Kopp Sisters on the March Read online

  They made their way at last to a high cattle fence and a gate with a banner strung across it. CAMP CHEVY CHASE, it read in bold hand-painted letters. NATIONAL SERVICE SCHOOL.

  At the gate stood a camp official wearing a blue sash over her brown Norfolk jacket. She looked to be about fifty and had the vigorous air of a club woman about her. Constance could imagine her organizing church suppers and auctioning off cakes for charity. She’d surely run any number of instructional campaigns in her time, on subjects as varied as hygiene for invalids and the advantages of uncolored butter. She was exactly the sort of woman Constance expected to find running a camp like this.

  “Geneva Nash, camp matron,” she said by way of introduction. From a card file on a table next to her, she extracted their registration forms. “I’ll take down your particulars and you can go find your tent. Why don’t we begin with the eldest Miss Kopp?”

  Constance hadn’t expected to be questioned so soon. She was seized with a rising sense of dread over the entire camp knowing that the disgraced former lady deputy from New Jersey was among them. But if she didn’t want anyone to know, then what was she to say about her past?

  There was no time to decide. Mrs. Nash and her sharpened pencil awaited.

  “Name in full,” Mrs. Nash said.

  “Constance Amélie Kopp.”

  “Address in full.”

  She gave it.

  “Are you a member of the American Red Cross?”

  Constance was not.

  “Are you native-born? Place of birth and year, please.”

  “Brooklyn, 1877.”

  “Are you married, single, or widowed? Single, I suppose.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you any children, parents, or others who are dependent upon you?”

  Constance looked over at Norma and Fleurette. “I suppose not.”

  Mrs. Nash gave the three of them a quick smile. “You all look quite self-reliant. Can you furnish a health certificate?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Languages spoken other than English?”

  “French.” No one admitted to speaking German.

  “Have you any training along the following lines? Dairying, farming, fruit-raising, market gardening, or poultry-raising?”

  “We live on a small farm and I do the vegetables.”

  Norma raised an eyebrow at that half-truth. Constance had only ever been nominally in charge of the vegetable patch but hated doing it. As soon as she could afford to hire a boy from the dairy to take care of it, she relinquished her responsibility. She realized with a prickle of dread that if she didn’t leave camp with some idea about her next endeavor, she’d be back at home, putting in the cabbage starts.

  “That’s fine,” Mrs. Nash said. “What about household work? Care of children, cleaning, cooking, knitting, mending, sewing?”

  “Some of it,” Constance admitted. That got a little laugh from Mrs. Nash.

  “It’s a superfluous question at a women’s camp. I wonder who thought to put it down. What about clerical work, such as bookkeeping, stenography, or typewriting?”

  “I keep the household accounts.”

  “And mechanical work, such as motor cars, telegraphs, telephones, or wireless?”

  “No, none of that.” Her throat tightened a bit as the questions veered in the direction of professional experience. Fleurette shuffled her feet and Norma crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Any other training, such as nursing, pharmacy, dentist, or lawyer?”

  She said nothing about police work, did she?

  “No.”

  “That’s fine, dear. And your present occupation?”

  Well, that was straightforward enough. Constance told the truth, and betrayed no emotion as she did so.

  “None. I haven’t any occupation.”

  3

  “YOU OUGHTN’T TO lie like that,” Norma said as they dragged their trunks and bags into the campground.

  “I didn’t lie,” Constance said.

  “You hid the truth. There’s no reason for it. You’ve no cause for shame.”

  “I just don’t want to have to answer to it,” Constance said crabbily. “You’ve brought us here to live among two hundred strangers. Do I have to tell everyone my business?”

  “You already did, when you decided to serve in a public office.”

  “Well, I’m not serving anymore, and if there’s to be one advantage in that, it should be that I don’t have to discuss it with you any longer.”

  “Humph” was all Norma said to that.

