City of Light

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City of Light Page 20

by Lauren Belfer


  “Well, no, it’s not surprising. You’ve had her since she was a newborn.”

  “At the beginning I used to wonder, what did the father look like, and the mother. I used to conjure them up in my head. Then after a while it didn’t seem to matter anymore. But now, when she makes some gesture I don’t recognize, I wonder if it’s something she’s gotten from … those other people.”

  “Or from herself.”

  “Yes, but what is a self?” he asked with a hint of a smile. “She’s so much like Margaret. I remember catching her when she was very young, just two, maybe three years old, following Margaret around the house and imitating her walk, arranging her shoulders and her head to be like Margaret. It almost broke my heart. You can’t even imagine what it feels like to remember now. It haunts me, how much like Margaret she is.”

  His voice caught. Shifting his body, he looked away. I started to reach out to him, to comfort him, then pulled back my hand, frozen by the impropriety of touching him in a public place. After a few moments, his knee brushing mine beneath the narrow table, he turned to me again, his face composed.

  “You’re still the only person who knows, Louisa. Apart from the doctor, of course.” He glanced around. “Sometimes I wonder which of my neighbors’ children aren’t really theirs, and they have to keep the truth hidden the way Margaret and I do.” There it was, the present tense, cutting into us. If Margaret were here now—well, she and I would be chatting together while Tom most likely would have gone off to join the gentlemen who were smoking and discussing business by the balcony stairs. “Do you ever wonder what happened to the poor girl who gave birth to Grace? Do you think she ever thinks of her?”

  I felt myself blushing. But before I was forced to answer, the bulky form of George Urban, Jr., arrived at our table, on his way, he told us, to bring the good news to Frederick Krakauer that despite the unexpected storm—and extremely icy it was, out at Niagara—the lines had held, the electric power had not gone down. The generators were still transmitting current, the factories were still churning out aluminum, the streetlights of Buffalo were still illuminated.

  The truth of this we later discovered ourselves when we left the Ellicott Square Building and found the streetlamps ablaze. Grace gave the lamps not a thought; we’d had them nearly five years now, virtually a lifetime to her. She took them for granted. But to me, they remained a small evening miracle, like a nightly blessing.

  As we rode home, bearskin blankets covering our legs, Grace fell asleep. She leaned against her father, her face like an angel’s. I wished there were a way to keep her close to me forever. I ached, that soon she would go to her home, and me to mine.

  On Chapin Parkway, Tom said, “Would you mind if I took Grace home first, to get her out of the cold?”

  “No, of course not. That’s best.”

  He headed down Lincoln Parkway to Forest Avenue. We drove through the gate of the estate, up the shoveled drive, and stopped under the porte cochere, which was lit by an electric bulb in a fixture designed to resemble a gas lamp.

  And then we saw that the beveled-glass window of the entry door had been smashed. Tom stared at the door in silence.

  The groom, pulling on his coat, ran out from the coach house. “Good evening, sir.” Irish. Black-haired. Young, but self-possessed. All the Sinclair servants were Irish. Did Tom find some kind of comfort in that? Were they more deferential to him, or more to be trusted?

  Without preliminaries, the groom jumped into the explanation. “Mrs. Sheehan heard the noise just after dark. It was a torch. Thrown from pretty close, probably, and pretty hard. Burned the hallway carpet. Could’ve been worse, if Mrs. Sheehan hadn’t been dusting the pieces on the mantel in the drawing room.” He paused for Tom to respond, and when Tom said nothing, he continued. “We searched, but we couldn’t find anybody or any traces. Not even footprints in the snow. They must have used the drive. Damned cheeky.”

  “Yes.” Tom sounded oddly untroubled.

  “Mr. Sheehan didn’t want to telephone the police without your approval.”

  “Good. No need to telephone the police. Take hold of the horses, will you? I’ll get Grace settled before seeing Miss Barrett home.”

  Tom went to the door, giving it a cursory examination before propping it open. How aloof he was. For him, aloofness was a kind of power. He did not invite me in, but took Grace in his arms with the utmost gentleness, keeping her wrapped in the blanket. Turning in his arms, she sighed. He spoke tenderly to her, words I couldn’t hear except for their reassuring tone. I had never been given the chance to speak to her with such words, to use such a tone.

