The Operator

by Gretchen Berg

  “Vi, I’m really fine.”

  “Vivian?” her sister Vera’s voice came over the line.

  Goddammit all.

  But she should’ve expected it. Vera wouldn’t miss an opportunity like this.

  “Hello, Vera.”

  Vera didn’t say anything else right away and Vivian wondered if one of her friends at Bell had disconnected the call for her. That would’ve been good of them. Merciful.

  “I’ve been meaning to call,” Vera’s voice came back over the line.

  Vivian felt renewed irritation for the Bell operators.

  “Have you?” Vivian tried not to sound icy, but it was a lot of effort.

  “Look, Viv, I just wanted to tell you I was sorry about what happened.” Her voice was flat, and to Vivian’s ears didn’t sound all that sorry. Vera had never really been sorry about anything in her life. Vivian couldn’t remember ever hearing her sister apologize, but she sure remembered a whole lot of “I told you so”s.

  “Well, there’s nothing to be sorry about. It was just a simple misunderstanding.” Vivian’s eyes widened with her attempt at bright and cheerful. If she’d had her Fire & Ice lipstick handy she’d have given her lips a quick swipe. “I mean, Edward told me all about it. It’s all in the Daily Record article. I’ll have a copy sent to you.”

  “Vivian.” Vera, not fooled by the phony tone, sounded like her usual harsh self again. “I’m trying to be nice.”

  “Ha!” Vivian barked into the receiver, knowing good and goddamned well Vera was back to her irritated tone, and wasn’t trying to be nice. “Well, I should be the one thanking you, then, shouldn’t I? I know how difficult it is for you to be nice.”

  “I take it back,” Vera spat, and her tone graduated from irritated to shouting. “Everything always goes your way, and the one time it doesn’t, it’s ‘Oh, poor Vivian, poor, poor, Vivian,’ and you still act like a spoiled brat!”

  Vivian felt tired. This hadn’t been her day. Your wedding day! She tried to think of a good response, but before she could, Vera struck again.

  “You deserve this, you ungrateful bitch!”

  And, with that, Vivian heard a sharp click, disconnecting the call.

  She stood there, stunned. The word “bitch” rang in her ears and she held the phone in the air, staring at it. Then she slammed it down onto the base in a delayed response, screaming to the empty room, “YOU’RE THE BITCH!”

  No one else was in the house, so Vivian didn’t bother with a pillow, but screamed out loud as she stomped up the stairs. She went straight to her hiding place in the bedroom closet and fished out the packet of cigarettes. She took the cigarettes to the tiny attic room, where she pushed open the sash and nudged the table with the typewriter to the side so she could scoot the chair close to the window. Smoking really was a filthy habit, and she didn’t want the smell in the room.

  As she inhaled and blew the smoke in streams out the window she replayed what she could remember of the conversation. “Bitch.” “Everything goes your way.” Everything didn’t go her way. NOTHING WENT HER WAY!

  By the third cigarette her anger had simmered a little. She considered the fact that, even though Vera hadn’t said anything nice, the know-it-all also hadn’t said, “I told you so.” Goddamned Vera, she thought. She makes my ass tired.

  What could Vivian say about her sister Vera? What did anyone say about Vera? She had a strong personality, that was one thing. And a confidence as big as her backside, that was another. She was the oldest, the brashest, and the bossiest of the McGinty sisters. A know-it-all of the first degree, you didn’t dare try to argue with her about anything. According to her, what she knew was law. When they were little and would go marching around the backyard, Vera was always the one wearing a pillowcase as a cape and pumping a stick up and down, leading the procession. No one was spared when Vera was in one of her moods. Henry’ll have to pay a girl to marry him. Vivian could dress up as a jack-o’-lantern on Halloween with those teeth of hers. Will could get himself beaten up by a girl. And Violet, well, Vera never really picked on Violet at all. She was twelve when Violet was born, and Vera usually just treated her like a little doll.

