City of Light (22 page)

Yes, you must have seen my type before, Stephen Grover Cleveland, and known that I would never betray you. That I would never blackmail you or attempt to contact your wife, because I had too much to lose. I had a position to maintain, and any scandal would hurt me more than you. Most likely from the moment of our introduction, you knew that I was safe. Yes, I protected you well, Stephen Grover Cleveland—mayor, governor, president.

As the days and weeks and years went by, gradually I found a way to live with my anguish. Often I was barely aware of it; it resurfaced only when a man looked at me with affection, approached me to offer love, the way Franklin Fiske had on the stairs at Francesca’s. Over the years there’d been several such men: a history professor at the university; a physician-researcher at the General Hospital; the headmaster of a New England boys’ school, whom I’d met at a conference in Boston; even a young architect at Louise Bethune’s firm. From the first hint of their interest, the pain, the shock, and the fear swept over me once more. Panicked, I took refuge in my professional position as I pushed the man away. During my times of composure, I forced myself to think of that night as a scientific experiment: I
had
learned, as you had said I would; that what I learned was disappointing—well, what more can be expected from an experiment? Not joy. Not comfort or reassurance. I had learned something else too: that I must never be trapped by ignorance in anything I did. I became ever-alert, ever-watchful, ever-searching for the code words by which society functioned, for the subtle nods and lifting eyebrows that signified everything—but only for those who understood. I made it my overriding goal always to understand.

And then there was Grace. Unforeseen. Unforeseeable. How farfetched, the idea that those few minutes amid the cigar smoke shadows could produce the miracle of Grace. Within three months I realized that I must make a plan.

My plan included the protection of
you
. In those days, in spite of everything, I still had high hopes for you; I blamed myself and my own ignorance for what had happened between us. I still saw the future with your name emblazoned upon it. Yet I realized that even as I protected you, I must protect myself from you. The fate of Mrs. Halpin was clear in my mind, and it terrified me. There must be no opportunity for you to steal
my
child, to put
me
into an asylum. I would look after myself better than that unfortunate woman had. Furthermore I knew that your friends would never allow you to face another moral scandal; they would resolve any such scandals themselves, silently and lethally, before there was even a whisper of public exposure.

This was the terror I faced. An appearance of normality must be maintained at all costs. There was no question of my starting the autumn term. I requested a leave of absence for the coming year from the Macaulay board. This would also give me the following summer away; other faculty members had taken such sabbaticals. I explained to the board that I wanted to spend time in New York City investigating new trends in education for women. I also wanted to travel to the Continent, where I’d never been. I wanted to renew myself among the cathedrals of France and the ruins of Greece.

How touched the men of the board were, how excited, to contemplate the increased knowledge I would bring to their daughters. Not only did they approve my request with more alacrity than I had expected, they awarded me, unasked, a generous study grant. A more than generous study grant. And with their money I went to New York and found a sanctuary.

When I was at Wellesley, a well-known woman, a Wellesley graduate—never mind her name—had come to lecture. She was working to establish a settlement house on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to help the immigrant poor. Her lecture had been inspiring. She’d invited us to join her if we shared her passion. After the lecture I spoke to her at length, but my path after graduation led me to Buffalo, not New York. Nevertheless I kept up with her work and her success through Wellesley publications. She now lived at the settlement house with like-minded women and devoted herself to teaching and charity.

She was the person I approached for shelter. I wanted to take refuge with someone who was a stranger—not someone who might care about me or ask me questions. Just someone who would give me a room and a job, and direct me to a physician when my time came. And so there, in New York, I became simply one more sad lady in a long gray coat, making my way through streets crowded with people who had no interest in me whatsoever.

Day after day I despaired over what would happen to the baby that was growing within me. Certainly I would lose my position if the board learned the truth. Without a job, without family, without money of my own, I had no means to raise a child. But I could never give the baby to an orphanage and surrender my claim on him, or her, forever. Unreasonable plans jostled in my mind. I could pretend to be a widow, change my name, move to San Francisco or Vancouver or Guadalajara, for surely teachers were needed in such places. And yet … the child and I might be safe in such a place, but life would be hard; harder than I wanted it to be for my baby.

