by Camille Eide
Biting back a smile, Eliza resumed her task.
Duncan lugged the table over to the chair, but instead of sitting down, John seemed more inclined to wear long ruts in the carpets.
In spite of the ongoing distractions, and thanks to John’s availability, Eliza edited and retyped far more pages than she had the day before, to her relief. Yet she still felt uneasy. Though he didn’t hesitate to help when she asked, John still seemed put out when she needed him. But at least he was willing.
As the five o’clock hour drew near, Eliza tidied her desk for the weekend and prepared her weekly timesheet for the employment agency, then took it to John for his signature.
He leaned on the mantelpiece and studied the sheet.
Turning, he looked into her eyes.
Her breath caught.
Eliza had been extra careful to keep a good distance from him. But in that moment, standing closer than she’d meant to, she was keenly aware of two things. The first was how unbelievably attractive a man he was. He even smelled good, like warm cedar and leather with a hint of spice. And the second was a reminder to keep her guard up. Now that they were working together, there would be more opportunities for him to beguile her with his infamous charms. Though his behavior toward her so far had been nothing but professional, she knew not to trust a charming, handsome man. Ralph’s romantic conquests hadn’t ended at the altar, and she’d be a pure fool to let herself get close to a man like that again.
Especially one with the reputation of Johnny Devine.
“Does this include the extra fee for collaboration?” he asked, holding up her time sheet. His intent look and the depth of his voice sent a current thrumming through her.
Eliza took a half step back. Those kinds of sensations would be dangerous for any girl—even one on high alert. “This is only my hours for this week. I still have to tell the payroll department about the new billing rate.”
“Excuse me, I’ll be right back.” John reached for his cane and left.
Eliza waited, confused. If she hadn’t seen him on film, she would have a hard time believing the man was capable of being good-humored or sociable.
Not that she had any intentions of socializing with him.
She collected her purse and hat, and as she reached the front door, John met her there.
He held out an envelope. “Good night, Mrs. Saunderson. We’ll see you Monday, Lord willing.”
Frowning, Eliza took the envelope. “What is this?” When he didn’t answer, she looked inside.
The envelope contained a ten-dollar bill. Ten dollars was food and bus fare for a week, plus payback of Ivy’s loan, plus some to spare.
“What is it for?”
He opened the front door. “It’s the difference you’re earning now. Twenty five cents per hour for a week. Sounds like you won’t get a paycheck right away, and I wanted to be sure you were paid now. For … all your extra work.”
Eliza calculated the increased difference, and he was correct. “But I haven’t worked a full week yet. This is too much.” She tried to give it back, but John shook his head.
“Please take it. You’ve earned it.”
“But … I haven’t, really.” Her confusion shifted into unease. Her pulse sped. She tried again to hand it back. “I can just have the billing department collect it from you, like usual.” Because I’m wondering if there’s something else you’re expecting to collect from me …
“Consider it a bonus, then.” Even his faint smile produced dimples, the same ones that had earned him the title “Dreamiest Man Alive” by all the girls in school.
Her pulse drummed in her ears. “But employers don’t usually pay for this kind of work in advance.” Especially not in cash. “So …” Eliza mustered every bit of boldness she had. “So this off-the-books cash is only for my collaboration work and nothing more?” The truth was, it wasn’t romantic advances from him that Eliza would find so unwelcome. It was the lying attentions of a flattering cheat. She wasn’t stupid. She may not have love, but at least she had her dignity.
John studied his feet, jaw tightly set. “This is simply for your hard work, Mrs. Saunderson, nothing more.” With a sigh, he looked outside. “James one, twenty-seven.”
“What?”
“It’s from the Bible,” he said.
By the time Eliza arrived home, the sky was growing dark.
Someone had tacked two notes to her door. One said a man called but left no name and said he would call again.
That was odd. A man who had any legitimate business with her would leave a name.
The other note said that Betty had called.
Still frowning at the first one, Eliza took down the notes and opened her door. Hot, thick air rushed at her, making her cough. She went to the sliding glass door that led onto her tiny balcony, opened it, and turned on the ancient fan. The annoying sound it made, like the chiming of a hundred tiny bells, meant she couldn’t leave it on at night unless she wanted to endure broom handle thumps from below all night and get an earful about it from the other girls in the morning.
Today was a feast day, thanks to her good fortune. She opened the jar of Skippy she’d bought on the way home, took out a slice of Wonder Bread, smeared peanut butter on it, folded it in half, and took a large bite. As she chewed, she made a second one and took her dinner to the tiny table. The beginnings of an article on ethnic injustice waited in the typewriter. She took another bite and leaned closer to read what she had written.
Japanese families, sent to internment camps, had been not only forced to leave their homes, but forced to sell them far below market value, or in some cases, to simply give them up. How could people have turned a blind eye to such injustice? Why is such oppression accepted in society simply as—
Something furry tickled her shins.
Eliza screamed and nearly fell off her chair.
A skinny, black cat with a white chin sauntered out from beneath the table.
The stray tom must have come in from the balcony. She had seen him out there a few times in recent days, but he’d never ventured inside before.
