A Kiss From Mr Fitzgerald

by Natasha Lester

  ‘And if you’re truly sorry, you will not go to the interview,’ her father added.

  Evie picked up her purse and tried to keep her voice steady. ‘I am going. I’m sorry I had to lie. But I’m not sorry I did it.’

  ‘I think you should leave me to talk to Evelyn,’ Mr Lockhart said to his wife and Viola, who left the room, Mrs Lockhart clutching Viola’s hand in shock and Viola looking as if life was now just about perfect.

  Mr Lockhart didn’t begin to talk straight away. He let the silence fill the room, fill Evie’s mind with fear and worry. This was the moment when she would discover whether her father’s love for her stretched only so far as social convention, or whether it was big enough to fill the wide open space that existed beyond propriety.

  Finally he spoke. ‘Let’s imagine for a moment that you do go to medical school, as preposterous as that is. What do you intend to do after that? Become an intern?’ He laughed. ‘It’s not even possible.’

  ‘Yes it is,’ said Evie, feeling a little more courageous as she said it. ‘New York Presbyterian has just appointed its first female surgical intern, Virginia Kneeland Frantz. She graduated second in her class this year from the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons.’

  Then her father began to shout and Evie flinched. He reminded her of Charles, wanting to bend her to his will. ‘So there is one other deranged woman in the whole of Manhattan. One! Do you have any idea what it will be like to be the freakish oddity everyone laughs at and nobody speaks to? You threw away your chance with Charles Whitman. I can’t see any other fellows lining up to ask you to marry them. You’ve been wasting your time on a foolish idea that will make you unmarriageable to any decent man. You’ll look back on all this ridiculousness in a few years’ time and be glad we stopped you.’

  That her own father would call her a freakish oddity galvanised Evie to fight. ‘You were a doctor,’ she shouted back. ‘Surely you’re pleased that I want to do something useful?’

  ‘You have no idea what being a doctor is like.’

  ‘Yes I do,’ said Evie firmly, although she knew it was a lie. ‘You may have found it too difficult to stick at. I won’t.’

  Mr Lockhart stared at her and Evie wished he would shout at her again. Anything other than look at her as if she was someone he’d encountered for the first time and didn’t particularly like. She shouldn’t have said what she had. It was mean-spirited. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. You cannot be a gentleman and a doctor. And you certainly can’t be a lady and a doctor.’

  There was something about the way he spoke, a wistfulness that Evie would never have expected from her father, that made her say, ‘Did you want to be a gentleman rather than a doctor? Or is that what Mother wanted?’

  ‘Your mother wanted what was best.’

  ‘But for whom?’

  Her question hung in the air, unanswered. What had her father given up for her, for her mother, for Viola? A busy life, a useful one. A life where he mattered. He’d exchanged it all for a bigger house, a position in the foothills of good society and a life of extreme boredom. No wonder he’d spent so little time with her and Viola when they were children. What did he see when he looked at them? A life forsaken? No wonder he spent so much time sequestered in his study reading, or going to Harvard to meet with his old cronies from his university days. It was to rediscover for a short time the person he might have been.

  Evie stepped over to her father and touched his shoulder. He looked at her, and although she tried to hide the pity in her eyes, he must have caught its barest flicker because his voice when he spoke was cold and the moment for truth was lost. ‘You have some romantic idea of helping people,’ he said. ‘You can help your mother organise the Concord Hospital fete. That’s what ladies do.’

  ‘I don’t want to spend the rest of my life idling by a fire-place, drinking cups of tea and commanding a housekeeper. Surely you understand that?’ she pleaded, willing him to admit that he didn’t want her to suffer the same life of tedium that had so wearied him.

  ‘Many people would be extremely pleased to live a life of such ease.’

  ‘Then let them have it.’

  Her father landed the final blow. ‘If you are accepted, which I doubt, we will not pay the college fees. If you won’t rescue yourself from a future of shame and ridicule, then I will have to save you.’

