A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [37]
Another full year passed. Then came the news that Mrs. Kendall had feared. Dr. James E. King and his wife Sarah Kendall King once again appeared at Minnie Kendall’s apartment on Union Street in a state of “alarm” and frantic haste. The baby was being returned to Maria Halpin. They told Mrs. Kendall to gather all of Jack’s things in a hurry. Everything had been arranged, and it had to be done right now. Maria was expecting her. She would be waiting for Mrs. Kendall outside her apartment. The transfer of the baby must take place outdoors, Mrs. Kendall was informed. On no account was she to enter the building. “It was a bad house,” she was told.
“They cautioned me on this point over and over again,” Mrs. Kendall said. There was one other important set of instructions. Under no circumstances, she was warned, could she let Maria know where she lived or where the baby had been raised the past year.
Mrs. Kendall and the child stepped into a waiting carriage. A driver, hired by Dr. King, took the carriage along a deliberately circuitous route to an address deep in the city. Apparently, for whatever reason, Dr. King was trying to keep his sister-in-law from remembering where she was going or how she got there. When Mrs. Kendall finally reached her destination, she learned it was Maria Halpin’s apartment, at 11 East Genesee Street. An elderly woman came out of the building—it may have been Maria’s neighbor, Mrs. Baker—and told Mrs. Kendall to bring the baby in. Maria was expecting her.
“Dr. King told me not to go in,” Mrs. Kendall dutifully replied.
The woman returned to the apartment to consult with Maria Halpin, and when she came out several minutes later, she said, “You must carry the child in and place it in its mother’s arms.”
Mrs. Kendall thought it through and decided she had to ignore Dr. King’s instructions and go along with Maria’s demands.
Carrying Jack, Mrs. Kendall entered the “bad house” and found waiting for her the woman she had first encountered in Grover Cleveland’s office. Mrs. Kendall was struck by Maria’s physical beauty. She was very “ladylike,” and she still had her figure. She was also weeping hysterically.
“Are you the baby’s mother?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I am Maria Halpin, the baby’s own mother.”
Maria took the child from Mrs. Kendall and held Oscar Folsom Cleveland in her arms, hugging and kissing him. She could not stop crying, and the child became alarmed by her behavior. After all, she was a stranger to him, and he was old enough to sense something was wrong. Mrs. Kendall took Oscar back and gave him her breast, which quieted down the fretful little fellow. Maria took everything in—this woman was nursing her biological son, and it must have hit her hard. She insisted that Mrs. Kendall tell her where she lived. But Mrs. Kendall stayed true to her word to Dr. King.
Suddenly, Maria began to spew venom—aimed not at Mrs. Kendall but at Grover Cleveland and Dr. James E. King. Her own obstetrician had stolen her baby, Maria declared. King was a “villain.” So was Cleveland (although she never once uttered his name). They were both evil.
When Maria and Mrs. Kendall parted ways at the door, it seemed that Maria did not bear this woman any ill will. In spite of everything, there was a special bond between them—their shared love for the boy. Maria gave Mrs. Kendall $2 for her troubles. She also tried to give the driver $3 if he would go back to Mrs. Kendall’s house and retrieve Oscar’s cradle, but Mrs. Kendall saw this as a ruse to find out where she lived; so on the way back, she asked the driver not to give Maria any information about her home address.