The Chaperone

  She wasted almost five minutes figuring out that the records were sometimes organized by year of birth, and sometimes by year of admittance. Within each folder, papers were held together with straight pins. Because of the heat, she removed her gloves, and she pricked herself right away, drawing blood. Sucking on her wounded finger, she sifted through the files with her free hand, her eyes moving over cardstock tabs with names. DONOVAN, Mary Jane. STONE, Patricia. GORDON, Ginny. She flipped past them. Overhead, the girls had stopped singing.

  She found it, her own file, in the drawer for 1889, her name written in capital letters on a tab—CORA, and nothing else. No last name. She pulled the file out. If she’d had more time, she might have taken a moment, bracing herself.

  The top page wasn’t yellowed or wrinkled, and the typed script was easy to read.

  Cora, 3, from FNM.

  Hair: Brown.

  Eyes: Brown.

  Seems in good health, of good intelligence, sweet natured; current distress likely due to transition. Had been at FNM (29 Bleecker St.) for some time.

  Parentage: unknown

  On the bottom of the page, someone had handwritten:

  Sent out on train with Children’s Aid Society, November, 1892. Placed.

  She unpinned the file. The second page was a handwritten letter on lined paper with a flowered border. The envelope was gone, but there were two creases where the letter had been folded in thirds.

  November 10, 1899

  To the kind people at the New York Home for Frendless Girls,

  I write this letter with much admiration for the good work that you do. My husband and I are the happy adoptif parents of Cora, now thirteen years of age, who resided at your home in her erly years, and who was brought to us in Kansas on an orfan train seven years ago. We believe she is as pleesed with her coming to Kansas as we are. However, we also think she would like to know more about her history and natchural parentege, as we think she will wonder about this even more as she gets older. Pleese know that my husband and I would not feel in any way upset if you sent any news about Cora’s peeple or history. We would, in fact, be greatful, as we think any truth would bring our girl some comfert.

  God bless,

  Naomi Kaufmann

  PO Box 1782

  McPherson, Kansas

  Cora stared at the signature. She had likely written it, Cora knew, sitting at the kitchen table with her good pen and her little brass inkwell shaped like a mouse, perhaps after Cora had gone to bed. She’d never told Cora she’d written the nuns. She likely hadn’t wanted to get her hopes up, and for good reason, as it turned out. If the sisters had written back, and Cora doubted that they had, it was only to say that there was nothing to say. Parentage unknown. But even with this blow, how good to know that Mother Kaufmann had tried, her concern for Cora bigger than any jealousy or fear. Cora picked the letter up and brought the thin paper just under her mouth and nose, wanting to somehow breathe her in. When she opened her eyes, she looked down, and saw the other letter.

  It was on good stationery, heavy cream paper, with no lines or decoration. The script was neat, the letters made with the alternating thick and thin lines that came from deft use of a fountain pen.

  May 1, 1902

  Dear Sisters,

  It has come to my attention that a brown-eyed girl with the Christian name of Cora, born in the spring of 1886 at the Florence Night Mission, may have been placed in your care in her early years. I am close with this child’s birth mother, who longs to know something of how the child fared, but who must insist on discretion, which is why I write to you instead. Please know that my friend has no intention of troubling Cora or intruding on her life in any way. But she tells me that she often wonders about the little baby she had to part with, and that any information, good or bad, would bring her no small measure of peace.

  I’ve enclosed a self-addressed envelope in the happy event that you are able and willing to pass along any news about Cora. You’ll notice that the return address is already written as the Hibernia Relief Fund. I apologize for the deceit, and hope that you won’t be troubled by it—my only intent is to spare myself any questions that a letter from your good organization would elicit, and thus cause me to choose between lying in person to my questioners, and betraying the confidence of my friend.

