Tea Cups & Tiger Claws

by Timothy Patrick

  Eventually the Indian summer turned to autumn, the hot days began to cool, and so did the fad of Jeb Railer’s demise. The red hot piece of coal cooled down to a white powder that blew away in the November breeze. The newspaper articles disappeared, the gossipers found fresher bones to chew on, and the police stopped pretending to care. No lasting damage had been done to Prospect Park’s sterling reputation, and the citizens didn’t feel violated by the violence in their own backyard. In that sense it had been the perfect crime; it had all the titillation, all the gore, all the unsavory characters, and none of the stain. Even the Railers had gotten something out of the deal: a booster shot to their notorious reputation. And now it was time for them to disappear. Time for Dorthea to disappear. Forever. No hard feelings. No sense begrudging the leper as long as she stayed where she belonged.

  But what about retribution? What about payment for the crime? Well the great thing about the court of public opinion is that the punishment starts immediately, before all the facts have been laid out and before a verdict has been rendered. In that regard, guilt or innocence doesn’t matter; the hapless defendant pays either way. In a swift and uncomplicated pronouncement, they are sentenced to disgrace, lost friendship, dashed expectations, and open ridicule, all of which might be lumped together and simply called a fall from grace. Unfortunately, this amounted to less than a slap on the wrist for Dorthea because she had no grace from which to fall. She’d been a wretch before the scandal and continued being a wretch after it. Oh well. Maybe it was all for the best. Punishing a wretch didn’t hold much excitement anyway. Not like punishing the high and mighty, such as the daughter of a duchess. Now that would be worth seeing.

  ~~~

  Seven years later, in 1939, one of the high and mighty suffered such a punishment when she ran off and married the son of a butcher. That’s right, dumbbell Abbey, Dorthea’s former sister, ran away with a smooth-talker named John Evans who worked for his father hauling carcasses and hosing down entrails. He also delivered paper-wrapped meat, which had probably been the big attraction for Abbey: he knocked on the door; she answered; he gave her a rump roast and a cow’s tongue; she fell in love. The stupid little mouse. The world had been served up on a silver platter, and she threw it away on the first oaf who gave her the time of day. Now she’d live the rest of her life with a clod who brought home forty dollars a week and the foul smell of intestines. Dorthea howled with laughter when she heard the story.

  But then, a year later, it got even better when Mr. and Mrs. Evans came back to town—with a baby! A baby who looked six months old if she looked a day! A simple calculation made it quite clear that dumb little Abbey had taken more than a cow’s tongue from the delivery man, and that’s why she’d left town with a one way ticket in her purse. As for the duchess, she didn’t seem to have room for the newlyweds in her twenty room mansion, so she bought them a little house down the hill next to the library. Not a starter mansion just above the base of the hill. Not a presentable colonial revival just below it. A three bedroom two bath in the flatlands on a block where grocers and haberdashers lived. Goodbye Toomington Hall. Hello little bungalow. Goodbye Lady Abigail, daughter of a duke. Hello Mrs. John Evans, wife of a sausage stuffer. The news made Dorthea feel like she had died and gone to heaven.

  And it made her want to celebrate, in her special way, which is exactly what she did on a bright spring day in 1940. In honor of Abbey’s spectacular fall from the mountain, Dorthea decided to climb to the top of it…literally. In Bryson Canyon, which snaked along the back side of town, she’d found a trail that led right up to the back of Sunny Slope Manor, fifty yards from the back porch, even closer if she cared to risk getting caught.

  Everybody saw the manor from town. Any Plain Jane leaving Gerard’s Market with pickles and beer saw the front of it. And if they got stars in their eyes, they might hop into their old jalopy and drive up the hill to see it closer—until the patrolman tapped on their window and told them to get going. They still only saw a postcard though. From her secret spot Dorthea saw the whole family album and sometimes more.

  Her devotion to Sunny Slope Manor didn’t come easily though. Apart from some boulders scattered here and there, the walls of Bryson Canyon weren’t made of rock or even sturdy dirt, but rather a grainy, crumbly substance that seemed to be determinedly grinding itself into sand. The trail itself felt firm enough, probably because of the pounding hoofs from the horses at the manor, whose horseshoe prints she saw on the ground, but it was steep and coated with grainy, slippery sand that sometimes sent the human foot skating without warning.

