Death of an American Beauty Read online

  Here, you could see the person clearly: a woman sitting, rather bored, her head leaning on her hand. Her face was all angles, slashing cuts of black, orange, gray, and yellow. I wasn’t sure I liked it; it felt almost cruel to take a face apart like this. But it was also mesmerizing. Nearby a matronly woman declared that if her child ever made art like this, she would smack it.

  We wandered through to another room, where Mr. Behan admired a painting of boxers—all muscle and epic struggle—and we both smiled in recognition of a painting of three young women drying their hair on the roof of a city building.

  Then I heard a high, excited voice call my name. I turned to see Louise’s young sister-in-law Emily Tyler weaving her way through the crowd, catching the eye of several gentlemen. This was not surprising; she was tall and lively, with the reddish-brown hair of the Tylers and mischievous brown eyes all her own. What was surprising was her presence in the city. She was supposed to be at Vassar College.

  As she reached us, she said, “Is Louise here, or are you on your own?”

  “On my own,” I informed her. “It’s my holiday.”

  “Me as well,” said Emily happily. “Not officially, but yesterday, I just decided that if I had to read or write one more word, my head would burst. So—here I am.”

  Notebook at the ready, Behan inquired, “And what do you make of the exhibition, Miss Tyler?”

  “Well, there are an awful lot of naked people,” she said, dimpling.

  “Miss Prescott?”

  “I like it,” I announced. “It’s a new way to see things.”

  Behan took this down; I knew how he’d write it. My views would be given due respect. But Emily would have the last word.

  “Do you cover the arts, Mr. Behan?” Emily asked.

  “Just the life of the city, Miss Tyler. Art, crime, the human drama…”

  “Oh, well, you should talk to Jane. Her uncle runs a home for prostitutes on the East Side. That’s just full of human drama.”

  Her voice had risen on the word “prostitutes,” and Michael Behan’s brow quirked. He might write about tawdry subjects, but he was conservative in some things, and young women shouting about prostitutes was apparently one of them. Making his excuses, he left me to manage a wayward college girl avid for experience.

  I asked, “Does your mother know you’re here, Miss Tyler?”

  “She does not,” said Emily, gazing at the black-and-white nude. “And don’t you tell her. Not a word to William or Louise either.”

  I was about to say she had one week to enjoy my discretion when we heard “Emily Tyler!” and turned to see Mrs. Dolly Rutherford. She embraced Emily in the manner of an old family friend, even though they’d only met once or twice before.

  “Have they released you from that purgatory in Poughkeepsie?”

  Like most socially ambitious women, Mrs. Rutherford had an excellent memory. Small and blond, she gave the impression of a woman who cannot imagine being unable to charm anyone into anything. She had a beautiful rose complexion and a ready smile. But the ringed fingers that set themselves on Emily’s arms were white at the knuckles, even as she kept a sharp lookout for anyone more important.

  I was certainly not that person. Nor was I a great fan of Mrs. Rutherford’s, so I stepped tactfully away and examined the next painting, three undressed women, painted by someone named Seurat. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, so I listened in as a bearded gentleman lectured a pink-cheeked young man, saying, “See the tiny dots of color? It’s called Divisionism. You don’t mix the paints into one muddy slosh, you let each color stand separate and of itself. But next to it, you put a contrasting color just as bold, and the two side by side give so much more light and life.”

  I was thinking that was rather marvelous when I heard Dolly Rutherford reproving Emily for speaking with a reporter.

  “Oh,” said Emily, with mock regret, “but he was a very handsome reporter. And anyway, now he’s run off. I don’t think he cared for what he was seeing. Much preferred the earlier pieces.” She twinkled at me. Had she not been William Tyler’s sister, I would have thrown a glove at her.

  Dolly Rutherford adroitly moved the topic back to a point of interest: herself. “Mr. Rutherford can’t abide this sort of thing either. I said, George, this is the most important art event of the year, you must see it. But the poor dear took one look, said he felt ill, and went back to his office.”

  “He’s announcing the next Miss Rutherford’s soon, isn’t he?” said Emily, referring to the annual contest in which young ladies vied to be the face of Rutherford’s department store. “I’m wild with curiosity as to who it will be.”

