“Stranger? She might be my mom, Jack. I can’t just stick my head in the sand. I can’t come home and sit around day after day wondering about this. Sure, finding out the truth might be hard, but it’s not as if ignoring your problems is any better.” Overwhelmed, my voice comes out sharp and loud.
“And that’s what I do? Just because I don’t tell you everything I saw and did in the war?”
My stomach drops. “No, wait, Jack, that isn’t what I meant. I was talking about me, saying that I can’t leave and just forget any of this happened.”
Jack doesn’t respond.
“Are you mad?” I finally manage.
“No.” Jack’s voice is quiet. “Not mad.”
“What’s the matter, then?”
Jack sighs. “You don’t want to come home.”
“It has nothing to do with you—”
“I know,” Jack interrupts. “I know that. But Poughkeepsie was my decision. And now that you’re down in the city, you don’t want to come back to this boring life, to sit home alone day after day.”
“Jack, honey, that’s not it. I just need to figure this out. I can’t get my mom back, you know? But I can at least do this one thing. It’s like—well, I’m going to the places she went, meeting the people she met. Learning who she really was.”
“And who you are.”
“Yes.” I nearly burst into tears again. “You get it.”
“No,” Jack says. “I’d do anything to escape the past.” His voice hardens. “To figure out who I am without it.”
I bite my lip, afraid he’ll take offense at my next words. “But you can’t.” I rush to clarify. “Our pasts are always there. You already know yours, but I need to understand mine.”
He takes a slow inhale, a long exhale. A bit of humor creeps back into his voice as he says, “You never do make things easy.”
I smile softly and exhale.
“No laugh?”
“The closest to a laugh anyone could get out of me right now.”
“I wish I could hold you.”
“Me, too. Very soon,” I promise.
“I love you, Stella.”
“I love you, too.”
I hang up and wrap my arms around myself to warm them, smiling softly. Jack and I are going to be okay.
But it’s not time to go home yet. I stand up straighter. WA-7, I dial.
Please pick up. My hand clenches around the telephone like I’m going to shatter it. One ring, two rings, three rings. Please.
Finally, I hear the click of Hattie lifting the phone on her end. The ringing stops, and the air crackles between us.
I take a deep breath, light-headed. “Hello, Mrs. Perkins. This is Nurse Anderson’s daughter again. I understand if you are unable to talk, but—” I’m saved from having to figure out where to go from here by a deep roar, only the beginning of which reaches me before the line goes dead. I jump back in alarm, and the phone cord yanks me forward again. “Mrs. Perkins?” I speak with the hope that my words can somehow disrupt the steady hum of the dial tone. “Ma’am?”
I call one more time, but the phone rings and rings with no answer. They’re home, obviously. They’re just avoiding me. Or worse.
I place the receiver back in its cradle. “A magazine publisher”—Hattie didn’t want Michael to know she was talking to me. That last roar echoes in my mind.
And yet she clearly knows something. Hattie recognized either my name or my mother’s.
I must find her.
* * *
—
Back at the library, I track down Hattie and Michael’s address in an old city directory. The only book I can find is dated 1934, but the address listed is in Washington Heights. I don’t think it’s too much to hope that it is the same one.
Then again, I have a tendency to let hopes fly away with me. Last year I was certain Mary Ellen’s utterance of “hello” meant she would repeat words I said, and I expected to get her speaking fluently. I flush now to remember my eagerness, unfounded and embarrassing in the face of Principal Gardner’s skepticism. Jack calls me the Keeper of Grand Ideas, but he’s only half right. I’m the Releaser of Grand Ideas. I catch them, entertain them briefly, and then watch them drift away from me when my foresight proves lacking. I do not always, as my father was prone to remind me, “think things through.” In that way, I was different from both him and my mother. Though she was always calm, she encouraged my own spontaneity. “Don’t settle. And don’t you ever stay silent.”
I won’t. I’ll figure this out—who Margaret is, who my mother was, who I am—no matter how many abruptly ended interviews I must endure to do so.
