The Chaperone (15 page)

When she did climb the stairs from the subway back into the bright sunlight, she moved aside to let people pass and took a moment to study the map. She was close. According to Floyd Smithers’s map, the address was right around the corner. She dabbed at sweat on her forehead, dampening the tips of her gloves. Soon, too soon, she would be standing outside the orphanage’s door. She put the map away. The streets and avenues were numbered logically. If she went for a walk to calm her nerves, there was little chance of getting lost. She opened her parasol, and, with her free hand, held her purse close to her chest.

Floyd Smithers had been right about the neighborhood—the Irish, or at least their names—were everywhere. McCormick’s Shoe Repair. Kelly’s Auto and Tire. Paddy’s was just Paddy’s; the word “Saloon” had been painted over thinly. She passed a Catholic church. Many of the people around her looked and sounded native born, though an old woman did lean out a high window to yell, “Daniel Mulligan O’Brien! You get your arse back up here now!” (No one but Cora—apparently not even the boy being summoned—turned to look.) She heard other languages here and there. Spanish. French. Along a side street thick with rumbling cars and trucks, a group of girls in braids bounced a rubber ball off a front stoop, calling to one another in a language Cora didn’t recognize. Over their heads, stretched across the street from window to window, were dozens of long clotheslines, from which hung undergarments and clothes, mostly sized for children—little vests and little shirts, short pants with patched seats and little dresses with ragged hemlines.

The more she walked, the more children she saw. And then they were everywhere. On one street, each stoop sported at least five or six throwing balls against the steps or balancing on the railings. Some children walked with their mothers, or with men in stevedore caps. More moved down the sidewalk in packs, all girls or all boys. Many looked as if they’d just been swimming in their clothes, their hair still slicked back and dripping, though none looked particularly clean. They gave one another light pushes and laughed, the barefoot ones hopping fast on the hot sidewalk. Cora saw a blond-haired girl of about eight reach into a garbage can, pull out a half-eaten apple, and take a delighted bite. When her friends gathered round, she handed over the apple, and they each took a bite as well.

She passed a pregnant woman with a bruised cheek and a rumpled hat, a child on her hip and another trailing behind her. When she noticed Cora staring, she glared.

And babies. So many babies. They cried from open windows and in the arms of other children. They rolled by in wobbling carriages and slept in slings tied around their mothers’ necks. A woman in a long black dress nursed an infant on a bench in front of a pool hall, her swollen breast bared for all the world to see. When she noticed Cora’s shocked stare, she misunderstood, smiled, and said something cheerful in Italian.

Cora felt dizzy. It was the heat, or perhaps the smells, which varied widely from storefront to storefront. Fresh baked bread. Cat urine. Melting cheese. Laundry soap. Roasting meat. She started to walk into a café, only to realize, too late, that all the patrons were male. As she hurried out, they called to her in another language, saying things she guessed to be, at best, disrespectful.

She got out the map again. She still didn’t feel ready, not in the least. But she was hot, and tired.

Three shrieking girls in dingy dresses rushed past her from behind. The smallest knocked her bony shoulder against Cora’s skirt. The girl kept running, her dark braid swinging behind her, but she called out, “Sorry, ma’am,” and briefly turned back, flashing a radiant, chipped-tooth smile.

She almost walked past
the building. She wouldn’t have known it if not for the address—she’d remembered it as larger than it was. It was just four stories, each floor five windows across, with the windowless wall on top. An adjacent lot, which she didn’t recall, had been paved and fenced, with a wide gate closed to the street and a two-story wooden outbuilding. But the brown brick of the main building was just as she remembered, and there was the little gold plaque by the door, engraved with a cross and black letters:
The New York Home for Friendless Girls.
Cora stared at it grimly. After all these years, really. They could have found a better name.

The air on the street smelled sweet and buttery, like cookies right out of the oven. If she had smelled such treats as a hungry child, she certainly would have remembered. Did they give orphan girls cookies now? Or did the girls bake them for sale? Other changes were clear. Inside the fence, there was a rudimentary swing set, the seats made out of the lids of packing crates. There was a climbing rope, too, knotted at the bottom. But some things were the same. Just next to the swing set, a pile of stuffed canvas bags waited by the door. Incoming laundry. Cora gazed up at the roof.

