Chapter
29

NEW YORK CITY—1929

Fiona first noticed a change in Arthur in the fall of 1929. He seemed increasingly preoccupied whenever he came to visit her, and his visits became sporadic and infrequent. He no longer took Fiona dancing or to the speakeasies, seeming to want nothing more than an hour of comfort in her arms, and then he was gone again. She also noticed that he drank a great deal more than ever before. She wondered if he was growing tired of her now that she was twenty-seven years old, or if Arthur had decided to make some changes in his life at the age of fifty-one.

Fiona had long feared the day when Arthur would stop loving her, and she’d tried to prepare for it. She had shopped conservatively for the past five years, saving every extra dollar in a hatbox on a shelf in her bedroom closet. She had learned to drive an automobile and often borrowed Arthur’s Cadillac to save money on cab fare, using the spare set of keys he’d given her. Eleanor was only five years old, too young to leave alone, too young for school—what would happen to her if Fiona had to find a job? She had to keep Arthur interested in her for at least one more year.

By late October, Arthur had become so distracted, his behavior so erratic, that Fiona began to feel desperate. She dug into the savings in her hatbox and splurged on a new hairdo and a flashy new dress. But Arthur went straight to the bar the moment he came through her door.

“Don’t you love me anymore?” she asked as she watched him fill a tumbler with scotch.

He looked up at her in astonishment. “What…? ”

“Something’s wrong, Arthur, I know it is. You haven’t been yourself for weeks—and you’re losing weight, I can see it. Are you… are you ill?” He lifted the glass and took a large swallow before answering.

“I’m fine, Fiona. If I’ve been… distant… it has nothing to do with you.”

She waited until he took another swallow, then she crossed the room and drew him into her arms, resting her head against his chest. “Can’t you tell me what’s wrong, darling? Maybe I could help.”

He gave a humorless laugh. “No one can help me, Fiona. I’m living a nightmare.”

“Does it have something to do with finances? They’ve had articles about the stock trade in all the newspapers, but I don’t really understand them.” Arthur took another gulp of scotch and set down the tumbler. He took Fiona’s face in his hands, and his eyes met hers for the first time since he’d come in. She saw his love for her, but also his deep distress.

“You shouldn’t have to worry about financial matters. They’re not your concern—they’re mine.” He kissed her briefly, then pulled free of her arms to pace the living room floor, sipping more scotch as he talked. “The New York Stock Exchange had another day of panic selling today. The floor was in chaos. Shares in Union Cigar fell from one hundred dollars to four dollars a share in one day—and that’s just one example. Other companies’stocks are falling by the dozens, too, and they can’t repay the loans we’ve given them. Our investors purchased stocks on margin, and now they’re losing their shirts—owing more than the stocks are worth. It’s turning into a disaster. Our bank is bleeding to death, and I can’t stop the hemorrhage.”

Fiona saw his fear and it multiplied her own. “What’s going to happen?” she asked in a hushed voice. He drained the last of his drink and poured another, his hands unsteady.

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“Is there anything I can do for you, Arthur?”

He gazed down at her, and his dark eyes had never looked more sorrowful. “I love you, Fiona. I—”

She waited for him to finish, but he didn’t. “I love you, too,” she finally said, moving into his arms again. He rested his cheek on her hair, and she heard him sigh. It seemed more a sigh of resignation than contentment.

“My car is parked downstairs,” he said softly. “I think you should drive up to the Poconos, spend a week there. It’s beautiful in the fall. There might still be some leaves left on the trees.”

Fiona looked up at him to see if he was serious. “We can leave first thing tomorrow, if you’d like,” she said. “I’ll ask Mrs. Murphy to watch the children.”

Arthur shook his head. “You go, darling. Just you and the children. I know you’ve been wanting to take them up to see the cabin and the lake.”

“But I don’t want to go without you. Besides, Leonard has school.”

Arthur smiled sadly. “He’s a bright boy. He can miss a day or two.”

