“She left, sir.” Hilly swallowed. “She got on a train for Chicago, and she never came back. I was five or six then.” He wanted to be manly, but still couldn’t talk about Elvira.
“Well, there’s a mystery for you,” the old man breathed. “What’s your theory?”
“Theory?”
“Let’s say some fellow who was passing through town came into the store one day and she waited on him. And say he was an important government . . . emissary—that’s what they call those fellows on secret missions, isn’t it, Diana? And say they fell in love, what they call ‘love at first sight.’ Well, you can see all the ways that might turn out. You think about it.”
“And she couldn’t tell us about him because he was on secret business,” Hilly added. “And . . . maybe still is.”
“Was she sad when she left?”
“Very.”
“Because she couldn’t tell you where she was really going.” Grandpa moved a chess piece. “Anyway, that’s one possibility.”
Rolling her eyes and laying aside her knitting, Diana said, “I’m going to make popcorn.” Pausing at the kitchen door, she eyed her grandfather. Still full of surprises.
chapter twenty-seven
THE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS 1912, Hilly and Ted Shuetty hauled an upholstered armchair up the stairs to the Stillman apartment.
Nell peered out the door. “What on earth?”
“An early Christmas present,” Hilly told her. “I’ve been saving up. Mr. Bettin at the furniture store says I can pay the rest on time.” They set the chair down in the living room. “D’ya like it, Mama?”
“Like it? It’s beautiful.” She ran a hand over the tufted back. “The green is perfect. It goes with everything. Hillyard, you really shouldn’t have. But I’m thrilled.”
Hilly grinned. “See how it feels.”
Nell sank down into the chair, resting her hands on the cushioned arms. “Like sitting on a cloud.”
“Now you have a nice place to sit when John Flynn calls,” he told her. “When he sees you in that chair, he’ll probably ask you to marry him.”
“What an idea!” she said, embarrassed that Ted Shuetty was hearing this.
Hilly shrugged and waved, heading back to Kolchak’s.
Nell relaxed into the new chair, caressing the soft fabric. Hilly’s careless remark made it impossible to keep John at a distance. She wouldn’t marry again and John knew it, but she sometimes dreamt of him and moaned as she woke, excited and spent. With rue she considered the horrid saying that you couldn’t have your cake and eat it too.
Glancing toward the bookcase where her meager but blessed collection of Mr. Wodehouse resided, she rose and crossed the room. The latest addition, Psmith in the City, had been a holiday remembrance from Cora Lundeen, amused by Nell’s fondness for feckless young men from English public schools.
Slipping Psmith from the shelf, Nell returned to the new chair and let the little volume fall open: “Dignified reticence is not a leading characteristic of the bridge-player’s manner at The Senior Conservative Club. . . . Mr. Bickersdyke’s partner did not bear his calamity with manly resignation. He gave tongue on the instant. ‘What on earth’s’ and ‘Why on earth’s’ flowed from his mouth like molten lava. Mr. Bickersdyke sat and fermented in silence. Psmith clicked his tongue sympathetically throughout.”
Oh, the darling. Oh, the bliss.
Choosing a French design from one of Cora’s magazines, Nell spent several days assembling a dress for the Lundeens’ New Year’s party.
“You look like an actress,” Hilly told her when she emerged from the bedroom. “I saw one on a poster for the St. Bridget Opera House. She was wearing a dress like yours.”
“I’m sure,” Nell said, her tone sardonic.
“Now go sit on your new throne.” Hilly led her by the arm. “The color of your top is excellent against the green chair. What do you call that?”
“I call it maroon.”
“I’ll let John in. He’s got to see you in that chair.”
Nell laughed. “Hillyard, I never knew you to be such an ‘arranger.’ The man is nearly old enough to be my father.”
“Does that make a big difference?”
“What if he became my husband, and then died next year? You’d feel terrible.”
“If he died, I’d feel terrible anyway.”
She eyed him with concern. “Well, don’t get your hopes up.”
When they heard steps outside, Hilly flung open the door and, ushering John in, helped him out of his coat.