“Can I help you?”

She turned. A young nun with a faint dark mustache was hurrying up the steps, followed by a man in overalls carrying a wooden crate.

“Oh. Yes,” Cora said, climbing the steps as well. “I… I’d like to speak with someone.”

“Regarding?” The nun looked at her pleasantly, taking one side of the crate while the man, still bearing most of its weight, took a ring of keys from the pocket of his overalls.

Cora hesitated. But the nun was clearly in a hurry.

“I used to live here,” she blurted out. “As a child.”

The man, who wore wire-rim spectacles, glanced at Cora as he turned a key in the lock. He nodded at the nun, took the crate, and carried it inside.

“I see,” the nun said, wiping one hand against the other. Rushed as she was, her expression seemed pointedly neutral; it was impossible to tell if Cora had shocked her, or if grown orphans came by every day. “I’m afraid we have Mass now. We’ll all be upstairs until one. You could come back tomorrow, either before twelve-thirty or after one.”

Cora worked to hide her disappointment. After all these years, she was still that conditioned to show only calm acceptance to a nun, to not talk back, to not be disagreeable or show ingratitude, even with the look on her face. But that was ridiculous. She wasn’t a child now. She was an adult, a married woman. She had nothing to fear.

“Could I just wait inside?” Cora smiled pleasantly, masking her own surprise. “I don’t know that I’ll be able to come back,” she added. “And I’ve come a very long way.”

The nun nodded, and Cora followed her up the stairs and through the door. The entry was small and painted white, with a stairway to the right and, straight ahead, a long hallway leading to a window-bright kitchen. Cora could see part of a stove from where she stood. The cookie smell from outside was gone; now she only smelled bleach.

“Thank you, Joseph,” the nun called out, though the man had disappeared. She shut the front door, turning the lock. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be late.” She was already moving up the stairs, using both hands to lift the hem of her habit. “Just go down the hallway and through the kitchen to the dining hall. You’re welcome to sit and wait there.”

Cora stood in the entry, listening to a muffled piano coming from somewhere above. The wooden crate had been set by the door. It was full of girls’ shoes, she saw now, scuffed and used, each pair held together by a rubber band. She looked at the front door, the brass knob in the middle of an oval-shaped plate with beaded edges. Nothing about it was familiar. But then, it wouldn’t be. It wasn’t as if she’d spent much time by the front door, coming and going as she pleased.

She moved down the hallway to the kitchen, the smell of bleach growing stronger. She passed two doors, both closed, and spaced evenly apart. She still heard the piano overhead, and now, the voices of girls singing.
Sing, my tongue, the Virgin’s trophies / Who for us her Maker bore.
Cora went still, looking up at the low ceiling. She knew this song, remembered it. Without thinking, she moved her lips to the words.
For the curse of old inflicted / Peace and blessing to restore.

The kitchen was unfamiliar. Both the sink and the green enamel stove looked modern, newer. Three cylindrical containers of bulk oats sat on a shelf next to the icebox. She almost laughed. After all these years, they were still serving oatmeal. Maybe the nuns put sugar or syrup in it now. Or maybe they didn’t still serve it twice a day, every day. In any case, when she was here, she hadn’t minded the oatmeal. She’d been happy for anything that eased her hunger, even if for only a few hours. And she hadn’t known anything better—that had helped. But after just a few days at the Kaufmanns’, eating scrambled eggs and potatoes and roasted chicken and peaches, she’d decided she would never eat oatmeal again. It didn’t matter if Mother Kaufmann put brown sugar in it, or butter, or syrup. It was the texture Cora remembered. She hadn’t had a bowl since.

Through the open doorway to her right, she saw the ends of two straight-edged tables. And benches, and light coming in through square, cross-barred windows. She walked into the dining room, sweat cooling on her forehead. The room was smaller than she remembered, and the four tables, arranged two by two, weren’t as long as the ones where she had eaten all those silent meals with the other girls and the nuns. But they were the same tables, of course. Everything seemed large when she was small. They’d had to eat in shifts, she remembered, the younger girls before the older.

