Miss Sandercock asked us to write essays telling four important things to do in an air raid but I couldn’t write a word. I just sat there watching the pieces of dust float around in the sun that was streaming through the window. I remembered what Mr. Schmoyer had told us about how most of the particles that float around in the air are dead skin cells. I figured most of the dead skin cells floating around that day were mine. The sunnier it got, the deader I felt.
At the bell, the kids handed in their papers and left but I just sat there. Miss Sandercock looked at me and asked, “Is there something wrong, Nancy?” The bright white winter sun glimmered on her pearls and her auburn hair.
I couldn’t talk. I tore a piece of lined paper out of my Indian Chief tablet and scribbled on it, “Miss Sandercock, I need help. A man has moved in with my mom and I hate it. It’s making me sick. Help me, please. Don’t talk to me about it. I can’t talk about it. Write me back a note, please. Please, Miss Sandercock.”
Dancing the Dark
Part Two
6
CORA SAYERS DOWLING, 1943
Cora sat at her usual table by the window, the white winter sun shining in on her like a spotlight. The tavern was quiet, with just Cora, Floyd the bartender, and a couple of afternoon regulars playing dice and griping about the war and the rations and the blackouts, guys who had been deferred, were 4-F or too old to go.
Cora took out a picture of Walt in his uniform and ran a fingertip around his jaw line, wanting to feel his rough strength on her cheeks and thighs and chest. She missed him something awful. Having Nancy come to live with her would help. Would keep her from getting too blue in the evening or from getting too friendly with some of the lonely soldier boys who were always coming into the tavern. It was hard, there were so many of them. Good-looking boys who’d kid around and tell Cora she was as swell a blond as Betty Grable. There’d been temptations, she didn’t mind admitting it.
She lit up an Old Gold and sipped a cup of coffee. Cora never drank until 5 p.m. She had her standards. The steam from the coffee and the smoke from the cigarette swirled around her head. Her blue eyes took on a dreamy look and her cherry red lips puckered as she assessed her place in the scheme of things.
“I could have been a movie star,” she thought. “I’m pretty enough; I have the figure.” Cora didn’t mind bragging, never had any patience with the holier-than-thou girls she’d grown up with, girls who’d coo, “Who, me?” anytime anybody paid them a compliment. And what did it ever get them? A lifetime of covered-dish suppers and husbands with potbellies and hemorrhoids.
Cora and Walt had aspirations. After the war, Walt planned to try out for the Secret Service. He knew a guy who had gone all the way to being a bodyguard to the President. Walt would love that. Cora too.
The tavern door opened and Blanche, another war wife, whirled in, waving a letter.
“Jack says he got cigarettes and gum I sent,” Blanche gushed, plunking her purse and a newspaper on the table. “He says one boy in his company passed around some pecans from his mother’s farm. He says it was like eating a steak dinner, he’s so sick of rations.”
“Oh, Walt complains too,” Cora cut in. “He says when my burnt cookies start tasting good I know how bad things are.”
“That Walt, he’s something, isn’t he?” Blanche laughed. “A real Jack Benny.”
“Yeah. As long as those Mama-mias—those Eye-talian women with their big bozooms and their spicy spaghetti don’t start looking too good to him.”
“Oh, Cora, you don’t have to worry. You and Walt are a real team.”
Cora looked down and twirled the ashtray. “Well, you never know. I hear things are the worst in the artillery. The boys don’t get to change their underwear for weeks. Don’t sleep in a bed for months. Who knows? They get a leave, go into some town, get cleaned up. Who knows what mischief they get into?”
Blanche frowned, then smiled as though she decided to put it out of her mind. “Did you get a letter this week?”
Cora stretched her hands out to inspect the cherry red nail polish. “No,” she said slowly, “But you know how the V-mail is. You don’t get anything for awhile and then it’s five letters at once.” She lifted her chin and lit another Old Gold.
“Yeah I know.” Blanche looked hesitant for a second, then put the letter into her purse and spread the newspaper out on the table. “Hey, good news. Remember the charm school I told you about?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the paper says that if you sign up this week, you get one lesson free. Look.”
