Miscarriage of Justice

by Kip Gayden

  Still, though the Gallatin Spring Gala might be the social event of the season, Anna’s enthusiasm was sorely lacking this year. She even only came to the teas now to see Elizabeth.

  The discussion ground on, in excruciating detail. Mrs. Oldham, the chairwoman for this year’s event, meticulously covered each item on her list: the decorations, the invitation list, the evening’s program—including the precise time of each planned activity—and the exact makeup of the head table.

  “Now, we simply must have at least three of the city aldermen there,” Mrs. Oldham said. “Mrs. Hix, your husband plans to attend, doesn’t he?” Alma Hix nodded. “And Mrs. Dotson, your husband will certainly be there, since he’ll be performing with the band. That still leaves one.” She looked around the room. “Which of us knows one of the others and will take responsibility for inviting him?”

  “Speaking of the aldermen . . . Mrs. Dotson, when is your husband’s subcommittee going to make its recommendation to the mayor?” Mrs. Bate said. She took a dainty sip of tea, then said, “It’s been, what? Over three months, now?”

  Anna wouldn’t look at Mrs. Bate. “I wouldn’t know. Dr. Dotson and I don’t discuss civic matters any more than we do Sousa.”

  “I see,” Mrs. Bate said, after an awkward pause. Mrs. Baskerville was still sitting with her lips pinched together.

  “Why don’t we keep our attention on plans for the Gala?” Elizabeth said, glancing worriedly at Anna. Some of the other women gave her a surprised look. Usually, Elizabeth needed far less excuse to expound on the cause.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Jennings,” said Mrs. Oldham. “But I believe we’ve just about taken care of everything on my agenda for today, except for making sure we have a majority of the aldermen there. It’s very important for our event to enjoy the support of our community leaders, you know.” Several of the women nodded.

  The meeting broke up. Anna gave an obligatory thanks to Mrs. Olmstead, the hostess for the gathering. She was nearly to the sidewalk in front of the house when she heard Elizabeth Jennings’s voice behind her. “Anna! Wait!”

  Anna turned and waited as her friend hurried toward her. “I wanted to walk with you, Anna, if I may?”

  Anna shrugged and turned to continue on her way.

  “What’s the matter, Anna? You were all out of sorts at the meeting today.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Elizabeth. For some reason, lately everything we talk about at our teas seems so . . . silly. A waste of time. I don’t know. I’ll try to be in better spirits next week.”

  “Is that all it is? Are you sure?”

  “Certainly. What else would it be?”

  Elizabeth watched the sidewalk in front of her feet. “I don’t know, exactly. But for some reason, I wonder . . . is everything all right between you and your husband?”

  Anna looked at her sharply. “Why would you say such a thing?”

  “Please don’t be offended, Anna. I’m not trying to pry. I just . . . want to help, if I can.”

  “Well, there’s nothing to help about,” Anna said. “Walter and I are fine. Our children are fine. Everything is fine. All right?”

  They walked several paces. “I was just trying to be your friend,” Elizabeth said, finally.

  “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. And I appreciate your concern, I really do. But I’m all right.”

  “Very well, let’s say no more about it.”

  By the time they reached Anna’s front gate, they were chatting easily. Elizabeth had to go to the gallery, she said, and they parted. Anna went into the yard and up the walk toward her house.

  The fact was, she was irritable. Charlie Cobb had not spoken to her a single time since she’d given him the magazine, over two weeks ago. She watched him walking to work each morning, sauntering along down North Water Avenue like the Sultan of Samarkand, smiling and waving to all and sundry. He’d even tip his hat to her if she happened to be sitting on the front porch. And in the evenings, he would pass again on his way home.

  Anna knew very well that he was taking a less direct route from his house to work, if he lived, as he said, on Railroad Street. He was troubling himself to detour sufficiently to stroll past her front gate, morning and evening. But would he stop? Would he ask permission to come into the yard? Would he as much as mention whether he’d read “A River Apart,” or how he liked it? He most certainly would not.

