M. J. ROSE
Grace was already dressed for the day ahead in a white pinafore, black stockings, shoes, and her lovely white coat. Draped diagonally across her chest was the sash that Katrina and Grace had sewn and embroidered together. White satin, edged with amethyst ribbon, the green letters spelling out Miss Suffragette City. An appliqué of the Statue of Liberty finished the piece.
“I’m all ready for our parade. Look!” Grace sang out, as she ran into the dining room and pirouetted in front of her aunt Katrina.
Grace had been followed by Ginger, the cocker spaniel who never left the seven-year-old’s side, and who now, sensing the child’s excitement, was wagging her tail as fast as a propeller.
Katrina, who had been standing at the sideboard, spooning eggs onto her plate, did as the tiny terror demanded and regarded her niece. The morning light shone through the stained glass windows, casting lovely blue and green watercolor reflections on Grace’s coat. The dining room windows, like all the windows in the Thirty-Sixth Street apartment, had been designed by her father-in-law, Louis Comfort Tiffany. Not only the windows, but the vases, silverware, glassware, accoutrements on the desktops—everything including her own engagement and wedding rings—were all from the family-owned emporium on Fifth Avenue, Tiffany & Co. Sometimes Katrina looked around at all the beauty thinking that she was plainer than everything in her own house. It wasn’t that she was unhappy with her looks, but she was realistic about them. Her husband, Charles, the only surviving son of the owner of Tiffany’s, had chosen his bride for her brains, not her beauty. Back then, that had been what was important to him.
“Aunt Katrina?”
The little girl was waiting for a reaction.
“You’re the very spirit of the day, darling,” Katrina said with a wide smile. “But”—she glanced over at Grace’s nanny, Tribly—“it’s too early to be all dressed and ready to go. The parade isn’t till this afternoon. Let’s take off the sash and coat, and put on an apron so you can have breakfast with me.”
“Ready to go where?” Charles Tiffany asked, as he strode into the dining room.
Ginger went to greet her master, tail wagging, knowing that she was soon going to get some eggs.
Katrina gave her husband one of her wide smiles and, instead of answering him right away, greeted him. “Good morning, dear. Breakfast looks especially good this morning. Can I make you a plate?”
Charles came over and inspected the silver salvers.
Katrina watched him, judging his mood. He seemed pleased enough as he kissed her on the forehead and told her that, yes, he’d appreciate a plate. She’d always enjoyed listening to his voice. It resonated with his fine education. He’d gone to the best prep school and then on to Yale. Like his father, Charles was a tall man with thick chestnut hair and brilliant blue eyes. But unlike Louis Comfort Tiffany, Charles didn’t take in everything around him. He didn’t notice beauty with the same appreciation that his father did. After all, he didn’t create exquisite objects like his father did; he only sold them. She often wondered if that’s why there was a joy in the father’s eyes that was missing in the son’s. Katrina hadn’t been aware of it when she’d first met Charles. She hadn’t even realized it the first few years they’d been together. One day, she’d broken an iridescent vase that her father-in-law had given her and been distraught over it. Charles had called in the maid to sweep up the pieces, and then, as if it had been an ordinary white china cup, told Katrina not to be so concerned, that he’d bring another home from the store. As if they were all interchangeable. She was certain that he had to know better, with a father who noticed every feather and pebble and shaft of light, that no two vases were alike. That each had a patina and sweep of color unique to itself, and that the one she’d broken was especially beautiful. But he hadn’t seemed to. As the years passed and Katrina continued to study the dynamic between father and son, and listened to the nuances of Charles’s stories about growing up, she came to better understand her husband’s reactions. Too many times, Louis Comfort Tiffany had adored his glass, ceramic, and jeweled creations and often made more of a fuss over them than over his family, which created resentments among his children.
Katrina added more eggs, bacon, and tomatoes onto the plate she was holding and took it over to Charles. Returning to the sideboard, she prepared another for herself as she addressed Grace’s companion, Tribly.
“Nanny, help Grace change so she can have breakfast with us.”
The two of them left, and Katrina watched the little girl skip out of the room holding Tribly’s hand.
When Grace had come to live with her aunt and uncle while her parents spent the year in India, Tribly had come with her. That, as it turned out, had been a very good thing. As much as both Katrina and Charles loved their nieces, nephews, and godchildren, without children of their own, they were a bit lost when it came to day-to-day caretaking.
Grace was a highly intelligent and sensitive little girl. But being an only child meant she was something of a loner, possibly too attached to her mother and father. She hadn’t handled the transition as well as Katrina had hoped. Tribly’s presence, though, had helped both emotionally and practically. Almost as much as Ginger, Katrina and Charles’s spaniel.
