Ella Dodson gazed at her copy of the Herald. “Don’t you read your own newspaper, Mr. Behan?”
“On occasion,” he said with the politest sarcasm he could muster.
“Then you’ll notice that we are referred to as negro. Maisie Phelps, negro. Charles Napier, negro. Delia Sands, negro.”
“Yes, but that’s so people will know…”
“Know.”
“Well, otherwise, they’d just assume…”
I saw by Mr. Behan’s expression that he was trying to find the right words to say what he meant, and failing, and had begun to realize a lack of right words might indicate a wrong position.
“It’s odd, is all.”
“Odd.”
“You like to repeat things, don’t you, Miss Dodson?”
“I’m helping you hear yourself, Mr. Behan.”
Before he could answer, Ella Dodson spotted Otelia Brooks as she emerged from a side door of the prison.
Officer Nolan, who had received great credit for his handling of the case, stepped forward to introduce himself. “I’m very glad it ended well.”
He expected a smile. He did not get it. Miss Brooks went still for just a moment before finding the words “Thank you, I am as well.” Then she kept walking, leaving the policeman puzzled he had been dealt with in such an off-handed manner.
She announced she had no intention of making any kind of statement; she wanted to go home. Then she took my arm and asked if I would walk her to the elevated.
I said, “Miss Dodson tells me there is a celebration planned at the salon.”
“I did not want it. I told her I did not want it. She said, Miss Brooks, you aren’t really going to deny all your friends and supporters the chance to welcome you home? She just wants to write the story.”
“And you can’t deny her that.”
“Apparently, I can’t. Some women will go where they mean to go.”
When we reached the entrance to the train, I said, “You’ll stay in New York?”
She smiled, surprised that I would think otherwise. “Oh, yes. I’m staying. In fact, I’m expanding. Mrs. Cross has a nephew with money he’s not using as profitably as he might. I’ve agreed to advise him.”
“But you won’t neglect the hats.”
“Never.”
It occurred to me to nudge her toward kindness to Officer Nolan. He couldn’t be blamed for not knowing what happened to Norman Brooks. That his fellow officers had looked the other way while her husband was murdered, or joined in the beatings, having decided they were Irish first and officers of the law second.
Then I thought, It wasn’t so many years ago, and Officer Nolan was not a young man. Otelia Brooks remembered. Why didn’t he? Why was he puzzled by her reaction? And why had I thought her wrong?
She took my hands. Pressed them gently. “Give my best to your uncle.”
17
Two weeks later, spring decided to make its presence known. Crocuses began to peep out of the Tylers’ window boxes. Trees exploded into bud. The air was kinder.
As I dabbed a mild soap on the edge of Louise’s corset, I thought they really were hellish objects to clean. Maybe I would ask Mrs. Hirschfeld if Lord & Taylor—where she now worked—had taken her advice about bras. Louise might be shocked at first, but I had a feeling it would make us both breathe easier.
At the moment, Louise was in the parlor, engaged in her morning phone conversation with her mother. From the kitchen, I could hear her voice rising to a surprisingly high pitch of excitement. Then I heard, “Jane! Jane, come in! Quickly!”
Setting aside the corset, I hurried into the parlor. Face alight, Louise said, “You’ll never guess! Mother says Charlotte is engaged. To a count! Is that better than a prince? I can’t remember.”
For a moment I stood gape-mouthed in surprise. Louise’s younger sister had never been my favorite of the Benchleys, and I was not sad when she went abroad. I did acknowledge she had shrewdness to match her abundant good looks. Still, even I would not have expected this triumph.
“I would think it depends on the count,” I said, recovering. “When is the wedding? Have they decided?”
Louise shook her head. “Next year, I would think. Mother’s sailing to Europe in order to meet him; Father is to follow. But she wants me to go with her, says she can’t possibly travel on her own. I don’t know what William will say, and we haven’t learned nearly enough French. Oh! I just realized, I don’t even know where he’s from, this count. I don’t know what they speak. What if it isn’t French?”
