Hope's Daughter

by Joani Ascher

  Mr. Dobbin smiled. “No, honey, I haven’t.”

  “Then why are you pushing this?”

  “I know I can’t replace your father,” he said, “but I must act just as responsibly. This is hurting me more than it will you. It’s for the best.”

  Jane turned to leave, knowing he was right. It was a risk, but one she had to take, now or never.

  “Jane,” he said, stopping her in her tracks. “There is something I want you to do as your first official deal.”

  Something about the way he said it put Jane back on her guard. “What is it?”

  “I want you to arrange for me to buy back the outstanding stock in this company.”

  “You already have a controlling share. Why do you want to stretch your resources and buy it all?”

  His sheepish smile told her as much as his words. “I never really wanted it to be publicly held. The company is financially able to stand on its own, with a nice cushion for further expansion. I don’t like having to answer to the shareholders.”

  Jane had only heard the first part of his statement. “You went through all of that just so I could take it public?”

  “Yes and no. It was necessary for our expansion to raise capital. I just picked the way that would give you the most pleasure.”

  Jane’s tears were ready to fall. “You’ve given me so much—too much.”

  Mr. Dobbin shook his head. “No more than you’ve given me, tenfold.”

  ****

  Anne put down the dividend statement Jane had given her. “I knew I made the right choice,” she said. “You’ve done very well with my investments. And from what I hear, you’re doing well for a lot of people.”

  Jane nodded, modestly keeping quiet.

  “I remember Hugh saying it was too bad you weren’t a man.”

  “It might have been easier,” Jane said.

  “Maybe. A man wouldn’t have needed to hold down a full-time job while starting a second one. And that’s all on top of being both mother and father to Ellen.”

  With a shrug, Jane looked for a way to change the subject. She did not want to think of Ellen’s father.

  “I can’t believe she’s almost eight already,” Anne said. “She’ll be in high school before you know it.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “So what are your plans for her birthday?”

  “We’ll have the same five or six children,” said Jane. “And this year, we’ll have a three-foot-deep pool where the victory garden used to be. I’ve arranged to have a swim party.”

  “But what about the polio?”

  “Everyone has been vaccinated,” Jane reminded her. “We don’t have to worry about it anymore. But there is a problem.”

  “What?”

  “I got a letter. From Martin.”

  Anne’s mouth dropped open. “What did he say?”

  “That he wants to see Ellen.”

  “No! He gave up all his rights to her.”

  Nodding, Jane said, “I told him that.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “I called to tell him he can’t see her. And he told me that if I refused, he would tell her I had my boyfriend buy her for me.”

  “That’s a lie!”

  Jane sighed. “Of course it’s a lie. I told you no good would come of it.”

  “Does he want her back? Why aren’t you panicking?”

  “No. He doesn’t want her back. It seems he will be passing through New York, and he just wants to see her. I told him he could come by one morning as she is leaving for school.”

  “Who will you say he is?”

  “I won’t say. I don’t even think she’ll notice him passing on the street.”

  “Did he say where he’s been?”

  “No. And I didn’t ask. I really don’t care. He hasn’t once sent her a note or anything. Or even asked me about her. Maybe he’s just curious.”

  “School doesn’t start for weeks,” said Anne.

  “Right.” She let down the strong front she had been struggling to maintain and wrung her hands together. “I hope he changes his mind.”

  ****

  But he did not. Martin showed up on the first morning of school. Jane stayed home to take Ellen herself, something she did every year on the first day of school, and as they walked out the front door, she spotted him.

  He had changed. All the swagger seemed to be gone, and he looked pale. His clothes were worn, seedy. It seemed he had not had a new suit since the ones Olivia bought him.

  He did not live up to the agreement. “Hello, Ellen,” he said, as they passed him.

  Her dark brown hair, in long braids on either side of her head, hung down the sides of her puffy dress sleeves as she looked up. Puzzled but still polite, she responded, “Hello.” Then she looked at Jane, for explanation.

  Jane opened her mouth, but no words came out. Her hands balled into ineffective fists. Who would she say this was?

  “I’m a friend of your father,” said Martin.

  Ellen cocked her head. “You look like a picture I have of him, but different.”

  Biting her lip, Jane waited.

  Martin smiled. “You are a smart little girl.”

  “We have to go,” said Jane. “Ellen, you don’t want to be late for school.”

  “But I want to talk to—to my father’s friend. Please, Mommy.”

  Shooting him a hateful stare, Jane repeated, “We have to go to school, Ellen. You don’t want to be late.”

  Ellen held back. Jane had little choice but to relent. “He can come by after dinner. You can talk to him then.”

  ****

  Jane fretted all day about Martin. She called her lawyer, who said he had no legal claim to Ellen. But that did not stop Jane from worrying. And by seven o’clock, when Martin came to their apartment, she was so tense her teeth hurt. In anticipation of his visit, Ellen had gone through a box in the back of her closet, in the room that used to be Olivia’s, and found the picture Jane had saved from the pawnbroker, of Olivia and Martin at their wedding. Ellen was beaming with pride when she showed it to him.

