by Megan Abbott
“We’ll get the funds,” Louise said, ignoring Ginny, twisting Marion’s nose with a grin. “We always do.”
But Marion was still looking at the icy blond thing on the sofa, at Ginny, whose fingers danced light and pretty along her own chest, swirling the rouge in strange patterns as she whistled soft to soothe them all.
AT WORK AGAIN, walking down long clinic hallways, spinning carbon paper and willowy onionskin around the feed roll, jamming keys under fingernails, taking long dictations, crying in the ladies’ room, tearing tissue into long curls around her fingers.
What glamour might I cast, she wondered, to embed needs under this man’s skin, make him crave me so deep like the deepness of something that goes through the blood, goes through the blood and bursts soft or swells hard in the brain?
A new hairstyle. A violet dress like the one in the window at Heckscher’s, the one she could not afford any more than the plain shirtwaist one at S. H. Kress & Co. Underthings, could it be more underthings, not so genteel, like her peach lace dainties—no, more like the canary yellow sparking out from under Louise’s dress as she slid from Ginny’s spindly arms to slip over to Marion to take her into her strong arms, “Mimsies, come to sup, I made a jellied ham roll just for you.”
Was that what was needed? she wondered. Because that she would do. And try as she might she had no thought of toasters or grocer bills or rent money for her girls. She could not make herself think of it.
“I DON’T MEAN to leave you forlorn, my darling girl,” Joe Lanigan said. “I don’t mean to break so many engagements.”
She nodded, she nodded and held on to him, fingers curled around his lapel as he stood in the clinic’s main office, waiting to speak with Dr. Milroy.
Anyone might have come in, but she had seen him and he was there and she had him for a moment.
He made as if to dance with her, spinning her slightly.
“You’re the apple of my eye,” he crooned, as he was looking through the large glass windows at the new nursing students gushing by. “You’re the cherry in my pie, the angel in the sky.”
But even as he said it, the eyes were darting, pupils hopping like Mexican jumping beans, taking in the willowy blondes, the crackling brunettes, the freckle-dancing redheads in their starched whites, just through the glass.
The corridor, filled with girls—she saw suddenly how it appeared to him. How it was like the grandest candy counter in the finest department store in town. A candy counter packed fat with brassy blond nougats and licorice-whip brunettes and auburn twists of taffy with round cinnamon-button cheeks, honey-faced brickle with sweet dimpled legs powder sweet as marshmallow, jellied lips of every color, with mouths red and glossy and waiting for him. He need only drop his pennies on the counter and take his pick. And pick and pick. Candy Man.
What candy could she tuck in her own wet palm to keep his lips sugared?
This was no way for a strapping man of thirty-five, handsome-faced, broad of chest, fast of grin, strong of heart, to live, night after lonely night in the airless mahogany and velvet house his wife had chosen eight years before and which was now the most expensive gingerbread-trimmed sickbed the town had ever seen. This was no way to live when each evening the streets filled with burbling office girls and waitresses, librarians and students, dancers and school-teachers, all bright-eyed and twitchy-tailed, little canaries with Jean Harlow puffs of hair, cheeping and twittering to him, “Come and get it!”
Part Three
She was so lovely. Like a doll on a high shelf in a nursery. You wanted to reach up and touch the pearly wax cheek. You wanted to put your fingers on the curling brush of long eyelashes. Feel them against your finger. She was so lovely. And she wanted to be my friend. A doctor’s wife. I told her I was from way up in the high country by Fool Hollow, which is famous for its walleye and all kinds of panfish. She said she had a friend, a Mr. Joseph Lanigan, who loved fishing, was mad for fishing. I said I bet he’s never seen one of our red-breasted breams and she said he surely had not. ‘You must tell Mr. Lanigan about it,’ her voice so fast upon me, high and excited. ‘I’ll arrange it. You’ll both come over for coffee. No, no, for dinner. I’ll make Mexican eggs and we’ll sit at the table and you’ll tell him about red-breasted breams. He’ll be so glad. Won’t that be fine?’ And I said it would and wouldn’t it be nice to meet Marion’s husband, who was a physician. And I’d never been invited to a doctor’s home before and wouldn’t that be something. Of course, it didn’t happen that way at all. I never did visit Marion’s home nor meet Dr. Seeley. But that’s later. At the time, oh, was I excited, and I went home straight that night to darn the holes in my best stockings and try to bleach out the old lace on my Sunday dress. After my toilette that night I looked at my long hair hanging to my waist in the mirror and wished I had a smart bob like Marion and then I’d have my hair marcelled like her and look like Constance Bennett. My, wouldn’t that be something?
