“But we can arrange something, I suppose,” he said finally. “I’ll make a reservation.”
“All right,” I said, clasping my hands together, trying to seem enthusiastic.
“You don’t know how it is in the city when the women are gone. You’d think summer months would be carefree, but there are business dinners set up left and right; everyone’s getting their work obligations in now while their children and women are out of the way and they can concentrate.”
I resisted the urge to backtrack, to say, of course, we should just celebrate the following weekend in Montauk. I had to actually hum a little song in my head to refrain from talking myself and him out of it, but I had been looking forward to the idea of going to the city ever since Dolly mentioned it. A glimpse at glamorous Dolly at work in her factory had sounded like fun.
“So we’ll make it work,” he said, and then almost as if he had to force himself to say it, “That would be nice.”
It had been months since we’d been together as man and wife should be. I remember when it had all changed, back in February. It was cold. I had lain awake staring at the ceiling waiting to hear the front door creak open. He’d stumbled in drunk long after midnight and he fell heavily into bed. He didn’t say anything, just fumbled around beneath my nightgown, clumsily feeling my body with his hands, cupping my breasts and pulling at them, reaching down between my legs, then pushing himself into me from behind. He didn’t kiss me on the lips. He didn’t look at me or speak to me. I didn’t see his face and when he finished he groaned into my ear, then he rolled over and went to sleep.
We didn’t speak of it in the morning. I didn’t even know if he remembered, but that’s how we made love from then on. When he spoke about going to Montauk that first time, saying we should start fresh, I thought he wanted to start over with love and tenderness. But now I wasn’t feeling so sure. He’d made no attempts to woo me into his arms. I hadn’t tried either, to be fair. The lack of intimacy began to feel strangely normal, but I knew it wasn’t right; it wasn’t the way a husband and wife should be.
I decided to go to the city that week and make it special, to remind him of what we used to have. I’d get Dolly to help me.
11
Dolly and I settled in on the train. Her assistant, Sally-Jane, traveled with us. We’d barely left Amagansett when Dolly called to her to fetch the lunch box.
“You know, I don’t even think I’m hungry yet. I just finished breakfast an hour ago.”
Dolly raised her eyebrows and smirked. “Who said anything about lunch?”
Sally-Jane took a small rectangular tablecloth out of a picnic basket and draped it over the table between Dolly and me. On it she placed two wineglasses, two small white china plates and two rolled cloth napkins. From another bag she pulled a small silver bucket engraved with Dolly’s and Clark’s initials.
“I’ll be right back with the ice, ma’am.”
“When I travel I like to travel in style,” Dolly said.
I laughed. “Where will she find ice on a train?”
“The gents in the fish cars love her; they have boxes and boxes of ice back there.”
At the back of the passenger train, she told me, were several cars that the Montauk fishermen had loaded up with fresh catches from their early morning trips, and they were sending them off to the city to sell.
Sure enough, Sally-Jane returned to the first-class passenger car with a bucketful of ice that she placed on the table’s edge closest to the window; then she opened a half bottle of Champagne Montrachet, filled our glasses and rested the bottle in the ice bucket.
Dolly put her nose in the glass and took a deep breath. “Oh, that’s good, Clark sure does know a good bottle when he sees one. Go on, Sally-Jane; you pour yourself a little glass, too,” she said.
“No thank you, ma’am; you know how the good stuff goes to my head, even the tiniest sip.” She untied several brown paper parcels and placed a selection of cheese slices, cured meats and breads on a serving plate in the center of the table.
“I have mixed feelings about trains,” Dolly said. “On the one hand, they saved us; on the other hand, they almost killed us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, remember at the Golden Cup I told you Clark had suffered a heart attack; that’s because he invested all his money in the railroad business. It worked out very well for us in the end, financially, but the stress almost killed him.”
“Oh goodness, Dolly,” I said. “How terrible.”
