The Chaperone (26 page)

And so right there, while sitting at the little table with the whirling fan muffling her voice, she explained her life to him, the truth of it, as plainly as she could. The Italian woman was over by the counter, reading a magazine, and Joseph was still and quiet as Cora talked. She told him about Howard and Earle and how much she loved them, and how even they didn’t know. She told him that even she and Alan talked and acted as if nothing were amiss between them, as if she really didn’t know that he was still meeting with Raymond at his office after hours, as if she didn’t know they bought each other presents—a watch engraved with
R.W.
and a Latin phrase she didn’t understand, books of poetry with lines underlined.
I am he that aches with love.

Joseph said nothing. She didn’t know what he was thinking, but she kept talking. She didn’t stop to take a sip of her drink. It was as if she needed to talk to breathe. She told him how young she’d been when she married, and how alone, and she was careful to explain that it really wasn’t as terrible as it sounded, that Alan was not a bad person, that he was good to her in many ways, and certainly an excellent father.

“But not a husband to you.”

She shook her head. He twisted his lips to one side. For a moment, she thought he might spit.

“I had a cousin like that, back in Germany,” he said. “He was a good man. He was a good person.”

Cora frowned, waited.

“Beaten. We did not know who, but we knew why.” He rubbed his cheek. “Your husband is maybe right to be secret.”

She put her face in her hands. Alan. She couldn’t bear it if he were harmed. She was as stuck as she’d ever been. It hadn’t changed anything, her telling Joseph Schmidt.

“What you do now?” he asked.

She looked up. “What do you mean?”

“Your boys are grown. That was why you stayed, you said. They’re grown now. This is right?”

“Oh. I don’t want a divorce.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“I don’t.” She tried to explain. “I don’t want to be divorced.” She shook her head. She didn’t want to be divorced. Of course she didn’t.

“Why not?”

She almost laughed. “How would I explain it? What would I tell people? What would I tell my sons?”

“That you want to be happy.”

“That’s not enough.”

“No?” He leaned closer, just a little. She drew back, looking away. The Italian woman had gone out in front of the store to sweep.

“What a waste,” he said.

She looked up. They stared at each other unblinking, with just the sound of the fan and the distant scuffing of the Italian woman’s broom. She couldn’t move, or she didn’t. Alan had once looked at her with so much hope and kindness, but not like this, never like this. Unchecked joy rose up in her, only for an instant, but somehow he saw it, or just knew, for without another word, he reached up under the brim of her hat and pushed a loose curl behind her ear. She didn’t move, not even as his rough fingertips trailed behind her ear along her damp hairline.

She could hear her own breathing, her pulse just under his fingers. His watch ticked by her neck.

“What time is it?” she asked.

He lowered his hand and looked at his watch. “Twenty to three.”

“I have to go.” Her chair screeched against the floor as she pushed it out. She picked up her purse and her gloves. She would put the gloves on outside.

He caught her hand. “Don’t go,” he said. “Not yet.”

“I really have to,” she said, more firmly. “I have to go now. I forgot. I just forgot. I’ll already be late.” It was true. She couldn’t be late, and give Louise that kind of leverage.

“Cora.”

She shook her head. She needed to get away. But she was still flushed and smiling, even as she pulled her hand away. She felt light-headed. To be looked at like that, to be held on to like that, it was intoxicating—she was not herself. “I’ll come back,” she said, a promise as much to herself as to him.

But by the time she was back out in the street, walking fast to the subway in the bright sunlight, she had a clearer head.

She was hurrying
up Broadway when she saw Louise walking toward her. Even on the crowded sidewalk, as small as Louise was, she was easy to spot, her face glistening, the black hair tucked behind her ears. A man whistled at her, but she moved past him as if she heard nothing, staring straight ahead. She walked past Cora, too. When Cora said her name, she turned, looking both annoyed and surprised.

“Oh. Hi.” She didn’t smile. “You were late, so I started walking.”

