Empire Girls (18 page)

“I never had a sister,” she said gently. “But from what I gather you didn’t have one, either, and neither did Rose.”

“Do you think it’s possible to make up for lost time?” I asked, lifting my chin to meet her eyes. She was still hard to read, but something warm melted away the frost I usually saw when she looked at me.

Cat shrugged. “Why would it matter if the future is going to be different?”

“Is it?”

“Ivy,” she said, standing up, “forget about finishing your shift. Maude and Viv can manage. Go to bed and get a real night’s rest. When you wake up in the morning, go see Rose. It really is that simple.” She pulled back the bedclothes, and I slipped in, conscious of the journal cradling my head through the thin pillow.

Cat switched off the lamp. “I’m not an overly optimistic person, but I do know that when you wake up the sun will be shining. Like someone stuck it up there just for you.”

“Like aces high in the ever-loving sky,” I murmured.

“Your father used to say that to you, didn’t he?” Cat asked, her voice soft. I wished she hadn’t turned off the lamp. I wanted to see her expression.

“He did. How did you know?”

But she was gone and I was tired. I closed my eyes finally and slept.

* * *

The next morning Cat was nowhere to be found. I let the cleaners in to scrub the floors and got dressed in my best-cut dress, a sky-blue drop waist. I pinned a pink summer cloche to my bob and carefully adjusted my stockings. My pulse raced so quickly I almost asked Bessie to pour me a quick nip.

“Aren’t you a picture?” she said, and I decided I didn’t care if she meant it or not.

“It’s my day off. Why not put on the dog?”

Bessie reached into the pocket of her apron and placed a telegram on the wet bar. “This came while you were getting gussied up.”

I snatched it up before the water ruined it. Was it from Rose?

Western Union

From: J. W. Lawrence, esq. , Forest Grove, New York

To: Ivy Adams, New York City, New York

Arriving on the 5:00 train. STOP. Grand Central. STOP. Meet me at the station? STOP. A country lawyer could get lost in the big city. STOP.

“I tipped the boy,” Bessie said, interrupting my thoughts.

I stuffed the telegram into my purse and handed Bessie a dime. “Don’t spend it all in one place,” I said and rushed up the stairs and into the day.

* * *

MacDougal Street looked just as I’d left it, a patchwork quilt of old and new New York. Cat had been right; the sun was absolutely blinding, and I squinted across the street at Empire House.

I saw Nell first, shouting orders to Sonny, who smiled lazily, nodding his head but not moving. Claudia lay stretched across the sidewalk playing marbles and annoying passersby, who had to scoot around her.

Rose sat on the top stair. The sun caught her hair and skin, painting her in the golden hue worthy of Klimt’s brushstroke. She wore a gypsy-cut gown in the lightest of cotton, a dress she’d made with her own hand, I could tell. She laughed at something Sonny said, but her smile was wistful.

Still, I balanced on the curb, watching the scene as if it were a play. Was there a place on that stoop for me?

MacDougal, so familiar to me now, was more than just a street to cross. It held everything this city had to offer, including my sister’s friendship.

I needed her to look at me. If I saw welcome in her face, I’d run pell-mell across that street. If she didn’t, I’d stay lost, wandering the city like a ghost.

Look at me, Rose. Please. Look at me.

Please.

CHAPTER 17

Rose

I SAT ON THE
stoop in the morning with my eyes open in a way they hadn’t been before, and I was seeing things for the first time. Our attic, for example, was lovely. Where before there were only dusty floors, I saw the history of all the previous tenants. Where before, the confines of the place left me feeling nothing but fear, I looked into the recent past and saw my own bravery. Where before I’d thought there was no honesty to be found in what I thought was a cruel city, I now saw the truth hidden between each line of conversation and each glance back and forth between those I realized were now friends.

Everything looked different to me through my new eyes, including my sister, who, I realized, was standing across the street, looking back at me. From the moment Santino and Nell urged Claudia inside and I followed their gaze across the sunny street, I knew, just from seeing the way her face lit up, that she had changed, as well.

She raised her arm in a wave, but I could not get over how stunningly perfect the moment was. I was recording it in my mind. I was savoring it. I may have even closed my eyes, because when I opened them, she was walking away.

“Ivy!” I yelled, chasing her, barefoot, the pavement burning my feet.

She stopped and turned around at the corner. I saw she was crying.

“I thought...I thought you didn’t want to see me. I thought you’d changed your mind,” she stammered.

“I wanted nothing more!” I said and pulled her to me so tight I may have pushed the breath right out of both of us. “It’s so wonderful to see you.”

She was looking at me in a way I’d wanted her to look at me since we were small. The way she looked at Father, and the way she looked at The City the first day we arrived.

