The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

by Susan Wittig Albert

  She got up. “And while the cat is away, my dear, sweet Daffy, the mice—so to speak—will play. While Mr. Moseley is gone, I am in charge!” She bent over and swept up the cat with a fierce hug. “Isn’t it wonderful, Daf? Mr. Moseley trusts me enough to ask me to manage the office while he’s gone!”

  And with that, she skipped down the narrow stairs and into the kitchen, where she poured out a bowl of Daffy’s dry cat food and sat down to coffee and Post Toasties with fresh sliced strawberries from her own backyard. When she finished, she rinsed her dish and made her lunch: a piece of leftover fried chicken, an egg salad sandwich, and two raisin-oatmeal cookies, with two more for Verna. She and Verna planned to eat lunch together the way they always did, in Verna’s office if it was raining or on the courthouse lawn if it wasn’t.

  The kitchen of Lizzy’s bungalow was small, but there was room for a table and two red-painted chairs, a four-burner gas range, and a white GE Monitor refrigerator. The table was covered with a red-and-white-checked oilcloth. There was a red linoleum-topped counter along one wall, white-painted cupboards with china knobs, and over the sink, a wide window with ruffled dotted Swiss crisscross curtains. On the windowsill sat a red geranium in a red ceramic pot, and over the table hung a lamp with a red-fringed shade that Lizzy herself had painted with bright images of fruit and flowers. She loved her kitchen, and though it might be silly to say so, she absolutely adored her GE refrigerator. It was the one with the motor on top. It kept everything beautifully cold and even froze ice cubes! It was so wonderfully modern after the smelly, leaky, zinc-lined icebox in her mother’s kitchen across the street.

  All the rooms in Lizzy’s house were small. She had bought the old place, very cheaply, from Mr. Flagg’s estate two years before. She had spent several months and a fair amount of her savings having it remodeled and installing a telephone, electric wiring, plumbing, and a bathroom. She had also employed painters and paperhangers to refinish the woodwork and worn wooden floors and repaper the plastered walls to suit her taste. While all this was going on, she continued to live with her mother in the house just across the street. Until the work was finished and she was ready to move in, she kept her purchase of Mr. Flagg’s house a secret—intentionally, because her mother had a habit of telling her what to do.

  Mrs. Lacy, of course, was dismayed when she learned that her daughter was moving out. But that wasn’t the end of it. In fact, not long after Lizzy had settled into her new home, Mrs. Lacy announced that the bank was repossessing her house, in payment of a loan she had taken out in order to speculate on the stock market. She would be moving in with her daughter.

  It took a while to resolve the issue, but at the last moment, Lizzy managed to make a deal with Mr. Johnson at the Darling Savings and Trust. With money she’d been saving to buy a car, she made a down payment on her mother’s house, which she now owned. She helped her mother to get a job as a milliner for Fannie Champaign (the very first job in Mrs. Lacy’s life) so she could pay twenty dollars a month in rent, which Lizzy then handed over to the Savings and Trust. In ten years, if all went well, the house would be free and clear.

  It wasn’t a perfect arrangement, but at least it kept her mother out of her hair, most of the time. And it allowed Lizzy to keep her perfect little house to herself, which was exactly the way she wanted it. And if that was selfish—well, so be it.

  Fifteen minutes later, Lizzy was walking south along Jefferson Davis Street, her brown felt swagger-brimmed hat perched at a fetching angle and her lunch in her handbag. One block later, at Franklin, she turned right and walked another block, to Robert E. Lee. Just ahead on the left was the imposing Cypress County Courthouse. Built of brick, it sat in the middle of the town square, under a stately clock tower and white-painted dome, surrounded by a few trees and neatly mowed grass. On Lizzy’s right after she crossed Robert E. Lee were Musgrove’s Hardware and the Darling Diner, owned and managed by her friends Myra May and Violet.

  Normally, Lizzy didn’t drop in at the diner in the morning, because Myra May, Violet, and their colored cook, Euphoria, were busy serving the crowd of men who regularly ate their breakfasts there. But this morning, she was in a celebratory mood—she was in charge of the office this week! So she opened the door and went in to get one of Euphoria’s famous doughnuts. She’d take it to the office with her.

