December 1921
The invitation arrived addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Richard Harrow, enclosed in an envelope embossed with cherubs. Clara laughed when they opened it.
"Oh my goodness, poor Romola," Clara said as they read the invitation. "I just got a glimpse into my life if my...if Nucky had married Lucy. I should write Margaret and thank her for resisting being the living incarnation of a nightmare."
The paper was heavy and expensive in Richard's hand. Along with the boughs of holly printed on the edges, two profiles faced each other in the middle, inscribed 'Mr. and Mrs. Geo E. Remus.' Underneath that was a drawing of a mother and baby swimming and the words:
Dive to health
Swim to wealth
Float on happiness
1921-1922
"It's not that I want to go," Clara continued when she saw the apprehension on his face, "but Romola's stepmother barely allows her father to spend any time with Romola at all. Romola was invited to the party and apparently told to invite some of her own friends. She's written and specifically asked for us to accept the invitation. Partly because she's going to need support, but also because she hasn't gotten to meet you yet."
Richard nodded, although the prospect of going to Remus's home was not a pleasant one. He hadn't liked the man during his ill-fated partnership with Jimmy last summer. But Romola was Clara's friend. He knew he should meet her friends, he should want to meet her friends, especially the ones who bore neither titles nor criminal records.
His anxiety about the trip grew when Rothstein spoke to him about the party one evening as they drove to Lindy's Delicatessen.
"It does appear that George Remus's party is one we are all destined to attend. I've decided to engage private railway cars and host a group. Please tell Clara I require her presence at tomorrow night so she can share her thoughts as to who should make up our party. And Harrow, although I'm sure they'll be business gatherings I'll want you to attend, you will not be on duty. Peter will be my bodyguard in Cincinatti. Enjoy it as a social event."
An obligation, Richard thought. To keep both his wife and the man who signed his paychecks from the Rathmore Surety Firm content.
As he approached his front door after the last evening he'd officially work in 1921, he could sense someone waiting on the other side of the door. No one could get into the apartment, he told himself. He had hired the doorman and the elevator operator. Clara and Tommy were safe. And, he thought, Mrs. Darmody had left yesterday so the apartment was once more safe in a different way. Everyone had been unsettled by her visit. Jimmy looked like he was drowning in darkness. Clara was so tense she turned brittle, and Tommy's stomach had been upset for days.
The worst part of the visit had been the day Gillian had taken Tommy to the park. Richard hadn't realized they were back until he heard Tommy crying in the bathroom.
"Where's Clara?" Tommy had asked plaintively between sobs.
"We do not need Clara," Richard heard Gillian reply, but under the typical honeyed tone of her voice was a harsh, angry note.
"That's not how she does it!" Tommy said louder.
"I'm your Mama," Gillian cried, "I know how to make you feel better."
He must have misheard, he decided, but still, he moved towards the door. That's when he saw Jimmy coming down the hall from the opposite direction.
Jimmy nodded at him before opening the bathroom door. "What's wrong?"
"Tommy fell and I-" Gillian replied.
"She's not making my knee feel better right," Tommy said between sobs. "I want Clara. She does it right."
"Clara learned from her mother," Jimmy replied. "Mabel was the greatest at fixing up skinned knees. I always wanted her to help me when I got hurt. Isn't that right, Ma?"
Clara had come home from the Post Office then, and Jimmy had pulled his mother away while they bandaged up Tommy's knee.
But the look in Gillian's eyes when Jimmy said that Mabel was who he wanted when he was little haunted Richard. That look made him even more relieved when Jimmy finally took his mother back to Penn Station to catch the train to Atlantic City.
Richard still opened the door with caution, one hand at his waistband. When he saw Tommy standing in his pajamas his hand moved away.
"I'm so glad you're here," Tommy said, looking up at him in a perfect imitation of Clara's expression and tone. Richard's mouth twitched.
"What. Do you need?"
Tommy grabbed his hand and pulled him along. Richard could hear Clara moving around in their bedroom. Packing, he supposed.
The Packard was in the dining room surrounded by rearranged dining room chairs.
"Clara says the elevator is still a problem."
