Sister Noon (18 page)

Blythe brought Lizzie the tea tray. On it were biscuits with almonds pressed into the tops and arranged like petals, and buttered toast with lime marmalade. Lizzie circled the spoon in her cup so it made a rough music against
the china, like the tongue of a crude bell. She turned to Erma. “Think how many times you and I played at this. Tea parties with water for tea and wooden blocks for tea cakes. In this very house. Why are children in such a hurry to grow up?”

“Babies,” said Erma complacently, “are God’s very best idea.” And that quickly the coziness was gone. Lizzie felt excluded from the sentiment, as though she were still playing make-believe while everyone else had gone on and done the real thing. She would never have a baby, nor would she be anyone’s baby ever again. She had a tactile memory of her mother’s hand on the back of her head, following the brushstroke down her hair, and was overcome with self-pity when it turned out to be the fern. Poor Lizzie had no one of her very own. She sat back and the fern frond groped at her bosom.

Outside the melancholy ticking of rain, inside the murmur of women’s voices. Blythe was one of the family, but ever so much more expensive than a Chinaman would be. Children were God’s very best idea, except for Blythe’s, who would be the death of her. Mrs. Mullin had met a Mr. and Mrs. Derry while attending a lecture on the customs of Japan. “In Japan, they consider it impolite to finish the food on your plate!”

“Not really! Do you hear, Lizzie?”

“They won’t take a gift unless it’s offered three times! The first two are considered mere politeness.”

Lizzie helped herself to another biscuit. What a nightmare fund-raising must be in Japan!

According to Mrs. Mullin, the Japanese were an exceptionally clean, respectable race, who only looked like
the Chinese. The way you could tell the difference was that the Japanese were extremely sensitive to beauty. Sunrises and waterfalls and the like, they couldn’t get enough of them. The Chinese didn’t care so much for nature, which is why they were so good underground.

But the Derrys were a nice, refined sort of people, and they lived on Octavia, close to the Bell mansion. They’d told Mrs. Mullin that in the days before the Sharon trial had made Mrs. Pleasant such a public figure, large groups of Negroes used to gather at the House of Mystery for voodoo ceremonies. This would happen only on stormy nights and when Thomas Bell was away. “How those women carried on in his absence! They counted on the noise of the wind to cover the drums, but it didn’t hardly do the job,” Mrs. Mullin noted. “As if thunder rolls in rhythm!”

Mrs. Putnam’s teacup floated to her mouth. She spoke from behind it. “I hope you’ve kept your promise and not seen that woman again.” Everyone turned to look at Lizzie. “I’m forced to tell you there’s been talk.” Her voice
sounded
forced. It sounded tired, upset. “Ever since the séance your name has been linked to hers. A strong public disavowal right then and there would have settled the matter.”

“I’ll make one here and now. I’ll have nothing more to do with her,” Lizzie said. The room was warm with tea and approval. Poor Malina Paillet, who never got to be warm again. Drums and the moon and a young dead girl about whom no one cared. Red rooms and painted mouths. Statues of naked, pleading women. Good-bye to all of that, and not the tiniest touch of headache.

In fact, after her declaration, things got even better.
As a reward for being the same old Lizzie, Mrs. Putnam invited her to join them for the Saturday-evening promenade. Not this week, when they had a dinner to go to, but weather permitting, the next. Happy Lizzie! She loved the Saturday-night Market Street parade. Saturday afternoon was for women and fashion. Lizzie could go to that alone, but she had no interest. Saturday night required an escort.

And then things got better yet. The baby made a series of gaseous noises and began to smell. The nursemaid was hovering nearby. She was thin and drained-looking, a woman whose hands, when empty, drooped exhausted from her wrists. Mrs. Putnam handed little Charles to her. His odor receded down the hall, up the stairs, and behind the nursery doors. There was no further talk of what a rosebud he was. Lizzie drank her tea in utter contentment.

T
hen, after all that stalwart normalcy, that very Sunday, as she was leaving St. Luke’s, she met Mr. Finney out with his hack. He tipped his hat, exclaimed unconvincingly on the coincidence, and offered her a free ride to the Ark or her home, wherever she was headed. In full sunlight, his eyes, behind his glasses, were bluer, but mottled as pebbles.

