Secrets on 26th Street

by Elizabeth McDavid Jones

  “Mum’s not home yet. We’re getting worried.”

  “I shouldn’t worry about her. Perhaps your aunt needed her to stay a bit longer. Your mum knows I’m here to take care of you girls.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Susan said hesitantly. It seemed, though, like Mum would have gotten word to them if she was staying over. Susan stared absently at Bea’s Trafalgar Square photograph on the nightstand. She doubted Aunt Blanche had a telephone, but Mum could telephone from town, couldn’t she, and leave a message for them at Rubenstein’s Drugstore on the corner?

  Bea had moved toward the nightstand, and now she reached down and angled the photograph away from Susan’s view. It struck Susan as a rather strange thing to do at the moment. “Was there something else?” Bea asked.

  “Yes! Are you all right, Bea? You’re limping.”

  “A bit of a sprain I got at work. That’s why I was late. Don’t mention it to anyone, hear me, love? It’s a trifle, really.” She eased herself onto the bed. “If you don’t mind, Susan, I’m terribly tired. Would you shut the door on your way out?”

  Susan was stung. Bea had always welcomed her company. Now she was brushing Susan off, as if she was a pesky child. As Susan closed the door, she thought she heard Bea moan. Something was wrong.

  Reluctantly, Susan went back to the kitchen. She found Helen asleep in the rocker. She led her to bed and tucked her in beside Lucy, but Susan was too anxious to sleep. Bea seemed to be in pain, and Susan couldn’t do anything to help her. She kept hoping that Mum might still show up this evening. Then Mum could do something about Bea. Susan went back into the kitchen to wait. She sat at the table and tried to read, but her eyes kept swimming. She couldn’t concentrate.

  The fire in the stove had died, and the room was growing cold. The flat seemed so empty without Mum …

  Susan jerked awake to a knocking at the door.

  Mum! She must have forgotten her key!

  Susan rushed to the door and flung it open, but it wasn’t Mum. It was Russell.

  “Oh, it’s you,” Susan said. Swallowing her disappointment, she turned from the door and slumped in the rocker. “I thought you might be Mum. Bea came home already, Russell, but thanks for going to check on her.”

  Russell stepped into the kitchen and grasped Susan’s arm. “You’re not going to believe what I found out.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I went to the Nabisco factory. I found the second-shift foreman. Had a nice long talk with him.”

  “That’s grand,” said Susan wearily. “I’m glad you enjoyed meeting the foreman.”

  “I did. He was a capital fellow. He had some interesting information.”

  “I’m not in the mood for this, Russell. I’m worried.”

  “You ought to be.”

  Suddenly Russell had Susan’s full attention. “Why?”

  “Your boarder’s been lying to you,” he said. “No Beatrice Rutherford has ever worked at the Nabisco factory.”

  CHAPTER 8

  LESTER’S VISIT

  Susan sprang out of bed at the first hint of dawn, hoping that Mum would be home. But the door to Mum’s closet stood open, the bed not slept in. In the kitchen, gray light filtered through the curtains. Mum was not there. Mum had not come home.

  Disappointment rippled through Susan, disappointment tinged with anxiety. Why didn’t Mum try to get in touch with them? She was bound to know they’d be worried about her. It didn’t seem like Mum at all.

  Bea was again her cheery self. She made hot cocoa and promised the girls an outing in the park after breakfast. Susan could have sworn, though, she saw Bea wince as she reached into the cabinet for cups.

  Helen gulped down her cocoa and asked for seconds; Lucy buzzed about the outing all through breakfast. But Susan only sipped at her cocoa and nibbled at her toasted cornbread. She didn’t have much of an appetite. She was worried about Mum, and Russell’s words from last night lay like stones in her belly.

  Why had Bea lied to them about her job?

  The only thing Susan could figure was that Bea was embarrassed about the job she did have. Maybe she was working as a maid somewhere, perhaps for that rich woman with the pug dog. Someone like Bea, Susan guessed, might feel ashamed of doing domestic work. It hurt Susan, though, to think that Bea felt she couldn’t be honest with her. After all, Susan told her nearly everything. She’d have thought their friendship was special enough for Bea to do the same—to have trusted Susan with the truth, if no one else.

