What the Lady Wants

by Renée Rosen

When her father returned to the carriage he told them that everyone had decided to wait it out. “We’re far enough north now. The fire will never come all the way up here. We’ll stay here tonight and in the morning, once they’ve put this beast out, we’ll be able to go back home.”

  Home! It was the first time anyone had mentioned home and the very word brought to mind the question that had haunted Delia through the whole ordeal. It was Abby who finally asked, “What if our house is burned down? What will we do? Where will we go?”

  “Now you listen to me,” Mr. Spencer snapped. “The fire’s spreading north and all those buildings that burned were nothing but balloon structures. They were made of wood frames. Our house is stone and we live far enough south. Our house will be fine, you hear me?”

  “Now not another word about houses burning down,” their mother said, giving both Delia and Abby a warning glance.

  Delia tried to take comfort in her father’s words, picturing their home among the other limestone mansions that lined Terrace Row. She listened to her mother and sister talk about needing a hot bath, wanting a cup of calming tea, wondering if McVicker’s would be open for that Friday’s matinee show. Delia wanted to join in, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the flames still breathing in the distance. It didn’t seem possible that anything could stop the inferno.

  When dawn broke Monday morning, the sky was still dark with thick black smoke. The only light Delia could see came from the flames, still shooting a hundred feet into the air. The fire looked to be about a mile away and that was too close. The carriages started moving again as the fire pushed their caravan farther and farther.

  An hour or so later they stopped in a stretch of prairie land, surrounded by shanties and cottages. Delia was hungry and tired. Time seemed to hang in the air, just as thick and unmoving as the smoke. There was nothing to do but wait. A man who had salvaged his accordion began playing oompah music while other men passed around lager and whiskey that she assumed they’d taken from the looted saloons back in town. People were eating raw corn that they’d found growing in the nearby field, juice from the kernels dribbling down their chins. Her father commented that it was the first time he’d ever seen the Germans and the Irish tolerate one another’s company. They had no choice.

  As the day stretched on, Delia moved from the carriage to the field, where the blanched-out grass rose up past her knees, just waiting to feed the fire. But still, it felt good to walk around after being cooped up for so long. Their coachman was tending to their horse, inspecting the gashes on its leg, shaking his head as he muttered something to her father. Delia distanced herself from them, thinking how she couldn’t bear another night inside that coach. She had barely closed her eyes the night before. The winds had howled so, beating against the sides of the carriage, rocking them to and fro. She’d been freezing one minute, sweating the next. The sounds of the fire had terrorized her during the night, but now, in the daylight, she had become accustomed to the booming roars off in the distance. She thought only vaguely about it, just another lumberyard igniting or perhaps more buildings collapsing.

  At dusk she had no choice but to retreat to the carriage again with the rest of her family. They all slept fitfully. It was almost midnight according to her father’s pocket watch when they heard a steady tap, tap, tap on the roof. At first Delia feared it was cinders showering down on them, but then she heard the yelping and clapping. She looked out the window. Rain! It was raining. She held out her hand and let the droplets pelt her open palm. A gift from the heavens! The harder it rained, the more it lifted people’s spirits. She watched them, young and old, standing with their heads thrown back, letting the rain wash over them. She could almost hear the hiss of the fire losing ground as giddy relief spread throughout her body.

  • • •

  By Tuesday morning, the fire was out and the black smoke had given way to a gray smoldering haze. Tears sprang to Delia’s eyes. They had survived. They were going to be all right. These were the only thoughts circling her mind as their carriage slowly began making its way back through the city and toward their home.

  “Everything’s so quiet now,” said Abby, who had worried the open seam of her glove so that now two additional fingers were exposed along with their nibbled nails. When she started in on a fresh fingernail, her mother swatted her hand away from her mouth.

