The Chaperone (38 page)

After the caterers cleared the plates, Winnifred, seated at the head of the table, cleared her throat and stood. She was in her early fifties, just a little older than Cora. But they didn’t know each other well, as the Fitches had only recently moved to town from western Kansas because—unbelievably—the air in Wichita was better.

“Thank you so much for coming today.” Winnifred smoothed the front of her dress. “I know I invited you ladies here under the vague premise of social aid, and I promise you that if, on your way out, you can spare a few quarters for the mason jar by the stairs, I’ll see that they get to the soup kitchen at First Methodist. But I should tell you I didn’t call you all here today to collect a few quarters.” Here she paused, pulling back her padded shoulders. “Ladies, I organized this brunch in the hope that we might band together against an enemy that all the soup kitchens in the world can’t conquer, an enemy that preys on all of us, rich and poor alike.”

Cora dabbed at the corners of her mouth, looking up with anticipation. If Winnifred Fitch had a solution to the dust, she certainly wanted to hear it.

But Winnifred looked grave. “As a newcomer to this community, I have been shocked to see… obscene items displayed where the general public, including innocent children, can see them. Contraceptive devices, I mean. It’s my impression that in these difficult times, druggists have become so desperate for revenue that they’ve let their moral standards slide. I have a feeling even you more urban ladies aren’t pleased it’s become so difficult to protect your children and grandchildren from the vulgar implications of these displays.” Her gaze moved around the table. “Virginia. Cora. I believe you both have teenage daughters?”

Virginia nodded. “I have three girls still at home,” she said. “And I couldn’t agree more with your concerns.”

Winnifred, and everyone else, looked at Cora.

“Greta’s my niece,” Cora said.

She didn’t elaborate. She understood she had not answered Winnifred’s real question, but it hardly seemed wise for her to tell these women that she had no problem with condoms on display in the drugstores. In fact, just a few weeks earlier, Cora had actually mentioned these new displays to Greta, casually saying that if a girl and boy
did
find themselves in need of “birth control,” to borrow Margaret Sanger’s phrase, they would likely do well to avail themselves of a druggist’s regulated merchandise, rather than take their chances with something purchased under the table in a pool hall or a gas station. Greta, usually so voluble, had gone mute with shock and then embarrassment. (“Aunt Cora! What kind of a girl do you think I am?” she asked. “The kind I love,” Cora replied.) But Cora thought the conversation necessary, as Greta was now eighteen, and she had a serious boyfriend.

“Ladies,” Winnifred continued, “I’ve invited you here today because I’ve been told that each of you is well connected and respected in the community. It’s my hope that you’ll each sign your name to a petition against these sorts of displays and advertisements, and that you’ll work with me to create a decency code for downtown.”

Up and down the table, there were murmurs of agreement and nodding heads. Cora fidgeted with her napkin, unsure what to do. She’d just enjoyed all that fresh melon and a glass of tea at Winnifred Fitch’s expense; she couldn’t very well excuse herself now. But she hadn’t dreamed this brunch would be a call to arms against condoms. Really, Cora thought, the druggist’s displays weren’t so very startling. For years,
McCall’s
had been advertising Lysol as a “feminine hygiene aid for nervous wives,” and everyone knew what they were really promising: no pregnancy and no disease. Cora’s doctor warned that it was all nonsense: Lysol wouldn’t stop a baby and could likely do serious damage to a woman. That warning was fine for Cora, who, as a married woman, had the alternative of a prescription diaphragm—once she worked up the nerve to ask for it. But what about someone like Greta? Cora was actually relieved that these days a girl, or at least her beau, could walk into a drugstore and find what was needed. It wasn’t that she wanted Greta to have intimate relations at seventeen—Cora didn’t think much of the boyfriend. But young people would be young people, whether the druggists got rid of the displays or not. Just the week before, Cora received a solicitation letter from two Wichita doctors hoping to start a charity home for unwed mothers. The doctors wrote that some of the girls they wanted to help were very young, and that they came from good homes and bad.

So during Winnifred’s speech, Cora was quiet. She listened to the ticking of her watch and focused on the feel of the theater’s cool air against her skin. There was no point in arguing with a table full of women who seemed as certain of what was acceptable and what was not as Cora herself had once been. Cora wouldn’t be able to change their minds, certainly not over brunch. She would only be ostracized. All she could hope was to manage her escape without actually signing anything.

