Glimmer As You Can Read online

  “Thursday.”

  Catherine affected a high-society accent and rid herself of responsibility. “Well, I’m quite sorry, dear. But I really thought you were coming back on a Friday.”

  “You were supposed to be at work anyway.”

  “Well, they weren’t going to keep me forever. I’m an old duck now. I’ll be thirty-one next week. All of those other ticket girls are young things, fresh out of high school.”

  “You got fired?”

  “I left before they could fire me. A girl’s got to keep her dignity!” Catherine stood and adjusted the patent-leather belt on her pencil skirt.

  Elaine was slight, yet Catherine was thinner, with her black hair arranged in a straight bob. Everything was angular with Catherine, which allowed her to assert her body like a pointed arrow in her chosen direction. Now she headed back to the bottle for another pour.

  “So where are you going to stay, dear sister?” Elaine inquired. “How are you going to pay your rent?”

  “Well, your fiancé here has made me an astounding offer. He said that I could sleep right in there.” Catherine waved her hand at the parlor. “He informed me that I could reside on that very couch! Wasn’t that grand of him? He’s a generous sort.”

  Tommy, only a few feet away, set his record player on full volume. Beset by the music, he trilled his lips, bobbed his head up and down, and slapped his hands on the sofa while a trumpeter in the song blared a speedy yet mournful melody. “Elaine!” he yelled above the cascade. “Listen to this!”

  Elaine yelled back, her voice cracking. “You’re out of your bloody mind!”

  She gave a tap to her grumbling stomach and searched for some provisions; the fridge was almost bare, containing only a sliver of cheese and a stick of butter.

  “The music, Elaine!” Tommy sailed toward her, his eyes barely open. “Do you hear me, babe?” He tried to grab her waist. “Come and dance with me now. It’s this Dizzy Gillespie album! Come on.”

  Elaine held her body firm, not allowing him to move her. She chewed rubbery cheese as he danced with her frozen limbs. “I’m eating.”

  Catherine tried to talk to her. “So how was it in the motherland? Oh, and Elaine—did you tell Mum and Dad that you’re pregnant?”

  Elaine shot her a look of death, though Tommy was oblivious as his shoulders jived in musical rapture. “I’m not pregnant,” she hissed.

  Catherine continued at regular volume. “I don’t understand why you don’t just go get a prescription from the doctor for those hormone pills. My friend Mindy goes to a doctor on Eighty-Sixth Street who gives her a regular prescription. You just take it once a day. Her life is so much simpler now. No concern of babies. Oh, and as a bonus, she’s developed this beautiful bosom.”

  “Let’s not talk about this right now.”

  “The music of the moment. The Siren’s song of now.” Back in the parlor, Tommy hummed his own words to a song.

  Elaine sighed. She couldn’t bring herself to keep chewing, and the cheese sat on the back of her tongue. “How long do you plan on staying?”

  “You’re not trying to kick me out already? Surely you have enough space here on easy street.”

  Catherine poured more gin. It came quickly, in a splash, and she laughed.

  “Please,” Elaine said, but she shrugged. From the parlor, Tommy’s song had switched to throaty snores as he rotated belly-up on the sofa. “I think I’ll follow suit. Retire upstairs and rest for a while. It’s been a long day.”

  “Suit yourself, dear sister.”

  Elaine switched off the blaring turntable, then trudged upstairs slowly. She lay on her bed, fully clothed, squinting at the outline of her face in the mirror. She and Catherine shared the same nose, delicate and upturned, but her own eyes were a different shade of gray, almost silver at certain angles.

  Elaine sat back up on her bed and unearthed a sheet of paper from deep in her bedside drawer. Before she left for her vacation, she had sent some queries to newspaper editors and made a chart to track their responses. She had applied for fact-checker positions at several prestigious publications, including the Tribune, the Tri-Star News, and the Chronicle, hoping that her fact-checking experience at the radio station would earn her an interview.

