by Kirby Larson
“Exemptum exactum!” His baritone voice rang out over the hall. Then, with a swoosh of his cape, he vanished. A woman behind me shrieked in surprise. My heart raced and I gripped the seat arms. Even though I’d been forewarned, Cecil’s departure was exceedingly dramatic.
It wasn’t until later that I would learn exactly how dramatic it had been.
Hattie Stay or Hattie Go
June 6, 1919
Dear Perilee,
Who would have imagined I would have news to write of, and so soon after my last letter. I attended the Venturing Varietals’ performance last night, which ended up being doubly theatrical! They are good, very good, especially that Miss Vera Clare, but she was upstaged by a vanishing act—one of the male actors eloped with the wardrobe mistress, Sylvia, and they went back to her family in Minneapolis. She was very sweet. I would’ve thought she could do better, but what I know about men and women would fit on a postage stamp.
There are dramatic gestures and woe-is-mes galore, but you can bet, despite all the to-do, the actors will still want their breakfast on time. I best get at it.
Hattie
I switched on the kitchen light and was startled to find that someone had been sitting in the dark. It was Miss Vera Clare, all afroth in a filmy lavender dressing gown. Her face, cleansed of makeup, was weary and lined. No one would mistake her for a rare beauty of the stage at this moment.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “So I started the coffee.”
I got out mugs, sugar, and cream. The percolator gave a dainty blurp to signal it was done brewing. Miss Clare stirred four heaping teaspoons of sugar into the filled mug I handed her.
“You’ve heard the news, I would imagine.” She took a tentative sip, then stirred in another spoonful.
I nodded and began beating eggs in a bowl.
“Evidently, they’d been planning this since we played Chicago.” She closed her eyes, leaning her head against the chair back, and patted at the underside of her chin with the back of her left hand. After a dozen or so pats, she righted her head. “I recommend this exercise. With your round face, you’ll be prone to creping in the neck. Most unbecoming.”
I’d never given my neck much thought before, aside from the occasional wince when I got a crick in it. At Miss Clare’s words, however, I felt its flesh begin to loosen and wrinkle. I lifted my head a bit higher.
She fussed with the bow on her dressing gown. “Thank heavens, that’s not my worry.”
“A crepey neck?” I wasn’t following.
“No. No.” The look she gave me would’ve curdled milk. “A troupe of our stature simply cannot perform without a wardrobe mistress. It isn’t done. Would Sarah Bernhardt have been expected to perform without attendants?”
Her question was being asked of the air, not me. I poured the eggs in the skillet, stirring so they didn’t burn.
“Surely you can see our dilemma?”
I surely wished she could see mine! I had to finish preparing breakfast, and she was driving me to distraction with her conversation. “Surely,” I said, hoping her rant had run its course and she’d remove herself to her room to dress—on her own, without an attendant—for the breakfast that I would be expected to serve—on my own, without an attendant—in very short order.
“I thought so. Hazel eyes are the sign of a sharp intellect.” She finished her coffee, setting the cup on the table as she rose to her feet. “We would require a firm commitment until we reach San Francisco, where we will no doubt be able to find someone more qualified. The pay is adequate and your lodgings would be covered.”
I pulled a warmed serving dish from the oven and piled it full of eggs, scrambled to the color of yellow jonquils. It was as I stepped away from the stove toward the door to the dining room that Miss Clare’s words hit me. “Are you offering me a job?”
She pulled her dressing gown snug around her. “We need a wardrobe mistress, and you seem the likeliest choice in this one-horse town.”
I bobbled the serving bowl. Was I hearing correctly?
“We leave tomorrow. And you would need to leave with us.”
Like a tiny violet tornado, Miss Vera Clare spun from the room and up the back stairs, leaving me to consider her offer. Well, not so much an offer as a command. Did she even know my name?
My mind awhirl with her proposition, I twice refilled Mr. Lancaster’s teacup with coffee as I served breakfast. I was thankful when the meal ended and I could finally retire to the kitchen to stand in front of a sink full of suds. That was the best spot for thinking, I’d learned.
