by Amy Stewart
Bessie dropped into a chair next to her and gave her a squeeze on the shoulder. If she could simply slip a few dollars to Bessie every week, and see her burden lightened a little at a time, that would suit her just fine.
Constance arrived just then, banging in through the kitchen door with the news that she’d survived her first week at Schoonmaker’s and required bacon, fried eggs, and a fresh batch of biscuits to mark the occasion.
“And how many shop-lifters have you put in jail so far?” Norma said.
“None, just yet,” Constance said, unwinding her muffler and lifting the lid of the coffee-pot to see what was left. “Mine is more of what you might call a preventative role.”
“Which means you go around glaring at people, and scare them off before they can steal anything,” said Norma.
“Without discouraging them from buying. Yes, that’s about right.” She said it in as cheerful a voice as she could muster, but Fleurette saw right through it.
“You’re not fooling anyone,” Fleurette said. “It sounds dull and inconsequential.”
Constance didn’t take the bait. “It’s here in Paterson, and that’s what matters. I’ll look for something else once the farm is sold.”
“Don’t count on the farm just yet,” Norma said.
That put a halt to the conversation.
The farm was Norma’s responsibility. Since the funeral, she’d busied herself with appointments at builders, surveyors, and anyone else who might have an opinion about the most expedient and profitable way to offer the place for sale. At the rate Norma worked, there was every reason to think she’d have it settled within a matter of weeks.
“I thought the house only needed a little sprucing up,” Constance said. “And the barn’s perfectly serviceable, isn’t it? What else is there to do?”
“It hardly matters what we do to the house,” Norma said as she buttered another biscuit. “We won’t get nearly enough for it. There are four other farms for sale within thirty miles of ours. They’ve all been waiting until after the war to sell. Judging by what they’re asking, on a per-acre basis, we can’t hope to bring in more than two thousand.”
“Two thousand, for eighty acres with a home and a barn?” asked Constance indignantly.
“That’s only if someone wants ours more than any of the others,” Norma said. “How many people are looking to buy a farm just now?”
“I’m not moving back there, if that’s your idea,” Fleurette said.
“You won’t have to,” Norma said. “We’re going to divide the land into smaller plots, each one suitable for the construction of a new home, and sell them off one at a time. That should bring in closer to four thousand dollars. We’ll have enough to buy the Wilkinsons’ house and still have something left in the bank.”
“But that’ll take months,” Constance said.
“If we can count on anything, we can count on delays, paperwork, and unanticipated expenses,” Norma said. “And we’ll owe rent to the Wilkinsons for considerably longer than we expected. But there’s no way around it. We’ll just have to live close to the bone.”
“Aren’t we already?” Fleurette said, feeling the extra twenty dollars Mr. Lyman had given her slipping away.
“Exactly. We’re used to it, after the war. If we can just continue on a war-time footing, for another year or so, we’ll be fine.”
“A year!” Fleurette put a hand over her mouth as soon as she said it, but it was too late. Bessie looked mortified.
“You girls are giving up too much,” she said. “I can’t ask this of you.”
It took all three of them to reassure her. “No one has given up more than you, in losing a husband,” said Constance.
“And the children, losing their father,” Fleurette added.
“And don’t forget that the farm is as much yours as ours,” Norma said. “We’ll see it through.”
Bessie didn’t look convinced, but before she could say another word, a knock came at the door. Norma glared at the clock: it was half past ten. “I don’t know how you get anything done with all these salesmen at the door,” she muttered, but she went to answer it anyway, and returned a minute later with an old and weary-looking man in tow.
“Mr. Griggs,” Bessie said, pushing herself to her feet. “Girls, you remember Mr. Griggs. Francis’s boss.”
He nodded and waved at them to stay seated, which they did. None of the Kopps were in what could be called a hospitable frame of mind, having only just begun to grapple with the prospect of another year of sacrifice and war-time living. Visitors were a nuisance generally after a funeral, but now their hospitality was entirely exhausted.
