The Chaperone

by Laura Moriarty

  “We should get back,” she said amiably. “We’ll be boarding soon.”

  “Would you like a sip?” Louise tipped the bottle toward her.

  Cora shook her head. When they got to New York, there would be no more questions of previous acquaintance, and she would be in a better position to explain to Louise the hazards—to her person and to her reputation—of allowing a strange man to buy her anything. She was a child, Cora remembered. Innocent. Motherless, Viola had said. She probably longed for guidance. The girl had gone to Sunday school, and by her own volition, for goodness’ sakes. She simply needed attention and instruction. As soon as they got on the train, Cora planned to provide her with both.

  She said goodbye to Alan on the platform. The sky was too bright for her to look up at him, so she gazed at her hands, held in his. They’d spent time apart before. When the boys were small, she’d taken them to visit his sister and her children in Lawrence while he stayed in Wichita to work. But she’d never been gone for over a month. And she’d never gone so far.

  “Your trunk was checked,” he said. “It should be delivered the night you arrive. But you’ll let me know if you need anything.” He spoke in a low voice, perhaps not wanting to imply to Leonard Brooks that there might be some need he had overlooked. “Don’t hesitate,” he added. “Anything at all.”

  She nodded, and, sensing his face moving down and toward her, held up her cheek for him to kiss. Over his shoulder, she saw Louise brazenly watching, her hand flat under the straight bangs. Their eyes met. The girl’s eyes narrowed. Cora looked away.

  “Now I want you to mind Mrs. Carlisle,” Leonard Brooks was saying, primarily to Louise, but loud enough for Cora and Alan to hear. He bobbed forward on his toes, his thumbs hooked on his suspenders. In heels, his daughter was taller than he was. “I trust I’ll only get reports of your hard work and good behavior.”

  Louise lowered her head and gazed down at him, holding her small travel bag behind her back. “You will, Daddy. I promise.” She could look so youthful, Cora thought, so girlish. But only sometimes. And the trick seemed to be in her command.

  Her father wiped his brow, squinting past her to the waiting train. “With what that school is charging, I expect that when you come back, you’ll be the best dancer in Wichita.”

  Cora and Alan smiled. But Louise only looked at him and blinked. She appeared momentarily at a loss for words, wounded even, her beautiful pout pronounced. She aged before Cora’s eyes, her gaze wizened as she lowered her chin.

  “Don’t be stupid. I already am.”

  She softened the words, as much as they could be softened, with an afterthought of a smile. To Cora’s surprise, Leonard Brooks seemed only amused at his daughter’s condescension. Either that, or he couldn’t be bothered to give what seemed the necessary reprimand. Cora herself would have put a check on such rudeness. But it wasn’t her place. Not yet.

  Of course in just a few years, Cora would better understand Louise’s annoyance with her father’s ignorance: being the best dancer in Wichita was hardly the end of her ambition. In just a few years, they would be reading about her in magazines, about her films, about her wild social life. She would receive over two thousand pieces of fan mail a week, and women all over the country would be trying to copy her hair. Before the decade was out, she would be famous on two continents. By then, if Leonard Brooks wanted to see his eldest daughter dance and dazzle, he would have to pay at a theater like everyone else, and gaze up at a thirty-foot screen.

  On the train, they had their own open section, Cora’s double seat facing Louise’s. The windows had drawn curtains made of the same maroon velvet as the seats, and overhead, they each had a small reading lamp. They wouldn’t need berths until they got to Chicago, so no partitions separated the sections. Normally, Cora liked the openness of day cars, but on this particular trip, she felt wary. Before they even left the station, a man from across the aisle, who appeared about Cora’s age, asked if he could help lower their top window. The man had not, Cora noticed, offered to lower the window of the two elderly women in the section directly behind them—and he addressed Louise directly. Cora quickly answered for her: telling him she would let him know if and when their window needed lowering. Her tone was polite but firm, and her real message was clear: she was the guard at the gate.

