City of Light

by Lauren Belfer

  May I present Miss Louisa Barrett,” Tom said.

  Jovially Mr. Roosevelt bounced my hand in his. Was I thrilled to meet the vice president? Certainly I did not object. But my memories made me cynical toward politicians who were generally praised for their probity.

  We’d gathered beside Delaware Park Lake, a crowd of chosen ones bearing such family names as Rumsey, Cary, Love, Urban, Scatcherd, Coatsworth, and even Winspear, vying for position around the beacons of Roosevelt, his wife and daughter. We waited to board the lavishly embellished rowboats that would take us to watch the fireworks from the water. Alice Roosevelt charmed the gentlemen while the ladies surreptitiously studied her, hoping to learn her secret; I’d seen girls like her before, however, and “spoiled” was the only adjective that came to my mind. Above us the star clouds of the Milky Way shot across the heavens, bright and clear.

  “And this is my daughter, Grace.”

  Roosevelt leaned down to her. “I saw you in the Electrical Building today, hiding there behind the morning coats. Nothing escapes me! A fine thing in a girl, to show an interest in the future. Keep it up!” Boisterously he batted her shoulder in playful camaraderie, but Grace stepped back, looking more abashed than amused. Roosevelt straightened when we were joined by a gentleman whom I immediately recognized—slight, effete, with a curling gray mustache and the look of an evil spirit. My insides constricted and I forced myself to stand straighter to make up for the cringing feeling within me. “Eh, Gilder? A fine thing, for a girl to care about the future.”

  “Indeed, sir.” Richard Watson Gilder, editor of the Century magazine. Well, he certainly was a friend to power: first Cleveland, the Democrat; now Roosevelt, the Republican. Of course both men were reform-minded, and Gilder was nothing if not reform-minded.

  “Know these people, Gilder?” Roosevelt asked.

  “I’ve met Miss Barrett,” he said smoothly. Apart from Cleveland’s private secretary, who’d taken me home that night, Gilder was the only person who knew about my visit to a certain hotel suite a decade ago. At any moment he could use the knowledge he sheltered to destroy me. “We became acquainted during an earlier administration.”

  Roosevelt heard no sinister undertones. “Good. The big fella here is Tom Sinclair, head of the power station and a damn fine job he’s doing with it too. And this is his daughter, who’s training to be an electrical engineer.” Roosevelt pushed the brim of her hat over her eyes. He gazed around to see if he needed to make any more introductions, but for once the sycophants had provided a wide berth. So he asked Tom a complex question about the stepping-down process for alternating current (Grace listening with her hands around her father’s arm), and Gilder turned to me.

  “How very good to see you again,” he said quietly. He stood too close, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of stepping away. What a horrible little man he was! He must have arrived this afternoon, for I hadn’t noticed him among the group at the Electrical Building. Or maybe he’d been elsewhere garnering praise: He was being hailed far and wide for some banal inscriptions he’d written for various exposition pylons and entryways.

  “I’ve certainly enjoyed reading your inscriptions, Mr. Gilder.”

  He averted his eyes. “Ah, yes. Well, thank you. Very kind of you.” He adjusted his tie in false modesty. “My, my, it’s almost, what, ten years since we met, Miss Barrett?” Was he purposely trying to torture me, or was this simply his natural demeanor? “How well I recall it. When our esteemed former president Mr. Cleveland was between terms. A time of upheaval.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you are as lovely as I remember. More lovely, in fact. And you’ve come so far and accomplished so much. Many of my friends have enjoyed visits to your home—and they report back to me on your every activity! They sing your praises, but I reveal nothing!” He gave me a long, meaningful grin.

  Could it be that he was attempting to seduce me? Did he think that because I’d once been at the mercy of Grover Cleveland, I’d now be at the mercy of him? He leaned closer while I ran a string of cutting responses through my mind to have one at the ready before I remembered: I couldn’t possibly reject him. I could only add one mistake to another, one lie to another, caught in a circle of helplessness.

