Chapter 35
A week after Mrs. Palmer Potter’s ball, Maggie stood among the crowd thronging the Midway Plaisance for the opening of the Columbian Exposition.
Everyone around her was buoyant with excitement, while Maggie felt completely flat inside.
The Exposition was opening, but she felt as if her own life, in every unfortunate aspect, was closing down.
Although thousands had surged into the White City to witness the great day, the Exposition remained unfinished; the great Ferris wheel still a work in progress, and according to the Tribune, the much-touted elevators in the Manufacturers Building were not in working order, and some of the magnificent gardens were nothing more than bare earth.
Even so, it was seen as a triumph for Chicago, as well as the whole country, and the excited crowds thronging the park now were testament to that.
As President Cleveland prepared to press the golden telegraph key that would turn on the electric lights and the many fountains in the Grand Basin, Maggie felt utterly flat, as well as sick with disappointment and defeat.
In the space of a single week, everything she’d worked for had crumbled to nothing.
Six days ago, Theo had come to her shop just as he’d promised.
All those crumpled bills he’d once thrust carelessly into his pocket were now presented to her—he’d taken far more care with his accounting than Maggie had ever realized—and the amount she owed was staggering.
Even with the seeming success of her business, she knew she would struggle to pay such a sum, and, moreover, she realized she didn’t even know how to pay.
She’d let Theo manage all the money, just as he’d told her he would do, and her own accounts were a shambles as a result.
It left her feeling both helpless and ignorant in the face of the bills he now presented, and furious with herself for being so.
“You must know I can’t pay this amount now,” Maggie had told him, a tremble to her voice, and Theo had sighed, seeming regretful that their association had come to this.
“I do know that,” he’d told her, “and despite what you seem to think, I’m not cruel.
” He’d shaken his head, resigned. “You’re not on the hook for it, Maggie, at least not right away, but I can’t bankroll you anymore, either.
” He’d paused. “Ma found out about us, and she wasn’t pleased.
I got an earful this morning, let me tell you.
” He’d grimaced, while Maggie had stared at him in growing trepidation, the shame she couldn’t shake deepening right into her bones.
This was exactly what she’d feared might come to pass, and she hated to think of how disappointed as well as furious Mrs. Stein had to be.
“I think she might have suspected for a while,” Theo had told her, “but after the Palmers’ ball last night, well…
she’s said I have to end it. Not just us, but this.
” He gestured to the shop. “So even if I wanted to keep you afloat, I can’t.
I am sorry, you know, no matter what you think. ”
He didn’t sound very sorry, Maggie thought, but she could hardly blame him. She’d told him last night she wanted to end their association—both personally and professionally—and now that was exactly what was happening. She just hadn’t expected the cost to be so high.
“All right,” she said on a steadying breath.
She couldn’t entirely blame Mrs. Stein for insisting Theo end his patronage, but it still hurt that she was willing to as good as ruin Maggie for the sake of her son.
Still, if Theo wasn’t going to demand she repay him everything he’d put into the business right away, she’d thought she might have a chance to stay open.
And if she did well, she could pay him back eventually, become truly independent as she’d always wanted. Maybe it could be even better this way.
That frail hope had died a swift death, as with all the others. “The rent’s due at the end of the month,” Theo had told her. “I rented this place for six months, and obviously I’m not renewing the lease.”
Maggie had realized she didn’t even know how much the rent was, and when Theo told her the amount, she knew that was beyond her means, as well.
If she was to stay in business, she would have to relocate to a much humbler premises, let go of Molly, who had taken such a risk in working for her, and forget any advertising. And where was she to live?
There were yet more indignities to face. The furniture in her apartment, Theo had explained regretfully, had been bought on credit, and Field’s was expecting it back imminently, along with the furnishings for the shop. It all had to go.
“I am sorry,” he’d told her yet again. “I was cross with you last night, over the way you ended things, but I was going to have to end it, anyway.” He’d sighed. “I did mean well, Maggie. I was trying to help you, but maybe I should have gone about it differently.”
Maggie had no answer to that. She could hardly blame him for ruining her reputation since she’d acquiesced to everything, convinced herself it truly was respectable even as inwardly she’d known the truth.
All she could do now was attempt to pick up the pieces and cobble back a business together as best as she could, whatever that looked like.
That ambition, however, also proved beyond her reach, for as the days had passed, she had not had a single customer since Theo had shown up at her door.
Worse than that, there had been a snide and salacious editorial in the women’s pages about her fall from grace, intimating that the success of her store had only been due to her notoriety.
While she hadn’t been mentioned by name, it had been obvious who the article was talking about, and the poisoned-pen writer seemed to relish her downfall, as everyone else in society did.
Two days after the ball, a coolly cordial note had come from Mrs. Bertha Palmer, explaining that there was no space for her hat in the Women’s Building, after all.
Mrs. Stein, Maggie realized, must have turned the full force of her influence against her, and to devastating effect.
