The Chaperone (13 page)

Cora nodded. She didn’t wish to be stern. But apparently, she needed to be stern to get the girl to listen. “Again, if you’d like to go down and get something to eat, I can go with—”

“I’m not hungry.” She turned away. “You can take your bath. Don’t worry. I’ll be right here.”

It felt wonderful
to undress, to free her belly and hips from the corset, and her legs from the stockings and garters, and her hair from the pins, and climb into the steaming tub. But she had to admit, it was getting away from Louise, even with just a closed door between them, that gave her real relief. Cora appreciated the girl’s wounded sulking even less than all the backtalk and teasing. If she was truly wounded, it was her own fault. Neither of Cora’s boys had ever talked to her so disrespectfully: if they disagreed with her and Alan’s rules, they bore it in silence, like the honorable young men they were. They certainly didn’t try to wear her down with constant argument and dramatic changes in mood. She thought of Myra, and the dance teacher in Wichita. They had both wanted Louise gone. It was becoming apparent why.

She sank farther down into the water, her soaked hair heavy on her shoulders. Let the girl sulk. Cora needed this quiet time to think, and to consider where she was. Today in the taxi, she had perhaps ridden past streets that her mother, and maybe her father, had walked on, maybe carrying her once. She had seen buildings that they would have recognized. Had they had other children? Her sisters and brothers? Did they speak the language of the woman with the shawl? Did they look like her? Would they know her if they saw her on the street? Her own people? Would she know them? She cautioned herself not to get too hopeful. But even if she never found them, even if they were dead, unable to ever meet her or Howard and Earle, she would at least spend the next few weeks walking the same streets they might have walked.

On the other side of the door, the bedsprings creaked. Cora stretched her sore toes against the faucet, listening over hissing pipes for any other sign of movement. What would she do if Louise just ran out to Times Square while she was in the tub, too naked to get out and stop her? Who was to say she wouldn’t? Louise was a different creature than Cora herself had been at her age. She had needed the Kaufmanns so badly—she wouldn’t have risked such behavior. Uneasy with the quiet, Cora unplugged the drain and carefully stood. The mirror was steamed over, and she used one of the thin but clean towels she’d found in the tiny closet to wipe it clear, revealing her reddened cheeks and her hair, still wet at the shoulders but already curling. She looked down at her body, her breasts and hips, where the pressure marks from her corset were just now starting to fade. She pressed her finger to a mark, red skin turning white, painful to the touch. Perhaps if she had a different sort of figure, she could, on occasion, go without.

She’d just put on her nightgown when she heard men’s voices, then knocking. She cracked opened the bathroom door. Louise, who was stretched out on the bed, still dressed and reading the Schopenhauer, did not look up.

“Louise!”

More knocking. Louise appeared to hear nothing.

“Ello? Ello? Ve have, ah, luggage for Brooks, ah, luggage for Car-liss-lay?”

“Louise!” Cora hissed. “Our trunks! I completely forgot. Would you please get the door?” She gestured at her own body. “I’m in my nightgown!”

Without looking at Cora, Louise closed the book and stood. She seemed surprisingly short, no longer wearing the heels.

“Wait. I have to get the receipts.” Cora moved to her purse. “And we need to tip.” She tried to figure. Two trunks. Three flights of stairs. Did one tip more in a large city? She gave Louise two dollars and told her to have them leave the trunks in the front room.

Louise took the money without a word, without looking her in the eye. She walked through the kitchen to the front room. Cora stayed in the bedroom, hiding behind the wall.

“Sorry. Hello.” She heard Louise open the door. “Thank you. Yes, I have the receipts. Carlisle and Brooks. Right here is fine. Thank you.”

Cora heard grunting, heavy footsteps. A man spoke gruffly to the other in a language she didn’t recognize. Turning off the bedroom light, she peeked through the kitchen to the living room and saw her own Indestructo trunk in the arms of a stout, dark-haired man wearing only a sweat-soaked undershirt and suspended trousers. He moved out of her vision as another man, bearded and equally sweaty, walked by holding another trunk by its handles. She could smell the men from across the apartment—nothing but sweat-soaked clothes, but the stench was strong enough to burn her eyes.

