Unmentionables Read online

  Applause, signaling the end of the program, rippled out of the tent flaps, followed quickly by the cranking of one or two motor cars, as several patrons ducked out early to beat the rain.

  On stage, Marian bowed deeply from the waist so that her clasped hands brushed her knees. Deuce, who had tucked his notebook under his arm to free his hands for clapping, pulled it out to make a few more notes. Beside him, Helen vigorously beat her hands together. The platform manager, a nervous fellow in brightly bleached white duck trousers, took the stairs to the stage two at a time, all the while shouting, “Let me remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that tomorrow’s schedule includes an afternoon concert by the Chicago Lady Entertainers and, in the evening, a stupendous performance by the Mystic Entertainer! Many of you were wise enough to purchase subscription tickets but for those who were not, there are a few, but only a few, single tickets available!”

  The crowd rose. A young man stood up and whooped, swinging himself around a tent pole. Women shook out their skirts and gathered their fans, knitting bags, and seat cushions. The men reset boaters and adjusted suspenders. Helen, who had continued clapping long after everyone else, brushed past Deuce and pushed her way to the stage. Marian was starting to descend the stairs off to one side when Helen called out excitedly, “You were marvelous!”

  Marian paused. “Why, thank you.”

  “There are so many women that need to hear your message.”

  Marian smiled, stepped back onto the stage. “Yes! Exactly.”

  “Especially in Emporia; it’s so backward!” Helen threw up her hands.

  “I’m finding that in many Midwestern towns,” Marian said as she strode toward Helen, her sandals clacking against her heels.

  Marian was lowering into a crouch so that she could speak directly to the girl when her tunic caught on a loose nail. She yanked the hem, throwing herself off balance, and stumbled forward—headlong off the platform. Flailing wildly, her legs flew up and over. Her left ankle smacked sharply against a folding chair and her tailbone thudded against the trampled grass. She crashed in a heap at Helen’s feet.

  “Oh my goodness! Are you all right?” Helen cried, dropping beside Marian, who was unnaturally still. “Mrs. Elliot Adams? Criminy!” Helen jumped up. “Papa, help!” she yelled at the familiar boater moving down the aisle among the dwindling crowd.

  Several heads turned. Alvin Harp, owner of Emporia’s garage, and Mrs. Flynn, the druggist’s wife, rushed over, followed by Deuce and Tula. A boy in knickers materialized beside Helen.

  “She fell!” Helen said.

  “Someone get water!” Mrs. Flynn shouted.

  “Helen, are you all . . .” Deuce began as he joined the cluster, then spotted Marian’s face contorted in pain. He knelt and picked up her limp hand. She moaned, her eyelids fluttered. “Someone find Dr. Jack. You, go,” he said, pointing to the knickered youth. “If he’s not around, check the Bellmans’.”

  “Here, let’s make her more comfortable,” Tula said, snatching a floral cushion from a nearby seat and tucking it under Marian’s head.

  “Get this chair out from under her,” Alvin said. “Raise that leg up some.”

  Deuce gently wedged his hands under Marian’s thigh. Her eyelids jerked open like tightly sprung window shades and she yelped in pain. Alvin pulled aside the shattered wood.

  “Hold on there,” Deuce said. “The doctor’s on his way.”

  Mrs. Flynn wrung her hands, all the while shouting, “Where’s that water? We need water here!”

  Grabbing a fan from an onlooker, Helen flapped it erratically above the lecturer’s shiny brow. A panting youth from the crew appeared at the edge of the stage holding aloft a pitcher of water.

  “What’s happened?” Dr. Jack asked, stepping into the circle and fluidly dropping his black satchel.

  Helen spoke: “Her hem caught on something. Then, boom, right off the edge.”

  “Hit her head?” He crouched beside Marian, whose eyes were again tightly shut.

  “I don’t think so,” Helen said, her voice quivering.

  Tula took up the young woman’s hand, whispering, “It’s all right.”

  “It’s my right foot,” Marian said in a loud voice, opening her eyes. “It hurts like hell.”

  “All right,” Dr. Jack replied mildly. “Let’s start there.” Folding the gown back, he gently pressed his fingers down the length of her tibia. “Does this hurt?”

