JOHN AND ROSE
Chapter Forty-One

June 22, 1931
Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Nadia sat up abruptly as the doorbell rang, annoyed at the interruption. Smoothing her skirt, she rose from the couch and turned off the radio, strolling lazily toward the front door and hoping that her grandmother would get it first.

She didn’t. Ruth was in the kitchen, watching the two youngest members of the Calvert family and making lunch. When the doorbell rang again, she called to her elder granddaughter.

"Nadia, will you please answer the door?"

Sighing, Nadia did as she was asked. She was still smarting with embarrassment over her unseemly behavior that morning, and just wanted to be left alone. She opened the door, not really caring who it was, then blushed bright red when she saw the person waiting on the other side.

"S-Sam!" she stuttered. "W-What are you doing here?"

"Your mother sent me here."

"S-She did? Why?"

"Well, you were right about her needing to hire another actor, and she did…cast…me for that part you helped me…audition…for this morning."

"Congratulations! I knew you could do it." She smiled, genuinely pleased for him.

"There was one thing, though."

"What’s that?"

"She says that I need to learn to read. If I can act as well on camera as I could in that audition, she might offer me a contract—but only if I can read."

"Well, that’s good…but why did she send you here?"

"She said that you would teach me to read, since you’re about to become a teacher and everything."

"Oh, she did, did she?" Nadia scowled, none too pleased at this turn of events. She had been planning on a relaxing summer, writing her stories and screenplays and forgetting about school and teaching until she returned to college at the end of August.

"She said that you need the experience, and you need a job. She also said that you would be grateful to have a job in these hard times."

"Oh, really? I’m her stepdaughter, not her servant, and she can’t just make me work for her. It wouldn’t even be a real job if she didn’t pay me."

"She said that she’d pay you a dollar a day."

Nadia rolled her eyes. "She can afford more than that."

"It would only be an hour a day. It’s a lot more than some people make in an hour."

"Oh. Well…she still shouldn’t try to tell me what to do. I’m an adult, and it should be my decision what kind of job I get."

"You have that many offers?"

"No, but…I’m still in college. I’m just here for the summer. I’ll be going back to Mississippi in August."

"I learn fast."

"Still…"

Sam looked at her, trying to decide whether she was really upset with her stepmother for suddenly giving her a job, or whether she simply didn’t want to teach him. He had been surprised when she had followed him around, pestering him about auditioning for one of Mrs. Calvert’s moving pictures. Nadia seemed sweet enough, if occasionally a little silly, but she had run away so quickly that morning after her stepmother had made her help him audition that he had assumed that, after her initial curiosity, she had wanted nothing to do with him. Perhaps she was afraid of what her family and friends would think if they knew she had been talking to him, or what her classmates would think—Mississippi wasn’t noted for its tolerance.

Still, she hadn’t slammed the door in his face, which was a good sign. Although he had never even thought about being an actor, he had been intrigued by the idea when Nadia had suggested it to him. He had had no idea what to expect in an audition, but it hadn’t been anything horrible—he had even liked dancing with Nadia. Mrs. Calvert had explained how things were done and what to expect when he had met with her, and had read the contract for the picture to him. He couldn’t write his name when he needed to sign it, but she had shrugged it off, telling him to make a mark on the line. She had also printed his name on the contract so that there could be no doubt whose contract it was.

Then she had told him that he needed to learn to read. It wasn’t the actual learning that was the problem—he was sure that he could learn, and Mrs. Calvert had agreed—but finding someone to teach him could prove difficult. Most people who were just learning to read were children, and he was much too old to go to school with them. There was Coe College, and even though he was older than most college students—he thought that he was about twenty-five years old—she didn’t think that his age would be a problem. After all, her husband had graduated from Coe College when he was in his late thirties. But she didn’t know if they would accept a student who was black, and whether they did or not, a person was expected to know how to read and write before they went to college.

