Like the excitement from five years ago with the attempted robbery and shoot-out at the William Annat Company department store at Christmastime. A shoot-out! In Wooster! Who would’ve believed it, but three armed men from Akron tried to rob the store. Akron, didn’t that just figure. You’d never hear of a Wooster resident shooting guns off at a department store at Christmas, for chrissakes. If it hadn’t been for a brave store manager and a quick-thinking salesgirl, who telephoned the operator to connect her to the police, who knows what might’ve happened? The quick-thinking salesgirl had been Vivian’s younger sister Violet, and Vivian would’ve been positively out of her mind if she’d been on the phones that night. Ellen Leonard had answered that call.
“Mercy!” Vivian had exclaimed, when Ellen had described the commotion in Bell’s switchboard room that night. “Jesus Christ almighty!” was what she’d said to Violet. Because she knew what to say in polite company, but didn’t want to have to mind her mouth around family.
Violet had quit William Annat shortly after, because she had a husband, two kids, and two cats and didn’t need those kinds of headaches in her life, and Ellen Leonard had taken her one night of switchboard crisis experience and moved to Cleveland to work at Bell there. She thought she was ready for a bigger city and its bigger calls. Vivian thought she’d better be, because if men from Akron were shooting up department stores at Christmas, could you imagine what the men in Cleveland were up to?
The robbery attempt had been the talk of the town for the next few years. At least until last June when that sneaky Gilbert Ogden embezzled $250,000 from the Wayne Building & Loan on North Market Street, where he worked as a teller. He took the money and absconded with the bank director’s secretary, according to the front page of The Daily Record. Although Vivian could’ve guessed at its meaning, she’d decided to look up “absconded” in the dictionary she’d had to buy Charlotte for school.
Abscond:
: to depart secretly and hide oneself
Charlotte was a sophomore at Wooster High School. She’d skipped the first grade after correcting the teacher on her usage of “break” versus “brake,” and knew words like “abscond” and “privy” and “myriad.” She also liked to read books, and was known to roll her eyes every time her mother boasted about how she “knew people.”
Vivian had spent days wracking her brain to try to remember if she’d ever overheard any telephone conversations between Gilbert Ogden and the secretary, before they absconded. She said she “had a feeling” about that Gilbert Ogden, with his shifty eyes looking every which way behind the round, steel-rimmed spectacles, and the nervous way he used to fiddle with his bow tie with stubby fingernails that he chewed down past the quick. “That’s the sign of a Nervous Purvis, right there,” she always said about nail-biters, and you didn’t want to get her started on the ones who wore glasses.
So, no, Vivian wasn’t all that surprised when she read about the embezzlement. But embezzlement, while sort of exciting to a town like Wooster, wasn’t the real news to Vivian. The real news had been Gilbert’s illicit romance with the secretary Flora Parker. “Illicit” was a word she knew, because it was all over her movie magazines.
“Flora Parker, my stars! Who would’ve thought?” she’d said to Ruth Craven, during one of the early afternoon lulls at the switchboard. “Although . . .” She’d then paused with a finger to her lips. “Wasn’t she from New York?”
Ruth had nodded. “From New York. And a little older. Pretty, though.”
“They have any kids, her and her husband?” Because that would’ve made it worse, and the worse a scandal was, the better it was to talk about.
“Don’t think so.”
Vivian had shrugged and thought, So, the trash ran away with the spoon. That had been something unexpected. It was Wooster’s own version of Bonnie and Clyde, and don’t think Vivian didn’t find it suspicious that Bonnie’s last name had also been Parker. There was a lot more significance to names than most people bothered to notice.
Vivian had thought Flora and Bill Parker were one of those annoying happy couples, what with all the arm-in-arm walking around town and staring into each other’s eyes she saw them doing. They were as swoony as a couple of lovebirds. But who knew what was really going on behind their closed doors? Vivian took her “knowing people” seriously, and especially since there was such a scandal around Gilbert and Flora, she was hard on herself for not having spotted the signs sooner (or at all).
