Three P.M. Jo sorted out her wardrobe, arranging and rearranging her dresses: day and night. There were only eight of them—it was hard to convince their father that they needed many dresses, and they tended to wait until the last moment to ask for anything, so they could present something suitably shabby.
The black dress was still in the bottom of the wardrobe. She took it to the hall bath and washed it in the sink with a little white vinegar, which got the scent out without the color bleeding. (Mary had shown them, long ago, as if she’d known they’d need it.)
As she hung it on the wardrobe door to dry, her chest got tight for a moment. When it passed she felt foolish, and made her bed again just for something to do besides stare at the windowpanes like they were the bars of a birdcage.
Four P.M. Lou came up the stairs and closed the door with a firm click before she turned to Jo and broke out with a smile in earnest.
“I leave tomorrow,” she said. Her eyes were wild with the terrified delight of the pardoned prisoner. “Tonight Tom and Father will go over Tom’s finances, to make sure he can provide for me.” Lou rolled her eyes. “Then it’s straight on to Chicago.”
“That’s . . . very efficient,” Jo managed.
Lou wrinkled her nose. “Tom didn’t give him any reason to delay. Father started out talking a month or two, and Tom agreed, but then Tom kept talking and before I knew it my bags were practically packed. I don’t think Father even noticed the runaround Tom gave him. Tom’s very clever.”
“I know,” said Jo through a dry throat.
“Of course.” Lou moved to the closet and began to sort through her dresses as if she had a hundred instead of ten and would have to leave some behind. There was a hint of panic about it, as if she was under surveillance and anything that went wrong now would lock her in the house forever.
“I’ve got to pack, somehow. Father said I should pull one of the trunks out of the old nannies’ room and not waste any time.”
Lou stopped and turned, as if she’d just realized how this happiness might look to Jo.
“I’m glad for you,” Jo said. “Does he want to see me?”
Lou nodded.
It was strange to think that their father’s office, which a week ago had been another country, was now so familiar that she knocked only twice before entering.
She plastered a polite smile on her face.
Tom was still standing in front of their father’s desk, shaking hands, shifting his weight as if he was eager to be gone.
“Father,” said Jo from the doorway. She watched Tom’s shoulders go tense.
“Ah, Josephine. Come in, come in. Mr. Marlowe was just leaving. As a very happy man, I might add.”
Tom turned and gave her the sort of smile a young man wears when meeting his beloved’s spinster aunt.
“Congratulations,” she said. “Best wishes.”
She shook his hand. It ached.
His gaze was dark and unwavering. Her misery was probably palpable, but she met his eyes anyway. There was nothing to fear from him now; he could hardly kiss her in front of her father, and the next day he would be gone to Chicago with Lou. He wouldn’t be back for weeks or months, and even then—
“I’ll see you tomorrow, sir,” Tom was saying. “Josephine, nice to meet you.”
He perched his fedora on his head and was gone.
Their father sat back in his chair and laced his fingers over his slim stomach, the picture of satisfaction. “I knew this would work out in the end,” he said, as if to himself.
Then he remembered Jo. “Now, about last night.”
“Van de Maar will be disappointed,” Jo said, taking a seat. Outside the study windows, Tom was revving the engine, hopping into his car, disappearing into the traffic.
She let her feelings disappear with him. There wasn’t time to mope; she had to think sharp.
“Van de Maar will understand, I think,” said their father, and Jo wondered if that meant there were other daughters in the wings who had been earmarked for van de Maar’s understanding. “How did you like Foster?”
“I can’t say I did,” said Jo. “I don’t know if I trust a man who”—she stopped herself from saying can’t hold his drink just in time—“drinks so much in front of ladies.”
Their father nodded. “A fair point,” he said. “Foster has always been a little blind to excess. Well, if you don’t like him, that’s all settled, then. Have you spoken to Ella and Doris?”
