The ladies keeled over in hysterics as Madeline brandished a bottle of pure-proof whiskey from behind the counter. “My darlings—the ‘regular’ teas are over there, by the stockings.”
“This one will do just fine for me!” Catherine poured the liquid down her throat. “Now, Madeline, do you have another proper ball gown for me to try on?”
“I do, my dear, as a matter of fact. And I have white gloves for everyone!” Madeline scuttled into the back room and emerged with a box of the long, stretchy gloves. “Do tell me, dear, why is your sister not in attendance this evening?”
Catherine shrugged. “Some issue with that bloke of hers.” She was getting a little fogged over with the spiked tea; despite the early hour, her eyes were turning red.
Madeline patted Catherine’s arm and sauntered over to the front door. “Welcome, ladies!”
More women dashed inside the Starlite. Their hats glittered with freshly fallen snow. The room turned abuzz with a crescendo of conversation: the purging of the personal before the party could begin.
“Wow, look at that!”
A group was convening around Gloria; she had been slinking unnoticed along the edges of the room until someone caught sight of a new mammoth rock on her finger. Gloria was compelled to the middle of the floor as they gaped at the thing: an impossibly flawless diamond which rose upward from a platinum band.
“I’ve never seen something that big!”
Gloria blushed and crossed her arms above her gray pencil skirt. “I don’t know—I guess it’s pretty big! It almost feels strange, though. I feel a little … exposed … wearing it.”
“Do you think you’ll still be able to come to us after you’re married? I mean, will he make you stop coming?” the ladies asked.
“Oh, no, I don’t think so.” She spoke a little too quietly. “He’s a modern man, my Joey. I’ll just tell him that I’m spending some time with my best girlfriends. He knows that I like to have fun with the girls.”
Madeline broke away from the group and went to her hot plate to boil water for more tea. Soon Harriet sidled up alongside her, squeezing a cigarette holder between her fingers and tracing the trail of smoke, on the path to sharing some secrets. “Hey, you see Jackie over there? Did you know that she actually sneaks out of the house to come here?”
“Yeah?”
“After her husband is asleep, she runs over here as quick as she can. She knows she has a few hours before he has to get up and use the bathroom.”
“What would her husband do if he found out she was here?”
“I would think he would ask for a divorce, wouldn’t you? It’s not exactly in good form to sneak out of the house at night. Or he might even do something worse. I think he hits her, you know.”
“Really? She never mentioned anything.”
Madeline looked in Jackie’s direction and saw her dainty arms covered up by her elbow-length white gloves. Jackie wore a polite half smile as she chatted with a girl next to her.
“Is he violent?”
“I don’t know.”
“I hope he never follows her here.”
Madeline’s white enamel teapot whistled savagely on her burner. The teapot was one of the few things she had salvaged from the apartment, before she sold off her possessions to pay her final month’s rent.
Four years prior, when Madeline cleaned out her apartment, she had unearthed a small cache of things Fred had left behind: a moustache trimmer, a box of cigars, an expensive fountain pen. Various items he’d used to mark himself as special—even one of those pinstripe suits he’d had tailored in Manhattan. Fred had never allowed her to hem his pants, even though her customers told her she was the best seamstress this side of the East River. He would only wear the shirts she had sewn for him if she claimed to have picked them up from an expensive male tailor in Manhattan.
You go and make things for women, Madeline. I don’t want you making clothes for me.
Now, she shook herself awake and sipped more tea. On rotation, she moved to make quick contact with everyone. She would arrive for the pivotal moments in everyone’s conversation—such was her special privilege to flit in and out, privy to any and all.
A small group was gathering near the fitting rooms around a girl who talked a million miles a minute, in verbal puffs of smoke. The girl’s boyfriend was in Vietnam; she had just received a letter from him, written in code. “It’s going to get worse. I don’t think he’s going to be there for just six months. They told him six months, but it seems like it’s going to be more. What am I even going to do? Should I even stay with him? We were dating for two months before he went off.”
“Do you love him?”
“I don’t know! How am I supposed to tell if I’m in love? It’s been two months! There’s no way I could tell in two months.”
“Well, if something happens to him, would you be sad?”
She was irate. “Of course I’d be sad! What kind of ridiculous question is that?”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant—well—would you have wished that he could have married you?”
Her voice quivered over the chamber tones of the classical music. “Why are we even talking about this?” She sputtered and slammed her teacup down.
The sharp clink drew Madeline from her post—she ran to intervene with an elegant flourish of her wrists. “Hello, ladies! Care for any more tea?” She would always fly into conversations, cut off conflicts before they got too heated. With lots of ladies in a small space, tempers would flare, the wrong thing might be said, and bonds could be broken. At the sight of Madeline soaring in, the women would cast their eyes down in guilt; then she would whisper to them, “Only a feeling of bonhomie.”
Now she procured an enamel flask, and a few of the women allowed her to pour a little liquor in their tea. Just a splash of booze—enough to make them feel like they were having something.
“Can I interest you in a little game?” Madeline said, and the women eyed her, seeming to warm up. “I created this amazing little conversational game that I wanted to share with you tonight. Come, gather around.”
