My Notorious Life (30 page)

And I cried and was sad that you would leave me and Joe. But Mother said, Oh, now, Lily, let the past be the past. She did not wish to discuss these matters any more and said we should think about nice things like Christmas. She said she had prayed for a good little daughter, and here I was. She asked over and over did I love her? and if I said yes she would smile, and her eyes filled with kindness the way warm water fills with the color of tea, when it steeps. You’d do anything to make her smile on you. I tried to be good, Axie, I learned all my psalms as Mother wished. I did my lessons, and kept my stockings neat. But it was hard to please Mother as she liked me to.

One afternoon, she led me to a seat next to her on the sofa. She said she was afraid she had some sad tidings from New York. And she said—I will never forget it—Your sister Ann Muldoon has passed away. I’m very sorry.

Mother explained that you had found our mother, but a few weeks ago you and Mam were stricken with fever, and died. She said you two were angels in heaven now. I did not cry then. All I remember is that I pressed the end of my pencil hard into the velvet upholstery so it pierced the fabric. Horsehair poked through and Mother heard the sound of fabric ripping. I was only a girl of seven.

What have you done? she scolded me, and because I was still unschooled, I said, I ain’t done nothing. It always made Mother so unhappy when I spoke that way. She told me again quite heatedly that I must not say “I ain’t” or “I haven’t done nothing.” It’s a double negative, she said, for if you have not done nothing, why, then you have done something, isn’t that right? Yet all the time it was Mother who had done something wrong, and lied to us both.

Only when she heard me crying for you my dead sister and my dead mother and my lost brother did she take me in her arms and soothe me down, and so I loved her then, what other choice did I have?

I must end this entry fast—my mother’s carriage is in front, earlier than expected, and I must hide this journal where she will not find it and pick up again when I get a chance. Please forgive this scribble.

September

Mother always hated the town of Rockford. There was nothing to do, she said. What life required was chamber music in a beautifully appointed room. A person had to talk about literature and fashion! But where would she do that on the terrible prairie? When she talked that way I would comfort her and say Poor Mother, but she was not easily consoled and suffered hysteria and took to her bed.

The year when I turned eight, Father put Mother and me on a train to Chicago. We were moving there, he said, and he would join us in a month.

On that journey, Mother told me that I spoke so properly now, and was so refined, that no one in Chicago need ever know that I was an adopted child. It would be so much easier for me if I never mentioned it. People could be unkind, she said. There was no reason for them to suspect my origins. She said I was their own little daughter Lillian Ambrose, and any talk of anything else was forbidden. She asked me to remember please not to kiss my thumb or cross myself or any of that Papist nonsense.

And so I never did mention any of my past to a soul, and, I am sorry to say, for years I lost sight of where I had come from and thought only of the present. There was so much to see and do, and I hope I do not sound ungrateful for my good fortune. We moved to a new home on Lake Shore Drive, with a carriage house and a garden. You can imagine the whirl of parties. When I was not in school, I was at a dress fitting, or going with Mother to buy dancing slippers. There is not much to report on those years.

Axie, I do not know how I’ll ever see you or Joseph again, or even be able to mail these pages. Why should I bother to write
more? Mother watches over me so carefully. If I asked any of the staff to research your whereabouts, surely she would hear of it. They are like spies against me, Axie. I cannot go to my room without a maid following to ask after my welfare. (At the moment I write this in the lavatory, where I am supposed to be taking a bath. I splash the water to deceive the housemaid.) I am not allowed to visit the other girls from school unless my governess is by my side. It is too awkward an arrangement, and so I have few companions but my cousin Clara, whom I seldom see. I don’t know what to do. It seems no use to continue writing this account.

March 1870

I scarcely believe it but after two years I have found another letter from you in Mother’s reticule, and by some miracle this time it is in an envelope with the address clearly marked. I am trembling with excitement. My sister! I admit I had begun to believe you were dead after all, that the scraps I found was only a dream. But today I know you are real. You live on Greenwich Street. You are Mrs. Charles G. Jones and you have a little girl. Your letter was in Mother’s handbag, so full of news about your daughter and your wish to see me. I am overcome reading it. I should not have been searching her possessions, but in truth I was only hunting for a hair comb and there it was. And now I know why all my previous efforts to discover another letter from you have failed—it seems you’ve been writing to the address downtown at my father’s office—which means that he has gone along with this deception. I would like to condemn him and my mother but I cannot—for they are kind people and have been good to me. You must please promise never to reveal me. I know I can trust you. I will attempt to mail these pages as soon as I can devise a way. Oh Axie, I feel that something will happen now, at last.

October 1870

Dear Axie, forgive the long time since I have added to this account but something HAS happened, and I must report on the most exciting news of my life. I am engaged! Perhaps Mother has written you all about the reasons for my distraction. My fiancé is Eliot VanDerWeil, Jr. He is my cousin—my father’s cousin’s son, really my second cousin. Oh, I can scarcely believe it. Just now he took me for a drive along the lakeshore. As we sat there on a bench, he proposed to me so gallantly, down on his knees. I thought at first he was joking, and I said as much. But he had a ring in his pocket—a gold band with pearl and diamonds—and he put it on my finger even before I said yes. Oh if you could see him. His green eyes do sparkle! Mother says he is quite the catch for any young lady, and I must say—

May 1871

Please forgive the abrupt end to my words above—now almost a year old. I was too distracted and unable to write again till now. I can only assume that Mother has told you all the details of my wedding to Eliot. Just now I came across my diary hidden in a trunk, and at last have found a moment when it is safe to take it up again.

