She was hungry. She got up and went out of the room. She went back to the elevator and pushed the call button. She waited. It was stiflingly hot in the hall. Through the elevator shafts she heard shouts and laughter but no sound of elevators moving. She looked around for the stairs.
It was even hotter in the stairwell. By the time she got down to the eighth floor, Violet couldn't stand the heat anymore. She went out into the hallway, which stank sourly of whiskey. The corridor was full of people, mostly men. They reeled and rolled as if they were standing on the deck of a ship. Some of them were tipsy, but most of them were positively drunk.
A man lurched toward her. His stiff celluloid collar had come loose from all but one of the buttons that held it to his shirt. The collar stood on end on his shoulder, forming a big white C that ended in his right ear. “Here's another Anti, Jim!” he said. “Ask her if there's any more whicks … whickskey coming!”
Violet fled back into the stairwell. Halfway down she passed some women wearing yellow roses, and they edged away from her. “Look at that, Anne!” one of them said to the other. “They're using children now. They have no shame at all.”
She had forty-two cents in her pocket. She came out into the crowded grand lobby. She could smell food from somewhere. She went down the wide marble steps that led to the main entrance. There was another wide stone staircase leading down to the cellar, and that was where the food smell was coming from. She started down the steps.
“I'm sorry, miss.” A man in a white uniform blocked her way. “The Grill Room is for men only.”
Violet stared up at him in disbelief. It was one thing to have to use a separate entrance. But she was hungry!
“I have money,” she said.
“It's not a matter of money, miss,” the man replied, shaking his head. “The Grill Room is for gentlemen. If you go to the dining room on the main floor, they can accommodate you there.” He looked at Violet's plaid dress with the double row of gigantic black buttons and the appalling three-inch-wide patent leather belt. “Provided you're suitably attired, of course.”
Violet climbed wearily up the stone steps again. She wove her way through the crowd and up a few more steps to the grand dining room. Inside, a brass band was playing, booming through the clink of cutlery on china and the sound of voices. A man in a white tuxedo stood at the entrance. “I'm sorry, miss.” He barred her way. “Evening wear is required in the dining room.”
Violet didn't have any evening wear. What was the matter with the world that you couldn't even get something to eat when you had forty-two cents in your pocket? She went back up to the front desk.
The desk clerk was counting his tally marks again. He looked up at Violet. “I have a dollar riding on your side,” he confided. “Ordinarily I'm not a betting man, but I think you Antis are going to pull this off, I really do.”
Violet put her hand to the rose she was wearing. She had forgotten all about it. It had wilted with the heat, and a few petals came off. She looked at them, little bits of velvety crimson in the palm of her hand. She remembered the line the drunks in the elevator had been singing—“The red, red anti-suffrage rose”—and the man who had said, “Here's another Anti!” She'd been too upset to think about it before, but now she realized she'd been taken in by the anti-suffragists. That woman who'd grabbed her at the train station, Charlotte Rowe, was an Anti, and she'd slapped an Anti rose on Violet and taken her up and put her in an Anti room. This was no way to find Chloe!
But first things first. “Where can I get something to eat?” she asked the desk clerk. “They won't let me into the Grill Room downstairs or the dining room.”
The desk clerk frowned. “Well, you have to change for dinner, miss. Of course.”
“I don't have anything to change into,” Violet said. Her other dress wouldn't do either. She was starting to feel very cranky. “Is there anywhere I can just buy something to eat?” She thought about the businesses they had passed on the way from the train station, all closed except the theaters.
“Not at this time of night. Not anyplace that a young lady ought to go into. You'll have to wait till morning.”
Violet felt like crying. She didn't care about where a young lady ought to go; she just wanted something to eat. “I can't wait till morning. I'm hungry right now!”
“Hmm.” The desk clerk frowned, thinking. “Don't they serve refreshments at your meetings? There should be one going on right now.” He nodded upward. “Up there on the mezzanine floor. The Antis' strategy meeting should have sandwiches. I saw the waiters taking them up.”
