The Chaperone

Mary has asked to meet Cora at Grand Central Station, and Cora nervously shows up early to wait for her. Impulsively, she buys a bouquet of roses for Mary. As soon as Mary shows up, Cora sees a resemblance to herself and knows that Mary is her mother, not a friend as she told the nuns. The two quickly acknowledge the fact and go to the train station restaurant to talk. Mary tells Cora her story.

Cora’s father was Mary’s short-term teenage boyfriend, whom she met at a dance and who disappeared to go out West when Mary told him about the pregnancy. He was 15 and Mary was 17 when Cora was conceived. Mary left for New York so her relatives in Boston wouldn’t find out about the baby, and she gave birth to Cora in a shelter for prostitutes and other women in need. She stayed in New York for six months to nurse Cora, and Cora understands that Mary “had left the first day she’d been allowed” (247). She asked that Cora be sent to a “Catholic home [orphanage]” (248), and she then returned to Boston, telling her relatives that she had gotten a new job in New York but had been robbed of her wages at knifepoint.