The Banished Children of Eve (80 page)

M
ARGARET WOKE
TO A BLACK SKY
, suffocating
heat. In the east, over Brooklyn, a low streak of red signaled day. There was no wind. From below came the noise of wagons and drays, the city's day already begun before the first light. Across the rooftop, other bodies began to stir, people rising up and becoming silhouettes against the dawn. She gathered up her bedding and went downstairs to Mrs. O'Sullivan's, where she had been staying since the destruction of the Bedford house. The air was thick and stale and feverish. Mrs. O'Sullivan stirred but did not wake. Margaret grabbed a pitcher and went down into the yard. She pumped it full of water, took it back upstairs, and sponged herself. Her hair had come undone. Pieces of hair hung down her back. She would have to brush it and braid it again. She sat at the table by the stove.

She had spent that night after he rescued them in his room. He lived in a hotel. She wanted him to ask her there, and he did. Next day he took her to Mrs. O'Sullivan's. Said he would call on her in the next few days. Two weeks had gone by. She had heard nothing. Never believed that story about him being with the gas company, at least not after that first day he had come to see the pipes. Miss Kerrigan was right. He was up to something. Maybe he had come to spy on Mr. Bedford, who had been acting most peculiar in recent times. Maybe he was intent on the shenanigans Miss Kerrigan accused him of, on burglary, but no common thief would have rescued them the way he had. Whatever he was, she didn't care anymore. Just wanted to see him again.

She thought she was pregnant. Felt it from the first minute. Wouldn't be absolutely sure for another week. But her flow was already late. Hadn't worried about it at first. Told herself he would come back, they would get married, no one would ever know. Mrs. O'Sullivan saw the change in her mood. “Look, dearie,” she said, “if you're puttin' any faith in ever seein' that one again, you're invitin' a terrible heartbreak.”

Margaret
lay her head against the wall. In the corner of the ceiling, almost directly above, a spider worked intently on her web. Her front legs flashed in quick, certain motions. She moved back and forth, up and down, spinning the silken thread out of her stomach, weaving a crisscross pattern of self-created wire. She worked furiously, laying wire atop of wire, until Margaret realized it wasn't just a web that she was constructing but a cocoon, a nest in which to hatch her eggs.

Margaret dressed quickly. She was working as a day servant now. Easiest work to get since the riot, and so many employers not wanting to have the Irish living under the same roof. Still, they couldn't do without the help. Support herself till she became too big to work. What then? How desperate would she become? What help was there? Out of her stomach, life. But, Mother of Mercy, where was the web to sustain it? She went downstairs. At six-thirty, Dolan would slow his cart at the corner but not stop, and she and Maureen and Sheila would jump on for the trip uptown, save three cents each over what the horsecars charged. Be at work at seven and begin the cleaning right away.

They were there on time but Dolan was late. Maureen and Sheila chatted away. She didn't hear what they were saying. She stared at the corner, praying for Dolan to appear. Can't afford to lose this job. And then, instead of seeing Dolan, she saw
him
walking up the street, slowly, looking about suspiciously, hands in his pockets, so serious and, God, so handsome.

C
ATHERINE STREET
SHOWED LITTLE TRACE
of the riot. Brooks Brothers' windows were nailed shut, pine boards hammered in place of the iron shutters the mob had ripped away. The glass in Mike Manning's front window and the door had been replaced. A newly painted sign hung above: GERAGHTY'S SALOON. Dunne looked in. Nobody to be seen. Geraghty apparently didn't have his predecessor's ambition that this be the first place opened on the waterfront each morning, whiskey-baited pot laid on the sea bottom to snare those denizens who couldn't crawl from bed to work without a glass or two.

Dunne stood in the gloom of the doorway. A few laborers appeared out of the morning mist and hurried toward the docks. They glanced around warily. Dunne stepped out and crossed the street. He turned and looked behind. Never knew, not after what had transpired during the riot and its aftermath. The booly dogs were still trying to catch the scent of those who had played a part or stashed some loot. Notices of reward posted everywhere. Troops still pulling people in. He hurried past Brooks Brothers, north on Cherry.

