Page 19 of The Harvey Girls

Thirteen

On Monday, Billie was to have her meeting with Mr. Gilstead to learn where she’d been assigned. The minutes ticked by slow as old honey, and it was a strangely light day for customers, so she could barely find enough to do.

“You’ll find out soon,” said Leif when she went into the cleaning-supplies closet for more silver polish and he was getting vinegar to wipe down the cutting boards.

“Yes. I’m nervous as a cat.”

“Any idea where they’ll send you?”

“I’m hoping closer to home. Kansas City, maybe.”

“That’s only about two hours away.” His look was meaningful, but she didn’t know why.

“That’s right,” she said.

“I could possibly… visit you.”

“We could be friends, you mean.”

“We could stay friends. I never stopped, you know. Even though you didn’t want to talk to me.”

“I’ll still be fifteen,” she said dryly.

He smiled. “Sixteen in June.”

The meeting was postponed for a day.

Frances rolled her eyes. “They’re all in a dither at headquarters. ‘Reassessing staffing needs,’ they say. For all I know, I’m going to get reassigned, and I’ve worked here for twelve years.”

“But why are they reassessing all of a sudden?” Billie was beside herself with the suspense of not knowing where she’d be living in just forty-eight hours.

“Some places get busier, some get quieter. And, you know, there’s the Grand Tour now.” Frances shook her head in disgust.

“What’s the Grand Tour?”

“Rich people.”

“Doing what?”

“ Touring , for godsake! Don’t you pay attention?

They all go traipsing around Europe, but now the Fred Harvey Company is pushing this Grand Tour of the Southwest. They’re calling it the American Orient, except with Indians and such.

All the new Harvey hotels have Indian rooms selling scratchy blankets and strange gewgaws, and some even have real Indians walking around, regular as you please.

Why anyone would want to see a bunch of savages is beyond me. ”

Billie grabbed her arm. “I don’t want to go to the Southwest! I want to go east to Kansas City. It’s a big station. Enormous! They must need girls there.”

Frances shook her off. “Look, all the girls want to go to these big fancy touring hotels. You’d think Albuquerque had champagne flowing from every spigot. If you don’t want to go, I’m sure they’ll be relieved.”

“You’ll tell Mr. Gilstead? Tell him Kansas City?”

“Absolutely.”

“The Grand Canyon!” Billie thought her head might explode when Mr. Gilstead told her the next day.

“I knew you’d be thrilled. You’ve become one of our top girls, so I’m sure they’ll be quite happy with you. A place like that requires a real way with people.”

Billie began to pace around Mr. Gilstead’s office. “But it’s all the way in Colorado!”

“Arizona, actually.”

“ Arizona? I can’t go to Arizona. I don’t even want to go to Colorado!”

“Miss MacTavish, I’ll remind you that you work at the pleasure of the Fred Harvey Company, and they are free to send you wherever they see fit.”

“And I am free to quit as I see fit!”

Mr. Gilstead stared at her for a full ten seconds. “I didn’t take you for the type to vent your spleen so freely,” he said menacingly. “Perhaps you’d do better at one of the more out-of-the-way Harvey Houses, like Brownwood, Texas.”

Billie let out a desperate sigh and tried to regain her composure. “Didn’t Frances tell you I’d hoped for Kansas City?”

“No, she never mentioned it. But if she had—”

The scream Billie almost let loose came out as a strangled squeak.

“ But if she had ,” Mr. Gilstead went on, “I would have replied that Kansas City is overrun with Harvey Girls at the moment, and they would never have assigned you there.”

Billie’s chin began to tremble.

No crying , she told herself. No! None!

Mr. Gilstead’s tone changed. “I understand that you’re quite close with your family, and that you’ve overcome a near-historic case of homesickness,” he soothed. “Might we send you back to them for a few days to consider?”

The next evening, Billie finished her last shift at the Topeka Harvey House by hauling the coffee urns back to the big sink.

Most of the other girls had tidied their stations and gone up already, and the chefs had finished their preparations for the next day.

Only Leif was left to wash the knives and gather up the carrot tops, fish skins, and other refuse for the pig farmer who would come at dawn to collect it.

The dish room was just off the kitchen, and she could hear him scraping food scraps into the big metal pail, just as she knew he could hear her rinsing out the urns.

