The Chaperone

by Laura Moriarty

  “The first time, I make mistake,” he said. “Not enough insulation. I didn’t know. The pipe was outside, and in January, it froze, burst. Ruined. So I do it again, this time right.”

  When she’d first come in, feeling as if she were about to jump from a great height, he’d offered her one of the two chairs at the little table by the window. He’d offered her peanuts, too, apologizing, saying peanuts were all he had. She assured him she wasn’t hungry, that a glass of water would be fine. A shelf above the sink held two mismatched glasses, two plates, and just one sharp knife. His daughter came over on Sundays, he said. They both liked sandwiches. He bought cheese and cold cuts at the deli. Through the week, the nuns fed him, whatever the girls didn’t finish. It wasn’t so bad. Oatmeal for breakfast. Peanuts. Bread. They got donations from the Hudson Guild. Sometimes fruit, vegetables. Most of the grocers in the neighborhood were Catholic, generous with the nuns.

  He asked if she ever got the letter from Massachusetts, if she’d found out anything else about her mother. She told him briefly about the meeting at Grand Central, the family in Haverhill she would never know. He asked questions, and he made it clear he was ready to listen to an expanded account, but she kept trailing off, distracted. Just the other day, she’d wanted so much to talk with him about Mary O’Dell, to have someone to confide in, but now that she was here, she was only thinking about how he was looking at her, the slant of gold in his right eye. And being alone with him in a small room. On the wall above the table was a bookshelf, or really, a row of books resting on a long board supported by metal brackets screwed into the wall, with two bricks serving as bookends. Sipping her water, she’d scanned the dustless spines. Principles of Wireless Telegraphy. Electric Oscillations and Electric Waves. Essentials of English. Automobile Engineering, Vol. III. Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children. Some of the titles were in German.

  She asked him if he missed Germany or being with people who were like him. It would be easier, she imagined, living where the language was his own.

  “I miss it sometimes.” He set his water on the table.

  “You miss your family? Do you have siblings? Are your parents alive?”

  He scratched the back of his neck. “That was not so good. My older brother was a difficult person. He and my father were the same. My mother died.” He shrugged. “Greta is my family.”

  Cora nodded. “I’m glad you have her.”

  He laughed, sadly. “Me, too.”

  “But do you ever feel…” She tried to pin down what she wanted to know. “Do you ever worry that you’re supposed to be in Germany? You were born there. I understand your family was difficult. But they’re yours, your blood relations. I know your daughter is, but all of your other relatives are there.”

  He shook his head.

  She’d thought that he didn’t understand her question, that her English was too Midwestern, too slanted or too quick. She tried again. “But you’ve had such terrible luck in this country. You don’t ever wonder if it was all a mistake? If you were supposed to stay there, with people who are your relations? Where your history is?”

  He shook his head again, more decidedly this time. “Germany is where I was born,” he said. “Only that. I am supposed to be where I go.”

  Not long after that, they were on his narrow bed, and she was helping him tug at the buttons of her blouse. Even then, she was full of dread, knowing what she had to say, the words she had to actually speak.

  “I can’t get pregnant.” She’d breathed it out, her eyes closed. Really, this was the bigger leap, the harder one, even more than just coming to his door. “I mean, I can. It’s possible, but I shouldn’t. The doctor said. Also, I don’t want to.”

  She opened her eyes. He pulled his face back from hers, looking alarmed, his spectacles askew. She heard the low horn of a ship.

  “Okay. Sorry.” He rolled off of her, facing the ceiling, his hands behind his head.

  She sat up. He’d misunderstood. She had no time for misunderstandings. “I don’t want to get pregnant, I mean. That’s what I don’t want.”

  He looked up at her, surprised again, and all at once she was falling, terrified of what he might be thinking. This was why Margaret Sanger and her talk of birth control was called obscene. It changed everything, what Cora had just admitted, to Joseph as well as herself: she had not come to his bed in a trance. She had not been seduced in a moment of weakness. No. She was lying here with him because she wanted to be, and wide awake enough to stop and think beyond the moment and know what she didn’t want, as well.

