To that I merely nodded. It was accepted fact Babe Ruth’s Catholicism would never allow him to divorce his wife as long as she lived. Which put me and Claire Hodgson in the same boat: women in love with men incapable of being our husbands.
Not that there was much difference, anymore, between me and Albert and a married couple. We spent nearly every evening together, having taken subscriptions to a number of theaters, and there was always a new movie to see, talkies replacing the silents more and more. Sometimes my mother cooked us supper, and Jake often invited us to join him if he found himself dining alone. There were days I practically lived at Albert’s apartment, heading home only to sleep. I wouldn’t have bothered to do even that—Albert had set up the second bedroom for me, with a closet I kept some clothes in and a chaise lounge I could sleep on—but my mother insisted I not give the doormen at Jake’s building any reason to gossip. Then there were our days at Eagle’s Rest, which felt to me now like a second home. Albert and I were there every April for the reception before opening day, and each October for the party to close out the season. Jake only attended away games during the postseason, so when the Yankees were on the road the three of us would often head up the Hudson together. Pip had even made friends with one of the monkeys, the female rhesus, who reached out gleefully from her cage whenever she saw him.
Planning parties for Jake wasn’t much of a career, but he’d been right, it turned out I didn’t really need one. I felt a twinge of regret at what I’d sacrificed whenever I saw Joseph Harrison’s name on the screen at the movie theater, but then again, I might have been as big a failure in Hollywood as I had been here in New York. I hadn’t given up much, not really, not compared to what I’d gained. Whenever I saw Albert’s face in the audience at one of my settlement house plays, smiling as the children bumbled through their lines, I knew I’d been right to steer him clear of King.
For years now, Albert hadn’t been in a lick of trouble—no black eyes, no police raids. He’d become indispensable to Jake, who’d raised his salary to the point we could have easily afforded a little house of our own on a leafy street in Brooklyn. But we didn’t need a house, living as we did. We only needed each other. Like Claire and Babe, we were bound together in every way that mattered. He called me darling, said he loved me, kissed my lips now instead of my cheek. Never mind that his kisses were fluttering things. I’d managed to forget, over the years, the kind of kiss he was capable of giving.
Chapter 35
The train was holding its departure for us, but even though they’d dubbed this extra run of the Southwestern Limited the “Yankee Special” it wouldn’t wait forever. Rex was on the platform, clipboard in hand, checking off players as they jumped aboard. “You’re late!” he shouted at the last couple of stragglers. He scanned his list then shoved his pencil behind his ear. “That’s all the players. You’ve got the Colonel squared away, don’t you, Albert?”
I did. His luggage was stowed in his private stateroom, my own suitcase in the butler’s berth adjacent to his own. I had a new respect for Mr. Nakamura after this trip. It really was a full-time job keeping the Colonel perfectly attired. “Did you send a telegram to Helen?”
Rex nodded. “Arranged for her ticket up to Eagle’s Rest tomorrow, too. I put her next to Babe’s friend, Claire. Figured two gals could gab their way up the Hudson together. We’ll meet them there on Friday. I told Helen you said hi.” Rex and I clambered onto the train as the exasperated conductor finally blew his whistle. “Oh, Albert, I almost forgot. Miller Huggins had me add a Kansas City player to the manifest. Remember that game we went to at the Polo Grounds, back when I was in school? I’ll never forget the first time I saw Babe Ruth hit a homer. Anyway, it’s the soldier we met that day. Huggins wanted to bring him out to New York to make him some kind of offer.”
It was like trying to make out the spoken words in a silent film. I saw Rex’s mouth move but couldn’t trust I’d understood his meaning. “King Arthur is on this train?”
Just then, Babe Ruth came hooting and hollering along the corridor, leading a pack of celebrating players in a drunken parade as he reenacted his winning catch. Rex and I flattened ourselves against the wall to avoid being trampled. “He’s here somewhere, but good luck finding him.”
