by Susan Isaacs
“Mr. Berringer?” I said softly. He jumped, as though I’d just come into the room and yelled Boo! “If you have a lot of preparation, I could come in real early tomorrow and we could finish the dictation then.” Maybe I was no diplomat, but it was better than saying, Hey, listen, you’d better get a good night’s sleep or you’re gonna find yourself on a funny farm.
If a man has some pleasure in one half of his life—home, work—he can usually take pretty much what the other half has to dish out. But in those weeks, what did he have? Hysterical bankers weeping on his desk in the office—and a lot of extra closet space at home. No wonder he looked like Boris Karloff’s first cousin.
And he just sat there, helpless. This had never been a helpless man. His face tilted upward, as if he was looking past me, at the door or beyond. Oh, how I could have kissed that neck, slipped my hand under the shirt and rubbed his shoulders, his chest.
“Mr. Berringer?” I whispered. Nothing. He’d forgotten he was handsome. He didn’t remember he was charming. He closed his eyes and exhaled a sigh, not even trying to cover up how loud it was. He simply didn’t know what he was doing. “About six tomorrow morning,” I said. Nothing. “Six, Mr. Berringer?”
“Six,” he repeated, but I wasn’t sure if he got me.
“In the morning.”
“Of course,” he said at last. “Of course, Miss Voss.”
Gladys smiled, but to me, Friday night did not signal freedom or fun. All it meant was the beginning of two days of being overwhelmed by the ordinary, two days without John to make my life come alive. So what the hell: I took a gulp of my whiskey sour, but since I’d spent lunch hour filing, the alcohol went straight north. Not that it made me silly. I didn’t leap up on the cocktail table and begin a soft-shoe routine. The liquor just made the sides of my head sensitive; I was suddenly aware of the weight of my ears. It was the kind of feeling that signaled: You should be home.
So why was I sitting in the Blue Elephant, a cocktail lounge for third-rate lawyers and washed-up stockbrokers, a place so dark you couldn’t see the last guy’s greasy lip-prints on your glass, even though you just knew they were there? To get whatever highly sensitive, top-secret information Gladys Slade had picked up on John or Nan or Mr. Leland. And also to keep her company.
The only company Gladys had at home was a radio and the Reader’s Digest. A couple of times I’d been up to the third-floor room she rented in an area of Brooklyn with no name, south of Greenpoint. The wallpaper was so old the roses had turned brown. Even on Christmas, her landlady never once said, Come on, have a cup of eggnog with my family; Gladys had to mail her rent check because the family that lived in the rest of the house wanted “privacy.”
Both her parents had died of TB by the time she was twelve, and she had no brothers or sisters, no cousins, even. All she had were the girls at work.
I can’t say life with a mother who giggles in the bushes was anything Good Housekeeping would recommend, but still, it was family. She’d lost track of all her sisters except for Annabel, who had married a sailor and lived on a navy base and sent birthday cards. And there were still Johnstons left in Brooklyn. We got asked to all their funerals and—until my mother had started showing up drunk—to an occasional Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. And I had a neighborhood. I knew Ridgewood’s fruit and vegetable man, the dentist and the corsetiere. And on summer nights when we all sat out on our stoops, I knew everybody’s business, and they knew mine.
But after Gladys’s parents died, she’d been pushed off on a cousin, who died right away, as if to say, The nerve of such an imposition. So Gladys lived at the Sarah Stewart MacDougal Home for Girls, run by some cheap Presbyterians, until she was eighteen. They found her the first of her furnished rooms the day she found her first (and only) job—at Blair, VanderGraff and Wadley.
Still, seeing her at the office, you’d never feel sorry for her. The law firm was all she had, but she made it hers.
Gladys took a long but ladylike slurp of her second whiskey sour. “Do you think Mr. Berringer is behaving”—she paused, and then found her word—“normally?”
“Normal for a lawyer who’s so tired he’s two minutes away from dropping dead.” But there was something funny in her questions, a tightness in her voice that even the loudness of her slurp wouldn’t ease. “Why?” I asked. She shrugged. “You know something I don’t know, Gladys? I can’t believe it. We’ve been sitting here for twenty minutes.”
