Louise's Blunder

by Sarah R. Shaber

  ‘I think we’re going to miss the movie,’ I said.

  ‘Better to watch history being made,’ Rose said.

  ‘You think this was that important?’

  ‘Yes I do. Social movements don’t ever stop. They can be delayed, but in the end things move on.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t believe this country will ever be integrated,’ I said.

  ‘No one thought a bunch of Russian peasants could overthrow the czar, either,’ Rose said.

  Sadie had eaten her jello with the colored girls, but came back to our table when they left the restaurant, smiling broadly. The policemen, who’d been guarding the door all this time, left with them. Sadie was still wound up.

  ‘Pauli said the Howard students are going to integrate the District and no one can stop them!’ she told us.

  The manager flipped the sign on the door to ‘Closed’. ‘Time for you girls to leave,’ he said. As we went out the door he said, ‘And don’t you ever come back here either.’

  When I got back to ‘Two Trees’ I was exhausted. I had pain between my shoulder blades from the tension that had built up in me in the restaurant. Propped up on my pillows I sipped a Martini. It was smart of those Howard students to send girls to the restaurants. If they’d been boys, I didn’t doubt there’d have been an awful fight.

  Royal was waiting outside the Western Market for me, leaning up against the big plate-glass storefront to take the weight off his game leg, smoking a cigarette. When he saw me he dropped the butt on the sidewalk and ground it into the cement with the tip of his shoe.

  ‘Where to?’ Royal asked.

  ‘Across the street,’ I said.

  We slid on to the cracked seats in one of the six booths in the tiny café. A fan missing one blade slowly turned overhead.

  ‘It looks dingy, but it’s clean,’ I said. ‘Great biscuits.’ My stomach was still somewhat dicey so biscuits would be all I could eat.

  The young colored waiter came out from behind the counter to wait on us.

  ‘Coffee,’ Royal said. ‘Adam and Eve on a raft over medium, and my friend here tells me the biscuits here are good.’

  ‘They’re the best in town. From my grandma’s recipe.’

  ‘I’ll just have biscuits and milk,’ I said. ‘Do you have real butter? Jelly?’

  ‘We got butter,’ he said. ‘But no jelly. How about some honey? We bring it up from my cousin’s farm in Virginia.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ I said.

  When Royal’s coffee came he pulled an aspirin bottle out of his coat pocket and tossed down two with his first gulp.

  ‘I hope your leg really hurts,’ I said.

  He grinned at me. ‘Yes ma’am,’ he said. ‘It does. Bourbon kills the pain best, but it’s a bit early in the day for that.’

  The colored boy brought our food.

  ‘These biscuits are real good,’ Royal said.

  I mixed up butter and honey into one thick spread and layered it on a biscuit. It went down well between gulps of milk so I ate another one.

  When we were done the waiter cleared our plates and Royal had another full cup of coffee. Then he pulled out his narrow pad and pencil.

  I considered very carefully what information I would share with him.

  ‘Paul Hughes’ parents are dead,’ I said. ‘There is no mother in Fredericksburg.’

  Royal glanced up from his notes, his eyebrows raised.

  ‘No kidding!’ he said.

  ‘His next of kin is listed as a sister in Knoxville. That’s where his body was shipped.’

  ‘I’ll be damned.’

  I told Royal a few more selected facts such as Hughes’ birth date and his education at Yale, and then delivered the bombshell. ‘The telegram, the one that was supposed to come from Hughes’ mother: it was sent from the Western Union office 434 Twelfth, Southwest.’

  ‘Wow,’ he said, ‘so close to the Tidal Basin!’

  ‘I know. What do you think it means?’

  ‘We don’t have enough information to connect the dots yet, but it’s a hell of a coincidence.’

  I said nothing about Clark Leach and Spencer Benton or about Hughes’ file being transferred to the ‘L’ room.

  ‘That’s all the information you have?’ Royal asked.

  I shrugged. ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘The file could have been edited by someone in Personnel after Hughes’ death, I suppose.’

  ‘Must have been,’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I can’t say it was nice knowing you. Goodbye. I’m going to work now.’

