by Vanda
The crowd moaned their objections to the word “bore” and encouraged her to do it all.
“I’m only doing a couple of numbers that have been giving me trouble to see if you have ideas. With Richard and my agent in the army, it’s hard doing this by myself.”
“By yourself?” Johnny growled.
“You know what I mean, dear. You’re always at the base.”
“We’re here for you, honey,” Riley said. “No matter where they send us.” He blew her a kiss.
“Yes, right here, doll,” Andy called from the back, raising a bottle of beer into the air. Andy’s voice didn’t sound male or female, only sort of neutral. Juliana smiled as Andy pressed the bottle to her lips and swallowed. Dolores, Johnny’s wife, slid off the couch, and Shirl pulled her back up. I drank down the last of my punch trying to dull the pain of seeing Juliana look at Andy that way. It didn’t work so I ladled more into my glass.
Juliana sat on a stool singing a quiet love song. It was different from the jazzy numbers she often did. When she finished, the room applauded and stomped their feet.
“Okay,” Juliana said. “I asked you here to tell me what’s wrong with it.”
“You were wonderful,” voices called to her.
“It wasn’t sincere,” I said. Everyone stared at me. “Sorry.” I wanted to run.
“What do you mean?” Juliana asked.
“There’s not enough you in it. You’ve got a nice voice, so it’s easy to miss, but it’s like you’re standing next to the song, not in it. Look, I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m gonna go.”
“She’s right,” Johnny said. “I never knew exactly how to put it, but that’s it. Here. I’ll show you.”
They pored over the music. People patted me on the back, but I kept watching her. Johnny was telling her, “It’s like you’re afraid of it.”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” she protested.
“I know, but in some of your songs there’s something like the kid said.”
“How’d you know that?” Shirl asked.
“I don’t know. It just popped out.”
“Have you had musical training?”
“Miss Applegate’s Sunday school choir.”
“That’s it?”
“Shirl, can I ask you something?”
“What, honey?”
“I think we should go away from people. It might be something bad.”
We walked out into the hallway and stood next to the staircase. Shirl lit a cigar. “What on earth do you want to ask that we have to stand out here?”
“A couple of girls were talking about Andy and they said she was ‘packing’. What does that mean?”
“It means she’s—well, she’s stuffed her underpants with a pair of rolled up socks.”
I could feel my brow crinkling. “Why would she do that?”
“Oh, dear. I’ve never had to explain this before. It’s because she wants …. Do you know what a penis is?”
“Of course. I was almost married.”
“You young girls know so much more than girls did in my day. She wants it to seem like she has a penis.”
“A pretend penis! Why would she want people to think that ?”
“There are some women who like to play that sexual role and their partners like …. Stop staring at me there. It’s not something I do. At least, not in public.”
“But in private …?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Does Juliana like, uh …?”
“You’ll have to ask her.”
Riley stuck his head into the hallway. “Hey, folks, Juliana’s gonna go again. ”
Shirl and I went back into the parlor. Warren was hooking his saxophone around his neck while Johnny’s fingers were running over the keys. Juliana stood holding the mic, nodding to the rhythm, waiting to begin. She caught Johnny’s eye, they nodded at each other, and she began “How’d you like to love me?”
It was a sexy song, and in that out-of-style dress, Juliana heated up the room. All were riveted. She looked like no one else in the room. Everyone wanted her. The room sizzled and buzzed, and you could practically hear the girls panting. Johnny loosened his tie, and unbuttoned his top button; he wanted her, too.
At the end of the song, she said, “Well?”
“How would magnificent be? Huh, beautiful?” Andy asked.
“I’ll take it,” Juliana said.
Others echoed Andy’s praise.
“And what about you, Miss Huffman?” Juliana asked.
Everybody looked at me like I was sposed to say something wise. My throat went dry. “You were … wonderful.”
“Thank you.”
She and the musicians were packing up. People drifted down the hall to the bedroom for their coats.
“I better go too,” Shirl said. “Mercy’ll be home from wrapping bandages and will want dinner.”
She disappeared down the hall with me following to get my coat. Juliana came up to me. “Surely, you’re not leaving,” she said.
“Well, I thought…you and Andy, uh—”
“I put the teakettle on. At least have a cup of tea when everyone clears out.”
“If you really want me to.”
“See you, Julie,” Andy said, throwing her overcoat over one arm and the other around Juliana. “Soon, I hope.” He—she pulled Juliana close and kissed her on the lips.
“Andy have you met, Al?”
“No,” Andy said. “Hi, Al. Quite a thing you telling Julie how to sing.”
“Oh, I wasn’t telling her—”
“You’re a brave soul.”
“Don’t talk like I’m one of those fussy prima donnas.”
“Well?”
Juliana punched Andy on the arm. “Get out of here.”
Andy laughed. “You better watch your heart around Juliana, Al. She can be a lady-killer.” She pulled on her overcoat. “I’ll catch up with you soon, doll. How about a quick sail around Capri in my yacht for Christmas? ” Andy hurried to catch up with Riley and Warren as they walked out, Riley yelling, “Merry Christmas, dearies.”
