The Spirit Room (50 page)

Izzie gritted her teeth. “No matter the truth about Mr. Weston, he is useless if he doesn’t know anything about where the girls are. I’m going after the girls.”

“
But how will you begin?”

“
I have no idea, but I must follow them to New York City.”

Thirty-Six

CLARA AND EUPHORA followed Mrs. Agnes Hogarth to the back of the house on Nineteenth Street. Clara tried not to stare at the woman’s left hand as they walked. It had only two fingers and they were both twitching. When they had passed through the kitchen, Mrs. Hogarth came to a closed white door.

“
We are not quite ready for you. I didn’t expect you so soon, but we can get things out of here in a few days. Clara, I am not entirely sure the boardinghouse has room for you yet, but the woman who runs it knows us, expects you at some point, and is very kind.”

Reaching with her good hand, Mrs. Hogarth opened the door. The room was a pantry with a very small high window that was covered with a red and blue plaid curtain.

Clara stepped back. “Euphora’s to sleep in your pantry?”

“
Well, it won’t be a pantry when we fix it up for her. It’ll be a small bedchamber. My husband is going to take out the shelves on this side.” She swept her two twitching fingers toward the wall.

“
Will I have a bed, then?” Euphora looked up at Mrs. Hogarth.

“
Oh, yes, dear. I know it doesn’t look like much, but when we take out all the jars and crocks and sacks, you can put your things on these shelves, and we’ll build you a little bed right here. And that window up there opens for ventilation. There are twelve families in this house. It’s the best we can do.”

Euphora’s freckled upper lip quivered. Clara thought she was about to cry.

“
You’ll like being close to the kitchen, Euphora.” Clara touched her sister’s shoulder.

“
I won’t like being away from you, though, Clara. I’ll be all alone.”

“
No you won’t, you’ll have Mr. and Mrs. Hogarth and I’ll visit you all the time. And it’s not permanent. I told you that.”

Then Euphora’s face broke and she did cry. Clara let her sister sob against her shoulder.

“
My cousin wrote me you needed a safe place for a while. You’ll be safe here. She also told me you are quite the cook, Euphora. Maybe you can show me some of the things you’ve learned from Emma. I’d like to see what she taught you.”

Calming a bit, Euphora stood up straight and wiped her eyes firmly with her palm.

Suddenly, dogs barked loudly outside. Clara jerked her shoulders up. Were they attacking someone? But in a quick moment she could tell they were just making a ruckus. She glanced at Mrs. Hogarth and Euphora, but they didn’t seem to notice anything at all.

“
Tonight you can sleep on a stack of quilts on the floor in our bedchamber. You won’t be so lonely then.” Mrs. Hogarth smiled for the first time since they had arrived.

She didn’t have the grandmotherly warmth that Mrs. Purcell had, but she did seem kind enough.

A cold trickle seeped into Clara’s stomach. In a few minutes, she would be walking out the front door, valise in hand, on her way to the lodging house Mrs. Hogarth had found for her on Thirteenth Street. Even though Mrs. Hogarth’s home appeared to be a good enough place to leave Euphora, going down the street a mere six blocks felt far worse than leaving Geneva forever.

“
Skunk!”

Shivers ran across the back of Clara’s hands.

“
Stink-pot!”

“
Rat!”

“
Son of a Bitch!”

Two boys, trying to outdo each other, hollered outside, setting the dogs barking mad again.

“
There are tenements behind us. Those boys are always at it.” She looked sternly at Euphora. “You’ll get used to it, but I don’t want to hear any of those words in this house.”

Euphora nodded.

“
Well.” Mrs. Hogarth glanced around the kitchen, then back into the half-empty pantry. “I suppose you two are weary to your bones after that journey. If Euphora is going to sleep in a bundle of quilts on the floor tonight, you could just as well sleep there too, Clara. It’s late. You can go to the lodging house in the morning.”

