But there was nothing like the feeling of leaving the last skyscrapers and homes of the city behind, especially as the Detroit River opened into Lake Saint Clair, and Jefferson wound up along it, just a hand’s breadth from the riverbank.
“Ah!” Eugene said, closing his eyes against the lowering sun. “Is there anything better than this?”
Though Lottie had had the same fleeting thought a moment before, when Eugene said it aloud, something suddenly went a little awry in her chest.
Is there anything better than this? she wondered.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Do you really think so?”
Eugene leaned over to kiss her cheek and rub her shoulder. “No,” he said. “I think marrying you will be better. And maybe a couple kids,” he said with a meaningful glance at the backseat.
Lottie shifted in her own seat. Now it didn’t just feel like something was wrong in her chest; it felt like something was pressing down on it. And Eugene’s hand on her shoulder suddenly felt like a spider crawling over her.
“You want to have kids right away?” she asked, trying to sound casual.
“Not too fast,” Eugene said, throwing his own head back to catch the scent of the river. “I mean, I’ll be satisfied if we have three in the first three years.”
Lottie glanced at him, and he grinned back at her, enjoying his joke.
“I mean, my family is known for production efficiency,” Eugene joked. His family was one of the major manufacturers of car parts in the city. At least, they had been, until the government mandated a weapons quotient for every manufacturer. Now Eugene oversaw weapons production at his father’s factory, a convenient post for the son of the proprietor, since it came with the added perk of exemption from the draft.
“Don’t you think…” Lottie began, then hesitated, not sure exactly how to put it. “Don’t you think it would be nice if we could do some other things first?”
“Like what, Lots?” Eugene asked with a lazy smile.
She thought for a long moment before answering.
“Like travel the world.”
Eugene sighed and planted both his hands on his knees. “I’ve been around this world more than once,” he said. “And I’ve never found anything I like as much as what we’ve got right here, in Detroit.”
Lottie pursed her lips.
“Especially the girls,” Eugene said. He leaned over to kiss her cheek again. “Especially one particular girl.”
Lottie tried to smile. “But what about other things you’ve always wanted to do?”
“You know what I haven’t done yet that I want to?” Eugene asked. “I want to marry the most wonderful girl in the world and raise a family with her.”
“You don’t want anything else?” Lottie asked.
“No,” Eugene said simply. Then he turned in his seat so he could really search her face. “What have you always wanted to do?”
The question spun around Lottie’s mind as the river rolled alongside them and the clouds slid by overhead.
Then the car lurched and sputtered. Lottie rolled her eyes and jammed in the clutch to try putting it back in gear again, but it was no use. The engine, which had been powering them merrily along the river road, had completely cut out.
Giving a wave over her shoulder to the traffic behind them, Lottie nosed the car off to the side of the road, braking just before she hit the fence that cordoned off a spit of private land that ran out into the river, with boats bobbing at anchor at the far end, where the river was deep enough to launch them.
“Not again,” Eugene said in a tired voice.
“Your brand-new Cadillac broke down two weeks ago,” Lottie snapped, feeling defensive about her beloved Bearcat.
“Yes,” Eugene allowed. “But it didn’t break down two weeks before that. And two weeks before that. And…”
Lottie pumped the gas, put the clutch in, then tried turning the ignition again. The engine coughed but then went silent.
Eugene, who was well acquainted with the moody ways of Lottie’s ancient chariot, leaned back and kicked his feet up on the door.
“The good thing about all these Sunday drivers,” he said, “is that someone will be along to help us anytime.”
Steaming at his lack of faith, Lottie opened the driver’s-side door and climbed out. “We can’t be stuck here forever,” she told him.
Then she walked around to the side of the car, bent over to find the release catch for the hood, and popped it open.
From beyond it, she could hear Eugene groan. “Lottie,” he called. “We can just hitch a ride to my folks’ place and call a mechanic when we get there.”
