City of Light (24 page)

My school. My refuge. Away from Mary Talbert and crusades I could not join. Away from Thomas Sinclair and his steady, observant eyes. Away from Franklin Fiske and his theories and accusations.

Here I was safe, and here I could make her safe. My daughter.

CHAPTER XIII

M
iss Barrett, we have a problem,” declared the mother of Abigail Rushman. Well, I appreciated people coming to the point, particularly in view of how rare that was in the circles I frequented. Still, it was nonetheless surprising.

Mr. and Mrs. Rushman were unlike their daughter. Ostentatious and flamboyant, they had entered my office with a flourish. Mrs. Rushman prolonged the flourish with an extended unwrapping of fur boas, worn even though the weather was now past the point of such trappings. But fur boas impressed no one if they were in the closet. It was the day after my visit to the Buffalo Club with Mary Talbert, and I wasn’t in the mood for fools.

The Rushmans were new to Buffalo. They owned a group of five-and ten-cent dry goods stores, called F. E. Rushman, which had proliferated throughout Ohio and western New York. There were rumors, which I’d heard via Francesca, that Rushman was the Anglicization of a long and unpronounceable German name. But Mr. and Mrs. Rushman didn’t appear to be immigrants themselves. They were stalwart supporters of the socially prominent Westminster Presbyterian Church—although again, rumor purported that once upon a time, in an unidentified portion of the Midwest, they’d attended (let us gasp together!)
a Lutheran
church.

Mrs. Rushman sat down opposite my desk, and her husband stood beside her.

“Our daughter—” Mr. Rushman began.

“—has gotten herself into a difficult position,” Mrs. Rushman interrupted. “Pregnant. Let’s just say the word so no one gets confused.”

Of course. How could I have missed it? I’d blinded myself to it altogether, expecting such a situation from a free-spirited girl like Evelyn Byers, but never from the sober Abigail. In the months since I’d first noticed, during our visit to the power station, Abigail had continued to put on weight. When I’d spoken to her about it, she’d quickly turned the topic to her studies, sharing her pleasure in a new area of interest, natural science, especially the study of butterflies. Never gifted, she was now eager to pursue this small area of endeavor, so I’d ignored her weight problem and focused on getting her advanced assignments from Miss Price, the science teacher, and practice in scientific drawing from Miss Riley.

“Don’t worry, Miss Barrett”—Mrs. Rushman lifted her hand as if to ward off my objections—“we don’t blame you and we don’t blame Macaulay. Far from it. We know how it happened, don’t we, Fritz?”

“Yes, I suppose we—”

“Exactly. We blame ourselves, but no good comes of blame. We are Christians and we know God forgives us.”

“Then why have you come to me?” Unlike Christ, I was under no obligation to forgive.

“Well,” she announced meaningfully, “you know Fritz has become one of the commissioners of the exposition?”

“No, I don’t think I did.” Vaguely I recalled his presence on the dais in the Yellow Room of the Buffalo Club. “Congratulations, Mr. Rushman,” I said, although I wasn’t impressed. No doubt he had purchased a large number of exposition bonds in return for this honor.

His wife accepted my felicitations on his behalf. “Yes, yes, thank you, we’re thrilled. But just so, we must maintain certain standards now. Which is what brings us to you. You understand?”

“No, I’m afraid I don’t.” Of course I did, but I wasn’t going to make this easy for them.

She sighed impatiently. “It means that we can’t leave town with her because everyone will know the reason—leaving town just as the Pan-Am is about to open, and Mr. Milburn already promising the commissioners invitations to his Bastille Day ball for the French ambassador. And Abigail can’t leave town alone, because everyone will realize then too. So we’re counting on you to find something to do with her, to get her out of the way with no one knowing.” Suddenly Mrs. Rushman’s belligerent surface cracked and she seemed about to cry. Her husband put his hand on her shoulder.

“We thought, well, we assumed—” Mr. Rushman hesitated. “Seems like something that must have come up before.” He looked at me hopefully. “So you would know what to do.”

