Returning, Frieda saw that Kate was weak. Perspiration was running down the sides of her face, dripping from her jaw onto the deep rose of her dress. Frieda steered her around, back toward the car, assuring her, “Next time we’ll walk down to the pond.”
Panting, Kate wheezed, “I used to leap across the creek, you know …” she breathed raggedly “… where it squeezes out into the pasture.” Her lips screwed into a smile. You could tell a dear friend something important again and again, knowing they would not mind the repetition.
“You felt like you could fly,” Frieda supplied.
“That’s right. Blind happiness. That was my blind happiness.”
Back in the car, when she had caught her breath and wiped her brow with a handkerchief, she told Frieda, “Harriet is engaged.”
“Engaged! Who to?”
“DeVore Weiss. He farms east of town.”
“His mother was an Apel.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I don’t know the Weisses, but the Apels were good people, hard workers, all of them.”
“He asked her last night after the dance.”
“I hope it wasn’t the whiskey talking.”
“No. From what Harriet said, he was perfectly sober. He took her to the all-night for a steak dinner first.”
Frieda laughed. “Needed to get his strength up.”
“He never even asked her home from the dance before, then all of a sudden he pops the question.”
“Maybe he just wants his way with her.”
“No. I think he’s serious. She asked if she could put it in the paper. He said she could put it on the radio.”
“Well, he’s got a sense of humor.”
“Yes.”
“That’s important. I couldn’t stand a man that didn’t have a sense of humor, even if he was a hard worker.” Pulling onto the county road again, Frieda said, “You’ll miss Harriet. She’s a good girl. A little silly and puts on airs, but she’s a hard worker and loyal. She appreciates family, coming from such a bunch of bums as she had to live with. My, but those brothers of hers was dumb clucks. Mean, too. Harriet got all the sense in that family.”
“Yes.”
“But listen to me! Heavens, she’s only going out to the country, not to Des Moines.”
“I know. I know.”
“Still, things will be different. They’re bound to be,” Frieda observed.
“The beginning of my old age,” Kate said and hoped that it didn’t sound too self-pitying. “Harriet and Bess have kept me young.”
“Pish-posh.”
“With both of them gone, I’ll be an old lady.”
“Then you and me’ll be old ladies together.”
Too soon, town was before them, the country behind. At the edge of Harvester, where they made a right turn, a dark blue car coming from town was heading into the country.
“The girl in that car reminded me of Bess.”
“What car?”
“A dark blue one, back where we turned.”
“I didn’t see.”
Only a glimpse. The girl’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail. But then many girls wore their hair that way. Kate wished that she’d gotten a closer look, at the girl and at the driver. Funny how a glimpse from a distance, like a familiar scent on the air, could set you to remembering. And worrying.
Chapter 19
BESS
Bess dried the water glasses, setting them on a tray to be carried out to the counter. Of course it was wrong, she thought, to feel the way she did toward Harriet, to say the things she’d said. Her anger was a loyal black beast that devoured friends and enemies, protecting her from them. Though she wasn’t really sure who had been devoured when Dixie had come to visit.
Bess had been eight when Dixie showed up with her mother. Dixie’s mother, Alda, a cousin of Uncle Martin’s (though he was dead by this time), had driven up from Mason City, Iowa. She and Dixie were on their way to Minneapolis for a wedding. They’d started out early in order to spend a couple of days with Kate. Bess remembered thinking that Dixie was a dumb name for a little girl from Iowa.
Three years younger than Bess, Dixie still had the curving, dimpled shape of a small child, and she had a head of soft, natural curls. She put some people in mind of a cherub.
First gazing on Dixie, Harriet had exclaimed, “Shirley Temple. She looks just like Shirley Temple. Kate, doesn’t she look just like Shirley Temple in Wee Willie Winkie?”
Bess was embarrassed by the way Harriet carried on. She’d really made a fool of herself, showing Dixie off to Frieda and the neighbors and perfect strangers as if Dixie were the baby Jesus. All over town she’d trotted out the Dixie dog-and-pony show.