  He might think she was crazed, unwomanly. There were names for women, the kind of women, who said the kinds of things that she’d just said. She moved her arm across her chest, her unbuttoned buttons.

  But there was no contempt in his eyes, no judgment. In fact, he looked as abashed as she did. “I have nothing.” He held up his palms as if to show this were true. “I’m sorry. I have been alone.”

  She waited. She couldn’t say anything else. She’d already said more than she thought she could.

  He cleared his throat. “I can… you want me to get something?”

  She managed a nod. He laughed, and unbelievably, she did, too.

  “You will wait here?”

  She nodded again. What did he think she would do—go with him? No. No one would pay attention to him, whatever he bought, wherever he could buy it. She, on the other hand, would be treated differently.

  “Fifteen minutes. Okay?” He stood, tucking in his shirt, and she understood he hadn’t been asking her to come with him. He was only asking if she was willing to wait.

  It was after he left that she let herself get a closer look at the framed picture propped up on top of the icebox. She’d noticed it when she first came in, but she’d thought it best not to inquire about it or even look at it too long, given the circumstances, and how unfair it might be to him. He hadn’t known she was coming here tonight. As he’d said, he’d been alone in this room. Now that he was gone, she moved closer and saw the photograph was what she’d suspected: Joseph with a full head of hair, wearing a good suit, his hand on the shoulder of a seated woman who held a baby in a baptism gown. It was a formal portrait, and the two adult faces were somber, but the baby, not knowing the rules, seemed to be caught mid-laugh.

  Right away, Cora felt the pressure of tears. Greta. A happy baby who couldn’t know what was coming. Influenza. Her mother’s death. Her father’s long absence in Georgia. Loneliness. Probably hunger. The New York Home for Friendless Girls, even after her father’s return. The next years would be cruel to all three of them. Cora didn’t dare touch the frame itself, but she leaned forward to study Joseph’s younger, unlined face and also, to look more closely at the wife and mother, who was fair-haired and a little stout, and even prettier than Cora had imagined. But she felt no jealousy, no selfish resentment or need to turn the picture away. She felt only a pained sorrow for this luckless mother with the serious eyes. If anything, the dead woman’s youth and beauty seemed a reprimand, not because Cora was here now, the first woman in this little room, but because she’d waited so long to come here at all. She’d lived too much of her life so stupidly, following nonsensical rules, as if she and he, as if anyone, had all the time in the world.

  They had to leave well before dawn, he said, before the nuns were up. He would see her home. Cora suggested going to breakfast. When he hesitated, she felt a punch of fear. Was it true, then, what she’d been told about men? Did they soon tire of what came too easily? She was being presumptuous and naive, perhaps, assuming he felt the same urgency. But in a few days, she would be gone.

  “Breakfast would be good,” he said, though he looked anxious, and only then did it occur to her that he likely hesitated because of money. Of course. She was a dolt. How insensitive could she be? He lived on oatmeal, peanuts, donated fruit. Since Cora had come to New York, she and Louise had gone to restaurants every day without giving much thought to the bill. She had money from Leona
rd Brooks, money from Alan. She could easily pay for breakfast for both of them, but she knew that even suggesting this would likely be a mistake.

  “I have toast and jam at my apartment,” she said. “And oranges.”

  He held her hand on the subway. Even when they got off at her stop, the streetlights were still on. Only the eastern sky showed a faint streak of rose, and the streets were quiet enough that she could hear the first twitters of birds. They passed a burdened paperboy and a limping woman in a garish gown. But they were often alone on the sidewalk, which at that hour seemed so expansive and uncluttered, as if laid out just for them.

  He left before noon. He had to see if the nuns needed anything, and he had his daily tasks. But if he worked late, he said, he could get ahead, and he would be free to come see her tomorrow morning. No, he said, his hand on her cheek. No, he wouldn’t be tired.

