Girl Waits with Gun (39 page)

“It was my idea,” I said. “I told the sheriff that if Mr. Ewing really wanted to stay in the Hackensack jail, he should use that as leverage.”

“Well, I knew it all along,” Norma said. “You are good at something.”

“What's that?”

“Telling Sheriff Heath what to do.”

OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS
, our case proceeded to trial. Prosecutor Wright called me into his office several times to go over it. The questions struck me as repetitive and unnecessary, but Mr. Wright insisted that we review every detail. Mr. Kingsley, the handwriting expert from New York, was prepared to testify that Mr. Kaufman had written the letters. He also secured a full confession from Marion Garfinkel on the basis of her false signature at the orphanage. Once she saw the way he was planning to put the evidence before a jury, she knew better than to fight the charges. She paid her own bond and was awaiting a sentence from the judge. Because the child had been returned to its mother, it was possible that she, like her brother, would face a fine rather than jail.

When the weather was finally warm enough, Francis and Bessie brought the children out to Wyckoff for what they liked to call “A Day at the Farm.” Francis had instituted this tradition to teach the children the value of hard work, and Bessie went along with it to have an excuse to sit in the shade, kick off her shoes, and let the children run wild. So every year in the spring, when the hens were raising their chicks and there were baby rabbits in the field, we'd spend the day outdoors watching the children chase the animals and ruin their play clothes.

We looked forward to A Day at the Farm more than the children did because we never had to cook. Bessie always insisted that a picnic would be more fun in the countryside anyway, but we all knew the real reason: she didn't want to eat our cooking any more than we did. The chief object of the day was to make it through Bessie's wicker hampers: first the stuffed eggs and cucumber sandwiches, then the potato salad, the baked chicken, and aspic, and finally the glorious fruit tarts and peach preserves. This year they'd brought ice cream, and Fleurette made a ginger ale punch that the children drank from Mother's gilded Sèvres teacups.

We pulled every rug out of the house and spread them on the lawn, then piled on all the pillows and cushions we could find, and from that perch we dedicated ourselves to depleting Bessie's hampers. Francis was in better spirits than we'd seen him in some time. He'd shaved his beard for the summer and it gave him an air of youthfulness and lightheartedness that was not entirely in keeping with his character.

“You look better without it,” Fleurette said. “You look much younger, and it's easier to know what you're thinking.”

“What am I thinking right now?” Francis asked.

Fleurette pulled off the red scarf she'd wrapped around her hair and lay back on a pillow. “You're thinking of buying an automobile and teaching me to drive it,” she said.

Norma groaned and said, “We've been riding around in the sheriff's wagon, and it has given Fleurette too many ideas, as I feared it would.”

Little Frankie discovered something behind the barn that made him shriek, and Francis jumped up and ran to check on him.

“I hope Henry Kaufman isn't lurking back there again,” Fleurette mumbled, half asleep.

I couldn't help but laugh, but Norma took offense. “We must never make a joke out of that man,” she said, and, turning back to Bessie, “Please don't listen to her. Henry Kaufman is very nearly out of our lives forever.”

Bessie pushed her plate away and rolled over on a pillow too, arranging her purple flowered dress around her knees. “I'm not worried about Henry Kaufman. I only ever worried about the three of you because I was sure one of you would shoot him, and then we'd have to visit you in jail.”

“Sheriff Heath would never put Constance in jail,” Fleurette said. “He likes her too much.”

“He likes all of us,” I said briskly, “and we owe him a great deal for all he's done. Although I'm sure he'll be glad when the trial is over and he can forget all about us.”

Francis came jogging back carrying little Frankie under his arm like a football. Frankie was shrieking and giggling. Lorraine skipped along behind them, holding out her hands. “We found a little blind possum and now we must wash our hands,” she said, seeming to leave out the most interesting part of that story. Lorraine had grown nearly a foot in the last year and was beginning to show a little of Fleurette's dramatic beauty. But today she was covered in dust and straw from the barn, and around her lips were traces of sticky jam.