Dixie was naturally delighted to be the object of such a fuss and, tucking her dimpled hand into Harriet’s, she began calling her new friend “Aunt Harriet” and saying she wished that Aunt Harriet would come with them to Minneapolis, where she, Dixie, was going to be the flower girl in a wedding. She wished Aunt Harriet could see her in her beautiful long pink dress with little satin rosebuds on the sleeves.
“Maybe your mama would let you try on your pretty dress for me,” Harriet suggested, looking to Dixie’s mother.
“You wait here in the living room!” Dixie squealed. “I’ll come down the stairs like a bride!”
Kate and Harriet and Bess sat down to wait as though they were in church expecting a bride to march down the aisle. In a few minutes Dixie appeared, looking like a rosebud herself, Harriet remarked. Descending the stairs slowly while her mother hummed the wedding march behind her, Dixie smiled upon them as if she were an angel stooping from heaven to touch their humble lives.
At the foot of the stairs Dixie paused and curtsied as her mother had told her to do. Harriet and Kate clapped and Dixie ran to Harriet. “Please come to Minneapolis, Aunt Harriet,” Dixie lisped with revolting guile. Harriet laughed and made a ridiculous fuss over Dixie’s dress, as if she’d never in her life seen a flower girl’s gown. But she failed to tell Dixie that she couldn’t go to Minneapolis with her.
After dinner Harriet suggested that they all drive down to the Majestic to see National Velvet. But Dixie’s mother said that she was tired after the trip from Mason City, and Aunt Kate explained that she was expecting Frieda to stop by. Bess wasn’t going to go anywhere with Harriet and Dixie, so Harriet took Dixie to the movies alone.
Kate and Alda and Frieda spent the evening bringing one another up to date. Kate had all sorts of Iowa relatives whom she rarely saw. And Alda was out of touch with many of her Minnesota relations.
Bess had crept away upstairs. What if Harriet went to Minneapolis with Dixie and had such a good time that she decided to move to Mason City, Iowa, where Dixie and Alda lived with Dixie’s father, Harry, who was a doctor, and by all accounts didn’t get drunk or hit Alda? That damned Dixie, why had she shown up? She had everything, including a long pink flower girl’s dress, and now she might get Harriet, too.
Bess lay on her bed for an hour crying, but careful not to be heard by the women downstairs. She certainly didn’t want them to know she was upset. While they were laughing about something that probably had to do with Dixie and how clever she was, Bess tiptoed to her desk and pulled out her scissors.
Stealing along the hall to Harriet’s room, where Alda and Dixie were going to sleep that night, she found the long pink dress laid out across their suitcase. Carrying it back to her own room, Bess sat down on the floor and cut the soft fabric into small pieces, which fell to the floor around her like flower petals.
When she was done, she didn’t know what to do with the pieces. Searching in the back of her closet, she dug out an old shoe box and stuffed them into that, burying the box under a pile of dirty clothes. Exhausted, she climbed into bed and fell asleep.
Much later, Harriet came into Bess’s room and woke her to inquire if she’d seen Dixie’s dress. Bess shook her head.
“You must have. It didn’t get up and walk away.”<
br />
“Maybe she put it somewhere and forgot.”
“No, she didn’t. Alda says the dress was on their suitcase when Dixie left for the movies. Tell me the truth now, where is it?”
“I don’t know,” Bess said, sticking out her lower lip and glaring at Harriet.
Aunt Kate had appeared in the doorway. “Look in her closet, Harriet.”
“You stay out of my closet. Those are my things in there!” Bess shouted.
Alda and Dixie were crowding into the room, Dixie in her nightgown, tears staining her face. Bess pulled herself up, backbone pressed hard against the headboard. Would Alda call Constable Wall and have her arrested?
Harriet was going through Bess’s clothes, which were on hangers, searching to see if the dress was hidden there. Dixie had set up a real tune. You could probably hear her over at Frieda’s, but Bess didn’t take her eyes off the closet door.
