She nodded in agreement. She wished all this regret and sadness and confusion would leave her already. Things would be better, she rationalized, if she could cheer herself up and accept Freddy’s kindness. With Freddy, maybe, she could forget the awful mess of Fiona and Anders and what they’d done in the barn. “Ask me whatever you like.”
“I have heard a rather wild story.”
Emmeline straightened, making her expression alert. The smell of the cigarette wafted toward her, but she didn’t want to cough or appear otherwise put out by Freddy—not now, when he was being so attentive.
“It’s about your maid. Did you know that she was hiding a boy in the greenhouse at your father’s place?”
Emmeline’s eyes widened and she moved her head slowly to the left. “You mean Georgie?” she asked.
“No.” Freddy grimaced and focused his attention on the cigarette between his index and middle fingers. “I mean Fiona.”
“Oh, yes, Fiona. . . .” Hearing the name out loud made her stomach tighten, and Emmeline felt a series of emotions wash over her: embarrassment, sadness, anger. “Well, no, I mean . . . yes. . . .”
“You were friendly with this servant, weren’t you? Well, she seems to have absconded with many of your—and my—jewels.”
“Oh.” Emmeline swallowed hard. She had not thought about the jewels. It was she who had insisted Fiona sell them, but now she wanted them back, wanted never to have been daring and brave, never to have gone looking for something more than this. “I—”
“You don’t believe it, because you have a kind heart. But I learned that she had help. A boy, who she was hiding in the greenhouse. A boyfriend, perhaps—”
“He wasn’t her boyfriend,” Emmeline shot back before she could think better of it.
Freddy blanched and then the strange light, the beginning of a realization, came into his eyes. “He . . . was . . . yours?”
“Oh, well . . .” Emmeline had accidentally told the truth, and she was too confused to figure out how best to twist it around, make it sound right and work for her. “Not exactly. I mean, it was all a long time ago. We were just children then.”
“You knew.” He gazed at her, aghast. “You knew they were stealing the jewels. Why, Emmeline? For what?”
Her heart was like a frightened bird in a too-small cage. For a few moments she was very busy trying to brush out the wrinkles in the lap of her dress. It was not yet midnight, on the first day of their married life, and she thought if she could only tell him the right story, they could begin again. That she could go back, and have the life that she had intended to have.
“They confused me,” she began slowly. “Tricked me, really,” she went on, half believing it herself. She did feel tricked, and badly used. “They came to me, and tried to convince me that Anders was my true love.”
“Anders?”
“Anders Magnuson. He was my friend, back before—you know, when I was—younger. He’s a boxer, well-known in certain parts of town. You said yourself I have a kind heart, and I was a little simple, I suppose, and they convinced me I was making a mistake, and that I should run away with them. . . .”
“With him.”
“But they must have used some magic! Because they convinced me of all manner of things that I can see were mistakes now. . . .” She had begun to babble, mixing truth and lies, half trying to convince Freddy of the nefariousness of Fiona and Anders, half wanting his pity and concern. She told him about the plan to go to New York, and the barn, and the desperate journey she’d taken just now, and what she saw, when she finally arrived on DeKoven. She tried to make Anders out as a wily seducer, and show how Fiona had always been more interested in money than in friendship. She tried to portray herself as a victim of their scheming, who had been coerced away from her true feelings for Freddy, who had been tricked into forgetting her best self. She was glad to think of Fiona and Anders this way. It made her feel that she had not lost so very much.
But if her story of woe moved him, it was difficult to tell from looking at his face. All the while Freddy sat impassively, and whether he was shocked or merely disappointed, she could not be certain.
“But I was wrong,” she concluded. “I was confused, I was sentimental, I was a little girl, I didn’t know how lucky I was to be marrying you. But now we can start again. With no secrets and no lies.”
When she was finished he stubbed the cigarette out in a black lacquered tray. “Your engagement ring?” he said as though it was this detail in particular that vexed him.
“Yes, but . . .” She stared at him helplessly. “I can get it back!”
