by Hazel Woods
“I’m just so glad you’re home,” Marie says, squeezing Hensley’s arm. “Really, I am.”
Hensley leans her head against Marie’s. “Me, too,” she says, wishing she could tell her the truth.
• • •
When her brother left early that morning, he was agitated by yet another unanswered telegram. He’d been mysterious about Lowell’s whereabouts, his intentions, the misunderstanding of her arrival. Finally, that evening when he returned from work, something in his demeanor seemed shifted.
“You are to meet Lowell tonight for dinner. It’s all set. It may still be redeemable.”
“Your arrangement or my life?” Hensley asked wearily. She had spent the last three nights at her sewing machine, trying to accommodate the changes in her figure. Using a bolt of awful taupe silk, which must have been her mother’s, that she’d found in Harold’s closet, she’d made a draping of cascading pleats to attach to a tunic. She would have preferred feathers worn long like a necklace, or roses made from some ethereal chiffon, but when she held up the pleats against herself and looked in the mirror, she was pleased.
“Let’s try to leave the drama to the playhouse,” Harold said, pouring each of them a cup of tea. “Or to Mr. Teagan.” Harold smiled at her as he stirred a lump of sugar into his tea.
Hensley let the steam collect on her palm, condensing into small, cool drops. “He doesn’t love me, does he?”
Harold sipped his tea carefully. “Again, Hensley, it’s time to be practical. Words like that can only confuse things. They are fraught, and their meaning changes with the decade.”
Hensley wiped her damp palm across her cheek. “I really thought he did. I thought I could tell. It seemed perfectly simple.”
Harold loosened his tie and said nothing more.
• • •
She meets him at an Italian restaurant on the east side. They do not touch. Lowell seems not to know what to do with his hands and so he places them firmly on the table.
“Hensley,” he says, quickly, as she sits down at the table across from him. “Would you like a drink?”
“Maybe something cold would be nice. Thank you.” Hensley looks at the charcoal gray wool of his suit coat. With a deep breath, she surveys the landscape of the table. He’s already ordered a Scotch and water for himself, which is sweating. There are red flowers on the table, and for a moment she thinks he’s brought them for her. But as she looks around, she sees that there is a bunch on each table. Glancing at his face, Hensley tries to find something new or changed in him. Instead, all she can see is that his hair is darker than she remembered it.
“You look well, Hen,” he says finally. “How are you feeling these days?”
Hensley blushes. The question seems too personal. Then she reminds herself that he is her fiancé. It is his baby twirling inside of her right now.
“I’m fine, Lowell. I feel good. Just a little tired. It’s a long journey. I thought you were to be at the station . . .”
“I can’t really tell. I mean, you’re hiding it well. It’s not noticeable at all.”
Hensley smooths the front of her dress and shrugs. Is this a compliment?
Then, after another sip of his drink, he adds, “Are you sure?”
“You mean, might you be off the hook?” Hensley says, her heart racing.
He shakes his head, his brow furrowed. “Don’t start. I’m just curious. I’d like to see, that’s all.” He winks. His small teeth make an appearance as he smiles. “Husbands are allowed.”
Hensley shudders. “You are crass. Would you like me to lift my skirts right here and let you inspect me?”
“Settle down, Hen.” Lowe reaches for a cigarette. “I only meant that you aren’t fat yet. That’s a good thing.”
“Yet?”
He ignores her. “I’ve had a lot of time to sort this out. We are embarking upon a sort of living play. We’ve been cast in our roles and we must do our best to render them with passion. I hope you can remember how this started.”
She takes a deep breath. “Passion?”
“Love, then. Is that better? Charles has things arranged with a judge next week.”
“Next week?” Hensley is suddenly short of breath. She imagines what her poor brother has had to endure, fixing this mess. Fraternizing with a man like Lowell Teagan is not his idea of fun.
“Not soon enough for you?” Lowe finishes his drink and signals the waitress for another.