It had been settled quickly—too quickly—and Jo suspected something terrible looming even as she answered. “Ella seemed very quiet at dinner,” Jo said, “and she hasn’t said anything to me this morning about Prescott one way or the other. He seems to be very refined?”
“He is,” their father said. “He comes from a very influential family. Ella would be a lucky woman if she could become Mrs. Prescott—probably a chairman’s wife someday. I trust she’ll keep that in mind.”
Because nothing seduced a girl like the idea of becoming the chairman’s wife in a family even more ambitious than her father’s.
“Yes, sir. When will he visit again, do you know?”
“Soon, I suspect. He seemed to like her. What about Doris? She and that Lewisohn boy seemed to get along. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“She likes him enormously, I think,” Jo said, and managed a genuine smile. “She already told me she’d like to see him again.”
“Excellent,” said their father. “I’ll start thinking about another small party next week, then. I’ll tell Mrs. Reardon so she has time to get something decent. I didn’t like the pheasant this time—nasty bird, pheasant, unless you know how to cook it. And Pavlova for dessert. Lewisohn will be for Doris,” he said, like it was still a discussion of the menu, “and tell Doris she’d better lock him in before he gets wind of her strange thinking and changes his mind—and we’ll get some of the other girls downstairs in the meantime. What are their names? The twins, I mean, next ones in line. Matilda?”
“Hattie and Mattie,” Jo said, her skin crawling. “The twins.” The older twins. She couldn’t even imagine him succeeding so far down the list of them that he got to Rose and Lily.
“Right.” He smiled. “That should be a joke, shouldn’t it? You can just change them around until everyone gets along, and no one’s the wiser.”
Jo blinked at him and didn’t answer.
“Well, that’s all,” their father said, taking up the paper. “I’ll call you or Louise if you’re needed.”
She stood, feeling numb, and turned for the door.
“And tell Ella to make up her mind soon,” he said. “If it’s not Prescott it had better be the next one. We can’t let word get out about a houseful of choosy girls.”
Though she should not by then have been shocked at anything their father said, still the words stopped her in her tracks.
She had also rejected the first choice; would she now be bound to the second?
Carefully, she asked, “And what about me, sir?”
He waved a hand. “I have other plans for you,” he said, “don’t you worry. Now go along.”
Jo could have hit him; she could have picked up one of the paperweights off his blotter and thrown it at him hard enough to knock him right out of his chair.
For a moment her hand felt heavy, as if she really could take aim and bring him down.
But if he got up again, God help all of them. That was the trouble. Even after all of this, there was still something to lose.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
• • • • • •
Jo had to give Lou credit for efficiency.
While Jo was gone, Lou had dragged a small trunk down from the attic. It had been mostly wiped clean of dust, except near the hinges, where she hadn’t bothered. Now she was folding her dresses as fast as she could, as if nothing could backfire once her trunk was packed.
When Jo came into their room, Lou looked up, hugging a green dress to her chest as if she’d been caught
out.
Jo had never seen her this way; Lou had never been hopeful before. She was a different creature.
It helped; not as much as it hurt, but it helped.
“Jo,” she said, “I want to thank you. I—I can’t believe I’m getting out of this house. I should be afraid, shouldn’t I?”
Jo thought about Lou and Tom in the front seat of his car, driving through open country, and wondered what there was to fear.
“I should be terrified,” Lou answered herself, “but all I can think about is what it looks like outside the city—what it really looks like, not just in pictures.”
The green dress went into the trunk; a nightgown appeared in her hands.
“Your Tom is the cleverest cat I ever saw,” she said, her eyes feverish. “He handled Father like it was a parlor trick! I could hardly stop myself from laughing and ruining everything.”
Jo’s black dress was still hanging on the outside of her wardrobe door. The late-afternoon sun filtered through the net, and the dress looked as if it had been covered with dust, forgotten for a hundred years.