  Deuce modestly looked away during the examination. Dr. Jack reached Marian’s ankle and when he pressed down she howled in pain.

  “Hmm,” he said, nodding slightly.

  Marian, who had raised her head to follow the course of the examination, asked, “What exactly does that mean?”

  “Did that hurt?” he asked.

  “Of course it hurt—I wouldn’t be bellowing if it didn’t,” she said.

  “How about this?” Dr. Jack cupped her heel and slowly rotated the foot.

  Marian clenched her teeth, her eyes moistening. “Yes.”

  “Hmm.” Dr. Jack pushed back a sickle-shaped hank of hair.

  Marian’s tone was panicked. “Is it broken? Do you think it’s broken? It can’t be. It can’t.”

  “Well, I’m not certain it is broken, it might—”

  “I’m booked for Galesburg tomorrow. I have to be there. You’ll just have to wrap it up or splint it or something. I’ll manage.”

  Dr. Jack smoothed her gown and stood.

  “I think it’s broken but it could be just a bad sprain. You’ll have to give it a day or two to see if the swelling goes down. Where are you staying?”

  Darius Calhoun, the platform manager, wormed into the circle. “She can’t stay a day or two. Didn’t you hear the woman? She’s due in Galesburg,” he said, his small body quivering so that, with white pants and tufted eyebrows, he gave the impression of a fox terrier. “Then the day after that it’s Blanchester and then . . .” he pulled a creased schedule from his pocket. “And then Vernon.”

  “At the very least this woman has a bad sprain and possibly a break,” Dr. Jack said. “Can’t one of the other lecturers with your group step in for her?”

  “No. That’s not how it works. Mrs. Elliot Adams is a First Day. She’s always a First Day. The supervisor who is setting up the tent in Galesburg will be mighty upset if his opening act is stuck here.”

  Dr. Jack shook his head. “I’m sorry but I’m prescribing rest tonight. I’ll check it in the morning. If the swelling has—”

  From the ground, Marian shouted up, “I’m booked! This isn’t possible. I’m booked!”

  “She’s staying at the Lamoine,” Tula said. “All the performers stay there.”

  “Yes, yes, but . . .” the platform manager was saying.

  Dr. Jack shook his head. “She’s got to have someone looking after her, keeping her off that foot.”

  “I don’t need anyone—” Marian started, but Tula interrupted.

  “She can stay with me. We have a sleeping porch off the kitchen with a day bed.”

  “Fine,” Dr. Jack said, dusting off his knees. “Thank you.”

  Mrs. Flynn grabbed Tula’s arm. “But what about the welcome reception at the refreshment tent? The ladies are all set up.”

  “You’ll have to tell them there’s been an accident.”

  And so Marian, still protesting, was lifted onto a stretcher by four of the strongest stage hands, shoveled into the back of Mueller Florist’s delivery truck which, fortuitously, was parked nearby, and transported down several bumpy streets, with the little platform manager trotting nervously behind.

  After receiving the bad news from Mrs. Flynn, the members of the Ladies Welcome Committee despondently dumped the galvanized tub of ice and reclaimed their cakes that, in the heat, had slumped to one side like elderly choir members during a long sermon. As the ladies left the grounds, the first coin-sized drops began to fall. The thunderstorm, so long threatening, had arrived.

  CHAPTER TWO

 
; SIGNS AND SYMBOLS

  THE NEXT MORNING, DEUCE WOKE to the buzzy rattle of the alarm clock. He reached across to turn it off. For the past two years, during sleep, the memory of his wife Winnie’s passing would somehow be erased from his mind, and the empty space beside him was always a shock in the dawn’s light. But this morning, even before he opened his eyes, he knew that she was not there.

  For a few minutes he sat dull-eyed on the edge of the bed, his mind wooled in sleep. Absently, he thumped his feet against the rag rug and rubbed his knees. Below the open window, the floorboards were wet where it had rained in.

  He switched off the rotating fan and shuffled to the bathroom. Even at this hour, the air was stuffy. A wrinkled sash hung from the newel post. In the bathroom, the mat was soggy. A hairpin stuck to the damp skin of his heel. Helen must have been running late for work.

