by Jill Barnett
She nodded and pointed to her chest.
"Yes, that's right. You will live there now with me. I have a room just for you. It has a view of a small garden. And Miss Clement has a room, too. We'll both be with you. And your great Aunt Martha will be there once she comes home from England. Aunt Martha who makes the famous cinnamon buns." Miss Clement had told him that Josie and Penelope made cinnamon buns together before last Christmas and they had all oohed, and ahhed over them at breakfast.
At that she grinned and leaned into his shoulder...and he melted.
How will I ever be all this little girl needs?
He cleared his throat and lifted the plans. "These are called cyanotypes--this blue paper with the white drawings, and they're the plans for a new building. These plans tell the builders how to construct it."
She stared at him.
"That's my job, he explained. "I draw the schematics, a big word that means I create buildings and draw up the instructions. And this long space here--see?--it's for the lift, the elevator, the cage that will carry people all the way up to the top floor so they don't have to walk up all the stairs....
And she then curled in his lap, quietly listening while he told her more about what he did, told her about the Forsythe Building and even about the changes and why they had to make them, told her about his other buildings, and stories, like the time they saw a cat on a top floor and everyone was afraid it would jump so men scrambled up to the top floor only to have the cat easily climb onto the scaffolding and then leap onto the roof of the building next door, before the cat turned and look back at them as if they were idiots. That story made her giggle, but that giggle was the only sound she made. He told her two more stories, and when he looked down again, she was sound asleep.
There was nothing in the Lowell House bedroom overlooking the garden court that was meant for a little girl, rather a large bedroom designed in size and decor to impress Lowell House visitors; it was the sheer opposite of what a child should have.
As he stood there with his niece, he mentally groaned. The draperies were heavy and fringed, and the furniture large, overwhelmingly masculine, and made of dark mahogany. The rugs were deep red, thick and heavy and intricately designed. Even the damned-blasted bed was a gigantic carved thing that looked like it belonged to some king of England, like Henry Tudor, the one who chopped off the heads of his wives.
His niece stood in the center of the huge room with its enormous... enormous everything and she looked as if the room had swallowed her. She studied the opulent room from wide, almost frightened eyes, and he felt like a horse's ass.
He moved to the wall. "Miss Clement's room is right here, through this door, so if you need her she's only a few steps away." He paused, completely out of his element as she stared blankly at the adjoining door. His niece was like an imported doll, wearing the same frozen expression on her porcelain face.
Desperate, he held out his hand to her. "Do you want to see the garden? Come." They stood at the bay window, framed in more elaborately-fringed, thick, and tied-back damask fabric constructed to let in little light.
Penelope looked down below, where the garden square was without color this late in the year and looked cold with its stone bench and empty fountain. Gray. The garden was as gray as the winter skies above it, as gray as the cemetery where he buried his sister and her husband. He knew suddenly that he had to protect his niece from all this gloom.
He squatted down until she could look him in the face. "I think we should make some changes in here, don't you?"
She brightened.
"Do you have a favorite color?"
She nodded.
He lifted his eyebrows in question and waited. There was no way she could point to a color in this room, everything was dark--the color of fine wine--and decorated with gold trim and braid and fringe. If she wanted the room changed, she had to speak.
She waited, so he waited. She was her mother's daughter, he thought, stubborn to the core.
"Blue," she finally said and paused. "Like the sky." She glanced then out the window up to where the skies were anything but blue. "Like the sky at home," she said solemnly.
He could tell her this was her home now and affectively remind her that the life she had known was gone...or he could shut up. He might be a horse's ass, but he wasn't stupid and a horse's ass. "Blue it is," he said. "We'll build you a window seat here," he pointed to the bay window, "so when spring comes and all the trees and flower bloom you'll have the best view in the whole house. There's a company I work with for my buildings and I know they would love to make this room just perfect for a little girl. In blue."
"With lots of pillows."
He smiled. "With lots of pillows. Pink pillows?" he teased.
She shook her head vehemently. "Blue."
So by that afternoon, Ed had been to the building site, where there had been some trouble while he was gone. Some costly supplies and tools were stolen, so now they had to see about hiring Pinkerton security to guard the jobsite at night. Trouble. New trouble.
While the partnership of Lowell & Green was a good mix, he was seldom gone from the city. He could be depended upon to be there, day in, day out. He was the fixer, the one who could grease the wheel of a deal and make it happen; he had the connections, and so he handled the all-important social side of their business. But he also oversaw the budgets and the expenditure,
co-ordinated the contractors, and handled the creation, the initial design, while Hal was the engineering genius, the structure expert, the nuts and bolt man. The designs themselves were a partnership of vision and innovative engineering.
But these new, taller buildings with their elevators, deep foundations and steel-framed structures were new to the city. While they were at first accepted as a phenomenal achievement, and had, until lately, been awe-inspiring enough to be well-received, lauded, and written up admiringly by journalists, things were changing.
Now, apparently, a faction was on the warpath, complaining to the city about the height of them blocking sunlight from the sidewalks and streets below. Trouble--trouble he hoped with new security would eventually merely go away.
