The Forgotten Room

by Karen White

  Her eyes brightened with recognition. “Augustus. My father’s middle name was August, you know. And my brother—the eldest of the twins—was called Gus.”

  “What happened to him?” I asked, immediately wishing I hadn’t when I saw the color slip from her face.

  “He died. In a barroom brawl.” She shook her head in distaste. “He died right before Harry left. It was all quite . . . unsavory.” She pressed her handkerchief to her lips as if wiping away a stain. “Do you know what happened after Harry left New York?”

  “Just the basics, really. After a stint in Cuba, he moved to Charleston, where he became a renowned painter. He even had a few exhibits here in New York that my mother brought me to as a child, although at the time I never realized that Harry and Augustus were the same man.” I paused, watching as Prunella clenched and unclenched her fist on top of her cane. “Captain Ravenel is Harry’s grandson.”

  Her eyes glowed with a dim light. “Is Captain Ravenel still here? I would like to meet him. The last remaining Pratt.”

  I swallowed, pressing back the tears that threatened every time I thought of him. “No. He was discharged last month and went back home to Charleston. He’s getting married in November.”

  She watched me closely, as if I’d given too much away, then relaxed back against the sofa, her face softening. “So Harry married and had children after all.”

  “Yes. But he never forgot about Olive, nor she him.” I pulled the ruby necklace from inside my blouse. “That’s how I came to own this. And the small miniature that Harry painted of Olive wearing this necklace was passed down from Harry to his son John and then to Cooper. Cooper showed it to me.”

  Prunella examined the necklace carefully, then raised her eyes to meet mine. “You look so much like her, you know. And so did your mother. I saw it when Philip brought Lucy to meet me that first time. That’s how I knew that Olive hadn’t disappeared, too.”

  She was silent for a moment as I digested her words, understanding that she’d known all along the connection between Lucy and Olive. She continued. “I never could determine how your mother managed to snare my stepson, although I was quite sure it had been deliberate. But I could never say anything because there was you. You were like the daughter I never had, so sweet and full of joy. I know I never showed it, but I always looked forward to your visits. It was the one bright spot in my rather bleak life.” Her lips curled up in a semblance of a smile.

  “Olive didn’t steal the necklace, did she?”

  She looked down at her hands, well tended and soft. “No. I was upset. Vengeful, I suppose. You see, I imagined myself in love with her father.”

  Her gaze bore into me, but I didn’t flinch. I knew she would tell me more if I showed her that I wasn’t appalled by her confession. That I wasn’t there to judge her.

  “But he rejected me for another. Not that I could blame him. I was a spoiled girl, who knew nothing of love. Of course he rejected me. But I was angry, unused to anybody telling me no. And when I saw that necklace on Olive, I couldn’t believe that my brother would have given a maid, a maid, something so valuable, regardless of where it had come from.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t know that part of the story?”

  I shook my head.

  “I might not have won the affections of Olive’s father, but someone else had. You see, the necklace had been a gift from my mother’s lover.” She paused. “Olive’s father.”

  I stood, too stunned to continue sitting still. “But why did Olive come to the mansion to work? I assumed she was educated, being an architect’s daughter. Surely she had other options than being a maid in the mansion her father had designed and working for his lover.”

  “Revenge, dear. Simple revenge. She wanted to ruin my father. But I was onto her and her plans. She would never be one of us. Her father was an elevated tradesman, after all.”

  I began pacing the small room, wishing Cooper were here so I could tell him everything. But he wasn’t. He was back in Charleston, planning for his wedding to Caroline in less than two months.

  “So you figured out who Olive was and you must have threatened to tell Harry if she didn’t leave. That’s what you meant when you told me that you wished to see Harry again, to apologize for something awful you’d done to him.”

  All my energy disappeared as I thought of how such a tiny thing as a lie could be like a pebble tossed in a pond, its ripples felt for decades. I collapsed back into my chair. “Is that what you came to tell me?”

