Wedded to War (20 page)

He shook his head in disgust and felt his temperature rising. He had given her all the trappings of a lady, but it was no use. She was a cheap imitation of the real thing. He hated her for it. If anyone found out that she was his mother and connected him with her, he would be labeled part of “the shoddy aristocracy,” a class of people with just enough money to pretend to be rich. Some clever little newsman for the
Herald
had brought the phenomenon to the forefront of society’s attention after the Brooks Brothers scandal over the uniforms made of shoddy hit the papers. The columnist just couldn’t resist coining the term, and it had taken off. Now everyone was talking about it, how Fifth Avenue was filling up with Mr. and Mrs. Shoddy, with pianos that were all case and no music, gold that was all glitter and no carat, art that was all frame and no original masterpiece. Now every time someone mentioned the word “shoddy,” whether in connection to Brooks Brothers or people, he suspected they were trying to make a point about him.
Enough!

Fanny snorted loudly then, waking herself up. Her body jerked, the knitting needles clattering to the ground, and she saw him standing over her.

“Pottsy!” she said, and inside he seethed. “Come give us a kiss.” Flabby arms reached up to embrace him.

“Afraid I don’t feel up to it today, Mother,” he said icily.

She retracted her arms to her sides. “Foul weather brewing?”

“I should say so, yes, as a matter of fact.”

“Should you really? Oh my! As a matter
of fact
even? Heavens no! Whatever could the trouble be?” She was mocking him now, openly, brazenly, the way she had mocked his father until she had driven him away. He clenched his teeth until his jaw ached.

“Did you really expect father to come back?” His voice was low, steady, strangely calm. He slipped his hand into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around his watch.

Her watery eyes narrowed under droopy lids. “What kind of a question is that?”

“When he left for the gold rush. Did you know he was leaving us then?”

“Of course! He left to find gold. For a better life for us.”

“Silly me—yes. He left to find gold, that much I’ll wager is correct. But for a better life for us? Are you sure?”

Fanny gawked. “I can’t understand you.”

“My bet—and I’m very good at betting—is that he went off for a better life for himself. A life that did not include us, and one that was indeed, decidedly better.”

“Why in tarnation would you figger that? What’s gotten into you, boy?”

Phineas cossed his arms over his waistcoat. “It was you. Gold might have been the reason he left, but you were the reason he stayed away. Your constant bickering, pestering, heckling. You never respected him, did you?”

“Respect? I loved him. Didn’t need to respect him, too.”

“Ridiculous woman! You can’t love a man
without
respecting him. But if you didn’t respect him—and we know you didn’t—all he felt was derision from you.”

“De-what?”

“Oh yes. I forgot. Let me make it simple for you and your childlike vocabulary. You made him feel unloved and stupid and worthless. Do you understand? No man can live like that forever. It was only a matter of time before he did something.”

“You can’t blame me for him abandoning us!”

“No, it wasn’t all your fault. He could have chosen to stay and do a little housekeeping in his family. He should have put you under his thumb and never let up.”

“How dare you speak to your mother that way!”

He whipped around to face her. “How dare you pretend for
years
that you were the victim of a circumstance out of your control! You preyed on my sense of responsibility toward you, the same way you preyed on father’s weakness.”

“You give me too much credit. I have no control over you.”

“I didn’t have to provide for you the way I did.”

“Oh yes you did. For your own sake, though, not mine. And that’s why you’ll never stop, either.” She tapped her temple. “I’m not so dumb as you think I am, boy. You been trying to get away from your roots ever since you been waist-high. Couldn’t have a poor momma, then, could you?” Another tap at her temple to prove her point. “You always do only exactly what you want to do. You live for yourself alone.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but she held up a hand to stop him. “Gah! No use denying it, boy. You and I are cut from the same cloth, and it sure as heck ain’t silk.” She smiled then, knowingly, with the devil’s gleam in her eyes. “Shoddy.”

“What did you say?” All the frustration and anger and disappointment boiled into a foaming rage.

Fanny threw back her head and cackled with diabolical glee. “Oh, don’t think I don’t know your little part in that sleazy business with
the uniforms. I’ve got eyes, haven’t I? Ears too.”

Phineas crossed the room in two long strides and hovered over her like a thundercloud charged with electricity. “Talk.”

“I don’t know how you managed to make a little mint from it without your name getting dragged through the mud now with everyone else’s. I don’t know what you did to keep them from coming back for you and pulling you down with ’em. But you made off with a sum, didn’t you? And no one suspects a thing.” She shook her head in reluctant admiration.

“I should throw you out on the doorstep right now—”

“Doubt it! You do and I’ll blab to the mayor and all your precious law professor colleagues about the dirty way you padded your income. Now understand, I don’t mind so much, but I think they might. Something about a law professor not doing something that’s strickly, you know, legal. Could be I’d have a mind to tell ’em all about the real Potter Hatch, and I’m just not sure they’d like to know you weren’t completely honest about that rich and fancy blood you pretend like you’ve got runnin’ in your veins.”

Phineas ran a hand over his goatee and stared at his mother’s smirking face. Technically, what he had done wasn’t illegal. As a longtime patron of Brooks Brothers, he had simply helped them arrange a lucrative business deal—considered beneficial to both parties at the time—and accepted a “commission” on the contract. It was all off the books, of course. He knew how to be careful. But if anyone found out about his role in the matter, the investigation alone would ruin his reputation.

And my own mother is blackmailing me.
Dark spots of rage dotted his vision.

“See what I mean? You and me, Pottsy, we’re both the same. Shoddy. Only I don’t mind so much. Facts is facts. But you—it’s eatin’ you alive.”

“Cup of tea?” Ruby rounded the corner with her silver tray.

“Starving! Pottsy, join me for tea, won’t you?”

