The Gilded Hour (17 page)

Before she could ask, Mr. Weeks said, “This here Bethel Tabernacle AME. The Reasons should be out any minute now.”

The doors opened as if commanded, and two young men in dark suits stepped aside to let the churchgoers come pouring out.

“Just in time,” the driver said.

Sophie understood that Weeksville was a colored neighborhood, but
still it was a surprise to see such a sea of faces and not find one white person among them. Odder still, it seemed that every pair of eyes was looking at her. It made her both less and more anxious, and heightened her irritation with herself. Of course people must look at her. She was a stranger, no matter the color of her skin.

People called out to Johnny Alger, but their eyes focused on her and stayed there. There were smiles and polite nods and curious looks and a few, it seemed, who wanted to stop but then moved on anyway, too uncertain to approach her.

Ten minutes must have passed and the crowd began to thin out, but Sophie saw no sign of Mr. Reason. Then Mr. Alger stood up so that the carriage rocked, and called to a boy who was coming down the church steps. “George! George Reason!”

He was about sixteen, just coming into his full height and still awkward, knobby joints as limber as a puppet’s. He stopped short of the cab, looked more closely at Sophie, and pulled his cap from his head to knead it.

The driver was saying, “Where’s your folks this morning?”

“Home,” George said. “Mary baby come along about sunrise. The women all too tired to listen to a sermon—”

“And the men too wound up,” the driver finished for him.

Clearing her throat, Sophie said, “It sounds as though this isn’t a good day for a visit—”

But George had already climbed up to sit next to the driver and they were off again, the conversation moving along without her.

•   •   •

T
HE
HOUSE
WAS
white clapboard with ivy-green shutters and a screened front porch. On one side was a garden in neat rows marked and sectioned off by string, and on the other a fenced yard was overrun with children.

The driver spoke a few words to his horse as they came to a stop.

“Are those all your—” Sophie stopped, and the boy grinned broadly at her uncertainty.

“Cousins, mostly,” he said. “My two little sisters are there if you look, up high in the climbing tree. There’s only about a half of us here today.”

“Enough Reasons to populate all of Brooklyn, one end to the other. Yes sir, reasons enough.” Mr. Alger grinned at his own wit.

From the other side of the house came the sound of a bell, and a woman’s voice calling the family to table. George swung down from the driver’s box, turned to offer a hand to Sophie, and waited while she paid Mr. Alger.

Sophie stood for a moment brushing at her skirt, adjusting her hat, and trying to calm her nerves. She thought of Aunt Quinlan, as she often did when courage failed her in such situations. Aunt Quinlan could go into any assembly, small or large, without hesitation or embarrassment, and talk to anyone. It was a skill Sophie had yet to acquire.

When she looked up, a familiar figure had appeared on the porch. Mr. Reason came toward her with a hand outstretched, smiling at her so openly that her breath caught in her throat.

“Dr. Savard,” he said, when she met him halfway. “I was wondering if you’d ever come. Welcome. Come on now and meet the family. I hope you’re hungry, because we got a ham the size of a small bear.”

“I
am
hungry,” Sophie said, as her stomach rumbled in agreement.

“Then come on. The whole family is looking forward to meeting you.”

•   •   •

F
ROM
THE
MOMENT
she stepped through Mr. Reason’s front door it was clear to Sophie that a quiet conversation would not be easy to achieve. Nobody could have a discussion in the middle of a gathering like this, people celebrating a new baby and—as she learned shortly—a wedding-to-be. Mr. Reason’s grandson Michael had brought his girl home with him to announce their engagement.

So Sophie let herself be propelled to the table that stretched from one room into another, given a place of honor next to Mrs. Reason, and plied with food and iced tea until she began to worry about belching in public. Through all that she was introduced, again and again, answering questions and asking her own, telling the story of Mr. Reason’s sprained ankle.

