by Joy Callaway
“Ginny, I’m sorry.” I didn’t turn around, but stared out at the night sky and then down to the darkened window of the Aldridges’ library. I’d noticed that the library lamps hadn’t been lit since the party, and hoped that his lack of work had something to do with missing me, that he couldn’t create without confronting my memory. “You’ve been avoiding me. I’ve come to see you every day.” I pinched my eyes shut and lifted a shoulder. “Why? Where . . . where have you been?” With you, I thought, remembering the lifetime I’d written in my notebook.
“I was writing,” I said. “Why are you here?”
I turned to face him. He stared at his hands, opening and closing his grandfather’s pocket watch at his hip, hair hanging in his eyes. I could see his profile in the mirror on top of Mother’s armoire, his straight brows pinched, full bottom lip clutched in his teeth.
“I . . . umm,” he mumbled, then looked up at me. Nerves curled in my stomach, forbidding the rest of my body to move. I stared at him—at the somber eyes and lips that had paused on an unspoken word. He held my gaze. “Ginny, I love you.” His words shocked my heart and warmed me through. I’d wanted to hear him say it for so many years, sentiments I’d long felt but propriety forbid me to say. He wouldn’t marry Miss Kent. He loved me. He’d come back to me. I reached down to take his hand. Clammy with sweat, his fingers were limp against mine.
“Charlie,” I whispered. “I love you, too. I always have.” He smiled thinly and looked down at our linked hands. “What is it?” He squeezed my hand so hard I flinched, and hugged me.
“I love you, Gin,” he said into my hair, “but I . . . I have to marry her.” I pushed him away and he stumbled back, catching himself against the wall.
“No, actually. You don’t. You coward!” Heat burned my cheeks. He’d given me hope only to crush it once again. “Why would you bother coming here? Why would you tell me you love me if it doesn’t matter?” I snapped, backing away from him. “To make yourself feel better?” My hands clenched at my side. His eyes were glassy, but I didn’t care. I wanted to hurt him as much as he’d hurt me. He opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and stared down at his shoes. “You can explain yourself or you can get out,” I said. Physically too weak to yell at him, anger still churned through me, stealing what little strength I had. Charlie straightened and started toward me. I put my hand out to stop him.
“Ginny, you know we don’t have any money.”
“We don’t either,” I said. My neck felt tight. “We barely have enough to spare for food by the time our bills are paid, but we’re happy. How does that—”
“I . . . I haven’t told you everything.” He cleared his throat to compose himself. “Mother and Father . . . when they got married they didn’t have the money to buy a house. My father’s uncle, Harry, offered to buy it for them on the condition that they’d pay him back. It was working out fine, but now without Father, we can’t afford it. The Review pays so minimally for my drawings that we’re four payments behind. Harry’s company folded a few months back. If we don’t reimburse him in full by next month, he’ll have to sell the house. Mother won’t have anywhere to go. If I marry, we’re saved. The initial three thousand from Rachel’s father will pay Harry off and then when I inherit the estate and ten thousand from Rachel’s family—”
“I don’t want to hear her name,” I said. He tried to take my outstretched hand but I snatched it away. “Don’t touch me.”
“I don’t love her,” he whispered. “My heart. You have it.” He put his palm on the silk above my chest.
“Then marry me instead and risk ruin,” I said. “We could find other jobs. Your mother could move in with us if she had to.” I removed his hand from my chest, feeling the cold air rush over my skin with its absence. He didn’t say anything, but closed his eyes and shook his head.
“You know she’d never agree to that,” he said finally. “Our home is all she has left of my father, of George.”
“Then you’ve made your choice.”
“No. I can’t. I don’t want to lose you . . . please, Gin.”
“What would you have me do? Wait for years until Rachel dies? Be your mistress?” He looked up from the floor and his body went rigid.
“I know that I can’t will you to do anything,” he said softly. “You’ll do what you want. You always have.” I laughed hollowly and caught a glimpse of my reflection as I turned away from him, stringy hair and ashen face harrowing in the dim evening light. I was a mess. Everything Miss Kent wasn’t. I pivoted to face him. His shoulders were slumped, the dark rings around his eyes even more pronounced than before.
