Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause (6 page)

“I suppose that’s the point,” Geneva said, “but how are they going to find a dress large enough for Delby?”

“Bessie’s making one from some of her old dotted Swiss curtains,” Charlie said. “I believe the wedding party is complete—or I hope it is. The first rehearsal’s tonight.”

Ignoring Phoebe’s frown, Lily Moss blotted her mouth with her white linen napkin, leaving orange smears of Tangee lipstick. “Well, I think the whole thing’s silly! Grown men dressing up in women’s clothing. You’d think they could find better ways to spend their time.”

The room came to attention as Miss Dimple rested her fork on her plate. “I don’t believe any effort to support our country could be considered a waste of time.”

Silence like a blanket of snow descended on the diners as Lily flushed and reached for her water glass with a trembling hand. Charlie wanted to stand and cheer for Miss Dimple’s stand, but she couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for Lily, who never seemed to think before she spoke.

To her relief, Velma Anderson spoke up. “Well, I can hardly wait to see it. That new coach, Jordan McGregor, has talked our own Froggie Faulkenberry into being the maid of honor.”

“That I have to see!” Geneva said, thinking of their stuffy school principal parading down the aisle in lace. She turned to Annie. “What do the younger girls plan to sing?”

“We’re working on a little dance routine to ‘Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.’ I think it should be fun—if Sebastian has the patience to put up with us,” Annie said.

Sebastian Weaver, who was the lone man at the table, folded his napkin and stood. “If I can tolerate seven high school couples … how do you say it … jitterbugging … to ‘The Two O’Clock Jump,’ I don’t think I’ll have a problem with that little group.”

Odessa thumped a tray down on the sideboard. “You not leaving now, are you? You gonna miss dessert.”

Even with sugar being rationed, along with just about everything else, Odessa continued to work miracles in the kitchen and usually managed to provide a sweet of some kind.

“I hate to miss that, but I have a class in half an hour and will have to hurry to make it.” The high school was almost a mile away, and almost everyone walked to save on gas. Eyeing the dessert, Sebastian hesitated on his way out. “Looks good. What is it, Odessa?”

“I found this here recipe for War Cake in one of them ladies’ magazines. Here, you can take a piece with you.”

“Why do they call it War Cake?” Velma asked as Sebastian left, happily munching.

“’Cause it ain’t got no sugar in it,” Odessa explained. “Just honey. Be a lot better with a good lemon sauce, but we don’t have enough sugar for that, either.”

Charlie found the dessert delicious even without the sauce. The new choral director had seemed to enjoy it, too. She wondered how he got along with the rowdy teenaged boys under his supervision as he was basically shy and had been raised in Austria, so his accent was sometimes a handicap because of the war with Germany.

Sebastian Weaver had been gone only a minute or two when he reappeared with a handful of letters. “The mail just came, so I thought I’d bring it in,” he said, depositing the small stack by Phoebe’s plate.

Annie jumped to her feet. “Oh, is there anything for me?”

“Just some old letter from a Cadet Frazier Duncan, but you wouldn’t be interested in that,” Geneva, looking over Phoebe’s shoulder, pretended to toss it aside.

Miss Dimple received a letter from her brother, Henry, and Velma, one from her sister in Augusta. Charlie finished her dessert and excused herself from the table, intending to wait on the porch for Annie to read her letter before walking back to school together, but Phoebe brushed suddenly past her, dropping several pieces of mail in her hurry.

Charlie stooped to collect what appeared to be a water bill, a postcard from a former roomer who had moved away, and an advertisement from Rich’s department store in Atlanta. “Wait, Miss Phoebe. You dropped something!” she called after her.

But her hostess had already disappeared down the hall to the back of the house, and there was only one word for the look on her face.
Fear.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

Dimple Kilpatrick seldom worried. It did no good to dwell on conditions one could not change, but if there was something she
could
do to improve a situation, she believed in doing what her father had referred to as “stepping up to the plate.”

When the other teachers left for school after the midday meal that day, Miss Dimple gathered up her leather handbag decorated with colorful yarn flowers, along with her umbrella, just in case she spied litter along the way, and left them in Phoebe’s front parlor. According to the porcelain clock on the mantel, she had more than enough time to get back to school before the first bell rang.

