Lucinda's Solution Read online

  Table of Contents

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  About The Author:

  Lucinda’s Solution

  Copyright © 2017 Nancy Roman. All rights reserved.

  First Kindle Edition: October 2017

  Cover and Formatting: Blue Valley Author Services

  This eBook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the original purchaser only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  For my grandparents, great-grandparents and all their siblings. Their stories of immigration and epidemics and determination and poverty and war - and love - inspired me. And inspired this book.

  CHAPTER 1

  1913

  I was twelve when my sister Catherine got married. I did not know how I would live without her.

  Yes, I still had Malcolm and Amelia. But to be perfectly honest, I never much cared for them. Malcolm was what my mother called ‘high-spirited’ but my father called a ‘vociferous savage.’ For once I thought my father may have been correct. There did not seem to exist in the entire house a chair he could not knock over or a plate he could not break. Or a spot on his body that did not have a bruise, slowly turning green. I found it rather miraculous that he had any teeth left in his head. My mother said Malcolm would outgrow it. I had my doubts.

  Amelia was the opposite. The opposite of hellion in this case was not angel. It was mouse. Where Malcolm ran headlong through any obstacle, and his fearlessness was startling – he jumped from the veranda roof into the hydrangea at three – Amelia was a cowering baby. Afraid of dogs and horses and insects, afraid of the dark and of thunderstorms. Weepy, my mother called her. Tiresome, I thought.

  “She’s sensitive,” explained my father. Oh, Father was infatuated. Amelia had blond curls and dimples, and liked – or appeared to like – to pray.

  Amelia wasn’t the beauty of the family, however. That was Catherine. Catherine had a creamy complexion that flushed easily in the most attractive way. Her eyes were bright blue, her lashes lush, and her dark hair was thick and gleaming.

  My father found her vain and shallow. But she was not. It was confidence, not vanity that brought that color to her cheek. I won’t deny that Catherine loved attention, especially the attention of men. But she loved men because she loved to laugh and men loved to hear that laugh. All men; boys too. Even Malcolm strove to make Catherine smile, turning somersaults and picking daisies. He would even sit in her lap for more than one minute.

  The only man not susceptible was my father - Catherine’s joy was an embarrassment for him. Piety was the only admirable attribute.

  And Catherine was not pious. If Springfield had hosted a society for heretics, Catherine would have provided the biscuits.

  Not that she didn’t attend Holy Mass on Sunday. On the contrary. She looked forward to it.

  “How nice it is to see all the families dressed up, the children all shined and gleaming. To exchange hellos with all your neighbors.”

  My father disapproved. “Sunday services are solemn occasions. Not social ones,” he lectured.

  “Nonsense, Daddy,” she answered - which only incensed him further, as he liked to be called Father, for a reason that was obvious to all - “Church is very social. Jesus told us to love one another, and that is exactly what I am doing.”

  And Church was where Catherine noticed Roger Blaisdell’s cousin Martin, who was visiting from Connecticut.

  Connecticut! She had her pick of all the men in Springfield. And she chose the one from Connecticut.

  I did not know how I would live without her.

  I did not know how soon I would have to.

  CHAPTER 2

  My paternal grandfather owned the lumber yard on the south end of Springfield. But he didn’t make much money at it until he started delivering coal. He would say, “Coal is cheap but it sells expensive.” The demand for coal was so great he needed to add a second wagon for deliveries. My father was sixteen and wanted to study for the priesthood. But my grandfather refused. So Father quit school and hauled coal.

  My father would have preferred the priesthood, and he would have been a priest whose parish flourished. His business acumen would certainly have garnered him a cathedral. At Benedict Lumber, he soon added a third coal wagon. And a furnace repair service. And since there was not as great a need for coal in the summer, and the three wagons sat idle, and idleness was a sin - therefore, ice delivery.

  The ice house was my favorite part of the Benedict empire. Malcolm would chip off shards with the pocket-knife that he was not supposed to have. Catherine would steal a bit of honey from the larder. We would feast among the cool dark igloos. Even Amelia would not tattle, so refreshing was the secret treat.

  So for a girl of eighteen who still enjoyed childish escapades, it astonished me that Catherine would decide to marry after knowing Martin Blaisdell less than two months.

