Fair Weather (12 page)

Lottie caught her breath, and the tears started in my eyes. Aunty faltered. She was the most beautiful woman we’d ever laid eyes on. Her pale blond hair was dressed up against the sweep of her hat. Her complexion was
perfection. Where Mrs. Potter Palmer wore ropes of pearls, this lady’s swan neck was encircled with diamonds. I wondered if there was a crowned head under that hat.

She smiled slightly and nodded nearly in our direction. But I had learned a hard lesson. Out here in the world, you thought twice before speaking to anybody you weren’t introduced to. Besides, my tongue was tied by her beauty. There was a scent of tuberoses in the box, and it must have come from her.

We bumbled into our seats, keeping some distance. The second act of the show burst upon us. It was the buffalo hunt.

Rolling eyes and throwing clods, the herd thundered back and forth before us. Rounding them up with many a fancy maneuver was Buffalo Bill, now changed into another outfit. To back him up were all the champion horsemen of the Sioux nation: Kicking Bear and No Neck and Jack Red Cloud. They were all over the place.

From the corner of my eye I observed the lady. She didn’t slump against the chair back. She sat forward, and it showed the lovely line of her back. She was corseted tight as a tick. I saw how painful that much beauty must be.

At long last they got all those buffalos corralled and herded off. The band broke into “Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight?” The lady turned our way a little shyly. Of course we were strangers to her. Then we heard her voice, like music. “Isn’t it awfully dusty?” she remarked.

Without thinking, Aunt Euterpe replied, “I said it would be.”

“Are you enjoying the show?” the lady asked me.

“Right much,” I heard myself answer, “though I expect my brother Buster and Granddad like it better.”

“Yes, and your dog seems to be interested in a career in show business.” She smiled.

Come to think of it, it was thanks to Tip that we were sitting in this box talking to this lady. “Well, he isn’t good for anything else,” I said, “excepting to keep Granddad company.”

“Your grandfather and Colonel Cody are old friends?” The lady just touched her throat with a gloved hand. She wore a ring with a large stone over the glove. I’d never seen that before. There was so much I’d never seen.

Aunt Euterpe leaned around me to reply. “Oh, yes, Papa and the colonel were in the war together.” She was more and more at ease in this lady’s company.

The lady nodded. “Old comrades-in-arms,” she said, like more music. “And yet men at their most warlike are less cruel than women.”

Aunt Euterpe started. “I couldn’t agree with you more,” she replied, no doubt thinking of all those ladies who’d never left a card on her. The flowers on her hat quivered and the next act began.

It was Colonel Cody again in still another costume, presenting “Unique Feats of Sharpshooting” on and off his horse. He was not a young man anymore. The rumor
was that he fired buckshot so he was bound to hit something. But as Granddad would very likely say, it was all show business anyway.

We came then to the grand finale with every member of the cast, man, woman, and child, on horse or afoot. The field became the Black Hills of Dakota. We were to have the Battle of the Little Big Horn and the last charge of General Custer.

For a duel to the death, it had many a diversion. Buck Taylor, the King of the Cowboys, rode on his horse and under it. Utah Frank showed off a good deal of rope work. Colonel Cody led charge after charge, and the Germans and the Russians got into it.

But at last, somebody being General George Armstrong Custer made his last stand, took a bullet, and toppled off his horse. Somebody impersonating the late Chief Sitting Bull won the day.

A musical interlude followed to let the dead get up from where they fell and leave the field. Then the whole cast came back, the two-legged and the four-legged, to take their bows. The Rough Riders of all nations held high their flags and totems as the band played “Over the Waves” and “The Columbian March.”

Then out rode Colonel William F. Cody for one last time, miraculously changed into an all-white outfit heavily embroidered. His horse pawed the air, and he raised his hat as the audience gave him one last standing ovation.

It was over, but the colonel urged his horse straight at
our box. He drew up and handed across the bunting a spray of sweet-smelling carnations in the colors of the American flag. They were for Aunt Euterpe.

“Oh, no!” she cried out. “Never in my life . . .” But she clutched those flowers to her. It did my heart good. What I wouldn’t have given for Mama to see it, and to be handed flowers herself.

Then in Buffalo Bill’s hand was, somehow, a nosegay of violets tied up in a silver ribbon. He was offering it to me, and another like it for Lottie. I remember yet his great gauntleted hand offering posies to those two country girls we were.

Without prompting, the vast white horse moved on. Now Colonel Cody sat there in the sky, above the beautiful lady. She looked up at him with her modest smile, and the audience craned to see her. From nowhere at all the colonel flourished a great spray of American Beauty roses and handed them over. She received them like a princess of the realm.

In a voice of sounding brass, he called out to the coliseum, “Ladies, Gentlemen, Children, I give you the toast of America—Miss Lillian Russell!”

*  *  *

Behind her glove Aunt Euterpe gave another of her shrieks.

The band struck up again “After the Ball,” the song made famous by Lillian Russell, and the crowd went crazy, singing along: “After the ball is over, after the break of day . . .”

She set aside her parasol and stood, turning in a sweeping way to greet her public. She dropped a curtsy that would have graced any European court. And I read Lottie’s mind. This fallen woman who painted her face and had had three husbands and was barred from the Washington Park clubhouse was everything that Lottie would like to be. And I felt the same.

Between us Aunt Euterpe sagged.

You wouldn’t believe how fast Granddad made it to our box once he’d heard Miss Lillian Russell was in it. He was way ahead of Buster. He was way ahead of Tip. His specs were at the end of his nose and his new necktie was askew, and he was very nearly winded.

Cradling her roses, Miss Russell put out her hand to him. “And you are Granddad, I believe?”

His gnarled old mitt came out to trap her gloved fingertips. “Ma’am, I’m crude as a ripsawed plank,” he croaked, “but you have no greater admirer in the state of Illinois.”

This was a pretty speech in its way, but Lottie and I worried about what might come next. Then it came.

“Are you acquainted with my daughter Miz Fleischacker?” Granddad asked. “She don’t get out much, but here she is.”

“Ah,” Miss Russell said uncertainly, drawing back a little.

Then, without hardly wavering at all, Aunt Euterpe rose to this unexpected occasion. She spoke firmly. “Miss
Russell,” she said, “you do our city an honor with your presence.”

Now Miss Russell’s hand came out to meet Aunty’s. “I will remember your kind words, Mrs. Fleischacker, when I have forgotten the snubs of others in the society of Chicago.”

And Lottie and I saw how things could be between two ladies of real refinement, even if Society wouldn’t know them.

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.

O
ur 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: M
RS
. D
ANFORTH
E
VANS
.

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.