CHAPTER 35
Alice woke knowing with all her resolve that Constance was right. Alice would have to go to the cotton exchange to inquire about Howard. If she failed to do so, she would be haunted by the possibility that he could be nearby, that she had failed to do her utmost for this child she carried. If he were to be found, she would find him. She would file for divorce for abandonment and hold him financially responsible to his child. She could do this. Constance had lent her the energy and the commitment. The gown was well enough along that she might take a morning off to visit the cotton exchange.
As she lay in bed, her gaze traveled to the window. Her eyes rested on the bare treetops, the limbs holding fragments of sunlight like bits of fabric in a quilt under construction, like comfort pieced together from throwaways. There is hope, she thought. There is something to life that we fail to understand. Life is a great puzzle, she thought. All these pieces of me forming something I cannot see, may never see whole. The pieces will come together somehow. It is a matter of trust. It is a matter of seeing life with new eyes.
Rising from the comfort of her temporary bed, Alice donned her shirtwaist, her simple gabardine gored walking skirt, and her only warm tailored jacket. None quite fit her now, in spite of the alterations she had performed on them. The shirtwaist was becoming tight, not only at the waist but around her bosom, as well. She tugged at it to relieve her discomfort beneath her arms. The skirt would do for now. Each of the six gores had wide seams, which she had been able to let out sufficiently. There was still a bit of fabric remaining for more. A relief, since she had only one other skirt, the one she wore every day to do her work on the gown. There were only four seams in the jacket to let out, and she had taken them to their limit. She pulled the front as near closed as possible, tugged again, then let go with a sigh. It would have to do. There was no alternative.
Luckily, she never spilled on herself and found it easy to remove any spots on her work skirt, left by enthusiastic little dirty hands, with a bit of soap and water on a rag, the touch of a hot iron. Well, she thought unhappily, dirty hands will not be a worry for the time being. The children were kept safely in the house with incessant adult supervision. For how long no one could predict. She knew the children were restless and pining to run free outside. Their short daily walks at least got them in the open air—three women on guard around them, absolutely no running, adult hands refusing to let go of theirs, and the instinctive childhood need for freedom and play thoroughly squelched. Alice donned the small wool hat she had fashioned for herself in Chicago, narrow brimmed with a side bow knot, soft enough to pack. Even though it was technically still winter, New Orleans weather was far warmer than that of either Chicago or the plains. A winter without months of snow and ice and wind would have been beyond her imagination. This was a place of perpetual spring, she thought, until summer arrived, of course.
From her bag in the corner, Alice retrieved the wedding photo. She had not looked at it since Howard disappeared. Not even when she had packed it in the bag. Now it was thoroughly wrinkled. Why had she even brought it? It was out of focus, a bit blurred—had Howard shifted as the shutter opened?—and now it was faded. The photo struck her vision as if she had never seen it before. Perhaps she had seen it only as she wished it to be. What had once seemed to be warmth in its tones now took on a yellowish hue that made them both appear sickly. Alice shook her head. She tucked the photo into the pocket of her skirt, counted her change, and closed her little cloth bag. Was this an act of insanity? She took a deep breath, picked up her gloves, and made her way down the stairs.
Constance was in the hall, on her way to join Analee and the girls for their breakfast. Alice could hear Analee making up stories with them.
“Once upon a time . . .”
“There were two little girls . . .”
“Who loved to . . .”
“Tickle Analee!”
Alice and Constance both laughed upon hearing the girls jump from their chairs and run giggling to Analee, whose deep, warm laugh rang out above them all. A momentary chorus of laughter, its harmony immediately halted. Alice studied Constance’s face, her lips pressed together, her eyes moist. Constance’s fingers rested on Alice’s arm with a calm pressure.
“You’ve decided?”
Alice nodded.
“I hate for you to do this alone. I just can’t—”
“No, you can’t. I would need to go alone regardless, Constance.”
Constance dropped her hand. “You have streetcar money?” She turned, as if to find her bag.
“I do. I have plenty. For both ways.” Alice lifted her skirt. “It will not take me long. I should be back by noon, I think.” She turned as if to go. Then said, “That was foolishness. If I do not find him, I will be back. If I do, I haven’t any way of knowing what might ensue.”
Constance seemed ready to speak, pulled back, hesitated. Then, all at once, she said, “If nothing else, Alice, you will have sight of one of the grandest buildings in the city, one of the grandest ever built, in fact. That florid thing cost three hundred eighty thousand dollars to erect! It is as ornate as a cathedral. But, oh so mixed up. A bit of everything thrown in—Second Empire, Renaissance, Italian, with Corinthian columns, no less. Gold ceiling medallions, frescoes, murals, sculptures—even a fountain, where the futures are sold. Well, not in the fountain.” Constance laughed uncertainly. “And an ornate steam elevator . . . Well, just don’t bid on the cotton futures.” Constance stopped then.
Alice took her hand and smiled. The idea of buying a future gave her a brief chuckle. Her recognition was sudden—here was a friend, doing what she could to lighten this endeavor, which might alter Alice’s life and psyche in unpredictable ways. Here was friendship, which Alice had never experienced. Not once. She felt the support of it, and simultaneously, she bore its lifelong absence deep within her, the ever-present loneliness she had never named. Alice nodded goodbye, opened the front door, and made her way to the street.
*
The cotton exchange, at the corner of Carondelet and Gravier, was fully as fine as Constance had described it, equal in various ways to the grandeur of the Chicago Board of Trade. Alice registered once more the magnificence of such palaces of commerce, these bastions of trade. The streets were packed: fine-suited men; fewer women by far, but visible in heavily plumed hats; noisy carts; and the occasional children running, shrieking madly through the crowd. Women might be magnets of attention in their fine outfits, might put on their own balls in leap years, vie for suffrage, but the world belonged to men. It seemed it always had. For the most part, only in governments with a succession of power based on primogeniture, such as hereditary monarchies, had power belonged to a woman, one woman, not women of equal standing—like that of Semiramis. The struggle for the vote had not yet made much progress. There was nothing but courage and determination to indicate it ever would. But there was progress: divorce, for example. If this day led her to him, Alice would, indeed, divorce Howard. She dodged the various modes of traffic—pedestrian, steam powered, electric powered, pushcarts—threading her way through the crowded street toward the majestic entrance.
As she hesitated at the entrance, the thought of taking out the photo hovering in her mind, a passing gentleman, smartly dressed, stood back to hold the door for her. What choice had she but to enter? She noticed his somewhat quizzical look as he continued to wait. She realized just how apparently lost she had to appear here among these grand echelons of cotton commerce.
“May I help you find something?” he said, shifting his briefcase to his other hand.