Finally Harriet emerged with the shoe box, her face a study in disbelief. “How could you?” she asked again and again, as though she seriously expected an answer. She held the open box out for Aunt Kate and Alda to see the remains.
“Oh, my God,” Alda said, and Dixie threw herself on the floor in howling hysterics. “I’m afraid she’ll get sick over this,” Alda told Aunt Kate, dragging Dixie out of the room.
Harriet followed, trying to soothe Dixie. “It’s all right, little Dixie, we’ll get you another one, don’t you worry.”
Aunt Kate stood looking at Bess when the others had gone. Bess pulled the covers up tight around her neck and pressed herself against the headboard until her spine felt crushed. She caught her lower lip in her teeth and stopped breathing. She wished that Aunt Kate would say something about how many years Bess was going to have to work to pay for the dress, or even how sad it would be when Constable Wall came to take her to jail. But she only looked at Bess, then turned and left, closing the door behind her.
“Aunt Kate, don’t go,” Bess had screamed, but her great-aunt didn’t come back.
After Dixie, Bess hadn’t spoken to Harriet for six weeks. This time she would never speak to her. Marry DeVore Weiss, you old fool. Now you’re a ghost, like Celia.
At three o’clock Doyle Hanlon opened the screen door of the Loon Cafe. Bess stood at a back booth, taking an order for Cokes. Afterward she was certain that she had felt Doyle’s gaze on her back. The skin along her spine had risen in goose bumps.
He sat down in the first booth and she hurried to it, happy that Shirley was at the malted milk machine. He wore gray trousers and a white dress shirt; his tie was loosened and the top button of the shirt unbuttoned. He looked very handsome and a little shy, as if he’d been perfectly sure of himself until he’d seen her, and then was abashed. He played idly with the Select-O-Matic as Bess walked toward the booth, more frightened than he could possibly be.
“May I help you?” She felt weak and illusory now, like a wraith.
“I’ll have coffee,” he told her.
Hand trembling, Bess wrote an illegible “coffee” on the pad. “Anything else?”
“Not right now.”
She turned away to fetch the coffee, wishing that it were good, which it wasn’t.
“Not right now,” he’d said. Her heart felt like a wild bird caught indoors, beating against first this window, then that. If she heard a million other voices but did not hear his for twenty years, and if he then spoke in the dark or over the telephone, she would know his voice from the million.
This illness was love. It had lain dormant in her from birth. All last night she had had a peculiar sense of recognition, as if before birth someone had pointed him out, saying, “This man. This is the one.”
She carried the coffee with special care, slowly, as if bearing Communion wine. None must slop over, making a pool in the saucer, which might stain his clothes.
She was unable to look away from him.
“When are you off work?” he asked quietly.
“Three-thirty.”
“Were you tired this morning?”
“No.”
“Me either. I haven’t been tired all day.”
She could think of nothing clever to say, and he deserved witty phrases.
No one in the cafe was waiting to be served, so Bess remained beside his booth, having lost the knack of walking back across the room.
“Bess!” Dora. She was toting up receipts at the cash register.
“Excuse me.” Bess went, not willingly, to see what Dora wanted.
“Shirley never got those toilets cleaned,” Dora told her when she had finished making change. “She’s a good little waitress, but she’s not much good for anything else. Would you do the toilets and sinks? Check the towel dispensers while you’re at it. I’ll sweep out later.”
“You want me to do them now?” Bess asked, hoping she misunderstood.
“You’re off in twenty minutes. If you don’t do them now, they’re not gonna get done.”
Bess smiled at Doyle Hanlon and shrugged as she headed toward the rest rooms. Maybe customers would be using them and she would have to wait until later.
Both small rooms were empty. She worked as fast as she could, but toilet paper scraps and paper towels lay wadded everywhere. And in the ladies’, someone had scrawled “Help!” on the mirror with lipstick. If Bess didn’t clean it up, Dora would have a fit. She fetched the Windex from the supply closet.
