THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY WAS VISITING DAY, BUT BY THURSDAY, Charles had already become irritated with Aidan, anticipating his defection to Dec’s family.
As they filed into class that afternoon, Aidan commented to Charles, “You were awfully quiet at dinner.” Tink had gone on about Sumner’s older sister, whom Tink claimed was quite a looker, and how he hoped she would visit on Saturday, giving him an opportunity to woo her, but Tink’s goading had failed to get Sumner to utter a word. Charles had been almost as silent.
“Yeah, well, I can’t say I enjoyed myself too much on last Visiting Day, no thanks to you.”
“You’re sore that I went off with Dec.”
Charles slammed his satchel down on his desk. “Now why would I be sore that my own brother abandoned me on family day?”
“Okay, I was in the wrong. I didn’t think about it. It was just that Dec’s ma reminded me of . . . well, you know.” Aidan sat at the desk in front of Charles. “It felt like family.”
“I’m your family here.”
“Yes,” Aidan conceded. “Yes, you are.” He nudged Charles’s shoulder. “This Saturday, me and you are gonna stick together like glue. We’re gonna watch all them people get off the boat, and when everybody’s got someone, well, I’ll have you and you’ll have me. Why, you won’t be able to get rid of me. I’ll be eatin’ off your plate, wipin’ my nose with your kerchief, followin’ you into the crapper, wipin’ your—”
“Okay, okay,” said Charles, trying to maintain his frown. The Coffin began slapping her ruler on the desk to signal the beginning of class. “Go find your seat, you nutter.”
Due to the threat of rain, heralded by ominous, sooty clouds rolling in across the water, the customary band concert to greet the Visiting Day steamer was moved to inside Bulfinch. As the boys lined up and marched down to the wharf, a few fat drops of rain pelted a boy here and there, but the clouds seemed reluctant to let go of what they had.
“Don’t you think it’s a bit cruel to make every one of us come down to greet the boat?” Aidan said to Charles. “I mean, lookit Bill over there.” Bill was kicking the sand with the toe of his boot, cap pulled low, his hands shoved in his pockets. He looked at the ground in a crowd where most everyone else was craning to see the visitors coming down the wharf.
Charles grunted. “Salt says even though the visitors are supposed to send a letter that they’re comin’, sometimes people come unannounced. Plus, Bradley don’t want all the extra work of figuring out who should meet someone off the boat. And—”
Aidan gripped Charles’s shoulder, hard.
“What the hell, Sully?” he asked as he followed Aidan’s gaze to the wharf, where he saw a woman offering her limp, downturned hand to the superintendent. “Who is—” But then she turned so that her hat brim tipped up just enough to reveal her face. Bess. “We’ve got to get down there. C’mon!” Charles said, and he started to push the boys in front of him aside.
“Wait.” Aidan grabbed his arm. “I been writing her.”
Aidan dropped his voice to a whisper. “I didn’t ask her to come! I never thought she would take it in her head to come. I just wrote her with letters to get to my ma.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” hissed Charles.
“I thought you’d be mad. Say that I was takin’ a risk. And I was, I know. But you don’t know what it’s like, leavin’ your ma behind.”
“What if Bradley or someone had asked you who you was writing to?”
“I addressed them to Auntie Bess.”
Charles let out a bark of a laugh, so loud that two boys in front of him turned around for a moment. “Well, let’s go see Auntie, then.” They made their way down to the wharf.
Bradley and Bess seemed to be wrapping up some little conversation that amused the superintendent when the boys arrived. “Splendid!” said Bradley, turning to them. “I thought I would have to send one of the boys to find you, but here you are. Your charming aunt found she was able to rearrange her schedule at the last minute so that she could visit.” Charles wondered if there were indeed appointments that were rearranged; if there were, he was sure that they were not of the sort Bradley was imagining.
Bess smiled an unfamiliar smile at the two boys. Charles was sure he had never seen this smile on her face before. It was an expression that seemed apart from the grim nature of the waterfront, perhaps unaware of its very existence. While her face was still too hard to be pretty, it had somehow shed the shell that was necessary to protect it from the life it saw back on the mainland.
The voice that came from Bess was also one Charles did not recognize. “The weather did threaten today, but it will only get worse as we head into winter. And I couldn’t wait until spring to see you two.” Bess stared into Charles’s eyes, imploring him to play along, but he could also see that she was having great fun with all of this.
“Ma’am, I am a bit confused,” said Bradley. “I don’t recall seeing any relatives listed on the boys’ applications.”
“I am a distant aunt, one that had lost touch with their mother. I’ve only recently learned of their whereabouts. I was the sister of the brother-in-law of their father, God rest his soul.”
“Well, that explains it,” said Bradley, though he still looked slightly confused. Just then, another visitor asked Bradley a question, giving Bess the opportunity to whisk the boys away from the wharf, her sober skirts rustling.
“Well, hello, you sons of bitches,” Bess said in her regular voice when they were away from the crowd.
“Bess, what the hell are you doing here?” asked Charles.
“Visiting my nephews, of course. I always wanted to see this place.” She looked around from their vantage point on the lawn. “Lotta trees, not a lotta buildings. Where are all the saloons?” she wisecracked, almost giddy.
As she continued to scan the island, Charles looked her over carefully. If it weren’t for her face, he would never have recognized her. Bess’s most recognizable feature from a distance back in Boston, her cleavage, was now covered with a high-collared dress in a matronly shade of gray. He had never seen her in a hat, and she looked strangely pale without her rouge and lip paint.
