The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Myra May, on the other hand, wasn’t anybody’s idea of feminine-or pretty, either, for that matter. She was the only woman in town who wore belted trousers every day of the week (including Sundays) and was trim enough to look good in them. She had a square jaw, a strong mouth, a long, horsey nose, and an intense, questioning look that made people wonder if their ties were crooked or they had spinach between their teeth. She was a serious, practical person with a reputation for saying exactly what she thought, regardless of how she thought you were going to feel about it, and for making up her mind without shilly-shallying around. She had a tendency to answer in short, brusque sentences, and any man who got up enough nerve to ask her out once usually didn’t repeat the request.

  After Myra May graduated from the University of Alabama with a major in Domestic Science and a minor in Education, she decided that she really didn’t have the patience to be a teacher. She also decided that she probably didn’t have the patience to be somebody’s wife, either, and by the time she was thirty and had gone out with all the available men in Darling, she was sure of it. One of the charter members of the Darling Dahlias, she certainly had her share of friends and loyal supporters, but people who did not like strong, direct, no-nonsense women had a tendency to keep their distance.

  So it came as something of a surprise to folks when Myra May and Violet became fast friends. Whether it was because Violet was looking for somebody who would steady her down, or Myra May was looking for somebody who would lighten her up, nobody could be sure. But it wasn’t long before they moved in together and began to talk about starting a business of their own. When they heard that Mrs. Hooper was thinking of selling out, they got excited about the possibilities and began investigating right away.

  The diner’s location between the Dispatch building and Musgrove’s Hardware, right across from the courthouse, made it especially handy for people who had courthouse business around the noon hour and wanted to catch a quick bite. The building needed some painting and fix-up, but the kitchen appliances and equipment were in good shape and the counters, stools, and tables were all fair-to-middling. But best of all was the diner’s outstanding reputation for good food at reasonable prices.

  The two women inspected the property and discussed the matter upside down and backward. In the end, they decided to buy both the diner and Mrs. Hooper’s half-interest in the Exchange, which meant that they now owned half of the town’s telephone system. They imposed only one condition: that Euphoria Hoyt (who was still known as the best chicken fryer in southern Alabama) would continue to cook and manage the kitchen. Myra May traded her house for her share of the business, and Violet put up all the cash she had and some she borrowed from her sister in Memphis, and the deal was done and everybody was happy-including Euphoria, who took a shine to both of her new bosses. And before long, the customers at the diner (who had been a little skeptical about the new management) were very happy, too, because Myra May kept the food moving efficiently from Euphoria’s skillet to the customers’ plates and Violet kept on smiling in her sweet and friendly way.

  It was a good situation all the way around.

  Before Lizzy went into the diner that evening, she paused to read the headline of the Mobile Register on the wire newspaper rack beside the gray-and-red-painted pay telephone booth that had recently been installed outside the diner.

  HOOVER SET TO CREATE COMMITTEE FOR UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF, the newspaper headline announced. Lizzy shook her head doubtfully. She was no fan of the president, who had come into office before the Crash and seemed to be stuck on the idea that any “relief” for the unemployed ought to come through volunteers and private charities. Would this committee be any different from the others that had tried to mobilize volunteer efforts? Lizzy had no problem where charity was concerned-everybody ought to pitch in and help out where they could. But it was high time that government stepped up and did its part, too. Happily, there was another headline, much more appealing, and she bent over to read it: SIXTH GAME SERIES WIN FOR PHILLY ATHLETICS OVER ST. LOUIS CARDINALS. That would make Grady smile. He was an Athletics’ fan.

  Myra May was behind the counter when Lizzy opened the door and went in. Since it was Saturday night, Euphoria was frying catfish instead of chicken, and the plates were heaped with mashed potatoes, cream gravy, and a choice of beans, cabbage slaw, or fried okra, along with hush puppies and sweet tea or coffee-all for thirty cents. A slice of pecan pie (the usual Saturday special) was another dime, but Euphoria cut her pie into sixths, rather than the usual eighths, so it was worth the extra money.

