A Cup of Tea: A Novel of 1917 (9 page)

T
o the outside eye, Rosemary’s life remained much the same as always except she became more civic-minded, took on more charity work and volunteered at the V.A. Hospital which seemed out of character to Jane since Rose couldn’t stand the sight of blood. “I don’t actually do nursing,” she said to Jane when she queried her. “I read to them, talk to them. If Philip were—I wish I could do more.” She was halfway convinced that Philip was lying in a hospital somewhere, a victim of amnesia. Jane thought she’d read too many books.

Jane couldn’t actually say anything to Rosemary
about any of this, not that it had been easy to offer varying opinions before. She was firm in the belief that if something had happened to Philip, she would know it and until such time, she would simply operate as if he were coming home.

She refused to allow the papers to run a death notice, trading on family connections, she convinced the editor at the
Times
to make no notice of it.

Her father was worried about her, in a way that went beyond parental concern. He realized he would have felt better if she’d screamed, yelled, taken to her bed, evidenced some of the frailer and more hysterical traits of her gender. He wondered how he’d raised a child who was so implacable and didn’t trust it. He suggested that they take a trip to Cape Cod to his sister’s, maybe by the seaside she would rest, maybe she would finally cry, but Rosemary refused. “No, Papa,” she said. “We can’t do it now. We have too many obligations here. Besides, if we were to get word of him…If you feel the need, Papa, to visit with your sister, go on ahead, by all means.”

“No,” said her father, “it’s your choice. And I’d rather stay with you here.”

He wondered if he should have forced the issue. The flowers that were sent as condolences, Rosemary refused to accept and had them all sent on to the Veterans’ Hospital. “It will surely cheer them up,” she
said. And no one was allowed to visit unless they had two or three amusing stories to tell. Rosemary would not discuss the war. And life on 9th Street went on much the way it had, as though there had never been a telegram.

I
t occurred to Jane shortly after the telegram arrived that Eleanor Smith would have no way of knowing about Philip, given the press black-out, and she felt it was her responsibility to bear the news. It took some prodding to get the address out of Dora who, finally, confessed to Jane that she had kept her on.

“I went to give her notice. And she gave me notice instead.” Dora laughed nervously. “I was afraid that—She suggested that she should design for me. And that my customers like her work. They do, you know. If I hadn’t,” she said, “she would have gone to Ella’s
Haberdashery or some-such…” Dora was frightened Jane would be angry with her.

“You don’t have to explain to me,” said Jane.

“Don’t I?” said Dora. “I feel responsible. They met in my shop, you know.”

“No,” said Jane, “they met before. They met the same day I met her. I sent her to you. Remember?”

“Yes,” said Dora. “I’d forgotten that.”

“Have you seen her?” asked Jane.

“Never comes in herself,” said Dora with a bit of an edge. “Has her actress girlfriend bring the hats in,” she said. Her opinion of Eleanor had been colored by her business dealings with her. She didn’t guess the real reason for it and that Eleanor’s condition had made her unable to show herself. “Quite the little star, our Eleanor,” she said. “But she’s talented. She designed this.” She held up a beige hat with very simple lines. “I think it would look good on you.”

Jane tried it on. “I’ll take it,” she said and insisted on paying for it, “as long as you give me her address.”

T
here was no answer at the apartment but as Jane was leaving the building, she ran into Eleanor entering the lobby pushing Tess in her carriage.

One look at the child’s face made Jane certain of whose child she was.

“My roommate’s baby,” Eleanor said much too quickly. And then added, “Were you looking for me?” with that curious open quality she had that could be so disarming.

Jane hadn’t been expecting the baby and suddenly couldn’t bring herself to tell Eleanor about Philip’s
death. “I was,” she said. “But I’ll stop back. It’s—late. I’ll stop back another time.”

“The hat looks good on you,” said Eleanor. She hesitated. “I would have given you one.”

She wanted to ask her about Philip. It had been six months since she’d heard from him. But how could she ask about Philip…

“She’s pretty,” said Jane, looking at the baby.

“Yes, she is,” said Eleanor. “And even tempered. I’m glad you like the hat,” she said again.

“Yes, it’s my style,” said Jane. “Plain. Usually. Plain and direct. Not always.”

Eleanor was quite agitated when she got upstairs to her apartment. She was convinced that Jane had come to tell her something. It seemed so odd she’d had no letter from him. She put Tess down for a nap, then changed her mind and bundled the child in warm clothes, put a blanket over her in the stroller, and walked the many blocks to the Armory, almost as if it were a vigil.

T
here was a list of dead and missing, handwritten, posted on the outside gate. Philip’s name wasn’t on it. She pushed her way into the War Office past the line of waiting women with children hanging on their skirts.

The building was institutional like a bad school, the walls may have started out yellow or green but had aged to be a hybrid contributing to the grim, efficient, oddly oppressive atmosphere. Eleanor was aware of the sound her shoes made as she walked to the end of the hall to an office marked by a plaque which said, “Office of War Information.” She spoke to a middle-aged secretary in military dress.

She took a seat on the wooden bench holding the blanketed, sleeping Tess against her shoulder as the secretary went to inquire if General Armstrong would see her.