She consoled herself with the thought that, although she saw Flora Parker every once in a while, she’d only actually spoken to her once, a few years before the robbery. It’d been in line at Buehler’s, and it’d just been small talk.
“The cashiers are sure chatty today, aren’t they?”
“Yes. It is slowing the line a bit.”
Flora Parker had then found something interesting inside her handbag, and Vivian guessed she wasn’t in the mood for conversation, although she could’ve gone on for a while about those cashiers. The few words between them really hadn’t been enough for Vivian to figure Flora properly.
She had noticed the can of vegetable shortening in Flora’s shopping cart, and that was something. If Flora’d been a good housewife, she’d have been cooking with lard or butter, but Vivian wasn’t going to pass judgment on her over something like that. She’d also been preoccupied with her own thoughts that afternoon. It was her and Edward’s ten-year anniversary, and Vivian was buying his favorite Amish Baby Swiss cheese, trying to plan the rest of their dinner in her head, and wondering what awful tin thing he was going to give her for a gift. Ten years was tin. Whatever it was, he was probably making it on his workbench in the basement. It better not be another goddamned watering can. She’d gotten one of those for a birthday gift one year.
Dorothy cleared her throat, bringing Vivian back to the present moment, where several lights were blinking in front of her on the switchboard. When she let herself drift off like that it took a nudge to get her back. With a snort of air through her nostrils, she plugged in the cord.
“Number, please,” she said, and quickly connected the call before answering the next one. Maybe that one would be the call with the Communist spies.
“Number, please.”
“Viv, is that you?”
“Yes, dear.”
Edward never surprised Vivian anymore, after fifteen and a half years of marriage, but she was almost surprised her husband recognized her voice on the other end of the line. He had some hearing loss, or at least claimed he did. It seemed to come and go. It was at its most powerful, the loss was, when she was reminding him to trim his nose hairs or put his dirty socks in the warsh basket. But the moment she and Charlotte were talking about shopping for a new dress, or something else not exactly practical, boy, did his hearing improve. She was sure he’d be able to hear a dog whistle if the whistle was talking about spending any of his money.
“They canceled the meeting tonight, so I’m home.” He sounded tired, as usual.
“Okay.” Vivian had no idea what they talked about at those stupid meetings anyway. Freemasons. Huh. Grown men having secret meetings about God knows what. It all just sounded like a way for them to have an adult version of their tree house with the “No Girls Allowed” sign out front, and call it a “society.” Edward was busy enough, working two jobs. If she hadn’t liked having the house to herself sometimes, she’d be annoyed that he chose to spend most of his free time with a bunch of other men instead of staying home with his family.
“I’ll leave the porch light on.”
“Thank you.”
She disconnected Edward, and reached to connect the next call.
“Number, please.”
The caller, whose voice she didn’t recognize, gave Betty Miller’s home number, which she did. Vivian looked at the clock on the wall, which read ten minutes till eleven. That seemed awfully late to be calling someone who had a family with small children, didn’
t it? She assumed Betty Miller had made it home from Freedlander’s, probably enjoyed a fancy dinner of roasted peacock or some such bird, on the rarest china plates and using real honest-to-goodness silverware, and then put her perfect, small, rich children to bed, probably in pajamas made of the finest spun gold. That made her think of Old King Cole. He called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl, and he called for his fiddlers three . . .
She was getting tired, though. Edward’s call and his mention of the porch light had made her think of just how much she wanted to be home switching off the porch light, slumping up the stairs, and crawling into bed. Plus, she had no interest in hearing Betty Miller talk about how swell her life was, how her Christmas party was going to be the event of the season, how God himself would have cleared his schedule for a chance to sit in the Millers’ living room and sip champagne with the crème de la crème of Wooster society. But something made her pause as the caller said, “Hiya, it’s me.”
