Читать книгу Up the Hill to Home - Jennifer Bort Yacovissi - Страница 10
ОглавлениеCharley Beck’s Happenstance
Charley Beck cracks himself up. He is perhaps the funniest person he knows. It doesn’t matter that his grandkids don’t always appreciate the humor of jokes they have heard practically every day of their lives. These days, Charley saves time by skipping over the buildup and going straight to the punch line; it’s just as funny that way anyway. His all-time favorite comes from one of the Nativity minstrel shows he, Ferd, and the other fellows used to put on to raise money for the parish. Charley, in blackface, tells jokes and sings comedic songs. One year there is a courtroom scene that sticks with him such that, almost every night at supper and at dinner on Sundays, he declaims the final line: “Your Honor, he sopped his bread in my gravy, and I hit him!” This invariably causes him to laugh so hard that he leaks tears and sometimes spittle. Then, more dependable than grace, he finishes his supper with a sigh and says, “Thank the Lord for that small morsel. Many a poor divil would call it a meal.”
A slightly built, sinewy man with a permanent walrus mustache, he is both quick and surprisingly strong, his grip impressive, even in an affable handshake. Charley is everyone’s friend and nobody’s enemy, and he is a wizard when it comes to building and fixing things. There is nothing he can’t make out of concrete, and the house and yard at 741 is the proof of it: ponds, fountains, retaining walls, the foundations for the pump house and barn, the floor for the garages he rents out to the apartment dwellers across the road who have no other place to park their cars. At home, if Charley Beck isn’t reading the newspaper, he is working in the garden; if he’s not in the garden, he’s building something new or fixing something that’s broken. If he is doing none of these things, he is rubbing under his battered fedora at the divot in the back of his neck, considering what to do next. A born farmer, a natural mechanic, and a modern-day homesteader, Charley Beck is a self-taught Renaissance man.
There are a thousand stories of Charley Beck, worn smooth as river stones from the telling. Legendary is the time that he, working down in the cellar to coax a flywheel back into operation, finds himself stumped by its unwillingness to function. But what seems like reluctance on the part of the flywheel reveals itself to be pure meanness when, on finally unclenching, it bites the end off Charley’s little finger, right up to the joint. Not one to hold a grudge, Charley admires the ragged wreckage of bone, skin, and blood, opens the grate to the furnace, kisses the fingertip and tosses it into the flame, saying, “So long, you son of a bitch, you’re no good to me now!”
When he retires from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in 1935, Charley receives a small corked ceramic bottle containing 52 shiny new pennies, one for each year of his employment. On more than one occasion thereafter, he remarks with a chuckle that he is surprised and touched by this outpouring of generosity by the U. S. Government. In contrast, the Voith children are always able to count on Charley Beck’s largesse. He is forever a soft touch when one of them needs a penny, a nickel, even—if the situation demands it—a quarter, and he is never without change in his pocket. Any time he misplaces his pocketknife, there is twenty-five cents in it for the lucky finder. When Charley Boy once asks how he seemingly has an endless supply of change, he winks. “Why, at the end of the workday, I just sweep up the leavings,” which causes him a good laugh at his own joke, since, of course, the Bureau doesn’t mint coins. The youngest ones are stumped when he teases, “Got a hot date?” as he reaches into his pocket, but he often succeeds in making the older ones blush as they head out to the movies or the soda fountain.
Deaf as a block later in life, he mortifies the teenage boys when they go with him to Mass: as he marches up the center aisle between the seated parishioners, heading for the front while they hang back, he hollers, “Get on up here! No use dawdling!” Charley, of course, has no idea he is shouting in church. Nor does he understand that a comfortable volume for him on the big console radio next to his favorite chair means that neighbors three doors down are treated to Eddie Cantor or Ed Wynn whenever the windows are open. As they grow, and his deafness deepens, the kids adapt, standing close and bellowing to get his attention, keeping a hand against the closer ear when studying or reading in the parlor during Charley Beck’s favorite programs.
Charley adapts too. Having raised only one child himself, he is bemused to find himself now surrounded by nine grandchildren, to the point that it is a puzzle to figure on where to put them all. He leaves that challenge to the women. Charley is one of a large brood himself, the product of another three-generation household, but those eons ago, he was one of the ones causing the bedlam, not ministering to it. The twenty-some years he and Emma spend in the big house with just Mary Miller, Lillie, and a nurse or maid effectively wash away the memory of what it means to pack that many bodies into what feels like a shrinking space. But these children have snuck into the house gradually over the years, so that Charley finds it something of a surprise when he considers the total numbers, though it’s a hard thing by now to remember what the house was like without them. He finds it convenient that his deafness increases along with the family population: the chaos of the household typically reaches him as a low hum, a sort of pleasant background music, though admittedly punctuated every so often by a crash or a shriek.
