No one had said anything like that to her since his death, and she missed him all the time. His stories about the lawless early years in Texas, in Laredo and Dallas and Austin and out on the Great Plains, were the best of her memories.
He would have told her to buy the red silk for sure.
Mama looked up from her roses, tipped her new sunbonnet back, and said, “Elsa. Where have you been?”
“Library.”
“You should have let Papa drive you. The walk is too much for you.”
“I’m fine, Mama.”
Honestly. It sometimes seemed they wanted her to be ill.
Elsa tightened her hold on the package of silk.
“Go lie down. It’s going to get hot. Ask Maria to make you some lemonade.” Mama went back to cutting her flowers, dropping them into her woven basket.
Elsa walked to the front door, stepping into the home’s shadowy interior. On days that promised to be hot, all the shades were drawn. In this part of the state, that meant a lot of dark-interiored days. Closing the door behind her, she heard Maria in the kitchen, singing to herself in Spanish.
Elsa slipped through the house and went up the stairs to her bedroom. There, she unwrapped the brown paper and stared down at the vibrant ruby-red silk. She couldn’t help but touch it. The softness soothed her, somehow, reminded her of the ribbon she’d held as a child when she sucked her thumb.
Could she do it, do this wild thing that was suddenly in her mind? It started with her appearance. . . .
Be brave.
Elsa grabbed a handful of her waist-length hair and cut it off at the chin. She felt a little crazed but kept cutting until she stood with long strands of pale-blond hair scattered at her feet.
A knock at the door startled Elsa so badly that she dropped the scissors. They clattered onto the dresser.
The door opened. Her mother walked into the room, saw Elsa’s butchered hair, and stopped. “What have you done?”
“I wanted—”
“You can’t leave the house until it grows out. What would people say?”
“Young women are wearing bobs, Mother.”
“Not nice young women, Elsinore. I will bring you a hat.”
“I just wanted to be pretty,” Elsa said.
The pity in her mother’s eyes was more than Elsa could bear.
TWO
For days, Elsa stayed hidden in her room, saying that she felt unwell. In truth, she couldn’t face her father with her jaggedly cut hair and the need it exposed. At first she tried to read. Books had always been her solace; novels gave her the space to be bold, brave, beautiful, if only in her own imagination.
But the red silk whispered to her, called out, until she finally put her books away and began to make a dress pattern out of newsprint. Once she’d done that, it seemed silly not to go further, so she cut out the fabric and began to sew, just to entertain herself.
As she sewed, she began to feel a remarkable sensation: hope.
Finally, on a Saturday evening, she held up the finished dress. It was the epitome of big-city fashion—a V-neck bodice and dropped waist, a handkerchief hemline; thoroughly, daringly modern. A dress for the kind of woman who danced all night and didn’t have a care in the world. Flappers, they were being called. Young women who flaunted their independence, who drank hooch and smoked cigarettes, and danced in dresses that showed off their legs.
She had to at least try it on, even if she never wore it outside of these four walls.
She took a bath and shaved her legs and smoothed silk stockings up her bare skin. She coiled her damp hair into pin curls and prayed they would create some wave. While her hair dried, she snuck into her mother’s room and borrowed some cosmetics from the vanity. From downstairs she heard the Victrola playing music.
At last, she brushed out her slightly wavy hair and fit the glamorous silver headband on her brow. She stepped into the dress; it floated into place, airy as a cloud. The handkerchief hemline accentuated her long legs.
Leaning close to the mirror, she lined her blue eyes with black kohl and brushed a streak of pale rose powder across her sharp cheekbones. Red lipstick made her lips look fuller, just as the ladies’ magazines always promised.
She looked at herself in the mirror and thought: Oh, my Lord. I’m almost pretty.
“You can do this,” she said out loud. Be brave.
As she walked out of the room and went down the stairs, she felt a surprising confidence. All her life, she’d been told she was unattractive. But not now . . .
Her mother was the first to notice. She smacked Papa hard enough to make him look up from his paperback Farm Journal.
His face creased into frown lines. “What are you wearing?”
“I—I made it,” Elsa said, clasping her hands together nervously.
Papa snapped his Farm Journal shut. “Your hair. Good God. And that harlot dress. Return to your room and do not shame yourself further.”
Elsa turned to her mother for help. “This is the newest fashion—”
“Not for godly women, Elsinore. Your knees are showing. This isn’t New York City.”
“Go,” Papa said. “Now.”
Elsa started to comply. Then she thought about what it meant to obey and she stopped. Grandpa Walt would tell her not to give in.
She forced her chin up. “I am going to the speakeasy tonight to listen to music.”
“You will not.” Papa rose. “I forbid it.”
Elsa ran to the door, afraid that if she slowed, she’d stop. She lurched outside and kept running, ignoring the voices that called for her. She didn’t stop until her ragged breathing forced it.
In town, the speakeasy was tucked in between an old livery station, now boarded up in this era of automobiles, and a bakery. Since the Eighteenth Amendment had been ratified and Prohibition had begun, she’d watched both women and men disappear behind the speakeasy’s wooden door. And, contrary to her mother’s opinion, many of the young women were dressed just as Elsa was.
She walked down the wooden steps to the closed door and knocked. A slit she hadn’t noticed slid open; a pair of squinty eyes appeared. A jazzy piano tune and cigar smoke wafted through the opening. “Password,” said a familiar voice.
“Password?”
“Miss Wolcott. You lost?”
“No, Frank. I’ve a hankering to hear some music,” she said, proud of herself for sounding so calm.
“Your old man’d whoop my hide if I let you in here. Go on home. No need for a girl like you to walk the streets dressed like that. Only trouble comes of it.”
The panel slid shut. She could still hear music behind the locked door. “Ain’t We Got Fun.” A whiff of cigar smoke lingered in the air.
Elsa stood there a moment, confused. She couldn’t even go in? Why not? Sure, Prohibition made drinking illegal, but everyone in town wet their whistles in places like this and the cops looked the other way.
She walked aimlessly up the street, toward the county courthouse.
That was when she saw a man headed her way.
Tall and lanky, he was, with thick black hair partially tamed by glistening pomade. He wore dusty black pants that clung to his narrow hips and a white shirt buttoned to his neck under a beige sweater, with only the knot showing of his plaid tie. A leather newsboy cap sat at a jaunty angle on his head.