City of Light

by Lauren Belfer

  And he was right. How could I get home without his help? Without his help, I would be compromised beyond repair. I would lose my job and I would never find another—not teaching, that is. Any dream I’d ever had would be over. I hated myself for my ignorance. All of this was my fault: I hadn’t known the code, I hadn’t understood the subtext of his words. It was too late now, to go back. His promise of secrecy was all I could rely on to protect me.

  I stopped fighting him. I became impassive, like a small, trapped animal.

  “So.” In his pleasure he lengthened the word. He kissed away a tear upon my eyelid. “Good girl.” Nonetheless, when he pressed his lips to mine, pushing his tongue against my teeth, instinctively I turned away, his saliva leaving a band across my cheek. Laughing he caught my face in the palm of his hand. “Still shy?” He tapped my nose with one tender fingertip. “No need to be shy with me.”

  He guided me to the bedroom. When my footsteps became reluctant, he gripped my wrist and twisted my arm behind me—laughing still, as if it were a game, my resistance a show that pleased him more and more. The bedside lamp was lit. The bed had a brocaded canopy.

  It wasn’t necessary for me to undress completely, that would take too much time, he said. With hurried fingers, he fumbled with the buttons of my dress, letting the silk fall to the floor as he pulled at my underclothes. The petticoats and the corset stayed on. He took off his trousers and undergarments, taking the time to fold them over a chair. He left on his shirt and dressing gown. Then he folded down the bedspread, keeping it even and neat. He lay upon his back and smiled at me encouragingly. But when I didn’t join him, he sat up suddenly and grabbed me. “None of that now,” he said, his smile gone—but gone only for an instant. In a tone that could only be described as loving, he added, “It’s natural to feel nervous the first time. But it won’t be so bad.”

  He moved me into position atop his legs. He put my hands around his private self, his hands over mine. He made my hands rub him, up and down.

  “There you go, there you go,” he said, his voice gentle, his grip crippling. Up and down, up and down, his hands over mine. Abruptly he placed his hands behind my head and pushed my head down—I didn’t know what he wanted, didn’t even know what he was thinking. In confusion I glanced at his half-closed eyes. He grunted in response. He shifted, pulling my body into position over him and pressing me down upon him. There was resistance, beyond my control, my body not opening to him. I had no notion what to do. He was displeased. His smile turned to a grimace. He used his spit to ease his way, gripping my hips and moving me to his exact pleasure.

  I wondered then, as he pressed inside me, more than hurting me, this is the great and hidden knowledge of life? This? This is what men and women have whispered about and created elaborate rituals to sanctify? Is this how it is with your wife, Frances, she who came to you as innocent as I, she who claims publicly to adore you? Is this what she adores? Your stomach like a rubbery cushion, propping her up? Or are you different with her? Is it possible to be different?

  I stared at the brocaded canopy. I didn’t know how long it would take. But suddenly he gave a self-satisfied sigh, and it was over. He rested, smirking. Sweat glistened on his forehead. I didn’t move.

  After a few minutes, the president instructed me to leave. He was finished. Besides, he didn’t want to keep his assistant secretary, who would take me home, up late when they had another busy day tomorrow. “And we can’t rely on poor Gilder to get you home,” he added. “He’s undoubtedly off somewhere resting his nerves.” The president chuckled as if this were a very good joke.

  Delicately, he pushed me off him. When I stood, the offal of his body flowed down my thighs. I dared not make a show of wiping it away. The smell of it made me gag. I pressed the back of my hand against my face to block the smell. I dressed as quickly as I could, my fingers shaking. This time he didn’t help me.

  An overly thin young man with ruddy cheeks and glasses waited outside the suite. The assistant secretary. Without looking at me, he led me to a carriage that had pulled in close to the hotel’s back door. For the sake of anonymity, the carriage dropped me at the deserted park, leaving me not far from the lake where one day Karl Speyer would drown. From there I walked home through deserted streets, trying to steel myself against tears. Tears would do me no good now. Besides, I had saved myself: I should be proud, I told myself over and over, defending myself against despair, fighting off self-pity. I had saved myself. I gripped my shawl across my chest as if it could protect me.

  In those days, I lived on the top floor of a house on the far side of Elmwood Avenue. My landlady was an elderly woman of genteel poverty; my rent allowed her to maintain her home. Her hearing was such that she never noticed my late-night footsteps.

  After that evening in 1891, I never tried to write to the president. He must have understood me well. Too well.

  Yes, you must have seen my type before, Stephen Grover Cleveland, and known that I would never betray you. That I would never blackmail you or attempt to contact your wife, because I had too much to lose. I had a position to maintain, and any scandal would hurt me more than you. Most likely from the moment of our introduction, you knew that I was safe. Yes, I protected you well, Stephen Grover Cleveland—mayor, governor, president.

