Love Comes Calling (6 page)

She refused to answer, just like I knew she would. Since she'd gotten married, unlike the rest of her old college friends, she hadn't gotten involved in anything at all. It was almost like she was trying to avoid everyone.

Griff leaned in toward the table as he addressed my mother. “Ellis is always busy, every time I see her.”

Mother put down her fork and gestured for the butler to collect the plates as she eyed me. “Yes. Ellis is very prolific. For every project she completes and cause she takes on, she seems to leave two unfinished.”

She made it seem as if I didn't even try! I wish she could be me for just one day so she'd see what a lot of trouble I went to in order to keep everything from turning out even worse. How would she like to wake up each morning knowing that as hard as she tried, no matter what she did, everything was likely doomed to failure before she even started? Sometimes I wondered if it was worth it to even get out of bed.

“Why don't we have dessert?” Father smiled as if everyone
was in agreement, no one had taken offense, and everything was fine.

As the sherry was poured, Griff asked after the telephone company. Telephones were my father's favorite project. Though he was chairman of the board of the telephone company, his interest went well beyond the proprietary. He was enamored of receivers and handsets and ringing tones of all sorts. And he was always talking about the modern lunchrooms and bathrooms and working hours the hello girls down at the switchboards had been given.

“Business is splendid! There are forty thousand telephones in the city and more being added every day. Next year I suppose we'll have to put in an automatic dialer—just no other way around it.”

Griff found my hand under the table and gave it a squeeze. “I've heard about those. You just pick up the handset and dial straight through. But . . . do you think people can really be depended on to dial by themselves, without an operator? I'd think it would be too confusing trying to remember a four-digit number.”

“That's what I told him.” Mother was looking at Griff with an approving eye. “How can anyone be expected to memorize a telephone number? And then dial it without making a mistake? If you let people do it for themselves, it's just asking for trouble. Leave it to the professionals, that's what I say.”

After dessert had been cleared away, after Lawrence and Marshall had dragged Griff out the back, Mother sighed
a long, heavy sigh as she glared at me from the foot of the table. “Would you like to explain yourself?”

What was the use of an explanation? Wouldn't it be better just to get to the point? “I'm sorry, I really am, but it wasn't my fault.”

“Nothing is ever your fault and still things keep happening! What you need, Ellis, is to focus and stop wasting all the chances life is giving you. You need to start . . .” She shook her head, but I knew what she wanted to say. I needed to start buckling down and applying myself. “You're not just anybody. You're an Eton. And if Etons just went around doing whatever they wanted, shirking their responsibilities, then what on earth would this world come to? Somebody, somewhere, has to step up and do for those who can't.
We
are those somebodies, Ellis. And you are one of us.”

Be somebody.

That's what I wanted. That's exactly what I wanted. I wanted to be somebody different. I wanted to be somebody famous. The leading lady. The one people would gaze at in the darkness of a movie palace and dream of becoming. For once in my life, I wanted to be the one everyone else wanted to be.

And being somebody is exactly what my mother wanted for me too. Although her Somebody wasn't my Somebody, given enough time, I was sure I could make her proud of me. Who wouldn't be proud of me when my name was up on a marquee, surrounded by blinking lights?

My father was looking at us with a mystified expression. “But . . . you said you were sorry, Ellis.” He glanced up at my mother. “Didn't she say she was sorry?”

Mother nodded.

“For . . . what? Exactly?”

My mother told him about the wine.

“But—! I don't understand how—!”

Mother's lips had folded into a grim line. “Go on, Ellis. Explain yourself.”

“I told one of the girls she could keep some grape juice in my closet. And being in the dark like that, I guess it started to . . . well . . .” It had done exactly what the label had warned it would do.

My father sighed. “I can guess what happened. But I don't understand why she would ask something like that of you. You do understand if anyone had found out about this, they might have thought the worst of you. Prohibition is the law in this land.”

I didn't see why they were so upset about it. It wasn't mine; I hadn't drunk any of it. And even if I had, I don't know why they would have cared. “We still drink sherry here. And you still drink sherry at the club. . . .”

“That's different.”

“But how?”

“Well . . . you see, the law isn't meant for people like us. It was meant for the poor, and all those immigrants, people who aren't able to handle their alcohol like we are.”

“So then why does it have to apply to me?” Not that I ever would drink alcohol myself. I couldn't stand the smell. It reminded me too much of Granny's cough tonic.

“It applies to you because you're an Eton. You have to set a good example. You might think we're old-fashioned, but your mother and I know about college hijinks, so we've allowed for some latitude in our expectations. But I know I speak for
both of us when I say we consider this incident beyond the pale. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

“You're saying . . . I should do as you say.”

“Exactly.”

“And not as you do.”

Mother and Father exchanged a glance. Father cleared his throat. “You've grown up living a sheltered life, so we know this can be difficult to understand. It's a bit complicated, the way Prohibition works, but trust us when we say that as reasonable adults who practice self-discipline, we understand what we're doing.”