“Yes,” his wife broke in. “That’s exactly what we thought. It’s the sort of thing that’s come up before and you would know what to do.”

I paused. I wasn’t about to reveal to them whether “this sort of thing” had come up before, although of course it had. “How far along is she?”

“As best as we can figure out—and of course we haven’t taken her to a doctor—about six months.”

“Six months! And you never noticed?”

“Did you notice?”

“No. However I did notice that she was putting on weight.”

“Was she?” said Mr. Rushman, concerned. “Hasn’t she been getting enough exercise? Has she been overeating? I thought she liked sports. Did you notice she was gaining weight, Cassie?”

“Of course not,” insisted Mrs. Rushman.

Please God, protect me. I took a deep breath. “Have you any idea who the father is? Perhaps it’s not too late for a wedding.”

“If only—” Mr. Rushman began.

“Impossible!” his wife interjected. “The man is married. He’s a very prominent man in the community,” she reported with emphasis and pride. “You would recognize his name if I mentioned it—which I certainly shall not!”

She had the temerity to proclaim this as if I were a common gossip.

“Of course we never should have let him be unchaperoned with Abigail, but how could we say no?” Mr. Rushman turned up his hands to show his helplessness. “They had interests in common. That’s how they met, pursuing these”—he whipped his hands in front of his face as he searched for the proper words—“these common interests!” The breath went out of him, leaving him deflated. “He put us in a very awkward position,” he offered flatly.

“He promised Fritz a position among the commissioners, and he followed through—we can’t fault him on that,” Mrs. Rushman said. “He also arranged for us to be invited to dinner at the Rumseys—and I’m not talking about the Dexter Rumseys, Miss Barrett, I’m talking about the Bronson Rumseys! At their beautiful home on Tracy Street.” Obviously Mrs. Rushman hadn’t recognized a vital truth: In our community, the retired Bronson Rumsey might be the epicenter of glamour, but his younger brother, Dexter, was the center of power. “Miss Love was there! She even approached me on the subject of assisting her with a charity project.”

“So you offered up your daughter’s virginity in exchange for dinner at the Bronson Rumseys?” Oh, Louisa, that was needlessly harsh, I chided myself. But sometimes the constant effort of self-restraint became too much for me.

“Certainly not, Miss Barrett. You exaggerate. We allowed him to spend time with her, pursuing their—common interests, as Fritz says, and we were quite innocent of what followed.”

“I see.”

Alas, I did see. Everything. The Palladian mansion on North Street. The house’s emptiness in the late afternoon, when Mr. Rushman was at his office, Mrs. Rushman was out paying calls, and the servants were preparing dinner. It probably happened in the Gothic revival library, there on the deep sofa, or on the velvety Persian carpet, while Abigail’s homework lay untouched on the desk. The only odd part was that Abigail didn’t seem the type to attract the attention of the kind of man they had described.

“Does he still spend time with her?”

“Certainly not! What do you take us for? And we haven’t told him a thing, in case you’re wondering!” She looked as if I’d insulted her. “We’ve told him only that she’s too busy studying for her final examinations to spend time visiting. But we have reason to believe that he suspects. That he is concerned. He is a gentleman, so he would be concerned. But he doesn’t pry.”

“We still approve of him,” Mr. Rushman assured me.

“Obviously,” his wife added. “Now here is the point, Miss Barrett: We must find something to do with Abigail and the infant. Will you help us?”

“What about your minister?” I asked. “The Reverend Holmes may have experience with such matters.”

Mrs. Rushman flushed. “This is not the sort of thing the Reverend Holmes would want or expect among his parishioners.”

“Ah. Quite so.”

“You
must
help us, Miss Barrett,” pleaded Mr. Rushman. “There’s no one else we can ask.”