  The Chronicle was Elaine’s top choice; she had wanted to work there as long as she could recall. As a young girl in England, she had watched her father devote significant attention to the Chronicle. The paper had arrived weekly at their London flat, shipped via transatlantic mail. Her father would always rip open the package with incredible focus, devouring each page, using the updates to inform his decisions for his import-export business.

  The Chronicle was big news, and her desire to work for the publication had influenced her choice to major in journalism at Briarcliff College. Elaine hadn’t applied to the Chronicle straight out of college—instead, she had worked for a few years at a news radio station in Manhattan, hoping that the experience would redound to her benefit later on.

  There was slim chance that a woman could become a reporter at the big-news Chronicle, but she hoped to at least get in the door as a fact-checker.

  Now, in the bedroom, Elaine flipped a page in her calendar to make a note of the date. Tommy never answered the phone, so there would be no way to know if an editor had rung while she was in England. She drew a line over the upcoming two weeks—if she didn’t hear from one of the papers within that time frame, she could assume that interviewing at the Chronicle was out of the question.

  Soon she heard the phone ring from downstairs, and she scurried to get it, breathless. “Hello?”

  “It’s Lisa, from today … from the cab? I’m so sorry to bother you.”

  “It’s fine, dear.”

  “I’m awfully sorry. I was just calling about the money.”

  “Like I said, dear, consider it a gift.”

  “But I really feel bad. How about this: I’ll slip the money under your door tonight. I have to be on an early flight tomorrow, but I would feel good knowing that we’re even, that I don’t owe you anything …”

  “Don’t bother yourself about it, dear. It’s just a pittance.”

  “Please? If you would, just give me your address. Then I can fly overseas with a clear mind.”

  “All right, if you insist, dear. You have a pencil? The address is 890 Livingston Street. I’ll give you directions.”

  “You really don’t have to come to the door. I’ll just slip the money envelope in your mail slot.”

  Elaine coughed and cleared her throat. Then her voice once more assumed its crisp, refined aspect.

  “No; I’ll see you at 890 Livingston, dear.”

  3

  Lisa

  “You’re still young, dear. There’s plenty of time to find someone else.”

  On the kitchen table, Lisa’s head rested on her crossed arms. “Please, Ma. I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

  “There now, honey.” Her mother stroked her hair. “You’re dripping on your flight attendant uniform, you know.” She grabbed a dish towel and attempted to absorb Lisa’s wet patches.

  Lisa yanked away, released herself to her bedroom, and then slammed her door. Curled into a ball on her bed, she nestled against her old baby doll. It was nighttime now, and Billy hadn’t even called to explain.

  Though he barely needed to explain. It all added up—his lackluster good-bye on the tarmac, his failure to send her a wire in Paris—finally, the fact that he had left her stranded at the airport. She had waited for over two hours in the terminal, hiding her embarrassing tears from the crowds.

  Billy’s behavior made sense to her now.

  He must have lost interest in her.

  Lisa had heard of this happening—men suddenly losing interest. One of her friends from high school had been dating someone for four years. They seemed serious—a real item—but then he just disappeared from her life without warning.

  Lisa hadn’t observed any warning signals from Billy either.
When she was in Brooklyn, they would go out on dates almost every evening, and he had always acted like he was enraptured with her.

  She had been dating Billy for a little over two years. She met him at a New Year’s Eve party for his labor union. Lisa was attending the party as a guest of her friend, a secretary for the labor union, and Billy approached her as she chatted with her friend near the punch bowl. He flashed her his dimpled smile, asking her to dance.

  Wordlessly, Lisa nodded yes, her heart fluttering as his muscled frame guided her effortlessly to the center of the Knights of Columbus hall dance floor. He twirled her around the floor, cracking jokes about his “manly” dance moves, and she giggled in girlish hysterics as his hands loosely surrounded her waist.

  When their dance was through, Billy paused in front of the labor union’s photographer to sling his arm around her shoulders. Lisa felt a crackle of electricity at his casual touch as she smiled for the camera. Billy then took her out on the floor for a few more dances; when the night was over, he asked her for a date.

