Twain's End (12 page)

She breathed out. “Then she won't need me anymore.”

“That's not true. We are going to need you more than ever. We'll be out and about—we'll need you to schedule things. Keep us on target. I'm going to take up my autobiography again. I'll need you to type it up.”

She looked up at him.

“Please,” he said harshly.

She turned away, letting herself sink into the vibrations of the car. At the lower edge of Union Square, great mounds of dirt, the tailings of the excavation for the subway system tunneling up the eastern edge of the park, surrounded the forlorn equestrian statue of George Washington. The statesman's steed bowed its bronze head under the oppressive skies as a cable car roared past, unable to regulate its speed on Deadman's Curve at Broadway and Fourteenth. Their motorcar had turned down Fourteenth and was jittering its way north along the western side of the park when Mr. Clemens, raking his hair, glanced to his right.

“Wait! Driver—stop!”

The car swerved to the curb. Before Isabel could make sense of what was happening, Mr. Clemens clapped on his hat, threw open the door, jumped out, then pulled her along.

“What are you doing?” She glanced back at her hat on the blue leather car seat. She was bareheaded and disheveled in the city with the husband of her supposed employer.

“Just come.” He tugged her toward rows of flowering plants in pots on display at the weekly flower market at the northern rim of the square.

“I can't.”

“Yes, you can.”

“It's going to rain.”

“I don't give a damn.”

He pulled her over to a clay pot from which fat blue flower heads drooped from their spindly parent. “How much?” he asked the boy tending the pots.

The boy was scratching his short-pants cuff with the side of his shoe, counting the coins Mr. Clemens had given him, when Mr. Clemens thrust the pot at Isabel. “Here. Hydrangeas. My favorite.”

“For your wife,” she said firmly.

“For you,” he said equally firmly.

“I can't accept this.”

“They're just hydrangeas. A man can give his secretary hydrangeas. What is wrong with that?”

She wanted to cry.

“Take it. Although you've taken all the fun out of it.” At that moment, the sky opened. Rain drummed against the sidewalk and pelted their heads and backs. They ran under the awning of a nearby milliner's shop, Isabel hugging her pot.

At the curb, rain bounced from the chauffeur's cap as he struggled to raise the cover over the car. When done, he splashed over with an umbrella, then shepherded them to the vehicle. Isabel slid inside, soaked to the skin. Locks of her hair were peeling from her bouffant like the skin from a banana.

Mr. Clemens took off his hat. He looked equally drowned, with tips of his hair plastered to his face. Only the top of his head was dry. “Take her home, Pat.”

“What about you, sir?”

“I'll take the train. Stop now.”

“We're not near the train, sir.”

“Damn it all, I said stop.”

As soon as the driver had braked, Mr. Clemens was out and waving away the car. He ducked under an iron marquee.

Isabel pivoted with a crunch of leather seat to look out the window as the car pulled away. Well-wishers were approaching Mr. Clemens in the driving rain. He looked up at her from the gathering crowd, then turning his back to her, launched into entertaining them.

• • •

Now, at the vanity in her bedroom, the tugging on Isabel's scalp had stopped. In the mirror, Isabel saw her mother balling a wad of hair. Once the rat was suitably shaped, Mrs. Lyon positioned it behind the wall of robustly back-combed tresses that she'd so tirelessly created.

“I'm going to quit my job,” Isabel said.

“What? Why? He's famous. You might meet a successful gentleman through him if Mr. Bangs doesn't work out.”

“I want to use my skills in the city.”

“Good heavens. Why would you want to do that?”

Isabel lost control of her emotions. “Mrs. Clemens has gotten better.” She stuffed her pain back into a box, but not quickly enough. Mrs. Lyon was watching her in the mirror.

Her mother's voice rose. “Have you talked with her?”

“No. Not yet.”

Mrs. Lyon vigorously smoothed her daughter's hair over the rat. “Then Mr. Bangs's attention is coming just at the right time. But I suppose the Clemenses will make a big play for you to stay. Mrs. Clemens will need you more than ever if she's becoming more active.”

