Finding Dorothy

by Elizabeth Letts

  A large pine wreath hung on the door of the Baum residence, a comfortable Italianate-style house on one of Syracuse’s most beautiful streets. Through the front door’s beveled glass, shadows moved, and then the door swung open with a tinkling of bells. Josie greeted Maud and her traveling companions warmly, helped her off with her coat, and admired her Christmas dress. Over her friend’s shoulder, the room was crowded with revelers.

  “He’s in the front parlor,” Josie leaned in to whisper conspiratorially. Then, louder: “Come in, come in!”

  Josie led Maud into a spacious parlor. In the corner stood a giant, richly scented northern pine, festooned with sugarplums, ribbons, tin cutouts, and glowing candles. A gentleman was playing Christmas carols at the piano, and a group was singing; others stood in clusters, chatting gaily. Josie stepped away to greet a new group of guests at the door. Maud felt suddenly shy—she did not know any of the Baum family—but a moment later, a large woman with a shiny red face, dressed in emerald velvet, took Maud’s arm in hers.

  “You must be Maud Gage. You are just as pretty as my daughter said. She has told me so much about you!” Maud took an instant liking to Josie’s mother, and she followed her deeper into the parlor.

  “There is someone Josie wants you to meet.”

  The room was so crowded that the pair had to work their way around the cluster at the piano and through several conversational knots. At last they reached the small group of people her hostess had been looking for. A tall man was standing with his back toward them. Maud suddenly regretted that she had agreed to this introduction. What had she been thinking? She started to pull her arm loose of Josie’s mother’s grasp, but Mrs. Baum held tight. With her other hand, she reached out and tapped the gentleman on his arm, and he spun around. Maud found herself face-to-face with a slender brown-haired man with bright gray eyes and a thick, dark moustache. She felt a streak of something dark and hot plunge from her throat down through her belly.

  Mrs. Baum gently pushed Maud toward him.

  “This is my nephew Frank. Frank, I want you to meet Miss Maud Gage. I’m sure you will love her.”

  The young man tipped his head toward Maud, and a slow smile spread across his face. “Consider yourself loved, Miss Gage.”

  She could see a twinkle of merriment in the gentleman’s eye. Was he making fun of her? He looked at her as if expecting a response.

  “I consider that a promise,” Maud answered tartly. “Please see that you live up to it.”

  She whirled away quickly, without giving him any chance to answer, only to see Josie hurrying toward her, her eyes dancing.

  “So? What did you think?” Josie whispered. “Good-looking, isn’t he?”

  Maud clasped her hands in front of her stomach, attempting to compose herself.

  “Well?” Josie said, looking at her friend with great interest.

  Before Maud could decide what to say, she was interrupted by Josie’s mother, who gestured them over to the piano to join the carolers.

  Maud linked arms with Josie as they sang “The Holly and the Ivy.” Over her shoulder, she heard one of the voices, a silvery, floating tenor, separate itself from the group, chiming in a melodic descant, but she did not turn around to see whose it was. The pianist flipped through a book of popular carols, and Maud and Josie sang joyfully, calling out the names of their favorites, still arm in arm. Maud was so caught up in the singing that she didn’t think of Josie’s cousin at all. By the time they had finished caroling, the young man had disappeared from sight.

  * * *

  —

  SHE WAS SEATED IN another room, chatting with a small group of girls, when she looked up to see that Frank Baum had come in to join her.

  “Do you mind?” he asked, gesturing to a nearby chair.

  “Please,” Maud said.

  “I’m afraid I may have offended you,” he said.

  “Not at all,” Maud replied. “If you offend me, you will know it immediately.”

  “And how will I know?” he asked, evidently amused.

  “Because I’ll tell you.”

  “My cousin Josie thinks the world of you. She has told me so much about you.”

  “And what kind of things did she tell you?” Maud blushed at the implication. He clearly did not know that Maud heard far too often that people were talking about her.

