Kopp Sisters on the March Read online

  “Six months, more like.”

  “I could’ve helped you. You could’ve brought the courses over to me at night.”

  “I had business with Mr. Pinkman at night.”

  “Of course you did,” Mabel muttered.

  They had, by this time, reached the Armory, where a crowd of young women, all arrayed in the fine winter coats of New York’s social set, waited at the wide red brick entrance.

  “Is this where they hold the fashion shows now?” Beulah asked.

  “It looks like a luncheon for the League of Ladies in Furtherance of Something-or-Other,” Mabel offered.

  A banner hung above the entrance. They had to push their way through the crowd to read it.

  “‘National Service School,’” Mabel read. “‘Enrollment for Spring 1917.’”

  Beulah looked around at the well-heeled young women in line. “These girls aren’t going into service,” she said.

  “I don’t think it’s domestic service,” Mabel mused. “It’s . . . something to do with the war. Look, they’re all wearing flag ribbons.”

  “Everybody wears a flag ribbon these days. I even have one somewhere.”

  Somewhere. It came back to Beulah in a sickening rush that her things had been packed up by Mrs. Pinkman’s maid and shoved in a train station locker. Which of her possessions had been left behind? What drawers went unopened, what cupboards ignored?

  Beulah didn’t like to speak to girls of refinement and breeding—they would see right through her, she believed or, worse, they would recognize her. Her face had been in every paper in 1911. It was only the patchy quality of the image that kept her from being stopped on every street corner.

  But a lonely kind of desperation had come over her, and she worked up her nerve to say to the nearest girl, “What’s this about? What sort of school is it?”

  “Haven’t you heard? It’s an Army camp for girls.”

  Mabel whipped around. “They’re taking girls into the Army? And all of you are going?”

  A chorus of giggles rose up around them. “Oh, she’s teasing you,” another girl said. “It’s not a real Army camp. It’s something the generals’ wives put together. They say that we’re to have our own part in preparing for the war. The troops are going to need us in France.”

  “What for?” Beulah asked. “Are you all going over to dance with the soldiers?”

  That brought a delighted gasp from the group. “Oh, I suppose so, if they ask us,” one of them said. “But the idea is to train us in nursing, or mending, or how to cook for a battalion.”

  Mabel rolled her eyes at this and started to walk away, but Beulah stared at them. “And then you’ll go to France?” She looked around at the masses of young women waiting to register. “All of you?”

  One after another, the girls thrust their chests out and gave a little salute. “I’ll go.”

  “I’ll go.”

  “Me too.”

  They collapsed again into laughter, but as far as Beulah could tell, they meant it.

  Mabel took her by the elbow and pulled her away. “What a lot of nonsense,” she said. “Let’s find you a place to stay for the night.”

  But Beulah shook her loose. “This is what I should do. I should go to this camp.”

  Mabel snorted. “With these girls? Look at them! It must cost a fortune. You don’t see anyone who lives below Fourteenth Street in this line.” She marched over and spoke to one of the women, and returned triumphant.

  “There, you see? The fee for six weeks away is forty dollars, and you have to bring your own uniform. This is nothing but a summer camp for swells.”

  Beulah fingered the bracelet around her wrist. Mr. Pinkman hadn’t thought to ask her to return it. “I could raise the funds.”

  “Oh, pish! Save your pennies.” Mabel tried to lead her down the street again. “You’re just tired and cross after the day you’ve had.”

  Beulah turned and looked back at the women milling about the Armory, in their good serge dresses and smart kid boots. She could see them on the deck of a ship, waving good-bye to New York, French phrase-books in their pockets. What a thrill it would be to watch the city grow smaller as the ship sailed east. Her troubles would vanish right over the horizon.

  Mabel could see her wavering. “You’d have to give your real name. This all looks very—governmental. They will know.”

  “These ladies? They’re not asking any questions,” Beulah said. “You simply go up and tell your name and they write it down. If there’s anything more to it than that, I’ll find a way.”

