After the Suffragette's Suicide Page 4

  “She said that?”

  “Yes. She said you tried to invite some yourself.”

  Bessie bit her lip harder. “Only my friends from the club.”

  “Where are your suffragist friends anyway? Please point them out. I’ve been dying to meet them. Did Mother approve?”

  Bessie shook her head, “no,” but added a smile. “Mother’s right, though. I do love surprise guests. A couple of them might sneak in later. I told them they should. It will liven things up a bit, don’t you think?”

  “If by liven things up, you mean father’s temper. He’ll be mad as hops,” her sister replied, and they both laughed.

  Bessie talked to me in her head. “Telling Pleasant she could bring her children was my mother’s way of punishing me for trying to invite my friends.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  A woman shrieked on the dance floor, and Bessie’s attention went straight to Pleasant’s older two kids, who were now playing what looked like a shoving game of tag around the dancers.

  Pleasant motioned to them. “I really do hope you don’t mind I brought the children. Mother said you wouldn’t, but I wasn’t sure.”

  “Mind? I wouldn’t have it any other way. Your children are the sweetest ever. Just little bundles of life.” The boy on her grandmother’s lap picked his nose.

  We kissed Pleasant’s cheek then left.

  “You couldn’t tell your sister the truth?” I asked as soon as we’d moved on.

  “She knew the truth. Who brings children to an adult party? She did it to show off. To show everyone there that she was married and I was not. To show that she had children…” She stopped herself. “It was silly, really. But I did care about that kind of stuff at the time.”

  I completely understood. The same thing went on with my family. I was 31 and there wasn’t a conversation at my mother’s house that didn’t include questions about when I was going to marry again, because really, didn’t I want children?

  Bessie’s voice trailed off a little as she spoke to me, remembering things. “And poor Pleasant didn’t really have a choice but to bring her children. She didn’t have a nanny. My father was quite controlling. And he told her, in no uncertain terms, that if she married Troy, he was limiting her funds. Girls of a certain status shouldn’t marry service men.”

  I was taking all sorts of mental notes. Bessie’s father decided a lot for his adult children. And her mother had unusual punishments.

  She went on. “There’s Troy senior, her awful husband, right now,” she said, looking toward the bar where a tall thin man in military dark bell bottoms and a neckerchief was ordering a drink. “I don’t really know him even though they’ve been married eight years now. He’s Navy. Gone most the time, which I’ve heard is probably for the best.”

  Troy raised his glass to the bartender who nodded politely. His seven-year-old son ran by him, almost making him drop his glass and Troy yanked him hard by the back of the boy’s sailor outfit, sending him to the floor, ending the children’s shoving game. “Pleasant!” he yelled, looking all around. “Where is that woman?”

  Pleasant rushed over, toddler kicking at her side. “Yes, dear.”

  “Take care of your children.” He directed his bloodshot eyes to Pleasant’s grandparents, who were heading out the door with their coats in hand. Her grandmother looked down, suddenly very interested in the buttons on her dress seam.

  “He’d been trying to get my grandparents to pay for a nanny for ages,” Bessie explained to me. “It’s a bit of a family joke that he lets his children run wild at family functions on purpose to try to persuade them.”

  Pleasant scowled at her older son, his nose bleeding from the fall. Someone handed her a cloth napkin and she dabbed at the blood while holding tightly to her toddler.

  Bessie headed out the back of the party toward the other side of the house.

  “You didn’t want to help your sister?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t know how.” She laughed. “I’m not much with children. I’m sure one of the housekeepers helped, although they avoided her children as much as I did.”

  At the back of the room, past the area that now housed the front counter of the bed and breakfast, were a set of doors that seemed like they led to a back porch.

  “The garden room,” she said as she clung to the wall, approaching it slowly. “This is where my father’s outcast friends always spent their time at a party, probably so they wouldn’t have to worry about trivial things like manners.”

