Page 26 of The Harvey Girls

Nineteen

Charlotte dubbed her roommate Angry Alva. The woman gained consciousness with an irritated huff, as if daylight were on par with gum disease. She had not one good thing to say about anything.

Charlotte avoided the room, a territory Alva marked by strewing her clothing about and exuding bad humor like an odious stink.

If she wasn’t working, inevitably she was entombed there writing letters home—no doubt complaining about Charlotte as well as everything else, from the uniform stockings (“Too thin! They run like a snotty nose!”) to the arid climate (“So dry! Makes my skin flake!”).

The days when they were on opposite schedules, one serving breakfast and lunch, the other coming in for the late-lunch and dinner shift, were ideal.

They missed each other entirely, though Alva often left notes about teeth grinding or what she referred to as “ghostly moans.” Charlotte had half a mind to hide some chains under her bed and rattle them in the wee hours.

The days when they waitressed together—and were thus off shift simultaneously as well—were less than ideal.

Charlotte steered clear by walking the wooded trails away from the canyon.

She particularly enjoyed strolling east to the cemetery, after telling Alva she was off to visit friends.

Alva didn’t care enough to inquire as to who these friends might be, so Charlotte was never put in a position to comment on their pulse activity. Which was uniformly zero.

She’d become a fan of self-proclaimed “Captain” John Hance when Henny had told her that, for years, the man had given canyon tours so chock-full of myth and hyperbole that they were more fiction than fact.

His tales were so tall that he’d been laid to rest under a headstone that was set ten feet from its footstone.

Her own stories were similarly sprinkled with untruths, and she had to admire a man who not only had made a decent living at it but had been forever memorialized as an accomplished liar.

In early May, the temperature at Grand Canyon Village could reach as high as eighty degrees during the day, descending precipitously into the thirties in the evening.

In either case, when it was too hot or cold for a comfortable walk, Charlotte often found herself at the Hopi House, studying the craftsmanship.

It was no Shreve, Crump & Low, the esteemed Boston jeweler who’d made her mother’s wedding ring, and yet the items here were somehow charmingly primal, making Shreve’s sparkling offerings seem garish in her memory.

There was a young woman named Ruth who was often behind the counter, as petite as Charlotte, with similarly dark hair, though hers was cut in a shoulder-length bob and bangs that ran straight across her forehead, and her skin was several shades darker.

Ruth’s voice was gentle and precise, and Charlotte supposed that English was her second language, though she didn’t have much of an accent.

She rang up purchases and attended to customers’ questions, such as “What’s this figure with the clarinet and the crazy hair?

” (Ruth always answered in the same way: “That is Kokopelli. He plays his flute to welcome the spring.”) Or “Why are the blankets so small—they’d never cover a regular bed!

” (“They are decorative. But they can also be used as lap blankets. They are very warm.”) Charlotte heard such queries and Ruth’s unhurried answers over and over as if on rotation.

The patience of a saint was the phrase that came to mind.

Charlotte herself often answered the same set of questions, generally about the canyon or the menu.

“How deep is it?” (Charlotte hadn’t a clue, didn’t care to know, and often said something along the lines of “Very!”) “What’s your favorite dish?

” (She always said the oysters, mainly because they were very expensive, but also because they reminded her of home.)

“How do you like working here?” Charlotte decided to ask on her third trip to the Hopi House, and it seemed to catch Ruth off guard. She smiled and nodded, but Charlotte suspected she was just stalling for time, trying to come up with an answer that was polite and mostly true.

“I work here, too,” Charlotte said quickly before the woman could toss off something pat and uninteresting.

“I’m a Harvey Girl in the dining room at El Tovar, and I’m impressed at your ability to answer the same questions over and over as if it were the first time you’ve heard them. I wish I had your talent for it!”

Ruth’s customer-bright smile downgraded a watt or two, and she glanced around to see if anyone else was in earshot. “I tell myself that customers are trying to understand the Hopi way, even if their questions seem silly or even rude at times.”

Charlotte saw the wisdom in this: acknowledging that people could be ignorant while simultaneously assuming they had good intentions. She wished she could do more of the latter and a bit less of the former. “But aren’t you ever tempted to say ‘Mind your own business!’?”

Ruth let out a surprised laugh. “No, but I sometimes worry I’ll tell the truth about Kokopelli, that he is a god of fertility and also mischief—sometimes a dangerous combination—and the ladies will run away in shock!”

It was the happiest moment Charlotte had had since arriving at this godforsaken place. “I’m Charlotte,” she said warmly, “and I want to know all the shocking things, as long as they’re true.”