The Celestials (20 page)

Sampson had spent the day, as many people do when they believe themselves betrayed by loved ones, feeling hurt and inflicting hurt. He had not been able to move his wife from her insistence that the child was his. He had spent the morning trying to catalog the one hundred fifty boys in the factory and realizing that he was acquainted with their faces almost not at all and their names even less. He found himself by the late afternoon a creature pacing a wall of bars.

Could he interview the boys one by one? Could he look at them and know? He examined the infant girl in her various states of quietude and squall. Would her features be apparent in her maker's?

He had, by the time Homer was pegging the same shoe for the third time, struck upon an idea that he felt held promise, and he spread before Julia the photo albums of Sampson's Boys on the card table, eliminating the twenty-two boys who had arrived most recently.

He realized with embarrassment that he disguised as anger that he had not a clue which of these boys were her students. And that her teaching of them had been his idea in the first place. He insisted that it was her duty to him and to God to tell him all that she knew.

The more her husband spoke, the more Julia wept.

She held the baby up to him. “She's my child,” she said. “After all these years,
my
child.”

He could barely understand her, her crying was so violent.

She pressed the infant bundle against his belly. “Please,” she said again. “Can't you love her for that?”

It seemed to him that no matter how he answered, there would be his life before this day and his life after, and he knew not how to reconcile the two.

Old and in need of the support of two grandsons, who were youthful and impatient on each side of their fragile grandfather, Homer Handley would be one of the many attendees at the Sampson funeral on a Sunday afternoon in October 1893, though he would not attend the reception. He had not, of course, been invited, but even if he had, he would have instructed his grandsons to take him home. His purpose was to honor the man by seeing him laid to rest, not to share the passing with others. Who knew why he'd felt so attached to this man for so long? And when his grandsons had delivered him home, and his wife teased him gently by asking if all had gone well at the funeral of his dear friend, all he would say in response was that he had thought it pleasing to see so many folks of so many stripes. His wife would cup his cheek as she had been doing for some thirty-plus years, and he would reach up to return the gesture.

But by the end of that working day, the thunder and lightning had begun and Emmett Fletcher was predicting hail. It had been a long and anxious day, and the hot storm wind, the flip-flopping of the leaves, revealing their silvery undersides like thrashing fish, and the smell of water in the air made Homer long for home and his wife. They would drink cold lemonade and watch the storm from their porch, counting the seconds from lightning to thunder to know how far they were from the eye.

And then he glanced to the Chinamen's side of the room and noted that the foreman was back, wearing Western work clothes and sporting a new haircut of the oddest design. The other workers were gathered around him in a mass alive with fear and ignorance, righteousness and anger. Homer felt as he imagined his terrier to feel on the days when the dog watched the humans pack up for an outing:
Who knows how long this may last, but nothing good can come of it
.

Chapter Eleven

It seemed to Charlie that he did nothing in the days following Julia's return home but negotiate and mollify. Even for a man with his abilities, the demands he encountered were a challenge. When had he ever imagined himself having to explain a situation such as this one? He professed ignorance. He promised investigation. He counseled patience and loyalty and suggested that idle speculation could do no good. On his return from the South Adams studio he had had to field dismay and upset about his haircut, and to put an end to their sense of betrayal, he had doled out their salaries, adding a little extra for each man from his own share, telling them it was a bonus from Sampson himself. He had charged them with living up to the high regard in which their employer held them.

Sampson didn't return to the factory for the remainder of that week, and Charlie was glad of it. His growing intimacy with Julia had not meant a change in the opinions he
held of Sampson. He never spoke ill of the man to others, never thought ill of him in his own mind. In fact, it was rare for him to think of Julia as another man's wife; she seemed so much her own person, and his relationship with her so much its own place, inhabited only by the two of them. He had felt, falling in love with her, as if they had discovered a door in the familiar earth leading to another country where nothing was anything they knew.

She, he knew, did not always feel this way. And it was by way of her sadness at her betrayal of her husband that Charlie found his own guilt. Her heavy heart filled his with the same weight. He came to think of it as more evidence of their love. Now he saw Sampson not just as a model for his aspirations, but as Julia's husband, someone who would care a great deal about Charlie's feelings for his wife. He understood this so acutely that he marveled that he had not felt it before. He hadn't even seen with any clarity the sort of future they might have together.

Presently, however, their years ahead were his only concern. Even the unrest among the workers could not take his mind from its one task: a life with Julia and their baby. And why not? Why couldn't anyone's life be his own?

And so as soon as the factory's machines had been quieted for the week and as soon as he could extricate himself from his charges, he headed to the Wilson House, the portrait in its stiff envelope in his breast pocket like armor for the heart.

His hair was slick with Macassar oil, his recently purchased navy-blue worsted suit was pressed, his collar starched, and his tie pinned with a delicate clip of jade and
gold. In a small sack, he carried offerings for the baby. He had no idea what Americans brought as gifts for the newly born, so he relied on Chinese tradition. He was ignorant of the child's name. He didn't even know if it was a boy or a girl. A wavelet of sadness broke across his chest.

As he walked, he fingered the items in his pocket: For a rich, healthy life, coins tied together with red string. For protection against the demons who steal young children to reinforce the foundations of bridges, a tiny arrow he had carved from wood. To give the baby's head a proper shape, a little pillow filled with rice. His stitching was clumsy, but he had used a piece of silk from a head scarf of his mother's, and he hoped that Julia would forgive the handiwork in favor of the sentiment behind it.

He nearly collided with Sampson on the way through the Wilson House's front doors.

