Stork Bite

by Simonds, L. K.

  “I telephoned Centenary, and they said your grades were above average. Why only one year? Why aren’t you continuing your education?”

  Mae was surprised by the question, and she sensed her answer was important. “Well . . . I never really intended to earn a degree. I’ve always wanted to work in an office, and I thought Centenary was a good place to learn the skills I needed.”

  “I see. Well . . . hmm . . .” Mrs. Mitchell ran her finger across the application. “How long have you been married?”

  “Since June.”

  “But you didn’t leave school because you married?”

  “Well, of course not. Jax, my husband, encouraged me to stay in school. But as I said, I’ve always wanted to work.”

  “What about children?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “When do you and your husband plan to start a family?”

  Mae felt very irritated at Mrs. Mitchell for poking around in her private life, but she had to admit that a woman who might turn up pregnant at any time would not be worth the trouble to train. “Unfortunately, my husband and I won’t be able to have children,” Mae said with a perfectly straight face. “I’m afraid it will just be the two of us.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Addington. I’m so sorry! I wouldn’t have?please forgive these personal questions.”

  “Well, they’re very disturbing. I had no idea what to expect, but?”

  “We have a unique position coming open,” Mrs. Mitchell interrupted. “We haven’t advertised it yet, but I think you might be perfect for it. It pays more than the job you applied for. Are you interested?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Mr. Carter’s secretary is moving out west in a few months. To Arizona. Anyway, Miss Camille has been with Mr. Carter since the firm started. Going on forty years now. I suppose he believed she would be with him forever. But she’s having some health problems, and her doctor says?well, anyway, Miss Camille can never be replaced, and I think we’ve all just pretended she isn’t really leaving.” Mrs. Mitchell took a folder from her desk drawer and put Mae’s application and test results in it. “And here you come, a serious woman with a college education. Married and settled, it seems. I’m just wondering. . . .”

  “My goodness.”

  “Well, there would be a lot to learn before Miss Camille leaves. And Mr. Carter will have to sit down with you first, before we even consider you for the position.”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you have time to wait for me to speak with him?”

  “Certainly.”

  Mae waited in the reception area where she had started the process that morning. After a while, Miss Camille, who seemed too old and decrepit to travel to Bossier City, much less Arizona, approached Mae and introduced herself. She sat beside Mae and asked about her family and her time in Shreveport. She chatted casually, as if they were seatmates on a train.

  Finally, Mrs. Mitchell emerged from the private offices and said, “Mr. Carter will see you now.”

  “He doesn’t bark or bite,” said Miss Camille.

  Mae smiled.

  Mr. Carter appeared startled when the door to his office opened. His spectacles rode the end of his nose above a great white mustache, and thin wisps of white hair moved about his head in a breeze of electric static. He stood and hesitated, not appearing to know what was expected of him.

  “This is Mrs. Addington,” Mrs. Mitchell said.

  “Yes. How do you do, Mrs. Addington?” Mr. Carter said. He had the deepest Southern drawl Mae had ever heard.

  “Very well, thank you, Mr. Carter.”

  “Um, well . . .” Mr. Carter looked at Mrs. Mitchell.

  “Miss Camille will take care of everything,” Mrs. Mitchell said.

  He brightened. “Perfect. Thank you, ma’am.” Mrs. Mitchell nodded to Mae and opened the door, indicating her interview was over. “Oh, one more thing before you go, Mrs. Addington,” Mr. Carter said.

  “Yes sir?”

  “Are you any relation to Walter Addington over at First City Bank?”

  “He’s my father-in-law.”

  “Well, how about that? Please give Walter my regards.”

  “Yes sir, I will.”

  Mrs. Mitchell walked Mae to the elevator and said, “Welcome aboard. Please be here at nine tomorrow.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Come see me first and I’ll show you the ropes.”

