Cakewalk Read online

  Cakewalk is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by American Artists, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  BANTAM BOOKS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Frontispiece: John Singer Sargent, American, 1856–1925, Mrs. George Swinton (Elizabeth Ebsworth), 1897, oil on canvas, 231 × 124 cm (90¾ × 48¾ in.), Wirt D. Walker Collection, 1922. 4450, The Art Institute of Chicago. Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago.

  Title spread art: (background) © iStock.com/​Spiderplay, © iStock.com/MKucova

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Brown, Rita Mae, author.

  Title: Cakewalk : a novel / Rita Mae Brown.

  Description: New York : Bantam Books, [2016]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016009034 | ISBN 9780553392654 (hardcover) |

  ISBN 9780553392661 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: City and town life—Mason-Dixon Line—Fiction. |

  Interpersonal relations—Fiction. | Sisters—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION /

  Sagas. | FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / Lesbian.

  Classification: LCC PS3552.R698 C35 2016 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/​2016009034

  Ebook ISBN 9780553392661

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Liz Cosgrove, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Victoria Allen

  Cover photograph: bathing beauties with parasols, c. 1928

  (Prismatic Pictures/Bridgeman Images)

  v4.1_r1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author's Note

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Author's Note

  Dedication

  Books by Rita Mae Brown

  About the Author

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for picking up Cakewalk. Please know that this is not a plot-driven book. You will not be breathlessly turning pages to find out who killed whom, etc.

  Cakewalk is you and I sitting out back watching the sun set behind the Blue Ridge Mountains, horses grazing in emerald fields, hounds asleep at our feet, and far, far too many cats imperiously surveying all.

  I’m recalling stories told to me by mother, my aunts, Dad, his brothers, and uncles when I was seven, eight. Stories about people then in their sixties, seventies, eighties, and even a few in their nineties, stories about my people. Given that everyone was an honorary aunt or uncle this included multitudes. Often, the storyteller, bourbon and branch in hand, added flourishes.

  Such close connection between the generations doesn’t seem to happen much these days. What passes for communication, especially electronic and public communication, is pitched to the lowest common denominator.

  I am not pitching to the lowest common denominator. I am pitching to you.

  Come, let us sit a spell to chat, ponder, laugh, lots of laughter. Let us bow to the silent power of Time until we, too, walk into the Sweet Bye and Bye.

  Ever and always,

  Rita Mae Brown

  Runnymede sits astride the Mason-Dixon Line. The Marylanders declare their side of town was founded in 1659, eighteen years after the king granted Maryland’s charter. Those on the Pennsylvania side consider this piffle but did admit that William Penn did not receive his charter from the restored Charles II until 1681. However, they swore a few farms had been established before that.

  It’s never a good idea to get into an argument with a Marylander. The residents of Baltimore fired on federal troops on April 19, 1861, furious that their repose had been so rudely disturbed. But then, Baltimore has always been peculiar.

  Finally Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon surveyed the dividing line between the two contentious states, no easy task. They began in 1763 and finished in 1767. As neither state felt satisfied, it can be concluded that the Mason-Dixon Line is accurate.

  The Marylanders regarded the residents of York County, Pennsylvania, as vulgar. The Yorkers considered the residents of Carroll County, Maryland, dreadful snobs.

  As residents from both sides of Runnymede paraded around the beautiful square in all but the worst weather, they were unfailingly courteous to one another. The minute a pleasant exchange ended between people from opposite sides, each felt the other a hypocrite. But then, hypocrisy has always greased the wheels of society.

  Men tipped their hats to ladies. Ladies smiled sweetly. Folks admired one another’s dogs and said they admired their children. Business was beginning to crawl out from the doldrums of World War I. York began to boom and, across the Susquehanna River, so did Lancaster.

  On the Maryland side it was a hop, skip, and a jump to Baltimore and, thanks to a good harbor, that city was recovering as international trade tried to return to prewar activity.

  As the town was named for Runnymede in England where King John signed the Magna Carta under a large oak tree on June 15, 1215, that great day was celebrated by all. Veterans marched in uniform. The ladies’ auxiliary societies also marched in their colors, gray and gold or blue and gold. Veterans of the Spanish-American War marched, as well as the younger men recently home from the Great War.

  A large bandshell sat at the Baltimore Street entrance to the square, half on the Maryland side and half on the Pennsylvania. While such attention to detail seemed excessive, it had proven prudent over other years, given the liberal and frequent application of libations for all. Fistfights could be broken up by each state’s police department. Years back, when the cannon was discharged in an attempt to topple General George Gordon Meade, both police departments worked together to see to the safety of the public and of General Meade.

