by Richard Peck
Now we could get to breakfast, though we were wringing wet. I wondered if there was a slice of ham to go with the eggs, but Lottie said she’d trust nothing in this kitchen that had ever been alive. She told me to beat up a bowl of pancake batter if there were no weevils in the flour. She began cracking our eggs. Lottie never looked more like Mama than when she was standing over a skillet with a spatula in her hand.
To keep up the pace we began to sing, softly, falling back on the old chestnuts we’d sing down home:
I gambled in the game of love,
I played my heart and lost,
I’m now a wreck upon life’s sea,
I fell and paid the cost.
and
My mother was a lady,
Like yours, you will allow,
And you may have a sister
Who needs protection now.
Songs like those, and I took my cue from Lottie. Was I beginning to know I couldn’t always take my cues from her?
With a bang like gunfire the door flung back, and there stood Mrs. O’Shay with blood in her eye.
Her hands were on her heavy hips. The very combs propping up her hair vibrated in outrage. “What do you two think you’re doin’ in my kitchen, if you wouldn’t mind telling me?” she bellowed like she was calling hogs.
We nearly jumped out of our drawers. Around Mrs. O’Shay the little maid Bridget peered. Drifting up behind them like the ghost of herself was Aunt Euterpe. She wore a black shirtwaist and a human-hair brooch at her throat. “Oh, dear,” she murmured, seeing me stacking cakes and Lottie looking for the coffee grinder.
“We were just pitching in to fix breakfast,” Lottie said.
“We overslept,” I mumbled, to explain.
Mrs. O’Shay whipped around and stuck her face into Aunt Euterpe’s. “They got no business in my kitchen!” she hollered. “Don’t they think I can cook?”
Wisely, we held our tongues. Aunt Euterpe went paler. “I am sure it was only a misunderstanding.”
It commenced to dawn on us what we’d done. We ought to have been ladylike and lolled in the bed. Then at seven we should have sauntered down to the dining room and waited for whatever Mrs. O’Shay saw fit to serve up. But where we came from, everybody did his share.
Mrs. O’Shay wheeled back at us. “And what have you done to my kitchen?”
Lottie’s shoulders squared. “We’ve cleaned it up,” she said. “It was filthy.”
The word hung in the room. Terrible wrath and something else burned in Mrs. O’Shay’s small eyes. We’d found her out. She couldn’t cook and wouldn’t clean.
“Your aunt never complained,” she said, low and mean.
Our aunt didn’t dare. We held our ground, though I was scared. The spatula hung a little dangerously in Lottie’s hand.
Mrs. O’Shay missed a moment, then turned back on Aunt Euterpe. “I was cook and housekeeper to poor old Mr. Fleischacker before you ever come on the scene, Mrs. Fleischacker. And how you nabbed him, I’ll never know!”
I liked to have passed out. Where we came from, people didn’t talk to you like that.
“Me and Bridget are done,” Mrs. O’Shay snarled. “Let them ignorant country girls cook your meals and fetch and carry for you. You’ve seen the last of us! And you can have your house keys back.”
She plunged a big red hand into her apron pocket.
Then the doggonedest thing happened. Mrs. O’Shay’s face went a quick purple. Her mouth flew open, wide as Mammoth Cave. She cut loose with a scream they could have heard back in Ireland.
Little Bridget jumped away from her. Aunt Euterpe fell back. Mrs. O’Shay jerked her hand out of her pocket and held it up before her horrified face. Attached to her longest finger was a snapping turtle.
It wasn’t as big as they get. It wasn’t even as big as a saucer. But it was big enough to have a good strong bite to it. And it didn’t turn loose, though Mrs. O’Shay flapped her hand and the turtle like a wild woman. Its shell swooped in the room with its tiny tail twitching behind.
Screaming like a banshee, Mrs. O’Shay danced a jig of pain across the kitchen. Then she was past us and out the back way, wringing her hand and the reptile as she went. Little Bridget followed at a safe distance, shedding her apron at the door.
In the yard Tip set to barking.
* * *
Then it was just Lottie and me over by the range. And Aunt Euterpe turned to stone in the doorway. Behind her Granddad’s old voice welled up from the dining room. “Where’s my breakfast, anyhow?”
