The Gilded Cage (14 page)

“You want to hurt her,” she whispered. He felt her teeth graze his ear again, not softly. “Take me the way you want to take her.”

Horatio had a flash of pleasure in his lover. Marguerite, strong, wiry Marguerite, the little savage, with her red lips and white teeth, her absence of shame.

Her thighs moved underneath him, and he groaned. His eyes flew open, and she was watching him avidly. “Don't think,” she said impatiently, greedily. “Just take me. Close your eyes,” she ordered angrily.

Horatio closed his eyes again. His head moved to her breast. He took her nipple between his teeth, and Marguerite moaned. Her sound of pleasure masked the creak of the bedroom door, so Horatio didn't raise his head. Then he heard the gasp.

Bell stood in the doorway. She saw everything at once, it seemed. Her amber eyes were very wide as they flew from Horatio to Marguerite. For an instant, she checked the room, as though she thought she had blundered. When she realized she was actually in her own room, she stiffened. And then she was gone like a shadow, flitting away, while Horatio was already slipping out of Marguerite, while Marguerite was just beginning to realize what happened.

“Bell!” she called. She struggled to put on the wrapper, but Horatio, damn him, was lying on part of it, and he was transfixed, unable to move. “Bell!”

She heard the front door slam. Marguerite lay back on the pillows and regarded the ceiling. She devoutly hoped she would continue to have a roof over her head tomorrow.

She was going mad. She would go mad. She was
already
mad. Bell ran down the block, laughing. Tears streamed down her face, and she continued to laugh.

Sex! It was everywhere around her, it filled the house with musk, and she was choking on the thick scent. To hear the news of Sally's death—and somehow Bell connected that death to sex, for what was Sally but a slave to her lover, her husband? And then to see Lawrence bending over Columbine that way—she thought she would die. And she'd run home for solace, wanting only to slip under cold sheets in her own bed, and found Horatio and Marguerite … like that.

She couldn't think of it. Lawrence had cupped Columbine's head so tenderly. His hands looked brown and large against her white throat. And Marguerite's nakedness, her black hair spilling over white shoulders, and Horatio, naked against the sheets. She had seen his most private parts, red and angry as an animal's. She had seen everything.

Bell hurried on. She was going west, away from respectability and toward the tenements that crouched under the Ninth Avenue El. Heedless and mindless, she walked quickly to drive out the pictures in her brain, her unbuttoned coat chasing behind her. All she saw was flesh. All she smelled was sex. She felt sick. She felt sweat bead up on her forehead, and she gulped in the frosty air.

She could smell the brewery now, and the sweet air made her feel sicker. She leaned against a wrought-iron gate. Across the street a squalid red brick building stood, its front crisscrossed with fire escapes and landings. Despite the cold, a few women leaned on their elbows and looked down at the street in a desultory fashion. One sat leaning against the fire escape, a blanket around her shoulders and a cigarette in her hand. The woman waved in a bored but beckoning way at a man who ignored her but started up the stairs.

Bell saw that they were prostitutes. She gripped the gate behind her, and she felt the iron bite into her cold bare hand. A sharp, protruding piece of metal tore the skin on her wrist. She felt a trickle of blood, warm and wet, snake down her forearm and stain her dress. She brought the injured wrist to her mouth. She imagined the smell of sex on her fingers. She swallowed, tasting salt, and, flecks of blood on her lips, she started to walk again.

C
OLUMBINE HEARD THE
first gasp just one minute into her speech. Good.

She had started simply. She walked out, waited for the applause to stop, then merely set her spectacles on her nose and read, in a quiet voice, from a hospital report. It was a long list of injuries. The details in medical language were no less chilling for being so clinical. The injuries described were a broken arm, a smashed cheekbone, black eye, burns on upper thighs, internal injuries and various bruises from a fall down a steep flight of stairs. At the end of the recitation, Columbine announced the patient's name, Sarah Hoover, her age, twenty-two, and the date of her death, two weeks previous. Her assailant? John Hoover. Her husband.

