A Cup of Tea: A Novel of 1917 (8 page)

W
ould she have been more careful with Philip’s letter if she had known that there would be no others? Did she leave it behind on purpose because she wanted to be discovered or had she simply become forgetful and skittish as so many women do in the early months of pregnancy?

Dora found it in the pocket of the work apron. She didn’t hesitate for a moment about reading it. Eleanor was so mysterious, didn’t ramble on at the drop of a hat, as did most of the girls Dora had hired and reveal the most intimate details of their lives whether Dora
was interested or not. No, Eleanor had secrets. Yet, even so, Dora was surprised, not so much by the contents of the letter but by the name of its sender. Philip Alsop. Eleanor and Philip Alsop. Dora folded the letter carefully in its envelope, put it in her purse, left the shop, and locked the door behind her even though it was the middle of the afternoon.

Jane didn’t hear her come in. The first thing she was aware of was Dora’s arm around her waist and then Dora was kissing her neck lightly. Jane’s mother was upstairs and physically unable to navigate the steps alone, so Jane felt free to let her hand rest on Dora’s thigh. But that was not the intention of Dora’s visit.

Dora put the letter in front of Jane on the desk and stood behind her while she read it. Dora was of the mind that they should tell Rosemary about it immediately but Jane stopped her. She took the letter from Dora and put it in the desk drawer. She locked the drawer and put the key in her pocket as if that would somehow keep the secret safe.

Jane couldn’t see the point of revealing it to Rosemary (Jane’s part in it aside), why did she need to know? Philip was at war and if he never returned…why did she need to have knowledge of his betrayal?

Dora, on the other hand, was convinced that Eleanor had behaved improperly and swore that she was going to give her notice.

Jane took some issue with that. Philip had behaved improperly. Why did Eleanor get blamed? They had a bit of a fight over this. And in the three years since they had been lovers, they’d never fought. But the definition of an affair, which is surely what Eleanor and Philip were having, is that it involves and affects more than two people which is how it comes by its name.

They shouldn’t have wasted any time arguing about Eleanor’s fate for, as it turned out, the girl had devised her own plan. When Dora returned to the hat shop, Eleanor was waiting for her.

After Mrs. Witherspoon had been fitted with a new hat for church and been sent out into the street with the hat already on her head, Eleanor said to Dora, “I was hoping I might speak to you.”

“That’s curious,” said Dora, “I was wanting to speak to you, too.”

Eleanor took the liberty of sitting across from her at the desk instead of standing, as she usually did, a discreet distance away. “I’ve been very happy here,” she said. “And I appreciate the opportunity you’ve given me. I’m not really suited to working in a store.”

Dora, who was poised to give her notice, was astonished.

Eleanor went on…“The people, you know,” and it began to sound a bit as if it were a prepared speech, practiced and refined for its effect. “It takes a certain personality,” she said. “You have it. I am too moody. Too flighty. I’ve learned an enormous amount from you.” Her manner was both polite and oddly menacing. “Some of your customers like me. I think, is it not true, that sales have gone up since I have been here? I would like it if you would let me design for you.” She looked at Dora directly. “You have customers who like my work. I wouldn’t like to take business away from you.” She said this last bit softly but the threat was implicit.

Dora agreed immediately. “Of course, you wouldn’t,” she said as she’d considered the possibilities and realized she didn’t want to lose part of her clientele in the middle of a war. “There would be a lot of details to work out,” said Dora.

“Whatever you think is fair,” said Eleanor who instinctively knew that in business, as in life, there was never a need to press after you’d won. And though Dora concealed it from Jane for some time, it seemed she wouldn’t be completely gone from their lives then.

A
s shabby as Wetzel’s Boarding House was, it had afforded Josie and Eleanor each a certain respectability. It wasn’t quite proper at the time for two women to live in an apartment alone, but they rented an apartment and concocted a story that made them look more respectable than they really were.

They claimed that Eleanor was married, for, of course, she would need to be married—she was so thin, the baby had started to show immediately—to Josie’s brother, “Frank”, who was properly at war which wasn’t far from the truth except that Josie didn’t have a brother. Josie bought a thin platinum band from
Dentons’ and made Eleanor wear it on her ring finger. When Eleanor tried to pay her for it, Josie insisted that since Eleanor was married to her “brother,” it was only fitting Josie should buy the ring. They sort of enjoyed the story as it gave them a public way to be protective of each other.