The sun began to burn away the mist. More people were about. Draymen hauled the day's first load from the docks. Newsboys trotted toward the ferry-houses, hands and clothing smeared black from the freshly printed papers beneath their arms. Dunne looked behind again. Getting to be a habit. He had checked out of the New England the day after Mulcahey had run amok and smashed up the hotel bar, demanding to know where his girl, Eliza, had gone. She had left the hotel the morning the news of Squirt's murder was brought by a stagehand from Brownlee's. The stagehand said he was taking up a collection to give the colored boy a Christian burial, and when Eliza asked if he had seen Jack, he said,
Sure, Jack is safe and sound, holed up in a saloon on Grand.
She went out the door, pushed aside those who tried to stop her, without a word to anyone. But when Mulcahey showed up, he couldn't be convinced she hadn't told someone where she was headed. The Metropolitans had to be called in to subdue him. They clubbed him to the ground and hauled him away. Weren't taking any chances these days. A few of them stayed behind and poked around the lobby, stopping people, asking questions.

Dunne
left the next morning. Moved into a sailor's hotel on Pike Street, a rickety, flea-ridden whore's paradise, but it had already been raided and searched by troopers and seemed safe for now. Dunne knew he should be planning another job, a quick and easy piece, but he hadn't been able to bring his mind to it.

A squad of Metropolitans passed down Scammel Street on their way to the waterfront. Never saw a booly dog alone these days. Didn't go anywhere unless as a pack. Dunne slowed his step until they went past. He had traveled this same route every day, promising himself if he didn't see her this time, he would never come back. Same broken promise every day. Margaret had agreed to come back to his room that day he got them safely out of Bedford's. Left the old man and the Metropolitan with the neighbors. The cook looked at Margaret and him with the same mixture of contempt and suspicion. Didn't seem impressed with the rescue Dunne had just performed. “What was it brought a gasman back to our door at such a time?” she asked. Dunne didn't answer. Margaret didn't seem to care. When they were alone, he held her so tight he surprised himself, almost as if he were clinging, and later, when they lay down on the bed in his room, she cried for a moment, and he kissed her as gently as he could, and she took the pins from her hair and it spread across the pillow like a shawl. They made love once, the first time for her. She rose and washed herself from the basin on the bureau, and they made love again. She fell asleep. He listened to the whisper of her breathing and lay awake till dawn.

He was glad she left the next day without a fuss. He walked her to the bottom of Jackson Street, said good-bye, some words about seeing her again, but was happy to be free once more. Had to get back into business now that Capshaw's scheme was bust. She went up the street, stepped into an alleyway, and disappeared from sight. But she hadn't gone away. She was still there, in his head, all the time. He hadn't found a way to get her out.

He knew
where she was living. He could go and knock. But he couldn't. How to put a kind face on a trade like his? He was sure that the truth would drive her away, unless he didn't try to explain, said nothing save that he had left his job and planned to join the Army, and if she were willing, they could get hitched, take the bounty he got for signing up and add it to what he already had. Be enough to see her through. Once the war was over, they could start fresh.

He was thinking all these things, same as a hundred times before, when he came around the corner of Jackson and saw her standing with the other girls. He was startled. He thought at first that she was waiting for him. But in an instant the cartman arrived. The two other girls got on. She stood on the pavement watching him.

“Margaret, for Chrissake, get on!” the cartman yelled.

Dunne tried to force himself to approach her at a slow, de-liberate pace, to remember all the words he planned to say.

“Hello, Jimmy,” she said.

He had his hands in his pockets, eyes on the gray paving stones. He felt the girls in the cart staring down at him. “I've things I must talk to you about,” he said.

“Leave or stay, Margaret,” the cartman said. “But tell me which it is.”

“I can't talk now,” she said. She took hold of the rail. Dunne took her other hand and helped her up. She stood in the back of the cart, the green eyes above him now, looking down. He tried to read what was in them but couldn't.

