Mark Dunn - We Five

“But will it get me more customers?” mulled Osborne aloud. “ That’s the question.”

Osborne had to admit that Molly was right about the tooth impeding any view of the street below. All that could be seen beyond it was a sliver of the bright morning sky.

“Papa, I think it was a good investment. Didn’t one of your patients say only last week that it was seeing the silly tooth which brought him to you?”

“Not exactly. He’d already heard about my practice, so it was actually the toothache that put him in that chair. Although my giant tooth did confirm he’d come to the right building.”

Osborne grinned. It was a crooked grin, made even more obvious by the fact that it uplifted half of his thick black moustache. He dipped his head and squinted through the narrow dagger of light entering the room beneath the tooth. “As if there’s anything else on this cluttered, woebegone street to take notice of. When my practice picks up, you have my promise: I’m going to move us out of this flat and away from this street forever. Even better: we’ll leave San Francisco altogether. I’m thinking Sausalito. I’ll find us a nice cottage there, with a handsome view of the Golden Gate. Someplace where you can plant violets and San Rafael roses, which were always your mother’s favorites, behind whitewashed pickets. I’m sure people in Sausalito have just as much need for dentists as people in San Francisco do.”

“Oh do be serious, Papa. How can we even think of leaving Frisco! My four best friends in the world live here. And besides, shouldn’t we include Mrs. Barton in this decision, since she’s going to be a member of this family?”

“ That has yet to be decided, monkey.” Michael Osborne was now on his way back to his sink in the rear bedroom.

Molly followed. “So you think there’s the possibility she’ll say no? Oh how could she, Papa? How could she possibly rob Mag and me of the chance to become true sisters?”

Osborne began to apply the foamy white lather to his accumulation of weekend whiskers. “I’m feeling fairly good about my chances with Clara. But I’m not sure your friend Maggie will be all that pleased to see the two of us wed.”

Molly sighed. “I wish I could say you’re wrong, Papa, but no, I’m afraid she won’t like it at all.” Molly sighed again. “Oh, I do wish you had let me talk to her yesterday. Her influence over her mother is strong, and I’m worried that even if Mrs. Barton wanted to marry you—”

“Oh, I know she wants to, monkey. No doubt about that. ”

“Yet Mag could still talk her out of it. Mag Barton is quite good at talking my heart-sisters and me out of— and into —all sorts of things. She’s very persuasive.”

The dentist pursed his lips in thought. “So just what do you think it is, Molly girl — the thing that makes our little Mag Barton dislike me so much?”

“I don’t think she trusts you, Papa.”

Osborne held his razor in temporary abeyance. “Trusts me to do what?”

“Well, to be a good husband to her mother, for one thing. I hope you don’t mind me speaking frankly.”

“Please, be as frank as you wish. I ought to know exactly where things stand with the girl.”

“Well, there’s also the other thing. She’s told me already how uncomfortable she is with your practicing medicine without a license.”

Molly’s father laughed. “Oho! Wait until she finds out I’m also practicing dentistry without a license!”

“And one thing more,” said Molly.

“Good God! You’re making me sound like the most disreputable man in San Francisco. Is it the drinking?”

Molly nodded. “It was drink that killed her father, you know.”

“To be accurate, it wasn’t demon rum that killed Barton. It was a California Street cable car.”

“Which he stumbled in front of because he was soused to the guards, Papa. You saw it happen from that dental parlor window — back before there was a gargantuan ceramic tooth blocking the view.”

“Have you not informed my potential future stepdaughter Maggie that I drink far less than I used to?”

“Of course I have. She doesn’t listen to me. None of my four heart-sisters listens to me. I’m like the youngest in the family who must sit all clammed up in the corner and hasn’t the right to say anything about anything. Of course, that isn’t completely true. It’s only at work where I’m to know my place. At all other times I have license from my sisters to say whatever I please.”

“You may be low girl on that department store’s totem pole, but I’m happy and proud of you for getting yourself hired on.”

“Though I would like to be more than a ribbon packer at three dollars a week, Papa. Mag and Jane and Carrie and Ruth have risen to salesclerks, and Jane has her eye on becoming a buyer someday, but I’m stuck in the stock loft above the shelves tying parcels all day — the little mouse in the attic: quiet and all but forgotten except when she peeps.”

Osborne laughed. “Then you’re hardly ever forgotten, Molly girl, because I’ve never known you to hold your tongue for more than a minute at a time. But you’re right to set your sights on something better, and I’m very proud of you for signing up for stenographic classes. I only wish you’d let me pay for them. Generally speaking, girls your age who must seek employment to pay for their night classes are girls without papas to provide for them.”

Molly smiled. “I like getting up and going to work each morning, Papa, and keeping myself out of your way. I also like spending time with my four sisters.”

Osborne smiled. “Even though they sometimes treat you like a child?”

“Not a child. Just a new employee who is supposed to know her place.”

“You mean up in the attic making her wee mousey bed out of a litter of excelsior?”

Molly knuckled her father playfully in the arm. “Ye Gods, Papa, you’re so droll sometimes.”

Molly put her arms around her father’s waist and gave him a hug. He checked his wish to answer the gesture with a paternal pat on the head, since his hands were dappled with shaving lather.

“Only a few days ago Jane said I was flighty-brained and nearly useless. Of course, I had just dropped a roll of ribbon on her head.”

“Everyone makes mistakes. But you shouldn’t be too hard on Jane for these sudden bursts of exasperation. It cannot be easy living the way your friend Jane does, forced to care for that failure of a junkman brother of hers. I buy dross gold from him for fillings; I think sometimes I’m the only customer he has. I’m certain it’s your Jane who brings most of the income into that sibling household. Alas, with her plain looks and unpredictable disposition, she’s probably saddled to him and to near-impoverishment for the rest of her days.”

“Jane will find someone, Papa — someone who will deliver her from her present circumstances. You’ll see. She isn’t pretty, but there are men who won’t mind such a thing either on account of their own deficient looks or because she’s smart and would be an asset in a certain kind of marriage — one built on mutual respect.”

“You sound like a suffragette.”

Michael Osborne pinched his daughter’s nose affectionately, leaving a small dollop of white shaving lather there. As she was dabbing the spot away with her handkerchief, he toweled his face dry. “How do I look?”

“Perfectly shorn, Papa, and oh so handsome. Mrs. Barton will fall swooning into your arms, crying, ‘ I do! I will! I must! ’”

Osborne bellowed with laughter. He was a large man and his merriment sometimes came in Falstaffian expulsions. “Oh you think so? Say, is that Miss Maggie I see standing on the corner below? Do you think she knows?”