In Need of a Good Wife (3 page)

Clara shook off the vision and pushed herself out of her chair, setting the folded newspapers on the table by the door in case someone else wanted to read them this evening. The last thing she needed was Mr. Rathbone catching her sitting down when she was supposed to be working. Just as she was coming around the bar she heard his steps creaking down the stairs outside and the bell over the door jingle as he pushed it open. Mr. Rathbone was a barrel-chested man with a beard so dense and sleek it seemed at times like a mink stole wrapped across the lower half of his face. His smile was a surprise of pink in that mass of darkness.

“Afternoon, Clara,” he said. “Have we done a good business today?”

Her breath caught as she remembered the pies lined up on the butcher block in the kitchen, all that flour and lard and good chicken squandered. She had forgotten to wrap them up, to send some home with Bessie, a few others to Bill—the lunatic who sat on the corner bench all day long, one good leg and one stump wrapped in wool, singing the “Battle Hymn”—anything to get those pies out of the tavern. Mr. Rathbone would know when he did the books that they were losing money on food, but he didn’t have to see the waste laid bare like this in his kitchen.
Blast those ministers
, Clara thought,
for
distracting me
.
For making me think about George.

She didn’t have time to stop Mr. Rathbone from stepping into the kitchen, and when he did he stopped short. She came in behind him and for a moment the only sound was the door flapping on its hinges, like a hand, already waving her good-bye.

“Ah, my girl,” Mr. Rathbone said as he swiped his hand over the back of his neck and massaged the fold of skin at his hairline.

“Yes, sir—I know it,” Clara said, anxious to take the burden of what he had to do off his hands. She didn’t begrudge him the need to make his living.

He looked at her and sighed, the corners of his eyes bending like twin frowns. “Mrs. Rathbone has a niece outside Albany. She is just fourteen but has been working her father’s farm since she was knee-high. Tavern work will be nothing for her.”

Clara nodded.

“You
know
I want to keep you on, but this child will live with us. She’ll work for nothing.”

“I understand, sir.”

“I hate to do it,” he said. She followed him back out of the kitchen and behind the bar. He opened the till and counted out two weeks’ pay.

“I can’t take any more than what you owe me, sir.”

“Yes, you can. Now, come on.” Mr. Rathbone pressed the money into her hand.

“No, sir.” Clara shook her head. “I couldn’t.”

“Don’t be stupid, girl.” His voice was sharp and he worked to soften it. “Think of what your father would say. Please take it. I feel bad enough as it is.”

Clara hesitated a moment longer. “All right,” she said, putting the money in her pocket.

“If you need anything, anything at all, you come to me—you hear?”

She nodded. Mr. Rathbone knew all about George. Everyone did. Clara could see the guilt digging a line across his forehead. He was as good as turning a widow out into the street. Right before the start of winter. Clara felt the pain begin to thrum at her temples, but she shook it away. This was the way life had been for a long time now: The world shoved her off her course and she pushed back against it, too angry or foolish to give up. She’d find another way to get by, though at the moment she wasn’t sure how.

He shook her hand. “You’ll find another position. I know you will.”

“Yes, sir,” Clara said, and she meant it. She turned toward the door.

“Wait—you should take a few of these pies.”

Her hand was already on the knob. “No, thank you, sir,” she said. God help the next blasted chicken pie that came into her sight. Her eyes grazed the room one last time and rested on the newspaper. She plucked it up and tucked it in her apron pocket as she stepped up into the daylight.

It had been years since Clara had been out in the middle of the day with nothing to do. She didn’t want to climb the stairs to her empty room just yet, didn’t want the truth of what had just happened to penetrate her mind. So instead she started walking.

William Street was crowded with carriages and market carts. Men with broad shoulders hoisted wooden crates and shouted to each other as they carried them down the stairs to the cellars below the shops. In front of Libby’s a bevy of dancing girls gossiped and pointed at a man across the street who tipped his hat low and scurried around the corner, hoping no one would see him. All the girls wore long red feathers in their hair that wavered in the breeze, and their makeup was thick and garish on their pocked skin. Clara walked a few blocks farther north than she usually did—she realized just how small the scope of her everyday life had become over the last few years. She turned left and walked up a quieter block toward the park. The few trees were red and gold, their leaves not yet ready to fall. The chill in the air made her rub her hands together, and she longed for something hot to drink.

