Lariats, Letters, and Lace

by Agnes Alexander

  “What’s an impression?” Beryl asked.

  Meredith explained, “It’s when you wear your prettiest Sunday dress and stay on your best behavior when grownups come to visit, because you want them to like you.”

  “Oh, so that’s why Grandpa said he’d polish his boots and buy a new suit.”

  Meredith smiled. “Yes. Sort of like that.”

  Lydia interjected, “Don’t forget you’ll need a photograph.”

  Meredith nodded, a frown puckering her brow and her eyes focused on a spot on the quilt. Then she remembered, and her smile returned. “Last spring for Grandpa’s birthday, we had our photograph taken with him. He bought the large one that hangs in the hallway, and for a few pennies more, he got the little one that sits on the table in the living room. There are so many other tintypes and daguerreotypes on that table, I’ll bet if I spread them out, no one will even notice it’s gone.”

  Violet gasped, her eyes shining with a deeper understanding of what Meredith was planning. She went from sitting to balancing on her knees in her enthusiasm to share in the scheming. “This is so exciting!”

  Beryl whined with more oomph in her sleeve-tugging. “Merrie, I still don’t—”

  “Beryl! Hush. Can’t you see we’re making a plan to order a wife for your grandpa?” Clara Jean Driscoll shushed her with a finger-pointing air of overblown seriousness.

  The older girls fell into giggling fits, and Meredith wiped her eyes from laughing then gestured for the girls to make a tighter circle. With a glance around to see if anyone was paying attention to them and satisfied no one was, Meredith went on.

  “We have to get a current issue of the Matrimony Courier and not get caught with it. Once we look through the magazine, if we don’t like any of the ladies in that issue, we’ll have to order another one. If we do find a grandma, then we have to get a letter to her from Grandpa.”

  Lydia cautioned, “Merrie, I don’t think your Grandpa will agree to write a letter to a lady he doesn’t know. He’s even more private and shy than my grandpa.”

  “I know.” Meredith said. “That’s why I’m going to write it on his behalf.” She wiggled her eyebrows and smiled.

  “You know this is going to cost a lot of money, don’t you?” Lydia asked.

  Meredith was two steps ahead in planning. “We’ll save our egg and butter money. There are odd jobs we can do, too. Uncle Ben said just the other day that I could work at the newspaper any time I want.” As an aside, she mumbled, “I hope it doesn’t take the rest of the year to save enough. There’s so much to do.” She closed her eyes and pressed the heels of both hands against her temples, overwhelmed by the impossibility of the details. Then she remembered what her grandpa often said.

  Once you’ve thought things through and you’re satisfied with your plan, don’t get lost in the details and lose sight of the reason you started out. Just get the job done the best way you can with what you have to work with. If you have the right intentions, the rest will take care of itself.

  Her doubt dissolved. It really was quite simple.

  Grandpa needed a wife, and she and her sisters needed a full-time grandma. That this plan would include a step-mother for her pa and another woman around to help Mama with all her sewing were both good and logical reasons for Grandpa to get married again.

  Fueled with mule-stubborn determination and an open-hearted faith it would all work out well, Meredith pushed misgivings from her mind. Standing, she extended her arms with fingers spread and palms out. The other girls jumped up amid giggling and rustling skirts and assumed the same stance. Each girl touched her fingertips to those of the girl on either side, which connected them in what Meredith called the unbroken circle of sisterhood.

  “As sisters in blood and sisters in friendship, we promise to help each other in times of need, forever and a day.” Meredith looked at each girl, affirming their fervent nods with her own. “We’ll take one little step at a time. But this is a secret. We can’t tell anyone.” She looked right at Clara Jean. “Especially not your brothers and little sister. They tell everything they hear.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  Meredith swept a grave gaze over the girls. “Swear?”

  “Swear.” Each girl responded with the magic word of solemn promise.

  “Good,” Meredith said. “We’ve a lot of work to do, and we need to do it quickly. We have to finagle this just so.”

  “Maybe we can ask Santa to bring us a grandma for Christmas,” Beryl piped in.

  Violet giggled. “And then Cupid can shoot them with love arrows when the lady gets here.”

