A Fall of Marigolds (23 page)

A dark-haired woman who looked a lot like Mick, but much older, started to come toward me.

Mick finished with his customer and stepped out from behind the register. “I got this, Mom,” he said to the woman. “Do you want to take the register for me?”

She smiled at me and took Mick’s place. I had not moved from my spot just inside the door. Mick came to me with one arm outstretched, his hand open. I moved toward him and tentatively placed my hand in his. He pulled me gently toward him and kissed my cheek.

“So good to finally see you again,” he said.

I nodded dumbly, my eyes filling with tears for no reason that I could think of.

“Here, let’s go to the back.” Mick led me past wrought-iron displays of African violets, potted bamboo, and cyclamen, past shining glass doors where flowers of every color stayed cool and fresh. We entered the workspace used for creating the arrangements. A young woman who looked college-age was working on a centerpiece, but she excused herself and left. He thanked her. Mick had obviously told her beforehand he’d be needing the room and that privacy would be appreciated. He indicated a corner where shelves held vases and ceramic pots, spools of ribbon and netting, and boxes of florist’s wire and tape that loomed over a little table.

He pulled out a chair for me.

“Thank you,” I said.

Mick took the chair opposite mine. “You are well?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You . . . you look great.”

“Um. So do you.”

“I’m so glad you called me back.”

“I am, too. Look, I’m sorry I was so harsh when you first called me. I . . . I needed to sort some things out.”

“You don’t owe me an explanation.”

I leaned forward in my chair. “No, I do. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t in a good place mentally until that photo was published. I . . . I was in a weird, in-between place where I didn’t know what I believed and I didn’t even know I was stuck there. And then you called me out of the blue and said you had the scarf.”

I stopped to gather strength, and Mick reached across the table to squeeze my hand.

“I know exactly what you mean,” he said. “I wasn’t the same after that day either. And my losses weren’t nearly as huge as yours. I was in a weird place for a long time, too.”

For a moment we just sat there, looking at each other and remembering what had bound us together then and kept us bound now. Then he released my hand and stood. He walked over to a desk in a far corner of the workroom, opened a drawer, and drew out fabric as brilliant as sunlight.

The scarf.

He walked back and I could not keep my face from erupting into a smile. He handed the scarf to me and it was as if he were handing me a bouquet. The marigolds were practically shouting a greeting to me. The scarf was just as beautiful as I remembered it.

“You can’t even tell what happened,” I said, fingering the bright threads.

Mick retook his seat and laughed. “It took several washings to get all the dust and debris out. My wife—ex-wife, I should say—said I’d never get it clean. But I was determined to have my way. The marigolds insisted I not give up. They are very resilient flowers, you know.”

I laughed lightly, too. It felt good. “Are they?”

“Oh, yes. They aren’t fragrant like roses and sweet peas, but they can stand against odds that the more fragile flowers cannot.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “They can bloom in the fall, even after a frost. Even after other flowers have given up.”

“No wonder I couldn’t stop thinking about them then,” I said, attempting to sound nonchalant, but my words must have hit Mick in a deep place.

For a moment he said nothing.

“I tried to find you. God, I tried.” Mick’s voice was noticeably apologetic. He sounded as if he wanted my forgiveness. “My . . . my ex-wife said I should get rid of it, be done with it. She said it was stupid to hang onto it when it was obvious I would never find you.”

“Ex-wife?”

Mick sighed. “We were already having some issues and I . . . I had a hard time after that day. A cousin who was a firefighter, and whom I was very close to, died in the North Tower—”

“I’m so sorry,” I interjected.

“On top of that, I couldn’t find you. And I couldn’t stop thinking that I should’ve stayed with you at the hospital. I shouldn’t have left you there.”

He was sounding more and more remorseful. I had no idea why.

“You had already saved my life, Mick. I’m sure I would have died on that street were it not for you. There was no reason you should have stayed with me.”

He shook his head. “But you’re wrong. I should have. I almost did. I should have followed my instincts. If I had stayed, I would’ve figured out your name isn’t Karen. I probably would’ve learned what your last name was. I would have been able to find you later when it really mattered.”

I didn’t understand the depth of his regret. And I was intuitively sensing that his unsuccessful quest to find me might have been the last straw in a marriage that was already crumbling. It was my turn to lean across the table and squeeze his hand. “There was nothing else you could’ve done for me.”

“But there
was
, Taryn. The scarf wasn’t the only reason I couldn’t stop looking for you.”

