FALLING STARS
Chapter Three

October 29, 1912

The next morning, Rose walked into town to buy the materials for her wedding dress. She hated walking into town, where the good, decent citizens of Chippewa Falls could look at her with contempt and moral outrage. Nice, well-brought-up young women did not live in sin with a man they weren’t married to, and the fact that she and Jack were engaged did little to cool the moral outrage displayed by many of the people she met.

The fact that she was now visibly pregnant only made things worse, and she wished that she and Jack had been married a few months earlier. At least then she wouldn’t be looking forward to waddling down the aisle.

Rose had mostly been able to hide her pregnancy up until the sixth month, when her stomach had enlarged to the point that her empire waist dresses no longer hid it. If people had been scandalized before, they were even more shocked now, that someone like her would walk down the street in broad daylight, uncaring of people’s opinions.

Many of the women crossed the street, or swept their skirts to the side to avoid contamination when she walked by. Some of the men looked at her speculatively as she passed, as least when she was alone. When Jack was with her, they kept their eyes to themselves, but she could still feel the townspeople’s condemnation.

Not all of them were that way; some were more tolerant. Still, the tolerant ones were rare enough that Rose had been surprised by Louise’s acceptance of the situation, and a bit suspicious. After all, Louise was Jack’s ex-girlfriend, and she might be trying to win points with Jack by accepting Rose.

Rose made her way into a dry goods store and wandered toward the back, where she thumbed through patterns for dresses, trying to find one that would be suitable as a wedding dress and would still disguise her girth. As she was holding up three patterns, trying to decide which one she liked the best, two of the town’s biggest gossips walked in.

Not realizing that Rose was there, they began talking, their voices rising with indignation as they discussed her.

"Just walking down the street, brazen as you please! She doesn’t even care that some of the young people might see her! Why, if they decide to imitate her...I don’t know what the world’s coming to."

Her companion nodded, pulling her two small children out from under a table laden with bolts of fabric. "She probably thinks that as soon as she marries her young man, everyone will accept her and her bastard child. That kind always does. I don’t see why she even thinks she should be able to walk among decent people. She probably doesn’t even know who the father of her baby is!"

"Now, Thelma, you shouldn’t say things like that. She seems very dedicated to her young man, even if they are living in sin. And you know that he’s been gone for five years, roaming God only knows where. She’s probably some hussy he picked up somewhere."

"Oh, but have you heard the way she talks? Like she’s putting on airs. Like she thinks she’s somebody...a member of high society or some such thing."

"Well, maybe she is at that, Thelma. Why, if she were my daughter, and she behaved the way she does, I’d put her out in a minute. Of course, my husband would probably disagree. Bob is more of the shotgun wedding type. But really, you’d think the girl would have more sense. Why, she expects to be accepted, but she goes around seducing young men. She shouldn’t expect society to accept her."

Rose had been listening intently to their words. Holding the pattern she had selected, she stepped around a display of sewing machines and came up to the table of fabric.

Thelma was going on about the scandal Rose had caused when her companion noticed Rose watching them. Tugging on Thelma’s sleeve, she hissed at her to be quiet.

Thelma looked up and saw Rose staring at her. Face reddening, she looked away, acting as though she hadn’t seen her.

With a calm, uncaring expression on her face, Rose sorted through the fabric, looking for something that suited her, but inside she was furious. Who did these women think they were, to talk about her? Hadn’t either of them ever made a mistake, or done something that later proved to be a less than wonderful idea? Looking back, she realized that impulsively pulling Jack into the back seat of the Renault with her was probably not the best of all possible ideas, but neither of them had been thinking about the potential consequences at that moment. And she wasn’t sorry that they were having a baby, despite the townspeople’s opinions. Their child had been conceived in love, a far better beginning than any child she might have had with Cal.

For a moment, Rose wondered where Cal was, but quickly put him out of her mind. She had more important things to think about, like her wedding to Jack in just over two weeks.

