The Chaperone (29 page)

“What’s the story? Should I be afraid? You look like you want to slug somebody.”

“I’m fine.” Cora looked up and managed a smile. But her jaw ached, and she knew she’d been clenching her teeth. She wasn’t angry, though. She wasn’t. She was just sad, just full of disappointment, fatigued from the miserable day.

“Mother says making faces like that is what makes you wrinkled. Not you in particular, I mean. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She stepped into her heels, clicked back across the floor into the bathroom, and shut the door. Cora looked back down at her book. If Louise wanted to see what her nightgown looked like with heels, Cora supposed she could, provided she stay in the bathroom. She had no wish to start any argument. She only wished to be left alone, to read her book in peace. But even the book was bothering her. Louise had been right about the hero, who wasn’t a hero at all—even now that he was old, and the wife he hadn’t loved was long dead, even then he couldn’t muster the strength to look his real love, now old as well, in the eye. Cora read with narrowed eyes. A horrible end for a book. Yet she took in every word, even as her jaw ached, even as her vision blurred. When she finished the last line, she closed the book and crossed her arms, staring at the pea-green wall. A terrible ending for a book. A foolish man, a waste. She could feel herself scowling, the lines of her face settling in. Louise and her mother were probably right—she was making herself look old. And now Cora knew just how she would age, what she would look like in twenty years, maybe less. She would look like Mary O’Dell.

Louise opened the bathroom door. She stood in the doorway, silent, clearly waiting for Cora to look up. Cora did, irritated, but then Louise looked away, a strand of black hair catching on her mouth. She was still wearing the heels, moving the hem of her gown around her knees as she shifted from side to side.

“Did you hear about the shooting last night?”

Cora shook her head, though Louise was still looking away. Louise looked back at her, waiting.

“No,” Cora said, “I didn’t.”

“Oh. Well. It should be in the paper tomorrow. A girl was talking about it in class. It was just one block up from where she lives.” She held on to the doorway as she stepped out of her shoes. “She said a Prohibition agent got a tip about a still, and when the police went in to check it out, somebody started shooting. This boy was killed on the stoop. The girl in my class said there was blood and maybe his brains all over the stoop.”

Cora squinted, her mind going right to Howard and Earle, as it always did when she heard of some boy, any boy, harmed or killed. “That’s terrible,” she said.

“Yeah.” Louise walked to the bed, a shoe in each hand. “She said her neighborhood has been a lot scarier since Prohibition started. She said things like that never used to happen. It used to be safe.”

Cora nodded, wary again. Of course Louise had an agenda. She wanted an argument. “I’m not sure about that,” Cora murmured. She shimmied down under the sheet, her head flat to the pillow. “It’s too bad the boy chose to get mixed up with bootlegging and stills.”

“He didn’t.” Louise dropped her shoes next to her side of the bed. “He didn’t have anything to do with the still. He just lived in the building with his family, and he happened to be on the stoop. The girl in my class said she’d known him forever, and that he was just a nice boy.”

Cora was silent, listening to the whirling fan. She would not be provoked into an argument. She didn’t have one in her tonight.

Louise sighed as she lay down on the bed, smelling of dental cream and talcum powder. The nights had been so warm that they slept with just the top sheet over them, the thin cotton bedspread folded at the foot of the bed. “It’s so stupid,” Louise said, pulling the sheet up. “People are still drinking. And they always will. People want to drink. That’s all there is to it.” She squinted at the collar of Cora’s gown. “Is that thing comfortable to sleep in? I mean, that lace at the neck. It can’t be comfortable. And what does your husband think?”

Cora didn’t answer. She reached for the lamp. She would not engage, not about her gown, not about Prohibition, not about anything. She just wanted to go to sleep, to feel nothing, to make this long day finally come to an end.

