“Do you see Charlie often?” I asked her, breaking the silence between us.
She laughed—nervously, I thought, but it was hard to attribute emotions to Mama, because sensations seemed to pass through her like mist.
As she was searching her mind, I had the sense of something happening below us. There was no noise to alert me, just a feeling of space taken up in a way it hadn’t been the moment before. Leaving Mama to her thoughts, I stepped toward the opening to the millinery shop and looked down.
The constellation of hats I saw below was impressive. Every shape and size of hat imaginable was represented. Hats molded snugly to mannequin heads, and others perched lightly as if anticipating the cranial sensitivities of their future owners. Hats the color of soot and others canary yellow. Hats that expressed themselves horizontally and equally as many that sprouted vertically. The milliner, Mr. Burns, was a precise man, and he lent that precision to his hats. Times were hard, apparently, but the hats argued otherwise.
I squatted to see more of the shop, and along with mannequin heads, their bodies cut off below their shoulders, Mr. Burns had a row of life-size mannequins because he liked to coordinate his hats with items of clothing for sale in the store. He had received permission from Daddy Kratt to buy these full-size mannequins, and while Mr. Burns boasted that they came from Siegel & Stockman in Paris, I knew they had not, my inventory duties making me privy to the expenditures of the store. Regardless, the new mannequins were impressive. Made from papier-mâché instead of wax, they were sleeker and more sophisticated than their Victorian predecessors. Mr. Burns dressed them with care and upbraided anyone who dared touch them. I once heard him tell Mrs. Greeley, the butcher’s wife, that she was as lovely as a mannequin. I hoped she knew that was high praise.
Nothing appeared out of the ordinary in Mr. Burns’s shop. Suddenly, I noticed—with no small amount of shock—that one of the full-length mannequins against the wall wasn’t a mannequin at all.
There Quincy stood, smiling at me.
I stood upright and walloped my head against a low attic beam. The others rushed to me, and I cradled my head while peering back into the shop below. I scanned the mannequins and landed on the space, empty now, where my brother had been.
* * *
The next week, I was on my way again to Charlie’s attic. A sharp November wind was whipping around the store’s brick exterior, and I heard a branch lashing against a far window. Grateful to be inside, I rounded the corner to pass through Mr. Burns’s office, and I found Jolly Bramlett there with him. He was leaning over her head.
“Oh, pardon me!” I said, and Jolly let out a little yelp.
Mr. Burns rotated his face toward me, his expression serene. “No need to apologize, Miss Kratt,” he said. “I am merely measuring Miss Bramlett’s head for a hat.” Mr. Burns was a boyish man, his chest slender and the voice that rose from it tidy and colorless. He spoke as impeccably as he dressed, and his unwavering air suggested that no stitch out of place would be tolerated, not in his work and certainly not in life.
Jolly’s surprise fell into a smile. She seemed to measure my envy with that smile, which burned brighter as she watched me considering the news that she would have a new hat. Mr. Burns went about his business with the tape measure, and Jolly sat properly, her hands clutched in her lap. What an extraordinary moment for her. Not many fathers would commission a hat for their daughters. I thought about the expense, too. Olva’s voice echoed in my mind. Two mornings ago, she had said that President Hoover lacked clear-sightedness. I doubted it was appropriate to criticize the president, but she was adamant that his optimism about the recent economic troubles was dangerously misplaced. I wondered if there might be a time when a fancy hat would be considered absurd in its indulgence. For some, it already was. A laborer in one of our cotton gins would sacrifice an entire day’s income to buy his wife a hat.
Mr. Burns was now taking notations on Jolly’s hat. A week ago, I had found him alone in the study of our house. Daddy Kratt sent people to the study when he wanted to question them about some matter or another. Judging from the grave faces of visitors who emerged from the closed doors, I gathered the topics were sensitive ones.
