The Forgotten Room

by Karen White

  I didn’t even pause before peering inside. It was mostly clothing—not recently cleaned judging from the odor that drifted out of the opening. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I was fairly certain that it would be relatively easy to find in a bag full of soft clothing. I stuck my hand into the bag and began shifting everything like a spoon stirring a soup pot. I lifted out a canteen, a book—Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn—a hardened package of Wrigley’s chewing gum, and a Dopp kit.

  I was about to give up when my fingers brushed against something hard. I knew it was a picture frame before I held it up to the light and saw the tinted photograph of a woman who looked a lot like Carole Lombard.

  She was beautiful, with icy blond hair and clear gray eyes, but whereas one could picture Carole Lombard laughing in one of her screwball comedies, the woman in the photo didn’t appear to be one who smiled easily. Her hair was dressed for evening, her head poised looking over her shoulder, her left hand lifted. And on her third finger sat a giant round diamond she seemed to be holding up like a trophy.

  Victorine, I thought, even as my fingers quickly undid the clasps at the back of the frame. I slid the photograph out from behind the glass and turned it over, my breath held as I looked for the name I was sure had been written on the back, most likely in an elegant script and as unlike my own pigeon scrawl as possible.

  But it was blank. I flipped it around to the front, thinking maybe I’d missed a signature or endearment, but all that was there was the name of Estes Photography Studio embossed in the bottom-right corner.

  Feeling oddly despondent, I reached my hand inside the bag one last time, digging in the corners just in case I had missed something. My fingernail clipped something solid and light, something that had been carefully wrapped in an article of clothing, then tucked in place rather than being haphazardly thrown.

  Carefully, I pinched the object between my thumb and forefinger and brought it out of the bag before placing it faceup in the palm of my hand. A fine linen handkerchief—the monogram CJR hand-embroidered in a corner—was wrapped around the object. I studied the handkerchief for a moment, briefly wondering if Victorine had lovingly stitched his initials, then pulled it away from the small square object so I could see it.

  It was a miniature oil painting, set in a gilded frame, of a woman with dark hair and green eyes who stared up at me. Her expression eluded me, the emotion displayed there unknown to me. If I’d been a poet, I would have called it passion, or perhaps lust. Or maybe even love.

  I remembered all the journeys to art galleries and museums my mother had taken me to, the lectures and art lessons, and for the first time in a very long while I wished that I had paid more attention. There was something eerily familiar about the paint strokes, about the way the colors blended together when one stared closely, the features of the face discernible only when held at arm’s length.

  The woman appeared to be nude, her long dark hair tumbling around her shoulders, her only accessory a filigree gold necklace about her slender, pale neck, a perfect large ruby dangling from the center.

  I stared at the miniature for a long time, the air thinning around me. It wasn’t the woman’s expression, or the necklace, or even the fact that this had been found with Cooper’s possessions. What stole the breath from my lungs was the simple fact that the woman in the portrait looked exactly like me.

  Eleven

  DECEMBER 1892

  Olive

  An enormous gilt-framed mirror hung above the mantel of the Pratt dining room, expertly scattering the light from the brilliant electric chandelier, and Olive kept catching her reflection as she hurried past with the serving dishes. She couldn’t seem to recognize herself. Who was that ruddy-cheeked young woman with the lacy white cap and the dark hair and the frown occupying the space between those harried green eyes? No one she knew.

  She bent next to the thick black shoulder of August Pratt—the younger, not the older—and presented to him the bowl of creamed peas. He was deep into a loud and good-natured argument with his father, brandishing his wineglass to illustrate a point, and didn’t notice her. “Sir,” she said. “Mr. Pratt. Would you care for the creamed peas?”

  She didn’t know how to serve, really. She’d been pressed into duty today because Hannah, the more senior housemaid, whose job it was to attend the family in the dining room (along with beetle-browed Eunice, who bore a plate of sliced goose at the other side of the table) had taken sick after lunch and was now confined to her room upstairs. At home, even before Olive’s father died, meals had been a much more casual affair, served all at once instead of fashionably à la russe, in separate courses, as the Pratts insisted on dining even when en famille. Mrs. Keane had given her a two-minute course of instruction. Serve on the left, pick up on the right (well, she knew that much already; she wasn’t a barbarian), and never, ever disturb the family while they’re eating. Or talking. Or listening to someone else talk. How Olive was supposed to serve and clear up six different courses (soup, fish, meat, game, roast, salad, dessert) without once intruding herself on the family’s notice, Mrs. Keane never quite made clear.

  The peas were heavy, swimming in a thick cream broth. August went on talking and gesticulating (something about railroads, or banks, or perhaps both) and paying her not the slightest notice. The fire sizzled and popped a few yards away, and Olive felt the first trickle of perspiration begin its slow, inevitable journey down her temple. In another moment, it would either roll underneath her jaw or drop from the edge of her chin. Possibly into the peas themselves.

  “Gus, you big lummox, the peas are to your left,” said Harry Pratt.

  Harry.