“I regret to decline,” he said through clenched teeth and stormed out the front door.

Tiny beads of sweat formed on the back of Ruby’s neck under her straw bonnet as she scanned Broadway up and down for any sign of more returning regiments.
Would I even recognize him? Would he recognize me?

Up until last week, finding Matthew had been the recurrent thought nagging at her like a young puppy nips its owner’s heels. But when news of the battle at Bull Run reached her, an ache had filled her chest until she was sure it had completely replaced her heart. She had no idea if he was dead or alive. More troops had come home yesterday, in defeat, their three-months’ tour of duty complete, but as far as she could tell Matthew was not among them.
Where is he? Does he lie bleeding under the sun somewhere?
Perhaps he was on his way home to her even now. If he returned to her without a limb, it would mean any construction or labor job would never be his again. She hated that she even thought about that when his body could be already heaped up and forgotten in a dead-house somewhere.

Ruby wandered in and among the noisy throng listlessly until she came to an abrupt stop on some stranger’s heels. He wheeled around to face her. A chill swept over her body.

“Aha, good day to you, Ruby.” Her mistress’s son doffed his cap and bowed to her. “Just the little lady I wanted to see. Let’s take a walk, shall we?” He offered his arm, and she hesitantly placed a hand on it, wary of doing anything that might jeopardize her current employment.

Phineas clapped a large hand over her small one and held it firmly beneath his palm. She walked alongside him, silently, as he steered her through the teeming mass of people. Soon they turned a corner into a side street, and the din of the swarming shoppers on Broadway gradually fell away.

“Better, yes? Now we can actually hear each other,” he said, still
walking. “Let’s just have a little chat now, shall we?” He grinned down at her. “You are looking quite well Ruby, much better than when you first started working for my mother.”

“I s’pose it’s so, sir.”

“You’re getting enough to eat? Sleeping well?”

“Oh aye, sir, perfectly well.”

“Good. You don’t look nearly so gaunt as you once did. Skin looking healthier, back a little straighter. And this is a new dress, isn’t it? Charming. The green really brings out the color of your eyes.”

Ruby nodded. It wasn’t fancy like most of the other ladies on Broadway, but it was the nicest calico dress she’d ever owned, no holes anywhere. When she had seen it in the pawnshop, the tiny pink roses on a light green background seemed to nod to her on their dainty stems. She couldn’t help but wonder, when she had bought it, if the previous owner of the dress would be coming back for it later, hoping to buy it back once she’d received her proper pay. But for Ruby, the dress had been a promise, fresh as spring, of a brighter tomorrow. One in which rags were replaced by black dresses and stiff white aprons during the week, and pretty, clean dresses on the weekends. No more hunger. No more being too cold or too hot. For Ruby, the dress was a symbol of hope.

“Lovely. Listen, I don’t know how much you heard last night when Mother and I were having our—discussion. But it was a private affair, and I can’t have you telling anyone else about it.”

He tightened his grip on her hand. Still they walked, farther away from Broadway, away from the noise, away from the people. Did he know where they were going?

“Fine, sir, I didn’t hear a thing anyway, I didn’t.” They had crossed Lafayette Street, and were still walking toward Centre Street. Her eyes widened and her pulse quickened. Soon they would be on the edge of Five Points.

“See that’s the thing. I’m not sure you’re telling the truth.”

“Please sir, I’d rather not go any farther if it’s all the same to you.”

“You told me once that you were a needlewoman, and then I found you serving tea in my mother’s house. You told me you weren’t a prostitute, and yet here you are, on your Sunday afternoon off, walking the streets along with the rest of them. You do see my dilemma now, don’t you, Ruby? I’m afraid I just can’t trust you.”

“Please sir, I’m a clean and decent woman, sure.”

He steered her into a dark doorway then, and propelled her up a narrow staircase until he unlocked a room and shoved her inside. “There now. Now we can have some more privacy.”

Only a bed and chair shared the small space. From beyond the thin walls she could hear the unmistakable sounds of people coupling in other rooms, as if they were in their own homes in the middle of the night and not in a public house a few blocks from New York’s busiest street, while the light of day still shone. On a Sunday.

“Where—?”

“My own little room in this fine House of Assignation,” he explained. “Oh well, it’s not very fine after all, but who can tell in the dark?”

Her skin crawled. She rubbed her hand where he had been gripping it and stepped away from him.

“The problem is, you’ve become a liability to me, Ruby. What does any good businessman do to protect against liabilities?”

She shook her head, her mouth suddenly gone dry.

“He takes out insurance, of course. That’s all I’m going to do, Ruby.” He tossed his hat onto the bed and stepped toward her trembling body. Twirled the ribbon of her bonnet around his finger. “I just need a little insurance.”

He yanked on the ribbon, untying it in a single jerk, pushed the bonnet off her hair and let it fall with a clap to the floor behind her.

She looked sideways at the door.

“Locked. Afraid you’re stuck with me for now, Ruby. But don’t worry, they all tell me I’m really quite good.” His breath smelled slightly of whiskey, but this man was not intoxicated. He was calm, calculating.
A lock of his jet-black hair curled onto his forehead as he leaned in.

His hands groped her hair, pulling the pins out until it tumbled loose around her shoulders. Lifting a handful to his nose, he smelled it. “Mmmmm. I’m glad you’ve been using the water closet since coming to my mother’s house. This would be far less pleasant if you still smelled like a dirty immigrant living with the pigs.”

Trapped like an animal in a cage with its predator, her chest heaved with shallow panting.

“Trouble breathing?” he said with a smile. “I can fix that too.”

As he reached for the buttons at her collar, she struggled to knock his hand away, but he caught her wrist and twisted her arm back until needles of pain shot up to her shoulder.