The cold trickle in Clara’s stomach eased, but she knew she’d feel it again in the morning.

<><><>

THE NEXT DAY, as Clara steered herself along the busy, snow-crusted sidewalk down Eighth Avenue, she kept seeing Euphora’s face afraid and streaming with tears. When she had said goodbye to Euphora, both their hearts broke. Euphora cried with a terrible, scared expression. Clara shook and cried watching her. Standing in the doorway behind Euphora, Mrs. Hogarth, after hesitating, put an arm awkwardly around Euphora’s shoulders. With the lodging house address crumpled in her hand, Clara tore herself away and walked on. It had to be done. All of it had to be done. Leaving Euphora there was better than letting Papa push her sister at men. Head down, Clara let the brim of her bonnet hide her sadness from more strangers than she had ever seen in her life.

At the lodging house, Mrs. Hogarth’s acquaintance greeted Clara cordially even though she was a little surprised to see her. She directed Clara to a room on the fourth floor that she would share with a girl named Hannah. Clara headed upstairs with her valise and when she had reached stair number seventy-five, nearly at the top, she broke a sweat and sat on a stair for a moment to wipe her brow and rest. This wasn’t like her. It was no time to be ill. She heard a soft whimpering ahead. That was fitting. Crying where she’d been, crying on the way, and crying when she arrived.

She dragged herself up the final thirteen stairs and shuffled toward her room, number ten. The door was ajar. She peeked in. A weeping girl with straw blond hair, sunny and pale like Mrs. Beattie’s, was lying face down on a bed.

Clara gently shouldered the door open and entered the narrow room.

“
Hello,” she said softly. “I’m Clara Benton, the new lodger.”

The girl pushed herself up and sat on the side of the bed. Hair flowing down to her waist, she yanked the corner of her wool blanket toward her and wiped her reddened eyes. She looked to be fifteen or sixteen.

“
Hannah Swenson. I heard you were coming in two or three weeks.”

“
I had to come sooner.” Clara dropped her valise on the floor and sat on the other bed three feet away.

“
Where are you from?” Hannah asked.

“
Geneva.”

“
Switzerland?” Hannah’s blue eyes grew large.

“
No, up north, on Seneca Lake.”

They both were silent a moment watching each other. Hannah had a wide, round forehead, a narrow pointed chin, long nose, and every tooth was as crooked as a tree branch. No one would call her handsome, but she had a sweet look about her.

“
I’ve just been crying myself,” Clara said. “I left my little sister with a stranger this morning. She’s going to be a domestic.”

“
Are your parents dead? My parents are dead.”

Clara glanced up at the sloped ceiling. It looked like a big wall tumbling over. “Yes. They’re dead. My mother died over a year ago. My father passed away last month.”

Sympathy filling her eyes, Hannah nodded. “I lost my job at the shirt factory a month ago and haven’t been able to find another. That’s why I was …” She patted her pillow. “I’ll have to leave here if I don’t find something by next week.”

“
Where will you go?”

Hannah shrugged.

Clara stood, feverish, limbs aching, and began to unbutton her dress bodice. She wanted to sleep.

“
What do you do when you want to cheer yourself up?” Clara asked.

“
I walk along Broadway and look at the people parading about. I have one nice dress. It was my mother’s. I wear it whenever I go.”

Mrs. Beattie had described Broadway to Clara and she had stared at the lithograph in the Blue Room for many an hour. It was the one place in New York City she knew she wanted to see.

“
Will you take me this afternoon after I’ve slept a little? I’ve never been so tuckered in my life.”

Hannah smiled and stood. “You’ve never been to Broadway?”

“
I just got here last night.”

As Clara began to climb out of her dress, Hannah stepped toward her and helped. As soon as it was off, Hannah took it to the armoire and hung it up. Then Clara got out of the whalebone hoop and set it in the corner of the room. While Hannah watched her, Clara lay down on her new bed, sank into the straw, and wrapped herself in the blanket. Hannah started talking about the lodging house and lodgers, but within a few minutes Clara closed her eyes and was asleep.

