Cakewalk

by Rita Mae Brown

“Is there a saint for freeloaders? That’s to whom I should address my heartfelt requests.” Fannie smiled wryly.

  Fairy turned to Louise and Julia. “Girls, if you can possibly marry a man light in the relative department, the marriage will not suffer. You’ll endure less strain.”

  “My God, the Creightons are the most fertile people in the Mid-Atlantic. Therein lies your true genius, Celeste. You avoided all this.” Fannie laughed.

  Fairy, smiling, reminded them, “She does have three surviving siblings, two nephews, and a third niece or nephew on the way.”

  “Fortunately, we don’t live close, and Margaret”—Celeste named Stirling’s wife—“can’t stand me. It’s mutual.”

  “Isn’t that Olivia Goldoni a prize?” Fannie regretted this the minute it flew out of her mouth and hastily amended it for the young people. “Thinking of Ramelle’s child made me think of that beautiful voice at the ceremony.”

  Juts, Louise, Ev, and Orrie took that at face value. It wouldn’t have occurred to them even to think that someone as old as Stirling might have a romantic life.

  Fannie and Fairy kissed Juts on the cheek, promising to come back later in the week to see the figures she’d made with her classmates.

  As they walked down the steps and out to the graceful gate, Fannie Jump’s car awaited them.

  “Fairy, dear, I’ll drop you home.”

  They settled in the rear of the cavernous vehicle, her driver at the wheel.

  “I told Mr. Thatcher”—as Fairy called her husband—“I’m going to learn how to drive.”

  “Really?” Fannie registered surprise.

  “I want to come and go as I please. Mr. Thatcher swears an automobile is too much for a woman to hold on the road. He tells me they are hard to steer. Well, perhaps, but I can hold a twelve-hundred-pound Thoroughbred in the hunt field. I am going to do it.”

  “That’s so thrilling.” Fannie looked out the window as beautiful pre-Revolutionary then post-Revolutionary homes glided by. “I don’t know if we’ll ever hunt again. What a terrible winter.”

  “Has been.”

  They rode in silence then Fannie Jump, burrowing down in a fur throw, voice low, said, “Celeste is lonely. She’s always been social and a charming hostess, but now she likes people in the house. My first clue was when she allowed the kids to use her garage.”

  “They were unusual circumstances.”

  “Fairy, I would have paid good money to see Juts smash that glue pot onto Dimps Jr.’s bosom. Those two girls are being groomed to be courtesans, I tell you.”

  “It does give me pause.” Fairy turned to her old classmate. “What else can they hope for? They aren’t well-born, I mean, the Rhodes are respectable enough but neither of those girls is going to land a rich young man. At least I don’t think so. For one thing, where will they meet them? They aren’t going to be presented to society.”

  “Big Dimps will find those demimonde places. Trust me, Fairy, she is relentless.”

  “All she’s doing is making up for her own discomforts. You see that so much with parents, do you not?”

  “You do, and I hope I’m not one of them.”

  “You raised your boys with benign neglect.” Fairy smiled.

  Ignoring this, Fannie asked, “Now really, truly honestly, are you going to learn to drive?”

  “I am. You will be my first passenger.”

  Fannie Jump wondered if that was a good idea. Nonetheless she returned to her topic. “I thought I would take Celeste into Baltimore with me. The symphony is playing a Russian-themed night. Why I don’t know. There is no more Russia. Baltimore has some treasures. Philadelphia is too far away and Washington is dead, just dead. The real reason our government is there is that there’s little temptation.”

  “I expect there’s enough without the arts.” Fairy smiled. “Thinking on Celeste, she says she receives a letter almost every day from Ramelle and she writes one as well. The baby is due early May. Actually, I think Celeste is doing well.”

  “But not well enough. She likes sports. I was thinking about getting a few tickets for the Orioles. The season’s not far off, she likes baseball.”

  “You can try it.”

  “And those boys need jobs. They make so little that if she becomes enthused perhaps she can twist Stirling’s arm to find work for them in his various endeavors.”

  Fairy turned to smile at Fannie Jump. “There, it’s settled then.”

