I had a chance then to study the nearly grown Simon up close, and what I saw set my heart to pattering. I found that he was courteous but never self-effacing. He didn’t wear a hat, but if he had, I’m sure he would never have doffed it to me. Though he was unfailingly gentle with the horses, the maid told me he had once beaten an older boy to within an inch of his life for calling his mother a pretty piece of baggage. He had stopped school after the sixth grade to help earn his keep, but I knew he liked to read, and his opinions always seemed well reasoned. There was some mystery about his father, but I deduced that Mr. Shaw had abandoned the family shortly after Simon’s birth, which perhaps explained his son’s barely veiled—and to my mind, rather thrilling—disdain for authority.
His humble origins didn’t deter me, for I was convinced that he would do great things. Once, after watching him brush Mama’s mare to a sheen worthy of Madison Square Garden, I’d asked if he didn’t mind taking care of other people’s horses. He’d smiled and said, “I couldn’t be sure they’d be properly cared for if I left it to someone else, now could I?” Thinking this a noble but somewhat backward way of looking at it, I’d asked him bluntly if he wouldn’t rather be doing more important things. “I will, someday,” he’d explained. “But this is practice, see? You’ve got to take things one step at a time.”
I thought I understood him. And as I lay restlessly in my bed at night, I dreamed, absurdly, of some vague but contented future together. And I waited—for I didn’t know what. An unidentified something, to resolve the unfamiliar tension building inside of me.
Thus came about the night of my disgrace. I remembered it with the clarity memory was wont to impose on things one would rather forget. I had gone down to the basement kitchen for something to eat before bed. It was Katie’s night off, and Margaret, our cross-eyed new kitchen maid, was washing the servants’ dishes. I had just sat down to the remains of a strawberry jam sponge cake when Margaret pulled on her coat and hat, hoisted a bucket of spotty apples from beneath the sink, and announced she was taking the apples to the stable.
Immediately, I saw my opportunity. Jumping up from the table, I grabbed Katie’s old coat from its peg and offered to take the apples myself. Of course, Margaret had been quite shocked, protesting that it was her job to bring them on Katie’s night off and that I’d catch my death going out in my thin chemise and robe, and asking what my mother would say, but I was not to be deterred. Stepping into the pair of old work boots that stood by the door, I pulled on the coat, snatched the bucket from Margaret’s reluctant hand, and clumped past her into the hall and out the service door.
I could still remember how the nubby boot lining felt against my bare feet as I half ran, half shuffled around the corner and up the block to our stable. I shut the stable door behind me and paused in the lantern light, breathing in the scent of lamp oil and sweet hay. Kellogg neighed in greeting, and I hurried over to shush her with one of the apples. She had just chomped down on it with her big yellow teeth, spraying drops of juice through my open coat onto my chemise, when I heard footsteps on the loft stairs behind me.
Holding my breath, I counted the steady footfalls on the treads: six, seven, eight. The footsteps stopped, and I turned.
He was standing at the bottom of the stairs, cloaked in shadow. “Did they send you for the carriage?” he asked, his eyes gleaming like polished jet in the lamplight.
“No.”
He tilted his head, studying me in that unhurried way of his. “Well, you’re not going for a ride. Not in that.”
“No,” I agreed, dizzy with excitement. “I’m not going for a ride.”
He waited, his dark eyes questioning.
Unable to explain even to myself why I’d come or what I expected, I simply smiled—an open, offering smile that I suppose anyone but a fool would have recognized. And Simon was no fool. He must have known, then, what I was feeling for him. And I, silly creature, seeing him smile in return, had been certain that he felt the same way.
• • •
But that had all been a long time ago, I reminded myself, shaking the memory off. I was no longer a dreamy, ignorant little girl. I could handle the likes of Simon Shaw. Pushing off the curb, I strode across the street, under the green canopy, and into the Isle of Plenty.
I stood inside the door for a moment as my eyes adjusted to the dim light. Through the warm haze of tobacco smoke I saw with relief that the saloon was indeed of the respectable sort, with rows of glassware stacked neatly on handsome wood shelving, and wall decorations limited to a simple gilt mirror, some boxing magazine covers, and an assortment of news clippings on the rear wall. A piano in the corner tinkled out “The Mansion of Aching Hearts,” just loud enough to be heard over the chatter of patrons two-deep at the bar, while a few families enjoyed an early supper of chowder and biscuits at the tables by the windows.
The bartender glanced up at my entrance with a welcoming smile. I started toward him, edging through two burly men at the counter. “I’m looking for Mr. Simon Shaw,” I told him. “I was told I might find him here.”
“He’s in the back,” he said, jerking his thumb toward a door in the wall behind the piano.
I made my way across the room to the door he had indicated. I straightened my coat collar, adjusted my hat, and raised my hand to knock—then paused as I heard the sound of laughter and male voices on the other side. It would be hard enough talking to Simon alone. I didn’t think I could manage it in front of an audience. I decided to wait for his visitors to leave.
