The Dolan Girls Read online

  “I’m so so-sor…ry,” she stammered and quickly opened up the front door.

  Inside Eleanor, took a running leap into her mother’s arms.

  “Mama, you’re home!” she shouted.

  Cora held her for a second then gently, yet firmly, put her back down. “Eleanor, calm down. That behavior just isn’t…just isn’t…”

  “What, Mama?” she asked, her little face flushed with confusion and hurt.

  “It’s just not seemly,” Cora said. Ellie ran to her aunt.

  Turning away, she didn’t even care that Minnie, with Ellie nestled in her arms, sniped, “Seemly? Oh, Cora.”

  * *

  At ten, Eleanor told everyone her name was Ellie, despite what her mother claimed. After school, she visited their two horses as much as possible, and she and Minnie had carefully worked out a secret code system.

  Whenever Cora was out, Ellie knew Minnie would allow her access to the parlor. The doves loved her and she them. If she had her way, she would spend even more time there, lapping up their colorful stories, risqué or not.

  She soon figured out that all the doves were also a part of a pact Minnie had dreamed up. As soon as one of them heard Cora coming up the front walk, they would all rush the girl out of the back end of the parlor so she could scurry down the hall toward her bedroom, plop down on her bed, and Cora would be none the wiser.

  In fact, all in all, everything appeared, as Ellie would say, “fine ‘n dandy.”

  Until Madam Ana fell ill.

  At first, everyone assumed it was a bad cold that had laid her up for a week. But that week stretched into two weeks, then three. The doctor was finally summoned, notwithstanding Ana’s resistance, and when the exam result was declared, it was not good.

  “Pneumonia, plain and simple. I’m afraid your lungs are in dire need of drainage. In addition, your heartbeat sounds too irregular,” he announced to the madam and a couple of doves present in her bedroom.

  Prescriptions, instructions, and warnings were dispensed, and within days, she did seem to improve a little. Still, the Dolan sisters were called into her bedroom at eleven o'clock one stormy night.

  “Come in, girls. I vant to talk to you.”

  Sitting down across from her, the sisters reached for each other’s hand.

  “First, I know you were both so sad when we never could find your papa. Never could give him a proper funeral. And I know, Cora, life has not been so good for you.”

  She drew a ragged breath and immediately coughed so hard, a spot of blood appeared on her imported Russian handkerchief. When her spasm subsided, she looked at the two pairs of stricken eyes staring at her and continued.

  “But I also know you love each other, and I love you. So, I have put you both in my vill. If I don’t make it, I give you my business, free and clear.”

  Cora looked at her sister, who stared back at her, displaying the same horror Cora felt.

  “But…” Minnie began.

  Ana held up one hand. “No buts. Is already written by lawyer. It’s done. You have no choice.”

  When the girls came over to the bed and encircled the madam in their arms, they both began to cry.

  Sniffling, the older woman cleared her throat. “By the vay, you are the daughters I never had. God bless you.”

  But the madam managed to cling on a little while longer, giving everyone hope. Pete even stopped drinking for a week or two, his recitations filled with faith and salvation, and all seemed right in the house again.

  Until the doves made a fatal mistake. It was a Saturday afternoon, lazy, uneventful, with Cora about to go to Mr. Mahoney’s, Minnie at the stables, and Ana holed up in the office going over the books.

  One dove swore later that she saw Cora leaving, another did not, but when Ellie entered the parlor and asked the doves where babies came from, their lecture was loud and decidedly non-clinical.

  “Becky,” Ellie asked, sucking on a candy, “What do you mean when you talk about getting some good loving?”

  The dove smiled. “All I can say, Ellie, is when a man touches you there, it gets you all inflamed, like you want him to never stop touchin’ you down there, and other places, too.”

  “What other places?” the young girl asked, wide-eyed.

  Susannah laughed. “Like your titties for one thing, and your…”

  Josephine leaned in. “Your snatchbox, your…”

  She never finished. From the doorway, the wheeze of horror escaping from Cora’s mouth was palpable.

  All heads pivoted toward her in time to see her march over to Ellie, grab her hand, and snarl, “That’s it! I’m sending you back east to school!”

