Clara and Mr. Tiffany

  I rose to leave.

  Mr. Thomas cleared his throat. “One more thing, Mrs. Driscoll. With anticipated lower production, we can’t keep your full complement of artisans. Who is your slowest worker?”

  “I don’t like to say.” The exacting care Miss Judd took in every task naturally required more time. I would quit before I ever gave them her name! “Slowest sometimes means finest.”

  “Well, whoever it is, she and one more of your choosing will have to go.”

  Rebellion boiled. “Then I’ll design a mosaic to keep all twenty-seven of us.”

  “They’re only made to order now,” Mr. Thomas said. “You have two weeks to reduce your department by two.”

  Feeling a curdling in my stomach, I strode quickly to the door and heard Henry murmur, “I’m sorry.”

  I WALKED HOME ALONE, bewildered, knowing my creativity had been strangled along with my department. No one was getting married soon, so I couldn’t use that to decrease our number. For the first time, I wished someone was. I refused to choose. There was a reason for keeping each one.

  In former days, I would have wailed in self-pity to Alice. Now I slipped a note under Bernard’s door.

  Come to me.

  I laid out the pages on my bed and waited, feeling the approach of change. The minutes crawled. I picked up the kaleidoscope and watched the glass shards slip into a new pattern.

  It wasn’t long before he knocked and peeked in.

  “Is it George?” he said softly.

  “It’s Tiffany’s. There was a meeting.”

  I pointed to the pages and he stood by the bed, stately and serious, picking up each page, studying it, putting it down, picking up another, while I chewed on my thumbnail.

  “Look at all the discontinued ones. It felt like murder.” My voice was petulant. I couldn’t help it.

  “Are the sales slipping?”

  “I’m not privy to any sales figures. I only see the orders. The moratorium on designing new elaborates is still in effect, I suspect forever. As an artist, I can’t expand any more. I’m like a blown vessel that has reached its capacity for thinness, and the glassblower has to stop or it will lose its shape and individuality.”

  He stacked the pages and set them on my desk, sat on the bed, and pulled me over to sit next to him.

  “Your individuality is greater than as an artist, Clara. Do you think that’s all there is to the woman? Do you think I’m in love only with the artist? Do you think I haven’t seen the beauty of your character? Your strength in leading the girls, your compassion in responding to the issues of their lives? That I haven’t fed off your joy in cycling, in parks, woods, the sea, the crush of New York? That I haven’t recognized a lovely, vibrant woman of intelligence and humor and passion and keen sensitivity and a thousand intense and beautiful feelings? A woman with a bigger capacity to love than she admits. A woman I’ve loved for years.”

  A swirling exhilaration exploded in me. Breathless and half frightened at the prospects, I glimpsed my larger self shining in his eyes, and I loved him for showing it to me.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before this?”

  “How could I force the issue when I saw every day how much you love your work and the girls? Besides, do you think I wanted to risk another love affair with a woman more committed to work than to life?”

  Edging toward accusation, the words resounded with hard truth.

  “Over time, I recognized that I’d rather go along as we have been rather than to force you to sacrifice what you love and maybe make a mistake and come to resent me,” he said. “But now, with this moratorium, maybe you see things differently. Maybe you can see possibilities for yourself outside Tiffany Studios. On your own, or with me.”

  “It’s a big change.” Though not one I hadn’t contemplated.

  “An enormous change. I realize that. I’ve read your note a hundred times. I can barely imagine what it would mean to you to give up what you love, but it would kill me to see you stay there out of loyalty to a policy that does not value you because you are a woman.”

  “Policy! It’s not loyalty to a policy, Bernard. I hate the policy. It has ruined lives.”

  Olga. Wilhelmina. If only they could have kept working. It was bigger than just Tiffany policy. All across the city that policy held women in its unholy grip.

  “Think what you just said, Clara. ‘Ruined lives.’ Think of the import of what you said.”