  She raised a regal eyebrow. “Partly. You will find, dear Kate, that as one gets older one tends to want to make amends. To fix old wrongs. Admitting my part in the Harry and Olive saga was just one of my sins for which I needed to atone. I am sure I will think of more. But mostly I wanted to pass on a piece of advice I wish somebody had told me when I was your age. It would have saved me quite a bit of heartache. Not that I would have listened, of course. But you’re a woman, Kate. Much smarter than I was. Which is why I have hopes that you will take my advice to heart.”

  To my surprise, she leaned her cane against the wall and reached out for my hands. I hesitated for just a moment before placing mine in hers. Her skin was cool and papery, as brittle as an autumn leaf. “Follow your heart. If you put your heart second and always follow your head, you will end up like me. Disappointment and regret are very lonely bedfellows.”

  There was a brief tap on the door and Mona popped her head through the opening. “Are we ready yet, Mrs. Schuyler?”

  “You took your time, didn’t you? I hope you got your fill of coffee and cake, because you’re not getting any when we get home.”

  Mona’s smile never dimmed as she picked up the cane and then helped Prunella stand.

  I kissed Prunella’s cheek. “Thank you,” I said. “For everything.”

  “Yes, well, next time do not make me come all the way out here to see you. You know where I live. And when your captain comes to visit you again, I want to meet him.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but she and Mona were already bustling out of the room and toward the elevator. I said good-bye and watched them leave, Prunella staring straight ahead as if she were still the princess of the mansion.

  I sat down in my chair again and stared at the wall for a long moment. Disappointment and regret. Could it be that in my desperation to avoid both I’d inadvertently embraced them, heading down the same path as Olive and Lucy? And Prunella. Had nobody learned anything?

  I closed my eyes as my world shifted beneath my feet and something that felt like hope fluttered in my chest. Standing, I made my way out of the office, my feet confident of their direction for the first time in weeks.

  SEPTEMBER 1944

  The reception desk nurse scowled at me as she held her hand over the telephone’s receiver. “Dr. Schuyler, may I remind you that this phone is not intended for personal use?”

  I resisted the urge to grab it from her and instead smiled. “I know, and I do apologize. But it must be an emergency for my friend to be calling me.”

  “Let’s just hope it is. I would hate to report you to Dr. Greeley.”

  “Yes, let’s hope it’s an emergency.” My sarcasm went unappreciated as the nurse reluctantly handed me the phone, mouthing the words, “Be quick.”

  “Margie? Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine. But we’re absolutely swamped here and two coworkers are out sick, so I’m it. I can’t meet you at the park today for lunch.”

  I felt more disappointed than I should. Margie had been my champion over the last month. She’d helped me write the first letter to Cooper, telling him I’d had a change of heart. She’d come up with the idea of using hospital stationery so if anyone else found the letter they would think it was official hospital business and not be tempted to open it. I’d written three letters, each one more
revealing than the last, each addressed to his family home on Tradd Street where he’d grown up and where he now lived with his widowed mother.

  Each week without a reply had left me more and more despondent, and I’d come to rely on Margie to keep my hopes and spirits up. But doubt had begun to splinter my initial resolution, each day seeming to dawn darker and darker. Disappointment and regret. At first Prunella’s words had been my motivation, but as the weeks dragged on, I began to see them as my destiny.

  I tried to put a smile in my voice. “I understand. Maybe Friday?”

  “We’ll see. But I still think you should go today. It’s beautiful outside and the leaves in the park have started to turn. Sit on our usual bench and pretend I’m there. I promise you’ll feel better once you get some sun on your face.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Maybe I will.”

  “Do it,” Margie commanded. “Let me play doctor for once.”

  The nurse tapped her watch with exaggerated movements. “I’ve got to go. I’ll call you . . .” The phone was ripped from my grasp before I could say good-bye.

