Kopp Sisters on the March

by Amy Stewart

  No wonder Beulah felt special. No wonder she harbored particular expectations as to their future.

  No wonder his wedding was such a strange and stilted affair.

  Half of Richmond turned out for it—the rich half, that much was plain. Beulah had never seen such finery and flowers inside a church before. The pews were overfull, and Beulah was compelled to stand in the back, which she didn’t mind at all, as she had no right to be there anyway. Instead of giving her name at the door, she said only that she was “a Beattie neighbor girl,” a phrase that somehow insinuated that she might be the daughter of a servant, and for that reason she was admitted inside as long as she didn’t take up a family pew.

  Beulah wore black for a month after her baby died, which was the reason why she wore a black veil to Henry Clay’s wedding. She would’ve gone in an ordinary afternoon dress, but Meemaw had declared that to give up her mourning only a few weeks after little Henry Clay Jr. went into the ground would bring a curse upon the entire family. Beulah didn’t know about curses, but she wore her black crepe nonetheless. It was an effective disguise. Besides, she was not the only woman in black at the wedding. It had been a terrible summer for cholera and others had lost family, too, most of them small children.

  From the rear of the church she could only see the hats and the backs of the necks of Henry Clay’s mother and sisters. His father must’ve been one of the men alongside them, although they all looked the same from this distance and she couldn’t guess which one he might’ve been. She recognized some of his ne’er-do-well cousins. One or two of them might’ve recognized Beulah, even behind her veil.

  As for Louise, Beulah saw nothing but frills and lace, and a bevy of similarly attired attendants. What did she matter, anyway? She meant nothing to Henry Clay and was only lucky enough to marry him because Henry Clay’s parents had prevailed at last. It wasn’t a love match. She would never have Henry Clay, not the way Beulah had. And Beulah carried the secret pride of having borne his first (and so far, only) son. What did Louise have to put up against that?

  The ceremony was overly long and the church was hot. Beulah dozed off, leaning against the back wall. When she came to, there was organ music and a great rustling of petticoats, and the couple was walking back down the aisle to a waiting coach. Henry Clay had the side of the aisle nearest Beulah. She edged over a little to get a better look at him. There was a smile across his face, but his eyes were blank. He shook hands with the men along the aisle, and accepted kisses from the women.

  When he reached Beulah, his gaze passed across her but did not stop. The corners of his mouth twitched downward for only a second—not so you’d notice, unless you were watching for it—and Beulah was.

  He saw her. She was certain of it.

  AFTER THE WEDDING, it was almost a year before Beulah saw Henry Clay again. In the time that had passed, she had decided that if he could get married, she could, too—and she almost did. Mayo Street held no appeal for her anymore, but the ball park proved a wonderful place to meet men and find entertainment. She came so close to love and marriage behind the dugout that she went around calling herself Mrs. R. T. Fisher, wife of the infielder, even though they never did marry, even though he’d been traded to Danville and she was back in Richmond. There were certain advantages to going through life as a married woman, chief among them that she could take a furnished room under his name on a more respectable street than Mayo. She even held a job in a shop for a few months and earned an honorable if meager living. Marriage gave her all of that, even if it was a sham marriage.

  The fact that Bob Fisher never did manage to put his signature to a piece of paper concerning Beulah, and that he sent her home after she trailed behind him to Danville for an ill-fated month-long stay—none of that mattered, as long as she could lay some claim to him. Bob Fisher was tall and good-looking, with a substantial nose, a toothy grin, good deep lines around his mouth when he smiled, and a sunburn from all those afternoons at the ball park. He was twenty-five, which seemed a solid and reliable age. He carried himself with swagger and confidence, and he was genuinely kind to Beulah. She, in turn, behaved like a perfect little wife, and understood only later that a perfect wife was not what Bob wanted Beulah to be.

  After he’d been away for six months without a word to her, Beulah had to own up to the fact that she was not, in fact, Mrs. R. T. Fisher, and might not even see him again, unless his team came through town for a game.

