Alice straightened and led the way into the sewing room, her hand touching the wall as she went. Once at the cutting table, she lifted the skirt with its short train, shook out the folds though her hands trembled. The silk emitted a whispering rustle as she turned it for Constance to see the progress. Her eyes bonded to Constance’s face to detect her reaction. Alice nodded her head as Constance’s face registered astonishment. Alice had counted on that. And on the somewhat awed wonder as Constance lifted her gaze to Alice’s face.
Everything they had conceived was now in place, with the addition of one last thing. Two glistening fish appeared on each side of the beaded rectangle, symbolic of the Gothic arched tower of the Brooklyn Bridge, just as they had mutually planned the design. But above that rectangle there was now a third shimmering, pointed oval, shaped the same as the fish but minus the tail. This pointed oval glimmered with delicate iridescence as the fabric moved. Visually, the shape was a subtle repetition of the Gothic arch and finished off the rectangular shape so that the impression became that of a lighted flame at the center of the design, a light reminiscent of Liberty’s torch. At a deeper, hidden level in Alice’s mind, the shape completed an allusion to Constance’s three children. This she had done for both of them, for their dead sons, regardless of whether Constance ever fathomed that aspect of Alice’s addition to the design. Every stitch in that simple shape had given Alice comfort.
CHAPTER 33
Alice descended from her room after her rest, a habit she had adopted as her pregnancy progressed, to find Constance and the girls in the sewing room. Entranced at the pearls and iridescent crystals in Constance’s palm, they did not notice Alice at the door. Alice could not quite make out the girls’ awed whispers, but she watched their tentative hands coming close but not quite daring to touch. I must make a beaded pouch for each of them, she thought, or, better, a collar to wear on simple dresses. Had she seen them with such dresses? she wondered. Always in ruffled pinafores. What was she thinking? She would need to work quickly if she intended to make anything, even something simple, for these girls. Her time here was limited.
“You be so pretty, Mama,” Delia said. After turning to see Alice there, “Miss Alice!”
Alice found herself enveloped in an ardent, if diminutive, hug.
“You making Mama beautiful!”
“Well, Delia, Mama is beautiful without my doing one thing. You know that?”
Delia tilted her face up to Alice. “I know.”
“I am hoping to make something for her that is as beautiful as she is.” How she would miss these girls. But at least for a while, she would be in the company of the older girls at the orphanage. It would not be the same. Far from it. But it would be something, for the time being.
“Alice and I are going down for some tea, girls,” Constance said. “I will send Analee up to play with you and help you straighten your playroom.”
“Can’t we go outside, Mama? I promise I won’t go near the fence,” Delia demanded, tugging at her mother’s skirt.
As Constance’s face blanched, Alice took her by the elbow.
“Not today, young ladies,” Alice said, stepping in. “There’s a bit too much breeze for your doll babies. And besides, I’ll bet it’s time they had some tea of their own. One whispered to me that they would love a tea party. Now, don’t tell them I gave away their secret. Oh, you have a tea set right here.” Not releasing Constance, Alice leaned over the play table and picked up a blue flowered teapot. “So lovely. I’ll ask Analee to bring up a bit of tea—or maybe juice, if you prefer—and some cookies for you. How would that be?” She set the teapot between the girls.
“Cookies? Oh, yes. We don’t have to have the tea,” said Delia.
Constance laughed. Laughing herself, Alice released her, but nothing could release the acute sense of the cost of fear.
Downstairs, installed in her room, Constance breathed deep, laid her head back on the upholstered padding of her chair. Alice watched her rock her head from side to side.
“Will this ever be done with?” Constance said. “Will this ever go away?”
Alice sat quietly, giving Constance time. She saw the strain on her face, the tension in her arms, even with her hands listless in her lap. There was nothing to say. No answers to such questions existed.
Analee entered with a tea tray, set it on the table between them. When Constance failed to open her eyes, Analee looked at Alice in silent questioning. Alice shook her head.
“I think the girls are waiting for cookies for a tea party.” That was all she could say.
Analee nodded and left the room as Alice poured a cup of tea. She studied Constance’s unresponsive demeanor. After setting the cup quietly on the table, Alice shifted in her chair and leaned toward Constance.
“Do you miss him?” she asked.
Without moving, Constance said, “No.” Then sat up in her chair and held out her hand for the cup of tea. “No, not in the least.” Alice felt Constance’s direct gaze. “Do you, Alice? Miss your husband?”
Alice was unprepared for such a question. She remained silent for a moment. Then, “No,” she said. “Not in the least.”
Constance dropped a cube of sugar into her tea, stirred it, then sat back and took a sip. “Are you looking for him still?”
Again, Alice was taken by surprise. She looked away, then answered candidly. “I sometimes see someone from a distance who I think might be Howard.” She also sat back. “It never is, of course. But it gives me a jolt. Then I wonder if I saw him, happened to bump into him on the street, what would I do? What would I say? I’ve no idea.”
“And you’ve no idea what happened to him, Alice? None. The police . . . ?”
“The police did nothing much. One officer was kind and seemed concerned. The others were blatantly convinced he had abandoned me.”
“They didn’t search at all?”
“I don’t know, really. Perhaps at a minimum. Only one seemed to offer any help or consolation. Nothing led to anything.”
“So, you decided to come south?”
How much would she be willing to divulge? She hardly knew this woman, yet here she was, living under the same roof, cared for and respected, as if she belonged. Yet shortly she would be gone. She would be back at the orphanage, and then what? She felt hopeless to anticipate what future she might have with her newborn child. She envisioned, with a clutch of fear, the very real possibility of poverty, of squalor, the fetid odors of the tenements. What would it be to confide in this kind woman? She’d never confided in anyone, unhappily, not even in her mother. Her mother’s love, her closeness was Alice’s treasure. It was what had held her in life. So she had held her hurts with her brothers, her distant father, deep within her. Her mother had loved them, too. Of that the evidence was clear. If Alice had felt shunned, unimportant in the family, she had kept it to herself. She had stitched it into every piercing of the needle as she sat with her mother, quilting scraps of her outgrown clothes, working in daises and ivy with the power of colored thread.
“Not right away. I thought he might come back. I found work doing alterations.”
“What was his occupation?”
“He works . . . worked . . . I don’t know . . . in the cotton brokerage. Travels a great deal back and forth to Memphis.” Alice went quiet.
“Did the police inquire at his office? Surely, they would. I can’t imagine . . .”
“I’ve no idea, Constance. They never said.” Alice paused. “However, I did.”
Constance’s cup clattered as she set it down. “You? Alone? You went to his office? And what did you find? Surely, he was working, or else his office would have been frantic to find him. Somebody had to pay attention. What did they say?”
Alice took a deep breath, let it out. “They had no idea who Howard Butterworth was. As far as they knew, he didn’t exist. Never had.”
Alice’s fingernails bit into her palm as she clenched her left hand. She did not divert her eyes from Constance’s face, watched the information refuse to register, then break in with all its incredulity. Constance leaned forward, no sound coming from her open mouth. Alice watched her sit back, close her lips, blink. From upstairs the sound of children’s laughter broke the silence. No one spoke.