—Elsie Nettle, R.N.
Interview, June 21, 1931
Det. Thomas Tolliver
“Marion, who is that new nurse at the clinic? The one with the dark hair.”
“Elsie?”
“Elsie,” Joe Lanigan said, as if giving the name a taste, rolling it along his tongue. “Elsie. Well, she’s a fine girl, isn’t she?”
“She’s very nice. A good girl.”
“Do you like her?”
“I don’t know her very well, but she seems very sweet. From a good family.”
“Well, maybe you should bring her by Louise’s.”
“Oh, Joe, I don’t think…”
“It’s the right thing to do, Marion. Make her feel at home.”
Elsie Nettle, just nineteen years old and at the clinic one week.
Not three days before, Dr. Milroy had made much the same request. “Mrs. Seeley,” he said, one dry hand on her shoulder, a new turn since Marion’s hair went white as powdered sugar. “Since you are no longer the youngest lamb, might we call upon you to play shepherd to our newest member of the flock? She is a young girl from the mountains and new to the big city, such as it is.”
Dr. Sweet, standing next to Dr. Milroy, nodded in big-grin assent. He liked to stride past Marion in the corridors and swing his stethoscope so it hit Marion’s hip or backside.
“I’d like to help,” Marion said. “Nurse Mercer was such a friend to me when I began.”
“Nurse Mercer.” Dr. Sweet rolled banjo eyes at Dr. Milroy. “That is love’s labor lost.”
“Now, Jasper,” Dr. Milroy said coolly, and turned back to Marion and smiled. “Nurse Mercer…Well, I’d much prefer your help in these matters. With such a young girl.”
Marion did not know what to say, but she had seen such winking and nonsense about Louise before and sometimes Louise did too and sometimes it seemed to fluster her, made her look over at Marion as if to see if Marion saw too and how Marion took it. There was always tittle-tattle, though, about the unmarried nurses. That was the way it was and Marion never bothered with it, never did.
“I am glad to offer any guidance I can,” Marion said, not meeting Dr. Sweet’s preening gaze, not participating in his foot-bouncing, chest-fluffing show.
She would guide this girl, her eyes big and dark, like a forest doe, and show her the things she knew. The nurses, after all, did not like to help. The nurses viewed new girls, especially ones as young as Elsie, the youngest by six years, as nothing but trouble, Louise most of all.
“I don’t fall for her line,” Louise muttered. “No one’s that green. Says she never even heard a radio till last week Sunday.”
“But she’s darling,” Marion replied. “If one of the doctors says a word, she jumps three feet from fright.”
“They cut our hours on account they can pay her less,” Louise said. “Who do they think they’re fooling?”
Elsie Nettle, though, was dear, and Marion found that she liked to help, liked to be a friend. She showed her all the hidden corners of the clinic, where to c
atch a lungful of fresh air out the back, the best route home to the Millicente Boarding House for Young Women on Pettington Street.
And now here was Joe Lanigan, wanting to join the party.
How did he even know there was a new nurse, and was this about the darting something in his eyes, the thing that looked like sorrow if Joe Lanigan knew sorrow from the next girl-fed folly?
“See what you can do, Mrs. Seeley,” he said, finger dancing along her stomach, making little patterns that sent sweet breaths up her throat. “Let’s see about our Elsie Nettle.”
MARION HAD JUST washed her hair and it smelled like flowers and she knew Joe would like it. She had pressed her good dress and tried to pleat over the spot where the threads had started to pull away from each other.
When she walked to the trolley stop a dusty breeze kicked up her skirt and she thought about seeing Joe for the first time in six days, even if it was with little Elsie Nettle.