  Over the years, Beulah had forged any number of letters of introduction when she adopted a new name. She wondered if the maid had packed her papers. That was just the sort of thing Mrs. Pinkman would throw into the stove if she found it.

  “But what if someone did figure you out?” Mabel said. “You’d have reporters following you all over again.”

  “No one’s recognized me in years,” Beulah said. “I’ve outgrown that picture in the paper. I can manage. Don’t you see? I could go to Paris, and get on with the Red Cross or some outfit, and wear a uniform, and when the war’s over, I’ll sail home on the arm of a soldier, and it’ll be like the war erased everything. Not just for me, but for the whole country! I’ll go in with everyone else, and wash out the other side a new—”

  Mabel shook her head. “This camp—it’s for nice girls who’ve lived under a chaperone their whole lives. You’re not like them, and they’ll know it.”

  But Beulah was staring dreamily at the sea of elaborately trimmed hats around her. “Look at them. They’re all fired up about going off to the war. Who, at a place like that, would ever bother looking twice at me?”

  2

  CONSTANCE KOPP WAS not in the habit of agreeing with her sister: it was never a good idea to concede territory to Norma. But as they rounded the bend and the camp came into view, Constance couldn’t help but be stirred—just as Norma said she would be—by the sight of a hundred or more young women, congregated in an open meadow on a chilly March morning, to register for wartime service.

  She sat atop a horse-drawn cart that jostled pleasantly toward the entrance, alongside all the other vehicles delivering campers and their trunks. Even from a distance, she could sense from the girls’ posture and their bearing a fine sense of purpose and forward movement. Some type of forward movement was exactly what Constance, at that moment, required.

  Norma had insisted that this camp in Maryland would put her back in her tracks, as if she were a derailed train that merely needed to be hauled upright and have its wheels greased. There was something to that, Constance had to admit. The events of the previous year had indeed thrown her off. She’d spent the winter housebound, stranded and stuck. It had taken Norma (forcefully, and without the consent of the other parties) enrolling the three of them in this camp to dislodge her from their small farm. If Norma meant for her to feel like a train put back on its tracks, the experience to Constance was more like that of a bear evicted suddenly from its winter cave.

  Hibernation was abruptly over, and the isolation of the past few months gone along with it. Norma clucked at their harness mare and tried—unsuccessfully—to maneuver their wagon down a road already clogged with autos, buggies, and traps delivering young women to the camp. Most vehicles had pulled off to the side, but some were simply stopped in the road, as if for a picnic.

  In her old job back in Hackensack, Constance would’ve hopped off the wagon, blown a whistle, and directed the drivers off the road. She even patted down her pockets, searching for her whistle, before she remembered that she wasn’t the deputy in charge.

  That little gesture didn’t escape Norma’s notice. Nothing escaped Norma’s notice.

  “Go ahead and order them out of the way. You like to be in charge.”

  I used to like it, Constance nearly said, but didn’t. It would only invite a lecture about burying the past before it buried her, a lecture Norma had delivered so many times that Co
nstance had it memorized. Instead she craned her neck and said, “I don’t believe they’re letting any vehicles through the gate.” She sat considerably higher in the wagon than her sister did and had a clearer view of the scene ahead.

  Norma urged their harness mare on. “They have to let us in. Ours is the only vehicle here for a military purpose.”

  Norma’s horse-drawn cart served a military purpose only in her own mind, just as Constance was still a deputy only in her own mind. What a pair they made!

  Fleurette, meanwhile, labored under her own illusions. While Norma and Constance sat next to each other on the coachman’s seat, the youngest Kopp walked alongside, having refused to be seen approaching camp in such a contraption.

  “There is an art to making an entrance,” she’d declared half a mile back. “You’ve put a barn on wheels and attached it to a worn-out mare. I wish you could see what a sight you make.”

