Page 46 of The Harvey Girls

Thirty-Five

“Can I take the table in the corner?” Billie whispered excitedly at Charlotte.

Charlotte was loading a tray with perfectly scooped ice cream in cut-glass parfait bowls, and she had to serve it before it melted.

Late June had warmed up aggressively in the last week, and so had the dining room.

Also, with the growing influx of visitors, the shifts were busier longer.

It was almost three in the afternoon, and the tables were still full of lunching tourists.

She was hot, irritable, and even more on head waitress Nora’s bad side since she’d started taking occasional days off to go on tours with Will.

“Absolutely not,” she said, surreptitiously dabbing at her face with a napkin. “I can’t have Nora after me for one more thing. If you take my table, she’ll think I’m shirking.”

“Please,” whined Billie. “Pleeeease!”

“For goodness’ sake, why is this one table so important?”

“It’s my favorite actress, the one from Fox Trot on the Congo !”

Charlotte heaved the tray of ice cream expertly onto her small shoulder. “Nora will use it against me. The best I can offer is to let you bring her coffee.”

“Thank you!” Billie let out a strangled squeal of glee and hurried off to the coffee urns.

Charlotte didn’t know why this one actress was so thrilling.

By now Billie should have been used to the comings and goings of famous people.

Why, movie stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks had dined there only last week.

You’d have thought they were Mary and Jesus, the way the entire staff of El Tovar practically genuflected in their direction.

Charlotte had been far more intrigued by Western author Zane Grey.

She’d just finished reading The Vanishing American , about a Navajo boy who is adopted by whites but returns to his village in adulthood to try and protect it from corrupt missionaries and government agents.

As Mr. Grey sat there contentedly eating his liver and onions, it was all she could do not to express her deep regard for the book and ask a question or two.

If it made Billie happy to serve a cup of coffee to the actress in the corner, Charlotte didn’t mind indulging her.

Billie knew Nora would lambaste her if she was caught bothering a customer, even with praise. She didn’t want an autograph or anything. She only wanted to tell the woman how much her talent was appreciated. What was so wrong with that?

“I’m a huge fan, Miss Turner,” Billie murmured as she poured coffee into the upturned cup. “You’re just wonderful!”

“Gee, thanks, that’s sweet of you!” The woman’s bright blue eyes twinkled happily.

Blond hair fell just below her ears in soft finger waves.

Her dress wasn’t particularly fancy for a movie star, but who wore ermine and pearls at lunch?

The light green cotton sleeveless showed her toned upper arms. “Do you get to see many movies here in the wilds?” she asked.

“Not very many,” said Billie, her eyes darting away to see if Nora was watching. “We only saw Fox Trot on the Congo a couple of weeks ago. It was a hoot!”

“What was your favorite part?”

“Oh, goodness, all of it! But I really loved when the African women were teaching you that dance, and you added in all those flips—I know you were an acrobat in vaudeville.”

Gertrude Turner’s gaze cut to her dining partner, a petite brunette wearing a high-neck blouse with long sleeves. She must have been roasting!

“This is my sister, Winnie. She was in the act with me. She could fly through the air like a cannonball.” The two women shared a meaningful, bittersweet glance.

“But that’s all behind us now—we’re here celebrating Winnie’s acceptance into medical school at the University of Southern California.

I’m especially happy because it’s not far from where I live in Hollywood. ”

“Medical school!” Billie said to Winnie. “My, you must be very brave.”

Gertrude Turner nodded. “The bravest.”

Charlotte was waiting for Billie to leave the table so she could approach and take their order, but the girl was nattering on with the blond as if they were old friends at a cocktail party.

The other woman at the table seemed to be all but forgotten, and Charlotte wondered if she might be annoyed, but as her back was turned, Charlotte couldn’t tell.

Nora had just come into the dining room (likely from berating some poor busboy for a crumb below a table), and it was only a matter of time before she noticed Billie’s criminal fraternizing. Charlotte strode toward the table to physically block Nora’s sight line until she could shoo Billie off.

“Good afternoon,” she said crisply as she approached, lobbing a quick glare of warning at Billie. “How can I be of—” When she glanced at the smaller woman, she froze.