  Although the policy constrained me too, there was an ironic safety in it. I could finally admit to myself why I had let the years slip by without asking Bernard if he was married. I was just as afraid of learning that he wasn’t as learning that he was. Now, without the security of the slim possibility that he was a married man, the protection from having to make a decision that would force me to leave Tiffany’s was gone. I hugged my pillow against my ribs, knowing that I stood on the edge of a precipice. Olga and Wilhelmina and Ella and Cornelia and Edith and Beatrix had all left to get married under their own individual circumstances. Had they all sensed a similar precipice, even for a moment? No. Not Olga. Her certainty that nothing was as important as love was a case of wisdom out of the mouths of babes.

  Gently, Bernard took the pillow away, turned me toward him, and cradled my wrists in his open palms. “When I was a little boy living in Gloucester, I watched workers make a clearing for a street of row houses. They chopped down all the trees. A bird sat on a stump. A worker tossed it in the air to fly away, but it came back to the stump. The next week, I found only feathers and part of a wing. It had perished out of fear to go beyond what it knew. Do you understand?”

  I felt my soul moving closer to his.

  “Yes.”

  GEORGE HUNG ON UNDER the care of Dudley, Hank, and Henry for another week. At his bedside the next Sunday, I dribbled water into his mouth from a straw, and Dudley tried to make him comfortable. Weaker and struggling more for breath, he turned his head to him.

  “Don’t cry over me, Dud. It’s better to die young than …” We waited. “To be an aging, feeble nellie.”

  Dudley’s face distorted.

  “Tell me again my favorite lines.”

  “I float in the regions of your love, O man, O sharer of my roving life,” Dudley managed to say.

  Hank opened the book and read softly,

  “And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me …

  The smallest sprout shows there is really no death.”

  Light passed from the window, and none of us wanted to leave the bed for so much as half a minute to draw the shade, so it became a big black eye looking in at us. Hank lit the oil lamp. George’s breath coming irregularly now sounded like the retreat of a wave over pebbles.

  “Read, ‘All goes onward.’ ”

  Dudley found the page and tried to read, but no sound came. He handed the book to me.

  “All goes onward and outward—nothing collapses,

  And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”

  With Dudley holding his right hand and Hank his left, and I on my knees warming his cold feet against my breasts, we waited to receive the last precious ounce of him. Minute by inexorable minute, the skin of his face lost its fever flush and became bluish gray.

  He took a jagged breath, struggled to say, “Look. The geese are flying,” and relaxed at last.

  Dudley’s head dropped to George’s chest in a muffled sob.

  After some minutes, Hank said in a pinched voice, “Frolic on, comrade.”

  He stepped out onto the stoop to give Dudley time with him alone. I followed him, we touched hands, and I went back to the boardinghouse alone.

  Bernard leapt to his feet in the dimly lit parlor and enfolded me. His arms, hands, eyes, breath, all spoke comfort.

  “It wasn’t brutal,” I murmured against his chest. “They loved him so. Such extraordinary, generous love.”

  Seeing Bernard’s folded white handkerchief, and the tenderness w
ith which he offered it, I wept.

  CHAPTER 47

  LIFEWORK

  BERNARD KNOCKED AT MY DOOR IN THE MORNING AS I WAS GETTING ready to go to the studio.

  “Don’t go today,” he said. “There’s nothing there that can’t wait. We’ll go to Central Park, or to Point Pleasant. Wherever you want.”

  “No. You have to go to work.”

  “You are more important. Love is more important than work, Clara. Be reasonable. Let me help you.”

  “I have to go.” I laced up my shoes.

  “You’ve been married to Tiffany Studios for at least a dozen years. You’ve proven your loyalty and your talent. You don’t have to go to the grave still proving it. And to whom? Nobody cares, Clara, as much as you do. Now won’t you take a day with me? You’ve just had two big blows. Take time to put yourself together again.”

  “I have to tell someone there, George’s friend.”

  “You can’t send a message?”

  “No. I have to tell him myself. And I have to see Mr. Tiffany.”

