City Of Promise Part 22

"I beg your pardon?"

"Lilies would be lovely. White lilies and blue delphiniums. Perhaps some dark purple irises as well. In a border just there. And one or two small trees of the sort that flower in spring."

He had the feeling she was speaking more to herself than to him. But there was a degree of animation in her voice he had not heard since the day they followed Frankie Miller out of Mama Jack's Cave.

"You know quality, Auntie Eileen. Exactly as you've always said. I trust you to make the choices."

"I'm not sure," Eileen said, "that's exactly what Joshua had in mind."

Mollie waved the objection aside. "Josh wants the house to be furnished and livable in the shortest possible time. And if you do it, so it shall be. Why should he object?"

"Because he wants you to be as you were. That's the goal of everything he's done, dear child, surely you know that."

"I do. I should like to be as I was, Auntie Eileen. If there was any way to make it be so, I promise I would take it." Miss Palmer, please tell Mrs. Turner that certain interior parts were injured during the difficulties. And that regretfully there can now never be children.

The past could not be changed, but the future might hold some small possibility not of happiness-she no longer expected that-but perhaps . . . relief.

The vision that came to Mollie in those few moments when she looked across the waste s.p.a.ce between Josh's grand new house and his stable was born of articles in G.o.dey's Lady's Book and Harper's, implanted in her mind over many years. The magazines frequently featured sketches of beautiful gardens attached to houses in places where such things were considered the normal surroundings of a fine home. In New York City, where however much a man might spend on pleasure, it would never occur to him to allow a building lot to be without a building, Mollie never actually saw any flowers that were not in a florist's window, or a vase, or an indoor pot on a sunny sill. Perhaps that's why so much of her needlework featured nature. She hadn't sewed a single st.i.tch since that terrible day when she bled away her motherhood, but the possibility of a garden sparked a small but insistent flame of interest.

Eileen recognized the opportunity and took it. She set about furnishing the house in a whirlwind effort that brought her to the Ladies' Mile six days out of seven-"Please send the bill to Mr. Joshua Turner on Grand Street"-all the while keeping an eye on her niece's even more remarkable activity.

Mollie took a cab to Eighty-Seventh Street each morning, stopping along the way to pick up various urchins and idlers willing to spend the day digging at her direction. She chose the most likely looking from among the impoverished gaggle hanging about in front of the uptown rookeries, and paid them in coins at the end of each session, making careful note of those who had done the best job. The following day they were the ones she selected. After two weeks she had a.s.sembled a reliable crew who were quickly becoming skilled groundsmen. Meanwhile, she sat with a stack of back copies of the journals that had provided her inspiration and thumbed through them, stopping each time she encountered a notice offering horticultural necessities or plants or seeds. "Dear sir, I write in response to your announcement in G.o.dey's of March 1871. Do you still offer specimens of the white lilium regale? . . . Dear Sir, I am most interested in the dark blue delphinium you offered in Harper's Bazaar earlier this year."

When she discovered a publication called The Gardeners' Chronicle, full of advice and extensive instructions for nurturing every type of growing thing, she was ecstatic.

Gradually Mollie's vision matured. Since by happy chance she had conceived her plan in the autumn, the best time for planting many perennials, shrubs, and trees, the garden in her dreams made a faint but swift impression on the lot marked in the city rolls as number 1062 Fourth Avenue. Meanwhile, a steady procession of delivery vans-most of them blazoned R. H. MACY and A. T. STEWART, though there were some from Mr. Constable's establishment and an occasional visit from an anonymous carter dispatched from a small draper's shop with no fleet of its own-arrived next door at number 1060, and off-loaded every conceivable sort of household furnishing and necessity.

At first Mollie was charged by her aunt with accepting the deliveries, but when Eileen found the beds and chests meant for the third and fourth floors all left w.i.l.l.y-nilly in the drawing room because no one had troubled to give the haulers more specific instructions, she arranged for Tess to go uptown with Mollie in the mornings and be on hand to receive the merchandise Eileen spent her days acquiring. That suited Mollie, who was then free to devote as many hours as were required to deciding if the blush pink of the climbing Bourbon rose Lady Antoinette would, on maturity, blend well with the creamy blossoms of the Virgin's Bower clematis she planned to grow up the side of the stable. No, she concluded. Too insipid. She would instead plant the deeper-colored Bourbon, Souvenir de la Pet.i.te Malmaison.

She sighed with pleasure at the thought of the two blooming together. As for hunting down the preferred rose, the quest made her tingle. Rather like what it felt like after one's hand or foot had "fallen asleep," as was said, and after much shaking and rubbing, sensation returned.

