Sister Noon (25 page)

Recently the meetings had been attacked by hoodlums and, in consequence, by baton-swinging policemen. The noise of benches being smashed and the hoarse shouts of fighting men were added to the general din. A boy was cured of Saint Vitus’s dance. A man was cured of a gambling addiction. Flora Briggs, a fourteen-year-old girl attending a meeting with her four-year-old cousin, fell into a faint and lay on the altar unnoticed for hours. When her uncle tried to fetch her out, he was thrown from the tent by burly men singing hymns. Her doctor told the newspapers he feared the girl’s health was permanently weakened by the dampness and the excitement. “If you went to one of Mrs. Woodworth’s meetings, you’d see it’s just a circus,” Lizzie told Ti Wong.

“We go?”

“Certainly not. You’d catch a chill. Or get arrested.” But that made it sound too exciting; she was beginning to want to go herself. She tried to stop. “The music is horrid. You’re safe here, Ti Wong. I promise. Why would God spare you from diphtheria only to drown you?”

“You think Miss Bell goes to revival?”

“What do you know of Miss Bell?”

Ti Wong pointed down through the window and Lizzie stood to see. There was Viola Bell, papers under one arm and crutch under the other, struggling through the sand up to the Brown Ark door.

“So Mrs. Woodworth can make her walk,” Ti Wong explained, just as Lizzie was asking, “What is she doing here?”

Lizzie went downstairs and listened through the open door while Jenny did her scales. When Miss Bell told her to, Jenny walked her fingers on the keys. She marched them, trotted them, galloped them according to Miss Bell’s instruction. “Some people play by imposing their will on the instrument,” Miss Bell told her. “Others think only of letting the piano sing through them. You must think about what kind of pianist it will suit you best to be.”

From outside, Lizzie could just hear Maud’s voice.

Nell found Lizzie listening in the basement. “A message arrived for you,” she said. “As if we didn’t have enough to do without delivering your mail.” She handed the note over, and climbed the stairs in a great show of breathlessness.

Lizzie opened the envelope with her fingernails.

“Mr. Finney would be honored if Miss Hayes would consent to meet him in the Grand Court of the Palace at one o’clock Monday, this. He will wait all afternoon in hope.”

So, Mr. Finney wanted his money at long last.

Of course, Lizzie courted further scandal by appearing in a public place with a young man who was no relation of hers. The Palace was as public as a place could get—see and be seen. Still, she must endeavor to do what was right. She remembered how Mrs. Pleasant had said she was too concerned with appearances. No doubt it was true. And what seemed right to Lizzie now was that little Jenny be returned to her mother, in spite of Mrs. Pleasant’s efforts to separate them. There was surely an irony in this, Lizzie thought. I am no agent of Mrs. Pleasant’s, she told an imaginary (and chagrined) Mrs. Hallis. Lizzie was trusting her instincts.

Any remaining doubts were dispelled by Sunday morning’s sermon. Like a sign from God, the subject was Abraham and Isaac. Lizzie had never liked this story, and even less the related one of Hagar and Ishmael. Why does Ishmael matter so much less than Isaac? she’d asked once in Sunday school. It was the sort of question bound to occur to a child who feared her parents would rather have lost their five-year-old daughter than their newborn son. Lizzie was probably ten at this time.

God doesn’t have favorites, her Sunday-school teacher had answered. And He blessed and protected Ishmael. But His covenant for Isaac was made before either was born.

As if God wouldn’t know both were coming. Lizzie was not satisfied, but she let the matter drop. If she quarreled with the Sunday-school teacher, her parents were bound to learn of it. Sunday school is not a place for questions, her mother would say. It was, instead, a training in unquestioning faith.

But what Lizzie had really meant was, Why does
Ishmael matter so much less to Abraham? She knew all children were precious to God.

This morning, the Reverend Pilchner reminded them that the sacrifice God suggested to Abraham was the one God would actually make. In fact, the mountain in Moriah where Abraham’s son had been spared was very close to the place where Christ was crucified. The sacrifice of a child, then, was something God asked only of Himself. It was beyond man and meant to be so, which interpretation helped Lizzie like the story a great deal better.

The fine weather of the weekend persisted into Monday. Lizzie took the streetcar to the Annie Street entrance with its fine marble walls. She had decided on a two-o’clock arrival as a test of Mr. Finney’s patience. She couldn’t help hoping he wouldn’t pass.

Light spilled into the Grand Court through the dome; sunlight, but sieved softer and more golden by the amber glass. The setting was one of opulence: purple tablecloths, silver sugar dishes, vases of cut crystal. The acoustics of the Grand Court were designed for privacy. Hushed conversations bubbled through the room, indistinct, but various as birdsong. Lizzie was unlikely to enjoy the social aspects of the occasion, so she took a deliberate moment’s pleasure in the setting. She didn’t often get to the Grand Court, where deals were made and men undone over cocktails.

Mr. Finney was waiting for her. He rose. She had never seen him so nicely dressed. Although his shirt was still a coarse linen, frayed at the cuffs, and his dress coat
was thready at the elbows, there was nothing in this to reproach. On the contrary, a gentleman showed good taste by never dressing above his income.

“I’m having champagne,” he said. “I’ll get you a glass.”

Lizzie turned to the waiter, a white man; the colored waiters had never been rehired. “I’ll have a cup of tea. And a sandwich, please. Whatever you recommend.”

