Glimmer As You Can Read online

  From the outset, she tried to make it special. Fresh flowers. The latest records.

  It wasn’t too long before she had started to draw a little crowd. It was a small group of women during those early months—invitation only, a select group of customers from the dress shop to join her after hours.

  Back in ’57, as she readied herself for the fifth meeting of the club, she decided to get a strawberry shortcake from a place on Henry Street to share with the girls. But she wasn’t quite fit for the outside world; sweat dripped down her neck from unpacking boxes of nylons all day, so she dashed to her apartment first so she could freshen up and fix her makeup.

  She climbed the stairs in her building, puffing with exertion. For a moment, she stopped to rest and leaned on the banister. From upstairs piped two voices: a baritone and a tinny squeak. She shook her head back and forth, trying to clear her ears.

  At the final flight of stairs, a pressing pain punched through her rib cage.

  She knew the baritone, and soon she observed the source of the tinny voice.

  Fred—in her very own kitchen. He was sitting next to his mistress.

  Fred’s unsightly girth was parked on one of Madeline’s kitchen stools—and he was wearing a shirt he often wore to city council meetings, a shirt that she had sewn for him once, by hand.

  It had been a month since Fred paid Madeline a surprise visit. When she came home from work that last time, she’d found him at her kitchen table with a bouquet of flowers, red in the face. His big drops of sweat dripped down on her tile.

  “I want to start over with you,” he panted.

  “Did Rachel kick you out?” She gave him a short laugh.

  “No, babe. I just keep thinking of you. I made a mistake. You’re the one for me. You’ve always been.” He moved to touch and kiss her. His great tire of belly fat leaned into her as he caressed her neck.

  “Get off me!” She tried to shove him away, but he persisted, hands on her waist, moving them downward, whispering in her ear like when they were new.

  With a final force, she pushed him away, and he smirked. He cleared his throat with his signature cough. “We have an event tomorrow, Maddy. A soiree at the Bridge Club. The theme is black and white. I’m sure you can find something to wear.” His moustache flexed upward in a grin.

  Fred held Madeline by the reins of his money—cash he gave her toward rent on the apartment, even after he started living with his mistress.

  He always arrived unannounced. He would slide an envelope of cash across her countertop and ask her to play the role of wife for another society event.

  When Madeline had first caught him in the act, she kicked him out of their apartment. He pleaded desperately to prevent an annulment, not wanting his Brooklyn city councilman’s name tarnished.

  She didn’t fight Fred too hard. He could spread lies, after all. She knew he would sully her name and discourage the other councilmen’s wives from visiting her store. Those society ladies bought a lot of dresses, a substantial part of Madeline’s earnings.

  She had kept her lips drawn, yet she was in no position to deny him.

  But this was the first time Fred had brought her to the apartment. Madeline had never seen the girl up close. At barely twenty years of age, Rachel was a skinny mouse, with stick-figure legs. Sitting with Fred at Madeline’s pink counter, she kicked her patent-leather heels in rhythm as she licked brown sauce off her knobby fingertips. She dug heartily into a bag of food, smearing the grease on Madeline’s baby-soft leather swivel stool.

  Fred chomped down on the gristles of animal fat like the most relaxed man in the world. His voice caramelized into burnt honey even as he gnawed at his greasy meat. “Rachel’s telling me I should divorce you.”

  Madeline stared wide-eyed, a deer in headlights. Her silence was interrupted only by the cuckoo clock, which chirped the hour.

  Fred threw back his head and chuckled: a scratchy, raspy laugh.

  Madeline’s eyes locked on her shoes. She studied her neatly polished heels. She shut out the sight of their poultry bones on their paper napkins. She closed her nose to the smell of rendered grease and department store cologne.

  She started to walk out.

  The two of them continued to eat, their lips smacking.

  “She must be in shock.”

  A low giggle passed through the kitchen door as Madeline closed it.

  She trembled, like a leaf in the wind.

