Out of Time

by Paula Martinac

  I took a room at the Saratoga House, which was my favorite at that time, being cozier and less expensive than the Grand Union or the United States. Also, it was run by a Jewish family, and was the only hotel in town not displaying the offensive “No Jews or Dogs Admitted” sign. Once I did stay at the Grand Union and was quite disappointed. It was certainly grand on the outside, with its impressive veranda running an entire city block. But the inside was dingy, low-ceilinged and filled with worn-out Victorian furniture. I ate in the famous dining room, bigger than anything I’d ever seen, only to find my table wobbly and the linen soiled. For this they charged as much as forty dollars a day for a room!

  So I preferred the Saratoga House, which was smaller and better kept. It was also filled with old furniture, which at least did not tip over. I had taken before, and got again, the corner room on the third floor, which was a little larger than the others and had a nice view up Broadway.

  I arranged to meet my sister for dinner. Her husband Matthew was coming down the next day from Glens Falls, and she did not like to dine alone. I talked her into dinner at my hotel, though she would have much preferred one of the others. I believe they were staying at the United States. Edith was quite pretentious. She was from a small town, married to a small-town businessman, but she wanted to rub elbows with the elite of New York.

  “What is the purpose of staying in Saratoga,” she said, “if we can’t be seen in the best places?”

  Of course, I had the feeling I knew what the “important meeting” was that she had arranged. She was very vague about it at dinner, saying only that it would change my life and might even rescue me from New York. I reminded her that I liked New York and had been very lucky to acquire a position at Barnard at my age. I was at that time just twenty-seven years old and had spent most of my life in small towns like Glens Falls, where I grew up, and Saratoga, where I had gone to college and then taught. I had been in New York for two years and for the first time felt unrestrained and unfettered by small-town conventions. Nothing was going to take me away.

  Especially not what Edith had in mind. My suspicions were confirmed the next morning as we were enjoying breakfast at the track. There was no racing that early, but we had a wonderful view from the clubhouse of the horses’ morning trot. We were joined by Matthew and his business associate, Richard Pleasant. He was exactly that.

  I was polite as usual. I was, after all, not angry at Mr. Pleasant, who smiled at me harmlessly and unknowingly across the scrambled eggs. It was actually rather brave of him to meet his business partner’s old maid sister-in-law. I wonder that the pressure didn’t make him bolt. I think I would have, in his shoes. But he was charmingly calm and talkative right through the final cup of coffee. My sister smiled effusively, and she was the one I could have throttled.

  I had not come right out and told her my feelings on the subject of men, but I think she could have guessed. I had had, by that time, a number of close friendships with women, including Mary Strickland, my teacher and mentor at Skidmore. We had lived together for several years. I would have, in fact, still been in Saratoga if she had not taken up with an older woman—her teacher and mentor, who came back to retire in Saratoga after many years of teaching at Smith. It was partially a broken heart that took me to New York.

  Edith, though, in her self-imposed blindness, insisted that I was just a career woman who had not met the right man. She had, over the years, tried to find him for me. It was clear after this latest episode that I was going to have to set her straight. It was unfair to me and to all the Mr. Pleasants who had had to endure brief, gratingly polite meals with me.

  In the middle of the day, I told Edith the heat was affecting me and that I had to go lie down. She seemed to believe that, as did Mr. Pleasant, who had heard as much about women’s propensity to fainting as I had. Mr. Pleasant offered to escort me back to the hotel, and it must have seemed extraordinarily brazen to refuse, when I think about it now. Women just did not go about unescorted in those days, as they do now, especially not in a slightly seedy gambling town like Saratoga.

  Back in town, there was a lot of excitement on Broadway just down the street from my hotel. One block was cordoned off to traffic. An enormous crowd of people had gathered in front of the Broadway Theater. At first I thought it must be for the latest matinee, but as I got closer, it was a most interesting sight. On the sidewalk in front of the theater were two moving picture cameras, and a crew of red-faced men controlling the crowds with megaphones. A man holding a ragged manuscript was talking closely to a man aiming one of the cameras, waving the script at him in an animated way, shouting “No! No! No!” above the hum of the crowd. As I wedged my way through to the front, I caught sight of the actor, a dashing dark-haired idol I was sure I had seen on film before. Next to him, fanning herself and calling for a touchup to her makeup, was Harriet.

