I left and poked my head into the next room, where Flossie was helping shy, round-faced Opal pile and pin her glossy black hair. Every time Opal locked eyes in the mirror with Flossie, she offered a sweet, timid smile. Flossie barely noticed. She was working hard, a mouthful of hairpins gripped tightly between her thin lips. That was Flossie’s way: caring, but efficient.
Flossie glanced up and noticed me.
“Violet—don’t you have a roast in the oven?”
During my two years at the boardinghouse, I had proved to be an efficient maid but a mediocre cook. Bread burned, gravy lumped, meat came out rubbery.
“You’re right,” I sighed. “I’ll go check on it now.”
I continued down the hallway, but when I passed Cora’s room, the sight of her stopped me in my tracks. She sat at a rickety old vanity, putting the finishing touches on her makeup. I didn’t mean to stare, but it was hard not to. As she carefully daubed rouge on her lips, her green eyes bright and her hair piled in a shapely bouffant, she made a perfect picture—a flame-haired Gibson girl in the flesh.
Her eyes met mine in the mirror. “Well, don’t just stand there . . . Come in, Violet.”
I stepped inside. She turned to get a better look at me, and I suddenly felt very aware of my plain brown hair and dull gray calico dress.
Over the past two years Cora had further cultivated her haughty, imperious air. She might have been forced into a life of dancing for coins, but to talk to her, you would think she was Marie Antoinette. This air ought to have repelled others. But on Cora it didn’t; it rendered her even more magnetic.
“I’m curious, Little Mouse,” she said, squinting at my features. “Let’s put some rouge on you . . . I want to see how it looks.”
I sat in her chair as she went to work, powdering and rubbing rouge into the apples of my cheeks, then dipping a brush into a little pot of red lip paint to trace the curves of my mouth. When she was done, she nodded with satisfaction.
“Why, Violet, I never noticed: your eyes are quite an unusual shade of gray!”
I turned to the mirror and gasped. Like Flossie, I looked a bit clownish. But . . . surprisingly, a clown with a few fetching features. There was a certain prettiness to my face I had never noticed before.
“My, my, Violet, it appears as though you like it,” Cora commented flirtatiously. She gave a sly smile and winked at my reflection in the mirror.
I am ashamed to admit, I would have stared longer. However, a loud rapping sounded downstairs, making me jump to attention.
“Oh! The back door! I forgot to unlock it!”
I rushed out of the room, down the stairs, and through the kitchen.
It wasn’t until I had pulled the bolt back and thrown open the door that I realized I had not taken a moment to wipe the makeup off my face.
“Jasper! Did you get everything on the list?”
Jasper stood there, blinking at me with surprise. He looked twice at my painted face, then cast his eyes to the ground, his tanned cheeks flushing red.
“Just as you wrote it,” Jasper replied. “Down to the last.”
A year older than myself, Jasper’s main duty was to stand outside the dancehall and collect admission fees at the men’s entrance. (Ladies entered free of charge.) But Tackett sometimes also put Jasper to work running the odd errand; in this case, he had picked up our month’s supply of dry goods from the general store.
He began to lift sacks of rice and flour from a cart in the alley, carrying them in through the kitchen door. As he hefted the bags over his shoulder and stepped past me, he stole little glances at my made-up face. I knew all the girls down at the dancehall fawned over Jasper but found it impossible to ruffle him with their lewd flirtations. And yet, around me he sometimes took on a youthful softness that put me in mind of a puppy. The problem was he was eager and handsome—too eager and handsome to be anything but trouble.
With his errand unloaded, he handed me the list I’d scrawled on a little scrap of paper.
“You’ve a beautiful hand for writing, Miss Violet.”
I have never been someone who knew much what to do with a compliment. I busied myself with the groceries.
“I’d like someone to learn me to make letters as nice as you do. But I’m guessin’ you had a natural talent for it.”
“You seem to do well enough with what you know,” I reminded him.
“I do . . . all right . . . I suppose.”
Footsteps thundered down the stairs and giggles and shrieks came from the sitting room. Jasper glanced curiously in the direction of the noise.
“Thank you, Jasper. I reckon you ought to be getting down to the dancehall.”
“Oh, but I could stay, Miss Violet, and help you put these sundries away . . .”
“Nonsense,” I said. “I won’t keep you another second.”
I ushered Jasper out the door where he rejoined his now-empty cart in the alleyway. He smiled at me, disappointed but not offended. I closed the door only to hear a loud tittering behind me. I whirled about to face Henrietta and Opal.
“Well, ain’t he awful sweet on you!” Henrietta cackled.
I tried to deflect their jibes. “Don’t be silly. He likes to hang about the house when he knows you girls are getting dressed. I’d wager he merely wanted to get a glimpse of Cora primping.”
Opal shook her head. “He’s the only one who doesn’t stare at her, actually . . .”
I felt a little color rise to my cheeks. I said a silent prayer that they would let the subject drop. In the next second Henrietta sniffed at the air.
“What’s that I smell burning?” she asked.
“Oh!” I cried, rushing to the oven and yanking the door open, only to encounter a blast of hot smoke. “Oh, no!” I pulled out a burnt roast. “Not again!” My eyes welled up with tears—partly from the smoke, but also from having reduced yet another dinner to inedible cinders.
“He’s going to have my hide!” I whispered.
Hearing my distress, Flossie came downstairs, swooping in to my rescue.
“We’ll fix it,” she promised. She rooted in a drawer for a butter knife and set to scraping the burnt matter off the roast, then off each piece of diced carrot and celery.
While Flossie worked, she directed me to boil and mash some potatoes we found in the larder. We then arranged a pair of plates, using the mashed potatoes to mask any remaining evidence of char.
“There!” Flossie said. “Good as new. Now hurry and take it in to him. Don’t forget a plate for Blanche . . . She’s on her high horse today.”