Siri Mitchell

by Unrivaled

  I brushed against Mrs. Hughes as I passed. “If you pull the syrup off now, you can probably use it for pancakes.”

  She patted my arm.

  Mother was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. “I’d like you to consider that Samuel Blakely is not a suitable companion for a girl in your position.”

  He’d been just fine before I’d left for the Continent.

  “And I don’t expect that you were ever late to any of your appointments in Europe.”

  We hadn’t been. In fact, most of the time, we were so anxious to see the sights we’d been early. “No.”

  “Then please allow those of us who stayed behind the same courtesy.”

  8

  The telephone rang on Monday morning, and I heard Augusta answer. A minute later, the butler found me in the parlor, where I’d been working on a better plan for the factory. I’d been at it for over a week now, and I thought I’d almost got it.

  He bowed. “You are wanted on the telephone.”

  Augusta was in the hall standing beside it. “It’s your father. He’s asked to speak to you.”

  I’d never, in fact, used one of the contraptions.

  She gestured to what looked like a horn.

  I picked it up, not knowing what to do with it.

  She sighed and then guided it to my ear.

  “Hello?” Funny. There was a buzzing sound, but no one was there. “Hello?”

  She tapped my on the shoulder and then gestured to a candlestick-looking piece.

  Oh. Maybe . . . I leaned over and spoke toward it. “Hello?”

  “Mr. Clarke?” I jumped as the voice came to me, not from the candlestick, but from the horn that was pressed to my ear. “This is Mr. Mundt. The boss would like to see you at the office. Immediately.”

  “Oh. Well—” I was speaking into the horn. Augusta picked up the candlestick and held it in front of my mouth. I leaned toward it, pressing the horn back against my ear. “Fine. Fine, then. Thank you.”

  There was a click from the horn, and the annoying buzz stopped. I held it out toward Augusta. She took it from me and set it on the hook that projected from the stand. “If you’re needed at the factory, Nelson can take you.”

  Though I’d been told my father had wanted to see me immediately, I waited at the office for nearly an hour before Mr. Mundt waved me toward his door. Apparently, some things never changed.

  My father pointed toward a chair with his cigar.

  I sat.

  “I was hoping you could help me.”

  And I’d been hoping he would ask. “I’ve been working on a new plan for—”

  “You see, I find myself in a bit of a bind. I owe someone a favor, and it’s time to pay it back. But it involves putting an end to a competitor.”

  Putting an end to someone back in Chicago had meant breaking their kneecaps or throwing them off a bridge. I was almost sure it didn’t mean anything quite so drastic down here. At least . . . I hoped it didn’t.

  He looked at me over the tip of his cigar. “To start with, I’ve ordered up an advertising campaign. New posters, since the old ones are getting faded. That sort of thing. I don’t want to do anything messy. Quick and tidy. If I can just take away all their business, that’s best for us and for them. I need you to make sure the posters get put up in prominent places across the city. Atop my rival’s would be a good start.”

  All of St. Louis was much bigger than Chicago’s South Side, but I could do it. I’d figure out exactly how later. “I wanted to talk to you about the factory.”

  He turned his attentions to a sheaf of papers that was sitting before him. “Factory concerns should be taken up with Gillespie.”

  “I did take them up with him. Or mentioned them at least.”

  “And?”

  “The factory isn’t very well organized. I think you might be able to increase production if your machines were placed closer together. That way the workers wouldn’t have to waste their time—”

  “Haven’t had any complaints about production. We sell more candy than anyone.”

  Sales. It had always been about the sale for my father. But life was more than money. “You’re wearing out the workers for no good reason. If you’d go down and take a look—”

  “Waste of time. Gillespie gets paid to take care of all of that. Sales is where the money’s to be made.”

  “But he could make more candy for you to sell if you’d just—”

  “You always were a stubborn one. Once you got something stuck in that head of yours, you wouldn’t let it go. Not for anything.” He smiled and winked, then picked up one of the papers sitting in front of him.

  “Why did you leave?”

  His brows peaked.

  I’d startled myself with the question just as much as I must have startled him.

  As he pushed the cigar into his mouth, his hand was shaking. He took a long draw on it before exhaling a billowing cloud of smoke. “Water under the bridge.”

  “But I want to know. I have a right to know.”

  “Does it matter? You turned out fine, didn’t you? And you looked after them all just like I knew you would.”

  What kind of a man would leave the responsibility for his family in the hands of a seven-year-old?

  “And you probably did a better job of it than I’d been doing.”

  “But why?”

  He ground his cigar into an ashtray. “Why?” He shrugged. “Why should I have stayed?” He tried to smile. “I doubt you even missed me.”

  “Miss you? You were never there anyway!”

  “Do you think I didn’t want to be? Do you think I liked knowing I couldn’t provide for my own family? No matter how hard I tried? No matter how much I managed to sell? Every time I walked in the door, my failure slapped me in the face. All I did . . . all I tried to do . . . it was never enough.”

  “So you just . . . gave up? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “What good was I to you anyway?”

