Clara and Mr. Tiffany (13 page)

“What kind of a role do you play?” asked Edwin, whom I had invited to dinner.

Mr. Bainbridge stared solemnly at his meat pie. “A rollicking young man of twenty-three who is very funny.”

Him? I had to control a snicker.

The buzzer sounded, and Merry excused herself to answer it. She came back ashen-faced.

“Clara, there’s an Officer O’Malley wants to speak with you.”

Edwin, George, and Bernard all raised their heads.

Mrs. Hackley poked the air with her fork. “See? I told you, Mr. Hackley. The morals of women who work in factories eventually decline.”

“Shush, Maggie,” Mr. Hackley snapped.

I felt all eyes following me through the arch into the parlor. Not a single teacup clattered in a saucer. The stocky, sandy-haired policeman stood with his hands behind his back, looking tired and bored.

“Evenin’ to you. Might you be Clara?”

“I am. Clara Driscoll.”

He pulled a letter from his pocket. “This be your hand?”

“Yes, I wrote this. How did you get it, if I may ask?”

“Her complete name.”

“Wilhelmina Agnes Wilhelmson. She used to work at Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company. I was her immediate superior.” Queasiness washed over me. “What happened?”

“Recognize this?” He pulled from his pocket the amber chunk of chipped glass. It was encased in rusty wire, which had been formed into a ring.

“Yes. I gave it to her. Tell me what happened.”

“Worth anything?”

“No. It’s only glass.”

“A girl was found in Blind Man’s Alley in the Fourth Ward just before six this morning, writhing and groaning but unable to speak. An empty bottle labeled
CARBOLIC ACID
was found next to her. Your letter and this piece of glass were in her pocket. She died in hospital an hour after they got her there.”

A small, shrill sound came out of my mouth as I sank onto the settee. Edwin and George rushed into the parlor and surrounded me, holding me from both sides, and Bernard and Merry stood by helplessly.

“Will you kindly come with me to identify the body?”

I agreed, numb at the thought.

“I’m going with you,” Edwin said.

“There was no envelope,” the officer said, “only this address written on your letter. Do you know where she lived?”

“I can’t be sure. I have three addresses for her.”

“Bring them.”

CLIMBING INTO THE POLICE WAGON
, I glanced back at George and Bernard and Merry watching from the stoop, and I missed the running board. Edwin caught me. Inside, he drew my head to his shoulder and held it there.

“I’m sorry. I know she meant a lot to you,” he said.

It was all too much like a seduced-and-abandoned tale in a cheap novel.

“Why didn’t she come to me? I could have told her that she would live through it, whatever it was. We could have had her back working in the studio. Her love for the work would have saved her.”

“Don’t take it on yourself.”

The foyer of the morgue in the Fourth Ward was a New World Bedlam, packed with weeping immigrants. Languages didn’t divide people here. Crying was universal. Officer O’Malley pushed his way through to the coroner’s desk, and I followed, my legs untrustworthy. I held on to Edwin.

The coroner led us through a cold hallway where small bodies lay shoulder to shoulder under a filthy cloth. In the women’s hall, he found number 2487 and peeled back the gray covering down to her shoulders. Her face was grotesquely contorted. I nodded yes and buried my face in Edwin’s chest.

Back in the corridor, the policeman spoke to two reporters, and then asked me, “Do you know of anyone who had reason to kill her?”

“No one.”

He flattened a crumpled piece of paper for me to read.

Fury exploded in my chest.

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
leapt to mind.

“Those addresses, ma’am. I have to notify next of kin.”

I pictured the crazed mother raving at the news in that steamy room, flinging out her heavy arm, shame making her unhinged, afraid of me, of the police, the landlord, the sweatshop boss. Dread threatened to sink me.

“May I come with you?” I blurted.

Edwin grabbed my shoulders. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I loved her, Edwin.”

The officer put the letter into his coat pocket. “Suit yourself.”

…

NO ONE ANSWERED
the knock at her parents’ apartment, where the sewing machines were still going even in the evening. We checked in the rooms next door to no avail, so we went to the aunt’s address. Wretched smells assaulted us at each dark landing. Wilhelmina’s mother and aunt and three small children huddled together, terrified at the sight of the policeman. I identified myself to try to make them less fearful.

“What happened?” Her mother’s face was drawn tight to steel herself.

The officer’s explanation brought wails and sobbing from the aunt but stony silence from the mother. It was her eyes that wrenched me—dark bubbles floating in watery milk, defeated eyes that saw the new country the way it would always be for her—unjust and barren.

“She lied to us.” The aunt turned to me as though it were my fault. “She told us she was working as a laundress in Connecticut.”

The officer showed Ned’s letter to Wilhelmina’s mother.

“She was a fool!” the mother said.

“Whatever else you might think of her, Mrs. Wilhelmson, she was a good girl and a fine worker, well liked by the other girls. I looked forward to seeing her every day. Please try not to harden your heart against her.”

FIRST THING THE NEXT MORNING
I went to Mr. Tiffany’s office and told him, holding myself together while I spoke.

“Oh, no, no, no,” he murmured, shaking his head slowly. “Was she the big girl who told me flamingoes don’t eat out of a person’s hand?”

“Yes.” The memory gave us a moment’s respite. “She had cheek.”

“I’m so sorry. I know how you care for all your girls.” The lines in his forehead deepened. “Did she have a father?”

