Heart of Lies (23 page)

Amelia corrected him. “No, he’s coming with me.”

“No, Amelia, I’m afraid that I’m not.”

The look on Amelia’s face instantly convinced the bursar that he wanted no part of this conversation. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said, edging toward the next two passengers. “You’ll have to step aside and sort this out. I can give you five minutes.”

Leo took a few steps away from the crowd, pulling his hand away from Maddy’s as he did so. After a moment’s hesitation Amelia followed. Her eyes narrowed in anger as she faced her new husband.

“What the hell do you think you are doing? I didn’t agree to bring her without you.”

“I can’t come with you. Not yet. Because we’re married, I’m able to give you custody of Maddy. Please take her to New York, and take care of her. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

“As soon as you can? Leo, this is ridiculous—”

Her protests were cut off by Leo’s lips against her own. His arms surrounded her. His kiss was urgent, passionate. It left her breathless.

“I will join you as soon as I can,” he said again.

Amelia’s head was spinning. She could capitalize on this turn of events, she thought as she caught her breath. She looked down at her new ward, aware of the little girl’s anxious eyes upon her.

Leo knelt down to talk to his daughter. “Maddy, this is Amelia. She’s going with you to America.”

Maddy smiled with dutiful politeness, her stance edged with wariness. Amelia wondered what the child thought about that kiss.

Leo grasped his daughter gently by the shoulders. “Amelia is going to take you to New York.” He waited for her to say something. A light of comprehension dawned on Maddy’s face.

“Is she going to be my new nanny?” she asked innocently. Amelia quickly stifled an incredulous snort.

Leo glared up at Amelia, then quickly turned his attention back to his daughter.

“Not exactly. You see, for us to be able to go to America, I need to be married to an American citizen. Amelia is American, and she agreed to marry me, so that we could leave Shanghai, and be safe. There won’t be any bombs in America. But I can’t leave quite yet. I’ll come for you soon. In the meantime, you must be a good girl, and mind Amelia. I promise I’ll come for you as soon as I can.”

Again, it seemed to take a while for Maddy to absorb this. Then she looked at Leo in horror. “You mean, she is your
wife?
” she shrieked, “Your
new wife
?”

“Maddy, please. It’s all right.” Leo tried to hold Maddy still, but she would not be comforted. She hit her father, flailing away at him like a crazed demon.

“I hate you. I hate you. How could you?” she screamed over and over again, writhing and pummeling Leo with all her might. Not knowing what else to do, Leo twisted her around and pinned her arms behind her back. She ended up facing Amelia, and the sight of her new stepmother caused her to fall instantly and eerily silent.

“I apologize. I should have expected this.” Leo said gravely, looking at Amelia over Maddy’s shoulder.

Amelia did her best to arrange her features into what she hoped was an expression of maternal concern.

“That’s okay, Leo. Of course it’s upsetting. Madeleine and I will soon be friends, you’ll see.”
And if not, I’m sure we can find a lovely Catholic boarding school near Manhattan. Let the nuns beat some manners into the little bitch.

NEW YORK, 1938

“Again, Madeleine. And please, this time,
try
to concentrate on the rhythm,” Sister Edwina admonished her pupil, not bothering to temper her exasperation. The small wooden piano bench upon which both she and Madeleine sat creaked nervously as the heavyset woman shifted her weight.

Maddy took a deep breath and began to play again, striking each note on the shabby old upright piano with stiff, awkward movements of her fingers. Unforgiving echoes bounced off the barren plaster walls. An hour locked in a dark closet in the Mother Superior’s office had finally convinced her to take piano lessons, and several sharp raps with a ruler persuaded her to hit the right notes as she learned how to read music. But nothing could make her play well.

Six iron bars secured the room’s one window. The scant sunlight that slipped through this barricade cast long, striped shadows across the scarred wooden floor. An amateurish oil portrait of the Virgin Mary provided the only decoration on the dingy gray walls. The Holy
Mother’s eyes were upturned, as if she, too, were begging for some heavenly miracle to assist the unwilling student who now sat in the room.

Sister Edwina closed her eyes and grimaced as Madeleine once again assaulted Bach. She’d never seen a pupil put forth so much effort only to attain such mediocre results. The girl had been taking lessons for over a year. She thought the girl’s father must be delusional to think that his child had any sort of musical talent. But his letters to Sister Gabriella, the school’s headmistress, always contained generous bank drafts, in part “to cover the cost of Maddy’s musical instruction.” Unfortunately for Sister Edwina, Sister Gabriella knew a gold mine when she saw one. Leo Hoffman’s wish that his child learn how to play the piano would be granted, whether Madeleine liked it or not.

Sister Gabriella administered Madeleine’s punishments with a clear conscience. It was her duty to teach the child obedience and humility. If that was all she learned from her music lessons then her father’s money was, in Sister Gabriella’s view, money well spent, despite the child’s lack of musical success.

