In Need of a Good Wife by Kelly O'Connor McNees Page B

that, the skin of her abdomen, rubbed red and always covered in rash. Now the paper felt wonderfully crisp against her fingertips. She had picked it up first thing in the morning at the post office and savored her anticipation of reading it.
    Only one other time in her life had she received a letter with her name on the envelope. Elsa had no need for letters from her employer, as she lived under his roof, and nearly everyone else she had ever known was dead. Last year a girl, Lucia, who worked alongside her in the laundry room, took up with a brickworker named George and moved with him to Buffalo. She had written with news of her new life. Lucia had vowed to stay friends after she left—Elsa hadn’t even known that they were friends until Lucia said the word on her last day. Elsa didn’t talk much while she worked, but she supposed she had listened to Lucia’s continuous narration, about her mother, about her beau, about the merits of Buffalo over Manhattan City, with some interest and Lucia had appreciated that.
    Well before dawn on the morning Lucia was to leave, Elsa went above stairs to the kitchen before the maids awoke. She felt a strong urge that she should make something for the woman to take on her journey, something warm and soft and filling. It had been a long time since Elsa called one of her grandmother’s recipes from her memory. But she found that the knowledge was still there, waiting patiently for her return. Quietly, carefully, Elsa added wood to the fire, then skimmed flour from the bin and heaped it in a mound on the board. She cracked eggs into a bowl and mixed them with butter and sugar, then folded them into the flour with her hands. Three fragrant plums, chopped into bits, studded the Kuchen and she slipped it into the range, praying that the sweet smell would not wake the house. When it cooled, just as the maids were filing in, she tied it in an old handkerchief and slipped it into her apron as she descended the stairs.
    Lucia was glad to receive the gift, but then she had left. Elsa would have liked to have a friend, if she had known that was what Lucia had become, but the realization came too late. Lucia was gone now, her life changing and Elsa’s staying the same.
    Just as Elsa unfolded the letter and smoothed the creases with her palm, she heard Mrs. Channing’s shoes clacking over the slate floor of the laundry room. The laundresses snapped to attention and Elsa stood from the bench, crouching quickly to slip the letter back in her boot and scurrying down the stairs to join the other workers.
    “Ladies, I have come down to tell you myself,” Mrs. Channing said, full of false humility over her willingness to go below stairs, “how very important it is that everything be perfect for the party this evening. We expect the whole of society to be here. That means every inch of linen must be pressed twice over, every bit of lace starched. I am counting on you.”
    She moved her eyes slowly along the line of women, nodding at each one as they said, “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Very well.” Mrs. Channing turned for the stairs but then paused, stepping back down. “There is one other thing. I have heard talk amongst some of the society ladies about this Clara Bixby and her proposal to take women to the West.”
    A few of the girls, some, Elsa noted, whom she remembered seeing at the meeting above the tavern, looked down at the floor.
    Mrs. Channing raised a crooked finger and pursed her lips. “I want you all to know that I disapprove profoundly of this woman and her scheme, on matters of propriety and safety. The western towns are full of criminals and wild men and Indians, and no respectable woman would volunteer to put her own life in jeopardy by traveling there. Just today, the Times warned that our city’s surplus of maidens will be ruined by this venture. I wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up in brothels.” The old woman was working herself into a lather. “Why, Manhattan City is full