“What do you mean?”

Mick looked down at my hand on his. “A text message that was sent to me that morning was delayed because of the overload. I didn’t get it until later that day.”

I still didn’t have a clue what he was getting at. “And?”

He raised his head to look at me and meet me eye- to-eye. “It was a reply to a message I had sent earlier. To your husband.”

The air in the little room seemed to become a solid thing. I felt the weight of it. “What?”

“He got the text message I sent for you. He replied at nine twenty-eight.”

“Oh, God almighty,” I whispered, and it was as much a prayer as any other I have ever uttered. Tears of relief and shock filled my eyes. I could barely remember what I had told Mick to text to Kent a decade earlier.

I had to think for a moment.

Tell him I’m safe.

Tell him I love him.

Tell him he’s going to be a father.

Kent’s last text message to my forgotten cell phone had been sent at nine twenty-seven, when he assumed I was already dead and his own death was only moments away. He had received my message from Mick’s phone a minute later. What I had wanted Kent to know, with all my heart, he had known.

I had an answer for the question Kendal had been asking since she was four years old.

Does he know I’m here?

“What did the message say?” I whispered.

“‘Tell her, “Be happy.”’”

I pulled the scarf to my face and let my tears fall into its threads for the second time in my life. The scarf had found its way back not for Mrs. Stauer. Or even for Mick.

It was for me.

CLARA

Manhattan

September 1911

ONLY
a few hours of daylight remained when I arrived exhausted back at Lily’s rented room. Not enough time to complete my last task before leaving for Scotland.

And as I stretched out on Lily’s bed to rest, I knew what I would do.

I did not need to rush back to Ellis on the next ferry. I had a room to sleep in, even clothes to wear if something happened to the dress I had on. But I knew people would worry about me if I didn’t show up at dinner on Ellis.

Ethan would worry.

Ethan.

For as much as I was sloughing off, I was keenly aware that everything about Ethan was hanging on. Part of me found that thrilling, but a bigger part shrank back in hesitation. My heart was nearly free from the crucible that had tested it and it would soon be mine again—as bare and vulnerable as a newborn—to give away. I could not picture myself handing my heart over again so soon.

Especially not until I had taken care of one last detail.

I drifted into sleep and awoke to the sound of a fire engine’s clanging bell as evening shadows were creeping into the room. I rose from the bed, disoriented and ferociously hungry and thirsty. It had been nearly twelve hours since I had eaten or had a drink.

I checked my reflection in the mirror above the bureau, pinching my cheeks to restore color to my face. I smoothed back the stray wisps of hair that had sprung free of my chignon while I slept. Lily’s scarf was still wound around my neck. I unfurled it and lay it on the bed.

The first order of business before finding a place to eat was using a telephone. I had to call the island and let Mrs. Crowley know where I was so that she in turn could tell Dolly and Ethan.

I checked my handbag to see how much cash I had left. I needed to save enough for transportation in the morning and my ferry back to Ellis. And I needed to eat. I had less than five dollars. Not enough to inspire confidence. I was fairly certain the landlady didn’t let her boarders use her telephone without paying her something.

Kneeling at Lily’s trunk, I rifled through the contents, looking for something of value to trade with the woman for the use of the phone.

I came across a small wooden box no bigger than a pound of butter. Inside were several folded British banknotes, a string of pearls, a silver ring with a single ruby, and several lovely bracelets, none of which looked inordinately dear, but neither were they cheap. I chose one, closed the lid, and rose to my feet.

Minutes later I was knocking on the woman’s door. She answered with what I was beginning to believe was her customary frown.

“Sorry to trouble you, but I would like to use the telephone if I may.”

Her frown deepened. “It’s an extra dollar a month for use of the phone.”

I held out the bracelet to her. “I’m a little low on cash, and the call I need to make is very important. May I trade you this bracelet to make the call? Please?”

She hesitated and then reached for the trinket and curled my fingers around it. “Don’t be giving away things that are special to you. Keep it short.” The woman disappeared back behind her door.

I lifted the phone off the table, put the handset to my ear, and raised the base to my mouth. When the operator came on the line I asked for the switchboard at Ellis Island and gave her the exchange.

Seconds later I spoke my message slowly to the operator on Ellis so that she could write it down and give it to Mrs. Crowley when she found her.

“From Clara Wood: I am staying overnight in Manhattan. It couldn’t be helped. My apologies. Please relay to Nurse McLeod and Dr. Randall that all is well and I shall return tomorrow.”

