Mittman, Stephanie

by The Courtship

  "It isn't the money," she lied, rubbing her sweaty palms against the green velvet skirt she wondered what had ever possessed her to wear. "It's the..." she searched for a word other than independence, but none stumbled into her path.

  "—tangible sign of appreciation and worth," he finished for her. "I've been a boor, haven't I? What do you say to a little vacation? When Ash's case is over? We could take a ship somewhere, perhaps. Or a train. Would you like that?"

  "I think we'd better win his case before we plan the celebration," she said, wishing she could get on a boat or a train and never come back, never see another law book, or courtroom, or lawyer—her husband included.

  "However it ends up, I think it wise we get away. Can't you smell that ocean breeze?" he egged her on. "Salt spray in your hair, and all that. Maybe Ashford could recommend a place. Though I suppose we wouldn't be looking for the same sorts of things."

  "We should get back to work." She stood and took the papers from the out basket and turned toward her office.

  "I'm sorry, Charlotte," he said, and she stood perfectly still with her back to him. "I'll try harder. I'll notice the things I ought to and comment on them."

  The harsh light of day had revealed the butchering she'd done to her hair, and no green velvet skirt or striped shirtwaist was going to make it look any better. Still, she wouldn't have minded someone at least acknowledging the change in her appearance this morning. Kathryn had simply stared, Ash had held his tongue, and Cabot had dashed extra bitters in his tea upon her entrance into the dining room.

  "Yesterday's memo was well done," he said, tapping his desk with a pencil. "Well done indeed."

  Especially when you consider what you paid for it, Charlotte thought bitterly. But then, the memo had been for Ash, who had caressed her with his eyes even while he was holding his tongue.

  ***

  They were all in the dining room waiting when Ash came down to dinner. As always, he was seated next to Selma and across from Charlotte. The intention was for him to entertain Selma while Charlotte made polite conversation with Eli on her left and Kathryn on her right. Cabot, pontificating at everyone, sat at the head of the table with Davis on his right, since the child needed the most edification from the master.

  The chip on Ash's shoulder was so heavy, he was surprised he could walk upright into the dining room, make his apologies for being late, and take his seat, all without breaking under the weight of it.

  "You're late," Cabot said. "Which is amazing, considering the fact that you can't leave this house."

  Ash tried simply ignoring him.

  "Equally amazing is the fact that someone whose description is remarkably close to yours was seen down on the docks last night."

  Ash watched Charlotte's eyebrows rise, but busied himself with his napkin. The closest he'd come was a woman named Jamaica, who'd told him about a blonde who'd moved farther south to ply her trade in the better weather.

  "A man of low moral fiber, this one was, consorting with those of the same ilk."

  "That is an exceptionally pretty dress," Ash said to Selma, without so much as a look in Cabot's direction. "It seems to make you glow."

  "That's not the dress," Eli said with a slight grimace. "That's her goyisher beau, you should pardon the expression but I feel I am among friends."

  "Eli, he's not a beau," Selma said, blushing to her widow's peak. "He's a nice man I see every now and then."

  "For vhat?" Eli demanded.

  "For tea, or a little supper. You're always at the office and I get lonely. Why shouldn't I eat with whomever I please?"

  "Goyim?"

  "We aren't out eating pig's feet, Eli. At least I'm not. What does it matter if the man is not Jewish? I'm eating dinner with him, not standing under the chuppa." Ash was surprised Selma could turn any redder, but she managed it at the reference to the bridal altar.

  "You're breaking bread with us, Dr. Mollenoff," Kathryn reminded him. "And we're not of your faith."

  "It's different," Eli said. "And you know it. We're friends here, a group of people not looking for more than that. Now if I vas to vork up the nerve to ask if you should maybe one day vant to go for a sip of tea vit me down in the city, and you should maybe take leave of your senses and say yes to an old fool like me, then maybe ve vould have something to compare.

  "But even then it vould be different. Selma is, you should take no offense, much younger than you or me, and children are not so distant a possibility for her."

