“Our daughter—” Mr. Rushman began.
“—has gotten herself into a difficult position,” Mrs. Rushman interrupted. “Pregnant. Let’s just say the word so no one gets confused.”
Of course. How could I have missed it? I’d blinded myself to it altogether, expecting such a situation from a free-spirited girl like Evelyn Byers, but never from the sober Abigail. In the months since I’d first noticed, during our visit to the power station, Abigail had continued to put on weight. When I’d spoken to her about it, she’d quickly turned the topic to her studies, sharing her pleasure in a new area of interest, natural science, especially the study of butterflies. Never gifted, she was now eager to pursue this small area of endeavor, so I’d ignored her weight problem and focused on getting her advanced assignments from Miss Price, the science teacher, and practice in scientific drawing from Miss Riley.
“Don’t worry, Miss Barrett”—Mrs. Rushman lifted her hand as if to ward off my objections—“we don’t blame you and we don’t blame Macaulay. Far from it. We know how it happened, don’t we, Fritz?”
“Yes, I suppose we—”
“Exactly. We blame ourselves, but no good comes of blame. We are Christians and we know God forgives us.”
“Then why have you come to me?” Unlike Christ, I was under no obligation to forgive.
“Well,” she announced meaningfully, “you know Fritz has become one of the commissioners of the exposition?”
“No, I don’t think I did.” Vaguely I recalled his presence on the dais in the Yellow Room of the Buffalo Club. “Congratulations, Mr. Rushman,” I said, although I wasn’t impressed. No doubt he had purchased a large number of exposition bonds in return for this honor.
His wife accepted my felicitations on his behalf. “Yes, yes, thank you, we’re thrilled. But just so, we must maintain certain standards now. Which is what brings us to you. You understand?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t.” Of course I did, but I wasn’t going to make this easy for them.
She sighed impatiently. “It means that we can’t leave town with her because everyone will know the reason—leaving town just as the Pan-Am is about to open, and Mr. Milburn already promising the commissioners invitations to his Bastille Day ball for the French ambassador. And Abigail can’t leave town alone, because everyone will realize then too. So we’re counting on you to find something to do with her, to get her out of the way with no one knowing.” Suddenly Mrs. Rushman’s belligerent surface cracked and she seemed about to cry. Her husband put his hand on her shoulder.
“We thought, well, we assumed—” Mr. Rushman hesitated. “Seems like something that must have come up before.” He looked at me hopefully. “So you would know what to do.”
“Yes,” his wife broke in. “That’s exactly what we thought. It’s the sort of thing that’s come up before and you would know what to do.”
I paused. I wasn’t about to reveal to them whether “this sort of thing” had come up before, although of course it had. “How far along is she?”
“As best as we can figure out—and of course we haven’t taken her to a doctor—about six months.”
“Six months! And you never noticed?”
“Did you notice?”
“No. However I did notice that she was putting on weight.”
“Was she?” said Mr. Rushman, concerned. “Hasn’t she been getting enough exercise? Has she been overeating? I thought she liked sports. Did you notice she was gaining weight, Cassie?”
“Of course not,” insisted Mrs. Rushman.
Please God, protect me. I took a deep breath. “Have you any idea who the father is? Perhaps it’s not too late for a wedding.”
“If only—” Mr. Rushman began.
“Impossible!” his wife interjected. “The man is married. He’s a very prominent man in the community,” she reported with emphasis and pride. “You would recognize his name if I mentioned it—which I certainly shall not!”
She had the temerity to proclaim this as if I were a common gossip.
“Of course we never should have let him be unchaperoned with Abigail, but how could we say no?” Mr. Rushman turned up his hands to show his helplessness. “They had interests in common. That’s how they met, pursuing these”—he whipped his hands in front of his face as he searched for the proper words—“these common interests!” The breath went out of him, leaving him deflated. “He put us in a very awkward position,” he offered flatly.
