by Lynn Austin
Mrs. Garner wore a tense smile as she introduced Bebe to the chattering ladies. Bebe hated being on display, scrutinized by a roomful of strangers. Some of the guests boldly questioned her about her age, others commented rudely on how short and girl-like she was. Bebe wished she could retaliate by pointing out how stout and wrinkled they were or by asking their age in return. But according to the etiquette books, she was supposed to answer their questions politely, no matter how inconsiderate they were, and above all to smile.
As the afternoon wore on, Bebe thought she was doing well until one of the younger women approached and asked her a question she hadn’t expected. “Which clubs will you belong to, Beatrice?”
“I-I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Which women’s organizations do you plan to participate in? Which causes have you supported?”
Bebe stuttered to form a reply. “W-well . . . back home, my mother and I worked with the Anti-Slavery Society.”
The woman frowned and waved her hand in dismissal. “That’s all in the past. The war is over. The slaves are free.”
“Yes, but there is still so much work to do. One of our guest speakers, Lucretia Mott, pointed out that since women proved their equality during the war by running their husbands’ farms and businesses, we should be allowed the same civil rights as men, and—”
“Excuse me? You’re not talking about woman suffrage, are you?” The room grew unusually still. Bebe felt everyone’s attention shift to her. She had no idea what the correct response was, so she told the truth.
“Well . . . Mrs. Mott explained that it was compassionate, educated women like ourselves who have worked hard to abolish slavery. And now all of the former male slaves are being granted civil rights, even though many are illiterate, while literate women are still being denied those rights.”
For a long moment, no one seemed to breathe. The room felt as hot as the hayloft on an August afternoon. Bebe had been certain that this gathering of women would agree with Lucretia Mott’s conclusions. Instead, they appeared shocked.
Finally, the woman who had asked Bebe the question mumbled, “I see. Would you excuse me, please?” She scurried away as if Bebe had head lice. Within minutes, everyone seemed to be saying good-bye and leaving. Bebe had no way of knowing if it was because of what she’d said or if afternoon teas always ended this abruptly. She soon found out.
“How could you!” Mrs. Garner roared the moment they were alone. “Didn’t you read the books I gave you?”
“Y-yes. All four of them.”
“Then why did you decide to ignore all of the warnings about never discussing politics?”
“I . . . I . . . she asked me about the clubs I belonged to, and—”
“And you told her you supported woman suffrage? Of all the outrageous things!”
“I didn’t mean . . . I only went to one anti-slavery meeting back home and—”
“You’ve not only embarrassed me in my own home, you’ve also ruined your chances of being invited to any of their homes! No one wants to entertain a woman with such radical views.”
“But don’t women deserve the same rights as—?”
“Certainly not! The public sphere of labor and politics is a man’s domain. Ours is the more exalted sphere of home and family. Motherhood is a woman’s highest goal. Our success can be seen in the character of our children and in the respite we provide for our husbands at home.”
“But—”
“Don’t you ever mention woman suffrage in my house or in my presence again! Do you understand?”
Bebe wanted to run down the hill and jump into the wide, cold river that flowed through Roseton. She was still in her room, crying, when Horatio returned home from work. He went to her immediately and folded her in his arms. “Oh, my poor Beatrice. Is it safe to assume that the afternoon didn’t go very well?”
“It was awful,” she whimpered. “I’m so sorry, Horatio. I know how important this event was to your mother, and I embarrassed her, and . . . and I let you down.”
“Beatrice, I love you. Nothing will ever change that. I don’t care what you said or what happened today. It isn’t important to me.”
“But your mother—”
“You don’t have to be part of Mother’s social circle if you don’t want to be,” he said gently.
“That’s good. Because after today, I doubt if she’ll ever allow me to be seen with her in public again.”
“I’ll smooth things over with her. Now, please don’t cry anymore. It breaks my heart to see you so upset.”
