Whatever it meant, he didn’t come . . . and I ate my black-eyed peas and home-canned collard greens alone.

Alone, I think. I was alone when I worked at the Vanderhoffs’ home too, though a different kind of alone. Alone surrounded by people.

After working at the Chicago Lying-in Dispensary as a milkmaid for more than a year, I was hired by the mother and father of one of our premature babies to return with them, as a private wet nurse, to their Lake Forest home. It seemed, at the time, like a good plan. The pay was better, I’d have my own room, and they promised to keep me as a baby nurse and nanny when my milk ran out.

Unfortunately, my life in the three-story brick home on Colonial Avenue wasn’t as pleasant as I’d expected. The rest of the house staff, the cook and the upstairs maid, resented me. Every three hours I breastfed the baby, as Dr. Shane from Lying-in had ordered, and kept the nursery and my adjoining sitting room tidy, but other than that I had no duties at all. When I offered to help in the kitchen, the cook turned away and Beatrice Vanderhoff, the baby’s mother, shooed me upstairs.

Breastfeeding the infant around the clock meant there was never a day off. What’s more, the couple’s first child had died of smallpox and the parents refused to let me take Baby Gerald out in the pram. Augustus Vanderhoff, a lawyer with a firm in downtown Chicago, a heavy man with a handlebar mustache and an annoying tic that made him look like he was winking, had an expansive library next to the parlor, and I was allowed to read his books. Other than that, until the weather warmed up, there was nothing to do.

For five months, I lived there, lonely and bored, before I grew daring enough to explore the house. One Sunday afternoon, when the maid and the cook were on their half-day and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderhoff had gone to a charity tea for Hull House, I took off my shoes and tiptoed upstairs to the third floor.

The first room I entered was an empty round turret with windows that looked out in every direction. I thought of asking if I could have it for my sitting area, but it was much too far from the nursery. The other three bedrooms were for guests, nothing much there but empty armoires, soft beds, and velvet-backed chairs.

Back on the second floor, I ended my investigation by peeking into my employers’ bedchamber, which was dominated by a huge maple four-poster bed. I’d never seen such a bed, and I crept in and lay down on it, smoothing the deep rose coverlet under my hands. Little Gerald was still sleeping in his wicker bassinet down the hall, so I continued to poke around. It was the first time I’d had fun for almost a year.

Pushing open the door to the walk-in closet, I ran my fingers through a row of my mistress’s gowns. Some of the dresses I’d never seen her wear, like the blue satin floor-length one with ruffles and the deep purple velvet with leg-of-mutton sleeves. The far end held the master’s clothing, only four suits, all black, a few white shirts, and a mourning coat.

Returning to the main room, I sat down at the vanity. The smell of my mistress’s perfume, Lily of the Valley, in a frosted glass atomizer, intrigued me, and I gave it a spray. In the mirror, a young woman, pale from no sunlight, her hair wound up tight in a chignon, her gold wire-rimmed spectacles perched on her nose, stared back. Momentarily, I was ashamed to see myself snooping . . . but only a little.

Careful not to disturb things too much, I lift the lid to the embossed silver jewelry box and one by one hold the lady’s necklaces up, imagining I’m a rich debutante getting ready for a party. There’s one ornament I particularly fancy, an emerald pendant on a thin silver chain. On the lower shelf of the velvet-lined box, I discover a gold ring with a solitary ruby. I slip it on and admire my hand. Then the kitchen doorbell rings.

Red alert! I jerk up, almost tipping over my stool, and look around wildly to see if there’s any evidence of my trespassing. When I try to slip the ring back into the box, it’s stuck on my finger.

The back doorbell rings again. I lick and pull, lick and pull, but the ring won’t come off! It’s probably only a deliveryman at the back door, but if I don’t answer soon he’ll wake the baby. All the way down the back stairs, I keep licking and twisting the ring on my finger, and just as I skid across the kitchen floor it slips off and I stuff it under my chemise. It wouldn’t look right for a lowly wet nurse to be seen with a huge red ruby twinkling on her hand!

I’m surprised to discover, when I unlatch the back door, that the person ringing isn’t a delivery boy. It’s Mr. Vanderhoff.

Betrayal

I should have known right away that something was off, but I’m innocent that way, always have been.

“Hey, thanks, kid. Took you long enough. You the only one home?” Mr. Vanderhoff slurs. He smells like he’s been swimming in gin. This was before the Eighteenth Amendment, and alcohol was still legal. “I lost my key.” I stand back against the kitchen table. He’s never called me anything but Miss Murphy before. “Mrs. Vanderhoff home yet?”

“No. No one’s here but little Gerald and me. I thought you might be the coal man.”

For some reason Augustus Vanderhoff thinks this is funny. “Coal man! Give me a hand here, honey. I’m feeling kind of weak.” I offer him my arm as men do with ladies on the street. Not weak, I think. More like drunk.

“Upstairs,” he commands as we careen through the kitchen. Twice he almost falls, and he throws his meaty arm around my waist for support. Besides the stench of booze, there’s the sickly odor of cigars and aftershave.

“I just have to get to my bedroom,” he mumbles.

The bedroom! I hope he’s too inebriated to notice if anything’s been disturbed. I can’t even remember if I closed the door. If he passes out, I think I can put the ring back.

The master suite door is still open when we stumble around the corner, but Mr. Vanderhoff is too drunk to notice. He circles around, takes me in his arms as if to dance, and begins to warble a ragtime. That doesn’t work. He can’t get his feet to do the two-step, and he falls over onto the big bed, taking me with him. I jump up quickly and straighten my skirt.

“My shoes, kid.” The big man is lying on his back with his hands under his head.

Where does he come up with the “kid” appellation, anyway? I’m not a child, and I’m not a floozy he picked up at the saloon. He sticks his legs out over the side of the bed.

I step reluctantly forward and undo the laces of his high-top ankle boots while he pulls off his shirt collar and unbuttons his vest. As I yank off the second shoe and drop it onto the floor, his legs circle my waist and he pulls me toward him, laughing.