Hope's Daughter

by Joani Ascher

  Martin lunged for it, caught it, and held it close, reading the numbers. “This is only five grand. Do you think I’m some kind of chump?”

  “You’ll get the other fifteen after you sign with the courts.”

  “You’ve got a deal.” Martin extended his hand to shake Prescott’s, but there was no reciprocation.

  The stock broker stood with his back to Martin, looking out the window. “Get out of my office.”

  ****

  By Friday, Jane was desperate. She had not been able to come up with anything close to what Martin wanted, even after asking all her friends for a loan. As it was, Mrs. McGill was babysitting for free, and her lawyer was doing the case pro bono, out of respect for Mr. Dobbin. But when she arrived in court, the lawyer was smiling.

  “I don’t know how you did it, Jane,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Martin signed away all his parental rights five minutes ago. He said there were no strings attached.”

  “Are you saying he has completely given up any claim to Ellen?”

  “Yes.”

  Jane took a moment to process that information. She felt as if a huge burden had been lifted from her shoulders. “Why?”

  “Martin didn’t say. And I don’t think we should ask, at this point. We don’t want to look at this too closely, or it might become a problem.” He took Jane’s arm. “The judge wants to see us. Remember what I told you. You need not feel worried that he will think less of you because of Z.Z. Let’s go.”

  The meeting was longer than Jane expected, considering that Martin had signed the documents. But the judge wanted to be sure Jane would be a good person to raise Ellen.

  “I understand you work outside the home, Miss Baldwin, yet you have petitioned to be Ellen Roche’s mother.”

  Jane had prepared her answer. “Your honor, there are other women who must go out into the business world. Many did during the war, when their husbands were overseas. We could not have won the war without them. They were able to manage, and I will be able to as well.”

  “What arrangements have you made for her while you are at work?”

  “My neighbor, Mrs. McGill, who is like family, will take care of Ellen.”

  “And what would happen if you were to die?”

  “My dearest friend, Anne Lewis, will adopt her.”

  “What if you should marry?”

  Jane wanted to laugh at that ludicrous question, but she remembered Mr. Smith’s admonition to take every question seriously. “Ellen is my first consideration. Whatever happens in the future will be entirely dependent on her needs.”

  “I’d like the child brought in,” said the judge. The bailiff left to get Mrs. McGill and the baby from where they sat in the hallway.

  They came in, with Mrs. McGill looking very shy. When Ellen saw Jane, her face split with a smile and she reached out her arms for her. Jane took the baby and snuggled her close.

  The judge banged his gavel. “Good luck to both of you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Mr. Dobbin’s voice could be heard across the whole first floor of the factory. “I said, ‘Go home,’ Henderson. I don’t want you here. If you don’t leave now, you’re fired.”

  Sylvia and Frances, Jane’s assistants, stared wide-eyed in the direction of the noise. “What’s going on?” Frances asked. “I’ve never heard Mr. Dobbin talk that way.”

  That was certainly true. In the almost ten years since he opened the factory, Mr. Dobbin had never once raised his voice to an employee. Now he was shouting at a man whose wife was in the hospital, dying of cancer. Jane rose and went to find her friend.

  On the way, she found Henderson, a thin, graying, forty-year-old man, standing near the time clock with his hat in his hand and his lunch box by his side, hesitantly fingering his time card. “Am I fired, Miss Jane?”

  “Don’t do anything yet,” she said. “I’m going to speak to Mr. Dobbin. Just stay right here.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, when she found Mr. Dobbin with his head in his hands leaning on his desk. “You just told our foreman to leave or be fired.”

  He turned red-rimmed eyes to her. “I couldn’t let him stay here. His wife—his family needs him now. He should be with them, not here. We don’t need him as much as they do.”

  Mr. Dobbin’s voice was filled with grief, puzzling Jane. She pulled over a chair and sat next to him.

  “The hospital visiting hours don’t start until one o’clock,” she pointed out. “Surely he can stay until then?”

