The Girls with No Names Page 5

  Chapter Five

  Effie

  As spring became flush with warmer weather, we managed on Saturday afternoons to sneak into the gypsy camp without rousing suspicion. This was thanks in large part to our headmistress, Miss Chapin, announcing at assembly, “I will not tolerate my girls getting up to no good now that the weather is warming.” Low titters circled the auditorium. We all knew she meant fraternizing with the opposite sex will not be tolerated. “So...our traditional student outing to the athletic fields in Westchester on Saturdays will begin this week.”

  I wasn’t allowed to participate in athletics, but I swayed Daddy to let me go by promising to play a single game of tennis and rest the remaining time.

  Our train to Westchester left the station at 6:00 a.m., which left the morning for tennis—or in my case “resting,” which meant scribbling in my writing notebook—eating a picnic lunch with our classmates and arriving back in the city by 1:00 p.m. Luella and I decided it was safe, if we both stuck to our stories, to tell our parents the train arrived back at 5:00 p.m. Then we could take the elevated train to Dyckman Street and walk the rest of the way to the gypsy camp.

  I found comfort in Tray’s quiet company, in Marcella’s cooking, the children’s loud games and the evening songs. I’d never noticed before how quiet and empty our home was. Even when our parents were there, it felt lonely in comparison.

  Luella was happier than I’d ever seen her. She no longer grumbled about the possibility of summer camp, or leaving for Newport, or complained about ballet. At school, in the yellow-walled library, there was no more bemoaning the difficulty of the biology exam or Miss Spence’s ethics class. She didn’t even show the slightest interest when Suzie Trainer disappeared from school, with everyone whispering that her father had put her in the House of Mercy for receiving a telegram from a boy. The telegram had been delivered to the school and, according to Kathleen Sumpton, a gossip, Suzie was told she must become engaged to this boy immediately. Only she had refused and her father had her locked away for it.

  “They would have driven right past your house.” Kathleen twisted in her chair to look at me, the gaggle of girls huddled around her turning too. Our history teacher had stepped out of the room.

  “I suppose.” I shrugged.

  The House of Mercy was just up the road from us, a Protestant Episcopal home for wayward girls. When I was young it held a mythological place in my stories, but it became a very real threat two years ago when a boy at a dance was caught with his hand on the small of Luella’s back. Daddy went wild with fury. Not even Luella’s charm could calm him. He said he wouldn’t hesitate to send her away, if that’s the sort of girl she’d become. Luella swore she thought the boy’s hand was in the middle of her back where it should have been. “How can I feel anything through my stays?” she cried, and Mama said she had a point.

  I hadn’t thought of the incident until Suzie Trainer’s disappearance.

  After that, the worm of guilt wiggling through me on Saturday mornings when I’d kiss Mama and Papa goodbye grew larger. There were no boys involved in our sneaking around to the gypsy camp, not specifically, but I began to worry about our weekend escapades. What if we got caught and Daddy sent us away? It’s not like we’d done one small thing, we’d been lying for a whole month, which was not something we’d be able to talk our way out of.

  I was also worrying over exams, which were just around the corner. Most of the Chapin girls thought little about grades and instead competed over who would be the first graduate to have four babies. I shuddered at the thought. Luella said she might have one baby, someday, but never four. And she was certain to have a smattering of lovers beforehand. I was certain not to have any lovers, but I also wasn’t interested in learning to cook and budget and keep accounts to run a household. I planned to go to Bryn Mawr and become a writer. Which meant I had to do well in all subjects. I focused on Latin and French, wrote short stories and essays, observed cells wiggling like living stained glass under the microscope, and dutifully memorized the periodic table and the classification system.

  Since the gypsy camp, my studies had dropped off. I’d do well in English no matter what, but my math and science would suffer if I didn’t focus. When I said this to Luella, she was unconcerned. She’d never been particularly interested in her studies, but this spring she hadn’t bothered studying at all. When I pointed this out, she just shrugged, indifferent. She even started telling Ivanov her arches ached and skipped ballet class.