While I waited, I scanned the newspaper clippings that covered the rear wall. Simon, I discovered, was in most of them. There was one with a sketch of “Alderman Simon Shaw” receiving a certificate of appreciation from the East Side Ladies’ Guild for prohibiting horse-cars from a residential side street, and another showing “District Captain Simon Shaw” presenting a check to a newsboy shelter. In the bottom row, there was even a piece about “friend of the arts, Simon Shaw” introducing William Butler Yeats at a YMCA poetry reading.
So saloon-keeping was just a side business, I concluded. Simon, it seemed, had become a politician. A Tammany district captain, to be precise. That would explain why he’d been in court that morning; as district captain, he’d be responsible for keeping potential voters and their families out of jail. Of course, Eliza, being a woman, couldn’t vote, but she did live in his district, and was part of a larger immigrant community whose support was vital to Tammany. Simon, as a member of that entrenched political machine, might be able to help her in ways that I couldn’t even imagine.
I jumped upright as the door suddenly flew open. A fresh burst of laughter rolled out on a cloud of smoke, followed by a barrel-chested man with an expensive-looking coat slung over his arm. The man stopped short, looking me up and down.
“Well now, if this isn’t the loveliest thing I’ve seen all day,” he exclaimed in a rolling Irish brogue. “Join me for a drink, dear lady, and I promise to take that frown off your pretty face.”
“I’m here to see Mr. Shaw,” I told him, keeping my frown firmly in place.
“I should have known,” he said with a sigh, managing to look both jolly and crestfallen at the same time. “Simon!” he shouted over his shoulder. “What do you mean by keeping this sweet young thing waiting?” He winked at me and stepped aside, gesturing me into the room.
I had little choice but to enter. Gripping the handles of my book bag, I stepped over the threshold into a windowless room that was hardly larger than a coat closet, thick with smoke and illuminated by a single overhead globe. Half a dozen men in shirtsleeves sat at a round table that took up most of the floor, nursing mugs of beer and smoldering cigars. Their conversation came to a halt as I walked in. From the way they were all staring, I gathered women didn’t come in the place very often.
Simon was at the opposite side of the table, facing me. He was coatless and collarless like the others an
d wore his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. He sat with his chair tipped back and one foot propped up on the table, holding a sweating mug on one thigh.
“Mr. Shaw,” I said, tipping my head.
He nodded back but made no move to get up.
“I’m sorry to intrude, but I have something rather urgent to discuss with you.”
Still, he said nothing but waited for me to go on.
“Perhaps you don’t remember me,” I said. “I’m Genevieve Summerford. You used to…”
“I know who you are.”
The other men stirred, glancing from me to Simon. One of them pushed back his chair and started to his feet.
“It’s all right, Joe. You can stay,” said Simon. “This shouldn’t take long.”
I felt a blush creeping up my cheeks. “I was hoping we might speak in private.”
“Whatever you’ve got to say, you can say in front of my friends here.”
I took a deep breath. “Very well. I’m here on behalf of a woman in your district who has been accused of a murder she didn’t commit.”
“The one in court this morning.”
“Why, yes,” I said in surprise. He had left before Eliza’s hearing, and I hadn’t expected him to be aware of her case. “I saw how you helped all those other people. I was hoping you could do something for her.”
His thumb tapped the rim of his beer glass. “They say she killed a doctor.”
“She didn’t do it.”
“They never do, do they?”
I hadn’t expected sarcasm. Whatever his other flaws, Simon had always been quick to defend an underdog. I remembered one time in particular when he’d stuffed a boy down a coal chute for dangling a helpless kitten from a sewer grate.
“I have good reason to believe she’s innocent,” I told him. “But the detective in charge—a man named Maloney—won’t even consider other suspects. He’s convinced he already has the case wrapped up.”
“Sounds like Maloney,” snickered one of the men, lifting his mug to his lips. A brass-buttoned blue coat was hanging from the back of his chair. He was a policeman, I realized, and if the shield pinned to his coat was any clue, a policeman of some rank. I glanced around the table at the other men, wondering who they were and why they were drinking beer in Simon’s private parlor.
“Why do you care what happens to her?” Simon asked me. “She’s not fancy enough to be a friend of yours. What’s it to you?”
The scorn in his voice made my cheeks burn even hotter. I told myself to let it pass, to focus on what I’d come for. But the anger and humiliation I’d thought I’d conquered long ago were bubbling up again inside me, and try as I might, I couldn’t stop the memories from bubbling up with them. Suddenly, I was sixteen again, cowering in the armchair in my bedroom, listening in stricken silence as my father revealed the bitter truth.
“It’s all through the servants’ quarters!” he had shouted. “He’s boasting that you let him fondle you! Couldn’t you see that he was taking advantage?”
I, innocent still, had refused to believe it, insisting that Simon loved me and would never demean me in such a way, to which my father, who had never before spoken a bigoted word in my presence, retorted that the boy was arrogant Irish trash, unfit to utter my name. I’d known he must be convinced of what he was saying to be so upset, but still, I couldn’t believe that it was true.
