Cascade (22 page)

“New York on the line,” Alma said, clicking the call through.

Mr. Washburn’s voice boomed through the receiver. “Your postcards are a resounding success!”

It took a moment for this news to process. It was like being inside a kaleidoscope, prisms of sound and image turning her upside down and around.

The editorial office, Mr. Washburn said, was receiving feedback from all over the country. “And that’s just the morning mail, and this is just Tuesday. And they are sending their feedback via postcards, my dear.” He laughed. “Lots of postcards.”

People were, unbeknown to one another, choosing the same method of responding to the article: by sending postcards of their own towns. “And the anecdotes!” he said. “The stories!” He was full of enthusiasm and details, yet Dez detected an undercurrent of something hesitant in his voice, too. And finally it came with a clearing of his throat. “So my heartiest congratulations, my dear. Although I must say I do have a bit of unwelcome news.”

She looked down at her hands, at her fingernails plugged with dirt. She closed her eyes.

“Your friend Abby stopped by.”

It was the way he said “your friend”—as if in quotes—that put her on alert. “She found her way into Harry’s office—Harry is our publisher. She had some good ideas for making use of our end page, coat-tailing the postcard idea when the decision about Cascade has been reached.
Postcards from America
. She’d done up some samples and she has fair talent with a pen, though not like you—”

Dez broke in, careful to keep emotion out of her voice. “What are you trying to tell me, Mr. Washburn?”

“Well, the ironical thing is that she happened in with this idea this morning, just as we were beginning to receive all these postcards. She suggested that we
solicit
story ideas from people across the country. Have them send in their own town stories, then she could illustrate them in the postcard format. Towns would vie with one another for a bit of fame. We could start the new series once the Cascade serial turns to photographs.”

The idea was exactly what Dez mentioned to Asa, a good way to expand the series once the Cascade story became a photographer’s feature. “It is indeed a great idea, Mr. Washburn, an idea I planned to suggest to you myself.”

“I see.” He hesitated a moment. “And that is as I wondered. Well, my dear, the thing that makes Miss Hadden desirable is that she could do the work here in our offices.”

“Why?” She knew, but she needed to hear him say it, needed to hear him offer what would be a tangible excuse.

“Well, for one thing, our turnaround time is quick. And Harry and I discussed the fact that we would want the subjects, and what’s depicted, driven by editorial decisions. Those are the kinds of decisions that are made here, around our table.”

“But Mr. Washburn.” She was conscious, with her replies, that Alma or Lil or anyone might be listening. She prayed no one was, because what she said next gave her the sensation of jumping off Indian Cliff Rock. What if she passed up this chance and then they had to move anyway? When the time came, she would simply have to talk Asa into moving to New York. She couldn’t worry about it now. Fate was directing her, had been directing her for weeks now. “I am moving to New York,” she said.

His voice crackled through a glitch in the telephone line. “You are? Well, that’s a horse of a different color. Splendid!”

“I thought I told you.”

“You didn’t, but no matter, it’s settled. Harry himself told me he’d rather see you do the work. You have the bigger talent. The job is yours if you want it.”

Her hand clutched the phone.
Please let no one have heard that, please let it all work out
.

“Miss Hart?”

He had asked her something; she asked him to repeat it.

“Just when will this decision by the state be made?”

“Word is, by July first.”

“All right then. I figure that by the end of summer, we’ll be at a point
with the Cascade story where dismantling and construction might begin?” He paused for her affirmation, and she murmured noncommittally.

“We could go for real photographs then. When do you move? We’re thinking that for the Fourth of July holiday we’ll run a contest to solicit ideas, then we can sort through them and choose the most promising. Start the new series at the end of September and run it through Christmas. Can you be here by August?”

August. She couldn’t possibly move to New York by August. “Most likely,” she said. What was she thinking?

“Splendid.” The rest of the call was talk of length, of deadlines, of the technicalities of magazine publication. She hung up the earpiece with shaky hands. What had she done? She paced the kitchen, agitated, gnawing her thumbnail. What would she do? She whipped open the icebox and began to pull everything off the shelves, sponging down the walls, wiping the milk bottles, the butter dish, the Hellman’s, putting everything back in a clear, defined order: dairy, meat, vegetable. When she was done, the icebox was pristine, but it was still too early to cook and she was too wound up to clean or weed or paint. She walked over to the window and looked out at the sky, pale blue with streaks of white cloud. What if her father was watching her, somehow?
Are you? Are you there?

This had to be fate; it felt like fate. She had a chance to make a success of this project, a success of herself. Abby had said she would look after herself. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t warned her.

Asa would have to be talked into it—but how, she couldn’t imagine. And what if Cascade wasn’t chosen? She glanced at the morning paper, lying on the drainboard, envisioning a headline:
STATE CHOOSES WHISTLING FALLS
, life in Cascade carrying on unchanged. Cars driving to Lenox when the Depression was over. Finding out she was pregnant, a baby like four sturdy chains attached to each of her limbs.

It seemed such a betrayal, to wish for the state to choose Cascade, yet—they had, all of them, been acting like taking a town went against nature. But there were ghost towns out west, weren’t there? And ruins of civilizations all over the world.

