The Forgotten Room

by Karen White

  She closed the door behind me. “She told me not to offer refreshments, but ye look like ye could use a nice cup of tea. I’ll bring some in just a moment.” She jerked her head to the left. “Herself is right through that door. Give a knock first, or we’ll both be hearing about it.”

  I watched Mona waddle away toward another door I assumed led to a kitchen, the tight black fabric stretched and shiny across her back. I wondered if she’d once worked for the Pratts and had stayed with Prunella not necessarily out of loyalty, but because she had no other options.

  I took a quick assessment of the room around me, familiar only because of the furniture. It seemed bigger here, out of place in the tiny apartment, with china figurines and objects d’art cluttering the heavy dark wood of the oversized pieces. Small paths had been carved between three large sofas and various accent tables and bookcases to allow passage from one room to the next, giving the room the appearance of the ocean’s surface after the sinking of a large ship, the debris scattered haphazardly without thought of placement or usefulness.

  It struck me as incredibly sad how this was all that remained of a once glamorous and privileged life, the beauty of all these things diminished by the peeling wallpaper and faded draperies of the drab apartment. My father had managed Prunella’s finances until his death, which must have precipitated her move across the river. A move she must have loathed, and probably still did. I almost turned away then, to let myself out of the door and into the rain-cleansed air.

  “Mona? Who was that? I hope you’re not keeping the door open too long—I don’t want to catch a draft and be chilled.”

  The voice hadn’t changed in all those years, the same imperious intonations, the perfect finishing-school accent. It reminded me of my father’s grimace as he told me that we had to visit Aunt Prunella again.

  I’m a grown woman. A doctor no less, I reminded myself. I lifted my hand and knocked and, without waiting for a response, pushed the door open.

  I didn’t see her at first. The small bedroom was the repository of an enormous mahogany four-poster bed and the largest armoire I’d ever seen. An oversized Victorian dresser and settee were crammed into the tiny room, making it easy to miss the diminutive woman propped up against overstuffed pillows in the bed. She was even smaller than I remembered, as if the passing years had pushed out pieces of stuffing.

  “Aunt Prunella?”

  She squinted at me. “Move closer so I can see you.”

  I moved two steps closer to the bed.

  “Closer. I don’t know why you insist on standing across the room.”

  I bit back a smile, suspecting that vanity was the reason for her lack of eyeglasses. I moved so that my legs pressed against the side of the mattress.

  She didn’t say anything for a while, her sharp blue eyes examining me closely, as a jeweler might examine various stones to determine their worthiness. Lifting her eyes to mine, she said, “Kate did you say? I remember you as a little girl, of course. You have the look of your mother. The same heart-shaped face with that pronounced widow’s peak.”

  It was clear she hadn’t meant it as a compliment. “My father used to say that, too, although I wasn’t sure I agreed. My mother was a beautiful woman.”

  “Was?”

  I nodded. “She died a few years ago.”

  If I thought she’d offer condolences, I would have been disappointed. I looked around for a chair, but the settee was across the room, so I remained standing where I was. “I’m afraid you and I lost contact after my father died. I was only recently made aware that you were still alive. As I explained in my letter, I’m a doctor at Stornaway Hospital, in the building I believe was the Pratt mansion where you once lived.”

  Her lips pressed together so tightly that the blood leached from them, leaving them so pale that her mouth seemed to disappear altogether. “Yes. I lived there for a short time before my marriage.” Her words were cold and clipped, as if to say, And this is where I live now.

  I forced myself to smile. “I believe I found a gown that once belonged to you. It was in the attic in an armoire. It’s exquisite, with tiny pink roses on it, and the tiniest waist. It has your name embroidered inside of it.”

  Her face softened, allowing me to glimpse the beautiful young girl she must have once been, before the disappointments of her life had overshadowed the good parts. “I wore that gown to my engagement party. My photograph was in all the society pages for weeks afterward.” Her lips curved upward in a smile, her thoughts turned inward, making me wonder what it was like to live one’s life looking backward.