  Then things changed for the worse.

  Daddy started showing up at school in his red Empire runabout, with the top down, to escort us to luncheon at Delmonico’s. This made us the envy of our peers. Girls clumped together watching from the steps of the Georgian schoolhouse as we settled into the car, our father plucking a gold-tipped cigarette from his lips with gloved fingers, his derby hat at a rakish tilt, pointy shoes so shiny you could see the steering wheel reflected in them.

  In any other circumstance, I would have relished this kind of attention from Daddy. It was a mean trick, giving it to me now when I was consumed with guilt and couldn’t enjoy it. These luncheons were out of the norm and every day that first week, I hurried through whatever exquisite dish was set in front of me and waited for him to tell us he knew about the gypsies. I thought maybe this was reverse punishment, showing us how good we had it before taking it all away.

  It took me three long weeks of watching Daddy lean back in his chair, smoking and scanning the room, catching the attention of everyone, before I understood that these luncheons had nothing to do with Luella and me. It never crossed my mind that the stunning woman we passed every day taking lunch by herself, a woman who possessed the room in a manner more like a man’s than a woman’s, was the reason. She was remarkable, with a confidence I’d never seen in our sex. Daddy would tip his hat and smile and the woman would return the smile with a toss of her head, her face round and sensual, her lips a devastating red.

  I intended to mention her to Luella, if for nothing more than her red lips, but somehow kept forgetting. Then came a day in May, as we sat eating our lunch and luxuriating in the sudden warmth of spring, when the woman rose from her seat and crossed the room to us. Luella and I stared. For all the dinners and parties we’d been to, we’d never seen a woman dressed like this. This was no mother clinging to the Victorian era, or schoolgirl pining after a magazine photo. This was the magazine photo. Here was the New Woman of 1913. A woman we’d only read about. Bold, confident, stripped of convention. Under strings of pearls and twists of sapphire tulle, she wore a flesh-colored dress of peau de soie so tight it looked like a second layer of skin. The effect was shocking.

  There was something disturbingly familiar in the way my father looked at her.

  “Emory Tildon,” she said, her voice floating into the room, light and carefree. “I thought that was you. These lovely creatures must be your daughters?” She narrowed her eyes at us with exaggerated interest, the sound of the other diners fading to a quiet din in her presence.

  Daddy stood up. He tugged at his cuffs and cleared his throat with a nervousness that embarrassed me. “Yes, these are my girls. Effie, Luella, this is Inez Milholland. Her father is an editor,” he said, as if this was supposed to explain something.

  Inez Milholland? Luella and I gaped. Here was the woman we’d gazed at on the cover of Woman’s Journal and Suffrage News.

  My speechlessness was nothing out of the ordinary, but Daddy gave Luella a sharp look indicating that she, at the very least, shouldn’t be rude. My sister only stared, awed into silence for the first time in her life.

  Miss Milholland remained poised and unflustered by our gawking. “It’s a pleasure to meet you both.” Her smile widened as she turned her dusty brown eyes on Daddy. “Won’t you step outside for a cigarette? It’s awfully warm in here and I could use a bit of air.” Her hand fluttered out, delicate as the fabric shifting over her
hips. Our father took her hand without pause and they slipped away from the table.

  Luella’s fork clattered to her plate. “How does Daddy know her?” she gasped, her mouth creeping into a smile. “He’s more liberated than he lets on. Come on, I want to get another look at her.”

  She pulled me from the table and out the restaurant doors to the bright and crowded street. It took a moment before we spotted Daddy helping Inez into the back of an open cab. A couple passed and I smelled the woman’s sickly-sweet, gardenia perfume. Luella started forward, halted and froze as Daddy leaned into the car and kissed that bright, red mouth of Inez Milholland. The kiss seemed to stretch for an endless amount of time as we stood frozen.

  Luella spun around, her face leached of color, her eyes crinkled into little slits of rage. In spite of Luella’s rebellious nature, she thought the world of our father. She pushed against him because she believed it was safe. She believed, as I did, that our father was principled and scrupulous, that he would rein her in when she dared go too far, as any good father would. She might not like it, but she respected the natural order of things.