  —

  What wasn’t settled was Juts’s announcement as she and Louise were clearing the table.

  “Now that I’m fifteen, I’m going to quit school.”

  “You can’t do that.” Louise placed the dessert plates in the sink of hot water.

  “Yes I can.”

  “A high school diploma helps you get better jobs.” Louise pushed open the kitchen door, which swung behind her as she went out to find Paul in the library.

  “Reading?”

  He put the book down. “I’ve never seen such beautiful books. The bindings, the colors, the gold stamping or silver. It must be a fortune in books.”

  “It is.” Louise took his arm. “Come on, let me show you what they’re making for the dance.” As she propelled Paul toward the side door and out onto the arcade, she said to Juts, “Don’t say anything to Momma. Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “We have to prepare her.”

  Juts glowed. “Wheezie, that means you agree.”

  “Maybe. You need to finish out the year.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “A tenth-grade education is better than a ninth-grade and really, Juts, you have to finish out the year to get even with Dimps.”

  “Is there any way to hide them?” Juts, neck craned upward, watched as Louis Negroponti shimmied along the heavy rafters, chain in hand.

  Richard Barshinger approached him on the rafter from the opposite end.

  Ev walked to the side of the cafeteria.

  “Ev, what are you doing over there?” Juts asked.

  “You go to the opposite side. Louie and Rick have to fix the chains, then backtrack and drop the ends to us.”

  “Ev, we can’t do that. People will see. The dance isn’t for eleven days,” Juts replied.

  “Do like I tell you,” Ev commanded. “I’ll explain later.”

  Still looking upward, Juts watched the two boys fix the chains with U-bolts. They then shimmied backward, repeating the U-bolt procedure every ten yards.

  Slowly Louis fed out the chain while Richard did the same thing for Juts. Once the chains were in the girls’ hands, they held them still against the wall.

  “What do you think?” Ev asked.

  “It will work. Okay, let go. I’ll pull it up and fix it here.”

  “Why not just fix up the pulleys now?” Richard asked.

  Louis, busy wrapping dark baling twine around the chain, which he carefully flattened out, called over, “Because a pulley is easier to see than this baling twine. Come on, Richard, think. Use your baling twine. We don’t want anyone to see this.”

  “Okay, okay.” Richard pulled the dark twine out of his pocket and imitated Louis’s procedure.

  This task completed, the girls held the respective ladders as the boys climbed down on each side of the cafeteria.

  “You can see the twine but you have to look for it,” Juts declared. “Who’s going to look for it?”

  Louis nodded. “That’s why we can’t put the pulleys up until the night before the dance. All we need is for someone to open their big mouth and some teacher will butt in.”

  “Yeah,” Richard agreed.

  Twilight deepened. The four, working after hours, shut off the lights, and pulled on their winter coats, for it was still cold outside. Carefully closing the door, they walked down the hallway and let themselves out of the old, pretty building.

  “We’ll walk you home,” offered Louis.

  “Sure.” Richard chimed in, mad that he hadn’t thought of it first. After
all, Ev was to be his dance date.

  They came up Frederick Road, reached the square, turned left, then reached Emmitsburg Pike and turned down that tree-lined expanse.

  A truck rumbled by, gold lettering on black sides, Van Dusen Hauling. Yashew Gregorivitch waved to them from the driver’s seat. They waved back. Edgar Wilcox rode with him. He worked in his father’s bakery but, like Yashew, was hoping to make extra money. He made every effort to become strong, since he had only one arm.

  “I thought Yashew got a job at the Red Bird Silk Mill,” Richard remarked.

  “He did. He works two jobs now.” Louis liked Yashew, a friend of his older brother’s. “He said he’s got to make a lot of money. His mom can’t work anymore.”

  The truck stopped behind them at Christ Lutheran Church, turning down into the narrow alleyway. They heard the engine cut off.

  “What are you all doing out late?” asked Louise, with Paul, when they came upon the high school group.

  “Waiting for you,” Juts flippantly said.

  “Well, here I am.” Louise, too, noticed the new truck at the church.

  The six young people turned back to look as they could hear the truck doors open.

