It amazed her to think that she didn’t even have to touch the ice anymore. That it was others, farther north, in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, who did the work of farming. She costed out the business carefully. The wages, the transport, the melt. The astounding logic of money. The ease with which it could appear, and the speed at which it could be lost. In St. Louis, she secured a line of credit with the Wells Fargo Bank on Fillmore. She walked up to bank tellers who knew her name. How are you, Mrs. Ehrlich? Such a pleasure to see you again. On the street men and women nodded to her politely. It frightened her. She held the edge of her wide dresses and stammered hello. She was shown the best sides of meat in the victualers. There was a hat shop on Market Street. Lily bought a flamboyant design with an ostrich feather, but when she brought it home she caught sight of herself in the long oval mirror and couldn’t bear the thought of being seen in it, put it back in its box and never touched it again.
The demands came. From the hospitals. On the steamers. In the restaurants. Fish stalls. Confectioner stores. There were even some hotels that had begun to use the ice in drinks.
After six years Lily Ehrlich was able to send her oldest surviving boy, Lawrence, to university in Chicago. Then Nathaniel and Tomas, too. In the winter of 1886 Emily turned fourteen years old. She spent most of her time upstairs in her bedroom, devoted to books. Lily thought her daughter, at first, to have been overcome with loneliness, but soon found out that the girl liked nothing more than to shut the curtains, light a candle, read in the flickering dark. The plays of Shakespeare. The writings of Emerson. The poetry of Harte, Sargent, Wordsworth. The room was so full of books that Lily couldn’t see the wallpaper.
Her own experiment with books had not lasted very long: she was mother to the daughter. That, in itself, was enough.
Lily divided her ice business in the winter of 1887. Three equal parts to her sons. Lawrence came home from university wearing a gray suit and bow tie, the owner of an eastern-sounding accent. The two younger boys were interested in the puffs of steam that drifted across the rail yards: they sold their portions, tipped their hats, said good-bye. Nathaniel went west to San Francisco, Tomas went east to Toronto. Emily received nothing: not out of spite, but simple convention. It never even crossed Lily’s mind. Mother and daughter bought a smaller house on Gravois Road. Out front, they cultivated a garden. They kept to themselves. On Sundays they dressed for church: long gloves, wide hats, white veils that fell over their eyes. They were sometimes seen on the promenade together. There weren’t many suitors for Emily’s attention. Nor did Emily expect any. She was hardly considered pretty. The books consumed her. There were nights when Lily asked Emily to come to her bed, slip in the covers beside her, settle against the pillows, and read. I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland.
That house on Great Brunswick Street seemed far away to Lily now, remote from her in daily custom and sound. The years themselves seemed to forget what she once had been. The shadows of forty years.
SHE WAS NO judge of fine fashion, but for the occasion she wore a long purple polonaise with a fitted cutaway overdress. The amethyst brooch lay high on her neck. Her gray hair was tucked under the curved brim of a mauve bonnet.
She stepped slowly from the horse-drawn carriage and shuffled arm in arm beside Emily who wore a simple alpaca dress. The evening was cool. Dark had just fallen. She was confused by the movement of the light and the close passing of so many bodies. They entered the hotel. Past the granite columns. The bellmen gave them cursory glances. Inside, high piano notes floated through the lobby. The dull pain was deep in her body now. Her hands, her knees, her ankles.
Lily cast a quick look at the large wooden clock in the corner near the bay windows. Too early by far. All around, women stood in expensive shawls and gowns. A few men in black tie and jackets. The fuss and flux. Small pockets of Negroes, too, in the corners. Mostly men. Everyone so finely turned out.
She edged forward. A gauntlet. She was sure they were watching her. She skirted the latticed wall, found a row of landscape paintings to pretend to admire, pulled Emily close.
— Quiet now, she said.
— I didn’t say anything, Mother.
— Hush anyway.
On large wooden easels around the hotel lobby she saw his name. Underneath, the words: National Women’s Suffrage Association.
Small clusters of women walked around underneath the chandeliers. Their serious chatter. Over by the bar, curls of smoke purpled the air. A distant clinking of glasses.
The piano player launched into a new tune. Lily turned to Emily and tucked a stray strand of plaited hair behind the girl’s ear.
— Mother.
— Quiet.
— There he is, said Emily.
Across the lobby, Lily saw him. Douglass was seventy-one years old now. His gray hair still stood in serious abundance. He wore a black jacket and white shirt with standing collar. In his breast pocket, a white handkerchief. He filled out his jacket and had developed a slight slouch, but there was still a heft to him: thicker, wider, yet more at ease. He was surrounded by a group of eight or ten women. They leaned in eagerly towards him. He stood at a slight remove, but then he cupped his hands and made some comment and the women laughed as if they were all part of some intricate clockwork.
He glanced across the lobby. Lily couldn’t be sure, but perhaps his gaze had remained on her. Maybe some movement behind her, some human fuss. When she turned to look at him again, he had already begun walking towards the hotel auditorium.
The room drew in behind him. A gust of air. A wake of light. As if it were all being funneled down to follow him. She felt herself falter. She was seventeen years old again. Standing outside Webb’s house. Bidding him good-bye. The early Dublin light. The shaking of hands. So unusual. The creak of the carriage. Later the butler, Charles, rebuked the staff. How dare you. The smallest moments: they return, dwell, endure. The clack of a hoof against the cobbles. The way he had looked at her as he left. The manner in which he had opened the day. The spectacle of possibility. I have little or nothing here. A small room at the top of a house. A series of back stairs. I as good as belong to them. Owned. She left under darkness. The shame she felt in Cork. At the Jenningses’ dinner table. He did not recognize her. At the dockside, too. He remained saddled. She was no more to him than a sweeping of papers, a wash of the carpet, a broom of the floorboards, a yard of calico. But what had she wanted? What had she expected? She heard the loud braying of the horses. The swoop of seagulls. The rain. She could not look him in the eye. Sheets of rain across her face. A destiny. Stepping onto the boat and away. It was all a confusion. She had been so very young. The ship horn was a relief.
Lily took Emily’s arm and they walked together across the floor. Two policemen stood outside the auditorium door, tapping their truncheons against their calves. They glanced at her, said nothing. The hall was almost full. Rows and rows of women on folding chairs. Their dresses spread out around them.
They took their seats near the back of the hall. She removed her gloves and put her hand upon the back of her daughter’s, rubbed her thumb along the inside of Emily’s wrist.
Douglass was introduced by a pale woman in a plain black tunic. The applause rippled through the air. He stepped up from the front seats. Climbed the stairs at the side of the stage. A slowness that he disguised well. He strode to the lectern. Put his hands upon it, looked out. He was thankful for the introduction, he said, glad to be in a city that meant so much to the many causes of true democracy that he so fervently espoused. There was a slight tremble in his voice.