The Operator

by Gretchen Berg

  Vivian pulled her lips over her dentures in a nervous frown, wondering if he was scolding her for waiting this long.

  “Per our code on the telephone, I did find what you had asked me to find.”

  He picked up something that looked like a large negative of a photograph from the top of the pile and handed it to her. Vivian stared at what turned out to be a photostat copy of a marriage certificate from the year 1923. Fifteen years before she’d married Edward. Eyes frantically darting around the details, they landed on the name of the groom: John Edward Dalton.

  “Oh, now, see here,” she said quickly, shifting the candy to her cheek. She pointed to the name of the groom, as she uncrossed her ankles and leaned forward in the chair with excitement. “This is someone else. This isn’t Edward.”

  For a few seconds the lump wedged in the middle of her chest loosened as she held her index finger firmly on “John.” She could’ve cried with relief. That wasn’t her husband’s name. But Mr. Don McAfee leaned back in his chair with his fingers tented against his chin and shook his head slowly at her.

  She pulled the sheet back in front of her face and ran her index finger along the other details. The groom’s date of birth, the same as Edward’s, and the place of birth, the same as Edward’s. It couldn’t be a coincidence. She swallowed the peppermint.

  “John Edward Dalton,” she read aloud, her breath an uncomfortable burst of mint.

  Edward’s given name was Edward, and his middle name was George, after his father George. There was no John in his name. THERE WAS NO JOHN IN HIS NAME! Edward George Dalton. Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry. Vivian had no idea where the name John had come from, but it seemed to her a sure sign he was trying to hide something, even if he hadn’t bothered to change his birth information. An icy shiver ran under her skin and her mouth felt parched, but still minty, as she scanned the rest of the license. The name of the bride was Mildred Fischer.

  “Mildred,” she said aloud, and pulled a face as if she had just swallowed a glass of ipecac instead of the peppermint. “She sounds fat.”

  McAfee threw up his hands and raised his eyebrows as if to say, She just might be. Vivian smiled at him and looked back down at the photostat, biting the inside of her lip to keep from crying. She needed to feel like someone was on her side right now. Edward had been married to Mildred when he took Vivian out riding in his Model A. Edward had been married to Mildred when he’d proposed to Vivian. Edward had been married to Mildred on their wedding day.

  “I found where she’s living now,” McAfee said in a gentler tone, speaking slowly, as if she might be frightened away like a bunny rabbit.

  “You did what?” Vivian gasped, dropping the photostat, her pocketbook and gloves on the floor next to a pile of file folders. She wondered how he ever kept all those records straight.

  “I found Mildred,” he offered simply, in his deep baritone, as he rocked back in his office chair, his delicate hands clasped behind his head. “No extra charge.”

  “Well, garsh,” Vivian said, feeling awfully sick and not too sure she wanted to know where Mildred was. She tried to breathe normally as she lifted the photostat from the floor and placed it on the corner of the messy desk. She couldn’t be sick in front of Mr. McAfee.

  Mildred Fischer. Mildred Fischer Dalton Taggart, as it were. Fat Mildred, now the ex–Mrs. Taggart, and ex–Mrs. Dalton, was still living in Syracuse, New York.

  “Stayed near the scene of the crime, so to speak,” Mr. McAfee joked.

  “Eh.” Vivian attempted a courtesy laugh, as she leaned down to pick up her pocketbook and gloves. She didn’t want to seem rude.

  The office seemed to be getting smaller and smaller and Don McAfee and his messy desk appeared to be swaying as Vivian withdrew the stack of bills from her pocketbook and aimed them in the direction of the desk. She slipped on a pile of papers on her way to the door, but caught herself in time, steadying herself on the broken coatrack next to the file cabinet.

  “Mrs. Dalton, call if you need anything,” the baritone voice boomed after her as she hurried away from the office that had shrunk down to a mouse hole behind her. Holding one hand on the wall, she teetered through the south end of the factory to get to the parking lot, the smell of chocolate filling her nostrils. It would never be the same for her after this, that smell. Chocolate. She would always associate it with this. This personal disaster that was ruining her life.

