To Sail Beyond the Sunset (19 page)

(This was in 1906, long before AIDS showed that buggery could be a special and deadly hazard.)

“—but that if I got curious and just had to try it, make him use a sheath and get him to be ultra slow and extra gentle—or I would wind up buying fur coats for proctologists’ wives.”

“Seems likely. Next, please.”

“Beloved—”

“Yes, Mo’?”

“If you want to do that to me, I’m willing. I’m not in the least afraid that you would hurt me.”

“Thank you. You’re a silly little wench, but I love you. I’m not yet tired of your other hole. Next picture, please; there are people queued up for the second show.”

“Yes, sir. I think this one is meant to be funny: husband surprises wife playing happy games with the housewife next door—look at the expression on his face! Briney, I had never suspected that a woman could be so much fun until that time Jane made a grab for me. She’s real cuddly. Or anything.”

“Yes, I know. Or anything. So is Hal. Or anything.”

“Well! I must have slept through something. This next one—Briney, I can’t see why women would use dildoes when there are so many live, warm ones around attached to men. Do you?”

“They don’t all have your opportunities, my love. Or your talents.”

“Thank you, sir.” I moved on. “Cunnilingus again, but two women. Briney, why are mermaids used as a symbol of Lesbos?”

“I don’t know. What did your Father say?”

“Just what you did. Oh, this next one does show something Father disapproves of. He says that anyone who mixes whips and chains, or either, with sex, is crazy as a pet coon and should be kept away from healthy people. Mmm, the next one is nothing special, just a different position, one that we’ve tried. Fun for variety, I think, but not for every day. And now—Oh, this one Father called, ‘the hetaera’s examination, or three ways for a dollar.’ Do you think Annie Chambers’s girls are examined this way? I hear that they are top quality this side of Chicago. Maybe New York.”

“Look, my sweet, I know nothing of Madam Chambers, or her girls. I can’t support both you and Annie Chambers, not even with the help of the Foundation. So I don’t patronize brothels.”

“What do you do in Denver, Briney? Cancel that—under our agreement, I’m not supposed to ask.”

“That wasn’t in the agreement; of course you can ask. You tell me your bedtime stories and I’ll tell you mine—then we’ll play doctor. Denver—I’m glad you asked that. In Denver I met this young fat boy—”

“Briney!”

“—who has the most gorgeous big sister, a grass widow a little younger than you are, with long slender legs, natural-blonde, honey-colored hair down to her waist, a sweet disposition, and big, firm tits. I asked her, ‘How about it?’” Briney stopped.

“Well? Go on. What did she say?”

“She said No. Hon, in Denver I’m usually too tired for anything more adventurous than Mother Thumb and her four daughters. They are faithful to me in their own fashion and they don’t expect me to take them out to dinner and a show first.”

“Oh, piffle! What is the blonde’s name?”

“What blonde?”

▣

I’ve just figured out how to get a message out via Pixel. So, if you will excuse me, I’ll get it ready at once so that I will have it ready the next time he shows up.

Dollars and Sense

Where is that damned cat?

No, no, cancel that. Pixel, Mama Maureen didn’t mean that; she’s just worried and upset. Pixel is a good boy, a fine boy; everybody knows it.

But, damn it, where are you when I need you?

▣

As soon as we were settled into our new home we shopped for Briney’s kitten, but not in pet shops. I’m not sure that there was such a thing as a pet shop in K.C. in 1906; I don’t recall ever having seen one that far back…and I do remember that we bought goldfish at Woolworth’s or at Kresge’s, not at a pet shop. Special items for cats, such as flea powder we bought at the Dog and Cat Hospital at Thirty-first and Main. But finding a kitten required asking the wind.

First I got permission to put a notice on the bulletin board at Nancy’s school. Then I told our grocer that we were looking for a kitten, and left the same word with our huckster—a greengrocer who stopped his wagon in our block every weekday morning to offer fresh fruits and vegetables.

The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company peddled its wares the same way but its sales wagon called only once a week since it carried only tea and coffee, sugar and spices. But that meant it covered a larger area with more customers and therefore greater chances of finding kittens. So I gave their driver our telephone number, Home Linwood 446, and asked him to call me if he heard of a litter of kittens, and then (having asked a favor) I bought his special for the week, twenty-five pounds of sugar for a dollar.

