A Violet Season (28 page)

“You may think I’m more powerful than you,” Frances said when the silence between them became uncomfortable. “But I’m a woman, too. I couldn’t have grown a business with my own money this way without a husband—my husband,” she corrected herself. “But it
is
my money that started all this. William cannot abide being reminded of that.” Ida was surprised to hear her voice crack, and Frances looked away, the only sign Ida had in the darkness that she might be crying.

“He’s a good man, William,” Ida said. She had never imagined saying so. He hadn’t been good to Frank, but he was good to his employees. He was devoted to his wife and his son. He was generous with the community. He wasn’t the demon she and Frank had always agreed him to be.

“You needn’t say so, Ida,” Frances said. “He hasn’t been good to you.”

“No, but he thinks he has his reasons.”

“It would be nice to feel . . .” Frances said very quietly. “It would be nice to believe that he chose me for something other than a fortune.”

“Oh,” Ida sighed, and she felt her own fortune, for she knew that in the beginning, she and Frank had chosen each other out of what had seemed to be love. “He was lucky to marry you,” she said. “And not just because of your inheritance. You are accomplished and intelligent. I’m sure he saw those things in you when he chose you.”

“It would be nice to be told so, that’s all,” Frances said. She reached into her cloak and drew out a business-sized envelope, which she slid on the table to Ida. “Best as I can figure, this is what you’re owed. The amount Frank has paid them over all these years. It comes from my own family, not through William, and now it’s yours again.”

Ida didn’t touch the envelope. She wished she could see Frances’s face better. Was there some catch? Would she later be asked to repay this as a loan?

“There’s four hundred sixty-four dollars,” Frances said. “Enough to help you get started.”

Ida was still afraid to touch the envelope.

“It’s your money, Ida,” Frances said, standing. “I hope you’ll forgive me.”

Seeing that she intended to go, Ida followed her to the door. As she opened it, she managed to say “Thank you,” and Frances briefly held her, the first time she had embraced her since Ida had met her as a bride.

In the next instant, Frances set her hand on the doorframe. “Good night,” she said.

*   *   *   

On the seventh evening after her return, Alice went home with Oliver. He didn’t ask questions, just gave her a quick kiss on the
cheek and picked up her satchel containing the few things he had delivered earlier in the week. Outside, as he was helping her into the wagon, she spotted Mrs. Pruitt pushing Avery down the sidewalk in a wheelchair. It was dusk, and she had hoped to escape the village unseen. But Mrs. Pruitt slowly raised her hand in greeting, as if confused by Alice’s presence, then touched Avery’s shoulder, and he turned to see her. Alice stepped down from the wagon and crossed the street.

Avery looked better than he had the last time she’d seen him, with even a flush in his cheeks—was that on account of seeing her? She allowed Mrs. Pruitt to hug and kiss her, and then she gave Avery her hand. Mrs. Pruitt prattled on, asking questions about the move to Albany that Alice had to ignore. She directed her attention to Avery himself. They were compatriots now, left behind by the other young men and women, who would go off and marry and live their lives in the new century. Alice squeezed his hand, harder than she had intended, trying to somehow telegraph that she understood something of his life and he of hers. His pale eyes met hers, searching for her meaning. “Good luck to you, Alice,” he said.

“Good luck to you, too,” she said. “Be well.” Then she pulled her hand from his and ran across the street, where Oliver, from his seat in the wagon, raised his hat to Mrs. Pruitt.

*   *   *   

The sun rose before five-thirty on the morning of their departure, giving Ida plenty of time to prepare before the workers turned up for the day. She wanted to be gone before they and the rest of Underwood saw her. She heard Prissy mewling at the door and let her in. She tried to pick up the cat and rub her soft chest with affection, for she would have to live out her life here, mousing in the barn. Unaware of how things were about to change, the cat wrestled out of Ida’s grasp and went poking her nose at the base of the sink, searching for something to eat. Ida poured her
a splash of yesterday’s milk and went in to see to Ana, who had begun to fuss in her old way.

Sitting in bed, Ida held the baby to her breast while opening a book so she could read a morning story to Jasper. The baby suckled for a few seconds, then whimpered. Ida put down the book and tried again, but again after a few sucks, Ana opened her mouth and howled. The other breast was no better. Ida laid the baby in the trundle bed and stood by the washbasin. A gentle touch, and she felt the prickling in her breasts, the release of her milk, and she leaned over the basin and massaged the base of her nipples between thumb and finger as she had done so many times. A slow trickle dribbled from her left breast, then stopped. From her right breast, she coaxed a few drops.

