At about seven o’clock the morning after Easter, Spike and I rolled out of bed. While I no longer felt like a stuffed Christmas turkey, I wasn’t awfully hungry. Spike, however, not having partaken of so lavish a dinner as I—although he’d been given several sneaky pieces of lamb by pretty much everyone—held a different opinion on the matter of breakfast.
Therefore, after I donned my bathrobe, slid my feet into my slippers, opened my bedroom door and saw Vi standing at the range, I blinked and said, “Morning, Vi. Are you cooking again?”
She turned and smiled at me. “Of course I am, Daisy. Everyone needs a good breakfast in the morning.”
If she said so. I’d have been happy with a slice of cold lamb with a little mustard on it.
But that doesn’t matter. Because Ma, Vi, Pa and I had already dined, I offered to drive my mother and aunt to their workplaces before I kept the appointment I’d made to read the Ouija board and tarot cards for Mrs. Pinkerton. They both accepted with thanks. After partaking of a Spartan breakfast, I hastened to my bedroom and changed from bedclothes into day clothes. Wasn’t difficult. My closet, as well as I, suffered from my personal over-indulgence, because of my tendency to sew all the time. But I always bought fabrics when they were on sale, and I also sewed clothes for the entire family, so we all dressed well.
Quite a difference from when I was a little girl and, like most girls of my age and social standing, I possessed four blouses and two skirts. My, how times had changed by 1925!
After settling my hat on my head, I picked up my handbag, went to the living room, and scooped books off the “to-be-returned-to-the-library” table we keep beside the front door. Then I followed my aunt and mother out to the automobile. Then I carefully backed the Chevrolet out of the driveway, drove north on Marengo, dropped Ma off at the Hotel Marengo, and continued on to Orange Grove Street and the Pinkerton mansion.
Jackson, the keeper of the Pinkertons’ gate, let us in and gave the both of us a big smile. We smiled back, and I drove Vi to the back of the house. The servants’ entrance. When I came back to read the Ouija boards and tarot cards for Mrs. P, I’d use the front door, by jeepers.
Not that I care about status and society and privilege and wealth or anything of the sort, you understand.
Because I didn’t see Harold Kincaid’s bright red Stutz Bearcat decorating the circular drive of Mrs. Pinkertons’ house, I didn’t walk into the servants’ entrance with Aunt Vi, but only gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, waved farewell to the Pinkertons’ recently hired chauffeur, Cullen O’Hara, and tootled out past the row of deodars lining their drive. I kind of wondered to whom the bright yellow sports car sitting in the drive belonged, but not enough to get out of the machine and snoop.
As I left the palatial mansion, I waved to Jackson, who grinned and waved back at me, then drove to the nearby Pasadena Public Library, one of my favorite places on earth. The library was housed in a beautiful building, too, with turrets and spires and vaulted windows that made it look almost as much like a castle as some of the homes on Orange Grove. The pristinely maintained grounds surrounding the library even boasted a pond and a gazebo if anyone felt like reading a book in a gazebo.
I parked our lovely self-starting Chevrolet on Raymond Avenue and picked up the books I’d brought to return. Then I climbed out of the Chevy and walked around the corner to the library’s front door. As soon as I stepped foot in the library, I inhaled a lungful of library-scented air and decided Pasadena was the best place in the entire world in which to live, and this library was the nicest place in Pasadena. Except for home.
Which brings up a point. A new library was in the offing. At this juncture, I wasn’t sure what the city fathers (there were no city mothers I knew about) planned to do with this wonderful building, but in 1922 a bond issue had been approved for the erection of a new city hall, a new library and a new civic auditorium. From what I’d read in the Pasadena Star News, actual construction of the library was set to begin in May, which wasn’t even a month away.
I felt sad at the notion of never setting foot in this building again, but I’d seen sketches of plans for the new library in the newspaper and, if everything went as predicted, I probably wouldn’t actively hate the new building. I just hoped my favorite librarian, who would by then be Mrs. Robert Browning, would still work there. It took a will of iron to continue working after a woman got married—in Pasadena, California, anyway—but I had hopes for the future Mrs. Browning. I’d learned she actually possessed a will of iron during the preceding year or two.
And there she was, serenely sitting at her desk in the reference section of the library, her glasses perched on her nose, reading something. She’d undergone something of a transformation at the end of 1924, and had spiffed herself up some. I shall take a small bow here, since I was directly responsible for the “new” Miss Petrie. Mind you, Robert Browning had fallen in love with the “old” Miss Petrie, which proves him to be a man of character who values the inner woman over the outer.
Did that make any sense?
Well, it doesn’t matter. I loped over to Miss Petrie’s desk after I turned in my family’s already-read books. She looked up and positively beamed at me. And then she hauled out a whole ton of books she’d put aside for my family and me. She was wonderful.
“What a great bunch of books. Thank you so much, Regina.”
But she wasn’t through yet. “And here’s another one for your father. Tarzan and the Ant Men, by Mr. Edgar Rice Burroughs. I haven’t read it.”
“I don’t blame you.”
Regina and I exchanged a couple of smiles. But honestly. I read the first Tarzan book, and all I can remember is Jane What’s-Her-Name being lost and alone in an open boat on some river in Africa, the name of which I should probably remember but don’t. She was there for hours and hours and hours. Maybe even days. And Mr. Burroughs didn’t once mention sunburn.
If I, Daisy Gumm Majesty, were to sit or lie in an open boat on an African river, I’d be burned to a crisp by the third hour and dead from heat exhaustion by the fourth. Perhaps this points to a snippet of practicality I’d inherited from my mother. Anyhow, I’d never complain to Mr. Burroughs about the lack of reality portrayed in any of his many books. After all, he was rich and I wasn’t, which just goes to show how much reality means to the reading public.
“Um…” Regina hesitated. I lifted an eyebrow at her. “I just wondered if you knew what kinds of books your fiancé and that… um…interesting fellow read.”
“Mr. Prophet,” I said. “And I don’t know! How selfish of me not to ask them. I know they both like to read, too.”
“Ah,” said Regina. “Yes. Mr. Prophet. Anyhow, when he came in by himself a week or so ago, he got a card,” said Regina. “He seems…Um, he seems a rather unusual person. I don’t mean anything improper!” she hastened to assure me. “It’s only…It’s only…”
“It’s only that you’ve never seen a real, live, honest-to-goodness character out of the Old West in the flesh?” I said, trying to help her out.
“Um…Yes.”
“You’ll probably never see another one, either. His is a dying breed.” I felt terrible as soon as those words left my lips, mainly because they were true.
“Anyway, he’s helped us out a lot in the few short months we’ve known him. I guess he aims to remain here in Pasadena. He’s kind of old to be moving around the country, I think.”
“That’s…” Her voice petered out.
“Sad?” I suggested.
“Yes.”
“I think so, too.”
“And him with only one leg.”
“Yes.”
We sighed in unison then, and I scooped all the books from Regina’s desk, said, “See you soon. Thanks, Regina,” and headed for the check-out desk.