The First Emma

by Di Maio, Camille

  She took the aged, speckled hand into her own and rested her cheek against Emma’s arm.

  “I don’t know if you can hear me,” she said into the dimness. “The nurses said that you might. And so I want you to know—”

  The words stopped in her throat, choked with inadequacy. What could she say to someone who had come to mean so much in so little a time?

  “I want to say thank you. For picking my letter. For bringing me here. For giving me Erik. For all you’ve done in your life that inspires me to push forward even when I want to shutter myself away in darkness. But mostly—”

  She lifted her head to wipe away the tears that had spilled onto Emma’s paper-thin skin.

  “But mostly, thank you for making me a part of your family. It’s been so long since I felt like I belonged anywhere—or to anyone. Because of you, I have love and hope and all those things that I’d despaired of finding.”

  Mabel paused. There was still so much she wanted to say. She laid her head down once more, gathering her thoughts. She felt a gentle pull to the end of her hair and turned just enough to see that Emma was stroking her loose strands with the gentleness and care that a mother might. She looked up at Emma’s face. Her eyes were closed, but her lips were upturned in a smile.

  She stayed there until the wax in the candle had turned to liquid. Emma’s breathing was faint but steady, and her hand had stilled. Mabel stood up and leaned over her friend. She kissed her forehead.

  “My Mama will be waiting for you,” she whispered. “Give her a hug from me and tell her about the happiness you’ve given her daughter.”

  EPILOGUE

  April 1943

  SPLASH. “Got you! Right in the neck.”

  “Don’t be so cocky, Erik Garrels. You’ve got it coming to you.”

  Mabel put both hands in the water, cupping them for maximum capacity, and sent a small tidal wave toward him.

  “Bull’s-eye,” she said, as he wiped his face.

  “Truce. Truce,” he laughed. He waded over to her, wrapping his hands around her waist and lifting her up to the side of the pool. Mabel was excited to wear her new swimsuit today. It had a golden yellow bodice that flared into a short skirt, trimmed with thin blue gingham.

  “It’s a lot nicer when there’s water in it, don’t you think?” He stayed in the pool, placing his arms on her lap and looking up at her.

  “It is. Such a break from the heat. But I liked it when it was winter, too. Empty. It’s where I met you.”

  “But you were all bundled in a coat and gloves and scarf. I like this outfit way better.”

  Splash! She got him again. “Watch it, there.” But she loved to hear the compliment from him. Wearing a swimsuit felt both scandalous and scintillating, as she’d never had a chance to have one as a city girl. All afternoon, Erik’s hands had wandered a little further than before. Not far enough to be considered indecorous—especially in this public place—but enough to send her imagination wandering. He still hadn’t brought her back to his apartment.

  He let go of her and pulled himself up to the edge. He stood up and held a hand out. “Let’s head over to the tree there.”

  They each wrapped large towels around themselves. She dried off enough to put on a terrycloth robe and then joined him on a picnic blanket underneath a blooming pink crepe myrtle. Behind them blossomed a field of bluebonnets, which Erik said only showed up in April.

  April, so far, had been her most beautiful month in Texas.

  Erik opened the basket she’d brought and set some sandwiches on a plate. “Have you heard anything from Buck?”

  She nodded. “Not in the last week, but he’s been very regular about it. Some of what he says is redacted. But it’s enough to let me know that he’s alive and well. And mostly out of danger. I know he wants to get back into combat, but they’re moving him to training staff. Teaching other pilots. It frustrates him, but I’m happy to say that there’s a better chance of him coming home because of it.”

  “Home,” Erik repeated. “So does San Antonio feel like home yet?”

  “It does.” She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the nose. Baltimore was firmly behind her now. Mrs. Molling had called a month ago and said that Pops had been found in a hospital in Gaithersburg. Pneumonia had taken him, and the doctor said he went quickly. The landlady sounded like she might be preparing for a flood of tears from Mabel, but they hadn’t come. She felt strangely at peace. It was a sad end, to be true. But at least he was no longer in pain. No longer wandering the streets. And she knew that he was with Mama and Robert. Mama had sent her a gift. The morning after Mrs. Molling called, three cardinals perched on the branch outside her turret window. One might have been a coincidence. Even two. But three was just too perfect, too planned to be anything but a message from Mama saying that they were together.

  “Yes,” she repeated. “San Antonio is home.”

  Mrs. Koehler had passed on as well, leaving them a few days ago. But they’d had six weeks to say their goodbyes as she lay in her bed with little communication. Mabel treasured the last moment she’d shared with her.

  Relatives had once again descended on the house en masse, prompting Erik and Mabel to get away to San Pedro Park. Emma would have wanted them to go out and enjoy the sunshine she loved so much.

  “Frieda gave me something for you,” he said. “It’s a little package that Auntie Emma asked her to put together. She said you’d understand what it was.”

  He pulled out a wrapped box from his bag. The paper was a glossy gold foil with a silver bow, almost too pretty to open. Mabel pulled at the ribbon and carefully slipped the box from the paper. She opened the package. It was a black mortar and pestle. Inside its bowl lay four dried chili peppers, four vanilla beans, and a small block of chocolate.

