Tiffany Girl

by Deeanne Gist

  I’d been told earlier in the week that my mother lived in heaven.

  He took a deep breath. “I’d asked my father where heaven was.”

  Everyone looked at one another with smiles and amusement.

  Miss Jayne tilted her head, her black hair swept up in artful disarray. “And what did he say?”

  “He didn’t say anything. We were in church. He simply pointed upward.”

  Her focus narrowed, concentrating the full force of her brown eyes onto him. His stomach clenched. She was very perceptive, a little too perceptive.

  “You didn’t believe him, did you?” she asked.

  “I believed him.”

  “But . . . ?”

  He sighed. “But for a long time afterward, I thought heaven and the church attic were synonymous.”

  Good-natured chuckles rippled about the table.

  Miss Jayne didn’t so much as smile. “How did you discover they weren’t synonymous?”

  “I climbed up into the church attic and my mother wasn’t there.”

  The clinks of silverware ceased. Mugs stalled midair. All fidgeting froze.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said softly, and she meant it. He could see her genuine sorrow.

  Emotion rose to the back of his throat. Emotion he’d long since buried, right beside his mother. At least, he thought he had. Not trusting himself to speak, he simply nodded and returned his attention to his plate. It was a long time, however, before he could swallow the rest of his dinner.

  KEROSENE HEATER 11

  “Kneeling in front of Mrs. Dinwiddie’s kerosene heater, Reeve tilted the upper portion back on its hinge and lifted out the tank.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  Kneeling in front of Mrs. Dinwiddie’s kerosene heater, Reeve tilted the upper portion back on its hinge and lifted out the tank. “This shouldn’t take too long, then I’ll have it fired up again and we’ll get you warm in no time.”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Take your time.”

  He couldn’t quite suppress a smile. She sat in her overstuffed chair with a blanket about her shoulders, a lap robe over her legs, a winter scarf about her neck, and a pair of gloves protecting her hands. He couldn’t believe she’d chopped the fingertips off of a perfectly good pair of gloves just so she could keep her hands warm yet have her fingers free to sew.

  Removing a pocketknife from his trousers, he scraped off some char along the edge of the flame spreader. His fingers were stiff with the cold, making even the simplest task take longer. “So what are you making now?” he asked.

  “I’m hemming a tablecloth. Be careful not to get any of that on my rug, dear.”

  “Mrs. Klausmeyer gave me an old sheet to double up and put over your rug. I’ll be careful, though.” He glanced about her room. Her accent tables already had cloths, and the other pieces of furniture were covered with doilies. “Where are you going to put your new tablecloth?”

  “It’s for the dining room.”

  “The dining room?” The gallery on top of the tank refused to budge. Raising up onto his knees, he grasped it and forced it in a counterclockwise direction until it finally came loose.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Dinwiddie replied. “Miss Jayne asked if I’d mind making one up. She thinks it will make our meals much more homey and pleasant. I quite agree with her.”

  He frowned. He couldn’t imagine their landlady parting with coin for something as frivolous as fabric for a tablecloth. “Where did the material come from?”

  “Oh, it’s some old stuff I had stored under my bed. We found some other fabric I had that would make lovely drapes for the parlor.”

  “We?”

  “Miss Jayne and I.”

  “So you’re making drapes as well?”

  “No, Mrs. Holliday agreed to do those up for us.”

  “With your fabric?”

  “Mmm-hm.” She wove her needle along the edge of the white cloth.

  He wiped his hands on a rag. “What if you want to use that fabric for something else?”

  “I won’t.”

  “Not yet, perhaps, but you might later.”

  Glancing over the rim of her glasses, she gave him an affectionate smile, her hands still working. “No need to get fierce, young Wilder. I’m thrilled to put the stuff to good use.”

  He still didn’t like it. Miss Jayne was taking over the entire place. Name cards at supper. Questions under their plates. Parlor games in the evenings. And now she’d commandeered the use of Mrs. Dinwiddie’s personal belongings. What if that fabric had been in her family for years? What if she’d had secret plans for it that she hadn’t yet had an opportunity to initiate? She’d never say so to Miss Jayne or anyone else.