But Lottie was already lost in thought, poring over the engine, remembering what Gus had always told her about the first step in repairing any engine: “Take a look.”
Gus was the one who had taught her everything she knew about engines, even though her father owned a factory that built hundreds of them a day. He’d been a mechanic before he became their chauffeur, which was crucial when even the best cars had a habit of breaking down at the most inopportune moments.
Lottie had numerous memories of her family all piling out of the car to find a patch of shade or flagging down other drivers who might send to the house for another vehicle to take them home while Gus worked on the problem.
Lottie, on the other hand, had always snuck around to watch Gus at work. She was fascinated by the gears and shafts, the pistons and carburetor and fuel tank, the axles and exhaust pipes. But he would never let her touch the engine herself—until she started sneaking out to find him in the garage. Even then, it took her weeks to wear him down. But eventually he put a wrench into one of her small hands and started to show her the basic elements of the engine.
By the time she had wrangled her Stutz Bearcat from her father, at age sixteen, she wasn’t just expert enough to fix it herself if it happened to break down. She could troubleshoot just about any car engine in the Detroit area. And she’d even managed to help a friend get their plane running in one of Grosse Pointe’s massive yards after an afternoon party.
The pilot, a buddy of her father, had landed it there the day before, with the joke that since he knew everybody would show up to the party in the best cars in the world, he’d opted for a plane. But when he tried to take off the next day, the engine wouldn’t even turn over. While all the auto execs stood around, gobbling in shock like a pack of turkeys, Lottie had been the one to quietly trace the fuel line, which led to the revelation that a local critter had gnawed a hole in it overnight.
“Take a look,” Gus’s first admonition, meant getting a grasp of the whole situation before you started taking things apart. The better you knew an engine, the more instinctive doing a visual check got. And Lottie didn’t know any other engine better than that of her beloved Stutz, with its large, smooth engine block, silver tubes, and thick copper-colored wires.
Gus’s second admonition was just as hard to forget as his first. “Look for the simple answer,” he always told her. “Not the complicated one.”
But she also knew after a quick glance that this wasn’t going to be a simple fix. Lack of power could only come from a handful of problems. She knew it wasn’t an issue with fuel, because they’d been purring along steadily before the engine choked. So it had to be something deeper in.
A minute later, over Eugene’s protests, she had pulled out the small tool kit she always kept in the trunk of the car.
“Lots,” Eugene pleaded with her, still with his feet propped up on the door of the car. “Darling, I beg you, wait for a proper mechanic. If only to spare that ravishing dress.”
Before he mentioned it, the thought hadn’t even crossed Lottie’s mind. But now that he’d brought it up, she did spare a minute to look down at her outfit: a smart white spring suit with white piping and white pumps. It was the kind of getup that might make some girls hesitate to even sit on a park bench.
But Lottie just shook her head. “I can do it,” she said. “G
us’s uniform is always spotless.”
“The first thing I’m going to do once we’re married,” Eugene said good-naturedly, “is fire Gus.”
“Gus doesn’t work for me,” Lottie retorted, squatting down to get a better look at the carburetor. It was easy enough to see, a silver cylinder right on the top of the engine block. But what she was interested in was the second butterfly inside, which had a tricky habit of getting stuck. And that was going to take some time to get at. “He works for my father,” she said, pulling a wrench out of her tool kit.
“That’s what your father thinks,” Eugene agreed. “But does Gus know that? I’m not convinced he’s aware he works for anyone.”
“Whoever he thinks he’s working for,” Lottie said, “he always gets it done.”
“I would just like to observe, my dear,” Eugene said, “that you are one of the lucky few who does not need to work.”
But I want to, Lottie suddenly thought with a fierceness that surprised her. A moment ago, she hadn’t been able to think of anything in the world she’d always wanted to do. Now there wasn’t anything she wanted more than to fix this crazy old car.
