Bicycle Built for Two (7 page)

Her tone of voice on this occasion was so
sharp, she made the young man at the desk jump and turn the pages
in his registry book so fast, some of them crinkled under his
flying fingers. Kate was satisfied with this response. If it had
been anything less brisk, she’d have had to get sarcastic. Over the
years, Kate had developed a blistering tongue to go with her
brusque manner. She was proud of both attributes, because they
disguised her feelings of inferiority rather well.

Sister Mary Evodius had been right. Kate had
wasted a lot of time in the hospital, but she needed to see her
mother before she went to work. Maybe Ma knew what had possessed
Alex English to pay for a private room. Kate visited every morning
and every evening when her mother’s tuberculosis got out of control
and she had to remain in the hospital for a time. Unfortunately,
Mrs. Finney’s hospital stays had become more frequent of late.

Kate found herself tiptoeing as she
approached Room 22A. She’d never been in this part of Saint
Mildred’s. This was where the rich people stayed. Kate felt out of
place and nervous, although she didn’t show it. She paused in front
of the door to 22A, wondering if she was supposed to knock. Rich
people liked their privacy—and they could pay for it.

“Aw, heck,” she muttered at last. And
squaring her shoulders, she shoved the door open so hard, the door
handle bumped against the wall. “Blast it.” She hadn’t meant to
push it that hard.

Her precipitate entry woke her mother with a
start that set her to coughing. Kate felt terrible. Rushing to Mrs.
Finney’s side, she hurried to apologize. “I’m sorry, Ma. I had a
hard time finding you this morning.”

Mrs. Finney pressed a handkerchief to her
lips, but Kate saw she was smiling in spite of everything. She
reached for the hand not holding the hankie. “I’m real sorry, Ma.
Didn’t mean to make so much noise.”

Her mother only shook her head, a gesture
Kate knew was meant to reassure her. It didn’t, but Kate wouldn’t
let on. Instead, she glanced around the room. “Say, this is swell.”
Her heart hurt a little, although she couldn’t have said why. She
wasn’t jealous that Alex English could provide her mother with
better medical care than she could. Was she?

Kate, who didn’t think it
was a good idea to fool oneself because life was hard enough even
when you admitted your foibles and follies, wasn’t sure. She’d have
to think about it. But she really didn’t think it was
jealousy
, per se
,
that made her heart hurt. She thought rather that the pain was a
manifestation of her limited ability to cope effectively with the
cards life had dealt her.

After her mother’s racking coughs stopped
and she lay exhausted on the bed, smiling up at her daughter, Kate
gave herself a hard mental shake. She didn’t want to upset her
mother. “So, Ma, when did you move to these grand quarters?”

“Last night. That wonderful Mr. English came
to visit me right after you left, and he made the
arrangements.”

“Ah.” Kate hated to add, “That was nice of
him.”

“It was the kindest thing in the world,
Katie. I don’t remember hearing you talk about him.”

“No. I didn’t even know him until
yesterday.” Should she have admitted that? Ah, nuts.

Her mother looked puzzled. “Really? I’m
surprised. I mean, I thought you and he were old friends.”

“Now where would I meet a gent like him,
Ma?” Kate laughed at the notion. “He’s rich, for Pete’s sake.”

“I know.” Her mother’s washed-out blue eyes
scrutinized Kate’s face until Kate would have blushed and squirmed
if she did things like that. She didn’t. “But . . . Well, I guess I
don’t understand, then, Katie. Why would he pay for a private room
for me, of all people? He said the two of you worked together, but
. . .”

“Beats me, Ma, but I’m glad he did.” And she
was going to find out the answer to her mother’s question, too, as
soon as she could run Alex English to ground. Whether or not she
explained the answer to her mother, Kate would decide later.

“It’s too much, though.” Mrs. Finney’s gaze
swept the room. “It’s too fine. It’s too good for me.”

Kate bridled. “Nothing’s too good for you,
Ma, darn it! It’s not your fault we’re poor.”

Mrs. Finney sighed and started coughing
again. Kate winced inside, although she kept her cheerful demeanor
in place. When she’d quit hacking, Mrs. Finney whispered, “Of
course, it’s not, dear.”

Kate patted her hand, but Mrs. Finney still
seemed distressed. “It’s my fault I married your father, though,
Katie. If that wasn’t wrong, it was at least stupid. And even you
have to admit it was a horrible mistake.”