  If Louise was distressed by her sequestering, she didn’t show it. The brightness of her face seemed both irrepressible and general, directed at no one in particular. No matter where she looked—at the ceiling of the car, at the other passengers, at her view from the trestle over Douglas Avenue—her glee was obvious, and, it seemed, as private as if she were alone. She did not speak to Cora, but as the gears of the train whinnied and clicked, she smiled, her fingers drumming on her lap. She tapped her toes. When the whistle finally blew and the train lurched forward, she tilted her chin up, closed her eyes, and exhaled with a sigh.

  “It is exciting,” Cora ventured. The boys had loved train trips when they were small, and even when they were older. They’d both insisted on sitting by the window, watching for puffs of steam, and for years, it seemed, on every journey, she’d had to ask the conductor if they could visit the engine.

  “Is it ever!” Louise rewarded her with a dazzling smile before turning back to the glass. Cora breathed in cigarette smoke and the scent of talcum powder. Diagonally across the aisle, a baby cried in its mother’s arms. The mother was trying to comfort the child with coos and kisses, and when her efforts failed, she turned and gave her neighbors an apologetic look. Cora caught her eye and smiled.

  “Goodbye, Wichita!” Louise waved down at Douglas Avenue, the busy stream of dark cars disappearing under the trestle. “Wish I could say I’ll miss you! But I don’t think I will!”

  Cora started to reach for her arm. Certainly some of their fellow passengers were from Wichita, and hadn’t yet forsaken their home. There was no need to offend. But the warning was unnecessary. Louise was finished saying goodbye. Even as they rolled by and away from the streets of her childhood, the square brick buildings and one-story homes, the treed parks and church steeples, she showed no interest in the view. Instead, she opened her bag and pulled out her reading material, of which Cora took sly and quick inventory: the July issue of Harper’s Bazaar, the June issue of Vanity Fair, and a book entitled The Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Before they were out of the city, the paved streets giving way to dirt roads and fields, Louise appeared immersed in the book. Occasionally, she set it open in her lap, using a blue-ink pen to underline something or mark the pages. But usually, the book was a wall in front of her face. Its cover was a dreary brown.

  Fine, Cora thought. She didn’t need the girl to be social. She’d come prepared with her own reading, which she now took out of her bag. Perhaps she didn’t keep all sorts of books lying around her parlor, but she enjoyed a good story as much as anyone. For this trip, she’d brought a Ladies’ Home Journal and the new novel by Edith Wharton. Normally, she might have stuck with her preferred indulgence, something by Temple Bailey, who could be counted on to deliver satisfying tales of plucky heroines outwitting painted vamps and bringing wayward husbands back into the fold. But for this trip, understanding that whatever title she chose would fall under the girl’s critical gaze, and would no doubt be reported back to Myra, Cora had gone to the bookstore and purchased The Age of Innocence, which, although it was written by a woman, had just won the Pulitzer Prize, and therefore seemed beyond reproach from even the worst kind of snob. It was also set in New York City, and though it was set in the previous century, Cora thought it would be interesting to read about the very place that they were headed, to picture long-dead characters walking the very streets that would soon be under her feet. She liked the story so far. And the historical details were lovely, all those carriages and sweeping gowns. Even as the train rumbled through open fields, and the air in the car grew warm with the rising sun, Cora turned the pages easily, feeling virtuous and smart.

  “What
are you reading?”

  She looked up. Louise was staring at her, her own book in her lap. The black hair, even in the heat, was as smooth as glass.

  “Just this.” Cora held her place with her finger and showed the girl the cover. The sky was brighter now. She adjusted the brim of her hat.

  “Oh.” Louise wrinkled her nose. “I read that. So did Mother.”

  “You didn’t like it?” Cora asked, though the answer was already clear from the girl’s expression. The only question was whether Louise and Myra had agreed on the matter. Cora suspected they had.

  “The House of Mirth was better. But in general, historical fiction bores me.” There was a hint of apology in the girl’s voice, just enough to vex. “Everything is so stuffy. All those ridiculous rules and manners about who gets invited to a party, and who can be seen with whom.” She reached into her bag and took out a pack of chewing gum. “It’s just tedious and fake. I couldn’t care about it.”

  “It won the Pulitzer.”