“He’s fine now, thank God. But I’m convinced it was the railroad that did it to him, the stress of so much of his money tied up in one industry. He should have diversified.” She took a sip of her champagne and leaned back into her seat. “But that’s how my Clark is. He has a one-track mind; when he’s got his heart and mind set on something he’ll go full force until he gets it. That’s how it was with me.”
Clark and Dolly had the kind of relationship one should envy, although you wouldn’t necessarily know it from a distance. They’d been married for six years, but they had that kind of relaxed composure about them that made it seem as though they’d been together all their lives. They both married later in life, Dolly told me, she in her late thirties and Clark heading toward fifty, and they agreed right away it was too late for children.
“I never wanted to get married,” Dolly said, looking out the window, watching the trees fly by. “Not even as a little girl when that was all my friends could think about. I never wanted to be under someone’s thumb, trapped, stuck with the same person for the rest of my days. It sounded like torture to me.”
“So then why did you?” I asked.
“Because I had my fun first.” She smiled and tucked an imaginary stray strand of hair from her immaculately set curls into her hat—a vibrant shade of purple sitting about eight inches tall, with various points and peaks like a bird flapping its wings about to take flight. Only Dolly could wear that headpiece with such ease and confidence.
“I had lovers,” she said, leaning across the table. “I had a lot of lovers,” she said, louder this time, with a look of excitement in her eye.
“Dolly,” I said, blushing, looking around the train car for anyone we might know.
“Oh, Beatrice,” she said, sitting back again, picking up a slice of cheese, “I’m not ashamed, and neither is Clark; that’s why we work so well together. We’ve experienced life; we’ve tasted lust and sex and maybe even a little love in all of its forms. We’ve come together having lived, ready to share, without resentment or regrets or repression.”
“So Clark knows?” I wished we weren’t having this conversation in the first-class train where people were sure to overhear us.
“Of course he knows.” She laughed. “And I’m assuming by the color in your cheeks that Harry is the only man you’ve ever been with, am I right?”
I nodded and she waited for me to go on. “I didn’t have steady company with any gentlemen before Harry.”
“You were so young when you met Harry, it’s perfectly normal.”
“It’s more than that, Dolly. I haven’t told many people this, but I had a brother who died in an accident soon after I started at Vassar.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” She leaned in and placed her hand on mine.
“I never really got over it and I don’t think I ever will, and for a few years after the accident life just stood still. I couldn’t be around people, let alone consider romantic interests. It wasn’t until I met Harry that I began to feel alive again.”
I took several sips of champagne. I wanted to relax; despite the age difference and the apparent difference in experiences, Dolly was the first person who’d spoken to me candidly and I wanted to be honest with her, too.
“Harry and I—” I stopped, I wasn’t sure if I should do this, confide in another woman, an older woman, about our personal life, or lack thereof. Dolly smiled, waiting. “Well, we, we aren’t as close as we could be,” I said, feeling
I owed her some glimpse of truth, since she’d just been so revealing with me.
“You mean you don’t have sex.”
“Dolly!”
“Sorry,” she said in a mock whisper. “So you don’t make love then?”
“I didn’t say that,” I said, regretting my decision to confess. “But no, not as frequently as we once did, and…”
“And?”
“And not as lovingly, or passionately.” I liked Dolly a lot and I admired her frankness and her ability to speak of such things, but I found it very hard to talk openly in a place like this. I looked around for Sally-Jane, perched in the back of the train car on a large trunk. When she caught my eye she immediately stood and walked over to top up our glasses.
“My dear, you are like a chameleon,” Dolly said, leaning over the table and taking my hands in hers. “One minute you are red as a beetroot; the next you are the color of ash. Is all this talk of frolicking making you ill?”
“Of course not,” I said, finishing my wine and picking up a piece of cheese from the plate. “It’s just that I worry sometimes, that’s all, that he’s lost interest or something.”
She looked at me kindly and she seemed to understand.
“Sometimes it can be quite…”
“Quite what?” Dolly asked.
“Well, it’s been a while, but the last time it was as if I could’ve been anyone, just a warm body.” I looked out the window embarrassed that I’d said too much but relieved also for getting it off my chest. “I don’t know; maybe it’s just what happens after being married for a while.”
