Alias Mrs Jones

by Kate McLachlan

  “You should,” Adelaide said. “We practice after school. You’ll already be there, and I could use someone to cover for me when I get called out on an emergency.”

  I was flattered. “I did play basketball in college.”

  “You went to college?” Trissie asked.

  “Yes,” I said without thinking, then realized Mabel Chumley would not have done so. “I mean no, it wasn’t college, it was just a normal school, for teachers, I mean. It was really just a few girls getting together with a ball. No team.”

  “Corsets do more than train the figure, though,” Caroline said. “They teach girls restraint in their appetites, and not only for food. That Dunn girl, for example. Frannie?”

  “Fannie,” I said.

  “Yes, Fannie.” Caroline nodded. “Her mother never made her wear a corset, and she turned into a hoyden. She wouldn’t be in the trouble she’s in now, if she’d learned a bit of restraint.”

  “You’re blaming that on a corset?” Sarah asked.

  “I blame it rather on Will Sims,” said Ona, from her perch on Sarah’s lap, where she had landed after several drinks.

  In fact, as the evening progressed, all the women migrated closer together until eventually everyone touched someone. Dinah, the woman I’d taken for a young man turning pages at the piano, sat on the floor and leaned against the knees of Mary, the piano player. Trissie perched on the arm of Grace’s chair and draped herself over Grace’s shoulder. Adelaide sat in the middle of the divan, with Caroline on one side and me on the other. Caroline leaned, as best she was able with her tight corset, against Adelaide’s arm. Even I had slipped off my boots and curled my legs up in my corner of the divan. My feet rested against Adelaide’s hip, which was warm and vibrated every time she laughed or even spoke. It made me feel very close to her, and I realized I hadn’t felt such physical closeness with anyone since I was a small child. Robert’s cold midnight embraces certainly had not felt like this.

  “You think Fannie Dunn is pregnant?” asked Dinah asked.

  “‘Course she is,” Grace said.

  “Too many girls, and boys too, don’t really understand what causes pregnancy,” Adelaide said. “Some people think we ought to teach it in schools.”

  “Ha!” said Grace. “That’ll never happen.”

  “It’s strange how so many odd things are happening at once,” Mary said. “First the trolley shooter, then that man getting killed, and Fannie Dunn disappearing like that.”

  “A trolley striker killed that Stanfield man,” Sarah said.

  “No, the trolley doesn’t go that far,” Grace said, “and he was a railroad man, not a trolley man.”

  “It doesn’t matter where the trolley goes,” Sarah said. “The strikers are excited. One man fired a shot at the rails, and now they all want to do it. They’re men. It’s not sensible, but there it is.”

  “But why was he out there in the first place?” Adelaide asked. “There’s nothing out that way but railroad tracks.”

  “Someone took him out there,” Grace said. “Someone who wanted incorporation.”

  “But he didn’t want to stop incorporation,” I said.

  “How do you know that?” Sarah asked.

  “Mabel knew him,” Grace said.

  “I didn’t know him exactly,” I said. “We met on the train and chatted a bit. He told me he was in favor of incorporation. He was working on a compromise so the town could incorporate and still keep the railroad work here.”

  “Well, I never heard that,” Sarah said, “and if I didn’t, it’s a good bet the man who killed him didn’t know it either.”

  “Sarah is the postmistress,” Ona said. “She hears everything.”

  The salon broke up late, but it felt too soon to me. The women went into the dressing room to change back into their women’s clothes or gather their wraps. Adelaide stood up and my feet, which had somehow wormed their way underneath her bottom, were suddenly cold. I picked up a boot, which I had pried off without untying, and untied the lace with my left hand.

  Adelaide took the boot from me. “Let me,” she said. She dropped to her knees, took my foot in her hand, and slid the boot on for me.

  “I can do it,” I said, though I enjoyed the feel of her hands on my feet.

  “I can do it better. I have two good hands.” She looked up and gave me a slow smile that made me catch my breath. She saw it, and her hands slowed. With her eyes steadily on mine, she put one arm on the cushion beside me. She put the other hand behind me on the small of my back and pulled me toward her. I felt something inside myself melt. She meant to kiss me, I thought, and I wanted her to. I had never wanted anyone to kiss me before, not even Robert before we were married, when I still cared for him. But I wanted Adelaide to kiss me.

