The Threshold

by Marlys Millhiser

  Callie O’Connell had left many rented houses before, but never with the sadness and fear she did the one in Alta. Everything she owned fit easily into a small carpetbag and Callie slipped the lady’s book of drawings in it too. “I know it’ll be seeming hard, now,” John said to her as she rode in a stagecoach for the first time. “But you’ll be seeing it’s for the best. And you’ll find Alta was a dull place indeed after you’ve been to Telluride.”

  “Will I go to school there?” Callie had heard Telluride had a big stone schoolhouse with only one class to a whole room.

  “No, you’ll be working and earning for Bram, like I told you. You’ll be learning more of what a girl needs to know than in a school, and they’ll be paying you to learn even. And you’ll not have to read no books either.”

  “But I like books, Pa. I don’t like cleaning things.”

  “Now, don’t you be sounding like your Aunt Lillian.” The stage mired down in the mud three times before they arrived. While Alta sat up among the mountaintops, Telluride hunkered low in a dark valley at their bottoms. Mountains seemed bigger, more forbidding when looking up at them; they glared back down at Callie. Horses drawing carriages and wagons kicked up mud and made slopping, sucking sounds in the street. Harness clanked and jingled. Wagons creaked. Drivers yelled and “hawed.” Many of the buildings were of brick and stone instead of wood, and Callie held on to her hat to stare up at the three-story hotel. It looked taller than the boardinghouse in Alta.

  A man in an apron stepped out of one of the two great doors in the hotel. A heavy scent of cigar smoke came through the door with him. He lowered a striped awning by a handle that squeaked with every turn. John led her to the other door. Stairs so wide that three angels abreast could descend them without brushing wings reached straight up to the top of the building, and so steeply she had to hold on to her hat again. She felt a little shiver of excitement even in her terror, and her breath made noise.

  “And what did I tell you?” Pa propelled her around the staircase to a metal cage with a spectacled man inside. “Here to see the housekeeper,” he said importantly.

  The man in the cage stuck a finger inside one end of his spectacles and rubbed an eye, his elbow pointing straight out. His other hand pointed around the corner. “Up the service stairs. Across the landing.” They followed his finger to a door and behind it a smaller set of narrow stairs that rose in the opposite direction to the wide ones and reached a landing between them.

  Mrs. Stollsteimer sat behind a desk in a cubicle hidden from the great staircase by a wall. Callie had never known a lady to have a desk unless she was a schoolteacher. Mrs. Stollsteimer was mountainous and the keys on her belt clanked like harness. Her cap looked like a doily with a bun in the middle.

  “John O’Connell, ma’am. And this here’s my Callie come to work for you, she has. Your sister Mrs. Fisherdicks up at Alta, she—”

  Mrs. Stollsteimer waved him quiet with a hand as large as his. “I’ve been expecting her.”

  Something inside Callie hardened when John O’Connell left her with assurances that he’d be back to see her soon, that when her mother and Bram returned they’d all come to Telluride to get her. If John didn’t make his lucky strike prospecting first, which would mean he and Callie could go to Denver and stay in style until Bram recovered. They’d visit him every day. His promises would have gone on for hours if Mrs. Stollsteimer hadn’t insisted he leave. Mrs. Stollsteimer stood looking down at Callie. “How old are you, Callie O’Connell?”

  “I turned eleven last week.”

  “You’re young and you’re small.” She took hold of Callie’s shoulders and switched her this way and that. “But you look sturdy enough.”

  Only yesterday Callie had played with Bertha Traub and her cat in Alta, blissfully unaware of the change her life would take today. The housekeeper rummaged through a cupboard beside her desk and drew out a black dress and white apron. Callie wondered if it was because of Mrs. Stollsteimer that the lady in pants warned her never to come to Telluride.

  PART TWO

  Telluride

  21

  Callie thought the dress made her sturdy brown shoes look silly and made her look more grown-old than grown-up. The white apron and cap were smaller versions of the housekeeper’s. “The girls should be gathering for their lunch now.” Mrs. Stollsteimer had shown her into a small room on the third floor crowded with six narrow cots. “Come along.”

