by Betsy Carter
Rose saw the change in her daughter. “I’m not blind to how good-looking he is,” she said after Walter had joined them for dinner the first time. “And it’s nice that he has a lot of money. But I worry that he’s filled your head with highfalutin notions.” That evening he’d brought an expensive bottle of wine and called Rose “sweetie” at least twice. “Imagine him calling me sweetie.” She shook her head. “Nobody’s ever called me sweetie.”
A few days later, Rose watched her daughter zip herself into a tight new evening gown as she prepared to go with Walter for an evening at the Stork Club.
“This man who has swept you off your feet, what do you know about him? Is he a kind man? Is he honest? Aside from his good looks and big wallet, what do you really see in him?”
“I have fun with him,” Catrina said. She knew how that word, with its frivolous and sexual overtones, would sound. She said it again. “I haven’t had fun in a very long time. I know he isn’t Irish and I know that makes you uncomfortable. I married one of us and he died. Da was one of us and he left. Walter Bianco is here. He takes me places I’ve never been and introduces me to interesting people. What’s so wrong with that? You don’t have to worry, I still am who I am.”
Rose’s eyes traveled up and down her daughter’s body. The two women had the same broad hips, large breasts, and winter-pale skin. She remembered why Catrina’s schoolmates used to call her Big Catrina. Her daughter was what men would call ripe. Rose had been ripe once. She knew from her own body that ripe turned flabby soon enough. She scrutinized her daughter one more time before asking, “So tell me this, what does Mr. Romeo see in you?”
“Believe it or not, he thinks I’m pretty. He says I’m different from the other girls he’s known. He finds me funny and charming and, you know, other things.”
“What other things would those be?” asked Rose.
“You met Da when you were very young, right?”
“Yes.”
“He was different from all the other boys. He was exciting and made you feel a certain way, didn’t he?”
Rose flushed. “I suppose he did, but that was so long ago—”
Catrina interrupted, “Surely Ryan Walsh was not your mother’s cup of tea. She would have wanted you to wait until you were older, to marry a professional man, maybe even an American, but Da was charming and made your world bigger. So what if he had a temper and used bad language; you loved him and nothing would have stopped you from marrying him.”
“Honestly, I can’t remember.”
“Of course you can,” said Catrina. “That’s why you worry about Walter so much. He reminds you of your own bad choice.”
“And if he does, is it so wrong to worry about you?”
“No, but at least my bad choice can keep us fed.”
Walter had courted bosomy blondes with tiny waists and made-up faces, and black-haired girls with dark skin and full features like his own, but he told Catrina that with her red hair and whiskey-colored eyes, she was more beautiful and exotic than any woman he’d ever known. “You’re gorgeous in an uncommon way,” he told her. “We make an eye-catching couple, like Jean Harlow and William Powell.” He taught her how to hobnob with the fancy patrons at the Blue Moon. “Be natural. Talk about what you know. You’re so direct and unpretentious, they’ll be charmed.”
Whether it was her looks or the frankness with which she dealt with people, Blue Moon customers took to her. Walter convinced Catrina to quit her job at the ASPCA and made her the hostess. Soon she was on a first-name basis with actors, financiers, and members of Governor Roosevelt’s family and inner circle.
“You’re my greatest asset,” Walter told her. Even years later, she’d be walking along Fifth Avenue and be startled when some fancy Eastsider gave her a second glance and asked, “Don’t I know you from the Blue Moon?”
It seemed as if Rose was the only person in New York City whom Walter didn’t charm. “He’s a sly one,” she said to Kiefer, when he asked what she thought of Walter. “Your sister’s so blinded by his fancy life, I hope she knows what she’s doing. I have a funny feeling about him. I don’t trust him. I wish I knew more about him.” She gave her son the hard stare he knew from childhood, the one that meant she wanted something.
“Why don’t I hang around his restaurant and see what I can find out about him?”
Rose patted his hand. “That’s my good boy. Of course, we won’t tell Catrina.”
“Of course not.”