  Ellie’s tiny protests fell on deaf ears, and three weeks later, she had stopped trying to make new ones as she, Cora, Minnie, Pete, and a frail Ana all waited for the Wells Fargo & Co stagecoach to arrive.

  When it did, Ellie was guided into the coach, the driver given careful instructions in regards to the schoolgirl, and the only emotion Ellie saw her mother show was a steely-eyed determination.

  Her fingers curled over the rim of the half-open window, the little girl eyed the foursome through her tears. Ana was sitting on a bench, blowing her a kiss, and Minnie’s scrunched up face looked like their old hound dog, Billy, after he had stepped on a burr. Pete was openly crying, his shoulders twitching up and down, and Cora, although stone-faced, was biting her lower lip, refusing to meet her daughter’s eye.

  “Oh, please, Mama,” Ellie tried one last time as the driver secured her bag atop the luggage rack, climbed up into the driver’s seat, snatched the reins, and released the foot brake lever.

  “Please don’t send me away!” she sobbed.

  But her cries were swallowed up by the click-click of the driver, the coach shifting, the six-teamed horses snorting, and the wheels starting their slow, rattling grind out of town.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Returning Home: 1883

  Over the next few years, Cora had developed a habit of telling any new dove about the importance of order always being maintained in the establishment she and Minnie had inherited. Cleanliness was tantamount to godliness, compliance to the customers understood––unless they became too unruly––and everyone was to expect the unexpected at every turn.

  As one of the madams, she was proud of her standards. Proud of how she always tried to protect her girls, along with her life-experience motto, Expect the Unexpected. But one routine Monday, when instead of Ellie’s monthly letter coming from back east, a telegram arrived and was handed over to her in their office, she read it, and nearly choked on her morning coffee.

  RETURNING HOME TO STAY. STOP. BEEN HIRED BY SOUTH BENTON SCHOOL COMMITTEE. STOP.WILL ARRIVE NEXT TUESDAY ON THE 2PM TRAIN. STOP. LOVE TO YOU AND AUNTIE. STOP. ELLIE”

  “Minnie, come here quickly!” Cora hollered.

  Minnie came running. “What in the world?”

  “Take…take a look,” Cora stammered.

  Minnie picked up the paper and mouthed the words. “My, oh my! Ain’t this wonderful!”

  Cora cleared her throat. “I’m not so sure. Remember, I went to considerable trouble to get Eleanor away from this place, so she could become a real lady.”

  “Look, Cora, I know you’ve gone through hell and back. I also know that you have always worried a damn sight more about what those holier-than-thou town women think than about keeping your own daughter here, close to us!”

  “You know that wasn’t all of it, not by a long shot,” Cora snapped as she massaged the nape of her neck.

  “That was a long time ago, Cora. Honestly, for all your smarts, you don’t have the sense of a bag of hornets. Don’t be such a fool. For goodness sake, just enjoy your daughter. And by the way, as you well know, she wants to be called Ellie, not your hoity-toity Eleanor that only you have insisted on calling her.”

  The two sisters shifted into their usual standoff poses: Cora annoyed, self-righteous, her hands on her hips; Minnie, wiry, know-it-all, breathin
g hard.

  Just then, one of their ladies entered. “Mrs. Cora, Miss Minnie, there’s a problem out on the floor.”

  Cora sighed. “What now, Marlena?”

  The soiled dove gulped before answering. “One of our customers, the old geezer one, is having a fit. Gettin’ real ornery, too.”

  In recognition of a regular happenstance, the two sisters looked at each other and grimaced.

  “Need any help?” Minnie asked Cora as she stood up.

  “Nope, I have it under control. Thanks, Sis,” Cora replied and headed out the door, Ellie and her homecoming temporarily forgotten.

  Out in the main parlor, the girls had already formed a wide circle around old Pete. Corsets, bustles, crinolines, pantaloons, and camisoles intermingled with a whiskey-stained suit, a grimy vest, and mud-caked boots. He was no match for them. As they gleefully shoved and tickled him, his fury rose with each breath, while his face ripened into the color of raw meat. Finally, when he could take it no longer, he sputtered, “She-devils!” which produced gales of laughter.

  “Ladies, ladies. Enough. Leave the man alone,” Cora said, placing a concerned arm around the smelly habitué. “There, there, Pete. They meant you no harm.”

