"Ha. The suburbs of literature."
"Yes, dear." Ramelle crawled under the covers.
"I bet you think I've been sitting here fuming over the afternoon? Well, I haven't. I haven't even wondered if Cora will show up tomorrow."
"I can see that you haven't been thinking about it at all. Is that why the book is turned upside down?"
Celeste wondered how long she'd been sitting there like that. She closed the book and turned out the light.
"Good night, dearest."
"Good night." Ramelle kissed her on the cheek.
September 26, 1911
The next morning Cora did not cook breakfast. The gardener's wife was pressed into service. Celeste pretended not to notice. Diana, the all-round maid, brought in the Runnymede Morning Trumpet. Celeste exploded. "Take that contaminated rag away. I don't understand why people enjoy reading about disasters at the breakfast table. Surely I'm not one of them."
Later Fannie Jump Creighton and Fairy Thatcher called to see if the storm had passed. This made Celeste all the more furious. The grapevine hummed all day. By nightfall, both South and North Runnymede were informed of the piano incident. Brutus Rife, who had taken over the munitions factory and cannery from his father, Cassius, particularly enjoyed the news. He'd proposed to Celeste year in and year out until 1898, when he married Felicia Scott, a classmate of Celeste's. Brutus had dearly wanted the Rife and Chalfonte fortunes to blend, but Celeste would have none of him. Her troubles just proved to him that a woman alone can't handle running things.
Cora's day passed quickly. She toiled in the big vegetable garden while the sun was up. When the girls came home from school she put them to work in it as well. Louise hoped to find a piano in the living room, but all she found was Lillian Russell, the cat, with a mole she'd caught. Juts tried to cheer her sister. She offered to cut the mole open so they could see its insides. This did not cheer Louise.
At nightfall the girls could hear Idabelle McGrail playing her accordion out on her porch. Every dusk in the good weather Idabelle would sit there, one sock up and one sock down, in different colors. Stretching her accordion across her ample bosom, Ida sang songs of Ireland and Scotland. Sometimes her huge, hairy son, Rob, would accompany her on his bagpipes. Tonight the music lifted up to the top of Bumblebee Hill, where the Hunsenmeirs lived, and made Louise feel all the more miserable.
"Mother, why don't Celeste gimme that old piano?"
"Celeste has her ways."
"But she has two." Juts sat next to her sister and put her arm around Louise's waist. "It ain't fair."
Louise started crying again. Lillian Russell rubbed against her legs. Everyone tried to comfort Louise. As there was little furniture in the clean frame farmhouse, an upright would be a pleasant addition.
"If Celeste hadn't been set on from all directions, she probably woulda give up that old piano. She's not a mean woman. But now, with her pride, it would take three years and four animals to get it from her."
This provoked a fresh outburst of sobbing on Louise's part.
That night there was no living with Celeste. She was so foul Diana quietly left and so did the gardener and his wife. The only one who could tolerate Miss Chalfonte on her high horse was Ramelle, and even she was having doubts.
Next morning the piano was no longer gossip but an issue. Poor Runnys were outraged that Celeste was being so damn tight. Rich Runnys didn't like the sound of Celeste's servants leaving. Middle-class Runnys didn't want anything to interfere with business, and if servants don't get paid they don't spend their money.
Celeste, unaware of the proportions of the incident, saddled up her beautiful bay mare for her morning ride, as usual. On the way back home she rode through the north side of town. Theodore Baumeister spied her and ran out of his barbershop. "Miss Chalfonte, good morning."
"Good morning, Ted."
"Town's in an uproar over your old upright."
"That just goes to show you people have nothing better to talk about."
"Yes, m'am, but I do believe you should give that little girl your piano so folks will settle down."
"Mr. Baumeister, I'll thank you to mind your own damned business." Celeste touched the horse's flanks and headed home at a fast trot.
There was no peace at home. Fairy Thatcher and Fannie Jump Creighton grabbed her as soon as she walked into the front hall.
