The Way of Beauty

by Camille Di Maio

  Vera stroked his bearded cheek, avoiding the places where she’d nicked him trying to shave it all. It was useless. He didn’t sit still long enough for her to finish the job, so now he looked like some old, wild man who had been let loose on the city.

  The tragedy was that he was still fairly young. Only forty years old. And yet she felt like the parent.

  “Shh. Shh. Vera is here. Your prinzessin. Drink the tea for your princess.”

  He took it from her, shaking, spilling drops of the hot liquid on his coat, but thankfully the fabric was thick enough that the liquid didn’t burn him. For a few moments, having this little thing to focus on kept him silent as he sipped the tea.

  Vera rubbed her hands. They were chapped and splintered. The factory where she’d worked for the last three years had changed its focus now that new owners had bought the space. She’d previously been making delicate flowers that were sold to milliners’ shops, the miniature nature of the work straining her eyes. Now she was sanding wooden spindles, and the foreman demanded perfection that left the girls’ hands in near ruin.

  Vera felt like her bones would pop out of her skin.

  She longed to get to know the other girls at the factory. To regain some sense of sisterhood that had begun during her time with Pearl. But they all came and went as marriages and babies and illness claimed what meager thread of conviviality existed among them. Russian girls who’d immigrated now dominated the workstations, and Vera wondered what they said about her in their strange tongue. What was the word for spinster in Russian? The pitying looks spoke their own universal language.

  The foreman alone seemed to pay her any mind, and not the kind that she welcomed. He walked down the narrow rows of benches, a little too close to her side. His hand balled in a fist until her reached her, at which point it would fall to his side and brush her backside. It was always then that he turned and placed his hands on her shoulders, looking over in a pretense of checking her work. She’d long ago learned to wear a scarf or a high-necked blouse so as to rob him of the pleasure of staring down at places that no man had ever seen.

  She knew that there were sacred places on a woman’s body. All these years later, she understood the G-I-R-L-S and B-A-R words that had confused her childhood mind. Words that made her blush now.

  Especially when she thought of it all in relation to Angelo. The only man whom she had ever wanted to invite to see these places that belonged to her. But he did not belong to her.

  Three whole years had passed since she’d spoken to Angelo or Pearl or Will.

  Three years since she’d run away into the gathering snow.

  As difficult as it had been to leave, it would have hurt more to stay.

  She always wondered what Angelo had told Pearl and William about her sudden departure. She hadn’t intended to lay that on his shoulders, but she hadn’t been thinking of anything except making the clean break that would give Angelo and Pearl the chance to be the husband and wife they’d vowed to be.

  Did William ask for her? Was he too big now for the little scarf she’d knitted for him?

  Immediately after returning from Washington, DC, Vera had given notice at their apartment and found a place eleven blocks south. The rent was much less than what she’d been paying, and her wages at the factory could stretch further. She wanted to save money to take art classes.

  Pearl had inspired her to work toward something more.

  Vera seldom had occasion to go near her beloved Penn Station. Sometimes, though, a subway shutdown would reroute her. She avoided going outside, where she knew Angelo would be manning his newsstand. But she had seen Pearl.

  It had been a surprise when she saw her old friend there. Though maybe it shouldn’t have been. Pearl lived right across the street. And as it was such a hub for thousands of travelers, it was natural that the suffragettes would have a near-permanent presence there passing around flyers and holding signs.

  Vera had pulled her cap around the sides of her face and hurried to transfer trains before Pearl could notice her.

  She’d seen her several times since then as she passed through the station. Pearl’s wardrobe was simpler than it had once been. Vera noticed from the distance that as the months wore on, so did Pearl’s once-fancy clothing. Maybe she’d sold her gowns, her furs, her shoes, her gloves. It would be like her to give that money to the cause.

  She never got close enough to see if Pearl was still wearing her plain wedding band.

  Every time, a piece of Vera wanted to abandon her avoidance and walk over to Pearl and tell her that she was sorry, so very sorry for running away like she had. But she was too scared to find out what the reception would be—would Pearl be angry with her or embrace her as a prodigal sister?

  She wondered again what explanation Angelo had offered.

  “Argh!” She jumped at the sound of her father, who had spilled more tea, this time on his hand.

  She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped it off. The tea had cooled enough that she wasn’t worried about a burn. But of course, he didn’t understand this.

  “It’s okay, Vater. Why don’t we continue walking?”

  She took his arm and, mercifully, he followed her without incident.

  They approached Penn Station, and her chest clenched at the sight of the place that was so dear to her. She had not been for several months, but the thought that always struck her did so now—that her smallness amid such vastness was more of a comfort than a threat. No matter her woes, they would fade someday even as these marble columns stood and would stand for hundreds of years past her own existence.

  Today they were taking a train to the far north end of the city to bring her father to an institution that was willing to assess his needs and hopefully do for him what she no longer could.

  That thought broke her heart. But his needs were breaking her.

  She looked up at the eagles. Those majestic birds stood at their perennial sentry posts. The one thing she could rely on when so much else was lost. They might be her only remaining family, or at least they were a tie to Mama, Vater, Pearl, Angelo, Will.