“He promised Fritz a position among the commissioners, and he followed through—we can’t fault him on that,” Mrs. Rushman said. “He also arranged for us to be invited to dinner at the Rumseys—and I’m not talking about the Dexter Rumseys, Miss Barrett, I’m talking about the Bronson Rumseys! At their beautiful home on Tracy Street.” Obviously Mrs. Rushman hadn’t recognized a vital truth: In our community, the retired Bronson Rumsey might be the epicenter of glamour, but his younger brother, Dexter, was the center of power. “Miss Love was there! She even approached me on the subject of assisting her with a charity project.”
“So you offered up your daughter’s virginity in exchange for dinner at the Bronson Rumseys?” Oh, Louisa, that was needlessly harsh, I chided myself. But sometimes the constant effort of self-restraint became too much for me.
“Certainly not, Miss Barrett. You exaggerate. We allowed him to spend time with her, pursuing their—common interests, as Fritz says, and we were quite innocent of what followed.”
“I see.”
Alas, I did see. Everything. The Palladian mansion on North Street. The house’s emptiness in the late afternoon, when Mr. Rushman was at his office, Mrs. Rushman was out paying calls, and the servants were preparing dinner. It probably happened in the Gothic revival library, there on the deep sofa, or on the velvety Persian carpet, while Abigail’s homework lay untouched on the desk. The only odd part was that Abigail didn’t seem the type to attract the attention of the kind of man they had described.
“Does he still spend time with her?”
“Certainly not! What do you take us for? And we haven’t told him a thing, in case you’re wondering!” She looked as if I’d insulted her. “We’ve told him only that she’s too busy studying for her final examinations to spend time visiting. But we have reason to believe that he suspects. That he is concerned. He is a gentleman, so he would be concerned. But he doesn’t pry.”
“We still approve of him,” Mr. Rushman assured me.
“Obviously,” his wife added. “Now here is the point, Miss Barrett: We must find something to do with Abigail and the infant. Will you help us?”
“What about your minister?” I asked. “The Reverend Holmes may have experience with such matters.”
Mrs. Rushman flushed. “This is not the sort of thing the Reverend Holmes would want or expect among his parishioners.”
“Ah. Quite so.”
“You must help us, Miss Barrett,” pleaded Mr. Rushman. “There’s no one else we can ask.”
I stared out the window at the trees, the leaves a delicate pale green. It would be difficult. Obviously Dr. Perlmutter, who had been Margaret’s doctor, was the man to call. But at six months—would that be enough time for a childless wife to prepare for an adoption by pretending to be pregnant? And Abigail would need to leave the city. But as her mother said, leaving just before the opening of the exposition would be tantamount to admitting that something woeful had occurred. Abigail would be “gone to the bow-wows,” as my students so succinctly phrased it.
I must have paused for some time, because Mrs. Rushman began to pull at her husband’s sleeve. “Tell her, Fritz, tell her,” she said in a loud whisper.
“Oh, yes. Yes,” he fumbled, touching his pockets. “Miss Barrett.” He cleared his throat. “We are in a position to offer you a good amount of money.” He stepped back in response to the derisive look I gave him. “As a donation to the school—not to you personally.”
“I will not mix money with a girl’s misfortune.”
Before Tom’s gift, I probably would have agreed with her. I would have accepted the offer, visions of new gymnasiums and science laboratories floating before my eyes. But Tom had given me the ability to take the high road.
“No. I will not accept your donation. But I will try to help Abigail. Is there anyone in your family without obligations, who might be able to leave the city with her?”
“I suppose Fritz’s mother could go out of town with her,” Mrs. Rushman admitted grudgingly. “But she’s seventy-eight and frankly her English isn’t the best.”
“What language does she speak?”
“German, if you must know, although I don’t see why it’s relevant.”
“Would the senior Mrs. Rushman be willing to do this?”
Mr. Rushman slowly brightened as he realized this plan might work. “Yes, I think she would. And she’s completely reliable. Totally on the money in spite of her age.” As he relaxed, he seemed to melt into a kindly man, justly proud of his accomplishments and of his family. “From the time I brought her over from our farm outside Frankfurt, she’s been my best advisor. She didn’t want to come here at first, refused for years, but after—”
“That was a long time ago, Fritz,” his wife broke in, putting an abrupt stop to his reminiscences.