I stared out the window at the trees, the leaves a delicate pale green. It would be difficult. Obviously Dr. Perlmutter, who had been Margaret’s doctor, was the man to call. But at six months—would that be enough time for a childless wife to prepare for an adoption by pretending to be pregnant? And Abigail would need to leave the city. But as her mother said, leaving just before the opening of the exposition would be tantamount to admitting that something woeful had occurred. Abigail would be “gone to the bow-wows,” as my students so succinctly phrased it.

I must have paused for some time, because Mrs. Rushman began to pull at her husband’s sleeve. “Tell her, Fritz, tell her,” she said in a loud whisper.

“Oh, yes. Yes,” he fumbled, touching his pockets. “Miss Barrett.” He cleared his throat. “We are in a position to offer you a good amount of money.” He stepped back in response to the derisive look I gave him. “As a donation to the school—not to you personally.”

“I will not mix money with a girl’s misfortune.”

“Don’t be so upright,” Mrs. Rushman snapped. “The school can always use the money.”

Before Tom’s gift, I probably would have agreed with her. I would have accepted the offer, visions of new gymnasiums and science laboratories floating before my eyes. But Tom had given me the ability to take the high road.

“No. I will not accept your donation. But I will try to help Abigail. Is there anyone in your family without obligations, who might be able to leave the city with her?”

“I suppose Fritz’s mother could go out of town with her,” Mrs. Rushman admitted grudgingly. “But she’s seventy-eight and frankly her English isn’t the best.”

“What language does she speak?”

“German, if you must know, although I don’t see why it’s relevant.”

“Would the senior Mrs. Rushman be willing to do this?”

Mr. Rushman slowly brightened as he realized this plan might work. “Yes, I think she would. And she’s completely reliable. Totally on the money in spite of her age.” As he relaxed, he seemed to melt into a kindly man, justly proud of his accomplishments and of his family. “From the time I brought her over from our farm outside Frankfurt, she’s been my best advisor. She didn’t want to come here at first, refused for years, but after—”

“That was a long time ago, Fritz,” his wife broke in, putting an abrupt stop to his reminiscences.

I said, “Before I decide anything, I need to speak with Abigail.”

“Whatever for? You won’t get anywhere with her—she says no to everything these days. She won’t wear the beautiful clothes I buy her, or if she does wear them she pulls off all the bows. She won’t even think about her coming-out party—I’ve got to make all those arrangements myself! I don’t know what to do with her.”

I said nothing, waiting for the echo of her dismal words to die away. Then: “I must ascertain what Abigail would like to do with the child who is, of course, hers.”

“That’s an unusual way of looking at it,” Mrs. Rushman opined.

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

Two hours later, during the senior study hall period, Abigail Rushman sat before me, round-faced and childlike, her books piled on her lap. Farsighted, she wore reading glasses suspended from a woven cord around her neck. She looked so forlorn that I pulled a chair next to her instead of facing her from behind my desk.

“Your parents have been to see me, Abigail.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

After that, I didn’t know what to say. Although this situation had come up before, it had never been brought to me personally for a solution. Indeed, my knowledge of previous situations was based on supposition, for I attuned myself to every shift in normal customs. Seven, eight times over the years I’d known something like this was occurring, even though those involved said nothing directly to me about it and I said nothing to them. Two of the situations had been obvious: girls pulled out of school in their senior years and married to men not strictly suitable, their babies born several months “premature.” But the more typical situation involved girls abruptly taken on grand tours, or sent to help needy relations in the West, or enrolled in exceedingly obscure boarding schools far away. I always wished I could talk to these girls and console them, but part of understanding the code was the tacit agreement not to break it. Parents would never want me discussing intimate matters with their daughters; to do so would be considered outside my proper role. Furthermore I would never tell a girl to keep one of our discussions secret from her family; I would never put a girl into that position, or indicate to her in any way that her parents might not always deserve her full confidence. So despite my better instincts, and knowing only too well the heartbreak these girls were suffering, I did my part to maintain the status quo.

Yet now, with Abigail, perhaps I could finally do more. “Is there anything you’d like to ask me, Abigail?”

“Do you hate me?”

Poor child. “Of course not, my dear. Why would you think that?”