"Celeste, you've got to do something!" Fairy exclaimed.
"What on earth are you so agitated about?" Celeste asked her.
Ramelle, having heard their tale, stood off to the side awaiting the earthquake.
"Agitated? Marooned is more like it. Celeste Chalfonte, do you know that on this very day our servants, Fairy's and mine, walked off?"
This unwelcome knowledge took a few seconds to sink in. "What?"
"Walked off, I tell you, and over the damned piano."
"You can't be serious!" Celeste's voice rose.
"Serious! I am fit to be tied, Celeste Pritchard Chalfonte. I'm hosting the monthly Daughters of the Confederacy meeting tonight, or have you forgotten?" Fannie Jump flushed in anticipation of her plight. "Yon know tonight's the night we plan for the Harvest Moon Ball, and nothing must be out of place. That viper Minta Mae Dexter and her Sisters of Gettysburg already pledged the decorations. All proceeds to the poor, blah, blah, blah. You should have heard her. Why her father didn't get picked off at Big Round Top I'll never know."
"Calm down, Fannie." Celeste grew icier the hotter Fannie waxed.
"Calm down! Calm down, after the Sisters nearly ran us over last Fourth of July? We've got to have a strategic session so we can outdo Minta and her soiled doves to raise more money."
"And you know the Martha Circle has been meeting in secret over the ball. We'll not be spared their onslaught of vulgarity, as usual directed by La Squandras."
La Squandras were Ruby, Rose and Rachel, triplets who shared a brain among them. They spent enough on jewelry to keep the Brazilian navy afloat As their father, Cassius Rife, had sold guns to both sides during the War Between the States, neither the Daughters of the Confederacy nor the Sisters of Gettysburg could abide them. In retaliation, La Squandras formed the Martha Circle, named for Martha Washington, and forced all the merchants' wives to join.
"Why can't you move the meeting to Caesura Frothingham's house? Ought to get our blood up since it's decorated in Reign of Terror style."
Fairy giggled. "Celeste, you are wicked."
Fannie was not to be amused. "Celeste, Caesura's servants are threatening to walk off, too."
"This is impossible," Celeste said matter-of-factly.
"Impossible or not, the Daughters of the Confederacy are marching on my house tonight at seven."
"Can't you have a meeting anyway?" Ramelle asked.
"I can't do anything without my servants. I don't even know where the finger bowls are kept. They magically appear on the table each time I inform Mona." Fannie was feeling her tragedy deeply.
"Fannie resents any accusation of usefulness." Celeste couldn't help saying it.
"You're a fine one to talk. You can't even boil water." Fannie retaliated.
"No, but I can saddle a horse."
"Road apples, Celeste. This is a dinner party tonight, not the Kentucky Derby." Fannie strained to think of something more awful to say, but terrible things hovered on the rim of her consciousness and then fled before she could pluck one.
"You've got to do something," Fairy pleaded.
"Why are you two matrons and pillars of society coming to me? Why don't you go to your husbands?"
"What, and lose my allowance because Horace will declare I can't manage servants properly?" Fairy wailed.
"Creighton has to be dragged out kicking and screaming from Pearl Streicher's. He's either there or up in York, Pennsylvania—Gomorrah on the Codorus." Her husband's dalliances or outright whoring didn't bother Fannie a bit. It left her more time to lead handsome young men astray. Fannie had a sharp eye for men, flesh on the hoof.
"This is your doing, Celeste. Do something," Fairy pleaded.
"I refuse to bear this cross alone. You, Fannie Jump Creighton, were the first to suggest I part with that dilapidated piano."
"Was I? Was I really, Celeste? I truly don't recall."
"Next time we play bridge, restrain yourself in the spirit department," Celeste barked.
"Now, Celeste, honey, Fannie loves her gin."
"You all are like a dog chasing its tail. If you'd stop accusing each other, maybe you could find a way out of this situation," Ramelle correctly noted.