Rose selected her fabric and waited for the saleswoman to cut the correct length for her. She eyed the two gossips as she stood at the measuring table. Thelma was trying to control her children, one of whom was trying to climb a sewing machine and the other of whom had discovered a pair of scissors and a dressmaker’s dummy.

Rose half-smiled as the storeowner began haranguing Thelma loudly about her children’s behavior. She thought she was so superior, but she couldn’t even control her own children. And two of them, so close in age...she’s no better than me, Rose thought snidely. She just happened to be married.

Rose paid for her purchases and left the store. Thelma recoiled as Rose passed her, as though she was being contaminated. I’m no more contaminated than she is, Rose thought, giving Thelma her best superior upper class look as she swept out the door.

Rose hurried to the market to finish her shopping, enduring more sideways glances and rude behavior. It was a relief to return home. Fortunately, the house that she and Jack were staying in was on the edge of town, out of the way of most of their rude neighbors.

It was different for Jack, Rose thought, as she made her way back toward their own neighborhood. Although some people also condemned him for living with her outside of marriage, it was different for him. Young men were expected to sow their wild oats, while young women were supposed to be exemplary members of society. Briefly, Rose wondered just who the young men were supposed to be sowing their wild oats with, but soon put that thought out of mind. People were friendlier toward Jack, less willing to condemn him for behavior that they viewed as normal, although his living openly with her had caused a few raised eyebrows.

When she reached home, Rose put her purchases away and stretched out for a few minutes, putting her feet up. Her feet and ankles swelled more now than they ever had before she became pregnant, and she spent far more time on her feet than she had before.

Eventually, Rose hauled herself to her feet and went into the tiny kitchen to fix herself some lunch. Jack wouldn’t be home from work until late in the afternoon. As she stood at the window, looking out over the unpaved street, she suddenly wished that they could move somewhere else. She knew that Jack liked Chippewa Falls, but she was tired of the townspeople’s condemnation. She also worried about how they would treat her child once it was born. She could tolerate a bit of condemnation herself, and had long since learned that scandal eventually died down once people found something else to talk about, but she worried about the baby. There had been a girl in her finishing school who had been the daughter of an upper class man and his mistress, and she had been treated with disdain, taunted by the other girls and kept on the fringes of their activities--when she was allowed to participate at all. Rose was ashamed to remember that she had been one of those who had picked on the girl, badgering her about her illegitimate status and keeping her out of their exclusive social circle. She had learned her lesson now, but she knew how people treated those who were illegitimate.

As Rose finished her lunch and washed the few dishes, she wondered if she could convince Jack to move somewhere else--someplace where people didn’t know that their child had been conceived out of wedlock. She doubted that Chippewa Falls would be a good place to raise their child--not unless the townspeople suddenly had a change of heart, and she doubted that was going to happen.

Rose spent the afternoon working on her wedding dress. She had to do all the work by hand, since she couldn’t afford a sewing machine, but fortunately a certain amount of hand sewing was considered essential to the education of an upper class girl, and she could sew fairly well.

Jack came in around 5:30, as Rose was standing over the wood-burning stove, trying to make dinner. She still hadn’t quite mastered the art of cooking--except for a few fancy dishes, she had never learned to cook as a girl, and Jack had had to teach her most of what she needed to know. She still had a penchant for over-cooking or under-cooking things, although she was better than she had been six months earlier.

Rose had the oven door open, trying to figure out why something could burn on the outside and still be raw on the inside, when Jack came into the kitchen. He waited until she had closed the oven door before coming up to her and putting his arms around her, feeling the baby move inside her. "How was your day?" he asked, as Rose turned around in his arms to hug him back.

He had already noticed her sewing project spread across the table, so he assumed she had gone into town, but he was unprepared for her vehement response.

"I hate this town!" she told him, pulling away and wrapping her arms around her swollen middle. "They’re all a bunch of rude, gossiping...old biddies!"

