City of Promise (41 page)

“I do. I should like to be as I was, Auntie Eileen. If there was any way to make it be so, I promise I would take it.”
Miss Palmer, please tell Mrs. Turner that certain interior parts were injured during the difficulties. And that regretfully there can now never be children.

The past could not be changed, but the future might hold some small possibility not of happiness—she no longer expected that—but perhaps . . . relief.

The vision that came to Mollie in those few moments when she looked across the waste space between Josh’s grand new house and his stable was born of articles in
Godey’s Lady’s Book
and
Harper’s,
implanted in her mind over many years. The magazines frequently featured sketches of beautiful gardens attached to houses in places where such things were considered the normal surroundings of a fine home. In New York City, where however much a man might spend on pleasure, it would never occur to him to allow a building lot to be without a building, Mollie never actually saw any flowers that were not in a florist’s window, or a vase, or an indoor pot on a sunny sill. Perhaps that’s why so much of her needlework featured nature. She hadn’t sewed a single stitch since that terrible day when she bled away her motherhood, but the possibility of a garden sparked a small but insistent flame of interest.

Eileen recognized the opportunity and took it. She set about furnishing the house in a whirlwind effort that brought her to the Ladies’ Mile six days out of seven—“Please send the bill to Mr. Joshua Turner on Grand Street”—all the while keeping an eye on her niece’s even more remarkable activity.

Mollie took a cab to Eighty-Seventh Street each morning, stopping along the way to pick up various urchins and idlers willing to spend the day digging at her direction. She chose the most likely looking from among the impoverished gaggle hanging about in front of the uptown rookeries, and paid them in coins at the end of each session, making careful note of those who had done the best job. The following day they were the ones she selected. After two weeks she had assembled a reliable crew who were quickly becoming skilled groundsmen. Meanwhile, she sat with a stack of back copies of the journals that had provided her inspiration and thumbed through them, stopping each time she encountered a notice offering horticultural necessities or
plants or seeds.
“Dear sir, I write in response to your announcement in
Godey’s
of March 1871. Do you still offer specimens of the white lilium regale? . . . Dear Sir, I am most interested in the dark blue delphinium you offered in
Harper’s Bazaar
earlier this year.
”

When she discovered a publication called
The Gardeners’ Chronicle,
full of advice and extensive instructions for nurturing every type of growing thing, she was ecstatic.

Gradually Mollie’s vision matured. Since by happy chance she had conceived her plan in the autumn, the best time for planting many perennials, shrubs, and trees, the garden in her dreams made a faint but swift impression on the lot marked in the city rolls as number 1062 Fourth Avenue. Meanwhile, a steady procession of delivery vans—most of them blazoned
R. H. MACY
and
A. T. STEWART
, though there were some from Mr. Constable’s establishment and an occasional visit from an anonymous carter dispatched from a small draper’s shop with no fleet of its own—arrived next door at number 1060, and off-loaded every conceivable sort of household furnishing and necessity.

At first Mollie was charged by her aunt with accepting the deliveries, but when Eileen found the beds and chests meant for the third and fourth floors all left willy-nilly in the drawing room because no one had troubled to give the haulers more specific instructions, she arranged for Tess to go uptown with Mollie in the mornings and be on hand to receive the merchandise Eileen spent her days acquiring. That suited Mollie, who was then free to devote as many hours as were required to deciding if the blush pink of the climbing Bourbon rose Lady Antoinette would, on maturity, blend well with the creamy blossoms of the Virgin’s Bower clematis she planned to grow up the side of the stable. No, she concluded. Too insipid. She would instead plant the deeper-colored Bourbon, Souvenir de la Petite Malmaison.

She sighed with pleasure at the thought of the two blooming together. As for hunting down the preferred rose, the quest made her tingle. Rather like what it felt like after one’s hand or foot had “fallen
asleep,” as was said, and after much shaking and rubbing, sensation returned.

The sign above the door said
SOLOMON GANZ
, and beneath it hung the traditional three golden balls of the pawnbroker. Joshua had a moment’s pause. He could have sent Hamish, except the clerk knew nothing about last year’s desperate attempt to raise capital. No reason he should be made privy to the details now. Mollie would have been a logical choice since she was the one who had arranged the original transaction, but the garden she was creating had brought on the first signs of genuine recovery he’d seen since she lost their child. He was reluctant to interrupt that healing for even a few hours.

Josh pushed open the door.

A bell tinkled.

A small, thin man with a mostly bald head appeared from the rear, pushing aside a heavy velvet curtain and smiling at him. “Good afternoon, Mr. Turner. I am Sol Ganz.” The man took a few steps forward and extended his hand. “It’s a pleasure to see you here.”

“The pleasure is mine, Mr. Ganz. Though I didn’t expect to be so easily identified.”

Ganz’s smile got wider. “You are distinctive, Mr. Turner. A large red-headed man with—” The pawnbroker broke off.

Josh’s turn to smile. “With a wooden leg. You’re quite right, I should expect to be recognized.”

“Besides,” Ganz said, “I was expecting you today. Or perhaps your wife.”

“She’s otherwise engaged at the moment, so I—”

“Ah yes, soon you will be moving to your new home. Ladies are always busy at such times.”

“You know a great deal about me and my affairs, Mr. Ganz.”

