City of Light

by Lauren Belfer

  That day I realized Tom and I would never marry. Not because of the machinations of others, but because Grace would be always between us. Indeed she had always been between us. Tom and I had always known one another through Margaret and later through Grace; to one another we had been simply necessary adjuncts to the people we truly loved. Nonetheless I felt connected to him, because of all we had shared and the memories we had in common; I trusted we would remain friends.

  Within a week, Tom closed the house, paid the staff for a month, arranged for a caretaker, and left the city. He wasn’t ready yet actually to sell the house. He spoke briefly of giving it to Macaulay, so the tennis court could become the school’s and the formal garden turned into a place for girls to play field hockey. He smiled a bit at the thought of a troop of girls playing field hockey across his lawns, but held off making a final decision. In the meantime, he took very little with him. He was accustomed to moving from one place to the next, he explained. He gave me the keys so I could sort through Grace’s things, which we would donate to the Fitch Crèche, and then he went to hide himself in the West. He had his cause, and gradually it seemed to sweep him up in its embrace, allowing him some respite, at least, from the anguish he suffered each day. Yes, he continued to blame himself. Years have gone by and have not relieved Tom of the burden of blaming himself.

  I was luckier. I hadn’t been on Goat Island that day. I couldn’t hold myself immediately responsible for her well-being at the picnic. Nevertheless, night after night I imagined her death, the image of it twisting through my mind, my imagination supplying every detail. I never realized how fervent my imagination could be, until it filled in the feel of the wind and the warmth of the sun and the whiteness of her skin, as a doctor (who happened to be on a visit to the Falls) tried to resuscitate her on the shore. Soon I found as much blame to put upon myself as Tom did: I should have gone with her to the Falls that day, even though I hadn’t been invited and my presence would have been inappropriate. I should have disciplined her more strongly from the time she was little. I should have, I should have … Every day of her life played over in my mind as I searched for ways I might have saved her. But then again, she’d always been heedless, boundless, rushing from one place and one thought to the next. Tom and Margaret were reluctant to curb her, offering only love to restrain her. And my love for her, well, it was different from the love I gave my students. For them I held the firm stance, the rational evaluation, the commitment to make them sit still and listen. With Grace I could never muster such resolve.

  Over the years I have come to believe that there was a certain inevitability about what happened to her. Her being created her death. Because of the way she was, she died the way she did. Accident followed character—the character which put her on the rocks to begin with. Accident followed society—the watching mothers who were afraid to offend the daughter of their husbands’ employer. And it also followed medical knowledge, which was so limited that a woman who suffered a miscarriage had a good chance of dying from it, and eventually her death destroyed the child she left behind. If Margaret had been at that party, Grace might have splashed in the water, but she never would have been allowed to spin on the rocks. But of course she would have had no need to spin on the rocks, for she did that only to create a fleeting vision of the woman she missed so much….

  Such were the thoughts which coiled ceaselessly through my mind, leading always back to myself. What if I hadn’t given her to Margaret and Tom? What if I’d stayed with her in New York City among the faceless masses? Would we have done better, perhaps, living in a room attached to a schoolhouse on a prairie in Kansas, where I would call myself a widow? Or somewhere in the South, where I could have taught the children of freed slaves? Would we have done better alone together in Chicago or San Francisco or in any city wild enough and new enough that the only thing that mattered was what you could do in the here and now, not what you’d been or done in the past?

  But of course I hadn’t made that decision. I’d done what had seemed best at the time—best for Grace, for the tiny infant that she was, helpless and vulnerable. Eventually I accepted that I was right to give her to Margaret and Tom; or at least I became reconciled to the fact that she’d had a good life in their care. Perhaps the problem was that the circumstances of her life were too easy. The horse, the art studio, her every desire met. If she’d had to work in a factory, as many girls did at her age—a textile factory, say, in the Carolinas—would she have had time to spin in circles to re-create her lost mother?