  Meredith looked from sister to sister then locked gazes with Lydia. “Santa and Cupid may be just the helpers we need, but it’s up to us to get everything in place to help them help us.”

  ****

  1891

  September 29th — St. Louis, Missouri

  Lord, help her. She wasn’t sorry the good-for-nothing was dead. She’d buried him a year ago today, and she’d never worn a day’s worth of black to mourn his sorry carcass, and she never would. Maybe, just maybe, she’d have found an ounce of remorse in her heart had he not keeled over at a New Orleans poker table with a floozy on one arm and a bottle of whiskey in his hand while gambling away everything they owned.

  No. Who was she fooling? Not even then.

  Traveling salesman. Balderdash.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  Irene Maxon drew her attention from staring at, but not seeing, the last burst of autumn colors in the flower garden just beyond the wide front window. Looking at her brother-in-law, she said, “I’m sorry, Arthur. I was off chasing a daydream down a primrose path. What did you say?”

  “The twelve-month notice to creditors expired yesterday. I paid the last legally submitted claim this afternoon. His estate is settled. All debts are behind you now.”

  Irene arched an eyebrow. “Behind me? I’ll tell you what’s behind me. Twenty-four years of my life are behind me. Wasted.” The word dripped with venomous regret. “And then to find out for the last half of those years, the scoundrel was gambling with borrowed money and then borrowing more money to pay what he was in debt for from gambling in the first place. It makes my head spin and my blood boil just thinking of it.”

  On a heavy sigh, she lamented, “He never did keep a steady job, so I should have realized the source of his occasional windfalls and questioned the oddities he brought home over the years. French military sabers and guns. A litter of purebred bloodhound puppies. Deed to a Lake Michigan lighthouse. Willcox and Gibbs cabinet sewing machine. Matched pair of draft horses harnessed to a lumber wagon.” She brushed a hand over her brow. “There were more lean years than not while he was chasing some new venture that would make us rich, and in the end, they all turned out to be nothing more than his gambling binges.”

  Irene inhaled a deep breath and blew it out with another heavy sigh. “But in all honesty, I can’t say we ever went without the necessities. There was always food on the table, clothes on our backs, and a little spending money.”

  “Irene, we both know you’re giving him more credit than he deserves. It was your hard work that kept your pantry shelves full. You made a name for yourself as a seamstress. You opened your house to boarders, and you were a generous neighbor, though at times, too generous for your own financial good.”

  Irene’s thoughts skimmed back through the years. “Yes, well, some of that came about through necessity and some because everywhere I looked, there were those with more need than mine. In those early years, I had to do something to keep the wolves from our door step and our son from starving.” She cut a glance out the window. “What a hellion of a boy he turned out to be. It was a relief when he went off to Africa with those missionaries, even though I told him there were plenty of misguided folks right here at home who could use some ministering. I'm hoping the time he's been gone has rerouted his wayward ways. I’m convinced it was that slip of a preacher’s daughter making ey
es at him that enticed him to throw in with those Bible-thumpers.”

  “Don’t understate how you tried to raise him right. There’s only so much a parent can do when a child has other ideas.”

  “I suppose that’s true.” It took her a few moments to shake off the cynicism that snuck in from time to time. Looking straight-on at Arthur, she said, “Let’s take care of business. Now that the creditors are paid, is there anything left?”

  Arthur removed an envelope from an inside coat pocket. “Just over three hundred dollars.”

  Dear Lord. She looked at the envelope a long time before she took it. Despite her determination to bear with equal dignity whatever the amount—much or little—her shoulders slumped with crestfallen disappointment. This piddling amount was hard to take. The money, along with a few personal keepsakes and sentimental pieces of furniture, clothing, sewing machine, box of patterns, and sewing basket represented the sum total of her life. Not much to show for a woman her age. When it came down to it, though, she had no reason and no right to ride the pity wagon. Much as she was tempted, neither could she place all the blame at the no-account’s feet. She had some culpability in getting where she was today, and there was no use whitewashing the truth of why she’d married him.