She ran her wrist under her nose and smelled rose milk and she knew Joe would like that too. It made her think of his fingertips tracing along her hip, his face pressed against her thighs, saying she smelled of violets, and she had laughed and said did he know what violets smelled like and he smiled and said yes, like this, and she could feel the flush all up her body, like a desert gust, a soft carpet unrolling, the sharp bones of a radiator shuddering, something, something.
But here was Elsie, waiting at the streetcar stop in a lavender dress and dark curls hanging all down her back and the hesitant smile of a young girl because it was what she was. You could near see the dew beading on her dark eyelashes.
They exchanged sprightly greetings and walked arm in arm to the Celestial Chow House. Elsie asked where Dr. Seeley was and Marion explained, very quickly, that he had a temporary post so far away but was due to visit for Easter, and that she missed him so, but goodness wasn’t it a warm evening and wouldn’t a tall glass of tea be heaven?
HE WAS THERE when they arrived, talking with some other men in shirtsleeves and jackets off, and Marion could tell from the red pitch to his face that he had been drinking.
“Mrs. Seeley, my, aren’t you pretty as a picture,” he said, sweeping her under his arm, pressing her to his chest. She could smell the booze on him.
But he straightened out and bowed toward Elsie and took her hand and kissed it with great delicacy, like he was performing on a stage.
Elsie could scarcely face him, so shy and stuttering, and they all sat, and Joe had already ordered. Waiters in pale gold mandarin coats kept bringing out steaming dishes with heavy silver lids, and it was egg flower soup and pineapple spareribs and egg foo yong and everything with a glossy sheen about it. Marion had not eaten so much since her wedding day, and she couldn’t help but think about how long she and the girls could live on just the cost of this one frilly meal.
She had not told Louise about her evening plans. She had in fact openly lied, claiming she had to stay home and complete her transcriptions. The way Louise talked about Elsie Nettle, the way Joe Lanigan was dodging her—Marion knew she shouldn’t be doing this, knew it was stirring things up that were already unsettled and dire. But Joe, but Joe…There were things he wanted and she felt so long past saying no to anything.
Joe ordered Sue Sin tea for everyone, even when Elsie spoke of wanting to try oolong, and that’s when Marion knew the Sue Sin was spiked, but she was sure Elsie wouldn’t know and she thought the poor girl must be wondering why her cheeks burned so hot and why her words kept coming out in long taffy twists. By the time the salt almonds and fortune cakes came, Marion snatched the girl’s teacup away and Joe saw her do it and winked at her.
She had to admit that it was all very gay, though, and Joe paid them each so much attention, but Marion even more. He told jokes and funny stories about the pharmacy customers, the whining toothachers and nervous mamas and the blossom-nosed lawyer with the clove breath, and then he kept saying he was going to order more food and Marion and Elsie kept laughing and holding their stomachs and begging him to stop, and he would twirl his hand in the air, threatening to summon the waiters, and the girls would shake their heads wildly and make him promise, no more food, no more food.
Marion could see that Elsie was having such a time and that she was admiring of Joe Lanigan. As the last plates were cleared, he reached out his stiff white napkin and put it to her cheek where the faintest dot of orange glaze rested, and Marion watched as he ran his fingers, thumb along her cherried lower lip, and grinned at her. Elsie turned five colors deeper and Marion put her hat on and said it was time to go.
Joe laughed that Marion was stricter than a schoolmarm, wasn’t she, and surely they had time for a drive in his automobile, all three of them catching a whisper of breeze, wouldn’t that be a wonderful way to digest and round off the wonderful evening?
Elsie supposed it would and Marion looked at Joe, who only laughed, and when they pushed together in the front seat of his car she could feel Elsie’s excitement radiating off of her, almost a burning thing, and she did not know how it made her feel.
JOE WAS DRIVING THEM WESTWARD, toward the thin ribbon of river and the promise of moving air, but before he reached the far end of town, he made two sharp turns and they ended up on Hussel Street and the girls’ bungalow.
“Mr. Lanigan,” Marion said, “I wonder what you have in mind.”
“I’m just going to make a quick stop to Nurse Mercer. I promised to deliver some medicine for her roommate.”