And then she made her way down the long hallway, knocked on Phoebe Chadwick’s bedroom door, and “stepped up to the plate.”

*   *   *

Phoebe opened her door only a few inches to see who was standing there, but it was enough for Dimple to notice the woman had been crying, and although she quickly brought up a hand to hide her mouth, it wasn’t soon enough to conceal her quivering lips.

Dimple spoke softly and calmly, as she would to a sobbing first grader. “Phoebe, dear, I don’t mean to intrude, but it’s obvious that you’re upset, and I want to help if I can. You haven’t received bad news about Harrison, have you?”

Phoebe shook her head silently, but she didn’t step back and continued to hold the door barely open. Miss Dimple didn’t see how the young man could be in danger this soon after his induction into the service, but casualties didn’t just happen on the battlefield. Also, she doubted if Phoebe had a chance to read the contents of a letter before she ran from the room. Yet
something
had arrived in the mail that day to cause her friend such distress, and it had to have been something she would immediately recognize as trouble.

It was obvious that Phoebe wasn’t going to confide in her or invite her into her room, and Dimple Kilpatrick wasn’t the barging-in type. She stepped back to assure Phoebe of that. “We’ve been friends for a long time, and I hope you know you can count on me—” she began.

Phoebe fumbled for a handkerchief and blew her nose. “Thank you, but I’m all right, really. Must’ve eaten something that upset my stomach.”

Then we all did, Dimple thought, since everyone at the table had eaten the same thing, but she only smiled and said she hoped her friend would soon be feeling better. Phoebe thanked her and closed the door, but not before Dimple saw the envelope on the table behind her, and that it didn’t have an address on the front at all—only a name.

*   *   *

Josephine Carr and her sister, Louise, along with their neighbor Bessie Jenkins and several others from the area, worked three days a week at the ordnance plant in Milledgeville, where munitions were processed for the war, and Charlie knew if her mother wasn’t there when she got home after school on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, she had probably stopped off at her aunt Lou’s.

That afternoon she found the two of them in her aunt’s kitchen drinking iced tea and nibbling on something that smelled heavenly.

“Spiced icebox cookies,” Aunt Lou explained as Charlie sniffed her way into the room. She offered a heaping plate. “Made with molasses and a little brown sugar. I thought I’d give them a try. Might make some for that little party we’re giving for the McGregors next month.”

“Mmm … good!” Charlie reached for another. Unlike her sister, Jo, Lou Willingham was a fantastic cook, and Charlie managed to stop in for a visit and a snack as often as possible.

“Did you get the cologne for Bessie?” her mother asked. Their neighbor was celebrating her birthday the next day, and Jo had invited her to join them for supper.

Charlie patted her handbag. “They only had one bottle left at Lewellyn’s.” Bessie was fond of Yardley’s Old English Lavender and had hinted to Jo that she was almost out. “Sometimes it makes me feel kinda funny to go in there,” she added. “I can still see Daddy in the back filling prescriptions with Phil.” Her father, Charles Carr, and Philip Lewellyn had been partners in the local drugstore before he died of a heart attack when Charlie was in high school.

Her mother nodded. “I know. I just try not to think about it.”

“So, what’s going on at school, Charlie?” Lou Willingham, noticing, no doubt, the look of sadness on her sister’s face, poured a glass of tea for Charlie and replenished the others. “I know you must’ve picked up some news at Phoebe’s.”

Charlie smiled. If her aunt didn’t know about something, it probably hadn’t happened. She told them how Miss Dimple had set Lily Moss straight about the womanless wedding. “And guess who’s going to be the groom? Harris Cooper!”

Her aunt laughed. “At least he won’t have to wear a dress. I guess I’d better dust off Ed’s old tuxedo since he’s to be father of the bride. I hope he can still get in it.”

“Annie tells me she tried to bribe Willie Elrod into being the flower girl,” Charlie said. “Told him he could be the pitcher for a whole month when they choose teams for softball during recess, but Willie said he’d rather wrestle an alligator than wear a dress! Heck, he usually ends up pitching anyway.” She shrugged. “They’ll probably have to use one of the younger boys who hasn’t started school yet.”