With Simon, I had felt…lovable. I couldn’t bear to think it had all been a deception. And yet, I had never doubted my father before. He’d told me I must never speak to Simon again, and I, frightened and confused, had finally agreed. He’d calmed down then, saying he held himself partly responsible for failing to educate me properly and that that could be fixed, provided I hadn’t “compromised” myself more seriously than he knew. It was a moment before his meaning sank in—but when it did, the shame was excruciating. Although I assured him quite truthfully that I hadn’t, by now the kisses and touches I’d shared with Simon seemed quite wicked enough in themselves. Father let out his breath then and said that everything would be all right, but of course, I knew it wouldn’t be. I had failed him, once again.
What came next was almost worse than my father’s anger. He left the room for a moment and returned with a little green book, handing it to me with instructions to pay particular attention to pages 72 and beyond, before he beat a hasty retreat. Over the next several hours, I received my first formal instruction on the subject of the sexual function—or more accurately, of its abuse—from Professor F. C. Fowler, certified doctor of physiognomy and anthropology. I read the book in my armchair with the door closed, growing smaller and smaller by the page, returning repeatedly to the most damning parts in hopes of finding some absolving exception—but there was none.
I could still remember whole passages by heart: “Animal love, as opposed to platonic love, is the kind of love we see in brute beasts and in man often descends even lower than among the cattle. It is a blind, unreasoning impulse that urges its possessor to its gratification, regardless of the consequences.” When the sexual function was made an instrument of passion and pleasure, the professor warned, “the penalty is sure to follow in all its revolting forms”—including leprosy, weakened bones, depletion of the vital forces, and a marked tendency toward criminal behavior.
While I had been guilty largely of ignorance, the young male mind, it seemed, was riddled with lecherous thoughts and images. Right-minded young men resisted these thoughts, Dr. Fowler explained, by reading about noble folk, or praying, or joining crusades; only the most debased would ever act upon them. “A pure-minded man or boy,” he asserted, “would no more defile the woman or girl he loves than he would his mother. As her natural protector, he allows himself toward her only the purest, most chivalrous of feelings.”
I recalled then the sharp intake of Simon’s breath when we kissed and the urgent pressure of his body against mine, and with sickening hindsight, I understood: if he had really loved me, he would not have debased me so. And he most certainly wouldn’t have boasted about it to others in the crudest and most impersonal terms. It was just as my father had said. I was the master’s daughter, the toy on the highest shelf, desirable precisely and only because I was unattainable. And I had let him kiss me, and press against me, and run his fingers over my breasts. It made me want to scrape myself with something sharp and inflexible.
I was sent off to Europe with my aunt Margaret on a three-month tour. The only way to ease my humiliation, I found, was to banish Simon from my mind and affections, and I did so with surgical precision. On the steamer to England, his hands grew hairy and grasping in my imagination, while his smile became a drooling leer. My interest in him, I came to see, had not stemmed from an understanding of his true character but was, in fact, a misdirected yearning for the “pure love” that Professor Fowler had so radiantly described. By the time we reached Liverpool, I was able to view what had happened as an unfortunate but educational experience, for which I need not hold myself too harshly to account.
There followed dozens of prearranged visits to acquaintances abroad, along with numerous receptions and dances where I saw how properly attentive a well-bred young man could be. By the time I sailed back past Lady Liberty into New York Harbor three months later, I could honestly say that Simon Shaw was no more than an unpleasant memory. When I discovered upon my return that his mother had left our employment for more gainful work elsewhere, taking Simon with her, my only feeling was one of relief.
Simon Shaw had no more power to affect me now than a fading old photograph—or so I had believed until today. And yet here I was, blushing in front of these strangers as Simon tried to prove once again, this time through his belittling, that he was as good as or better than I was. It was only the thought of what I had come for that held my temper in check. He was nothing to me, I reminded myself—but he could be critically important to Eliza. And so, when he asked
why I cared about what happened to her, I answered simply, “I’m a doctor now. She’s a patient of mine.”
“A doctor.” His eyebrow rose. “Your father must be proud.”
“Yes, I believe he is.”
He looked around the table. “What do you think, boys?”
“Wouldn’t hurt to ask a few questions,” said one tentatively.
“Sure,” another said with a shrug. “What harm could it do?”
Simon looked back at me, pursing his lips. “Give me one hard fact,” he said, “that says she didn’t kill him.”
“She isn’t constitutionally capable of murder.”
“I said fact. That’s your opinion.”
“It’s my professional opinion. I’m a psychotherapist, and she’s my patient.”
“It’s still just an opinion. You’ll have to do better than that.”
“There was someone else in the room with the doctor while Eliza was waiting to speak with him. She heard sounds of a struggle.”
“Did anyone else hear it?” he asked.
“Not that I know of, but isn’t that what the detective ought to be investigating?”
He shrugged. “Not if it’s obvious she’s lying. What else have you got?”
I mentally rummaged through the jumble of information I’d accumulated over the past few hours but found I was longer on theory than on hard fact. “Her fingerprints aren’t on the murder weapon,” I ventured.
“That doesn’t mean anything. She was wearing gloves.”
“How do you know that?” I asked in surprise.
“It’s in the police report.”
“But you’d already left the court when Officer Callahan testi—”
“It’s my job to know what’s going on in my district,” he said, cutting me off.
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