Ethel Montgomery cleared her throat. “We might do better to stand against all types of immorality,” she offered. “Did you know there’s a current movement to legalize beer in Kansas so long as it’s of a certain weakness? They aim to do away with Prohibition here, too. Winnifred, I’m certainly sympathetic with your concerns, but I think we could work to uphold temperance as well. It seems to me these two issues are two sides of the same leaf.”

Cora worked not to sigh. The rest of the country had already deemed Prohibition a failed experiment. But Kansas hadn’t yet budged. Still, the
Wichita Eagle
estimated that the city’s inhabitants drank two hundred gallons of illegal alcohol a day. So much for enforced temperance. Two sides of the same leaf indeed.

The caterers were quietly filling glasses with water, and Cora recognized one of them as Della’s youngest son, who was around the same age as Howard and Earle. She smiled, but he either didn’t see it or pretended not to.

“I like your thinking,” Winnifred said. She took her seat, whispering a thank you as her own glass was filled. “But that’s a more expensive fight. The wets are well funded and well organized. I know most of us are hard pressed right now.” She paused with a wry little smile. “If we want to take on alcohol, we’ll have to get creative. Is anyone here related to a millionaire? A shipping magnate, perhaps?”

There was polite laughter. Viola, sitting at Cora’s right, gave her a friendly nudge. “Cora knows Louise Brooks.”

Cora turned and stared at her blankly.

Ethel Montgomery rolled her eyes. “Somehow I doubt she would support a ban on obscenity.”

“She doesn’t have any money anyway,” added Virginia. “She declared bankruptcy, I thought. She told the papers she had nothing left but her wearing apparel.”

Someone else clucked her tongue. “All those furs. Poor thing.”

Cora looked at the ceiling, the sandbags and ropes, the dark stage lights. When Louise was still living in Wichita, when she was just a pretty black-haired girl performing anywhere her mother could book her, she may have twirled and jumped across this very stage for applauding classmates and neighbors. Cora looked over her shoulder, at the rows of empty seats.

“How could she be bankrupt?” Viola shook her head. “I knew she’d divorced, but she got married again, didn’t she? Some millionaire in Chicago?”

“She left him,” said the woman who’d clucked her tongue. “That marriage was even shorter than her first.”

“If she’s bankrupt again, she might go back to him. That’s what her mother did.”

Cora lowered her eyes. Myra was back in town. Her children were all grown, but she was living with Leonard again—just the two of them in that big house on North Topeka. Cora heard she’d simply run out of money, and that her health wasn’t good. Everyone thought it was generous of Leonard to have taken her back.

“Louise Brooks won’t have to go back to anyone,” Virginia said. “If she divorced another millionaire, she should be set up nicely.”

“I hope so for her sake. What is she now, thirty? Already twice divorced. That would make a man think twice. And Hollywood seems to have tired of her. She hasn’t been in anything in years.”

Winnifred smiled faintly. “Perhaps even Hollywood doesn’t want to hold up as an example a woman who takes marriage so lightly. Now regarding the fundraising—”

“It was the talkies,” Virginia said. “That’s what I heard. She didn’t have the voice for them. A lot of the people who were big in the silents just looked good. Now you’ve got to sound good, too. It’s a whole different style of acting. That’s why she had to make those films in Germany, to try to get a little more mileage out of her face. She didn’t have a voice for sound.”

“She has a fine voice,” Cora said. “There’s nothing wrong with her voice.”

Every face turned toward her. Viola raised her brows.

“And she’s been in talkies,” Cora added. “
It Pays to Advertise
was a talkie.”

“I forgot she was even in that,” said Viola. “That was the last one she was in, wasn’t it? And that was four years ago.”

“Which one was that?” Ethel asked. “I don’t know that I saw it.”

“Carole Lombard was in it. She was the lead. Louise Brooks just had a side part.” Viola turned back to Cora. “So what was it? If it wasn’t her voice, why did she go bankrupt? Used to be you couldn’t go to the theater without seeing her face, and now you don’t. Where’d she go?”

“I don’t know,” Cora said. “I’m not in contact with her.” She looked at the center of the table and raised her voice. “Sorry. I only know she has a good voice. I don’t know anything else.”

