Orphan #8

by Kim van Alkemade

“Leadville, actually, but Denver first. I was hoping to make the Overland Express.” She looked around, anxious. “Do you know when it leaves?”

  “It was scheduled for eight o’clock. You would have missed it, but there’s been a delay, some problem loading the horses. I was supposed to see my family off before attending a function this evening, but I couldn’t very well leave my wife to watch these ruffians by herself. Would you allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Cohen?”

  “I’m afraid I should arrange my ticket.” Rachel sat Simon up gently.

  “I’ll take him,” his father said, picking up the boy.

  “I’m not a baby, I can walk, Father!”

  “Very well.” He set Simon on his feet and extended a hand to Rachel. She stood.

  “I’ll talk to the ticket agent to be sure there’s a place for you. I know my wife will want to thank you personally.”

  They found Simon’s mother on a bench surrounded by luggage, a baby in one arm and a little girl sprawled, sleeping, across her lap. A purple satin jacket strained to contain the roll of fat around her waist. The feathered hat perched on her head looked like a seagull bobbing on flotsam.

  “Oh, Simon! Just look at your collar. See what you’ve done, Henry!” Henry, beside her, hung his head.

  “Althea, this is Miss . . . ?” The man looked at her.

  “Rabinowitz, Rachel Rabinowitz. Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Cohen.”

  “My pleasure, dear,” Althea said, distractedly offering a limp hand. “David, when can we board? I need to settle them into the car before they drive me to distraction.”

  “Rachel is a nursing student, dear. She took care of Simon’s bloody nose just now. She’s going to Denver, to see her parents.” Althea looked at her husband and lifted an eyebrow, as if an idea had been communicated between them.

  “Really? Do you have your ticket yet?”

  “No, I need to arrange it.”

  “Listen, dear, I know this is abrupt, but would you consider traveling with me? The children’s au pair was taken ill and Dr. Cohen won’t allow her to travel, but I don’t see how I can possibly manage on my own.”

  “Oh, come with us, Rachel! We’ll have such fun on the train,” Simon pleaded.

  “Thank you, I’d be happy to travel with you, Mrs. Cohen, if I can be of help.” Simon applauded; Rachel interrupted him. “But, are you in coach as well?”

  Althea let out a laugh. “Oh, dear, no, we’re in the Pullman, but you’ll join us, please. You can use the au pair’s ticket. I can’t express to you what a comfort it will be to have someone with me.” As if everything had been settled, Althea handed the baby to Rachel then shifted the sleeping girl off her lap. She stood and smoothed her skirt with gloved hands. “Just look at these creases,” she muttered to herself.

  Their train was announced. The doctor escorted his family and Rachel down to the platform and into their compartment, where they said their good-byes. Soon after the train pulled out of Chicago, a porter arrived at their compartment to deliver their luggage and introduce himself. “Mrs. Cohen, my name is Ralph Morrison.” His voice was deep, with a hint of bayou in the vowels. “I am here to make your journey as pleasant as possible. The dining car has been holding dinner, and I’ll be making up the beds while you enjoy yourselves a late supper. If you need anything at all, just call for me.” He cleared his throat. “Now, you are welcome to call me porter, or Ralph, but as I am lately a grandfather, I’m afraid I’m just a little too old to answer to ‘boy.’”

  Ralph Morrison paused to gauge their reaction to his speech, which he delivered with a calibrated smile to every passenger, as if inviting them to be amused by the novelty of treating a person of color with respect. Althea was too distracted by the children to have paid much attention, but Rachel couldn’t see why anyone would call the tall man with a sprinkling of white in his close-cropped hair a boy.

  Dinner was remarkable, thick steaks on china plates, silverware gleaming against the linen tablecloth. Rachel cut the meat for the little girl, but Simon insisted on struggling with the steak knife himself. Returning from the dining car, Rachel thought Ralph Morrison must be a magician to have transformed the plush compartment, with its upholstered couches and curtained window, into a bedroom, the four beds made up with stiff sheets and soft pillows. They took it in turns to undress in the tiny restroom, complete with washstand and toilet. Despite the polished faucet and beveled mirror, Rachel saw when she pulled the chain that their waste emptied onto the tracks rushing beneath them, just as it had in the coach car from New York.