  It was impossible to argue with Norma, and it was no good telling her that she couldn’t possibly understand. Norma had never held any sort of job, much less been fired from one. She’d never been accused of wrongdoing and been unable to clear her name. She’d never had to walk down the street and meet pity on one face and scorn on the next, day after day.

  Furthermore, it was inconceivable to Norma that she might not understand her sister’s troubles. Norma believed herself to be an authority on all matters Kopp-related and wouldn’t entertain ideas to the contrary.

  She did, however, know how to let a subject drop when she’d exhausted it. She cast a critical eye over a row of newly constructed privies, which still smelled of fresh-cut wood and sawdust.

  “I shouldn’t like to be close to the latrines,” she announced, in a voice far too loud for the subject under discussion. “These girls will be up at all hours.” Norma prided herself on her sound constitution, which allowed her to sleep solidly through the night. She considered it a character weakness to hop up and down to the toilet in the dark.

  “We’re supposed to be in number seventeen, but I don’t see it,” Fleurette said. She wasn’t looking, either: she was far too busy watching the khaki-clad soldiers carrying tent poles and rolls of canvas to each campsite. Constance hadn’t considered the possibility of any kind of male presence at the camp.

  “It’s just over here,” Constance said, and marched them over to their spot.

  Norma deposited her bags with relief. “I heard a girl came all the way from Texas. She didn’t reserve a place, but Miss Miner took pity on her and let her in.”

  “How fortunate for the girl from Texas,” said Fleurette.

  “It doesn’t speak well for the military order of the place. They’ve only room for two hundred, and everyone who applied has turned up or sent a replacement. I don’t see how we make room for the odd girl from Texas.”

  There it was. Already Norma sounded as if she ran the camp.

  “She’s no odder than anyone else who signed up for this affair,” said Fleurette.

  “I mean to say that it’s five to a tent. The figures don’t come out right.”

  “Five to a tent? But there’s only three of us,” Fleurette said.

  “That’s right,” Norma said. “We’re to share with two others. I can only imagine . . .”

  But Norma couldn’t imagine, could she? The three of them had lived together in relative isolation on their farm outside Hackensack for so long that it was impossible to contemplate two more women—complete strangers, no less—under their roof. Norma in particular was such a creature of routine. Constance wondered how she’d manage.

  All around them, women in pairs or small groups were settling in. Some simply sat down on their trunks and waited for the young men to bring their tents over, but an insurrection of some sort was under way, led by a woman in her thirties—Constance was relieved to see anyone over the age of nineteen enrolled in the camp—who insisted that the women should pitch their own tents.

  “I didn’t come clear from Fort Worth to have a man set up my tent,” the woman shouted, as she wrestled a bolt of canvas away from an unsuspecting soldier. “If we can’t put a few pegs in the ground, you might as well send us home now.”

  “There’s your girl from Texas,” Constance said.

  “Well, she’s right about one thing. They’re not pitching my tent.” Norma dashed over and took h
old of their tent, nodding at Constance to carry the tent pole.

  “Look at that,” the Texan said. “Already we’ve organized a brigade.” She was tanned and sturdy, with a gap between her front teeth and a hat that looked like it had been trampled by a horse. “I’m Margaret Day. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “Constance Kopp. This is my sister Norma.”

  “Constance Kopp? Have I heard that name before?”

  “It’s awfully common,” Constance said, in a tone meant to brush the idea away. “Let’s show these boys how to raise a tent.”

  THEY SPENT THE rest of the afternoon pounding tent stakes into the ground and raising the central pole to support what turned out to be a round tent meant to house eight men, or, as one of the newly unemployed soldiers said, “Five of you girls and all your things.” He introduced himself to Fleurette as Hack, but his friend corrected him.

  “He’s Private Fred Hackbush, but we call him Hack. I’m Clarence Piper.” The two of them were, to Constance’s eye, about as handsome as all boys of nineteen, which was enough to render Fleurette temporarily incapacitated and in need of help in arranging her trunk and cot in accordance with military protocol. Constance sent them away before Fleurette started setting up housekeeping with one or the other of them.

