The Forgotten Room (36 page)

S
EPTEMBER
1944

 

The reception desk nurse scowled at me as she held her hand over the telephone's receiver. “Dr. Schuyler, may I remind you that this phone is not intended for personal use?”

I resisted the urge to grab it from her and instead smiled. “I know, and I do apologize. But it must be an emergency for my friend to be calling me.”

“Let's just hope it is. I would hate to report you to Dr. Greeley.”

“Yes, let's hope it's an emergency.” My sarcasm went unappreciated as the nurse reluctantly handed me the phone, mouthing the words, “Be quick.”

“Margie? Is everything all right?”

“Everything's fine. But we're absolutely swamped here and two coworkers are out sick, so I'm it. I can't meet you at the park today for lunch.”

I felt more disappointed than I should. Margie had been my champion over the last month. She'd helped me write the first letter to Cooper, telling him I'd had a change of heart. She'd come up with the idea of using hospital stationery so if anyone else found the letter they would think it was official hospital business and not be tempted to open it. I'd written three letters, each one more revealing than the last, each addressed to his family home on Tradd Street where he'd grown up and where he now lived with his widowed mother.

Each week without a reply had left me more and more despondent, and I'd come to rely on Margie to keep my hopes and spirits up. But doubt had begun to splinter my initial resolution, each day seeming to dawn darker and darker.
Disappointment and regret.
At first Prunella's words had been my motivation, but as the weeks dragged on, I began to see them as my destiny.

I tried to put a smile in my voice. “I understand. Maybe Friday?”

“We'll see. But I still think you should go today. It's beautiful outside and the leaves in the park have started to turn. Sit on our usual bench and pretend I'm there. I promise you'll feel better once you get some sun on your face.”

“Sure,” I said. “Maybe I will.”

“Do it,” Margie commanded. “Let me play doctor for once.”

The nurse tapped her watch with exaggerated movements. “I've got to go. I'll call you . . .” The phone was ripped from my grasp before I could say good-bye.

I retrieved my lunch pail and pulled on a sweater before leaving the building. Margie was right. The weather had shed the heat and humidity of summer, allowing the first hint of autumn in the air, a crisp bite to the breeze that drifted from the park as I crossed Fifth Avenue. I felt marginally better when I found our bench empty and sat down, turning my face toward the sun. For a moment I could even forget the heaviness in my heart. But only for a moment.

From the corner of my eye I saw somebody approaching but didn't turn my head, expecting them to pass by. I closed my eyes, enjoying the warmth of the sun, and didn't open them even as I felt someone sit down on the other end of the bench. I'd grown up in the city and had learned to keep to myself, to not acknowledge strangers, even one sitting on the same bench.

I opened my eyes and focused on undoing the clasps on my lunch pail.

“Growin' up in South Carolina I was told that Yankee women all fell from the ugly tree, hitting each branch on their way down. But then I met you and learned that couldn't possibly be true.”

I stared hard at the smooth metal of my pail, wondering if I was dreaming and if I looked at the opposite end of the bench there would be no one there. But there was only one way to find out.

Slowly, I turned my head. Cooper, in civilian clothes, sat back on the bench, one long leg casually crossed over the other, an elbow propped on the bench's back. His fedora was pushed back on his forehead so I could see his eyes. “Hello, Kate.”

Forgetting my lunch pail on my lap, I stood, barely noticing the clatter it made as it hit the ground, my apple rolling to my feet. He stood, too, leaving his fedora on the bench so I could see his dark hair, longer now, curling slightly around his ears.

“What are you doing here?” I didn't like the way that sounded, but I couldn't think of anything else to say.

He grinned. “Margie told me you'd be here.”

I shook my head. “That's not what I meant. Why are you here, in New York?”

“Because I read your letters. All of them. I would have come sooner but I had business to take care of.”

“Caroline?”

He nodded. “It's over. It was over even before I received your first letter. I told her I couldn't marry another woman knowing I loved someone else. Even if that woman said she didn't love me and I thought I'd never see her again.”

He paused, allowing his words to sink in.

“I allowed her to end the engagement to save her dignity. She's already seeing someone else.”

I took a step forward. “There's so much I need to tell you.”

“Not yet,” he said, crossing the space between us and wrapping me in his arms. His kiss was new yet familiar, tender yet searching, and as my fingers threaded their way through his hair it was as if the past ceased to exist, the present shimmering at our feet along with the fallen leaves.