“He’ll see you,” said the woman. “I thought he would.”

Eleanor walked into the General’s Office and took a seat across from him. Tess was sleeping in her arms.

“I’ve come—to ask about my—brother,” she said.

How many conversations like this had he had in the past few months. “His name, please,” said the General in low and measured tones.

“Captain Philip Alsop.”

He hesitated. He knew what had happened to Philip Alsop. He shifted some papers on his desk. He looked curiously at Eleanor. He didn’t remember that Alsop had a sister.

“The casualties have been so extensive,” he said. “There isn’t a family in New York that hasn’t been touched by this.” He didn’t need to say more. There was no doubt about what came after that sentence, although he went on in some detail.

The next thing Eleanor was aware of, she was on the street, as though she’d lost a patch of time, had no memory of anything except staring at the map of Europe on the wall behind the desk strategically marked with thumbtacks…and then she was pushing
the baby down Lexington, gripping the handles of the stroller so tightly, her knuckles were whitened, lost in a memory of her own.

The carriage pulled up on a street corner that looked more like an alleyway. There was laundry hanging from windows and people standing idly on street corners as if they had nowhere else to go. The carriage stopped in front of a tenement building. An old woman was evident in an upstairs window hanging sheets on a rope of clothesline
.

A twelve-year-old girl with a dirty face and a torn dress sat on the stoop of a building next door. Her shoes looked as if the soles were worn, cold, sitting there without a sweater
.

Eleanor turned to Philip in the carriage next to her. “You wanted to see where I’m from,” she said. “A street just like this one. A street you’d find in any city, if you chose to look for it.”

She pulled the silk shawl tighter around her shoulders
.

Philip spoke to the driver. “We can go now,” he said
.

Did she imagine in that moment that he was taking her away from it forever?

When she got back to the apartment, she put Tess down in her crib.

He will never see his baby.

She walked over and looked at herself in the mirror.
Slowly, she undid the many buttons of her dress. She put a hand on her breast and tried to lose herself in a memory of her own. In the crib, Tess started crying. She walked over and gently rocked the crib and began to sing to her.

Her voice cracked.

There was a mobile hanging over the baby’s crib, glass petals in the shape of teardrops that in the daytime caught the light and splashed a rainbow across the quilt. She knocked the mobile and the petals made a sound like bells.

When Josie came home with Jimmy Donohue, Eleanor was asleep in the chair in the living room wrapped in the silk shawl. She woke up as soon as she heard the front door shut. Her face was streaked from crying.

“He’s dead, Josie. He’s dead. And he’s never coming back to me.” She began to cry uncontrollably. Josie slipped herself into the chair beside her friend and held her head in her lap until she’d quieted down. In the next room, the baby started to cry and Jimmy Donohue went to comfort her. “It’s no different than
it was,” said Eleanor looking up at Josie. “I always knew I’d be alone with her.”

And then she said no more about it. She didn’t go out for a week. Josie and Jimmy Donohue took care of her and Tess.

It was shortly after this that she took up with the producer, Robert Doyle, who, understanding the circumstances of her life, treated her as if she were a rare and fragile creature.

Doyle was content to wait and in the meantime take whatever she felt that she could offer. He liked having her on his arm. He formed a strong attachment to the baby whom he showered with gifts. No one understood why she didn’t marry Doyle; a lot of girls in her situation would have. Except she once said to Josie, by way of explanation, “I can’t do it unless I feel that I can love him.” Outwardly, Eleanor seemed to be all right, but she was so much about looking one way when she actually felt another, that it was difficult to tell. She and Rosemary had that in common.

A
s for Jane Howard, she felt as if she were observing a situation where everyone around her, partly due to their lack of information and skewed perceptions, was in an altered state. A situation she could correct if she set her mind to it, if she could only see her way clear to do that. She unburdened herself one night to her mother, whose counsel she hadn’t sought since she was ten. “What would you do,” Jane asked her, “if you knew that Christina’s husband was having an affair?”

“My Christina?” Her mother laughed. “It wouldn’t be the first time.” Jane Howard’s mother was raised in Vienna and, as a result, freer about these things
than many of the other women in New York although Jane had never felt at liberty to discuss her own preferences with her mother. Jane always imagined she suspected though since she’d never given her one of those lectures. “When are you going to get married, dear?” She never asked Jane why she didn’t seem interested in suitors.

“No,” said Jane, “I meant, what would I do if I knew that my best friend’s husband was having an affair…?”

“
Your
best friend,” said Malina. “But I thought Philip was—”

“Reported dead,” said Jane. “He was. But he was having an affair and the woman he was having an affair with had a baby.”

“Are you certain it was his baby?”

“Fairly certain.”

“I would do nothing. I don’t see what this has to do with you.”

“Because I intruded,” said Jane. And, after a moment, it all came rushing out, in some detail, the story of the first night Rosemary had happened on Eleanor, picked her up, so to speak, and then unceremoniously booted her into the street, how Jane had followed her after Rose had tossed her out and given her the address of Dora’s Hat Shop. She tried to explain how she felt she was complicitous when Philip started seeing
Eleanor, how she had egged him on, delighted in it, unmindful of the consequences all of it might have.