Richard tried to hide a smile. Tommy needed to learn to back the car into the elevator so that he could easily pull forward when they got to the lobby. He took off his coat and jacket. Remembering Jimmy's words at Christmas stopped him.
"Tommy. You should ask. Your father."
"He's not here though," Tommy said, looking up at him hopefully.
Richard nodded. Jimmy wasn't here. He was.
"If you want to. Mmm. Turn left. Which way do you turn?"
"Left!" Tommy said. He looked down at his hands, spread his thumbs, and then lifted his left hand.
"Yes. But when you reverse. You turn the wheel. In the opposite. Way."
It turned out peddling backward was the more challenging part for Tommy. The Packard banged into one of the chairs several times. Richard made a note to touch up the green paint when they returned from Cincinnati.
"There you two are. Tommy, did you even let Richard eat?" Clara asked as she walked into the dining room.
Tommy smiled at her from the Packard. "Clara, I am now so very good at backing. So I should take my car to Cincanasty."
'So very good?' Clara mouthed at Richard with a smile.
"Tommy. You can't take. Your car. On the train," Richard answering, quickly understanding this had been a matter of some debate all day.
"Show me what Richard taught you and then I'm taking you off to bed, monster. You still need to decide what toys to take."
Clara had left a plate in the oven. Meatloaf. Better than last time. He was finishing it when he heard her knock on the morning room door before she walked in.
"Tommy does love that car. He 'roundatated' the tires at least twice today."
He pressed the mask into the bridge of his nose to make sure it was back in place before he turned towards her.
"I've mostly finished packing for us. You should check to make sure I put in everything you'll want."
Although Clara was typically casual in the manner she went about chores, she took packing very seriously. Tissue paper, pins, a suitcase that resembled a small trunk. Everything came out as beautifully pressed as it was when it went in (and the beautiful pressing Clara required was reflected in the bill the laundress sent every two weeks). He wasn't sure if the careful packing was more a reflection of her father or of his valet, Eddie.
"You didn't. Have to pack. For me," he said, although the idea of Clara meticulously packing his things with hers made him happy.
"Of course I did. It was in a list of things good wives do!" Clara said with a smile as she moved to her desk and started reorganizing her piles of papers and mail, checking one last time to make sure she wasn't overlooking anything important. "Ivy Wells went to the park with Tommy and me today. He almost knocked her down trying to get out of the elevator with the car. She's such a nice kid. Then the seamstress's delivery boy brought my New Year Eve's dress just before you got home. The shoulders had to be taken up because the dress...well, it has to fit perfectly to work at all. I hope you'll like it, it's a bit different from my typical choices. It was my payment from Rothstein for helping plan his party, so I decided to take a risk..."
Clara continued talking for a few moments before she realized Richard was sitting at the table examining his cuticles with intense fervor.
I am tired in my soul, Clara thought. The last stress-free moment she'd had for days was when they lay on the window seat and listened to the wireless on Christmas before Jimmy brought Gillian to the apartment. Every moment Gillian had been in New York had felt like a weight pressing her into the earth. Closing her eyes at night was almost impossible as she lay awake next to her husband and listened for the sound of Gillian's footfall going down the hall towards Tommy's room. It was one of the few times since they'd started sharing a bed where Richard slept soundly while Clara stared at the ceiling. Clara had Tommy up and ready an hour before his normal time every day so that Gillian wouldn't have a chance to try and dress him.
The very first night Gillian was there they fought over bathtime.
"I certainly am going to give my boy his bath and put him to bed while I'm allowed to be here," Gillian spat at her.
Over my dead body, Clara thought. "It's very important for Tommy to have consistency. And anyway, Tommy is a big boy. He can bathe on his own. He just needs a little help with his hair and to be supervised so he doesn't fall."
Still, she couldn't keep Gillian from hugging and kissing Tommy. Were they more possessive, did they last longer than normal grandmotherly affection should, she worried each time? Every time Tommy squirmed in Gillian's grasp Clara had to fight the urge to push Gillian away from him.
No one had protected Jimmy. Angela was dead in part because she had hesitated to act. But Tommy. Tommy she could protect. Even if it came at a cost. She looked over at her husband and suppressed a sigh. They should be away from...all of this. In a new life in a new place where no one knew her as Nucky Thompson's daughter or him as Jimmy Darmody's former point man.