The idea that King and I were both rocking over the same stretch of track made me light-headed. There had been plenty of nights, over the past five years, when I’d be going happily along with Helen on my arm, not thinking of him at all. Then some man’s blue eyes would pop out at me from the drab world in which I lived and the hairs on my arm would stand at attention, expecting his touch. He’d sent a couple of postcards that first year he was in Missouri, but he was a terrible correspondent. We’d lost touch during the off-season, when he’d sailed for Cuba to join a ragtag exhibition team. He could have come to New York if he’d wanted to, I told myself. If he’d missed me, he would have. But he didn’t, and I didn’t go visit him, either. When the Yankees played the Cardinals in ’26, King must have guessed I’d be in St. Louis. For all I knew, he was in the stands. Between pitches I looked for him, my eyes scanning those thousands of hatted heads for a glimpse of his fair hair.
But moments like that were few, with months or even years between. Ever since I’d made my choice on the High Bridge, Helen and I had lived a charmed life in the Colonel’s employ. I’d never had someone care about me as deeply as Helen did, or depend on me as completely as the Colonel. There was hardly an idle hour during which I might fall into a lonely melancholy. And if I did? There was a time I would have dolled myself up and dragged myself down to Antonio’s, hoping to catch some man’s eye for a furtive encounter that would leave me lonelier afterward than I’d been before. Now I simply gave Helen a call. Before I knew it, we’d be seated happily at a restaurant or in the audience of a show. I had no flashes of panic, no dread of arrest or ruin. I’d have sworn I had no regrets, either—until I heard King Arthur’s name and that stubborn part of me I’d thought was long forgotten insisted I seek him out.
King may have been on this train, but Rex was right when he’d said good luck finding him. We’d all been in such a rush to get to the station that the exhilaration of winning the World Series was still pounding through everyone’s blood. I’d looked through two cars of rioting players, and all I had to show for it was a torn sleeve and a bruised elbow. I gave up and shoved my way back to the Colonel’s stateroom just as Babe’s parade charged past me again.
“You’d think his arm would get tired,” I said, locking the door to keep them out.
“We can’t begrudge Ruth his antics tonight, Kramer, not after the way he snatched that ball out of the air to win me the Series.” The Colonel changed out of his suit and into the silk pajamas I laid out for him. He must have been the only member of the Yankees organization determined to get some sleep that night. I was still in my shirtsleeves, the underarms sour with perspiration after that hot afternoon in the stands. How the Colonel had the fortitude to keep his jacket on throughout the entire game was beyond me.
“That catch was truly a thing of beauty, sir.” Any other player would have hobbled off the field and stuck his sore knee in an ice bath, but not Babe Ruth. He leaped over benches like a steeplechase horse as he took that caught ball on a victory lap around the locker room. His elation carried him right to the train station. Since then, gulps of gin had served the double function of numbing his knee and elevating his mood so that the carousing was still going strong.
The Colonel and I were talking over the game when the door to the stateroom suddenly shook under an assault of pounding fists. He cautiously approached. “What is it?”
“Come on out here, Colonel, and have a drink with us!” Babe’s booming voice was buoyant as a circus barker. “We wanna toast ya!”
“You go to sleep now, Ruth. We have a big day tomorrow when we get back to New York.” The Colonel turned to me with a smile on his face, satisfied with his response. Then the door of the stateroom was blasted to s
plinters as a big fist came smashing through the wood. The diamond on Babe’s pinky ring glittered as his arm reached for the Colonel. Did Babe think he could haul the man through the hole he’d punched in the door? His hand closed around a handful of silk, then his arm pulled back, tearing the Colonel’s pajamas and leaving him half-naked. A tremendous whoop echoed along the corridor. “I got the Colonel’s pajamas!” Babe cried, as if that piece of silk were as significant a catch as the winning ball of the World Series.
I expected the Colonel to be livid, but instead he giggled hysterically, the excitement of the moment overcoming his usual reticence. “I’m lucky Ruth loves winning as much as I do, Kramer.”
“Should I get you a fresh pair of pajamas, sir?”
“No, you go on to bed.” He caught his breath as his giggles turned to sighs. “Send a porter back to fix this door before you turn in.”
