Twain's End (27 page)

“Watch it!” the woman exclaimed.

Isabel apologized.

“You are hopeless.” Clara laughed. She fished a coin from her coat pocket and dropped it in the red pot.

The caped woman dipped her bonnet in gratitude. “Merry Christmas.”

Her charity dispensed, Clara led the way over to Fifth Avenue, much quieter and brighter out of the shadow of the cast-iron El tracks. “I've been thinking about Christmas,” she said over her shoulder. “You should take it off, go home to your people.”

They stopped at a cross street to let pass a double-decker electric omnibus chock-full of gaping tourists. Isabel's people consisted of her mother, who lived in a room around the corner, and her sister and brother-in-law, who were busy raising their family in Farmington.

“Thank you very much,” said Isabel from behind her wall of boxes. “But I hate to leave Jean. Her seizures are getting so frequent. Is there someone who can keep an eye on her?”

“She's my sister. I don't need you to tell me what to do with her.”

The omnibus chugged by as Isabel grasped for words. First hospitalized for a year and now wrapped up in making an American singing debut, Clara had not had to deal with her sister's care. She was unaware of the signs of an oncoming seizure and had no idea what to do even if she could recognize them. She—and everyone else—relied on Isabel to take care of Jean, and as much as Isabel loved Jean, even she was terrified of the seizures. Her fear was not that Jean would hurt her, as Katy claimed she had done, but that Jean would hurt herself.
Only Katy had witnessed Jean's seizure-induced violence, painting a horrifying scene in which she'd feared for her life. Jean never attacked anyone else.

“Isabel, is that you?”

Isabel juggled her load to find the speaker. Next to her at the curb, beneath a wide-brimmed mink hat, beamed Betsy Trompert, whose father had been in business with hers.

“It is you!” Betsy tried to hug her but, thwarted by the boxes, could only laugh. She brought forward two young girls buttoned up in rabbit fur and ribbons. “These are my granddaughters, Ellis and Elisabeth. Girls, I'd like you to meet one of my oldest friends, Isabel Lyon—or is that your name still?” She slid forth the sly look she'd perfected as a girl playing with Isabel on the bluffs of Spring Side. “I hear that you are to marry Mark Twain.”

Before she could speak, Clara leaned in and produced a hand from her muff. “I'm Clara Clemens, Isabel's employer. Don't make me kill you by calling me Mark Twain's daughter.” She laughed as if she were clever.

Betsy drew back. In the awkward pause, she saw the boxes in Isabel's arms. “Simpson Crawford,” she said. “Lucky you! They have the nicest things.” She took in Isabel's drab clothes. Confusion bridged into pity in a single blink.

The omnibus cleared. Betsy grabbed her granddaughters' hands. “Must be off—I'm taking the girls to see the windows at Siegel-Cooper. Good to see you, Isabel.” They hurried across the street and down the sidewalk.

Clara sighed, then shook her pretty head. “Too bad Siegel-Cooper is the other way.” Her expression cooled as she and Isabel set off. “You really must stop this hideous talk about Papa and you.”

Kindness was not working, nor was diplomacy. “What if we were to marry, Clara? Why would that be so hideous?”

Clara flashed her a look. “Don't make me laugh.”

• • •

That evening after dinner, Isabel sat before the towering carved mahogany wall of the Orchestrelle, pumping out Schubert on the player organ as her stomach knotted. How perfectly the tormented strains of the andantino suited the absurdity of the scene. Just across the room, Clara was arguing with her father about Isabel, every word of her protests perfectly audible, as if Isabel were a stray whose owners were arguing over whether to keep it.

“They're saying that you're going to marry her, Papa. That snide smirk on people's faces when I deny it, as if they are sure that I am lying—I cannot bear it.”

“I never took you,” he said, “as such a tender little shoot.”

“I don't know what's worse—you actually marrying your
secretary,
or you keeping her under our roof and
not
marrying her. It's scandalous, Papa. Mamma would never allow it.”

“Probably not, but there's a new sheriff in town.”

Isabel kept pumping.

“It's not working out to keep her, Papa. She thinks she's the boss! When I fired Marjorie last week, Miss Lyon had the nerve to fight with me to keep her, as if she is in charge of employing our cook!”

“She was in charge of just about everything while you were gone, Clärchen. I needed her to be. She did a good job.”

“Well, it can't go on. Having her here humiliates me. I'm the one who is running this house now, and you need to tell her so.”

There was a silence. Isabel could feel them looking at her.

Mr. Clemens drew a breath. “I think you just did.”

Isabel slid her foot off the pedal. With all the dignity she could muster, she rose and marched stiffly out of the room. She was packing her trunk when a knock came on the door. Mr. Clemens opened it before she gave her permission.

“Can I come in?”

“Clara wouldn't like it.”

“I'm not worried about Clara.” He ambled over to the bed. “What are all these?”

Folding a shirtwaist, she glanced over at the spread, where the
fruits of hours of her labor had been lined up so that she could count them. “Pincushions.”

“You collect them?”

“I make them, and my mother sells them to her friends.”

“You need the money?”

Her skin prickled: he truly was not aware of her poverty. The man had no idea she couldn't afford a new dress, or hat, or shoes. He could not lift his head from the loving bosom of the world long enough to notice that everyone in his own household was struggling in one way or another.

He picked up a pincushion shaped like a swan. “I was reading up on my hero, Gibbon, while you were gadding around with Clara today. You know how I love his histories.”

Gadding around.
She laid the shirtwaist in the trunk.

“It seems that as a youth, our Edward Gibbon fell in love with a girl from Geneva. He was set on marrying the girl, but his father said no, the girl was of no consequence. Gibbon, it is said, never got over it. But I guess the girl did pretty good. She married the French comptroller-general, Necker, and produced Madame de Staël, the most revered female writer in France.”

