by Alice Duncan
At any rate, Lucille Spinks came to our house for dinner, which was tasty, and we aimed to practice our duet afterwards. Ma offered to wash and dry the dishes for us since we needed to practice, but we helped her. We already knew the song, after all, and were only getting together for one last rehearsal. Besides, Ma worked very hard during the day. She shouldn’t have to work at night, too.
When the dishes were done and my family was ensconced in the living room reading, I trotted to the piano and played the music through once. And then Lucy and I began singing. We sounded pretty good together, but she positively grilled me for information about Sam Rotondo in between verses.
“Is he a married man?” she asked. I think she was attempting to act as if she were merely slightly curious, but she did a mighty poor job of it.
“He’s a widower,” I told her, trying hard not to snap.
“Oh, the poor man!”
Right. “I think he’s over it now.”
Lucy gave me a puzzled look. “How can you get over the death of someone you loved enough to marry?”
Good question and one I couldn’t answer. Yet. “Well, I didn’t mean it that way. But I think he’s over the worst of his grief.”
“How did his wife die?”
Boy, she just wouldn’t let the subject drop, would she? Holding in my temper, whilst wondering why I was in a temper in the first place, I answered. “She had tuberculosis.”
“Oh, that’s so sad.” To my absolute amazement, Lucy snatched a hankie from her pocket and dabbed at a leaky eye.
“Yes,” I said. I think I meant it, but I was so confused by that time, I’m not sure.
“He’s not from around here, is he?”
Fighting my aggravation at Lucy’s probing, I said, aiming for sweetness, “He’s originally from New York City. I believe he and his wife moved to California for her health, but by the time they got here, it was too late.”
Lucy tsked. “Does he have any children?”
Sam Rotondo? A father? I thought not. I couldn’t even imagine such a thing. “Um . . . no.”
Lucy gave a mournful sigh.
To forestall more Sam questions, I inquired brightly, “Do you think we have the song down well enough, or should we go through it one more time?”
Thank God she responded to my question instead of asking me for more information about Sam Rotondo, the bane of my existence. We sang the song again. Then she thanked Aunt Vi for a lovely dinner, said good-bye to my parents and Billy, and we left.
When I drove her home, however, she started in on the Sam issue once more. I considered driving the Chevrolet into a tree but restrained myself.
“Do you know how old Detective Rotondo is?” asked Lucy.
“No.” Sensing that was too short an answer, I elaborated even though I didn’t want to. “I mean, I’ve never asked him. I think he’s a little older than Billy. Late twenties or early thirties maybe?”
“Perfect,” Lucy said in something akin to a purr.
“Perfect for what?” I asked, hoping my peevishness didn’t come across in the question.
“Well, I mean . . . I mean . . . I. . . .” Lucy’s words stuttered to a stop.
“Are you interested in him in . . . in a romantic way?” I asked at last, even though her interest had been obvious from the moment of their meeting.
I’m sure she blushed again, but it was too dark in the machine to see. “Well, I think he’s an awfully attractive man. And he’s a detective and all. I think that’s very . . . interesting.”
“Hmm. Maybe.”
Lucy tossed her head. “I think being a detective must be interesting work. And at least he’s alive and employed. So many young men aren’t these days.”
“That’s the truth.” Not only had thousands of our young men died, thanks to the evil Kaiser, but the country had been in a financial slump ever since the war ended.
“And, yes. I guess I am interested in him,” Lucy said at last. “I don’t know about the romance part.” She giggled.
Nuts.
Chapter Six
In spite of Lucy’s inexplicable interest in Sam Rotondo and my irritation resulting therefrom, she and I sang our duet beautifully in church the next day. As we sang, I was surprised to see Sam sitting in the congregation next to my family. Even though he’d visited our church before this, I was pretty sure Sam wasn’t a Methodist. Weren’t all Italians Roman Catholic? It then occurred to me that he might have come on account of Lucy. For some reason, that made my spirits sink. What was the matter with me, anyhow?