  Vivian remembered how her mother always said she’d never have to worry about Vera. Except for when she took up with that boarder the Brinkerhoffs were putting up in their house after the stock market crashed. Vivian heard her mother say she wished Vera had some better options for a beau. “But she’s got my stout figure and sloping shoulders, and with that smart mouth she’ll just have to settle for whoever settles for her.” And Vivian had smirked and silently agreed.

  Chapter 23

  Betty Miller settled herself into the first pew at Forest Chapel Methodist and rubbed her gloved hands together, waiting for the Daltons to show up. She would have liked to draw attention to the Dalton scandal at proper social gatherings, where she could outdress, outclass, and generally outdo Vivian in every single way, but they did not run in the same circles, so it had to be at church. She was going to make Vivian into a glorious pariah, because her comeuppance was long overdue.

  When Reverend Alsop read from James 5:19–20, Betty made loud murmurs of agreement and looked, pointedly, in the direction of the Daltons.

  If anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

  “Wanders from the truth,” Betty repeated in a low voice, but not so low most of the people around her didn’t hear.

  When Reverend Alsop read from Ephesians 5:15–20, Betty nodded her head and looked, pointedly, in the direction of the Daltons’ pew.

  Be careful how you live.

  “Amen,” Betty said, while still looking at the Daltons.

  If Vivian noticed Betty’s decidedly un-Christian behavior, she didn’t let on. It drifted up and over her like Reverend Alsop’s sermon. Something had shifted inside Vivian. Almost overnight. Was it the wedding yesterday? The conversation with Vera? She couldn’t say. She just knew something felt different today, and she wasn’t noticing the things she usually noticed. Like Betty Miller.

  From her place in the first pew, Betty Miller was doing so much turning and murmuring that a few of the congregation’s members were wondering if she might be possessed. She’d murmur and amen, and seek Vivian out with her angry stare, shooting visual daggers in her direction.

  But Vivian paid no attention to Betty, the murmurs, the amens, or even the sermon, and, instead, was suddenly far more curious about minutiae she’d never bothered with before.

  Minutia:

  plural minutiae play mə-ˈnü-shē-ˌē, -ˌī, mī-, -ˈnyü-

  : a minute or minor detail—usually used in plural

  For example, the plaque outside the church, telling everyone when it was founded (1887), or the hymnbook she held during services, turning it over to see the gold stamp that would tell her where it was printed (Plattsburgh, N.Y.). Names, dates, places.

  “I don’t have any exact dates, just now,” Betty Miller was saying from the podium.

  Vivian was just barely aware the service had ended, and now Betty was jabbering to the congregation about something.

  “Rest a-ssured, my father, your mayor, is working hard to make sure the good people who had their money stolen will be re-im-bursed. But, do please remember. We’ve just celebrated Christ-mas, and as you all know, money is a little tight after the hol-i-days.”

  Almost as tight as Betty Miller’s smile.

  Vivian only saw the tight smile. The words were just an over-enunciated background hum to her. For some of the other members of the congregation, the ones who had never been able to afford sitting in the first five pews, the over-enunciated words were more grating than usual. If J. Ellis Reed was really the bighearted philanthropist his daughter was trying to make him out to be, he’d have reimbursed all the Wayne Building &
Loan customers by now, not just the wealthier ones, or the ones who’d complained loudly enough to be heard. Roy Patterson was still making payments on the house he’d inherited from his dad fifteen years ago, Daisy Stucker’d been kicked right off the Stucker farm, and Jacob Starlin, who’d been laid off from the rubber factory some years back, feared he’d never own his property outright. He could hardly even keep his own wheelbarrow in his backyard.

  Wooster and all its goings-on, once terribly important to Vivian, had lost their glossy appeal. She was suddenly consumed with a burning desire for information directly related only to her.

  Every telephone call she would put through at Bell would now be listened to with extra squinting at the board, hoping to hear that unfamiliar voice again, to figure out who had called Betty Miller with that story. And every waking moment would be spent planning and plotting, and poring over the correspondence she had sent and received about Edward and his past. Even as they sat side by side in church that day, Vivian was only vaguely aware of her husband in body, but the facts and history of his life were marching across her mind as she mouthed words, just not the words to the hymns everyone else was singing. She was making plans.

