As well they shouldn’t, Cora thought. She saw it even more clearly now—that summer in New York, she may as well have been charged with trying to hold back the wind, or time itself. Even then, Louise had been a force. But when they were sharing that hot little apartment and Cora had made Louise scrub the paint from her face, she’d truly believed she was not just doing the right thing, but the only thing she could do. And like a well-trained parrot, over and over, she’d warned Louise of the dire consequences of a sullied reputation. Just a few years later, Louise’s reputation had been soundly sullied by the popular press, yet the only consequence, as far as Cora could tell, was more movie roles and greater fame.
Still, she couldn’t shake a feeling of worry, that same hesitant concern that had nagged her that summer in New York. Had Louise been happy to leave Denishawn? If not, what had she done to get herself kicked out? Had she gone out drinking? Was Louise satisfied being Chaplin’s newest young mistress, or did she hope for something more? She was being silly, she told herself. Louise didn’t need her concern, and likely wouldn’t want it. In every magazine photograph, she appeared confident, with a savvy glint in her eyes. Cora supposed it was just as likely that Mr. Chaplin would be left feeling used—or that they would leave each other, unharmed. As young as Louise was, she was a grown woman, a modern woman, smart and fearless of judgment, a lovely sparkle on the blade of her generation as it slashed at the old conventions.
Within a few years, the movie house by Alan’s office had a bold-lettered sign that read Starring Wichita’s own Louise Brooks! which they added to the marquee whenever one of her films came to town. On the screen, Cora noticed, Louise often moved like a child, skipping, twirling. She perched in older men’s laps, eyes wide, and she still regularly employed her pout. The gossip in the magazines, which portrayed a very different Louise, must have perplexed her fans. Cora wasn’t surprised when she read that Louise was bringing a lawsuit against a photographer for circulating a picture in which she wore only a draped scarf, an entire nude hip on display. Louise defended her position to reporters, explaining that she had posed for the pictures when she was a chorus girl, but now her profession was very different. “I have embarked on a serious career as a motion-picture actress,” she explained, “and I fear it will injure my chances of success in my new profession to have those draped photographs of myself scattered about the country. In my new profession I am called upon to play many innocent heroines, girls who are models of modesty and respect for all the time-honored conventions. In fact, my directors tell me that these are the roles for which I am preeminently suited. It would be too great a shock, I fear, for moviegoers who had admired me in one of these roles to come across a photograph of me as I looked when I posed before Mr. De Mirjian’s camera wearing only a carelessly flung scarf, and sometimes a pair of sandals. The contrast would be certain to destroy or weaken some of the illusions of innocence and unsophistication my acting had created.”
She went on to clarify that she felt no shame for having posed for the pictures, which she believed were artistic and tasteful, and appropriate for a chorus girl. She pointed out that a low-cut gown might be perfectly acceptable for evening, but the same gown would be indecent in the afternoon. The gown was simply inappropriate for a given situation, not fundamentally incorrect.
“She could practice law,” Alan chuckled. “She would do very well, I imagine.”
Cora had to agree. Louise’s argument seemed right for the times. Lately, it was hard to know what would be considered appropriate or out of bounds from one day to the next. Two years earlier, hemlines had fallen again, almost to the ankles, but now they were back at the knee. And that summer in Wichita, the Ku Klux Klan’s baseball team challenged the Negro League’s Monrovians to a game, umpired by white Catholics, who wouldn’t have an allegiance to either side. Cora, who feared violence, didn’t attend, and she didn’t let Greta go, either. But Joseph and Raymond and Alan went, and there wasn’t any violence. For years, the three men would be able to brag that they were there watching the night the Monrovians beat the Klan, 10 to 8.
Even more surprising, at least to Cora, was the news that Myra Brooks had left her husband, as well as her two younger children still living at home. There were rumors of another man, but that could have been just rumor. What was known was that Myra was working in Chicago, writing a weekly column on health and beauty and psychology for a magazine no one had heard of. The women in Cora’s circle were horrified, to say the least. One autumn afternoon, when Viola and Cora were addressing envelopes for the League of Woman Voters, Cora made the mistake of mentioning Myra’s name.
