by Diana Forbes
“To pray, yes, although you’ll need to sit upstairs in the women’s section.”
“Of course I’ll pray. What else would I do in a temple?”
“I mean they’d frown on handing out any pamphlets. But if you’re there to pray, then of course you are welcome.”
“What if I pray to be allowed to hand out pamphlets?”
He turned his head toward me and caught my eye. We started to laugh. It had been a long time since I’d laughed this much with anyone. Stone had laughed at me; but Quincy, he laughed with me.
It had also been months—months!—since I’d been to a service of any kind. I nervously glanced up at the sky. Would God forgive me my negligence? All in all, it seemed better to go pray as a Christian in a temple than to never set foot in a church.
I nodded. “I’d be delighted to go with you.”
Quincy lightly pressed my wrist, sending a frisson traveling up my arm. I had read about the electricity demonstration at the Chicago World Fair and had seen some of the electric streetlights along Broadway.
I endeavored to put the newfangled “electricity”—and Quincy’s touch—out of my mind.
“Why hasn’t my brother come home yet?” he asked. “Can you answer me that? Katharine’s frantic.”
I shrugged, equally mystified. I considered the investor who’d wanted to break Stone’s neck in two and silently asked God to watch over him.
“So, during all the time he stayed with you… nothing romantic ever transpired?”
I sighed. “Not from him. I became too fond of him but worked hard to cut the bonds of affection I’d formed with him.”
Quincy’s eyes widened. “So, you have terrible taste in men, do you?
I thought about Sam Haven, who’d rather be a banker than a man of the cloth. Then I considered Stone Aldrich with his profound love of Art for Art’s sake. Then I pictured Mr. Daggers, a seducer by night, rich banker by day. I did have awful taste in men. Instead of fretting about being unattached, I should be thanking my lucky stars that none of the men I knew had stepped forth to claim me.
I glanced at my walking partner. “Believe me, my feelings for your brother were completely one-sided. But he was enamored with Art. And nothing improper ever occurred.”
“So, you had the bad taste to fall in love with him and you got no fun out of it,” Quincy said, regarding me with twinkling eyes. “A pity.”
We strolled down the Avenue. Dappled sunlight spotted the trees, skipping across our eyes and hair. He snapped his fingers, trying to rouse me from the silence that had fallen over the conversation. “Artists can be quite passionate, you know,” he said.
I laughed, and suddenly I felt free. Maybe if I could work financial independence into the Movement’s platform, women would have the last laugh. In the absence of having good taste in men to meet and marry, self-reliance seemed like a necessary alternative.
And I knew just the right person to carry the message forward. Me.
Chapter 30
Coverage
Tuesday, August 15, 1893
Verdana and I dashed downstairs to pick up copies of the morning papers. Around us, pigs oinked and urchins begged. Sewage smells rose from the steamy streets. The city was up, smelly, needy, and lively. Two scrawny dogs wrestled for gutter scraps. Verdana skimmed the New York Sun and the New York Times for parade coverage, then speechless, handed them to me.
The Sun was merciless. The Times was barbed. The papers painted our recent suffrage march as filled with an army of dour-faced, bonneted women unable to fend off scores of male “admirers.”
Nowhere in the reporting was there any mention of a stray horse.
She ran her hands through her short, fiery hair as her eyes widened with her special brand of zeal.
“Do you have a match?” she asked, stopping at a metal trashcan right out of a Stone Aldrich cityscape.
“Why? You don’t smoke anymore, do you?”
She tapped her large tummy. “I have many vices, dearest, but I recently gave up that one.”
A big, fat man puffing a big, fat cigar walked by. He wore a straw boater. Everyone in New York smoked as if the city wasn’t filthy enough. Verdana stopped him and asked if he had extra matches. He reached into his jacket pocket and handed her a booklet.
“Be my guest, boy,” he said, chuckling at her giant sunflower pantaloons. He toddled off.
She stuffed the two newspapers into the bin and lit them on fire. Smoke shot up from the bin, stinging my eyes. Strange garbage smells lurked underneath, worse once heated. She was starting a bonfire on the street in the heat of summer.