Lou was inspecting pots of rouge, holding one up to her face in the mirror. “How was Father with you? You arranged everything, I’m sure, you’re as smart as he is, that old bastard. Is everything settled for Doris?”
“Soon,” Jo said, feeling like her throat was turning to mud.
“Good.” Lou knelt to look through her pile of ruined shoes. After a moment the sound stopped, and Lou said to the inside of the closet, “I shouldn’t have doubted you, Jo. I’m really sorry. Of course you know what you’re doing. You’ve always looked out for us.”
Lou sat back on her heels and looked over her shoulder. Jo saw she was holding a pair of gold shoes in her lap—one of her first catalog pairs, Jo remembered—so worn down that the strap had vanished and every last flake of glitter was gone.
Lou had bought them that first year at the Kingfisher, when it was still just the four of them dancing and Jo was in love with Tom.
“Once you’re out, don’t ever come back here,” Jo said, quietly, and left.
She sat in the library a long time without bothering to turn on a light; there wasn’t much, just now, that she wanted to see.
seventeen
SOME SUNNY DAY
Lou was almost done packing by the time Jo came back to the room. The bronze dress Lou wore out dancing was draped over her bedspread, the only thing of Lou’s left.
“I want to go out,” said Lou.
Jo felt too empty to argue anything except, “It’s dangerous.”
“I know. But the girls have been trapped like mice up here for two days, and this is the last time we’ll all be together for God knows how long. I want to leave off like we started—dancing.”
The difference between now and when they had started was that they were no longer invisible. Their father’s suspicious eye was on them now, and he was determined to keep them unsullied goods in a busy market.
But Jo was too tired to be frightened, just now, and Lou was right. Who knew when any of them might ever see her again?
No. That didn’t bear thinking about.
And under all that was something deeper and meaner and true; Jo wanted to see him, just once, before he was someone else’s husband, and gone for good.
“Call them in,” Jo said.
Jo had washed her face with cold water on her way back from the library—she had been flushed—and when she was alone she rested her fingertips on her temples for a moment, just to bring a little feeling back.
The room filled with them, primly, as if they’d been prepared for a scolding.
“All in, General,” said Doris, closing the door. She moved behind the younger girls, rested one hand on Sophie’s shoulder and the other on Violet’s.
Then eleven pairs of eyes were fixed on Jo, and for the space of a breath she felt the impossible weight of protecting any of them, let alone all of them, and hated their mother for dying.
“This is how things stand,” she said when she trusted her voice. “Lou is leaving us. She leaves tomorrow for Chicago, with a man named Tom Marlowe. You might remember him from the Marquee—he was the host there.”
The silence was absolute. Jo could hear pigeons walking on the ledge, it was so quiet.
At last, Ella ventured, a hint of poison in the tone, “Tom from last night?”
“Yes,” said Jo, and pressed on quickly, “he was very taken with Lou at the Marquee, and didn’t like the look of the gentleman she was with last night, and so everything is already settled with Father.”
A moment too late to be casual, Doris whistled and said, “Lord, you dodged a bullet, Lou. That other one’s a mummy.”
“But you—but Father called us down in front of him,” Violet said, her voice shaking. Fear or anger, it was hard to say. “It was so awful.”
You. Jo’s throat went dry.
“He suspects us, from the papers,” Lou said. “Tom put him off the trail.”
“Then he has a terrible way of going about it,” said Rebecca.
Hattie and Mattie exchanged unconvinced looks.
Sophie whispered, “Tomorrow? She’s going tomorrow?”
Jo ignored it. Sophie wasn’t deaf; if she didn’t like it, that wasn’t Jo’s problem.
“Doris will be seeing Sam Lewisohn again, since she was so keen on him the first time.”
Hattie and Mattie, who were recovering from the first round of bad news, snickered and kissed their own fists with relish.
Araminta blushed and whispered something to her, but Doris was grinning too hard to mind either the twins or Araminta’s advice about dealing with teasing.
