by Gail Rock
I think Dad enjoyed my friends too, though he would never admit it. He would just pretend to be interested in his newspaper and would occasionally look up to ask how we could giggle so much without getting sick to our stomachs. I hoped he was in a good mood now, because I knew it was going to be a tricky situation.
“Hi!” I said, as I ran up to them in the garden. I was trying to sound casual, but I couldn’t hide my excitement.
Grandma looked at my dress and knew something was going on.
“Where you been all dressed up?” she asked. I hated wearing anything fancier than jeans, and she knew it.
“We went to see Constance Payne and get her autograph.” I held my book out to show her.
Dad turned around and looked at me. “I told you not to go over there,” he said, annoyed.
“Oh, Dad, she was great,” I said excitedly. “You should see her! She was wearing a fabulous Japanese kimono, black with great big red flowers, and these fantastic slippers with embroidery and sunglasses and bright red nail polish!”
“Sounds like the Dragon Lady to me,” he said sarcastically.
“And the way she talks,” I went on. “It’s so elegant!”
“Most actors talk phony,” he said, sounding unimpressed.
“Well, she studied in England,” said Grandma. “I suppose she’s got an accent.”
“You should hear what she said about you,” I said to Dad, teasing him.
“What?” he said, sounding curious.
“Oh, never mind!” I said, knowing he would be dying to find out. I thought it was a good way to distract him a bit before I told them about the dinner invitation.
“You can tell me,” Grandma said, smiling and suspecting I was up to something.
“Well,” I said, pausing dramatically, “I said, ‘Do you remember James Mills?’ And she said, ‘Oh, he was a handsome devil!’”
Grandma and I both laughed, and Dad looked embarrassed. He didn’t seem to know whether to believe it or not.
“How would she remember me?” he asked.
“She was positively exotic!” I went on. “And dramatic! And nice, too. You really should see her. I asked her to present our style show awards, but she can’t, she has to go back to New York … she’s doing a new play on Broadway.”
“I told you not to pester her!” Dad said. “It’s not good manners to bother people that way.”
“Oh, she didn’t mind,” I said. “Besides, I made up for it by inviting her to dinner.” I winced, prepared for his reaction.
“You what?” he said.
“Oh, Addie!” said Grandma.
“Well, I had to! She said she wanted to see you again, Dad. I had to be polite. You just said to have good manners, didn’t you?”
“You don’t go inviting people to dinner without asking at home first!” he said angrily. “Well, it’s my home too!”
“Now, Addie, don’t get sassy,” said Grandma. “You really should have asked first.”
“We can’t have her here to dinner!” Dad said.
“Now, James,” said Grandma. “It’ll be all right.”
“Can we have something special?” I asked Grandma, hoping to rush right on with the plans before Dad could stop it.
“We sure will,” she replied. “I think it’s a nice idea invitin’ her. She’s probably lonely in that big old house.”
“Oh, Mother!” said Dad, exasperated. “She doesn’t want to come to dinner over here!”
“The heck she doesn’t!” I said. “She’s coming Saturday night!”
The idea that it was all arranged for Saturday really seemed to set him off. “You had no business inviting her!” he shouted. “You can just march right back over there and tell her you made a mistake. Tell her you forgot to ask your grandmother first.”
“I can’t do that.” I said.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Well, she practically invited herself! And then, I told her you’d just love to see her again.”
I thought he would explode at that. “I hardly know the fool woman!” he shouted.
Grandma was shushing him and trying not to smile. “Addie, that’s fibbing! You mustn’t do things like that.”
“Well,” I said, trying to hide my own smile, “Dad can always go over and tell her he doesn’t want to see her, and that she can’t come to dinner.”
“Oh, brother!” he said, sounding defeated. “One of these days, I’m going to lock you up!”
Grandma and I smiled at each other and began to plan what to have for dinner on Saturday.
Chapter Three
I was as nervous as a cat all Saturday afternoon. I usually couldn’t care less about clothes, but I tried on everything I owned about three times trying to look my best. I polished our old silver and shined the plates and glasses until my fingers ached. And I kept looking at the roast beef in the oven to see if it was going to be good enough for our special guest. I had made original place cards with artistic Easter motifs on them, and had picked some daffodils for a centerpiece. Grandma and I had moved the table from the kitchen to the living room in honor of Constance.
Dad looked absolutely disgusted by the whole thing, but when Grandma appeared in her best Sunday dress, he went and grudgingly put on a suit and tie.
When six o’clock arrived and Constance hadn’t shown up, I began to get even more nervous. At six fifteen Dad looked at his watch and said she probably wasn’t coming. He sounded pleased by the idea.
“She’ll come!” I said. “I put a note under her door this afternoon to remind her. Besides, she’s too high-class to just not show up!”
“High-class, my …” said Dad.
“James!” Grandma interrupted.
“Foot!” Dad finished.
There was a knock on the door, and I ran to answer it. Suddenly I hated our dumb, little four-room house. It was too threadbare, not good enough for Constance to see.
