Remembering the Titanic (11 page)

Because her mother was fine,
would
be fine. Hadn’t she just said so herself?

Sensing that something was happening but unable to figure out exactly what it was, Nola turned once again on the vanity stool. She glanced at the magazine in Elizabeth’s hand, and anxious for a diversion, said as if nothing out of the ordinary had taken place, “Oh, darling, look at the gorgeous green hat on the cover! Do look inside the magazine and see if it tells us where I might find that hat. It would go so beautifully with my green suit, the one with the ermine collar.”

Elizabeth smiled. “Oh, it would, Mother, you’re right.” Still smiling, she began leafing through the magazine again. Though she appeared to be searching the pages for information about where her mother might purchase the green hat on the cover, she was actually mentally composing her letter of inquiry to Vassar about admissions policies.

Dear Sir or Madam,

You will be happy to hear (though not nearly as happy as I was) that my mother is perfectly satisfied with her life, perfectly capable of caring for herself and therefore I am writing to inquire how I might become a matriculating student at your fine establishment…

or:

Dear Sir or Madam,

Might you have room at your fine establishment for a young woman who has had enough shopping on Fifth Avenue to last her a full lifetime?

“Have you found it yet?” Nola asked.

“No. But I’m still looking.”

They returned to New York the following day, a sticky, sultry, Thursday afternoon in mid-July.

A month before Elizabeth had secretly written to Vassar College, applying for admission. She had asked for a scholarship, saying she wanted to be independent of her family. She doubted, at the time, she would be able to leave her mother, but she wanted to have hope.

On a Tuesday morning, she received her acceptance letter.
“We are pleased to inform you…
.
”
Not only had she been accepted, but because of her “excellent academic standing” in her “lower-form education,” she was being offered a scholarship that would meet most of her expenses.

Elizabeth couldn’t believe her good fortune. Now, even if her mother disapproved, she would be able to go. She could get a part-time job in Poughkeepsie, perhaps as a salesclerk in a department store, to cover the remainder of her expenses.

The first person she shared this joyful news with was Max, by telephone. He was as elated as she was. When she had returned from Tarrytown and shared with him what had happened there, how her decision to apply to college had come about, he’d been almost as excited as she was. But he reminded her that because she had applied so late, she would have to tell her mother right away.

She did.

Upon hearing the news, Nola collapsed.

“W
ELL, OF COURSE YOU
can’t possibly go,” Nola said flatly when Elizabeth, her stomach churning, had read aloud the contents of her letter from Vassar. “I can’t imagine what you were thinking, applying to college behind my back and not even discussing it with me first.”

They were outside, in the garden, where Elizabeth had found her mother gathering a bouquet of pink roses. She would have done almost anything to avoid this confrontation. But she was to leave for Poughkeepsie soon. Perhaps Max would drive her. If not, she could take the train. At any rate, there was not enough time to break the news gently to her mother.

“I didn’t discuss it with you,” Elizabeth said, “because I wasn’t sure I’d be accepted. But now I have been, and I
am
going, Mother. They’ve given me a scholarship. I won’t turn that down.”

Nola tilted her head, protected from the sun by a wide-brimmed straw hat. “You’re
not
going, Elizabeth. I need you here. I can’t possibly manage here all by myself.”

Elizabeth clutched the sheet of paper in her hands so tightly the fine linen stationery crackled like kernels of corn popping. Nola glanced around as if trying to locate the source of the annoying sound. “You said you didn’t need a husband, Mother, remember? At Alan’s. You said your life was just fine without a man to take care of you. You
laughed
at my efforts at matchmaking. If you can manage without a husband, why can’t you manage without a daughter? You have friends. You have a social life, you said so yourself. You can do the same things with Betsy and Caroline and your other friends that you and I do together. And the household staff will take care of everything else.”

“Caroline and Betsy won’t be here in the evenings.”

“They’d come if you invited them.”

Nola’s face was quite pale. “It’s during the evening that I miss your father most, Elizabeth. He wouldn’t want me to be alone then, Elizabeth. He was counting on you to save me from such loneliness.”

