Tiffany Girl (22 page)

A wave of disappointment crashed through him, then was quickly followed by uncertainty. Was she expecting him to discuss the terms with her? He’d never done business with a woman before.

“We’re selling it cheap because we’re wanting to go south. We got family there.” She made a motion that encompassed the porch. “We keep a good place.”

He studiously avoided looking at the peeling paint, the uneven boards on the left side of the landing, and the water stains on the eaves. It could’ve had gaping holes in its sides and he’d still have wanted it. “How long have you lived here, Mrs. . . . ?”

“Gusman. Since ’88. Clive bought it from an old-timer who’d lost his wife, and his wits, as well.”

Somebody else’s wife had died in that house? He sighed. After all these years, he supposed it was inevitable, but he didn’t like hearing about it.

“You want to see the rest of it?” she asked.

“You don’t mind?”

“Nope.” Turning, she disappeared inside, leaving him to follow or not.

He climbed the steps.
Hello, Dad
.

At the door, he removed his hat, stomped the snow from his boots, took a deep breath, and stepped across the threshold. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. It was tiny. A rag rug sat in front of the fireplace, anchored by a rocking chair, a kitchen chair, and a miniature-sized chair, almost as if Silver Hair’s three bears had been living there.

He looked to the spot where his mother had been laid out. There was no furniture there, just a wall with dark rectangular patches on it, making him wonder if they’d recently held framed images that had been sold to make ends meet.

“Kitchen’s through here.” She walked into a connecting room, the little boy eyeing Reeve. His delay in following his mother caused her skirt to stretch.

“You like it here?” Reeve asked, his voice low.

Mrs. Gusman tugged on her skirt. “Come on, Archie.”

The boy scurried after her without answering.

Reeve made it no farther than the doorway when he came to an abrupt halt. Light poured through a storm door and side window whose frame held fluttering red-checked curtains. Cabbage simmered on the stove, its aroma filling the little ten-by-ten room. A hip bath sat propped against one wall. A lump of bread dough rested atop a well-used cabinet dusted with flour. It held one bin, a cutlery drawer, and a removable chopping board.

He tried to picture his mother in here, but had only fleeting glimpses that vanished before he could fully grasp them. Still, he
was standing where she’d stood. Walked where she’d walked. He again tried to feel her, get a sense of her, but it had been too long.

Mrs. Gusman slipped the baby into a chair. Someone had modified it with rails to keep the tot from slipping out. “Climb on up in your chair, too, Archie, and I’ll give you some dough.”

A yearning slammed into Reeve. Had his mother ever done that for him?

Archie took the bit of dough his mother tore off for him and began to roll it into a snake. Reeve watched in fascination.

“Would you like some coffee, Mr. Wilder?”

“What? Oh, no.” He rotated his hat in his hands. “I, you, um, you wouldn’t know where your husband is, would you?”

“I imagine he’s at Krummenacker’s Saloon down at Pennsylvania and Jamaica.” Her voice held no bitterness, only resignation. She plucked an apron off a peg, then threaded the sash behind her waist to tie it on. “You thinkin’ you might be interested?”

“I’m interested.”

“You got the money?”

He hesitated again, unused to discussing such things with a woman, but under the circumstances, she might be the only one capable of it. It was hard to fathom. “I don’t have eight-hundred ninety-nine dollars, if that’s what you mean. And with all the banks broke and no one lending money, I don’t think I could come up with it, either, but I might be able to take on the payments for you.”

Her shoulders wilted. “We’d need more than the payments. Like I said, we’re heading to Tennessee. Clive’s going to start fresh out there. We can’t go empty-handed.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “How much do you need?”

“Bottom dollar would be two hundred, plus picking up these last two years of payments.”

It was an amazing deal, and bespoke their desperation if they were willing to let it go so cheaply. Still, a heaviness pressed against his chest. “I’m afraid I don’t have that much.”

Turning toward the stove, she stirred the cabbage. “How much have you got?”

“Forty-eight.”

The baby gurgled, waving his hands and making spit bubbles.

Mrs. Gusman tapped the spoon against the side of the pot, then turned back around. “I’m sorry, Mr. Wilder. If we had to, we could come down to one seventy-five, but not to forty-eight.”

He glanced into his parents’ room on the right. The room he was born in. The room he’d slept in. The footboard of a sturdy wooden bed with a patchwork quilt was just visible. He could have the only home he’d ever known for one seventy-five and two years of payments.

It might as well have been a hundred thousand for all the good it did him. He looked down. A bit of snow had fallen off his boot and made a muddy smudge on the wooden floor. It wasn’t the first time he’d ever tracked mud into this house, but he was sorely afraid it would be the last. He released a long breath. “Well, thank you for your time. I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

“No trouble.”

With a nod, he let himself out the front door, the lump in his throat so big he couldn’t swallow, much less breathe.

