Veiled in Smoke

by Jocelyn Green

  Perhaps coming here was a mistake. But Sylvie climbed down from the carriage just the same, taking Jasper’s arm to steady her steps. “Thank you, Eli,” she called up to the driver. “I’ll only be a moment.”

  “Take your time, Miss Sylvie.” He tugged the brim of his cap lower on his head, shading his eyes. “I won’t go anywhere.”

  Overcome by her longing for home, Sylvie had requested a detour to Court House Square before continuing on to the church. Along the way, they’d passed dozens of uniformed soldiers, bayonets flashing in the sun’s brilliance. She had been shocked to see hundreds of temporary wooden structures thrown up in place of those that had burned down. They resembled little more than shanties of various sizes, but painted signs declared grocers and merchants open for business. Where larger buildings had collapsed or been burned out, other signs sprouted from what remained, listing the name of the establishment, along with a notice for customers.

  Open for business at 23 Canal Street!

  Rebuilding to begin December 1!

  Bricklayers apply at 69 Canal St.

  Gone east.

  The overwhelming smell was that of charred earth. With one hand, Sylvie lifted her skirts above the ankle-deep dust that covered the ground. With the other, she clung tighter to Jasper, her steps faltering over hidden chunks of brick and stone. A blackened finial from the top of the courthouse lay on its side, half buried in a drift of debris that included tin and wire. At the corner of La Salle and Randolph, a woman sold chestnuts.

  A flock of Canada geese soared overhead, but there were no other birds, for there were no more trees in the burned district to hold them. Some of the outer walls of the courthouse remained standing, but it was empty and barren inside. Crews of men with pickaxes and shovels were scattered over the square, bending and heaving rubble into wheelbarrows and wagons. Every turn of a wheel, every disturbance of the broken remains stirred up dust, and the air was so thick with it that Sylvie was obliged to drop her hem to cover her nose and mouth with her hand.

  Slowly, she spun to face her old street. The wreckage of the Sherman House hotel was being moved, and so was that of City Coffee and the cigar shop. But the corner of the block that she’d called home looked much the same as she’d left it. Nothing had been cleared away save for a small patch upon which a table now stood, presided over by a boy of about twelve and a young man. They were related, judging by the resemblance in the eyes and cleft chin.

  “That’s our property,” she choked out. “What are they doing there?”

  Jasper frowned. “Let’s find out.”

  Through a narrow path, they approached the table and found it full of small items that looked like rubbish.

  “Fire relics!” the boy declared with a hint of an Italian accent. He twisted his newsboy cap to scratch beneath it, then tugged it back into place. “Get your fire relics here! Remember the desolation of Chicago! The name’s Louis Garibaldi, ma’am and sir, and these are bona fide relics, curated and guaranteed by my brother Lorenzo and myself. Take a gander, why don’tcha? Carry a memento with you always!”

  Smiling at the boy’s theatrical style, Sylvie peered closer at the wares and distinguished a pile of washers welded together into one piece, a fragment of a marble statue that was just two clasped hands, a stack of charred invoices, and a prayer and hymn book from one of the churches, half burned away. Beneath those were rows of miniature firemen’s hats and miniature bells, all of untarnished metal.

  Jasper picked up a fireman’s hat and balanced it on the tip of his finger. “These don’t look like they’ve been through the fire.”

  “Ah.” Louis spread his hands above them with the flair of a magician. Knitted fingerless gloves slouched beneath coat cuffs in need of laundering. “They have been through it and have been reborn, they have. All the miniatures were made from the courthouse bell, which was melted down and recast for the purpose.”

  Stunned, Sylvie placed a small bell in her palm and heard in her mind the great clanging from the night of the fire—not just the courthouse bell, but all the church and school bells ringing their alarm. The dust in the air became the dust borne on the vicious winds that rushed ahead of the flames. Her pulse leapt. It’s over, she told herself, but sweat itched across her scalp beneath her hat and lined the inside of her chemise, the residue of fear not forgotten.

