Of more immediate concern was that there might be gossip if I went sleigh riding. However, I was Grace’s godmother; and in addition, despite the inroads of Susannah Riley with Francesca, I was still commonly considered beyond romantic involvements—with men at least. I glanced at Grace, then back at the sleigh. The scene glowed as if it were a painting waiting only for Grace and me to enter the places intended for us.
As we drove away, I saw diamonds in the treetops. Diamonds of ice, blowing in the breeze. We rode down Chapin Parkway to the circle and so to Forest Lawn Cemetery. Passing through the cemetery’s whimsical gate, we joined our neighbors amid the tree-covered hills and curving paths.
Angels and obelisks covered the hillsides, but there was nothing morbid here. As in so many cities, the cemetery was a favorite place for picnics in summer and snowball fights in winter. No one came here from the narrow streets along the waterfront, or from the neighborhoods where people spoke languages different from ours. Or had skin of a different shade. We who idled here were like an extended family, at ease and at home.
Today children built snowmen and played hide-and-seek among the sandstone mausoleums and the marble peristyles. Their parents strolled the grounds, unconcerned about separation from their little ones: The guard at the gate was conscientious, keeping out everyone he didn’t know, and since everyone inside knew virtually everyone else (whether living or dead), any lost child was invariably found.
So many were here among my students and their families, among the sixty millionaires and many near-millionaires of Buffalo, and among the doctors, attorneys, ministers, artists, and architects who served them. Yet despite these many visitors, the cemetery felt blissfully uncrowded; there was more than enough room for all of us to spread out among the lofty tulip trees and the broad beeches, to find sheltered glens lined with white-barked birches where we could linger beside still ponds.
Coming toward us now was Maria Love, with a sleigh full of her grandnieces and grandnephews: mischievous little Carys and Rumseys, one or another continually tumbling off the sleigh and into the snowdrifts. Without slowing the horses, Miss Love circled the sleigh around and reached out a hand to retrieve them. A trio of men named John approached us, all members of my board of trustees: John Milburn, bestowing his charming smile on one and all; John Albright, bird-watching with his youthful second wife; John Larkin, the mail-order soap king, gleaming as he always did with the cleanliness bestowed by constant use of his own products. Even his hands gleamed, and undoubtedly because of this, he rarely wore gloves. Mr. Rumsey drove past, tipping his hat like a minister offering his blessing upon us all. His daughter Ruth, he told Grace, was home with a cold; bad luck, we agreed, for her to miss such a glorious day.
Grace sat between Tom and me. She held my hand and sometimes touched her father’s arm or rested her head against his shoulder. She asked to tour the cemetery and so we did: around the spring-fed Mirror Lake surrounded by flowering, snow-covered crabapple trees, white on pink; along the cascading Scajaquada Creek, where a great blue heron fished slowly along the shore; across stone bridges and into hidden vales of oak trees. Scattered among the obelisks and angels were stone portraits of dead children, captured in their playfulness and hurry, snow like shawls around their shoulders.
Grace appeared serene and at ease. After my useless consultation with Dr. Hoyt, I could feel only relief that at this moment, at least, she was fine. When she spotted a field of violets poking through the snow beside a small Gothic steeple, she pulled at Tom’s sleeve.
“I want to pick some for Mama.”
Tom brought the sleigh to a stop, and she slipped out. A flock of white-throated sparrows fluttered up as she approached. She spent some time among the violets, carefully gathering only the most perfect.
As we watched her, Tom said quietly, “I never dreamed I’d see Grace picking violets for Margaret’s grave. Before we were married, Margaret asked me to bring her here to pick violets for her mother’s grave. This is the same spot. I remember the steeple.” Then he fell silent. How different this day would be if Margaret were with us. We’d probably be throwing snowballs at each other now, or having a contest to see who could throw one the farthest; Tom and Grace would be the finalists, and Tom, of course, would let Grace win.