Katrina had taken to teaching Grace sewing and embroidery. Katrina’s stepmother had taught her, and she was enjoying passing the hobby on. She and Grace practiced by creating a wardrobe for Ginger, who patiently put up with the fittings. Katrina wasn’t sure who was more proud of the clothes when they went out for walks: Ginger wearing the concoctions, or Grace showing off her prowess with the needle.
“So where is it that Grace is going today?” Charles asked his wife.
Katrina put her plate down next to him and took her seat.
Before she could answer, Wilson, the butler, emerged with a silver pot and proceeded to pour wonderfully fragrant coffee into Minton Somerset Green china cups, made exclusively for Tiffany & Co.
“I thought I’d bring her to the march,” Katrina said, as she splashed cream into hers.
Charles took a sip of his black coffee too quickly and grimaced.
Katrina silently cursed, knowing from the louder-than-usual clink of porcelain what was coming.
“We discussed all this and agreed Grace would stay home today,” he said.
“We did. Yes. But I changed my mind. Grace should be exposed to what is going on in our world. Today is going to be historic. I know it. And I want her to experience it. This fight for the vote is nearly seventy years old.”
“Yes, but we agreed,” he repeated.
“This is Grace’s future. I want her to see women marching, with the men who support them—” She paused to take a sip of her coffee, surprised that despite the scent and the cream it was a bit bitter. “Oh, Charles,” she pleaded. “What harm is there?”
“The harm is the child’s safety. Why do I have to remind you? My responsibility is to take care of Grace. And of you, my dear. Of everyone who lives under my roof. These suffrage events can turn ugly, Katrina, you know that. If it were up to me you wouldn’t even be marching. But there’s nothing I can do about that, is there?”
Ignoring the question, Katrina continued. “How many protests have I attended and how many parades did I march in in college? I’m hardly one of the precious vases or lamps from the store, Charles. I haven’t gotten chipped, smashed, or dropped in any of them. And I won’t today.”
“You can’t know that. You’ve had luck on your side. These marches are not safe. We both know there have been women badly hurt both here and in England. Imprisoned! And you are much more precious to me than any one of our vases or lamps. I couldn’t bear it if anything was to happen to you. Or to Grace.”
His sentiment was heartfelt, and Katrina knew it. She sighed. Navigating a marriage was no easy thing, and she was the first to admit she didn’t always get it right. It was like the new car that her father-in-law had just purchased, that she had borrowed to practice driving at Laurelton. Turning the wheel required a lot of strength, and even when you managed it smoothly, there was no controlling the road beneath the chassis.
Grace came running back into the room.
“I don’t believe I got my morning hello,” Charles said to the little girl.
She skipped over to him and kissed him good morning. Gently, he reached out and brushed an errant curl off her forehead. And for what felt like the millionth time, Katrina felt a pull deep inside her.
At first she’d thought that she had been the one unable to conceive, because it seemed impossible that her strong, capable husband would be sterile. Katrina’s grandfather had been a doctor. She herself had been in the 1897 graduating class of Bryn Mawr with a double major in chemistry and biology and understood more than most women about the goings on inside the womb. When after two years she still had not fallen pregnant, Katrina and Charles sought advice from physicians, none of whom discovered any reason for it, other than the mumps that Charles had contracted during childhood. The illness must have made him sterile.
Once the two of them accepted the situation, Katrina brought up the idea of adopting a foundling. She was a secretary of the executive committee of the Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children and treasurer of the Sunnyside Day Nursery. She saw children in need who broke her heart, whom she and Charles could do so much for. But her proud, stubborn husband hadn’t been able to embrace the idea.
She had forgiven him for his sterility, but Charles had not forgiven himself. He had learned to cope with the fact that unlike his father, he was neither artist, nor jeweler, nor inventor of a unique style of stained glass. Charles could accept that there were many things Louis Comfort Tiffany had done that he would never do. But there was one thing the elder Tiffany had done a half-dozen times that Charles could not accept. And that was his ability to father a child.
Now here they were. Married fourteen years. And suddenly a child had come to live with them, bringing with her so much joy. And yet at the same time reminding Katrina, and she assumed her husband, all too often of what they didn’t have.
Before Grace had moved in for the year, Katrina and Charles had settled into their routine. They were eminently busy between the work they both did—he at the family-owned concern, and she with the suffrage movement and various charities and garden clubs—plus their social engagements, family obligations, and weekends in Long Island. They frequented the opera and the theater. They shared a love of tennis, golf, and sailing. They seemed to have worked out a life that even without children was rich and fulfilling.
Then Grace had arrived. It was different than having dinner with their extended family that included many nieces and nephews. Different than spending weekends with friends who had children.
Day after day, this feisty little creature who cried and laughed and learned and gave affection with abandon reminded Katrina of what she’d never had. And, she imagined, reminded Charles of what he could not give his wife.
She’d thought she’d come to terms with their childlessness but now she saw she’d only buried her feelings under a pile of good works. What had her husband done with his?