  When that order shattered, she became wild.

  She shoved me back through the restaurant doors and into our chairs at the table, where we sat wordless. The clink of flatware and hubbub of voices prickled my skin. My potatoes looked pasty, the gravy mud. I pushed my food aside and bit the inside of my cheek until it bled. I wanted to make an excuse for Daddy. Explain the woman away. But, I couldn’t.

  Luella had her elbows on the table, her eyes fixed on the cut-glass saltshaker as if counting the grains. Her silence unnerved me. She always had something to say.

  When Daddy returned he was chatty and casual, as if nothing out of the ordinary had taken place, draping his arm over the back of his chair with an air of privilege. I looked for a smear of red on his mouth, but saw only the blush of his own lips.

  Luella and I never discussed it, but I knew it was that haughty moment, even more than the kiss, that Luella refused to forgive. If he’d been unnerved or jumpy we might have convinced ourselves that his morals were intact. Passion had blinded him. He’d regain his balance. But he wasn’t thrown, not in the least; even with the sin of another woman on him, my father was jaunty. Genial. Proud.

  It was the first time I saw him as a man who’d been given everything, as a man separate from the person who was my father. I thought of the night when I was eight years old and I’d watched him pace in the parlor after my doctor’s visit. Maybe his anger back then had nothing to do with my possible death. Maybe he’d bellowed at the doctor when I was born, not because he believed I was a strong baby, but because he refused to believe something he wanted could be taken from him.

  I felt crushed under the weight of our discovery. It sickened me watching Daddy’s bright, blue, unapologetic eyes as he waved the waiter over. I thought of Mama in her well-fitting dresses and her nightly cold cream applications, of her pride in Daddy marrying her despite her scars and homely limbs. The words of those women in the parlor came back to me; I don’t know what spell Jeanne wove over Emory when they were courting, but I wouldn’t have risked it. Well, Mama had risked it, I thought angrily. She had risked it because of those scars. It wasn’t her fault the spell wore off.

  When Luella and I returned home from school she shut herself in her room without a word to me. I tried to study, but I couldn’t concentrate so I moved my desk chair to the open window and tried to think up a story. The gauze curtains fluttered. The sun melted, golden and powdery over my lap and I could smell spring, the newness of it. No story came. Writing was what I shared with my father. Mama treated it like a silly pastime, glancing at a story I’d hand her with a distracted smile like I was a child handing her a scribbled drawing. Daddy took me seriously. Every Sunday morning he’d fold his paper, set it by his plate, and look up at me as if he’d just remembered something incredibly important. “Where’s my story, peanut. Did you forget about me?”

  I never forgot. I’d slip the notebook from my lap and offer it gravely. Recently, Daddy had started wearing glasses, which only added to the professional air he’d put on as he read, nodding, smiling, grimacing, every now and then offering a hearty laugh. Luella and Mama went about their usual breakfast business, chatting, spreading jam, pouring coffee while I waited with my hands pressed into my lap for Daddy to raise his head and say, “Fine work, peanut. Fine work indeed.” Then he’d launch into his honest critique, telling me what did and didn’t work, treating me like a writer worthy of this solid advice.

  In the window glass, I caught my reflection, pale, thin, lips like pencil lines. I’d never be a woman who wore lipstick. Daddy would be ashamed of me. I pulled off my gloves and held my hand to the light. My nails were a bulbous, milky yellow. They disgusted me, but I forced myself to look at them, imagining God an ugly giant pouring tallow from a massive pitcher, a drop landing and hardening on each finger. Maybe I’d write that grim story for Daddy. Who cared what he thought. His advice meant nothing now.

  At six o’clock I went down to dinner, even though I didn’t want to face anyone, not even Luella, who, to my surprise, was already at the table. I sat across from her relieved she wasn’t protesting. This was good. We would slip the moment under the rug. Bury it. Forget it.