  Hard times had fallen upon them after their father and grandfather had died together in a catastrophic railroad accident, which left her and her older sister, Linda, in the position to help support their mother and grandmother. Linda had more schooling and secured a clerk’s position with an accounting firm, and then married the senior partner’s grandson two years later. She’d moved mother and grandmother into her new home and cared for them until their deaths many years later. Irene had continued her job in a clothing factory, even though she could only afford a drafty room at a boarding house on the poorer side of town. It had been, and remained to this day, a matter of pride to be able to make her own way.

  Then like a bolt from the blue, he’d arrived in town dressed in expensive clothes and flashing a charming smile. His glib tongue was a generous with compliments as his pockets were full of spending money. More than that, his big ideas were as grand as his bigger promises. When she’d found herself two months along, to his credit—or so she believed at the time—he’d married her and kept her an honest woman. But marriage hadn’t slowed his wanderlust.

  Love never sparked for her, so it wasn’t long before she’d found his absences a satisfactory arrangement. Life as a respectable married woman with a house on the right side of the tracks, albeit a house with a part-time husband, was preferable to the stigma of being unmarried with an illegitimate child. But why she hadn’t divorced him or vice-versa somewhere along the way, she couldn’t say. It just hadn’t happened.

  When he did pass through town, he occasionally left money, but more often than not, asked for hers with the pie crust promise to pay her back. It was no wonder Junior had turned out the way he had, considering the example his father had set. Through and through his father’s son, at fourteen, Junior had gone off with his father. On that particular excursion, they hadn’t come home for two years. She wasn’t ashamed to admit she hadn’t missed them. Life ran a lot more smoothly just receiving the occasional letter bursting with enthusiasm about this gold mine purchase or that patent medicine project than having them at home planning to remortgage the house—again—in order to bankroll his latest adventure.

  But always lurking under her I’m-reconciled-to-what-life-has-handed-me façade was a yearning for something more, and it was this long-incubating wish that evolved into the drastic change she was about to make in her life. Her wants were simple: a man to love who returned her love with all his heart and children to dote upon. At her age, children meant grandchildren, but that was fine. She imagined sewing their clothes, sharing her favorite books, telling stories on cold winter nights, wrapping presents for their birthdays, decorating the Christmas tree, hunting Easter eggs…

  A wistful sigh brought a sting of longing to her eyes, and she lifted her apron to dab it away. Oh, such special times. She’d give a lot to have the right someone to share them with.

  Sometime during her self-indulgent musings, Linda had come into the room and was watching Irene with patience tinged in a good dose of pity, which wasn’t an emotion Irene valued to give or to receive. Pity unchecked too often turned to blaming others for what a person should have taken responsibility for themselves.

  “Irene, you needn’t worry about where to live. You can continue staying with us. Arthur and I have enjoyed having you here these past many months.”

  Irene nodded. “I appreciate that, and I’ve felt right at home, but I’m making plans to leave St. Louis. It’s time for me to go out on my own before I’m too old to get out of my rocking chair.”

  Linda’s guarded response was slow in coming. “What do you mean, leave? Are you going on a trip? A vacation?”

  “A trip, yes. Vacation, no. Thanks to my not so dearly departed husband, I’m no longer burdened with property or encumbrances, so I suppose I should be grateful to him for that.” She snorted an unladylike laugh that was as dry and mirthless as the aching in her disillusioned, lonely heart. “As long as I look at it that way, I can keep back the urge to stomp on the bastard’s grave.”

  Chuckling, Arthur offered, “You can borrow my hunting boots.”

  “And I’ll come with you. When you tire of stomping, I’ll take over,” Linda added.

  Irene smiled at the mental image of her every-hair-in-place-shoes-never-soiled sister holding her skirt hem out of the dirt while leading a band of marching Ladies of the Temperance Guild members around the cemetery in a rousing rendition of Battle Cry of Freedom. But her moment of self-amusement flittered away like a dry, brittle autumn leaf caught on a breeze of reality.

  “I can’t stay here. I’ve lived on your charity and the goodness of your hearts long enough. People pity me now that the truth is out about why I sold the house. I can’t abide that.”

