The Gilded Years (28 page)

Lottie put her hand over her mouth, and the two others followed her lead.

“Finally,” said Caroline. She tilted her head back, her red hair down around her shoulders, and tossed off the rest of her drink. “The reason I hate being a woman is that these dresses are oppressive.”

“So take it off—” Lottie interrupted before Anita threw a pillow at her. She put her hand back over her mouth.

“And,” said Caroline, raising her voice, “all I’ve ever wanted to do is become a lawyer, and what will I do after graduation? Probably marry and end up a housebound woman with thirteen children.”

“I didn’t know you were seriously interested in the law,” said Anita admiringly.

“Why would you be housebound?” asked Lottie, laughing. “Do you lose your legs in this grand vision of yours?”

“You could take the exams for law school,” said Belle. “Harvard and Yale don’t admit women—well, Yale did once accidentally and then the poor girl died before she could
ever practice—but there are schools that do. The University of Pennsylvania does.”

“How many have graduated from there?” asked Caroline, refilling her drink.

“I don’t know,” said Belle. “Four? Five? A few at least.”

“But why shouldn’t I be able to attend Harvard if I qualify?” said Caroline. “My brother graduated from Harvard Law and now he practices in Washington. He tells quite good stories about it. He once had to defend a man who cut off his mother’s head with an axe. He said he thought she was a tree.”

“More than five women have graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s law school,” said Anita.

“But not many,” said Caroline. “Two dozen at best.”

“So you will be lucky number twenty-five,” said Anita, who had never let difficult odds dictate her life. “And twenty-six and twenty-seven and twenty-eight and so on will have you to thank.”

“I just want to sing and write music,” said Belle, belting out a quick scale.

“And I just want to repose by a Japanese palace while someone feeds me little orange fish,” said Lottie. “That will be my profession, fish connoisseur and cultural surveyor.”

“Will you write to me from Japan, Lottie?” asked Belle, fashioning a never-before-seen cocktail and watching Lottie trace the outline of her woodprint with her eyes closed.

“Of course I will. I’ll write to all of you in golden ink, with a paintbrush.”

“Is it true they write only with brushes in Japan?” asked Belle, trying to focus on Lottie’s face.

“Perhaps we should telegraph Joseph Southworth and ask,” whispered Caroline.

“Oh, stop it, you ignoramuses,” said Lottie. “It isn’t his
fault that his mother was a child prostitute who wooed the senses out of elder Southpaw with her minuscule waist. Anyway, I think it’s quite charming that he’s Japanese.”

“You let him go rather quickly despite that opinion,” said Belle. “And found someone else very quickly.”

“Well, I didn’t want to, really. But what choice did I have? I suppose everything worked out as it should,” said Lottie, her back turned to Anita.

“Yes, you’ll eat fish in Japan with Porter, and I will mother my thirteen children,” said Caroline, raising her glass.

“No,” said Anita, her heart stinging at the idea of Lottie and Porter together for good, “you will be a lawyer.”

“Your father is a lawyer in Boston, isn’t he?” asked Caroline.

“That’s right,” said Anita. An image of her father cleaning classrooms and bathrooms, always the invisible employee, lingered in her mind.

“Is he with a large, prestigious firm in an ornate building filled with leather-bound books?” asked Belle.

“No. He’s privately employed,” said Anita. “In an ornate building filled with leather-bound books.”

“We, too, have an ornate building filled with leather-bound books,” said Lottie. “It’s called the library. Perhaps we should sneak in there now and write our names in all the volumes. Then we’ll never be forgotten. I’m truly afraid of being forgotten once I walk out of the Lodge for good.”

“Anita, you would make a fine lawyer but a terrible judge,” said Belle, looking down at her drink. “You forgive too easily.”

“Agreed,” said Caroline, looking at Lottie. “And Lottie, no one is ever going to forget you, so stop fretting. But they’ll remember all of you, the bad as well as the good.”

Lottie laughed and refilled her drink, raising it to her
friends. “Your own personal hurricane, ladies. That’s what I am.”

“I think one can still be judicious with a forgiving heart,” said Anita, who despite weeks of anger toward Lottie, had fallen into her old ways, their friendship flourishing again. “My father, Robert, he was considered for a judgeship. An old Harvard friend recommended him, but he decided against it.”