“The thing is this,” she said. “Men are like animals; they have basic needs. If those needs are not being fulfilled at home they will find gratification elsewhere.”
“Dolly, I’m not suggesting that he’s—”
“I’m not saying you are, but just be aware that your husband has certain primal needs.”
She called to Sally-Jane and tapped our glasses. “Would you mind, darling?” she said. Even though Dolly was always polite and Sally-Jane certainly didn’t seem to mind, I couldn’t help but cringe at Dolly’s gesture. I was raised to roll my sleeves up and get the job done and I could have easily retrieved the bottle and poured it myself, but within seconds our glasses were full again.
Dolly and I had made plans to visit her father’s hat factory together as soon as we arrived in the city. She was going to show me the milliners at work, the wooden molds they used and the new colored wool felts she’d be using in the upcoming season’s line. I was going to have just enough time to freshen up, drop my bags at the apartment and meet Harry for a late dinner. But Dolly changed our plans.
“Let’s see the factory tomorrow. You seem worried about your marriage and I think I can help. Today our first stop will be Regine Brenner’s on Fifty-Seventh Street. It is the best and the only place you should shop for lingerie from now on. And let me assure you, once Regine Brenner is finished with you, your man will never take his eyes off you again.”
I smiled gratefully and suddenly had complete faith in Dolly and this Regine woman. I’d been weighed down with uncertainty about Harry recently, even though I tried to remind myself it was probably all in my head, and I felt relieved to know I was going to do something about it.
“We’ll call Harry’s secretary and make up some excuse why he needs to stop by the apartment this afternoon before dinner, and you can surprise him,” Dolly said. “In nothing but your Regine Brenner.”
“Before dinner?” I asked.
“Yes, sometimes you need to change the routine, shake it up a little. Then, after…”—she paused as if to ensure I understood where we were going with this—“send him out for a martini while you freshen up for dinner. I’ll send Sally-Jane over around six so she can do your hair.”
* * *
A doorman greeted us from the taxi, took our luggage and led us to an elevator inside 50 West 57th Street. We rode up seven floors and the elevator boy pulled back an ornate steel gate to reveal a large showroom. Cloth mannequins were draped with silks and lace in various shades of pale pinks, whites and beige. There was a chaise longue in the center of the room and decorative mirrors reflecting beautiful fabrics from all angles. As we walked into the room to meet Regine Brenner, I caught a glimpse into the back room where ten women worked at sewing machines. Dolly took my hand and squeezed.
“It is wonderful to see you again,” Mrs. Brenner said to Dolly with what sounded like a Russian accent, or maybe it was German. Dolly kissed her on the cheek, then pulled the short, slightly pudgy woman in for a hug. She wore small, round glasses and her hair was pulled into a low bun that was too severe for her face. It was summer and Dolly and I were dressed in cotton day dresses, but Mrs. Brenner wore a dark green skirt suit with a hem that almost touched her ankles and a high-necked blouse.
“This is Mrs. Beatrice Bordeaux, a dear friend of mine, and she’s in need of some extra special lingerie for an extra special occasion.” Dolly winked and clasped her hands.
Mrs. Brenner remained straight faced. “We measure first,” she said, snapping her fingers. She led me into a dressing room the size of my bedroom with long silk curtains, plush carpeting and pale pink roses in tall glass vases on three wooden tables. Once inside she started to unbutton my dress and unfasten my belt, then handed them to a dark-skinned woman who appeared in the dressing room holding a tape measure. I felt naked standing there in nothing but my girdle and panty briefs, and my instinct was to slouch my shoulders and cross my arms over my midsection.
“Stand up straight,” Mrs. Brenner said as she wrapped the tape measure around my hips, my waist and then my chest. I watched her in the mirror feeling like a child being fitted for a school uniform. I had always felt so awkward in front of mirrors, so skinny and boney. In the last few years I had developed a few more curves, but they were slight.