Now he was in his office, mid-afternoon--when Penelope was napping and he felt he could slip away from home--staring a pile of correspondence, notes about every fiasco that had happened while he was in San Francisco, every missed business meeting and appointment, the pile on his desk topped off with a new schedule that gave him almost no time for his niece.
What the hell was he going to do about her? How could he go about changing his life for her, juggling everything, being everywhere he needed to be, but there for her, too. So much for him being the fixer. He had no idea how to fix her.
She needed him. She desperately needed some kind of family, this shocked little girl, traumatized by a great loss, living with a stranger, in a strange house, in an even stranger city, in a room that looked like a grand suite at the Metropolitan instead of a home. He stared at his bloated schedule, shook his head, and vowed he would not let his niece down the way he'd let her mother down.
3
"Are you ready?" Ed asked his niece as he stood in the doorway of her new blue bedroom and watched Miss Clement kneel down and button up Penelope's coat. She looked at him with those huge brown eyes and nodded. Not a single word passed her lips. Penelope had been like that for the last two weeks. His niece was cloaked in silent grief. She hadn't even spoken his name. She would just turn up at his side and touch his knee or his hand.
So they were off to see Thomas Cummings, a protégée of G. Stanley Hall and a colleague of James Baldwin. Both men had studied under Wundt at his clinic in Germany and were new American pioneers of in the field of child development. Luckily for Ed, Cummings was now a professor of Psychology at Columbia, and even luckier, a fellow member of the Union Club. And he was willing to see Penelope and advise Ed.
He glanced around the bedroom as he waited. In his mind he had hoped his niece would take one look at the new
bedroom and suddenly start chattering or laughing or some other miracle.
He was an idiot.
Oh, she liked the blue room, the smaller bed with its pale blue bedding, the smaller chairs near the fireplace covered in blue and yellow flowers and stripes, and the lighter draperies surrounding the window seat he had promised her, with its blue and yellow bolsters. The painted furniture and subtle wallpaper were light colors. Even the wood floors had been refinished in a golden color instead of the dark planks and were topped with thick, pale blue rugs with gold patterns. The room looked nothing like it had; it looked like the sky on a sunny day.
When she first saw the refurbished room, Penelope had walked around, touching the bed, the tables and chairs. She had crawled up onto the window seat, looked at him with those big innocent eyes and patted the seat cushions for him to come sit. At the time, he'd had the flash of a thought to wait and see if she would speak if he forced her, if he had merely stood there. But something--guilt or fear or both--told him not to push her.
Everything was still so new to her. If he were feeling so uncertain, what must she be feeling?
So he sat down next to her on the window seat and she'd crawled into his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek, which had been enough to make a grown man cry.
"There," Miss Clement said as she finished tying the ribbons on Penelope's bonnet and straightened. "She's all ready, Mr. Lowell."
He thanked her, took his niece's hand, and they walked down and out to his waiting carriage together.
Traffic on the avenues grew thick with horse trolleys and carriages. Crowded sidewalks were packed. As they made their way across town, the ride was silent. Achingly silent. He asked her questions. "You remember where we're going?"
She nodded.
"We're just going to talk to him," he said reassuringly.
She nodded, then turned away from him and looked out the carriage window at the shops along the way.
Well, he thought, he might as well get used to being the one doing all the talking for a while. Impatient, he checked his pocket watch for the third time. They might be late to the appointment with the carriage traffic and crowds on the streets. He leaned over and looked at the intersection ahead, where there was a trolley crossing. The carriage slowed, then stopped. Pedestrians poured across the streets while they sat helpless, unable to move forward.
He checked his watch again. Five minutes till their appointment. They would be late.
"Mama," a little voice whispered.
Ed turned. "Penelope?"
She was kneeling on the seat, her small hands pressed flat against the carriage window. "Mama," she said again.
He moved across the seat. "What is it? What do you see?"
She pointed to a shop window under the elevated train. Hoskins Toys the sign read. In the window was a doll with his sister's blonde hair and delicate porcelain features, wearing--of all things--a blue coat and bonnet.
"Mama," she said again looking back at him and now pointing. Her first words in weeks.
The doll did look like Josie.
A second later the carriage jerked forward and he saw panic rise in his niece's eyes.
"Mama!" she cried, turning back, her hands flat against the window.
He touched her shoulder. "We'll come back," he told her. "After we see Dr. Cummings."
She didn't move, didn't look at him but kept looking at the shop window, turning as the carriage moved forward and away. When the toy window disappeared from view, she sat back on the seat and looked up at him with damp eyes.
He slipped his arm around her and she leaned against him. "We'll come back. I promise."
The appointment took over two hours, and while Penelope stayed in another room with a nurse who was reading to her from a children's book about three little kittens, Dr. Cummings spoke to Ed in his private office. "I've seen a few cases like this before and have studied reports on this type of traumatic reaction in a child whose life has been turned upside-down. Death is difficult enough for an adult to accept. For a child to lose both parents at once....well, you must understand--"
Ed understood all too well. Flashing before his eyes was the image of his parents as he'd last seen them, waving down at them from a ship deck. He felt that image in his gut, a pain like a sharp ulcer.
