Winter Sisters

by Robin Oliveira

“I have no fame,” Elizabeth’s gaze had turned glassy. “None whatsoever.”

  “Mrs. Stipp,” Abraham Lansing said, with a conspiring glance at Jakob, obviously seeking again to divert attention from the distressed Elizabeth, “are you considering retirement from your profession?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Mary said.

  “Society has no need for women physicians. The war is long since over. There are plenty of men to do the job. I ask because I’ve heard that in some states women doctors are petitioning the courts to be allowed to practice where they’ve been denied. The effort seems excessive. War gives license for many things, but a woman’s natural province is the home. Why are you so compelled to exhaust yourself with work when you could lead a regular life?”

  Mary lifted her wineglass. “What is a regular life? Perhaps you would like it if I stayed home and twiddled my thumbs?”

  Viola gave a short laugh, and Jakob rose, eager both to avoid outright war and to save Elizabeth and Mary from the unwanted attentions directed their way. “If you’ll excuse us, I am in dire need of some fresh air. Miss Elizabeth has kindly consented to accompany me in a stroll down the street.” He turned to her and said, “Haven’t you, Elizabeth? With your permission, of course, Dr. Stipp.” Jakob directed an appealing gaze at William, who acquiesced with a brief nod. Jakob apologized to his mother, who waved him on his way, and the two young people fled the room.

  Eyebrows raised at the impropriety of the young scion of the family and an unchaperoned girl deserting a dinner barely in its infancy—there were still five courses to come—but there was brittle envy, too, for most of the guests wanted to leave but could not, out of deeply ingrained manners that dictated courtesy before sanity.

  —

  Later, in the parlor, the women took tea while the men drank brandy by the bank of windows flung open to ventilate the room of their blue cigar smoke. Elizabeth and Jakob had returned sometime during dessert and were being left alone, albeit under the watchful eye of Amelia, who sat nearby, half-listening to their gentle teasing and half-listening to Jane Pruyn discuss her husband’s ambassadorial service to Japan during the war.

  “We didn’t go with Robert, of course, the children and I. And here the War of the Rebellion was on, so we moved to the Continent for four years. The Continent is so much more civilized than the Orient. Don’t you agree?”

  Gerritt had cornered William by a vase of hothouse roses and said under his breath, “You’ll forgive me. I meant no disrespect. I am sometimes an oaf when it comes to delicate things. But I would like very much to extend again the House of Shelter proposition that I made to Mrs. Stipp.”

  “That is entirely for her to decide.”

  “Of course, of course. But between men—”

  “Mary Sutter makes her own decisions.”

  “Mary Sutter?”

  “I call her that when she is at her most courageous. Which is most of the time.”

  “I only want to help.”

  “You can. Do not mention the clinic to anyone else. It was never yours to interfere with in any way. I perceive that in your offer you meant to be generous. But Mary is not a woman to be manipulated. She alone will decide what she wants to do.”

  In an armchair nearby, Mary smiled. William rarely interjected himself into her fights, but when he did, his machinations generally took the form of orders and not negotiation.

  “Of course,” Gerritt said. “Forgive me. I invited you all because I thought a party might cheer you. And I thought Jakob and Elizabeth might be able to hide in a crowd and get to know one another. The other night at dinner, Jakob mentioned to me that he was quite taken with her, and I must admit that I am, too.”

  William opened his mouth to reply when a deafening explosion rocked the house, a flat boom that thundered through the open windows, followed by percussive, shuddering waves. A violent cracking noise reverberated through the air, and then another. The night erupted. Bells began to ring: deeply resonant church bells, sharp, clanging fire bells, and then the awful, piercing shriek of the Lumber District siren.

  The sudden clamor startled everyone into silence.

  Then the guests exhaled. The river. Yes. That was it, they all agreed. The river ice was breaking up.

  But Harley and Gerritt, far from sanguine, exchanged a swift and piercing look. Gerritt jerked his chin to the door, and Harley bolted from the room. Jakob, too, jumped to his feet.

