The Forgotten Room

by Karen White

  Margie leaned closer, her eyes so wide I could see the whites around her irises. “That’s not all.”

  She reached over and opened the journal, flipped through several pages before replacing it on my lap. “I copied this one verbatim from the society pages of the New York Times from their January third, 1893, edition.”

  I peered down at Margie’s neatly formed Catholic school penmanship and began to read.

  Mr. and Mrs. Henry August Pratt of New York City announce the engagement of their daughter, Prunella Jane, to Mr. Harrison Charles Schuyler, widower of the late Cassandra Willoughby Schuyler and father of Philip C. J. Schuyler. An elegant engagement ball was held at the Pratt residence on Sixty-ninth Street on New Year’s Eve. The date for the nuptials has been set for October 10th at Saint James’s Church.

  I looked up, meeting her eyes. “But Philip Schuyler . . .”

  “Is your father,” Margie completed for me. “Which makes Prunella Pratt your father’s stepmother, which I suppose means that Harry Pratt was your stepgrandfather? Or something like that.”

  “Actually, that would make him my stepgranduncle.” I shook my head. “Why didn’t my mother ever tell me any of this?”

  Margie shrugged. “Well, there’s the architect’s suicide, and then Harry Pratt’s disappearance and his brother’s tragic death—it’s all rather sad if you think about it. Maybe she was trying to protect you.”

  “Maybe,” I said. But I knew that wasn’t it. The ruby necklace alone told me that my mother had kept secrets from me. Her reasons were now silenced by the grave but whispered in my memories of a mother who’d always seemed to be waiting for something; something more. I pressed my fingers against the ruby beneath the collar of my dress as if it held all the answers. But it lay heavy and still against my throat, a mute talisman of my mother’s past.

  Margie reached over again and flipped a page in the journal. “Prunella Pratt Schuyler was listed in the last census in 1940, widowed and living alone. I couldn’t find a death certificate so I’m assuming that means she’s still alive. Here’s her address.”

  I stared down at the page, the words barely registering. I met Margie’s eyes. “You’re amazing, you know. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  She brushed her hand through the air as if to erase the words. “It was fun. And you can take me to dinner. Or find out if your captain has a brother and introduce me.”

  I hugged her. “You’re better than a sister—have I ever told you that?”

  She shoved me away but her face had pinkened. “Yeah, yeah. Just don’t forget that introduction to the captain’s brother.”

  “You got it,” I said, pulling her to her feet and escorting her out of the hospital. I needed to return to work, but first I had to write a note requesting a visit with Mrs. Prunella Pratt Schuyler. I wasn’t sure if she’d remember who I was, or even want to see me, but I would try. She was quite possibly the only remaining person in the world who could shed light on the mother I thought I’d known, and into the dark corners of our past.

  I waited until I was certain the nurses in the cots around me were sound asleep. I wasn’t on call and had allowed myself the luxury of sleeping in a proper nightgown. Not that I’d done much sleeping since lying down—but I’d have plenty of time for that as soon as I finished my errand.

  I slipped on my wrapper and slippers, then carefully slid the hammer and screwdriver from under my pillow before stealing from the room. I’d taken the tools from the maintenance closet earlier that day, hoping they wouldn’t be missed until I could return them the following day.

  After pausing to listen for voices or approaching footsteps, I dashed out into the corridor, almost colliding with the corner of the large antique bookcase that I’d seen the orderlies and doctors discussing earlier. It looked as if they’d managed to pull out a corner of the large piece of furniture before simply giving up, leaving an even bigger impediment in the hallway.

  I ducked into the servants’ stairwell and ran quickly up to the attic floor. I’d seen Caroline leave after dinner, so I knew Cooper was alone. Two empty cots had been set up in the attic but had yet to be filled by incoming patients.

  The door was slightly ajar and I pushed it open. There were no lights on in the room, but a pale, milky light settled on the room like a gentle benediction. The bed was empty, yet I knew Cooper was there, could feel him watching me, could feel his pull like the tides under the moon. I turned my head and saw him outlined against the window, where he’d pushed aside the blackout shades.

  I stayed where I was, afraid to approach. Afraid to get pulled into the riptide that seemed to surround him. I cleared my throat. “I brought the tools to open the top drawer of the cabinet.” I considered for a moment placing them on a trunk and leaving, but knew that I could not.

  “I was hoping you’d come,” he said softly. “I’ve been waiting to finish sketching you. You promised.”

  I swallowed, hoping he couldn’t hear it. “I’ve been busy.” I cleared my throat. “I found out that I’m related by marriage to Prunella Pratt. She was my father’s stepmother.”

  “And Harry?”

  “Her brother. He disappeared in 1893. And it looks like his artistic abilities disappeared with him.”

  “Interesting,” he said, walking toward me. “What a strange coincidence. That you’re related to the family who once lived here.” He stopped in front of me, near enough that I could feel his heat. He was bare chested again, wearing only his pajama bottoms. The gift from his fiancée.

  The reminder made me step back. Holding out the tools to him, I said, “Here. Let me know if you get that cabinet drawer open.” He hesitated a moment, then took them. I turned to leave, but strong fingers captured my arm.