  Chapter 24

  Betty Miller hadn’t planned to address the congregation today, but she’d heard a few pointed grumbles directed at her that she was certain were related to her father’s bank and the tardy reimbursements. She noticed Vivian Dalton didn’t seem to be paying attention at all, but the Daltons had already gotten their money back, hadn’t they?

  Betty had been surprised and, she’d daresay, impressed yesterday, when the Daily Record article was published, telling the rest of Wooster about the Dalton scandal. She had then congratulated herself on having beaten the newspaper to the punch. At least with the people who mattered. She’d felt a great rush of euphoria as she’d made the announcement at her afternoon tea party, with all the ladies’ powdered and rouged faces turned toward her in eager anticipation.

  Vivian’s timing in placing the story in the Record had been off by about two weeks, but Betty would grudgingly give her credit for having had the presence of mind to stem the flow of the hemorrhaging gossip by controlling the story. Well, good for her. Controlling the story was ninety percent of the battle, except, sadly for Vivian, the battle had ended. She was left with the carnage now.

  Betty had kept a watchful eye on her own husband after hearing about Edward Dalton’s secret first wife. What a strange story it had been, and to happen to a relatively normal family right there in Wooster. After her tea party, the rest of the women eyed their own husbands with the same low-level suspicion. How well did you ever really know your spouse?

  Take Clara Weaver’s husband, David, who spent long hours “at the office,” and it couldn’t have been all work he was doing, because he wasn’t that successful an insurance agent. But it did take a certain kind of personality to get people to buy coverage they’d never need, and that was really David’s problem. Or then there was Miriam Thompson’s husband, Rex, who didn’t have David’s personality issues, but had other problems. He was the state representative for District 1 in the Ohio House. That position did require travel to Columbus, Betty supposed, but the drive was only ninety minutes, and Betty really didn’t think it was necessary for him to keep an apartment there. And then there was Marilyn Dean’s husband, Farley, who, as we knew, had given his secretary an outrageous Christmas bonus that year, and it had nothing to do with her bookkeeping skills. If you asked Betty, their behavior had all started to look incredibly suspicious.

  Betty watched Charles undress for bed in the reflection of her gold-framed vanity mirror. He pulled on the new red and green pin-striped pajama bottoms “Santa” had brought him for Christmas, taking too long to tie the drawstring. He then slid his once-muscular arms, one by one, into the pajama shirt and proceeded to fasten the buttons, unaware that Betty was watching him. He missed the first button, so by the time he reached the last buttonhole there were no more buttons to fasten. He poked a finger through the lonely buttonhole and wiggled it, then shrugged, kicked out of his leather slippers, and climbed into his side of the bed.

  Betty inhaled sharply through flared nostrils, rolled her eyes, and let a careful stream of breath out through her lips, keeping them just slack enough that she didn’t whistle like a teakettle. She then looked back at her reflection, twisted the lid off the jar, and dipped her fingers into the cold cream, rubbing it in careful circles over her face. She could not imagine Charles ever doing anything truly scandalous. The sheer laziness displayed with the button-fastening extended to other things as well.

  She supposed Charles had always been that way, but a girl’s vision was blurred at the beginning of love affairs, wasn’t it? She wouldn’t say she regretted marrying Charles; after all, he came from one of Wooster’s very best families. Vivian Dalton obviously hadn’t considered breeding when she made her choice. If she’d had any sense she’d have chosen Betty’s brother John, although Betty promised herself she wasn’t going to think about that anymore because her analyst had advised against thinking of anything that made her temple veins throb, and now they were throbbing again because, How dare that common slut turn down Johnston Reed!

  Charitable Thoughts, she reminded herself as she pinched the skin beneath her wrist. That was the phrase Dr. Charlton had suggested. Charitable Thoughts, and pinch beneath the angel charm on your wristwatch. Betty shut her eyes and forced another sharp inhalation through her nostrils, and then another, and one more, until her blood pressure returned to normal and her veins ceased to throb.

