The Way of Beauty

by Camille Di Maio

  She pulled away a bit and pointed toward her grandfather. “What happened? Where are they taking him?”

  “He collapsed. I was helping him to the restroom, and his knees gave out. He fell to the floor and hit his head against the table. They’re going to take him to the hospital—I’ll drive you over there.”

  She hadn’t been there. In chasing after Emmett, she’d neglected to be there for her grandfather. What if she could have helped him?

  “Alice.” He looked at her with concern. “It is not safe for him here. He needs medical help. He needs to be in a facility that is experienced in how to care for him.”

  She ran her hands through her hair. It had been coming for some time. But now that it was here, she couldn’t bear the thought of Opa being put away somewhere. Opa had been a constant presence, and she knew better than anyone how to coax lucidity out of him.

  She shook her head. “Mother won’t hear of it. And—and we just can’t.”

  Alice didn’t finish saying what was on her mind. Even if they ate beans every day and stopped buying paints and no longer gave to the causes they supported, they could not afford the expense. And she knew her mother never wanted to abandon him to the state again.

  William removed his wool overcoat and put it around her shoulders. He drew her into his arms once more and rested his head against hers as they watched the ambulance doors close on her grandfather.

  “My dear, you know that you don’t need to worry about such things. I’m going to take care of it all.”

  She didn’t protest. Being wrapped in William’s arms felt like a harbor in the storm surrounding her. She was too tired to think of what that might imply right now.

  “Where are Angelo and Vera?” he asked without moving.

  “She’s walking with him. It takes him much longer on crutches, you know.” She knew that they had only to say the word, and William would arrange for the finest prosthesis available to be made for him. But not one of them would have ever asked.

  “They love each other very much, don’t they?”

  She managed a smile, despite the circumstances. “Yes, they do. They really do.”

  Alice realized that William had not let go of her and she had not pulled away. And that he had not stuttered once.

  In this moment when she felt as if she had nothing to hold on to, she was being held up.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Here you go, Opa.”

  Alice put a pillow behind her grandfather’s head, taking care to avoid the white bandage that a nurse had just changed.

  “Danke, Aleit,” he said, and she was pleased to realize that he knew who she was.

  Thanks to William, her mother had been able to spend these past two weeks by Opa’s side. He’d offered to cover any losses she might have from requesting a leave of absence from her post at Macy’s.

  At first she refused, but he offered this explanation.

  “Zia Vera, you and I both know that he won’t be with us for much longer. You have this time, and time is precious. You gave me so much of yourself when I was a young boy, and I would like to do this small thing for you. It’s what families do.”

  Alice liked to spend evenings with Opa. She would finish a shift at the newsstand and bring a sketchbook and a novel until he fell asleep for the night.

  None of them had to do this. After Opa was released from the hospital, William arranged for him to be moved to his own Midtown apartment and hired round-the-clock nurses to see to his comfort. Opa’s bedroom was flooded with light in the daytime, and his bedcovers felt like real silk. They probably were. He slept well, ate well, though the head injury had weakened him beyond what they expected him to recover from.

  Two weeks in, Opa’s breathing became particularly labored. A bedroom was made up just next to him for Vera and Alice to use. Vera liked to go home to Angelo, but Alice noticed that Opa slept better when she was near.

  Sometime in the night, Alice fell asleep on the window seat and woke to feel William sit down next to her. Lincoln sat at her feet, which had become his permanent spot. Seeing the little pup every day gladdened her in these sorrowful times.

  “Shh, shh,” William said when she stirred. She rubbed her neck, which felt stiff after the awkward way she’d been sitting. “I just came to switch places with you if you wanted to go to your bed.”

  She stretched her arms out. Her bed sounded great. It was a feather bed, soft enough to sink into, with down blankets that were like heaven.

  “That’s very kind, but he seems to know when I’m not here. I’d like to stay a bit longer, at least.”

  “Do you mind if I stay with you?”

  It was lonely sitting here with Opa. William’s company would be welcome.

  “I would like that.”

  He walked over to the closet and brought out yet another blanket like the one in her room. My goodness, had he taken stock in whatever manufacturer made these? Or were they as standard to rich people as dish towels were in her kitchen?

  He laid it across her knees, and as he did so, he noticed her open sketchbook.

  “May I?” he asked, touching its cover.

  She nodded.

  William flipped through the first few pages, on which she’d drawn places around New York that she’d committed to memory. First, one of the eagles. She was proud of the way that one had turned out. Just the right shading so that each feather on its chest was distinct. The eyes had been difficult—at first her attempts had made it look angry. But she’d erased it enough to thin the paper in that spot until she was happy with the results.

  Others were redraws of places she’d been with Emmett. Not all were locations. One was a lone trunk, with all the items they’d found in the luggage room. She practiced rubbing the lead and varying the pressure of the pencil to perfect the details. It wasn’t finished, but it was on its way.