  She made it to the Buick, opened the door, and slid onto the icy leather of the front seat, pulling the door shut. Breathing in and out and staring straight ahead over the steering wheel, she sat there. Watching her breath crystallize in the air, and remembering how she’d once sat in Edward’s Model A doing the exact same thing on their very first date. The windows of the Buick had iced over while she was inside the office, and she knew she’d need to get out and scrape them off if she expected to be able to see while driving home. But first, she wanted to see what it felt like to get close to freezing to death. Alone.

  Chapter 21

  Charlotte waited until she was alone in the house to sneak up to her mother’s weird office attic room. Her curiosity had previously been tempered by the fear of what she might find in there. She was reluctant to visit the room in much the same way she’d be reluctant to reach her arm into a dank, rotting log in the middle of the woods out at Christmas Run Park, but late last night, well after her mother had come home, she’d heard an incessant rat-tat-tat-tat-ing of the typewriter and wondered what it was that was so urgent her mother had to be typing it at three o’clock in the morning.

  She stepped softly over the rug that ran along the upstairs hallway, and tiptoed up the short four-step staircase to the attic level, and then tiptoed some more over to the tiny terrifying attic room. The door opened with a loud creak. It wasn’t a rotting log, but the room was cramped and musty, and for some reason smelled like cigarette smoke. Charlotte quickly crossed over to the desk, leaned over the typewriter, and pushed up the window sash. The air that slowly eased in through the window was frigid but clear.

  She lowered herself into the sturdy wooden chair and inhaled the chilly air into her nostrils as her arm rested on a stack of pages next to the typewriter. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to look at the stack just yet, so she let her eyelids close as she listened to the clattering of a trash can being dragged out into the alley by one of their neighbors. Just rip it off, like a Band-Aid, she told herself, and then turned her attention to the pile.

  Dear Sirs,

  Can you please confirm if Edward Dalton was a student at the College of Wooster between the years . . .

  Dear Sirs,

  I would like to know if you could tell me if Edward Dalton enlisted in the Army on . . .

  They were all like that. Page after page of earnest pleas for information. Letter after letter typed to various civic and governmental agencies, inquiring about everything from her father’s educational enrollment to his military service to his work history. The letters looked like first drafts, with many words run through with x’s. Charlotte peeled back page after page of the letters with her father’s name somewhere in the body, and her mother’s name in signature at the bottom. She shook her head and wondered if her mother had gone crazy.

  In a separate, much smaller pile, behind the large pile, she found several pages of her mother’s poetry. They were simple little poems, about flowers and butterflies and that kind of thing. These, Charlotte had already known about. Her mother had even submitted them for publication in The Daily Record’s Spindrift column. Some had been accepted and printed. Like the one on top of the pile:

  Blue Monday

  I wish I were a weather vane

  Then I could vanish this quandry

  Of brilliant sunshine versus rain

  And know when to do my laundry!

  Charlotte coughed out a guffaw, then dropped the clipping and slapped both palms to her forehead. She slid her palms down over her eyes and then down he
r cheeks, pulling the skin into a horror face the way she used to when she tried to make her little cousins laugh. Oh, God. So embarrassing. But there was a part of Charlotte that was a little proud. Mother had even thought to use the word “laundry” instead of “the warsh.” She smiled to herself.

  She picked up the clipping again, holding it with fingers and thumbs in front of her face as she propped her elbows on the little table. The editors at the Spindrift committee weren’t exactly working overtime. “Quandary” was misspelled. She wondered if her mother had looked up the word in her dictionary. “Quandary” didn’t seem like a word her mother would have used. For someone who claimed to hate books, her mother spent a lot of time on something some might consider literary. That was sort of a quandary.

  If her mother had submitted a poem and The Daily Record published it, she’d go swanning around the house humming to herself and smiling at things that normally didn’t warrant smiling. Like the sepia photograph of Grampy and Grammy Kurtz in front of the fence at their farm; an even more somber version of American Gothic.