As part of being her same old self, Lizzie had determined never to see Mr. Finney again. Someone else could deal with the mystery of Jenny Ijub, though it had seduced her initially by being so like a story, with its medieval jousting and Irish wives as tiny as fairies. But she was resolved to leave it now unfinished, had never found Jenny an agreeable little girl. If there were a wealthy father, someone else would have to produce him.

Lizzie’s mood of the moment was elevated. She’d just heard an improving sermon with many particulars worth considering at her leisure. “Making a home for Christ in your heart” had been the basic text, and she’d planned to spend the afternoon examining and redoubling her efforts to do so.

Instead, Mr. Finney. After the first shock, she was not frightened of him. It was daylight; there were plenty of people on the streets. He made the offer so courteously. There was a nasty, gritty wind, and a ride, even in an open hack, would be nicer than walking. She could see that the only way out was through. She asked to be taken to the Brown Ark, since there was no reason he should learn where she lived and she very much doubted the ride would be free.

Sure enough, Mr. Finney had a proposition to make. He began by telling her how much he admired her. His opinion of her was exceedingly high. “I see I didn’t snow you for a minute,” he said. He was relaxed, affable. He really was very good-looking, in a scholarly way, because of the spectacles, but easy in his movements and manner. Lizzie was proud to be seen with such a presentable young man. She rerouted some of her disapproval of him to herself for this ridiculous vanity.

He twisted around in his seat, scarcely tending to the horse, but it seemed to manage without him. “You didn’t snow me, either,” he continued. “I know you still have the child.”

“I don’t,” Lizzie said, which was a lie on a Sunday and saddened her greatly. The wind boxed her ears. So she quickly tempered it with something true. “I do know where she is.” In spite of her resolute uninvolvedness, she found
she couldn’t stop there. “What do you want with her?” she asked.

There was a suspenseful moment while she waited for the answer. She expected to hear about abandoned women. Romance and betrayal. Summer heat. A child born unwelcomely.
Babies are God’s very best idea,
except when they’re not. She could practically do the story herself, though the interest would be in the names and details. But a carriage was passing them; Mr. Finney had turned around momentarily to drive.

When he could, he turned back. Why, nothing, he told her. He didn’t want the child at all. He was pleased to think of the good care she was getting with the good ladies of the Brown Ark. He gave Lizzie a gorgeous smile, revealing his tiny incisor like a fang. There was a sudden strong gust of wind, which took the yellow feather from her hat. Lizzie watched it fly away.

Not what the girl was accustomed to, Mr. Finney added darkly. Lizzie turned to look at him again. When he saw she was looking, he shook his head sadly. No, it was her mother wished her returned. Mr. Finney observed that a well-brought-up lady like Miss Hayes would have only the highest opinion of motherhood. Probably Miss Hayes’s own mother was a saint. But Miss Hayes mustn’t be picturing a natural mother with a natural mother’s feelings. “Truly,” Mr. Finney finished, “a great shame that God don’t deny motherhood to women of cruel and grasping disposition.” He seemed to be losing his Irish accent. It faded in and out of his speech now, as if he couldn’t decide on his heritage.

It made Lizzie wonder whether he needed the glasses.
At just that moment he took them off. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket; it snapped like a flag.

“But the child’s mother could take her at any time,” she pointed out. “I don’t understand what she needs you for. I don’t understand the need for lies and subterfuges.”

The horse wandered to the side of Gough Street and stopped. In the resulting silence, Mr. Finney muted his voice. “Ah, but then there’s Mammy Pleasant. She paid the mother good money for the child. She mustn’t know the child’s been taken back.”

“She bought the child?” Lizzie asked. How would that happen? Was the child for sale to anyone, or had Mrs. Pleasant simply made an irresistible offer? She imagined Mrs. Pleasant coolly covering the face of a murdered girl with her housekeeping apron. What wouldn’t the woman do? She resolved yet again not to play any part in Mrs. Pleasant’s machinations.

“I imagine it pleased her to buy a little white girl.” Mr. Finney’s voice was prim. He wiped one eye with his handkerchief, dabbed at it. “I’m afraid some sand has blown into my eye,” he said. “Might I impose upon you, Miss Hayes, to look?” There was nothing of Ireland in his accent now, but there might have been a whisper of Australia. “Please. I can feel a stone the size of a goose egg rolling about in there.”

