Claverack assembled each morning in the chapel. When I first learned of this daily event, I admit my heart sank in despair. I ended up feeling quite the opposite, for in chapel, any student was able to rise and speak, sing, or recite. It was a place where Esther exceled. And tomorrow, she was to perform for the whole school. But this morning while our laundry dried, she performed it for me.
“ ‘Thou sayest that thou has slain my father.’ ”
She was controlled, but I could see the anger bubbling beneath her skin. It was exciting.
“ ‘For tell me, if thou wilt,’ ” she continued, now allowing the anger to surface, and burn through her eyes, “ ‘wherefore thou art now doing the most shameless deeds of all, dwelling as wife with that blood-guilty one, who first helped thee to slay my sire, and bearing children to him, while thou hast cast out the earlier-born, the stainless offspring of a stainless marriage.’ ”
She removed any hint of Esther, becoming fully Electra with the final lines.
“ ‘. . . for that matter, denounce me to all, as disloyal, if thou wilt, or petulant, or impudent; for if I am accomplished in such ways, methinks I am no unworthy child of thee.’ ”
I jumped from the wash boiler and applauded. She was wonderful. Really wonderful. Although secretly I believed I might have done more with the repetition of the word “stainless,” and maybe increased the register of the voice when Electra added to the list of insults her mother might denounce her with. And possibly paused for a slight breath before the word “methinks.”
Esther bowed deeper. I applauded louder. And then, forgetting all about being quiet and smiling, I stuck my thumb and pointer into my mouth like Thomas had taught me when I was eight, and whistled.
With one shrill blast—I’d made my first friend at Claverack.
Dearest Corey
Esther and I began to meet early each morning in the basement to practice her declamations. She took on the role of every great lady we could think of in theater and literature—too short a list, we often grumbled.
I sat on the edge of the wash boiler playing with the dolly stick while Esther inhabited the greatest lady in the greatest scene in all of great theater—Act One, Scene Seven of the Bard’s Macbeth. Before she spoke the monologue’s last legendary lines, she inhaled slowly, girding herself, and then . . . unleashed.
“I have given suck, and know
How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me.
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.”
After which she held her hard, steady gaze on the audience for longer than was comfortable for anyone to endure, and then plunged into a bow.
I leaped from the copper bucket and hugged myself in joy at her rendering of the beautifully fearless Lady Macbeth.
When Esther stood, her face was red with pleasure. “I may use this for my audition, if I receive one.”
“There is no question you’ll receive an audition,” I told her. She flushed even more.
Esther had applied to Charles Frohman’s Empire Dramatic School. She’d only applied two weeks ago, but it seemed as though we’d been waiting to hear back for our entire lives. Esther had dreams. I loved her for this because it meant dreams existed. I’d often wondered if perhaps Nan and I had made them up.
“Will you sit in front at chapel tomorrow?” she asked.
“You don’t need me to, but I will.”
I wasn’t Esther’s only fan, so I would surely have to arrive early to secure a front seat for her performance. There were many young men and women at Claverack with whom I would need to compete. Esther was admired. There was one in particular whom I knew would be in attendance. Corey Albertson.
Corey was a first year, like me. He seated himself in the front row at all Esther’s readings. When I noticed this, and made reference to it, he told me he was an avid fan of poetry in particular, and the dramatic arts in general. And I laughed.
“Dear Corey,” I’d said. “It’s strange that I have six brothers at home, and not an avid fan among them.”
I had caught him in a bit of a trap. If he pointed out my brothers were not learned men, he might offend me. If he didn’t point it out, he risked looking like he was arriving to win a seat up front to witness Esther’s performance because he preferred her to other girls.
“We must allow for differences in people,” he’d said.
I was impressed with his response. He was smarter than I’d originally thought.
