City of Light (25 page)

“Because what happened … it’s so different from the … standard you set for us.”

“Standards are goals, aren’t they? Goals that we all struggle to live up to, as we try to be good people. To be the kind of people we ourselves can respect. Do you think you’ve let yourself down, with what’s happened?”

“I don’t know. Everything is so confusing. The gentleman, he was so kind and sweet to me. I didn’t realize. I mean …”

A chill swept through me.

“I didn’t expect what … what he was going to do. I didn’t realize about … I mean, no one ever told me.” She stopped, biting her lip and staring down at her books.

“Yes, I understand.” And of course I did. The habits of society hadn’t evolved much since my own youth. To this day, with their fathers’ encouragement, boys of Abigail’s age were “educated” by certain women in other parts of town. Every now and again I heard whispers among the matrons at the club about girls receiving strictly unidentified diseases along with their wedding rings. But daughters were kept in complete ignorance of sexual matters, with nothing to fall back on for knowledge but disjointed rumors passed by older brothers, or easy-to-discount tales related by the few girls who spent time on farms. Most girls had no way to defend themselves against seduction, or even to recognize it; no way to say, this far but no further. Oh, yes, they were told over and over that men would attempt to assault their virtue and they must never give in. But they were told in such a way that they expected the assaults to be aggressive. Faced with sweetness, with tenderness and vulnerability—or even with deeply veiled innuendo, as I had been, they were helpless. Unfortunately parents did not consider it part of my job to teach them otherwise.

“And he really was nice to me,” Abigail assured me. “I mean, he never meant to hurt me. We met because of the butterflies. We were both looking for butterflies in the upper meadow of the cemetery. It seems like a long time ago now.” She shook her head sadly. “It was at the end of last summer, when we met. We had so much to talk about. He knows everything there is to know about trees and birds and butterflies. I bet there aren’t many grown-ups who like butterflies!” she averred. Then she sighed, crestfallen. “My parents won’t let me see him anymore or even talk to him. He must be wondering what’s going on. His feelings must be hurt.”

There were tears in her eyes. She looked no older than Grace.

“Will I be able to graduate?”

Graduation was in a month, when she would be that much bigger of course, but everyone was accustomed to seeing her overweight. I made a quick decision. “Yes, Abigail, you shall graduate.”

That brought a grin which she tried to repress.

“Have you thought about what you would like to do with … the baby?” There it was. The word finally out.

Her eyes widened with bewildered surprise. “It’s hard to think about. I mean, about it really being there.” She glanced at her stomach. “Do you really think it’s there?”

“Your mother seems to think so.”

“But how does she know? She asked me a lot of questions and said she’d hit me if I didn’t tell her the truth, and I
did
tell her the truth, and then she got my grandma and they pressed their hands all over my stomach and decided a baby was there.”

“I’m sure they were right, Abigail. Now we must decide what to do.”

I gave her time to think this through. “Well, my mother and my grandma say I can’t keep the baby, so I guess I’d like the baby to go to a family that doesn’t have a baby and needs one. It doesn’t have to be an important family. Just a family that could love a baby.”

Then her composure broke. She leaned against my leg to cry. I placed my hand on her back to comfort her. After a few minutes I said, “Up, now. Up.”

Rising, she gazed at me with open, absolute trust.

“You must focus on the good you can take from this experience, Abigail.” I hoped I didn’t sound pedantic. The line between sanctimony and encouragement was blurred. Yet how could I greet innocence except on its own terms? “I admire your courage.”

I squeezed her hands, and she gave me an unsteady smile. “Thank you, Miss Barrett. I’ll always do my best from now on.”

CHAPTER XIV

I
wouldn’t put it past any man to feign an interest in butterflies to get what he wanted from an innocent girl. Nonetheless, I didn’t allow myself to engage in idle speculation about the father of Abigail’s child. It wouldn’t help me or Macaulay if I greeted a prominent man of the community with a too-knowing look, let alone an impulsive glare of condemnation.

A few days after the Rushman visit, while I was still trying to map out the proper course of action for Abigail, I received this note:

My dear Miss Barrett
,

I wish to discuss with you, privately and confidentially, a matter relating to the Macaulay School. Kindly visit me at my office, in the administration building at Stony Point—where we may be assured of privacy—at your convenience. Shall we say this Friday at eleven A.M.?

With thanks
,
J. J. Albright

Such a request, from a member of the Macaulay Board, could not be ignored, even during school hours. So on Friday, I undertook the train ride from downtown Buffalo to the massive steel mill complex rising along Lake Erie at Stony Point, less than ten miles to the south.

Only a few years earlier, Walter Scranton had negotiated with Buffalo business leaders about moving his Lackawanna, Pennsylvania, steel mills to a new, better location on the shores of Lake Erie, close to the cheap electricity of Niagara and easily accessible to ore shipments from the Mesabi Range in Minnesota. Scranton had quickly found the local investors he needed: my board of trustees in action once again. One city we were, cut like a diamond, every facet a glittering reflection of the whole.