  “I could return it to you, if you’d like to have it back. Although it has a terrible stain on the front. I think it might be wine.”

  Her eyes snapped, her eyes hard as they regarded me. “Yes. It’s wine. A stupid and clumsy maid spilled it on me. Ruined it completely.”

  Eager to change the subject, I said, “I found some sketches of Harry’s, too. Your brother was quite talented.”

  She gave a quick shake of her head, as if she’d just tasted something bitter. “He was a hobbyist, nothing more. But he somehow got it into his head that he wanted to be an artist. Father set him straight, of course. Pratts did not become artists. It just wasn’t done.”

  I shifted on my feet, uncomfortable to be standing next to her bed and having this conversation. She made no offer to find a chair for me, and I was not going to sit on the side of the bed. It seemed as if we were waiting the other out.

  I cleared my throat. “I understand that Harry disappeared around the same time as your marriage. Did you ever find out what happened to him?”

  She turned toward the window, the dim light reflected in her eyes. “No. He simply . . . left. Never even said good-bye.” She paused. “I would have liked to see him again, I think.” It might have been a trick of the light, but her eyes appeared to mist, becoming twin pools of shallow blue water. “I did something awful, and I would have liked to tell him how sorry I was. As if that could have changed anything.” She paused for a moment before turning her pale eyes on me again, blinking as if suddenly realizing that she had spoken aloud, that she had finally acknowledged her wrongdoing. “You will find, Kate, as I have, that sooner or later everyone leaves you until you are left quite alone with only disappointment and regrets for company.”

  Mona entered the room, bustling about quickly, as if to deflect her mistress’s icy stare. She placed a tray across Prunella’s lap and began pouring tea from a silver pot into two mismatched Spode china cups.

  “I thought ye might be parched, Miss Prunella,” Mona said as she dropped two large teaspoons of sugar and a healthy dribble of cream into a cup and handed it to Prunella. The older woman took it grudgingly and began sipping.

  The windows of the room were shut, no doubt to block nuisance noises such as children and traffic as well as the inevitable dirt and dust. But it also made the air stale and stifling, and I found I was indeed in need of refreshment. Mona poured a cup for me and I took it, holding up my hand when she offered cream and sugar. Prunella seemed almost relieved, as if she budgeted her cream and sugar. But not, apparently, her stationery.

  I blew on my tea, wondering why I’d come. I’d already known she was related to Harry Pratt, but what else had I hoped to learn? Knowing what had happened to Harry wouldn’t have solved the mystery of the miniature or the ruby necklace. They were simply unrelated elements, connected only by my own curiosity. And Cooper’s. So why was I there? Maybe I’d come with the hope that once Prunella knew I was alive, we would make a connection based on our mutual loneliness. The war had taught me to treasure life and all the things that connected us as human beings. Prunella and I had no family except for each other.

  My gaze panned over the cluttered room as I sipped, taking in the cosmetics on the dressing table and a crumbling bouquet of dried roses that listed languidly in a dome-shaped glass cover on a ta
ll plant stand. Disappointment and regrets. I shivered despite the mugginess, and continued my perusal of the room. A low bookcase sat beneath one of the windows, where a large leather-bound volume was squeezed in between much smaller books. I paused with my cup held to my lips, remembering the book from my childhood visits. “Aunt Prunella, is that your scrapbook?”

  She saw where I indicated and elicited a bored sigh. “Yes, it is. My mother clipped every article about me from my debutante ball through my wedding. I thought it was quite tiresome, but she insisted.” A spark lit her eyes, belying her ennui.

  “May I see it?” I asked, already walking toward the bookcase.

  “If you must. But do not take too long. I need my rest.”

  I looked back and saw Mona rolling her eyes. After placing my cup and saucer on top of the bookcase, I slid the thick volume from its place and brought it back to the bed. Mona cleared the tea set before excusing herself for a moment. She returned with a kitchen stool that she placed next to Prunella as I settled the scrapbook against the older woman’s scrawny knees.

