After some minutes, Hilly wandered from Nell’s side—at first only a few steps; then a bit further; finally, crossing what seemed a great expanse of store, turning again and again to be certain that his mother hadn’t left without him. Did mothers ever do that? He didn’t think she would, but maybe she would forget that he was there.
Most of these tables, piled with merchandise, were taller than he was. If she didn’t see him, maybe she’d think that she hadn’t brought him. What if she went home and they closed the store and he was still in it? And he hadn’t had his supper?
And shouldn’t there be someone working on this side of the store? Hadn’t there been a man when Elvira had brought him here once, a man who’d bent to shake Hilly’s hand and call him “little man”? Now, beyond the reach of women’s voices, it was too quiet.
There, ahead of him, mounted against tall shelving, was a pair of men’s long underwear. He himself had never worn anything like them. They were huge and pale and headless. And weren’t they moving, just a little? Yes, yes, the arm—he was pretty sure—had moved a tiny bit, reaching out.
Eyes wide, heart pounding, he backed away, bumping into table after table but backing still, until at last he was near the front door and someone was coming through it and he could see his mother, over by Elvira. He finally breathed and ran to Nell, grabbing her skirt, and she said, “What on earth . . . ?” And he was safe.
Elvira was on a ladder, fetching down boxes of gloves for a customer who seemed determined to try on most of the stock. The woman finally shook her head and turned away just as Cora Lundeen hurried up.
“Elvira, you’re the very one I want.”
The girl blushed and clasped her hands at her waist—cap in hand, so to speak.
Cora hurried on. “Mother and Father Lundeen think you’re a corker. And George, well, you should hear him carry on.” She smiled, drew a breath, and continued, “I’m planning a Christmas party at our house for everyone from the store, the bank, and the lumberyard. Mother Lundeen will help, of course, but I need your thoughts—what people here like to eat and drink, what kind of music they like, all that sort of thing.”
Reaching across the counter, she placed a hand on Elvira’s arm. “Please say you’ll help?” She tipped her head to the side imploringly. “Could you come to my house tomorrow after church? George will be duck hunting. You and I can have a cozy lunch and make our plans.”
She turned to Nell. “You wouldn’t mind, would you, Mrs. Stillman, if Elvira had lunch with me?” Both Cora and Elvira looked at Nell.
“Of course not.” Who could refuse such a creature?
“I’m awful to take advantage of Elvira, but I love to plan parties. Isn’t it fun to see people enjoying themselves?”
“You have a good heart,” Nell told her.
“Maybe I’m just indulging myself. There’s nothing I love better than dancing. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t dance.” She laughed, casting a brief glance heavenward, petitioning for an endless waltz. Then she smoothed the fingers of a glove, adjusted her little fur hat, and started for the door, calling over her shoulder, “My house at noon, Elvira?”
Adoration lit Elvira’s features, lending the pale oval a seraphic glow. Nell waited a long moment before saying, “I need some twill. Maybe the dark gray. And the kneesocks. Gray. We mustn’t forget.”
Elvira was a fortunate young woman, to be acquiring a friend like Cora Lundeen. Nell only hoped she wouldn’t break her heart in the process.
chapter ten
HARVESTER HAD ONLY TEN INSTALLED TELEPHONES, yet the social news of early 1903 traveled as if over a thousand wires. George and Cora had canceled their planned trip to London in June. Cora was expecting! Over back fences, the lying-in was predicted for mid-May.
Cora wanted to deliver in Boston, near her mother, and, since Dr. Gray advised no travel during Cora’s late months, the young Lundeens journeyed east shortly after Valentine’s Day.
On the first of May, Laurence and Juliet Lundeen boarded the train to Chicago, from there traveling to Boston. Elvira was beside herself with expectation.
“May’s a good month to be born—I mean, with the weather warm and everything green. If it’s a girl, maybe they’ll name her May. If it’s a boy, they should name him George Jr. George is a . . . heroic name. Well, remember, St. George slew the dragon, and George Washington was the father of this country.”