  “Let me see if I can remember….Ah, no need to remember,” he said. “I have it right here!”

  He fished into his breast pocket and pulled out a letter, which he began to read aloud.

  “ ‘We had a most agreeable time on Hallowe’en,’ ” he read, in a warm, musical voice. “ ‘We girls decided to conduct a séance—’ ”

  “She didn’t!” Maud exclaimed.

  Frank smiled, his expression amiable but not entirely free of mischief.

  “ ‘All of us got clues about our future husbands—’ ”

  Maud stood up and tried to snatch the paper from his hand, at which point he smiled and handed it to her.

  “ ‘Except for Maud. The knocks and raps entirely ceased when we asked about her future husband.’ ” He was now reciting from memory. “ ‘I should think that the spirits were more terrified of her than she was of them!’ ”

  Maud’s temper was about to erupt. How could Josie have written to him about the séance? This was certainly not going the way she had expected it to.

  “ ‘And then,’ ” he continued, still reciting from memory, “ ‘a tree branch started rapping on the window, and it spelled out the letter F.’ ”

  Maud wished she could back up to the beginning of this entire meeting and start over. Every time he looked at her, she felt like a loud whirring sound started up in her ears, as though their entire conversation were taking place in a railroad car.

  “So, ever since,” Frank concluded, “I’ve been dying to meet you. I wanted to meet a young woman of whom the very spirits are terrified!”

  By this point Maud was certain that he was teasing her, even if she couldn’t read it in his expression.

  “The spirits are not terrified of me,” Maud said. “Nor I of them. I don’t believe in spirits.”

  Appearing amused by this proclamation, the gentleman just stroked his generous moustache with the tip of one slender index finger and said nothing.

  Maud was growing frustrated, but she was determined to be cordial, at least for Josie’s sake, so she tried again: “So, tell me, Mr. Baum. What line of work are you in?”

  “Actor,” he said. “Director, stage manager. Oh, and writer. Perhaps writer should go first. I’m the principal everything in the Baum Theatre Company. It’s a small company. We travel from town to town putting on our shows. It’s a vagabond’s life, but I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

  “Oh,” Maud said. “I don’t know the first thing about theater. How does one go about becoming a theatrical man?”

  “Well, I wasn’t fit for anything else,” Frank answered, his eyes crinkling up into a smile. “Not a whit of business sense, I’m afraid—unless that business is magic.”

  “Magic?”

  His eyes lit up. He spread his arms wide, as if, with his long, tapered fingers, he could cast spells right in front of her.

  “Isn’t that what the theater is? You conjure up something out of nothing—you build a whole world from the ground up out of nothing but the images that dance around in your mind. Nothing like it. As to how I got started, my father built a theater for me—down in the oil country. I’m not ashamed to admit I was the beneficiary of his extraordinary largesse—but the plays are all mine. I do it all: the acting, the songwriting, the dancing. I even use the latest fandangos to rig up the sets. But it’s all in the service of the spellbinding, transformative, elusive, otherworldly quest for magic. That’s why I was so eager to meet you, Miss Baum.” He p
eered into her eyes. “So few young ladies seem interested in this kind of thing. And here is my own cousin’s friend leading a séance—you must be a most intrepid individual.”

  His discourse was so odd that Maud was not sure what to make of it, and yet there was something in his manner that had captured her fancy.

  “I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not afraid of spirits because I don’t believe in them—not because I’m so intrepid. Although, I daresay, I’m not easily scared.”

  Frank was gazing at her with much interest. “You’re not afraid of anything?”

  “Well…I didn’t say I wasn’t afraid of anything. I don’t care for scarecrows—and I can’t abide to be teased. Because I lose my temper. I guess I’m a bit afraid of my own temper.”

  “Scarecrows?” Frank asked as if this was the most wondrously fantastic statement he had ever heard. “Why don’t you like scarecrows? They can hardly scare a crow—much less a person. Why, I’ve seen scarecrows who were so friendly with crows that they seemed to invite them into the cornfield for company!”

