City of Light (16 page)

“But at Niagara the
people
aren’t paying to build the power station.”

“No, but the power station is using the water of the people’s river and the people’s Great Lakes. Karl Speyer understood this and was trying to preserve the river and the Falls.”

“The
people
never did much with the water before, except gawk at it; excuse me—admire its supreme beauty. Besides, the state of New York, presumably the protector of these people you claim to represent, has given the power company the options to use the water—”

“In what darkness were these options given, I ask you? And given away for ‘free.’ Whose palms were greased to bring about that bit of chicanery? I told you: Bribery is one of the hypotheses I am here to prove.”

“You’ve reached your conclusions before completing your investigations?”

“Well, of course. How would I know what to investigate if I hadn’t already reached my conclusions?”

“I see your point.”

“But seriously”—he was almost pleading with me to agree with him—“the water of the Great Lakes belongs to all the people, not just the people wealthy enough to exploit it. That means you, and me. You do see that, don’t you?”

“I see that you are a crusader. Or perhaps a preacher, like your father.”

“Miss Barrett. Please, let us at least acknowledge the fact that the public should own the profits from Niagara.”

“By what means should they do so? Through the state government which you yourself have just accused of corruption?”

He sighed. “I believe—and I’m not alone, I assure you—that electricity is a basic human need. Here in your home you have running water and steam heat—these are considered necessities. Why not electricity? Don’t you want electricity?”

Of course electricity was a wondrous gift, but I hadn’t grown up with it, and so having it at home didn’t seem essential. “Not particularly, no.”

“Oh, you’re impossible. I’ll ask you to look at it purely from the perspective of money, then. Imagine all that could be done with the profits to help the poor. The state could establish—”

“Why, Mr. Fiske, I do believe you’re a socialist,” I jested, attempting to put an end to what was beginning to feel like a harangue. “I myself have always stayed out of politics.”

“No one can stay out of politics forever, Miss Barrett.”

“Loyalty to my friends is more important.”

“Is it?” He looked at me disparagingly. “And if your so-called friends have committed murder in pursuit of their goals?”

“If Karl Speyer was murdered, who exactly do you think murdered him?” I demanded, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear his answer.

“Not Thomas Sinclair personally, that much is obvious. I visualize more of a Henry the Second/Becket scenario: ‘Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?’ I believe Speyer was about to blow the whistle on him.”

“Pardon?” I asked incredulously.

“I mean, reveal what he’s really trying to do: take all the water of Niagara and turn it over to industry.”

I paused to think. What was my goal here? Grace. The protection of Grace. I focused on her, to keep myself from making any confessions to Franklin Fiske that I might regret. “I will not betray my friends for the glory of your newspaper.”

“Your name would never appear publicly. Besides, you’re in this now whether you like it or not. Why not put your access to good use? These men have nothing to hide from a woman like you—someone they can’t see, even when she’s with them.”

“You have an odd method of persuasion.”

“You say you don’t like flattery. Besides, I think it’s wonderful to be invisible. I wish I could be invisible.”

“That you could never be.”

He stepped closer to me. He put his hands on my shoulders. “The
World
believes in heroes and villains. Why not be one of the heroes?” He increased the pressure of his hands on my shoulders. All at once I was tempted. Tempted in every way—intellectually, emotionally, physically. “Why not step outside yourself? Future generations will thank you for it. Why not—”

Future generations … Grace. I stepped away from him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Fiske, but I can’t help you.”

He stared at me for a long moment. “Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained,” he said magnanimously. I led the way into the hall and retrieved his coat. “Don’t hesitate to approach me, should you change your mind,” he added hopefully.

And with that he was gone.

CHAPTER IX

G
race…she was more important to me than the waters of Niagara, more important than Franklin Fiske’s hypotheses, or Karl Speyer’s death. How could I know that they were all linked? At that moment I knew only that Margaret was no longer here to take care of Grace; now I held that responsibility and held it willingly.

Thus, several days after Fiske’s visit, I walked up Elmwood Avenue on a brisk afternoon heading toward the state hospital. I tried to put Fiske’s Henry II/Becket scenario out of my mind and focus only on my goddaughter, but nonetheless my thoughts drifted…. Could I have misjudged Tom all these years? Would he stop at nothing to achieve his goals? Even now I couldn’t permit myself to believe him capable of … but was I deluding myself? My mind went in circles—and inevitably circled once more to Fiske’s image of Grace at the Rumsey luncheon, pounding her fist into her leg and saying she wanted to die. I felt incompetent with her, useless; I had helped so many girls at school, but Grace, somehow, I couldn’t reach.

Which was why I’d made an appointment with Dr. Austin Hoyt, the superintendent of the hospital. Already I saw my destination ahead: the red medina sandstone towers with their mansard roofs; the high fence; the tall trees, offering refuge to the patients huddled beneath the canopy of branches.

