I Still Dream About You

What the Fly on the Wall Saw

THE DAY EDWARD CROCKER WAS BORN, THE DOCTOR IN ATTENDANCE was jubilant. His patient had just given birth to twins, a boy and a girl. Nurse Lettie Ross ran to the top landing upstairs and announced to Angus, waiting below, the good news: his wife had given him the son he wanted and a daughter.

But an agonizing hour later, the weary doctor came down the stairs and slowly walked down the long hall to the study, dreading the task at hand. Angus Crocker was a man he had wanted to please. He needed a benefactor, and if all went well, Angus had promised that he would build him a hospital. But all had not gone well. Due to unforeseen complications, he had lost the mother, and the weaker twin had died soon after.

Sometime later in the evening, after all the servants had been sent home, the young nurse was called down to the study, and the door was closed behind her. No one knows how much money was exchanged or what was said, but in the middle of the night, a baby was wrapped in blankets and taken away, and by morning, the baby that lay in the cradle upstairs was named Edward, and the word “male” written on his birth certificate. The doctor got his hospital, and the young nurse had a position for life. With the death of Angus’s wife, there would never be another child with both Crocker and Sperry blood. Half-mad with grief and half-mad with power, Angus had made a deal with the devil that night.

There would be a Crocker son. Not the one he had hoped for, but this child would carry on as best it could. What if there were sacrifices? Hadn’t he sacrificed to create an empire? Hadn’t its mother died bringing it into the world? This child would be made to understand that this was the only choice. A female child was not a blessing to a wealthy man; a female was a liability. Who knows, down the line, what fortune hunter could come along, marriage laws being what they were; and after Angus’s death, this stranger could gain total control of the Crocker-Sperry holdings. Hadn’t he done the same thing? Angus was not about to give away his life’s work to some unknown thief or scoundrel looking to steal another man’s fortune. It could happen. And by God, this child would understand that it was for her own good that it was done. The child would thank him one day.

After the funeral of his wife, Angus wanted to get as far away as possible from the place that held such painful memories. He sold all the company’s holdings in Scotland, and as soon as the child could travel, father, nurse, and baby sailed for America and, upon arriving in New York, boarded a private train headed to Birmingham. Acting on a tip from his friend and fellow Scot Andrew Carnegie, in Pittsburgh, Angus had purchased thousands of acres of land he intended to develop into the largest coal, iron, and steel company in the South.

Lettie Ross, the young nurse, knew that the bargain she had made was ungodly, but she had eight younger brothers and sisters and a sick mother who would be saved from the grinding poverty of the poor working class. With her salary, there would be money for doctors, food, warmth, and education for her brothers and sisters. Maybe she would go to hell for what she had agreed to, but it was a small price to pay for an entire family’s salvation. And the child in her care would want for nothing, other than being deprived of its natural gender; but as far as Lettie was concerned, that was also a small price to pay. Given a choice, what female wouldn’t want to live as a male? Males were free to move about the world as they chose; males could vote; they could not be beaten by their drunken husbands like her poor mother. But most of all, this child would never be forced to submit to a man for anything, the way she had been. When the child came of a certain age, she would make her understand that what had been done was for her own good. The child would thank her someday.

As the years passed, she began to see what a lonely, unhappy life the little girl was leading. When she was sixteen, it was Lettie Ross who first came up with the idea of Edwina. And what fun it turned out to be: all the trips to London, shopping for clothes. A few years later, a townhome in Mayfair was purchased, and the grand deception began. In June of 1912, Miss Edwina Crocker, twin sister of Edward, was launched into London society, and Lettie Ross was happy. For once, the girl could be who she really was, and although it would only be for a few months once a year, it would provide some relief from the tremendous burden of having to be Edward the rest of the year. When her father, Angus, had died, she had taken over the family interests and was now in charge of all the Crocker companies. It was quite a responsibility, with little time for fun. Edwina cherished the months she spent in London: her friends, the parties. There was even a time when Edwina fell in love and entertained the idea of giving up the charade forever. But by then, it was too late. The revelation would have caused too much of an uproar, and the scandal might have destroyed the company. She had hundreds of employees’ welfare to think about, so although she loved him, she said goodbye to the young man. But there was another reason she did not give up her life as Edward and marry. Unlike most women, Edwina had felt what it was like to have power, to be a male in society. And once having tasted that power, she was not willing to give it up, even for love.

She was, after all, her father’s daughter, and she liked the business of making money. She was smart, capable, and, having lived as a man and a woman, even more intuitive about people than old Angus Crocker had been. Since taking over, she had more than tripled the company’s assets. In 1932, she foresaw the decline of coal as a fuel source and, unlike the other stubborn coal men, she followed her gut intuition and sold most of her coal interests and invested the money with oil prospectors in Texas.

Years later, looking back at what her life would have been as Edwina, with all the restrictions and limitations of being female, she came to believe that although it had been a terribly reckless and selfish thing that had been done, in the long run, Lettie was right; it had turned out to be for her own good.

As Edward, the son, she’d had total control of her own life. As Edwina, the daughter, she would have had money, but never control of it; she would have borne the Crocker name, but never the power that went with it. And there had been other advantages. When Edward had spoken, people had listened. When he had championed women’s causes, he had not been dismissed as just another emotional female. When Edward had ordered men about, they had not balked at receiving orders from a woman.

And her life had not been without fun. She and Lettie had laughed over the years, picturing the faces of men: if they had only known a female was running one of the largest companies in the world and had bested most of them at golf, if they had known a female was the president of three all-male clubs, it would have boggled their minds. She knew men’s real opinion of women. She’d heard it firsthand. At the time, even in a deeply racist society, the mostly uneducated black man had been given the right to vote before college-educated women, black or white. If she could do more as Edward to help the cause, then as Lettie said, it was a small price to pay.

But as the years passed, the strain of living a double life began to take its toll. And in 1939, while in London, Edwina suddenly became more tired than usual. Insisting that she needed a complete rest, Lettie took her to her family home in northern Scotland to be attended to by Lettie’s physician brother.

But after an examination, the news was not good. Edwina had an advanced case of leukemia and was dying. Devastated, Lettie never left her side for a moment. A few weeks later, Edwina Crocker died in Lettie’s arms, the same arms that had been the first to hold her at her birth.

With her beloved Edwina gone, Lettie now had to solve the problem of informing the world about what had happened to Edward. People in Birmingham would soon begin to wonder where he was.

The next morning, she sent a wire. Soon after it arrived, the Birmingham News carried this headline in bold letters across the front page:

EDWARD CROCKER FEARED LOST AT SEA

Three days after the death of his beloved sister, Birmingham business tycoon Edward Crocker has been reported lost at sea in what appears to have been a sailing accident. The accident occurred off the northern coast of Scotland, where his sister was buried.

Everyone in Birmingham sat waiting for news; when it came over the Teletype, it was rushed into print and broadcast on the radio.

EDWARD CROCKER OFFICIALLY DEAD

A week later, over a thousand people came to a memorial service for a man who had never existed. Edward Crocker, the person they had known as the rich, powerful industrialist, had died quietly in an obscure little village in northern Scotland as Edwina. But before Edwina had died, she had made one last request. She wanted to be taken home and buried at Crestview. Lettie had promised her that it would be done, but in 1939, war was brewing in Europe and travel was difficult, so the trip home would have to wait. In the interim, Edwina’s body was buried in a small country cemetery outside the village in an unmarked grave until it was safe to sail again.