The Forgotten Room

by Karen White

  I swallowed. “You’ll continue to heal and then you will leave and go back to your home in Charleston where you will marry Miss Middleton in November and forget all about me. And I will continue to nurse the wounded officers that the war will spit out until there are no more bodies to throw into the war machine. I hope to become the best doctor that I can be and continue to practice medicine until I’m too old to see straight.”

  I’d tried to make my tone light and flippant, but my voice had caught on the last word, as if I imagined Cooper seeing the bleak world I’d painted for both of us.

  “Then let me finish your sketch, so I won’t forget you. But I want you to wear the necklace. Would you do that for me? As a parting gift.”

  I pulled away and sat on the edge of the bed, my back to him. I should say no. I should stand up and walk out of the room without saying anything. But the ruby lay heavy around my neck, as if all the unanswered questions lay trapped inside of it. He would be leaving in two weeks and I’d never see him again. It was a small thing, really. To allow him to sketch me wearing my grandmother’s necklace. It would be a fitting way to say good-bye.

  “Yes,” I said without turning around. “I’ll let you finish the sketch, and I’ll wear the necklace.” I’d made it to the door before he spoke.

  “Kate?”

  I turned the door handle.

  “You feel it, too, don’t you? This thing between us. This connection.”

  I closed my eyes, seeing my face in the miniature, remembering how I’d felt the first time I’d seen him being pulled from the ambulance in the pouring rain. But he was promised to another, and my life’s path was never meant to intersect with his.

  “Good night, Cooper.”

  I closed the door behind me with a soft snap before I felt compelled to answer.

  Twenty

  CHRISTMAS DAY 1892

  Olive

  The tracks of the New York Central Railroad lay like an open scar all up the length of Fourth Avenue, and to cross over this dirty gulf by one of the steel bridges was to cross into another world.

  Well, maybe the transition wasn’t quite so dramatic as that. Nobody wanted to live next to the stink and steam of the railway line, after all, so the houses began shrinking once you walked across Madison Avenue. But the inhabitants of the western side of the tracks still had some aspirations to grandeur. They lived within gazing distance of the mansions around Fifth Avenue. They passed these limestone palaces on their way to a morning stroll in Central Park and rubbed shoulders with their well-heeled neighbors at every opportunity.

  Like an old English ha-ha separating one pasture from another, however, the Fourth Avenue railway viaduct neatly separated the upper classes from the middle ones. On the eastern side lived the respectable professionals, the artisans and shopkeepers seeking a little more fresh air than could be found farther south, and here, in a narrow and neatly kept house on Seventy-eighth Street, between Lexington and Third Avenues, lived Olive’s mother and the three boarders in the upstairs bedrooms, one of which had once belonged to Olive herself, in the long-ago days of her girlhood.

  When Olive trudged up the steps to the front door on her afternoons off, she always remembered how her father had scorned this house, which the Van Alans had bought in the early days, when he was only an ambitious junior draftsman at McKim, Mead & White. He hadn’t liked its narrow proportions, or its cheap construction, or the muddy brown stone of its façade. When the Pratt mansion was finished, he told Olive, he would buy them a beautiful wide house on the other side of Fourth, the right side of Fourth, made of noble white limestone with a proper garden in back. The commissions would come pouring in, once the Pratts’ wealthy friends saw the beauty of the Pratts’ new home, and they would have an upstairs and a downstairs maid, a trained cook and housekeeper, and even their own carriage. The Van Alans would take their place—this was her father’s dream—among the very society that employed him.

  A dream, of course, that would never be realized, and to Olive, returning week after week from the glory of the Pratt mansion, the color of the brown stones had become the exact shade of disappointment. The very sight of them, as she turned the corner, would turn her legs into lead. One by one, she would trudge up the steps, as she might drag her way into prison.