"--that she has had her security taken away." Cummings was still talking. "She must learn to trust you in the way she trusted her mother and father. There is nothing wrong physically, you understand. She is choosing to be silent."
"As I told you, she has spoken. She has said my name. And on the way here today, her first words in a few weeks. She said "mama."
"She did?" The doctor looked thoughtful. "Was there a trigger of some kind. Why mama?"
"There was a doll in a shop window that looked like Josephine, her mother."
The doctor raised his eyebrows and Ed added, "There was no time to stop. We would have been late." They were late anyway. "We would have been even later," he added. "I promised her that we would go back."
"Good. If she saw something in that doll, something familiar, that's a key perhaps to the start of her healing. We often forget what a loved one looks like after they're gone. That's frightening, especially to child your niece's age. To have something that reminds her of the mother she has lost can only help to soothe her. The doll would be something she could hold onto. I would suggest buying that doll as the first important step toward helping Penelope fill the void of losing her mother. It might go a long way in helping her feel safe. I know she has you, certainly, and I can see that you care deeply for your niece. You are the only lifeline for her in a sea of loss and confusion."
Ed felt his stomach drop at the truth and reality in that statement. Her only lifeline.
"You mentioned your aunt is in England?"
"Yes. But she will be back before Christmas."
"That's good. You are an unmarried man, Mr. Lowell. There is no woman she can turn to. No female that can step in for her mother. She has you and her nurse, you said? Keeping the same nurse was a smart move on your part. You were lucky she was willing to move across the country.
"Time will be the best remedy for her. Time passing and the time you give her. Create a safe world for your niece. Value her trust. "
Ed nodded.
"Understand this, she will need your time. Every day."
He must have had a telling look on his face because Cummings added, "I know you're a busy man, but I would suggest you do not merely rely on her nurse. You need to schedule time with your niece every day. And plan to have at least one meal together daily. It's important she has a schedule and that she learns she has a constant in her life. You are that constant." Cummings leaned back in his chair. "Do you have any questions?"
"Is there anything I can do to force her into talking? Should I try forcing her? I mean, should I perhaps not answer her so readily?"
Cummings shook his head. "No. Talk to her, as you have been. Ask her questions. Do not get discouraged. Do not try to rush her. Do not push or get angry. Just consistently talk to her. And it's important that you include her in your daily life. Make special outings. Do things with her. Create a new normal life for her here, with you. In time she will adjust." Cummings smiled at him for the first time.
"Fatherhood isn't easy. I have three children. But it can be especially difficult when it comes as a complete surprise with a 4 year-old little girl. I trust you can do what needs to be done. You build solid buildings. You can rebuild her niece's life. You have a reputation for getting things done, though right now you look fairly petrified."
"I am petrified."
"You can do it."
Ed rose and they shook hands. As he opened the door to fetch Penelope and leave, Dr. Cummings said, "And buy her the doll, Lowell."
They went back to the toy shop directly from the physician's office. Ed almost didn't find the store and had Will drive the carriage up and down the block twice. Then he realized the wind
ow display had changed and in the doll's place was a train complete with station and town, trees and track that circled a display with a stuffed bear in a small rocking chair.
He took Penelope to the shop door, which had a bell that rang when the door opened. Inside was filled with floor to ceiling shelves of toys made from wood and tin, in bright colors, blocks stacked in every size, games and puzzles and mechanical animals, everything needed to fascinate a child. He glanced down at his niece, half hoping to see delight on her face, but she was staring at the display window with a serious look. In the corner was a table with dolls of many styles and sizes. "There are the dolls, Penelope. Come. Let's go look there." He watched her look at the doll corner as they moved toward it. But there was no doll with blonde curls, a blue coat and bonnet and Josie's sweet face.
Ed caught the shopkeeper's eye and the man rushed over. "Can I help you find something, sir?"
"Yes. There was a doll in the window earlier today, with light hair and a blue coat and bonnet."
"Yes, yes. The doll sold a little while ago."
Ed mentally cursed. He should have stopped.
"But we have this whole corner of dolls. I'm sure your little girl can find one she likes." He smiled down at Penelope, who was staring bleakly at the doll display. "So many dolls to look at, the man said kindly. I have two blonde haired dolls here, as you can see." The shopkeeper showed her another doll in a pink gown with a sweet face that looked nothing like Josie.
Penelope shook her head and stepped back, hiding behind Ed's leg, her fists gripping his trousers.
"I'm looking for same as the one you sold."
"Oh, dear. The Josephine doll is rare, sir. I don't have another."
"Josephine?" Ed repeated numbly.
"Yes. That's the name of the doll from the window. We purchase all our dolls from a distributor here in New York who represents all the dollmakers. This particular doll can only be ordered in the spring and the dolls are made to fill orders for the holidays. It took months to get the one I sold. Perhaps one of these others will suit your daughter. They are certainly as well made and quite pretty, too." The man was looking at his niece.