  “Do you have any petroleum jelly?” With great effort, he kept his voice civil. It wasn’t Mrs. Dinwiddie he was irritated with, but that blasted New Woman who’d evidently decided that if she couldn’t take over the world, she’d take over Klausmeyer’s Boardinghouse instead. He tightened his jaw. Over his dead body.

  “There on the dresser.” She pointed with her head to a large marble-top dresser crowded with frames, candles, jars, and hat stands. “On the far left.”

  He stood before the dresser, overwhelmed and uncomfortable about reading the labels of such personal things, much less rifling through them.

  “Oh my, it’s freezing in here.” Miss Jayne walked in with a wooden easel and set it up by the door. Her hair was in its usual artfully-arranged-to-appear-unarranged pouf. She’d changed out of her Sunday clothes and now wore a plain brown skirt and striped shirtwaist.

  “Come in, my dear. Come in.” Mrs. Dinwiddie paused in her work. “Mr. Wilder is changing out the wick in my heater. It won’t be long now.”

  “Hello, Mr. Wilder.” Miss Jayne gave him a bright smile as if she had every right to be here when everyone knew Sunday afternoons were the times he did for Mrs. Dinwiddie what their landlady’s husband neglected to do himself.

  Reeve didn’t feel at ease with very many people. He much preferred to be alone. Yet Mrs. Dinwiddie was not like everyone else. She was a kindly old lady who’d lost her husband and son within a year of each other and had no one left in the world. He knew only too well what that was like.

  But more than that, she always put others before herself. He’d never in his life seen such a selfless person. It wasn’t fake, either. He’d watched her for a long time before he’d finally responded to her overtures of friendship.

  The same characteristic that was her greatest strength, however, was also her greatest weakness. She’d give anyone anything without a thought to her own wants, needs, or comfort. Which brought him back to the tablecloth and draperies. There was no way to know what that fabric had been earmarked for, but one thing was certain, Mrs. Dinwiddie wouldn’t have used up precious space in this tiny little room to store it away if it meant nothing to her.

  “Show him where the petroleum jelly is, Miss Jayne.” Mrs. Dinwiddie pointed a finger toward the left side of the dresser. “It’s there by the licorice powder.”

  He quickly scanned the jars, bottles, and containers littering the left side of the chest. He could find it. He didn’t need any help from the likes of her.

  Miss Jayne stepped up beside him, paused for no more than a second, reached over him, then whisked up a little tub clearly marked with the Vaseline label. “Here you are.”

  He snatched it from her. “What’s the easel for?”

  Her face lit. “I’ve decided to paint a portrait of every member of our family here at 438, starting with Mrs. Dinwiddie.”

  “A portrait? Right now? Today?”

  She laughed. “Heavens, no. It will take much more than one sitting. Today I’m doing the sketch. Then every Sunday, about this time, I’ll come back and do the next step.”

  “Every Sunday?”

  “Yes.”

  “At this exact time?”

  “More or less.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because
it’s the only afternoon I have off, and because if I come at the same time each week, the lighting will not have changed too drastically.”

  He spun around and pierced Mrs. Dinwiddie with his gaze. This was their time. His time. Not his and Miss Jayne’s times.

  But Mrs. Dinwiddie wasn’t looking at him, she was looking to the side and tapping her lips with a fingerless glove. “Oh, my. Will I have to wear the same outfit every single Sunday?”

  “It would be helpful if you would,” Miss Jayne replied.

  “You absolutely do not,” Reeve all but growled. “You wear whatever you want. Miss Jayne will make do.”

  “Well, yes,” Miss Jayne said. “I can certainly make do, I’m just saying—”

  “She knows what you’re saying,” he snapped.

  Mrs. Dinwiddie looked at him, lifted her brows, and followed his progress as he stalked back to the heater, plopped onto the floor, and crisscrossed his legs. He knew he was being churlish. And so did she. Still, was nothing sacred anymore?

  Yanking off the lid of the Vaseline, he dug into it with his rag and wiped it onto the threads of the gallery so it wouldn’t stick next time he needed to unscrew it.