  Yashew, Edgar, and Rob McGrail unloaded barrels which they rolled to a side-door cellar. When they reached the side door, they put a barrel on a ramp and rolled it down. Someone was down there because the barrel stopped at the bottom.

  Wheezie, hearing the thud, asked, “What are you all doing? Rob, you’re a Catholic.”

  “I’m working. Wheezie, we’ve got a lot of calls to make tonight. The trucking business is picking up. We haul lumber, bricks, even Rife’s canned food if he gets behind. Mr. Van Dusen was smart to buy four new trucks.”

  “What’s in the barrels?” Juts innocently asked.

  “Stored potatoes,” Yashew quickly answered. “Now that winter’s almost over, everybody’s run out of potatoes, red beets, turnips, you name it. Nobody put up enough. Nobody thought winter would be this long or hard.”

  Edgar smiled shyly. He liked Juts, Louise, and Ev. He felt no girl would look at him now.

  Paul, getting the picture, nodded to the workmen, turned, and herded the group back toward Emmitsburg Pike.

  Juts, over her shoulder, called out, “Who’s in the cellar?”

  A deep voice, sounding like that of the sexton, Herschel White, boomed, “The Archangel Michael. You kids go home!”

  Back out on the pike, going first to Ev’s house, Paul walked on the outside of Louise, which she appreciated.

  Richard opened the gate for Ev. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Hey, Juts, how are we going to get all the stuff to the cafeteria?” Louis asked as they left Ev.

  “How much do you have?” Paul inquired.

  “We can show you.” Juts, as they neared Celeste’s, led them to the garage.

  She opened the door to reveal painted figures leaning against the wall. Most were three-dimensional papier-mâché stretched over wire. Others, like the fork and the spoon, were made of wood, with braces to keep them upright. The cat and the fiddle remained unpainted. The little dog, however, had been painted brindle, a hard job.

  “That’s huge.” Paul pointed to the black-and-white cow.

  “The cow jumped over the moon.” Louis recited part of the poem. “I’m afraid we’ll bang this stuff up moving it all and we won’t have time to repaint.”

  “Yashew’s truck would do the job.” Rick wished he had a better answer.

  Louise turned to the man who was becoming her steady fellow. “Pearlie, you’re thinking about something.”

  He smiled. “Give me a couple of days. You want the figures protected and if it turns out to rain when you move them, that’s a bigger problem than a scratch or a dent.”

  “Darn, I hadn’t thought of that.” Richard shoved his hands in his coat pockets.

  “And the other thing is, once we hang the cow over the moon, how do we get her to jump over it?” Louis went on to explain to Louise and Paul how they intended to use pulleys to hoist the cow over the moon.

  “Yeah, that is a problem,” Paul agreed. “Let me think about that, too. Might be something as simple as you have two people on the floor who jump it over, you know, with long sticks controlling or something.”

  Francis opened the front door. “Are you kids going to work now?”

  “No. I wanted to show Louise and Paul how much we’ve done,” Juts replied.

  “Hells bells, you kids could put these things in the Mummers’ Day parade.” Francis whistled, citing the huge annual parade in Philadelphia.

  “Well, I have a date.” Louis smiled. “Elizabeth Chalmers.”

  “The senior? You got a date with a senior?” Rick blurted out. “And she’s pretty too.”

  “She’s nice. Most all the girls in our class are taken, and Dimps Jr. turned me down flat. She’s a real snot. Anyway, Elizabeth came with her father after school to the garage. Old man’s Olds broke down again and while they were talking I asked her. She’s kind of shy. She said she watched all my games and she could hear the crunch when I hit someone or someone hit me.” Louis related this with some pride. “So I asked her to the St. Patrick’s Day dance and I promised she wouldn’t have to hear a crunch. I didn’t think she’d say yes but she did.”

  “Wow, an older woman.” Rick looked at Louis with new eyes.

  “Ah, what’s two years, especially when you’re as big as I am? People come in the garage and they think I work there, you know?”

  Juts complimented him. “She has good sense. Don’t forget to get her a corsage, Louie.”

  “Mom’s gonna help me.” Louis turned to Rick. “What are you getting Ev?”