The day I had found Mr. Burns there, the double doors to the study had been ajar, and Daddy Kratt had not yet arrived. Mr. Burns was waiting in the window nook, reading an edition of John Henry Newman’s prose, and he was seated in such a way, his back pressed against the glass, so that when he glanced up from the pages, he looked into the room rather than outside. He was missing a fine view. Of the lily pond, laden with curds of algae, and of the clovered field that broadened away from the house before erupting into a belt of woodland. I had been in those woods many times with Rosemarie. They were full of mystery, dark and moss-slicked and gauzy with gnats. But Mr. Burns seemed content with his perspective, the giant chandelier that commanded the ceiling and the globe on the desk that no one ever turned. He waited with his lips pressed into a tight smile, an indication of his self-possession even while he waited for my father’s appearance.
When I heard my father arriving, I ducked into the hallway. Entering the study, he left one of the double doors cracked. I sidled up and listened, finding that Charlie was the subject of Daddy Kratt’s questions. He wanted to know if Charlie had frequent visitors to the attic. My ears strained, but I couldn’t hear Mr. Burns’s response. I leaned in closer and closer, and suddenly, the door at my nose flew open, Mr. Burns stepping out in front of me. He regarded me with no change in his expression, that same composed smile hovering on his face. Mr. Burns had fared better than most visitors to the study. The only time I had seen any change in Mr. Burns’s composure was some months back, when I had found him in the post office with Mrs. Greeley, the wife of our butcher. As he stood cozily next to her, I had glimpsed a look of unguarded joy on his face before he noticed me and swiftly parted ways with her.
I continued to watch Mr. Burns as he deliberated over Jolly’s hat. As if reading my thoughts, he looked at me with a strict gaze.
“What kind of hat will it be?” I asked.
“Peacock,” Jolly announced proudly, and Mr. Burns nodded in accord.
“My sister loves peacocks,” I replied carelessly. “They are as absurdly beautiful as she is.”
“I’m done with the measurements, Miss Bramlett,” Mr. Burns said in a clipped way.
Jolly thanked him and offered me a smug look before she walked out the door.
Later, I would wonder at what moment Jolly had figured out the hat was for my sister and not her.
Two weeks after I had watched Mr. Burns measure Jolly’s head, I was standing on the front porch of our house, my sister and Mr. Bramlett on the lawn below. It was early, and he had come to retrieve my father for that day’s work, and he clutched a Kratt Mercantile Company shopping bag in one of his hands, his fingers short and blunt and squared off at the ends. The way he was looking at my sister made me think he had come looking for her, too.
Rosemarie, thirteen years old at the time, obeyed no circadian standards, so she was waltzing around as if it were midday. I had lifted my pointer finger, about to chastise her for wearing a sleeveless dress on a winter morning, but before I had the chance, Mr. Bramlett was approaching her.
“It’s cold, little bird,” he said, taking her hands. He placed them in a prayer position and pressed his two palms around them. Then he bent over and blew into them, his lips grazing her fingers. “We’ll warm you right up.”
In front of Mr. Bramlett, Rosemarie stood immobile, although her eyes curled up ever so slightly toward a dawn that had not quite prevailed over the darkness. She seemed to have fallen into a slumber of compliance, so stationary was she, but Mr. Bramlett happened to loosen the pressure on her hands momentarily, and she dashed away with unexpected speed, her hair flapping behind her. Running away was always Rosemarie’s first reaction to difficult matters. In that moment, I
could begin to understand why.
Shep Bramlett’s face—that giant, two-storied countenance—set itself toward the direction Rosemarie had flown. He spat hard on the ground and whipped his eyes at me. Jabbing his hand into the shopping bag, he pulled out a hatbox. Letting the bag fall to the ground, he rifled through the box and lifted the hat for me to view. The hat, made of peacock feathers, was stunning. Purple and blue, its iridescent plumes shimmered skyward. Despite Mr. Bramlett’s vulgarity, he had chosen well for Rosemarie.
Mr. Bramlett strode toward me, and as I backed away, he thrust the hat into my hands. “You can give this to your goddamned sister.” His roughness could not mask his embarrassment.
After watching him storm off, I lifted the empty bag off the cold ground, returned the hat to its box, and buried it among the random effects in our cellar.