Then Buster piped: “Anybody see my turtle?”
* * *
Even with a hearty breakfast in us, Lottie and I were cast in gloom and guilt. There were no two ways about it. We’d run off all Aunt Euterpe’s household help.
She drooped dreadfully at her place, though she’d polished off her eggs. It seemed to be the worst morning of her life. “Good help is so hard to find nowadays,” she sighed.
“It’d be the first good help you ever had.” Granddad spoke around a mouthful of pancakes. There’d been no conversation till now. Nobody had asked him about seeing the real Lillian Russell last night at the theater. And he hadn’t offered.
Aunt Euterpe folded and refolded a dingy napkin. “I believe I had better move into a hotel. Quite respectable people are now living in the better hotels.”
Lottie and I verged on tears. “No, girls,” Aunt Euterpe said, “do not take it to heart. I was rattling around in this big old house anyway. No one pays a call on me.”
We’d come to that conclusion on our own. A silver tray was out on her marble-topped hat stand. It was for the visiting cards of ladies who might call on her. Nobody had.
“Ain’t people neighborly a’tall?” Granddad asked.
“I am in a hard place without Mr. Fleischacker.” Aunt Euterpe fingered her brooch. “A widow’s lot is not easy.” She clung to the grim little ornament at her throat.
“What’s in that brooch anyway?” Granddad squinted down the table over his specs. He saw better without them.
“It is a lover’s knot of human hair,” Aunty said, “all I have left of the person of Mr. Fleischacker.”
“You snipped it off his head?” Granddad seemed interested. Buster certainly was.
“In a manner of speaking,” Aunt Euterpe replied. “He was bald as an egg, but I cut it out of his beard. After he was in his coffin, of course.”
Lottie set aside her fork.
Granddad pondered. The knot of hair under the dome of Aunty’s brooch was gray.
“I take it he wasn’t took from you in the prime of his life,” Granddad said, not unkindly.
“He was eighty-four.”
Granddad blinked. Whatever age he was, he wasn’t yet eighty-four himself.
Aunt Euterpe sighed further, and I read Lottie’s mind. She’d like to get Aunty out of those black widow’s weeds she wore. And if it had been left up to Lottie, she’d have stuck that awful human-hair brooch in the stove.
“You see,” Aunt Euterpe said, “I was Mr. Fleischacker’s secretary. I sat in his outer office and handwrote his letters for him. That was before the advent of the typewriter. I wouldn’t know how to operate a typewriter. . . .” She tapered off.
“Well, it was honest work,” Granddad declared.
Aunt Euterpe turned over a hopeless hand. “Mr. Fleischacker was a widower. I was his secretary. When we wed, people talked.”
“What about?” said Buster, again alert at the wrong moment.
We quieted Buster, and a stillness descended.
I suppose I saw then why Aunty had bothered to invite us to Chicago. She was lonely. I’d had to come to this city jammed with people to see a soul as lonely as hers. It stirred my heart. And Lottie’s too.
Breakfast was over. There wasn’t any pie. We sat in the airless room, hearing the tick of the landing clock. I only wished I could do something about Aunt Euterpe’s sad situation. After all, we owed her something after running off her household h
elp.
Doomishly she broke the silence. “Mr. Fleischacker’s first wife’s friends cut me dead. And we knew no one else.” She stared away at an empty future through the spectacles that gripped her narrow nose.
A tapping sound came across the scrubbed kitchen floor, drawing nearer. Tip stuck his muzzle around the dining-room door. He’d worked the back door open and invited himself into the house. Aunt Euterpe seemed not to notice. Buster noticed, but sat still as a little soldier.
Hunkering, Tip skulked across the rug and disappeared under the table. We were country people. We never let animals into the house, not unless they were ready to cook and eat. But we were miles from our world. Tip seemed to settle somewhere near Buster’s boots.
Aunt Euterpe’s plight had Granddad baffled. His gnarled old hand worked his clenched chin. Lottie looked across at me. This was no problem for a man to solve.
