* * *
The elevator was all the way up at the twelfth floor, so I left my luggage with the doorman and carried only my lingerie boxes up three flights of stairs to our apartment. I heard a door slam and when I reached the second floor a woman passed me on the stairs. I knew almost everyone in our building, but I was sure I hadn’t seen her before. She caught my eye for a second, then looked away and hurried down the stairs leaving a trail of Shalimar perfume behind her.
Our apartment was like a large three-pronged fork. The front door opened into a rectangular living room/dining room, and shooting off that main room was our bedroom, the kitchen and an office/extra bedroom, which we thought would be a nursery one day. The rooms were without doors when we moved in and we had intended to add them at some point, but we both grew to love the openness of the apartment, how light from the bedroom windows streamed into the living room and bounced off the pale yellow walls, so we left it that way.
I hadn’t been home in three weeks and the smell hit me the moment I opened the door. Fresh cigarette smoke and Shalimar. I held on to my bags at the door and I spotted two martini glasses on the coffee table, one with a single olive left in the bottom, the other with jarring pink lipstick smeared on the rim. Harry hadn’t been expecting me to arrive until after six o’clock and Doreen, our cleaning lady, usually came on Wednesday afternoons. He must have thought she would get there before me.
That nervous excitement I had felt in my chest all the way from Regine Brenner’s to my front door suddenly vanished and a sickening dread took its place, tightening my throat, my chest, and winding down into the pit of my stomach. On several occasions over the past year I had wondered, privately, if Harry had been unfaithful, but I’d pushed those thoughts to the very back of my mind. I never dared to acknowledge my fears. I knew deep down that our relationship was in trouble. I thought he might feel he was failing as a husband, unable to impregnate me, but could that really drive a man into another woman’s arms? One comment from Dr. Lombardi that it could very well be Harry’s fault that I wasn’t yet with child and he had to go out and prove that he was still a capable lover. Was that what this was about? Or was this just par for the course? Was this how he envisioned marriage, a wife at home, mistresses on the side? A new, more interesting, different-looking woman when I became too familiar? I felt sick. I had to sit down.
Harry had always been successful, as a child and as an adult. He had prospered, running a successful trading company when many in the financial industry had failed. With help from his family, and especially from his father, who passed his trading company down to Harry, he had been a success his entire life. And here he was unable to perform the one duty that almost anyone could do—rich or poor, successful or down and out. Any man could make love with his new, young wife and impregnate her. I understood how this could cut a deep emotional wound, especially coming from a family where there was an expectation that he carry on the family name. But of course we never discussed it. To speak of it would have made it real, and if it were real we wouldn’t be able to go on; the resentment would be out in the open. So we kept on with the game and acted as if it still might happen. I still held out hope for a child, however unlikely it sometimes seemed, but Harry had clearly given up on us.
* * *
I remembered our first night in our new apartment. We lay in bed, he stretched out on his back, with me leaning on his chest, my face inches from his.
“God, I’m glad I love you as much as I do,” he had said, putting one hand behind his head.
“Well, I should hope so,” I said.
“I’ve seen so many couples, friends of my parents and such, who just seem so unhappy in their relationships. More than that, they seem to despise each other, but they stay together because they have to.”
“No one has to stay together if they are not in love,” I said, so sure of myself, so sure back then that love was more important than anything else.
“Beatrice, people like us don’t get divorced.”
“People like us?” I asked.
“Okay, people like me, my family, who are now also your family, so yes, people like us.” He reached for a cigarette. “It’s not done in our circles.”
My people—grocers, steelworkers, even business owners like my father—we could divorce if we really wanted to. But the idea had never come up, my parents had been so devoted to each other. Besides, everything had happened so fast and so urgently between Harry and me, there wasn’t even room in my mind for the thought that we might not last.
“I don’t think it’s anything that we will have to worry about,” I said, playing with the hairs on his chest.
“I don’t either,” he said, “and that’s why I’m so goddamn happy I met you.” He lifted me up and sat me on his toned stomach. “I knew you were something special when I first saw you, sitting at your little desk, in your pretty little frock, scribbling down notes for that editor, Savage.”
I remember thinking that I had felt more important than that when I was Mr. Savage’s secretary. I liked working and making my own money, and thinking I was making a difference in that grumpy editor’s day. I even had a little game with myself every morning when I brought him his coffee. I’d be determined to make him smile, and I’d keep track of it in a little notebook. Even if he just curled one side of his lip in recognition, I’d count that as a smile. If I got four smiles out of a five-day workweek, I’d treat myself to tea at Lady Gray’s on the weekend. In some small way I’d convinced myself I played a part in getting the magazine out the door each month, but maybe I had just imagined that sense of being part of something.
“I’m glad I don’t have to work there anymore,” I said. And then Harry kissed me, holding me a little too tight around my chest, but I didn’t stop him; it was as if he needed me more than anything. I was so sure then that I had been given this gift, this man whom I loved so much and who loved me, I was sure it was some kind of consolation from God for taking my brother away from me.
