Cindy Thomson - [Ellis Island 01]

by Grace's Pictures

  The train was not crowded because the working folks had not yet heard the factory whistle blow and the female shoppers were still engaged. Even so, a man in a brown tweed overcoat took the seat next to him.

  “Good day, sir.” Owen tipped his hat.

  “Oh, it is that. Greetings.”

  As the Sixth Avenue el swung southward, Owen checked his watch.

  “Nice-looking timepiece,” the man said.

  Owen glanced at the man and then quickly tucked the watch away.

  “Mind if I see it?”

  Reluctantly Owen handed it to the fellow.

  “These are given to families of police officers killed in the line of duty.” He raised his eyes, seeming to examine Owen’s uniform. “How did you get it, if I may ask?”

  “Someone gave it to me.” Owen retrieved it from the man’s hand. He should not have let a stranger touch it. He told himself to be more careful next time, not to check the hour in public, and never again to leave the watch in the bathroom.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said.

  “For what?” Owen tried to study the architecture outside the train window.

  “Well, you must have lost someone important in your life, and I’m sorry for that.”

  “You are very kind.” Owen stood, even though his stop was blocks away. He still had time to make the walk, and it would be better than entertaining questions.

  As soon as he descended the platform to the sidewalk below, he knew he had made a mistake. Today Owen was heading for the main police station on Mulberry. He was only a few blocks away, but he was almost to Union Square. For two years he had avoided the very spot in which he now stood—Dead Man’s Curve. The Lincoln statue seemed to gaze down at him, the two of them having witnessed the same awful event that day. The image of the streetcar barreling toward Broadway out of control, the little russet-haired immigrant girl, and the man wearing a blue wool policeman’s coat running full speed toward impending doom. At the time the name Dan O’Toole meant nothing to Owen, but that day a stranger and his family forged the turning point of Owen’s life.

  A wave of sadness rose up from his belly. He tapped his fingers on the front of his own coat in an effort to remind himself. He was now a public servant. He was making a difference. He was doing what Dan no longer could.

  Owen jogged across the street away from the statue, heading south. If only he hadn’t been so slow to react that afternoon. If he had been a different person then, like he wanted to believe he was now, he might have been able to change fate. If Officer O’Toole’s mother had known who he was—a member of the other half, the rich elite, the snobs—she never would have given him that watch.

  Beads of sweat formed on his brow in the chilly air. The aroma of sausage and salty fish drifted to him from open windows and merchant carts.

  Of course he would not court Tabitha Pierpont. People like her are alien down here. If his mother wanted to see him after Thursday’s charity event, she would have to come to his apartment, and that had about as much chance of happening as the Queen of England taking a holiday in Battery Park.

  5

  LATE TUESDAY AFTERNOON, Grace received her first task outside the house.

  “Grace, love, I’m completely out of raisins.” Mrs. Hawkins held the heel of her hand to her forehead as she stared at the batter she’d been mixing. “I cannot have bread pudding without raisins. Oh, and I’ve already sent Annie off with the laundry. Be a dear and scramble out to get some, would you? Just two blocks that direction.” She pointed out the window. “I’d go myself, but I’m up to my elbows with flour and I have to get tonight’s bread in the oven. Look in the second biscuit tin on the top shelf. There is a quarter in there you can use to pay for them.”

  “Oh . . . I suppose I could.” Grace found the money, collected her cloak and a shopping basket, and hurried outside, telling herself she had to become accustomed to the city sometime. She willed herself to remember her mother’s exhortation: You are able.

  But once she set foot on the sidewalk, she lost her bearings. She glanced upward at the tops of the buildings. Two blocks . . . up or back? It could not be far. She chose not to go back and ask again lest her hostess think her inept. She could figure it out. She could.

  At a crossroads she paused. Across the street stood several vendors. That was probably the place. She hurried over and examined their offerings but did not find what she needed. “Raisins?” she asked one after the other.

