Free Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland Page A

hall room when they arrived? Maybe that’s what made Cornelia so serious.
    “It’s all pretty bleak, then?”
    “Not entirely. I’ve met wonderful, hardworking people who want to give back to the country that took them in. Poverty isn’t something deserved because of lack of character. There’s nobility in the Lower East Side, just in their perseverance. At the settlement house where I live we’re proud that we are now offering the first public bath in the city, soap included. We want to provide services free of the paybacks that Boss Tweed required whenever he did an ounce of charity.”
    His eyes, dark as jet, flared with specks of light when he said that. He was radiant, happy about making a difference, pleased to tell me about this world so far removed from jeweled peacocks.
    “You actually live there?”
    “Yes, I do. So I can be more available in crises.”
    How could a handsome, clean, immaculately dressed, intelligent man be content to be surrounded by poverty?
    “You might say I live in the teeming cradle of the promise of this country. The immigrants of the Fourth Ward have troubles, almost insurmountable troubles, but they have dreams too, and ambitions and loves and sorrows. Each person may have left parents and grandparents behind, sisters behind. They gave up their languages and their countries, but each one brings with him a story. Some bring a skill, furniture making or saddlery or ironwork or baking.”
    “Or glassmaking.”
    Edwin nodded. “Some bring memories of injustice. Some, only hope. They’re going to give us more than they’ll get.”
    I lathered my scone with clotted cream, a twinge of shame at its excess.
    He asked, “Do you know this poem?
    “
Give me your tired, your poor
,
    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free
,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore
.
    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me
.
    “To
me
, Mrs. Driscoll.”
    “Clara, please.”
    “Clara, then. ‘To me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’ ”
    “No. I haven’t heard it before. It’s very moving.”
    “Imperative, you might say. A woman named Emma Lazarus wrote that poem as a donation to an auction to help fund the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. It’s not well known, but I believe someday it will be.” He finished his tea in one gulp. “Have you ever been on an excursion boat that circles the statue?”
    “Never.”
    He gripped the edge of the table and leaned toward me. “Let’s.”
    “Now?”
    His intensity was magnetic, irresistible.
    “Yes. Now.”
    THE NEW OPEN-AIR electric streetcar clanged and rattled as it sped us down Fourth Avenue and along Bowery Street, jammed with people andlined with tenements, flophouses, tawdry saloons, and smoldering ash barrels. Pushcarts piled with pots and pans, potatoes and carrots, shoes and used clothing clogged the street. Boys hurried in all directions carrying bundles as if they had immigrated too late and were racing to catch up. For want of a clothespin, some woman’s washing that had been draped over a line between two buildings blew off into the running gutter.
    “Don’t ever come down here by yourself,” Edwin said. “The Bowery Boys are more or less gone, but other gangs have taken their place.”
    As if I would want to. I put my handkerchief to my nose against the foul odor of unwashed bodies. The ceiling strap held by countless grimy hands before me swung like a noose. Apprehensiveness kept my arm tight to my side, but at a lurch of the streetcar, I quickly grabbed it.
    Why did he take me this way rather than straight down Broadway to the Battery? Was he in love with misery?
    “Where is it you live?”
    “A few blocks from here.”
    Standing on a street corner, a thickset woman in a babushka raised her hand in a timid wave, and Edwin waved back. I was immediately aware of my stylish rose-colored tie at my throat lifting in the breeze in the open car as though it were greeting her too. I took her glance at me not as