  What is the measure of a child? Why does one survive and another not? What is the measure of a mother? How have I endured these years? I don’t know. But my nature has always been to keep going, to work on from day to day. Grace’s nature was riskier than mine. And so each morning the sunrise surprises me—that I am still here to see it, when Grace is not. On my bedroom windowsill I keep the spyglass she left behind. Every now and again I pick it up, as if by holding it I could hold her, as if by looking through it I could find, there in the distance, a note she’d placed for me upon her window.

  In the immediate aftermath of Grace’s death, I, like Tom, had my cause to keep me moving forward. Apart from the funeral, I couldn’t take time off from school. Godmothers didn’t need to take time off, to go into retreat, to let mourning consume them. It was just as well that I was busy all day. Grace could fill my mind only at night, when I tried to fall asleep, or in the middle of the night, when suddenly I woke and remembered she was gone, or in the early morning, when the time came to rise. Each day I made myself get out of bed, get dressed, brew tea, and drink it because teachers, staff, and students were waiting for me, depending on me, asking me questions from eight A.M. until six P.M., awaiting the decisions I made for them—one decision after another, all through the day, pushing Grace’s face, her words, her being, out of my mind.

  Even my friends couldn’t help me. Francesca visited, but I couldn’t confide to her the level of my grief. I never wanted to hear her say, “She was only your goddaughter, you’ve got to get over it.” Concealing the truth from Francesca became irrelevant, however, because within a few weeks she was gone: She’d managed to get Susannah released from the hospital and together they were on their way to Angkor Wat, the two of them transformed into female explorers attired in khaki skirts and followed by a line of bearers.

  Franklin came to see me, and he too was unaware of my shattering grief. As usual he arrived in time for tea, which we had in my study because of the early autumn chill.

  “I’m sorry about your goddaughter.”

  “Thank you.” I kept my hands folded in my lap. I had begun doing that lately, so I could squeeze my hands together tightly, painfully, if ever I needed to stop myself from crying.

  “She was always wild, though,” he observed. He shook his head in sadness.

  “Yes.”

  “I mean, at least she seemed to me—” He stared at me with perplexity, obviously trying to gauge my reaction, but I steeled myself to remain impassive—impassivity was now the mask I wore each day. “I meant no offense to her memory.”

  “Of course not, Franklin,” I said generously. “You’re right, she was wild. Sometimes. Now then,” I said, clapping my hands together and briskly changing the subject, “what have you been doing?”

  He sighed in apparent relief that our required commemoration of Grace was complete. “Well, frankly, I’ve been annoyed. I’d thought this would be the ideal time to publish all my revelations about Niagara, especially what with Sinclair forced out, but lo and behold the death of McKinley has rendered irrelevant all other news from the Niagara Frontier. There isn’t any more space in people’s minds right now, my editors inform me, for stories that include the dateline ‘Buffalo.’”

  I paused to take this in. I was finding it slow going lately, to comprehend even the simplest explanations. “So what will you do?”

  “Bide my time, I suppose. See if anything else strikes my fancy. Ingratiate myself with t
he new operators out at the power station, in case they have anything useful”—he raised his eyebrows meaningfully—“to offer me later on. Some of what I do depends on you.”

  “It does?” I asked, feigning surprise, though I wasn’t at all surprised that he’d brought the conversation around to this.

  “One of my cousins once told me that many girls make it a point of honor never to accept a man unless he’s proposed three times.”

  “I’m not a girl.” I smiled ruefully to hear the outrage in my voice, and I realized that most likely I would never marry. Not Franklin, not anyone. I didn’t think I’d ever have the strength to open my soul to anyone to the extent that marriage, to me at least, required.

  Smoothly Franklin shifted the conversation to some gossip he’d heard at a party, to the new topics he was considering for his next story (while not leaving Niagara behind for good, of course), and my interest waned. Soon I found I could barely register the words he said. Eventually he rose to leave, and I was grateful to be alone once more.

