Wedded to War (6 page)

Phineas, Charlotte could tell, relished being caught in the whirl. His countenance always brightened around luxury and opulence, and here on Broadway, both were displayed en masse in the storefronts lining the avenue. Places like Lord & Taylor and Brooks Brothers usually caught his eye, but today he paused in front of Tiffany & Company, gazing at the dazzling ladies’ jewelry displayed on black velvet, with a firm hold on Charlotte’s small, gloved hand.

“Phineas.” Charlotte tugged gently on his arm. “Did you hear me? I said I’m going to apply to be a nurse.”

He swiveled around to face her. “Pardon me?”

“Yes, a nurse. The W.C.A.R. means to train one hundred New York women to serve as nurses for the army—the army doesn’t have enough, you know—and I mean to be one of them.”

His brow furrowed. “But how would that look?”

“Patriotic,” she said, a little too quickly. “Dutiful. Benevolent. Respectable, too.”

“Just how would it be respectable to have women mixing with large masses of half-naked men?”

“Phineas, listen to me. The most respectable women—and men—of our class are behind this. Reverend Henry Bellows, Dr. Elisah Harris, Mrs. David Dudley Field, Mrs. Henry Baylis, Mrs. Cyrus Field, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell … all of them.” When he still looked unconvinced, she continued. “The army is simply unprepared to handle the magnitude of what is about to unfold on the battlefields. Why not use women
who are willing, able, and most eager to serve? Think of it this way. When a doctor or surgeon makes a house call, who takes care of the sick or wounded when the doctor leaves?” She paused. “The women do. The mothers, wives, sisters, sometimes even daughters receive instructions from the doctor or surgeon, clean and dress the wounds, administer the medicines. We are already nurses. This is just moving it to a different setting. Not every soldier’s mother or wife will be able to tend their own. Only a select few will fill that role—but we must have training. Do you see?”

“I don’t like it. I’m afraid most people won’t think about it in the same way. But if you insist on being stubborn about it …”

“It is what I want.” She pinned him with a determined look. She didn’t really need his permission.

Suddenly, a woman in a bright green gown, too low in the neckline for daytime wear, and with a bonnet pushed too far back on her head, sauntered past, leaving behind her a trail of lilac scent so thick Charlotte could taste it.

Charlotte followed Phineas’s gaze in time to see the woman look back over her shoulder and throw him a brazen wink and a smile as bold—and sickening—as the heavy fragrance in which she was drenched. Her cheeks were painted. In a flash, Phineas’s face flamed just as red, but playing around the corners of his mouth was just the hint of a smile.

N
one of it seemed real to Ruby O’Flannery. The noise was deafening, the glaring sun unfriendly to her weak green eyes. Far more used to shadows, she felt as though she had just stepped into a scene in an overexposed photograph. Thousands of people lined the sidewalks, pushed against windows, or streamed out of doors all along the road. New York City’s Sixty-Ninth Regiment was marching in full uniform to attend mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Mott Street for a blessing from Archbishop John Hughes. It would be the company’s last stop before departing for war. Flags of emerald green fringed with gold, the Irish regiment colors, dotted the churning sea of people. The crush of the unruly crowd frightened Ruby; hundreds were attempting to march alongside the soldiers. She had already lost sight of her husband, Matthew, just one bobbing black felt slouch hat among one thousand others.

The tune of the bugles and the steady beat of the drums changed
pitch in Ruby’s ears as her stooped figure was swept farther and farther away from the marching regiment by the surging throngs of spectators. She could hardly comprehend that so many people suddenly supported what Matthew was doing. She was used to jeers, not cheers.

Ruby and Matthew had arrived at the Port of New York in 1850 at the crest of the mass migration to escape Ireland’s Great Famine. While they saw New York as a new beginning, New Yorkers made it clear that the O’Flannerys, along with the thousands of other immigrants who arrived that year, were unwelcome, posting signs on their storefronts reading “I
RISH
N
EED
NOT A
PPLY
.”