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Mary O’Dell

  10 Maple Street

  Haverhill, Massachusetts

  Cora read the letter again, and then again, crinkling the stationery from holding each side too tightly. It wasn’t just the content that thrilled her, that frightened her. Cora had never in her life seen forward-slanting but narrow-lettered handwriting so similar to her own. This Mary O’Dell, this “friend,” looped her y’s the way Cora did. She crossed her t’s at the same height and angle. It was as if Cora had written the letter in her own hand.

  The girls were no longer singing above; she could hear the priest’s droning voice, though she couldn’t make out his words. She looked at her watch. Five minutes. She had time to copy the name and address onto the pad of paper in her purse. But she stood still for a moment, and then, with a satisfying thrill, took both letters out of the folder and tucked them into her purse. She put the file back, straight pin refastened, her name showing on the tab just as it had been, and closed the file drawers.

  She stood back to make sure the room looked exactly as she’d found it—she owed the German that much. But she didn’t feel bad about the theft. She doubted the sisters would ever open her file, and what she had taken belonged to her.

  When the German saw her, he stood, and met her at the low curve of the stairs.

  “You found what you needed?” he asked quietly, leaning down. He smelled like salted peanuts.

  “Yes!” she whispered. She had the crazed urge to embrace him, to risk getting oil on the front of her dress. She was that ecstatic. She put her gloved hand to her throat. “I have an address! An actual name and address! Thank you so very much!”

  He frowned and looked at his watch. “We will go outside,” he said.

  She understood he was ushering her off the property, getting her out the door as quickly as possible. That was fine with her. Outside, she nearly ran down the steps, her feet as light and nimble as a girl’s. She almost knocked into a passing stout woman who wore no hat. Even after Cora apologized, the woman gave her a warning look.

  “You are all right?” The German was still coming down the steps, putting on his cap.

  “Yes!” She breathed in the cookie-sweet air and smiled. “But thank you! Thank you so much!”

  “You seem very…” He frowned again and flapped his hands. “Excited. Maybe you should sit?”

  “I’m fine,” she assured him. A truck sputtered by, and she raised her voice. “I’m delighted, actually! I can’t tell you.” She couldn’t. She couldn’t explain to him what this meant to her, what he had made possible. She’d get a letter in the post by tomorrow. It would likely reach Haverhill, Massachusetts, in just a few days. The German seemed happy for her, his eyes bright behind his spectacles.

  “You’ve been so kind, and you don’t even know me. I wish I could thank you somehow.”

  “I could use a cold drink,” he said.

  Her smile was still. Was he joking? She didn’t understand. Was he taunting her about her foolishness the previous week? But he looked serious. And he was waiting.

  “Right now?” she asked. It would have to be now. She certainly wasn’t going to arrange an appointment, or some kind of date, for later. She wasn’t coming back here again. “Aren’t you working?”

  “I am always working. I live on-site, upstairs there.” He pointed through the gate to the second floor of the outbuilding across the lot. Metal stairs led to a door. “I can leave as soon as Mass gets out. As long as everything is running, I take breaks as I like.”

  “Oh,” she said. She glanced about her, at the people walking past them on the sidewalk, the cars going by on the street.
She was being asked to get a drink with a foreign handyman, and she wasn’t wearing her ring. But if anyone around her cared, they didn’t let on at all.

  “There’s a drugstore around the corner,” he said.

  She nodded, not meaning that she’d agreed to the plan, only that she had heard him. She wasn’t sure what to do. In truth, she did feel like celebrating, and he was the only person she could celebrate with, and certainly, he deserved a thank you. In any case, he didn’t have designs on her—he’d made that clear the other week. She would mention that she was married, work it into the conversation. There was nothing wrong with a public drink in the middle of the day. And anyway, it didn’t matter, as no one she knew would see her.