  She led Callie out to the staircase and to the second floor. Callie looked down at the golden pool of sunlight on the bottom stair and the lobby floor below. Dust motes glided through it. She had an urge to sit in that bright pool awhile and warm away her dread and the chill of that third-floor room. The hotel had service stairs at the rear of the second-floor hallway also, and these led directly to a busy kitchen. Pans clanged and people scurried. Callie’s throat caught at all the staring strangers as she followed the housekeeper to a corner where five girls dressed just like Callie sat at a table.

  “Callie O’Connell”—Mrs. Stollsteimer held her shoulders again to be sure she faced them—“I’d like you to meet Olina Svendt, Elsie Biggs, Opal Mae Skoog, Grace Artherholt, and Senja Kesti. Girls, this is our new helper.” Each girl blinked as her name was said and Callie in her embarrassment forgot each name immediately. Her starched apron humped up as she sat and they giggled behind their hands when she tried to poke it down. The housekeeper brought her a bowl of soup with pieces of chicken, potatoes, and tiny green things floating in it and a glass of milk almost too cold to taste. The girls whispered among themselves, but addressed not a word to Callie. One handed her a plate of dark bread, another the butter, and they all watched her, as if to see if she knew what to do with them.

  The soup was tasty and the bread rich with molasses and raisins. The other girls had hints of mischief and laughter lurking behind their eyes, but Callie didn’t see them again until supper. Cora, a chambermaid, taught her how to tuck in the corners of bedsheets so they wouldn’t pull out, how to clean carpets with a carpet sweeper and the carpet runner on the stairs with a whisk broom. Callie learned to scrub out indoor toilets and porcelain bathtubs. The rooms at the front even had their own. Chambermaids wore gray dresses with white aprons and dust caps. Cora told Callie that if she worked hard, she too could become a chambermaid.

  The next day Callie was again on the grand staircase that cut up through the center of the building. This time she swiped with an oiled dust mop at the wooden ends of each step where the carpet runner didn’t reach and she was again gazing longingly at the spot of sunlight in the lobby below when it disappeared. Not because of a cloud but because a wall closed over the staircase hiding the lobby. The edges of the wall sizzled like spattering meat in a fry pan.

  Callie dropped the mop to clatter down to the second-floor landing where the staircase now ended. She hadn’t expected anything like this to happen in Telluride. But now she expected to see the lady who wore pants, and perhaps her husband too. Callie saw a lady. But not the one she’d anticipated. This lady stood in a gilt frame and was, except for a wisp of floaty gauze, as naked as it was possible to be. Callie plunked down hard on a stair, almost too astonished to breathe. The white flesh fairly shimmered against a dark background ominous with storm. The lady’s hair was down and flying about. And it was all bumpy, as if she’d braided it wet and let it dry before taking it down.

  “Better not let Mrs. Stollsteimer see you sitting there,” Opal Mae Skoog whispered from where she dusted the balustrade. Her head stuck out between two of the posts. Callie could only point at the new ending to the staircase. Opal Mae turned to gasp and stare and then tried to pull her head back without first straightening it, and was caught between the posts. She struggled in such panic Callie thought she’d choke herself, and ran down to help. When Opal Mae lay on the hall floor, crying, but with her head still attached, Callie looked back at the naked lady to find the stairs and the patch of sunlit lobby had returned instead.

  Op
al Mae’s father had been killed in the Smuggler-Union Mine. She had three brothers and three sisters. Her mother took in boarders, and all the children who could, worked. Senja Kesti’s parents came from Finland. That’s why she had such an odd name. Olina Svendt was the biggest and the oldest. She instigated most of what little mischief they had time for and managed to avoid most of the blame. She had very pale skin and hair, and wide, even teeth. Callie noticed gentlemen noticing Olina on more than one occasion. Elsie Biggs had fair hair and blue eyes too, but there the similarity to Olina ended. Quiet, timid, sallow—she seemed younger than Callie but was over a year older. Elsie was not clever and usually received the blame Olina avoided. Grace Artherholt was an orphan put out to work by her aunt, who already had a houseful of children.