“Yes, and a mother.”

The thought of Wilhelmina’s hardened mother brought on embarrassing tears. I should never have gone to their house when Wilhelmina told me not to. Instantly Mr. Tiffany offered me his crisp white handkerchief, and I sobbed into its embroidered
LCT
.

After I got control of myself, he asked softly, “Would you like me to tell the girls?”

“No. Thank you. I will, but it would be nice if you came upstairs later and said something to them.”

At that moment, I didn’t know what to do with his handkerchief.

“You keep it, Clara.”

IN THE BIG STUDIO
, the morning started the same as any other morning, and I realized that the younger girls did not read newspapers. It would be the hardest thing I would ever have to do in this room, I hoped. I could tell by Alice’s face that she already knew and was waiting for me to tell the others. Agnes came out of her separate studio at the opposite end of the workroom from mine, given to her recently because of her privileged position as a window designer. I could see that the three older women—Miss Stoney, Miss Byrne, and Miss Judd—also knew. All five must have read it in the
Times
. It had to be now.

“I regret that I have something very sad to tell you.” I paused for their attention, squeezing his handkerchief. “Our friend and co-worker, Wilhelmina, has taken her life.”

Stunned silence, and then a barrage of questions and a flood of tears. Alice, Agnes, the three older misses, and I tried to comfort the younger girls, making the rounds, holding those who needed it, lending handkerchiefs.

Mr. Tiffany appeared in the doorway with a bouquet of white chrysanthemums. His mere presence made the girls draw away from one another, blow their noses, and turn toward him. He set the vase on a worktable in the center of the studio.

“I come on a sad occasion today.”

Oh, Lord, please don’t let him give one of his inflated speeches.

“The loss of any one of you is a loss to all of us. We must remember her for the happiness and humor she brought to us. I hope you’ll be comforted in knowing that Wilhelmina will have a spread of chrysanthemums, gladioli, and lilies, and that her parents will be likewise remembered. If any of you wish to go to her services, you may have the time off with no loss of wage.”

He almost got through it without a lisp.
Chrysanthemums
tripped him up, but he struck just the right fatherly tone. In that moment, for me, he had grown into his inherited middle name. Comfort.

God taking from us and loving us at the same time by providing comforters was a kind of spiritual equanimity. It seemed a phenomenon of life how a death insinuates us into the debt of those who stand by us in trouble and console us. This morning, I felt utterly bound to Mr. Tiffany and utterly bound to Edwin, contraries though they were. I loved both of them for trying to make it easier on me.

By mid-morning, after the girls had cried themselves out, a dull silence had settled, and one by one, starting with the conscientious Miss Judd, they took up their work, the soft sounds of glass snippers and double-bladed shears familiar and soothing.

W
E WAITED IN THE PARLOR FOR EVERYONE TO COME IN ORDER
to go together to see the Tiffany gas tower in Madison Square Garden. Hank entertained us by drawing caricatures. None of them were complimentary. Mrs. Hackley’s earlobes rested on her shoulders. Mr. York’s eyes bulged like doorknobs. Dudley’s hair sprouted daisies, and Merry’s frizzed as if shocked with electricity. Francie’s head was in profile, and a fish was caught in her crocheted snood. His of me pricked me like a needle. A center part as wide as if a path had been mowed; octagonal rimmed spectacles framing drooping, squinting eyes; a high-arched nose so long I could have passed for Cyrano’s sister. There was too much truth in it, but since everyone else was able to laugh at their own worst features exaggerated, I had to too.

Just then Edwin arrived carrying a paper bag, which he handed to Merry.

“They’re
vatrushki
, sweet cheese pastries, a very special gift to me,” he announced. “A Russian mother wrapped in a babushka brought her boy to the settlement house to learn English, but she was too ashamed to register herself. I suppose she feared she would utter some strange sound wrongly so that it meant something ugly or impolite. She makes three cents each hemming handkerchiefs as piecework in her tenement. At that rate, it must have taken her several months to save her pennies for the ingredients, so eat slowly.”

That touched all of us, so we nibbled quietly.

Edwin must have extended himself to this woman who the world would never know existed. His compassion for others had a strange effect
on me. Every time I learned of some help he gave to someone, I felt he was giving the kindness to me. It made no logical sense, but when he found a job on a construction crew for an Italian father of four, established a Polish church in a waterfront warehouse, and helped a bewildered Sicilian mother just out of Ellis Island find her husband and son working on the docks—I thought of these acts as love offerings to me. Despite the time and intensity he gave to others, he made me feel that I was the vessel into which he was pouring his best self. I realized I had come to love him for his hunger to bless.

The times I felt I was pouring out my best self were at the studio, working to become indispensable. I hadn’t felt confident yet to ask Mr. Tiffany to make a policy exception for me, and it had been more than a year since Edwin’s proposal. Edwin’s patience was in itself an act of love.

Into this reverie drifted the soft sound of Merry humming a slow, dreamy tune as she took up the plates. Edwin slid onto the piano bench and picked out the notes.

“Sing it,” he said. “It’s a waltz, I think.”

“Yur tootin’, it is. An Irish waltz.” Slowly, she began to sing.

“Keep going,” he said. He was playing the simple melody along with her.

Amazingly, he was playing fully now, chords and the delicate melody and frippery of his own invention. I was entranced.