He held my head gently in his hands and pressed his forehead against mine. “I love you, Kate. I don't want to live my life without you. We can live here or in Charleston or in Timbuktu; I don't care as long as we're together. You can be a doctor and I can own an art gallery anywhere. Just tell me that you want to be with me.”

“Yes,” I whispered. Then, “Yes!” I shouted. “I love you, Cooper Ravenel, and I will follow you to the ends of the earth.”

An elderly couple walked by, their hands clutched between them. The old man winked as they passed, giving his wife a peck on the cheek.

Cooper's eyes became serious as he studied my face. “I figured out why our parents didn't marry. There was something about that letter from my father to your mother that kept bothering me until I finally realized what it was. The date on the letter. He wrote it in 1920.”

I raised my eyebrows, wondering at the significance.

“My parents were married in 1917, and I was born in 1918.”

I felt my lips form a perfect
O
. “Well, that certainly explains . . .”

My words stilled in my mouth as Cooper took my left hand and slipped a ring on my third finger. It was the ring bought for my grandmother, Olive, by the love of her life, and then forgotten for more than fifty years, hidden in the dark where no light could reach the heart of the brilliant stone and make it shine. It glittered on my finger in the bright sunshine, filled with promises and possibilities.

Cooper kissed me again as a strong breeze rustled the leaves on the path, tumbling them around our feet and sending more raining down on us from the trees above. I looked up at the scuttling clouds in the autumn sky. “Do you believe in fate?” I asked.

“Maybe. Or perhaps the eternal persistence of love.” His lips smiled against mine. “Or maybe it was just Margie. She's very persuasive.”

I laughed, then stood on my toes to kiss him this time, my grateful arms holding him tightly. The sounds of the city swarmed around us as life marched on in this corner of the world, where glorious old mansions peered down into the streets, where nothing and everything changed, and where star-crossed lovers had finally found each other in a house on Sixty-ninth Street, in a forgotten room at the top of the stairs.

N
EW
Y
EAR'S
E
VE 1893

Harry

To his surprise, the room looked exactly the same. Maybe the auction company hadn't bothered with the worthless scraps of furniture up here; maybe nobody had even ventured up the stairs. There was the Chinese cabinet, probably still filled with his drawings; there was the easel, tilting slightly to one side. The battered chaise longue, still covered in disreputable old velvet; the sheepskin rug, right there in the middle of the floor, scattered with cushions . . . well, he looked away from that. There was only so much nostalgia a fellow could take.

The thing was, he hadn't planned to come up here at all. He was going to let it all lie. If the newspapers were telling the truth, his father had gotten no more than he deserved, losing his fortune after the usual kind of Wall Street skullduggery, in which you tried to cover up your losses and ended up making them worse, dragging down a few thousand innocent middle-class shareholders and a bank or two along with you. Prunella? She could take care of herself, no doubt about that. Gus—poor bastard—Gus was dead.

And Olive was still married; there was nothing an honorable man—and Harry liked to think he had a streak of decency left, despite everything—nothing he could do about that.

She had a daughter. The Pinkerton man had sent him a note last month. The little girl had been born right above the bakery on the day after Thanksgiving, and they had named her Lucy. Harry had read the note and said a prayer for mother and daughter, and he had tossed the paper into the kitchen fire and watched it burn. He had closed his eyes and pictured Olive holding a baby girl to her breast, a baby girl who wasn't his, and his heart had hurt so much, he thought maybe he was having an attack.
Somebody save me.
Maria had come in and asked him what in the name of the holy blessed Virgin he thought he was doing, staring into the fire like that.
Nothing,
he said. She said was there anything she could do, and he didn't say another word, just turned around and took her to bed right then and there, kept her there most of the afternoon, and on Christmas Day she told him she was pregnant, señor.
Feliz Navidad.

He was on the boat the next morning, heading to Miami and the train for New York.

Now here he was, and nothing had changed, and everything had changed. Nobody lived here anymore; nobody lay with somebody on that sheepskin rug and went to heaven. Nobody danced around the ballroom in silks and jewels; nobody sketched anybody's beautiful pale breasts in the lamplight. Nobody lived and loved and wept. Just furniture, and memories.

God, the memories.