As one of the leaders of this new steel-mill consortium, John J. Albright had been responsible for organizing the purchase of the land, nearly fifteen hundred acres. He’d been able to buy it cheaply by misleading the owner into believing that he was looking for a flat piece of property on which to grow the millions of flowers needed for the Pan-American Exposition. Apparently Albright hadn’t actually lied about his intentions, he’d simply played on the seller’s assumptions. When the deal was complete (the legal documents prepared by John Milburn), it was hailed as brilliant. With the addition of something called a “timber crib breakwater” (carefully diagramed in the newspapers), Stony Point would have the best harbor on the Great Lakes. The steel complex would one day compete with the Carnegie works in Pittsburgh. Or so the newspapers proclaimed.

From the train window I saw miles of ill-made shacks forming a town of squatters. Here lived the thousands of workers who had come to construct the technological miracle which would one day—or so it was advertised—produce a million and a quarter tons of steel a year. The workmen were like an ancient army camped across the plain, accompanied by food and water wagons, as well as the requisite camp followers.

The train stopped at the gates of the construction site and I got off. Before entering the complex, however, I paused. The air was acrid, stinging my eyes. Dust gritted against my teeth. At the end of a road lined with infant trees and carefully paved with asphalt (in addition to his other endeavors, Mr. Albright was our local asphalt baron), the administration building rose in almost shocking Beaux-Arts magnificence atop a gentle knoll. Beyond it, Lake Erie shimmered, light reflecting off the water to lend an unearthly halo to the monsters before me … yes, fifteen hundred acres of monsters: gruesomely shaped derricks, dredges, gantries, cranes and engines belching black smoke. With a touch of anxiety, I began my walk toward Albright’s office. Around me were rail lines by the dozen, going nowhere; narrow bridges crossing the sky; electrical lines in a dense weave. And there was sound: dull thuds, high-pitched screeches, small explosions, whistles, bells—whether of warning or alarm or happiness at the shift’s end, who could tell? Before I was halfway down the road, all the sounds blended into one sound, a vibration that never ceased and became more a feeling than a hearing, passing through my body.

A few years before, Stony Point had been a forested lakeside wilderness. Now it was—this. Yet I had to admit that some of the monsters were beautiful. I had to stop to admire them, as they bathed and baked in the sunlight: slender smokestacks in towering rows; graceful lighthouses (or so they seemed) with bells on top; the machine shop like a crystal palace. In their way, these monsters were as beautiful as the forest they had replaced.
Steel Works Will Rise Like Magic
—that was one of the headlines I remembered. There
was
magic here: I was surrounded by a magical forest of the future.

When the secretary ushered me into his office, John J. Albright did not stand to greet me. He simply looked up from the work at his desk, his glasses catching a glare of light.

“Good morning, Miss Barrett,” he said graciously. He was terribly thin, but he always looked like this, year after year unchanged. “Thank you for coming. Please, make yourself comfortable. I’m at a tricky spot here.”

He returned to work. Tools were arranged neatly across his broad, polished desk. In addition there was a stack of white boards, and a container of pins. As I approached, I realized that he was mounting butterflies, flashes of color dense beneath his long, delicate fingers. Don’t leap to conclusions, I cautioned myself.

His office was what I would have predicted: the intricate scrollwork of the ceiling; the wide leather chairs; the flowing brocade curtains at the tall windows; the thick Persian carpet; gaslight rather than electricity. Nevertheless there was one important difference from the standard-issue industrial mogul’s office: The paintings were by Corot, misty-green scenes of sheep, lakes, and shepherdesses, feathery-leafed trees rising around them. Mr. Albright enjoyed landscape paintings, particularly from the Barbizon School, although he couldn’t be called a connoisseur. He simply collected things, from the canvases that would one day go to his art museum in Delaware Park, to the mounted butterflies that adorned one wall of the office.

His “tricky spot” continued, and so with Corot’s vision in my mind I went to the windows. As so often happened in Buffalo, the wind from Lake Erie had changed the day. Clouds now covered the sky, painting the scene in shades of gray. If the office had been on the opposite side of the building, I would have seen the lake, huge as an inland sea; I would have seen the grain elevators and the skyscrapers of Buffalo, comforting as home. Instead I felt as if Albright and I were in a boat run aground in a landscape created by Jules Verne or H. G. Wells, no longer magical but desolate, the derricks and gantries looking like giant insects. For a split second the Pan-American Exposition flower garden that might have been exploded before me: millions upon millions of flowers in rows of rampaging color—roses, daffodils, lilies, tulips—butterflies flitting among them.

“Did you have a pleasant journey?”

I turned to find him staring at me. In his gray suit, with his graying hair and mustache, he was as stark as the landscape outside, the dead butterflies offering the only colors of life within the narrow orbit of his being.

“Yes, thank you. It was brief.”

He chuckled. “Indeed. We are close to the city but far away.”

“Quite so,” I replied.