Familiar green eyes blinked up at her in surprise. “Charlotte?”

Winnie Turner. That poor, damaged girl from Wellesley College. They’d been friendly freshman year—the other girls shied away from all those scars. When Charlotte began spending time with Simeon, she’d avoided her friends, especially those like Winnie who might be smart enough to figure it out.

Lifetimes had passed since then. Charlotte barely recognized herself from that naive girl she’d been only two years ago. How did Winnie?

“Pardon me?” she said coolly.

“Charlotte Crowninshield!” The woman’s face lit up with warmth. “It’s me, Winnie Turner—from Wellesley!”

Charlotte kept her expression perfectly neutral. “I’m sorry, you must have mistaken me for someone else.”

Winnie’s gaze remained trained on her. “But—”

“This is Catriona!” Billie said quickly. “Catriona MacTavish!” She turned to Charlotte. “Thanks for your help, Catriona, but I can take this table.”

Charlotte nodded curtly and walked back to the coffee station to hide behind the urns until she stopped shaking. Billie found her there after taking the Turner sisters’ order.

“Crowninshield?” she whispered. “That’s your last name?”

“It was.”

“Sounds fancy.”

Charlotte almost laughed. Fancy didn’t begin to describe it. “And who in the world is Catriona MacTavish?”

Billie handed Charlotte the coffeepot. “My sister.”

Charlotte was relieved that Gertrude Turner had given her sister the seat with the view.

Facing the windows overlooking the canyon, Winnie couldn’t study Charlotte to find the lie.

But just knowing the other woman was in the room, Charlotte felt shaken as she went about serving her tables like an automaton.

It wasn’t fear of being found by Simeon—Winnie Turner wouldn’t know how to contact him and wouldn’t try if she did.

It was shame.

Shame for her foolish choices, her lost potential. Shame for being caught in this damned apron.

But there was also shame about being ashamed. Every Harvey Girl in the dining room was working at full capacity with a smile on her face; they were proud of that apron.

As she served chocolate pudding to a family in homespun clothing who’d likely broken the bank to eat at world-famous El Tovar, Charlotte realized that of all the fates that could’ve befallen her once she’d married Simeon, this was one of the best. The work was hard, of course, but she had a nice little nest egg growing, and when she wanted to move on—whether to a different Harvey establishment or to somewhere else entirely—the choice would be hers.

It wasn’t just control of her own life that Charlotte cherished. She had friends here, too. Billie MacTavish had gone from an uneducated, blubbering klutz to… well, possibly the most quick-witted and loyal friend Charlotte had ever had. There was Henny, funny and kind.

And Will. In his quiet way, he had become a friend to her, too. He still didn’t know she was married, but other than that, she’d had deeper, more revealing conversations with him than she’d had even with Billie.

When the shift was over, Billie and some of the other girls decided to “take a stroll in the late afternoon light.” It wasn’t the light they craved, Charlotte knew.

They wanted to hear all about Billie’s brush with stardom.

They reminded her of that silly Tildie back in Topeka, always nosing around for intrigue.

Charlotte returned to her room. As she sat there considering her past in a new light, she felt a strange sense of calm come over her.

Yes, she’d made mistakes (or one big one, at least).

Yet through all the terrible things that had happened, she had persevered, devising an arguably ingenious plan to save herself.

Not only had she achieved it, but she’d landed in a place many young women would envy.

Maybe she could stop castigating herself quite so much.

Maybe instead of shame, she could indulge in a bit of pride. She was alive, after all, engaged in honest work, surrounded by friends.

Maybe she could even be grateful.

“Dish,” commanded Billie as she thumped herself down onto the bed later that night. Since getting chummy with the other young women, her vocabulary had taken a turn for the vernacular, a change that Charlotte found grating.

“Pardon me?”

“You know what I mean. Who’s Winnie Turner? And why does she dress like somebody’s granny?”

“She went to college with me.”

“You were friends?”

“Yes, I suppose we were. Until I began secretly seeing Simeon, and then I cut myself off from everyone.” Now that she thought of it, Simeon was the one who’d urged her to stop seeing friends—out of caution, he insisted—and spend time with him instead.

He’d made her positively paranoid that other students would be jealous and alert the administration.