  The final one was her attempt at a portrait. Emmett. Thoughts of him competed with her concern for Opa, but when she realized that all her worry was not going to bring him back from whatever had happened to him, she acknowledged her helplessness and focused her thoughts on her grandfather. At least her presence here did some good.

  As time went on, though, she began to accept that Emmett might be gone forever. She could wallow in thoughts about who he might be and what might have happened to him. Or she could move on with her life. She had so much. A family who loved her.

  A man like William.

  William’s gaze lingered on this last sketch. Alice hoped he didn’t recognize it. Faces were a challenge for her, as proven by all the work she’d done on the eagle. In truth, it looked nothing like Emmett, and she’d felt too spent to correct it, preferring to preserve all her memories in her heart rather than in this poor rendition.

  She must have conveyed something of her feelings on paper, though, because William said, “Emmett?”

  His voice was low at this word, and she hung her head, feeling bad about accepting all this generosity on behalf of her family when her heart had been laid open for all of them to know about that night at Emmett’s apartment.

  “Do you love him?”

  She shrugged. Then nodded.

  Why had Emmett never contacted her? With what they had shared, either it had all been a pretense, or . . . he was gone forever.

  This simple gesture was the most she’d acknowledged about him in all these weeks, and it pricked her resolve like a pin to a balloon. Suddenly the tears that she’d held back flowed. A trickle at first and then an unleashed flood, enough to make her catch her breath loudly. William sat next to her and pulled her into his arms as he had that night Opa went to the hospital.

  As she had then, she felt so secure there. She thought again that William just fit like something that was always meant to be. How could she put into words that Emmett was a dear and wonderful and terrible chapter of her life? But also that she was ready to turn that page? To turn to William.

  She let herself rest against his chest until all th
e tears were spent. All the while, he said nothing. He just held her and stroked her hair.

  They must have sat there for half an hour. She didn’t look up at him, just remained curled up, staring at the way the moonlight shone through the window. William stood after that and guided her to her feet.

  “I think you should go now. Look. He’s breathing calmly. Let me stay here with him so you get some sleep. I promise I’ll wake you if he stirs.”

  He walked her to the door, and as he opened the one that led to her room, she had the fleeting thought that it would be nice to be kissed right now. A gentle kiss. Gentle but strong, just like William.

  Her dreams became confused, alternating with nightmares of what might have happened to Emmett, taking on a strangeness that included grizzly bears in a forest to falling off the Ferris wheel at Coney Island. Other nights she thought she felt William slide into the bed next to her, under those magnificent blankets, and hold her all night.

  But she woke up alone, knowing that she had imagined it all.

  The next few nights passed similarly, with William finding her on the window seat and helping her up and promising to get her if Opa needed her. The only difference was that there were no tears. And that each time he closed the door behind her, her desire for him to kiss her grew stronger.

  On the fifth night of this new routine, a gentle knock at her bedroom door woke her hours after William had come to sit with Opa. The door cracked open, letting in a little light. William was silhouetted in it, and she thought that perhaps he was going to join her after all.

  “Alice,” he whispered, never passing the threshold. “I’m sorry to wake you, but you’d better come.”

  She jolted up. Opa. She’d changed into a nightgown and now slipped on the robe at the foot of the bed. She tied the sash around her waist and hurried into the other room.

  Opa was restless and coughing. She sat next to him and stroked his liver-spotted hands until he settled. She helped him turn to his side, which had sometimes helped in the past.

  It took longer than usual, but he fell asleep once again.

  She stood up and found that William had not sat the whole time. His arms were crossed as he watched the scene.

  She walked over next to him.

  “It won’t be much longer, will it?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’m so sorry.” His voice became deeper. Quieter. “Alice.”

  She turned to him, his face less illuminated than it had been when the moon was full days ago. But she saw in the shadows of his face a longing that she’d known had been there all along. And her own for him, which had remained dormant among bigger, wilder, more passionate ones, began to bud.

  “William.”

  She faced him now, willing for him to unfold his arms and pull her into them.

  “I—” he started.

  “Yes?”

  “I love you, Alice.”

  Her heart began to beat faster. It ached like one who had been harnessed and was only now being released. This felt like the kind of love that her parents shared. The kind that could span years.

  The kind she realized she wanted.

  “William,” she said as she lifted her head to his. “I love you, too.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  1943 and on

  William and Alice were married the following month, and Opa died three weeks after that in as much comfort as possible. William had been a rock to them all, an eagle all his own. Alice recalled that there were twenty-two of the granite statues around Penn Station. Not just the one that looked into their window. Perhaps there were as many kinds of ways to show love, to receive it. Emmett had shown her one that was complicated and passionate. William demonstrated one of simplicity and warmth. With Emmett she felt fiery things that consumed her. With William she felt the peace of gentle waters that calmed her.

  Yes, twenty-two eagles. At least that many ways to love.