  On the other hand, if her mother had submitted a poem and it wasn’t accepted, Charlotte would find her sitting at the kitchen table squirting Reddi Wip onto graham crackers and eating them one after the other. Those were a couple of pretty good indicators of her mother’s unpredictable moods. If she was just a little bothered, she’d be eating the graham crackers. If she was very bothered, she’d be in her apron, banging around the kitchen baking something. But there was a third level to her mother’s anger.

  That night, after dinner, Charlotte had been on the way to the bathroom to brush her teeth when she’d heard a loud thump from her parents’ bedroom and then a faint whine. She peeked through the keyhole, absolutely against her better judgment, and saw her mother with a pillow pressed up against her face. She was screaming into the pillow. Charlotte had slowly backed away from the door and continued on her way to the bathroom. Then, the next day, she had come home from school to find a pan of seven-layer bars cooling on the counter, and two empty graham cracker boxes in the kitchen trash can.

  For a double recipe of “7 layer Cookies”:

  Have on hand:

  1 large pkg, Nabisco Graham Cracker Crumbs

  2 large baking pans (9x13)

  1 Large pkg. Chocolate bits

  1 “ pkg. Butterscotch bits

  At lease 1/2 pound butter.

  1 Large pkg shredded Coconut

  3 Cans Eagle Brand Condensed Milk

  About 2 cups chopped Walnuts.

  Very slowly, melt the butter and stir in the graham cracker crumbs, thoroughly mixing.

  Evenly divide the crumbs into each pan.

  Pat down all over the pans

  Scatter the chocolate bits lightly all over each pan (A hand full at a time)

  Then, scatter some of the butterscotch bits, all over.

  Then, scatter the coconut, lightly covering.

  Follow this with the rest of the chocolate bits and the rest of the butterscotch bits.

  Then, the rest of the coconut.

  Open the three cans of Eagle Brand milk and pour over the coconut, being careful not to get too much along the edges. (One can per pan and divide the third can evenly over it

  Then, scatter the chopped nuts all over each pan.

  Have the oven preheated at 325 degrees and bake the two pans 50 to 55 minuts.

  When the top of each pan shows a light brown and they are sort of bubbly, remove.

  Cool slightly, and with a sharp knife, cut the cookies. Be sure to loosen along the edges.

  Wrap in saran wrap and foil—put in the frigerator—or the freezer.

  If Charlotte had had any idea about Mrs. Betty Miller’s gossip-filled afternoon tea party, and what was coming, she might have started banging around the kitchen to whip up her own batch of cookies. Or perhaps a wedding cake would’ve been more appropriate.

  Chapter 22

  Ah, to be a blushing bride. A girl’s wedding day was one of the most special days of her life, wasn’t it? No one talked too much about the second wedding day, though, especially if you had to marry the same man all over again because he’d been a bigamist the first go-round. The blush of humiliation was a different shade altogether, and one that Vivian would say was unflattering to her skin tone.

  There would be no cleaning up this can of worms, now that it’d been opened. Vivian had had to tell Charlotte first, before she sent the details for the story to Harry Sweeney at The Daily Record. She hadn’t wanted to surprise her daughter any more than necessary.

  The timing wasn’t the best, though. If she’d had a full day to herself, to relax and prepare, it would’ve been better. But life was life, she’d had to work at the switchboard, and she’d been too tired to dress it up any better. What was the point? she thought. It’s like putting a blond wig on Edward G. Robinson.

  “Your father and I have to get divorced and then remarried because he had a wife he forgot to tell me about.”

  She’d waited for Charlotte’s reaction, preparing herself for hysterics and tears, probably a little blame, since everything god-awful seemed to be Vivian’s fault. But poor Charlotte must’ve just been in shock. She went as white as a sheet, and then the white turned a little green and Vivian helped her into the upstairs bathroom. Mother sat with daughter on the cold tiled floor. She stroked Charlotte’s hair as she hung over the toilet, vomiting partially digested seven-layer bars into the bowl. Well, six-layer bars, since Vivian had taken out the chocolate bits.

  “Me, too, honey,” she whispered softly over Charlotte’s bent head. “Me, too.”