“You have a new butler,” John observed, laying a couple of small packages on the lamp table.
“Yes,” Nell said, “and the butler insists I sit here so that you can see how well my dress goes with our chair.”
“And indeed it does,” John said, sitting in the rocker opposite as Hilly had indicated. “The chair’s new. Very nice.”
“My Christmas present from Hilly. The nicest piece of furniture I’ve ever owned.”
“The Professor has good taste.”
“Doesn’t she look like an actress?” Hilly asked. “She made that dress herself. Isn’t it excellent?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Hilly, you’re embarrassing me. Get going if you’re going.” To John: “He’s looking after young Larry tonight.”
“Open this first, Professor.” John rose, handing one of the packages to Hilly, who tore into it at once. “Riders of the Purple Sage and Smoke Bellew. Excellent! Thank you, John. This is excellent!”
When Hilly had left, Nell said, “‘Excellent’ seems to be the pet word of the moment.”
“My pet word at that age was ‘profound.’ Everything was profound, from the laying of the Atlantic cable to the latest penny dreadful.” He handed Nell the second package. “Here. I understand you’re infatuated with a Mr. Wodehouse.”
“You dear man.” Unwrapping the package, Nell held up three books—Mike, A Gentleman of Leisure, and The Prince and Betty. “How on earth did you find them?” she asked, clasping the books to her breast.
“A fellow in St. Paul could probably get me a Gutenberg Bible if I wanted.”
“They’re perfect. Thank you.” She rose and started for the kitchen. “I’m afraid all I have for you is a tin of cookies I baked—the soft ginger ones you said your mother made.”
He followed her and slipped his arms around her waist. “Nothing could please me more.”
Later, in the car, Nell inquired about John’s Christmas.
“Christmas was just as Christmas oughta be. Everyone was well, and the three grandchildren are the right ages for St. Nicholas—Grace is three now, Harry five, and Caroline eight. Caroline recited ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas’ on Christmas Eve, and we all went skating Christmas Day before sitting down to Mathilda’s roast goose and trimmings.”
“Mathilda?”
“Paul’s wife.”
Hearing John talk of his family made Nell feel remote from him. He owned so much past in which she played no role.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m fine.”
“We don’t have to go inside,” he said as they drew up in front of the Lundeens’. “I can go to the door and explain that you’re under the weather.”
“And miss showing off my new dress?”
Juliet had invited two tables of whist. With John and Cora as their opponents, George and Nell partnered the first game. George told Nell, “Hilly’s going to teach Larry to play whist.”
“Well, Hilly taught him to play chess when nobody thought he could,” said Laurence, who was sitting at the second table. “Whist will be a breeze.”
“Your dress is good enough to eat,” Cora told Nell.
“Copied from one of your magazines.” Nell concluded dealing and laid down a spade in the center of the table. “After I’d made it, I was afraid it might be too . . . fashionable for a schoolteacher.” George laughed.
Smiling, Nell told him, “There’s always the ris
k of ‘getting above ourselves.’” She hoped that the Elvira scandal was well behind her, but in the ashes of disgrace, some would always find a spark.
“What you’re above is the hoi polloi who concern themselves with your clothes.”
George was always thoughtful, pleasant, and the soul of breeding, but, like a September frost, middle age had overtaken him early.
Nell noted Cora’s glance straying to her husband. How much did she blame herself for George’s decline?
Now Juliet was turning from the second table to ask John, “Will you be in town for the Businessmen’s Variety Show? February 28 and 29?”
“I’ll be back for the performance. Couldn’t miss Charlie here and Laurence doing the ‘Tap-Dancing Honeymooners’ number.”
“Laurence is already rehearsing,” Juliet told him, and rolled her eyes.
“Will you run for the legislature again?” Cora asked, leading a small trump.
Holding her breath and bracing her spine against the back of the chair, Nell prepared for a blow. If he ran, this would be his third term.
“I’m damned if I know. I’m weighing a couple of options. I’ll let you know as soon as I know.”
“It’s your turn to play, partner,” George prodded. “Nell?”
