They had a beer to celebrate the first deposit in the jar that was to free the old homestead. As they rocked and sipped, Miss Tinkham gazed fixedly at an object suspended from the wall above the piano. Suddenly she jumped up.
‘May I pick some sweet peas and four-o’-clocks, Mrs. Feeley? I’ve just had a brilliant idea!’
‘Sure! What you aimin’ to do?’
‘You’ll see! You’ll see!’ said Miss Tinkham coyly.
Later she went to her room and spent the rest of the afternoon doing things to the tray of flowers she had gathered. She emerged only in time to set the table for supper, which she did with a great deal of mysterious humming and smiling to herself.
Mrs. Rasmussen had dug a large mess of dandelions in the back yard. Evidently the time had come for her to show her true prowess as a cutter of corners. The dandelions were cooked with a piece of bacon rind and seasoned tartly with vinegar. On each dish floated several slices of hard-cooked egg.
‘Just what we needs for a little spring tonic this time o’ year,’ she said. ‘An’ they don’t cost nothin’ neither!’
She also served them a platter of beef liver and onions. Her method of dipping the liver into boiling water for a second or two before frying it made it as tender and tasty as calf’s liver. A large earthen casserole of macaroni and cheese accompanied the liver. Mrs. Rasmussen found a macaroni factory on G Street that sold broken and imperfect pieces of macaroni in all shapes and sizes for three cents a pound. She was glad, now that things were tightening up, that she had bought ten pounds. And before it slipped her mind, she must find out what day Old-Timer could drive her out in the truck to the groves for free grapefruit. She left no stone unturned, and knew from years of pinching pennies that the fruit-growers would give you all the fruit you could haul off during those last few days before the law required them to bury the surplus fruit in order not to leave it on the trees to breed fruit flies. She had often kept grapefruit from one year to the next by lining them up on the kitchen shelves, not touching each other.
If you put a drop of wax in the stem end, they would keep indefinitely.
‘If I’d only do as good every day as I done today,’ Mrs. Feeley was saying, a dandelion dripping from the corner of her mouth, ‘it wouldn’t be long till we’d be outa the woods!’
‘We’ll make it!’ Mrs. Rasmussen said confidently. ‘I ain’t tippin’ my hand, but I ain’t gonna sit by an’ see a friend lose her home.’
‘I should say not!’ added Miss Tinkham. ‘Why, life just wouldn’t be the same anywhere else! I am only beginning to learn what it means to really live. If only they would rent my house! I would gladly turn every cent of the money over to the fund, Mrs. Feeley!’
‘I know you would. An’ don’t think I don’t appreciate you all standin’ by me like this. We ain’t never starved a winter yet. We may have to dig an’ grub a little bit this time, but they ain’t nothin’ got in this world without pains but dirt an’ long nails!’
‘That’s the Gawd’s truth,’ agreed Mrs. Rasmussen, looking a little regretfully at her own long, burgundy-tinted nails.
The dinner dishes had been done and the three were rocking slowly, digesting their meal. From time to time, one of them would toss out a remark that showed they were all busy planning how to raise the money and still make ends meet about the house.
‘You know, I been figgerin’, it’s a hunert an’ twenty a month we gotta raise, besides our keep. Twenty-nine or thirty a week don’t sound like so much but when you look at it by the month, it sure comes high!’ Mrs. Rasmussen was still wrestling with the problem. ‘Now, I figger we can all live on my thirty-dollars-a-month pension money; then it’s up to us to scrape up somehow a hunert an’ twenty on top o’ that…for two months an’ a half!’
‘I expect to hear from my lawyer any day now and whatever he sends me, I’ll turn right over to you as treasurer, Mrs. Rasmussen.’ Miss Tinkham thought the will if not the deed ought to count for something.
‘Never thought I’d see the day I’d be lettin’ my friends support me,’ Mrs. Feeley said with a sigh. ‘But I’d sure be up Bitch Creek without you! We’re sure gonna miss our beer!’
‘Ain’t no use crossin’ no bridges till you come to ’em,’ Mrs. Rasmussen advised. ‘Besides, you never can tell when we’ll get a little windfall…like that case today.’
‘Wouldn’t a bottle taste good right now! Kinda takes your mind off your troubles!’
They grinned at each other and Mrs. Rasmussen went to get the beer. After a bit Mrs. Feeley said:
‘Play us a piece, Miss Tinkham! Music is cheery-like! Might as well enjoy our home while we got it!’