“What that woman has done is despicable,” Viola hissed, every other syllable marked with the tap of the pen on the table. “If she was unhappy with her husband, that’s one thing, but I can’t understand a woman leaving her children. Theo is being sent off to military school. Some relative is taking care of little June.” She paused, making a weak attempt to lick an envelope. “And Zana Henderson is actually defending her! ‘Giving her side,’ is what she said. Apparently, Madame Brooks never wanted to be a mother. She wanted to be a writer, an artiste, and she felt she’d denied herself long enough.” Viola shook her head, then stopped, reaching up to fix a pin that had slipped from her bun. “Well, I disagree. Maybe Myra didn’t want to be a mother, but that’s what she is, and she needs to act like one. I know Zana and Myra were great friends, but a crime has been committed against those children.”
Cora was silent. Viola was angry, and right to be angry. But again, Cora knew what she knew. She finished addressing an envelope, aware that Viola was watching her, waiting for her to speak.
“It’s true,” she finally said. “What Zana said, I mean. At least that’s what Louise told me once. Myra didn’t want children, and she wasn’t happy with Leonard.” She met Viola’s offended gaze and looked away. “But I don’t disagree that it’s very sad. I feel awful for Theo and June.”
“I’ll say it’s sad. And I’m sorry, but I don’t understand all this sympathy for that woman. I don’t see what could be so wrong with Leonard Brooks that she would have to leave him. He’s seemed decent enough whenever I’ve met him. And he certainly makes a good living. Zana said that Myra complained he was ‘demanding and inconsiderate,’ but I never got that impression from him. Everyone I’ve talked to thinks he seems a perfectly nice man. But even if it’s true, she should have discovered that about him before she married him. If he’s really such an ogre, she might have noticed.”
“Do you think she meant sex?”
Viola was silent. But it was clear from her expression that Cora should not have wondered the question aloud.
“I just mean that perhaps that’s what Myra meant.” Cora stacked her envelopes neatly. “Maybe not. But if that’s the case, she wouldn’t have known what she was getting into, not in that respect. She was young when she married. That’s all I meant.”
Viola picked up her pen, her eyes still on Cora. Her hollow cheeks had turned pink. “Goodness, Cora. I can’t believe you just said that.”
Cora made no reply. It would be unwise to continue, to join Zana Henderson’s losing battle to defend, or at least understand, Myra’s leaving. Cora wasn’t sure why she’d bothered as much as she had—she didn’t even like Myra Brooks. But then, she, too, had been a very young bride, with no understanding of what she was getting into, what the marriage, and the relations, would and would not be about. Cora had managed her escape in secret, but Myra hadn’t had the luxury. She couldn’t judge, now that she had Joseph. If Myra had meant sex, “demanding and inconsiderate” seemed a miserable combination, perhaps worse than nothing at all.
• • •
But no one could defend Myra once Ethel Montgomery’s cousin in Michigan mailed her a handbill with Myra’s picture that advertised: Myra Brooks, youthful looking mother of film star Louise Brooks, to speak on beauty and health this evening. It was soon discovered that Myra, riding the tide of Louise’s swelling fame, had
landed a spot on the Redpath Chautauqua circuit, giving lectures on how she had nurtured her famous daughter’s poise and beauty—and how she managed to keep her own. The women of Wichita wondered aloud if Myra, when lecturing on her maternal wisdom, ever mentioned that she’d abandoned Louise’s younger brother and sister, or if, because only Louise’s name was lucrative, she didn’t mention her other children at all.
They could only guess what Louise herself thought about any of this. By then, she was truly famous and unreachable. Her name was on the screen with W. C. Fields’s, and the magazines were reporting that she was to marry her newest film’s young and handsome director. Soon, the magazines were describing the newlyweds’ beautiful new home in California, and lavish parties with caviar, and picnics with famous friends at the Hearst castle. Louise was photographed with her new husband in evening gowns and, when she visited New York, various fur coats.
That May, Greta came home from school and, after taking a bite of the apple that Cora had just handed her, announced that no girl she knew felt sorry for June Brooks, even if her mother did leave her.