Now, with the joyful shouts of the masses and the steady rhythm of the marching Sixty-Ninth ringing in her ears, Ruby dared to hope Matthew’s new opportunity and its guaranteed salary was the answer she had been praying for.

Unable to find a spot inside the cathedral, Ruby leaned against the brick wall enclosing the adjacent cemetery outside and smoothed her dark red hair back into place in a tightly coiled bun. The petite woman had been beautiful once, her parents even naming her for the striking color of her hair. But that was a lifetime ago.

“Hey, hunchback!”

Ruby didn’t need to look around to know the brazen child was talking to her. It was true. As an outworker seamstress, unending hours spent bending over her sewing in the poorly lit rooms of her tenement cramped her back and neck muscles so much that she was stooped over even when not working. Her neck bent forward, giving her the appearance either of being in a great hurry when walking or greatly attentive when in conversation.

A ripple of laughter told her that a gaggle of young boys had singled her out as the object of their attention.

“C’mon now, and show us yer arms, tweety!” another boy taunted.

Arms already folded across her chest, she dug her fingers into them as if to keep them from flying up by accident. Like any other hand sewer, her arms had been so trained by holding work up to her eyes that their
natural resting position was to bend up from the elbows. The cruel nickname “tweety,” she assumed, was based on her hideous resemblance to a bird with broken wings. She made it a habit to carry something in her arms while walking in public to disguise their unnatural bend. Caught empty-handed, she would fold her arms across her chest or prop her fists on her hips, rather than straighten her elbows, which caused great pain.

From around the corner, a Sister of Charity came and shooed the boys away on threat of putting them in the nuns’ Orphan Asylum. It would have been a step up for the boys’ living conditions, but they scattered anyway.

“Are you all right, my child?” the nun asked Ruby. “Pay those lads no mind. They come from hard homes, you know, with little but the clothes on their backs. You can’t imagine the filth and vermin that share those dark, cramped quarters with them.” Ruby nodded. She understood more than the nun realized. Those boys were her neighbors at the tenement.

“I’m all right, Sister. Just waiting to see if I can catch a glimpse of my husband before he sets off.” Ruby kept her arms crossed. The kind nun nodded and returned to her duties. Taking a deep breath, Ruby lifted her face to the sun. The warmth felt good after another long hard winter. Spring had come again, when she felt like it never would. Of course, this spring was different—this spring had brought with it a war that seemed so far away, but whose fingers had reached up to her city and grasped her neighbors and husband in its mighty grip, pulling them away from her. But the war machine also paid money, for which she was grateful. It had to be wrong to find hope in any aspect of war, but Matthew’s steady income would allow her a respite from the life-draining hours she had been forced to keep lately.

An hour later, the Sixty-Ninth spilled out the front doors and began their march directly to the ferry that would take them to Annapolis for their first mission of guard duty. Ruby scanned the uniformed men for a final glimpse of her husband.

The crowd continued to push past her, almost knocking her down.
A strong grip on her shoulder spun her around.

“Don’t you have any work to do?” Matthew suddenly stood over her. His brawny form, the evidence of long hours spent building bridges and hauling rocks, stretched the fibers of his ill-fitting Union greatcoat. His blue eyes flashed with their usual intensity, his ruddy cheeks flushed with both anticipation of war and the heat of the packed sanctuary he had just come from.

His absurd question stung Ruby as much as his drunken slaps. She usually worked fifteen hours a day from their dank tenement dwelling, sewing cuffs, buttonholes, and sleeves of bleached muslin for Davis & Company, but work always surged in April as the garment manufacturer rushed summer styles to Western and Southern suppliers. She could easily count on eighteen hours most days this month, earning her between seventy-five cents and $1.50 per week. She knew exactly how much work awaited her and needed no reminding.

“Can’t a woman see her husband off to war?” Ruby replied. A rash of heat radiated from her collar to her chin.

Matthew shook his head. “Soon’s I get my paycheck, I’ll be sending it on home to you, but in the meantime, you are supporting yourself.”

Time and pain had chipped away the luxury of common courtesy and kindness, but Ruby knew he wouldn’t let his wife go hungry if he could help it.