  The next day a small desk was placed in Miss Camille’s office, which one entered to seek passage into the inner sanctum where Mr. Carter conducted his lawyering. Mae was to learn, through instruction and osmosis, everything Miss Camille did to ensure Mr. Carter’s continued success, and thereby, the continued success of his gas, oil, and property clients. Mae was determined to be a quick study and get Miss Camille on her way to breathing desert air as soon as possible. She had her sights set on Miss Camille’s big oak desk and the prestige it promised, not to mention the twenty-five-cent raise she would earn when she assumed the full range of her duties.

  But within her first week, Mae discovered there was a knotty problem Mrs. Mitchell neglected to mention during orientation: Mr. Harry Peabody, the junior partner in the firm. Mr. Peabody showed up at Mae’s desk the first time Miss Camille trundled down the hall and left her alone, as if he had been waiting around the corner, twisting his pencil-thin mustache with gleeful anticipation. He leaned over Mae’s shoulder—as if to read the correspondence she was typing—and stuck his hawkish nose deep into her curls.

  Mae stopped typing and ducked. “May I help you with something?” she said.

  Mr. Peabody grinned and said, “Harry Peabody. Partner in the firm. I like to be a pal to the new girls, especially the ones who smell as fresh as you do.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Mae muttered. Just then Miss Camille came back and saved her, but Mae was worried about the next time, not to mention after Miss Camille left and she was on her own. How would she push him off and keep her job?

  “So, tell me about Mr. Peabody,” Mae asked during the morning coffee break. Three times a day, the secretaries and stenographers and clerks escaped their desks and file cabinets for a few minutes respite in a ladies-only breakroom, where they enjoyed morning and afternoon coffee, lunch at noon, and an all-day smorgasbord of office gossip.

  “You mean Harry the Hands?” said Martha, who was Mr. Peabody’s secretary.

  “More like Harry the Snout. He just stuck his nose in my hair.”

  “Well, that’s a new trick.”

  “Foreplay,” said Barb. Barb was Mr. Rose’s secretary, and the office rumor was that they were lovers and had been for years. Barb chain-smoked, wore false eyelashes, and smudged her eyelids with kohl.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” said Martha. “Hands isn’t used to married women, and he’s working up his nerve to go in for the Big Feel.” Martha blinked rapidly behind her thick-lensed eyeglasses. “Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses. Buy yourself some specs, Mae.”

  “I don’t think eyeglasses will be enough to keep him off Mae,” Barb said.

  When Mae returned to her office, she looked up “foreplay” in the big dictionary behind Miss Camille’s desk. The definition made her blush and she turned the page quickly.

  Mae fretted through the next couple of days, wondering what she would do when Mr. Peabody showed up again. Miss Camille would be leaving soon, and Mae knew it was just a matter of time until Hands cornered her alone. One morning, she almost jumped out of her skin when she looked up from her typing and found him standing in front of her desk. Miss Camille was nowhere in sight.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Addington,” Mr. Peabody said stiffly. “Um, is Mr. Carter in his office?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Well. I’ll just poke my head in.”

  “All right.”

  “Oh, and by the way, um, well, about the other day, um, I hope you know that was all in good fun.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Oh, well, um, if I ca
me across as forward, you see.” Mae could hardly believe her ears. Was he apologizing? “Anyway, no harm done, right?” he asked hopefully.

  Mae looked at him steadily, but she said nothing. She had no idea how he had managed to get himself on the hook, but she wasn’t about to let him off.

  Peabody glanced toward Mr. Carter’s office, and then looked at his wristwatch. “Oh, geez, look at the time. I better get on to my next meeting. I’ll catch up with Mr. Carter later. Well, I’m glad we got a chance to clear up any misunderstanding about the other day. So, have a lovely afternoon, Mrs. Addington, and please let me know if you need anything. Anything at all.”

  Mae could hardly wait until lunchtime to tell Martha and Barb about the turn of events.

  “The word’s out on you,” Martha said. “It’s all over the office.”

  “What word?”

  “About your husband,” said Barb.

  “Jackson?”

  “That’s right.” Barb tapped her cigarette against the ashtray. Barb did not eat during lunch. Instead she smoked and drank coffee that she spiked from a flask she kept in her purse. “They found out your hubby’s a gangster.”

  Mae started to object.