  But today, Christmas Day, Olive didn’t trudge up the front steps. She bounded. Her heart swooped along for the ride. She was too sore and exhausted and exhilarated to notice the ugly brown color of the wall before her. As she dropped the knocker against the door, and as the noise beat against her ears, she thought for the first time that perhaps her father’s dream had always been impossible. That you couldn’t really enter the hallowed halls just because you had designed them. And even if you could, you might perhaps find that this entrée wasn’t going to make you happy after all. That it wasn’t the beauty of the house itself, but the beauty of what lay inside.

  The beauty of who lay inside.

  A year after Mr. Van Alan’s death, there was no downstairs maid to open the door on Christmas Day: only Olive’s mother, groomed to her painstaking best in what had once been a fashionable gown of burgundy velvet.

  “Merry Christmas!” Olive said, leaning forward to press a cheerful kiss on her mother’s cheek. She did this mostly to disguise the flush that overcame her own skin at the sight of that familiar maternal face; her mother had always seen right through Olive’s angelic expression to guess at the transgressions that lay beneath.

  Transgressions that now seemed absurdly trivial, compared to what Olive had done last night.

  “Why, Merry Christmas, darling,” Mrs. Van Alan said, a little surprised. “Come into the parlor. It’s so awfully cold outside. I’ve built up the fire, nice and hot.”

  If this was nice and hot, Olive thought, then what had the fire been like before Mrs. Van Alan built it up? She unwound her muffler and shrugged out of her wool coat and decided that it must be her imagination, how the ruby underneath her plain gray dress seemed to glow against her chest. Before her mother took the coat away, Olive reached into the pocket. “Here. They gave us each a little Christmas present.”

  Mrs. Van Alan looked down at the money in Olive’s palm. “Ten dollars?” she breathed.

  “Take it. I don’t have anything to spend it on, anyway.”

  Her mother looked at her in wonder, hesitating, and then went to the small walnut desk in the corner, which was populated by Mrs. Van Alan’s beloved china shepherdesses in various pastoral attitudes, along with a few pensive sheep, contemplating a woolly escape (or so Olive had always imagined). She unlocked one of the drawers and tucked the ten-dollar bill inside a leather purse, all without a single word. Just a kind of heartbroken gratitude in her posture, the declining angle of her neck, as if she were too embarrassed to express her thanks.

  Olive stared at that vulnerable white nape, bent in humiliation, and a little of the euphoria ebbed away.

  Mrs. Van Alan turned from the desk and straightened her woolen shawl around her shoulders. “Did you have a nice Christmas Eve?” she asked, with false brightness.

  “Christmas Eve? Oh, yes. Thank you.”

  “They didn’t make you work too late, I hope?”

  “Work? No.”

  “Because you don’t quite look yourself.” Mrs. Van Alan stepped forward—it was not a large parlor—and took Olive’s hand between hers. “You’re not sick, are you? They’re not cruel to you?”

  “No, no.” Olive looked away, to the collection of framed photographs on the mantel. Her father’s was the largest, right in the center, looking impossibly youthful and handsome in his pressed black suit and neat beard. He had always seemed young for his age, had always bristled with energy and enthusiasm. You could detect his charisma even in the sepia dimensions of the photograph. A bit like Harry that way, wasn’t he? Even the memory of him could draw Olive’s adoration from between her ribs.
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br />   Mrs. Van Alan put her hand to Olive’s forehead. “You’re flushed. You don’t have a fever, do you?”

  “Of course not!” Olive stepped away. “I was just walking briskly, that’s all. I didn’t want to waste a moment.”

  Her mother didn’t reply, and Olive had the queer sensation that that quiet brown gaze was settling on her skin, sinking beneath her surface, rooting out the truth that lay inside.

  That Olive was in love.

  That Olive—shameless, glorious Olive—had lain with her love in the early hours of Christmas morning.

  That she felt him still upon the hollows of her body, upon every patch of skin, in every nodule. As if she now carried him inside her.

  The old story, a maid and her master. But it hadn’t been like that, had it? No, it was Olive who had kissed Harry first, Olive who had placed Harry’s hand on her warm breast. She was not an ignoramus. She had once had all her father’s books at her command, even the ones not intended for young ladies; she knew what was about to happen. She had known it would hurt—and it had—but she had also known that there would be pleasure: that she could give Harry pleasure and he could give it to her in return, and that she might never have this chance again. She might live a hundred years and never again connect with a human being in this perfectly primitive way, this way she could connect with Harry. As if they understood each other better without the interference of language.