“If I’d just let her continue walking down the street,” Jane said, “if I hadn’t encouraged him…”

“But you’re not responsible,” her mother said.

“I feel responsible,” said Jane. She laughed. “And slightly incompetent. When I went to tell Eleanor about Philip and saw the baby, I couldn’t tell her anything at all. And now,” she said nervously, “I feel that I ought to tell Rosemary—it’s the child that changes it—but I don’t know how to tell Rose. I’m a sorry excuse for a go-between.”

“That’s not a terrible thing,” said Jane’s mother, “a go-between is just a step up from a gigolo.”

“Then, that is what I am,” said Jane, “because I think Rosemary has a right to know.”

I
t was with some determination that Jane showed up, a few hours later, at Rosemary’s door. She noticed the house was strangely lit from inside, as though it were faintly glowing. She rang the bell and, after, a moment, Rosemary answered it.

“Jane!” she gushed at her, “This is a surprise! We were just—I would’ve invited you…” She looked embarrassed. “But it didn’t seem like your style. But I’m so awfully glad you’re here.” She whispered in Jane’s ear. “You’ve heard about this woman. Madame Olga? Everybody’s seeing her. We’re—having a
séance.” She hustled Jane inside. “Take off your coat and gloves. We all have to touch hands.” She giggled. “Can I get you a drink?” And then she got oddly serious and this next bit she said was quite strange. “You see I want her to try to contact Philip, because if she can’t…” her voice trailed off but her meaning was clear.

She poured Jane a glass of champagne and pulled her into the drawing room which was lit, as was the rest of the house, only by candles which accounted for the strange, ethereal glow outside. Madame Olga was seated at the head of a card table that had been set up for the occasion. She was in her late forties, with the kind of skin that had seen too much sun, she had a silk scarf wrapped around her head and very large earrings, the stones of which appeared to be black opals. Her hair fell out from the scarf in curly wisps about her face. Her eyes were green and quite compelling. And it was clear she had a bit of a temper if pushed. Her accent appeared to be Rumanian.

Rosemary set her glass of champagne on the table and pulled a chair up for Jane. “Jane Howard,” she said, “I would like you to meet”—she gestured dramatically—“Madame Olga. Psychic seer extraordinaire.” Madame Olga nodded her turbanned head. Jane nodded back in somewhat identical if mocking fashion.

“You know everyone else,” said Rosemary, as seated at the table were Teddy and Sarah Porterville and Rosemary’s father.

“Do not ask,” said Rosemary’s father, “how I was talked into this.”

Jane laughed and took a seat next to him. “I won’t,” she said.

Jane said hello to the other people seated there as Rosemary took her place next to Madame Olga.

The room was absolutely still. The candles flickered. The air seemed thick as though it were ripe for visions, although Jane suspected it was because the doors and windows were shut, the furnace was on, and there was a healthy fire burning in the fireplace.

Madame Olga threw her head back for effect, then put her hands out to touch her fingers to Rosemary on one side and Teddy Porterville on the other. She looked at them all for a moment, then bowed her head. The rest of them did the same, reaching their hands out to touch the fingers of the people on either side.

When Madame Olga spoke it was with a heavy accent. Her voice was deep and guttural. “The spirits are here,” she said, “if only we can reach them…I want everyone to touch their fingers to the fingers of the person next to them. Feel…” She said the word “feel” as though it had more than one syllable in it.
“…the energy from your spirit fusing with theirs…”

Rosemary whispered to Jane across the table. “It’s a test you see to see if she can summon Philip…but so far she hasn’t been able to do it…”

“Silence,” said Madame Olga forcefully. “I need quiet, madame, so they can break through to our space and time…”

Madame Olga swooned her head back. “The spirits are here,” she said, “if only we can reach them. I feel that they are near us. I sense that they are near us. There is something here.”

The chandelier above the table began to sway slightly, the candles dimmed as if they were about to go out. Jane tried to assess if there was a trick here, if the chandelier had been rigged by wires. The room felt suddenly cold.

“They are around us…” said Madame Olga. And then her trance-like swoon was broken as the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” said Rosemary jumping up from her seat.

Madame Olga began to mutter something under her breath in gypsy to the effect of “Fucking debutantes, they do not understand the sacredness of the moment.” But everyone in the room just thought this was part of her gypsy spirit chant.

Rosemary walked to the front door and opened it. There was a man standing on the steps in a regulation issue army coat. He was so thin and strangely taller than she had remembered him.

There was a soldier in an army vehicle parked at the curb.
Was it possible…?

“I seem to have misplaced my key,” he said.

“Philip…?” And then she was in his arms, alternately kissing his face and resting her head on his shoulder, holding onto him as though she would never let him go. “Philip! Oh, my darling, you’re home.”

She swept back into the drawing room hanging onto Philip’s arm. She was smiling for the first time in months.

“Madame Olga,” she said, “you’re fabulous! I will recommend you to all my friends.”

And then she turned to Jane. “Jane! Jane! Philip’s home.” But Jane had already jumped up from her seat to throw her arms around him.