The Operator

by Gretchen Berg

  Wooster was her town, and he’d humiliated her in her town. Everyone, from Vivian’s parents to her aunts and uncles to her kindergarten teacher to her doctor, her dentist, the checkout clerks at Buehler’s to the college girls who worked at Beulah Bechtel’s to her coworkers at Bell, and everyone else she’d ever come into contact with in that town, now knew that her husband was a bigamist, their marriage hadn’t been legitimate, and she’d been a fool.

  That was the word she’d felt hanging over her head on her second wedding day. “Fool.” Not “bride” or “wife” like on the first one. Vivian Dalton, fool, pleased to meet you. Vivian’s second wedding day was busier than the first had been. In addition to getting married (again) in the morning, she knew she had to do the cleaning and the washing she usually did on Saturdays, later on. She was sure there’d never been a less romantic wedding. Not only did she not wear a beautiful white dress with a floor-length lace veil, she didn’t even try to get a flower corsage to match her eyes this time. But you could bet your ass she wore her best dress and put her face on before setting foot outside the house that morning.

  Vivian refused to look at Edward during the “ceremony,” if you could call it that. She, instead, directed all her polite attention to Reverend Alsop, who kept pulling at his collar, shifting his eyes nervously back and forth between Vivian and Edward, and repeatedly clearing his throat. Charlotte, their illegitimate daughter, was not there. She’d asked to stay at the house, and before she left Vivian had pulled her close, Charlotte’s head tucked under her chin.

  After the newspapers had been delivered that morning, with the story about the Daltons, the switchboard at Bell had gone crazy, and the ladies who were working didn’t get a moment’s peace. The switchboard itself looked like a fireworks display with all the lights, and cords and arms were flying left and right as the operators plugged and unplugged, flipped up and flipped down. They hardly had time to listen in on any of the calls, but when they did they all heard, “Dalton!”

  Dalton! Dalton! Vivian Dalton! Edward Dalton! Did you hear about the Daltons? There were people in Wooster who’d never heard of either Vivian or Edward Dalton before that Daily Record story, but after Saturday they sure had.

  Vivian McGinty’s older sister Vera had once said that she was “perpetually craving attention,” and Vivian had eventually looked up “perpetually.”

  Perpetual:

  1a: continuing forever: everlasting perpetual motion b (1): valid for all time, a perpetual right (2): holding something (such as an office) for life or for an unlimited time

  2: occurring continually: indefinitely long-continued perpetual problems

  perpetually adverb

  Perpetual was how she saw the horror of this godforsaken day. It would never end. The telephone would keep ringing and ringing and she’d have to keep explaining and explaining. Vivian would’ve grudgingly admitted that she did like attention, compliments on her Beulah Bechtel hat, that kind of thing. Not this kind of thing. She did not want any of this. She did not want to have to get remarried to the man she’d thought was her husband for almost sixteen years. She did not want the entire town of Wooster, her hometown, where she’d been born and raised, to know about her shameful, embarrassing dirty laundry. And she did not want to have to explain everything to her family on the telephone that day. She had to make several attempts at a couple of the calls, because the switchboards were so backed up.

  “Sorry, Viv, can you try again later? By the way, how’re you doing? You doing okay?”

  Vivian’s brothers and her older sister had moved out of Wooster by then, to Fredericksburg and Akron, but the news would reach them soon enough. She remembered when she was going to be married (the first time), and how excited she’d been to tell everyone. Vera’d said nobody’d be crazy enough to marry her. The ring Edward had given her had belonged to his mother, whose fingers were unfortunately thick. Edward said thick, Vivian would’ve said fat. The delicate platinum band with elegant scrollwork surrounding a half-carat diamond slipped right off Vivian’s ring finger, so until she could have it properly fitted by Orelin M. White of White Jewelers on East Liberty Street, she wore it with a piece of cloth tied around the back.