Watching from behind the newspaper, he often wonders at Lillie’s abilities as a mother to so many, herself an only child. From the beginning, it seems the most natural thing in the world to her, as though she has been practicing her whole life. She has an innate grace and cheerfulness that she’s never lost, but that belie the strength and steadfastness that allow her to keep the machinery of the household running, and to keep the children from turning feral. He imagines that she has inherited the cheerfulness from him, the iron will from her mother.
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It’s mid-winter of 1893 when he first sees her in Rock Creek Park, that huge green swath of paths, gardens, parkland, and wilderness that runs like a backbone down the center of Washington City. He loves exploring different parts of the park during his free time away from Engraving. Even if he walks the same path every day, there is always something new to see. This particular Saturday afternoon, enjoying the unseasonably mild February weather that has coaxed early narcissus to poke up through the leaf litter, he finds himself near the stables. Here are some other folks taking in the lovely day. A party of five or six people appear to be readying for a trail ride, men in boots and jodhpurs, women in long black skirts and riding hats. Charley folds his arms on the top of the rail fence to watch as the men joke among themselves and the women fuss about in preparation for mounting.
Then he notices one other woman, who holds herself separate from the others. While the rest of the party has clearly left the dirty work of preparation to the stable hands, this woman is doing her own final checks of the saddle, bridle, and stirrups. He smiles to himself when he sees that she knows the trick the horses like to play on an unsuspecting rider, of taking in air as he buckles the saddle strap, then exhaling after the rider mounts to loosen the saddle. Charley has seen novices slide completely underneath their horses after falling for that trick. This woman knows to wait until the very end of her preparation, after the horse has relaxed, to do a final quick cinch on the strap, catching the horse unawares.
It is not until the larger party is finally mounted and sauntering out of the fenced barn area that he’s sure she isn’t with them. Though she has done her own tack work, he senses that she is somehow of a higher social status and breeding than the rest of the riders, as though she has been raised to know the intrinsic value of doing some things for herself, a trait he sometimes observes in people who come from old money. She carries herself with a self-assuredness that gives her movements both grace and focus, but with a firm and unsmiling expression that makes her fully unapproachable. Finally, in one smooth motion, she fixes her foot in the stirrup and swings herself up unassisted and arranges her sidesaddle position. Without any noticeable signal on her part, the horse takes two or three steps and then breaks into a slow trot out of the yard. He watches as the horse and rider gain speed across the grassy field, break into a full gallop, and disappear into the woods.
It is not even a week later, taking a stroll after work toward the park at Judiciary Square, that he is brought up so short that the man behind him treads on his heel. A quick apology, forefinger to cap, and he turns to look again. It is the unique bearing that has caught his eye, the patrician way that she holds herself without any self-consciousness. Now she is wearing a starched white blouse with a rounded collar, a long tie, and a full gray skirt. It makes her look like an office worker, which thoroughly befuddles him. She is emerging from the Eighth Street side of the General Post Office building when he sees her. Another woman is beside her, and Charley can see that the woman is talking, apparently without pause, in that utterly self-absorbed way unique to the sex. She is oblivious that her companion is not listening. At the curb, his horsewoman stops, and he notices the way she seems to be looking over, or even through, the things around her—not in a haughty way, but as though she is absorbing the surroundings through more than her eyes. Finally, the other woman pauses for air, long enough to realize that this is where they are to part company. Disappointed to be losing her audience, she nonetheless takes her leave with a wave and a giggle, eliciting a brief nod in return. Charley waits to see which way his lady turns and briefly considers following. He dismisses this as intrusive. Instead, he simply glances at his pocket watch and heads toward home.
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A few times a week, he makes a point of lounging outside the building entrance at the time his horsewoman leaves from work. She rotates among three very similar outfits, and sometimes mixes elements of each. The only adornments she ever wears are a mother-of-pearl comb to hold up her hair, and, depending on the outfit, a cameo at her throat. He is glad for her that she is not always accompanied by the nattering woman. Often she is by herself, always with the same upright bearing and smooth carriage, the same distant look that appears to take in everything while giving nothing away. He has never once seen her smile.
One exceptionally warm day at the beginning of March, one that makes pedestrians roll their eyes at each other in speculating what this means for another suffocating Washington City summer, he stands upstream from her path out of the building. Today his horsewoman is walking out of the building with a man; the body language alone communicates that he is merely an acquaintance, probably a co-worker who happens to be leaving at the same time. A few steps beyond the door, they say a word or two in parting, and the man tips his hat. He turns and begins walking toward Charley, who takes his moment without a blink.
“Pardon me...”
“Good afternoon?”
“Don’t mean to intrude, but the lady you were just speaking with?”
“Yes?”
“I feel sure I know her, but I just can’t place the name...”