  Next to him Selma threw up her hands, but what caught Ash's attention was that his mother's cheeks had taken on the same pink tinge as the woman next to him. "Now he's got me calling in the midwife! Eli, we had tea, that's all. The man delivered my mail at the warehouse and then when we moved to the new building, there he was again. He smiled, I smiled, and from this you've got little crosses hanging around my children's necks."

  "God forbid!" Eli said, his hand shaking as it covered his heart. "Better you should be dead."

  "Dr. Mollenoff!" Charlotte shook that pretty little head of hers, smaller now without that ridiculous bundle of hair piled atop it. He couldn't look at her without thinking of rolling her about in the grass, tumbling down a hill with her like two carefree children. Thoughts he clearly had no right to.

  "Religion," Cabot said with a huff, the way he said most things of late. "Just another weapon to divide people from one another. Race, sex, religion. All excuses for discrimination and hate."

  "All sources for unity and progress. People banded together with the same cause can achieve great things," Charlotte said. It was simply amazing to him that such brilliance could come out of the same darling little mouth that had nearly accused him of stealing her honor. "Look how close the women are to the vote."

  "Oh, yes," Selma said sarcastically. "In the meantime the man who stables my horse has more say about our President than I do."

  "I think we tend to write off people too quickly," Ash said. What was it his father had told him when he'd handed him a nickel to give the man who begged by the church? There but for the grace of God go I. "How many people thought Charlotte, here, could never make a fine lawyer because she's a woman? How many would have said that my brother could never become a lawyer because he's stuck in that chair? Look at all of us—"

  "But that's just man fulfilling his potential," Charlotte said. "Selma's asking why those who don't achieve their full potential still have rights that others of us have proven we deserve."

  "Because if we had to use reaching their potential as the criterion for the right to vote, my dear Charlotte, only you would be allowed to vote!" He raised his glass to salute her.

  "Here, here," the doctor seconded, and everyone drank to a clearly embarrassed Charlotte.

  "I think what we're really at here is suitability," Cabot said. "Eli probably has nothing against Selma's friend personally, but I can certainly understand his concerns regarding whether the friend is an appropriate one for his sister and whether condoning a relationship between them is not inviting trouble in the door."

  "Come, now, Mr. Whittier. You wouldn't try to decide what was right and appropriate for your brother, would you?" Selma asked.

  Ash noticed Charlotte's pale face, the way she busied herself lining up her spoons against the edge of the table, the way her gaze refused to rise and meet his own. "I think," he said, "that you and I suffer the same fate, Miss Mollenoff, and that what was once a blessing has become a curse."

  "Because we raised you," Dr. Mollenoff said, nodding his head. "A parent and yet not a parent. Fine lines, we draw, and then we cannot seem to cross them, eh, Mr. Vhittier?"

  "Am I your curse?" Cabot asked, erasing everyone from the room but the two of them.

  "Of course not," Ash was forced to say. Cabot had been there too many times for him, smoothing over rough spots Ash himself had created.

  Cabot snorted quietly, apparently deep in thought. "Just your albatross, then, is that it?"

  "Don't be absurd," Ash resp
onded, recognizing for the first time the millstone his brother had become, the weight of the guilt that he had dragged around the world with him, and denied to Cabot's face because it upset his brother so.

  "You know," Cabot said abruptly, addressing Selma as if the private exchange between him and Ash had never taken place, "Davis's father is a mail carrier. Perhaps he knows your new beau."

  "The man is not a beau," Selma said, crossing her arms and grimacing. "He's merely a friend I would just as soon not discuss."

  ***

  Davis had no doubt his da would know Miss Mollenoff's beau or friend or whatever she wanted to call him. His father knew everyone, knew everything. To hear him tell it, there wasn't a shamrock in all of Oakland he didn't hear growing before it broke the ground. Like he knew that big fellow Moss would be waiting at McGinty's Bar for him to come in after court, and that the man would follow them home like a shadow on a summer afternoon. Like he knew that Mr. Ash had someone searching all over the bay for some dish like it would prove he hadn't set fire to his warehouse.