Now was not the time to be sentimental. As a child, she’d been ridiculously sentimental about loss, about time passing. A holiday spent in Amherst with her mother’s great-aunt would bring such grief by evening—
this day is gone and will never come again
. A child braiding daisies by the roadside, seen briefly as they whisked past in their Ford:
I will never see that child again
. Then her mother and Timon died, and sentimentality became something cheap, something too small and flimsy to encompass real grief. A daisy was just a daisy.

She didn’t have to save Cascade; it didn’t seem she could. She just had to save the playhouse. It was possible to move a building. She just needed to find someone to do it, to pay for it, find a place for it to go.

Now was when the eyes of the country were on Cascade. And if Cascade was doomed, then now was the time to reap exposure for the playhouse. If she could get people to care about it, she might get people behind her to help her move it somewhere.
Somebody
had to have that kind of money. The only person she could think of, who might remotely care, was the man who’d bought the First Folio, and she honestly couldn’t remember the details. All she knew was that he was a collector who avoided the limelight and was known to be quietly hoarding as many Folios as he could get his hands on. He was wealthy enough to have been able to afford her father’s entire collection: the two First Folios—the pristine one as well as the older, less-valuable version, and the Nicholas Hilliard miniatures, the Romney sketches, the promptbooks, all the antique, rare playbills.

She pulled the telegram from her pocket.
CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Rose would remember his name. If he cared about Shakespeare so much, maybe he’d want to help the playhouse. If he no longer had the means or desire to move it, at the very least he might know people who did.

It was always bittersweet to know that people you loved were alive in the world but in a place where you couldn’t be with them. When Alma Webster got Rose on the line, Rose’s voice came through strong and clear, so
full of emotion that Dez could almost feel Rose’s strong, ropy hands holding her face. Conscious of the long-distance call, Rose spoke staccato-fast. She’d bought a dozen copies of the
Standard
, she said. The story would surely change the state’s mind, she had no doubt of that. “What do you need, dear?” she asked, because no one paid for a long-distance call for no reason.

Dez had made seventy-five dollars. If she couldn’t spend part of it on Rose, who could she spend it on? She explained that to Rose and asked everyday questions just to hear her voice, to get her to slow down and talk as if she were in the room, sitting over a cup of tea. Rose tried, but a lifetime of being thrifty was too hard to overcome. She wasn’t comfortable on the telephone. She said she liked Chicago well enough. It was cold, yes, in winter, but in summer the breezes off the water reminded her of Cascade. It was wonderful to have her sister’s girl’s children around and she loved Chicago’s markets, the fine flour she could buy on Pearl Street, for her pastries. “Of course it doesn’t have a Shakespeare theater. And it doesn’t have you. Oh, I do miss you.”

“I will visit you,” Dez promised. “Someday I will visit you.” She told Rose her plan, that she was hoping to find someone who might be interested in moving the playhouse. “If it comes to that.”

“Move it! From Cascade?”

“Better than seeing it bulldozed.”

Rose was silent. “Well, don’t jump the gun, dear. You know it’s always been just rumor.”

Dez was about to tell her everything, then held back. What was the point?

“And don’t even think of moving it without telling me first.”

“I won’t.”

Rose did remember the name of the collector. “Henry Folger. But he’s dead.”

“Dead!”

“He died that summer before your father died. Right after your father
agreed to sell him the collection. Oh, his estate still paid and all. He was building a library down in Washington, and the poor fellow died right after they laid the cornerstone. Your father felt terrible about it.”

So the collector was dead. An avenue closed. Dez stayed on the line for another minute, but in the back of her mind she was thinking that the death of the person she hoped might help seemed a sign, a bad one. Yet surely, even in the midst of the Depression, there was someone else who had the means to help.

She hung up and looked around the quiet kitchen: the dishcloth folded by the sink, the dust motes swirling in the sunlit air, all the little details that challenged any idea that life could possibly change.

She chewed on her middle fingernail, and peered into the hall to check the time. Almost four. Still early, early enough to call on Stanley Smith. He had been in town a week. He might have a clearer idea of which way the decision was heading. Would it be too strange for her to visit? Maybe she could get an answer out of him, go forward from whatever knowledge she could obtain.

The Cascade Hotel was a sprawling Victorian with a wraparound porch that hunkered down on the western edge of the common. In its heyday, summer rooms had always been reserved months in advance. The bankside lawn had bustled with croquet games, and waiters carrying trays of spiced tea. Now, although Mrs. Mayhew kept the place tidy, paint was peeling around the eaves. Clapboards had come loose. Dez climbed the wide steps and pushed through the front door, the lobby air moist with the smell of boiled cabbage. It permeated the rose-covered carpet, the heavy drapes. A distant sound of clinking pots came from the kitchen, and the registration desk stood unmanned. Dez slipped behind the desk to peek at the register. A flurry of men had come in over the past week. In the middle of the list, on May 31, was
Mr. S. E. Smith
of
Newton, Mass. Room 4.

Room 4 was on the main floor, at the end of the long hallway in the east wing. Walking there, her footsteps muffled by the carpet, she felt self-conscious. Who was she to call on a man she hardly knew, in his hotel room no less?