“Well, I’m sure you didn’t set out to follow him.”
Lisa sat down and gulped. “No. But I’m wondering, if he was in that neighborhood, do you think it’s possible he could have seen Madeline a few minutes before she died? He could have driven right past her. Maybe he was one of the last people to see her. I mean, I would never want to ask him about it—it just seems so silly.”
“Why does that seem silly?”
“Like I said—I don’t want to seem strange,” Lisa admitted. It was near nine-thirty, and Elaine fiddled with her watch, trying to send a subtle hint, which Lisa picked up. “I’d better go—I don’t want to get you in trouble. It was nice to spend some time with you, though. Hopefully I can go to one of the events you’re organizing one of those days.”
“Whatever you can make.”
She left, and the room was vacant once again.
Elaine collapsed on the bed, holding her stomach, which was still empty.
49
Lisa
August 1962
“Can you please pass the meat loaf?”
Lisa had been unable to avoid this dinner invitation to Billy’s house. Although she was exhausted from her lunch shift, she gave herself a quick brushup and drove the ten minutes to his apartment.
Billy was sitting with his father on the sofa, yelling at the television as the Mets missed some plays. “Come on, come on, come on!” Father and son punched the air as though they were the ones up to bat.
“It’s so good to see you, dear.” Billy’s mother had set the table flawlessly, as usual, napkins folded crisp at the corners.
The game was ending—the Mets had lost.
Billy and his father sulked to the table. His mother served up rectangles of meat loaf and scooped up mashed potatoes.
“Extra gravy, Ma.”
Lisa eyed Billy as he held out his plate for a soupy pour. His eyes were bloodshot and his chin looked red. His stubble was uneven, like he had stayed up too late and shaved. And his father was shoveling meat loaf into his mouth in animal proportions and slurping down great sloshes of wine from a goblet. Lisa turned away.
His mother smiled beatifically and passed Lisa a platter of green beans. “Billy tells me you two are going to look at halls this weekend?”
“Well, yes. I’ve been to most of the halls for my friends’ weddings, but it would be nice to see them again in the light of day.”
Billy’s father lit a cigarette. “One of my buddies owns the one on Flatbush Avenue. I’m sure he could set you up with a fine deal.” Smoke wafted up into Lisa’s mouth from across the table.
“Oh well, maybe,” she said softly.
“That sure is nice of you, Pops. We’ll take a look at it.” Billy smiled at his father, eager to please.
The television was still on in the background, in the living room. The post-game commentary had concluded, and the nightly news was starting: “What really happened with Marilyn Monroe? Coming up next.”
It had been all over the news since the morning.
Marilyn was gone too.
Lisa had tried to channel her in the mirror at least a thousand times, raising her lip just so, making her eyes coquettish, pretty.
Now she was dead, like Madeline.
Billy’s father got up from his empty dinner plate to hover over the television as the newscaster used words like barbiturates and overdose.
“She was a foxy babe,” he muttered.
Billy’s father’s mistress had to have been foxy too, with her blonde hair and her plump lips next to his, over the city of Paris.
Lisa’s heart thumped hard in her chest. There was no way that she could tell Billy about his father and that woman on the plane. His father would deny it anyway. But her throat seized up watching Billy’s mother, trying so hard to be a family woman at the kitchen table when her own husband didn’t care.
Billy’s mother wiped her mouth with a napkin and got up, throwing away her half-eaten plate of food. “What a shame this all was. She was still so young, with so many years ahead.” She changed the subject. “I made a peach pie, if anyone wants a piece. Lisa, dear?”
“I’m still working on the meat loaf. But thank you.”
Their forks clinked against their plates as the news broadcast continued. Billy was usually more talkative, but he was quiet. Droopy.
Worn out from work, maybe.
Or maybe she was looking at him differently.
* * *
Billy walked her down to her car after dinner.
It was a dark, humid night, and he leaned her up against the car and stuck his tongue far into her mouth and for too long. But she didn’t pull back. He had his arm around her after that, and a group of teenage girls sauntered past, turning their heads to stare at him. He was wearing a nice shirt, something more expensive than Lisa could ever afford. Some of the girls giggled, like they thought he was cute, and Billy puffed out his chest and set his shoulders back.
“I’m going to go to a party with my friends tomorrow night,” Lisa told him. It was a good moment to let him know she wasn’t desperate for him.
“Which friends?”
“The Starlite crew. My friend Elaine has been getting some of them together. It’s a get-together at one of the girls’ apartments.”
“Sure, babe. Go ahead and get all of your single-girl stuff in now.” His face was ugly again as he spit on the sidewalk.
“You don’t mind, do you?”
“Nah—I’m just joking.” He smiled, and then his face relaxed, gorgeous once more, with his dimples.
Billy’s arm was tight around her again.
Her future husband.
