The Light of Luna Park

by Addison Armstrong

  I turn back when I’m at a safe distance. I would cry if I weren’t so numb. I’ve spent two years and four months in Bellevue’s halls. Just two more months and I would graduate, a crane pin affixed to my bosom and a degree in my hand. I could work at Bellevue forever, take my pick of any hospital in the country. And now it’s all gone. Everything I’ve ever worked for.

  But I can’t sink into despair. I have Stella to take care of. God knows how I’ll cope once she’s gone; I’ll have nothing.

  I clutch her to me, grateful that she is part of my story for now. Our first stop as mother and daughter is a pawnshop. I’ve rehearsed my story time and time again, and Stella has heard it enough in our journey across the city that I hope she’s come in some primitive place to believe it as true. I am Althea Anderson, widow. I trained at Bellevue but left to marry, only for my husband to fall gravely ill of tuberculosis. By the time he passed away, our daughter Stella was born, and I could no longer return to the hospital.

  But to sell my story, I need a ring. The pawnshop is squeezed narrowly between its neighbors, filled to the brim with other people’s jewelry and furniture. It smells of rust, like blood.

  It is hot even so early in the day, and the metal scent seems to seep into my clothing and rise from under my arms. Despite my own discomfort, Stella is alert and fascinated. Her eyes are wide at the shine of metal and the bump of the door shutting behind us.

  I breathe in deeply through my mouth and instantly regret it. My throat feels coated as if with polish. “Excuse me, sir?” I approach the man at the counter. “I need a ring.”

  His gaze shoots immediately to my bare left hand and then back up to the baby at my breast. But the revulsion I expect does not come. Instead, the man’s face stretches slowly into a smile like the cut of a scalpel. “Rings are expensive, I’m afraid,” the man shrugs. My toes clench. He knows that Stella and I are desperate—an unmarried woman and her illegitimate child. Shame rises hot within me, making my head feel as if it will float up and away while my feet stay leaden, rooted to the floor. Through this sensation of being stretched apart I hear the heavy thud of a box; the man has lifted an array of rings onto the counter for my viewing.

  They overwhelm with glitter and gold, relics of the rich Edwardian years and even the decadent time of Queen Victoria. Relinquished to the pawnshop by families who once had the wealth necessary to adorn their fingers like kings. Perhaps sold by brides left at the altar or families short of a working man after the Great War, these rings are studded with green emeralds and red rubies, then welded to resemble hearts or stars or even doves. They are more than I need. I want something subtle, and more importantly, inexpensive. I don’t have enough of my father’s inheritance left after two years of school to pay for anything more.

  I don’t have anything now, except for Stella. And she won’t be mine for long.

  I finally select a pair of simple gold bands. The pawnbroker undoubtedly overcharges me for them, but the situation would replicate itself anywhere else in the city. An unwed mother is pure, distilled desperation, and no man would be foolish enough to keep from capitalizing on it.

  “At least we are now above suspicion,” I tell Stella as I slide the rings on outside the building. “Regardless of the fact that the rings are a bit too large and the man who sold them was perfectly horrid.”

  Something in my tone must belie my disgust, for Stella makes a noise in response. “Stella.” I shake my head even as I smile. “That was not funny. In fact, it was quite unkind.”

  I become aware of the slick, heavy sweat beneath my gown. I carry Stella in one arm and all my belongings in the other, and my body sags under the weight of my wool dress. “Well,” I relent. “I suppose we do deserve something to laugh about.” I lift her to kiss her face. “I think,” I whisper to the girl, “that we are doing the right thing.” My new rings slide to the base of my finger. “Or at least”—my voice drops—“I hope that we are.”

  Breathing deeply, I look down at my list. I cross out this errand as though I’m doing my Sunday shopping.