He had suggested that she teach him to read, but Mrs. Calvert had just shook her head. Between running her own film company and caring for her family, she hardly had a spare moment. It was then that she had decided that Nadia would teach him, never stopping to consult her stepdaughter on the idea. He liked Nadia, although said anything since he had commented on her to her stepmother that morning, but he wasn’t sure what she thought of him. He also wasn’t sure if it would be appropriate for her to teach him, especially since it would most likely be private lessons. It would only be teaching, to be sure, but some people might not see it that way.

Still, he wanted to learn to read, not only because it might get him a long-term contract with Dawson Films, but because he recognized it as a valuable skill. He had never had a chance to learn to read growing up—there had been no school nearby that would accept him, and the amount of work that every family member had to do just to survive would have left little time for schooling anyway. There had been no chance to learn at home—his mother couldn’t read at all, and his father just a little. They had worked harder than any of their offspring—labor laws and reforms, what there were of them, didn’t apply to an impoverished family of sharecroppers trying to make a living on worn-out soil.

His mother had died in childbirth when he was thirteen, and after that, his father had abandoned the hardscrabble farm and gone to the nearest town looking for work, taking his three surviving children with him. Things hadn’t been much better, but they had survived, and, at sixteen, Sam had left home to make his own way in the world.

It hadn’t been easy, but there had been enough good times to make it worth it. He had gone home once, to find that his sister had married and his father and brother were working in a cotton mill. Perhaps he should have stayed and helped them, but his life as an itinerant worker had been more satisfying than working for starvation wages in a dark, noisy, closed-in factory, so he had left, and hadn’t been back since. At least when he went hungry, he was doing so on more or less his own terms.

Then had come the janitorial job with Dawson Films—not his favorite sort of work, but Mrs. Calvert had agreed to pay him fairly. And now he was a motion picture actor—and he had never even seen a moving picture.

Which brought him back to the problem at hand.

"Well, can you teach me to read?" he asked Nadia, not at all sure what her response would be.

"Um…I guess I could." Nadia was still hesitant.

"Is it just that you don’t want your mom telling you what to do, or that you don’t want to work with me?"

"I…I…" Nadia’s face slowly regained its red shade. "I…don’t mind teaching you, but…but I’m an adult. Mom can’t tell me what to do!"

"Do you want to teach me?"

"I…uh…" Nadia stammered, not wanting to give him a real answer. She did want to teach him—it would give her a chance to get to know this intriguing young man better—but she made a fool of herself every time she saw him. "I…I…all right. I will," she decided suddenly. What did it matter what he thought? Certainly he would never be more than her student, and she would be prim and proper and dignified from here on out. Of course she would. The fact that he was the most interesting man she had ever met meant nothing.

"Nadia?" Ruth called from the kitchen. "Who’s at the door?"

"Um…we were about to sit down for lunch," Nadia told Sam. "Would you like to join us?"

"Who’s us?"

"Me, Grandma Ruth, and my little sister, Jane. I have a baby brother, too, but he doesn’t eat with us yet. He just gets a bottle when Mom’s not home."

Ruth came out of the kitchen, Peter in her arms. He squealed, waving his arms at his beloved older sister. Nadia took him, bouncing him gently and making him giggle.

Ruth looked around Nadia at her visitor, who still stood outside the front door. Frowning, she took Peter back from Nadia and turned to Sam.

"Can I help you?" Ruth had never trusted "coloreds," as she called them, and finding Sam on the doorstep, carrying on a conversation with her granddaughter, made her suspicious.

"Grandma Ruth, this is Sam…uh…what’s your last name?"

"Blass."

"Sam Blass. Mom cast him in a small part in the picture she’s going to start filming in July, and she hired me to teach him to read." She didn’t notice Sam’s look of annoyance when she revealed that he couldn’t read.

"Did she now?"

"Yes, she did." Nadia was beginning to get defensive. She knew that her grandmother was standoffish toward people who she didn’t consider to be as good as herself, but she was beginning to get downright rude. "I asked him to stay for lunch," she added, knowing that Ruth wouldn’t like the idea.

