Did she mean it?
The taller woman spoke. “Very well. Have a seat, Doris.”
The other woman dusted a chair with her gloves before sitting. Their disapproval of Alice Parker was apparent.
Grace served the tea and more than once was tempted to spill it on the snobbish ladies. But she had not yielded to that temptation.
When they’d left, she caught Alice in the front hall. “Why, may I ask, do you put up with that?”
Alice rolled her eyes. “Status, dear Grace. Status. I do not expect you of all people to understand. Besides, I can’t get out in my state. This is better than nothing. I’m tired and my ankles are swollen. I’m going to retire.”
“Very well.”
Mr. Parker worked late and did not come home before Grace left. Once she had all the children tucked into bed, she waited a full hour to make sure they were asleep before locking the front door. She knocked softly on Alice’s bedroom door.
“What is it, Grace?”
Grace whispered into the door. “The children are all asleep. I’m heading for home.”
“Mr. Parker home?”
“He is not, ma’am.”
“Fine. Go on.”
11
A SUNBEAM BURST THROUGH the stained-glass window on the right side of the church, sending sprinkles of blue and green at Owen’s feet. He glanced behind him and noticed Grace McCaffery sitting in Mrs. Hawkins’s pew on the other side of the aisle three rows back. She seemed to notice him and glanced down. He hoped he hadn’t embarrassed her.
When the services concluded, he made his way toward Grace and her companions. “Ladies.”
Mrs. Hawkins replied. “Officer McNulty, how nice to see you. You are looking dapper as usual in your fine blue suit.” She gave his lapel a tug. “I so prefer this to your police uniform.”
He grinned. “As do I. Lovely to see you too, Mrs. Hawkins, ladies.” He turned to Grace. “How are you getting along, Miss McCaffery?”
“Fine, thank you.” She seemed to focus on the colored windows that had lost some of their illumination now that the sun was higher.
He cleared his throat. “If I can be of any help again . . . giving directions . . . anything at all, please call on me.” He stood straighter and nodded toward Mrs. Hawkins and Annie. “That goes for all of you ladies.”
Grace dared to look him in the eye. “I will not need anything, thank you.”
She winced as Mrs. Hawkins’s elbow nudged her side. He pretended not to notice.
“You are very kind, Officer,” Grace said.
They said farewell and he watched them walk away, wondering if they felt the same way as those on his beat—that he was an outsider, someone who did not understand them or even care about the challenges they faced. Mrs. Hawkins did not seem like that. She always had an encouraging word when he needed it. But those Irish girls? Owen wasn’t sure at all that they saw him as anything more than just another rich American.
He was still contemplating what he might do to change his reputation when Reverend Clarke extended his hand. “Always nice to see you in church, Owen.”
“Always nice to be here when I’m not scheduled to work.”
The reverend gave him one of his famous smiles, his sparkling eyes open wide. “You keep showing Christ to those you meet, Owen. This town needs more like you.”
“Why, thank you, Reverend. I hope I’m up to the task.”
“God equips those he calls, you know.”
Owen basked in the reverend’s blessing all the way back to his apartment. Some days, like today, it was easier to believe that than others. He needed to hold on to that, bank it for a rainy day. He could have used such encouragement at Miss Amelia’s the other night.
On the walk back home, Mrs. Hawkins questioned Grace. “The day you were delayed with the raisins . . . was Officer McNulty the one who gave you directions, love?”
Grace tried to sound unconcerned. “He was. Why do you ask?”
“Well, as your guardian during the time you are adjusting to living here, I want to advise you to trust officers like Owen. He is a good man. I understand you are cautious. You didn’t know. That’s why I mention it.” She linked arms with both Grace and Annie. “My Harold used to say, ‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.’ Better to befriend someone like Officer McNulty in a big city like this, lovies.”
After a day off, Monday hit Grace like a steam engine. Ever so grateful to be returning to Hawkins House that evening, she climbed the stoop like her shoes were lead.