The Reasons had so many children and grandchildren and they were all so full of energy and curiosity that Sophie’s excellent memory was quickly overtaxed. She could only be glad that half the family was missing. More unusual than the size of the Reason family was the fact that so far she had counted two sets of twins and one set of triplets. When she remarked on this, everyone looked at Mr. Reason.

“I stuttered as a boy.” It clearly was a set piece, because the whole room erupted into a chiding laughter.

When the table had been cleared and the younger family members were bringing in pies and coffee, Mrs. Reason leaned closer to Sophie. “I’m so glad you finally found your way over here to see us,” she said. “But am I right in thinking you have some business to discuss with my husband?”

Sophie nodded.

“Are you in a hurry to get back to the city?”

“Not a hurry,” Sophie said. “But before dusk.”

“Well, then,” Mrs. Reason said. “We’ll have us some pie, and then I’d like you to come meet my newest grandbaby and her mama, my youngest daughter.”

The invitation was not for Sophie as a physician or a midwife, but because Mrs. Reason considered her a family friend. It was such an unusual turn of events that Sophie was confused for a single instant, and then she smiled. She said, “I like pie and I would love to meet your daughter.”

As if Mrs. Reason had snapped her fingers to make it so, the men disappeared and Sophie spent the rest of the afternoon with daughters, daughters-in-law, granddaughters, and small children of both sexes, all of them talking to each other and to Sophie. The littlest were too shy to approach her but sent coy looks and grins. When the little girls got carried away, a look from their grandmother was enough to calm them down, but Mrs. Reason’s daughters-in-law were not so easily subdued. They teased each other to the point of helpless laughter and stamping feet and mock outrage.

Althea was the second youngest of Mrs. Reason’s children. “I about gave up hope for a girl,” Mrs. Reason said. “Already had my first grandbabies when Althea and Mary came along, the last set of twins. After that I was done.”

“She saved the best for last.” Althea snagged one of her sons to wipe his face, holding on to the squirming five-year-old with one arm and wielding her handkerchief with the other.

A knock at the door brought the news that the new mother was awake. Every one of the women would have stampeded to get to her first, but Mrs. Reason had seen that coming and forestalled it by putting herself in the doorway. “All y’all have to wait your turn,” she said. “I’m taking Miss Sophie in now.”

“And me,” Althea said, giving her mother a look that dared her to disagree.

•   •   •

I
N
A
SUNNY
bedroom that looked out over the fallow garden, Althea leaned over her sister to examine the sleeping baby’s face.

“Ten grandsons,” Althea said to Mary, “and you had to break stride.”

“About time, too,” Mrs. Reason said, coming around the other side of the bed to get closer. “Girl babies do dawdle along in this family.” With sure hands she scooped the bundled newborn up to cradle her against a substantial bosom. “Come look at what Mary made,” she said to Sophie. “Look at this beautiful child.”

Sophie observed closely, both new mother and baby, and saw no signs of distress or trouble. Mrs. Reason’s youngest daughter was a healthy woman, exhausted but satisfied with herself and her place in this world.

“What are you going to name her?” Sophie asked.

“Mason and me, we’re still talking about that,” Mary said. She tore her gaze away from the child in her mother’s arms and smiled at Sophie. “You’re a doctor. You catch a lot of babies?”

“At least a couple times a week,” Sophie said. “But I also treat women and children more generally.”

“Didn’t even know there was colored woman doctors.”

“More of us every year,” Sophie said. “Maybe your daughter will be one too.”

Mary looked directly startled at the idea, and then amused. “Could be,” she said. “No children of your own yet?”

“I’m not married.”

“You got to find a man with character enough to take pride in an educated wife,” Althea said. “That’s what Mama always told me.” She looked at her mother and grinned. “And that’s what I did.”

“Althea taught school before her boys come along,” Mrs. Reason told Sophie.

The baby began to fuss and Mary sat up against the pillows and gestured for her.

“You have a beautiful daughter,” Sophie said. And to Mrs. Reason: “I need to think about getting back to the ferry.”