  The drugstore had both an American flag and an Italian flag in the window, as well as signs advertising trusses, Mentholatum, and cold drinks. The air inside smelled of garlic and witch hazel, and Cora and the German were the only customers. The light was dim, at least compared to the sun-bright sidewalk, but there were familiar goods on the shelves behind the counters: talcum powder and Hypo-Cod, Ayer’s Hair Vigor, cigars, Mag-Lac toothpaste, and tatting yarn. It could have been a drugstore in Wichita, except for a sign, hung from the cash register, read that Benvenuti! in bold red letters, which Cora guessed to be some kind of warning.

  An apple-shaped woman with dark hair nodded at the German from behind the counter. “Oh, hello to you. What today?” She was taking rubber hot-water bottles out of a cardboard box and hanging them from wall pegs. She wore a black dress with a high neck, and sleeves down to her wrists.

  Cora turned to the German. “Whatever you like is fine,” she said. She was still effervescent, floating. Mrs. Mary O’Dell. She would put a letter in the post by tomorrow.

  “I will have an Orange Quench. Thank you.” He removed his spectacles, rubbing each lens on the folded sleeve of his white shirt.

  “I’ll take the same,” Cora told the woman. She wasn’t sure how slowly she should speak, if the woman truly knew English. She held up two fingers. “Two, please. Two.”

  The woman put the chilled bottles on the counter. Cora put a quarter on the counter, and when she looked up, she saw the German was watching her. He looked away.

  The woman slid her change across the counter with small, wrinkled hands stained purplish red. “Scusi,” she said kindly, wiggling her fingers. “È solo l’uva.”

  Cora smiled as if she understood, thanked her, and followed the German, who carried both bottles, to one of the three empty tables at the back of the store. Flies buzzed all around, but he pushed a lever on a pivoting fan and angled the steady whirl at one of the tables. He pulled out a wire-backed chair for her before he sat in his own.

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “And thank you.” He lifted his bottle as if making a toast.

  “Do you know what she said?” Cora whispered.

  “What?” He leaned in to hear over the fan.

  Cora gave a quick glance to the woman at the counter. “What did she say about her hands? The stain?” Cora worried it was some kind of rash. Her drink was still on the table. She wouldn’t touch it until she knew.

  “I do not know Italian.” He took a sip of his orange drink. “But I think she has been making wine.”

  Cora looked at him. He had a gold streak in one of his eyes, from the white to the pupil, like a slant of sunlight. “You’re serious?”

  He nodded.

  She glanced up at the woman, who was still hanging up hot-water bottles. She was at least in her sixties. A gold cross hung from her neck.

  “That’s terrible,” Cora said. “She could be arrested.”

  “That is terrible. Yes.”

  “I mean it’s terrible that she’s doing it,” Cora clarified. “Are you saying she’s selling it? Like a bootlegger?”

  He smiled. “It is probably for her family. Italians drink the wine like milk.”

  She looked back at the woman. “And what if a Prohibition agent were to come in here and see her hands?”

  He sipped his drink. “She would be caught red-handed, ya?”

  She worked not to smile. “That’s not funny. I’m truly concerned.”

  “Then write to your senator.” He lifted his soda. “Tell him to repeal the Volstead.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh. You’re in that camp.”

  “And you are not?”

  “Correct.” She sat up straight, taking off her gloves. She was thirsty, and her glass bottle looked perfectly cold, sitting and sweating on the table. A trace of grapes wouldn’t hurt her.

  He watched her with narrowed eyes. “You would put her in jail? That woman?”

  The orange drink was sweet and bubbly. She held a sip in her mouth before she swallowed. “If she’s really selling poison that ruins families and lives, yes. Yes I would.”

  “Hmm.”

  He seemed as if he didn’t quite believe her. Well. She knew her mind. And she’d educated simpler men than him. She took another sip and set her bottle down.

  “Tell me that this isn’t a better country since we got rid of the booze.” She raised her voice a little. It would be good for the Italian woman to hear her. “You know right here in New York they’ve had to close down entire floors of hospitals, floors that were once reserved for people who had poisoned their blood? I believe that’s considered progress.”

  “But now more people are being shot in the street.”

  She shrugged. “Criminals, maybe.”