I copy down Hattie and Michael’s address. I’ll go first thing tomorrow. It being a weekday, I’m hopeful that Michael will be at work and Hattie will be home alone.
I don’t know what I’m going to ask her, but she has to have the answers.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Althea Anderson, November 1926
The phone rings as I set Mrs. Wallace’s porridge on the kitchen table. I send up a quick prayer that, whoever is calling, it isn’t Mrs. Wallace’s son. If he cancels dinner tonight, she will be brokenhearted.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Anderson?” The deep voice is not that of Mrs. Wallace’s distracted son but one I have come to know even better. Dr. Morrison has continued his visits to check on Mrs. Wallace’s collarbone throughout the two months I’ve been here, but I’ve never known a collarbone injury to last longer than eight weeks. It pains me to think our time with the doctor may be drawing to a close; he provides me my only window to my old life in the medical world. My only window, really, to the world beyond this townhouse. My only connection to someone my own age, to someone who sees me as a peer rather than a caretaker.
“This is she. Is something the matter, Dr. Morrison?”
“No,” he says hurriedly. “I simply wanted to ask your permission for something.”
I am intrigued. On paper, my life is a wild adventure: subterfuge, secrets, and lies. But my reality is more mundane. I spend my days washing diapers and preparing meals. “Go on.” I perch on the balls of my feet, curious.
“I have a meeting tonight with some other physicians from the AMA.”
The AMA, the American Medical Association. They are the group responsible for promoting preventive health care, the group currently working on a list of hospitals approved for residency. What could Dr. Morrison possibly be asking me in regard to these illustrious men? My heels quiver.
“It’s not an official AMA meeting,” he clarifies, “but a group of us meets every other Saturday evening of every month.” He laughs. “A thrilling way for a young man to spend his nights.”
I can’t help but smile. “I am the same. My idea of fun is curling up with a medical text. And who knows? Perhaps I’ll get a chance tonight—Mrs. Wallace’s family is coming for supper, and I’m off.” I laugh. “That is, if Stella cooperates.”
A pause. I fear I have made the doctor uncomfortable, spilling my thoughts so. It is not my place as a woman or as an inferior. My heels hit the ground as I open my mouth to apologize, but Dr. Morrison’s voice filters through the receiver before I get the chance. “Would you like to come to my meeting tonight, then?”
“Pardon me?”
His voice grows stronger. “I was calling to see whether you would allow me to recount your experience at Dr. Couney’s incubator ward. I think my friends would be fascinated. But it would be even better to hear it from you, the true expert. If you aren’t working tonight.”
Expert. I glow, even as my automatic response echoes through the telephone speaker. “I can’t.”
And it’s true. I can’t, can I? I’m a mother, not a nurse. I have secrets to hide, not stories to tell.
I pick the easiest truth to share. “I can’t leave Stella
here without me.”
“Bring her.”
“Pardon?” It seems all I can do is ask Dr. Morrison to repeat himself, and I feel foolish. But I cannot possibly be understanding him correctly. Me, bring Stella to a meeting of medical men? I’d be more likely to marry President Coolidge himself.
“It’s a very informal meeting, at one of the men’s homes. His wife is there with their infant, and I can’t imagine your bringing Stella would be any different.”
I can. The wife will excuse herself politely after appearing briefly in her most becoming gown; she will set supper on the table and then disappear to care for her child as a woman should. The men will be left commenting on the comeliness and domesticity of their host’s wife; the man will bloat with pride.
I, on the other hand, will not be excusing myself. I will be there, crying infant in my lap, as I insert myself into a conversation they are convinced I have no right to invade.
“Unless”—Dr. Morrison corrects himself quickly—“unless there is another reason you do not want to come. Perhaps you would not find it interesting. I apologize if you feel that I am pressuring you.”
