An Imperfection in the Kitchen Floor Read online

  Ivy’s shriek brought me back from my daydream.

  “Why, Mama, you can’t be serious!” I heard Ivy complain. “I haven’t seen William in two months and now you are going to make me take Tish along for the entire day?”

  Confused, I tried to piece together what had just happened. I had no intention of spending the day with Ivy and William.

  “Papa, please,” Ivy implored, turning her entire body toward him.

  “No, your mother is right,” he said. “Perhaps, for appearance’s sake, it would be better if Tish accompanied you today.”

  “But William and I are to be married in a month. There is nothing improper about the two of us being alone together,” Ivy protested.

  “All the more reason—you will have your entire lives together. What is one afternoon with your sister?” Mama’s insistent tone finished the discussion.

  In a boiling fury, Ivy excused herself from the table and brought her plate into the kitchen. I followed her in, carrying the remainder of the plates. I stood next to Ivy at the sink, feeling the heat of her impotent wrath. Silently and cautiously, I began to help her wash up.

  “I’ll stay out of your way today, Ivy,” I ventured quietly, lest Mama and Papa hear. “I’m really sorry that Mama and Papa are making me come with you. I’ll bring my sketchbook, walk down to the park with you, and then find a bench. When you are ready to go home, swing by and fetch me. If we walk back together, Mama will think we were together all day.”

  She remained silent, fuming, passing me clean dishes to dry. When we finished, she went upstairs to our room to get ready. I reluctantly followed her, supposing that I, too, should be ready to go out for the day. While Ivy brushed her silky hair and twisted it softly up at the nape of her neck, she hummed to herself, clearly calmed by the sight of her reflection. I plaited my dark hair down my back. Deciding it looked juvenile, I took out the braid and rewove it to resemble something closer to Ivy’s coif. Though I could never attain her natural beauty, I was pleased with my appearance and went downstairs, leaving Ivy and her humming behind.

  ●●●

  It was a grand reunion. William rushed in the front door, squeezing both of Ivy’s hands in his and declaring earnestly how much he had missed her. He was classically handsome, dressed in a high-waisted brown suit and straw hat. He removed the hat when he stepped inside, shaking Papa’s hand in a friendly greeting and then smoothing his side-parted blond hair. He presented Oliver with a small chocolate while gently grinding his knuckles into Oliver’s plump cheek.

  Mama invited him to sit down in the parlor, but Ivy insisted on a tour, showing him the highlights of where the wedding ceremony would be held, and where the food would be set up, and the musicians, and the punch. Papa trailed behind them, eagerly receiving William’s compliments on the spaciousness of the home and the land that was contained within our double lot. It was improper for William to go upstairs, so Ivy told him all about the amazing view from our window, how we could see the fireworks from the park, and sometimes even hear the music wafting in. It was as if, given the opportunity to brag, she suddenly liked our home.

  “Well, don’t get too settled, my darling,” William said to her. “Soon we’ll have our own space, though not quite this impressive, I’m afraid.” With one statement, he had deftly pleased both Ivy and Papa. We all sat in the parlor, and Mama appeared with tall glasses of lemonade.

  “How’s business, William?” Papa asked from his chair. William regaled us with stories from the bank in the city where he was quickly moving up in management. His father was a banker, and they had a grand old house in Chestnut Hill. Though his parents had offered him a nest egg when he and Ivy got engaged, William had turned it down, along with the seven-bedroom starter house down the block from his parents’ fine estate on Seminole Street, preferring to make his own way in the world. I admired that in him, especially since I knew Ivy desperately wanted that well-appointed Colonial.

  “The talk abroad about the European war is a little unsettling to our big investors,” William said, “but we’re counting on Mr. Wilson to keep his promise of America remaining uninvolved.” Ivy beamed in pride next to him on the chaise lounge. “And how is the shop coming along, Mr. Hess?” William asked.

  “Good, good. A little delayed in the opening, but it is planned for next week.”