  “You’ve barely touched your breakfast, love.” Bea’s voice broke into Susan’s thoughts. “Aren’t you feeling well?” She felt Susan’s forehead.

  “It’s my stomach,” Susan said, and she told herself it wasn’t really a lie. Her stomach did hurt, though not in the way Bea was thinking. “I don’t think I’ll go to the park.”

  Bea insisted on dosing Susan with castor oil and putting her to bed. She set a glass of water beside Susan’s bed and tucked the covers around her. “Try to sleep, love. You were up late last night.”

  Susan wondered if Bea was feeling guilty for making the girls worry last night. She had an urge to tell Bea that she knew about her job, but something in Bea’s eyes—was it sadness or pain?—kept Susan from doing so. What harm would it do, she thought, to let Bea have her secret?

  Susan watched Bea walk quietly from the room, then listened to her and the girls in the kitchen getting ready to go out. Soon the kitchen door slammed. Susan knew she was alone.

  From her bed, Susan stared out at the slice of sky she could see through her open window. Even though her view was marred by the fire escape, she could tell it was a beautiful morning. The smell of the ocean drifted in on a west-bound breeze. The same breeze whipped the smoke from the Nabisco factory into a soft, blue sky.

  Susan usually felt as bright as the weather on a day like this, but today she felt tired and listless. She hadn’t slept well last night. Visions of the violence at the rally had plagued her dreams, and she found herself wondering if it was more than a coincidence that Bea had come home injured. Could Bea have been at the rally? she asked herself. But she quickly dismissed the thought. She couldn’t imagine why Bea would try to hide going to the rally. Bea had no Tammany boss like Mr. Riley breathing down her neck, threatening her to stay away from suffrage.

  Susan must have dozed off, because she awoke with a start to the sound of a knock on the front door.

  Mum!

  It had to be Mum, for who would come calling on a Sunday morning? Susan leaped out of bed, flew to the kitchen, and flung open the door. Then her throat constricted. At her door stood Lester Barrow.

  Her mouth went dry. Lester here to demand his money, and both Mum and Bea gone—what on earth was she going to do?

  “Missy O’Neal. Good morning to ye.” Lester tipped his hat and grinned in a way that made Susan shudder. He was wearing a gray, double-breasted serge suit, high-collared shirt, and silk tie. Susan figured he must have stopped by on his way home from church. “Did not see your family at Mass this morning. Your mother’s not ill, I hope.”

  Susan’s tongue was as heavy as lead in her mouth. She didn’t know whether to invite Lester in or try to get rid of him. Finally, she heard herself stammer something about Mum visiting relatives for the weekend.

  “And did she leave the rent with you, lass?” Lester was frowning.

  Susan felt weak in the knees. She knew Mum was no closer to having all that money than when Lester had come to her office a while back and demanded it. Somehow Mum had managed to put him off then, but Susan had a feeling that Lester would not take kindly to being put off again.

  Susan thought of her barbershop money, hidden safely away for a moment like this. But the moment had come too soon. Her stash had grown so slowly, with Delaney taking half her tips, that Lester would probably laugh if she offered him the little she had.

  Still, Susan had to do something. She couldn’t just stand here forever like a statue. Susan repeated
to herself what Bea had told Mum about using confidence to deal with men like Lester. Then she swallowed once, twice, invited Lester in, and offered him a cup of tea. All the while she was struggling to keep her hands from shaking and giving away her terror.

  Susan shoveled a few lumps of coal into the stove and lit it. As she slid the kettle onto the burner, she said, “You understand, Mr. Barrow, Mum has the money, everything she owes you for the last few months.” She reached into the china cabinet for two of their best china teacups. “The problem is, I don’t know where it is. She left in such a hurry, I guess she forgot to tell me.”

  Lester looked puzzled. “But it’s only for this month’s rent I’m here, lassie. Your boarder, Miss Rutherford, paid all the rest quite some time ago.”

  Susan nearly dropped Lester’s cup in his lap. Bea had paid their back rent? Where had Bea gotten that kind of money?

  Praying her eyes didn’t betray her shock, she forced a confident smile. “Oh, yes, I forgot she said she was going to do that. Care for sugar, Mr. Barrow?” A confident person, Susan was sure, would offer sugar to a guest, even if the guest was Lester Barrow. Luckily there was a tea-spoonful left at the bottom of the sugar bin.