  And since it was Saturday, you had dinner music at no extra charge, for the radio was tuned to the National Barn Dance, on WLS in Chicago (the initials stood for “World’s Largest Store,” because it was originally owned by Sears and Roebuck). Gene Autry-new to the Barn Dance-was singing a cowboy ballad, but the four men at the counter weren’t listening. They were talking about the poor cotton yield due to the drought, the rising unemployment rates, and the latest exploits of Chicago’s notorious gangster and mob boss, Al Capone, who ran the city’s speakeasies, bookie joints, gambling houses, brothels, racetracks, and distilleries.

  “Hey, Liz,” Myra May called out from behind the counter. “We’ve got the table in the corner. I’ll be with you and Verna in a minute. Fredda’s taking over for me this evening.” Fredda was the youngest Musgrove girl, capable but not always dependable-which probably accounted, Liz thought, for Myra May’s frazzled look.

  Lizzy waved to Myra May, then turned and threaded her way between the tables, stopping to say hello to Ophelia Snow, vice president of the Dahlias, and Ophelia’s husband Jed, the conservative mayor of Darling. They were eating supper with Charlie Dickens, the editor of the progressive Darling Dispatch, and his sister Edna Fay. Seeing Mr. Dickens, Lizzy was tempted to stop and mention her idea for a human interest feature about Miss Jamison’s Broadway career, but she thought it would be better to approach him in the office, where they could sit down and discuss the details.

  Anyway, Jed and Mr. Dickens were having their regular Saturday night argument about politics and the economy, with Jed making his usual passionate defense of President Hoover’s conservative “leave-it-alone” approach: the notion that the federal government should stand back and let individual communities deal with their own individual problems. It was Jed’s belief that the Darling volunteers-its fine churches, the Ladies’ Club, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and the Merchants’ Association-could handle anything that came up, and it was ridiculous to think that the bureaucrats in Washington would have any better idea of what needed to be done than the folks right here at home. He wasn’t in favor of the new committee for unemployment relief and thought that Mr. Hoover had gotten pushed into creating it because some in the Republican party were afraid that they would lose more Congressional seats in the upcoming midterm elections if the president wasn’t seen as doing something.

  Mr. Dickens, on the other hand, took a more liberal (but equally passionate) approach, arguing that Washington needed to do more to help out. The British government, for instance, had for some time funded an old-age pension, so its elderly citizens didn’t have to go to the poorhouse when they could no longer work. And with unemployment growing every day, he argued, the federal government ought to provide some kind of relief. There were lots of jobs that needed doing. Government ought to be organizing the effort to pair jobless men to work. Between the drought of the last few years and the old sharecropping system that turned so many-black and white-into de facto slaves, Southern farmers were in dire need of help. Huey P. Long, governor of Louisiana, could clearly see the scope of the problem and was offering a whole bushel of solutions. Why couldn’t President Hoover?

  Lizzy generally agreed with Mr. Dickens, although she wasn’t so sure about Governor Long, who had just been charged with kidnapping a pair of witnesses in a fraud investigation. People called him “the Dictator of Louisiana,” and with good reason. But as she passed the tab
le, she caught Ophelia’s eye and gave her a sympathetic smile. Ophelia and Edna Fay were trying to have their own conversation, on the subject of Edna Fay’s efforts to organize the Darling Quilting Club, of which she was the president, to produce quilts for needy families. But they had to do it under the menfolks’ loud discussion, which had already gotten to the table-pounding stage.

  So Lizzy just said hello and headed for the table in the corner, which was covered with a red-checked cotton cloth. Verna Tidwell was already seated there, wearing a pretty brown and gold two-piece silk shantung dress and a brown felt hat. Lizzy’s hat was blue (the one her mother had refurbished) and her blue crepe dress had a separate sleeveless jacket, a jabot tie and a belt, and a pleated and flared skirt. Women in Darling liked to dress up when they went out to supper and the movies, even if they weren’t going on a “date.”

  As Lizzy pulled out a chair to sit down, Verna leaned forward, her brow furrowed. “I talked to Miss LaMotte after you went home,” she said, without preamble. “I swear, Liz. Something about this situation is really fishy. She denies being who she is.”