“Not to worry,” she told herself. She put the kettle on and, fastening a few buttons to cover herself, took Jasper and his story-book out to the kitchen. The baby cried hungrily in the bedroom, but Ida let her go on, hoping she would cry herself out and fall asleep. By the time she had finished reading to Jasper, the water was hot. She poured some into the basin, tempering it with cold so it wouldn’t scald her skin. Then she wet a washcloth and, after opening her shirtwaist again, pressed the hot compress on her breasts and waited. She imagined she could feel the weight of the milk. Her breasts were firm, as if they had something to yield. But when she tried again to massage the milk down, just a few drops fell into the basin of water, blue-gray clouds that spread and disappeared. Her milk was gone.

*   *   *   

In the morning, Alice heard her mother fussing in the kitchen and washing at the basin. Jasper began to stomp about and speak in his midday voice, and Alice gave up on the little sleep she’d hoarded and rose to get breakfast. Reuben, looking so much taller than she had remembered, hitched Uncle William’s old team to the wagon
and brought it around front, and together she and Oliver and her mother packed the last few things. Aunt Harriet came across the lane in her apron with her girls following behind, and the four of them stood in the barnyard, viewing the preparations like mourners at a burial. Alice watched as Aunt Harriet embraced her mother for a long time, so long that she and her cousins grew embarrassed and turned their heads away. She’d had no idea that her mother even cared for Aunt Harriet. Then her aunt walked over to Alice, tears running unchecked down her face. She gripped Alice’s arms and said to her, “Take good care of your mother now,” as if it were Alice’s mother who needed taking care of and not Alice herself. She had to remind herself that her mother had kept her word, and no one, including Aunt Harriet, knew what had happened in the city.

It was time to go. “Where is Reuben?” Ida asked, and her heart accelerated and jumped. She suddenly felt panicked to leave at once.

“I’ll find him,” Oliver said.

Ida kept busy straightening things in the back of the wagon while Alice walked Jasper to see the chickens one last time. Harriet’s girls wandered away. Fifteen minutes later, Oliver jogged down the hill with Reuben by the arm. Behind them, Norris stood outside greenhouse 3, his hands in his pockets. There was no sign of William or Harold or Frances.

“I’m not going,” Reuben announced as they neared the wagon.

“You are,” Ida said. “Climb up there now. We’re ready to leave.”

Reuben yanked his arm, but Oliver stood firm. “You want me to lift him up there, Ma?” he asked.

“Come, Reuben,” Ida said sternly. “You’re keeping us waiting.”

“I’m not
going,
” he said, yanking again, and his face twisted as he strained against his brother’s grip.

What was she to do? Tie him to the wagon? Nothing else would keep him from jumping out at the corner and running away. Or worse, running once they reached Albany.

“Oliver,” Ida said, but the rest of her intended words dammed in her throat.

Oliver beheld her trembling face, and she saw the recognition pass over him. He let go of his brother’s arm, and Reuben staggered and fell on the drive.

“I’ll take good care of him, Ma,” he said. “I promise.” Reuben looked up at them, confused. “Get up and say a proper good-bye,” Oliver commanded.

Ida could no longer hold her own broken pieces together, and she sobbed aloud as Reuben stood and walked to her, then allowed her to embrace him. She hated for the children to see her this way. Only Jasper remained innocent of their circumstances, and when he reached out to her from Alice’s arms, his trust tore Ida’s heart. She squeezed Reuben tightly and breathed him in, his earthy hair and his sweaty skin, then stepped back and regarded his bewildered face, but still she couldn’t speak. She kissed his forehead and nudged him toward Oliver. Then her young man, her firstborn, enfolded her in his sturdy arms and whispered in her ear, “Don’t worry, Ma.” Then, to her surprise, “I love you.” Unable to look at his face for fear she would lose her courage, Ida kissed him quickly and turned her head, then climbed up to the wagon seat.