Charley can see the man’s hesitation, but he combines a friendly smile with a sincerely befuddled look, and the man gives in. “That’s Miss Miller, Emma Miller. She’s a clerk in the office down the hall from mine.”
Charley taps his chin and squints. “Maybe I know her parents from church.”
“Not parents. I understand her mother’s a widow. I’m not sure where they live.”
“Well, it’s a puzzlement. Maybe it’ll come to me. Much obliged to you, though.” The man touches his hat and continues on his way.
Emma. Emma Miller. What happened, Emma? Raised as a gentlewoman, but then Daddy died and the money ran out—or you found out it was never really there in the first place? And now you’re a clerk at the General Post Office. He isn’t laughing at her; he sympathizes, knowing the wellborn are so unready, so ill-equipped, when forced by circumstance to meet the realities of everyday life. And yet you handled that horse with no nonsense, no worries of dirt under your fingernails. With a will.
He waits another few days, then falls into the crowd behind her as she leaves the building. She heads north up Seventh Street and turns onto G, following the west side of the green space of the Pension Building, exactly where he’d been headed that first day. Half a block above the square, she turns onto Washington Street, one of the city’s many alleys in which low-rent housing has insinuated itself. The alleys are originally cut through to remedy the problem of how to get essential services—garbage removal, coal delivery—to the residents of Pierre L’Enfant’s fat city blocks.
And here again he is completely caught short. The row homes at the top of the alley are shabby but still neatly kept; farther down, he can see the progression into a jumble of shanties, some stacked precariously like building blocks, one on top of another. Far down the alley there is a group of colored children playing in the street, and Charley realizes that it is just beyond them, in the next alley over, that one of the city’s last remaining slave pens has only recently been torn down. Of course, in Washington City, it’s still common for the highborn and low to live cheek by jowl on the same streets, but there are clearly visible social distinctions, and there’s no mistaking who belongs in which group. This is more like the rough and tumble of his own wharf-front Georgetown neighborhood, where the various races mix like so much stew. It’s beyond him that she lives in similar circumstances.
Emma nods at a row house neighbor working on his tiny front porch, who has waved to her with his hammer. She mounts the three steps up to the adjoining porch and disappears inside. Charley stands on the other side of the neighbor’s house and rubs at the back of his neck, no longer feigning befuddlement.
“I think she’s already rented the room.”
It takes a moment for Charley to process that the handyman neighbor has stopped to stretch, noticed him looking at the house, and offered a comment.
“Beg pardon?”
“I say I think Mrs. Miller already has a renter for the room. That’s why you’re here, yah?” His German accent is thick, but his English says that he’s been in the country for some time.
“Oh, I see. Well, I thank you for keeping me from interrupting their supper for no reason.” Charley smiles and tips his cap; the neighbor again salutes with his hammer as Charley turns and starts again for home.
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“I tell you, Joe, I can’t make sense of it. I’d’ve bet anything that she was wellborn, but I can’t imagine a family falling that far in the space of a few years. I was thinking that they still had a big house and were just working to keep up appearances. You know how they do. But that?”
Charley and his buddy Joe are sitting on stools at their regular neighborhood bar, a half-empty glass in front of each. Joe and Charley share virtually their entire existence, since they work together in the Wetting Division at Engraving and Printing, and live in the same boarding house, sharing a room with each other and a bath with everyone.
“Well, I can’t make sense of it either. You see this girl once at the stables, and now you’re stalking behind her like an Injun hunting buffalo. And you were doing this when you thought she was rich? What exactly was your pitch going to be? You figured your natural charm and good looks would do all the heavy lifting?”
Particularly since Charley has no good looks to speak of, Joe knows perfectly well that there is nothing to recommend either of them to the fair sex. Today, as with every workday, they have changed out of their greasy coveralls into street clothes, taken a damp rag to their faces and a wet comb to their hair, and scrubbed their cuticles and fingernails with lye soap and a stiff bristle brush. Approximately twice a month, they take the work clothes home and, with their landlady’s assistance, soak the coveralls in hot water and lye and scrape the grease out of them, if for no other reason than to make themselves less combustible. Even a poor woman might take pause.
“There’s just something about her—not how she looks, but how she seems. Then when I saw her coming out of the post office, a worker! I just needed to figure it out.”
“And now?”
“Well, I’m still figuring on it.” He takes a drink. “I need to get her to notice me.”
“Holy hell, Charley. What are you fixing to do? Set your hair on fire and get her to beat it out for you?”
“Naw. I think she’d just step around me and keep on going.”