“Come look at my garden first,” she said. “The weather is just too beautiful to stay inside all day. While we’re doing that I’ll ask Mr. Reason to bring the carriage around.”

•   •   •

“T
HERE
’
S
NOT
MUCH
to see yet.” Mrs. Reason opened the gate into a large kitchen garden and then closed it behind them. “But I wanted a few minutes alone with you.”

Sophie said, “I so much appreciate your hospitality and warm welcome.” She spoke the truth, but the words sounded overly formal to her own ear. Mrs. Reason seemed not to notice, her attention turned inward. Sophie wondered if she had something more serious and personal to ask and began to compose her face into the expression that was meant to tell a woman that she was listening closely, and hearing.

“Have you ever thought about leaving Manhattan?”

Before Sophie could even begin to answer, she went on. “I realize it’s been your home since the war and you have a practice there, but just imagine. Imagine what you could do for Weeksville. And I can promise you this, nobody will ever begrudge you your title or the respect you’re owed.”

In her surprise Sophie startled. “How did you know that?” And then, more quietly, “Of course you know.”

Mrs. Reason was a woman of color who had lived in the north since before the War between the States. She had been here during the draft riots, and that was likely not the worst she had seen.

She said, “Is that why you and Mr. Reason settled here? To be among your own people?”

“That was a good part of it,” Mrs. Reason said. “Weeksville is a little bit like home, like New Orleans. We are left mostly to ourselves and there’s not much need to trade with white folk. We’ve got pretty much everything we need: lawyers, music teachers, tailors, a cobbler, carpenters and masons, nurses and midwives, too. It’s our place. It could be your place.”

She stood abruptly at the sound of a carriage. “I know I’ve given you a lot to think about. Will you do that?”

Sophie thought of home, of Aunt Quinlan’s sweet face and of Anna’s, curious and laughing and fierce by turns. She thought of the garden there and of Cap, the summer day he had caught her up against the pergola trellis, heavy with sweet jasmine, sugar in the air itself, and kissed her. The
surprise of it. The soft touch of his mouth and the rough prickle of his cheek, the tripling pulse at the base of his throat, and how right and good it had been.

“I love my family,” she told Mrs. Reason. “That’s where I belong. For the time being, at least.”

•   •   •

T
HE
JOURNEY
BACK
to the ferry was far too short for Sophie to hesitate about what she had to say, and so she told Mr. Reason about Comstock’s determination to prosecute female physicians associated with Dr. Garrison.

“By extension this is a threat to you,” she said. “Because I recommended your services to Dr. Garrison. He is not above entrapment and spying to lay his hands on a target. You must be alert.”

When he glanced at her Mr. Reason’s expression was calm, without even a hint of surprise.

“It’s good of you to come so far to tell me about this. But do you really think there’s a threat?”

“Yes,” Sophie said. “I’m sorry to say, I think there’s a threat. He has ruined businessmen for the challenge of it, and sent good doctors to prison. He takes satisfaction in such things. I had to come tell you in person because he monitors the mails.”

After a moment he said, “There’s no way you would know this, but I retired shortly after we met, the day of my accident. My eldest grandson took over the business. You didn’t meet Sam today; he spent this last week in Savannah. Should be home tomorrow.”

“Well,” Sophie said, oddly deflated. “Could you possibly tell him about all this?”

“Or you could come out to dinner next Sunday, tell him yourself.”

She grinned at him. “I can try to do that. But in the meantime—”

“Of course,” Mr. Reason said. “And let me promise you one more thing. If you need help of any kind, send word. You can send a message to the law offices of Levi Jackson; he’ll see it gets to me. There’s a whole world of help over here in Weeksville. Will you remember that?”

Sophie wondered how such a thing could be forgotten.

