Shadows of the White City

by Jocelyn Green

  “She felt no lack,” Jozefa said when they passed. She spread her hands over her knees, rings sparkling. “I understood that she had already seen every inch that she wanted to see with you. It was obvious she enjoyed her time with Ivan. She loved being pampered. Everything she desired was brought to her.”

  “But when she gave you letters for me, you didn’t mail them.”

  Jozefa flicked her wrist, discarding the challenge. “As I said, dear, she made her choice, and she chose you. It’s over.” She retrieved her handbag from the floor and withdrew two railroad tickets. “She could have taken this ticket and started a life with me in Europe full of every comfort and experience a young girl could wish for. She didn’t. I beg of you, be good to her.”

  Sylvie didn’t need to be begged on that score. She studied the tickets. “You’re leaving this afternoon?”

  “My trunks have already been sent to the station.” Jozefa’s eyes misted. “I’ll speak here one last time, and then yes, I’m leaving. Alone.”

  It was a straight walk of nine blocks from the Woman’s Building, at the western edge of the fairgrounds, to the Austrian Village on the Midway. But stepping inside, Sylvie felt a world away in both time and space, transported to Old Vienna as it appeared in the 1700s. Thirty-six buildings, all in a state of elegant and artificial decay, surrounded a central plaza and included shops and houses leaning against each other, a functioning church, a one-thousand-seat restaurant, a beer garden, and the spired City Hall.

  Still, it was easy to find Meg. As expected, she had set up her easel in the middle of a courtyard, where she could see the most. The canvas reflected the crisp blue sky, the terra-cotta rooftops, and the grey-brown buildings around them. Potted trees and windowsill boxes spilling over with flowers popped with color.

  Sylvie spotted Olive and Rose at a table beneath a red-and-white-striped awning and waved.

  “Oh!” Meg startled. “Sylvie. I wondered when you’d come. I had no idea all these shops actually have the tradesmen and women inside, producing the goods they sell. Lace, embroidery, carving, ivory-turning. I tried talking to some of them but didn’t get far.”

  Sylvie laughed. There were five hundred Austrians here to populate this village for the Fair, and she wasn’t surprised they didn’t all speak English. “I’m sure they understood and appreciated your interest in their work, all the same.”

  The Austrian band struck up their next piece on the opposite side of the plaza.

  “Charming,” Meg murmured. “I can see why this is one of the most popular sites to visit, even though the wares are marked with ‘World’s Fair prices.’ The ambience is worth it.”

  “I saw Jozefa.” Sylvie could hold the news in no longer.

  Meg’s paintbrush suspended in the air. “This morning?”

  Sylvie told her what had transpired, then checked her timepiece again. “In three hours, she’ll be gone.”

  A sigh lifted and released Meg’s shoulders. “I hate to say good riddance, but . . . well. I still can’t believe what she did, even if she is Rose’s aunt. Does Rose know she’s leaving today?”

  “She must. Jozefa said she chose not to accept her train ticket.” Sylvie squinted toward the girls again. “Who’s that with them?” But as soon as she asked, she knew.

  Ivan.

  Excusing herself from Meg, Sylvie threaded between tables and Austrian waitresses in starched white aprons. Beneath the awning, her vision adjusted to the shade.

  Rose jumped up and hugged her. “I didn’t invite him, Mimi,” she whispered in her ear. “Please don’t be rude. He missed me. I kind of missed him, too.”

  “Rude, me?” Sylvie tried to sound casual, but resentment twitched inside her. She wanted this time together to be special. Without Ivan. Nonetheless, she assured Rose she knew how to be civil.

  She sat in a slatted wood folding chair beside Olive, across from where Rose settled next to Ivan.

  “Aunt Sylvie!” Olive lisped through the gap in her teeth. A small checkerboard on the table between her and Rose held a game half played. “Rose has a new friend, and his name is Ivan. Do you know him?”

  “I do. Hello, Ivan. I didn’t know you’d be here today.”

  A waitress set a basket of rye bread on the table and poured Sylvie a mug of rich, dark coffee topped with hot foamed milk. The girls didn’t care for it, but she noticed Ivan wasn’t drinking any either, and supposed he was trying to save money.

