“It does.”
She was surprised by the conviction in his voice. He was looking at her so intently. She brushed her hand across her face, wondering if something was there. But no. And really, that wasn’t the kind of look he was giving her. She didn’t know what to make of it.
“I appreciate you helping me like this,” she said. “I wish I could pay you. I’m sorry I didn’t say that from the start. I’m not myself right now.”
“Of course not.” Finally, he looked away. “And I’m honored to represent you. It seems to me you’re a very decent young woman who has had a difficult time. And borne it well, I should add. You don’t seem bitter in any way.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. Even with Mrs. Lindquist’s snoring, she could hear the ticking of his pocket watch. Hadn’t he said he would only stay for an hour? She didn’t know the time, but surely they’d been talking for longer than that.
“Would you like more tea?”
He shook his head, and still, he made no move to leave. She didn’t know why not, what should happen now. She’d already told him she couldn’t pay.
“It must be very exciting to live in a city.” It was all that she could think of.
“It is.” He smiled warmly. “So much to do. We have a soda shop now, with mirrored walls, and electric fans in the ceiling.” He gestured up to the Lindquists’ bare ceiling, twirling his hand. “You can get penny candy, all different kinds, and malted milk shakes.”
It made no sense to Cora, how he was looking at her, how long he was staying, the focus of his kind gaze. Mother Kaufmann had told her she had a strong face, an interesting face, and that it was beautiful in a unique way. Cora believed this when she was young, but as she got older, she suspected Mother Kaufmann of flattery. She had observed the behavior of the boys at school, the way they acted around certain girls, and she knew real beauty would have trumped everything, even her sketchy origins. Yet even after she was the champion of graces, the boys at school were polite to her at best. And yet—yes, it was true—this very handsome lawyer had been sitting in the Lindquists’ parlor for longer than he had to, staring back at her as if she really were something to behold.
“That sounds wonderful,” she said, her voice perhaps too full of breath, too loud. Mrs. Lindquist woke with a cough. Cora and the lawyer fell silent, both of them looking away to give her time to compose herself. When they looked back, Mrs. Lindquist was sitting up straight. She smiled at Cora, sipping her tea as if it was still hot to her lips, and no time had passed at all.
“I should be on my way.” Mr. Carlisle lifted his briefcase, opened it, and put the notepad inside. “Thank you, Mrs. Lindquist. Thank you, Miss Kaufmann.” He looked at Cora meaningfully and stood. She stood, too, the top of her head barely reaching his shoulders. She realized, only now, that for at least an hour, she’d had a short recess from her squeezing grief.
Mrs. Lindquist stood beside her. “Dear? Are you all right?”
She nodded. At that moment, unbelievably, she was.
He helped, and he helped quickly. There wasn’t even a trial. By the start of the new year, the Kaufmann daughter and her brothers had agreed to a settlement. Cora wouldn’t get a full fourth of the profit from the farm, but she would get enough to pay the Lindquists something, and, when she did move out, to afford her board and security until she married or found a vocation. The money did make her feel better, more hopeful for the future. But it was her new legal name that truly raised her spirits. She was officially Cora Kaufmann now, as recognized by the State of Kansas.
She sent a letter to Mr. Carlisle’s office in Wichita, letting him know what she planned to do with the money the following autumn: she would go to Wichita herself, to Fairmount College, and train to be a teacher. She thanked him for his kindness. She wrote how much his compassion and charity had meant to her, and she signed the letter “with gratitude and deep respect,” which wasn’t nearly what she felt. In truth, she had replayed those hours with him in the Lindquists’ parlor many times, letting herself imagine that she would somehow see him again, after she moved to Wichita. It wasn’t that large of a city—surely they would bump into each other. And perhaps he really wasn’t married yet. But in her more somber moments, which were frequent, she understood these imaginings as fantasy, not likely to actually happen. If Cora ever did see him in Wichita, she would be lucky if he remembered her at all. In so many ways, they weren’t on the same level. He had just helped her because he was kind.