  “Not here.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t remember the last time I saw someone selling dried fruit from a cart on this street, miss.”

  She sank down onto the curb between an apple cart and a peanut roaster, barely noticing a cold wind swirling at her feet.

  She heard a familiar voice.

  “That is you, Grace. I spotted you wandering a block over and thought I’d better make sure. Are you lost?”

  She looked up, shielding her eyes from a ray of sun that found its way between the two tall buildings across the street. Him again.

  “I can help you.” He extended a gloved hand.

  “Thank you, Officer, but I can find my own way.” You are smart. She stood and adjusted her shopping basket on her left arm.

  “It’s my job, you know. I don’t mind at all.”

  Mrs. Hawkins’s batter must be turning to soup by now. She needed to hurry. “I’m to buy raisins for bread pudding, only I can’t find any.”

  “Oh, let me show you.”

  She reluctantly took his arm as he led her two blocks south. They stopped in front of a glass storefront painted with bright-blue letters: O’Malley’s Market.

  “They’ve got them in there, I bet. Go see. I’ll wait out here. This is my area to patrol today. If I go in there, the owner will think something’s wrong.” He kept nodding and smiling, pushing her into the store with an insisting expression.

  When she stepped across the threshold, the scent of cinnamon met her. She inhaled deeply.

  “Help you, miss?” a man in a white apron asked.

  “I’d like a quarter pound of raisins, please.”

  “Certainly.” He began filling a paper bag from a barrel.

  “I had no idea this place was here.”

  “Twenty-five years now.” He smiled and handed her the bag. “I’m guessing you are a newcomer.”

  “I am. I . . . uh . . . have not been out much.”

  “Well, I do hope you’ll come back.”

  She had so much to learn.

  When she saw Owen McNulty waiting for her, she tried to be polite. “Thank you. I’ll be on my way now.”

  “I will walk you back.”

  “Please, Officer. ’Tis not far. You go about your work.”

  He tipped his hat to two middle-aged women who passed by. They greeted him by name and giggled when he returned their hellos. Grace wasn’t sure, but she thought they made light of him, whispering something about a wealthy boy. He let out a breath, impatient sounding, she thought.

  He turned back to her. “I’m going your way anyhow.”

  She didn’t want to encourage him. Not after Ma . . . “I’d rather go alone, if you don’t mind—learn my way around here.”

  He bowed as though she were a princess. “Until we meet again, Grace McCaffery.”

  She did not want to like this man and hurried away before he could charm her any more.

  She returned by the back door. “Sorry it took me so long.”

  Mrs. Hawkins hurried to her side and took the basket. “Oh, my. Did you get lost, love?”

  “A wee bit.”

  “I am so sorry. I should have waited for Annie.”

  “No, no.” Grace hung up her cloak and warmed her hands by the stove. “I found them all right.”

  “Indeed. Excellent! Did you ask directions? Always someone ready to help, love, if you ask.”

  “I did.”

  Mrs. Hawkins took Grace’s shoulders and steered her toward the hall. “Look on the t
able, love. A letter just arrived for you. Reverend Clarke has informed the post office of your current residence. Go on.”

  Grace’s heart leaped. Ma! She took the treasured letter into the parlor.

  Dearest One,

  I can scarcely believe this letter will find you in America. It warms my heart to know that you will be well fed, clothed, and your soul nourished in church. S. P. assures me the place he sent you to will take care of you. The only hope I have left for you that has not been fulfilled is that you will find a fine young man to marry.

  I do hope you are still drawing. Ever since you were a wee lass, you liked to make pictures. Do send me something.

  Work hard. I will continue to pray for you and love you with all my heart.

  I also am well fed and attend church regularly. So do not be concerned. There is nothing I need besides word from you occasionally.

  Love,

  Mother

  Her mother had to come to America. She just had to.