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She sees that he’s not outside again today, and realizes that she’s disappointed. For as much as he may imagine that he is being discreet, Emma notices him every time. At the stables, she understands that he has just happened by and is simply taking in the activity, this wiry young man with active, cheerful eyes and a big mustache. Outside of work that first time, it is the collision between the two pedestrians that catches her attention, but she would have noticed him anyway. His gaze then is intent, inquisitive. She sees him often after that, loitering at the curb, sometimes pretending to read the paper, sometimes chatting with a passerby while he continues to watch for her. Mr. Fredrickson describes him perfectly when he mentions a young man who asks after her outside of the building, with his made-up story of a church connection. And now that he has followed her home, she sees that her circumstances are below even what he is willing to accept, and he is gone. So now she feels disappointment, an old sensation that until this moment she is sure is boxed up and put away for good.
Emma has long since given up any thought that her life will ever be more than what it is: that of a spinster, living with her widowed mother who takes in boarders to fill the gaps in what Emma earns as a postal clerk, her position for the last sixteen years. By now, Emma has lived an entire second lifetime beyond what is normally considered a marriageable age. Her heart was broken once, long ago, by a boy who seemed interested in her for a time. In the end, though, his attentions were drawn away from her solid frame and unflinching demeanor by a big-eyed giggly thing with golden curls. From that point on, she’s known her time is past. So now, seeing he is not here, feeling once again that empty hole in her stomach, she struggles to put her disappointment back into its dusty box and close the lid.
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The Capitol Bicycle Club has set up on the Pension Building green this week, taking advantage of the lovely weather to put up a tent and some booths, and present a series of cycling demonstrations to encourage membership. Street vendors who know a business opportunity when they see one have also set up shop in the fringes, and the whole enterprise takes on the feel of a street fair. The club has an assortment of some of the very oldest bicycles alongside the latest models, and club members take turns demonstrating riding techniques and allowing game bystanders to try them out.
Charley stops by the first day and has a long friendly chat with one of the club’s members, a Mr. Henry, who is very willing to discuss each type of bicycle and the challenges of riding each one. Mr. Henry is impressed with Charley’s quick grasp of the mechanics. He allows Charley to take a few spins out of sight of the rest of the crowd. The bicycle Charley chooses, ridiculous-looking by the day’s modern standards, is particularly difficult both to balance and steer, but again Charley takes to it naturally. Then Charley invites Mr. Henry into his confidence and asks his indulgence in helping with a bit of a plan. Upon hearing it, Mr. Henry laughs and says that if Charley promises to be careful, he agrees to be a willing participant in the scheme. And so it is that two days later, as Mr. Henry is using his best pitchman’s banter to draw in the afternoon passersby to take a look at the bicycles, Charley is scanning the street, waiting to give the sign.
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Emma is heading toward the knot of people that has been here all week, taking in the cycling demonstrations and browsing the temporary stalls that have sprung up. The square, with its wide expanse of grass, is a natural with couples, families, various organizations like the cycling club, and all manner of snake oil salesmen who regularly set up shop to sell their wares. Emma has looked on with mild interest as she passes by each afternoon, idly wondering what it would be like to ride one of the machines, which of course she would never do.
Suddenly, a collective whoop rises up from the crowd, then laughter and scattered applause. She glimpses a head, weaving among the onlookers, but has trouble making sense of what she is seeing. She slows down in time to see the crowd part, and in fact several people leap out of the way, as the laughter swells.
As soon as the cyclist is out of the knot of people, she sees who it is—of course it is; who else would it be?—and that he is heading right toward her. The contraption he is riding is one of the earliest models of bicycle, with the small wheel in front and the large one in back; it is a beast to control, and he is wild. She doesn’t believe it for a minute, though; he knows exactly what he is doing, and she is having none of it. She strides forward in determination, but he begins to circle her even as she walks. The crowd loves it as he spirals around her, and hoots and claps to egg him on. On his third pass, she raises her head and fixes him with a hard look; it is the first time they make direct eye contact. In that moment, he realizes that he has been duped; she’s been onto him all along. In the second before she breaks her gaze, he crosses his eyes and lolls his tongue from the corner of his mouth. He makes one more pass, and though her head is back down, he sees it: she smiles.
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The following Sunday afternoon, in the time between morning Mass and evening prayers, he knocks on the front door of the little row house on Washington Street. It is Emma who opens the door, and regards him without surprise. “I was beginning to think you would never come.”
Without another word, she turns; he follows her in, taking off his cap as he steps through the door. She walks him the two steps into the little parlor where Mary Miller sits in the sliver of afternoon light at the window, tatting. “Mother, there is a young man here to see you.” With that, Emma turns and leaves the room.
This stern-looking, white-haired woman looks up with some surprise, and spends a moment assessing him. “I’m sorry, I already have a boarder. We only let the one room.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’d been informed of that. I have a room already.”
“We don’t welcome solicitors, then.”
“I wouldn’t expect you would, ma’am. I’m not here to sell you anything.”