  She wished she could call herself a widow, but she’d already made too much of the fact that she was married to the great Bob Fisher, who was doing so well out in Danville that he was rumored to be under consideration to join the Brooklyn ball club. Anyone who read the sports pages would know that she couldn’t possibly be a widow, because the man she claimed as her husband was at that moment kicking up dust in the infield.

  She found that she liked ball players, though—their easygoing camaraderie, their muscled shoulders, that way they had of breezing through life. They played a game for a living, the only game they ever wanted to play, and because of that they were entirely at their ease and comfortable in their own skin. They took pretty girls as their due, welcomed them easily, said good-bye without even feigning regret, and made no promises they couldn’t possibly keep.

  Beulah loved them for all of that. She loved their beer, their tobacco, the sand in their shoes, the way they’d come off the field hot and dusty, and emerge from their clubhouse an hour later, scrubbed and fresh-faced, with open collars and rolled-up sleeves. Everything about them was easy and good. Beulah couldn’t stay away.

  When Henry Clay turned up at the ball park, this time with Louise’s brothers (a far more respectable group of men than his old friends), Beulah was shocked at how he’d changed. After almost a year of marriage, he hadn’t grown fat, exactly, but he was swollen, somehow, and red-faced, and dull-eyed. There was an angry set to his jaw that Beulah didn’t remember seeing before. When she compared him now to the ball players she’d come to know in the last year, he wasn’t nearly the specimen of man they were. What had she ever seen in him?

  Beulah sat behind the dugout with the other girls, as she always did, and kept her head turned so Henry Clay wouldn’t spot her from his place in the bleachers not far away. After the game, though, she forgot herself, and milled around behind the clubhouse with her friends, and there Henry Clay spotted her. Louise’s brothers were out on the street, ogling a friend’s new automobile, so Henry Clay took a chance and ran to her.

  “I thought you’d left Richmond for good,” he said, panting, when he reached her.

  “You don’t own Richmond,” she said. Her friends giggled at that and she walked a little ways away from them. Henry Clay followed.

  “I thought I’d never see you again,” he said.

  “I don’t know why it matters whether you do or not,” Beulah said.

  “I can’t stand to be in that house any longer,” Henry Clay said. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

  “If you’re asking if I know what it’s like to be Mrs. Henry Clay Beattie, you are correct,” Beulah said. “I don’t. But it don’t matter to me now. I married a ball player last fall, and I’ve been all over the country with him, watching his games.”

  Henry Clay hung his head. Beulah couldn’t believe she could hurt him so easily. “Which one is your husband?” he mumbled.

  “He’s back in Illinois right now. But I still like to watch the games.”

  Henry Clay snatched up Beulah’s hand. She looked around to see who might be watching. His wedding ring dug into her palm. “Meet me tonight, Beulah,” he begged. “Just give me one more good night with you. That’s all I’ll ever ask.”

  Beulah jerked her hand away. “Why are you still after me? Go on down to Mayo Street and find yourself whatever you like.”

  Henry Clay whispered, “I can’t go down there, don’t you see? I have a hawk for a mother-in-law. She’s got it in for me. She knows all about—what I used to do. Don’t ask me how
she found out. But she pulled me aside on my wedding day and told me that if I ever so much as looked at another girl, that would be the end of it between me and Louise.”

  “You talk like you don’t much care for Louise,” Beulah said. “Why don’t you just walk away?”

  He put his palms against his temples and then ran his fingers through his hair, frantic. “Don’t you remember? If I make one wrong step—I’m out. I’m out of the family, and that damned store, and there’s not one penny for me. My daddy’s got me on an allowance, if you can imagine that. A grown man, and I have to go over and beg for what’s due to me, every Sunday!”

  “You could try earning your money,” Beulah said. “You could be your own man and not wait for your daddy to hand you everything.”