“Harvard?” said Lottie, lowering her drink to her lips. “If your father went to Harvard, why did your clever brother run off to radical Cornell?”

“I’m not sure,” said Anita, too quickly. “If I remember correctly, he didn’t pass the Harvard entrance exam.”

“Smart as he is?” said Lottie, doubtfully. “That can’t be true.”

“Some people just want time away from home,” said Anita. “For a few years.”

“But Ithaca over Cambridge? No one would ever make that choice,” said Lottie.

“My father never even attended college,” said Belle, shrugging. “I think it’s wonderful that your family is so cerebral, Anita. You’ll make a very good professor. And yours too, Lottie.” Belle stood up and picked one of Lottie’s hats out of her closet.

“Enough of this intellectual talk!” said Lottie, watching her. “Let’s do something dangerous. Who is brave enough to follow me to the fifth floor and onto the roof?”

“The roof?” said Belle. “How do you do that? Kendrick will surely catch us. And the maids are on the fifth floor.”

“Oh, no,” said Anita, who had been to the highest points of the roof with Lottie many times before. “It’s very possible. And we won’t disturb a soul.”

“It’s simple, really,” said Lottie. “We just enter the empty maid’s
room, the one who was caught stealing a watch and was banned from campus and jailed, open her window, and fling ourselves out. There is a small chance that we will fall to our sudden deaths, but it is very small.”

“Caroline, do you want to die tonight?” asked Belle.

“Absolutely not,” said Caroline, her hair wildly protesting as she shook her head.

“Fine, you two,” said Lottie. “You can watch us and imagine what a daring life might feel like.”

“I’ll take boring over deceased. Miss Caroline Hyde Hardin, found in pancake formation on the manicured grounds of Vassar College. I don’t think so,” said Caroline.

The four girls stepped quietly out of the room, padded upstairs to the fifth floor, and tiptoed into the empty maid’s room.

“Far better to be caught by a maid than the lady principal,” said Lottie. “We can always pay them off.”

“Anita, you go first,” said Lottie.

Belle and Caroline stared with horror as Anita opened the latch on the window, pushed both panes open, and deftly slid herself out. She shifted her backside out first, then swung her legs around, inching herself up the inclined roof—which fell straight down five stories—until she was close to the building’s flat-topped east wing. Then she rose to her bare feet and curtsied.

“Anita! Don’t! You’ll fall!” cried Caroline in panic. Anita took a few graceful steps that brought her up to the flat walkway. She did a little jump up, drawing a scream from Belle.

“Sound the alarm, why don’t you?” said Lottie before positioning herself on the window frame. “Or maybe just invite old Kendrick for tea.” Lottie followed Anita’s exact routine, and soon they were both standing on the roof of
the long east wing, looking at their friends at the far-off open window.

“They didn’t really believe us,” said Lottie, resting her weight against Anita’s shoulder. “That we come out on the roof at night.”

“I know,” said Anita. “Maybe if you had said you did it alone they would have believed you. But it’s the idea that the two of us dare to do it, that they didn’t believe. It was me.” She would never have dared put a toe on the roof before Lottie persuaded her to, but that was Lottie’s way, opening the doors to a brilliant world, then closing them whenever she wanted to. Anita had decided she would refuse to have the doors closed on her for good.

“They don’t understand our friendship,” said Lottie, watching Anita walk confidently along the roof, stopping to take in the bright stars hovering above the dark earth. “I know what everyone says about me—that I love someone and then tire of them. That I drop them and leave them to rot after a few months. But you have never bored me.” She looked at Anita and leaned on the railing next to her.

“You have never bored me, either,” said Anita. “Quite the opposite. You have your flaws, Lottie, let’s not pretend you don’t. But so do I. And you’re the most interesting person I know. And I’m sure the most interesting I will ever know.”

“Has this been your favorite year at school?” asked Lottie. “Despite everything that has happened in the past few months. Despite my mistakes, my flaws as you say. Has it been?”

“Of course it has been,” said Anita. “You know that.”