  It was the best night Rachel could remember. Never mind that the train stopped twice to take on cargo, the coupling of cars lurching her out of sleep. The spells of wakefulness allowed her to savor the night. The boys had the top bunks; Mrs. Cohen had taken the baby into her bed, leaving the little girl, Mae, to sleep in Rachel’s arms, the small head resting lightly on her elbow. Rachel wrapped her arms around the girl’s breathing warmth and let the swaying train rock them to sleep as Illinois and Iowa rolled away beneath them.

  IN THE EARLY morning, while the train was stopped in the yard at Omaha, Althea rang for the porter to bring coffee and rolls. Rachel feared Mrs. Cohen would remark on her bald scalp before she could settle the cloche hat over her head, but Althea was either too tactful to say anything or too distracted to notice.

  “Just look at that sky,” Althea murmured. “That’s what I miss most, is that big western sky.” While they enjoyed breakfast in the quiet of sleeping children, Althea whispered her family’s history: how her father, Dr. Abrams, had come out to Colorado to start the Hospital for Consumptive Hebrews, and met her mother, the daughter of pioneers who’d been in Colorado since gold rush days. Althea met her own husband when he came out from Chicago to intern at the hospital; they’d been married in Temple Emanuel before Dr. Cohen moved them back to Chicago to establish his own practice. Rachel listened contentedly while she finished her coffee, wondering what it would be like to know so much about her own past. Althea rang for more rolls and cold milk as the children stirred awake.

  “Do you know what happened with the horses last night, Mr. Porter?” Henry asked, sitting on his mother’s bed and popping a roll into his mouth.

  “It’s Mr. Morrison, Henry,” Rachel corrected. Ralph Morrison glanced at her, then back at the boy.

  “How’s about you call me Ralph and I’ll call you Henry, all right? And I sure do know what happened with those horses. My good friend saw the whole thing with his own eyes.” He took a knee in the open doorway of the compartment. Henry and Simon both came closer. “A whistle blew in the train yard, and one of Mr. Guggenheim’s prize stallions spooked going up the ramp into the horse car. When he reared up, his back hooves slipped off the ramp and he tumbled down on the tracks. Just then, the caboose got coupled on the back of the train and bumped the horse car. That stallion got caught under the carriage.”

  Ralph glanced at Mrs. Cohen, seeking approval to continue the gruesome story. His tip—indeed, his career as a Pullman porter—depended on never giving offense. But anything that entertained her boys was fine with Althea. “Go on,” she said.

  “Well, that horse was whinnying to shatter glass, and all the horses on the car started bucking and neighing. It was pan-de-mo-ni-um. Mr. Guggenheim’s trainer was raising heck with the conductor. The engineer moved the train back off the horse, and the poor creature had to be put down. Not only that, but then the horse had to be chained up and dragged off the tracks.”

  “I wish I could’ve seen it,” Henry said.

  “What was the horse’s name?” Simon asked.

  “Now, that’s a very good question, young man, but I don’t know the answer.” Ralph Morrison took the pot to refresh their coffee. “Lunch will be served between twelve-thirty and two. Would you like the first or second seating, Mrs. Cohen?”

  “First seating, please, the children will be hungry again.”

  As the train rocked across Nebraska, Rachel took the boys down
to the observation car. She waved away cigar smoke as they pressed against the window, the prairie sweeping past under a huge blue sky, the boys searching in vain for buffalo. After lunch, Althea tried to wear the boys out by letting them race along the corridor, to the unspoken dismay of the porters, while Rachel stayed in the compartment with Mae and the baby, both napping. Sitting by the window, she watched the sagging telegraph wires rise and fall like waves between the pine poles. She wondered what messages were pulsing through those wires, dash dot dash.

  It was nearly ten o’clock that night when the Western Express pulled into Denver’s Union Station. Rachel had her cardboard case ready. She expected to say her good-byes to Mrs. Cohen and the children in their compartment, but Simon had fallen asleep and needed to be prodded to his feet, Henry was cranky, and Althea asked Rachel to take Mae while she carried the baby. Ralph Morrison, handing Mrs. Cohen down to the platform, looked satisfied, though not impressed, with the tip she pressed into his hand. He tucked the money into his pocket, adding it to the generous amount he’d gotten, with a knowing wink, from a banker traveling with his mistress.