Or Arnold Rothstein's current bodyguard.
What ate at her conscience was that she loved her life. The apartment, meeting other writers and editors, waking up with Richard's arm across her, going anywhere she liked...she loved it all. Four-year-olds were a lot of work that she hadn't expected to cope with at twenty-three, while still a newlywed, but Tommy was also often enjoyable. Even if she had been forced to debate why he couldn't take that ridiculous car to Cincinnati at least five hundred times over the course of the day.
But she feared Richard wasn't as happy as she was.
"What have I done wrong now, Richard?" she asked, staring down at the papers she was sorting.
"Clara."
"No, I mean it. Just tell me what I did wrong so I can apologize. Because you are clearly..."
"I should. Be the one. Who buys your dresses,' Richard said, still looking at his hands.
Clara moved to the rectory table and sat across from him. "What's this? Richard, you make more than me. By a lot. You pay for almost everything. You paid for these," she said, gesturing to the pink silk pajamas she wore. "And my pay for writing and anything else we can spare goes into the forever fund."
He reached over and touched the top of her hand. The money they were saving for their future. Clara believed that one day they'd have what they wanted. A two-story house with window boxes and a hardware store with a desk for her in the office. Life didn't work like that, though, he thought. Where were Jimmy and Tommy in that life?
When he put money in the account he thought of it as protection for Clara if-when-anything ever happened to him. Money so she wouldn't have to go back to her father, money so she could take care of Tommy.
There was another bank account Clara didn't know about. He thought about children and money in terms of shoes and doctor's visits and making sure they had enough to eat. But there were also school fees, paying Kaity, and a host of other expenses associated with raising Tommy in the city. Clara thought Jimmy was covering most of these costs.
It was complicated. Jimmy's mother needed money, and Richard didn't object to that. Of course Jimmy had to send it to her. The packets Jimmy had started off getting from Luciano, which apparently he couldn't stop taking, also cost. And Jimmy wasn't making as much as Richard.
So Richard took on collection jobs from Rothstein, put that money in an account at a different bank, and wrote the checks needed. It kept Clara from fighting with Jimmy. And whatever he did to take care of Tommy, to help Jimmy...
It was what friends did. It was nothing compared to what Jimmy did for him. Everything he had in his life? He had because of Jimmy.
He ran a fingertip over Clara's rings. A year ago tonight Richard had packed a suitcase in his boarding house room, knowing he would get up in the morning and collect Clara from the Ritz. They were going to New York for Jimmy and Angela's wedding. Jimmy was full of plans for his family and for taking over Atlantic City.
And now, Jimmy's life was in ruins. Richard owed Jimmy.
"This was what we agreed to, Richard," Clara said, unaware of what was going through his mind. "When we agreed to come to New York."
He didn't answer her. Clara closed her eyes. She was happy, yes, but she didn't like the undercurrent that pulled at them both. Going under was not an option. She grappled for the words she knew one of them needed to say.
"I love our silences. The way we can be together and not need to speak, but sometimes I fear we take refuge in that and don't say the things we need to say. There are times we have to say them."
She stood up suddenly and went back to her desk, apparently taken with the need to once more sort the stacks of paper. "It all happened so fast," she said, almost in a whisper. "Getting married. Moving here. If it was to fast, if you aren't..."
He had to swallow several times before he could answer. "Clara. Are you. Unhappy. Do you-"
"No, I'm not! But you are. I don't want to make you unhappy, I-"
"You don't. Make me. Unhappy."
"Something is. Is it Rothstein?" Clara could see in her mind's eye Richard sitting stiffly on the edge of their bed. After Christmas, after everything...was that what bothered him, she wondered?
Clara drew up her courage and turned to face her husband. "Is it...Richard, it isn't Charlie, is it?"
The look in his eye let her know she was right. She sighed.
"Darling. There's nothing to be jealous of! He's like...Jimmy, but better dressed and even more obnoxious."
They looked at each other silently, and then Clara watched his jaw work for several seconds before the words came. "Not like. Jimmy. Jimmy is. Your family. Our family. Luciano. You kissed."