  “It’s a wonderful thing, when a beautiful woman brings intelligent men together.” Close to my ear, he spoke softly, yet in the tone of public exposition. “Indeed it is vital in this era of our nation’s expansion that we maintain the salons of intellectual rigor.” His breath was warm on my cheek. “I understand that at your salon for example, plans were made—”

  The vice president glanced our way. “To the boats!” he declared abruptly. He strutted off and inwardly I blessed him for his need to be always at the center of attention.

  Gilder rushed to take his position on Roosevelt’s left; after all, a vice president has only two sides, and in this case his wife had claimed the other.

  From our boat on the water, the exposition beside us was like an imaginary kingdom come to life, a city without shadows or substance, its reflections rippling on the surface of the lake. Rather than illuminate the buildings with arc lights that would reveal—well, solid buildings—the lighting designers had chosen to outline the structures with small incandescent bulbs, hundreds of thousands of them, creating the illusion of structures without walls. Compared to this, the fireworks were a magnificent anticlimax, bursting over us in forty-one glorious varieties (according to the program) and promptly forgotten. Afterward, the dignitaries piled into the carriages waiting to take them to a reception at the Buffalo Club, open to women on this night of nights. Being still in mourning, Tom would not attend the reception, and I opted not to as well, to avoid the lurking Gilder.

  On our walk home, in the press of the common crowd, we came upon my student Maddie Fronczyk and her brother, Peter. Maddie’s thick blonde braids were wrapped around her head and covered with a scarf. Peter was as handsome as ever, unassuming and appealing, with a wayward lock of hair falling across his forehead despite his continual efforts to push it back. He was escorting Maddie home, to the house opposite school where she boarded on the top floor, close to the watchful eyes of the two Macaulay teachers who lived on the lower floors.

  To my surprise, Tom invited all of us to his home for refreshments on the terrace. Peter hesitated, most likely uncertain whether it was appropriate for him to visit his employer socially, but Maddie, ever forthright, accepted for them both.

  With the staff out, Grace was in heaven, fancying herself in charge of the house. She found a lemon cake in the pantry and carefully instructed Maddie and me on where to find lemonade and the various glasses, plates, and silver that Mrs. Sheehan considered appropriate for use outside on the second-floor terrace.

  Maddie didn’t attempt to conceal her awe at the house. “How wonderful, to visit a robber baron en famille!” she whispered with delight as we climbed the stairs behind Grace. “I could manage to be happy here.”

  “Yes,” I agreed as we passed beneath the Tiffany window. “It would do.”

  “What are you two whispering about?” Grace demanded.

  “About you, of course!” Maddie said, pretending to chase her up the stairs.

  When we joined the men on the terrace, Tom had already poured whiskey for himself and Peter. He’d lit candles on the glass-and-wrought-iron tables beside each chair. He seemed comfortable in his role as host. Meanwhile in the broad, shifting shadows, Peter looked ill at ease and younger than his years, out of his element, like an eager boy given his first glass of spirits and furtively trying to learn the proper way to drink it.

  We sat down, and Grace served the cake while we talked and laughed about nothing of importance. How I liked Maddie. She was bright, confident and without conceit. Unlike most of my students, she neither feared nor worshipped me. Yet soon I would lose her. Next month she would graduate, and in the autumn she would enter Cornell University on scholarship. I projected a sea of possibilities onto her
: Perhaps she would become a doctor, a scientist, an attorney … no matter what, a leader among women. I hoped she would feel that I had prepared her well.

  Peter slowly relaxed while Tom told amusing stories about some of the power station’s more eccentric employees. There on the terrace, an observer might have concluded that we were equals, one and all. But the sense of equality was nothing but a trick of the candlelight.

  Gradually we fell into a comfortable silence. Tom stared toward the exposition, at the Electric Tower that looked like a transparent net of light. Grace stretched out on the chaise where I had lain in the afternoon. In the quiet, the warm calm of the evening swept around me—the soft breeze shifting, the sweet scents percolating as if from a thousand roses, the crickets calling, the high vault of trees protecting. Yet as the minutes passed, we seemed to wait with an increasingly unnatural patience—for Tom, as if he were the center around which we moved, the person for whose benefit we spoke even when we were speaking to one another. Oblivious to our waiting, absorbed by the view, he slowly sipped his whiskey. The murmurings of the French fountain in the garden seemed louder in the stillness.

