Cakewalk

by Rita Mae Brown

“They’ll come if Maude and her friends tell Dimps that this is a good way to make up for the fight. And”—she pointed at Maude and the little group—“tell Dimps she was right, but also she has to do this for her class, the Class of 1922, and for Mrs. Stiles.”

  The girls conferred for a moment, then Maude asked, “What’s Mrs. Stiles got to do with it?”

  “She’s our class sponsor.” Dick nearly rolled his eyes, he couldn’t believe they were that stupid.

  Ev then promised, “I’ll keep Juts in line, but you have to help me.” She wagged her finger at Dick.

  “No one can keep Juts in line.” He smiled because that’s why he liked her.

  “Make sure she dances every dance and”—Ev swung round to Louis Negroponti, the football center—“you ask Dimps to the dance.”

  Louis was an all-round athlete, football, baseball, track and field when possible.

  “Me? She doesn’t even like me.” The huge, sweet fellow threw up his hands.

  “She’ll like you well enough.” Betty Wilcox smirked. “She doesn’t have a date.”

  “That’s not true.” Maude stepped toward Betty. “Percy Morris asked her.”

  “Why didn’t she say yes? Percy’s a good guy,” Richard said.

  Maude, turning her head up slightly, declared, “She’s not going to a dance with a boy who’s shorter than she is.”

  “Well, there!” Ev said triumphantly. “Louie will make her look like a peanut!”

  Louis grinned sheepishly.

  The sound of steps coming down the hall shut them up. Everyone went back to their tasks as Mrs. Stiles opened the door, shut it firmly, and scanned her students. They ignored her. She walked through the room, checking each piece being made or painted, then she hoisted herself up on a long table, her legs dangling. Mrs. Stiles, young herself, was a popular teacher.

  “Class. There’s so much to be done before the dance. We’ve lost Juts for a few days. The principal has sent her and Dimps Jr. home. In disgrace, I might add. Two less pair of hands when we most need them.”

  Dick, shoes back on, addressed his teacher. “Can they work from home?”

  Mrs. Stiles’s eyebrows shot up. “How do you propose that?”

  “Like you said, Mrs. Stiles, we need them. We need Juts to do the fork and spoon and we need Dimps to sell tickets. A couple of us can take the fork and spoon to Juts and the girls. And they”—he indicated Dimps Jr.’s group—“can take rolls of tickets to Dimps at home, and she can sell tickets after school door-to-door.”

  Mrs. Stiles abruptly stopped swinging her legs. “Dick, that just might work.” She clapped her hands. “All right then. You have my permission.”

  “What about Mr. Thigpen?” Richard named the principal, a strict person.

  “Mr. Thigpen will be fine. In fact, when you all come back to school on Monday, when you see him, do thank him for his latitude.” Mrs. Stiles was certain he’d go along with it, for, if nothing else, poor old Mr. Thigpen couldn’t take his eyes off Mrs. Stiles.

  After school, Maude and the girls raced to Dimps Jr.’s house, where Big Dimps, on her day off, was ironing in the kitchen. They knocked on the door.

  “Junior, go see who that is,” the harried mother called out.

  Opening the door, the tenth grader smiled, then gave a little nod of the head to signify where her mother was. “Mom, it’s the gang.”

  “Ask them in. It’s cold out there.”

  Maude was first through the door and hurried back to the kitchen. “Thank you, Mrs. Rhodes. We won’t be long and we’re here to tell you that this was all Juts’s fault.”

  Mother knew her daughter well but pretended to believe it. “I’m glad to hear that.”

  Returning to the front door, Maude informed Dimps Jr. that Mrs. Stiles had agreed to her selling tickets after school, house to house.

  “Here.” She handed Dimps Jr. two big rolls of tickets.

  Staring at this formidable task, the somewhat chastened girl said, “How can I sell all these?”

  “We’ll all help you. We’ll meet after school, and here’s the best part,” Maude breathlessly said. “We can sell to the kids at North Runnymede High. They don’t have a St. Patrick’s Day dance.”

  “All right.” Dimps Jr. began to divide up the tickets while the others thought about how to divide up Runnymede.

  —

  The large brass lion’s head knocker thudded against the door.