At length Granddad drew himself up and boomed, “You need to get out more, Terpie. This house is a tomb. It’s time we were off to the fair. These children need educating. They’s green as—”
“Papa, I couldn’t possibly—”
“Me and the boy will be lookin’ over the heavy machinery and the farm implements. We may drop by the Pennsylvania pavilion to see if the Liberty Bell’s still cracked. You can show these girls the womanly things, Terpie.”
“The cars will be so crowded at this time of day,” Aunt Euterpe sighed.
“Then have your man bring your carriage around,” said Granddad.
Aunt Euterpe quaked. “Flanagan was out yesterday, Papa. He won’t like—”
“You leave Flanagan to me,” said Granddad in a final way.
* * *
Midmorning found us swaying along in Aunt Euterpe’s closed carriage. Granddad and Buster rode on the box with Flanagan. We heard the low rumble of a conversation starting up. Aunt Euterpe had viewed Lottie and me with dismay when she saw us dressed again today in yesterday’s finery. She wore a different set of widow’s weeds and a hat like a heavily veiled coal scuttle.
As we rolled past number 1350 Lake Shore Drive, she pointed out once more the great palace of Mrs. Potter Palmer, the queen of Chicago society.
“There are no locks or knobs on her outer doors,” Aunt Euterpe breathed. “A visitor is admitted only by servants forever posted just inside.”
My land, I thought. Like jail.
“A visiting card left upon Mrs. Palmer passes through the gloved hands of twenty-seven servants and social secretaries before she sees it,” said Aunt Euterpe wanly, “. . . if she sees it.”
We turned at the water tower past the Farwells’ pair of mansions, then on down Michigan Avenue, over the bridge, and by the new art institute and the skeleton of the Auditorium Hotel rising out of the ground. After a time we were on Prairie Avenue, and Aunt Euterpe could tell you who lived in every mansion: the Armours, the Fields, the Pullmans, Kimball the piano maker. She knew them all from her distance. And my, how she admired them.
We clipped along past their mighty gates in a traffic of fine carriages and charabancs and five-glass landaus, drawn by high-stepping chestnut trotters, many in silver-mounted harness. The horses’ hooves were blackened like patent leather.
It seemed to comfort Aunt Euterpe to be in so fine a district. But then from above, Granddad and Flanagan, old friends now, burst into song to serenade the neighborhood:
Did ye ever hear tell of McGarry—
Mick McGarry? Comes from Derry?
When he got half tight, he was sparry—
Oh, he was such a divil to fight!
Sure he’d fall out wid soldier or sailor,
Or a nailer or a tailor;
Be jabers! He’d tackle a jailer.
He was dyin’ to fight ev’ry night.
Aunt Euterpe sank back against the buttoned upholstery and took refuge behind her veils. She huddled there like she was coming away from Lincoln’s funeral as onward we rolled, heading for the fair.
THE WORST DAY IN AUNT EUTERPE’S LIFE
Part Two
Under the summer sun the exposition glittered like a city carved from crystal. The flags of all nations snapped in the china-blue sky. The doorway of the Transportation Building was a solid-gold sunburst. A mass of roses bloomed across the islands with the Japanese temples. And over the domes and spires of the fair the captive balloon looked for the curve of the earth.
We left Granddad and Buster at the Hall of Electricity. There, it was said, over a long-distance telephone you could hear music being played in New York.
Aunt Euterpe had seemed to rally. She shooed Lottie and me into the Horticultural Hall to pay a quick call on the giant cactus in there. But she was in a rush to get us to the Woman’s Building, which was to her the beating heart of the fair. After all, Mrs. Potter Palmer ruled the Board of Lady Managers.
The Woman’s Building stood on the lip of the lagoon like a villa of ancient Pompeii blown up to gigantic size. The building itself had been designed by a young woman, Miss Hayden. It was fine, of course, by far the finest building we’d ever set foot in.
As quick as you came inside, you were in a vast hall like a cathedral. There on one wall was a tremendous mural by Mrs. MacMonnies. It depicted cavewomen of prehistoric times, seeming to discover fire.
“Bringing enlightenment to their menfolk,” Aunt Euterpe murmured behind her veil.
“Learning how to cook so they’ll never get out of the kitchen,” spoke Lottie into my other ear.