•   •   •

I
N
THE
CAB
that took her from the ferry to Waverly Place, Sophie dozed, slipping in and out of quicksilver dreams. She was in Brooklyn and New
Orleans, in Mrs. Campbell’s austere kitchen, in the lecture hall where she had realized that yes, she wanted to be, she would be a doctor. She was a doctor. Tomorrow she would spend most of her day at the Foundling Hospital, where the nursing sisters took in infants who were too sick to save, and others that Sophie would treat. Some she would send on, to orphan asylums or back to their families. She could close her eyes and see many of those faces. They came to her in all colors. They came to her for help.

J
ACK
M
EZZANOTTE
FOUND
a bench in Washington Square Park and sat down to wait until three o’clock, when he could knock on Anna Savard’s door without looking like a smitten schoolboy. The sun was warm on his face and he was bone tired, but he was not so short on sleep that he would shock the neighborhood by dozing in public. A patrolman was sure to pass by and then he’d never hear the end of it.

Two nursery maids came to a stop to talk, both of them rocking their carriages to keep their charges quiet while they sent quick sidelong glances in his direction. Jack picked up his newspaper and hid behind it. There was a surplus of spinsters in the city, the long-term effects of the war still in evidence. So many young women without hope of families of their own. They made him think of his sisters, which in turn made him sad.

Thinking about Anna Savard, by comparison, didn’t make him sad. He certainly spent too much time thinking about her. An educated woman of strong opinions, self-sufficient. The nursemaids—pretty, educated to the point that they could read and write, keep track of household accounts, do needlework and mending, with families and reputations good enough to gain employment looking after the children of the wealthiest families—they were more likely to marry than Anna or Sophie Savard. Or than his own sisters.

With that thought he caught sight of Anna headed his way. She had turned into the park from Fifth Avenue, walking quickly so that her skirts swirled around the toes of her boots and the edge of her cape—a deep evergreen color—kicked up with every step. Jack wondered if she was wearing split skirts today, as she had the first time he saw her in that church basement, locking horns with Sister Ignatia. He wondered if the hair she had coiled at the back of her head would curl once released from its pins.

She didn’t see him sitting there and would have passed without taking any note.

“Pardon me, Dr. Savard.”

She turned on point, alert, her frown shifting to surprise. “Detective Sergeant Mezzanotte. What are you doing here?”

He gestured to the bench. “Sitting. In the sunshine.”

She looked up at the clock in the university tower. Her walk had put high color into her cheeks and at the very tip of her nose.

Jack said, “It’s about half past two. You aren’t late.” And at her puzzled expression. “We have an appointment at three; did you forget?”

He waited until she took a seat on the very edge of the bench and folded her hands in her lap. She wore gloves embroidered with ivy.

“Is that your work?” He gestured to her gloves.

She frowned, not understanding him.

“The embroidery.”

“No. You’re interested in embroidery?”

“Only because I see so much of it. Both my sisters embroider, for various churches and for some well-to-do ladies who have less time or inclination.”

She lifted a shoulder, almost apologetically. “The only kind of sewing I do is very different. You have two sisters?”

“And five brothers. And you?”

“I had an older brother, but he died when I was young. Now I have Sophie. And Cap.”

She looked away into the depths of the park. Her eyes were the color of tarnished copper, tawny browns shot through with green.

“I’m sorry about your friend Mr. Verhoeven,” Jack said.

There was a small silence. “Thank you,” she said finally. And: “You have news about the Russo boys?”

“No,” Jack said. “But there is someone to interview who might be of help. If you care to join me.”

Her eyebrows lifted ever so slightly. “Today? Now?”

“Unless you have other appointments.”

She seemed to bristle a little, as though she disliked the idea of being waited for. “Close enough to walk?”

“A half hour, at a reasonable pace.”

She got up, and so did he.

“I’ll take your bag,” he said, but she swung it away from him.

“Peremptory of you, wouldn’t you say?”

She was in a prickly mood. He looked forward to this walk.

