Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse. Faith Sullivan
Howard Schroeder, and his wife, Elsie, pulled out chairs.
“Fruit punch?” Anna teased Howard, looking at his glass, her heroic laughter audible at wonderful distances. Elsie Schroeder peered around, anxious lest their table appear raucous.
“Elsie here signed the pledge,” Howard said. “I keep tellin’ her I never signed the darn thing, but still I gotta be a long way from home b’fore I can get next to spirits.”
Anna laughed. “That’s the advantage to being Catholic,” she told him, lifting her glass. Elsie pursed her lips but said nothing.
“These chairs—” Howard confided, “rented from an outfit in Chicago. Brought in on the train. How ‘bout that? None of yer borrowed church chairs that collapse under a fella.”
“Excuse me, please,” Elvira interrupted. “Anyone need something from the buffet?” She left the table.
“That’s a good girl,” Howard said of Elvira when she was out of earshot. “She’s the pet down at the store.” To Nell he whispered, “She’s been practicing her manners on us. Wants to be like a lady, she says.”
“I told her a lady is someone with a good heart. She thinks there’s more to it,” Nell told him.
“Too many girls these days are trying to be a somebody,” Elsie said. “Putting themselves forward, my mother called it.” Elsie’s was a voice one might hear exclaiming, “I don’t think I’ve ever been completely well.”
Taking umbrage, Anna said, “Elvira wants to make something of herself. If that’s putting herself forward, I’m for it.”
Straightening, Elsie observed, “Getting married and keeping house was good enough for some of us.”
“Not everybody’s cut from the same cloth,” the unmarried Anna said, rising. “May I refill someone’s drink?”
As Anna wandered away, Nell asked, “Does anyone know where George and Cora will honeymoon?”
Howard lifted his chair away from the table and crossed his legs. “France and Italy, his dad told me. They’ll come home in the fall. By that time, the new house’ll be ready.”
“The Lundeens are building George a new house?”
“Building themselves one.”
“Where?”
“On Second Avenue, across from the school. George loves this old house, grew up in it,” he said, gesturing toward it. “So Juliet—Mrs. Lundeen—said, ‘take it.’”
“Wasn’t that kind.”
“Well, he’s an only child. They dote on him.”
And so the conversation continued. After ten minutes, Nell missed Elvira. Ah, there she was, at the drinks table—but seemingly caught in a trance. Was it the wedding couple she was staring at? Moments later, though, she was holding a glass of punch and returning arm in arm with Anna.
While guests basked in the warm afternoon, Juliet Lundeen made her way from table to table, thanking everyone for coming. “We’ll soon be getting to the toasts,” she warned, “so be sure your glasses are full.” Laying a hand on Elvira’s shoulder, she said, “My, but you look pretty. Is the gown new?”
“Yes, ma’am. For my birthday.”
“Don’t tell me today’s your birthday?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m seventeen.”
Juliet bent and kissed the girl’s cheek. “I wish you the same as George and Cora—a lifetime of happiness. Now, before you leave, take a satin rosette from the cake table. There’s one for each woman.” At this, she moved on, telling them that the two servers in charge of drinks would be coming around to refill glasses.
From beneath her lashes, Elvira surveyed the others, hoping they had noted Juliet including her among the women. And when the servers came around, Elvira requested champagne. “For the toasts,” she told Nell—a statement, not a question.
Nell worried about the second glass, and she knew that Elsie Schroeder’s eye was bent in their direction. “Just this once,” Nell said. “We don’t want people talking.”
Toasts were drunk—Laurence Lundeen’s, “It is fortunate when your only child is the one you’d hoped for, and his bride is the daughter you’d have chosen. To George and Cora!”
From a table of family intimates, a gentleman of high color and assurance was the last to rise. Lifting his glass, he said, “As a Dutch uncle, I’m allowed to offer advice: After ‘I love you,’ the four happiest phrases in the language of marriage are: ‘I’m sorry,’ ‘What do you think?’, ‘It’s just what I wanted,’ and ‘Let’s have a glass of beer.’” Laughter. “Cora and George.”
Nell looked inquiry at Anna, who leaned toward her. “John Flynn. Lawyer.” Cupping her mouth with her hand and nodding significantly, she added, “Widower.”
Later, the bridal couple, wearing street clothes, were seen off in a festooned buggy destined for the depot and the Chicago-bound train. Nell and Elvira rose now to thank the Lundeens and say their good-byes. As she and Anna followed the girl, Nell noted that Elvira was not altogether steady on her feet.
At the gate, drawing on her newly acquired “trimmings,” Elvira managed to blurt at the Lundeens, “Thank you for a grand time. Everything was . . . grand,” before dashing headlong down the drive, pulling the handkerchief from her waistband for the second time that afternoon.
“She’s a little overcome by it all,” Nell explained, and hurried to follow.
It wasn’t until Elvira reached the park across the street and slowed that Nell caught up. “What on earth . . .” she began, clutching the stitch in her side.
Elvira sank onto a bench, weeping and bending over the side to vomit. Nell dug in her bag for a handkerchief. Emptied and weak, Elvira laid her head on the back of the bench, eyes closed.
“What’s going on, Elvira?”
The girl shook her head slowly, not opening her eyes. “Nothing,” she whispered. “I am so sad. That is all that is going on.”
DURING THE REMAINDER OF THAT SUMMER, Elvira begged for trimmings and more trimmings. “Teach me how to set a table! Proper!” Or how to carry on polite conversation—and what was polite conversation?
Before marrying Donal Ryan and moving west, Nell’s mother had been in service in Boston. She knew how things were done; Nell might have grown up in homesteading poverty, but she had “better ways,” as Mam would say, so now Nell could only imagine Elvira’s sense of inadequacy.
To Nell’s satisfaction, however, Elvira wanted at last to read—good books. “Nothing too hard to start out,” she cautioned, so Nell brought home fifth- and sixth-grade readers. But Elvira’s country-school education had been solid, as far as it went, so it wasn’t long before she graduated to adult books on loan from Juliet Lundeen.
For all Nell’s delight in Elvira’s progress, she was disquieted. Behind Elvira’s new needs lay a troubling something. And the normally chatty and candid child was silent regarding that something.
Autumn exploded in a flash of gold. School reopened, the young Lundeens returned from Europe, and George’s parents moved into a substantial new house across from the school and half a block off