The Forgotten Room (10 page)

But there had been two sons, twins. What had the other twin done to be excluded from his father's will?

The date on the will was 1893, the year Lucy had been born.

There was a sharp rapping on the door. “Yoo-hoo? Anyone in there?”

Lucy jammed the file into the drawer and kicked the cabinet closed with her foot. “Yes?”

Fran poked her head around the door. She already had her hat on and was drawing on her gloves. “We're going for chop suey. Want to come?”

Lucy pressed her eyes shut. Only Fran. Fran wouldn't know a file if it bit her. “I would, but . . . I have a dinner engagement.”

Fran's eyebrows went up. “A dinner engagement? You've been holding out on us. You never said you had a fellow. Hey, El! Miss Dark Horse has a dinner engagement!”

Lucy cut around Fran, yanking the door of Mr. Schuyler's office firmly shut behind her. She walked purposefully toward her desk. “No, no. It's not like that. It's just . . .”

“‘Just . . .'?” Fran trailed after Lucy, scenting fresh gossip.

Blast Philip Schuyler and his schemes. Philip Schuyler, sitting seraphically in a box at
Tosca
, his stepmother in silk and diamonds beside him.

Lucy improvised. “It's just . . . a friend of the family. He's visiting from out of town.”

Fran pursed her lips significantly. “An out-of-town friend.”

Lovely. It would be all over the steno pool by Monday.

There was no strategy like distraction. On an impulse, Lucy said, “Fran, do you know where I can get a cheap dinner dress in the next”—Lucy glanced at the clock above Miss Meechum's desk—“hour and a half?”

“What sort of dinner dress are we talking about?”

“A respectable one. Something I can wear to Delmonico's.”

“Delmonico's! I wish my family had friends like that.” Fran craned her neck to call back over her shoulder, “Hey, El, did you know we had a Rockefeller in the office?”

“We do?” Eleanor appeared behind Fran, searching in her purse. “Have you seen my gloves?”

Fran rolled her eyes. “Never mind your gloves. Miss Butter Won't Melt here has a date at Delmonico's!”

She oughtn't to have said anything. Briskly, Lucy jammed her hat
on her head, securing it with a long pin. “Never mind. I can just wear my suit. It's no one I need to impress, after all.”

“Oh, no, you don't.” Fran linked an arm through hers. “Delmonico's! I'll send you off right. I know this little woman on Delancey who can make you look like your dress came straight from gay Paree.”

Given that Fran had been no closer to Paris than the Bronx, Lucy took that with a grain of salt, but she let herself be towed off to the elevator, Eleanor trotting along behind.

Fran's dressmaker might not be Parisian, but she was reasonably cheap. Passing up the gaudier options, Lucy settled on a dress of sapphire blue, with long chiffon panels over a silk slip.

It was only an imitation, she knew, but looking at herself in the long mirror, she could imagine herself at the opera with Philip Schuyler.

She couldn't do anything about her sensible shoes or her battered leather bag, so different from the wisps of beads and silk the other ladies were carrying. But at least her dress looked right. As long as one didn't look too closely.

Delmonico's was housed in an imposing building on Forty-fourth and Fifth. The maître d' took in Lucy's old hat and cheap gloves at a glance.

“Yes?” he said.

Behind the maître d', Lucy could see the dining room, the walls hung with pale yellow silk—
Ach,
she could hear her grandmother say in
her head,
such waste!
—the windows shaded with cream lace. An onyx fireplace dominated one side of the room. Large palms provided an illusion of privacy for the well-dressed diners, who spoke in muted tones by the light of yellow-shaded lamps.

Lucy tried to look as though she dined out every day. “Do you have a reservation for Schuyler?”

The name appeared to have a magic effect. The twin furrows disappeared from between the man's brows.

“Schuyler . . . ,” said the maître d', checking his book. “Ah, yes! Mr. Schuyler reserved a table in the Palm Trellis. If you would come this way?”

The Palm Trellis, it appeared, was on the roof. The maître d' handed Lucy over to a uniformed elevator operator, who whisked her upstairs to a vast room where white fans turned lazily overhead, dispelling the July heat. Window boxes spilled over with hydrangeas, and sweet-scented wisteria twined around white-painted trellises.

Back at Stornaway House, her attic room would be hot and close. The shared kitchen would be even hotter, with the depressing smell of day-old boiled cabbage that seemed to have sunk into the very walls.

On an impulse, Lucy tugged her mother's ruby pendant from its hiding place. It was heavy and old-fashioned, but the ruby was real. It made her feel, a little bit, as though she belonged here.

Through the long windows, the sky was shading gently toward dusk. The breeze from the fan ruffled the long chiffon panels of Lucy's dress as she followed yet another attendant through the long room, to a choice table at the back, framed in an arch of wisteria, shaded by two tall palms.

As they approached, a man unfolded himself from his seat at the table. The light was against her; Lucy could make out only a dark suit, dark hair, a broad set of shoulders.

What would Didi Shippen do?

Pinning on a stiff social smile—and trying not to trip on the hem of her gown—Lucy held out a hand. “Mr. Ravenel?”

