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You're the Cream in My Coffee

By Jennifer Lamont Leo

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First off, I need to set the record straight. In a town the size of Kerryville, Illinois, rumors have a way of catching fire and burning a hole straight through the truth.
Despite what you may have heard down at Madge’s Cut ’n’ Curl, the fact that I, Marjorie Corrigan, fainted in the balcony at the Orpheum during the Sunday matinee had nothing to do with the movie’s intense Great War battle scenes. Or the steamy romance between an American soldier and a French farm girl. Or the scandalous appearance of a curse word right there in black and white for the whole world to see. It had nothing to do with Myrtle Jamison’s off-tune piano accompaniment, or the refreshment stand running out of Coca-Cola even before the feature started.
Above all, it had nothing—absolutely nothing—to do with my being in the “family way,” a rumor as mortifying as it was untrue. Honestly! I realized the good ladies of Kerryville thought my engagement to Dr. Richard Brownlee had dragged on entirely too long, but spreading malicious rumors was not the way to speed things along.
Here’s how it all began. On an unseasonably warm April afternoon, the theater grew close and stuffy, especially up in the balcony where my kid sister, Helen, and I were seated. The new air-cooling systems, all the rage in city theaters, had not yet made it to little Kerryville. I pressed my handkerchief to my face and debated whether to sneak down to the lobby for a cold drink. I knew the picture by heart, anyway. Helen and I had already watched John Gilbert in The Big Parade several times. The feature selection at the Orpheum changed with glacial slowness, and the owner swapped in an old favorite now and then when new reels were slow to arrive. Still, I hated to annoy people by crawling over their legs in the dark, so I stayed put and watched a favorite scene in which the soldier and the French girl first meet in the village near her family’s farm.
As the doughboy and farm girl flirted onscreen, I mentally recast the scene. The French village became Kerryville, the farm our family’s dry goods store, and the French girl was me, stocking thread and cutting fabric on an ordinary day, when in walks a handsome soldier, ready to change my life forever. What would it be like to have my whole world turned upside down by this soldier, his dazzling smile hinting at adventure and mystery? What if he invited me to run away with him? What if he held out his hand to me and said—
“Stop hogging all the Jujubes.” Helen reached over and snatched the candy from my hand. With a start I snapped back to reality, guilty I’d been caught daydreaming, especially since the soldier in my fantasy clearly bore a face other than that of my fiancé, Richard. With a sigh I relinquished the sweets. Real life wasn’t anything like the movies.
Helen had begged to see The Big Parade yet again, but playing around the misty edges of my mind lurked the real reason I had given in. In John Gilbert’s soulful expression, in his strong jaw and khaki uniform, I saw Jack. Jack, the sweetheart lost to me forever on some battlefield in France. And for just a little while, in the dark, I could think back and remember.
For heaven’s sake, Marjorie, snap out of it. I straightened my spine against the velvet cushion. It’s been ten years. You’re engaged to someone else. Move on with your life. Forward, march.
Sternly I directed my mind to imagine Richard in the soldier role, but it didn’t quite work. For one thing, Richard hadn’t served in the war. For another, he was not prone to impulsive romantic gestures. Our courtship proceeded on a steady course, free of drama. Silently I recited his good qualities, a habit I’d acquired of late. Richard was kind. Generous. Faithful. Prosperous. Toss in thrifty, brave, and clean and he’d make the perfect Boy Scout. In fact, he made perfect husband and father material. Everyone said so. If together we seemed to lack a certain, well, spark, then so what? A girl can’t build a future on castles in the air.
At sixteen, Helen still firmly believed in air castles. Beside me she mused, “I wonder if our brother fell in love with any French girls during the war.”
Or if Jack did, I wondered against my will, then chased that thought straight out of my head. Remembering my old flame invariably brought on useless comparisons between then and now.
“Not likely,” I whispered to Helen. “Charlie’s never mentioned any girls.”