  She grinned.

  “What are those for?” he asked.

  “For cooking something up,” she answered. Mrs. Koehler had taught her that the kitchen was not the only place to raise the heat.

  “I have something else for you. This one is from me.”

  He took another box from his bag. A small one.. Mabel’s heart beat faster. She knew what it was without opening it. Her hand shook as she took it from him. He didn’t drop to one knee as was the conventional way of doing things, and she was glad for it. Instead, he sat right next to her on the blanket, shaded and hidden by the branches.

  “I spoke to your brother before he got on the bus. I asked him, that if you would have me, could we have his blessing to get married.”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding and crying.

  “I haven’t asked you anything, silly.”

  “Yes anyway!” She threw her arms around his neck.

  “Don’t you want to see what’s in the box? Aren’t girls supposed to go right for the jewelry?”

  “I have a lot of things to teach you about women, I guess.” But she opened it anyway. Inside was a thick band made of gold, with little leaf shapes imprinted around it.

  “It was my mother’s,” he whispered. “I can get you something fancier. But I’ve always imagined giving this to the woman I would marry.”

  “It’s perfect. I only want this. I only want you.”

  Erik pulled her toward him and kissed her. A long, lingering kiss that promised more to come. She slid her hand down to the blanket, placing it over the chilies and chocolate and vanilla beans.

  She would start this marriage off right. Mrs. Koehler had made sure of it.

  .

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I FIRST LEARNED OF Emma Koehler while living in San Antonio. For decades, I would pass the beautiful but dilapidated structure that was once Pearl Brewery and thought that it was magnificent, even in its poor condition. Several years ago, developers started to recognize the potential in its stunning architecture and turned it into a lively part of town that features a farmer’s market, bakery, boutiques, and much more. The main brewery itself was turned into Hotel Emma. For months, the structure hid behind its
façade, and on the exterior, we could only see the black and white letters painted onto the beige bricks. Little did we know what a wonder was being created inside. Shortly after its opening, it was named one of the top new hotels in the world by Conde Nast.

  So, who was the “Emma” of Hotel Emma? She had to have been quite a lady to have such a place named for her.

  What I learned was captivating. She’d been the wife of a German-born brewer. Her husband had two mistresses, also named Emma. And one of the mistresses murdered him. Emma the wife then took over the brewery, just as Prohibition began to devastate the beer industry. Taking advice from friends at Anheuser Busch, Emma Koehler kept all of her employees working by changing the nature of what they made. From ice cream to dry cleaning, Pearl was one of the only brewing companies in the country not to go out of business.

  Additionally, she had to steer her company through the Great Depression.

  She emerged from that and put out production numbers that were twice what the brewery had manufactured under her husband’s presidency.

  While I found this all so intriguing, I grew frustrated that it was nearly all I learned about her. Not that I didn’t try. Ancestry.com at least informed me of her parentage, birthplace, and siblings. But, as was so common to the era, almost everything there was to know was about her husband. His accomplishments, his triumphs. Next to nothing about her early life. Or how she ran the business for decades after his death. And with greater success.

  Other investigative tactics proved challenging. With no descendants, there were not any children or grandchildren to talk to. Though they had many nieces and nephews, efforts to track them down had many dead ends and the few leads that had merit went unanswered. I was delighted when I was granted an opportunity to visit with the hotel’s historian—and then astonished that he and even the hotel’s archivist possessed little information beyond what I had already gathered. Attempts to get information from the college that now owns the Koehler mansion were fruitless; I was twice told that they didn’t have anything to share with me.

  A friend proposed a theory for the shocking lack of journals or documents, and it is based on this truth: in 1964, Otto A’s wife, Marcia, committed their son, also named Otto, to a mental institution in Colorado Springs that was notorious for admitting perfectly well people and warehousing them so that their more wealthy family members could get them out of the way. (Wouldn’t that make its own good story?)

  Might such a person also have disposed of anything belonging to Emma Koehler that did not have monetary value? It’s just speculation, but with a surprising lack of first-source materials, I couldn’t help but imagine why that might be. Without any actual documents available, I set out to create an imaginary one through the character of Mabel Hartley writing down Emma’s dictation.

  This is the beauty of writing historical fiction: there is a wide berth to create within the holes of a story. It is my hope that the publication of this book will illuminate connections with people I couldn’t find during the research stage and if I learn anything new, I’ll be sure to update readers with blog posts. But, as it stands, this is the story I fashioned from what I know now.

  I also received gracious research help from a source outside Hotel Emma. I met with the fantastic staff at the Virginia Anheuser Busch facility, who took me on a tour and discussed the historic methods of beer-making. I even attended a beer-making class at Colonial Williamsburg, though the eighteenth-century research had little bearing on my twentieth-century book. Of additional help was staff at the St. Louis Anheuser-Busch headquarters, who provided me with more historical documents about the process and about some of the characters like Adolphus Busch, who figures into this book in a minor way.