  Except today’s list tells a story. The details I invented last night are printed in careful script; in this new world, I cannot afford to forget that though I am still Althea Anderson, I earned the name by virtue of my deceased husband. I am, for all intents and purposes, the widow of Joseph Henry Anderson. He died, I rehearse, six months ago. Recently enough that Stella is legitimate; long enough ago that the lessened state of half-mourning is appropriate. Accordingly, I am dressed in a high-necked gown of gray wool, and the few pieces of jewelry I own are tucked away and hidden.

  I pull out Ida’s note, the address scribbled alongside a not-yet-advertised job description. WANTED for an invalid widow suffering from weak heart, but not otherwise disabled; must be accustomed to nursing; duties light, chiefly at night; age from 25 to 35; good reader preferred. Apply by letter, to M. Wallace, care of Charlotte Wallace. I pray that Mrs. Wallace will like the look of us as I trudge the two miles to Times Square.

  “Please, dear God,” I pray. “I don’t know whether I deserve this chance, but Stella does.”

  And then I knock.

  The inhabitants are slow to answer, and I pull back slightly to take in the building, which lines Times Square on 43rd Street. I am accustomed to living in dormitories, and this two-story townhouse will seem large in comparison. Stella’s eyesight will sharpen as she gazes out the window and sees the bright lights: The Rose of Stamboul, Macy’s, Columbia, the King of Pizza. How she will learn to sleep through the night with trolleys and motorcars rumbling below her, I am less sure.

  The door finally begins to pull open, and I stand straighter. It folds in slowly, and I wiggle my toes in apprehension.

  “Oh, dear.” The woman who finally appears is frightened. “You aren’t my daughter-in-law.” She begins to slide the door closed, but I step forward and speak quickly. “Mrs. Wallace,” I begin, “I am . . . Mrs. . . . Anderson. I was sent by Ida Berry as a potential caretaker.”

  Relief subtracts years from the woman’s face. “I didn’t know I requested a woman with a baby.”

  “Oh.” I wrestle briefly with the desire to lie. “You didn’t, I’m afraid. But my husband—her father—is deceased, and I was hoping you would appreciate her . . .” Stella begins to whine and squirm. “. . . vibrancy.” Stella, I beg silently, quiet. “She sleeps well and cries little.”

  I could have said she cries all night, and I’m not sure Mrs. Wallace would have heard me. Her gaze is fixated on Stella. As if Stella has rehearsed her part the way I have, she stares solemnly back at Mrs. Wallace, green eyes wide open and imploring.

  When Mrs. Wallace sighs, I begin to hope. Please, I pray again as Stella and I cross the threshold, please give us this job.

  Mrs. Wallace leads us to her small kitchen. A counter lines one wall, the icebox beside it. She sits us down at the cluttered table in the center of the room.

  “My daughter-in-law gave me a script . . .” Mrs. Wallace fumbles around until she pulls out a handwritten sheet of paper. “Let’s see. I have a weak heart and a history of heart attacks, and I need significant help with meals, cleaning, taking my medications, and going up and down stairs.” Mrs. Wallace squints. “Well. I sound utterly helpless.” She places the sheet down. “My daughter-in-law has been helping me, God bless her, but she is as high-strung as they come. All I really need to know, if you’re friends with Ida, is that you have experience as a caretaker.”

  I smile. I approve of this daughter-in-law. “I’m a trained nurse,” I assure Mrs. Wallace. “I was unable to graduate due to marriage and my husband’s subsequent illness, God rest his soul, and then we had Stella. But I’ve experience in surgery, obstetrics, pediatrics, palliative care, emergency and trauma . . . and just about everything else.”

  Mrs. Wallace raises her eyebrows. “So you can read, I take it.”

  I smile. “Yes, ma’am. I a
dore to, in fact.”

  “Have you read anything recently that you would recommend?”

  “Evelyn Scott,” I respond immediately, though honesty is not part of my script. I recite a line about shadows and snow, one that feels particularly applicable to my own current existence of secrets and subterfuge.