“Not that he’d tell us, of course. You don’t tell that sort of thing to your sisters.”
“Sssh! Watch the picture.”
Helen fell silent, but she’d seen the movie too many times to become engrossed. Minutes later she whispered, “I wish you and I could travel to France.”
“Maybe we will. Someday.”
She snorted. “You say that now. But once you’re married, we’ll never get to go anywhere or do anything fun, ever again.”
This time the “Sssh!” came from the row behind us.
My sister’s words echoed in my head. Never do anything fun again. Suddenly, in spite of the heat, shivers that had nothing to do with John Gilbert’s dreamy dark eyes raised goose bumps on my arms. The screen blurred. The flocked-velvet walls closed in on me. My pulse pounded. I needed air.
I nudged my sister. “Come on. We have to leave.”
Helen gaped at me in the flickering light. “What’s the matter?”
The rows of seats rearranged themselves in dizzying patterns.
“Now, please. I’m—I’m not feeling well.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. I just feel—strange.”
She gestured toward the screen. “But the soldier and the French girl—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Helen,” I hissed, gripping her arm. “How many times have we seen it? War happens, he leaves, he comes back, they kiss, end of story.”
“Ow. Stop it!” Helen yanked her arm away, swatting the man in front of us. He turned and glared. “Sorry,” she whispered, then to me, “See what you made me do.”
The theater dipped and spun. “I mean it, Helen. I have to leave. Now.”
She peered at me. “Jeepers, Marjorie, you don’t look so hot.”
I stood and lurched over legs and handbags toward the exit. “Sorry. Sorry.”
And the next thing I knew, I was lying flat in the aisle, Helen rubbing my wrist, a pockmarked usher shining his flashlight in my face, and Eugenia Wardlow, the town’s biggest gossip, leaning over me with a look of delighted concern.
***
“If you wouldn’t attend those ghastly pictures, this never would have happened,” my father’s wife, Frances, scolded that evening, after getting an earful from Sadie Miller, who heard it from Penelope Blake, who got it straight from Eugenia Wardlow herself. “I’m mortified. Simply mortified.”
“You’re mortified?”
Feeling more like an obstinate youngster than a woman of twenty-six, I avoided her gaze and watched her hands tense and flex as she kneaded bread dough.
“‘Family way,’ indeed,” she sputtered. “That woman is a—a—” She gave the dough an extra-vigorous punch—whether on Eugenia Wardlow’s behalf or mine was unclear. “Well, being a Christian woman, I can’t say what she is. But she spreads a nasty rumor quicker than ‘one if by land, two if by sea.’ I’ll be on the telephone all evening, trying to set things right.” She straightened up and blew a strand of hair out of her face. “Honestly, if Eugenia weren’t the only florist in town, I’d order your wedding flowers elsewhere, just to spite her.”
“That’s what I hate about small-town life,” I said. “Everybody’s always poking their noses into everyone else’s business and offering up their own skewed versions of things. Since when is fainting a sign of the stork, anyway?”
“Since busybody spinsters like Eugenia decided to liven up the gossip mill.” Frances glanced at the wall calendar, where Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia and the Kerryville Pharmacy wished us a healthy 1928. “I suppose we could move the wedding earlier.”
My heart lurched. “Earlier! That would only make matters worse.”
She sighed. “We’d never be able to pull it off, anyway. So much remains to be done: the guest list, the invitations . . .” She paused. “You ought to see Doctor Perkins. Best make sure you’re not coming down with something.”
“I’m fine, really. The theater was simply roasting, and I . . .”
“Yes, Helen told me all about it.” Frances returned to kneading. “Marjorie, you’re a grown woman. I can’t stop you from going to the pictures, but I can at least insist you stop taking Helen with you. At her age she doesn’t need to see all that romantic folderol and get strange ideas in her head.”
