THE ASHWORTH LEGACY

ACT I: INCIDING

The flag was folded on a Thursday in November 1943, and Cat O'Connor held it in her hands and did not know what to do with it because it was too small to be a flag and too heavy to be cloth. It had belonged to someone's son, or someone's brother, or someone's fiancé—Cat's own name, Sean, had not been on the list of the dead, but the list was long and the post office had delivered it in a plain envelope with a return address that meant nothing to anyone in the factory where Cat worked with her hands from seven in the morning to seven at night, pressing metal parts into shapes that would become engines that would become planes that would become victories or losses depending on which side of the Atlantic you were standing on when the news arrived.

She was nineteen years old and Irish and tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. The factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut, employed three hundred women, most of them Irish or Italian or the daughters of immigrants who had come here believing that hard work was its own reward. Cat believed it too, or had believed it, before the war had made belief into something that felt less like a principle and more like a requirement.

The War Bond gala was at the Waldorf Astoria, and Cat was not supposed to be there. She was supposed to be at the factory, at her station, pressing metal parts. But her sister Mary had a friend whose boyfriend worked catering at the Waldorf, and the boyfriend had called on a Tuesday to say they were short four ushers, and Mary's friend had called Cat on a Wednesday, and Cat had said yes because yes was easier than no and because she had nothing else to do with her evenings that did not involve sitting in a room that was too small and listening to the radio.

She wore a dress that she had made herself from an old curtain her mother had brought from home, a blue cotton with white dots that was not elegant but was clean, and she stood in the corridor of the Ballroom, holding a tray of champagne glasses that she was not allowed to drink from, and watched the wealthy people of New York arrive in furs and diamonds and the sort of confidence that comes from never having had to press metal parts into shapes.

Julian Ashworth IV was standing at the entrance to the ballroom, talking to a man who was possibly a senator and possibly a movie star—Cat could not tell the difference—and he was looking at the man with the same expression he had worn when he had first approached her in the corridor three minutes before: mild discomfort, the sort of discomfort that belongs to a man who is out of his element and knows it and is trying not to let it show.

"Can you help me with something?" he said to Cat, which was not how you asked a waitress for help but was how a man who understood that he was asking help asked for it.

"Depends on what it is."

"I need to know which room the fundraising basket auction is in. I have been asked to oversee it, and I have no idea where it is."

Cat had no idea either. But she was good at finding rooms. In the factory, you learned the layout of the building quickly because being lost meant your station was unstaffed and being unstaffed meant the line stopped and the line stopping meant the man with the clipboard looked at you with a look that was not quite anger and not quite disappointment but something that felt like both.

"Give me two minutes," she said.

She found the room. It was down a corridor she would never have found on her own, past a room full of musicians tuning their instruments and past a bathroom that smelled of lavender and expensive soap, and it was a small room filled with baskets that had been donated by department stores and filled with things that cost more than Cat made in a month.

"Here," she said, returning to Julian.

He looked at her. Really looked at her. Not the way the other men at the gala looked at the women who served them, which was to say without looking at all, and not the way the wealthy men at the gala looked at the women who worked for them, which was to say with a vague appreciation that was almost generous and almost patronizing and usually both. He looked at her the way a person looks at another person who has solved a problem he could not solve.

"Thank you," he said. "I am Julian."

"Cat."

"Cat," he repeated, as if testing the sound of it. "That's short for Catherine?"

"It's short for what I am."

He smiled. It was a small smile, not the polished smile of a man who was used to being smiled at, but a real one, crooked at the edge, the sort of smile that belongs to someone who is not used to smiling at galas.

They talked for seventeen minutes. He told her he was a war veteran—he had served in the Pacific, had come back with injuries that were visible and injuries that were not, and hated his family's name because his family's name was associated with money and privilege and the sort of philanthropy that was designed more to be photographed than to do any good. She told him she worked at a factory and that her name was Cat and that she did not care about his family's name because she did not know it and did not want to.

Seven minutes in, he said, "I think I want to marry you."

Ten minutes in, she said, "That's fast."

Twelve minutes in, he said, "I know."