  The first Monday of October, just two weeks after her death, my salon resumed, as it always did. I couldn’t postpone, to do so would reveal a period of mourning unseemly for a mere godmother. But I was glad of the salon, in the end. So many came to show me support. How many of the board came pretending not to know the truth about Grace I couldn’t tell, but what did it matter? They were there for me. Mr. Rumsey arrived early and stayed to the end, as did Franklin, who engaged Mr. Rumsey in passionate conversation about, of all things, the Rumsey herd. In November, the exposition land would be bulldozed and sold to developers to create upper middle class housing. Would those famed cattle never return to western New York for him to admire? Franklin wondered. Mr. Rumsey regarded Franklin with bemusement and confessed that the herd would remain at the Rumsey ranch in Wyoming, where it had found refuge during the exposition. From the way Franklin kept glancing to find me—to know where I was in the room at each moment—I couldn’t help but think this conversation was staged for my benefit. Was he trying to prove to me how well he fit in? I already knew. Were Franklin and Mr. Rumsey in some sort of collusion about me? After the levels of collusion I’d previously experienced, I wouldn’t let myself be bothered by that. Nonetheless I appreciated Franklin’s concern. He looked terribly handsome, almost exotic, beside Mr. Rumsey, that paragon of ministerly rectitude. I could recognize Franklin’s attractiveness while still knowing I wouldn’t act on it.

  Elbert arrived, and after giving me a quick hug devoted himself to business matters with the other guests, making notes on his little pocket pad. Watching him, I smiled inwardly. Wherever he went, he was always, and unapologetically, himself. I’d invited the Talberts and they came, which flattered me considerably. The only notable absence was Mr. Milburn. The week before, his portrait at the Buffalo Club had been defaced (every past president of the club had his portrait displayed in those hallowed halls). This act of revenge for the exposition’s losses was not Mr. Rumsey’s style, but was most likely committed by younger men whose fortunes were less secure to begin with and were gone now. In early 1902, Milburn, rendered an outcast, would move to New York City.

  The autumn passed. School brought its usual rewards and frustrations. The holidays were soon upon me. Mr. Rumsey invited me to Christmas dinner with his extended family at Rumsey Park, which was kind of him, and I did appreciate the company on that always difficult day for spinsters. In the past I would have spent the day with Margaret, Grace, and Tom, or with Francesca.

  I used the school break between Christmas and New Year’s to sort through Grace’s things. The house was lonely with dust covers on the furniture. While I went through the closets and shelves brimming with her possessions, I felt a pang of guilt that I hadn’t done this before Christmas so the children at the Crèche could have these things as presents. But I consoled myself that they would enjoy them just as much at New Year’s. Some things I left at the house: her drawings of course; the infant clothes which Margaret had put aside in a special box to save; and her hats, which reminded me of the tilt and turn of her head. I took nothing home with me, for I couldn’t bear to be reminded of her any more than I already was.

  In January, Miss Love requested my presence for lunch at 184, just the two of us, as her way of thanking me for the donation to the Crèche. We talked about the after-school vocational program she was instituting for older children at the Crèche—“Get them started on the proper path while they’re still controllable!” she explained. We talked about the memorial to President McKinley that was being proposed for Niagara Square. We talked about a replacement for Francesca at the Infant Asylum (mercifully Miss Love did not ask me to fill the position, showing more sensitivity than I’d given her credit for). We talked about anything but Grace. To distract myself from my memories, I offered my slice of lemon cake to a yellow canary who was as fat as a powder puff. As I watched him eat, I thought how much Grace would have enjoyed the sight. I could almost feel her squeezing my hand in the pleasure of it, knowing we must not reveal any giggles or even smiles to Miss Love, who regarded the feeding of her canaries as nothing but their due.

