by Jane Steen
“Ha.” Madame barked a short, mirthless laugh. “We are the lucky ones this time. In confidence, I have heard that Field’s have lost nine hundred thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise.”
“Martin told me that too. Perhaps two hundred thousand dollars’ worth saved, and they are already back in business. If I can help with your unpacking—”
“Merci bien, but no.” A brief gleam of amusement crept into Madame’s steel-ball eyes.
“I’ll admit I was hoping you’d say that.” I sighed with relief. “I’ve had quite enough of moving. I came to thank you, in fact. For coming to my rescue on Thursday.” I hesitated. “Did you . . . talk to Thea?”
“I think it may be a little time before she tries that trick again.” Madame smiled a small, tight smile, but then she shook her head. “But she is a liability for you, Mrs. Rutherford. A—how do you say? A millstone around your neck. She makes you worry, and worry is not a good thing for a young woman like you. You have sufficient responsibilities.”
“I can’t abandon her.” I fiddled with one of the smooth ringlets Alice had created that morning to cascade over my shoulder as a change from my usual piled-up hairstyle.
“You will not abandon her. You could.” Madame sighed. “Eh bien, one day when she is old enough, she will abandon you. And I do not know whether she does you more harm now or whether she will be more dangerous in the future.”
“Dangerous?” I raised my eyebrows.
“Just so. And yet,” Madame shrugged, “she has considerable potential in our trade. I will wait a few days more, and then we shall speak of her again.”
“So she’s giving satisfaction as an apprentice?”
“She learns very fast. She will not do for the dressmaking side, in my opinion.”
“No? I remember her being good with her needle as a child.”
“She wants a larger stage. She already asks to work as a shopgirl.” Madame paused before looking back up at me. “When we had our little talk, I suggested that it was a position where one had to exercise great discretion. One had to learn to keep one’s thoughts to oneself.”
“Really?” I tried to imagine Thea keeping her tongue behind her teeth but failed.
“Hmmm.” Madame’s eyes gleamed. “I believe she has the inner discipline to heed my advice, if she wants preferment badly enough. This is a struggle I might allow her to win—but only if she plays by my rules.”
“So, Mrs. Rutherford.” Madame appeared as if from nowhere some days later, Thea in her wake. “The time has come to talk about this young lady.”
She had found me gazing out of the atelier window, woolgathering as a dress took shape in my mind. Light flooded the huge room; we were a dizzying six stories high, our new store being two floors higher than the old, and we soared above the adjacent buildings to take full advantage of even this weak winter daylight. Behind me, the atelier murmured with quiet purpose, the soft creak of scissors cutting through fine cloth making itself heard above a muted buzz of foreign tongues, the half-whispered conversations of the embroiderers seated a few feet away from where I stood.
I loved the sounds of the atelier, and I loved its huge windows. It soothed my soul, somehow, to stand there and contemplate the vast December sky, a pool of pale blue above the jumble of brick, iron, and glass below us. Columns of smoke rose vertically into the still air. I could almost feel the city of Chicago breathing, working, working, striving to thread the tentacles of its commerce across America, across the globe. It was the lifeblood of trade, the great force Martin understood how to manipulate, creating money with the same apparent ease with which I created beauty.
I let my fanciful thoughts go, turning to gaze at the young woman who stood at Madame’s side, her eyelids lowered in an attitude of respectful submission. It was false submission, I was sure, but it was enough. Madame had proposed a challenge, and Thea had taken it.
I had to admire the child. Her willfulness subdued under the discipline Madame had imposed, Thea’s whole being was transformed; she had at last achieved that indefinable quality called poise. She didn’t fidget or shift her feet, but neither did she look stiff or uncomfortable. She held herself in perfect balance, like an athlete, with a fluid confidence that belied her age.
Nor had her weeks in the residence resulted in any of the untidiness young girls were sometimes prone to when left to their own devices. Her hands were linked in front of her, their nails cut short and neatly kept. Her hair was dressed in a modest but becoming style, her collar and cuffs were spotless, her dress well brushed and free from wrinkles. She had listened attentively as Madame spoke and then angled her head deferentially toward me to catch my reply.