Sampson's jacket was unbuttoned, his collar askew, yet even so, the man was better dressed than Charlie could ever be. Sampson's face registered no recognition and then he looked as if he might laugh. Charlie thought that if he did, he would strike him. But Sampson only grasped him by the shoulders and pulled him into the front hall. “Sing,” he said. “Just the man. Do you have a minute?”

Charlie thought about saying no. He remembered years ago, as a child, what a revelation it had been to realize that when his parents summoned him, he need not answer.

“Of course,” Charlie said, allowing himself to be led to one of the reading rooms off the lobby. For this man he would always have a minute.

They seated themselves in armchairs that promised more comfort than they delivered. Other than Morris Kronick, the hotel's thirteen-year-old Jewish errand boy, they were alone, and the boy was asleep, his hands tucked under his arms as if for warmth.

Sampson modulated his voice not at all. He had two things to ask. Perhaps Charlie had already heard the news of Mrs. Sampson's return. Perhaps he had heard more. It was actually of no mind what Charlie had heard or from whom, since it should have been clear to the foreman by now that the only version of events that mattered was Sampson's own. Here was the situation as he understood it, and as he hoped Charlie would as well: his wife had brought with her from Michigan an infant girl.

A girl
, Charlie thought. He felt no disappointment that the child was not a boy.
Our daughter
, he thought.

Despite her protestations to the contrary, Sampson went on, it was clear to him, and would be to Charlie, that the girl was some share Celestial. He needed Charlie's help.

At this, Charlie's heart rippled like a cloth spread across a wide table. He had always had this reaction to men of power asking for aid. There was something lovely and exciting about their petitions, like a praying mantis bowing before his mate.

Sampson seemed to hold no embarrassment at making this request, and though the foreman would have liked to believe that what accounted for this was Sampson's belief that they were equals, he knew the opposite to be the more likely explanation.

“I must have the father's name,” Sampson said. “And I must have your help to achieve it.”

Charlie had a vision of pulling his calling card from his breast pocket and handing it to Sampson with a bow.

What did American men like Sampson do when so extremely confronted? Charlie's life had been devoted to nudging and ushering Americans into the positions he desired them to take, as if trying to push a bead of water across a table. The idea of direct confrontation was so foreign it was like the woods on the far bank of the river that had run along his hometown's edge.

Morris Kronick woke with a start, rearranged his limbs, and regarded them dully.

“I am here to help,” Charlie said, feeling the deception even more than usual. Had everything he had ever uttered been a lie?

Sampson appeared relieved. “I need you, of course, to think of your men, to think of anyone who . . .” Here he faltered, uneasy. His sad eyes swept the room. “Well, anyone with whom you think I might want to speak.”

“Yes, of course,” Charlie said, already filing through his workers' faces and names as though, if he looked carefully enough, another father would appear before him.

Sampson also needed his foreman, if it was not too forward a request, to speak to Mrs. Sampson. She had always liked Charlie. Perhaps even if she would not speak direct about the recent events, she would somehow allow Charlie access to rooms that she had so far kept hidden. At least from him, he added quietly, and Charlie had the urge to
cup the man's shoulder. He pushed at the sack of gifts for his daughter with his booted toe and assured his employer that he would do what he could. He would call on Mrs. Sampson at this very time.

“Oh, no,” Sampson said. “Not now. She is resting with the baby and says they are not to be disturbed.”

He looked as if he would speak further, and Charlie waited.

Sampson looked at the boy asleep again in the chair across the room. The sight seemed to sadden him anew. “She is changed since her return,” he said.

Charlie's gut flipped with worry and possibility. “I would think so,” he finally offered.

Sampson glanced up at him as if unsure whether the Celestial was, against all odds, employing humor. “No,” he said. “Not in the obvious ways. She is somehow more . . .” He appealed to Charlie helplessly.

Charlie had never seen him at such a loss. He found the situation unpleasant. “In China, they say new mothers are as the tiger.”

It was unclear whether Sampson understood what he meant. He again turned his face to Charlie. “I've really never seen anything like it,” he said.

And Charlie nodded as if his boss had unrolled before him a map to his wife's inner workings, a tidy scale in one corner, a compass indicating true north in another.

“What is the child's name?” Charlie asked quietly.

Sampson regarded him as if from a distance. He said nothing, unable, even in the context of this unprecedented
intimacy, to admit that it had not occurred to him to ask, or to her to offer.

Ida kept from Lucy and Alfred until the following Saturday evening, embarrassed at her outburst. Since Thursday last, she had felt her self to be the breaking wall of a dam. She'd been able to manage her days and restrain herself from speaking too loudly to shopkeepers or losing patience with children in the street. But her body had grown heavier each day as if, with full petticoats and skirt, she was wading farther into deep mud.

She tried to sort out what she knew from what she only thought she knew. Charlie and Mrs. Sampson were indeed faithful friends. Beyond that, she reminded herself, she knew nothing. She had no right to feel betrayed, and yet she did, her feelings sneaky trespassers on grounds she had thought well fenced. So she found herself climbing the front stairs of the Pearl Street tenement, hoping that the sight of her friend would deny any further mortification.

Lucy and Alfred sat on the small bench they used as a sofa, reading together a letter on the paper Ida recognized as belonging to the oldest Robinson cousin, still in their Virginia hometown. Neither of them seemed to have heard Ida's entry.

They laughed, leaning into each other's shoulders with an ease and affinity before they looked up.

“Oh, Ida,” Lucy said, her face filled with affection. “Now I am happy.”