The Gilded Hour (25 page)

“What?” Anna said, as he unfolded his long frame from the chair.

“What?” she said again, as he stopped right in front of her, not touching but so close she could smell the starch in his shirt collar.

He said, “Did you bribe that kid?”

She raised her head sharply and took a step back; Jack moved two steps forward.

“I paid him for his services,” Anna said, refusing to step away again and trying to convince herself this had to do with calm self-assertion and
nothing else. “That’s not bribery. Why must you always put things in terms of criminal behavior?”

The corner of his mouth quirked. “Because I’m a cop,” he said. “And Baldy is a criminal.”

Anna felt her heart pick up a beat. “He may have broken the law—” she began.

“Laws,” Jack said. “Multiple. Often, with great skill and enthusiasm.”

“Well,” Anna said, shifting in her irritation. “Of course he’s no angel.”

“How much money did you give him?”

“Six dollars with the promise of a bonus if he’s successful. And before you say anything else, Mezzanotte, you should know that if he just takes the six dollars and never does anything to earn it, I will still consider the investment to have been worthwhile.”

For a long moment he looked down at her, a crease in the fold between his eyebrows, and one corner of his mouth pulled up, as though she were a puzzle that resisted solving.

“Come on,” he said. “We have a couple more stops to make.”

Anna said, “I’m almost afraid to ask.”

•   •   •

F
OR
THE
NEXT
two weeks, Anna was on high alert and agitated with herself about it. Some days there was a note from Jack Mezzanotte with news about the search, but more often when she left for the day the porter would have a note asking her to meet somewhere: the Protestant orphan asylum, the Our Lady of the Rosary convent, the Boys’ Protectory on Broome Street, the Sheltering Arms Home, the Society for the Relief of Destitute Children, the Asylum of St. Vincent de Paul.

They would meet, talk to the head of the asylum or hospital, and go their separate ways. If it was dark when they finished, Jack insisted on seeing her home, and they talked of everything and nothing at all. Anna wondered if she had imagined his interest in her. But then he would come to call and sit down to talk to Rosa about what they had learned and where they would go next, and during those visits she was well aware of his regard.

He touched her often, in ways that a more strictly brought-up woman would not have allowed. She felt his hand on her shoulder, very briefly, or he touched her lower back when they made their way through one room to
another, so lightly that she might have imagined it, if not for the satisfied look on Mrs. Lee’s face.

He was playful with the little girls and could make even Rosa laugh, while Lia giggled so hard that she would dissolve into hiccups. He told tall tales in English and Italian, he produced butterscotch drops out of a seemingly bottomless pocket, and all the time his gaze returned, again and again, to Anna.

One early evening on an omnibus traveling down Broadway he had picked up her hand and examined it as if it were some strange object found on a park bench. He undid the three mother-of-pearl buttons at her wrist, and then, too late, looked to her for permission.

“May I?”

She wanted to say that he should not, but somehow his manner was so disarming that she just nodded.

“The only time I’ve ever seen you without gloves in public was on Randall’s Island, when you treated that infant with—” He couldn’t recall the name.

“Ankyloglossia,” Anna supplied. “He died that same week.” After a moment she said, “I only take off my gloves when I’m working, or when I’m at home without chance of company.”

With a few quick tugs he slipped it off and cradled her hand like an injured bird. And it was pitiful, rough and red and swollen, the nails cut to the quick for the sake of antisepsis. There was no denying that her hands were terrible.

“I wash—I
scrub
my hands and forearms dozens of times every day.”

“What exactly do you use?”

“We used to scrub nails, hands, and lower arms with potash soap and then rinse with a five percent carbolic acid solution.”

“Used to?”

“It worked fairly well. You can tell by dipping your hands in nutritive gelatin just after finishing the process. If no microbes grow in that culture in three days, that’s proof that the regimen is killing all infectious agents. Unfortunately it also was horrendously hard on our hands. So now we start with scrubbing, as before, but rinse first with eighty percent alcohol for a minute and then a three percent carbolic acid solution. It works as a sterile
procedure and isn’t quite so hard on the hands. Still, Mrs. Lee’s hands are not nearly as bad, and she’s been scrubbing floors for all of her life.”

She was rambling, but it was hard to watch him studying her hand while her fingers twitched, ever so slightly. “The whole thing is made more complicated by the fact that I can’t operate if there’s even the slightest break in my skin. Then I put myself at risk. Someday they will come up with a better way to protect the patient and the surgeon both from infection.” And then, more hesitantly, “Are you put off by my hands?”

