Wilson avenue, Chicago, is not merely an avenue but a district; not only
a district but a state of mind; not a state of mind alone but a
condition of morals. For that matter, it is none of these things so much
as a mode of existence. If you know your Chicago--which you probably
don't--(_sotto voce_ murmur, Heaven forbid!)--you are aware that, long
ago, Wilson Avenue proper crept slyly around the corner and achieved a
clandestine alliance with big glittering Sheridan Road; which escapade
changed the demure thoroughfare into Wilson Avenue improper.
When one says "A Wilson Avenue girl," the mind--that is, the Chicago
mind--pictures immediately a slim, daring, scented, exotic creature
dressed in next week's fashions; wise-eyed; doll-faced; rapacious. When
chiffon stockings are worn Wilson Avenue's hosiery is but a film over
the flesh. Aigrettes and mink coats are its winter uniform. A feverish
district this, all plate glass windows and delicatessen dinners and
one-room-and-kitchenette apartments, where light housekeepers take
their housekeeping too lightly.
At six o'clock you are likely to see Wilson Avenue scurrying about in
its mink coat and its French heels and its crêpe frock, assembling its
haphazard dinner. Wilson Avenue food, as displayed in the ready-cooked
shops, resembles in a startling degree the Wilson Avenue ladies
themselves: highly coloured, artificial, chemically treated, tempting to
the eye, but unnutritious. In and out of the food emporia these dart,
buying dabs of this and bits of that. Chromatic viands. Vivid scarlet,
orange, yellow, green. A strip of pimento here. A mound of mayonnaise
there. A green pepper stuffed with such burden of deceit as no honest
green pepper ever was meant to hold. Two eggs. A quarter-pound of your
best creamery butter. An infinitesimal bottle of cream. "_And_ what
else?" says the plump woman in the white bib-apron, behind the counter.
"_And_ what else?" Nothing. I guess that'll be all. Mink coats prefer to
dine out.
As a cripple displays his wounds and sores, proudly, so Wilson Avenue
throws open its one-room front door with a grandiloquent gesture as it
boasts, "Two hundred and fifty a month!" Shylock, purchasing a
paper-thin slice of pinky ham in Wilson Avenue, would know his own early
Venetian transaction to have been pure philanthropy.
It took Raymond and Cora Atwater twelve years to reach this Wilson
Avenue, though they carried it with them all the way. They had begun
their married life in this locality before it had become a definite
district. Twelve years ago the neighbourhood had shown no signs of
mushrooming into its present opulence. Twelve years ago Raymond,
twenty-eight, and Cora, twenty-four, had taken a six-room flat at Racine
and Sunnyside. Six rooms. Modern. Light. Rental, $28.50 per month.
"But I guess I can manage it, all right," Raymond had said. "That isn't
so terrible--for six rooms."
Cora's full under lip had drawn itself into a surprisingly thin straight
line. Later, Raymond came to recognize the meaning of that labial
warning. "We don't need all those rooms. It's just that much more work."
"I don't want you doing your own work. Not unless you want to. At first,
maybe, it'd be sort of fun for you. But after a while you'll want a girl
to help. That'll take the maid's room off the kitchen."
"Well, supposing? That leaves an extra room, anyway."
A look came into Raymond's face. "Maybe we'll need that, too--later.
Later on." He actually could have been said to blush, then, like a boy.
There was much of the boy in Raymond at twenty-eight.
Cora did not blush.
Raymond had married Cora because he loved her; and because she was what
is known as a "home girl." From the first, business girls--those alert,
pert, confident little sparrows of office and shop and the street at
lunch hour--rather terrified him. They gave you as good as you sent.
They were always ready with their own nickel for carfare. You never knew
whether they were laughing at you or not. There was a little girl named
Calhoun in the binoculars (Raymond's first Chicago job was with the
Erwin H. Nagel Optical Company on Wabash). The Calhoun girl was smart.
She wore those plain white waists. Tailored, Raymond thought they called
them. They made her skin look fresh and clear and sort of downy-blooming
like the peaches that grew in his own Michigan state back home. Or
perhaps only girls with clear fresh skins could wear those plain white
waist things. Raymond had heard that girls thought and schemed about
things that were becoming to them, and then stuck to those things. He
wondered how the Calhoun girl might look in a fluffy waist. But she
never wore one down to work. When business was dull in the motor and
sun-glasses (which was where he held forth) Raymond would stroll over to
Laura Calhoun's counter and talk. He would talk about the Invention. He
had no one else to talk to about it. No one he could trust, or who
understood.
The Calhoun girl, polishing the great black eyes of a pair of field
glasses, would look up brightly to say, "Well, how's the Invention
coming on?" Then he would tell her.
The Invention had to do with spectacles. Not only that, if you are a
wearer of spectacles of any kind, it has to do with you. For now, twelve
years later, you could not well do without it. The little contraption
that keeps the side-piece from biting into your ears--that's Raymond's.
