After that first date, Peter and I spent most of our free time together. We attended concerts and moving pictures and patriotic rallies. We listened to Negro musicians play in the Five Points joints and attended the plays at Elitch’s, an amusement park with acres of gardens. Or we just walked along Sixteenth Street, looking into the store windows so that I could study the fashions.
We spent Saturday afternoons together, too, since I worked only a half day. Peter would meet me in front of the store, and we’d have lunch at the counter of the five-and-dime, then wander about the store looking for treasures. We roamed City Park, walking around the lake or looking at the animals in the zoo. They weren’t exotic, just deer and elk and a brown bear, animals that lived in the mountains, but I’d never seen them up close. A few times Peter drove us west in his roadster, to where the mountains began. We’d go into little cafés and drink coffee that was thick and bitter, and listen to old men talk about the mining days that were long gone.
Peter often brought books and studied in our living room or in the backyard, stopping from time to time to play with Dorothy. She was an odd little thing, barely ten years old, and looked even younger. She seemed afraid of men, but Peter drew her out. He gave her a storybook once, but Mr. Streeter said the book wasn’t fit for a child and threw it in the ash pit. Gil rescued it, and I kept it in the house, and one of us would read it to her when she came upstairs.
At other times, Peter talked about what he’d learned in school, and I tried to be enthusiastic when he expounded on religion, although the truth was I didn’t care much. I had my own interests. I drew designs for hats or for fabrics. Or I sewed. Working at Neusteter’s had piqued my interest in fabrics. I was enchanted with the crepe de chine and cut velvet, the Egyptian cotton and fine Scottish woolens used in the clothing we sold at the store. I was intrigued with patterns that required pieces to be cut on the bias, with gussets and interfacings and trims, and all the intricacies of the stitching. I convinced the seamstresses in the alterations department to set aside scraps of material, the bits of ribbons and trim they snipped from clothing altered to fit Neusteter patrons (as we’d been instructed to call customers), and give them to me. I used them to trim hats and to make patchwork scarves. I also bought exotic fabrics at the Denver Dry Goods next door and combined them with the salvaged scraps to piece together throws. Sometimes I quilted them. These quilts were bolder and more sophisticated than the dowdy, old-fashioned calico ones Helen and I had slept under as children.
When Peter didn’t have to study, we scoured the thrift stores to find antique shawls and old beadwork and lace, which I incorporated into my creations.
“Why don’t you make dresses and sell them? Wouldn’t that pay better than being a department store artist?” Peter asked me one day when we were rummaging through a bin of worn clothing. “I think you’d be first-rate at it,” he added. I pulled out a velvet dress so old it had been worn with a hoop. The bodice was shredded and would have to be discarded, but the skirt, a deep claret color, might be salvaged. I rubbed the velvet against my cheek, feeling its silky smoothness on my skin, and told Peter it was “swellegant.” I’d picked up that word, like most of my slang, from my friend Florence. I wondered who had worn the dress so many years before, whether it had been made for a ball or a Christmas party. Sometimes the old clothing had bits of paper pinned to it, identifying the dress or the wearer: “Mary’s wedding gown” and “My mourning dress” and “Worn to the Grand Duke Alexis ball, January 17, 1872.” I bought that one just because of the note. Once, I found a white satin ball gown trimmed in ostrich feathers with the name “Tabor” embroidered inside and thought it might have belonged to the wife of the Silver King. But usually the clothing was anonymous, and I was left to make up stories about the women who had worn such lovely creations.
“I don’t want to be a dressmaker. It’s too much of an undertaking,” I said. I set the dress aside and picked up a soiled bodice with intricate turquoise trim. I could use the beads on an evening dress I was stitching. “I’d have to spend a fortune on stocking fabrics, and I’d have to find a studio. Then where would I get customers? It’s not as if the sales clerks in the better dress department at Neusteter’s would turn over their patrons to me. I’d have to be half sales clerk, too, and I’m no good at that. I find it awfully hard to flatter people.” I didn’t add that I really did not care to design things for other women, preferring to design only for myself.
“You could make hats. You’re quite good at it, you know. I think you could be a wow. Mother spends a fortune on hats.”
“I don’t really make them. I just trim them,” I told him. “I don’t know anything about blocking straw or felt.”
“You could learn, couldn’t you?”
“If I wanted to, I suppose, but I’m not sure I do.” In fact, I’d never had any great desire to go into business on my own. I’d all but deserted my easel and was happy to get a weekly paycheck from Neusteter’s. I had a feeling I might not be all that good at anything. Painting had just seemed like the thing to do with my degree, and of course I hadn’t been successful at it. What I liked best was design, but at school we didn’t sit around talking about becoming designers—or illustrators, which was what I was now. We said it was commerce and was beneath us. It would be as if Peter got his theology degree and then became a Bible salesman.
“Well, I think you have style. So does Father.”