  She leaned toward me. “Mabel,” she said.

  I stiffened, pulled back, and looked away. What was I doing? I wasn’t Mabel. I was an imposter with secrets, terrible secrets that I could never share with Adelaide or anyone. I couldn’t let her kiss me.

  She rose, dropped my second boot beside me, and stepped back. “I’m sorry, I misunderstood.” I could tell by her voice that she’d turned away, though I didn’t dare look. There was no way she could see me shake my head, but she was wrong. She didn’t misunderstand me at all.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I AVOIDED ADELAIDE after that. It wasn’t difficult. She had no reason to seek me out at the boarding house, since I didn’t need my hand wrapped anymore, and she didn’t attend Ida Mae’s suffragist meeting on Sunday. I was busy anyway. The lessons Mrs. Dunn had prepared had run out, and I was on my own. I studied the students’ books all weekend, and in the evenings as well. Grace tried to talk to me, but she couldn’t speak openly at dinner. I wouldn’t answer my door when she knocked, and I waited until after she and Trissie went to bed before taking my turn in the bathroom, so I was able to avoid talk of Adelaide.

  But I missed her. We were becoming friends, the sort of friends who could speak with only looks, the sort of friends I’d wanted my entire life and never had. She understood me even when I was fabricating a lie, and she liked me anyway. She wanted to kiss me and I wanted her to. I felt a physical pull from my heart when I thought of her, but I ignored it. I cared for her too much to let her fall for someone like me.

  I was late getting home on Wednesday. I’d learned that Adelaide’s uncle kept the office on Wednesdays, so that’s the day I stopped after school to get my stitches taken out. A pink crescent the size of a dime marked my forehead, but old Dr. Keating assured me it would fade. It was dark when I finally got home.

  Ida Mae met me at the front door, which was unusual.

  “Mabel, you have some visitors,” she said, her voice hushed. “They’re in the parlor. They’ve been waiting for you.”

  My heart stilled. I did not have the sort of life where unexpected visitors could mean something good. I braced myself, but when I entered the parlor, I relaxed and smiled. It was only Mr. and Mrs. Dunn, standing beside each other at the mantle.

  “Hello Mr. Dunn, Mrs. Dunn,” I said. “Have you heard from Fannie?”

  Mrs. Dunn answered. “No, Miss Chumley, we have not, and I’m sorry to—”

  “I told you before,” a voice interrupted. “She’s not Miss Chumley. I am!”

  I turned. I hadn’t noticed the rumpled figure sitting in the corner chair, but now she rose, and she was right. She was the real Miss Chumley.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Ch—that is, ma’am,” Mr. Dunn said to me, his manner flustered. “She arrived this afternoon. She has papers, a teaching certificate with her name on it, and my letter.”

  “That’s right,” Miss Chumley said. “I can prove that I’m the real Miss Chumley, and you, Miss Imposter, cannot.”

  She was right again. I stood, dumb and dumbfounded with nothing to say. I glanced at Mr. Dunn, at Mrs. Dunn, and over my shoulder to Ida Mae. They all watched me closely. It was my turn to speak.

  I looked back at Mr. Dunn. His exp
ression was sympathetic and encouraging. He wanted me to make it all right. I grasped the back of a chair and leaned against it. “I’m sorry,” I said. My voice quivered, and I forced it to steady. “It was wrong of me, I know, but I so needed employment, and I, uh, I’ve always wanted to teach.”

  Mr. Dunn winced. “Are you saying this other young lady is correct? She is Miss Chumley?”

  “Of course I am Miss Chumley,” the real Miss Chumley said. “I showed you my papers. Why are you asking her? She’s nothing more than a criminal. You ought to have her arrested.”

  Mrs. Dunn stepped forward. “Who are you then?”

  “My name is Mrs. Jones,” I said. “Eleanor Jones. I was on the train when Miss Chumley boarded. I overheard her talking with a young man. She said she had been hired to teach school here, but that she didn’t want to do it.”

  “Hold on there,” Miss Chumley said. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “And the young man convinced her to elope with him.”