Chuckling at losing her wits over a cat, she crouched down to pet him, but the cat shied away. She coaxed him closer with a piece of her sandwich, then scratched him between the ears.
There was a pronounced kink near the white tip of his tail, a nick in one ear, and the outline of ribs showing through his fur.
“Poor old tom, looks like you’re hungry too. Guess you’d better stick around, because we’ve got pennies from heaven today. Although you never know how long the bread’s going to last around here, you’re welcome to share what I’ve got.”
The cat rubbed alongside her leg and bumped her with his bent tail.
She stroked his head.
The cat lifted his chin for an under-the-jaw scratch. The coloring on his neck and chest looked like a tuxedo.
“Well, aren’t you the gentleman now,” she said with a laugh. “So, all this sudden attention has nothing to do with my groceries, huh?”
The cat sniffed her fingers.
“All right, here you go. I’m a pushover, I know.” She fed him a few more pieces and stroked his fur. Pets weren’t allowed in the building, but maybe if she fed him and put him out during the day, he would come back when she returned home at night.
“If you’re going to hang around, I guess you need a name. How about Mortimer?”
With a yawn, the cat stretched.
“No, too stuffy. Truman? Eisenhower?”
The cat stepped around the chairs and stared suspiciously at the closed lavatory door.
“Not much of a politician, hmm? No, I think you have more of a bookish look about you. Whitman? Burns? Scott? No. I don’t see you as the poetic type either. Maybe a literary hero. Mr. Darcy? Now there’s an aloof chap who’s impossible to read.”
Speaking of hard to read, what made John Vincent/Johnny Devine so aloof?
But then, shouldn’t she prefer him aloof to the alternative?
She gave the cat a light stroke, forcing her employer out of her mind.
The cat shied just out of her reach, but continued to purr. Contradictory little fella.
Eliza smiled. “Yes, Darcy suits you perfectly.” She broke the rest of her sandwich into pieces and set them down for the cat, then went downstairs to wait for the phone.
It seemed Joan was rescheduling her card party due to a last minute date. As soon as Joan finished her call, Eliza gave Betty’s telephone number to the operator.
Sue Ellen answered.
“Hiya, doll,” Eliza said with a smile. “How are you? How’s school?”
“Oh, Auntie Liza! I’m swell. But I hate sixth grade! The boys are such drips!”
Eliza heard some muffled talk, then Sue Ellen huffed into the phone. “Eddie Jr. has a friend over to watch The Lone Ranger. His family doesn’t even have a television. What a square. Just a minute, Auntie Liza, I’ll get Mother for you, hold the phone. Mother! It’s Auntie Liza!”
Eliza waited several long seconds as the eleven-year-old got a gentle scolding that shouting wasn’t ladylike, similar to the ones Eliza and Betty’s mama had given them as girls.
At least someone was carrying on Mama’s legacy.
“Eliza?” Betty sounded relieved. “Darling, I’ve been so worried. Why didn’t you return my call?”
“I’m sorry, I got in late. I work across town, and it takes three buses to get home.”
Betty sniffed. “Oh. Well, I’m glad to hear you’re alive, anyway. But why do you have to ride so many buses? What sort of job is it?”
Eliza described the editing and typing part of the job, but left out the part about whom for and where—for the time being. What Betty didn’t know, she couldn’t fuss about.
“I don’t understand why you put yourself through all that for a temporary job, I really don’t.”
“It’s a long-term, freelance job. And it pays very well.” In cash sometimes, it seemed.
“Long-term?” A huff reached across the miles as if Betty were standing beside Eliza. “Really, how long-term could it be?”
“A few months, probably. It’s hard to say at this point. If the publishing house sends it back for revisions, it could be even longer.”
“But, darling, you know that won’t do. It might put some food on the table—such as it is—but it’s not a permanent plan. It’s just not … responsible. Or proper. A respectable woman’s place is in the home, making sure her husband succeeds. You understand, don’t you?”
Yes, Mother. Eliza winced and quickly shook off her attitude. Betty was all she had left, and her sister really did care, in her own way.
“And since you brought it up, I have to say I really worry about you. About your future, I mean. Someone has to think about it. Now what about that nice man, Stanley, that Ed invited over last time you were here? He owns two appliance stores. In fact, he sold us my new Hotpoint Automatic Laundry Pair. Stanley does very well, Eliza. Did he ever call?”
Eliza grimaced. It wasn’t that she was opposed to dating a pudgy bald man who sweated more than he talked about himself—which was a lot. It was the idea of marrying someone simply for security and identity while pretending to the poor man and everyone else that she was happy.
“Well, I suppose you didn’t really encourage him, did you.”
Why would Eliza encourage a man to call her if she wasn’t interested in marriage?
And why wasn’t she interested in marriage?
For three very good reasons: cooking, cleaning, and smiling. Smiling while listening to complaints and demeaning insults. Smiling while cleaning a shattered dinner plate and tomato sauce from the wall where Ralph had thrown it. Smiling while eating her dinner alone because Ralph had gone over to Bruno’s for something that didn’t “taste like dog food.”