“Uncle Charles, I’m going to march in the parade with Aunt Katrina!” Grace told him as she scooped eggs onto her fork.
“I think we need to discuss that, Grace,” he said in all earnestness.
“What do you mean?” She put down the fork. She was suddenly on high alert, hearing something in her uncle’s voice that made her very nervous.
Katrina watched the little girl start to worry her thumbnail with the pad of her forefinger, her tell when she sensed trouble.
“I think it would be much more fun for you and Nanny to come to my office instead of getting all tired and dirty at the march. We can sit in the window seat and watch it all as it goes by.”
Grace’s lips quivered. She looked over at her aunt. Katrina could see the little girl was about to cry. And she couldn’t have that. It made Katrina remember when she’d been a bit younger than Grace and her mother had died. Her aunt had come to Katrina’s bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed and told Katrina she had some bad news and was going to need her to be a big girl and not cry. But Katrina hadn’t been able to swallow her grief.
“I think your uncle has come up with a grand idea. You can have a party at his office with Tribly. Hot chocolate and cakes. And you can stand at the window and wave at me and all the grown-ups and…” She was trying as hard as she could to come up with more, and then she hit on it. The perfect idea. “And if you promise to be careful with it, I will give you my Brownie camera! And you can be the parade’s official photographer, which is much more important than marching. Would you like that?”
“Your Brownie?” Grace asked in astonishment.
Katrina nodded with all the solemnity the moment allowed.
Grace was obsessed with the camera. When she first arrived and saw it, she’d begged Katrina to teach her how to use it. She’d broken it the second time she’d tried and had been inconsolable. Katrina had bought a new one and had been giving her lessons ever since. As good as Grace was at sewing, she was even better at photography. Even at her young age, she had shown a very sophisticated eye for framing.
Now Katrina watched her niece’s expression go from sorrow to elation. “The official photographer for the parade?” Then she scrunched up her forehead. “What does that mean?”
“Sit down and while we eat, I can explain.”
Grace did as she was told, and Katrina described what “official photographer” meant and what Grace’s obligations would be if she accepted the job. Which the child did with delight. Over her cup, Katrina glanced at Charles, who was reading the morning paper, having divorced himself from the conversation now that he had gotten his way. He always expected to win and was petulant when he didn’t.
Theirs wasn’t the ideal marriage she’d envisioned when at twenty-five she had fallen in love with a man three years her junior who’d been more taken with her for her accomplishments than her looks. It had been quite the scandal that she was older and involved in the suffrage movement. She’d expected the gossip to bother him more. But if anything he’d seemed to enjoy the shock of it all. As had she. She’d loved that they were flaunting propriety a bit. When he introduced her to friends and family, he always mentioned how much he admired Katrina’s gumption to go to college—his sisters had as well—and to have graduated with a double major. And to be taking up causes. But it seemed as if all that pride had turned to anger over what she was fighting for now. Was it his resentment that she had something she loved so much outside of their home? That she was fulfilled by the movement in a way he wasn’t by his work? And if it was, then he was being a spoiled child.
She chided herself. It was unfair of her to judge him harshly. Charles was generous, thoughtful, and very kind. Like Katrina, he had lost his mother when he was very young. She at age five, he at six. They shared that heartache. Charles had grown up with six sisters and liked women in a way that not all men did. That endeared him to Katrina. It was part of his attraction. Unlike other men, he had never ignored what she had to say or thought less of an idea just because it had come from a woman.
Charles also had to accept that he’d been the replacement to the firstborn Charles Lewis Tiffany, who had died as a baby.
Katrina thought it cruel that her father-in-law had named his second son after his first. What a burden for a child to have. Katrina saw its ramifications. Charles wasn’t quite the son Louis had wanted. Not creative. Not an artist. Not capable of giving the Tiffany name an heir. Not someone who would change the world the way Louis had, or his father before him.
All that frustration and the sense of being less than came out in ways that over time Katrina had come to dislike. She knew from her close friends that no marriage was immune to feelings of anger and even hatred. It was typical for a couple to get on each other’s nerves. But if you were lucky, as she was, respect and abiding love would get you through. Except for the last few years, his refusal to embrace the movement that she was devoting her life to was becoming a real obstacle in their union. He confounded her. Here was a man who adored women and cherished them and trusted them and looked to them for advice and yet clung to old-fashioned notions of protecting her.
“So it’s settled, then,” Katrina said to Grace. “I’ll wave up at you in the window of Tiffany’s, and you’ll take my picture along with pictures of all the other women and men marching. It’s a very important job, but I’m convinced you’re going to do us proud. And maybe we can use one of your photographs in our next pamphlet.”
Grace beamed, and Charles looked on, amused.
“Well done, dear,” he said. Then he squinted and leaned closer to her. “Katrina, what is that pin on your lapel?”