Mr. Griggs looked a bit unsure of himself in the presence of so many unaccommodating women. “I’m sorry to intrude. I didn’t have a chance to speak to you at the funeral, and I thought it best to wait a decent interval before . . .”
“That’s fine, Mr. Griggs,” Bessie said. “Please do sit down. Can we offer you anything? We were just about to put on another pot of coffee.”
“No, thank you,” he said.
He was a wiry man bordering on frail. Fleurette had the impression that he used to travel to China every year to buy baskets (that was his business, he imported baskets from China), but that became impossible during the war. Francis used to say that Mr. Griggs just didn’t have the stamina for such a long voyage anymore and thought that he—Francis—might be asked to go in his place next time.
It occurred to Fleurette that Mr. Griggs was the last person to see Francis alive. What a way to die—to simply drop at his desk, in the middle of an ordinary day of work, and to have his boss looming over him in the final minutes.
They all sat watching him, waiting for him to say what he’d come to say. Fleurette hoped vaguely that he’d brought his check-book. Perhaps Francis was owed a bonus, or the firm had taken out some sort of insurance?
“We’re just so terribly sorry about Francis,” Mr. Griggs began. He had to clear his throat several times to get through it. “He seemed perfectly well right up until—well, until the last moment. It was all so very fast. We don’t believe he suffered at all. I want you to know that.”
“You told me so at the time,” Bessie said. “He was surrounded by people who cared about him. That means a great deal to me.”
Mr. Griggs seemed to be determined to deliver some sort of prepared speech. “And he was very much at the center of everything we did, as you must know.”
“Yes, of course,” Bessie said. “He was entirely devoted to your company. You’ve been so good to him over the years.”
“Well, he was good to us, too,” Mr. Griggs said.
Norma had even less patience for platitudes now than she did before the war. She stood up as if to indicate that his visit was over. She could be quite formidable, even in the way she let the kitchen chair scrape the floor as she rose.
“If you’re missing him so much, maybe you’d like to offer his job to one of us,” she said, a little too forcefully. “Didn’t Francis keep the books? Constance can do that. Any one of us could drive a truck, or sweep the floor, or take orders, or—”
“Oh, but I’ve found a position already, and I’m sure Mr. Griggs—” put in Constance, but Norma wouldn’t hear it.
“There’s a baby on the way,” Norma pronounced, causing a startled Mr. Griggs to sweep his eye over the four of them, perhaps uncertain as to who, exactly, was to be the bearer of the next generation of Kopps. “So we don’t have time for condolences. We need the work. Tell us what exactly Francis did down there, and we’ll sort out who can do it. His salary can just keep coming to this address as before.”
Poor Mr. Griggs looked as though he’d walked into the wrong house and couldn’t find his way out. He took an uneven step backwards and said, “I can see I’ve come at a difficult time. Perhaps I might call on you again, once you’ve . . .” But whatever he meant to say trailed away, as he fumbled for his coat and hat.
The Kopps uttered their half-hea
rted good-byes and he was gone.
11
IT WASN’T THE year of miserly living that most worried Fleurette. It was the possibility that a year might turn into a lifetime. How many stories had she heard of penniless widows, of destitute spinsters? Poverty was like a leak in a boat: once the hull was punctured, it started to list, and to take on water, and soon it became impossible to right.
Although she’d never realized it, the farm had always been, to Fleurette, a source of great untapped wealth that would act as a sort of bulwark against misfortune. Over the years she’d felt trapped by it, and yoked to it, but she’d also felt the solidity of it beneath her feet. Eighty acres has a pleasing heft to it, like a pocketful of coins.
But what good could it do them now? It had not escaped Fleurette’s notice that Norma had been vague about what, exactly, the proceeds from the sale would mean for them, eventually, beyond the purchase of the Wilkinsons’ house. Would there be enough left to keep Bessie and the children fed and housed for years to come?
It seemed unlikely.
It seemed equally unlikely that Constance’s salary could furnish any sort of comfortable existence for all six of them—seven, once the baby arrived.
