by Tom Powers
Suddenly Aunt Helga turned and walked across the room with her cameo earrings swinging, and, bang, she opened the big square piano like a gun going off. And she sat down and stretched her arms out to get her wrists out of her sleeves, and bang, both hands down on those old yellow keys, her foot on the loud pedal. And for the first time I heard Aunt Helga play.
It was like a march, and I imagined soldiers and a circus and a carnival. She played it loud and hard, making my blood tingle. Then she got up and came over and kissed me.
“Let’s go to bed and all get a good night’s sleep,” she said. And we did.
So now, nearly to Hawaii, I was kind of tingling with being so near home. I guess Hawaii ain’t so near really, but it sure was nearer to home than India.
Anyway I was getting there, and Herbie said I could send a telegram from San Francisco where I was going to, right after Hawaii, that we was getting nearly to.
Hawaii was like what everybody has surely seen with their own eyes in the movies. Grass skirts and ukes, and Betty Grable and flowers around the neck, though there wasn’t as much of all that now because of Pearl Harbor. We went right by there and it sure looks awful. But war or no war, Hawaii is like you expect, only with more soldiers and sailors.
Herbie and Jimmy had promised me they wouldn’t tell people about where all I had been. And they didn’t, and so I didn’t have to tell about it to everybody.
This was goodbye to both of them, too, because I had to get on another plane to go the rest of the way.
I only had a little bag I’d bought in Australia. In it was a few things I’d had to let the council buy for me, as well as the precious little box I had saved, my little green bug and my book.
So in Hawaii I threw away my lingerie and bought some more. There was no place to wash anything but stockings on the plane, and Herbie’s and Jimmy’s was a man’s plane so I didn’t like to leave things around. So I bought some more like I said, and I said goodbye to Jimmy and Herbie.
The other plane was bigger than anything I had ever rode in, and it seemed nearly as far to San Francisco as all the rest because I was worried about Pop and where had they sent Jeff off to fight the war, and where I could get a job. And thinking a lot more about Mattoon, like I always did.
I wondered where Aunt Helga got the idea, as if she’d always wanted to, and why she hadn’t done it long before. If she did do it.
And by that time there was San Francisco and California, too. And did my feet itch to get on it.
We landed and got out, and a lot of soldiers around and newspaper men and photographers surrounded me, and I had to pose for ’em.
Well, while I was posing this way and that, and saying “No” to having the skirt “just a little bit higher over the crossed knee, please,” somebody in the crowd says, “Hello, Miss Garbo.” And my heart stopped. And, “Well,” the voice says, “tell us all about your trip,” and it was Mr. Wens.
I could have died for joy, and I thought, “He sure keeps up with what goes on around the world to be here to meet me.” It didn’t occur to me to think that Aunt Mary might have let him know. But Aunt Mary had, so he had.
Mr. Wens said Pop had been pretty sick, and that he knew Jeff had been shipped away but didn’t know where.
I told him a lot, and he listened and kept shaking his head, big-eyed and serious about some of the bad things and chuckling about other things. He called me Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland and kid names like that. Then he said we were going to fly to Chicago.
But first we had dinner and went to the theater and then to a place up on a hill where you could see all of San Francisco. And at the table, Mr. Wens says, “How about it, big shot, do you want me to manage your career for you?”
And “What career?” I says.
“Well,” says Mr. Wens, “it’s no use being modest. You can cash in on all this publicity, and get enough dough to do it all over again, deluxe, when you feel like it.”
“What would I have to do?” I says.
“Go in the movies, do a lecture tour, write a book, sell your face to advertise sunburn lotion.”
“Listen, Mr. Wens,” I says, “all I want is to see my pop and get a job that I’m fitted for and see a few other people that I don’t know where they’re at yet, and to never see my name or my picture in anything.”
“You’re wonderful,” he says, “and there’s only one of you in this world, and, by God, I hope you can fight ’em off and do it. I’ll do my best to help you.”
