City of Light

by Lauren Belfer

  Standing, pressing her knitting against her waist, she curtseyed and blushed. “Thank you, Mr. Hubbard.” There was a hint of a Scottish accent in her voice.

  “A fine job you’re doing. We’re most appreciative.”

  “Thank you, sir.” She curtseyed again.

  “Good day to you, then.”

  “And good day to you, sir.”

  Elbert turned and walked to the door on the far side of the landing. I had resolved to keep my attitude completely businesslike, and now I steeled myself to the task at hand. Before opening the door, Elbert whispered, “You should know that Mère Rushman has graced us with her presence. That fine woman told me in confidence that the infant should be dropped off at a church door somewhere far away, so that five or ten years hence his features will not be recognized in town and cause Maria Love to ponder a resemblance—a resemblance to whom, Mrs. Rushman did not reveal.”

  When Elbert opened the door, the first thing I noticed were the leaf shadows that danced upon the walls. The stained glass in the transoms showed a scene of white lilies against green fields. The chairs, the table, the bookcase, the bed and cradle beside it—all were handmade of solid, plain-finished oak. A peacock with a sweeping tail, in tooled leather, decorated the back of a hand mirror. I might have stepped into medieval England.

  “I’m so pleased you’re feeling better,” Elbert said sympathetically, patting Abigail’s arm as she lay in bed propped up by pillows. Embroidered blue herons walked up the hem of the pillowcases. Abigail held a Roycroft book, her thumb marking her place. The binding was a brown leather tooled into the image of an angel. The Last Ride, by Robert Browning. “As soon as you’re out of this nagging ‘fever’ we’re going to put you to work illustrating a manuscript—your apprenticeship is over!”

  She smiled at him dreamily, under his spell like everyone else. Her long hair was spread around her, reddish-blonde. “Miss Barrett, there are some of my watercolors on the table, just practices, but …”

  I went to look. The paintings were lovely: flowering vines, gentle reeds, frolicking birds meant to decorate the margins of a typeset page. She’d also done dozens of initials, capital letters turned into miniature works of art.

  “They’re lovely, Abigail. Truly. I’m proud of you.” She gave me the same dreamy smile she’d given Elbert.

  I turned to the cradle. The sleeping baby looked strong and plump for a newborn. He had some fuzzy blonde hair—nearly white—as though he were Scandinavian.

  “Abigail,” I said gently, pulling a chair beside the bed, “Mr. Hubbard tells me the nurse would be happy to take your baby. She seems like a lovely woman. Perhaps we should consider—”

  “Isn’t there a family in town?” She sat up, all at once beset by anger and worry. “I thought there was a family in town.”

  “Yes, there is. But perhaps—”

  “I want the family in town. I told that to Mother—I told that to you, Miss Barrett,” she added, her voice sounding strangled, as if I had betrayed her.

  “You told me you wanted him to go to any family that could love him.” I maintained my gentle tone. “If he’s with the nurse and her husband—”

  “I thought you knew what I meant! I don’t want him to grow up to be a farmworker! I want him to grow up in the city and have a chance to become a lawyer or a doctor or the president of the United States.”

  The innocence of her hopes made me shiver.

  “I want his new mother to be a graduate of the Macaulay School! I want him to go to the Nichols School and to college—an Ivy League college—I want him to become a millionaire!”

  “Mmm,” Elbert sighed. His impatience with just such sentiments had caused him to give up his position in business and come here to establish a community of artisans. Of course he’d already made his fortune by then, so the degrees of hypocrisy in his reasoning were difficult to sort out. “We must look to the person, my dear, not to the financial backing, nor to the academic degrees, which in the end don’t mean much—begging the forgiveness of our highly educated Miss Barrett.” He nodded at me graciously.

  Abigail was not deterred. “I don’t care what you think. That’s what I want for him, and I won’t let anybody tell me no!” She hit her fist against the quilt, her face scrunching up like a three-year-old’s on the verge of a tantrum.