She plucked a shirtwaist from the wardrobe. “I'm not sure what you are saying with this story.”

He put back the pincushion. “Isabel, please stay. I need you more than you need me.”

She faced him straight on. “She made me stand with the servants at your birthday dinner last month. When I got to Delmonico's, they barred my way. Do you know how foolish I felt, all dressed up in my ancient debut gown, being turned away by the maître d' when I tried to enter the dining room?”

“You didn't miss anything. Colonel Harvey padded the place with all his Harper and Brothers friends. It was hardly a party for me—more like a benefit for his books. But you're right, you should have gotten in.”

“She purposefully humiliated me out in public today. I won't go
into the details, but let's just say that she's given my old friend plenty to gossip about.”

He picked up another pincushion, a black silk cat. “Clara's not a happy soul. I don't know why she finds so much pleasure in hurting others. She seems to think that fate is out to destroy her, and it's true that she's accident-prone. Most of her childhood, she nearly died almost every day. When she was a three-year-old, the nurse caught her teetering out on the edge of the balcony of our fifth-story hotel room—that's our Clara. But she takes bad luck stalking her too personally. Bad luck is on everyone's tail; it hasn't singled her out for special treatment.”

She roughly folded the shirtwaist. “Clara is only part of the issue.”

He put the pincushion on top of the folded waist. She looked up.

“Lioness, don't go.”

“Give me a reason why I should not.”

She saw the fear in his eyes. He looked away. “Damn it, you know me better than any living person.”

“Sometimes I think I don't know you at all.”

“Yes, you do. You know me, and yet you still like me.”

“ ‘Like!' ”

“That might be more important than loving me.”

“Oh, Sam.”

He gathered her to him. His neck was warm against her face. “God, I need you.”

“If I stay, I need help with Jean. She's getting worse—we have to face the situation. I'm frightened for her.”

“Shut up, Lioness,” he said into her hair. “Just say you'll stay. For Jean. For me.” He kissed her hair. “Especially for me.”

She closed her eyes. “Will you take me to Bermuda?”

He pulled back from her. “Is that what you want?”

She wanted his commitment to her. She had given him everything. But she was not going to beg.

She nodded. “Yes.”

He kissed her hair. “Book the trip.”

The New York Evening Mail,
April 1906

EDITORIAL

Things have reached the point where, if Mark Twain is not at a public meeting or banquet, he is expected to console it with one of his inimitable letters of advice and encouragement. If he deigns to make a public appearance there is a throng at the doors which overtaxes the energy and ability of the police. We must be glad that we have a public commentator like Mark Twain always at hand and his wit and wisdom continually on tap. His sound, breezy Mississippi Valley Americanism is a corrective to all sorts of snobbery.

September 1906

Norfolk Gymnasium, Norfolk, Connecticut

C
LARA HAD SAILED THROUGH
her concert program. Now here she was, in the finale, singing the Bach/Gounod “Ave Maria,” with a grin threatening to shanghai her face. People would say it was nerves, it being her American debut, but it wasn't; it was joy. Pure unmitigated joy. Finally,
finally,
she was up onstage, doing what she was born to do. Hadn't Papa said that she had crawled out of the womb ready to give a show? Even as she quaked now from her vibrato, she almost laughed. She could picture her infant self lighting up slick uterine walls with a candlestick as she squirmed her way out into the world.

Mr. Luckstone frowned over his shoulder as he massaged the piano keys. Oh dear, he could see she was cracking. Focus!

She closed her eyes, concentrating on the force of the music surging through her body and out of her mouth. When she opened them, she saw the tarpaulin-covered shapes of the gymnastic apparatus hulking like tan dinosaurs against the sides of the wood-paneled walls. Someday she would laugh about debuting in a gym. How quaint her beginnings would seem when she was playing Carnegie Hall, the Wigmore, and the Wiener Musikverein in Vienna. From the smallest mustard seed comes a mighty tree! But even here tonight, among the dumbbells and pommel horses, her audience was stellar: reporters from
The New York Times,
influential people from
New York: the Gilders, the Harveys, the Rogers . . . Charles Edwin “Will” Wark.

She touched her throat for drama, just as she had rehearsed at this point in the piece, and cast her gaze upon Will Wark, down in the front row.

Just look at him with his crinkly blue eyes, straight sandy hair, and thick muscular body of a
man.
His chest nearly popped out of his shirt, yet when he smiled, he was a just boy—a Tom Sawyer!—and he was smiling at her now. He'd come all this way to Norfolk, when his concert schedule was full accompanying other singers. She hadn't spent much time with him in New York, always within musical circles, never alone, but there was a spark between them; it wasn't her imagination. Yet she had to get over it. Will Wark was married.

She filled her tremolo with despair. Few knew of Will's marriage—he seemed to keep it secret, for some reason—but Clara had made inquiries. Why were the good ones always taken?

A flash of white caught her eye. Two rows back, Papa's head nodded forward in a nap. She felt her vocal cords constrict.

She paused as the strains from Mr. Luckstone's piano expanded throughout the gym. She had begged Papa not to come. He had said he wouldn't address the crowd, that he'd be quiet, but Papa could no sooner be quiet than could a monkey not hoot. He'd get up and steal the spotlight, and Clara would be forgotten. Her importance in the room would shrink to the level of a footstool.

She jumped back into the music.

Oh, Papa looked innocent, with his chin propped upon his snowy shirtfront. But as sure as she was singing now, he would spring to life the minute the music stopped and, refreshed by the goodwill that she had created, would commandeer the crowd.