  To save her. Just as Evie had once tried to save her half-dead pet mouse from the jaws of a cat, a mouse who thereafter walked with a limp and sported a chain of toothmarks around its neck. She marched out of the room, ran down the stairs and hailed a cab.

  Climbing in, she gave the driver the address and asked him to hurry. She needed to be at the college in fifteen minutes and she had to compose herself. She had to pretend that the sudden insight into her father and his refusal to allow her the freedom he himself coveted didn’t upset her. She had to imagine that the dean would be unlike most other people and would not think her deranged and a freakish oddity for wanting to study medicine.

  Most of all, she needed to remember Rose dying. To remember, as much as she wished to forget it, Charles and what he had almost done to her last night. That was her reason for wanting to be an obstetrician. The difficulties involved would just have to be surmounted.

  She looked at her watch. A horse and cart laden with blocks of ice was clip-clopping along in front of them as if this was Central Park and not a busy street. ‘Can you go around him?’ she asked the driver.

  ‘Not unless you want to get yourself killed,’ the driver replied.

  Finally they reached Tenth Avenue, and Evie paid the driver and jumped out of the cab. She ran to the college, losing her hat, and arrived bright red in the face. Perhaps the interviews might be running late and she’d have time to compose herself. But of course she was ushered straight in, hatless and panting, and asked to sit down.

  ‘Miss Lockhart,’ the dean said. ‘You’re applying to medical school with a literature degree.’ Every word was suffused with sarcasm.

  ‘No,’ puffed Evie. She took a deep breath and tried to settle herself. ‘I’ve just completed summer school, here at the college. I meet all the requirements for pre-med.’ She ran out of air and had to stop.

  ‘Literature is very different to medicine,’ the dean replied.

  As if she didn’t realise that. The dean was so in control, serene even; he barely moved his lips when he spoke, only his tone belied his rudeness. Evie felt even more flustered and breathless. ‘I understand that.’

  ‘Medicine is highly competitive. Our applicants are men with the highest grades from the most reputable colleges.’

  ‘And my grades are also of the highest standard and are from a reputable college. First Radcliffe, whose alumni include such notable women as Gertrude Stein.’ Gertrude Stein? Why of all the names would she pick that one? The dean hardly looked the type to favour experimental writing. Evie blundered on. ‘And your own college –’

  ‘Where you’ve attended summer school only.’

  ‘When I began at Radcliffe, medical colleges weren’t open to women,’ she said. ‘Most of them still aren’t. So there was little point in taking a pre-medical degree. I’ve tried to rectify the gaps in my education with summer school, and you can see how well I’ve done.’

  ‘It’s difficult to see how a literature degree makes you a good candidate for admission into medical college.’

  Suddenly exasperated, Evie said, ‘A literature degree doesn’t make me a good candidate for medical college. But a desire to learn does. I wish more than anything to become an obstetrician. And when I want something, I work my hardest to get it. The men in your course have probably never had to consider the impossibility of getting something they want. But I have. And it makes me even more resolute. I’m a good candidate for admission because you need female doctors in this city and I’m set on becoming one.’

  The dean closed the file in front of him. He hadn’t b
othered to write anything in it. ‘Thank you for your time, Miss Lockhart. Your aspirations may be higher than your abilities.’ He stood, indicating the end of the interview.

  It was over. Evie was shocked, finally, into silence.

  The dean’s parting words about her aspirations and her abilities shadowed her as she walked away. She returned to Columbus Circle in a daze, unable to believe what had happened. She’d failed utterly. The statue of Columbus no longer inspired her as it had on her first morning at the college. Evie wanted nothing more than to give Christopher a push off his perch so he could see what it was like down there on the more democratic space of the ground.

  She didn’t want to go back to the Whitmans’, where she’d have to tell her parents that the interview had gone badly. She’d buy some chocolates and go to the Foundling, she decided. A place where she could focus instead on the baby, who had far more troubles than Evie did.