“Isn’t that a kindness,” Marion said to Elsie, an edge slipping into her voice in spite of herself. “Owns four pharmacies and still makes his own deliveries.”
“My, you’re starting to sound like Nurse Mercer herself,” Joe said, grinning, as he shut off the car.
“That is very kind.” Elsie beamed, oblivious, and Marion tried to keep her head. She knew this was not a good idea. She knew without knowing all the reasons why Louise and Ginny would not like this. It was something she felt, a pressure in her throat.
“You two can stay here,” Joe assured them. “I won’t tell them they’re missing our fun little party.”
He was inside for a moment when Louise’s russet head suddenly popped up along the car’s passenger window, making Marion nearly jump from her seat.
“What’s doing, kids?” Louise piped, reaching through the window and embracing Marion, tugging at her curls.
Marion looked for signs of ire, signs of anything, but Louise just grinned at her, at them both, Elsie nearly bouncing in her seat, having such fun.
Trying for a smile light as air, Marion said, “You know Elsie, the new nurse and new to town.”
“And she’s getting the special top-o’-the-line Joe Lanigan tour,” Louise said, reaching past Marion and pinching Elsie’s blushy cheek as if they were old chums.
“Hello,” Elsie said, smiling.
“Hello yourself, puss.” Louise grinned.
“Mr. Lanigan gave you your medicine?” Elsie said.
“That he did, whip-poor-will. That he did. Soon enough,” she said, “he’ll be giving you yours.”
TEN MINUTES LATER, in the car, Joe was laying his hand on Elsie, very light, and Elsie looked over at Marion and Marion did not know what to do, so she just began chattering to Elsie even as she saw Joe Lanigan’s hand on Elsie’s leg, just resting there, just resting. Marion could very nearly feel the fluttery heat coming off Elsie. Oh, the poor thing could hardly manage it. She had no idea what was happening, but her head felt funny and maybe it was all the tea?
All the while Joe was talking gaily about the new houses being built on the northeast corner of town. Now it was nothing but desert dust, but in two years it would be filled with families and businesses and prosperity. Marion could not truly listen, Elsie’s face so close to hers, so confused and unsure, her blushful face near bursting, cherry beamed. Marion wanted to soothe her, whisper tangled assurances in her ear, but how could she when she was hand-holding her into such a dark, abominable breach.
It was three miles or so from town when Joe stopped the automobile in a dim patch of cleared field. The night air grit-gleaming the plundered left-behinds—brown glass shards, foil and rusty rinds of Sterno tin, a hobo camp ransacked, burned flat.
“Marion, I’m going to show Elsie where the new store will be once these houses go up. Would you like to walk a ways with us and see it as well?”
“Oh, I don’t think so, Joe,” she said, and she felt her head shake back and forth hard. “But if you’re longer than five minutes I shall scream.” As she said this, something pressed, rose up in her throat and she made Joe meet her eyes and feel it. He did feel it, but he was so hard to surprise.
“She’s afraid of rattlesnakes,” Joe confided to Elsie, whose hand he took as Marion moved to let her past.
Elsie looked back at her as Joe escorted her into the brush.
She looked back at Marion with a face darling as a puny chick and she was biting that petal-pink lip of hers and her eyes were filled with heat and fear. Marion could almost hear her little pullet heart beating.
IN THE CAR, Marion sat and touched the worn spot on her dress and thought of any number of things. The time, age thirteen, she rubbed her cheeks with beet juice before school and Mrs. Pace called her a Magdalen and made her stand with her dress over her head in the yard. The way the wallpaper gaped in the Carson City rooming house where she and Dr. Seeley had resided for three months while he awaited the final judgment of another state licensing board. The time Louise’s fingers danced along little points of hair at Marion’s ears, temples and the middle of the forehead and said, These are the five points of Venus, Marion, did you know? And Ginny piped up, I think you forgot one.
Had it been five minutes? She was not sure, but she thought suddenly of Elsie’s downy cheek trembling and she hated herself, she hated herself.
She opened the car door and got out, slamming it as thunderously as she could, and made to start walking, made to start running.