Finally Grace returned with the flowers sheltered in the crook of her arm, and we drove to the area near Margaret’s grave. Tom tied the horses, and we climbed up the hillside, Grace leading us. When I slipped on the snow, Tom caught my elbow. This was the highest hill of the cemetery; President Fillmore was buried at the top. Margaret’s grave was three-quarters of the way up. A rabbit hopped away from the marker as we approached, its white tail bobbing in the snow. Laughing at the sight of it, Grace turned to us, her smile making me yearn to hug her. When we reached the grave, Grace stood still as if saying a prayer, then placed the violets beside the stone. The flowers were velvety purple against the melting white. Only a stone marked Margaret’s grave now, but on the anniversary of her death a carved angel would take its place above her. Grace wiped the snow from the stone so we could see the lettering. Margaret Winspear Sinclair, 1866 to 1900. I bit my lip, trying not to cry; I didn’t want Grace to see me cry.
I had stood here with Tom last September when Margaret was buried. Grace wasn’t with us. Because she was distraught, Tom had allowed her to stay home with the housekeeper during the funeral and burial. The Winspears had clucked their disapproval at Tom’s decision. The funeral and burial were exactly what she needed to see, they argued, to help her with her mourning. They appealed to me. Generally children did attend burials, but at that moment I was too distraught myself to judge or advise. The Sinclair house was so confused the morning of the funeral: people turning up from everywhere, food being served in every room, muffled greetings exchanged, hugs bestowed upon me by friends whose names I couldn’t remember. I hadn’t slept in days. Grace threw a tantrum, kicking the maid who tried to help her dress, throwing a dish of applesauce against the wall of her playroom, screaming for “Mama” over and over. In retrospect, I realized that Tom had been right to keep her home. Finally that evening, as Tom had tucked her into bed and I had given her a good night kiss, a numbness—an utter blankness—descended upon her. She slept for fifteen hours, and when she woke, for weeks that blankness became her refuge.
“I wonder if Mama sees us now.” Grace didn’t sound sad today, only matter-of-fact: a child who had been raised to believe in heaven and still had no reason to doubt its existence. “Remember how much Mama loved the snow? Remember that time she helped me build the biggest snowman anyone had ever seen, on our front lawn? Remember how we dressed him up in your silk top hat and scarf?” she asked Tom.
“Of course,” Tom said. “As I recall I donated some old boots to him too.”
“I remember, Papa.” She hugged him with pleasure. “I remember.”
“And then I came over to admire him,” I said.
“Yes, Aunt Louisa, I remember! I wrote you a special note of invitation.”
“I still have it.”
“I remember everything about that snowman,” she said proudly.
Remember, remember, remember. So much of our lives had turned into remembrance.
“I’m sure Mama sees us now. She watches everything I do,” Grace assured us. “So I always have to do the right thing. That’s why lately I never do anything wrong.” She gave Tom and me an impish grin. “Sometimes I like to pretend she visits me. Sometimes when I spin around really fast like this”—she twirled and twirled in the snow—“I get dizzy and I can see her out of the corner of my eye, just like she’s sitting over there!” At the end of a twirl she stopped suddenly and pointed at a gravestone farther up the hill. She looked stricken, as if she’d truly expected to see Margaret; or as if she had seen Margaret, just at the edge of her vision, and now Margaret was gone. “Did you two see her?” she asked.
“No, darling,” Tom said gently. “We didn’t see her.”
“Neither did
I,” she said, bereft. Grace took Tom’s hand and mine, making a chain of us, and we stood for a long moment looking through the trees toward the park lake and the half-built art gallery beyond it. In the sharp, clear air, the towers of the asylum seemed close upon us. I studied Grace’s now-placid face. I wasn’t surprised that she would attempt to conjure up Margaret’s being. Children were always telling ghost stories, and at church the ministers made angels and the afterlife sound like a certainty. Therefore why wouldn’t her beloved mother always watch over her, and even visit her now and again? I grasped at something Dr. Hoyt had said, that Grace simply needed to pass through the time of mourning and then all would be well. I tried to believe this was true. Yes, I said to myself over and over, at heart my goddaughter was fine, and she always would be.
I glanced at Tom, to find him looking at me. He seemed to be searching my face, for what I didn’t know. Then, almost as an afterthought and only for an instant, his searching look turned into a shy smile.