“How?” he cried in anguish. “What a fool I was the day I bought that ring. I brought Ada’s husband with me, and I could see how it amused him, how I asked to see every ring they had, and held them up, wondering which of these could possibly be good enough for my beautiful Emmeline? Oh, I knew what he was thinking: that I’d been taken in by a little social-climbing nobody. But I didn’t care. I didn’t care! My heart was full with Emmeline, and all I cared about was pleasing Emmeline.”
“You did,” she said meekly. “I loved that ring.”
“And the crown! That crown had been in my family for four generations.”
Emmeline shrunk into the settee. She had not considered the piece’s provenance when she had handed it over to Fiona to turn into money.
“In what sordid place did you say you hawked it?”
“I—I don’t know,” she stammered. “Fiona and Anders took care of that.”
“That barn, you said it was on DeKoven Street? On the West Side?”
She nodded slowly.
Freddy stood up and adjusted the high collar of his fine jacket. Earlier, the white tails had given him the appearance of a dashing hero out of a newspaper serial, but now it had a different effect. It was rumpled and sweat-dark, and she could see that he had been wounded by this day too. She had believed that depicting the events of the past few days as she had would win his sympathy, that he would see how tired and hurt she was, and they could begin anew. But now he seemed unlikely to say anything at all. The prospect of a silence without end made her desperate and doubtful of her own existence.
“You’re not going to go looking for them, are you? Oh, please don’t.” She jumped up and came toward him. She couldn’t stand the idea that her friends might learn that, along with everything else, Emmeline’s marriage was already a disaster. Didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing how completely they had ruined her. “They didn’t really have anything to do with . . .”
Freddy cleared his throat, as though he had just heard something but wished he hadn’t, and moved away from her. As he paused in the doorway to the hallway she said his name, and when that didn’t bring him back, she started saying anything she could think of to make him stay.
“They probably aren’t even at the barn anymore,” she said.
This seemed to get his attention. “No?” His voice chilled her with its abrupt force. “Where might those thieving rag-pickers be?”
She had never seen Freddy so angry before. It changed the very shape of his face, and he appeared more wolf than man. Since he’d started courting her, she’d thought of him mostly as a man who was particular about what he wore, and who could be manipulated by always keeping herself just out of reach.
“They could be anywhere . . . out of the city, or . . . back in the old neighborhood, where Fiona’s people are.” The room’s temperature had changed suddenly. Emmeline was having trouble making sense. But she felt certain that Fiona and Anders would never go to the old neighborhood. That was one place, on account of Gil Bryce, she was sure that Freddy would not find them. Plus, it was the last place Freddy, who dressed so fine, would ever go. “In the alleys near Jackson and Wells,” she said triumphantly, as though the location alone would ward him off.
He assessed her. “Jackson and Wells?”
“Yes, but don’t go there now. Stay with me. I’m sorry. I made a mistake, b
ut I am still your wife.”
He came at her so fast that she fell to the floor trying to get out of his way. He grabbed her by the roots of her hair and dragged her to her feet. His palm, when it hit her face, smacked like a frying pan just off the range.
“Yes.” His breath was hot in her ear: “You are my wife.”
She had no breath. The room, with its large, polished wood furniture and many gilt-encrusted objects, had a crushing gravity. Through the doorway, she could see the darkness of the fourth-floor landing, and wished to disappear into it. “To have and to hold, or did you forget that part? You will not humiliate me this way. You will not let them think they were right, that I was had by a con man and his pretty daughter. You are my wife, and I will get that ring back tonight, and you will be seen wearing it tomorrow, and the day after, and forever.”
His shiny black shoes darted over the ornamented carpet. Emmeline touched her burning cheek, too frightened to make a whimper. She wanted to stop him, but she was terrified of what he would do to her if she drew him back. She wanted him to leave, but she wished she hadn’t brought Fiona and Anders into it. Her temples throbbed, and her soul shrank from what she’d done.
The door closed behind him, and this time there was no mistaking the metallic whine of the bolt locking her within.