She drew a breath and tried to pull herself together, but her tears wouldn’t stop falling. “But what will I do all day, Horatio? The house is cleaned for us, all of our meals are prepared, our clothes are all sewn and laundered and pressed. The chores that I used to do back home are all done for me, and I have nothing to do. Your mother doesn’t like me and never talks to me. You told me I mustn’t talk to the servants, and I don’t have any friends . . .”
He smoothed her hair off her face. “You’ll make new friends soon. The first day of any new venture is always the most difficult one. I’m certain that when you try again, you’ll find someone in Mother’s crowd or among their daughters who will be a friend to you.”
Bebe wanted to believe him but couldn’t. She longed to be honest with him, to tell him that she really wasn’t graceful and refined, to confess that she had been playacting ever since the day they’d met. But the only certainty in her life right now was that she loved him—more and more each day, if that was possible. And she would do anything in the world for him. She dried her eyes with her new linen handkerchief and smiled up at him.
“Forgive me for complaining, Horatio. I’m so sorry. I’ll do better the next time. I promise.”
CHAPTER
12
When Tommy O’Reilly arrested me last night, he’d had the audacity to ask if I was married. I stuck out my chin, looked him square in the eye, and said, “No, I am not, Tommy—are you?”
He took a step backward, holding up his hands as if I might take a swing at him. It wouldn’t have been the first time. “I meant no offense, Harriet. I just thought that if you were, I could call your husband to—”
“To do what? Come and rescue me? Talk some sense into me? Take control of me?”
“Sorry I asked,” he said, shaking his head. He was careful to keep his hands in a defensive position. “And the answer is no, I’m not.”
“Not what?” I was too angry to keep track of the conversation.
“Not married. I’m single. Like you.” He smiled, and if I hadn’t known him as well as I did, I would have thought he was being flirtatious. But I was immune to men’s advances in general—and to Tommy’s in particular.
Grandma Bebe may not realize it, but she had played a huge part in forming my opinions of men and marriage. To be honest, I couldn’t see why I needed either one. She no longer had a husband and she fared just fine without one. She went wherever she pleased and did whatever she pleased, and I planned to do the same. I knew how to start an automobile, how to drive it down the road, and how to take care of it when it rattled to a halt. What did I need a husband for?
My parents’ marriage had also contributed to my opinions— but not in a positive way. Mind you, I never heard them arguing, and our house was, for the most part, a peaceful, happy place. But that was largely because my mother treated my father like a maharajah in his palace: “Yes, dear. No, dear. Whatever you say, dear.” On the odd occasion when my father became unreasonable she resorted to tears, which nearly always worked in her favor. I was much too proud to weep, so how could I have a marriage like theirs? I planned to navigate my own path through life, and I had no intention of handing the rudder over to anyone else.
My low regard for marriage had solidified into rock-solid aversion when my sister Alice became engaged. Where should I begin to describe that turn of events? After breaking hundreds of hearts, Alice finally made up her mind and settled o
n one beau. If her decision surprised me, imagine the astonishment of her innumerable spurned suitors. The fact that she’d made up her mind at all was shocking. My empty-headed sister had trouble deciding which hat to wear for a stroll down the block, let alone choosing something as momentous as a mate. Alice insisted on seeing the good in everyone, so she had been forced to rely on Mother’s skills at dissecting people and analyzing their pedigrees. It was the only way Alice ever could have narrowed her choice down to one.
I was thirteen that spring of 1912 when Alice got engaged. She was twenty. The lucky winner of Alice’s heart was a banker’s son named Gordon Shaw, grandson of one of Roseton’s founding fathers. I had absolutely no idea what Alice saw in him. Gordon was a bore. His favorite topics of conversations were himself and his bank full of money.
But before the marriage could occur I had to endure . . . The Wedding. When General Pershing and his troops set off for France in 1917, they didn’t go through nearly as much rigmarole as Mother and Alice did as they prepared for The Wedding. Digging the Panama Canal was simple in comparison. One afternoon, when they were trying to narrow down the guest list to slightly less than circus-like proportions, the hullabaloo became so unbearable that I fled to Grandma Bebe’s house for refuge. I found her seated at her desk, writing a speech for a temperance rally.
