Lilies in Moonlight Read online

  Behind her the bell rang, and though she didn’t know another soul in this part of town, Lilly spun on her stool to see who walked in. Two women, probably in their fifties, wearing identical gray dresses, white aprons, and ugly brown shoes.

  Maids.

  “Afternoon, ladies.” Now the man behind the counter lived up to his friendly visage.

  “Afternoon, Ed.”

  “Two egg salads? Coffee?”

  “Oh, it’s payday,” one of the women said. “Make it two chocolate sodas, right, Annie?”

  “You read my mind,” Annie said, and the two of them giggled as if it were truly funny.

  “Sounds good,” Lilly said. She imagined herself part of their conversation, but they responded with a dismissive glare. The few bites of sandwich sat heavy in her stomach, and she wished for just a minute she were sharing a sticky table with little June and Teddy.

  Deciding these women weren’t worthy of her smile, she drooped her face into an exaggerated pout and twirled back to her sandwich, giving the women a view of the back of her neck, imitating the pose she’d seen on the cover of the Vogue magazine on the newsstand in the corner.

  She continued with her sandwich and soda and sales-ticket book, all the while listening to Annie and her friend. Apparently their mistresses were at a weekly country club luncheon, meaning somewhere within walking distance there was a neighborhood with money.

  Lilly tore her sandwich into smaller and smaller pieces, making it last long enough for Annie and her friend to finish their egg salads and chocolate sodas. Ed was not fooled for a moment; he’d come close to catching her midbite several times, but every time he asked if she wanted to order something, Lilly smiled her brightest and said no, thank you, she was watching her figure.

  At ten minutes to one, the maids slurped the last of their sodas and bid Ed good-bye. Lilly swigged the last of her Coca-Cola—warm and flat by now—and carefully folded the square of wax paper to put back in her leather case. It would wrap tomorrow’s sandwich.

  “See ya, Ed.” She gave a little salute, bangles clanking, and set the door’s bell ringing.

  With the women in gray about twenty paces ahead, Lilly straightened her shoulders, refreshed her grip on the case’s handle, and took a determined step. Fortune could not be far away.

  ullen Burnside reached into the bucket and took out another brand-new baseball. Stainless white leather, smooth as skin. Bright red stitching. He turned it over and over in his hand, just as he had since he was a kid. Like this for a fastball. Like that for a curve ball. Change-up. After a couple of soft tosses straight up and down, loving the feel of it landing in his open palm, he gripped it tight in one hand and grasped the barrel of the cannon steady with what remained of the other.

  “A little to the left, Eugenie.” He gestured with the ball to accompany his voice, which wouldn’t carry all the way across the yard.

  Through the pitching machine’s scope, he saw the figure in the maid’s uniform and starched white apron. She had one hand on her hip, impatient, most likely because his mother waited inside with some urgent need. But it was essential to get the position just right. After all, she was the same height as Cullen—within an inch at least—and her feet were roughly the same size.

  He stood straight, taking his eyes away from the cannon’s scope. “Bat up.” He manipulated his own body, and she hers, until they made a mirror image. His arms up, her arms up. His back bent, her back bent. He couldn’t help the fact that her face maintained its familiar mix of irritation and frustration.

  “Choke up.” His final instruction before taking another look through the scope. Perfect. He tightened the bolts and loaded the ball into the top tube leading down to the cannon’s barrel.

  “You shoot that thing at me, and you’ll wish you died in France.” Eugenie made this same threat every day. It had lost its sting.

  He ran his finger along the tube that fed the gas into the cannon and checked the powder level. After attaching a wire leading to the remote trigger, he dropped in the ball.

  Eugenie remained in position until he reached her. In one seamless motion, he placed his hands over her hands on the bat and stepped into her place as she let go. The doorbell inside the house rang.

  “Oh no. That means Mrs. B is going to open that front door herself.”

  “Go ahead.” Cullen stared straight down the barrel of the cannon. “We’re finished here.”

  Giving no thought to what or who might be at the front door, he settled into his stance. He’d never get used to batting left, but he knew plenty of fellows who came back from the war with no right arm at all, so no use complaining about not matching the stats on the back of a baseball card.