Miss Tinkham obliged, selecting only the gayest and jolliest tunes she knew. Mrs. Feeley felt lots better and finally sang a few verses of ‘Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie.’ The other two were delighted.
‘I never knew you could sing, Mrs. Feeley! You have a fine, robust voice!’ Miss Tinkham exclaimed.
‘Ain’t sung in years! Do you know “Dear Old Girl, the Robin Sings Above You”?’
It appeared that Miss Tinkham did.
After singing it through once, Mrs. Feeley wanted to know why they couldn’t ‘chord it’ a little.
Mrs. Rasmussen sang what she called ‘second,’ a rather monotonous alto. Miss Tinkham supplied the tenor, good and high.
‘Now, ladies: all together! One, two—sing!’ Miss Tinkham was in her glory. Why couldn’t she have thought of this? After all, it was her own field.
Mrs. Feeley gave out strong and loud with the tune and the others struggled along as best they could with the ‘harmony.’ They had just taken up the repeat when the back door opened and Old-Timer came in and sat down, attracted by the sounds of revelry by night. Mrs. Feeley waved her beer glass at him as a signal to help himself: she couldn’t stop now!
‘Mister always favored “Dear Old Pal o’ Mine,”’ Mrs. Rasmussen said.
‘Swell!’ cried Mrs. Feeley enthusiastically.
They bore down hard on that, time after time, in love with the sound of their own voices.
‘My throat’s dry!’ Mrs. Feeley complained.
They all decided that they needed to wet their whistles, too. So Old-Timer attended to the beer.
Next they attacked ‘My Buddy,’ until Mrs. Rasmussen became all choked up with emotion and couldn’t sing, on account of Mister, him a veteran and all!
‘Never mind, my dear!’ consoled Mrs. Feeley. ‘We’ll sing somethin’ cheerful! How about “You Made Me What I Am Today, I Hope You’re Satisfied”?’
The intricacies of the harmony required full concentration from Mrs. Rasmussen and she soon recovered her composure.
‘Now to finish up good in honor of the President, let’s sing “Home on the Range.”’ A great theatrical director was lost in Mrs. Feeley.
When they reached the chorus, they all turned round at once, attracted by a loud booming bass coming from the back of the room. It was Old-Timer lifting up his voice in song.
‘Well, now, it sure looks like the old sayin’ ’bout every cloud havin’ a silver linin’ is true! Who’d a said we’d a ended up this day singin’?’ The friends nodded at each other in agreement.
‘Yes, sir!’ Mrs. Feeley mused. ‘We might as well finish the beer!’
S
ATURDAY
night finally rolled around. That was Miss Tinkham’s night to sell the corsages. All day she had been in her room doing mysterious things to the baskets of flowers she had picked early that morning.
The gardenias were full of tight, green buds, but there were no open blooms. They had been blooming gallantly for weeks, but Miss Tinkham realized they could not stay in bloom indefinitely, so she hit upon a new scheme.
Mrs. Rasmussen and Mrs. Feeley were counting the tax money on the kitchen table. They had not done as well as they expected to.
‘The junk sure don’t move fast when you want it to,’ Mrs. Feeley said. ‘We’re gonna have to do better’n this or we’ll never make it! All I’ve took in since that feller gimme ten dollars for the sink is twelve dollars.’
‘We’re eight dollars short for this week,’ the treasurer announced. ‘Say, if we was to have mush an’ milk for supper we could take today’s dollar an’ put it in the kitty! You know I ‘low a dollar a day for eats, an’ I ain’t touched today’s money. I was figgerin’ to get some cube steaks for supper, but they’ll taste all the better for Sunday dinner! What say?’
Mrs. Feeley looked a trifle crestfallen, but she agreed.
‘Well, if you’re willin’, I sure as hell oughta be! But mush an’ milk is a awful dreary supper for a Saturday night!’ Mrs. Feeley saw in her mind’s eye those sixteen luscious brown bottles of the cheap beer a dollar would buy marching straight into the maw of the tax jar.
‘Sure! It’ll be fine. I’ll put plenty of salt in it. We gotta use up that gallon o’ milk I got for a quarter by goin’ after it. Even so, I guess I’ll have enough to make us a batch o’ pot cheese; with some parsley an’ them little chives an’ hot peppers chopped up in it, it’d sure go good with the b—’
‘Shut up!’ Mrs. Feeley couldn’t help laughing. ‘I thought we was gonna have mush an’ milk for supper. It’s gonna be hard enough to swaller without you talkin’ about beer an’ cheese!’