“I’ll see you around the neighborhood, of course,” I said as pleasantly as I could. Charlie had been as much a part of me as I was, but the man standing before me was foreign, a stranger to my soul. Charlie’s brows furrowed and he crossed the room, gathering me awkwardly in his arms. I stood against him, puppet-like as he hugged me. “You need to go now.” I untangled myself from his embrace. He backed away, staring at me as he went, and then finally turned. “Take care of yourself, Charlie,” I whispered. As the door clicked shut, I stood in my mother’s room alone, regretting my words and wishing that I could have been weak enough to keep him.
Chapter Four
NOVEMBER 1891
The Loftin House
BRONX, NEW YORK
I eyed the old wooden clock on my nightstand. Just past 5:20. Less than ten minutes until Franklin and Mae would appear in my doorway, tear the notebook from my fingers, and demand that I come with them, though I didn’t want to go. Neither tolerated tardiness—or my need to be alone. Since Charlie’s surprise visit a week ago, they’d barely left me to my own devices, appearing in my room to distract me every few minutes as if their presence could somehow cause me to forget. Instead, they were driving me mad.
I glanced down at the page and read the sentences for the tenth time. The first ran on and had to be fixed, but I couldn’t figure out how. “In all the time I’d known him, he’d never begged for anything, not because he was necessarily against it by principle, but because he’d always been perfectly intentioned in everything he did, and felt that if a person didn’t react to his intentions in the affirmative, well then, they didn’t, and life went on. So the fact that he was begging now startled me.” I circled the sentences, slammed the notebook shut, and flung it across my bed. Perhaps my problem wasn’t my ability to edit, but the fact that these particular sentences required me to recall the misery on Charlie’s face. Even though I knew I’d done the right thing, Charlie had been my best friend for eighteen years. We’d grown accustomed to consoling each other. In spite of everything, it was strange that I couldn’t be the one to cheer him, that he was the source of my own sorrow.
I glanced at the discarded notebook, not entirely sure why I was bothering to edit it in the first place. It wasn’t as if anyone would ever read it. It was too personal, not to mention terribly written. I was a short story writer; I had no idea how to write a proper novel. I hadn’t attempted a longer work in twelve years, since I was a child. My family and the Aldridges had gone to see P. T. Barnum’s circus in Brooklyn, and the glitz and the wildness of it had left us all inspired. The next day, I was commissioned by Charlie and my siblings to write a book about the ringmaster. In my ten-year-old mind, I’d thought a story of a ringmaster who could speak to animals a genius idea. I’d written the fifty pages with great fervor, while Charlie sketched the scenes and Franklin painted dramatic depictions of the ringmaster. Even Mae, Alevia, and Bess had been convinced to participate. Alevia obligingly played Gavotte Circus Renz by Hermann Fliege over and over for inspiration, while Bess created replicas of the performer’s costumes. When we’d finished the book, we were sure it would eclipse Stevenson’s Treasure Island in popularity. Our hopes were only provoked by our parents. After Mae’s dramatic reading, they’d deemed it brilliant. Father had bound the volume with two thin sheets of wood and Mother had covered it in a scrap of red silk. We’
d given the finished copy to Charlie for his eleventh birthday.
I stood and crossed to my dresser, running my fingers along the chipping white paint on my windowsill as I went. Glancing in the mirror, I laughed wryly at the hints of black lead smudged across my cheeks and under my eyes as if I’d actually been writing rather than crossing out, erasing, and rewriting the same sentence over again. I thought of Charlie’s library, of the one place I’d always retreated when I couldn’t seem to find the right words. I knew that part of its magic had to do with Charlie’s presence, his encouragements and suggestions, but within its walls, I’d always been able to sort my thoughts. He’d stolen my only hideaway from me.
I scrubbed the pencil marks away with the tip of my finger and smoothed the pink silk rose petals attached to the Brussels lace at my shoulder. It had taken Bess three nights to arrange all of them and affix them to the sleeve in the latest fall fashion. Bess refused to create anything short of perfection, even if the costume was being made for one of us.