  “Good morning, Liz,” Myra May called from the cash register end of the counter. Violet, carrying a tray filled with two plates of ham, eggs, and biscuits with red-eye gravy, looked up with a smile.

  “Hey, Liz,” she said warmly. “Nice to see you. Sit anywhere you can find a seat.”

  As usual, the tables were filled, but there were several empty seats at the counter, so Lizzy made her way there. The white Philco radio on the shelf behind the counter was tuned to the morning farm and market reports, and the men’s voices were muted as they listened. Through the pass-through into the kitchen, Lizzy could see Euphoria, dressed in her usual white uniform, flipping pancakes and frying eggs, bacon, and ham. Myra May, wearing a white bibbed apron over her customary slacks and blouse, stepped away from the cash register and picked up a china mug.

  Myra May wasn’t the prettiest woman in town, not by a long shot. She had a strong face with a square jaw, a firm mouth, and deep-set eyes that seemed to look right through you. Her intense intelligence made some people squirm—especially men who weren’t used to women with brains. Her friend and co-owner, Violet, on the other hand, was petite and picture-pretty, with loose brown curls, an engaging smile, and a soft heart. If you were in trouble and needed help, Violet was ready to do what she could.

  Judging by looks (of course, a lot of people always do just that), Myra May and Violet might appear to be an illustration of the old adage, opposites attract. But whatever pulled them together, their partnership seemed to make perfect sense. As far as business was concerned, Myra May’s no-nonsense, let’s-get-on-with-it management skills were complemented by Violet’s customer-oriented charm and friendliness. On the personal side, Violet’s accepting nature allowed her to deal sympathetically with Myra May’s prickly impatience and smooth out the irks and quirks in their friendship.

  Violet and Myra May lived in the apartment over the diner with irresistible little Cupcake, the daughter of Violet’s dead sister. Cupcake wasn’t a year old yet, but she had strawberry curls and the bluest of blue eyes, and while everybody knows that there’s no such thing as a perfect baby (they all cry, spit up, and dirty their diapers), Violet and Myra May were convinced that she was the nearest thing to it and counted themselves lucky to have her. Cupcake spent her days cuddled on a customer’s lap or napping in a bassinet next to the door to the Darling Telephone Exchange, which was conveniently located in the back room of the diner. Conveniently, that is, because Myra May and Violet owned half of the Exchange, with Mr. Whitney Whitworth owning the other half.

  The Exchange had started out with just one operator working part time. Now, almost everybody in town had a telephone and so many people made phone calls at all hours of the day and night that Myra May (who managed the switchboard) had to have an operator on duty around the clock. She was looking for somebody to replace Olive LeRoy (Maude LeRoy’s youngest daughter), who was moving to Atlanta to live with her cousin and work at the telephone exchange there. Henrietta Conrad, whose mother ran the Curling Corner Beauty Salon, was trying out for the job.

  Actually, Myra May had said she was glad to lose Olive, who was inclined to be talky. She needed somebody who could be trusted to keep secrets, since every telephone conversation in Darling went through the Exchange. The operators knew who’d been arrested for drunk and disorderly on Saturday night, whose aunt had her appendix out over at the hospital in Monroeville, and whose daughter had eloped with a man twice her age. They weren’t supposed to listen in, of course, but everybody understood that this was pretty much unavoidable, since it was too much to ask any human being to sit in fro
nt of that switchboard for eight hours a day with her headphones on without overhearing something.

  But Myra May held her operators to a very strict code of ethics. She told them that if she heard so much as a whisper of gossip that could have come from the switchboard, she would fire the offending person on the spot, no ifs, ands, buts, or maybes. Of course, it might be hard to tell the difference between gossip that came from the switchboard and gossip that came from somebody’s party line, but Myra May was a hard woman when it came to loose lips. She didn’t mind holding the threat of firing over her operators’ heads.

  “Coffee, Liz?” Myra May asked, picking up the mug in one hand and the pot in the other.