The unknown woman’s voice was low and secretive, almost seductive enough to make Vivian uncomfortable. Like the time when she was thirteen and had happened upon her brother and Edith Cramer in the backseat of the family’s Model T. She shuddered a little and stifled a gag, then squinted at the board in front of her, as if the squinting would help her figure out who “me” was.
“You’ll never believe this,” the voice said.
And, although Vivian was sure the disbelief would just have something to do with a surprising new way to put lobster or crab or some other expensive seafood into a casserole recipe, she stayed on the line, held her breath, and listened. After just one minute her body had gone rigid, with her fingers pressing themselves white into the countertop. Her heart thumped in her chest and her mouth went dry. Vivian listened in a state of stunned paralysis, gaping at the switchboard and feeling like the rug of her life had just been yanked out from under her.
Chapter 3
1925
It was a warm spring evening, the kind of evening where you wanted all the windows and doors open so you could smell the flowers, feel the warm breezes, and hear the crickets chirping. Ten-year-old Vivian McGinty was doing all three of those things while setting the table in the dining room. She was also lifting up each of the empty diamond-patterned water glasses, peering into them, shaking them lightly in the air next to her ear, and then setting them back down on the table. Uncle Frank and Aunt Emma and the Cutter cousins were driving up in the Sheridan from Apple Creek for Friday Night Fish Fry and, as usual, Vivian was full of excitement and dread. Excitement to see the relatives, and dread about eating the fish. The Fish Fry was a tradition Vivian’s Pawpy had brought back to Ohio after visiting the Michigan and Wisconsin McGintys.
The McGinty ancestors had sailed to the United States all the way from County Tyrone, Ireland, sometime in the early nineteenth century. They’d arrived in port at Philadelphia and then scattered like blown dandelion seeds all over the mid-Atlantic and Midwest regions. Uncle Frank and Aunt Emma weren’t McGintys, but they were kin, they lived within driving distance, and they enjoyed the Fish Fry.
Aunt Emma was Vivian’s aunt on her mother’s side. The Lancaster County German Mennonite side. The Kurtzes. “Happy as a pot of mice, are we?” was just one of the weird things Aunt Emma would say to Vivian’s mother, speaking in Low German while poking her in the side, trying to coax a smile out of her sister. Myrtle Kurtz McGinty never seemed as happy as a pot of mice. She always seemed about as happy as the mice that Zipper the neighbor’s cat dropped in a mangled heap on their doorstep. Myrtle needed to be coaxed into a smile. The McGinty side never needed coaxing.
“Paddy, how are you? How’s the railroad business?” Uncle Frank asked, as he clapped Vivian’s father on the shoulder.
The way Uncle Frank said it you’d think Patrick McGinty owned the railroad, but he just punched tickets. Vivian had once heard Uncle Frank call her father a “wickedly charming Irish robe,” and she’d wondered if the robe was anything like Joseph’s coat of many colors from the Bible. She’d asked Vera about it later, and Vera had laughed long and hard.
“Rogue, dummy, not robe. God, you’re stupid.”
As usual, Vera hadn’t been helpful. Whatever it meant, robe or rogue, Vivian was proud that people talked about her Pawpy. He was popular around Wooster, and people liked him. She’d once heard a neighbor say, “Oh, that Paddy. He’s got a ready wink in one eye, and the reflection of a passing woman’s backside in the other.” Vivian had squinted at his laughing blue eyes the next time she looked him in the face. She didn’t see either of those things.
What she did see was her Pawpy trying to talk her mother into converting to Catholicism, and her mother refusing. She’d just shake her head slowly back and forth, grumbling under her breath. To Myrtle, church was church, and having to do a lot of standing up and kneeling during services didn’t change that. And going to confession? She waved a rough, dismissive hand at the thought. She didn’t have anything to confess anyway. Forest Chapel Methodist was just fine for their purposes. Pawpy didn’t go with them on Sundays. He claimed he went to Mass at St. Mary’s, but Myrtle and the McGinty children thought it more likely that he prayed to the Patron Saint of My Wife and Kids Are Finally Out of the House from the comfort of his living room armchair.