  “Please. Not yet. Let me finish your sketch. It’s a full moon and I’d like to capture you in the moonlight.” I heard the tools clattering against the top of a trunk and then felt both of his hands on my shoulders, turning me around. “Please,” he said again, and I was lost on that single syllable.

  “Do you still have it?” I asked, hoping for a delay, or postponement, or any reason at all not to spend more time alone with him.

  He grinned, apparently reading my mind. “Nurse Hathaway copied all of my medical information on the other side onto another page and gave the sketch to me. She’s a very astute woman.”

  Cooper left me where I stood and walked over to a trunk that had been moved between the two new hospital beds to be used as a shared nightstand. He opened it and pulled out what looked like a sheepskin blanket and a single candle in a brass holder. “I found these in here and figured they must have been used by Harry for his sketch subjects.”

  “You have to close the blackout shades if you’re going to light the candle.” I was trying to be practical, to remind myself that I was a professional woman, that I was doing this only as a favor to a patient.

  His teeth glowed white as he smiled at me, as if he knew what I was thinking. “The civil defense patrolman went by about ten minutes ago. We have about two hours before he returns.”

  “Oh,” I said, watching him place the blanket in the puddle of moonlight by the window, then set up the candle on a small table he’d dragged to the middle of the room. The strike of a match was followed by the sharp scent of sulfur as he lit the candle. He grabbed a pillow from the bed and propped it against the wall beneath the window. “Come recline here. I want to make sure I see your eyes.”

  I began walking toward the window.

  “Take off your slippers, too, if you don’t mind. It ruins the effect.”

  I heard the smile in his voice, and it relaxed me, made me believe that he was simply an artist and I his subject. I reclined on the blanket, propping my head on my hand as I leaned against the pillow. It wasn’t uncomfortable, although I wasn’t sure how long I could stay in that position.

  “Do you have a br
other, by any chance?” I asked, remembering my promise to Margie.

  His eyes widened with surprise. “No, I don’t. Why do you ask?”

  I shrugged, feeling silly. “Just wondering.”

  He nodded, his gaze brushing over me. “Your wrapper. It needs to go, too.”

  Looking down, I saw how matronly it looked. “Oh. Of course.” I sat up and slowly untied my wrapper before taking it off and tossing it away from the blanket.

  I heard him rummaging through a drawer—presumably for the unfinished sketch and the pen from his clipboard—so he wasn’t looking at me when he issued his next directive. “And unbutton your nightgown.”

  I sat up quickly, clutching the neckline against my throat. “Excuse me?”

  “I need to see the ruby necklace if I’m going to sketch it. I assume that’s the lump I’m seeing at your neck.”

  I relaxed somewhat and unbuttoned the five small buttons that ran from the top of the neck to my breastbone, spreading the material so the ruby could be clearly seen.

  “Perfect,” he said, looking at me, his voice strained. He pulled over the bedside chair next to the candle and sat, then began to sketch.

  The only sound was that of the mice in the walls and the scratch of pen on paper, and I found it soothing. Soothing enough that I felt my head grow heavy.

  “Not yet,” Cooper said. “Let me finish with your face and then you can sleep.” He looked over the clipboard at me. “Perhaps if I talk, it will keep you awake.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, giving him a groggy smile, watching how the candlelight softened his face, illuminated the boy beneath the soldier.

  “So tell me about yourself. Tell me why you wanted to become a doctor.”

  It took me a while to answer, as I realized nobody had ever asked me that question before. “Because I hated feeling so helpless watching my father struggle with lung cancer.” I thought for a moment. “And because my mother encouraged me.”

  “How did she do that?” he asked, his eyes focused on the paper in front of him.

  “She told me . . .” I stopped, sensing how odd it would sound telling this to someone who hadn’t known my mother and father; hadn’t known that there was always enough love, but how there always seemed to have not been enough for my mother. My father had adored her, and she had loved him, but not in the same way. To me she’d been like a child who’d lost her favorite doll and been left to make do with her second best.

  “She told you what?” Cooper prompted.

  “She told me to do something with my life that could never be taken from me. To devote myself to something that involved every part of me, including my heart, so that I would never lose it. When I told her that I wanted to go to medical school, she almost seemed . . . relieved.”

  The scratching noise had stopped, and I looked up to find him watching me intently. “So you’ve never wanted to fall in love? To have a husband and a home? Children?”

  “It’s not that I never wanted any of that. It’s just that I’ve always wanted to be a doctor more. When so many people along the way told me that I couldn’t because I was a woman, it made me want to be not just a doctor, but the best doctor.”

  “And you never met a man who made you rethink your choices?”

  Not until you. I bit the words back. I wanted him. Yes, I’d finally admitted it to myself. But did I want him enough to give up everything I’d worked so hard for? Not that it mattered. He was promised to another, and my wanting of him was as impotent as a single raindrop in the desert.

  I closed my eyes without answering him. “I’m so tired. Are you almost done?”

  I listened as the clipboard was placed on the wood floor with a snap, then Cooper’s bare feet as he padded toward me. “Can you move your nightgown off your shoulders? I need to see the ruby against your bare skin.”