Fourteen minutes in, she said, "Why?"

Sixteen minutes in, he said, "Because you are the first person at this entire evening who looks at me and sees a person instead of a checkbook."

Seventeen minutes in, she said, "I need to finish my shift."

He nodded. "When can I see you again?"

"Three days," she said. "Give me three days."

"I'll give you three days."

ACT II: UNDERCURRENT

They married on a Saturday in December 1943, in a marriage office in Albany that was nothing like the Waldorf Astoria and everything like what a marriage office should be: fluorescent lights, a linoleum floor, a clerk who had seen ten thousand couples and could read their stories by looking at their shoes. Cat wore the same blue dress. Julian wore a suit that fit him poorly because he had bought it off the rack and had never before had the experience of a suit not fitting him perfectly.

The clerk said, "Names?"

"Catherine O'Connor."

"Julian Ashworth the Fourth."

"Just Julian," he said.

The clerk did not ask for clarification. She had heard that one before too.

They were married in eleven minutes. The clerk stamped the license. Cat put the license in her purse next to the flag that she still did not know what to do with.

They drove back to New York in his car, a car his family had bought him that he drove slowly and carefully, as if he were apologizing to it for using it. Cat sat by the window and watched the city pass and thought about what she had done.

She had said three days. He had given her three days. In those three days, she had gone to the factory, pressed metal parts, gone home, sat in her room, called her sister, called a friend, called nobody at all, and then she had gone to a marriage office in Albany and stood in front of a clerk with fluorescent lights and a linoleum floor and said, "Yes."

"You don't have to do this," her sister Mary had said, and Cat had said, "I know," and Mary had said, "Are you sure?" and Cat had said, "No," which was the truest thing she had said all week.

At the Ashworth house—a house that was larger than the entire building Cat lived in, a house that had rooms with names like "library" and "music room" and "sun room" in a way that made Cat feel like she had walked onto a movie set—Julian's mother received her in the drawing room with a smile that was perfectly constructed and perfectly empty.

"So you are the girl my son has married," she said. Not welcomed. Not welcomed away. Assessed.

"I am."

"My name is Eleanor Ashworth. You will find that we have certain expectations in this family."

"I expect that too."

Eleanor's smile did not waver. "Good. Because they are not negotiable."

Cat looked at her. This was a woman who had spent her life understanding that money was a language and that she was fluent in it. Cat understood too. She was fluent in a different language—the language of the factory floor, the language of the shift whistle, the language of women who made the same gesture ten thousand times a day and did not complain because complaining did not make the metal easier to shape.

"I am not negotiable," Cat said.

Something flickered in Eleanor's eyes. Not approval. Not disapproval. Recognition.

Julian found Cat in the sun room twenty minutes after the reception, sitting on a chaise lounge that was too ornate for her and looking at the garden through glass that was too clean.

"My mother will try to manage you," he said, sitting beside her.

"I know."

"My father will try to buy you."

"He'll have to line up."

He smiled. It was the crooked smile. The real one.

"I disown myself," he said. "Before he can do it. I am cutting ties. The fortune is gone. The name means nothing to me. I have a rank in the army and a discharge pending and three hundred dollars in the bank and a wife who does not care about any of the things my family cares about. It is, I think, the best thing I have ever done."

Cat looked at him. The afternoon light through the clean glass turned his face gold and grey at the same time. "You hate your family."

"I hate what they represent. I don't hate them. My father loves his money. My mother loves her reputation. I love you. Those are not incompatible positions. They are just—different."

ACT III: CLIMAX

The disownment came in January. It was a letter, delivered by a lawyer, on thick paper with the Ashworth family crest printed at the top in ink that was probably real gold. Cat read it in the kitchen of the apartment Julian had found them—a small apartment in the Village that had heat that worked and a kitchen that was small but clean and a window that opened onto a street that had bodegas and bakeries and a dog that barked at 6 AM every morning whether it was raining or not.

"She read it?" Cat asked.

"She did."

"And?"

"She said, 'Tell your father I will write when he learns to use a pen that works.'"

