The Seduction of Water

by Carol Goodman

  “He wouldn’t have been the first—or the last—to blame the church for encouraging large families and prohibiting birth control. Poor woman. Imagine having seven children—and I see from the boys’ birth certificates that she was only thirty-nine when she died! I’m afraid though that Sister Dominica had few words of compassion for him here. ‘I warned him against impugning the church, especially in the presence of his young daughter who’d accompanied him, but he was too far gone in his grief to heed me and the girl, instead of thanking me, told me that her father wasn’t saying anything she hadn’t thought already. I’m afraid that since the girl is old enough to be on her own she’s outside the realm of our help and we’ll just have to do the best we can with the boys.’ ”

  Sister D’Aulnoy falls silent even though I can see from the motion of her pale blue eyes behind her thick glasses that she’s still reading to herself.

  “Well? And what about the boys?”

  “She gives a summary of their health, general physical appearance, and hygiene, all of which seems all right except for the youngest boy, Arden. He had a withered arm.”

  “A withered arm?”

  “Yes, from an early bout with polio.”

  “Isn’t he the one who died here?”

  Sister D’Aulnoy shifts through the rest of the file and extracts an official-looking document. “He died a year after his admittance here. I imagine he was weakened from his childhood illness.” Sister D’Aulnoy looks up from the file and I see a look I hadn’t been expecting—apology.

  “I want you to know that this isn’t the only kind of story here at St. Christopher’s. Many of the boys who’ve come here over the years have thrived, gone on to have careers and families . . .” I think of the picture-lined wall in her office. “I could show you some very inspiring letters from our graduates. Although the boys don’t live here anymore—they’re in group homes—many go to nearby colleges. I’ve suggested to the monsignor that the top floors of this building could be turned into a dormitory for those boys, but so far we haven’t found the funding . . .” Her voice trails off. “. . . but none of that changes the fact that your uncles’ experience here was not a happy one.” I’m glad when she lowers her eyes back to the file. I’m not the one she should be apologizing to, but as far as I know there aren’t any McGlynns left to listen to this story, so I do.

  “The oldest boy, John, seems to have shown quite a bit of academic promise. The monsignor was recommending him for a scholarship to St. John’s College, but after Arden’s death his behavior deteriorated. When he reached eighteen he left St. Christopher’s without graduating. There’s a series of addresses given for him, most in Coney Island—I gather that’s where his sister, Rose, had gone to live. He came back often to take Allen out for weekends, but . . .” Sister D’Aulnoy pauses over another letter, shaking her head. Several of the papers she’s flipped through drift to the floor. I kneel to pick them up.

  “On one of their excursions Allen and John were picked up for shoplifting in Flatbush. After that Allen wasn’t allowed to leave the premises or have visitors.”

  “Not Ro—my mother either? That doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Apparently your mother had been expelled from St. Mary Star of the Sea for stealing from the collection plate. The family was deemed a poor influence. It does seem a shame, though. There are several letters here from Rose asking to see Allen . . . I . . . I don’t see copies of any response.”

  Sister D’Aulnoy takes off her glasses. I look up at her—I’m still kneeling, gathering the fallen papers, the marble floor cold on my injured knees—and see the tears in her eyes. She reaches for me and, to my horror, crouches down, puts her arm around my shoulders, and with her other hand clasps both my hands in hers. “Your poor mother,” she says, “it must have broken her heart.”

  After that I try to get out of there as quickly as possible. I don’t know what I’m more horrified by: the McGlynn family story or my own impersonation of a descendant. Sister D’Aulnoy promises me she’ll look further into what happened to the boys and escorts me all the way down the long hall to the exit, still holding on to my hand as if I were a child. She points out the pictures along the wall showing the early founders of St. Christopher’s, portraits of Dominican nuns who taught here, young men in service uniforms accepting medals, group shots of boys at picnics and basketball games and graduations. Then there are the photographs of well-dressed men and women at benefit banquets and charity balls. We’re almost at the end of the hall when I see a familiar face. It’s in a newspaper photograph that’s been framed. The caption reads, “Chief Officers of the Board of Directors of St. Christopher’s at the 1962 Annual Benefit Dinner.” The group seated at a curved banquet, smiling for the camera, is of five men and one woman. I recognize one of the men as Peter Kron, but his isn’t the face I’ve stopped for. It’s Hedda Wolfe, seated next to Peter, one hand—I notice the fingers are slender and not yet gnarled by arthritis—resting on his arm.

