I watch the blood bubble up from my skin, first in drops and then in a passionate dribble, tumbling over the ridge of my thumb and onto the rug. The stains are bright and red, next to the burning paper, nearly extinguished, and the strewn flowers. A few dark spots pop out into the air before me, like the reverse of stars, and I drop to my knees, cradling my hand, unable to speak, transfixed by the flow of blood and by the strange pattern it makes among the orange blossoms.
I think not of my own wound, or of the pain in my burned fingers and my scored palm, but of the bottle of aspirin waiting for me in the medicine cabinet, and how I will now miss my evening dose, because I cannot possibly rise from this floor again. I am too sick. I have lost too much blood. I am just plain drained.
Chapter 19
France, August 1918
One time, when I was about twelve, I got lost. Only for an hour or two, but it was January and quite dark by the time I found my way home, and my father was frantic, though not for the reasons you’d think.
The whole incident should never have occurred, as he reminded me often in the days following. My father had strict rules about our travels: I was never to go beyond the limits of our single square block without him, and Sophie was never to leave the house alone at all, and if I had stayed within those limits, I would never have lost myself.
But I was twelve, you see, and I was beginning to experience stirrings of rebellion. I thought my father was absurdly overcautious; I thought he didn’t understand how capable I’d grown. I was angry at him, too, for reasons I didn’t want to examine. So one day, when he was busy in his workshop down the street, and Sophie played downstairs with the nice Irish lady who rented our basement apartment, I slipped outside and took the sharp January air into my lungs and set off for a little walk. Just to show that I could.
I headed west, toward the bustle of Fifth Avenue, and when I reached Fifth I hesitated and turned south. I thought I’d go as far as Madison Square, maybe, and see the famous Madison Square Garden tower, where Thaw murdered Stanford White. And when I reached Madison Square and admired the tower, I thought I might just go down Broadway and see a few of the great dry goods emporia—Lord & Taylor or Wanamaker, which Father would never dream of entering—and I became so enthralled by the shop windows and the lighted displays and the sheer illuminated thrill of Manhattan that I kept on going and going, imagining I could just walk right back up Broadway again, or head east and take the Second Avenue El uptown, and then I realized I wasn’t on Broadway at all, and that the streets were no longer numbered, and instead of lying flat in an orderly, easily understood grid, they sprawled in every possible direction, intersecting at odd angles, creating triangular patches of contested pavement, overrun by horses and delivery trucks and streetcars and people in strange, worn clothes chattering in every possible language under heaven. I was lost.
Now, any sensible New York City parent would teach his child, if she somehow lost her way amid the hustle-bustle of downtown Manhattan, to find the nearest policeman and ask for help. In our house, things were different. I was never, under any condition, to approach a policeman. A drunk on the corner was preferable to a policeman. I was to avoid speaking to policemen as if they carried an especially virulent strain of typhoid, transmitted by words. If a policeman happened to catch my gaze as I walked along the street, I was to smile absently and turn my face in fascination to the nearest shop window, even if that shop was a morgue.
And a number of blue-suited members of the Metropolitan Police swiveled their heads and narrowed their eyes at the sight of me, neat and clean and young in my blue wool coat and hat and muffler, my sturdy leather shoes, all worn and plain but well made. I hurried along as if I knew exactly where I was going—you must always assume an air of confidence as you navigate your path through New York City, whatever the neighborhood and whatever your age—and thought, I’ll just keep going until I spot something familiar, a landmark, City Hall or the Brooklyn Bridge, and then I’ll know exactly where to go.
And then I plowed directly into the chest of a cop.
He was terribly nice, pepper-haired and blue-eyed. He told me, as he escorted me personally back to my home on Thirty-Second Street, boarding the Second Avenue El at the Canal Street station (How had I missed it? I thought in agony) and getting off at Thirty-Fourth Street, that he had five girls of his own, and he didn’t want to think what might have happened if I’d rounded the wrong corner and ended up on, say, Delancey Street. Next time, as soon as I lost my way, I should head directly to the nearest policeman and ask for help. Would I promise him that? (We were now walking west on Thirty-Second Street, my house only a half-block away.)
I promised him.
You can imagine my father’s expression when he opened the door and saw the two of us, Virginia and the policeman. The look of unfiltered terror, which Officer Shea innocently interpreted as a parent’s natural fright.
Father disguised it quickly, of course, and the policeman went away amid a torrent of thanks. Only when the door was closed at last did Father’s horror find its true node. How much had I told the policeman? What name had I given him? Where had he found me, and did I mention how long we had lived in the city? Did I even realize what I’d done? The danger to which I’d exposed us all?
I think I managed to answer all his questions without breaking down, but the shame hung over my head for a week. The lesson sank through the pores of my skin and into my bones. Say as little as possible about yourself. Don’t attract attention. Follow the rules. Be self-sufficient. Never, ever ask for help.
But I think Father learned something, too, about the possible effects of keeping your daughters under lock and key, without the chance to stretch their legs. Because the morning after my little adventure, next to my plate at the breakfast table appeared a folded paper, which—unfurled—turned out to be a detailed map of Manhattan Island.
All of which, maybe, is apropos of nothing, but I found myself thinking about that awful January afternoon as I drove Hunka Tin—a new Hunka Tin, belonging to the American Army Ambulance Service, but almost exactly the same as the old one, so that I nearly forgot they were two different vehicles—along the road toward the field hospital at Epieds, where the advancing Fourth Division had been sending back a stream of casualties since the end of July.
The night before, Major Fitzwilliam hadn’t asked me anything more about my father and his extraordinary new fortune. I guessed he was too astonished, or maybe that kind of financial interrogation just wasn’t the done thing between ladies and gentlemen. (Not that social custom likely carried much weight with Samuel Fitzwilliam.) Or maybe it didn’t matter. Money was money, and the means of acquiring it—like children—should be rarely seen and never heard.