Private Life (8 page)

Mrs. Bell reported that Mercer's grandfather had been a Jew, but (they fell again into

indifference) the grandfather had converted, and upon coming to St. Louis, Mercer had

joined her very own Methodist church. Anyway, the unusual and estimable thing about

St. Louis, according to Mrs. Bell, was that people of all faiths lived there side by side,

and many of the best families were Catholic--you couldn't avoid that, given that the city

was founded by the French, with the Irish, the Italians, and the Germans "hot on their

tail," as Mr. Bell said. All the best women's clubs had all types of women in them ("as

long as they're rich," said Lavinia).

Mrs. Bell was a more lackadaisical chaperone than Lavinia. The streetcars had

been the scene and occasion of a great strike only a year before--track had been blown

up, electrical lines cut, and any number of men killed on both sides. Dora clung to the

view that the policemen had committed tremendous crimes against the strikers. Whenever

Mr. Bell fumed that the strikers had gotten off "scot-free," Dora's rejoinder was "Only a

little starvation and destitution here and there," but she said it under her breath, and out of

the hearing of her father. But no one stopped them when, one day, Margaret followed

Dora out of the house on Kingshighway and they took the streetcar to Stix, Baer & Fuller.

They ended up riding it to the end of the line and back, staying out for most of the day.

Their excuse was that it was raining, and that they had to stay on the streetcar so as not to

get their shoes wet, but no one asked them for an excuse.

As delightful as it was to go to Stix and look at the floors and the counters and the

shelves of goods (lawns, organdies, mousselines, dimities, silks, velvets, laces of all

kinds), Margaret enjoyed the streetcar itself more, for the power with which it surged

away from every stop, for the airy breeze that blew her hair about and endangered her

hat, for the swaying motion both lulling and exciting.

The very next day, they went out again, and got on another streetcar, and since it

was not raining, they went to Mr. Shaw's garden, which was south on Kingshighway and

past Tower Grove Park. They walked along the paths and looked at the trees, reading the

labels beneath them, then wandered about the all-glass Linnean House for as long as they

could stand the heat. The next day, they went out again.

Dora was most observant of the passersby, whether they were walking or riding

the streetcar or wandering through the departments of Stix, Baer & Fuller. She would

scrutinize them without seeming to, and then, when they weren't looking, she would

produce some expression or gesture of perfect mimicry. Most of the people they saw

were men, and so the effect was quite amusing. Her pencil might turn for an instant into a

cigar, her parasol into a cane, her hat into a homburg, her smile into a supercilious smirk.

The crowds they encountered were transformed into a gallery of types, all oblivious. For

Margaret, there was the added pleasure of watching the eyes of these men pass

indifferently over Dora just seconds before she put their idiosyncrasies--something as

tiny as a gorge-clearing or an unconscious pull of an ear--on display. Margaret laughed

aloud, drawing the attention of Dora's target, at which point Dora would pass effortlessly

into her most maidenly demeanor.

One day, on the streetcar up to Fairground Park and Natural Bridge Road, which

was a long, pleasant, breezy ride, Dora reached into her bag and handed Margaret some

papers, a manuscript of some three or four pages, fairly but closely written. What it

seemed to be was a transcription of the supper conversation of the evening before, written

as a play. The dramatis personae were Father, Mother, E., D., M., and X. E. was Etheline,

the serving girl. X. was Mrs. Bell's French bulldog, Xenia. M. was evidently Margaret,

and so forth. Dora's handwriting was copybook--she could have earned her living in a law

office.

No scene was set. The dialogue simply commenced:FATHER
Mrs. Bell, Dora is

giving Xenia her lamb chop
.MOTHER
Of course not
.FATHER
Of course not

what?
MOTHER
Of course she would not give Xenia her lamb chop
.
She would not do it,

Mr. Bell
.FATHER
She is doing it
.MOTHER
She is not doing it. Dora, are you giving the

dog your lamb chop?
DORA
No, Mama. Not exactly
.FATHER
What exactly are you doing,

Dora?
DORA
I am giving her my parsnip
.

Margaret remembered this exchange. Reading it now made her laugh. When she

laughed, Dora grinned.

She turned to the next page:FATHER
Etheline, why haven't you joined the union

yet? They were around here just the other day, weren't they?
ETHELINE
Who was around

here?
FATHER
The union organizers. She saw them. Did you join up,

girl?
ETHELINE
No, sir
.FATHER
Did you give them any money?
ETHELINE
No, sir, I

didn't
.MOTHER
To whom did Etheline give some money? Etheline, do you have any

money?
ETHELINE
No, ma'am. I ain't never got no money
.FATHER
I told

you
.MOTHER
How would she get money? I don't give her money
.DORA
Mama wouldn't

give Etheline any money if her life depended on it
.

Just as Margaret was thinking that Dora was a remarkably observant girl, a man

passed between the two of them and got off the streetcar at Cass Avenue. Margaret saw

nothing except that he gave his nickel to the conductor, took off his bowler hat, smoothed

the brim, and then replaced it on his head, but when she looked at Dora, the girl flared her

nostrils and lifted her eyebrow, then straightened her shoulders as if they had been

knocked to one side by the swaying of the car. Her head described the exact arc that the

man's head had described when he put his hat on. Then the car jolted forward, and Dora

laughed.

After this, Margaret could not take her eyes off Dora. When, in the course of a

morning, she had occasion to mimic Elizabeth writing a note to Mr. Hart and

absentmindedly putting a dot of ink on her nose, or to mimic Etheline sweeping behind

the sofa as if she were stabbing an intruder to death, it was most uncanny, something like

the effect of going to an arcade where she might pay a penny and watch a short film.