Wednesday, May 14, after the dismissal bell rang, Elvira took Hilly’s hand and walked up Main Street toward the school. The temperature had climbed to eighty, unusual for the date. From the west, the sharp, not-unpleasant odor of manure drifted in from plowed fields, commingling with the lilac scent of town.
Elvira thought that the red-stone school, gazing down over Main Street, looked upon her and Hilly with the tender glance of an affectionate grandmother. She was inclined to make relatives of buildings; they stood in for the pitiful lot God had given her.
For instance, Lundeen’s Dry Goods, a substantial two-story brown-brick building, was the courtly yet entirely approachable uncle who took the train to St. Paul every year to serve in the state senate—and after the session closed, brought you a tiny replica of the majestic new capitol building.
The Harvester Arms Hotel was a sophisticated, distant cousin who drank champagne and thought nothing of traveling to Chicago. She let you try on her rococo hats—grand with ostrich feathers and velvet roses—and taught you songs from the latest operettas.
Thrusting open the heavy schoolhouse door, Elvira helped Hilly climb the stairs to the main floor where he ran to the third-grade room, calling, “Mama, Mama!” His voice and steps echoing in the near-empty building.
Nell was moving from window to window, closing the upper sashes with a long pole. The western sun beat in upon the oak floor and desks, releasing an exhalation of varnish and wax.
“Look who’s here,” she called, standing the pole in the corner and spreading her arms to her son. “Did you have a good day?”
“We went to the . . .” He turned to Elvira.
“Post office,” she told him.
“Post ossif.”
“And what did you do there?”
Hilly shook his head.
“We mailed a letter to Cora,” Elvira said, “telling her we are thinking of her and hoping that she is well.”
Hilly nodded. “She’s getting a baby in Boss . . .”
“Boston.”
“But we don’t know if it’s a boy,” he told Nell.
Later, on the way home, Elvira asked, “Can we stop at the store? Maybe word came on the telephone.” She grabbed up Hilly and ran with him.
At the rear of Lundeen’s, past the yard goods, an open stairway led to the office and switchboard in a loft that overlooked the sales floor. Elvira set Hilly down and ran up the stairs, calling to Anna Braun, “Any word?”
Nell and Hilly waited below. Moments later, Elvira appeared, snuffling and wiping her eyes. When Hilly saw Elvira’s face, he began to whimper.
“What’s happened? Is it the baby?” Nell seized hold of the banister.
Starting down, Elvira shook her head. “It’s a boy and his name is Laurence, after his grandpa. But Cora had a hard time.”
“She’s not . . .”
“No! But she can’t move her legs. The doctor said not to worry, it’s probably temporary . . . but still, you do worry, don’t you?”
Hilly grabbed Elvira’s skirt and bawled.
At the head of the stairs, Anna Braun sagged against the newel post. “Imagine. Our pretty little dancer.”
chapter eleven
WHEN GEORGE AND CORA brought baby Laurence home in August, Cora was still in a wheelchair, though her Boston doctors remained hopeful.
Cora hired both the recently widowed Mrs. Krautkammer to keep house and fourteen-year-old Lizzie Jessup to help with the baby. Elvira burned with envy. Lizzie might be a willing girl, but she was also a dough-faced, pigeon-toed, ignorant one, who hadn’t finishe
d sixth grade and didn’t know the difference between a bread plate and a pastry fork. What kind of influence was that for baby Laurence? Elvira felt passed over—unreasonably, as she would never abandon Hilly or give up her part-time work at the store. Still, wasn’t life unfair?
One day in late October, the bloodless Lizzie wheeled Cora up to the fabric counter, where Elvira stood wrapping a length of lace around a scrap of cardboard. “I’ve come to throw myself on your mercy again,” Cora said, handing the baby to Lizzie. Elvira watched the girl trail off, breathing through her mouth. “I’m planning this year’s Christmas party.”
Cora laid a gloved hand on the wooden counter and cast her eye around the store. Nothing could be further from her city background than this village dry-goods store, yet she was at ease here and grateful for its prosiness. Its very odor—offcastings of fabric sizing, plus woolen mittens, beaver felt, and dogskin coats—lent an odd sense of refuge.