My plan was to tell my dear husband the truth, once we were married. But if anything, I fear discovery even more, for as Mother explained, Eliot is a wealthy man, and quite active in the Methodist Church. If the family should discover my origins, he could disown me on the grounds that he had been deceived. He might disinherit any children we will have, knowing that I was born a
She has convinced me that she is right, and there are any number of reasons for me to keep our secret. Really, it is not difficult. We have kept it now already for ten years. I will attempt very soon to mail these pages to you with an address where you might write back.

You must understand that Mother is only trying to protect my future and to maintain good relations within the family, and she has succeeded admirably. Eliot and I have a lovely home. We are
always at parties and concerts. (Did I mention to you that I enjoy singing lieder music?) We have traveled to Paris and London. We are sure to stop one day in New York—and even now I scheme about how we might meet. It is still nearly impossible to find time alone, for Mother often travels with us, and Eliot is as jealous of my independence as she ever was, but I am determined.

September 16th 1871

Axie!

God forgive me I am here now, TODAY, in New York, and will try to pass this account to the Hotel clerk to deliver to you before we sail for Calais the morning of the 18th. I pray that you still reside at your address in Greenwich Street. Please meet me tomorrow evening (the 17th), in the lobby of the Hotel Astor, at eight o’clock in the evening, as my husband will be at his gentlemen’s club. If anyone should ask, please say you are Mrs. Ann Jones, an acquaintance from my school days at Crawford School for Young Ladies. If I am with a gentleman or anyone else please do not speak to me, I beg you. If you ever should identify me as your sister I feel certain I would be in danger of losing everything. —Lillian

S
he was here. My sister.

I read her packet of pages with a sick loose feeling like I’d swallowed bitter aloes and would now come apart at the joints. The delicate small pieces of paper trembled in my hands. A whiff of rosewater came off them, and one of the pages was stained, with tears I figured, spilled by Dutch for the ten years gone past, while she believed I was dead and I thought she had forgotten me. Now she was a married lady of nineteen, here in New York. I might meet her in a hotel as easy as walking out the door. I sat down in my chair and held my head in my hands. She was here.

—What is it? Charlie asked, when he came in and saw my face.

I handed him the packet and while he read it he whistled through his teeth.

—Charlie, I said, trembling, —my sister is only down the street.

—Let’s go find her right now, then, he said, and went for his hat.

For a shiny minute, I had a picture in mind of us two sisters flying across a hotel lobby, past the potted palms and the bellhops, catapulting into each other’s arms. But no, fate’s cruel fingernails had come to rake me across the face.

—The date, I cried. —What is today’s date?

—The eighteenth of September, my husband told me. But it was the SEVENTEENTH she’d wanted to meet me. I had missed her. The letter arrived too late. She had sailed for Calais already this morning, off and
gone to the backside of the moon. I set her pages down, and covered my mouth with the flat of my hand. —I’ve missed her.

Charlie put his hand on my shoulder. —At least the dirty deeds of that lying excuse of a so-called mother of hers have been exposed.

—All this time she thought I was dead.

I went in a rush off to the Hotel Astor to find her in case of a mistake, but the clerk informed me the VanDerWeils had departed. I could not be consoled. That night the ghost of my Mam visited me keening, full of reproach while my sister floated in my dreams, wearing pearls. Despite my husband’s leg draped over mine under the covers, and the round bundle of the sleeping Belle warm in the bed between us, a dark bile of longing covered me along with the blankets. I loomed around the house lost in blue thoughts and when I worked filling orders for Lunar Remedy often my attention was drawn to the far distance, gazing off like relief was there if only I knew how to look.

—Sweeten up, said my husband when he tired of my black mood.

—Easy for you to say, says I, snappish.

—He who dwells in the past robs the present, he quoted, Mr. Philosopher. He would not coddle me or humor me, he was too busy yes he was, for Madame DeBeausacq’s remedy required special ingredients in large quantities, and Charlie had found a farmer up the river whose rye field was corrupted with ergot and he’d contracted to buy the lot at a discount. Off he hurried in great excitement to Poughkeepsie to fetch it, while I toiled lonesome over the stove, the pill press and the washboard, a toddler at my skirts. He talked of ergot and advertisements and profit whilst I mourned my sister and worried that when he was out of my sight somebody would steal him like all my loved ones was stolen, some Poughkeepsie Polly in pantaloons. He only laughed and promised he would bring Annabelle a present. And what would he bring me? I wondered. While at Mrs. Evans’ I had seen ladies whose husbands brought them a case of the Venus Curse, a ghastly pox that made the hair bald in patches, the skin all over pustules, and worst was they gave it to the babies. Some present. That Curse was the reason so many children were born dead. And now Charlie was in Poughkeepsie, and while wondering what he’d bring me, I took the train of mistrust all the way from a present to a pox, suspecting my husband even without no evidence, expecting betrayal at every depot.