Kopp Sisters on the March

by Amy Stewart

  She learned about that only after Freeman abandoned her. She’d gone around looking for work in New York—he’d left her no choice—and quickly found that she couldn’t give her own name. Women drew away from her, and men whistled and called their colleagues to come running over and have a look at “the real Beulah Binford.” She rushed out of more than one office red-faced and fighting back tears.

  What was that silly name she chose the first time? Lucy Lane. As Lucy Lane, she could secure work as a clasper in an envelope factory. With a week’s pay in hand, she found a boarding-house and a girl willing to share a room with her. Mabel was her first friend in New York, and the only one who ever knew the truth.

  It was Mabel who told Beulah what the soiled undergarments meant. They’d been living together for about a month when Mabel arrived home with a gallon jug of wine. “Don’t ask how I came by it,” she said, “but we’re going to have us a party tonight.”

  With nothing to eat but crackers and potted ham, the wine went straight to Beulah’s head. They reclined together on her bed, end to end, with their elbows resting comfortably on each other’s knees. No circumstance is more conducive to setting free a secret than two women with a bottle of wine and an entire night to themselves. Beulah was all too ready to surrender her real name, and everything that went along with it.

  Fortunately, Mabel couldn’t be shocked. She’d lived in New York too long to find anything scandalous in Beulah’s version of events, and in fact considered herself privileged to share a room with a woman whose name was probably better known to most Americans than Edith Wilson’s. “Every one of my roommates had a story,” Mabel said, “but you happen to have the only story of 1911. You were right not to go on the stage, but I won’t pretend I’m not highly entertained to hear the entire business from your side.”

  Beulah didn’t find it at all callous of Mabel to say that her misfortunes were so entertaining, and in fact it lightened her spirits to bring the sordid mess out into the open and to give it an airing. She relished every detail, lingering over her veiled figure at the back of the church during Henry Clay’s wedding, and that afternoon at the stock pond when he brandished his gun.

  The part about Louise’s mother describing the soiled underclothes came out hours later, well past midnight and well into the wine.

  “I always wondered why they bothered about his nasty old pants in the middle of a murder trial,” Beulah said.

  Mabel sputtered. “Do you mean that you don’t know?”

  “Well, I . . .” Beulah didn’t know, and there was nothing to do but wait to be told.

  “Surely you’ve heard, after all those years you spent . . . I mean, from what you’re telling me, you lived in a house full of women who . . .” Mabel couldn’t quite bring herself to say it. “These were women with experience. Isn’t that right?”

  “That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Beulah couldn’t help but be annoyed at the way Mabel was dancing around the subject. Hadn’t she just told her everything? It had taken them each a hefty portion of that raisiny old cheap wine to work themselves up to this point in the conversation. Beulah didn’t think she could keep much more of it down. Hadn’t they reached the honest end of the bottle yet?

  “Well, they must’ve told you how to be with a man. How to keep yourself from having a baby, things like that.”

  “Oh, those horrible rubber bags.” Beulah shuddered. “They put the same soap up in there that they use to clean the toilets. Do you know how that stings?”

  Mabel didn’t want to talk about the soap. Beulah couldn’t blame her. “And didn’t they tell you about . . . social diseases?”

  Beulah said, “I don’t recall that term. Maybe they didn’t use such polite language, for fear of not being understood.”

  “I’m trying to ask you if you were ever told what it meant if a man had sores. Did they tell you to look at him when he pulled his pants down, and to see for yourself if he was . . .”

  “Clean,” Beulah said crossly. “They told me to look and see if he kept himself clean. But I never could stand to look. Can you?”

  Mabel reached over and took Beulah’s hands in hers. “Beulah, dear, I want you to think about this. Those sores—those were a sign of his disease. That was the stain in his underpants.”

  Beulah shuddered. Now she felt truly ill. “I can’t believe Louise showed that to her mother.”

  Mabel sighed and tried again. “You told me he was acting crazy just before his wife died. Isn’t that right? He was going off like a lunatic?”