  “You can’t hide anything around here,” Martha said around a mouthful of sandwich. “But don’t worry. We’re still friends.”

  Barb lit a second cigarette from the butt of the first. “We’re just now friends,” she corrected.

  Miss Camille took off for Arizona as soon as Mae had her bearings. She left Mae her big oak desk and her title of Moat Dragon, which was what everyone at the firm called the three executive secretaries who guarded the partners. Mae could not decide if the moniker was a complaint or a compliment, but she supposed that depended on the day.

  Chapter Fifty

  Mae’s tummy fluttered at the thought of hosting a luncheon for her best friend, Miriam, and Miriam’s mother, Mrs. Landau, who was a charter member of the Shreveport Junior Service League. Mrs. Landau was a powerful woman, and it was she who would carry the day on Mae’s acceptance to the league.

  Mae agonized over the menu, even though they would hardly eat a bite in one another’s presence. She finally settled on a cold luncheon to ward off the August heat. She used a juice glass to cut little rounds of white bread that she spread with a savory blend of cream cheese, mayonnaise, and herbs. She had wrangled the recipe from the Youree’s head chef. Mae added paper-thin slices of cucumber and put the clever little sandwiches in the icebox to chill. She prepared a spicy tomato-based soup with diced cucumbers and green peppers, to be served cold. The soup, another Youree kitchen invention, tasted like summer. She planned to serve it in her new Art Deco bowls, which she chilled in the freezer.

  The cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers came from Mae’s nosey neighbor across the street, Ada Tidwell, whom Mae had seen the afternoon she wrote her final letter to Buster. Mrs. Tidwell knocked on Mae’s door almost every evening with some gift or other from her prolific garden. “Now, Mrs. Addington,” Mrs. Tidwell said as she handed Mae a bowl of vegetables. “Where has that husband of yours been keeping himself? I never see him.”

  “He was here last night, Mrs. Tidwell,” Mae responded without missing a beat. “Didn’t you see his car?”

  “Oh, well, I’m the world’s worst for noticing who’s coming and going. My nose is always in the flower bed or the garden. You know that, Mrs. Addington.”

  When Mae had prepared everything as well as she possibly could for the luncheon, she waited in her living room and watched out the big front window for Miriam and her mother. She was surprised when Miriam drove up alone, and she went outside to meet her.

  “Hi, sweetie,” Miriam said as she got out of the car.

  Mae resisted a very strong desire to ask Miriam where her mother was, which would have seemed ambitious and indelicate. Instead, she invited her friend inside and offered a crystal tumbler of iced tea with a perfect lemon wedge perched on the rim.

  “The house is just lovely,” said Miriam.

  “I’ll give you the royal tour,” Mae said.

  The women spent the better part of an hour drifting from room to room, talking about this and that. When they were finished, Mae invited Miriam back to the living room to wait. They sat on the couch beside each other. Eventually, Mae asked casually, “What time should we expect your mother?”

  “Oh, Mae, I’m so sorry. She isn’t coming.”

  Mae was shocked that Mrs. Landau had not bothered to send a note to cancel. Despite her disappointment and annoyance, Mae put on her best cheery face. “Well, my goodness, Miriam, that’s no trouble. I’m sure she’s very busy. All kinds of things come up unexpectedly. I’ll meet with your mother another time.”

  “Oh gosh, Mae. This is so hard.”

  “What, honey? What’s hard?”

  “She isn’t coming for lunch. Ever. Neither are the other ladies in the league.”

  “What—I don’t understand.”

  Miriam stood. She carried her iced tea and her purse to the kitchen, and Mae followed her. “What’s going on, Miriam?”

  Miriam set her glass on the counter. She took a handkerchief from her purse and dabbed her eyes. “It really doesn’t have anything at all to do with you. All the ladies in the league love you, just like the girls in the sorority. So does Mama. She thinks the world of you, truly, but . . .”

  “But what? For heaven’s sake, Miriam, spit it out.”

  “They won’t let you join the league, Mae.”