“I just didn’t know it had all been worked out. I mean, I wasn’t even sure . . . when you didn’t meet my train I thought . . .”
“The sooner the better. While you can still pass for respectable, right?”
Hensley pushes back her chair. She wants to hurl her glass of water at him. Dirty him, shame him, hurt him. Why did she ever think this would work? Does he care at all for her? Will he ever learn to be thoughtful, to be kind? Will she?
“It’s a joke, Hen. Look, we’re in a predicament. Or, rather, you are. But I helped you get there, I know. So I’m trying to do the right thing. But don’t make me feel as though by marrying you I am shackling my entire spirit. Can’t we be light? Be frivolous?”
Hensley is still. His words do absolutely nothing to quell her anger. In fact, she cannot remember ever feeling so offended. She is certain she has never hated anyone until this moment.
Though she wishes she could stop them, the tears begin as soon as she speaks. “Nothing about this is frivolous, Lowell. This is forever, what we are about to do. You are to be my husband, not my jester. I do not feel like laughing about such a horrid mistake.”
The consonants in the word seem to spark in the air. The din of the restaurant continues all around them, but between them there is nothing but the echo of her word. Mistake. This word is somehow worse than his. How did that happen? In defeat, Hensley pulls in her chair. She brings her hand to her face to wipe away the tears.
“Please forgive me,” she says quietly.
Lowe’s face is expressionless. He smiles a quick, bitter smile and says, “Well, at least we agree on something.”
They sit across from one another without speaking until they’ve finished dinner. A heavy sadness presses against Hensley’s chest, but her eyes are dry.
As the sidewalk outside bustles, a million lives in transit, Hensley can think of only one. She reminds herself not to address him, that it is a useless endeavor, but she cannot help it. It is a cliff that she throws herself right over.
Even as Lowe sits across from her, Hensley drafts a new letter in her mind. Dear Mr. Reid, Have you ever felt betrayed by your very own self? As though you’ve locked yourself in a burning room and swallowed the key? This is how I feel as I sit across from my fiancé, the father of my unborn child, the man beside whom I will lay my head. I fear that I’ve grown up just a little too late. If I were the girl I was when I met Lowell, I would run away. Pretend that my own happiness matters more than any other’s. But just as I realize that I am part of a much bigger story, that someone else’s history has already begun inside of me, I know I must stay. What a foolish owl I am.
Finally, Lowe stands and offers Hensley his arm. She forces a smile and takes it.
They walk out into the evening, their betrothal like a wedge between them.
When she arrives back at Harold’s apartment, he is already asleep. Hensley paces across the living room. Next week. Her thoughts are incoherent. She doesn’t know what to think. The abstract notion of becoming Mrs. Lowell Teagan has become an actuality. They dined together. She took his arm as they left the restaurant. He walked her past his new apartment building on Seventy-second, where she, too, will soon live. He kissed her cheek when he left her at Harold’s door. None of it seems right. But she knows that when she put herself on that train, this was precisely the destination she’d chosen.
Unable to sleep, she sits up late at her
sewing machine with his words a refrain blurring her thoughts. Next week. She works on a veil. There is a scrap of lace in her sewing basket that she thinks she can fashion into something sweet. A Juliet cap or perhaps a headband. But after hours of standing before the glass, folding and piecing, ripping out stitches and rethreading her needle, she falls asleep, with only discarded bits and pieces strewn around her.
• • •
Hensley spends the week before her wedding on entirely domestic pursuits. She prepares a cut of meat for dinner, irons laundry, tidies the living room, washes the windows, and sweeps the floors. She does not mind having the apartment to herself. But she knows it cannot go on like this. In the glass above her dresser, she marvels at her changing figure, letting herself smile at the baby’s clandestine movements. Beneath her full skirts and long tunics, her belly is becoming round and tight. She likes its weight, the fullness of her body. This baby has become her only ally.