She reached up and touched the amethyst, peridot, and diamond butterfly pin she’d attached to her white shirtwaist. She could have waited to put it on at the march and prevented Charles from noticing it. But she prized honesty above all other virtues, even if it meant another row with her husband.
Katrina had a few pieces of jewelry she’d been given as a young woman that had come from other stores. Upon her graduation from high school her stepmother and father had given her pearls from Bailey Banks & Biddle. When she’d graduated from college they’d presented her with a diamond watch from the same shop. But except for a few odds and ends she had inherited, all her pieces came from the Fifth Avenue store started in 1837 by her husband’s grandfather. And Charles didn’t recognize this one.
“It’s a suffrage pin. Dr. Kunz helped us get them made. A dozen of us have them, and we’re all wearing them today.”
“Dr. Kunz? Our Dr. Kunz? The head of the gemology department at Tiffany’s?”
“Of course. Who else would we ask?”
Charles shook his head. “This is really going too far, Katrina. Did you go behind my back and ask Dr. Kunz to do this for your group?”
“As a matter of fact, no. I wouldn’t do that, Charles. Would I?”
He looked almost sheepish except that was an attitude he never adopted. He wasn’t very good at admitting he was wrong, or apologizing. Something he’d clearly inherited, along with blue eyes and a strong, handsome face, from his father.
“George Kunz is a member of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage—”
“Don’t remind me,” Charles interrupted.
Katrina frowned. This was old ground and tiresome. “And among the members are the husbands of many women with whom I work, of which you are aware. Mrs. Belmont went to Dr. Kunz and asked him, and he was only too happy to help her create something symbolic. And what better than a butterfly—a symbol of metamorphosis and endurance. Butterflies prove that change is a beautiful thing.”
“I love butterflies,” Grace chimed in. “There are so many at Laurelton. Grandpa planted all those butterfly bushes to make sure they’d come visit, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Katrina said. “They’re called Buddleia bushes.”
Uninterested in the Latin name for the plant, Grace continued talking. “Grampa once told me a butterfly was a garden with wings. So is your pin a garden with wings, too?”
Katrina nodded. That was so like her father-in-law to say. He lived to create beauty and revered it. He’d used the symbol himself, in lamps as well as in freestanding stained glass butterflies and dragonflies that he hung from the windows and would give as small gifts, delighting everyone who received one.
“I don’t know if I approve of Dr. Kunz creating Tiffany jewelry that is going to be associated with this radical movement.”
“It’s too late, darling. Just like it’s too late for antiquated views about suffrage.” Harsh words but communicated softly, as was her style. “You know, you really are a complicated man. You met me—already a total radical, already committed to the movement, a college graduate scandalously three years your senior—and you married me. I told you I wasn’t going to change. And yet you’ve spent the last few years shaking your head as if you suddenly woke up and discovered I was a political creature determined to get women the vote. And we are going to get it, Charles, despite you and your friends who for God knows what reason are scared of us entering the voting booth.”
“The reason is that there are spheres in which feelings should be paramount and kingdoms in which the heart should reign supreme and those belong to women—”
“Charles, don’t go quoting that ridiculous anti-suffrage nonsense suggesting men are the only ones capable of understanding politics. What is that phrase I keep hearing? Oh, yes, ‘politics degrades women more than women purify politics.’ Please, that’s not true any more than any of those other platitudes men keep circulating.”
“Are you two fighting?” Grace asked in a very serious tone of voice.
Katrina laughed and then Charles joined in.
“Actually, yes, dear,” Katrina said. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t love each other. Like when you and I fight over you not behaving.”
“That’s what Mama says about her and Papa fighting, too.”
“Because it’s true,” Katrina said.
Beside her, Charles sighed. “I did know whom I was marrying, my dear. But I didn’t think that you’d devote yourself to this quite the way you have. Getting even more involved in it. I thought…” He broke off.
Katrina put her hand over his, covering his wedding ring with her palm. They both had their disappointments. Of course he hadn’t expected her to get even more involved. They’d expected to start a family. Expected she’d have babies and become the mother she had been so desperate to become.
At eleven o’clock, before Katrina left to go downtown and start helping prepare for the march, she stopped in on Grace and her nanny. Giving Tribly the Brownie camera, she instructed her on the plans for the rest of the day.
She was to bring Grace and the camera to Mr. Tiffany’s office at three and remain there for at least an hour until Katrina and her group had walked under the window and Grace was able to take her photograph.
“And I think since you have the camera, you should leave the dog at home,” Katrina said to Grace, who agreed.
In the front hall of the brownstone on Thirty-Sixth Street, Katrina put on her hat and jacket, checked her reflection in the mirror, and went outside to the car and driver she’d ordered. Her destination, she told Miller, the chauffeur, was Washington Square West. But he might not be able to get all the way there due to certain streets being closed off because of the parade.