  As the days and weeks and years went by, gradually I found a way to live with my anguish. Often I was barely aware of it; it resurfaced only when a man looked at me with affection, approached me to offer love, the way Franklin Fiske had on the stairs at Francesca’s. Over the years there’d been several such men: a history professor at the university; a physician-researcher at the General Hospital; the headmaster of a New England boys’ school, whom I’d met at a conference in Boston; even a young architect at Louise Bethune’s firm. From the first hint of their interest, the pain, the shock, and the fear swept over me once more. Panicked, I took refuge in my professional position as I pushed the man away. During my times of composure, I forced myself to think of that night as a scientific experiment: I had learned, as you had said I would; that what I learned was disappointing—well, what more can be expected from an experiment? Not joy. Not comfort or reassurance. I had learned something else too: that I must never be trapped by ignorance in anything I did. I became ever-alert, ever-watchful, ever-searching for the code words by which society functioned, for the subtle nods and lifting eyebrows that signified everything—but only for those who understood. I made it my overriding goal always to understand.

  And then there was Grace. Unforeseen. Unforeseeable. How farfetched, the idea that those few minutes amid the cigar smoke shadows could produce the miracle of Grace. Within three months I realized that I must make a plan.

  My plan included the protection of you. In those days, in spite of everything, I still had high hopes for you; I blamed myself and my own ignorance for what had happened between us. I still saw the future with your name emblazoned upon it. Yet I realized that even as I protected you, I must protect myself from you. The fate of Mrs. Halpin was clear in my mind, and it terrified me. There must be no opportunity for you to steal my child, to put me into an asylum. I would look after myself better than that unfortunate woman had. Furthermore I knew that your friends would never allow you to face another moral scandal; they would resolve any such scandals themselves, silently and lethally, before there was even a whisper of public exposure.

  This was the terror I faced. An appearance of normality must be maintained at all costs. There was no question of my starting the autumn term. I requested a leave of absence for the coming year from the Macaulay board. This would also give me the following summer away; other faculty members had taken such sabbaticals. I explained to the board that I wanted to spend time in New York City investigating new trends in education for women. I also wanted to travel to the Continent, where I’d never been. I wanted to renew myself among the cathedrals of France and the ruins of Greece.

  How touched the men of the board were, how excited, to contemplat
e the increased knowledge I would bring to their daughters. Not only did they approve my request with more alacrity than I had expected, they awarded me, unasked, a generous study grant. A more than generous study grant. And with their money I went to New York and found a sanctuary.

  When I was at Wellesley, a well-known woman, a Wellesley graduate—never mind her name—had come to lecture. She was working to establish a settlement house on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to help the immigrant poor. Her lecture had been inspiring. She’d invited us to join her if we shared her passion. After the lecture I spoke to her at length, but my path after graduation led me to Buffalo, not New York. Nevertheless I kept up with her work and her success through Wellesley publications. She now lived at the settlement house with like-minded women and devoted herself to teaching and charity.

  She was the person I approached for shelter. I wanted to take refuge with someone who was a stranger—not someone who might care about me or ask me questions. Just someone who would give me a room and a job, and direct me to a physician when my time came. And so there, in New York, I became simply one more sad lady in a long gray coat, making my way through streets crowded with people who had no interest in me whatsoever.

  Day after day I despaired over what would happen to the baby that was growing within me. Certainly I would lose my position if the board learned the truth. Without a job, without family, without money of my own, I had no means to raise a child. But I could never give the baby to an orphanage and surrender my claim on him, or her, forever. Unreasonable plans jostled in my mind. I could pretend to be a widow, change my name, move to San Francisco or Vancouver or Guadalajara, for surely teachers were needed in such places. And yet … the child and I might be safe in such a place, but life would be hard; harder than I wanted it to be for my baby.

  One day when I was walking along the Battery, staring at the ships in the harbor, an idea came to me:

  Some months before I met Grover Cleveland, my best friend, Margaret, had confided to me her despair that after several years of marriage she’d not yet had a child. Suddenly the solution I’d been yearning for spread before me like a flash of inspiration: Margaret and Tom would become the parents of my child. I would return to my position in Buffalo, where I would watch, and help, my child grow. Margaret and I shared the same values, the same ethics. She was generous, tender, and loving. Of course I knew Margaret better than I knew Tom, but Tom had always seemed to me upright and moral. I admired his courage and all he had achieved. Margaret and Tom loved each other; their marriage was stable and happy. And of course they were both rich. Their child’s every material need would be fulfilled. Margaret and Tom would create a mirror image of how I would have raised the child myself, if only circumstances had been different.

  I wrote to Margaret from New York and said that the leader of the settlement house where I was staying (while conducting my board-sanctioned research into trends in education for women) knew of an innocent girl who had found herself in an unfortunate position. This girl was from a good family (not from among the immigrant hordes one might associate with my settlement-house acquaintance), and she hoped to find an equally good family to raise the child she would bear but could not keep.