He returned to his work. His every gesture was meticulous. Suddenly there was a long screech outside. A bell began clanging. A fire bell, maybe, or an ambulance. Albright tilted his head, frowning, listening. When the bell ceased, he resumed work. Albright had the overwhelming ease of a man born to great comfort. He had no need to rush, no need think of my responsibilities. His own convenience was the motivating force with which he passed through the world. Soon, perhaps, he would sojourn at his retreat on Jekyll Island in Georgia; soon he would visit his so-called cabin in the Adirondacks. What need had he to hurry?

I approached the desk and stood beside him, to feel the presence of his body. Had he fathered Abigail’s child? It seemed unlikely, he with his asceticism, she with her solemnity. And yet—so far—he had fathered six children in two marriages. There must have been pleasure in such fecundity. Pleasure to spare.

“What kind of butterfly is that?” I leaned close to him to examine the specimen. He glanced up at me, surprised, perhaps, by my nearness and meeting my eyes for an instant. Immediately he looked back at the butterfly.

“This is a Colorado Hairstreak, sent by my man in the West.” He tilted up the mounting board for me to see. The butterfly had large patches of purple and orange, shaped by bands of black. I never understood the satisfaction derived from killing such exquisite creatures in order to mount them on the wall. “I’m preparing a gift for my little daughter Elizabeth.” He paused, giving me a quizzical look. “Do you like butterflies?”

Who would admit to not liking butterflies? “Yes. Of course.”

“This is one of my favorites.” He opened the wooden box on his desk and delicately used tweezers to remove one of the specimens. “Cloudless Sulphur.”

A beautiful name. Cloudless Sulphur. The butterfly was completely yellow, even the body and antennae. Not the sallow, dingy yellow of the meeting room at the club. This yellow was pure and brilliant, like a bit of morning sunshine captured upon the earth.

“It’s surprising, to see something so pure,” I offered.

“Yes.” He studied me, his brow knit. “It is surprising. I’ll mount it for you as a gift. Yes”—he seemed to drift off into his own thoughts—“a gift.”

“Mr. Albright, I don’t think—”

“No, please, you are in need of a gift. You deserve a gift. Indeed you do.” He nodded his head hard, as if sealing the deal. “I won’t have it mounted today, however,” he insisted petulantly. “You won’t be able to take it home with you today. Please don’t assume—”

“Oh, no, indeed. I would never expect to take it home today,” I reassured him, wondering what convoluted path had made him defensive. “Whenever you’re ready will be fine with me.”

“Well then, that’s settled,” he said with happy relief. “Do sit down, Miss Barrett.” He motioned to the chair on the opposite side of his desk. “I’m most grateful to you for coming all this way. Did you tell Sinclair that you were coming?”

“No. Why should I?”

“A question, nothing more.” He waved it away. “I’ll get right to the point, then. I find myself in the position of asking a favor of you. Two favors, actually.”

Here it comes, I thought: his admission of guilt. Evenly I said, “Whatever I can do. I’d be honored to assist you.”

“You know, Miss Barrett”—he leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms across his chest—“I have often observed that things happen in this life which are difficult to explain. For which no one is to blame.” He sat up a bit. “Now there’s a bit of a rhyme, eh? ‘Difficult to explain, no one is to blame.’” He beamed at his cleverness.

“Yes.”

He watched me for a moment before beginning again. “Indeed I have often observed that life is filled with trials and rewards. With challenges that give us the opportunity to do our best. To become all we can become. To do what is right. So the Good Lord would have it—I believe, at least. Well”—he sat up straight, moving his chair toward the desk, rubbing his hands together—“enough said on
that
matter. And spring is here at last. Makes us all feel better.”

I beg your pardon, Mr. Albright, I felt like saying. What are you trying to tell me? If this was a code, its meaning completely eluded me. I could understand how the owner of the land we were sitting on had been persuaded to sell for a song because he thought a flower garden was going to be built here instead of a steel mill. I leaned forward. I smiled brightly. Why not bring on a confrontation? “Mr. Albright,” I said charmingly, “are you acquainted with a Macaulay student named Abigail Rushman?”

He looked confused, his eyes narrowing. “I didn’t say that. Why do you ask?”

“She has a great love of butterflies.”

“Ah,” he exclaimed happily. “Good for her. A fine interest for the young. You might show her your Cloudless Sulphur—when it’s prepared.”

“Yes, I shall. What a good idea. I may even give it to her. As a gift. In the summer.” In the summer, Abigail would give birth to her child.

“That’s as you wish.” He appeared indifferent to the prospect of me making a plan to give away his gift before I had even received it. “How well I know the pleasure we butterfly lovers find in the acquisition of new specimens. Now, Miss Barrett, the second favor.”

I wasn’t aware that he’d asked the first favor. He stared at the Corot on the wall beside his desk. He seemed to be collecting his thoughts, pondering how to begin. Finally he said, “You must tell Tom Sinclair that I have my finger in the dike, but I can’t hold the waters back much longer.” He smiled at me thinly. “That turn of phrase is a good joke, don’t you think? In this context, I mean. ‘Finger in the dike … holding back the waters.’”

“I don’t precisely understand it.” Was Albright trying to warn Tom that the authorities were closing in on him regarding Speyer’s death?