  Lizzy considered, then shook her head. “I’ll have one of Euphoria’s doughnuts to take to the office, if you’ve got any left.” She looked at the doughnut plate, covered by a clear glass dome, and saw two doughnuts, shiny with sugar glaze. They were two for a nickel. “What the heck,” she said. “I’m treating myself this morning. I’ll take both of them.” She opened her handbag and fished out a nickel.

  Myra May bagged the two doughnuts, then leaned over the counter, her face grave. “Heard anything from Verna in the past day or two?” she asked in a lower voice.

  “Verna?” Lizzy took the bag. “I saw her on Saturday afternoon, when we worked at the Dahlias’ garden together. Why?”

  Myra May straightened, rearranging her face. “Oh, no special reason,” she said, with studied casualness. “Forget I asked.” She glanced at the man seated on the stool next to Lizzy’s and picked up the coffeepot. “Mr. Gibbons, you ’bout ready for another cup of java?”

  “No, really,” Lizzy persisted, beginning to feel alarmed. “Is Verna sick or something? Has she had an accident?” She knew that Myra May was on the switchboard on Saturdays and Sundays and even some nights, until she could find a replacement for Olive. What had she heard?

  “Shhh,” Myra May said quickly. “Don’t talk so loud, Liz.”

  She was looking past Lizzy with a strained expression on her face, and Lizzy turned to see Coretta Cole sitting at the nearest table, dressed in a close-fitting gray suit, white blouse with a floppy white bow, red hat, and red high heels. Her shiny black hair was as stylishly waved as if she had just stepped out of the door of Beulah’s Beauty Bower, and her large, luminous eyes were carefully made up. She looked a lot like Joan Crawford, whom Lizzy had recently seen in Our Blushing Brides.

  Lizzy had known Coretta since high school, although they had never been what you’d call close friends. In fact, Lizzy had learned through a couple of painful tattle-tale experiences that Coretta couldn’t be trusted. Tell her a secret and she’d blab it all over school, exaggerating and twisting it to make you look bad and herself look good. It was like that game of telephone that people sometimes played at parties—or worse. By the time you heard your secret again, you scarcely recognized it, and you wanted to go off and hide in a corner somewhere.

  Coretta had worked full time in Verna’s office until the county budgets were slashed and Mr. Scroggins cut her hours in half. Verna didn’t have a very high opinion of her, Lizzy knew. She complained that Coretta didn’t pay careful attention when she was given instructions, so that she messed things up and somebody else (usually Verna) had to spend valuable time making them right.

  And now here was Coretta, big as life and twice as natural, having breakfast with Earle Scroggins, the county probate clerk and treasurer, and Amos Tombull, the chairman of the county board of commissioners. Mr. Scroggins and Mr. Tombull (who was decked out in his summer seersucker suit, although it was only April) had their heads together, talking in low voices, while Coretta perched uneasily on the edge of her chair, sipping coffee and looking fidgety and uncomfortable, as if she herself wasn’t sure what she was doing there.

  And then, at that moment, Coretta turned and saw Lizzy. Her eyes, already wide, widened still further, and she squirmed uncomfortably. Yes, actually squirmed, like a catfish snagged and dangling on a fishhook, while the color rose in her cheeks. She caught Lizzy’s glance, held it for a measurable moment, then turned back to her coffee and the conversation at the table.

  Lizzy frowned. This was unusual, wasn’t it? Why was Coretta Cole having breakfast with Amos Tombull, who pulled all the strings in county government, and Earle Scroggins, who was Verna’s boss? Lizzy herself wasn’t comfortable around Mr. Scroggins. He was well enough respected around town because he owned property and had the power to hire and fire, and he always managed to get himself reelected when the next election rolled around. But he wasn’t much liked, except by the few who profited from his patronage. Lizzy could guess why. She had seen another side of him once in a legal dispute. Mr. Moseley called him Snake Eyes.

  She turned back around. “What’s going on, Myra May? Why is Coretta Cole having breakfast with Mr. Scroggins and Mr. Tombull?” She narrowed her eyes. “I’ll bet you heard something on the switchboard, didn’t you?”