Pulling my grandfather’s worn copy of Irving’s The Sketch Book from the drawer beneath my mirror, I flipped it open. How many times had I read it and found solace in its pages? Stopping on the title page, I stared at the colophon, “published by George Putnam.” Putnam and Irving had been fast friends, though Putnam had been Irving’s junior by decades. Late in Irving’s life, press after press had passed up the chance to publish an updated edition of Irving’s work, but Putnam had decided to take it on, convinced that the words Irving had written were still relevant and needed. It was one of the most profitable decisions Putnam ever made, and the reason I’d been introduced to Irving’s work as a child. My grandfather had started reading the new anthology and was so taken with it that he’d demanded his entire household read it. My father then passed it on to me.
I closed Irving and went to retrieve my discarded notebook. Perhaps it was a vain and foolish ambition, but the desire for someone to read and cherish my stories as I cherished Irving’s swelled in my chest. I closed my eyes and ran my hand over the worn cover, imagining it as a threadbare hardback on the dresser of a girl I would never know. That possibility eclipsed the hole in my heart with a strange new sense of purpose, and I knew that the feeling alone was worth whatever would come next. I would make something of this manuscript—somehow. I would find a way to learn what it would take to transform my scattered words into something of worth.
“Well, what a welcome surprise.” I jumped at the sound of Franklin’s voice and whirled to face him. Propped against my doorframe in a black tailcoat, he grinned at me and flicked his gold pocket watch open. “Five-thirty precisely and you’re actually ready.”
“Good thing, too. At least for your sake,” Mae said to me, materializing beside Franklin in the doorway. “I stalled as long as I could. I helped Mother with the laundry and even washed the dishes twice, but Frank said he’d be hauling you off with us at five-thirty whether you were ready or not.”
“Oh really? And if I wasn’t?” I laughed, narrowing my eyes at the two of them.
“I’d just sling you over my shoulder.” Franklin shrugged and scratched at the corner of his mustache. He glanced down the length of my turquoise blue satin dress. “In any case, I have to admit that I’m relieved you’re dressed. Mae and I were taking bets on whether or not we’d have to endure the Symphony next to the stench of that horrendous pink dressing gown.” I grinned and snatched my small black purse from my bedside table.
“You would’ve survived,” I said, shoving past them. “But I doubt I would’ve. I’m afraid the spectacle of a woman in her nightclothes wasn’t the sort of entertainment Mr. Carnegie had in mind.”
Chapter Five
Carnegie Hall
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Franklin coughed, hand masking his face to keep from laughing out loud. I looked around wondering what in the world he thought was so funny, but saw nothing beyond Mae beside me fiddling with the ruched collar of her plain purple-velvet dress.
Franklin turned to face us, eyes glistening with hilarity. “Do you see Louise Carnegie over there?” he whispered, nodding toward the balcony across from us. All five stories of the new hall were packed tonight—the papers said that most of its two thousand eight hundred seats had been occupied for every performance since its opening in May—but I found Andrew Carnegie’s sparse white hair and full beard as easily as a spotlight amid the darkness of his hall. I laughed under my breath at his wife next to him.
“You can’t miss her. She’s wearing one of Bessie’s hats,” Mae noted, no doubt thinking what we all did: that the joke was on Bess’s customers. Mrs. Carnegie’s head looked as if it’d been wrapped up like a Christmas package in red silk with a gargantuan gold bow attached to the side.
“The bow keeps hitting Adelaide Frick in the face.” Franklin chuckled through the last word, pinching the bridge of his nose in an attempt to keep his composure. “I’m thankful Bess is busy sewing. We would’ve been subject to a monologue on her inspiration for that dreadful accessory.” Unable to look away from the huge hat, I watched as Mrs. Carnegie turned toward her husband, sweeping one of the bow tails across Mrs. Frick’s cheek. Glaring at the fabric hanging in her face, Mrs. Frick batted it and scooted away. I laughed out loud, and clapped my hand over my mouth, feeling the eyes of the patrons around me.
“It’s a wonder she’s not wearing that wretched stork hat she had Bessie make after Caroline Astor’s party.” Mae scrunched her nose, tucking a stray mahogany tendril behind her ear.