  It was true that they were arriving in the most unlikely of vehicles. Every other camper had been delivered by wagon, truck, automobile, or small cart pulled by some manner of mule or pony. The Kopp sisters, however, traveled by mobile pigeon cart. It was half again as tall as anything else on the road and resembled a miniature cottage on wheels.

  “If I can’t approach by automobile,” Fleurette continued, “I’d rather come strolling in as if I’ve only just been let out of one.” With that, she hopped off and proceeded by foot.

  She had outfitted herself in a dusty pink coat with a fox fur collar, which she swore was the warmest coat she owned, but it also happened to be the most outlandish. Even in this crowd of debutantes and bankers’ daughters, she made an impression. Heads were turning. Constance saw a chauffeur purse his lips as if to whistle, and she reached once again for her pocket. How satisfying that handgun used to feel, at moments like this.

  All around them, young women were disembarking from their vehicles and hopping up and down in an effort to ward off the chill. Many of them stood on top of their trunks and suitcases to get a better look. Wicker hampers were being emptied of sandwiches, children were organizing games for themselves, and mothers and fathers stood by, wearing expressions of fatigued indulgence. A woman in uniform walked between the families, greeting campers and issuing instructions as to the disposition of trunks and bags.

  Constance recognized her at once. “Is that Maude Miner?” she called.

  The woman looked around in surprise. “Constance Kopp! I should’ve known you’d turn up here!” She pointed a camper in the direction of the entrance and walked over.

  Constance had met Miss Miner the previous fall at Plattsburg, a military camp for men intending to join the Army. Miss Miner had been in charge of making sure nothing untoward went on between the men and the local girls, as the success of the Plattsburg camps depended on them remaining free of scandal. She’d tried to convince Constance to work for her as a camp matron, but at the time Constance still held her post as deputy sheriff. She could remember, as clearly as if it were yesterday, telling Maude that she couldn’t imagine a better place for herself than the Bergen County Sheriff’s Department.

  Maude remembered it, too. “I’m just sick over what happened to you,” she said. “What did those leaflets say? Troublesome lady policeman? I can’t imagine how that man expects to hold public office after plastering that nonsense all over town. The fact that the voters elected him anyway is something I’ll never understand. What was his name again?”

  Maude meant well. Constance saw in her face that mixture of sympathy and outrage she’d come to expect from anyone who knew what had happened to her. It was only just now occurring to her that she’d have to confront it here at camp, not just once, but over and over.

  She took another look around at the crowd. Was that a lady reporter, going from one family to the next, and a photographer alongside her?

  As Constance seemed to have lost her tongue, Fleurette stepped up quickly and said, “His name is Mr. Courter. We don’t dignify him with the title of sheriff. Constance doesn’t like to speak of him at all.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean—”

  “We’ve had a rather difficult winter,” Norma put in, “but she’s in fine form now.”

  Constance wished mightily that Norma wouldn’t talk about her as if she were an invalid.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” Maude said quietly, in the tone she probably employed with disgraced girls. Constance recognized that tone—she’d used it herself, many times.

  “You needn’t apologize,” Constance said, “only I’d rather start fresh and avoid any talk of the past.”

  Maude patted her arm, still dispensing more sympathy than Constance would’ve liked. “I won’t say a word. But someone’s bound to recognize you, after all that business with the election. You were in the papers down here, too.”

  Of course she was. She’d been in the papers as far away as California. Girl Deputy Fired. Politics Takes Job from Girl Cop. And this one, so succinct in its humiliation: Miss Kopp Loses.

  Norma grunted. “I’d put no stock in this crowd reading the papers. Most of these girls turn right to the ladies’ pages and never go further.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Maude said, although she didn’t look convinced. “Now, what are we to do with this . . . this . . .” She looked up at Norma’s cart and searched for the proper term.

  “Mobile pigeon transport cart,” Norma said. “I’ve come to teach a class.”

  “Ah, yes,” Maude said vaguely. “I do recall hearing something about a last-minute addition to the curriculum, but I didn’t know it had to do with . . . birds, is it?”

  “They’re trained to deliver messages from the front,” Constance put in.