  We stayed in the shadows as we peeked into the room, which was as large as my mother’s backyard in Indianapolis. It was surrounded by windows on all sides, the light of the lamps reflecting off of them, giving each person sitting around the nearby patio table a sinister glow. There were about ten of them, equally split between men and women.

  The room itself was filled with wrought iron patio furniture and extra large art.

  “I’m sure you’ll recognize one,” she said to me at the same moment I spotted him. A thick man who resembled Teddy Roosevelt with his vest and round glasses. Henry Bowman. He was taking off a clunky pair of gloves that looked just like the one in the display case.

  Chapter 6

  Driving Forces

  “And that’s all there is to driving, or that’s what they told me at the dealership,” he said, tossing his gloves onto the table, almost knocking over a couple of glasses. “Who wants to go for a spin?”

  “Not now, Henry,” the thick blonde woman next to him said. I knew from the photos around Gate House, she was Marjorie Bowman, Jackson’s great grandmother. It was funny how I thought she looked grandmotherly and sweet in her photos. In person, she seemed more like a prison guard.

  Bessilyn whispered to me in her head, even though there was zero chance anyone could hear her. “You couldn’t go to a party without people bragging about their cars anymore. The newer and more expensive, the more important you were.”

  “Not much has changed,” I said.

  The group of guests sitting at the informal table in front of us were an older group, most in their 40s and 50s, who all seemed too drunk to know they were laughing and toasting to nothing, which was probably why they hadn’t noticed Bessie standing at the door. I checked their faces, but didn’t see anyone who looked like Eliza.

  “This party. It’s just unseemly, that’s all,” one woman said, her wine glass spilling as she leaned over. “If you ask me, the Hinds indulge their 35-year-old child far too much.”

  The table roared with laughter. Several people toasted.

  “I have to admit, she does look good for her age. There is something to be said for the figure of a childless woman,” Henry added, adjusting his Theodore-Roosevelt-looking spectacles. He outlined the shape of an hourglass in the air with his fingertips then turned to the men at the table for confirmation. They all looked down at their cufflinks.

  Marjorie dutifully stepped in. “That’s only when comparing her to her sister tonight, who’s apparently given up on fashion anymore. Did you see Pleasant’s awful frock?”

  The other ladies laughed knowingly.

  “Motherhood changes women, and not for the better,” Henry said. He turned to his wife. “Present company excluded…” No one said a thing, so Henry continued, like he was trying to correct his gaffe. “And perhaps you all are right. A woman of Bessilyn’s age should probably prefer a ladies garden party to celebrate her birthday. Something more suitable for her situation.”

  “A party of equally aging spinsters? Henry, that might be hard to come by.” Marjorie said, touching his arm. The table burst out with laughter again.

  Bessie’s voice was calm for a woman hearing such insults about herself. “I’d introduce you to Jackson’s great grandparents, but this is when I left them that night. You can imagine why.”

  “But,” I said, hesitating to go anywhere. “Eliza’s not here. You said she was.”

  “Yes, she is. Look in the shadows. It was an odd arrangement the Bowmans had with their nanny, or house nurse. I never knew what she was. She didn’t sit with them. They barely acknowledged each other.”

  Henry pulled a deck of cards out of his jacket pocket and shuffled them. “I learned this trick in Australia on one of my business trips.”

  “He’s such a good businessman,” Marjorie said, looking up at her husband with doting eyes.

  On his other side, in a chair like she was banished to the darkness of the corner, sat a woman who looked just like me. She had a single lamp next to her on a small table, but even in the dimness of the light I could tell for certain it was her, same blondish brown curls, same eyes. She didn’t look up or engage with the rest of the table. She appeared to be knitting and mumbling to herself.

  “What did you say your business was, Henry?” one of the men asked.

  “I didn’t. Now, pick a card,” he announced to the table, spreading the deck out face down along his fingertips. A woman with long gloves indulged him.

  “I thought there’d be more yams than this,” Henry chuckled, his tight vest practically bursting at the seams as he moved the cards around to shuffle them. “I heard this aging spinster’s party was built on them.”