<><><>

THE WHITE WALL CAREENED TOWARD HER. She’d be crushed, buried. Heart exploding, Clara yelled, “Stop!” The wall stilled. She slowly caught her breath. It was just the dormer ceiling. She was in room ten…the lodging house. She inspected her surroundings. Hannah was gone. It was dusk. She rose and found a chamber pot under the bed, used it, then rolled herself like a sausage in her blanket and went back to sleep.

<><><>

THE NEXT MORNING SHE WOKE to Hannah’s voice. “Come on then. There’s breakfast with the price of the room, but you can’t miss it. There’s no supper. It might be your only meal today if you’re like me.”

“
I’ll be along.” Clara bit the inside of her mouth and thought of Euphora waking up on the Hogarth’s bedchamber floor. Euphora would be lonely in that house without anyone but the old couple. She’d have to visit her little sister often. She wouldn’t be like Izzie. She wouldn’t promise to visit, then never do it.

“
Don’t dawdle, Clara. The other girls eat everything set out if you don’t get there in time.”

<><><>

A LITTLE LATER, in the dining room at the breakfast of oatmeal and tea, there were three others besides Hannah who were somewhere under sixteen or seventeen. Then there were four older women, one with two young daughters. They were all friendly enough, asking Clara’s name and whether she had employment and offering ideas, but they were quite intent on eating as Hannah had warned her. The older four seemed worn. One had a half-closed eye, one was gaunt and yellow, the third sullen, and the fourth slumped over. The younger ones had lively spirits, though, and teased each other as they shoveled down their oatmeal. Clara hadn’t eaten since breakfast at Mrs. Hogarth’s the day before and she ate every last bit that the others left. One by one the lodger women and girls rose and set off to go to their factory jobs or back to their rooms to do piece work. No one lingered.

Hannah waited for Clara to finish then took her back upstairs. “We’ll dress up, then walk down Broadway. I’ll show you your new hometown. There’s all the days after this one to look for employment and besides that, the cold has broke and the sun is shining bright.”

After they had taken off their everyday dresses, they helped each other with their whalebone hoops and petticoats. Clara dug into her valise and laid out her dresses on the bed—the white séance dress and Mamma’s gray everyday dress. She put them next to the one she had worn to breakfast, her dark blue checker calico. She looked at them and remembered the indigo dot from Sam. It was back in Geneva, tossed out when she wanted room for Mamma’s Bible.

“
And there’s the green-and-white stripe with lace collar in the armoire. Which one shall I wear?” Clara asked.

Hannah’s eyes were huge. “You have four dresses?”

Clara glanced at the array. They weren’t fancy. They weren’t elegant. They weren’t anything. They were simple dresses. Two of them reminded her of things she wanted to forget, Papa’s séance hoax and Mamma dying. None of them was even what one would call a winter dress.

Hannah went to the armoire and brought the green-and-white stripe dress out for Clara, then she brought out a shimmering silver silk taffeta with wide, flowing sleeves and three flounces on the skirt and held it over her front. Sewn at the bosom, a single blue silk flower the size of an apple covered a few of the front buttons.

Clara reached out and caressed one of the soft flounces. “None of mine are this lovely.”

“
I take good care of it. It’ll have to find me a husband.”

“
You’re looking now?”

“
Every day since my parents died. That’s why I go over to Broadway. There’s thousands of men up and down the street. You’ll see.”

<><><>

WHEN THEY STEPPED OUTSIDE, Clara lifted her face and felt the winter sun. The ice on the stone walks was turning to glistening slush. As they walked along Thirteenth Street toward Broadway, cold water seeped into her boots making her feet clammy, but she didn’t mind. Everyone was bustling, racing along the sidewalks, trying to get somewhere lickety-click. But she and Hannah had the entire day to go anywhere and nowhere.