I did as he asked, then decided to take one more walk through the train before attempting to sleep. But King wasn’t in the club car with the cheering players. He must have already bunked down for the night, the curtain around his berth drawn shut. I was surprised at the depth of my disappointment. The word lovelorn came to mind. I was making my way back to bed when the parade of rioting players burst through the coupling between the cars. Babe held the torn piece of pajamas in the air, the others following like hounds on a scent, their howls barely human. At the end of the corridor was a washroom barely big enough for a man to stand in. Fearing I’d be crushed or mauled, I reached for the handle and tried to open the door but it stuck. Babe’s eyes were wild, his face red and sweating as he lurched along. What would they want to tear from me? I wondered. I shoved the door hard. It gave way. I stumbled in and slammed it shut, turning the lock as the riot raged outside. Only then did I realize why the door had been so difficult to open—the washroom was occupied.
I spoke over my shoulder. “I’m sorry, I’ll get out in a second. You see what’s happening out there?”
The commode flushed and I heard the sound of the lid being closed, a zipper being pulled, a belt being buckled. I considered pivoting to address the man, whoever he was, but that would have put us face-to-face, close enough to kiss—a thought that made me blush. Instead I pressed myself forward to make as much space between us as possible.
“Albert, is that you?” I turned around. King’s face materialized as if by magic. “I’ve been looking all over this train for you.”
It took me a moment to adjust to the reality of a world with him in it. I would have thought I was making him up if it hadn’t been for the weight of his hands on my shoulders. “I’ve been looking for you, too.”
“Have you really?” He’d been drinking, I could see that from the sheen in his eyes, but he wasn’t crazed. The train rocked along the tracks, swaying us against the walls of that narrow room. He must have been dizzy because he sat down on the closed lid of the commode and pulled me onto his lap. “Where have you been hiding?”
I pushed the hair back from his forehead, let my fingers trace the curve of his ear. “I was in the Colonel’s stateroom.”
“I should’ve known to look for you there.” He placed a palm on my cheek, curled his fingers around my neck. Someone pounded on the locked door, jiggled the handle, gave up and moved along.
I meant to tell King how many times I’d picked up a pen to write him, how often I thought of him, how I still had that button from his uniform among my keepsakes. Instead, I said this: “I always forget how blue your eyes are.”
“I never forget you.” He switched off the light, leaving only the glow coming through the frosted glass to illuminate his expression. His eyes drifted shut as he brought our mouths together.
Since last I’d seen him, the only kisses I’d known were fleeting ones on Helen’s closed lips. I hadn’t minded. I’d figured the chambers of my heart she was able to fill were the necessary ones. Yet all it took was a single kiss from King to reveal the fatal flaw in my reckoning. The scent of his sweat filled my nostrils as I succumbed to the irrefutable logic of desire.
“Rex said you’ve got a meeting with Miller Huggins?” We’d stayed in that washroom long after the rioting in the corridor ceased. We were standing now, the motion of the train swaying us like a dance. He helped me get my shirt back on. I put a knot in his tie and snugged it up to his collar.
“Yeah, on Thursday, at the Yankees office. Do you still live in that brownstone?”
“No, I have an apartment in the Colonel’s building, but the place’ll be overrun with reporters. Let me see if I can’t get you invited up to Eagle’s Rest. A bunch of players will be going. One more won’t matter.”
Though we were on the same train for another nineteen hours, I didn’t see King again. I thought I caught a glimpse of him when we got off at Grand Central Station, but there was such a mob of fans and reporters I couldn’t be sure. At the reception with the governor at the Biltmore, I took Rex aside, he squared it with Huggins, and next thing I knew King Arthur’s name had been added to the list of players who’d be coming up to Eagle’s Rest.
Chapter 36
Eagle’s Rest may have had fifteen bedrooms, but it was a puzzle how to fit twenty-three people into them. I was run off my feet finalizing menus and inspecting deliveries, so when Claire volunteered to take over the room assignments I gratefully handed her the guest list. After all, she knew better than I did which players got along and which couldn’t stand each other. Officially Claire was rooming with me, but really she’d be sleeping in Babe’s room next door. She put the married couples and Miller Huggins in the guest bedrooms on the second floor. Upstairs, four of the eight rooms were occupied by staff. Rex had already volunteered to double up with the Yankees’ publicity man, so Claire paired off six players into the remaining three rooms. She and I were passing each other in the hallway Friday morning when she caught my arm.