  “No. Not always. And it seems to me more people are dying drinking bathtub gin.” He tilted his bottle to his chest, to the oiled bib of his overalls. “I used to serve the best beer in the state. It looked like gold in a glass. It was healthy and pure and good. No one ever got sick from that.”

  She scowled. “You worked in a saloon?”

  He set his bottle on the table. “I owned a beer garden. In Queens. It was a good place, with no one getting shot, no gangsters.” He crossed his arms. “People would bring their children, their babies. How is this bad? No one was drunk. My wife would bring the baby and get her dinner there.”

  “Oh,” Cora said. She hadn’t guessed there was a wife, and a baby, and now she felt even more embarrassed about the way she’d behaved the week before and her silly fretting over buying him a drink. She tried to imagine a whole family living in the small space above the orphanage’s shed. No wonder he was bitter, then, if he’d owned his own business before. But every change, even a good one, had its casualties. And whatever he wanted to think, a beer garden didn’t sound like any place for a child.

  He waved his hand. “It does not matter. This is not what I want to tell you.” He was sitting so close to the fan that the breeze pushed a bead of sweat sideways across his broad forehead. “I want to talk about your records. I know it is not my business. But I let you in, and now I feel responsible.”

  “Responsible?” She brought her bottle to her lips.

  “Ya.”

  “For me?”

  “Ya.”

  She almost laughed. “Well, that’s very sweet.” She started to lean back in her chair, mirroring his posture, but her corset wouldn’t let her. “I can assure you I’ll be fine. I’m a grown woman.”

  “I can see.”

  She glanced up. His face was neutral. She couldn’t tell if he was being suggestive. He’d just told her about his wife and child. But she’d heard about European men.

  He leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “I just do not want… The nuns have reasons for keeping the records private. I have been working there for a few years now, and I have seen the people who bring their children, and the people who come to visit.”

  “Please.” She raised her palm. “The sister already gave me this lecture. I know my mother could have been a drunk or… a woman of… ill repute. I know all this, thank you.” Her purse, with its wonderful new contents, was nestled against her side. “But I don’t care. I have an address. I came looking for answers, and now I might find them.
That’s all that matters to me.”

  “That is good.” His brows lowered behind the silver frames. He seemed not to require more from her, but now she wanted to talk, to say these words to another person, this stranger, her sudden confidant.

  “So I don’t care if she’s a drunk or… or… anything. But you know, she could very well be a decent person. I remember the parents who came to visit. Some of them were just poor. Some were just sick. It’s not as if they’re all bad people.”

  “I hope not.” He nodded, looking at the table. “My own daughter stays there now.”

  Cora tilted her head. “Your daughter? She’s…” She couldn’t think of how to ask. If she was his daughter, she wasn’t an orphan.

  “My wife died. The influenza.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Cora said. She’d heard the flu had been especially bad in New York. In Kansas, in just 1918, more than ten thousand had been killed, including Alan’s sister and her husband in Lawrence. Everyone at the funeral, except for the minister, had worn a paper mask, and Alan, even in his grief, had yelled at Howard for yanking his off after the service. When they returned home, they’d been too scared to even get on a streetcar, and Cora, terrified, had kept the boys home from school for months.

  “I’m glad you survived,” she said. “For the sake of your daughter.” She didn’t know what to say. “Did you… did you fall ill at all?”

  “I wasn’t with her.” He rubbed the blond stubble of his chin. “I was gone for most of the war and a little after. Down in Georgia. Fort Oglethorpe. I was interned.”

  “Interned?” She frowned. “You mean imprisoned?”

  “Ya, it was the same. Only with prison, you get a trial.”

  She leaned a little away from him. “What did you do?”

  “It was what I did not do.” He held her gaze. “I didn’t get down on my knees at the request of a mob. I wouldn’t kiss the flag, not for them. So I was a spy. They had about four thousand of us spies down there. Only we did not know we were spies until they tell us.”