Page 5 of The Harvey Girls

Three

The ride was a little under two hours from Kansas City to Topeka, and in that time, fine snow crystals had begun to swirl frantically across the brittle fields, collecting like granular white pebbles in the crevices of the train car windowsills, only to escape when a strong gust hit them sideways.

Though it was nearly April, winter still had its teeth in the desiccated landscape.

“Windy,” the younger girl whispered, her earlier enthusiasm for train travel apparently having diminished considerably since having her nose practically pressed against the glass as they’d pulled out of Kansas City.

“I suppose we should be glad we haven’t signed on as street sweepers,” said Charlotte, stretching to rouse herself from the deepest sleep she’d enjoyed in months.

“Might be a walk to get to the restaurant,” Billie murmured. “I hope it’s not too far.”

Charlotte stared at the girl a moment. Did she not understand any aspect of what she’d undertaken? Clearly she was young—Charlotte wondered if she had inflated her age a tad—but now she was beginning to think the girl might have some mental deficiency, as well.

“The restaurant is at the depot ,” she said slowly, hoping to keep the condescension she felt from revealing itself too clearly, though she considered that the girl might not pick up on it anyway.

“It’s specifically for railway passengers, so it’s actually right there, where they get off.

The walk is likely about twenty feet from the train door. ”

Billie’s cheeks went geranium. “I don’t… I haven’t…”

“No, of course not,” said Charlotte quickly. “Harvey Houses are only found on the Santa Fe Railway, and if one hasn’t traveled on the Santa Fe, how would one know?”

“How did you know?”

“Well, I suppose I’d heard about it from others. Girls I knew in college who—”

“In college?” Billie’s eyes were wide with surprise shaded with suspicion. “You’re a college girl?”

“Well, not anymore, I… I…” Good Lord, how had she let that slip? And she’d sworn to stick to the story she’d so carefully devised while waiting for the most recent shiner to fade.

“Graduated?”

“No, I never did, actually.” She quickly switched to her practiced response.

“My parents died in a car crash several years ago, and the money ran out, so I needed a job. And there was a young man who wanted to marry me, but I didn’t share his enthusiasm.

He was heartbroken, and I felt very bad about it, so I thought it best for both of us if I went far away, and we could both make a fresh start. ”

“But you went to college.”

“I did.”

“What did you study?”

Charlotte was taken aback. Most of the girls she knew would’ve pressed her for details about the romance. Why would anyone care about what she had studied? Was this question meant to trip her up? She had to gather her wits for a moment.

“It was a liberal arts education. I studied everything.” There. That would do it.

“The American Revolution?”

“Yes, of course.” She’d been raised in Boston. Schools taught the war for independence as if the British might return any day, and children needed to be prepared to take up muskets if called upon.

Billie smiled. “I can recite ‘Paul Revere’s Ride.’?”

“Lovely. Perhaps a customer will request a rendition with his steak.”

The girl’s face fell.

“Oh dear. Don’t take it so hard. I was just teasing.

” Simeon’s sense of humor, so charmingly outlandish when they’d first started meeting outside of school her sophomore year, had turned toward sarcasm as misfortune had embittered him.

Or possibly he’d always been sarcastic, but he only began using it as a weapon against her after they’d married.

Apparently the tendency had worn off on her.

Billie’s head turned toward the window, and Charlotte thought she might be good and truly offended, but it was only the outskirts of Topeka that had caught her eye. “Oh,” she said. “This is a big city, too.”

Topeka , thought Charlotte. Good Lord.

The depot was two stories of red brick, and long—Billie guessed there were at least twenty of those large arched windows along the span of the second floor.

That’s a lot of brick , she thought. More than Table Rock Brick and Tile could’ve produced in a week.

A wooden porch roof jutted out over the station platform, sheltering the benches on which travelers sat awaiting the train.

A newsstand was built right into the depot next to the main entrance of the lobby.

As they descended from the train onto the platform, a young man all in white—brimless cap, shirt, pants, and knee-length apron wrapped around narrow hips—came from the side of the building.

He was gangly in that way boys often were when their bones had stopped growing but their flesh was still playing catch-up, like Maw’s gravy before it thickened, all flavor but no heft.

The broad knobs of his shoulders curled against the cold as he banged a mallet against what looked like an enormous metal dinner plate that hung from a rope he grasped.

“Diners this way!” he called out. “Lunch now being served!”

Billie clutched her bag to her chest as the passengers pressed past her into the station, others stamping their feet in the cold until they could board.

She waited for Charlotte to be given her suitcase, despite the fact that the woman had been rude to her.

“Your betters are no better,” Maw often said, “but best not to get on the wrong side of them.”

Besides, a wave of homesickness had suddenly hit her in this foreign place bustling with people, all of whom clearly knew their direction and their business, while Billie had no idea of either.

Where was she to go? Who was she to ask?

She found herself futilely searching the faces of the people who scurried by for some sign of familiarity.

Yesterday morning she knew every last person within five miles of her.

Now she was nearly drowning in a sea of strangers.

Her chest tightening in panic, she made herself focus on the young man banging the metal plate, how his knuckles had gone bloodless from the cold.

Needs mittens , she thought, and half considered offering the loan of her own, as if he were her brother Duncan, who was always flying out of the house careless to the cold or wet, the wee eejit.