  “As Mercutio proclaimed in Romeo and Juliet, ...’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but ‘tis enough, ‘twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man. All I wanted was a little love, Cora. I swear it!” He sniffled pathetically as the girls giggled.

  With a dirty glance aimed at the group’s ringleader, Charity, Cora turned back to Pete. “You did produce some money, right, love?”

  He looked down.

  “Now, Pete, you know the rules.”

  “I just wanted a little love. As Henry David Thoreau said, There is no remedy for love but to love more. He also said…”

  “Now, Pete, enough about Thoreau,” she interrupted, gently angling him toward the door. As soon as he left with a snort and an “After all we’ve been through together,” Cora shook her head and turned back to face her employees.

  “Ladies, she said, “some women in this town may look down on us, but I do have my standards. Gentility is most important, above all else. I thought I had made myself perfectly clear.”

  A few head nods and corset scratching was all she got before Marlena stepped forward. “Ah, Mrs. Cora?”

  Placing one hand on her hip, Cora sighed. “Now what?”

  “He was full as a tick, that one was. He almost fell down twice.”

  Cora squinted her eyes, assessing her new employee. “I don’t care how drunk he was. He, Miss Minnie, and I go way back.”

  “But you tossed out a feller from Fanny’s bed just the other night. I reckon he wasn’t half as likkered up as that ol’ coot.”

  Cora frowned. “I could tell the man with Fanny was going to be big trouble.”

  “Yes, zat one very, very scared me,” Suzette, the resident French girl affirmed. “I zink Mrs. Cora maybe saved Fanny’s life.”

  “Trust Mrs. Cora,” Rosie interjected. “She’ll always watch your back, or at least your backside!” There was an explosion of laughter.

  “All right, all right. Get a wiggle on, ladies,” Cora continued, her eyes sweeping over them. “I heard a group of cowboys are ridin’ through town, maybe even this afternoon. Now, go, go!” Her two claps, echoing through the room like claps of thunder, reminded her of Madam Ana in her prime, before she got sick and died, before the Dolan sisters inherited this enterprise, whether they had a hankering for it or not.

  She could hear the girls whispering as they retreated up the winding, red-carpeted staircase to their various rooms, and soon, the parlor’s sudden calm brought her back to a scene she wanted to forget.

  “…All I can say, Ellie, is when a man touches you there, it gets you all inflamed, like you want him to never stop touchin’ you there, and other places, too.”

  “What other places, Becky?”

  Susannah laughed. “Like your titties, for one thing, and your–”

  Josephine leaned in. “Your snatchbox, your––”

  “That’s enough! She’s only a child…” cried Cora, immediately turning to Ellie.

  “That’s it! You're going to back to school back east, young lady.”

  “But Mama, I don’t want to. Please don’t make me! Oh, Mama, pleeeeeeeease.”

  After plumping up a few stray pillows on Madam Ana’s center settee, resetting chairs in strategic positions, leveling a gilt-framed painting on the wall, and glancing up at the prized crystal chandelier, she slowly returned to her office to think.

  It was a much more cheerful room now than when Mrs. Ana had occupied it. Filled with personal objects that might mean little to most people, to the Dolan girls, they were treasured assets: Ellie’s first report card, framed (all As of course), the gingham-clothed doll from their mother Mattie, several dime novels she refused to let her daughter read as a child, two dented brass lamps her parents had brought from Missouri, Buffalo Gals, Old Dan Tucker, and Sweet Betsy from Pike sheet music for their friend Everett to play when the customers wanted to lean against the piano and sing, and most prominently displayed, their family portrait taken that fateful 1856 morning, so long ago.

  She could feel her mind tip-toeing back toward the dark times––the sound of Wes unbuttoning his pants, the metal clink of his notched gun on the side table, Pete’s muffled cries, the blast of Minnie’s shotgun, the…

  “Cora!” Minnie exclaimed, bursting in. “You’ve got to accept her coming, that’s all there is to it. Stop that lip biting right now!”

  “I’m just fine, thank you,” Cora muttered, straightening up the already organized papers on the desk and running a finger over one of the lamps to check for dust.