  Lester accepted the sugar and stirred it into his tea. “You didn’t tell me, Missie O’Neal, that your boarder was a cousin of your father’s, and so highly connected at that—her grandfather in the British Parliament and all. It was kind of her, wasn’t it, to come all this way to assist your poor widowed mother? If you’d only told me who she was, that day in the bakery, why, I wouldn’t have been worrying a bit about getting my money.”

  Bea? Her father’s cousin? That was ridiculous, Susan thought.

  For a long moment Susan’s mind was blank. Finally she managed to say something that she hoped sounded reasonable. “I … I didn’t think about it, I guess. I was so excited, you know, about her coming, about meeting Dad’s cousin.” A nervous laugh escaped her lips, and instantly she scolded herself. She’d be in a fine position, wouldn’t she, if Lester figured out she was bluffing …

  But he didn’t seem to notice. He finished his tea and wiped his mouth. Then he pushed himself back from the table. “I must be going, lassie. I’ve still the fifth floor to collect from, not to mention my buildings on 25th. Tell your mother there’s no hurry on the rent. I know now she’s good for it. She and your boarder.” He closed one eyelid in what Susan supposed was a wink.

  Like a lizard blinking at a fly, Susan thought, before it snatches up the fly for its dinner. She shivered. “I’ll tell her you were here, Mr. Barrow.”

  “Aye, you do that. I’ll be back next week sometime. Perhaps when your charming cousin is here. Good day.”

  The door closed with a thud that echoed through the empty rooms. Susan stood still, listening, hardly able to believe that Lester was gone. She kept thinking that he might come bursting back through the door, chuckling in the same nasty way that he had in the barbershop, and tell her that it had all been a joke, that he was throwing them out on the street and taking Susan to jail for lying to him.

  At last Susan was convinced he wasn’t coming back. She collapsed in Mum’s rocking chair and tried to straighten out her tangled thoughts.

  Foremost in her mind was the fact that the overdue rent was all paid, that worry wiped away by Bea’s generosity. Susan’s heart swelled with affection for Bea, yet she wondered why Bea did it, and how. Susan supposed that Bea simply wanted to help out the family. Mum would have objected to accepting charity, of course, but Susan guessed that Bea hadn’t told Mum till after the rent had been paid.

  The “how” posed more of a problem. Did Bea have that much money to just give away? Maybe Bea’s family was more well-to-do than she’d led Susan to believe. But if that was true, it presented the biggest puzzle of all—namely, what in the world was Bea doing in Chelsea?

  A chill ran down Susan’s spine as the answer unfolded inside her head: something that must be kept secret for now.

  Susan gave a small, strangled cry. Bea’s letter! She had forgotten all about it.

  In her mind’s eye, Susan again saw Bea whisking the letter off the floor and stashing it in the nightstand drawer. As Susan recalled the incident, it occurred to her that Bea had seemed awfully eager to get that letter out of Susan’s sight.

  On an impulse, Susan got up and walked back to Bea’s room. She stood in the doorway, tempted to go in and peek in the drawer, just to see if the letter was still there.

  It was wrong to snoop, she knew, but she couldn’t forget that she’d caught Bea in one lie already. If she’s lying about why she came to Chelsea, Susan thought, maybe we should know about it.

  Susan thought of the conversation she’d overheard between Mum and Bea, and Bea muttering about a war. Had Susan been wrong at the time to ignore her fears for Mum’s safety?

  Susan stared at the nightstand, struggling with her conscience over whether to look for the letter. That was when she noticed Bea’s framed photograph was gone. Susan’s eyes swept the room, the nightstand, the dresser. The photograph had disappeared.

  At that moment, Susan heard a faint peal of laughter from the street below. She glanced out the open window and saw Bea and the girls returning from the park. Lucy was skipping down the sidewalk, holding fast to the string of a balloon. Bea and Helen were right behind, holding hands. Helen was nibbling on an ice cream cone; Bea had a newspaper tucked under one arm and a shopping bag in her free hand.

  Now it was too late to look for the letter. Susan tried to swallow her fears about the secrets it might hold and went to meet Bea and her sisters at the door.