  “Please.” She gestured to the basket. “Help yourself.”

  Thanking her, he tore off a chunk of bread and ate it without butter.

  “How did you find us?” She brought her mug to her mouth and licked the foam from her lips.

  “I went to the apartment this morning. Thought I’d visit Rose while Lottie cleaned. Lottie told me where you’d gone.”

  Sylvie should have guessed.

  Rose kinged one of Olive’s checkers. “It feels like we’re in the pages of one of Olive’s storybooks, doesn’t it? If I can ignore the tourists, everything else is enchanting.”

  “Yes, it is,” Ivan said archly, watching her. For a man of few words, he certainly knew how to make them count.

  Sylvie ripped a hunk of bread from the loaf, then pinched off a smaller piece and ate it, the bitter taste filling her mouth. Her gaze returned to Rose, wearing another dress that Sylvie hadn’t seen before today. “You never told me what happened to your clothes,” she said. “I saw other young ladies wearing your dresses while you were gone.”

  “That must have been so strange for you. I had no idea you’d ever see those again. Aunt Jozefa wanted to give me all new fashions, so she gave my old things to Ivan to dispose of.”

  “She told me to burn them behind the tenement,” he said. “But I saw no reason for such waste. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t even cut them up for rags, there was so much use left in them. So I dropped the clothes off at a few different pawnshops and church charity bins instead.”

  Sylvie considered this. “Including your own, St. Michael’s.”

  “I saw no harm in it. My sister hasn’t had a new dress in far too long.”

  “But did you know the laundry tag was still in it?” Sylvie asked. “Did Jozefa?”

  He took another bite of bread, swallowing quickly. “I didn’t. She realized it had been left in it later, but it didn’t bother her until she learned I didn’t burn it. You should have seen how upset she was when she heard Lottie had the dress.”

  Rose looked up from the checkerboard. “She really came unglued when you mentioned that Lottie was doing housekeeping for Mimi, remember? That’s when we started packing.”

  So that explained the sudden move out of the Palmer House. Jozefa figured Sylvie would recognize the dress and inspect it, find the tag, and track them to their room. “But Ivan, if she asked you to burn the clothes, why did you tell her you didn’t?”

  He ran a hand over his hair, but the waves bounced back over his forehead just the same. “She kept saying she knew best, better than us. I wanted her to know I do my own thinking.”

  “A point you have fully proven,” Rose said. She turned her face toward the sky peeking between the awnings over the tables. Seagulls flapped and soared toward Lake Michigan.

  With Olive paying far too much attention, Sylvie changed the subject. “Have you thought of where you’ll seek employment next?”

  “There’s always the docks,” Ivan said, “but you never know until you show up in the morning whether or not you’ll get a day’s work. So I’m going to apply at the Polish restaurant at the Fair. It’ll close at the end of October, but in the meantime it might not be so bad. Being Polish ought to give me a leg up. I heard they have waiters from Cleveland and the guests are disappointed.”

  That sounded familiar. “Do you have any experience in food service?” Sylvie asked.

  “No, but I’m learning I can act my way through a lot. ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entran
ces; and one man in his time plays many parts.’”

  Rose sent him a smile, and Olive reminded her to take her turn.

  Sylvie gaped. “I had no idea you were a student of Shakespeare, Ivan.”

  “It’s a recent thing. Over the last few weeks, Jozefa asked me to help Rose with her lines. Rose helped me understand what the lines mean, too. We’ve been practicing As You Like It together. And Romeo and Juliet.”

  Sylvie nearly spit out her coffee. Then she drank, and drank again, disguising her absolute speechlessness. Had this been a genuine kindness on Jozefa’s part, giving the couple something constructive to fill their time? But surely she, an actress herself, would have realized the danger of putting two young people in such a position. Acting out lines of love and romance, unchaperoned in a hotel room . . .

  “I win!” Olive cried. “Aunt Sylvie, will you play with me next?”

  Sylvie nodded as Olive reset the checkerboard, strains of Austrian band music floating around them.