As I scrubbed, two voices whispered around me. Hattie Go spoke into my right ear: “Don’t you see? This is your chance to do something Grand.”
Hattie Stay buzzed in my left ear. “What about Charlie? What will he think if you move even farther away?”
“He’d want you to have that adventure,” urged Hattie Go. “Want you to pursue your dreams.”
“He wants you to marry him!” protested Hattie Stay.
“The Pacific Ocean!” sighed Hattie Go. “Think of it!”
I could almost smell salty air. Hear clanging cable cars. See Nob Hill. And fog. I’d only read about such things, in one of the books Uncle Chester had left behind. Sights and sounds and smells that would nourish my seedling writer’s dreams like water and sun.
I shook out the dish towel, trying to shake out the voices bickering in my head.
“Oh, Hattie.” Mrs. Brown stepped through the swinging door. “Here are my ideas for dinner today.”
I took them from her. “This looks pretty fancy.” I glanced at the clock. How would I get everything accomplished in time for dinner at noon?
“My thoughts exactly.” She smiled. “I’m counting on Mr. Lancaster to spread the word about us to other troupes.”
I held up the menu. “In that case, are you sure you want me to bake the cake?”
“If you sift the flour twice, it should be fine. Now, I’m going to tidy up the parlor and answer some mail before my Ladies’ Aid meeting. If I’m not there to stop them, they’ll put Millie Sewell in charge of the Flag Day picnic.” She shuddered. “I’ll be back in time to help set the table.” She pushed out the swinging door, then pivoted right back in.
“Oh, this came for you yesterday. I forgot about it, what with all the hubbub.” She tossed an envelope at me as she left the room. I caught it and saw that it was from Leafie. This was only the second letter she’d sent, so I tore it open right then and there.
Dear Hattie,
Excuse the wobbly handwriting, but your tomcat is making a nuisance of himself. Seems he feels it’s time for his afternoon snack of sardines and cream. Turns out if you give a cat a treat once, he expects it every day! I wouldn’t mind except he’s growing so stout he nearly knocked me out of my own bed last night.
Rooster Jim sure enjoyed the last note you sent him. Carries it everywhere! Your letters make us feel like we’re right there in Great Falls. You do have a way with words.
Now, I hope you are sitting for this news: Traft Martin carted your old claim shack over to the schoolhouse, where it is now the home of the Vida, Montana, Lending Library. So much for old dogs not being able to learn new tricks! Wouldn’t Chester get a kick out of that, him being such a bookworm?
I did not read the enclosed. Figured it was none of my business. But of course I won’t hardly sleep until I know what’s inside. Quite a shock getting a letter for Chester. Following so close on Traft’s actions, I nearly had to take to my bed to recover.
My nose will twitch with curiosity until I hear from you.
All best,
Leafie
I peered inside the envelope postmarked “Vida” and slid out another, smaller envelope, this one from San Francisco. Imagine the coincidence! I opened it, and as I pulled out the letter it held, something small fell into my apron pocket. I left it and took up the letter.
Dearest Chester,
We agreed long ago that you would come should I ev
er send the enclosed. I hope with all my heart that you will return it in person, as I care more to see the bearer than the token itself.
Yours,
Ruby
That was all it said. I looked for more clues on the envelope. Aside from the postmarked date—April 11—there was only the return address and, above that, “R. Danvers.” I reached into my apron pocket and fished out the dropped object.
I had seen such a thing before, when I’d lived in Kentucky with that one set of cousins. The eldest—what was her name?—had come home all aglow one night, bearing a similar token. The one now in my hand had started life as a Mercury dime. Mercury’s image had been filed away from the face of the coin and replaced with two sets of initials, carved with careful elegance: C.W. and R.D. With my thumb, I traced the froth of lacy engraving skimming the edges of those four precious letters.
Chester Wright. Ruby Danvers.
When that Kentucky cousin had been gifted her engraved token, she proclaimed it signified true love. In this case, I couldn’t say what the token meant. I knew very little about Uncle Chester, despite his bequeathing me his homestead claim, though in his one and only letter to me, he’d called himself a scoundrel. Other than that, he was a cipher.