When my mind returned to the present moment in the millinery office, I found Mr. Burns staring at me.
“Oh, I really must be getting up to Charlie in the attic,” I said, gesturing toward the far end of the room at the ladder. “I have some business to attend to with him.”
Hearing Charlie’s name, Mr. Burns’s unflappable face twitched momentarily, and he looked at me with a kind of gaudy interest. His expression quickly resumed its usual restraint. I hurried toward the ladder and through the opening into the attic. There was Charlie. He stood triumphantly next to the restored Tiffany lamp, his elation erasing Mr. Burns’s odd behavior below.
“Charlie!” I cried. “Well done! How did you get the parts so quickly?”
“Improvisation,” he said, winking.
“You are quite marvelous.”
He busied himself with a soft towel, wiping the base of the lamp. I had embarrassed him with my praise. He moved on to cleaning the light switches, his fingers easing across their contours.
“You find it beautiful, don’t you, Charlie?”
“I do, Miss Kratt.”
“Why don’t you keep it a bit longer? No one expected you to fix it in a flash.”
As Charlie smiled at me, Olva’s head popped through the opening in the floor, and she crawled into the attic, followed by Mama. They regarded me pleasantly enough, perhaps with a measure of surprise to see me there again. How often had they excluded me from these secret meetings? The scent of rose water flooded the room. Mama had taught me how to make the perfume, heady yet delicate, same as she wore, but I had given mine to Olva after one of my schoolmates suggested that a sweet fragrance on me was as good as wasted. Now, Mama and Olva smelled the same.
“Was Mr. Burns still there?” I asked, pointing below us. Because the entrance to the attic could only be accessed through Mr. Burns’s millinery shop, he would be privy to anyone’s comings and goings from the attic. I remembered the strange weight of Mr. Burns’s gaze when he saw I was paying Charlie a visit.
Mama and Olva exchanged a look. No, Mr. Burns was not there any longer. I wondered if they always chose moments when he stepped out of his shop to sneak into the attic.
“The lamp!” Olva cried.
Charlie’s smile brightened. He patted Olva on the arm, a soft and familiar gesture, and he bowed his head slightly at my mother. “Rosemarie, a pleasure to see you, as always.”
I thought it was very familiar of Charlie to use my mother’s first name. It made me think of my sister, who was named after Mama. Shep Bramlett was fond of saying that the name was fitting for my sister because it took two women’s names put together to convey the scale of her beauty.
Charlie set the lamp on one of his worktables and plugged it in.
“Drum roll!” Olva announced before fulfilling the request herself.
Charlie turned the first key switch, and the fanfare from Olva was so boisterous that out of bashfulness, he quickly turned the other two switches. The lamp illuminated was no less resplendent in the humble setting of the attic. The gadgets and tools strewn across the floor caught the light at various angles and seemed to crackle to life.
Light brought new clarity to the setting. “I had no idea you three gathered regularly here,” I said. “Have my invitations been misplaced?”
Olva managed a small laugh, but Mama appeared more alarmed than anything. Charlie switched off the lamp.
“At least Olva knows I’m joking,” I said. We stood in the awkward silence I hadn’t intended to bring on. Rather than make my exit, I remained. My curiosity outweighed my chagrin. I wanted to see what they did here in the attic.
It turned out they talked and laughed. When they grew comfortable with my presence, I was surprised to hear how many names of people in Bound came up and how freely they spoke of them. I heard Mama’s voice more than I had in the past five years. Maybe in my whole life. Olva made some comment about Mr. Burns, and everyone laughed, me included, even though I hadn’t heard what was said. Then Charlie jabbed his index finger toward Mr. Burns’s shop below, and we all fell silent before Olva erupted into laughter again, unable to bridle her mischievous joy.
“Mr. Burns and his mannequins,” Olva tittered. “If one of them came to life, he’d leave town with it.”
“Who’s to say Mr. Burns is not himself a mannequin come to life?” I said, getting in on the joke. “He wears his head on his shoulders as stiffly as if he remembers a time when he wasn’t real.”