  Soon the waitress returned, and Sylvie stumbled through her order. All the world’s a stage, indeed! Jozefa hadn’t known what she was doing with these two. Or worse, she had.

  When Olive slipped out of her chair and scampered off to see Meg, Rose leaned forward. “In a way, I feel sorry for my aunt. She tried so hard to keep me.”

  A month ago, Rose had said Sylvie’s boundaries were so confining they felt like a cage. And now she felt sorry for Jozefa, who had literally penned her up?

  “Possession,” Sylvie said quietly, “is not the same as love.”

  Ivan needed to hear that as much as anyone. Only grudgingly did she remind herself that he had, in fact, freed Rose, hoping to win her even when she had more choices, according to Kristof’s report.

  Still. Sylvie had so little trust to spare, she couldn’t bear to part with much for him.

  Rose reached across the table and touched Sylvie’s hand. “I was hard on you before. For all the rules and guidelines. But I’ve come to realize you meant them for my own good. Aunt Jozefa meant them for hers.” She leaned back in her chair. “To her credit, she let me go my own way in the end, didn’t she? She didn’t come back for me, when she certainly knew where I was.”

  Ivan folded his arms. “She ‘let you go’ because you were already gone by the time she returned to the Auditorium Hotel on Saturday.”

  “She’s my only blood relative in the world.” Rose’s chin trembled. “Now I’ll never see her again.”

  A pang of compassion swelled in Sylvie. “It could have been different. If she hadn’t resorted to deception, she could have been part of your life in an honest way. I would have welcomed her. Her choices were—”

  “Please, Mimi. Speak no ill of my aunt, especially when she’s not here to defend herself.”

  The Vienna sausages and potato salad arrived, drawing Olive and Meg from the easel. By the time they’d finished sachertorte for dessert, Sylvie had checked her watch three more times. Not until after they had browsed through shops of Austrian linens and market tables of silver and amber jewelry did Sylvie relax. At last, Jozefa was on her train and speeding away from Chicago, out of their lives. It fell to Sylvie to pick up the pieces she’d left behind.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1893

  Tying her hat ribbons firmly beneath her chin, Sylvie emerged onto her building’s rooftop, though she’d never been fond of heights. There was Rose, reading in a folding chair beneath the open sky. Wind pulling at her skirt, Sylvie pressed a hand to her flipping stomach and passed the terra-cotta pots of red geraniums.

  “Thanks for leaving a note to find you here.” She sat in the chair beside Rose. Two sparrows landed nearby, pecking at seed and bread crumbs Rose must have scattered when she arrived.

  “I didn’t want you to worry when you came home from work to an empty apartment.” The broad brim of her straw hat undulated. Her shawl had fallen behind her back, the ends looped over her elbows.

  “Worry, me?” Sylvie teased, glad her hat covered her hair, which showed far more grey than it had a month ago.

  After slipping a ribbon into her book, Rose closed it. “I’m serious, Mimi. I’ve caused you more distress than you ever deserved. I’m sorry about that. It’s not your fault we’re not related by blood. I wish we were. You don’t know how much I do. I don’t know how to explain why it matters at all.”

  “You don’t have to explain that, Rozalia.”

  “I want to try.” She tapped the cover of Mansfield Park. “Do you know why this story means so much to me?”

  Sylvie could guess. “I’d rather hear it from you.” Warmth soaked through her hat and dress to her skin, the parting caress of a mild day.

  “It’s about finding one’s true home, and Fanny Price has so much trouble. She’s a monster, you know.” Rose’s hair draped over her shoulder in a long thick braid, the ends of which flirted with the wind.

  “The literary trope?” Sylvie clarified. The character type was most often associated with Mary Shelley’s novel, in which the monster Dr. Frankenstein created didn’t fit or belong in the world he inhabited.

  “Right.” Rose shifted in her chair, and it creaked. “Fanny doesn’t fit anywhere. She doesn’t belong with her natural parents in Portsmouth, and she doesn’t really belong with her adoptive family, the relatives who have raised her in Mansfield Park. It’s incredibly sad when you think about it.”