“I’m sorry.” Cora swallowed and tried to steady her breath. “But you really should just wait for me. What if I hadn’t seen you?” Cora had actually run the last block, worried Louise would use her tardiness as an excuse to go off on some solo adventure. But of course the hours of dance class had left her both sweaty and exhausted. Louise wouldn’t want to go anywhere until she had a bath and a nap.

“What’s wrong?” She frowned at Cora. “You look strange. Your cheeks are red.”

“Oh.” Cora touched her wrist against her warm forehead. “Well, I knew I was late. I’ve been hurrying in the heat. Are we headed home then?” It was a little heady, being the one to evade and distract.

Louise resumed walking, though she glanced at Cora. “I hope you’re not coming down with something.”

For a moment, Cora was touched by her concern. But Louise went on to say that they would need to be careful to use different glassware, just to be certain. She couldn’t afford to get sick while she was here, not before they made the selection for the troupe. Cora reassured her that she was not ill, and that she was just tired, but after that, as they walked along, she was silent. Louise talked about Ted Shawn doing his Japanese Spear Dance, and how beautiful it was, how perfectly it showed off his skill and excellent form. Cora nodded, half listening, dazed by the heat. No, she thought. She wouldn’t go back to see Joseph Schmidt, not tomorrow, and not ever again. She thought of the hero of
The Age of Innocence
, who’d had a brief moment of forgetting himself, unbuttoning the Countess’s glove, but understood he could have no more. It was the way things had to be.

And just deciding this, it seemed, she got her reward. When she and Louise got back to their building, waiting in the mailbox was a pale yellow envelope for Cora, postmarked Haverhill, Mass.

FOURTEEN

On her way to Grand Central Terminal,
Cora stopped to buy a bouquet of yellow roses, which she hadn’t planned to do until the very moment she saw them, bright and lovely, at a corner stand. Still, she arrived at the terminal twenty minutes early, and she had an easy time finding the big clock above the information booth. So there was nothing to do but just stand there, shifting the roses from arm to arm and gazing up at the ceiling. The first time she passed through Grand Central, when she and Louise had just arrived in the city, she’d been so overwhelmed and rushed she hadn’t even noticed, for example, that the blue of the ceiling was the background for a map of the heavens, the constellations outlined in gold. But today she had time to marvel, taking in the ceiling as well as the glittering chandeliers and the terraces overlooking the main concourse, and the polished marble floor that went on and on, and how cool the building felt on such a warm day, even with so many bodies rushing about inside.

But mostly, she looked at the clock. Very soon now. Very soon.

As it got closer to noon, she paid more attention to the travelers approaching the booth from all directions. Mary O’Dell had written that she would be wearing a gray matron’s hat with white beading on the front. There had been no time for Cora to write back with any more questions, or to say what she would be wearing. So she scanned the crowds for a gray hat, turning every time she heard fast-approaching heels, only to watch each woman move past her or run to embrace someone else.

But there was no reason to worry. Not yet. It was still a few minutes before noon. That morning, she woke before dawn, jittery before even a sip of tea, and she’d had to work not to show impatience with Louise’s slow morning routine, the way she lounged in bed until the last possible moment. Cora had literally counted the minutes until she could deliver the girl to Denishawn. Now she was free and here, at the appointed time, exactly where she was supposed to be. She’d done her best to look nice. She was wearing her good silk dress, her pearls, and a pretty hat with a lavender ribbon.

She smoothed down her dress, though it didn’t need smoothing, and tried not to keep looking at the clock. There was, after all, plenty to distract. Clearly, Mary O’Dell was not the first person to suggest the clock as a meeting place. On every side of the information booth, it seemed, a happy reunion was taking place. An old man with a cane bent low to embrace a running child in pigtails. Two grown women held hands and jumped up and down like schoolgirls. A man in a white suit strode past Cora to a young woman in a sleeveless dress. When he reached the woman, they didn’t speak. The man leaned down to kiss the woman, dropping his cloth bag on the floor so he could put both hands on the small of her back, pulling her against him. The woman’s bare hands moved up to his shoulders. Her fingernails were painted red.

It was only when they both glanced at Cora that she realized she was staring.

