Miss Sharp suggested that we also enlist Mr. Bellows’ help.
“Rupert Bellows!” Miss Corey had cried. “Whyever would we use him?”
I knew that Miss Corey didn’t like our history teacher. I had begun to suspect that she was jealous of the attention he paid to Miss Sharp.
“Because a man has to accompany Nathan into the club, and I don’t think Agnes’s Mr. Greenfeder will fit the bill.”
“Are you saying that Rupert Bellows does?” Miss Corey squawked. “Do you honestly think Rupert Bellows has ever set foot in a house of ill fame?”
Miss Sharp blushed. “I most certainly hope not! But he is a knight of the Order. He is charged with going into hell itself if need be, and I have every confidence he will play his part admirably.”
“He looks like a two-bit dandy,” Miss Corey remarked now, looking over the edge of the rooftop. “I can smell his bay rum cologne from here.”
I looked over the edge of the roof and saw Mr. Bellows and Nathan standing on the club’s front stoop. Mr. Bellows, who usually wore muted tweeds, was dressed in a loud plaid suit, spats, and a top hat, which he now doffed, revealing slicked-back hair, as the door opened. A whiff of gin and tea-rose perfume merged with Mr. Bellows’ bay rum cologne and wafted up to our perch along with a woman’s voice. I leaned farther over the edge of the roof and opened up my inner ear to hear what she was saying.
“You needn’t flash your brass at me, Diamond Jim,” she purred in a rich, seductive voice. “Only gentlemen with references get past Madame LeFevre.”
Nathan, in an only slightly more subdued outfit, stepped forward and whispered something in Madame LeFevre’s ear. Even my bird ears couldn’t hear what he said, but everyone on the waterfront must have heard Madame LeFevre’s throaty laughter.
“Well, why didn’t you say you were friends with Big Jim O’Malley right away, boy-os? Any friends of Big Jim’s are always welcome here.”
“Big Jim O’Malley?” I repeated, sitting back on my heels as Nathan and Mr. Bellows disappeared inside. Miss Corey looked puzzled, and I remembered she couldn’t hear what I could, so I explained that I’d heard Nathan say that name.
“Hm . . .” she said, narrowing her eyes at me. “Big Jim O’Malley is a bigwig in Tammany Hall politics. I can’t imagine how Nathan knows him, but it was clever of him to use that name to get in. Nathan’s a lot smarter than he lets on.”
I stared at her, surprised that she thought about Nathan Beckwith at all. “I didn’t think you liked any—” I began, but when I realized what I was about to say I clamped my hand over my mouth.
Miss Corey tilted her head and smiled. “Men?” she asked. “Is that what you were going to say?”
“I didn’t m-mean . . .” I stuttered, unsure what I did mean and feeling as if I’d stumbled on forbidden territory. Blood rose to my cheeks. Luckily the only light on the roof came from the welding torches of the workmen laboring through the night on the Woolworth Building eight blocks to the west.
“I think what you’ve probably noticed is that I don’t like Rupert Bellows,” she replied with a strained smile. In the light of the torches I could see how pale she had become. In the daytime she usually wore a veil to hide the marks on her face, but she had left it off for tonight’s operation. The marks on her face stood out like constellations of a distant universe. Remembering what Miss Sharp had told me about their origin, I felt a pang for her. Miss Corey had been kind to me at Blythewood. She had gotten me a part-time job as her assistant in the library to augment my allowance and give me independence. The last thing I wanted was to pry into her secrets and make her feel uncomfortable.
“Yes, of course, that’s what I meant,” I said, grateful for the exit she had offered me.
For a moment I thought she would leave it at that, but then she sighed and said, “Or perhaps you’ve noticed more than that.”
I could have pretended not to know what she meant, but then I remembered what it felt like to keep my own secret. “I suppose I’ve noticed that you like Miss Sharp very much,” I said.