“Has Phoebe heard any more from her niece’s son, Harrison?” Jo asked. “I understand she took it pretty hard when the boy was drafted. He can’t be more than eighteen.”

“Nineteen, I believe,” Charlie said. “Too young, but then so many of them are. She hasn’t mentioned him lately, but something came in the mail today that seemed to upset her a lot.”

Lou frowned. “Do you know what it was?”

“She left the room in a hurry, and I didn’t know quite what to do. I think she just wanted to be left alone.” Charlie sipped her tea and made a face. “Ugh! Is there saccharin in here?”

“Well, there
is
a war on, you know,” her aunt reminded her, but she smiled when she said it. People used the expression so much it had become sort of a joke to help ease the reality that, because of the war, scarcity was a fact of life.

“I remember when Phoebe married Monroe Chadwick,” Lou said. “It was the first big wedding we’d ever been to—I must’ve been about sixteen. Her gown was made of Brussels lace, and her hat looked like it had yards and yards of tulle on it. I thought she looked like a princess!”

“I’ll never forget it,” Jo said. “Phoebe told me later that her mother had made that dress. Like most of us she came from a family of modest means.”

Her sister snorted. “I don’t think Phoebe ever felt accepted by Monroe’s clan.”

“Isn’t that Monroe Chadwick’s brother who owns the bank?” Charlie asked.

Her aunt made a face. “Hubert. Heart as cold as a well digger’s butt.”

“
Louise!
” Jo gasped. “What would Mama say if she could hear you talk like that?”

Louise Willingham laughed. “I reckon she’d say I sounded just plain
common,
but it’s the truth, and you know it, Jo. Both Hubert Chadwick and that wife of his act like the Baptist church would dissolve into dust if they weren’t there every time the doors open.”

Charlie reached for another cookie. “I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t love Phoebe,” she said.

“Oh, well, they supposedly have important relatives in Atlanta—a judge or something,” her mother explained. “Served in the state legislature for several years.”

“Monroe was into politics, too,” Lou said. “Lord, he was mayor here forever, and ran for Congress a couple of times, remember? I never understood what Phoebe saw in him. Always seemed a bit of a stuffed shirt to me. And now I hear Hubert’s son—you know, the tall one with the receding chin—is thinking of running for governor.”

“Phoebe’s been a widow almost ten years, hasn’t she?” Jo said. “I thought maybe she’d marry again, but she never seemed interested in anybody else.”

“Too bad they never had children. She should’ve had a houseful,” Charlie said. “She absolutely dotes on Harrison.”

“She was that way about his mother, too—her sister’s daughter. Remember Kathleen, Jo? I always thought she was such a pretty child. Her mother used to bring her here for visits in the summers, and Phoebe would always entertain for them.”

“I don’t suppose we heard from your brother today,” Jo asked her daughter as she glanced at the clock and gathered up her belongings.

“You know I would’ve brought it along if we had,” Charlie said. “And we did get a long letter from him last week.”

“But that was last week.” Josephine Carr knew all too well that during wartime, a lot could happen in a week. “Anything from Will or Ned?”

Charlie shook her head. She and her sister raced to the mailbox every day for news from Delia’s young husband, Ned, who was serving in Italy, and Will Sinclair, whose greatest fear was that the war would be over before he completed his training as a fighter pilot.

*   *   *

Annie was onstage with the fifth- and sixth-grade girls when Charlie arrived at the high school auditorium for rehearsals that Friday night. In fact it seemed that all of those involved in the entertainment were present on time and had been marked accordingly by Emmaline, who sat in the front row, notebook in hand. It was surprising what fear could do to a person, Charlie thought as she slipped into a seat to wait until she was called. She, Delia, Millie, and Geneva were to portray fairy-tale characters in a brief sketch, and she hoped they would be able to run through their part soon, as she had a stack of papers to grade when she got home.

“I guess we’d better take a few minutes to look over these posters the children made, as I know Buddy wants to get them circulated,” Delia whispered to Emmaline during a lull in the rehearsals. Most of the contestants had colored or painted their entries on pieces cut from cardboard, and Buddy Oglesby had stored them as neatly as possible in a box beside the stage.

“I have already made my selection, and I’m sure you’ll agree it’s the best one by far,” the woman replied.