  But this became my conundrum: how should I write a whole novel that honors what had to have been a remarkable woman when there are nearly no historical records of her? And yet what we do know is so intriguing? My initial idea to write a book solely about Emma had to go to the wayside unless I wanted to almost entirely fictionalize her and I didn’t want to do her that disservice. So instead, I invented a companion character: Mabel. A timid girl who was Emma’s opposite: the daughter of an alcoholic, a young woman whose heart had been broken both in love and in war. She would arrive in Texas in the hopes of a fresh start, just as Emma’s life was ending. And together, Emma’s story would not only emerge, but would inspire Mabel to take risks, think bigger, and leave the past behind.

  We all need a dose of that and that’s why I wanted to bring what I did know of Emma’s story to light.

  Along the way, I did find some additional facts that made their way into the story. Indeed, Emma Koehler was injured in a car accident and confined to a wheelchair. (Though the details, including the year, the location, and the duration, are at odds when you look at different reports.) She never married after Otto’s death. She did continue to take in many nieces and nephews and help them get their start in the United States. She did hire a cook named Frieda (though the details of that character are all from my imagination.) She did live in a magnificent mansion on West Ashby Street, which still stands today and is owned by San Antonio College. Details of the mansion are true.

  I learned, too, that Emma obtained a substantial loan from her brother so that they could go to Germany and purchase the recipe and mother yeast from Pearl and bring it to the United States. (Though I’ve heard differing accounts about his business: some saying that he had a gardening empire and others that he was a brewer as well.) It is also true that Otto had bought a cottage for his two mistresses on Hunstock Avenue. And that Emma’s death certificate cited senility.

  I included newspaper quotes about the trial of Emma Burgemeister throughout the book for several reasons: it was considered the Trial of the Century at the time, as evidenced by the international coverage. And it allowed me to touch on the part of the story that involved the mistresses without distracting from the Emma/Mabel narrative.

  Besides those and a few other things I wove into the story, I was left with making educated guesses about some items, choosing between conflicting details, different spellings of names, and I fabricated other parts for the sake of story. (For example, I don’t know how Emma actually felt about Otto after his affairs, but I can imagine what I would feel, and so I made that choice for her. I don’t know if they chose not to have children or if they had infertility issues, but given the time period and culture, I chose the latter route.)

  I always weave a romance into my books, but I did not want to give Emma a romance as a widow because there is no evidence of that. So Mabel and Erik (who is a fictional nephew, though he has the real last name of Emma’s birth mother), get to have the love story to offset the lack of it in Emma’s tale.

  Thank you, dear reader, for taking this journey with me, one that was quite unlike my other books as far as research goes. It was my first attempt at taking a real historic person and making her the central figure of the story, stymied by there being almost no documents, books, or records from which to draw key points. My goal, instead, became to take inspiration from her life, explore the feelings of a women in such unique situations, and honor what she accomplished as a business-running woman in a mancentered world and industry. I hope you enjoyed the essence of her life and draw some inspiration for yourself.

  PHOTO ©Alamo Colleges Foundation. Emma Koehler in about 1910.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  EVERY BOOK HAS its own path and this one definitely had some surprises in store for me. But I had excellent companions along the way.

  First, to my fellow founders over at My Book Tribe on Facebook: Tess Thompson, Kay Bratt, Christine Nolfi, Denise Grover Swank, Amanda Prowse, Julianne MacLean, Karen McQuestion, Susan Jones Boyer, Grace Greene, and Kate Danley. And to MaryAnn Schaefer and Cody Bauchman for all of your assistance! I marvel at the work and work ethic of all of you. Book friends— come find this group on Facebook if you want to be a part of an amazing online community!

  To Nancy Cleary, edit
or at Wyatt-MacKenzie, for your immediate enthusiasm for the Emma book! So glad to be on this adventure with you.

  To Tonni Callan and Kristy Barrett for being beta readers and for giving me a boost of encouragement EXACTLY when I needed it.

  To Sarah Weaver for joining me on our odyssey to Hotel Emma and learning more about Emma Koehler.

  To Jeff Fetzer at Hotel Emma for all your help and information about her.

  To Gary Dronen and Tracy Lauer at Anheuser-Busch (Williamsburg and St. Louis, respectively) for wonderful assistance on the history of beer.

  To Chanel Cleeton: I got most of my writing and editing done while we were hanging out. The best kind of peer pressure is someone sitting across from you being productive.

  To Carolyn Taylor, with whom I discussed the Emma story very early on and who was so engaged in the possibility of it. And to Jim Peterson, who brought me the idea about Koehlers—not knowing that I’d already written the book!

  To my agent, Jill Marsal and to my developmental editor, Tiffany Yates Martin for advice and support that always light my way. (Crediting Tiffany, too, with the title. My first one was awful!) I am one thousand percent where I am because of the two of you.

  To the Bookstagrammers, as numerous as the stars, who support my books, all books, and the bookish culture in general. Instagram is my happy place because of you all!

  To my family: Rob, Claire, Gina, Teresa, and Vincent, I can’t do what I do without you. And you are all why I do it.

  And in thanksgiving to God for … everything.