Elizabeth winced. But she recovered instantly. Nola didn’t usually play her trump card … Elizabeth’s father … so quickly. She knows how determined I am this time, Elizabeth guessed, and it’s making her desperate. “You could sell the house, Mother, if it’s too much for you,” she suggested. “You could buy a nice country house, perhaps near some of your Connecticut friends. Or you could take an apartment in the city.”

Nola looked horrified. “An apartment?”

“Mother, there are places on Central Park West that are enormous. Some of them are two whole floors, no different than a house.” Elizabeth had never seen such places for herself, but Anne and Bledsoe had mentioned them as evidence of the extravagances of the wealthy, when the poor were suffering so.

“If they’re no different than a house,” Nola responded sharply, “what would be the point of moving? I already
have
a house. And,” she added, turning away from Elizabeth to snip one last pale pink rose from its bush, “I’m not leaving it. There are memories of your father here. Nor are you leaving.” Carefully placing the flower in the basket she carried over one arm, Nola turned and began walking up the stone path toward the kitchen door.

“I
am
going, Mother!” Elizabeth called after her. “I’ve been accepted and I’m going. Max is driving me to Poughkeepsie on August twenty-seventh. You’ll be fine here. You don’t need me. I’ll come home every weekend to spend it with you, but I
am
going.”

Afterwards, Elizabeth was never sure of the exact sequence of events. When it played out in her mind later, it was all a confused jumble, as if someone had taken a movie reel, sliced it to pieces, and then spliced it back together all wrong.

But she thought it began when she cried out, “I
am
going!” that last time. Nola stopped on the path, her back to Elizabeth. The basket heaped with pink blossoms dropped to the ground. Nola turned, one hand against her chest, an expression of surprise on her face. She stood like that, motionless, for a second or two, then dropped abruptly to her knees, one hand extending beseechingly toward Elizabeth.

Elizabeth stood frozen, unwillingly to believe what she was seeing. When she could move again, she ran to her mother’s side.

“Call Dr. Cooper,” Nola whispered with great effort. “Fenton Cooper,
call
him. Hurry!” Then she toppled sideways, landing in Elizabeth’s arms.

At the hospital, it seemed to Elizabeth hours, even days, before Dr. Cooper emerged from the emergency room’s swinging doors to approach Elizabeth. She was sitting alone on a hard wooden bench in the hallway. The doctor was a handsome man, tall and authoritative, his dark hair graying at the temples. His expression was grim.

Elizabeth jumped to her feet. The ride in the ambulance had been frightening, the suspense while waiting for a diagnosis nerve-wracking. Unable to reach Max by telephone, she had asked Cook to keep calling his number until he answered. Cook hated the telephone, and Elizabeth was afraid she wouldn’t do as asked. And now she had to hear what the grim-faced doctor had to say all by herself, instead of having Max at her side. “Is my mother all right?”

“She’s doing as well as can be expected.” Dr. Cooper motioned Elizabeth to return to the bench, then sat down beside her.

What did
that
mean? “What’s wrong with her? What happened? She was fine one minute, then … was it the heat? She was wearing a hat against the sun, but…”

“Unfortunately,” Dr. Cooper said soberly, “a hat is no protection against heart trouble.”

Elizabeth’s world stopped turning. Every sound in the hospital, every bit of bustling activity among nurses and orderlies, every voiced complaint from emergency room patients awaiting treatment, vanished, disappeared as completely as if Elizabeth had waved a magic wand. She could no longer hear, or speak, or think. The pungent medicinal odor that had been making her head ache was gone. There was nothing left in the hospital but that one phrase: “heart trouble.”

Dr. Cooper cleared his throat.

“My mother doesn’t have heart trouble,” Elizabeth managed, though she had no idea how the words had formed.

“I’m afraid she does.”

Not true. Not … not …
not
… true! It couldn’t be. Nola had never appeared the slightest bit ill … no,
that
wasn’t true, either. On the ship, on the
Titanic
… she had been ill. Briefly. But … that had been seasickness, hadn’t it? Many people had it, even though the trip was as smooth as a glide across glass. Smooth until…

“Is she going to die?”