But a week after she sent the letter, he was back at the Lindquists’ door, this time holding a bouquet of red carnations and seeming more nervous than before.
His courtship made perfect sense to Mrs. Lindquist—and yes, she said, it was clearly a courtship; she knew a man with intentions when she saw one. And she had to say, she wasn’t surprised at all—Cora was a lovely young woman, pure of heart and pure of virtue, and what man wouldn’t want just that in a wife? Mrs. Lindquist imagined many men, even wealthy, sophisticated men, would prefer an unsullied country girl to a hardened woman of the city. The legal situation had simply given Mr. Carlisle a chance to get to know her. True, he was older and more educated, but wasn’t that often the case for a husband and wife? He didn’t seem to lord anything over her. He was as smitten as she was. It was clear to anyone with eyes.
It was clear even to Cora. Alan—Alan, she called him now—brightened at the sight of her. He wanted to be with her all the time, this handsome, considerate man. It was unsettling for her, this giddiness, this excitement, this thrilling at the touch of his hand on her arm, so soon after the misery of the previous fall and winter. Mrs. Lindquist said she shouldn’t feel guilty. The Kaufmanns would want this happiness for her. They would agree that she deserved it.
“And I did some checking for you,” she added, her voice lowered, though Mr. Lindquist was out with the pigs and they were alone in the house. “His family is very respectable. I have cousins in Wichita, and they talked to the mother once. They said you could tell she had good schooling, she spoke so nicely.”
The next day, Cora walked to the schoolhouse and begged her old teacher for any book she could study that might help her with her grammar. The teacher told her she already spoke just fine, better than most of her other students; but Cora persisted, and the teacher eventually lent her Lessons in Language by Horace Sumner Tarbell. The preface assured her that self-confidence was the key to success with any art, and that regular study would provide her self-confidence, though the book’s subsequent warnings made her anxious. (Caution: Be careful not to say don’t for doesn’t. Caution: Never say ain’t, hain’t, ’tain’t, or mayn’t.) At night, after the Lindquists had gone to bed, she stayed up with the book and a candle, going over subject-verb agreement and proper use of adverbs and the error of the split infinitive. Some of the rules she knew from school, but not all of them. She did the exercises. She learned when to say “lie” and when to say “lay,” when to say “me” and when to say “I,” and to never say “irregardless,” and though she was most urgently concerned about her speech, she read and studied the sections on punctuation and capitalization and proper salutations, just in case the time came when she would have to write Alan’s well-spoken mother a note.
When Alan first took her to Wichita for dinner at his parents’ house, which was so beautiful and modern, with an indoor bathroom that had a little pull chain above the toilet that made it flush, she was nervous, certain they would be disappointed in her youth and plainness, even though she wore the flower-trimmed hat and the smart dress with the narrow skirt that Alan had purchased and sent to her at the Lindquists’. The very fact that he’d bought clothes for her to wear to the dinner suggested that his parents would be observing her closely, and she found another book on table etiquette and memorized its every instruction, worried that if she didn’t, she would be soon found out as the bumpkin that she was.
But to her surprise, she was greeted warmly. Alan’s parents and his pretty sister appeared cha
rmed by every practiced sentence that came out of her mouth. His mother, a very tall woman with Alan’s eyes, declared Cora just as good-natured and naturally intelligent as her son had described. Alan’s father smiled as he made a toast to Cora’s “wholesome loveliness.” After dinner, Alan’s mother took her hand and said she understood Cora had suffered a horrible loss with the death of her parents, and that she hoped their family could bring her some solace. Cora was struck to see real kindness in the woman’s face—there was no hint of the judgment or ridicule she’d been afraid of.