  “You seem to be feeling better,” Bea said, smiling. “And here we made a special trip to the pushcart vendors for all this food—”

  “Bea said you needed a treat,” Helen interrupted, “so I took her over to Tenth Avenue.” Tenth Avenue was in the Jewish section of Chelsea. Since the Jewish Sabbath was Saturday, the pushcart vendors were out in force on Sunday.

  “Bea got oranges, Susie!” Lucy said. She had chocolate ice cream smeared all over her mouth. “And see the pretty balloon she bought me?” She beamed. Lucy had never had a balloon, though she begged for one every time they went to the park.

  Helen held out a small bag to Susan. “We brought you some candy, Susie. Horehound. Bea said it would help your stomach.”

  “We didn’t suppose you would feel like ice cream,” Bea added.

  Susan thanked Bea and forced a smile. That missing photograph was nagging at her. Yesterday Bea had made a point of turning it away from Susan’s view, and today it was gone. A small thing, maybe, but peculiar. And all these peculiar things about Bea were beginning to trouble Susan quite a lot.

  Susan started unloading the shopping bag. There were oranges and bananas, a tin of cookies—Bea called them “biscuits”—four big pickles wrapped in paper, a slab of cheese—

  Then Susan’s eye fell on the newspaper Bea had placed on the table. SUFFRAGISTS JAILED! the headline shouted. Susan quickly scanned the article, her thoughts pulled back to yesterday’s riot. According to the newspaper, the suffragists were being blamed for the violence, and the mayor had sworn to make examples of the women who were arrested. He promised that they would receive heavy fines and jail sentences. Susan shook her head. With Tammany Hall against them, how could the suffragists hope to succeed in New York City?

  “You’ll come, too, won’t you, Susie?”

  Susan pried her thoughts from the suffragists and looked down into Lucy’s hopeful face. “Come where, sweetie?”

  “Our picnic on the roof. Bea says we’ll have cheese sandwiches and oranges.”

  “Yeah, sure, I’ll come.” Outings to the park and picnics on the roof—Susan wondered whether Bea was trying to keep them so busy they wouldn’t have time to worry about Mum. It was only a stray thought, but it planted itself in Susan’s head, and it stayed there the rest of the day.

  CHAPTER 9

  A TELEGRAM AND A LETTER

  Mum still
wasn’t home by Sunday evening, and Susan’s uneasiness turned to fear. Tomorrow would be Monday—a workday. If Mum didn’t show up at the office tomorrow, she’d be fired. Something had happened, Susan was sure, something that was keeping Mum away.

  Susan tried to voice her concern to Bea, but Bea insisted there was nothing to worry about. “Perhaps your mother made arrangements with Mr. Riley in case she had to stay longer.”

  Susan knew there was no such thing as “arrangements” for workers in Chelsea. If you displeased your boss, you lost your job, and everyone understood that’s how it was. Everyone except Bea, it seemed.

  Susan was too worried now to be satisfied with Bea’s guesses about what might have happened. She wanted to know something for sure. “Can’t you send a telegram to Aunt Blanche? I just want to know that Mum is safe.”

  Bea touched Susan’s arm. “You have my assurance, love. Isn’t that enough?”

  Susan fixed her eyes on a crack in the linoleum. She couldn’t look at Bea because she knew her answer was no. Bea’s assurances were no longer enough. Susan’s heart beat faster as she realized what that meant. She couldn’t rely on Bea anymore. She would have to take action herself to find Mum. First thing tomorrow she would wire Aunt Blanche.

  After dropping Helen off at school, Susan went to the Western Union office on 30th Street and plunked down a quarter from her barbershop money to send the telegram. All morning she hung around 30th Street waiting for an answer. She wandered over to the docks and watched the longshoremen unloading ships, but after a while, that made her heart ache for Dad. Which, in turn, made her worry more about Mum.

  By three o’clock, she still had no answer, and she decided she’d better go on to the barbershop. The hours at the barbershop dragged by, and when six o’clock arrived, Susan stowed her shoe-shine kit and fairly bolted for the door. The long walk back to the Western Union office seemed endless. The sun cast long shadows of buildings across the sidewalk in front of her. Hundreds of faces and figures hurried past her, but Susan didn’t see them. All she thought about was her telegram and the reply that would surely be waiting for her.