The Chaperone

by Laura Moriarty

  “I’m worried about you,” Cora said.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Not that, Louise. I’m worried about you.”

  She didn’t say it to get the last word, but it was the one time she got it. Louise only managed a low laugh before she turned and retreated from the room.

  They were mostly quiet on the way to class. Louise walked with surprising competence, even in heels, her overnight bag swinging from her shoulder. But she did yield to Cora’s suggestion that they stop and buy a bottle of aspirin, as well as an apple to put in her bag. By the time they descended the staircase to the studio, she gave no sign that she was feeling the effects of anything but a good night’s sleep. She smiled at Ted Shawn and gave St. Denis a cheerful good morning as she came out of the changing room. Still, Cora lingered for a while, watching the warm-up from the metal chair in the corner. Any worries she had quickly disappeared: Louise’s movements were as elegant and precise as ever, and when she finally glanced over at Cora’s reflection in the big mirror, it was with a look of annoyance, or perhaps something harsher. Cora, seeing her vigil was unwelcome, made her way to the door.

  The walk back to the apartment felt particularly long and hot. As soon as she got upstairs, she ran a bath. Her hair didn’t need washing, but once she was in the tub, she let her head slip under the lukewarm water, her curls fanning out around her head, weightless. Finally alone, she let herself cry. Her hand moved up to the back of her neck, her fingers tracing her hairline. She would be going home soon, in just a few days, returning to her real life. And what had she accomplished? Nothing with Louise. And nothing with herself. She’d come here with the hope that finding her mother or father, or just finding out about them, would somehow make her more content, or show her how she might strive to be. She’d always assumed that this first, unremembered loss, even before she was sent out on the train, was the root of her unhappiness. But perhaps she was no different from anyone who’d grown up with their real parents, with brothers and sisters and a shared last name. Perhaps her orphan status was just an excuse. For now she knew her mother’s name and her father’s name, knew all she needed to know, and she didn’t feel any different.

  She’d been so envious of Louise.

  Out of the tub, her hair still dripping wet, she closed the bedroom curtain and turned on the electric fan, not just for its coolness but for its drone that would quiet the sounds coming in through the open window, the gunning motors and backfires in the street. She lay down, water-cooled and naked under the sheet, and tried in earnest to calm her mind. She needed to sleep, to make up for all the hours she’d missed that morning, and so she tried to think of her wraparound porch in Wichita. In just one week, she would be sitting in the front porch swing with Alan, drinking lemonade and looking at the big oak in the yard, and waving to neighbors walking or driving by. She would do as she had always done, and go back to the life she knew. But even as she tried to keep Wichita in her mind, even as she pretended the breeze from the fan was a cool autumn wind moving through her own front yard, her eyes, for some time, remained open, staring up at the low ceiling with the expression of someone still stunned.

  When she finally slept, she slept long. She woke with hair dry as yarn, most of it matted between her head and her pillow. And she was hungry. Very hungry. She squinted at her watch and gasped, jumping out of bed. She was half dressed before she realized she wasn’t late for anything. Louise was on her way to Philadelphia, accounted for until tomorrow afternoon.

  She sat back on the bed, pulling her fingers through the tangles at the back of her neck. She had this night to herself, to do whatever she liked. For now, she would need to eat.

  A half hour later, she was sitting at the counter of the luncheonette, waiting for Floyd Smithers to acknowledge her presence. She knew he was just pretending not to see her there; it wasn’t yet the dinner hour, and only three other diners, an older couple and a businessman, were seated at the counter. Floyd moved back and forth between them, offering refills on coffee and clean ashtrays. Cora waited, patient, looking down at the menu, though by now she was more than hungry; she was so ravenous she couldn’t think.

  “May I help you?” he finally asked, standing in front of her. His face held no trace of a smile.

  “Floyd.” She put down her menu and leaned a little over the counter.

  He looked over her head, scanning the restaurant. “Look,” he whispered, only glancing at her. “Please don’t make trouble for me here. I’m sorry, okay? Believe me, I’m sorry. And I know you’re sore. I know.”

