by Amy Stewart
“I wrote the letter,” Fleurette called out, “because we simply must have May Ward at our camp. She puts on a light comedic act with patriotic songs, just like what you saw at the Plattsburg camp last year.”
“I remember it well,” Maude said. “But this”—here she glanced down at the letter she pulled from her pocket—“this May Ward wasn’t with you, was she?”
“No, she was making a moving picture just then, but now she finds herself able to return to the live stage. I know all the songs and I intend to train some of the girls to sing in the chorus. It’ll be every bit as good a program as the men had.” Her arguments, all so carefully crafted and rehearsed, gave Maude little room to argue.
“It’s up to the camp matron. What does Miss Kopp have to say about it?”
Constance wasn’t about to be responsible for refusing Fleurette her turn on the stage, even if it was only at a camp for girls. She’d be insufferable if she was denied this small pleasure.
“Mrs. Ward is known as a respectable actress,” Constance said. “I can’t imagine that any of the parents would object.”
“I’m not concerned about the parents,” Miss Miner said. “You’re the one who has to manage the entire production.”
“The girls deserve a little entertainment, after how hard I’m going to make them work,” Constance said. “I’ll reply to Mr. Bernstein myself.”
Fleurette frowned at the mention of hard work but raced back to her table to deliver the news.
19
“YOU DON’T EXPECT me to get up there and sing, do you?” Beulah said, when Fleurette came bouncing back to the table with news of May Ward’s concert.
“It’s only a few little lines of the chorus,” Fleurette said. “Anyone can do it.”
“I never had a talent for singing,” Beulah said.
“But you must’ve been taught music and dance,” Fleurette said. “Didn’t you go to a girl’s academy? Even I was sent to one in Paterson.”
“Oh, of course I went,” Beulah said, with the air of fatigue she’d been cultivating. Wealthy girls were always fatigued. “I was forever being carted off to Mrs. Dimwit’s or Miss Featherbrain’s, but I couldn’t be bothered to learn the steps. What good would it do me?”
“It might’ve won you a place in my chorus line,” Fleurette said, “but if you’re as terrible as you say, I’ll put you in charge of the footlights.”
“Couldn’t I sit in the audience and throw rose petals?” Beulah asked. It put her in a sweat just to think about standing up on a stage and having all eyes on her at once. Fleurette couldn’t possibly know it, but Beulah had a rather ruinous history with the stage. She couldn’t bear to return to the spotlight, here at camp.
Where have I seen that girl before? Every single camper would have time to think about it. One of them might just snap her fingers, stand up, and call out her name.
That’s Beulah Binford!
Beulah could just imagine a voice floating out from the dark. She’d heard it before. When she first moved to New York, people used to spot her on the street. One woman even ran up to her with a picture cut out of the newspaper. She’d obviously been carrying it around in her pocket for weeks.
“I heard you were in New York,” the woman hissed, shaking the picture at her. “I’ve been watching for you. They banned you from the stage, didn’t they? There’s nothing for you here. Go on back to Richmond.”
Fortunately, Mabel was walking with her that day, and came to her rescue. “She only looks like Beulah! Don’t hold her looks against her. Throw that picture in the trash where it belongs, and leave us alone.” Mabel had to rush Beulah down the street to get away from the growing crowd of spectators. They ducked into a hotel that was known to be generous with the sherry in the afternoons and sat in the lobby, taking curative sips until Beulah stopped trembling.
She would not be setting foot on a stage. Not now, not ever.
“What’s this lady’s name again?” Beulah asked when she realized Fleurette was still watching her.
“May Ward. She has a traveling act. It’s May Ward and Her Eight Dresden Dolls. Haven’t you’ve heard of her?”
“I used to see the posters in New York,” Beulah said. “Were you one of the Eight Dresden Dolls?”
“For a while,” Fleurette said. She looked around and saw that the mess hall was emptying. Beulah’s letter-paper was still blank in front of her.
“I thought you were going to write to your sister,” Fleurette said.