The sign above the door said SOLOMON GANZ, and beneath it hung the traditional three golden b.a.l.l.s of the p.a.w.nbroker. Joshua had a moment's pause. He could have sent Hamish, except the clerk knew nothing about last year's desperate attempt to raise capital. No reason he should be made privy to the details now. Mollie would have been a logical choice since she was the one who had arranged the original transaction, but the garden she was creating had brought on the first signs of genuine recovery he'd seen since she lost their child. He was reluctant to interrupt that healing for even a few hours.

Josh pushed open the door.

A bell tinkled.

A small, thin man with a mostly bald head appeared from the rear, pushing aside a heavy velvet curtain and smiling at him. "Good afternoon, Mr. Turner. I am Sol Ganz." The man took a few steps forward and extended his hand. "It's a pleasure to see you here."

"The pleasure is mine, Mr. Ganz. Though I didn't expect to be so easily identified."

Ganz's smile got wider. "You are distinctive, Mr. Turner. A large red-headed man with-" The p.a.w.nbroker broke off.

Josh's turn to smile. "With a wooden leg. You're quite right, I should expect to be recognized."

"Besides," Ganz said, "I was expecting you today. Or perhaps your wife."

"She's otherwise engaged at the moment, so I-"

"Ah yes, soon you will be moving to your new home. Ladies are always busy at such times."

"You know a great deal about me and my affairs, Mr. Ganz."

"We have," Ganz said, "a moderately large transaction between us. At least it is so for a small businessman like myself. These days the sum is very modest for you. See, I know that as well."

"Your loan went a long way to making that possible, Mr. Ganz. And as you indicate, it is due today. I've come to pay you and reclaim my property."

Ganz showed him into the room behind the curtain and indicated a chair. "When your wife came to see me she sat right there." He took his own seat and reached into a drawer and produced a roll of soft chamois leather. "And gave me this." Ganz loosed the tie, and allowed the roll to unwind on the table between them. Eileen Brannigan's rings and bracelets and her peac.o.c.k brooch sparkled in the light of the gas lamp that provided the only illumination in the windowless s.p.a.ce.

"And you gave her," Joshua said, "six thousand dollars in paper currency."

Ganz offered a slight shake of his head. "Not exactly. I gave her a banker's draft for that amount. And accompanied her to Mr. Cooke's bank on William Street and saw that it was cashed."

"Yes," Josh agreed. "I recall her explaining that." Her hand had trembled when she handed over the thick roll of bills. Six thousand, Josh. What shall you buy? Six lots, you magnificent creature. Back to back on Sixty-Eighth and Sixty-Seventh, and our fortune made. From that flowed McKim's clever and enormously profitable square with a central courtyard. Had he bought fewer lots, the Carolina would not exist. Josh withdrew a piece of paper from the breast pocket of his coat and put it on the table beside the jewels. "I can go with you to Drexel's bank on Broad Street and perform the same service if you wish."

The p.a.w.nbroker did not touch the draft, only leaned forward and examined it. "That won't be necessary, Mr. Turner. Ten thousand, three hundred and twenty dollars. That is the correct amount."

Josh put his hand over the roll of chamois leather, which he knew without checking would include everything Mollie had p.a.w.ned the previous year. Sol Ganz would not still be in business if he indulged in that sort of blatant thievery. Ganz put his hand over the draft, knowing that a man of Joshua Turner's sort would not write it had he not the funds.

The exchange was made.

The p.a.w.nbroker accompanied his visitor to the street in front of his door. "It has been a great pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Turner. If I can be of help anytime in the future . . ." He stretched out his hand.

Josh shook the other man's hand, and put on his topper. "Thank you, Mr. Ganz. I do not see any immediate need for a p.a.w.nbroker, but one never knows."

"Indeed, Mr. Turner. One never does. So just remember, Sol Ganz is here on Avenue A. Waiting only to be of service."

The newness of everything had a particular smell. Not in the least unpleasant, Josh thought, but quite different from every other house he'd lived in. Sunshine Hill was built by his parents from the ground up, but in his earliest memories it was already full of people and much lived in. Even his rooming houses had been occupied before he acquired them and transformed them to his purpose. Number 1060 Fourth Avenue was pristine.

Thanksgiving fell that year on the twenty-eighth of November. The last of their things-clothing, toiletries, papers, and the like-were brought up from Grand Street two days before. The final transfer of the household goods came in the form of a carter's wagon that arrived bearing Agnes Hannity and what appeared to be the contents of at least six pantries.

"Careful with them there pies," the cook was shouting as Josh rode up on Midnight. He reined in and watched while the haulers carried box after box through the bas.e.m.e.nt level tradesman's entrance to the left of the front door. "Hey! Them's my summer pickles and they won't be improved by your jouncing 'em this way and that."

"I fear she thinks no one has discovered fire this far uptown," a voice said at his elbow, "and we must survive on picnic food from now on."