My surprise at seeing Sam, however, paled in comparison to the astonishment I felt when I espied my student escapee, Gertrude Minneke, sitting in the very back row of the church. What in the world was she doing there? Not that I begrudged her attendance at my church, but I should have thought she’d attend services at the Salvation Army, if she went to church anywhere. It occurred to me that nothing in my life was going the way it was supposed to be going, even down to people attending the wrong churches, and that was making me grumpy; and then it occurred to me that I should probably just give up trying to figure things out. Life was complicated, sometimes more often than not, and there wasn’t a blessed thing I could do about it.
Shoot, perhaps Sam had come to church to keep tabs on Gertrude, although I couldn’t think how he’d have known she’d be there. Maybe he’d set spies on her. Since he wouldn’t tell me why he was interested in her comings and goings—or goings and hidings—there was no way for me to know. My brain was beginning to hurt, so I decided it would be better to concentrate on singing the song and forget about other people’s actions.
In spite of my fuddled musings, everyone seemed to enjoy our duet. The minister even complimented Lucy and me on our “lovely voices.” I suppose he’d have said something nice even if we’d stunk, but we didn’t. We were good.
After the service I’d rid myself of my choir robe and joined my family in the fellowship hall, where the congregation always gathered after church for cookies and tea and coffee. I spied Gertrude at the back of the hall, all alone, looking like she wanted to run away. Then I spied Lucille Spinks, her hand on Sam’s arm, gushing at him, while he looked down upon her, a bemused expression on his face.
I turned my back on the two of them and aimed myself at Gertrude.
She slid around a corner just I approached, but when I, too, turned the corner, she was waiting for me in the hallway. I smiled benevolently at her, or tried to. “It’s so nice to see you here, Miss Minneke.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Majesty.” She looked nervously up and down the hallway. She gave a big gulp and blurted out, “Mrs. Majesty, may I speak to you for a moment?”
“Of course you may.” Oh, boy! Maybe I’d finally learn why she was as skittish as a spooked bunny rabbit! “Is something the matter, Miss Minneke? You seem a little . . . worried about something.”
“Oh, no!” cried she. I didn’t believe her. “There’s nothing wrong. I . . . I just wanted to come to this church today. Your duet was beautiful.” She added the last comment perfunctorily, as if she thought she needed to say something nice about me.
“Thank you.”
“I wanted to see you and where you went to church.”
How very odd. Rather than saying that, I said, “How did you know I went to this church?”
“Captain Buckingham told me.”
“Ah. I see.” But I didn’t. Why had she asked Johnny where I attended church? I probably should have asked her, but I didn’t want to appear too awfully nosy.
We stood there, staring at each other, for several seconds. Then Gertrude said, “Well, I probably ought to be getting home now.”
“Won’t you stay for a while after we chat and have some cookies and coffee?”
“Oh, no. I really don’t. . . .”
“Ah. There you are.”
Startled by this new voice, I turned to see Sam Rotondo standing in the doorway. “Were you looking for me?” I don’t think I hid my inc
redulity very well.
“Billy was asking where you went,” he said.
“I’ll be right there.” When I turned around again to ask Gertrude if she’d like to meet my family, she’d vanished.
What in the world was going on with that woman? I turned back to Sam and prepared to return to my husband.
But Sam was staring down the empty hallway. “Was that who I think it was?”
Sighing, I said, “If you thought it was Gertrude Minneke from my cooking class, the one who keeps running away, then yes, it was.”
“She ran away again.”
“I guess you’re just a frightening fellow, Sam.”
He frowned at me. “There’s something odd about that woman.”
“I suppose there’s something odd about all of us,” I said, shrugging and wishing everybody would revert to behaving as I expected them to. I was really annoyed that Sam had butted in just when I might have been able to get to the bottom of the Gertrude puzzle. “What made you come to this church today, for instance? That seems odd to me.”
He shrugged. He did that a lot. I decided I was going to hit him if he refused to answer that question. I might have hit him if he said he came to church to see Lucy, too.