Beulah pushed the paper away. “I couldn’t think what to say.”
WHERE WAS CLAUDIA now? She didn’t last long with Luther Powers’s family, Beulah knew that. She was too restless for farm life, and unwilling to take orders from Mrs. Powers or to follow her ideas on child-rearing. She didn’t take to the rigors of farmhouse chores and found Luther to be dull company, seeing as how he was always coming in after dark, exhausted and filthy, good for nothing but a silent dinner and an early bed-time.
But she couldn’t get away by herself. She didn’t have a dime to her name, and she wasn’t about to go crawling back to Meemaw’s. There was no convincing Luther to leave his family’s farm. The boy didn’t know much, but he knew his duty.
Then luck arrived for Claudia in the unlikely form of her father-in-law’s demise. After Mr. Powers dropped to his knees in the field and proved immune to any effort to revive him, it became immediately clear that Luther could not carry the burden of running the farm on his own, nor could he afford to hire on laborers.
Beulah wasn’t there and didn’t know how many nights were spent arguing over it, but it must’ve been quite a few, because after a reasonable mourning period, the farm was sold. Mrs. Powers kept a parcel of land on the edge of the property closest to town for herself, and Luther built her a small cottage on it. Then he and Claudia moved to Washington, D.C., where Luther hired on at a steel factory.
Four years after that, Beulah had a baby of her own. Claudia had by then moved on from Washington and hadn’t left a forwarding address. Meemaw had a letter from her but refused to show it to Beulah. “Don’t go writing to her,” Meemaw said, as fiery and blunt as ever. “She’s gone off to a teacher’s college to make something of herself. That don’t concern you.”
Beulah was by then seventeen, the same age Claudia had been when she had her baby. She’d always imagined that Claudia would come back for her pregnancy, and would tell her what to do and help her through it. Where was Claudia, when Beulah most could’ve used a sister?
The baby belonged to Henry Clay Beattie. Of course it did. Beulah never went more than a month or two without sharing a bed with Henry Clay. A baby was bound to be the result, and she was glad of it. She wanted to give him one, after everything he’d given her.
She’d amassed a little collection of trinkets he’d bestowed upon her over the years. He had the endearing habit of turning up with some small girlish treasure: a tiny rose-colored perfume bottle with a glass stopper, a delicate gold lorgnette on a chain, a double-ended lip-stick in a silver case. They were obviously lifted from his sisters’ bureaus—imagine a life so filled with baubles that one could disappear and not be missed!—or, in the case of a pristine packet of silk stockings, taken right out of his father’s department store.
He would undress her first, and then, at the very moment of wildest anticipation, he would dangle the tiny gift before her eyes and take his own fulfillment from her, all at once. It delighted her to catch only a glimpse of some sparkle, and to feel it drop to her bare chest, cold and mysterious, at the very moment that their bodies came together. She felt so utterly swept away on those nights, lifted breathlessly above her circumstances and set to sail into some new life, where it was only her and Henry Clay, and all his riches and good looks to carry them along. She was someone else on those nights. She was his.
Of course she would marry him after the baby came, and live with him in a big white house with columns in the front and a porch that wrapped all the way around. She r
emembered how it went with Claudia. Once they see the baby—and in particular, once the man’s mama sees the baby—it will be understood that there is nothing to do but to make a marriage, and quickly.
But Henry Clay had different ideas about it. If there was one thing the promiscuous son of a well-to-do family knew, it was how to send a girl away when she got into trouble. His cousin told him of a place down in North Carolina where a girl could have her baby in private and leave it with the nurses to be placed with a good family.
Beulah had no intention of handing her baby over and didn’t think she needed to go any farther than Mayo Street to give birth, and told him so.
“May Stuart won’t care if I have a baby up in her room,” Beulah said, but Henry Clay was adamant about it.
“They have good nurses down there,” he said. “They’ll look after you, and you won’t have to worry about anybody around here gossiping about it.”