One day when I was walking along the Battery, staring at the ships in the harbor, an idea came to me:

Some months before I met Grover Cleveland, my best friend, Margaret, had confided to me her despair that after several years of marriage she’d not yet had a child. Suddenly the solution I’d been yearning for spread before me like a flash of inspiration: Margaret and Tom would become the parents of my child. I would return to my position in Buffalo, where I would watch, and help, my child grow. Margaret and I shared the same values, the same ethics. She was generous, tender, and loving. Of course I knew Margaret better than I knew Tom, but Tom had always seemed to me upright and moral. I admired his courage and all he had achieved. Margaret and Tom loved each other; their marriage was stable and happy. And of course they were both rich. Their child’s every material need would be fulfilled. Margaret and Tom would create a mirror image of how I would have raised the child myself, if only circumstances had been different.

I wrote to Margaret from New York and said that the leader of the settlement house where I was staying (while conducting my board-sanctioned research into trends in education for women) knew of an innocent girl who had found herself in an unfortunate position. This girl was from a good family (not from among the immigrant hordes one might associate with my settlement-house acquaintance), and she hoped to find an equally good family to raise the child she would bear but could not keep.

After a few weeks, Margaret wrote back to say that she and Tom, after much discussion, were interested in adopting this child. Margaret had some questions, however, which had to be addressed before plans could move forward. Was I certain, that the parents of this child were not Italian? Not Spanish, Greek, Russian—was I certain that the parents had no link (except one of philanthropy) to the immigrant communities of the city? Would this child grow to have Mediterranean-type skin? Did the child have Jewish blood? (She did not mention Negro blood, which to her must have been beyond imagining.)

I was saddened by this letter even as I responded to it with reassurances. Despite her independent nature and her work among the poor, Margaret harbored, like an unerasable part of her soul, all the prejudices of her class. But who among us does not? Who among us, if we strip away the veils of self-righteousness, would take the chance she and Tom were taking without at least a modicum of reassurance?

To answer Margaret, I spun a tale. I created a play in which I was a character, although not the lead character. I created the innocent girl who had found herself in this unfortunate situation. I described my visit to the girl’s home. She turned out to be a child, really, no more than fifteen. Since the deaths of her parents, she had lived with her grandparents in a substantial home in the East 70s, off Fifth Avenue (how much more authentic, I told myself, than a house actually on Fifth). The grandparents were kindhearted. They blamed themselves for what had happened to the girl. They were telling their friends that the girl suffered from consumption. When the girl’s time neared, they would take her out of town and tell everyone that they were traveling in search of a cure.

I related to Margaret every detail of my visit: being ushered in by the butler; walking up the curving staircase; meeting the grandmother, whose family name I recognized; entering the girl’s bedroom, where she lay upon a canopy bed, surrounded by dolls, blonde hair curling around her face.

Perhaps I overdid it. But so clear was my vision that I couldn’t help but add details, more and more. The pastel drawings of children on the walls. The pile of books on the bedside table. The girl’s modesty, her obvious intelligence and wish to do the best she could for her child.

The father of her child … well, this was more problematic, I realized as I prepared my letter. A bounder, yes. A man who took advantage of a young girl … who could it have been?

All at once I knew. Of course! The girl’s older sister was married to a member of the English aristocracy. “It is my understanding,” I wrote to Margaret, “that during a recent holiday, this so-called gentleman took advantage of his young sister-in-law, then returned in due course to his English estates with his wife, who, I am assured, is ignorant to this day of what occurred.”

Perfect. A sweet American girl taken advantage of by a cad who is nonetheless an English nobleman. With misgivings I remembered after I posted the letter that Tom had been born an Irish Catholic, not likely to respect the English aristocracy; but he never protested, and maybe he appreciated the irony.