Joe the doorman would say to Josie tipping his hat as she walked in carrying a bag of groceries, “Afternoon, Miss Kennedy. How’s your sister doing today?”

“She’s fine, Joe, thanks,” Josie said smiling which wasn’t really the truth.

Eleanor never left the apartment. Josie did the shopping and delivered the hats for her to Dora’s taking a certain pleasure in flouncing into the hat shop looking as bohemian and actressy as possible. It was all Dora could do to get her out the door as quickly as possible. She kept cash on hand, sealed in an envelope, because Josie made her plainly uncomfortable.

Eleanor would sit in the chair in the living room by the window most of the day sewing hats, occasionally reading or leafing through magazines and studying the fashions. She was so pregnant that the only way she could stitch was to balance the hat on her stomach. “I wish I could go out on the street for a walk,” she said mournfully.

Josie offered to go with her but Eleanor declined. “I hardly know four people in this part of the city,”
she said, “but I’m sure the second I go out, I’ll run into one of them. Do you think our mail’s being forwarded from Wetzel’s?” That was what she was really upset about, that she hadn’t heard from Philip.

“I’m sure it is,” said Josie. “I got some today.”

“I haven’t had a letter from him for a month.”

Josie didn’t say anything.

“Oh you think he’s just forgotten me?”

“I didn’t say that,” said Josie. “It must be—it must be hard to send mail. The paper says they’re on the move.”

“The paper that you keep hiding from me,” said Eleanor accusingly. “The paper that says that there are heavy casualties…”

“In the North,” said Josie trying to calm her. “I didn’t think that he was in the North. I think that you should eat something.”

“I don’t want to eat anything.” She made a face and pushed herself out of the chair. “I’ll make you a sandwich, Josie. You’ve got a show tonight.” She hesitated in the doorway of the kitchen. “It’s the waiting that’s hard,” she said. “And not knowing whether you’re waiting for anything at all. You think that I’m a fool for waiting.”

Josie shook her head because she knew that nothing she could say would change Eleanor’s mind.

Eleanor had always figured the angles, but when
she figured the angles here, they didn’t add up. Her mother used to tell her, “Don’t fall in love, Leni. When you fall in love, you lose your sense.” This was what it was then. She’d fallen in love. And she knew in her heart, even though the odds weren’t in her favor, there wasn’t anything else worth waiting for.

I
t was a Catholic Hospital. St. Mary’s. There was a large wooden cross on the wall behind Eleanor’s bed. All of the nurses wore nuns’ habits and, she imagined, would be fairly unforgiving if they knew her true circumstances—but it was the middle of a war and no one thought that it was odd that the baby’s father wasn’t at her side.

Her labor was quick and forgotten as soon as they put the baby in her arms. She was beautiful, perfectly formed, long legs and feet that arched like a ballerina’s, milk-white skin and little wisps of brown hair that Eleanor thought felt like silk.

“I will never let you know the things that I know,” she promised, the first time she took her to her breast. “I will never let you be cold or hungry or frightened in the middle of the night.”

She named her Tess. The last name was more of an issue. “Kennedy,” Josie insisted. “You have to make it all seem aboveboard.” It was an overt fabrication to put on the baby’s birth certificate: Father: Frank Kennedy. But she had no right to use the name Alsop. And it was, Josie convinced her, a necessary lie.

Josie and Jimmy Donohue rented a carriage for the morning so they could take the baby home in style. Josie had never seen Eleanor happier, unaware as they were that as their carriage passed Fifth Avenue a military car with two soldiers in the back was on its way to Rosemary’s house.

M
r. Fell was in his study cataloguing butterflies. He was placing a particularly large blue monarch under glass when the doorbell rang. He ignored it and continued with his work but then it rang again.

“Why isn’t anyone getting the door?” he muttered under his breath. And then got up to answer the door himself.

There were two young soldiers on the doorstep. They looked grave and somber. One of them was holding a telegram in his hand. Mr. Fell knew instantly why they had come but he was silent and let them
speak. “We are looking for Mrs. Philip Alsop,” said the younger of the two.

“Could I suggest that you go away so that none of us will know of this?” said Mr. Fell. “No, I guess I could not suggest that.” Not that it would have done any good as Rosemary’s car pulled up at the curb as he added, sadly, “Yes, I imagined that you were.”

