The last of the leaves had long since disappeared in the November rainstorms, leaving vacant spaces of sky among Dr. Thurston’s tree branches. Wagons passed our house, carrying load after load of coal to feed the asylum’s giant furnaces. The locked garden had all but disappeared in the snow. We were so bundled on our way to school that we could hardly move, and the horses on John’s farm wore robes of ermine.
Mrs. Luth was nice enough, helping us bake Christmas cookies and even knitting a scarf for each of us as a present, but you couldn’t really talk with her like you could with Eleanor, and Papa was busy with The Closed Door.
It was the week after Christmas when Carlie said, “I’ve got an idea. Let’s have Eleanor come for dinner. Then she and Papa could sing together.” I guessed what she was thinking. It was what I was beginning to think too. Maybe it wasn’t proper for Eleanor to live with us because Papa was a widower. But suppose he and Eleanor got married; then Eleanor would be here all the time. “You ask,” Carlie said.
My chance came when Papa had a visit from a famous psychiatrist who had come to see the asylum especially to meet Papa. Papa brought Dr. Magnum home. It was snowing out, and they arrived with little hats of white on top of their own hats. Dr. Magnum was a small, busy man with black chin whiskers like the Thurstons’ Scotch terrier. Papa carried him off to his study as if he were something precious, a bit of gold or an expensive diamond. Mrs. Luth brought them many cups of coffee, and Carlie and I could hear Dr. Magnum’s high, sharp terrier voice yipping and then Papa’s deeper voice like a German shepherd barking. The yipping and barking went on for over an hour, and at last Dr. Magnum and Papa emerged from the study. Dr. Magnum shook our hands and yipped some pleasant words at us, making his chin whiskers go up and down.
After he left, Papa said, “Well, that was most gratifying. Dr. Magnum has read my articles, and he came all this way to tell me that he believes in my theory of mental illness.” Papa was all puffed up and grinning.
At once I pounced. “Papa, can we invite a friend to have dinner with us?”
Papa’s mind had followed the terrier out the door, and he had hardly heard what I asked of him. “Whatever you like, Verna. Now you must excuse me. Dr. Magnum has given me some excellent ideas for the book. Go out and play. I must have quiet.”
“But Papa, it’s getting dark and it’s snowing out,” Carlie said.
“Anyhow, it’s time for supper,” I said.
“Yes, so it is. Tell Mrs. Luth I will have my supper in my study.”
Papa closed the door to his study behind him. I ran for pen and ink.
“Tell Eleanor to come right away,” Carlie said, “before Papa asks who’s coming.”
“Sunday afternoon is the only time Eleanor has off, so it will have to be next Sunday.” Carefully, with Carlie looking over my shoulder, I wrote the letter.
January 23, 1901
Dear Eleanor,
We would like to invite you to have dinner with us next Sunday. You could come home with us after church.
Sincerely,
Verna and Carlie
“Mrs. Luth,” I asked, “could Carlie and I have supper a little later tonight? We have an emergency letter we have to take to the asylum for Papa. Papa is having his supper in his study, and you could leave ours in the oven.”
Nothing in the world bothered Mrs. Luth. She never asked questions. Now all she said was: “It’ll be in the oven.”
We looked to be sure Papa was still in his study, and then, after flinging on our coats and hats and tugging on our boots, we ran along the snowy path from one lighted house to the next. The snow stuck to our eyelashes and crept into our boots. We made footprints up the stairway of the asylum and left the note for Eleanor in the office. “You’ll be sure she gets it?” Carlie said.
The receptionist sighed and said, “You can watch me put it in her mailbox yourself.”
On the way home Carlie asked, “Should we invite a minister?”
“A minister? What do you mean?”
“Well, if we want them to get married, you have to have a minister.”
“Carlie, for heaven’s sake. It takes time for people to decide if they want to get married, and then you have to plan the wedding and everything.”
The next evening Papa came home with an envelope addressed to me. I tore it open and found a note from Eleanor saying she would be glad to have dinner with us. Without thinking, I said, “She’s coming,” and danced Carlie around.