  She saw then how tired he was, the skin beneath his eyes lavender. It had been a long night for him as well.

  “I don’t want to make trouble,” she said quietly. “I just want to tell you.” She glanced over each shoulder. The older couple was laughing about something between them, something private. No one was listening. No one cared. “I just want to tell you,” she tried again, “that Louise told me you didn’t… that nothing happened.” She could feel her cheeks heating up. “I was too hard on you. A little. I mean, you knew she was young. You shouldn’t have had her sneak out and meet you like that.” She met his gaze, taking in his long lashes, the faint sprinkle of freckles across his nose. “But thank you for getting her home.”

  She’d surprised him. That was all she could tell, looking up at his face, his young forehead creased as he took her in. The bell from the window to the kitchen rang, and he turned to pick up the order. Cora again looked down at the menu, her gaze lingering on a detailed description of something called The Mega-Sandwich. Thin slices of roast beef. Swiss cheese. Special blend of herbs and spices. Freshly baked bread.

  Floyd reappeared before her, his expression somewhat softened.

  “Just so you know,” he whispered, “I didn’t want the night to go like that.” He tapped his writing pad on the edge of the counter, exhaling through his teeth. “I thought I would take her someplace grown-up, you know? Impress her? Well, I played the dope. I sure did. Second I get her in, she treats me like a kid brother. She’s going off and talking to other guys, some of them, you know, pretty rough-looking. Way older than me, for your information, and I couldn’t get her to leave. I couldn’t get her to listen to me. I put my hand on her arm and she about bites it off. I didn’t know what to do.” He blinked slowly, tiredly. “I’ve never seen a girl drink like that.”

  Cora wanted to reach up and pat his head, the way she might do with one of her own boys after they had confided some heartbreak. She could imagine the scene at the speakeasy, the change in Louise once she’d gained entry, and Floyd’s rising panic as he realized what he’d gotten himself into. He was older than Louise, but just all of nineteen, maybe twenty. An appealing and decent young man. Louise was, in her words, a little much for him. And yet he’d waited, maybe for hours, to make sure that she got home.

  “I just wanted to get to know her.” He frowned, rubbing a dishcloth along the counter. “And you weren’t going to let that happen. You weren’t going to let me take her out. I knew that. She’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. I’ve been standing here waiting for you two to come in every day, thinking about her all the time. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Cora nodded. He was right. She wouldn’t have ever let him take Louise out. So he’d gone and managed it the only way he could.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry about everything, the whole mess. And I’m grateful that you’re a nice young man.” She paused as long as she could. “And I’d like a Mega-Sandwich, please.”

  His dishtowel went still. “What?”

  “A Mega-Sandwich.” She pointed to the description on the menu. “And a glass of milk, please.”

  He looked at her oddly. She didn’t care. She’d said she was sorry and she was sorry, but now she was so hungry she wanted to walk over to the older couple and pick the buttered dinner roll right off the man’s plate.

  She drank the milk down as soon as she got it, its coolness filling her st
omach. Right away, she felt the corset squeezing in on her. But that was wrong, of course. The corset didn’t squeeze. It didn’t move. It was always the same. It was her belly that was getting bigger, expanding from just the glass of milk. She set her glass down and shifted on her bar stool, trying to take a full breath. She hadn’t even eaten yet. She had, it seemed, two options: continued hunger, or, if she ate a full meal, the corset’s further reprimand. The gnaw from the inside or the squeeze from the outside. Which was worse? She knew she was tired of hunger. That was what she knew.

  It was late afternoon when she stepped back outside, the Mega-Sandwich—which had been delicious—heavy inside of her, her breathing shallow to compensate for the tightness at her waist. As full as she was, she wasn’t tired, and given the length of her earlier nap, she knew she wouldn’t be for some time. The sun was low, obscured by buildings, but heat radiated out from the sidewalk and brick walls. She could go back up to the apartment, but she’d finished her book. She would have nothing to do. She could buy a magazine, she supposed. She thought she would be glad for the night off, the peace of it, but really, a night without Louise was the same as a night with Louise, and not so different from so many nights in her life—hours to endure, hours to just get through. How much of her life had she thought of this way?