“Ain’t this takin’ a risk, comin’ here?” asked Aidan.
“Look who’s talkin’ about takin’ risks—you, writing to your old Auntie Bess?” She tweaked his ear cheerfully. “Little pup, I take risks every day. Every time I take on a new john, could be he’s got the clap.” She took apparent pleasure in seeing Aidan blush at her comment.
“What’s with all the high-falutin’ talk there with Bradley?” Charles asked as they started to head up the hill with the rest of the crowd. “I didn’t even know you could talk like that.”
“There’s a lot that you don’t know about me, Nephew,” she replied archly. Charles thought about the note she’d written to Stryker and wondered if Bess wasn’t just grandstanding. Maybe she was more than he had assumed her to be—but what that might be, he still couldn’t figure.
All the boys and their visitors bunched up around the doors to Bulfinch as they filed in. Bess, Charles, and Aidan hung back a short distance, waiting for the crowd to thin. Bess smiled and took a big breath. “Air here is damn clear, I’ll say. Nothing like that stink on North Street.”
When most of the crowd was inside the building, they moved to join the last people entering. Bradley was standing by the door with friendly comments for the visitors. When Bess passed by him, he said, “Miss Matthews, I hope the band concert is to your liking.”
“I’ve no doubt it will be delightful,” she replied in her not-Bess voice, and Charles fought not to laugh.
In the afternoon, after the concert, the tours of the carpentry and print shops, and the midday meal—which was of decidedly higher quality and refinement than the typical Saturday dinner—several boys from each class went to their classrooms to prepare their readings from their written essays. Aidan’s, entitled “Alexander Bell’s Telephone: Will It Replace the Telegraph?” was one of three that The Coffin had selected from the Third Class. Bess and Charles stood in the yard with the other boys and visitors waiting to be called into the building.
“It’s good I got you alone,” said Bess. They strolled around the flower beds while they talked. “I got some news.”
“The cops? We been found out?” said Charles anxiously.
“Nah, it ain’t about that. It’s about Aidan’s ma.”
Already Charles knew what she was going to say.
“I gave some urchin a nickel to run the first letter to Aidan’s ma, and he never did come back. I figured he delivered it. But when the second letter came, I did the same with a different urchin, and this one shows up back on my doorstep, still with the letter. Seems this one was the nosy type, and when he didn’t get no answer at the door, he started askin’ around the building. Probably hoping I’d give him an extra tip for his detective work. He found out she passed two weeks prior.”
Charles looked out at all the flower beds, way past their prime now that it was mid-autumn. Finally he said, “When are you gonna tell him?”
“I ain’t. That’s your job.”
“Bess, can’t you—”
“Forget it. I don’t even know him. He’s your friend. Tell him when you want to tell him.”
“Christ.” Charles rubbed his face. “Do we even know where she’s buried?”
“You’re lucky that urchin came back at all. He coulda kept walkin’ like the first one.” She paused. “I did give him a big tip.”
“Well, that’s just grand,” said Charles wryly. “That will make all the difference to Sully.”
The matron appeared from the building and called out to the visitors and boys that they should proceed to the classrooms. Bess and Charles made no move to leave the flower beds.
“Bess, is this why you came over to the island? To deliver this news?”
“Partly. But also I always wanted to see this place, ever since my nephew came here.”
“You’re really different when you’re here.”
“I feel different here. I could be anybody here.” She looked up at the sky, where the sun was trying to break through the cloud cover.
That night, the dormitory was in its usual post–Visiting Day heightened activity. Many boys displayed on their beds the things they’d received from their families that day, and trading was in high gear. Merton Poole, seeing that Charles and Aidan had nothing, gave them each a gingersnap from the tin his mother had brought. “It’s a bum deal, not having an older brother,” Poole complained. “Older brothers know what you need here: a slingshot, a decent aggie, a penny dreadful. Lookit Davidson over there—his brother gave him a pair of dice he carved himself! Drop of India ink in the pips, the whole bit.” The three of them looked over to Davidson’s bed, where a half dozen boys were admiring the dice. “He ain’t even got a bed box with a false bottom. Where’s he gonna stash them things?”
“You got gingersnaps,” Aidan pointed out as he ate his. “Can’t eat dice.”
“And I also got this picture from my little sister.” Poole held it up. “She drew her dolly. Can’t eat it or play a game with it.” But he placed it carefully on the table beside his bed. “Maybe your aunt will bring you somethin’ next time.”
Charles thought about what Bess had brought—the news about Aidan’s mother. He lay back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling as Aidan and Poole continued to chatter on. The more Charles thought about it, the more difficult the situation seemed. Aidan would naturally be upset when he found out, but there would be no way to explain to anyone here why he was upset. Their mother was supposed to have died months ago. Aidan might even want to go back to the mainland to try and find his sister or visit his mother’s grave. Who knows what he might do? Or say? He could end up putting them both at risk.
On the other hand, if Charles didn’t tell him, no one would. Bess was the only one who knew. If there was nothing Aidan could do about it, then why upset him unnecessarily? Charles looked over at Aidan, who had talked Poole out of another ginger snap. He looked happy, Charles thought. So did Poole, and so did most of the boys he could see in the dormitory. But they all had some misfortune to bring them here—parents dying or being too poor to keep them. The happy ones weren’t thinking about the past, though. They were living in the present, eating cookies and admiring dice. That’s what he and Aidan had to do, Charles decided: They had to live in the present.