The pictures on the far wall showed modern women. To understand them took more education than I had. The women danced and played lutes across one panel. I comprehended them. In another, I thought they were flying a kite. But Aunt Euterpe said they were in the Pursuit of Knowledge. In the center scene three women and a girl picked apples off a tree. I thought I grasped that. But Aunt Euterpe said they were gathering the Fruits of the Arts and Sciences.
These pictures had been painted by Miss Mary Cassatt. Aunt Euterpe said she was the finest artist alive, and a great friend of Mrs. Palmer’s.
We roamed room after room. Aunt Euterpe trod more firmly in this world full of the achievements of women. I believe I did too. It showed what women could do. They could paint and explore and discover. We could.
We came upon an exhibition called “The Model Farm Kitchen,” though could there ever be such a wonder as we beheld? The range was fired by gas, so you’d never have to gather another stick of kindling. Water ran hot and cold straight into the sink. Electric lights hung down. A machine washed your clothes for you and wrung them out. Lottie and I couldn’t look at each other for fear of laughing out loud.
There on the wall of The Model Farm Kitchen was a verse I tried to learn by heart to repeat to Mama. It was called “The Hymn of the Farm Wife”:
Let the mighty and great
Roil in splendor and state!
I envy them not, I declare it.
I eat my own lamb,
My own chicken and ham,
I shear my own sheep and I wear it.
I have gardens and bowers,
I have fruits, I have flowers,
The lark is my morning’s charmer;
To no one I bow,
So here’s to the plow!
Long life and content to the farmer.
But it didn’t ring true to Lottie. She suspected a man poet had thought it up.
We drifted on and came to the auditorium just in time to hear Susan B. Anthony on the subject of women’s suffrage. Aunt Euterpe pulled us inside, and we were glad enough to sink into the velvet seats even if it meant being lectured to.
Miss Anthony’s favorite subject was giving the vote to women. It seemed a long shot to me. But she was an elderly lady, full of years and wisdom. She spoke at length, banging the pulpit, and Aunt Euterpe was rapt.
As we filed out, Aunty exclaimed, “If women voted, we would throw the rascals out. We would purify politics!”
“Will we get the vote?” Lottie wondered.
; “Certainly not,” Aunt Euterpe said. “The men wouldn’t hear of it.”
We narrowly escaped another lecture. It was Miss Frances Willard and the temperance shouters, calling for the prohibition of all hard liquor. They planned to pray the country dry.
But Lottie put her foot down. First the model kitchen we’d never have. Then votes we’d never get. Lottie wasn’t ready to hear about pouring all the whiskey in the ditch, which nobody was going to do.
Besides, Aunt Euterpe admitted it was teatime, and we’d missed our noonday meal. She claimed the best people took their tea at the Turkish pavilion. We strolled in that direction.
Oh, it was nice inside Turkey—cool with all that tile work and a fountain splashing in the center. To our delight an orchestra played in the background—all the new songs we hadn’t heard: “In the Gloaming” and “Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight?” and “Seeing Nellie Home.”
Ladies sat at small marble tables around the fountain. You never saw such hats. The elastic that held mine on cut into my chin. Aunt Euterpe cast veiled looks at our getups. A smudge had appeared from somewhere on my best gabardine skirt.
“Make note of their posture,” Aunt Euterpe murmured. “Pay attention to the way they hold their teacups.” They were grand ladies, no question about that. And their corsets were so binding, they had no choice but to sit as rigid as the cavalry on parade.
Men in turbans brought our tea: finger sandwiches tangled in parsley, little cakes like crescent moons. Nothing to stick to your ribs, but pretty on the plate. The teacups were gold-banded, and the brass teapot spout was the flaring hood of a cobra snake.
Aunty couldn’t very well drink tea through her veil. She threw it back. And froze.
Her gloved hand reaching for the teapot clasped her black bosom. “Girls, the table across the fountain,” she gasped. “Don’t look now.”
We looked at once. Three of the elegantest ladies you ever saw sat around a little table. Their hat brims all but skimmed one another. Points of lace fell from their elbows. There were silk tassels on their reticules.