Mrs. Miller looks hard at him, and he plainly sees where Emma gets her bearing, if not her appearance. “What, then?”
“Ma’am, I’d like permission to court your daughter.”
Charley can see that he’d have to think hard on it to come up with another sentence that would surprise Mrs. Miller even half so much. There is a long moment while she continues simply to stare at him. “Young man, how old are you?”
“I’ll be twenty-six in September.” There is an even longer pause now. He is wondering what combination of words he can put together that will prompt her to invite him to sit, and to offer him some tea. But he can see that it will be dashed hard to charm this woman.
“How do you know my daughter?”
He wants to be careful here. “We see each other from time to time outside of work.”
“And where is that?”
“I work at Treasury, ma’am, in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.”
Of the next hundred questions wrestling with each other behind her gaze, the one that triumphs is, “Your name?”
“Charles Joseph Beck, ma’am, but everyone including my mother calls me Charley.”
“German?”
“Yes, ma’am, on both sides.”
“Emma?” Two beats pass before she walks back in, though both presume that she has been just outside the threshold the entire time.
“Yes, Mother?”
“I suppose you two have not been properly introduced. Charles Joseph Beck, this is my daughter, Emma Lucretia Miller.”
He almost extends his hand, but hers are firmly clasped together in front of her, and he feels certain she will leave him hanging. Instead he puts his finger to his cap, which is of course not there, and smiles. “It’s a pleasure, Miss Emma.”
She simply nods. “Mr. Beck.”
Mary Miller surveys the two. “Well, Emma, I suppose you’ll need to make some tea.”
She disappears into the kitchen, but still Mrs. Miller does not invite him to sit down. He is standing near the mantle, considering his next conversational gambit when he sees a picture of Emma. He has to stop himself from picking it up, but he can’t help examining it closely. There she is, perhaps in her early twenties, in the fancy dress fashion of the day: heavy taffeta with a pronounced bustle, a nipped waist, and lace at the throat and down the bodice. She is standing at an open wrought iron gate set into a stone wall with trailing vines, an elaborate prop in the photographer’s studio, no doubt. Her gloved hand rests casually against the stone doorway, and she is gazing just to one side of the photographer, which gives her an air of intrigue. Even here, she is no simpering ingenue, but it startles him to see her in so fashionable a pose.
“She had that photograph made a number of years ago, for a young man.” He is now doubly startled that Mrs. Miller is sharing this confidence, one that he feels sure Emma would not appreciate. “My daughter doesn’t like that I have it out, but I’ve always thought that it’s the best photograph of her that was ever made.”
“It’s impressive.”
There is a pause while he continues to examine the photo, and he can feel Mrs. Miller continue to examine him. He turns to face her. “You realize that my daughter is rather older than you—do you, Mr. Beck?”
“Yes ma’am, I expect so.” They consider each other; he knows she is challenging him, and he feels it’s crucial that he hold his ground.
“You walked through our neighborhood; this is where we live. You can see that we’re not rich.” The understatement doesn’t require a response; he simply nods once.
He can see her trying to puzzle it out behind her sharp eyes, why he is here, why the interest in Emma. “Mrs. Miller, I can’t say why no man has swept up your daughter to make her his own. It’s clear to me that she’s a strong woman who knows her own mind, and she holds a body steady in her gaze. Maybe that directness puts some off, but I see it as a mark of character. Something she’s gotten from her mother.”
It’s an obvious currying of favor, and Charley can tell she sees the joke in it. They look directly at each other and exchange a smile.
Emma comes in with the tea tray and arranges it on the ottoman that squats in the tiny space between the sofa and easy chair. Mrs. Miller moves from her spot near the window to the chair, and Emma arranges herself at one end of the sofa. There is a brief moment in which Charley is unsure of his direction, but Mrs. Miller indicates the other end of the short sofa with a tilt of her head. He sits, realizing as he does that in the four weeks of seeing Emma perhaps three or four times a week, this is the closest he has ever come to her. She pours tea, adding sugar and milk without asking his preference, and offers it to him. “Mr. Beck?”
“Thanks kindly, Miss Emma.” He holds the cup and saucer carefully, mindful not to slurp. It is a mighty fine cup of tea.
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They settle quickly into a pattern. He waits for her outside the Post Office’s main entrance in the afternoon and walks her home. She shows him her favorite spot, in the courtyard where the mail wagons come and go and the horses are stabled; they chat with some of the groomsmen Emma knows, who take great pride in their charges. When it becomes impossible not to, she finally introduces him to the chatty woman from that first day, to Mr. Frederickson from whom he has gotten her name—no hard feelings over a small mendacity in pursuit of romance—and a few others who can’t contain their interest at hearing of Emma’s new young man. This unexpected and improbable turn in Emma’s fortunes creates quite a stir among the clerks, many of whom regard her with a newfound respect, as though she has suddenly revealed depths they have not known she possesses.