  “I won’t be but a minute, Louisa.”

  In the hall, he was joined by the housekeeper and butler. The Sheehans were both gray-haired and thin, with an almost military bearing; they were one of those married couples who come to look like one another after long years together. They began talking about the window, pointing out the burned patch of carpet, but Tom silenced them, nodding toward Grace in his arms. He carried her up the stairs, Mrs. Sheehan following while her husband carefully pushed the door almost shut: closed enough to keep out the cold, open enough to show me no offense.

  Soon Tom returned. Mrs. Sheehan would help Grace to change her clothes, then tuck her into bed; despite her forbidding appearance, the housekeeper was kindhearted. As we rode away, Grace’s third-floor light was on. The horses’ bells jingled sharply in the cold night air; if Grace had awakened she would hear the cheerful sound.

  “Albright was telling me the other day that I must get a governess-companion for Grace,” Tom was saying. “Told me she needs more than a housekeeper looking after her. Advised me to put an advertisement at Smith College, or even Vassar. But not Wellesley, he told me—Wellesley girls are too headstrong! I’m sure he was thinking of you, Louisa.” He batted my shoulder good-naturedly as he turned the sleigh onto the street. “Anyway, I told him, seeing as what happened when he brought a governess-companion into the house, I thought as I wouldn’t! At least not yet.” He laughed. “But Albright assured me that a pretty governess was probably just what I needed. ‘Fix you up in no time,’ he said.”

  I liked Susan Fuller Albright, the Smith College governess John Albright had married. Her New England family had ties to the Shakers, which made her unusual. But I couldn’t allow the thought of her (and the implications about a possible stepmother for Grace) to deflect me.

  “Who do you think threw the torch?” I heard my voice echo beneath the snow-covered trees.

  He waited a long moment before answering, and then said with studied indifference, “Oh, a thief, don’t you think?”

  “A thief? A torch?”

  “You’re probably right, Louisa.” Suddenly he was treating the matter as a joke. “Couldn’t have been a thief. Much more likely that the house was set upon by nature lovers. Someone from the Niagara Preservation Society. Daniel Henry Bates himself. Singed his beard in the process. Or maybe the perpetrator was a disgruntled investor in the Buffalo Gas Light Company. Or a member of the lineman’s union—a ‘hot stick man.’ Or maybe—now here’s thought—maybe it was Frederick Krakauer. Although he doesn’t seem like a torch thrower himself. But surely Mr. Morgan provides him with discretionary funds to cover the hiring of torch throwers. I wonder how you’d put that down on an expense report. Honestly, I imagine; I’m sure Mr. Morgan insists on honesty: ‘five dollars, torch thrower with good aim.’”

  “Why are you talking this way?”

  His smile faded. “Ah, Louisa, everyone’s impatient with me these days.”

  “Why should people be impatient with you?”

  “I’m sure they have their reasons.”

  “What reasons, what people?” I knew I sounded proprietary, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “People in hot pursuit of their own agendas. I wish them luck, one and all.”

  “But don’t you care if—”

  “Of course I care, Louisa. I particularly care about Grace. About he
r safety. But what’s the point of upsetting the household? Or upsetting you? It was obviously an act meant to frighten us, not to burn the house down.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “Because it was done when the servants were awake. And because someone who wanted to burn the house down would have thrown the torch through the front windows, onto the curtains.”

  “Maybe whoever did it was just incompetent.”

  “That’s possible,” he admitted grudgingly.

  “Why won’t you telephone the police?”

  “The less notice, the better. I don’t want to give whoever did it the satisfaction of a public investigation.”

  “But ignoring it might prompt whoever did it to do something that would be impossible to ignore.”

  “A risk I’m willing to take.” Suddenly he became angry: “If you want my hunch, it’s Bates’s gang. They make everything personal. Sometimes I wonder if they’ve got a spy on me: Their propaganda shouts things about me that I’m only vaguely aware of myself.” He smiled as he said this, his anger quickly waning. “I’ll just have to get a spy on them—tit for tat! Well, let’s not think about that now. Let’s think about what a wonderful day we’ve had. Let’s think about a snowball fight.”