“She gets to go to Hollywood,” Greta explained, still chomping the apple. “She gets to live with Louise for the whole summer. I told June I met her sister in New York, and that I’d like to come visit, too. She said she would see. Her brother Theo gets to go there, too. Everybody says they’ll be living in a mansion, probably with a pool and servants, and that Louise’s husband is so rich he has six cars, and there’ll probably be all kinds of movie stars just lounging around the house.”
Here, Greta sat in one of the dining room chairs, her scraped knees crossed, her chin raised, as if she were an elegant woman posing poolside. Cora smiled. Greta was still shy at school and at social events, but in private, she had a theatrical streak.
“What happens at the end of the summer?” Cora asked. “Is June going to come back?”
Greta shook her head. “She’s going to school in Paris. I forget the name, but when our teacher heard it, she said, ‘My my, it must be nice to have a movie star for a sister.’ And Louise is going to visit her in Paris all the time because she’s so rich she can go back and forth across the ocean the way most people cross the street.”
Cora was impressed, not with the money, but with the decency of the gesture. If someone would have told her, back in the summer of 1922, that her surly and scheming fifteen-year-old charge would soon be rich and famous, she would not have been so astounded. But she would never have guessed that in just a few years, Louise would not only be happily married, but also stepping in to care for her younger siblings, taking up where her mother left off. Cora admitted that she’d perhaps been wrong to worry. Louise, with all her boldness and blitheness, really was doing just fine.
But then everyone seemed to be faring well in those last, easy years. Earle got married in St. Louis, and though he was still in medical school and didn’t have much money, the bride’s parents splurged on a wedding with over three hundred guests, complete with a small orchestra and prime rib at the reception. Howard was Earle’s best man, and Greta was the flower girl. Toasts were made to the couple’s future, and though the police commissioner and the mayor were in attendance, no one seemed to care that one of the punch bowls was spiked with gin.
Joseph managed to get himself hired at one of the airplane factories—this was back when Clyde Cessna and Walter Beech were just men you might see on Douglas Avenue, and few understood what they, and the young industry, would become. Joseph started as a janitor and held that position for a year before someone let him start tinkering with an engine. He made an impression quickly. When the University of Wichita announced a new degree in something called aeronautical engineering, the company paid for him to go to school. He started to earn a good salary, and Ethel Montgomery asked Cora if her brother was “in the market,” as she had a widowed sister in Derby. Cora explained that unfortunately, her brother’s dying wife asked him to promise never to marry another, and Joseph, bless his heart, had agreed.
“That’s so romantic,” Ethel said.
“Yes,” Cora said, “it is.”
That afternoon, she told Joseph about her lie. “Women love to feel sorry for a man,” she warned. “Now they’ll all be after you.” He thought this was very funny. They were alone in the house, so he kissed her.
It seemed good fortune was all around, like air you breathed but didn’t notice. Stocks were high, rain fell as needed, and the future seemed bright and clear as the summer sky. It was 1929. All across the nation, bright young flappers danced to jazz, and every little breeze still whispered Louise in magazines and movie houses.
Of course, the wind was about to change.
NINETEEN
During the worst storms, they sealed the windows with tape and stuffed rags soaked with paraffin under every door. Still, the dust got in. Cora could taste it on her lips when she woke. She’d give the house a good sweep first thing in the morning, and three hours later, there’d be a new layer on the floor, so thick she could see her own footprints. Dust coated the dials on the radio, the papers on Alan’s desk, and the dishes in the cupboards. Joseph would rinse off the lenses of his spectacles, and a few minutes later, he’d have to do it again. They couldn’t leave food out. Della did her best with the wash, but on bad days, when the wind was so thick with it you couldn’t see across the street, the buses would stop running and she couldn’t come. When the schools closed, Greta stayed home, and she and Cora worked together, armed with wet rags and brooms. As the weather turned warm, they swept out not just dust, but spiders and centipedes. And that was in the home, their sanctuary. Outside, the wind stung the skin and eyes and chipped paint off fences.