“I'll be here when you get back,” he said.

“It'll be late. After eight.”

The cartman
cracked his whip. The cart began to roll. Margaret sat. Dunne walked beside the cart. “No matter. I'll be here. I've got plans for us.”

The cart gathered speed and made a fast turn onto Grand. Just before it went around the corner, she looked up and waved. A happy wave, Dunne thought.

He stood where he was. He would wait. However long. He had plans. Whatever it took.

M
ORRISON FOSTER
couldn't sleep
. He had been listening to Jane's crying all day. Still was. It came through the door of the most expensive hotel in New York, a pine door shaved and shaped in Albany by a machine that could cut a door as thick or thin as was desired. The St. Nicholas had ordered its doors cut thin. The city's first hotel to cost over a million dollars, but the owners had skimped on details such as doors and windows. Morrison was more annoyed by the thought of such disregard for the principles of solid construction than by Jane's crying. She had been sobbing for days now. He was almost used to it. She started as soon as he came and gave her the news.
Stephen is dead.
She let out a cry and fell into his arms. Might have hurt herself badly if he hadn't been there to catch her. And he had spared her the full tragedy. He didn't have to. He could have been blunt, told her what else he had read in the personal and confidential message expressed to his office by the New York undertaker.
Died by his own hand.
But that wasn't Morrison's way. Never had been.

From the beginning Morrison had been responsible, serious, considerate of the feelings of others. They made the mess, he cleaned it up: Papa's drinking, Momma's moods, Stephen's irresponsible, flighty, self-indulgent ways. William, a cousin whom Papa and Momma had raised as though he were their son, had left home in 1826, the year Stephen was born. William was often a help, but from a distance. It was Morrison who went to the door when the landlady was looking for the rent, when the grocer came with his unpaid bill, the tavern keeper, the shoemaker, the teacher looking for their sister, the minister, the immigrant with the ugly grin who said Stephen owed him for the performance of an unspeakable act, said it loudly, right there on the steps where the neighbors could hear.

Morrison threw
off the covers. He took his robe off the chair, stuck one arm into the air, then the other, and slid the sleeves over them. He tied the robe around his middle, hugged himself. It was freezing. The hotel provided no heat after midnight; more skimping. He walked away from the thin door and the sound of Jane's sobbing. The wind struck the window hard, rattling pane and sash. He pulled aside the drape. Below, on Broadway, the lampposts created small pools of light. A drunken man helped a woman over a heap of ash-blanketed snow. She fell, and he fell on top of her. Their high, happy laughter echoed in the street. They got up and struggled against the wind across the trafficless avenue, Broadway at 4:00 A.M., quiet and vacant at last.

Jane's sobbing sounded more inconsolable than ever. At this point she is weeping for herself, Morrison thought. He had wept at the news of Stephen's death, wept for almost an hour over Stephen's life, the unfulfilled promise, the sins, the shortcomings. But long ago, as a child, he had studied the weeping of the bereaved, and it seemed to him that though a portion of their tears were for the deceased, most were caused by the sting of being reminded of a common oblivion, the emptiness and futility of resisting it, the certainty that all would be swallowed in the same conclusion, everything lost and gone forever. Though faith taught that this end was only another beginning, even faith, Morrison observed, trembled in the presence of death, wept, cowered, at least in those first glaring moments when the truth of human fragility was too fresh to be explained or softened by words, no matter how sacred their source.

Would Jane weep harder if she knew how Stephen died?
Morrison wondered. He spared her the truth, as he had spared everyone. He took the undertaker's message and burned it. He went to her home, wrapped Jane's child in his arms, rocked her, reassured her, arranged for her lodging and care while they were away in New York. The child was distraught over her mother's weeping. She had no memory of her father, and Morrison didn't mention Stephen's name to her. He held her small hand, patted it. “Momma has lost a dear friend. That is why she weeps. She grieves over a friend's death. There, there, child.”