Despite the droning fans overhead, the rest rooms were nearly as hot as the kitchen. In the speckly mirror of the ladies’, Bess saw that strands of hair were coming loose from her ponytail and hanging in strings around her face. Her skin looked greasy and her lipstick was smudged. I look like someone in an Erskine Caldwell novel, she thought.
She must tell Dora that the men’s floor needed mopping. Bess was glad that Dora never asked her to mop the rest rooms. The men’s was particularly distasteful. Women sat down. However, the women also scattered toilet paper from here to Sunday, putting it on the seat to protect themselves from syphilis and crabs, and then letting it fall to the floor and get shuffled around.
She could have taken all of this with good grace if she hadn’t been dragged away from Doyle Hanlon. When she returned the Windex to the supply room, she saw that his booth was empty, the table cleared.
“Time to hang up the apron,” Dora told her, inclining her head toward the clock. Three thirty-five. “You’ve done a good day’s work.”
Bess carried her soiled apron to the kitchen hamper. “The floor in the men’s is a mess,” she told Dora, grabbing her clutch bag from beneath the counter. “It’s going to need mopping.” Dora deserved to mop the men’s.
Bess had resolved not to see Doyle Hanlon. Now, here she was, half silly with grief at losing a few minutes of his time.
Outside the cafe, she squinted at the empty somnolence of Main Street. People were home with the shades pulled, wiping the back of their necks with dampened handkerchiefs.
As she neared the Standard Ledger, she saw Herbert Hanlon in his white suit and Panama hat emerge from the doorway leading to Hanlon Land and Investments. A demigod who dabbled in futures, he stared down the street at her as she approached, then pulled sunglasses from a pocket and put them on, heading toward her.
He knows, Bess thought. He’s going to confront me. She tried neither to look at him nor to look away as he drew near. And then he was past. But he had looked at her, something he had never done before. He knew.
Bess’s pulse was racing and she wished that she were home. Everyone on the street knew, she was sure. Halfway home, Doyle Hanlon’s dark blue Mercury pulled up. He leaned across the front seat and called to her through the open window, “Give you a lift?”
She should say no. In the senior Hanlon’s glance she had read warning. But neither his cautionary gaze nor her own best intentions were sufficient against the sound of Doyle Hanlon’s voice. She opened the door and climbed in, smiling determinedly.
“I smell of hamburgers and french fries,” she said. “Do y
ou smell of futures?”
He grinned at her. Bess’s delight was so keen, her ears buzzed.
“Do you have a little time?” he asked.
Where were the no’s she’d so carelessly flung at boys who’d asked for a date or boys who’d tried to unbutton her blouse?
“A little. But I have to be home for supper.”
Doyle Hanlon drove out of town by the route he had taken the previous night. At the edge of town a car, returning from the country, turned right and away from them, but not before Bess recognized Frieda’s.
“Oh,” she said.
“Something wrong?”
“My cousin Frieda’s car turned there at the intersection. Aunt Kate was in the front seat.”
“Is that bad?”
“I don’t know.”
They were in the open country now, past the last houses straggling toward farmland, and he took her hand. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I don’t know.” But she did know. The lump of culpability in her stomach had grown heavier. She had fallen in love with a married man, the father of twin boys. Not knowing what he had in mind, she was allowing him to drive her into the country. She was her father’s daughter.
But maybe he would only drive. Maybe he didn’t intend anything more than that. Maybe theirs was to be a platonic love, simple and painful.
When she speculated along these lines, she felt silly being so upset over an innocent drive on a hot afternoon. If he could read her thoughts, he’d laugh at her. If he had more than conversation in mind, he would surely have chosen one of the beautiful girls home from college. Bess was certain that any female who spent more than a few minutes in his company would fall in love.
He looked at her with a serious, almost sad expression and pulled her toward him on the seat. She did not resist.
“I don’t know how to explain what I’m doing,” he said. “I don’t want to do anything that will make you unhappy.”
He said nothing for a few minutes. She waited for him to continue. She had no idea what he would say, nor even quite what he had meant by what he’d already said.
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