“I just thought your song was pretty and decided to hear it in the venue for which it was created. The two of you sounded very good together.”
Oh. Well, that took the wind out of my sails. I said, “Thank you,” humbly.
Billy and my folks were seated at a long table in fellowship hall, and Lucy and her family sat with them. I plunked myself down next to Billy’s wheelchair.
“Where’d you run off to?” Billy asked.
“I thought I saw one of my students.”
“One of your students?” This, from Lucy. “What are you teaching, Daisy? I thought you read palms for people. I didn’t know you taught school, too.”
Billy snickered, blast him.
Ignoring him, I said, “I’m only teaching a seven-week course at the Salvation Army.”
“Oh?” Lucy sounded positively fascinated, curse her. “What’s the subject you’re teaching?”
Have I mentioned that Lucille Spinks was tall and skinny and had rather rabbity teeth? Well, she did. Not that she was ugly or anything.
I took a deep breath and tried to recollect if Lucy knew about my many cooking failures of the past. I wasn’t sure, but you never knew about these things. Bravely daring, I said, “Cooking.”
Lucy didn’t burst out laughing, so I guess she was ignorant of my past misdeeds in the kitchen. “Oh, my. How fascinating. Why are you teaching the class at the Salvation Army?”
“Captain Buckingham is a friend of ours. He’s the one who asked me to teach the class.”
“Oh! I think I remember him from school. Johnny Buckingham, isn’t it?”
“He’s the one, all right.” I wished she’d drop the subject.
Not Lucille Spinks. She seemed determined to drag the issue on forever—or until someone ratted me out. “Who are the students taking the class?”
Another deep breath calmed me enough not to holler at her. “They’re nine ladies whom the Salvation Army is sponsoring. They all need help for various reasons. Some of them are war refugees and others are people who were down on their luck. The Salvation Army is helping them out. They’re good at that sort of thing. They never turn anyone away.” I’d learned this bit of information from Johnny, who’d hit the skids after he got back from the war. He’d begun drinking heavily and credited the Salvation Army for saving his life. I have no cause to doubt his reasoning on the subject.
“Oh,” said Lucy. “How nice of them.”
Was it my imagination, or was Lucy making cow’s eyes at Sam? I couldn’t tell. “Yes. They’re a very helpful organization. Very inclusive. As I said, they never turn anyone away.”
Then Lucy proceeded to grill me about the Salvation Army much as she’d grilled me about Sam the prior evening. By the time we finally left the church for home, I was more than ready to escape. Sam, naturally, was invited to partake of our noon dinner. It occurred to me he might have gone to our church that day just so he could come to dinner at our house, but even I, who didn’t give Sam much credit for anything, gave him more credit than that.
* * * * *
Harold Kincaid called me on Tuesday of that week and asked if I’d like to partake of luncheon with him. As I mentioned earlier, Harold didn’t live in Pasadena and he worked as a costumier at a moving-picture studio in Los Angeles. But he’d gone to visit his mother that day, and we generally got together when he was in town.
“I have to be fitted for a tuxedo,” said he, not sounding particularly happy about it.
“I’m surprised you don’t have tuxedoes at the studio.”
“We do.” Harold sighed deeply. “But Mother wants me to get a brand-new one for the wedding. She’s in a dither about it.”
“Yes,” I said. “She’s been dithering a lot recently. I thought she’d calm down after your sister got religion, but she hasn’t.”
“Lord, no. She’d probably approve if Stacy had been saved by an Episcopalian, but Mother disapproves of the Salvation Army because they allow poor people to join their ranks. She equates poverty with evil.”
I laughed at that. “Shoot, that’s one of the reasons I like the Salvation Army. Because they don’t care if you’re rich or poor, and they don’t turn you away if you’ve slipped up in life.”
“You and me both. But you know my mother.”
“I certainly do. She’s a lovely woman and my best customer, but she is . . . um . . . a little scattered.”
