“Well, isn’t that why we’re going?” Norma said. “To find her and bring her home?”
“I don’t remember agreeing to go anywhere. We know where she is now, and we have assurances that she’s safe. We could write to her in care of the theaters in any one of those cities if we wanted to. We might even be able to put a telephone call through.”
Norma snorted. “You’re not seeing the situation clearly, which doesn’t surprise me at all, because you’ve always been blind to trouble where Fleurette is concerned. Mr. Bernstein has shown us what kind of man he is.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“He took one line out of a newspaper article about you and tried to turn it into cheap entertainment. He’d put his own mother on stage, if he could rent the theater at a discount and sell tickets for a quarter.”
“But what do we expect Fleurette to do if we turn up at the theater, in front of Mrs. Ward and all the other girls, and insist on bringing her home? Is there any possibility that she’ll be glad to see us? Could you imagine her coming along willingly? And how do I explain that I’m allowed to go wherever I want, and to do as I please, even if that means wrestling with a criminal, but she can’t stand on a stage and sing a song?”
“You don’t do as you please. You’re being paid to do a job. You follow orders. Anyone would agree that your work is thoroughly unpleasant and should be making you miserable, and probably will, once you’ve been at it long enough.”
Norma had a maddening way of derailing a conversation. Constance wondered suddenly if she’d ever had a straightforward talk with Norma about anything. She couldn’t recall one.
“Never mind about me,” Constance said. “We must think about what we’re doing.”
“I’ve already thought about it. You’re the one who can’t make up her mind.”
It was true; she couldn’t. She had half a mind to grab Fleurette by the collar and drag her home, and the other half—well, she still wanted to grab her by the collar, but she told herself that she knew better, and that it wouldn’t do any good.
“The minute we turn up, it’s over,” Constance said. “Fleurette won’t forgive us for it. We’d better be certain, and I’m not.”
Norma dropped onto a bench along the platform and folded her arms across her chest. “I said I don’t like that man.”
“Yes, you did.”
“There’s something untrustworthy about him.”
“So you’ve observed.”
“I know I’ve heard his name before, in connection with some scandal or another.”
“I’m surprised you don’t remember.”
“I will.”
“Until you do, I think we ought to stop and ask ourselves the question: Are we prepared to follow Fleurette around for the rest of her life and disapprove of everything she does, or are we going to behave like modern women and let her go her own way?”
“I suppose you’re the expert on how modern women behave.”
“Well, I know I’m expected back at work. Is that modern enough for you?”
The train arrived and Norma swept her arm toward it. “Go on, then.”
35
NORMA BOARDED A NORTHBOUND train and Constance took a rickety little trolley down to Fort Lee to see about Minnie Davis’s landlord. The trolley rolled along at such a maddeningly leisurely pace that she wished she’d walked. She’d had to squeeze herself into a narrow wicker-work seat meant for a much smaller person, which made for an unpleasant ride, and she fumed over her predicament the whole way.
While it was true that Constance was furious at Fleurette for going away, she was mostly furious at her for going away at that particular moment. Had she only run off a week earlier—or, who knows, a week later—Constance felt she would’ve been able to think clearly about it. But she was unsettled over the Minnie Davis case and the uncomfortable truth that Minnie had tried to keep from her. Was Fleurette hiding something, too?
It was obvious that Fleurette felt emboldened to go away precisely because of the kinds of cases Constance had been struggling with at work. Constance tried to think back over what she might’ve said about them in Fleurette’s presence.
She was fairly certain she’d delivered a lengthy speech about how petty and selfish it had been of Mrs. Heustis to try to keep Edna at home, and what a mockery she’d made of the police and courts by involving them in a family matter. (Had she really said that, and then gone running to Sheriff Heath the minute Fleurette disappeared? She had.)
It seemed that she also had sharp words for Mr. and Mrs. Davis, and she felt the need to repeat them at home. Fleurette must have been terribly emboldened to hear that Constance believed it to be Mr. and Mrs. Davis’s own fault for driving young Minnie away.
Constance also might have said that if the Davises couldn’t offer Minnie some kind of life that satisfied her, they deserved to lose her.
Yes, she definitely said something along those lines.
Who, then, could blame Fleurette for thinking that she had every right to accept the very role for which, as Sheriff Heath pointed out, she did audition, with the full knowledge and consent of her guardians?
Did Constance ever once voice an objection to her auditioning, or to accepting the role—on the unlikely chance that there really was a role, and it was offered to her?
She did not.
There seemed no rational reason, then, for Constance to be alarmed over Fleurette’s new venture, or to go chasing after her. She probably shouldn’t, in hindsight, have gone to interrogate Freeman Bernstein, although she did have some obligation to make sure Fleurette was, in fact, with the company.
But the trouble was that she couldn’t separate her worries over Fleurette from the outright state of alarm she’d been thrown into at the reformatory. Seeing Minnie sent away so abruptly, and hearing at last the hurried confession that she’d suspected all along—all of this had her worked into such a nervous state that she hardly knew where Minnie’s situation ended and Fleurette’s began.
Constance stepped off the streetcar in Fort Lee and found the bakery where she’d first seen Minnie. She stood across the street and looked up at the little window on the second floor, which was now covered over in newspaper, perhaps to make ready for another tenant. She couldn’t help but admire Minnie for making some stab at a new life, even such a modest life as this one. As for the men who might have come in and out of that room, Minnie was right. If there were no men in evidence—no other party to accuse of a crime that took two to commit—then she deserved her freedom as much as they deserved theirs.