  Miss Jayne made a few more trips, carrying in a stretched canvas and propping it onto the easel, bringing a sketchpad and leaning it atop the canvas, then scattering a few supplies onto Mrs. Dinwiddie’s bedside table. Reeve intentionally didn’t offer to assist her. Instead, he brushed off the cobwebs, dust, and dirt from the gallery.

  Finally, Miss Jayne pulled a smock over her clothing and began buttoning it closed.

  Mrs. Dinwiddie set her sewing aside. “I guess I should remove all these blankets so you can see.”

  Reeve slammed the gallery onto the floor, causing it to rattle. “You will not.” The pulse in his jaw hammering, he impaled Miss Jayne with his stare. “Would you have her catch a chill just so you can get a sketch?”

  Miss Jayne flushed.

  “Mr. Wilder,” Mrs. Dinwiddie hissed. Never, ever had she used that tone with him. “That is quite enough.”

  He flexed his fists. “I’ll not have you becoming ill. She can jolly well wait until I’m done and the room has warmed or she can come back tomorrow.”

  “She will be working tomorrow.”

  “Then she can go straight to the de—”

  “Mr. Wilder.” Another warning, this one fiercer than the last.

  He cranked the stem with sharp turns until the gears came to the end of the wick carrier.

  “He’s right,” Miss Jayne interjected into the yawning silence. “Quite right. I wasn’t thinking. I’ll wait.”

  Finally. Some inkling of sense. Praise the saints that be. Maybe now she’d leave.

  “Come and sit beside me, then, while we wait.” Mrs. Dinwiddie’s voice held great affection and not a little reassurance, as if Miss Jayne were the one who’d been wronged. Grabbing the wick with two fingers, he lifted it up and pulled it out of the carrier.

  “No, no,” she said. “That’s all right. I’ll just do some warm-up sketches.” Her charcoal began to scrape along the pages of her sketchpad.

  Mrs. Dinwiddie did not pick her sewing back up. A sure sign of her displeasure. With him. And it was all Miss Jayne’s fault. He and Mrs. Dinwiddie had been having a perfectly fine visit until she’d entered into their conversation, then actually shown up in the flesh.

  Lining the cotton tails of the new wick onto either side of the wick tube, he held them in place with one hand, brought his pocketknife to his teeth, opened it, then used it to tuck the tails down inside the tank. As he worked the wick down, the hairs on the back of his neck began to rise. Somehow, someway, he knew he was being stared at. Not by Mrs. Dinwiddie, but by her.

  He slanted a glance at her. She was drawing on her sketch pad. She flicked her gaze to him and froze. He immediately returned his attention to what he was doing, refusing to look at her again. It took a little persuasion, but he finally slid the wick down until the adjuster made contact with the wick carrier.

  He wiped his brow with his shoulder. The gears were meshed. By the time he leveled the burning surface, reassembled the tank, filled it with fuel, and installed it back into the heater, the extended silence in the room had caused the tension to rise to even greater heights.

  “We’ll need to give it fifteen minutes to soak up the kerosene before I can light it,” he said, collecting the discarded wick and drop cloth.

  “That will be fine.” Mrs. Dinwiddie’s voice was civil, but not warm. Nothing like it normally was.

  He looked at her.

  Her lips were pressed together, her eyes full of censure.

  His chest tightened. Scooping up his mess, he scrambled to his feet, swept past Miss Jayne, and headed out back to dispose of it. It wasn’t until he returned to light the heater that he saw Miss Jayne’s sketch.

  He pulled up short. A muscular man with broad shoulders and curling, untamed hair held a gallery in one hand, while he crammed a wick into it with the other, elbow out. The lines were quick, rough, and careless, yet he knew immediately what it was. Who it was.

  She sat in the chair beside Mrs. Dinwiddie, both of them looking at him. They’d ceased speaking when he’d appeared. Had they been talking about him?

  “Excuse me,” he mumbled, then lit the wick, closed the heater, returned the Vaseline to the dresser, and left, feeling angry, confused, and hurt. A hurt not unlike the one he’d felt many times before when he’d been shut inside his room at his grandparents’ house and stood in front of the bolted-down window, looking out at the world from behind a barrier as impenetrable as a solid brick wall.

