• • •
When I hung up, I went directly to Lucy’s box. I decided to look for anything I could find about Elinor—letters, journal entries. There was, in fact, a packet of letters that were from people other than Harriet. None were from Elinor, but several were from Sarah Stern with postmarks in various locations across France. They were all dated 1917 and 1918. Sarah, it turned out, was driving an ambulance as a volunteer, and had met a number of interesting women, including:
. . . a camp of English girls, members of the V.A.D., daughters of the titled aristocracy. They never lifted a finger for themselves at home, but here they are, mucking about with the rest of us, helping to save lives. Of course, after the war, they’ll go back to being waited on hand and foot. But I suppose one must give them a certain measure of credit for coming out here at all.
Later in that letter, Sarah admitted a particular fondness for one of the British ambulance drivers.
Elinor Devere, her father is Viscount of something or other. Terribly spoiled, but a girl of considerable intellect. We have begun to read together some afternoons between shifts and to discuss what we read in what free time we have. I have only two books with me, Women and Economics and Eighty Years & More, and she has none, but amazingly is interested in both of those, though I wouldn’t describe her as a suffragist. Those times together are the bright spots amid all the horror. I will be sorry to leave this camp, but I follow the American troops. To tell the truth, I am a bit smitten.
There was a last letter from Sarah in England. The armistice had been reached, and she had somehow managed to end up in England, carrying with her the address of Elinor Devere in London. “Well, my friend, when we saw each other again, it was clear what path we would take. We have discussed her coming to New York with me. So maybe I have found my partner now, too, as you have your Harriet!”
There were no more letters from Sarah after that. Presumably, there was no need to write, since Sarah and Lucy both lived in New York City, although at opposite ends of town. I took out the scrapbook and flipped to a snapshot of Sarah and Elinor at the beach. Sarah, small and feisty, Elinor, large and plump, looking much older than her mid-twenties. I both looked forward to and dreaded my Sunday appointment, when the past would suddenly really come to life.
19
Elinor Devere owned a brownstone on Grove Street, the front of which was almost completely obscured by ivy. It was a house I had passed many times and often looked at in admiration, wondering who lived there.
I had put my fears about Catherine taking over my project aside and talked her into coming with me for the meeting. I thought it was important for our relationship. She was hesitant, based on the incident with the Sarah Stern articles. But when it came to talking to Elinor face to face, I was scared, and I admitted it. Catherine had excellent interviewing techniques from years of doing oral histories of immigrants on the Lower East Side. I was afraid I would be too abrupt, too anxious to fit a lot into fifteen minutes, and would alienate Elinor or Emily or both. If that happened, I knew Catherine would take control.
I hadn’t asked if I could bring her, though, and Emily Fleck was startled to see both of us at the front door.
“Yes?” she said, as if we might be Jehovah’s Witnesses or door-to-door saleswomen.
“I’m Susan Van Dine, and this is my friend Catherine Synge,” I explained. “You must be Ms. Fleck.”
She was a tall, angular woman, in her fifties, with a haircut that looked like it had been done with a bowl and a dull pair of scissors. Her dress did not quite fit her. It hung on her like it was someone else’s and she had just thrown it on when we rang the bell. She wore Birkenstock sandals with white athletic socks. The picture she made was not my idea of a personal secretary.
“Oh, of course,” she said, stepping aside to let us by. “Please, come in.”
While she closed the door, we stood quietly in the foyer. It was lined with paintings, landscapes mostly, probably British. There was a long Persian wool runner leading down the hall to two doors at the end.
“I was only expecting you, Susan,” she said, emphasizing the “you.” She looked a bit flushed, like someone who has discovered she has more dinner guests than dinner and is quietly calculating how to stretch it.
“Catherine’s a historian,” I explained. “I thought she could keep me on track so we don’t waste any time.”
Emily led us down the hall to one of the doors, which was slightly ajar. “If it goes well,” she said, pushing it open, “you can come back.”