“Oh, sorry. I was woolgathering. What are trumps again?”
The others laughed.
John pulled the car to the curb outside the meat market and turned off the engine. The machine snorted to silence. The late night was quiet after the earlier barrage of gunshots announcing the New Year.
“If we sit here, you’ll take pneumonia,” John said. “May I come up for a few minutes?”
When Nell hesitated, he took her hand. “I doubt anyone will notice on New Year’s Eve, Nell. I won’t stay long.” She nodded.
Once inside the icy apartment, Nell lit lamps and John started a fire in the cookstove. They sat down at the kitchen table.
“Cora asked if I would run for the legislature again,” he said. Nell nodded. “I’ve actually been approached to run for Congress next year.”
Nell was silent.
“D’ya think it’s a terrible idea, darlin’?”
“It’s probably a wonderful idea,” she said. “But remember what Cora said when you ran for the legislature? ‘I’m afraid we’ll lose you.’”
“But you didn’t lose me, did you? And you won’t now. You’ll see.”
Washington wasn’t up the road a piece, like St. Paul, but it was his career. If she tried to stop him, one day he’d resent it.
“You’d be a wonderful congressman. Just don’t expect me to smile as I wave good-bye.”
“I’d be disappointed if you did.”
After John had left, Nell heated a brick on the stove, wrapping it in a towel and slipping it between the bed-sheets. Returning to the kitchen for a last cup of tea, she paused in the living room to fondle the books he had given her.
Opening A Gentleman of Leisure at random, she read: “‘Personally,’ said Jimmy, with a glance at McEachern, ‘I have rather a sympathy for burglars. After all, they are one of the hardest-working classes in existence. They toil while everybody else is asleep. Besides, a burglar is only a practical socialist. People talk a lot about the redistribution of wealth. The burglar goes out and does it.’”
Turning the wick down and blowing out the flame, Nell sighed and headed to the bedroom, teacup in one hand, brick in the other, book tucked under her arm. It’s up to you now, dear Mr. Wodehouse. You must see me through the winter nights when he’s in Washington, and the summer afternoons when he’s on the hustings.
A book was not flesh and blood; John was. But a book was nearly everything else: companion, instructor, travel guide, entertainer, philosopher, sometimes healer. The list was endless.
And Mr. Wodehouse, well, he was a conjuror, summoning a world that had never been but was more real than any that had, a world that provided all that the so-called real world withheld—most especially, friends who didn’t leave.
Well, John Flynn, she thought, folding back the covers and slipping the brick into the cold bed, if you lose my affection to P. G. Wodehouse, it’s your own damned fault.
chapter twenty-eight
SOUTH OF BACALL’S HILL, on the east side of Harvester, stretched a flat, open area, once a community pasture. A portion of it was now marked off for kitten ball.
In the spring of 1913, Coach Timms dragooned a couple of high-school athletes to mow a crude running track on another section. Later, lanes would be drawn for formal meets, but for now Timms’s runners loped around the track in casual clots.
Ten boys made up the team, the youngest an eighth grader. To accommodate everyone’s schedule, Timms arranged practice for Sunday mornings—before church, of course, to head off the objections of Baptist mothers.
The first practice for the scheduled May 19 meet was held in early April. Most of the snow had melted, but a frigid westerly breeze sliced through the boys’ clothing as they awaited instruction from Timms. At least in church, we’d be out of the wind.
Young Gus Rabel was quiet till Timms was out of earshot, then sneered, “Watch out, fellas. Get too close to Stillman, you’ll catch something.”
Sensing a joke, Nils Petersen, a good-looking senior boy, stamped his cold feet and asked, “Like what?”
“Mommy-itis,” Gus told him, adding, “Stand over there, Stillman. Nobody wants to catch what you’ve got.”
Hilly moved a couple of steps away. Here it comes. The eighth grader, a head shorter than Hilly, darted from the pack and charged. Hilly simply stood aside, but could see that this boy would be the bullies’ mascot, while he would become their goat.
“Afraid of a little kid, Stillman?” Gus called.