  Well, Dr. Perlmutter had found a fine family in town. The baby was healthy, his skin pale, so the fine family would presumably have no objections. “And if he’s in town,” Abigail continued, turning wistful, “there’s a chance that I would see him now and then, isn’t there?” She gazed at me with wide-eyed wonderment. “I mean, I wouldn’t know him at first, but how many babies could there be, that were his exact age? After a while, I would figure out who he was, don’t you think? And even if I didn’t, after a while I could persuade Dr. Perlmutter to tell me, if I promised never, ever to tell him—” She glanced at the cradle. “Then I could always make sure he was all right, without ever letting him know who I was. But if anything happened, I would be there to look after him. To back him up, if he ever needed anything. I’ll get a job, if I have to. I’ll think of something I can do. Then I’ll have enough money to help him, if he ever needs anything. I’ll always be there for him.” With a contented smile, she leaned back against the pillows, which puffed up around her.

  She was utterly confident, as only the young can be. The absolute assurance in her face made me look away, tears smarting my eyes.

  That evening, using the ruse of illness, I called on Dr. Perlmutter in his spacious examining rooms and told him about my visit to Abigail.

  “You see the good we’re doing here, Louisa?” he said with satisfaction, sticking his thumbs in the armholes of his vest. Although we were no more than acquaintances, he always called me “Louisa,” no doubt assuming that the right to do so came with the Hippocratic oath. He was a large man, with florid cheeks and a big belly imprisoned by a tight vest. His office and examining rooms, on the ground floor of his comfortable home on Franklin Street, reflected a complacent ease. Someone who didn’t know any better might look at him and his rooms and conclude from their serene, self-assured equanimity that he’d never lost a woman in childbirth, when in fact he had: Margaret, and so many of my graduates, dead from giving birth, regardless of which doctor attended them. Not the doctors’ fault, of course, but my anger at the losses had nowhere else to go.

  “Arranging adoptions always pleases me. Everyone benefits,” he continued. “Now then, the family is eager to proceed. We should make the transfer soon. The grandmothers-to-be are already wondering why their grandchild is running late and what I intend to do about it!”

  Having no emotional involvement, he could afford to be flippant.

  “How often do you do this, Doctor?”

  “Not frequently, Louisa, but not infrequently. How’s that for an answer that tells you nothing!” He laughed pleasurably.

  The good doctor and I made a plan: In one week, on August 6, I would go out to East Aurora again in a hired brougham driven by a hired man whom the doctor had reason to trust. I would bring the baby (soothed by a dash of brandy) to Dr. Perlmutter’s home, where he would examine the infant. “Merely cursory,” he confided. “With such good parentage—a Macaulay girl, after all, and a gentleman of society, as you say—I don’t foresee any problems.” Apparently the doctor, like so many do-gooders, viewed poverty as a genetic vice.

  At any rate, after nightfall, with the baby asleep and ingeniously hidden under the voluminous coat Dr. Perlmutter was renowned for wearing in both summer and winter, the doctor would enter his ostentatious carriage—christened the “delivery coach” and designed especially to garner attention—and take the baby to the waiting parents. He would spend a good amount of time in the bedroom so the servants wouldn’t talk, give the infant a hearty slap on the bottom at the appropriate moment to induce crying, and call in the nervous, waiting husband to witness the miracle: a son. Perlmutter would complete his night’s endeavors
with a hearty meal in the kitchen, and just after dawn, looking weary but pleased, he would depart the family home. If any neighbors happened to wander by, they would have it straight from the doctor that both mother and child were doing well, the mother a bit tired but blissfully happy, thank you very much.

  There were no documents to be prepared, no papers to be signed. The arrangement was neither legal nor illegal. In a sense, it didn’t even exist: Everyone participating would pretend it had never happened. The adoptive family had to trust Dr. Perlmutter’s word that the baby was healthy and of good background. The only protection the family would have from Abigail attempting to reclaim her child was the absolute social rejection she would face if she did so.

  We wrote the necessary notes, Dr. Perlmutter to the adoptive family, myself to Elbert and the Rushmans. The doctor wanted to wait a week because he believed the baby would do better during the long carriage journey if he were given a bit more time with his original nurse.