  All was calm now but Delia found the stillness haunting. As they made their way back through Lincoln Park, she could see that the city had been broken to its core. The wooden sidewalks were gone. The trees were gone. So were all the houses and buildings. The rain continued to fall, turning the streets, already filled with heaps of debris, into gray sludge. Without any landmarks to guide them, even Delia’s father had difficulty knowing where they were. Through his clenched jaw he called out to the driver, trying to decide which paths to take. Despite the coachman’s prodding whip, their horse was barely inching along. Block after block of buildings that had stood four and five stories high days before had now been reduced to piles of charred wood. Delia’s mother kept her hand clamped over her mouth, her eyes blinking back tears.

  At last, up ahead in the distance, Delia spotted the turrets of the Chicago Avenue Pumping Station on Michigan Boulevard. Two days earlier, they’d simply blended into the background, but now they were everything, an anchor for her hopes. The pumping station was still standing. All was not lost! Hope rose up inside her.

  “Look,” she shouted, her pulse jumping with enthusiasm. “It’s going to be okay!”

  But as soon as those words left her mouth their carriage came to a halt. The driver cracked his whip over the horse’s hide, but it refused to move. Delia’s father got out and climbed up onto the box. Again and again the driver whipped the animal until its legs buckled and it collapsed.

  Delia and Abby cried out and their mother covered her eyes as the carriage violently jolted forward. Mr. Spencer and the driver jumped down off the box to check on the horse. Delia watched through the window. The horse was dead, its eyes bulging open, its mouth covered in froth, its coat slick from sweat and rain. Delia turned away, thinking she might be sick despite having nothing in her stomach.

  Now they had no choice but to go the rest of the way on foot. The mud and ash covered Delia’s bottines as they walked, coming across odds and ends lying in the carnage. Delia saw a rag doll in the muck, her button eyes looking up to the sky, and a ceramic bowl or perhaps a vase, melted into a twisted shape. A pocketknife had survived along with a man’s shoe, its tongue hanging out thirsty and covered in soot.

  The downtown streets and walkways had become impassable and unrecognizable. Any minute now Delia expected to see McVicker’s Theatre or Colonel Wood’s Museum. She was desperate to see the opera house or the Green Room, even the State Savings Institute, anything that looked familiar. But other than an occasional wall or storefront left standing, the city had been incinerated. The fire had been so hot that even the limestone had decomposed into heaps of sand and grit. Even the metal and steel cores of the buildings that everyone believed were fireproof had melted into globs still glowing red from their centers. If those had melted in the inferno, what could possibly be left of their home? Delia swallowed hard and pressed her hands to her throbbing temples.

  Her father looked at her, as if he knew what she was thinking. He had two days’ worth of whiskers covering his face, dark circles looming beneath his eyes. “We’re going to be fine,” he insisted as they forged ahead. “The entire city can’t be in ruins.”

  Delia prayed he was right, for if not, she feared they would never survive. There would be no clean water, no food, let alone anything else.

  The rain stopped as they continued to slog through the ash. A man in the middle of the rubble held a coveted copy of the Chicago Tribune and called out the headlines: “Tens of thousands homeless. More than three hundred dead. Medill declares, ‘Chicago shall rise again!’”

  D
elia walked alongside her father as they came across heaps of dead cinders, soaked from the rain but still hissing and sending plumes of steam rising ten and twenty feet high. One lone pole remained standing with a cardboard sign nailed to it. When Delia saw what it said her stomach lurched.

  CASHBOYS & WORK GIRLS WILL BE PAID WHAT IS DUE THEM.

  MONDAY 9AM OCT. 16 AT 60 CALUMET AVENUE.

  FIELD, LEITER & CO.

  “Oh, it can’t be,” Delia said to her father. She thought of Mr. Field as she bent down and picked up a handful of damp ash, collecting it in her hand like a snowball. “This can’t be all that’s left of Field, Leiter & Company.” She was choking back tears because she knew then that her father’s store, just a few blocks over, must be gone as well. “This can’t be all that’s left of State Street!”