  We turned and left, back down the hall to the main part of the house, passing a beautiful bust of George Washington on the way by and some old paintings of Bessie’s relatives that seemed to watch your every move. The orchestra had picked up to a lively song I actually recognized. “Give My Regards to Broadway.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked Bessie.

  “Yes. I was used to being the joke at this point,” she half chuckled. “I chose not to marry, so I am naturally labeled a spinster. It’s disturbing how easily it flows off the tongue, though, as if labeling a ‘cat’ a ‘cat.’ Walter was five years my senior, a man already forty, but he was still considered a young, eligible bachelor ripe for family. No one was surprised when he broke up with the spinster woman too old to give him the life he deserved. No one but me, I suppose.”

  She looked down as she walked back out to the party. “Chin up. Let’s go meet my parents. I should warn you, though.” She paused at a beautifully adorned table trimmed in golden flowers. “Let’s just say, it’s been a while since they’ve been happy with me. I should also tell you, I suspect them in my… untimely demise.”

  We approached what could only have been the most prominent table at the party with a view that was front and center of the dance floor and the orchestra. Men in tailored suits with pocket squares and vests; women in feathered hats with diamonds and pearls, hair all in neatly swept up-dos. Bessie kissed an older couple each on the cheek.

  “My parents,” she told me.

  Her mother looked much younger than her father, a thin woman with dark hair and blue eyes. Her father was bald with a gray mustache.

  “Are you enjoying the party you requested?” her father asked.

  “Stop, James,” her mother quipped. “Don’t listen to him,” she explained to the rest of the table. “I insisted on the party. Bessie didn’t even want anything so extravagant. She’s the family humanitarian, mind you. But, I insisted. If we’re going to have a party, we should do it right. Bring up the spirits around here.”

  Everyone nodded. They all knew what spirits needed lifting, Bessie’s engagement ending and all.

  “Don’t just stand there, my dear,” a plump woman with glasses said to Bessie, motioning to the chair next to her.

  “My mother’s best friend, Doris,” Bessie explained to me as we sat next to her. Bessie fidgeted with her hands, looking down at her gloves.

  “I didn’t get a chance to say happy birthday,” the woman said. “Let me get a look at you.”

  Bessie looked up into the woman’s pale green eyes.

  “Beautiful. You’re still so beautiful. You’ll find someone. Don’t wait too long, though.”

  Bessie squeezed her hands into tiny little fists under the table. Her mother shot her a look.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Smalls,” Bessie said, dutifully.

  “We were just talking about you.”

  “No,” the man beside her said. “We were just talking about my new Moon motor car. It’s a beaut. You should see it. Cold steel and four cylinders. Only three thousand dollars.”

  “Herbert, stop bragging. He’s going to kill himself with that.”

  “Now I know why she tells me to drive it all the time,” he said, and the rest of the table laughed.

  “No, but it’s why I won’t let him teach me,” she added to more laughter.

  “You could learn to drive it, too,” Bessie said. “I could teach you at the women’s club. You won’t die.”

  Everyone stared at her and I could feel Bessie’s cheeks growing warmer as she thought things through. “It’s quite simple. Only a few things to master, really.”

  “Bessilyn’s been very busy at the orphanage as well,” her mother said quickly. “Tell us about your work with the orphans.”

  “I never knew what to say at times like this,” Bessie told me. “My mother’s idea of me and my idea of myself never went hand and hand.”

  Bessilyn leaned into Doris. “I’ve been very busy with the woman’s suffrage movement too. I think having the right to vote will help other causes…”

  Her father cut her off. “That’s enough, Bessilyn. We talked about this.”

  Bessie threw her hands on her hips. “I’m sorry, Father,” she said, her voice rising in intensity that didn’t at all sound remorseful. She swallowed and continued, looking up at the table now, a new-found confidence in her throat. “I’d forgotten it’s perfectly fine for men to talk about everything from the cost of their new automobiles to the hour glass figure of a woman, but God forbid a woman should bring up the fact that she might like to have the right to vote because that topic is going far too far.”