But now to see firsthand the remnants of his affairs, left like a sloppy criminal, spilled out across our apartment, made me feel physically sick. How foolish I’d been, only now to be confronted with cold evidence, not in some hotel room, not in some other woman’s bed, but in my own home, which I had created for him, where I had picked out the colors for the walls, I had gone to Macy’s and selected the fabrics for the curtains and I had selected sheets and pillows for our bed as finishing touches to what I hoped would be a perfect home.
The doorman knocked at the door and delivered my weekend bag from downstairs. I asked him to send Doreen away when she arrived; I didn’t want her here cleaning when I felt like this and I was convinced that Harry believed she would come and clean up his evidence. If I hadn’t arrived early to surprise him she would have known that there had been another woman in my apartment while I was in Montauk, she would have washed those martini glasses, she would have washed those sheets, and then I’d have to face her again and again and she’d be burdened with this secret. I carried my bags into the bedroom and set them down on the floor.
The bed was a tangled mess of sheets. I stripped it, placing the sheets in the hamper and making the bed with a fresh set from the linen closet. I emptied the ashtrays on the dining table into the garbage, noting the same horrific pink lipstick stamped on the tips of at least five cigarettes and feeling the heat from one of them. I washed the martini glasses and set them upside down on the kitchen counter to dry. In the bathroom I dusted off our lace demi-curtains and put a bottle of setting lotion, not mine, in the cupboard under the sink. I straightened the pillows on the couch, swept crumbs and dirt from the floor and wiped down the dining table.
I thought of another woman’s skin on our cream-striped couch, her hair in the shower, her bare feet on the floor, and I felt the sudden desire to wander the rooms of our apartment the way some other woman had, as if I too had no care for another woman’s marriage. I wanted to feel that kind of freedom, confidence and power
that some other woman had felt just hours earlier, probably opening the drawers and looking inside, free to roam her lover’s home while he was at work and his wife was summering in Montauk. It was then, after I imagined what it would be like to be the other woman, the woman I’d passed in the stairwell, or the woman at the Manor or the woman in Palm Beach, it was then that I walked back to the bedroom and took the black silk slip from the lingerie bag.
Slowly I unbuttoned my dress and hung it on the back of the door. I removed my girdle and put it in the garbage can as Mrs. Brenner had advised. I stepped out of my underwear and stood naked among the wreckage of our apartment, our marriage, our life. I turned to the long freestanding mirror in the corner of the room and unpinned the rest of my hair, letting it fall around my shoulders any which way it pleased. I stepped into the slip, the one with lace detailing and corset-like ribbon that zigzagged all the way up from the small of my back to my shoulder blades; then I took Dolly’s lipstick out of my bag and painted my lips, big and red and bold. At Regine Brenner’s I had felt beautiful, empowered, as if I were the one who would be the success this time and I would bring Harry up with me. But as I stood there in my own bedroom, amidst his trail of careless, vulgar deceit, I felt like nothing more than one of his whores.
I wanted him to see me dressed that way, even if just as a reminder of what could have been, of what he could no longer have. I knew then that everything had changed between us. Things could never go back to the way they were before.
I wanted to lie on the couch and imagine I were her, whoever she was that day. As I walked past the mirrored wall surrounding the fireplace I saw a smeared handprint. I placed my fingers against the print; it was smaller than Harry’s but ever so slightly larger than mine. I picked up the cleaning rag and was about to wipe it away when the front door swung open.
Harry stood in a pale grey suit, white shirt and the baby-blue striped tie I had given him for his birthday. I’d always thought it made him look so handsome.
“Beatrice, my God, what are you doing here?” he said, stunned. I stood there, barefoot, clad in black lingerie with the cleaning rag in my hand. He looked around the room, his eyes searching for the glasses, the cigarettes, maybe even the single stocking I had found entwined with the bedsheets. His eyes seemed to settle on the kitchen counter, on the upside-down martini glasses.
“Is Doreen still here—”
“I told her not to bother,” I said, my throat dry as if I’d swallowed a box of matches.
He looked at my outfit and I think I saw a look of horror cross his face. “What are you wearing? Why are you—”
I cut him off; it was all too terrible to let him go through with it and finish his sentence. He’d been caught, in our own apartment, on our anniversary. Another failure.
“I thought I’d surprise you.”
His eyes darted to the bedroom, to the made-up bed. “I thought you were on the later train,” he said in almost a whisper.
“Well.” I pressed my lips together, forcing myself to remain composed. “Happy Anniversary, darling.”
He didn’t take one more step toward me; he didn’t even let go of his briefcase. I’d never seen him so crestfallen, so caught out and tangled in his own game. Charming Harry, the one who always remembered everyone’s name and the names of their children. Harry who knew a little about everything in the news, in history, in politics, enough at least to join in every conversation at a cocktail party. This time Harry couldn’t think fast enough to lie.
“So the landlord?” he asked.
“It was all just a lie.”
“Can we talk about this at dinner tonight?” he said, looking for a brief moment as though he needed to lean on the doorframe for support. I had to resist my instinct to run to his side, take the briefcase from him, steer him to the couch and pour him a drink. “I have to get back to the office.”
