The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

by Susan Wittig Albert

  She heard herself saying, as if the words were coming from someone else, “Did you know that I was once engaged to Miss Hamer’s brother?”

  “Really?” Liz was surprised. “I didn’t know she had a brother.”

  “His name was… Harold,” Bessie said. She said it again, testing it, almost tasting it. “Harold. If we had married, I would be Miss Hamer’s sister-in-law. And Miss Jamison’s aunt-by-marriage.” Put that way, it seemed almost funny, and she smiled.

  “But you didn’t marry?” Verna asked gently.

  “No.” The sudden, painful sadness washed her smile away, and Bessie felt her mouth trembling. She should stop, she knew. She didn’t want to say the words, or to hear them, either. But she couldn’t. She swallowed and went on.

  “It was a long time ago, when I was still in my early twenties. Back then, of course, it seemed like a terrible tragedy, the worst thing that had ever happened to anybody in this world. Which it wasn’t, I know.” She sighed heavily. “But still…” Her voice trailed off.

  Verna put her glass down, obviously intrigued. “So what happened, Bessie? Did you quarrel?”

  Bessie swallowed again. “I never knew what happened,” she said matter-of-factly. “There wasn’t any quarrel. The wedding arrangements were made, the church reserved and everything, and I even had my dress. Harold and I were planning to borrow Daddy’s car and drive over to the jewelry store in Monroeville and pick out our wedding rings.” Her mouth twisted around the bitter words. “But then he was just… gone, that’s all. I never heard a word from him. No letter, no telegram, not one single word, from that day to this.”

  “I am so sorry, Bessie,” Liz whispered. She opened her mouth, then closed it again, as if she couldn’t think what else to say.

  Bessie looked down at her fingers clasped in her lap. “I always suspected that Miss Hamer drove him away. I reckon he just couldn’t take her bossing him around any longer, telling him what to do. She didn’t like me one bit, of course. But then, she wouldn’t have liked any girl Harold wanted to marry. She wanted to keep him all to herself, and she was determined to make life miserable for anybody he cared about. He knew that, I think. So he left.”

  Verna frowned. “He didn’t get in touch with his parents, to tell them where he’d gone?”

  “They were dead,” Bessie replied. “They died in a railroad accident when Miss Hamer was in her twenties and Harold was just a tiny child, before he’d had his first birthday. She raised him all by herself-and pretty well smothered him, too.” She sighed, remembering. “That’s the way Harold saw it, anyway, although to be fair, I don’t suppose anybody could blame her. She was doing her best to take care of a young boy who would’ve run wild, left to his druthers. So she kept him on a short rein, like a rebellious young horse. I used to think maybe he wanted to get married just to get out from under his sister’s thumb.”

  “I can understand that,” Liz said. “I got engaged to Reggie just to get away from my mother. Not that I didn’t love him,” she added hastily. “I think we would have been happy together, if he’d come home from France.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t have worked for us,” Bessie said, and heard herself saying a truth she had known but had never spoken out loud. “Getting married, I mean. I understand that now. There wasn’t any way Harold could be free of his sister as long as he stayed here in Darling. She would have made both of us miserable, meddling in our marriage. He must have known that, too. So he left. He didn’t ask me to go with him because he knew I couldn’t leave my father. In a way, I suppose, it was a kindness. He didn’t force me to make a choice. He did the choosing himself.”

  She stopped, startled. A kindness? Did she really think that? But after all these years, the real truth was that she still didn’t know what to think.

  “My gracious, Bessie,” Verna said in surprise. “I never heard a word of any of this.”

  “No reason you should,” Bessie replied with a short laugh, “either one of you. It’s not something I wanted to talk about. And it happened a long time ago.”

  “But didn’t you think it was really strange that he didn’t try to get in touch with you?” Verna persisted. “Especially since you hadn’t quarreled.”