  The two high school bands played together in the bandshell. Chairs were set up for everyone, as well as a wonderful dance floor which circled the bandshell. These were dismantled every autumn and preserved for the next year. The cakewalk, a pageant on the dance floor, proved a high point, various cakes being baked by the ladies of the town. One paid a quarter to participate. The proceeds were divided between the two veteran associations. Since many young men fought overseas, the hope was that enough money could be raised to help those in need. For a lady’s cake
to be included was a great honor and her name was prominently printed in the Magna Carta Day celebration program. The Maryland newspaper printed the programs on even years, the Pennsylvania newspaper on odd years.

  Peculiar as it was, being divided by the Mason-Dixon Line, Runnymede burst with pride and civic participation. Fuss and fight they might, but sooner or later, the residents of Runnymede would pull together.

  It was declared that the oak under which King John signed the Magna Carta still stood in England’s Runnymede. So the American Runnymedians planted an oak in the mid-1600s, now huge and smack in the middle of the square, a baroque fountain on the western side perhaps twenty-five yards away from the oak tree.

  Each June 15, the Magna Carta signing was reenacted followed by speeches predictably bleated by civic worthies that our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, the American documents of life, liberty, and citizenship, had their genesis in the Magna Carta. Each year since the late 1870s, this was challenged from the gathered women, for they did not have the vote. As it was 1920, the Pennsylvanians ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women that right. Maryland and all the southern states rejected it. One state was left to vote on suffrage: Tennessee. If Tennessee voted yes, the amendment would have the three-fourths majority and become the law of the land. However, most people felt Tennessee would reject it, it being a southern state.

  As that state’s momentous vote would not come until after Magna Carta Day, all the planners devoutly hoped Runnymede’s ladies and those gentlemen who supported their efforts would behave. After all, Pennsylvania and Maryland had already voted.

  How lovely it would be to have a calm Magna Carta Day, an event whose planning began in January of each year. However, it was secretly suspected that if calm reigned among the ladies, something else might erupt. You could never tell about Runnymede.

  In Runnymede everybody knew everybody. Nobody forgot a thing, not one blessed thing, especially if a whiff of scandal attended it. You could be held accountable for your great-grandfather being roaring drunk in the square and exposing his shortcomings. And, like all close-knit places, the child of that great-grandfather had to hear that he was the spitting image of same, along with the warning that G-pop was a notorious alcoholic who dropped his pants with alarming frequency. A kindly male adult might mention that jewelry shrinks in the cold so as not to make one overly concerned with one’s own equipment.

  History was wielded as a weapon, or so the young believed. Their elders knew without a doubt that this new generation dancing the Charleston, with women smoking and hemlines shrinking, this generation was going to hell in a handbasket. To hell!

  A very large basket would be needed.

  Excited because Pollyanna, staring Mary Pickford, was now showing at the Capitol Theater on the corner of Frederick Road and Runnymede Square, Louise Hunsenmeir, nineteen, and her younger sister, Juts, not quite fifteen, hurried through the light snow.

  The elder sister shot out of her job at the Bon Ton department store as though she’d been fired from the cannon on the south side of the town’s center square. Julia, called Juts, ran to catch up with her as she flew from the store.

  “Wheezie, hey!”

  Slowing down a bit, the slender Louise called over her shoulder, “Come on, we’ll miss the first few minutes.”

  The two trotted, slipping a bit, reaching the theater. A line, not long but long enough, curved down Frederick Road.

  “Good. They won’t start the movie with people still outside.” A puff of frosty breath escaped Louise’s lips, artfully enhanced with a light shade of lipstick.

  “Isn’t Orrie going to meet you?” Juts named Louise’s best friend.

  “You know Orrie, she slides in at the last minute.” Louise peered up the line, then whispered, “Get a load of Lottie Rhodes.”

  Juts stepped a bit out of the line to look at the attractive young woman: too much lipstick, too much of everything.

  When the line started moving, Juts then said, voice low, “She’s got the same coat you do, only yours looks better on you.”

  The two fought night and day but were best friends when they weren’t fighting. Louise smiled. “You know how she is in summer. At least she’s covered up in the snow.”

  “How do you know? You can’t see the front of her and she loves to show it off. Maybe she has snow in her cleavage. And you know who is just as bad? Dimps. She pushes her bosoms on the boys at school, then pretends she has to squeeze by them. Ugh.”