Cora tilted her head forward to see, her silky yellow hair sliding down over her forehead on one side as she read. “Capricorn Charm School. Be a Model or Look Like One. February Special. One Free Lesson with the Six-Month Charm Course.” The ad went on. “Whether you know it or not, you model every day of your life. Somebody is watching you. Somebody is remembering what you do and say.”
Cora leaned toward Blanche, who smelled like Joy cologne. “Are you going to sign up?”
“I might. Not that I’ll ever really be a model.” Blanche lowered her eyes, her lashes forming a fetching black fringe on her cheeks. “I’m probably not pretty enough.”
Cora sighed.
“But if I had more poise—see here, it says the course helps build poise—Jack could be really proud of me when he comes home. I could entertain. We could invite the mucky mucks from the company. You know how important it is for a man, being a gracious hostess for him.”
Cora narrowed her eyes at Blanche. She was younger, with her striking violet eyes in a creamy face, but Cora was prettier. If Blanche could go to charm school, damn it, so could she. She could build more poise and help Walt get ahead with the Secret Service. If she helped herself get ahead, too, all the better. Why work in a music store all her life? Cora looked out the window and squinted into the sun.
She pictured President Roosevelt singling Walt out. “That young man there,” the President would say. “That’s the one I want for a bodyguard. The one with the beautiful blond wife. Who is she anyway? She must be a model.”
How much did the course cost? The ad didn’t say. Cora had her allotment and her salary from the morning job at the record store. Even a part-time salary added up. She could pass for a lot younger—twenty two or twenty three. Nobody would guess she was already thirty.
Cars sputtered across the street. A clutch ground. The nurses and orderlies from the day shift at the hospital were heading home.
Blanche looked out. “Oh, is it that late? I gotta go. Jack’s mom is coming to dinner.” She rolled her eyes. “I swear that woman can spot dust two rooms away.”
Cora grinned. “I’ll hang onto the ad, one less thing to clutter up your place.”
She moved to the bar and perched on a stool. “Can you believe this?” she asked Floyd, pointing to a news story. “An aircraft plant sent home fifty-three girls for wearing sweaters on the job, complained sweaters were too sexy.”
Floyd shook his head and told Cora he was glad The Tune Time Record Shop didn’t have any such cockamamie rules. “We don’t need Ann Sheridan when we got our own sweater girl right here,” he kidded.
Cora rubbed her hand down the sleeve of her coral boucle sweater and beamed at Floyd in appreciation. But she felt uneasy, too. It didn’t seem right, sending the girls home. Why not send the guys home for ogling the girls when they had war work to do?
She glanced at her watch, looked up and shot Floyd a dazzling smile. “So it’s about that time. I’ll have the usual.”
“You got it.” Floyd poured a generous jigger of bourbon into a highball glass decorated with frosted strawberries and topped it off with a bubbly splash of Seven-Up. He worked underneath a four-color poster that showed an American flag and urged, “Zap the Japs Off the Map.”
He set the Seven and Seven in front of Cora, who was now hunched over the Capricorn Charm School ad.
“So when is that niece of yours coming to stay?”
Cora looked up. “Oh, this weekend. She’s coming this weekend.” She sipped her drink and nodded her head. “It’ll be good, having company.” She smiled again, but thinner. “Nancy’s a good kid. She writes poems, you know.”
“Is that so?” Floyd rubbed the inside of a shot glass with a stained rag, then carried some glasses to the other end of the bar.
Cora thought back. Things had happened fast after Nancy’s English teacher had called a social welfare agency and explained, “The child came to me in a state of trauma.” The overburdened social workers had asked if there was a responsible relative the girl could live with until things blew over and that had led to Cora who’d been more than happy to oblige. In fact, she had been feeling a little guilty that she hadn’t been looking after Georgia and Nancy as much as Mama would have wanted. Taking Nancy in would make up for lost time.
Floyd returned. “So I hope that doesn’t mean you’re gonna make yourself scarce around here,” he said, “get all tied up with PTA meetings and peanut butter sandwiches.”
“Me?” Cora laughed her husky laugh. “Nah, I’ll bring Nancy along. She’ll get a kick out of it here. She’s debonair for a kid. She’ll be thirteen next month. We’ll have a lot of laughs. Just start polishing up your Shirley Temples.”