  Mrs. Wallace waves her hand. “I’ve lived many decades of sadness and prefer happy poetry, but you have a melodic voice. You will do.”

  God must harbor some special love for Stella (who couldn’t?), because Mrs. Wallace enlists me to begin immediately. After feeding Stella, I unload my toilette into the small upstairs bathroom that is to be ours. I set the one framed picture I have of my mother and father beside my bed and then sit on its edge. Stella is cradled in my arms, her eyes wide open. New sights, new sounds, new home. Two new homes in as many days, I realize, but Stella seems unfazed. All morning, her unblinking eyes have taken in the city’s chaos and grime as if she is as eager to observe New York’s many corners as I am a surgery or a birth. “Funny”—I smile down at her—“that we already seem to have some things in common.”

  Especially, I do not add aloud, as you are not truly my own.

  I bite my lip. For the last two months, Stella has been my confidante. I have gone to her when the doctors have belittled or ignored me, when the long days and hours have seemed too much to handle on my own. I have had Stella as my secret keeper, as a listener who will not and cannot judge.

  Now, our charade can continue just a little while longer.

  Is it wrong that part of me is grateful?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Stella Wright, January 1951

  I wake early in the dark apartment, eager to get to the vital records office and put this whole matter to rest. My face is puffy from sleeping so poorly. Though I remember my bed being comfortable in my childhood, I tossed and turned last night. I realize only now that it was the first night Jack and I have spent apart since we married, and the timing unnerves me. As if sleeping apart is a product of our discord and not just distance.

  Pushing my fears aside, I do my makeup and hair as usual in the weak morning light, not because I expect the staff at the Bureau of Vital Statistics will spare me a glance but because a set face proves I am ready to meet the day. I wash and rinse with freezing water. I apply powder and blush and then eyeliner and mascara. Red lipstick, a pillbox hat atop my curls.

  The subway is chaotic at this time in the morning. I stand and clutch the ceiling straps, grateful that I’m wearing gloves to keep the grime off my hands. My mom was more conscious about germs than most women of her time, and I can’t help but wonder now if it was because she had a background in medicine.

  If she had a background in medicine.

  Reaching the Bureau of Vital Statistics before opening, I pace up and down Worth Street to keep warm: from records office to city clerk’s office to courthouse. Men in suits bustle past, and I envy them their purpose.

  I’m at the front of the line for the records office at 8:59, and I hop up the marble steps and open the door just as the bell chimes for 9:00.

  “Good morning,” I chirp. The man behind the desk looks up, and I take in his thick eyebrows and receding hairline.

  “I’m here for a birth and death certificate,” I announce. “For Margaret Perkins.”

  “Just fill these out.” The man slides two forms across the counter to me.

  “Thank you.” I record what I know and the man takes the forms without expression, disappearing into the back room.

  I retreat to one of the uninviting chairs that lines the room and wait. As my back grows sore and the minute hand makes its turn round the clock, I start to regret this trip. What do I expect to find, anyway? What does it matter when Margaret Perkins died, if I don’t even know who she is?

  Just as I’m starting to think I’ve been foolish in staying an extra day in the city (could Jack be right again?), another man appears with my documents. I keep myself from reaching out and snatching them as he drones on about the rules—no food, no drinks, no leaving the building with the records.

  “Of course.” I have a pen in my pocketbook so I can take notes if I need to. “Thank you.”

  Margaret’s death certificate is on top. My eyes flick quickly across the first few fields: borough, hospital, file number. I confirm the name, Margaret Ann Perkins. Female, white, and single. Instead of an age being marked for the girl, a sloppy checkmark dominates the field reserved for babies who died after less than a day. The death date is July 5, 1926, which would make her birthdate the same.

  How could she have died in July 1926 when the thumbprint and note serve as proof that she survived until August?

  Puzzled, I continue down the left side of the certificate. Father: Michael Perkins; Mother: Hattie Perkins. The place of death is Bellevue Hospital, and the cause is listed as “Born early, two months,” signed and sworn by a Nurse Ida Berry.