“Go and wash yourselves off at the pump,” Bessie said. “Ask your aunt Fleurette to help you.”

Fleurette opened one eye in Lorraine's direction and let out a gasp of mock horror. She jumped to her feet and took each child by the hand, and soon they were shrieking again at the pump and splashing around in a muddy puddle, having forgotten all about getting clean.

“We were just talking about the trial,” Bessie said to Francis, in a deliberate manner that suggested that she'd been instructed to find out what was going on.

Francis reached in the basket for a lemon tart and said, “What about it?” before pushing half of it into his mouth.

“It'll all be over next month,” I said. “We expect a short trial and a quick conviction, and then we can all go on with our lives.”

“And then what?” Francis said without looking at me.

I didn't want to have to give him an accounting of my attempts to find a position for myself. I'd ridden into New York a few times, hoping that Mr. LaMotte would have another photography assignment for me and would be willing to pay me this time. He was never there when I stopped in. I saw him on the sidewalk once, but he appeared to be arguing with a client and he waved me away.

I had even returned to Wanamaker's and wandered the sales floor, trying to pick out the girl they'd hired to be their store detective. I saw any number of pretty, petite girls in fine spring dresses circling the tables and fingering the goods, but not one of them looked capable of handling pickpockets and thieves.

There were very few positions announced in the paper either. Advertisements for bookkeepers and office clerks appeared every few weeks, but always in the men's help wanted section, never the women's. I saw vacancies for housecleaners and cooks, and the mills were always hiring, but none of that would have suited me. I could have taken a stenography course, but there were already three girls running notices each week that they were trained in stenography and looking for positions.

All of this seemed impossible to explain. “I'm looking for something suitable,” I said. “A job to help make ends meet. I've been on a few interviews already.”

Francis seemed poised to deliver another lecture, but Bessie put a hand on his arm and he smiled at her and settled back down in the contented manner of a well-fed husband who has submitted to his wife's charms. She patted him and said, “You girls are going to have such an adventure, I just know it. Constance will find a good place for herself, and then maybe she'll hear of something that would suit Norma. And who knows what the world has to offer Fleurette? Or what she has to offer the world?”

We all turned at once and looked toward the water pump, where Fleurette had joined the children in a contest to see who could splash the most mud on the other. Both girls had hitched their skirts up around their knees and turned on little Frankie, who had never been more delighted. He dropped into the puddle and grinned at them like the most contented pig in New Jersey.

“Let's do the world a favor,” Norma said, “and not unleash Fleurette upon it quite yet.”

BY MAY
, there was little to do but wait for the trial. I was finally able to get a man out to put new locks on the doors and glaze the broken windows we'd boarded up. Norma expanded the size of her pigeon flock by half again, which gave her an excuse to spend most of her days in the barn fussing with the incubator and keeping the wood stove going. Fleurette took seriously the job of sewing clothes for little Bobby and soon had him outfitted with play clothes, a sailor suit, and a new suit for church. Even Norma took an interest in the boy. On the weekends she brought a basket of pigeons over to Lucy's and let him watch as she tied bright blue ribbons to their legs and released them. He laughed and clapped as they circled overhead and flew away.

I had plenty of work to do. There were tomatoes and pole beans to plant, fences to repair, and blankets and rugs to be brought outside and beaten until the dust had been driven from them. But the chores were only a distraction from our real problems. Any woman in our position would attach herself to a relation with a spare room and make herself useful. If I couldn't come up with a better idea, we would have to do the same, and soon.

And then what? Where the years ahead had once seemed vague and unknowable, amorphous in shape and indeterminate in size, after my mother died I began to see a set of decades stacked neatly in front of me like bricks. First came my thirties, already half gone, and beyond that my forties and my fifties, solid and certain. But after that, the bricks started to crumble. My grandmother died at the age of sixty-two, and my grandfather at seventy-one. Then my mother was gone, having succumbed to pneumonia after only just turning sixty herself.

When I allowed myself to think about the brevity of the time ahead of me, and the futility of spending any more of it on cooking and mending and gardening, it frightened me so much that I almost couldn't breathe.