  Delilah Rhodes Jr., called Dimps Jr., as her mother is Big Dimps, obviously had studied her sister Lottie’s ploys for male attention. Both of the Rhodes girls, drilled by their mother, teased but drew the line. Big Dimps ran the cosmetics counter at the Bon Ton. She made certain her girls, cosmetics artfully applied, looked alluring. Given a lackluster marriage, Big Dimps’s view of same had narrowed to a man’s financial capacity or potential for the future. The purpose of this bosom barrage was to ensnare the richest young man possible. As Big Dimps felt she had married beneath her, she was determined her two daughters wouldn’t make the same mistake. Surely they would make other ones.

  “I can’t see Lottie’s date,” Louise grumbled.

  “Me neither. He’s at the window, I think.”

  Paul Trumbull, new to Runnymede, an army veteran from the Great War, purchased two tickets. He’d been seeing Lottie over the fall, a desultory courtship discouraged by Big Dimps because he was a lowly housepainter. As a small rebellion against her mother, this made him somewhat more attractive to Lottie. Also, Paul was quite handsome. Sooner or later Lottie would cave to her mercenary matrimonial purpose, but for now, why not string along as many young men as possible?

  Southerners referred to such fellows as conquests. Lottie hoped to be spoken of as a woman of many conquests, a trail of broken hearts left behind her.

  Juts took the ticket her sister had bought for her once they’d reached the ticket booth. “Thank you.”

  “When you get a job, you can take me.”

  “Soon,” Juts promised.

  “You have two more years of school.”

  “I’m bored. I’ll finish tenth grade. That’s enough.”

  The two greatly resembled one another. Louise had attended Immaculata Academy, paid for by Celeste Chalfonte, their mother’s employer, since Louise evidenced musical ability. Louise had converted to Catholicism. Juts, on the other hand, attended South Runnymede High School. She dutifully went to the Lutheran church and didn’t believe a word of it.

  They walked down the right aisle of the clean movie house, finding three seats near the front.

  “I’ll go in first. You can save a seat for Orrie,” Juts suggested.

  Louise sat down, did not yet take off her coat.

  Still in her coat a few rows behind them, Lottie also sat holding a seat for Paul, who was buying popcorn.

  Just as Paul entered the aisle the lights flickered, the house went dark, the organist began to play. The film title appeared, Keith Morgan, the organist, hit a few notes, and a rustle of anticipation filled the theater.

  Squinting, popcorn in hand, Paul walked by Lottie, who had turned to talk to one of her girlfriends down the row. The theater, filled with young people, grew quiet.

  He came upon the empty seat, noticed the coat, sat down before Louise could protest, put the popcorn box toward her, then kissed her.

  Louise hauled off and slapped him. “How dare you! You beast!”

  “Hey, don’t you touch my sister.” Juts leaned over Louise.

  Stunned, Paul couldn’t find his voice but the usher found him.

  Tall Walter Rendell yanked Paul out of his seat. “Come on, bub.”

  “I didn’t do anything. I mean, I thought she was someone else.”

  “That’s what they all say.” Walter dragged Paul up the aisle, popcorn falling from the red-and-white box Paul grasped.

  Having seen the kiss, Lottie shrieked, “You two-timer. I never want to see you again.” S
he stood up and smacked him with her purse.

  “Lottie?”

  She smacked him again.

  Seeing a furious Lottie, Louise’s mood improved considerably.

  Walter continued to drag an increasingly resistant Paul.

  Proclaiming for all to hear, Louise enunciated quite clearly, “Lottie, if you can’t keep your boyfriend happy, it’s not my fault.”

  Juts laughed out loud, as did others.

  Orrie finally arrived in the theater. Baffled as to the uproar, Orrie sidestepped the two men just as Paul hauled off and belted the usher.

  “Goddammit, I didn’t come home from the war to put up with this!”

  Walter struck back, hitting the smaller but wiry man in the chest. Ever happy to help a brother veteran, other young men jumped Walter. Walter’s friends jumped the vets.

  Louise, Juts, and Orrie turned, sitting on the backs of the seats in front of them, as most other people did, to enjoy this show.

  Inflamed by the insult, Lottie stomped away, her largesse bouncing with each determined stride, pocketbook in hand. She swung it at Louise, who ducked.

  “You hussy. Kissing my date.”

  Louise ducked another swing. “Lottie, he kissed me.”

  “If he’d known he was kissing Runnymede’s religious nut, he would have gagged.”

  Louise cocked her fist, landing a good punch right on Lottie’s left glory.

  “I’ll throttle you.” Lottie dropped her pocketbook, reaching to choke Louise.

  Juts blocked Lottie’s hands. “You touch my sister and I’ll tear one of those zeppelins right off your body.”

  Orrie added to the defense, but Lottie’s friends in the theater came to her aid.