So I said I was tired and he took me to the hotel I was sleeping at and up to my door. I had to laugh at what a funny boy he was, saying things nobody else could say in such a way you couldn’t think he ought to have said it. Like when we got to the door of my room, he said, “Don’t tell me that you’ve come back from this little adventure as good a girl as you went.” And after I had laughed at that and put out my hand, he says, “I was sure right, when I first saw you in that white number in Mexico City and called you the Snow Queen. Good night, my little ice maiden.” And when I asked him if he wouldn’t like to come in for awhile, he said, “No, I don’t think so, because it wouldn’t mean what I wish to God it did mean. See you tomorrow at nine, princess,” he says, “at which time we start back to where I can turn you over to your rightful owner, with seals unbroken, damn it.” And he was gone till the next day.
Boy, I sure was tired, so I quickly had a hot bath and crawled into a real bed for the first time in I don’t know how long.
I woke up to let in a bellboy with four white orchids and a card in ’em with Mr. Wens’s right name on it but scratched off—why, I don’t know—but on the other side he had written, “Pure like you, white like you, expensive like you, and only God can make them. Wens.”
I wore the orchids down to have breakfast with him and he showed me papers full of war and me, but I was so anxious to get started I didn’t want to eat hardly, and certainly not to waste time reading things about myself that I already knew.
“You’re sure you won’t disappoint me now by writing a travel book?” he says.
“I’ve already written a lot,” I says, “but don’t worry, it’s just so I can show it to my grandchildren,” I says, “so they won’t think I’m lying too bad.”
“Let’s go,” he says, and we did.
It was better flying over the land, and my own land at that, as they say in the songs.
We had fun, with officers and two nice girls that were army nurses with uniforms. They were a lot of fun, and they made me kind of proud that women could be like soldiers and good fellers, and yet know when a joke has gone far enough, and still not be prissy.
Now, just to prove to myself that Mr. Wens wasn’t right, and that this is no travel guide, I’ll skip everything till we got to Chicago.
The pilot was nice, and before we landed he showed me a pilot’s eye view of Chicago. There was the Wrigley Building, and the lake, and Michigan Boulevard, and the Outer Drive and all, just as if it didn’t know I had ever been away, and it sure didn’t.
Cities don’t miss you. There’s always plenty of others to take your place, and that made me think of Butch’s. I asked Mr. Wens, and he said he hadn’t been there, but he had heard Pimples hadn’t gotten out of jail. He said we’d go there tonight and see, and then I could get a night’s rest at the Drake and start off to Mattoon tomorrow to see Pop.
“I don’t know about the Drake,” I says. “What money I got left, I better use to pay Mrs. Calahan that I owe some rent to,” I says. “And I should get back to my few belongings, if she hasn’t sold ’em,” I says.
But he only laughed and said, “What a girl,” again.
We were coming in to land so I buckled my belt. And as we leaned over forward to come down I’m ashamed to say my old trouble came on me at the sight of Chicago coming up to meet me. I thought those butterflies had molted into caterpillars and that I had graduated from them that night at Mulloy’s, but no, there they was still on the job. But they settled down as soon
as my feet was on Illinois.
It didn’t seem like I could believe it. Here I was in Chicago, and maybe none of it had happened to me at all. I could have been standing there yet wondering, but then the reporters and photographers came with their flash bulbs, and that brought me back to life.
So after a picture or two we got in a taxi and drove to the Drake—the same rooms up near the top. Mr. Wens told me to telephone Mattoon, on him. I had the receiver off the hook and the operator had said, “Order, please,” before I remembered that Aunt Helga didn’t have a phone.
So I took a bath and went to sleep for a nap, singing to myself that old song that starts, “Chee-caw-go, Chee-caw-go, dum-deedily-dum.”
The telephone woke me up—it was Mr. Wens downstairs. I dressed and went down. We drove to Mrs. Calahan’s and did I get a surprise.