  “What plans have you made? Why haven’t you mentioned this before now?” Linda asked.

  Irene stuffed the envelope into her apron pocket and picked up a magazine from the occasional table nearby. “Let’s sit at the dining table.”

  Linda sat stiff-backed, her hands on the table top, fingers entwined, and knuckles white from gripping so hard. Irene slid a magazine across the table to her sister who looked at the cover, then back to Irene, confusion darkening her face. “I don’t understand. This is the current issue of the Matrimony Courier.”

  Arthur glanced at the magazine then leaned back in his chair. Although he maintained his stoic accountant’s countenance, the gleam in his eyes told her he knew what she was up to. When he winked, it gave her the boost she needed to face her sister’s soon-to-be-voiced disapproval.

  Irene said, “I don’t think we’ve missed an issue in all the years it’s been published. In fact, I recall how disappointed we were when it went from a weekly to a monthly publication. We’ve spent many a Saturday afternoon poking fun at the people who advertise in it.”

  “Yes. It’s a delightful diversion I look forward to—” Linda sucked in a gasp. Horror-stricken, her hands flew to her mouth. “Surely you don’t mean…” She looked to Arthur for reassurance, didn’t find it, and drew her gaze back to Irene. “This— This is…unseemly. It could be dangerous, and it’s certainly indecent. Arthur, surely you must advise against this.” Linda fixed her husband with a stop-this-nonsense-now glare.

  Arthur steepled his fingertips together then tapped his index fingers against his lips. “It is all of that, but I believe any discussion against it is moot. Am I right?”

  “Yes.” Irene was as thankful for his quick assessment as for his acceptance of her reality.

  “Moot?” Linda again looked from her husband to her sister. “Moot as in what’s done is done?”

  Irene opened the magazine to a page with the top corner folded over, and waved a read it for yourself gesture.

  Linda stared at the page.
“Why did you include your name along with your photograph? Had you no thought toward maintaining your anonymity and assuring your safety?” When she looked up, anger and disappointment clouded her eyes.

  “You really mean your anonymity, because if anyone reading this realizes we are sisters, judgments will be made.”

  “Well, yes. I suppose that’s true, but that’s not what I’m most concerned with.”

  Oh, yes, it was, and they both knew it. Linda was sensitive to community opinion despite her feigned indifference at the moment. Irene steeled herself to take the coming dressing-down.

  “Irene, we’ve both heard the terrible stories that can come of these arrangements. The false identities. The unscrupulous intentions to take advantage of unsuspecting women. You really should have advertised under an assigned number to ensure your privacy with the men who respond. Not to mention maintain some modicum of self-decency. You know the magazine acts as intermediary on your behalf by accepting and forwarding all correspondence to you.” Linda fixed a stern and disapproving older sister glare on Irene.

  Irene met Linda’s chastisement head on. “Yes, that is all true, and I agree with the policy, but I decided to forego the extra time anonymity involves since it is counterproductive to my goal of leaving here as soon as possible. Exchanging letters is a slow, tedious, patience-stretching endeavor. I want to move forward with my life as soon as possible. I’m not getting any younger.”

  Arthur interjected, “Linda, read it aloud.”

  Linda’s back went board straight, and she snatched up the magazine. “Well, if you insist.” Not until she’d huffed and puffed further disapproval did she begin reading.

  “‘Irene Brownlee Maxon, widowed, forty-eight, of decent weight with good figure and pleasant features, average height, possessed of a healthy and sturdy constitution, desires warm and caring companionship with consideration of marriage to an equally healthy and strong, attractive man of same age or thereabouts of independent means and who has the capacity to open his heart and his home to a true and upstanding woman. Irene has lived her entire life in St. Louis and desires to move to the West. She enjoys spending time with children, reading, music, gardening, and she expects a potential partner to share similar interests in order to have a harmonious home. Along with an amiable disposition and modest savings, she keeps a clean and tidy house. Her cooking and seamstress skills are well-honed. She has no preference of town or country dwelling, however, no men of uneven temper, salesmen, drunks, panderers, or unemployed need respond. Send letter of introduction with pertinent personal information and recent photograph…’”