“Oh, heavens no! I’m sorry if I frightened you, Elizabeth. Her condition is not life-threatening. There is very little treatment, unfortunately, but there
are
ways to keep her out of harm’s way. You and I,” the doctor said, smiling reassuringly at Elizabeth, “will see to that, won’t we? We’ll make sure she’s well cared for. That’s what Martin would expect of us, don’t you agree?”

“But … but she hasn’t
seemed
sick,” Elizabeth said. She was struggling to comprehend what Dr. Cooper had just told her. “She has so much energy. All those shopping trips … I get tired long before she does. And her color is good … are you positive, Dr. Cooper? That she has this … this heart trouble?”

He looked a bit miffed. “Of course I’m sure. I wonder,” he added, “if you could tell me what precipitated this spell.”

Elizabeth flushed with guilt. She lowered her eyes, studying the black and white floor tiles. “I … I told her I was going away to college in August. I’d just been accepted and given a scholarship. She … she didn’t like the idea.”

“Well, of course not. My goodness, Elizabeth, she recently lost her husband. And she finds out her daughter intends to desert her? Why would she like the idea?”

Elizabeth ducked her head further, fighting tears.

“Well,” Dr. Cooper said as briskly, patting Elizabeth’s hand in an awkward attempt to console her, “no matter now. But it’s agreed that we’ll have no more talk of you leaving your mother alone in that big house? Your place is, of course, with her.” He shook his head. “I myself don’t hold with higher education for women. Makes them less content to fulfill their duties in the home when they marry, as most of them do. It gives me chills to think of who might be running the country should women be given the vote.”

“Perhaps they would know more about politics,” Elizabeth countered, “if they were better educated.”

Fenton Cooper had no intention of wasting his valuable time arguing with a stubborn young woman. “About your mother … this episode has been very frightening for her. You must reassure her that you’ll remain at her side. That will do more to hasten her speedy recovery than any medicine. The important thing, and I must stress this, is that she not be upset or distressed or worried, do you understand that?”

As guilty as Elizabeth was feeling, she had to ask, “Can’t you fix it? An operation…?”

“Oh, no, my dear. I’m afraid this is a condition your mother will have to live with. With proper care, of course.”

“But she
will
live? This condition, you said it isn’t life-threatening, didn’t you? Why didn’t this happen when she lost my father? She adored him. That had to be the worst thing she’s ever gone through. You know how agitated she was, for a long time. But she was never ill.”

“That is true. And quite astonishing. I thought so at the time. But your mother is a strong woman, Elizabeth. I believe she tried her best to remain calm for your sake, and it saved her from any cardiac distress. Mothers will do anything to save their children pain. I’ve seen it many times.”

And look how I paid her back, Elizabeth thought, thoroughly ashamed. By planning to leave her.

Standing up, she asked the doctor if she could see her mother. “I won’t upset her, I promise.”

“Yes, of course. You’re just what she needs, I’m sure.” Dr. Cooper stood up and led the way down the hall.

They had arrived at the curtain hiding Nola from view. “Remember, now,” the doctor cautioned, “she is not to be upset in any way. Comfort and reassurance and a daughter’s devotion, that’s the ticket. She will be allowed to go home tomorrow morning, where she must rest and remain calm for the remainder of the week. If all goes well, she should be up and about in no time, leading a normal life again for the most part, and this difficult little episode will be behind both of you.”

Elizabeth frowned. “A normal life? Even shopping and dinners and parties? But I thought…”

“She needn’t be bedridden. As long as she doesn’t become agitated or distressed, she may do as she pleases.”

My father’s philosophy exactly, Elizabeth couldn’t help thinking. Let Nola do as she pleases and don’t let anything upset her. What was it about her mother that led men to pamper her so?

Well, a cold, stern voice in her head answered, right
now
it’s a heart condition, you spoiled, selfish girl. Your mother fell to her knees in front of you and this is all the compassion you can muster up? Pampered or not, she must have been very frightened.

As
I
was, Elizabeth thought, remembering that terrible moment in the garden.

Thanking the doctor, who then hurried off to attend to other patients, Elizabeth pulled the curtain aside and entered the emergency room cubicle where her mother lay on a bed, her eyes closed.