The First Emma

by Di Maio, Camille

  It was a tiny effort in a tidal wave of change. Soon after, the Anti-Saloon League nationalized their support and petitioned congress for a federal amendment to the Constitution that would ban alcohol. Temperance advocates insisted that intoxication gave rise to crime and other immoralities in the population. I argued that those who were inclined to indulge in poor behavior would find their mischief with or without the assistance of ale and that to deny it to the wider citizenship for the sake of a few bad apples was woefully unfair.

  From the throne of my wheelchair, I organized rallies with the local bar owners I’d befriended years ago and I personally subsidized the cost of certain Pearl products to entice the support of the public.

  One of my victories was convincing the Texas Brewer’s Association to pledge twenty-cents per barrel to support wet legislation and in a short time, we gained ground. So much so that the governor, Oscar Branch, earned the nickname “Budweiser Branch.” I would have far preferred the name to be some derivative of Pearl, but alliteration won the day. And besides, the Busch family was essential in aiding us for the collective good, so I could concede the nod to their own product.

  We were all in it together.

  Those efforts began to work swimmingly, even as my legs did not. Emma Dumpke remained my nurse because I had no time to hire another. And I no longer cared where Otto chose to relieve his manly impulses. Whatever they did together, it didn’t happen under my roof. Otto had bought her a little cottage on Hunstock Avenue. She came to the mansion during the daylight hours and served me. In the nighttime, I presumed, she served my husband.

  Soon enough, the need for me to have more care arose. I was diverting all my time into my business and none into my health and it began to show. The irony that I’d turned into what I’d loathed about Otto early on was not lost on me. But I was too consumed with the work to care.

  Emma Dumpke was skilled, I have to admit, at helping me in and out of my bath, in and out of my clothes, and assisting me like the invalid I still was. But I didn’t want to be that way forever. The doctors in Germany had given me some hope that I could walk again, but I would need to address it with the same effort that I gave to Pearl.

  Though San Antonio was coming into its own, its medical community was still rather provincial. So when Emma Dumpke mentioned that she had a friend in Germany who was skilled in the kind of therapy I needed, I decided that I had nothing to lose by accepting her offer to write to her. The girl was eager to please me for reasons that should be obvious, so I had no doubt that her recommendation could be trusted.

  Two months later, Emma Burgemeister arrived, following the same arduous path that we had had to take. The train to Hamburg, the passage over the North Sea to Southampton, the journey across the Atlantic to New York, the train across thousands of miles.

  So it was no surprise that when she arrived ragged and tired, I was not able to see beneath the weariness and realize the astounding beauty she was. Only days later when she emerged from the turret room upstairs—the poor woman had gotten quite ill on the voyage—did I discover that she was Emma Dumpke’s opposite in every way. Tall. Strong jawline. Bigboned. Her brown-red hair had enviable curls that were natural and wild. She did little to tame them.

  Once she’d been suitably restored by my cook’s excellent chicken soup, Emma Burgemeister wasted no time getting down to work. While Emma Dumpke treated me with delicacy, as if I were some fragile flower petal, Emma B., as I came to call her, acted as if I were a rock in need of chiseling. And she let it be known that she was in charge, even though I was the one paying her.

  I quite liked her brash style.

  “Mrs. Koehler,” she would say in a stern, husky voice. “We are not here to play. We are here for you to walk again. Now, stand up!”

  I hadn’t stood up in months. But I did not tolerate disobedience. I had not felt like such a child since the days I used to ride on my father’s back as we walked along the Mississippi River.

  I gripped the edges of my wheelchair, embarrassed that my attentiveness to Pearl had eclipsed all regard for my own care and that I had allowed Emma Dumpke to coddle me. My arms were strong enough, but they were not built to support me. As I tried to stand, my legs felt like gelatin: soft and easily pliable.

  They began to collapse and I nearly tumbled onto the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” I heard myself saying to my taskmaster.

  “There are no ‘sorries.’ Only successes,” came the retort. And so I tried again.

  And again.

  And again.

  By the third day of nothing but attempts to stand, I was able to do so for a full five seconds and it felt like the biggest accomplishment of my life. Emma B. did not applaud me, however. She told me that we had to strive for ten.

  And when I met ten, then twenty.

  Twenty became a minute.

  In between these tortures, she would allow me to sit and to press my feet against her folded hands. She would push and I would push back and she said that it was intended to strengthen the muscles that had atrophied for so long.

  So exhausted was I by the end of a day that I rarely made it to the dinner table. The cook would bring my dinner to my room. I encouraged Emma B., however, to join whoever would be over any given night.

  What I did not realize is that Otto had begun returning home in time for the meal. It was quite unlike him, as he usually took dinner in town with clients or partners in his various enterprises.

  Weeks passed. I continued to grow stronger and could now walk the length of the long hallway. Emma B. never seemed pleased with my efforts, however. At each milestone, she rewarded me by setting a new and more difficult goal.

  At long last, the efforts didn’t tire me and I felt ready to return not only to Pearl on occasion, but to dinner in my own home.

