All Other Nights (8 page)

A
T FIRST DURING THE DAYS JACOB WOULD DISAPPEAR FROM
the house, ostensibly to his undisclosed business in supplying the camps, but usually to his contact at the local bakery and then to odd circuits around the town, which he tried to vary daily. New Babylon was a small city—large enough to have been a rather busy railroad junction before the war, which was why Philip Levy’s business was based there, but no longer large enough for Jacob to lounge in taverns for hours on end without eventually arousing suspicion. After the first two weeks, he began implying to Philip that his business had dried up and that it wasn’t safe for him to return home. Soon thereafter Philip took him on as a bookkeeper and manager. It seemed like an impossible stroke of luck, but Jacob quickly discovered that in fact Philip needed him desperately: his finances were in a shambles. His attempts to move his shipping business to other parts of the South had largely failed, since the number of railroads available was quite limited and transport by boat had become almost impossibly risky. He admitted to Jacob that he had started taking in boarders at the house out of desperation, and by now they constituted most of his income. Jacob did his best to cut Philip’s losses by rearranging certain debts and credits, and was proud of how much he managed to salvage. He refused to accept payment from Philip; the command was smuggling money to him anyway, baked into the rolls that he picked up at the bakery. In exchange, Philip let him stay at the house for free.

In the evenings Jacob situated himself in the house’s front room, which seemed to be the best place to speak with the girls after supper. Philip usually spent his evenings going out to taverns, desperately trying to drum up business, or else buried in papers in his study a few rooms away. He seemed to avoid the girls deliberately once supper had ended, and Jacob took up the habit of sitting in the front room with them, pretending to read. Usually the older two were waiting for their gentleman callers—Major Stoughton for Lottie, and William Wilhelm Williams the Third for Jeannie. They came to the house with eerie regularity, and never at the same time—often, in fact, on alternating days, as if the sisters themselves had timed it, and after a few weeks Jacob began to suspect that they had. He watched as the couples left for an evening stroll, or took their turns sitting on the veranda, sometimes for hours on end, the men stroking the young ladies’ dark curls. Afterward, when the summer evening at last began to darken, whichever sister had been out would hurry back inside, and the other would accompany her upstairs. The younger two sometimes followed; on other nights, they remained in the front room with Jacob, absorbed in their bizarre work.

One night during Jacob’s early weeks at the Levy house, Phoebe came into the front room after washing the dishes to continue whittling a wide wooden dowel, sitting down on a chair in the corner as she carved a design around the outside of the wood. Lottie, fresh from cleaning the boarders’ rooms upstairs, was out on the veranda with Major Stoughton. Rose was still sweeping the dining room; Jeannie was in the kitchen, where Jacob could hear her scrubbing the floor. He had noticed that in lieu of keeping actual servants, Philip Levy had judiciously employed his daughters instead.

“Would you do me the honor of showing me what you’re making?” Jacob asked Phoebe. “I’ve seen you carving, and I am quite intrigued.”

Phoebe smiled, slightly, and handed the piece to him. The wood was carved nearly all around with birds flying in formation, layered over a semblance of clouds in the background. Now Jacob was able to see how intricate the work on it was—and also to notice that the inside had been hollowed out almost completely, making the exterior design even more delicate, and even more impressive.

“It’s a handle for a riding crop,” Phoebe said, before he asked. “Jeannie asked me to make it.”

The family did not own any horses; Jacob had never seen any of them riding anywhere, even on a hired horse. “For Mr. Williams?” he asked.

“Of course. Who else?”

Jacob passed the piece back to her, his heart pounding. “It’s lovely,” he said. “Your work is better than any boy’s I’ve ever seen.” She took the piece and shyly looked back down at it, avoiding Jacob’s eyes as she returned to work. But he could see that she was pleased.

Rose entered the room, ignoring them both as she sat down next to the wooden secretary desk. She helped herself to a charcoal pencil and sheet of paper from the desk, and immediately began scribbling something. Jacob turned back to Phoebe, wondering what more he might be able to learn.

“Do you make things for Miss Charlotte’s gentleman too?” he asked.