She was right. Ruth shook her head, looking for a polite excuse to turn Sam away. She couldn’t forget that she was only a guest in this house, and that if she angered Rose by being impolite to someone she had hired, her daughter could very well tell her to find a home of her own. She didn’t think that Rose would cast her out, but she wanted to be safe, and she knew that any rudeness on her part would immediately get back to her daughter through a disgruntled Nadia.

"I’m afraid that I only fixed enough for the three of us, and there isn’t any bread left—Jane sneaked down last night and ate a lot of it."

Nadia sighed, knowing that her grandmother was making excuses, but there wasn’t really anything she could do about it. Jane had found her way down to the kitchen the night before and gotten into the bread—along with the strawberry jam and the butter. John had come downstairs after hearing the noises in the kitchen, spanked his youngest daughter soundly, and sent her back to bed, but not before she had eaten a considerable amount and fed some to the half-grown dog the family had acquired.

"I can share my lunch," she offered. "I don’t eat that much anyway."

"You don’t eat nearly enough," Ruth interjected.

"I’m fine, Grandma."

"No, Nadia, I insist—"

"We’ll go into town for lunch, then," Nadia told Sam. "My treat. There’s a little diner where you can get a good sandwich for cheap. We should go there before they go out of business, too."

"I don’t know…"

"I’ll be back later, Grandma."

"Nadia Calvert…"

"Come on, Sam." Nadia hurried out the door before her grandmother could begin to lecture her on her behavior. Ruth DeWitt Bukater was the only person she knew who could lecture worse than her stepmother, and Nadia really didn’t want to stand there and be embarrassed.

They walked together into town, jumping apart in embarrassment when they accidentally touched and ignoring the stares of the people that they passed. Nadia was more accustomed to being stared at than Sam was—after all, she was the stepdaughter of a movie star and the daughter of a well-off businessman. She also looked a little different from most of the people in town, with her olive skin, and had sometimes attracted speculation as to why a well-to-do man like her father had adopted a child so obviously different from him.

Sam was uncomfortable with all the attention—not all of it was merely curious—and sat nervously at the table at the back of the diner that Nadia had chosen. There weren’t many people inside, even at noon, but he still didn’t enjoy all the attention being paid to the two of them.

Nadia noticed, but shrugged it off. "It’s amazing how much gossip can be created by walking down the street," she remarked, perusing the menu. After telling Sam what was offered, they ordered their lunches and sat quietly, glancing nervously at each and at the table.

Finally, Nadia spoke. "If I’m going to teach you to read, I need to know where you’re at. Can you read at all?"

"I can read a clock, and my numbers through twelve. Your stepmother explained how this morning."

Nadia raised an eyebrow. "You are a quick study. It took me a year to learn all that. Of course, I was also very young." She paused. "Do you know your alphabet?"

"No." He knew what the alphabet was, but not what it consisted of or how to read it.

"How about your name? Can you write it?"

"No."

"Okay." Nadia sat back, thinking. "We’ll start with the alphabet, then. Did my mom say whether she wanted me to come to the studio and teach you, or go somewhere else?"

"She wanted me to go to your house, because you have space and plenty of beginner books. She doesn’t have that at the studio."

"No, I guess she wouldn’t."

"Your grandmother isn’t going to like it."

"Grandma doesn’t own the house. Mom and Dad do. She can complain, but if she doesn’t like something, Mom just tells her that she’s allowed to leave and find a place of her own. They don’t always get along."

"What about your dad? What will he think?"

Nadia thought for a moment. "I really don’t know. But I don’t think he’ll try to put a stop to it. He and Mom each have their own businesses, and they don’t try to interfere with each other. Besides, Mom owns a lot of Dad’s company. That gives her power."

Sam looked at her, raising his eyebrows. "That’s quite a marriage."

"Oh, they love each other. Mom doesn’t lord it over Dad, even if she does make more money than him. They respect each other."

"That’s good to know."

"Well, when would you like to start? Tomorrow?"

He thought for a moment, nodding as the waitress brought their food.

"Tomorrow sounds good."

Chapter Forty-Two
Stories