She bit her lip. “Yes, I do like Vionetta very much,” she rasped in a strained voice. “I like her . . .” She looked away and stared up at the half-built Woolworth Building as if the words for her feelings could be found in the elaborately carved Gothic tower. “I like her more than as a friend. I would like to spend the rest of my life with her, I don’t care where or how.”
“Does she feel the same?” I asked.
“I don’t know!” she cried. “How can I know? If I tell her how I feel it might ruin the friendship we have.” She turned to me, her eyes glittering as if the flares of the welding torches had lodged in them. “You understand that the way I feel is not . . . accepted. It’s not the way I’m supposed to feel.”
“I don’t understand that at all,” I replied hotly. “How can anyone control the way they feel about someone else? And how can anyone tell someone how they’re supposed to feel? The way you feel about Miss Sharp . . . well . . .” I fumbled for what to say. “I accept it. Anyone with half a brain and two eyes in their head would have to!”
She laughed hoarsely and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Avaline Hall,” she said, “you are quite remarkable. If you ever have a secret burdening you, you know where to come.” She leaned forward and squeezed my hand.
“A secret . . . ?” I began, but then a noise drew our attention to the street.
“There’s Vi!” Miss Corey cried, leaning over the edge of the roof.
Below us stood a woman, but I was sure it couldn’t be Miss Sharp. She was drab and stooped, her head covered by a gray shawl. She looked shorter and older than Miss Sharp, but when she knocked on the door the noise resounded across the waterfront. The door opened and Madame LeFevre’s voice wafted up to our perch.
“Have you come about a job, dearie? I’ll have to see what’s under all them layers if you have.”
“I’ve come for my husband,” Miss Sharp replied in a quavering voice that nonetheless carried on the night air. “Mr. Robbins. He’s here with his friend, Mr. . . . er . . . Flyte.”
It had been Kid Marvel’s little joke to assign us all aliases based on birds or flying. I was “Phoenix” and Miss Corey, much to her chagrin, was “Magpie.”
“It’s not my policy to divulge the names of my clients or to let ladies into my establishment. Go home, duckie, and wait for your husband like a good little wifie.”
“Oooh,” Miss Corey whispered, “Vi won’t like that.”
“I most certainly will not!” Miss Sharp announced in the clear loud voice she used to reprimand students who didn’t do their assignments. “I will stand here and wait for my husband until he comes out!”
“Suit yerself, pet.” Madame LeFevre began to close the door, but before she did Miss Sharp shouted in a loud, commanding voice. “John! John Jacob Robbins! I know you’re in there. Come out this minute before you spend another penny on some painted harlot while our three children go hungry!”
A large man came out the door and remonstrated with her. “Ma’am, you can’t stay here. You’ll raise the whole neighborhood—”
“I will raise the hounds of hell if that’s what it takes to get my husband out of the clutches of that she-devil!”
“She could, too,” Miss Corey remarked admiringly. “I’ve seen her raise the hounds of hell.”
The front door opened and closed again. Miss Sharp’s voice rose ever higher and louder, raining threats and pleas that convinced me that she had three starving children at home. Lights went on in buildings around us and neighbors leaned out their windows to watch the fracas. In the building below us I heard slamming doors and querulous voices. I opened my inner ear and listened.
“Get a load of the bellows on that one!”
“No wonder the poor man came here for a little peace and quiet.”
“At l
east he has someone who cares enough to come looking for him.”
This last came from a girl on the top floor in back. I moved toward the back of the building and looked down into the rear alley. A patch of light from a top-floor window illuminated a rickety old fire escape clinging precariously to the crumbling brick walls. In the alleyway below, two large men stood guard smoking cigarettes and listening to Miss Sharp’s tirade. I focused on the voices coming from the top-floor window.
“I’m here to help you, Ruth,” I heard Nathan say. “I’m here to take you back to your family.”
“I told you my name’s not Ruth, it’s Fanny and I don’t have no family!”
“Not even a sister Etta?”
The only reply was a whimper that might have come from a small mouse, then the girl repeated in a monotone. “My name’s not Ruth, my name’s not Ruth, my name’s not . . .”
