Fair Weather

by Richard Peck

  Tip sailed into our midst then. He had to be talked out of jumping on Miss Russell’s skirts. And after Tip came Buster.

  “Boy, come and meet the greatest lady of the American stage.” Granddad grabbed for him. “Ma’am,” he said, “this here’s my grandson, Bus—LeRoy. Boy, this here is Miss Lillian Russell!”

  Buster beheld her, this perfect woman in her unforgettable hat, with her armload of roses, her lovely smile.

  “Did they name you for our horse?” Buster inquired.

  AN INVITATION FOR AUNT EUTERPE

  Our days at the great exposition began to flicker past us. We came home weary that day, and footsore the day after that. Now we were picking the fair clean. We visited the pavilions of all nations. And when we’d worked through them, we called on all the state pavilions and the one for the territories of Arizona, Oklahoma, and New Mexico.

  We fed off the free samples at Agricultural Hall. And we had us ground beef patties on buns they were calling “hamburgers.” Granddad and Buster climbed over every locomotive in the Transportation Building and examined every fish in the Fisheries Building. Aunt Euterpe marched Lottie and me past every last picture in the Palace of Fine Arts. She was as good as her word about showing us all the fair might have to teach us. But then, I supposed she saw that her own Chicago days were numbered.

  One afternoon we returned by steamboat, sailing from the exposition pier, bound for Van Buren Street. We stood on the deck, feeling the breeze in our faces and the slap of the waves on the bow. The great city on the curve of the lake stood tall between us and the setting sun. Surely I must have wondered how we could go home again after all we’d seen.

  That was the day we found the envelope on the front hall floor when we got back to Schiller Street. Starting, Aunt Euterpe swept it up before Tip could get at it. She tore it open while we were still jostling in around her, and held up a visiting card.

  There, I thought. Now she has a card for her silver tray. She read it out: MRS. DANFORTH EVANS.

  Behind me Lottie caught her breath, then fell silent.

  “Mercy,” Aunty murmured, “she is the wife of a dean at the University of Chicago . . . very distinguished . . . an excellent family . . . I do not know her . . .”

  Aunty sidestepped into her front parlor for some privacy. We followed. She pulled a larger card out of the envelope and settled her spectacles to read it.

  It was an invitation. Mr. and Mrs. Danforth Evans requested the pleasure of Aunty’s company at home on South Michigan Avenue for a musical evening, dancing with supper to follow.

  Aunty looked up, bewildered. “But I am in mourning.”

  “No you ain’t,” Granddad said.

  She read on, her eyes bugging. The invitation was to include Miss Lottie and Miss Rosie Beckett, Mr. Silas Fuller, and Master Buster Beckett.

  She looked up bemused at the bunch of us around her. What a peaceful life she’d led before we came. Now were we the cause of this sudden invitation too? Or was being seen in the company of the mayor and the governor somehow behind it? Granddad himself looked stumped and unusually innocent. For once, though, I was blameless and in the clear, as far as I could figure.

  “Papa,” Aunty said in desperation, “I see no reason why you and the boy should accept—”

  “Wouldn’t miss it!” Granddad crowed. “It will give this boy a chance to see how polite society conducts theirselves. It might knock a rough edge or two off him.” He thumped Buster lightly. He was still cranky about Buster asking Miss Russell if she’d been named after our horse.

  Aunty fetched up a sigh like a sob. And Lottie said, “When?” Only that.

  Looking again at the invitation, Aunt Euterpe shrieked. “My stars! Tomorrow night. How sudden! What can it—girls, you have nothing to wear. I have nothing to wear!”

  She turned on Granddad. “Flanagan will have to take us. It is an excellent neighborhood, very select. Home to the Seips, Yerkes the streetcar magnate, the R. T. Cranes. Only the sifted few. Papa, you will be responsible for making sure Flanagan is clean-shaven.”

  We’d never seen Aunty so animated. She was truly out of mourning now, and nearly out of breath.

  Upstairs, when we were skinning off our fair clothes, I watched Lottie like a hawk. She knew more about this turn of events than she was letting on.