“Clara Wilson, is it you?”

A woman in an expansive dove-gray dress put her hand on Clara’s elbow. Clara peered at her.

“It’s Bitty Lathrop. From Sunday school. Don’t
tell
me you don’t remember!”

“Bitty!” Clara exclaimed, a little embarrassed. “Of course I remember you! You caught me lost in thought.” But Clara wouldn’t have known this woman from Eve. Bitty had once been, well, a great deal smaller than she was now.

“How
are
you?”

“I’m well, thank you,” Clara said. A group of children shoved past them, chasing a hoop as it rolled down the street. They stopped to steal some apples from a tree, its heavy boughs drooping over the fence around a yard at the end of the block. “And you?”

“Oh, just lovely,” Bitty said. “I’m married now, with four children. My Charles works at City Hall.”

“Oh, that’s marvelous,” Clara said. She recognized Bitty’s smile now, and it made her think of her sisters, gone so long. They all had played together, whispered and giggled in their pew at service.

“And
you
must be a schoolteacher now,” Bitty said, glancing at Clara’s plain dress. “I always knew you would be.”

“What do you mean?”

Bitty slapped Clara playfully on the arm. “You don’t remember the way we used to line up our dolls on the bench after class and play pretend lessons? You took it awfully seriously, Clara. I can still see the way you held that ruler, like a weapon!”

Clara laughed. She felt a little pang remembering the cold room at the church, the minister’s wife who taught them about Noah’s ark and Lazarus raised from the dead like some kind of magic trick. The woman had a tiny whisper of a voice that made every Bible story feel like a secret. “That was such a long time ago.”

“So I have it wrong, then?” Bitty asked. “You aren’t a schoolteacher?”

Clara shook her head. “I’ve been working in my father’s tavern for the last few years.” She didn’t see any reason to tell Bitty that it didn’t belong to her father anymore.

“Oh,” Bitty said, trying to cover her disappointment. “Well, isn’t that nice of you to help him.”

“I suppose,” Clara said. “Though lately I have been thinking it might be time to find something new to occupy my time.”

Bitty smiled. “Well, I have no doubt you will find something interesting to do. Of all the little girls in that class, you always were the smartest one.”

“I was?” Clara felt shocked. “I can’t
imagine
that’s true.”

Bitty nodded solemnly. “But it is! We all thought that, if anyone did, you would be the one who would … do something special.” Clara could see that Bitty felt awkward finishing the sentence, which sounded a little like an admonishment.

Clara
had
loved school. She remembered that now, though it had been a very long time since she’d allowed herself to think about the things she once loved. “It’s very nice of you to say that, Bitty,” Clara said. “And perhaps you’re right— perhaps it isn’t too late to make good on my potential.”

“We were all so proud to know you, Clara.” Bitty took her hand. “
Still
proud. You just never know what might happen. Look at me. Would you ever have thought I’d have a husband?”

Clara smiled. “Well, of course, Bitty.” But the truth was, Bitty had been a homely girl, with a sallow complexion and teeth like a jackrabbit.

Bitty shook her head and winked at Clara. “You’re just being kind. But it’s all right. A matchmaker found him for me, if you want to know the truth. My daddy paid her a pretty penny too.”

Clara stared at her a moment. The sudden idea Bitty’s story gave her—a way to leave Manhattan City for good, a way to claim that little white cottage from her daydream—seemed to hang in the air right before Clara’s eyes, like one of those apples on the tree at the end of the street. She had no right to it, to the promise it held. And yet it bobbed there, red and full, waiting to be plucked.

Rowena rose early, determined to respond to the invitations and have it over with. She dressed in her room, stepping into her lavender gown, and lifted one sleeve at a time high enough to push her arm through. Between the steel crinoline and the layers of cotton petticoat and satin flounces, the ensemble was almost too heavy to lift. Life had been easier when Hattie was here to help dress her, but that was back before the war.