  “Of course I thought it was strange, Verna. I was devastated.” And now that she’d said this much, the rest just came tumbling out, as if the words were speaking themselves. “For once in his life, my father was kind to me, even though he could barely hide how glad he was that Harold had left. He’d never made any secret of the fact that he hated the idea of our getting married. But he was kind to me-canceled all the wedding arrangements himself, so I wouldn’t have to do it. For months, I wouldn’t talk to Miss Hamer, because I was convinced that she knew where her brother had gone and was refusing to tell me. And of course I just kept thinking there’d be something-a letter, or a postcard. But there was nothing. It was as if he had fallen right off the face of the earth.”

  “And Miss Hamer?” Verna asked, narrowing her eyes. “She didn’t hear from him either?”

  Bessie could feel her mouth trembling and she pressed her lips together. “If she did, she didn’t tell me. I’d ask, and she’d just shake her head. But of course she wouldn’t tell, since she was the very reason he left.”

  “So sad,” Liz murmured. She looked stricken. “For both you and Miss Hamer. For Harold, too.”

  “Yes,” Bessie said stoutly. “I survived, maybe because I knew I hadn’t done anything to drive him away.” She had always felt good about that, in the private corner of her mind where these memories were stored away-that they hadn’t quarreled, that her last words to him had been soft and loving. “But I think she blamed herself, and the thought of what she did has been driving her crazy.”

  “You mean, really crazy?” Verna asked.

  “Nutty as a fruitcake,” Bessie said. “And she’s gotten crazier and crazier every year. Ask the neighbors-they can hear her screeching like a madwoman, sometimes in the middle of the night. Or ask DessaRae, or Doc Roberts. They know.”

  “And Miss Jamison?” Verna asked, tilting her head. “What does she know?”

  Bessie frowned. “I haven’t heard Miss Hamer shrieking since the ladies got here, so Miss Jamison probably doesn’t know about that yet. And there’s no reason why she would know anything about Harold-unless Miss Hamer told her, which I’m sure she wouldn’t.” But now that she thought about it, she wondered whether she herself ought to tell Miss Jamison. It might help her to understand the situation she had moved into.

  “What an incredible story,” Liz said in a low voice.

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it?” Bessie replied. She pulled in a deep breath and let it out. “But as I said, it was a very long time ago.” She closed her eyes, trying to conjure up Harold’s face. “You know, I almost can’t remember what he looked like-not really. I have a photograph of the two of us together, playing in the water at the swimming hole on Pine Mill Creek. When I think of him, that’s how I picture him, smiling and happy, still just a boy. I never think of the way he must look now, gray-haired and wrinkled and maybe even bent and stooped.” She sighed reminiscently. “Sometimes I think how different my life would have been if we’d married. We would’ve had children. And I wouldn’t have-”

  “Oh, there you are, Bessie, dear!” came a bright voice at the kitchen door. It was Leticia Wiggins, hobbling down the back steps. She was moving carefully, leaning on her cane with one hand, holding on to the banister with the other. Leticia had fallen the year before and broken her wrist. She didn’t want to do it again. “Maxine and I have finished our canasta game. I won forty-two dollars!”

  “Forty-two dollars!” Verna raised her eyebrows. “My goodness!”

  “It’s just pretend money,” Bessie said in a low voice. “They started out gambling for pennies but now they’ve made up these colored paper bills. And they can never agree-”

  “Forty-two?” Maxine Bechdel snapped, coming down the stairs behind Leticia, her white hair
gleaming. “Don’t be ridiculous, Leticia. It was only thirty-two. You added wrong, as usual.” She peered nearsightedly at Bessie’s guests. “Oh, it’s Elizabeth and Verna! Hello, girls. We haven’t seen you for a while. Mind if we join you?”

  Liz put her glass down and stood up. “Somebody can have my chair,” she said. “I’m afraid I have to go. It’s thundering, and I need to get home and close my windows.”

  “I’d better be on my way, too,” Verna said, standing up. She put her hand on Bessie’s shoulder. “Thanks for sharing all that family history with us, Bessie.”

  “You’re welcome,” Bessie said, reaching up to clasp Verna’s hand. She shook her head with a wicked grin. “I’ll bet old Miss Hamer doesn’t have an idea in her head that she’s harboring a couple of vaudeville dancers. But that’s what comes of letting those naked ladies bloom in her front yard.”