  After a few weeks, Margaret wrote back to say that she and Tom, after much discussion, were interested in adopting this child. Margaret had some questions, however, which had to be addressed before plans could move forward. Was I certain, that the parents of this child were not Italian? Not Spanish, Greek, Russian—was I certain that the parents had no link (except one of philanthropy) to the immigrant communities of the city? Would this child grow to have Mediterranean-type skin? Did the child have Jewish blood? (She did not mention Negro blood, which to her must have been beyond imagining.)

  I was saddened by this letter even as I responded to it with reassurances. Despite her independent nature and her work among the poor, Margaret harbored, like an unerasable part of her soul, all the prejudices of her class. But who among us does not? Who among us, if we strip away the veils of self-righteousness, would take the chance she and Tom were taking without at least a modicum of reassurance?

  To answer Margaret, I spun a tale. I created a play in which I was a character, although not the lead character. I created the innocent girl who had found herself in this unfortunate situation. I described my visit to the girl’s home. She turned out to be a child, really, no more than fifteen. Since the deaths of her parents, she had lived with her grandparents in a substantial home in the East 70s, off Fifth Avenue (how much more authentic, I told myself, than a house actually on Fifth). The grandparents were kindhearted. They blamed themselves for what had happened to the girl. They were telling their friends that the girl suffered from consumption. When the girl’s time neared, they would take her out of town and tell everyone that they were traveling in search of a cure.

  I related to Margaret every detail of my visit: being ushered in by the butler; walking up the curving staircase; meeting the grandmother, whose family name I recognized; entering the girl’s bedroom, where she lay upon a canopy bed, surrounded by dolls, blonde hair curling around her face.

  Perhaps I overdid it. But so clear was my vision that I couldn’t help but add details, more and more. The pastel drawings of children on the walls. The pile of books on the bedside table. The girl’s modesty, her obvious intelligence and wish to do the best she could for her child.

  The father of her child … well, this was more problematic, I realized as I prepared my letter. A bounder, yes. A man who took advantage of a young girl … who could it have been?

  All at once I knew. Of course! The girl’s older sister was married to a member of the English aristocracy. “It is my understanding,” I wrote to Margaret, “that during a recent holiday, this so-called gentleman took advantage of his young sister-in-law, then returned in due course to his English estates with his wife, who, I am assured, is ignorant to this day of what occurred.”

  Perfect. A sweet American girl taken advantage of by a cad who is nonetheless an English nobleman. With misgivings I remembered after I posted the letter that Tom had been born an Irish Catholic, not likely to respect the English aristocracy; but he never protested, and maybe he appreciated the irony.

  At any rate, this was the provenance I created for the child I bore to President Grover Cleveland.

  My story had the desired effect. Margaret wrote back to say she and Tom would be very pleased indeed to adopt this infant. She would begin telling her friends and family that she was with child at last. She would wear a pillow around her stomach and increase the stuffing bit by bit. Embracing her latest adventure, she made a continuing joke in her letters about the need to reshape this ever-enlarging pillow with scientific care.

  Only Dr. Perlmutter knew the truth. She had persuaded him to play along because society would think something amiss if the esteemed doctor were not seen entering and leaving her house with a certain frequency during her confinement. She and Tom had already decided on names, she wrote: If the child were a boy, they would name him Thomas, after his new father. If it were a girl, they would name her Grace, for by the grace of God they had found her.

  When my time came, my acquaintance from the settlement house took pity on me. She found a local doctor. She secured a place of privacy for the birth itself, which went as well as could be expected. She traveled with my infant daughter and a wet nurse to meet Dr. Perlmutter in Albany. He took the infant with him to Buffalo, accompanied by a new wet nurse whom he had hired in Albany. The Albany nurse looked after Grace in a second-class compartment while the doctor relaxed in first class, telling one or two friends he met along the way that he had been visiting a cousin in the state capital. The nurse returned to Albany on the same train. Dr. Perlmutter knew the infant was intended for Margaret and Tom, but he did not know that I was its mother.

  When I had recovered from the birth, I went to Europe. I visited the places I had dreamed of and felt as if I didn’t see them at all. My attention wa
s focused on imagining the baby now ensconced in the mansion at the corner of Lincoln Parkway and Forest Avenue.

  When finally I returned to Buffalo, shortly before the start of school in September of 1892, a letter awaited me from the board. In formal language the letter informed me that upon the retirement at the end of the year of the now-elderly clergyman who had established Macaulay nearly forty years before, I would become headmistress; I would move into the house next to the school.

  I barely glanced at the letter, so eager was I to see Grace. At the Sinclair home, the maid ushered me up to the library. Margaret sat in a rocking chair, the baby in her arms. My baby. Grace. I was startled. She was so much bigger than the newborn I had last seen. Now eight months old, she was round and tumbly as a bubble. Her eyes were still blue, her hair still blonde. Her baby clothes were soft and fine, decorated with lace. She smiled and giggled at her mother. At Margaret.

  Happiness glowed on Margaret’s face. “Don’t tell me anything more about her parents, Louisa. I want to pretend she has no parents at all, that she was brought by angels. In fact, she was brought by angels.”