  “Batter up,” he barked, gambling that he’d still have enough breath afterward to swing the bat full around. He stared down the barrel of the cannon, unblinking.

  Why couldn’t it have been a gun, Lord? Why couldn’t I have been shot instead?

  The trigger sat in perfect position. He could keep his heel dug in and rotate his foot to depress it. He did this now, his toe hovering over the switch. He closed his eyes, replacing the mounted machine in the middle of the yard with the image of a mound of dirt and a man upon it, all wound up and ready to fire. Maybe a young Babe Ruth. Or Carl Mays.

  The scents of cut grass and flowers faded behind the imagined ones of sweat and dirt and beer. In his mind, the roar of a crowd overtook the quietness of his upper-crust neighborhood. His name over a loudspeaker: Now batting for Pittsburgh, Cullen Burnside. No nickname. That would come later.

  He didn’t want to open his eyes, but if not, he’d never swing the bat. Never hit the ball. So when the echo of his name faded into the darkness of his mind, he once again stared down the barrel of the pitching machine.

  Three, two, one.

  His toe hit the trigger. Simultaneous with the explosion was the image of the red-stitched projectile hurtling straight toward him. Cullen stood, fearless and ready in its path. In the time it took for the ball to cross the distance between the barrel and the bat, his mind moved far away from the tranquility of a baseball field. Now, he saw men fallen all around him, steam rising from torn, bleeding bodies, limbs and guns and endless, endless mud. Finally, the engulfing yellow cloud that robbed him of his life.

  What had he to fear from a five-cent toy?

  He swung. The muscles remaining in his right arm screamed with the effort. They screamed, because he couldn’t. He channeled all his strength into the bat, bracing for the desired impact between the bat and ball. But if he’d miscalculated, or Eugenie had grown taller, or the ball slid across some imperfection in the barrel and the ball collided with him, what loss could there be?

  And then, the sound. Wood connecting with leather. His eyes closed again at that second—a habit he’d never been able to break. But he could feel a good hit. When he opened his eyes again, he saw it, long and low. Line drive to right field, or at least into the hydrangeas. The flowers quivered with the impact. At any field in the country that would be a single. But he didn’t run. He didn’t have to. He needed all his strength to return to the bucket to take out and load the next ball.

  ead up, shoulders back, bright smile.

  Good afternoon. Is the lady of the house at home? Because this was not the neighborhood to have ladies answering their own doors. The houses sat on either side of a broad street with a wide green manicured strip—interrupted by a tree every so often—stretched right down the middle of it.

  She stood in the shade of the first tree at the top of the street, pinching the fabric at the back of her dress, fanning the sweat dry. By now the kohl around her eyes was smeared, and she’d nibbled her lipstick away with her cheese sandwich. The weight of the case had left her shoulder numb, and there was no disguising the half-moon stains under her arms.

  She surveyed the houses. How to choose, how to choose, how to choose. Several had discreet signs directing servants to a back entrance. She wouldn’t choose any of those. Lilly Margolis might be a penniless girl from Miresburgh, Pennsylvania, but she was nobody’s servant.

  One house called to her. Tall—three stories—and white, with six columns across the front porch. Imposing and inviting at once, with a whimsical coral-colored path winding from the sidewalk to the front steps. The front door an enormous stained-glass window framed by dark cherry wood. A high stone barrier jutted out from either side of the house, extending to the back, with an iron gate marking the entrance to a wide side drive. But the lack of a fence around the front yard made the place seem that much more welcoming. A small brass plaque dangled over the doorway: 711.

  “Seven-eleven.” Lilly snapped her fingers. “What could be luckier than that?”

  She made her way up the coral pathway, hoping if nothing else to be given the opportunity to come in and sit for a spell. Her shoes might be cute, but they weren’t meant for walking all over Pensacola.

  Up close, she could make out the images in the stained glass. A breathtaking scene of a train winding through a mountain pass, beginning on one door and carrying over to the next. She could have stood staring at it for the rest of the afternoon, admiring the tiny bits of glass in place as wildflowers and sleeper-car windows. Instead she took a deep breath and rang the bell. Twice. Just as she was about to turn away, figuring not even a seven and an eleven together could bring her any luck, half of the train swept away.