What would she do next—burn my corset?
Verdana reached into her pocket, extracted some coins, and handed them to me. “Quick. Go chase down every newspaper boy you can find, buy out all the copies of these papers, and bring them here. Let’s have a news roast.”
“Verdana, is this legal?”
She slapped her bloomered thigh. “All’s fair in love and war.”
“But we’re not at war.”
Other than a stray cow being led to a slaughterhouse, things looked remarkably peaceful.
She grabbed my shoulders and shook them hard. “We are at war. Trust me. We need to burn every last newspaper we can find. The papers aren’t going to control what folks say about the Movement. We are.”
We bought and roasted fifty newspapers in total, Verdana assuring me the whole time that it was for the greater good of the Movement.
Six hours later, bleary-eyed and stinking of newspaper soot, we arrived at Amy Van Buren’s mansion on Millionaire’s Row. Our hands were black with the residue of burned newsprint. I desperately needed a bath and wondered if the owner would be kind enough to lend us one of her thirty-seven bathrooms so we could wash up.
“Good afternoon, urchins,” Amy said, scrunching her pug nose.
Reeking, Verdana strode into the grand salon, nodded to the thirty or so women seated in the room, monopolized the largest couch directly under the naked goddess ceiling mural, and pounded her plump, sooty hand on the priceless coffee table. “Publicity like this will kill the Movement in New York,” she declared.
Amy frowned. “What publicity? I couldn’t even find a newspaper to buy today.”
Verdana grinned her toothy smile. She looked like a female jack-o’-lantern, a bit mischievous, possibly crazy, but oh so happy. “That’s because Penelope and I burned them all.”
Amy fluttered down on a couch, clasped her hands together, shuttered her dark eyes closed, and appeared to be in a private consultation with God. As she lifted her hands to her temples and gently massaged them, I knew I had been correct. Burning newspapers was not the smartest enterprise. I wondered if our fearless leader was asking God how to deal with idiots, and if he might actually be listening. For a woman, she commanded an awful lot of power. It couldn’t all be on account of her husband’s money.
“All publicity is good for the Movement,” Amy said. She adjusted her white lace gown against the opposing couch. “In a few days readers will forget the exact tenor of the articles and only remember that, in New York, suffragists march for a great cause. That is, if you’d let them buy a bloody newspaper, Verdana.”
A footman offered Amy a chocolate petit four. She waved him away, but accepted a refill on her cup of tea. “Penelope, you seem rational and not prone to petty outbursts,” she said. “What do you think?”
Her regal gaze beamed over to me, Mary, Madeleine, and Midge, all squeezed together on one of the couches at the opposite end of the immense room. The mid-level women in the Movement shared their space more openly than the top leaders. It was commonplace to see the mid-level holding in their breaths to make room for others on a couch while the top-level expanded to make as little room for others as possible.
I studied the fine blue and white tea service, noticing for the first time that the saucers all carried the legend, Votes for Women. Was that our collective goal or just a collective fantasy? Amy lifted
the teacup to her lips. Where had she bought such an exquisite china pattern?
Of course, she’d probably had it specially commissioned.
“I agree with Verdana that biting publicity can only harm the cause, long-term,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted her, nodding. A huge smile lit her face, making her look even more rakishly handsome than usual. “But…”
Verdana quickly motioned with her hands to stop the discourse now that I’d defended her side of the argument.
I continued. “Amy also makes a superb point that all publicity is good, in which case I wonder if we might secure even more of it.”
“Traitor,” Verdana rasped.
Amy chortled.
She pointed a long, perfectly manicured nail at Verdana. “Your business manager is clever,” Amy said, acknowledging me with the briefest of smiles. “You should listen to her…let her do the thinking. I’m not paying you to think. Go on, Penelope. What do you recommend?”
I paused, remembering the many newspapers I’d read since coming to New York. “It’s complicated, as all the publicity is controlled by the other side.”