A mistake—He insisted on carrying it in for me, asserting that twenty-five pounds was much too heavy for a lady…and I learned that what he really wanted was to get me alone. I evaded his hands by picking up Brian Junior, a tactic Mrs. Ohlschlager had taught me when Nancy was tiny. It works best with a small and very wet baby but any child small enough to pick up will throw a hopeful male off his stride and cool him down. Oh, it won’t stop a crazy rapist, but most delivery-men (and plumbers, repairmen, etc.) are not rapists; they are simply ordinary rutty males who will go for it if offered. The problem is simply to turn him down firmly but gently, without causing him to lose face. Picking up a child does this.

It was bad judgment also because a whole dollar was too much of my household budget to tie up in sugar, and (worse) I did not have ant-proof storage for that much sugar…so I wound up spending another sixty cents on a sugar safe as big as my flour bin—which left me so short on cash a week later that I served fried mush for supper when my “plan ahead” called for ground beef patties. It was almost the end of the month, so it was serve mush or ask Briney for an advance…which I would not do.

With fried mush I served two strips of bacon to Brian and one to me, and one strip, fried crisp and crumbled, divided for Carol and Nancy. (Brian Junior still regarded Cream o’ Wheat as a gourmet dish, so he got that plus what milk I had left in my breasts.) Fresh dandelion greens helped to fill out the menu, and their butter-yellow blooms I floated in a shallow dish as a centerpiece. (Can anyone tell me why such pretty flowers are considered weeds?)

It was a skimpy supper but I ended it with a substantial dessert I could make with what I had on hand, plus two cooking apples picked up cheap that morning from my huckster: apple dumplings with hard sauce.

Hard sauce should be made with confectioners’ sugar—but Aunt Carole had taught me how to crush and crush and keep on crushing granulated sugar, using a big spoon and a bowl, to achieve a fair imitation of powdered sugar. I had enough butter on hand and vanilla extract, and I used one teaspoon of cooking brandy—also on hand; Aunt Carole had given it to me on my wedding day. (It was now half gone. I tasted it once—horrible! But a smidgen of it at the right time and place certainly enhanced the flavor of food.)

Brian made no comment on fried mush, but complimented me on the dumplings. On the first of the month following he said, “Mo’, the papers say that food prices are up even though the farmers are squawking. And I’m certain that this bigger house is costing you more to run, if only in electricity, gas, and Sapolio. How much more each month do you need?”

“Sir, I’m not asking for more money. We’ll get by.”

“I’m sure we will but the hot weather will be with us next month. I don’t want you paying the iceman the way some housewives do. Let’s raise your allowance by five dollars.”

“Oh, I don’t need that much!”

“My lady, let’s do raise it that much, and see how it works out. If you have money left over at the end of the month, tuck it away. At the end of the year you can buy me a yacht.”

“Yes, sir. What color?”

“Surprise me.”

I managed to add pennies and nickels and dimes to that “egg money” over the months by never using a charge account, even with my grocer—which was just as well, as Brian was in business for himself sooner than he had anticipated.

His employer, Mr. Fones, had made him a junior associate after two years, then assistant manager in 1904. Six months after we moved into our wonderful new house Mr. Fones decided to retire and offered Brian a chance to buy him out.

It was one of the few times I have seen my husband in a quandary. He usually made decisions quickly with the icy calm of a riverboat gambler; this time he seemed bemused—sugaring his coffee twice, then forgetting to drink it.

At last he said, “Maureen, I’m going to have to consult you on a business matter.”

“But, Brian, I don’t know anything about business.”

“Listen to me, my love. Ordinarily I will not bother you about business.
Deus volent
, I will not need to do so again. But this affects you and our three children and the one that has caused you to get out your fat clothes again.” He told me in detail what Mr. Fones had offered.

I thought hard about it, then said, “Brian, under this agreement you are to pay this—‘drawing account,’ you called it—to Mr. Fones each month?”

“Yes. If the business makes more profit that the average of the last few years, his share increases.”

“Suppose it makes less. His share goes down?”

“Not below that drawing account figure.”

“Even if the business loses money?”