Fortunately, the social welfare people hadn’t thought to ask where Cora spent her evenings—never thought to question anyone who might say, “Oh, Cora, yeah. She’s one of the regulars at Jolly Jack’s. Lots of fun. A real looker, too. The GIs love her.” The folks at the social welfare office had had trouble enough handling family turmoil in five counties—trouble enough finding homes for kids like Harold Kessler over in Snyder’s Knob who had threatened to kill his parents with an axe after he had chopped holes in the walls and floors and demolished all the doors of their house. Nancy’s case was small stuff. A disgruntled kid. An uppity schoolmarm saying the girl should be moved out of an unfit home. Small stuff. The hearing officers—a big blond who smelled like cats and a red-nosed man with a pock-marked face—had been thrilled to learn there was a married aunt with a spare room and upstanding habits. The rosy-nosed man had particularly noticed Cora working a Reader’s Digest Word Power column as she waited for their interview. “Oh, I do it every month,” Cora had said cheerily. “I think it improves the mind, don’t you?” After that, everything was just paperwork.
Cora sank into bed a tiny bit tipsy. She’d been trying to go easy on the booze now that Walt was gone. She’d probably do better when Nancy moved into the spare room.
“A spare room,” she whispered into the night. Stripes of light from automobiles driving by on Fairlawn Lane crept across the bedroom wall like ghosts.
The house creaked. That’s what the nursery had been reduced to. A spare room. A pain zigzagged through Cora’s chest as she thought of her two lost babies, little Lily and little Beth. She’d given them names even though she’d never known if they were girls or boys.
A car stopped, its headlights flooding a wall of Cora’s bedroom like a movie screen. A car door slammed shut with a thud. Cora winced. Feet crunched on the cinders as someone walked across the street. Cora closed her eyes and thought of lying in the cinders, thought about the awful night as though maybe this time she might make more sense of it.
Cora carries little Beth with sunny confidence, already five months along and plump as a peach—well beyond the dangerous three months when she’d lost poor Lily two years earlier. Walt jokes about her cravings. “Pickles and ice cream,” he kids. “The little woman likes to wake me up at 2 a.m. to get her pickles and ice cream.” He smiles, shakes his head, and everyone grins in commiseration.
They find a flat closer to Walt’s postal route—a bright white-walled place with four rooms, a washing machine, and a yard with a tire swing tied to a tree. Perfect for a kid. The only problem is the price—$10 a month more than the old apartment. Cora convinces Walt they can swing it with her savings from the Tune Time Record Store. She’ll have to quit for a while, of course, but she’ll go back. She’d get bored sitting home.
Walt resists at first, but Cora understands. He likes being the breadwinner. His own mother always worked and she browbeat his dad like a woodpecker going at a post. Walt always swore he wouldn’t end up like his father.
Eventually, though, he agrees to the move. Cora suspects what swings him around in the end is Jolly Jack’s being just down the road. Walt had been pulled over a couple of times for driving under the influence.
The trouble begins with a visit from Walt’s mother, Estelle. Estelle makes snide remarks about Cora’s housekeeping and carps at Walt over everything from his pompadour to his habit of folding the newspaper with the sports page in front. By the afternoon she leaves, Cora and Walt are limp. They go for a few at Jolly Jack’s, then across the street to dinner at a small cafe they haven’t been to before. They order clam chowder, roast pork with gravy, apple sauce, and creamed corn. Everything goes well until the owner brings the check.
Walt looks it over and frowns. “Hey buddy,” he booms, “you made a mistake. This bill says two packages of crackers. Two cents each. You gotta be kidding. Nobody charges for crackers. Crackers come with the soup.”
“Well, no,” the owner says. He is a large man with curly hair and a belly round as a beach ball underneath his stained white apron. “I asked if you wanted crackers. You said yes. If you hadn’t a wanted them, I wouldn’t a given them to you. I wouldn’t a charged you.”
“You gotta be kidding.” Walt’s voice rises, his face as red as a stop sign. “You’re trying to rob us. This is robbery. That’s what it is. Who eats soup without crackers?”