Now another question mark: Ruby Danvers. Was she Uncle Chester’s lost love? The one whose traces I’d found in the trunk he’d left behind? My crystal ball was as clear as if it’d been filled with Montana gumbo mud.
C.W. and R.D. I pressed the token into my palm. Here was yet one more mystery about my scoundrel uncle.
A mystery that, thanks to Mr. Cecil Hall, I now had a chance of solving.
The coin grew warm in my hand. My last check to Mr. Nefzger had been mailed off. If I went to San Francisco, I could always go on to Seattle—or back to Arlington—afterward.
I untied my apron and hung it up slowly.
Eyes squeezed tight, I said a prayer. “Lord, you have moved in many mysterious ways in my short life. If I am supposed to go, I’d sure appreciate a sign.” Slowly, I opened my eyes, taking in every inch of the kitchen for the answer to my prayer.
Nothing inside the room had changed. I glanced out the window. No miraculous rainbow or bolt of lightning. I was on my own here.
I placed my right palm on the swinging kitchen door, standing half in, half out. At that moment, a memory overtook me. I’d been held after school, as Miss Simpson was determined to improve my penmanship by requiring me to copy a sentence on the chalkboard. Fifty times I’d written, “Of all the words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: it might have been.”
There was my lightning bolt. Else why had that particular memory come unbidden? I smoothed my hair and marched into the parlor to give Miss Clare my answer.
I caught Mrs. Brown in the vestibule on her way out and told her of my decision, too. Upon receiving the news, she looked positively distressed. I think it had less to do with me and more to do with the spot she was in. I assured her I’d fix the midday dinner but told her I would need the evening to prepare.
“That’s decent of you, Hattie,” my almost-former employer told me. “Let’s hope Mrs. Whitcomb’s at the meeting today. Her cousin might make a suitable replacement.”
I put the letter and the coin in my skirt pocket and then transformed myself into a veritable conjurer of cookery, measuring flour here, separating eggs there, and stirring, stirring, stirring all the while. With various pots bubbling away, I patted dry the chicken pieces, then dipped them in buttermilk. When I slid the first drumstick into the pan, hot oil splashed out, stinging my cheek and staining my second-best shirtwaist. One more thing to do before packing! I snatched a rag to wipe off the oil, dragging it through the buttermilk, which ran down my arm and onto my skirt. I grabbed another rag to clean my skirt and knocked over the mixing bowl filled with flour measured out for the biscuits. In a few short minutes, the kitchen was a shambles and I looked like a chicken leg, dipped in buttermilk and flour and fit to fry.
At that very moment someone rapped at the back door. “Oh, go away, will you!” I snapped. But the knocking continued. Frazzled senseless, I threw open the door, ready to give whoever stood there a large piece of my mind.
“Do you really want me to go away?” Charlie asked. “I just got here.”
Burnt Biscuits and Beaus
A kiss can be a comma, a question mark or an exclamation point.
—Mistinguett, French actress
“Charlie!” I screamed, and threw my arms around his neck, scratching my cheek on his starched collar as I hugged him close, breathing in his good Charlie smell of peppermint and pine soap. Then I pushed back to take him all in, head to toe. It’d been two long years since I’d seen him off at the train station, years that had brought some changes our correspondence hadn’t revealed. Those changes added up to more than a few inches in height. He’d gone off a boy of seventeen and returned a man. There was a new scar across his left eyebrow and an unfamiliar expression—sorrow? worry? I wasn’t sure—across that familiar face. But other than that, he was Charlie, through and through. And home safe from that terrible war.
I pressed my hand to my chest, trying to ease the sudden pain there at the thought of all the boys who didn’t make it back. Seeing him here, his good self right in front of me, completely unexpected, knowing I’d just made a decision that might break his heart, I did the only prudent thing a person could do. I burst into tears.
Charlie dropped his bag and scooped me close. “What’s all this?”
I indulged in a several-minute deluge, making a complete muddle of the both of us. Finally, I gathered myself together and pushed away. “I’ve made you a horrible mess.” Cried out, I dried my face with my apron.