I said, “Before I decide anything, I need to speak with Abigail.”
“Whatever for? You won’t get anywhere with her—she says no to everything these days. She won’t wear the beautiful clothes I buy her, or if she does wear them she pulls off all the bows. She won’t even think about her coming-out party—I’ve got to make all those arrangements myself! I don’t know what to do with her.”
I said nothing, waiting for the echo of her dismal words to die away. Then: “I must ascertain what Abigail would like to do with the child who is, of course, hers.”
“That’s an unusual way of looking at it,” Mrs. Rushman opined.
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
Two hours later, during the senior study hall period, Abigail Rushman sat before me, round-faced and childlike, her books piled on her lap. Farsighted, she wore reading glasses suspended from a woven cord around her neck. She looked so forlorn that I pulled a chair next to her instead of facing her from behind my desk.
“Your parents have been to see me, Abigail.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
After that, I didn’t know what to say. Although this situation had come up before, it had never been brought to me personally for a solution. Indeed, my knowledge of previous situations was based on supposition, for I attuned myself to every shift in normal customs. Seven, eight times over the years I’d known something like this was occurring, even though those involved said nothing directly to me about it and I said nothing to them. Two of the situations had been obvious: girls pulled out of school in their senior years and married to men not strictly suitable, their babies born several months “premature.” But the more typical situation involved girls abruptly taken on grand tours, or sent to help needy relations in the West, or enrolled in exceedingly obscure boarding schools far away. I always wished I could talk to these girls and console them, but part of understanding the code was the tacit agreement not to break it. Parents would never want me discussing intimate matters with their daughters; to do so would be considered outside my proper role. Furthermore I would never tell a girl to keep one of our discussions secret from her family; I would never put a girl into that position, or indicate to her in any way that her parents might not always deserve her full confidence. So despite my better instincts, and knowing only too well the heartbreak these girls were suffering, I did my part to maintain the status quo.
Yet now, with Abigail, perhaps I could finally do more. “Is there anything you’d like to ask me, Abigail?”
“Do you hate me?”
Poor child. “Of course not, my dear. Why would you think that?”
“Because what happened … it’s so different from the … standard you set for us.”
“Standards are goals, aren’t they? Goals that we all struggle to live up to, as we try to be good people. To be the kind of people we ourselves can respect. Do you think you’ve let yourself down, with what’s happened?”
“I don’t know. Everything is so confusing. The gentleman, he was so kind and sweet to me. I didn’t realize. I mean …”
A chill swept through me.
“I didn’t expect what … what he was going to do. I didn’t realize about … I mean, no one ever told me.” She stopped, biting her lip and staring down at her books.
“Yes, I understand.” And of course I did. The habits of society hadn’t evolved much since my own youth. To this day, with their fathers’ encouragement, boys of Abigail’s age were “educated” by certain women in other parts of town. Every now and again I heard whispers among the matrons at the club about girls receiving strictly unidentified diseases along with their wedding rings. But daughters were kept in complete ignorance of sexual matters, with nothing to fall back on for knowledge but disjointed rumors passed by older brothers, or easy-to-discount tales related by the few girls who spent time on farms. Most girls had no way to defend themselves against seduction, or even to recognize it; no way to say, this far but no further. Oh, yes, they were told over and over that men would attempt to assault their virtue and they must never give in. But they were told in such a way that they expected the assaults to be aggressive. Faced with sweetness, with tenderness and vulnerability—or even with deeply veiled innuendo, as I had been, they were helpless. Unfortunately parents did not consider it part of my job to teach them otherwise.