Katrina had a good feeling about today. The excitement had been palpable for weeks. There had been dozens of marches in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and other big cities since the movement had really taken off in the States in 1909. But the rumors were that this was going to be the biggest. As one of the organizers, she was anxious that everything go well. The mayor would be at the main reviewing stand, along with state officials. There would be other reviewing stands on the parade route for more dignitaries. There would be hecklers, too—angry men and even some angry women—who, much like her own husband, didn’t want things to change. Thousands of police would help control the crowds and keep the peace if in fact any altercations broke out. She hoped there would be no arrests and no one got hurt.
In England, the movement had been much more violent. But Katrina, along with her fellow activists in America, had chosen to pursue a more peaceful path. So far it had mostly worked, but women were getting tired. Tired of the fact that since Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had begun this movement in 1852, it was still ongoing. Here they were in 1915, and they still had to protest and fight and explain and cajole. They still had to put up with archaic notions that women were second-class citizens, incapable of figuring out for whom to cast their vote. Or as Charles had said at breakfast, they were fragile and needed protecting. Fragile, my foot, Katrina thought, and gave a deep sigh.
“Is everything all right, ma’am?”
“Yes, Miller. I’m thinking about today.”
“The missus is marching. She’s got all her gear. I helped her with her banner.”
Katrina grinned. Miller’s wife was the family’s seamstress and a delightful woman. The couple had three young daughters, and Katrina spoiled them.
“Thank you for being so supportive of our effort, Miller.”
“Well, the way I look at it, I don’t want my little girls to grow up in an unfair world.”
“You’re one of the enlightened ones,” she said, not voicing the rest of what she was thinking. That she didn’t know how her Yale-educated husband, who ran one of the most important stores in the country, where women made up the greatest number of customers, who had six sisters, who loved his wife with passion and devotion, couldn’t manage to open his mind the way their chauffeur had.
Miller took several detours, but as Katrina had predicted, the closest he could get her to her destination was Ninth Street and Sixth Avenue. She didn’t mind walking, she told him, and thanked him as she got out and merged into the crowd.
Katrina knew the map of where they were all to meet by heart. She’d helped organize it. Businesswomen were to congregate on West Thirteenth Street. Letter carriers’ wives on East Ninth. On West Eleventh near Fifth were the artists and actresses and dancers, architects, other occupational groups. Some meeting places were organized by profession, others by the clubs the women belonged to.
Everywhere she looked women were dressed in white, carrying yellow or purple, green, and white banners. Some wore celluloid buttons. Others had pinned white feathers onto their hats. The feeling in the air was jovial, excited, and portentous.
After ten minutes, Katrina joined the other members of the Woman Suffrage Party of New York. Almost everyone was there, many of them wearing George Kunz’s pins, the peridot and amethyst wings glittering in the sunlight.
The march finally started with a surge at three in the afternoon. A lively brass band began playing, filling the air with the exciting sounds of trombones and trumpets. Katrina felt the drumbeat through the soles of her shoes, making its way up inside her until it reached the tips of her fingers. Her heart pounded to the rhythm.
She felt her eyes fill up with tears as she passed underneath the arch at the north end of Washington Square Park and, arm in arm with her sisters, trekked up Fifth Avenue. She had been devoted to the cause her entire adult life. This was the moment she had been waiting for, and it was already spectacular. They had expected crowds, but what she was seeing heartened her. These were much bigger and grander than any she’d imagined. She couldn’t see the fronts of the buildings anymore. In some places, it looked like the spectators were eight or nine rows deep.
Yes, there was something different about today. Maybe 1915 would be their year. Thirteen other states had already ratified and given the vote to women. Maybe this march, two weeks before the ballots were to be cast, would be what finally made the difference in her own beloved city.
At noon, Charles Tiffany’s secretary, Inez Goddard, knocked on his door. Because the store was open on Saturdays, Charles often came in for half a day and his secretary did as well. There were always jewelers on the premises, too, in case an important client had an emergency. Tiffany’s was known for its customer service. Charles’s grandfather had prided himself on being available and satisfying every customer’s needs. Charles and his father knew that philosophy had helped build the store’s stellar reputation.
“Dr. Kunz is here to see you, sir,” Inez said.
When he’d arrived that morning, Charles had asked Inez to see if the chief gemologist was in the building. And if not, to put a call in to his home. It appeared she’d located him.
“Please send him in.”
George Kunz walked into the room. Right away Charles noticed the orange-and-black celluloid pin on the gemologist’s lapel. The words “Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage” encircled a three-petaled flower. Charles swallowed his sigh and greeted Dr. Kunz. At age fifty-nine, Dr. Kunz was a leader in his field and had been for more than twenty years.
“Have a seat, George. Would you like some coffee?”