“Oh, Ma, hush up about that. You didn’t know
what he was like when you married him.”

“I knew soon enough afterwards that I should
have done something, though.”

“Don’t be daft. What could you have done?”
Kate hated when her mother blamed herself for things. Everyone knew
that women were the slaves of men, even in the United States, where
life was supposed to be easier than it was anywhere else and where
slavery wasn’t supposed to exist any longer. Kate knew better.
Maybe women didn’t have to walk around veiled from head to toe, as
Little Egypt had told Kate Egyptian women were forced to do, and
maybe they weren’t shackled to their husbands, but women in the
good old U. S. of A. had precious few rights of their own.

If Kate’s mother had left her father, and if
her father had wanted to, he could have kept Kate and her brothers.
He’d probably have done it, too, the monster. Her father didn’t
give a rap about any of his kids, but he’d have kept them in order
to torment Hazel Finney. He was like that, the son of a gun.

“Oh, Katie, I’m so sorry.”

“About what?” Kate asked briskly. Sometimes
she deemed it appropriate to nip these guilty apologies from her
mother in the bud in order to avert a frenzy of self-recrimination.
None of her family’s misery was Mrs. Finney’s fault. Kate knew it,
if her mother didn’t. “About trying to do your best? If you keep
apologizing, Ma, I’m going to have to take steps.”

As usual, when Kate pretended to get on her
high horse, her mother’s worries seemed to fade. She smiled at her
daughter. “You’re a jewel, Katie. You’re the best daughter any
mother ever had.”

“I doubt that.” Kate wrinkled her nose. This
time, Mrs. Finney chuckled softly. Kate held her breath, but her
mother didn’t start coughing. Thank God, thank God. “Say, Ma, I’ve
got to get to work. Gotta tell those fortunes, you know.”

“I wish I could watch you work, Katie. I’m
sure you make a beautiful Gypsy.”

“I make a pretty silly-looking Gypsy,
actually, but Madame lets me use her makeup, so I can darken my
skin. Nobody seems to mind my blue eyes. Anyhow, the booth is dark,
so they probably can’t even see them. It’s spookier that way.”

“Ah, Katie, I love you so.”

“I love you, too, Ma.” Kate rose, leaned
over, and gave her mother a quick peck on the cheek. “I’ll be back
tonight, Ma. Don’t let ‘em give you any guff.”

“Never.” Mrs. Finney chuckled again. “They
wouldn’t dare. Not with you and Mr. English both looking after
me.”

“Right.” Kate waved merrily and left the
room with her usual lightness and grace. As soon as she closed the
door behind herself, she expelled a gust of breath and leaned
against the wall for a moment.

She hadn’t anticipated her own reaction to
her mother’s new surroundings, but the truth of the matter was that
she, Kate Finney, a young woman whose entire focus in this life was
to overleap the barriers of her birth and class, was pure-D,
absolutely, positively, no-doubts-about-it, intimidated by all this
fancy stuff. She glanced at the walls in this wing of the hospital
and noticed all the pretty pictures hanging there, and the bright
white paint. Kate would have bet anything that the Charity Ward of
Saint Mildred’s hadn’t been painted since the Civil War.

This place scared her. She kept expecting
some rich matron to walk out of one of the rooms adjoining that of
her mother, observe Kate in the hall, and call a nurse or an
orderly or somebody to escort her out. She didn’t belong here, with
respectable people. Kate Finney wasn’t respectable. She was trash.
People had been telling her so all her life, and no matter how much
she denied the label, resented it, and rebelled against it, she
believed it.

She straightened and took on another cargo
of air. Intimidation was no excuse for slacking. Nor was being
trash. If Alex English was paying for that room, then even if Mrs.
Hazel Finney didn’t deserve the benefits that came with first-class
accommodations, Alex English’s money did, and Kate was going to be
darned sure her mother got them. She marched to the nurse’s
station, willing to be nice about it, but prepared for a fight if
anyone challenged her.

By the time she got to Madame Esmeralda’s
booth at the fair, Kate felt as though she’d already worked a
twelve-hour day. She heaved a sigh as big as she was when she saw
Madame Esmeralda, dressed to the hilt in her Gypsy suit and
swigging a carbonated beverage from one of the Exposition glasses
the concessionaires sold on the Midway. Tossing her handbag onto a
chair, Kate sank into another one.