  The glowing young woman in the aged photographs was barely recognizable as the same woman in the bed beside me. I calculated that Prunella would be about seventy years old now, but her air of frailty and helplessness added years to her age. I wondered if disappointment and regret could do that to a person, could etch themselves into the curves and planes of a young girl’s face, like time’s library stamp.

  I let her turn the pages with her still elegant hands, listening to her stories of what it was like for her in the latter part of the last century, to imagine Stornaway Hospital as the glittering mansion it had once been, seeing her handsome brothers in their formal wear dancing with beautiful women at the various balls the Pratt family had hosted in their short stay in the mansion on East Sixty-ninth Street. It made me nostalgic for something I had never known but felt a connection to nevertheless.

  I was thinking of an excuse to leave when she turned the page to reveal a large article and photographs that filled facing pages. There was an inset photo of the entire Pratt family in formal attire, posing in front of the familiar circular stairs of the mansion. I pointed to the tall and handsome fair-haired young man standing next to a younger Prunella, his smile full of mischief. “Is this Harry?”

  She nodded, her finger gently brushing the clipping. “He was so handsome, wasn’t he? Gus was handsome, too,” she said, tapping the image of another blond young man, who was still nice to look at yet lacked whatever spark his brother seemed to have. “But Harry . . .” She sighed. “My mother used to say he hung the moon in the sky, and if you’d known him, you might even agree.”

  I leaned closer, studying his eyes. I examined the curve of his jaw and the way his nose was a little too thin and a little too long but which made it all the more arresting in his otherwise perfect features. “He looks . . . familiar,” I said, leaning back to get a better perspective.

  “He should,” Prunella said indignantly. “We favored each other.”

  I looked at her and nodded. “Of course,” I said, knowing that wasn’t it at all.

  The larger photo was taken at Prunella’s engagement ball. A full orchestra was set up at one end of the ballroom, which was currently being used as examining areas for the patients, with cots running the length of the gilded room. Some of the couples were blurred as they swirled around the floor, smudges of white from ladies’ gloves resting on the shoulders of black-frocked gentlemen. I recognized an older version of Prunella, the mother from the smaller photo, holding court near the punch table. I leaned in closely and felt my breath stop.

  Standing directly behind Mrs. Pratt was a young woman in a maid’s uniform almost identical to the one Mona currently wore. Except this uniform was new and crisp and fit the slender form of the woman who wore it. She had dark hair pinned up beneath a white cap, and her gaze was fixed on the tray of champagne glasses that she gripped with both hands, as if she were unaccustomed to serving.

  Despite the pressing heat in the room, I felt a chill dance up my spine and take residence at the nape of my neck. It wasn’t that the woman resembled me. It wasn’t even that she was a dead ringer for the woman in the miniature portrait that belonged to Cooper and had once been his father’s and his father’s before him. It was the dark-stoned necklace that hung on the outside of the uniform, the delicate chain tangled in the neck of her dress as if some exertion had coerced it from its hiding place and it had become stuck in the high collar.

  It took me a moment to find the words in my dry mouth. “This maid—with the necklace. Do you know who she is?”

  Prunella leaned forward and squinted, her eyes then widening in apparent recognition as her expression changed to a scowl. “Her name was something like Olivia or Olivette or something.” She shook her hand like she was shooing a fly. “Something common.”

  I forced my voice to remain steady. “And she worked as a maid for your family? At the house on Sixty-ninth Street?”

  Her lips formed a single line of disapproval. “She thought she was one of us because her father had been an architect. But blood does tell in the end, doesn’t it? My father discovered some horrible things about him and dismissed him, hoping he’d just go away. But the fool killed himself, and his daughter was left to believe that he’d been slighted. The one thing I do know is that she was a thief. She stole that necklace from me. And she disappeared with it before I could get it back.”

  “The stone, in the necklace. Was it a ruby?”

  She gave a small shrug. “I suppose so. It was dark red and had belonged to my mother, so I assume it was a valuable stone like a ruby.”