  “And that hero, if that’s what you want to call him. He turns out to be so pathetic, such a coward.” She slipped a piece of gum in her mouth and offered another to Cora, who refused. “He’s in love with the Countess Olenska, the only authentic woman in the book. But she’s out of bounds just because she’s been divorced? What bunk. And then he marries that boring, dumb May Welland and feels so noble for it. He’s an idiot. He deserves his misery. But I don’t know that he deserves a book.”

  Cora looked down at the book. In love with the Countess Olenska? A divorced woman? Cora hadn’t expected that. In lust with, yes. Perhaps the girl misunderstood. Perhaps she didn’t yet know the difference.

  “Oh.” Louise, childlike again, put her fingers to her lips. “Did I ruin it for you? Sorry.”

  “Not at all,” Cora said. “I read for the language, not the story.” She’d heard someone say that once, and now seemed a good time to repeat it. She gazed out the window, the girl’s black hair in her peripheral vision. Outside, the prairie looked hot and windless. A herd of Angus stood knee-deep in a muddied pond, most of them clustered under the shade of a lone willow. The train would probably go by the old farm, not right by it, but close. She remembered lying in bed at night, in perfect darkness, listening for the whistles.

  “Your husband is handsome.”

  Cora looked at her, surprised. “Oh. Yes. Thank you.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Pardon?”

  “How old is he?”

  “He’s forty-eight.”

  “A lot older than you.”

  “Not so much,” Cora said. She wasn’t sure if she was being flattered.

  “My father is almost twenty years older than my mother. He’s as old as her father.”

  “Oh.” Cora smiled. “Well. That’s not unusual. Often when the man is older, it makes for a good match.”

  The girl stared at Cora as if she had said something wise and not generally known.

  “Dear? Are you all right?”

  She nodded, a strand of black catching on her cheek. “Yeah.” She gazed at her own hands in her lap. And then, as if forcibly breaking a spell, she blinked, looking up. “My mother regrets it. Marrying him, I mean.”

  Cora drew in a quick breath. “You shouldn’t tell me that. It isn’t my business.” She looked away, to show she meant it.

  “She wouldn’t care. It’s not personal. Nothing against him. Or us. She just doesn’t like her life. She didn’t want to get married, but her father made her because my father had money. She didn’t want children, either.”

  Cora looked back at her. “Who told you that?”

  “She did. And she told him, back when they got married. She said if he really wanted to get married, fine, and if he wanted children, she would have them, but he would have to find someone else to take care of us.” Louise shrugged. “He didn’t.”

  Cora waited, wanting to choose her words carefully. Perhaps Myra had said this in a joking tone, the way some women did. Cora had never cared for that kind of humor. It wasn’t a funny thing to tell a child she wasn’t wanted. She thought of little June, wandering around the house.

  “I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”

  “She meant it.”

  Louise looked and sounded amused, which Cora didn’t understand. Such a statement by a mother must hurt. She shook her head. What a horrible woman Myra was. And how unfair the world.

  “Perhaps she felt that way for a time,” Cora said, giving Louise the kindest of looks. “But I’m certain she cherishes all you children now. She must understand her good fortune.”

  Louise frowned. “She didn’t say it in a mean way, if that’s what you think. I told you it’s not personal.” She looked at Cora coolly, leaning back in her seat. “It’s nothing against us. She had six little brothers and sisters, the ones who lived, I mean. Her mother was always sick, and she always had to take care of them. So even before she met my father, she was already tired of babies. I can’t blame her for that.”

  Cora was silent, chastened. She had not suspected Myra Brooks of a difficult upbringing.

  Louise held her gaze. “The only reason she knows how to read is because she’s so smart, because she loves books and music so much. She taught herself.” She lifted her chin. “She taught herself everything. And she knows far more than most people know.”

  Cora nodded, eager to concede this point. She’d not meant to make the girl defensive about her mother. She touched her hand to her left temple. The air in the car had gotten warmer.

  “Anyway.” Louise paused to pop her gum. “I’m never having a bunch of brats. Or even one. That’s for sure.”

  Cora smiled. “Well. You have plenty of time to change your mind.”

  “I won’t.”

  They rolled on in silence, Louise looking out the window, Cora staring into the aisle. It would be wise, she knew, to let this argument go, to let the girl think what she wanted. Time would tell. But she was irritated. There was something entitled in the girl’s voice, something proud and unthinking.