Harold almost howled with laughter.
When he stopped laughing, I said, “Anyhow, I’d love to join you for luncheon. Do you want to meet somewhere, or do you want to pick me up?”
“I’ll pick you up. Say twelve-thirty?”
“Sounds good to me.”
I hung up the ’phone, happy to have something to look forward to for once.
Billy, who’d overheard the conversation, didn’t seem at all pleased.
“Harold,” I told him.
“I heard. I don’t know why you like that fellow so much, Daisy.”
Borrowing a gesture from Sam Rotondo, my mortal enemy, I shrugged. “He’s nice. And he’s funny, too.”
“He’s a faggot, for Pete’s sake.”
“He’s a nice man,” I insisted. “In spite of what you think, I don’t think he had any control over . . . that aspect of his personality.”
“That aspect of his personality? Nuts.”
So there we went again. It seemed to me that anytime I managed to look forward to doing something, Billy would object to it. Kind of took the joy out of life, if you know what I mean. Be that as it may, I said, “Would you like to join us?”
“No! Cripes, Daisy, I don’t like hanging around with people like that.”
“People like what, Billy Majesty?” My temper began to erode. Billy’s reason for disliking Harold really irked me. It’s one thing to dislike someone because he does bad things or is mean-tempered or malicious or does something horrid to you. It’s something else entirely to dislike someone just because he’s different from you. “Like kind? Sweet-natured? Generous and funny? Are those the types of people you don’t like to hang around with?”
“Dammit, Daisy, you know what I mean. I don’t like homosexuals, for Pete’s sake!”
“Why not? Are you afraid Harold will try to seduce you or something?”
“That’s disgusting, Daisy,” Billy said solemnly.
“I just wish you could see past Harold’s one . . . quirk—”
“You call men loving men a quirk?”
“Yes I do! He can’t help what he is, Billy, any more than you can help what you are.”
And if that wasn’t the wrong thing to say, I don’t know what was. I swear, my mouth gets me into so much trouble. I should have learned by that time not to argue with Billy, but it annoyed me that he had such a s
kewed opinion of a gentle and lovely man. Harold had helped me out more than once when I’d desperately needed someone to rely on. Of course, it didn’t help that he’d been with me when the police raided the speakeasy where I was conducting a séance, but that wasn’t really Harold’s fault. He had intended to be helping me on that occasion, too.
In any case, my ill-chosen words precipitated one of the heated arguments in which both Billy and I ended up hating ourselves. Or maybe we both just hated me. It didn’t matter; I knew it was wrong to argue with my husband. Poor Billy. He really deserved a better wife than I.
By the time Harold drove up to the curb in front of our house in his lovely, jazzy red Stutz Bearcat, I was in a dismally blue mood.
“I’m sorry, Daisy,” Harold said with true sympathy when I explained why I appeared so downcast. “Your poor husband has a lot on his plate.”
“I know it. But so do I, Harold! And it makes me mad that he judges people the way he does.”
“We all do it, sweetie. Believe me, your Billy is no different from ninety-nine percent of the people in the world. Men like Del and me are considered worse than murderers and rapists and other criminous people.”
I brushed a tear from my cheek. “That’s not fair, Harold.”
“Too true, but there’s not much I can do about it. Or you, either. Besides, you’ve told me more than once that you hate Germans, and I defy you to name one genuine German you know and tell me why you hate that person.”
Grumpy now, I said, “You fight dirty.”
“But it’s the same thing, Daisy. Your hatred of Germans is as irrational as your husband’s hatred of men like Del and me.”
“That’s not true. Germans started that war and almost killed Billy. Neither you nor Del has ever done anything awful to Billy. Or anyone else, for that matter. At least not that I know about.”
“True. But that doesn’t matter. People fear what they don’t understand.” He frowned as he steered his car. “Anyhow, let’s talk about something else. This subject is too depressing.”
“All right.” After sniffling once or twice and blowing my nose, I asked, “How’d the fitting go?”