Kiefer started going to the Blue Moon late at night, after Catrina had left. Mostly he sat at the bar and watched. He noted Walter’s slick hair, his dazzling smile, and the Cuban cigar he kept in the front pocket of his suit. He saw how the young girls ogled him and how he kissed the hands of older women and sometimes patted their behinds. Men of every age slipped him bills and whispered in his ear. As far as Kiefer was concerned, the showgirls who danced in their feathers and sequins were naked.
After a while, he became a regular. He’d talk with the bartender or other customers and make casual inquiries about Walter. “I gather he’s a family man from Mount Vernon, two sisters, dogs. Sounds nice,” he said to Tony the bartender one night.
“Are you kidding?” Tony laughed. “Me and him grew up in the same neighborhood. The Bronx. No sisters. No dogs. Nothing like that. Always had a lot of girls, though. With a puss like that, hell, even I’d kiss him.”
Kiefer laughed. “Sure seems like he has a lot of friends, though—all those actors and politicians who pass through here.” He purposely didn’t mention the loan sharks, bookies, and occasional toughs from one of the city’s criminal gangs he’d also observed. He’d watched Walter in nervous conversations with one or the other of them, and noticed how, when talking to them, he would take the cigar from his pocket and finger it like a rosary bead.
“Sure, he’s got lots of friends,” said Tony. “Not exactly the kinds you’d take to your mother’s house for dinner. But friends of a certain sort, yeah.”
On another evening, Kiefer struck up a conversation with a reporter for the Evening Journal, a regular at the bar. They talked about the beautiful women and all the famous people who came to the Blue Moon. “You ought to do a story about the guy who runs this place. I hear he’s quite a character.”
The reporter took the bait. “Bianco? He’s a character right out of a Dashiell Hammett novel. Rumor is this place is backed by Owney Madden and that Bianco is always late on his shipment payments. I’ll tell you this: His story won’t have such a happy ending if that’s true. Too bad, he seems like a nice enough guy.”
Kiefer raised his eyebrows. Madden was a known bootlegger and gangster who’d also muscled his way into a piece of the Stork Club. He wondered how much of this to tell Catrina or Rose.
On the following Friday night, Rose, Catrina, and Kiefer had their usual dinner together. Catrina was talking about the party that she and Walter were planning to go to that weekend. “It’s in Great Neck,” she said. “Great Neck. What a funny name. I wonder if there’s a town called Not Such a Great Neck or Pain in the Neck?”
Kiefer interrupted her. “I’ve been hanging around the Blue Moon for a couple of weeks. Been watching your fellow.” He shook his head. “He’s not who you think he is.”
“What? You’ve been spying on Walter?” Patches of red blossomed on her neck.
“Not spying, exactly,” said Kiefer. “Looking out for my little sister.” He told her about the rumors: the bad company Walter kept, the pandering to his customers. “He didn’t grow up in Mount Vernon with sisters and dogs,” he said. “He’s from the Bronx. He lied about that. Who knows what else he’s lied about?”
“Listen to him,” said Rose.
“So the two of you have become experts on Walter because Kiefer’s been playing big-shot detective for a few nights? You have no idea who Walter is.”
“I have some,” said Kiefer. “Look, I’m not blind. He’s rich and good-looking, I’ll grant you that. Guys like that know how to sw
eep gals like you off their feet.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s like Da. Charming, handsome, but a cad at heart. You live in a daydream. Have you forgotten what it was like when Da walked out?”
Rose looked down at her plate as Catrina shoved her chair away from the table, stood up, and called to Sasha. “I may be living in a daydream,” she shouted at Kiefer, “but this is a damn nightmare!” When she was halfway out the door, Catrina leaned back in and called to both of them: “You’d better get used to this cad, because I’m going to marry him.”
10.
Everyone said it was good luck the way the harvest moon shone on the night Catrina and Walter married. He closed down the restaurant and invited nearly two hundred of his close friends. Harry Hopkins, a crony of Governor Roosevelt’s, presided over the ceremony.
A red carpet covered the walk down the long hallway from the front entrance to the main room. As the band struck up “Blue Moon,” Kiefer took Catrina’s arm. With her upswept hairdo and made-up face, Kiefer thought she looked older than her twenty-two years. “Ready?” he asked as they headed down the hallway.