  Celeste had laid out fabrics that Louise brought her. The dark long table provided a contrasting backdrop for the fabrics.

  Back in the kitchen, scolding Juts, Cora didn’t hear it. Celeste, having been party to the drama when Juts came to the house early, opened her own front door.

  A surprised Ev, Dick, Betty, and Richard looked up at her. She looked at the young people carrying the fork and the spoon.

  “And the little dog laughed to see such a sight. Oh, come on in. I’ve heard all about it, but not the fork and the spoon.”

  “We’re sorry to bother you, Mrs. Chalfonte, but we knew Juts would be here.”

  “Indeed she is, with a black cloud hanging over her head. You all go sit in the library and I’ll bring Juts out to you.” Then she lowered her voice. “You know, Sunday is her fifteenth birthday and her mother is furious. Perhaps you can alleviate some of Cora’s distress and of course, Juts’s too.”

  Within moments, Juts and her mother traipsed into the library, where the fork and spoon were being held by Dick and Richard.

  “Oh, Mrs. Hunsenmeir, this is all Dimps Jr.’s fault. She’s jealous about Juts and she goes out of her way to make her cross. Really, Dimps started it,” Dick said.

  The others all murmured assent. Celeste asked the kids, “Would anyone like a refreshment?”

  “No, ma’am, but thank you,” Richard replied.

  Celeste sat down by the fireplace. “You know, that fork and spoon are well made. All you need is some silver paint.”

  “Mrs. Stiles said we could give them to Juts to take home because they are her special project. And we need her to make the little dog and the cow. She’s gotten the rest done. She drew out all the patterns. No one is as good as she is, and this dance makes money for our class.”

  Celeste had gone to private schools and didn’t know much about the public variety. “And what do you do with your profits?”

  “We save them and then in our senior year we decide what to do with them. The Class of 1920 is giving the school a new scoreboard. Really big.” Betty was impressed.

  “And we, the Class of 1922, want to do even better.” Dick smiled.

  Celeste looked at them, listened, and realized this was important to them. Though she evidenced no desire to bear a child, she liked young people, and she particularly liked these young people.

  “I’m sure you will.” Celeste turned to Cora. “What do you say?”

  “Momma, I promise I won’t shove glue in her face again.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll do worse.” Cora sighed deeply then examined the fork and the spoon. “How are you going to get these utensils up our hill and how are you going to build the other things you need?”

  “We’ll find a way.”

  Celeste smiled. “Leave them here. Francis has every tool since the building of the Pyramids. Put the fork and spoon into the garage and you all can work there after school if Cora permits Juts to participate.”

  “All right, but Juts Hunsenmeir, if you don’t behave yourself you will find yourself in more trouble than ever. No dances, no movies, no walks around the square even. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  Each young person thanked Celeste as they made their way through the side corridor to the garage, carrying the fork and spoon. Ev grabbed the spoon, Richard the fork, and they danced in a little circle, celebrating their good fortune.

  Watching them with Cora, Celeste laughed. “Do you remember those days?”

  “I do.” Cora smiled.

  “Let’s promise t
o never stop dancing.” Celeste held up Cora’s hand, twirled her around the hall.

  Celeste dropped her hand, both of them laughing. “You know, Cora, it’s your friends who get you through life.”

  Sitting on a red cushioned pew in Christ Lutheran Church next to her mother, Juts listened to Pastor Wade drone on from the pulpit. Every Sunday, the three Hunsenmeirs trooped down the hill, walking in good weather on Emmitsburg Pike, where the Lutheran Church reposed perhaps two hundred yards behind the South Runnymede City Hall on the corner of the square. Each Sunday, Louise would kiss her mother and continue around the square to the northeast corner, where the more elaborate St. Rose of Lima Catholic church was located.

  Juts, not inclined toward dogma, thought her sister silly to make such a show out of leaving them for the Catholic faith. While Juts enjoyed the service, the church calendar, and its reflection in the colors of the surplices and even the choir robes, she loved the rumble of the majestic and celebrated organ originally shipped from Hamburg in the early nineteenth century and considered church a necessary ritual. Somewhere, an archangel sat at a table with a clipboard checking the times you attended church, paying special attention to additional services in Lent. For Louise, dogma, the path to heaven, assumed prime importance.