In the afternoons, she walks rather aimlessly, trying to ignore the hourglass that seems to be falling ever faster as her wedding day approaches.
She sees the flyer pasted up against the wall by the Seventy-second Street entrance to the park. The circus will be in town all week. She remembers holding her father’s arm, walking with him behind the clowns and the tricycles and the spinning hoops. How desperate she felt then, and now, looking back, how she longs for such a simple time.
It is not in good taste to leave the apartment after dark alone. Harold would have no use for a circus. She can just imagine what he’d say.
A circus? With clowns and fire-breathers? There’s enough of that in this city without paying for it.
She thinks of sending Arty a note, just to wish him good luck, but decides she’d better not. She walks on home, lingering on the memory of how he snapped that apple right in half.
When Charles returns to New York, his father brings the car to the station. Neither of them acknowledges the cane in Charles’s grip, nor the slow pace used to navigate their way out of the station. They drive directly to his father’s club, where they dine in a corner booth. The steak arrives so thick and rare, Charles has a hard time eating even half of it.
“You must get your appetite back,” his father says, passing him the front page of the evening newspaper. “I’m sure the food was awful over there.”
Charles takes the paper from his father, nodding. He doesn’t really care about anything he reads. He is thinking only of finding Hensley. The strange silver goblet is wrapped in newspaper in his luggage along with an address on West Seventy-second.
He has written to Rogerson about his encounter in Hillsboro. You can imagine my surprise when the man transformed before my eyes into a woman, a beauty. The Wild West is as wild as anything, my friend. I know this one anecdote will keep your dirty mind occupied for many days.
Several times on the train he began a letter to Hensley, but he cannot bring himself to tell her of the severity of his injury. Of course, he must. It is all that matters now. Will she care to be courted by a crippled, handicapped man? A veteran who has not come back stronger but who has, in fact, come back a shell of his former self. Of course, if one can survive with a quarter less of himself, perhaps that does make him stronger than those who remain whole. But as long as the question remains unanswered, everything remains possible. And so he’s thrown every attempt into the trash.
At home, he stands in front of the large mirror centered over the dark mahogany bureau. In the falsely lit night, he unbuckles his belt and lets his pants fall to the floor. Then, loosening his prosthetic, he leans it up against the chest of drawers. There in the glass, he can see the butchery of his stump. He has felt its wide, uneven scar with his fingers and imagined how it must look, but he has never had this view.
Its bluntness is animal and indelicate, like the sole of an elephant’s foot. He can lift the stump with his thigh muscles, but the absence of a knee joint or the slender slope into ankle and foot makes the job seem ridiculous. He is acutely aware that he will never appear whole again. This is the way his body will remain. There is no recovery, no therapy.
He sits on the bed to remove his tie and shirt, so that he is completely naked. With the support of his cane, he then stands and lets the full image of this new identity sink in.
His own unforgiving eyes avoid looking at the left side of his body. He turns slightly, hiding his lack. His body is still young, the skin full and buoyant across his torso and biceps. From this side, he is a whole man, virile and healthy, his buttocks the strong beginning of a long, solid leg. But he turns back, letting his full figure show in the mirror. He looks unfinished, deformed, and, worse, he cannot cross the room without strapping on the wooden leg that waits against the bureau. He hangs his head and throws his cane at the lamp to extinguish it.
• • •
The next morning, he travels uptown in a taxi and stands in front of the building that matches the address Teresa wrote down for him. Will he know her if she’s on the street? Will she be anything like what he imagines? He looks carefully at the women who pass him, their languorous strides and wide-brimmed hats revealing nothing.
The apartment is just a block from Central Park. He stands beneath the awning and peers into the lobby with its small, upholstered settee cradled between the two curving staircases. The doorman greets him with a sorry look on his face. “Can I help you, sir?” Charles detests this look of sympathy. He shakes his head and walks on past.
