The Chaperone

This chapter is a flashback to Cora and Alan’s early married life and begins with the text of a newspaper article describing Cora and Alan’s wedding. The article makes it clear that Alan had more social capital in Wichita than Cora did, highlighting the relatively unequal footing of their early relationship. At their wedding reception, a friend of Alan’s named Raymond Walker tries to make a drunken speech, but other wedding guests escort him away.  

Cora and Alan settle into their married life. Cora doesn’t know what to expect sexually from their marriage and is tentative in the bedroom. The two have separate bedrooms, but Alan visits her at night to have sex. Cora soon gets pregnant, and the two stop having sex after that. She nearly dies giving birth to their twin boys but eventually recovers, although Alan tells her that for medical reasons, she shouldn’t have any more children. They agree on that, but they stop having sex entirely, and Cora wonders if he’s visiting prostitutes.   

When the twins are four, the family plans an outing to a local amusement park with Alan’s sister and her husband. On the morning of the excursion, Alan says he isn’t feeling well and stays home. On the trolley to the park, Cora starts feeling unwell, too, and sends the boys off with their aunt and uncle while she returns home. When she gets there, she discovers Alan in bed with Raymond Walker.

Alan sends Raymond away and talks to Cora. In the early 1900s, homosexuality was a social stigma and considered sinful by mainstream society, and Alan points out that if Cora reveals his secret, he could be killed. She at first demands that he leave the house immediately, but she then reconsiders and says she wants a divorce. She feels betrayed by Alan’s secret, assuming that Alan asked her to marry him to cover up his homosexuality. Alan argues that he and Cora care for each other and their sons and that he doesn’t want a divorce, but he says he will grant her one if she wishes. He also emphasizes that his sexuality is an ongoing struggle and that he has tried to deny his feelings for men during his married life. He leaves her to mull over the question of a divorce. The chapters that follow reveal that Cora and Alan decide to stay married.

The narrative returns to the novel’s main timeframe of 1922 in New York. Cora returns to the orphanage to look for her records. Joseph lets her into the records room and warns her to finish looking before the nuns and girls come back downstairs from Mass. Cora finds her file, which doesn’t have much information. Her parentage is recorded as “unknown.” Her file contains a letter from Mrs. Kaufmann asking for information and one from a woman named Mary O’Dell, also asking after Cora. Mrs. O’Dell says she’s a friend of Cora’s birth mother, but the handwriting is strikingly similar to Cora’s, and Cora suspects that Mrs. O’Dell might be her mother. She takes both Mrs. Kaufmann’s and Mrs. O’Dell’s letters from the file.

Joseph escorts Cora outside when she’s finished in the records room, and Cora offers to do something to thank him for helping her. He suggests that they get a soda at the drugstore around the corner, and they converse while they have their drinks. Cora is pro-Prohibition, and they discuss alcohol, which was outlawed at the time; Joseph once owned a beer garden and doesn’t see anything wrong with good beer. He points out that criminalizing alcohol leads to people drinking potentially lethal home-brewed liquor in secret.

Joseph was imprisoned at an internment camp in Georgia during World War I because of suspicions about his loyalties as a German American. Cora learns that his wife died in the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 while Joseph was in the camp. Joseph has a young daughter who was placed with the nuns after his wife died, and he moved to an outbuilding on the orphanage grounds to be with her and work as a handyman. Joseph is straightforward and honest with Cora, and she senses that he’s interested in her: “He nodded, his gaze moving over her face in a way she would long remember” (214). Flustered, she says she has to pick up Louise from dance class and leaves without expecting to ever see Joseph again. 

Cora sightsees by herself in New York during the days while Louise is at dance class, and she quickly becomes lonely. She’s also fretting about whether Mrs. O’Dell will respond to a letter Cora has written her. She decides to use money that Alan has sent her to buy a radio for the girls at the orphanage, and she uses the errand as an excuse to meet with Joseph again. After they pick up the radio, they go for soda again at the drugstore.

Cora finds herself telling Joseph about Alan’s homosexuality, tired of keeping it a secret: “And what a relief it would be to say the words aloud, to have someone else in the world truly know her” (228). She doesn’t think Joseph knows enough about her and her identity in Kansas to make the confession dangerous to Alan. Joseph takes the revelation in stride and makes it clear that he’s interested in Cora when he says, “What a waste,” in reference to her sexless marriage (230). He also reaches over to stroke her hair. Cora becomes giddy and flustered and realizes she’s late to pick up Louise from class.

Louise says that Cora looks flushed, and Cora makes an excuse about hurrying in the heat. Louise doesn’t want to get sick because she’s trying for a permanent position with the Denishawn dance company, and she becomes preoccupied with the idea of catching something from Cora. Eventually she seems to believe that Cora really is just overheated. Cora is in awe of herself for covering up her meeting with Joseph. When she and Louise get back to the apartment, there’s a letter from Mrs. O’Dell waiting for her.