“Billy, you know what? I keep meaning to ask. That night that Madeline was killed, and you were out with your friends—well, you know, I was on my way to see Madeline that night. I think I saw your car in the neighborhood. Was that you? I was thinking maybe there was a chance you could have seen her, just walking down the sidewalk or something. Maybe you could have even been one of the last people to see her before that guy hit her. Did you see her, Billy? I can’t even imagine seeing someone in their final moments.”
Billy shrugged and turned away from her, coughing and spitting on the sidewalk. “There’s no way I could remember back that far, babe.” He guffawed, proud of himself, and turned to face her with a grin. “Hey, you saw me that night? Were you following me? I must be irresistible, huh?”
“Far from it.” Her face was turning red.
He came around and grabbed Lisa’s waist. “Just kidding again. My oh my! You’re a little uptight tonight, aren’t ya?”
Then he gave her a smack on the rear, like it was a big joke. His dull, large hands made a loud clap, as though taking ownership of a round slab of meat.
“I’m going home, Billy.”
She moved past him, opened her car door, and got into the driver’s seat.
He chuckled to himself like a hyena. Then he lit a cigarette, still laughing, gazing into the distance.
“Tell your mother thank you for dinner,” she said primly, then drove away.
* * *
She kept her engagement ring off the next day as she served tables at the luncheonette. A male customer gave her butt a pat after she set down his bowl of soup, bare-knuckled. She gave him a look of dismay and cleared his table later to find an extra-large tip.
Back at her apartment, she covered up the ring, wrapping a dirty nightgown around it, shoving it under her dresser. This girls’ night would be good for her.
* * *
Lisa hadn’t been to Brooklyn Heights since the day Madeline died.
Harriet’s apartment was in Brooklyn Heights, not too far from the Starlite Dress Shop.
It was hot that evening, and she drove with the windows cracked. The sign was still up at the Starlite, although the windows were dark.
She folded in her bottom lip and parked her car on Livingston Street, stepping out with some caution.
The neighborhood was quiet. All
shoppers in the local stores had gone home for the evening.
Lisa peered inside the Starlite.
It was empty, as far as the eye could see. Shadows in a vacant space. A great and gloomy contrast to the hum of energy the first time she’d stepped in—so bright she could barely cross the threshold.
Now it stood as a nothing.
Lisa stared through the window, as though Madeline would come out and greet her. It had been three months since Madeline passed.
A fire engine screamed past her on the street. She jumped, and her hand brushed up against some grit in the window frame. It was a thick, grayish dust that stuck to the edge of her palm, like soot. She blew it from her hand; specks floated into the crevices of the sidewalk. Other specks adhered to her arm, which was coated in sweat.
There were no signs of an incinerator in the building—no openings for a chimney. Lisa leaned in closer to the window. There was a black spot on the glass, above the patch of ash.
It was like a vandal had tried to torch the building.
It was growing darker, and the street was desolate.
Lisa was alone.
She left to go to the party.
50
Elaine
Elaine was in the back of Harriet’s apartment with a few other women. They were making watercolor paintings, splashing colors on yellow paper to the sounds of the radio. They had the windows wide open, with electric fans at full blast. They projected their voices over the noise, which lent some excitement to the gathering as they painted away in the warm indoor winds of the evening.
Harriet came around with a platter of little buns, and Elaine ate with gusto. She was making up for lost time, eating. She gripped her bun in one hand and held her paintbrush in the other.
Everyone was talking about who they were dating.
“I actually went on a date last night,” Elaine admitted, blushing.
She had been a little more open lately. Maybe it was that expensive psychoanalyst, though she had been to only a few sessions.
“Spill the details!” The ladies sat on their heels, watercolor brushes in hand.
“Well—” She faltered as they stared, ready to latch on to every word. “He’s very nice. David is his name. He’s a reporter at the Chronicle. Very intelligent.”
“If he’s so nice, then why wasn’t he taken yet?”
“He was married, actually. His wife died a few years back.”
“Oh.”
The room fell quiet with a fragile silence. The women returned to making art—soft, watery applications of paint on the creamy white paper.
“His wife died in childbirth,” she told them. “He has a daughter—his mother watches her while he’s at work.”
“How sad.”
She and David had dived deep on their first date. She had refused to go out with him at first, but he’d kept asking her—and he really did seem funny and friendly, with a lightness that Tommy had never had. On a whim she had finally agreed to go out with him, and they’d enjoyed a very pleasant evening at a restaurant. They had dined slowly and chatted, allowing time to swirl around them as they talked about their lives.
Elaine was surprised to find herself talking about Tommy, but David didn’t flinch; he even spoke about his own late wife.
They talked about everything: hobbies, the cinema, the Chronicle.
It was all very normal. A functional conversation. He seemed to understand Elaine on another level, in the way of those who had felt grief in their own times.
“Do you think you’ll see him again?”
“I think so.” She painted a pink heart on her paper absentmindedly. Catherine noticed and teased her, spilling a little of her red wine and smudging it on the borders. Elaine surprised herself by laughing.