He wasn’t; neither was he going to hit one.
“All right, you bums, let’s see what you’ve got,” Timms called. He began to send the runners off in groups of twos and threes, sprinters first. When the sprinters had all finished, Timms gave them a few pointers and dispatched them to church.
“Stillman, Arndt, and Petersen, get over here.” Hilly and the two others jogged to the track, peeled off their jackets, and waited for Timms to blow his whistle. Hilly felt ready. While snow had still lain piled along the cemetery road, he had begun training again, a mile and a half out of town, then back.
“How far?” Petersen asked the coach.
“Till I blow the whistle,” Timms told him.
In March, John had sent Hilly a proper pair of running shoes. Hilly kept them in his bureau, saving them for meets. Jogging in heavy winter high-tops the rest of the time was awkward, but Hilly knew it was building his legs. Later, when he ran in light footwear, he’d feel buoyant.
Hilly owed John a lot. For one thing, John took him seriously. While John was in Washington, he wrote once a week—letters you might write a college man, Hilly thought. Monday’s letter read:
Dear Hilly,
Your mother tells me you practice your running every day, getting up before school to get to it. I admire folks who pay due regard to the activities they undertake.
Every man needs a pastime or two that he respects and that recompenses him. By recompense I mean gives some deep reward to mind or soul, not the reward of money or loving cups or ribbons—though they may accompany the other.
If you ever have the time or inclination, I’d be interested to hear about the recompenses of running. I was never any kind of runner, tending more toward Greco-Roman wrestling myself, but I can imagine the satisfaction in something as solitary and challenging as the long-distance run.
In looking over what I have asked, I see that I may have requested the impossible. To describe what is ineffable is a tall order.
I enclose a pat on the back along with my love.
John
Hilly looked up “ineffable” and was glad to add it to his vocabulary. The word surely applied to a great deal of life, at least his.
But besides the pleasure of being taken seriou
sly—and that was huge at fifteen—when you were with John, a sureness took hold of you. Sort of like when you were running. You felt you could make something of yourself, something your mother would be proud of. If Nell married John, would they live in Washington? That’d be the answer to his prayers. No more “Mama’s boy.”
With John Flynn dreams at his back, Hilly flew forward around the rough track, losing himself in motion.
Not until the coach stepped in front of him did Hilly realize that it was time to stop. The other runners were laughing at him for his mooniness. Hilly’s face burned.
Timms blew his whistle again. “Too bad the rest of you lead-foots aren’t as crazy as Stillman.” He turned and walked away.
But Hilly knew the sneers would continue. Lily-liver and yellow streak. The only way to prove them false was to fight.
But his mother . . .
Monday, May 5, Hilly returned from his morning run winded, his cheeks red with exertion and the chill of early May. “Your first meet—the one in Red Berry—it’s Friday, isn’t it?” Nell asked as he sat down to oatmeal. “Are you excited?”
“I guess.”
“Frightened?”
“Yes,” he said. But he had something else he needed to say and couldn’t put it off. “Mama?”
“Yes?” She sprinkled brown sugar over his cereal.
“About Friday?”
“You’d rather I didn’t come to the meet?”
She’d read his mind. “Would you be disappointed?”
“I’d make you nervous if I was there.”
He nodded.
She added milk. “Anybody could understand that.”
“Really?” She was hurt, he knew. But if she heard someone calling him names . . . it was better this way.
The day of the Red Berry meet dawned dark and bone chilling. May in Minnesota was contrary, sometimes hot enough to fry eggs on a tin roof, sometimes as cold as Jesse James’s heart.
Again and again during algebra—then history, and English—Hilly peered out at the sky. Was it growing lighter? Darker? If it rained, would the meet be canceled? Excellent.
Around 1:30, the sun pierced the clouds and a light westerly breeze began sweeping ragged gray shreds eastward. At two o’clock, the club members assembled in front of the school, where three automobiles waited to carry them the seven miles to Red Berry. Both George Lundeen and his father had volunteered to drive, as had Arnie Kolchak, who’d taken an interest in Hilly’s running.
Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse Page 12