  Da had been different all week. So different that when Mr. Johnson had said he was taking Davis over to the mister's place, his da hadn't even blinked. Yeah, go, he'd told him, and he hadn't opened the bottle until Moss had knocked on the door.

  "How'd you like to sleep up in the high room?" the mister asked him as Maria was circling the table with a platter of something that smelled extra good. Fish in papillote, old Mrs. Whittier had told him, and warned him to take the paper off like he'd never gotten fish or chips wrapped up in a newspaper before.

  The missus's fork fell against her plate with a clang and a clatter, and she chased it to stop the noise in a hurry. "The high room?" she asked. "But that's your brother's room. Where would Ashford sleep?"

  "The carriage house," the mister said, like it had all been decided already. Except Davis guessed it wasn't, since the mister added, "Unless, of course, you object, Ash. It's clear you're feeling a bit confined by now. Perhaps a little space, a little distance, might make you more comfortable. And keep you on the grounds."

  "If you're implying that I've been out pleasure seeking—" the brother—Davis thought he was real nice, and surely liked the man's parrot—started to say.

  The mister took in a big breath and acted like he hadn't said what Davis was pretty sure he had. "Never!" he said, shaking his head slowly back and forth. "But you don't mind the carriage house, then, do you?"

  The brother said he didn't, and then told Maria he didn't want any more food.

  "Good, good," the mister said, and winked at his brother real big so everyone else at the table could see. "Maybe we can slay two birds with the same stone. Give you a bit of the privacy you must be craving after all those years at sea and all."

  "Well, Liberty ought to appreciate the chance to spread his wings," Ash said, smiling right at Davis when he said the bird's name.

  "Not to mention you as well," the mister added, then looked at the missus and smiled real private, like it was just the two of them in the room. "And then, Charlotte, you'll be able to get up there every now and then like you used to. Tend your animals and such."

  "My animals?" The missus tilted her head and leaned around the doc and Davis to get a better look at her husband. "What animals?" she demanded, just like he was the one hiding them.

  "Oh, the little one-eared fellow, and the blind one, and the rodents you can't bear to catch in traps. Need I go on?" Davis had figured that the man had to know at least about that stupid rabbit who was always getting loose. The mister seemed real pleased with himself for having kept the secret so long, but the missus didn't seem to appreciate it at all.

  "The blind one is dead," she said through gritted teeth. "He died about a year ago in the cellar. How long have you known about them?"

  The mister shrugged and winked at Davis. "I'm no idiot, Charlotte. Not blind, not deaf. The first one I can remember is that squirrel you called Bristles. Not counting the cat I agreed could stay in the cellar after our urn-filler got to him."

  He waved at the peacock feathers filling the jug on the sideboard. It was too bad that bird had died. The missus was all broke up about it, which surprised Davis because he didn't think anyone liked the mean old buzzard all that much.

  "Not counting the cat you relegated to the cellar," the missus said with her eyes all squinty. "Where the poor thing died. If you've known all along, why didn't you say anything? Do you have any idea how hard it's been for me to take care of them surreptitiously? Getting up in the middle of the night to feed them just to accommodate your edict of no pets in this house—do you have any idea how many stairs I've climbed, trips to warm things up and back again, all after you've gone to bed. Do you—"

  The mister threw back his head and laughed. "You make it sound like it was my fault that you were a sneak and a liar. As if you could sneak anything past me, Charlotte! As if I don't know everything that goes on under my roof. And here I was all this time letting you get away with your little deception."

  "Why?" she asked, her fists so tight up, they were turning white. "What was the point of making my life so hard?"

  "Nobody made you take in those animals, Charlotte, so don't go blaming me for the work of them," the mister said.