We held each other, daring the sun to burn our bare shoulders. We couldn’t let go, because both of us knew we wouldn’t be able to go home again. I was learning I never really wanted to, and Ivy was learning, for the first time, that the safety it had given her was gone, making her grieve. I hushed her. “We’ll create a new family together, Ivy,” I said, holding her as the busy city disappeared, leaving only us.

“I’m sorry I slapped you. I was overwrought,” I said after a long silence. “Also,” I said, wiping my tears, “you were right. I cry much too easily, I’ve found.”

“You feel things deeply, Rose. There’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t think anything you cried over was easy at all. Unless I’m mistaken and you cry when you burn toast.”

“No,” I said, laughing.

“So, what do you want to do?” she asked.

“I want to find Asher, and I think I’ve found the last clue. Cat and Nell are in on it, and I overheard them discussing Daisy—she has to be the key. I think she’s hiding Asher.”

I looked at my sister for any sign of surprise, but her eyes reflected a softer understanding. Then she said, “And Cat, I believe, knew Papa very well. Only I can’t put all the pieces together.”

“Of course you can’t. We need to be together to do that.”

“And now we are,” she said.

“Onward.”

“Onward,” agreed Ivy.

* * *

Arm in arm we walked back to Empire House. Words tumbled out over one another. She told me of her suspicions about Cat knowing our father. I told her of my suspicions of Cat and Nell being related.

“Perhaps you’re right, Ivy,” I said. “Maybe Nell is Asher’s very own Miss Havisham!”

“Of course,” she said, and hugged me again, touching my long braid.

“I like your hair this way,” she said. “I’m proud of you, Rose.”

“I’m proud of you, too.”

As we reached the stoop, her eyes fell.

“What is it?”

“You said in your note to me that you stole something. Did you really?”

“Yes, and I haven’t been able to peek at it or put it back for that matter, until I was with you again. So let’s go! It’s a photo album. I just know it holds the answers.”

She reached into her rucksack, brought out my journal and set it in my hands.

“Is it stealing if we learn things? Is it stealing if we give it back?”

“No. It’s not,” I said and kissed her cheek.

“I’m glad you never bobbed your hair,” she said as we walked into Empire House. “It’s lovely this way. You should wear it down completely, you know.”

I stopped at the foyer mirror, took my hair and unbraided it at the bottom, letting the loose layers frame my face. “Are you sure it doesn’t look too much like I’ve been in bed for too long?” I asked.

Ivy laughed. “No, Rose, you look like a writer,” she said.

“I’m not really a writer.”

“Yes, you are. Who knows? Someday, you may travel to Europe and write with the Parisians.”

I knew that she was proud of me.

“You look like a gypsy,” she said.

“I feel like a gypsy,” I replied.

We walked up the stairs together, arm in arm, unwilling to let go, and laughed at our bodies bumping the walls as we rounded each landing. We were starting again.

“I missed this place,” Ivy said when we reached the penthouse.

* * *

Claudia came bounding up the stairs after us. She surprised me by throwing her arms around Ivy’s waist, and Ivy surprised me by hugging her back. “I missed you!” said Claudia. “And I can read!”

Ivy laughed and nodded her head patiently, listening to a litany of the weeks that had gone by at Empire House. “Can I show you how swell my penmanship is? Rose says it’s near perfect for a girl my age.”

“Yes, of course,” said Ivy, who turned back to me as Claudia went to retrieve her notebooks. “Did a letter arrive recently, Rose? I didn’t get a chance to tell you before I left, but Mr. Lawrence said he’d found a sealed letter in Papa’s safety deposit box at the bank. It should be addressed to both of us.”

Claudia dropped her notebooks. She stood stock-still in the middle of the penthouse. I could tell she didn’t know whether to run from us or to us. “Miss! Oh, no. Miss!”

“What, what it is Claudia?” I asked.

She stepped backward toward her little corner under the eaves, and then, turning around, she reached into an apron pocket on a low hook and retrieved an envelope.

“I found it in the foyer. I thought I’d put it by your bed, like a favor. But then I must have forgotten about it.”

Ivy and I looked at each other.

“Show me,” I said.

“Swear you ain’t mad.”

“I swear!”

She brought us the letter.

* * *

“Just so you know,” said Claudia, who sat on my lap, “I didn’t steal it or nothin’, I swear.”

“We both know you didn’t steal it,” said Ivy.

“You’re good sisters. I wish I could be one of you.”

“How about we just say you are?” I asked.

“You mean it?”

“You bet,” said Ivy.

We sat on my bed side by side, and I held Claudia on my lap for comfort. Ivy opened the letter. “It’s from Papa,” she said.

“Read it aloud, Ivy.”

Ivy read us the last chapter of our search.