  All of the girls resented the fact they were not allowed to keep any of their wages. Much of this Callie learned in the third-floor room where they giggled and whispered in the dark and Olina told scary stories. Sounds from the streets came up to them until they fell asleep, and sometimes woke Callie in the night. Shouting and piano music and bursts of laughter and horses whinnying in alarm. Sometimes even gunshots. The town seemed never to sleep. Yet it was a quiet place compared to Alta, where the mill thundered. Here the mills were faraway pulses, only there if you listened for them.

  The night after Callie and Opal Mae saw the painting on the staircase, Olina hung her blanket over the transom so they could switch on the light to look at the drawings in the book from Callie’s carpetbag. The other four didn’t believe the story about the naked lady on a wall that didn’t exist and agreed that Olina’s stories were better. But all were fascinated by the drawings.

  “This is the hotel, but where’s the office building next door?” Grace asked. “Why would your lady have drawn tables with umbrellas there instead?” They decided the Chevy Citation was an enclosed buggy lacking its wagon tongue.

  “That’s down there, I think.” Olina pointed mysteriously south toward the river and the railroad tracks when they came to the picture of the Senate. “On that side of town. Across from the jail.” Olina admitted to peeking down side streets when she was out on errands.

  Callie wished she’d be sent on an errand. In her first two weeks at the New Sheridan she stepped foot out of the building only once and that was into the back alley. She kept expecting her father to visit as he’d promised, and still prayed to some vague hope she couldn’t name for her brother to get well. Now that she was away from the solicitous ladies of Alta, Callie missed Luella most of all. She’d sometimes see a figure that looked like her mother from behind but who always turned a stranger’s face to her.

  When a letter finally came, Luella wrote that Bram improved slowly. That she’d feared they’d lost him several times. “Callie, you wouldn’t know him, he’s so thin.” He slept better now, had fewer nightmares. Her mother had not been well herself. “I’m troubled that we are all apart. I was angry with your father when he wired that he’d sent you to Mrs. Stollsteimer, but I’ve written her and she’s replied. She assures me you are well cared for and kept too busy to be lonely. I think of you every hour and we’re grateful here for the money you’re earning.” And the rest was a plea for Callie to stay in or near the hotel and not wander about the town. That she be off the street before three o’clock in the afternoon.

  At three o’clock that afternoon, Callie feather-dusted a second-floor front room and looked out to the street below, wondering what was so magical about that hour of the day. There were not as many people about as in the mornings, but still a good deal of activity. Mrs. Stollsteimer had even more warnings than Callie’s mother. “Never be rude to the guests of the hotel.” How could she be rude to people who didn’t even see her? “Never enter a room when the gentleman is present.” “Never leave the hotel unless sent on an errand, and always return before three o’clock.” That night, Callie asked the girls about three o’clock in the afternoon and it seemed they’d never stop laughing. Finally Olina said, “Because the bank is robbed promptly every afternoon at three o’clock and the streets are full of madmen taking potshots at everyone in sight. Especially little girls with shaggy hair.”

  Callie had trouble tying her own hair up in rags and had been letting it go straight. “There wouldn’t be any money left to rob.”

  “Because that’s when they come out,” Elsie said solemnly and with a suggestion of fear or awe. Elsie didn’t often say anything.

  “Shut up, dunce. Let’s not tell her. Let’s show her. I’ll think of a plan.” Olina was very good with plans. Several days later she found Callie with Opal Mae and Grace polishing silver. “If we’re a little late, you’re to say we’re finishing up the sinks in the common toilet on second,” she told the other two, and grabbing Callie’s hand, hurried her to the kitchen door. “We’re to pick up Mr. Macintosh’s boots.” He was a guest with his own toilet, and everyone ran for him.

  The mud in the alley had dried enough that they could walk along the edges without sticking. Crows fought over the garbage mess behind the buildings and eyed them skeptically. Callie knew two people wouldn’t be sent for one pair of boots. “But what if Mrs. Stollsteimer goes up to the common—”

  “Callie, you’ll never learn anything if you don’t take a chance.” The sun was out and the birds sang; summer was so short in the mountains. Callie wanted to hang back so the outing would last. Every other building on Colorado Avenue seemed to be a saloon with its doors open in invitation. But there were also shops that had fanciful clothes in the windows. On the way back they stopped to look in several of these and Callie was embarrassed to see lacy, beribboned corset covers displayed openly just like in the mail-order catalogs. Suddenly Olina pulled her around a corner and into a side alley, put her finger to her lips, and pointed to the street. Some miners stood in the doorway of a saloon; a wagon piled with sacks of feed lumbered past. And then everything seemed to grow as still and breathless as Callie felt. The miners all looked down the street.