Harriet handed up the baby in her basket, and Alice handed up Jasper, but before she could climb up herself, she was distracted by a movement on the driveway. The workers were starting to arrive; among them was Joe, riding up to the barn on his bicycle. He dismounted and leaned the bike against the north wall, where a few others were already parked. He stood there beside the barn, looking foolish with a ribbon tied around one leg of his trousers to keep it from catching in the gears. He hadn’t the sense to walk up to her and take her in his arms and ask her again to be his wife. Instead he raised his cap and said directly to Alice, “Godspeed.” She pulled herself up to the wagon seat; her mother clicked her tongue, and the old team lurched into motion.

W
ithin an hour, they had driven north past the range of Alice’s experience. She had never seen these roads just a few miles beyond her own town, and she recognized the obvious: there were other directions in which to go.

They stopped south of Germantown to eat lunch beside a fallow field and let Jasper run his legs tired. Ida tried to nurse the baby one last time, but Ana fussed and slapped her little hands on Ida’s chest. Finally, Ida passed the baby to Alice and poured some cow’s milk into a feeding bottle. Ana squirmed in Alice’s arms, then settled and drank for a minute or two. Ida cried again, private tears that she wiped on her sleeve as she walked away from the wagon so as not to distract the baby by her presence. When she returned, Ana had pushed the bottle away and was sitting up in Alice’s lap. Ida placed a scrap of bread in the baby’s hand and said to Alice, “We’ll try some pap tonight.”

At twilight they engaged a room at a tavern in Hudson, where a bar fight awoke them at three
A.M.
After that Ana refused to sleep. The second day of travel was harder, exhausted as they were, and they passed the miles mostly in silence, save Jasper’s singing. Long stretches of the road were overgrown and deserted. Everyone, it seemed, was traveling by steamship or train.

They reached the rumbling city of Albany midway through the third day. Ida had expected to cross the Hudson on the old ferry, but when they passed through the last tollhouse and inquired directions of the toll keeper, they learned there was now a bridge at South Ferry Street. The river was much narrower here than at Underwood, yet busier, with steamships and barges and tugboats and schooners passing one another like wagons on the streets of New York. They paid the fifteen-cent toll and began the short crossing. It felt otherworldly and frightening to be traveling over the river traffic, over the river itself, like angels gazing down on earth. Ida had never imagined anything like it. To steady herself, she shifted her gaze to the far waterfront, crammed with warehouses and ferry slips, factories and grain elevators and large hotels. S
AILS
A
WNINGS
T
ENTS,
read one boldly painted building. P
AINTS
O
ILS
S
TEAM
E
NGINE
& B
OAT
S
UPPLIES.
Beer barrels lay stacked on their sides, waiting for shipment at the dock, and the air smelled of baking day.

And the capitol! When Ida had left with Frank in the summer of 1875, it had been under construction. Now it was a fantastical castle in the middle of the humble city, its red roof punctuating the otherwise drab landscape like a carnation on a gentleman’s lapel. Things had changed even since Theodore Roosevelt had led his Rough Riders into battle under a year ago. Now he slept in Albany’s executive mansion.

They were over the bridge, and Ida had to get her bearings. Here was Broadway, and a few blocks up, Steamboat Square, where the road took a bend to the west. She guided the team to the left up State Street, the widest avenue, with two sets of electric trolley tracks veining its center and the palatial capitol building at its head, where the street veered left to accommodate it.

Alice held the edge of her seat. People were staring at them, two women with two children in a wagon piled full of household goods. They looked pitiful. Above them, loops of trolley and telegraph wire seemed a net designed to trap them, and everywhere
she turned, something reminded her of New York: the paper scraps blown up against the curb, the striped awnings pulled out over painted plate-glass windows, the clatter of hooves and wheels on the paving bricks, and the shouts of men and boys. Alice bowed her head and shut her eyes tight.

Past the brick and brownstone State Street Presbyterian Church and Emmanuel Baptist, with a grand new bell tower. Ida could feel her own pulse in her ears. Here it was. Dove Street. She guided the team to the left and entered her old neighborhood.

Alice’s mother had spoken often of her girlhood in Albany, and Alice had pictured a spacious neighborhood of stately homes set back from the street, with green lawns and front porches where many of the scenes of her mother’s young life had played out. Instead she found a narrow city street, with brownstone town homes standing shoulder to shoulder, their front stoops like tongues stuck out on the sidewalk. Her mother was thrilled by it all.