The Gilded Hour
Page 6

The most Sophie could do for her was to listen.
“The worst of it is, he wants six sons of his own. It’s a competition with his brothers, and I fear he won’t let up. He’ll keep me breeding until he’s satisfied. Or I’m dead.”
As Sophie worked, Mrs. Campbell told her things she would be embarrassed to remember in a few hours. If Sophie said nothing, the new mother would be free to forget about the secrets she had whispered, and to whom she had said them.
Mrs. Campbell was drifting off to a well-earned sleep when she suddenly shook herself awake.
“Have you heard about Dr. Garrison?”
Sophie was glad she was facing away in that moment, because it gave her a chance to school her expression.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve followed along in the newspaper.”
There was a long silence. When she turned around Mrs. Campbell said, “If you are a physician, could you—”
“No,” Sophie interrupted her. “I’m sorry.”
Mrs. Campbell heard only the regret in Sophie’s voice, and she pushed harder. “Another one too soon will kill me, I know it. I have money saved—”
Sophie set her face in uncompromising lines as she turned. “By law I can’t even talk to you about contraceptives or—anything similar. I can’t give you a name or an address. If you know about Mrs. Garrison, you must know that the mails are not safe.”
Mrs. Campbell closed her eyes and nodded. “I do know about the mails,” she said. “Of course I know. Mr. Campbell makes sure that I know.”
Sophie swallowed the bile that rose into her throat and reminded herself what was at stake.
2
WHEN THEY HAD shepherded the children off the ferry, Mary Augustin let out a sigh of relief to discover that there were three omnibuses waiting for them. Even better, as far as she was concerned, were the four sisters who had come to help with almost thirty desperately frightened and unhappy children. Ten children and two sisters in each omnibus was manageable. Sister Ignatia was difficult in many ways, but she had no equal when it came to planning.
Mary Augustin had just crouched down to encourage a trembling and teary six-year-old called Georgio when an older man came off the ferry, walking very slowly. As soon as he was on solid ground he simply sat down where he stood and began to fan himself with his hat. There was sweat on his brow and his color was ashen. This might be simple seasickness or something far worse; Mary Augustin tried to get Sister Ignatia’s attention, but at that moment a scuffle broke out in the crowd of people waiting to board for the next crossing.
Two dockworkers stood nose to nose shouting at each other, both of them strapped with muscle and both decidedly drunk. Punches were thrown and bystanders darted out of the way, some laughing and others looking disgusted, while all the time the old man sat and fanned himself and tried to catch a breath. Mary Augustin divided her attention between moving the orphans farther away and the old man who might be having a heart attack, and so she only saw what came next from the corner of her eye.
One of the longshoremen shoved the other with such force that he went staggering back with an almost comical look of surprise on his face. Bystanders jumped out of the way of his pinwheeling arms, and in fact the man seemed to be losing momentum when his feet got caught up in someone’s canvas sack. In his last desperate attempt to regain his balance he flung out both arms, and one fist slammed into Salvatore Ruggerio, eleven years old, newly orphaned, who had gone closer to watch the fight but now stood frozen with shock.
Man and boy went over the edge of the dock, backward. There was a single heartbeat of utter silence, and then the crowd erupted.
Sister Ignatia was shouting, her voice like a bullhorn over the noise. “Move the children! Get them away!”
And still Mary Augustin hesitated, turning to watch as three men, one of them in the long navy coat of a patrolman, jumped into the water. Just beyond him the old man Mary Augustin feared was having a heart attack had jumped to his feet to watch the drama, as nimble as a boy of ten.
•   •   •
ONE OF THE omnibuses had already left and so Mary Augustin got her charges onto the second one as quickly and calmly as could be managed. She was hesitating about whether to go see if she was needed on the dock when Sister Ignatia came marching up and grabbed her by the elbow to turn her around.