  “Get the books!” Gerritt shouted at him, tossing him a key ring from a pocket of his frock coat.

  Jakob caught it, lunged for the door, and dashed away without a backward glance.

  Chapter Fourteen

  With the first warning boom, chaos broke out all over the city. Intoxicated men poured out of taverns. At Tweddle Hall, patrons in fancy dress fled the night’s entertainment for their waiting carriages. Merchants who lived above their riverside shops tumbled down back stairwells and thrust themselves into the fraught business of preserving their livelihoods, while their wives herded their crying children uphill. Hoteliers near the river instructed sleepy guests to pack their bags and skedaddle. Railroad engineers scrambled to move their locomotives out of harm’s way, adding the incessant screech of steam whistles to the rising din. And stevedores and lumber handlers converged in droves on the district, intent on saving as much lumber as they could. They had maybe an hour, two if they were lucky, before river water inundated the district and washed away the overwintered stock.

  The Van der Veer carriage hurtled through the city, carrying Jakob to the district. At North Broadway, several blocks distant from the rising river, he encountered a mounted policeman cantering down the granite blocks of the thoroughfare, shouting over the bells, “Get to higher ground. Run like the devil is after you.” The streetlights of Broadway fell away as Jakob exited the carriage and raced on foot toward the river. At the corner of Water Street, he called to a shopkeeper turning the key in the lock of his dry goods store. Jakob plucked a new lantern, a can of kerosene, and a box of carbon matches from the shelves, and threw money onto the counter as the storekeeper begged in vain for help moving his goods into the eaves. Outside, Jakob coaxed a brilliant flame from the fragile lantern mantle. Holding the swinging lantern aloft, he hurtled down the remaining quarter mile to Lock Two, then squeezed into the mass of men pouring into the district. Everywhere was noise—people screaming, horses’ hooves clattering against cobbles, and fractured river ice crashing into the pilings of the north railroad bridge, a cacophony that sounded like the end of the world.

  The Van der Veer lot thrummed with chaos. Harley had taken off from the party in his little gig without waiting for Jakob, but now Jakob, his lantern swinging wildly, darted between the towering stacks of lumber, searching for the overseer, who he thought had preceded him to the district. But the man was nowhere. Irritated, Jakob abandoned the fruitless search and tried to get a sense of what could be done with the dozens of Van der Veer men who had reported. Underfoot, slush and mud were making the going hellish, and the river ice was cracking and roaring as it gave way.

  In Harley’s place Jakob directed the men to load the flat barges with as much lumber as the ships could carry. Canal boats that had frozen in the slips during the blizzard could carry 165,000 board feet—a good save, and every board foot they preserved was money in everyone’s pocket. The men responded to Jakob’s shouted instructions, crawling onto the stacks, manning ropes and pulleys, and leaping onto barges to receive the payloads. They worked hard and fast, wary eyes peering into the darkness toward the river, their backs bent to the job. The only light came from bobbing lanterns and the silver shine of a half moon reflected on banks of low clouds. No one knew how much time they had, or how many hours they worked, but to a man, bones grew weary and sweat poured from them like a fire hose.

  Suddenly an enormous cry broke through the chaos as lookouts posted on the river shore shouted, “Now, now, now!�
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  Men abandoned their work on the spot and bolted.

  They thundered past Jakob, vanishing into the night, urging him to follow. But instead Jakob hunted every inch of blackness, and only when he had verified that every last one of their men had vacated the lot did he race to the Van der Veer Lumber office to retrieve the company books, which contained the record of every transaction the company had ever made. This retrieval had been his father’s sole aim in sending Jakob tonight, but Harley’s absence—and his father’s—had forced Jakob to perform the overseer’s responsibilities until this last minute.