  She’d pressed her thumb up against the knot in the cloth to hold it steady as she shot her hand out under Vera’s nose, and letting out an accidental high-pitched giggle. The sun had been shining brightly through the window over the sink in the McGintys’ kitchen, where Vera was filling a glass with water. Vera had jerked her head back, and then slapped Vivian’s hand away in annoyance, so Vivian took a step back, cleared her throat, and held her left hand over her right shoulder, fluttering her fingers. Vera’d set her water glass on the counter, turned around, looked at the fluttering hand, and Vivian saw the briefest of scowls before Vera forced the corners to stretch out into a smile. The smile hadn’t reached her eyes, though. Vivian had noticed that.

  “Well,” Vera’d said, her voice much higher and thinner than usual. “Good for you. Congratulations.”

  None of the responses from any of the other McGintys had been quite as satisfying as Vera’s. Pawpy had crowed, “One down, two to go, eh, Vera? Violet?” And Vivian’s mother might as well’ve thrown a barrelful of dirty wash water on Vivian when she suggested that Vera be her maid of honor.

  This “announcement” of Vivian’s second wedding was going to have to be different, and her only consolation was that everyone’d probably already seen the newspaper and wouldn’t be gasping quite so much when she told them over the phone.

  She dragged the heavy telephone base to the sofa and set it next to her as she sank into the cushion, which had a lipstick mark on the other side and she’d get to that later. She groaned and looked at her hands. The skin had started to wrinkle, and there were two spots she was calling freckles, but a doctor would’ve said were liver spots. She hadn’t even worn the diamond engagement ring for a long time. It just got in the way when she was baking. She kept it safe in the velvet-lined silver jewelry box on her dresser. The rings on her fingers were the Irish claddagh on the right hand and her plain wedding band on her left.

  She cradled the receiver between her shoulder and cheek, twisting the claddagh ring as she waited for an operator.

  “Number, please,” Pearl Fry’s nasal tone came over the line.

  Vivian thought the nasal tone made Pearl sound like she was complaining all the time, and that she’d sound less so if she’d sit up straight in her chair at work, but now wasn’t the time to worry about that. Forgetting the chaos in the switchboard room, Vivian asked Pearl for some privacy when she connected the call. Not that she would’ve known if Pearl continued to listen in anyway. Listening and slouching and whining through her nostrils. Some people had no respect for family affairs. Vivian really wanted a cigarette.

  “Hello, Mom?” Vivian said when her mother answered the phone.

  “Vera?”

  “No, Mom, it’s Vivian.” She rolled her eyes. How could her mother still get the two of them confused?

  “Oh, oh,” she stammered. “Vivy.”

  Vivian didn’t have a chance to say anything else before the telephone was handed to her father.

  “Hiya, Vivy,” he said, cheerful as ever.

  “Hi, Pawpy.” Vivian took a deep breath.

  “Aw, now, Vivy, love, you don’t have to make a big to-do about it. We saw the paper.”

  “I . . .” Vivian felt her voice catch, and she bit her lip. She suddenly felt small. Small and overwhelmed.

  “Now, nothing wrong with this, I tell you! A wedding, and I didn’t have to pay for it!”

  “Oh, Pawpy.” Vivian laughed through the sob that came out. Spittle sprayed the telephone mouthpiece and Vivian pulled up a corner of her apron to wipe it away.

  “There’s nothing so bad that it couldn’t be worse.”

  “Uh-hunh.”

  “You doing some baking today?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Attagirl. Whatever it is, bring
some by tomorrow, okay?”

  And then, like he always did, he hung up the phone. Patrick McGinty didn’t feel the need to waste time or words on the telephone, and his family had learned not to take the hang-ups personally. Just like that, the first call was over and Vivian felt like crying with relief. Part of her wanted to run over to her parents’ house and curl up next to her dad on the couch like she used to when she was little. She’d felt like that a lot, lately.

  Myrtle McGinty always complained that her children never visited, especially Vivian, since she lived just a few blocks away. Vivian winced as she thought of this. That sullen, gloomy attitude of her mother’s was contagious. If you spent too much time with her, you’d soon find yourself filled with worry and dread and a general sense that everything was awful, until you were just as depressed as she was. Not quite what Vivian needed at the moment. She was glad her mother had handed off the phone.