  Lizzy blinked. “You mean, she isn’t Nona Jean-”

  “No, no, no, the other way around. She denies being Lorelei LaMotte. She swore up and down that she’d never been on Broadway, doesn’t know Mr. Ziegfeld, and has never been a dancer.”

  “When did you talk to her?” Lizzy pulled off her blue gloves and folded them into her lap. “Where?”

  “This afternoon, just outside the drugstore. She was trying to get a prescription for Veronal filled but Mr. Lima wouldn’t do it because the prescription was out of date. She was really upset-said it was a matter of life and death. He sold her some Dr. Miles instead.”

  “That old snake oil medicine.” Lizzy rolled her eyes. “My mother takes it. But how did you happen to be at the drugstore, Verna? The last time I saw you, you were headed for home.”

  “Well, I-That is, I-” Verna stopped, embarrassed. “To tell the truth, I followed her.”

  “Followed who?” Myra May asked, appearing at the table with a loaded tray. She had taken off her white bibbed apron and was wearing her usual beige linen trousers and a red button-front rayon short-sleeved blouse, with a loose paisley scarf. She began setting plates on the table. “No, no, hold on a minute. Whatever you’re telling, wait until I get back with the iced tea. I don’t want to miss any of it.”

  Which meant that Verna had to start all over again when Myra May came back with the pitcher, and Lizzy had to explain who Nona Jean Jamison was before she became Lorelei LaMotte. The story was a little confusing, but finally Myra May had it clear.

  “So this woman is incognito,” she said, buttering a piece of hot corn bread. “I guess that means she doesn’t want anybody in town to know that she was in vaudeville.”

  “But why?” Verna asked, waving her fork. “I mean, for heaven’s sake, Myra May. She’s famous! Why wouldn’t she want anybody to know?”

  “Maybe she’s trying to get away from the newspaper reporters and all that attention,” Myra May replied. “Maybe she just wants some peace and quiet. People do, you know. And it probably isn’t all that easy to earn a living as a performer these days. Since Prohibition, I mean. And since the Crash. People don’t have as much money as they used to.”

  “Peace and quiet?” Verna laughed shortly. “If that’s what she wants, she’s going to have to hang that red dress in her closet and wash that makeup off her face. Putting a bag over her head wouldn’t hurt, either. Bailey Beauchamp was about to jump right out of that fancy Cadillac of his and gobble her up right there in the middle of the street, like she was a piece of candy.”

  Myra May chuckled. “Don’t let Mrs. Hobart hear about that. She’s the jealous type, you know. If Bailey Beauchamp hasn’t put his misbehavin’ behind him, she’ll show him how.”

  Lizzy sighed. If it was true that all Miss Jamison wanted was peace and quiet, her newspaper article idea probably wasn’t going to work. If Miss Hamer’s niece wouldn’t admit to Verna that she was a Broadway star, it wasn’t likely that she would submit to an interview for a feature story in the Dispatch. But maybe Verna hadn’t approached her right. Or maybe she had simply caught Miss Jamison at an awkward moment, when she was upset about not getting her prescription refilled. Lizzy frowned, wondering what that was all about. Veronal was a very strong sleeping medicine, from what she had read. It must be for Miss Hamer. Was the old lady having trouble sleeping? Was she very ill?

  “Actually,” Verna said, pursing her lips, “now that I think about it, I wonder why Miss Hamer’s niece is here. Doesn’t it seem odd to you? I mean, has she ever in her whole adult life visited her aunt? If she had, surely somebody would have noticed, wouldn’t they?”

  “That’s true,” Lizzy replied. Strangers in Darling were an irresistible source of gossip. And Miss Jamison was the sort of person that people would talk about. “Maybe she’s here because she’s down on her luck. Myra May is right. Money is tight everywhere-it can’t be the best time in the world to be in show business.” That would be another angle for her story, she mused. Small-town girl dances into the Big Apple limelight, then slips and falls back into shadowy obscurity. A spectacular rise; a tragic fall.

  “And if she’s never been here,” Verna was going on, “why not? I mean, doesn’t it seem a little strange that she’s never once bothered to visit her aunt-and all of a sudden she’s living here?” She frowned, pushing her mashed potatoes around with her fork. “Come to that, how do we know who this woman actually is? She’s already lying about not being Lorelei LaMotte. Maybe she’s lying about being Miss Hamer’s niece, too.”