No one replied. Cora realized she’d perhaps spoken more forcefully than she’d planned. She didn’t want to keep sitting at this table. She scooted back her chair.

“Cora?” Viola touched her knee. “You’re not leaving? Don’t. We were just asking. Are you upset?”

Cora shook her head, tight-lipped. She was upset, but she wasn’t yet sure she had a right to be. They weren’t asking her anything about Louise that she hadn’t wondered herself. But then, she had been wondering without any glee, while these women were clearly pleased that Louise, once so high above them, seemed to have fallen so fast. Now they wanted the story, details. Cora had none to give.

“I just need to be on my way,” Cora said, rising to her feet. “Thank you for the brunch, Winnifred. What a treat to dine in this cool air.” She forced a smile, pushed in her chair, and started toward the stairs to the right of the stage.

“Before you go, you should sign the petition.” It was Winnifred, calling after her.

Cora moved down the steps, watching her feet in the dim light. So much for her quiet escape. But maybe a little honesty was called for.

“No. I think the drugstore displays are fine.” She paused, pulling on her gloves. “But thank you for brunch, anyway.”

Without looking up, she opened her purse, took out six quarters, and dropped them into the mason jar at the edge of the stage. There was no sound but coins against glass, echoing through the theater, and then her clutch snapping shut. A little dramatic, maybe, but that was fine. This was, after all, a theater. As she made her way up the carpeted aisle, the women behind her were quiet, waiting. She breathed deeply, taking in all the cool, clean air that she could, knowing she’d soon be outside.

She might have left
the brunch early anyway. It was a Friday, and Joseph would be home by noon. He’d long ago arranged to get to work early every morning so he could have Monday and Friday afternoons off. He’d told the lead engineer he was an early riser, and that he liked those solitary hours, just before and after dawn, when he could tinker with the engines and wings and landing gear in silence. He was good enough at his job that this preference was indulged without much inquiry. No one put together or cared that Della only came to the house on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If a widower wanted to get off work early twice a week so he could relax at home while his married sister kept house, that was no one’s concern.

When she walked in, the house was silent and, with the fans running and the curtains in the parlor closed, almost comfortable.

“Hello?” She stood in the entry, brushing off her skirt. “Joseph?”

“I am here.” He appeared in the front room’s doorway, wearing trousers and a clean T-shirt. His hair was still wet from the shower, which he’d built onto the bathtub earlier that year—he didn’t like the dust in the bathwater. Now everyone in the house took showers instead of baths, mostly to save on water, though Cora didn’t miss scrubbing the beige waterline from the tub.

“How was the ice-cold brunch?” He moved toward her and leaned in to kiss her, smelling of mint. “Did your tea freeze in your cups?”

Instead of answering, she stepped away, glancing into the parlor and then the dining room.

“No one is here,” he said. But he didn’t move toward her again.

“I’ll just go round to make certain.” She unpinned her hat and smiled. “Have you eaten?”

She wasn’t always the cautious one. Sometimes it was Joseph who had to remind her that their privacy was never certain. A friend could stop by. A neighbor might glance through a window. And there was always the possibility of their greatest fear—Greta coming home early. But the high school was far enough away that if Greta ever fell ill in the middle of the day, she would need to call for a ride home. And for the last two summers, she’d worked part-time in Alan’s office, filing and answering the phone. Cora had asked Alan to call at once if Greta ever left the office early, especially on a Monday or Friday. Alan, always the gentleman, had agreed without question or comment.

Over the years, Cora and Joseph had spent a good portion of their limited private moments anguishing over whether or not to tell Greta the truth. But it always felt too dangerous. When Greta was twelve, she and her friend Betty Ann Wills had a terrible row after Betty Ann, left alone in Greta’s room while Greta finished chores downstairs, read enough of Greta’s diary to become upset with the way she’d been described. The girls exchanged angry words, and after Betty Ann left, Greta was inconsolable, tearfully insisting to Cora that her diary was for her private thoughts, and that what she’d written hadn’t been meant for Betty Ann’s eyes. Even as Cora agreed and comforted her, she was relieved Greta hadn’t been able to write anything far more damaging in her diary. Joseph and Alan agreed it was proof they had to keep lying to the girl they all loved. Betty Ann Mills might have held all their lives in her grubby, ten-year-old hands.