Perhaps you would not find it interesting. I have worked with doctors to deliver dozens of babies at Bellevue, spent months at Luna Park learning the ways the early ones can be saved. I find the topic of their preservation more interesting than anything else on earth, save my daughter herself. And I suddenly cannot bear Dr. Morrison’s thinking I do not. He is the only man who has ever appeared to respect me. I cannot have him believe that his respect is unfounded. Even if it is risky to link myself to the incubators or give the world a trail to follow. I’ve given up my career for Stella; I can do at least this for myself, and for other babies like her.
And so, closing my eyes, I answer the doctor. “No. I would love to be there. Thank you.”
* * *
—
He arrives to escort me to his friend’s at six. Rightly, he assumed that I would be uncomfortable appearing on my own. Not even on my own, I chuckle drily, but worse. With a baby on my hip.
“Have a good evening, Mrs. Wallace.” I bid the woman farewell and cast one last look at her in her finery. I’ve spent the entire afternoon ensuring that she looks her best for her son and daughter-in-law’s visit, and she wears an old-fashioned but beautiful dress of deep magenta.
I feel guilty leaving her. Though the job comes with an evening off each week, I’ve never taken advantage of it but for that fateful day I went to the Perkinses’.
I pour Mrs. Wallace a glass of water before I go. “I’ll be back by nine thirty,” I promise her. “Have a good night with your family.”
“And you at your meeting,” she says.
“Thank you.”
I shift Stella slightly in my arms. And then, flexing my toes, I step out onto the stoop.
Dr. Morrison is waiting, and he takes my arm gently as I nod my permission. In winter, six in the evening is well past the night’s chilly threshold, and the world is gray and black around us. It wouldn’t be safe for Stella and me alone.
I sink into the night in my gray woolen dress, the only one in which Dr. Morrison has ever seen me. The alternatives in this half-mourning charade are white and lavender; the first, too likely to be stained by Stella’s spit-up milk; the second, too frivolous in a room of learned men. I have done all I can to ensure that they will take me seriously. I’m grateful I never bobbed my dark hair, and I’ve parted it and pulled it back into a braided knot.
Still, the doctor’s light touch on my arm reminds me I am a woman. He guides us gently, Stella and me on the inside of the sidewalk. He purchases our subway fare, ten cents in total, and escorts me to the car. The conductor opens the door to let us in as we approach, ringing the bell to signal our entrance. “Thank you,” I whisper as Dr. Morrison offers me his arm to step off the platform. I cringe as my ring reflects the light in the car. Dr. Morrison is escorting me, touching me, under the assumption that I am a widow. But I am not a widow. I am a girl of twenty-four years old, and I am out for the first time with a man. I imagine the other subway patrons assume us married, Stella our daughter.
If only I could give that gift to Stella. The gift of a real family: husband, wife, baby girl. Instead, she is here with a mother who is a liar and a criminal, a man who is but the emergency physician of her mother’s employer. A stranger.
I shouldn’t have come.
“Please, take my seat.” Dr. Morrison lifts his hat and stands to allow a boarding woman his spot; I nearly follow him, eager suddenly to get off this cramped subway and back to Mrs. Wallace’s. The doctor, Stella, and I are a dangerous parody of a family, and my stomach lurches in shame as the subway begins to move. Stella coos. Perhaps the motion of the car simulates the rocking of a mother; I don’t know. To me, despite the fabric-covered seats and the wood paneling, the subway is an uncomfortable place. We passengers are strangers, and both our silence and our noise are awkward. It is different at the hospital, where a layer of vulnerability renders a stranger an intimate acquaintance.
The woman sitting beside me watches Stella. I smile politely as I take in the woman’s appearance: a working girl. Her hair is bobbed, and a cloche hat sits atop her head. She eyes my rings with envy, and I pull my sleeve in a nervous attempt to hide them. The more people I lie to, however indirectly, the more intense my shame. No wonder I never lied even as a teenager at boarding school: I did not sneak off to smoke or miss my curfew necking with boys in the yard. Even then I would never have described myself as weightless, the way my mother’s death hung heavy on my shoulders like a too-big dress—but now, I feel the palpable heaviness of untruths like stones.