It was with the word “we” that the possibility dawned: “we” might mean … me. If Louise Tyler was sailing for Europe, I was sailing for Europe. I was going to Europe.
“Everyone speaks French, Mrs. Tyler. He’s a count, he must. Or even English. After all, if he’s fallen in love with your sister, they must have managed somehow.” At the very least, I thought, he knew the English word for wealthy.
“Oh, Jane, we have a million things to do. Mother’s coming over in the afternoon. I must call Monsieur Lafitte. Lessons every day, don’t you think?”
“I do.”
“Every day, and you and I shall only speak en français.”
“Bien sur, Madame Tyler. Et n’oubliez pas les vetements nouveaux pour le voyage.”
Louise hesitated.
“The clothes for the trip, Mrs. Tyler. We’ll make a list. Une list.”
* * *
Despite the Benchleys’ happy news, I was finding it hard. I still woke up gasping for breath, Carrie’s face freshly clear in my mind. And I felt the strange need for confession, even though I did not believe in it. I imagined whispering to an unseen authority: I have sinned against Sadie Ellis for treating her like a fool because she was cruelly treated. I have sinned against Carrie Biel by putting her in harm’s way. I have sinned against Otelia Brooks because I put her, too, in harm’s way. I have sinned by not thinking about that which I should have.
When I met Michael Behan for a walk in the park to thank him for his articles, I asked, “Do you go to confession?”
“I do,” he said warily.
“Do you find it helpful?”
He considered, as if the efficacy of the practice had never crossed his mind before. “Helps to admit it. Put it behind you.”
“Do people put it behind them?” I kicked at the path. “Sometimes I think we just commit the same sins over and over.”
“Still gives you a bit of a grace period. I can’t imagine not doing it. Having years of…” He shrugged, reluctant to give his transgressions a name. “… hanging around your neck.”
“Good Lord, Mr. Behan, what do you have on your conscience?” I teased.
“You’re not a priest, Miss Prescott, so that is none of your business.”
We passed by the zoo, where a line of excited children and weary parents waited to go in. I thought of my trip to the Zoological Society, now postponed, and everything else I had meant to do on my holiday.
Regret must have showed in my face, because Michael Behan asked quietly, “And how was your holiday, Miss Prescott?”
“I think I shall make different plans next year.”
“Well, you started with the Armory Show. Dropped Book, there was your first mistake.”
“Nude Descending. And it wasn’t all bad. I went dancing.”
“Ah, yes, the cotillion.”
“No, at the Acme Café.”
At the mention of the gangster’s club, Behan frowned. “You should tell that milkman to take you to more suitable places.”
“He wasn’t a milkman.” I paused. “He was a songwriter.”
Behan took that in. “You’ll tell me if it’s time to weigh in with the silver fish knife.”
“Oh, I don’t think he’s that sort. I probably won’t be seeing him again.”
“Does this fellow need a punch in the nose?”
I smiled. “He does not. But you could buy the fish knife for Charlotte Benchley. She’s engaged t
o be married.”
“May the groom make it to the altar in one piece,” he said, alluding to the fact that Charlotte’s first fiancé had not been so fortunate. “Who is it?”
“The Count Barkoczy of Austria-Hungary.”
“The what of the who of the where?” I repeated the title. “So Miss Benchley joins the nobility.”
“And I get to go to Europe.”
“Europe.”
“For the wedding. Mrs. Tyler is going, and I’m traveling with her and her mother, Mrs. Benchley.”
“But you’ll be back?”
“Oh, yes, of course. Although Mrs. Tyler means to spend some time in Europe—she’s never been—so I don’t know when we’ll return. Not more than a year, I’m sure. Mrs. Benchley is deathly afraid of foreign anything. Even a countess for a daughter won’t be compensation for long.”