Mr. Ravenel made no move to take her hand. He stood frozen, an expression of surprise amounting to shock on his face.

In a voice so low that Lucy could hardly hear it, he said, “Your eyes are blue.”

J
UNE 1944

Kate

“Well, he
is
a doctor.”

I stood in the middle of the tiny single room of a three-floor walkup in a dubious East Side neighborhood south of Park and stared into the pretty freckled face of my best friend, Margie Beckwith, her eyes wide with possibilities.

“So am I,” I reminded her. “But I'd rather kiss a cockroach.”

She shuddered with an empathy that only sisters or best friends who'd known each other since they were in diapers could have. Our mothers had met on a bench in Central Park when we were babies, our prams parked next to each other by happenstance, and then by design as the women discovered they had much in common. Or, more specifically, that they both had the same delusions of grandeur.

Whereas my father had been a lawyer with a respectable pedigree, most of our family money had been lost in the crash of '29, and while we weren't penniless, we had most definitely become middle class. It had always been apparent to me that while both of my parents had
minded our social demotion, my mother had been much less forgiving of our circumstances. She'd been a loving wife and mother, but I'd never been able to completely shake the feeling that she always believed that there had been another life, a bigger, brighter life, waiting for her somewhere around the corner.

Mr. Beckwith sold men's suits at Bergdorf's, while Mrs. Beckwith taught piano to the privileged—and mostly tone-deaf according to her—children of those who'd managed to hold on to their money, or the newly rich. The latter she considered beneath her and were tolerated only because they paid well. Although neither the Schuylers nor the Beckwiths lived anywhere near Fifth Avenue and Sixty-ninth Street, their bench in the park was somehow fitting.

Margie turned toward her closet. “I don't know why you're asking to borrow clothes from me—we're nowhere near the same size. And I certainly don't have anything appropriate for dinner at 21.”

“Exactly,” I said, eyeing her curvy figure, which had gone out of style during the Victorian age. “I'm not trying to look attractive.”

She pulled out a dark gray skirt and examined it before putting it back with a dismissive shake of her head. “That's not something you say to a friend from whom you're borrowing clothes, you know.”

“I'm sorry, Margie. I didn't mean it that way. It's just that Dr. Greeley makes me so angry. He's practically blackmailing me to go out with him. Otherwise, he's going to do his best to ruin my career.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn't be kissing patients.” She sounded a bit peeved as she roughly slid hangers over the rod in her closet.

I blushed at the memory of Captain Ravenel's lips on mine. Despite my best efforts to forget it, I could still taste him every time I closed my eyes. Which is probably why I hadn't had much sleep in the past week. A week where I'd happily delegated his care to Nurse Hathaway and the other staff doctors, ignoring his requests to see me.

“It wasn't like that. He . . . surprised me. And then excused the
whole thing to Dr. Greeley by saying he confused me with someone else.”

Margie looked over her shoulder at me. “I wish some good-looking man would surprise me with a kiss. That sort of thing doesn't happen in the archives at the New York Public Library, unfortunately. And if it did, it would probably be from some old man wearing tweed with suede elbow patches and smelling of mothballs.” She screwed up her face, her good humor returned. “Of course, I'd probably still be grateful. It's been a good deal too long since I was last kissed. This war is taking far too long.”

“Send a Western Union to Hitler, why don't you? He probably hasn't realized.”

“I just might,” she said, turning around and holding up something brown, wool, and indescribable. The only way I could tell it was some sort of garment was because it was on a hanger.

“Whatever it is,” I said, “it's perfect.”

“It's a dress that was my mother's, and not only is it blatantly out of style, but it's also hideous. And it's about two sizes too big for you.”

I was already unbuttoning my blouse. “Then let me borrow a belt, too.”

“I'm still not sure why you agreed to go out with this guy, Kate. Just tell him no and let him say what he wants. You're a brilliant woman—one of very few, I'd bet, who've graduated from college in less than four years. And you're a good doctor, too. Surely your work will speak for itself.”

I slid the rough material over my head, grimacing in the mirror as it settled on my shoulders. “In a perfect world, maybe. But I'm a woman, and a young woman at that. People will believe what they want to believe. They're already prejudiced against me because I'm only twenty-three and already a doctor. They think I haven't paid my dues because I graduated from medical school in two years—along with just about
every other MD candidate since the war started—which they conveniently don't remember. Like it's my fault there's a shortage of doctors. I'm constantly made to feel as if I need to wear my Vassar diploma around my neck as well as my MD to prove myself.”

I turned to the side and back, making sure the heavy material hid all of my curves. “So, no, my work doesn't count, only the word of my male colleagues.” I leaned forward and plucked Margie's cigarette from the ashtray and took a long drag before regarding myself in the mirror again as I blew smoke at my reflection. “Which is why I'm being forced into this charade tonight. I just need to make sure that Dr. Greeley is left with no illusions. I plan to talk about my thimble collection and my crooked toes all night.”

Margie took the cigarette and took a drag before placing it back in the ashtray, studying me with a tilted head and narrowed eyes. “I hate to tell you this, Kate, but even in that awful dress you still look beautiful.” She took a folded handkerchief from the top drawer of her dresser. “Maybe if you wipe off your lipstick.”