She passed into the dark upstairs hallway and descended the stairs, her hand trailing along the banister. Though she felt her fingertips grow grainy with dust, she willed her mind to ignore it. The morning sun shone through the long narrow windows that flanked the front door of the row house. The promise of a new day, brisk and bright at the height of autumn, should have filled her with hope, but all Rowena could see was how threadbare the carpet in the front hall looked in the unyielding sunshine.

The invitations sat in a neat pile on her writing desk in the study. The lacy calligraphy on one urged her to join Celia Birch and Eliza Rourke for a tea given in honor of the new Mrs. Lindley, Eliza’s sister-in-law. Mr. Lindley owned three homes in Manhattan alone, not to mention his country house in Riverdale, where the stabled horses probably ate finer food than anything Rowena had seen lately. The second square of fine cream-laid stock promised dinner and dancing at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Channing of Madison Square. Louise Channing had lately made something of a project of Rowena. Along with the invitation, she had slipped a personal note in the envelope, promising that her nephew Donald was willing to escort Rowena, if she had no one else in mind.

Rowena got angry all over again at the thought of it. Donald Channing! Who spoke with a lisp and had what Rowena could only conclude was some kind of fungus growing out of his ear. She had spent one interminable evening with him and Mr. and Mrs. Channing a month back, after Mrs. Channing had told Rowena at a luncheon that it had been long enough since Richard’s death.

That was how the woman said it: long
enough
. As if Rowena were a child wrung out from a tantrum who needed the stern hand of a disciplinarian to set things right. The wisest, noblest man Rowena had ever known, the man who carried her very own heart in his haversack, walked out on the battlefield at Cold Harbor and got shot by a Spencer repeating rifle belonging to a man from his own company. All the blood drained out of his chest and down into the dark Virginia soil, where, in digging their trench, the men had found the decomposed remains of soldiers who had died there three years before. But never mind all that. It was high time, according to this old cow, for Rowena to start looking for someone to replace Richard. Mrs. Channing nattered on about overhearing women spreading rumors at the draper’s: Rowena Moore, left with nothing after Richard
chose
to go to war when he could have hired someone to fight in his place.

“My dear,” she had begun, her withered hand clutching Rowena’s wrist. Her voice dripped with such exaggerated sympathy, Rowena could have choked. “I know it’s difficult to hear the words of these cruel gossips, words which can’t
possibly
be true, but I am only thinking of you. A widow, however grieved, must think about her future.”

And so Rowena had agreed to the dinner out of sheer weariness. But after two stultifying hours of conversation about Donald’s button factory and his collection of antique candlesticks, she had nearly leapt from her chair when a member of the Channings’ army of maids whisked her empty ice cream dish away. Rowena muttered her good evening and scandalized all three of them by insisting that she would find a carriage home, alone. Outside it was pouring rain, and water gushed in rivulets through the mud in the street. Rowena tried to open her umbrella, but the ribs were stuck—it had been ages since she’d actually needed to use it—so she tucked it under her arm and hurried on, the sides of her soggy bonnet sinking against her cheekbones. She imagined that with each sure footstep, each clack of her heel on the cobblestone, she was breaking one piece of Mrs. Channing’s limitless bone china, until the woman would have to suck her soup out of her nephew’s sweaty hat.

Rowena’s anger kept frothing up inside her as she passed through the square onto Broadway. Suddenly, her heel caught a rough stone and she slid and fell, landing hard on her back side with a splash. The world halted for a long moment. She felt a roiling then in her lungs like nothing she had ever known, and she took a breath, then stood and screeched like a banshee. All the couples who were hurrying home from the theater scattered like a horde of mice. Rowena hauled back with her umbrella and pummeled it against the lamppost with all her might. “I will sell my
body
to the
sailors
at South Street,” she shrieked at everyone and no one, whacking the base of the streetlamp over and over until the glass lantern swung dangerously from one side to the other, “before I marry that dull, yellow- bellied …” she whacked and whacked and tried to think of what else he was … “
festering-eared
Donald Channing!”