  "Vas she supposed to just let them die?" the doc asked. "Come on, now, Mr. Vhittier. You know your vife better than that. She didn't have no choice but the one you left her—to hide them."

  It seemed to Davis that the doc had a point. Even in the little time he'd known the missus, he'd seen that she couldn't even turn on a spider. She sure looked silly chasing the hairy little thing under the sofa and warning it to stay there cause Maria was on her way and would be sure to step on it.

  "It's my fault?" the mister asked, his eyes real big like it was the silliest thing he'd ever heard. "She sneaks these things into the house against my express wishes and I'm the one guilty of something?"

  "She asked you why, Cabot," the other mister said. If Davis didn't know better he'd swear that man was sweet on the missus, the way he kept looking at her like she'd just baked him a birthday cake with three layers and a whole lot of candles. "And I'd like to hear the answer. We know why she tricked you—her nature wouldn't let her do anything else. Why did you trick her?"

  It seemed like everyone was ganging up on the mister, but Davis figured the man could take care of himself, so he rested his head in his hand and just watched the man wheel that chair of his back away from the table a little.

  "I should have expected you would leap to her cause," the mister said to his brother. "For all the good it'll do you. You can look at me and ask why I don't want animals around here, Ashford? It's just one of the many little annoyances this chair has caused in our life. Seems you were right about how much I'm forced to disappoint her. Not that it's your fault in any way, Ash, but I'd expect you to at least be aware of the limitations imposed on me by—"

  "You want to get into this in front of our guests?" Ashford asked. Davis was beginning to think of him by his first name, since that was all most people called him. "Because I doubt she does."

  "No, he does not," the old lady said, stomping that cane of hers against the floor.

  Then I'll just be moving my stuff on out to the carriage house, if anyone needs me," Ashford said, getting up from the table and throwing down his napkin. "And we can finish this later."

  "Just wait until our guests leave," the missus said, signaling him to sit back down. "And I'll give you a hand. I've a few things up there that—"

  "I think not, Charlotte," the mister said, rolling his chair back up against the table and waving for Maria to take away their plates. "We have a great deal of work to do if we hope to win Ash's case. If you really want to be of help to him, I think it would be best if you and I did some work together tonight. And left Ash to himself and your various other animals."

  It made sense to Davis, but there must have been something he was missing, because Mr. Ash stormed across the room while the mist
er yelled at Maria for more wine. And Davis saw the old lady pat the missus's hand gently, giving the mister the evil eye like he'd done something she was real ashamed of.

  "I was just wondering, Cabot," Ash said before he left the room, "what made you tell her now?"

  CHAPTER 17

  She'd helped settle Davis into the high room, which consisted of little more than introducing him to a few more animals Ash had been willing to put up with, and pointing out some books he might enjoy leafing through. And then she'd gone down to her office, only to find the lights turned out and no sign of Cabot at all.

  Twice today she'd felt that he was threatening her. Of course, looking at it rationally, she was being ridiculous. All he'd said was that she could take her cases with her if she left. How could that possibly be construed as a threat? Especially since she wasn't going anywhere. Or putting Davis in the high room and suggesting they needed to do some work on his brother's case. What kind of threat was that?

  Still, something was afoot. They had become adversaries suddenly, on opposite sides of a nameless case.

  Her head was just poking through the neck of her nightgown when she heard three short taps. Davis? She lowered her gown, and clutching it around her neck, she opened her door to an empty hall. Again she heard the rapping and like an idiot she ran to the window to look out at the dark night.

  "Charlotte?"

  She heard the low voice, but saw nothing.

  "Charlotte, can you hear me?" It was Cabot's voice. She poked her head out the window and looked in the direction of his room.

  "Cabot?" she said out into the night.

  "Charlotte?" He tapped again and she realized he was knocking on the wall that separated their rooms. "Are you in there?"

  She put her head against the wall. "Cabot? Are you all right? Do you need something?" She was reaching for her robe and trying to remember where it was that Arthur slept, when Cabot answered her.