LITMIR.BIZ

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for Chicago pulls out, I’ll be boarding it. The suffrage movement needs soldiers too, and I intend to join up. And I challenge each of the members of our class to join with me and journey out into the wider world.”

      Abruptly, she took her seat. Father Knapp gripped Deuce’s arm.

      “What the hell is she talking about?” he asked, in a barely controlled whisper. “Did you know about this?”

      Deuce’s mouth went dry. All spring Helen had chattered on about the Chicago Women’s Political Equality League, the city’s abundance of jobs for women, its profusion of respectable rooming houses. He knew she was going to go sometime, but he didn’t think she’d be leaving so soon.

      “Well?” the old man tightened his grip. Reverend Sieve, head bowed, was muttering the benediction.

      “She’s talked about it some,” Deuce said. “I didn’t take it seriously.”

      “There is no way in hell she’s going,” Father Knapp growled.

      “No, of course not.”

      Helen rushed up to the two men, cheeks and eyes radiant. “How did I do?”

      Deuce quickly turned away from his father-in-law. “You were wonderful, sweetie.” He wrapped his arms around her. “Great day.”

      Helen laughed, pulled back, and gave Father Knapp a solemn peck on the cheek. His expression was as stiff as his old-fashioned collar. She glanced at Deuce with raised brows.

      “Your grandfather—”

      Father Knapp interrupted. “There is no way in hell you’re going to Chicago.”

      “But—”

      “And you did nothing but embarrass yourself up there.” He flung his hand toward the stage. “Disgraced me too, and the memory of your mother.”

      When her grandfather mentioned Winnie, Helen’s cheeks paled. The old man had struck a nerve. Although outspoken, Helen’s vulnerability lay in wanting to live up to Winnie’s aspirations for her. The old man knew this and, in the two years since Winnie’s death, used his late daughter’s memory to manipulate his granddaughter. Deuce hated him for this. From the day he’d exchanged vows with Winnie, with a somber two-year-old Helen looking on, the old man had done nothing but stage manage every part of their lives.

      “Look, it’s too soon. Come work at the Clarion for a year, just like we discussed. Then the three of us can sit down and, you know, reconsider, and then . . .”

      Helen glared directly into Deuce’s eyes. “That’s the kind of thing you always say. You’re always compromising. You go along with everybody. Well, sometimes that doesn’t work. You have to take a side.”

      She turned and stomped off across the wide lawn, her graduation gown billowing behind her.

      Deuce started to follow but Father Knapp pulled him back. “Let her go. She’ll cool down. She’s got to learn that she’s not going to always get her own way.”

      * * *

      Remembering this exchange, Deuce wriggled uncomfortably as the razor scraped his left cheek. Even now, three months later, with Helen somewhat resignedly installed as bookkeeper at the Clarion, he knew things weren’t settled. She could take off at any minute. Probably the only thing keeping her was Father Knapp’s crack about Winnie turning over in her grave.

      Yet, deep down, he was a tiny bit glad if it meant she’d stay. The house was too big for one person. Already, with Winnie gone, at least half of the rooms had gone fallow. On his rare visits to the parlor, the draperies smelled stale, his footsteps echoed on the parquet floor. What would living here be like when it was just himself?

      He knew in his heart he should let her go. Help her go. But banging up against his father-in-law’s opposition was dicey. The man had bought and furnished Deuce and Winnie’s house, paid for Helen’s painting, piano, and horseback riding lessons—none of which were within the reach of a newspaperman—and, most importantly, Father Knapp was a silent partner—the majority partner—in the Clarion. But Deuce loved Helen more than anything and refused to squash her dreams. The evening of the graduation ceremony, he and Helen had talked it through. She apologized for what she’d said and he admitted that he allowed himself to be swayed too often. Although unhappy these last three months, she’d agreed to stay in Emporia for one more year.

      The metal clatter of the trolley’s steel wheels on the tracks out front pulled Deuce’s thoughts back to the steamy bathroom and the lather drying on his face.

      In the bedroom, he dropped a hand towel onto the wet floorboards by the window. Over at the Lakes’, the porch shades were drawn. Tula’s houseguest must be sleeping in. He fingered the tangle of ties on the closet doorknob. Two striped affairs, some muted solids, and the lavender number that Helen had given him for his birthday five years back. He’d worn it once but the fellows at the barbershop had razzed him and that had been the end of it. “Don’t want to stick out like a sore thumb,” he’d mumbled to Winnie when Helen was out of earshot. Today he felt differently and yanked it off the rack with a snap.

      On the dresser, a tortoise box held enamel lapel tacks and gilt watch fobs representing most of Emporia’s fraternal orders and business clubs. Becoming a member of the Elks, Knights of Pythias, the Commerce Club, and all the others represented Deuce’s slow but steady crawl up the social ladder.

      Since the 1820s, when his ancestors first settled in what was to become Macomb County, there had been rumors about colored blood in the family. No Garland ever publicly confirmed it, but when he was nine, Deuce had been ushered into his grandfather’s sick room. There, the old man, with skin the color of fallen oak leaves, solemnly explained that way back, Deuce’s great-great-great-grandfather had married a Negress and it was a disgrace that haunted the Garland clan to this day. “But don’t never admit it, boy. They can say what they like, but they can’t prove it.” Even without confirmation, whispers clung like cobwebs to each generation and Deuce never completely shook off the humiliation he’d felt as a small boy, teased in the schoolyard with shouts of “Nigger Deuce.”

      The taunts boiled up like welts whenever trifling disputes arose. As a child, it had happened over games of mumblety-peg and duck, duck, goose and he’d run home to the comfort of his older sisters. Later, the insult was occasionally flung during poker games and, more often, in disputes over the attentions of young ladies. Wounded, he had retreated to the type cases of Brown’s Print Shop, where he’d worked as an apprentice. As he grew older, Deuce adopted a different strategy: rather than retreating, he’d moved heaven and earth to fit in. He took up the cornet when silver bands were the rage; ordered roast beef and mashed, same as all the regulars at The Rainbow Grill. When asked what he thought about a matter, he blew words as slippery and vague as soap bubbles until the questioner revealed his opinions first. “You got that right,” was his pat response. None of this was all that difficult because he had a naturally pliant nature. It was his heart’s desire to belong. He wanted nothing more than to be included. His nickname, Deuce, came from his earliest years when he ran after his older siblings shouting, “Me too, me too!” His first nickname was Two-Two, and eventually it became Deuce.

      And what were the Elks and the Knights of Pythias and the others about, if not belonging? The handshakes, the toasts, the rituals, all separated insiders from outsiders. Then there were the levels, ranks, and orders to rise through, each with its own signifier worn on the lapel for all to see; recognition made tangible in bits of brass and gilt. He’d worked like a dog to win acceptance. But more and more, since Winnie’s death, he yearned to rise above being nothing more than the mouthpiece for Emporia’s prominent and powerful. Now, with the typhoid deaths, this urge became more acute.

      He fastened on the usual array of pins and headed downstairs. Lifting the cake cover, he found a day-old biscuit. Breaking it open with his thumbs, he spooned on strawberry jam and reassembled the two halves. Bundling his breakfast in a napkin and dropping it into his pocket, something Winnie would never have allowed, Deuce retrieved his boater from the hall table and settled it

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