At any rate, this was the provenance I created for the child I bore to President Grover Cleveland.

My story had the desired effect. Margaret wrote back to say she and Tom would be very pleased indeed to adopt this infant. She would begin telling her friends and family that she was with child at last. She would wear a pillow around her stomach and increase the stuffing bit by bit. Embracing her latest adventure, she made a continuing joke in her letters about the need to reshape this ever-enlarging pillow with scientific care.

Only Dr. Perlmutter knew the truth. She had persuaded him to play along because society would think something amiss if the esteemed doctor were not seen entering and leaving her house with a certain frequency during her confinement. She and Tom had already decided on names, she wrote: If the child were a boy, they would name him Thomas, after his new father. If it were a girl, they would name her Grace, for by the grace of God they had found her.

When my time came, my acquaintance from the settlement house took pity on me. She found a local doctor. She secured a place of privacy for the birth itself, which went as well as could be expected. She traveled with my infant daughter and a wet nurse to meet Dr. Perlmutter in Albany. He took the infant with him to Buffalo, accompanied by a new wet nurse whom he had hired in Albany. The Albany nurse looked after Grace in a second-class compartment while the doctor relaxed in first class, telling one or two friends he met along the way that he had been visiting a cousin in the state capital. The nurse returned to Albany on the same train. Dr. Perlmutter knew the infant was intended for Margaret and Tom, but he did not know that I was its mother.

When I had recovered from the birth, I went to Europe. I visited the places I had dreamed of and felt as if I didn’t see them at all. My attention was focused on imagining the baby now ensconced in the mansion at the corner of Lincoln Parkway and Forest Avenue.

When finally I returned to Buffalo, shortly before the start of school in September of 1892, a letter awaited me from the board. In formal language the letter informed me that upon the retirement at the end of the year of the now-elderly clergyman who had established Macaulay nearly forty years before, I would become headmistress; I would move into the house next to the school.

I barely glanced at the letter, so eager was I to see Grace. At the Sinclair home, the maid ushered me up to the library. Margaret sat in a rocking chair, the baby in her arms. My baby. Grace. I was startled. She was so much bigger than the newborn I had last seen. Now eight months old, she was round and tumbly as a bubble. Her eyes were still blue, her hair still blonde. Her baby clothes were soft and fine, decorated with lace. She smiled and giggled at her mother. At Margaret.

Happiness glowed on Margaret’s face. “Don’t tell me anything more about her parents, Louisa. I want to pretend she has no parents at all, that she was brought by angels. In fact, she
was
brought by angels.”

Margaret snuggled Grace close against her neck. “You’ll be her godmother, won’t you, Louisa?”

I felt dizzy. I had lost forever the right to hold Grace that close, as much as I yearned to—and how I yearned to press that round baby body against my heart; to feel that smooth skin against my cheek. I was consumed by the urge to grab her—to run down the stairs with her and out the door, my future and hers be damned. Even if we were in the poorhouse, at least we would be together. We
must
be together.

No. Focusing all my strength, I steadied myself. Grace’s future was the only one that mattered, and her future had to be here, where she could have everything she needed. Not simply money, but family too: a mother
and
a father.

Dreamily Margaret repeated, “Yes? You’ll be her godmother?” I nodded my assent. I knew then that I would never tell Margaret the truth. I would never step into the bond of her love for Grace, because if I did, I might hurt Grace … Grace, whom I must now protect whatever the cost. I watched Margaret cuddle her. I loved Grace, and also I loved my friend. My best friend. I would never bring her guilt or anguish by revealing the true parentage of the child she cradled. Now, for the first time, and forever, there would be a secret between us.

I knew that Grace would be sent to Macaulay. I knew that throughout her childhood and youth, I would be in charge of her education: seeing her every day, watching her grow, training her mind, with luck becoming her friend. Closer to her perhaps, as she got older, than a “mother” ever could be. I would be the one she would confide in. Perhaps. Perhaps.