  “He said he wanted to marry me.” Miss Chumley sounded bewildered, and I felt some pity for her. She’d had a rough two weeks, by the looks of her. Her traveling dress, the same one she’d worn in the train, was heavily stained and wrinkled, and her hair had been stuffed into a dirty wad on her head. “But he didn’t marry me at all. He only used me, and now I’m r-r-ruined!” She burst into tears and fell back in her chair.

  Ida Mae moved into the room and put a hand on Miss Chumley’s shoulder. “There there.”

  Mr. Dunn reached for his handkerchief, but Miss Chumley did not wait for it. She wiped her nose on her sleeve. Mrs. Dunn looked at her with distaste and turned to me. “But how did you come to take her place, Miss, er, Mrs. Jones?”

  I would stick with the truth as much as I could. “Miss Chumley said that she knew no one in Hillyard. I thought, well, if a girl like her can teach school, surely I can. I am at least as well qualified, but I have no teaching certificate. So I took her place. I’m truly sorry. I was quite desperate.”

  Mrs. Dunn glanced at my cast with some understanding, I think, and asked, “Have you no family, Mrs. Jones? A home? A husband?”

  “I am a widow,” I said. “Circumstances have left me quite bereft.”

  “We have a strict code of ethics for our teachers,” Mr. Dunn said, exchanging a distressed look with Mrs. Dunn. “They are not to keep company with young men at all. We are somewhat relaxed about such rules here in Hillyard, but an elopement...”

  “She’s certainly not suitable to teach our children,” Mrs. Dunn agreed, seeming to forget that one of her own children had run off to commit an identical sin.

  Miss Chumley raised her head. “I’m not? What about her? She’s an imposter. She’s a liar!” Her tearful and accusing eyes met mine, and I felt a quiver of fear, for of course I was.

  “I will have to bring this to the school board,” Mr. Dunn said. “Meanwhile—”

  “Meanwhile,” Mrs. Dunn said, “don’t think you can count on me to teach again. I’ve had my fill of it. Let Mrs. Jones do it. She’s a refined lady, at least, a widow, and she’s shown she knows how to teach the children.”

  “But you don’t even know who she is,” Miss Chumley protested. “She could be another Lizzie Borden, for all you know. Maybe that’s why she’s a widow. She probably killed her husband, and she doesn’t even have a teaching certificate.”

  “A teaching certificate can be arranged,” Mrs. Dunn said, ignoring the first charge. “I obtained one myself in a matter of weeks. The manners of a lady, on the other hand, are not so easily assumed. Mrs. Jones, you will continue to teach, I hope, while Mr. Dunn assists you in obtaining the certificate. As for you, Miss Chumley—”

  “But I have no money,” Miss Chumley wailed. “I have nowhere to go.”

  “There there,” Ida Mae said again. “I won’t put you out.”

  WORD OF MY deception spread quickly, and reactions to it varied. My fellow boarders seemed to think I’d impersonated Miss Chumley out a sense of civic duty.

  “You’re a sly puss,” Grace said at dinner. “Claiming all this time to be Miss Chumley. Not that I blame you. A hussy like her should not be teaching our children. It’s a good thing you came along when you did, Mabel.”

  “Call me Nell,” I said.

  The real Mabel was dining in the kitchen, and she would sleep there as well on a mattress on the floor. Ida Mae’s charity only extended so far.

  “Well, she’s ruined now,” Grace said cheerfully. “I hope the story gets out and proves a lesson for our girls. Pity Fannie Dunn didn’t wait a few more days. She might have changed her mind about running off.”

  “I think it’s romantic,” Cora said. “Timothy and I eloped, you know, and I’m not ruined. You only get ruined if you don’t get married after all, like Miss Chumley.”

  “Why do you say ruined?” Ida Mae asked. “Miss Chumley seems a perfectly healthy girl, unless of course she got herself with child.”

  “Do you think Fannie and Will got married then?” I asked.

  “I’m sure of it, unless they couldn’t get a license,” Cora said. “Timothy and I got married in Idaho, where it’s easy. Fannie and Will didn’t want to go there, though. They wanted to go west.”

  “You know where they were going?” I asked.

  “Oh yes, she told me all about it. When Timothy and I eloped, it was all over town. She knew I’d know how to do it.”