She sank onto a bench, her gloved hands resting cautiously on the table.

“Hello.”

She turned. The man in overalls had entered from a door on the other side of the room. He carried a folded ladder to the center, just beneath a small circle of exposed wires. Before he opened the ladder, he stopped, the spectacles glinting in the sunlight.

“You are fine?”

He had some kind of accent. She wasn’t sure what. He had an angular face, his hair thinning and blond.

“I’m fine, thank you.” She coughed, her throat dry. “I’m just waiting.”

“I can get you something to drink?”

“Oh. Yes. Some water would be wonderful. Thank you.”

She heard him opening the ladder, and then his footsteps to the kitchen, the keys jangling in his pocket. She removed her gloves. When she heard him running the water, she placed her hands on the table, her fingertips tracing the groove of the wood. After every meal, they’d wiped the tables down with boiled rags. She looked out the back window. The grass in the yard was summer dead, and there was just a stump where the big tree had been.

The handyman returned, and a glass of water was set in front of her.

“Thank you,” she said, glancing up.

He smiled, not moving away. She looked down at her hands. She’d taken Floyd Smithers’s advice and left her wedding ring back at the apartment.

“I’m fine now, really,” she said. She waited until he had walked back to the ladder to lift the glass to her lips with both hands. As soon as the cold water touched her lips, her body seemed to take over, and she drank it all, gulp after gulp, her eyes closed, her head tilted back.

The handyman, up on the ladder now, started to whistle.

She turned away, setting the empty glass on the table. She didn’t wish to be rude, but she didn’t want to talk. She opened her purse and took out
The Age of Innocence
, more as a buffer to any conversation than an actual desire to read. She couldn’t read right now. She could only stare at the pages, trying to calm herself.

The handyman stopped whistling. Without thinking, she looked up. He nodded at her book and started to say something, but before he could, she turned her whole body away from him, staring down at the pages, the swimming, unread words. She glanced at her watch. It was already a quarter till one. Her fingers tingled, and she felt a rushing in her arms, as if her very blood knew where she was.

Sister Delores.
Cora recognized her at once—the high cheekbones, the blue eyes—and had to work not to gasp. Of course. The nuns who had been old when she was a child would all be dead by now. But Sister Delores was only middle-aged, with deep lines between her faint brows, and especially around her mouth. If anything, even in the austere black habit, she looked less frightening than in memory. She seemed smaller, like the tables, and the dining room itself. Cora wondered if she still carried the paddle.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” she said, leaning a little across the desk. Her voice was the same, low and commanding. “I used to think I would remember the face of each girl who lived within these walls.” She shook her head, peering at Cora.

They were in an office, behind one of the two doors that opened to the hallway. Just above the nun’s head was a framed painting of Jesus in Gethsemane, and, beside that, a framed photograph of the new Pope. The wooden desk was free of clutter, with just a typewriter, a pen, and a stack of paper weighted down with a silver cross. The only window was somewhat obscured by a long lace curtain, which fluttered a little with the warm breeze, its patterned shadow flickering on the hardwood floor.

“I don’t expect you to remember me,” Cora said. In truth, she was glad Sister Delores had no memory of her as a child. She had introduced herself as Cora Kaufmann from McPherson, Kansas, not Mrs. Alan Carlisle from Wichita, who had already pestered them with three letters, who had already been told no.

“You’re in Kansas now, you say.” The blue eyes focused on Cora’s. “You went out on the train, then?”

Cora nodded. Overhead, she heard water moving through pipes, and the shuffling of many feet. The girls were getting started on the laundry, taking the soiled clothes and sheets from the bags. All these years, while she had lived with the Kaufmanns and gone to school, and then married Alan, and brought up the boys in Wichita, back here, the laundry bags had still been arriving every day, at the same time, with different small hands doing the scrubbing and the hanging.

“Was your placement good?” The nun winced, as if preparing for a blow.

“It was, Sister. Wonderful people chose me. I couldn’t have been more fortunate.”

Sister Delores closed her eyes and smiled. “Praise God. That’s nice to hear.” She opened her eyes. “That’s been true, more often than not, of the girls we’ve sent out, the ones we’ve heard from. Not always. But more often than not.”