Sometimes it seemed like there was nothing but a long line of dour-faced men in her life: fathers, husbands, school principals, security guards, cops. Disapproving doctors her parents had vaguely conferred with after incidents at school—each of them avoiding her eyes, disappointed in her. The episode back in high school hadn’t changed her behavior, but it’d made her more careful. No one who counted had caught her again until today.
And no one ever caught her with a pocketbook full of dross again. Never again would someone dump her pocketbook on a counter and find used tissues, dirty combs, Tampax, worn-down lipsticks and other makeup, half-eaten boxes of Good and Plenty, stuff she’d taken from other girls’ lockers in school, snapshots of movie stars from Hollywood studios autographed by a machine.
There was less than fifteen dollars in her purse today. She counted it twice to be sure, checked the little pockets, unrolled the white hanky, and dug around in her suit jacket pockets. Too little money to pay a fine or bribe the guard—if it came to that.
She’d come downtown today in a fog. Could she tell this to whatever person came into this room? That she hadn’t known any of this would happen today. She hadn’t meant to take those things, hadn’t considered her heart’s desire till it was tucked inside her purse. Would they care she’d set out this morning in her pretty pink suit with nothing but a jaunt into the city in mind—a lunch downtown to break up the tedium of her life? She looked nice in her new outfit. The conductor on the train had smiled at her. So too the ticket seller, the woman across the aisle, the man who gave her a hand stepping down from the train. It had started out so well.
Then suddenly, she had to have one or two of the beautiful things she saw, had wanted for her whole life. She didn’t understand it herself. It was like she was in a dream, did these things as if sleepwalking. There must be a name for it.
She got up, stretched, and looked out the tiny window at the people on the street, people free to walk around, to have lunch, to make a purchase. Only an hour ago, it’d been she walking those streets without a care. Was the window no more than a slit so people like her could not jump out?
Occasionally a secretary or another uniformed guard—apparently Wanamaker’s security staff was enormous—opened the door, never saying a word. Making sure she hadn’t magically stuffed herself in some bag or box or drawer and found her way out of the office, out of the store, much like the stuff she’d tried to take. But there was no escape, only long, sinewy hallways lined with the offices of the people who’d spot her. An hour, perhaps two, passed. It was like waiting in the doctor’s office without the posters on various diseases to examine.
Hank suddenly stood in the doorway, looking more tired than angry. His face was ashen. “Come on,” he said, offering his hand. “Let’s get it over with.”
Although the gesture implied some feeling for her—some pity—his voice was cold. He led her out of the room, and down the hall. No one stood in their way; no one peeked from drawn blinds or through open doors. She was in a fog, absolutely terrified. Get what over with? What had Hank meant? Hadn’t he taken care of it? Wasn’t that what he did? Wasn’t that part of the deal?
Hank led her to a larger and brighter office in the famous Wanamaker’s Department Store, the mother ship of emporiums in Philadelphia. It was too bad she hadn’t been caught at Lit’s, she thought, as she followed him. Lit Brothers didn’t have such an exalted idea of itself. It knew its place. She’d have been able to bluff her way out of the lower-rung stores. Their security wouldn’t have made so much of it—so much out of the paltry stuff in her bag. Eve would’ve been impermeable at Lit Brothers, even Gimbel’s.
The windows shone transparent here, the room carpeted with a richly-colored, thick rug. A slight odor of stale cigars hung in the air while she waited alongside of a too-silent Hank. She wasn’t going to be put in the Eastern State Penitentiary, she realized. People charged with a crime didn’t get ushered into offices like this one. Hank probably gave them a deal on their printing needs for the next fifty years. Men like Hank, the president of his parents’ venerable printing firm, didn’t have wives incarcerated in the Eastern State Penitentiary.