  I kept myself close to home during the early winter, but ironically, as the February cold gripped the city and snow encased the ground, I felt ready to get out a bit. In that spirit, I accepted an invitation from Mary Talbert to visit the conservatory in Olmsted’s South Park, not far from the steel mill at Stony Point. At first I queried her about the destination of our excursion: a botanical garden in February? Yes, she insisted. We would go only on a sunny day, and I would be surprised. So on a sunny Saturday we took the train, hiring a carriage when we arrived at the Lackawanna station.

  Surrounded by snow, the conservatory seemed like an overgrown dollhouse, its arches and cupolas lending it an Anglo-Indian look, like a play-palace built for the daughter of a rajah. Inside, the conservatory was warm and humid. Walking through the central, domed pavilion with its palm trees, and on into the orchid collection, Mrs. Talbert asked me a simple question, as simple as something like “How are you?” or “You haven’t seemed yourself lately.” Without taking time to think or reason, I began to unburden myself to her. I told her everything: the night at the Iroquois Hotel, the birth of Grace in New York, my decision to give Grace to Tom and Margaret, the blame I placed upon myself for Grace’s death. I was prepared for her judgment, for her condemnation that I’d been so naive as to go with Gilder that night. But she offered only sympathy, revealed by a kind of density in her eyes which welcomed me toward her soul. “How strong you’ve always had to be,” she said. “Much stronger than me.” And I felt for her a kind of surge that I can only describe as love.

  Near the end of our visit, as we left the fern and hydrophyte house with its two-story waterfall, she turned to hold the door for me. A gaudily dressed young couple nearby nodded sagely to one another. I realized that Mary’s holding the door had answered a question for them. They had been taken aback to see a well-dressed Negro woman walking with a well-dressed Caucasian. Now they understood that Mary was my maid, and all was well with the world.

  Mary raised her eyebrows in good humor. “There you are, ma’am,” she said in an ersatz southern accent before letting the heavy door close directly in the couple’s faces. How we laughed afterward. Sitting beside her on the train ride home, I studied her profile, the golden skin, the rounded cheeks, the straight nose, the warm half-smile, and I felt—here is my friend, the friend I have yearned for since Margaret died—but even closer, because I have trusted her with everything important to me. I have confided all and found acceptance. A friend now, finally, to call my own.

  EPILOGUE

  Early September, 1909

  This year, Grace would be graduating from Macaulay. She would be seventeen, applying to college; Margaret would be making arrangements for her coming-out party. If only Margaret had lived, if only Grace had lived. I stand now by the lake in Delaware Park where Karl Speyer drowned. Looking across the water, I see the cemetery
hillside where Margaret and Grace are buried. Although I cannot actually see their graves, I do see them in my mind: the angel that marks Margaret, the child holding a water pitcher that marks Grace. So many hopes, brought to naught, commemorated only by stone.

  And yet, I reassure myself that I’ve been blessed in these past years by those who have lived, one after another fulfilling dreams I’d nurtured for them. Maddie Fronczyk is a physician who works with Dr. Alice Hamilton in Chicago in the new area of industrial medicine. I used Tom’s endowment to fund her medical education. Millicent Talbert is in training to be a pediatrician. During this past summer, she worked at a Negro settlement house in Richmond, Virginia. I feared for her safety in the South, but Mary tells me that Millicent doesn’t recognize personal risk; she seems to have overcome the fear of risk on that summer’s night eight years ago. Abigail Rushman has stayed on at East Aurora with the Roycrofters and is one of their most skilled book designers. I see her at the club now and again when she visits the city, though she never refers to the necessity that took her to East Aurora and greets me with no special acknowledgment of gratitude or memory. Which is how it should be. She is a professional now, confident in her path. She has not married.

  After several years in the Orient, Francesca returned to the city alone. Susannah, she told me, had confessed to her the murders of Speyer and Fitzhugh and then disappeared in Singapore. Francesca explained to those who asked that Susannah had died of an Asian fever—“so dreadful, those Asian fevers,” she said forthrightly at my salon. Despite Francesca’s homecoming, Mary Talbert has remained my closest friend, even as she travels widely for her work against discrimination and lynching.