  I had been about to show her the ruby that was at that moment hanging around my own neck, had even reached toward the top button of my blouse. But I stopped. I replaced my hands in my lap, watching as they trembled. “What sorts of things was her father accused of?”

  “Adultery for one. With a client’s wife, no less. Both father and daughter deserved what they got.”

  I stared at her for a long moment, realizing that she didn’t know that Olive was my grandmother or that her own stepson had married the daughter of an apparent thief. A maid. Was this the reason for my mother’s secrets?

  I stood, my knees shaking, desperate to leave. “I should go,” I said. “And let you rest. I appreciate you taking the time to see me.”

  She looked almost disappointed, as if she didn’t get visitors very often, and I felt an unwelcome stab of pity for her. Disappointment and regrets. Before I could stop myself, I said, “I’ll come back, if you’d like. You can show me the rest of the scrapbook.”

  Her face seemed to brighten, transforming it. “That would be . . . appropriate,” she said. “Just please be sure to let us know when you’ll be here to ensure it’s at a convenient time.”

  If I hadn’t been still reeling from what I’d just learned, I might have laughed. “Of course. Thank you again,” I said, then said good-bye to Prunella and her maid.

  I nearly stumbled in my haste to get through the outer door, then paused on the outside steps as I sucked in lungfuls of fresh clean air that didn’t taste like bitter regret.

  I sat at the desk in Dr. Greeley’s office behind a pile of paperwork, happy for the distraction. He’d seemed surprised when I’d volunteered to tackle the ever-growing pile, but I knew he’d never guess the reason why I chose to hide in a place in which Cooper Ravenel would never think to look.

  I’d been avoiding him since the night we’d spent together. Seeing him walking with Caroline was too painful and would have completely dissipated the fantasy cloud I’d created where it was just Cooper and me, and no war, or fiancées, or futures that didn’t involve the other. I found myself dreading his release almost as much as I anticipated it, eager to put the pain behind me. I’d have to take the advice I always gave to my patients, to look forward to each day that took you beyond the pain, tha
t healing would eventually come. I only wished the healing wouldn’t hurt so much.

  There was a brief knock on the door and Nurse Hathaway stepped inside, closing it softly behind her. “I’m sorry to bother you, Doctor. But I have something for you and I didn’t think you’d want anybody else to see.”

  I sat back in my chair and watched as she placed a small stack of papers on the desk in front of me. “What . . . ?” I stopped, confused for a moment. They were sketches of a woman with dark hair and a heart-shaped face, nude except for the familiar necklace she wore around her neck. I recognized the fireplace in the attic room, and the mullioned windows, and for a moment I thought it was me. Or, I realized for the first time, my mother. Our coloring had been different, but she’d had the same widow’s peak, the same shape of the face. As had her mother.

  “Captain Ravenel asked me to give them to you. He said he found them in the drawer of the Chinese cabinet in the attic. He wanted you to know that he’d opened the locked drawer, and that he didn’t want these to end up in the wrong hands.”

  Her face remained expressionless, but I thought I saw something in her eyes. “She looks like you,” she said.

  I felt myself coloring. “Yes. She does. But it’s not.” I couldn’t meet her eyes. It wasn’t me in the sketch, but it could have been.

  “I know,” Nurse Hathaway said. “The artist signed and dated it at the bottom—H. Pratt, 1892.”

  She must have said something, but I wasn’t listening. I was too mesmerized by the single signature, the bold H and P of the artist on the bottom corner of sketches of a woman who looked like my grandmother, wearing the necklace that had been stolen from Prunella Pratt.

  As if she hadn’t said anything, I said, “Have you shown these to anybody else?”

  “No, Doctor. Of course not. I understand it’s a private matter and none of my concern.”

  I flipped through the sketches, each one more detailed than the last, as if Harry Pratt had spent a lot of time studying his subject. Olive. My grandmother. I sat back in my chair again, regarding the young woman in front of me. “Why are you always so kind to me, Nurse Hathaway? You must know that I’m not a favorite among the nurses or doctors.”