  “It’s fine for you to have your ideas. But don’t force them on our guests.” Her father wiped his glasses with his napkin. “Please forgive our daughter. She seems to have forgotten what polite conversation is.”

  “No, it’s perfectly all right,” Doris said. “Herbert and I feel just as strongly. Don’t we, darling? Only, we’re members of the Anti-Women’s Suffrage Movement.”

  Bessie’s face dropped. “But you’re a woman.”

  “Glad you noticed, dear. There are very large differences between men and women in society, and not just our looks. That’s precisely why I’m a member. I believe that in order for things to run properly in a society, we must never forget our places.” She turned to Bessie’s mother. “Isn’t that right, Greta?”

  Bessie’s mother, Greta, threw a hand over her mouth, shooting Bessie a horrified look for dragging her into such a conversation. “I… I,” she said, taking a deep breath. She took a long sip of her wine and composed herself. “I, for one, would hate to mess with all the meetings and boring literature that casting a considerate vote would entail,” she said, smiling nervously into her glass.

  The other women nodded at the table.

  “Then skip it,” Bessie replied. “You don’t have to vote. But to deny the rest of us that right because you can’t bother to educate yourself is reprehensible at best and pathetic kowtowing to your male counterparts over here at worst.”

  An audible gasp fell over the table.

  “Bessilyn Hind,” her father yelled. “If this rudeness is what we have to look forward to with the women’s movement then no wonder it’s failing.”

  “It’s not failing,” Bessie began then stopped herself when she looked around the table at the older faces who all seemed dumbstruck by her boldness. “You wish it were failing, but wishing won’t make it so. And that’s what scares you all the most.”

  The woman Bessie had been talking to could not seem to take her eyes off her lap. “I hear you’re going on a trip, Bessie. That sounds lovely.” She pretended to lower her voice so only her husband would hear. “I can see why they’re sending you off.”

  Bessie’s eyebrows scrunched. “A trip?”

  “It was a surprise, Doris,” Bessie’s father said, standing up and reaching into the pocket of his dark suit jacket. “I was going to make an announcement, but now that the cat’s out of the bag…”

  He waved an envelope in the air as he addressed the table. “Not exactly perfect timing, but then I’m starting to believe perfect timing doesn’t exist in life. At least not in mine.”

  The table awkwardly chuckled.

  “Happy birthday, my dear. Your present.” He handed Bessilyn the envelope, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. His smug smile, the curve of his chin, there was something very familiar about the man. But how on earth could there be anything familiar about a man from 1906?

  Bessie opened the envelope while talking to me. “Their table already knew what I was getting. My parents were tired of their embarrassing daughter living close enough to their friends that they couldn’t lie about her.”

  She pulled the ticket out and held it up for the table to see. “A ticket to Europe.”

  “An all-expense-paid trip,” her mother chimed in. “She’ll be traveling all around Europe for a bit. Great Britain, Ireland, Germany… So this will be farewell for a while for our dear Bessie, I’m afraid. But don’t feel sorry for her. Oh no. She’s about to have the time of her life. Her uncle Frederick in London has even offered her a job at his dress shop, so if it works out, Bessie may want to stay.”

  Bessie dutifully walked over to her father and kissed him on the cheek then did the same for her mother, her eyes welling up into tears as she thanked them.

  “The poor girl’s choked up,” Doris said.

  Bessie could barely get her mouth to form words. “Thank you, really. I’m so grateful, but I can’t. Not now. I’m in charge of the meetings at my women’s club. I have one coming up this month.”

  “Not anymore, you don’t,” her father replied. “And you’re welcome. Enough said.”

  The people at the table all seemed happy for her. Voices rose over the music. “Europe? What a splendid idea.”

  “Maybe she’ll find a husband of an exotic nature. That’s what my cousin did. And she was almost as old as Bessilyn.”