Runny03 - Loose Lips (20 page)

He sucked on his cigar, and a gray-blue line lazed up to the ceiling in Celeste’s kitchen. Hansford, a small mountain of tack in front of him on the big wooden table, possessed nimble fingers. O.B. Huffstetler, Celeste’s stableman, had fallen behind on his chores, this being one of them. The young man was exhausted by his six-month-old infant, a boy they had named Kirk but called Peepbean. Peepbean, born with leather lungs, put them to good use throughout the night. No one had warned O.B. or his wife that infants are hazardous to your health as well as your personality.

Neatly laid out to his left were the leather-repair tools, while on Hansford’s right were pieces of rich English leather in Havana brown. Nobody made better tack leather or better steel for bits than the English.

“Julia, do you remember the time you saved up pennies and nickels?” her father asked. “You couldn’t have been three yet but you knew money was something special, so you saved and saved every time someone gave you a penny for ice cream. Then you marched right across the square to the Bon-Ton and bought
yourself a little iron elephant bank with an upraised trunk. Louise laughed at you because you spent all your money on the bank and had none left to put into it. You cried and cried. I gave you a penny to put in your bank and you stopped crying. Then Louise cried because she said I loved you more than I loved her. So I gave her a penny and she shut up. You offered your bank for her penny’s safekeeping.” He rested his cigar in a big ashtray as he set to work on a torn throatlatch. “She refused because she said how could she tell her penny from your penny.”

“I don’t remember about Louise’s penny.” Juts reached for a laced rein where one of the laces had broken. She, too, was good with her hands. “I still have the bank, though, and it has that first penny in it—for luck.”

“The damnedest things pop into my mind.” He reached for waxed thread. “Maizie wants a dress for a Christmas party. Louise won’t buy it for her. How about I give you the money and you buy the kid the dress. Louise won’t like it, though.”

“Louise will get over it.” Julia noticed a flame-red cardinal darting in a holly bush by the garden. Celeste’s kitchen was her favorite room in the entire grand house. “I feel sorry for the kid. She’s playing second fiddle to Mary forever. She’s asked to her first big party. She and Mary are so differently shaped she can’t wear Mary’s old clothes.” She exhaled through her nose.

He punched the thread through a hole he’d made with an awl.

Cora came in and put up the teapot. “You two are nesty.”

“Maizie’s party dress,” Hansford said with no further explanation.

Cora nodded at her younger daughter. She had heard three sides of the story already: Louise’s, Maizie’s, and now Juts’s. Maizie had been invited to a dance and had found the perfect dress, green velvet with white fur trim, at the Bon-Ton. Juts had watched her try it on and told her it looked beautiful. But the dress was thirty-one dollars and Louise had refused even to discuss it.

Celeste, wearing a silk kimono in a deep, rich navy blue, pushed open the swinging door.

“I need something hot.”

“On the stove.”

“Mmm.” She inspected the pot.

“A watched pot never boils,” Cora told her.

“I know.” She smiled. “Naturally, you all will remain silent about my wearing a Japanese article of clothing.”

“Better than lederhosen,” Juts cracked.

“My legs would get cold.” Celeste joined them at the table and rooted through her tack. “It’s always something, isn’t it? I’ve broken two martingales—actually, I didn’t break them, Rambunctious did—and, oh thank you.”

Cora put the teacup in front of Celeste and then served Hansford, Juts, and finally herself before sitting next to Celeste. “Maizie’s fit to be tied.”

“She can’t go to the party naked.” Celeste laughed.

“Louise will pitch a hissy.” Hansford shook his head.

“According to Louise
she
is the only mother in the world. None of the rest of us know anything. She even crosses you, Momma,” Juts said.

Cora smiled. “Louise gets the big head.” She added, “Even if you all buy Maizie that party dress, Louise will take it back. You know it for a fact.”

“Yeah. Hateful, mean, and bossy—those are the facts.”

“Spoken like a true little sister,” Celeste noted. “I was one myself.”

Hansford took another drag from his cigar. He was watching Juts closely. “She’s like your mother,” he observed to Cora, chuckling.

“Well—Momma sure had a sense of humor.”

“Bepe was nutty as a fruitcake.” Hansford called Harriet Buckingham by her nickname.

“I’m
not crazy. Louise is crazy. I’m perfectly sane.”

“Isn’t memory convenient?” Celeste said.

“Just a minute here, Hansford, Bepe was not tetched at all.” Cora rattled her teacup, her hands delicate even though she’d put on weight over the years.

“She dropped a net over your father at Pauline Basehart’s and drug him right out in the street. Sure caught those girls off guard. I tell you, it was a spectacle.”

“Never mind. That was long ago.”

“Who was Pauline Basehart?” Juts asked.

“The local madam,” Celeste informed Juts.

“Mom!” Juts exclaimed.

“My father had a weakness for women.”

“Weakness—it killed him. There he was in the middle of Hanover Street, naked as a jaybird, with Bepe beating his ass until his nose bled. He couldn’t get out of the net and Pauline wasn’t going to free him. She sent a girl to fetch Ardant Trumbull—that’s Pearlie’s great-uncle—who was sheriff then.”

“I didn’t know that,” Juts exclaimed.

Hansford laughed. “Girl, there was a whole heap of living in Runnymede before you made an appearance.”

“My father—” Cora shrugged. She didn’t know what to say.

“He was no better nor worse than many, but Bepe fixed his wagon.” Hansford shook his head.

“You think I’m like Bepe?” Juts asked.

“All over again.” Hansford clapped his hands. “To the teeth.”