“May I move in with you until the wedding is over?” I begged. “Please?”
Grandma smiled and blotted the ink on the last line she’d penned. “Well, as much as I would love your company dear, your mother would never allow it. . . . But as long as you’re here, Harriet, maybe you can listen to my speech and tell me what you think of it. I’ll make us some tea, first.”
I would’ve rather had a bottle of sarsaparilla, but Grandma didn’t have any in her icebox. I sat down at her kitchen table while she put the kettle on to boil, savoring the peace and calm. I liked eating in Grandma’s kitchen. Our kitchen was the domain of Bess, our Negro cook, and Maggie our hired girl, and they didn’t like anyone venturing into their territory. Grandma didn’t have any servants and preferred sitting in her kitchen more than any other room.
“I’m never getting married,” I said with an elephant-sized sigh.
“Never is a very long time, Harriet. And marriage is what gives you a purpose in life—not to mention a family. Just think: If I hadn’t married Horatio, your mother never would have been born. And if your mother hadn’t married your father, you never would have been born.” She scooped tea from the canister into the pot while she talked, then set cups and saucers in front of us.
“If having babies is the only reason to get married,” I said, “then count me out for sure! The last thing I need is a drooling, squalling baby. And if Alice decides to have one, I’m moving in with you for good.”
“Most people get married for love, Harriet. . . . No, don’t make a face. I know you don’t understand it now, but someday some lucky man will come along, and when you fall in love with him it will be like plunging over Niagara Falls. You won’t know how you ever lived without him. That’s how I felt about Horatio.”
“I don’t think Alice ‘fell over the falls’ with Gordon Shaw. I think Mother steered her straight into him, like beaching a ship on a sandbar. I can’t figure out what Alice sees in him. Or what he sees in Alice, for that matter.”
“I hope that both of them are looking for the right qualities in each other. And I hope, for Alice’s sake, that there is more to Mr. Shaw than a handsome face and a wealthy father.”
“Well, there’s nothing more to Alice, I know that for sure. Aside from a pretty face and fluffy blond hair, she’s completely hopeless. She has trouble remembering how to uncork her smelling salts, and she needs them at least three times a day—that’s how often she swoons.”
“Now you’re exaggerating,” Grandma said with a smile.
“What do men see in women like Alice—and my mother? No offense, I know she’s your daughter, but Mother doesn’t do much of anything except look pretty and fuss over Father and go to club meetings.”
“I know. Poor Lucy,” Grandma said, shaking her head. The kettle reached a boil and she rose to pour the water over the tea leaves. “Lucy was overly influenced by Horatio’s mother, I’m sorry to say. I wasn’t home much of the time when she was little, so my mother-in-law made her into the woman she is today. Lucy acquired a taste for expensive things because Mrs. Garner kept buying her extravagant toys—imported dolls, a rocking horse, an enormous dollhouse. She even bought a miniature porcelain tea set so Lucy could learn the tea ritual from a very young age. And the last thing Grandma Garner did before she died was to make sure Lucy married well.”
“You mean to my father? He was a prize? I don’t believe it. He owns a department store, for goodness’ sake. He has a moon face and spectacles. His forehead gets higher and higher every year.
What in the world did Mother see in him?”
“He was a very nice looking, up-and-coming gentleman back in the early nineties, when they married. Not as handsome as my Horatio, but not every woman can be as fortunate as I was.”
I didn’t say so, but I had seen pictures of Horatio and I didn’t think he was handsome at all. He looked scrawny and pasty-faced to me.
“Horatio and I went to Niagara Falls on our honeymoon, and it’s a perfect metaphor of what love is like: powerful, beautiful, terrifying, overwhelming—and there’s no turning back once you fall over the edge.”
“But you’ve told me stories about how hard your marriage was, especially living with Horatio’s parents and trying to learn all those society rules. You made it sound horrible.”