  “He sure was,” Beulah said. “I’d never seen him like that. I hardly knew him.”

  “Well, don’t you know? The disease does that to a person. That could be why he was out of his mind.”

  Tears came into Beulah’s eyes, and she pressed her palms against them. Henry Clay had only been dead a month at that point. They’d put him in an electric chair and burned him to death. She woke up every night thinking about it. There’d been no picture of that in the papers—someone at the news bureaus had a sense of decency—but she could imagine it, and she did, between the hours of two and three o’clock, every morning.

  “Are you saying that all he needed was some medicine, and he wouldn’t have shot Louise?”

  “I think he might’ve been too far gone for medicine,” Mabel said.

  “Well, didn’t the judge know about it? Couldn’t he have brought in a doctor?” Beulah sniffed and looked around for a handkerchief.

  Mabel handed hers to Beulah. She spoke more gently now. “What I’m trying to tell you is that he was diseased, and you might be, too. You need a Wassermann test.”

  Beulah looked up at her sharply. “Do you think I have what Henry Clay had?”

  “Well, that is how you get it. Don’t you know that?”

  Beulah pulled away from her. She didn’t like to have all the things she didn’t know pointed out to her. “I know that you can get a disease from a man, if that’s what you mean. But I don’t have one. And I hardly let Henry Clay touch me last summer. Before that, it had been . . . I don’t know, a few years.”

  “And how many baseball players in between?”

  Beulah smiled at the thought of those ball players. “Oh, a few, but they’re so clean and good.”

  Mabel put a hand over her mouth to stop from smiling. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m going to have to teach Beulah Binford a thing or two about men. We’re taking you to a lady doctor next week.”

  Beulah had never seen a doctor of any kind, but there was no arguing about it. Mabel kept every promise and every threat, including this one. She hauled Beulah off for a Wassermann test, and Beulah was found, through some miracle, to be free of disease. The lady doctor gave her a lecture on the evils of social illness and the importance of keeping herself pure until marriage.

  “And when you do marry,” the doctor said, “after you marry, there’s a better way to make sure you don’t have a baby than a hose and a bag of toilet soap.”

  She pulled a little rubber cup out of her desk and pinched it together. Beulah didn’t require very many words of explanation. “I’ve heard about those,” she said. “How nice for the married ladies.”

  The doctor dropped it on her desk. “I believe I hear my receptionist calling. Wait right here.”

  Beulah didn’t hear anyone calling. When the doctor didn’t return she stood up, slipped that little rubber cup into her pocketbook, and went out into the hall, where Mabel was already paying the bill.

  “Did you get one?” Mabel asked on the way out.

  “Well, I stole one, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s what you were supposed to do.” Mabel put an arm around her, and they leaned into the wind on Forty-Sixth Street. “You’re a New York girl now.”

  41

  OUTSIDE THE INFIRMARY, Nurse Cartwright was waiting off by herself, leaning against a solitary birch that served as a kind of informal camp message board. Notices of lost items were posted there, and off
ers from the more enterprising campers (Fleurette not among them) to mend stockings and hems for a fee. The nurse made a show of appearing to read the notices, but came rushing over as soon as Constance walked out.

  “Everyone’s talking about a gunshot,” she said. “I heard it myself, but I thought it was only an auto misfiring. Do I have another patient?”

  Constance glanced down the camp’s wide central avenue, with tents arrayed on either side. Discipline was starting to fall apart. With the show over, and no one to order them to bed, the campers were running between the tents, a sort of frenetic buzz in the air about the gunshot that brought the performance to an abrupt end. Constance could hear the rumors floating toward her: Hack shot an intruder. May Ward was followed to camp by a jealous lover.

  She motioned for the nurse to follow her. They walked a little ways away, behind the infirmary, far enough to be out of earshot.

  “You don’t have another patient,” Constance said. “There was a gun, but it didn’t find its mark.”

  “And who was its mark, may I ask?”