  She had done her best to ignore the third man at the table, radiant and laconic in sleek black dinner dress, though his burnished hair kept catching the electric light, as if (so it seemed to Olive, anyway) to signal her, or else to taunt her. Every time she leaned next to his shoulder, offering him the newest dish to arrive steaming in the dumbwaiter, she felt the warmth of his neck on her arm, and smelled the curious mixture of pomade and shaving soap that characterized his evenings; every time she passed around the other side of the table, his face would half turn toward her, catching her gaze in an amused way that communicated the length and breadth of their secret in a single instant. (She snapped her eyes away at once, of course, but never soon enough.)

  Harry.

  “What’s that?” said August, wineglass raised.

  Harry nodded at Olive. “The peas, idiot.”

  August jerked to the left, knocking his elbow into the dish. Olive staggered and caught herself, while the creamy pea ocean sloshed dangerously to the edge of its Meissen shore.

  “Clumsy girl,” said Mrs. Pratt.

  “She wasn’t clumsy,” said Harry. “Gus was the clumsy ox who knocked into her. Are you all right, Olive?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How on earth do you keep all their names straight?” said Mrs. Pratt. “Especially the new ones.”

  “Not difficult at all when they’re as pretty as this one,” said Mr. Pratt. “Eh, Olive?”

  Olive’s cheeks burned. She righted herself, steadied the sloshing of the bowl, and then hesitated at August’s unpredictable elbow, not certain whether he had actually rejected the peas or forgotten she was there.

  Mrs. Pratt said icily, “Well, as far as I’m concerned, I can’t tell them apart. I suppose it’s different for you gentlemen.” There was a slight ironic weight on the word gentlemen.

  “For God’s sake, Gus, spoon yourself some peas and let poor Olive continue on her way,” said Harry.

  “Poor Olive, is it? Friend of yours?” demanded Gus, in his voice that sounded like cigar smoke passed over gravel. He shared Harry’s golden good looks, but already his excessive habits were beginning to grind down and tarnish the gifts nature had bestowed on him. He ate too much and drank too much and—judging from that voice�
��smoked too much. In another hour, he would be off in a cab, visiting a series of establishments and acquaintances that knew him all too well, each one lower and rougher than the last. In another year, his last football season a distant memory, he would start churning all that robust muscle into fat.

  Meanwhile, August, ignorant of either the corpulent future that awaited him or of Olive’s nearby disapproval, plunged the silver serving spoon deep into the creamed peas, carried them perilously to his plate, and went back for another spoonful.

  “It’s not so different, is it?” Mr. Pratt was saying to his wife. “A gentleman notices a pretty woman, and I understand it’s much the same for the ladies. Noticing a pretty fellow. Don’t you think, Mrs. Pratt?”

  Mrs. Pratt pressed her lips together and stared at her plate.

  Mr. Pratt smiled and turned to his daughter. “Isn’t that so, Prunella? Your fiancé is handsome enough, for all he’s twice as old as you are.”

  “Yes, Papa,” said Miss Pratt. That was all Olive had ever heard her say: Yes, Papa and Yes, Mama, and sometimes the opposite, when the occasion called for respectful negation. If Prunella Pratt had formed any chance opinions of her own in her eighteen years on this earth, she kept them to herself. The other housemaids liked to moan about her—she’ll catch you out; she likes to stir up trouble—but housemaids were always moaning about something, weren’t they?

  “You see, my dear?” Mr. Pratt directed his jowly, bland face back to his wife. “It seems a woman’s head can be turned by a handsome face after all. Who’d have thought it?”

  “Speaking of Prunella’s unfortunate victim,” Harry said, a little quickly, “does he have any idea what’s waiting for him at this engagement ball you’re planning? I happened to meet him yesterday over at Perry Belmont’s place, and he seems to be under the impression that it’s just a small family New Year’s Eve kind of thing. Bottle of champagne and canapés and everybody kisses at midnight. Won’t he be surprised by those swans? Ha-ha. Why, thank you, Olive. I believe I would enjoy a dollop of those delightful peas you’re offering.”

  “You should be careful how you speak to me,” Olive said, closing the door behind her.

  Across the room, Harry was busying himself with his chair and easel and a set of charcoals. He was either nonchalant about her arrival—and she almost hadn’t done it, almost hadn’t come at all—or trying exceptionally hard to seem as if he were. “Careful? How?”

  Olive leaned back against the door and took in the scene before her, not wanting to miss a single detail in her haste, in her anticipation, which choked up her throat and made her fingertips tingle. “Your family will think there’s something between us.”

  Harry straightened and turned toward her, wearing that broad and radiant smile that made her heart freeze in her chest. He had changed into a simple white shirt and brown trousers, terribly bohemian. His sleeves were rolled halfway up his forearms, and his teeth were as white as his shirt. “There is something between us.”

  “Don’t be a fool. You know what I mean. I’ll be dismissed on the spot.” She could hardly get the words out, he was so beautiful.

  Harry put his hands on his hips and tilted his head. His smile dimmed, almost mortal. “Olive,” he said slowly, “do you think for a single moment that I would let them hurt you in any way?”