And she did sleep, almost right away. But she fell into dreams, and she would remember one dream the next morning, and even long after that: She was still in her nightgown—she could feel the lace at the collar, the soft cotton against her legs—but she was back at her dining room table in Wichita. Alan and Raymond Walker were sitting there with her, both of them wearing suits and drinking out of teacups. They were being nice to her, making pleasant conversation, but one of Alan’s hands was under the table, and one of Raymond Walker’s hands was under the table, too, and she knew by the looks on their faces that something illicit was going on out of view. She didn’t look under the table because she didn’t have to. She could tell by the smiles on their faces, their mischievous grins. And she was mad, mad about it. But then she lifted her own teacup to her mouth, and it was beer, which in her dream tasted sweet, like tea sweetened with honey. “Like liquid gold,” Alan said, raising his cup as if making a toast, a toast, it seemed, to her. She could hear sirens outside, coming closer, maybe real New York sirens in the dark streets outside that became part of her dream, but she was thirsty, so thirsty, and so she stopped being mad and stopped worrying about the sirens and took a long drink from her own teacup, and the sweetness of the beer was so perfect, so cool and wonderful, that she tilted back her head to empty her cup. Alan smiled and said she would be fine. They would have to stay hidden, but they weren’t bad people. They were just people who wanted a drink.

She never knew
what woke her. She would realize later that the room had been quiet for hours, with no movement aside from the whirling fan. But for some reason, maybe the heat, maybe a car backfiring, she became conscious in the darkness, even as her eyes were still closed. She lay still for a while, recalling the strange dream and the imagined sweetness of the beer. Just a dream, not a memory. A car rolled by on the street, followed by another with a louder engine, and she opened her eyes. The thin curtain was aglow, illuminated by an orange streetlight, and she turned away from it, careful to move gently so as not to disturb Louise. In just the past few weeks, she’d grown used to sharing a bed with another body, staying confined to one side, not letting her arms and legs flail about as she did in her big bed at home. And so now she peered through the semidarkness to locate Louise’s head, to measure just how much space she had.

She could only see the white of the pillow.

She sat up, making certain, her hands moving over the sheet.

“Louise?”

The fan whirled. She reached over to turn on the lamp, shielding her eyes from its brightness. The bathroom was dark. She pushed back the sheet and got out of bed.

“Louise? Are you here? Answer me.”

She checked the bathroom, just to be sure, and moved quickly through the kitchen. In the front room, she pulled the chain on the low lamp. The painted Siamese cat stared.

She ran back to the bedroom, snatching her watch from the nightstand. Twenty past three. She hiked up her long gown, rested one knee on the bed, and peered over the edge of the other side, where Louise had dropped her shoes just hours before. They were gone. Of course they were. Louise had left them out on purpose, boldly, right in front of her. When had that been? Ten o’clock? Almost five hours ago, and there was no way to know what time she’d left. Cora went to the window and pulled aside the curtain, looking down at the street. Even at this early-morning hour, people were still out, men and women bobbing down the sidewalk, getting into taxis, huddled at the corners in little groups. She could see a few lit windows in the building across the street. But the luncheonette was closed, its electric sign dark, its windows dimmed. From the sidewalk, a man with no jacket waved up at her, while his two friends laughed, as if with all the bare-kneed girls in the street, Cora was the one who’d been putting on a show for them, in her prim gown with the ribbon at the collar, her hair loose to her shoulders. She stepped out of sight, her heart pounding, her arms crossed over her chest.

She didn’t know what to do. Wake the neighbors? The few people she’d seen in the hallway and on the stairway never even said hello. Should she go down to the street and start screaming? Ask a stranger how she might find the police? So they could what? File a report? Her fingers grazed her lace collar, the skin of her neck. No. There was no need for real alarm. Louise was fine. She’d gone out for a lark, but she would come back soon, and when she did, Cora would give her a good scolding, a terrific scolding, letting her know how much she’d frightened her, and how absolutely stupid she’d been to go out by herself in New York City in the middle of the night. Didn’t she know that Cora would only have to say one word about this to Ruth St. Denis, just one word, and Louise could forget about Philadelphia and joining the troupe?

Cora turned off the lamp so she could again look out the window, unseen. Stupid girl, she thought, even as her gaze moved worriedly up and down the street. Perhaps she should tell St. Denis. It would serve Louise right to have to go back to Kansas now, to lose everything because of her childish behavior. But even as she thought this, she knew that if Louise would just come back, Cora would say nothing to Ruth St. Denis. Louise needed punishment, yes, but Cora didn’t want her to lose everything, not when she was so close, the only student they picked.