  Constance hesitated. Who else could she tell, besides Norma? “You mustn’t say a word.”

  “If it concerns my patient, I’m duty-bound to keep it quiet.”

  Of course, Nurse Cartwright didn’t know her patient’s true identity—and Constance wasn’t about to tell her that. “I will say only that a gun was fired in the general direction of Mrs. Ward’s husband, but he wasn’t hurt.”

  Nurse Cartwright squinted at her in the dim light. “A girl shooting at another woman’s husband? I’ll wager she had a good reason to put a bullet in him. I wonder if she’ll tell me what it was.”

  “That’s for her to decide,” Constance said.

  “Oh, she’ll tell me,” the nurse said. “They all do. If you’re through with her for the night, I’ll mix her up a sleeping powder. She needs her rest.”

  “Why should she sleep tonight?” Constance said. “She stole a gun and tried to shoot a man. That ought to keep her awake. Mr. Bernstein was very nearly murdered.”

  “And then you stopped it,” the nurse said, with cheerful aplomb. “That’s a job well-done.”

  “But it isn’t over yet,” Constance said. “Mr. Bernstein’s going to want to press charges. I’ll have to call in the police, and testify myself. I’m the only eyewitness. I’ve no choice but to give evidence.”

  The weight of what had happened was descending upon her. She could picture all too clearly what was coming next: the police arriving, the interviewing of witnesses, Beulah put in handcuffs, taken away to jail . . . and then the reporters, and a round of scandalous stories about Beulah Binford and the National Service Schools. Beulah’s life would be ruined a second time. Constance’s own past would be resurrected: the disgraced lady deputy, bringing dishonor to another institution.

  But even worse, the cause of women’s war work would be set back a decade. A camp meant for wartime preparation, descended into a tawdry feud between a notorious harlot and a vaudeville showman. No mother would ever send her daughter to such a place again.

  Nurse Cartwright was watching her: she saw the despair move across her face.

  “It’ll be a mess, with the police here,” she offered.

  “It will,” Constance said, “but I can’t ignore the law.”

  Nurse Cartwright gave a startled little cough. “The law! What business is that of yours?”

  “It used to be my business,” Constance said.

  Nurse Cartwright stepped back and looked her over. “Oh, I see it now. You have that air about you. What were you? Jail matron? Police lady?”

  “Something like that,” Constance admitted. Her former profession hung about her like a uniform.

  “But you’ve given it up?”

  “You might say it gave me up. But that doesn’t change the fact that a crime has been committed, and I have a duty—”

  Nurse Cartwright interrupted. “This Mr. Bernstein—what did he do to that girl? Was it lawful?”

  “It might not’ve been,” Constance mused. Was he guilty of fraud? Misrepresentation? “Whatever he did, though, the punishment isn’t a bullet through the head.”

  “No, the punishment is a good fright, and that’s all he’s had,” Nurse Cartwright said.

  They’d walked around the infirmary three times now, their heads bowed, hands clasped behind them.

  Nurse Cartwright blew out a puff of air and looked up at the stars, considering. “You must know the inside of a jail cell, if you’ve been in police work.”

  “I slept in one myself, alongside my inmates,” Constance said.

  “Then you know what’s in store for her. Would it help that girl to go to jail?”

  “Not at all,” Constance admitted. “In my old position, I could put a troubled girl under probation, and keep an eye on her myself. But I can’t do that anymore.”

  The nurse glanced back over at the infirmary and said, thoughtfully, “She does need looking after.” Then, turning back to Constance, “There are times when I find the law to be more of a hindrance.”

  Constance sighed, thinking of her illicit late-night trainings and how dull life had been without them. “I’m getting rather tired of laws and rules myself, but consider the position I’m in.”

  “It seems to me,” the nurse said, “that a great deal depends upon Mr. Bernstein. He’s the only one with a grievance. If he has an ounce of shame, he’ll scuttle out of here and never say a word.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Freeman Bernstein,” Constance said. “And what am I to tell the campers about that gunshot? And the parents, and Miss Miner, when she finds out?”

