Chapter Twenty-One
Washington, DC
JULIA
Climbing trees left their hands covered with sap, but then they realized how easily they could pick up dried leaves and pine needles.
They played at being a new sort of forest creature, half person and half tree.
(All sorts of unpleasant things can be turned to good account with a little determination.)
FROM LIBERTY ISLAND, BY MISS CRANE
In late April, Julia could finally walk without a cane and manage the steps to her apartment. According to the doctor, Julia was ready to reenter the world. According to Julia, she was not, but everyone was pleased for her, so she made a great show of also being pleased.
She could not expect anyone else to understand that she dreaded the thought of returning to the life interrupted by the Knickerbocker disaster, since she did not even understand it herself. Nor could she continue to impose on the Seabornes. She could only keep pretending.
A few days after Morgan School’s principal accepted with alacrity her offer to return for the last weeks of the school year, Bess came by the studio to fill her in on where her students were with their lessons.
“I should warn you that the children have lots of questions,” Bess said with a little grimace. “I told them all I could, but since I was not in the theater, I could only partially satisfy their curiosity. Which, I must say, is a bit morbid.”
“That’s all right. I expected as much.” Julia had indeed anticipated this, but as soon as Bess left, she burst into tears.
What is wrong with me? For the thousandth time, she wished Louisa were there.
Julia looked out the window and was alarmed to see Michael heading for the studio. She dried her eyes and tried to disguise her dismay, but given his own alarmed expression upon entering, it seemed she had not succeeded.
“Jules, what is it?” He sat on the little sofa by her side and looked at her with such concern, tears welled up again.
She covered her face. “Don’t be nice.”
“Shall I throw a dead fish at you?”
She managed a sniffly laugh. “Bess came by and gave me an update on the students, and for some reason, it just sent me.”
“I wonder why?” His tone was of genuine inquiry.
She finally removed her hands from her face and looked at him. “Thank you for being curious.”
He looked affronted. “A fine man I’d be if I wasn’t curious when you’re obviously overset.”
“I don’t mean curious as opposed to uncaring or indifferent.
I mean curious as opposed to already knowing.
I’m sick to death of people thinking they know me better than I know myself, and patiently guiding me to the truth.
” Julia surprised herself with this outburst, but it was something that had been simmering under the surface during her convalescence.
Though Michael had the decency not to mention it, he had probably long observed what Julia herself had only just begun to recognize: In her romantic drama, Pelham was cast as the master, with Julia in the role of eager, ingenuous pupil.
She continued. “I suppose what sent me was that Bess mentioned that my students will have lots of questions, and I cannot answer them.” Julia had avoided reading anything about the accounts of the Knickerbocker disaster, and knew little beyond her own experience. “I guess I should look at the papers.”
“Are you sure?”
When Julia nodded, Michael stood. “We have them saved. I’ll be right back.” He soon returned with a box, filled to the brim with newspapers and magazines. “Shall I stay, in case you have questions?”
“You wouldn’t mind?” In reply, Michael held up a magazine he had brought for his own entertainment, then plopped into a comfortable chair, feet on an ottoman.
Since the most recent papers were at the top of the pile in the box, the exercise was like starting with a toe in the water and slowly immersing oneself.
The latest stories were about grand jury indictments against the architects and builders involved with the construction of the theater, followed by stories about the investigations that led to those proceedings.
By the time she reached the profiles of the dead, Julia thought she was acclimated.
Besides, she had not been able to avoid all knowledge of who lost their lives that night.
Margaret had told Julia about several families she was acquainted with who had lost loved ones in the disaster so Julia could write and express her sympathy.
As it turned out, she was not at all prepared.
As she read about the many brilliant, worthy people whose lives had been cut short, she felt as if a great weight were pressing on her chest. Musicians and diplomats, politicians and veterans, young people who were engaged to be married, four women who worked in the War Office.
And children, so many children. Before long, she was crying again.
Michael rose, pulled the ottoman over, gently removed the paper from her hands, and waited patiently.