At Grand Central, we transition onto the Harlem line that will take us to Scarsdale. Though this is Stella’s first time out of the city proper, I scarcely hear the announcements for the train stops we pass. I am so wrapped up in my own thoughts that Dr. Morrison must tap my shoulder lightly to get my attention when it is our turn to alight. I stand with an embarrassed dip of the head.
I lift it as we approach a grand Colonial Revival home. I am determined, despite the baby in my arms, to make a respectable impression on the men within the mansion. I want them to see the fruit of my difficult work, my single-mindedness, my studying and years of practice. I want them, unlike the doctors at Bellevue, to see me with the respect with which they see one another.
A woman swings the white door open when we knock. She wears a pale pink tea gown of crepe de chine, lace fins falling across her otherwise bare shoulders and down her back. I resist the urge to tug self-consciously at my own dress.
“Mrs. Burns.” Dr. Morrison bows slightly as he turns from our hostess to me. “Mrs. Anderson. A fellow medical worker.”
“How do you do?” Mrs. Burns smiles graciously. “Come along inside. Dr. Burns and the others are in the sitting room.” Her expression registers no surprise at my presence or my baby’s, and for that I am grateful despite the pallor her shimmering gown casts over my own.
“Thank you,” Dr. Morrison and I chorus in unison as we traipse through the doorway and left to the sitting room. Unlike the entryway, enshrouded in floral wallpaper and dotted with porcelain urns, this room is entirely devoid of pink or lace. Unless the men’s cigar smoke merely clouds such elements from view. Already uncomfortable, I press my lavender handkerchief gently to Stella’s nose.
“Charlie.” The men nearest the doorway turn to greet the doctor, removing their cigars from between their lips to smile.
“Dr. Reynolds.” Dr. Morrison nods. “Dr. Mason. May I present Nurse Althea Anderson.”
“How do you do?” I echo Mrs. Burns’s words even as I notice the shift in my name. Thirty seconds ago, I was Mrs. Anderson; now I am Nurse Althea Anderson. “I appreciate your letting me be here tonight.”
The smiles drop from each man’s face; they exchange uncertain glances.
�
��Althea”—Dr. Morrison steps in—“has valuable medical experience that I think we would all be interested in hearing.”
“Certainly, certainly,” murmurs the first man, his hair thick and dark. Dr. Reynolds? Dr. Mason? I cannot recall. Especially not now, as my name has just gone through yet another reincarnation. Althea, he called me. Althea.
“What of the baby?” The other man interrupts the beating of my heart. “Does the baby have unique medical knowledge as well?”
I flush as the first man, who is at least attempting politeness, disguises a snigger as a cough.
“In fact”—Dr. Morrison’s voice takes on a nearly physical presence, the word fact falling heavy from his mouth like a foot planted on a step—“yes.” He is about to continue, but I speak before he is able.
“Don’t worry about it, Doctor. Your friend was just teasing.” Teasing, ridiculing, provoking. But they won’t get a rise out of me. Challenging them will merely set them more deeply against me, and showing my distress will weaken me in their eyes. I know the way these things work. Dr. Morrison—Charlie, tonight—does not.
“Let’s go introduce you to the others, then,” Charlie responds gruffly. A compromise.
He leads me to a larger, louder cluster of men. I see as we approach why they congregate here on the far side of the room; behind them stretches a dark walnut bar. A few of the men lean laconically against it, and I wonder whether Prohibition has changed the contents of the cabinet. I doubt it. I study the men. The tallest of them is clearly the host of the evening; he is relaxed in a way that can only mean this is his domain.
“May I present Nurse Althea Anderson.” Charlie’s voice has an edge to it that was not there the first time he uttered this phrase. “Althea, this is our host, Geoff.” He indicates the man I had pinpointed: Dr. Geoff Burns.
“How do you do?” The phrase is becoming quite tiresome, and I am regretting already that I have come.
The Light of Luna Park Page 18