They were far better off than most. Alan continued to make a good salary, and as he’d always been cautious with investments, they didn’t lose much in the crash. Joseph took a deep cut in pay at Stearman, but by 1934, there were military contracts for training planes, and his pay went back up a bit. It was the farmers and their families who kept suffering, dry year after dry year. Sometimes, Cora would consider that she was likely sweeping some Oklahoman’s home and livelihood off her living room floor. Cattle were starving, or suffocating, and people had no choice but to abandon their homes and make their way to the city. There were men selling pencils or Salvation Army apples on every corner of Douglas Avenue, and more than once, travelers with hunger-dulled children had come to Cora’s back door, asking for food. She and Della would go to work, making sandwiches with whatever they had on hand.
Even some of Cora’s friends and neighbors were having trouble, albeit of a milder sort. Viola Hammond and her husband, having lost so much in stocks, took in two boarders to help with their mortgage. The Montgomerys sold their Cadillac and bought a Buick Standard. The gardening club disbanded entirely, as by then, everyone had given up their flower beds to the dust. But many people didn’t seem affected at all, even as the rain didn’t come and the stocks didn’t climb and a Democrat was sworn in as president. Cora still went to lunches and teas, where she and the women she knew wore white gloves and Florentine hats and the new, shin-skimming dresses with belted waists and bolero jackets. By then, even the older women were no longer wearing corsets, and it was easier to eat and breathe and move, but even the more-forgiving girdles were miserable in the heat. One broiling summer morning, after more than eleven straight days of hundred-degree temperatures, Winnifred Fitch, whose husband came from a prominent meat-packing family, rented out a theater and had the manager set up lamps and a long table on the stage so she and seven other ladies could eat a catered brunch in air-conditioned comfort. The cool air awakened Cora’s appetite, and she ate five slices of fresh honeydew melon, savoring every bite.
After the caterers cleared the plates, Winnifred, seated at the head of the table, cleared her throat and stood. She was in her early fifties, just a little older than Cora. But they didn’t know each other well, as the Fitches had only recently moved to town from western Kansas because—unbelievabl
y—the air in Wichita was better.
“Thank you so much for coming today.” Winnifred smoothed the front of her dress. “I know I invited you ladies here under the vague premise of social aid, and I promise you that if, on your way out, you can spare a few quarters for the mason jar by the stairs, I’ll see that they get to the soup kitchen at First Methodist. But I should tell you I didn’t call you all here today to collect a few quarters.” Here she paused, pulling back her padded shoulders. “Ladies, I organized this brunch in the hope that we might band together against an enemy that all the soup kitchens in the world can’t conquer, an enemy that preys on all of us, rich and poor alike.”
Cora dabbed at the corners of her mouth, looking up with anticipation. If Winnifred Fitch had a solution to the dust, she certainly wanted to hear it.
But Winnifred looked grave. “As a newcomer to this community, I have been shocked to see… obscene items displayed where the general public, including innocent children, can see them. Contraceptive devices, I mean. It’s my impression that in these difficult times, druggists have become so desperate for revenue that they’ve let their moral standards slide. I have a feeling even you more urban ladies aren’t pleased it’s become so difficult to protect your children and grandchildren from the vulgar implications of these displays.” Her gaze moved around the table. “Virginia. Cora. I believe you both have teenage daughters?”
Virginia nodded. “I have three girls still at home,” she said. “And I couldn’t agree more with your concerns.”
Winnifred, and everyone else, looked at Cora.
“Greta’s my niece,” Cora said.
She didn’t elaborate. She understood she had not answered Winnifred’s real question, but it hardly seemed wise for her to tell these women that she had no problem with condoms on display in the drugstores. In fact, just a few weeks earlier, Cora had actually mentioned these new displays to Greta, casually saying that if a girl and boy did find themselves in need of “birth control,” to borrow Margaret Sanger’s phrase, they would likely do well to avail themselves of a druggist’s regulated merchandise, rather than take their chances with something purchased under the table in a pool hall or a gas station. Greta, usually so voluble, had gone mute with shock and then embarrassment. (“Aunt Cora! What kind of a girl do you think I am?” she asked. “The kind I love,” Cora replied.) But Cora thought the conversation necessary, as Greta was now eighteen, and she had a serious boyfriend.
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