  He stood and reached to grab a handful of snow from a low-hanging branch. Before I knew what was happening, he’d put the snow down my back. It tickled and made me shiver even as I laughed. He put his arm around me, pressing me close to him and gripping my wrist to prevent me from trying to pull out the snow.

  “Be careful or I’ll toss you into a drift,” he whispered.

  And with that whisper, an image of the park lake came into my mind. An image of Karl Speyer writhing beneath the ice. I pulled away from him.

  “What’s wrong? Have I taken liberties?” There was a touch of irony in his voice.

  After managing to remove the snow, I wrapped my arms around myself. I stared ahead, reluctant to respond.

  “You’d better tell me. I can’t let you go home unless you tell me. Shall we spend the night sitting in the sleigh outside school?”

  In spite of myself I relaxed a bit. “Well, it’s just … I was surprised, when Karl Speyer died, that you didn’t, I mean—”

  “That I didn’t mention to the journalists his impromptu visit to us earlier that evening?”

  “Well, yes. Exactly.” I was taken aback by his frankness.

  “And you’ve been harboring this question for weeks now, have you? Torturing yourself about my sins of omission? With no one to talk to and nowhere to go with your worries?” He was trying to make me laugh and had finally succeeded.

  “Yes, to all those questions, yes.”

  “You should have come to me right then, Louisa, and asked me about it,” he said gently.

  “I felt—shy.”

  “Shy? You?”

  “Yes, I’m very shy. Once you get to know me.”

  “Mmm, I see what you mean,” he said, not believing me. “Let me explain, then. I didn’t tell the reporters or the police about Speyer’s visit because it was irrelevant. I’m trying to run a business. How can I do that, with police and reporters swarming over me? Speyer and I had a discussion we’d probably had five times before. We disagreed on a certain policy that I won’t bore you with, and whenever it came up, I won the argument. I am the boss, after all. But he kept pressing his point, and that’s good: I don’t like yes-men around me.”

  “Some people think you arranged his death.”

  “No one I know, I hope.”

  I didn’t think he’d ever met Fiske. “No one you know.”

  “Good.”

  “But you see, when you gave all that money to the school … well, naturally I wondered—”

  But I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say, I wondered if you were trying to bribe me into silence.

  By now we were on Bidwell Parkway. Silent himself, Tom rode down to Elmwood and turned to come up Bidwell beside the school. In front of my home, he drew the horses to a stop.

  Then I realized that he hadn’t denied the accusation; he’d asked a question, he’d made a joke—and he’d let my implication about the endowment and Speyer’s death stand unchallenged. Distressed, I reached for my reticule and pushed the blanket from my legs. Although I was upset, I had to maintain dignity and politeness. I turned to thank him for the day—and found him calmly studying me.

  “Don’t go yet. I have a confession to make.” I didn’t move. “The truth is, I made a mistake with Karl Speyer. I let myself show how angry I was, because he came to the house instead of talking to me at the office or even at the club. I raised my voice. If I hadn’t raised my voice, you wouldn’t have found anything amiss, now, would you? You’d have simply been grateful that I’d kept your name out of the newspapers. I violated my own rule, which is to make my voice softer, not louder, when trying to make a point. A trick I picked up from old Dexter Rumsey.”

  Even now he didn’t deny my implication. “But then why—” I began, prepared to challenge him.

  “No, don’t say anything.” He put his fingers to my lips for a half-second. His hand smelled leathery from the reins.

  “There’s something else I must tell you, seeing as you’ve virtually accused me of murder,” he said amiably.

  “Tom—”

  “Quiet, now.” He brought his hand to my lips once more. “Since our discussion, what, six or seven weeks ago now, I’ve been keeping track of Grace a bit more than I used to. I’ve been bringing more work home instead of staying late at the office. I’ve been reviewing papers in the library, that kind of thing. Grace has been joining me, doing her drawings and her homework. So we’ve been working together, you might say. And I’ve been watching her. I’m discovering—to my surprise—that she begins to remind me of someone. Of you, in fact. Or rather, you begin to remind me of Grace.”