  And that was it. For the past several days, and especially the past few hours, Olive had argued with herself endlessly about Harry Pratt. Whether she was simply blinded by his pretty face and his pretty manners and his flattery and his social position, or whether this attraction she felt for him was genuine. Whether she should visit him again in his studio, or ignore him and continue on her mission to rescue her father’s memory and reputation. Whether she was right to be in this room at all, whether she was being weak or brave, whether Harry was a good man or simply a good seducer, whether Harry meant her salvation or her downfall.

  And now, as he stood there before her in his billowing white shirt, glowing gold from the lamplight, surrounded by canvas and paint and brick walls and old furniture, in that beautiful and intimate room her father had designed at the top of the Pratt mansion, she realized that not only did she no longer care about the answers; she couldn’t even remember the questions.

  She belonged here. That was all.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know much about you at all.”

  “Well, you’re going to. You’re going to know everything about me, and I hope you’ll tell me everything about you. Not that I need to know it. I already know who you are.”

  “What?”

  “I mean the essence of you. Come here. I’ve set up a little background for you, a little more comfortable than last week. And I built the fire up, so you won’t be cold.”

  Olive wanted to ask why she would be cold, since she was wearing her thick flannel nightgown topped by an even thicker dressing gown, but perhaps she didn’t want to know the answer to that, either. She walked obediently in the direction of Harry’s gesturing hand, where a pile of cushions lay on the floor, flanked by a pair of potted palms. “Of course they won’t be palms in the actual painting,” Harry said. “It’s just for perspective.”

  “Of course.” Olive lowered herself carefully onto the cushions, which were upholstered in silk and threadbare velvet and released a comfortable scent of dusty lavender as she sank among them.

  “They’re from my aunt’s old house in Washington Square, I think. I salvaged them myself when Uncle Peter died and she moved uptown. There was something old and decadent about them; I couldn’t resist.”

  “I thought everything about this house was decadent already.”

  “Not in the same way. It’s all gilding and no gold. That’s it. You can recline a little. On your elbow, yes, like that. Look as if you’re settling down to daydream. Beautiful.” He circled around behind her and put his hands to her head, unpicking her braid. “Do you mind removing that dressing gown?”

  “Yes, I do!”

  Harry stepped around the cushions and bent on his knee in front of her, bracing his elbow against his thigh, almost as if he were playing football. “Olive, will you do me a very great favor? Stop thinking about the stupid people downstairs, all the stupid people in the world outside this door. They don’t exist. There’s only one opinion that matters anymore, and that’s yours. Your opinion, Olive. That’s all I care about, and that’s all you should care about. What do you think will happen if you take off this robe?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think I’ll turn into a slavering beast and ravish you on the spot?”

  She laughed. He was smiling and genial and serious all at once, and the lamplight hit his head like a halo. “No.”

  “So you trust me?”

  She studied him a little longer, and he didn’t waver. How could he be a danger to her, when his blue eyes reflected hers so steadily?

  She reached for the belt of her dressing gown. “Yes.”

  Harry said nothing as she slipped the thick brocade over her shoulders and freed it from around her legs. He took the robe from her hands and folded it carefully, leaving it atop the fraying rush seat of the chair in the corner.

  “Now come here,” he said, holding out his hand.

  She put her fingers in his palm, and he drew her upward. Her cheeks were warm, but she held otherwise steady, though her limbs felt naked under the white flannel of her nightgown. Because they are naked, you fool, she reminded herself, but not even that thought disturbed her tranquility. The flutter in her belly was only a benign and eager anticipation. She had made her decision, hadn’t she? She had crossed the Rubicon. Now she had only to see what lay on the other side.

  Harry led her to the wall next to the small fireplace, where a pile of angry coals hissed heat into the room, and pointed to the three square tiles above the mantel. Olive hadn’t noticed them before, and now
she wondered why: They were beautiful, full of color, depicting intricate heraldic shields on either side and a central figure of Saint George bearing his crimson white-crossed flag.

  Harry’s hand moved downward. “See this section of brick here? It’s loose.”

  He released her hand and worked the bricks free from the mortar in a single irregular shingle, revealing the cavity within. “You see? There’s a hollow here, as if the builder forgot to put in a few bricks. Well, he didn’t forget. I got to know the architect a little bit, when they were building this place, and he showed me. I guess he liked to do that when he designed houses, to put in some little secret. So, if you need anything, if you want to leave me a message of any kind, just put it in here. I’ll find it, I promise.”

  Olive stared at the hole, unable to speak. Unable, almost, to breathe. I got to know the architect a little bit. Oh, Papa. Papa, my God. Papa knew Harry. Papa made a little secret and shared it with Harry. Shared it—maybe—with her, with Olive, from wherever his soul now existed? To tell her—what? To perhaps say: Harry is a fine man, a man who can keep a secret, a man you can trust, Olive.

  A sign. This is the way, Olive.

  If she looked hard enough inside this small cavity in a brick wall, would she see her father inside?

  At last, a whisper: “Yes.”

  “And I’ll do the same. I’m sure you can find an excuse to sneak up here during the day, can’t you? Just check behind the bricks, and I’ll be there.”

  “Right under Saint George,” said Olive. The fire warmed the flannel of her dress, or maybe it was Harry, robust and full of life, inches away.