The Chaperone

by Laura Moriarty

  And she got to be with those she loved for so long. Cora remembered Greta as a little girl hiding under a table, and she remembered her as a young mother, and now Greta herself had two grandchildren. Little Donna, whom Earle had once bounced on his knee, turned into the adolescent who told her parents and her great-aunt Cora to quit calling people “colored,” and who once stood up in church to ask, with a trembling voice, a room full of white Presbyterians to support the sit-in at Dockum Drugs. Greta’s youngest, Alan, who grew up to be as handsome as his namesake, became a science teacher in Derby with two boys of his own.

  And to Cora’s surprise, one day in 1982, Howard’s son Walt really did come to Wichita to talk to Cora about the summer she spent in New York as a chaperone to Louise Brooks. By then, Walt was in his fifties, a portly college professor of film studies, and Cora was living in the retirement home not far from Greta’s new house. Walt brought with him a little box he called a VCR, and he plugged it into the television in Cora’s room, explaining he’d brought along a few Louise Brooks movies—he had them right in his bag. They could watch one if she was feeling up to it. Yes, he said, right on her television. And if she got tired, he could just push a button, the film would stop, and she could resume it again whenever she liked. Yes, he agreed, yes. It really was a marvelous little machine.

  He wanted to talk with her about Louise. He was writing a book about Hollywood’s Golden Age, he said, and anything she could remember about Louise Brooks, any particular story, would help. Cora told him what she could, avoiding what she’d promised not to tell anyone. She said nothing of Mr. Flowers, and she said nothing of how she’d found Louise in 1942, drunk and broke and raging at her mother in her attic room. Cora wouldn’t betray her, even now. But as it turned out, Walt already knew about Mr. Flowers and Edward Vincent and about Louise’s miserable return home during the war. He knew everything. He’d read her memoir, he said.

  He was apologetic for Cora’s confusion. Sorry, he said. Did she not know Louise Brooks had just published a book? Yes, he said. A book. Just last year. Lulu in Hollywood. It got quite a bit of press, all good. Yes, he said, she was still alive. She was seventy-six, living in Rochester. He heard she’d stopped drinking, but still, her health wasn’t good. Emphysema. But her book was sterling. It wasn’t just a memoir, but a collection of essays, some about her own life, some about the film industry and the famous people she’d known. She’d gotten rave reviews from Esquire and the New York Times. Everyone was so impressed with the writing, the sharp observations and wit.

  “I’ll get you a copy,” he told Cora. “You would enjoy it, I’m sure.”

  Cora thanked him. She couldn’t read anymore, but Greta read to her when she came to visit, pausing like Walt’s amazing little VCR every time Cora drifted off. And really, she was just so happy to know that this book existed, that Louise, hardly down for the count, had bloomed again. And at seventy-six! Perhaps she’d needed that long to discover that she was more than youth and beauty, more than her mother’s ambitions, more than circumstance. Her beloved Schopenhauer was perhaps right: old age did drop the masks.

  Greta was never able to read Louise’s book to her. Not long after her grandson’s visit, Cora suffered a stroke, and she spent her last days in bed, moving in and out of memory, the past and the present as one. She couldn’t see anything but gray and shadows, but she knew that Greta and Earle were there with her, her children, one on each side.

  “Aunt Cora?” Greta said. “Can you hear me? Cora?”

  She couldn’t talk, couldn’t form the words, but she could hear—she could hear her name. And the low rumbling of a train. She was not in her room, but at a hospital, lying on a bed with scratchy sheets, and there were beeps and unfamiliar voices. And more and more, she heard the train. There were tracks near the hospital, perhaps, and every time a train rumbled by, she could feel a slight vibration, not enough to rattle the window, but just enough for her to recall the feeling of being on board, rocked gently but relentlessly forward.

  “Yes,” she said. “I hear.”

  An unfamiliar woman’s voice, friendly. “What’s your name?” A hand on her shoulder. “Can you tell me your name?”