Clara felt the blood rush to her cheeks and felt the banked flames of old anger begin to burn anew. "That's what this is about? Would you like to discuss how that kiss came to be?"
Richard looked up at her. "That girl. Doesn't get drunk. With me in our home. And sleep on our window. Seat. I don't go. Out with her. While you. Are away."
Every word was clearly a struggle so Clara bit her lip to keep silent until he was finished.
"That's very true, Richard," Clara said in a calm voice. "Of course, I've never kept back a secret like someone planning to kill your father. And then I've never left you to suffer while I followed someone else around, have I?"
"I told you. I thought-"
"Yes, yes that you'd convinced Jimmy not to kill my father. But when that bullet tore into him, when Owen Sleater came to get me and you knew what happened..."
"I couldn't betray. Jimmy."
"You couldn't betray Jimmy?" The words felt like a punch. Never enough, not even for her own husband. During some of the worst moments of her life, when she thought everyone had betrayed her, the person she loved most had worried about Jimmy.
"He'd ordered my father's death. It's only because Jimmy's so terminally hapless that my father lived...Do you know what those weeks were like for me, until my damn uncle, of all people, finally told me what happened? They were agony. I was planning to leave Atlantic City, to leave all of you, because..." She pressed the heel of her hands over her eyes, willing herself not to cry. "Because how could I stay? And I heard nothing from you. Not a call. Not a note. Nothing."
"Clara. I was Jimmy's point man. It was my responsibility. To-"
"What about your responsibility to me? Did that ever factor into your calculus? My god, I had been in your bed for weeks. What if we hadn't been as careful as we thought? What if...? You tell me you love me, you want me, but when decisions had to be made you chose Jimmy," Clara said, and hated herself for the tremor she couldn't keep out of her voice.
Richard didn't answer her, and his silence made her even angrier.
"And as for Charlie? I don't like sharing you with Jimmy, and I...I still love Jimmy. And although you might find him more deserving of loyalty, at least I'm whom you want in your bed. The person Charlie wants in his bed is the same person he's most loyal to. There are things that not even I will share."
Richard looked up at her. "He and. Lansky. Have been friends-"
"Ah yes, since childhood. Like Jimmy and me? Except they fuck, Richard."
She should not say that out loud, he thought. He'd also...wondered. Luciano always seemed as if he was considering bedding anything with a pulse that crossed his path. Not so Lansky, who kept his thoughts and feelings very much contained. Richard appreciated that. Jobs planned with the dispassionate Lansky were jobs certain to go smoothly. That's why the day he looked up and saw absolute raw hunger in the way Lansky looked at Luciano he was so surprised and carefully looked down again before Lansky realized what he had seen.
"Clara-"
"I'm not saying Charlie wouldn't bed anything with a heartbeat, and I'm not entirely certain heartbeat is a hard qualification. I'm saying he's not going to bed me. Because I do understand loyalty."
"You can't. Say that."
Clara nodded. "Not to anyone else, certainly. Rothstein watches all. I'm sure he knows. But I can't imagine how much...danger they would be in should others guess. But you are still my husband, are you not? So you I tell. That's how this works."
"I wouldn't. Have you. Or this. A life. If I hadn't met Jimmy," Richard said. "He understands about. The war. About being a soldier."
Without meaning to she closed her eyes. The smell of gunpowder and smoke still lingered just behind her conscious thoughts, no matter how much she told herself they were all just part of her past. That horrible gnawing fear that felt like a pit of acid in her stomach, but also the numbness where the fear used to live, still lingered inside of her. It wasn't an adventure. It was dirty and awful and she couldn't believe men in clean offices decided to condemn an entire generation to that hell. Rose had whispered just come back that day and then Clara crawled out with a knife between her teeth. Her hair was covered by a scarf, an attempt to camouflage her from the snipers in the trees around them. She was armed only with the knowledge from a brief class in telegraph operating and her knife. It was Jimmy who saved her, who saved them all. Because he'd taught her to hotwire automobiles back in high school, so she knew how to efficiently slice and splice wires.