And this they did also. Dora was ready to do anything. The first film she took

Margaret to was called
Another Job for the Undertaker
, and in it an ignorant fellow from

the countryside went to sleep in his hotel room with the gas lamp on but not lit. Within a

minute, he was carried out to a hearse and driven away, much mourned by his friends. It

was shocking, really, until Dora told her that the whole incident was staged. Another of

these films was about Kansas, and demonstrated what Missourians were always saying,

that Kansans had a distressing propensity for violence. In this picture, Mrs. Carrie Nation

entered a saloon with her disciples. They were all carrying axes, and they proceeded to

smash the place to smithereens. Mrs. Nation was the victor, although she got a dose of

beer in the face when she smashed the tap.

Mrs. Bell gave Elizabeth the wedding she must have wished for Dora--a breakfast

at the big house on Kingshighway, with the Danforths and all of the members of the

Ladies' Club in attendance, and the big staircase in the front hall strung with garlands of a

yellow flower that Margaret didn't know. Elizabeth sewed her own gown, with the help

of Mrs. Bell's sempstress, but the bodice was a piece of Branscomb family lace, Belgian

and in perfect condition. The cake came from the best French pastry shop in St. Louis,

and Margaret, Beatrice, and Lavinia all wore new hats from the May Company hat

department. Elizabeth had seven new dresses, and her linen chest was full. Best of all,

Margaret had had no hand in filling it. Mercer took his bride on a wedding trip to Hot

Springs, down in Arkansas, a famous spa, and then they went to live in their new house in

Kirkwood, which was two or three blocks from the railroad station. This meant that

Elizabeth could come visit Margaret and Lavinia with hardly any trouble at all. Margaret

herself rode the train back home after the wedding, and there were quite a few

unaccompanied women on it, though, of course, they kept to themselves and did not go

into cars where food or drink was being served.

MARGARET was twenty-three. Two girls her age, Mathilda Tierney and Martha

Johnson, had gone out West to Idaho as itinerant teachers. They had found an abundance

of eligible men and had married right away. It was exciting, it seemed, for a man or a

woman to set out alone, not so exciting for them to set out as a couple. To Margaret,

however, it seemed like a long trip, no matter how you made it. Lavinia said that she was

a lazy thing, and that books had taught her to be more lazy. After you read a few of them,

you had the feeling you knew all about wherever the book took place, so why take the

long train ride? On top of all of this, according to many authors, dangers abounded in all

of these locations. You had the dangers of train wrecks and gunshots and sinking ships

and outlaws, but also the likelihood that you would be swindled. Inheritances would be

stolen. Letters would go astray. The friendliest stranger would be the one that, long ago,

purloined the deed to the family home. How much more preferable, it seemed to

Margaret, in spite of the uncertainty of her future, to wake up in the warmth of the

morning and look out the window at blooming honeysuckle, the skittering of squirrels,

the cawing of crows and jays as they objected to the cats.

The natural thing would be that a bookish girl would teach school. There were

schools around, both county schools and local academies, and plenty of the girls teaching

in them knew less than she did. She might have talked her way into one of them, and

perhaps she would have gone to a teacher-training institute--there was one held for three

weeks each summer in the county seat. But the girls who taught school did not speak

highly of the work--the big boys and the little girls and the firecrackers and the lost and

damaged books and the evident indifference of one and all tested the teachers' patience

unmercifully. The schoolhouses were drafty and chill or stuffy and hot. A schoolmistress

had to dress with extra sobriety. A girl of twenty might look thirty or forty, and the older

boys, who were almost her age, or, in some cases, older than she was, would tease her

anyway. Lavinia felt that teaching was an occupation of last resort, to be attempted only

when all matrimonial prospects were exhausted. Look at Martha Johnson--all the way

across the country in Idaho, and what was her honeymoon, according to her aunt, but

doing all the dishes her new husband and his brother had dirtied over four or six months,

and carrying in and firing all the water herself--there were no servants in Idaho, even

uncooperative ones, but she was married, safe and sound. As long as her mother could

talk like this, Margaret knew, she wouldn't have to teach.

Margaret and Lavinia looked on the bright side every day. There was an apple

tree (reliably pollinated by the tree next door, so that it bore every year), a pear tree, a

rhubarb patch, a raspberry patch, and a strawberry bed. Their old horse Aurelius lived in

the barn (replaced on the farm by a much younger and more elegant pair of black Morgan

horses from up in Audrain County). A hired man who worked for all the families in the

neighborhood took care of Aurelius in the mornings and the evenings, and Margaret gave

him apples during the day. They sometimes took him out for a drive to the farm, where

Lavinia and Beatrice consulted about Lawrence and the baby, Elliot.

Robert and Beatrice were thoroughly generous with them--every wagon from the

farm into town brought them a ham or a sack of potatoes or a peck of apples that they

didn't need. They had an account at every shop. This abundance became a burden to

Lavinia--there was only so much apple butter that could be eaten, only so many articles

of clothing they could wear, only so many shawls they could use to go out to the barn,

only so many quilts they could pile up. And so they became very charitable: If a quilt had

the least little fraying or a shawl had fallen into disfavor, they donated it to the church,

just to unburden the cupboards a bit. They made rugs for the church, ripping up dresses

that were only two or three years old. Every poor family in town became a judge of their

pies and jams. If someone fell sick, Lavinia was the first to bring a hot dish to the family,

or to offer to take a spell of nursing. Lavinia had been industrious for so many years that

her industry had become redundant.

Margaret avoided these activities as best she could. She would wake up, read for

an hour or so, eat a leisurely dinner, take a walk, read another chapter. But even though

she set this example, still, they baked on Monday, washed on Tuesday, ironed on