  She looked at it and then him. Cocking her head, she said, “Why did you go away, Father?”

  “I couldn’t take care of you.”

  You wanted the money more, Jane thought.

  “Mommy could, so she took me?”

  Martin looked puzzled. “Mommy died.”

  “No, that was my first mommy. My second mommy is her sister. She became my mommy.”

  Martin raised his eyebrows. “Is that how she explained it? What did she say about me?”

  Ellen furrowed her brows. “What did you tell me, Mommy?”

  Jane had never really told Ellen anything. The child had not asked. She had always thought that one day, when Ellen was much older, she would explain about how some people should not be parents. But that time had not come yet. How could she tell this eight-year-old that her father had not loved her enough to do whatever it took to take care of her? Or that if he could not, he could at least have found a way to stay in her life?

  “I think you should hear it from his own lips,” Jane said, unable to even say “your father” in front of Ellen.

  Martin narrowed his eyes, the way he used to when he had to explain to Olivia why he had not found a job, or did not have his paycheck, or did not show up until four in the morning. Jane knew a lie was coming, but she was helpless to prevent it.

  “I had to go away. I missed you terribly, but it couldn’t be avoided.”

  Ellen stared at him for a long moment but remained silent. Jane wished she could know what the child was thinking.

  Furrowing her brows, Ellen said, “Will you be leaving again?”

  “No. Well, maybe, but I’ll come and see you again. If that’s all right with your mother.”

  He looked at Jane, as if challenging her to say, in front of Ellen, that he could not see her.

  What could she say? Did she want the responsibility of sending Ellen’s father
away?

  “Let us know when you’ll be in town again,” Jane said, moving toward the door. Martin stood up himself, patted Ellen on the head, and said good night. He even gave Jane a peck on the cheek. She fought the urge to wipe it away, mindful she was in front of the child.

  After he left, Ellen made no move to get into her pajamas, even though it was past her bedtime. Jane did not know what to say to her. She felt an explanation was in order, but the truth would contradict Martin, and this was not the time.

  “Why didn’t he ever send me a letter, Mommy?”

  Jane shook her head. The child truly was bright.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you tell him he couldn’t?”

  “No.”

  Ellen bit her lip. But she didn’t say anything, and she went to her room.

  Jane was left to wonder where this would all lead.

  ****

  Two months later, after an especially good run on the market, Jane was in a position to establish her own independent firm. She swore she would never again take a risk with her money, and taking a risk with someone else’s was naturally out of the question. She depended on word of mouth, when she opened her office, and it took quite some time to build a client base.

  One of her first clients was Frances, her assistant at Mr. Dobbin’s company. The forty-five-year-old woman, who had never married, came into the little office Jane had rented, clutching her bank book.

  “I’ve never done this before,” she said nervously. “My father always told me it was a big mistake.”

  Jane knew that Frances had cared for her elderly parents for years, giving up her own opportunities to marry. Now that they were gone, she was alone in the world.

  “But I decided I would take the chance, as long as it was with you,” she added.

  “We’ll be very conservative,” Jane told her. “I wouldn’t do anything that will risk your savings.”

  “You have to do something, though,” Frances said. “With what I have saved, I won’t have to worry, but I’ll never get to take a cruise or see Paris, either. I want to be able to do that someday.”

  She and Jane discussed various types of stocks for an hour, and when Frances left she promised to tell her friends about Jane’s new business. Within a few weeks, five of them came in, and in turn, they sent more people.

  As promised, Jane was very conservative with her clients, most of whom were housewives investing the tiny amounts of money they had managed to save from their husbands’ household expense allotments. Her conservatism was a good choice, because right after that the stock market, which had been booming for years, developed a nine-month case of jitters. Jane nervously scanned the ticker tape hourly, fretting whenever a stock she had recommended dropped a fraction of a point, but her clients were confident enough to follow her recommendation not to sell hastily. And when it was over, her business was on a steady upward course.

  She had repaid all her debts, and her investment of the one hundred dollars the teachers’ pension fund had sent when Olivia died had grown substantially. Although it was in her name, since Olivia had forgotten to change the beneficiary’s name to Martin’s, it was entirely earmarked for Ellen’s college fund. Since she did not do high-risk investments, or urge her clients to buy and sell frequently, she did not earn as much as her counterparts with Wall Street addresses. Yet her penny pinching enabled her to accumulate a bit of a nest egg.

  But with all she had, she felt something was unfinished, someone not repaid, and it troubled her for weeks.

  At the same time, life moved along smoothly. Mrs. McGill took excellent care of Ellen, filling in for Jane whenever necessary. Jane paid her a handsome salary, even though she tried to refuse it.

  “I love taking care of Ellen,” she would say. “It’s like having a grandchild of my own.”

  Jane knew it was one of Mrs. McGill’s big disappointments that her own son had not lived to marry and have a family. That was why she took care of the Baldwin girls, as she used to call them. No one mentioned that she did not start doing that until she got over disapproving of them. “Two girls living on their own like that,” she had said to some of the older neighbors. “It isn’t right.”

  Jane had come to love the older woman, whom she could not visualize without her perpetual polishing rag for the banister. And it finally hit her—that was the debt she had not repaid.