Later, as he sits in the parlor having a drink with his parents, he loosens the strap from around his stump so that the prosthetic falls away, leaving his pant leg flat against the chair. His mother’s face fills with horror. He’d only wanted to massage his aching stump, but instead he folds his hands in his lap, allowing his mother some peace in her own house. “Excuse me, Mother,” he says finally, reaching for the wooden leg. “I didn’t realize . . .”
“Good God, Charles,” she says, pulling a handkerchief from between the cushions of the sofa. “Have you lost your mind, as well?”
She stands and leaves the room, her eyes clouded by tears, leaving Charles to reassemble himself.
When his father enters moments later, the newspaper tucked under his arm and an umbrella in his hand, he says merely, “Good evening, son.”
Charles nods a greeting and swallows the last of his drink.
“Are we smoking?” his father says, offering him a cigarette from his case.
“Love to,” Charles says.
His father fixes himself a straight glass of whiskey and refills Charles’s glass. He sits across from Charles with the newspaper on his lap, reading the headlines. Without looking up, he says, “Don’t let your mother trouble you. She is sentimental. Still thinks of you as her own flesh.”
Charles nods.
“When you’re up to it, I’d like for you to come into the office with me. Nobody there will give a damn about your leg. You’re a Reid—that’s all that matters.”
Instead of telling his father that he still wants nothing to do with the business and that he will continue to pursue medicine, he says, “There’s a girl. She wrote me letters. First her father did. We played chess. And then she chimed in. She’s remarkable.”
His father looks up from the paper, smiling briefly. “A pen pal, you mean?” He takes a sip of his drink.
Charles nods and reaches for the ashtray beside him. Holding it under his cigarette, he says, “Yes. You might say that.”
“Well, where is she, this girl?”
Charles swallows. “Here.”
“Manhattan, you mean?”
“Indeed,” Charles says, letting the burn of the nicotine swell against the back of his throat.
His father grunts. “Let’s meet her. Bring her for dinner one night. Just give your mother some notice so that they can prepare an extra plate in the kitchen.”
Charles puts out his cigarette. “Ye
ah, it’s a bit complicated.”
His father wrinkles his brow. “How so?”
“She doesn’t know about this,” he says, motioning to his leg. “She doesn’t know.”
His father looks back at the newspaper. “Says here they are putting a woman in jail who was speeding and refused to pay the fine.”
Charles sighs.
“And it looks like that little Pitcairn Island received their first mail from America.”
The room goes quiet except for the occasional rustle as his father turns the pages. Charles uses his cane to stand and cross the room, removing another cigarette from the silver box. He opens the window slightly, letting the warm, noisy air of the street enter the parlor. As he lights his cigarette, his father says, “What I mean is, you cannot let this defeat you. If this girl doesn’t want you, another will. But get on with it, Charles. You lost the leg honorably. Shame is ugly.”
Charles watches the leaves of the oak tree turn ever so slightly in a breeze he cannot feel. “You’ve not seen it,” he says quietly.
His father shrugs. He refills his whiskey and joins Charles by the window.
“I will always be this way. Always,” Charles says.
They stand side by side, watching the world go by.
“Bravo,” his father finally says, clinking his glass against the windowpane.
In the hours before she dresses for her wedding, Hensley walks alone through the already busy streets of New York. Her shadow stretches in front of her, darkening her own path. She is walking west, toward the river, away from the noise of Broadway. The sun swathes her back, heating her freshly washed hair and neck, while the bare skin on her face stings with the lingering coolness of dawn.
She is following no route, simply walking. Looking for a reason to believe that something about today might surprise her. When vows concerning the length of love and honor in the face of sickness or death are spoken, surely the chemistry between two people changes. Surely they will no longer be the disappointments to one another that they’ve been. Surely, if anything, the air between them will be suffused with solemnity. They will transform, like the work of the very best illusionist, into kinder, more beautiful partners.