Loving Frank (36 page)

CHAPTER
47

B
y May it was clear that there would be no Japanese cook. The chef who had so delighted them in Tokyo was not simply delayed but, according to a brief note he sent in English, not interested in coming to Wisconsin at all. Mamah would have to launch a new search, and the competition for household help was stiff with summer coming on. Within days of the letter from Tokyo, Frank announced that he had found a new prospect. John Vogelsang, the man who ran the restaurant at Midway Gardens, told Frank he had just the solution, a wonderful woman from Barbados named Gertrude.

“Makes all the regular things and brilliant desserts, apparently,” Frank said to Mamah one evening. “She’s got a husband who would come along. Vogelsang says he’s an educated fellow who pitches in, does a variety of things. We could use another chore man, don’t you think?”

“Why is Vogelsang willing to give them up?”

“With his connections, he can get good help in Chicago any day. It’s a little favor to us, I think. He said he thought these two would like being out in the country.”

Mamah wavered. It would be not only one person but two. As usual, there was the uncertainty about money. Frank had gotten a small advance for Midway Gardens. There would be money coming in for the Imperial Hotel, but when, no one knew.

“Why don’t you invite them to work for a weekend?” she said. “Let’s see how they do.”

WHEN GERTRUDE CARLTON
arrived from Chicago, she carried a pillowcase full of food. She was young, with smooth brown skin and a gentle, confident manner. Dressed in a white waist and blue serge skirt, she carried a parasol above her Sunday hat.

Mamah showed her around the kitchen and the garden. The young woman stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the vegetable patch, approval flitting across her face. “Peppers,” she said.

“Not nearly ripe, though,” Mamah said.

“Don’t worry, I got some, fresh pick.” She bent over and yanked up a handful of chives and parsley.

Back in the kitchen and covered in an apron she’d brought, Gertrude wrapped a bright scarf around her head. Mamah’s jaw fell slack at the food she took out of the pillowcase. Guavas. Okra. Limes.

“My land, where did you find those things?”

Gertrude laughed. “Mr. Carlton got friends.” Her voice had a sunny, singsong quality. In that moment Mamah saw a girl more than a woman. How old could she be, twenty-two?

When Gertrude’s hand brought out jars of red and yellow spices, Mamah sighed wistfully. “Mr. Wright prefers simple food. Fish and chicken. Potatoes.”

Gertrude smiled. “Just you wait. I make simple food.”

“We have chickens. Do you want to cook a chicken tonight?”

“Tomorrow. Tonight fish from the river. Mr. Carlton will catch some.”

“Mr. Wright doesn’t like fried things.”

“I won’t fry, madam.”

“Or spices.”

Gertrude wore a look of forbearance. “Just a little ’pon the fish, madam.”

JULIAN CARLTON SEEMED
an odd match for his wife. He was about thirty, small but well built and handsome, with a serious demeanor made more so by his immaculate shirt and tie. His English was clipped and British, unlike his wife’s lilting dialect.

In the courtyard outside, Frank was pointing to windows that needed to be washed.

“Let Julian go fish,” Mamah called to him. “He’s going to catch our main course.”

The couple spent that Saturday in a flurry of activity. By two o’clock Julian had caught six fish. Smells of garlic, onions, and curry soon wafted from the kitchen into the living room, where they met the lemon scent of the furniture polish he was spreading over the chairs and table. For the past couple of hours, he had been a blur of motion, polishing silver, pressing linens, climbing up a ladder to clean windows.

At dinnertime Mamah and Frank walked into the living room to find him dressed in a white jacket.

“Madam,” he said, nodding slightly. He escorted Mamah, followed by Frank, to the dining table, where he pulled out a chair for her, then one for him. The napkins he had pressed that afternoon were arranged in elaborate folds on the plates. In a matter of moments he was bringing food in to them on a covered silver tray he’d found, carrying it above his shoulder on his palm. When he returned to the kitchen, Mamah shot Frank a worried look.

“This is too much,” she said. “This house is too small for formalities.”

But when they cut into the fish, it was tender and savory, seasoned in a delicate, unfamiliar way that had to be Caribbean, and when dessert arrived—a simple apple pie but perhaps the best either of them had ever tasted—they looked at each other and grinned.

“Where did Gertrude learn to bake like that?” Mamah asked Julian when he came back to clear the plates.

“I made the dessert tonight, madam.”

“When did you have time? And where did you learn to make an apple pie?”

“I was a Pullman porter, madam, before I went to work for the Vogelsangs. I learned how to do whatever needed to be done.”

“So that’s it,” she whispered when Julian was out of earshot. “That explains the formality, the way he carries the tray. My father always said that Pullman porters are better trained than the world’s best waiters. That white jacket he’s wearing? It’s a porter’s jacket. They buy their own when they go to work for Pullman.”

Her father had been a great admirer of the men who worked the sleeping cars. Julian’s formality suddenly seemed familiar and endearing. His bearing was dignified, respectful, but not fawning.

“And I know where the guavas came from. New Orleans. I’ll bet he has his porter friends bring food up to Chicago for him.”

“Well, the fish couldn’t be better,” Frank said. “What do you think? Should we hire them?”

“If they’ll have us.”

WHILE THE CARLTONS
cleaned up inside, Mamah and Frank sat out in the garden under the big oak. It was early June, and the mosquitoes had not yet become a menace. Frank was rarely home now. Midway Gardens was to open June 23, and the place was nowhere near finished. Everyone was in a panic, he told her, from the construction foreman to the orchestra conductor to the investors.