  Separates had become popular, especially in sportswear, and while Dorthea looked good in anything, and knew it, she made a determined effort to put her fashion ignorance of the old days behind her. Her hiking outfit, by Claire McCardell in New York, consisted of cream colored shorts with decoratively cut pockets, a black belt, and a matching cotton-knit button top, cut just above the waist, with a simple round neckline and cap sleeves. Of course she wore makeup and the requisite bright red lipstick. And if she got dusty, and sometimes bloody, at least she did it in style.

  Bryson Canyon didn’t have much life to it, she thought, as the shallow cave that marked the halfway point of her climb came into view. Nothing but lizards, snakes, and a few dumb rabbits who hadn’t figured out that a feast of green gardens waited for them up at the rim. She knew about the horseback riders but had never seen any of them, or anyone on foot either. Unless a person wanted to spy on Sunny Slope Manor, or maybe hide a body, Bryson Canyon didn’t have much use.

  Looking back a few years, to when she’d gotten her money, she wondered how she hadn’t ended up buzzard food in Bryson Canyon herself. If some scamp from down the hill had shown up on her doorstep talking blackmail, that’s what she would’ve done. And where on earth had she gotten the gall to pull off the scheme without cutting Ermel in on it? Nobody showed up Ermel Railer, that had always been gospel, especially at a time like that when she had her claws out looking for someone to pay for the loss of her dear, cherished, saintly husband. Fortunately, that someone ended up being Ermel’s old enemy the duchess, who got squeezed for a thousand dollars, not because of what happened to Jeb, but because of what he’d been doing when it happened: delivering bootleg liquor to Toomington Hall. Ermel threatened to blab it far and wide so they paid her to shut up. And during this time, as Ermel fussed and fretted over that little pile of money, Dorthea stayed out of sight and finagled her way into a much bigger pile, which she stashed in the narrowest crawl space she could find under their house.

  What could she say? She’d been lucky.

  And smart too, smart beyond her years, because when she finally laid eyes on all that cash and her head started to swim, she didn’t go out and buy a mountain of bangles and baubles and fluffy whatnots, or even a new dress, the thing she wanted most. First of all, she never would’ve gotten away with it, not while living under Ermel’s suspicious glare, but she also knew it didn’t make sense. After all, Ermel had a fancy dress. She showed it to strangers at the drop of a hat and paraded up and down in it like the Queen of Sheba. But she was still Ermel, lower than a bug, and that dress didn’t amount to anything but a make-believe Halloween costume. Dorthea didn’t want that kind of dress. She wanted something better, and while she bided her time, waiting to slip away from Ermel’s clutches, she thought about how to get it:

  A lady has a dress and lives in a shack. A lady has a dress, a diamond broach, and lives in a shack. A lady has a dress, a diamond broach, a fur coat, and it’s too bad she lives in that shack because she really is quite stylish. The stylish lady has a dress, a diamond broach, a fur coat, a new motorcar, and has moved into a cute Craftsman. I hear she is quite charming. The stylish, charming lady has a dress, a diamond broach, a fur coat, a new motorcar, a cute Craftsman, speaks French, and eats in the finest restaurants. Look at that remarkable woman. Who is she? She’s the stylish, charming lady who has a dress….

  That’s the kind of dre
ss Dorthea wanted, for starters, and if her stupid mother didn’t know how to go about getting it, she did. She also knew, even at that young age, that she didn’t have enough money in the shoebox under the house to do it. She had enough to turn herself into another Ermel, with a dozen dresses instead of one, and some jewelry, and an automobile too; or maybe enough to set herself up as a shopkeeper, but not enough to become the fine lady she saw in her mind’s eye. To do that she’d need to find a way to make that pile of money grow into something useful. And why not? Other people did it all the time. Now her turn had come.