“Well, I know one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I know you’re in love with Mr. Berringer!”
My stomach flopped over; for a second, I thought I was going to give back my drink. But I just swallowed and said, “You talk about behaving normally? You’re the one who’s nuts.” I tried to kid myself: Gladys is a great kidder. But Gladys was genuinely upset and very serious. She held her head high; her flared nostrils looked like two dark tunnels cut into a mountain. “When did you come up with such a crazy idea? Hey, and anyway, if I was gone on someone, wouldn’t I tell you, of all people?”
“I always would have thought so, Linda. We’re best friends.”
Boy, was she ever on the alert. Her eyes were like two thumbtacks, trying to pin me to the wall. The possibility of me, Mr. Berringer, a secret crush: It was the stuff Gladys’s dreams were made of. And if I did anything—sip my drink, twirl my beads—it would give me away. So I sat frozen. But there was terrible silence. I could hear the bartender squeezing out the sponge, moving a glass, cleaning up a spill. Then I made myself smile. I said, “Okay, you’re right, Gladys. Mr. Berringer really swept me off my feet. I’m madly in love. It was his smile that got me. You know, the smile he only gives to seven million people every day. So deeply personal. So very, very private.” But Gladys didn’t let down her guard. “Oh, come on. He’s not a human being. He’s a charm machine. You don’t think—”
“All I know is, you say you’re drowning in work, but you have time to run around the office, talking to this one, that one—”
“So what? Since when do you stay stapled to your desk?”
“All of a sudden you’re best friends with Marian Mulligan, and you’re asking her so many questions even she’s getting suspicious. If she gets suspicious…And you never even told me you were talking to her.”
“Gladys, I’m sorry. I’ve been crazy with work, and this is the first chance—”
She cut me off. “How come you have time to talk to that moron Marian?”
“Because I’m very curious. Okay? I admit it. I’m curious about Mr. Berringer, and her boss is handling part of the separation agreement. And Mr. Berringer’s my boss…. How many bosses do you know whose wives leave them?”
“You’re buttering up Marian, and then you’re stopping off at Wilma’s and Helen’s, asking all kinds of questions, like you were Mr. and Mrs. North.” She almost had tears in her eyes. With the other girls she was queen, but I was her friend. “I would have gone with you to ask.”
“Gladys, what’s the big deal?”
She banged her glass on the table. “Linda, the big deal is, all you do is talk about him. Someone says, Gee, there’s a great glove sale at Ohrbach’s, and you say, Oh, Mr. Berringer, he wears gloves. Oh, and by the way, Mrs. B, when she walked out on him…do you happen to know what color gloves she was wearing when she left?”
“Gladys, what’s with you? I didn’t talk to you about Mr. Berringer for a couple of days, so it’s a major felony?”
“I just don’t want you to make a fool of yourself. If any of the partners get wind of it…”
What was she trying to pull? I thought. And then I realized: She wasn’t only desperate for gossip; she was scared that if I’d fallen for John, I’d want to cherish him alone. I’d float up to the clouds, abandon her. Gladys wanted to keep me, and keep my crush for just the two of us. A Sunday special.
And part of me wanted to-be kept. What a relief it would be, to talk about John, to have someone—a sober someone, my best fr
iend—to take pleasure in all I’d gathered. Let me tell you about the veins in his hands, Gladys, about the way he holds the phone. But then what would I be? Just another girl with a cheap pash for her boss.
It burst out of me: “Listen, Gladys. There’s a big, fat difference between worrying about someone—someone you have a lot of respect for—and going nuts over them. It so happens I like Mr. Berringer. Okay? He’s a wonderful, decent man. And—”
“Linda, calm down.”
“No. I mean, how would you feel if I accused you of holding back on me?”