  It sounded absurd, but Maude managed to answer graciously. “Of course! The telephones do fail from time to time. How practical. Did you ride in it all the way from New Jersey?”

  “We took the train. Horse and cart followed by box-car,” Constance said. “We’ve only just ridden in from the station.” The truth was that neither she nor Fleurette had been willing to undertake a journey of some two hundred and fifty miles in a horse-drawn wagon filled with unhappy pigeons. Norma had relented only after she realized that she was physically unable to wrestle Constance aboard—and she did try, but Constance outweighed her by a good thirty pounds and stood her ground.

  “Well, we have a stable at the very back of the camp,” Maude said. “I’ll clear the way and you can ride on in.”

  With that, Maude marched ahead, waving campers and their vehicles out of the way. Someone nearby was whistling a tune. A few girls took it up and started singing.

  Fleurette was about to join in, but Norma silenced her with a glare. “One has to be awfully far away from the fighting to treat war like a carnival.”

  “We aren’t at war yet,” Fleurette said, “unless you picked up the news at the train station and decided not to tell us. And I’m glad to hear that some of the girls can sing. I’ve written to Freeman Bernstein and asked if May Ward can come and give a show. I promised I could round up a chorus here at camp and teach them the songs.”

  “You never said anything about writing a letter,” Norma snapped.

  “I’m telling you now,” Fleurette said lightly, as if the subject of Freeman Bernstein had only just occurred to her.

  Norma harbored a smoldering dislike of Freeman Bernstein, a vaudeville manager whose wife, May Ward, took Fleurette on tour with her the previous spring. Fleurette’s abrupt disappearance sent Norma marching into Mr. Bernstein’s office, demanding to know her whereabouts. Mr. Bernstein dismissed her worries and lectured her on the proper way to bring up a young girl in modern times. As Norma disliked both lectures and modern times, the meeting ended badly.

  Time had not softened Norma’s animosity toward the man—but time rarely did. Norma didn’t just hold grudges, she feathered a nest for them and kept them warm, like a broody hen.

  “That man is not going to set foot inside my camp,” Norma sputtered, when she
could, at last, find the words.

  “It isn’t your camp,” Fleurette said. “May Ward’s been performing at all the men’s camps this year. If they’re given a show of patriotic music, why shouldn’t the women have the same?”

  Norma ignored her and urged their horse along.

  The reporter was still making her way through the crowd. When the cart started moving, she dashed over. “What a cunning little wagon,” she cried, walking all around it and taking in its windows with fitted shutters, its rear door with retractable steps, and its ladder to the top. It was a perfectly crafted vehicle, built entirely by Norma and her friend Carolyn.

  Norma would’ve told the reporter all about it—it was, after all, her mission to convince the public of the benefits of pigeons to wartime communication operations—and Constance wouldn’t have minded, except that the man with the camera followed closely on the reporter’s heels and set up his stand to take a picture.

  “Let’s have all three of you girls pose in front of it,” he proposed.

  “Yes, and I’ll need your names,” the reporter said.

  The headline wrote itself: Defeated Lady Deputy Dons Khakis.

  “No pictures!” Constance called, rather frantically. “No pictures, and no names.”

  The reporter looked up at her through delicate gold-rimmed spectacles. “It’s all in furtherance of the camp and its ideals,” she said sweetly.

  If Constance had learned one thing about reporters, it was that a story was only ever in furtherance of its readers—and readers wouldn’t pay a penny for another story about preparedness camps and high-flown ideals. It was trouble they liked, but Constance was no longer in that business.

  “We’d like to get settled,” she said. “We’ve come a long way. I’m sure there are plenty of other ladies to interview.”

  “Oh, you must be simply exhausted,” the reporter said, still pleasant, still sympathetic. “How far have you traveled?”

  “My sister’s too polite to refuse directly, but I’m not,” Norma said. “Go on, now.” It wasn’t entirely clear whether she was talking to the reporter or the horse, but both moved along.