When the kissing noises died down, Doris said, “I liked Sam back when he danced, and I like him now.”
“Yeah,” said Lily, “but he’s just some man.”
“Hey.” Doris lifted a finger. “He’s just some man I like. There’s a big difference. You be nice.”
“You said he hardly dances now!” moaned Rebecca.
Doris flushed. “Well, at least he dances, and well enough for me. Who knows if this Tom fellow is any good at dancing, either? You’re a bunch of nosey parkers.”
“You’ll have a chance to see for yourself,” said Jo. “We’re going out to his place.”
A ripple of relief ran through the room.
It was too loud, too happy; it was a gloss over an unspoken thrum of mutiny so sharp that Jo felt like someone had snapped a rubber band against her wrist.
Lou hadn’t been lying about the girls being ready to bolt, if Jo tried to hold them. If she had said no tonight, they might well have sneaked out from under her, even after everything.
Jo resented the undercurrent—as if she had chosen to give them a terrible father, and to be his envoy.
“Enjoy it,” she said. “It might be the last time we go dancing for a while. It will be the last time we go out dancing all together. Tomorrow Lou leaves us. Doris won’t be far behind her, and then it will be Hattie and Mattie’s turn to be thrown to the wolves.”
The murmurs rose, though Hattie and Mattie fell suddenly silent.
“Cabs at midnight,” Jo said, to shut them up.
The girls were gone like leaves.
When they were alone, Lou said, “Don’t you want the girls to know you set me up with Tom?”
“No,” said Jo. “I don’t want them to think I can pull more decent men out of a hat. He’s the only man I know.”
“Nonsense. We know nothing but men.” But Lou frowned. “Jo, I want to be free of this house, but—what will happen to you?”
“Get your dress on,” said Jo. “You should look good tonight.”
• • • • • •
Hattie and Mattie slid into the taxi opposite Jo and Lou. Their matching shoes were clutched to their chests, and two identical pairs of wide eyes gleamed in the dark.
“Who has Father chosen?” Hattie asked.
“Has he told you yet?” Mattie said.
Jo shrugged. “As soon as I know, you’ll know.”
“But he won’t make us marry anyone we don’t like, will he?”
Hattie said, “We’re not like Doris and Lou. We’ve never met a man we’d want to have around.”
“We want to go on just as we are—”
“—and you can’t just let him—”
“Quit it,” said Lou. “Like she doesn’t have enough to handle without you two squawking at her about things she can’t help. Pipe down.”
(Lou had never contradicted her in front of the little ones; a general needed a united front.)
Jo wondered what Lou was thinking now, besides that she would soon be out from under their roof forever.
Maybe Lou really thought there was something Jo could do, as if she was just waiting for the full moon to turn them all into swans and throw open the windows.
The twins settled into a tense silence.
Jo looked out the window and counted the streets as the numbers on the buildings dropped, falling closer and closer to zero on the way to the Marquee.
Autumn was coming, and the sidewalk was just cold enough that they all danced on their stocking feet over the pavement and up the stairs, where the burly doorman couldn’t help but smile back at the chorus line of grinning faces pressing into the doorway.
When they went in and down the first hallway, she didn’t look up the stairs.
Just before the man at the second door opened it, Jo wished Tom wouldn’t be there, that he and Lou had already left, so she could stop half-looking for him.
It was better just to know he was gone.
It was dangerous to care for him; there were some rules that never broke.
• • • • • •
Never tell a man your name. Never mention where you live, or any place we go. Never let a man take you anywhere; if you take one into the alley to neck, tell one of your sisters, and come back as soon as you can.
Never fall for a man so hard you can’t pull your heart back in time.
We’ll leave without you if we have to.
• • • • • •
Their effect was almost as impressive the second time; though they didn’t have much, the Hamilton sisters knew how to wear what they had.
The Girls at the Kingfisher Club: A Novel Page 14