A Proper Pursuit (51 page)

“This is the way we’ll do things,” Silas told Nelson. “I’ll give you a small stake to get you started. You place the bets while my friend Jackson studies the dealers. If things are on the up-and-up, we’ll talk about a loan.”

I took Nelson’s arm as we entered the private casino. Silas and his friend escorted Katya. I felt absurdly jealous.

Cigar smoke filled the opulent room, making it seem dingy. The atmosphere seemed darker and more oppressive than I’d remembered from last time. Perhaps it was because Nelson was so on edge. I felt sorry for him. He had more at stake than ever before—not only his father’s money, but also his happiness with Katya. I followed him to the dice table and watched as he placed his first bet. He held out the dice to me.

“A kiss for luck, Violet.”

I backed away, shaking my head. “Let Katya be your good luck charm.”

I tugged on her arm. She had been holding on to Silas, but she let go as I nudged her forward. Silas’ friend was watching the game, but Silas was studying the three of us.

I turned my attention to the game. Nelson’s forehead shone with sweat, even though the room didn’t feel at all warm to me. Katya looked as frightened as a doe in hunting season. Silas and his friend seemed very intent on the game, and I thought I saw them exchange knowing glances and sly hand signals from time to time.

I watched each roll of the dice until I could no longer stand the tension, then I turned away and watched all of the other well-dressed partygoers gambling away their money. A group of cigar-wielding men waved wads of it around like it was so much paper. I suddenly had a horrifying thought. What if Silas and his partner had used Nelson to get inside because they intended to rob everyone? What if they weren’t watching for crooked dealers at all but for a chance to steal every last dollar in this place? Just because Silas had shown me a harmonica instead of a gun didn’t mean he was unarmed tonight.

Why had I ever trusted him? I knew that his friends had committed robbery before—right here at the fair! I had to warn Nelson. I inched my way over to his side and bent to whisper in his ear.

“Nelson? May I have a word with you, please?”

“Not now.” Sweat trickled down his brow.

“It’s very important—”

“Shh!” He waved me away.

I’d had enough. My father was coming tomorrow, and I’d wasted six weeks on Nelson and his nonsense. It was his own stupid fault for being in this situation. Besides, he didn’t have any money to steal. Who cared if Silas and his friend robbed everyone in this place? I didn’t.

I slipped away from the gaming table and merged into the crowd. Everyone was occupied with money. No one cared where I went or what I did. My anger and disappointment made me courageous. My mother was at the fairgrounds, a short distance away. I needed to face the truth.

I left the smoke-filled casino and went to find my mother.

Chapter

35

I
stopped outside the pavilion to get my bearings. I was alone, but I didn’t feel at all afraid. The well-lit streets bustled with people, and colored searchlights crisscrossed the sky, lighting up the fair’s golden domes and towers. The World’s Columbian Exposition was beautiful, and I was seeing it for the last time. Tomorrow I would leave Chicago. In another three months all the grand pavilions would be torn down and the White City would disappear. Everything would change. That was the lesson I’d learned this summer: Life was all about change.

I scanned the horizon and saw the giant wheel, revolving slowly in the distance. I began walking in that direction, following the clues I’d found in Silas’ photograph. I remembered that the entrance to the Midway was near the Woman’s Pavilion, and I could see that graceful building across the lagoon.

Finding my mother’s theater turned out to be easier than I’d expected. The turbaned Arab and his camel stood right in the middle of the Midway Plaisance, drumming up business for the Arabian Nights Show. The billboard outside the theater featured a woman in a harem outfit just like the one my mother wore in the photograph. According to the scheduled times, I had more than an hour to talk with her before the next show began.

I left the pathway and walked around to the back of the theater as if I knew exactly where I was going. It was what Louis had done when he’d led me backstage at the theater the other day. No one had stopped him then, and no one stopped me now. A sign above the backstage door read
Employees Only
. I tried the knob and found it locked. I drew a breath for courage and pounded on the door. It opened a crack, and a bearded man with oily hair peered out.

“What do you want?”

“I’m here to see Angeline … um … Angelina. She’s expecting me.”

He looked me over from head to toe like a greedy child eyeing an ice-cream cone. He didn’t seem inclined to let me in.

“Angelina said she might have a job in the show for me,” I added.

His lips curled into a smile. He opened the door very wide. “Second door on the right,” he said, pointing.

My knees shook violently as I walked down the short corridor. I quickly knocked on my mother’s door before I lost my nerve.

“Come in,” someone called from inside. I turned the knob.

The scent of roses overwhelmed the tiny dressing room. I knew I had found my mother.

She sat before a mirror at a lopsided dressing table, brushing her dark, loose hair. I had loved to watch her do the very same thing in her bedroom in Lockport. She looked up at my reflection in the dingy mirror and knew in an instant who I was.

“Violet,” she whispered. She stood and turned, and we rushed into each other’s arms.

“Mama!” I wept. “Mama, I found you!”

Memories from childhood flooded back as I felt her familiar arms surrounding me and heard her murmuring in her native language. I don’t know how long we remained that way. I only know that I had missed her embrace, her voice, her love, for eleven long years. I needed to make up for all that lost time.

“I’ve missed you so much, Mama!”

“And I have missed you,
ho-cheech-ka
,” she cried. “You will never know how much!”

At last Mother released me. She held me at arm’s length and gazed at me, her eyes brimming with love.

“Look at you,” she murmured. “You are beautiful! And such a lady! A proper young lady, just as I hoped you would be.”