Mrs. Calahan was a circus performer before she got too fat for her brother to catch her. He could still catch her—she said he never had missed in twenty years—but her weight was too much for his knees on the trapeze, so she couldn’t do it anymore.
“Well,” she says, “come in, come in,” and I wondered what could had come over her. But it seemed like she had seen the mystery-woman pictures in the papers because she had saved my things and even washed out a slip and a pair of knickers and ironed ’em, too. She said I was a celebrity, and she was glad to have had me in her house. She only charged me what I owed and no interest, and said she was glad to have me back anytime—or the young gentleman, if he didn’t have a place.
Mr. Wens thanked her and told her he was my manager.
Just as we were leaving she says, “By the by,” she says, “a lady has been coming here asking to get in touch with you off and on. Gray hair and sad face. I can’t just recall her name but a very respectable person.”
So we went away, me wondering who it could be. We had dinner and went to a show, and then after midnight we went over to Butch’s.
I was glad to have Mr. Wens along, on account of Yanci and the Beaver, or maybe even Pimples.
We went in the door, and I couldn’t hardly believe it could be so much the same—Butch behind the bar, a few customers, the juke box lit up and playing, Moe holding a tray like always with both hands flat under it on account of no thumbs. And a girl selling cigarettes, out of a new bright-red tray, her long white formal around the floor. And who was it but Millie.
I just looked and stood there with my mouth open, for here was Millie as slim as I was, pretty near, and her hair newly touched up and done very nice, and all fixed up as if she hadn’t never met that Curly.
But just then, she saw me, and she let out a yell that made the customers all turn around. She hugged me with the new tray up, edgeways between us, and the packs of Chesterfields and Old Golds and Luckies went all over the floor.
Moe came over, with his funny way of shaking hands. Even Butch looked pretty near pleased, but not quite—till I asked him if he hadn’t found the tray and the cash box, and he hadn’t. Nobody had, for there it was, just like I left it, up over the Ladies’ john, though now it was covered with dust. Butch counted the money in the cash box before he could really let go and give Mr. Wens a Scotch on the house and me a Coke.
Well, I was scared to ask Millie about the baby, so I says, “Where’s Red?”
“He’s home,” she says.
“You mean you’re together again?” I says.
“Why not?” she says.
“Well, that’s fine you’re together.”
“Together?” she says. “Red and me is married,” she says, “and being as Red’s sprained his ankel at the Y. playing handball, I let him stay home and mind the baby till I get back from work. So you see, it all worked out fine.”
“But the baby,” I says.
Millie blushed right through that liquid powder she uses to cover her complexion.
“Well,” she says, “anybody can make a mistake, I guess.”
“Of course, Millie,” I says, “and, anyway, Red had forgave your mistake long before I went away.”
“I don’t mean that mistake,” she says. “You sure can get fooled,” she says, “and was Red tickled, and did he tease me.”
“Wait a minute,” I says, “go slow.”
“Well,” she says, “I guess that Curly, he didn’t mean so much to me as what I thought.”
“Why?” I says. “Come on, Millie, don’t be so ornery, talking riddles.”
“You done it,” she says. “When I saw your picture in the news,” she says, “dressed up all in black and flying off with a man,” she says, “I just gave a low moan and doubled up. When I came to I had a six pound premature boy with hair as red as my face was—and that was as red as fire. Well, after that, when Red proposed for my hand,” she says, “I just couldn’t hardly find any grounds for refusing him,” she says. “And that’s all.”
I thought we were going to lose Mr. Wens, but he got hold of himself after awhile.
All we could find out about Pimples and the others was that they weren’t together anymore, anyway they didn’t come to Butch’s much.
So I was saying goodbye to everybody and explaining to Millie that I didn’t want the job back, and anyway, it was hers before it was mine. Then Butch says, “Did you get in touch with that lady who was here a couple of times asking after you?” And he told me about the same as Mrs. Calahan had said.
So we went back to the hotel through the north door by the lake because there were reporters at the other one and in the lobby.