The room we entered was very bright and overly warm, like they had the heat on already, even though it was only October. I didn’t see anyone at first, because everything was very white and yellow and she blended right in. But on the white wicker chair near the front window with a big, cream-colored afghan thrown over her lap sat a very old woman, probably the oldest woman I’d ever seen. My own grandmother was only seventy-eight, and, like Tuttie, was still spry and lively. This woman was dozing in her chair, her skin as white as her hair, her hands folded loosely across her chest. She made a small snuffling noise as she slept. She did not hear us come in but woke only when Emily called her name.
“Elinor,” she said softly, motioning us toward a big yellow couch next to Elinor’s chair. “Miss Van Dine is here.”
Elinor’s eyes opened slowly, but she did not lift her head. She examined us from a forty-five degree tilt for several minutes, then, when she was thoroughly awake, adjusted herself in the chair.
“Which one is she?” Elinor asked at last.
“I’m Susan Van Dine,” I said, standing up and extending a hand to her, “and this is a friend of mine, Catherine Synge.” She had an amazingly firm grip. I had expected a weak, dish towel sort of handshake, but she took my hand firmly and pulled it down with a strong tug.
Awake, she did not seem so fragile. She sat straight in the chair and tossed the afghan to one side.
“Bloody hot in here, Fleck,” she said, taking Catherine and me by surprise by her tone and language. “My secretary,” she said, turning to us with a conspiratorial whisper, “is terrified of my taking cold and dying of pneumonia. So it is always eighty or ninety degrees in here. It’s like a bloody sauna.”
Fleck had disappeared and come back with a tea tray. I glanced at my watch, concerned about the time.
“I’ve been anxious to meet you, Ms. Devere,” I began, taking the teacup offered to me and passing it to Catherine. “Ms. Fleck has told you I’m doing some research on Lucy Weir.”
“What?” she said, sipping at her tea. “Oh, yes, yes, of course she did.” She sipped again noisily. She did not have the manners I associated with British aristocracy.
I pulled the scrapbook out of my knapsack. I had brought it along at Catherine’s suggestion.
“We thought if you looked at some pictures we have,” Catherine explained, “you’d remember some of the events they represent and tell us a bit about them.”
Elinor frowned. “I don’t need pictures to remind me,” she scowled. “I have a perfect memory. I remember those days like they were yesterday. I can tell you every detail. You know, this is the same house I lived in then. Fleck wasn’t with me then, she came just a bit before my Sarah died. This isn’t the same furniture either, though some of it is. Sarah never liked yellow, but it cheers me up. Yellow is my favorite color, in fact. Then red. The bright colors. The fiery ones. I’m a fire sign, you see.”
It was odd to hear a ninety-one-year-old talk about fire signs. Catherine and I both gently tried to interrupt her monologue about colors, but we could tell she was going to be hard to focus. Her memory may have been intact, but it wandered all over the room, bouncing off corners and turning into something entirely different. After fifteen minutes, though, she was lively and animated and Fleck let her go on for another fifteen. In fact, she kept extending the interview, till we had been there almost an hour and knew a lot of details but not much substance. We heard the story of meeting Sarah. We fou
nd out about her home in England, what Grove Street was like in 1920 when she first saw it, exactly what color Sarah’s eyes were, and how long it took to cross the Atlantic in those days. “A jolly good time,” she said.
When she began to look tired, I posed a final question. “Could you tell me how you found my shop? It seems so coincidental. Here I am, researching your old friend, and you wander into my store!”
Elinor clicked her tongue, suddenly more animated. “I would never just wander anywhere! I knew where we were going!”
Fleck, Catherine and I exchanged glances, and the two of them looked noticeably uncomfortable. “How?” I ventured.
Her voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “It was rather like a dream,” she said slowly. “I was sitting here and suddenly I saw myself entering your shop and buying that pin. Fleck thinks I’ve gone daft, but that’s just how it happened. It was like someone or something compelled me to go there. This will sound odd, but I almost thought I heard Lucy’s voice.”
“I believe you,” I said, and considering all that had happened to me, I did believe her.
Elinor liked us that first day. I could tell. In fact, she called after us, “Come back soon!” as Fleck escorted us back out to the foyer.
“She’s a strange one,” Fleck said simply, “hard to pin down. It’s her age. She didn’t used to ramble so. Or have these revelations she says she has.”