“There’s something wrong,” I told Miss Corey. “I have to go down there and talk to her. You keep an eye on Miss Sharp.”
Before she could stop me, I was on the fire escape heading down to the second floor. Each step I took made the whole contraption shake. I was afraid the noise would alert the guards in the alley, but they were too busy listening to Miss Sharp’s shrieks, which had now been joined by Mr. Bellows’ retorts delivered from a front window. The two of them were shouting back and forth like an old married couple.
“If I’da known you were such a lazy good-for-nothing layabout I’d never have married you, John Robbins!”
“If I’d have known you were such a sanctimonious shrew I’d never’ve let your father strong-arm me to the altar!”
They sounded like they were enjoying themselves.
I hurried down metal steps filigreed by rust to a lacy thinness, trying not to picture the fire escape at the Triangle. When I reached the window, I paused to breathe and looked through the glass.
I’m not sure what I thought a house of ill fame would look like—gaudy, I suppose, certainly not this well-appointed room with a four-poster canopy bed, lace curtains, and china bric-a-brac on the tables and chests. It looked more like a girl’s room in a wealthy home—until I looked at the girl inhabiting it. I recognized her features—dark thick hair, olive skin, high wide cheekbones and large brown eyes—from her photograph, but it was hard to believe she was that same laughing girl. She was wedged into a corner between a wardrobe and night table, her bare arms wrapped around her chest protectively, shivering so hard that her yellow silk dressing gown trembled like a butterfly’s wing. She looked so scared I thought one of the guards must be in the room, but when I looked around all I saw was Nathan standing as far as he could from her, raking his hands through his hair and staring at her as if she were an explosive device.
“Please,” he was pleading, “I’m here to help you. If you just come with me we’ll bring you to Etta.”
At the sound of Etta’s name, Ruth whimpered as if Nathan had struck her, causing Nathan to tear at his hair and look wildly around the room. When his gaze lit on me he flung his arms up and rushed to the window.
“Thank the Bells!” he cried, helping me into the room. “I thought she would start screaming any minute. She’s acting like I’m trying to murder her every time I mention Etta.”
Ruth whimpered and cringed as if she had been struck. I took a step toward her, holding my hands out, palms up, as if I were approaching a bating hawk.
“It’s all right, Ruth. I’m a friend of Etta’s. We worked together at the Triangle factory. My name’s Ava. Maybe she mentioned me?”
Ruth only whimpered and slid down the wall with her arms clasped around her knees, trying to make herself small. She stared at me out of eyes so wide and glassy I could see my reflection in them . . . only it wasn’t my image. Taking a cautious step forward I knelt down and stared into her eyes. Where my reflection should have been was a ghoul—decaying skin hanging over a hollow-eyed skull. When I opened my mouth smoke poured out.
No wonder Ruth was terrified.
“She’s been hypnotized to see us as monsters,” I told Nathan, who’d knelt beside me. A twin horror leapt into Ruth’s vision: Nathan as he might appear three months dead with worms crawling out of his empty eye sockets.
“She seemed to think I looked all right before. It was only when I mentioned Etta—”
Ruth whimpered and Nathan’s reflection bared yellow fangs and spat with a forked tongue.
“Et—her sister’s name must be a trigger of some sort to prevent anyone trying to lure her away by promising to return her to her family.”
“What a nasty trick,” Nathan said with a grimace of disgust.
“That’s how van Drood operates,” I said, recalling the images of my mother van Drood had shown me in the Hall of Mirrors. “He takes what’s most precious to you and makes it horrible.”
“Can she be cured?”
“I broke van Drood’s spell by using my bells.” I took out the repeater from underneath my shirtwaist. “I’m not sure if it will work with her.”
I was about to press the watch stem, but Nathan stayed my hand. “Shh. Do you hear that?”
I’d been so intent on Ruth that I’d forgotten to listen with my inner ear, but when I focused now I heard a voice in the hall. “Madame LeFevre says to get all the clients out in case that harridan outside draws the coppers.”
