The Chaperone (31 page)

“I won’t forget anything.”

They looked at each other, and Cora, for the first time, had the miserable experience of seeing herself, truly seeing herself, the way Louise saw her. A confused, hypocritical old biddy. A fool on a fool’s errand, indeed. She’d been a fool all summer, an unhappy woman spouting hurtful, stupid maxims about candy and virtue, telling lies to an injured child. And weren’t they lies? Didn’t she know that already? For what had been the real value of her own virginity, her own ignorance, at seventeen? Why had she been so very eager to teach this girl to be as delusional of its worth as she’d been? Why? What was in it for her?

Louise turned around and used the rim of the bathtub to pull herself to her knees. She had red marks on the backs of her legs, impressions from the tiles.

“I want to brush my teeth,” she muttered, rising to her feet.

Cora nodded. She thought of extending a hand, wordlessly asking the girl to pull her up, but she was fairly certain she’d be turned down. She reached for the edge of the sink and hoisted herself up, feeling achy and older than she was.

“Could I have some privacy?” Louise asked, not looking at her now. “I have to pee.”

Cora walked stiffly out into the bedroom.
Innocent when I went in, not when I came out.
The curtain was still pulled back from the window where, just fifteen or twenty minutes earlier, she’d kept her angry vigil. She went to close the curtain and saw the streetlights were still on, though the traffic on the street and the sidewalks had thinned. Was it four? Past four? She lay down on her side of the bed and pulled the thin sheet up to her chin. She would listen to make sure Louise came to bed and got at least a little sleep. But she understood the girl wanted privacy, or at least the illusion of privacy, even for the few remaining days they had to share this room. So Cora turned toward the wall and closed her eyes, though she already knew she wouldn’t sleep.

SIXTEEN

The hook-nosed Russian at the corner grocery
told Cora she was his first customer of the morning, continuing with friendly chatter until he noticed her blank, exhausted stare. Without having to make further conversation, she purchased a
New York Times
, a loaf of bread, strawberry jelly, a stick of butter, a tin of black tea, and six oranges. Out in the street, it was still early enough that the air was comfortable, almost cool, the sun only starting to brighten the sky.

The entry of their building looked as it always did, with no sign of the drama just a few hours before. On her way up the stairs, she saw Louise’s shoe, the heel wedged between the rails near the second landing.

She was quiet as she let herself into the apartment, setting Louise’s shoe on the floor and her purchases on the writing desk. She put water on for the tea, slipped off her shoes, and walked back to the bedroom. Louise was sleeping on her side, her arms and legs pulled close. Her hands obscured most of her face, but with every exhale, she made a soft whistling sound. Cora, reassured, moved silently out of the room.

The paper had an article about the boy killed on the stoop. It happened just as Louise had said: a police raid on a reported still, bootleggers with guns, the boy walking out to the stoop at the exact wrong time. There was a quote from the police chief saying he regretted an innocent person, a thirteen-year-old boy, had lost his life to violent criminals. Suspects had been arrested and charged with voluntary manslaughter as well as the illegal brewing of alcohol, for several barrels of gin had been discovered and destroyed. There was a quote from the victim’s mother saying her son had, in fact, been a good boy who never once looked for trouble, and there was a picture of the stoop being mopped by a grim-faced man, identified in the caption as the victim’s uncle.

Cora rested her palm on the picture, lightly, then with pressure, as if trying to blot it.

She needed something to keep her occupied, something quiet to do while Louise slept, so she read the whole paper, front to back. She regularly read the paper back home, and since she’d come to New York, she’d been reading the
Times
. But on this particular morning, she was struck by the hodgepodge placement of light stories alongside the disturbing. Babe Ruth had hit three home runs in one day for the second time. A twenty-one-year-old nurse in Rochester had leaped to her death because, according to her roommates, she didn’t know how to tell her fiancé they couldn’t marry: one of her parents was half-Negro. A movie star’s divorce was upheld in Las Vegas. In Germany, the foreign minister, a Jew, had been shot outside his home, and a radical but committed group was threatening to kill more Jews in important positions. Brooklyn planned to create two thousand parking places for Coney Island. Armenians were suffering, starving. President Harding expressed commitment to ending the coal crisis. Textile workers were striking. There’d been another lynching in Georgia, this time of a fifteen-year-old boy. On a happier note, skirts that showed the knees were becoming passé, hemlines having dropped again, and so all across the country, parents, clergy, and educators were breathing a collective sigh of relief, as morality was back in vogue.