  I could see the hurt in his eyes. He was holding my arms, but not so tightly that I couldn’t free myself.

  “Just remember that I know you and love you better than anyone,” he said.

  I nodded, assured that he loved me in the way I had always longed for, but this had to be done this morning, while the resolve was hot. I walked quickly out the door and turned off Irving Place to Fourth Avenue to catch the subway. It would get me there before I changed my mind.

  …

  GOING INTO TIFFANY STUDIOS, I said to myself, Hold fast the fort, dear women. I went to Henry’s office first, and closed the door behind me.

  “I already know. Hank came to tell me last night.” We both stood numb in each other’s arms. “Hank and Dudley and I may have been his lovers,” he said softly, “but you were his finest friend.”

  “We said some lines from Whitman right at the end.”

  “Hank told me.”

  I wiped away tears.

  “Take care of yourself, Clara. You don’t have to stay at the studio.”

  I looked at him curiously.

  “I meant today, but take it as you wish.” With utter delicacy, he added, “Onward and outward.”

  “Thank you for everything you did for him, and for me.”

  I went across the corridor into the ladies’ room, blew my nose, tidied my hair, pulled back my shoulders, and looked in the mirror. What I saw was the face of a survivor—one who would find her own surprises, design her own adventures. In the next five minutes, I would have to tear myself away from him, the loved one who, like Edwin, like Francis, came close but did not measure up. Too many disappointments tumbled one after another. I breathed in resolve. Then I entered Mr. Tiffany’s office.

  “I’m glad I found you before you started your rounds. I was afraid I’d be too late.” I sat down at the side of his desk. Three gardenias floated in an enamel bowl. Maybe it had been made by Alice.

  “There’s no other way to say this. I have to leave.” My voice did not quaver.

  His face contorted. He turned the opal ring on his pinkie finger back and forth, a small, agitated movement. “May I ask why?”

  “I can’t grow any more here.”

  “I feared as much at the meeting.” He hunched over the gardenias for a long moment, and suddenly straightened himself. “I could move you to enamels.”

  “No. It’s more than that.”

  He inclined his head toward me. “Is it a man in your life?” His eyebrows went up in avuncular curiosity.

  “I lost a dear friend yesterday. You met him once at a Christmas ball and took us up to your studio. He’s the brother of the man I left the company for a long time ago. Our friendship wasn’t a romance, but it made me see how vital love is in a fully lived life. Art alone can’t suffice.”

  He stared at the bowl of gardenias, his fist pressing against his mouth. “I’ve come to suspect that myself,” he said.

  “There is another man who gives me the loving regard I’ve always wanted.”

  “What if I bent the rule in your case? Our little secret.”

  “If I marry him? No. I’m done with secrets. Thank you, though.”

  “Then an open breaking of policy under mitigating circumstances? No one else is capable to lead the department.”

  I could have fainted dead away at the hugeness of his offer. This I was unprepared for. It was staggering, and wonderful—solid evidence of his recognition of me, that I mattered that much to him—a solution. My much simplified tree-of-life clock sitting on his mantel ticked out the moments when my chance for both, Louis and Bernard, existed side by side.

  “That’s kind of you to offer.”

  It seemed a precursor, and I wanted to be there when it happened. But if my leaving made him consider loosening the strings, maybe it was my last act of love for the Tiffany Girls. Maybe someday Olga could come back to work here.

  “There was a time when I wanted that. Under the current business situation, though, it wouldn’t make a difference.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s been a once-in-a-lifetime partnership, Louis, and I’ve grown tremendously under your guidance. The joy of our collaboration has been central to my life. Mr. Platt and Mr. Thomas have destroyed any further opportunity for that.”

  The corners of his mouth tightened downward. “That’s going to hurt me too.”

  “What I leave undone here will be taken up by someone behind me in the great parade of creativity.”

  “I can’t imagine who.”

  “Make Alice head designer, but don’t saddle her with administrative responsibility. It divides a person to have to focus on art and commerce.”