  I retrieved my lunch pail and pulled on a sweater before leaving the building. Margie was right. The weather had shed the heat and humidity of summer, allowing the first hint of autumn in the air, a crisp bite to the breeze that drifted from the park as I crossed Fifth Avenue. I felt marginally better when I found our bench empty and sat down, turning my face toward the sun. For a moment I could even forget the heaviness in my heart. But only for a moment.

  From the corner of my eye I saw somebody approaching but didn’t turn my head, expecting them to pass by. I closed my eyes, enjoying the warmth of the sun, and didn’t open them even as I felt someone sit down on the other end of the bench. I’d grown up in the city and had learned to keep to myself, to not acknowledge strangers, even one sitting on the same bench.

  I opened my eyes and focused on undoing the clasps on my lunch pail.

  “Growin’ up in South Carolina I was told that Yankee women all fell from the ugly tree, hitting each branch on their way down. But then I met you and learned that couldn’t possibly be true.”

  I stared hard at the smooth metal of my pail, wondering if I was dreaming and if I looked at the opposite end of the bench there would be no one there. But there was only one way to find out.

  Slowly, I turned my head. Cooper, in civilian clothes, sat back on the bench, one long leg casually crossed over the other, an elbow propped on the bench’s back. His fedora was pushed back on his forehead so I could see his eyes. “Hello, Kate.”

  Forgetting my lunch pail on my lap, I stood, barely noticing the clatter it made as it hit the ground, my apple rolling to my feet. He stood, too, leaving his fedora on the bench so I could see his dark hair, longer now, curling slightly around his ears.

  “What are you doing here?” I didn’t like the way that sounded, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  He grinned. “Margie told me you’d be here.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not what I meant. Why are you here, in New York?”

  “Because I read your letters. All of them. I would have come sooner but I had business to take care of.”

  “Caroline?”

  He nodded. “It’s over. It was over even before I received your first letter. I told her I couldn’t marry another woman knowing I loved someone else. Even if that woman said she didn’t love me and I thought I’d never see her again.”

  He paused, allowing his words to sink in.

  “I allowed her to end the engagement to save her dignity. She’s already seeing someone else.”

  I took a step forward. “There’s so much I need to tell you.”

  “Not yet,” he said, crossing the space between us and wrapping me in his arms. His kiss was new yet familiar, tender yet searching, and as my fingers threaded their way through his hair it was as if the past ceased to exist, the present shimmering at our feet along with the fallen leaves.

  He held my head gently in his hands and pressed his forehead against mine. “I love you, Kate. I don’t want to live my life without you. We can live here or in Charleston or in Timbuktu; I don’t care as long as we’re together. You can be a doctor and I can own an art gallery anywhere. Just tell me that you want to be with me.”

  “Yes,” I whispered. Then, “Yes!” I shouted. “I love you, Cooper Ravenel, and I will follow you to the ends of the earth.”

  An elderly couple walked by, their hands clutched between them. The old man winked as they passed, giving his wife a peck on the cheek.

  Cooper’s eyes became serious as he studied my face. “I figured out why our parents didn’t marry. There was something about that letter from my father to your mother that kept bothering me until I finally realized what it was. The date on the letter. He wrote it in 1920.”

  I raised my eyebrows, wondering at the significance.

  “My parents were married in 1917, and I was born in 1918.”

  I felt my lips form a perfect O. “Well, that certainly explains . . .”

  My words stilled in my mouth as Cooper took my left hand and slipped a ring on my third finger. It was the ring bought for my grandmother, Olive, by the love of her life, and then forgotten for more than fifty years, hidden in the dark where no light could reach the heart of the brilliant stone and make it shine. It glittered on my finger in the bright sunshine, filled with promises and possibilities.

  Cooper kissed me again as a strong breeze rustled the leaves on the path, tumbling them around our feet and sending more raining down on us from the trees above. I looked up at the scuttling clouds in the autumn sky. “Do you believe in fate?” I asked.

  “Maybe. Or perhaps the eternal persistence of love.” His lips smiled against mine. “Or maybe it was just Margie. She’s very persuasive.”