  The office occupied a square of land adjacent to the main road that ran along the river side of the district, but the office was a good hundred feet from the shore. The location was advantageous—close to the Lock Bridge, serviced by the district trolley, just steps away from one of the big sawmills. All day long, the scent of sawdust and the whine of the enormous band saw penetrated the two-room edifice where his father reigned as the king of lumber. His father had built the impressive office a decade ago, when the company’s coffers had swelled after the war. With a view to impressing clients, Gerritt had spent eight thousand dollars on an elegant building crafted not of lumber, but of brick—a heretical ode to profitability. Its French roof rose twenty feet, and the walls inside were paneled in black walnut. It was the envy of the other dealers, and his father’s pride and joy.

  Dredging the key ring from his pocket, Jakob juggled the lantern, fumbling as he unlocked the door. The river sounded like a freight train. He tripped on the raised threshold as he went in, slammed the door, and rushed through the reception room with its high sales counter and overstuffed chairs into his father’s office in the back. There he kept his big combination vault, hidden behind a panel door fashioned to look like the wall. He rounded his father’s wide oak desk and dialed the lock, his fingers trembling. Outside, chunks of ice battered the North Bridge, grinding against it. He misdialed and began again, his fingers feeling like jelly. After an eon, the tumblers locked into place. Jakob hefted the bolt, swung open the lead door, and began rummaging, loading ledgers into the crook of his elbow, in all, fifteen volumes of the history of Van der Veer Lumber. He had no idea that his father kept so many. He stuffed them one after the other into a thick burlap sack, scooped up piles of greenbacks, slammed the door shut, twirled the lock, snagged the lantern, and charged out of the inner office and back through the front room with his spoils.

  He yanked the outside door open an inch. Black, icy water surged in around his feet.

  Heart pounding, he strong-armed the door shut, but somehow, water kept seeping in underfoot

  He stood there, panting. There was no going outside. The river would sweep him away. How long had he been inside? Two minutes? Less?

  He skidded back through the front room to his father’s heavy oak desk and heaved the burlap bag atop, plunked the lantern beside it, and clambered on top, too, breathing hard, making rapid calculations. He recalled his father’s warnings at the cemetery. If the freshet turned out to be as bad as his father predicted, the building might fill with water. And fast. And if the river rose above twenty feet—which it sometimes did—rarely, but still—the office would be completely submerged. Gulping air, he fought panic, reeling with fury at Harley. Where was that man? If he’d shown up to do his job, Jakob could have retrieved the books straightaway. He would not now be facing a watery grave. Furthermore, where was his father? He’d thought he was just behind him. Had he said that he was coming? The ominous splash of lumber piles toppling and ice smashing made it impossible to think.

  What was essential? Staying alive.

  For a brief moment, he thought of Elizabeth. They had not walked far—just down to Willett Street and back under flowering horse chestnut trees, but then they had sat on a neighbor’s steps, whispering together about Paris and the Conservatoire. Elizabeth had confided the relentless criticism her instructor had heaped on her, her overwhelming sense of failure, the sadness of everything she had loved vanishing from her life, all of it pouring out of her in a rush. He had taken her gloved hands in his and did not relinquish them until she finished.

  A huge crash thundered through the air. Slabs of ice, keeling over.

  Underfoot, water already lapped halfway up the solid desk. Where was it coming in? From underneath the floorboards maybe?

  Frantic, Jakob took inventory in the flickering lantern light. At some point, he had lost the kerosene tin. Soon, the oil would run out and he would be plunged into pitch-blackness.

  His eyes raked the shelves, searching for anything of use.

  Then he remembered.

  In the front room, his father kept an altar to the lumber business: links of grappling chain, a long cant hook, an even longer, sharp-pronged peavey, a mass of lethal picaroons. And one double-bitted ax.

  He lowered himself into the freezing waters and gasped.

  He toed forward, uncertain of the flooring. There was little current. A vase bobbed by. An oil lamp. Holding his lantern high, he headed for the front room.

  The double-sided ax hung suspended on nails on the wall, high above the sales counter. Heaving himself up, he grappled for it and knocked it off its hooks. It splashed into the water beside him. He grabbed for it, just snagging the curved wooden handle before it drifted away. His legs were already numb. One hand grasping the ax, the other the lantern, he drifted like a ghost back through the water, thinking rather than feeling his way.