Smiling while pretending she wasn’t dying on the inside.
“Eliza? Did you hear what I said?” Betty’s voice had risen half an octave.
“Sorry, what?”
“I said you can’t do this forever, darling. You’re thirty-three. You have to think about your future. I’ll have Ed talk to Stanley again.”
Couldn’t Eliza work on getting her books published and freelance in the meantime? Was it irresponsible to want to make a way for herself that didn’t depend on someone else? Were women really only good for helping men succeed with their dreams and nothing more?
Maybe Betty was correct. Maybe it was foolish to want to be a person in her own right, to entertain her own hopes and dreams, to believe she could use her skills to make a difference. Maybe she should do what Betty wanted and date Stan, the Hotpoint Man.
But what about Eliza’s wants? Did they not matter?
A tear slipped down her cheek. She brushed it away, surprised at herself. Tears had never solved anything.
Joan was back with a pinky and thumb at her ear and an apologetic smile.
Eliza wiped her cheek and held up a finger. “Listen, Betty, I have to go. Let me think about it, okay? Tell Ed hello and give the kids hugs and kisses for me.”
“Well, all right,” Betty said with a sigh. “Take care.”
“You too, Betty. ’Bye now.” Eliza headed up the stairs and back to her room.
Mr. Darcy was gone—no surprise.
She massaged her stiff neck, then planted herself at the table and reread her half-finished article. But words like racial and sexes and oppression only made her heart heavy.
What did she want, really? Independence? Well, that was obvious, since she was willing to go hungry rather than ask a man to support her.
What about love?
She shrugged. What about it? Aside from her parents, love had been a struggle to earn—as if what she and Ralph had could even be called love. She’d never been pleasing enough. Was there such a thing as love that wasn’t based on performance or on a momentary whim of approval? Could she ever be loved simply for who she was, without the constant pressure to be something more?
Did such a love exist?
In the movies, maybe. But she lived in the real world. Real world love, as she had found, was conditional. It took constant work to earn it and kept her in constant fear of losing it. The trade-off just wasn’t worth it. Not to her.
Eliza put a stick in the balcony door so she could safely leave it open a crack to let in the cool night air. She turned off the clanging fan, reached for the light, then stopped when she saw the spines on her bookshelf and remembered John’s quiet, parting words. She hunted through her bookshelves for the secondhand Bible she’d bought for a class in college. She found it, then leafed through it to the book of James and read until she spotted the chapter and verse.
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
Wanting the exact definition, Eliza looked up the word “affliction” in the dictionary.
An instance of grievous distress; a pain or grief.
She frowned. Did John think she was a grieving widow in distress?
Of course. He probably couldn’t help but notice how she inhaled her lunch like a pig.
Eliza read the passage again. He had insisted she take money she hadn’t yet earned. To which she responded by suspecting his motives. To which he responded by suggesting he was obeying a Bible verse about helping widows.
The peanut butter in her stomach turned to sludge. Was the man simply being kind? At the beginning of his book, he claimed to be a changed man. Eliza hadn’t given much credence to those words. She’d become an I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it kind of gal.
Was it possible that she had read him wrong?
Maybe. But even if she had been wrong, that didn’t change the fact that she needed to stay on her guard. Johnny Devine was an award-winning actor. She’d seen him on the silver screen and knew exactly how convincing a liar he could be.
The camera lies like a flattering lover. I should know�
��I’ve been both the pursuer and the pursued. No one can spot ruthless flattery better than I can.
~The Devine Truth: A Memoir
6
At noon on Saturday, Eliza gave up on Mr. Darcy. She’d placed a bowl of water on the balcony and left the door open all morning as she washed and hung her underthings, hoping the cat would come back and make her studio a regular stop on his rounds. Maybe even come to think of her place as home. But there were probably other balconies where he fared better than peanut butter, bread, and water.
Swell. Stood up by a cat.
She finished her article, proofread it, then placed it in a large manila envelope. The American Women’s Alliance had agreed to consider it for a paying spot in their national magazine, A.W.A.R.E. There had also been some discussion with Eliza of an opening for a regular column, for which she intended to apply. The AWA had published a number of her articles in their weekly newsletter, and though those had earned only meager pay, she had the great satisfaction of reaching out to oppressed women who needed to know they weren’t alone. The newsletter’s readership wasn’t huge, but it was growing.
Unfortunately, Eliza wouldn’t enjoy much in the way of publishing credits, because even though she was writing primarily for women, the editor suggested Eliza use a non-gender-specific pen name for protection. She had decided on E.J. Peterson—the initials for Eliza Jane, and her maiden name. It had a strong ring to it, like the name of someone who ought to be taken seriously.
Eliza smiled as she sealed the envelope. This article could be just the break E.J. Peterson needed.
She donned a red-floral chiffon scarf over her hair and tied it beneath her chin, then grabbed her article and handbag and set off for the post office.
Leaves lined the gutter at the curb like a long orange-and-brown boa, shuddering with the passing traffic. Autumn was dessert, in Eliza’s book. After the heat of summer, autumn came with clean, fragrant breezes like a scoop of sorbet after a spicy meal.