I did as she instructed and faced her again. “How's this?”

She shook her head. “It's no use. Maybe you should show him your toes just in case.” Margie stuck her head back into the closet and when she turned around she was smiling triumphantly.

“Here are a pair of my librarian shoes—only seen on elderly women over eighty and younger women who are on their feet all day and work in libraries—and which will look perfect with those old stockings with the ladders running up and down your legs.”

I smiled, knowing the thick, clunky heels and manlike uppers would be perfect with the dress. “I hope they don't turn me away. The 21 Club is pretty ritzy.” I'd wanted to go to my mother's favorite restaurant—one she'd told me about again and again when I was a child yet where to my knowledge she had not been since I was born—but I'd sadly discovered that Delmonico's had closed in 1923.

Margie took another drag from her cigarette, then blew the smoke up to the ceiling. “Why's he taking you there? It's not like he couldn't take you to some dive—you had to say yes anyway.”

“His cousin's the bartender, so he can get us a table. Dr. Greeley is trying to show me how important and well connected he is, I suppose, even though we'll probably be put in some corner by the kitchen.” I slid on the shoes and sighed. “I can't believe I went to med school for this.”

“Sure. You could be living the glamorous life of a librarian like me instead. What I wouldn't give,” she added under her breath.

As I folded up my skirt and blouse to tuck into my pocketbook, she said, “Maybe I should stop by the hospital and meet your Captain Ravenel. Since you're not interested.”

“He's taken,” I said, a little too quickly. We hadn't heard back from any member of his family, or any Victorine. I'd decided that if something hadn't arrived by today, I would send another letter to let them know that he was on the road to a full recovery and that arrangements could be made to bring him home by the end of the month if his recuperation continued on the same path.

According to Nurse Hathaway, he'd not requested a pen and paper to write a letter himself, and I tried not to read anything into it. I had no interest in the captain except as his doctor.
I've been drawing your likeness since I was old enough to pick up a pen.
I gritted my teeth, wishing I could stop hearing his words. But they haunted me, a ghost that accompanied me during my rounds and at night in my dreams when I was finally able to fall asleep.

Margie stood back from me, eyeing me critically as I pinned my hat to my hair and pulled on a pair of kid gloves that had once belonged to my mother. They had once been expensive, purchased years ago by my father and given as a Christmas gift. They were worn now in the fingertips, and I'd resewn the seams along each finger several times, but I couldn't bear to part with them. There was precious little of my mother's
I still had. And when I wore the gloves it was like having her hand in mine, guiding me like she had when I was a child.

Margie shook her head. “You look positively awful, but still better than most women. Are you sure you don't want to spend the night here? You know I'm always up for a midnight gab session.”

I leaned forward and hugged her. “I know, and I appreciate it. But I have early rounds in the morning so it's better that I sleep at the hospital. We'll have lunch next week and I'll let you know all about it—down to the last gory detail.”

“All right. But if you change your mind, just ring the bell. I'm a light sleeper.”

We said our good-byes and I hurried down the three flights of stairs and out into the humid night and began walking toward the nearest subway. I'd refused to leave the hospital with Dr. Greeley, knowing it would only fuel the gossip mill, and I was already prepared for the argument we'd have about him not bringing me back to the hospital. Not that he would necessarily offer, of course. He made a big deal out of me being a “new” woman, an educated doctor of independent means. I suppose he thought those were insults, too.

I walked in the early-evening drizzle, futilely trying to avoid the drips from shop awnings as I passed beneath them, then quickly ducked into the station. I bought chewing gum from the vending machine on the subway platform so I'd stop gritting my teeth, hoping Dr. Greeley wouldn't think I'd freshened my breath for him. After a short wait, I boarded my train and sat down.
I've been drawing your likeness since I was old enough to pick up a pen.

What had he meant? I shook my head to mentally erase the words and attempted to focus on the evening ahead, where I would at least be getting a free meal. Instead, all I could see were eyes the color of winter grass, and hear words spoken with a soft Southern drawl.

I struggled through the heavy wood doors of Stornaway Hospital, feeling—and probably closely resembling—a rat drowned in an overflowing gutter. I was soaking from the rain, and bone weary from trying to stay mentally sharp during the interminable dinner where I had fielded off innuendoes, hands on my thighs, and blatant attempts to kiss me—only one that I'd allowed to be successful. I had to give him
something
to chew on, to make him think there was hope. Otherwise, I had no doubt I'd be asked to pack my bags and find another hospital where fraternizing with the patients wasn't frowned upon. Most likely on the corner of Never and Ever.

I wondered how long I could take a steaming hot shower for without using up all the hot water in the building. Probably not long enough to scrub every inch of my skin the number of times required to erase Howard Greeley's clammy touch and rubbery lips.

The night nurse at the reception desk gave me a disapproving glare as I walked past her, too tired to attempt a smile or share any pleasantries. It didn't matter. News of my appearance so late in the evening would be spread among the nurses and staff by morning rounds. Hitler had nothing on the nurses at Stornaway—perhaps he should consider using them for his propaganda machine.