  Beulah couldn’t believe she had the nerve to say such a thing to Henry Clay. Then again, she’d been running around with these ball players, and to a person they were all their own men. Free spirits, making their way in the world on the strength of their sweat and their talent. What would they make of Henry Clay, crying about his daddy and his pocket full of money, all of it unearned and unappreciated?

  “Go on home to your wife, Henry Clay,” Beulah said.

  Henry Clay was by then even more red-faced, breathing heavy and almost crying. There was something wrong with him. Something had changed, but Beulah didn’t want to ask what it was.

  He grabbed her again, this time by the elbow. “They’re watching me all the time, Beulah,” he panted. “I can’t ever get away from them, not for a minute. I can’t hardly take a breath in my own house without someone looking at me funny. You’ve got to come with me. Just give me one afternoon. Let me be my own man again, for just a few hours.”

  Beulah picked his fingers off her elbow, one at a time. “Is that Louise of yours expecting a baby yet?”

  Again he hung his head. “She’s just a couple months away.”

  “And do you intend to raise this one, or are you going to throw it away like you did your first-born?”

  He was crying now, really crying. Beulah had never seen a man weep and found that the sight of it made her queasy. “Of course I intend to raise it,” he said, sniffing and shaking like a little boy coming out of a nightmare. “And I never did throw that other one away. I wanted to see him, but your Meemaw wouldn’t let me.”

  Beulah knew better. She knew her Meemaw told him he could come around and see that baby. He never did. “It don’t matter what you wanted to do. It only matters what you did. You stayed away.”

  “I wish I’d seen him once. Your grandmother sent me a note after the funeral and told me I wouldn’t have to worry about a baby anymore. I keep thinking it’s my fault, what happened to him.”

  “Your boy took the cholera like so many babies did. I shouldn’t have said you wanted to throw him away. I know you didn’t.”

  That seemed to placate Henry Clay, who wiped his eyes and looked around for his brothers-in-law.

  “Go on back to your people,” Beulah said, “and stop making yourself so damn miserable. You have a wife and a baby and a house and plenty of money. You ought not to cry and complain and make such a mess of everything. Go on home.”

  The ball players were coming out just then, and the other girls were starting to gather around. Beulah was eager to get away from Henry Clay.

  “But how can I find you?” Henry Clay said. “Just—if I need to. Not to bother you again like this. I just want to know where you are.”

  Beulah was distracted watching those ball players and didn’t think much about how to answer Henry Clay. “I’m Mrs. Fisher now,” she called, an easy lie to toss off as she walked away. “But don’t come around looking for me. You had your chance.”

  22

  NURSE CARTWRIGHT WENT to town for supplies, having discovered that two hundred girls could make short work of a carton of aspirin, several packets of mustard plasters, and rolls of gauze and cotton. She was distributing more than the expected number of hot water bottles, and found herself entirely depleted of cough syrups and sleeping powders. She returned with all of this and one other item that interested Norma a great deal: a newspaper.

  Constance never would’ve believed that her sister could survive without her daily infusion of newspapers from every nearby city and as far away as New York. Norma didn’t just read her papers, she quarreled with them, shook them at her sisters for emphasis, and even gave them a smack when she couldn’t otherwise resolve her disputes with them.

  For that reason, the arrival at camp of a single newspaper made for a momentous occasion in their tent. Norma sat up with a lantern, digesting the news from Washington and passing on whatever might be of interest to the others.

  “They fought back the Germans in Verdun,” she announced to Sarah, who had reason to believe her brother might’ve been sent there. “Someone even brought down their aeroplanes with those enormous machine guns. It doesn’t say whether it was the British or the French.” She rattled her paper to make her displeasure known over the reporter’s lack of specificity.

  “Shooting down aeroplanes doesn’t leave much for the ambulances to pick up,” Sarah said curtly. “It’s becoming another kind of war over there, and we’re not doing a thing about it.”

  Constance looked up from her ledger-book, where she kept a record of the day’s activities. It was a habit from her years on the women’s floor of the jail. She recorded demerits issued, classes skipped, sick days taken, and work shifts completed.