At Washington Street, Mary Miller invites him in for tea, and, on several occasions, dinner. During the visits, Emma remains almost mute, with her mother and Charley conducting most of the conversation. Eventually, Charley fills in the gaps by telling stories from his workplace, boarding house, childhood. Sometimes he inserts ridiculous, fabricated elements to see if she is listening. He considers it a victory when he gets her to roll her eyes, and several times to fully smile. His greatest achievement comes when he tells the story from work of the huge print roller breaking loose from its packing straps and chasing a whole herd of workmen down the corridor: she laughs out loud.
Early each Sunday, he picks her up at home and walks with her to St. Patrick’s for Mass; afterward they might take a horse trolley up and go for a long walk in Rock Creek Park. It is on these Sunday outings that Emma is most engaged in their conversations, and Charley finds that she is a woman of ideas and opinions, simply rusty in sharing them. They enjoy competing to be the first to spot what’s in bloom—Emma even knows some of the Latin names—or following birdsong to its source. She takes him on a hunt through the underbrush for some of the herbs she once gathered for her father’s medical practice; she ends up on her hands and knees to get at a sarsaparilla root and uses his pocket knife to cut out a chunk for him to crush between his fingers and inhale the aroma. That she is unconcerned about the dirt or the spiders reinforces his sense of their rightness together. The day she sketches for him the device she has invented and patented, closely describing the operation of the roller mechanism now used throughout her office for assembling training pamphlets, he knows that there is no one else for him.
One Sunday they stop at the stables where he first sees her, and lean on the same railing, enjoying the warming scent of hay, horse sweat, and fresh manure. “Who taught you to ride?” Charley asks her.
“My papa. He kept horses all the time I was growing up. I did most of the stable work for him, too.” She smiles at the memory.
“He was a medical doctor, was he?” She nods. “It must have been hard for you and your mother when he died.”
“That’s when I started working at the Post Office, certainly. But you know, we were living on Washington Street when he was still with us.” She gives a baleful smile at his look of surprise. “There never was much money, and the times he was away, during the war and after, there was even less. Sometimes we were comfortable, but it was just as often we needed to move to find more affordable rent.” She pulls a long blade of grass that is growing against the fence and plays with it. “Of course I didn’t understand anything back then. For me, my father was Hercules, and I remember thinking that it must have been all Mother’s fault that he wasn’t there and we were poor.” She pauses again and smiles to herself. “It’s funny. I’ve never talked about this with anyone. I don’t think I’ve even thought about it until just now. Anyway, I finally realized later how hard Mother must have worked to keep us all together. Imagine what those horses must have cost us.”
Charley nods, able to see the picture clearly, and pleased that Emma has chosen to share so much. “Was there more than just you and your mother, then?”
“My brother John died before I was born; he was only a year-and-a-half old, and Mother said it hit Papa hard. Sister—my sister Mary—was born a few months before John died, and then I came about two years after that.”
“So, where is Mary now?”
“She’s not with us anymore.”
“Ahh. I’m sorry.”
Emma throws away the shredded blade of grass. “No, I’m sorry. I make it sound as though she’s dead. She’s not. She lives in a home in New York. It’s very well kept and the people are kind to her. Mother makes sure of that.”
Charley can see that this is not the time to ask anything more. They both lean against the fence, and Emma holds her face up to the sun and breeze. The moment passes, and they both relax again. Charley watches her as she smiles at the chestnut gelding she was riding that first day.
“Maybe you and I can go riding one of these Sundays,” he suggests.
She gazes appreciatively at an Appaloosa one of the stable hands is exercising in the yard. “No, I’m done with riding. The day you saw me I had already decided was my last time.” She reflexively touches her hair. Emma can’t bring herself to say, I’m getting too old to ride.
Charley chuckles. “Imagine: if I’d been ten minutes later, or even just five.”
Emma nods. “We might never have met.”
They both push back from the railing, and continue walking. “Happenstance,” says Charley, shaking his head, “pure happenstance.”
cd
Another Sunday in late April, Charley invites her to go up on the new electric streetcar along the Seventh Street Road to a spot above Florida Avenue. Until just a couple years ago, Florida was called Boundary Road, and marked the edge of the city. Here though, the large tracts of farmland are even now beginning to give themselves over to the radiating avenues and squares that echo the L’Enfant city plan, if only a tiny bit at a time. They alight at a stop on the section of the road that the city has lately named Brightwood Avenue, a small strip on the much longer Seventh Street Road that continues into the deep countryside of Montgomery County.