  And it was there that I noticed it.

  Oh, it might have been indistinguishable to anyone but myself. A look between Otto and Emma B. A brush of his hand against her shoulder as he would get up from the table. And my thoughts were confirmed one evening when I heard disturbing sounds coming from the kitchen and found them both half-dressed and leaning over the countertop.

  The betrayal! Did my husband have some sort of fetish for women named Emma? For I’d never suspected him of having affairs before Dumpke and Burgemeister came into the picture.

  What made it worse—and, yes, it got worse—was that he had not ended things with Emma Dumpke. Quite the opposite. On another occasion, an afternoon in which I came home early from a visit to Pearl, I was surprised to see Otto’s car in the driveway. He never came home for lunch.

  But what I saw between the crack of the doors to my parlor suggested that Otto—well, I won’t draw that ghastly picture. Needless to say, the blond nurse was with him on the sofa.

  I didn’t confront him then. I wasn’t heartbroken: I’d long since not had even the tiniest romantic notion toward my husband. What I did mind was how brazenly they carried on in our own home. It was the height of disrespect for me. His wife, who had followed him to Texas. His wife, who had secured family money for his vital purchase. His wife, who had acquiesced to every new business whim. His wife, who almost single-handedly oversaw Pearl. Who took in his many relatives. And who had never once betrayed him in return.

  The next day, I had the sofa removed from the house and replaced it with one that was much more to my liking anyway. It had a stiff back, firm cushions, was narrow in stature. Decidedly not one suited for lovemaking, though even that word seemed tainted.

  Neither Emma dined with us that night and astonishingly, we were housing no relatives at the time. So Otto found himself alone with me.

  We didn’t speak at all through the soup course. Or the salad course. Or the meat course. Or the dessert course. It was not until the cook brought out a port for him and a lager for me that he spoke.

  “What is bothering you, Emma?”

  “Why do you think I am bothered?”

  “You usually have p
lenty to say.”

  “I do have plenty to say. Just not to you.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Ask my nurses.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I think you do. Seems that they’ve been meeting your needs as well as mine.”

  He put his glass down. I expected an apology. Even one for the sake of decorum, but he gave none.

  “A man has to be a man, Emma. And I haven’t wanted to come to you with that burden since your accident.”

  I scooted my chair back and stood up. It seems like such a little thing to be able to stand until you’ve had the ability taken from you. But this gesture of indignation meant so much more to be because of how hard I’d worked to do this seemingly little thing.

  “No, Otto. Our bed had grown cold long before the accident. You’ve been taking me for granted since the very beginning of our marriage. I’ve been there for you through everything. And this is what you do in return. You are despicable.”

  He slammed his hands on the table. If I’d hoped for contrition, I would have been disappointed. “Dammit, Emma, what do you want from me?”

  “I want you to stop doing these vile things in my home.”

  “It’s my home, too.”

  “Yes. This absurd mansion that I never wanted anyway. If it weren’t for the gossip that would come from it, I’d be perfectly happy to move into a little cottage much like the one you bought for Emma Dumpke. In fact, it would be more than fine with me if you turned this into the den of iniquity you’re clearly set on, and I’d happily live an hour’s carriage ride away and leave you all to each other. But I will not abandon Pearl and all the people there. I will continue to live here and watch Pearl from this hill and soon enough, I’ll be able to walk there once again.”

  His jaw was tight. “I’m not firing the Emmas.”

  I laughed. “I don’t expect you to. Because even if they left, you’d waste no time in finding a fourth Emma and a fifth to satisfy this bizarre little fantasy that you’ve begun. But I do want Burgemeister out of here. Send her to live with the blond one for all I care. But neither will live under this roof anymore.”

  “Fine.” Otto crossed his arms, but I could tell that I’d defeated him. It gave me no joy. Even with all that had happened, if I could turn back the calendar many years to the brief time that we had blissful happiness together, I would do so. But I didn’t pine for it. I mourned over what was. What could have been.

  Otto, on this point, was true to his word. Emma B. moved in with Emma D. and how that all worked out I neither knew nor cared. After sufficient time had passed and a string of far less qualified women had come to try to assist me, I at last relented and let them continue to do what they’d originally been hired to do. It was an unusual situation, to say the least. Receiving aid from the two women who warmed my husband’s bed. They did not speak of it. Nor did I. We got to work and my health began to improve.

  Life passed in this curious way. Until Emma Dumpke up and got married.

  .

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  MRS. KOEHLER REGAINED her strength over the next few days. Helga said that she’d rallied, but Doctor Weaver cautioned that it would be short-lived. Some people who’d reached her age experienced a brief surge of adrenalin shortly before they died. A way to complete anything that was left undone. He compared it to an expectant mother: around the fifth or sixth month, she would become almost manic in her drive to prepare the house for the arrival of a child.