As a group: That’s how I forced myself to see the patients as I made my way up the drive. About thirty men and women, separated by sex, spread out along the paths. They gardened with intense concentration. Here and there nursing sisters stood like sentinels, watching them. Guarding them. From each other? From themselves? The patients were all slightly off-balance, their hair too thick or thin to match their eyebrows, their shoulders oddly angled to their heads. They were a people of extremes: the very thin working next to the very fat; the very short next to the very tall; their faces were terribly long and wrinkled, or perfectly round and full. None of the men’s regulation muslin trousers fit properly: Either bony legs emerged between cuff and sock, the skin pasty-white; or the trousers were rolled up at the ankle over and over into a thick bulge. Each person was off-kilter by just a notch, and thus separated from those who walked free on the other side of the fence.

Grace didn’t look anything like these people. I grasped at a hope that therefore she would never be among them.

The Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane. Designed by H. H. Richardson, in the Romanesque style. The complex faced due south; sunlight was one of the treatments. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux had designed the landscape, covering over two hundred acres with billowing trees and rolling meadows. There was space for one thousand patients in linked pavilions that curved along the crest of a hill. Nonetheless, rumor held that the hospital was perpetually overcrowded, two or three patients bunking in the rooms designed for one. Still, before the hospital, the insane had been relegated to poorhouses or ignored on the streets. Now they enjoyed (if that was the word) farm labor. They grew their own vegetables, milked their own cows, raised their own pigs. They possessed a bubbling brook to stroll along. A baseball diamond. A music conservatory. A greenhouse. The hospital was like a paradise at the edge of the city. How I longed for a paradise. I was tired, worn down by vigilance.

I met Dr. Hoyt at his office. He suggested that we talk outside, and so we walked together along the curving paths. All the paths curved; curving paths were considered therapeutic. Crocuses and daffodils spread wild across the lawns. Hoyt looked like a youthful Santa Claus (although not so much like Santa Claus as to be mistaken for one of his patients). Over the years, I’d seen him at lectures, concerts, and art exhibitions, where his bluff heartiness could spread good cheer around a room. But this was the first time I’d consulted him. I couldn’t trust the opinion of Grace’s family doctor, a kindly old man who treated all the children of Delaware Avenue and who undoubtedly knew as little about why a girl would talk of killing herself as I did. I also wanted the opinion of someone who didn’t know Grace personally and could be objective while still understanding her background. Dr. Hoyt was the only choice. However, I didn’t know if I could trust him; I intended to approach him cautiously until I could parse out his loyalties.

Through the greening tree limbs, I glimpsed the two square towers at the top of the hill, visible for miles around.

“You know, Dr. Hoyt, my girls have the distinct impression that you stare at them from those tower windows. That you sit up there in your study day and night, watching everything that goes on in the city below you. The idea gives them hours of pleasurable terror—as well as a few serious nightmares.”

His blue eyes truly twinkled as he looked at me, and he rubbed his white beard (much better trimmed than Santa’s). Taking my elbow, he guided me around a turn in the path. We were the same height, but his girth was such that there was little room on the path for me. My skirt brushed against the bare rosebushes, getting caught here and there on the thorns.

“I’ll let you in on a little secret, Miss Barrett,” he whispered dramatically. “There is nothing up in those towers except pigeons—and the evidence of pigeons. The towers are empty. Hollow. Purely for show.”

“Really?” I glanced back at them. “I’m … shocked!” And I was, although I made it sound like a joke; the towers had haunted me too. “Please don’t tell anyone else, Dr. Hoyt. Their hold upon the imagination must never be diminished.”

“I agree totally, Miss Barrett.” He gave my elbow a squeeze and leaned closer to my shoulder than was strictly necessary for conversation.

With this intimacy inflicted upon me, the moment seemed propitious for confiding the reason for my visit. So I told him the story of Grace Sinclair, never giving her name, never revealing that she was adopted, but providing sufficient details, I hoped, for him to reach a conclusion.

When I finished, we walked some moments in silence across the crest of the hill, studying, in the far distance, the marble outlines of the Albright Art Gallery and beyond that, the Spanish cupolas of the Pan-American Exposition. At the bottom of the hill, the meandering Scajaquada Creek reflected a ribbon of sunlight through the valley.

Finally Hoyt asked, “What do you think is the cause for concern here, Miss Barrett?”

“Well—that the girl will do exactly as she threatens and take her life.” Why was he asking, when the answer was self-evident?

“What makes you think her words are more than just talk, the kind of talk children that age habitually engage in?”

“I’ve never heard a child threaten to take her own life.”

“Your experience perhaps is limited.” His voice was heavy with condescension. “Children will say almost anything to gain attention.”

“Almost anything, Dr. Hoyt,” I replied, mustering my defenses. “There usually remain some areas about which they have scant knowledge.”

“You speak as an indulgent schoolmarm, not as a physician.”

I waited until I could control my voice. “The girl and her mother were very close. One might have to say unusually close, compared to other families in the neighborhood.”