  Angelo and Vera could hardly contain their joy. William invited them to join them in the beautiful white town house he’d purchased for his bride on Fifth Avenue. But both loved their little apartment on Thirty-Third Street and refused nearly every bit of help that he tried to offer.

  With the exception of the prosthesis. His quiet voice rose above their protests in that they ceased arguing and allowed him to do this one thing. And it was a miracle. After several poor fittings, Angelo now had one that worked so well that he didn’t even limp when he had it on. His new mobility inspired him to expand the newsstand to twice its size and productivity.

  William encouraged Vera to leave her place at Macy’s and helped her find one at an all-girls’ school, where she could teach art lessons. What she did not know was that the school required all their teachers to have graduated from college, but a sizable donation from the Pilkingtons allowed this particular rule to be overlooked. And in time, the faculty was so impressed with Vera’s natural gift with both paints and students that no one even remembered that she wasn’t formally trained.

  Alice, however, did receive her degree. After their daughter, Libby, was born, William insisted that twice a week she allow a nanny to take over so that she could attend classes. It took nearly a decade, but she graduated with honors after completing her thesis on historical architecture.

  Her subject was Penn Station.

  She covered the story of Alexander Cassatt’s inspiration to build tunnels that connected New Jersey to New York. The stories of the demolition of the Tenderloin. Her parents supplied her with an endless number of anecdotes about that time. And while their kinds of memories were not the sort that would fit naturally into a research paper, they did provide hours of conversation around the dinner table.

  Alice did not write about watching soldiers kiss their girlfriends as they went off to war, nor about the room that housed the lost luggage. They were not pertinent to her focused analysis of the construction of the station, but more than that, they were memories that she held close to her heart and never spoke of.

  The best information that the policemen were ever able to relay to her was that Emmett Fischer seemed to be an immigrant whose father was German and mother was Jewish. There was some reliable information that pointed to his father’s death of unknown causes, and while nothing was known of the mother, it was likely that she’d been sent to a concentration camp. Alice hired a private investigator to follow up on some of these leads, and he reported that neighbors of the Fischers said that Emmett’s father had claimed to be Jewish so as not to be separated from his wife when she was taken away. Emmett was able to escape, and they assumed he’d succeeded in the plan he’d laid out for himself—to use his father’s passport, which showed a striking resemblance, and flee to the United States. They had not heard from him since.

  As to what happened after that awful day in the apartment, the police believed that Emmett was not part of any official movement but may have used his Aryan looks to ingratiate himself in some of the Nazi circles that did meet in New York in the hopes of discovering something that might be helpful to the Allies.

  At that point, they laughed at the notion that a young man could have aspired to be useful in that way, but Alice knew better. He’d found something that must have been important or they wouldn’t have taken him. Whatever the letters were—she would never know—someone had wanted to stop them from being seen.

  1959

  Vera liked to say that Libby was Pearl’s revenge on all of them.

  She said so with a smile. Pearl’s name might as well have been mentioned right next to God’s, considering the admiration with which they all spoke of her. But where Angelo, Vera, William, and Alice were all shades of agreeable, Libby had inherited Pearl’s feisty nature.

  Ever-new opportunities for women encouraged voices that were increasingly fearless. It was never a question that Libby would go to college or that she would study nearly anything she wanted. She looked forward to voting in the upcoming election, but she treated it as a matter of routine, since
women had been doing so for nearly four decades.

  Perhaps that was the victory. Not that these things were possible. But that they were commonplace.

  But there was still a long way to go. When Alice graduated from college, she’d found few doors available in the men’s world of architecture. She always applied for jobs as Alice Bellavia, as she wanted to be accepted on the merits of her ideas. But twelve interviews later, she had to accept that some boys’ clubs just weren’t ready yet. So she put her visions into motion without them. She and William spent weekends driving around the city finding abandoned properties. They’d measure the spaces, make anonymous offers to owners, and to date had converted seventeen properties into functional, beautiful places that she sold for a profit.

  But Libby was going to be another matter. She was wild for Elvis Presley, not merely for his good looks and famous hips but for his innovation. Like many teenagers of her era, she liked everything that was new, new, new. William and Alice regularly invited her to join them on their drives, but she had no interest in buildings full of spiderwebs.

  Alice reminded William that this was the very thing his mother had fought for—to pave the way for young women like Libby to have their own ideas about things.

  Though Alice was Libby’s champion at every turn, their relationship was not without contention. Their latest disagreement was over an invitation to spend the summer in Nantucket with the family of one of her school friends.

  “You’re quite right to hold your ground on this, dear,” Vera said as she and Alice drank their coffee in the atrium of the apartment. Vera had come over early, since they had plans to tour the botanical gardens today. Vera wanted to paint the irises that had just been planted, and Alice was writing an article for National Geographic about Lord and Burnham, its architects. “It’s simpler to be poor,” her mother said. “One doesn’t have friends who have houses on Nantucket, and one knows that they will spend their summer working.”

  “You’re not poor, Mama,” Alice said as she poured the cream for both of them.