  Anna was becoming thoroughly annoyed about the whole matter. What was he about? Had he forgotten about her, about their conversation? Was it all just a joke to him, leading her on with his winning smile and his veiled hints, then treating her as if she were a stranger?

  Anna wondered if, somehow, his wife—Daisy, was it?—suspected something and forbade him to speak to her again. If she had, then Anna hated her, and hated Charlie for paying attention to her silly demands.

  She fretted over it all that morning and past noon, then decided she could bear the suspense no longer. She would walk downtown, to Elizabeth’s art gallery, and on the way, she would pop in at Person’s Barbershop and see about having a word or two with Mr. Charlie Cobb. Why should she wait for him? He was only a man, after all, the same as Walter and the others. How could she expect him to take any trouble about her feelings?

  Climbing the hill toward the town square, Anna had an amusing thought: She tried to imagine what Mrs. Baskerville would think of her, walking by herself, going downtown to speak face-to-face with a man who wasn’t her husband. That would be a new tune to march to, wouldn’t it, Mrs. Baskerville? Anna felt bold and reckless. She laughed out loud and didn’t care if anybody heard her or what they thought about it.

  When the striped pole of Person’s came into view, Anna felt her confidence falter the slightest bit. But she stiffened her backbone and kept right on going. She was going to show Mr. Charlie Cobb that the world didn’t wait on him. She wanted to know something, and she was going to find out, all on her own and without anyone’s permission.

  Her entrance into the barbershop was an eerie re-enactment of her first time, except that today she didn’t have the camouflage of her nine-year-old son’s presence. The men in the waiting chairs and the barbers stared at her as if she were covered with blue fur.

  Except for Charlie Cobb. Just like before, he was smiling at her as if he’d been expecting her all day. “Oh, yes, Mrs. Dotson. I’ve got it right here,” he said, excusing himself from the customer in his chair. He opened a drawer in the counter, reached inside, and retrieved the folded issue of Argosy Anna had given him.

  “Thank you again for loaning me that article,” he said. “Daisy thought it was very interesting. And thank you for picking it up on your way, today. That was very convenient, and I appreciate it.”

  She stared at him for a few seconds, then managed, “Of course, Mr. Cobb. You’re . . . welcome. Both of you.”

  He smiled at her, then went back to combing and clipping.

  10

  Outside, anna collected herself as she continued on toward Elizabeth’s gallery. Charlie Cobb was too clever by half! Not only had he thought about her taking matters into her own hands, he’d counted on it. He’d handed her the magazine as if it were nothing special, passed off their encounter as something casual and prearranged—known to Daisy, even!

  He was playing her like a fish on a hook. And the trouble was, as hard as she tried to be offended, Anna was enjoying it.

  It was exciting to think that Charlie had spent time considering her possible reactions, thinking up strategies. It had been so long since Walter had taken any trouble about her whatsoever that the notion of this handsome, well-spoken man holding the thought of her in his mind was thrilling. It was dark and secret and delicious, like the last piece of chocolate in a hidden box.

  As she opened the door of the Jennings Art Gallery, Anna again felt audacious and capable, like a pirate or a highwayman. She would take what she needed, no matter the consequences.

  “Hello, Elizabeth,” she said, turning around, then realized it was Walla
ce, Elizabeth’s husband, who stood behind the counter.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Jennings. Elizabeth told me she was coming down here, and I just expected to see her.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Dotson. Elizabeth was here, but the school sent word that one of the children needed her. I told her to go on. Anything I can do for you today?”

  “No, I suppose I— Wait.” Anna walked toward a canvas hanging on the wall of the gallery, a depiction of a woman in white, reading in a garden. “What is this?”