  During the first few weeks of their courtship, they went out to the movies, out to the pizza parlor. They took long walks around Brooklyn together. She was entranced by his charm and the casual way that he laughed. Everything seemed light around him.

  Everything moved so effortlessly with him.

  At the end of that first month, they sat next to each other in a booth at the pizza parlor, and he pulled something out of his pocket. It was a copy of the New Year’s Eve photo from his union’s newsletter. Billy had drawn a heart around the two of them, and below their picture he had taped a jewelry box, which she opened to reveal a gold locket.

  With a boyish grin, he squeezed her hand, asking her to go steady. They had been an item ever since.

  Yet now he was ignoring her, as though none of it even mattered.

  Tears started to stream down Lisa’s face, and she sat up to grab a handkerchief from the dresser adjacent to her narrow bed. As she dabbed at her tears, she observed herself in the mirror—her eye makeup was smudged, her mascara had leaked to form black splotches around her lids, and her eyelids were puffy. Her blonde hair lay in knotted clumps around her face.

  Lisa closed her eyes, unable to look at herself, and set her head on her pillow.

  Shortly, her mother’s voice shouted through her door, “Honey, I meant to ask—how did you get home from Idlewild?”

  She paused to take a deep breath, then answered, “I shared a taxi with a girl from the airport. She loaned me money.”

  “That was nice of a stranger, to give you some money. But you know we’re not beggars.”

  Lisa cast her eyes around her tiny room: the frayed carpet, the paint flakes on the windowsill.

  The words spilled out before she could stop them. “Why were we almost evicted, then?”

  The other side of the door grew silent.

  Lisa closed her eyes and exhaled. She peeled herself off her damp coverlet and opened the door.

  Her mother was no longer there.

  * * *

  A few hours later, she left her apartment. Lisa didn’t usually drive around by herself at night, but here she was, steering her massive boat of a car between the pillars of the elevated train tracks, alone.

  For their dates, Billy would pick her up in his red convertible. Sometimes he even borrowed his father’s car, an expensive Oldsmobile designed primarily for the race track. Billy was a skilled driver, and he always operated the steering wheel as an extension of his sinuous muscles, even inside the tight boxes of the Brooklyn streets.

  Next to her, he might sometimes place a bouquet of fresh flowers, along with a golden box of fine chocolates.

  For my queen, he would say. Then he would kiss her, with feeling.

  Now, Lisa took a sharp intake of breath as she navigated another tight bend. Night trains passed on the tracks above; their headlights bounced down through the rail gratings and shimmered on the icy streets in quickly moving lines of light.

  She was lost en route to Brooklyn Heights; the directions Elaine had given her on the phone earlier were too vague. Though Lisa had crossed the Atlantic Ocean multiple times over, she struggled in this closer terrain of Atlantic Avenue. Elaine’s directions had sent her toward a little strip of stores on Livingston Street, not the brownstone Elaine had skittered toward this afternoon.

  Lisa started to turn back home, then looped back in a last effort to find the place. At last, a sign caught her eye: a street address in gold numbers at the corner.

  The building wasn’t a brownstone, but it said 890, which Lisa had underlined in her notes.

  The block was mostly desolate, but a few fancily dressed women walked briskly toward a storefront. Lisa parked and watched them enter as she clutched her little envelope of cash with numb fingertips. She looked up to see:

  The Starlite Dress Shop

  Elaine hadn’t mentioned anything about working in a dress shop. She had exited the taxicab toward an elegant brownstone residence, not a storefront. It seemed unlikely that she would be out in the shopping district at nine o’clock at night. Yet, from a distance, there did appear to be some lights aglow in the Starlite Dress Shop, even as all the surrounding shops were closed.

  The sidewalk in front of the dress shop shone with patches of ice, though there was a thin clearing near the door. This store’s window boasted a full display of mannequins, each in a different jewel-toned ensemble, fit for an evening fete. The mannequins were backed with displays that obscured much of the store’s interior. Between these displays and the tall silhouettes of some clothing racks near the windows, it was difficult to tell how many shoppers might be inside at this hour.