Over the next three months, Corey arrived early to save me a seat up front in chapel for all of Esther’s performances: Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Ismene in Antigone, and Isabella in Measure for Measure. During this time, I kept myself tucked inside my good girl character while embracing my growing friendship with Esther. I acted beside her to intensify her monologues. Fed her forgotten lines during her performances. And stayed up nights with her dreaming of life in New York as a famous actress once she had been admitted to Charles Frohman’s. Life at Claverack gave me everything Corning never would: Betty and Esther and Corey and ten acres filled with people who had no reason to despise me. Only the weekends left me low, for Esther and Corey, along with most of the students, headed home to visit their families, leaving the campus, and me, feeling empty. Corey thoughtfully presented me with two butterscotches at chapel each Friday, one to ease the blow of Saturday, and the second, to see me through Sunday.
Nan paid for my books and clothes, Mary for my tuition. And I paid for my room and board through my work in the dining hall. There was no extra money for travel. Not that I’d go home if I could, but when everyone departed, I was left with myself—Margaret Higgins, not the good Lady Liberty. I wondered how long I’d play this part of standing around holding a torch, watching life sail by.
Friday evening before my dining duties, I walked Esther to the train to wave her off. Corey was always at the station, ready to board with her. I teased him about Esther not giving poetry readings all the way down to New York. He hardly cracked a smile. He was intelligent, but the boy had the sense of humor of a rock.
By December, I’d fallen into a comfortable rhythm at Claverack. I knew the routines of the kitchen and dining hall as well as I knew the cracks in our old cabin’s dry sink. I was excelling in all my classes because I’d made a point to always surpass expectations for every assignment as per the old advice of Dr. McMichael. Esther and I counted each other as best friends. And though he was obviously an “avid fan” of Esther Farquharson, Corey Albertson had become my dearest Corey, as he seemed to be always nearby whenever I needed him.
On the second Sunday in December, and our last week before we broke for Christmas, I took the cold walk to the train to surprise Esther on her return to school. I was bundled up in my overcoat and scarf. It was a pretty winter afternoon. The dying sun lightly touched the icy branches of the trees turning them an amber yellow. Night was falling. There was something about a winter night that always excited me . . . as if anything could happen. Summer nights were for long barefoot walks discussing life. But winter nights were mysterious. And this one felt as if it might be just such a night.
The train clanged into the station on time. Nothing new about this. When the doors opened, a boisterous crowd of Claverack students burst forth. Corey was among them, and was far from boisterous. The evening was following a predictable pattern. What was unusual, however, was that Esther was nowhere in sight.
I hurried toward Corey. When he caught my eye, he balked, springing the hard memory of the moment I’d heard the news of my sweet little Henry into my heart. I stopped short on the platform. Seeing me frozen in place with what must be a panicked look on my face, Corey raced toward me waving a letter in the air.
“She’s all right, Margaret. She’s all right.”
My body turned solid again and I allowed the horrible mom
ent to pass away as I swiped the letter from his hand with a weak smile, my head still a bit wobbly from the scare.
“Thank you, my dearest Corey. You are a most agreeable postman.”
“Margaret.”
“What?”
He hesitated.
“You said she was fine,” I whispered.
“She is.”
“Then . . . ?” I ripped open the letter. I didn’t need to read the entirety of it to know what it said. She had been accepted. She would attend Charles Frohman’s Empire Dramatic School. She would become a famous actress. What she would not do was return to Claverack. Ever.
“This is the most wonderful news,” I said, my hands shaking as I clutched at his coat lapels.
Corey made the entire situation worse by leaning into my lips with his lips . . . and kissing me.
I didn’t make things any better when I kissed him back.
And when his warm hands gently grabbed hold of my face like having his lips on me wasn’t nearly enough, I couldn’t help thinking of Lady Liberty standing cold and alone in that harbor . . . and how much warmer it was pressed tightly against my dearest Corey.