  But as I began to rise from my seat Royal reached across the table and grabbed my wrist, hard.

  ‘You’re not done yet, Mrs Pearlie. I have another job for you.’

  I pulled back from his grip and he let me go. At this point there was nothing to keep me from just leaving the café. I was fairly sure he wouldn’t report me to OSS now. But I couldn’t repress my own curiosity. I lowered myself back down to the bench.

  ‘What now?’ I said.

  ‘I want you to go to that Western Union office,’ he said. ‘Even if the return address wasn’t printed on the telegram they’ll have a record of it.’

  I knew immediately that I would do it. I wanted to know myself.

  ‘What if it’s just a girlfriend’s?’ I said. ‘Hughes could have spent his weekends with her, pretending to be visiting his mother. And when he fell ill the girlfriend sent the telegram to Mrs Nighy, leaving her return address off the telegram message.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe not. But I need to know if I’m going to find out who murdered Mr Hughes.’

  I wasn’t convinced Hughes was murdered myself. But I wanted to know who sent that telegram, too, and I figured that the only way I would know was if I checked it out for him. And I’d already done enough to get myself fired; what was one more infraction?

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll go. But I can’t until the weekend. I can’t leave work without a very good excuse and I’m not going to lie.’

  Royal nodded. ‘Good. I’ll catch up with you on Sunday afternoon. Where can we meet?’

  ‘Around the corner and down the alley from the filling station across the street from my boarding house.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  After Mrs Pearlie left the café Royal called for another cup of coffee and lit a cigarette. If that woman really was just a file clerk, he thought, she was wasted. She had only given him the very basic information from Hughes’ file. She was keeping her mouth shut about everything else. But he had her hooked now. He could tell by the expression in her eyes when he asked her to go to that Western Union office for him. She wanted to know what had happened to Hughes as badly as he did.

  Since Hughes’ case had been closed Royal wasn’t permitted to investigate. He couldn’t make any official inquiries without his superiors finding out. Without Mrs Pearlie he’d be without resources. He just hoped he could keep her interested long enough to help him solve the case.

  I couldn’t figure out Clark Leach. He’d offered to pick me up and drive me over to Rose and Sadie’s again. Leach was a big shot. He was a member of the inner circle at OSS, escorting China’s representative Dr T.V. Soong at the Trident Conference. Why on earth was he bothering with me? And why did he want to spend his Thursday evenings at Rose’s little salon to begin with? He stuck out like a sore thumb. He was the only man there. Of course, I reminded myself, Paul Hughes had been a member too, and from Hughes’ file it looked like he and Leach must have known each other at Yale. I promised myself to find out tonight how well they’d known each other.

  After he’d picked me up Leach and I stopped at the Western Market to buy supplies for the evening. We bought a six-pack of beer and potato chips. I’d already gone by the liquor store for a bottle of Gordon’s gin.

  ‘Peggy isn’t coming,’ Rose said, as she met the two of us at the door. She had already changed out of her work clothes into jeans rolled up at the ankle and a sweatshirt. Sadie
wore a pair of smart lounging pajamas that I immediately coveted.

  Sadie took our offerings into the kitchen while Rose plopped on the sofa. ‘Sit,’ she said to me, patting the sofa next to her. ‘You look done in. Let Clark make our drinks.’ She extended her empty glass and Clark obligingly went over to the makeshift bar, an old dresser topped with a painted tray crowded with liquor and a Martini shaker.

  Sadie came in from the kitchen with the potato chips dumped into a mixing bowl and the dip still in its carton. Clark brought us our drinks. With the first sip of my Martini I felt myself unwinding from the long day. It was good to be with a group of friends with whom I didn’t have to be on guard all the time. Even Clark seemed like just another government bureaucrat instead of a big shot at OSS.

  ‘Before I forget,’ Clark said, ‘A friend of mine has been assigned out of town for a few months and he’s given me the use of his little sailboat. It’s moored on the Virginia side of the Potomac. If you like we could go out some Saturday and you girls can sunbathe while I fish.’

  Curiouser and curiouser, I thought. Why was this man hanging out with us low-level government girls?

  ‘That would be divine,’ Sadie said. ‘Can Peggy come too? Spencer works most weekends.’