“What is this all about, Verna?” Papa asked.
“Eleanor is coming for dinner on Sunday.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“We asked you last night just before supper if we could have a friend, and you said yes. Eleanor is a friend.”
Papa looked very serious. “Verna, you will have to write her again and explain that there was a mistake. It is very inappropriate to invite a young woman to dinner into a home where there is no wife.”
Carlie’s face scrunched up and turned red. I said, “Papa, it would be rude to write her not to come. We already invited her, and she said yes.”
Papa thought for a minute. “Mrs. Luth is not even here on Sundays, so there will be no one to make a dinner.”
Carlie said, “She leaves cold things for us in the icebox.”
“That is hardly a company dinner, Carlie,” Papa said.
“We’ll make a special dinner for her ourselves,” I said. “I know how to cook. Eleanor let me cook with her all the time, and Aunt Maude left a lot of her recipes.”
Papa said, “You have done a foolish thing, girls. We will leave it for now, but I must consider how it can best be remedied.”
I didn’t want to think about any remedies. Eleanor was coming. I was sure once Papa and Eleanor were at the same table, everything would be fine.
On Saturday I coaxed Mrs. Luth into baking a cake for Sunday, and Carlie and I went off to the glasshouse to beg Louis for flowers for the table. Sunday morning Carlie and I were up before light. “What did Mrs. Luth leave for our dinner?” Carlie asked.
I opened the icebox and picked up the covers of the china dishes. “Hard-boiled eggs, salad, and cold chicken,” I said. “Cold chicken’s too plain, but we can’t have something hot because it has to be ready when we get home from church. Papa gets cross when he has to wait to eat.” I thumbed through Aunt Maude’s recipes. “Here’s one for Fowl à la Mayonnaise. That sounds a lot better than cold chicken. It’s just cooked chicken on lettuce covered with mayonnaise, and there’s a recipe for the mayonnaise. You set the table, Carlie, and remember, knives and spoons on the right and forks and napkins on the left.”
The recipe for the mayonnaise sounded simple. I cracked two eggs and let the slippery whites fall into one bowl and the yolks into another bowl. I poured out six tablespoons of salad oil and four tablespoons of vinegar. It said to add the oil and vinegar very gradually to the egg yolks while beating them. I found the whisk and started beating the eggs and pouring in the oil and vinegar, but no matter how hard I beat or how slowly I poured, the mayonnaise curdled like sour milk.
Carlie was watching me. “Ugh,” she said. “It’s all lumps.”
“I can see that,” I snapped. “Go and put the plates out and leave me alone.”
I threw the ugly sauce away and started over with our last two eggs. When the lumps began to appear, tears fell into the mess. Lumps weren’t romantic. Papa would notice the lumps right away, and it would spoil everything. Carlie came over with the strainer. I looked at her and grinned. After the straining, the mayonnaise still had a few lumps, but you hardly noticed them, and the creamy sauce looked pretty over the chicken, which I arranged on the lettuce and put back into the icebox to keep cool. In the living room I spread some sheet music on the piano so I could play for Eleanor and Papa to sing. There was just time to dress for church. I wore my blue serge wool with the lace collar. Carlie insisted on wearing her pink silk party dress with the smocking. “That’s a summer dress,” I said, but Carlie wouldn’t give in.
“It’s my best dress,” she said, and wriggled into it.
When Papa and Eleanor marched in with the choir, Carlie pinched me. Eleanor sang a solo that had lovely words from one of the psalms: “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.” I knew that a hart was a deer, and I wondered if Eleanor was thinking of the deer she’d once tamed and had to shoot. It didn’t look like it, because her face shone like it always did when she sang. I saw Papa watching her, and I pinched Carlie back.
The Thurstons came up to us after church while we were waiting for Eleanor and Papa to leave the choir room. Papa came out first, still buttoning his overcoat. He said to Mrs. Thurston, “Elvira, I wonder if I could impose myself upon you. Would you take in a hungry man for dinner? The girls have invited Eleanor for dinner, and I would only be in the way.”
