Chapter Twenty-Three
Seth dropped to his knees to check on Katie immediately, then helped position her more comfortably as he checked her pulse. “I’m going to have to start traveling with my medical bag,” he said. “Victoria, would you have any ammonia, maybe in the kitchen?”
“I think so,” she said.
“It can work almost as well as smelling salts,” Seth said, but before Victoria was even out of the room, Katie started stirring.
Victoria offered her water, and soon we’d helped the girl up and onto the sofa. “Sorry about that,” she said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Danielle said. “I fainted like that in a movie once. I was only supposed to swoon, but the director thought it had more flair. They ended up taking the scene out, though, because an expert insisted women don’t normally faint from shock.
After all these years, it’s rather nice to prove that jerk wrong. ”
Danielle pulled her lap blanket tighter around her legs.
“I suppose you’re entitled to the whole story.
Your great-grandfather was…” She stopped to take a few deep breaths, then moistened her lips.
“He was the love of my life, but in a time when a relationship between a white woman and a black man was not only scandalous but in many places illegal.”
“So you were lovers,” Katie said.
“We were husband and wife,” Danielle said.
“We married in France, which was a little more progressive about that kind of thing, but my agent begged me to keep it a secret. I thought we’d live out our lives there.
But then…” Danielle sighed. “It wasn’t just difficult to be black back then, it was also difficult to be an apparently single woman.
Banks and studios didn’t feel as if many of us were up to managing our own finances.
My parents were entrusted to do that, and they employed my brother, and between them, they milked me dry.
“Not only did I have to come back to the States to straighten it out, I found myself begging my agent to get me more parts because there was so little money left.
I was in the middle of a film when I discovered that I was, as we often said back then, ‘in the family way.’ My agent knew of a doctor who ran a private hospital and who, for money, would look the other way.
While Hollywood thought I was having a nervous breakdown, which, sad to say, was considered much more acceptable by society than loving a person who was deemed the wrong color, I was really giving birth to your grandmother.
“When I made my triumphant return, I had to smuggle her into Graystone in the trunk of the car. Our servants were sworn to secrecy, and we lived a happy three years as near to being a normal family that we could, considering Abdi and I couldn’t be seen together, and Pearl couldn’t be seen at all.
She was my ‘treasure hidden in the house.’ ”
“If you were so happy,” Katie asked, “what happened?”
“Life was just too hard,” Danielle said.
“It wasn’t fair to Abdi for me to treat him like a servant whenever anyone came to call.
He had too much pride for that. And it grew more difficult to keep Pearl concealed.
She wanted to go outside and run around in the garden and play, to make friends, and in the end, it wasn’t fair to keep her locked up like some princess in a tower.
There was no place where we could live that would have accepted our family, and if we were found out, it would have meant the end of my career, when I was still trying to recover financially from the damage my brother had done.
I think we knew our relationship was destined to fail, that the obstacles were just insurmountable, but we held on because neither of us was ready to face the truth, to let go. Then Quimby died.
“I couldn’t justify keeping Abdi on as an animal trainer when there was no animal for him to train.
I considered getting another big cat, but we both knew that our situation was untenable.
It brought us to the breaking point. I sent…
” She took a long, shaky breath, then swallowed hard. “I sent them away.
“I provided as much as I could, financially, and as much as his pride would allow. We held on to a slim hope that it would be temporary, that society was changing. At the beginning, he sent me photographs. Pearl with her front teeth missing, Pearl in kindergarten. Pearl with a big bright smile, playing hopscotch with her friends. I couldn’t take her away from that any more than I could be a part of it, and I knew that she would have the best life being brought up by her father. ”
“So that’s when you divorced?” Katie asked.
“We never divorced.”
Katie’s jaw dropped. “But Pop-pop remarried.”
Danielle looked at her glumly.
“He was a bigamist?” Katie said.
Danielle just looked down at her hands in her lap. Finally, she said, “He never sent me another photograph.”
I looked at Maureen, who had made a study of Danielle’s scrapbooks. She was frantically trying to dry her eyes. Mort put an arm around her.
I gestured toward the door. “Why don’t the rest of us clear out of here and give you two a chance to get caught up.” We followed Victoria into the kitchen, where she opened up a container of cookies and offered it to each of us before helping herself to one.
“What do we do now?” she asked Howard.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“About Katie and her daughter,” she said. “We can’t very well toss them out, especially when Katie came here looking for family to care for her child.”
“Danielle is family,” he said.
“I know Danielle is her great-grandmother,” Victoria said, “but how can she care for a child? Danielle can’t care for herself.”
“No, no, I mean Danielle is family,” Howard said, “not just to Katie, but she’s like family to you and me. I think Katie and Rose should stay here with her great-grandmother…and with us.”
“And when Katie…?” Victoria said, the sympathy in her eyes finishing the sentence for her.
“Maybe we could…raise Rose,” Howard said.
“You mean, adopt her?” Victoria said.
“I’m game.” He took both his wife’s hands and looked deeply into her eyes. “If that’s all right with you. And if that’s what Katie and Danielle decide is best.”
“Well,” Seth said, “it seems like congratulations may be in order.”
But neither Howard nor Victoria responded; they were locked in a long embrace.