She heard the gasp, then felt the audience stir, rustle, cough. It was as though one whispering murmur passed through the crowd like a breaking wave. And then attention returned to her. Columbine knew this, even as she went on speaking. She knew she had them in her hand. Her first object now was not to lose them.

She went on with Sally's story, detailing the heartbreaking list of Sally's attempts to find help. The neighbor, the doctor, the police, the family. Those who questioned her loyalty, her sanity, her conduct. At the end, Sally had no one left to go to. When her husband dragged her from her aunt's house, there was no one to prevent her going home to him. He was her husband. He had that right.

By the end of her speech, Columbine imagined that each person in the crowd was leaning toward her. Their pale faces were upturned and rapt. No one coughed, and no one stirred.

“Silence,” she said. “They tell us silence keeps us safe. With silence, we remain honorable wives, mothers, daughters. But what honor is this, and who defines it? Our husbands, our fathers. The same husbands and fathers who have raped us, have beaten us. The same uncles who have slipped their hands inside our bodices. The same brothers who have invaded our beds.” Another gasp went up, and Columbine charged on. “What happened to Sally Hoover is a crime. And that crime is added to a multitude of similiar crimes too horrific to conceive of. But when we add our silence to those crimes—that becomes our deepest shame. I hear the multitudes crying. I hear Sally Hoover's voice crying. And she is crying ‘Shame.'”

Columbine paused. She looked out into the crowd, and she caught Bell's eye. Bell nodded at her encouragingly, and Columbine felt her palms grow damp. She'd discussed the ending of the speech over and over with Bell, and finally, she'd decided to go ahead with her plan. It could backfire, she knew. But now, Columbine let no trace of fear enter her voice. That was the point, wasn't it?

“What would happen,” she asked, leaning forward and looking from face to face of the women in the audience, “if we women told the truth about our lives? I say if we told the truth here, tonight, it would surge out of the doorways and run down the stairs in a coursing stream until it was a river of righteousness raging through the streets of our city and our nation.” Columbine held the eyes of the women in the first rows of the hall. “Stand up,” she said, and a thin-faced woman in the first row jumped. “If you yourself have been beaten, if you yourself have suffered abuse at the hands of your father, your uncle, your brother, your husband. Stand up. If you have a friend, a sister, a mother, an aunt who has suffered that abuse, stand up. Show us. Show this hall, show this city, show this nation how widespread this cancer is. For God's sake—for
women's
sake, stand up. You'll notice,” Columbine added, her voice softer but still carrying to the farthest reaches of the hall, “that I am standing, too.”

There was a pause. Then, as agreed, Bell stood. It took ten agonizing seconds before Ivy Moffat stood, a few rows away, as she'd promised to Columbine. She saw another woman stand, a stranger, near the back of the hall. Then another. And another. No one spoke, no one moved except the countless women, some dressed in fine hats and cloaks, some in the plain black of the working girl, who rose and stood, erect and silent, by their chairs. Tears burned behind Columbine's eyes but still she waited, then waited longer, for more women kept standing until it seemed the great hall at Cooper Union was filled with women standing, giving silent testimony. When Columbine was sure that every woman who had the courage to stand had done so, she nodded. Then she turned away and walked off the stage. She had prepared a few more words, but this was the most eloquent conclusion she could reach.

She stood trembling in the wings as the hall exploded with applause. Someone pushed her back toward the stage, and she stood for a moment, hearing their cheers, then quickly walked off again. She didn't feel triumphant and exhiliarated, as she usually felt after a speech. It hadn't turned out to be her speech at all. It was the speech of the hundred silent women who had stood in the end.

Columbine reached out shakily to grab the edge of a dusty curtain to steady herself for a moment. Then people were rushing at her, women she worked with, people she didn't know, people she knew. At first she could hardly distinguish the faces. She looked for Elijah Reed, but she didn't see him, and she felt disappointed. Why she felt she needed that man's approval she didn't know. Again, Columbine felt irritated, and then was irritated at her irritation.

She was led to small reception area, where she barely had time to drink a glass of water and catch her breath before they were on her again. Congratulations bubbled from every mouth. Everyone looked energized, excited. But the question was, would anything change? Would they risk embarrassment or anger to question the rights of a husband? Would they still even care a month from now?