“Thank you, yes.” The white-bearded, white-haired man sat down easily. He exuded energy and curiosity.
Charles had always liked him and felt a bit awkward about this encounter. Rising, he walked over to the bar in the corner of his office where Inez refreshed a silver urn with coffee several times each day. He filled two cups, splashed cream in both, and walked back to his desk, where he handed the gemologist a cup. Charles sat down across from one of the most revered members of the Tiffany’s firm and hesitated for a moment. He didn’t want to antagonize Dr. Kunz. Having worked side by side with Charles’s grandfather and then his father, Kunz was a part of the Tiffany’s legend. By the time he was a teenager, he had collected more than four thousand mineral specimens. He had even discovered a new gem in 1902, a lavender-pink gemstone that had been named after him, kunzite.
“So, Charles, how can I help you?”
“I’m … I was glad I caught you in.”
“I’m only here for a few hours. I’m marching in the parade.”
“Yes, yes. It’s about that, actually, that I wanted to talk to you. About this brooch you’ve made for some of the ladies in the movement.” He paused. Charles thought of Dr. Kunz as a member of his family, an uncle even. He’d known him his whole life. Dr. Kunz had been to his wedding. Charles had attended the gemologist’s wife’s funeral, as well as his granddaughter’s christening. They’d traveled together and argued politics before. But this conversation was sure to be more difficult.
“I happened to see my wife wearing her brooch this morning.”
Kunz smiled. “Yes, I’m quite fond of it. We created more than a dozen butterflies with some lovely amethysts and peridots. The insect is a perfect symbol for these strong women and this brave fight.”
The store’s elder statesman had traveled all over the world, dug for gems, discovered new minerals, staved off robbers and thugs. He’d carried a gun hunting amethysts in Siberia. He’d written the definitive book on the folklore and magic of gems, of Shakespeare’s use of precious stones, on the history of talismans. And he was a sentimentalist. Just a few months ago, Charles had been to the Riverside Park ceremony where a twenty-foot-tall equestrian statue of Joan of Arc had been unveiled. Along with five other men, Dr. Kunz had been responsible for raising twenty thousand dollars to have the piece sculpted, cast, and installed. The artist they chose was a woman, no less, Anna Vaughan Hyatt. An avant-garde decision. But then, Dr. Kunz was a liberal progressive. He believed mightily in democracy and equality. He often spoke about how poorly the African diamond miners were treated, of the squalor and illness he encountered in China during his searches for jade, of the terrible poverty he witnessed in India. He’d become a staunch advocate for labor and women’s rights. So when Joan of Arc had come back into popularity in France and been named a saint, Dr. Kunz, along with steel fortune heir J. Sanford Saltus, decided to adopt her as a symbol of what women could accomplish.
To honor Saint Joan, Dr. Kunz had traveled to France to collect stones to include in the statue’s granite base. In Rouen, he’d picked up pebbles from the castle where Joan of Arc had been imprisoned. From Reims Cathedral, he’d obtained masonry fragments from the room where she’d watched Charles VII’s coronation. He’d collected rocks from Domrémy, where she was born, and some from Orléans, where she so valiantly led the troops.
Kunz had also buried a time capsule inside the base: a box made of copper that held souvenirs from her recent canonization—commemorative medals, copies of the speeches, and some American and French coins. But of all the things Charles had taken note of, the staurolite crystal that Kunz had included was the most moving. Fairy stone, as it was called, was meant to symbolize the tears shed for the saint.
“The butterfly brooches are lovely, but I’d prefer to keep politics out of the store,” Charles said.
“They were not put on display for exactly that reason. They were a private transaction between me and several of the leading ladies of the movement.” He cleared his throat. “Including your wife.”
“Yes, yes … as I mentioned, she’s wearing it today for the march.”
“What is it that bothers you, Charles? That Katrina is wearing the pin, or that she’s marching?”
Charles felt that same frustration he’d experienced at breakfast, that he’d felt for the last few years whenever he and Katrina butted heads over suffrage.
“Damn it, it all bothers me. It bothers me that I can’t convince her to give up this fight.”
“But, Charles, it’s not you or me that they’re fighting. They are standing up to be treated as equals. We trust women with our love, our health and happiness, to take care of our home, to raise our children. We ask them to work with us in our factories and offices and often do the same jobs we do. Why shouldn’t they be equal and vote for the politicians who will make decisions about their lives?”
“I imagine your daughter is marching?”
“Ruby is a grown woman with a daughter of her own. She doesn’t clear her activities with me. But, yes, of course she is. And with her daughter.”
“And I imagine Ruby has one of these pins, too?”
“Charles, this conversation is—”
“I know, I know,” he interrupted. “I’m being old-fashioned. I don’t like all this uproar and change. I worry about Katrina.”
