I was on my way home from the fish market with a freshly caught haddock, one I chose for its bright pink flesh and silver skin, now wrapped by the fishmonger in a damp, wrinkled page torn from The Times. Black newsprint had seeped onto my white gloves, and I was thinking I was lucky that Maureen could wash away the ink with bleach and lye before my father discovered the mess. Before I knew it I had stumbled upon Mr. Morris, only steps away. He was very still, like a heron in the bay that waits for the shadows of fish to appear. He most likely would have let me pass without a greeting if I hadn’t spied him first.
He was thinner than I’d remembered him, and I admit that his countenance gave me pause. I had grown unused to seeing him close up, and the ease with which I was accustomed to greeting his fierce appearance had dissipated. I may even have taken a step back, so like a wolf did he appear. Then I looked into his eyes and remembered who he was. He said hello in that kind voice of his, as he had when we first met. Years had passed since that time. I was no longer a little girl and he was no longer a believer that the city of New York would embrace a man such as himself.
“It’s a good thing I heard you had been hired by Dreamland, otherwise I might have fainted to see a man who’d vanished so completely from my life. I mourned you,” I said bitterly. “For no good purpose it seems.”
“We thought it best if you knew nothing of my presence,” he told me. He seemed bashful now that I was a grown woman; perhaps he had seen me recoil when I first spied him.
“I wouldn’t have said a word to my father.” I was still quite hurt that the secret of his presence in Brooklyn had been kept from me. Since I’d known he and Maureen were still together, I hadn’t made a single slip of this confidence.
“Your father is a man who can figure things out without any words being said. We did it to protect you as well. That was our concern.”
“And now he knows you’re here and will be working for our competitor.”
Mr. Morris shrugged. “All men must work.”
I noticed he had a bouquet of spring flowers, white tulips mixed with red anemones. I gathered they were for Maureen, but Mr. Morris took me by surprise when he mentioned they were meant for Malia, the Butterfly Girl. Just then Maureen left our house, hurriedly making her way down the street, so I could not question Mr. Morris any further, though my face was hot with anger. Maureen was wearing her best dress, a green muslin with black silk trimming, along with a hat I hadn’t seen before, gray felt decorated with pale blue feathers.
When she saw me there with Mr. Morris, her expression darkened.
“I see your friend has returned,” I said to her. “But of course I’ve known that for some time.” I did not let on that I had often followed Maureen, but I suppose she knew, for she shook her head sadly, as if I was the one who had disappointed her.
“He was gone for two years, back to Virginia. He wrote letters, but of course I never received them, for they wound up on the trash pile as soon as they were delivered. Your father saw to that. When Mr. Morris realized he could not stay away, he came back to Brooklyn and we renewed our friendship. I thought it best that you not know that he’d returned.”
“You made that decision for me?” I responded bitterly. “Even when there were rumors he would be at Dreamland you said nothing to me. Less than nothing, for you lied.”
“Is the truth always the best remedy?” Maureen wondered. Perhaps it was a question she asked herself. As she thought this over, she saw that I had been to the market, and had tarried when I spied Mr. Morris. “You should be at home, miss. The fish must be put on ice immediately or it will go bad and I shan’t be able to make supper tomorrow. You wouldn’t want to be poisoned by a piece of bad fish, would you?”
“It’s stinking already,” I said. “Unlike the flowers for Malia,” I continued, with a meaningful nod to the bouquet in the Wolfman’s hands.
I didn’t wish to hurt Maureen but rather to protect her, for I worried that Raymond Morris might not be as trustworthy as he appeared. For his part, Mr. Morris stammered and said a few words about the splendor of flowers, quoting from Whitman, “A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.” This may well have been the great Whitman’s opinion, but I knew for a fact that Mr. Morris valued books above all other things. If he might misrepresent his high regard for books, he might be willing to lie about other issues. I wondered if I’d caught him in a clandestine relationship with Malia. Maureen, however, did not share my suspicions. Instead she turned on me, rapping her knuckles on my head, as she used to when I was a little girl and she found me misbehaving.