  So she had gathered up all her bravery and placed Harry’s hands on her skin, and when he had asked her if she was absolutely certain, she whispered back that she absolutely was. She had braced herself for the brutal moment, but he hadn’t been brutal at all, only tender and grateful and enamored, and he had held her so close afterward, she thought that their veins were clicking in the exact same rhythm, that they had actually achieved the kind of union that would make them immortal.

  Then she didn’t think anything at all, until Harry kissed her awake just before dawn and helped her wash and dress. His chest was still bare, and she had put her hands on him in amazement. He had laughed softly and smoothed her hair and told her not to be shy, that she could touch him all she liked. He belonged to her now, like Adam belonged to Eve.

  Then she had stolen back down to her cold bed in the nunnery, trying to encompass this thought. Trying to comprehend what she had just done. This trespass she had just committed, this sin that felt like the opposite of sin.

  “He would be so dismayed to see you now,” said Mrs. Van Alan.

  Olive snapped her gaze back to her mother. “Dismayed?”

  Mrs. Van Alan was looking at the photograph. “Yes. To see you as a servant to that family, at their beck and call. Serving their needs.”

  Was it Olive’s imagination, or was there a certain inflection in the words Serving their needs?

  “Only to find justice for Papa,” Olive said.

  “He would want that least of all.” Mrs. Van Alan shook her head, making her earbobs jingle against the dark waves of her hair, which were gathered into the same gentle knot Olive had known all her life. “He would want you to find a better life. A husband and a family of your own.”

  “And if that’s not what I want?” Olive said defiantly, conscious all at once of her undergarments, which seemed to chafe on the sensitive skin between her legs in an entirely new way this morning.

  “Olive! Don’t say things like that. You don’t mean them.”

  “But I do mean them. I want to be free. I want to be independent and able to choose whom to love—”

  “Olive!”

  Her name bounced around the room, rattling the china, making the rows of sheep and shepherdesses shiver in shock. Olive planted her feet in the middle of the worn rug and returned her mother’s horrified gaze with too much sternness. But she didn’t feel stern. She felt as she had last night: as if she were finally telling the truth. Throwing off shackles. Contemplating the impossible.

  What if she did follow Harry to Europe? What if they did live in Florence together, laughing at convention, repeating that strange and wonderful act as often as they liked, while the Italian sunshine poured down upon them like a benediction?

  Italy. Where no one knew who she was. Where Harry might never find out how she came to live on Sixty-ninth Street.

  “A parcel arrived for you yesterday,” said Mrs. Van Alan.

  “A parcel!” Olive’s heart leapt.

  Her mother turned back to the desk, and for the first time Olive noticed a small package resting among the china shepherdesses, wrapped in brown paper. “It’s from Mr. Jungmann.”

  “Mr. Jungmann,” Olive repeated. Her heart settled right back into its ordinary place. “The grocer, you mean?”

  “Such a nice man. Do you remember how you introduced us after church, last month? He’s been so kind. He calls on me every week, to see if there’s anything he can do for me. He fixed that stopped drain in the kitchen a few days ago. There’s something to be said for a fellow who’s good with his hands, don’t you think?” She handed the package to Olive. “I think he’s rather handsome.”

  Olive stared dumbly at the brown box in her hands and tried to remember seeing Mr. Jungmann at church. Well, it was possible, wasn’t it? She and her mother always met for the nine o’clock service at the Church of the Resurrection, right after the Pratts had bundled off for fashionable St. James’ on Madison Avenue. “I—I suppose so.”

  “Well, open it.”

  Now she remembered. She had been a little surprised to see Mr. Jungmann there, because she hadn’t noticed him among the congregation before. He had been friendly and red-faced and had greeted her mother with the reverence of an acolyte before the Virgin Mary. He had said many complimentary things about Olive and parted from them with a quaint and formal little bow. And then Olive had returned to her duties at the Pratt mansion and forgotten all about it.

