“Yes, I want you to go. Take a good look around and let me know if you think it’s worth pursuing.”
Out on the field, a strapping soldier stepped up to the plate. His shoulders seemed twice as wide as his waist, his limbs stretching the fabric of his uniform tight. He raised the bat, planted his foot, and waited.
“Watch out for King Arthur,” the soldier on the mound yelled, winding up to pitch. The rest of them stepped back off the infield. We all turned to watch him hit. The motion started in his hip and traveled to his knee, which swung out even before his arms moved. The ball met the bat with a clean crack and flew far into the outfield. One of the soldiers ran after it only to pick it up off the grass and trot it back in. The batter ceremonially rounded the bases in an easy lope.
Rex turned around, eyes shining. “Did you see that? He’s almost as good as the Babe.”
The Colonel took notice. “Let’s see what he can really do, hey, Rex? Run down and tell Huggins to send out one of our pitchers.”
The photographers got Rex’s picture while Huggins disappeared into the clubhouse. Slim Love, already in street clothes, followed Huggins out, his gaunt face looking none too pleased. “Throw him a fastball,” I heard Huggins say. While Love trotted out to the mound, Huggins called the soldier back to home plate. “Try it again, son. The Colonel wants to see what you’ve got.”
The other soldiers let out a hoot. “Show ’em, King!”
“You ready, soldier?” Love yelled.
The plate was in deep shade by now, but King’s fair hair seemed to generate its own light. He set his shoulders and walked his grip lower on the bat. “Ready.”
The pitcher wound up and sent the ball fast and straight over the plate. The crack of the bat echoed back from inside the dugout. The ball sailed up into the bleachers. The soldiers on the field whooped and rushed the plate before King could even think of running the bases.
“Let’s have him up,” the Colonel said, waving at Huggins. Led by Rex, King came up to the owner’s box. “Just wanted to wish you good luck, son.” They shook, King’s big hand engulfing the Colonel’s dainty one, while a cameraman’s bulb flashed.
“Thanks for letting us on the field, sir.”
The Colonel took out one of his business cards and handed it to him. “You be safe over there. Give us a call when you get back. I’d like to see you try out for the team.”
King beamed as if the war had just been won. “Thank you so much, Colonel Ruppert, I’ll do that.”
“Why do they call you King Arthur?” Rex asked.
“Well, Arthur’s my last name. I guess my mother liked the idea of having a King in the family.”
“I bet you’ll kill a lot of Germans, King.”
“Rex, don’t talk like that. I hope you come home safely,” Helen said to King. “You and all your friends.”
“Thank you, miss.” He turned the Colonel’s business card over and held it out to her. “Won’t you give me your address, so I can say I have a pretty girl back home to write to?”
I expected Helen to blush and giggle, but she didn’t. “If you’d like, of course I will.” I offered her my pen.
The Colonel leaned over to me and said in German, “Why can’t Huggins find me a fine boy like that for my team?”
“He certainly is a handsome one.” The words slipped out before I could stop myself.
“Write yours down, too.” King winked at me. “I’ll send you a postcard from France.”
I jotted down the address of my rooming house on Washington Square even though a postcard of some Parisian chorus girl was the last thing I wanted. “Good luck over there.”
“Thank you all again.” He gave a salute then climbed back down to join his comrades on the field.
We filed out of the owner’s box, around the ballpark, and down to the Speedway where the cars were parked. The Colonel’s driver was waiting beside the limousine, but when he opened the door it was Rex who got in, followed by Mrs. Winthrope. Helen held out her hand to me. “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Kramer.”
“Albert, please. You too, Helen.”
I expected the Colonel to join them, but he didn’t. As the Packard pulled away, his new National Roadster was revealed parked beside it. I hadn’t realized he’d driven himself. “What time is my dinner with Astor?” he asked. “Eight o’clock? I’ll hardly have time for my bath.”
It was only six. I wondered how intricate his preparations for a night out must be that two hours wouldn’t suffice. The Colonel buttoned a canvas duster over his clothes, adjusted his driving goggles, and cranked the engine. I could feel the thrum of those twelve cylinders in my chest. “Until Monday, then, Kramer.” He settled himself behind the wheel and put the car in gear, tires kicking up dirt as he zoomed away from the Polo Grounds.