The Chief of Security—if that’s what you called him—came in, Bill Something, a fellow St. Joseph’s Catholic High School graduate, though ten years before her husband. Suddenly loquacious, Hank began a rush of glad-handing, jocular remembrances of St. Joseph’s, memories about which priests were still teaching, talk of cafeteria food, of theatricals with all-male casts; the punishments dispensed by the principal—a man of uncommon strength; a few mutual friends. This perfunctory exchange of reminiscences lasted five minutes, during which she stood like a convicted felon awaiting sentence. The two men eventually ran out of high school remembrances, agreeing quickly once they got to it that Eve would get professional help.
“I’ve something in mind already,” Hank told Bill. “A place for Eve, that is. I’ve heard good things about it. We talked to the administrator there today.”
Eve wondered who “we” was.
“It’s a sickness,” Bill said, nodding his approval. “I think of it as girl trouble. We see it every day—women with too much time on their hands.”
Looking at her abdomen for signs of a possible remedy to this, he pumped himself up, this stellar representative of the great Wanamaker’s Department Store, and looking obliquely at Eve, shook his head. “Men—when they steal things—it’s tools or something they need. Girls—well, they take the pretty stuff—the trifles.” He looked at Eve. “Can’t help herself, you know, Hank. And she’ll keep doing it until she gets some counseling or goes to jail.”
Eve held back the urge to slap him. She could imagine the satisfaction of feeling her hand on his cheek, seeing a blush of crimson replace his dark arrogance. Did he think she was deaf or mentally deficient, speaking to Hank as if she wasn’t in the room? Probably some boys’ school behavior he’d learned at his costly Catholic high school, where girls were looked on as suitable for child bearers, dance partners, hostesses, and not much more. For that matter, why had no one spoken to her for the hours she’d sat in the dark office? Why must her husband be brought here to tend to it? Why must he speak for her, take care of her?
Who was “we?”
If it’d made sense when she was fifteen, it didn’t now. There was a woman in the Senate, for God’s sake. It was the 1960s. Her gynecologist was female.
“Won’t do you any good to smack her around either,” Bill added suddenly, snapping her out of her stupor. “It’s a compulsion she’s got.” A bead of sweat suddenly moustached his lip. Hadn’t he said this only minutes before? “You’ll have to ask the men in white coats what to call it.”
The heat in that office rose as he calculated his power over them. He must live for exchanges like this
Hank must’ve seen the dangerous look in her eyes then, because he began edging her toward the door. “Well, thanks for giving—us—another chance. There won’t be another incident, I can assure you. She’ll stay away from Wanamaker’s in the future. Right, Eve?”
Even now, her husband didn’t look at her. No one looked at her. She nodded anyway.
“Forget about it,” the man said, finally released from the need to dominate the room. “I know you’ll take care of the little lady. Make sure she gets the kind of help she needs.” He looked at Eve directly for the first time. “Our upbringing, you know. The Church made us responsible—men who take care of our women.”
This responsible man with good upbringing and fine schools, who was basically a department store cop once you stripped away the business suit and the big office.
“I’ve expunged the record, Hank. It never happened.”
She still felt something coming off of Bill as he was about to release them—send them off into the world chastened for his minutes with them, for his graciousness and astute observations. If he hadn’t found out that Hank Moran was her husband—hadn’t recognized the name—would he have come alone to visit
that dank office and done something to her?
Like her father, ten years earlier, her husband never said a word on the ride home. It was a Buick LeSabre rather than a bus, but that was the only difference. The silence was the same: scorching and horrible. There were always grim-faced men in charge of her, she thought again. Men who guided her around by the elbow, steering her like an unwieldy ship into port. Men who were ashamed of what she’d done—at their association with her. She’d have to turn it around somehow. That’s what she thought as they began the drive home—to the house she’d filled with baubles and merchandise—some stolen, some charged to her husband’s accounts.
“You didn’t mean what you said—that thing about an institution?” she asked him suddenly.
“I did indeed. But it’s more like a country club,” he said, reaching into the glove box and throwing her a pamphlet. “Dad played golf there in the forties, in fact.”