Fiona gripped him tighter. This was so unlike Arthur. She was worried sick. “I’m not going anywhere without you,” she told him. “I’m going to stay right here so you’ll always have a place to come and someone to love you when you’re upset. I want to be with you to help you.”

“I don’t think anyone can help me,” he murmured.

He left a little while later after finishing the bottle of scotch. His steps were unsteady as he walked to the elevator. He didn’t come the next day or the next. Fiona listened to the news reports on the radio and bought newspapers every day, trying to understand what was happening in the financial world and how it might affect Arthur. On Tuesday, the stock market plummeted so drastically that the newsmen dubbed it Black Tuesday. Fiona felt frantic. She had no idea how to get in touch with him; he had always come to her.

As she walked Leonard to school a few days later, Fiona made up her mind to try to find Arthur. She’d met him for lunch once, and he’d shown her the building on Wall Street where he worked. As soon as she and Eleanor returned to the apartment lobby, she asked Charles to call a taxi for her. She was much too upset to try to drive Arthur’s big Cadillac Phaeton in the busy downtown traffic.

“Where are we going, Mommy?” Eleanor asked as they climbed into the back of the cab.

“To visit your father. Maybe he’ll take us to lunch. Wouldn’t that be nice?” When Fiona gave the driver the Wall Street address, he turned all the way around in his seat to stare at her in surprise.

“Are you nuts, lady? It’s a madhouse down there. Don’t you listen to the news?”

“Of course I do. Take us as close as you can, please.”

Traffic on Broadway ground to a halt, well north of Wall Street. Fiona paid the cabby his fare and climbed out, clinging tightly to Eleanor’s hand as they walked the rest of the way to the office building where Arthur worked. Not only cars but thousands of pedestrians jammed the streets, bringing traffic to a standstill all over the financial district. The normally sedate streets were in chaos. Angry patrons mobbed the banks to try to retrieve their money. Police shouted in frustration as they tried to maintain some semblance of order. All of the men looked angry, worried, desperate. Poor Arthur.

Fiona felt battered by the time she reached the main doors of his office building. Eleanor looked frightened by all the shouting and shoving. But even if Fiona had wanted to go inside and look for Arthur, she wouldn’t have been able to; a cordon of police blocked the doors. She would have to wait and watch for Arthur to come out. It would be lunchtime soon.

She stood on the steps and peered down the curving street as far as she could see. It resembled a canyon of brick and cement and glass, and she felt as though it might crumble down on top of her. All around her, the anger and confusion and chaos grew worse by the hour. She didn’t know what to do.

“Mommy, my feet hurt. Can I sit down?” Eleanor asked after a while.

“No, darling. The steps are filthy. You’ll get your lovely coat all dirty.”

And Fiona also feared that if the crowd suddenly rushed this bank building the way they were mobbing so many others, little Eleanor would be crushed in seconds.

“We’ll wait just a few more minutes. Your father should be leaving for lunch soon, and we can eat with him. Won’t that be fun?” But the longer she waited, the more certain Fiona became that Arthur was truly living a nightmare, just as he’d said. He wouldn’t risk coming out into this angry crowd for lunch, nor would he want to see Fiona and Eleanor.

“Mommy I’m hungry,” Eleanor whined, tugging Fiona’s coat. “When are we going to eat?” Fiona looked at her watch—it was after one-thirty, and still there was no sign of Arthur.

“I’ll buy you a candy bar. Would you like that?” She glanced into the building’s lobby one last time, then made her way back through the throng to a newsstand she remembered passing on the corner. She heard the hawker shouting out the headlines as they approached.

“Extra! Extra! Read all about the chaos on Wall Street.”

Fiona boosted Eleanor up so she could pick out a chocolate bar. She wondered why anyone would need to purchase a newspaper telling about the chaos on Wall Street when the newsstand itself stood right in the middle of it all.

“Extra! Another stock market suicide!” the hawker yelled.

Fiona set Eleanor down again after she’d made her choice and dug into her purse for change.

“That’s Daddy,” she heard Eleanor say.

“What, darling? Where?”