  Mary, the baby had been called at last, now that it seemed it would survive. ‘Mary,’ Evie murmured when she picked up the baby, wondering how many other children had had to suffer from Sister Mary’s lack of imagination. She walked around the big room until Mary fell peacefully asleep in her arms. As she rocked the baby, she noticed Sister Margaret watching and she smiled to encourage her to approach.

  ‘I have some chocolates for you,’ Evie whispered. ‘In my purse on the chair over there. Make sure Sister Mary doesn’t see them or she might eat them all herself!’

  Sister Margaret giggled, her face transformed from a map of woe to a picture of delight. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘How has Mary been?’ Evie asked as Sister Margaret found the chocolates and slipped them into the pocket of her habit.

  ‘Much the same. Crying a lot. But a gentleman came to see Sister Mary about her yesterday.’

  Evie stopped rocking the baby as she took this in. ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘He left some money to help care for her.’

  Mary stirred and Evie jiggled her arms, puzzling over the mysterious gentleman. Why provide money for the child but leave her in an orphanage? Unless the nurse in Concord had been right: someone had done something they shouldn’t and they wanted the evidence out of the way.

  ‘Can you tell me if he comes again?’ Evie asked. ‘And perhaps try to get his name.’

  Sister Margaret nodded eagerly, clearly pleased to have been asked to help, and Evie’s heart ached for her. That chocolate and a request for assistance could make such a difference to someone’s life.

  She kissed Mary and placed her back in the cot, then thanked Sister Margaret for her help. Setting her shoulders, she returned to the Whitmans’, where she knew her family would be sitting in a row in the drawing room like a line of hungry gannets waiting to peck her to pieces. She slipped in the door, hoping to get to her room before anyone noticed her, wanting to lie down on her bed to think. But the butler saw her and gave her a telephone message. Evie recognised the number straight away. She was sure Mr Whitman was at the bank, so she let herself into his study and dialled the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons.

  The dean was quick to advise that her application had been unsuccessful. He hadn’t even waited to write her a letter, she realised; they wanted to be rid of her as soon as they could.

  Evie didn’t respond; she simply hung up the telephone. What was there to say? She was devastated, so stricken it was impossible to think. She had nothing. No dignity; Charles had stolen that last night. No family, because how could she continue to see Viola once she was married to Charles? No husband, because she’d stupidly thought she could have a better life than that. No man she really cared for, because the one she admired had moved to London. And no home, because how could she ever go back to a life of Concord tea parties now that she’d lived in New York? But the college had refused to admit her. She’d lost everything. No matter how hard she’d worked, it wasn’t enough. What she wanted was beyond the bounds of possibility. The absoluteness of this made her gasp aloud, too loud; somebody would surely hear and discover her when she most wanted to be alone.

  And somebody did. ‘Evie, what is it?’ Mrs Whitman’s voice came from the doorway.

  ‘My ambitions overreach my abilities. I haven’t been accepted into medical school.’

  ‘Well, that’s wrong, plain and simple.’

  Evie stood up and walked over to the fireplace. She reached out a hand to touch the big heads of white hydrangea that sat like fallen clouds in two matching porcelain vases on the mantel. She clenched her fists and rubbed them against her eyes, which were dry but tired and blurred, as if they were not seeing the world as it really was.

  ‘I might be able to help,’ Mrs Whitman said.

  Help, thought Evie. She was always needing help. She seemed unable to do anything on her own. She was the very opposite of independent. A fungus, requiring a host to survive.

  ‘Mr Whitman and I are benefactors of the college,’ Mrs Whitman continued. ‘Our donations allow the college to provide services for the poor. I’m sure that if I was to express an interest in you, they could revise their decision.’

  ‘I wanted to be accepted based on what I know.’

  ‘My dear, once you have a start, you can show them what you’re made of. But you won’t be able to do anything without a start. The men who’ve applied have all used their connections to get ahead. Men are so much better at that than women, who are always too afraid to ask. It’s not the time to be polite. It’s time to put up a fight.’