And surely no one believed that Fleurette’s seamstressing wages would do more than pay the egg and butter man.
With buttons and hems and eggs and butter on her mind, she paid another visit to Mr. Ward.
* * *
“IT’S ABOUT TIME you turned up,” he said when she appeared in his office. “I was about to resort to throwing pebbles at your window. Petey says he knows some Morse code and we thought we might try signaling from the roof across the street.”
“You’d never get a Morse code signal past Norma,” Fleurette said. “You’ll just have to wait for me to drop in.”
“I wasn’t sure if you would. Some girls don’t find the work to their liking.”
“That’s why it’s called work. You have to pay me to do it. Didn’t you say that?”
“It sounds like something I’d say. But Mr. Lyman wasn’t so awful, was he? I wouldn’t mind a cuddle with him myself, if he bought me dinner after.”
“He was very nice,” Fleurette said. “Are they all like that?”
“They ought to be,” Mr. Ward said vaguely. Fleurette thought again that everything Mr. Ward said could be interpreted two ways.
“And did the pictures come out?”
“Works of art, every one of them,” Mr. Ward said. He pushed them across his desk and Fleurette studied them. She thought she looked quite dramatic, even from the back. “Girl Caught in Scandal,” the caption could read. She would’ve enjoyed making a scrapbook of them, except that her sisters would find it. Criminals like to keep a record of their misdeeds—she remembered Constance saying that. She couldn’t fall into such an easy trap. With a good deal of reluctance, she handed them back.
“Do you have another Mr. Lyman for me?”
“Well, how does a Mr. Finley sound?” he asked, shuffling through the files on his desk. “He has something to do with shipping and, would you believe it, his wife has run off with a sailor.”
“Then why aren’t we trying to get a picture of Mrs. Finley with the sailor?” asked Fleurette.
“Because, I remind you once again, my client is doing the honorable thing,” Mr. Ward said. “He doesn’t want to see his wife photographed in flagrante delicto, and her name dragged through the papers as a common—well, as a woman who would run around with a man who is not her husband. He loves her still, you see.”
“I wonder why,” Fleurette said.
“Some of them do,” Mr. Ward said. “Now, this fellow isn’t the type to take a room at the Metropolitan. Since Mrs. Finley has already left the premises, you’re to pay him a visit at his home. He just lives over in—”
“In his own house?” Fleurette said. “Isn’t that awfully familiar?”
“Shocking, isn’t it?” Mr. Ward said mildly. “If you think a judge looks unkindly on a married man entertaining a lady in a hotel room, you should see what he’ll say about inviting such a lady into the marital home. Right there in the sitting-room, next to the family portraits, the vixen’s dainty feet pushing the missus’s knitting-basket under the settee. It’s an outrage, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I suppose it doesn’t matter where I go,” Fleurette said, “as long as Petey’s quick with the camera.”
“It’s even better this way,” Mr. Ward said. “Petey’ll be inside already, rummaging around in the kitchen, most likely enjoying a glass of Mrs. Finley’s cooking sherry while the two of you get comfortable. You’ll be in and out in a minute.”
* * *
IT WASN’T A minute. Mr. Finley came to the door a ruined man.
Petey had seen it before: he took one look at the man’s crumpled face and said, “There now, Mr. Finley. It’s like a jab at the doctor’s office. Treatment hurts worse than the disease. Not that I’d say”—here he cast a flattering eye in Fleurette’s direction—“that an evening in Miss Crawford’s company would hurt at all.”
Fleurette was Rose Crawford that night. She liked to pick her last names from the city directory, and she chose first names from among the theatrical notices. She was partial to any sort of floral name as she thought they suited her. She’d be Lily next, and thought she might make a convincing Iris, too.
Mr. Finley remembered his manners and rushed to assure Fleurette that it wasn’t her company that upset him so. “Oh, it isn’t you, of course. Only now that you’re here, I think of my dear Agatha and . . . well, this is her home, too, and to think that it’s come to this . . .”