  Finally Tom turned to us. “Before electricity, we would’ve had to close the exposition at sundown. Gives us a bit of a chance to serve the public, eh, Peter?” he asked wryly.

  “I hope we always serve the public, sir,” Peter replied.

  “Yes, let us flatter ourselves with the conviction that we do.” Tom stretched his legs before him. “Well then, Peter, what are the men saying about poor Fitzhugh?”

  Peter looked a bit shaken by the question. “What do you mean, sir?”

  “No talk about supernatural forces pulling him into the water? The same supernatural forces that might have had a hand in the death of Mr. Speyer?”

  “I read about those supernatural forces in some of the newspapers,” Peter admitted. “Along with curses, hexes, all kinds of nonsense—right there in the newspaper,” he added indignantly.

  “Yes, I read all that nonsense too,” Tom said. “The point is, did anyone believe it? Any of the men, I mean. Anybody thinking God is no longer on our side, as it were? That we’re holding court with the devil?”

  “No, sir. I can assure you on that.”

  “And no one’s thinking Fitzhugh might have walked into the water on purpose? Because of some … upset about his work?”

  “No, sir. Not at all.” The idea of suicide seemed to shock Peter. “We all knew Mr. Fitzhugh. He was always coming around to check on everything. Always asking questions. Not to criticize—just for the love of it. He never would have …” Peter couldn’t say the words he never would have walked into the rapids on purpose.

  “Good,” Tom said with finality. Abruptly he changed the subject. “Well, if I’m not mistaken you’ve nearly completed your apprenticeship. Soon we’ll be congratulating you on becoming a full-fledged operator.”

  “Yes. Thank you.” Even in the candlelight, I could see that Peter blushed.

  “Any regrets on leaving your friends behind?”

  “Friends?”

  Tom sat up. “If we may call them friends. How about ‘colleagues’? That sounds better, doesn’t it? From the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.”

  The stillness grew deeper around us. Nothing seemed to move. I could hear Peter’s breathing as he tried to determine the best way to answer. He might have been on trial for the crime of association—was that a crime? As the silence lengthened, I remembered Frederick Krakauer, in the train returning from Stony Point, attempting to convict Tom of a similar crime.

  Finally Peter stammered, “I … well …”

  Benignly Tom said, “Let us assume that you have left them behind. They’re a reckless group, if I’ve ever seen one. You don’t seem reckless. When I heard they were debating whether to secret away a stash of dynamite, stick by stick—”

  “How did you—” Peter began, then abruptly stopped.

  Tom let the silence drag on, as if silence itself were a technique of interrogation. Then quietly he said, “How can I conduct a business if I don’t know what’s going on? If I don’t know what my workers are thinking and plotting and planning?”

  Maddie, beside me, gripped the armrests of her chair. I sensed that somehow her brother’s future was at stake. I realized I was now seeing the subtle mastery Tom possessed, the power as pure and unalloyed as Mr. Rumsey’s. How could I ever have allowed myself to be lulled into thinking he was a man with a clear conscience, or incapable of doing harm to further his own interests?

  Tom leaned forward. “I need to protect them from foolishness and stupidity. From doing things they’d regret later. Can’t be a good father without knowing what the kids are up to—that’s what my dad used to say. Got to make sure they don’t get into trouble with the law. Can’t allow them to blow up their own jobs, if you see what I mean.”

  Although Peter said nothing, I did see what Tom meant: He alone was keeping back the union-smashing forces Frederick Krakauer’s employers would be only too glad to release.

  At last, with surprising boldness, Peter spoke up: “The union men are still my friends, but I don’t regret training to become an operator. I think I know what’s best for myself and my family.”

  Tom leaned back, looking pleased. He took a sip of whiskey. “We may have something in common, you and I.” There was a gentleness in his voice, like a father speaking to a beloved son. They were like father and son: They shared the same height, the same coloring, the same occasional shyness. But with this difference: Peter, terribly handsome, was still a boy, lanky, not fully grown into his body, his features smooth and innocent. Tom was strong and at ease with his strength, his features handsome but worn at the edges: a man poised at full maturity, old age still beyond imagining.