“I guess,” she said.
They walked silently and slowly. He figured she was nervous and that was why she looked so dour, but as they were about to enter the main room, cameras popped and the band switched to “Always.” Catrina licked her lips, took a deep breath, and switched on a smile as if a director had yelled “Show time!”
“You okay?” Kiefer whispered.
“I’m perfect,” she whispered, still smiling.
Catrina wasn’t lying. Everyone in this room had to see how perfect it all was. Didn’t Susanna and Iris envy her as she walked down the rose-strewn aisle in her ivory silk and Chantilly lace gown with its three-yard-long veil? Kiefer was certainly taking it all in: the rich ones, the famous ones. He liked to talk about taking care of his little sister, but his little sister was doing fine taking care of herself. Even her mother, for God’s sake, must be impressed by Walter in his perfectly cut tuxedo, by this world and the role that Catrina was about to play in it. The image of James standing next to her came into her mind, but she pushed it away. Not here. Not here. She almost laughed when she imagined her father mingling with the Jews and Italians in this room and the Negroes in the band. His voice seemed to breathe in her ear: I can see her, Catrina Ballerina, a beautiful bride, her da by her side.
Catrina felt exhilarated, the same way she used to as a kid when Kiefer would dare her to jump into the Hudson. The icy water always shocked the breath out of her, but she’d rise to the surface and shout triumphantly, “I did it!” She shivered now as she’d shivered then. Her eyes welled up as Walter slipped a ring on her finger, and Hopkins pronounced them man and wife.
I did it, she thought.
The band played “Star Dust.” Catrina and Walter danced for a while, then Catrina asked Kiefer to dance and Walter asked Rose. “No, thank you,” Mrs. Walsh said. “I’m not the dancing sort.” For the rest of the evening, mother and son sat apart from the guests, whispering back and forth.
“No priest, no nothing. You’d think she never saw the inside of a church,” said Rose.
“Walter looks tanner than usual. I don’t know how he does it; it’s been cloudy and rainy for the past week,” noted Kiefer.
“Have you noticed the size of the diamonds these women are wearing?” asked Rose. “I swear, if they cashed in all the jewelry in this place, they would have enough money to feed the entire country.”
“Half these guys would hock that stuff tomorrow morning if they could,” Kiefer said with a laugh.
There were slipper orchid arrangements on every table, and even if the country hadn’t been in the midst of a depression, the food would have been considered extravagant: turtle soup, steak, lobsters from Maine, roasted potatoes with sour cream and caviar in mother-of-pearl shells, hearts of palm au gratin, and, as a private joke, chicken cutlets. The chocolate wedding cake had a likeness of the newlyweds piped in yellow buttercream icing, and there were ice buckets that stayed filled with Champagne bottles until the last guests stumbled out at two thirty in the morning.
Walter decided they would walk to the Plaza Hotel, where he had reserved the ten-dollar-a-night honeymoon suite, facing north onto Central Park. It was early September, and the leaves on the trees were still heavy with summer. When he asked if she’d ever had a bird’s-eye view of the park, Catrina answered, “I’ve been in the park many times, but never over it.”
Walter put his arm around her and squeezed her waist. “Well, Mrs. Bianco, it’s only one of many treats I have in store for you!”
By the time they got to their room, it was after three. Walter had drunk more than his share of the Cristal Champagne and fell into bed without removing his tuxedo. Catrina lay next to him and watched him sleep. He breathed through his mouth as tiny bubbles escaped his lips. With his eyes closed and his face slack, he looked his age. She didn’t know this Walter: this old man of forty-two, her husband. Dutifully, she turned on her side, wrapped her arm around his chest, and sank into the boozy smell of him.
When she woke up a little before ten, Walter was still asleep. As this was her first stay in a hotel, she was glad to have time to explore by herself. In the bathroom, she ran her fingers along the rim of the smooth porcelain tub and the faucets, which had gold handles shaped like swans. On the marble sink were two packets of soap wrapped in white paper. They had the words The Plaza written in blue, and each fit perfectly into the palm of her hand. No one would notice if one were missing, she told herself as she slipped it into her handbag, aware of the irony of Mrs. Walter Bianco wanting to steal soap. Then she went and looked out at Central Park.