•   •   •

T
HEY
MADE
THEIR
way along the park to Greenwich Lane and then north, through neighborhoods of small houses and tenements. On this warm spring afternoon people had come out to sit in the sun on their stoops, grandmothers and children just walking, invalids and cripples, war veterans too numerous to count. A toddler lurched up and down the sidewalk with an older sister close behind.

A group of young girls were playing skully, stopping just long enough for Jack and Anna to pass by. As they approached a vacant lot, a whole pack of young boys came racing onto the sidewalk. In the middle of the group a grinning boy held a bloody pocketknife up, waving it like a trophy. He was limping, but his expression was pure victory.

Anna took in the details automatically: he was filthy from playing in the dirt, but he looked well nourished, and more important, he looked like a boy with no worries beyond the next challenge to his status as victor. No doubt he didn’t even feel the wound on his foot.

“Oh dear,” Anna said. “Mumblety-peg.”

Jack laughed. “You don’t approve.”

“Do you know of any woman who does? There’s something wrong with a game that you can win by pinning your foot to the ground with a dirty pocketknife.”

“That’s not the only way to win.”

She looked at him sharply. “Did you play mumblety-peg with your brothers?”

“We still do, now and then.”

She stopped, her mouth falling open.

“Boys bloody themselves,” he said. “One way or the other.”

“Yes,” Anna said grumpily. “And they lose toes on occasion, too. I’ve sewn up more than a few lacerated feet over the last few years.”

They walked in silence for a long minute. Jack had decided that discretion was the better part of valor and was declining to argue the merits of this particular game.

“The world is a dangerous place for children,” she said finally. “As we both know too well. Those boys were just Tonino Russo’s age.”

Jack said, “Let’s hope Tonino has nothing more dangerous than a game of mumblety-peg to deal with.”

Another longer silence, in which they both remembered that they might never know what became of Tonino or his brother.

“You know,” Anna said, “Rosa cries herself to sleep, but she’s very careful to present a calm face to the world. She doesn’t even ask about the letters Sophie and I have written, or the list of places we’re putting together to visit. The only thing that’s keeping her from breaking down is Lia. For Lia she puts on a brave show.”

“And you?”

“I’m not much of an actress, but then I don’t spend very much time with them. Margaret and Mrs. Lee and Aunt Quinlan deal with the day by day, and all of them have vast experience with orphaned children. Sophie and I are prime examples.”

He was studying the sidewalk, it seemed to Anna. Trying to find something to say. She hoped he would realize that she would not want or need sympathy.

“Rosa said something to you about your brother, back in Hoboken. I’ve been thinking about it ever since.”

Anna kept her silence, and he took this as permission to go on. “She said that your brother failed you, and you agreed.”

“Did I,” Anna said. Her voice caught a little, but he seemed determined to go on.

“What I was wondering was, has anyone else ever said as much to you? That your brother failed you?”

“No,” Anna said. “Of course not. My brother was a West Point graduate. He was an army officer, and he did his duty. He was proud to do his duty. For that he deserves respect.”

After a moment she glanced at Jack and saw an expression she didn’t really understand. Not pity, she was fairly certain. Uncertainty, reservation, confusion. She was struck quite suddenly with an almost overwhelming fear: he would ask questions now, questions she didn’t want to think about, much less answer.

An ambulance came rattling past them, pulling up to the portico at St. Vincent’s, just ahead. Anna picked up her pace a little.

Just that simply the conversation slipped away.

•   •   •

J
ACK
SAID
, “D
OES
it make you curious, the ambulance?”

She seemed surprised by the question. “You mean professional curiosity, I suppose. Is that how you feel when you see an arrest being made?” And without waiting for his answer she went on.

“I wouldn’t call it curiosity, but a kind of awareness, a tensing. After a while you can gauge the situation by the way the ambulance drivers move and by their voices. My guess is that this isn’t a very serious case, so no. I’m not interested enough to interfere.”