  Lizzy dug into her catfish, which was crispy brown on the outside, flaky and delicious inside. “For heaven’s sake, Verna. Can’t you ever just take people at face value?”

  “Nope.” Verna tossed her head. “Doesn’t pay, Liz. Lots of people cheat. Others lie. And some will do anything to gain an advantage. I see it all the time in the probate office, you know.”

  Lizzy sighed. Verna was by nature a suspicious person. But she had become even more wary over the years she had managed the records in the Cypress County probate clerk’s office, where she was responsible for recording election results, people’s wills and estates, property transactions, and the like. Verna always said that if she stubbed her toe on a rock, she was compelled to look under it, to see what was hiding there.

  “And something usually is,” she would add. “Something we probably wouldn’t go looking for, if we could avoid it.”

  Lizzy had to admit that Verna had a point. Some people cheated; others lied. She had recently read a news item about a family in Florida who had welcomed their long-lost son, kidnapped years before. Unfortunately, the man turned out to be an imposter angling for an inheritance. She supposed it wouldn’t hurt to look a little more closely at Miss Lorelei LaMotte.

  “Maybe we ought to have a talk with Bessie Bloodworth,” she suggested. “Bessie has known Miss Hamer longer than the rest of us. If anybody knows anything about why Miss Jamison is here in Darling, it would be Bessie.”

  “Actually, now that you mention Bessie, I do remember something,” Myra May said. “I’d forgotten about it until right this minute. But somebody-a woman-in Chicago telephoned Bessie a couple of weeks ago, asking about Miss Hamer. Since it was long distance, I stayed on the line long enough to make sure that the call went through okay. The woman said she was calling Bessie because her aunt doesn’t have a telephone, and she needed to find out a few things.”

  “Find out what things?” Verna asked curiously. “What else did she want to know?”

  “I have no idea. I got off the line.” Myra May pointed at Verna with her fork. “And even if I hadn’t, I couldn’t tell you what I heard. I shouldn’t have told you as much as I did.”

  “All you’ve said is that a woman was calling from Chicago, Myra May.” Verna sounded cross. “Anyway, we’re not asking for the combination to the bank vault. We’re just trying t
o understand why a woman calling herself Miss Hamer’s niece-”

  “Forget it, Verna,” Myra May said firmly, and applied her fork to her mashed potatoes. “You’ve worked on the switchboard yourself. You understand that the operators aren’t supposed to listen to people’s conversations. And if they do catch a bit of it, they’re definitely not supposed to talk about what they hear.”

  Lizzy knew that this was true. Verna had worked part-time on the switchboard a few years back, when Mrs. Hooper was sick and needed the help.

  “Violet can keep her mouth shut,” Myra May was going on. “But Olive and Lenore are still just kids. If I told tales and they found out, they’d think it was all right for them to do it and then I’d have to fire ’em. I love you with all my heart, Verna dear, but don’t ask me to tell you anything I might’ve heard on the switchboard. Okay?”

  Verna rolled her eyes. “Myra May, you are a hard woman. I am sure glad I don’t have to work for you.”

  Lizzy chuckled. The four switchboard operators had to be among the best-informed and most up-to-date people in Darling. All the news in town went through the Exchange-the price of cotton, how many kids had the measles, whose wife had left him, whose sister had miscarried. But Myra May made sure that her operators played by the rules. What comes into the Exchange, stays in the Exchange.

  She changed the subject. “Speaking of Violet, what do you hear from her, Myra May? When is she coming home from Memphis?”

  Not looking up, Myra May spread butter on her corn bread. “She called this morning.” She spoke reluctantly, almost as if she didn’t want to talk about it. “Her sister isn’t doing so well, I’m sorry to say.”

  “It’s her sister’s first baby, isn’t it?” Verna asked.

  Myra May nodded. “A little girl named Dorothy. The baby’s okay, apparently, but Violet is worried about her sister. The doctor is keeping her in the hospital, and of course there isn’t much money. Violet is worried about how they’re going to pay the bill. I’m afraid-” She stopped, as if she didn’t want to say the words.