Free Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland Page B

accusatory of my well-being, only curious.
    When the streetcar slowed for a stop, Edwin leapt off and ran to her. He spoke quickly, urgently, leaning down and holding both her hands in his upraised palms. Her head bobbed in happy acknowledgment. He made a move to jump back onto the running board, but then she said something more and he turned back to her and scribbled something on a scrap of paper. The streetcar started to roll and gain speed.
    “Stop! Stop!” I shouted in a panic.
    The conductor sounded an alarm and the driver slammed on the brakes, which jostled everyone. A little boy was thrown off his mother’s lap, and when I stepped off, the conductor yelled at me. I was rattled and miffed as I hurried back to Edwin, who was running toward me.
    “What were you thinking?” I cried. “The conductor, the driver, all those people were angry with me. I had to step over a child.”
    “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Clara. Are you all right?”
    “What was I supposed to do, riding off to God knows where without you?”
    “I’m sorry. I had to tell that woman that I found a job for her son. She doesn’t speak much English, so I didn’t think she got the name of the factory right. I needed to write it for her. I thought I could get back on in time.”
    I calmed down as we waited for the next streetcar. We sat inside this time, quiet for a few minutes. I could not begrudge Edwin his impulse to help. He had given the woman kindness and a moment of extraordinary humanity, and that was of inestimable value. Could a mosaic or a leaded-glass window do that?
    “What’s remarkable,” he murmured, intent on his thought, as though he had not done anything impulsive or reckless or disregardful of me, “is that most newcomers get out of here in one generation, working day and night to honor the parents who brought them here.”
    “The same ethic as the Tiffanys,” I said, “but I’m sure Mr. Tiffany has never set foot here—he of the opal ring who preaches that beauty is within the reach of everybody.”
    “There are other kinds of beauty.”
    And he had just shown me one kind. I forgave him at once.
    THE IRON STEAMBOAT COMPANY’S excursion sternwheeler eased out into the harbor among clipper ships, freighters, coal barges, and ferries. Edwin put his frock coat over my shoulders and stood close to block the wind that plastered his white shirtsleeves to his muscular arms. What a shift between rash disregard and thoughtful caring. We chugged near Ellis Island’s new immigration station, a two-story wooden structure with low towers at the corners. Nearly half a million people came through last year, Edwin said.
    “That’s only the beginning. The floodgates are open, Europe is pouring itself out, and we are witnessing the great drama of human migration.”
    He asked me to imagine the steerage immigrants wearing numbers pinned to their clothing and crowding through turnstiles to have theireyelids pulled up with buttonhooks during the brusque medical checks and health interrogation, New York’s version of Judgment Day. The rejected had to go back.
    My stomach revolted. What bewilderment had my girls felt as little tots? What humiliation and physical suffering had their parents endured first to get here, and then to be admitted? If the daughters were any indication, Wilhelmina’s parents would have stood up to it with square shoulders, but I wasn’t so sure about Cornelia’s.
    Up, out of murky water, the Statue of Liberty proclaimed with upraised arm thirty stories in the air the principles of friendship and welcome and hope, the possibilities of contribution and achievement. Edwin called it by its official name,
Liberty Enlightening the World
. The copper robes of this mighty woman fluttered in the same wind as my muslin skirt did, stirring me to shine.
    In the other direction, high above the East River, a roadway had been flung over the tops of masts, suspended on wire threads between two lordly towers with double Gothic