“Even if it loses money. Yes, that’s part of the proposal.”

“Briney, just what is it he is selling you? You are contracting—will be contracting if you accept—to support him indefinitely—”

“No, just twelve years. His life expectancy.”

“If he dies, it ends? Hmmm! Does he know about my great-aunt Borgia?”

“No, it doesn’t end if he dies, so get that gleam out of your eye. If he dies, it goes to his estate.”

“All right, twelve years. You support him for twelve years. What do you get out of it?”

“Well… I receive a going business. Its files, its records, and, principally, its good will. I’ll have the right to use the name ‘Fones and Smith, Mining Consultants.’” He stopped.

“What else?” I asked.

“The office furniture, and the lease. You’ve seen the office.”

Yes, I had. Down in the west bottoms, across from International Harvester. In the spring flood of 1903 when the Missouri River again failed to turn that corner and tried to run up the Kaw almost to Lawrence, Briney had to go to work in a rowboat. I had wondered then why a mining company would be down there—no mining in the west bottoms, just black mud clear down to China. And the heavy stink of the stockyards.

“Brian, why are the offices there?”

“Cheap rent. It would cost us four times as much to get the same space on Walnut or Main, even clear out at Fifteenth. I take over the lease, of course.”

I thought about it hard for several minutes. “Sir, how much of the firm’s traveling has Mr. Fones been doing?”

“Originally? Or recently? When I first went to work for him, both he and Mr. Davis made field trips; I stayed in the office. Then he broke me in on what he expected from a survey—that was before Mr. Davis retired. Then—”

“Excuse me, sir. I mean, ‘How much traveling has Mr. Fones done this past year?’”

“Eh? Mr. Fones has not made a field survey for more than two years. He’s made a couple of money trips. Two to St. Louis, one to Chicago.”

“While you made all the muddy-boots trips?”

“You could call it that.”

“That’s what you call it, Briney. Dear, you do want to go into business for yourself, don’t you?”

“You know that I do. This is just sooner than I had thought I could manage it.”

“Are you seriously asking me to say what I think you should do? Or are you just using me as a sounding board to get your thoughts straight?”

He gave me his endearing grin. “Maybe some of both. I’ll make the decision. But I do want you to tell me what to do, just as if it were entirely up to you.”

“Very well, sir. But I need more information. I have never known the amount of your salary—and I don’t want to know now; it’s not fitting for a wife to ask—but tell me this. Is that drawing account figure more or less than your salary?”

“Eh? More. Quite a bit more. Even with the bonuses I have received on some deals.”

“I see. All right, Briney; I’ll express my advice in the imperative. Refuse his offer. Go down tomorrow morning and tell him so. At the same time hit him for a raise. Ask him—no, tell him—that you expect a salary equal to that drawing account he was proposing to siphon out of the business.”

Briney looked startled, then laughed. “He’ll have a stroke.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. But he is certain to be angry. Count on that and be braced for it. Don’t let him get you even the least bit angry. Just tell him calmly that fair is fair. For the last two years you have been doing all the hard and dirty work. If the business can afford to pay Mr. Fones that big a drawing account for not working at all, it can certainly pay you the same amount for working very hard indeed. True?”

“Well…yes. Mr. Fones won’t like it.”

“I don’t expect him to like it. He’s trying to hornswoggle you; he’s certain not to like it when the same swindle is offered to him. Briney, that’s a touchstone for a fair deal that my father taught me: Does it feel like a fair deal if it’s turned the other way around, mirror image? Point this out to him.”

“All right. When he comes down off the ceiling. Mo’, he won’t pay me that much. Wouldn’t it be better for me to resign?”

“Truly, Briney, I don’t think so. If you simply quit, he will make loud squawks about your disloyalty—how he took you on as a youngster with no experience and taught you the trade—”

“There’s some truth in that. Before he hired me, I had had practical experience underground in lead and zinc and in coal through working summers while I was going to school. But no experience with precious metals, just book learning. So I’ve learned quite a lot while working for him.”

“Which is why you must not resign. Instead you are simply asking to be paid what you are worth. What the proposition he offered you shouts aloud that you are worth. Fair is fair. He can go ahead and retire, and pay you that amount to run the business, while he enjoys the net profit himself.”