  After much muttering, tugging at ropes, and stomping on pegs, Norma surveyed their living quarters and pronounced them satisfactory. “We’re missing two cots and the girls who sleep in them,” she told Constance. “Make yourself useful and go find them.”

  Make yourself useful. That was all Constance had been hearing from Norma lately. Every time Norma caught her gazing into the distance, dozing behind a newspaper, or standing in front of a sink full of dishes with no idea what to do about them, she came up alongside her and gave her a little push with her hip. Make yourself useful, she would say. Try washing those dishes instead of staring at them.

  She didn’t want Norma to think that she was at all prepared to take orders, so she tried to make it appear as if it were her idea to step out of their tent and have a look around. She pushed the flap closed behind her and stood blinking in the fading late-afternoon light, taking in the tumult all around. A miniature city had sprung up at Camp Chevy Chase. From every direction the pounding of stakes into the ground created a chorus of percussion, a disjointed but strangely musical drum line.

  The campers hauled their trunks and cases to their new living quarters, shrieking and laughing as they struggled (and sometimes failed) to raise their tents, and calling out to newly arrived friends. The place had the air of a summer party, in spite of the early March chill, and seemed far removed from the fighting in France or, for that matter, the very idea of war.

  Having no idea how to secure the missing cots and their occupants, Constance made her way down the avenue, dodging trunks and carpet bags, and stopping to inspect a spotted dog that had already appointed itself camp mascot. Just before she reached the central commons, from whence cots and other supplies were issuing forth, she heard a voice behind her.

  “Are you looking for tent seventeen?”

  Constance spun around and found herself facing a woman of about twenty-five. She was long-limbed and angular, with generous brown eyes and hair to match.

  “Sarah Middlebrook,” she said. “I’m from Baltimore.”

  “Constance Kopp, from Wyckoff.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “New Jersey. Near Hackensack.”

  “New Jersey! You’ve come far. I’ve never been anywhere until now.” She couldn’t stop grinning. “If I could only find my tent.”

  “You have,” Constance said. “I’m in tent seventeen. I’d just gone out to look for our missing tent-mates.” They walked back together.

  “Am I the last to arrive?” Sarah asked, as she followed Constance into the tent.

  “We’re still missing one,” Constance said. “These are my sisters, Norma and Fleurette.”

  The other two Kopps looked up in unison.

  Sarah said, “Sisters! Aren’t you lucky to have each other.”

  “Are we?” Fleurette asked.

  “I wonder,” Norma said.

  Fleurette had brought far too much in the way of luggage and was engaged at that moment in a tug-of-war with Norma over the arrangement of cots and trunks. They were still bickering, mostly under their breath, about the invitation Fleurette had extended to Freeman Bernstein and May Ward.

  “You won’t be allowed to turn this camp into a vaudeville spectacle,” Norma muttered.

  “It isn’t up to you to decide what’s allowed,” Fleurette returned.

  “They’re delightful company when they remember their manners,” Constance assured Sarah.

  “Well. Put me wherever you like,” Sarah said. “I copied out a diagram from an Army handbook on the arrangement of cots and trunks in a field tent. It looks like the trunk belongs at the foot of the cot, just so.”

  As she put her things in order, Norma hurried over to have a look at her diagram. “We should’ve each had one of these, if they expected military order,” she said.

  “The soldiers were here to provide military order,” Fleurette said, “but you sent them away.”

  “I’ll take my instructions from the manual,” Norma said.

  “If you won’t take orders from a man standing right in front of you, then why listen to the man who wrote the manual?” asked Fleurette.

  “I don’t believe anyone in the military takes orders from a private,” said Sarah, to warm approval from Norma. As unlikely as it seemed, Norma might’ve found an ally.

  They were nearly finished unpacking their trunks, and making ready to light the first lantern of the evening, when the flap parted and their fifth tent-mate walked in.

  Every eye turned to her at once. She was a pretty girl, with a pointed chin and a little bow-shaped mouth. She wore a handsome wool coat with white rabbit fur at the collar.