We left, a little confused and dazed by an hour of loosely connected memories. Catherine felt challenged; I was just tired.
“We didn’t find out a thing that we need, really,” I sighed.
“It’s like that,” Catherine smiled. “It’s hard work sometimes.”
“I wonder if it’s worth it,” I said, thinking I might have more luck just rummaging through Lucy’s box.
“Oh, it’s always worth it. Think of it, even if she is a little crazy—she knew Lucy Weir,” Catherine said, kissing me on the cheek before we went off in opposite directions. “It’s worth it. You’ll see.”
• • •
We went back to visit Elinor the following Sunday, and, knowing what she was like, had planned our method of attack more carefully. She was seated in the same room, the same chair, with the same afghan over her, as if she’d been waiting there all week for our return. In fact, she said, “Well, it’s about time,” as we came in and sat across from her.
Catherine pulled out the scrapbook and flipped to a photo of Harriet and Lucy in their apartment. “You remember Harriet Timberlake, of course,” Catherine said.
“Of course I do!” But her tone was coldly, rather than warmly, reminiscent.
“She was an actress,” I inserted. “Do you remember much about her acting career?”
“Hrmph,” Elinor said, burrowing her chin into the afghan. “An actress, indeed!”
Catherine and I exchanged a quick and puzzled look. We had never expected discord in The Gang. From the photos of warm, smiling faces, we had assumed a camaraderie, a pocket of lesbian friends who traveled together, supported each other’s work. Hadn’t Sarah mischievously autographed her book “For my partners in crime”? Where was the chill in Elinor’s voice coming from?
“She was an actress?” I asked cautiously. “We have evidence of that. She played in regional theaters, possibly a few movies. Is that correct?”
“Oh, of course, if you call that acting,” Elinor frowned, taking the teacup Fleck offered her. “Lucy was always after her to pursue the legitimate theater, to act Shakespeare and the classics. But Harriet went for light, romantic drivel. Drawing room comedies. Movies that were made in a few weeks, the kind that only played a day in each theater. Plays that were so badly written they offended the intellect. She never made any money at it. Or what she made she quickly spent on clothes for all the parties she went to. She was a bit wild, never really grew up.”
Elinor started losing the grip of her teacup; she was falling asleep even as she spoke to us. I asked another question to try to wake her up and prolong the session.
“But they were happy together, weren’t they?”
“Oh,” she said, pulling the afghan closer around her, “at first I suppose. By the time I met them, though, they’d settled into their roles. Harriet always running about, Lucy writing and teaching, making money. Lucy was always working. Those photos, they’re mostly of places we went to, following Harriet’s so-called career. Lucy was worried, you see, and started following Harriet to her various performances. It consumed so much of her time, working and following Harriet, that it took her away from other things. Like the women’s club she had been a member of, Heterodoxy. Though perhaps that wasn’t such a loss, ultimately. Sarah remained active in it for years, till around 1927, I believe, when the atmosphere became more conservative in the club. Helen Hull—you must have heard her name? The novelist?—and Sarah had a dreadful experience at a meeting in which another member had the cheek to define the ‘perfect feminist’ as a wife and mother! When they took objection and no one would back them up, they began to be disillusioned with the group. Things narrowed so, the group changed, and Sarah found other things to do.”
“And the performances you spoke of?” I asked, to get back to Lucy and Harriet. “Did you go along? Is that what all the group photos in Lucy’s album were about?”
“Oh yes, Sarah and I went along with Lucy quite a bit, went to see the most dreadful plays you can imagine. If they could be called plays. Sarah and I went to good theater in New York, and to the Provincetown Players, which was very au courant. Saw a lot of O’Neill’s early plays. And the four of us saw The Captive with Helen Mencken in 1926. You know what that was, don’t you?”
I didn’t, but Catherine of course did, and explained that it was a Broadway play with lesbian content that was closed by the police for its supposed immorality. The star, Helen Mencken, who later married Humphrey Bogart, went to jail temporarily, and the play created a furor that led to the passing of the padlock law, which prohibited the portrayal of homosexuals on the New York stage until 1967.