It was the most normal remark Mollie had made to him since the previous April. Josh slid from the saddle and put an arm around her waist. "I have not been this excited," he admitted, "since I was six years old and it was Christmas Eve, and I was convinced St. Nick was coming down the chimney."

A young boy appeared. "Stable your horse, Mr. Turner?"

"And who are you?"

"This is Oliver Crump," Mollie said. "He's called Ollie and he's been working with me for two months. I thought to keep him on as a combined gardener and stableboy. Subject to your approval I told him."

"Well, he looks suitable enough." He was small but wiry. And no doubt, thought Josh, plucked from one of the G.o.d-awful rookeries. "I take it you've convinced Mrs. Turner you can dig, Ollie Crump, but do you know anything about horses?"

"Yes sir, happens I do."

The boy was stroking Midnight's muzzle all the while, and the mare was nuzzling up to him, apparently content with his touch. "How," Josh asked, "has that familiarity come about?"

"My pa was a blacksmith, sir. I worked with him sometimes."

"Was?" Josh said. "And is he not a blacksmith now?"

"No sir. He got the fever and died two years back. Left me and my ma and four sisters what's littler'n me."

Followed by abject poverty, and the fetid, criminal environment of those places where the poorest of the poor were warehoused and left to their evil. The whole sorry story laid out in two sentences.

"There's a room in the stable where Ollie can sleep," Mollie said.

"A month's trial," Josh said releasing the horse to the care of his new stableboy. "See she's properly brushed and cooled down before you feed her, Ollie."

"Yes sir, Mr. Turner. I will."

The boy led the mare away. The carter's wagon was at last empty and rolling down Fourth Avenue. Agnes Hannity and Tess and whoever else was part of his newly established household had disappeared. He and Mollie were alone. "Shall we go in?" he asked.

Through his own front door. And just before he crossed the threshold Josh swept his wife into his arms and carried her into the house. "Not bad for a fellow with a peg," he said as he put her down.

She didn't say anything, but at least she was smiling.

Josh had not been inside the house for two weeks. It was a quite deliberate act of restraint. He'd wanted to be as surprised as he was right now, seeing the warm yellow gaslight bathing polished wood and softly draped damask, and occasionally reflecting a sharper gleam as it encountered marble and the hard sheen of satin. And everywhere that wondrous smell of newness and beginning.

They ate a cold supper of mutton pie off trays on their laps in a comfortable family sitting room on the second floor, where the more formal fabrics of the downstairs drawing and dining rooms gave way to flowered chintz and checked gingham. "Your study is through there," Mollie said, indicating a door behind them. "Just as you said you wanted."

"Excellent. Incidentally, I've set up an office for Hamish down at the foundry, but he'll come and work with you here two days a week."

She nodded agreement. Then, the trays cleared and the room quite empty of anyone but themselves, "Will you show me the bedrooms, Mollie."

He followed her up to the third floor. "Two here and two on the floor above," she said. "Proper bedrooms up there. Not servants' quarters. Agnes and Tess have rooms downstairs near the kitchen. Jane as well. She's agreed to live in now that we need a full-time maid."

"Downstairs," Josh repeated. "They don't mind that rather than the upper floor?"

"They haven't said if they do. And Mr. McKim says that's how it's being done in all the better New York houses these days."

"Makes sense," Josh said. Looking meanwhile at the bed big enough for two in the room in which they stood. It had four tall posts but no canopy or curtains.

"I'm told," Mollie said, "that with modern heating there is no need to enclose the beds in drapery. But if you prefer-"

"No. This is fine. It's a handsome room."

"The one next door is exactly like it," she said, speaking quietly and turning her back to him as she did so, while making a show of adjusting something on a dresser top.

He was, he realized, dismissed.

He could not, however, fall asleep in the room next door to his wife's. There was a chiming clock in the entry hall and he heard it strike ten and then eleven. After that he got up and prowled about the place, not bothering to strap his peg back on, managing with only his cane and feeling more excited with each hopping step. By G.o.d, it was a place to do a man proud. Never mind that Mollie had wriggled out from under the task he set her and gotten her aunt to do the selecting and buying and arranging. He loved the way the house looked, and tonight, eating supper with him, showing him around, Mollie had been closer to her old self than anytime in the past six months.

More than ample time for what Simon called her female parts to have healed.

He did not knock but let himself into her bedroom as quietly as he could, grateful for the thick rug that quieted the tapping of his cane. He could hear her breathing. Soft and steady and not startled. Either she was asleep, or awake and expecting him.

Josh made his way to the side of the bed and slipped out of his robe and his nightshirt and lifted the quilt and crawled in beside her and whispered, "Mollie, are you awake?"

"I am."

"I thought . . . It's a new beginning, love. I want us to be as we were."