  “Wonderful. And what a beautiful setting we will have here for the wedding! My mother will just love it, and she has asked me to extend her offer to help any way she can,” William said, attempting to sound sincere.

  Of course, his mother was going to look right down her nose at this relatively humble house. I had only met her once, but I envisioned her haughtily floating around the reception party, quietly judging behind her pinched face and greeting people only after they spoke to her. Some of the Chestnut Hill society would be invited, of course, and so they would likely tightly pack together, afraid middle-class lower earning potential might be contagious.

  “We are looking forward to seeing them again,” Mama said, genuine and self-secure.

  The conversation continued over the particulars of the wedding and finally Mama excused herself and pulled me with her to prepare the luncheon. Oliver tagged along and occupied himself near our feet, zooming wooden cars along the floor of the kitchen. We laid out the thinly sliced meat and cheese. Mama brought out her bright orange gelatin salad. It was stippled with peaches and Bing cherries, a blizzard of coconut on top. I carried a tall sweating pitcher of lemonade to the dining room as Mama announced that the meal was ready.

  Over lunch, I listened as my family discussed the wedding, the honeymoon plans and the newlywed cottage, subjects that held my interest only slightly. I made myself a sandwich and ate, almost knowing what was going to be said next. Everything was always so familiar. Even in this new house, the furniture and its configuration was the same. Our familial habits and the intonation of their voices had an invariable lilt. I knew exactly what this bread, this meat slathered with mustard, was going to taste like. The bright tang of the mustard would always be muted slightly by the greased turkey breast, and by its absorption into the deep crevasses of the pillowy bread. Mama’s signature gelatin salad, which people loved for its consistency, turned my stomach in its familiarity. I yearned for something new. I lost my appetite and left most of my sandwich untouched.

  “Tish… Tish…” Somewhere distant, someone was saying my name. I brought my mind back around to the conversation at the table.

  “Yes, I’m sorry. What were you saying?” I looked up, hopeful that my face feigned interest and that I could sustain it for the entire afternoon.

  ●●●

  The air was warm and muggy as we walked toward the park. I trailed a safe distance behind Ivy and William. She clung to him like he was a raft in a storm, her arm linked in his. Bored, I kicked up the cinders on the road, making a scuffing sound and dirtying my stockings with clouds of dust. Ivy’s face grumbled at me with each glance back. We entered the park at the same place as last night, right past the superintendent’s house, but this time, I followed William and Ivy as they wound around slowly on the various paths, past the flowers and the paisley-shaped ponds.

  The park sounds weighed heavy in the humid air. Through the song of the carousel and the chiming of the games, I could hear the flirtatious lilt of Ivy’s voice. We joined the swarm of people on the midway, the large open space lined with games and vendors, and William paused at a booth to buy some popcorn. In the crush of people, I had to stay closer to them than any of us wanted. They did not share their popcorn with me, and shot ahead as often as possible. I kept my eyes on them and followed through the well-dressed crowd.

  Soon, the park guests diffused, floating in various directions and filtering around the grounds. We passed the Dance Land where the dance had been held, and approached the rides. Ahead of me, I could see the entrance to the rides: The Coal Mine, Venice, the Toboggan, and The Scenic Mountain Railway roller coaster. As we wandered by the Mirror M
aze, I searched for a bench and wondered what Ivy and William would ride first.

  “Ride one with us, will you Tish?” William asked, earning a frown from Ivy.

  I nodded and followed them to the line and then through the turnstile of the Flying Airships. The man collecting the coins at the front wore the uniform of park employees, with a metal change-maker strapped around his waist. The skin on his face glistened in the heat, and it had a sun-beaten olive tone. He was tall, with dark hair. He turned and I saw blazing brown eyes that I recognized immediately. He was the man from the dance last night. A crooked grin softened his stare as he seemed to recognize me too. I was startled, and self-consciously smoothed my hair. I held his eyes for a moment, but looked away first.

