If Wishes Were Kisses: Six Beloved Americana Romances, a Collection (Small Town Swains)

by Pamela Morsi

  "Yes. I even rather casually mentioned it to your father."

  "You asked my father?"

  "I had no one to speak for me," he explained. "I had to speak for myself. Although I admit I was not very direct."

  "What did you do?" she asked.

  "I went into the bank one day and laid out my financial affairs as if I were there to borrow money. Of course, I didn't need or want to borrow any money. He knew that, I was sure. I tried to make conversation, to show him that I was a friendly neighbor. Finally, when I thought that perhaps he was getting to like me, I made a suggestion of marriage."

  "You suggested to my father that you wanted to marry me?" Gertrude was stunned.

  "Not directly, of course," he answered. "That is not the Polish way at all. I asked your father if his house was not too crowded. I told him that I had plenty of room in mine."

  Mikolai shook his head.

  "Your father was quite insulted and said something about his house being the fittest in Missouri. I'm afraid your father didn't understand a Polish proposal at all."

  Gertrude giggled. "You were trying to see if he was interested in getting his daughter married."

  Mikolai shrugged helplessly. "I didn't understand American ways. I had no way of knowing. And from the way he acted, I thought he wasn't receptive to having me as a son-in-law at all."

  Gertrude shook her head, still laughing.

  Mikolai was smiling at her. "Of course, now things are different. Now I know."

  "Now you know what?"

  "Now I know that your father is interested in my becoming your husband."

  "What are you saying?"

  "Your father is in heaven now, is he not?"

  "Well, yes."

  "A man in heaven cannot paint his house."

  "Cannot paint his house?"

  "Tarantowate," he said. "Dappling the house so that the suitor knows there is a marriageable female inside. From heaven your father could not dapple the house. So he has dappled you, with chicken pox."

  Chapter Forty-Three

  MY FAMILY HISTORY

  an essay by

  Roberta G. Edwards

  Mrs. Pederson

  Sophomore English Composition

  Venice High School March 12, 1965

  Family history is important because who we are is a lot of times dependent on who the people in our families were. I am very proud of my family. They are not rich or famous, but they are important to me and in some ways they have been important to this town.

  I am the youngest of three children born to Robert Donald Edwards and Lila Claire Stefanski. My father is originally from Indiana. His parents died when he was a little boy and during the Depression his family scattered all over and he doesn't know where they are. He came to Missouri during the Second World War when he was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood. He liked Missouri so after the war he settled here.

  My mother was born in Venice and has lived here her whole life. She worked for the telephone company until she got married and now takes care of my brothers and me. She is very interested in local history and knows a lot about things that happened and people that lived here a long time ago.

  My grandparents are Mr. Teodor Stefanski and Claire Barkley Stefanski. My mother is their only child. But my Grandpa Teddy was married once before. His first wife, called Grandma Olive, died in 1931. They say of her that she was a robust woman until the day she died. She must have been robust because she had nine children, including two sets of twins and a set of triplets. Mama says that it is Grandma Olive's fault that there are more Stefanskis in the Venice telephone book than there are Smiths or Joneses.

  Grandpa Teddy and Granny Claire were in the first graduating class of Venice High School. Grandpa Teddy attended the University of Missouri for two years before coming back to Venice to get married and run the family business. Grandpa Teddy was not called up for service in World War I because he injured his leg playing football when he was in high school. That was the only year that Venice High School won the state championship.

  Granny Claire went to Simmons College and received a degree in journalism. She worked on several newspapers back East including the Boston Globe. In 1931 she was fired from her job (part of the Depression layoffs) and she returned to Venice.

  I said to Mama that it must have been fate that Grandpa Teddy's wife had died only six months earlier and destiny made Granny Claire lose her job and return to Venice.

  Mama laughed and told me that Granny Claire has never depended much on fate and destiny. But she wouldn't explain to me what she meant.