  But Mr. Jungmann, apparently, had not.

  Olive slid the string free and loosened the paper, which had been folded in crisp brown angles around an oblong box.

  “Ooh, look at that,” said Mrs. Van Alan.

  “It’s a box, Mother.”

  “Dearest, the best things come in boxes. Go on, go on.”

  Olive opened the box and unfolded the tissue to reveal an ornate silver hairbrush, beautifully made, its bristles so white they disappeared against the wrapping. “I can’t accept this!” she gasped.

  “Gracious, Olive.” Her mother’s voice was slow with awe. “How beautiful!”

  “It’s too much! It’s—it’s far too intimate.” She set down the box as if it were scalding her. “Far too expensive. It’s improper.”

  Mrs. Van Alan snatched the box right back up and plucked the hairbrush from its nest of tissue. She laid it lovingly on her palm, turning it over, tracing the scrollwork with an admiring finger. “Don’t be a fool, Olive. He’s in love with you.”

  “But I don’t want him to be in love with me! I certainly never encouraged him. And I can’t possibly return his affection.”

  Mrs. Van Alan turned sharply. “And why not? Too good for him, are you?”

  “It’s not that—”

  “You do realize we are destitute, Olive? Destitute. Your father’s debts . . .” She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “The money from the boarders hardly covers the housekeeping. Every month I scrape and mend and make do. I’ve run out of credit at the butcher. I’ve had to sell off all my good clothes, all the silver, all the jewelry except my earbobs. The last thing I own from your father.” Her eyes glimmered. “I shall have to sell the house next, and live in some dirty tenement—”

  But Olive had stopped listening, because she had just taken notice of those earbobs in her mother’s ears, hanging from the tiny lobes as they always did on special occasions, at holidays and at church. They were made of rubies, a small round one at the top and a larger, teardrop-sha
ped stone dangling below, in a delicate and distinctive gold filigree setting.

  A stone exactly the same shape, inside exactly the same setting, as the ruby that now dangled between Olive’s breasts.

  Mrs. Van Alan produced tea and brandy cake, which Olive chewed dutifully in a mouth that seemed to have lost all sensation. She replied like an automaton to her mother’s questions, though she couldn’t remember, later, a single word they had exchanged. At half past three she glanced at the clock and said she had better be going. She needed to return to Sixty-ninth Street by four in order to start preparing the house for Christmas dinner.

  “Can’t you wait a few more minutes?” said Mrs. Van Alan. “Mr. Jungmann promised to stop by this afternoon.”

  “Then I should leave immediately.”

  Her mother’s soft and longing face turned hard. “Don’t be stupid, Olive. Just listen to you! You’re running off to serve Christmas dinner to the people who murdered your father, when—”

  “They did not murder Papa!” Olive shot back, and then, shocked by her own words: “Not all of them, anyway.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Van Alan fingered the edge of her plate—the second-best china, because the first had been sold off last spring. “Oh, I see. I see it now. You’re being drawn in, aren’t you? Seduced by their riches and glamour, just like your father was. So they can swallow you inside and digest you and spit you out again—”

  Olive rose from the table. “That’s not true!”

  “We have nothing, Olive. We are nothing, thanks to those—those evil people. You have this chance, this one chance, a kind and respectable man with a nice prosperous business—”

  “Where did you get those earbobs, Mother?”

  Mrs. Van Alan blinked and touched a finger to her right ear. “These? From your father, of course.”

  “I know, but when? When did you get them?”

  “Last Christmas.” The tears began to glisten again at the inner corners of her dark eyes. “He used the first installment from the Pratts to pay for them. Nothing left over for housekeeping, of course, oh, no. Your father never thought about the price of coal. Why buy coal when you could buy a beautiful—a thing of beauty—” Her voice faltered. She laid her hands in her lap and stared at the small and sizzling fire in the grate, a pitifully tiny pile of cheap bituminous lumps.