“Mothers and daughters should be close.”

“After the mother died … well, the girl seems to have become overly emotional. Her reactions are too extreme. One minute she’s … nervous, and the next she’s as happy as … well, as a child.”

“She
is
a child, Miss Barrett. Children are known for such extremes.”

“Sometimes, but not always, she blames herself for her mother’s death.”

“That is a natural part of mourning, for any child.”

“Yes, but—”

“Now, now,” he said, to reassure me.

“Well, there’s another area of concern. From things the girl has said, I fear there may once have been a certain … tension in the home. She has spoken of arguments between her parents….” I let my words drift into implication. But I myself didn’t understand the meaning of the implication: I couldn’t very well say to him, her parents argued about electricity.

“Miss Barrett, you have never been married. Had you been, you would realize, I assure you, that such arguments are the commonplace of daily life. It must be difficult, I realize, for you to find a way to evaluate that which you yourself have not experienced.”

Hold back your anger, Louisa. Laugh it off. “But Dr. Hoyt, we’re not consulting about me.” I tried to sound flirtatious.

“Of course not, my dear,” he brusquely replied. “Surely I did not imply such a thing. You are emotional and disjointed today.”

He was trying to humble me. Because I wasn’t married. Because he assumed me to be inexperienced in ways of the heart and the body—a nun in relation to men. He presumed certain facts about me, and defined me to himself in a way that bore no relation to my actual life.

I realized that I should confide nothing more to Dr. Hoyt. That anything I said could be used against me. The instinct for self-preservation that I had assiduously developed over the years came to the fore, protecting me from this fragrant garden. Flatter him, my instinct told me. Twist him to my own benefit. Then walk out the front gate and forget everything he’s said.

“Please understand,” he continued, “the tears of marital discord are commonplace. How else is the fair sex to get its way? The domestic argument, or series of arguments, overheard by your young student probably had to do with an overexpensive piece of silk. Or a brocade for new curtains when the old curtains still looked fine.”

“Yes, Dr. Hoyt.” I pretended to mull this over. “I begin to understand. You are right. Undoubtedly.”

“You describe the girl as having artistic tendencies. These must be properly channeled, to direct any concomitant emotional waywardness. I trust you to see to that at school. As you say, the girl’s mother recently died. It’s only natural that she should speak in ways that are to us unaccustomed; that she would seem different from her old self. I am certain that when her time of mourning is complete, she will return to her usual cheery disposition.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

“What I find more interesting, Miss Barrett, is your concern. Your particular concern. You, a woman with so many students to care for …”

We stood beneath the spreading bower of a purple beech, the leaves fresh and new—pure, brilliant color. We gazed across the lawns to the hospital farms.

“Please sit down, Miss Barrett.” He indicated a wooden bench that circled the tree trunk. He sat beside me, a bit too close. He placed his arm along the back of the bench, as if he were stretching.

“Have you considered why you should have this particular concern?” He raised his brows in an inviting manner. “Perhaps you don’t understand your own mind. Obviously I don’t know the identity of the family in question….” He paused over this phrase, so I knew that he suspected. In spite of Fiske’s journalistic machinations to discover it, the fact that I was Grace’s godmother was no secret. “But if there is a young daughter involved, is not the widowed father a man of your own age, of solid position, a man for whom you may feel some sense of attraction?” He placed his hand upon my shoulder. He patted me. From a distance, an observer would think he was simply comforting me. “I have no desire to invade your privacy or gain intimacies to which I am not entitled, Miss Barrett.” He rubbed my shoulder carefully, bit by bit, as if he were examining the bone for a fracture. “I simply caution you to keep in mind your own motivations, in everything you do. As I would caution anyone.” He shifted so that he faced me. It seemed entirely possible that in another moment he would kiss me.

“You are so insightful, Dr. Hoyt.” I clapped my hands lightly, as I did when a student interview was at an end. I stood. His hand drifted down my skirt to the back of my knee—his idea of a sheltering embrace, I was certain. “I’m so grateful for the time you’ve spared me in your busy schedule. I shall certainly take your words to heart. In the meantime, Miss Francesca Coatsworth awaits me!”

He leapt away. It never failed: Francesca’s name, when properly invoked, had the power of a witch’s spell. He covered his protruding belly with a flat hand as if to protect himself from an assault.

“No need to walk me out, Dr. Hoyt.” I couldn’t resist one more turn of the knife: “Before I see Miss Coatsworth I must stop at school to review my monthly report for Mr. Rumsey—Mr. Dexter Rumsey, that is; the head of my board of trustees, as you may know, Mr. Rumsey holds you in the greatest esteem. He has mentioned you to me. During one of our frequent meetings.”

“Anything I can do … anytime … a pleasure …” He appeared positively frightened of me. Although none of my questions had been answered, I felt a thrill of accomplishment.

He gave me a quick handshake and I strode down the sylvan paths, indulging myself with the certainty that I would never need to visit Dr. Hoyt again.