  “No. Henderson’s children will be home for lunch at noon. He should be there for them, and see them back to school on his way to the hospital. They have enough to deal with without coming home to an empty house every day at lunchtime.”

  “The eldest child is fourteen,” Jane said. “She’s capable of handling a few sandwiches.”

  Mr. Dobbin’s face became red. “But should she have to? Her mother is dying. Why must she be without her father too? Why should Caroline have to wash the baby’s face and hands and answer all of Harry’s questions?”

  Jane looked closely at Mr. Dobbin. “Henderson’s children’s names are not Caroline and Harry, and his youngest is eight. There is no baby.” She patted his hand. “You’re talking about your own children, and when their mother died, aren’t you?”

  He brushed a tear away and hung his head. “I wasn’t there for them. I had to work to put food on the table, or so I told myself. But couldn’t I have managed to be with them a little more? That was the hardest thing they ever had to do in their lives, and I let them do it alone.”

  “Henderson needs the money,” Jane said.

  “Cut him a check. We’ll pay him for the whole month, and if he needs more time, we’ll pay him for another. I want him with his family. If I have to do his job myself, I will.”

  Jane went out to tell Henderson what Mr. Dobbin had said, and the man nearly wept with gratitude. “Ask him if I can work in the morning, at least. He has a big order coming due, and I can’t just leave him to fill it alone.”

  “I’ll talk to him. But for now, you should go home. Give me your time card. I’ll see that everything is taken care of. Come in tomorrow morning, and we’ll talk about the details.”

  “Thank you, Miss Jane. And thank him for me.” He put his hat on his head and went out.

  Jane went back into Mr. Dobbin’s office. He still sat at his desk, staring into space. “That’s taken care of,” she said. “But I think you have something else you must do.”

  He turned his watery blue eyes to her. “What?”

  She picked up the phone receiver and held it out to him. “You have to make a few phone calls.” She took a deep breath. “To Caroline, Harry, and Peter.”

  Mr. Dobbin nodded, and Jane left him to it.

  She was still thinking about the look of relief and reconciliation on his face after his round of phone calls while she was on her way to see Anne. Unfortunately, Anne’s world had recently collapsed.

  “They treat me as if I’m a fragile piece of crystal, without a brain in my head,” Anne complained over a cup of tea in her Park Avenue apartment. Her clear gray eyes, still shrouded by grief, held a determination Jane had never expected when she first met the woman so many years before. With Hugh Canfield, she had played the socialite, carefree and occasionally nasty, although Jane had found out she was only covering up her pain. But with Schuyler, she had been herself, loving, caring, and a wonderful wife and mother. Irene had blossomed with her mother’s love, and Schuyler had achieved many of his goals, not only financially but also philanthropically and philosophically. But now a sudden heart attack had ended his life, leaving Anne a widow only five years after her marriage.

  Anne was not only alone, she was the head of a corporation, unusual for a woman in 1952. Schuyler’s will had been specific on that point, and no one dared question it. Jane’s heart was breaking for her friend.

  “As if you didn’t know to the penny wh
at you’re worth,” Jane said. “Why don’t you go to another firm?”

  “I’ve talked to several. These men seem to believe I can think of nothing but jewelry and furs.”

  “What about Prescott?” Jane hated to bring it up, but she knew he wouldn’t treat Anne that way. “Couldn’t he handle your investments for you?”

  “No. I assume Hugh got custody of him in the divorce. I’m sure he’d be willing, but I know Hugh would hate that and take it out on Pres. I couldn’t do that to him.”

  “But he was at the funeral,” Jane pointed out. She had gone breathless at the sight of him. He had changed. There were frown lines around his mouth and between his eyebrows which had never been there when she worked for him. But he was just as handsome as when he’d returned from the war.