“Old men live in the past,” Cora rebuked him.

“At least I remember it. Harold Mundis’s grandpa couldn’t even remember his children when he was my age.”

“The things I’m learning.” Juts got up and poured everyone more tea. “Celeste, I’m dying of starvation. May I have one of your scones?”

“Put them on the table. We’ll all enjoy them.”

Juts admired the hand-painted china as she placed the scones in the middle of the table.

“We still haven’t solved the Maizie problem.”

Ramelle opened and shut the front door. They heard her stamping the snow off her feet.

“Anyone home?”

“We’re in the kitchen,” Celeste answered.

Ramelle walked in rubbing her hands. “It’s getting frigid out there. Scones! Cora, you’ve outdone yourself.”

Ramelle squeezed in next to Celeste and heard the entire dolorous tale of Maizie and the emerald dress she coveted at the Bon-Ton. Cora began making more tea.

“Why can’t she wear one of Spotts’s dresses? Maizie’s about her size now, don’t you think?”

“Grand idea,” Celeste declared.

They marched upstairs to the huge cedar closet. The effort of climbing the stairs exhausted Hansford. Breathing hard, he sat on a Regency chair. Many of the dresses were out-of-date, but one lovely chiffon, almost a flame-red, was perfect.

“Maizie will look like Christmas itself,” Ramelle said.

“What if Louise says this is charity?” Juts felt the sheer fabric.

“I’ll take care of that,” Celeste volunteered.

As they walked downstairs, Julia said to Ramelle, “Louise is forever harping on how being a mother is different. She’s always saying I can’t understand. You’re a mother. You don’t seem any different to me than before you had Spottiswood.”

“On the outside, no; on the inside, yes. I had to put someone else first.”

“Oh,” came Juts’s weak reply.

Cora held on to the finial at the bottom of the dark mahogany steps, waiting for Juts. “Don’t fret so about it. You’ll never have a baby if you think about it all the time. Gets your innards worked up.”

“She’s right about that.” Celeste put her arm around Juts’s shoulders.

“I put Chessy first. How much different can it be?”

“Chessy’s not helpless,” Ramelle offered.

“Wanna bet?” Juts replied.

“All women think all men are helpless without them,” Celeste said. “Truth is they do fine without us. They might not have as much fun, but they’ll live.”

Cora disagreed. “A woman can live without a man; a man can’t live without a woman.”

“What do you think, Hansford? Speak for your entire sex.”

“Well, a man might be able to live without a woman, but life wouldn’t be worth living. I’ve seen men die of loneliness in those mines, yes, I have.” He changed the subject back to Juts’s dilemma. “Girl, if you want a baby, then you should have one.”

“I don’t know if I can.” Juts swallowed the words.

“You can,” Celeste said with authority. “After all, the doctor didn’t find anything wrong with you. It’s Chester you’ve got to get to the doctor.”

“Men are peculiar about those things.” Hansford coughed; it took him a few moments to get his breath back. “If he won’t go, Julia, there are children out there needing a home. You think about it.”

“I don’t know if Chessy will raise a child that isn’t his.”

“Have you asked him?” Celeste usually took the sensible approach, so people’s tender emotions were left out of the equation.

“No.” Juts’s voice grew fainter.

“Well—ask him.”

“I can’t. I’m afraid.” Julia’s chin trembled.

“Maybe you can find some subtle way to bring up the subject,” Ramelle said soothingly.

“A child that’s unwanted will be illegitimate. Mother Smith would have a cow—”

Celeste interrupted. “Mother Smith is a cow.”

Julia smiled weakly. “Chessy won’t go against his mother and she won’t want someone that’s not her own blood.”

“I think you’re right about Mother Smith, but maybe you underestimate your husband—after all, he married you,” Ramelle said.

C
hessy was surprised when he arrived for his dancing lesson and found Trudy had two other couples there, friends from Baltimore. She said this was her Christmas present to him. He’d gotten too used to dancing with her—he needed to dance with other women.

After a few false starts he discovered that if he gave a strong lead the lady would follow.

After the lesson the group stayed to chat. Since the next week was Christmas, Trudy was booked at dances every single night, either as an escort or to help things along. The Sisters of Gettysburg, the Daughters of the Confederacy, the Kiwanis Club, the Elks, the Sons of Cincinnatus, the Pilot Club, the North Runnymede Country Club … everyone was throwing parties.

Before leaving, Chessy gave her a small present wrapped in gold paper with a red ribbon.

“Don’t open until Christmas.”

“What a sweet thing to do!”

“Merry Christmas, folks.” He waved to the couples as he opened the door to leave.

Trudy followed him into the hall. “I have a present for you, too.”

He smiled. This was the second surprise of the evening.

She dashed back into the studio, emerging with a narrow box about thirty-six inches long. The bow was a big centerpiece almost like a paper chrysanthemum, with curly tendrils. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Smith.”

He laughed at the formal address. “Do I have to wait until Christmas to open it?”

“No, but if you don’t it means you’re undisciplined.”

“All right, then.” He stepped down onto the top step. “I’ll save it.”

She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “Merry Christmas.”

He wanted to say something but blushed instead, turning to hurry down the stairs.

M
ary appraised her sister. The chiffon dress draped perfectly on Maizie. Mary wasn’t the least bit jealous.

She’d received a postcard reading, “Miss you. Your Billy.” From this terse communication she divined red-hot oceans of love.

The snow shone blue in the twilight. The house lights splashed gold over the snow. Maizie, in a frenzy of anticipation, kept asking, “Is he here yet?”