  It was not the first time that Mabel had made the comparison between birth and death. She’d had a front-row seat to it with Mama. The woman who used to bathe her, feed her, coddle her, had needed those very things in her final days, and Mabel had been all too willing to serve her in that way. As heartbreaking as it had been to watch her mother wither into near-nothingness, the opportunity to play that role for her had given peace to Mabel. Maybe that’s why Robert’s death and Papa’s drunken disappearances were especially grievous. Robert was just gone. He was there, and then he wasn’t, his death heralded only by a typewritten form on yellow paper, delivered by a young man in uniform who had never even seen combat.

  What was worse is that Robert hadn’t died on a battlefield; they’d lost him in a training accident shortly after arriving at the European theater. An inglorious end to a glorious young man.

  And Papa. Mabel would have gladly nursed him back to health if only he would have chosen to come home. There was not a day that she didn’t worry about him, especially as it was now mid-February and the weather reports out of Baltimore were grim.

  But she would have Buck back any day now. He hadn’t called her again, but she knew that he would do everything he could to make his way here as soon as he could.

  Mrs. Koehler dismissed Mabel for the morning. Her lawyer was coming over to review her will. And she’d decided to write personal letters to each of her nieces and nephews, which were a considerable number. Especially since she even gave cousins like Erik those monikers. The family tree was vague, to say the least. If you shared blood, you were family, and that’s the only name to which Mrs. Koehler ultimately subscribed.

  The day was a beautiful one and locals said that February was always the first time spring hinted that it would arrive soon. Canadian geese began to arrive from the south, finding a temporary home in Texas before an eventual flight back north. Mabel had seen them from her windows, pecking at the bits of grass on the lawn.

  She put a cardigan around her shoulders and decided to go for a walk. She knew Erik was at work, but even if he hadn’t been, she would have wanted to take this walk alone. She was delighted to have love in her life again. One that was proving to be much more real than the sham she’d experienced before. But she’d learned from Mrs. Koehler that there was another kind of love that had previously eluded Mabel: the love a woman could have for herself. Finding her own way, forging her own path.

  Emma Koehler had come to San Antonio as a bride, but set upon something that was uniquely hers by walking the streets of her new town and making it her own.

  Mabel had no idea how long her employment with Mrs. Koehler would last—until the woman died? Surely no longer than that. But now that she was here, she didn’t want to return to Baltimore. There was the very real possibility of a future with Erik, but more than that, she felt like San Antonio was the place of a fresh start. Baltimore carried the sad memories of her old life.

  Whatever it took, she would stay. She’d find a job in a shop or become a teacher or anything else that came along. She felt the electricity of possibility run through her veins. It was a new day for women.

  Mabel walked past the parlor and heard Mrs. Koehler discussing things with her attorney. So she stepped out of the house. She hadn’t ventured down North Main Street yet, and as she started down that way, she felt ashamed that she had been here so long and explored so little. But as Emma had said, not one more minute should be wasted. And that included time spent dwelling on regrets.

  The scenery was not particularly exciting, at least for the first mile. The Koehler Mansion and Pearl sat well outside the boundaries of downtown. There were still patches of farmland and the occasional barber or gas station. But it was easy to see where growth had begun. Half-finished construction sites dotted the landscape, likely waiting for the end of this war. As drummed home by every poster created, all resources needed to go to the efforts overseas. It was difficult to make a case for needing steel to build a new hat shop when it could go toward reinforcing the sides of a naval vessel.

  But the road took a livelier turn further down when she reached the boundaries of the downtown area. Here, green areas were deliberate, the first of which was Crockett Park. A stone slab stated its name and indicated that it had been established in 1875.

  As she continued, there was far more bustle. Cars were driven by women or by old men: the young men were serving Uncle Sam. Fruit sellers had more variety than they’d had just weeks ago, though not as much as s
he imagined the summer would bring.

  She came upon another open area, but it was more of a plaza. On the western side lay a stone cathedral, the seat, she knew, of the Catholic population of the city. Before Mama got sick, the family used to attend an Episcopal church on the occasional Sunday, but after she died, Papa never took them again. Mabel didn’t remember much, but she did recall a feeling of serenity when they would go. Something about being a small piece of a large past. It assured her that everything would work out in the end.

  She ascended the steps and was happy to find the enormous wooden doors unlocked. Inside, the notes of an organ wafted through the bell tower and the hallways, and the voice of a soprano carried its melody. They stopped and started; it must have been some kind of rehearsal, but Mabel appreciated the sounds. She marveled at the cream-colored stone and the octagonal window that sat above the altar. At the very back, an ornate gold structure held statues of unfamiliar saints.

  Mabel walked the perimeter, which was made up of tiny chapels. One caught her eyes. It was a painting of a woman with dark hair, draped in a turquoise mantle, standing above a crescent moon, and being held up by angels. A plaque to the right said Virgen de Guadalupe. Mabel recognized it to be Mary, revered, as she recalled, by Catholics and Episcopalians alike.

  A shiver passed through. Mama’s name had been Marie, a variation. Perhaps Mabel was looking for signs where there were none, but it felt like a gift from her mother. To be here, in front of her namesake.

  Before the painting was an iron stand full of candles. Only two were unlit. She picked up a long matchstick and borrowed the flame from a nearby candle to light the remaining ones.