She had startled him. He raised his head to frown at her. “That would be very narrow-minded of me.”

Anna tried to draw her hand away, but he held on to it, his grip gentle but unyielding. For a moment she had the sense he might kiss her palm, and the idea of his tongue against her skin made her squirm.

“Don’t,” she said quietly, and, with fingers that were almost numb, put the glove back on.

“What you need,” Jack said after a long moment, “is some kind of glove made out of thin material. Not cloth, that wouldn’t work. Something like—”

His expression went momentarily blank, and then cleared. “Something like condoms, for the fingers and hands.”

The image that came to mind was outrageously funny. And intriguing, somehow.

He said, “Condoms are made out of lamb intestines, I think. If they could be sterilized and sewn into a glove, wouldn’t that work?”

Anna couldn’t help smiling. “This must be the oddest conversation of all time.”

“But wouldn’t it work?”

She thought for a moment. “That particular material is permeable, so the surgeon would still have to scrub diligently. I don’t think soap alone would be enough.”

“But say for a minute that it’s possible to sew a sterilized glove out of lamb’s intestine or something similar. You could test it with your gelatin—what did you call it?”

“Nutritive.”

“—to see if microbes grow. And if they did, you could experiment with
different kinds of materials and sterilization and how you treat your hands, first. Until you got the right combination.”

“That would likely take years,” Anna said. “And someone willing to do the labor. The curing and sewing and sterilizing.”

“But it might just work,” Jack said. “It’s worth thinking about, at the very least.”

That evening when he walked her to her door, he paused in the shadow of the garden wall to kiss her.

“Savard,” he said, against her mouth. “I spend a lot of time thinking about you. Night and day, I think about you. And it’s not your hands that first come to mind.”

He kissed her again, thoroughly, roughly, and then waited until she had opened the door.

“I’m thinking about those gloves,” he called up to her. “Even if you aren’t.”

A
T
THE
VERY
beginning of her medical training Sophie had realized that the most difficult challenge she would face was not chemistry or pathology, but what Aunt Quinlan called her tenderhearted nature. Medicine demanded calm, rational, reasoned thinking and quick decisions. The ability—the willingness—to cause discomfort and even pain in pursuit of a cure. Sophie learned to think of her heart as something she had to put away, lock away while she worked.

Children died of diseases that were preventable. Women died in childbirth despite the very best medical care. They came to her with cancers of the breast and womb and mind, with hands crushed in factory accidents, with burns and broken bones, with their fears and their stories. She listened, and where she could, she helped. She sometimes—too often—failed.

As now she feared she was failing Rosa. Certainly she had had no real comfort to offer when they took the girls to Blackwell’s Island to see their father buried.

Lia took comfort in being held and rocked and read to. Rosa, calm, efficient, ferocious Rosa had retreated into her sorrow and anger and would accept nothing from anyone. The only time she seemed to relax at all was when she was in the garden with Mr. Lee, and it was only with Lia that she allowed herself to bend when her little sister remembered, suddenly, that they had found and lost their father on the same day.

Rosa wanted nothing for herself and was almost impossible to engage in any conversation, unless it had to do with her brothers.

For almost three weeks now Anna and Jack had been visiting child welfare institutions, whenever they both had a few hours to spare. Twice or three times a week he would come for supper and then afterward sit at the
kitchen table with Rosa and go over where they had been and what they had discovered. It was an impressive list, and a disappointing one. They had interviewed staff and children at the Society for the Protection of Endangered Children, the Children’s Aid Society office and lodging house, the Howard Mission, the Shepherd’s Fold, the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and orphan asylums run by the Episcopal, Protestant, Baptist, and Methodist churches. Within the next few days they would start visiting Roman Catholic orphan asylums together.

They made other inquiries, too, that they did not tell Rosa about, and might not simply because they hoped it would never occur to her that her brothers could be someplace far worse than an orphan asylum.

Just now Jack and Anna were in the kitchen talking to Aunt Quinlan and Rosa. From the open door came the sound of voices rising and falling in a regular rhythm, and then Rosa’s voice rose and wobbled and broke. She so seldom cried that Sophie wondered what news Jack had brought.

•   •   •

S
OPHIE
GOT
UP
from her spot in the garden and held out her hand to Lia. “Shall we go for a walk?”