  She decided she would see a movie. She understood that almost any movie she could see would likely play in Wichita in a few weeks, and that she wouldn’t be taking full advantage of her diminishing time in New York. But she only wanted to occupy herself, to sit in the dark and relative cool, staring up at a screen so large and close that whatever it displayed would seem like the totality of her own vision, another world made real. She walked down to a film house and chose a Buster Keaton series, hoping she would laugh or at least not think for a few hours. That was what she needed. Something light. And time to not do, to not think.

  The theater didn’t have a full orchestra, just a pianist and an oboist playing side by side on the far right of the stage. When the first reel began, both musicians smiled up at the screen, and their music was jaunty, upbeat. Keaton, playing the hero, found a wallet, returned it to the owner, and was accused of trying to steal it. He tried to buy furniture secondhand and was accused of stealing that as well. The oboe twittered. The piano bounced along. Cora heard people around her laughing, everyone getting the joke—Keaton was doomed to appear a criminal, no matter what he did. The pianist switched to more dramatic chords as Keaton, just lighting a cigarette, accidentally threw an anarchist’s bomb into a police parade. The oboist came in with a spirited melody as the entire police force gave chase. Cora was still and quiet. She understood the movie was funny, simple, and that on another night, she might have laughed.

  She was taking it too seriously, her dark mood infiltrating everything, even what was supposed to be easy and fun.

  At the end of the short, Keaton somehow managed to herd the entire police force into the jail, locking them inside and leaving himself out, the free man he deserved to be. It was a good ending, Cora thought. But it wasn’t to be. A pretty girl gave him a disapproving look, and that was all it took for him to unlock the door, releasing his mistaken pursuers. The freed police pushed Keaton into the jail, locking him in for good.

  “The End” was carved on a tombstone. People laughed, clapped, and hooted for more as Cora, glad for the surrounding dark, stared somberly at the screen.

  It took her over two hours to walk. She could have taken the subway, but at first, when she started out, she told herself she was just going for a stroll. It wasn’t that crazy of a notion. There was still plenty of light in the sky, and by the time she crossed Fifty-seventh Street, the air was cool enough for a mosquito to whine near her ear and then sting the back of her neck. By then, she was aware that she only walked in one direction, and that she had a destination in mind. She walked quickly, keeping up with the traffic on the sidewalks, the deliberate walkers of New York. She passed block after block, building after building, street after honking, roaring street, aware of the gathering darkness of the summer evening, the hot and breezeless air, the blisters forming at the back of her heels, and most of all, the way she kept moving forward, her jaw finally unclenched, compelled only by a clarity so new and sharp it felt like joy.

  She aimed the pebbles at the second-floor window, next to the door where he’d pointed. It was all she could think to do. She threw one after the other over the iron rails of the gate, but the window was over twenty feet away, and most of her throws missed the outbuilding completely. She did hit the metal stairway twice, and she worried about the sound it made, and whether the nuns were asleep. The street was quiet, with a car sputtering by just every now and then, the sidewalks almost deserted. Whenever someone did pass by, she would face the street, holding the remaining pebbles behind her back. She nodded briefly at women and ignored all men, repeatedly glancing down the street as if waiting for a taxi. But who knew what passersby thought when they saw her—a middle-aged woman with no ring and no escort, holding no purse, just standing on the street? She felt herself growing anxious. But it didn’t matter what they thought. This was what she understood now. There was no rational reason to care.

  The window was curtained, but she could see the glow of a lamp. She waited, watching for movement.

  She took off her right glove for better aim. The next pebble hit his door. There was a light by the door, a single bulb in a lantern secured to the wooden frame. Winged insects wandered in its glow, undisturbed by her pebble. Her next shot glanced off the sloping roof. It was the corset, limiting the range of her arm. She remembered playing graces in the barn with Mother Kaufmann, how it sometimes seemed as if she’d willed the ring to sail up just right.