  “Cora, for shame,” Ida Mae said. “You’ve known all this time where those children are and didn’t tell? The marshal’s been looking for them, and the Dunns have been half mad with worry.”

  “You don’t tell when it’s an elopement,” Cora explained. “Besides, I don’t know exactly where they are, only that they were taking a train to Seattle. Anyway, nobody asked me.”

  MY THIRD GRADE students accepted my name change without blinking an eye. I explained that I had only been taking Miss Chumley’s place temporarily and so went by her name, but now that I was to be their regular teacher I would be called by my own name. After half a day of hearing “Miss Chum-Jones”, they got it right nine times out of ten. The seventh graders found it a bit more unusual, but they weren’t troubled by it, except for Carrie, who narrowed her eyes when she heard my explanation. I would have expected nothing less. I knew I could expect more stringent scrutiny from my fellow teachers, but fortunately an event occurred that afternoon that made my news fall away like dust.

  The trolley strike was over! We heard clangs and cheers from outside before class was even finished. The boys could not contain themselves. They darted to the windows and looked out.

  “There’s grown men dancing, Mrs. Chones,” Dewey cried out, having not quite grasped my new name.

  “They are,” Guy said, “and they’re banging pipes and laughing.”

  “Mrs. Jones, may we go down and find out what’s happened?” Russell Gordon asked.

  Before I could answer, the door opened, and Principal Martin poked his head in. “The trolley strike’s over, Miss Ch—er, Mrs. Jones. We’re letting school out early today. Remember to clean up first!”

  The children were no more excited than I.

  It was three o’clock, the time of day when travelers were more likely to be returning from Spokane than going into it, but this was no ordinary day. Anyone who did not have a horse and buggy, or a car or bicycle, I suppose, for the daring, had not been able to go into Spokane since the strike began. Practically anyone with the time and a nickel wanted to go into the city, and the line for the trolley was long. It ran every fifteen minutes, but I would still have a wait of at least a half hour before I could get on, and likely as long a wait coming home.

  I took my place in line, but hesitantly. I did long to purchase some of the finer items that I could not find in Hillyard, my favorite bath oils, scented soap, and face cream, but I could wait another day.

  I hesitated too long. The crowd about me jostled aside, and I saw Marshal Mitchell heading straight toward me. His eyes pinned me
.

  “I’d like a word with you, Mrs. Jones.” His face was stiff, his brow furrowed, his entire demeanor displeased. He gnashed at the J, sounding for all the world like Dewey with his “Mrs. Chones.” It was immediately apparent to me that, while the students and the Dunns and Ida Mae’s boarders were not troubled by my impersonation of Miss Chumley, Marshal Mitchell certainly was.

  I trembled. I winced. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I could invent stories to convince the Ida Maes and Hiram Dunns of the world that I was indeed the widow Eleanor Jones, innocent imposter of Mabel Chumley, but Marshal Mitchell would not be so easily persuaded.

  Another voice called to me from behind. “Mrs. Jones, there you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Why, hello Marshal. Are you heading into town? Mrs. Jones and I are not. I’m going to take a look at her arm. Did you forget, my dear?”

  It was Adelaide. She gripped my elbow and pulled me from the line. “Come along now, you can go into town another time, and the marshal can wait as well.”

  He glared, but he did not interfere except to say, “I will speak with you again, Mrs. Jones.”

  I let Adelaide guide me away. My thoughts were in turmoil. There was nothing so bad about Widow Jones impersonating Miss Chumley to obtain a teaching position. It was a scandal, perhaps, but a minor one, nothing to interest the law. But there was more to concern the marshal than that. Mr. Stanfield had been murdered. Marshall Mitchell knew I’d met Mr. Stanfield, and now he knew I lied about it, or at least part of it. He would want to hear my story again, and he would be less inclined now to take my word. If I told him I boarded the train in Bismark, Grand Forks, or St. Paul, would he check? Would he find out I lied about that too? I didn’t dare tell him I’d boarded in New York City.

  “We’ll stop in here,” Adelaide said.

  We were at the door to Minthorn’s drug store. I was surprised to see how far we had walked, and surprised too that Adelaide had walked in silence and left me alone with my thoughts.