  The eagles wouldn’t die on her. The eagles would not marry someone else. They would not get sick. They alone were her constant.

  The sun was beginning its descent in the sky, and Vera urged her father to hurry his pace. A taxi fare to the northern part of Manhattan would cost a whole three dollars that she didn’t have, so she was praying with everything she had that he could withstand a subway ride without panicking. It was getting late in the day, and there was no time for error before the hospital office closed.

  As soon as they stepped into the station, she realized her mistake. The bustle that she found enticing—hordes of people coming and going with exciting lives and possibilities—proved overwhelming for the frail man whom she was supporting with her shoulder.

  “Go away! Go away!” he shouted as travelers brushed past them. He turned to her, the cloud of bewilderment crossing over his eyes. “Who are you? Leave me alone!” He broke free of her grip and stumbled several feet, dodging luggage. He managed to get to the center of the concourse, near the clock that hung like a Christmas angel above everyone’s heads. She nearly caught up with him, hindered by the bags she’d packed with his few possessions. But even then he was too fast for her, driven by an onset of madness. He turned down one of the side hallways, narrowly avoiding a porter with an overloaded cart.

  “Go away!” he repeated. Vera might have been embarrassed by all the attention they were drawing if it were not for her thorough sympathy for his delirium. She’d let this go on too long. He’d needed intervention ages ago, and instead she’d kept him home, out of what? Loyalty? Selfishness? Their one meager room was going to feel haunted if she stayed there without him.

  But all too quickly, there were no chances for lamentation. Her father collided with a waiter carrying a tray of water glasses, sending a fountain of shattered glass across the floor, soaking him until his feeble body was visible
through his thin white shirt.

  “Vater!” she shouted, reverting to the German that sometimes still slipped from her lips. Always in her most vulnerable moments.

  He crumpled to the ground, covering his face with his hands and adding tears to the wetness that pooled around him on the marble floor. Vera ran to him, taking him in her arms despite the very real chance that it would only frighten him more.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked, rubbing her hands along his half-bearded face to make sure that no stray shards had cut him. She moved down to his arms and held back a cry when a tiny particle pierced her palm. She ignored the drops of blood and pulled him to her, whispering reassuring words that thankfully calmed him.

  She felt the back side of her long skirt grow heavier as the water permeated its threadbare fabric. But she ignored it, rocking her father back and forth, shutting out the clatter around them as people encircled their little scene. It was just Vera and Vater cocooning themselves in this vast space.

  Until a familiar voice broke through: “Move aside. Let me get to them.”

  Her face tingled as an onslaught of unexpected tears began to gather. Vera didn’t need to look up to recognize Pearl.

  She felt her old friend wrap her arms around the two of them as she gently raised them off the floor.

  Pearl. After all this time. Vera couldn’t even begin to comprehend it, but she felt a joy that was beyond what words could describe.

  “Here we go,” Pearl said to Vera’s father. “You’re safe. We’re going to get you some help.” Pearl used her free arm to keep curious watchers away. She steered them down the hallway near a side exit.

  The women stood on either side of a more compliant Vater as they drew closer to the door. A heavy rain had started to descend. An awning bowed above them but mercifully never broke. A bright-yellow taxicab sped past the near-antiquated horse-drawn version.

  Vera pulled back even as Pearl stepped forward to open the door.

  “No,” whispered Vera, concerned about the fare, but she did not have any other choices. Her protest fell away with the breeze.

  Her father’s body became rigid. He’d never ridden in a car as far as Vera knew, and it was daunting to even the most lucid of people. “Bitte, Vater,” she pleaded. It took all her strength plus Pearl’s to maneuver the old man into the back seat. The driver grew frustrated.

  “We’re paid by the mile, not by the time, girls. Hurry up or I’ll drive off and find an easier fare.”

  Vera knew this would rankle Pearl.

  “That’s some way to treat the daughter of William Pilkington II,” her friend huffed. Her father was a household name right along with the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers.

  “Yeah, right, and I’m the king of the Bronx. Just get your fanny in or I’m out of here.”

  Vera looked at Pearl’s face, expecting her to be horrified, but she did not betray anything but determination to finish the job of getting Vater into the car. Vera ran around to the other side, stepping into an ever-growing puddle, but by now she was so soaked that she barely noticed.

  “Bitte, Vater,” she cooed, softening her voice and looking directly into his eyes. The flicker of recognition was enough that he scooted in, helped along by her guiding his arm and Pearl nudging from her side.

  Vera looked up to thank Pearl before they drove off, but to her surprise, the woman shut the door behind her.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “You don’t have to do that.” Vera did not finish the rest of her thought. Especially after I disappeared on all of you.

  “Nonsense. That’s what friends do.”

  Was Pearl only helping because she felt that it was some kind of duty?

  The driver turned around and barked, sending a cloud of cigarette smoke through the back. “Wonderful. You made it. Now you want to tell me where you’re all going so that we can get out of here?”

  Vera and Pearl spoke at the same time.

  “Washington Heights Hospital.”

  “Eleven Madison Park.”

  Vera turned sharply. “What are you doing?”