When we returned to our sleigh at the bottom of the hill, we came upon Seward Cary, one of Maria Love’s adult nephews. He was a thin, long-faced man with a passion for polo, who never seemed to have enough to do to fill his time. “How about a race, Sinclair?” he called, standing in his cutter. His breath steamed in the cold. “Up on the flats.” He motioned toward the northern part of the cemetery.
“You’re on, Cary,” Tom responded. The gentlemen of our city had a love of sleigh racing. On Richmond Avenue, on Delaware, even here in the cemetery, they liked nothing better than to race in the brisk air.
Hesitantly Grace said, “I don’t want to race.”
“Now, now, little girl, a bit of a race will do you good,” Tom said, with more than his usual touch of Irish brogue.
Up on the flats, Tom pulled alongside Cary’s sleigh. Earlier races had drawn a small crowd. The route was discussed, positions were adjusted. Both men stood. Someone offered to give the signal: A whip snapped against a tree trunk—and with it Seward was off, whipping his horse and whooping, Tom right beside him. The bystanders shouted. The wind lashed against us, burning like ice crystals into our skin. Our sleigh heeled as we curved around a bend, and I gripped the railing.
“We’ve got him,” I thought I heard Tom say into the wind.
Grace clutched my hands and pressed her face into my skirt, making a mewling sound and trembling—altogether more scared than she should have been. At her age, she should have been enjoying it. Nonetheless she was terrified, and I couldn’t see her this way and do nothing to help her.
“Stop, Tom!” I shouted. My eyes watered in the wind. He did nothing to stop. He couldn’t hear me. I shouted again. Still he couldn’t hear me. I pulled at his arm. “She’s frightened!”
He glanced at me, bewildered, and looked down at Grace, her arms wrapped around my legs, her face hidden. Then he did slow the horses, from a gallop to a trot to a walk until he stopped them completely—or they stopped on their own accord, feeling the strength leave his hands. He sat down. Up ahead Seward Cary gave a cheer in the joy of his victory.
“She was frightened, Tom,” I said quietly. “Even if she had no reason to be.”
He stared at Grace and then at me. Not in anger or regret, or even with concern for his daughter. He simply looked confused, as if he were in a foreign land and the language I spoke—although he was supposed to know it, had even studied it—was so different from what he expected that he couldn’t begin to comprehend it.
By the time we left the cemetery, however, all was forgotten. Grace seemed happy again, rubbing her father’s arm, pressing against him once more. He too seemed to have put the incident from his mind. But as I gazed at her, watching her glance flit from one spot to the next, I realized that she defied my understanding, defied every small reassurance at which I grasped. She was like water slipping through my hands.
We turned onto Delaware Avenue, heading downtown. The late afternoon sun left bands of color across the snow. The horses went at a steady trot, the mansions and churches flashing by, the lawns broad and snow-covered, the branches of the double row of elms meeting overhead. Suddenly downtown opened before us in its glory: City Hall, its Gothic tower surmounted by statues representing Justice and Commerce, Agriculture and the Mechanical Arts. The post office, with its tall, slender campanile. And the new skyscrapers, taller than church spires. Yes, we had skyscrapers in Buffalo.
We passed the Prudential Building, designed by Louis Sullivan: thirteen stories high, built of steel, covered with terra-cotta carvings of vines and trees that soared upward like an impenetrable forest to surround the oriel windows at the top. The decorations made the building seem even taller than it was, and the terra-cotta glowed deep ocher in the sunset.
“Look well at that, Grace,” Tom said. “Thirteen floors and no electricity. Steam-powered elevator and gaslights. I don’t know how the workers stand it, being in the gaslight all day. Well, we’ll improve on that soon, eh?”
“Yes, Papa,” she said, though I sensed she wasn’t listening. “Look, there’s where you work!” Excited, she stood and pointed to the Ellicott Square Building, a few blocks ahead.
“Right you are, my girl.”
Designed by Daniel Burnham, the Ellicott Square Building was ten stories tall and covered an entire city block. It boasted six hundred offices, forty stores, sixteen counting rooms. It was the largest office building in the world, but it too had no electricity.