  It took some doing but she got it accomplished. On a sunny Saturday in May 1957, Jane called Mrs. McGill and invited her to lunch. They spent hours afterward, shopping and talking, even going to a museum, before they got home. Ellen had returned from her friend’s house, and she greeted them outside the apartment building, smiling reassurance that the mission was complete.

  “Mommy has a surprise for you,” said Ellen.

  Mrs. McGill wiped her face with her handkerchief. “I’m so tired, I can’t take anything more.”

  “Don’t worry, Grandma, you’ll like this.” Ellen opened the front door and stepped aside for Mrs. McGill to look within.

  All the neighbors were standing there, many of whom had lived there since before the war. The others, relative newcomers, had already heard the tale. And all of them wore huge smiles.

  It took Mrs. McGill a moment before she realized what they were smiling about. There, in the place where the wooden banister had been, was a new brass one, almost identical to the one Mrs. McGill had given up for the war effort. A string with a new polishing rag attached hung from the rail.

  Mrs. McGill clapped her hands to her face. “I never thought—” Then she burst into happy tears and hugged Jane and Ellen. In the end, she had hugged everyone in the building, including several dogs.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Before she knew it, Ellen was finished with sixth grade, having skipped third. She was growing up way too fast.

  Ellen had seen her father once a year since her meeting with him. He seemed to remember her around the time of her birthday, although he was hazy on the date, and he would send a note saying he would stop by during the second week of September. It was the same every time. He asked Jane if he could take Ellen out alone, and Jane refused. They often just sat in the living room talking, with Jane hovering in the kitchen nearby. Many times it seemed to Jane that Martin sounded as if he were whining, or complaining, but she could not hear his words, nor did she wish to. At those times, Ellen seemed impatient to go out, and Jane went with them. It was very awkward, especially when people looked at them and smiled as if they were a family.

  Before Ellen’s tenth birthday, Martin came to Jane’s office. “I want to take Ellen to see my mother. She’s her granddaughter, you know.”

  Jane ignored his defiant attitude. “I’ve made it a point to take Ellen to visit your mother every year at least twice. But if you like, I’ll invite Mrs. Roche to come see us this time.”

  “That’s asking a lot. She’d have to take so many trains.”

  “I’ll pay for a cab, if she likes. I’ll talk to her about it when I ask her to come.”

  Martin seemed about to say something, but he stopped. He cleared his throat. “I asked Ellen what she wants for her birthday. It’s a real expensive porcelain doll, and I’d really like to give it to her. She should have a pretty doll.”

  Jane did not comment. It struck her as odd that Ellen would have asked for such an expensive gift.

  “But it is real pricey,” Martin continued, “and I don’t have the cash right now, what with the hard times and all. I don’t want to disappoint her.”

  The whole country was experiencing prosperity, but Martin seemed unaware. “I’d pay you back,” he said. “Just think of Ellen’s face when she opens it.” Jane knew she would never see it again, but she gave him the money. Ellen’s happiness was the only thing that mattered.

  When it was time to open the presents, the porcelain doll he’d promised was a poor rubber-faced substitute. Jane vowed that if Martin asked her to fund a gift in the future, she would buy the present an
d wrap it herself.

  Ellen looked puzzled at the gift but did not say anything. “Tell your grandmother about how well you did in school last year,” Martin prompted Ellen, by way of diverting attention from the doll.

  “She told me all about it, Marty,” said Mrs. Roche. “We can’t wait around for you to show up to see each other, you know.”

  Mrs. Roche had turned out to be quite fond of Ellen, and the child enjoyed her. Their relationship was not close like the one Ellen and Mrs. McGill shared, but it was solid. She had even come to respect Jane, and allowed her to invest some of her meager savings so that she would have an easier time in her old age.

  The weakest link between them was Martin. After he and his mother left, Jane commented on the lovely sweater Mrs. Roche had knitted for Ellen.

  She did not mention the doll, but Jane could tell she was not happy with it. Jane took Ellen in her arms and said, “If you really want the porcelain doll, I’ll get it for you as soon as I can manage it.”

  Ellen stood back and looked up at her mother. “What porcelain doll?”

  “Martin said you told him about one.” She did not mention that he had asked her to pay for it.

  “I’m really not interested at all in dolls,” Ellen confided. “But don’t tell Martin that. I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

  Mrs. Roche suffered a stroke six months later and complained because her son never came to see her in the hospital. Jane brought Ellen to visit the old woman in the convalescent home in the Bronx as often as possible, but neither Ellen nor her grandmother ever talked about Martin to each other again.

  On Ellen’s eleventh birthday, Martin visited, although he had not even called since her last birthday, and asked what his little girl would like for a present.

  They were standing in Jane’s living room. All the windows were open, letting in the lovely September air. Jane was about to go to the kitchen so they could have some privacy, but Ellen said, “Please stay, Mommy.”

  Jane returned to the couch and sat down. She watched Martin’s face. He never seemed comfortable with Ellen, and never showed her any affection.

  “I heard the girls are playing with hula hoops,” Martin said. “Would you like one?”