“And he really was nice to me,” Abigail assured me. “I mean, he never meant to hurt me. We met because of the butterflies. We were both looking for butterflies in the upper meadow of the cemetery. It seems like a long time ago now.” She shook her head sadly. “It was at the end of last summer, when we met. We had so much to talk about. He knows everything there is to know about trees and birds and butterflies. I bet there aren’t many grown-ups who like butterflies!” she averred. Then she sighed, crestfallen. “My parents won’t let me see him anymore or even talk to him. He must be wondering what’s going on. His feelings must be hurt.”
There were tears in her eyes. She looked no older than Grace.
“Will I be able to graduate?”
Graduation was in a month, when she would be that much bigger of course, but everyone was accustomed to seeing her overweight. I made a quick decision. “Yes, Abigail, you shall graduate.”
That brought a grin which she tried to repress.
“Have you thought about what you would like to do with … the baby?” There it was. The word finally out.
Her eyes widened with bewildered surprise. “It’s hard to think about. I mean, about it really being there.” She glanced at her stomach. “Do you really think it’s there?”
“Your mother seems to think so.”
“But how does she know? She asked me a lot of questions and said she’d hit me if I didn’t tell her the truth, and I did tell her the truth, and then she got my grandma and they pressed their hands all over my stomach and decided a baby was there.”
“I’m sure they were right, Abigail. Now we must decide what to do.”
I gave her time to think this through. “Well, my mother and my grandma say I can’t keep the baby, so I guess I’d like the baby to go to a family that doesn’t have a baby and needs one. It doesn’t have to be an important family. Just a family that could love a baby.”
Then her composure broke. She leaned against my leg to cry. I placed my hand on her back to comfort her. After a few minutes I said, “Up, now. Up.”
Rising, she gazed at me with open, absolute trust.
“You must focus on the good you can take from this experience, Abigail.” I hoped I didn’t sound pedantic. The line between sanctimony and encouragement was bl
urred. Yet how could I greet innocence except on its own terms? “I admire your courage.”
I squeezed her hands, and she gave me an unsteady smile. “Thank you, Miss Barrett. I’ll always do my best from now on.”
CHAPTER XIV
I wouldn’t put it past any man to feign an interest in butterflies to get what he wanted from an innocent girl. Nonetheless, I didn’t allow myself to engage in idle speculation about the father of Abigail’s child. It wouldn’t help me or Macaulay if I greeted a prominent man of the community with a too-knowing look, let alone an impulsive glare of condemnation.
A few days after the Rushman visit, while I was still trying to map out the proper course of action for Abigail, I received this note:
My dear Miss Barrett,
I wish to discuss with you, privately and confidentially, a matter relating to the Macaulay School. Kindly visit me at my office, in the administration building at Stony Point—where we may be assured of privacy—at your convenience. Shall we say this Friday at eleven A.M.?
With thanks,
J. J. Albright
Such a request, from a member of the Macaulay Board, could not be ignored, even during school hours. So on Friday, I undertook the train ride from downtown Buffalo to the massive steel mill complex rising along Lake Erie at Stony Point, less than ten miles to the south.
Only a few years earlier, Walter Scranton had negotiated with Buffalo business leaders about moving his Lackawanna, Pennsylvania, steel mills to a new, better location on the shores of Lake Erie, close to the cheap electricity of Niagara and easily accessible to ore shipments from the Mesabi Range in Minnesota. Scranton had quickly found the local investors he needed: my board of trustees in action once again. One city we were, cut like a diamond, every facet a glittering reflection of the whole.
As one of the leaders of this new steel-mill consortium, John J. Albright had been responsible for organizing the purchase of the land, nearly fifteen hundred acres. He’d been able to buy it cheaply by misleading the owner into believing that he was looking for a flat piece of property on which to grow the millions of flowers needed for the Pan-American Exposition. Apparently Albright hadn’t actually lied about his intentions, he’d simply played on the seller’s assumptions. When the deal was complete (the legal documents prepared by John Milburn), it was hailed as brilliant. With the addition of something called a “timber crib breakwater” (carefully diagramed in the newspapers), Stony Point would have the best harbor on the Great Lakes. The steel complex would one day compete with the Carnegie works in Pittsburgh. Or so the newspapers proclaimed.
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