MIMI AND MAURICE
CHAPTER ONE

1

———

 

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1936

SAN FRANCISCO, CA

 

 

We are sorry for your loss.

 

Six words opened every claim letter Mimi Lansdale ever wrote, and the apology rattled in her head, long past her workday, rolling around like a loose ball-bearing.

 

We understand that this is a difficult time for you and your family. This letter is to confirm that we have received the necessary documents to process your claim for the life insurance policy. The claim has been approved in whole, and the payout is being issued to you as the designated beneficiary.

 

Enclosed please find a check for $1,500 payable to you from your husband’s policy.

 

Your husband had minimal foresight in providing a meager amount for you and your fifteen children.

Unless, of course, you killed him, which would trigger a demand repayment.

We hope you did not kill him.

 

Mimi pulled the paper from the typewriter with a whir. She didn’t include the last three lines. The mental codas she added to the final claim letters of the day were for her own amusement—sarcasm, judgment, droll observations she never actually typed—and today was no exception. 

          She straightened the items on her desk into their proper places: lamp, typewriter, notepad, fountain pen, and a pint Ball jar, its wire bail clamped shut over a collection of sea glass. The secretaries, most of them much younger than Mimi and all of them single, were allowed one personal item on their desks. Most chose flowers, or a picture of family, or a beau. Mimi chose glass.

          At 4:30, she grabbed her purse, retrieved her gloves from the desk drawer and her hat from the rack, and joined the rush of girls to punch out for the day. 

          By the time she walked through the massive Neo-Classical bronze doors of the Metropolitan Life building and a half block to the corner of California and Stockton, sweat stained her green seersucker dress. Her small-brimmed straw hat made her head itch, and her curls stuck to her temples. There was no use even trying to pull on her gloves.

          Workers and businessmen crowded the sidewalk, jostling for position. Mimi crossed to the westbound side of the California Street route, pedestrians separating themselves into lanes of traffic, to wait for the next car. The cable’s bell clanged a warning as it lunged up the hill. A paperboy barked,  “Heat Wave! Ninety-One Degrees!”

          “Hi, Mimi!” Rose called out, hopping with her five-foot-one frame and waving. Mimi was only one inch taller than her friend, short compared to the rest of San Francisco, so crowds often swallowed them.

          Mimi caught up to her in a few steps. Both grabbed the brass bar and pulled themselves onto the outer step. Mimi’s practical shoes bit her heels as the car caught the underground cable, the system towing it inexorably forward and up the inclined street. 

          Perspiration assaulted them from all sides; even Gatsby, who stood in his usual place in front of the University Club at Powell Street, had his jacket draped over his arm today, his waistcoat discolored, checking his pocket watch as usual. The corner was a busy intersection of two cable lines and pedestrians, but he always stood out, tall and handsome.

          At the stop, Mimi smoothed her hair and Rose straightened her blouse before alighting to await the Jackson/Washington cable, which would take them to the lower lands of the city. When the streetcar arrived, the girls clung to the outside once again as they headed north to Jackson Street. When the car emptied, they moved onto bench seats side by side as they began another long ascent.

          “Tell me about the party,” Rose prodded. “Was it this last weekend or the one before? Was the piano beautiful?”

          “It was last Saturday and I was fabulous, thank you for asking. It’s easy to play well when you’re sitting at such a lovely instrument.”

          “Oh, yes. You always are. Fabulous, I mean. You should play concerts even.”

          “Thank you. No, I’d get too nervous if anyone actually watched me while I played.” Mimi fanned her face. “Otherwise, there’s not much to tell. Gorgeous women and handsome men living lives we’ll never know.”

          Rose patted Mimi’s hand as the Victorian homes appeared, their straight lines and sharp angles like staff paper before the notes were added. 

          After Polk Street, the buildings became a mix of apartments and businesses, a more casual presentation than the stiff gray and white of downtown. Then, once across Gough Street, Pacific Heights mansions loomed: Victorians standing next to beaux arts, next to Edwardians, all beautiful in their own way.

          “Those homes are fascinating,” Rose said.

          “I wouldn’t say they’re fascinating. Lovely, ornate, massive, surely.” Mimi had been inside many of them to play piano for dinner parties, teas, and luncheons, and the gatherings were all the same: men argued the Revenue Act over gold place settings, piles of food went uneaten, and her host and hostess treated her kindly and called her by name.

          “The food smells divine,” Mimi said.

          Rose adjusted her wedding ring. “I bet handsome men make eyes at you.”

          “All the women look like Garbo or Marlene Dietrich.” Mimi tugged at her dress. “I’m sure they’re more compelling to talk to.”

          “Conversation isn’t what they’re after,” Rose laughed. “Besides, you could hold your own with any of those men.” 

          “Probably not what they’re after either.”

          The car slowed and stopped. In tandem, the girls stepped off.

          “You should come with me,” Mimi said.

          “Come with you?”

          “To the dinner parties. You’d love it and Father would be thrilled. He detests me going alone. You can turn my pages for me. I don’t know why I’ve never thought of it before now.”

          Rose let out a little squeal. “I’ll ask Phillip, but I’m sure he won’t mind.” She danced a few steps of a waltz, swinging her skirt.