  He took William’s fare for the three of us and then ushered William and Ivy into an airship. He pressed a button at his control panel and they moved slowly away. An empty airship, hung from two cables, floated toward me. He said nothing, but offered his hand in assistance. I took it, feeling a shiver of electricity in the depth of my belly, and climbed onto the ride.

  There was a heavy click and the airship raised up into the air, elevated and swinging around in dizzying circles until finally slowing back to earth. We disembarked on the other side and Ivy turned on me. “I’d really like some time with William. Alone,” she hissed under her breath.

  “Alone?” I asked, incredulous, and spreading my arms out wide to illustrate my point. “There are thousands of people here!”

  Ivy audibly sighed. “You know just what I mean, Tish. Mama and Papa made you come with me, but you promised that you wouldn’t hang around all day. You promised!”

  “Yes, all right, I did. Enjoy the park. Come find me when you are ready to go home.”

  Ivy grabbed the popcorn box out of William’s snacking hands and held it out to me as some sort of consolation. “Here, you can have this.”

  I took the popcorn and wandered toward a bench out of the sun. Watching Ivy and William walk away, I grabbed a handful of the warm popcorn and shoved some into my mouth. The slick butter and salty coating instantly made me thirsty. I should have asked William to get me a drink before they left. Placing the popcorn down on the seat next to me, I pulled my small sketchbook out of my satchel and began to draw the roller coaster. I enjoyed the task, but grumbled at how Ivy had fulfilled her prophecy of me painting the roller coaster by abandoning me here at the park. The sounds surrounding me were distracting at first, the crowd chatter and the clacking roller coaster crashing in on my concentration, but soon I was well into the drawing and I might as well have been alone.

  “That’s pretty good,” someone said.

  I was startled, and looked up. It was the man in the blue jacket, which I now understood to be the park’s uniform. As he looked down at me, I noticed that his dark hair had a slight wave to it and, despite the hair tonic that shone in it, yearned to be free.

  “Thank you,” I said. I wasn’t sure I wanted to start a conversation. I turned back to my drawing, bringing out the shadows cast by the trees.

  The man helped himself to the seat on the bench next to me and began to read a book. I recognized the dust jacket of The Eyes of the World, the same as sat on my bookshelf at home.

  After a few moments, he looked up. “Have you read this?” he asked, holding it out to me.

  “I have,” I said.

  “It takes place in my home state,” he said. He sighed and stretched his arms across the back ledge, his legs out straight in front of him, crossing them at the ankles.

  “You are from California?” I asked, my voice pricking with interest and something I recognized as jealousy.

  “Yes,” was all he said.

  There was so much I wanted to know! How did he get here from there? Why did he choose to leave a state that seemed so full of color and adventure? Did he spend time in the mountains? Were the mountains as big as they seemed in the paintings? Was it always warm? What did the Pacific Ocean look like?

  This man sitting inches from me on the bench had lived in a place that I so desperately wanted to explore; he had lived a life I so desperately wanted to live, but we had not been introduced and I couldn’t simply pepper him with all of my questions.

  “Have you been there? To California?” he asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Not yet?” He sniffed. “How’s a girl like you, who gets dragged around a dance by her friend, and dragged around the park by—who was that—your sister, going to ever get to California? Did you pick out a husband at the dance last night to take you there?”

  I was aghast. “You don’t know what kind of girl I am. You don’t even know me. And how could you, lurking in the corner all night long?”

  “Ah ha. I knew you were watching me.”

  “It was you who was watching me!” I cried, but instantly regretted it. I flushed deep crimson. How could I be so bold? I had to turn the conversation to something more civilized. “There are some wonderful paintings depicting California on display downtown at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Huge sky and sprawling mountains. There just seems to be so much air. Do you know the art work of Albert Bierstadt? Or Paul Dougherty?”

  He laughed and stood up. Instead of answering, he stretched his arms out wide and arched his back, letting out a groan. “I’m Ellis.”

  “I’m Letitia, but everyone calls me Tish,” I said.

  We shook hands and he said, “Let’s walk around a bit. I’ll tell you everything you want to know about California. Besides, I bet that popcorn is making you thirsty.”