“Well, a lot of people. You’d be surprised,” the man says, raising his voice to show Walt he isn’t intimidated. “The places that give you crackers, they just charge more for the soup. You don’t get any choice. Here you get a choice.” The man has loose pouches of skin underneath his eyes that jiggle when he talks.
“You bastard, you’re making that up.” Walt pounds his fist on a rubber mat on the counter. A flurry of toothpicks flies up into his face and makes him madder. “If you think I’m gonna fall for a cock and bull story like that, you’re dumber than you look.” He reaches across the counter and pushes the man, makes a fist and waves it threateningly. “If you think I’m some goddamn sissy from the sticks that you can pull a trick like this on, think again.” Several customers in the cafe turn to watch.
“Walt, please, let’s just pay it and go,” Cora pleads. She puts her hand on Walt’s arm but he shoves it away with a jerk and gives her a dirty look.
“Whose side are you on, anyway?” he spits.
Cora looks scared. “Yours, Walt, you know that. I’m always on yours, but it’s only four cents. Let’s just pay it and go.”
“Only four cents?” Walt’s voice booms. “Look who’s talking. Miss Big Time Spender. Had to have a fancy new apartment. Had to have a hotshot washing machine.” He pushes Cora. She grabs the counter for balance.
“Christ, if you had your way, we’d end up in the poorhouse,” he yells.
The cafe owner looks at Cora’s swollen belly. “Look, buddy, let’s forget it. It’s been a busy night. Maybe I didn’t make it clear about the crackers, that they were extra. Here, gimmee the bill. I’ll take the four cents off. No hard feelings.”
Walt steps back, rolls his body to establish equilibrium, burps, then opens the door and walks out without paying. Cora gives the owner a helpless, pleading look and follows.
She remembers only snatches of what happens after that. She remembers Walt’s big voice imitating her, saying “Only four cents,” in a loud falsetto as she runs up Fairlawn Lane behind him, awkward with her weight. She remembers that he stops all of a sudden, swings around, and then she feels a pain in her chest and hears a thud like a sack of potatoes being dropped and tastes the bitter, dusty cinders.
Two days later she hemorrhages. It might have happened anyway, the doctor insists. God works in mysterious ways. It was unfortuna
te that she’d tripped and fallen, but she shouldn’t blame herself. “Give her some extra TLC,” he tells Walt. “It’s a touchy time. She needs some extra TLC.”
Walt tries. He never actually apologizes—that’s not in him—but he dries the dishes and stops teasing Cora about her cooking, and for a couple of weeks he rubs her back at night.
But things change. Without the jokes and the wisecracks, there’s a distance between them. Cora starts drinking more, partly to forget the lost babies, partly because something else begins nagging at her. Sometimes when Walt roughhouses (that’s what she calls it) she feels an enormous thrill, an excitement that she likes. He’s never all that brutish. He might push a little, maybe squeeze her breasts too hard or twist her arm to pin her down. But he stops before he does any serious damage, then he treats her like a queen. He tells her how beautiful she is, how lucky he is to have her. Sometimes when the days and weeks become too humdrum and Cora begins to wonder if their dreams are just pie in the sky, the tussling and the making up break the monotony, remind Cora she and Walt aren’t ordinary, they’re special. At least, that’s what she’s always thought, but ever since she lost little Beth, she’s started to wonder.
The Capricorn Charm School was located on the second floor of a dingy downtown building above a photo studio with pictures of GIs in the window and a sign that said “Give Her Something to Remember You By.” Cora had stopped by at noon after her shift at the Tune Time Record Shop, telling herself it couldn’t hurt to take a look around. The school had a reception area with gray carpeting, a gray settee, and a table piled with stacks of Vogue and Mademoiselle. Behind the settee, a large plate-glass mirror was well lighted so that it brought out pimples and blackheads and enlarged pores that a girl might otherwise miss.
“This could be fun,” Cora thought, clutching yesterday’s newspaper, blood pulsing in her fingertips. She straightened her pleated skirt and rearranged her powder blue sweater and pearls. “I can probably pass on a few pointers to Nancy. She’s been having a rough time of it. She could do with a little glamour in her life. Mama would like that. And who knows? I might even make it big.”
Rhonda the Rubber Woman Page 6