  Last week I’d have plagued her till she told me. But now I’d been to the fair. I’d been made acquainted with Colonel William F. Cody, and I was in long skirts. True, I’d stumbled and fallen over Mrs. Potter Palmer. But I was more of a woman now. I was not yet a woman of the world, but I had a toe in the door. I didn’t deign to quiz Lottie. Besides, I’d be fourteen in the fall.

  Lottie was acting peculiar, jerking the pins out of her hat and looking around distracted. She flopped on the bed with one shoe on and one shoe off. She was about beside herself, but I said nothing. I bided my time.

  * * *

  There was to be no exposition for us women that next day. Granddad and Buster were off early to see Gentleman James J. Corbett, the heavyweight champion of the world. He was demonstrating the use of the punching bag at a gymnasium on the Midway.

  Aunt Euterpe and Lottie and I spent the day turning State Street upside down for outfits suitable to a musical evening, dancing with supper to follow. A strange and unknown fate was about to hurl us into polite society, and we had to look the part.

  Worse, we’d have to buy straight off the rack and hope for the best. I leaned to pink, but Lottie said my hair would kill it. I leaned to seafoam green, but she said every red-headed girl in North America leaned to green. Aunty would have fallen back on black for herself, but Lottie and I wouldn’t have it. We were all near the end of our patience when she conducted us off to lunch at the Siegel Cooper store.

  Then she watched every move of our table manners and made comments.

  It was as hard a day as I ever put in. Give me the butter and egg business every time. But the money poured off Aunt Euterpe like Niagara Falls. By the afternoon we were all outfitted from the skin onward. That included stiff muslin underdrawers and two petticoats apiece. “I know they are not comfortable,” Aunt Euterpe said. “They are not meant to be comfortable.”

  * * *

  We were invited for half past eight. Aunty said that’s when we would leave Schiller Street, to keep from getting there too early.

  Lottie and I were down in the front hall first, fussing over each other. I never was able to do much about my hair. But Lottie had got it up off my neck, and that made me feel grown-up enough to go.

  I was in ivory satin with a ribbon run round the neck. Lottie was in lavender, which brought out her eyes. Even in the hard glare of gas flame she glowed with a beauty she would always keep. We neither of us wore jewelry. We didn’t have any to wear. But Lottie said too much jewelry was unsuitable for girls of our years.

  Aunt Euterpe came down the stairs, almost handsome in points of brown lace. We’d warned her against her human-hair brooch. At her waist she wore the last of Colonel Cody’s carnations.

  Granddad and Buster came down the stairs sparring with each other after having watched Gentleman Jim Corbett. To our relief Granddad wore his second-best, the black alpaca with the baggy knees. He’d brought back the winged collar to go with it. A bow tie clung to his bristly old Adam’s apple like a black moth. Buster was once again in good order with his socks up and his cravat on. But he looked dubious.

  * * *

  The Danforth Evans residence was nowhere near as grand as Mrs. Potter Palmer’s castle. But it was fine in its way. It backed on Lake Michigan, and the front porch was wide and welcoming. Music drifted from its bright windows. Aunty nearly had a sinking spell on the front walk. It had taken her many a weary year to come this far.

  At the door we handed over our invitation to a hired man of some sort. Then right away a lady in gray lace and gussets with a single long strand of pearls was making for us. “Mrs. Fleischacker, how good of you to come. It is only a family party wit
h a few friends.” She seized Aunty’s hand, which must have been like ice. “I thought it was time we met,” the lady said.

  This was Mrs. Danforth Evans herself. Behind her in a long room couples swept past in the waltz to the strains of “Every Leaf on the Tree.” Granddad was remarkably subdued, but it wouldn’t last. Buster looked wary, though when Mrs. Evans shook his hand, he said, “At your service, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Evans called us all by name. She lingered over Lottie, but who wouldn’t? She was that pretty. Then we were led into a library shelved to the ceiling. Before a veined-marble fireplace stood a very sleek man with wings of gray hair and gold-wire spectacles. He was Mr. Evans, though his wife referred to him as the dean. He came forth and lingered over Lottie’s hand too.