  Dolly Rutherford smiled briefly. “Yes, that will be announced at the conclusion of my musicale, ‘Stirring Scenes of the Emancipation.’ Your dear sister-in-law has deigned to take part, and I have a feeling she will amaze us all!”

  Well aware of Louise’s shyness, Emily giggled. Mrs. Rutherford then suggested Emily join her at Rutherford’s celebrated tearoom, the Orientale; the store was only a short distance, and they could take the car. In the tradition of students since time immemorial, Emily sensed a free meal and accepted on the spot. To me, she gave a wave of the fingers, which she then drew across her lips, urging silence. And I was free to wander the exhibition on my own.

  Which I did for a very enjoyable hour. But I was getting tired, my head overfull of images, when I stopped in front of a black-and-white etching. It was a city scene, a group of buildings at night. In one window, a woman, not quite dressed, put her wash on the clothesline to dry. There was a man behind her; her husband, presumably, but she felt vulnerable, unaware of being watched. In another window, a woman stood in just her underdrawers, arms above her head as she pulled her hair into a knot. She seemed to be enjoying her nakedness, taking in the air on a sweltering summer night. But a shadowy figure on a nearby roof was gazing at her. This vision of the city was both jarringly realistic and something out of a storybook, and it unnerved me.

  “That’s grisly,” said Michael Behan behind me.

  I wheeled around. “You deserted me!”

  “I certainly did. What is it they’re teaching at ladies’ colleges these days?”

  “Oh, that’s just Emily Tyler. She likes to be shocking.”

  “She succeeds.”

  He said I had the look of a woman in need of a cup of tea, and I said I was exactly that. The day had started as exhilarating, but now I felt exhausted. I simply could not look at another thing.

  I said as much to Michael Behan as he set two mugs of tea and a plate of seed cake on the café table. I expected him to tease me, but he said, “I don’t much care for it. Cutting up the face, shoving it this way and that. As if it’s a … thing. Not human. Hits you in strange ways. I’ll be happy to be done with this assignment, to tell you the truth.”

  As he cut the cake in two with a fork, he added, “Although it does get me home in time for dinner.”

  In the past, Mr. Behan had worked long hours; this, I sensed, had caused domestic quarrels. “How is Mrs. Behan?” I asked.

  “She is very well, thank you. Actually, I do thank you, as it’s partly down to you.”

  “Me?”

  He nodded. “You remember telling me that Mrs. Behan’s mood might improve if I hired a day girl?”

  “And you did?”

  “Not exactly. But her father died”—I was about to offer condolences, but a quick shake of the head told me Mr. Behan did not mourn his father-in-law—“which left our fortunes somewhat improved. Also, my mother-in-law in permanent residence. Which has its … charms. But it’s put us in mind of family, so I’m working a bit less and home a bit more often.” He sipped his tea. “Those who aspire to posterity must work to achieve it, or some such pablum.”

  He was shy as he said it, and I understood that future Behans were now hoped for. Knowing he liked children, I said sincerely, “I wish you great success.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  For a
moment we smiled at each other, and I thought how nice it was to be friends with a gentleman. Michael Behan would have fat, handsome babies, and I would knit something for them. A hat.

  “Where is it you’re off to after this? Is all this”—he waved a finger at my new jacket—“for your uncle? Or has that milkman finally found his nerve?” Behan liked to spin yarns about various suitors who were yearning to approach but had yet to find the courage.

  “We have a new milkman now, and I never see him. Nor the policeman nor the butcher, baker, or candlestick maker. But I am off to the refuge.”

  Apparently, Emily’s impulse to shock had rubbed off, because I added, “We’re having a dance tonight.”

  “A dance.”

  “Yes, it’s an annual event. The Southern Baptist Ladies’ Cotillion.” I sipped my tea. “Or, as some of the women prefer to call it, the Whores’ Ball.”

  Behan leaned back in his chair. “Now, this I might have to see. How does one get invited to this soiree?”

  “You don’t, Mr. Behan. No men are allowed.”

