Beautiful Days

by Anna Godbersen

  Other cars trailed them, and though she saw that a reception had been arranged on the lawn, neither she nor Charlie really considered paying attention to anyone but each other. At the threshold, he scooped her up in his arms and stepped into the house that was her house now, too. As he climbed the stairs, she could feel his heart through his thin ivory shirt and knew that hers had quickened, too. She reached up, taking his head in both her hands so that he would keep bringing his lips, which felt so pleasantly warm and soft, to hers all the way up to the third floor.

  At the top of the stairs she felt a wave of trepidation pass through her, and she wondered if Charlie would feel it, too, and guess that she was scared. But she had already promised to be his forever, and the grin he was wearing seemed to indicate that he hadn’t noticed anything amiss. He carried her into his bedroom and lay her down on the big brass bed. One by one his buttons came off, and she heard each one as though it were a rhythm beaten out on a drum. Then she felt his weight on top of her, the smell of his skin and the oil he used in his hair filling her nostrils, and there was nothing left to do but wrap her arms around his neck.

  “Are you mine?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Are you ready?”

  She smiled and put her fingers through the hair at the base of his neck. “Yes,” she said, pronouncing it as though it were the most beautiful word in the world.

  Chapter 25

  OUTSIDE TRINITY CHURCH, THE SUN WAS BRIGHT AND the air was full of dust. The bride’s more traditional friends called after her and threw handfuls of rice, and her newer friends stood slightly apart and waved. White Cove had been a kind of nirvana in Cordelia’s mind, a place she had been trying to reach for a long time, but she could not help but notice with a wry smile that this wasn’t so different from a wedding in Union, where the ceremony also was usually performed in the church on Main Street, and the groom, if departing in a hurry, was liable to kick up the dust of a country road.

  “She looked happy,” Letty said.

  “Charlie, too,” Cordelia replied.

  Both of the calla lily bouquets were still in Letty’s arms, and as the crowd began to disperse, she glanced down and took note of this. “Astrid never threw her bouquet!” she exclaimed.

  “I guess you’re the next to get married, then.”

  “Not me.” Letty shook her head with a firmness that surprised her old friend. Perhaps she sensed Cordelia’s confusion, because she added: “I have things I have to do first.”

  “I know you do.” Cordelia waved at Willa Herring and her husband, who had spent quite a lot of money at The Vault last night, as they glided to their waiting car. “Did you read the papers this morning?”

  “Yes, can you believe it? That news might even reach home,” Letty marveled in her wide-eyed way. “They really actually think I’m good.”

  “They think you’re much better than good.” Cordelia pinned back a few loose strands of hair and watched another group of wedding guests depart for Dogwood. “I do, too.”

  “Oh, but you always thought that.” Letty gave a small wave of her hand.

  “Yes.” Billie descended the stairs of the church on her father’s arm, and she sent a subtle wink Cordelia’s way before climbing into the Marshes’ chauffeured Duesenberg. “Letty, you remember how I said I was sorry earlier?”

  Letty turned her blue eyes up at Cordelia, and had to squint because of the sun.

  “Well, I’m sorry that I told you you couldn’t sing at the club, but it’s not just that. I’m sorry I didn’t know that you would be the best singer for the place all along—I’m sorry that I hadn’t planned it that way from the beginning.” She took a breath and her dimples emerged as she smiled. “From now on, I’d like to bill you as our main act.”

  The last guests pulled away, and there was only Cordelia’s car waiting to take her back to Dogwood. Letty shielded the sun with her hand and for a number of seconds wouldn’t meet Cordelia’s eyes.

  “What do you say?” Cordelia tried to make her voice sound enthusiastic, but she could tell that even in the cloudless sunshine of a summer afternoon, Letty was turning a hard thing over in her mind.

  “A few days ago, that was all I wanted . . .” she began slowly. “It was my very best dream.” Letty pressed her lips together and tapped the toe of her heeled Mary-Janes. “But what those people said in the paper is true. I have something, I’ve always known that. Now is my chance to use it. I got a job all by myself, and now Valentine O’Dell wants to turn me into a star.” When she said his name, her cheeks turned pink, and she tried to hide the fact that she was smiling over it by turning her face away. “He wants to give me the training that will make me the most polished version of myself. He’s going to teach me the things I really need to know.”

  Shrugging, Letty finally let her eyes drift back up and meet Cordelia’s. Her blue irises had a coldness in them, and Cordelia realized that she was not the only one who’d grown up with the events of the previous night. A different girl would have gloated about her good fortune, but Letty seemed almost sorry to be standing there telling Cordelia that she didn’t need her job after all, thank you very much.

  “Mr. O’Dell sounds nice,” was all Cordelia could manage to reply. She wished that she could say more, but she had become so accustomed to Letty needing her, and it was such a shock to see Letty become so suddenly independent that she couldn’t quite think straight.

  “Yes, he is. He and Sophia Ray are taking me out for supper tonight, after the show.” A big sigh passed through Letty’s small frame, and then she shook off whatever sadness had arisen within. She handed the bouquets to Cordelia, removed the straw cloche from the place where she had been keeping it tucked under her arm, and fixed it over her hair. “And speaking of the show, I had better hurry, or I’m going to miss my train.”