I retraced my steps around the ballpark and joined the hundreds of fans jostling to climb that twisting stairway up Coogan’s Bluff, my thighs burning as I reached the top. The train downtown was jammed and the journey seemed interminable. Perspiring and rumpled, I envied the Colonel who was, I imagined, at that very moment, stepping fresh from his bath.
Chapter 7
By the time we got home from the Polo Grounds, all I wanted was a long soak in a hot tub. I shut myself up in the bathroom while my mother made supper and Rex ran off to regale his friends with tales of Babe Ruth’s home run. I lowered myself into the steaming water, the heat pinking my skin. Closing my eyes, I let my aching limbs float and my mind wander.
I hadn’t realized the extent to which my illness had confined me to a world of women. Other than Rex, I hadn’t had a complete conversation with anyone except my mother or the nurse in months. It was invigorating to see how the men I’d encountered that day moved through the world with such purpose: Harrison directing his play, Richard Martin managing the theater, Clarence preparing for his deployment, Colonel Ruppert overseeing his baseball team. Even his secretary had work to do and missions to accomplish. He was the opposite of Harrison in so many ways, I thought. Instead of wanting to be in charge of everything around him, he seemed content to observe. I liked how he’d been happy to let Rex lecture him about baseball rather than pretend he knew all about it. With Harrison, I always felt I was acting a part, whether or not I was on his stage. Next to Albert I was simply myself.
When the bathwater cooled, I pulled the rubber stopper to drain it down a bit, then added more hot. Sliding the bar of soap along my arms and legs, I lamented how the muscles beneath my skin had gone soft from disuse. I planned a regime of increasingly longer walks to build up the strength I’d need if I had any hopes of getting back on the stage. Recovering from my surgery, surviving the pneumonia—for the past few months, that had been my career. Despite my current exhaustion, I was eager for my life to be about something bigger than the four walls of my bedroom.
With slick hands I soaped my breasts, concentric circles of white and brown and pink. The nipples hardened at my touch, sparking the memory of how greedily Harrison had once gobbled them. He’d been glad to see me today, I could tell. Though I knew he’d never abandon his philosophy of free love and turn suddenly faithful, I couldn’t help feeling drawn to his energy and flattered by his attention. But Richard Martin was right, I reminded myself as I put down the soap. I was better off without him.
Beneath the water, I pressed my hand against the puckered line of my appendectomy scar. It stretched from the tip of my index finger past my wrist. Though the ache of my missing organ had finally vanished, remembering its persistent pain made me realize I hadn’t menstruated since being released from the hospital. I might have had my period while I was there—the memory of those weeks was so muddled by morphine I wouldn’t have known. I’d been bleeding when my appendix burst, of course, a week of bleeding that was tapering off when the fever shot up and I collapsed. I supposed the pneumonia must have disrupted my cycle, anemia robbing my blood of iron. It would probably start back up soon. The doctor who’d taken care of my trouble had assured
me I’d be good as new in no time. I sometimes wondered if the one event had precipitated the other, but my understanding of anatomy, rudimentary as it was, assured me there was no connection between my appendix and my womb.
When Colonel Ruppert telephoned that morning, he’d asked about my appendix. If he really did call only once a year, as my mother said, how had he found out about my illness? I wondered what I would have done if I’d known who I was talking to at the time. I recalled to my mind’s eye the image of Colonel Ruppert as he stood in the doorway of our house, his duster smeared with my father’s blood. I’d always considered him practically a murderer, but now I remembered the look of shock and sadness on his face. In all these years, I’d never spared a charitable thought for the man, but having sat beside him at the ballpark, having seen his smile and smelled his scent, it occurred to me that my father’s death must have been terrible for him, as well.