  “You said a board member had recently asked for the McGlynn file. Was it Hedda Wolfe?”

  Sister D’Aulnoy looks as if she’s going to tell me that the information is confidential and then she relents—in consideration, no doubt, of my tragic family history. “Yes, do you know Ms. Wolfe? She and Mr. Kron—not that one in the picture, but his brother—are two of our longest-serving board members.”

  “Um . . . I’ve heard of her. She’s a famous literary agent.” I wonder to myself how she knew about Rose McGlynn and her brothers and why she didn’t tell me about my mother’s connection to them. That feeling I’d had earlier in the day of following a labyrinth set out by someone else recurs, but this time instead of making me feel dizzy it enrages me.

  Because she is still holding my hand I can’t end my meeting with Sister D’Aulnoy by holding out a hand for a businesslike shake. She seems reluctant to see me go, one more McGlynn orphan let loose into the world by St. Christopher’s, abandoned on the river’s edge. I wish now that I could confess my lie—tell her that my mother was only John’s childhood sweetheart, not his sister, that for all I know my mother still had a mother and father when she took off upstate—but when she pulls me into her soft arms, I don’t resist. After all, I am an orphan now, as alone in the world as any of the boys who found their way to this door.

  The traffic on Atlantic is a rude surprise after the quiet of the chapel. I’m nearly run over crossing back to Court Street. I turn once more to look at the building in the dying light and notice that one of the angels on the corner of the building has only one wing; the other wing has been broken off. I stare at it for a long time, thinking about Arden’s withered arm, and the creatures in my mother’s stories whose wings break through their spines, and also of the story that Gretchen Lu told me in the Greenmarket all those months ago, of a sister who tried to save her brothers by staying quiet and knitting them shirts of nettles, only she’d been unable to finish the arm on the last sweater and the youngest boy was left with a broken wing for an arm. Then I turn away and walk toward the subway to take me back to Manhattan.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  It’s dark when I emerge from the subway station on 14th Street and I feel as tired as if I had swum across the East River—as drenched too, from sweating in the un-air-conditioned train. My scraped knees, though, feel as if I had crawled here. I want, more than anything, to go home, take a cool shower, and order in Chinese food, but if I postpone to tomorrow this last visit it will be one more day before I can call Aidan. One more day he’ll have to wait wondering if I’m ever going to call.

  I walk west on 14th toward the meatpacking district. The trendy new boutiques and art galleries are closed now, but the stalls with their deliveries of freshly slaughtered meat are still open, the smell of blood mingling with the breeze off the river. I almost turn back, but then I see a light on in Hedda’s loft and, sidestepping a jet of water from a meat vendor’s hose, ring her bell. She lets me in right away, without asking for my name, as if she’
s been expecting me—or someone else.

  Someone else, I would guess, from her low-cut silk sweater, a double strand of creamy pearls filling the wide neckline, and snug-fitting satin capris. If she’s surprised to see me she does a good job covering it up; not that I can make out her expression too well since she’s standing above me on the metal stairs, her face hidden in the shadows.

  “Iris, finally! I’ve been trying you all day. Did you get my messages?”

  “No, I’ve just come back from Brooklyn,” I say, climbing the stairs. I hadn’t noticed on my first—and only—visit here how the sound of footsteps on the metal stairs reverberates through the empty space of the warehouse’s first floor.

  “Brooklyn?” Hedda says when I’ve joined her on the landing. I notice that she’s holding the door to her apartment partly closed behind her.