  I laughed, then stood on my toes to kiss him this time, my grateful arms holding him tightly. The sounds of the city swarmed around us as life marched on in this corner of the world, where glorious old mansions peered down into the streets, where nothing and everything changed, and where star-crossed lovers had finally found each other in a house on Sixty-ninth Street, in a forgotten room at the top of the stairs.

  Epilogue

  NEW YEAR’S EVE 1893

  Harry

  To his surprise, the room looked exactly the same. Maybe the auction company hadn’t bothered with the worthless scraps of furniture up here; maybe nobody had even ventured up the stairs. There was the Chinese cabinet, probably still filled with his drawings; there was the easel, tilting slightly to one side. The battered chaise longue, still covered in disreputable old velvet; the sheepskin rug, right there in the middle of the floor, scattered with cushions . . . well, he looked away from that. There was only so much nostalgia a fellow could take.

  The thing was, he hadn’t planned to come up here at all. He was going to let it all lie. If the newspapers were telling the truth, his father had gotten no more than he deserved, losing his fortune after the usual kind of Wall Street skullduggery, in which you tried to cover up your losses and ended up making them worse, dragging down a few thousand innocent middle-class shareholders and a bank or two along with you. Prunella? She could take care of herself, no doubt about that. Gus—poor bastard—Gus was dead.

  And Olive was still married; there was nothing an honorable man—and Harry liked to think he had a streak of decency left, despite everything—nothing he could do about that.

  She had a daughter. The Pinkerton man had sent him a note last month. The little girl had been born right above the bakery on the day after Thanksgiving, and they had named her Lucy. Harry had read the note and said a prayer for mother and daughter, and he had tossed the paper into the kitchen fire and watched it burn. He had closed his eyes and pictured Olive holding a baby girl to her breast, a baby girl who wasn’t his, and his heart had hurt so much, he thought maybe he was hav
ing an attack. Somebody save me. Maria had come in and asked him what in the name of the holy blessed Virgin he thought he was doing, staring into the fire like that. Nothing, he said. She said was there anything she could do, and he didn’t say another word, just turned around and took her to bed right then and there, kept her there most of the afternoon, and on Christmas Day she told him she was pregnant, señor. Feliz Navidad.

  He was on the boat the next morning, heading to Miami and the train for New York.

  Now here he was, and nothing had changed, and everything had changed. Nobody lived here anymore; nobody lay with somebody on that sheepskin rug and went to heaven. Nobody danced around the ballroom in silks and jewels; nobody sketched anybody’s beautiful pale breasts in the lamplight. Nobody lived and loved and wept. Just furniture, and memories.

  God, the memories.

  He’d thought it would hurt, coming up here like this, looking around the place and thinking, inevitably, of everything that had happened. And sure enough, the memories had crashed down on him the way the waves hit the beach before a hurricane, one after the other, each one merging foamily into the next. Meeting Olive on the stairs, under the moon. Sketching Olive. Olive in her black dress and white pinafore apron, ducking around a corner. Olive lying like a nymph on the old velvet cushions, Harry kneeling above her, Olive lifting her arms to draw him down, to wrap her legs around him and throw back her head as if she couldn’t take any more, and then she did.

  Olive’s extraordinary face, her huge doe eyes, her spirit and her longing and her striving.

  Olive gone.

  That terrible morning. Waking up alone, hearing the commotion. Poor stupid Gus, carried half-dead into his room. Looking for Olive, desperate for Olive, more and more desperate. Her room tidy, her trunk gone. Looks like she’s done a flyer, said the cook, shaking her head, and the housekeeper ran for the cabinet to count the silver.

  Painting frantically, waiting for news, because there was nothing else he could do but paint. Paint, damn it. Pour his heart out onto that damned wall. And when they found her—this was how he imagined that moment, when she returned to him—he wouldn’t say a word of recrimination, not a hint of reproach for breaking his heart. He would take her in his arms and show her the mural he’d made while she was gone. This is for you, Olive. This is you, Olive.