  As he dabbed shaving soap to his cheeks, Deuce thought of Helen’s graduation day. It had been stifling on that day too. Helen had led her class across the lawn, up the aisle between rows of applauding families, and onto the bunting-draped outdoor dais. As valedictorian, she had taken her seat in the first row at the front of the stage, Deuce watching with amusement as her foot jiggled impatiently through Reverend Sieve’s invocation, Miss Thayer’s salutation, and the class history. Then it was her turn at the podium.

  She had begun in the accepted manner, with references to “life’s path,” “beginnings, not endings,” and “realizing our possibilities.” She carried on for a good ten minutes in this fashion before veering abruptly into virgin territory. Deuce had straightened, suddenly alert.

  “But these really are just platitudes, at least for the female members of our graduating class who are still denied full participation as citizens, as workers, even as we step forward to aid our nation in a time of war. Yes, we are fortunate to live in Illinois, a state where women have at least been granted limited voting rights, but none of us can earn a wage equal to a man’s, or enter into marriage on equal footing.”

  A gust tossed the blue and yellow bunting. Miss Thayer and several of the young ladies clamped their hats to their heads. Hatless and unheeding, Helen continued.

  “That is why tomorrow, when the 7:20 for Chicago pulls out, I’ll be boarding it. The suffrage movement needs soldiers too, and I intend to join up. And I challenge each of the members of our class to join with me and journey out into the wider world.”

  Abruptly, she took her seat. Father Knapp gripped Deuce’s arm.

  “What the hell is she talking about?” he asked, in a barely controlled whisper. “Did you know about this?”

  Deuce’s mouth went dry. All spring Helen had chattered on about the Chicago Women’s Political Equality League, the city’s abundance of jobs for women, its profusion of respectable rooming houses. He knew she was going to go sometime, but he didn’t think she’d be leaving so soon.

  “Well?” the old man tightened his grip. Reverend Sieve, head bowed, was muttering the benediction.

  “She’s talked about it some,” Deuce said. “I didn’t take it seriously.”

  “There is no way in hell she’s going,” Father Knapp growled.

  “No, of course not.”

  Helen rushed up to the two men, cheeks and eyes radiant. “How did I do?”

  Deuce quickly turned away from his father-in-law. “You were wonderful, sweetie.” He wrapped his arms around her. “Great day.”

  Helen laughed, pulled back, and gave Father Knapp a solemn peck on the cheek. His expression was as stiff as his old-fashioned collar. She glanced at Deuce with raised brows.

  “Your grandfather—”

  Father Knapp interrupted. “There is no way in hell you’re going to Chicago.”

  “But—”

  “And you did nothing but embarrass yourself up there.” He flung his hand toward the stage. “Disgraced me too, and the memory of your mother.”

  When her grandfather mentioned Winnie, Helen’s cheeks paled. The old man had struck a nerve. Although outspoken, Helen’s vulnerability lay in wanting to live up to Winnie’s aspirations for her. The old man knew this and, in the two years since Winnie’s death, used his late daughter’s memory to manipulate his granddaughter. Deuce hated him for this. From the day he’d exchanged vows with Winnie, with a somber two-year-old Helen looking on, the old man had done nothing but stage manage every part of their lives.

  “Look, it’s too soon. Come work at the Clarion for a year, just like we discussed. Then the three of us can sit down and, you know, reconsider, and then . . .”

  Helen glared directly into Deuce’s eyes. “That’s the kind of thing you always say. You’re always compromising. You go along with everybody. Well, sometimes that doesn’t work. You have to take a side.”

  She turned and stomped off across the wide lawn, her graduation gown billowing behind her.

  Deuce started to follow but Father Knapp pulled him back. “Let her go. She’ll cool down. She’s got to learn that she’s not going to always get her own way.”

  * * *

  Remembering this exchange, Deuce wriggled uncomfortably as the razor scraped his left cheek. Even now, three months later, with Helen somewhat resignedly installed as bookkeeper at the Clarion, he knew things weren’t settled. She could take off at any minute. Probably the only thing keeping her was Father Knapp’s crack about Winnie turning over in her grave.