Twenty-Six
Born in the slums, died in the slums.
—Carved into the bar at Jem Gallagher’s
They passed the Michigan Southern Depot and were in the old neighborhood again. A few city blocks, that was all it was, cut by crooked alleys, bordered on the west by the river, near where it hooked left and flowed on south to join the Mississippi. When she was small, these blocks had seemed the whole world. A glare was visible on the far side of the river, above the tar roofs and ship masts, its terrible reddish light reflected on an otherwise murky sky.
“They haven’t been able to put it out yet.” Fiona’s bottom lip trembled as she sought Anders’s eyes.
“Don’t.” Anders had seen her expression and read her thoughts. He held her gaze as he gave a firm shake of his head. “It’s not our fault.”
But Fiona had seen the broken lantern, and couldn’t help feeling that the conflagration had something to do with her.
As they turned onto the wide main street of the neighborhood, they were met by the strong westerly wind. A man, emerging from a laundry, was robbed of his hat—the current of warm air plucked it from his head, and sent it tumbling backward in the direction of LaSalle. But he was apparently in a rush, for he did not even attempt a retrieval. Fiona glanced over her shoulder to see where the hat would land, and noticed a boy about Jack’s age, watching. He had been leaning in the doorframe of a three-story frame building, but he disappeared down an alley after she caught his eye. The inside of her mouth went dry.
Perhaps, she reasoned, the boy’s haste was only to be on time for supper. But it was late for supper. As children they had been watchers, too. Ochs Carter would tell them who to look out for, and it would mean a half-penny if they could get the news of the whereabouts of certain persons of interest to Emmeline’s father within minutes of spotting them.
“We can leave soon, I promise,” she said. “Just as soon as I’ve warned my family.”
“Don’t worry.” His eyes had a sheen by then, and the ropey muscles of his arms tensed. “We’ll be all right. Just stay close.”
They went north, into the alleys, where three-story tenements of brick and pine leaned against each other, like trees that grow too close together and must fight each other’s branches for the sun. In a few minutes, they would be at her family’s place; and yet, in this part of the city, a hundred feet could be a treacherous distance. A whistle cut through the evening din behind them, and another sounded up ahead. Shutters banged, and a door opened.
“Don’t look back,” Anders said in a low voice. “Stay close to the wall.”
He fell behind her, yet still she knew how to match his pace. Although he moved in silence, she sensed him, just as she’d sensed him the day she’d gone to Gorley’s. This time he was even closer, and she felt the idea of his hand at the small of her back, urging her to move fast. Her hair crackled and her ears took in every tiny noise: the incessant blowing; the muffled voices within the shabby dwellings; the wailing of hinges; distant, high-pitched laughter; a rattling of coins; the heels of boots against a wooden walkway. The boots were getting louder; Fiona could feel them now, like a small hammer administering taps up and down her vertebrae.
It’s probably nothing, she reasoned. Soon we will come to the end of this street, she thought. Soon we will be home, soon my parents will know of the danger and take the necessary precautions, soon we will be back on the train.
But these hopeful notions were no match for the uneasy beating of her heart. A few seconds passed, and she couldn’t stand it anymore. She glanced over her shoulder and knew that the man with the heeled boots—he was tall and lean, with a bristly mustache—was on their trail. His chin was drawn into his throat, his gaze sought them like a marksman.
Anders’s fierce posture and pace remained the same. His fingers brushed her hip, and she focused once again on the outlet of the alley, the place where they were going. But what she saw there made her stomach tighten into a fist. At the end of the way, standing in wait for them, was Gil Bryce. Although his greasy hat was crushed down around his ears, she knew him by the leather duster he wore and the broad menace of his shoulders. His eyes were just visible beneath his brim, flickering with blue-green rage, but his mouth curved with satisfaction upon seeing these two prodigal children of the neighborhood, returned to his territory.
“Hey there, Mag,” he called, his voice a cruel imitation of friendliness.
