Though Waters Roar (26 page)

“But we
have
to go! Please, Grandma? Please?” She didn’t know it, but I planned to surprise her by signing The Pledge, swearing to forsake all alcoholic beverages for the rest of my life. After hearing about my grandfather, I never wanted to take a single sip. Grandma was going to be so pleased.

We left Roseton early in the morning and made it over the first range of hills without any trouble. We saw some pretty huge puddles in the road, and the mud looked deep and squishy in places, but Grandma steered smoothly around all the obstacles. Twenty minutes into our trip, though, we came to a quagmire that had completely swallowed the road. Grandma stepped on the gas to plow straight through it, but the car never made it to the other side. We ground to a halt, stuck in the mud—sunk clear up to our axles, judging by the spinning sound that the wheels made. A shower of muck sprayed out from the rear wheels and splattered down on the rear window. We were going nowhere. Grandma lifted her foot off the accelerator and let the car engine die.

“Oh, dear,” she said with a sigh. “I was afraid this would happen.”

I started to open the passenger door, certain that if Grandma knew how to fix a tire, she would surely know how to get us out of this mess, too. But she stopped me before I could climb out.

“Where are you going, Harriet? Stay in the car. It’s much too wet and muddy out there. You’ll ruin your shoes.”

“But we’re stuck. Shouldn’t we do something? Jack up the car, maybe? Or start pushing?”

“No, we’ll just wait. Another car is bound to come along soon and help us out.”

I stared at her in disbelief. “But . . . but you said that only women in fairy tales wait to be rescued.”

“Harriet dear, neither one of us is capable of getting this car out of the mud by ourselves.”

“But you said—”

“I know, I know. But there are exceptions to every rule, and this is one of them.”

My disappointment was as deep as the mud. How was I supposed to learn anything about life if Grandma was going to contradict herself? I heaved a loud sigh to let her know how frustrated I was. “First you say, ‘Don’t wait to be rescued.’ Now you say, ‘Wait for help.’ How am I supposed to know what to do when?”

“Well, I suppose time and experience will teach you the difference.”

I sighed again and sat back with my arms folded, waiting for an explanation. Grandma stared at the fog-shrouded mountains in the distance for a long moment. Rain pattered softly against the roof and slid down our windshield like thin, glassy fingers.

“Sometimes you can look at circumstances,” she finally said, “and you can clearly see what needs to be done. Take my mother’s situation, for instance. She didn’t wait for someone else to help the runaway slaves; she did what she could to rescue them herself. And in my own situation, I knew that I had to do whatever I could to rescue Horatio so that he wouldn’t drink us all into ruin.”

I waved my hand impatiently. “I understand that part. Like you said, ‘Only women in fairy tales wait to be rescued.’ ”

“Yes. But there were other times in my life when I took matters into my own hands, and . . . well, things didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped. . . .”

Bebe sat in the parlor with her four-year-old daughter on her lap and held up two books for her to choose between. “Which story shall we read today, Lucy?”

“Both! I want to hear both of them!”

“No, we have time for only one of them before your nap.”

“But I want both!” Lucy pouted.

Reading stories before Lucy’s afternoon nap was one of Bebe’s favorite rituals, and one of the few times she had Lucy all to herself. Lucy resembled a little angel, with her halo of curly blond hair and her sweet rosy face—but her temperament didn’t always match her appearance. Bebe glanced at Lucy’s nanny hovering nearby. The woman always gave in to Lucy in order to avoid a temper tantrum, but Bebe was determined not to spoil her only child. She laid one of the books aside.

“If you can’t make up your mind, we’ll read this one.”

“No! I want two books!”

Bebe ignored her daughter’s stubbornness and opened the book, hoping Lucy would settle down once they started reading. Several pages into the story, the front doorbell chimed. Bebe paused, waiting for the servants to answer it, listening to hear who it was. Lucy listened, too, and when it became obvious that a deliveryman had arrived at the front door with a package, she slid off Bebe’s lap, squealing with delight and clapping her hands. “For me? Is it for me?”

Bebe laid aside the book and followed her to the front hallway.