  There was nothing very special about her looks. She was undeniably pretty, in the way of most actresses of the day, coquettish and slightly pouty. Her mannerisms were that of a spoiled child. When she brushed wisps of her sandy-colored hair from her face or adjusted the sash of her dress, it was with a dramatic, affected air.

  But there was a second after her makeup was freshened when she peered into the crowd, assessing what people thought of her. In her eyes was written a question, that of her own worth. I caught those eyes with mine and smiled broadly. Later she said that I winked, but I can’t imagine that I did. Whatever I did, she smiled back, the question removed. Standing there in her virginal white dress, her hair falling carelessly over her shoulders, she looked almost shy. She waited patiently for the scene to be filmed. She did it beautifully, a model of dramatic poise and ability.

  I remained standing there, after the crowd had cleared. I walked up to her bravely as the crew began to pack up the equipment.

  “Is this your first photoplay?” I asked politely. She smiled, casting down her eyes, then half looking up at me again.

  “How could you tell?” she blushed.

  “You seemed uncertain at first,” I said. “But then you performed beautifully.”

  “Thank you,” she said, simply.

  “I’m Lucy Weir,” I said, “and I’d be pleased to have you join me for dinner tonight. If you tell me your hotel and room, I’ll ring you up.”

  “Oh,” she said, looking suddenly embarrassed. “Well, I, you see, don’t have a hotel. I mean, I live in town. With my family. Well, you see, it’s a local photoplay, I got the part when I starred in a pageant earlier this month.”

  I realized then she was no more than twenty.

  “Then perhaps you’ll meet me at the Saratoga House anyway,” I insisted, charmed at her discomfort. “For dinner at six o’clock.”

  She nodded, raising those clear eyes to meet mine squarely. “Of course,” she said. “That would be lovely.”

  “I’ll see you then, Miss—?” I said, realizing I had awkwardly not asked her name.

  “Timberlake,” she smiled. “Harriet Timberlake.”

  • • •

  It was quite a risk I had taken, and as I dressed to go down to dinner, I could not imagine why I had done so. I could lose my position at Barnard. But there was something in her eyes, I told myself, something that spoke to a feeling we could not ignore.

  As I straightened my skirt and buttoned my jacket in front of the mirror in my room, something else was troubling me. I caught my own eyes in the mirror. At the corners, when I talked or smiled, were the beginnings of crow’s feet. I had four grey hairs mixed in with the auburn. My waist had thickened to twenty-eight inches in the last year. My suit, though it fit well, was a dull, dowdy beige.

  “You’re an old maid,” I said to my reflection, thinking of the sprightly Harriet, in her girlish dress, probably not too long out of high school. At the last minute, I added a dot of rouge to my cheeks and stuck a posy in my lapel.

  The funny thing was, Harriet had had the same anxiety, only in reverse. It was apparent the moment I saw her a
t dinner. In fact, I hardly recognized her. She wore a somber, dark blue serge suit even though it was August. Her long, wavy hair was tucked up neatly under her straw skimmer, and she was battling with a few stray wisps before she saw me. She was fidgeting with her gloves also, pulling them up and smoothing the fingers as if they were too small or she had borrowed them from someone else. Except for her face, she looked as old as I. But of course, I thought, she dressed for a meeting with a maiden teacher.

  We were oddly formal with each other during dinner. I ordered the roast beef, and Harriet the baked chicken. She hardly touched her food. I, as always, ate heartily, and commented on her lack of appetite.

  “I want to be in photoplays,” she explained, “and the camera adds such weight to you, you wouldn’t believe. I looked like a fat woman in my screen test!”

  It was one of the longest things she said at dinner. Mostly, I asked her questions and she answered them briefly, often with her eyes cast down. When I talked about myself, she looked up and smiled charmingly. It was a bit like dining with one of my students.

  At the end, over coffee and a raspberry ice she let melt in the dish, she offered me her first question of the evening.

  “How long will you be staying?”

  Since I had assumed I was boring her, her interest was touching.

  “I leave tomorrow morning,” I answered. “The races don’t appeal to me, and I have classes to prepare for.”

  “Oh, I see,” she said, drawing a calling card from her pocketbook, an address book, and an elegant fountain pen. “May I write to you? Would you give me your address?” She held out the book and pen for me to write it down.