Violet thanked him hurriedly and ran up the narrow stone stairway.
The mezzanine was a broad balcony above the lobby, with a large room set off it by French windows. In the room were many women and a few men, all well dressed, all wearing red roses. Violet didn't really pay much attention to them, though. In the room there was also a stand holding a tray, and on the tray were sandwiches: cucumber sandwiches, sliced cold chicken sandwiches, and cold tongue sandwiches. Violet gathered as many of them as would fit onto one of the little china plates provided. Then she sat down on a chair near the wall and ate.
Nobody in the meeting seemed to have noticed that she had come in. They were all listening to a tall, thin, horse-faced woman in an enormous hat decorated with a flood of red roses and two ghastly green bird wings. She wore three red roses in a row on her lapel.
“I think we can count on Speaker Seth Walker from here on in,” the horse-faced woman was saying. “He no longer hearkens to the cry of the suffrage siren. We've got him listening to something else.”
A man in the room took two gold coins out of his pocket and jingled them loudly. The people in the room chuckled. Violet ate a cucumber sandwich.
“That's one thing we don't have to worry about, Miss Pearson,” a woman in a full-length black bombazine gown said to the horse-faced woman. “Money.”
“No, thank goodness,” said Miss Pearson. “There are so many gallant men willing to do their utmost to protect the rights of Southern womanhood.”
“And an employer's right to hire anybody he wants, including needy children who have dependent parents,” the man who had jingled the coins said righteously.
“And, God willing, the rights of the whiskey distillers to conduct their business freely again someday,” said a woman sitting near Violet, but not loud enough to be generally heard.
“So I don't think we need to worry about all that yellow bunting hanging in the capitol,” said Miss Pearson. “The Suffs can hang all the yellow bunting they want. Yellow bunting doesn't vote. And neither do they.”
People chuckled.
“But what about our resolution to table?” a little woman in a lavender dress squeaked. “It failed.”
“It doesn't matter, Miss Claiborne,” said Miss Pearson. “We can make as many motions to table as we want. We'll make another tomorrow.”
“And besides,” said a woman in a floppy straw hat. “There's another little surprise in store for the Suffs tomorrow.”
“Now, now, Mrs. Pinckard. Tomorrow evening, of course, is the public meeting at the capitol to discuss the passing of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.” Miss Pearson said the name as though Susan B. Anthony were a woman of particularly evil repute, and several people in the room hissed.
“Passing of it indeed!”
“That's not going to happen.”
“Not if we have anything to say about it.”
“That's the spirit,” said a man near the back of the room. Everybody turned to look at him. “And speaking of spirits, we've just run out in the hospitality room. Not to worry”—he raised a hand—“there's plenty of gold in the kitty, as you all know. We have more coming in from the mountains, but meantime we have sent to Hell's Half-Acre for a small supply to tide us over.”
The Antis were bribing people! Violet thought. They'd bribed that Seth Walker fella to make him change sides. And they were serving illegal alcohol to legislators up on the eight
h floor—that's why those drunks were up there.
“Bootleg stuff from Hell's Half-Acre will make you blind,” another man observed.
“Then we'll lead the legislators up to the capitol by the hand and help them cast their votes.”
Miss Pearson gestured for silence. “We're ahead of the game. The Suffs were counting on Walker, and losing him to us was a serious setback for them. We're going to win this.…”
There were mutters of “yes!” and “hear, hear!”
“But not without a fight. Tomorrow, we need all hands at the capitol.”
Violet combined a cucumber and a chicken sandwich and ate them together as an experiment.
“Governor Roberts is not on our side. He's made no secret of the fact that he's a Suff. We need to ride herd on all our men and do whatever it takes to keep them loyal. And if need be, we may have to be prepared to remove a few of the Suffs' men from the picture.”