I had met Peter’s father because he had invited us to the Brown Palace Hotel for dinner. He was a prominent judge and there had been talk about him running for governor, although Peter said that wasn’t likely. I hadn’t yet met Peter’s mother. She was spending the summer in Kansas City with one of Peter’s sisters, who was ill. The Howells lived in a mansion on Capitol Hill. Peter had driven me by it once, and I recognized it. Helen and I had walked past it when we first explored Denver. When his mother returned, he said, she would invite me for dinner.
Would she? Judge Howell was nice enough but rather stern, and I wondered if the Howells thought I wasn’t good enough for Peter. Or maybe they believed I was interested in his money, because it was clear they had plenty. Judge Howell’s father had made a fortune selling hardware in the mining towns. But I wasn’t after Peter’s money. I wasn’t even sure I was after Peter. I was after a good time.
It was Helen who made me think about whether I wanted to be married to a minister. “He’ll propose soon enough. You know that,” Helen said one blustery evening as we sat by the grate in the living room, she knitting and me mending.
“Oh, I don’t know any such thing,” I replied as I inserted a darning egg into a stocking and inspected the tear.
“You do know he’s crazy about you. It’s obvious. Even Gil sees it.”
I didn’t reply.
“He’s a nice enough fellow. I’ll admit that. Gil thinks he’s almost good enough for you. But do you really want to marry a minister?”
I didn’t want to answer her and held up my mending. “Honestly, this stocking is new! I don’t know how I could have ripped it.”
“Face it, honey. He will ask. You have to decide what you’ll answer when he does.”
I put down my darning then and looked at her. “I haven’t thought about it. Besides, I’m not as sure as you are that he will.”
“Oh, fudge!” Helen snorted. “Of course you’ve thought about it.”
I went to the grate and held my hands over the fire. Although it was still summer, the day was cold, and the house was drafty, so we’d built a fire to take off the chill. In winter, the wind swept down from the mountains across the prairie and under our door. “Did you order coal for the furnace? I would hate to run out in the middle of winter. It’ll be bad enough having to practice heatless Mondays.” President Wilson had asked Americans to honor not only heatless Mondays but meatless Tuesdays and wheatless Wednesdays for the war effort.
“Lute!”
I turned around and almost shouted. “I don’t know, Helen. I adore Peter. He’s the best man I’ve ever met. I’m crazy about him. But I don’t know if I can be a minister’s wife. I don’t care about helping the downtrodden. I don’t even knit stockings for the soldiers like you do.” Helen was working on a stocking now. They were ugly, the color of coal, but they would keep some doughboy’s feet warm.
“You don’t know how to knit,” Helen interjected.
I ignored that. “I’ve never even read the Bible all the way through. And I think I prayed enough in Iowa to last my lifetime.”
“And you’d have to wear those depressing out-of-fashion clothes.” Helen knew how to make me laugh.
My mood lightened. “There’s that.”
“You’d have to give up working at Neusteter’s, too. Did you ever know a minister’s wife who held a job?”
“I never knew any wife who had a job. What about you, Helen? Will you stop working when you marry Gil?”
“Nursing’s different. It’s a calling, not a job.”
“Oh.” I wondered if she caught the annoyance in my voice.
“At least you wouldn’t have to live on a minister’s salary.” Helen knew that Peter’s father was wealthy.
“No, perhaps not.” But I wasn’t sure Peter would accept his family’s money.
“Maybe he’ll be a missionary and you’ll go to darkest Africa.”
“I doubt it.” I was tired of Helen’s jazz, as Florence would say. “I really don’t know what I’ll do if he asks. I’m not sure I’m up to being married to a minister. I’m really not a good person like Peter.”
Now Helen set down her knitting and leaned forward in her chair. “Don’t you ever think that, Lute. You say that because you’re an artist and you like clothes and good times, so you think you’re flighty. Maybe there are others who think that, too. But I’m your sister. I know you better.”
Helen always gave me more credit than I deserved.
I sighed. The truth was I actually had begun thinking about whether I should marry Peter if he asked me. I loved him, of course. I’d realized it not long after we started going out. I had been sitting in the yard when Peter came up behind me and dropped a rose from his mother’s garden into my lap.
“It’s almost as pretty as you are,” he told me.
That had been a mawkish thing to say, and I had almost told him so. But I’d held my tongue, and when Peter picked up the flower and held it next to my face and repeated, “Almost as pretty,” I treasured the silly words.
I’d always assumed I’d marry one day, of course. Girls did. One of the reasons I’d studied art was it was something I could pursue as a wife. At least I had planned that far ahead. I could paint portraits of my family, perhaps paint flowers or landscapes that I’d enter in art shows. I’d never had grand plans for a career, didn’t want one, in fact. I’d work only until I married, then be a good wife, giving nice little dinner parties and going to tea with the wives of my husband’s associates. Maybe I’d be considered a little bohemian because I’d once held a job, but not enough that I’d embarrass my husband.