The little girl had begun to show some of the roundness that was appropriate to her age, her hair had taken on a glossiness, and her coloring was high. Where her sister was weighed down by worry, Lia was relentlessly calm, cheerful, and affectionate. Mrs. Lee reported that the only time she had seen the girl cry was when Margaret and Aunt Quinlan had been arguing about the relative importance and value of corsets, a difference of opinion that was aired daily. Lia’s unhappiness, Mrs. Lee believed, came from the inability to climb into both laps at once to offer comfort.

Now Lia skipped along at Sophie’s side, singing to herself, a melody Sophie didn’t recognize. She held one of the old dolls from the attic firmly by a leg, and seemed unaware of or unconcerned by the doll’s head dragging along behind her. When they sat down on a bench in the early evening light, Lia began to undress the doll, holding a conversation with her that sounded very much like Margaret talking to Lia herself. Suddenly she stopped and looked up at Sophie.

“What’s a corset?”

Sophie had been waiting for this question, but she had assumed it would come from Rosa, who was at the center of the disagreement between Margaret and Aunt Quinlan.

“A corset is a kind of chemise.”

Lia’s expression was puzzled. Sophie doubted that even Aunt Quinlan knew the Italian word for
chemise
, and so she touched the doll’s old-fashioned undergarment, knee length and low in the bosom, with sleeves that came to the elbow. “This is a chemise. You wear one, shorter than this.”

Lia still looked puzzled and then her face cleared as she made a decision. She grabbed her pinafore, skirts, and petticoats in both hands and hefted them to peer down at her own belly and the cotton chemise that covered it. Sophie gently disengaged her little hands and smoothed down the skirts.

“A corset is a kind of chemise,” Sophie repeated. “But not soft. It’s made out of very stiff material. Some ladies wear corsets because if they are tight enough, it pinches in to make their middles look very small. They do this to be fashionable.” She made a motion in the air, the outline of a woman with a tightly cinched waist.

Lia squeezed the rag doll’s lumpy middle, frowning in concentration. She said, “Aunt Margaret wants Rosa to wear a corset.”

It didn’t surprise Sophie to hear this from Lia. While Italian was her first language, the little girl had an acute ear and could parrot things exactly, even if she didn’t entirely understand them.

Sophie said, “Aunt Margaret thinks that all young girls should start wearing corsets as soon as possible, because she did as a girl.”

“But Aunt Quinlan doesn’t like corsets.”

“No, she doesn’t. She didn’t allow Anna or me to wear them, not ever, because she believes corsets—” She paused and rethought her approach. “Girls who wear tight corsets can’t run and play or climb trees or do anything much except sit. Aunt Quinlan says that being free to move is more important than this.” She made the same figure in the air.

She could have added her own medical opinion and Anna’s, but Lia had heard enough. The little girl propelled herself from the bench and onto the lawn, where she stopped to spin in place with her arms extended, the
half-dressed doll still firmly in hand. Then she loped off, yelling behind herself, “I am the wind!”

“Yes you are,” Sophie said with a laugh. “And so you shall always be.”

•   •   •

B
Y
THE
TIME
Sophie and Lia got back, Jack Mezzanotte had gone home and Anna off to bed in anticipation of an early and difficult surgery. But Margaret was waiting and she immediately grabbed up Lia.

“Past her bath time,” she said to Sophie. At the stairs she paused. “Mail came for you while you were out.”

Sophie waved good-bye to Lia, who still held the half-dressed doll in one grubby hand.

On the hall table were two letters and a small packet that took her breath away. She would have recognized it by shape in a dark room, so often had she held it in her hand. The last time more than a year ago. Cap had written the address himself. Very deliberately she put it aside and picked up the first letter, waiting for the frantic beat of her heart to settle.

The handwriting was unfamiliar, an awkward scrawl that was nothing like Cap’s measured, angular hand.

Dear Dr. Savard,

I write with the news that I have no news. I have spoke to the Arabs who run gangs from the Battery to the Park and nobody remembers a Guinea boy with dark hair and blue eyes, about seven years old or any other age. I also had a look around certain establishments you wouldn’t be familiar with, places Detective Sergeant Mezzanotte can tell you about if you ask. No trace of the boy at the Hurdy Gurdy, Billy McGlory’s and the like, nor did I hear of him in worse places still. I’ve got business up Haymarket way this coming week and will see what there is to see. With any luck, nothing at all. Better a train headed west than the Black and Tan or one of the Chinee opium joints, that’s my opinion. I’ll write again as soon as I have something to report, good or bad.