  Each step after that was harder to take, their spirits sinking in the mud along with their shoes. Delia and her family continued walking south, heading deeper into the heart of the destruction. As they approached Terrace Row, Delia’s heart dropped down in her chest and she felt as though she couldn’t breathe. All they found was a charred wall, not more than six feet tall, looking as though it was a single wind gust away from tumbling over. Smoke rose from the piles of debris like campfires on the prairie. She felt hysteria mounting inside her. Where were all the trees? The gardens? The mansions? There was no neighborhood left. Their home was gone. Everything was gone. She promised herself she wouldn’t cry. She had to be strong for her father, who held her sobbing sister, and for her mother, who had already dropped to her knees, landing in a heap of ash as she wept into her hands.

  Delia had to distance herself from her broken family. Their tears and sobs echoed through her body, draining what little courage she had left. As she walked among the ruins, she wondered, Could this rubble possibly be where the parlor stood? Is this what’s left of the music room? Where was my bedroom?

  Then she found a gooseneck copper teakettle lying on its side. It must have been in the kitchen, or maybe it had belonged to a neighbor. She’d never seen it before and yet it was the only thing they had left. She picked it up and cradled it in her arms as a single tear leaked from her eye.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Five days later, Delia and Abby lay on their sides facing each other, crowded into the same bed. Not that Abby didn’t have her own bed just a few feet away, but she’d had a nightmare and come running to Delia.

  Delia covered Abby’s shoulders with the blanket and propped herself up against the walnut headboard. She could smell her sister’s breath, sour like yeast. As she turned up the lamp on the nightstand, a warm glow filled the room, bringing objects into view: the intricate wood carvings around the mirror of the bedroom hutch in the corner, the Persian rug, the blue velvet draperies on the bay windows. It was a fine house, but it wasn’t home.

  Delia and her family had taken refuge at a relative’s house down on Eighteenth and Michigan, on the fringe of where the fire stopped. Her aunt and uncle had welcomed them without question. It had been less than a week since the fire, but Delia felt as if the first seventeen years of her life had all but faded away like fragments of a dream she couldn’t fully recall.

  “Do you think Augustus is okay?” Abby whispered to Delia.

  “You’ll hear from him soon.” She’d been telling Abby that every night since the fire.

  “But how will he know where to find me?”

  Delia didn’t have an answer. She didn’t know where to begin to look for friends. Her father told her that several families had already left the city, heading for Philadelphia or New York. But he wanted to stay in Chicago and rebuild his home and his business. Thankfully he had insured everything, so Delia knew that the physical could be rebuilt—but what about everything else? She thought about her father, the strongest, proudest man she knew, and how this fire had taken something vital out of him, like the marrow from his bones. His confidence, that part of him that always knew what to do next, seemed to have been buried in the rubble.

  Her mother was even worse. She’d stayed in bed for two days, refusing to get up, unable to eat. “I can’t face it all,” she’d cried into her fists. “I tell you, I can’t face it.”

  Delia, like her parents and everyone else, walked around in a stupor for days, trying to grasp what had happened. She couldn’t comprehend that the city was gone. The tasks ahead were overwhelming. The cleanup seemed insurmountable, the repairs and rebuilding too daunting. At times she had to stop and sit, catch her breath, for fear that she might faint.

  “Try and get some sleep,” Delia said to Abby, reaching over to turn down the gaslight. “Don’t you worry, it’s going to be all right,” she said, stroking Abby’s hair. “Somehow everything’s going to be all right.”

  As Delia’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, she heard Abby’s breathing deepen. She had fallen back asleep, but Delia remained awake. She rolled onto her back, thinking about how in another few hours she’d have to get up and face another day. It had been less than a week and already she was exhausted. It wasn’t physical fatigue she suffered from, for nothing visibly demanding had been put upon her. It was emotional, a steady draining from her mind, her heart. She was worn down from the inside out and no amount of sleep could revive her. How was she going to find the energy to keep going? God, how she just wanted everything to go back to the way it was before the fire.