Laughter rose from the group once again, and their shining eyes, the merriment there, grew partly from their surprise at my naughtiness. My face warmed, and the attic, despite its expansiveness, felt cozy, and I was suddenly as fond of it as I had been of any place in my life.
Mama and Olva began trading jewelry back and forth, as if Mama were a teenager. Then Mama reached around Olva’s neck and said, “Now try this one.”
I knew it was her cameo. It had been my grandmother’s, a rare double-sided Edwardian coral cameo (1½ by 1 inches) set in gold. One side displayed the face of the goddess Athena and the other the god Ares. I had never before seen it depart my mother’s neckline. I felt tightness in my throat as Mama placed the cameo around Olva’s neck. It was not that I objected to Mama letting Olva wear the necklace, but it was more that they had not thought to include me in this ritual.
For distraction, I turned my attention to Charlie’s shop. Some objects were from the store—a cash register sat mutely on the floor in disrepair—but other items I recognized from some of the affluent families in town. In one corner towered a grandfather clock I had seen in Shep Bramlett’s house, a Samuel Thompson from the early 1800s, which stretched its head through the rafters with the imperturbable air of a monarch.
“Charlie,” I said, “you are surrounded by things that would ordinarily be unknown to a man like you.”
The silence was leaden. Mama and Olva turned their faces toward me. I opened my mouth to try to cover up my old words with new words, but Charlie spoke before I could make my shabby attempt.
“You are right about one thing, Miss Judith.” This drew a raised eyebrow from Olva. “I do come to know the things as I work with them. And they, in a way, come to know me, as the oils of my fingers remain on them.” Charlie’s voice was smooth and worn. “It has always seemed to me that the more we touch something, the more we draw it up into ourselves, so that when that thing goes away, it is still within reach, its traces lingering on our fingertips.” He then looked at Mama, whose eyes darted downward.
“Beautifully put, Charlie,” Olva said with a touch of uncertainty, as if she wasn’t entirely sure what he had meant.
I decided to leave. I said my goodbyes, not swiftly enough, because Charlie insisted on walking me out through the milliner’s shop. He checked first to see that Mr. Burns was still away, which he was. Mama and Olva came, too—it seemed the three of them could not be separated—and as Mama made her way down the ladder, Charlie approached to help. That was when I saw it. Charlie’s and Mama’s hands met on one of the ladder rungs, and as her hand slid i
nto his, he squeezed it.
I turned on my heels to exit the milliner’s shop. Head throbbing, I began my unsteady descent to the third floor. What I saw below made me take in a sharp whit of air. Farther down on the same staircase ran Quincy. I watched as he scrambled hastily, leaping onto the landing of the stairs and taking a route through a back door that led down to Daddy Kratt’s office.
Before ducking out of sight, my brother paused to look back. Catching my eyes, he flashed me a dark wheel of a smile.
Windsor chair
Wooden spinning wheel
Mahogany secretary
R. S. Prussia vase
Pie safe—Grandmother DeLour’s
Butler’s tray (silver plated)
Amsterdam School copper mantel clock
Hamilton drafting table
Letter opener (cut glass)
Tiffany lamp (diameter 16˝; 21¾˝ height)—broken fixed
Victorian chaise longue
Octagonal Jacobean parlor table
Mahogany sewing cabinet
Westclox alarm clock (Big Ben model)
Hepplewhite side table
Watchmaker’s workbench
Edwardian neoclassical brass column candleholders (10˝ tall)
Abner Cutler rolltop desk
Riding whip—Daddy Kratt’s
New York Times (Wednesday, October 30, 1929)
Peacock hat
Edwardian coral cameo (1½˝ × 1˝)
Five
It was early in the morning, and the summer sun had already begun its staring contest with my eastern-facing house. I sat behind the slim shadow of one of the porch columns, and I peered around it to see an old Ford truck, rust eating at its edges, parked but running its engine at the edge of my lawn.
The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt Page 8