  The two sisters quarreled over it during the four years that Louise attended Immaculata Academy. As Juts was nine when Louise began, her arguments revolved around Louise’s turning into a killjoy. Dogma had nothing to do with it. Now, at the ripe age of just fifteen, it being her birthday, she did grasp some of the differences between Catholic and Lutheran teachings. Still, she couldn’t understand why it mattered.

  During one of her fulminations concerning Carlotta’s influence on Louise, Celeste encouraged Louise to become an Episcopalian, which Celeste called a natural compromise.

  Juts would have been as happy in a Shinto temple. The High Georgian architecture of Christ Lutheran made her feel party to a world of beauty, and a Shinto shrine, with its purity, would have produced a similar effect. Once, years ago, Cora visited a much older aunt, who lived in a Shaker village. This too had impressed Juts.

  Louise, also, reveled in the colors, the incense, the candles flickering everywhere, the statuary, most especially of the Blessed Virgin Mother, arms lowered but outstretched in blessing. The statue of Jesus, the sacred heart poses, reminded her of the necessity of sacrifice. Granted, best the sacrifice be given by others but Jesus did provide the ultimate example.

  And so, the morning of March 7, birthday or not, began as all Sunday mornings for the Hunsenmeirs. You paraded to church. The Grumbachers, Bleichroders, Epsteins, and others attended services in the temple Saturday night, but for all the others, Sunday it was. The Baptist churches tended to be off the square, some out on little country roads. The Methodist church sat near the temple over on Baltimore Street.

  As Orrie was Louise’s best friend, she prayed for her daily. Orrie stayed firm in the Methodist faith. The two chose not to discuss religion.

  The Presbyterian church, white-painted brick, was two blocks off the square on Hanover Road.

  But in the main, the churches with social and political pull lined the square: Episcopal, Lutheran, and Catholic. Founded by Catholics, Maryland ensured that this faith had high status, certainly more so than in the other original thirteen colonies. Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries left its bloody stain throughout the centuries. St. Rose would have been built on the Maryland side but for an unusually devout Pennsylvanian, an Italian officer who had fought for King George. After being captured by the Yanks, he chose to stay when the war was over, and he prospered. He bought the land on the Pennsylvania side. Over time, other places of worship were added.

  These three buildings reflected the aesthetics of the place as well as the time in which they were constructed. Christ Lutheran was redbrick with white pediments, white pillars with clean Doric columns, and huge, long, hand-blown-glass windows, a real testament to the wealth of the parishioners, as it was built shortly after the Revolutionary War. So was St. Rose of Lima, but there the embroidered, gilded, lush Italian influence overwhelmed the senses. St. Paul’s, the Episcopal Church next to St. Rose, provided a contrast. Its imposing edifice was constructed of light gray stone, two enormous brass doors, scenes from the Bible on them, and so many stained-glass windows that when the sun shone through in one direction, the colors were cast onto the snow through the windows on the other side of the church. The interiors reflected the temperament and times, as well.

  Juts, affected by the silent pull of architecture and interiors, as is everyone, dutifully found the hymn, sharing the book with her mother.

  Would this service never end? It was her birthday, after all. Surely Jesus didn’t mean for services to be so long and so dull.

  Finally, with the last hymn still echoing, Pastor Wade proceeded down the wide right aisle to the vestibule doors, Bible in hand. The choir procession followed and then the pews emptied out in orderly fashion, the people closest to the pulpit and the lectern first—Lutherans were nothing if not organized.

  As Pastor Wade took Juts’s hand, he smiled. “Happy birthday, Juts.”

  “Thank you, Pastor Wade, and thank you for your sermon.” Juts was learning the ways of the world. Just because Pastor Wade’s sermon bored her didn’t mean she couldn’t thank him. As her mother told her, any performance takes a lot of work.

  He beamed up at Cora as he next took her hand.

  Emerging onto the square, where the snows were packed down, shining like hard vanilla sauce, Louise came toward them, now accompanied by Paul.

  “She likes him,” Juts said, without much intonation.