He nodded, a slow up and down, and said nothing. I had expected the obvious pleasantries. Or teasing. Disparaging comments about the English. But he was … disappointed, I realized, with a twinge of pleasure. When I gave my uncle the news, he had said our family were poor sea travelers and hoped I would fare better. Anna had just given me a long list of books and pamphlets to send her.
Michael Behan opened his mouth, then decided silence was the better course. I opened my mouth to ask what he had meant to say, then also decided silence was the better course. We rounded Sheep Meadow, where the sheep had just been let out to graze.
“I’ll write to you, if you like. All the details about the wedding. I’m sure Charlotte wouldn’t mind the attention, so long as you tell New York—repeatedly and in great detail—that she’s made a spectacular match.”
“Well, that would be kind of you,” he said. “And I shall write you if the heir to the Behan fortune makes an appearance before you get back.”
Gazing up at the trees, I thought how by this time next spring, Michael Behan might be a father. Charlotte would be a countess, and I would have been to Europe—a miraculous thought.
And only a month ago, Sadie and Carrie were both alive and would now never see another day, much less another year.
“He was there that day. At the Armory. Did you know that?”
“Who? Rutherford?”
“Remember the dead cat? You made a joke about it being the Herald critic. I think he did it. Dolly Rutherford said he took one look at the Cubists and left. She said he was offended.” I thought of the Picasso I had found both thrilling and disturbing, the way it carved a woman’s face into sections. “I think he was inspired.”
“I don’t care to enter the mind of George Rutherford.”
I didn’t care to either, but I felt we should. If it was possible, and I wasn’t sure it was. The miasma of rage, grandiosity, and the will to destroy that some might dismiss as madness felt disquietingly resonant. I knew the pleasure of adjusting a woman’s appearance, even radically, to help her show herself to new advantage. It had never felt arrogant to me before. I thought of Leo’s mother, Mrs. Hirschfeld, the way her attentions made women worry less about what they did not have to offer and proud of what they did. But George Rutherford saw women as clay. The only thing he recognized in a woman was his effect on her. For a while, I had wondered how such a creature managed to run a business. Then I thought, Perhaps he had not run so much of it. Of the two Rutherfords, Dolly was the more astute. George had been primarily known for his advice. And, of course, the pageant. The police had already learned that two other American Beauties had met with unfortunate fates. I suspected there would be more.
And yet he was afraid, too. Outraged. That was the word he had used when he found me where I shouldn’t have been: in his office. How many years had he stared at the women strolling the aisles of his store, so free and entitled? So, invent a contest. Show them exactly as you wanted. At the Armory, what would he have seen? I remembered the paintings, the woman on her back, frank and open. And the girls on the rooftop, carefree, washing their hair. Finally, those women at their windows, enjoying the night air. And the watching shadow figure who made their liberty seem like vain folly.
I gazed about the park. Couples strolling. An elderly woman in a chair pushed by a nurse. A child toddling after a pigeon. A policeman nodded to a gentleman sketching the ducks. In light of a George Rutherford, was it idiocy to think this was reality? And yet I didn’t want to think of Michael Behan’s fat-cheeked, happy baby-to-be in a world where only the cruel drives of George Rutherford held sway.
Michael Behan said, “I did say, those paintings … some of them could bring out an ugly side of human nature.”
“I think they just reveal what’s there. I don’t think you can blame the paintings.”
* * *
When the poor had nowhere to go in life, they ended up in the city’s lodging houses or the streets. In death, they lay on Hart Island. During the Civil War, Hart Island was used as a prisoner of war camp for Confederate soldiers. For a time, it was a boys’ reformatory, and many ill-treated boys joined the young men of the Civil War in their graves. So it was already crowded with the dead when it was purchased by the city and made into a potter’s field to replace other mass burial sites such as Washington Square Park and Bryant Park.
In 1913, it became the final resting place of Sadie Ellis and Carrie Biel. They would be buried in simple wood coffins, lying in a trench alongside hundreds of other unknowns. Even the buildings were abandoned on Hart Island, the old barracks of the Civil War internment camp hollowed out behind windowless walls of red brick, roofs long since fallen and blown away.