TIFFANY GIRLS’ WORKROOM 
¹⁶

“Worrying her lip, she glanced about the room. Aggie wrapped foil around cut pieces of glass, using beeswax as adhesive. Mary, the daughter of a portrait painter, worked on a new cartoon. Ella, who drank enough tea for the entire British Empire, selected glass for a window while Elizabeth worked as her partner cutting it.”

CHAPTER

26

W
e are behind, girls.” Mrs. Driscoll rose from the table, then began to pace. “With Louise married, Lulu home sick, and Theresa’s hand stiffening up again, we are losing a lot of ground.”

Flossie glanced about the studio. They might have only completed five windows, but they’d made inroads on five more and it was just a matter of time. Still, there were a dozen to do in all and every single one involved thousands of steps, thousands of pieces of glass, and thousands of hours.

“Must I remind you how much is at stake here?” Mrs. Driscoll stopped and grabbed the back of her chair. “What we are doing is of great significance. Millions of people from all over the globe will be attending the fair. Imagine what it will do for our sex if we accomplish our goal. Then imagine the damage if we don’t.”

Flossie hadn’t thought of that. She’d been so focused on her own goals she hadn’t really thought of the bigger picture. Still, she was growing weary of everything always being about gender. Did every move they make always have to be viewed through a lens that focused on how females were compared to males?

Mr. Wilder’s articles had been particularly fierce this week in his denunciation of the New Woman. She supposed that was inevitable, all things considered, but it saddened her just the same.

“I
know you are working hard.” Gripping the chair more firmly, Mrs. Driscoll leaned in toward them. “But you
must
work faster. The fair starts in one month. It is clear we will not be ready, but we mustn’t be any later than we absolutely have to be.”

Mona Van Ness, their errand girl, hurried into the workroom, her long black braid bouncing. She handed Mrs. Driscoll a note, then chatted quietly with Grace near the front.

Sighing, Mrs. Driscoll handed the note back. “Thank you, Mona. Mr. Mitchell told me to send you to the showroom next time I saw you.”

“I’ll go find him right now, then.” The girl waved to the rest of them, them hustled back out.

“It appears I need to go out to the factory in Corona.” Mrs. Driscoll shook her head. “I’ll probably be gone the entire day, so when I return tomorrow, I will be reviewing what each of you did and how quickly you did it. I challenge you to surprise me.”

Returning to their stations, each Tiffany Girl picked up her weapon, as it were, and answered the call to battle. Flossie wasn’t sure how to cut the glass more quickly yet still adhere to the shape of the paper template. Her arm and hand muscles had gained strength over the weeks, but some of the pieces were tiny and the cuts intricate. Still, she put her head down and bent her mind to the task.

Nan also sped up her work. Normally, she’d pass anywhere from a half to a full dozen colored sheets of glass in front of the easel before deciding on one. Today she simply chose the first sheet she tried. Flossie had long since learned that the selection wasn’t just about color, it was also about texture and transparency. Mrs. Driscoll even had the selectors stack their glass pieces behind each other sometimes in order to achieve the perfect color, or to project a third dimension, or to alter the transparency.

This fast and reckless method of Nan’s caused a great deal of glass to stack up on Flossie’s table in a very short amount of time.
The higher the piles, the more pressure Flossie felt, and the more anxious she grew. She managed to bite her tongue until Nan started pulling glass for Christ’s throne. It sat in the innermost spot of the entire window and it needed to be spectacular—the perfect color, the perfect texture, and the perfect amount of transparency.

Turning, Flossie sorted through a selection of rippled glass Nan had passed over and chose an iridescent goldenrod dotted with metallic-looking speckles. “What about this one?”

Nan huffed. “Hardly. You just worry about cutting the pieces I’ve chosen and be sure to line them up so the grain flows in the same direction.”

Flossie bit back her retort. What would Mrs. Driscoll say when she returned? Flossie didn’t fancy the idea of having to recut all these pieces simply because Nan couldn’t be bothered to slow down.

Grimacing, Nan placed a hand against her stomach. “I hope I’m not getting whatever it is that drove Lulu to leave yesterday.”

Flossie hoped so, too. The last thing she needed was to get sick. “Your stomach ails you?”

“It does.”

“Maybe you’d better rest. I’ve plenty of cutting to do.”

Rubbing her stomach, Nan glanced around at the others. “No, I’ll be all right.”

But throughout the next two hours, she continued to worsen, as did her selections. By noon, she wasn’t even holding the sheets up to the window. She simply grabbed colors, slapped a template onto them, and set them on Flossie’s table.

“Nan, it’s clear you feel wretched. Go home. I’ve plenty to do.”

After a great deal of waffling, Nan finally acquiesced. With her coat slung over her arm, she tapped a stack of glass she’d just put on Flossie’s table. “It’s imperative that you use these pieces for the nativity. Do you understand?”

“You needn’t worry. Everything will be fine.”

The moment she left, Flossie’s mood lifted. She’d not realized how oppressive Nan had become, but the sun shone brighter, the work went faster, and the other girls’ banter became infectious.