Cora sat back in her chair and stared up at the front room’s pale yellow walls, now bright with sunlight, and the painting of the Siamese cat. Her jaw was clenched. Her hands were balled in fists. There was no use pretending she was still just sad or disappointed. Twice, she had to get up and pace the room.

At a quarter to nine, she went into the bedroom and slowly pulled open the curtain, wincing at the screech of the hooks as they slid along the rod. Louise turned away from the window, pulling the sheet up over her head.

“Louise?” Cora walked to Louise’s side of the bed. “It’s time. If you want to go to class, you need to get up now. You need to get up and get dressed. And pack for Philadelphia.”

There was no sound. But the black brows moved low.

“I have tea and breakfast in the other room.” She waited. “Louise? If you want to sleep, sleep. I’ll leave it up to you. But if you’re late for class, you won’t get to go to Philadelphia. And you might not get to join the troupe.”

The sheet lowered a few inches. Louise stared dumbly at Cora, her eyes watery, pink-rimmed. But she was awake now, able to decide. Satisfied, Cora went into the kitchen. She poured two glasses of the cooled tea she’d brewed earlier. She put four pieces of bread in the oven and started to peel an orange. After a while, she heard Louise moving around the bathroom, running water, spitting. Cora carried their plates and glasses to the front room and set them on the table. She folded the newspaper and put it away. She didn’t want a distraction now.

Alone at the table, Cora ate her orange, though it was difficult to chew and swallow, her dread a knot at her throat. Perhaps she shouldn’t say anything. She could pretend last night’s conversation had never happened, and neither of them would ever bring up Edward Vincent or Mr. Flowers again. In some ways, that seemed the best solution. She was just a chaperone. Perhaps it wasn’t her place to meddle in such a private, awful matter. Still, she didn’t think she could pretend that she knew nothing, not now, when she had an image of Louise, a little girl, invited into a house for popcorn, not when she thought of Edward Vincent teaching Sunday school.

Louise walked out of the kitchen with her hands pressed against her temples. She’d put on a loose cotton dress, and she appeared to have splashed water on her face and combed her hair. But she moved across the front room carefully as if it were the deck of a rocking ship. To Cora, already seated at the table, it did not seem possible that a person in her condition could be ready for rigorous dance practice in less than an hour. Even if she somehow suffered through it, she wouldn’t be any good.

“Maybe you should stay here and rest,” she said. “I can walk down by myself and tell Miss Ruth you’re sick. You might only lose Philadelphia.”

Louise slumped into the opposite chair, looking down at her plate of toast, her peeled orange.

“It’s not a lie.” Cora buttered her toast. “You are sick.”

“What else will you tell her?” Her voice was gravelly, low.

“Nothing.” Cora pressed too hard with the knife, tearing a hole in the toast. She looked at it, and after quick consideration gave up the whole pretense, her knife clanging to her plate. Louise looked up, startled.

“Louise, I’m not interested in ruining your chance with Denishawn. If you want to go to Philadelphia, go.” Cora smoothed the edge of the oilcloth. “I want to talk about what you told me last night.” She hoped her face communicated all her sleepless regret, and her outrage, too. But in case it didn’t, she cleared her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry… to hear what happened. In Cherryvale, I mean.”

Louise wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She seemed embarrassed. Cora hadn’t thought it was possible. But the look only lasted a few seconds before the more familiar, collected gaze returned.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Louise.”

“I really don’t.”

“Flowers? That was his name?”

“Oh, God.” She pressed her hair against her temples. “I should have kept my mouth shut.” She wasn’t even talking to Cora, just muttering to herself. “I’ll learn. This is why I shouldn’t drink.”

“Someone should be told, Louise. He could still be luring girls, little girls, to his house.”

“No.” She held up a hand, waving weakly. “I never heard about any other girl going over there.”

Of course not, Cora thought. If there had been other girls, their mothers would have told them to keep quiet, too. There was no way to know.

“And he left town anyway. Moved away before we did.”

“Do you know where?”