  She felt a little lighter after talking to Pawpy, so after giving herself five minutes just to breathe and muster some bravery, she made the next call to Violet. And then I’m done for the day. That’d be enough. Laura Eagan answered at the switchboard this time and Vivian asked for privacy, like she’d done with Pearl, although Laura was quick to pooh-pooh the thought, in her cutesy baby voice.

  “Oh, Vivian, I never listen in on other people’s conversations. We’re not supposed to do that, you know.”

  Oh, for chrissakes. Vivian rolled her eyes up into her head. She could just picture Laura sitting there, with her eyes opened to their widest, like Betty Boop, and her spine straight as a lamppost. Laura sat up a little too straight, if you asked Vivian. It wasn’t like there were any men hanging around the switchboard room. Laura was lying about the not listening, but she was also right. They weren’t supposed to do that, you know. What would’ve happened if Vivian had never listened in on Betty Miller’s phone call? Would they still be here, in this mess? Or would she still be oblivious, and more or less happy?

  Oblivious:

  1: lacking remembrance, memory, or mindful attention

  2: lacking active conscious knowledge or awareness—usually used with of or to

  Oblivious was one thing, but she also wouldn’t have been legally married.

  “Hello, Vi?”

  “Well, hiiii, how are you?” Violet sounded tentative; careful and cautious, like she was afraid of breaking something just by speaking.

  “Have you heard?” Vivian asked, wanting to know just how much she’d have to explain.

  “Yes, Vivy, it’s just awful, I’m so sorry.”

  “Well, there’s nothing else to be done now. We’re married again.”

  Several seconds of silence passed.

  “And you’re sure?” Violet finally said, speaking slowly. “You want to stay with him, even after all this?”

  Violet had found herself a good man, and had no patience for the ones who weren’t.

  “You know, Vivy,” she went on, “I liked Edward. I liked him all the way up until today. Now he’ll have to do a lot of work to get back into my good graces.”

  Vivian almost smiled at that. Violet imagined herself as something of a lion, but Charlotte called her Aunt Kitty Cat.

  “You’re sure you want to stay with him?” Violet repeated her question.

  Vivian took a deep breath and blew a few stuttered bursts of air that almost became whistles. She was holding back tears.

  “I thought about it,” (another deep breath) “but, Charlotte’s still in school, and we’ve lived in this house for so long. And we’ve been together so long. I don’t know, I just thought this would be easier.”

  But then she wondered about the word “easier.” What was easier? She was just terrified at the idea of being alone. This cheese will not be standing alone, Edward! This cheese is going to take a sheep! Or the sheep will take a wife! Her mind was a tangled mass of thoughts and nothing was making sense. Cheese, sheep, easier, easier, eeeeeee.

  “Is he there, at home, right now?”

  “No. I told him to take Charlotte out to buy her some saddle shoes and take her for a malted.”

  She’d felt awful about the way she’d told Charlotte. Just dumped it on her like a load of greasy gravy covering up a turkey. And right after she’d eaten the seven (six)–layer bars, the poor thing. That’d been bad. If she were a good mother she’d have had a present for her or something. What kind of present did you give your child when you told them everything they knew about their family was a lie? No matter what the present might’ve been, it would’ve just reminded Charlotte of the reason she’d gotten it. The whole thing gave Vivian such a headache.

  “He’ll find a way to work in a stop at the hardware store, too, I’m sure.”

  It galled Vivian how easygoing Edward had been about all this. While she’d been tied up in knots, he’d just gone about his daily business, work, errands, Freemason meetings, as if this had all been no more of an issue than if he’d forgotten to take out the trash. Mildred Fischer was the trash, Vivian thought, and the trash had been taken out this morning. Before their marriage ceremony, Edward had signed a document confirming his divorce from Mildred, so that was done. Oh, whoopsies, I forgot I had another wife. That was his story.