“There you are, Grace.” Annie helped her off with her cloak. “Look what came for you today.”
“My camera?”
“Aye, ’tis. Over there.”
Grace grabbed the package from the hall table and took it into the parlor.
“Open it. We have been waiting,” Annie said, following her into the room.
Grace untied the string and pulled away the brown paper covering the box. On the outside she noted the words Brownie Camera for Pictures 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 Inches. PRICE $1.00 Made by EASTMAN KODAK CO. Rochester, N.Y.
No one would need to employ a photographer once these became popular. Grace pulled the lid off the box, eager to try it out.
“How does it work?” Annie asked.
Mrs. Hawkins clicked her tongue. “Give her time, love. There should be instructions in the box. Even a child can operate it, you know.”
The camera was a mere cardboard box, covered in black paper, nothing like the colorful box it arrived in. There was a lens on one end and on the top a winding mechanism she assumed was to advance rolled film. Grace could not imagine how something so simple-looking could take photographs. She began studying the instruction booklet and practicing with the shutter, which is what the booklet recommended you do before loading the film.
The Hawk cleared her throat. “Did you know, girls, the camera is named for the Brownie character, those darling little drawings Palmer Cox made for his stories in the Ladies’ Home Journal? Maybe you’ve seen them.”
“Like on the box?” Annie asked, picking it up.
The Hawk laughed. “Oh yes. There they are.”
“Aye, like Irish fairies,” Annie said, winking at Grace.
“The druggist down the street carries the film,” the Hawk said. “Fifteen cents a box. You mail it back to Kodak and they will develop it for you.”
“It doesn’t get much simpler than that,” Annie said.
Along with the camera, Grace had ordered two boxes of film, each with six exposures. The directions said the camera could be loaded in daylight. Amazing.
“Do you think you can operate it, love?”
She aimed the camera box at Mrs. Hawkins and clicked the shutter. The Hawk jerked back in her chair. “Don’t waste your shots, Grace.”
“Relax, Mrs. Hawkins. The film isn’t loaded.”
Grace and Annie giggled.
The woman put her hand on her chest. “Gracious. You already know all about the thing. When you are ready, let us all know and we’ll line up for portraits. What do they call these? Snapshots? Yes.”
“I would be happy to.”
It was Thursday and she’d gotten a half day off. But she was not anticipating the maid’s dance. Grace had a new camera, so she was preparing for her first leisure outing alone. She was headed to the park with her newly purchased drawing supplies and her Brownie camera.
The sun set early on December days. She needed to remember that even on fairly warm days like this when she was tempted to forget. She hadn’t loaded film in the camera yet, but she wanted to practice while she was alone. The chatter in Hawkins House didn’t allow time to choose a fitting composition for her first snapshot. She thought that if she could first sketch the image of what she wanted to capture, she could then discern whether or not it was worthy of photographing. She did not want to waste her film.
When she passed Bowling Green, she was only steps from Battery Park. She had only moments to spare while the ligh
t was just right. She positioned herself under a tree and began to observe the activity around her. Finally she settled on a bicycle for her subject. Someone had leaned the contraption against a tree and she thought it made a wonderful image. Nature and man. She sketched the scene from two different viewpoints, then moved on, her fingers growing a bit numb from the cold.
Late afternoon rays of sun kissed her cheeks even if they did nothing to warm her. She rested on a stone bench near a statue of a man and pondered who it might be. A war hero? He did not wear a uniform. A statesman? Perhaps. Odd. He held something like a child’s toy, a boat, in his hand. A fat pigeon interrupted her thoughts. She laughed as she watched it land on the statue’s boat and bob its head.
She’d heard that America was a considerable country, much bigger than Ireland. New York was only one city, and there were fields and trees and vast open spaces somewhere. She inhaled, taking in the smell of the harbor, nearby food vendors, and even the sooty smell of burning coal.