  “He came as a friend,” said Anne, “and he is a good one. But I use another firm entirely. That is, Schuyler did, and they were competent. It’s just that I don’t feel all that comfortable with them. They seem to think the whole concept of investment is over my head.” She put down her tea cup when Irene called out to her from the bedroom.

  Jane went with Anne to visit Irene in her frilly pink bedroom. Anne and Irene had picked everything out together when they moved to the new apartment after the wedding, and if the wallpaper was a bit childish for someone of Irene’s age, it was exactly what she wanted.

  But she looked so sad now, lying on her bed with her cheeks swollen.

  “Does it hurt again?” Anne asked.

  Irene nodded.

  “Okay, sweetheart. I’ll get you some more aspirin. Aunt Jane will stay with you while I’m gone.”

  Jane sat on the bed next to the girl. “I told Ellen you’ve been to the dentist,” she said, knowing that this latest round of dental care had been extensive. Irene had terrible trouble with her teeth, a not uncommon situation among children with her affliction. “She hopes you feel better soon.”

  Anne returned with a small bowl of applesauce. “Here you are.” She spooned some up for Irene, and Jane saw the chopped-up aspirin in it. “The pain will go away in a little while. Try to get some sleep.” She turned off the light and shut the door on the way out with Jane. “I wish this was all over for her, but since her medical problems never seem to end, some other problem will crop up once this is done.”

  “Sooner or later everything will be fixed,” Jane said, hoping it would be true.

  Anne looked very worried. “She’s just not bouncing back the way she used to.” She listened at the door, and motioned Jane to follow her.

  “How is the bomb shelter coming along?” Anne asked, when they were back in the living room.

  “Mrs. McGill is very busy filling it up now.” Jane was not sure the room in the basement would actually protect anyone from atomic fallout, but people all across the country were building their own shelters, and Mrs. McGill had been using any spare time she could find to gather a Geiger counter, containers of water, first aid kits, and canned goods.

  “She would do better to invest in the stock market,” Anne said. “Then she could get a return on her investment.”

  “You don’t believe in bomb shelters?”

  “Not really. I know it’s all the rage to worry, but there always seem to be more immediate problems around me.”

  The pain from Schuyler’s death and Irene’s ill health was etched clearly on Anne’s face. Jane tried to divert her. “Maybe you should try to find a woman broker. Someone who would give credit for your intelligence where it is due.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Anne said, a small smile creeping onto her lips. “I know of someone who is not even in the field yet but who gives advice to many people, both her friends and several people where she works, and they do quite well. I was thinking of someone like her.”

  Jane shook her head. “I’m not licensed.”

  “Then I want you to get licensed.”

  “I can’t just go out and get a license. I would need an affiliation with someone who has a seat, and I can’t possibly afford it.”

  Anne scowled. “I didn’t realize… Well, you’ll just have to find a way. Maybe Pres—”

  “No.”

  “Why? Because he broke your heart?”

  “He did not. We were never in love.”

  “But you might have been, if things had turned out differently.”

  It was uncanny how Anne had always seen that possibility. But Jane had lost any chance she might once have had with Prescott. She still remembered the look on his face when she would not hug him goodbye when he left for the war, and the feel of his lean, muscular body when he returned. But the look of betrayal on his face when he found out about Z.Z. still appeared in her mind like a nightmare, one of her own making. “It was my fault. I wasn’t honest with him. If I had been, things might have been different.” If only, Jane thought for about the millionth time.

  “Yes, you and he could be old marrieds by now, with several children. As it is, neither of you has any.”

  Bristling at that, Jane put her empty tea cup and saucer down on the coffee table. “Ellen is my child. She couldn’t be closer to my heart if I had borne her myself.” She glanced over at the picture on Anne’s piano, of herself and Ellen, smiling at Ellen’s sixth birthday party only a month before.

