The Twelfth Child (Serendipity #1)(32)
Last week we went to the talking picture show which, even here in Richmond, is considered most modern. Tomorrow evening we are going to the Symphony and Miss Meredith bought me a new dress to wear. It is the latest fashion. Papa would fall over dead if he saw me in it. Mister Frederick, who is also in Miss Meredith’s employ, drives us around town in a Pierce Arrow automobile that is so shiny you can see your face in it.
I am very happy and know for certain that I have done the right thing in coming here. I am hoping to become a writer like Miss Meredith, but instead of poems I shall write stories of courageous women, which is something Mama would be proud of. I pray that you and Papa are doing well. I hope he has forgiven me for running off the way I did, but knowing Papa, he likely never will.
Abigail typed her name then removed the sheet of paper and folded it into an envelope addressed to Rebecca Withers.
Throughout the entire first year she continued to write such glowing letters. Week after week, she told how Miss Ida, as she came to address her benefactor, had taken her to Carter’s Department Store, the largest in all of Richmond, and how they lunched in a tea room with fresh flowers on every table and brocade draperies at the windows. She told of the concerts and ballets they attended and how she had gotten her hair cut into a bob. It’s the very latest, she wrote, the most fashionable ladies are all wearing it. In most every letter she inquired about her father and whether or not it appeared that he had forgiven her behavior. Although Will answered every letter, he never answered that question.
Abigail slipped into her new life as if it were a satin dress. She’d start out walking across the street and suddenly she’d be floating, stepping along on a feathery cloud with her toes barely touching the ground. Every evening the housekeeper drew a warm bath laced with fragrant crystals of jasmine, then Abigail would soak herself in the claw-footed tub and smooth her skin with rosewater and glycerin. After a while, the calluses on her hands disappeared and along with them went the memory of her life on the farm. Livonia’s apron was folded and tucked into the bottom drawer of her dressing table for Abigail no longer had need of such a thing, she’d become a fine lady.
Everything changed after her second summer in Richmond. It happened on a Monday in October, when the crackle of fall was in the air and pots of yellow chrysanthemums were lined up along the walkway. Miss Ida, who usually insisted they dine at six so that at seven she could listen to Amos and Andy, wrinkled her brow and said, “There’s been stories of terrible happenings in New York. Tonight we must listen to Mister Winchell and learn the truth of the matter.” After supper, she called for Abigail, Frederick and Anna Mae, to join her in the parlor; then she turned the radio dial to the somber-voiced newscaster telling how people in New York City were jumping out windows because they had lost everything they owned in the stock market. “Oh, My Lord,” Miss Ida repeated over and over, twisting her lace hankie into a knot.
Anna Mae, who had spent the last thirty years cooking for Miss Ida and never been outside of Richmond, had no knowledge whatsoever of the New York Stock Exchange, but she knew by the tears in Miss Ida’s eyes that the situation was serious. “Now, don’t you go fretting, Miss Ida,” she said, “Them New York folks is plain out crazy, ain’t no such thing gonna happen here.” After that Anna Mae scurried out of the room saying that she’d fix up some hot chocolate to make everyone feel a bit better. But before she could return with the tray of cocoa and shortbread cookies, Miss Ida had poured herself a full snifter of brandy.
Abigail thought Anna Mae spoke good sense, and reasoned that poets did have a tendency to portray things in a far too dramatic fashion. She remembered the day Miss Ida had gotten herself into a tizzy over an article she’d read in Ballyhoo Magazine – she steamed and snorted for days, even wrote letters to three congressmen, a senator and President Hoover, but eventually it was all forgotten. Abigail decided that this stock market thing was just such another instance and would soon enough blow over. Before the sound of Walter Winchell’s voice died away she had drifted off to thoughts of attending the ballet in the green satin dress she’d seen displayed in the front window of Carter’s Department Store.
One week later Ida Jean Meredith received a telephone call from Walter Crimmins at the bank. He did most of the talking; she just stood there with the receiver pressed to her ear and a stream of tears rolling down her face. After she’d hung up the receiver, she didn’t say a word to anyone, just lowered herself into the rocking chair and started humming – no specific song, just a monotonous drone that had the sound of a hurt dog. When Anna Mae announced lunch was served, Miss Meredith didn’t even turn an eye, she just kept creaking her chair back and forth, back and forth. The very next day she told both Anna Mae and Miranda, the cleaning woman, that she would no longer be needing their services. “We’ll have to make do” she tearfully sobbed to Abigail. “There’s no other choice.”
“Make do?” Abigail replied soulfully, never imagining that it would fall upon her to do the cleaning and cooking. “Does that mean we won’t –”
“It means I’ve barely enough money to feed us!” Miss Ida moaned, and then she started to cry in huge shuddering sobs. After that, Miss Meredith did little more than wobble back and forth in her rocking chair from dawn until dark, no longer bothering to bathe or dress herself. “It costs too much to heat bath water,” she’d say, “We’ve no money for such luxuries.”