  “You gave all of us up . . . and then you walked away and fell into this.” It didn’t seem like he’d suffered much. Not the way we had. It sounded like he’d abandoned us and never looked back.

  “Can we . . . forget about all of that? It’s not really worth remembering, is it? Besides, you’re here now.”

  But being here had required a lot of years of being back there, in Chicago.

  “Sometimes you have to leave the past behind and start again,” Father continued.

  “But what about us? Because you left, we never had that chance.”

  “I won’t say it was the right thing to do. . . .”

  “Why didn’t you come back for us?” Why hadn’t we mattered?

  “And say what? What would you have wanted me to say?”

  “I’m sorry?” That would have worked as a start.

  My father’s shoulders dropped. “I am. I’ve always been sorry. But sorry wouldn’t have done you any good back then. So . . . why don’t we concentrate on what I can offer you now?” He stood and held out his hand.

  When I didn’t extend mine, he jammed it into his pocket. “I know I don’t deserve a second chance, but I’m hoping you’ll give me one anyway.”

  A second chance.

  He only wanted me to offer him what he was giving me, but it didn’t seem fair. What had he ever done to deserve it? I owed him nothing. He owed me everything. So it was much easier to ignore his request and think instead about what he’d asked me to do. It didn’t sound too difficult until Mr. Mundt had told me there were a thousand posters waiting to be hung.

  One thousand posters.

  To be put in prominent places.

  Were there even a thousand places to hang posters in the city?

  That afternoon, I rode a streetcar downtown and walked through the city. I battled shoppers on Olive Street. I pushed through vendors on Washington Street, counting all the Royal Taffy posters I could find and looking for new places to hang them. It was hot, thirsty work, so I t
ook a break to listen to some ragtime in a place called Chestnut Valley. It wasn’t much of a valley. Wasn’t much of anything I could see, but as soon as I heard the music, it felt like home.

  I walked into the middle of a cutting contest and joined the crowd in cheering as two pianists played up and down a pair of pianos, each trying to leave the other behind by changing keys and tunes. Eventually one outplayed the other. The loser left his piano and collected a beer from the bar before joining the rest of us in hailing the victor.

  As I walked the streets, I didn’t see many posters for other companies’ candies, and those I did see had been pasted up alongside signs for prizefights or election notices. They were mostly in alleys and on the sides of buildings. I planned to cover them all with Standard posters—it wouldn’t take too much work—but I needed to find someplace better to put our advertisements. Someplace that people couldn’t help but see.

  Where did people gather?

  They went to and came from Union Station by the hundreds, but where else did they go? I asked Nelson that evening. “Where do you go when you get time off?” I was watching him polish the brass headlights of the car I’d learned he called Louise.

  “Well . . . Sunday afternoons, what I like to do is go to Forest Park. They got some bears there and that big birdcage you can walk through. The one leftover from the Exposition. There are boats you can rent. Usually someone playing music at that bandstand. Always something going on at Forest Park.”

  “What would you say most people here like to do? Where do they go on Saturdays or on Sunday afternoons?”

  “It depends. There’s that swimming pool over on Delmar with its dancing pavilion.” He straightened for a moment and put a hand to his back. “Some go over to Chestnut Valley to listen to that ragtime music.” He shrugged. “Folks go all over, I suppose.”

  So how could I make sure they saw Standard advertisements everywhere they went?

  Augusta was having some club of women over for tea the next day, so I hightailed it out of the way and found myself once more on a streetcar headed into the city. We passed houses and schools and churches. At each stop we picked up mothers and their children. Soon the streetcar was crammed with them. One of the little boys beside me was sucking on a log of Royal Taffy.

  He clutched it tighter when he saw me looking at him.

  At a nickel a stick, Royals weren’t cheap. They were a treat to be saved up for. A prize to dream of. Across from me, I saw a child counting her pennies as she eyed the boy and his candy.

  If I had to put up posters, it should be in places children could see them.

  I knew what it was to be a child, hoping against hope for something good to happen. I knew the victory that came with each carefully collected penny and the triumph that swelled the chest on the walk to the store. But best of all was the satisfaction that came from having a Royal Taffy taste exactly like you’d dreamed it would. A gooey, chewy, creamy piece of heaven. I’d always been able to count on a Royal Taffy in a way I was never able to count on my father. The candy had never disappointed me. Not the way he had.

  If hanging up those posters would give some boy like I’d once been something to hope for, something to believe in, then to my way of thinking, it was a job worth doing.

  9

  The Veiled Prophet parade that preceded the ball was interminable. I just wanted the whole thing over and done with. I’d been making and packaging my new candy for two weeks now, hiding the cube-shaped, cellophane-wrapped pieces down in the cellar. There were ten thousand people expected at the ball. Tonight, I would finally have the chance to introduce my hazelnut chews to the city!

  I smiled and waved along with the other members of the court as the horses drew us down Olive Street. Firecrackers exploded; confetti filled the air.

  I caught a glimpse of Sam. I waved and tossed a flower in his direction. He didn’t see me. He seemed taken with the girl who was standing by his side. I might have said she was just a child, she was that short; only she wasn’t looking at him in the way a girl would. And her figure filled out her dress in a way that I could only hope mine would one day do.