She looked over the bobbing heads for Lawrence, but she didn't see him. He had told her he would be first backstage to greet her. Instead, Elijah Reed came forward. He was dressed in a dark suit, and for once, his shirt was pressed and starched.

“It was an excellent speech,” he said quietly. “You said what needed to be said.”

“Thank you,” Columbine murmured softly, to hide her pleasure at his words. “And thank you for giving me the chance. It was good of you to wait.”

“I knew you would say yes,” he said imperturbably.

She bristled. “Do you know me so well, Mr. Reed?”

He looked at her appraisingly. “No,” he said seriously. “But I'm a good guesser.”

She couldn't help smiling at that. “Are you coming back to the house afterward? Bell is giving a little reception.”

He bowed. “Of course. Miss Huxton has already asked me. I'll see you there.”

He moved away. Behind him, Columbine saw Ned moving toward her.

“Oh, Ned, I'm so glad you came,” she said when he came up.

“It was a wonderful success,” he said. He did not take her hand or kiss her cheek. “I was very moved.”

“Thank you,” Columbine said. “How is your work in Washington? I see your name in the papers every other day, it seems.”

“It keeps me busy. It's a city of charlatans, Columbine. I've met some characters, let me tell you,” he said, laughing.

How like old times it was, Columbine thought. Yet how not. Ned's stories had kept her so amused. She'd forgotten that, how his bemusement at fools could make her laugh.

But someone else came up to congratulate her, and Ned slipped away with a bow. She shook hands and chatted and when she looked around again, he was gone.

Columbine began to wonder why Lawrence did not appear. She frowned. He had spoken so eagerly of seeing her speak tonight. Where was he?

Though he hadn't kissed her again, and she was quite sure she wouldn't have allowed it if he had tried, she still found herself drawn to him strangely. They hadn't discussed the kiss, but it lay between them, constricting her behavior now, making her a little shy with him. Lawrence had taken a room near Tompkins Square, but he seemed to be at the house almost as often. And he always seemed to arrive when she was frustrated or bored or needed a break, bringing kuchen from the local bakery near his house, or flowers, or whatever small thing struck his fancy on the way.

A slender arm slid around her waist, and she turned to confront the quiet amber eyes of Bell. “It was a great success,” Bell said, kissing her cheek.

“You were as much a part of that speech as I was,” Columbine told her. “Thank you for everything. Have you seen Lawrence, by the way?”

Bell's arm slipped off Columbine's waist and fell to her side. “No, I haven't.”

Columbine hesitated, but she could see how Bell's spine had stiffened. She knew that Bell wasn't very fond of Lawrence. “I suppose we'll see him back at the house.”

“Yes,” Bell said quickly. “And perhaps we should think of leaving.”

“Bell, are you all right?”

“Of course. I'd better not monopolize your time. I'll see about a carriage.”

“All right.” Columbine watched Bell move through the crowd thoughtfully. Her head had been buried in her lecture for the past few weeks, that was clear. Bell seemed troubled by something. Ever since Sally Hoover's death, she hadn't been herself. Even little Marguerite had been scarce lately.

Shaking her head, Columbine surveyed the crowd a bit impatiently. Fiery Leonora O'Reilly, who was working on founding a consumer's society, had captured an intent Elijah Reed's attention. Bell had disappeared. Marguerite hadn't come at all. And where was Lawrence?

Lawrence heard the first ten minutes of Columbine's speech, but he felt no impetus to remain. The speech would be another success in one long trail of successes for the notable Columbine Nash. Another speech that explored another issue that was completely beside the point. The world was crushing the spirit of honest men while Columbine and her girls fretted about a few women who had the misfortune to marry bad men. If the system were changed, those men would not need to resort to violence in their homes, they would be free. Columbine was, as usual, focusing on too narrow a vision.

Lawrence was the man for expansive visions; it should have been him up there declaiming to a rapt audience. He hurried through Astor Place, crossing the dark streets, picturing the adulation, the notices in all the papers about his brilliance. It was time to demonstrate his commitment. It was past time.