He'd thought it would hurt, coming up here like this, looking around the place and thinking, inevitably, of everything that had happened. And sure enough, the memories had crashed down on him the way the waves hit the beach before a hurricane, one after the other, each one merging foamily into the next. Meeting Olive on the stairs, under the moon. Sketching Olive. Olive in her black dress and white pinafore apron, ducking around a corner. Olive lying like a nymph on the old velvet cushions, Harry kneeling above her, Olive
lifting her arms to draw him down, to wrap her legs around him and throw back her head as if she couldn't take any more, and then she did.

Olive's extraordinary face, her huge doe eyes, her spirit and her longing and her striving.

Olive gone.

That terrible morning. Waking up alone, hearing the commotion. Poor stupid Gus, carried half-dead into his room. Looking for Olive, desperate for Olive, more and more desperate. Her room tidy, her trunk gone.
Looks like she's done a flyer,
said the cook, shaking her head, and the housekeeper ran for the cabinet to count the silver.

Painting frantically, waiting for news, because there was nothing else he could do but paint.
Paint,
damn it. Pour his heart out onto that damned wall. And when they found her—this was how he imagined that moment, when she returned to him—he wouldn't say a word of recrimination, not a hint of reproach for breaking his heart. He would take her in his arms and show her the mural he'd made while she was gone. This is for you, Olive. This
is
you, Olive.

This is how much I love you, Olive Van Alan, daughter of my father's architect, the man who used to indulge my interest in drawing by showing me how to draft, and once told me about his brilliant daughter named Olive, the light of his life. Only you wouldn't trust me enough to tell me who you were. I waited and waited, because I wanted you to trust me enough. But you never did.

You ran off instead, and married the first man you met.

Hans Jungmann.

Harry patted his chest, reached into his jacket pocket, and produced that first report the Pinkerton agency had sent him. Jungmann's photograph lay inside. He'd looked at it only once, but it wasn't a face he could forget. Thick, round, smiling idiot head. Shoulders like an ox. Belly like Santa Claus. On the night of the tenth of January, a week and a half after Olive had risen from Harry's bed—well, such as it was—she'd let this fat German bastard roll on
top of her and make her his wife. After a little practice—Jungmann looked like the type who needed a little practice—they'd made a baby together.

That single blurred photograph had sent Harry flying down to Cuba and into the arms of so many women he couldn't actually remember them all, until he tired of promiscuity and settled into a kind of habit with beautiful Maria, who was kinder and more faithful than the rest, and also a very good cook. And now they had made a baby, too.
Estoy embarazada, señor.
Merry Christmas, Harry, you're going to be a father.

The old rush-seated chair still rested in its place near the easel. Harry sank down and leaned his forearms on his knees, staring at the folded letter in his hands. It was almost midnight now, and the year would be over. This unexpected year, that had turned out so vitally different from the one he had imagined, as he lay in Olive's arms twelve months ago and drifted into a happy sleep. They were supposed to go to Italy, they were supposed to share a run-down set of rooms in Florence or a shabby little villa in Fiesole, and this baby that Olive held to her breast was supposed to be his. He had actually bought the ring. He had planned it all out. He had meant to ask her to marry him just as the sun rose on the first day of the New Year. What a romantic fellow, the old Harry Pratt.

And this dream, it had been so close! A hairsbreadth away, a few minutes on a clock, an Olive who was perhaps a little less noble, or a little more sleepy, and he would be the father of Olive's child instead of Maria's.

Did Olive think about this, too? Was she awake right now, as he was, in some room above some bakery in Brooklyn? He closed his eyes, and he thought he could almost see her, sitting in a chair with a baby in her arms, and her fat German bastard husband snoring contentedly in the bed behind her.

Except that, for some reason, in this moment, sitting in this room stuffed with memories, while the same eternal moon poured through the skylight to pool on the floor before him, he felt no rancor toward this man. For the first time, he felt no resentment for Hans Jungmann, or for the baby he had made with Olive, the girl who should have been Harry's daughter. His chest still
hurt, but it was a warm kind of ache, and as he pictured the baby's tiny face, and Olive's exhausted arms, the ache turned into something else, something fulsome and tender and unending. Forgiveness. Love. The inexplicable certainty that, in a way, this child
did
belong to him. That she and Olive belonged to him, always, carried about in some chamber of his heart that would never close.