After a few minutes of loosening bolts, Lottie had finally opened up the belly of the carburetor. The first butterfly valve worked perfectly, as always. “Thank you,” she said briskly as she continued tinkering to get at the second.
“What did you say?” Eugene called.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Lottie said.
“You were talking to yourself?” Eugene asked.
When she didn’t answer, he said, in a tone of mixed amusement and incredulity, “To the engine?”
“Shh!” Lottie said. “You’ll hurt its feelings.”
Just as she’d suspected, the second butterfly valve was stuck, but with a good push from her screwdriver, it sprang loose. She spread an ample amount of grease over the whole thing for good measure and double-checked the action. Then she quickly screwed everything back into place and collected her tools from the grassy roadside. Feeling satisfied, she hopped back in the car and honked the horn with a grin.
Eugene sprang upright from his reclined position, dropping his feet to the floor of the car, his eyes wide in astonishment. She figured he must be thoroughly impressed at her mechanical prowess.
But as his gaze fixed not on her eyes, but on a region somewhere around her midsection, she finally glanced down at herself to see a giant smear of black grease that covered not just the jacket of her smart white suit, but the skirt itself.
Oh no.
Too bad she didn’t keep a spare outfit in the trunk next to that tool kit.
“Like you said,” he said wryly after a minute. “Spotless.”
“That’s the inside of the carburetor,” Lottie said, judging from the stain. “I must have forgotten what I was doing when I pulled that section out.”
“You can tell just by looking which part stained your dress?” Eugene said. “Somehow I think that puts you in a class beyond.”
Lottie was about to smile at him, until he added, “I just wish that you’d remembered who you’re meeting for lunch.”
At the reference to his parents, Lottie’s smile died on her lips. They most certainly would not find anything amusing about her stained dress.
She turned the key in the ignition. The Stutz roared back to life and she patted the dashboard fondly. Then she turned to Eugene. “But the car works!” she crowed, pulling out into traffic. “At least we won’t be late for dinner.”
“That’ll give my father so much more time to enjoy your dress,” Eugene said.
Lottie felt a little pang as she looked down at the grease smeared all over her lap. “Maybe I can do something about it before he sees it,” Lottie said.
“Like buy a new dress?” Eugene asked.
Lottie rolled her eyes.
A few minutes later, they turned onto the long lane of mansions his family house sat among and then the winding drive that led to his house, hidden among a dense growth of old trees.
Lottie parked in the circle near the front door, then steeled herself and stepped out. She scanned the yard for a garden hose or something to clean up with, but before she could, Eugene’s father appeared in the front door.
The big grin that had graced his face when he first threw it open faded immediately at the sight of Lottie’s dress.
“Are you all right, dear?” he asked. “What’s happened to you?”
“Lottie’s Bearcat failed to proceed,” Eugene said, going up the walk to shake his father’s hand, with Lottie trailing along beside him. “But she got it running again.”
The look of concern in Mr. Grantham’s eyes changed to one of consternation, then recognition. “That’s grease,” he said. He was one of the biggest parts manufacturers in Detroit—there was no telling him the stains were anything else, once he knew what he was looking at.
“Guilty,” Lottie said with what she hoped was a charmingly self-deprecating smile. “But we got it running again.”
Mr. Grantham looked from Lottie to his son in shock. “We?” he said, looking at his son. Lottie bristled at his reaction.
“I’m afraid I can’t claim any credit for this one,” Eugene said, raising his hands as if in surrender.
“I’m not sure this is a credit to anyone,” Mr. Grantham said. He scowled at her as if she were a machine that had malfunctioned and needed to be fixed—or replaced.
Lottie felt her cheeks begin to burn with frustration and shame.
“Well,” Mr. Grantham said. “I think maybe you’d better go around the side and see if you can get one of the maids to help you, before you go in to Mrs. Grantham.”
“Dad—” Eugene began to protest, but Lottie laid her hand on his arm.
“That’s perfect,” she said. “I’ll see you in a minute.”