  ‘Of course,’ Clark said.

  This gave me an opening to ask about Peggy.

  ‘Peggy’s OK, isn’t she?’ I asked. ‘I mean, she was so upset about Paul Hughes’ death.’

  ‘She’s fine,’ Rose said. ‘She had to go to some important dinner with Spencer tonight.’

  ‘She missed a fancy shindig at the Capital Yacht Club the Sunday Paul died. Told Spencer she didn’t want to go. He was furious. They had a huge fight. I suppose she figured she’d better go with him tonight,’ Sadie said.

  Time to quiz Clark. ‘Did you and Paul know each other?’ I asked. ‘I mean before the war.’

  ‘Slightly,’ Clark said. ‘We were both at Yale. I was older than he but we lived in the same residence hall. In fact I provided a reference when he applied for his job here at OSS.’

  ‘It was Clark who introduced us to Paul,’ Sadie said. ‘You would have liked Paul, Louise. He was smart and knowledgeable, he could talk about anything. I miss him.’

  ‘It’s a damn shame what happened,’ Clark said.

  ‘Save some of those for us,’ Rose said, taking the bowl of chips away from Sadie and passing it around. ‘Did you hear about what happened at the Little Palace Cafeteria yesterday?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Sadie said. ‘Three colored students from Howard University went into the place to get some sodas. The soda jerk served them, but when they went to pay at the register they were charged extra!’ Another sit-in!

  ‘Extra?’ I said. ‘What for?’

  ‘For being colored,’ Rose said.

  ‘Sometimes I feel like this country still exists in the nineteenth century,’ Clark said. ‘When I lived in Paris such a thing would be unthinkable.’

  ‘But you don’t live in Paris anymore,’ Sadie said.

  ‘Sometimes I wish I still did. After the war, if things don’t change here, I may move to Europe.’

  I thought of Madeleine. In every way she was the equal of any white girl her age I knew, and she had more brains than many. I didn’t see why she shouldn’t get paid exactly the same as a white girl doing the same job, or why she was segregated at work. And why shouldn’t she be able to buy a soda at a drug store or rent an apartment? When I was growing up in Wilmington I often wondered why the colored people accepted their lot so submissively. Of course I kept my mouth shut about what I thought.

  The potato chips were gone so Sadie went into the kitchen and came back with a bowl of peanuts. ‘This is it,’ she said. ‘The cupboard is bare.’

  I’d finished my second drink and wondered if Clark was ready to leave. I caught his eye.

  ‘I should really go,’ Clark said. ‘I need to prepare the notes I took today at the Conference for my secretary to type up tomorrow. Before I pick up Dr Soong in the morning.’

  ‘I suppose you can’t tell us all about him,’ Sadie said.

  ‘No I can’t,’ Clark said, standing up to leave. ‘But I predict that China will be a major power someday. Now that it’s a democracy all those people will control their own destiny.’

  The small old man wearing a filthy raincoat and swigging on a bottle wrapped in a paper bag peered around the corner at the entrance to the apartment building. He ignored the stares of pedestrians passing by and fixed his eyes on the doorway. A couple came out; it was Leach and the girl. She had a nice figure and pretty hair, but she had to be at least thirty and wore round-rimmed spectacles. She was no knockout and not young, so she wouldn’t stand out in a crowd; that was good. He watched Leach hand her into his car – such a gentleman – and drive off. Well, he’d wanted to see her face and now he had. He straightened up and walked off to the closest bus stop, throwing his paper bag into the nearest trashcan. When it hit bottom a Coke bottle slid out of the bag.

  Clark stopped around the corner from my boarding house to drop me off. We’d agreed mutually that he’d never pick me up or drop me off where anyone would see us together. Perhaps he was sensitive about the difference in status between us. Just as well – I didn’t want anyone to think I was dating him.

  ‘Want to go to the movies tomorrow night?’ he asked, after he’d come around to open my door. ‘Mission to Moscow is supposed to be even better than the book. Walter Huston plays Ambassador Davies.’