  Rachel followed the family off the train and up the ramp to the station, Mae’s sweaty little fingers in one hand and her case in the other. Henry ran ahead, Simon followed, and Mrs. Cohen hurried after them, the feathers on her hat bobbing above the crowd. In the station, Mrs. Cohen embraced a man Rachel assumed was her father, Dr. Abrams; the boys were bouncing around him while he cooed at the baby. Before Rachel could get near enough to hand Mae to her mother, the group had moved toward the arched doors. Rachel looked over her shoulder at the ticket window—a few men were gathered there, as well as porters emerging from the tracks with carts of luggage—but before she could stop Mrs. Cohen, the family was outside. Rachel hurried to catch up, pulling Mae along, only to see them piling into a black sedan. As she reached the car door, Althea, settled up front with the baby on her lap, called back to the boys to make room for Rachel and Mae. Henry reached out and grabbed her case. Hoisting Mae onto her lap, Rachel rode the tide into the car.

  They disgorged at Althea’s parents’ house, an impressive Queen Anne with steep gables. Its shingled turret looked like a doll’s house to Rachel compared to the clock tower of the Castle. The children ran to their grandmother—even little Mae toddled up the brick walk—but Rachel hung back. Dr. Abrams came up behind her, carrying one of Althea’s bags and the cardboard case. “Would you take these?” he said. “I’m going back for the rest of the luggage now.”

  “Excuse me, sir, but I need to go on to Leadville. Perhaps you could bring me back to the station with you?”

  “The Mail to Leadville doesn’t leave until the morning. I’m afraid there aren’t any more trains tonight.”

  Dr. Abrams called his wife down from the porch. After a hurried consultation, he got back in the sedan and motored away. Mrs. Abrams spoke to Rachel. “It’s been settled. You’ll stay with us tonight. Now come on in, dear.”

  Rachel sat with the boys while Althea and her mother went upstairs to settle Mae and the baby. By the time they came back down, Simon and Henry were nodding in their chairs. “I’ll take them, Althea, if you want to wait up for your father,” Mrs. Abrams said.

  “I’m too exhausted for conversation, Mother. I’ll drop the boys off in the nursery and get into my old bed. I’ll see you at breakfast.”

  As Althea and the boys climbed the stairs, the front door opened and Dr. Abrams came in with the luggage. It took him two trips to carry it all in from the car and up the stairs. When he was finished, he dropped into a chair and removed his round wire-rimmed glasses to wipe his forehead with a napkin. Mrs. Abrams poured him a glass of iced tea, her strong arms managing the heavy glass pitcher as if it were weightless.

  “I checked on the Mail to Leadville. It leaves at nine, but you won’t arrive until the afternoon, it makes absolutely every stop along the way. Perhaps I could arrange for someone to drive you?”

  “I could do it, Charles. A day trip to Leadville would make a nice diversion for the children.”

  “No, thank you, Dr. Abrams, Mrs. Abrams, I won’t mind the time on the train.” They didn’t seem to believe her. “I’ve been so busy helping Mrs. Cohen with the children I haven’t had any time to prepare myself. My father, you see, is very ill.”

  “As you wish. The scenery will be spectacular at least, especially around Breckenridge,” Dr. Abrams said. “I’ll say good night now.”

  “I’ll be right in, Charles, I’m putting Rachel in the Ivy Room.”

  Mrs. Abrams took Rachel upstairs, past the bedrooms where Althea and the children slept, to a narrow staircase. Rachel followed her up to a cozy room in the attic, where she found a freshly made bed, a small dresser, and a sink with hot and cold taps. The electric light brought green vines and goldfinches out of the wallpaper.

  “I meant to have the au pair in here. I hope you don’t mind, Rachel.”

  Rachel didn’t mind in the least. Tucked into the circular turret, its view of Colfax Avenue fractured by the small panes of a leaded window, the Ivy Room made her feel like a princess in a tower. Pulling shut the curtain, she took off her hat and clothes and washed herself from head to toe with a warm, soapy cloth. She opened the case to pull out her nightdress. Rachel had forgotten about the braid. Catching the light, Amelia’s hair smoldered accusingly.

  DOCTOR ABRAMS DROPPED Rachel at Union Station the next morning. Buying her ticket for the Mail train, she was grateful to have traveled from Chicago with the Cohens—what she had left of Naomi’s money might not have covered the whole trip. But on the slow train that took most of the day, Rachel didn’t worry about what she’d do if Sam wasn’t in Leadville after all. Instead she pictured his face spreading into a smile as she appeared. He’d be impressed that she’d done this all on her own, relieved to know it wasn’t his job to worry about her anymore.