The society women who had clamored for her hats, whether out of curiosity or genuine desire, no longer did, all because she’d fallen out of favor, so quickly and completely.
Instead of an up-and-coming milliner, she was nothing more than a fallen woman, a floozy, and it made her realize how flimsy her success truly had been.
She’d been a storm in a teacup, a flash in the pan, and nothing more.
How could she not have seen it? Prepared for it?
Instead she’d let herself believe her own press, Maggie had realized.
She’d convinced herself she was different, special, a cut above, when she’d been anything but.
And now she was grasping at straws, helpless in the face of her own failure, with no recourse but her own scattered wits.
Yesterday, some workmen from Field’s had come for her furniture, and she’d had to let Molly go.
“I trust you’ll be able to get your position back,” she’d told the girl, who had been dismayed indeed to have her position terminated so abruptly.
“I don’t rightly know,” she’d told Maggie bitterly. “I never should have accepted your offer. I knew how they were talking about you.”
“I wish I had,” Maggie had replied with a small, wry smile, although inside she’d wanted to weep.
She’d slept on the bare floor of her empty apartment, utterly sick at heart; the building would have to be vacated next week.
Where she would go then, Maggie had no idea.
She didn’t think she could bear to return to Brendan and Danny, disgraced as she was, with all of Brendan’s accusations proved right.
She still had a little money saved, thankfully, but the thought of starting over felt impossible.
She was finished in this city, Maggie had realized dully, at least as a milliner.
And, in truth, she wasn’t even sure she wanted to design hats anymore.
What a vacuous, empty way of life it had been, in the end.
Maggie had come to the Exposition today to escape the emptiness of her own life, but all the spectacle and show just made her feel worse—and emptier—than ever.
“As by a touch the machinery that gives light to this vast Exposition is set in motion,” President Cleveland intoned from the stage, forcing her mind back to the momentous occasion at hand, “so at the same instant let our hopes and aspirations awaken forces which in all time to come shall influence the welfare, the dignity, and the freedom of mankind!”
Maggie watched as, with great deliberation and flair, he pressed the gold key, and a roar of approval and excitement radiated through the crowd.
The whole park became instantly illuminated with electric light, as massive flags unfurled from the Court of Honor—the American, the Spanish, and one representing Columbus.
The fountains in the Grand Basin sent water arcing over one hundred feet into the air, causing some visitors nearby to laughingly raise their umbrellas to avoid the rainbow-colored spray that sparkled in the sunlight.
Another cheer went up as two hundred white doves were released into the springtime sky and the guns of the warship Michigan, anchored out on the lake, were fired.
It was a spectacle to end all spectacles, the most enormous and overblown celebration of innovation and industry, and Maggie wanted no part of it.
As she looked around at the shining White City with all its inventions and amusements, the crowd around her spontaneously bursting into singing the national anthem, she wanted only to turn away from it all.
All the ambition she’d once had—to forge a future, to make a name for herself, to court fortune and fame as if they were worthy goals—had drained away, leaving only a deep regret in the ensuing emptiness of her soul.
She’d chased after the wrong things, Maggie reflected as she wandered down the Plaisance, past a variety of outlandish concessions—Sitting Bull’s cabin, a miniature Lapland Village, an ostrich farm that offered omelets made from their eggs, and a balloon park that advertised trips in a hot-air balloon.
Everything looked garish and overblown, which was how she felt about her own ambitions and dreams. How could she have let herself be deceived in so many ways?
Not just about her relationship with Theo, but what she’d wanted for herself.
What she’d believed was important, what made a life worth living, because it wasn’t, Maggie knew, a life designing fanciful hats for pampered women who only wanted to be amused.
She’d thrown away her few tried-and-true relationships, a potential life of love and belonging, and for what? A fleeting moment of tainted fame.
And now she had nothing.
Perhaps, Maggie mused as she stood in front of the unfinished Ferris wheel, a circle of steel still encased in wooden scaffolding, she’d leave Chicago.
Maybe Danny would go with her. They could go back east, or maybe even further west, out to California.
Why not? What really did she have to lose?
She might even have enough money for the train fare, once she finished with everything here.
But would Danny even want to go with her? she wondered. He’d chosen Brendan over her months ago, and she hadn’t seen him since. The idea that he’d want to cast his lot with her now seemed fanciful at best.
“Maggie?”
Maggie turned from her sightless survey of the giant Ferris wheel, shocked to see none other than Brendan standing in front of her, almost as if she’d conjured him out of thin air.
For a second, she was speechless; the idea that they could find each other amidst all these thousands of people felt like a true miracle.
And while she knew she could have always traveled to Englewood to visit him there, she never had, and maybe never would have.
“Brendan—” she began, shaking her head in wonder.
“Don’t you look smart,” he remarked wryly, and it was only then that Maggie noticed how he looked—pale and thin, haggard, his eyes bloodshot, his face unshaven. A sudden terror seized her and she grabbed his hand.
“Brendan,” she asked, a tremble to her voice, “what has happened?”