  Maud tried in vain to suppress a smile before she burst out laughing. “Our neighbors had a scarecrow in their yard. I could see him from my bedroom window, and I was convinced that he was going to climb down off his perch and come after me!” she admitted.

  “You must have been something as a young girl!” Frank said. “I wish I had known you then.”

  “Oh, you would have despised me,” Maud blurted out. “I was a terrible tomboy—my mother let me run around in my brother’s cast-off short pants. I climbed trees and shot marbles…the boys teased me, and so did the girls!”

  Frank laughed and leaned closer. “I’m certain I would never have despised you!” he said.

  “I’m so glad that you two are getting to know each other.” Only now did Maud notice that Frank’s aunt Josephine Baum had been hovering nearby, seeing how the matchmaking was going.

  “Miss Gage was just telling me she’s not fond of scarecrows,” Frank said genially. “While I’m rather partial to them—the straw men and I have had some pleasant conversations through the years.”

  Josephine beamed at her nephew. “Frank does say the most unusual things, doesn’t he? Why, I could listen to him all day. One time, we were driving to Onondaga and the whole way he told me a story about the horse who was pulling the buggy. He was just an old nag, but the way Frank told it, he had an entire life story. Remember that, Frank dear? You called him Jim the Cab Horse? You had us in stitches. Oh, I wish I could have remembered it so I could have told it to other people…”

  Frank laughed. “I don’t remember Jim the Cab Horse, Auntie, but I’ve found that most cab horses have quite a lot to say. They’ve got interesting lives, you know. They travel all over the place, seeing all kinds of things.”

  “Oh, Frank.” His aunt smiled indulgently. “Always so fanciful. Come on into the dining room,” she said to both of them. “We’re about to serve dinner now.”

  A crimson damask tablecloth covered the table, and the place settings gleamed with silver. A goose, its golden skin crackling, was at the table’s center. There was a silver tureen of oyster soup and fluffy mashed potatoes, two kinds of pudding and a beautiful mince pie. But Maud could scarcely eat. She was seated at the far end of the table, where she tried to keep herself from throwing glances toward Mr. Baum. She was hoping to have a chance to speak to him again after dinner, but then she saw him excuse himself just as the dinner was ending.

  “I’m so sorry to leave early,” he said to the assembled group. “But the snow is coming down hard. I need to go now, before it gets too deep for my buggy to pass.”

  He hurried out of the dining room with a genial wave but didn’t even glance in Maud’s direction. Maud followed him with her eyes, and felt her face freeze. The meeting had clearly been a failure.

  The plates were cleared and the group had moved back to the piano when Maud looked up and saw Frank, now dressed in his hat and topcoat, in the doorway, a sprinkling of snow whitening his shoulders. He beckoned to her. Maud looked around. No one was watching.

  Extricating herself from the group, she passed into the front foyer. “I thought you had already left,” she whispered.

  “I couldn’t leave without speaking to you again,” he said.

  Maud’s heart beat faster.

  “I want to call on you. Tomorrow? The day after? Next week?”

  “Tomorrow is Christmas Day. You can’t come tomorrow!”

  “I have to return to Pennsylvania with my theater company on New Year’s Day.”

  “I’m going back to school then. I won’t be home until March.” She tried to sound as if she didn’t care.

  “I want to call on you,” he repeated, then turned his head at the sound of harness bells in the street outside. “Please. I have to go—my horse is getting restless. I’m sorry to leave so suddenly like this. Please, I want to call on you before you return to Ithaca. May I?”

  Maud tried to say no but found herself nodding. His face unfolded into a brilliant smile, and then tipping his hat, he opened the door and disappeared into the falling snow.