Your humble servant
G. Gianbattista Garibaldi Nediani—Ned

Despite the serious subject matter, Sophie had to smile. Anna’s description of Ned had been almost as colorful as the letter. She put it aside for Anna’s attention.

The second letter had been written by someone with a clean, nimble hand that was also unfamiliar to her.

Dear Dr. Sophie,

It is just a few weeks since we had the pleasure of welcoming you to our home on a beautiful spring afternoon, and now I find myself writing not—as I had hoped—to invite you for another visit, but to share the news of my husband’s sudden death. We laid Sam to rest on what would have been our fifty-second anniversary, just four days ago.

We are steadfast in our faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and take comfort in His tender mercies. He has called Sam to His side and one day He will call me to join him. Until then I have family to look after and work to do.

Aside from this sad news, I am also writing to say that our eldest grandson, also called Samuel Reason, has taken over the printing shop. You didn’t meet Sam when you were here because he was on his way home from Savannah, where he was visiting his wife’s family. Now he asks for permission to call on you to discuss business matters. If you could send word to him at the shop on Hunterfly Road about when he might call, I would be thankful for your help during this difficult time.

I hope you know that you are welcome here at any time, for any reason, and that you will not wait long to visit.

With sincere good regards and many thanks for the care and kindness you showed my beloved husband, I remain your true friend.

Mrs. Delilah Reason

Sophie sat quietly for a long time, thinking about Sam Reason. Mrs. Reason had her children and grandchildren, sisters and brothers and friends to support her and give her purpose. More than that, she had fifty-two years of memories to sustain her, an abundance Sophie found hard to imagine as she weighed Cap’s unopened package in her hand.

Very carefully she clipped the string and folded away the thick brown
paper wrapping. Inside she found the familiar, much-loved pen case that had passed back and forth between Cap and herself for ten years, always with a letter enclosed and sometimes with more. She had thought never to see it again and so for a moment she only studied it, tracing the carving of a single tree beside a lake of inlaid pearl.

Finally she opened it to take out a letter of many pages, rolled into a tube and tied with a bit of string. She was terrified and exultant all at once.

Sophie, my love,

Nothing has ever felt more right than the act of breaking the long and painful silence that I created between us. I could make no accusations if you were to tear up this letter without reading another word, but I hope you will not. I have things I must say to you.

I have hurt you and disappointed you and told myself that I acted for your own good. You know that my fears for your health are founded in fact but I must now confess that while I could not admit it to myself at the time, my decision to cut you off was about more than your health. I was angry because I wanted you for my wife and you rejected me. And so, to my shame, I rejected you and convinced myself it was the right thing to do.

Then Aunt Q came to call and when she went away she took my delusions and pretenses with her. I have been cruel and unfeeling, and I can only ask your forgiveness. I hope you will be more generous than I have been, though I don’t deserve it.

I have missed you. Every day, every hour, every minute I have missed you. You must know that I love you still and always, as I have loved you since that June we were sixteen, standing in the shade of the rose arbor, my senses filled up with the scent of the flowers and the low hum of the bees, and then with you and nothing else. Your taste, the texture of your skin at the corner of your mouth, the very sound of your breath catching in your throat. I loved you then as I will love you on the day I die. And I will die, Sophie, and my death will come too soon.

And so I come to the letter from Dr. Zängerle which your good aunt brought me. I have read it many times and in the end, I cannot believe that Dr. Zängerle’s methods will provide a cure, but I do think that his treatment might give me more time than I would otherwise have. You want
me to go to Switzerland and put myself in Dr. Zängerle’s care at the Rosenau clinic. I will agree, with some conditions:

However much time I may have, you and I will spend it together. You must come with me to Switzerland and stay with me until the end, whether it comes in a week or six months or even, as unlikely as it seems, a year. I want you to be my wife and when my time is done, my widow. Before we depart for Europe, we must be married in a legal ceremony with your family and witnesses of my choosing in attendance. Our marriage must be announced in the papers both before and after the fact. Whatever the uproar and accusations and scandal, nothing will be done in secret.

We will not share a bed or any kind of physical intimacy beyond the care a physician provides for a patient. You and I will both take every measure to ensure that I do not infect you, or anyone else.