“This is a new start for us, Ruby.” His voice was edged with determination.

And then he was gone, as suddenly as he had appeared, lost again in the formation of soldiers filing down the street on their way to the ferry.

Ruby stood frozen in place. Something about his farewell haunted her. “A new start,” he had said. Yes, that was it. That’s what he had said when they immigrated to New York, and yet they had still struggled, just in new ways, to survive. That’s what he had said when they learned they were going to have a child, both times, and now they had none. Was she still a mother if her children were dead? She pressed calloused
and pinpricked fingertips against her eyelids, as if she could close her mind’s eye to the horrific images her memory now dredged up. She needed to sit down.

Chin tucked down, Ruby fought her way back to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and stepped through the two sets of massive double doors. As the muffled din of the retreating crowd faded, she sank down into the last pew. Her slight shoulders shook with silent sobs that racked her entire body.

Spent at last, she looked up. Stained glass windows on the sides of the church depicted stories from the Bible, while the windows at the front of the nave cast the light in shades of blue and green. Thick, red carpeting created a path from the middle aisle up the stone steps to where the archbishop had said mass a short time ago. The ceiling was so tall her gaze followed it up until it pointed her to the heavens.

Rarely was she in a place this magnificent. Catholic churches, like Catholic immigrants, faced hard times in New York City, too, prompting them to charge an admission fee to enter, and to rent the front pews to the upper- and middle-class as another marker of their wealth. Ruby had been told that the brick wall enclosing the Cathedral and cemetery was to prevent mob violence from anti-Catholics, but she had always thought of it as yet another barrier between her and God.

Today, however, she relished being here. She felt like she should pray, but all she knew from her childhood was the Hail Mary. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” she started, slipping to her knees and gently rocking back and forth as she had done as a girl. “The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

Now, and at the hour of our death
, Ruby repeated to herself.
The hour of our death.

Was it only supposed to take an hour? Just one moment, just one death? For when each of her children had passed from this life, they
took pieces of her with them, leaving her with half a heart and a life never to be fulfilled.

Ruby’s gaze settled on a sculpture of Mary holding Jesus—not the newborn baby, but the lifeless body of God the Son, just pulled down from the cross. Tears rolled down Ruby’s cheeks unbidden as she stared at Mary’s stony face. She had come here in search of peace but felt only pain instead.

She hurried from the Cathedral and made her way back to the tenement. For once, she was grateful to be able to turn her attention to the work that awaited her.

B
y the end of the week, Alice was home again at her tranquil estate in Fishkill, seventy miles north of Manhattan, and Jacob was back at her side. For the moment. Charlotte could picture her sister knitting and sewing far into the night to outfit her soldier husband for war.

And what am I doing? Dancing at a ball to honor the newest debutante of society. As if there was nothing better to do.
The thought pinched her as much as the whalebone corset cinching her waist to a mere fifteen inches.

She trained her eyes on her dance partner as they twirled through a sea of taffeta and coattails. In the edges of her vision, the room spun in a sparkling, pastel blur of opulence. Charlotte’s feet kept time to the polka, but her heart beat to a reveille.

When horsehair bows finally stopped dancing on their strings, the men bowed and women dipped in low curtsies before being handed to the next partner listed on their dance cards.

“You are as lovely as ever.” Phineas’s mustache tickled her cheek as he spoke into her ear, sending a shiver down her spine. She wore an off-the-shoulder gown of soft white organdy, adorned with a cluster of buttery roses made of silk ribbon in the center of the bodice, and more roses cascading down the multitiered skirt. Her chestnut hair was swept up and crowned with a band of green leaves and a bunch of roses covering the thick knot at the nape of her neck. “You look like an angel in that exquisite gown.”

“I’d rather look like a nurse and do something useful for once,” she murmured, sure no one could hear her anyway. Phineas walked Charlotte back to her mother and returned to the dance floor to complete a set of eight dancers for the quadrille, without her. Though Caroline sniffed at the empty slot on her daughter’s card, Charlotte was content to rest and watch the mesmerizing movements on the gleaming hardwood floor.