THE TRIAL WAS SET AT LAST FOR EARLY JUNE
. We were expected in court on a Tuesday morning and hoped to be finished by Friday. Fearing that the long ride back and forth to Newark would leave us overtired, Sheriff Heath made arrangements for us to stay at the Continental Hotel for the week. On Monday night we rode the train to Newark with an enormous trunk of clothes and a stack of hatboxes taller than the girl who intended to wear them. Fleurette was delirious over the notion of staying at a hotel and had made herself a new dress to honor the occasion, an apricot affair that sagged strangely at the knees in what she called a “bowling pin silhouette.”

“I think you went wrong just south of the waist,” Norma said.

“It's Parisian,” Fleurette said.

“That didn't come from Paris.”

“It came from McCall's, by way of Paris.”

Fleurette did look exquisite in the dress, and she knew it. A porter came running the minute she appeared on the platform and loaded a cart with our luggage. He escorted us across the street to the hotel, where Fleurette swept into the lobby ahead of us, her head cocked slightly to show off her wide straw hat (festooned with what Norma called an “audacious” arrangement of silk roses and dyed feathers). It is no exaggeration to say that every head turned in her direction. Norma and I struggled along behind her, hot and dusty from the trip, looking every bit the part of two spinster aunts unable to keep up with their young charge.

The man at the registration desk made a little bow when he saw her. “Evening, miss. You one of Sparks's girls?”

“Sparks?”

“She's
our
girl,” I said, rushing up behind her. “Miss Constance Kopp and her sisters, under arrangements made by Mr. Robert Heath.”

Norma nudged me, worried, I knew, that I was about to mention the criminal trial. Norma didn't want anyone at the hotel to know that we were there in connection with the sheriff or the courthouse, believing that we would attract the attention of reporters looking for a sensational story.

“What's a Sparks girl?” Fleurette asked.

The desk clerk looked at us nervously. “My mistake, miss. Some—ah—entertainers are lodging with us for the week, and I mistook . . .” He looked down, embarrassed, and shuffled his registration cards. “Here we are! The Misses Kopp.”

Just then the tallest and thinnest man I'd ever seen leaned over the desk next to us and said, in a loud and lively voice, one word: “Sparks.” Fleurette had to lift the brim of her hat to stare up at him, which she did, open-mouthed. He wore a pinstriped suit made of enough yardage to clothe two ordinary men, and when he leaned over the desk to sign his name to the register, the pen looked like it might snap between his long, bony fingers.

He glanced down at the three of us and tipped his hat. “You ladies in town for the show?”

“What show?” Fleurette said, before I could stop her.

“Sparks Circus, miss. A vision of beauty and splendor, just like yourself.” He winked at her and flashed a gold tooth when he grinned.

I took hold of Fleurette's shoulder, but she was effervescent by now and there was no way of stopping her.

“Are you with the circus?”

He turned to her and made a deep bow. “World's tallest man,” he said, winking at her as he rose. “Haven't you heard of me?”

Fleurette was quivering. I'd never seen the girl so excited. Norma shot a worried look at me, but I just shrugged. I couldn't see how we'd get her away from him unless we picked her up and carried her off.

“Is—is everyone in the circus staying here?” she asked.

He raised an eyebrow to the desk clerk, who looked alarmed at the possibility, and said, “Only a few old friends of Mr. Cooke's. You know Mr. Cooke, don't you? Used to be a circus agent. One day he was one of us, and now he's a hotel proprietor.”

Fleurette turned back to the man handling our registration. “Did you think I was with the circus?” she asked, incredulous.

The world's tallest man stepped in before the clerk could compose an answer. “A little thing like you?” he said. “We'd put you on the trapeze. How do you like heights?”

Norma couldn't stand it any longer. She took Fleurette's arm and dragged her across the lobby, leaving me to sign the register and take the key from the clerk. The circus man apologized to me but then said, “You're not quite the world's tallest girl, but we could find something for you.”