Verdana crossed her booted feet, then proceeded to arrange her legs and thighs into a pretzel shape until she sat cross-legged on the couch. With each shift of Verdana’s body, Amy’s mouth dropped a little lower.
“Careful, please. The upholstery on that couch cost me more than your salary for a year,” Amy drawled. She scratched at one of her bejeweled bracelets. Her dark eyes lit on me. She patted the empty space next to her on the couch. “Come here, dear.”
I felt a fluttering in my belly. Had I been chosen? I glanced at the other four women on my couch. Was Amy Van Buren really beckoning to me? She patted the seat next to her again. Yes, it was true. I was moving up—to a more spacious couch. And maybe, one day soon, I’d be granted a couch of my own.
She curled her index finger, motioning for me to join her. “Yes, I’m serious, dear.” She cupped a hand over her eyes. “I can hardly see you from all the way over here.”
I hopped up from my perch ten feet away and did as she requested. Now we both faced Verdana, whose face had turned florid. I tilted my head to Verdana.
“There are suffrage papers,” I said, “but who reads them? They hardly have the circulation of the New York Times.” I tapped my hand against a rose-patterned tole table dating back to the eighteenth century, then withdrew my hand as if I’d touched a cook stove. “We need one of our own to secure a job at a real newspaper or magazine and report for the other side—ours.”
I glanced at the reigning queen of the Suffrage Movement, hoping she wouldn’t chastise me for being too aggressive with her heirlooms.
“The mainstream publications won’t budge,” Verdana said, downing a piece of cake so quickly that I wondered if her fork had touched it. She noticed me watching her eat and shrugged. “If they were going to allow objective reporting on this, they’d already have a reporter on the beat.”
“That’s circular logic,” Amy declared with the expansive sigh of one who had to deal with numerous dunces in her employ. The grand dame didn’t strike me as the most patient of employers—or human beings for that matter. Rumor had it that she’d forced her own daughter to wear a steel rod down her spine every night to improve her posture; and her daughter, who was just as intimidated by her mother as everyone else seemed to be, had actually agreed. Clearly, our patroness would stop at nothing to get her way, and I fervently wished that Verdana would drop the topic before she angered Amy—yet again.
Verdana untangled herself from her pretzel position to stamp her boot against the high-gloss floor. “It’s true, and you know it.”
“The very position one takes when one is arguing circularly,” Amy cried, clapping her hands together.
The two footmen jumped to attention. Indeed, I felt all the women in the room collectively throw back their shoulders as if expecting a new order from the militant missus. But this time, she had no directive. Instead, she sat back on the couch, silently swilling her tea.
“Where’s Katharine?” Amy asked. “She works at Harper’s Weekly, doesn’t she?”
Wednesday, August 16, 1893
The mansion on 52nd Street was so large that it was easy to get lost en route from one room to another. I was searching for a washroom when I stumbled on the larder where, to my surprise, I spied thirty-six Shepherd’s Pies, already baked, sitting on one of her immense counters.
After locating the bathroom, I backtracked to the pies so I could find them again. Then I crept back to the salon and whispered my discovery in Verdana’s ear.
“Show me,” she said.
Together, we snuck back to the larder. The Shepherd’s Pies were still there, smelling sumptuous, teeming with bits of fresh mutton, and boasting the flakiest of crusts. They looked almost as rich as the Shepherd’s Pies Bess used to bake. I missed those family dinners, capped by Father and me stealing down to the kitchen late at night to savor a second helping. Food had never been in short supply back home. I remembered the dinner we had the first night I’d learned of the Panic—stuffed game hens, along with roasted potatoes and buttered yams. With such a feast, I’d wondered if we were really so close to famine.
“Do you think they’re for us?” I whispered, as my stomach let out a repressed roar.
Verdana laughed, then cupped her hand to her mouth so no one would hear. “I doubt Amy’s been feeding us crumpets every day with the intention of promoting us to Shepherd’s Pie.” Verdana licked her lips.
Steam rose from the pies. It had been weeks since I’d eaten a real meal. And though the afternoon teas staved off the hunger, they seemed empty, somehow. I longed for both real food and a special companion to share it with.