  “That’s by an American artist, Mary Cassatt. I’m not sure about her. She goes in for all this strange new French nonsense. One of our dealers recommended her, and we took this painting just to see, but, I don’t know—”

  “It’s stunning,” Anna breathed. She moved closer. With her eyes two feet from the canvas, she could see the small sweeps of blue against the white of the woman’s dress, the hints of it beneath her eyes, in the hollows of her cheeks. At this range, the composition had a misty, unfinished look—as if the artist had painted the woman from an image in her mind, rather than as a simple study of some model. And yet, to Anna, it seemed perfect. The woman in the picture reminded Anna of herself, sitting on her porch and reading her stories, waiting for Charlie Cobb—or something, at any rate—to enter her life with some understanding, some romance, something to deliver her from her everyday prison of polite conversation, tea, and empty stretches of hours devoid of all passion. This woman could be her, Anna decided. She was reading, imagining worlds beyond. She was in her chair in a garden, but her soul was roaming the universe, searching for its meaning, its consummation, its mate.

  “I’ll take it,” Anna said, turning toward Wallace Jennings.

  “Pardon?”

  “I said I want this painting. Can you have it delivered to my house?”

  He looked surprised. “Well, I suppose so, but wouldn’t you like for Dr. Dotson to—”

  “No! Send it to my house. Have it framed with . . . that,” she said, pointing to a thick, gilded framing sample, done in leaves and vines.

  “Are you sure, Mrs. Dotson? That frame alone probably costs—”

  “Yes, quite sure, Mr. Jennings, if you please.”

  He shrugged and started making notes on a pad. “Very well, then.”

  “Good. Thank you very much, Mr. Jennings. And please tell Elizabeth I came by.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Anna left the shop, feeling more exhilarated than she had in a long time. She knew exactly where she would hang the painting: above her bed. It would remind her; it would give her hope.

  Anna was halfway home when she remembered the Argosy in her hand. The Cassatt painting had quite knocked it out of her head, but as soon as she remembered, she walked a little faster. She should have time, she calculated, to look through the magazine before the children came home from school.

  She went inside and tossed her hat and parasol on the table in the vestibule. She went to the parlor and settled herself on the Queen Anne settee and spread the magazine in her lap. By the time she had turned two pages, she could already tell she was going to be enthralled.

  In the margins, in a neat, small hand, Charlie Cobb had written notes to her. She didn’t even need to turn to the story she’d mentioned to him; the notes started within the first five pages, next to a poem entitled “Hearts Aflame”:

  This poet has captured me entirely, dear Anna.

  A bit farther down, apparently as an afterthought, he had written

  Daisy, of course, would never understand why.

  Anna felt a fierce smile spread across her face. Of course she wouldn’t. She and Charlie were linked somehow, in some primal way that Anna herself didn’t understand.

  She flipped the pages until she came to the story, “A River Apart,” about the woman from a wealthy family who had fallen in love with a man who lived on the “poor side of the river.” Near the beginning of the story, Charlie had written

  Loneliness is truly a curse, and it knows no boundaries of class.

  A bit later on, near a paragraph describing Diana, the story’s main female character, she found some lines in Charlie’s hand:

  She walks in beauty, like the night

  Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

  And all that’s best of dark and bright

  Meet in her aspect and her eyes.

  . . . Byron speaks for my heart, too. —C.

  Anna felt her heart marching in quickstep. Charlie’s words plunged into her like an arrow dipped in honey—it was as if he could read her innermost thoughts.

  The clock in the hall chimed the quarter-hour. Mabel and Scott would be home soon. Anna went upstairs, to her room. She put the magazine in her armoire, beneath the French nightgown.

  Later that evening, after the children were in bed, she told Walter she was tired, that she was going to bed a bit early. She went upstairs and got the Argosy from her armoire and scanned it from cover to cover by the gas lamp beside her bed, reading and analyzing each of Charlie’s handwritten comments. She got some scissors from her bureau and clipped out all of Charlie’s notes, then tossed the magazine in the trash can. Anna placed the clippings in an envelope and slid the envelope back into the bottom of the drawer in the armoire, beneath the French nightgown. Briefly, she ran her fingertips across the nightgown, enjoying its suppleness, its smoothness.