“Why am I alive?” she asked finally.
“Do you mean why did you survive instead of them?”
“Children, Michael! They had their whole lives ahead of them. And the others, people doing such valuable work, parents who left their children orphans…”
Michael took her hand in his. “Soldiers who survived and made it home from the war speak of the anguish of believing they did not deserve to live. You are no less worthy than anyone, of course, but more importantly, Julia, your survival defied no principle of fairness or justice. No one died so you could live. The fact is, nobody deserved to die in that theater.”
She was quiet for a moment, then said, “I suppose I feel like I have been too lucky all my life. That I have had so much when others have so little.”
Michael smiled. “There are wretched souls who have far more, and happy people with less. As to your advantages, you are generous with people in need. Not just materially, but spiritually, too. You have always been a light in the darkness, Julia. The world is better for you still being in it.”
“Thank you, Michael,” Julia said with a watery smile.
It had helped just to bring her thoughts into the light and expose the flaws.
Though she was not entirely relieved of her feelings, what Michael had said was sensible, and she felt she might eventually embrace the idea that she was not chosen to live, that none were chosen to perish.
And while she considered his other comments too generous, she was grateful for them.
She returned to the papers. By the time she reached the stories that were published closer to the event, she had already absorbed much of what was in them.
She was almost to the bottom when she came across a story containing her own statement.
She had forgotten that Michael had coaxed it out of her at the hospital.
I am so grateful to those who worked so hard to free me, and to the doctors and nurses at the scene and here at the hospital.
I know how very fortunate I am, that it was by the barest chance that I survived.
I am heartsick for those who did not, and I extend my deepest sympathies to their loved ones.
She smiled at how rational it was, compared to how she had felt just moments ago.
She also saw that it appeared in several papers simultaneously.
Michael had ignored his job and stayed by her for hours that night, and then shared with the wire services the one tidbit that could have been his exclusively.
It was when Julia picked up one of the last papers, The Washington Herald, that she got a terrible, confusing shock. It did not contain the statement from her, but to her dismay, it did have one about her, from Miss Mina Ellis, “a close friend of Miss Julia Demarest.”
I hope the men who were responsible for this disaster are soon brought to justice.
Nobody should have to endure what Miss Demarest did.
Long, harrowing hours in total darkness, entombed by debris, her ankle crushed.
Yet even when rescuers finally discovered she was alive beneath the rubble, she insisted they first help a young boy, also trapped, whose spirits she had kept up throughout the ordeal.
Julia recoiled in horror. “Oh, no!”
“Is that the Herald? I wondered if I should show it to you.”
“How could she?” She was horrified by the low note Mina’s words struck.
Nearly a hundred people died in that theater.
Even in her pain-addled state, Julia had known the only appropriate sentiments were gratitude and sympathy.
Not only did Mina’s words savor of self-pity, but they depicted her as some sort of heroine, simply for comforting a child trapped under his dead mother’s body.
Then Julia noticed something else. The paper, an early edition, was dated Monday, January 30.
“Do you remember Mina visiting me soon after I was admitted?”
“She came the very next day. I was in the room.”
“She said she was going to Charlottesville for the weekend.”
“She couldn’t have gone and gotten back. The trains weren’t running.”
“I know I was muddled, but I feel like I would remember her telling me she had not gone after all. I recall feeling relieved she had gotten back safely.”
“You did not just feel that. You said it,” Michael replied. “You were so groggy, and I didn’t know she was supposedly in Charlottesville. I figured you were referring to her being stuck across town or something.”
“And she did not correct me?” Julia asked.
Michael shook his head.
Mina was hiding something, and Julia bet it was a love affair, probably with someone married and prominent. “Why would she dare come to the hospital, knowing I could catch her lying?”
“Most people take the Herald in the afternoon, so she probably forgot they even had a morning edition. She could have returned by rail on Monday and given them the statement for the late edition.” He added with a hint of apology, “It might be unfair, but from what I know of Miss Ellis, I suspect she could not stay away.”