In the East, refuge had never occupied her thoughts. But here, where the sky and land stretched forever, civilization felt precarious. People still spoke with sharp pain of the blizzard of 1888, which had killed so many. And they shuddered to recall the Hinkley fire, in which more than four hundred had perished.
In this dry-goods store, with a staunch country girl named Elvira wrapping lace around a bit of cardboard, Cora felt cosseted and sheltered, oddly at home.
That Sunday afternoon, in the Lundeen parlor, Cora told Elvira, “The lady’s chair by the fire is comfortable.”
Sitting in the chair, lavished with friendship, Elvira found herself borne across the boundary between Earth and Heaven, ushered into a world lovelier, more secure, more comfortable, even better smelling than any she’d dreamed of. What was that scent which seemed to be nothing laid on, but a part of the house itself?
The oil paintings; the deep, soft Turkey carpets; the upholstered furniture and shimmering draperies; the mahogany mantel and marble fireplace—surely these spoke of ease and gaiety.
Cora wheeled herself across the room, frowning and setting her mouth as the carpets resisted her. Elvira rose to help, but Cora motioned her off. “This is good exercise,” she explained, screwing up a thin smile.
From the sofa she gathered up a dress of navy-blue faille, one of several dresses heaped there. Tiny fabric-covered buttons marched up the sides of the sleeves. “You could wear this, don’t you think? You might have to shorten it a bit.” She held it up.
Elvira crossed the room and took the dress in her hands, caressing it. “It’s beautiful. But why can’t you wear it?”
Cora turned the dress to show Elvira the sleeves and the back. “Look at all these covered buttons. Can you imagine how uncomfortable they are when I lean back against this chair?” She grimaced. “Torture.”
“But you’ll be walking again soon,” Elvira said. “And then you’ll regret giving this away.”
“Certainly I’ll be walking again—and dancing! Oh, how I miss the waltz. George loves to waltz. But think of the fun I’ll have buying new things.” With a kind of scorn for herself, she turned the wheelchair away from the sofa. “Now, let’s plan the party.”
When Lizzie looked in later, the two women had finished making their party plans. “The baby’s down for his nap,” Lizzie said. That girl’s strained through a sieve, Elvira thought. No spirit. What Cora needs is someone to buck her up.
Cora asked the hired girl, “A pot of tea? And slice us some of the gingerbread, please. Get yourself a piece while you’re at it.”
Turning back to Elvira, Cora said, “It’s none of my business, but I have to ask.” She clasped her hands beneath her chin in a girlish gesture, as if meaning to coax a secret. “A girl as pretty as you must have a swain.”
Elvira looked confused. “A swain?”
“A suitor?”
“I . . . no, no.”
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you. But you’re lovely and fun. Someone should be setting his cap for you.”
Cora sounded like Nell. “I guess I’m just not interested in that kind of thing.”
“Well, someday.”
Easy with one another, they sipped tea and finished two slices of gingerbread each before Elvira said good-bye, taking the dress with her.
“George could deliver the clothes,” Cora told her.
“Oh, no,” Elvira said, “I can’t wait to show them to Nell.”
Walking home through the early November gloom, with a bleared sun low behind banked clouds, Elvira relived the afternoon’s plummy pleasures: the strong, pliant baby, soft and warm against her; the genuine appreciation she felt from Cora; the beautiful clothes she held in her arms, given without condescension or patronage. She clasped them to her face, savoring the scent of friendship. A swain?
With a puzzled scowl, she shook her head and plunged on.
chapter twelve
FINGERS TREMBLING, Elvira slipped into a watered-silk moire the color of red grapes. “What do you think of the color?” she asked Nell.
“It’s beautiful. It changes when you move. Sometimes it has a green cast.” Nell began buttoning the back. “Poor Cora.”
“I know. I feel guilty wearing this to a party at her house.”
“She’ll be happy to see you in it.”
“But it feels . . . like I’m walking on her grave.”
“You’re in a strange mood.”
Moving to the parlor, Elvira paraded up and down. Hilly, in his Dr. Dentons, watched from the kitchen door.
“I can’t get used to it,” Elvira said. “It’s one thing to stand still in a dress like this. But dancing in it!”