Beulah didn’t mind about the gossip. She had every intention of returning with their baby—it would be a boy, she felt sure of it—and presenting him to Henry Clay and his mama right there on the Beattie’s grand front porch. Anyone walking by would be able to see exactly what she was doing, and she wouldn’t mind at all.
But she allowed Henry Clay to put her on the train for North Carolina, if that’s what he wanted to do. Once they were married, she’d have to do whatever he wanted, all the time, and she wouldn’t mind that, either.
They didn’t say good-bye in Richmond. Henry Clay borrowed his father’s trap and drove her to another station, two towns away, where he hoped he wouldn’t be recognized. (Make sure you put the girl on the train yourself, that was the advice given to him by his cousin. Don’t hand her money for a ticket and expect her to go where you tell her.)
Following his cousin’s advice, Henry Clay bought the ticket, and kept it in his hand until it was time for her to get on board. Beulah carried her baby low and close, like Claudia had, so it wasn’t difficult to hide her condition under a high-waisted dress. For a little extra concealment, she wore a cape even though it was late in the spring. If any of the other passengers waiting on the platform suspected, they didn’t let on.
“I’ll see you back here in a few months,” she said as the train screeched into the little station, nothing but a barn roof over a rickety platform.
“You might find you like it down in Raleigh,” Henry Clay said, but not unkindly. He didn’t have it in him to be unkind. There was always an air of gentility about him, even to a girl like Beulah, and that’s what Beulah appreciated. He’d make a good husband to her. Of course he wanted to marry her, and only needed the baby as an excuse to do so. Why else would a man of his wealth be twenty-five and unmarried?
“I think I like it better here,” Beulah said. She gave what she hoped was a flirtatious smile, but with a baby crowding against her rib cage, she couldn’t tell anymore how she came across to men. It was distracting, trying to carry on a conversation with Henry Clay while his baby was kicking inside her.
Henry Clay looked over the top of her head, watching the platform. “Well, there’s your train,” he said, and picked up her trunk. The porter took it, along with a few coins from Henry Clay, and heeded his words about where the trunk and the girl were to be deposited.
Beulah never touched the train ticket. Henry Clay passed it directly into the conductor’s hand, and Beulah found herself whisked aboard, the ticket punched and tucked into the back of her seat, another crumpled bill pressed into her hand from an ever more guilty-looking Henry Clay, and then he was back on the platform, and the train was moving, and Beulah had nothing to do but to wait. To wait for the baby to come, to wait for her return to Richmond, to wait for Henry Clay’s mama to see what her boy had made, and to make the arrangements for the wedding. It didn’t seem at all daunting, only tedious. Such a great deal of waiting when they could’ve walked into any church and been married in an afternoon.
Sleep came easily to Beulah now that a baby was growing inside her. As soon as the train set to rocking back and forth out of the station, she put her head back and slept, and dreamt of Henry Clay’s son and the white house with the columns in front.
BUT SHE NEVER DID have a chance to present her baby to Henry Clay’s mother. The subject was hardly even discussed. When Beulah returned to Richmond with her boy, in August, about a month after he was born, her grandmother didn’t register any surprise at all over the fact that she didn’t leave him in Raleigh as she’d been told to.
“I hope you didn’t name him after his daddy” was all she said when Beulah appeared on her front porch.
“I did,” Beulah said. “I gave him the same whole name. Henry Clay Beattie Jr.”
“That better not be them Beatties that own Beattie’s department store,” Meemaw said.
“Of course it is. After we’re married, you can come around and see him anytime you want. Him, and all the other ones I’ll have.”
Meemaw chuckled a little at that. “If this is a Beattie like you say it is, you won’t be marrying him or having no more of his babies. I don’t mind going to have a word with that boy, but that’s all it’ll be.”
“But—why can’t you do like you did for Claudia? Don’t you think when his mama sees this boy she’ll want him? He’s the spitting image of Henry Clay. Couldn’t she use a grandson, to take over the running of their store someday?” Beulah had it all worked out in her head: how the boy would learn the family business from his daddy and his grand-daddy, and grow up in the merchant class, and wear a suit to work every day.