  Roast pork, potatoes and green beans were heaped onto my plate, but I couldn’t eat. Neither could Luella, who kept her hands glued in her lap. I, at least, pushed my food around with my fork.

  “What is it?” Mama asked. “Don’t you girls feel well?”

  “We ate a large lunch,” I offered, hating how innocent she looked, how plain. I wished she’d worn her green dress instead of this severe, black one.

  “You took them to Delmonico’s again?” She smiled at Daddy. “You’re spoiling them. It’s so unlike you to be that frivolous.”

  “It is unlike you to be frivolous, Daddy,” Luella said, her tone daringly confrontational. “Although we did have the pleasure of meeting the most astounding woman today, a Miss Inez Milholland.”

  My chest squeezed. I worked the torn skin on the inside of my cheek with my tongue and prayed my sister would stop talking.

  Daddy reached for the pepper with an easy smile at Mama. “Do you remember her father, John Elmer Milholland? He’s an editor for the New York Tribune. He used to be on Mother’s guest list before his views on women’s rights became too vocal for her tastes.” He ground the pepper a little too vigorously over his pork.

  Not an inkling of concern crossed Mama’s face. “The name’s familiar, but I don’t remember him.”

  Luella was not going to let this go. “Inez Milholland is the woman who led the Suffrage parade on Washington, the one on the white horse, remember? It was all over the papers. I remember thinking how beautiful she was. Daddy admires beautiful things. Don’t you, Daddy.”

  Daddy’s smile fell. “There were more people at that spectacle than at Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. There’s no respect for our presidential election system anymore, not a whit!”

  “Not when it excludes women,” Mama replied. We all looked at her, startled. “What?” she said. She had finished eating and sat in her chair with a self-composed dignity, her gloved hands in her lap. “I’m not as old-fashioned as you all think. I believe in votes for women. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t approve of their protests, or the way they make showy statements, like the sixty-year-old woman who stood on a mountain in Peru with a banner. I believe there must be a quieter, more diplomatic way of going about it.”

  “No one would listen.” Luella shot Daddy a look.

  He held her gaze. “Not if you’re insolent, they won’t.”

  “How else are women supposed to be heard?”

  “One’s actions have consequences.”

  “Precisely what I was thinking.”

  Their words batted back and forth like a tennis ball, each waiting for the other to sm
ash the net. “I’m terribly glad you introduced me,” Luella forced a laugh. “I think I’ll take up the good fight with the glamorous Miss Milholland. I’m sure she’ll have me. Women in numbers.”

  Color rose in Daddy’s face. “You will do no such thing.”

  “That’s not what I meant, Luella.” Mama looked confused that the conversation had gone so far off the rails.

  I slunk down in my chair, hating what Luella was doing.

  “You can’t stop me fighting for the rights of women. I’ll do what I want.” She flicked her head toward Daddy. “You most certainly do.”

  Daddy’s fists thumped the table and my plate jumped. “That’s right. I do. I’ve earned that right by growing up.”

  “I’ll be sixteen in a few months. That’s old enough to marry, if I want.”

  Mama sucked in her breath and Daddy’s jaw bulged under his smooth high cheeks. “Not without my permission, you’re not.”

  “I don’t need your permission. If the law permits it, I can do it.” Luella looked triumphant.

  Generally, Mama defended Luella to Daddy, but this was too much. She remained silent, her eyes like a paralyzed doe caught in the cross fire.

  Daddy’s clear eyes sparked with anger. “Goodness,” he mocked, “do you have someone in mind?”

  “Maybe.”

  I knew Luella was making this up, but the vein swelling across Daddy’s forehead was a sure sign he did not. “There are homes where indecent girls like you are sent and I am absolutely not beyond it.” Daddy’s voice was a low threat.

  “How dare you call me indecent. I’m not the one who’s done anything wrong.” A thread of panic trailed Luella’s anger. “You’re the—”

  “Out!” Daddy roared, leaping to his feet, his arm raised as if he meant to grab her.