  “Yes, to St. Christopher’s Home for Boys. I believe you’re familiar with it?”

  One of her hands—the one not holding the door—flutters to her pearls, which click together in the echoing space, and then bats at her hair as if pushing back a wayward strand, but, as always, her hair is perfect, a glistening silver wing. “You’d better come in then,” she says, holding the door open. “We should talk.”

  She takes me through the living room, past the spiral stairs leading to a second-story loft, and into the kitchen. Unlike the cold formality of the living area, this room is surprisingly cozy, filled with burnished copper pans and honey-colored cabinetry. She offers me a seat at a scarred oak refectory table and pulls a half-filled bottle of white wine from the refrigerator.

  “No thanks,” I say to her offer of a drink, as invitingly cool as the frosted green bottle looks. I need to keep my wits about me. “I’ll have some water.” As usual, the sight of Hedda struggling with as simple a chore as getting a glass and pouring water from a frosted pitcher disarms me, but I resist the impulse to feel sorry for her. She’s been lying to you, I remind myself, and her lies may well have gotten Joseph killed.

  She gives me my glass of water and pours herself a glass of wine, sets it down at the table, and sits across from me.

  “So,” she says. “St. Christopher’s. You must have figured out your mother’s connection to the McGlynns.”

  “No thanks to you. Did my mother tell you about Rose and John McGlynn?” She shakes her head, taking a sip of wine—a sip so diminutive I suspect it’s to postpone answering. In all our conversations up to now I’ve been deferential, but she doesn’t seem surprised or put off by my anger. In fact, a hint of a smile plays around the corners of her mouth.

  “No, she never mentioned them. I imagine I was led to them in much the same way you were—through reading about the Crown jewel theft and trial. Of course I connected the name McGlynn to Tirra Glynn and to the name she was registered under when she died. Is that how you arrived at St. Christopher’s?”

  “Yes,” I admit, “several months after you apparently. You could have saved me some time.”

  “It’s not my job to save you time. I expect that part of your memoir will be the story of how you tracked down your mother’s secrets. I hope you’re keeping a careful journal . . .”

  “This isn’t about a memoir anymore, Hedda. Joseph is dead.”

  “I didn’t tell you to hire an ex-convict to handle priceless paintings, Iris. I can’t see what Joseph has to do with your research.”

  “Then why did you spend the summer interrogating him? And don’t tell me you were after him for fertilizing tips.”

  Hedda takes a somewhat larger sip of wine, using both hands to steady the glass when she returns it to the tabletop. Then she sidles her chair over closer to me, her pearls clattering together like castanets with the awkward effort of her movement. “It was about another matter,” she says in a quieter voice, “about someone else who had been a guest at the hotel.”

  “Peter Kron?”

  She looks away from me or, rather, over my shoulder toward the stairs as if the man I’d just named was hidden upstairs in her boudoir. Only Peter Kron has been dead for nearly thirty years. When she looks back at me her eyes are shining, but whether with tears or anger I’m not sure.

  “What makes you think Peter Kron is anything to me?”

  “Well, the picture of you and him at the 1962 St. Christopher’s benefit banquet for starters and—” I am going to say and your reaction to hearing his name, but the tears that have started coursing down her face have made that last part unnecessary.

  I wait for her to gain control of herself—I’d make a lousy police interrogator—looking away as she uses the heels of her hands to wipe away the tears and succeeding in only smearing her mascara.

  “It’s true,” she says finally. “I loved Peter Kron and he loved me. The first agency I worked for represented his wife, the great poet Vera Nix. He would call up looking for her because she had said she had a meeting with us, but of course she didn’t. There are certain writers—not your mother, mind you—who think their artistic talent gives them the right to do whatever they please. It broke my heart to see what she put that poor man through. You could tell he wasn’t strong—that he’d been through something bad in the war and that was probably why he hadn’t the strength to leave her. My instructions when he called were to tell him that yes, Miss Nix was out to lunch with Mr. Lyle, but I’d misplaced the name of the restaurant they were dining at. As if I’d ever! Better for me to look like a stupid incompetent ninny than for Vera Nix to get caught with her knickers down.” Hedda gets up to refill her wineglass. The pale greenish liquid sloshes into the glass and spills over the rim onto her gnarled fingers.