Without warning, Hilly cried, “Wanna go!” and flung himself sobbing at Elvira, grabbing handfuls of her skirt. “Wanna go dance!”
“It’s a grown-up party,” Elvira told him, trying to loosen his grip.
“No! Wanna go!” he screamed, beating her thighs with his fists.
Then Nell was on him, snatching him roughly, twisting him toward her. “Don’t ever hit! Do you hear me? Never! Never!”
“Mama,” he bawled, clutching her knees. “Mama!” When had his mother ever raised her voice to him? What was happening? He had only wanted to dance with Elvira.
A few minutes later, shaken by the scene with Hilly—what had gotten into Nell?—Elvira studied herself in the mirror above the bureau. Even by dim lamplight she saw that her cheeks were flushed. She felt feverish and weak.
She had an unsettling sense that she’d attended this very party a long time ago. For weeks she’d heard echoes of it in her head, voices and music, like the scratchy sounds from the graphophone tube at the Harvester Arms. And when she heard them, she grew melancholy.
In George and Cora’s dining room, Elsie Schroeder, wife of Howard the store manager—Elsie who had taken the pledge—poured herself a cup of fruit punch. Across the broad table, Elvira ladled out a cup of the brandy-laced version.
“Imbibing, are we?” Elsie lifted an eyebrow and smiled.
“As Anna always says, ‘That’s the advantage in being Catholic.’” Elvira moved toward the door and stood watching dancers in the parlor, where the furniture had been pushed against the walls and the carpets taken up.
Elsie followed. “That’s a mighty fancy dress.”
“Mrs. Lundeen gave it to me.”
“Mrs. George Lundeen?”
“Yes.”
Elsie pondered this. “Well, I suppose it was too nice for the missions box at church.”
At this, Cora appeared around the corner of the parlor door and wheeled across the hall. “There you are,” she called to Elvira. “Would you be a dear friend and pour me a cup of brandy punch?”
“I was just complimenting Elvira on her dress,” Elsie said. “She’s fortunate to have a fairy godmother.”
“Oh, no, Elsie. The fairy godmother is fortunate to have Elvira.” Cora took the cup and drank deeply. “Now, Elvira, I want you to save several waltzes for George. He’s too kind to say it, but I know he misses dancing.”<
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“I’m not very good.”
“Doesn’t matter. He’s a strong lead. Just let yourself go.”
Over the course of the evening, Elvira lost count of her dance partners. The manager of the lumberyard asked for two or three schottisches. A teller at the bank stole the polkas, while Howard Schroeder was partial to the two-step. In the dining room, finishing off a roast-beef sandwich, Anna told Elvira, “Elsie’s given up dancing now. Howard says she’s immodestly virtuous.” Anna wiped mustard from the corner of her mouth and looked up as George Lundeen approached.
“Elvira? I think you owe me a waltz or two.” The quartet had struck up “The Sidewalks of New York,” and George led Elvira into the parlor.
“The color of your gown becomes you,” George told Elvira, whirling. “The men in the back parlor are saying you’re the prettiest young woman in Harvester.”
“Cora’s the prettiest woman in Harvester! And she gave me the dress.” Then, afraid she’d spoken sharply, she added, “Because of the covered buttons in the back.”
“They’re a problem,” he agreed. “Cora’s had to make a lot of adjustments. She’s a good scout about it all.”
“She says she’ll be dancing again, maybe this time next year.”
George said nothing.
“Don’t you believe?”
Again, he said nothing.
“Anything’s possible,” Elvira finally told him.
“True.”
But Elvira sensed his doubt. Maybe the doctors had told him something they hadn’t told his wife.
Tempering, though, George said, “Who knows what a year might bring?”
“Life changes so fast,” Elvira said. “Look at me. I’m a totally different Elvira from the one who came to town. I don’t believe I’d know that girl anymore.”
He smiled. “You’ve grown up since you came to the store.”
“Well, I’ve been there two years now.”
“Only two years? So much has happened, I feel like I’m forty.”
After “Annie Laurie” and the “Blue Danube,” George returned Elvira to the dining room and poured her a cup of punch. “I’ll be back later for another waltz.”
Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse Page 5