“Why you wear this?” Mrs. Brenner asked, pulling at the fabric of my girdle. The Sears catalogue had promised it would “do wonders for a woman’s hips.”
“To improve my hips?” I said, asking her approval for something I’d been wearing for weeks.
“You don’t have hips,” she said. “You don’t need to flatten; you need to make more voluptuous.” She ran her hands around two imaginary beach balls as if to replicate the perfect, full-figured hips. “You’re not a boy; you are a woman; you need to dress like one.”
She scribbled my measurements down on a piece of paper and spoke in what sounded like a combination of Russian and Spanish to the woman standing behind her, who scurried away to pull some styles from the showroom.
“Yoo-hoo.” Dolly walked into the dressing room with a cigarette in an ebony holder in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other. “Here,” she said, handing me the champagne.
“I put a call out to Harry’s secretary and I’ve arranged for him to be at the apartment at four thirty.”
“What did you tell her?” I asked.
“Oh, something about the landlord, who needs to meet him immediately due to a possible leak in the apartment.”
I frowned; Harry would be furious if he was called out of work for something ridiculous.
“Don’t worry,” Dolly said. “Once you surprise him in something very special he won’t even remember why he’s there. Regine.” She turned her attention to Mrs. Brenner. “She needs something very, very seductive, none of those old-lady gowns I like to sleep in. Also, Beatrice needs some silk slips, ooh, maybe one of those that lace up in the back,” she said, “and short to show off her legs.”
Mrs. Brenner squinted her eyes and stared at my body, turning me around. She sighed. “Not easy,” she said. “She needs meat on her, especially in bosom. And buttock. But legs and waist, good.”
“Oh, honey, I think you look amazing,” Dolly whispered encouragingly as if she didn’t want Mrs. Brenner to hear. “It’s like what Wallis Simpson said in the papers: ‘A woman can never be too rich or too thin.’”
“My mother alw
ays said I was like a bean pole,” I said.
“Well, some say thin is in.”
Mrs. Brenner’s assistant returned with an armful of silky slips, nightgowns and robes. Mrs. Brenner closed the curtain on Dolly and began to dress me.
“This one cami-knickers, all in one combination,” she said as I stepped into a soft pale pink slip that turned into shorter shorts than I would ever wear in public. She pulled it up over my torso and placed the straps on my shoulders. It felt light as air, as if I were wearing nothing at all. The ruching on the hips and the gathered fabric on the chest created an illusion of slight curves on my otherwise straight up-and-down figure. She pulled the fabric tighter at the back. “This better,” she said. “Small waist, so I ask the girls to alter for you.”
The silk against my skin felt even more luxurious than the lingerie Harry bought me for our wedding night, and something about the way it draped in some places and accentuated my figure in others made me feel more womanly than ever. I looked at myself in the mirror and imagined myself standing in front of Harry in this expensive, decadent silk.
Dolly pulled back the curtain, took a long look at me, then turned to Mrs. Brenner. “Do you have it in black?”
“Black?” I asked.
“The pink is too innocent,” she said.
“Only good on some ladies,” Mrs. Brenner said. “You, Mrs. Dolly, yes, black is good; you got the sex for it. But Mrs. Beatrice, I am not sure; we try.” She went out to the showroom and Dolly rummaged through her handbag and pulled out a lipstick in a silver case. She rolled it up, puckered up her lips, instructing me to do the same, then painted my lips a bright, daring red. She then took out some of my hairpins, pulled my hair around my shoulders and left it long and wavy and wild. She stood back and raised her eyebrows in approval.
I left Regine Brenner’s with four beautifully packaged boxes full of camisoles, underwear, slips and robes, a decadently embroidered corset that made my waist even smaller and gave the appearance of hips, and several lace bras in my exact cup size. Mrs. Brenner had even altered several of the garments in the sewing room while Dolly and I waited in the showroom. I received strict instructions not to use Ivory Flakes on the silk, and instructions from Dolly on when to wear each item. She even slipped her half-used red lipstick into my handbag, to be worn with the black silk number later that afternoon when Harry got home from work.
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