  He was as charming as she was, though in a much quieter way. He watched rather than led. The first time he appeared at our dinner table - which he accomplished by bringing Mother white roses - Martin was deferential with my father, who grew as puffed and flushed as the ham he was carving. And yet I detected from Mr. Blaisdell an undercurrent of mockery.

  That was the moment I fell in love with Martin Blaisdell myself. He had brown hair that tended to curl, but not so much
as to be feminine, rather just enough to soften his forehead and partially cover the tops of his large ears. He had blue eyes, and so bettered the chances that Catherine’s children would be so endowed. I have blue eyes myself. He dressed in expensive, but not new, clothes. Quality but not Vanity, as my mother would say.

  My mother liked Martin Blaisdell too. But she was reluctant to agree to Catherine’s marriage. She herself had married young and against her wishes, as her parents had too many daughters, and were glad to get rid of the first three posthaste. In my role as familial observer, I could see that she only sometimes loved my father. She respected his business ability and appreciated that he was a good provider. Her other married-off sisters were not as fortunate. Certainly they were not poor - their father had seen to that when brokering the deal. But Aunt Helen’s husband was stingy with his wealth, and required Helen to beg for each nickel. Aunt Margaret’s husband had a preference for liquor and loose women. Father was not lecherous or mean. Just opinionated, humorless, and unrelentingly pious. Not so bad really.

  Martin Blaisdell was not humorless. And Catherine loved to laugh. Together, they were in a constant state of mirth. Either heads down suppressing inappropriate giggles or heads thrown back in full and loud hilarity.

  Mother, being naturally light-hearted herself, enjoyed their happiness. Still, she worried about Catherine taking on such responsibility as marriage at only eighteen.

  “Marriage is a serious undertaking,” declared Father. “You cannot snigger your way through the life-long commitment - not to mention the holy sacrament.”

  “Oh Father,” Catherine argued, “Marriage may be serious, but Love is joyful.”

  And she would not be dissuaded.

  I had no objection to Catherine marrying. I loved the idea of more babies in the family, especially if she and Martin could produce one who was jolly, and perhaps a balance between Malcolm’s temerity and Amelia’s timidity. And I certainly thought that Martin was a handsome and charming man. I thought so to a fault.

  My grievance was the distance between Springfield, Massachusetts and New Haven, Connecticut. Two hours by train. Cheaper by trolley, but you had to transfer in Hartford and again in Meriden. Probably half the day, although Martin seemed to manage to do this often enough.

  I would imagine the least expensive way to travel would be by automobile, but first you would have to submit to the expense of buying one, which was an unnecessary extravagance, according to my father. My mother wholeheartedly agreed, but she often wholeheartedly agreed out of simple loyalty. I ventured she would love to drive up to church in her own automobile.

  Catherine assured me that Martin would purchase an automobile in just a few years, and then they would make the trip to Springfield every week. But in the meantime, they promised that they would visit one Sunday a month.

  One Sunday a month! As if I could bear thirty days with my mother the only congenial person in my household.

  So as Catherine was determined to marry, I became determined to keep her in Massachusetts. It was logical and practical for Martin to move north rather than Catherine move south. Why should he not work for my father at Benedict Lumber and Fuel?

  Which is exactly what I said the next time Martin took his place at our dinner table.

  “Father,” I said, “You need an intelligent assistant in order to expand your business. You can add tools and hardware to your offering, and Martin has that very experience.”

  Seated beside me, Catherine reached under the tablecloth and gently squeezed my knee, which was our secret signal that we were on the right track in manipulating our father. I was delighted to think that perhaps her hopes were in the same direction, although she had spoken just the previous day of the opportunities that New Haven offered.

  “Nonsense,” replied Father. “Springfield has more hardware stores than we need. And Martin has an excellent position in New Haven.”

  “But even if you don’t want to be in the hardware business, you should still consider the future. Now that you are fifty, you need to ensure that Benedict Lumber will be in good hands should anything…”

  “Fifty is not old,” my mother interjected, as she was well aware that my father worried incessantly that he was about to speak to God through more direct means than prayer.

  “But you have so much knowledge,” I carried on. “You need to impart everything you have learned to someone dependable and hard-working - and who will be part of the family.”

  “Martin will be family, of course,” Father replied. “But Malcolm will inherit the business.”

