“I’m a good caretaker,” she heard herself say, in her most motherly, mollifying voice, “and very discreet. And of course,” her knees weakly curtsying, “you can always change your mind.”
Tears rose in Mrs. Cohn’s eyes, as shocking as if she’d begun to sob. Emma looked to Story, but he wore the same diligent grin he’d worn the whole time, oblivious. Emma had caused the tears, she knew. You can always change your mind. She had provoked a memory, needled, hurt the woman before she had even really tried. The effortlessness of it startled her. But Beatrice Cohn’s tears disappeared as abruptly as they had come on, simply dropped back behind her skin, water behind a wall. She smiled at Emma, her mouth closed but still a smile, disorienting Emma to such a degree that for a second she thought, She knows who I am.
“I don’t see why we can’t give it a try,” Mrs. Cohn said in her clipped, humorless way, unaware of her blatant rhyme, and now, as she and Story began to make arrangements, Emma saw her smile more clearly. There was no complicity in it, only charity. It was the smile she had worn on Emma’s stoop, the one she must have worn on all the stoops she visited where women with plain hair and brown shoes answered their flimsy doors. So Emma’s pity for Lucy’s mother had been fantasy, but hers for Emma was real. As she nodded at Story, her smile stuck, a studied, stale thing, and Emma saw the thought that must keep Beatrice Cohn’s heart going, despite its early shame. She was thinking, correctly: The poor woman, married to a drunk. She was surrendering to Story for Emma’s sake.
Six
On Saturday mornings, Lillian Haven played bridge at the Draper House on Commonwealth Avenue with the College Club. She went to be among the Protestant women, to maintain her place among them, however tenuous it might be, to let their scents (understated), their voices (soft), their movements (slight), their entire atmosphere, seep in and inflect her. She went for the chamber music, too, especially the violin, and for the sandwiches: tiny triangles of cucumber or cream cheese or shrimp pressed between bread so impossibly white and airy she felt transformed (almost) just holding one. Pinkie out, mouth closed, she bit her tongue so as not to salivate.
She could have done without the bridge, or any other game. Games worked against Lillian because she always wanted too badly to win and was never able to hide this, and so the other women trusted her, the sole Jew, even less than they would have.
They all liked to win, of course. Their very presence in the Draper House was a testament to their having won the right to be there on Saturday mornings, for three hours, before the men arrived. They hired their own musicians—all male—and drank coffee, not tea. But this was a collective triumph. It was a point they’d made, like winning the right to vote, though Draper House had come later and seemed to many of them just as significant. Whereas the way Lillian sat forward in her leather club chair, cards pressed to her collarbone, lips drastically pursed, clearly had nothing to do with anyone but Lillian.
“I’ve had the thought”—Evelyn Sharp’s hand paused en route to laying down her next card—“we should bring our granddaughters one weekend. Show them what women can do, when we put our minds to it.”
Penelope Lockhart clucked. “What a lovely idea. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself.”
The others murmured in agreement. Lillian murmured, too, though she was looking at Evelyn’s hand, at the slender, tan fingers, the freckles she’d contracted sailing in her youth. She focused on Evelyn’s freckles to avoid the envy that slithered through her heart. Lillian had no granddaughter, nor any grandsons either. She cleared her throat, an almost but not quite involuntary nudge to Evelyn, who at last laid down her card with an infuriatingly opaque expression. Lillian flared her nostrils but Evelyn didn’t see; she and Penelope had begun to plot the granddaughters’ visit.