          Mimi followed Rose onto the next streetcar, thankfully only a mile’s ride. The wires crackled overhead as both girls wiped their faces with embroidered hankies, Mimi’s the same fabric as her dress.

          “Now don’t get too excited,” Mimi cautioned, “we’re just the help.”

          “Oh, I’d love the chance to go inside those houses,” Rose cooed. “I bet the service entrance alone would make me weep.”

          As they crested the hill at Broadway, the bay came into view, revealing the Marina District before it.

          Rose brushed her skirt. “When’s the next time you play?”

          “Saturday. 7:00 p.m. at the Bakers’. I’ll come to collect you at 6:10.” Mimi tapped her watch. “And wear that dark blue number, the satin.”

          They stopped at Filbert, the street they both lived on. The sun, indolent in the summer afternoon sky, led them past the butcher shop on the corner and the grocery store midway down, on the way to Rose’s townhouse.

          “I’ll tell you tomorrow if Phillip says yes,” Rose said. “Tell your father and Inez hello for us, will you?”

          Mimi nodded and waved, her hand still bare. Father would disapprove. She struggled to pull on her gloves as she crossed Steiner Street, then stopped at the first scent of the pink Dame Edith Helen rose that lounged over the brick garden box at the Rutherfords’ house. She stole three petals, pushing them into her left glove, the one with the mended hole in the palm, and sniffed them like perfume on her wrist.

          Sweat trickled down her neck as she reached the mailbox in the covered entry of her row house, four houses down from the scene of her petty crime. She found a letter from Aunt Louise, a Sears and Roebuck catalog, and two letters from Maurice, which she promptly tucked into her purse.

          The living room was as stifling as the heat outside, windows open, already wide to catch the evening breeze when the sun fell behind the marine layer out to sea. Mother had loved the brocade curtains that cast a red glow in the room.

          Father wasn’t home, so she peeled off her gloves, saving the rose petals in a pewter bowl with others in various stages of drying.

          “Any letters today?” Inez called out.

          “Just one from Aunt Louise,” Mimi lied, entering the kitchen. She leaned on the counter and flipped through the Sears catalog.

          Inez breezed by, singing “Good Night, Irene” off-key. “Set the table, will you?”

          Mimi placed Mother’s china—simple white with delicate gray roses and a silver rim—at their chairs around the square mahogany dining table. Father arrived home at 6:00 as Mimi set mashed potatoes on the table and Inez carried out a roast on Mother’s silver platter. He said grace, after which forks and knives clinked, a Morse-code plea for someone to speak. 

          Mimi stirred butter into her potatoes, keeping each food separate on her plate, then ate tiny bites from the tip of her fork. Father took in a grand breath as if readying an aria phrase. 

          “How was the first day of school?”

          “The Murphy boys penny-jammed the classroom door,” Inez said with a sigh. “The principal and Mr. Jones had to take the door off the hinges. I have no idea where they got the pennies.”

          “Not so funny when someone does it to you,” Mimi said. “Where did you get them?”

          “Oh.” Inez sat up straight in her chair. “I forgot about that.”

          “Did they get expelled?” Father asked.

          “No, but they’re suspended for two days—two quiet, no-Murphy-boy days.” She turned to Mimi.

          “Speaking of suspended, have you finished sewing that new dress for me?”

          Mimi glared at Inez, then turned squarely toward her father. “The Legion of Honor is opening a new exhibit this weekend. Would you like to see it?”

          “Why don’t you take Inez?”

          “Thank you, no. I have enough time with Mimi as it is.”

          Mimi raised her chin. “She’s not interested in art.”

          “Just because I don’t get all sappy over paintings like you do doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate art.”

          “Fashion eludes you, too.”

          Father laid his hands flat on the table and leaned forward.

          “Sorry,” Mimi said.

          “Don’t say it to me. Say it to Inez if you mean it.”

          Mimi was silent.

          “Mimi,” he warned.

          “Oh, all right. I’m sorry.”

 

 

After dinner, the three listened to Caruso singing “Vesti La Giubba” and arias from Pagliacci. Father buried himself in the evening newspaper, and Inez worked on her new attendance book for her pupils at Henry Durant School.

          “May I finish the ironing in the morning?” Mimi asked. “I’d like to go to bed early.”

          “No, Inez is waiting for her dress and I need those shirts in the morning. It won’t take you long.”

          Inez wrinkled her nose at her sister and Mimi mirrored the gesture.

          The dress collar on the newly sewn material curled upward, and Mimi mashed the iron on the unruly cotton until it submitted to the appropriate form. With a few more quick strokes over the bodice and skirt, in time with the voices soaring into the evening, she finished and threw the dress into Inez’s lap.

          “Fast enough for you?”

          Father shook his evening paper straight and eyed the girls over the top. “The word of the day: Offing: the more distant part of the sea seen from the shore.”

          When expertly ironed, the shirt on top of the pile was an ornament of class and style. If only she could do that to her life, apply a press to set it straight and starch to make it stick. 

          Her life wasn’t here. It was in the offing.

​

​

©Copyright Jo Taylor, 2026