  Shaken by the force of her body’s response to the trinket, she dropped it as though it held the heat of that dreadful night.

  Jasper’s fingertips gave the lightest touch on her elbow. “Are you all right?”

  Deflecting the soft-spoken question, she smoothed her jacket over her skirt and addressed the relic sellers. “This is my father’s property,” she told them. “We owned Corner Books & More.”

  “Is that right?” The young man, Lorenzo, stuck a toothpick between his teeth and chewed it. “You going to rebuild, relocate? It didn’t seem like we were in anyone’s way here.”

  “We’d like to rebuild, but . . .” Sylvie’s voice trailed off as she looked at all the activity on the rest of the block. “It seems not a single brick has been moved from the lot. Do you know why?”

  “Fire relics!” Louis shouted past her, waving his cap to beckon potential customers. “Come get your relics of the Great Conflagration!”

  “Lady, it’s up to the private property owners to clear their own land. Did you think the city would do it for you? I don’t know where you or your father have been not to know this, but if you want to clean up, clean it up yourself. Otherwise folks assume you’ve gone east and the land is up for grabs.”

  She stepped sideways to look behind him. In the burned-out basement of what had been their bookshop, seven or eight people had set up lean-tos. A clothesline was strung from one to another on the opposite side, with diapers and breeches draped over it. With a toddler on one hip, a woman bent over a cookstove set up near the middle.

  “Is that your family?” she dared to ask. “Are you living here?”

  “Us? Nah.” Lorenzo rolled the toothpick to the other corner of his mouth. “But you can see why they thought it was abandoned. My guess is they’ll clear out as soon as the weather turns nasty. The Relief and Aid Society is erecting barracks, but I can’t blame folks for wanting to stay out of those as long as possible.”

  Frustration swelled as Sylvie thanked him for his time and left him and his brother to sell their wares.

  “What were we thinking?” she fumed, making her way back to the street. “Meg and I assumed the land would be magically cleared away. Such foolishness! Where did we come by such a notion?”

  Jasper did not berate her. She did that well enough on her own.

  “We’ve squandered time that could have been spent working. If we’re approved for a house of our own, we need a place to put it. I’d rather not impose upon you any longer than we have to.”

  An eyebrow lifted beneath the brim of Jasper’s hat, but he said nothing. Likely he completely agreed with her.

  Clouds of dust turned her skirt a sepia tone below the waist, as if she were climbing out of a daguerreotype. After a backward glance at her corner lot, she continued forward, finding her footing one step at a time through the rubble. “We must hire a crew.”

  Jasper guided her toward Eli. “Can you pay them?”

  “Some now, some later. Isn’t that how business must be done all over the city?”

  “It is.” He handed her up into the carriage.

  Eli spoke over his shoulder. “Everything all right, Miss Sylvie?”

  She rubbed the chill from her arms and took a seat. “Meg and I have more work to do than we realized, if we have any hope of resurrecting Corner Books & More. I’m ready to go to the West Side First Congregational Church now, please.”

  The coupe lurched forward, and she pressed her hand against the side to steady herself. Settling into the rhythmic motion, she drew a handkerchief from her reticule and dabbed it discreetly over her face and neck to remove the dust that had settled there.


  A soldier marched past them, rifle on his shoulder. Balling her handkerchief in her fist, Sylvie followed him with her gaze.

  “Jasper, are there other young men at the university who might rather pick up a shovel than a weapon when they aren’t studying or in class?”

  He set his hat on the bench beside him and raked a hand through his curls. “I can find out. And if there are, I’m willing to lead them. Clearing the rubble is only a matter of strength, no real skill required. It’s the construction afterward, materials and labor, that will prove the greater challenge by far.”

  “One step at a time,” she told him, watching the ruins passing by. “If I must think of them all at once, I’ll never take the first.”

  Jasper’s small smile brought the hint of a dimple to his cheek. “You’re braver than you think.”