“Good,” said Lottie. “Because I love you. I always will.” She paused for a moment before grabbing Anita’s hand and pulling her farther along the roof. “Let’s run to the other side and really terrify them.”

They raced down the horizontal footpath, built for workers who needed to access the tower roofs, and turned to see their friends white with terror. Belle was jumping up and down with her hands on her mouth to keep herself from screaming.

“Come,” said Anita, “let’s go back. I think Belle is going to faint.”

“But first, just look out at the gatehouse, at Strong and Raymond,” said Lottie, pointing to the new dark red-brick dormitory identical to Strong Hall. “Look to the west. You can see the observatory and the alumnae gymnasium. And the outline of the lake if you really squint.” She put her head on Anita’s shoulder. “I never want to leave this beautiful place. I know there are great things waiting for us, but if it were up to me, this would be forever.”

“Me, too,” said Anita. “Vassar for the rest of our days.”

Lottie smiled as she blinked away tears.

“It will be, in a way,” said Anita, sensing Lottie’s distress. “I promise.” But in that moment, June felt very close. Anita seized Lottie’s hand again, and together they ran back across the roof, praying not to be spotted by the tower watchman. The two hopped back through the rounded wooden window frame, silently, one after the other.

“I told you, Anita,” said Belle the next afternoon. Both girls’ heads were pounding after the night’s revels, and she and Anita were struggling through their Latin assignment. “You would make a most unsatisfactory judge. You’ve forgiven Lottie already, and you will every time.”

Anita smiled at Belle, and looked back down at her translation. Belle was right. Anita had forgiven Lottie without reservation when they had been together for those few minutes high above the campus, just the two of them in their own private world.

I
f Anita’s anger toward Lottie had nearly vanished, as she admitted to Belle, her resolve was cemented by a letter she received from her old friend Bessie Baker Lewis a week into April.

The letter was delivered to Anita by one of the maids. Just one letter, placed directly in her hand in the hallway, which was not school protocol.

“I’m afraid some of the mail has been going into the wrong hands, miss,” said the maid, curtsying. She hailed from the depths of the Catskill Mountains and was only one year into her employment. “This one wasn’t in the right stack. I wanted to give it to you myself.” Anita thanked her and walked up the grassy slope to the farm, letting the fragrant spring air warm her face. She paused for a moment on Sunset Hill, between the blooming crab apple trees and daffodils, looking down at the school she felt increasingly terrified to leave. She tore open the letter, looking at the familiar postmark from Ithaca and the handwriting of their go-between, and was shocked to see it was from Bessie Baker. Frederick must have helped her by sending it via their special route, Anita thought, her hand unsteady at the sight of the writing.

She read it with her back against a tree, trying not to cry at the feeling of Bessie’s familiar, lilac-colored paper in her hands.

My dear Anita,

I have been worried about you, so worried in fact that I am writing to you for the first time in your four years of being away. I hope this letter makes its way directly into your hands and does not compromise you in any way. Frederick told me not to be anxious, that with his help it would, but I’m still fretting over it.

I imagine you are a mix of relieved and angry to see my handwriting, but I must tell you the reason that I took the risk of writing. William and I had dinner with Frederick in Cambridge, and he confided in me about your relationship with Porter Hamilton. Anita, I don’t understand it.

It was always agreed that after Vassar you would return home and that you would be you again. If you entertain a flirtation with a man like Porter Hamilton, you will have to hide everything about your past—your parents, Frederick, Elizabeth, and Robert. Me. You could never see me again, unless I passed for white when we were together. Now that I am the wife of William Henry Lewis, that is impossible. It was different when I was younger and could go between the black and white worlds almost unsuspectingly, but now, I could not. What is more, I have no desire to. Do you? Do you really want to marry someone white just for the sake of opportunity? Frederick says it is for love. That you fell in love with him. And if he believes that, then I know it to be true, because you’ve always been terrible at hiding such things. I remember at Northfield after an assembly at Mount Hermon, when one young man
struck your fancy. You denied it because of his race, but it was written like a verse upon your face.

Please do not be upset with me for writing such a candid letter. I sat upon it for weeks before mailing it, knowing what could happen to you if someone else read it. I hope that you don’t feel I’ve penned it out of disrespect.