Eleanor pointed to the newspaper lying on top of a large stack beside her. Under the word Suicide was a picture of Arthur. Fiona felt her knees give way as if someone had kicked her feet out from under her. She collapsed onto the sidewalk.

The next thing she knew, she was lying on the cold cement, dizzy and nauseated. Eleanor stood over her, crying loudly. Fiona could hear car horns honking in the distance and people shouting. Her head hurt from striking it on the pavement. A uniformed patrolman bent over her.

“Ma’am? Ma’am, are you all right?”

“I-I don’t know.” She couldn’t remember what had happened.

“Everybody stand back,” someone shouted. “Give the lady some air. Come on, stand back.”

“Shall I call a cab or an ambulance?” the patrolman asked.

“A cab. I have to go home. Leonard will be home from school soon.” And she must make herself pretty in case Arthur…

“Read all about it,” the newsboy shouted nearby. “Another stock market suicide.”

Fiona let out a sob. It couldn’t be true. She sat up and snatched a paper from the top of the stack. She saw Arthur’s picture again, prominently displayed. Then Eleanor blocked him from sight as she fell into Fiona’s arms, weeping with fear. “Mommy… mommy!”

“It’s all right, darling. Everything is going to be all right,” she soothed. But it was a lie. The world had just come to an end, and she didn’t know what to do.

The patrolman helped her up, then walked her down to the corner and hailed a cab for her. She felt grubby and disheveled and stunned. She’d torn her stockings on the rough pavement, and her coat was dirty, one sleeve ripped. She glimpsed her reflection in the taxi’s window and realized that she had blood on her forehead. Her hands trembled as she pulled a handkerchief from her purse and tried to wipe off the blood.

The doorman rushed out to help Fiona when he saw her struggling out of the cab. “Are you okay, ma’am? What happened?”

“She fell down,” Eleanor told him. “Mommy fell down.”

“Here, let me help you,” Charles said. Fiona leaned against him gratefully as he led her into the building and up the elevator, and then he helped her unlock her apartment door. “Are you okay?” he asked again. “Shall I call a doctor?”

She shook her head. What she wanted was for Charles to hold her tightly and tell her that the newspaper had made a mistake; it was the wrong photograph, the wrong person. But Charles hurried back down-stairs to tend his door as soon as she was inside.

Arthur is dead, she told herself over and over, struggling to believe it.

Arthur is dead. She couldn’t stop trembling. She had a good supply of alcohol that Arthur kept in the apartment and she was tempted to start drinking it, numbing herself so she wouldn’t feel grief or pain or fear. But she had to remain strong for her children. She couldn’t fall apart. She had to think what to do.

She still gripped the crumpled newspaper in one hand, and she finally summoned the courage to open it and look at it again. Maybe she had misunderstood. Maybe Arthur’s photo was on the front page for another reason.

She only needed to read the first line of the article to learn the truth:

Investment banker Arthur Bartlett died last night in his Wall Street office in an apparent suicide, the latest in a series of suicides following the stock market crash earlier this week… She dropped the paper onto the floor.

Fiona’s first reaction was fear. She had two children to support, and Arthur was dead. He hadn’t abandoned her for another woman, as she’d long feared, but had taken his own life. What would happen to her and the children? How would they live? Had he left any provision at all for them in his will? But no, he couldn’t have—Arthur had gone bankrupt.

The fact that Fiona had ruined her own life by becoming involved with a married man was bad enough. But she had ruined her children’s lives, too. Arthur was dead. How would she live without him? How could she?

In an instant her fear vanished, swallowed by grief. Arthur would never walk through the door again, never take her into his arms, smiling his lopsided smile. She would never see his love for her reflected in his sad, dark eyes; never sit on the cabin porch with him in Deer Falls counting the stars; never lie beside him at night.

Fiona wept and wept. Eleanor climbed onto her lap looking bewildered and afraid. “Don’t cry, Mommy,” she said over and over. “Don’t cry.” They were both weeping when Leonard came home from school.

“What’s wrong?” he asked in alarm. Fiona saw the fear in his eyes as he gazed at her disheveled clothing and bloodied forehead. “Are you hurt, Mommy?” He was only seven years old, too young to be her strength and support, but she saw his willingness to try, and it touched her.