  We felt no reason to hurry. The plan seemed clear and acceptable on all sides. All the parties agreed to it, or so we believed—although of course it was Abigail who had agreed, and the adoptive parents who had agreed, and the doctor and I who had agreed.

  Mrs. Rushman had not agreed and felt no compunction to share her view with any of us.

  One week. Not a long time, though time turns long or short depending on what fills it. I worried about the baby—irrationally, I tried to tell myself. Elbert sent me a note saying he was going to Cleveland and Detroit to deliver lectures, but to rest assured—all was well.

  Anyway, what could happen in a week? One day Grace and I cruised on Mr. Rumsey’s yacht with his family and friends; we went to Falconwood, a private club on Grand Island in the Niagara River, where we picnicked along the water, liveried servants spreading blankets and unpacking baskets. Another day I took Millicent Talbert to lunch at the Twentieth Century Club. That very week, a Negro was lynched in Elkins, West Virginia, and another in Port Royal, South Carolina. Mary Talbert was spearheading a protest campaign, and I could only imagine the anger and despair she must be suffering. I felt terribly protective of Millicent. We sat on the screened piazza overlooking the fountain gardens—seemingly far from the battles of the nation outside. Although she was quieter and more reflective than before, she seemed very much like herself.

  Day upon day I woke to a cool breeze prompting me to pull the sheet over my shoulders. And then the week was over, and the time had come to set our plan in motion.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Rushman,” I said, meeting her on the path leading to the Hubbard home. She was coming out as I was going in. “A lovely day for a journey.” The sky was deep blue, the air crisp, more like spring than summer. There’d been rain in the early morning, and now the sun sparkled over the wet lawns.

  “Your intervention is no longer needed, Miss Barrett.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Two days ago I took the creature to the Infant Asylum in town. Or rather, I dropped it off in the dark at the door.” She gave a self-satisfied smirk. “Took it when Abigail was asleep. She didn’t even know! Luckily your friend Mr. Hubbard was away giving lectures, so he couldn’t interfere. Abigail was beside herself when she found out. She keeps ordering me to go to the asylum to find the creature! Hysterical, that’s what she is. But she’ll come around, sooner or later. What choice does she have, eh?” Mrs. Rushman made a little laugh. “We fed the creature a good dose of brandy to keep it quiet on the trip. I pinned a note to its blanket, saying it was Polish. I even wrote the note on the bottom margin of some Polish newspaper Fritz found. That should throw them off the trail!”

  “But the Infant Asylum—how could you!”

  “That’s what it’s there for.”

  “Why wasn’t I informed of your plan in advance?”

  “Why should you be? You’re not a party to this.”

  “But you asked for my help!”

  “You protected Abigail very nicely, I’ll grant you that. But I don’t believe in this business of adoption. You probably think I’m cruel, Miss Barrett, but when you’re not the one involved, it’s easy to think you’re better than everyone else. I’m telling you, we can’t have some little urchin wandering around the drawing rooms who looks like Abigail—she’ll be disgraced. And what if the creature turns up in twenty years and wants money from us? Or tries to blackmail us? I won’t allow it.”

  “But the child will die at the Infant Asylum.”

  “That is in the Lord’s hands,” she responded with determined sincerity.

  “But I found a good family!” I called uselessly as she mounted her carriage. Her driver wore formal regalia.

  “Good day to you, Miss Barrett,” she said as she closed the carriage door. She stressed the “Miss” as if it were a badge of my inferiority; a scarlet letter that I wore.

  “A baby boy,” Francesca was explaining to Chief Nurse Clarkson. The Infants’ Ward felt dank. Because I’d had no choice, I’d confided Abigail’s misery to Francesca, who’d immediately become practical and forthright, bringing us here. “We’ve come to find a baby boy. Dropped off the day before yesterday. By mistake. His mother wants him back. Her family was misinformed, to bring him here. My friend has seen the baby and will make the identification.”

  Chief Nurse Clarkson, in her well-starched, well-pressed uniform, wanted to help. She was a gray-haired, thick-waisted woman, but quick-footed. She wore an unpretentious gold cross around her neck. Fetching her record book from her alcove office at the end of the ward, she found the proper page. Six infant boys had been dropped off the day before yesterday, she reported.