  “Who’s a vaudeville dancer?” Leticia wanted to know, hobbling across the grass. “You’ll have to speak up, Bessie, if you want people to hear you.” She sat down in the chair that Liz had vacated and glanced at the partly emptied pitcher. “Maxine, darlin’, you’re still up. Bring us two more glasses, will you, and we’ll have us some of this lemonade.” She looked back at Bessie. “Now, do tell, Bessie. Who’s a vaudeville dancer?”

  “No, no,” Bessie said hastily, raising her voice. “We were talking about the Dahlias’ talent show. I said that it’s going to be as good as watching a vaudeville review. Don’t you think so, Verna?”

  “Oh, definitely,” Verna said, and Liz nodded, too. They said their good-byes, leaving Bessie and her friends to enjoy the fragrance of the Angel Trumpet drifting across the backyard.

  EIGHT

  Verna Has a Visitor

  That was quite a story, wasn’t it?” Verna said, as she and Liz walked down Camellia Street-hurrying a little. The growl of thunder was coming closer and neither of them had an umbrella.

  “I wonder what happened to him,” Liz said reflectively. “Bessie’s fiancé, I mean. It’s so sad.” She shivered. “At least I knew what happened to Reggie-his mother got a letter from his commanding officer after he was killed, telling her where he was buried. Bessie never even knew what became of her fiancé. It must be hard to live with a mystery like that.”

  “There’s another mystery,” Verna replied darkly. The suspicion had been growing on her all afternoon, while she listened to Bessie tell her story. “Now that I know a little more about this situation, I’m beginning to wonder whether Lorelei LaMotte really is Miss Hamer’s niece.” She turned to her friend. “Honestly, now, Liz. Tell me what you think.”

  Liz was silent for a moment. “The other day, I read about an odd situation in Florida. These people’s son was kidnapped years ago, and when he came home, all grown up, they were thrilled to death. It turned out, though, that he wasn’t their son after all. Some smart police detective revealed his real identity and they were shocked at how they’d been duped.”

  Verna turned to stare at her. “You know, Liz, the same thing could be true here. Nona Jean’s mother is dead. Her aunt doesn’t know her-not really, I mean. Nobody here in Darling knows her, not a soul.”

  Liz frowned. “Didn’t Walter’s cousin tell you that he had known her when she was a girl back in Monroeville?” A streak of lightning raced across the southern sky, under a pile of threatening clouds.

  “Yes,” Verna conceded, “but he could have been wrong. Gerald has been wrong a lot, over the years.” She thought back to their visit to New York, where Gerald had strutted around, the big-city hero lording it over his small-town cousins. “Or maybe he was saying it to make himself look important-the way men do, you know.”

  “I’m confused, Verna,” Liz said. “Miss Jamison told you that she isn’t Miss LaMotte, and now you’re saying she might not be Miss Jamison, either.”

  “It is confusing,” Verna replied. “But that’s what makes it a mystery-and intriguing. All I’m saying is that we need to know more about her.”

  “More what, exactly?” Liz asked, over the roll of thunder.

  “Just more,” Verna said. She thought for a moment. “You said that Miss Jamison had some legal business with Mr. Moseley. What was it?”

  “You know I can’t talk about specifics,” Liz said patiently. “Attorney-client privilege includes me, too. Mr. Moseley has drummed that into me from the day I went to work in his office.” She hesitated. “But I guess maybe it won’t hurt to tell you that it had to do with a house she’s put up for sale. She’s asked Mr. Moseley to handle it for her.”

  “In Chicago?”

  “Not exactly, but close.” She sighed. “If you must know, it’s in a suburb on the west side of the city. Cicero.”

  Verna stared at her. “Cicero! Don’t you read the newspapers, Liz? Cicero is all over the front pages. That’s where Al Capone hangs out, so he can stay out of the clutches of the Chicago police. Haven’t you heard the saying, ‘If you smell gunpowder, you’re in Cicero’? You don’t suppose-”

  “No, I don’t suppose anything of the sort.” Liz pulled down the corners of her mouth. “Verna, you would suspect your own grandmother-if you had one.”