  From the library she checked out piles of books about money and millionaires, especially self-made millionaires like John Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, which she read two and three times each. On Saturday mornings she walked the five miles up to the polo fields at the base of the hill where she slipped through the fence and hid in the bushes under the scoreboard. She didn’t watch the thundering horses, which sometimes charged right up to her, she watched the rich people in the stands. The ladies wore dresses with padded shoulders and hats shaped like chimney pots and bird cages. The men wore derbies and neckties and coats with fury collars. And they all had gobs of money.

  But where did they get it? Certainly not all from the same place. There wouldn’t be enough to go around. No, just like Rockefeller, Carnegie, and the others, they made their money in all sorts of different ways. Some, like old man Newfield’s family, who she recognized at the polo field by the way people stopped by his box and paid their respects, got rich from real estate, others from oil or steel or the railroads. All of them made their money at some business or enterprise they knew about. She learned that from the books. To make money you had to know your business better than everyone else. That way when the opportunity came, you saw it first. That’s how it worked.

  And that’s where she hit a brick wall. What business did she know about? She knew Yucky D…and Pine Street…and the bad side of town, useless stuff like that.

  One day, after she’d turned eighteen and had moved into Bingham’s boarding house on Olive Street, a three block improvement over Pine Street, she happened to be at the Prospect Park train station. As she waited for the West bound train to Santa Marcela, where she’d signed up for an adult English grammar class, she eyed the first class car of the East bound train that had just pulled in. The smartly dressed passengers climbed down the steps to be instantly greeted by hustling chauffeurs and fussy butlers. Her envious eyes lingered on them for a moment before drifting back to the rest of the train, where she saw a surprising number of people pouring out of the second and third class cars. What business did all these people have getting off the train? Nobody came to Prospect Park. She gave them a good going over as they approached and pegged them for a bunch of servants—nannies, housekeepers, kitchen maids, cooks, gardeners, gardener’s boys—that sort of lot, obviously just come from their day off in Santa Marcela. They had the plump, rosy cheeks of servants, and the clean unfashionable clothes. And they walked like servants, briskly, mindful of some time clock that waited to report their tardiness. But why were there so many of them? That seemed curious so, without thinking about it, she fell in with the crowd as they left the station. Once outside, some of them broke away to the parking area where shiny cars with idling engines waited for them. Dorthea guessed that these had to be the butlers and governesses and others with enough prominence to get picked up by car. Most of the others headed directly across the street to the bus stop where, unless she had misjudged, they’d catch the bus and take it to the base of the hill. From there they’d hoof it the rest of the way up to the big houses where they got paid to wait tables, fetch brandy, and fasten brassieres.

  Dorthea knew these types well, saw them in town all the time, as did everyone else, and for the most part didn’t care for them. They worked for their food and keep like circus animals but acted like little dictators. And if your shadow happened to fall the wrong way across their path, they’d sneer at you quicker than the millionaire whose boots they shined. Uppity house slaves, that’s all she knew about them and all she cared to know, until this day at the train station. She found it interesting that so many of them had homes and families in Santa Marcela but worked in Prospect Park. That’s a long way to go to work. Her brain began to churn. There must’ve been thirty of them getting off that train. What would they give to live closer? What would they give to be just a bus ride away from home instead of a bus ride, a train ride, and then another bus ride? A half hour away instead of an hour and a half? And not just them. In fact, not especially them, because many of those she saw getting off the train probably lived in the servants’ quarters at the mansions where they worked and only visited home on occasion. But what about those who didn’t live in servants’ quarters? And what about the tradesmen—the carpenters and masons and painters who made their bread and butter in Prospect Park but lived in Santa Marcela? With all those big houses up on the hill, one more perfect than another, there had to be a small army of them.

  Dorthea ditched grammar class and quickly walked to Greenberg’s drug store on the corner of Center and Main. She found a seat at the end of the breakfast counter, ordered a coffee, and looked out the storefront window. Sure enough, within the span of just a few minutes, a cabinet maker, a hauler, a carpenter, and two electricians had driven by, one truck after another all headed up the hill. And she had no doubt that if she came back at the end of the day, she’d see those same trucks, plus others, coming back down the hill, most of them on their way home to Santa Marcela.