  Her hand rested on her doorknob at the exit to her own apartment. The cuckoo clock rang out with the final ding of the hour, and her body froze. A piece of pink caught her eye. It was a receipt on her coffee table; she had prepaid for the shortcake when she ordered it.

  The bakery on Henry Street would close at five thirty.

  Her new social club was set to convene at six o’clock. She picked up her RSVP list—over thirty women had signed up in the affirmative.

  With a deep breath, she burst back into her kitchen with newfound energy.

  “This is a ridiculous game we’re playing. I’m tired of it.”

  “C’mon, Maddy, I want you to tell her. Isn’t it true that you don’t want a divorce?” His eye twitched and he jawed his gums, his greasy moustache moving up and down.

  “Well …” She caught a glimpse of some errant, pointy hair in his moustache. He never groomed himself to look flawless—only to look powerful.

  Fred represented a swing district in the council. He usually gave her a third of the rent and maintained the annual lease of her shop in his name; initially, her landlord wouldn’t assign leases to women.

  “I think I do want a divorce, Fred.” Her knees shook as she clutched the doorframe.

  Fred began to cough on a chunk in his throat, and Rachel patted him on the back, showing no effort to hide her glee. He gazed at her with one half-closed eye, over his hacking cough.

  Madeline’s entire body continued to tremble. An invitation sat on her counter, addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Abbott. Its glossy stationary announced a banquet, yet another function that would begin with a cocktail hour in which councilmen slapped each other on the back and talked in code about resolution numbers, ballots, and other things they made no effort to explain.

  She suddenly removed her hands from the doorframe, her posture erect. “Yes. I do want a divorce.” More of her words poured out, crystal clear over the havoc of Fred’s coughing fit. “I’ll pay my own way. You give me back your key to this apartment, and you and your girlfriend could leave right now.”

  It would be the fifth meeting of the social club. She looked at her watch.

  “Maddy, let’s talk about this a little bit more.” He tried to plead and grabbed her arm as Rachel shot him daggers with her eyes.

  “Give me the key.” Madeline held out her hand, fingers trembling.

  Fred stood motionless, but his mistress thrust her hands into his coat pocket. She removed the key and slapped it down on the counter.

  “We need to talk about this, Maddy.” Snapped out of his paralysis, Fred assumed a saccharine tone, trying to submerge his sins under a wash of sugar.

  “I can’t talk about it. I have to be somewhere. And I have to pick up a cake.” A new kind of earthquake rumbled in Madeline’s core. “My lawyer will be in touch about the divorce.”

  There was no lawyer yet.

  Fred wiped the grease from his chin, sputtering about the financial help he had given her, and his mistress yanked his sleeve with her skeletal arms, dragging him out the door.

  Madeline stood slack-jawed in the middle of her living room.

  She looked at herself in her ornamental mirror. Fantasies flickered in her eyes.

  A new thrill in her blood coursed through her veins, deepening the color in her cheeks. Like a dress design gone astray, she would toss her marriage in the trash, and start anew.

  * * *

  Fred told the other councilmen in due course.

  It wasn’t too long before the society ladies stopped patronizing her store, and sh
e entered a deep debt—a darkness she couldn’t admit.

  She had to sell her things. She couldn’t take care of herself. She cried as her neighbors rifled through her treasures for sale. These were people she used to greet in the lobby, exchanging niceties as they brought up the mail. She had laid out her best china and all her dearest possessions. They scrounged through her belongings as though she were dead and gone. The neighbors paid pennies for her most beautiful hats, and her dresses—the ones she had fashioned with her own two hands.

  The net of the sale was enough to pay for one month’s rent on the apartment.

  After the month was through, she left before she could be evicted, moving into the back room of the Starlite with only a small suitcase, two pairs of shoes, and a coat.

  After Fred was out of the picture, she had to beg the landlord of her dress shop to reassign the lease in her name. Over the years, there were times when she could barely make rent for the storefront alone. But she was finally starting to put away a bit of money. There had been a recent uptick in sales from a larger, more loyal customer base—girls from the social club.