The sound of an explosion in the distance had rung out as her fingers finished manipulating the wire. She'd managed to get her gas mask on, but not quite in time. She'd lay in the field and wondered if she'd see her mother in a few moments. Concern that her father would forget to send money to Angela and Tommy gnawed at her. She worried about her father. Her last thought was wondering if Jimmy was still alive or if he was now also one of the lost.
The next thing she knew she woke up in darkness with Rose telling her it was going to be okay.
But she knew nothing of war. Of the bonds between those who survived it.
After all, she was just a woman.
"So that's it then," Clara whispered.
He had been wrong. He'd known he had been wrong. He took a deep breath. "I believed him. I wanted to. Believe him. That he changed his mind about. Killing Nucky."
"I know that," Clara responded. "That's why I went looking for you, that's why I wrote you. That's how..."
I forgave you, she thought. But still.
"You keep. Secrets to. I don't know why. You stabbed. The Commodore's body. Or why. You hate Gillian."
"I don't hate Gillian," Clara whispered and felt something inside her shatter. "I spent most of my life wanting her to love me. After my mother died, I wanted my father to marry her. She and Jimmy were as much my family, if not more, than Eli and June. I thought that way we could all really be a family. Jimmy could really be my brother. But my father wouldn't and now I know...They aren't my secrets to tell, Richard."
They are Jimmy's, she thought, and somehow he's almost as much a part of this marriage as we are.
He nodded. Clara followed the compass of her own internal morality. "That's. How it should be."
She turned towards him and he hesitantly reached a hand out to her.
They were so distracted they didn't hear someone else enter the apartment.
"By any chance is there supper?" Jimmy asked as he walked into the room.
The Harrows weren't the only couple finding it difficult to get along as they prepared for the trip.
"And just where have you been might I ask?" Dennis Malley asked from the shadows of the sitting room as Rose closed the front door to their apartment, carved from the ground floor of her grandmother's Fifth Avenue residence.
Rose squared her shoulders. "Upstairs to see Grandmama, and then I went to see Clara and we lost all track of the time."
"You do spend a lot of time with Clara," Dennis said as he lit another cigar.
Not really, Rose thought.
"But Arnold I wrote to Mrs. Remus accepting the invitation!" Carolyn said, struggling to keep her voice calm.
"Of course, dear, but I don't see why that should matter. Whatever Remus's...pretentions, he oversees Cincinatti. There's no need for you to be dragged halfway across the continent for his little soiree."
He carefully tilted his teacup, his eyes...well, they were supposed to be smiling at her. Instead, she felt trapped by them. Like he was a boy pinning an insect to a board. Once, 'there's no need' made her feel safe. Protected. Her dear Arnold, protecting her from the world in a way she'd never experienced.
But slowly, much to slowly, she realized that protection could also feel like confinement. The more successful Arnold became, the more luxurious her life became. But also her life became smaller.
Until it was this. This brownstone. Ever rarer society invitations accepted. Now Arnold had other women, like Clara Harrow, to do his bidding amongst society circles.
Now Arnold had other women.
"Mayor Hylan will be joining us. You know you don't enjoy such rough company, dear."
"Arnold, please," Carolyn said, unable to keep the whining tone from her voice.
"Fine. Have Clara rearrange the sleeping arrangements for the train," Arnold said and walked away.
Plover, Wisconsin
Emma stood at the counter, butchering the old hen she'd harvested earlier, when she heard her father's heavy footfall. His leg must be hurting, she thought dispassionately as the cleaver neatly separated breast from the old girl's backbone.
"You got a fancy looking letter," her father told her as he walked into the kitchen.
Emma wiped her entrailed coated hands. A white envelope addressed to her with a New York City postmark. Her heart caught in her chest. Richard. It could only be Richard. She opened it. Inside, the paper was heavy and folded like a card. The letters RHC were engraved on the front. When she opened the card, three photographs fell out.
The first was of Richard, wearing his mask but both sides of his face visible, staring down at the camera. He looked a little drunk, she thought, but well enough for someone in that state. His mask was in terrible shape. The next photo was...a wedding photo. Emma swallowed. Richard facing some blonde woman in an expensive-looking dress and a small boy posed in front of them.