  Grace refolded the letter, took it upstairs, and slipped it into the trunk at the end of her bed. She stared at the old piece of luggage for a moment. With its frayed leather strapping and scuffed exterior, the trunk might have crossed the ocean several times. Grace was not sure she could make that trip again to get her mother away from Sean Patrick Feeny, the man Ma was unfortunately married to. The peeler. She had to get Ma over. Without her mother, Grace was unsure she could make it.

  6

  OWEN HOPED GRACE MCCAFFERY had not heard the snide remark the women on the street made about him. The last thing he wanted was for new arrivals to get the sense that he was not who he appeared to be. He might have been born rich, but now he was a public servant, someone folks could count on. Many of the shopkeepers and upstanding citizens in Lower Manhattan did not trust the police—and with good reason—but Owen was working hard to earn a good reputation on his beat.

  He swung his nightstick as he walked down a side alley and chuckled to himself. There might be another reason he hoped Grace didn’t overhear. That petite redhead had caught his eye. He had no time for romance with the kind of schedule he kept, but he enjoyed pondering the idea nonetheless.

  His mother would faint if she knew what her son was thinking.

  Mother. If only he could separate the two sides of his life, build a dam between them. He’d tried and so far had not done a bad job of it. His mother usually had no inclination to come south of Gramercy Park. She’d never been down to Miss Amelia’s place before today, so far as he knew. He would make sure she stayed away from his ward. Not only would she find the area repulsive, she’d blow his standing with the department, to say nothing of the folks on his beat. Once they saw the woman in fur and pearls, strutting the way only the rich do and snubbing her nose at everyone she deemed improperly attired, no one would take him seriously.

  A noise at the end of the alley raised his senses. Rats? Maybe. But when he saw a figure move in the shadows, he knew it was human. “Who’s there?”

  “Whaaat?” A hobo emerged, clutching a glass bottle.

  “Move along, fella.”

  The man tottered off and Owen continued on, kicking blackened leaves from his boots. He had no big job in the department, no cases to follow. All he did was patrol and chase away vagrants. Maybe someday, if folks would just trust him, he’d be able to do something bigger.

  As they finished supper preparations, Mrs. Hawkins told Grace that she was invited to a lecture presentation that very evening.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Jacob Riis, love. I thought you’d be delighted.”

  “The man who took your husband’s photograph?”

  “That’s right. He’s giving a lecture and presenting some of his photographs. When I heard about it, I thought you might like to go since you expressed an interest in that photograph. And Mrs. Reilly will be attending as well. You’d like to see her again, wouldn’t you, love?”

  “I would. I enjoy sketching, and photographs interest me greatly.”

  “Right after supper, then.”

  Later, as Grace tied her hat ribbons into a large, looping bow and followed Mrs. Hawkins to the carriage, she realized that even though she was less than enthusiastic about the lecture topic, the plight of immigrants—didn’t she know what it was like to be one?—she was eager to see the photographs, examine the light and shadows, see how he positioned his subjects and what she could read in their eyes.

  The carriage’s sudden jolt as it halted to avoid hitting people in the street caused her to swallow hard just as a disheartening thought struck her. As much as she wanted to capture images and light and shadows, she wasn’t very good at drawing a person’s likeness.

  You are smart. You are able.

  She squeezed her eyes tight. The pencil sketch of Ma pinned to the wall in her room had brought Grace comfort, but Grace had not captured what she’d hoped to see. A camera could do that. Cameras froze a moment and forever captured the truth without bias. Photography was different from paintings, where the artist interpreted what he saw for others.

  As soon as the notion of taking photographs herself occurred to her, she heard the long-ago voice of her father in her head. “Weak. That’s what you are. Pitiful. You’re just lucky you’ve got a kind father, lass. There’s not another would put up with the likes of ya. You or your mother. Yous would not survive without me, and don’t you forget it.”

  Weak. Pitiful.

  She’d carried those messages with her to the workhouse, where no one retained a smidgen of self-respect. Grace could still feel her mother’s hands cradling her youthful head as her father hurled hatred. “Shh, child.” And then Ma would say those affirming words to her, words so smooth and even-flowing. Words that most times could not battle past her father’s harsh, steely assessment of his daughter.

