“Yes, you may have a cookie. One each. If any are left from my orphanage auxiliary meeting, you may have another after supper.” Constance kissed the top of Maggie’s head, unlatched the tight little hands from her skirt. “Have you been good girls today for Analee?” She raised her questioning face to her housekeeper.
“Yes’m. They always good girls.” Analee hesitated. “Had to stop Delia from shaking her doll, so she don’t break it. She kept saying, ‘You hush now. You just hush that crying.’ She say that baby making too much racket and she had to make her stop crying. I scolded her some. That’s about it.”
Constance stiffened. Her heart was exploding. “You were shaking your doll, Delia?” Her voice came out edged and tight. “Why were you shaking your doll?”
“She wouldn’t stop crying, Mama.”
“Analee is right. You’ll break her, honey.” She managed words that would make sense. “Then it would be you crying. Shaking your doll is not the way to make her stop crying.”
“Well, Daddy did it.”
“Daddy shook your doll?”
“No, Mama. He shaketed baby David a lot, and he stopped crying. Maybe he breaked baby David?”
Constance gasped for breath, grasped the edge of the table, elbows locked. Her baby, her David. She had touched him, patted him, thinking him asleep. No response. No breath. No life. She knew babies sometimes died in their sleep, but who would anticipate such a thing? No one. Who would even think of such a thing? No one. She had returned home from errands for the orphanage, picking up hand-me-downs from a woman who had recently taken an interest in those children. The little dresses had been lovely, far fancier than those her own girls wore. She had greeted her girls then as she’d greeted them now, their excitement running through her, buoying her spirits. Hugging them tightly, yet eager to mount the stairs and peek in at David, her precious son, her boy after two girls. She had put no greater value on a son than her girls, but she had loved the balance of both in her life.
Her joy at his birth had overwhelmed her. More so than it had Benton. That had surprised her, puzzled her all those months. He had not been eager to hold this baby boy in his arms, as he had the girls. She had thought it a male characteristic to be prouder of sons than daughters. Yet somehow Benton had seemed less interested, more ill at ease with this precious boy than with the girls. So she had been surprised to find him standing there in the nursery, staring out the window, like a statue on guard. He had turned when she whispered to him, so as not to wake the baby. He had nodded and left the room, more quiet even than usual. She had glanced into the crib to be sure they had not disturbed the sleeping infant, then had followed him out and closed the door.
A bit later, her small bosom tight with milk, she had gone to wake him from his now too-long nap, touched the back of his silky fine hair, laid her hand on his back. He had not moved, even when she’d jostled him slightly. He had not opened his eyes. How many eternities had it taken her to absorb the absence of his breath?
Dr. Birdsong, her childhood friend, her doctor, her children’s doctor, had held her and had simply said over and over, “It happens, Constance. Sometimes it happens.” Had reassured her she was not to blame. The baby had not suffocated. “Thymic asthma, most probably,” he had said, and he’d written it on the death certificate. “It happens. It just happens.”
Now Delia’s words struck her like a blow. “Daddy shaketed baby David a lot, and he stopped crying.” Her infant son shaken till he stopped crying? By his father, now lying deep under some unknown water. Dead, like his son.
Analee shooed the girls from the room. Reluctantly, they backed away, their eyes bright with curiosity and fear.
“You ain’t going down, now is you?” Analee took firm hold around the back of Constance’s waist. “I got you, Miss Constance.”
Constance shook her head but did not raise it. Her legs were failing her. Had Benton meant to do it? Impossible. He was not that kind of man. Benton had been broken by David’s death. She had consoled him as best she could in her own grief, but he had been so distant. He had clung to her only once, his face buried against her waist, while she stroked his hair, where her own tears fell like slow rain. When he’d choked on his words, pleading, saying he should have known, she had repeated the doctor’s words: “It happens. Sometimes it just happens.”
“I got you now.” Analee locked an arm around Constance’s waist, holding tight. She stretched out her foot to scoot a side chair close and eased Constance into it.
Constance sat, hands limp in her lap, head rolled back, eyes locked above her, looking at nothing. Minutes passed before she spoke, and then, as if addressing no one, her eyes on the plaster above, she said, “They saw him?”
“I don’t know, Miss Constance. I don’t know.”
“She couldn’t just make that up, Analee.”
“I don’t know. Childrens is apt to make up most anything, do they get a mind to it.”
Constance lowered her head and turned, her face blanched of color, the anger rising like a razor through her. “And just how would she get a mind to that, Analee? That’s not a thing you just get a mind to.”
Analee wiped at the sweat across Constance’s brow, tugged at a fragment of something stuck to the skin at her eyebrow. “Them ladies gone be here right soon, Miss Constance. I’m taking you up. I’m gone put you down to rest. I’m gone tell them you took sick. Got a headache come on of a sudden. Them ladies can handle it all without you.”
“No, Analee.” Constance pulled herself upright. Testing her balance, she glanced at the valise on the floor, then accepted Analee’s hand for security. “Give me a moment to gather myself. I’ll be all right momentarily.”
“Miss Constance, you ain’t gone be all right. But I know you ain’t gone give up living . . .” Analee laid her hand on Constance’s shoulder. “Mayhap they gone be times like this, long as you live.”
Constance closed her eyes and shook her head. Her fingers clasped the water glass Analee slipped into her fingers. The water was cool and braced her some. She needed to get that valise out of the way. Out of sight. She needed to hide that disguise. But she could not lift it herself. Her small remainder of strength now failed her.
“Would you bring that valise up for me, after all, Analee? I’d as soon not climb the stairs by myself.”
CHAPTER 3
A day’s tardiness for Howard was not unusual; in fact, given her husband’s erratic work schedule, it was far too frequent. An overextended meeting might easily cause him a missed train, resulting in a day’s delay returning to Chicago. The occasional locomotive breakdown might result in almost as lengthy a holdup. Two days had once given her serious concern. Now three days with no word from him threw Alice into alarm.
The leftovers from the dinner Alice had splurged on for Howard’s return, the dinner for which he had never appeared, lasted her two and a half days. The last of the roast chicken, squash, potatoes, and spinach were gone by the time she resigned herself to his disappearance and mustered the courage to go to the police.
The day was hot—no hint yet of fall weather—the heavy heat like wet clothing drooping on a line across the alley, like all those clotheslines across all those alleys dripping on the pedestrians hurrying to do whatever worrisome errand awaited them. Alice tugged the muslin sleeves of her lightest dress over her damp arms and buttoned the high collar. In reluctant surrender, she hesitated, touching the chifforobe where his few garments hung. After locking the apartment door, Alice descended the stairway and stepped out to the perpetually muddy street. The odors of horse dung, waste, rotting garbage, and offal assailed her. Raising her skirt, she looked both ways and balanced on the sagging planks of the boardwalk that pretended to give protection from the pervasive mud.
Two streets over she encountered a mounted policeman shouting instructions to a group of children racing along the street.