Dear Ivy & Rose,

If you are reading this, I’ve died. Believe me, it’s as shocking to me as I’m sure it is to you. Please know how much I love you.

There is no way for me to explain what I have done, or how I have behaved. I took advantage of both you.

I’ve always searched outside of me for a reason—to be here. To be a person of this world, a citizen, a man who lives outside of the internal workings of his mind. Your mother always thought I loved Colleen, Asher’s mother, more than I loved her. That she was in competition with a ghost. Colleen died giving birth to Asher, and we had such a short marriage, I could never compare the two.

Love is a mystery, girls. When I met your mother she was a wild, progressive creature, ready for adventure...see, she took me away. I never had to look deep into myself until you girls were born. I’m ashamed to admit that every time I looked at the two of you, especially you, Rose, for reasons you either understand already or are soon to understand—you stirred feelings inside of me that reminded me of what I’d left behind. And your mother, she never wanted a sedate life at all. She would have kept traveling and having children at the same time. I was the one who insisted we settle down at my family’s home. A place I’d yearned to escape from myself, as a boy. I think I killed her spirit, only one of my many sins brought about by fear.

Here is what I know: I know that Asher went to war, and I know that upon his return, he was not well. I tried to see him. No...that’s a lie. I wanted to see him. But I was afraid.

The truth is I couldn’t face him. I left him the house as a consolation prize. I know that hurt you, Rose. But I also knew you couldn’t live here forever, caught in some dream that would only wake you when you were old, and your life already gone. Trust me, I know because I recently woke up and it had happened to me.

I am enclosing his last known address, the name of his grandmother and his sister, Cat, who was five years older and never very fond of me, or so I thought.

I’ll never forget when Colleen died and I carried Asher from our rooms to Nell’s, and little Cat begged me to take her with me. She was so little, and she reached up her arms and cried out, “Papa! Don’t go. Take me!”

How was I to leave my own infant behind and raise a child that wasn’t even my own? There was no way. I thought, perhaps, when I met your mother that I’d gather them up, once we settled down somewhere, but I lost track of my desires once we stopped traveling.

So there you have it. Go find him, girls. Put the family back in its rightful order. Try and tell Nell that at least I understood her anger, even though I didn’t care for her strict and shallow ways. And, girls, please tell Catherine that I should have taken her with me. Tell her I always remembered her, loved her and thought of her as my own.

And go to him, your brother. Remind him of who he is. I trust the two of you have learned enough of the world by now to do it the right way.

I also know that there were better, braver ways to tell you about my life before. But I’m not brave. I’m a coward.

If it is any solace at all, you, my darling little girls, have helped me to at least see, for a brief moment, the man, the father, I could have been to the other two I left behind.

Thank you,

Papa

Sometimes, when the earth is at the correct axis, we see things aligned perfectly. Our father had given us a gift with the letter he wrote, and Claudia had unwittingly given us the gift of keeping it from us, until the very moment we needed it.

We paced together and cried, then paced some more, clutching at each other and rereading it aloud in line and out of order.

“So that’s that then,” said Ivy. “Come, Claudia. Don’t be upset. We wouldn’t have known what to do with this letter if you’d remembered to give it to us. Let me braid your hair, won’t you?” Ivy smoothed out the letter and folded it into a tidy square. She then placed it under her dress, in her brassiere close to her chest.

“Scandalous,” I said.

She looked at me, and I watched her eyes go from worried that I’d been serious to realizing I was kidding. She broke into a terrible fit of giggles.

I started to laugh with her, and once we started, as inappropriate as it was, we couldn’t stop.

I was losing my breath, and tears were streaming down both our faces.

“Can you even believe it? It’s been in front of us this whole time!” she was saying.

“No, I cannot. How did we not know?” I said.

“Cat...Asher...Nell!” She laughed. Our stomachs were sore by the time we calmed down.

When the laughter subsided, we sat close together and paged through the photo album. Each one meant so much more to us because we finally knew that Nell, Asher and Cat were all connected to our father. And in a way, it was like looking at a family album.

Ivy was braiding Claudia’s hair as we looked.

“Who’s this little girl, though? She looks so familiar. Keep turning those pages, sister,” said Ivy.

“It must be Daisy...they grew up together,” I said.

At the very end of the album, there was a loose photo. One of Asher, looking handsome and carefree. Staring at a beautiful young woman with such love in his eyes. She had her head tossed back in laughter.

“Dear God, that’s Natasha!” said Ivy. “She works at the Republic Theater.”

“Natasha? No, that’s Daisy! Ain’t she pretty!” said Claudia.

“So now we know,” she said. “What do we do next?”

“We go see Daisy,” I said, and we left out the back fire escape. Just like real detectives, at last.