Miss Tinkham emerged from her room dressed for her Saturday-night foray on the night spots. She looked very elegant in her white crepe afternoon frock with the lovely accordion pleats in the front and back; the pleats floated out in panels when she walked. The dress could have stood dry-cleaning and there were two large cigarette burns on the bodice, but they were not noticeable because she had covered them up with a filmy black lace scarf. It was on account of the cigarette holes that she had got the dress at the Thrifty Shoppy for only half a dollar; real crêpe Romaine, too. Instead of doing her hair up as usual she let it hang loosely about her face. It wasn’t very gray…only in a few places; and she hated to pin up those lovely curls that had been the result of the experiments of the students at the Beauty School. It was wonderful of Mrs. Rasmussen to get her the free permanent.
‘My, you do look chick!’ Mrs. Feeley said admiringly as she came out and sat down at the table.
‘Thank you, my dear. Black and white is always sumptuous, don’t you think?’
‘Your hair looks good on you loose like that; more youthful-like.’ Mrs. Rasmussen was wishing her own face wasn’t so long, so she could wear her hair in a George Washington bob.
‘It is important for me to look my best tonight, just as seductive as I possibly can. We need to realize on all our assets to raise that money!’
Mrs. Feeley hoped Miss Tinkham would use discretion when it came to giving her all; you never could tell with these impulsive natures.
After the simple fare had been disposed of, Miss Tinkham rose to put on her hat and go to work. The hat was the final touch of elegance: a picture model of black velvet with a large red satin rose nestling coyly under the brim. Those hats had really been something just after the Armistice.
She carried a large damp pillowcase full of something. The ladies were all agog, but too polite to ask. Mrs. Rasmussen hovered about itching to know why the pillowcase instead of the usual shirt box for the corsages. Miss Tinkham savored her moment and then gave in graciously. She opened the pillowcase and took from it a fragrant flower garland made of deep red carnations. She draped it around her neck and turned to let her friends survey her. They were struck dumb with admiration.
‘Yes,’ said she modestly, ‘I thought up the idea when I noticed Danny’s paper lei on the wall the other day. You know the gardenias cannot stay in bloom all the time, so I made these leis, some out of four-o’clocks and some of sweet peas. The carnation leis are the most elegant, but they are the hardest to make. Think the sailor boys will like them?’
‘Will they like ’em?’ Mrs. Feeley echoed. ‘Boy, you’ll really clean their plow tonight!’
‘You’re just wonderful!’ Mrs. Rasmussen spoke fervently. ‘Wait a second!’ She dashed back to her room, emerged with an atomizer in her hand, and began spraying Miss Tinkham vigorously. She stood with her eyes shut, her head thrown back, drinking in the vile-smelling stuff.
‘Glamorous! Glamorous!’ she breathed. ‘What is it called?’
‘Named “The Tigress”; it’s sure nice c’logne!’
Miss Tinkham found things in full swing when she reached town. She knew the ropes well enough by now to know payday when she saw it. Before she had even displayed a single lei, she had been the recipient of three free drinks. One sailor had called her Hedy Lamarr. Always a stickler for the proper setting, she decided to sell her wares in a fitting background, so she strolled over to the Tropic. The place was jammed with men in uniform. As she stepped in the door she took half a dozen leis from their covering and hung them casually over her arm the way she had seen the native flower-vendors carrying them in the travel ads. Her entrance to the strains of ‘Sing Me a Song of the Islands’ could not have been more impressive if she had planned it herself. In the kindly light of the bar she looked quite beautiful and almost young. Suddenly inspiration struck: she walked with stately tread among the tables holding out her leis and intoning with quiet dignity:
‘Remember Pearl Harbor! Remember Pearl Harbor!’
It looked as though she had said the right thing. The men from the fleet mobbed her and paid a dollar apiece for the garlands without batting an eye. Miss Tinkham was delighted to see that the lads not only bought leis for their girls, but bought and wore them themselves. Evidently it was all right for a man to wear a lei even if he couldn’t wear a corsage. Two or three of her submarine sailors were there and called her over to their table as usual. They were disappointed because all the leis had been sold before she got to their table. She could have sold five times as many as she had.