  “We’re going to bring him to my grandmother’s house until we can figure out what to do next.”

  Vera’s pulse quickened. She was grateful for Pearl’s help getting Vater into a taxi, but this was more than one step too far. They couldn’t impose on such generosity, especially when it wasn’t Pearl’s to give.

  And when so much time had gone by since they’d spoken.

  But Vera knew that when Pearl had an idea, there was no dissuading her.

  “Are you on good terms with your family again?” she asked.

  “My parents maintain their silence, but I think Lady Gran can be worked on.”

  Vera wanted to ask about Angelo, too, but couldn’t bring herself to say his name. She didn’t know what had been discussed three years ago or since then. Pearl was wearing gloves, so it wasn’t even possible to see if she was wearing a ring.

  Not knowing what three years might have brought made her feel like she was looking through darkened glass, seeing only images moving with nothing being clear.

  The driver shifted his body far enough that he could fold his arms across the seat. “If you dames don’t decide right now where you are going, I’m going to drive you all the way to Albany and collect my fifty cents a mile from you just for wasting my time.”

  Vera’s father started to shiver and let out a tremendous sneeze.

  “And if you can’t keep that old man quiet, I’m charging you triple.”

  Couldn’t he see that they were frantic anyway without making them feel guilty about it?

  “Madison Park,” Pearl repeated, undeterred. “And if you don’t keep quiet, I’ll report you to the mayor’s office. And if you think that I won’t or can’t do that, check with the manager at Delmonico’s and ask who dined with Pearl Pilkington just yesterday. Olive Child Mitchel. The mayor’s wife. That’s right. We serve on a suffrage committee together, and our families have been close friends for many years. Way back further than if I sent my fist down your throat and grabbed you by the intestines and pulled them out to knit into a blanket to keep you warm on the frigid nights that you will spend on the street after you lose your position with the New York Taxicab Company. Because you know Harry Allen, your boss? He’s a friend of my father’s. They golfed together last week at Clearwater.”

  Vera stared in utter awe and amazement at the tenacity with which Pearl spoke. A whole new depth of admiration washed over her for her formidable friend.

  Pearl sat back and crossed her arms. “Now. Take us to Madison Park.”

  The driver looked as if he’d been struck and dutifully turned around and pressed on the pedal.

  Although Vera did notice one thing—Pearl had said Pilkington, not Bellavia. Had something happened between her and Angelo? Or had the powerful name Pilkington just suited the situation better than that of an Italian immigrant?

  Her curiosity was insatiable. But she had to be patient. She would not get all the answers now.

  Pearl leaned into Vera’s ear. “I made that last part up. I have no idea if my father was even in this country last week, let alone what he did. But he does golf at Clearwater, so who knows?”

  Pearl’s easy way with a fabrication reminded Vera of the night Angelo had pretended they were married in order to get them a room. Not that she needed much reminding. The memory of her brief chance to be Mrs. Bellavia, even by farce, warmed her in wintertime. As did the memory of their near kiss. Though it also burdened her with a guilt that had never dissipated.

  In less than a mile, they’d reached the front steps of the grand home. Had it really been more than three years since she had encountered Pearl in front of that fountain? Since Vera had drowned her sorrows over Angelo’s engagement by discarding her precious stones into its waters?

  So much had changed since then. And so little. Vera was still the same factory girl. Pearl was the same ou
tspoken woman who somehow made Vera feel as if she were an equal.

  A uniformed man stepped out holding an umbrella. He dashed back inside and returned with several more when he saw the three bedraggled figures exit the cab. He handed one to each of them.

  “Miss Pilkington,” he said in an astonished tone. Again Vera noticed the use of that name. But that could also be standard in this household that had never fully accepted Angelo as Pearl’s husband. “We had no word of your arrival. And your grandmother is in California right now, as is her habit in the winter.”

  “I’m as surprised as you are, Victor, but this is an emergency, and you and I both know that she would open her doors to me.”

  “Of course, miss. I meant only that we would have prepared your rooms with fresh flowers and lit a fire.”

  “I don’t need the flowers, but I will take you up on a fire if you can have one of the girls start one in the library. And prepare three bedrooms.”

  “Of course. Right away.” He turned to go inside but stopped when she spoke again.

  “And if you could please pay the cabdriver, I would be grateful. We owe him a dollar, but I’d like for you to pay him three.”

  Three? Vera wondered.

  “Three, because if he wasn’t already going to remember this day, it will teach him a lesson so that he never forgets that girls and dames are actually all ladies and should be treated accordingly. And a lady forgives grievances with grace and class, qualities that he could stand to learn.”

  “Yes, miss,” said Victor, and Vera thought that she would pay a whole three dollars just to know what might be going through his mind and the driver’s.

  The butler turned and went inside, keeping the door ajar. The light that flowed from inside cut through the dark rain like an invitation to a different world. What were they doing here? She and her father didn’t belong in this kind of place.

  “I can help you,” said Pearl, standing to the side of Vera’s father and putting his arm around her shoulder. Surprisingly, he didn’t resist. Then again, who could resist Pearl?

  “Let’s get him into some dry clothes,” she said. “And then we need to talk.”