Then she tramped off around the side of the house, toward the kitchen and laundry at the back.
Lottie chastised herself for letting Mr. Grantham’s disapproval affect her so much. She didn’t have any reason to feel a lick of shame or regret over the ruined dress. In a strange way, she was sort of proud of it.
As she traipsed through the garden to the servants’ entrance, she just called up the sound of the engine in her head and felt the same satisfaction she had when it had roared to life. The sound of that gentle purr had been intoxicating. And it was worth all the grease stains in the world.
Three
“LACE FROM ALSACE,” MADAME Rosetti said.
While Lottie watched in the threefold mirror in front of them, Madame draped a length of thick, delicate white frippery over Lottie’s shoulder and around the curve of the neckline of her wedding dress, letting yards more of it fall back down over Lottie’s shoulder, to the ground. Then Madame pinned the raveling edge of the lace firmly in place in the center of the dress and gestured impatiently at her young assistant, Vera, who scrambled to hand her another bolt of expensive trimming.
Lottie barely recognized herself: in the mirror was a perfect bride, with lace and silk cascading from her shoulders and billowing out in gigantic folds from her waist.
“English bobbin lace,” Madame announced, repeating the whole operation by pinning this lace to the opposite side of Lottie’s neckline, then letting the remains spill back down over Lottie’s other shoulder.
When Madame was finished, she stepped away from the little round dais where Lottie was standing, which raised her a good ten inches off the floor of the room. Madame clasped her hands and closed her eyes as if she were Michelangelo regarding his statue of David. “Brava!” she breathed. “Si beau!”
Beside her, her assistant shuffled nervously, not quite sure whether she should imitate her employer’s rapture or stay at attention in order to quickly meet Madame’s inevitable next demand.
Lottie stifled a smile at Madame’s casual switch between Italian and French. She had always wondered how someone with such a clearly Italian surname had decided to advertise herself to the world wit
h a French honorific. But Madame’s business acumen was unquestionable. Despite her French moniker, or perhaps in part because of it, she was the most in-demand bridal couturier in Detroit.
In the mirror, Lottie glanced back at her mother, who was seated on a dove-gray fainting couch behind Lottie, wearing a smart gray suit herself, her blond hair as perfectly coiffed as always.
“What do you think?” Lottie asked.
“What do you think, dear?” her mother replied with a gentle smile.
Lottie looked back at the mirror.
She had picked the dress out ages ago, right after Eugene proposed last Christmas. She’d watched other friends lose months of their lives to the hunt for a dress, rifling through gowns at shop after shop in Detroit and all the way out to Ann Arbor or Chicago. Before the war, she’d even known girls who took a boat or plane to the continent, so they could choose a design no one had ever seen before, from shops in Paris or London.
Lottie, on the other hand, had been both decisive and sensible. Madame’s shop was known as the best, so she’d started there, looked at a dozen dresses, and chosen one: a simple design in thick white silk with princess seams, a scoop neck, and delicate cap sleeves that showed off the way tennis had toned her arms.
Initially, Madame had been effusive about the dress and appeared to be almost in awe of Lottie’s levelheadedness. But over time, Madame’s awe had faded into something more like suspicion. Was Lottie sure about the dress? she wanted to know every time Lottie came in for a fitting. Didn’t Lottie have any opinions? Wouldn’t Lottie like something to make the dress a bit more special?
And just as Lottie had chosen her dress with great reasonableness, she listened to all of Madame’s suggestions with great reasonableness—but didn’t take any of them. The truth was she wanted her dress to be simple. The country was at war, after all.
As a result, Madame’s suggestions got more and more elaborate. Which was how Lottie had ended up there, at what was supposed to be her last fitting before the big day, with lace cascading down her back.
Madame was certain that the dress needed a little something more, something to make it truly special, truly Lottie’s. And so she’d dug up handmade lace from across the world, so Lottie could see the difference.
For Love and Country Page 2