  Nurse Cartwright patted her shoulder and turned to go back to the infirmary. “I told a few of them that it was only a prop, shooting blanks. It works marvelously. Give it a try. Can I mix you a sleeping powder, too? You could use one.”

  Constance declined the sleeping powder. She made her way back through the tents, ushering girls to the latrines or the water pumps one last time, issuing stern warnings about curfew.

  A girl of only seventeen, her hair in two long braids, popped out of her tent in her nightgown.

  “Go on to sleep, Roberta. Reveille’s at six,” Constance said.

  “But, Miss Kopp—is it true? Are you the one who fired the gun? I heard there was a bear in the woods. Did you kill him?”

  “I heard it was Hack, shooting at a thief who was going from tent to tent while we were at the show” came a voice from inside Roberta’s tent.

  A little crowd gathered around, most of them wrapped in blankets against the nighttime chill. Constance looked around at their faces, some anxious, some mirthful. This was little more than a bedtime story for them—a bit of adventure, a story to be passed around for a few days until the next bit of drama gripped them. The newspaper-reading public would treat it that way, too, if word got out: an entertainment, to be tossed about the way a cat tortures a mouse, until a more enticing plaything comes along.

  Never mind what happens to the mouse. Constance looked back at the infirmary and marveled again at the fact that the notorious Beulah Binford was secreted away there. What had to be going through her mind at that moment?

  “It was a gun, wasn’t it? It sounded more like an automobile firing.” The question came from a girl named Sally who’d attended her wireless class. She had a bit of garish lip-stick still smudged across her lower lip. Constance pulled out a handkerchief—here was one rule she could enforce, anyway—and wiped it away.

  “It was nothing but a theatrical prop meant to sound like a gun,” she told them. “Flash powder, for dramatic effect. I’m sorry if it startled you. It went off unexpectedly.”

  Whether they were satisfied with that explanation or not Constance couldn’t guess. At least they went obediently back to their tents.

  Now she had Freeman Bernstein to reckon with.

  42

  NORMA DID A marvelous job of holding Mr. Bernstein at gunpoint. It was, in every way, the ro
le she was born to play: Norma was nothing if not indomitable in the presence of a foe.

  Hack held up his end of the bargain, too, and didn’t allow anyone to come near the tent. Fleurette stayed with May Ward in the mess hall where they were forbidden, under rather stern orders from Clarence, from leaving until Constance gave the order.

  The entire operation was conducted so smoothly, Constance reflected, as she looked around the camp, that it almost seemed as if they’d formed a cohesive military unit. It was with no small amount of pride that she thanked Hack and Clarence for their efforts and stepped inside the tent to confront Mr. Bernstein.

  Norma was at her ease in a folding chair, with one leg crossed over the other and the pistol pointed casually in Freeman’s direction.

  “Has he been entirely silent?” Constance asked.

  “No. I had to remind him twice,” Norma said.

  “I’m glad there wasn’t a third time. I’d like to speak to you privately, Mr. Bernstein, and the walls of this tent are far too thin. Please come with me.”

  “I’ll go anywhere you like, as long as I’m not looking down the barrel of a revolver any longer. A man my age shouldn’t be kept in suspense when bullets are involved.”

  Constance thought otherwise and decided to take the weapon with her. She held her hand out and said to Norma, “That’s all for tonight. I’m sure you need to see to your pigeons.”

  “Pigeons!” scoffed Mr. Bernstein. “What does an Army camp need with pigeons?”

  That remark was enough to make Norma look thoughtfully at the gun. Constance took it away gently, and Norma stumped outside.

  Constance took hold of Freeman’s arm in that proprietary manner she used to employ with her inmates, digging her fingers into the bones around his elbow to let him know that he’d be down on the ground with a nose like Beulah’s if he tried to run. He groaned but went along with her, having been given no choice in the matter.