The Gilded Hour (3 page)

Finally Anna turned to Rosa Russo, who presented herself and her infant brother with an expression that was meant to be composed.

Anna said, “May I hold your brother while I examine him?”

“Mama says, no. Mama says—” She paused. “Mama said you will take him away from us, and we must stay together.”

Anna considered, and then she leaned forward and lowered her voice.

“My mother died on the day I turned three, and my father a few weeks later. Every day I think about them, and what they would have expected of me.”

The girl’s eyes focused on Anna’s face, looking for something specific there, some answer. “Did you have brothers and sisters to care for you?”

“A much older brother, who was away at school. Too young to raise a little girl. So an aunt brought me here to raise with her family.”

“Your brother let you go?” Her expression was torn between shock and disdain. “Why would he give you away?”

“It was a difficult time,” Anna said, her voice catching. “Much like this time is for you all.”

“There is no excuse,” said the girl. “He should not have let you go. Where is he now?”

“He died,” Anna said. “In the war.”

“He should not have left you,” Rosa said, almost incensed. “He failed you, but I will not fail my sister and brothers.”

Sister Mary Augustin cleared her throat, ready to speak up in defense of a brother many years in his grave, someone she had never known and could not imagine.

Anna said, “Rosa, I hope you are right. I hope you can do for your sister and brothers what my brother couldn’t do for me.”

•   •   •

B
Y
MIDAFTERNOON
A
NNA
was back on the ferry with the sisters and the healthier orphans, half of whom had had their hair cut almost to the scalp to stop the spread of lice. The children who were ill—a possible case of tuberculosis and another of measles—had been left in New Jersey to be cared for, though no one could tell Anna exactly what that meant, to her disquiet. Also absent was Santino Bacigalup. Mr. Mezzanotte had arranged work for him on a farm somewhere in the countryside.

When Father Moreno returned, he voiced the same objections to this arrangement that Anna had heard from Sister Ignatia, in a tone only slightly less irritated. The pledge of a significant contribution to the poor box finally swayed him.

The priest looked at her suspiciously. “Are you trying to buy forgiveness for some sin? The Church no longer sells indulgences, Dr. Savard.”

“I’m not Catholic, Father Moreno. I would guess my idea of sin isn’t much like yours.”

She blotted the bank draft she had written out on his desk and handed it to him.

“And Sister Ignatia? Who will explain this to her?”

“I suppose it will fall to me,” Anna said. “I hope that will count as sufficient penance.”

The priest’s mouth quirked, stopping just short of a smile.

“The boy needs to be vaccinated,” Anna said. “Before he goes to his new employer. That is possible, I trust?”

Father Moreno said, “It will be arranged.”

As she was leaving he called to her, and Anna paused in the doorway.

“I don’t doubt that your concerns for these children are real and your intentions good,” he said. “But you are more like Sister Ignatia than you might like to admit.”

•   •   •

O
N
THE
FERRY
, surrounded by the children and the other passengers, Sister Ignatia did not hesitate to raise the issue of the Bacigalup boy. “You interfere,” said the older nun. “You interfere in ways that could have terrible consequences.”

“Doing nothing has terrible consequences, too,” Anna said calmly.

“Do not congratulate yourself. This is not a charitable act.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Anna said.

Sister Ignatia pulled back a little, surprised.

“No one ever does anything out of charity,” Anna went on. “Every choice we make benefits ourselves directly or indirectly. Even if it looks like a sacrifice, the alternative would be unbearable in some way. If I hadn’t helped I wouldn’t sleep well, and I need my sleep.”

Gray eyes moved over her face, looking for some clue that would account for such an odd and disturbing philosophy. “Such cynicism is unattractive in a young woman.”

“That may be. But it is necessary for a doctor and a surgeon.” Anna tempered her tone with a small smile.

After a moment Sister Ignatia said, “It was a mistake to ask for your help. I won’t do it again.”

“That would probably be best,” Anna agreed. “But I will still come and make sure everyone is vaccinated.”

•   •   •

O
NE
BENCH
FARTHER
on, Giancarlo Mezzanotte was in deep discussion with Rosa Russo. Wedged between the man and girl were Tonino and Lia, while Rosa still carried the infant.