Under pressure, she could pull out something verbal and elaborate, with a great scheme of rules to keep everyone talking and laughing. Her games would start small and evolve—folding chairs would come out from the back room, and everyone would sit around the tables as she played ringleader.
“Come now, everyone!” Madeline tapped her teacup with a spoon and called for order. The din lowered, and she closed the lid of the record player. “Bring out the chairs!”
The women knew what to do; they got the chairs, laughing, and threw off their heels.
With everyone settled in their stocking feet, she passed around the slivers of tea cake. A satisfied air of eating underscored her announcements. “Now, you sit over there, Marcia, and you put your chair across from her. See, it’s a talking game; everyone needs to be facing one other person, and you need to do it in less than a minute’s time.”
She proclaimed the rules to the crowd with confident waves of her hand. Improvisation was a challenge that she usually embraced with a devious smile.
But today she faltered—and her smile wavered.
Something was out of place. Something unnatural for this hour, when all the ladies had already settled in for the evening.
She squinted.
There was a spot of motion behind the gauzy curtain on the front door, the flash of a person who moved in the way of being unfamiliar with the social club yet prepared to enter anyway.
Madeline’s heels ground into the floor; she flashed a glance at Jackie, who took delicate nibbles of tea cake, unaware.
She headed toward the door with assertive steps.
Brave.
Bold.
Then her lips turned once more to a wide smile.
It was only Lisa, the sweetheart who had once come looking for Elaine. Madeline opened the door and pulled her inside the store.
“So happy to see you here again, da
rling! No need to lurk around!” Madeline patted Lisa on her back, a wash of relief softening both sets of brows. “We’re just about to start a game! Why don’t you join in?”
Lisa hesitated a bit as she stood amid a bustle of ladies moving around their portable chairs. With a shy smile, she accepted an empty folding seat. She was decked out in her blue airline blazer as though she had just stepped off a flight.
Lisa darted her head from side to side with the anxious awareness of a little bird; Elaine was nowhere to be found.
Madeline had moved to the center of the room, where she egged on the crowd. “Now, the first thing you do is say your name. Loudly, so everyone hears you. No shrinking violets here!”
The women went up and down the line and shouted out their names. Some yelled made-up monikers, like “Mozzie” or “Cup-cup.”
Madeline tapped Lisa on the shoulder. “You’re up next, my love!”
“Stewardess,” Lisa said feebly. She laughed along with everyone else, though her cheeks burned red.
“Okay, now say ten words that begin with the first letter of your neighbor’s name, in one minute or less. I’m timing you, ladies. Go!”
Madeline pounded her wristwatch, and they all raced the clock. As women were eliminated, one by one, those removed from the game looked on from the perimeter as the competition dwindled down to the final few.
“Um, Rebecca … let’s see. Raspberry. Running. Run. Raisin. Risk. Rice. Roof. Rough, r …”
“Five seconds!” Madeline trilled.
Harriet’s cheeks glowed a fiery crimson even as her mouth curled up in a wide grin. “Rope … um, I’m stuck! Too many of you staring at me!” She took a deep drag of her cigarette to blow a smoky O into the center of the circle.
“Time’s up!” Madeline sang out.
Lisa was up next. She turned even more scarlet than Harriet as she began. “Okay, um … Harriet. Handsome, handles, hot, harmony … hills … healing … hurt … hawk … hen, and—”
“Five seconds!”
“Hat!” Lisa finished.
Everyone howled and cheered, Lisa grinned from ear to ear, and Madeline brought forth her prize: a pair of sparkly, elbow-length gloves.
The tips of Lisa’s ears grew pink as she slipped the gloves over her arms, admiring them from all angles.
The ladies gathered around to offer congratulations. “Wow, you are a quick thinker!”
“Well, I guess I perform well under pressure. I have to be on my toes on the plane all the time …”
“Oh, tell us all about it!”
“I would love to travel!”
“Well—I just came back from Beirut, where people were water-skiing. The Mediterranean is so beautiful. It’s even nicer than Sheepshead Bay!” Lisa’s face was slowly returning to its normal color.
Their discussion turned to water, and vacation, and culture, and Lisa seemed to fit with them as if the club were a jigsaw puzzle and she a missing piece, talking up a storm. A woman from Greece entered her in conversation about her home country; Lisa wanted to be assigned to fly there one day. The conversation flowed to men: Lisa revealed that her boyfriend had just left her, and everyone began their own confessions of heartbreak.
Madeline excused herself from the group—she had talked about her own heartbreak too many times already. She switched the music back to the top forty and the women started to dance, making up steps, twirling around, going with it. Harriet literally kicked off her heels, which sailed across the room, flying upside down into a rack of brassieres. Cynthia created outlandish hairstyles on anyone who would sit still, and Catherine Huxley crooned at the top of her lungs. Lisa seemed to be enjoying herself too—wreathed in smiles at their antics. The ladies welcomed her, pulling her into their dances. Now there was someone else to have a good time with.
* * *
Madeline remembered the first time she had met Catherine Huxley, when her sister brought her to the social club back in ‘57. Catherine had been spunky from the beginning, ready to dance and grab a drink as soon as she burst through the door.