•   •   •

I
had hoped a different woman might be working in the reception area when I returned to the newspaper office the following morning. But the woman was the same one who had assisted me when Ethan brought me there. And she remembered me. Concern for me was etched across her face when she recognized who I was.

I decided honesty would be in my favor with this woman. She would respond to grief with compassion.

So I told her I had survived the Triangle Shirtwaist fire but had lost a good friend to it, and I apologized for having dashed away the last time I was there.

“Not to worry. It’s quite all right.”

And then I told her I wanted to read all the news stories that had followed in the days after the fire.

She nodded, knowing without my saying it that I was performing something of a ritual cleansing, long overdue.

She took me to the reading room where I had been before and set me down. She left and returned a few minutes later with a stack of back issues. The woman squeezed my shoulder when she left and shut the door, giving me privacy that I didn’t know I would treasure until she was gone and I was alone.

I unfolded the papers, which she had given me in chronological order, and prepared to look down at the ghastly headline for the March 26 issue, the final death toll not even complete:

141 Men and Girls Die in Shirtwaist Factory Fire; Trapped High up in Washington Place Building; Street Strewn with Bodies; Piles of Dead Inside

A sound escaped my throat, not so much a whimper as a single note, like a tiny scrap of a hymn. I lifted my eyes from the words, waited for strength to return to me, and then I continued to read the account of the day that had forever changed me.

Three stories of a ten-floor building at the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place were burned yesterday, and while the fire was going on 141 young men and women—at least 125 of them mere girls—were burned to death or killed by jumping to the pavement below.

The building was fireproof. It shows now hardly any signs of the disaster that overtook it. The walls are as good as ever and so are the floors; nothing is the worse for the fire except the furniture and 141 of the 600 men and girls who were employed in its upper three stories.

Most of the victims were suffocated or burned to death within the building, but some who fought their way to the windows and leaped met death as surely, but perhaps more quickly, on the pavement below. . . .

One by one, I opened and read the newspapers from the last week in March, pausing often to blink back cleansing tears that I should have shed long ago. Each new headline felt at first like a blow to the chest, and then a remembrance for the dead, and then a stone to be cast across the wide sea of my memory.

When I was finished, and the papers refolded to hide again their terrible news, I rose from the table and opened the door.

The woman who had helped me watched me emerge with a kind and knowing smile on her face.

“Thank you so much for letting me read the papers,” I said, but I was thanking her for more than that and we both knew it.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asked.

There was.

“The friend of mine who died was named Edward Brim. He was one of those who fell. And I . . . I was there to see him step out of the window.”

“Good gracious,” the woman whispered, a sheen of wetness glossing her eyes.

“He . . . took the hand of a young seamstress who was too afraid to go alone.” My voice was breaking as I spoke. “He took her hand. He helped her down. He helped her down.”

I could not continue. The woman was now openly crying.

“I am so sorry for your loss,” she said when she was able.

“I would very much like to tell his parents—and his fiancée—that he died a hero,” I said.

“Oh. Of course.”

“But I only know that his parents live in Brooklyn. I was hoping you could look up the address for me. And I don’t know where his fiancée lives at all.”

“Oh.”

A strange look passed over her face and I wondered whether she thought I was asking too much of her.

“Well,” she continued, “I can give you the Brims’ address, but the woman he had been engaged to, I do believe she has married and now lives in Chicago. Or maybe Minneapolis. I would have to check. The announcement was printed last month.”

“What was that?” I could not wrap my thoughts around the words “she has married.”

“Yes, I am pretty sure that was the name I saw in the announcements last month. Savina Mayfield?”

I could only nod my head.

“It was an unusual name. I remembered it from Mr. Brim’s obituary. And so it caught my eye when I saw it last month in the wedding announcements.”

“She married someone else?”

The woman shrugged. “It happens that way sometimes.”

Words failed me. I had only just now been able to release Edward, and in the same time Savina Mayfield had already married someone else?

As I stood there, incredulous, the woman told me to wait for a moment and she would return with Mr. and Mrs. Brim’s address. A moment later she came back and handed me a slip of paper.

•   •   •

MY
mind was a tumble of thoughts as I sat on a train bound for Brooklyn. Reason bade me to concentrate on what I knew, not on what I didn’t. Savina Mayfield’s reasons for marrying so soon after Edward’s death were her own. She owed me no explanation, and since I surely wouldn’t get one from her, I focused on preparing to introduce myself to Edward’s parents and share with them what their son had done with his last seconds on earth.