  “You’ll feel differently when you fall in love,” Cora said. “You may not think so now, but you might want to marry someday.”

  “Hmm.” Louise smiled and lifted her book. “Schopenhauer writes about marriage. He says getting married is like grasping blind into a sack of snakes and hoping to find an eel.”

  “Does he.” Cora gave the book a disparaging look.

  “Actually,” Louise said, lowering the book again, “I think I’d like to get married someday. I just don’t want children.”

  Cora almost laughed at the girl’s innocence. She didn’t yet understand about babies, and how they came through marriage, decided on or not. But then, looking into Louise’s eyes, she realized what the girl meant, what she was getting at, wasn’t innocent at all. Cora looked out the window, up at the sky, feigning interest in a blue-bottomed cloud. There wasn’t much else she could do. Just a few months earlier, Margaret Sanger had been arrested for publicly asking if birth control was moral. Obscene, she was called. And that was in New York, if Cora recalled correctly. In any case, Cora wasn’t about to attempt a similar discussion on a train in Kansas, not with anyone, thank you very much.

  Certainly not with an adolescent girl.

  When the conductor called out for Kansas City, Louise looked up from her book and bounced a little in her seat. “That means we crossed the state line.” She looked at Cora, and then at the rounded ceiling of the car, her hands pressed together in theatrical prayer. “I’m out of Kansas! Thank you, God! I actually made it out!”

  Cora looked out the window. Kansas City’s Union Station was like Wichita’s station grown stout, just as beautiful, but twice, or even three times, the size. That was how it was going to be, she realized. As they moved east, slow and steady, everything would get bigger.

  “You’ve been out of state before?” Louise gave her a friendly, inquisitive look.

  “No.” Cora leaned back against her seat. “I’ve
traveled around Kansas, but that’s all.” She smoothed her hair, and adjusted a pin in back, purposefully avoiding Louise’s reaction. She didn’t need to see it. She could imagine the look of disappointment, even disgust. It would be a worse crime than not knowing about Denishawn, Cora’s openly admitting the smallness of her life.

  The truth would have worked in her favor, impressing the girl, perhaps. But the old lie had moved easily through her lips—she’d told it so many times it felt true, even now, with the steady rumbling of the wheels on the track pulling up memories. She had been only a child on her other long trip, traveling with other children but also alone, headed west instead of east. She’d been hungry. Her seat, she remembered, had been hard wood, and the nights long and absolutely dark. But the sounds were the same, the whistles and the gears. So was the rocking feeling, which was what she remembered best. Then, as now, she’d been almost sick with both dread and longing, moving fast toward another world, and all she didn’t yet know.

  FOUR

  She didn’t recall what the building looked like. Perhaps she never saw it from the outside. But she remembered the roof, which was flat, and covered with gravel, and long enough that if a girl called out from one end on a windy day, a girl on the other end wouldn’t hear her. On every side was a beige-brick wall that was too high for Cora, or even the older girls, to see over, even when standing on a chair. Metal hooks stuck out of the walls, but they were not allowed to use them for climbing. If you tried and you were caught, woe to you, as the nuns liked to say. The hooks were for knotting the clotheslines, stretched taut across the roof. Pigeons, and sometimes seagulls, would land on the wall, give Cora their one-eyed stare, then turn and fly away.

  The older girls carried wet clothes up the stairs in baskets, each attached to a tag with the owner’s name. Cora and the other younger girls would pin them up, sometimes standing on chairs. She couldn’t read the names on the tags, but the nuns had shown them how to keep each basket at the head of each line, so the clothes wouldn’t get confused. All items had to be pinned with care as they belonged to paying customers. If the wind blew a pair of trousers or a skirt down into the gravel, it had to be washed again, and the older girls would get sore. They already worked hard enough. Most of them had scars on their hands and forearms, burns from flatirons or scalding water. Imogene, who was almost fourteen and nice, had let Cora touch the burn on the back of her hand. It didn’t hurt anymore, she said. The skin had healed over, a lopsided heart of brownish red, rough under Cora’s fingers.