  “Like in the miniature,” I said, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth.

  “Yes.”

  I sat up and pulled one side of my nightgown off my shoulder, knowing if I pulled the other one down, I’d lose the nightgown completely. Our eyes met, our thoughts in tandem.

  Very quietly, he asked again, “Have you ever met a man who made you rethink your choices?”

  We stared at each other for a long moment, listening to the sound of the candlewick flickering in melted wax and a lone car passing by on the street below.

  “Just once,” I whispered, my eyes not leaving his. I reached up to the fabric on my shoulder, but his hand against mine stopped me.

  His face was that of a man in pain. “Don’t,” he said, his voice rough. “I can’t . . .” He shook his head. “We shouldn’t . . .”

  I lifted his hand with my free one and brought the palm to my lips. Since my decision to become a doctor, I’d never been so sure of anything in my life. “My mother once told me that a lifetime of good enough was a fair price to pay for a single moment of pure happiness. This is my moment. Don’t take that from me.”

  With deliberate slowness, I reached up and slid the nightgown from my shoulder, feeling the soft cotton puddle at my waist.

  “Kate,” he said, the word filled with wonder, and promise, and the single moments that were meant to last a lifetime.

  He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me softly as I pulled him down with me onto the sheepskin blanket, cocooned in the light of the moon where wars and tomorrows didn’t exist, and where one moment could be made to last until the fragile light of dawn.

  Twenty-three

  NEW YEAR’S EVE 1892

  Olive

  This time, they hadn’t even made it as far as the attic. The shame of it.

  Sorry, Harry gasped into her ear, but she hardly heard him over the noise of her own blood, the thump of her own heart. Sorry: How could he be sorry? Olive wasn’t. She wasn’t sorry for anything, not the hardness of the wall against her back, not the dampness of Harry’s forehead against her cheek, not the stairwell railing that pressed into her hip. Not for Harry’s hands, which held her in place like a double-headed anchor, so that she didn’t float right off into kingdom come.

  Not for all the times they had come together this week, just like this, furtive and beautiful and primeval, like a pair of lovers resurrected from legend. Like Tristan and Isolde, like Lancelot and Guinevere: the kind of tale with which Olive, as a budding young lady, had always become impatient. Why would any sane woman give up everything for an object so chimerical as passion? But now she knew. She would give up anything for this. It frightened her, what risks she would take, what price she would pay, what conventions she would ignore, for this instant of joy in Harry’s arms.

  An instant of true happiness, before she returned to reality.

  She tightened her fingers around his hair and whispered, “I have to go back. Someone’s going to come looking for me.”

  “But not here. No one ever comes here, except us.” His thumbs moved against her bottom. “One more minute.”

  “Why? You’ve had what you wanted.”

  “Not yet.” He kissed her neck. “This is what I really wanted, Olive. This is what I can’t get enough of.”

  “Harry—”

  “Just be still, won’t you? Don’t spoil it. Trust me, for once.”

  Olive relaxed against the wall, against Harry’s sturdy hands, and closed her eyes. Just for a minute. Because he was right, wasn’t he? Harry was always right. This was the best part. This was what she couldn’t get enough of, not if she lived forever: Harry on her skin, Harry’s grateful kisses on her neck, Harry and Olive, teeming and sated, brimming over with each other, as if this house and this world had been built by God’s hands for their love alone.

  But they weren’t, not really. The world was more practical than that. Two minutes later she was hurrying back down the staircase, legs atremble, smoothing her rumpled skirt, to burst onto the fifth-floor land
ing and the maelstrom of preparation for the evening’s festivities.

  If anything, she thought, the house and the world had been built for Prunella Pratt’s engagement ball.

  A curl brushed against her cheek. Olive put her hands to the sides of her head and realized that her hair was damp and loose, that the pins had been dragged from the knot at the base of her neck: a natural consequence of repeated ecstatic abrasion against a plaster wall. She turned in horror to the gilded mirror that hung at the end of the landing, right where the winding staircase reached the floor, and began jabbing the pins in place.

  “Olive! What’s the matter? You’re blushed to the gills!”

  Olive spun around. It was Bitsy, one of the parlormaids, a quiet girl with a lilting Irish accent.

  “Nothing! I was just fetching something, and the stairs . . .” She shrugged helplessly.

  Bitsy rolled her eyes. “Well, you’d best clean yourself up right quick. Ellen’s burned her hand on the curling tongs, the old galoot, and there’s no one else to help Miss Prunella dress.”

  “But I’m not a lady’s maid!”

  “Seems you are now. I’d hop to it, if I was you.”

  Bitsy turned and hurried back down the stairs, without another glance, until she rounded the curve and disappeared. But her voice floated up in her absence: “Mind you straighten your cap, now, Olive!”

  Olive turned back in horror to her reflection. Bitsy was right: She was flushed, and her cap sagged shamefully to the left. Upstairs, Harry had ducked into the studio to reconstruct himself back on orderly lines, but Olive had no such luxury, did she? She forced her fingers to stop their shaking and put each pin back in place. She drew in a long and steadying breath and straightened her white cap. There was nothing she could do about the blush. She had earned it, fair and square.