“What do you have in mind?” I knew already, but Madame was the ultimate authority when it came to the apprentices, and I always deferred to her.
“Christmas approaches.” Madame glanced up at the sea of blue outside our windows. “The sales floor becomes more busy while the atelier becomes quieter.” She nodded in the grandmotherly way that fooled nobody who knew her well. “Mr. Salazar asks me for girls with good English, trained in our ways and presentable, and I have selected a dozen, including Miss Lombardi. She does not have the passion for the dressmaker’s art that would cause me to reserve her for special training.”
I nodded. “Are you still eager to be a shop junior, Thea?” I asked her. “It won’t be very interesting, I’m afraid, but one has to start somewhere. Sorting ribbons, sweeping up, handing things to the older shopgirls, cleaning the glass counters with newspaper and vinegar.” My words brought back memories, and I grinned. “Remind me to tell you one day about my experience at Gambarelli’s.”
The smooth eyelids lifted; the brilliant hazel eyes met my gaze, alive with light but entirely emotionless.
“I’d like to try working on the sales floor, if you please, Mrs. Rutherford. I’m eager for preferment. I understand I must do more menial tasks until I’ve earned some seniority. Some girls at the residence say I have an eye for luxury goods. Jewelry and such.”
“Where you work doesn’t depend on me or Madame—that’s up to the department heads.” I smiled, but Thea did not reciprocate. “Juniors go where they’re most needed, and I believe they try to give them some variety to see where they do best.”
“Bien.” Madame nodded. “We will make a sales uniform for you, Miss Lombardi, and we will inform you where to report. You may return to your work.”
Thea bobbed a small curtsey and turned to go, but not before I’d glimpsed a momentary expression that somehow didn’t look nearly as submissive as the polite mask she’d schooled her face into. Madame and I watched as the young woman walked away from us, her back arrow-straight and the clear light from the windows sparking flashes of red fire from her auburn hair.
“Is she really giving satisfaction?” I asked.
Madame pursed her small mouth. “That child is deep. I sense there is a great deal of anger in her. But she is most intelligent, and it has not taken her long to learn that we do not brook slyness or insolence. She has taught herself to keep her feelings locked away and her tongue still, and that will take her far. Above all, I believe it is important to her that she stay at Rutherford’s rather than return to being a guest in your home. Curious, n’est-ce pas?”
“Not really. She had a great deal of autonomy in Kansas, and I’m certain that to be a dependent in someone else’s household, however luxurious, is irksome to her. I sympathize—I was not fond of my stepfather, as Thea is not fond of me, and when he sent me to the Poor Farm, I reveled in no longer being under his authority.” I shrugged. “Even if it meant I was under the authority of others, Thea’s mother included.”
“You consider your experience has given you an especial insight into the girl’s struggle to find her own way.” Madame’s eyes were thoughtful as she gazed up at me.
“I do. I’ve always liked the notion that I was my own woman. Haven’t you?”
“Oh yes. Yes indeed.” And for a moment I thou
ght I saw past sufferings flit across Madame’s visage as she looked beyond me to the crystalline heavens.
“I feel—if it isn’t too conceited—that I was inspired when I suggested Thea work here.” I watched a skein of geese cross the sky in the far distance, wings flapping vigorously as they spread out into their characteristic V. “It’s solved so many problems.”
“We must hope, then, that it does not create new ones.”
22
Nice things
I invited Teddy and Thea to join us for Christmas, as part of the family. Things went quite well until after dinner.
“But how can you make a voice go into a machine and come out again?” Tess was asking.
We were sitting around the table enjoying nuts, oranges, cheese, and sweetmeats. Tess had listened to Martin’s explanation of the invention called the phonograph with great attention but had clearly not grasped the principle behind it. Truth be told, neither had I. I put down the nutcracker and waited for Martin’s reply.