  * * *

  —

  MAUD WOULD RETURN TO Fayetteville early in the morning to celebrate Christmas at home, but tonight, she was staying over at Josie’s. Upstairs, after the guests had left, the two girls helped each other unbutton their Christmas dresses, unlace their corsets, and unpin their hair. At last unfettered in their loose nightgowns, they lay down next to each other in the bed.

  “So, what did you think of him?” Josie asked.

  Maud was flustered, for once not knowing what to say. With his talk of chatty cab horses and friendly scarecrows and magic, he seemed more than anything to be a bit strange—and yet, her memory of his face, his slow smile and steady gray eyes, seemed to float in front of her even now.

  “I don’t know. Yes, no, I’m not sure,” Maud answered. “I don’t know what happened to me. I couldn’t seem to carry on any kind of sensible conversation with him.”

  “Oh, Frank always says the oddest things, doesn’t he? I always thought you’d go together. You’re both so different from other people!”

  “In any case, I’m not looking for a beau,” Maud said. “And I’m sure he didn’t like me anyway.”

  The girls lay in companionable silence for a few minutes. “He did have a nice smile,” Maud said. She heard Josie breathe a contented sigh.

  “I knew it!” she said.

  * * *

  —

  ON THE THURSDAY FOLLOWING Christmas, the Carpenter family, distant cousins on Matilda’s side, were coming to call. Julia whispered to Maud that among the visitors would be her secret beau, Mr. James Carpenter. Color high and eyes shining, Julia put on her Black Watch plaid with the deep blue velvet trim. Maud worked on Julia’s hair, coiling her long braid with pins to her crown, covering her ears, then smoothed the frizzy flyaways and pulled a few tendrils loose, to frame her face.

  “You look beautiful!” Maud whispered.

  Julia patted her hair nervously, her cheeks flushed pink. “Oh, no…I know I’m plain…” She looked anxiously in the mirror, tugging at the waistband of her dress. “I would have made a good schoolteacher, if I hadn’t suffered so from nerves.”

  “Don’t say that,” Maud remonstrated. This was a familiar topic, and one that grated on Maud. She did not find her sister plain—she was petite in stature and had blunt features, but her hazel eyes sparkled with wit, and her tawny hair was beautiful. Mother had always had a plan for Julia. She would study to become a schoolteacher. But Julia, smart and bookish as she was, was not well-fitted for higher education. Her studies had been too much for her. Julia was content in the home, but Maud hated how Mother bossed her sister around. Today, Julia looked beautiful, Maud genuinely thought, and she was expecting a visit from her beau. She pinched her sister�
��s cheeks to pinken them, then slipped her arm around Julia’s waist and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  Mr. James Carpenter was thin and knobby, with a baby face that made him look even younger than his years. Maud could not help but draw an immediate comparison between this young man and the one she’d met the previous week. Whereas Frank Baum’s eyes had been warm and lively, Maud found something slightly unsettling about James Carpenter’s demeanor. At first she couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but after seeing him return to the rum punch several times, she realized that he was intoxicated.

  She was seated on one of the divans in the parlor, next to Julia, when he made his way toward them.

  “You are studying at the university?” His manner seemed not completely friendly.

  “I am,” Maud replied. “I’m taking a degree in literature.”

  The young man seemed to have no reply for this, and an awkward silence followed. “And what about you? What line of work are you in?” Maud asked, trying to be polite.

  “I intend to explore the field of agricultural cultivation,” he said grandly. “I am currently amassing the necessary funds,” he added. “I plan to depart for Dakota Territory within the year.”

  Without so much as a tip of the head, he spun on his heel and walked away.

  “What do you think of him?” Julia whispered.

  “Well, I’m not sure,” Maud said. “We’ve only just met. But I think he’s rather abrupt—and very young!”

  Julia frowned. “He’s not abrupt. Just ambitious! He has such a fire in him. I’m sure he’ll make a success in Dakota.”

  “I think his passion leans more toward the rum punch,” Maud muttered, but Julia did not appear to hear. She was following his form as he cut across the room.