Julian laughed. It was a real laugh, loud and unselfconscious, the sort of laugh that you only hear in apartments with windows that open onto streets with bodegas and dogs that bark at 6 AM.

The years unspooled. 1944. 1945. The war ended in August, and Cat and Julian celebrated in the street with strangers who were dancing and drinking and crying, and Julian held Cat and danced with her in the middle of East Village and she laughed and he laughed and the dog from downstairs barked and nobody cared.

Cat got a 16mm camera in 1947. It was expensive—Julian had saved every penny from his army severance and their salaries and they bought it from a man in Harlem who had taken it out of a war surplus store and was selling it to them for more than the store had asked because it was a 16mm camera and people who made films always paid more than the asking price.

Cat made documentaries. Small ones. Of the factory. Of the women who had worked with her. Of the neighbourhood. She filmed the baker on his balcony tending tomatoes. She filmed the children playing stickball on the corner. She filmed her husband sleeping, his face relaxed in a way it never was when he was awake, looking younger and older at the same time.

"People don't watch these," Julian said, watching her edit a reel in the living room, which was also their office and also the place where they paid bills and also the place where the dog slept.

"People don't have to watch them," Cat said. "I just have to make them."

"You're impossible."

"I know."

In 1950, Julian's father died. The news arrived the same way all news arrives in families that have not spoken to each other in years: through a lawyer. Cat was in the kitchen making dinner. Julian was in the living room watching television. The phone rang. Julian answered it. He listened. He said, "Okay." He said, "Thank you for letting me know." He hung up the phone.

"My father is dead," he said.

Cat turned off the stove. "I'm sorry."

"He disowned me."

"I know."

"He left everything to a trust. For me. I am not in it."

Cat dried her hands on a towel. "That's sad."

"It's fine."

"It's not fine."

He looked at her. She was standing in the kitchen in the blue apron she wore when she cooked, her hair tied back, her face clean and unmade-up, and she was looking at him with the same direct, unflinching gaze she had brought to the Waldorf Astoria in 1943.

"It's fine," he said again. "He disowned me. I disowned myself. We agree on something, finally."

ACT IV: AFTERMATH

November 1963. Cat was watching the news in the living room. Julian was in the kitchen, washing dishes. The television showed John F. Kennedy in Dallas. It showed the motorcade. It showed the aftermath. Cat sat on the chaise lounge—the same type of chaise lounge she had sat on at the Ashworth house in 1943, though this one was secondhand and comfortable and had a cushion that she had made herself—and watched and did not understand how the world could change in a single afternoon.

Julian came into the living room with two cups of coffee. He set one on the table beside her. He sat down. They watched the screen in silence. The world had changed. It would change again, many times, in the years that followed. But this afternoon, in this apartment with the window that opened onto the street with the bodega and the bakery and the dog that barked at 6 AM, the world was changing and they were watching it change and that was enough.

"Maybe," Cat said, "we should screen the films."

"The documentaries?"

"All of them. The factory. The neighbourhood. You. The dog."

"We could screen them somewhere."

"Here. Here is fine. People from the neighbourhood. The baker. The children. The women from the factory who are still alive and still coming upstairs."

He was quiet for a moment. "You want to show them our life."

"I want to show them that it mattered. Not your family's life. Ours. The life we built. It mattered."

The screening was in the spring of 1964. It was in the apartment. The neighbours came. The baker came with his tomatoes. The children who had played stickball were now teenagers and stood in the corner and tried to look older than they were. The women from the factory came, Cat's old friends, their hands still marked by years of pressing metal into shapes. Julian sat beside Cat on the chaise lounge, and the 16mm projector hummed, and the light from the projector turned the wall into a screen, and Cat's life played across it, frame by frame, in silence.

When it was over, nobody spoke for a long time. Then the baker said, "That's us." And the women nodded, and some of them cried, and Julian held Cat's hand, and Cat thought about the flag she had held in 1943 and the marriage office in Albany and the Waldorf Astoria and the seventeen minutes that had changed everything.

The world kept changing. It always does. But in this apartment, on this wall, on this screen, their life was there, and it was theirs, and it was enough.