  Madeline tossed and turned on the fold-out mattress in the back room. Through the open doorway, she eyed the vagabond Aphrodite mannequin, now in the shadows. Cleared of her flowers, the mannequin was bare, open to any possibility.

  The sun would rise in a couple of hours, yet Madeline still couldn’t sleep.

  PART TWO

  The Opportunity

  7

  Lisa

  A few hours’ sleep, a croissant, and a coffee, and Lisa was on her hotel shuttle to the departure terminal, where she would serve the plane to Rome.

  Sometimes there were opportunities for sight-seeing, but today she had time only for sights from the shuttle—rue after rue of elegant boutiques, each displaying windows of avant-garde fashion for the well-heeled.

  If one of these boutiques hosted a nighttime social club, like the Starlite, Lisa imagined that a line would form around the block each night. Parisian women would shed their trench coats to display elegant silhouettes, their fashion as an art form, full skirts atop stiletto heels. They would dance and sip champagne, carefree.

  It was snowing in Paris today. Lisa’s shuttle dropped her off at Orly Airport and she entered the public plaza, heading through the Pan Am terminal to the boarding bridge. Flakes fluttered and melted on the airplane’s windows as it idled on the runway. Passengers filed in quickly, and the comfort of the large crowd enveloped her. The world was a big place with a lot of people, and she was only one of them.

  “Bring the woman in row four a pillow!” Jane barked.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Lisa brought out the pillow. She cradled it like a baby to keep it warm. Full service. But the passenger already had a pillow tucked behind her head, and the woman was nearly asleep.

  “Another pillow, ma’am?” Lisa asked anyway, to fulfill orders.

  The woman startled from her sleep. “Hrmph.” The woman made a throaty sound and tilted her neck.

  The pointed red peaks of Jane’s lips turned upward.

  Blood rushed up Lisa’s face as she turned down the aisle and dropped her upright posture.

  It had been a setup.

  “She has a pillow already.”

  “So? You’re trying to show me up?” Jane snarled.

  Lisa kept her head down; Jane’s words fell to her feet.

  * * *

  It was early afternoon when they landed in Rome. The smell of Jane’s breath lingered in Lisa’s nostrils. Her demands had only increased as the flight went on, especially after the copilot spent a few minutes during his break making small talk with Lisa.

  Jane had watched the two of them, narrowing her kohl-rimmed eyes at Lisa, then pulled her aside afterward to admonish her for wasting time.

  “You shouldn’t be talking to him anyway, during a flight.” Jane’s red lips were tight with apparent jealousy.

  Lisa had to bite her tongue to stifle a little giggle. Jane couldn’t stand that the handsome copilot usually preferred to talk to Lisa, of all people.

  When it was finally time for the passengers to leave the plane, Lisa’s chest flooded with a surge of relief. Once they disembarked, she shuttled through the airport quickly. A feeling of forward thrust surged in her veins, a sensation that she was in unstoppable motion. The other crew members were dispersing to their hotel on the outskirts of Rome, but she wasn’t ready.

  On impulse, she hopped in a cab, which was more cramped than an American taxi, with a tiny back seat. She asked the driver to take her to the tourist district; he rattled off questions she couldn’t understand, except for the word Pantheon.

  “Sí,” she responded.

  He sped away from the curb, tires squealing as she searched for a seat belt. They wove in and out of traffic, and the motor gunned on and off. Lisa made the sign of the cross, and they motored faster and faster, through scrubby brushlands. Soon enough, the streets grew close together—crowded. Edifices of antiquity rose from the sidewalks, light-brown buildings that had stood through countless births, deaths, battles, and reconciliations.

  A tear dropped from Lisa’s eye as she drew a breath. The taxi pulled into a gorgeous, stone-laid plaza, and she beheld the gargantuan stone columns of the Pantheon. She entered the building behind a few British tourists who chatted in reassuring words of English.