  Mae sat down on her new bar stool, one of three that had wooden legs, metal footrests that circled the legs, and deep cushions of creamy leather. “I don’t understand,” she said slowly.

  “It’s because of Jackson.”

  “What about him?”

  “Did you know he’s a bootlegger?”

  Mae almost laughed out loud. She almost said, “A bootlegger! Why Jax hardly touches the stuff.” Then Miriam’s words fell into place like a missing puzzle piece, and a perfectly reasonable picture emerged where there had been only murky, nagging denial before. “Jax told me he delivers medical supplies,” she said.

  “Well, that’s what they call it. Some of the whiskey is even marked, ‘For Medicinal Use Only.’”

  “How do they know?”

  Miriam looked down.

  “How do the ladies in the league know that Jax runs bootleg? I’m his wife, and I didn’t know.”

  “Some of their husbands are customers.”

  “I see. So . . . well . . . gosh, Miriam. I guess it’s okay for your husband to buy whiskey, but it’s not okay for him to sell it?”

  “It’s just that the league is working on its application to the National Association and being accepted is really important to them. Maybe if they were already accepted, the leadership wouldn’t be so particular.”

  “You mean about having the wife of a bootlegger on their membership roll?”

  “Oh, Mae.”

  “What if I get a divorce?”

  “Well . . .”

  “I’ve been thinking about divorcing Jax anyway.”

  “Well, gosh, Mae,” Miriam said with a pained look. “Then you’d be divorced.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Mae parked under the carport of her red brick house, and for a brief moment, she missed living at the Washington Youree. It would’ve been nice to have a mouthwatering supper brought to her by a liveried waiter in the hotel’s fancy dining room. She would’ve enjoyed cocktails on the rooftop too, even if she had to drink them with Jax.

  Jax had taken dancing lessons while they lived at the Youree—Mae was certain of it. On Saturday nights, he had tried out this or that new move while he pulled and pushed her around the moonlit rooftop dance floor. He looked at his feet a lot and often lost the beat, but despite his halting rhythm, Mae felt closest to Jax when they danced.

  Mae sensed her husband’s silent yearning when she tried to follow him across the floor, with the band playing and some crooner leaning into the
microphone. She might have kissed Jax in one of those boozy, woozy moments, and in doing so she might have ignited a spark that transformed whatever they were doing into a marriage. But something had always shattered the enchantment—Jax belched, or stumbled, or muttered to himself—and Mae had to turn her face away.

  “This is your dream, kid,” she said aloud as she pulled a bowl of tuna salad from the icebox and a loaf of bread from the pantry. She made a sandwich and ate it standing at the kitchen counter, staring out the window at nothing.

  After supper, Mae took a cool bath, put on her robe, and poured a Coca-Cola over ice. She turned on the radio and settled on the couch to read a movie magazine and wait for Guy Lombardo’s program. The announcer said they had a special guest who was making his radio debut, a solo singer named Bing Crosby. Mae smiled, thinking Bing went right to the top of the list of silly names musicians made up for themselves.

  An hour later, Mae woke up and realized she had slept through the program. She stood and stretched and turned off the radio. Then she went to the living room’s picture window to close the drapes before going to bed and discovered Hollister’s red Ford coupe parked at the curb. She hurried out the front door and down the sidewalk.

  Hollister was lying across the front seat, out cold. Mae opened the door, and her hand flew to her nose at the overpowering stench of whiskey, stale tobacco smoke, sweat, and filth. Mae leaned inside and pushed his shoulder. “Hollister?” She pushed him harder. “Hollister! Wake up. What are you doing?”

  He roused and wiped the drool from his mouth with the back of his hand. “Uh?”

  “C’mon. Come inside.” Mae tugged at him until he was more or less sitting up. He threatened to roll out of the car, and she pushed against his shoulder to keep him upright.

  “Mae, you smell really good,” he slurred.

  “Better than you, my dear.”

  “Sorry . . . been on a bender.”

  “Okay, big guy. Let’s get you inside. I can’t carry you. You’re gonna have to walk. Think you can do that?”

  “Sure. Sure. No problem.”

  “Let’s go.”