  Verna chuckled wryly. “If my grandmother lived on Twenty-second Street in Cicero, I might suspect her. That’s where Capone has his headquarters. In the Western Hotel on Twenty-second, according to The Dime Detective.”

  The Dime Detective was one of the tough-guy crime magazines that Verna read every chance she got. It often included snippets about real-world mobsters-and always lots of information about Al Capone and his gang. For instance, Al Capone had a violent temper and was known to take a bloody revenge against anybody he thought was disloyal. At the same time, he’d been the first to open soup kitchens right after the Crash and distribute clothes and food to the needy. Many people in Chicago saw him as a Robin Hood, a romantic hero who defied the law to give them what they wanted (alcohol) and what they needed (food, clothing, and employment). “Public service is my motto,” Capone was quoted as saying. “Ninety percent of the people of Cook County drink and gamble and my offense has been to furnish them with those amusements.” Lots of people seemed to agree with him.

  Verna looked at Liz. “Well, Liz? Would you dig up the address of Miss Jamison’s house for me?”

  “Maybe,” Liz said reluctantly. “I guess it would depend on whether it’s really important. And I hope you’re not trying to tell me that Miss Jamison has anything to do with Al Capone.”

  Verna was candid. “I don’t know if it’s important. And I have no idea whether Miss Jamison is connected with Al Capone or not. But somebody ought to try to find out who this woman really is and what exactly she’s doing here in Darling, don’t you think?” She gave her friend a closer look. “What’s eating you, Liz? You’ve been quiet all afternoon. Not your usual bouncy self.”

  Liz sighed heavily. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you, Verna.”

  “Try me,” Verna invited, and linked her arm in Liz’s. “Come on, Lizzy, give,” she said affectionately. “Something’s up. Is it Grady?”

  Liz rolled her eyes. “No. It’s not Grady. I haven’t even seen him all week.”

  “Well, then, it must be Mr. Moseley.” Verna chuckled. “I know he’s been pestering you to-”

  “It’s not Mr. Moseley,” Liz said, so quickly that Verna suspected it actually was Mr. Moseley. Then she added, in a subdued voice, clearly worried, “It’s my mother.”

  “Uh-oh.” Verna frowned. “What about her? Is she sick? Is she-”

  “She’s not sick.” Liz sighed. “Although what’s happened makes me sick. She’s lost her house.”

  Verna turned to stare. “Lost her house?” she said incredulously. “But I thought your father-”

  “He did. He left it to her free and clear, along with enough money to keep her for the rest of her life. But she took out a mortgage a couple of years ago and put the money into the stock market, with Miss Rogers’ broker. And we all know what happened to Miss
Rogers.”

  “Oh, dear!” Verna exclaimed, feeling a deep sympathy. “There’s nothing left, I suppose.”

  The same thing had happened all across America, Verna knew. The market had risen so fast and so far in the late 1920s that a great many ordinary people-housewives, truck drivers, retail clerks, teachers-had been infected by stock market fever. The newspapers and magazines and radio programs spilled over with tempting stories about taxi drivers making a fortune, or a school teacher from Peoria or a janitor from Poughkeepsie striking it rich. Even in Darling, far away from Wall Street, the stock market was all people talked about, from the farmers gathered around the stove in the back room at Snow’s Farm Supply to the women buying dress goods at Mann’s Mercantile. Everybody believed that the market was like an elevator in one of those New York skyscrapers. It was only going to go higher, all the way up to the very top, wherever that was. Everybody wanted to get in on the ground floor.

  And you didn’t need a lot of money to get on board. Fork over ten or twenty percent of whatever you wanted to buy, and any broker would happily loan you the rest. Of course, if there was a brief downturn, you might get a “margin call” and have to pony up some more money. But the next day, the stock would bounce up again and you’d be in the clear and on your way to a fortune, so nobody worried about the temporary dips. Up and up and up-until the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached the dizzying peak of 381. People in the know-bankers, brokers, big investors, even President Hoover himself-were saying that the Dow could go as high as 400 or 450, when it would likely reach a plateau before it took off again. Some of them were still saying this on the day the bottom dropped out and panic-stricken people began selling. Last week, Verna had read, the Dow had slipped to 180 and was still on its way down, no telling how far.