“No idea. Cora, I’m not even sure that was his name. Maybe I just remembered Flowers. Come to think of it, it might have been Mr. Feathers, not Mr. Flowers.” She smiled. “Maybe I was de-feathered.”

“This isn’t funny, Louise.”

“Isn’t that for me to decide?” The smile was gone. “Please drop it, okay? It’s just something that happened. I’m fine. I don’t want you to make a big production out of it.”

“I’m not out to embarrass you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“But you would embarrass me.” Her stare was hard, unblinking. “So really. Understand. You bring up Eddie, or Cherryvale, and I don’t know what you’re talking about. Mother won’t, either, just so you know. You’ll just make yourself look crazy.”

Cora looked at her torn toast. Myra. A sorry excuse for a mother. And Leonard, a blind and preoccupied father. Louise was the real orphan at the table. Cora had had the Kaufmanns.

Louise put her knife on the table, idly spinning it like a dial. “Did you mean what you said? You really aren’t going to tell Miss Ruth about last night?”

“I meant it.”

Louise stared down at her plate, her uneaten toast. She looked too confused to be grateful. “Good,” she said finally. “Then I’ll go to class. I’ll pack now.” She nudged her plate toward Cora. “I can’t eat this. Sorry.”

“You should try to eat something. Even just the orange. You’ll be in class for five hours. And you’ll be traveling after that.”

“I won’t keep it down.” She scooted her chair back and stood.

Cora held up her palm. Louise stared down at her, bleary-eyed. She leaned to one side and steadied herself, her hand on the back of the chair. “What?”

“I’m worried about you,” Cora said.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Not that, Louise. I’m worried about you.”

She didn’t say it to get the last word, but it was the one time she got it. Louise only managed a low laugh before she turned and retreated from the room.

They were mostly quiet
on the way to class. Louise walked with surprising competence, even in heels, her overnight bag swinging from her shoulder. But she did yield to Cora’s suggestion that they stop and buy a bottle of aspirin, as well as an apple to put in her bag. By the time they descended the staircase to the studio, she gave no sign that she was feeling the effects of anything but a good night’s sleep. She smiled at Ted Shawn and gave St. Denis a cheerful good morning as she came out of the changing room. Still, Cora lingered for a while, watching the warm-up from the metal chair in the corner. Any worries she had quickly disappeared: Louise’s movements were as elegant and precise as ever, and when she finally glanced over at Cora’s reflection in the big mirror, it was with a look of annoyance, or perhaps something harsher. Cora, seeing her vigil was unwelcome, made her way to the door.

The walk back to the apartment felt particularly long and hot. As soon as she got upstairs, she ran a bath. Her hair didn’t need washing, but once she was in the tub, she let her head slip under the lukewarm water, her curls fanning out around her head, weightless. Finally alone, she let herself cry. Her hand moved up to the back of her neck, her fingers tracing her hairline. She would be going home soon, in just a few days, returning to her real life. And what had she accomplished? Nothing with Louise. And nothing with herself. She’d come here with the hope that finding her mother or father, or just finding out about them, would somehow make her more content, or show her how she might strive to be. She’d always assumed that this first, unremembered loss, even before she was sent out on the train, was the root of her unhappiness. But perhaps she was no different from anyone who’d grown up with their real parents, with brothers and sisters and a shared last name. Perhaps her orphan status was just an excuse. For now she knew her mother’s name and her father’s name, knew all she needed to know, and she didn’t feel any different.

She’d been so envious of Louise.

Out of the tub, her hair still dripping wet, she closed the bedroom curtain and turned on the electric fan, not just for its coolness but for its drone that would quiet the sounds coming in through the open window, the gunning motors and backfires in the street. She lay down, water-cooled and naked under the sheet, and tried in earnest to calm her mind. She needed to sleep, to make up for all the hours she’d missed that morning, and so she tried to think of her wraparound porch in Wichita. In just one week, she would be sitting in the front porch swing with Alan, drinking lemonade and looking at the big oak in the yard, and waving to neighbors walking or driving by. She would do as she had always done, and go back to the life she knew. But even as she tried to keep Wichita in her mind, even as she pretended the breeze from the fan was a cool autumn wind moving through her own front yard, her eyes, for some time, remained open, staring up at the low ceiling with the expression of someone still stunned.