  Her pencil was poised in mid-air, but she was watching Sarah, who was readying herself for a night in the woods. “What’s the matter with you?” Constance asked.

  Sarah shoved her feet into her boots and wrapped her braided hair around her hand, then began to pin it up. “I haven’t had a letter from Jack in nearly a week.”

  “They get delayed,” Norma said authoritatively. “The rail system’s a mess, and the ports are overfull. Even our ships have to drop anchor and wait. Over half the letters aren’t getting through at all.”

  Sarah was usually so tolerant of Norma’s overbearing ways, but her patience had worn thin. “That could be the explanation, or it could be something far worse. None of us know, not even you.”

  With that she stormed out. Constance would’ve run after her, but she was only half-dressed herself and had her nightly rounds to make. Besides, what could she say? None of them knew what might become of Jack. It wouldn’t be fair to Sarah to pretend otherwise.

  Norma went on as if nothing had happened. “Here’s something for you. Your Mr. Bielaski’s in the papers again. They’re calling him the most remarkable investigator in the country. He says that the United States needs an independent and secret organization that will work in closer co-operation than the men we are hunting.”

  “And who is he hunting this week?”

  “Oh, the usual. Russian revolutionaries, German propagandists, pacifists, insurrectionists, and saboteurs.”

  “I wonder how he manages it all in secret,” Constance said.

  “Well, they don’t explain that, for the most obvious of reasons,” Norma said, and put the paper down to go out and check on her pigeons before curfew.

  When she was gone, Constance picked up the paper. There was a photograph of Mr. Bielaski at his desk, looking pointedly at the camera. Arrayed around that picture were five or six fanciful drawings of his secret agents: a postman flipping through the mail, a businessman hiding behind a newspaper on a train, a waiter carrying a tray of drinks, and a society lady covering her face with a fan.

  How many society ladies had Mr. Bielaski enlisted, and how had he accomplished it?

  Constance took the entire page and stashed it in her pocket for further consideration.

  Curfew was by then only half an hour away. The tent was empty: Sarah and Norma had both stepped out, and Fleurette and Beulah were out socializing. There were by now long-running card games in some of the tents, and in one tent a girl dressed as a fortune-teller and read palms for a dime. She
did a brisk trade that way, predicting war hero husbands, obedient children, and exotic journeys. Constance should’ve shut the little enterprise down, except that it kept the girls lined up around the tent where she could keep an eye on them. Better they stay at the campsite and fill their heads with nonsense than run off into the woods, she reasoned.

  Constance made her rounds in great haste, still thinking of Sarah and wanting to catch up with her. The front gate was locked, which meant that Hack and Clarence had already been by. There was a larger than usual gaggle of girls around the latrines, owing to one of them being occupied for the last hour by a girl with cramps. It fell to Constance to help her to her feet and deposit her at the infirmary with Nurse Cartwright, who was glad for the company and for a chance to put her new hot water bottles to use.

  Constance took one last walk between the tents, calling a halt to the card games and the fortune-telling. Within half an hour, the camp was quiet.

  Low clouds hid the moon that night. There were no lights around the perimeter of the campsite apart from the lantern Constance carried. She doused the light and slipped behind the barn into the gap between fence posts, which led to her usual rendezvous spot with Sarah and the others. She could hear them faintly through the trees and rushed down the path, worried all at once that she never should’ve let Sarah out of her sight. She’d never seen Sarah so disconsolate.

  But she arrived and found everything in order. Everyone was present: Sarah, Margaret, Bernice, Hilda, and Fern. They were practicing the halter hold Constance had taught them, which required the girl to approach from behind, hook his right elbow (assuming the opponent was right-handed) with her own, pin it behind his back, then throw the other arm across the man’s neck, pinning down his left arm in the process. Then it was a simple matter to kick a knee into the back of his leg. Even a large man would go down face-first, if the move was done quickly and with confidence.