There was something familiar about the man’s posture, though Anna was certain she had never met him before. When he inclined his head toward Rosa to listen more closely, she realized that he held himself like a doctor taking a patient’s history, weighing and measuring each piece of information, not because he thought the child was lying, but because her tone and expression told him more than her words ever could.

It was an odd thought. The man was still dressed in his work clothes; he might be a carpenter or a stonemason or even a mill worker himself, but unlike most men of her acquaintance, he had a talent for talking to children. Which probably meant he had children of his own or had grown up with many brothers and sisters. Or as an orphan.

He looked over his shoulder as if she had reached out to tap it and raised one brow. Somehow he had heard her unvoiced questions.

Anna gave a brief shake of her head. When he turned away again she asked Sister Mary Augustin the question she couldn’t hold back. “What kind of farm is Santino Bacigalup going to be working on?”

But Mr. Mezzanotte had heard her. He turned around again, hooking his elbow over the back of the bench to speak to her directly. He had a very deep and resonant voice, but he still had to raise it to be heard. “I sent him to my parents. They are floriculturists and apiarists. Beekeepers.”

The urge to tell him that she knew the meaning of
apiarists
and didn’t need a definition was strong, but she bit down on it, banishing with it the long list of questions that sprang to mind. Such as, if this man farmed in New Jersey, why was he on his way to Manhattan? And why did he speak as though he had been educated for work other than farming?

“I see I neglected to introduce you properly,” Sister Ignatia said dryly. “Dr. Savard, this is Detective Sergeant Mezzanotte. Of the New York Police Department.” Her jaw set hard, as though she had to bite the words off to let them go.

An unexpected turn, but it made sense to Anna. He had a natural authority and an air of quiet competence. What he lacked was the condescension that she had encountered in police when she dealt with them professionally.

“I was under the impression that most of the detectives are Irishmen.”

He flashed a smile that changed the very shape of his face. A wide, honest, open smile that felt to Anna like a physical touch.

He said, “That’s true, the police force is primarily Irish.”

“Just as most physicians are men,” said Sister Ignatia, which put an end to the conversation.

Anna had the distinct feeling that the older sister liked the detective sergeant and thought well of him. More than that, she seemed to believe that he needed to be protected from her, Anna Savard. She might have calmed the nun’s uneasiness by assuring her that she had no interest in the detective sergeant, and even if she did, she had never learned how to flirt with any degree of comfort. It occurred to her then that she wished she could flirt with him, just to see Sister Ignatia’s reaction.

Sister Mary Augustin brought her out of her thoughts. “I’m glad Detective Mezzanotte is here to explain things to the little girl. To prepare her. It’s terrible when it comes as a surprise.”

Anna’s attention shifted to the four Russo children. Despite Rosa’s sincere intentions, they would not be able to stay together. The orphanages were segregated by sex, so that Rosa and her sister would go in one direction while her brothers went in another. Most likely they would lie to her to make the separation less troublesome, Anna was well aware. They would tell her that she’d see the boys again soon.

People told lies to children as they told fairy tales, with complete certainty that disbelief would be suspended. Rosa Russo was not likely to be so easily misled. Anna wondered if she would lash out or beg or weep, or if she would keep her dignity as a way to protect the three children she saw as her responsibility. She would fight, that Anna knew with certainty.

The agents of the health department were waiting at the dock, middle-aged men with great showers of facial hair, scowling even before the first of the orphans came onto the dock.

Anna set off at a brisk clip, not stopping to take leave of anyone at all.

•   •   •

A
FTER
FOUR
YEARS
of study at the New York Woman’s Medical School and another four years in the clinics, hospitals, asylums, and orphanages of Manhattan, Sophie Élodie Savard had earned the title of doctor. And still, when the door of the clapboard house on Charles Street opened to her
knock, Sophie introduced herself to the man standing there without any title at all.

Archer Campbell had an unruly head of red hair and skin that was almost translucent, as tender as a child’s. He was a slight man, the kind who would never grow fat no matter how well he ate. His hands, large and as hard as a drover’s, were ink-stained.

