Friday late afternoon, March 10, 1882
O’Farrell Street Boardinghouse
Nate looked up at the mantel clock one more time. Only fifteen minutes had passed since the last time he looked.
“Abbie, my sweet, please, please cheer up. Do you need to be changed again? Shall we try the crust of bread Tilly brought you? Your stuffed doggie? Just tell me what you want!”
As if a ten-month-old baby can understand what I say, much less talk. How is it that Annie and Kathleen, even young Tilly, seem to know in an instant what my daughter wants?
Nate took Abigail, who had been crying off and on for what seemed like hours, to the bedroom’s bay window to look down at the street, hoping to see Caro Sutton’s carriage sweep up to deposit his wife at the front door.
He pointed. “Look, Mama’s going to be coming home any minute. See the woman walking up the street with the big umbrella. Aren’t you glad you’re in here, nice and warm?”
Abigail evidently found the woman and her umbrella an affront, and her whimper shifted into a wail, again…
He’d come home a little past three, as he’d promised Annie he would. She’d reminded him as he left this morning that Abigail went down for her nap a little before three, often slept for an hour, but that there was no consistent pattern to when she woke up. His plan had been to get in an hour’s work while Abigail finished napping, since he had a number of documents to review in preparation for another divorce hearing next week. Then he’d be ready to play with his daughter, feed her, and then change her. At which point his wife would be home.
What he hadn’t expected when he arrived at the boardinghouse was for Tilly to meet him at the front door with the announcement that Abigail had only slept for fifteen minutes and was currently down in the kitchen being entertained by the young boarder, Emmaline.
Gone was his chance to get some work done.
He put his satchel on the desk in the office and went down the back stairs into a warm kitchen, redolent with the smell of lemon cake just out of the oven. Beatrice O’Rourke smiled at him from where she sat at the table, chopping potatoes, and he saw an uncooked pot roast sitting in a pan on the stovetop, waiting to be surrounded by those potatoes. He found himself salivating at the thoughts of the dinner that awaited him, a fitting reward for coming home early to take care of his daughter.
Abigail, pink cheeked, hair a tousled mass of golden-red curls, was sitting up in a nest of blankets in her baby carriage, laughing at the antics of Prince, the young cat, who was leaping to catch a feather waved in front of him by Emmaline. Dandy, the terrier, sat next to the carriage, watching the cat’s antics with a puzzled look on his face.
The kitchen, which was an oasis from the cold rain outside, and his daughter, who noticed his presence by raising her little arms in the air and saying, “Da,” filled him with warm satisfaction. Life couldn’t get much better.
And then it all went downhill.
His daughter’s smiling face turned into a frown and wobbling lower lip when he didn’t instantly come to pick her up. As he hurried over and swept her into his arms, he accidentally brushed up against Prince, who hissed, causing Dandy to bark in excitement, at which point Abigail added her cries to the commotion.
Embarrassed, he remembered Annie’s strict admonition to care for Abigail upstairs so Beatrice, with only Tilly to help her prepare for dinner on Kathleen’s night out, wouldn’t be bothered. So he stammered his apologies and practically ran up the stairs with his daughter. Once he made it to the nursery, he slammed the door shut and began to go through the series of actions that had always gotten Abigail to stop crying before.
Sweeping her up into the air, jiggling her on his knees, picking up her favorite stuffed animal and waving it in front of her, none of these tactics worked today. Tilly arrived at the door with a covered dish and spoon, and she suggested that the “poor wee thing” might be hungry. She also wrinkled up her nose and made the comment that if he wouldn’t mind setting up the high chair, which was folded in the corner of the room, she’d change Abigail.
Extremely grateful to exchange the job of changing his daughter’s diaper for the task of figuring out how to open up the high chair, an intricate wooden contraption with metal hinges and sliding bolts, Nate told himself that all Abigail needed was a clean diaper and some food. Then his sunny-tempered angel would be restored, and all would go smoothly.
That foolish hope died the moment that Tilly left the room and he put his daughter into the high chair.
Instead of opening up her mouth wide to take the first spoonful of mashed peas and carrots, his daughter banged one tiny fist into the bowl, almost upending it. This, at least, seemed to amuse her, so he refused to be daunted. Deciding that it might be a good idea to put the bowl in his lap, where she couldn’t get it, he pulled the rocking chair closer to the high chair and scooped out the first spoonful of vegetables.
However, that’s when he noticed his daughter was now leaning so much to the side of the chair that her mouth was perpendicular, rather than horizontal, and remembered that his wife always wedged their daughter into the high chair with a pillow. Sighing, he put the spoon back into the bowl, put the bowl onto the changing table, and got a pillow from the baby’s crib and propped Abigail upright, which seemed to please her.
Sitting down again, bowl back in his lap, spoon poised to enter his daughter’s mouth, he faced a new obstacle. She wouldn’t open her mouth. He discovered that now that she had four teeth, two up, two down, the method of just sliding the spoon in between her lips no longer worked. Neither did making the sounds of a train going into a tunnel, which he’d seen Annie use to great success on more than one occasion.
He recalled another tactic he’d seen his wife use. He took his index finger and gently moved it into the side of his daughter’s mouth to pry it open, popping the spoon into her mouth at the same time. He then watched with dismay as she expelled the green and orange mess with her tongue so that it began to slide down her chin towards her frilly white gown. He leapt to the changing table, grabbed a clean diaper, and triumphantly stopped the flow. It took a few moments, but he eventually located a bib, got it tied around his daughter’s neck, and then started the process all over again.
This time his daughter cooperated, opened up her mouth wide, took in a large mouthful, then spat it directly into his face. He must have shouted, maybe even cursed, and by the time he had fumbled to the room’s washstand and washed out his stinging eyes, his daughter’s face was screwed up into a ferocious frown. He apologized, tried to make her laugh by making funny faces, but she would not be placated. The next twenty minutes he spent fruitlessly trying to get food down her while she quite successfully got that food over her fists, in her hair, and over his shirt front, glaring at him the whole time.
He’d finally given up, as her frown eventually turned to wails, and that’s when he’d started the equally unsuccessful task of once again trying to get her to stop crying. He tried twirling her around, making odd sounds, and waving a rattle in her face. Each effort would get a startled look and then the resumption of wails. Finally, her head began to lower onto his shoulder as she became exhausted from her sobs. With a sigh, he had turned to put Abigail down in her crib when the door to the nursery opened and Mrs. Stein stood there, frowning.
He put his finger to his lips, and Mrs. Stein frowned even more, saying, quite loudly, he thought, “I heard that Abigail didn’t nap today. That’s why she’s cranky. But don’t put her down. If she goes to sleep now, it will be hard for Annie to wake her to nurse when she gets home, and the child will have trouble sleeping through the night. That would be unfair to Tilly, who has agreed to sleep in the nursery, since it’s Kathleen’s night out. The poor girl will be exhausted from helping Beatrice on her own. So, for everyone’s sake, please try to keep Abigail awake a little longer. Sometimes a change in scenery works. I would take her to your bedroom. Before Herman and I leave to go to dinner, I’ll tell Tilly to bring up a nice warm washcloth to clean her up and some ice in case the problem is her teething. Good luck.”
He’d had the uncharitable thought that her advice might have been self-serving, given that the Steins’ bedroom was right across the hall from the nursery and his daughter’s cries could be quite penetrating.
And so here he was, a half hour later, with Abigail awake but very unhappy. Her sobs had turned into a tired whimper and her eyelashes were crusted together from her tears. And, desperate for a glimpse of his wife, who had been away from home for only a little over two hours, he thought, How has she been doing this for ten months?