  • • •

  Delia remained despondent for days. She spent her time in her aunt’s front parlor, sketching the scenes she’d witnessed the night of the fire: two men laying wet carpets on a rooftop hoping to spare it from the blaze lapping at the house next door, people running into Lake Michigan, rats and other rodents coming out from underground, seeking escape from the heat. Though she knew better than to think of herself as a real artist, she had a modest talent. Despite her mother seeing no point in Delia studying art, drawing and painting had always helped her make sense of the world around her. That was how she connected all the fragments she experienced, giving it order in her mind. She turned to drawing now, but even after she’d done a pile of sketches, the fire’s devastation was beyond her.

  Putting her sketch pad aside, she reached for the newspaper and came across an advertisement on the front page of the Chicago Tribune that surprised her:

  FIELD, LEITER & COMPANY REOPENING ON THE CORNER OF TWENTIETH AND STATE STREET

  She recalled the sign outside the rubble where the old Field & Leiter store had stood at State and Washington and realized that Mr. Field must have started looking for a new location the moment the fire was out. Even Delia’s father—considered one of Chicago’s most astute businessmen—was still months away from being able to reopen Hibbard, Spencer & Company. How could it be that in less than two weeks, and in the midst of such suffering and chaos, Mr. Field had been able to get a new dry goods store up and running? Though she wished her father’s store had been the first to reopen, she couldn’t help but feel a surge of admiration and gratitude for Mr. Field. He was bringing life back to the city.

  Delia grabbed the newspaper and ran into the drawing room. “Look,” she called to her sister as she waved the Tribune. “Let’s go! Please, say you’ll come with me.”

  Abby didn’t need much convincing. She was heartened by the news as well. They needed to replace everything and Abby especially loathed having to wear her aunt’s and cousin’s hand-me-downs.

  So that afternoon Delia and Abby headed on foot from Eighteenth and Michigan over to Twentieth and State. It was a cold fall day, gray and overcast. The air still carried a stale smoky smell. As they walked they didn’t see a single hack or omnibus go by, but they did hear the trains, which had been spared from the fire. Their whistles blasting in the distance were a welcome sound.

  Many of the streets were impassable, so they had to take the long way around, walking east toward the lakefront. With collars turned up and hands stuffed inside their coat pockets, Delia
and Abby passed city workers clearing pathways, shoveling heaps of rubble toward the water, dumping it all into Lake Michigan. They saw planks of wood, half of a piano, a parlor chair and other debris floating along the choppy surface.

  As they headed on, they noticed a carriage or two passing by and when they turned south onto State Street there were more carriages and phaetons rumbling past them. Half a dozen more. When they arrived at their destination, Delia stopped and checked the address.

  “This can’t be right,” she said. “It’s nothing but an old barn.”

  “And in the middle of nowhere.”

  Delia observed the horse barn, which sat on a barren stretch of overgrown grass. The ground was dried out with more cracks running through it than a broken eggshell.

  “They must have made a mistake in the newspaper,” said Abby.

  A group of women trudged past them, trampling through the rough terrain with their dresses hiked up to their ankles. They were elegantly clothed, one in an inverness cape, another wearing a bonnet with a lace-embroidered brim and the third with a jacket with a pannier that cascaded past her bustle.

  “Excuse me,” said Delia, “but we’re looking for the new Field, Leiter & Company.”

  “This is it,” said the woman with the bonnet.

  “Here?” Delia pointed at the horse barn.

  “Well,” said the woman with the cape, “the line starts around the corner, but yes, this is it.”

  The line? Delia and Abby peered around the side of the barn and there were women—a hundred or more—lined up, chatting among themselves and eagerly anticipating their turn to step inside. Delia and Abby took their places at the end of the line and within minutes another dozen or so women had joined the wait behind them.

  Delia caught a glimpse of Mr. Field standing in the doorway. With his white gloves and plug hat, he looked as proud as if he were standing before a castle.