Who was this mother—not the lively woman she had watched all afternoon—this silent woman of no opinion? But Constance learned from her how to be not just two women but as many as it took to please, to play the part, depending on whom she was with and what was expected of her. As she grew, Constance learned to measure the cues from whatever company she was with as to who she was expected to be. Without being aware, except by a pervasive anxiety, she read the responses of those around her: the slightest opening or squint of an eye, the most minute raising of an eyebrow, the invisible tapping of a toe under a long skirt, a throat clearing, or a face turned aside. Though she worked hard, harder than even she knew, to be acceptable to others, she was haunted by her perceived failures, especially with her father. She avoided him if she could. She stood or sat quietly if she could not, head down, trying to think ahead what he might ask next. Her truncated answers to his rare questions left her unfulfilled. Sometimes she blurted out withheld bits of herself, only to be shushed by her mother.
Constance’s one consistent time alone with her father was while reading, he with his newspaper, she with whatever book might be her current assignment. Sitting at an angle from him, with her sharp farsighted eyes, she could read the front page and the less interesting back one as he held the opened paper in front of his face. She especially loved his subscriptions to the New York newspapers. Now and then, a headline would be such that she could not contain herself.
Such were the headlines—and especially the images—for the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. She was less than ten when she put aside her book and tiptoed close to his open paper. She stood transfixed at the sight of what she could only decipher as the towers of a castle and the hypnotic symmetry of line after line running to and from those magical turrets. It proved impossible not to put her finger on those lines, trace them to the looming towers of a nonexistent castle, fireworks blossoming from them, all the while murmuring, “A bridge, a bridge.”
The paper snapped as her father whipped the page sideways and into his lap. Her stomach lurched as they stared at one another, the moment frozen.
“Sit down and open your book, Constance,” he said. Then, after a moment, he looked again at the mesmerizing image on the front page. “I’ll give it to you when I am finished.”
Constance gulped in the next breath. For once, her father would actually give her the news. It was not until he rose and took the one sheet from the paper, handed it to her, and folded the rest under his arm that she actually believed he had meant it. She devoured the words, the curving symmetries of those lines, marveled at this feat of human ingenuity. Days later Constance would read the headlines, in much smaller print and without images, of the deaths of twenty-five in a panic on that bridge when a woman fell on the steps. There was no need to touch those words. She hardly needed to read past the subtitle. Something in her deflated, like a balloon punctured and gone flat. When she tried to speak to him as he lowered the paper to turn the page, he simply said, “You are too young for such things.” And that was that.
Until, of course, to prove the reliability and strength of the structure, an entire troupe of elephants was marched in a grand parade across the bridge. Such a show! And her own resilience rose. Her father let her keep that page, as well. The whole endeavor transformed into a great fairy tale for her. She kept the papers from her father carefully folded in a dress box from Maison Blanche that her mother gladly provided.
In the years that followed, she added another page to the box, one that announced the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. Another page or two about the much-anticipated World Cotton Centennial in New Orleans, but she discarded them after her father took the family for a thrilling, but ultimately tiring, visit to the exposition, which was emblazoned with hundreds of newfangled electric lights, almost bright as day. The strings of neoteric bulbs left nothing hidden, including her excited exuberance, which her father immediately squelched with admonitions to “Calm down and behave like a lady.”
Constance’s reminiscences shifted to her marriage. Realization dawned on her that she had simply traded her father for Benton. She had been a lady, and it was a lady Benton had wanted. Perhaps any lady would have done. Constance had been convenient and available. And as her father’s daughter, she was Benton’s stepping-stone through his own magical gate into New Orleans society. She had not been the bridge he needed, transporting him into social acceptability, but she’d been good enough, and likely as close to that social entrée as he might hope to come regardless. From there she was simply an accoutrement to his ambitions. She would do, as long as she didn’t laugh too loud or talk too much, didn’t express her opinions or start to tell an anecdote he considered his own, and didn’t ever contradict him. Most of all, she had to keep her hands in her lap or folded and still, in spite their being as unconsciously necessary to speech as her tongue, just like it was for her silent mother. In that sense she had married her overbearing father and become her silenced mother. Both in one package.
To her great surprise, the world around her found her beautiful. She could never understand why. Regardless, she became Benton’s primary improvement project: Would she please pull down her skirt? Was she aware the toe of her boot was scuffed? Her hair was too flat against her head. Did she not understand how to fluff it? Why was she wearing that open-necked dress to dinner? These were business partners, and she needed to be covered with a jacket. Would she stop talking with her hands? She must learn to speak without pausing—her hesitancies were such an irritant. The list was endless. Yet she devoted herself to trying. She put her life’s energy into every detail: herself, the girls, the house, the household management, her failure to be alluring to him. That last item was the one that pained her, emotionally and physically. If she opened herself to him, tried to make herself tempting with a new gown, an open robe that revealed a bit of flesh, he rebuffed her. If not, he took her silently and only for his own gratification, often in ways that repelled her. If she addressed the issue in any way, he reminded her that this aspect of marriage was meant for the indulgence of men. She was a lady, after all, not a whore. If he needed to remind her of that, he would. And did. She wept her secret tears alone in the attic, longing for something different, for the romantic affection encountered in novels, hinted at by twittering friends at intimate luncheons, or at soirees where she might witness a husband whispering in his wife’s receptive ear if he thought no one was looking. No, she was not a whore, though his manner toward her sometimes made her feel like one.
CHAPTER 27
Alice’s question broke through the spell of the past. “What would you think of using this beading to enhance the bodice in some way?”
Constance felt disoriented as her awareness returned to the present, the bright sunshine casting an oblique slant of light across the sewing room floor. “I’m sorry. Could you repeat that? My mind was elsewhere.”
“I was looking at all the beading on this wide sleeve here and thinking how you need to be a bit understated, because you’re still in mourning. So, I’m seeing these beads on the bodice, but in a much simpler design. Something linear, perhaps.”
Linear. Instantly, Constance saw lines, the curving convergence of cable lines on the Brooklyn Bridge. “Wait!” she said, running from the room. “Wait right here.” As if Alice might disappear somehow.
Constance knew exactly where to find the box with her handful of newspaper clippings. It was on a shelf just inside the attic door. She ran up the stairs and was back minutes later, her excitement palpable. She rummaged through the few clippings to one at the bottom and lifted the page out with a flourish.
“This,” she said, pointing. “This! Right here. Can you do this?”
Constance saw the perplexity on Alice’s brow as she studied the image of the famous bridge. She tried to look with Alice’s eyes and saw the towering architecture, the Gothic arches, the lines of the streets running through.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I meant these.” Her finger traced the lines of the cables, the mysterious almost parallels that somehow curved and converged with one another, coming visually to a single point. Her finger traced those hypnotic lines, just as she had as a child, standing mesmerized on the outside of her father’s newsprint barricade.
“I see it,” Alice said. “Yes, I can see it. Of course.” She raised a delighted face to Constance’s questioning gaze.