“You can make a mess of me any time.” He smiled again. In an instant, I was taken back to the day we’d met, when he’d walked me home from Arlington High School after I’d come to stay at Uncle Holt and Aunt Ivy’s. I’d been so shy, I couldn’t even get my own name out. But that didn’t bother him. He’d talked enough for the both of us. It was him, too, who’d given me Mr. Whiskers, that sassy old tomcat. I don’t know how Charlie knew that that bundle of fur and purr was just what a lonely orphan girl needed, but he did.
He took in the boiling pots, the biscuit fixings, and the sizzling skillet on the stove. “It looks like my timing is bad.”
Oh, if he only knew. I opened my mouth to tell him of my plans, but the words got stuck somewhere between my head and my heart.
“Shall I come back later?”
Later? There was very little later left. “Charlie … well, I … There’s something—” I had hoped to deliver my news via letter, not in person. “I had no idea you were coming.”
He grinned. “That’s not the only big surprise. Can you sneak away for a walk?”
I gestured at the pots and pans. “Not till after dinner.”
“Looks like you could use a hand.”
“Or two!” I picked up a towel and began cleaning up the mess.
Charlie snapped off a salute. “Private Hawley reporting for duty!”
I shook my head. “You? Cook?”
“You’d be surprised at all the army taught me. About airplane engines and how to make my way around a kitchen.”
“That I would like to see!” I finished sweeping up the last of the spilled flour.
“All right, then.” He grabbed a spare apron, tying it around his middle. He looked so ridiculous, I couldn’t help laughing.
“Laugh all you want,” he said with a very serious face. “But you’ll have crow to eat for your supper after you taste my biscuits.”
He wore the Charlie look I knew so well. The set of the chin and fixed gaze that said, “I can do this; try and tell me I can’t.” It was the same look he’d worn when Del Bradford had said no one could climb to the tiptop of the old cottonwood tree by the schoolhouse. Or when the other boys on the baseball team said it was impossible to teach a girl—me!—to pitch. Or when he’d been told he was too young to enlist
in the fight against the Kaiser. Tree climbed, girl taught, enlisted and served. Check, check, check. Sometimes it seemed to me that Charlie saw life’s challenges as a mere list of items to tick off, one after another. If he had set his mind to cooking, it would be a safe bet to say he could cook circles around me. Leastways, I wasn’t in the position to turn down an offer of help right then. “Here’s the plan. I’ll handle the salad and chicken and you can tackle the biscuits and cake.”
As I fried and sliced and simmered, I knew I should tell Charlie about San Francisco. Should have told him the very second he arrived. But opportunity doesn’t nibble twice at the same hook. My news was like a heavy stone in a muddy pond, sinking deeper and deeper into my gut.
Cross my heart. I would tell him right after the meal. No matter what.
When the troupe and Mrs. Brown—and Charlie—sat down to dinner at noon, compliments flowed faster than water over the Great Falls. “This chicken is so crisp,” said Mr. Lancaster. “The biscuits are like biting into clouds,” said the ventriloquist. “I shouldn’t,” said Miss Clare, patting her tiny waist. “But that cake is so delicious, I will have seconds.” Had I baked the cake, rather than Charlie, she would not have made such a request. Her comment earned me a Charlie wink, accompanied by a wicked smile, but he never revealed his role as kitchen elf.
Even though he was my friend, I was not allowed to sit and eat. Mrs. Brown was particular about holding the line between staff and guests. Being that I was still help, I made sure I did indeed help, hovering around the groaning dining room table throughout the entire meal.
Charlie had finished recounting the most entertaining story about a battlefield baseball game using gas masks as mitts. While everyone enjoyed the laugh, I hurried back into the kitchen to refill the coffee carafe. Task accomplished, I pushed open the door and returned to the dining room as Mr. Lancaster reached over and slapped Charlie on the back. “I’m sure you got your share of Huns over there. Showed them a thing or two,” he said, making a motion in the air as if jabbing with a bayonet.