“We were there on opening night,” Elinor elaborated, and though it was off the subject, it was fascinating nonetheless. “Most of the audience was young women like us, in pairs or groups. We never had such an opportunity before to see a play that spoke directly to us, to be in such a group of women. It was one of the most moving experiences of that decade for me, perhaps of my life.”
“I can’t help but notice,” I said cautiously, well aware that I should not antagonize my interviewee, “that you’re a bit disdainful of Harriet.”
Catherine poked me with her index finger. I pulled away and continued looking straight at Elinor.
“She was never my favorite person,” Elirtor said, coughing into the afghan. “If it hadn’t been for Lucy, we would never have been friends with her at all, Sarah and I. But Sarah loved Lucy so, they were both writers and politically aware, and I was immensely fond of her also. She was such a good person, a caring person. Helped Sarah and me patch things up more than once, I’d say. She was fair and even-tempered. Her one blind spot was Harriet, and I must admit I never understood it. Oh, Harriet was pretty enough, and when she wanted to be, she could be charming. But she was such a flirtatious, frivolous thing. Why, she even tried flirting with my Sarah. She didn’t know how to be friendly, really. If she liked you, then she’d flirt.” She coughed again, and I thought she was finished, but she went on with a raspy voice. “I can’t say I was torn up when she died.”
“But Lucy was, I assume?” I asked, startled by her bluntness.
“Yes, she went practically dotty,” Elinor continued, pushing her teacup toward Fleck for a refill. The tea was lukewarm now, and she drank her second cup in one long swallow. “Ah!” she sighed. “Good tea.”
“I’ve heard she went away for a while,” I pursued, trying to keep her on track. She was fading again, and I still had questions.
“Hmm? Yes, yes, for a while, I can’t remember exactly. Maybe for a month,” she said, but her
eyelids looked heavy. Elinor had grown sad-looking and was now resting her chin on her chest. Soon after, she dozed off, and Fleck escorted us out.
• • •
After we left Elinor’s, Catherine and I briefly considered spending the evening with each other. We walked to the subway together, where Catherine would go in one direction and I in another. We stood at the token booth, stalling for time, looking for our tokens in our pockets, thinking of bits of news we hadn’t told each other, waiting for one or the other to make the first move. But neither could or would. We passed through the turnstile finally and waved reluctantly goodbye.
That night in bed, I read some of Harriet’s letters to Lucy. One was written from Provincetown and was full of praise for a fellow actress, Amelia Wingate. Harriet, I gathered, was touring for several weeks with a regional theater group. The play, she herself acknowledged, was dreadful, but the acting company was marvelous.
I don’t know when I fell asleep or how the lights got turned off. I didn’t want to explore the possibilities at the time. But I woke to a sudden pressure on the mattress of someone sitting down carefully on the edge, trying not to disturb me. I nearly jumped off the bed with fright.
“It is only I,” someone said, precisely and correctly, and I recognized the level clarity of Lucy’s voice. “You’re hearing things about Harriet, from someone who didn’t particularly care for her. Elinor is a fine person, but she could never see Harriet’s good points.”
“But,” I began, and my voice failed me. It was like a dream I often had, in which I faced some danger and tried to speak but couldn’t. Before I could find my voice, the mattress had straightened out again and I knew I was alone in the bed.
But Lucy, I wanted to say, were you happy? I decided there was no way to really know, unless I looked for the answers in the box.
20
August, 1930
We met in an unusual way.
I received a letter from my sister Edith in Glens Falls, asking me to join her and her husband at the races in Saratoga one weekend. I was not much for horse racing, it held no particular interest for me, so I wrote back and declined but said I would be pleased to visit her in Glens Falls sometime in the fall. She wrote again, most insistent, saying that she had arranged a very important meeting for me there and would I kindly not embarrass her by not showing up. So I took the train to Saratoga on Friday morning. It was August, several weeks before my classes at Barnard resumed. I was at that time finishing the novel that would become Central Park, my first, a horrid little thing about a male professor and his love affair with a female student. It was my first and only stab at writing about such things. I did indeed need a break from it, and it was hard not to obey my older sister.
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