  Granddad stirred and came alive. “Si Fuller,” he boomed, “from down in Christian County.” The rug on the floor was an Aubosson, as Aunty later recalled. Granddad looked around, possibly for a spittoon.

  “Mr. Fuller, I am given to understand that you are a well-known figure in your district,” Dean Evans said in greeting.

  “Well, I’m an old sod-bustin’ son of the soil, and an early settler in them parts. I’m older than I show,” Granddad imparted. “I got more toes than teeth.”

  “You don’t say so,” the dean replied smoothly. “Are you a drinking man?”

  “Only on special occasions,” Granddad said, “and this is one of them.”

  A young man turned up suddenly in the library door. He ran his hand through his hair, looking rushed. He was broad-shouldered and right good-looking, all in black with a boiled shirtfront and patent-leather shoes. “Mother,” he said to Mrs. Evans, “why didn’t somebody tell me they were . . .”

  Then he saw Lottie. She stood by the hearth, all in lavender that brought out her eyes. Her hands were clasped before her to keep them steady.

  “Lottie?” the young man said. “Lottie.”

  “Everett,” Lottie answered.

  * * *

  “Hecka-tee,” said Granddad.

  Come to find out, Everett wasn’t a drifter and a grifter after all. And he’d never done time in jail. He’d been in college. He was pale and spindly from his studies at the University of Chicago. That summer he’d come down to work in the field for our neighbors the Shattucks to build himself up. There he’d caught his first sight of Lottie.

  Despite her feelings Lottie hadn’t encouraged him overmuch. She hadn’t turned him away either, though she saw the differences between them. Him trying to educate her by reading to her from his schoolbooks hadn’t worked on his behalf. As she was to say, she hadn’t minded the poetry, but she didn’t care for the history. It was all about the past, and she was looking ahead. Still, it was a warm summer, and Lottie melted.

  And wasn’t she sly? She let Mama send her up to Chicago to get her away from Everett. And right along she knew he’d be coming home to get ready for his senior year. Let this be a lesson to all mothers everywhere.

  The members of my sex can be very sly. Give me boys every time. One of them asked me to dance that night at the Evanses. I told him I didn’t know how, not unless it was a square dance. But the orchestra wasn’t playing “Turkey in the Straw.” It was playing “After the Ball,” the song the whole world sang that summer. But the boy swept me up anyway, and while I didn’t float, I didn’t fall.

  Lottie and Everett turned past us on the ballroom floor, and they only had eyes for each other. In a far corner Granddad seemed to be lecturing several professors from the university. Over there along the paneled wall Aunt Euterpe had found her place in the society of refined ladies looking on as chaperones from a row of gilt chairs. Where Buster was, I couldn’t tell you. He was quicksilver, there and gone before you knew.

  * * *

  We saved the great wheel on the Midway for our last evening. It was the famous invention of the bridge builder George W. Ferris, meant to be an answer to the Eiffel Tower at the exposition in Paris, France.

  We stood long in the line to get on, and Everett Evans was with us. He and Lottie were too thick to stir now, and a little sickening in the looks that passed between them.

  There we stood with that great metal thing creaking and groaning over our heads. I believe that was the last time in our lives that Buster clung to my hand. And Aunt Euterpe wasn’t looking forward to getting on it either now that she seemed to have something to live for.

  But at last we were at the head of the line and being hurried into one of the cars. They held sixty people, and forty could sit on upholstered swivel chairs.

  Then up we began to go, leaving our stomachs behind. Up as high as the minarets of A Street in Cairo, then higher than that until you couldn’t even hear the music from the Midway. I thought about not looking. Aunt Euterpe sat stuck to her chair, clutching her reticule in a death grip. Everett and Lottie gazed only upon each other. But Buster and Granddad were plastered to a window, so I looked too.

  As we turned up into the sky, you didn’t notice the straining and the clanking of that terrible wheel anymore. The great exposition began to fan out below us, and all the pavilions were like frosted wedding cakes. It was the White City on blue lagoons against the endless lake. Golden statues caught the last of the setting sun. Then like sudden morning the electric lights came on. If I could show you anything, I would show you that. The searchlight turned, and everything was washed in light like there could never be darkness again.