“Oh, honey, them Beatties don’t want nothing to do with a girl their son messed with down on Mayo Street. That’s not their way. Like I said, I’ll speak to the boy that did this to you, and we’ll find a place to put that baby.”
Little Henry Clay Jr. was sweet and warm, like a loaf of bread, and he had a fine head of dark hair like his daddy. But it hadn’t occurred to Beulah that she’d have to nurse him and hold him and look after him all day long, every day, after he was born. She always thought she’d have some help. She’d marry Henry Clay, and there would be a nurse to take the baby. Or Claudia would come home and invite Beulah to move in with her and Luther and whatever children they had. Or Meemaw—even Meemaw would help to raise a baby. She loved babies. Beulah had seen it when Claudia brought hers home, four years earlier.
But this was different. Maybe Meemaw knew better than to get mixed up with another baby that was only going away. She never helped with him, or held him for long, or called him by his name. She left Beulah to look after him all by herself. That was too much to manage.
There seemed to be three times as much washing to do. The kitchen smelled of boiled diapers morning and night, such that Beulah couldn’t bear to touch her food. She was tired and cross and couldn’t have a minute to herself, even on the toilet.
If the baby loved her, he showed no sign of it. He was hot and tearful and prone to rashes. He wanted nothing but her sore and bloodied breast, and would not accept a milk-soaked rag as a substitute, not even once. She cried when she fed him, and sometimes bit into her fist just to feel another kind of pain.
This could not go on. She begged Meemaw to go looking for Henry Clay like she promised to.
“Either you bring him here,” Beulah said, “or I will march this baby right over to his doorstep.” If the Clay family would not receive her, she was prepared to set that baby down on the porch and walk away. She’d already been dreaming of it, in those rare moments when the baby let her dream. She would hand him to a stranger, if it bought her a moment’s peace.
Meemaw looked at her doubtfully. “Don’t you want to wait until he’s weaned?”
“We can wean him tomorrow,” Beulah said. She hardly knew what that meant, only that if he was weaned, she could wrap her breasts in bandages and never let another human touch them. “Go get Henry Clay.”
“I’ll do it,” Meemaw said, “but you clean yourself up, and get the stink out of here, and chase out those fli
es.”
“Are you really going to bring him here?” Beulah asked, so relieved that her chin wobbled and her eyes watered.
“ ’Course not. A Beattie man won’t be seen coming into this house. You make it tolerable for me, and I’ll take care of your troubles, like I’ve done for every one of you girls.”
Beulah couldn’t argue with that. She put the baby down on the floor and let him scream, and she did what she could to make Meemaw’s house decent again.
Meemaw, for her part, went out to look for Henry Clay, not wanting to approach him at the Beattie mansion if she could avoid it. She asked around down on Mayo Street and in some other disreputable establishments nearby. He wasn’t there, but everybody knew Henry Clay, and everybody had an idea of where he might be found: a hotel, a cigar shop, a barber with a card game in the back room. She visited them all, without success.
She eventually tracked him down, not in May Stuart’s parlor like he’d been so often over the last few years, but at his club, with his more respectable friends. Meemaw wasn’t allowed inside and had to go in through the kitchen and persuade a friendly dishwasher to pass a note to Henry Clay, along with a handful of coins to be deposited in every palm through which the note passed: from a waiter to a bartender, from a bartender to a shoe-shine man, from the shoe-shine man to the attendant in the billiards room. She had no idea how often Henry Clay turned up at his club. The note named a time and place one week later in case it took that long to reach him.
On the appointed day, Henry Clay arrived as instructed and in fact turned up early.
“Where’s Beulah?” he asked when he saw only Meemaw waiting for him near the rose bower at Monroe Square.
“You’re a free man. Go see Beulah anytime you want,” Meemaw said. “I’m here to find out how you plan to keep your mama from ever seeing Beulah, because that girl’s ready to go knock on your door with a baby in a basket.”
Henry Clay spat on the ground and said, “She wouldn’t dare.”