  Constance noticed at once that her shoes were scuffed and nearly worn through at the toes, and ill-suited for walking through the grass. They were the shoes of an office girl.

  There was also, in her eyes, a most unexpected flash of terror. Constance saw that, too, before the girl blinked and hid it away.

  “Am I the last to arrive?” she said, with a light little laugh. “My driver gets terribly lost on these country roads. He’s useless outside of Manhattan. Now, who are all of you? Make yourselves known.”

  Constance couldn’t place her accent, but it certainly didn’t come from Manhattan. “I’m Constance Kopp, and these are my sisters, Norma and Fleurette. That’s Sarah Middlebrook.”

  The new girl pulled off one white glove and tucked it into her coat pocket. “Roxanna Collins,” she said, extending a limp hand. “My friends call me Roxie.”

  4

  Roxie? WHAT WAS she thinking? She invented a nickname for herself on the spot, out of sheer panic, and now she was stuck with it.

  Beulah had practiced her new name all the way from Manhattan: Roxanna Collins. Miss Collins. Roxanna. It needed to sound so familiar that she’d turn around instinctively every time she heard it. In the past she’d chosen tricky false names on a whim, and never could keep them straight. This one had to roll off the tongue.

  Why, then, did she walk into that tent and spit out a brand-new nickname that she hadn’t once rehearsed?

  Because rich girls have nicknames, that’s why. This occurred to her as soon as she found herself in the spotlight, standing with the tent flap draped around her shoulders and four pairs of questioning eyes upon her. Rich girls never use their full names. They’re never Margaret or Elizabeth or Beatrice. They’re Peggy and Lizzie and Sissy. Nonsensical names, names that Beulah wouldn’t inflict upon a cat, but that’s what they liked.

  It’s nothing to panic over, she told herself. Just a last-minute adjustment. She’d get used to Roxie, and she wouldn’t mind if anyone called her Roxanna. “My mother always does,” she would say, with a lightness in her voice when
she exhaled the word mother. Just gloss right over it, she told herself. Don’t bite down on that word. Let it all come out in one easy stream: My mother always does. Just like that.

  She had to convince herself that she had an ordinary mother, and a father, too. Two polite, well-mannered people who sat together in a parlor in the evenings and smiled sweetly when their daughter walked into the room. If such people existed, Beulah had never known them, but now she had to conjure them, and place them firmly in her past, like nailing a picture to the wall.

  Beulah had retreated so far into these thoughts that she’d failed to notice that her tent-mates were all watching her curiously. Instead of a trunk, she was dragging three enormous carpet bags stuffed with everything that Mrs. Pinkman’s maid had deposited in the train station locker. She would’ve left her belongings there and come back for them six weeks later, but the locker fee had only been paid through the end of the week. She couldn’t afford the storage, as she needed every penny for the train. Not just one train, but three, and a streetcar, and then a hack to carry her from Washington over to Chevy Chase. She never would’ve managed a trunk, but somehow she was able to lug three bags by slinging one over her right shoulder, carrying one in her right hand, and dragging the third one behind her.

  “You must’ve brought a clean uniform for every day of the week,” said the youngest and prettiest of the three sisters, eyeing those overstuffed bags. Beulah hadn’t expected to share a tent with older women. Two of them were nearly forty, and one was in her mid-twenties. Only the little one, Fleurette, looked to be about twenty, the age Beulah was pretending to be.

  “Oh, they can’t be serious about those uniforms,” Beulah said. “Five dollars for a khaki skirt and a jacket? It’s nonsense.” She saw her mistake immediately. What wealthy girl complains about the price of a plain-sewn skirt?

  “I had my mother’s seamstress whip one up for me,” she added—lightly, carelessly, breathing right past that word mother—“but then wouldn’t you know, our girl forgot to pick it up from the seamstress. So I rummaged around in the back of my closet and found the oldest and most dreadful things I own. If any of these rags get dirty, it’ll only improve them.”