But there she was, looking quite beautiful. She had on a stylishly draped green dress, and her hair was curled and falling softly about her face. She carried a brown purse with beige gloves and wore brown pumps with open toes. I noticed a little chip on her fingernail polish that had been there the day we had met. She hadn’t done her nails to come to dinner with us.
She seemed rather nervous and made an excuse about being late, saying she had tried to call but didn’t realize we had no phone. I had a feeling she had wanted to call and say she wasn’t coming at all, and for the first time in my life I was glad my thrifty father hadn’t ever had a phone put in. Constance said she wouldn’t be able to stay long because she was expecting an important call from New York. I put her bag and gloves down on a table near the door and introduced her to Dad and Grandma.
Dad seemed a bit uncomfortable having her there, and when she thanked him for inviting her to dinner, I thought he was going to blurt out that he had done no such thing. But he looked at me and covered it up nicely, and Grandma asked everyone to be seated, because dinner was all ready.
“Oh, I don’t mind waiting a bit for dinner,” said Constance, “if you all want to have cocktails first.”
Grandma looked startled, and so did Dad. No one ever asked for a drink at our house. “Oh, we never serve cocktails,” Grandma said politely, and went on into the kitchen. Dad gave me a skeptical look behind Constance’s back, and I hurriedly pulled out her chair.
“Miss Payne, you sit here,” I said, covering the awkward moment.
“Please, Addie,” she said. “Call me Constance.”
Grandma brought in the plates, and we started eating and making small talk with Constance about how long it had been since she was in town and how busy she must be in New York. She seemed distracted and didn’t really answer our questions about New York. I watched her closely, but I tried not to stare. I noticed she wasn’t eating anything and was just pushing the food around on her plate.
“To think you turned out to be a famous star!” Grandma said to her. “I remember when you were j
ust a little thing, reciting at the Sunday School pageants and all.”
“Pass the salt, Addie,” said Dad, sounding bored to death by all the chitchat.
“Were you in those things too?” I asked Constance. “So was I when I was little! I even wanted to be an actress then.”
“Did you?” she asked, smiling at me.
“Yeah, once. Before I decided to be an artist.”
“Addie, pass the pepper,” Dad interrupted. He never had any patience with my ideas about being an artist.
I went on as though I hadn’t heard him. “I’ll probably study in Paris, and then when I’m famous, I’ll live in New York.”
I heard Dad give a little snort of derision.
“Yes,” Constance said to me, “if you’re going to be famous, New York is the place to be.”
There was more small talk, and then Constance asked Grandma if there might be some wine. “Just a little touch,” she said, “to go with the roast beef?”
I saw Grandma and Dad exchange a glance.
“I’m afraid there just isn’t a thing in the way of spirits to be had in our house,” Grandma answered. “We never partake.”
Constance seemed embarrassed and rattled on about how she was used to taking wine with her meals and something about French wines coming back after the war, and we all looked at our plates awkwardly.
“Do you ever have champagne?” I asked, trying to rescue her from the silence. “I bet you have it on opening nights!”
“Oh, yes,” she smiled, looking relieved. “That’s a tradition.”
“Oh, I wish we could see you on the stage! I wish you would at least do our style show!”
“Now don’t go bothering her about that!” said Dad sharply.
“But couldn’t you do it for old times’ sake?” I continued. “I mean, you’ve never given a performance or anything in Clear River. People would like to see you.”
“She doesn’t want to be in some silly thing like that!” Dad said, annoyed. He turned to Constance. “I don’t know where she gets these crazy ideas. She’s always up to some nonsense—going to Paris and New York and wanting to be an artist!” He said it as though it were all quite ridiculous.
“Well, that’s what I’m going to do!” I said angrily.
He turned back to me. “You’d better think about settling down somewhere and making a home for yourself, instead of doing so much daydreaming!”
I wanted to shout back at him, but I knew I mustn’t, especially with company there.
Suddenly Constance spoke, looking right at him.
“Daydreaming isn’t so bad,” she said. “You have something to look forward to.”
I was startled that she had come to my defense, and so was Dad. I felt his argument with me had somehow shifted to her.
“You look forward to gettin’ a decent job,” he said to her, “and making a living and trying to raise a family. That’s about all there is.”
“I guess that just isn’t enough for some people,” she said firmly, and they stared at each other almost angrily.
“Not for me,” I said quietly.
Dad turned angrily back to me. “You’ll find out when you grow up … and can’t have everything you want!”
“It doesn’t hurt to try for it!” I said defiantly.
For a moment he just stared at me, and I thought he was going to ask me to leave the table. Somehow Constance and I had joined forces against him, and he was furious.
Grandma was keeping out of it, but she cast me a sympathetic glance, and I knew she felt for me in moments like this. I was always full of daydreams that Dad thought were ridiculous, but she would understand and quietly encourage me.
There was silence for a few moments while we all ate. Then Constance suddenly spoke. “When is this style show of yours, Addie?”
“Next Wednesday,” I said glumly.
“Well,” she said, “maybe I can make it after all.”
Dad gave her a sharp look as though she had said it just to annoy him.