Her color was high but otherwise she wasn’t even breathing hard. “The boy knocked his head. That patrolman”—she pointed with her chin—“wants the third bus to take him and that idiot drunkard to St. Vincent’s.” She paused as if an unwelcome thought had come to her and then shouted over her shoulder, as forceful as a general.
“Officer! We’ll take the boy to St. Vincent’s and nowhere else! Do you understand me?”
The patrolman, young enough to be Sister Ignatia’s grandson, swallowed visibly and nodded, but she had already turned her attention back to Mary Augustin. “So you’ll have to get all the rest of the children into this bus. Sister Constance will come along and you’ll just have to squeeze together. I’ll see about the boy—” She hesitated.
“Salvatore Ruggerio.”
“Ruggerio,” Sister Ignatia echoed. “And send word when I’ve spoken to the doctors. Now get these children away. They’ve seen enough.”
•   •   •
ROSA RUSSO CONFRONTED Mary Augustin as soon as she had climbed up into the omnibus. Anger and sorrow and disappointment all vied for the upper hand, but anger won.
“My brothers,” she said. “They took my brothers away.”
The separation had been inevitable, but it would have been handled more sensitively if not for the chaos on the dock.
Mary Augustin said, “There are two buildings at St. Patrick’s. One for girls and one for boys. You can see the boys’ building just across the way, and that’s where your brothers will be.”
At least to start, Mary Augustin added to herself.
Since she had come to the orphan asylum she had seen children handle such separations too often to count. More often than she cared to remember. Some of them were too numb to react at all, while others collapsed or struck out. Rosa simply stood her ground. Her eyes were swimming with tears but she didn’t allow them to fall. She seemed to be struggling to say something, or not to say something.
“Come sit by me,” Mary Augustin said. “And I’ll answer your questions as best I can.”
But Rosa went back to sit next to her little sister, the two of them sharing their seat with other girls.
It was just then that she realized that the omnibus had turned from Christopher Street onto Waverly Place. She was wondering if the driver knew where he was supposed to take them when Washington Square Park came into view and she made her way forward to the box, swaying with the jerking of the bus over paving stones.
The driver was no more than a boy, but he handled the horses with ease and took no offense at her question.
“Your little ones need quieting,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road and the traffic. “Upset as they are. I thought I’d take them through the park, distract them a little from that sad business at the ferry.”
It was something Mary Augustin had yet to figure out, how it could be that some city dwellers were so coarse and rude, while others showed tremendous kindness and generosity of spirit. She thanked the driver and went back to her place, signaling to Sister Constance that all was well.
And in fact the children had quieted. All of them were turned toward the windows, leaning against each other to make the most of the space available, pointing to things they couldn’t name. With some effort, she summoned her Italian and tried to put names to things they asked about.
They pointed to trees and walkways and children being pushed in prams, to the houses that lined Waverly Place, tall redbrick homes that must look like palaces to children who grew up in tenements.
Rosa Russo wanted to know what kind of people would live in such a place, if they were kings and queens.
“Just people,” Mary Augustin told her. “Families.”
Her eyes narrowing, Rosa said, “Do you know any of those families?”
Mary bit back her smile. “Not in these houses. But down the street”—she pointed down Waverly—“you see the building with the towers?”
“A church,” Rosa said.
Mary Augustin was sure it wasn’t a church, but neither did she know what such a grand building might be. The driver rescued her by calling over his shoulder.
“That’s New York University,” he said. “Looks a lot like a church, I’ll grant you that.”
“Rosa,” Sister Mary Augustin said, “I do know somebody who lives just ahead, and so do you. Dr. Savard, who examined you before we got on the ferry. She lives a little beyond the university, with her aunt and cousin in a house with angels over the door, and a great big garden, as big as the house itself. With a pergola. And chickens.”
There was absolute silence while Rosa translated for the other children, and then a dozen more questions came shooting at her. Mary Augustin answered and Rosa translated while the horses plodded forward under trees heavy with buds just beginning to open to the sun.