  “Well, get in, I’ll give you a ride,” Cordelia said, gesturing at the car. The driver, seeing her point at him, started up the engine.

  “It’s such a pretty day . . . I think I’d rather walk.” Letty pressed up on her toes and kissed Cordelia on the cheek. “I’ll see you,” she said, squeezing Cordelia’s hand. When she let go, she turned immediately and began walking toward the station.

  “Hey, good luck tonight!” Cordelia called when Letty was a short way down the road.

  “You, too!” Letty called back, raising her arm but not turning around.

  With her hand on the hot metal of the door handle, Cordelia went on watching until Letty’s silhouette became very small and turned the corner. Though she knew she ought to be happy for Letty, and happy for Astrid, she couldn’t help but feel a little lonely now that her two best friends had gone off into their glittering futures and she was left without a boy to even imagine herself falling in love with.

  That was when she saw the plain black car loitering across the street, and the muscles of her face constricted. She let go of the handle and walked swiftly toward the mysterious car before her driver would notice she was gone. In a matter of seconds she had rounded the passenger side and slid into the front seat.

  “You can’t be looking for me,” she said.

  Max stared at her for a long time, but she couldn’t be sure what he was thinking. Was he admiring the way her dress fit her, or was he mentally rehearsing some final insult? In the end, he never did answer her question directly. “Did you get the corsage?” he asked.

  “That was from you?”

  “Did you like it?” he pressed, in that same even tone, with his eyes focused on her. With a flutter of surprise, she realized that he was nervous. That he wanted to be sure he had given her the right thing. In his plain white T-shirt and brown utilitarian pants, it was easy to see that sending the right flowers was not something he’d ever thought much about.

  “Yes, it was beautiful.” She smiled at the memory of how it felt to be given orchids. Across the street, her driver had noticed that his charge was gone and had stepped out of the car. Without thin
king, Cordelia lay down on Max’s lap. “If you want to talk more,” she said, looking up at him, “you had better drive.”

  So he steered the car nonchalantly down the road. Once they’d turned and he told her it was all clear, she sat up. He gave no indication that he planned to stop driving now. She waited for him to say something, to explain his hurtful denial, or at least his coming there today. But he offered nothing and met her eyes only briefly.

  In the silence, all the confused emotions that Max had inspired in her over the course of their short friendship rose up again, and she was trying to decide how to tell him to take her home when he finally spoke.

  “Do you have time for dinner?” he asked.

  “No, I couldn’t, I—”

  “I don’t mean dinner like your set does it, five courses and a show. Just something simple and wholesome. Come now, you’ve got to eat.”

  She regarded him. “What do you want from me?” she said eventually.

  “I want you to have dinner with me,” he replied, in a practical tone, ignoring the yearning in her voice. “At the same place I have dinner every Sunday night.”

  She would have said no, except that she didn’t want to go back to Dogwood, where the celebrating would be going on for hours, and Astrid and Charlie would have eyes only for each other, and Letty’s absence would be quite acutely felt.

  “All right, but you have to drop me at the club when I’m done.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  “And let me call Charlie’s man Jones quickly. Otherwise my driver will be in trouble for letting me get kidnapped, too.”

  By then it seemed clear that he wasn’t going to explain why he’d told the newspaper people he didn’t know her, nor was he going to be very elaborate or romantic about what he wanted from her now. So she let them sit in silence and didn’t try to think up bits of conversation that would only have sounded silly in that context. It was a familiar drive, and she enjoyed seeing the other motorists out on Sunday, and the boats cluttering the East River, and the well-dressed women walking poodles on Fifth Avenue. Children holding balloons came in and out of Central Park, under the shade of dense, green foliage. Soon they had passed the park, and she realized that the streets were no longer numbered in the nineties, but in the hundreds.

  “I didn’t know the streets went up this high,” she said, twisting to scan the tops of the buildings in the new part of town they had drifted into. The limestone mansions were behind them; here the apartment buildings and townhouses were made of brick.

  Max laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said. “It’s only that you do seem to know everything, and it surprises me when I find a chink in your armor.”

  “Oh.” Cordelia paused, unsure whether this was an insult or a compliment.

  “Welcome to Harlem,” he said.

  “Harlem?” She knew what Harlem meant—that was where nightclub aficionados went to hear race music—and when she raised her eyes again, she realized what was different about the neighborhood. The streets here were just as populated, and the people were doing all the same things that people on the other part of Fifth Avenue were doing, but here their faces were black.

  She was so surprised that he would take her here that she didn’t think to ask another question until he had parked the car and come around to open the door for her. “You’ve been here before,” she said, as he led her toward a redbrick townhouse and nodded hello to the children playing on the stoop. They smiled up at him, not as though he were the great Max Darby, but as at someone kind and familiar.

  “I told you, I have dinner here every Sunday night.”