Frank regaled her with stories about life at the construction site, about the sylphlike young woman working as a model for Iannelli, the sculptor, who was creating the mold for the concrete sprites that would decorate the winter garden. He described how she walked every day past the leering union men to the sculptor’s shack, her head held high. How the sculptor faced away as she stripped off her clothes, then turned back when she gave the word. How the girl stood with both arms raised over her head for hours on end holding an imaginary sphere, while the artist shaped her round breasts and muscular thighs from his block of wax.

“What a professional,” Mamah said admiringly.

“I wish Iannelli were half the pro.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Ah, he’s bullheaded. I told him precisely how to change the tilt of her head, and he ignored me. He spent an entire week making another model that was no better.”

“What did you say to him?”

“Words are useless with him.”

Her eyebrows went up when she saw Frank’s face flush. “What did you do?”

He shifted in the slatted chair and played with the crease in his pants. “Poked a couple of holes in the damn thing.”

The air went out of her chest. She waited. As Frank let go of a few details, the scene began to form in her mind. Frank entering the sculptor’s shack alone, raising the cloth covering over the wax model only to discover a new version as wrong as the last. Frank lifting the tip of his cane reflexively and thrusting it into the soft eyes of the figure, then covering up the model for Iannelli to make his own rude discovery.

“I lost my head,” he said.

Mamah considered the battle at hand, judging whether to choose it. Frank was under pressure; everyone at the site was short-tempered. She began to speak but held her tongue. She did not belong in this fight.

“I’ll start over with him on Monday—apologize,” he said.

Mamah relaxed and leaned back in her chair.

The only sound in the evening quiet was the clatter of pans in the kitchen. When the noise ended, she saw the light in the bunk room go on.

“Do you think the Carltons will survive all right?”

“They want the job. Vogelsang says they’re churchgoers. I’m sure they’ll hook up with a congregation.”

“That’s just my point. In Chicago, even in Oak Park, there’s the Colored Baptist Church. They would find friends there, go out in the evening. But up here I don’t know what they’ll run into.”

“They’ll make their way. I’m not worried about it.” He ran his hand along her forearm. “What are you going to do now that you’ll have some spare time?”

She breathed in contentedly. “It’s a luxury to think about.”

“Is Ellen out of the doghouse?”

“You mean will I go back to translating for her? Yes, I will.”

“And all this business of who she authorized to do what?”

“Oh, I’m not letting her off the hook on that account. And heaven knows, I don’t agree with her that women will somehow doom the human race if they go out into the workplace in large numbers. Still, I don’t believe anyone else has written as powerfully about personal freedom or reforming the institution of marriage. What can I say? She’s not perfect, but I can’t forget what she did for me.”

“She should be grateful to
you.
Ralph Seymour called the office this week and said sales of
The Woman Movement
have been quite brisk.”

“Pardon me while I gloat.” Mamah chuckled to herself. “That’s good news for Ralph, too. I remember when his head proofreader came to him midway through
Love and Ethics
and said, ‘Mr. Seymour, I have been with you twenty years, but I would rather give up my job than finish this book.’ Ralph had the courage to publish Ellen when others wouldn’t.”

“Ralph agrees completely with us. Ellen Key is the new star of the movement in this country. She never would have gotten to such a place if you hadn’t translated her.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice if she would just acknowledge that? We shall see. I have a couple of essays to do still. But I’m nearly finished with the work she authorized. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about doing something of my own.”

Frank’s face lit up. “Funny you should mention that. I ran into Arnell Potter at the station when I came in this morning. He’s ready to retire. Sell the newspaper. And I was just thinking, why don’t we buy it? Why don’t you become the new editor of the
Weekly Home News
? You’d be dazzling. I could write a guest editorial every once in a while.”

Mamah began to laugh. “You’re not serious.”

“Don’t say no yet. Just consider it.”

“Ah, the ironies are rich.”

“I know a country paper is small potatoes. But think of the potential. If you wrote your own stories—and you probably would at first—you’d have an official reason to call people up and say, ‘May I come out and look at that prize hog everybody’s talking about?’”

Mamah smiled at the prospect.

“You think I’m kidding, but I’m not. You’d be brilliant at it. The minute people meet you, they’ll love you. Everyone does. And you’d actually care about their damn hogs. I know you. Anyway, it’s something that could work for you, especially if you’re not going to come to Japan for the whole time.”

Mamah had already told him that she would not be going for the duration when the Imperial Hotel work began in earnest. Her mind was made up. Six months had been too long the last time. Frank had not taken the news well, but the fact that he was discussing it meant that the idea was finding some acceptance.

“Look, Mame, if you want your own project, this is a great one. God knows it would change our profile around here. And you don’t have to do it Arnell’s way. Break some new ground—introduce Ellen Key to the ladies of Iowa County. Get them buzzing about erotic love.”

Mamah chuckled again. “Now, there’s a notion.”

“Sleep on it a couple of nights. That’s all I’m saying.”

THE NEWSPAPER IDEA
kept her wide awake that night.

Mamah played with the editor role, imagining herself reading the wire service messages as they clacked over the telegraph machine. What could be sweeter than to commandeer the enemy’s ship? But another idea had taken hold in her mind. She believed she was ready to write her own book.

Freedom of the Personality.
She said it out loud. Too stuffy for a title, she thought, when it came into her ears. But that would be the gist of it. The book had to be less philosophical than Ellen’s dense prose. Simpler, more direct.

By morning the concept had shaped itself into something new. She woke up knowing she would collect stories of contemporary women, all kinds of women who had struggled against the odds to make authentic lives for themselves.

The idea made Mamah’s heart leap. It was too expensive to travel around interviewing. For now she would make up a sheet of questions to mail to those who immediately came to mind. Ellen Key. Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Else Lasker-Schüler. And others who weren’t famous at all. If things got better between them, she would ask Lizzie, too.