Hot air funneled up her throat, forcing her mouth open. She looked at the slick colored pictures blindly. This was a real place then—Hank hadn’t said it just to put the fellow off.
“I’ll stop doing it. I’ll never…” What could she promise him? What words would derail this idea?
He nodded. “That’s true—you won’t. After you get some help. A ninety-day observation period.” He poked a finger at an early paragraph on the brochure. “That’s the mandatory period.”
“You’re, you’re—what do you call it? What you’re doing to me?”
“Committing you? Yes. Mother and Dad and I talked it over.…”
Her mouth fell open. “It just happened, Hank. We just walked out of that store.”
Hank tipped his head to the side and frowned. “It’s not like your little stunt today was the first time, Eve. Or even the tenth. It’s not like our house isn’t filled with the things you have to have, things you never unwrap half the time.” He pounded the wheel. “Actually Dad suggested sending you to Norristown State Hospital the last time—remember when you took that gold pen from the stationer’s?”
Had she? Had she pinched a pen? She honestly didn’t remember it. “Norristown. That’s a snake pit. You wouldn’t send me there?”
Stories about Norristown had been part of her childhood. Any kid who acted up was threatened with it. It was practically a chant to skip rope to on the sidewalk.
Cinderella
Dressed in brown
Got carted off to Norristown
How many shrinks
Did it take? 1-2-3.…
“That’s why you’re going to Oak Terrace.” He patted her hand soothingly. He’d calmed down considerably. “Look, that guy made some good points. He said you needed help. I’ve been wrong to think it was something either of us could fix.”
“We can talk it over, Hank. I can see somebody, but at their office.”
He shook his head. “You need intensive therapy. They’ll be waiting for you when we get home, Eve. I made the call before I left my office, although I’ve talked to them several times. Mother’s come over to pack an overnight bag. I can bring other things later. This is going to make things better. Give it a chance.”
She’d jump out of the car at the next light. Except there were no lights, just miles of country road, an endless avenue ending with men waiting for her—more men in that endless line. Did she have a choice? Could she support herself? Make her way in the world? If she didn’t go along with it, she’d be returned to Herman Hobart. She’d have no choice but to go back to that tiny row house, to the room with an ironing board next to her bed.
“Why can’t you take me there then? Why these men?”
He swallowed loud enough for her to hear it. “They have their own procedures, Eve. They were very clear about it on the phone.”
They, they, they. They were in control. His voice was shaky for the first time. “Just go along with it. Give it a chance.” He kept saying that—like she had any choice.
The two men were waiting in the driveway, looking eerily like the guards at Wanamaker’s. Her mother-in-law stood at the door, suitcase in hand, trying to squelch the smile slithering up her face. Eve wondered if they’d chase her if she tried to run.
There was nowhere to go though. She would’ve just had lunch downtown and come home if she knew. Been content with window-shopping. She straightened up in her seat and looked at the smiling men head-on.
Eve’s room at Oak Terrace, which wasn’t as bad as she’d feared, had one of the new princess phones on the bedside table. One of the ones with a light for dead-of-night calls. Shaking her head at what Hank’s mother had packed for her, she opened her handbag, so recently the object of endless commotion. Luckily her address book listed phone numbers for all of her favorite stores.
“I’ll be needing a new peignoir,” she was telling Adele at Ballinger’s Lingerie within minutes. “Perhaps two,” she said, looking around the room. “Ecru and wine, I think. Oh, and slippers. Size 7. Oh, of course, you know that. What was I thinking? Can you deliver them today? I have nothing suitable at all. I have a temporary address for the delivery man.”
She slammed the suitcase shut with her foot and shoved it into the closet, which was too small by half. “Yes, and perhaps a bed jacket, Adele.
PATRICIA ABBOTT is the author of the ebooks Monkey Justice and Home Invasion (Snubnose Press). More than one hundred of her stories have appeared in print, in anthologies and online. Recent stories have appeared in The Huffington Post, Thuglit, Plots with Guns, Kwik Krimes, Beat to a Pulp, and The Interrogator. You can find her blogging at Pattinase.