Some widow got him, she reflected. He was smiling at the woman. Smiling. The last picture was Richard with the boy, both of them frowning down at some toy.
"Emma?" Her father asked from the table.
"It's Richard," she said softly, beginning to read the letter. "He's married, to a woman named Clara. She said he met her oldest friend, Jimmy, in Chicago in May of 1920, and when she came to visit they were introduced. A few weeks later he moved to Atlantic City and started working for her father. They were married in July."
"He's, he's fine?" her father asked with a strangled note in his voice Emma chose to ignore.
"Well, he's married," Emma said in reply and turned to hand the photographs to her father. "He's working for an insurance company. She writes stories."
His breath caught. Richard looked happy, he thought. He never thought his son would look happy after the war. The picture of him alone, he didn't look ashamed or like he was hiding. It made sense that his now-wife took it. The boy looked like he was looking at someone he loved. He picked up the picture of his son at his wedding. The wife was pretty. Pretty like Elizabeth had been when they married. She was smiling happily at Richard who smiled back at her with the good side of his face. Richard was wearing a fedora in the picture with the boy. He had never seen his son in a fedora before.
"She says Richard is a wonderful husband and good with the boy," Emma said with bitterness her father felt.
He picked up the letter. It was obviously expensive paper and went with the fact the woman and little boy looked like their clothes cost real money. Richard's suits didn't look cheap, either.
"She looks like a rich girl," Emma said from the sink, where she was rinsing chicken parts and the bloodied cleaver.
"That she does."
"She wouldn't last five minutes on the farm," Emma continued.
He looked again at the delicate face of the woman who was his daughter-in-law, dressed like something out of a picture show. "No, I don't think she would."
Emma was silent again. "He met her that June, and then just followed her back to Atlantic City."
Her father sighed. "Emma, this is the best news we could have received about Richard. He found friends. A woman-a woman kind enough to write to us and send pictures-loves him. He has a job, a home."
"Richard had a home here, a family. He didn't need a career. He was a farmer."
"He was a boy who was sent to war. He didn't have the chance to decide if he wanted to be a farmer. But I always reckoned you would keep the farm and Richard would go do something else. I never pictured him working for an insurance company but he always had a head for figures."
Emma never let anyone know her feelings, but her father could feel her anger and hurt in the way she stood at the sink."He didn't have to go to Chicago."
"He did. He needed to understand who the war turned him into. The war, the injuries, they all changed him. The boy who left this farm to be a soldier was gone. And we all wanted him back. This girl, he meets her after he's been in Chicago some months. She doesn't know what he was. She's not always comparing him to the person he used to be. His face, his voice...what we think of as damaged, she just thinks of as part of the man she loves. And they were young enough when they met that they could grow up together some. Your brother looks like a city man now. I reckon that has to be at least partly her influence. I think your brother was never going to marry some sensible farm girl. Or if he did, he wouldn't be happy. It's why he let go of Jenny so easily. He needed someone dreamy like he was dreamy. A pretty city girl who thinks up stories? Was probably always going to be the kind of woman Richard needed. The thing that fixed me after the war was your mother. It was making a home, it was having children."
"Exactly. Richard could have been fixed at home."
He sighed, knowing as usual with Emma he would have to be brutal to try and make her see someone else's view. "No, he couldn't. Richard needed to find a woman. A woman of his own. A life of his own. He was always going to need things he wasn't going to get from his sister. And Emma, you need the same. You need someone to love you, someone to make a life with."
Emma refused to cry. If her brother preferred some dreamy princess, so be it. Once more she wiped her hands before walking out into the hallway. She picked up the telephone, and took a long breath before asking the operator to connect her with Gerald.
Author's Note:
I'm so sorry about the delay! I accidentally wrote a 20k word chapter I'm currently beating into submission. The good news is that at least for the next few weeks I should actually update consistently!
Also, the Plover scene is one of the very first things I wrote for this story, over a year ago now. I had to change some things because I wrote it before I decided Jimmy would live!
Next chapter everyone takes a trip, and someone unexpected develops feelings for Meyer (Charlie, uh, well, he doesn't take it well).