She glanced up and saw that the young man had caught her staring at his nearly white knuckles.

He blinked once or twice as if trying to divine her purpose.

Startled, she raised her mittened hand to indicate she was only thinking about how cold his must be, nothing more.

But he took it as a greeting (though an odd one from a complete stranger) and gave a small, pleasant, mildly confused wave back.

Charlotte had her suitcase now and nodded at Billie to come along. “Let’s make the best of it, shall we?”

Inside the station, there was a large waiting room with wide, arched doorways on either side. Charlotte heard the hum of voices and gentle clacking of cutlery on china drifting toward them from the right and headed toward it, with Billie at her heels like a lost puppy.

“May I seat you?” asked a woman in her thirties, Charlotte guessed. One curling thread of silver escaped from otherwise straight black hair pulled back at the nape of her neck. She had crow’s-feet, or the beginning of them.

Crow’s-toes , thought Charlotte, and at twenty-two she wondered if she, too, would soon have tiny creases at her eyes and across her forehead.

It fell on her like a brick from a crumbling building how thoroughly she had wasted her youth on such a one as Simeon Lister.

Gladly given away the privileges of her birthright to be beaten and berated. To be “loved” until she was nothing.

Billie mumbled something at the woman.

“Pardon me? You’re what?”

“The new Harvey Girls,” Billie said, as if it were some sort of jail sentence. Maybe she wasn’t as simple as Charlotte had thought. The girl knew a prison when she saw it.

“About time,” the woman muttered. “We’ve a need for you, that’s a fact. Now just stand back there beside the coffee urns and watch. I’ll get to you directly, once they’re all safely back on the train.”

The coffee station stood between the lunchroom—a wandering U-shaped counter with swivel chairs attached to the floor by thick metal poles—and the larger dining room, with its white linen tablecloths and crystal glasses.

The urns themselves must have held endless gallons of coffee, the lids towering around the height of Billie’s head.

The Harvey Girls moved rapidly without appearing to jog, skimming along the gleaming wood floors like low-flying aproned birds. They smiled brightly but never seemed to raise their voices as they attended to even the most garrulous of customers.

“Why, look at this! What a lovely sandwich, but see here, is this the roast beef? Because I feel certain I ordered roast beef, and this appears… does it?… so it does, it seems to be corned beef. Now my memory isn’t what it once was, and I supposed it could be my very own fault, but I wonder if you could just check the order on this, and if I ordered corned and not roast, why then, I’ll just live with my mistake, won’t I? ”

The Harvey Girl smiled, nodding as if this were the most scintillating conversation of her young life. “Let’s not worry about what you ordered and get you what you wanted. I’ll be right back with a roast beef sandwich for you.”

“Oh, now, I don’t mean to be any trouble.”

“No trouble at all!” The girl whisked away the plate and sailed toward a door behind the urns before another word could be spoken.

Charlotte’s already low spirits plummeted.

She’d been born with a sharp tongue (her mother never tired of reminding her) and her years with Simeon had only sharpened it.

He’d encouraged her energetic, if not entirely ladylike, use of an exclamation in service of a point he agreed with.

He’d actually admitted to her during that very first meeting in the library to review a paper she was writing that he sensed a kindred fiery nature in her that he very much appreciated.

Fiery. She had been, and certainly those instincts were still there.

But in recent years, as he’d become more inflamed, it had been left to her to cool his temper.

She wondered now if she could stand to listen to the blathering complaints of customers without the fear of a flying fist to deter her from snapping back.

She glanced at Billie. The girl’s eyes were wide with some combination of fascination and anxiety as she watched the billiard game of Harvey Girls bouncing from one counter to the next like cue balls. “How will we ever learn it all?” she murmured.

“How did you learn ‘Paul Revere’s Ride’?” Charlotte hoped it sounded encouraging.

“With a lot of mistakes,” the girl said ruefully.

Thirty minutes later, when the gong had sounded and train customers had risen virtually in unison and made their way back to the platform, the Harvey Girl with the silver thread in her hair returned to them. “Let’s get you upstairs and into some uniforms,” she said.

“We’re to start today?” asked Charlotte.

“Oh yes, right away. We need to get you up to speed before the next train arrives in…” she glanced at a large clock with a white face and black roman numerals affixed to the back wall, “about forty-five minutes.”

She took them down a hallway beside the kitchen and up a narrow flight of stairs. “I’m Frances, the head waitress. The dormitory is up here. You two are friends?”

Charlotte and Billie glanced at each other blankly. “We’ve only just met,” said Charlotte, “but I suppose we’ve become friendly.” Billie’s face, readable as a signpost, said she wasn’t entirely sure about that, but Frances either didn’t see the look or chose to ignore it.

“Good! You’ll room together.”

As they walked down the dormitory hallway, Frances pointed out the bathroom, sewing room, and parlor, and opened the door to a small room with two iron-framed twin beds and a small armoire that had seen better days. It had two drawers below and a narrow rack for clothing on hangers above.

Charlotte and Billie were told to unpack while Frances sized them up for uniforms and headed down the hallway to the linens room.

In moments, she had returned with two sets of vastly different lengths—one short and one long.

She laid one on each bed and said, “Now get yourselves dressed, come down to the lunchroom, and we’ll get your career as Harvey Girls off to a roaring good start! ”