  It was kind of him to say. But as she recalled her recurring nightmares, not to mention her reaction to a metal bell no bigger than her thumb, she knew it was a lie.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The morning was half gone by the time Meg finished her errand and returned to the house. Pinching the pearl heads of her hatpins between two fingertips, she managed to extract the long pins and remove her hat. The hall mirror showed shadow crescents hanging beneath her eyes. Her lips looked pale, her hair dull. Not a flattering portrait, but a true one.

  With Sylvie volunteering at the church today, Meg was determined to be useful too. Helene had recalled the name of the attorney who officiated Hiram’s will, so this morning Meg had gone to the Tribune to pick up a directory of relocated businesses, since the office of Thomas Grosvenor had been in the burned district. Nate was at the Tribune building when she stopped there, and after she told him about the missing will and her search for it, he had accompanied her to the attorney’s office. Just as Meg feared, most records had been lost in the fire, Hiram’s will among them. But the clerk thought Mr. Grosvenor might remember something helpful, so he arranged an appointment for Meg for next week. It was better than nothing, she told herself.

  “Hello?” she called into the house. “Jasper? Kirstin? Helene?” Her voice bounced off the walls, bringing no response.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been alone.

  Facing the task of unbuttoning her cloak unaided, she used her teeth to pull down the bandage on one side of her left hand, exposing her thumb. When the top was free, she wiggled her thumb to loosen the wrappings. Scar tissue stretched. The movement felt unnatural and stiff. Frowning, she watched her fingers fumble at the buttons. The pressure she applied did not match the pressure she felt. The nerves seemed farther away from her skin than they had been before the fire. She’d expected nerve damage in her right hand, not this one. Even so, with effort, she managed to unfasten her cloak and hang it on the hall tree.

  Meg stared at her left hand, pinching her index finger and thumb together despite the binding around her palm.

  Could she hold a pencil without all the feeling in her fingers? Whatever marks she could make were bound to be inelegant, but she could try. She had to try.

  Upstairs in the bedchamber, she found a pencil and writing paper in the desk. If she could write with her nondominant hand, didn’t it stand to reason she could paint with it too? In time?

  A sunbeam warmed the rug at her feet. Seated at the desk, she picked up the pencil, her grip awkward. It didn’t feel right. When she put the lead point to paper, the pencil tipped out of her hand. She picked it up again, struggling to get it into the proper position and keep it there.

  Slowly, she spelled her name, dropping the pencil three times in the process. The letters staring back at her looked like a child’s attempt.

  She tried again, noticing how her hand pulled the characters into a leftward slant. She tried compensating for this by adjusting where her wrist and elbow rested on the desk. Not only could she not sense the pressure in her grip, but the pressure between pencil and paper eluded her as well.

  Apprehension gathered in her shoulders. When painting, the miniscule variations of pressure applied to a brush made a huge difference in the thickness of lines, the consistency of shading. It mattered more than she wanted to admit.

  Head aching, she set that concern aside for another day, or tried to. As she studied her work, the letters began to wave and jostle in her vision. The harder she concentrated, the more fatigued she became, the more acutely her childhood affliction came back to her. Had she spelled her own name incorrectly? Now it appeared the words pushed together, letters out of order.

  She closed her eyes, breathing deeply. She meant only to steady herself, but memories rushed at her, voices of teachers who’d called her lazy and stupid, of children laughing. Meg had not bowed to those taunts, though each one named her worst fear. What if they’re right about me? she had secretly wondered. But on the outside, she was fiercely defiant.

  Her parents had told her she was created in the image of a God who loved her no matter what. But if she had learned anything from her childhood, it had been that worth, as the world measured it, was not innate. It was defined by what she knew and did. Her gift for painting had been the evidence that she was valuable after all.

  Opening her eyes, Meg turned the paper over, shutting out the wiggling words, and attempted to sketch a picture instead. She fumbled the pencil, and it rolled to the floor. After picking it up, she attempted a simple outline of a head and hair, a shape she had drawn countless times.