  The cups were empty, and only crumbs were left of the cake. As we got up to leave, he said, “You’ll be doing their hair, I suppose.”

  “Oh, I’ll be dancing, Mr. Behan.”

  “Will you?”

  “I happen to dance very well.”

  “Do you?”

  “I do.”

  We collected our coats and made our way outside. After the overheated air of the crowded Armory, the chill and damp were refreshing. As we walked out of the tunneled exit, I decided this was a very satisfactory start to my vacation.

  By now the crowds were much larger, and for a moment we were trapped at the gates, buffeted by people eager to get inside. There was a screech of tires and a wet thud. Then someone screamed. My immediate thought was that a person had been struck by a car, a driver making a sudden dash around the traffic and running into someone. But then I saw people gathering by the wall of the Armory, heard cries of “Revolting!” “Who would do such a thing?” The sound of retching.

  Drawn by instinct, Behan had pushed his way through the crowd and was trying to get a look over hats and shoulders. I saw his neck go rigid, and he stepped back.

  “What is it?” I asked, looking even as I heard him say, “Don’t.”

  A cat—the tail and stiff paws told me that right away. The staring eyes, bulging entrails. The poor head, hanging by a sinew, spoke of deliberate cruelty. And the red, spreading in the gray snow, that wide gaping slash in the belly … I swallowed, tasted bitter tea and bile.

  “I hope that’s not the Herald critic’s review,” said Michael Behan, guiding me away. “Come on, let’s find you a cab.”

  2

  The Southern Baptist Ladies’ Cotillion was the creation of Otelia Brooks. Her blood could still be seen on the carpet in the entry hall of the refuge if one looked hard enough. It had been cleaned many times—often by Miss Brooks, who was frustrated with herself for losing consciousness when she arrived. That she had made it to the refuge at all was providential. But she was a woman who demanded the miraculous of herself. Only such a woman would have attempted to get my uncle to host a dance at the refuge—and succeeded. The cotillion was the most festive day in the Gorman Refuge calendar, and I smiled in anticipation as I walked the last blocks to the place I had once more or less called home. But my mood changed abruptly as I turned onto Third Street.

  They were back.

  The refuge had once been a brothel, but in the 1890s the owner, Mrs. Gorman, turned it over to my uncle to start a place where women could learn skills that would result in less professional peril. Over the years, there had been some in the neighborhood who objected to a home for former prostitutes in their midst. But beyond the occasional drunken serenade and self-exposure from men on their way home, the refuge had been left alone.

  Until recently. In 1909, a reporter had published an article called “The Daughters of the Poor,” which argued that prostitution was no longer a business of women but of men who saw profit in selling them. Many took up the cause with moral fervor: committees were formed, investigations launched. No vast network of villains was revealed, only venereal disease and a lot of poor women who found prostitution paid better than other work.

  Still, the danger of losing a generation of men to syphilis gave rise to organizations such as the American Vigilance Association and the American Purity Alliance—as well as the zeal of Clementine Pickett. Mrs. Pickett had been obliged to move to the Lower East Side a year ago, following a loss of income with the death of her husband. Already prickly over that misfortune, she had been dismayed to discover that she now lived “mere blocks from a bawdy house.” Not only her home but the morals of her son, Orville, were in jeopardy. My uncle and his supporters had met with the lady several times in an effort to persuade her that their mission and hers were the same: fewer women engaged in the business of prostitution. But the widow Pickett was of the opinion that any house occupied by women who had once sold themselves was a brothel and that the man living with such women was a procurer. She wanted them out of the neighborhood.

  To that end, she had organized several of her friends and associates to stand in front of the refuge and harass anyone who went in and out. They prayed loudly, sang hymns, and bellowed shame at any woman who crossed the threshold. Mostly, they were a nuisance. But in recent weeks, they had gone beyond prayer and singing. One or two of Orville’s friends had gotten close enough to the women to offer personal insults. Dog feces were left on the steps. Two weeks ago, a rock had come crashing through the second-story window. My uncle had called the police, and since then it had been quiet. But it was an uneasy truce. And the dance tonight might be enough to break it.