  I was taken by surprise. There was not a romantic spark between us. I’d about given up trying to figure him out. Why not Rose or Sadie? He’d known them longer than he’d known me. Perhaps he just wanted to get away, and I was an undemanding companion.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. Why not?

  Friday morning Milt shambled into the dining room in his pajamas and robe, unshaven.

  Phoebe blanched. Ada, Henry and I focused on our breakfast, preparing for an unpleasant scene.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Milt said to his mother.

  ‘Honey, I just think you should dress before you come downstairs,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘I had a bad night,’ he said.

  ‘Son,’ Henry began.

  ‘I am not your son!’ Milt snapped at him.

  ‘Sorry,’ Henry said. ‘It was just an expression.’

  Silently Ada passed Milt the platter of pancakes and sausage. She held it for him so he could scrape his breakfast on to his plate with one hand.

  ‘Where’s the maple syrup?’ he asked.

  ‘There isn’t any,’ Phoebe said. ‘We’re using honey.’

  Milt threw his fork on to the table. ‘Damn it!’ he said. ‘You’d think Dellaphine had been cooking long enough to know not to fix pancakes when there’s no maple syrup. Mother, get her to scramble some eggs for me, would you?’

  Phoebe would stand up for Dellaphine under any circumstances, even to her son.

  ‘Breakfast is over,’ Phoebe said. ‘Since the war came and there are more people in the house Dellaphine doesn’t prepare individual breakfasts. She has too much else to do.’

  ‘She’ll do it for me if I ask her,’ Milt said. He got up from his place and pushed through the swinging doors into the butler’s pantry on his way to the kitchen. Phoebe put her head in her hands.

  ‘Phoebe, he’ll get better,’ Ada said. ‘He’s been through so much.’

  ‘He just needs some time,’ Henry said. ‘Maybe when his Purple Heart arrives it will perk him up.’

  Phoebe nodded, pushing her plate – still full of food – away from her. It seemed to me that she’d gotten even thinner since Milt had come home.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Phoebe said. ‘I’m going to fix Milt some eggs.’

  She followed her son through the swinging doors.

  ‘I would have thought Phoebe’s son would be more of a man,’ Henry said, his voice lowered almost to a whisper.

  ‘You haven’t been to war, have yo
u?’ Ada said.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ Henry asked.

  At this point I decided it was time to clear the table. I carried a stack of dirty dishes into the kitchen where I found Dellaphine filling the sink with suds while Phoebe broke eggs into the frying pan. Milt leaned back in a kitchen chair, his eyes closed.

  ‘I’m going to feed the chickens before I leave for work,’ I said. I’d settled the half-grown chicks into the coop outside yesterday. So I slipped down the kitchen steps to the back yard, where I found Madeleine under the stairs smoking a cigarette.

  ‘You ran off,’ I said. ‘Coward.’

  Madeleine was dressed in one of the suits Ada had given her last summer when she cleaned out her wardrobe, a chic khaki number with pink trim. I’d gotten some nice dresses at the same time. Both Madeleine and I joked we wanted Ada to gain more weight so we could rummage through her closet again.

  ‘That kitchen wasn’t big enough for all of us,’ Madeleine said.

  ‘Was Milt always like this?’ I asked her.

  Madeleine shook her head. ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘He used to be real nice to all of us. After Mr Holcombe died he sort of became the man of the house and he was very serious and responsible and kind to his mother.’

  ‘I guess war changes people,’ I said. ‘And pain changes people too.’

  Madeleine shrugged. ‘All I know is, if he was a colored man, he would be back at work somewhere by now. He’d have to be. Otherwise he’d starve.’

  ‘One of the men who works for my daddy has one leg,’ I said. ‘He gets along fine.’

  Madeleine walked down to the chicken coop with me.

  We watched the chicks run pell-mell to us, squawking and flapping their half-grown wings, as we scattered their feed.

  ‘One of those chicks is a rooster,’ Madeleine said. ‘I can see a bitty comb.’

  ‘First time he crows he goes in the pot,’ I said.

  ‘Did I ever tell you about my daddy?’ she asked, out of the blue.

  ‘No you never have,’ I said. I had never pumped anyone at ‘Two Trees’ about Madeleine’s father. It wasn’t any of my business.