“Yes, Miss Lucy. It’s for you,” the butler said. Lucy snatched the package from his hands without a word of thanks and began tearing off the brown paper wrapping, scattering it all over the floor. Mrs. Garner descended the stairs to watch the destruction, wearing a pleased smile on her face.

“I was wondering when my surprise might arrive for you, Lucy. Open it carefully, dear. You wouldn’t want to break it before you’ve had a chance to play with it, would you?”

Bebe stifled a groan. “Not another toy, Mother Garner. The playroom is overflowing with toys as it is. No child needs that many playthings.”

They were expensive toys, too. Last week Mrs. Garner had purchased a wooden rocking horse for Lucy, with a mane and tail made of real horsehair. The week before, she had brought home a stuffed bear with glassy eyes and velvety fur and paws that really moved.

Lucy tore open the box and quickly dug through the straw packing material to retrieve her prize. “Look, Mama! A dolly!”

Bebe crouched beside her daughter. She had to admit that the doll was beautiful—even more so than the five other dolls Lucy already owned. Its hair felt like real human hair and the eyes in its dainty porcelain head opened and closed when Lucy moved her. She even had tiny eyelashes. According to the label, the doll had been imported all the way from Germany.

“She’s lovely, Lucy. You must give her a very lovely name to match.”

“And you must be careful with her,” Mrs. Garner added. “You don’t want to get her hair mussed or her clothes wrinkled.”

“Aren’t toys meant to be played with, Mother Garner?”

The older woman ignored Bebe’s question and reached for Lucy’s hand. “Come, Lucy dear. Let’s go find a place for her in your playroom.”

“But it’s time for her nap, and—”

“Lucy wants to play with her new doll, don’t you, darling?” They walked upstairs together, followed by the nanny.

“Lucy?” Bebe called up the stairs after her. “Did you thank Grandmother Garner for the present?” She didn’t reply.

Bebe looked down at the torn paper and straw that Lucy had strewn all over the floor for the servants to clear away. She sighed in frustration and bent to pick up the mess herself. Her daughter was growing into a spoiled, demanding child, who didn’t know how to do anything for herself, but whenever Bebe complained to Horatio, he took his mother’s side.

“She’ll only be a child for a few more years, Beatrice. You want her to grow up happy, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.” Bebe wanted everyone to be happy—most importantly, Horatio.

His drinking binge following Lucy’s birth had lasted nearly a month. Bebe had begged him to stop, appealing to his love for his new daughter and for her. When he finally agreed, she took him up to the fishing cabin for a week. Once again, Horatio sobered up, apologizing and promising that it would never happen again. He had kept his promise for four years now. In return, Bebe had done her best to settle into the Garners’ social world at his request, planning dinner parties and open houses and teas, attending social gatherings and balls and fetes. In fact, she was supposed to attend the ribbon cutting ceremony at Roseton’s new women’s club this afternoon. She wished she didn’t have to go.

“I own the tannery now,” Horatio had told her. “I have certain duties to perform in this community, and so do you and Mother.” Like it or not, those duties included pointless ribbon-cutting ceremonies. Bebe trudged up the stairs to get ready, ignoring the commotion in Lucy’s playroom as the nanny tried in vain to coax her into taking a nap.

“Let her stay up and play with her new doll,” Bebe heard Mrs.

Garner say. “I insist.”

Bebe’s maid was waiting in her room to help her dress. “Mrs. Garner chose this gown for you to wear today,” she said. Bebe nodded, tight-lipped. It seemed as though Horatio’s mother made every decision in her life. While the maid tightened her corset laces and slipped the chosen gown over her head, Bebe struggled to stay afloat in a sea of resentment. She hated the control that Mrs. Garner had over her—and now over Lucy. She felt as though she were navigating through rocky waters without a map: praying Horatio would remain sober, trying to please Mother Garner, hoping to maintain a façade of normalcy for her daughter’s sake.

As she sat at the dressing table, watching in the mirror as the maid arranged her hair, Bebe thought her life resembled a lavishly written novel without a plot. What good was all of the pageantry and posturing without a purpose? And what good did it do her to look beautiful on the outside when she seethed with frustration and resentment on the inside? She wished she would get pregnant again so she would have something useful to do—and so Lucy wouldn’t become so spoiled—but that hadn’t happened, either.