“Enough,” Sister Edwina snapped as Maddy finished her soulless rendition. She hefted her considerable bulk off the bench. “You may be excused. But you must ask Sister Constance to allow you to listen to a recording of that piece. Then try to capture some of the
essence
of the music. I’ve told you a hundred times. There’s more to playing the piano than just hitting the right notes.”

Maddy sprang up, eager to escape her ordeal. “Yes, Sister Edwina. Thank you, Sister Edwina,” she said politely, without a trace of the resentment she felt. In an instant she collected her books and her sweater and sped out the door.

The majority of the one hundred girls enrolled at St. Mary’s Elementary School were day students, dismissed at three o’clock into the waiting arms of nannies and mothers. The school could accept only half a dozen live-in students, for it had not been designed as a boarding school. The six small bunks and six chests-of-drawers that lined the walls of the attic room where the boarders stayed were put there as a temporary concession to a few particularly wealthy parents whose schedules made it hard to deal with the special challenges posed by children deemed “difficult.” When it became clear to Sister Gabriella that the school could charge a significant premium for the extra attention given to such students, the arrangements became available on a permanent basis.

For the past year Maddy had been one of the six. It was a convenient arrangement for Amelia; Madeleine was out from underfoot but only a moment away if Leo should make a sudden appearance. As one month drifted into another, Amelia almost forgot that she had a stepdaughter tucked away in a convent school. Oh, Leo knew that Madeleine was at a Catholic school; Amelia had obtained his consent to that much. Why would he object to a boarding school? After all, he’d abandoned his daughter. Madeleine was a well-tended little piece of bait, luring her father to come for her. To come for her, and back to Amelia.

Her one assurance that her plan was still working were the letters that Leo sent every month, containing a simple note and a bank draft. Every letter made the same promise; he would come within six months. As long as Leo covered Madeleine’s expenses and the nuns took care of her, Amelia tolerated the wait. Still, she did not take any chances that her plan might go awry. She screened every piece of mail that traveled between Shanghai to New York, including all the letters sent to and
from the sour old headmistress at St. Mary’s. Madeleine had not once written to her father.

Amelia enjoyed her life in New York. She picked her escorts from a pool of rich, bored young men, whose trust funds enabled them to ignore the unpleasant consequences of what people were referring to as “the Great Depression.” She could wait for Leo, she decided, as long as she stayed adequately entertained.

Most of the girls who boarded did so only for a short time: a month, a weekend, or a two-week holiday. Maddy became friendly with one of them: a plain, shy little creature named Jennifer, who screamed at night with nightmares that seemed as terrifying as Maddy’s own. But when the spring term started, Jennifer’s parents divorced, and she was sent to Vermont to live with her father’s family. Maddy did not try to stay in touch with her. By now she accepted the fact that people simply disappeared.

She was pleasant to the rest of the day students, yet did not have one real friend among them. There were so many things that set her apart. She knew nothing about American life; she even spoke English with a British accent. She knew songs and games in French, not English. She accepted what was given to her, but never asked for anything, not so much as a glass of milk, for she could not forgive herself for making the request that had killed her mother.

The defiance she felt played itself out in subtle ways. She said the rosary backward, or tucked unwanted bits of Friday’s fish into the pockets of her school uniform, until she could excuse herself to the bathroom and flush them down the toilet. For the most part her rebellions went unnoticed. But the piano lessons were another matter.

She could not find a voice for the terror she felt when Sister Gabri
ella first told her to sit down and play. There was no way for Maddy to explain to the unsympathetic headmistress that she had killed her mother and lost her father by playing the piano. When the sisters convinced the anguished child that she must play or suffer unrelenting punishments, she capitulated. But she deliberately played badly, using her skill to turn the music into noise. The look of suffering on Sister Edwina’s face was her only comfort.

She took her lesson at four o’clock on Thursday afternoons, and it was supposed to last for one hour. Luckily, half an hour was generally all that Sister Edwina could bear, and rather than escort her to the library where the other borders remained confined until time for evening prayers, Sister Edwina just instructed Maddy to “go join the others.”

The first time this happened Maddy dawdled in the hallway for the better part of half an hour, knowing that she was not expected until five. To her amazement, no one asked her any questions when she slipped into the dreary room where the other boarders sat reading and working. She realized that as long as she showed up to study hall before vespers at six o’clock, the nun in charge did not know that Maddy was not at her piano lesson, and no one else knew she was not in the library. For over an hour, once a week, she was free.

At first she spent her stolen time in the small powder room underneath the stairs, hiding and reading a Bobbsey Twins novel left behind by a former boarder. When she finished that book, she became bolder. Maddy had the convent to herself, as long as she kept away from the library and the sisters’ sleeping quarters. She would creep from room to room, not disturbing anything, just exploring and relishing her solitude.

Today it took her just five minutes to reach her goal: the kitchen. She took a full twenty seconds to open the door, moving the iron handle in minuscule increments, making sure it didn’t squeak. Once inside, she walked around with practiced, silent steps, delighted just to be where she shouldn’t be.