“But I don't? Is that what you're saying?” I didn't mean to be testy, and honestly, I didn't care, but it didn't seem quite fair. I folded my napkin and put it on the table beside my plate. Then I stood.

Mother held out her hand as I walked by.

I put mine into it, and she drew me toward her, putting her other hand to my cheek. As I bent, she kissed me, squeezing my hand before letting it drop. “We just don't want you to fall in with the wrong element.”

“I won't.” At least I didn't plan on it, and I don't think anyone would quite consider Irene the wrong element, and even if she was, I wasn't falling in with her. I ought to have just left without saying anything else, but considering the circumstances, I didn't have much choice. “About the closet . . . ?”

That warm, rather maternal look in my mother's eyes sharpened with suspicion. “Yes?”

“When the grape juice exploded, you might say it got on most everything.”

Her brow rose. “And by that you mean?”

“The grape juice was really quite dark colored, and most of my spring and summer clothes were rather light colored and . . .” I'd done it again. I'd managed to extinguish every bit of lingering affection and replace it with disappointment and despair.

“Oh, Ellis.”

I started my summer off the next day at church, helping the Missionary Aid Society prepare some barrels to be shipped to a church in Manchuria. Mostly it involved sorting through huge piles of clothing that had been collected in spring and separating out girls' clothing from boys' and men's from women's.

It made me wish I had some money of my own to donate, but I'd used it all on dresses and movies and ice cream sodas. And even if I hadn't, I would have been saving it for a train ticket to Hollywood.

Much of the clothing appeared to have been pulled from trunks in which they'd been stored for ten or twenty years along with camphor and tobacco snuff. It made me want to pinch my nose. I held up a dress. “Don't you think . . . ?” It was so old-fashioned.

My mother looked over at me. “What did you say, Ellis?”

“It's just that . . . I wondered . . . are these clothes for the missionaries or the Manchurians?”

“I don't know. Why? Does it matter?”

I turned the dress round so she could see the high-collared, ruffled front yoke of it. “It might if those missionaries read
Ladies' Home Journal
.”

“I should think people who don't have very much would be happy with whatever they're given.”

Maybe. I folded it up and placed it on the pile waiting to be put into a barrel marked
For Ladies
. “Maybe someone can make something from it. Like . . . some sort of cushion.” Or something. “Do you think any of them even have one of those old corsets to go with it?” Granny still wore those sorts of contraptions, and I had often wondered if they weren't partly to blame for her chronic ill-temper.

“It's not how you look on the outside that's important.”

I knew that. I'd known that since forever. But wouldn't you tend to behave better if your outsides looked nice as well? “But no one's going to fit in any of these dresses if they don't have a corset.”

Mother was frowning. “You might be right. . . .”

I took the dress from the pile and walked over to Mrs. Cooper, who'd been bossing everyone around all morning. As I was explaining about how the dress was so old-fashioned and how it probably needed a corset and wondering whether anyone in Manchuria would be able to wear it at all, I was struck with inspiration. “If you want to give them away, then we could use them down at Radcliffe.”

“Radcliffe? For what?”

“For the theater.”

“The
theater
!” Her chins were quivering.

“Sure. That coat over there would be terrific for a dastardly villain, and this dress could maybe be used for some consumptive old granny and the dress over there could be a costume for a medieval lady, maybe, if we do Shakespeare next year—”

“These are meant for the missionaries!”

“But that's what I mean. Just because you send them doesn't mean they'll like them or even ever wear them, especially if they don't have any place to stage theatrical events.”

“What are you trying to say?”

My mother had come to stand beside us. “Ellis, I think that—”

“I'm just saying if
I
were sent all of these . . . I just wonder if they're really going to be very useful, that's all.”

“People who are destitute aren't in a position to be choosy.”

“Then maybe that's why we ought to be careful what we send them.”

“Are you saying our charity isn't appreciated?”

Was I? I guess . . . maybe . . . “Yes. I suppose I am.”

Her mouth fell open.

“We ought to collect money next autumn and send it to them so they can buy the kind of clothes they're used to wearing. They'd be new then . . . or at least not quite so old.”

She gasped. “But do you know what they wear over there?”

“No.” But it had to be something more fashionable than all of these discarded clothes. “Do you know?”

“Well . . . no. But I'm sure we wouldn't be sending barrels of clothes to them if their own clothing were adequate and appropriate.”

“I really think I should pack up all of these and have someone take them down to Radcliffe, and we could store them at the theater until next term when we can . . .” But
we
wouldn't be doing anything with them. I wouldn't be there next year.

Mother was tugging on my arm. “I think what would be nice is if you could sit down in this chair, Ellis.” She swung
one away from the table and pushed me down into it. “And you can read to us from the Scriptures as we finish packing these barrels.”