  “Wave! Smile!” One of the other girls reached over and poked at me with her bouquet.

  The wind gusted, blowing the skirts of our matching white dresses about and teasing our hair from our flowered coronets. It made conversation nearly impossible, unless we wanted to scream our words. I didn’t have much to say to them in any case. I contented myself with watching the crowds, and I assumed the others had too . . . until the wind subsided for a moment and I could hear what they had been saying.

  “ . . . only reason was because she went abroad . . . or maybe they felt sorry for her father . . .”

  “ . . . thinks she’s too good for us . . . gown in Paris . . .”

  “Why? Isn’t Vandervoort’s good enough?”

  My face flushed as I wove together the snatches of conversation. I’d had nothing to do with being chosen as queen! And I hadn’t gotten my gown in Paris. I’d gotten it at Vandervoort’s, the same as they probably had. Did they think I couldn’t hear them?

  One of them looked back over her shoulder at me and smirked.

  They knew I could hear them?

  Well. Just . . . well! My chin began to tremble. I raised my arm and waved it vigorously. Too vigorously, perhaps. After a while I felt perspiration bead up on my brow and when I licked my lips, I could taste salt. But with my arm in front of my head and sweat trickling down my face, at least no one was able to see my tears.

  At last the parade ended, and one of the city patrolmen drove me home in an automobile. Glad to be rid of my court, I put their ill-spirited comments aside as I turned my thoughts toward the evening.

  If I hurried, I thought I just might have enough time to help Sam with the candy before I had to leave for the ball. By the time I’d washed my face, fixed my hair, and exchanged one white dress for another, more elaborate one, he was already more than half done.

  “Remember, Sam, you’re to bring them out—”

  “As people are gathering, before the court is presented. I know.”

  “Do you think . . . no one should notice you, should they?”

  “No. Unless you force them to because you’re so worried about it and they wonder what on earth you keep staring at.” His voice was piqued. His tone, annoyed.

  “Do you think a Veiled Prophet Queen has ever fallen away in a dead faint before?”

  He slanted a look down at me. “Do you really want me to answer you?”

  “No.”

  He smiled. “You’ll be the prettiest one up there. Don’t worry.”

  “I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about this.” I gestured toward the boxes of candy that he’d stowed in the delivery wagon.

  “Everything will be fine.”

  Everything had to be fine. I gave the candy one last look before turning away. It was up to Sam now. I took up his hand in mine. “Thank you for being a true friend.”

  The hitch in his brows caused my heart to plummet to my stomach.

  “What?” Something must have gone wrong.

  “Do you think your hair is supposed to be falling down?”

  I put a hand up to my hair only to discover one whole side had slipped its pins and was sliding down the back of my head. “No!” Not after I’d just re-pinned it. “Can you—can you help me?” I couldn’t ask Mother. She’d want to know how I’d come to be in such a state. Last time she’d seen me, I’d assured her I was almost ready for the ball. Though she’d become used to seeing me in the kitchen, I doubted she would ever expect—let alone condone—what I planned on doing tonight. She would never approve of my using the ball as the venue for my candy’s debut.

  Sam scowled for a moment, and then his face suddenly brightened. “Just a minute.” He ducked back into the kitchen, screen door flapping behind him, but soon returned. He fiddled with my hair, poking here and there, before pronouncing it done.

  “Do you think
it will stay?’

  “It should. I used caramel sauce.”

  “What!”

  “Mrs. Hughes was making some, and it hadn’t cooled yet. Should hold like glue.”

  “The Queen of Love and Beauty can’t go around with candy on her head!”

  “It’s the same color as your hair. I don’t see why anyone should notice.”

  Why anyone should notice? Why wouldn’t they! I took a deep breath. There was nothing I could do about it now. Even if I washed it out, my hair would take too long to dry. “Forget about my hair. Think about tonight. Let’s rehearse it again. Once people start exclaiming over how good the chews are, you’re going to say . . . ?”

  He threw back his shoulders and pushed out his chest. “I’ll say, ‘I’ve heard it’s City Confectionery’s new premium candy.’”

  “Right. And you have the recipe?”

  He patted his coat pocket. “I’ve got it here. The minute I get home, I’ll hand it to my father.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And tell him to start production first thing tomorrow morning.”

  People would go home from the ball talking about the candy. With luck, maybe the newspaper would even mention it. By tomorrow evening, people across the city would be clamoring for my chews. The company’s future was all but assured!

  “There’s no need to be nervous.”

  I wouldn’t have been if my mother hadn’t kept telling me there was no need to be nervous. And if the car we were riding in wasn’t being escorted down Olive Street by a pair of policemen on motorcycles who kept tooting their horns at every person they happened to see.

  Mother smoothed the train of the gown that was looped over my arm, then stroked the ermine that lined my cape. “I don’t think you’ve seen him since your return, but the Minard boy has quite improved since you left.”

  Not so much, I expected, as to overcome his unfortunate tendency to bray like a donkey. Though if he liked my candy, he could certainly proclaim its virtues to everyone with that piercingly loud voice of his.