  Lisa cautiously stepped out of her car, making her way down the icy sidewalk. She stood beneath a narrow awning, which shielded the dress shop’s door but provided little protection from the winter chill. She trembled as she slowly lifted her hand, using her knuckles to rap on the door. It was solitary on this sidewalk in the silence of the night, and the wind whipped up her little stewardess skirt.

  From across the street, a man sweeping snow paused to look up. “Do you need some help, lady?”

  Lisa ignored him and knocked on the door more urgently. It swung open swiftly, catching her by surprise.

  “Hi there!” It was a woman with a cheerful smile. “Are you Elaine’s friend? She literally just asked me to step around the block and look for a girl who might be lost.”

  “I guess I’m the lost girl.”

  Festive sounds of laughter, music, and chatter leaked through the open door.

  “Come in, dear, follow me.” The woman took Lisa’s hand and pulled her inside, ushering her through the crowd.

  Lisa let herself be dragged like a puppy, yanked through a maze of people, racks, and tables. The shop buzzed with beautiful noise as ladies appeared and disappeared behind the A-lines and taffeta skirts. To the sides, the place was shiny and gleaming, walls lined with silvery mirrors, multiplying each reflection. Everything was resplendent.

  On a table, nylons had been displaced to display tea plates of delicate pastries. Women were drinking, debating, laughing. A makeshift dance floor in front of the fitting rooms boiled with the energy of rapid-fire twists. They were actually doing the Twist, though the music was hard to hear above the laughter, and they were giddy with hilarity, collapsing into giggly heaps as their full skirts tangled on the floor.

  Lisa smoothed down her airline-issued skirt. The women here seemed utterly at ease as they frolicked around the space, sashaying and shimmying to the music. She felt stiff and out of place—like a dull spot in a field of luminous joy.

  Lisa heard a playful voice shout at her from somewhere within the crowd. “Hey, I see we have a new friend!” The woman gave a friendly laugh. “It looks like she’s about to take us somewhere!”

  From within the group, the lady was suddenly next to Lisa, patting her arm in a friendly way. She glowed, with auburn hair curled into dramatic flips. She was voluptuous in a
tight-fitting black dress, and her ears glittered with chandelier earrings.

  She looked like the happiest woman in the world.

  “I’m Madeline, darling.”

  She extended her hand, which Lisa accepted through the baggy sleeves of her mother’s old brown coat.

  “Wow—a stewardess! I would absolutely love to hear about your adventures. You must have stories to tell, working for the airlines. Come over here—I’ll fix you something to drink.” Madeline pulled her to a table strewn with dozens of liquor bottles, which cast a glint of amber into the room.

  “Oh, I don’t really drink.” Lisa’s voice was high-pitched.

  Madeline led her to the far side of the store. A group of ladies played cards between the dress racks, sprawled out on rugs. “Look, everyone! I have another player!”

  “Fabulous!” someone squealed.

  A petite woman in a large bouffant hat tried to deal Lisa into the game. She slid the cards into Lisa’s curled-up fingers with a stream of girlish giggles.

  “I’m so happy we found someone else to play!” She grabbed Lisa’s chilly hand, and her warm brown eyes danced with mischief. “I’m Harriet. I’m the dealer tonight. Usually Catherine deals the cards, but she’s not here yet.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to play. I’m actually supposed to meet someone—her name is Elaine.”

  “Oh, yes, Elaine! She’s doing a reading on the side there.” Harriet gestured casually. “But why don’t you play with us for a bit? We’ll teach you as you go along.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m very tired. And I’ve been up for hours, and I have to catch a flight tomorrow.”

  “So, you’re one of those ladies?”

  Lisa’s cheeks reddened. “What do you mean?”

  “You work for the airlines?”

  “Yes, Pan Am.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t sure. We have dress-up nights here, and sometimes girls just come in costume for the fun of it.”

  “Like it’s Halloween?”

  “No—just to experience being in different roles. It’s a costuming experience. We play different roles all the time, you know.”