Lizzie could see no way to refuse him, not with his eye so obviously streaked with red. He leaned down to her and she leaned forward. The brim of her hat touched his face. They were almost close enough to kiss.

The eye he held open was swimming with tears. Through them Lizzie could see a pinpoint of dust. She
took his handkerchief and touched it away. Inside her leather gloves, her fingers shivered. “I thank you,” he told her. “You’re a lady who doesn’t shrink from a rough task. Many would have fainted.”

He blinked several times, then returned to the topic under discussion. He didn’t know what the bill of sale had been, he said, but he’d been offered thirty dollars for the quiet restoration of child to mother. Now, for that same thirty dollars, he would tell the mother he’d been unable to locate the child. He would pretend that Lizzie’s trick had fooled him, as it might, after all, have done. He asked for no additional sum, because it sat so much better with his conscience to leave the girl where she was. He would have the thirty dollars he’d already all but earned, and he would have peace of mind as well. Everyone would be happy who deserved to be. He would prefer cash.

The horse urinated loudly. The noise went on and on. It was a sound Lizzie usually found comforting—the same sound as when you poured yourself a hot bath, the lullaby sound of rain on stone. Now it seemed merely coarse. This was an ugly request to come so close after a moment of some intimacy. Could he have dreamt for one instant that she would agree? The particular sum he requested had the touch of Judas in it.

“I have a small independence,” Lizzie said coldly. She didn’t credit a word he said. “But I’m not a wealthy woman.”

The horse stamped its foot. Mr. Finney reached the whip to her shoulder, sketched down her arm with it. It didn’t actually touch her, but Lizzie felt her face grow hot. “I begin to see the pattern of our friendship,” Mr. Finney said. “And it’s you denying me every little thing I ask.”

He was flirting with her! “We’re not friends,” Lizzie said, climbing from the hack to the street. There was nothing flattering about this, she told herself, but she had to make the point sternly. She waited to feel as insulted as she’d been.

Mr. Finney’s voice was increasingly soft. “That choice belongs to the lady, of course. But it disappoints me to hear you say so.

“Twenty-five dollars, then.” He was clearly a man with a tender heart. “It’s worth five dollars to me just to keep Mammy Pleasant out of it.”

“I couldn’t scrape together more than ten,” Lizzie said haughtily. She meant it as a refusal. He took it as an offer. He said he would come to the Brown Ark the next day to get it. He picked up the reins and clattered away, abandoning her on Gough Street like the sharper he was.

Apparently neither age nor position nor blameless respectability protected a woman from the mockery of a man who’d attained none of these. Apparently he thought her so old and neglected that she would respond to any cheap attention. Even worse was the way she had done so. Lizzie stood looking after him, touching her gloved hands to her cheeks. She was angry, but she was also flushed and unsettled. She’d just been blackmailed and it was her very first time.

The wind had grown stronger. It hissed through the lattice of telegraph wires, rattled the ash cans, tossed single sheets of newspaper about like confetti, spit sand into the air. It lifted her dress and breathed on her ankles; loosened her hair from its pins and beat her around the face with it. She clutched her hat to her head.

Rabbi Voorsanger came around the corner. Usually his face was wreathed in his own cigar smoke. Today the wind was carrying the smoke away.

From an upstairs window Lizzie could just hear the chords of an accordion. They resolved themselves into “Santa Lucia.” The rabbi’s steps were light, and timed to the music. He danced his way down the hill, beard and coat flapping, until he disappeared into a crowd of people.

S
o instead of making a home for Christ in her heart, Lizzie spent the afternoon thinking about Mr. Finney. First she thought that she could simply not be at the Brown Ark when he came. Let the matter of the Chinese boy have an extra day to settle itself. Let Nell be the one to send someone to send Mr. Finney off.

Then, having given the matter a troubled night, she’d realized that the right thing, however distasteful, however uncertain in result, the Christian thing, however it prolonged her involvement in the continued, messy saga of Jenny Ijub, would be to return the girl to her mother. She should meet Mr. Finney as planned and she should ask who Jenny’s mother was and how to find her.

Perhaps she was not such a bad mother. Lizzie had no evidence beyond Mr. Finney’s word that she was, and Mr. Finney’s word was clearly insufficient.