Across the street, men in top hats were feeding their carriage horses from tin buckets. She could hear the barking of the sea lions at the zoo. Making no noise, she lifted the chair from behind the desk and moved it to the window, where she sat and stared out at the children playing, the green that seemed to spread out forever, the duck pond where she and James had gone on weekends. The thought of James, his young body, the surprise of him, made her eyes water. She visualized them on the other side of this window, walking hand in hand through the park. She wished for a moment that she were that girl again and wondered how she’d become this one: a rich woman with her husband asleep in a bed in the Plaza Hotel, a husband twice the age James had been when he died. God’s injustice, she thought, was immense and cruel. So caught up was she in her thoughts that she barely noticed that Walter was awake and calling out for her.
They stayed in bed until early afternoon, making the kinds of plans for their future that couples make when their bodies are sticky and satisfied. He stroked her hips and told her she was built for motherhood. “You’ll give me beautiful children,” he said. She promised him as many as he wanted. He held out his hand for her to shake it. “You’ve got yourself a deal, sister.” He vowed to always take care of her. Money was not an issue, he said. They’d continue to live as they had been living. She’d have to stop working at the restaurant when the kids arrived, of course, but they would have all the domestic help they needed—Irish girls, if she wished.
He’d seen a brownstone on 185th Street in Washington Heights. “In this market,” he said, “I can get it for a song.” They were living in Walter’s apartment, near the restaurant, a world away from Washington Heights. It would be a long trip downtown to the restaurant, but he thought the building was perfect for them, one of a row of houses with chocolate-colored turrets that hovered over the street, he said, like a cluster of witches. He described the mahogany trim on the parlor walls and how there was a skylight latticed with wrought iron on the top floor. “It has four floors, including the basement, and that’s about ten rooms. We’ll fill each of them with a little Bianco.”
The brownstone sealed the deal. Walter would have his children, and Catrina would finally have her forever.
Two months after the wedding, they moved in
to the brownstone. They filled the rooms with cane chairs and brass beds and tables with Florentine marble tops and carved oak legs. Catrina found a stray terrier who got along fine with Sasha and Spooky, and a new beagle puppy. They bought a Pfaff sewing machine and installed a Steinway baby grand on the parlor floor. He called it their music room and said that this would be where they’d hold their parties.
On Rose and Kiefer’s infrequent visits, Catrina would stash the most ostentatious crystal decanters and Tiffany lamps in a closet. Rose always greeted Catrina with a kiss on the cheek, and Walter shook Kiefer’s hand with a polite “Nice to see you again.” They’d sit in the parlor, Rose and Kiefer on the powder-blue velvet settee, Walter and Catrina across from them on the white Louis XV sofa. Walter would try to engage Kiefer in talk about Babe Ruth’s latest homer for the Yankees or the fluctuating stock market, but her brother wasn’t a willing conversationalist and would come back at him with two- or three-word answers, all the while jiggling the keys in his pocket.
Rose usually came straight from work, wearing her old drab green coat over her hospital uniform. She sat stiffly and claimed she had just eaten when they offered her food. Catrina would ask her about her trip uptown, or they’d discuss neutral subjects like the new Empire State Building. Before long, Rose would look at her watch and then at Kiefer, who would mutter, “It’s getting late. I gotta get Ma home.” Although Catrina offered Rose money, Rose always refused. Catrina worried that her mother looked shabby and wondered if Walter found Kiefer boring, then felt embarrassed that she’d had these thoughts at all.
After a year and a half, no kids had arrived, and no parties had happened. The rooms gathered dust. Sometimes one of the dogs wandered upstairs, but mostly the house remained unlived-in. “We can’t make babies with a menagerie in our bed,” Walter declared, and from then on the dogs were locked in the kitchen until morning. When there was still no baby, Walter and Catrina’s lovemaking became less frequent. He spent less time at the restaurant. He began coming home late at night, or sometimes not until early in the morning. In the past, he’d invited her to go to parties with him. These days, he didn’t bother.