Harry opened his eyes. The familiar room assembled again before him. What had happened here was gone, and he couldn't have it back. Maybe he'd just been lucky to have it at all, even for a few weeks.

He turned his head to the wall that contained the fireplace. There was no fire, of course, but the ashes remained in a small and tired heap, hardened by the dampness of a year's neglect. His gaze rose to the mantel, and to the bricks above it.

During that first frantic week of 1893, he had slid the brick out of its place every day, sometimes twice a day, sometimes three times, hoping to find some message there from Olive. But the space remained empty and hopeless, and on that last day, when he had gathered up his paints and drawings, he hadn't even bothered to look. Too mad at her. Too mad at himself. Too mad at God.

Harry rose from his chair and walked toward the mantel. The brick slid out easily in his hand, just as it always had. A few motes of dust and mortar floated out into the air. He stuck his fingers inside and felt something hard and ridged against his fingertips.

For a moment, he closed his eyes and let his hand rest where it was. The way you might savor a rare glass of wine before taking the first sip, because you didn't want to rush these things. He'd learned that much from Olive, anyway. You didn't want to rush something that happened only once, and was gone.

He drew the object out.

She had wrapped it in a square of old velvet. Harry stuck the envelope under his arm and unfurled the ends, one by one, taking his time. A small folded note lay on top. He opened that first. His fingers shook a little.

Take this, in remembrance of one who will always love you.

And his eyes filled with tears, damn it, so that when he looked down at the miniature itself, he couldn't even see her. Couldn't see the rare and perfect details of her face, the expression in her eyes. But he didn't need to. He knew every brushstroke. He'd painted her himself, exactly as he wanted to remember her. Almost as if he knew he would need it one day.

Through the glass of the doors—or maybe it was the skylight—came a faint roar of delight.
Dong, dong,
sang the bell of a distant church spire. Fashionable St. James', probably, where his sister had married her prey, that tall blond man with the nice kid who always tagged along, hoping someone might give a damn.

Eighteen ninety-four. Time to move on.

Harry draped the velvet square back over the miniature and the folded note, and he placed them carefully into his inside jacket pocket. In the cavity above the mantel, he placed the Pinkerton report, and then, after an instant's hesitation, the scribbled notes he'd written to Olive but never sent. Maybe she would stop by one day and find them. You never knew.

He placed his two hands on the mantel and stood there a moment, contemplating the three terra-cotta squares—the crimson figure of Saint George, sword raised in triumph to the sky—until he couldn't stand it anymore and turned to the corner of the room, a few yards away.

He'd meant to throw it in the fireplace, but his arm had been more forgiving—or more sensible—than his furious head, and the little box had fallen in among the canvases stacked to the right, well away from the danger of the coals. At the time, he had thought about going to retrieve it, but instead he had gathered up his supplies and left the thing where it fell.

Now, as he moved the wooden frames aside, he thought it would be a miracle if the box was still there. He'd spent far more than he should, for a man planning to support a wife and mother-in-law abroad, and how could a small fortune like that remain unmolested, no matter how obscure its location?

But there it was, the little square box that had once contained all his earthly ambitions, wedged between a blank canvas and the plaster wall. He
bent down and picked it up and rotated it between his fingers. The velvet was still soft and new.

He didn't open it. He didn't think he could. He carried it to the fireplace and reached inside the cavity below Saint George, until his fingertips brushed against the wall, and he left the box there. At the very back, so you couldn't just see it there. You had to hunt for it. You had to want it badly.

He replaced the brick, which went in a little more stiffly than it came out, and turned to look over the room one last time.

In his haste, he hadn't taken everything. He'd left all his sketches of Olive in the Chinese cabinet, and all of his old painted canvases. Some of his paints and charcoals, too. Well, let them stay. Maybe the new owner would have some use for them.

He walked briskly to the door and hurried down the stairs, refusing to linger over the place where he had seen Olive's face for the first time, or that heavenly spot where he'd taken her against the wall because he, in the impatient lust of new love, couldn't possibly wait another second, and she—equally eager—had just about swallowed him up with her passion. (He remembered resting against her afterward, listening to the beat of her heart, taking her breath into his lungs, and thinking that he was the luckiest man in the world, that you couldn't connect with a human being any more perfectly than that. And sure enough, he'd been right.)

When he came to the fifth-floor landing, he paused.