“You mean Major Stoughton?” Phoebe grinned. “Oh, no. I couldn’t possibly do it for a Yankee.” She continued whittling.

“Yankee,” Rose muttered from her seat across the room. “Eek, nay!”

Phoebe was clearly accustomed to ignoring Rose’s odd outbursts, and carved without interruption. But Jacob decided to press further. “Doesn’t Miss Charlotte—well, doesn’t she cater to Major Stoughton’s attentions herself?” he pried. He had Phoebe flattered now; he needed to use his chance. “It seems unfair to make something for Mr. Williams but not for Major Stoughton.”

“Who knows what Lottie wants?” Phoebe said, in a tone that made it clear that she herself knew, quite well. Phoebe lacked Jeannie’s acting talent, Jacob noticed. She blew some sawdust off the wood. “Probably not Major Stoughton,” she added, and grinned.

This half-candor was intriguing, but Jacob’s thoughts were soon interrupted by Rose. “Major Tough Tons,” Rose announced, scribbling furiously with her pencil, then scratching something out. “Major sought not. Majors ought not.”

He turned toward where Rose was scribbling. As she continued scribbling, he pictured her nonsense words in his head. All of them spelled
Stoughton
, he noticed, with the letters rearranged. The girl was a freak of nature. But his goal, he reminded himself, was to win the whole family’s affections; every effort had to be made, even if it meant indulging the inanities of a freakish eleven-year-old girl. “Are you making some sort of puzzle?” he asked innocently.

“Major to gunshot,” Rose replied, without looking up. “Major to shotgun.”

Jacob perceived that this line of inquiry was useless. Phoebe groaned.

At that moment Jeannie entered the room, holding a stocking and some darning thread. When she saw Jacob, she paused, just barely, and then glared at Phoebe. Phoebe rose quickly as Jeannie sat down in a chair next to his.

“I’m going upstairs now,” Phoebe said loudly. “Rose, please join me.”

“Majors ought not,” Rose answered. But she did stand up, carefully rolling up her piece of paper and taking it with her as she followed her sister upstairs. For the first time, Jeannie and Jacob were alone.

“Good evening, Miss Levy,” he said carefully, and allowed himself to admire her. She had been working hard in the kitchen, and it had given her face an almost radiant gleam. He looked at her dress and immediately noticed how the bones of her corset pushed against the worn dark fabric, drawing his eyes up from her waist. The coiled fear in his stomach tightened again, an animal thrill that coursed through his limbs. It was all, he reminded himself, for the cause.

“Good evening, Mr. Rappaport,” she replied, her tone bland, uninviting. “How is business?” she asked.

He wondered what she meant. “Unfortunately it has been much better in the past,” he said delicately. “But your father is a very dedicated man.”

Jeannie threaded her needle and began stitching. “That would be one way to put it,” she said.

The air in the room suddenly felt very warm to him, his chest becoming damp under his shirt and vest as he tried to think of a reply. She seemed to sense him watching her, and she took her time pulling the thread through the fabric. This gave him time to observe her at close range, imagining the wonders hidden beneath her dress. In the days since he had met her, she seemed only to become more stunning. Her lips, he saw, were perfect. But then she spoke again.

“We are all rather curious about you, Mr. Rappaport,” she announced, still stitching. “Tell me: why aren’t you still in New York?”

The question alarmed him. He bit his lip, admiring the curve of her body as she leaned over the stocking in her lap. She hadn’t looked up at him. “What do you mean?” he finally asked.

“Well,” she replied, “you are clearly a gentleman with many opportunities. Papa says that you are brilliant with numbers.” The phrase settled into Jacob’s gut like stale bread. “You’ve apparently saved us from imminent bankruptcy.”

Was it true? Jacob thought of the financial disaster he had discovered in Philip’s office and knew that he had done nothing more than bail some water out of a sinking ship. Yet he saw no reason to disabuse her of the idea. “I did what I could,” he said, trying to sound modest. “But your father deserves most of the credit.”