He turned away and dabbed at his eyes. Petey and Fleurette edged into the room: they’d had to practically force themselves inside because Mr. Finley was too distracted to play the part of host. Already Fleurette missed her first client. Mr. Lyman had known how to take charge of the situation and seen to it that Fleurette enjoyed herself.
But now it became obvious that Fleurette would have to be the one to take charge.
“What a lovely home, Mr. Finley,” Fleurette said, hardly glancing around at the embroidered cushions and chintz curtains. She shrugged out of her coat. “Where would you like to hang this?”
When a man is out of his depth, it’s always good to give him some simple task to accomplish that will allow him to regain his footing. Fleurette had learned this lesson in the short time she’d spent traveling with a vaudeville troupe, shifting from train to cab to hotel to theater and back, always with a driver or porter or usher to contend with. She’d acquired a knack for telling a man exactly what needed doing and then praising him for doing it. Men liked that.
It worked perfectly on Mr. Finley. He snapped out of his reverie and reached at once for Fleurette’s coat. “May I take your hat, too, miss?”
Fleurette had a very particular idea about how her hair ought to look when photographed from the back in Mr. Finley’s parlor. “I’ll just run to the powder room first, if you don’t mind,” she said, “and Mr. McGinnis will tell you exactly where he’d like us to sit.”
Having left the two of them to work out the arrangements, Fleurette dashed down the hall into a tiny bathroom that had obviously only just recently been emptied of a woman’s toiletries. A glass shelf still held the circular imprint of a powder-puff box, and a little enamel tray was sticky with the residue of perfume bottles recently swept up and taken away. In the medicine cabinet, Mr. Finley’s razor and soap remained crowded on the bottom shelf, alongside his hair tonic and a salve whose purpose Fleurette did not wish to investigate. The other shelves stood empty.
She unpinned her hat and made the necessary repairs to her hair, which she’d done up in an arrangement that might’ve been becoming in 1912. Her idea about Rose Crawford was that she wasn’t a widow but lived as one: she’d been abandoned by a suitor years ago and found herself unable to love another, until she noticed Mr. Finley and he noticed her. They’d been living in some proximity, Fleurette had decided
, as neighbors or fellow church-goers or perhaps (Fleurette liked this version of events best) Rose Crawford worked in a dull and dusty office near Mr. Finley’s place of employment, and they passed each other frequently on the street.
Mr. Finley hadn’t, of course, thought to so much as nod in Rose Crawford’s direction when he was still a married man. It was only after dear Agatha ran off with a sailor that he even glanced her way, and saw her looking at him . . .
On the strength of that fine bit of fiction, Fleurette had worked up a hairstyle and a plain little dark green dress with the saddest excuse for a lace collar she could conjure. Poor Rose Crawford, pinning her dearest hopes on the misty-eyed Mr. Finley! She allowed her shoulders to slump forward a little as she returned to the parlor, as had become Rose’s habit after so many years bending over a typewriter.
“There she is,” Petey said, hardly looking her way. He was all business now: he’d put a dainty wooden table at an angle, with a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Finley in a brass frame prominently displayed, to further outrage the judge.
The sofa was long enough to allow two people to sit entirely apart and never touch, so Petey placed a pillow where he wanted Mr. Finley to sit, and another, right next to it, for Fleurette.
Mr. Finley watched all of this with the air of a man observing a plumber going about his work. He seemed inclined to offer a suggestion or two, but held his tongue.
“We’ll be finished in no time, Mr. Finley, and you can enjoy your evening,” Petey said.
Mr. Finley looked around morosely. “There’s nothing left to enjoy. If my Agatha were here—”
“Why don’t we take our seats,” Fleurette put in, before Mr. Finley launched into another soliloquy over his departed Agatha. She arranged herself on the cushion Petey had placed for her, leaving Mr. Finley no choice but to settle down next to her.
She recalled, a little wistfully, how Mr. Lyman had given her a thrill when he swept her up in his arms. Looking back on it, she thought it generous of him. He had put her at ease with a dash of harmless flirtation, and he’d been sure enough of himself to know how she’d take it.