“We don’t have much time,” I said. “We have to hurry.”
I pushed the stem of the watch, holding it close to Ruth so the sound wouldn’t be heard outside in the hall. She cringed when I got close to her, but when the repeater began playing, her face relaxed and she fastened her eyes on the tiny figures hitting the bells. The watch played a tune I’d never heard before but that reminded me of the folk songs I sometimes heard the Jewish women singing at Henry Street. Ruth’s eyes filled with tears that washed away the ghoulish images.
“I think she’ll come with us now.”
A loud rap on the door startled me so badly I nearly dropped the watch.
“Time’s up, boy-o,” a loud, gruff voice announced. “Less you wanna end up spending the night in the Tombs.”
I nudged Nathan to respond.
“I say, old sport, it’s not cricket to rush a fellow. Give me a minute to . . .” Nathan’s face turned beet red. “Er, say my farewells.”
Raucous laughter greeted his remark. “Kiss the girl goodnight and be off with you!”
“Keep talking!” I whispered, getting Ruth to her feet and steering her to the window. As long as she looked at the watch she moved docilely. I helped her out onto the fire escape while Nathan declaimed love poetry to the amusement of the men in the hallway. With one hand holding the watch in front of Ruth and the other on her back I managed to lead her up the shaking fire escape. Miss Corey was there to help us onto the roof.
“Thank the Bells! I think the police are on the way. I’ll go signal Vi that we’ve got Ruth while you get her to the next rooftop.”
I led Ruth to the roof of a neighboring tenement, down its stairs, and out the back door to a side street where Agnes, Sam Greenfeder and Kid Marvel were waiting in a car. As soon as we were inside, Sam peeled away from the curb. I kept Ruth’s eyes focused on the repeater while Sam navigated the crowded streets of the waterfront to get us back to Henry Street Settlement House.
I was beginning to wonder if there was any way to break the spell for good when the door to the house opened and Etta burst out crying Ruth’s name. The minute Ruth heard her sister’s voice she looked up from the watch. Would she see a monster when she looked at Etta? I wished I had been able to prepare Etta. No one wanted to be looked upon as a monster, especially by her own sister.
But then Ruth was rushing into Etta’s arms and bursting into tears. The spell was broken.
10
WE ALL GATHERED in the downstairs parlor. Agnes went to the kitchen to find Helen, who’d
used her time waiting for us to prepare an elaborate tea, while Omar examined Ruth for aftereffects of the hypnotism she had been under. Miss Corey paced nervously until Miss Sharp and Mr. Bellows appeared, laughing at the parts they had played and reprising bits from their roles. Miss Corey paled and turned away, excusing herself to help Agnes with the tea. Kid Marvel congratulated everyone on a con “well played” and Sam asked for details of what cons he’d played in the past. The drab little parlor with its union meeting notices and worn copies of Girl’s Life and The United Worker was suddenly filled with a gaiety more buoyant than the Montmorencys’ ball. There was one figure, though, that hovered on the periphery in the shadowy hallway: the changeling. I left the warm circle and went to stand beside her.
“I only came to bring Etta,” she said quickly. “I didn’t want her walking here alone. But I see I can leave her now. I suppose I’d better before your Miss Corey decides to kill me.” She had tied a scarf over her head to hide her features, but I could make out her red swollen eyes.
“Where will you go?” I asked.
“Back to the Blythe Wood. I’ll be absorbed back into the forest, into the bark and moss and ferns. Once we’re set loose from our human hosts we revert back to our natural state. See, it’s already happening.”
She looked down at her hand, which was resting on a wooden table. I followed her gaze. Her hand was turning the color and texture of the wood. It was nearly invisible.
“Is that why I’ve never seen your kind in the woods?” I asked. “Because you’re . . .”
“Camouflaged? Yes. Without the human spark we merge with the elements. It’s not so bad, really, only . . .” Her voice hitched in her throat. “I think it will take me a long time to forget Etta.”