“Did you know rain has no smell of its own?” a girl in the workhouse had once said. “It takes on the scent of whatever it falls on.”
Grace now knew it was true. Rain on pavement and horses had a whole different odor than rain on grass. Thank goodness there was some green here in America—or would be come spring.
A discarded newspaper blew to her feet. She kicked it away. With all the crowds, garbage, and smokestacks in New York, the rest of America was hard to imagine.
She closed her eyes to try. But there was still sound. Lots of it. Trolley car bells, children laughing, people chattering, boat horns blasting.
She opened her eyes and rubbed her face. If she were going to survive, much less thrive, in this place, she would have to do what she had done in the workhouse. Look for the beauty—the lone flower, the glimmer of fresh raindrops, the carvings high on the facade of city buildings, the delicate differences in the shapes of people’s noses, the shades of their hair, their expressions, the color that she knew had to be there somewhere. She looked around her and bemoaned the fact that her scribbling had nearly used up her only pencil.
As she contemplated the cost of fresh paper and charcoal pencils, she removed her camera from her satchel. The low hum of a private conversation caught her attention. A trio of men, each one with a top hat and black coat, stood on the other side of the statue chatting with a more modestly dressed fellow. She began to wonder if there were enough differences in each individual’s appearance to draw them uniquely. Was the cut of their coats the same? Perhaps one had deep-set eyes and another, freckles. Maybe one would dare to wear a red tie. Even if he did not, she could paint him that way or try to.
With her camera in hand she crept closer to the statue, raising a finger to her lips as she stared at the pigeon still perched on the toy boat.
“Fifty dollars, I’d say, Goo Goo,” she heard one of the men mumble.
Businessmen, she assumed. Men in America had a strange way of doing business, here in a park. Surely there was a pub for such talk. She leaned out to sneak a look. The man’s eyes met hers, rounded in surprise.
“Hey!” he called, pointing at her.
Embarrassed, she started to stutter. “I-I . . . uh, sorry.”
“She’s got a camera!”
One of the men lunged at her and she ducked under his arm. They wanted to steal her camera! She ran as fast as she could until she reached a round stone building on the edge of the harbor where a lot of people gathered. The crowd was large enough to allow her to escape by squeezing in among shoulders. “Hey,” a plump lass with blonde curls said to her. “Wait in line like everyone else.”
“Sorry. Someone was after me.”
The girl shrugged her round shoulders and then pointed. “There’s a copper out there, Red. Go tell him.”
Copper. The word Americans used for a peeler. Grace stared at her. “Why would I do that?” No sooner had she spoken than she remembered the admonishment Mrs. Hawkins had given her after they’d encountered Owen McNulty on the trolley when Grace had first arrived. “Be respectful to the New York police, and they’ll be there when you need them. Treat them rudely and spend the rest of your days looking behind you in dark alleys.” Grace trusted the people who had helped her get settled, but how far should she take that dependence? Police—peelers—were some of the most unscrupulous people on earth.
The yellow-haired girl laughed. “I don’t know. Maybe you need help or something?” She cocked her head to one side. “’Less you lifted someone’s wallet and the cops are after you.” She gave Grace a shove. “Go on and get out of here, Red. I won’t rat on you.”
Her first inclination had not been to find a peeler. It would take some time before Grace could talk herself into taking Mrs. Hawkins’s advice altogether.
Grace touched a hand to her hair before wandering over to another crowd of people where she could stare out over the park. The area around the statue was now occupied by a group of lads playing a game of tag. She glanced up and down the walk that led around the water. The men were gone. The Hawk’s warning rang true. Grace did need to look behind her in dark alleys and also in the park. There were plenty of evil people lurking everywhere.
She took a deep breath and held her camera to her chest. “Excuse me,” she said to a young mother herding a group of children. “What would you all be waiting for?”
She smiled at Grace. “Why, to get into the aquarium. Are you coming in?”
“Uh, what is that?”