Madeline was thrilled that Elaine had brought her sister to the social club as a guest. Elaine had first entered the dress shop earlier in the week. After she had browsed the shop for some time, Madeline had taken the initiative to bring something out from the back room. It was a burgundy-colored ensemble, to do Elaine’s delicate coloring justice.
While she was trying her outfit on in the fitting room, Madeline busied herself with unpacking a new shipment of hats, straight from Italy. When Elaine emerged from the dressing room, Madeline knew she had made the right selection for her, with a fitted bodice that showed off her dainty figure.
“My goodness!” Madeline squealed, unable to help herself. “You look gorgeous!”
“Thank you.”
Elaine didn’t look too pleased, though, as she scurried back into the fitting room, then returned with the dress slung over her arm. “My apologies. I’m actually not going to be able to get this.”
“What’s that, dear?”
“I don’t have enough money.”
“Twelve dollars, then.” Madeline had resigned herself to taking a few losses each day at that point. Better to have customer loyalty than a quick sale.
“Twelve?”
“Twelve.” She smiled knowingly. “A lucky man is gonna love this dress.”
“Well, it’ll be our third date.” Elaine blushed.
As Madeline brought the dress over to the cash register, Elaine fumbled in her purse, digging for her wallet, and a little book tumbled out onto the counter.
“You like to read poetry, dear?”
“Oh, I love to read poetry! And sometimes I write it.” Elaine’s eyes sparkled.
“Do you ever try reading it out loud?”
“I memorized a few Shakespeare sonnets back in school and recited them to the class.”
“That’s not what I mean. I meant, have you ever read with feeling? Out loud?”
Elaine laughed—a musical sound. “I can’t say I’ve read it aloud with feeling.”
“Well, if you get interested, let me know. I’ve recently started a social club for women. Some poetry readings would really bring things together. We’re meeting later, if you want to join us.”
“Thank you, but tonight is my date. Perhaps next week?”
“Keep us in mind! We’ve been trying to meet regularly.” Madeline had tucked the shop’s phone number under the knotted twine atop the box. “Enjoy the dress, darling.”
* * *
Now, with the Starlite in full swing, Madeline was thrilled to see that it was still growing nearly five years later. The new girl Lisa seemed to be enjoying herself too, and it was all a mess of clothes and tea, laughter and music. And they were loud, with the thumping music and their shouts and their laughter. Madeline eyed the door. The cops could come and see them, but Madeline didn’t have a license to sell alcohol—not that she was selling it, as everything was gratis. She sold enough extra dresses on social club evenings to provide refreshments for the girls—but the cops could get her on anything, if they wanted to.
But they had been loud on other nights, to no consequence. So she had taken to sliding in her stocking feet with the rest of them—donning a tiara; letting the movement, mood, and music take her where it would.
“Madeline!” Down near the front door, Catherine waved a pair of long white gloves to grab her attention.
Breathlessly she responded. “Yes, darling?”
“Who’s that outside?” Catherine might have been a tad too tipsy, hovering near the front mannequin displays in full sight of Livingston Street. Maybe she’d drunk too much spiked tea—but she was insistent, pointing outside, her voice elevated.
Madeline followed Catherine’s gesture—squinting across her mannequin displays, peering out through the storefront windows.
Behind the glass: a flash of wide, pale forehead.
Madeline inhaled sharply.
The person disappeared.
She drew closer to the window. There was only emptiness—the dark of the night.
A cop would have banged on the door. It wasn’t a policeman out there.
It had looked like Fred’s forehead instead—with that vulgar, distinct tilt of his brow.
Fred.
Or just her imagination.
Madeline poured the rest of her spiked tea down the drain.
12
Elaine
Elaine paced her bedroom early in the morning.
She always had to be careful with Tommy.
She waited as she made half loops around their bed.
One wrong move might cut the spindle-thin fibers that held him in check.
Her breath came quickly as she stared at him, asleep—the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest as he slumbered into the morning, his eyelids fluttering gently. In the light of day, as he snoozed, Tommy’s intensity was hidden. He made soft murmuring sounds as he mumbled in his sleep.
She paced still more, and the minutes trudged by; she trod heavily, but Tommy didn’t stir. He needed to be fresh for her news. Receptive. She would get him before he was clogged with the cobwebs of the day.
She would reveal the news about her job at the very moment he woke.
Now she perched on their bed, bouncing a little, creating some motion. Tommy turned over in his sleep.
After thirty minutes, she tired of this and went downstairs.
The waiting was endless—maybe she could leave the house for a diversion.
She picked up the phone. She needed a breath of fresh air—someone different, disconnected from all of this …
“Lisa? Good morning, my dear! It’s Elaine!”
“Oh, hi!” Lisa sounded flustered but pleased. “It’s great to hear from you.”
“Yes, I wanted to call! I would love to get together! Are you free this morning? I was thinking Benny’s Ice Cream Parlor?”
Lisa hesitated for a moment. “Oh, Benny’s? Ice cream on a winter morning?” But then her voice lifted. “Oh, well, sure! Why not? That sounds like fun! How about eleven? A prelunch?”
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