Martin ran a hand through his hair and thought for a moment. “Well, let’s see if this makes sense. Have you ever noticed that when there’s a really loud sound nearby, you can feel the air move?”
Tess screwed up her mouth in disbelief. “Sound is sound, Martin. It doesn’t—” Her face brightened. “Yes, it does! When I saved Nell from that nasty Mr. Poulton and fired the rifle, it made a very loud sound near my ear and the air did move. I remember.”
“Bang!” Sarah, overexcited after too much food and a surfeit of Christmas, shouted so loud that the air probably moved quite fast. Tess jumped, and Thea scowled.
“Children should be seen and not heard,” she pronounced “They definitely shouldn’t shout.”
“I was making a rifle noise.” Sarah, reassured by the presence of so many adults—and knowing she no longer risked being alone with Thea—glanced sideways at the older girl as she slid down from her chair and headed for Teddy. “I could shoot a rifle too. Teddy, can you teach me how?”
“Perhaps when you’re older.” Teddy allowed Sarah to scramble up into his lap. “Right now, you’re too small to hold a gun.”
“I bet I could.” Sarah wiggled her feet in their patent-leather bow shoes.
“Young ladies shouldn’t talk about betting,” Thea said.
“You just said I’m a child.” Sarah’s eyes narrowed.
“Sound causes a vibration, you see,” Martin continued, recapturing Tess’s attention. “Mr. Edison realized he was able to use that vibration to make a needle move, scoring a pattern on a sheet of tinfoil. He worked out a way of turning that pattern back into sound, do you see? So when he said ‘Mary had a little lamb’ into the device, he was able to reproduce the sound of his voice several times before the tinfoil became too scratched.”
“Mary had a little LAMB, its fleece was WHITE as snow, and EVERYwhere that MARY went, the LAMB was SURE to GO.” Sarah spoke in the loudest voice she could summon, putting a great deal of singsong emphasis on some words. “When we have a house in Lake Forest, Papa, may I have a sheep? As well as a pony? They have sheep in South Park, and they keep the grass nice and short, so a sheep’s a really useful thing.”
“Why don’t you ask for an entire menagerie while you’re at it?” Thea asked. “And a carriage like Tess’s?”
We had all walked down to the stable block after church, and Thea had been unable to banish the resentment from her carefully schooled face as she’d stood watching Martin’s demonstration of Tess’s new landaulet. Donny had proudly led out the horse purchased to pull the carriage, and Thea had not missed the opportunity to make some acid-sweet remarks designed to draw everyone’s attention to Donny’s status, or rather the lack thereof, in our household. I had seen Sarah observing her.
Now Sarah simply gave Thea another sidelong glance as she launched herself from Teddy’s lap—causing him to wince as her shoes made contact with his shins—and ran to Martin.
“May I have a carriage, Papa? Just a little one, so I could learn to drive?”
“Ask me again when you’re older,” Martin laughed. “Tess needs to visit her family, which is a different matter from buying you a carriage merely so you can ride round and round a field. Now go sit down and behave. You’re being too loud.” He gave her a tiny push on the back of her blue silk dress.
“Is the phonograph a toy, Papa?” Sarah asked as she resumed her seat.
“Do you want one of those as well?” But Thea’s remark was generally ignored as Teddy rose to fetch the journal containing the etching of Mr. Edison’s invention, which, to my mind, looked more like a collection of spare machine parts than anything useful.
“You might call it a toy for rich men.” Teddy scrutinized the numbered diagram. “I’d be happier if some of the money and time they put into inventing new gimcracks were—”
“—given to the poor.” Thea finished her brother’s sentence with a roll of her eyes. “You sound exactly like Pa.”
“I’m proud to sound like Pa.” Teddy sat down rather stiffly. “Don’t jeer at who our parents were. Our father always chose the way that was right.”
“I think Thea’s unhappy because your Mama and Papa aren’t here for Christmas,” Sarah said to Teddy. She had commandeered a handful of hazelnuts and was busy arranging them in a straight line.
“Hush, Sarah.” I put out a hand toward my daughter, who smiled and said prettily, “Yes, Mama.” But we were too late.