There were other magnificent buildings everywhere around us. Downtown Buffalo was designed in the early 1800s by Joseph Ellicott, whose brother had worked with Pierre L’Enfant on the design of Washington, D.C. The downtown streets radiated from wide public circles that created an aura of nobility and civic triumph. At the end of every southward-running street, the grain elevators rose stark on the horizon. Beside the elevators were the coal trestles, the biggest in the world, and the railroad yards; and in the harbor were the masts of the lake schooners and the funnels of the freighters, symbols one and all of where the money came from to make this magnificence possible.
When I was a child, and later at Wellesley, Boston was the city I visited for a treat, but Boston was staid and self-protective compared to Buffalo: Here we had the freedom of the frontier, the freedom of never-ending expansion. We were a city “full of beans,” as I’d once heard it described. A city of wonder. We’d sent two presidents to the White House. We were an exposition city, like Chicago and Philadelphia. Suddenly a sense of gratitude swept through me—to be here, now, in this sleigh, gliding through the most exuberant city in the nation. The city’s exuberance was mine; the city itself was mine.
I felt overwhelmed; shaken by my sense of belonging.
This winter, hotelier and restaurateur Ellsworth Statler had opened a Viennese café, the first café we’d ever had, in the central light court of the Ellicott Square Building. No matter how many times I visited the Ellicott Square Building, when I entered the light court I was astonished. It was covered with glass supported by curved metal braces. Huge chandeliers hung from central arches. At each end of the court, curving staircases with intricate banisters led to the shops on the balcony. The building was designed around this central court for a very practical reason: to bring natural light into the inner offices.
Now that dusk was upon us, gaslight suffused the court. Everyone of importance was here. Mr. Statler himself, a net of smile lines around his eyes, a thick mustache dominating his thin face, showed us to a table. Francesca waved from a corner, where she sat with Susannah Riley, who had her back to the crowd. Maria Love was at a center table (naturally), surrounded by her rambunctious little Carys and Rumseys, their faces now covered with evidence of hot chocolate and cake. Nearby, Susan Fiske Rumsey sat with her cousin Franklin, his photography equipment piled on the floor beside them. Mrs. Rumsey smiled her greeting, while Fiske simply nodded at me by way of recognition, and I appreciated his discretion. For the first time, I focused on the fact that I was the only person to whom he’d revealed
his secret. Knowledge, of course, is power; why had he given me such power over him? Why had he trusted me? I caught myself staring at him for a beat longer than modesty dictated; hastily I shifted my gaze away. Tom and I continued our peregrination across the room. We said hello to everyone we passed and everyone said hello to us, each strand of the city knit tightly together.
The only person we didn’t say hello to was Frederick Krakauer, “Morgan’s man” as Fiske called him, who slouched, hands folded across his broad abdomen, in a straight-backed chair near Maria Love’s table—near her table, but pointedly not at her table. Looking as if he were lightly dozing, eyes half-shut, he regarded us all with a forbearing smile while Miss Love studied him speculatively.
Once we were settled, Grace ran off to join a group of children who were playing a complicated game of hopscotch across the marble mosaic floor. She received an effortless welcome from them. All the girls were Macaulay girls, all the boys went to the Franklin School and then to Nichols. How wonderful it was, to gaze upon children who had nothing more to do with their time than devote themselves to the self-imposed rules governing jumps across a patterned floor.
Tom too gazed at the children, but with a preoccupied look. Perhaps he was remembering his own youth, or perhaps he wondered only about the propriety of lighting a cigar in mixed company. Grace’s hair flew as she jumped. And then Tom startled me.
“You know,” he said, almost to himself and still watching Grace, so that I had to lean close to hear him, “sometimes I look at her and realize that I’ve completely forgotten, for weeks or for months, that she’s not really my daughter. That’s surprising, isn’t it?”
He turned to me, and because I had already leaned close to hear him, we were now very near to one another, his eyes dark in the gaslight. Suddenly I felt shy and flustered.
City of Light Page 19