  Granny Claire's parents, my great-grandparents, were George and Prudence Barkley. George Barkley was a banker. He died before I was born, but there is a picture of him that I have seen where he is dressed up in some strange costume, like a sheik or something. Mama says that it was taken when he was Sublime Kalifa of the Crusading Knights of the Mystic Circle. That's a kind of community organization that they had back then. I guess it was sort of like my dad being in the Rotary.

  Grandma Prudence lived a very long time. Long enough to see her son, Lester Margrove Barkley, sworn in as governor of the State of Missouri. Uncle Lester is now a judge on the State Supreme Court.

  Grandpa Teddy's parents were Mikolai Stefanski, a Polish immigrant, and Gertrude Barkley. Actually, his real mother was from Poland and was named Lida, but he doesn't remember her. Gertrude was also Grandma Claire's aunt, but Mama tells me that in olden times families got mixed up like that a lot with people marrying other people who were related to them by marriage or something.

  Gertrude Barkley was a writer and published five novels and a collection of short stories about immigrants that won her an important literary prize.

  Mama says I get my talent for writing from Great-grandma Gertrude. I also have her name for my middle one, but I don't like it. I think that if she could manage to write books, get married, and win prizes, she must have done it in spite of that name.

  I have one very vague memory of who I think were my Stefanski great-grandparents, Gertrude and Mikolai. I must have been very little, because Mama said that they died before I was old enough for school.

  I remember being on this porch. It was very clean and shiny and it was red brick. I'm not sure exactly, but I think it may be the house on East Main Street near downtown where my Aunt Arlene and Uncle Pete live.

  I can remember her, Grandma Stefanski, laughing and offering me a cookie. She said it was hazelnut and that Grandpa had picked them off the tree, just for "his baby Bobbie." I looked up at the man then. He was sitting in a chair on the porch and he had two canes, one on each side of his chair. He spoke to me. He talked funny, like he had an accent or something. He was like a big man, but I guess I wasn't afraid of him because I crawled up into his lap and pulled on his big eyebrows. They were the biggest, thickest eyebrows I have ever seen.

  She spoke to me then, about the cookie.

  "Your grandpa and I planted that tree," she said. "We planted it and we thought we would never have a hazelnut from it. But we did. And we thought we'd never have a little girl, either, but we have you."

  The old man laughed and he winked at me. Then he told me a story about an ancient hazel tree and how it protected Mary and the Baby Jesus from King Herod's soldiers. It was a nice story and a familiar one. I liked it very much. When he finished I hugged his neck. He stroked my hair and called me his dziecka. He stared off across the porch to the big tree that grew at the side of the house. Grandma looked at the tree. And I looked at the tree, too.

  It's all I remember of them. But now, looking back, I think that perhaps they weren't just looking at the tree. Maybe they were seeing things from the past. Things they did. People they knew. Times they remembered. I don't really know. Maybe it was like a symbol, I guess. All I saw was a tree and in those days all a tree was to me was something shady.

  No Ordinary Princess

  Chapter One

  Burford Corners, Indian Territory, July 4, 1907
>
  It was love at first sight for Princess Calhoun. Love, true love, pure love, totally consuming love, love that caught her heart in her throat and had her trembling, trembling from head to toe. He looked up and saw her. She felt the heat suffuse her cheeks. Then he looked at her, really looked at her as no man had ever looked at her. Seeing her, real and ordinary and imperfect, and finding pleasure in that gaze. She was stunned and struck dumb and screaming inside. Screaming for joy. Love at last, at long last, love.

  "Someday, someday," she had confessed to her best friend, Muna. "Someday a man is going to come along and I am going to love him with all I am and everything I ever hope to be."

  That someday was today. And that man stood fifty yards away looking at her. Not quite smiling, but looking, looking at her and watching her fall in love with him.

  It was a day that had begun quite inauspiciously. Preparations for the Fourth of July picnic had kept her busy all morning. And her father's absence had been a nagging worry.