The Friday Night Fish Fry became Paddy’s version of Mass, and Vivian enjoyed it about as much as she enjoyed sitting in church. She had no problem eating the applesauce and fried potatoes, but when they were gone she was left with the fish. She’d look around at everyone else’s plates to see if they’d eaten theirs yet. That fish was all that was standing between Vivian and the apple crisp for dessert, but she just couldn’t bring herself to eat it. She couldn’t eat it and she couldn’t think of a way to get rid of it. It would sit on her plate until she remembered to push it around and around with her fork.
“Vivian, eat the fish,” her mother ordered.
“Oh, now, Myrtie, Vivy doesn’t have to eat the fish if she doesn’t want to.”
Vivian tried to hide her smile behind her napkin. She loved when her father was “half seas over,” as he liked to say, because it meant he either wouldn’t notice the kids’ behavior or wouldn’t care. On the days when Pawpy knocked off work early, he’d take the front porch steps two at a time up to their white two-story clapboard on Buckeye Street, fling open the front door, and go straight to the liquor cabinet. He’d open the whiskey while their mother was still stirring the boiling pot on the stove, which always smelled like it was dirty socks and bloomers rather than food.
“Doin’ the warshing on the stove tonight, eh, Myrtie?”
After a few slugs from the bottle there was a good chance Pawpy wouldn’t really be able to taste the meal anyway. By the time they sat down at the table and bent their heads in prayer, Mr. McGinty could’ve been convinced they’d already eaten dinner.
Vivian looked back at the fish on her plate. She tried to remember, at least at mealtimes and on her knees before bedtime, to be grateful she had food to eat. She tried to remember to be grateful about a lot of things, but it was harder when you were the middle kid. Henry and Will claimed they were middle kids, too, but Vera liked to remind everyone, “Vivian’s the real middle child,” with her voice full of oldest-child authority, “commonly overlooked and perpetually craving attention.” Perpetually, Vivian repeated the word to herself. Perpetually. She wondered what that meant.
While the grown-ups and older kids talked to each other across their plates of awful fish at the long table, Will and Violet kicked each other under it. Forks and knives scraped against plates while Vivian, not quite old enough to talk to the grown-ups and a little too old to kick Will and Violet under the table like she used to, let her mind wander to what she had planned for after dinner. She glanced at the water glasses and began to fidget. Tonight it didn’t matter that Ruby, Opal, and Vera wouldn’t let her play with them afterward.
“We don’t ‘play,’ Vivy,” Vera would scoff, and then shut her bedroom doo
r, leaving Vivian on the outside, every single time.
The last streusel crumb had been scraped from the plate and everyone had pushed their chairs back and made their way out of the dining room. Vivian stayed behind to help her mother clear the table and then brushed the dish towel dramatically back and forth across the rough grain, making a great show of cleaning up, getting a rare smile from her mother and a pat on the head from her Uncle Frank.
“Attagirl!”
Pawpy gave her a wink and then grabbed her mother by the hand, dragging her out to the living room while she protested. He’d never let her mother do the dishes right after a Fish Fry meal and she’d complain that the crud was going to set on the plates and pans if she didn’t get to them right away. Vivian held on to the back of a dining room chair and rocked back and forth, toes to heels, toes to heels, as the grown-ups settled themselves in the living room. She waited until she heard the swinging rhythms and blaring horns of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra coming from the radio, and then she sneaked back into the kitchen. She reached for one of the empty water glasses next to the sink, wiped the rim on the hem of her dress, and tiptoed quietly up the stairs to the bedroom she shared with Violet. When the weather was nice, like it was tonight, Violet liked to play with her dolls in the backyard after dinner, so Vivian had their room all to herself.
Pawpy and Henry’d put the screens in the bedroom windows a couple of weeks ago, and Vivian could smell the neighbor’s freshly cut grass and hear the crickets chirping. She could also hear the faint, faraway sound of Violet’s little voice as she sat under the clothesline and talked to her dolls.
The Operator Page 2