Violet had finished her sandwiches, and she got up to get a few more. Everyone was listening with rapt attention to Miss Pearson and nobody seemed to care how many sandwiches Violet was taking. They had probably already eaten in the dining room. They were suitably attired. Hanging on the wall behind Miss Pearson was the flag of the Confederate States of America. Violet recognized it from her history books at school. But the Civil War had been over for fifty-five years. What was the matter with these people? Didn't they even know what country they lived in?
Why were all these women against woman suffrage anyway? Violet could understand how a woman could just never have thought one way or another about voting but not how a woman could be against it. Well, except Mother was.
Violet drifted out of the room to the balcony and stood looking down at the lobby below. The railing was low— too low to lean on—so she didn't stand too close. She stood beside a garland of plaster fruit that decorated an arch in the ceiling and chewed a cold tongue sandwich thoughtfully. From up here, you could actually hear what people were saying.
A balding, stoop-shouldered man in a brown suit stood below her. He was wearing a yellow rose in his lapel and talking to a woman in a white dress with a yellow sash.
“It's a shame about Seth Walker, Miss Pollitzer,” he said. “That's a blow. How many do we have now?”
“I'm not sure, Mr. Hanover,” the lady in white said. “Miss Mayhew is working on the latest numbers now.”
Violet almost dropped her tongue sandwich when she heard the name Mayhew.
“Oh, here she comes now.”
This time Violet did drop her sandwich, and it fell over the railing. Violet didn't stop to see where it hit. She put her plate down on the floor and turned and clattered down the stone staircase, having the presence of mind to drop her red rose on the stairs as she went.
She might not have recognized the woman coming toward her if she hadn't heard those people say “Mayhew.” Chloe was wearing a smart sky blue walking suit and a straw hat with a yellow rose in it. Looking under the hat, Violet could see that Chloe had bobbed her brown hair—it only just reached her collar. Mother would have had a fit. There were shadows under Chloe's dark brown eyes that made her look older than her twenty-three years.
“Hello, Chloe,” Violet said.
Chloe stared at Violet as if she were a giraffe. “Violet! What on earth?” Then she ran forward and threw her arms around Violet.
Violet hugged Chloe, embarrassed. Theirs was not a hugging family. They let go of each other quickly.
“Violet, what on earth, how on earth …” She took a step back and looked nervous. “Violet, Mother and Father aren't here, are they?”
“No,” said Violet. “I, um …” To say she had run away suddenly seemed melodramatic in the face of sensible Chloe in her sensible suit. “I kind of left.” She felt a need to justify herself, so she added, “They never gave me any of your letters. And then I found them in Mother's desk when I was looking for a stamp.”
“Oh, Violet! Then what happened?”
Mr. Hanover and Miss Pollitzer listened politely.
“I just got mad and left,” said Violet. “And then I went to New York, and … well, anyway, here I am.”
“I can't believe you came all this way alone!”
“I wasn't exactly alone,” said Violet. She wasn't sure how to explain about Mr. Martin and Myrtle, particularly now that she had lost them.
Chloe turned to the other two. “I beg your pardon. This is my sister, Violet. Violet, this is Miss Anita Pollitzer of the National Woman's Party and Mr. Joe Hanover, a representative from Memphis who's leading the suffrage fight in the House.”
Violet turned and curtsied carefully. “How do you do,” she said politely. “I'm very pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise, I'm sure,” said Miss Pollitzer.
“How do you do,” said Mr. Hanover politely.
“Chloe, you'd better go get this taken care of,” said Miss Pollitzer, nodding at Violet. “But did you get those numbers?”
“I think so.” Chloe handed Miss Pollitzer a piece of paper. “If they're uncommitted, I put a question mark next to them, and if they might change sides, I put two question marks. I might not make it to the meeting tonight. Excuse us.”
Violet curtsied again and then followed Chloe briskly across the lobby toward the women's entrance.
The Tulane Hotel, where Chloe and the other National Woman's Party members were staying, was two blocks away, downhill, and Violet noticed when they got outside that it hadn't gotten any cooler even though it was fully dark now. The Tulane was only six stories high instead of ten, and it was less intimidating than the Hermitage.