  She reminded herself that she and Charles had four beautiful children. (Not that the Daltons’ daughter Charlotte wasn’t a lovely girl, she really had very good manners, if Betty were being completely honest, but she did have a tendency to slouch, but Charitable Thoughts!)

  Betty had often thought she might want to write her memoirs when she reached her later years. She had a lot of advice to offer young girls and women everywhere. Thoughts about posture and breeding and manners, as well as her own life story. Although, if she were to write her memoirs, she wasn’t sure she would be completely honest about everything, unless her later years became her golden years, and she could finish the final chapter on her deathbed.

  If things had gone differently in her youth, she might have married someone else altogether. But she had married Charles. All part of God’s plan! Perhaps, if she hadn’t gotten into trouble, she might have, might have, chosen someone else to spend her life with.

  And, just every so often, she let her mind wander into an imaginary, unwritten chapter in her not-yet-written memoirs. A chapter where she’d lay her soul bare, and admit on the imaginary printed page that Charles’s family money and social standing had taken precedence over a stronger urge deep inside her, all those years ago.

  She hadn’t thought about him in years (another lie). She couldn’t even bring herself to think his name, she could only think of him as that urge, because of the way the memory made her feel. (That was true.) Uncontrolled. She was uncomfortable with the involuntary response of her body when she imagined his face hovering over hers, his strong arms pinning hers down as they both laughed, and she could almost smell him as she remembered. The mixture of the pleasant with the masculine and the acrid.

  Her eyes closed and the chapter continued writing itself in her mind as she took another deep breath through her nostrils, half expecting to smell that smell. That smell was the real reason she had to have Dolly take the car to the filling station. Because she couldn’t be around that smell. But when she inhaled in front of her vanity mirror, in the bedroom she shared with her well-bred, snoring husband, all she could smell was the cold cream.

  That foul, grossly inebriated Santa Claus, endangering the innocence and wonder of Wooster’s children, and polluting the very idea and spirit of Christmas. Jesus Christ was not born in a straw-filled manger in Bethlehem so that some filthy, drunken hobo could wreak havoc in the toy department of Fre
edlander’s and desecrate the holiness of Our Lord and Savior’s special day.

  That was what she had said to all her friends. That was what had gotten him fired. Wooster was her town and he had some nerve showing his face and bringing that smell with him. To taunt her, to tease her, to remind her.

  But that was all in the very, very distant past, and now she was Mrs. Charles Miller and she had a rock-solid toehold in the very firmament of Wooster, Ohio. And if Charles ever forgot that, if he ever took their marriage, their children, or their perfect life together for granted . . . if he ever decided to take a little wander, to test the waters in someone else’s swimming pool, like Farley Dean or any of the other ones . . . She looked again at the now-sleeping mound and was almost one hundred percent certain he wouldn’t.

  But, if he did . . . she narrowed her eyes at her own reflection in the mirror, staring back at her like a sinister Japanese geisha girl from one of those god-awful movies they used to show at the, oh, what was the name of that theater? It wasn’t important. If Charles Miller ever did anything to embarrass the family, she would have her father on it faster than you could say “Daddy’s girl.”

  It didn’t occur to Betty to wonder, How well did you ever really know your father?

  Chapter 25

  Charlotte Dalton had learned a little more than she cared to about her own father, and the Monday after the newspaper story was published, she refused to get out of bed, and who could blame her? Vivian had opened the door to her daughter’s room and had seen a lump under the floral-sprigged bedspread, which was pulled snugly over the lump’s head.

  “Charlotte?” Vivian looked around the room at the disarray. Clothes thrown on the floor, over the chair, records out of their sleeves, books everywhere.

  “Urmph.”

  “You’re not going to school today? It’s Groundhog Day.” She made a halfhearted attempt at little animal squeaky noises she thought might’ve sounded like a groundhog, but there was no answer from the lump.