We could not make the final journey on the barge up the sound to the Bronx with them, but that did not mean they had no funeral. Given the distinction of their wounds, the bodies of Sadie and Carrie had been held until the investigation was closed. Now they could travel together in a horse-drawn rattletrap truck, the boxes shifting and sliding with every bump in the road. But they were not alone. At dawn that morning, my uncle, Berthe, the other women, and I gathered to follow the truck on foot to the barge.
It was a warm enough day that we could wear only black shawls. Berthe and my uncle walked ahead. Walking behind them, I thought Berthe’s place should be mine; surely I should be leading the walk at my uncle’s side. But I realized I had a different place in the world. I didn’t share the daily life of the refuge’s residents. And so I should not be leading them. It didn’t mean I had no place.
Anna walked alongside me. When I was recovering, she had come every few days, bearing more food from her aunts than one person could eat in a year, all of it soft, making me feel like a gorgeously spoiled infant. Now looking at the wreaths of dried roses, myrtle, and eucalyptus we had put on the coffins, she said, “Is it strange that we want to make death look pretty?”
This morning, we had laid Carrie’s rope bracelet beside her, placed a crown of flowers on Sadie’s head. I thought of how Otelia Brooks felt about the women whose hair she dressed. You care for someone, you make them beautiful. Show the world what you see.
I said as much to Anna, adding, “You don’t stop caring once the person has died.” Sighing, she took my hand and shook it, in her habitual blend of irritation and affection.
As I walked, I considered that Norman Brooks probably also lay at the City Cemetery. Otelia had no way to visit him, as we would have no way to visit Carrie and Sadie. They were lost to us. But not forgotten.
Our parade took a turn onto Baxter Street. The Duchess and several other ladies stood on the corner, waiting to join. The Duchess wore a black crêpe veil over her hair, and the ladies wore black armbands. As they headed toward the back, I said to the Duchess, “Miss Bullotte, perhaps you would like to walk with my uncle.”
Startled that I had addressed her by name, or that I had addressed her at all, she assessed the meaning of my offer for a moment. Then smiled. “I would at that.”
At the dock, my uncle read from the Book of John as the coffins were loaded onto the barge. “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not
so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”
Then he began to sing “Amazing Grace.” The women who knew the song well from Sunday services joined in.
Looking at the man who had appeared at the police station so many years ago and offered me his hand, I sang the echo: And grace will lead us home.
Epilogue
Shaking the newspaper out, I remember Ella Dodson’s point to Michael Behan, that certain citizens were always described by certain newspapers by their race. That habit continued at the Times until 1946. “This may seem like a small thing,” the Times’s editorialist wrote in a rather self-congratulatory piece. “The Negroes don’t think so.” I can imagine Ella Dodson answering, Yes, we haven’t thought so for a century.
By the 1940s, however, Ella Dodson would not have been reading the Times. When President Wilson celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation by segregating all federal workers—even going so far as to put a cage around one worker who could not be moved or fired—she decided matters in the capital needed sharper observation. And so she became the Washington correspondent for the Associated Negro Press. Ella became the reporter no White House press officer wanted to call on, not unless they had their facts and ethics in order, something more than a few have found challenging. In her late seventies, she became something of a celebrity as she lashed the Nixon White House, exigent and unbudgeable in the front row, cane in hand, splendid hat on her head. The hat that had finally arrived at her Washington home, after many years of good-humored nagging.
Few newspapers noticed when Otelia Brooks died in 1937. By then George Rutherford had been supplanted by killers even more flamboyantly cruel, and the passing of the woman who dispatched him excited little interest. But the Times wrote an obituary, as did the Herald. Both papers had reporters who remembered the Rutherford case and Miss Brooks. (Or if they had forgotten, they were reminded by those who had not.)
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