  But Myra May only pressed her lips together and shook her head. She poured coffee in Mr. Gibbons’ mug and took Lizzy’s nickel for the two doughnuts.

  “Thanks,” she said briefly, and gave Lizzy a troubled smile.

  Lizzy understood that something unusual was going on, something to do with Verna. But she also knew she wasn’t going to get another word out of Myra May. She would have to find out the truth from Verna herself when they had lunch together, although of course she wouldn’t say that Myra May had inspired her concern. She would, however, casually mention that she’d seen Coretta Cole having breakfast with Mr. Scroggins and Mr. Tombull. Lizzy had no idea what this meant, but it certainly seemed like something Verna ought to know.

  Back out on the street, thinking about what she had just seen, Lizzy headed for the office. It was still early, but there was traffic on the square, with cars and a few old trucks parked, nose to the curb, in front of the diner and Musgrove’s and across the street at the courthouse. Farther down the street, tethered to the streetlight post in front of Hancock’s Groceries, she saw a big brown horse. The draft animal was hitched to a wagon, and a farmer in a pair of muddy denim overalls was unloading a bushel basket of collards and a bucket of turnips. A heavyset woman in a faded cotton dress and slat bonnet clambered down from the wooden seat with a wire bucket of eggs. Yard eggs were advertised for twenty cents a dozen these days, but she would likely sell hers for eight or nine cents, which she would take in trade. Many of Hancock’s customers, especially the farmers, bartered fresh-caught fish, butter and eggs, and garden truck for staples like flour, salt, coffee, and tea. Some also traded for white sugar, although at fifty-eight cents for ten pounds, sugar was almost three times as expensive as flour. Most farmers and even some townspeople used honey or molasses as sweeteners. If you knew where to look and weren’t afraid of getting stung, you could raid a bee tree, and many folks made molasses from their own sorghum.

  As Lizzy walked past the plate glass window of the Dispatch building, she could see Charlie Dickens standing at the counter, talking to Angelina Biggs, who was probably handing in the copy for the Old Alabama Hotel’s menus for the upcoming week, which Charlie ran off on the old Prouty job press that filled one back corner of the print shop. Angelina managed the hotel kitchen, while her husband Artis was the hotel’s general manager. Charlie didn’t look up when Lizzy walked by, which was just as well, Lizzy thought. The copy for her “Garden Gate” column was due and she realized with a guilty start that she hadn’t given this week’s items even a moment’s thought. Then she turned and climbed the stairs at the west side of the building, up to the second-floor offices of Moseley and Moseley.

  Benton Moseley (the youngest and now the only surviving Moseley) had hired Lizzy a few months after her high school graduation. She had been planning to work just until she and Reggie Morris, her high school sweetheart, could get married and move into a little house of their own. But Reggie had joined the Alaba
ma 167th and marched off to France and—like so many other American boys—hadn’t marched home again.

  Heartbroken, Lizzy had moved the little diamond Reggie had given her from her left hand to her right. She kept on living in her mother’s house and working in Mr. Moseley’s law office, which quickly became the center of her life. After all, the law office was where important things happened, where people came to get their problems solved and their mistakes fixed—or not, as the case may be. Benton Moseley was smart and progressive and (most of the time) treated Lizzy almost as an equal. For her part, Lizzy was bright and eager, a quick study, presentable behind the reception desk and pleasant on the telephone, and more talented than she knew. They got along well.

  That was the good part. The other part was rather unfortunate, for Lizzy had developed a fierce adolescent crush on Mr. Moseley. She suffered the pains of unrequited love in silence, always half worried that she might slip and blurt out, “Oh, Mr. Moseley, I love you!” Heartened by the goose-bump-raising thrill of a stray glance or an accidental touch of his fingers, she had even imagined that Mr. Moseley might care for her, too.

  But that was silly. Romances like that happened only in the novels Lizzy liked to read. And then it all became academic, anyway, for Mr. Moseley married a beautiful blond debutant from Birmingham, who quickly became one of Darling’s acknowledged social leaders. When Mr. and Mrs. Moseley hosted a dinner party or attended a function at the country club, everybody oohed and ahhed and said what a perfect couple they were.