“I didn’t mean—”
Don’t back down, I said to myself. “Gladys, I’m a human being. He’s someone I see five days a week, and sure, I’m sorry Mrs. Berringer took a powder. More than sorry. Sad. But I’ll confess something. I’m nosy. So sue me. I asked a couple of questions. You know damn well that if Mr. Avenel’s wife packed her bags, you’d bring in the blood-hounds, and don’t tell me different. I think you owe me an apology.”
I waited. When she spoke, I could hardly hear her voice. “I’m sorry, Linda.”
“It’s okay.”
I thought: What’s the percentage in turning to mush under a little pressure? Like that British boob who gave away Czechoslovakia. The only time you back down is when you’re dead.
Gladys lifted her glass. “Thanks.”
I gave one of those conspiratorial winks that you see in the movies but never in real life, but we’d just had a very dramatic situation and, sure enough, Gladys not only fell for it but winked back.
I said softly, “A girl in my position can’t be too careful. If I got tipsy…” I paused. “Who knows? I could start babbling my secret. About my grand passione for my darling, precious John.”
Then I laughed, and my friend Gladys joined me.
I couldn’t believe it!
I’d been trying to pick up the tiny little strings of eraser stuck way down between my typewriter keys with the tip of my pinkie, and there I was with my finger in my mouth, rewetting it, and who should walk by and stare at me but Nan Berringer.
Was I shocked! I thought she was in Reno! I started to say, “Good morning, Mrs. Berringer,” but I was so nervous I hadn’t taken the finger out of my mouth. And she was in such a hurry all she must have heard was “Goo—” By the time I pulled out my finger and got to “morning,” she was past my desk, the heels of her expensive black suede shoes making snappy sounds on the brown tile floor of the corridor where the secretaries sat.
She’d swept right by John’s closed office door, so she hadn’t come to fling herself into his arms and say either, I forgive you, John, or, My dearest, my love, I’m so deeply sorry. No, she just kept going, and fast. Still, in that second when she passed, I got a chance to see her like never before.
God, was she pretty! I could see why John loved her. Her skin was so flawless it looked as if it was made out of the stuff that covers pearls. She wasn’t actually beautiful, but what made Nan Leland Berringer a knockout was that everything was wonderful. Wonderful, nice eyes. Same with the nose and mouth. Her hair may have been a non-breathtaking brown, but somehow it was a richer color than anyone else’s. It was styled in a perfect pageboy: longer than her chin, shorter than her shoulders, and unbelievably shiny, as though she’d been given sole access to the world’s best shampoo. If God had worked in a beauty parlor, He would have said, Okay, this is what hair is supposed to look like.
Naturally, her figure was as superb as the rest of her. Lovely, but not lovely like the figures of other lovely women. Nan was about my height but built on a finer, smaller scale. Not skinny; just petite enough to make a guy feel she’d been custom-made.
Her clothes were like gift wrapping for her specialness. Her gray dress was superior to anyone else’s gray—the softest color, and the fabric so fine it looked like someone had taken a steamroller and flattened out a couple of yards of wool. It was absolutely plain; this dress didn’t even have a button you could see. Still, it was beautiful. On top it was politely tight; the skirt flared. The dress said, Look at the classy narrow shoulders and the delicate waist, and if you’ve got an extra five seconds, take a gander at the regal posture. You could see why John loved her.
It wasn’t only the way she looked. It was Nan herself. She wasn’t just a pretty twenty-one-year-old matron. Oh, sure, she was that, but she was more. Smart. It didn’t only show in her eyes, like with most people. Everything about Nan was smart: the size steps she took, the way she carried her purse. Smart in a way I would never be. If I could have been anything in the world, I would have been Nan Leland Berringer.
And I thought: God, what a loss. How he must miss her.
Then I got up and trailed her.
I was definitely no intellectual, but I wasn’t the class dunce, either. I figured if anyone caught me tippytoeing ten feet behind Mrs. Berringer, they’d think John had sent me to spy on her, and that wouldn’t be so terrific for either him or me.
So I snuck into the supply closet and came out with a couple of boxes of typing paper, enough pencils to last till 1947 and two bottles of ink; then I didn’t even waste my time looking where Nan had gone. Instead, I sauntered by Gladys’s desk. There’s that old joke about the three major means of communications: telephone, telegraph, tell a woman. The comedian had probably worked at Blair, VanderGraff and knew Gladys.