  “Well, land sakes. Look at you! Such a vision, such a vision.”

  The door had swung open to reveal a woman hardly bigger than a child, yet she held herself with the dignity of a queen. She wore an old-fashioned dress—long sleeved and high necked, even in this heat—and her hair was a swirl of cinnamon and gray swept up into a Gibson girl style that she must have been wearing for the last twenty years. She had bright blue eyes and rosy cheeks—like some kind of grown-up lady doll.

  Lilly’s opening line stuck in her throat.

  “You might just be the first genuine flapper who ever made a visit to my house. Come in, come in, darling. It is so hot outside. Will this heat never end? Come on in here for a cool drink of lemonade.”

  “Good afternoon, m’am,” Lilly said, undaunted by the stream of welcome pouring over her. “Is the lady of the house at home?”

  The woman opened the door wider, ushering Lilly in. “I’m the only lady of this house, unless you want to count Eugenie. Which I don’t. Oh, she keeps it clean enough, but that’s what she’s paid for, after all. Wouldn’t have her at all but my son …”

  The woman prattled on, but Lilly heard nothing. She stood in a foyer of polished wood, gleaming walls, and a perfect little marble-topped table with an ornate gold mirror hanging above it. A glimpse confirmed her suspicions that her dress was drooping and her face and neck were blotchy red from the sun. Should have worn a hat.

  “You have a lovely home here.” Her voice echoed.

  “My Davis saw to every detail. Every detail.” The woman closed the door behind them, and the click of the latch echoed too.

  “Well,” Lilly got her thoughts together, “a woman with such fine taste will surely want to have the very best in her beauty regime.”

  But the woman was not listening. She simply walked through the house, beckoning Lilly with a ring-encrusted hand to follow her. “Right in here, the front parlor.”

  Lilly found herself in a room full of light. Two elegant white sofas faced each other, with an oblong table in between. The wallpaper appeared to be a series of twisting ribbons in alternating rose and green; the longest wall was covered with a series of small paintings—still-life in various fruit, bowls, pitchers, and wine. “Davis has a fine work by Thomas Nast in his study which I would much prefer to showcase here—better light, you know. Much better light. Glorious Gettysburg battle scene. But he says it’s much too controversial for a front parlor.”

  “These are lovely.” Lilly tried to sound as if she had a cultivated eye for art. “I can see you have a taste for fine things. That’s why you’ll find the very jars and bottles—”

  The woman shouted, “Eugenie!” before extending a gracious invitation for Lilly to sit on one of the white sofas.

  Within minutes, a tall woman in a black dress and crisp white apron appeared in the front parlor doorway, her hat slightly askew. The woman herself was gray. Her hair, her skin. All muted shades without a speck of color to be found. She had a face made of features—eyes, nose, mouth—all with a lack of distinction.

  “Yes, Mrs. B?”

  “Can you please fetch us a pitcher of lemonade and—are you hungry, dear?”

  “Oh no,” Lilly answered, too quickly to be believed.

  “And a tray of sandwiches I think too. Not cucumber”—she turned to Lilly—“I don’t know who ever thought a person could fill themselves up with a cucumber sandwich. Chicken salad, if we have any. No, make it ham.”

  “Now, Betty Ruth Burnside,” the maid said, her voice as gray as her skin, “you know you’ve already had your lunch.”

  “But the world is full of people who haven’t, Eugenie. We’d do best not to forget that. And cookies. Do we have any of those pink ones with the lemon icing?”

  “I think your son might have left a few.”

  “Then bring those too.” Her face transformed with childish delight, she clapped her hands and turned to Lilly. “They really are the most delicious treat!”

  “Thank you.” Now Lilly knew the woman’s name was Betty Ruth, and possibly the most wonderful creature she’d ever encountered. “Pink cookies sound delicious. In fact, pink is the signature color of Dalliance Co—”

  The rest of the word erupted in a scream as the sound of gunfire rattled the paintings on the wall.