“We have,” Ganz said, “a moderately large transaction between us.
At least it is so for a small businessman like myself. These days the sum is very modest for you. See, I know that as well.”

“Your loan went a long way to making that possible, Mr. Ganz. And as you indicate, it is due today. I’ve come to pay you and reclaim my property.”

Ganz showed him into the room behind the curtain and indicated a chair. “When your wife came to see me she sat right there.” He took his own seat and reached into a drawer and produced a roll of soft chamois leather. “And gave me this.” Ganz loosed the tie, and allowed the roll to unwind on the table between them. Eileen Brannigan’s rings and bracelets and her peacock brooch sparkled in the light of the gas lamp that provided the only illumination in the windowless space.

“And you gave her,” Joshua said, “six thousand dollars in paper currency.”

Ganz offered a slight shake of his head. “Not exactly. I gave her a banker’s draft for that amount. And accompanied her to Mr. Cooke’s bank on William Street and saw that it was cashed.”

“Yes,” Josh agreed. “I recall her explaining that.” Her hand had trembled when she handed over the thick roll of bills.
Six thousand, Josh. What shall you buy? Six lots, you magnificent creature. Back to back on Sixty-Eighth and Sixty-Seventh, and our fortune made.
From that flowed McKim’s clever and enormously profitable square with a central courtyard. Had he bought fewer lots, the Carolina would not exist. Josh withdrew a piece of paper from the breast pocket of his coat and put it on the table beside the jewels. “I can go with you to Drexel’s bank on Broad Street and perform the same service if you wish.”

The pawnbroker did not touch the draft, only leaned forward and examined it. “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Turner. Ten thousand, three hundred and twenty dollars. That is the correct amount.”

Josh put his hand over the roll of chamois leather, which he knew without checking would include everything Mollie had pawned the previous year. Sol Ganz would not still be in business if he indulged in that sort of blatant thievery. Ganz put his hand over the draft, knowing
that a man of Joshua Turner’s sort would not write it had he not the funds.

The exchange was made.

The pawnbroker accompanied his visitor to the street in front of his door. “It has been a great pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Turner. If I can be of help anytime in the future . . .” He stretched out his hand.

Josh shook the other man’s hand, and put on his topper. “Thank you, Mr. Ganz. I do not see any immediate need for a pawnbroker, but one never knows.”

“Indeed, Mr. Turner. One never does. So just remember, Sol Ganz is here on Avenue A. Waiting only to be of service.”

The newness of everything had a particular smell. Not in the least unpleasant, Josh thought, but quite different from every other house he’d lived in. Sunshine Hill was built by his parents from the ground up, but in his earliest memories it was already full of people and much lived in. Even his rooming houses had been occupied before he acquired them and transformed them to his purpose. Number 1060 Fourth Avenue was pristine.

Thanksgiving fell that year on the twenty-eighth of November. The last of their things—clothing, toiletries, papers, and the like—were brought up from Grand Street two days before. The final transfer of the household goods came in the form of a carter’s wagon that arrived bearing Agnes Hannity and what appeared to be the contents of at least six pantries.

“Careful with them there pies,” the cook was shouting as Josh rode up on Midnight. He reined in and watched while the haulers carried box after box through the basement level tradesman’s entrance to the left of the front door. “Hey! Them’s my summer pickles and they won’t be improved by your jouncing ’em this way and that.”

“I fear she thinks no one has discovered fire this far uptown,” a
voice said at his elbow, “and we must survive on picnic food from now on.”

It was the most normal remark Mollie had made to him since the previous April. Josh slid from the saddle and put an arm around her waist. “I have not been this excited,” he admitted, “since I was six years old and it was Christmas Eve, and I was convinced St. Nick was coming down the chimney.”

A young boy appeared. “Stable your horse, Mr. Turner?”

“And who are you?”

“This is Oliver Crump,” Mollie said. “He’s called Ollie and he’s been working with me for two months. I thought to keep him on as a combined gardener and stableboy. Subject to your approval I told him.”

“Well, he looks suitable enough.” He was small but wiry. And no doubt, thought Josh, plucked from one of the god-awful rookeries. “I take it you’ve convinced Mrs. Turner you can dig, Ollie Crump, but do you know anything about horses?”

“Yes sir, happens I do.”

The boy was stroking Midnight’s muzzle all the while, and the mare was nuzzling up to him, apparently content with his touch. “How,” Josh asked, “has that familiarity come about?”

“My pa was a blacksmith, sir. I worked with him sometimes.”

“Was?” Josh said. “And is he not a blacksmith now?”

“No sir. He got the fever and died two years back. Left me and my ma and four sisters what’s littler’n me.”

Followed by abject poverty, and the fetid, criminal environment of those places where the poorest of the poor were warehoused and left to their evil. The whole sorry story laid out in two sentences.

“There’s a room in the stable where Ollie can sleep,” Mollie said.

“A month’s trial,” Josh said releasing the horse to the care of his new stableboy. “See she’s properly brushed and cooled down before you feed her, Ollie.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Turner. I will.”

The boy led the mare away. The carter’s wagon was at last empty
and rolling down Fourth Avenue. Agnes Hannity and Tess and whoever else was part of his newly established household had disappeared. He and Mollie were alone. “Shall we go in?” he asked.

Through his own front door. And just before he crossed the threshold Josh swept his wife into his arms and carried her into the house. “Not bad for a fellow with a peg,” he said as he put her down.