  Mrs Whitman reached out and took Evie’s hand in her own; it was such a motherly gesture that Evie couldn’t help but feel a cut to her heart. She knew her mother would never say such a thing. And Mrs Whitman seemed to know Evie better than her mother did; she couldn’t have used better words to rouse her. A fight was exactly what Evie felt like.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Evie. ‘For everything. It’s more than I deserve.’

  ‘It’s exactly what you deserve.’

  Evie left the study and simply told her parents that she hadn’t succeeded. That they wouldn’t have to worry anymore. She didn’t wait to listen to their satisfaction at the news. She went to bed, but she didn’t sleep. She listened until she was certain everyone had retired for the night, then she crept downstairs, uncertain who would answer the telephone at this time of night but hoping someone would still be awake.

  ‘Yes?’ came a voice from the other end of the line.

  ‘Could I speak to Lil, please?’ Evie asked.

  Evie waited forever, then heard Lil’s wide-awake voice say, ‘Hello?’

  ‘Lil! It’s Evie. Is the attic room still vacant?’

  ‘Sure is.’

  ‘Would you share it with me? I can’t stay with the Whitmans any more. And even if I don’t get into medical school, I can’t go back to Concord.’

  ‘I’ll talk to Mrs Lomsky in the morning. When are you coming?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  Chapter Ten

  Evie packed one suitcase with the new dresses and shoes she’d bought, plus a couple of old frocks that would be fine for life as an impoverished student, if she was lucky enough to be one; half a dozen books; her new rouge, powder and lipstick; and a clean hanky, because some habits were hard to lose. She’d delivered a knockout punch to her conscience by stealing into her parents’ room while they were at dinner and opening the bottom drawer of the desk where it was her father’s practice to keep a little emergency money. Thankfully he’d kept up the custom here at the Whitmans’ and so Evie made a small donation to her own forthcoming emergency – just enough, she hoped, to get her through two weeks in Manhattan without a job.

  She wrote a letter to Mrs Whitman, thanking her and telling her where she was going. She also wrote a letter to her parents, but didn’t include her forwarding address.

  Then she picked up her suitcase and tiptoed out onto Fifth Avenue, ready to walk almost seventy blocks downtown with her suitcase in hand in the middle of the night. At first her progress was slow, but further
down Fifth Avenue, the buildings changed from stiff and formal Beaux Arts carved limestone to stores selling fur coats and furnishings, ornate bronze traffic towers, the triangulated glory of the Flatiron Building, and Ladies Mile, where six caryatids the same size as Evie looked down on her from above the awning of a store, as if they were giving her their blessing. She smiled at them and began to walk faster, counting off the blocks, her excitement rising with every step she took closer to Minetta Street.

  Lil was watching from the window and came downstairs to let her in. ‘Shhh,’ she whispered. ‘Mrs Lomsky’ll make us scrub the floors if she finds I’ve had a guest in my room. Luckily she sleeps through everything, from fires to gentleman visitors, so we should be safe.’

  They hustled up the stairs and into Lil’s room, where Evie leaned on the back of the door and began to giggle. ‘That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever done in my life! I’ve just walked from one end of Manhattan to the other in the dark of night carrying everything I own.’

  Lil laughed too. ‘It’ll be the first of many crazy things you do if you live with me.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  Evie spent the next day hiding in Lil’s room while Lil was at work. Hiding meant that she wasn’t allowed out, but a steady stream of girls came in to introduce themselves. They offered to lend her everything from hair rollers to ‘rubber goods’, a euphemism Evie had some trouble deciphering until a packet of the articles was produced and Antonia from the ground floor, who was the most theatrical person Evie had ever met and whose hands spoke as eloquently as her mouth, used a curling iron to conduct a demonstration of the correct way for a man to put one on. Having only recently experienced her first kiss, Evie couldn’t imagine ever being in a situation where rubber goods would be required, and she knew her mouth and eyes were wide open during the entire procedure; in the end, though, she was laughing so hard at the ludicrous sight of a curling iron covered in sagging rubber that she had to be shushed lest she bring Mrs Lomsky to the door.