Tired as I was, my mind wouldn’t stop racing. I submerged my head and let my thoughts drain away. I stayed in that muffled world, only my nostrils above the surface, until my skin was as plump and puckered as something salvaged from the river. Curls of steam trailed after me as I emerged from the bathroom, my robe tied around my waist and a towel on my head. My mother called from the kitchen for me to come have something to eat. Taking a seat at the table, I was surprised to find my appetite strong for the ham salad sandwich and glass of milk she placed before me.
“I’m so glad to see you eat like this, Helen. Didn’t I tell you an enema would do you good?” I didn’t share her belief in the curative powers of enemas and had forgotten she’d even suggested it. I took a bite of my sandwich to avoid answering. “So listen to this, Helen. I telephoned Jake at home, to thank him for this afternoon, and guess what?” She paused dramatically. “He’s invited you to go along with his secretary tomorrow to visit the orphanage.”
I had to swallow before I could respond. “Why would he do that?”
“It was something you said, about how adorable the orphans were. He thought you’d be interested, so he offered to arrange it. He’ll call in the morning to say what time.”
I washed the ham salad down with a swig of milk. “But I can’t tomorrow.”
“Why not?”
I knew the can of worms I was about to open, but there seemed no way around it. “I promised Richard Martin I’d help him at the Olde Playhouse.”
She looked puzzled. “When did you do that?”
“This morning. I went there on my walk.”
“You went to the Playhouse?” My mother stood and tossed her napkin on the table. “I don’t understand you, Helen. How could you ever want to see that man again?”
“Who, Richard?”
She placed a fist on her hip. “Joseph Harrison. Don’t pretend you didn’t go looking for him, though for the life of me I don’t know why you would, after what he did to you.”
I pulled her back into her chair. “Don’t worry, Mom. I guess he did break my heart, but I’ve gotten over it.”
“I’m not talking about your heart, Helen. The man nearly killed you. If only you’d come to me instead of taking matters into your own hands.”
My gut understood her words before my brain could figure out their meaning. I broke into a cold sweat as nausea riled my stomach. “What do you mean, into my own hands?”
“You know what I mean, Helen.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “You shouldn’t have let him bully you into an abortion. We could have made him marry you.”
I wanted to tell her he didn’t bully me, that I’d never even told him. Instead, I blurted out the more pressing question. “How did you know?”
“I had to hear it from the surgeon at the hospital. He held your X-ray up to the window so I could see it with my own eyes.”
My mind conjured the image of a tiny baby floating across the milky radiograph as if on a cloud. But it couldn’t have been. It was gone by then. “What did you see?”
She shivered. “The fishhook in your womb. You could have bled to death, Helen. How could you let someone do that to you?”
The memory of that dark hotel room came back to me in a rush. Instinctively, I wrapped my arms around my abdomen. “I don’t know what he did. He used ether. It was all over by the time I woke up. The wardrobe mistress gave me his name. She said I could trust him, that he was a real doctor.”
“A butcher is what he was. The surgeon wanted to report you both to the police. He said the evidence couldn’t have been any clearer.”
I tasted bile as I pictured the fishhook I’d unknowingly carried inside me all those days. “Is that what made my appendix burst?”
“What are you talking about?” My mother stared at me, her face shifting from anger to pity. “We discussed this, Helen, at the hospital. Don’t tell me you don’t remember?”
“I don’t remember much of anything about the hospital. They had me on morphine the whole time. It was all dreams, I thought, just crazy dreams.”
“Oh, Helen.” She reached into my lap and took both of my hands. “You looked right at me and said you understood.”
“Well, I didn’t. I don’t. Explain it to me now.” Tears welled up in her eyes and began rolling down her cheeks, terrifying me. “What is it, Mom, just tell me. Am I in trouble with the police?”
“No, not that. The surgeon said he wouldn’t call the police, that he’d change the surgical report, if I paid what he was asking.”
New York City was famously corrupt, but this was a new low. “He blackmailed you?”
“He wanted a thousand dollars. It was all my savings, Helen, everything I had.”
I felt sick. I’d made a decision I’d thought would affect only myself, yet I’d managed to bankrupt my mother in the process. “Mom, I’m so sorry. I’ll find a way to pay you back, I promise.”