  Then Anna found her latest issue of Argosy, and carried it to her writing desk. She opened it and began making her own notations in the margins. When the opportunity presented itself, she would give this issue to Charlie. It wasn’t quite the same as having a real, face-to-face conversation—but it also wasn’t as risky.

  The next morning, as Anna sat at the breakfast table in the kitchen, sipping a cup of coffee and staring out the window, Walter came into the kitchen.

  “Your light was on rather late, wasn’t it, dear?”

  “Oh, yes. I decided to do a little reading in bed, before I turned down the light.”

  “What were you reading?”

  “Just one of my periodicals.”

  He gave a little smile and shook his head. “More of those stories?”

  Anna took another sip of coffee and kept her eyes out the window.

  “I wonder, dear, whether you might have plans for tomorrow evening?”

  She set down her cup and looked at him. “Friday night?”

  Walter nodded. “I was hoping we could have a little dinner party here for a family that’s new to town.”

  “Really? Anyone I know?”

  “Yes, matter of fact. You and I were talking about him the other day: my new barber, Charlie Cobb.”

  At hearing Charlie’s name on her husband’s lips, Anna had the fleeting thought that she’d been discovered, but realized that was ridiculous. Walter could know nothing because . . . there was nothing to know. She’d loaned Charlie a magazine, and he’d given it back. That was all there was.

  “Yes, he seems like a nice man. He did a wonderful job on Scott’s hair.”

  “I’m pretty impressed with him, too. As a matter of fact, I think he’d make a good Mason. I’d like for us to get to know the family a little better. They have a little girl.”

  Anna caught herself before saying, Yes, her name is Alice. Instead, she gave Walter an interested look and nodded. “That sounds fine, Walter. Will you make the invitation, or shall I?”

  “I’ll talk to Charlie today, on my way to the office. I think seven o’clock or so, don’t you?”

  “Fine.”

  “All right, then. Thank you, dear. I think we’ll enjoy the Cobbs’ company.”

  Anna suppressed the giggle that tried, beyond all reason, to burst from her lips. “If you say so, dear.”

  Walter gave her a surprised look. “My! You’re certainly agreeable, this morning.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Oh, no reason, just . . . Well, fine, then.”

  They heard the sound of feet on the stairs.

  “Sound
s like the children are ready for school.”

  “Yes, Walter. I’ll walk with them.”

  “Well, then.” He stepped across the kitchen to her table, leaned over, and gave her a chaste peck on the forehead. “Have a good day, dear.”

  “You, too.”

  He went whistling down the back steps, just as Mabel and Scott, faces washed and in their school clothes, came shambling into the kitchen, with Gertrude bringing up the rear.

  “You want me to walk them to school, Missus?”

  “No, Gertrude. I’ll walk them, today.”

  “Yes’m.”

  Anna picked up the brown paper sacks containing the children’s lunches, prepared by Gertrude and waiting beside the stove. She put the sacks into their satchels and kissed Mabel, then Scott, on the crown of the head.

  “All ready for another day?” she said.

  The children made mumbled replies.

  “All right, then, here we go.”

  As they marched down the front steps and into the bright April sunshine, Anna thought about the interesting twists and turns life could take. On the way downtown today, she was going to drop off the Argosy so Charlie could read her messages. And tomorrow night, he and his wife and daughter would be her dinner guests.

  Very, very interesting . . .

  “ MAMA, CAN I SHOW the little girl my dresses?”

  For the tenth time today, Anna had to suppress the urge to say, “Her name is Alice.” I don’t know her name, don’t know her name, don’t know her name . . . “Why, certainly, darling, I don’t know why not. I think the two of you are going to have a whole lot of fun playing together. Can you fold those napkins and help Gertrude put them on the table, please?”