City of Darkness and Light(2)

Aggie was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs with Liam already strapped in his buggy. “You could take those letters with you to read,” she said, handing them to me.

I laughed. “I believe you’re more interested in my mail than I am.”

“I love hearing about foreign parts,” she said. “It’s like a fairy tale.”

“I’ll read Miss Goldfarb’s letter to you later if you like,” I said. Aggie hadn’t yet managed to learn to read, in spite of my efforts to teach her. I put on my hat, adjusting it in front of the hall mirror, then Aggie helped me maneuver the buggy down the front steps.

“I hope you have a nice walk, Mrs. Sullivan,” she called after me as I set off.

I almost asked her again to come with us, but I reminded myself that she was the servant and the laundry was her job. I’d bring her a cake for tea, I decided. She loved the cakes I brought from the French bakery around the corner. As Liam and I bumped over the cobbles of Patchin Place I couldn’t help glancing across at the doorway of number 9. It had been two months now since my friends Elena Goldfarb and Augusta Walcott, more familiarly known as Sid and Gus, had taken it into their heads to go to Paris, so that Gus could study art with the best painters of the day. I had never thought that Gus’s talent for painting was as great as she believed it to be, but her cousin Willie Walcott had gone to study in Paris and was now apparently making a name for himself as a painter of the Impressionist school. He had promised introductions for Sid and Gus.

From their letters they seemed to be having a roaring good time, while I missed them terribly. I had come to count on their comforting presence across the street, their extravagant parties, and their bohemian lifestyle that Daniel only just tolerated for my sake. With Sid and Gus, life was never boring. You never knew when you’d open their front door and find the front parlor turned into a Mongolian yurt or a Turkish harem. They never had to worry about the day-to-day trivialities of normal life. They had enough money to live as they wanted, according to their rules. This is not to say that they were always frivolous. They were keen supporters of the suffrage movement and I missed attending those meetings at their house as well.

I sighed as I came out onto Greenwich Avenue and steered Liam’s buggy around a pile of steaming horse droppings. Ah, well. They’d grow tired of Paris and come home eventually, wouldn’t they? And in the meantime I had a husband to look after and a son to raise. Things could be worse. Liam leaned forward in the buggy, urging me to go faster, and babbled in delight when an automobile drove past us, its driver’s long scarf streaming out in the breeze behind him as he steered the contraption around a slow moving dray. Just like his father, I thought, smiling at his excitement. We were seeing more and more automobiles these days. I know Daniel secretly hankered after one. He was allowed to drive the police vehicle when there was a special need, but that didn’t include giving his family a ride.

I waited for a gap in the traffic before I pushed the buggy across into Washington Square, passing beneath the great arch and into the relative tranquility of the gardens beyond. Here activity was confined to mothers pushing buggies while toddlers clung to their skirts, bigger boys bowling iron hoops that rattled over the gravel paths, and even bigger boys playing a game of kick the can. I wondered why the latter weren’t in school as it certainly wasn’t a holiday. I suppose they could have been newsboys, taking a break from long hours standing on street corners.

I found a bench in the sun and turned the buggy so that Liam could watch the bigger children at play. He seemed more fascinated with the fountain in the center of the square and a flock of small birds that perched on the lip, daring each other to take a bath in the spray that flew out in the breeze.

With my son content for the moment I opened my letters. I dutifully read Daniel’s mother’s letter first, as he’d no doubt want a report on her doings and she’d no doubt want a reply from me. Usually her weekly letters were a recital of what she had done around the house, what her young charge Bridie was doing, interspersed with slivers of local gossip. But today I was surprised to read, By the time you read this I shall be gone.

My heart lurched in my chest. I have to confess that I wasn’t overly fond of Daniel’s mother, but this was so sudden. Then I read on.

I am writing this in haste to let you know that I am about to embark on a journey. I decided not to mention this plan to you in advance as I rather think that Daniel might have tried to dissuade me. And I don’t think it would have taken that much to dissuade me since it was such a huge undertaking for me.