I exited the train seven blocks from where the Brims lived off Fulton Street. A ticket taker at the train station was kind enough to tell me in which direction I would find their house. I decided to walk to clear my head and also save my money. I still needed to get back to Battery Park and on the ferry.

My feet were sore when I arrived at the brownstone row house, one of twenty just like it on the Brims’ street, but the ache was a welcome distraction. I wanted to know what had happened with Savina. I truly did. And within me, I felt I had the right to know. Surely the Brims knew. How would I get it out of them politely? I knocked on the door the moment I arrived on their stoop so that I wouldn’t suddenly change my mind and leave.

But no one answered my knock.

I kept at it long past the moment when I knew no one was home. I wanted an answer. I needed one.

A fresh wave of mental exhaustion was falling over me as I kept up with my pounding. At first I didn’t hear the voice behind me. When I did, I realized the woman who had spoken to me had asked me the same question twice.

“Can I help you, miss?”

I pivoted in embarrassment to face her. She was standing on the stoop next to me with a tiny dog in her arms that now barked a warning to me.

“I . . . I was just . . . I wanted to speak to the Brims.”

“Oh. They’re out of town for a few days. Were they expecting you, hon?”

“No. No, they weren’t.”

“You can come back on Monday. They’ll be home then.”

I shook my head. It seemed heavy on my shoulders. “I’ll be gone.”

The woman cocked her head. “You want to leave a message with me? I’m watching their place while they’re away. This is their dog.”

It would have been easy to tell her no, there was no message, and leave. But I did want the Brims to know what Edward had done for that young, frightened girl who had shared the fiery ledge with him. Perhaps they had questions like I did. Perhaps they wondered, maybe wondered every night, why he was on the ninth floor instead of the tenth, where his office was.

“May I borrow a piece of writing paper?” I asked.

“Come on over.”

The woman introduced herself as a longtime neighbor and friend of the Brims, while the dog steadily announced he was not pleased I was there. She sat me down at her own little writing desk and handed me a pen and a sheet of lavender paper.

I smoothed the paper and wrote the words that I would remember Edward by:

My name is Clara Wood. I was a nurse in one of the offices at the Asch Building and I was there the day of the fire. I met Edward in the elevator two weeks earlier. He was very kind to me, as I was a newcomer to Manhattan. He had invited me to see the sewing floor the day of the fire. That is why he was on the ninth floor. I was safely on the street when those trapped in the burning building began to fall from the windows. I saw Edward on the ledge. A young girl was next to him and the fire was all around them and she was afraid to step off. He took her hand and they left the ledge together. I wanted you to know that. His last act was one of kindness. I am so very sorry for your loss.

Clara Wood

I blew the ink dry. The woman handed me an envelope. I tucked the note inside but I did not seal it shut. I didn’t care whether the woman read it and I figured she would when I left.

“So you knew Edward, then?” I asked, as I addressed the note to Mr. and Mrs. Brim.

“Oh, yes. Poor fellow. You heard what happened?”

“Indeed. I did.”

“Such a tragedy. Such a needless tragedy.”

I nodded. “And him engaged to be married.”

The woman snorted. “Yes, well. It wouldn’t have been much of a marriage to that one. None of us liked her. I think toward the end there, Edward was starting to see what we all saw. She was nothing but trouble wrapped in a pretty face and sweet talk. I wouldn’t have been surprised at all if Edward had called the wedding off. We were all hoping he would. He told his mother he had met someone and was having second thoughts. And then . . . that terrible fire.”

I let her words wash over me, words that held within them a sticky balm that soothed even as it raked across the remnants of the wound.

“He didn’t love Miss Mayfield?” I asked.

The woman seemed to think this an odd question. “Well, I don’t know. Maybe in the beginning he did; Lord knows why. But I don’t think he did toward the end. And she certainly didn’t waste any time finding someone to take Edward’s place. You know she got married already, right? I feel sorry for that man; I do.”

For a moment I sat there in the neighbor’s chair, inhaling the sweetness of the air around me.

The grieving heart could still believe in love.

And so could I.

“Can you tell me where Green-Wood Cemetery is?” I asked.

•   •   •

HALF
an hour later, after splurging on a taxi for the three-mile jaunt and walking the length of several rows of headstones, I found Edward’s place of rest.