Cora hurriedly followed Carson from the room, aware of how astronomically much this had to be costing her mother. In the few months transatlantic phone calls had been available, there had never been any question of calling American family, or of them phoning here. It was simply insane to pay three pounds a minute when letters had always done well enough.
Cora snatched up the receiver. "Mother?"
"Oh Cora, dearest," her mother breathed, "are you all right? I got Robert's letter in the morning post, and I've been just frantic."
So Martha did know. Cora had not been able to bring herself to tell her, but of course Robert had written. "Mother, you didn't need to call, really. It's—it's expensive." How much had it cost simply for her mother to speak to Carson and for him to fetch her from the dining room?
"Oh, bother about the money, Cora. It's not as though we can take it with us! And I knew I had to speak with you. How are you, darling? How are you, really?"
"I'm…I'm all right." That couldn't have been any further from the truth, but how could she possibly have time in a transatlantic phone call to go over it all?
"Stop this nonsense right now, Cora. You most certainly are not all right. I'm calling you from three thousand miles away because I received one of the worst letters of my life a few hours ago. I'm scared to death about how you're feeling after what's happened to you, and it's not doing anyone any good for you to pretend it's nothing. I want to know what's going on and what you're thinking and what I can do and what I should say to you. Do you want me to come, dear? I'll be on a ship tomorrow if you want me."
It was vintage Martha Levinson. Her brashness had become a source of embarrassment to Cora as she herself had grown more and more English over the last three decades, but this frank, tell-me-what's-wrong-and-how-to-fix-it tone was exactly the mother she remembered from her childhood. Suddenly, the static-y voice from across the ocean, coupled with the day's events, was too much for her, and Cora burst into tears.
"Oh, my dearest," her mother said, the strain of tears audible in her voice, "oh my darling Cora." Yet Cora could not respond past her sobs. She leaned against the post to keep herself from collapsing to her knees, and suddenly Carson, who had clearly not gone far, was at her side, slipping a chair behind her.
"My lady," he murmured, too discrete to meet her eyes, and she sank into it.
"Darling, I wish I could hold you," she heard her mother say, and the words only made her cry harder. She was aware that several more minutes passed as her mother whispered sentences she could not process, so distracted was she by the sound of Martha's voice and her accent and the thought that it was almost as though her mother had her arms around her across the miles.
Slowly, it dawned on her again that the cost of this phone call would end up approaching that of a new automobile, and her mother should not be spending this sort of money merely to listen to incoherent sobs. "I'm sorry," Cora choked at last.
"My dear, don't be sorry for your tears!"
"No, the money—I don't mean to go on so long—"
"Hush, Cora!" Martha said, almost sharply. "I don't want to hear another word about the cost. If I had to sell my house out from under me to pay for this phone call, I would!"
Her mother's sincerity brought on another round of sobs, until Cora finally whispered, "Mama," using the American pronunciation she hadn't given voice to in forty-plus years. "Mama, it's been horrid."
"I don't doubt it, my dear," Martha said. "I'm sure that doesn't begin to cover it."
"I think about it all the time. I can still feel him, and…oh, Mama…"
"I know, darling, I know." Martha paused, and when Cora did not speak again, she said, "Robert sounded determined to take very good care of you. Has he?"
How like her mother to take absolutely any circumstance as an opportunity to check in, in her sternest manner, on her son-in-law. Cora could imagine her raised eyebrows, and the thought slowed her tears as she felt a slight urge to smile.
"Oh yes, of course. He's been wonderful—he's been very, very good to me. I couldn't have survived without him." And truly, she could not fathom how she'd lasted the first week without his comfort.
"I'm glad of that, at least."
"We went to London today," Cora said suddenly, and then the whole story was pouring out of running into Bricker at Scotland Yard, and how she'd flown at him when he'd mentioned her daughters, and how she did not think she could bear to appear at the trial and see him again.
"I can't, Mother, I just can't," she said earnestly. Her tears had stopped, but a stray sob escaped from her lungs. "I can't look at him!"
"What's this, Cora? You don't seriously mean you won't be testifying?"
"I can't! You can't imagine how awful it was!"
"Cora, Robert tells me the two of you are determined to take the case to court and make sure this animal never sees the light of day again. He tells me how badly you've been injured, not to mention violated, and he tells me you've learned your own maid was attacked years ago and that surely there have been many women in between, and then you tell me you won't testify? Cora, how else do you imagine this beast will ever be brought to justice? You have an opportunity your maid didn't have, an opportunity I should think none of his other victims had. You know what your title means on that side of the Atlantic; you have standing in the court, and you're the one who can put an end to all of this."
She didn't want to put an end to all of this; she wanted it never to have happened at all. She wanted to climb into bed, let Robert wrap his arms around her, and never set foot outside again. "You don't understand," Cora said, hating the whine she could hear at the edge of her voice. "It's so…painful."
Her mother paused. "Cora, I know that you're in unimaginable pain. I know that, and I don't pretend to understand your feelings. But do know that my heart is breaking for you, breaking, and it hurts me deeply to know you're hurting. Believe me when I say that I'd suffer this for you if I could." Cora felt the truth in Martha's words, having thought many times that she was at least thankful that if Simon Bricker must attack one of their household, then thank God it had been her and not Mary or Edith or even Rose. The thought that he easily could have encountered either of her daughters out for a late night stroll or cornered them in an empty hallway terrified her far more than the memories of her own assault. She did not doubt that her own mother would have willingly offered herself to Bricker if it would have spared Cora.
"But you know what else I am?" Martha went on. "I'm angry. I'm angry that anyone would dare to hurt my baby. I'm outraged at the thought of what you've gone through. I was so mad when I read your husband's letter that I thought for a moment that I could swim the Atlantic myself just for a chance to get my hands on this animal! And what I don't understand is why you're not angry. How can you let this beast walk away after he's used you so horridly? Where's that tigress I raised in New York? Think of how you felt in that hallway this afternoon—"
"I was only so angry because he mentioned the girls—"
"And that," her mother said, her voice icy with rage, "is exactly how I feel. Use that anger, Cora, use it to make yourself punish him! You can lock this man away forever, you can make sure he never again sees sunlight, you can give him what he deserves. If you stand up, you can make sure he'll never hurt another woman. You know good and well he'll strike again if he's not in prison; think of what your poor maid told you. And all of these women are someone's daughters!"
As Martha talked on, Cora felt her tears freeze into a solid block of wrath, a righteous anger at the thought of what Bricker had done to her and to Baxter and to nameless women she would never know. In her mother's assurances of her blamelessness, she began to truly feel, perhaps for the first time, that it had not, in any part, been her fault, or that there was anything she should have done differently.
"You've got every right to walk outside your own home!" Martha raged when Cora wished she'd only stayed inside that night. "Heavens, girl, you're the one who paid for the estate!"
He'd had no right to lay his hands on her, she thought with absolute certainty. Or on her maid, or on anyone.
"You'll testify now, won't you?" her mother asked at last.
"Of course." Cora found she was almost eager for the trial. She no longer wanted to weep; she wanted to smash something—the greater its resemblance to Bricker's skull, the better.