  Shivering, he lugged himself onto the desk, and pulled his legs up one by one. He was shuddering, cold through. He crawled to his hands and knees, staggered to a stand. The desk was heavy enough to stay put for a while, but water could carry anything away.

  For a brief moment, he had a sense of the walls of his heart dissolving. He had just been born, and now he might die. A vision flickered before him—his mother, weeping.

  He was not dressed for exertion. He was dressed for a dinner party. He began wildly swinging the ax.

  Chapter Fifteen

  At the first peel of bells, Emma was on her feet.

  She’d been dreaming and now she was awake and she didn’t know why.

  Earlier, she and Claire had fallen asleep under a new blanket that the Man had promised would ward off the chill of the stone walls. It hadn’t. She was always cold.

  The dream was her favorite one. She dreamed it all the time. It was about stars in the sky and a ladder that dropped down from heaven and a little man who wore a sparkling top hat who reached over the starry ledge to beckon Emma and Claire to climb the ladder into the shimmer, away from all the pain.

  The nearby church bell, the one that rang on Sunday mornings, was banging back and forth in its tower. Above the sound of the bell, the high shriek of the Lumber District whistle wailed, too. The Lumber District siren used to mean that her father was coming home from work. Now it meant that the Man was coming back.

  But it wasn’t morning. And it wasn’t evening. It was dark.

  Emma blinked into the blackness, looking first, as she always did, to the top of the stairs to see whether or not the Man was coming down. He always came down first if the Other Man was coming, to admonish Emma into cooperation, to carry Claire away. But the door wasn’t opening. On the street, yellow lantern light flashed around the black shadows of the window boxes. Hollow calls of panic and worry floated in the air.

  The bell was the one that rang so loudly on Sundays. Yes, for certain, it was the church bell. But it wasn’t Sunday morning now, was it? And the siren had already sounded for that night. And the Man wasn’t coming down the stairs.

  At least not yet.

  Claire woke and began to weep, and Emma wrapped her arms around Claire’s waist and petted her hair.

  Think!

  Until this moment, the ringing of the church bell had been a gift. It had given her the ability to mark time. She counted everything now: the numbe
r of weeks they’d been gone, the number of stairs to the locked door, the number of times the Other Man came, the number of times he’d forced her to do that.

  But the bell also meant that one more week had passed and her mother and father hadn’t yet come for them. She feared that what the Man said was true. That her parents had given up on them. That they didn’t care.

  Tonight, neither the Man nor the Other Man had come downstairs, but now that reprieve vanished in importance. Now, more bells began to ring. Was this upheaval a new trick? But how could the Man enlist everyone? Outside, people were yelling. No. This was something else, something the Man didn’t cause, though in their new world nothing happened that the Man didn’t make happen.

  Her mother loved the sound of church bells, except when it was the middle of the night. When it was the middle of the night, the bells signified something terrible, Emma remembered. Her mind churned as she struggled to remember what her mother said they meant.

  Outside, flashes of candle and lantern light flickered past the window boxes. People were up. People were awake.

  When the bells rang, her mother would leap from her bed. She would throw open the window and call out—what?

  Oh, her mind was working so slowly. Too slowly.

  Fire or flood!

  Cradling Claire in her arms, Emma forced herself to make her thoughts as ordered as the rungs on that ladder to the sky. She didn’t smell smoke. But she couldn’t be certain. Sometimes the coal stove smoked and sometimes everything smelled of it, and when it did, she didn’t smell other, loathsome things.

  Emma put away her fear. Because she might need to do something.

  Think one thought at a time, she told herself.

  Down here, shut up in the basement, she might not smell smoke. So it was possible that the bells meant fire.

  But maybe it was just early in the morning. Maybe it was a holiday. Easter was coming. She remembered that she was to have had a new dress for the holiday. Her mother had promised to make it for her. Maybe it was Easter now?