Bebe and Mrs. Garner arrived side by side at the ceremony, smiling and greeting the other women as if they were as close as mother and daughter. On lonely afternoons like this one, Bebe longed for a true friend. Her relationships with the other society women were superficial, and none of the women had become what she would call a friend, much less a confidante. She missed Mary MacLeod, even though their friendship had lasted barely a month. After Lucy’s birth, she had begged Horatio again and again to allow her to visit Mary, but he always refused.

“Why do you need her?” he had asked. “She’s not like us, Beatrice. Please stay away from her.”

Three hours after the ribbon-cutting ceremony began, Bebe returned home, her face stiff from holding a phony smile in place all afternoon. She trudged upstairs feeling exhausted, even though she’d done nothing more strenuous than eat
petit fours
and listen to boring speeches. After changing out of her dress, she sat down in her dressing room to read the newspaper. Mr. Garner’s subscription had never lapsed, and Bebe had developed the habit of reading the news every day. Occasionally, she would find an article about the Woman Suffrage movement—the paper always described their activities in negative terms, of course—and sometimes an article would mention Lucretia Mott.

But what interested Bebe even more were the descriptions of a temperance crusade that had swept across upstate New York, Ohio, and Michigan this year, quickly gaining momentum. Like the abolition crusades, it had begun when groups of Christian women joined together in prayer meetings, seeking the abolition of all alcoholic beverages. As the movement spread, the women began holding their prayer vigils on the streets outside of saloons until the embarrassed customers went home and the saloon owners caved in to the pressure and closed their doors. So far, the women had driven dozens of saloons out of business.

Bebe cut out all the articles she could find with news of either movement and kept them in a cigar box in her dresser drawer. If Horatio wouldn’t allow her to become involved, she could at least enjoy reading about what other women were doing.

Bebe was disappointed to find nothing about either the Temperance or Suffrage movement in today’s paper. Instead, every headline and article described the shocking news that yesterday, September 18, 1873, the nation’s best-known banking house, Jay Cooke and Company, had collapsed. Business affairs usually were of little interest to Bebe, but she could tell that this news was momentous. She read every word. Experts predicted that more bank failures would quickly follow; that businesses and industries would be forced to close their doors once they could no longer borrow money; that workers would be laid off, leading to labor unrest, riots, and starvation. The newspaper painted such a grim picture that Bebe whispered a prayer that the experts would prove to be wrong.

Late that night, Horatio startled her awake, moaning and thrashing in bed.

“Horatio! Horatio, wake up!” she said, shaking him. His eyes finally flew open and he sat up, looking frantically around the room as if he didn’t know where he was. “You were having a nightmare, Horatio. Everything is fine, it was only a bad dream.”

She could feel his body trembling, shaking the bed. Sweat drenched his silk pajamas. He groaned and ran his hands through his hair and then climbed out of bed. Bebe got out of bed, too, and started to light a lamp, but he stopped her.

“Don’t! I don’t want a light on.” She tried to draw Horatio into her arms to soothe him, but he refused her consolation, pushing her away. He began to pace as if trapped in a cage with no way out.

“Tell me about your dream, Horatio. Was it the war again?” He shook his head. She could see that he longed for a drink, and she was glad that she had thrown out every drop of alcohol after his father died. She sat on the edge of the bed, still feeling shaky after being startled awake.

“Please tell me what’s wrong.” He didn’t reply. “Talk to me, Horatio. Are you worried about something? I read in the newspaper about the huge bank that went broke—are you afraid it will affect the tannery?”

He finally turned to her, and she could hear the controlled anger in his voice, even though she couldn’t see him clearly in the dark. “This house is my refuge, Beatrice. I don’t want to talk about work when I’m at home. Besides, you don’t need to concern yourself with financial matters. You shouldn’t even be reading the newspaper in the first place. Why can’t you read
Godey’s Lady’s Book,
like other women do?”

His words stung and she knew he had meant them to. She lashed back without thinking. “I don’t care about the latest fashions. I care about real life! You think I’m too stupid to understand the news, don’t you?”

“I didn’t say that. But why concern yourself with the world outside our home? I work hard so that you can be free from worry, like Mother is.”