There was more talking that she couldn’t understand. Louise moved into her view, taking a small clipboard and pen from one of the men. Louise looked distressed as she signed, and Cora wondered how she could bear it, standing so close. She was still wearing the low-cut blouse, but the man waiting for the clipboard seemed indifferent to it. As Louise signed the paper on the clipboard, he wiped his arm over his forehead.

Louise gave him the money and said thank you again, looking up at him for longer than seemed necessary. Dear God, Cora thought. Did the girl not have any discernment at all? Was every man’s attention and desire necessary?

Louise handed the clipboard back to the man.

“Do you want some water?” she asked.

Silence. From the dark bedroom, Cora watched the girl put her hand to her mouth and pretend to drink from a cup. There was a response from the men, and then Louise was in the kitchen, opening the cupboards to search for cups. Cora shrank back in the darkness as Louise ran the faucet. A moment later, she asked if they wanted more, and again the answer must have been positive, because the whole process was repeated before the men said brief words Cora didn’t understand and moved back toward the front door.

Even after they were gone, the door closed and locked behind them, the stench of their sweat lingered. Cora walked through the kitchen, her hand over her nose and mouth, and almost bumped into Louise, who was putting the two empty cups in the sink. Cora took her hand away, looking into the girl’s dark eyes. Was she still angry? Would she be hostile? Would she start up another fight?

“Your hair,” Louise said. “It’s curly.” Her voice and expression were neutral. If she was still upset, it didn’t show. “I didn’t know. It’s pretty.”

Cora smiled briefly, tucking the sides behind her ears. Alan always said that, too. “Thank you. And that was nice of you to offer them water.”

It had been. Indeed, Cora felt sheepish, even ashamed, that she hadn’t thought of it herself. That the men would be thirsty just hadn’t occurred to her. But Louise didn’t need to know that.

A baby, maybe in the room right above them, started to sputter and cry. Louise seemed calm, but newly distant, not looking her in the eye.

“I’m going to change and go to bed.” She nodded toward her trunk. “I’ll unpack this in the morning.” She gave Cora a perfunctory smile. “Good night.”

“Good night, dear.”

In the front room, Cora sat at the table. She wanted to give Louise some privacy, a little time to herself. And she had the familiar sensation of having forgotten something crucial, but not knowing what it was. She looked down at the trunks. Louise had an Indestructo, too. Top of the line.
Arrived Safe
was the slogan. And really, it was amazing that the trunks had arrived safe, both of them, having been in the care of strangers for their long journey to and through this massive city, with so much risk of damage or loss. Anything could have happened to either one of them. Yet here they sat, unharmed.

The next morning,
they had eggs and coffee at the luncheonette across the street, where the young man behind the counter assured them that Seventy-second and Broadway was only a mile away. He said they would be better off just walking: the subway was stifling this time of year, and the trolleys were always crowded. He drew them a map on a napkin, using the pen from behind his ear.

“Where are you two from anyway? I thought I’d heard every accent in the world.” He looked at Louise as he refilled someone’s coffee.

“Kansas,” Louise said, spooning sugar into her mug.

“Kee-ansas?” He stepped back, his hand flexed under his bow tie, as if she’d said something funny. “You come straight from the feeerm?” A few other diners at the counter chuckled. Cora smiled politely.

Louise’s gaze went cold. “I don’t sound like that,” she said.

He picked up a spoon, tossed it high in the air, caught it, and gave her a friendly smile. “Sorry, beautiful, but you do.”

On their way out, Cora tried to console her. “He was flirting,” she said, adjusting her hat to block the sun. She wasn’t worried—from what she’d seen of Louise’s reaction, the counter boy didn’t stand a chance. “You don’t have an accent.”

Louise rolled her eyes. “You don’t hear it because you have the same one. We can’t hear ourselves. We sound like hicks and we don’t even know it.” She shook her head, frowning. “I should thank him.” She was speaking slowly, pronouncing every word with care. “He did me a favor.”