“Okay,” I said, turning, setting the dirty rag on the end table. “I’ll get changed.”
“I made reservations at The Hurricane Club,” he said, his face serious and his forehead furled.
“I know,” I said. “I’ll be there.”
He made a couple of awkward steps toward me. I shook my head. “Don’t bother,” I said, and I looked at the ground. He stopped, turned slowly, then walked out the door.
* * *
Sally-Jane came over and fixed my hair as planned. I had been crying and my eyes were red and puffy. She went to the kitchen and returned with ice wrapped in a cotton cloth; she placed it on my eyes and had me lie down on the couch, my hair hanging over the side. She brushed it for a good fifteen minutes, humming a little song. I wondered if this was part of Dolly’s daily hair routine or if it was just something that she knew I needed. When I got up, Sally-Jane set me with curlers and started powdering my face, penciling in my eyebrows and rouging my cheeks.
That night Harry arrived at the restaurant before I did. When I walked up to the table he was sitting with another couple. He stood and kissed me on the cheek as if nothing had happened. “Beatrice, darling, you don’t mind if Putman and his wife, Bess, join us, do you? I bumped into them at the bar.”
“Of course not,” I said, thankful that I didn’t have to sit through an evening of dinner alone with Harry, even if it was our wedding anniversary.
12
The next morning I had to force myself to open my eyes and face the day, but once awake I wanted to get out of that apartment. Harry had already left for work; he must have tiptoed around, because I hadn’t heard a thing. I quickly dressed, repacked my bag and left.
I had promised to meet Dolly at the hat factory. She wanted to show me her father’s empire as well as her fall collection in the works, and she had offered to design a hat for my return to the city that September. When we made the plans on the train in from Montauk I’d been excited, but now everything had changed. I was sure she’d ask me about the night before, and though part of me wanted to tell her the truth, I knew I couldn’t. How could I sit at a dinner table with her and Clark and know that they knew what was going on behind the scenes in my marriage? If I told her, I’d never be able to keep up the façade; I’d crack. My head was throbbing from all the wine I’d allowed myself to drink at dinner and my body felt like a lead weight, but I knew that if I canceled on Dolly she’d be sorely disappointed and she’d suspect that my evening with Harry had not gone as planned.
I took a taxi to 39th Street and Fifth Avenue and walked toward Sixth. It was only ten o’clock but it was already hot and muggy, the heat warming up the garbage cans left out on the street and filling the air with a sour, pungent smell. The sidewalk felt sticky under my shoes and a worker from a delicatessen poured a bucket full of soapy water on the sidewalk and scrubbed with a wide broom. The stream of dirty water ran into the littered street, picking up cigarette butts and scraps of old newspaper along the way. I walked past a vacant lot with a row of makeshift houses built from sheets of cardboard and bits of wood. Two men sat on wooden milk crates smoking; another read a newspaper and two children in filthy clothes played in the gutter. I gave them each a nickel and they ran into the lot, kicking up dust behind them. I crossed to the other side looking for 63 West 39th.
The tiny elevator opened directly into the factory and I stepped inside. It was loud in there; the sounds of a large, whirring fan, the tapping of a hammer, filled the large loft space. It felt like a furnace. Metal shelving lined the walls, stacked with wooden hat molds of different shapes and sizes. There were shelves dedicated to crowns—rounded bowlers, indented fedoras—and others stacked high with large circular molds for brims: some wide, some narrow, some burned black from use, others fresh and white and newly carved. Workbenches piled with sheets of wool felt blocked my view as I took a few steps into the space and looked for Dolly.
To the far left, seven men, silhouetted by the light coming in from the windows, stood in a line at a workbench with their backs to me. Across from them, where heat seemed to be emanating from irons and what loo
ked like a small kiln, I saw Dolly with a pair of goggles on her head. She was working shoulder to shoulder with an older man, the sleeves ripped off his shirt, his ebony skin glistening from the heat. As I approached I saw that Dolly was wearing culottes, a blouse and a bandana wrapped around her hair. She looked dangerously modern.
“Darling,” she said, pushing her goggles onto her forehead. “You made it.”
She kissed me on the cheek and her skin felt hot and damp. Taking me by the hand, she led me to where she’d been working. “This is Blue—he has a workshop downstairs.” The man nodded his head in my direction. “Blue is our mold maker. He carves and shapes the molds, so we can literally dream up any shape and style we want here and he turns them into tangible reality.”
Dolly took me around the factory showing me where they steamed the fabric onto the mold, ironed the crown for smoothness and stiffened the brim. She was so knowledgeable and comfortable in the factory, and, even in a workroom full of men, she fit right in.
“You certainly know your way around,” I said.
“Oh, I practically grew up here. Daddy would run the show and work with the guys over there”—she pointed to the back corner—“and my mother would sew and trim.” She looked around and I could feel her sense of pride. “These are my uncles.”
“Really?”
“Well, not really my uncles, but they feel like family. I grew up with them.”
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