  Grace leaned into the window of the carriage and gazed toward the tops of the skyscrapers. This was America. There need be no demise of aspirations any longer. Perhaps photography would suit her. It was worth finding out.

  They entered an ordinary clapboard-sided building and made their way to some folding chairs. Mrs. Reilly was already there.

  “Good evening, Edwina,” Mrs. Hawkins said as she sat, causing the chair to squeak under her weight.

  “Agnes, Grace. Lovely to see you.”

  Mrs. Hawkins motioned for Grace to take the empty chair between them. In front, a makeshift platform had been erected for the speaker, just a series of crates nailed together so the audience would be able to see Mr. Riis with ease. Grace glanced at the program bill they had been handed when they came in. Mr. Jacob Riis was boldly inscribed at the top, along with the description “Author of How the Other Half Lives.”

  Mrs. Reilly leaned over to whisper. “He’s a very intelligent man, Grace.”

  “Who is the other half? Half of what?”

  “There’s the rich half and the poor half. You know.” The woman turned her head away.

  Grace thought surely there were more divisions in American society than that. She did not consider herself poor, not truly. She’d been poor. She’d gone to bed with gnawing hunger in her stomach. She’d lacked fresh water and combs for her hair. Now she had those things. She was . . . well . . . dependent. Who would write a book on the dependent masses? Grace started to ask another question, but the woman hushed her as a man in a suit came to the podium.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Children’s Aid Society, I welcome you to tonight’s lecture.” He droned on about financial donations and the progress his charity was making until Grace had to cover her yawns with her palm.

  Finally the man of the hour gingerly picked his way along the crate slats and turned to address the crowd. When he spoke about tenement houses, Grace knew that those were the places she had been fortunate enough to avoid. The most misfortunate of the lowly lived there.

  Mr. Riis pulled on his coat lapels. “The poorest immigrant comes here with the purpose and ambition to better himself and,
given half a chance, might be reasonably expected to make the most of it.”

  There! She’d heard it from someone who had been an immigrant and made something of himself. There was hope for her now, she supposed.

  He went on. “Yet high rents for squalid living conditions and low wages depress the immigrant and squash his resolve.”

  Oh, so it wasn’t so. Grace was confused, tired, and hearing her father’s voice in her head again as Mr. Riis elucidated eloquently about the tenements and the immigrants’ plight. “And these are the dungeons where crime springs forth, though it need not be. This, my friends, is where the line lies—that place that marks below it the dwelling of the ‘other half.’ My photographs will illustrate my contentions.”

  The words caught Grace’s attention. She wondered if this man’s photography was anything like Mr. Sherman’s on Ellis Island.

  An assistant dimmed the lights and turned on a tin box machine to project what he called lantern slides on the wall. Gigantic images. The crowd gasped. She was not the only one amazed. What a wondrous invention.

  Grace strained her neck to see around heads. Scene after scene of dingy buildings and glum-faced families living in cramped quarters sprang into view in black and white. Instead of the creative compositions she’d expected, these images captured sullen faces and filth. Perhaps if the photographs were in color . . . but no, all of New York was mostly gray, as she had observed. Why he wished to capture faces so like the ones Grace had lived with in Ireland, she could not imagine. Grace longed for beauty. That spark of hope. That’s what someone should capture. Mr. Riis had done that with Harold Hawkins’s portrait. He had not accomplished it with these lantern slides.

  She continued to stare at the images on the wall. As sad as it appeared, Grace couldn’t help but feel that those children were more fortunate than many in Ireland. At least the children in Mr. Riis’s photographs lived with their parents. In Ireland’s workhouses the children lived in the attic, separated from parents they rarely got so much as a glimpse of, if indeed they weren’t cared for in some far-off orphanage. She turned away, not able to summon a reaction as those around her did, bellowing with shock and indignation.