I had to bite my tongue to keep from crying out, but Carlie didn’t bite hers. “Papa, you’re supposed to be at our dinner. It’s for you and Eleanor.”
Dr. and Mrs. Thurston looked from Carlie to Papa, who had turned beet red. There was no time to say anything more, for Eleanor was coming. Mrs. Thurston said, “Excuse us for just a moment, Edward.” She grabbed my hand and Carlie’s and led us off. The minute we were far enough away that she wouldn’t be heard, Mrs. Thurston said, “Girls, you have put your father and Eleanor in a very difficult position. It is not fair to Eleanor. People will talk.”
I remembered how Mrs. Lartner had looked when she saw Papa and Eleanor together at the piano. “Meddling mischief-maker,” Papa had said. It was unfair. How could our plan work if they weren’t allowed to be together?
Carlie said, “But we want them to get married.”
Mrs. Thurston wiped away Carlie’s tears with her lace handkerchief.
“That thought must come from them, not from you, and I don’t think either Eleanor or your father has any idea of such a thing.”
I didn’t believe that. I remembered how Papa looked at Eleanor in the choir. All I could think of was how perfect it would be if they got married. But I had to admit that for now we would have to give up our plans for having the two of them together for dinner.
We tried to hide our disappointment as we led Eleanor back home. I sneaked into the dining room to remove the extra setting before she could see it and wonder what had made Papa change his plans. Eleanor exclaimed over the mayonnaise. “I’ve never tasted better,” she said. “Very fancy!” After a bit we were so happy to have her there that we tried to put aside the terrible failure of our plans and make Eleanor’s visit pleasant for her.
“I’ve made friends with the other women attendants,” Eleanor said. “We get twenty dollars a month and our room and board. I’ll soon be rich. It helps that I can speak German. I long to know their stories, but they are like books you can’t open. They seem so miserable, and it makes me so happy when the music helps.
“The attendants live on the fourth floor. We report for duty at seven in the morning, and we’re on duty until eight in the evening, but Sunday afternoons like this we have off. They’re all really nice girls. None of us has much, so we share. This shawl belongs to one of them.”
I was angry with Papa for not being there to admire the shawl that Eleanor had specially worn. After dinner I played piano, and Eleanor and Carlie sang. When it was time for Eleanor to go, Carlie and I walked her back to the asylum. The sky was streaked with purple. There was a sliver of new moon. Snow fell in big soft flakes covering Dr. Thurston’s grass and trees and Louis’s flower beds. The snow pulled away all the color. Ahead of us was the asylum. With its lighted windows it looked like a great ship on a white ocean.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” Eleanor said. “There’s going to be a training school for nurses right here, and some of us attendants might get to sign up.” Eleanor kissed both of us and disappeared into the asylum, leaving Carlie and me to walk back alone.
The day before, one of Aunt Maude’s letters had come. She had asked after each of us and sent along some instructions for Mrs. Luth on how to take care of the fireplaces in winter. When I opened her letters, I felt little puffs of icy air escape. Soon Papa would be back home from the Thurstons’. He would go into his study, close the door, and work on his book. I was sure he liked Eleanor. I was sure I didn’t think it just because I wanted it to be true. But he would do nothing about it. Eleanor’s and Carlie’s hearts were there for everyone to see. Aunt Maude’s and Papa’s hearts were shut away in their locked gardens. I wasn’t sure about my own heart. I was a little afraid to be like Carlie and Eleanor, so quick to love that you might get hurt, but I didn’t want to be like Aunt Maude and Papa, so cautious that loving got away from you.
“What can we do now?” Carlie asked, but I had no answer. I had learned that there were times when you just had to do something, like the time I had gone out to the farm to rescue Eleanor. And there were times when you had to let people make up their own minds, like Eleanor had to choose for herself whether to go with her father. I thought about the horses on John’s farm, standing patiently, day after day. I wished I could be that patient, but I knew I couldn’t. I reached for Carlie’s mittened hand and hung on. “We’ll think of something,” I said.