  I press my lips together. I have as many questions as I did before. More.

  I look next to Margaret’s birth certificate. The information matches what I know about Margaret: her name, her parents, her birthdate (again, July 5, 1926)—but my lips part with shock when I see the signature in the bottom corner. Ida Berry may have watched Margaret die, but she isn’t the nurse who delivered her.

  That was my mother. Her measured hand is as familiar to me as her voice, and the fourteen letters of her name march across the line: Althea Anderson. Below is the signature of a physician supervisor scrawled in cursive that is impossible to read.

  Part of me is tempted to dismiss it all. Didn’t I just ascertain at the Bellevue Nurses’ Residence that my mother was never a nurse? Surely there’s more than one Althea Anderson in the world.

  Except for the handwriting. I’ve read a thousand notes in my mother’s firm script, from those tucked into my lunch pail in grade school to the letters she’d write me weekly after I moved away. I’d recognize her handwriting anywhere.

  I look up to the ceiling. Something else tugs urgently at the back of my mind, and I squeeze my eyes shut in frustration.

  Then it hits me.

  My mother couldn’t have delivered a child in July 1926, because I was born just two months later. September 5, 1926, to Margaret’s July 5.

  I wait my turn at the counter again, foot tapping impatiently. “I need another birth certificate form, and also one for marriage licenses. Please.”

  This time, I eschew the hard chairs and pace back and forth until the worker returns. “I have the marriage certificate,” he tells me, “but I couldn’t find the birth certificate.”

  I stare at him in shock. I requested my own—do I not exist?

  He must sense my rising panic, because he makes an effort to reassure me. “It’s not uncommon. Hospitals were rather slapdash in their approach to record keeping back in the day. But again”—he waves the sheet in his hand—“here’s the marriage license.”

  “Thank you.” At least he’s given me something to hang on to.

  I look at my parents’ certificate of marriage.

  I see their names, the place of marriage, the witnesses, and the celebrant. Finally, there’s the date: July 1927. I blink and nearly drop the paper in surprise. My parents weren’t married until nearly a year after I was born?

  My mother was never anything but even-keeled, and my older father never seemed the passionate type. He and Mom didn’t act particularly loving toward each other; they didn’t even kiss each other on the cheeks, for God’s sake. He would give her a chaste kiss on the forehead sometimes, more like a father than a lover. It’s impossible to reconcile the parents I knew with the story this paper tells, of two people too overcome by passion to wait for marriage and a child born out of wedlock.

  I grip the sheet tighter. I have more questions than I did an hour ago. I get a new story from every new source, and none of them add up. My
mother was a nurse, but she wasn’t. Margaret died at birth, but she didn’t. I was born in September 1926, but my parents didn’t marry until 1927. Mom was a nurse in July, and I was born in September.

  I take a deep breath and try to calm my thoughts. Does any of it matter? I know who my mom was. She was kind and patient, caring and generous. She held my hand and listened to my stories for so many years; does it matter what she did before all that?

  Yes. The answer is clear and final. Without my job and my kids, without my parents, and with tensions with Jack bubbling to the surface, I hardly know who I am anymore. I need the knowledge of my mother to be an anchor. She made me who I am, and I need her help to figure out who I can become after losing both her and my job in one fell swoop.

  But I don’t even know which revelation to focus on: my parents’ marriage date, Margaret’s death, or my mother’s apparent time as a nurse.

  I press the heels of my hands to my brows. It’s like I’m back at my mother’s place gathering her treasures—but they keep slipping out of my hands.

  Mom, who were you?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Althea Anderson, September 1926

  “ ‘I must learn to be content,’ ” I read, “ ‘with being happier than I deserve.’ ”

  I nod along with Elizabeth Bennet’s final words. I, too, am happier than I deserve with Stella at my side. Only during the night do I dream of what my world will be once I have to let her go.