The boy next to her giggled. “The fish house. I’m going to see the whale.”
“Where is the whale?” Grace leaned out to get a view of the water.
He tugged on her skirt. “In the fish house.” He pointed toward the building. “They gots an octopus too.”
Grace had to see that.
“Can anyone go in?”
The lass shrugged her shoulders. “There’s no admission charge, if that’s what you mean. Come on and wait in line.”
When Grace got inside, she was amazed. Arched pillars and painted stucco walls gave the place a regal feel. Chattering children and giggling young lasses made Grace think of the great fairs in Ireland, a vague memory from before her workhouse days. The memory of light and color and life. The beauty she had not found out in the park.
She stayed with the flow of people and lifted her nose to breathe in the scent of hot peanuts. The lad she’d seen earlier inched past her, toting a small sack of the treats. He placed one nut in her hand.
“Thank you.”
“A treat for a beautiful lady,” he said, smiling without the benefit of a front tooth.
Beautiful? Not her. He was being polite.
His mother squeezed him to her side, smashing his cheek until he complained. “A charmer, I’m afraid.” She gave Grace a half smile. “Like his father.” She sighed.
A crashing sound turned every head toward the center of the building.
“The whale!” The lad tugged on his mother’s pocket purse until she relented and moved in that direction.
Grace had seen a whale at sea and she could not imagine how one could be tamed inside a building. In Ireland, when she was a wee lass and her mother had taken her to visit relatives in the far west of the island, she’d seen whales dragged from the shore and cut up for blubber and oil and whalebones to be used in various ways. They were massive, magnificent creatures. She turned and clambered up the steps workers stood on to feed the animals, moving in the opposite direction of the crowd. When she reached the highest level where she could still see the pools below, she took in the sight, admiring how sunlight from the rooftop glinted on the water.
Someone bumped into her. She supposed she would have to explain herself to an aquarium worker. She had only wanted to get a better view and no taller than she was, it was difficult down below. But when she turned to the man standing next to her, someone she expected to be a spectator like she was, she noted the lack of a uniform and nearly fell off the platform. The man from the statue!
Just beyond him two fellows in tweed coats sat on the landing, dangling their feet. Sandwiched between them was a fellow wearing a black coat and holding his tall hat in his lap. He glanced at her, his deep-set, dark eyes serious. Even after he turned away, she remembered that face. In the park by the statue another man had called him an odd name. Something like glue. . . . Goo Goo.
He puffed continually on a cigarette as he stared at the opposite wall. The lot of them seemed wholly American to Grace from the cut of their clothes to the ring of their voices.
The man next to her suddenly pulled the Brownie from her hands, took it apart, and felt inside the box. Frowning, he turned the camera upside down and gave it a shake.
“What are you doing? Give that back to me.”
He dropped it at her feet and she scrambled to pick it up.
“Where’s the film?”
“’Tis not loaded.’Tis a new camera. I’m practicing.” Before she could stand, he pulled her satchel from her arm.
“Hey!”
He grabbed her two boxes of unopened film and stuck them in his pockets. Then he tossed her bag to the ground.
“Nobody takes photographs of my boss, lady.”
“I wasn’t trying to—”
“Don’t matter what you try to do.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. As much as she didn’t want to be bullied ever again, she felt weak and helpless. You are able. “Give me my film.”
The curve of his lips and his low, dipped eyelids gave her a chill. His eyes were shadowed and beard stubble speckled his chin. The lines beneath his bulging eyes meant that he’d spent too much time in the pub. He rubbed his nose almost continuously. But despite his rumpled appearance, he was still properly attired for a gentleman, with smooth leather shoes and a finely cut suit, custom-made probably. He stared at her a moment, then scrambled down the opposite side of the metal stairs, following his companions, and disappeared below among the children carrying bags of peanuts and a troupe of women in colossal hats.
Cindy Thomson - [Ellis Island 01] Page 10