Dr. Kunz nodded. “You know what is one of the most wonderful things about gemstones? In this world that is constantly changing, you can count on a sapphire always being royal blue and a ruby always being bloodred. We appreciate the permanence of jewelry, you and I, and your father and grandfather. How a stone is passed down from generation to generation, enduring through time. But you can’t apply that to people and customs and desires and politics. They will never be as constant as a hundred-thousand-year-old diamond. Life is what our thoughts make it, Charles. Joy is born of gratified desire. Be it a woman putting on a bracelet adorned with precious emeralds, or standing up and fighting to be treated as an equal. Both make her heart beat faster. As will the heart of the man who gives her the bracelet or stands by her side in the fight.”
“Is there nothing I can say that would cause you to at least consider my way of thinking?” Charles asked.
“Consider this. Stop thinking of women as objets d’art made of glass, son. Think of them instead as gems. Yes, the diamond is king, but the pearl is queen—with that touch of feminine frailty that is part of a woman’s charm. Yes, the pearl is slightly less impermeable. Yet, like a woman, it has endurance. Every bit as much as the masculine gems. You see that, yes?”
No, Charles didn’t see it. Nothing was as hard as a diamond. A pearl could be smashed with a hammer. The gemologist was romanticizing. Charles drained his coffee cup.
“I wanted to ask you to please not sell any more of those butterflies, even privately.”
“I can’t agree to that. They’re not stamped with the Tiffany and Co. seal. I used my own gem stock and paid the jewelers out of my own pocket. You’ll never see them in the store, that I can guarantee. But never create more of them?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Charles, but I cannot give you my word on that.”
A few hours later, Charles’s office door burst open, and with impish delight, Grace came skipping in, Tribly a few steps behind her.
“There are so many people in the street!” Grace said breathlessly.
She was wearing her white coat, her Miss Suffragette City sash, and holding the Brownie camera like her little life depended on it. Tribly had done up her hair in perfect ringlets, with purple and green intertwined ribbons, and had pinned a suffrage ribbon on her own coat.
Mr. Tiffany frowned at it, but Tribly seemed to ignore him. The nanny didn’t work for him, after all, but for Grace’s parents. It wasn’t his place, but he wanted to ask her to remove it. He was sick of the whole thing. It seemed everyone around him had fallen victim to the madness of this movement. He even suspected Inez Goddard had one of those ribbons tucked underneath her collar, but he was too much of a gentleman to ask.
“Yes, yes, it’s going to be a very grand parade,” Charles said to Grace. “Now come see your perch.” He stood and took her hand.
He smiled as he felt the small, warm fingers curl into his. Of his six sisters, five were younger. Grace reminded him of them—especially the youngest, Dorothy, who had married the year before. There was a time when she used to put her little hand in his, the way Grace was doing now, whenever he took her down to the beach at Laurelton for a swim or a sailboat ride.
Charles indicated the navy-blue cushioned window seat. “Now, if you sit here, you can look out and take pictures of the people as they pass by. I’ve figured out that your aunt Katrina will be passing by in about thirty to forty-five minutes if the parade is on time.”
It was, in fact, precisely forty minutes later when Charles, who’d gotten up to watch the marchers with his niece, saw his wife. She was at the head of the parade carrying a large American flag, marching to the sound of the big brass band. As they watched her come closer, the wind whipped up, and the flag wrapped around Katrina’s face, obstructing her from view.
“Oh, no, I can’t see Aunt Katrina to take her picture!” said Grace with a note of panic.
Grace had been snapping photos for the last half hour, taking so many, Charles had had to change her film twice.
“Just wait, sweetheart, the flag will blow off in a second.”
“But I can’t take her picture if I can’t see her face!” Grace was distraught.
“Any minute the wind will die down,” Charles reassured her as he watched the scene. The wind held the flag to his wife like an embrace. How fitting that was, he thought. She was as married to her causes as much as she was married to him. But that’s exactly why he’d found her so fascinating when he met her. Her determination and her enthusiasm, along with her ready smile and spirit of adventure, defined her.
How he wished they could see eye to eye on this one subject, though. That they didn’t have to argue about it so often.
Charles continued watching the flag. Finally, it blew open for a moment, and he caught a glimpse of Katrina laughing as she struggled against the folds of fabric.
“Now, Grace,” he said. Then the wind whipped up again, and Katrina was gone once more.
Behind him he heard the child’s nanny call out in a concerned voice: “Grace?”
Charles looked away from the parade and down at his side. His niece wasn’t there.
“Grace?” Charles called as he spun around and looked over at Tribly. “Where is she?”
“She must have run out,” Tribly said, heading to the door. “I was reading. I didn’t see…”
Charles outran Tribly and raced out of his office. He sprinted down the hall and took the stairs, Tribly barely keeping up.
They reached the first-floor landing.
