Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland Read Free Book Online Page B

and doing hand gestures. In summer, feeling daring and giddy, we lifted our skirts and stepped in. The sensuality of the cool water moving against our bare legs thrilled us. We liked best those places where the water rippled and light danced on the surface. In quiet moments we shared our curiosity about men and wondered whether we would be housewives like our mothers when we grew up, or something daring, modern, and mysterious—women of the professions.
    Alice answered my knock in her terry-cloth robe and slippers as she was towel-drying her hair.
    “Clara!” She wrapped me in her arms and pulled me inside. “I’ve been wanting to get over to Brooklyn to see you.”
    “That’s good of you, but I’m not there anymore. I live just south of Gramercy Park now.”
    I sank into the cushions of her wicker armchair. The familiar worn pink chenille bedspread, the potbellied oil lamp with parchment shade on the drop-leaf table that served for writing, eating, and drawing, and the woven rag rug like mine that we’d bought at a women’s craft center in Cleveland made me feel instant warmth, instant comfort.
    “I’ve gone back to work for Tiffany.”
    “Oh?”
    “Francis left me no money.”
    Her jaw dropped open.
    “Well, just enough to cover the burial and two months of living expenses. The rest, a substantial amount, went to a daughter I hadn’t known about. Apparently there was an earlier woman.”
    “No! I can’t believe it.”
    I hadn’t been able to either. Shocked, I had grabbed the will out of the attorney’s hands, and the edge of the paper, sharp as the realization of my worth in his eyes, had cut my skin—as if the contents of the will hadn’t cut enough.
    “The alleged daughter was one Sister Maria Theresa, so the inheritance went to a convent. And I, the stepdaughter of a Protestant minister,was out on the street.” The sarcasm gave me a moment’s release. I’d had no one I could tell it to.
    Alice slammed down her hairbrush onto the bare table. “That’s horrible. You’ve been wronged. I feel awful for you.”
    “Don’t feel too sorry for me, Alice. I wouldn’t want to stay married one more day to a man so deceptive.”
    “Aren’t you the least bit angry?”
    “In my low moments, of course I am.”
    She thrust forward her chin. “Could you sue?”
    “Who? The convent? The Holy Roman Church? And with what? When I moved out of the boardinghouse in Brooklyn I left all of his things for the daughter to collect, even his spare change. Maybe some poor, plain soul in black habit could use his mustache cup. What tickled me most was to imagine what use the nuns would have for his copy of Darwin.”
    Alice slapped her hand over her mouth. “Locked it up, I should guess, instead of burning it, so the Mother Superior could feed her curiosity on it between Compline and Matins. And when she was occupied during Mass, some wayward sister would be madly trying to filch the key.”
    I let out a smirky kind of chuckle.
    “I’m sorry, Clara. I shouldn’t make a joke of it. Do you have any idea why he did that?”
    “Yes, I do. His incapacity in bed. He didn’t look it, but he was sixty-two.”
    “Twice your age. I didn’t realize.”
    “He, we, tried and tried, but he couldn’t produce anything harder than a stern look. He ate oysters, hated the rubbery slipperiness of them but still downed them one after another with eyes squeezed shut like stitched wounds. He offered suggestions, whispered so the boardinghouse walls wouldn’t hear. Time after time in bed, after trying everything we knew, I saw hope go out of his eyes, and they filled with accusation.”
    Alice let out a low, wordless murmur. I picked up her hairbrush, lifted her damp hair, and began to brush.
    “He was unwilling to talk about it, though I could tell it was on hismind as we went walking, or as he methodically washed his face, came to bed, and then absently went back to the bathroom to wash it again.”
    Sentences came out