  She softened. “I just want her to be everything I’m not. Is that so difficult to understand?”

  “No, it ain’t. All’s I’m sayin’ is let the girl live. She’s back here with an important job. A job with respect, I might add.” Minnie chuckled. “After all, somebody’s gotta tame all those little savages and with one teacher after another skedaddling, she just might be South Benton’s only hope.”

  Cora nodded slowly.

  “All right then,” Minnie said. “We’ll meet her at the train station. Pete will want to come too, of course. I’ll put ol’ Becky in charge.”

  Cora wrinkled up her nose. “Becky?”

  “Cora, she’ll do just fine.”

  * *

  The two o’clock train from New York was more than an hour late. While Cora walked over to the stationmaster to complain, Minnie regaled Pete with a story a drunken cowboy had shared the night before, and by the time Cora returned, the bard was howling with laughter.

  “That’s a good one, Minnie. Reminds me of…”

  “Mr. Waterford says it’ll be here any time now,” Cora cut in. “Trains have been running late these days,” she muttered, thoroughly massaging the back of her neck.

  “That’s interesting,” Pete said, and suddenly knelt down. He laid his right ear directly onto one of the tracks.

  “What are you doing, Pete? What will people think of us?” Cora blurted out, checking the platform for people’s reactions.

  “Great idea, Pete,” countered Minnie.

  Pete stayed low, his face thoughtful, as if in a trance.

  “Did you hear me?” Cora asked.

  Minnie shook her head and turned away. “Lord help us.”

  “I can feel it, I can feel it!” Pete announced. He stood up and dusted himself off. “We’ll hear the whistle any second now.”

  Sure enough, within seconds, a lone, haunting wail echoed somewhere off in the distance. Thick plumes of black smoke suddenly appeared, rising up into the light blue sky as a train made its slow approach, the repeated clang of its locomotive bell growing louder and louder as it completely dominated the otherwise calm air. When the train finally entered the station, the locomotive’s side-rods rattled, and jets of stea
m hissed out venomously from its cylinders, blocking everyone’s view. Now that South Benton’s railroad commerce was expanding, at least seven or eight people had stepped off the ‘Iron Horse’ before they caught sight of Ellie on the platform, three cars down.

  Cora took a sharp intake of air. Her daughter was a sight to behold.

  With auburn hair and hour-glass proportions, Ellie cut a perfect ladylike figure in her tan and black brocaded traveling suit, bustle, matching boots and parasol; everything Cora could ever ask for in a daughter. As the trio trotted toward her, Cora thought she heard Minnie’s “We’ve got a real lady on our hands now!” and Pete’s “As Alexander Pope would say, Fair tresses man’s imperial race ensnare; And beauty draw us with a single hair,” but she couldn’t be sure. Her heart was beating so hard, she thought it would surely burst out of her chest.

  Colliding together in a mass of hugs and tears, the four of them paused only to lean back from each other and laugh.

  “Lordy, lordy, if you aren’t the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Pete exclaimed.

  “Oh, Pete, you ‘ol flatterer, you.” Ellie giggled, flinging her arm over his shoulders.

  “It’s true, you are a sight for sore eyes, Ellie,” Minnie added, then turned to Cora. “Isn’t that so, Sis?”

  Cora beamed. “She sure is. Welcome home, Eleanor.”

  A slight shadow crossed Ellie’s face. “It’s Ellie, Mama, remember? Ellie.”

  Minnie and Pete exchanged looks, while Cora stood still, giving her lower lip a good couple of bites.

  “Ellie,” she said finally, and tried a smile.

  Minnie rubbed her hands together and drew Ellie close. “Well, let’s go home, shall we? We made sure your room is nice and cheerful. Why, your mama even picked a big bunch of flowers for you just this morning.”

  Leaning into her aunt, Ellie smiled. “Oh, Auntie, you haven’t changed a bit. So good to see you!” Arm in arm, they walked on ahead as their chatter wafted back toward Pete and Cora.

  “She sure is lovely, Cora. You must be so proud.” Pete’s grin stretched from one ear to another.

  Again, Cora managed a tight smile. “Now, Pete, when we get back, I need you to cut down on the liquor cabinet. There’s no need for Elean––Ellie’s first night home to be…”