  Tomorrow then, Cora agreed, her fingers moving through the light hair on his forearm. She was already thinking of a meal she could make him, or buy prepared, something casual that she could pretend to just have on hand. He could come as early as ten-thirty, she said. Louise would be in class.

  After he left, she went to work. She took a quick bath, drained the tub and filled it again to wash the sheets, holding a bar of soap under the faucet until it lathered. She wrung the sheets as best she could before hanging them from the curtain rod in the bedroom. She tidied the rest of the apartment, washing the dishes and cups, shaking the pillows free of indentations. Still, when it was time to leave for the studio, she was certain Louise would know everything, just by looking at her face: her cheeks and neck were still sore from his stubble, and as anxious as she was, she couldn’t stop smiling. She was dazed, distracted by memory. On Broadway, the sun blazing above her, she walked right into the pole of a streetlight. “Watch yerself,” said a passing man, unhelpfully, and two little boys moved in a wide arc around her, as if she were dangerous, or a drunk.

  By the time Cora reached the studio, Louise had already changed into her street clothes, and she looked surprisingly alert for having just endured a dance class on the heels of a bus ride from Pennsylvania. But she barely glanced at Cora, and it seemed she truly had no memory of the difficult morning before she’d left.

  “My God, it’s good to be home,” she announced as they climbed the stairs back up to street level. “I mean, Philadelphia is fine. It’s certainly a step up from Wichita. A big step, God knows. The audience was wonderful, very sophisticated. You could tell they thought we were amazing. But it was so strange: I felt absolutely bereft not to be in New York, even for one night. I just feel so at home here.” When they stepped out onto the sidewalk, she inhaled deeply, her dark eyes taking in Broadway, the windowed towers all around. “Isn’t that something? That I could feel so attached to a place that’s still new to me? It’s not even where I’m from.”

  She didn’t seem truly interested in Cora’s answer, as she gave her no time to respond. As they walked, she talked about what a marvelous partner Ted Shawn had made, and the flesh-colored paint all the dancers had to wear so they wouldn’t technically be half naked, how the paint smelled like witch hazel and how silly the whole idea seemed to her. Cora half listened, silently considering Louise’s question about being so attached to a place. If it was strange, then Cora herself was guilty of strangeness—for now, even with all that had happened, she still wanted to go back to Wichita. She already knew that she would think back on these remaining days with Joseph for the rest of her life, with longing, with real grief. But she missed her home. She missed the quiet streets she knew so well, the unobstructed sky. She missed hearing her name called out by friends she’d known for almost twenty years. After the loss of the Kaufmanns, the town had taken her in and made her feel a part of it. She wasn’t an outsider there, and even now, that meant so much.

  In any case, she had to go back. Of course she did. Her boys would be back for college breaks, and their home would need to be as it always was—with her in it, making them hotcakes and asking about their lessons and games and plans. And even without the boys, it wasn’t as if she could just leave Alan. He was her family, every bit as much as her sons were. He’d lied to her, yes, but he’d also taken care of her, and he’d been a devoted father. If she left him now, there would be a scandal and then, perhaps, suspicion. He would have to marry again, and hope for his life, his very life, that his new bride would be as naive as Cora had once been, or as loyal as she was now.

  They weren’t far from the apartment when she realized Louise was looking at her, taking her in. Cora’s glove went to her stubble-scrubbed cheek. The dark eyes felt penetrating.

  “What?” Cora asked, glancing away.

  “How long have you not been listening? My God. I guess I’ve just been talking to myself.”

  “I’m sorry, dear. What is it?”

  “I said, Miss Ruth said I could move in the day after tomorrow. I thought you would like to know.”

  “Thank you.” Cora feigned a smile. Friday. Her last day. There would be no reason she could give to stay longer. She could tell the Brookses she wanted to leave in the morning. Saturday, then. She would have three more nights in New York. She imagined herself on the train, looking out the window and seeing the same fields and towns and rivers she’d passed coming east with Louise, uncrossing every bridge she’d crossed. She could buy a new book for the journey, something light and distracting. By Sunday night, she would be home.