  Popcorn surely makes everyone thirsty, but I couldn’t help feeling that maybe he did know me.

  ●●●

  After getting a boysenberry juice from a nearby vendor, Ellis and I strolled the grounds of the park, finding ourselves back around the big lake. The grassy areas surrounding the paths were lush and ripe in the early spring, but quite manicured and forced. I sipped my drink and brushed aside a flowering branch that was hanging over the path. Its delicate blossoms were just beginning to burst forth, their pink the darkest they would ever be.

  “That’s a pretty tree. I’ve never seen it before.” Ellis said.

  “It’s a cherry tree. These all are,” I said, pointing out the ones that surrounded it. “They come from Japan. I’ve seen them at Morris Arboretum. I read in the newspaper that they have them in Washington DC now, too, but I haven’t been there. Yet.”

  “There is that ‘yet’ again,” he said.

  I fiddled with the branch, gently turning it to look at the buds. “In a week,” I continued, “these trees will all bloom at once, raining down petals like fairy snow. The flowers don’t last long. I bet Mama would love to paint them. I’ll have to bring her back to show her.”

  “Your mother paints?”

  “Yes, mostly still lifes. Fruit, vegetables, flowers.”

  “Do you paint also?” he asked with a nod toward my sketchbook, now closed and tucked under my arm as we walked.

  “Yes. Do you like art?”

  “Can’t say I know much about it.”

  “Well, there are lots of great museums in Philadelphia. We used to live in the city and Mama would try to take us to a museum once a month. Either the Academy of the Fine Arts or the Philadelphia Art Museum. She likes to get ideas for her still lifes. The Peale Family is from Philadelphia and are quite famous artists, you know. They paint the most realistic still lifes. But I prefer the grand landscape paintings. There was an incredible exhibition a few years ago, all landscapes. Mama let me see it twice. America is so vast, I want to be there, paint where those artists did, experience it for myself. The colors take my breath away. I can’t imagine how intense the view would be in real life.”

  I knew I was rambling, but it filled the space between us with safe territory. We drifted further along the path.

  “Why not enjoy the view right here? Compared to the city, this is practically countryside,” Ellis asked.

  “How easy for you to s
ay, since you have already seen it all. I am fairly familiar with everything here. It still has the same sort of feeling. I have seen almost all the types of trees that grow here, and the flowers. I want to experience something new.”

  He pointed at a cluster of yellow flowers near the ground. “How about these? Seen these before?”

  “Daffodils are just about everywhere you look, each springtime of my entire life,” I laughed. “The Victorians say they represent new beginnings.”

  “Oh, really? Fancy that.” He looked around to see if anyone was watching, then leaned down and plucked one, using his thumbnail to cut through the stem. He handed it to me with a grin.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Molly

  In that first week home alone with Hayden in Aunt Tish’s house, I felt the loss of my mother acutely. Every question I had went unanswered, every doubt doubled. I felt like a bear cub abandoned in the woods. I stumbled endlessly through the wilderness.

  My mom had been sick when I was in high school, but we thought she had beaten the cancer. One Tuesday afternoon, a few weeks into the fall semester of my sophomore year of college, I was lying on my dorm room bed, clumsily undoing the buttons on my boyfriend’s shirt and kicking the largely ignored textbook to the ground, when the phone rang.

  “Let the machine get it,” I mumbled between fervent kisses.

  My boyfriend, Jeremy, was very cute. Though if I were being completely honest, he was a little dopey. We had gotten into the same college, so he must have been book smart, but he was scattered. He was always losing things and didn’t seem to understand the jokes our friends made. But, he had strong, defined shoulders and the most adorable cleft in his chin. At nineteen, what else mattered?

  The phone rang and rang as I gave up on the buttons and lifted Jeremy’s shirt over his head. Finally, the machine clicked on and my roommate’s voice announced, “You’ve reached Caroline and Molly. We’re out having more fun than you! Leave us a message and we’ll call you back!” The machine beeped loudly.