Charley guides her along the unimproved roads, grateful that the weather has been dry. At Eighth and Flint Streets, an unpaved intersection, he stops in front of a large, partially cleared corner lot, already staked with flags at the property corners. He sees that Emma understands immediately, though there has been no discussion of a formal engagement, let alone a wedding date; there is no need. He starts: “I’ve saved a good bit so far, about half enough to buy the property outright, but I’m figuring it will take another year to do the rest and have the cash to build the house...I know it’s a little out of town, but I’d like to have room for a nice farm plot.”
She turns to him. “I have some money. Mother insisted I save as much as possible so that I would be able to take care of myself.”
He is vaguely ashamed to admit that he has calculated almost exactly this scenario to figure whether there is a hope of sealing this deal; it’s her unblinking grasp of the situation and immediate partnership in it that prove he’s been right about her.
Emma’s eyes are on the property as she turns over the possibilities. “When can you sign the papers?” she asks.
Charley considers her as she considers the land. How different she is than any other woman he has ever encountered. By nature, necessity, and tutelage, she is thoroughly practical. He can clearly imagine her out on the frontier, breaking ground for crops or mixing mud to fill the chinks in the cabin walls. He has long wished to be out there, in the wide-open spaces of the endlessly possible. It will do, though, to make this half-acre of cleared farmland at the edge of the city into its own little frontier homestead. He’s formed this vision in his head, and here is his pioneering woman, willing to pitch in and build it with him, who makes the vision complete.
cd
Mrs. Gamertsfelder sets the tray of lemonade on the small table in the kitchen garden and pauses for a moment. She loves to look at the neat rows of vegetables, thoroughly weeded, and the infant beans, sweet peas, and tomatoes already vining up the twig and twine trellises. They’ve already harvested some of the cool weather vegetables, like broccoli and cabbage. It’s still early in the prime growing season—the tomatoes have only just gone in—but she has great expectations of how it will go: the tomatoes will inflate to bursting in their skins, their appearance on the dinner table followed by their immediate disappearance, devoured by boarders who sorely miss the fresh fruits and vegetables they associate with home. She will even be able to make a few extra dollars by selling the surplus produce at the farm stand on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Mr. Schultz always welcomes her selling at his stand, since her produce is top notch and helps to keep the customers coming back. And the best part is that she doesn’t have to do a bit of it. It’s all Charley.
“Can I get you boys anything else?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. G. Your lemonade never needs accompaniment,” Charley tells her.
“Oh, go on with you,” she laughs as he winks at her.
Her boarders are polyglot. She has Swedes, Poles, Norwegians, Dutch; Germans, of course—she especially loves the boys who are fresh off the boat, who bring news and stories in the native tongue, untouched yet by the English they so desperately want to learn, from a homeland she hasn’t seen since girlhood. Every so often, she even rents to an Italian, as long as he is clean and comes with good references from an employer. But none of them are Charley, who immediately adopts her tiny garden as his own, expands it, and keeps it in sharp order. That Germanic instinct for military precision belies his easy-going cheerfulness and willingness to pitch in for her wherever he sees the need.
Mrs. G has taken in boarders since her husband died in the war, and her son in childhood from the whooping cough. So dashing as a young man, Niehls Gamertsfelder comes from a family of successful shipping merchants that builds the family home and business close by the bustling wharves of Georgetown’s port, and makes its money on a succession of high-value products: tobacco, wheat, coal, lumber. But the port of Georgetown gradually loses its shipping channel to silt and flood, and its business to the railroad and the infringing federal city; and the Gamertsfelder family loses its fortune and its sons to war, disease, and bad luck, until Hedda Gamertsfelder, nee Sheckles, a mere in-law, is the last one standing.
She rents every spare room in the big house, two and even three to a room, and only has one hired girl to help out, so it is all she can do to keep up with the cooking and cleaning. But she looks after all her boys with redirected maternal pride, and Charley has never heard her say a cross word, even when Gretchen manages to tip the whole soup pot over on the wood stove, in a single motion not only ruining dinner but ensuring that another cannot be prepared. At the time, though, even Mrs. G has to bite her lip to keep the words back.
Charley pushes back from his knees to his haunches and stands up to stretch. Joe, who has been bending over, stands upright with a groan. “I told you not to do that.”
“You always tell me not to do that.”
“Pig head.”
“Know-it-all.”
Joe pours them each a glass of lemonade, and they drink in companionable silence. Joe knows nothing about gardening, but Charley has taught him to distinguish between the weeds and the emerging vegetables to the point that Charley trusts him with the hoe and the thinning trowel. Joe thinks of it simply as the difference between the good weeds and the bad weeds, but he certainly enjoys the final result. Plus, by helping out, he too gets to share in the profits from the farm stand—a jealously guarded secret, since he certainly doesn’t want a crush of greedy lummoxes horning in on the bounty.