  At first I was relieved to see that Orville, not his mother, was on duty this evening. Mrs. Pickett was a sharp-tongued interrupter; I found her too enraging for politeness. At thirty and nearly six feet, Orville Pickett was a slab of a man, overgrown but soft and immature. The reddish hair on his egg-shaped head was thinning, and his cheeks were flushed. Away from his mother, he seemed to have no real meanness to him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw me and raised his hand ever so slightly in greeting. I nodded back, hoping that our tentative friendliness might facilitate peace.

  Peace was not the goal of the Duchess of Damnation, however, who stood across the street with her ladies in waiting. For the Duchess, it was surrender and withdrawal from the field of battle or nothing. Known at one time as Jennie Bullotte, the Duchess was one of the most notorious madams on the Lower East Side. Fiercely protective of the honor and welfare of her trade, she took offense at the Lord’s judgment delivered by people “who ain’t got no more pull with Him than I do.” So when the Purity Brigade took their position, she showed up with her girls to respond. Not above five feet, with a tower of black hair trimmed in silk butterflies, she was a skilled saleswoman who knew that parading her ladies along the block opposite Mrs. Pickett’s brigade made a pretty—and provocative—contrast. Through the drone of hymns and prayers, the Duchess and her ladies would chant things such as “On our backs or at the tills / working women pay the bills!” When Mrs. Pickett read from the Bible, the Duchess read from her own price list for a wide array of services. In one tour de force, they had bent over as one to reveal a splendid lineup of scarlet underdrawers.

  As for Mrs. Pickett’s group, we seemed to have only the stalwarts this evening, huddled together against sin and chill winds: Orville, Mrs. Hilquit, and Miss Cobb, who read from Deuteronomy in a quavering voice.

  And then I saw Bill Danvers.

  The women drawn to Mrs. Pickett’s cause were devout, fearful, or bored to varying degrees. Most of the men were similar. I suspected some were paid. But Bill Danvers was different. A rangy man with a chicken neck, he wore his dark hair slicked close to his scalp. His teeth were crooked, the canines pointed. His ill-fitting “respectable” clothes hinted at the hand-me-downs of redemption; his cheeks were newly shaved, and his mustache t
rimmed of all vanity. But I suspected his piety went no deeper than his shirt and was just as easily shrugged off. He had already had a fractious encounter with the Duchess, and his eyes glittered at any young woman that passed. I felt fairly sure it was he who had thrown the rock and left the mess on the steps, and whenever he was around, the group was agitated, bolder. As I approached, I saw his tongue flick across his lips. And knew he had wanted me to see it.

  I did not want Bill Danvers around during the cotillion.

  “Good evening, Mr. Pickett. You shouldn’t read in this poor light, Miss Cobb, it’s bad for the eyes.”

  She glared. “‘And if thy right eye offend thee—’”

  “I’ll be sure to pluck it out, thank you. Mr. Pickett, may I speak with you?”

  Orville glanced uncertainly at the group. But as I had suspected it might, the chance to talk to a girl overrode his anxieties, and he followed me a little way from the refuge.

  “Mr. Pickett, do you really think women of Miss Cobb’s and Mrs. Hilquit’s age should be out in the cold like this?”

  “God doesn’t care about the cold, Miss Prescott.”

  Seeing I couldn’t talk him into a temporary cease-fire on account of the weather, I asked, “Who will be here tonight?”

  “Tonight? Me, Mrs. Bailey, Mr. Danvers…”

  As he listed the names, I made a hasty decision. A lie was in order.

  “It’s just that it’s my birthday, Mr. Pickett.”

  “Oh.” He blinked. “Happy birthday.”

  “Thank you. We’re having a party at the refuge. There will be some music and dancing. Innocent, of course. There will be no men present.”

  “Your uncle will be.”

  “No, he won’t. He has business elsewhere this evening, and he doesn’t care for dancing. It will just be me and the other ladies. But it’s the sort of thing a less honorable mind might misinterpret, and I wouldn’t want any trouble. I know Mr. Danvers is a friend of yours, but he hasn’t got your … self-discipline.”