She had been easy with him, until they started talking about the Russo boys and then, by extension, her brother. He wished now that he had waited for another time to ask questions. She intrigued him, she surprised him. She went on surprising him while very little seemed to surprise her. But she was not without scars, ones she had no intention of showing or even, he realized now, acknowledging, even to herself.

She said, “Do you think that a woman wouldn’t be able to cope with the realities of the work you do?”

This tone he understood; she was irritated and willing to let him know that.

“Your sensibilities don’t strike me as fragile,” he said. “So let me tell you about yesterday morning. A cobbler with a business on Taylor Street killed his wife. He is more than seventy, she was less than thirty.”

She seemed to be interested. “Jealousy?”

“Italians make an art of it. So we got the call and went out, but the cobbler disappeared before we got there. We spent most of the day looking for him and were about to give up—it was just getting dark—when he walked past me. This was in the Italian colony in Brooklyn. It’s not hard to disappear for a few days at a time over there.”

Anna said, “You recognized the cobbler?”

“I had a description—short, bald, a gray mustache—”

“That must describe hundreds of men. You’re smiling. Is there a joke here somewhere?”

Jack rubbed the corner of his mouth with a knuckle. “Not a joke, but maybe a bit of a secret weapon. I’ll tell you how I caught him: I asked him a question.”

She made a gesture with her hand, impatient for him to go on.

“I was standing on the corner when he walked past me. He fit the description so I said, ‘Hey, Giacalone!’ and he stopped and turned. Then I said, ‘So why did you kill your wife?’ He told me, and I arrested him. End of story.”

She had stopped and was looking at him the same way he might look at a pickpocket with a dodgy alibi. “Why would he do that? Just because you used his name?”

“Don’t you turn when somebody calls your name?”

“Yes, probably. But I wouldn’t confess to a crime on that basis. There must be something more to it.”

She liked puzzles, clearly, and would ask questions until she got to the bottom of things.

“Yes, there was more to it. I said it in his language.”

“You spoke Italian.”

“Sicilian.”

“They don’t speak Italian in Sicily?”

“The Italians in Sicily do. The Sicilians do not. I can see you don’t believe me, but it’s true.”

“Say it for me. First in Italian and then Sicilian.”

“A command performance,” Jack said, giving her an exaggerated bow from the shoulders. “‘
Perchè hai ammazzato la tua donna?
’ would be a colloquial, friendly Italian. ‘
Picchì a ttò mugghieri l’ammazzasti?
’ is Sicilian. Or one kind of Sicilian.”

They walked on, and he could almost hear her thinking, looking for flaws in his story.

“There is more than one Sicilian language?”

“Dozens of dialects of Sicilian. Hundreds of dialects of Italian.”

“How is it you speak Sicilian?”

“I don’t, really. I just have a collection of sentences at the ready.”

Her mouth contorted as if she were repressing a smile. “Do tell.”

“‘Why did you kill your wife—or friend, or neighbor?’ ‘What did you do with the money you took?’—that kind of thing.”

“Are Sicilians responsible for most of the crime?”

“Oh, no,” Jack said. “Which is why I know how to say those crucial sentences in more than one kind of Italian.”

She was quiet for a full minute. “Detective Sergeant Mezzanotte,” she said a little huffily, “I think you’re pulling my leg.”

“Test me, then, if you don’t believe me.”

“All right. Florence.” She said it as if she knew for a fact that the men of Florence would never kill their wives.

He smiled openly at that.
“‘O perché tu ha’ammazzaho la tu’ moglie?’”

She pressed her lips together while she thought. “Of course I have no way of knowing if that’s right. You could be making it up out of whole cloth.”

He laughed, and very deftly took her hand and hooked it through his crooked arm.

“Your claim,” she began after a long pause, “is that this man was so taken by surprise to find a countryman that he let his guard down.”

“Something like that.”

“I find it hard to imagine.”

“If you found yourself on the other side of the world in a country where you were disliked and distrusted on sight and you didn’t speak the language—”