than the Provincetown Playhouse had been. I couldn’t help but imagine how easily a stage would fit at the far end, how many rows of seats the barn could accommodate. I let out a hoot to test the acoustics. Not bad, I thought, as my voice came bouncing back to me from the rafters. I hadn’t taught drama at the settlement house for years now, the administrators having deciding it was more important to focus on nutrition and hygiene while this Depression dragged on. “You can’t eat art” is how they put it to me when my classes were canceled. You may not be able to eat it, I thought, but still a person is starved without it.

  Turning the barn into a theater was a fanciful notion, but the idea reminded me I needed to get a handle on the running of Eagle’s Rest. I called Albert and asked him to send up the accounts for the estate so I could go over them.