Man Is Not the Only Animal
Between the breaking down of Claverack’s kitchen and dining room before Christmas, and the need to set it back up following the holiday, I was only in Corning for a week. Although this was longer than either Mary or Nan was allowed home from their jobs.
It was not enough time . . . with Nan, with Mary, or even with Ethel and Thomas. Joseph had moved up in the factory and was now a cutter. Clio, Richard, and Arlington had grown. Clio looked so much like John now it was stunning. Richard was reading. And little Arly was crawling around the house reminding me so much of Henry. My mother and my sisters and I sat over tea and I told them about all my classes.
I didn’t tell them about Corey.
My father stuck to his chair, shouting out quotes in approval when he liked what he heard.
“ ‘Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every book and creed and dogma for itself, the world cannot be free.’ ”
And disapproval when he didn’t.
“ ‘Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied.’ ”
“We are women, but we shall not bicker with him,” my mother said in a low voice, surprising us.
Men. Women. It was a distinction my father had always professed in the loudest of voices should not make a difference in our life’s prospects. Although I couldn’t help noticing it was the women in his life who began to cook Christmas dinner, while he and the boys did like men, which was whatever they liked, until they were called to eat.
* * *
Jumping back into the routine of the Higgins house confounded me a bit. By the time I found the broom and dustpan to sweep out the bedrooms, Mother had plucked and gutted two ducks, Nan had finished washing and hanging the day’s laundry, Ethel had washed up the breakfast things, and Mary had made a tart. I could see how much my mother enjoyed having us all home. She stopped working every few minutes and looked up, watching her four daughters moving about her house.
My body was here at home, enjoying Christmas with my family. But my head wouldn’t stop thinking about school. Mostly Corey, and his strange profession of love following our kiss. Actually, this was not true. Mostly I was thinking about the kiss, and the ones that followed. But also about Esther and her new life, and how empty the campus was going to feel without her next week when I returned. I even found myself thinking about my classes, my teachers, and my plans of attending Cornell for medical school after graduation. I was surrounded by the familiar movement of my sisters, the playful shouts of my younger brothers, the smell of a roasting duck, along with the general Higgins hum that was home, yet I didn’t fully belong to it anymore. Like Mary and Nan, I was a visitor here. So when the week was done, and I was on the train, I found myself craning my neck for my first sight of the Claverack station.
Corey met my train. I suggested we walk the long way back to school, and therefore I arrived on campus with my lips raw and chapped from kissing in the freezing January air. I was home. I left Corey to greet Betty and Marion and all the kitchen ladies, and to bring them Mary’s carrot soup as a gift.
I was too busy with my dining duties and new classes to miss Esther much in the initial week. Although she stayed on my mind. We’d already written three letters back and forth to each other, so I felt as though I was also starting classes at Charles Frohman. With Esther’s permission, I’d promised to pass along all my letters from her to Mary, who seemed almost more excited than Esther that Esther was attending the Frohman school, the dramatic arts being Mary’s dream. Between our correspondence, my letters with my sisters, my new classes, my dining hall job each evening, and Corey’s constant attention, I began the new term a bit wound up.
Strangely, every addition to my calendar seemed to produce more additions, most especially to my social calendar. Or perhaps it was what I called the “Corey effect.” Having a man on my arm had made people notice me. And I liked it.
The acceptance loosened my grip on hiding my Higgins. I began to joke and laugh and tell stories. I began to become more me. Which me I was becoming didn’t concern either one of the “me”s—the feeling me or the controlled me—I believed I bounced back and forth between them in a happy way. When I confessed to Corey how I’d like to perform a poem at chapel, he persuaded me further into doing so.
I performed Sappho’s “Hymn to Aphrodite.” And I performed it well. Afterward, I spent the entire day asking for everyone to repeat themselves when they spoke to me, because I was still back in the chapel, reliving that moment when Sappho’s words first fell from my lips: “Immortal Aphrodite, on your intricately brocaded throne, child of Zeus, weaver of wiles, this I pray: Dear Lady, don’t crush my heart with pains and sorrows.”