There was a long line of cars parked out front, and Chloe and Violet stopped to visit the Hope Chest.
Henry Ford had said, famously, that you could have any color Model T you wanted as long as it was black, but you actually could get other colors. The Hope Chest was dark green, with black fenders and running boards and a black collapsible roof. It was a runabout, with a leather front seat big enough to hold a driver and a passenger but no backseat. Instead, there was an open space behind the cab, which had been fitted with a small wooden truck bed. “For carrying stuff,” Chloe explained.
They admired the car's pressed steel radiator, its nickel hubcaps and narrow, wire-spoked wheels, the nickel radiator cap, and the big round electric headlamps, which Violet said looked like bug eyes.
“Like frog eyes,” said Chloe fondly. “And it's amphibious too, the Hope Chest is, like a frog. I've driven it right through streams, especially this last month, when I've been up in the mountains, hunting down Tennessee legislators in their dens.”
She patted the Hope Chest on its steel hood. “It's my freedom, the Hope Chest. And women have been using automobiles so much this last year, they might really give us freedom. I mean freedom to be real, voting citizens of the United States.” She sighed. “If there's time, I'll teach you to drive it.”
The Tulane lobby was just as big as that of the Hermitage but less grand, with wooden pillars and paneling and marble floors (there seemed to be a lot of marble in Nashville, Violet thought). There were no crowds—just a few people here and there in armchairs reading the evening paper and a few women wearing yellow sashes or yellow roses passing through.
On the way inside, Violet finished her explanation of how she'd gotten to Nashville, which she'd started as they walked from the Hermitage.
“And you wired Mother and Father from Washington and let them know you were all right?” Chloe asked.
“Yes. Mr. Martin made me,” Violet said.
“Good. I'm sure they must be frantic.” Chloe got her key from the desk clerk, who was playing pinochle with a drummer (as traveling salesmen were called). The drummer had his hat on.
Violet thought it was odd of Chloe to take Mother and Father's side, considering Chloe wasn't on speaking terms with either of them. “I don't think they're frantic. But anyway, I told them I was all right. Mr. Martin paid for it.”
“Well, I think you
should write them again. I'm not sure how long we're going to be here, but they'll be worried,” said Chloe as they climbed the stairs to the second floor.
It seemed like no matter how many times she mentioned Mr. Martin's name, Chloe wasn't going to say anything about him. If Mr. Martin was sweet on Chloe, Violet thought, it must be one-sided. Violet was more concerned about “how long we're going to be here.” Chloe didn't seem as happy as she should have been to see Violet.
“But I'm going to stay with you,” Violet said. “Maybe you should be the one to write and tell them that. They don't listen to me.”
“We'll see,” said Chloe.
“Aren't you worried about Mr. Martin?” said Violet, trying again. “Those agents that were after him?”
“No,” said Chloe firmly, turning the key in the lock and opening the door. “Oh, don't look at me like that, Violet! This ax has been hanging over Theo's—over Mr. Martin's head all the time I've known him, and I can't worry about it anymore.”
Violet thought that was unkind, but Chloe looked so exhausted that Violet decided not to say anything. She looked around the room. It had two iron bedsteads, like the room in the Hermitage, but it was a bit bigger. Both beds were clearly taken, which Violet guessed meant she would have to share with Chloe.
“I'm sorry, I know that sounds mean,” said Chloe. “But you know, Violet, you can't change people. Most of us find that out the hard way—I'm telling you for free. Do you want some Chero-Cola?”
There was a rattle of ice in a bucket, and the pop of a bottle opener, and Chloe handed Violet a soft drink bottle.
“Thanks,” Violet said, and took a long gulp of the Chero-Cola. It was very sweet, and she instantly felt less tired. She tried to pass the bottle back to Chloe.
“No, you go ahead and finish it,” said Chloe, sitting down on the bed with a sigh and taking off her shoes. “Don't worry about Mr. Martin, Violet. He can take care of himself.”
“What about Myrtle?” Violet demanded.
The Hope Chest Page 10