From inside, the door to Harriet’s apartment kept opening and shutting as more women entered.
Lisa arrived, and she entered the painting room shortly thereafter. She looked fair and even more dainty than usual in a pretty pink outfit.
She glanced around Harriet’s apartment with hesitation, raising her heels to avoid stepping on pieces of art.
“Hullo! How are you?” Elaine put her hand on Lisa’s arm to put her at ease. “We’re having a little art time! Care to join?”
Lisa accepted some paper and brushes without paying much attention to the materials. She sat next to Elaine and made little jabs at her paper with a brush.
After some time, she darted her eyes about and whispered to Elaine, “I went by the Starlite before I came here.”
Elaine gulped. “You did? I can barely bear to look over there.”
“There were ash marks on the window, traces of something. I don’t know what.”
“Someone had a smoke outside?”
“More like fire had been on the window.”
“Vandals of Brooklyn.”
“Why would anyone want to mess with that empty place? She’s dead!”
Elaine shuddered. “It could be an ugly reminder for some people. The empty shell of a place that belonged to Madeline. And she got all that attention after she died.”
“What are you saying? Who do you think could have done something like that?”
“Who knows? Maybe Fred Abbott?”
Lisa paused her brushstrokes and swallowed. “You think Fred went there and did that himself?”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t step foot near that place.” Elaine was still painting. She made a big black X to cross out the images. As if it wasn’t enough to have it all gone, someone was trying to mar the shell of the Starlite.
The other ladies weren’t hearing any of it as they argued about Marilyn Monroe, debating the cause of her death, shaking their paintbrushes in frustration.
“I don’t think Marilyn could have done that to herself. It had to be someone else, someone who was jealous of her.”
“How do you know what she was thinking?”
“She wasn’t the melancholy type. People who would do such a thing are usually the melancholy type.”
Elaine slid herself into the debate. “You never can know what’s going on inside someone’s head.”
Outsiders had mostly seen Tommy as suave, lively, and intelligent. And that was how he was—before the fourth drink.
“Of course you don’t know what someone’s thinking, but Marilyn was different,” Gloria argued.
Elaine looked over for Lisa’s response—but Lisa had left the room, abandoning her smudged artwork.
Nothing was ever in full color. Even if they tried to pretend.
51
Lisa
Friendly women tried to feed Lisa snacks and drinks as she escaped the painting room. They even shoved cocktail napkins into her hands to make her stay. But suddenly she couldn’t grip anything, and she couldn’t be among people.
It was the Starlite. The shell of it, topped by those burned bits.
The fuzzy wool over her eyes had started to separate.
Strands had begun to unfurl as the pieces of ash showered down on her hands.
People were out there who wanted to destroy things.
Like relationships. Billy might have destroyed the two of them.
So much of her had been wrapped up in him.
Yet his hand had moved without hesitation to slap her bottom. Like he was the cowboy and she was a steer.
He’d never even asked how she was doing.
She opened the door to leave the apartment. Harriet stood with a tray of pigs-in-a-blanket, laughing as she tried to balance it. Lisa claimed that she had to go, and then she gave Harriet a hug, though they never had talked much.
Billy would hate her if she left him.
He would tell his friends that she was a prude, and then he would move on to another girl who would linger on his dimples.
Maybe one of those teenage girls who had ogled him outside his apartment.
* * *
In bed, Lisa couldn’t sleep. The night was sticky, and her father was up late, watching the tele
vision on a high volume.
A beam of a streetlight caught the edge of a large bag in front of her closet. The bag was packed with all her wedding magazines and the wedding lists. Her wedding shoes were at the top. The satin heels dug into the silky lingerie she had purchased for the honeymoon.
Girls didn’t break engagements.
She had been a stewardess. She had left the glamour of the uniform, the travel. Any extra flesh stayed tucked under her blazer; the passengers had never seen the rows of scales in the weigh-in room. Jane had hidden her crueler admonitions and saved them for hisses in Lisa’s ears.
But Lisa had seen the plume of smoke in the bay. She couldn’t pretend anymore.
She couldn’t with Billy either.
It could all end quickly.
Billy’s poor, cheated-upon mother would answer the phone, and then she would have to get him on the line so Lisa could break up the engagement. It wouldn’t work.
She would go down to the bridge site instead.
She would meet him after his shift ended and ask him to join her for a walk. In the thick air of the evening, she would tell him that things were over. She would leave before she could see his anger.
The tavern would be close enough for him to blow off some steam and get a drink with his friends. He could talk about Lisa—the bitch. He could foam up a storm, then drink it down. Then he wouldn’t come back.
For one more time, she would play the part of what he wanted her to be. This time, she would become the boring prude.
She threw a pair of wrinkled slacks onto the dresser for the next day.
She would soon become a nothing and vanish from his life.
* * *
At the construction site, she looked small.
Glimmer As You Can Page 24