  There was a subtle strain of threat in his voice. Dread crept into me, tingling in my fingertips.

  “Not her manner—that’s like Margaret. But her features. Her—your hair, your eyes, your jawline.” No, I wouldn’t challenge him now, and he knew it. Twisting the reins around one hand, he touched my face, one finger moving across the line of my jaw. I didn’t move. He pushed back my hat, rubbing his fingers into my hair. He whispered, “Yes, I see you in her, and her in you. What does that mean, do you think?”

  Abruptly I turned away from him and fumbled for my key. “It’s our Anglo-Saxon Protestant blood.” I tried to sound lighthearted even as I trembled. “It makes us all look alike. Sometimes in class, I can’t tell one girl from the next. Thank goodness for the scholarships you’re funding, to bring some fresh features among us. I’d best be going.” I was careful not to look at him. “Thank you for the lovely day.” I slipped out of the sleigh, not waiting for him to accompany me, and hurried up the path.

  I was panting by the time I shut the door behind me. I pressed myself against the wall, gasping for breath.

  And then the tingling sound of sleigh bells reached me, telling me Thomas Sinclair was driving home.

  PART II

  “I have tried so hard to do right.”

  Former president Grover Cleveland,

  before his death on June 24, 1908

  CHAPTER XI

  What is the measure of a man?

  Is it physical? He was of medium height with dark-blue eyes and rich brown hair. His mustache was thick and long. He weighed over two hundred fifty pounds, but during his time heftiness was a sign of prestige, of the enviable comfort needed to consume so much food. His weight was also a reflection of the German beer gardens he frequented, where he enjoyed sausage, sauerkraut, and innumerable steins of beer.

  What is the measure of a man?

  Is it professional? He was the impoverished son of an impoverished clergyman. Struggling to find his way, he settled with an uncle in Buffalo. He became a clerk in a law office, taught himself the law. Gradually he progressed in his chosen field, impressing one and all with his pro
bity, his honesty, his hard work. He was elected sheriff and never shirked his duty, even when duty included the role of hangman. In 1881, he was elected mayor. He promised to end corruption, and he did. Over and over he vetoed city contracts that had been awarded by graft. The “veto mayor,” they called him. In 1882, he was elected governor. “Public Office Is a Public Trust”—that was his slogan, and it was revolutionary. With unwavering courage, he confronted the forces of corruption, fighting patronage and the vested interests. And in 1884, he was elected president of the United States.

  Stephen Grover Cleveland. Yes, there was much to admire in him. People said his rise was meteoric. In three years, he went from mayor to governor to president. Some said it was Buffalo that catapulted him to glory, Buffalo that spoke for him—the city like an explosion of power and might withstanding every economic downturn. Buffalo, the city every American wanted to feel touched by, an emblem of hope for the nation.

  What is the measure of a man?

  Is it moral? In public, he projected steadfast integrity. He took pride in being a reformer, battling bribery and kickbacks. He struggled to put an end to the spoils system which had ruled political life for years. But in private, his standards were different. Perhaps this is true for most men, however—their private transgressions are harmless enough, as long as they remain undiscovered. Perhaps we should simply be grateful when, in at least some arenas, these men put duty and honor first. And yet … Cleveland aspired to the highest office in the land: Should he have been held to a higher standard than other men, in order to inspire the nation by his example?

  During the Civil War, Cleveland avoided service by paying a Polish immigrant to replace him in the fighting. Of course there was nothing illegal about this; many estimable men did it, and Cleveland at the time was the sole provider for his mother and sisters. Nonetheless his decision to avoid the draft was considered somehow … unpresidential.

  A bachelor until age forty-nine (when he married twenty-two-year-old Frances Folsom in the White House), Cleveland spent his Buffalo evenings drinking and carousing. There were pranks; practical jokes; fisticuffs on the street outside his favorite saloons; blunt language and blunt pleasures with women who expected nothing more. Even after he became governor, no visit home was complete without a good-natured brawl.

 

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