He’d also drawn them a good map. Even in the dizzying heat of the morning, they had no trouble finding the church where Louise’s classes would be held. Cora was relieved when they were directed to the basement—just going down the carpeted steps, the air felt cooler against her sweat-damp skin, though the basement hallway held the faint odor of musty, uncirculated air. A muffled piano played a waltz, the music turning loud when they opened a door to a large, low-ceilinged room with no windows and a mirrored wall. Maybe twenty young women and four young men, all barefoot, and all wearing sleeveless bathing costumes, were stretching bare arms and legs against waist-high wooden bars that ran the lengths of the walls adjacent to the mirror. The piano was played by a spectacled woman glaring at the sheet music.

“I am going to change,” Louise said, enunciating each word. She gestured toward a red door that more young women were coming out of. Cora nodded and smiled. She wanted to say something encouraging, something kind, perhaps telling Louise not to be nervous. But then, Louise didn’t look nervous. She looked completely calm, not in need of encouragement, or of anything, for that matter. Cora, along with a few of the dancers, watched her walk away.

Within twenty minutes
of the instructed warm-up, which consisted of a lithe woman with bobbed red hair calling out French commands the students all seemed to know, Cora, sitting in a metal chair in the corner, understood why Louise hadn’t seemed anxious. She was a good dancer. Her legs were shorter and a little plumper than most of the other dancers’, and still she landed from jumps more gracefully, and she could hold a pose longer without trembling. She was strong. In general, she seemed to move more easily than anyone, even the instructor. Cora understood little about dance, but a tall man and a turbaned woman, standing by the mirror and occasionally conferring with each other, gave a strong impression of authority, and they seemed to notice Louise as well. When she performed a jump in front of the rest of the class, the turbaned woman looked up at the man and nodded.

When the turbaned woman raised her hand, the piano stopped. The dancers went still. Despite the relative cool of the basement, they were all sweating, even Louise, the chests and backs of their black wool suits soaked through. But aside from the panting breath of a few students, they were perfectly quiet, every one of them looking at the couple with reverence. When the turbaned woman told them to sit, they sat, right there on the hardwood floor.

“Welcome, all of you, to Denishawn. I am Ruth St. Denis.”

Cora could only guess what the counter boy at the luncheonette would have made of Ruth St. Denis’s accent. She didn’t sound foreign, but she spoke with a dramatic rhythm, emphasizing each word.

She held out both hands and smiled. “Please, call me Miss Ruth.”

She wore a sleeveless calf-length dress, deep red, with a brown silk scarf knotted on one side of her narrow hips. Like the dancers, she was barefoot. The few strands of hair that were free of the turban were milk white, but her face didn’t look much older than Cora’s. She’d tweezed her brows into thin half-moons.

“And this”—she bowed slightly, extending a sinewy arm to her right—“is my husband and partner, Ted Shawn.”

The man smiled at the students. He wore a white collarless shirt and white flannels, and he also had bare feet. He seemed relaxed, calm, yet his posture was perfect.

“You may call me Papa Shawn,” he said, with no accent or strange intonation. “Once we get to know each other better, you probably will.”

The students laughed, some of them, including Louise, looking a little dazzled. Ted Shawn was over six feet tall, and well muscled, with a broad chest. His hair was thin, his hairline receding, but he looked younger than his wife. Something in his manner made Cora think of Alan. He smiled at St. Denis as she spoke.

“Unfortunately,” she said, “I will not be able to stay in New York and watch you grow as dancers. As you likely know, we have a studio in Los Angeles, and I need to spend at least part of the summer there. But I will see you some of the time, and I wanted to meet you today, and perhaps give some guidance and inspiration.”

As she spoke, she stared at a point on the wall just above Cora’s head, her eyes narrowed as if she saw something there, though after a while, Cora looked up and saw only blank white wall above her. St. Denis told the students that as of this moment, they were all personal representatives of Denishawn, and that she expected them to behave that way on and off the premises. Other persons interested in modern dance had unfortunately linked the art with sordid behavior, at least in the public’s mind, but she and her husband intended to correct that misperception. Young women who were Denishawn students wore hats, stockings, and gloves when out in public. They did not roll their stockings. Male students wore hats in public. Obviously, no smoking or drinking would be permitted for either gender, on or off the premises.

“Dance is a
spiritual
experience,” she said, her taut jaw raised, her gaze now moving over the faces of students. “It will not
tolerate
indecency or self-corruption.”