“No, she won't. She's got Clara. And Mr. Clemens.”

“Mr. Clemens!” Mrs. Lyon scoffed. “The man cannot be bothered to lift a finger. Are you still doing all of his accounts? What's wrong with him that he cannot manage a single business affair? No wonder he went bankrupt. He's so proud of paying back his creditors—touring around the world to do so—when he shouldn't have lost it all in the first place.”

A knocking sounded at the cottage door.

Mrs. Lyon gasped. “Mr. Bangs! He's early. Oh dear, I haven't filled the sponge cake! How does one do these things without staff?”

The knocking came again.

“I'm coming!” called Mrs. Lyon. No devil pitchforking her hands could have made her more quickly spread the rest of Isabel's hair over the rat, twist it, and then rapidly fire pins into the base of the knot she'd created.

They could hear the door opening.

Mrs. Lyon looked with horror at Isabel in the mirror. “Mr. Bangs is coming in!”

A voice came for the parlor. “Miss Lyon?”

Mrs. Lyon gasped. “It's Mr. Clemens!”

Both women listened with held breath to the approaching footsteps. Mr. Clemens appeared in the bedroom doorway. “Yes, it is.”

Mrs. Lyon cleared her throat. “Mr. Clemens, of course you realize this isn't proper. Isabel will be out—”

Mr. Clemens clenched his hands at his sides, then walked quickly over to where Isabel sat. He stood over her until she looked up at him. “My wife wants to go to Italy. She'll get better there. I agreed to take her as soon as we can get passage.”

Isabel nodded. Tears stung her eyes.

“You're coming with us. She needs you. You've got to come.”

“I can't,” Isabel whispered.

Mr. Clemens turned to Mrs. Lyon, watching the pair with her fingers to her mouth. “You, too,” he said brutally. He turned back to Isabel. The flesh under his eyes twitched as if electrified. “Say you'll come. Tell me that you'll come. She needs you.” He knotted and unknotted his fists. “I need you.”

A salty lump prevented Isabel from speaking. She nodded.

June 1903

Riverdale-on-Hudson, New York

U
NFOLDING ARMS CROSSED OVER
the rigid ruffles of the pinafore that encased her trunk like a candy wrapper, Katy rapped on the telephone closet in which Isabel was placing a call.

“Hold the line, please,” Isabel told the “hello girl” at the switchboard office. She cupped the receiver to her chest, then wiped the perspiration from her brow with the back of her hand. The humidity had intensified since her trip into the city with Mr. Clemens earlier that week. Even with every window in the house open, the nook under the stairs was close; it smelled of mold and furniture wax. “Yes?”

“She wants you.”

Seven months' association had done little to smooth Katy's permanently raised hackles toward Isabel. If anything, their relationship had deteriorated, try as Isabel might to be kind. The best policy was to keep out of Katy's way, a feat not easily managed, as they served the same master in the same strained household.

“I'm placing a call for Mr. Clemens,” Isabel told her as politely as possible. “Please tell Miss Clara—”

“Not Miss Clara,” Katy snapped. “Mrs. Clemens.”

So this was it. She would finally meet Mrs. Clemens. Even after Clara's joyous reports that her mother was out of bed and walking around her room, and after Mr. Clemens's announcement that
Mrs. Clemens wished to go to Italy, Mrs. Clemens had not summoned Isabel, nor had Isabel expected to be called. Isabel had gotten used to the arrangement, to the point of almost believing that there was no real Mrs. Clemens. She had come to prefer it this way.

“I will place this call later, thank you,” Isabel said into the receiver. She hung it on its hook, feeling slightly nauseated.

Sweat blossomed under the arms of her shirtwaist as she followed Katy up the stairs. She had done nothing to cause offense to Mrs. Clemens, she reminded herself. She had said nothing to encourage Mr. Clemens's attentions, had done nothing that could be criticized. Even if she had certain feelings, she would never act upon them. To do so might part her from him forever.