She touched her hand to her neck and turned toward the booth, where a man in a turban was asking about a train to Chicago, his English halting and careful. He held the hand of a boy in short pants, who was gazing up at the ceiling with an open mouth, probably seeing it for the first time as well. He tugged on his father’s jacket and said something in another language, and when the father didn’t look down, the boy, perhaps sensing Cora watching him, looked at her and moved closer to his father. He continued to stare up at her, and Cora tried to imagine what he saw in her face, how strange she might seem to him if he was new to America and not just Grand Central. She gave him what she hoped was an encouraging smile, then turned away so as not to scare him.

She loved the city today, loved the beehive feel of where she was standing, loved the signs listing arrival times of trains from Albany, Cleveland, and Detroit, as well as smaller towns she’d never heard of. She loved the little boy standing by his turbaned father, and she loved the man with a pungent cigar and a briefcase sprinting across the concourse as if there would never be another train, and she loved the two old men with sideburns and black hats looking just like some of the Jews back in Wichita and having a good laugh about something. She even loved the man and the young woman who had been kissing, who were now walking out to Lexington Avenue, the woman’s body pressed close to the man’s, his hand moving down from her waist to the curve of her hip for everyone to see.

Cora lowered her nose to the roses, breathing in. She wouldn’t begrudge anyone a reunion today.

She would love her. She already knew it. She would love Mary O’Dell no matter what kind of person she turned out to be. Even if she was not her mother, even if she really turned out to be just a concerned friend, and the similar handwriting was a strange coincidence, Cora would still love her for being such a caring friend or such a good person in general that she would take a train all the way down from Massachusetts just to give a stranger some solace. She would love her for even having known her mother, who might be dead now, found too late. Whoever got off the train would tell her more than she’d ever known. She would be grateful for that.

She searched the floor for a woman with dark hair, curly like her own. That was when she noticed an older woman wearing a gray matron’s hat walk up to the booth. Cora would always remember it, the shock of seeing her mouth, her exact mouth, on the face of another person. This woman was stouter, and older, but she had the same full lips, the same slight overbite, and her square jaw was still firm. She stood on the toes of sensible gray heels to survey the crowd. Cora moved toward her without feeling her feet.

“Mary?” The name came out high-pitched, strange. “Mary O’Dell?”

The woman looked at Cora, but didn’t speak. Her hair was reddish-blond, and though the bulk of it was pinned up under the matron’s hat, Cora could see its texture was nothing like her own, and nothing like the hair of the woman in her memory, the woman with the shawl. In fact, nothing about this woman before her was like anything she’d remembered or imagined. This woman was dressed beautifully, in a gray linen dress that was wrinkled at the hips, the front panel embroidered with flowers. A short strand of pearls, small and dainty, circled her well-creased neck.

“Cora?” They were the same height. Her eyes were gray and larger than Cora’s.

Cora nodded. People were all around them, standing, waiting, walking, looking up at the clock. But really, it was as if they were alone in that enormous space, taking each other in.

“You’re my mother,” Cora said, with no accusation, but with no question in her voice. All she had to do was look at the other woman’s mouth and chin, even her nose. “You. You’re not a friend. You’re my mother.”

She stepped back from Cora, looking nervous.

Cora shook her head. No. She wasn’t angry. And then it was as if the child in her were bursting forth, too excited, too thrilled to be contained, and too impatient for misunderstanding. Cora opened her arms and moved forward, and then she was breathing in the woman’s unfamiliar smell and the roses still clutched in her own hand. The body against hers felt stiff and still. But she was not pushed away. She was embraced back, held tight, just as in her wildest hopes. But this was real. Without letting go, she looked up at the blue ceiling with its glinting zodiac, her vision blurred, her nose running.

They stepped back from each other. Cora realized she’d lost her hat. She stooped to pick it up. They both laughed, and then stopped, staring at each other.

“Well.” Mary O’Dell reached up to touch her glove to Cora’s cheek. “There’s no point in denying it, now is there? Not when you’re the spitting image.” She had an Irish brogue. It was pretty, Cora thought, gentle. The voice she should have known.