  Although it did not show in the picture, there had been ten of Ellen’s playmates at the party, even with all the polio scares. Naturally they had held it outside, to minimize any danger, and the plans for a wading pool had been scrapped. They had set up a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game, which had the children both bewildered and delighted. The pool would have been, as Mrs. McGill said, “just asking for trouble.” Every morning, she told Ellen not to get too tired, stay away from puddles, and inform her immediately if she had a headache. Ellen was not too clear on the concept of a headache, but she always assured Mrs. McGill she would tell her when she got one.

  Anne nodded. “That’s true, and I’m sorry. But you have to admit, Pres has no children. And from the looks of things every time I see them, no love for his wife.”

  For once, Jane did not change the subject immediately. Even though talking about him hurt, she felt the need to satisfy her curiosity, just this time. Hearing anything about him brought her a tiny bit closer, somehow. “So tell me,” she said, leaning back into the sofa cushions, “why does he stay with her?”

  “Because he is nearly as stubborn as you. Pride is a terrible thing in a person, when it keeps him from happiness, and pride is what makes him keep his promise to be married to that witch. But at least he respects it in others.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He understands your pride. That’s why he never told anyone he was the one who paid Martin off. But his business partner blurted it out the other day, after I said something unkind about Prescott’s treatment of you.”

  Jane was on her feet. “What are you saying?”

  Anne sucked in her breath. “I think I said too much.”

  “You can’t stop now. Did you just tell me Prescott Weaver paid Martin to agree to drop his parental rights?”

  “Yes.”

  Feeling as if the floor had just dropped out from underneath her, Jane sat back down. For years now she had wondered what made Martin come to his senses and realize that Ellen belonged with Jane, and the truth was he had been paid off to agree to give up his child. And it was all done behind Jane’s back, by a man who had— She could not believe it.

  “You’ve known this for a few days?”

  “Yes. I should have told you immediately. But I promised I wouldn’t.”

  Jane tried to digest the information, but it made little sense. “What right did Prescott have to do that?”

  “If he hadn’t, you could have lost Ellen.”

  “Never! I would have found a way.”

  “Oh, really? You, who refused to take gifts, who only wanted to borrow what she could hope to someday repay? Wasn’t your happiness and Ellen’s worth more than that
? Or was your pride worth the most?” Anne stopped for a moment as tears filled her eyes. “Life is too short. You shouldn’t waste it standing on principles. I thank God I never wasted a minute, not a precious second, with Schuyler.”

  “That’s different,” Jane said. The look in Anne’s eyes told her that conceding the point would be charitable. “But I’ll take it under advisement.” She had more than enough to think about. How could she repay Prescott Weaver? How could she face him? And how much had he paid Martin?

  Her head whirled, but she would not let on to her friend how upset she was.

  Anne scowled. “I can see you’re still unwilling to discuss this.”

  “What would be the point?” It wasn’t as if there was any hope for a future.

  “Fine,” said Anne. “Have it your way. Will you try to find a way to get affiliated with the stock exchange? Both the Big Board and the Curb would be useful.”

  Jane was impressed by Anne’s knowledge of the distinction. Stalling for time, she said, “I heard they are changing the name of the Curb to The American Stock Exchange.”

  “Oh? That sounds better, somehow, for a woman. ‘The Curb’ makes one think of the gutter.” She paused for a moment but went right back to her quest. “So, can you do it?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks,” said Anne. “Oh, and please don’t tell Prescott what I told you.”

  “I’m not likely to be talking to him anytime soon.”

  ****

  Ellen smiled when Jane came home. “Let me show you the picture I made, Mommy.” She put a piece of paper on the table.

  Two stick figures were drawn on it, one tall and one short, with triangle skirts. The small one had black straight hair, and the tall one had yellow curly hair. Another figure, lying down, floated over their heads. “That’s my first mommy,” Ellen explained, pointing to the floating person. “And here we are. You,” she pointed to the tall figure, “and me. Isn’t it good?”

  “It’s wonderful. Where should we hang it?”

  “Grandma said we should put it in a place of honor. What’s honor?”