Katy stopped at Mrs. Clemens's bedroom door. “If you break her heart, I'll kill you.”

A bubble of guilt burst beneath her breastbone. “Don't be absurd.”

“I'm warning you.” She opened the door.

The room, hot and darkened by heavy curtains, smelled of camphor, talcum, and roses. The shadowy walls, papered in a large, vaguely flowered print, seemed to respirate the too-sweet scent. It engulfed the great carved bed in the center of the room, which, as Isabel's eyes adjusted to the gloom, revealed itself to be a carnival of wooden cherubs frisking along the headboard and squatting upon the mahogany posts. A chill streaked up Isabel's spine when she realized that her employer was reposing below them. Mrs. Clemens's slight body barely raised the coverlet from the mattress. Was she asleep?

“Miss Lyon.”

Isabel flinched.

Mrs. Clemens's weak voice carried a patrician Northern accent, elite, like that of Isabel's own people. “Please shut the door and come in.”

Isabel did so as, with a scrape of linens, Mrs. Clemens struggled to sit. Her thin gray tresses trembled against her nightgown as she fought against her pillows. Isabel rushed to her.

“I am fine.” Her employer coughed wrenchingly into a handkerchief
and then continued in an imperious wheeze. “I must do things for myself. Youth—my husband—coddles me too much. How am I to walk among the olive trees in Italy if I don't build up my strength?”

Isabel stood back as Mr. Clemens's wife, breathing heavily, wound the glossy rosewood music box next to her bed. The tottering opening chimes of “Für Elise” tinkled into the hot, quiet room.

“How may I help you, ma'am?” In her life of service, Isabel had never called her female employers “ma'am.” Using their proper names had allowed her to keep at least a shred of pride.

Mrs. Clemens pointed with a thin finger. “Could you hand me my robe, please.”

Isabel fetched the black silk wrapper lying over the back of an oval chair. Mrs. Clemens allowed Isabel to hang it upon her bony shoulders, and then dragging her legs off the bed, tied it around herself. She drifted to the window to the tinny pinging of the music box.

“I understand that you are feeling better,” Isabel offered. “I am glad.”

Mrs. Clemens parted the drapes. Sunlight flooded in through the wavy glass windowpanes, bleaching her profile. The sockets of her eyes were large and her nose scant; her forehead was as high, rounded, and white as the bone beneath it. Yet from across the room, Isabel could see that something fierce shone within Mrs. Clemens's dissolving earthly shroud, as if the diminishing of her flesh were exposing the spirit beneath it.

The teetering notes pealed as Mrs. Clemens gazed out the window. Grasping the drapes for support, she did not bother to turn to address Isabel. “When we are in Italy, you must find your own lodgings. Make it close enough that you can attend to my husband each morning and far enough that there will be no going back and forth between your house and mine at night.” The music slowed as she revolved to face Isabel. “Youth is from the South, you see. His family had slaves. Tradition was that the master of the house had free access to the female servants. Youth has told me this fact himself.
I think he has never completely freed himself from that mind-set, although he denies it.” Mrs. Clemens smiled. “Have you ever been to Italy?'

Isabel tamped back her shock. “Yes. With the Danas.”

“I love the flowers there,” said Mrs. Clemens. “There are no hydrangeas, though. At least I don't remember seeing them, and Youth makes such a fuss over them. Doesn't he?”

The tinkling crept to a single metallic twang.

A heavier, painful gas seemed to have replaced the air in Isabel's lungs. She couldn't breathe.

“Wind the box up, dear. I didn't do a good job of it.”

Isabel stepped to the table. She cranked the brass handle on the polished box, guilt wedging against the back of her throat.

“It's all right, dear. He told me that he gave you the hydrangeas. He tells me everything.” She nodded in time when the music began. “That is why I have had to restrict his visits with me. He tells me so much more than I want to know. He always has, foolish boy. His complete candor is terrible for my health, although I suppose it's good for his. I seem to serve the function of sucking the poison from his wounds—I've never been good at spitting it out.”