She was leaving early the next day, before breakfast even, and had already pocketed a few biscuits and an apple for her trip to Kansas City.

There she had time for a quick meal at the Harvey lunch counter before catching the train north to Table Rock.

This would likely be their last few moments together, and she wondered how to say goodbye.

He had been unfailingly kind to her during the hardest month of her young life, and she knew she would never forget him, even if she wanted to.

Which she told herself she did, but knew it was a lie as soon as she thought it.

The scraping sound stopped just as she finished her last urn, and a moment later he was there in the doorway. “I’ll help you carry those out,” he said.

No need , she almost said, because she was perfectly capable of doing it herself. But it was his way of beginning the ending they were about to have, and so she thanked him, and they carried the urns back out to the coffee station together.

“It’s warm out,” he said.

“Oh, I know. I’ve been trying not to sweat through this heavy dress all day.”

Smiling, he raised an eyebrow.

She pressed her fingers to her lips, mortified, but then she just laughed. “Why do I always say the most unladylike things to you? You must be a devil of some kind!”

“Only a minor one,” he said. “No one you’ve heard of.”

“Well, one I won’t forget, anyway.”

He gazed at her a moment as if memorizing her features. “Would you… might you take a walk? Just a short one. I don’t think we’ll need our coats.”

“That would be nice.”

He held the door for her, and they headed west on Fourth Street toward Shunganunga Creek. The moon was just starting to wane, a fat crescent in a clear sky, and it shone just enough to light their way, but not so much as to be garish.

“Grand Canyon,” he said, breaking the silence.

“Can you believe it?” she muttered.

“I hear it’s very… dramatic.”

“I suppose. Except what will that matter to me, trapped inside during every daylight hour, a million miles from everything I know and love?”

From you , she wanted to say.

“After six months, you can request a transfer.”

“I’m fifteen, if you’ll remember.”

He chuckled. “Yes, I remember.”

“Six months is a good portion of a life for someone my age. And besides, they’ll only transfer me where they need me. No guarantee it’ll be any closer.”

They walked in silence for a few moments, until she mustered enough courage to ask, “Do you think you’ll stay in Topeka forever?”

“I’ve no great reason to stay. It’s familiar, I suppose, but I have no real ties.”

They came to a bridge over the creek and stood side by side watching the water sluice underneath them and away across the city.

“Even if I could transfer, Billie, and be lucky enough to end up… where I’d like to, even then we wouldn’t be allowed… The rules are strict. We could only be friends.”

“I’m only fifteen anyway.”

“Sixteen in June.”

“And if you did come to that stupid canyon place and we were friends, but I hated it and quit and moved back home, then you’d be stuck there.”

“Without you.”

“You’d make other friends,” she said.

“I’m not that friendly.”

“To me you are.”

He turned to look at her. “You make it easy.”

She gazed up at him, the light hitting him in just such a way as to make those lovely teacup crackles in his eyes shine.

And then his beautiful, bruised face was coming closer, his hands lightly resting on her arms, then slipping behind her back.

It was slow and sweet, and not scary at all, even though it was the first time a man, a full-grown man, had ever touched her in such a way—in any way at all other than the occasional hug from her da.

She felt herself drifting toward Leif like a little boat in the creek beneath them, being carried along without an ounce of effort. Floating.

His lips were light on hers, not the sort of mashing pressure she’d seen in the movies, but with the tenderness her father showed her mother when they thought no one saw. But Billie saw. And she knew the way a man was supposed to touch a woman. With hope. With reverence.

“Is this all right?” he whispered against her cheek.

“Yes.”

He kissed her again, and her arms slid around his waist of their own accord, as if finally finding a longed-for resting place, a slow, lingering dance, each partner doing their part to accomplish, bit by bit, the pressing of their bodies gently but firmly together.

After a few more kisses, he stopped and tipped his head back to look at her.

“Oh my,” she sighed.

“Couldn’t agree more.”

Sadness suddenly swept over her. The futility of it. It seemed to hit him, too, at just the same moment. He pulled her in and held her against his chest the way she’d always hoped he would.

“June’ll come,” he whispered. “And the one after that. I’ll send you birthday letters.”

“I can’t wait to open them and see what you have to say.”