Strange ideas like there’s room for a little romance and adventure in a person’s life. Like there’s a world beyond Kerryville. Anyway, at sixteen, Helen practically knew more about the birds and the bees than I did. But all I said out loud was, “Yes, ma’am.”
The back door swung open and my older brother Charlie shuffled in. “Hi, all. When’s supper? I’m starving.” He reached around Frances to pinch a bit of bread dough, but she playfully slapped him away and covered the bread pan with a cloth. “That’s for tomorrow. We’ll eat early tonight since your father’s out of town.”
“Hey, sis, you all right? I heard you made quite a scene at the Orpheum. Swooning over some love scene?” He batted his eyelashes.
“Very funny. The Big Parade is a good war story. Which you would know if you’d ever seen it.”
“‘Good’ and ‘war’ don’t belong in the same sentence.” His face darkened. “I lived it. Why would I want to watch it?”
I changed the subject. “Where did you hear I fainted?”
“Some fellows were talking about it over at Riley’s.”
“Oh, that’s just swell,” I mumbled, embarrassed to be the object of gossip but secretly relieved not to detect any alcohol on my brother’s breath. When he returned from the war, broken in body and spirit, he too often drowned his pain in whiskey. Prohibition or no Prohibition, he was always able to get his hands on some. Knew the right people. With Frances active in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, those were some tense years in the Corrigan household. Thankfully, as far as I knew, he’d remained sober for the last year or so. He’d gone back to church, too. Still, I couldn’t break the habit of expecting a whiff of alcohol on his breath and felt relieved when there was none.
“Don’t worry, I set them straight.” Charlie raised his good arm. “I’ll pummel any goon who gets out of line. I’ll go wash up. Glad you’re okay, sis.” He limped out of the room.
Frances pulled a pitcher from the icebox and set it on the table. “I do wish he wouldn’t hang around a tavern on Sunday with all that riffraff. It’s not seemly.”
I set out plates. “It’s not a tavern, it’s a soda fountain. And they’re hardly riffraff. Just friends he grew up with.”
“It was a tavern before Prohibition. I don’t trust that Riley not to keep a bottle stashed under the counter.” Frances frowned. “Charlie would get further in life if he chose a better class of companions. You don’t see the Cavendishes wasting Sunday afternoons at Riley’s—or at the Orpheum, for that matter.”
“Who cares what the Cavendishes do?” I muttered, knowing full well that at least one of the two of us cared deeply. The Cavendishes were Kerryville aristocracy. Dr. Cavendish ran Kerryville General Hospital. Mrs. Cavendish ran the Hospital Auxiliary, the WCTU, and practically everything else. Frances, anxious for the Corrigans to rise in society, coveted the Cavendish seal of approval on everything from how we spent our Sundays to who our friends were. My engagement to Dr. Richard Brownlee was a jewel in her crown.
“I dread to think what your father will say,” Frances continued. “Fortunately he knows Eugenia Wardlow’s a ninny. What about Richard? You’d better telephone him right away, before he hears it from somebody else.”
“I’m seeing him tonight for dinner. Speaking of which, I’d better freshen up.” I stood, bone-weary and not of a mind to discuss any more of my personal business with Frances.
She crossed her arms. “You know, you two would already be married by now, if only—”
“If only I hadn’t dragged my feet on setting a date,” I finished, sparing her the trouble of repeating herself for the thousandth time.
“He’s wanted to marry you for ages, and you keep putting him off. It’s no wonder people have started . . . speculating.”
Heat rose in my chest. “Let them speculate. Anyway, I’m not putting him off any longer.” September fifteenth, my wedding day, loomed just on the other side of summer.
“He’s a real catch, Marjorie,” Frances admonished, “and you’re not getting any younger.”
“Thanks.” I made tracks for the door, desperate to escape the conversation.
“Marrying Richard is the wisest decision you’ve ever made. You’ll be set for life,” she called after me, “if you don’t spoil your chance.”
On the staircase I ¬¬¬¬¬bumped into the eavesdropping Helen.