  And why didn’t they live in Prospect Park? Because that’s where rich people lived, the richest of the rich on the hill and the prosperous merchants down below. Everyone knew that. And unless they had paint brushes in their hands, or screw drivers, or tape measures, they didn’t belong anywhere near this world. So they lived with their own kind in Santa Marcela and rode buses and trains to work or drove forty miles a day in rickety work trucks. And on Sundays they read stories in the newspaper about the Prospect Park gods and goddesses who lived in million dollar mansions built out of granite from medieval castles. These plain folk knew how to ignore sweaty brows and how to lean into their work. They knew how to sharpen blades at night by the firelight. And they knew that rich people lived in Prospect Park.

  It wasn’t exactly true; Yucky D, where white trash families rented homes for eleven dollars a month, proved that. And Dorthea knew another family in a regular house on Pine Street that paid only fourteen. But the out-of-towners didn’t know that. They saw the towering peaks of Sunny Slope Manor and the marble columns of the mansions below, not outhouses and fifty year old shacks. They didn’t know any better. “They didn’t know any better,” she said it out loud, right there at the counter.

  The man sitting next to her looked up from a stack of index cards he’d been studying and said, “Pardon me, pretty lady?”

  Ignoring him, she dropped two nickels onto the counter and got up to leave. He looked back at his cards. She walked a step toward the door and noticed a big, boxy, leather case on the floor next to the man’s stool. It said “Mansfield Hinge and Latch Company, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania” on a brass nameplate shaped like a hinge. He was a traveling salesman who probably knocked on doors and visited merchants and poked his head into every barber shop in town in order to drum up business. And who probably knew Prospect Park as well as anyone who didn’t actually live there. On a lark, she tapped him on the shoulder. When he swiveled in his chair to look at her, she asked, “How come I can’t seem to find any bricklayers in this town?”

  He sat up straight and chuckled. “In Prospect Park?” he asked. “Because they don’t live here that’s why…unless they’ve got bricks of gold they’re not lettin’ on about.” He laughed loudly, along with some others at the counter. “If it’s bricklayers you’re looking for lady, you’re in the wrong town.” Then he stared suspiciously. She smiled and left the store.

  Bricklayers…and carpenters…and all the other workers didn�
��t live in Prospect Park because they didn’t know they could. That’s why. And maybe, if the numbers added up right, Dorthea might just be the one to tell them something different. She might tell them about living close to work, or family, and making their lives easier. Not at Yucky D, of course, most people had more pride than that, but on Pine Street, in a real house.

  At the newsstand outside the drugstore she bought the Prospect Park Tribune and the Santa Marcela Herald. For the next three days she studied real estate listings in both papers and called the telephone numbers listed in many of the advertisements. She drew columns on paper and filled them with numbers. When new newspapers came out each afternoon, she made more telephone calls and filled more columns with numbers. At the end of that time she knew that average working class three bedroom homes in average working class neighborhoods in Santa Marcela sold for three thousand four hundred dollars, or rented for twenty three dollars a month. On Pine Street, a below average neighborhood, the same homes sold for two thousand two hundred and thirty dollars and rented for sixteen, when they could be found.

  She devised a simple plan: buy a two thousand dollar home but collect the rent of a three thousand dollar home. She’d put twenty three dollars a month in the bank instead of sixteen. Simple. So simple it sounded stupid…really stupid.

  But millionaires took risks. She knew it from the books. If she wanted to be like them, she had to do the same. So she closed her eyes, held her breath, and took a risk on a small three bedroom house on Pine Street that cost $2,150—paid in cash. According to plan, she advertised the house for rent at twenty-three dollars a month, not in the Prospect Park Tribune, but in the Santa Marcela Herald, and got an immediate response. She quickly learned, though, that responding isn’t the same as renting. When she showed the place, some of the people complained upfront about the size of it, and about the rough neighborhood. Others smiled politely, kept their hands in their pockets, and rushed through like cows being hustled through a chute. And those were the ones who bothered stopping at all; sometimes they drove by, saw the neighborhood, and kept going without even saying “thanks but no thanks.”