  “Mom said shamrocks and roses, white roses, and she said I had to wear shamrocks in my jacket.”

  “Hey, that’s a good idea.” Louis smiled.

  As the two boys left, Juts opened the side door into the house where Cora was finishing up.

  “You’re late.”

  “I am, Momma. Lots to do, plus I had to make up the days’ work I missed.”

  “Mmm, where’s Louise?”

  “Outside, making eyes at Pearlie.”

  Celeste had walked into the kitchen just as Juts said “making eyes.”

  “This sounds promising.”

  “Oh, Miss Chalfonte, she perks right up every time she sees him, she hangs on every word. She’s worse than, I don’t know, she’s worse than Genevieve and Dancedelot.”

  “Lancelot, dear,” Celeste said with a smile.

  “Right.” Juts had strained to come up with two famous lovers.

  Just then Louise, looking impossibly happy, entered the kitchen from the side door.

  “You kissed him! I know you did.” Juts pounced on Louise.

  Affecting a superior air, the older sister huffed, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Ha!” Juts sounded victorious, although why, no one knew.

  “Girls, let’s go home. Celeste doesn’t need your foolishness and neither do I.”

  Emboldened and wound up, never a good thing, Juts then asked Celeste, “Did you ever make eyes at the boys?”

  Cora was aghast. “Juts, what’s gotten into you? You apologize right now, you little hoyden.”

  Laughing, Celeste leaned down toward Juts. “No. I did not make eyes at the boys. They made eyes at me.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are you satisfied?” Cora looked at Juts, then at Celeste.

  “Well, how am I supposed to learn? I know what I’m supposed not to do but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. The boys like me but I don’t want to kiss anyone.”

  “Maybe they don’t want to kiss you,” Louise shot back.

  Cora stepped toward Louise. “That’s enough.”

  “But Mother, all she does is make fun of me and she even spies on me if Pearlie and I sit by the fire at home. She’s like a tick.”

  “I hate you.” Juts doubled her fist.

/>   Celeste, tall, wonderfully fit, stepped between the sisters. “Let’s go sit by the fire in the library for a moment, shall we?”

  As they had never been asked like grown-ups to sit by the fire with Celeste in her favorite room, both immediately shut up, meekly following the great beauty into a room that glowed. Cora turned back to the kitchen to take off her apron, get her coat. She moved slowly to give them more time.

  “Louise, sit here. Juts, there.” Celeste stood between them, fire behind her. “You two are like banty roosters. That’s natural among sisters and brothers, but Juts, Wheezie is a young lady now, of marriageable age. Things change. Your sister has been wise in her behavior. Some women are fatally attracted to bad men.”

  “Like our father?” Juts blurted out.

  “Well, yes. Juts, you are still a little young to understand feelings toward boys and men. That changes as you age. You don’t have them yet but Wheezie does. Please don’t ruin it for her.”

  Juts had never thought of these things. She wasn’t feeling guilty, but she was ill at ease.

  “Miss Chalfonte, did you feel like that? When you were Louise’s age?”

  “Sometimes. I thought the whole thing quite confusing. When I was nineteen, it was 1896, and I was shipped off to England for polishing, you might say. Mother truly wanted me to marry a duke or an earl. Since I could ride, and ride well, I even rode in the hunt field with the empress of Austria, who was most kind to me. I did have suitors. All those titled boys.”

  Louise, wide eyes, breathed, “A duke?”

  “A smattering. Most were poor as church mice and they craved my American money. A few young men, though, I believe truly liked me.”

  “But you didn’t like them?” Juts was now as breathless as her sister.

  “One. I liked one fellow very much. He had no title. He was a jockey for the duke of Portsmouth. No hope for either of us really but he kissed me once, and I will remember that kiss for the rest of my life.”

  The two, spellbound, at that moment could see the nineteen-year-old Celeste.

  Louise, tears in her eyes, said, “You have a broken heart.”

  Celeste smiled, put her hand on Louise’s shoulder. “For a time. I deeply disappointed my mother, but I felt like a heifer at auction. I couldn’t do it and I discovered the longer I was in England, the more American I felt. I wanted to come home and I did. Now, there, you know everything.”