  “So one day I decided to overstep the letter of my instructions just a bit. I said, ‘Oh yes, Miss Nix and Mr. Lyle went out for lunch hours ago.’ ‘And I suppose you’ve misplaced the reservation again, Heddie,’ he said. ‘Well no, in fact I haven’t, Mr. Kron, they’re at the Plaza.’ I knew once I said a hotel he’d go. So I did too. I waited for him in the Palm Court and when he came I told him everything—not just about the fictitious luncheons, but the stories I’d heard of what she really did when she went out of town on reading tours and things I’d heard her say about him. I told him I thought it was a crime the way she treated him and that he deserved much more. ‘But do I deserve a girl like you, Heddie, with the courage to be honest?’ I told him he did. We spent that weekend at the Plaza—I knew she was going out of town—and from then on whenever she was out of town we met there. This was in the midfifties, a few years before I started representing your mother, so you see, she had nothing to do with it.”

  “But you found out later from Peter that he’d known her at the Crown Hotel. Did he tell you they had had an affair?”

  “Yes. He said he’d had a brief fling with her—of course I knew I hadn’t been the first—and that Vera found out and accused her of stealing from her room to get her fired.”

  “That was in John McGlynn’s retrial,” I say. “Vera Nix accused my mother of stealing and then failed to identify her in a lineup.”

  “Of course. Someone told her that Peter was having an affair with a maid named Katherine Morrissey, the maid who probably was in and out of her suite twice a day, but she’d never bothered to look at her. For all her slumming around Harlem and the Village she didn’t give a damn about the underclass. You see what a monster she was . . .”

  “I don’t doubt she was a monster—monster enough, perhaps, to still hold a grudge against my mother twenty years later when she ran into her at the Hotel Equinox, especially if she thought her husband was still having an affair with her.”

  “But we don’t know that for sure. Joseph swears they weren’t.”

  “That’s what you were trying to find out from Joseph—and from me—whether Peter was still in love with my mother that summer.”

  Hedda reaches her hand across the table and lays her fingers over mine. They’re damp from spilled wine and cold—not like Sister D’Aulnoy’s warm hands. “I know you’re probably wondering how it
could possibly matter so many years after Peter’s death. But he stopped seeing me that summer—he said because Vera had finally agreed to have a child—and I’ve always wondered if that was the real reason. There hasn’t been anyone since who’s meant as much to me as he did. I’d like to know that I meant as much to him.”

  “And what did you learn from Joseph?” I ask, taking my hand out from under hers.

  “He didn’t think they were having an affair. He said that when he saw Kay and Peter together they were arguing . . . and I think I know why. When Peter realized Kay Greenfeder was Katherine Morrissey he told me he wanted to see her because he believed that she’d left town with something of Vera’s . . .”

  “My mother wouldn’t have stolen anything belonging to that woman.”

  “No, I agree, but Peter said it was something he had given her. I suspect he didn’t tell her it belonged to his wife . . . in fact, he did it to me once. Gave me some earrings that later I saw on Vera in an old society page picture.”

  I’m about to say something about the character of a man who gives away his wife’s jewelry to his mistresses, but I decide that maligning Peter Kron will be counterproductive at this point. Hedda’s on her third glass of wine and I suspect that she’s not a nice drunk. What I need now is a little more information, not a fight.

  “Did Joseph say whether Peter Kron got what he was looking for from my mother?”

  Hedda shakes her head, again setting those damned pearls rattling. “He said Peter left very abruptly in the middle of August, but he continued to call the hotel and ask to speak to Kay . . .”

  “How did Joseph know that?”

  “Janine, your telephone operator, told him.”

  “And did my mother speak with him?”