  Vivian wanted off the emotional roller coaster. It had passed the point of Too Much. In addition to the whole mess with Edward, she’d heard Pearl say that one of those Siamese twins, the ones they separated in Chicago in December, had died. Only lived thirty-four days after being separated from his sibling. She’d broken down and wept right there in front of the switchboard. Forehead to forearm, jerking with sobs. Dorothy patting her shoulder. It just went to show that everything in the world was terrible.

  Wooster Daily Record

  Saturday, January 31, 1953

  Daltons Wed Again to Make Sure Knot Is Legally Tied, by Harry Sweeney

  The Edward Daltons of Wooster went to the altar a second time today just to make sure that the knot which was tied 16 years ago was done so legally.

  Twenty-nine years ago Edward Dalton was a 17-year-old delegate to a Christian Endeavor convention. On a dare he and one of the other delegates were married. When the two returned to their native city of Syracuse, N.Y., and told their respective parents, there was quite a fuss. The marriage was annulled, forthwith, or at least everyone thought it had been annulled.

  Dalton came to Wooster and attended Wooster College. He served in the army from here. He made Wooster his home, settled down, and married a local girl. They have raised a fine daughter, who currently attends Wooster High School.

  The first Mrs. Dalton also quickly got over the Christian Endeavor experience, and she, too, wed another person. They had a youngster. Everything would have gone O.K. if her husband hadn’t sought to divorce her. In looking into the records he discovered to the amazement of everyone that the first marriage had never been legally annulled.

  This discovery of course involved the Wooster Daltons. Mr. Dalton instituted court action immediately to have the first marriage legally set aside. This was done today by order of Judge Darius Martin who heard the case.

  The five-day provision was waived by Probate Judge Wolford Hartley and the Dalton knot was tied again today in the sanctuary of the Forest Chapel Methodist Church by their pastor, the Rev. Arlen B. Alsop.

  Fortunately Eddie had discussed the whole affair with his family, so, aside from a little embarrassing kidding no harm has been done.

  However, as tradition goes, the Daltons will maintain their original anniversary which is June 5, 1937, and will truly rejoice in the knowledge that their friends understand this u
nfortunate situation.

  It was official, and now everyone in Wooster would know about this unfortunate situation. This one would sit right at the top of everyone’s lists of scandals so far in 1953. Although Vivian could take a little comfort in the fact that the story wasn’t as much of an upset as the Gilbert Ogden bank robbery story had been, and the townspeople weren’t affected by it the way they’d been with the robbery.

  Publicly, the people of Wooster had emphatically criticized and condemned “that sneaky” Gilbert Ogden for what he’d done, but privately there were some who wondered if they could’ve gotten away with something like that. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. There had been a lot of sucking air through teeth, and exaggerated eyebrow-waggling, and “Whooo-wee, that’s a lot of money!” declarations. Their fantasies varied a little, but most imagined their debts wiped clean, their troubles disappearing in the blink of an eye, and life rising up to meet them at every turn, with all that money. New homes, new cars, maybe even a boat, although they’d have to take it up to Cleveland or Sandusky to get it out on the water. Hell, they could just pay somebody to build them a brand-new lake right there in Wooster! With that kind of money, the world could be your oyster, and you could afford to buy all the oysters you wanted at Buehler’s. That sneaky Gilbert Ogden had wanted the oyster, saw his opportunity, and seized it (along with Bill Parker’s wife), and showed everyone in Wooster that maybe being sneaky wasn’t the worst thing you could be. Nearly every one of the telephone operators at Bell had overheard at least one lamentation about Gilbert Ogden’s “luck,” and they’d all nodded along in secret agreement.

  Nobody in Wooster was talking about Vivian Dalton’s luck.

  “Unfortunate situation,” the article had called it. That’d been the understatement of the year, which Vivian had insisted upon with The Daily Record. Most unfortunate that Eddie had not discussed the “whole affair” with his family. Yessir. Most unfortunate that Vivian had instead heard about it while eavesdropping on Betty Miller’s telephone conversation six weeks ago. Most unfortunate, that nasty little tick of a rumor which had dug its pincers into Vivian and then burrowed its head in deeper as she clawed and scraped at it, trying to pry it loose.