CHAPTER ONE

New York

Monday, September 20, 1909

Mama, you'll never guess in a million years!" My adopted daughter, Bridie, came flying into the house like a miniature tornado, her schoolbag knocking the newspapers from the hall stand as she hurtled toward the kitchen. I had just settled my ten-month-old baby, Mary Kate, into her high chair, where I was trying to persuade her that pureed carrot was edible. The result so far was that both Mary Kate and I were liberally spattered with orange daubs.

"Holy Mother of God!" I exclaimed. "I thought that school was teaching you to behave like a young lady. What has made you charge in like the cavalry?"

Usually her excitement had something to do with her best friend, Blanche. It ranged from Blanche has a new dress made of raw silk to Blanche is going to Paris. Blanche, as you may have guessed, led a very different life from our own, in a mansion on upper Fifth Avenue, while our abode in Patchin Place, a quiet backwater in Greenwich Village, was somewhat humbler.

I looked up expectantly at Bridie. "Well?"

"You know the big celebration?" she said. "The Hudson-Fulton parades?"

Who didn't? The whole city had talked of nothing else for weeks. The city was already filling up with visitors from all over the world. It was to be a joint celebration of three hundred years since Henry Hudson had discovered the river named after him and one hundred years since Robert Fulton had invented the first commercial paddle steamer, thus making commerce on the river possible. There were to be two weeks of parades, starting on September 25, some through the streets of the city and one grand naval parade with replicas of Hudson's and Fulton's ships, naval vessels from the American navy, and vessels from nine other countries. Since the aim was to promote international peace and prosperity, I thought it rather ironic that the ships were all armed to the teeth with impressive guns—the Ger-man dreadnoughts trying to outdo the English battleships and the American warships trying to outdo both.

"How could I not?" I replied. "Your poor father has been tearing his hair out, trying to make sure everything is safe and secure." As the New York head of the newly founded Federal Bureau of Investigation, Daniel was tasked with providing security to the various foreign diplomats, heads of state, and military personnel during their time in New York.

"That's good," she said, still breathless. I suspected she had run all the way home from school. "Because I am going to be in one of those parades." Bridie attempted to be a fashionable young lady, but when she was excited she reverted to the giddy, unrestrained excitement of a girl.

"You are?" The parades were one week away and there had been no mention of this before.

She nodded. "Miss Allen told us about it today. We had a special assembly. It's the historical and cultural parade. There are floats showing educational progress in America."

Bridie went to an expensive school for young ladies, paid for by my friends Sid and Gus, who lived across Patchin Place. Sid and Gus, whose real names were Elena Goldfarb and Augusta Walcott, were women of private means who broke all the rules of society and did whatever they pleased. This ranged from going to Paris to study art to turning their sitting room into a yurt and eating Mongolian food. Life across the street from them was never dull.

"And you're going to be on one of these floats?" I interrupted before she could go on. I had never learned to be patient, I'm afraid. She nodded. "It's a float showing education for young women. It's going to say FUTURE WOMEN OF NEW YORK: A BRIGHT AND PEACEFUL FUTURE FOR OUR NATION."

"That's grand," I said. "But why have I only heard about this just now? I thought everything had to be approved by the committee and was in place weeks ago."

"It was," she said. "Another ladies' academy was supposed to be on the float. A more important school than ours. But their principal is very forward thinking, and very much in favor of the advancement of women. She wanted to have girls standing at a blackboard on which there was a complicated math equation and other girls at a table doing a chemistry experiment, as well as girls painting and reading. The committee got wind of it and said absolutely not. Girls were to be shown as future homemakers, raising intelligent and educated children. So this principal said, 'Not my girls. They are going to change the world.'"