She glanced at him, skeptical, then looked back at her needle. “Papa also says that your father is one of the most brilliant businessmen he’s ever met, and that he’s fabulously successful. Hobnobbing with British bankers and so forth,” she said. “Supposedly you all live in grand style over there. And without any armies at your doorstep either.” She said this last sentence with great contempt, as though Jacob personally embodied an army at her doorstep. He understood that he did. “I’m sure that in New York you spend all your nights at glamorous balls, and that beautiful young ladies are tripping over each other to marry you. Even if you wanted to have some sort of adventure as a smuggler or a speculator, your father probably could have bought you a whole plantation here for a pittance. Certainly you had no need to stay in a boarding house. Especially an inelegant one like ours, without a single slave. None of us can make head or tail of why you’re here.”

This frightened him. Did she somehow suspect him? He thought carefully and chose to tell the truth, or at least something close to it. He braced a hand against his knee.

“My father and I are no longer on speaking terms,” he said.

She looked up at him, startled. Her brown eyes focused on him, and for the first time he saw her seeing him, instead of waiting to be seen. When she spoke, her voice was different, more natural, its arrogance dissipated into the warm air in the room. “Why not?” she asked.

“We had a disagreement,” he said.

Now she was interested, he saw. She put down her needle and leaned toward him in a remarkably unladylike posture, planting her palms against her knees. His own mother would have considered her crass, he thought. But he was enchanted. As she leaned forward, he caught a glimpse, beneath the neckline of her dress, of the upper edge of her corset, and the sweet slender ache of a shadow between her breasts. “What sort of disagreement?” she asked.

“About a—a lady,” he answered. “He wanted me to marry her.”

“I see,” she said, leaning back. The shadow disappeared. “And you said no.”

“Not exactly. I just left.”

She considered him, twirling a dark lock of hair around a finger. “Why didn’t you simply say no?” she asked. “Then you could have stayed there, and continued hobnobbing with British bankers and the like.”

“It wasn’t a choice,” he replied. “It was a matter of obligation.”

She drew her thin eyebrows together, as if trying to solve a puzzle. “Obligation to whom?” she asked. He was amazed by how interested she was, how the pretense had drained from her voice. “To your father, or to the lady?”

“To everyone.”

“To everyone but yourself,” she said.

An unease crept into Jacob’s body. He had never allowed himself to think of it that way. But Jeannie was still curious. “Did your mother want you to marry her, too?” she asked.

This was more than Jacob wanted to think. Picturing his mother meant picturing Elizabeth Hyams. But Jeannie was watching him, her dark eyes on his. He imagined leaning toward her, taking hold of her waist, her hair, her breasts. “I suppose she did,” he said.

“But did she say so?”

Her boldness took him by surprise, and so did the question. His mother rarely said anything in the presence of his father. She had been only seventeen years old when his father imported her from Bavaria, and she had known no one in America but him. It pained her to have produced only one child who lived past infancy. In lieu of worrying about children she didn’t have, she worried about the business, about the house, about their friends, about doing her very best to ensure that everyone was enjoying all of their hard-earned bounty as much as possible. His father spoke to her lovingly in front of other people, but Jacob had heard him shout at her in private. With his father she was deferential, diffident, at his mercy. More than once, Jacob had discovered her hiding in some obscure corner of the house, her carefully powdered face blotched and streaked with tears. Each time she told him that soot was irritating her eyes, that something must be done about the chimneys.

“No,” he answered. “But I never heard my mother say no to my father.”

Jeannie laughed. “I never heard my father say no to my mother,” she said. “She always acted quite ladylike in public, but there was no question of who was in charge.”

Jacob laughed along with her, marveling at how honest she seemed, how willing to talk and to listen. In her laughter he heard something close to friendship, the first friendliness he had encountered since his talk with Mendoza the previous year, on that lonely night. He decided to encourage her candor.

“Surely you’ve had disagreements with your father too, from time to time,” he said.

Now Jeannie hesitated. She picked up the stocking again, and blinked. Several long seconds passed before she spoke.

“My father and I disagree about nearly everything,” she said.

He saw how her eyes turned away from him, and wondered how he could bring them back. “He’s always seemed rather accommodating to me,” he tried.

“Of course,” she replied, her voice arching into a slight sneer. “Philip Mordecai Levy would never dream of upsetting an important merchant from New York. It’s only his own daughters he can’t speak to.”