She was on the edge of her chair, talking a mile a minute to Lenore Stevenson, the bookkeeper, who everyone called Lenny, and I don’t think it was just a nickname. Lenny looked like a man in a skirt. A big man, and she had a pair of hands that would have looked great on a Giants pitcher, plus a cigarette voice that came pretty close to being as deep as Mr. Leland’s.
“Lin-da,” Gladys said, “come here.”
“Yeah,” Lenny echoed, “come here.” She was huge, but strong—not fat: a rhinoceros, but a gentle one. She was shy—she ate lunch alone with her ledgers, never with us in the conference room—and she hardly talked, except to Gladys, whom she practically worshiped. But Lenny had a good heart and was always doing sweet things, like slipping me my pay envelope Thursday night instead of Friday morning.
I rested my supplies on Gladys’s desk. “I can’t talk. I got to go and kill myself, because that’s the only way I won’t die from overwork.” I sighed, putting a little quaver in it—“Boy oh boy”—and picked up my stuff.
“You must stay,” Gladys said, in her Queen of England voice.
“I ‘must’ stay? You going to pull out a silver teapot and pour?”
“Stay, Linda,” Lenny said.
“I can’t.”
Gladys added, “We’ll make it worth your while.”
Lenny nodded and crossed her arms. Gladys swiveled her head around, looking for lurkers; when it came to gossip, she trusted no one. Then she nodded at Lenny, like Go ahead.
“I was down by Mr. Leland’s office—” Bookkeepers could go where secretaries fear to tread.
“And guess who just happened to dance into Mr. L’s office?” Gladys butted in.
“The Rockettes,” I said.
“Linda, be serious,” Gladys hissed.
“Okay, I’m serious.”
“Mrs. Berringer!” Gladys said.
“Mr. Leland’s daughter,” Lenny added.
“Thanks, Len.”
“Yeah, sure, right,” Lenny rumbled. “Anyway, guess what she told her father?”
“They invited you in to join them? You got an engraved invitation?”
“Aw, Linda, you’re a card!”
“How come you got to listen in, Lenny?”
“She didn’t get the door closed fast enough.”
“What did she say?” I demanded. Ever since my drink with Gladys, I stopped pretending I wasn’t curious; I’d come to realize that when you’re trying hard to be something you’re not, people think you’re phonier than you are.
Lenny raised her eyebrows and looked upward, like the secret was between her and Him…and Gladys too, because the next second, Le
nny looked straight at her. And Gladys was almost jumping out of her chair, like she had taken a double dose of Castoria. “Tell her,” Gladys bubbled. “It’s okay. Go on, Len.”
“Awright.” Lenny made circles with her shoulders, like she was getting ready to throw her world-famous fastball. “Mrs. Berringer walked in there and said, ‘Daddy, I won’t wait another day. I’m going to Reno tonight.’”
“Tell her what happened next,” Gladys ordered.
“Mr. Leland said, ‘Close the door, Nan.’” Lenny could add and subtract like a genius but sometimes seemed a little slow at general thinking.
“No. After that,” Gladys said.
“Oh. See, Mrs. Berringer came back to close the door, but the second she was doing it, you could still hear her. And you know what she said? ‘I don’t care what you say. I’m going to marry Quentin!’”
4
The window behind Edward Leland’s desk was open, and the year’s first warm breeze floated in; even Wall Street smelled sweet. But in that office on the forty-sixth floor, there wasn’t a trace of spring softness.
Mr. Leland stared as I stood near the door of his office. Not a man’s stare—no Look at those legs!—but a cold look, searching for something, and the worst of it was, I had no idea what he was after. Without thinking, I brought my pencil up to my mouth; when you’re scared, there’s nothing like a good, hard chew on a pencil for fast relief. But the way Mr. Leland’s eyes were boring through me, he would have known the depth of the teeth holes. I lowered it.