Juliana said good-bye to her last few guests. Johnny hoisted his wife up and she flopped around in his arms like a rag doll. “Sorry about this,” he said to Juliana.
“As soon as you get back to base,” Juliana said, “write to me.”
Johnny nodded as he dragged his wife out. Then Juliana and I were alone.
“I’ll get that tea,” Juliana said.
I sat on the couch. “I can help you clean up.”
“I have a couple of girls coming tomorrow.”
“Oh. Are you gonna go away with Andy?”
“I don’t know.” She walked into the parlor carrying the tray.
“I guess you like him, I mean her, a lot.”
“Everyone likes Andy. How did you do that?” she asked as she put the tray down on the coffee table. “You have no training.”
“Well, there was Miss Applegate at Sunday school.”
“Al, where did that come from?”
“From you. I think your soul was talking to mine.”
“You say the queerest things.”
“Do you and your mother have a strong bond?”
“I don’t know. I never thought about it. I suppose. Mother and I were close throughout my childhood, if that’s what you mean. I was Mother’s ‘little star’. She had me on the stage singing and dancing before I was three. I loved it.” A shadow of sadness crossed her eyes. “She gave up her own career for me.” The shadow passed, and she smiled. “Yes, I’d say Mother and I are ‘bonded’, though I’d never use that word.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
After spending the morning playing the part of a nurse in an episode of When a Girl Marries I headed to Juliana’s porch and waited for her to open the door. When the door finally did open, instead of Juliana being there it was a young girl, Juliana’s maid. Pieces of red hair poked out of her white cap.
�
�Oh, miss, sorry I took so long,” she said, “but as you can see I’ve been with the laundry.” She nodded at the armload she held. She couldn’t have been more than twenty like me, but she was obviously Irish.
“Come in, miss. I’ve ever so much to do before the missus gets home.” She flew down the hallway and down the stairs with me behind her.
“Are you going to use the Bendix?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Let me do it.” I jumped up and down like a baby seal.
“Oh, no, miss.” She opened the door of the Bendix and pushed the laundry in through the opening. “The missus would never allow her guests to be doing her laundry.”
“Juliana won’t mind. Where does the soap go? Can I put it in?”
The young maid poured out the soap powder into a cup, trying her best to ignore me. She shook the powder into a hole on the top of the machine.
“Let me put the bluing in. Okay? Let me do that.” I was still jumping up and down, and the girl couldn’t help laughing.
“Now, miss, if the missus comes in, I’m going to be in a world of trouble with you. She doesn’t like me consorting with her guests.”
“She’s not like that.”
The girl made a quiet snort and handed me the cup of bluing. “Now, don’t you be getting one speck of this on Mrs. Style’s nice, clean, white linoleum floor. ”
“You call Juliana Mrs. Styles? It’s hard for me to think of her as a Mrs. anything.”
“It’s hard for me to be thinking of her as anything but. Now, please, take this, miss, before I’m the one to spill it all over her floor.”
I took the cup from her hand. “Now, you be careful with that,” she repeated. “Or it’ll be my head.”
I poured the bluing in. “Hey, what’s your name? Mine’s Al. Well, it’s really Alice, but everyone calls me Al. So, what’s everybody call you?”
“Aileen, miss.” She turned two dials on the Bendix and the thing started chugging. The soap bubbled, and I could see the clothes going round through the little window. I squatted down to see better.
“Holy mackerel, this is unbelievable. You don’t have to presoak. My mother had two big tubs in the basement for the presoak.”
“Yes, this machine is a wonder.” Aileen began sorting through another pile of clothes. “In the other home where I work, they still have the old machine with the presoaking and pulling through the wringer and the rest of it. It takes hours and my fingers get red and sore, but not with the Bendix.”
“To think my mother and I had to stir up the soap to make the suds, but look at this. Gosh, what times we live in, huh? Ya know, some people say we’ll even go to the moon someday like Buck Rogers.”
“I doubt that’s true, miss.” Aileen laughed.
“I’ll help ya with the sorting.” I grabbed some clothes away from her. “I always helped my mother with this.”
“Oh, no, Miss Al. You mustn’t. You should go upstairs and wait for the missus. If she came home, she wouldn’t like seeing you doing this.”
“Does she get lots of guests?” I asked, separating the whites from the colors.
“It isn’t my place to say. Please let me do that.”
“Tell me. We’re friends now.”
“Well,” she looked around, lowering her voice. “Now that the mister is off fighting the war, she has quite a few guests. Lunchtime guests, breakfast guests, guests who come for tea. But it all seems a bit queer.”
“How so?”
“Whenever she has these guests she pays me for the day and tells me to go home. Isn’t that a wee bit queer? I mean, why have a maid if when you have guests you pay her to go home?”
“These guests. Are they mostly—women?”
“Excuse me?” Juliana’s voice came from behind us. Aileen jumped to attention as if she were a private in Juliana’s army.
Juliana looked stern, her eyes like death rays coming out of Flash Gordon’s ray gun about to vaporize Aileen.
“Juliana,” I said. “Aileen and I have been having a swell time with your Bendix. This machine is a miracle.”
“Yes,” Juliana said, not taking her eyes off Aileen .