  Sylvie watched her intently, suspecting that she was talking about herself as much as she was of Fanny.

  Rose opened the novel on her lap and read. “‘When she had been coming to Portsmouth, she had loved to call it her home, had been fond of saying that she was going home; the word had been very dear to her, and so it still was, but it must be applied to Mansfield. That was now the home.’”

  “What does that mean to you?” Sylvie prompted.

  Rose sighed. “Fanny Price is basically homeless. She feels like she belongs wherever she isn’t. She doesn’t belong anywhere at all.”

  Sylvie reached out and cupped her slender shoulder. “You aren’t Fanny Price. You aren’t homeless. Your home is here, for as long as you want it to be. I can’t answer why God allowed both your parents to die. But I’ve always counted it my deepest joy that I got to be the one to raise you in their stead. It was love, not obligation, that bound us together. I love you more than you know.”

  She paused, wondering if her words were having any effect at all. If words alone could make Rose secure, she would surround her with them, wrap her as tight as the shawl Rose now drew around her shoulders. Instead, she feared what she’d said had made no more impression than the butterfly that landed on the nearby geranium and fluttered off again without even making the blossom sway.

  Rose watched its looping flight. “Honestly, I don’t even think she belongs with Edmund. She married him because he just happened to be the one closest to her.”

  Sylvie pondered this. If Rose saw herself in Fanny Price, was she saying her attachment to Ivan was unraveling? She had to ask. “Has your view of Ivan changed?”

  Rose shut the book. The traffic from the street below mingled with the bright notes of the wind chime hung outside the Hoffmans’ window. “I don’t know how I view Ivan anymore. Everything is different. He seems to care for me as much as ever, but now that I’m free, I don’t fancy being smothered, even by his affection.” She spoke quietly, as if only to herself.

  “Jozefa dangled outings in front of me, chances to see you at the Fair.” Rose had obviously leapt to the parallel track in her train of thought, for Jozefa and Ivan were the two rails of her captivity. “But every promise proved false. She kept putting it off. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow. Today will not work after all.’ And I already told you about the letters.”

  The letters. Sylvie’s hand went to her pocket, stiff with today’s mail. Something had come for Rose today. She withdrew the envelopes and flipped through them until she came to it. The handwriting seemed feminine and vaguely
familiar. Perhaps Hazel had—

  No. Sylvie examined the script again. That was Jozefa’s hand. She glanced at Rose, who was looking off into some unseen distance again. If Sylvie kept the letter back, Rose would never know it. And why shouldn’t she, when Jozefa had kept so many letters from Sylvie?

  Her conscience cracked. To mimic another’s wrong was never right.

  Besides, Jozefa was already gone. Rose had chosen Sylvie. The letter was either a good-bye, an apology, or an invitation to correspond. Sylvie had no right to keep it.

  “Rose,” she said. “This is for you. I think it might be from Jozefa.”

  “And you’re giving it to me anyway? I’m impressed.”

  “So am I.” Sylvie tried to laugh as Rose opened it and began to read.

  “You’re right, it’s from her. Long, too.” She smoothed the page on her book, bending over it as she read.

  All at once, she stood, Mansfield Park falling from her lap. She paced, one hand over her mouth, then turned her back to the wind and stood still. Sylvie pushed out of her chair. Warning licked through her.

  When Rose cried out, Sylvie could bear the suspense no longer. “What is it?” she pleaded. She could not survive any more secrets.

  Rose spun to face her. “Jozefa is not my aunt. She lied.”

  “What?” Sylvie gasped. “Now will you press charges? If you won’t, I will. The woman is mad!”

  But Rose was already shaking her head, tears rolling free from her lashes, holding up the letter. “She isn’t my aunt. She’s my mother.”

  Her shawl slipped to the ground.

  “I don’t understand,” Sylvie said again. She sat opposite Rose at their kitchen table, having taken refuge from the wind when it threatened to snatch the letter. Nothing Rose had said since reading it made sense. “Your mother was Magdalena Dabrowski.”

  Rose pressed a handkerchief to her mottled face. “You haven’t read this.”