Even more delicious was the moment when Sappho begged Aphrodite to become her ally in love’s battle: “Some say an army of horsemen, some of footsoldiers, some of ships is the fairest thing on the black earth, but I say it is what one loves.”
As I gloriously relived this line, while at the same time hurrying across the large yard to the dining hall in the dusk, I bumped into something warm and knocked it to the ground.
“Ouch!”
“Did I do that?” I asked, shaking off my self-grandeur.
“Yes, dear Sappho,” the warm thing responded.
I helped it to its feet. It was a girl. I recognized her as someone from my class, and was thrilled she recognized me from this morning’s performance.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Are you hurt?”
“Not at all,” she responded, smiling. I liked her instantly.
“I’m on my way to the dining hall for work,” I said. “Walk me so that I might give you a lengthy apology for tumbling you into the dirt.”
“My pleasure.” She bowed. “And no apology necessary, lengthy or otherwise, my beautiful poetess.”
“My darling,” I said, in my very best high-society voice. “Let’s be friends forever.”
“Let’s,” she agreed.
It might have been a joke, and I remembered we did laugh. But it became true. Her name was Amelia B. Stewart, and for the next few weeks, we recounted our “bumping into each other” story to whomever would listen . . . a group that quickly diminished over time because this story only seemed to be fantastic to Amelia and me.
Amelia and me.
We were always together. She was clever and happy and adored laughing. At my expense. At her expense. And often at Corey’s expense. Although he didn’t seem to think she was very funny. I thought he was wrong, as did Amelia.
Amelia was an atheist. Not in word, but in deed. And since my own dalliance with religion had flashed and disappeared as quickly as a shooting star, we got along very well. Each evening after I finished in the dining hall, I met her to complete my studying. She had usually finished hers as she
didn’t need to work. I studied while Amelia read from the Bible. Those who passed couldn’t help nodding with awe and respect. A duo of pious young women working late into the night.
If they lingered another moment or two, they would have received a different version of this scene all together, as Amelia adored exchanging certain words of the scripture with “other” words. Words not found in any holy book. Which was too bad because the new sentences she created were not only lyrical, but quite funny.
“You’re such a talent,” I told her, trying not to giggle as if I was Ethel’s age.
She placed a hand to her breast. “No, my friend, it is you.”
We broke down in fits. Corey never studied with us.
I still enjoyed Corey’s kisses, but the walk to the location where they took place felt as though it was becoming longer as he filled it with his plans for the future. For a while, I added to this line of discussion with wise and profound advice. But I’d since dulled on it. It had begun to feel repetitive. And when he covered my mouth with his and gurgled how he couldn’t wait to marry me, it felt different somehow. Back in January, marry me had felt like something strong and deep. Now in February, it felt more like he was talking about a contract.
One day I heard myself saying, “I would never think of jumping into marriage without the definite preparation and study of its responsibilities.” And strangely, I actually meant it.
When I repeated this to Amelia, she laughed. She always laughed.
“You can’t keep him as a beau once you’re in New York at Frohman, anyway,” she said.
“True,” I sighed, as if this truth hurt. But really, it didn’t. It only felt as though it should.
“Okay, forget Corey for a moment,” she said. “Open it!”
Esther, along with Mary, had convinced me to apply to the Frohman school. Since the day I’d heard of it, Mary and I had plotted through letters to have me apply. Amelia knew I wished it. This is why she helped me. I hadn’t exactly given up on being a doctor, it’s just that everything now seemed possible since coming to Claverack. Although I still hadn’t mentioned the application to Corey, even though I was quite sure he would advise me to apply. Corey Albertson’s passion for words might be outpacing his passion for kisses these days, but the boy was honorable and kind. I was hoping when I broke his heart he still conceded to being friends. I sure did like him.
What Every Girl Should Know Page 12