Later, Alan told her he’d been honest with his parents, telling them everything about Cora’s legal case, and even her coming from New York on the train. She had their sympathy, he said. But there was a reason they had said nothing about her life before the Kaufmanns. His parents strongly believed it would be best, for Cora, and for everyone—as Alan and Cora were spending so much time together—if her origins weren’t publicly discussed. As far as they were concerned, Cora was a nice young woman who had grown up on a farm outside McPherson, and that was as much of the story as people needed to hear.
Cora was quick to agree. She was much in favor of a fresh start. There was no need for anyone in Wichita to know she’d come in on the train, that she’d ever been Cora X. And if Mrs. Lindquist was correct, and if her own greatest wish came true, she would soon be Mrs. Cora Kaufmann Carlisle, and that would be the name that mattered. She would be Alan’s wife, part of his family, and she would fully embrace her good fortune, his surprising and irrational love, just as she had when she first met the Kaufmanns, all those years ago.
PART TWO
Ah, no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence,
the innocence that seals the mind against imagination
and the heart against experience …
—EDITH WHARTON, The Age of Innocence
SEVEN
They were still out on the sidewalk of West Eighty-sixth Street, the taxi pulling away, when Louise put down her travel bag, raised both arms, and declared herself in love with New York City.
“It’s exactly as I imagined it!” She let her arms fall and looked out at the street, at the honking, halting parade of cars, headlights bright in the dusking air. She turned to Cora with glistening eyes. “I’ve always known it, my whole life. This is where I’m meant to be.”
Cora, though exhausted, managed a smile. Louise had been like this since the moment they stepped into the main concourse of Grand Central Station. Even with people just behind them and just in front of them, so many speaking strange languages and wearing the dark clothes of foreigners, some smoking, some coughing, all exhaling too closely, Louise said she felt as if she were walking into her dreams. Cora had only nodded in response, her gaze moving around the concourse, taking in the arched blue ceiling and the wide exits on every side. It was a magnificent space, brighter than the station in Wichita and big enough to swallow it whole. But if she’d been there before, if the train she’d boarded with the other children had left from that very station, she didn’t remember. Nothing felt familiar. Maybe it would have, if she’d had more time there. But once Louise saw the exit for Forty-second Street, she walked toward it quickly, saying she couldn’t wait to get out on the famous street and breathe in the city’s air.
The attraction, from what Cora saw, was mutual. As she and Louise made their way through the big doors and into the muggy air, even with the rush of so many people moving in and out, all kinds of men—laborers in shirtsleeves, sailors, even well-dressed men who seemed to be in a hurry—let their gazes linger on Louise’s face before moving down the length of her figure. Beautiful women in silk dresses turned to look at her haircut, the blunt bangs so unusual even among so many bob-haired heads. At least Cora hoped the hair was why they stared. That morning on the train, Louise had returned from the ladies’ lounge in a light green skirt and a white short-sleeved blouse with such a low V-necked collar that she had to swear to Cora that her mother not only approved of the blouse—she’d bought it for her. Cora surrendered the argument. Either Louise was lying, or Myra had very poor judgment, and Cora hadn’t felt up to making a case for either. And so Louise had sauntered into the streets of New York with so many eyes on her lovely face and striking hair and rosebud décolletage. She pretended not to notice the attention she garnered, but Cora, glancing at her from the side, suspected that she did.
Cora herself, on the other hand, knew she did not look her best. She was in need of a bath; the train windows had been open for most of the trip from Chicago, and she felt as if she’d been basted in grease, thoroughly heated, and finally dipped in dust. And she was tired. Despite her more sensible, lower-heeled shoes, she trailed Louise across a wide street with its vaguely observed crosswalk to the taxi stand, struggling to keep up. “People move more quickly here,” Louise said, looking back over her shoulder. “Have you noticed? They walk faster, talk faster, everything! It’s swell!”