She saw the cookie jar on a high shelf and decided it was well out of reach, so she decided to investigate the small room next to the kitchen. It was full of white linen bags, each one half as big as herself. She cautiously peeked into the closest one. Laundry.

At the other end of the tiny room she saw a heavy wooden door, gray with age. A sliding bolt across the center kept it securely shut. Maddy stared at it in fascination. What was behind that door?

She checked the time. She had a good twenty minutes before she had to be back. Heart pounding, she reached up and tugged at the bolt. Once released, it slid easily to the side. She turned the handle. The door swung open.

She found herself looking out into the service alley that ran between the convent and the building next door. The door led outside. It was a door to the world. She could feel the cool autumn air brushing her face, tempting her to step out. Dare she? Dare she?

She took a few timid steps toward the street, then remembered to turn back and shut the door to the laundry room, checking first that she would still be able to open it from the outside. This accomplished, she took a deep breath, and ran.

She stopped when she reached the edge of the alley. She knew that six blocks away, straight down Eighty-sixth Street, was Central Park. And she would go there. But not today. She didn’t want to risk discovery, and she didn’t have much time.

Ten minutes later she was in the library. The thoughts in her head had nothing to do with the history book in front of her. The boldness of her plan made her shiver with anticipation, but she could wait. One of the things she’d learned during the past year was patience.

It was three weeks before she was able to antagonize Sister Edwina into cutting her piano lesson to a mere twenty minutes. By four-thirty she was on the street, skipping happily toward Central Park, with almost ninety minutes to spend any way she wished.

As she approached the park, she saw a crowd gathering on the lawn just inside the park’s entrance. Several people were waving signs, and one person seemed to be getting attention by shouting some sort of slogan, which was greeted with roars of approval.

Maddy edged closer, curious but cautious. She read two of the placards. One read, N
O
M
ORE
W
AR
in big red letters. Another read, D
ON’T
S
ACRIFICE
O
UR
S
ONS
.

On the outskirts of the crowd she saw a girl with thick, fiery red hair, who looked to be about her own age. The girl also wore a parochial school uniform, though hers consisted of a green plaid skirt, white blouse, and green sweater. She sat on a large rock, scribbling furiously on the page of a notebook. Every few seconds she paused, looked back at the crowd, then started writing again. When she stopped to listen she would stick the end of her pencil between her teeth. Having had her wrist slapped with a ruler for absentmindedly engaging in the identical habit, Maddy was immediately envious. Her curiosity got the best of her.

“Hello,” Maddy said when she got within talking distance.

The girl lifted her head. “Hi. Isn’t this just the keenest thing you ever saw?”

Maddy looked over again at the crowd, which now seemed to number close to fifty people, most of them women. One woman was standing on a wooden crate, talking about the death of her sons in a war in Europe. Around her chest she wore a silk banner, emblazoned with the words M
OTHERS
A
GAINST
W
AR
.

“What’s all this about?” she inquired.

“Just a sec,” the girl answered, still writing. When she finished the sentence, she looked up again.

“It’s a protest, to tell people like President Roosevelt that we should mind our own business if there ends up being another war in Europe. You know, people who don’t think that what Hitler and Mussolini do is our problem.”

“What’s not our problem?”

“Hey,” the girl responded, eyes alight with interest. “Where are you from, anyway? You talk just like Vivien Leigh.”

“Do I?” Maddy had never seen a movie featuring Vivien Leigh, but she’d seen her picture in a movie magazine left behind by one of the day students.

“Sure. Are you English like her? I should interview you. What’s your name?”

“Wait,” Maddy said, both embarrassed and pleased at the attention she was receiving from this outgoing American. “I’m not English. I’m from Shanghai. And I don’t know anything about any war in Europe, although there was a war going on in Shanghai when I left…”

Her words trailed off into silence as she thought about what the war in Shanghai had cost her. Her father sent her to New York with Amelia because he blamed her for Martha’s death. And why shouldn’t he? It
was
her fault. If she hadn’t asked for that doll, her mother would still be
alive. Maddy regretted having started this conversation, but her engaging companion gave her no chance to retreat.

“Shanghai? You mean, Shanghai,
China
Shanghai? You must be kidding. You don’t look Chinese.”

“There are loads of people in Shanghai who aren’t Chinese.” It didn’t seem to matter where you were from in Shanghai; there you were either Chinese, or you weren’t. She assumed it must be the same here in America. One was American, or one wasn’t. She knew she wasn’t, or rather, she knew that she didn’t want to be, if for no other reason than Amelia was an American. Then what was she? French was the language most often spoken at her home in Shanghai, and she’d attended a French school, where French nuns taught her French history and began the day with
La Marseillaise.
Maddy quickly decided that French would do as a nationality of choice.

“I’m French.”

The girl seemed doubly impressed. “No kidding? French? Do you speak French?”

“Bien sur, je parle le français
.”