Page 6 of The Harvey Girls

Four

Billie wasn’t sure which was more uncomfortable—the stiff black dress itself or changing into it in front of someone who was no relation to her and hadn’t even known her for a full twenty-four hours.

She had shared a room with her four sisters at home, of course, and they ran about in their underthings, but they were little girls, and they were her little girls.

This Charlotte was a full-grown woman. And a stranger.

For her part, Charlotte seemed to take it all in stride, simply turning her back and slipping off her coat.

She wore a nice—though somewhat faded—green drop-waist dress with a square neckline and long tie knotted below her ample bosoms. That came off just as quickly, and Billie spun around so she wouldn’t see the woman’s brassiere and drawers.

Billie was tempted to put the long black dress on over her own, then wiggle the other dress out from under it, but that seemed silly. She had nothing particularly worth looking at, with a camisole covering her small breasts, and drawers that went down her narrow thighs.

“I’m too thin,” she had occasionally whined to her mother.

“I look like a soup spoon on a hunger strike.” She hoped one day to have a soft womanly body like her mother’s, to which her mother would laugh and say, “Nine bairns’ll soften you up, but good!

Soften your insides, too!” It had become a private understanding between them that whenever Lorna sneezed, Billie would run and get her a new set of drawers.

There was an oval mirror on the wall by the door, and Charlotte stood back to survey herself in the dress and massive pinafore apron.

“Good Lord,” she muttered, then moved in close to squint at her hair, as if she were searching for something she hoped she wouldn’t find.

She turned to look at Billie and let out a humorless laugh.

“I’m not sure if we’re off to work or the convent. ”

Billie stiffened. “I’m Catholic,” she said, drawing herself to her full height, “so it could be either for me.”

The other woman’s eyebrows went up. “No offense was meant.”

“Then none taken,” said Billie, but she kept her chin high nonetheless.

Down in the lunchroom, Frances introduced them to the other Harvey Girls, who all seemed friendly despite frantically preparing the restaurant for the next onslaught due to arrive in twenty minutes.

A girl named Alice was standing at the coffee station with one of the spigots open, letting the dark liquid drain into an old bucket.

“We don’t serve coffee more than two hours old,” explained Frances.

“It’s the standard.” It wasn’t any standard that Charlotte had heard of, even in the finer restaurants in Boston.

The Crowninshields themselves drank coffee that had been brewed in the morning by a kitchen maid and was reheated throughout the day.

True, the early coffee always tasted best, but for an enterprise attempting to make a profit, it seemed like a strange waste of time and money.

“I’ll start you two on beverages. You know the cup code?” They both shook their heads. Frances turned to the lunch counter and took a cup and saucer from the ones being quickly dealt out at each place setting by a girl named Edie as she made her way down the snaking counter.

“It’s simple: cup right side up in the saucer—coffee.” She turned the cup upside down. “Hot tea.” Then she set the upside-down cup on the table tipped against the saucer. “Iced tea.” Upside-down and flat on the counter was milk. “Now you do it.” She slid the cup to Billie.

Billie set the cup upright in the saucer. “Coffee?”

Frances glanced up at that big, black-rimmed clock on the wall. “Don’t ask. Is it coffee, or isn’t it?”

“Yes, I… I believe it is.” Billie turned the cup over. “Iced tea.”

“No.” Frances slid the cup and saucer to Charlotte. “Let’s see if you were watching.”

Charlotte had, in fact, been watching quite closely and committed the information to memory just as she had for any one of a thousand quizzes, tests, and exams she’d taken over the years.

A teacher almost always wanted simply for you to listen and parrot back her answers, and Charlotte had had more practice than ninety-nine girls in a hundred.

Of course, she hadn’t retained a lot of it—the pluperfect French and Pythagorean theorem—but she had always known what she needed to know for the test. Simeon had been the only teacher who’d wanted to be surprised by a girl’s answer.

“Coffee, tea, iced, milk,” she said as she flipped the cup into the various configurations.

Billie’s face fell, and Charlotte immediately felt guilty. She’d never been one to lord it over the slower, less confident girls. It was just another example of how she’d deteriorated, this flaunting of her intelligence.

“Correct,” said Frances quickly, glancing once again at the clock. “Carlotta, you’re in charge of asking customers for their drink orders. Bobbie, you’re to fill a coffee pitcher and follow after her, pouring coffee in upright cups only. Understand?”