  “That’s been my Achilles’ heel. Commercial concerns have smothered the breath of life of art for the time being, but I can’t expect you to wait around until it revives.”

  “Carrie McNicholl would be a good department head. She’s very organized, she knows the skills of each girl, and she knows the bookkeeping. Anna Ring can assist her with it.”

  He wrote down their names.

  “Another thing. My salary is more than that of two of the newer girls together. Now you don’t have to fire any of them.”

  “I’ll tell that to Mr. Thomas.” He let out a long, loud breath, a sigh. “I don’t know how I’ll get along without you. Your devotion and contributions have been inestimable, and your inventiveness has been brilliant.”

  “And I don’t know how I’ll get along without you, your genius on fire, and Mr. Belknap, and my girls, and Frank.”

  It was my life’s cup spilling over, and a lump of love formed in my throat.

  I opened my pocketbook. We had been so formal and careful, but I wanted something lighter today too.

  “I love the poetry of Emily Dickinson. This morning I copied out a verse for you.” I handed it to him, and he read it to himself slowly.

  We never know how high we are

  Till we are called to rise;

  And then, if we are true to plan,

  Our statures touch the skies—

  “I know you’ve always wanted to be taller. I understand that. I’ve always wanted to be prettier.”

  A mix of feelings creased the skin under his eyes. “The verse means more than that, and you know it.” He took out his billfold and slipped it in.

  “One thing I’ve been meaning to tell you.” I grinned to prepare him for something quibbling. “Shorten those two pedestals. That will make you appear taller.”

  He scowled at them, and his mouth opened slowly. “You’re right. All these years.” He shook his head as though he were amused, but when he turned to me, his amusement dissolved. “Then we’re through? Isn’t there anything else?”

  “Yes. There is one thing. If I might say so, your daughters have as much right to an education as your son.”

  “I have conceded to some night classes.”

  “That’s a start. You’ll do more in winning back
their love by supporting their goals than by refusing.”

  He pondered that a few moments, and then said, “I want you to know that what you saw that night in my studio doesn’t happen anymore. I was at my lowest when you saw me.”

  “I knew you could pull yourself out of it.”

  After an awkward moment, I told him I would finish out the week so as to leave everything in order.

  He asked if he could take me to lunch. I felt a tremor of panic. Time exclusively with Louis—how I had yearned for that. Out of recognition for the policy concession he had offered, I thought I should accept, yet the urgency of getting to Bernard beat strongly in me.

  “Any other time, I would love that, but I have someone waiting for me, I hope.”

  We stood. The cord connecting us unraveled, though not so fast that we did not feel the prolonged, inevitable tearing away, as though we were cupping each other’s chins like peonies, holding for one more moment the eyes of the once beloved before stepping away.

  I HURRIED FROM THE SUBWAY back to Irving Place, and was out of breath. Or maybe I was short of breath because of the momentous decision I had made. Exhilaration made me sweep through the parlor and run up the stairs. Bernard didn’t answer my urgent knock on the door to his room. Of course not. He was at work, but where was that? I went through the corridor calling, “Bernard? Merry?” and found her in the pantry.

  “Did Bernard go to work today? Do you know where his office is?”

  “Why, dearie, he left here this morning with a bag packed.”

  “Good God! Not another disappearing man!”

  “He looked fearful sad.”

  “If he comes back, tell him I went looking for him. Keep him here.”

  On a slim hunch I hurried to the station and got there in time for the eleven-fifteen to Point Pleasant. The train crept along at a snail’s pace. I could have run there faster.

  He must have thought I chose Tiffany over him. I bit my lip until it bled. I should have told him, but I hadn’t been sure that I’d go through with it.

  At the station, I felt like lifting my skirt and racing down the wooded path toward the cottage like a madwoman, but that wouldn’t change anything. He was either there or he wasn’t. I forced myself to walk along the coast in a measured pace, all senses alert to remember this momentous act.