I’d always believed I’d marry a man who sold insurance, like my father, or a banker or a lawyer, or perhaps someone who ran a store or a lumberyard. But a minister?
I started to tell Helen I was tired of talking about Peter when we heard a noise below us, in the basement, and Helen shook her head in disgust. “Mr. Streeter’s drunk again, drinking with our rent money.”
“At least we don’t have a mortgage payment.” Because we’d sold our parents’ home in Cedar Rapids, we’d had the money to buy the house in Denver outright—a good thing, because it was unlikely a bank would have given a loan to two women. And since we were both employed, we could cover the taxes and utilities bills without the Streeters’ rent money. It wasn’t the first time Mr. Streeter had lost his job and Maud had begged Helen and me not to evict them.
“When he drinks, he’s vicious,” Helen said. “Remember the time Maud’s face was bruised and she said she’d run into a door?”
I remembered. Maud had had a black eye.
“As a nurse, I’ve seen too many women like that. I know what men can do when they get angry.”
“I’d leave any man who hit me.”
Helen scoffed and put her knitting on the table, then stood and went to the window. It had drizzled all day, and now rain was coming down hard. “Yes, I suppose you would. You could get a job and support yourself. But how could Maud get on? She’s too frail to work as a domestic, and she’s not attractive enough to find a job in a shop. If she left him, she’d be on charity.”
I’d never considered that, and I stared at my sister for a long time. “He’s probably difficult only when he’s drunk. They seem to get along pretty well when he’s sober. He always buys her little presents afterward.”
“With more of our rent money.”
“I doubt that he hits her often. She probably says things that set him off.”
“No woman deserves to be blamed for a man hitting her.”
Helen looked so dejected that I stood and put my arms around her. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m so sorry, dear.”
Helen was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Maybe if you’re a minister’s wife, you can help women who’ve been … mistreated, help children like Dorothy.”
“Me?”
“Why not? Why don’t you talk to Peter about it?”
“You mean I should say, ‘Peter, in case you’re going to ask me to marry you, would you mind awfully if I help women whose husbands smack them around?’”
I laughed, but Helen didn’t. “Don’t you think it’s more important than selling clothes to women who already have too many?”
“That’s not fair, Helen.”
She looked away. “No, of course it isn’t. It’s just that I get so knotted up over the women I take care of. Sometimes I want to pick up a coal shovel and whack their husbands on the head.”
“I know you do, and I wish you would.” Just the week before, Helen had told me about a woman with four daughters who’d given birth to a stillborn boy. Her husband had beaten her, claiming she was responsible for the boy not having lived. Then he’d locked her out of the house, and she’d had to sleep in the chicken coop. The woman actually believed she deserved the punishment, and she begged Helen not to tell anyone what had happened. She was too ashamed.
We were silent for a time, busying ourselves with our work. At last, Helen put aside the half-finished stocking and said, “I’ve really put a cloud over our day, haven’t I?”
“No, of course not. You care too much. You care about me, and you care about the soldiers and the women you help and all those little souls you encounter.”
“Little souls?”
“Oh, it’s something I heard Judge Howell say. Peter says it, too. It comes from some Roman emperor. It means the poor, the hopeless, the common people nobody ever notices. In truth, it applies to all of us. We’re all lost little souls in our way—you and me and maybe even Peter.” I smiled at my sister and added, “It certainly includes those who are unlucky enough to be married to ministers.”
Helen laughed, and her mood lifted. “I do get gloomy sometimes, don’t I?”
Before I could reply, we heard a knock on the door and exchanged glances. “Maud?” I mouthed. Helen put aside her knitting, and we hurried to the door. Dorothy stood there, her dress soaked, her wet hair hanging limp around her face.
“Mama said I should stay outside until Papa goes to sleep. But it’s cold, and I’m all wet from the rain. Can I come in?” she asked.
“Of course. You can stay with us,” I told her.
“Papa’s sick again,” she repeated. “I don’t like it when he’s that way.” She went to stand before the fire, shivering, her arms wrapped around herself, while Helen fetched a blanket.
I wondered if Mr. Streeter hit the little girl when he was drunk. “I know. I’ll fix you cocoa, and then we’ll pop corn. Would you like to do that, Dorothy?” I asked as Helen wrapped the blanket around her. We took her into the kitchen.
“When your mother comes to get you, we’ll have a party,” I said, getting out the popcorn popper.
Dorothy looked at me solemnly. “All right. Can we give Mama some popcorn? We didn’t have any supper.”
“Sure,” I said, then turned to Helen and mouthed, “But not Papa.”
Helen didn’t notice me. Instead, she stared at Dorothy with tears in her eyes. “Gil said he would say something to Mr. Streeter,” she whispered to me.
“About Maud?” I asked.
“About Dorothy.”
I didn’t understand.