Knowing, as we do, that Raymond's wife is named Cora we know that the
Calhoun girl of the fresh clear skin, the tailored white shirtwaists,
and the friendly interest in the Invention, lost out. The reason for
that was Raymond's youth, and Raymond's vanity, and Raymond's
unsophistication, together with Lucy Calhoun's own honesty and
efficiency. These last qualities would handicap any girl in love, no
matter how clear her skin or white her shirtwaist.
Of course, when Raymond talked to her about the Invention she should
have looked adoringly into his eyes and said, "How perfectly
_wonderful_! I don't see how you think of such things."
What she said, after studying its detail thoughtfully for a moment,
was: "Yeh, but look. If this little tiny wire had a spring
underneath--just a little bit of spring--it'd take all the pressure off
when you wear a hat. Now women's hats are worn so much lower over their
ears, d'you see? That'd keep it from pressing. Men's hats, too, for that
matter."
She was right. Grudgingly, slowly, he admitted it. Not only that, he
carried out her idea and perfected the spectacle contrivance as you know
it to-day. Without her suggestion it would have had a serious flaw. He
knew he ought to be grateful. He told himself that he was grateful. But
in reality he was resentful. She was a smart girl, but--well--a fella
didn't feel comfortable going with a girl that knew more than he did. He
took her to the theatre--it was before the motion picture had attained
its present-day virulence. She enjoyed it. So did he. Perhaps they might
have repeated the little festivity and the white shirtwaist might have
triumphed in the end. But that same week Raymond met Cora.
Though he had come to Chicago from Michigan almost a year before, he
knew few people. The Erwin H. Nagel Company kept him busy by day. The
Invention occupied him at night. He read, too, books on optometry. Don't
think that he was a Rollo. He wasn't. But he was naturally somewhat
shy, and further handicapped by an unusually tall lean frame which he
handled awkwardly. If you had a good look at his eyes you forgot his
shyness, his leanness, his awkwardness, his height. They were the
keynote of his gentle, studious, kindly, humorous nature. But Chicago,
Illinois, is too busy looking to see anything. Eyes are something you
see with, not into.
Two of the boys at Nagel's had an engagement for the evening with two
girls who were friends. On the afternoon of that day one of the boys
went home at four with a well-developed case of grippe. The other
approached Raymond with his plea.
"Say, Atwater, help me out, will you? I can't reach my girl because
she's downtown somewheres for the afternoon with Cora. That's her girl
friend. And me and Harvey was to meet 'em for dinner, see? And a show.
I'm in a hole. Help me out, will you? Go along and fuss Cora. She's a
nice girl. Pretty, too, Cora is. Will you, Ray? Huh?"
Ray went. By nine-thirty that evening he had told Cora about the
Invention. And Cora had turned sidewise in her seat next to him at the
theatre and had looked up at him adoringly, awe-struck. "Why, how
perfectly _wonderful_! I don't see how you think of such things."
"Oh, that's nothing. I got a lot of ideas. Things I'm going to work out.
Say, I won't always be plugging down at Nagel's, believe me. I got a
lot of ideas."
"Really! Why, you're an inventor, aren't you! Like Edison and those. My,
it must be wonderful to think of things out of your head. Things that
nobody's ever thought of before."
Ray glowed. He felt comfortable, and soothed, and relaxed and
stimulated. And too large for his clothes. "Oh, I don't know. I just
think of things. That's all there is to it. That's nothing."
"Oh, isn't it! No, I guess not. I've never been out with a real inventor
before ... I bet you think I'm a silly little thing."
He protested, stoutly. "I should say not." A thought struck him. "Do you
do anything? Work downtown somewheres, or anything?"
She shook her head. Her lips pouted. Her eyebrows made pained twin
crescents. "No. I don't do anything. I was afraid you'd ask that." She
looked down at her hands--her white, soft hands with little dimples at
the finger-bases. "I'm just a home girl. That's all. A home girl. Now
you _will_ think I'm a silly stupid thing." She flashed a glance at him,
liquid-eyed, appealing.
He was surprised (she wasn't) to find his hand closed tight and hard
over her soft dimpled one. He was terror-stricken (she wasn't) to hear
his voice saying, "I think you're wonderful. I think you're the most
wonderful girl I ever saw, that's what." He crushed her hand and she
winced a little. "Home girl."
Cora's name suited her to a marvel. Her hair was black and her colouring
a natural pink and white, which she abetted expertly. Cora did not wear
plain white tailored waists. She wore thin, fluffy, transparent things
that drew your eyes and fired your imagination. Raymond began to call
her Coral in his thoughts. Then, one evening, it slipped out. Coral. She
liked it. He denied himself all luxuries and most necessities and bought
her a strand of beads of that name, presenting them to her stammeringly,
clumsily, tenderly. Tender pink and cream, they were, like her cheeks,
he thought.
"Oh, Ray, for me! How darling! You naughty boy!... But I'd rather have
had those clear white ones, without any colouring. They're more stylish.
Do you mind?"
When he told Laura Calhoun she said, "I hope you'll be very happy. She's
a lucky girl. Tell me about her, will you?"
Would he! His home girl!