Joe has worked with Charley for a few years now, has been his roommate for only a little less than that. Younger by several years, Joe is happy to learn from his friend’s greater experience in life, and grateful that Charley never lords that seniority over him, or laughs at the young country boy still new to the big city. The job at Engraving is the first he’s ever had that’s more than a mile from his family’s home, and having to move into the federal city is overwhelming and, frankly, scary. Charley is the first person to find Joe the morning he shows up for work, looking pale and lost, and promptly takes him in hand. They are well-matched in temperament, both natural mechanics and self-directed problem solvers. They make a good team.
Charley surveys their work. “Need to finish up soon.”
“Church again?”
“I can’t help it that you’re a heathen.”
“Once a week is salvation enough for most of us...it used to be enough for you.”
Charley gives Joe an exasperated eye-roll. “There’s only so many places that are fit to take a young lady. I can hardly bring her down to McCreary’s for a beer, now can I?”
There’s a pause and Joe looks into the middle distance as he says, “So are you just waiting until the wedding to introduce us?”
He rubs the back of his neck as he considers this. So that’s it: Joe presumes that Charley hadn’t brought them together because he is somehow ashamed of Joe. Of course, that isn’t it at all, but the plain truth of it is that he’s afraid that Joe and Emma just won’t like each other, and then what? Will he have to choose between his best friend and the woman he plans to marry? It’s too painful to consider, and so he has simply side-stepped the issue. But now that Joe has brought it up, there is no sense delaying the inevitable, so it’s just a practical matter of how to bring it about. An idea comes to him and without considering, he exclaims, “Crystal Spring!”
“What?”
“The racetrack up in Brightwood. It’s right near the lot. We can have a picnic this Sunday on the grounds.” Almost as he says it, he feels he should have thought of something less involved. Quicker.
They pick a spot to meet. Charley arranges to have Mrs. G pack a basket for them, and they decide that Joe will bring it, since Charley and Emma will be coming directly from Sunday Mass.
That evening, Charley waits until they are on her doorstep saying goodnight to tell her of the plan. It has taken him all evening to work up the courage, and even now he feels his resolve slipping. Once he finally gets the words out, she simply looks at him for a long moment and then nods. “Good night, then,” is all she says.
And so, on Sunday, Joe sets off from the house, feeling conspicuous as he carries the picnic basket through the streets and onto the various horse trolleys he takes to get to the track. As he greets people along the way, he realizes from their smiles and nods that they assume he is headed off to meet with his own young lady, rather than that of his best friend. This is the part he doesn’t like to consider, what his days will be like without Charley as a roommate. But now that Charley will be settling down and moving out of Mrs. G’s house, perhaps it’s time he thinks about doing the same thing. Perhaps Emma has a friend. That way, he and Charley can still spend off-hours time together.
He is the first one at the appointed spot and considers what he should do. Lay out the tablecloth that Mrs. G has packed? But then what? There aren’t many folks on the grounds yet, so at least there is no one right here to see him fidget. Finally, he lays the cloth so that he can put the basket down. As he straightens up, he sees them walking across the grass toward him.
Joe lets out a startled snort that he covers up by pretending to sneeze. If he’d been describing the scene to their buddies, he would have gotten at least one full-out, thigh-slapping guffaw. Charley and Emma are the same height, and while Emma is not at all fat, she is...solid. Substantial. Next to her, Charley, with his slight, wiry build looks for all the world like a broomstick with a mustache. It is a mighty comical sight. He forces himself to replace amusement with affability, but as they come even closer and he looks again, the smile slides off as he feels his mouth drop open, and he is not fast enough to cover that up. Joe has always imagined that Charley’s girl is a girl. This is a woman—so much so that he can see gray strands salting her dark hair.
From his side, Charley’s stomach hurts. He has watched keenly as Joe has gone from curious expectation to stifled laughter to open stupefaction inside of a minute. He can’t bring himself to look at Emma; it’s all happening just as he’s feared. But as they finally reach Joe, a wondrous thing happens: Emma extends her hand, and in a warm, cheerful voice, says, “Joe, I’m Emma. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” Charley swivels to look at her, and he can’t think he’s ever seen a lovelier smile.
Disarmed by the friendly welcome, Joe responds immediately with his own genuine smile and says, “Me, too, Miss Emma. I was beginning to think we might never meet.”
“I was beginning to wonder the same thing myself.”
They both look expectantly at Charley, who spends a second with his eyebrow raised, looking back. Then he bursts out laughing. “Well, what a relief that we can all stop wondering now! My only wonder is what Mrs. G might have packed in that basket you’ve been carting around. Maybe we can take a minute and just see what, before the ants carry it off.” He continues to chuckle to himself, and shake his head as he kneels down on the tablecloth. “My, my, aren’t you two a pair.”