“I’m honestly shocked that anyone was inspired by the pelican hat enough to request anything remotely related,” I said.
“I’m not. If one of them has it, the rest want it . . . well, not the same thing of course, something similar.” Franklin rolled his eyes and fiddled with his new gold cuff links. “That’s the only reason Bess has customers anyway. Hodgepodge a hat for Caroline Astor and they all come flocking.”
“Frank, I don’t want you to think I’m unappreciative. This is amazing,” I said. Looking away from Franklin’s expensive cuff links, I gestured to the Carnegie Hall stage right below me. “But you invited the whole family!” Franklin had been excited to invite Mother, though a headache kept her home. Her parents, Sarah and George VanPelt, had kept a reserved box at the Academy of Music since its opening in 1854. She often spoke of the performances she’d seen as a young woman—The Barber of Seville, La Sonnambula, Don Pasquale—though she rarely mentioned fond memories of her parents at all. Her mother, a hard-nosed woman, had passed on from some type of fever when Mother was sixteen, and her father succumbed to a ruptured aneurysm a few weeks before my parents’ wedding—a match of which he adamantly disapproved.
“Frank,” I said again, nudging his arm. “Surely we can’t afford this. And those cuff links had to cost at least fifteen dollars.” I didn’t want to harass him about his spending, especially because his salary and Bess’s financed the majority of our charges, but I knew that seats like this cost at least five dollars apiece and we’d only had twenty dollars to spare last month.
Franklin lit a cigar, puffing on the end. “We can’t,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “I met a man on the train to Connecticut last month whose father—some entrepreneur sort—has reserved this box for the season. We got on quite well and we’ve kept in touch. They should be by to join us shortly.” He took a drag and coughed. “And the cuff links only cost ten. They were discounted at Wanamaker’s.” He lifted his arm in front of his face. “Handsome aren’t they? I’ve been saving a few quarters here and there and finally had enough to buy them.”
I smiled, inhaling the charred smoke from Franklin’s cigar. It reminded me of wandering past the Manor of Morrisania as a child before it was parceled off, of the old gardeners puffing away while they worked on the lawn.
Everyone suddenly stood around me and I joined them, pulling my skirt from the chair cushion as the players began to take the stage. Orderly and slow, black tuxedo after black tuxedo, th
ey filed into their seats in front of the columns trimmed with gilded filigree, waiting for Walter Damrosch. I felt a bit guilty coming to see the Symphony. Franklin had hoped Alevia would attend, but none of us were surprised when she begged off to practice. She’d auditioned for the sixth time, and been denied, just a few weeks before, on the grounds that her playing wasn’t satisfactory, though the truth was Damrosch didn’t want to cause conflict between the male players by admitting a female. I’d grown tired of both the Philharmonic and the Symphony pretending that they were rejecting her based on the quality of her playing.
Walter Damrosch came on stage to a roar of applause, tipped his head, and forced his thin lips into a mediocre smile. His lack of enthusiasm annoyed me and I looked away, scanning the guests in orchestra seating. A woman in an elaborate red dress trimmed with rose chiffon and black velvet ribbon was doubled over laughing in the second row, her face nearly as crimson as the fabric. Righting, she drew her fingers to her mouth to whistle and I recognized her immediately as Anna Katharine Green, bestselling writer of detective fiction. She nudged a dark-haired man to her left and he turned to face her, the full beard, kind eyes, and wide smile unmistakably belonging to her publisher, George Haven Putnam, president of G. P. Putnam’s Sons. I stared at them for what seemed like minutes, watching them laugh and clap like old friends, imagining Mr. Putnam’s father and Washington Irving sharing the same camaraderie. My heart lifted in my chest. I wanted desperately to feel the excitement for my book alive in someone else, and knew, in that moment, that someone was George Putnam—a man whose literary ancestry ran parallel to the author I admired the most. Mr. Putnam leaned in and whispered something, pointing toward the velvet curtains drawn back from the stage. Anna’s eyes followed. I wondered if they were talking about ideas for a new story.