  Louise was quiet as they walked past the luncheonette. Cora watched her glance through the big windows to the counter in the back. She did look somewhat remorseful, or at least put out that a friend had been lost.

  “You might go talk to him,” Cora said gently. “Try to patch things up.”

  Louise kept walking. “He hates me, I imagine.” She moved her bag to her other shoulder. “And I told you. He’s not my type.”

  Cora, still looking ahead, cleared her throat. “But you let him think he was, Louise. You hurt him. And still, he saw you home. You might thank him. And apologize. Or at least say goodbye.”

  Louise stopped walking. Cora did, too. An old woman grumbled and moved around them.

  “What do you care?”

  Cora sighed, fanning away a fly. A ridiculous question. Of course she cared. She cared about Floyd, but more than that, she knew it would do Louise good to consider someone’s feelings besides her own, and not to fear real kindness and caring. All these weeks they had spent together, she’d known Louise needed mothering, someone to fill in where Myra, apparently, had left off long ago. Still, Cora saw now that the whole time they’d been in New York, she’d focused on all the wrong things—what the girl wore, if she went out alone, whether or not she could wear rouge. Nothing that mattered, not in comparison with what Louise truly needed by way of instruction and example. Louise was already capable of kindness—it was she, after all, not Cora, who’d given those men water that first night in the city. And even now, it was clear that Louise wasn’t glad to have wounded Floyd, and that although she didn’t love him, and probably couldn’t, she at least missed him a little and perhaps understood she’d done him a wrong. It was a last opportunity, Cora thought. Now that they were about to go their separate ways, even now that she understood how much Louise had been wronged in her own life, Cora wished she would have spent more time on the essentials: when to say thank you and sorry.

  “I think you feel bad.” Cora tilted the brim of her hat. She was aware of people moving around them, as if they were rocks in a quick-moving stream. “I can see it, looking at your face. You know you should go talk to him. You know it’s the right thing to do.”

  Louise looked at the sidewalk, pushing her hair behind her ears. The pout seemed real, not for show.

  “Right now? I’m all sweaty from class.”

  “You look fine. You smell fine. You know you do.”

  “You’ll let me go alone?”

  “For one hour.” Cora rubbed the edge of her glove against the mosquito bi
te on her neck. “You’ll come back to the apartment in one hour. And you’ll go nowhere else. Do I have your word?”

  Louise looked at her dumbly.

  “Your word, Louise. Your promise. I’m trusting you. One hour?”

  “Fine.”

  “Your word?” Cora wanted to drill the concept home. “I have your word?”

  “Yes. Yes, okay?” She seemed more flustered than annoyed. “Yes. You have my word.”

  Cora nodded. “Good luck then.” She turned and walked on alone.

  The apartment wasn’t much cooler than the blazing street. Cora walked back to the bedroom, turning on the fan and immediately taking off her blouse and skirt and corset. She started to put on her tea gown but changed her mind—just her thin robe would be cooler. And she was tired. The sheets were dry, swaying in the breeze from the open window. She took them down from the curtain rod and made up the bed neatly, smoothing out wrinkles with the flat of her hand. Tomorrow. Tomorrow she and Joseph would lie in this bed, in these very sheets still warm from the sun. How long would they have? Three hours? Four? There might be time, as well, to talk, to go out to the front room and eat with him, or to just lie in bed with him as she had this morning, skin against skin. The feast before the famine. She put the folded blanket at the foot of the bed, unpinned her hair and lay down, her eyes still open. The water stain on the ceiling no longer looked like a rabbit’s head. She couldn’t imagine why she’d thought it ever had.

  Two knocks. Then four.

  She stood up, annoyed, tying the sash of her robe. She’d hoped Louise would take advantage of her full hour of freedom, if only so she herself could have a full hour as well. But she made herself pause before she opened the door. She should show appreciation and approval: Louise had kept her word.