The Wentworth Letter
by Jeff Soloway
The new student in the Jane Austen seminar walloped himself into the chair next to the professor. He was overweight, balding, and haphazardly shaved, and he appeared to have only one eye, or one that worked; the other was hidden behind a single darkened eyeglass lens. The tittering of the young women (there were never any young men in the Austen seminar) was like a wind through dry grass. Cheryl, the only human among the leopardesses, got up and took the seat beside him. She smiled warmly at him. He smiled hotly at her.
“This is Alex,” announced Professor Cowen. Fooled by the name, he had expected his new continuing-ed student to be a female book-club regular hoping to ditch cookies and gossip for more sophisticated literary chitchat. Instead he got a guy whose breaths sounded like an idling Harley. “He’s an auditor from our local community.” In compensation for this misfortune, the university waived its fees.
“We’re reading Persuasion,” said Stella, leaning her sleek body over the table toward him. “Do you know it?” She put on her most obviously fake smile, the one designed to strike fear in the hearts of her victims and bloodlust in the hearts of her allies.
“I don’t need Persuasion,” Alex replied, lifting an undulating monobrow. “I’m already persuaded.” He added a seal-the-deal leer that might have nailed down a discount from an East Boston hooker, but was useless before a carelessly beautiful heiress to a carried-interest fortune. There were at least three in the seminar.
“You should shave your pubic hair,” Stella advised. “It’s running all over the back of your neck.” The tittering rose to gale force.
“Don’t listen to her,” said Cheryl, who was impressively outspoken for someone who paid nowhere near full tuition. “She hasn’t read the book. Or any book. Do you like Jane Austen?”
“Honestly? It’s pussy lit. No offense intended,” he added, encompassing all the girls in a one-eyed searchlight sweep.
“You can’t say that,” said Professor Cowen.
“I mean girly lit. Nothing happens.”
Cheryl generously ignored the insult. “It’s not the plot, but the way she describes—”
“Describes what? No sex, no action, no guts. You know how I lost my eye?”
“Someone shot you in the face?” Stella asked sympathetically.
“I wish,” said Alex. “Listen—”
“Setting aside,” said the professor, b
efore the man could continue, “the despicable misogynist slur which must never be repeated, our newest student has a point. I also hate Jane Austen. Does that surprise you? I have hated her since fifth grade, when my mother—the president of the Boston Austen Society, no less—forced me to read her. Her protagonists are quick-witted snobs who want only to marry a sufficiently wealthy gentleman. In the end they do. Nothing else happens. So why do we read her?”
The women could tell he was on a pedagogical roll and had the grace not to interrupt. (At least half had crushes.) Neither did Alex, though his breaths groaned louder.
“The scholars say we read her for her precise irony and perfect prose style, which we will continue to unpack in this class. But you read her—don’t you?—because you love to experience the triumph of heroines like Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse. They’re like you, as you think you truly are. I understand that. But here’s the news: this isn’t literature. Literature is, as they say, an adventure in search of a hidden truth. It is the passionate expression of emotions and ideas that demand action. Read Tolstoy and Hemingway, Shakespeare and Melville. They knew life isn’t about marrying for money. I think our newest student knows that too. Am I right?”
The professor looked at Alex. Maybe the guy would say something intelligent. Or maybe he’d just agree. It didn’t matter. The others would get the point. They were quite intelligent—especially Cheryl. She was a transfer student, a few years older than her classmates, and she knew how to expand her mind to accommodate a challenge, not just draw it close to protect her preconceptions.
“What I understand,” Alex said, “is that pussy books are for pussies.”
The professor pointed to the door. “You don’t belong in this class.”
“Yeah I do. I got a letter.”
“Not from me you didn’t.”
“No. I have a letter. A letter written by her.”
The Malfeasance Occasional Page 3