A man might be distracted or distraught or coolheaded when his wife was in labor, but Mr. Campbell seemed mostly irritated. He scowled to learn that the doctor whose fees he had been paying was not coming. Instead there was a woman, and worse still: a free woman of color, as Sophie had been taught to think of herself as a girl in New Orleans. One with a calm, professional demeanor who was well spoken and willing to look a man straight in the eye.

Mr. Campbell was the kind who would have just closed the door in Sophie’s face had the note she held out not tripped his curiosity. This one was scrawled under the letterhead of the New York Women’s Hospital and was short to the point of rudeness:

My dear Mr. Campbell:

Miss Savard is come in my place because I have been unavoidably detained. She is an excellent practitioner with much experience, and she asks only half my fee.

Dr. Frank F. Heath

As was usually the case, the combination of the low moan issuing from the back of the house, the note, and the lowered fee bought her entrance.

Sophie glanced back at the driver who had brought her. She had paid him to wait an hour in case she needed to send for assistance, but she wouldn’t be surprised to find him gone as soon as she turned her back. She would have to send Mr. Campbell himself, if it came to that. It almost made her smile to imagine the affronted face he would make if she had to give him orders.

The house was small but beautifully kept, nothing out of order, every surface polished, fresh curtains at the windows. While Sophie went about
the business at hand, her patient’s husband blustered at her and muttered to himself, his eyes turning again and again to the clock on the mantel as he paced up and down, chewing on a cigar stump. He wouldn’t allow her to close the door to the room where his wife labored, and so he was there every time she looked up. Sophie wondered whether it was his wife’s labor or the fact that he had no place to sleep that accounted for his growing irritation.

“The first three gave her no trouble.” He stopped in the doorway to interrogate her some hours later. “Why is this one taking so long?”

“This child is very large,” she told him. “But your wife is strong and the baby’s heartbeat is steady. It will just take longer than you might have hoped.”

It was a relief when he left for work.

Mrs. Campbell said, “I never wanted Dr. Heath. He’s so rough.” She had an accent Sophie thought of as New England, her vowels abrupt and all
r
-sounds clipped away. “I wanted a midwife, but Mr. Campbell”—she glanced into the empty hall and still whispered, as if her husband could hear her from anywhere in the city—“Mr. Campbell thought the wife of someone of his high position must have a doctor.”

Because there was nothing she could say to such a statement, Sophie asked instead about swaddling clothes and clouts and a basin.

“You sound strange,” Mrs. Campbell said to Sophie. “Not American.”

“French is my first language.”

“Mine too.”

Sophie turned in surprise.

“I was born and raised in Benedicta, in Maine,” Mrs. Campbell said. “Lots of Francophones in Benedicta, but I moved to Bangor when I was fifteen, and I gave it up for English.”

Sophie said, “I came here as a child from New Orleans.” She hoped that the contraction that began to peak would distract her patient from this line of questioning, but Mrs. Campbell picked up where she had left off.

“I’ve never seen anyone with your coloring. Your eyes are such an odd shade of green, and your skin—”

“I am a free woman of color,” Sophie interrupted. And at the blank expression Mrs. Campbell gave her: “My grandparents were French and Seminole and African, but I have never been a slave.”

A frown jerked at the corner of Mrs. Campbell’s mouth. “Not white,” she said. “But your hair—they’ve got a name for somebody like you, I just can’t—”

Sophie interrupted. “I was very young. I remember almost nothing of New Orleans.”

Which was a lie. She had been ten full years old when she left the city of her birth, and she remembered far too clearly what New Orleans had been, the smell of seawater and bougainvillea, how cool the tile was under her feet when she played in the courtyard, the children’s rhymes that still came to her now and then when she was very tired. She remembered the sound of her father’s voice and the way he cleared his throat before he said something he thought would make her laugh. She remembered her mother’s tone when she was happy and when she was worried and when she decided she had enough of work and wanted to go exploring and Sophie to come with her. She remembered the baker’s wife who came from the islands and told stories of the Iwa of Saint-Domingue, and Jacinthe who had only three teeth but ruled the kitchen and could make the servants tremble with a look. She remembered the quality of light that fell across her bed when she woke in the morning.