  CARTOON—PAPER PATTERN—COMPLETED WINDOW 12

  “Pressing down with her stylus, she outlined each individual color on a giant cartoon Grace de Luze had painted with watercolor.”

  CHAPTER

  16

  Mr. Tiffany had been sequestered in Agnes Northrup’s office for almost forty-five minutes. Flossie glanced again at the woman’s door, wishing she could simply sit at the man’s feet and listen. Already she’d been able to apply what she’d learned from him to her painting techniques. If she could just shadow him, she’d be able to learn so much more. Especially since it was going to take her forever to save up enough money for tuition to the School of Applied Design, much longer than she’d originally thought.

  She wondered what he and Miss Northrup were discussing. Was he critiquing her work? Miss Northrup had been with Mr. Tiffany since 1888 and was the manager before Mrs. Driscoll. Nan said the woman had hated it and complained it interfered with her designing. So Nan was to have taken her place. Then Mrs. Driscoll, who had worked for Mr. Tiffany before, swooped in and swiped the managerial position. Miss Northrup had become a full-time designer and been given her own personal office. Nan was given nothing—no promotion, no special working space, no title. She was simply a Tiffany Girl, just like the rest of them.

  This morning Mrs. Driscoll had moved Flossie and Nan from the storeroom to the workshop with the rest of the girls. As much as Flossie loved putting the glass away, it was a rather lonely affair. Out here, she not only enjoyed the camaraderie of the other girls, but she was able to see all the other tasks they performed.

  Pressing down with her stylus, she outlined each individual color on a giant cartoon Grace de Luze—a designer who’d been with Tiffany for three years—had painted with watercolor. Finding a spot of rich blue, Flossie ran the point of her stylus around the edge of that single color. She was careful to exert a good deal of pressure on the stylus, for underneath the cartoon were two sheets of carbon transfer paper atop two sheets of heavy manila paper.

  When she was finished, Mrs. Driscoll would pull back the cartoon. Underneath, on the manila sheets, would be a perfect outline of where each fragment of colored glass would eventually be placed. Before the two sheets of manila were separated, however, one of the other girls would number each individual section Flossie had delineated. Nan told her they would use those numbers o
ver and over when putting the window together.

  Stepping out of Miss Northrup’s office, Mr. Tiffany clapped his hands together. “How are my windows coming along, ladies?”

  Flossie wondered if he changed into his fine clothes every time he wanted to visit the Women’s Department, for she’d never seen him looking anything less than the gentleman.

  “What do we have here?” he asked, stepping up to watch two girls cut templates with three-bladed scissors.

  They were cutting around carbon lines on manila paper that someone else had already traced and numbered. Their special scissors cut an eighth-of-an-inch border around each piece to compensate for the lead that would be soldered there. The glass cutter would eventually use the numbered pieces of paper as her templates.

  “Wait a minute. What’s this?” He frowned. “Mrs. Driscoll, this looks like the western section of our Adoration window.”

  Weaving between the tables, Mrs. Driscoll approached him at a sedate pace. “That’s exactly what it is. They’re cutting out the wreath the woman is holding.”

  He pulled out his pocket watch and popped it open. “But, we’ve twelve windows to make before May. How can we still be cutting out templates for the first one?”

  “The men’s tasks are new and unfamiliar. Our speed will improve with time.”

  “But we don’t have time.”

  “Nor can we afford careless errors because we are hurrying when we should be paying attention to detail.”

  His lisp became pronounced. “Well, then, let’s give the ladies a little incentive, shall we?”

  Mrs. Driscoll folded her hands in front of her. “What did you have in mind?”

  “The two girls who do the best work, who complete their tasks quickly and without errors, and who never miss a day of work will be sent to the fair. By me.”

  Flossie touched her fingers to her lips.

  Mrs. Driscoll gave a small smile of approval. “That would be extremely generous of you, but even more than that, they would like to maintain their positions as Tiffany Girls even after the chapel is complete—even after the men return. My suggestion would be to award them permanent positions if they complete the windows in a timely manner.”