  A light ringing of ladies’ laughter, the high rattle of their chatter. Three ladies walked by the alley, arm in arm, dressed in the loveliest dresses Callie had ever seen. Prettier than Miss Heisinger’s, brighter and silkier. The sun caught in the plumes on their hats. Their parasols were fringed and the slight sway in their walks set the fringe to dancing.

  “Them,” Olina whispered. Two more, then three. Callie finally breathed. Another group, still all marvelously clothed. One turned her face to them. A thin dark smudge showed under each eye; her lips and cheeks were bright.

  “They’re painted!” Callie said and Olina said, “Shush!”

  More and then more. And not one of them had a husband with her. The miners called to them and they waved back and laughed. One lifted her skirts an inch or so and did a little skip. Right behind that group came two ladies alone and on Callie’s side of the street. They were deep in conversation and took no notice of the miners across the way or the girls in the alley. They were as beautifully dressed as all the rest. One was rather fat, with red hair. The other was Callie’s Aunt Lilly.

  22

  The Sandals in Telluride’s museum had wedged wooden heels, webbed leather tops, and were toeless and heelless. Streaks of copper-brown remained but most of the color had aged to beige. Aletha even recognized the dart-shaped hole torn out of a sole edge by a department-store escalator. “There’s no way these can be your shoes.” Cree doubled over to stare at them. “They’ve been here for years. You just got to town.”

  A typewritten message Scotch-taped to the underside of the glass case’s top announced that the contents, as well as the hanging clothes displayed on the wall behind, had been found in trunks and boxes stored in the historic bordello, the Pick and Gad, and had been worn by the soiled doves who worked there. A smaller note, self-propped like a place card, sat beside Aletha’s shoes and pointed out how these resembled more modern designs, and ended with the cliche of there being nothing truly new under the sun. It didn’t try to explain the obviou
s differences between Aletha’s sandals and the other shoes in the case. The latter were either black or yellowed white with high button tops and pointed toes that had curled with age to suggest they’d belonged to overgrown pixies. They looked exactly like the shoes worn by the good women on the sunny side.

  “I still don’t believe it.” Cree straightened. “The same pair of shoes could not have been on you and in here at the same time.”

  Aletha shrugged and walked out of the museum.

  “Look, I’ve picked up some books and pamphlets on Telluride’s past. I’ll lend them to you,” Cree said when he’d caught up with her. “This, for instance”—he waved at a two-story building that housed the laundromat in its basement—“used to be the Miners’ Union Hospital. The unions didn’t trust the money withheld from their pay to provide medical care and built their own hospital. Aletha, next time the tear opens, promise me you’ll—”

  “I’ll read your fucking books, okay?” She stopped in mid-stride and turned on him. They collided. “But they won’t tell me what happened to Callie. They’ll be full of man stuff. And this world is so boring compared to Callie’s. I’m not sure I can resist if temptation offers.” They walked on in silence, Cree making disapproving noises under his breath.

  “You sound just like a spoiled adolescent—” He threw her against the side of the post office and bent over her as if in an embrace. But his head turned to watch a shiny Bronco round the corner and move up the street. “Uh, friends of mine. And you think this world is dull.” He released her so fast she lost her balance and fell against the wall again. “I have to know where they go. See you for dinner.” He took off at a run.

  Aletha picked up some steaks and a slab of raw calves’ liver on her way back to the condo. The liver had the consistency of a drowned corpse when she cut it into tiny bits, but Charles relished it. He made snorting noises while he gobbled. Then he purred and rubbed against Aletha as if she were Mildred Heisinger. “Here I thought you wanted a Victorian home with a Victorian lady. Is it just the liver?”