Billie nodded, eyes cast down in shame.

“Yes?” said Frances pointedly.

“Yes, I understand.”

For the next ten minutes, they helped Edie bring out the dainty little glass cups of fruit and set them at each place along the counter. Where did they find strawberries in March, for goodness’ sake? Charlotte didn’t have time to wonder. Suddenly a gong began to sound out on the train platform.

“Stations, please, ladies!” Frances called out, and everyone seemed to know where to go.

Where do I start? wondered Charlotte, but then she saw Billie at her elbow.

“Go get one of those pitchers and fill it like she said, and then follow along behind me.” Billie’s eyes flashed in the briefest moment of anger at the bossy tone.

“We’ll work together, all right?” added Charlotte, forcing a smile.

The girl’s pique subsided, and she went to get the coffee.

Thirty minutes. That’s all the Harvey Girls had in which to ask several hundred customers for their orders, relay them to the kitchen, attend to beverage requests, serve the food, ensure that every diner was happy with their generously portioned meal (plus extra ketchup over here, and a clean knife to replace the one that dropped on the floor over there, and the fourth glass of water across the room), lunch dishes cleared the moment the patron was finished but not a moment before, dessert presented with more coffee or tea, the bill paid, and everyone happily out the door.

Thirty short minutes, and it only worked if every last one of them was on their toes, working in perfect concert with the others, as tightly choreographed as a Russian ballet.

Billie watched Charlotte approach the first customer, a smile more like a grimace on her naturally serious features.

“Would you like coffee, tea, iced tea, or milk?” she asked as her hand hovered over his cup.

The customer squinted at her, as if trying to make sense of the too-wide smile and the too-high tone.

“I’ll just have water,” he said.

“Oh, well then.” Her smile deflated. She glanced around. “I’m sure the water girl will be right along.”

Water girl? thought Billie. There had never been any mention of a water girl. “I’ll get that for you,” she said, and hurried back to a small table where she’d seen pitchers. She poured the water and gave the customer a little smile. “Just let me know if you need any more later.”

He grinned up at her. “Thank you kindly, Miss.”

Charlotte was a couple of customers down the counter by now, so Billie rushed to the next person. Cup right side up in the saucer. Coffee.

She tipped the coffee jug over the cup and watched as it sluiced in one side and sailed high over the rim on the other, splashing several drops of hot liquid onto the woman’s brown leather clutch purse that she’d laid by her plate.

“Ohhh!” shrieked the woman. “My purse! It’s ruined! My favorite purse! And you nearly burned my hand!”

“I’m so sorry!” Billie panted with fright.

“I’m so terribly sorry!” With a pitcher in each hand she swung around to find a place to set them so she could clean up the spill.

There was a little table behind her, and her trembling hands landed the coffeepot all right, but the metal water pitcher went clean over the side, splashing water onto the floor.

She stared at the pitcher rattling on the floor and thought she might faint with panic over what to do next.

“No need to worry, ma’am.” It was Charlotte’s voice behind her. “We’ll get that cleaned right up, and your purse should be fine.”

“No it’s not fine! It’s splattered with coffee! And she nearly burned me!”

“The purse is brown leather. Here, I’m wiping it off, you can’t even see it. And she didn’t burn you, she just scared you.” Charlotte’s tone, even more than her words, sent a prickle down Billie’s neck as she bent to retrieve the water pitcher. She jumped up and spun around quickly.

“It’s all my fault, Miss,” she said. “I’m so sorry. You must have been scared near witless with all that coffee flying about.”

“Of course I was!”

“And this purse—so pretty! How’d you come by it?”

The woman gazed down at the purse, which, after Charlotte’s quick wipe, had begun to dry. The spots were barely visible. “It was a gift from my sister.”

“My, she must love you.”

A soft, sad smile whispered across the woman’s face. “She lives in Spokane now, and we don’t get to see each other but every five years or so.”

Faraway family. Billie could feel her throat tighten. “Bet she misses you.”

“I miss her, too. I think I’ll go over to the newsstand and buy a postcard to send her.”

“Oh, she’ll love it!”

The woman smiled and patted Billie’s hand. “You’re a sweet child.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Just fine.”

As she moved to the next upright coffee cup, something caught the corner of Billie’s eye.

It was Frances scowling at her.