  “When I was young,” Tom continued, “I was lucky enough to be helped along my way by a man who took satisfaction in helping others.” Tom could only have been referring to Albright. “In response to my gratitude, he said only that he was one who’d gained the most.”

  Now I warmed to Tom, sentimentalism be damned. How could I know that he was drawing Peter in—like a fisherman playing the line.

  “I try to give opportunities to those who’ve worked hard and made sacrifices for what we’re all trying to achieve.”

  Peter said nothing, risked nothing.

  “I remember your dad. A fine man, he was. When a family’s given so much …” His words drifted off. But what exactly was Tom offering Peter—and in return for what? Just when I thought he might come to the point, Tom put his glass on the table beside his chair and got up. “Well, look at that girl, will you? Asleep in her party clothes.”

  And indeed she was, her arm spread across the pillow of the chaise.

  “Louisa, would you help me get Grace into bed?”

  Looking eager to escape, Maddie rose. “Peter and I had better be going. Thank you, Mr. Sinclair, for—”

  “No, thank you. Grace and I have been too isolated these last months. It’s good to have company.”

  He walked to the chaise and stood beside it, his suit jacket pushed back by his hands on his hips, while he considered the best way to lift Grace and carry her upstairs without waking her.

  “Peter,” he said, still looking at Grace, “would you and Miss Fronczyk mind staying a few minutes to walk Miss Barrett home, since you’re going in that direction? The staff may still be out, and of course I can’t leave Grace alone.”

  “That’s quite all right,” I said. “I can walk myself home.” I hoped I sounded cheery. I didn’t want to go home, at least not yet. I wanted to stay here, I needed to stay here. To learn if Grace’s supposition about her father’s intentions could possibly be correct. Suddenly, unexpectedly, I felt desperate to belong; desperate to find a safe haven where I could finally rest after my years of concealment and maneuvering. God help me, but in my own weariness I was thinking of attaching myself to a man who perhaps condoned murder or may have committed murder hi
mself. “I’ve walked these streets many times, day and night.”

  Deferentially he said, “I’m sure you have, Louisa. But please, allow me my sense of responsibility. I can’t let you walk home alone with so many dangers lurking about.”

  I wasn’t accustomed to people looking after me, and now I discovered I didn’t entirely like it, in spite of my yearning for shelter. I wondered: Who was I, in his eyes? A forthright schoolmarm the equal of any man, or as much a lady as Margaret, respected for her virtue and in need of masculine protection? “Come now. What dangers?”

  Gently he said, “I simply prefer not to take the risk.”

  CHAPTER XX

  I checked the statistics: We’re lucky if three percent survive to their first birthday,” Francesca whispered so that the skulking nurses wouldn’t overhear. “So ninety-seven die, for every hundred who come in.”

  Francesca and I walked slowly through the Infants’ Ward of the Orphan Asylum. A Gothic edifice, the orphanage was at least forty years old, with long windows and open wards. The quatrefoil ceilings were shadowy and cavernous above us. Our footsteps echoed. A heavy rain beat against the windowpanes, and the air around us was clammy and dense, as if all the oxygen had been used up. Rusting in neglect, metal cribs stretched down the ward; infants lay swaddled within them, sometimes three or four to a crib. The babies were pinch-faced, their skin drawn tight across their skulls from dehydration. Their cheeks were pimply and peeling. Here and there between the cribs, stolid women dressed in black sat on stools and held an infant to suck at each breast. Was this really where the judgment of the Lord was passed upon us? Was this really the Lord’s design, to punish the innocent for the sin of their making? How was it, that people managed to twist God’s teachings to justify whatever they pleased?

  “I corresponded with the director of the Infants Hospital in New York City,” Francesca said. Her words sounded hollow against the tiles. “He wrote back that Italian women make the best wet nurses. So I managed to dismiss the old wet nurses, who were all Russian—why, I don’t know—and utterly worn out anyway, and I brought in these women, but even they—well, how do you keep up with the demand?” She glanced at a woman who was struggling to burp one baby while the other still cried for food. The smell of unchanged diapers made me gag. Two orderlies tried to manage the diapers, and they appeared to treat the babies gently, but obviously it was an endless, unwinnable process.