  “Do you want me to come over?” Violet asked.

  “No, thanks, honey. I’m a little tired. I think I might go lie down,” she said as she rose from the spot on the sofa she’d been sitting in for the past fifteen minutes. “Could you do me a favor, and call Henry and Will and tell them, and make sure you tell them I’m happy about everything, okay?”

  “Vivy, does this remind you of Pawpy?”

  Vivian didn’t answer right away, but her shoulders slumped.

  “The letters, I mean.”

  “I know what you meant.” Vivian heaved what must have been her hundredth sigh of the day, and looked back at the sofa that now had a Vivian-shaped indentation. She took a few steps to the wall, then leaned heavily against it and slowly slid down, curling her legs against herself when she reached the floor.

  Vivian didn’t know if her father had written all three letters at the same time, but he must’ve mailed them at the same time. Those three love letters the “wickedly charming Irish rogue” Patrick McGinty had written to three different women, while he was married to her mother. At least one of the letters had been for her mother. That’d been a small consolation.

  Vivian guessed he’d written the love letters at the same time, but then must’ve been careless and accidentally put each letter into the wrong envelope. It couldn’t have gone any worse if Laurel and Hardy had been postmasters. Each of the three women got a letter that was supposed to go to one of the other ones. “Dear Myrtie” went to Adelia Harvey, and “Dear Adelia” went to Grace Cady, meaning that “Dear Grace” went to Paddy’s wife, Mrs. Myrtle McGinty, and no matter how she read it, there just wasn’t any way that letter had been meant for her. Her name wasn’t Grace. And when Myrtle McGinty read the entire letter and saw the signature was her Paddy’s signature, things went very wrong.

  Don’t get caught, he’d told Vivian about her eavesdropping. Keep those secrets to yourself. Oh, Pawpy. The betrayal felt personal, like he’d betrayed the whole family, not just their mother.

  Just don’t get caught.

  Who were those other women? Apparently, as far as Pawpy was concerned, they were all just part of the great freedom he had working on the railroad. Some of what “this great country had to offer,” was how he’d put it.

  Vivian and her brothers and sisters had always assumed that their Pawpy stopped working for the railroad because he didn’t have enough seniority to keep his job, because that’s what their parents had told them. After the love letter fiasco Vivian suspected her mother might’ve demanded he quit that job and find something else to do. Something that would keep him close to home, where she could keep an eye on him.

  Keep an eye on him. Like he was a baby with a hand too close to a hot stove. Why did these men need to be watched
to behave the way they should behave? Grown men, for chrissakes. She’d have been better able to handle it if it’d been a regular old affair, like the one Farley Dean was having with his trampy blond secretary at the accounting firm. Vivian wouldn’t have been happy about that, but it would’ve seemed at least kind of familiar. How would she have “kept an eye on” Edward before she’d even met him? It just wasn’t one of the questions she had thought to ask him during their courtship. What do you think of jazz? Can you make a good bathtub gin? Are you already married?

  “It’s not . . .” She tried a sentence to answer Violet’s question about Pawpy and Mama, but her thoughts were starting to swim. “It’s not the same thing.”

  Pawpy, the railroad, Edward and Mildred, It’s “the farmer takes a wife” not “the sheep . . .”

  “No, no!” Violet blurted out, her words landing like stones tossed into the choppy waters of Vivian’s thoughts. “No, it’s not at all. I just wondered if it, you know, made you feel like it did back then.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It hurts.”

  “I’m so very sorry, Vivy.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure. Thanks, Vi.”

  “Okay, then, go get some rest. But call me later if you need to.”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  Vivian pushed herself up from the floor with a groan and reached over to the side table to place the receiver back in its cradle. She had counted nine steps up the stairs when the phone rang. Violet and her damned sympathy and attention to detail. She always liked to double-check things. Vivian would’ve let it ring but the noise was grating on her nerves. After the sixth ring she’d made it back down the stairs to the phone.