  “This one was left on the doorstep, at night,” Francesca said.

  Four of the six had been left on the doorstep at night.

  “Where are the four?”

  “Well, well, two have died already, Miss Coatsworth. You see this mark in my book? The check mark?” She showed us her carefully prepared records, her printing small and precise. “That means the little varmint died. It’s the will of the Lord.” Her accent was Scottish, like that of Mrs. Houghton, the wet nurse at Elbert’s, although Mrs. Houghton’s accent was mellifluous and this woman’s was as starched as her uniform.

  “Where are the other two?”

  “Well, well, let me see, I need to check the numbers on the cribs, it’s a complicated system.”

  She walked down the ward, comparing her records with the numbers on the cribs. But the babies were taken in and out of the cribs to be fed and changed. Who could tell if they were always put back in the proper place? I glanced at Francesca.

  “Nurse Clarkson,” Francesca said, catching up with her, “shouldn’t these babies have identification tags on their wrists or ankles?”

  “Forgive me for saying so, miss, but that would never work. For sure it would kill them. Rubbing the tags into their mouths and choking, rubbing them against their legs, getting cuts and infections.”

  “Ah. I see.”

  Nurse Clarkson nodded in affirmation. She continued to walk down the ward conducting her mathematical reckoning. I wandered away from her, studying the babies, searching for the one I had seen just a week before swaddled in hand-loomed blankets, rocked in an oaken crib. The stench; the pitiful, mewling whimpers; the sheen of incipient death—all these I tried to ignore in my search.

  Swiftly Nurse Clarkson was before me. “You are certainly free to look for this baby too, ma’am,” she said tightly, her voice indicating the opposite. “Look all you like.” She gestured widely. “We are always open to inspection, whether Miss Coatsworth is here or not. Nothing is hidden. We are not ashamed of the work we do.”

  Francesca joined us. “We don’t ask for your shame, Nurse Clarkson,” she said pointedly. “We ask only for the baby.”

  Nurse Clarkson glanced at her guardedly before turning away to continue her tour of the cribs, leaving Francesca and me to search together.

  Each baby was more pitiful than the last. By the window there wa
s a wet nurse, holding an infant at each breast. The woman appeared as scrawny as the babies. I hesitated to examine too closely, but Francesca had no such compunction and walked right over to the woman, speaking to her in Italian, only to learn that both infants were girls.

  “Oh, Miss Coatsworth, here’s a boy who came in the day before yesterday,” Nurse Clarkson called, excitement transforming her face. “I knew we’d find one.” We hurried to her side.

  The boy was strong and crying robustly. But he had dark hair.

  “The child we want is Scandinavian-looking,” Francesca said.

  “Everyone says they’re here for a Scandinavian-type baby,” Nurse Clarkson observed with brisk condescension.

  Unruffled, Francesca said, “There may have been an indication on his blankets that his family was Polish.”

  “Polish,” Nurse Clarkson repeated flatly.

  After a moment’s pause, Francesca and I left her and resumed our own search. Suddenly Francesca gripped my arm.

  “Here’s one,” she whispered.

  I looked closely. It could be. The child was listless but blonde. Very blonde. It lay on its back beside three other infants.

  “Nurse Clarkson?” Francesca called. When she joined us, Francesca pointed to the blonde baby.

  “Oh, that one. That one came in, let me see”—she flipped through her record book—“he’s been here awhile. Number 3/247—that one came in two weeks ago. Poor dear, he’s not looking as good as he did when he first arrived. That happens. They just waste away. He’s not the one you want, I’m afraid.” She moved on.

  Could Abigail’s baby actually be dead after only two days? Surely God could not allow such a thing to happen; not after what Abigail had suffered already. I had to find a way to help her. Maybe we should just choose a baby….

  “Louisa,” Francesca whispered, holding my shoulder, stepping close to me. Her closeness, our closeness, the way our thoughts converged: These were my only comfort. “Why don’t we just choose one. Save one. That blonde one—it’s scrawny, but let’s take it.”