And after that? She didn’t know exactly where she would go or what she would do, but she was counting on her cache of jewelry to secure a train ticket and a fresh opportunity in a city where she could start again, under a new name if she had to. It wouldn’t be easy, but it wasn’t impossible.
It was in that almost carefree state of mind that she submitted to Constance’s questioning. She didn’t believe the others when they told her that she could tell Constance everything—she was, after all, a deputy sheriff and on the side of the law—but Minnie had assembled a version of the truth that she felt reasonably sure would be accepted.
Constance spoke in a voice just above a whisper. “It appears the prosecutor is preparing to bring a white slave charge against Anthony—against Tony.”
“Because of me?” Minnie protested. “That’s ridiculous! I wasn’t exactly snatched from the sidewalk, if that’s what you mean to say.”
“That’s exactly what the prosecutor wants to say. He intends to make a case that Tony carried you across state lines for an immoral purpose.”
Minnie found the very idea insulting. She’d heard of girls going to jail over debauchery charges, but as the nature of their offense was never described, she’d imagined an act far worse than anything she’d ever done.
“But surely you’ve told them otherwise,” Minnie insisted. “He didn’t have to kidnap me at all. I wanted to go. I hated Catskill. Did you go and speak to my parents?”
“I did.”
“Then you know why I left. Wouldn’t you run off to New York, if you lived with them?”
Minnie could see that argument made an impression on Constance. “I probably would have, at your age,” she admitted, “but I want you to understand the difficulty you’d be in if you put it that way to the judge.”
“What difficulty? It’s the truth.”
Constance cleared her throat. “Well . . . I know the judge would appreciate your honesty. But if a girl is found to have . . . to have gone around with men, especially if she so freely admits to living under the pretense of marriage . . . well, she might not be set free.”
“But what else could they possibly do with me? I haven’t robbed a bank. Why would they keep me in jail?”
“They wouldn’t keep you in jail. They’d send you to a girls’ reformatory.”
A reformatory! The very word brought to mind girls in white uniforms being made to march in straight lines and memorize Bible verses. “But I’m not in need of reforming,” Minnie complained. “I just need to break away from Tony and find a place of my own. What’s wrong with that? You could let me go today, and I’d never make another spot of trouble. You just helped another girl get out of jail, didn’t you? Why can’t you do the same for me?”
Constance sighed and leaned against the wall. “Hers was a very different case.”
“I don’t see why.”
“Because Miss Heustis—Edna, the girl you’ve heard about—had done absolutely nothing to attract suspicion. That isn’t the case with you and Tony, and you admit it. Besides, Edna is eighteen. I’m sorry to put it to you so bluntly, but in your case a judge will see a sixteen-year-old girl who disobeyed her mother and ran off with a man she’d only just met. He might think her a girl of low scruples for pretending to be the man’s wife when she wasn’t. A girl like that is in need of reforming.” She turned and looked at Minnie. “That’s what the judge might think.”
“And you couldn’t tell him otherwise.”
“I could try,” said Constance. “But it would help if I had something in the way of evidence. Isn’t there anyone who could testify as to your character? A landlord or?—”
“There was some trouble with him,” Minnie said morosely.
“What about your job? Could I speak to your boss?”
“I didn’t get on very well there, either.”
It was starting to dawn on Constance that her success with Edna Heustis had come a little too easily. Not every girl who got arrested came with character references. “Well, you won’t be released unless someone is willing to take you in and vouch for you. Are you sure you can’t write a letter of apology to your parents, and make things all right with them?”
“You know I can’t.”
“Isn’t there anyone else? An aunt, or a cousin?”
Minnie shook her head. “I never knew my mother’s family, and my father—well, you can imagine what his people are like.” She found it difficult to speak as her predicament became clear to her.
“And is there anything at all you haven’t told me? You heard what the prosecutor said the day you were arrested, about men going in and out of the place. Is there any truth in it? I can’t help you if I don’t know what really happened.”
Minnie forced herself to look Constance in the eyes.
“Of course there weren’t other men,” she said. “It was just me and Tony, and I thought we were to be married. There’s nothing else to tell.”
19
WHAT MINNIE MISSED most about her old life was perfume. The inmates were allowed nothing but tar soap in the jail, which smelled like hospitals. But perfume! It spoke to her of a life she’d held in her hand, however briefly.
She never did spray the fragrances liberally around her—she believed that to be uncouth—but instead she would allow the donor of the perfume to choose his favorite spot, and there she would apply it for him, every time: the crook of her arm, the underside of her neck, behind her knee. One man liked it on the very small of her back, and she wore it there just for him: their little secret.
She didn’t know enough to ask for parma violets and crushed white roses from the perfumeries in New York, but she did enjoy a few good imitations from the druggist in Fort Lee, with names like Dreams of the Orient and Empress’ Bouquet, names that hinted at their ability to transport her to another place, another time, another life.
Tony never asked her who bought the perfume. He wasn’t the kind of man to notice a little thing like the particulars of a girl’s toilette, nor was he attentive enough to remark on the fragrance behind her ears.
He wasn’t even particularly interested in her, but she only came to understand that later, in the solitude of her jail cell. When she went down to the dock that day in late September, she’d already decided that she wasn’t going to spend another winter in Catskill. She just didn’t know how, precisely, to pull it off. Tony was her opportunity. Why should he fall under the spell of her perfume, much less love her, if she saw him chiefly as a means of transportation?