“There’s a new recruit I don’t know who just got added to the list. Do you think Mr. Kramer would mind taking him in? The only other option is to put him with the butler.”
I thought of that bell in Mr. Nakamura’s room, how Jake rang for him at all hours of the day and night. “It wouldn’t be practical for the butler to share. I don’t suppose Albert will mind.”
“I didn’t think so.” She flashed me a knowing smile. “He must not spend much time up there anyway.”
Around noon I heard the honk of a horn as a car rolled up the gravel drive. I was getting up to see who it was when Claire came racing down the stairs and right out the door. Babe Ruth stepped out of a brand-new DeSoto Coupe and caught her up in his arms. He’d left Manhattan ahead of everyone else, and I soon understood why. Claire led him up to his room, and it was a full two hours before they emerged, both freshly bathed and dressed for dinner. They made themselves at home in the parlor, mixing drinks from Jake’s extensive stash of liquor.
The limousine arrived next, Schultz at the wheel and Mr. Nakamura beside him. Albert and Miller Huggins had ridden in back with Jake. Out of consideration for me, they’d brought my brother with them, too. Rex ran up and lifted me off my feet. “We won the Series, Helen!”
“I know, Rex, I was listening. Go on inside, Babe is mixing drinks.”
Jake cut a jaunty figure in his tan suit and straw boater, the joy of his team’s victory visible on his face. “Is everything ready, Helen? The players will be arriving any minute.” He nodded to Schultz and the limousine drove off, followed by the caretaker in his truck, to meet the train.
I had my eye on Albert as I told Jake we were prepared for all of his guests. “Claire Hodgson has been a tremendous help. It was kind of you to invite her.”
“After the way Ruth played in St. Louis, I couldn’t refuse him.” He patted my arm before going inside, followed by Miller Huggins. From the dejected way he shuffled along, no one would have guessed he’d just won the World Series.
“Helen.” Albert was strangely elated, hugging me like we’d been apart years instead of just a few days. “Have yo
u seen the guest list?”
“Excuse me, Miss Winthrope.” Mr. Nakamura had been left stranded in the drive with a pile of luggage. “Where am I taking these, please?”
I gave Albert a kiss. “I’d better help him. Babe and Claire are in the parlor. Go ahead, I’ll join you in a minute.”
Everyone else arrived while I was sorting out the suitcases. I found Jake in the foyer, welcoming his guests with hearty handshakes. “Helen, there you are. Mrs. Hoyt was asking for you.” The first time Waite Hoyt brought his wife up to Eagle’s Rest, she’d thought I was Jake’s housekeeper until her husband set her straight. I was Mr. Kramer’s friend, he told her, because that’s how they all knew me. Mr. Kramer’s friend and the Colonel’s hostess. “Stay with me, Helen,” Jake whispered, pinching my wrist. “The women like to see you when they come in.”
I received his guests as if his mansion were my home, too. When it seemed we’d come to the last of the arrivals, Jake followed them in, leaving me momentarily alone in the foyer. But he’d gone too soon. There was one more player coming through the door.
“Hello again, Helen.”
I refused to believe my eyes. It was impossible, I told myself, yet here he was, King Arthur at Eagle’s Rest. Though his fingers were warm, I felt a cold shiver at their touch. I hadn’t yet managed to speak when Albert came trotting out of the parlor to greet him. They explained how they’d run into each other on the train back from St. Louis. Their words seemed to come from a great distance, drowned out by the whoosh of blood in my ears.
“I hope you don’t mind sharing.” I thought Albert was speaking to me. “All the other rooms were full so Helen put us together.” But I hadn’t, I wanted to say. It was Claire. If I’d seen King’s name, I would have rerouted the roads to keep him away.
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