  “Malcolm is seven years old. It will be ten years before you can even start to train him.” And ten years before he can add, I thought.

  “Oh, we have plenty of time.”

  I looked at Malcolm, who was smashing peas with the back of his fork. My father had better start Malcolm immediately.

  “Besides,” my father added, “it is a wife’s duty to follow her husband. Wheresoever thou goest, there goest I.”

  I suppressed a laugh. “Ruth said that to her mother-in-law, not her husband.”

  “Which makes the point even more so. It is the husband’s family that takes precedent, not the wife’s.”

  Martin finally spoke.

  “Lucinda, it is very sweet that you would like Catherine and me to live in Springfield, but your father is correct - I have a very good job in New Haven, with a very good future for me. I’m a supervisor at the plant, and I will soon be a manager.”

  “And Martin really loves working there,” Catherine said.

  And everyone at the table except my father, and perhaps Malcolm, was well aware that Martin would not love working for my father. Father was a decent man, and a fair boss, in his own way, which was that he made every decision and closely supervised all work. His employees were decently paid and kept safe. But none would say he enjoyed it.

  I did not give up, however.

  I entered my father’s study - after knocking and waiting for permission to enter of course - the following evening. Father was at his desk with his newspaper to one side and the Bible to the other. Directly in front of him were a comb and a small hand mirror. This made me curious, but also hopeful. My father was a vain man, and perhaps I could appeal to his pride.

  “I’m worried,” I said to Father. “I’m worried that your knowledge is so vast it will take years for you to impart all your wisdom. And Malcolm will not be ready for quite some time. What will happen to the business and to Mother if you do not start right away, and then something happens that denies anyone the opportunity to understand the complexity of Benedict Lumber and Fuel?”

  “I have been reflecting on that myself,” said Father. “Our dinner conversation has left me disconcerted. I must confront the possibility that I could expire before Malcolm comes of age.”

  I was astounded. But not nearly as astounded as I was to hear what came next.

  “So, Lucinda, I have made a decision. I should start forthwith transferring my knowledge to someone who can then teach Malcolm when the time is right.”

  “An excellent idea!” I said.

  “I think it is. That is why I think that you should start coming into the office every day after school, and full time this summer.”

  “ME? Holy Cow, Daddy, I’m twelve years old.”

  “Language, Lucinda!”

  In my utter consternation, I forgot to use my father-approved vocabulary.

  “I actually thought you were eleven. Twelve is even better.”

  “But Father…”

  “Listen to me, Lucinda. I am well aware that a lumber yard - indeed, any business, but especially the rough world of strong-backed men - may not be an appropriate place for a young lady. But I am also unfortunately aware that you are the most astute of all my progeny. And although you are on
ly eleven…no, twelve… I will be honest with you. I do not see much prospect for you with regard to marriage. You are no beauty and you are too outspoken to charm a young man into marriage.”

  “You already think I will be an old maid?”

  “We need to be realistic, Lucinda. I do not see a husband in your future. So we need to secure a satisfactory life for you as a spinster. Comfortable even. You can learn the business and be an invaluable asset to your brother. Which will ensure that you will always have a home with your brother and a decent income - since it will be through your efforts that our business thrives.”

  I excused myself, saying to my father that it was much to consider, but I was surprised that I could respond so calmly when my head was on fire, but the rest of my body so cold.

  “We’ll plan your schedule at breakfast,” he said as I stumbled away. I did not forget, however, to close his door quietly, as required.

  I went out to the second-floor veranda. It was just a small balcony at the top of the front staircase, meant in earlier years, my father had said, for men to have a cigar before bedtime. No one ever used this space now except me. In fact, it was kept locked, due to Malcolm’s propensity towards human aviation. I had found a spare key about two months earlier, and kept it behind the urn on the landing.

  This turn of events was quite overwhelming.

  My father wanted me to learn the business. My father thought I was too ugly and cross to ever secure a husband. My father’s business was full of roughnecks. My father expected me to go to work at twelve years old. My father expected that I would run the company for his dolt of a son, in return for a roof over my head. My father thought I lacked charm.

  My father thought I was the smartest of his children.

  The most astute of all his progeny.

  And that is how in my attempt to manipulate my father, he instead manipulated me.

  CHAPTER 3