  And this Rabinowitz who owned the dry goods store? The more Rachel thought about it, the more she convinced herself he must be their father. She thought of Simon in the house on Colfax Avenue, securely circled by his mother, his brothers and sister, his grandparents. And back in Chicago his father and another set of grandparents, and cousins, maybe, and aunts and uncles. Even Naomi had her Uncle Jacob and Aunt Estelle, and Vic had his mother, too. Didn’t she at least deserve to have a father?

  The engine chugged over ravines and along creek beds high in the Rockies, stopping often to drop off mailbags and take on passengers. Finally, the conductor called Leadville. Rachel stepped off the train onto a wooden platform. The evening sky, still bright, was overbearingly blue. The few rough men who’d gotten off the train with her quickly scattered. She asked the man picking up the mail if he knew where she could find Rabinowitz Dry Goods.

  “Sure, it’s next to the Tabor. Just go up Harrison Street, it’ll be on the left, can’t miss it.”

  Rachel made her way along the raised sidewalk, stepping up and down at each street crossing, mud caking to her shoes from the unpaved roads. Her breath quickened and her heart thudded after only a couple of blocks. She worried she was getting ill until she remembered what Dr. Abrams had told her about the altitude. She rested a moment, looking around at Leadville. Only a few people were out—men in work clothes, women in plain dresses—and traffic was a car motoring past a horse cart. The entire town consisted of the one road and the few muddy lanes that crossed it. Beyond was nothing: no bridges or rooflines or streetlamps. Althea Cohen had spoken of the Rockies as expansive and open, but to Rachel, Leadville seemed a lonely island overshadowed by snowy peaks. Its isolation was as oppressive as the closeness of the sky. She wondered how her father had ended up here, how Sam had found him. Taking as deep a breath as she could, she lifted the cardboard case and continued.

  She nearly passed it before noticing the letters T-A-B-O-R affixed to the facade of a large building. She hadn’t expected “the Tabor” to be an opera house. Rachel looked around, her eyes scanning above doorways. There it was, Rabinowitz Dry
Goods, painted on brick, faded and peeling. She peered through the shop window, stuffed with dusty goods, and saw a long counter stretching the length of the store. A row of enameled ovens marched down the center aisle, which was blocked by barrels of nails and stacked wheelbarrows. The walls were obscured by shelves piled with cooking pots and hatchets and pie pans and bolts of cloth.

  Rachel tugged at the door. A bell jangled as it opened. “Be right out!” a man’s voice called. Through the maze of goods, she saw a figure emerging from the back of the store. White hair circled his head, dipped down his cheeks, and crossed his upper lip. Beneath his jutting eyebrows, he squinted through round glasses. He was older, of course he was, but there was something deeply familiar about the shape of his chin, the reach of his nose, the slope of his shoulders. As he neared, Rachel flew back in time. She was four years old and a man with this nose, this chin, was lifting her to those shoulders, kissing her cheek, calling her a little monkey. She dropped her case. In two running steps she met him, her arms around his neck.

  “Papa!” All the anxiety of her long journey was released in a rush of child’s tears.

  Chapter Fourteen

  DR. FELDMAN’S NURSE WAS NAMED BETTY—I READ IT on the nametag she wore pinned to her uniform. From her stern voice on the telephone, I’d expected someone Gloria’s age, but she was younger than she sounded and more fashionable, too, with manicured nails and hair sprayed into place. Still, the brisk way she took my information left no doubt who was in charge. Once she’d started my chart, she led me into an examination room and told me to get undressed. “Right down to your panties, then put this on.” After I’d changed, she tied the cotton gown for me behind my back, tugging each little bow securely in place. She’d be a reassuring woman to have as a mother, I thought. Polished and dependable, if a little intimidating. Flo was nice as could be, but it pained me to see how her kids ran her ragged.

  When I returned from providing a urine sample, Betty had me perch on the examination table while she took my pressure and pulse. I was surprised to see her ready a draw kit without being given an order. “He always wants blood drawn from new patients,” she said, answering my unasked question. As she wrapped the rubber tube around my upper arm and patted the inside of my elbow to raise a vein, I wondered what she got paid. It would be nice to work in a doctor’s office: steady hours, a good salary, no changing shifts or heavy lifting of patients. Why hadn’t I ever applied for a job like this?