As Ramelle was younger, quite beautiful and Celeste's lover, Fannie and Fairy stiffened. They did not like being told what to do by a relative newcomer. After all, they grew up with Celeste. In childhood the three were called Hie, Haec and Hoc by their classmates at the Fox Run School for Young Ladies. At Vassar each covered for the other, a considerable feat. Fannie shamelessly screwed young bloods from Yale, Fairy cheated like a bandit on her tests and Celeste threw herself at Grace Pettibone, a gorgeous upperclass girl. By that time the three were referred to as the Furies for all the trouble they caused. Nonetheless, Ramelle was right. After a ritual fluffing of feathers, they settled themselves.
"What do you suggest?" Fannie stared at Ramelle, wishing she could find a man that good-looking.
"Why can't Celeste go and talk with Cora?"
"Ride up to Bumblebee Hill and suffer the entire town seeing me placate Cora? Never!"
"It's your pride versus our social well-being," Fairy said.
"Now you sound like my sister, Carlotta. Bag it, Gladys." "Bag it, Gladys" was a childhood expression of the threesome that roughly meant shove it up your ass.
"Perhaps we could ask Her Holiness to come and say a prayer over all involved," Fannie sneered.
"You know, the union organizers started this." Fairy went off on a tangent.
"The Unpleasantries Between the States have been over for some time," Celeste remarked.
"No, union organizers—men who read Karl Man and go into factories," Fairy went on.
"My house is not a factory." Celeste folded her hands.
"No, but Cora is a member of the proletariat" Fairy was rolling now. "The workers will rise against their masters."
"Fairy, have you been reading seditious books?" Celeste's right eyebrow arched upward.
"I... yes."
Fannie nearly fell over. "Fairy, I never saw you crack a book the entire time we were in college."
"Karl Marx, that German?" Celeste, too, was stunned. "Really, Fairy, pay no attention to the Germans. They still haven't recovered from Attila."
"However did you start reading?" Fannie wanted to know.
"Horace set me off. You know how conservative he is. After his last trip to Chicago he returned fuming about unions, unhealthy ideas, Paris in 1871. I never saw him so excited. I decided anything that upset Horace must be good. So I made up my mind to find out," Fairy said.
"Interesting though that may be, I don't think Cora's been reading behind our backs. Cora can't read," Celeste gently stated.
"Oh, really?" Fannie was mildly surprised. "I never think about that. I wonder how many of our servants can read?"
"They count just fine," Fairy complained.
Fannie returned to her original trial. "What am I to do about the Daughters of the Confederacy?"
"Can't you three stop bickering long enough to create one plan, even one?" Ramelle prodded them.
"To what do I owe this fierce outbreak of rationality?" Celeste was stung.
"Darling, the town is in an uproar. I seriously doubt it's due to organizers or anything systematic. Your keeping the piano seems a spiteful gesture. God knows, Celeste, you could purchase a piano factory if you wanted one. It's the little things that spur people, not the big ones. You know that—one small incident can trigger larger ones until everyone forgets how and why something started." Ramelle spoke quietly.
"You're quite right, Ramelle. But I'll be damned if I'll knuckle under to a batch of servants and shopkeepers!"
"Just by giving Louise a piano?" Fannie understood perfectly well Celeste's position, but needled her anyway.
"Fannie, I'll lose face—with you tarts as well as with the town. It's a matter of discipline. One can't go about giving things because others ask."
"Strange. I thought that's what Jesus meant." Ramelle had steel in her back this time.
"The last Christian died on the cross!" Celeste was hurt.
"Christ never mentioned pianos," Fairy innocently remarked.
"Right, there were no pianos in the New Testament All they had was David with his harp in the Old." Fannie displayed her vast biblical knowledge.
A radiant smile covered Celeste's face. "Ladies, Jesus didn't have a piano, but La Sermonetta does."
"Carlotta?" Fairy was confused.