  Last night, like most, he'd failed to return home. But she knew that he would make an appearance at his own party. If he didn't, Princess vowed, she would never forgive him.

  "Any word from my father?" she had asked Howard, the young man who was part butler, part handyman.

  He kept his full concentration upon his task as she spoke. "Nothin' yet, ma'am. For sure he'll be driving up in that noisy ol' thang any minute now."

  "Naturally he will," Princess agreed with a certainty she didn't feel. "He must be delayed in a meeting. He wouldn't be late for his own Fourth of July party."

  And if he was, she vowed silently to herself, she would cheerfully drag him out into the drive and choke him lifeless. Of course, she could never do that. Although she had once heard herself described by a neighbor as a hefty, strapping young woman, her father outweighed her by nearly a hundred pounds and had been considered quite a brawler in his day. But if he did not make it to this party she would certainly give him a piece of her mind. And she was just the woman to do so.

  It was one of the truths of her life that Princess Calhoun knew what should be done and when to do it. And she could not fail to pass that knowledge on to others.

  "Guests are arriving at the porte cochere, Miss."

  Princess gave him a tight smile. "Thank you, Howard. I will be in the receiving room momentarily."

  Princess Calhoun was not necessarily a willing pinion in the machinery of Burford Corners social life. In fact, if someone had asked her where she was from, she would have preferred to tell them that she was a resident of Topknot, the brand-new oil camp town that sat right on the city limits of Burford Corners. The good people of the older community had not been welcoming to the wild oil field folks that flocked to their area. They had barred their doors, shuttered their windows, and crossed the street to avoid them at every opportunity. Princess was raised in the oil fields. She had friends among the people of Topknot, many of whom were more like family. They had moved together from boom town to boom town from here stretching back to West Virginia and Pennsylvania. But Topknot had no truly residential area and when her father chose to build her a house, he'd picked a lovely spot just north of Main Street in Burford Corners. Princess Calhoun realized instantly that as the wealthiest young woman in town, she was expected to become the purveyor of all that was polite and fashionable.

  It was a duty that came to her easily. Her own mother, dead since Princess was a girl, had been shy and sickly. Demure in every way. But in all honesty, Princess was more her father's daughter. She needed work and purpose. She had little interest in idle chatter or the life of leisure. And the fine society of Burford Corners was as much in need of guidance and direction as the rest of the world.

  Today the entire population of the two rather mutually disagreeable communities was to celebrate the birthday of the nation in the garden of her home.

  For that reason alone, when Princess swept into the west receiving room, there was a smile on her face as she greeted the first arrivals.

  "Oh, Daddy and I are so delighted that you came," she told first one and then another. "Mingle as you will, sample the food, and enjoy yourself."

  It was a polite encouragement, not far different from one given from any hostess. But somehow when Princess said it, it sounded very much like a command.

  She was never nervous or fretful. Determinedly she charged forward in life, doing what must be done in the manner most appropriate. Taking up the duties of the hostess with the same energy and vigor that might be employed in fighting battles or righting injustice. It was not something with which she was naturally at ease. But if there was anything that Princess Calhoun understood it was that hard work and organization were a strong substitute for natural talent. Of course, four years at Miss Thorogate's College, Saint Louis, Missouri had taught her much.

  She had been an uninspired scholar, a fact that came as a great surprise to her father and his friends. It was one of the strange quirks of the human mind that people believed that a plain woman with a domineering nature would rightly possess exceptional intelligence. Princess knew herself to be neither bright nor beautiful. But she was practical and determined and had a strong sense of empathy for the unfortunate and downtrodden. If it could be said that she had a talent, it was for caring for other people in a deep and meaningful way. And transforming those feelings into actions and solutions.

  Today those actions meant seeing that a hundred invited guests, many of them people she hardly knew, enjoyed themselves on this special occasion and got to know each other.