  They went in the front door and down a dimly lit hallway. As her eyes adjusted, she saw that the walls were covered with felted wallpaper, and that a number one had been painted on the door to the parlor-level sitting room. Max beckoned to her, and they began walking up the carpeted stairway with the polished mahogany banister. On the second floor, he knocked on the door where the number two had been painted, then turned the knob and went in.

  “Hello!” he called as he walked into the living area of a small apartment. Cordelia, following behind him, saw that a simple chandelier hung over a square table set for two. Through the doorway, she could see a neatly kept living room, with old Victorian-style furniture and a view of the street.

  “Hello!” Max called again, and then a woman came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, and embraced him.

  “Shhhh, you’ll wake the neighbor’s baby,” she said.

  “I want you to meet someone,” Max said, stepping aside and putting his arm around the woman’s shoulders. “This is Cordelia Grey. Cordelia, this is my mother.”

  The woman’s face was the color of milky coffee, and though her eyes were tired, Cordelia could see that she had once been beautiful. Max had inherited some of her features, she could see that now, but it still stunned her that Max, who seemed so natural amongst his white, Protestant patrons, should be related to this woman. Her hair was not like the hair of the black women who lived in Union—it had been treated with something that made it straight, and it was arranged like Cordelia’s, in a low bun at the nape of her neck. She wore a brown housedress, which was smartly tailored and fit her well.

  When Cordelia became aware that she was staring, that it had taken her too long to respond, she stepped forward and offered the woman her hand.

  “I’m Rosemary Darby,” the woman said, shaking Cordelia’s hand warily as she glanced at Max.

  “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, too,” she replied, although her posture seemed to say she wasn’t sure. Cordelia couldn’t help staring another moment, and Mrs. Darby looked back at her in a precise and undaunted way that made Cordelia ashamed of always peering at people, wanting to figure out what was going on in their minds. None of your business, Mrs. Darby’s eyes seemed to say, in her quiet dignified way.

  “Do you smoke?” Max’s mother said eventually, breaking the silence, but not the air of suspicion.

  “No.” Cordelia hated to lie, but she decided this time it was all right. She could see this was an important point for Mrs. Darby, and she decided that if she was sure that she would never touch a cigarette again then she could get away with a little white lie this once.

  “Good.” Mrs. Darby clapped her hands and the mood lightened. “Are you staying for dinner? I’m afraid I only have two steaks, although I have plenty of potatoes and greens, and I always get a big cut for Max, so there’s really plenty of meat for three, and if he wants you here that badly, he’ll be willing to share.”

  So Max set another place, and the three of them sat down and talked for an hour or more as they ate Mrs. Darby’s cooking. At first Cordelia talked about Ohio, and how she had come to New York, trying to be vague about her father and her family’s current line of work. But this proved easy enough, because Rosemary Darby seemed perfectly happy whenever the conversation returned to her son, of whom she was very visibly proud.

  “Has he taken you up in the airplane?” she asked, as they were picking up their plates to bring into the kitchen.

  Cordelia nodded.

  “You must be special then.”

  Cordelia smiled at that, and looked to Max to see if it were true. But he gave no sign. He only said, “I’d better go, Ma. I asked Cordelia to come over last minute, and she has somewhere she has to be.”

  “Thank you for dinner, Mrs. Darby. Everything was delicious,” Cordelia said, as she began to follow Max toward the door.

  “Come back soon, Cordelia. You’re a long way from home, and this is a city that will wear you down if you don’t put a home-cooked meal in your belly once in a while.”

  “Thank you. I will.”

  Cordelia waited in the hall as Max embraced his mother and said a few parting words, and then they walked to the car and headed in a downtown direction. By then it had grown dark outside, and a half mo
on was hanging over the silhouettes of the buildings, and a cool night air that smelled like summer touched the skin of her face. There didn’t seem to be anything to say until he turned the car onto Fifty-third, and parked halfway down the block from The Vault. She could see that already people were gathering out front, and that photographers were waiting in the street as they had been the night before.

  “You wouldn’t be able to fly anymore if they found out, would you?”

  “Not the way I do now,” he said. “Maybe they’d let me be a boxer. But not a flyboy.”

  “I’m glad you introduced me to your mother,” Cordelia replied.

  He was as handsome to her as ever, and it made her feel pleasantly weak having his serious gaze on her again, and at such close quarters. The anger that she had felt toward him had evaporated—she could see now why he made himself difficult to know, and why he had resisted pursuing her the way another boy might. All his celebrity and all his opportunities depended on him seeming like a very specific type of person, and he couldn’t risk seeming like another person for even an instant. Too much was at stake.

  She knew that when she got out of the car she might not see him again, and so she sat quietly and looked straight ahead and reached out for his hand. They interlaced their fingers and listened to the other’s breath grow steady. Everyone had secrets, Cordelia saw now; she was not alone in that.

  “Well, good-bye, I guess,” she said after a while. The phrase made her heart hurt.

  “Bye.”

  She squeezed his hand and got out of the car and began walking toward the club. She was glad that it was there and would keep her busy for many hours to come. The crowd would pour in, and there would be brutes and beauties, and it would be a whole pageant for her to watch. She had come all this way to see spectacles like that, and now they were hers to view every night, but she had never been so grateful for them as right now.