  Inside the great rotunda, a perfect window brought forth the pale-gray sky. All colors blended in harmony, as though Nature had coordinated its hues with the timeless structure. Next to her was a small statue of a saint; Lisa squinted at the Italian words, and her ears flooded with a quick stream of Latin. A chant echoed through the chamber. She turned on her heel to see a small wedding party. A pale bride in a simple white shift stood next to her nervous groom. He tapped his foot as a priest raised his arms.

  Lisa turned away.

  She had her own bridal shoes—flawless white satin heels. She had skipped some meals on the week she purchased them in order to pay for them. She had often stood in the window of the bridal store, torn between two gossamer veils.

  Billy had never popped the question, but it had felt like only a matter of time. They were always seeing each other and had seemed fated to be together.

  Back in Lisa’s little Brooklyn room, the white shoes remained in their box, hidden under her twin-sized bed, beneath clumps of dust and a broken music box. In the Pantheon now: the first kiss of man and wife. The bride was radiant, with an ethereal glow.

  Lisa hid her face. She bent down to gaze at a centuries-old figurine as tears smarted in her eyes. Even amid the beauty of Rome, she couldn’t escape the fact that he didn’t care.

  8

  Elaine

  On interview morning, Elaine woke with a start.

  Tommy had remembered to sleep in the bed. She pulled her leg from beneath the covers, and he rolled over with a little moan.

  The day before, he had been in a glorious mood. She’d distracted him from booze, cooking him three-course meals as he tinkered with his gadgets. They made love several times, read some French philosophy books, and lounged around in a warm mist of bodily satisfaction.

  She had the power to draw his attentions where she intended, at times.

  It had been a luxurious, heavy day. Tommy was still naked beneath the covers, and she watched his eyelids flutter slightly as his chest rose up and down in his sleep.

  Elaine managed to get out of bed without waking him and scurried downstairs to the washroom. His musky scent still clung to her. She quietly cleaned herself with a washcloth, bleeding still, on her cycle.

  Her head dropped with heaviness as she painted on her makeup. She made her lipstick lines more crisp than usual.

  Professional.

  Her eyeliner curved at demure angles. She used a gentle coating of mascara.

  Next, the finishing notes: creams and powders. Tommy didn’t see any of it, dead to the world in wheezes of sleep.

  Bang-bang-bang—she jolted.<
br />
  Catherine was at the bathroom door.

  In the few days since she quit her job, Catherine had been gone most of the time, staying at the Starlite long after Elaine left, going back to the brownstone only in the early morning for a few hours’ sleep in the parlor.

  Catherine wanted to be a singer now, and at the Starlite she would wail into song, serenading the ladies with her clear, silvery tremolos. Conversation would hush as everyone stopped and stared at the source of this lovely voice; they showered Catherine with spare change and adoration. She always beamed at the whole bunch of them, glittering with self-possessed flair.

  Elaine peered in the mirror to set her powder; it wouldn’t quite stick.

  Catherine’s voice was husky and hoarse as she shouted behind the bathroom door. “Elaine, I need to use the loo!”

  As Catherine banged on the door loudly, Elaine listened for Tommy’s footsteps.

  She exhaled in a tight puff and opened the door in a rush of products. Her eyeshadow applicator was tight between her fingers; lipstick tubes tumbled from the vanity.

  “You look like you’re off to court.” Catherine appraised her.

  Elaine was suited up in her gray woolen dress, which she hadn’t worn in two years. It was made of brushed felt, and Madeline had once tailored it to fit her perfectly. When she worked at the radio station, it had cost her half a paycheck.

  “I’m going to Midtown.”

  “What’s in Midtown?”

  “I’m going to walk around, take in the sights. You know I like to walk around Manhattan.”

  “But it’s freezing outside.”

  “Maybe if you got more sleep, you’d have more energy to withstand the cold. I thought you had to use the loo—go ahead already.” A sisterly snipe—weapon for distraction.

  “I do have to use the loo,” Catherine retorted.

  Elaine stepped out of her way and set her nose powder in a rush. She dashed to the kitchen and grabbed her résumé from the typewriter she stowed beneath the sink, behind the cleaning supplies.