  “Oh dear.” Betty Ruth smoothed her skirt and sat on the sofa next to Lilly. “That was a loud one.”

  “Wh-what was it?”

  “My son. He is in the backyard, playing that foolish game of his. I expect the telephone will ring any minute.”

  As if on cue, the gilded white phone on the corner desk jangled.

  “Eugenie, darling! Be a dear and answer that in the kitchen? Tell whoever is on the other line that we are not at home. Not at home.” She reached over and patted Lilly’s leg. Three of her fingers bore rings—a jumble of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and gold. “It’ll be a few minutes before the next one, and they aren’t all that loud. Sometimes I don’t hear anything at all.”

  “Is it safe?”

  Betty Ruth cocked one perfectly arched brow. “Did you come here to talk about my son? Because he is very particular about the women with whom he keeps company.”

  For a moment, Lilly forgot exactly why she came here at all, but then she noticed the details of Betty Ruth’s powdered face and caught a hint of expensive perfume as the woman removed her hand. Lilly looked around the room—marble tabletops, silk drapery, antique furniture. All of it belonged to this woman dripping in jewels, whose dress, though dated, was impeccably tailored. Lilly had come here with a leather case full of cheap lotions and powders and scented water. All of it together worth less than the single drop on Betty Ruth’s wrist.

  Lilly was about to excuse herself, apologize, and leave without trying to sell a single jar when two things happened. Eugenie arrived carrying a silver tray stacked with perfect little sandwiches, and the pistol or gun or cannon or whatever it was exploded again, startling the seemingly unflappable maid, causing her to stumble into the room and drop two tiny sandwiches to the floor.

  “Let me get those,” Lilly said, but at that moment a jingling sound heralded the arrival of a beautiful blond cocker spaniel. The dog swept the sandwiches off the carpet and swallowed them down in one gulp.

  “That’s my crazy Mazy.” Betty Ruth reached down to pat the dog’s head now on her lap. “And goodness, doesn’t she look just like you? Big brown eyes and your hair waves just like hers. Of course you have a much more elegant nose. What my mother would have called ‘patrician.’ ”

  “Well, thank you. I never thought being compared to a dog would be so much of a compliment.”

  “You are a beautiful girl.” Betty Ruth patted Lilly again, with every bit as much affection as she showed the lovely Mazy. “And I do so envy your style. So modern.”

  Eugenie made a noise—not an approving one—as she set down the tray.

  “Oh, you just ignore her.” Betty Ruth handed Mazy another sandwich. “She’s old-fashioned.”

  Without comment, Eugenie handed Lilly a small china plate painted with a pastoral design and edged in gold leaf. At Betty Ruth’s insistence, she loaded it with two sandwich triangles, a small bunch of green grapes, and two of the aforementioned pink-frosted cookies.

  Betty Ruth ate nothing but a cookie, and Mazy was dismissed to follow Eugenie back to the kitchen.

  “So nice to have a young person come visit.” Somehow Betty Ruth managed not to get a single pink crumb in the corners of her lips, while the entire front of Lilly’s dress had a dusting of bread and cookies. “Have you already told me your name?”

  Lilly finished a sip of lemonade. “It’s Lilly. Lilly Margolis.”

  “Lilly Margolis. Why, that sounds just like music, doesn’t it? Lilly Margolis. Just like music.”

  “Thank you.” Lilly’d never heard that before.

  “And what brings you here, Lilly Margolis?”

  Lilly nudged the tan leather case with her toe, embarrassed at its contents. Still, she couldn’t claim to have simply dropped by unannounced for lunch. “I am a representative of Dalliance Cosmetics.”

  “Oh, a salesgirl! How glamorous.”

  “Some days more than others.”

  “And I suppose you would like to sell me some of your products.”

  “Oh no,” Lilly said before realizing just how ridiculous that sounded. “I mean, I can tell you are a woman of fine taste, but I’m sure you already have a lovely array—”

  “Nonsense. What kind of a salesgirl do you ever hope to be with that attitude? Come, come. Finish up your lunch and show me what you’ve got in there.”