The store was crowded with patrons who’d been watching the parade and then had come inside for a look around. He and Tribly stood surveying the crowd.
“Where could she be?” Charles asked. “Where would she go?
“She was so concerned about not getting a photograph of her aunt marching. Maybe she went outside to see if she could get one that way?” Tribly suggested.
“Into that mob? Oh, no!” Charles shouted as he pushed his way through the shoppers in the aisles of his store, panicked at the thought of the tiny child caught in the throng of people outside.
Charles hurried to reach the doors to the street. For the first time in his life he forgot about where he was. He’d been taught since he was a little boy that he had to be careful in the store. There were precious objects in every cabinet, on every shelf. One always had to be mindful so as to avoid bumping into someone or knocking against a cabinet. But not today. Every second that he slowed down to let a woman pass or dodge a glass corner was a second that Grace was venturing deeper into the crowd.
Had Katrina seen her? He hoped so. He prayed the little girl had run right up to her aunt. He imagined Katrina being surprised to see her, picking Grace up and laughing that she could walk with her after all. He pictured his wife taking Grace’s hand, as he had not an hour ago, and the two of them marching the rest of the way together to Fifty-Ninth Street.
“Ouch!” a woman shouted, as Charles accidentally stepped on her foot. He mumbled an apology as he swerved to miss her and felt his shoulder hit something.
He’d lived in dread of hearing the sound, that terrible sound, that meant he’d been careless and broken some precious object his father had made or collected. The sound that told him he’d be getting punished for his infraction.
He’d never broken a lamp—not even as a boy playing hide-and-seek with his sisters in the house that was filled with dozens of stained glass lamps. Not even while throwing a ball on the lawn at Laurelton, outside the estate that boasted more than a hundred stained glass windows.
Now he heard that sound. For one second he looked down. A table lamp—red tulips, emerald leaves, and orange butterflies—broken, ruined, in pieces, scattered on the floor and on the countertop. But Charles couldn’t waste any more time. He ran out of the store and into the street, looking for Grace. It appeared she had indeed been swallowed up by the damnable parade.
For a moment he was swallowed up also. He turned around and around. He tried to shout over the sound of the marching band, but after the third time he’d hollered, “Grace—Grace—Grace…” he knew that it was fruitless. The band played on as more and more women marched by carrying their flags and banners.
He turned around and around once more.
And there she was. Grace, standing off to the side, petting the nose of a white horse. And Katrina, still holding her flag, by her side.
Charles took a deep breath. He hadn’t lost her after all.
He pushed through the crowd, making his way over to his wife and niece, both of whom were surprised to see him.
“Grace!” he said, kneeling down in front of the little girl, taking her by the shoulders, wanting to hug her and shake her at the same time. “You can’t go running out like that. I couldn’t find you. You have to mind when someone tells you what to do.”
Grace’s face threatened tears. Katrina looked at Charles and said, “She’s sorry.” Then she looked back at Grace. “You are, aren’t you, Grace? Apologize to your uncle.”
“I am sorry.”
“Why did you run off?” Charles asked.
“I wanted to take a better picture of Aunt Katrina. I told you.”
“Yes, you did.” Charles stood. “Let’s take the picture now, and then I’ll take you back upstairs.” He looked at his wife. “All right?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
Charles watched as Katrina posed and Grace lifted the Brownie to her eye and positioned the camera exactly how she wanted it.
“You look like a soldier, Aunt Katrina,” she said. “A soldier in the parade.”
Taken with the child’s description, Charles looked from Grace back to Katrina. She did look like a soldier. A soldier with a smile on her face.
Grace took another photograph and then lowered the camera.
“Thank you,” Katrina said to Grace.
“For what?”
“For saying I look like a soldier. For seeing me the way I want to be seen,” Katrina said.
Charles saw the light shining in his wife’s eyes. What she’d said echoed in his mind. He repeated it to himself. Thought about it. He forgot about his niece for the moment. And the parade and the music. Charles closed the gap between them.
“I haven’t changed my mind about the parade, Katrina, but…”
Katrina was surprised by the softness in his eyes. “What is it, Charles?”
“I haven’t been seeing you the way you want to be seen, have I?”
She shook her head. “Not for a long while.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
She bowed her head for a moment, so he couldn’t see the tears in her eyes. So he wouldn’t know how much that mattered to her. She didn’t want to be weak like that, not here, not now.
“Thank you for that. We’ll talk about this later. I need to get back to the parade.”
Charles nodded. “I’ll get Grace and—”
He looked from Katrina to his left, where Grace had been a moment ago.
“Grace?” he yelled.
She’d just been there. And now she was lost again.
“Grace!” he called out again.
“You look back that way,” Katrina said. “I’ll start looking ahead.”
“She can’t have gotten far. We’ll find her,” he said.
“Of course we will,” said Katrina.
And they both ran off in opposite directions.