  Yet, deep down, he was a tiny bit glad if it meant she’d stay. The house was too big for one person. Already, with Winnie gone, at least half of the rooms had gone fallow. On his rare visits to the parlor, the draperies smelled stale, his footsteps echoed on the parquet floor. What would living here be like when it was just himself?

  He knew in his heart he should let her go. Help her go. But banging up against his father-in-law’s opposition was dicey. The man had bought and furnished Deuce and Winnie’s house, paid for Helen’s painting, piano, and horseback riding lessons—none of which were within the reach of a newspaperman—and, most importantly, Father Knapp was a silent partner—the majority partner—in the Clarion. But Deuce loved Helen more than anything and refused to squash her dreams. The evening of the graduation ceremony, he and Helen had talked it through. She apologized for what she’d said and he admitted that he allowed himself to be swayed too often. Although unhappy these last three months, she’d agreed to stay in Emporia for one more year.

  The metal clatter of the trolley’s steel wheels on the tracks out front pulled Deuce’s thoughts back to the steamy bathroom and the lather drying on his face.

  In the bedroom, he dropped a hand towel onto the wet floorboards by the window. Over at the Lakes’, the porch shades were drawn. Tula’s houseguest must be sleeping in. He fingered the tangle of ties on the closet doorknob. Two striped affairs, some muted solids, and the lavender number that Helen had given him for his birthday five years back. He’d worn it once but the fellows at the barbershop had razzed him and that had been the end of it. “Don’t want to stick out like a sore thumb,” he’d mumbled to Winnie when Helen was out of earshot. Today he felt differently and yanked it off the rack with a snap.

  On the dresser, a tortoise box held enamel lapel tacks and gilt watch fobs representing most of Emporia’s fraternal orders and business clubs. Becoming a member of the Elks, Knights of Pythias, the Commerce Club, and all the others represented Deuce’s slow but steady crawl up the social ladder.

  Since the 1820s, when his ancestors first settled in what was to become Macomb County, there had been rumors about colored blood in the family. No Garland ever publicly confirmed it, but when he was nine, Deuce had been ushered into his grandfather’s sick room. There, the old man, with skin the color of fallen oak leaves, solemnly explained that way back, Deuce’s great-great-great-grandfather had married a Negress and it was a disgrace that haunted the Garland clan to this day. “But don’t never admit it, boy. They can say what they like, but they can’t prove it.” Even without confirmation, whispers clung like cobwebs to each generati
on and Deuce never completely shook off the humiliation he’d felt as a small boy, teased in the schoolyard with shouts of “Nigger Deuce.”

  The taunts boiled up like welts whenever trifling disputes arose. As a child, it had happened over games of mumblety-peg and duck, duck, goose and he’d run home to the comfort of his older sisters. Later, the insult was occasionally flung during poker games and, more often, in disputes over the attentions of young ladies. Wounded, he had retreated to the type cases of Brown’s Print Shop, where he’d worked as an apprentice. As he grew older, Deuce adopted a different strategy: rather than retreating, he’d moved heaven and earth to fit in. He took up the cornet when silver bands were the rage; ordered roast beef and mashed, same as all the regulars at The Rainbow Grill. When asked what he thought about a matter, he blew words as slippery and vague as soap bubbles until the questioner revealed his opinions first. “You got that right,” was his pat response. None of this was all that difficult because he had a naturally pliant nature. It was his heart’s desire to belong. He wanted nothing more than to be included. His nickname, Deuce, came from his earliest years when he ran after his older siblings shouting, “Me too, me too!” His first nickname was Two-Two, and eventually it became Deuce.

  And what were the Elks and the Knights of Pythias and the others about, if not belonging? The handshakes, the toasts, the rituals, all separated insiders from outsiders. Then there were the levels, ranks, and orders to rise through, each with its own signifier worn on the lapel for all to see; recognition made tangible in bits of brass and gilt. He’d worked like a dog to win acceptance. But more and more, since Winnie’s death, he yearned to rise above being nothing more than the mouthpiece for Emporia’s prominent and powerful. Now, with the typhoid deaths, this urge became more acute.