Jack was aware that people talked about them, but he hadn’t realized how much it upset Rose. Rose had never struck him as the sort to care overmuch about what other people thought, but apparently the constant gossip was getting to her. It annoyed him, too, but he was used to being looked down upon by the "superior" people that he met. Rose had always been at the top of the heap, so it bothered her more.

"What happened?" he asked, trying to understand what had set her off.

Rose took a deep breath, and then told him about the gossips in the store, about the women who crossed the street to avoid being contaminated by her, and about the men who looked at her speculatively, wondering just how easy she was.

Jack had noticed the people gossiping about them, and the women who avoided Rose, but he hadn’t been aware of the way that men looked at her.

"They don’t look at me like that when you’re around. They assume that I’m yours. But when you’re not there, they look. And I know what they’re thinking. Cal used to look at me the same way."

"Have any of them actually...ah...propositioned you?"

Rose rolled her eyes. "Of course not. They don’t want a woman whose stomach precedes her down the street. It wouldn’t surprise me, though, if one of them did proposition me after the baby is born."

"We’ll be married by then. The wedding is only a little over two weeks away."

"Yes, and I’m going to waddle down the aisle."

"You’re not that big, yet."

"I’m getting there, and people will be watching, wondering what scandal we’ll create next. Why didn’t we get married months ago?"

"Because you wanted to wait until we had a house to live in, and I had a job, and we had time to prepare for a wedding..." He raised an eyebrow at her.

Rose scowled. "Don’t confuse me with logic, Jack. I want to move somewhere else."

He sat down at the table, thinking. "We can’t afford to move right now. We’re barely making ends meet as it is. We can’t just run off whenever things get uncomfortable."

"What happened to ‘heading for the horizon’, Jack? You never had a problem with being poor before."

"The baby happened. We can’t just go roaming around, sleeping under bridges and riding the rails, with you expecting a baby in two and a half months. It isn’t safe for either of you."

"I could help. I’ve got some skills now, and I could work..."

"Doing what? Many employers won’t hire women, let alone women in the family way."

"I’d think of something."

"I’m sure you would, but the fact remains that staying here is the best option for now. Maybe after the baby is born, and is old enough to travel, we can try to find someplace else, but for now..."

"I hate this place!"

"Not everyone is that bad. Some people are more accepting, like Louise."

Rose snorted rudely, telling Jack exactly what she thought of his nosy ex-girlfriend.

He sighed. "We’ll be married soon anyway, and people will find something else to gossip about. They’ll forget."

"No, they won’t, Jack. People here are no more accepting or forgiving than they are in high society. They won’t accept the baby, and I won’t see my child mistreated just because its parents married after it was conceived."

"I think they’ll forget--"

"They won’t." And Rose told Jack about the illegitimate girl that she had gone to finishing school with, about how they had taunted her, and about how the girl had finally escaped to a marriage to one of the lower members of high society.

Jack listened, considering Rose’s arguments, but not so sure that she was right about the way that people would treat their child. He did understand that Rose was more concerned with how people acted toward the baby than how they acted toward her--she still didn’t care what others thought--but he also realized that another move was not an option at the moment. The baby wasn’t due until mid-January anyway, so it would be a while before they would have to worry about it.

"I’ve been thinking, Rose, but there’s just no way we can afford to move now. Even if we could find a place to live in another town, I would still need to find a new job, and jobs are scarcer in the winter, when a lot of the farm work shuts down and people come into the towns looking for jobs. We need to stay here for the time being. Maybe in the spring we can go somewhere else, but for now we need to stay where we are. People might change their attitudes somewhat after we get married, anyway. It’s not as if our baby will be born out of wedlock. People will come around, you’ll see."

"Maybe," Rose conceded grudgingly, but she doubted it. Some people had a long memory, and were very slow to forgive, even when no harm had been done to them. But Jack was right. They couldn’t simply "head off to the horizon" with a baby on the way, and she supposed that she could tolerate things until the spring.

Chapter Four
Stories