“Oh, I have an idea! Let’s steal a pie,” Verdana urged, laying a steady hand on my arm.
“No.” My eyes started to tear up. “That’s just plain wrong. Let’s ask her for one.”
Verdana placed her hands on her ample hips. “I’m not asking her. Did you hear that cut she made about my salary? What gall she has, telling me what we should and shouldn’t say in our speeches. Really, she has so little integrity.” She mimicked her nemesis fiddling with a hatpin. “Everything with her is about making the biggest statement, down to those gargantuan hats she wears. Well, I want to make a statement, too. Let’s steal a pie.” She picked at the crust of the pie that was furthest away from the oven, chewing on its flaky crispness. She made sounds indicating her approval.
Without another word, she scooped a pie off the counter. She shoved the meaty delicacy into my arms.
I rolled my eyes to heaven, asking God to forgive Verdana’s foibles.
“Don’t just stand there,” Verdana said, tapping her clunky boot against the marble kitchen floor.
“No,” I whispered. “I can’t walk out of here holding a pie.” I pictured Amy’s army of footmen on staff to enforce her every whim. “We’ll get caught.”
“Then use some ingenuity,” Verdana rasped. “Quick.”
Before I could utter another word, Verdana wrested the pie from my arms, lifted my skirt in the back, and shoved the pie between my thighs. I gripped the pie tin with my legs as tightly as possible but knew her plan wasn’t going to work.
“It’s impossible to walk and hold onto the pie with my legs at the same time,” I snapped. “Let’s just eat the damned pie here.”
She raised her palms to the ceiling and shrugged. “Fine.”
Without further ado, she lifted my hem and scooped the pie tin out from under my voluminous skirt. We hovered over the counter and ate the meal with our bare hands. The two of us really were turning into urchins—Amy was right. Crumbs splattered over our faces and clothing as we devoured the mutton, carrots, russet potatoes, and onions.
Without a doubt, it was the best meal I had ever tasted.
Thursday, August 17, 1893
Amy Van Buren had a way of whipping us into a frenzy until we all felt more beaten up than the h
orses plodding around town with their carriages in tow. Sometimes I thought she would have made a better jockey than a leader. The better part of each meeting was devoted to quarreling. Our list of demands was long and included voting rights for women, the enfranchisement of black men, and financial freedom, to name a few. We disagreed (vehemently) over the order in which to pursue them.
Amy, dressed in lilac muslin, looked like the Easter parade all by herself. No one would ever describe her as beautiful, but she had refinement and the wisdom to know which of her features could be accentuated by a particular hat or the color of her clothing. Dripping in amethysts, from earrings to brooch to necklace, she looked like a study in mauve. Like Mary, Madeleine, Midge, and many of the other women gathered around that morning to hear her immortal words of strategy, Amy was manless (the fact that she was married was more of an encumbrance). Her husband was never there and presumably never missed.
Quincy, Verdana, and I huddled at one end of the parlor. We were munching pastries and chatting quietly among ourselves when the lady of the house marched over to our corner in her enormous mauve hat.
“How are you coming along with the ‘enfranchise women’ speech?” she asked Verdana.
Verdana plucked out a feather from an overstuffed couch and nervously ran her fingers up and down the soft ends. “We haven’t started the speech yet.” Then she awkwardly stuck the feather behind her ear. From a nearby table, she picked up a jade Buddha ornament and rubbed his belly roll over and over. “Why?”
“I’d have thought that Shepherd’s Pie would be an inspiration,” Amy drawled, as her eyes danced maliciously.
“It’s not shepherding us to greatness yet,” Verdana said lightly. But she looked like she’d seen an evil spirit.
“We could learn what was said at the suffrage convention in Chicago a few days ago,” I interrupted, “and more or less use that for a script.”
Amy walked over and patted me on the shoulder. “You are a most practical girl, Penelope. I admire that. But the next time you want a pie, just ask for one. Petty theft is beneath you.”