  The next pebble hit the door.

  He opened it. She held her breath. It occurred to her that even though he was balding, and not so tall, he would not generally be thought of as an unhandsome man, and there was a possibility that he would not be alone, and that she could be in for humiliation. He stepped onto the tiny landing and peered across the dark courtyard, half his face illuminated by the single bulb. She smiled, even then, even before he saw her. He held a book in one hand, his fingers sandwiched in the pages, marking his place. He waved his other hand through the cloud of insects. He tilted his head.

  She waved.

  “Cora?”

  He held up his finger, asking her to wait, and disappeared behind the door. A moment later, he reemerged without the book. He trotted down the stairs, keys jingling, jumping over the last three steps.

  “What good surprise,” he said. Again, he looked so happy to see her. He was already searching through his ring of keys.

  She leaned against the gate, each hand holding an iron rail, still warm from the sun. “I was just… I was just in the neighborhood…” She stopped. The lie was ridiculous. It was nearly dark. What would she be doing down here? No. She had no excuse this time. There was no radio to purchase, no favor to ask. The truth was this: she’d walked over sixty blocks for no other reason but that she’d wanted to see him. It didn’t matter that she was leaving in a week. It was precisely because she knew she was leaving that she didn’t have time to be coy.

  “I’m free tonight,” she stammered. “I wondered if you were free, too.”

  That was enough. He nodded, unlocking the gate.

  SEVENTEEN

  He asked about the impressions around her waist, on her shoulders.

  “This is from what you wear?” His fingers, rough against her skin, traced a curve from just under her breast to her navel. “It is so tight? This must hurt.”

  She was embarrassed. He’d never turned off the lamp on the table. It was just a reading lamp, but the dim halo of light reached the bed. Despite her best efforts to relax, to concentrate on what she herself was feeling and seeing, she’d been so aware that she was visible to him, not covered in darkness as she’d been with Alan. And now, after, it seemed her fear was founded: there was something strange about her n
aked body, something she hadn’t known was strange. Did other women have marks from corsets? Cora guessed, just from his reaction, that his wife hadn’t had marks. Immigrant women didn’t always wear corsets, especially if they worked. But did other women like her have marks? There was no way to know. Even while giving birth to the twins, she’d had a sheet over her, draped to her knees. No one had seen her bare belly since Mother Kaufmann stopped giving her baths.

  “You get used to it,” she said.

  He frowned, lying back on the pillow. But he kept his warm hand on the curve of her hip, and her embarrassment quieted, quieted more, and finally fell silent. This, she thought. This, more than any shame or worry, was what she would feel for some time, what she wouldn’t get used to or forget: his shin scratchy under the back of her knee, only a glaze of sweat between. She lay perfectly still. The back of her knee could sweat and itch or catch on fire, but she wouldn’t move it away, not while she was still willing her skin to soak up the feeling, so that she might not waste it all now, when it was almost too much, and in less than a week, never again.

  And to think he’d apologized. For finishing fast, he said. He hoped she would give him another chance. He’d smiled, so she smiled, too, though she didn’t really understand—nothing had seemed fast in comparison to what she remembered from those few, lightless evenings with Alan. And Joseph had kept his hands on her, his mouth on her, his gaze on her. She was annoyed with herself. In comparison, she’d been a rag doll, too shy, too uncertain, to do more than put her hands on his shoulders, to even glance at his eyes, and even that had taken such will.

  She would need another chance, too.

  His room was spare and neat and small. From the bed, she could almost reach out and touch a clean white sink with a water pump. On the other side of the sink, a small icebox sat on what looked like a nightstand. The unpainted walls were bare except for two pairs of overalls and two white shirts, each garment hanging from its own nail. He’d converted the closet to a bathroom, he explained—no tub, just a toilet. He put it in himself, having learned about plumbing when he helped install toilets for the nuns and the girls. The plumber appreciated his help and told him where he could find used pipes and a stool.