"I'd like to see that. You get your sister to give Louise a piano. All she'd give her is a blessing. She may be a religious nut, but she'll pinch a nickel until the Indian rides the buffalo," Fannie sneered.
"Oh, ye women of little faith." Celeste stretched out her hands in benediction and reproach. "My sister runs Immaculata Academy, or have you forgotten?"
"Celeste?" Fannie Jump saw it coming.
"Yes, I shall send Runnymede's musical wonder to Immaculata Academy, there for education and moral uplift."
"You're a genius," Fairy admired.
"You said it; I didn't." Celeste nodded.
"Darling, you are a wonder." Ramelle touched Celeste's hand.
"Careful, dearest. We don't want to offend Fannie and Fairy's ordinary sensibilities."
Fannie loved such rare moments. One never talked of these things directly, although as she grew older she really didn't care what she said about Creighton or her lovers. Celeste, however, was far more reserved. "Bullpucky, Miss Chalfonte. 'Twas I who stumbled upon you and Grace one cold winter's night."
"Serves you right, you rude thing. Didn't your mother teach you to knock? Anyway, we were just keeping warm. Ramelle, don't listen to Fannie. She exaggerates when she tells the time."
"Celeste, isn't this going to cost you money?" Fairy delved into more practical matters.
"You mean Louise Hunsenmeir?"
"Private academies aren't in the custom of accepting poor girls," Fairy said.
"Better to pay for it than give up that piano. If I part with that damned instrument I'd lose more than money. This truly is the best solution, and who knows, maybe Louise will learn."
"Isn't it cruel to educate the poor?" Fannie was genuinely perturbed.
"Cruel? Education is the finest gift anyone can give!" Celeste had her hand on her hip.
"No, really, Celeste, what good is an educated woman? She can't do anything. The best Louise could hope for would be marriage to a man broad-minded enough to forgive her her origins," Fannie said a bit sadly.
"Better to be unborn than ill bred?" That eyebrow arched upward again.
"I..." Fannie was stumped.
"Oh, God, and what if your sister gets her clutches on the child? Next thing you know, she'll want to be a nun." Fairy's lower lip quivered a bit.
"Carlotta's Catholicism mystified our family for years," Celeste said. "Why couldn't she be secure in the white bosom of Episcopalian abundance?"
"Are you sure this is the only way?" Fannie wondered.
"Yes, but that doesn't mean Cora will agree to it."
Fairy slumped. "Oh, no. I never thought of that."
Celeste saddled up again and rode off toward Bumblebee Hill, south of town. She wasn't two lengths down the Emmitsburg road before the entire town was buzzing. The land west of Runnymede rolled in gentle deep-green hills. Just above the town on the north side, Hanover horse farms bred the nation's best Standard-breds. A faint hint of fall tainted the air. Celeste loved this land. She'd seen Paris, Vienna, London, Rome, Athens and Saint Petersburg as well as New York, she loved Maryland best. The undulating hills gave a strength she could never find in oth
er places. In a sense she was blessed because she knew where she belonged. She rode past Idabelle McGrail's and strained for sight of the old girl. All Runnymede had bets going on Idabelle's socks matching. Ida was nowhere to seen.
The hill steepened considerably. Cora's house, an A frame farmhouse built around 1832, commanded the top of the hill. A small apple orchard lay behind the kitchen. A few peach trees drooped with fruit beside the barn. Morning glories smothered the porch. Celeste wondered how Cora could keep it all up. Order, cleanliness and splashes of color clearly showed Cora's hand, A big wooden washtub by the front porch burst with black-eyed Susans. Flowers bloomed everywhere. Even the hens looked happy. Cora worked this by herself. Her husband, Hansford, ran off in 1907. Wasn't women that drew him, but booze. Celeste never heard Cora complain about Hansford or anything else. Cora worked. Complaining took time. Celeste could see her, hatless, stooped over the vegetable garden in the back.
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