He withdrew at once, and Lizzie and Mr. Finney looked at each other across the table. “Mr. Finney,” she said straight off. She wanted no inconsequential pleasantries, nothing that would prolong the meeting. “I need you to tell me the identity of Jenny’s mother. And anything else that would help me locate her. I’m determined to see them reunited.”

“Right to it.” Mr. Finney smiled at her fondly. “You’re a businesslike woman. I admire that. I admire you more every time I see you. It’s the way you look, Miss Hayes. So proper and churchy, and all the time one of Mrs. Pleasant’s own. You do it to a turn.”

“Please honor my request,” Lizzie said. She struggled with her tone of voice, which somehow settled on lifeless.
One of Mrs. Pleasant’s own.
But why argue with such a man? Why argue with anyone? It was only appearances, after all, no truth to it.

He removed his glasses, rubbed them against his sleeve, and replaced them. She remembered leaning toward him to dab the grit from his eye, so close she could feel the intermittent warmth of his breathing.

“Well,” he said. “Right to it, then. It embarrasses me mightily to have to begin by admitting that bit about Jenny’s mother was a lie. I don’t know who she is. Need
drove me to it. Debts and creditors. I’m usually quite an honest man.”

“I’m sure,” said Lizzie. She stood, forcing him to stand as well. “Then we’ve nothing more to say.”

“But I
have
learned the name of the child’s father.”

They sat again. Mr. Finney was relaxed in his chair. He appeared as comfortable as if he were in his own dining room, sipping his champagne, gesturing with his free hand. “What’s that worth to you?”

He appeared to think it worth a lot. He so obviously thought himself in the position of advantage today. Lizzie noted this, and it made her anxious.

Her tea arrived, and her sandwich. She let the waiter withdraw, then took a small bite. Cold tongue. Chewing it helped calm her. She swallowed. “I imagine it’s worth a good deal more to the father than to me,” she said, casual and self-possessed. “Why not appeal to him?”

“Sadly, he’s dead.”

“Are there other relatives who might be made to feel their responsibility?”

“There are indeed.”

“Then go to them.”

“Look here,” said Mr. Finney. His aura of sincerity intensified. The air was thick as smoke with it. “I only want a fair cut. My information was hard come by. You were willing to pay me ten dollars just to leave the child alone. How much more valuable is this?” He took a pen from his pocket, called the waiter over and asked for a piece of paper. The hotel stationery was heavy and beautifully monogrammed.

“Now I’m writing the father’s name,” Mr. Finney
said. He folded the paper four times, creased it with his fingernail—his nails were splendidly clean—and set it between them on the purple table. It began to open immediately, like a flower.

Behind him, Lizzie saw Mrs. Hallis enter the Grand Court. She wore a hat all covered with seashells. Very
fin de siècle
and not very Methodist. But what unbelievable, dreadful luck. If Lizzie didn’t leave at once, she was about to be seen dining alone with a man, by the last person she would wish. She stood abruptly, forcing Mr. Finney to his feet again.

“I won’t pay you a cent,” she said. “I was never going to pay you.”

“We had an agreement.”

“Never.”

His face grew troubled. “Just read it, then,” he said. “I’ll trust to your fairness after. I know you can be trusted.”

Lizzie knew she should go. Instead she spoke. There was something here she couldn’t make sense of. “If the father was dead, and you didn’t know the mother, why did you try to adopt the girl? That first time you came to the Ark?” She didn’t have the nerve to ask him about the kidnap attempt. It seemed rude and, anyway, too easily denied.

“I knew Mrs. Pleasant was interested. I figured that meant money somewhere. Mrs. Pleasant is like a dowser when it comes to money.

“But I didn’t really plan to get the child. Miss Hayes, I’m a man who takes the long view, a man who thinks several steps ahead. If you can make something seem valuable, then people will pay just to keep it. I came so you’d pay me
later to stop coming. It looked an easy scam and I was desperate.

“I’m not so desperate now, and what I’ve got here is valuable. Hardly anyone knows about the child’s father. So far. If you’ll just read it…”

Lizzie looked down. The note had opened entirely, and lay on the table with her father’s name, Wellington Hayes, face up for anyone to see.

Lizzie’s mind jumped from her body to the mezzanine above them. Her mouth continued to work, but she could hardly hear what she said, being then so far away from her voice. “Is this a joke?” she asked. She might have spoken too loudly. The words arrived to her as if whispered, but two men at a nearby table turned to look. They were young men, and never would have noticed a woman of her age, so she must have been speaking too loudly.

Mr. Finney shook his head. If he’d smiled at her, if he’d patronized her in any way, or pitied her, or mocked her, she would have picked up the sugar bowl and struck him with it, careless of the spectacle.

She fantasized doing so. Clunk, clunk, clunk! His face remained impassive during the attack. His tone was mild. “Perhaps you’ll have that champagne, after all.”

Her mind reunited with her body; her good sense returned, and all her other faculties with it. They sat again and she whispered to him fiercely. “You’ll never make me believe this. First of all, the child could hardly look less like me.”

“And you’ve never seen two sisters, one blond, the other dark before? We even had a name for that when I was growing up—sister noon and sister night, we used to say. Mind you, these were cases when both parents were the
same. Or so we judged. The thing is that you can never know about the father for absolute certain. Even your own father, you can never be sure.”

“You’re not strengthening your case.”

“Your mother was dead. Men suffer from loneliness more than women. If you knew what that was like, you’d find it forgivable. You don’t strike me as an unforgiving woman.” He raised his glass to her and her forgiving nature. The bubbles careened through his champagne.