“I’m unhappy about that too,” Teddy replied to the company at large. The tips of his ears had flushed a rosy red. “But there’s only one of us behaving like an ornery mule and riling everyone up about any subject that’s raised at what’s supposed to be a pleasant family dinner.”
“Well, I like that.” In contrast to Teddy, Thea had grown somewhat paler. “I’m not allowed to speak my mind when everybody else does? May I remind you I have just the same right to opinions as you.”
“May I remind you I’m the head of our family, and a man.”
“Man?” Thea gave a short laugh.
From the look on Teddy’s face, Thea’s jeer was the final straw. He was not given to outbursts of temper, but at that moment there was a remarkably intense expression in his round gray eyes. “Man enough to assert my authority over you,” he said in a low voice. “Man enough to correct you when you are being rude to our hosts. Man enough, if I have to, to take you out of Rutherford’s and make you stay at home, where a woman should be. Maybe it’s time I took my place as the man of this family. You need someone to disabuse you of your highfalutin ideas about your own importance.”
Thea’s face grew a shade paler, and I looked at Martin in dismay. I certainly didn’t want to sanction a family row at our dinner table, but we could only stop it by treating the two of them like children, and that was distasteful to me. What was more, Teddy’s exasperation was understandable, but his remark about a woman’s place being in the home was one I did not agree with. Unable to think of the right thing to say, I kept silent.
“I’m earning enough now that I can afford two rooms and a sitting room in the house of one of my friends,” Teddy said to Martin and me. “Mr. Hezekiah Galloway and his wife are fine people. Mrs. Galloway runs a boardinghouse Pa would be right happy to see. Mr. Galloway is a stonemason, a lay preacher, and an impressive speaker in the cause of temperance and the suppression of gambling and low entertainments of all kinds. Thea could help Mrs. Galloway in the house in return for a cheaper rent. There’s always plenty of cooking and cleaning to do.”
“And her employment?” I asked, my dismay increasing. “Thea may be young, but she’s a hard worker and knows how to behave at the store.” I resisted the urge to show my annoyance that the child wouldn’t behave outside the store. “She might rise high in a few years, and it’s my belief she wants to be there. Why would you take that away from her?”
“Because my family is extremely fond of taking everything away from me.” Thea spoke through a clenched jaw, her magnificent hazel eyes bla
zing in a white face.
“A woman belongs at home.” Teddy was now clearly determined to say something he’d been thinking for some time, and heedless of the consequences. “Her house and children are Thea’s proper domain, when the time comes for me to find her a suitable husband. Until that day, she should learn the skills she’ll need for later on.”
“I don’t need to learn anything about keeping house. Mama made sure—” Thea bit off her words, making a visible effort to control herself, and to my surprise Tess interrupted.
“I don’t think the Lord means every woman to spend all her time cooking and cleaning.” She looked straight at Teddy, her expression earnest. “It says in Genesis: ‘And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.’ He didn’t say He was making a cook. Mrs. Lombardi once said to me that man and woman were one flesh and one bone and should work together side by side, as one person. Like Nell and Martin do. Martin doesn’t clean or cook, and I don’t see why Nell should either.” She turned to me and smiled. “It took me a long time to figure that out, Nell.”
“Teddy, please don’t take Thea out of Rutherford’s.” My body was rigid with the need to convince Teddy that he was wrong, but I refused to begin the argument again. “And let’s not argue on Christmas day.”
“Peace on earth and goodwill to all men.” Sarah had been quite silent, watching with stunned horror the storm she had caused to rain down on all of us by her boisterous behavior. Now she spoke into the tiny interval of silence in a small, frightened voice. “I didn’t mean to make you cross, Teddy.”
“You haven’t, darling.” Teddy had the grace to look a little ashamed of himself. “I apologize to the entire company. Including my sister.” He shook his head. “I guess I’m finding it hard to be Pa after all. He wouldn’t have used harsh words against Thea, however downright provoking she was. I let my heart speak; I’ve said more than I should.”