  She knew it. She was Cora, of course. She was every Cora she’d ever been: Cora X, Cora Kaufmann, Cora Carlisle. She was an orphan on a roof, a lucky girl on a train, a dearly loved daughter by chance. She was a blushing bride of seventeen, a sad and stoic wife, a loving mother, an embittered chaperone, and a daughter pushed away. She was a lover and a lewd cohabitator, a liar and a cherished friend, an aunt and a kindly grandmother, a champion of the fallen, and a late-in-coming fighter for reason over fear. Even in those final hours, quiet and rocking, arriving and departing, she knew who she was.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’m indebted to the people who helped me do research for this book. Al Jenkins was kind enough to answer my questions about cars in 1922. Tracy Floreani helped me with the Italian spoken by the woman in the drugstore. Eric Cale and Jami Frazier Tracy of the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum helped me imagine the interior of Wichita’s Union Station. Kathryn Olden, a longtime resident of Wichita and wonderful conversationalist, met with me to talk about her memories. Alice Lieberman put me in touch with Ann Kuckelman Cobb, who answered questions about the hazards of childbirth in the early 1900’s.

  Here are some of the books and documents I read while writing this book:

  Lulu in Hollywood by Louise Brooks

  Louise Brooks: A Biography by Barry Paris

  Louise Brooks: Lulu Forever by Peter Cowie

  Wichita: The Magic City by Craig Miner

  The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920’s by Paula S. Fass

  Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920’s by Frederick Lewis Allen

  1920’s Fashions from B. Altman & Company (Dover Publications)

  The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City’s History by Eric Homberger

  We Rode the Orphan Trains by Andrea Warren

  Tears on Paper: The History and Life Stories of the Orphan Train Riders compiled by Patricia J. Young and Frances E. Marks

  Orphan Trains: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children He Saved and Failed by Stephen O’Connor

  You Must Remember This: An Oral History of Manhattan from the 1890’s to WWII by Jeff Kisseloff

  Lost Broadway Theatres by Nicholas van Hoogstraten; with additional photography by Jock Pottle and Maggie Hopp

  Denishawn: The Enduring Influence by Jane Sherman

  Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home by Emily Post, 1922

  “Unspeakable Jazz Must Go!” by John R. McMahon, The Ladies’ Home Journal, December 1921

  New York Times articles from July 1922

  Darkness and Daylight; or Lights and Shadows of New York Life, a Pictorial Record of Personal Experiences in the Great Metropolis by Helen Campbell

  “The War Department: Keeper of Our Nation’s Enemy Aliens During World War I” by Mitchell Yockelson

  The Irish in Haverhill Massachusetts by Patricia Trainor O’Malley

  Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the 19th Century by Haisa R. Diner

  The History of Family Planning Delivery Systems in Wichita, Kansas 1965–1975 by Jane Weilert

  Plains Woman: The Diary of Martha Farnsworth, 1882–1922, edited by Marlene Springer and Haskell Springer

  The Tihen Notes by Dr. Edward N. Tihen, Wichita State University Libraries’ Department of Special Collections

  Yesterday’s Stories: Popular Women’s Novels of the Twenties and Thirties by Patricia Raub

  The Daily Routine of a Kansas Farm Wife in the Nineteenth Century by Georgie L. Steifer

  The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti

  I will be forever grateful for the help I received from my writing group: Lucia Orth, Mary Wharff, Judy Bauer, and Mary O’Connell. Each read drafts and gave feedback that was both s
harp and encouraging. I would also like to thank my wonderful editor at Riverhead, Sarah McGrath, for her insight and careful reading, as well as my agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, for her continued encouragement and discernment. I’m very lucky to work with these talented women.

  I would like to thank the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Kansas for giving me a semester off of teaching to focus on this project.

  On the home front, several good friends stepped in to entertain Viv on days when I felt particularly frantic to finish a chapter. Anna Neill, Margaret Marco, Jason Slote, Barb Willis, Jill Cannon, Michelle Ward, Ken Jansen, and Gretchen Goodman-Jansen always returned Viv healthy and happy. Ben Eggleston, despite his own busy schedule, hung out with Viv and read drafts and always seemed happy to do so. Viv and I continue to benefit from his patience, his wit, and his thoughtfulness.

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Part Two

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Part Three

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Acknowledgments