She did not answer.

He reached out and stroked her cheek, leaning forward after a moment to kiss first her forehead and then her lips. "I thought I'd taught you to kiss me back," he said, a hint of teasing in his voice. "Have you forgotten so soon?"

She shivered. Not with that welcoming tremble of the virgin girl who despite her inexperience had delighted him by daring to come naked to her bridal bed. She was crying. He could taste the salt of her tears on her cheeks. "Mollie, please . . ." Then, because he knew he could not live with himself if he did not make the offer, "I'll go if you wish."

"You're my husband, Josh. It's what you wish that matters."

d.a.m.n her. She wouldn't even meet him halfway. He'd been celibate for months and he was not a monk; she should not expect him to act as such. "Look, I don't want-"

"Yes, you do. And you can. So you may as well go ahead."

He rolled on top of her without another word.

He felt rotten about it the next day and perhaps if things had worked out differently Josh might have tried again to effect a rapprochement with Mollie. As it was, events intervened.

A note was delivered the following morning. It was from Zac. Josh was at once summoned to Sunshine Hill.

He knew something was desperately wrong as soon as he approached the house; the gates at the foot of the long steep driveway were flung open. Zac met him at the door, his stricken face conveying the news before his words. "She didn't wake after the night. It was very peaceful. We can be thankful for that."

They buried Carolina from Trinity Church and interred her in the churchyard. Joshua was astounded at the numbers who showed up for the funeral. All the New York waterfront it seemed, everyone from an aged Greek named Socrates Paxos-the last survivor of the trio who had captained her clippers-to any number of gray-bearded stevedores who remembered her with affection. A goodly number of black people as well. Confirming the truth she had never been willing to discuss, how active she'd been in the dangerous work of the underground railroad in the days preceding the war. Old friends as well, Papa's old business partner, Dr. Klein and his family, and much to Josh's astonishment, a contingent of Catholic nuns, as well as a Chinese woman. His father, he noted, spent a good amount of time talking with one of the nuns, and embraced the Chinese woman with obvious and genuine affection.

"Your mother was a woman of many parts," Mollie murmured.

"Apparently so."

Eventually, the graveside ceremonies were done and a verger in a white ca.s.sock and a purple cape began ushering them past the many worn and moss-covered headstones of this oldest part of the burial ground. Most were original and undisturbed, though the church itself had been rebuilt three times since it was erected in 1697.

Josh caught a number of names as he walked by. Sally Turner Van der Vries for one, and Lisbetta Van der Vries Smythe for another. Lisbetta had been known to the town as Red Bess, he remembered, and one way or another deeply embroiled in the feud that originally tore the Devreys and the Turners apart. Death, however, was the great leveler. Not far from Red Bess was the grave of her brother, Willem Devrey. Born Van der Vries, he'd been the one who anglicized the name. And there was Christopher Turner, and beside him Samuel Devrey-not Zac's father, the ancestor he'd been named for-and Sam's brother Raif. And nearby a stone that was aslant and had a corner knocked off. Jennet Turner DaSilva it said, 17151783. Someone had left a single rose at its base, dead now but the browned petals not yet blown away. Josh bent over to examine the card beside the flower. Heroine of the Revolution R.I.P. He knew Jennet was his many times great-aunt, and according to family legend, in her time the most notorious woman in the city. It pleased him that someone in his own day had remembered the other part of who she'd been.

Everything pa.s.ses, dearest Joshua. Try and leave behind more good than bad.

He would have sworn it was his mother's voice whispering those words in his ear, and when at last the slow file of mourners went through the churchyard gate to Wall Street he felt as if he'd trodden through his own history and somehow emerged on the other side.

"I intend to carve my Thanksgiving turkey at my own table," he'd said. And so he did.

Mrs. Hannity produced a bird of uncommon wonder, golden brown and succulent, and a series of accompanying dishes-chestnut stuffing and roasted potatoes and onions in cream and b.u.t.tered squash and cranberry sauce-that showed no hint of having been made in a kitchen she'd not seen until forty-eight hours before. The family gathered and ate with gusto and exclaimed over the glories of the new house.

At the end of the meal both the cook and Tess arrived in the dining room, each bearing a pie in either hand. "Mince and apple and pumpkin, and custard," Mrs. Hannity announced. "Course custard ain't traditional for Thanksgiving, but it's Mr. Turner's favorite." There were three Messrs. Turner at the table, but no one was in doubt that Josh was the Mr. Turner Mrs. Hannity wanted to please.

Master of all he surveyed.

The thought actually crossed Josh's mind. He had the grace to, first, color, then chuckle to himself, though he didn't think anyone but Aunt Eileen noticed. Probably his mother would have as well, and smiled at him in that knowing way she'd had.