Aileen looked down at the floor. “Mrs. Styles, I know I forgot my place, but—”
“Yes,” Juliana nodded, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Juliana, you’re not mad, are ya? ’Cause if you are, it was my fault.”
“Go upstairs, Al. I’ll meet you in the parlor.”
“We were just playing.”
“Go upstairs,” she said more firmly.
I stomped up the two sets of stairs to the upstairs parlor mumbling to myself, “ Why is she so mad? We were only doing her wash.”
I went to her window to sulk when I saw the service banner with the blue star hanging there. It hadn’t been there before. When did she hang it? And why? Did she miss him or did she hang it ’cause it was expected?
“Come,” Juliana said brightly as she entered the parlor. She placed a tray on the coffee table. “Have a little lunch and some tea.”
“Well?” I asked.
“It isn’t your concern. Have a sandwich.”
“It is my concern.”
“Sit down and eat.”
“That whole thing was my fault, and I don’t know why you’re so mad anyway. You’re always saying how you like to have fun. So why shouldn’t I ?”
“We do not have ‘fun’ with the servants and Aileen knows that.”
“What?”
“Have a sandwich.”
“There are no crusts on them.”
“I thought you might appreciate something a little special, but obviously you don’t so I’ll throw them out.” She moved to pick up the tray.
“With rationing? Are you certifiable? There are some people with no food.” I grabbed a sandwich and took a big bite. “Aileen made these, didn’t she?”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full. And, yes, she did.”
“What did you do to her?” I shouted, still swallowing egg and white bread.
“Stop shouting. I only did what had to be done.”
I gulped the last of it down. “Did you fire her?”
“Of course. What did you expect me to do?”
“Of course? You can’t take that girl’s job away. What’s she sposed to do?”
“If you were so worried about Aileen’s job, why did you lead her into this situation?”
“’Cause I had no idea her employer was a monster.”
“I’m a monster, am I? I am paying her to do a job. Not to have fun with you. She knows she is not to socialize with my guests.”
“Do you have the slightest idea what a job is to people like Aileen and me ? Yes, me . I’m like her. Do you know what it is to have your whole life controlled by the whim of some employer? The times I saw my father try to look hopeful when he told Mom he’d been let go. Again. The times I saw him on the porch when he thought no one was looking, crying. The dreams that can be crushed by one person having a bad day. My boss, before I came here, knew I dreamed of coming to the city to make a new life, and he hated me for it. Every single day he threatened to fire me and throw my dreams in the sewer. Do you know what it’s like to live like that?”
“No,” she said, quietly.
“Please , Jule.”
“You cannot socialize with her. Do you understand?”
“No. But if that’s what it takes to get her job back, okay, I won’t.”
“All right then. But if this ever happens again—”
“It won’t.” I jumped up. “I hear her opening the servants’ gate.” I ran into the hallway. “She’s going. Stop her. Tell her.”
“At least pour me a cup of tea. It’s getting cold. Aileen,” she called as she walked down the steps.
I crept halfway down to listen.
“You can take the rest the afternoon off,” Juliana said, “but come back tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, mum? Yes?” Aileen’s voice was filled with the exci
tement of a dozen long stem roses.
After Juliana and I finished lunch, she said, “I’ve bought you a few things. They’re over there on the chair. Go look.”
On the chair were bags from Saks, Bonwit Teller, Bergdorf Goodman. Even the touch of the bags spoke quality. Only certain people got to touch bags like those. “You got me clothes from these stores? I can’t take them.”
“Open the bags.”
I took out two boy’s dress shirts, one white, one pale blue, a black tie, and one blue and red striped tie. “We’re supposed to conserve. I know! You could return these and make me a shirt. I’ve got a book here in my handbag.” I took it out. “It’s called Make and Mend . It tells you how to make a blouse out of an old tablecloth. See?” I held it out for her. She ignored me.
“My tailor will make you a jacket and a couple pairs of pants.”
“You want me to dress like a boy?”
“When we’re alone. Not when the servants are around, of course.”
“But these are so expensive.”
“They’re only rayon.”
“But custom-made pants? That’s gotta cost—”
“I’m having a couple of my husband’s suits cut down for you. I’d buy new material, but everyone’s cutting up men’s suits to conserve and he has so many and I guessed that might make you more comfortable.”
“Yeah, that’s good. But these shirts and ties and the tailor’s time …. It’ll take me ages to pay you back.”
“They’re gifts. You don’t pay someone back for a gift.”
I ran to the master bedroom. On Juliana’s desk, I found a piece of letter paper. Pale pink, lightly scented. I wondered if she used this paper to write to her husband. What a terrible thought. I took her pen out of its holder, dipped it in the inkwell, and wrote, “Al Huffman owes Juliana ….” I left the amount blank and blotted the words with her blotter. The blotter was made of heavy brass with a design of a flower. Juliana made everything nice in her house, right down to the ink blotter. I ran back into the parlor where Juliana still sat.
“Fill in the amount here, and I’ll make a payment each week.” I pulled a quarter from my dress pocket. “We’ll start with this.” I pushed it into her palm.
“Take this back. I don’t need it, but you may.”