Madame cocked one black eyebrow. Kate wished
she could do that: lift only one eyebrow at a time, because the
gesture was great for quelling the opposition. She’d practiced, but
she hadn’t succeeded yet in duplicating the eyebrow-lift
properly.

“Rough morning?” Madame asked.

“Yeah.” Kate’s feet hurt, her head hurt, her
heart hurt, and her eyes were gritty from lack of sleep.

“How is your mother this morning?”

Kate recognized Madame’s
intensified expression as one of concern. Madame wasn’t like most
of the people Kate knew. Whether she’d been through more rough
times than most, or her attitudes were a product of her being a
Gypsy, or what, Kate didn’t know, but Madame never fussed at her.
Kate appreciated her for it. Madame didn’t dither, and she didn’t
weep and wail. Madame was, in short, as practical a person as was
Kate herself. “She’s okay. Mr. English moved her to a private
room.” Since she couldn’t lift just one of her eyebrows, she raised
both of them to let Madame know what she thought about
that
.

Madame’s reaction was exactly as Kate
expected it to be. “What does he want from you? He gonna make you
quit your jobs here at the fair?”

With a shrug, Kate forced herself to get up
and head for the makeup table. “I don’t know. I was going to search
him out, but I was running late—it took me forever to find Ma’s new
room at Saint Mildred’s—and I decided to let him come to me. I’m
afraid he will, too,” she added glumly.

“Mmmm,” said Madame.

Kate recognized the sound as one of
agreement. “I guess it would be a good idea to wear that silly
black band I used to dance in until these darned bruises go away,
even in the booth.”

Madame nodded and grunted.

And, with explanations taken care of, Kate
got busy with her makeup. She expected Alex English to show up
sometime this day, and didn’t know whether she wanted him to or
not. She knew she probably should thank him for improving her
mother’s lot in life, but she didn’t want to. She also couldn’t
imagine what his motivation had been.

If he thought Kate Finney
was one of
those
women; if he expected her to do something of which Kate
disapproved, he’d learn his mistake in no time flat. She might even
add a touch of physical emphasis. It would feel good to smack his
insolent face.

A notion that she might be the least little
bit unreasonable when it came to Alex English crossed Kate’s mind,
but it didn’t stick around to plague her.

Chapter Four

Alex was feeling rather proud of himself
when he left the Agricultural Building and headed for the Midway.
Not even Gil MacIntosh could accuse him of being anything other
than a open-handed, generous man now. Not after he’d paid to have
Mrs. Finney transferred to a private room.

His insides gave a small shudder when he
recalled meeting Mrs. Finney for the first time, and of walking
down that row of pathetic cots with their pathetic human contents.
He almost wished he could rescue all of those afflicted souls, but
he didn’t have that much money. He felt better about Mrs. Finney,
though. Much better.

Of course Alex couldn’t very well go around
boasting of his benevolent deed, but he had no doubt whatever that
Kate Finney would spread the word. She’d have to. After all, Alex
was helping her out, wasn’t he? He was feeling so good about
himself, in fact, that he even broke into song at one point. No one
else was around at the time, or he’d never have done such an
unconventional thing.

“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I’m
half crazy, all for the love of you.” He liked the tune. It was
bright and perky and fitted his mood today. When he got to Madame
Esmeralda’s fortune-telling booth, he hesitated for only a moment.
He didn’t know why he hesitated even that long, unless it was
because he was slightly nervous about being the recipient Miss Kate
Finney’s exuberant thanks. Not that he didn’t deserve them.

He pushed the door open slowly, not wanting
to interrupt anything if there were a fortune being told inside the
booth. The lighting inside the booth was so dim, it took several
seconds for his eyes to adjust to the change from bright
sunlight.

In fact, he discovered when he could see
again, there were two fortunes being told. Without making any
further noise, he stood in the darkened booth and watched the
goings-on with interest for a few moments.

Kate, who sat across from a hefty matron at
the far table, had lifted her head upon his entry, but hadn’t
acknowledged his presence by doing anything else. She didn’t even
give a smile or a nervous start. After he removed his hat and set
it on the rack conveniently placed beside the door, Alex frowned
and took a seat on one of the hard-backed chairs lined up against
the front wall.