  Even when she managed to keep the pencil in her hand, the lines veered off course, distorting the shape to a mockery. The disconnect between her brain and her fingers was maddening. A small whisper of reason suggested that she give herself some grace, for she was using a hand she’d never sketched with in her life. Louder was the fear that her skill had burned up in the fire, never to be recovered.

  She held her breath and focused on another try. This time the pressure she poured into the task broke the pencil lead, marking her failure with an asterisk.

  Meg threw the pencil across the room. She felt wrung-out and raw, every disappointment of the last couple of weeks collecting beneath the surface of her skin. Her soul craved beauty and hope, and what she found instead was disordered scratchings and a dread that time might not heal all wounds after all.

  For herself or for her father. It galled her that she could control neither her own hand nor Stephen’s fate. She must trust God for both. As Charlotte Brontë wrote, she must “avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.”

  Resolved to do better in that regard, Meg retrieved the pencil from where it had landed on the bureau. Her mother’s Little Women lay next to it. It had lost its front cover, but that was all. The sight of her mother’s name on the title page brought a hitch to Meg’s breath. She could use a mother’s comfort now.

  After bringing the volume back to the desk, Meg carefully turned the pages, noting her mother’s graceful handwriting. Ruth always wrote in her favorite books. She underlined passages and even talked back to the characters in the margins on occasion. Meg’s exhaustion made reading challenging, since the letters refused to be still, but she managed to sort through a few lines. On the blank page opposite the start of the first chapter, Ruth had penned a quote from the character Amy March: “I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.”

  Meg had always felt an affinity for Amy’s character because of their shared interest in art, even though the eldest March sister shared Meg’s Christian name. But she had forgotten this quote. Written in Ruth’s hand, it took on new layers of meaning. Beneath it in smaller letters, Ruth had added, Yes, dear Amy, but I’m not afraid of storms, for the One who made the sea is in my boat with me.

  Turning to the window, Meg gave her eyes a rest from the text. A strengthening wind shook the trees outside. Bark stripped away and blew off the sycamore trunk.

  Mothers weren’t supposed to have favorites, but if Ruth had been forced, she would have picked Sylvie. It was Sylvie, after all
, who knew to preserve this book. It was Sylvie who had excelled in school and who’d never distressed Ruth with tantrums or cluttered the home with drawings and paintings. Longing for a connection with her mother that had eluded her in life, Meg returned her attention to the book.

  Near the middle of the novel, a folded sheet of paper covered with Ruth’s script obscured the beginning of chapter thirty. Meg labored to unfold it. Dated 1865, it seemed to have been ripped from her diary.

  Ruth had wanted to hide this.

  The impulse to honor her mother’s wishes guttered as soon as Meg spied the shape of her own name among the jumble of letters. Her mother had written about her. Such a small and simple thing, and yet it was enough for Meg to forsake the privacy of the dead for the chance to feel closer to her. She rubbed her eyes, then slowly untangled the letters.

  Meg’s hopes may prove false regarding Stephen. She insists he’ll recover in time, but he’ll never again be who he was. Forgive me, Lord, but at times I want to shake her for not accepting this.

  Meg sat back in her chair and exhaled. This was not a diary but a prayer journal, a window into Ruth’s soul. And Ruth had wanted “to shake her.” Had Meg really grated on her mother so much? Tension coiled tighter inside her.

  She paints only from imagination and not from life, but there is beauty in the imperfect too. You are a God who uses broken vessels. You are not afraid of human limitations or scars. I fear that if she doesn’t accept this, she will one day weary of her father and cease to love him if he doesn’t recover to her impossible standards. Hope can only carry her so far, so long.

  The words wrapped around Meg like a vine, the phrase “impossible standards” a thorn that pierced her conscience. She railed against the idea that she would ever give up on her father. Yet did she persevere only for the chance that he would get better? Or would she still love him—truly and freely love him—if his current state never improved?

  As for the scars her mother mentioned, Meg would live with her own for the rest of her life.