She didn’t know how much time passed before she spotted them, two people moving oddly down the sidewalk, the taller one almost upright and half supporting, half dragging the other. The smaller, leaning figure wore a sleeveless dress, light-colored. Cora pressed her forehead against the window, cupped her hands over her eyes, and saw the cropped black hair. She picked up the key and ran down the stairs in her bare feet, one hand alternately gripping and sliding down the narrow banister. She could hear her own breathing as she turned the first landing, her nostrils flared like an enraged bull’s. She reached the bottom of the stairway, ran across the gritty floor of the entry, and tried to fling open the door to the street, realizing only now that it was kept locked at night. She undid the lock and pushed the door so hard it swung open and hit the exterior wall.

“Oh. Hello.”

Before her, on the covered stoop, Floyd Smithers, his bow tie dangling from his collar, stood very still, doing his best to hold up Louise, who slouched against him like a soft doll. She was still in the nightgown, wearing the heels. She raised her head, looked at Cora through hooded eyes.

“Oh fuck. Not her. Please? Take me anywhere else. Not her. Not now.” She frowned at Cora. “That’s a goddam ugly nightgown, by the way. You look like Little Bo Peep.”

Floyd met Cora’s gaze. He looked alarmed, and perfectly sober.

“I just wanted to get her home,” he said.

For a moment, Cora couldn’t even speak. She wanted to scratch his handsome, college-boy face, the door key sharp in her palm. He was at fault for this, more than Louise, even. Now Cora knew what they’d been whispering about over the counter at dinner. He’d plotted it all out, getting a fifteen-year-old girl out alone and so drunk she couldn’t stand up, so he could… what? The night was still warm, muggy, but she felt a chill of real fear.

“You’re disgusting,” she hissed. “I should call the police.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t mean to…” Louise started to swoon away from him, and he widened his stance for better support.

“I can guess your intentions.” She moved to Louise’s other side, looping one bare, limp arm over her neck. “I’ll take it from here, thank you. But don’t worry. You’ll be hearing from me soon. And from the authorities. She’s a child, fifteen. You knew that.”

He disentangled himself and stepped away. Louise’s full weight slumped against Cora, and they staggered backward, almost falling against the wall. For such a small person, Louise was surprisingly heavy, dense like a soaked sponge, and the silk nightgown hard to hold on to. Cora righted herself, hooking her free arm around Louise’s waist, and took a careful step toward the stairway. Louise rolled her head in and whispered something indecipherable. Her breath smelled of sour milk and pine.

“Floyd.” Cora turned her own head away, breathing hard. She wasn’t sure if he was still there. “Floyd?”

“Yes.”

She closed her eyes. “It’s three flights up. I need your help.”

In a moment, he was beside them. He put one arm under Louise’s knees, one arm under her shoulders. Without comment, he made his way to the stairs. As soon as he began to climb, Louise started to kick and slap his back, muttering protests. One of her heels fell off on the second landing, but Cora, following, didn’t pick it up. She wouldn’t. Maybe the shoe would be there in the morning. Maybe it wouldn’t. It seemed to Cora she deserved to lose it.

At their door, Floyd waited, breathing heavily, as Cora pushed the key into the lock. Louise, somewhat revived by her ride up the stairs, was also exhaling audibly, but she was doing it on purpose, as a joke, blowing her acrid, piney breath at Cora’s cheek. “You like that, Cora?” she slurred, heavy-lidded. “That’s gin is what that is. You should try it sometime. You know? Maybe you won’t be such a wound-up pain in the ass.”

Cora opened the door, moving through the kitchen to the bedroom. “Just put her on the bed,” she said, yanking the chain for the bedroom light. He did, not too gently, and stepped away, still breathing hard and red in the face. Cora noticed he no longer appeared contrite. He actually appeared put-upon. She hoped he didn’t feel in any way absolved, just because he got Louise upstairs. That was the least he could do.

“Nothing happened,” he said. “Nothing. I just wanted to get her home.”

She stared at him, trying to see any sign of real honesty. She wanted to believe him. She was desperate to. But he might say anything now, to get himself out of danger. The flush of his skin made him look younger than he was, boyish. Maybe he wasn’t lying. But that was just it—there was no way to know.