Fiona felt like a deer hunted through a ravine. If Anders had not been right behind her, she would have stopped, frozen in her tracks. But they moved together, forward, as one. As though they, too, were hungry for a confrontation. She remembered Anders’s sudden anger in the train station, and wondered if maybe he did want a fight. Another man appeared at Gil Bryce’s side, and though she dared not look, Fiona had an inkling of others joining the one with the mustache to their rear.
“Hello there, you handsome boys!”
Fiona’s gaze swung in the direction of the brassy voice. Above them, half leaning out of a second-story window, was a woman wearing sausage curls and a louche smile. Her elbows were folded on the sill, and she arched a painted eyebrow. The rest of the woman’s face was painted too, and Fiona was momentarily distracted by the thought that she knew her, that if she could only picture this woman without makeup she would remember how. Then she had it: The woman’s name was Maud, and she had been engaged at one time to Anders’s older brother, Michael. But they said that, later, she had lost her way.
Anders! Fiona twirled in place, but he was gone. She was alone on the street, with Maud leering down, and Gil Bryce’s men at either end of the alley.
“Don’t look so beastly,” Maud was admonishing Gil Bryce’s gang. “I was hoping we could have a good old time.”
Anders’s fingers circled her wrist, pulling her off the street. The space between the two buildings was so slender, she hadn’t noticed its narrow opening from the alley. But now they were running along between a wall of brick and a wall of pine plank. Gil Bryce was shouting after them, and she was relieved that he didn’t seem to know precisely where they had gone. They had almost reached the outlet when he stopped, shoved his shoulder against a door that blended in with the rest of the pine edifice, and pulled her along behind him. Like that, they were in a different place.
“Hey, Mag, where you been?” called a man stumbling toward them. His face was dirty but he sounded friendly. Sawdust soaked with spilled beer rose to her nostrils. They were in Jem’s place, she realized, and as before she was the only female in sight.
The second man to notice Anders sounded less kind. “Is that the kid?”
“Gil Bryce’ll be wanting to know he’s around,
” said another.
“Let the kid be.”
“Don’t you tell me who to let be.”
To her relief, Anders pulled her in close, as though he might be able to shield her from view with his body, and hustled her along the same corridor she’d gone through that morning, a few days and a long time ago, when she’d come calling on behalf of Emmeline.
The crowd erupted in argument. A debate raged over whether Anders Magnuson’s presence should be reported or kept a secret, accompanied by much shoving and cursing.
“They’ll figure out where we went,” she whispered. “They’ll be right behind us.”
“I know.” Anders jerked his head at the scene behind them. A brawl had broken out in their wake. “But they’ll have to get through that.”
On they went, leaving behind the combustible atmosphere of the saloon and stumbling into the courtyard. At night the place was quiet as a secret. The walls of the surrounding structures rose up, framing a square of midnight sky that winked peacefully from a thousand different points of light. They gazed up. For a moment, they were the only two people left in the wide world.
He took hold of her hips, and his breath mixed with her breath.
“I’m sorry,” she said, pressing into his chest. “This was a bad idea. I’ve put us in danger.”
“Don’t you understand, Fiona? I’d go anyplace with you.”
Her shoulders relaxed and her body softened into his. They might have gone on like that—clutching each other, oblivious to danger—had a great whistling and cawing, like some mythical winged beast, not brought their attention once again skyward. The sweetness drained from Fiona’s limbs.
The wind sent a blazing piece of roof—or what anyway had once been a section of roof—sailing overhead. It was huge and bright as a comet, and it rained sparks on the surrounding buildings.
“Come on.” Anders’s fingers interlaced with hers.
At the back of the courtyard was a window. Anders pushed it open and hauled himself up and through. Once he was inside he reached for Fiona, lifting her by the torso. He pulled her into a low-lit living room, where an old woman dozed in an armchair, her knitting fallen into her lap. Fiona turned, and closed and locked the window. Although she could see no disturbance in the courtyard, she knew Gil Bryce’s people would find it soon.
When We Caught Fire Page 19