  Just at that moment when the fair was a field of diamonds beneath my feet, the fair and all the world belonged to me. Rosie Beckett of Christian County.

  Granddad’s weathered old cheeks were wet with the beauty of it all, and Buster’s eyes were saucers. There was the future unfurling below us as we rose higher and higher into the bright night.

  AFTER THE BALL

  Lottie and Everett were married in the library of the Danforth Evans residence in the summer after the fair. Of course we were all there. Dad gave Lottie away. Buster was her ring bearer, which he didn’t like being. I was her maid of honor. While I leaned to pink, she had me in powder blue, with a wreath of cornflowers to quiet my red hair.

  I sang at her wedding, the first time I’d sung without her voice to carry me since that distant day when they’d had to lead me off the stage. I sang “O Perfect Love,” and Mama’s hand reached over to take Aunt Euterpe’s. Mama had a hat for the occasion, with lilacs.

  Lottie and Everett urged me to live with them in Chicago and go to high school there, and Mama and Dad let me do it. Though I thought I had about all the education I could absorb, the fair convinced me I had a world more to learn.

  Aunt Euterpe pursued her plan to sell her house on Schiller Street and move into a hotel. She chose the Metropole on South Michigan Avenue. There she was welcomed into the society of that neighborhood as kin of the Danforth Evanses.

  Dad had been right as rain when he said he’d never make a farmer out of Buster. Buster wasn’t more than nineteen before he was in the east, in the state of New Jersey, looking for work in the motion pictures.

  He mastered the Kinedrome, the machine that made The Great Train Robbery starring Bronco Billy Anderson. Later on Buster followed the movies to California, where the world came to know him as LeRoy Beckett, the producer of Westerns—first one-reelers, then two.

  And Granddad? He never died. He lived on and on, in our hearts. I see him yet, stumping along the Midway in his old ice-cream traveling togs, parting the common people with his stick.

  Or there he goes in his terrible wreck of a buggy, the buzzard’s feather in his hatband to ward off rheumatism and the epizootic. Tip’s there on the seat beside him, and they’re going to town for the mail, in case one of us children has written a letter home. And, of course, it’s always fair weather.

  AFTER THE FAIR

  A Note from the Author

  The World’s Columbian Exposition closed forever on October 30, 1893. Monday, October 9, the twenty-second anniversary of the great fire, was named “Chicago Day,”
and 754,261 visitors passed through the fair’s turnstiles. Chicagoans called this the largest gathering of humanity in the history of the planet. The New York newspapers, still aggrieved that the grandest of all fairs had been held a thousand miles from civilization on the verge of empty prairie, once more skewered Chicago for its boasting as the “Windy City.”

  On October 28 Mrs. Potter Palmer presided over the ceremonial last meeting of the Board of Lady Managers, ascending the platform in the Woman’s Building to the boom of an organ prelude, Miss Susan B. Anthony at her side.

  Across the fairgrounds in the Hall of Music, the Honorable Carter Henry Harrison began to ring down the curtain on the fair before a convention of his fellow mayors. “This World’s Fair has been the greatest educator of the nineteenth century . . . It has been the greatest educator the world has ever known,” he said. “I myself have taken a new lease of life, and I believe I shall see the day when Chicago will be the biggest city in America.”

  The White City on the shores of the inland sea reached for the sky and promised a steam-driven, electrically lit future of peace and prosperity through progress.

  But the fair ended on an ominous note.

  When Mayor Harrison returned home from his last speech, he was shot dead at his front door by an assassin. The final night of the fair had been planned as a spectacular sound and light show, but in mourning for the mayor, the flags were lowered in silence, and all “music, oratory, and pyrotechnical displays” were canceled. The fair closed with the tolling of a funeral bell, and the huge Westinghouse searchlight made a final sweep of the grounds and went dark.

  Still, the World’s Columbian Exposition altered the future and changed the face of the nation in large ways and small. The ideal vision of a city rising out of pools and plazas informed city planning through the century to come. The fair’s Greek and Roman pavilions reappeared in many a pillared and porticoed public building. The exotic Japanese and Turkish architecture inspired the revolutionary designs of a young Chicago architect named Frank Lloyd Wright.