  The food was prepared. The servants instructed. The production in order. Princess kept constant vigil on everyone and everything, all the while smiling and smiling and offering needed advice to anyone who came near. It was not, after all, simply a party. It was an important step in uniting the two communities.

  "Good afternoon, Daddy and I are so glad you could join us."

  The phrase was repeated dozens of times.

  Princess smiled at all of them, welcomed all of them. Chatted with all of them. And wished desperately that she was elsewhere.

  Howard ushered in more guests and Princess looked up once more, the polite smile still plastered upon her face. This time, however, her eyes lighted with genuine delight.

  "We're here!" an attractive, dark-eyed young woman declared as she hurried through the door before her parents.

  Princess grabbed her in a warm hug.

  "Thank goodness," she said, chiding gently. "You are quite late. I was afraid I'd have to get out my surrey and go to get you soon. I simply could not make it through this afternoon without you."

  Muna Nafee was the very best and truest friend of Princess Calhoun. And that had been the fact for some time. If people thought it strange that the strong-minded daughter of King Calhoun should take up with the soft-spoken and exotic offspring of Topknot's newly opened Emporium, then they just didn't understand the hearts of the two young ladies involved.

  "I haven't seen you for a week. Where have you been?"

  Muna looked momentarily uncomfortable. Whatever she intended to say, she didn't. Her mother moved up right behind her and quietly scolded her in their strange foreign tongue.

  Muna nodded, clearly annoyed, but resigned. She turned to gesture toward the man that had entered with them. He was a short, balding fellow in his late thirties. He sidled up to her, grinning so broadly he appeared more foolish than friendly.

  Princess gave the gentleman a polite nod. Undoubtedly he was one of Muna's numerous uncles. They showed up in the boomtowns from time to time. One by one, as his businesses grew, Mr. Nafee brought his family from the old country to work for him.

  Eager to show welcome, Princess held out her hand even before Muna began the introduction.

  "Prin, this is Mr. Maloof Bashara, newly arrived to our city."

  The man began shaking her hand vigorously. "I speak English no good!" he declared heartily. "I speak English no good."

  "It's a pleasure to meet you, sir," Pr
incess said kindly. "Are you a member of the family?"

  Mrs. Nafee was whispering furiously to her daughter. Muna spoke once more.

  "Mr. Bashara is my fiancé," she said.

  Princess turned to stare at her friend in disbelief.

  "What?"

  Muna raised her chin a little higher. "Mr. Bashara and I plan to marry, Prin," she said. "I wanted you to be the first to know."

  Princess stood, her jaw opened in shock for an instant before hugging Muna to her once more.

  "I . . . I . . ." Her brow furrowed questioningly, Princess tried to ask the what, where, and why without words.

  In reply, Muna merely rolled her eyes and gave a slight toss of her head in the direction of her father.

  "We are so very happy," Mrs. Nafee declared in her heavily accented English. "Our little darling, to be married at last, and to such a fine man."

  "I ... I am so ... so very delighted for you," Princess said finally, forcing the correct words from her lips. She continued looking questioningly at her friend and hugged her once more, but without the spontaneity of earlier. "I am just so . . . surprised and ... so very happy for you."

  There were more congratulations all around as the Nafees accepted the good wishes of the hostess.

  Mr. Bashara declared once more that he didn't "speak English no good" and then to her surprise asked Princess, "How much you pay for this rug?"

  "What?"

  "How much you pay?" he asked, pointing to the Aubusson at their feet.

  "I ... I don't know, I . . ."

  "This rug is no good," he stated flatly. "Friend of Muna, I get you better rug."

  "Uh . . . ah . . . that's not necessary, I . . ."

  "No trouble," Mr. Bashara declared. "I get you better rug."

  Muna reached over and grabbed her fiancé’s arm, almost protectively. "We do not discuss business at parties, Mr. Bashara," she told him.

  "This is not business," he assured his intended with certainty. "I get friend a better rug ... at cost."