So I slept in the room with the rose-colored curtains. I had plenty to think about, but like always, nothing stops me from getting a good sleep, so I did.
There were more papers full of me that came up with breakfast. Mr. Wens came up, too, and we had breakfast in the parlor. Then we went to the station.
“The last lap,” he says as we got in a yellow taxi, that like all yellow taxis, brought a lump in my throat.
“How do you account for your good luck, Miss Universe?” says Mr. Wens.
“I’ve got a bug,” I says.
“Dear, dear,” says Mr. Wens.
“Some bugs are good luck,” I says, “and I got one of that kind.” And I pulled the chain out of the neck of my dress and showed him the green scarab that Mr. Bosco had crossed my palm with on Christmas Day.
“That’s the chain the old prince gave me,” I says, “and this is a little bug a friend of mine gave me. When I saw that the little bug had a little link on it for hanging, I hung it on, and I wear it for luck. The chain was supposed to be for a pretty big diamond, but I kept that safe in my bag so it got lost. But I must say, if I had to lose something, I’m sure glad it wasn’t this bug.”
“You mean the diamond got sunk with the plane?” he says. And I told him that it was sunk along with everything else—except the little box that it seemed like something had helped me to save, and that I wasn’t going to open till I got home.
“Yes, sir,” I says, “that little bug took care of me and always will.”
But I didn’t say anything about the children and grandchildren Mr. Bosco had said it would bring me, not wanting to remind myself that I didn’t know where Jeff was at.
Mr. Wens had said last night that he would try to find out, and somehow, I thought there was nothing Mr. Wens couldn’t do. He hadn’t found Jeff for me yet, but that morning I still hoped he would.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WE GOT TO THE DEPOT and was it crowded. We had quite a wait for my train because I had been so scared of missing it.
While we were standing first on one foot and then on the other, I heard my name, and I looked and saw a little gray-haired woman waving at me over the shoulder of a sailor. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her.
Even when a porter moved some bags so she could get through I didn’t know who she could be. Then she came over and spoke to me and took my hands and big tears spilled down her face.
It felt cold in the depot when I realized who it was. “Why, Mrs.
Harwood,” I says, and I introduced her to Mr. Wens (that I remembered to call Mr. Swift). He saw that she wanted to talk to me, so he said he wanted to get some magazines, and left us by ourselves, me and Dr. Harwood’s wife that my brother had shot so dead.
As soon as Mr. Wens was gone she put her hand on my arm.
And “Listen careful,” she says, and she told me she and Dr. Harwood had talked it over, and he was so sure the boy was the guilty one. They had both hated Willie’s testimony because he was trying to mix poor Uncle Ulrich up in it.
Well, they didn’t have hardly any money, she said, but as the doctor’s trial went on, it seemed like her husband had more money. Then she found he had that very expensive lawyer.
All of this had worried her a good deal.
And then when her husband got killed by Willie, she couldn’t help wondering how it had happened that her husband was killed in Uncle Ulrich’s shop. What was he doing there, she wondered. So the doctor got killed and Willie got sentenced, so she came to Chicago and got a job.
After a year she sent for her furniture and when it came she found in a little drawer in the doctor’s desk three letters to her husband from Uncle Ulrich.
The first one said that he would arrange for a lawyer, and that the doctor was to be sure not to forget their agreement. The next two were just notes that had come with checks. One of the checks, for two hundred and fifty dollars, was signed by Uncle Ulrich. It was still in the envelope because her husband hadn’t cashed it before he died.
So she just put the check and the letters in a plain envelope and addressed ’em to Aunt Helga in Mattoon and sent ’em off.
Well, the very next week, she read about the inquest on Uncle Ulrich, and started worrying over these things—her letting Aunt Helga know anonyomously that maybe Uncle Ulrich had been guilty about Darlene, the girl that Willie had brought to the doctor and then had died, getting them into all that trouble. And Mrs. Harwood worried over whether they had anything to do with each other. So she had tried to find out where I could be to ask me about all this.