Rosemary had been to lunch at “21” with Jane where the disproportionate number of women in the room and the fact that it was a meatless day emphasized the presence of the war. They had taken a walk down Fifth Avenue, Rosemary’s driver following in the car a discreet distance behind, so he would be waiting at the curb as soon as they were ready to go home. After a few forays into stores, they piled safely into the backseat of the car with their packages and drove downtown. They pulled up in front of the house as the two soldiers were still standing on the doorstep. Rosemary turned absolutely white and gripped Jane’s arm.

The soldiers knew no details, only that Philip had been reported dead. They had found his dog tag on a battlefield but, as yet, had been unable to identify a body. Rosemary’s face hardened into a porcelain mask. If there was no physical evidence, there was no way they could know for sure. Maybe he’d…there were
so many possibilities. She fastened onto the phrase, “…unable to identify the body.”

When someone dies, time seems to take on a dimension of its own. Minutes expand to sometimes seem like hours and silence is filled with memories of what has been. It was not a traditional mourning period, however, as Rosemary refused to acknowledge it.

Jane went with her to Carlysle’s funeral home on Madison Avenue. The floors were thickly carpeted and they noticed everybody seemed to speak in whispers. A white-faced fellow led them into Oliver Carlysle’s office and left them alone. The furniture was leather. Carlysle’s desk top was bare except for a conservative floral arrangement, white chrysanthemums and baby’s breath, which somehow made its own statement. Rosemary and Jane, each clad in appropriately dark clothes and Rosemary wearing a black hat with a wide brim. She kept her head bowed so that it was difficult to see her eyes. She seemed nervous.

“I don’t know how you have a funeral without a body,” she said to Jane. “I guess we, could just bury the telegram.”

Jane was stunned and didn’t know if she was supposed to laugh. But before she could respond, Oliver
Carlysle, the proprietor of the funeral home, entered. He looked as one would have expected him to look, so pale as to appear pasty with slightly pudgy, well-manicured hands. He mistakenly extended his hand to Jane, who realized that she didn’t want to take it. “Mrs. Alsop—” he said.

Rosemary stood. “
I
am Mrs. Alsop.”

“Would you forgive me?” Carlysle said immediately. “I would like to express our condolences,” he said using a peculiar third-person liberty that made Jane wonder whether he imagined he was speaking on behalf of the entire spirit world.

Rosemary cut him off. “Yes, of course,” she said.

He took a large book out of his desk drawer and placed it on the desk top. “There are a great many decisions to make at a time like this,” he said. “We have a great many resting grounds and caskets to choose from…”

He turned the book towards her and in it were various pictures, drawn in gray and brown charcoal, of coffins, mahogany, pine, some elaborately carved, and headstones made of marble, granite, and simple stone. There was something so austere about them, dark, lonely, somber.

“Would you forgive
me
?” said Rosemary, standing. “I can’t go through with this.” She turned and walked
out of the office as a fairly startled Mr. Carlysle stared after her. Jane didn’t know what she was supposed to do, it wasn’t her place to make the arrangements. She smiled apologetically and left the room leaving Mr. Carlysle alone with his white chrysanthemums.

T
he thought of it sitting empty with a headstone. Somber. Lonely. Not a place she could ever visit…

Jane caught up with her on Madison Avenue although as she watched her walk up the avenue, she considered it might be good for Rose to have some time alone.

“Rose, wait!” she called out. “We’ll find somewhere else.”

“I don’t want to find somewhere else,” said Rosemary as she stopped in front of a clothing shop. There was a female mannequin in the window dressed in a brown suit with a long skirt and well-tailored jacket.

“Well, what
are
you going to do?” Jane asked her.

“Not have a funeral,” she answered as if it were all as simple as that. “Not have a funeral until there’s a body. Until there’s a body, we can’t be certain.”

“But,” Jane said softly, “they said there was no doubt. That the firefight was so extensive there was—nothing left.”

“But I’m not certain,” said Rosemary. She looked at the suit in the window of the shop. “Do you like that suit?” she asked Jane.

“It’s all right,” said Jane, startled she was being asked to comment on a piece of clothing. “It looks like it might be difficult to walk in.”

“It’s not quite mourning,” said Rosemary. “But then again, I don’t want to be in mourning.”

Rosemary opened the door of the shop and walked in. She couldn’t imagine bringing flowers to an empty grave. Jane followed her into the shop having decided it was better to pretend it was an ordinary afternoon.