“Was she sore?”
“A little. She’ll get over it. But no more pictures for you for a while.”
“Aw.” She trailed into my room. “Have you finished my dress for Spring Fling?”
Helen would be making her dramatic debut at the high school’s end-of-the-year program, reciting “The Wreck of the Hesperus” to a packed, and likely sweltering, auditorium. I was her wardrobe mistress for the event, but I’d promised Frances that as soon as Helen’s dress was out of the way, I’d get busy on my own wedding gown.
“Not yet, Miss Impatience. I’ve been a little preoccupied with creating a town scandal.”
“Will you finish it soon?”
“Not if you don’t stop pestering me. Besides, you don’t need it until Spring Fling.”
“Can I at least see it?”
“Helen.”
“Please?”
I surrendered and opened my sewing basket. “Oh, all right. Here. Mind the pins.”
She held up the pale violet frock—an old one of mine that I was altering to fit her—and swayed to and fro in front of the pier glass, glowing. “Oh, Marjie, it’s the cat’s meow.”
“That shade suits you. Brings out your eye color.”
“Am I pretty, Marjie?”
“Pretty is as pretty does.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Now you sound like Frances.”
I cringed. Sounding like Frances was not one of my goals in life.
“You might be pretty,” I teased. “Maybe the tiniest little bit. When your horns aren’t showing.”
She stuck out her tongue. “Oh, you’re a hot sketch. Be serious.”
I smiled. “You look like our mother.”
Her eyes widened. “I do? Honest?”
“Honest. And she was stunning.”
Helen was silent a moment as she absorbed that thought.
“But remember what the Bible says,” I said. “‘Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain . . .’”
“‘. . . but the woman who feareth the Lord, she shall be praised,’” we finished together.
“That’s Scripture,” I added. “Not Frances.”
“I know. Mrs. Varney had us memorize it in Phoebe Circle. That reminds me. She wants to know if you’ll help out next fall.”
“Help out with what?”
“Phoebe Circle. After you’re back from your honeymoon, of course. She says the group is getting too large for her to handle all by herself. I overheard her tell Superintendent Lewis that we’re quite a handful,” she added with pride.
“I can imagine.”
“Aw, she’s just getting old. Anyway, she said you used to love Phoebe Circle, and she’s hoping you’ll come back and help lead it. She said she’s been planning to speak to you about it at church, but you always disappear right after the service. Which is true.” She tossed me an accusatory look.
I made no reply. Mrs. Varney was right. As a girl I’d been active in Phoebe Circle and other church activities. But that was before the Lord chose to take away everything that mattered most to me. His prerogative, of course. “Thy will be done,” said the prayer I still dutifully recited. But for the past few years, as my Bible gathered dust on my bedside table, I’d found it hard to pay Him much more than a perfunctory visit on Sunday morning. And even that was largely due to Frances’s insistence that “nice people” go to church.
“I’m sure she’ll ask you about it herself,” Helen concluded. “I only said I’d mention it.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“It’d be fun, having you for a leader.”
“You just think I’d let you get away with more high jinks than Mrs. Varney does,” I teased. “You’d be surprised what a tough old bird your sister can be.”
She took one last twirl and handed me the dress.
“I don’t know about that. But you sure are a whiz with a needle and thread.”
She whirled out of the room. As I opened the sewing basket, I caught sight of something half-hidden in its depths. My heart squeezed. I lifted the photograph, worn around the edges from much handling. Jack in his army uniform, smiling and confident.
I turned it over. “I’ll be home before you know it,” he’d written on the back in his strong, black cursive. “You won’t even have time to miss me.”
Oh, Jack, how wrong you were. I rubbed my thumb over the sepia image. I’ve had plenty of time to miss you. Ten years, and I’m just getting started.
Gently I replaced the photograph and covered it with Helen’s half-sewn dress. If only a heart could be restitched as neatly as the seams of a dress after it’s been torn apart.

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