“You mean it?” I asked excitedly.
“Yes, I think I can arrange it,” she said, smiling.
I was astounded. My brainstorm had actually worked out!
“That’s awful nice of you, Constance,” said Grandma. “All the girls will be so excited.”
“They’ll run you ragged if you let ’em,” Dad said to her scornfully.
“I’m sure they won’t,” she said politely, disagreeing with him again.
Suddenly Grandma and I realized the rolls were still in the oven and about to burn, and we ran to the kitchen. I was nervous about leaving Dad and Constance alone at the table, and I listened carefully from the kitchen to what they said.
There was an awkward silence, and then Dad made some small talk about being sorry to hear about her mother and how it had been a long time. There was another silence. Finally Dad spoke again.
“I remember how we used to tease you. We called you ‘Countess Constance’ because we thought you were stuck-up.”
I couldn’t believe he had said that to her. It seemed terribly rude, though I didn’t think he had meant it that way.
“Yes. I remember,” she said quietly, and I wondered if her feelings had been hurt by the memory of the other kids being unkind to her.
“Well,” he said, a bit embarrassed and realizing he had sounded impolite, “I guess you showed everybody. You’re the only one of us who made a big success.”
Constance didn’t reply, and I rushed back in with the rolls before they could get into another disagreement.
Constance seemed more nervous than ever and looked at her watch and said she really had to leave and get her call from New York. I had never known anybody in Clear River who had a long distance call from New York City, and the idea seemed very glamorous to me. She got up from the table abruptly and started for the door. I was startled that anyone would get up and leave in the middle of one of Grandma’s roast beef dinners, and I tried to convince her to stay for dessert. She seemed very agitated and insisted she had to go. As she rushed out the door, I called after her to remind her of the style show, and she promised she would be there.
As I came back in, I saw that she had forgotten her gloves. I picked them up and hurried to the door and called after her, but she had already gone. Dad and Grandma had sat back down at the table and were talking quietly about how upset Constance had seemed. I went to put her gloves in the desk drawer, and as I smoothed them out, I found myself trying one of them on. When I slipped my hand into it, I realized it was very old and worn, and my finger poked up through the end of it. I stared at the glove and wondered why a famous star like Constance would wear something so old and shabby.
The afternoon of the style show luncheon, Carla Mae, Gloria, Tanya and I carefully carried our dresses to the Dew Drop Inn. The Inn was the only restaurant in Clear River, and it had a dining room that was often the scene of town social functions.
We had been writing and rewriting our narration for days and figured we were as close as we would ever get to putting on a real Paris-type fashion show like the ones we saw in the newsreels.
I was feeling triumphant. All the ladies were dying to see Constance, and it had been my idea to invite her. Her appearance would be the high point of the afternoon. The ladies had finished their luncheon, and the show was about to begin. A panel of the Women’s Club would judge our creations, and Constance would award the prizes. A chair had been reserved for her at the end of the head table so that she could arrive just as the show began. But I noticed she still wasn’t there.
Mrs. Tuttle, who played the organ in our church on Sundays, was there to play the piano for the style show, and Mrs. Coyne, who owned the Dew Drop Inn, would narrate. As each of us came out on the little stage, we would hand our card to Mrs. Coyne and she would read it, dramatically describing the details of our dresses.
We milled around nervously backstage while the first few girls went out. We kept peeking out the door to see how the l
adies were responding to the show and looking to see if Constance had arrived yet. Her chair was still empty.
Carla Mae was on next, in her pink dress with ruffles all over it. I had told her I thought it was a little too dippy with all those ruffles, but it was the kind of thing she liked. She walked nervously up and down the “runway” aisle and swooshed around a couple of times so everybody could see her ruffles as Mrs. Coyne read her card.
“Miss Carla Mae Carter in her original creation, ‘Pink Parfait,’” Mrs. Coyne read. “A lovely number to wear to a Hollywood premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre or for eating caviar and champagne at the Eiffel Tower. Yards and yards of fluffy ruffles in strawberry pink provide just the right feminine touch for today’s young lady … ‘Pink Parfait.’”
I thought that was a particularly icky description, and I thought I saw Mrs. Coyne trying to hide a smile as she read it.
Then Gloria came out in her dress. It was bright green plaid with white cuffs, white trim around the hem, white belt, white collar and a gigantic white bow at the chin. Unfortunately, Gloria had made the bow so enormous that she had to tilt her head back to keep from ruining the bow, and she had a little trouble seeing where she was going. As a result, she came leaning down the aisle as though she were descending a steep hill. Besides, she hated the whole idea of walking out in front of all those people, so she rushed up and down the aisle like the place was on fire, and she was off stage before Mrs. Coyne had a chance to finish reading her card. All the ladies laughed and applauded her anyway.
When Gloria came off, the four of us poked our heads out the door again to see if Constance had arrived. She hadn’t.
“What are we going to do if she doesn’t show?” asked Carla Mae.
“She’ll be here!” I said, trying to sound positive. “She’ll be here! Just don’t panic!”