“Did I? I didn’t mean to. Marriage can be difficult at times, I’ll grant you that. But being married to Horatio gave me a great deal of joy, as well.” She smiled, and even with silver streaks in her dark hair, I could see remnants of the lovely woman Grandma Bebe must have been. She poured tea into my cup and pushed the sugar bowl across the table to me. “Here. I know you like it sweet.”
“But you were pretty, Grandma. Mother and Alice are, too. You and my mirror have told me countless times that I’m plain. I look like Father’s side of the family. Even if I was interested in marriage, who would want to marry me?”
“Outward beauty can be a distraction for many men. Count it a blessing that you’re plain, Harriet. That way, you’ll know that a suitor is attracted to the real you, not the fancy wrappings. Believe it or not, I was very plain when Horatio met me. I was dressed in a simple calico gown with my braids coiled up on my head. I was a shy, small-town farm girl with no social graces at all. What he saw in me, I’ll never know.”
Grandma was getting more nostalgic about marriage by the moment. I needed to bring her back to the present. “I’m going to go to college when I finish school—and not some sissy female seminary, either. I want to go someplace substantial like Cornell or Oberlin. I want to be like you, Grandma, and do something important with my life. Didn’t you say that your work for the Temperance Union gave your life meaning?”
“Yes, but you can be married and still serve a cause. I did. Besides, I probably never would have joined the Union if I had remained single.”
“I don’t believe it.” Her insistence on the joy of marriage was starting to frustrate me. I blew into my cup to cool the tea and my temper, then said, “You need to explain yourself, Grandma.”
“It’s a long, sad story . . . are you sure you want to hear it?”
“We have plenty of time. I’m not going home until the wedding is over. And if Alice has a baby, I’m never going home.”
“Every marriage has its good times and bad, Harriet. Change is the only constant in life. . . .”
_ By the time Bebe and Horatio had been married for three years, she had perfected her ability to perform in society. She could pay visits to the wealthiest homes in town and make meaningless conversation for hours on end without committing a faux pas or a gaucherie. But even with flawless social skills, Bebe never achieved full accept
ance by Mrs. Garner and her friends. That came by birth, not by marriage. She would always be poor little Bebe Monroe, a dairy farmer’s daughter. Many of the young women who were Bebe’s age held a grudge against her for capturing Roseton’s most desirable bachelor. The older women never forgave her for denying them a huge society wedding—a major social event among the well-to-do. They would consider her a gold digger, an upstart, a newcomer in town, even if she resided there for fifty years.
Bebe may not have been allowed to mention woman suffrage, but she did find something more meaningful to do than attend tea parties and social events. Since the Garner men owned one of Roseton’s largest industries and employed hundreds of workers, it was the duty of the Garner women to be charitable to the poor workers’ families. Once every month, Bebe and Mrs. Garner would travel by carriage to The Flats, as the sorry side of town was called, accompanied by the driver and the family butler for protection, of course.
Before Bebe visited The Flats for the first time, she had never imagined that such poverty existed. Her family had always worked hard on their farm, and life had been primitive in many ways, but at least they’d always had plenty of food to eat. In The Flats, the ramshackle tenements and bungalows were bounded by the river on one side and the railroad tracks on the other. Sewage oozed down open gutters alongside the streets, and freight trains rumbled past day and night, rattling windows and foundations. There was no grass or trees, and the yards behind the buildings were so tiny and barren that the workers couldn’t even grow food or raise animals. It seemed like a miserable way to live. Yet in the eight-block area of The Flats, Bebe counted six saloons.
“Those saloons are the reason you must never venture into this part of town alone or at night,” Mrs. Garner warned.
On Bebe’s first trip to The Flats, they visited a tannery worker’s wife, who had recently given birth. “Her sixth or seventh child, I believe,” Mrs. Garner said with a sniff. Bebe wondered where everyone slept at night in that tiny, crowded apartment. The new mother barely spoke English, but she did know how to say “Thank you,” which she repeated over and over as she expressed gratitude for the meal they’d delivered—as if Bebe and Mrs. Garner had cooked it themselves. Bebe felt like a fraud.