When I told Cora I wanted to leave New York and find a teaching job, I meant somewhere close enough that I could visit the city(her hometown) from time to time.
Shaking her head in disappointment, Ivy roughly folded the letter into the envelope and tucked it into her coat pocket. After pulling on her gloves, she grabbed the satchel and stepped outside, grasped the handrail, and carefully walked down the icy steps to the sidewalk.
On the walk there, a cold wind cut between the buildings and blew down the street, making Ivy shiver. A peddler’s wagon drove by. One of the horses released a load, leaving the manure pile steaming on the roadway. She wrinkled her nose at the smell. The one good thing about winter was that cold tended toquench the odorous stench of manure and garbage that piled up in all but the best areas.
The Altucher brownstone stood on a quiet street in the respectable part of the city, its windows glowing warm against the gray February afternoon. Ivy climbed the steps with her usual anticipation, already composing today’s lesson in her mind. She’d brought a small bag of dried beans to use as counting tokens—a trick she’d devised to help Fritz visualize the different verb endings. If she laid them out in patterns, he’d remember them better than if she simply drilled him on recitation.
Teaching the Altucher boys had become the bright spot in her otherwise dreary existence. Three times a week, she escaped while her father was at his office. For two precious hours, she was Miss Jackson, Latin tutor—not Ivy, the housekeeping drudge.
The maid showed her into the parlor, but instead of Henrick and Fritz waiting at the table with their books and slates, Ivy found Mrs. Altucher standing by the window, her plump face creased with worry.
“Miss Jackson.” Mrs. Altucher twisted her hands together. “I need to speak with you before the boys come down.”
The quaver in her voice traced a cold finger of dread down Ivy’s spine. “Is something wrong? The boys?” They’d appeared perfectly healthy when last she’d seen them. But children so easily became ill. And illness often led to—” She shoved aside the memory of her brother, who’d been the same age as Fritz when he’d succumbed to whooping cough.
The older woman's eyes glistened. “I’m afraid this will have to be the boys’ last lesson. It’s Mr. Altucher’s business.” Mrs. Altucher dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “There have been setbacks. He made some foolish decisions.” She pressedher lips together, obviously holding back more condemnation of her husband.
So relieved the bad news wasn’t about the boys’ health, Ivy almost didn’t follow the rest of the woman’s words.
“We must economize, and....” Mrs. Altucher spread her hands helplessly. “We’re letting some servants go. Cutting out…. Well, luxuries must be sacrificed.”
Luxuries.Ivy wanted to argue that Latin wasn’t a luxury—that education was the foundation upon which young men built their futures. She wanted to say that Henrick had a gift for languages, that sweet Fritz’s struggles meant he simply learned differently than most. She wanted to offer to tutor them for free, to keep coming three times a week just to see their faces light up when a difficult concept finally clicked into place.
But she couldn’t. If word got out that she offered free lessons, she’d be inundated with requests, and she only had a small allotment of time for her secret tutoring. She needed to be paid, for every penny of her hidden savings meant she could someday escape her father’s house. “I understand.” Ivy’s voice came out smaller than she intended. “These are difficult times for many families.”
“I only hope we don’t have to sell the house.” Mrs. Altucher squeezed her hand. “You’ve been wonderful with the boys. They’ve learned so much. Their teachers are pleased with their progress. I only wish....” She lowered her arms.
Ivy knew what she wished. The same thing Ivy wished—that circumstances were different, that money was plentiful. That women’s choices weren’t controlled by fathers and husbands.If wishes were horses, beggars would ride, she scolded herself. “Shall I give them their final lesson?”
“Please. I haven’t told them yet. I thought...perhaps you might know the best way.”
Ivy didn’t knowthe best way. She wasn’t sure there wasa best wayto tell two boys who’d come to love learning that their tutoring sessions were ending. But she nodded and followed the maid to the study, where Henrick and Fritz waited with their slates and their eager faces and their complete ignorance of what was about to change.
She taught them for two hours, pouring everything she had into the lesson. She used her bag of beans to help Fritz master the subjunctive mood, arranging them in patterns on the table until his eyes lit with understanding.
She challenged Henrick with a passage from Cicero that made him frown with concentration, then grin with triumph when he worked out the translation. She laughed at their jokes and praised their efforts and pretended that her heart wasn’t breaking.
When the lesson ended, she reached across the table and took their hands in hers. “I have to tell you something,” she said softly. “This will be our last tutoring session.”
Fritz’s lower lip trembled. “But why? Did we do something wrong?”
“No, sweetheart. You’ve done everything right. Both of you.” She squeezed their hands. “Sometimes, circumstances change, and we have to adapt. But that doesn’t mean you should stop learning. Practice your declensions. Read your Latin primers. And remember,” she tapped Fritz’s forehead, “everything I’ve taught you is in here now. No one can take that away.”
Henrick, old enough to understand more than his brother, gave her a solemn nod. “We won’t forget, Miss Jackson.”
“I know you won’t.” She fought to keep the clench of her heart from showing on her face.
She said her goodbyes to Mrs. Altucher, accepted the final payment pressed into her hand, and stepped out into the February cold.
The walk home stretched before her, gray and endless. Ivy pulled her coat tighter, but the chill that seeped into her bones had little to do with the weather. She’d lost her only pupils. Her secret savings, carefully hoarded over months of tutoring, would only stretch so far. And a long line of families seeking female Latin tutors didn’t exactly exist.
What am I going to do now?
The question circled in her mind, round and round, without settling on any answers.
Ivy stopped walking and found herself standing before a newsstand, the papers rustling in the bitter wind. Her eyes, blurred with unshed tears, drifted across the headlines almost without seeing them.
The wordMONTANAcaught her eye, conjuring images of vast blue skies and snow-capped mountains, of a world utterly unlike the cramped, gray streets of New York. She placed a hand over her pocket, hearing the crackle of paper.