  “She does.” Cora squeezed Juts’s gloved hand. “He treats her right.”

  “But Momma, you told us men always treat you right in the beginning.”

  “Yes, most do. Sometimes when you’re young you aren’t as good a judge of character as later, but your sister has always had a way with people. Think of all the boys who’ve tried to court her. This fellow is different.”

  “I want you to know, Momma, I am not getting married.”

  “Yes, dear.” Cora didn’t even bother to ponder why that popped up. She remembered saying the same thing in the 1880s.

  —

  Celeste descended down the long, wide steps of St. Paul’s, followed by her two closest friends and their spouses. Every trace of snow and ice had been removed, ensuring a safe passage. The elderly and infirm always had someone to help.

  The brisk air caused the three friends to pull their scarves tighter.

  “Creighton, dear, I will be home by one,” said Fannie to her husband. “But I did promise to go over to Celeste’s for Juts’s birthday and to see the transformation of the garage.”

  He’d already heard all about the St. Patrick’s Day plans.

  Fairy Thatcher also bade her husband adieu, with instructions concerning what to tell the cook.

  Arm in arm, the three watched the two Rife brothers—Julius and Pole—climb into their father’s 1914 Gräf und Stift.

  “I would have thought they’d have sold the car. Cars are much improved now,” Celeste remarked.

  “Slow. They’re taking everything slowly,” Fairy remarked. “And the investigation into Brutus’s demise is slow.”

  “Slow, as in slowly the Ice Age ended,” Fannie remarked with a smile. “No one really cares, including Brutus’s wife or three sisters. Older than dirt, those three. I don’t even think his sons care their daddy’s dead. You know Julius is twenty-one and Pole not far behind. But Julius will take over the businesses. I heard he walked into the canning factory the day after his father died, sat at the desk, and began giving orders.”

  “Products of Cassius’s first marriage.” Fairy mentioned Brutus’s father. “Always makes a mess, and Brutus’s sisters aren’t going to challenge the sons. They can’t make money. They only know how to spend it.”

  “Which is how they earned the title La Squandra
Sisters.”

  Celeste shortened her stride, as Fannie’s and Fairy’s legs weren’t as long. “Whatever is done is done. We’re all the better off for it.”

  “Quite,” Fairy said as they reached Christ Church. “Remarkable.”

  “Hmm.” Fairy nodded as the three watched Patience Horney being led down the marble stairs, carefully guided toward the direction of her mother’s house.

  Once at Celeste’s, Cora set the table with both daughters’ help. Ev Most, Orrie, and Paul also assisted. A large birthday cake was brought out from the kitchen.

  “Devil’s food!” Juts exclaimed, her favorite.

  Fifteen candles circled the outside, which she quickly blew out.

  As they accepted their plates, Fannie pleaded, “Not so big, Cora, remember I must go home to Sunday dinner.”

  “Me, too,” Fairy added, but she could have devoured the whole cake, she was so thin.

  A tray with wrapped gifts awaited Juts.

  Louise gave her a pale pink sweater. “Spring has to come, Juts.”

  “It’s beautiful,” her sister gushed.

  Ev gave her a belt, Orrie a small bottle of perfume. Paul, with Louise’s guidance, had gotten Juts a box of good pencils, a pencil trimmer, and a tablet. Celeste gave her a lovely pair of pearl earrings.

  “Mrs. Chalfonte, they glow!” Juts allowed her friends to inspect the box.

  Celeste smiled. “You’re old enough for pearls now.”

  Fannie gave her a box of embroidered handkerchiefs, while Fairy provided a thin spring scarf in pale green that would pair nicely with the sweater.

  Obviously, everyone had conferred.

  Fannie listened as the clock struck twelve thirty. “This is more fun than Sunday dinner. I hate to leave.”

  “Me, too,” Fairy agreed.

  “You create glorious Sunday dinners,” Celeste added. “Both of you.”

  “Yes, well, every shirttail cousin of my esteemed husband appears. Every Sunday, it’s the miracle of the loaves and fishes.” Fannie stood up, shoulders squared.

  Fairy giggled. “Well, it’s a good thing you attend services every Sunday. Prayer will help.”