“You’re alive, Helen. That’s all the compensation I need.”
Her kindness only deepened my guilt, but I was still confused. “So you paid him, and then the doctor took out that fishhook when he removed my appendix, is that what you’re telling me?”
“What I’m telling you, Helen, is there was nothing wrong with your appendix. It never burst. He didn’t remove it.”
It was like seeing Houdini wriggle free of a straitjacket—unbelievable, despite the evidence before your eyes. “Then how did I get my scar?”
“He said by the time he opened you up, the infection was so severe he had no choice but to take it out.” She let go of my hands to blot her wet face with a napkin. “A hysterectomy, he called it. He said you would have died if he didn’t. You nearly died because he did.”
The wet hair on the back of my neck felt like ice. “I never had appendicitis?”
“No, Helen, it was the infection that ran up your fever. I explained this to you. I’m so sorry, I had no idea you didn’t remember.” She took a breath and leveled her gaze at me, making sure there would be no further misunderstanding. “I’m not exactly sure what the operation entailed, but the surgeon told me that you’ll never be able to have a child.”
I turned my head and vomited chunks of masticated bread and ham salad onto the kitchen floor. Just then the door to the apartment slammed open as Rex came running in asking what was for supper. I stumbled out of the kitchen and took refuge in my bedroom. Covered in sweat and shaking, I opened my window and gulped in the cool evening air. Another wave of nausea swept over me and I crawled into bed, burrowing under the blanket, knees pulled up to my chest. My mother knocked on the door, wanting to come in, but I didn’t deserve her comfort. Through my sobs I told her to go away.
I’d carried Harrison’s child less than three months. It had never even quickened. That those brief weeks should constitute my life’s allotment of motherhood was too tragic for me to contemplate. The pit of regret that fed my tears seemed bottomless. Eventually, though, it emptied out, giving way to moans at the back of my raw throat. I hadn’t cried this hard since my father died. How ashamed of me he would have been, I thought. I
tried to find some solace in the fact that he’d never know what a stupid girl I’d turned out to be.
The appendicitis story sounded so ridiculous to me now that I wondered how I’d never questioned it before. But it was the story everyone in the neighborhood knew, repeating it back to me as I walked the block leaning on my nurse’s arm. Had the nurse known the truth? Surely the scar wouldn’t have fooled her—though maybe it had. I remembered her remarking on the surgeon’s sloppy work as she rubbed me down with alcohol.
It was all too much for my mind to contend with. A crashing headache followed my crying fit. I crept from under my blanket to search the nightstand for an aspirin tablet. I would have sworn the glass of water I kept at my bedside was empty, but there it sat, cool and full. I fell back on my pillow, the bitter taste of aspirin on my tongue.
Chapter 8
It was nearly an hour after I left the Polo Grounds before I finally got off the train at Christopher Street. I decided to stop by the Life Cafeteria for dinner. Looking in through those big windows for anyone I knew, I spotted Paul sitting alone. It was unusual to see him by himself. Admirers were attracted to his beauty like bees to cherry blossoms, and though he wore his clothes loose, there was no camouflaging his magnificent dancer’s body. We used to tease him that he could be the next model for the Arrow Shirt Man if Leyendecker ever got tired of Charles Beach. The wonderful thing about Paul, though, was that he didn’t take his good looks seriously. They were an accident of birth, he said, for which he deserved no credit.
“Oh, thank God, a friendly face. I was absolutely dying of boredom.” Paul kicked out the chair opposite him and I dropped into it. “You look wretched.”
I took off my hat and yawned. “It’s been a long day.”
“And after last night, too. We were pretty lit up.”
“I can hardly remember, it seems like a century ago. What’re you doing here all on your own?”
“Killing some time before I have to make an appearance.” His ballet company was hosting a reception for its wealthy benefactors, he explained, and the dancers were expected to attend. “Which I wouldn’t mind if our director didn’t insist we arrive coupled, like animals entering the Ark.” He took a sip of his coffee, which looked as if it had gone cold. “I’ve been paired with Geneviève again. If I escape without a mauling it’ll be a miracle.”
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