“I’m all right, Leonard. It’s just a scratch. Come here.” She reached to pull him close to her, and all three of them huddled together on the couch as she told him the truth. “Your father died, darling. Do you understand what that means?” He shook his head. Fiona wasn’t sure she understood it, either. She didn’t want to understand. But in telling her children, the painful reality gripped her heart at last.

“It means… it means that he’ll never come back to us. We’ll never see him again. He’s gone… forever.”

“Can we find a new daddy?” Eleanor asked in a shaky voice. Fiona couldn’t reply. She hugged her children closer, weeping until all her tears were gone.

She slept on the couch that first night, knowing she would never find rest in the bed they’d once shared. She didn’t change out of her clothes, unable to go into the closet where Arthur’s spare shirts were hanging. When she opened the medicine cabinet above the bathroom sink to get headache powders the next morning, she saw the razor and toothbrush Arthur kept in the apartment, and his favorite tooth powder. She began to tremble, not with grief but with anger.

Death hadn’t taken him—he’d embraced it himself. He was a coward. The newspapers said that a lot of men had lost everything they had, yet only a few had resorted to suicide. She still would have loved him even if all his money was gone, but he hadn’t given Fiona that choice. He’d ruined her life by never making an honest woman of her, and now he’d ruined their children’s lives with the terrible legacies of bankruptcy and suicide. Arthur had abandoned them, just as Rory had abandoned Fiona’s mother and sisters. What would they do now?

Fiona could barely function as her emotions spiraled downward in an endless cycle of anger and fear and grief. How could you leave us, Arthur? How could you? she asked over and over. Charles voiced his sorrow every time Fiona went in or out—which wasn’t often. “I’m just so sorry about Mr. Bartlett, ma’am. He was a decent man.” She didn’t know how to respond.

When Mrs. Murphy arrived on cleaning day, she had tears in her eyes.

“I read in the papers about Mr. Bartlett, ma’am. I’m so sorry. He was always very kind to me.” Fiona stared at her woodenly, her arms tightly crossed to keep Mrs. Murphy from embracing her. Fiona knew she would lose the slender grip on her composure if anyone hugged her.

“I can’t pay you, Mrs. Murphy,” she said coldly. “You may as well go home.”

“But… I need this job. I don’t know how I’ll find work—”

“And I don’t know how the children and I are going to live!” she shouted. Mrs. Murphy was immediately contrite.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m… I’m so sorry.”

Fiona looked away. “I know. And I’m sorry for yelling.” Neither of them knew what else to say.

“Well… good-bye, then,” Mrs. Murphy said. She bent to embrace Eleanor, who was waiting for a hug. “Good luck to you.” She quietly closed the door behind her.

Fiona lived in a haze for a month, somehow managing to send Leonard to school each morning, fixing haphazard meals for the children, eating very little herself. She knew she couldn’t succumb to grief forever; she would have to let it go soon and decide how she would make a living for herself and the children. But she couldn’t seem to muster the energy or the courage to move on.

Then the landlord knocked on her door on a cold, gray day near the end of November. “I’m very sorry about Mr. Bartlett, ma’am. I read about him in the paper.”

Fiona nodded mutely. Everybody had read about it. Everybody in the world, it seemed, knew that her children’s father, the man she loved, had put a gun to his head and killed himself after going bankrupt. The landlord exhaled and looked down at the floor, as if what he was about to say was very difficult.

“I’m sorry to trouble you at a time like this, ma’am… but I’ll be needing the rent payment on the first of December. I let last month’s rent go by because your—because Mr. Bartlett paid me the first and last months in advance. But December’s is due, you see. I wouldn’t bother you if I could help it. Mr. Bartlett was a real good man.”

“Can you give me a week?” she asked hoarsely.

“Sure, sure. But then you have to pay me or… or move out, okay? Please don’t make me throw you out in the street. I’d really hate to do that to you, with the children and all.”

“Come back in a week,” she said, closing the door.