It really was something, all the bustle and commotion, so many people everywhere. Cora didn’t let herself look up at the buildings, gawking like the newcomer she was. She’d taken the warnings of people back home seriously, and she was on guard for pickpockets and hustlers, though during the short wait for the taxi, neither a pickpocket nor a hustler appeared. Once she and Louise were in a cab, with its relative safe and quiet, she tried to take it all in, looking out at more buildings and cars and trains and trolleys than she had ever even pictured in one place. She’d seen photographs of New York, street scenes and pictures of parades in the newspaper. For years she’d studied them, searching for anything—a street corner, a building’s façade, a passerby’s expression—that might remind her of her early life. But she couldn’t have imagined the noise of the actual city, all the engines and horns and jackhammers and drills and the jarring clatter of elevated trains. The only way she could think of New York, the only way she would be able to describe it when she got home, was as a hundred Douglas Avenues on the busiest day of the year, all of them pushed up against each other and on top of one another. She was at once amazed and overwhelmed.
But Louise’s enthusiasm was unrelenting, even after they arrived at the squat apartment building, even after they climbed three flights of stairs, even after they found the key under the loose board by the door just as the landlord had told Leonard Brooks they would, and gained entrance to the disappointing apartment.
“It’s not so bad,” Louise announced, trying and failing to turn on a lamp, which Cora hoped only needed a new bulb. The front room was small, with pale yellow walls, most of the floor space taken up by a writing desk and a circular table with three chairs. There was no window, just a framed oil painting of a Siamese cat hung above the desk. Cora followed Louise into and through a narrow kitchen that doubled as a hallway to the bedroom, which was shaped exactly like the front room, though the walls were painted pea green. The bedroom did have a window, and a ceiling fan. But no rug. A door by the bed led to a bathroom. The bedroom itself had no door.
Louise plopped on the bed, declared it very comfortable, and said New Yorkers didn’t really care about their apartments because they were never home. “That’s just fine with me,” she said, her voice growing louder to compensate for Cora turning on the faucet in the bathroom. “I’d live in a closet and be happy, as long as it’s by everything that matters.”
“We have warm water,” Cora called out. The bathroom had its own small window looking into an airshaft, and walls that had been painted, for some reason, blood red. But there could have been orange stripes on the walls for all Cora cared. A bath was all she needed. Easing out of her shoes, she stuck her head into the bedroom.
“I’m going to take a bath, dear. Do you need to use the bathroom before I get in?”
“I’m fine. Go ahead.” Louise crouched by an electric socket, plugging in the fan. “Just don’t take too long. I can’t wait to go out.”
Cora leaned against the bathroom doorway, fanning herself with her hand. “Are you hungry???
? She had to talk over the running water. “We had that big supper on the train.”
“No, I’m not hungry. We should go to Times Square. We could take the subway.”
“Oh, Louise.” Cora shook her head. She was so tired. The sleeping berths on the train had been as comfortable as they could be, with drawn curtains and porter-fluffed pillows; still, she’d been too aware of strangers across the aisle, not to mention the steady rocking. She hadn’t slept very well.
“I figured you might be tired.” Louise tugged on the low neck of her blouse. “That’s all right. Is there anything you want me to get?”
Cora stared at her. In the street below, a car backfired. Louise blinked back at her, smiling, as if what she’d just said made perfect sense.
“It’s almost dark.” Cora nodded toward the bedroom window, which, aside from the whirling fan, held only a view of a brick wall maybe six feet away. “And you have your first class in the morning.”
“Not until ten. I’ll be fine.” She slid past Cora into the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and gave her reflection a brief but appreciative glance. She looked beautiful. She did not smell at all. It was as if for her, even in these warm rooms, even after the long journey on the train, sweat and dust and fatigue did not exist. She was still in heels. Cora had already eased out of hers, and so in the mirror, they appeared the same height.
“Louise,” she sighed, bracing herself. There would be no avoiding an argument. She glanced back at the tub, checking the height of the water. “I’m sorry. I can’t let you go out by yourself.”