I thought she would hug me again, but instead she turned away, tightening the belt on the ragged bathrobe she wore over her costume, drawing it closed. I saw shame in her eyes and in her manner as her gaze flitted around the shabby room, seeing it the way I would see it.

“I am sorry that you found me, Violet. Sorry that you see me this way.”

“No, Mama, don’t be sorry. I’m not—”

“Shh, shh … Listen, my darling. You must go back home. You must not let anyone see you here with me.”

I shook my head, swallowing the lump of emotion in my throat. “But I want to talk to you. I want to know—”

“Shh … No, darling. No one must know that I am your mother. I do not want to tarnish you.”

“You could never do that! I love you, Mama!” I moved toward her, longing to embrace her again, but she shook her head, holding up her hands to keep me away.

“You are very young, Violet. You do not understand how the world is.”

“Then explain it to me.” I sank onto her chair, wiping my tears as quickly as they fell. “I’m not leaving until you tell me everything I want to know. Why did you marry Father? Why did you have me? And why … why did you abandon me?”

“Then will you go?”

“If you want me to.” I couldn’t understand how she could hold me in her arms and weep one moment and push me away the next. “I know that you and Father met on the night of the Great Fire. I know that he rescued you, but I don’t know how.”

She paced the cramped room for several moments as if gathering her thoughts, searching for a place to begin. I was struck by how lithe and graceful she was—and how beautiful. She looked very young to me, not yet forty, and I realized that she had been younger than I was now when she’d married Father. My hapless, straitlaced father must have been as attracted to the exciting young Angeline as stuffy Herman Beckett had been attracted to me in bloomers.

“Listen, I came to this country with my family when I was only a small girl,” she began. “We were a family of gypsies—do you know what that means, what kind of life we led?”

“I-I think so.” Thieves. Like Silas McClure.

“My father and older brothers started a theater here in Chicago. It was not a very nice place, and they made my sisters and me … We had to do whatever they said. I wanted to get away and have a better life, but they forced me to stay. My brothers locked me in my room every night with no shoes and no coat so I could not get away. I was their prisoner.

“That is where I was, locked inside, when the fire began. My brothers saw that the city was burning, so they left me there and went out to steal things from other people. I would have died that night if John hadn’t saved me. He and his brother smashed down my door and helped me get out. Then John’s brother ran back inside to save more people—but he never came out. The building fell into the street, and we had to run and run to get away.

“I hope you never have to live through a night like that one,
ho-cheech-ka
. It was worse than any nightmare I have ever dreamed of. The flames roared like a hundred trains, and buildings crashed to the ground. The sky was as light as daytime, the heat as warm as a summer day. We ran from the smoke and from the hot sparks that blew over us like snow. The cinders stung our skin, blown on the wind that howled in our ears. Some of the burning coals were as large as chestnuts.

“We ran as fast as we could, but the fire chased after us, a towering wave of flames that rolled toward us, trying to drown us. The streets were full of wagons and horses and screaming people trying to escape. They would leave things behind, dropping furniture and belongings to lighten their load until we had to climb over mountains of baggage just to get away. Behind us the flames leaped hundreds of feet in the air and swallowed buildings in one gulp. No one was fighting the fire. They could only watch helplessly as everything burned.

“John and I walked for miles and miles. My throat hurt from the smoke, and my feet ached because I had no shoes. John carried me on his back much of the way, like a child. We finally got to where all the streetcars had stopped. The men had driven them as far away as they could to get them out of the fire’s path. They let us sit inside them to try to rest or maybe sleep.

“The city burned all night and all the next day. When the rain finally came and the fire stopped, my old life had all burned up. I could start all over again in a new place. John took me to his father’s church in Lockport. I had never seen such a nice, quiet town.

“I fell in love with John, with his kindness and gentleness—and he loved me. But it was a terrible mistake to get married. I did not belong like all of the other people in that town. John’s father disliked everything about me. The clothes I wore had too many colors. My hair should be put up, not hanging loose. I smiled too much; I was too foolish; I loved to dance. Everything was always wrong, and he said that I was turning you the wrong way too. He said I should not dance with you. And so I began to feel very sad. I stopped going out of our house. But I still had you and John. You brought me so much joy, Violet. I don’t have enough words to tell you how much.”

“Then why did you leave me?”

“After you were born,
ho-cheech-ka
, I had two more babies, but they died while they were still inside of me. Your grandfather said that God was punishing me for some sin in my life. I grew afraid that God would harm you or your father in order to punish me even more. I loved you both too much to let you suffer because of me.”

“But that isn’t true. God doesn’t do things like that. And Father knows it isn’t true. Why did you listen to Grandfather?”

“Do you remember the game we used to play together?”

“I don’t remember very much …”

“I would ask something like: ‘If you could choose, would you rather be a butterfly or a firefly?’ And then you would have to choose.”

I closed my eyes as tears flooded them.

“If you could choose, Violet, would you rather live on the moon or under the sea?”

“Mama, listen …”

“No, you need to listen to me,
ho-cheech-ka
. In the end, it was no longer a game for me. I had to make a choice and it was a terrible, terrible one—like choosing whether to be blind or to go deaf. Except that I had to choose between staying with the man I loved, the daughter I loved more than life itself, and ending up destroying them—or choosing to go away so they could live.”

“I don’t understand—”

“Have you ever been in love?”

I shook my head, trying not to think of the tender look I’d seen in Silas’ eyes.

“Come back and talk to me when you do fall in love. Only then will you be able to understand.”

“But I need to know now. I won’t leave until you tell me everything.”

I could see her frustration and her reluctance. But I had waited too long and searched too hard to leave my mother now.