  “That would be fine,” I said, surprised by her interest. “I mean, I would like that.” When I finished, she handed me one of her cards to keep. I had to resist the urge to run my finger over the embossed gold of “Miss Harriet Timberlake.”

  “This is a lovely pen,” I said instead, rubbing my hand over it. “It has a nice feel to it.”

  “My father brought it back from Italy,” she said, closing her pocketbook. “I hardly use it. Perhaps you’d like to keep it?”

  I was startled and handed it ungraciously across the table. “I couldn’t,” I said. “It was a gift, and, I’m sure, an expensive one.”

  I knew it was a mistake by the way she cast her eyes down and plopped the pen carelessly into her bag. She sighed instead of speaking.

  Then in such an intimate tone I surprised both of us, I half whispered, “Write me something beautiful with it.” She looked up, her head tilted rakishly to one side, and smiled seductively.

  “I will,” she said, with a soft blush rising in her cheeks.

  Later, alone in my room, I did what I had resisted earlier. I sat on the edge of the bed with her calling card in my left hand, my right index finger feeling the silky bumps of her name. I am embarrassed to admit that I took off my suit and shirtwaist and stood again in front of the mirror in my petticoat and chemise. I let my hair down over my shoulders and brushed it till it shone. I let one strap of my chemise fall over my shoulder and stared in wonder at the creamy smoothness of my own skin.

  Harriet Timberlake wanted me, I could tell. Maybe she was too young to know what that meant, but it seemed unlikely. And I was suddenly no longer Miss Weir, the spinster schoolteacher. I was Lucy, and I was desired.

  21

  August, 1930

  I remember receiving that first letter from her. I knew, instinctively it seems, that it had been written with the Italian fountain pen. When I saw the return address, my heart began to race, my palms to perspire. “Miss Harriet Timberlake, Union Avenue, Saratoga Springs.” I left it sitting on the dressing table for hours, unopened. I wanted to prolong the moment of first seeing it, first touching it, first lifting it to my face and smelling the unmistakable scent of Harriet. Roses, it smelled magnificently of roses. Fresh cut, June roses.

  I opened it finally, after hurriedly preparing for my next day’s classes (and distractedly—did I teach them anything that day, those bright, eager faces? Or did they stare out at me from their desks, puzzled by our sudden leap from Milton to the Romantics?) In bed, I lay the letter shamelessly on the pillow beside me. I read it through five times quickly before I let the words register. “My dear Miss Weir,” I read, not “Miss Weir” or “Dear Miss Weir,” but her dear Miss Weir.

  How did she know that I, too, felt the bond between us instantly? How did she know that I could not describe or explain it either, that if I had let myself, I also might have thought we had both led past lives? But not I, rational, somber Lucy Weir! I could not indulge myself in those popular beliefs and practices—past lives, seances, Ouija boards—but oh, oh how the temptation to find the answer was there! Were we man and woman in another time? Husband and wife? Star-crossed lovers? Lifelong companions? Old maids together?

  “May I hope to be your friend?” she asked.

  My dear, oh my dear, you may hope to be much more!

  • • •

  I responded immediately, writing that I would like nothing better than to meet her again when she visited New York. It was forever till I heard from her again. This was, of course, 1917 and wartime, and the mails traveled much less quickly than they do now. When I think about it, it seems such a long time ago, such an ancient time. There were so few automobiles in the city then, so many more horses. I took a horse-drawn streetcar to visit Harriet. Eighty-fifth Street, where we later moved, was still somewhat of a frontier, and Barnard was seemingly in another country. In those days, I lived in one room in a building on West 101st Street, what was called a bed/sitting room. I shared a hall bath with three other unmarried women. I could have invited Harriet to my room, as she was a woman and it would never have been seen as out of the ordinary, but it did not seem the proper place. I had nowhere to make coffee or tea, and the atmosphere was not conducive to entertaining guests. So, like a gentleman caller, I arranged to meet her for lunch at her aunt’s house in Gramercy Park.

  We were shy with each other. Harriet barely spoke at first and hesitated to look directly at me, though several times I caught her eye. I was introduced to her mother and her aunt, who both looked me over curiously as if they could not discern why a woman of my age was pursuing a friendship with a girl of Harriet’s years. I wanted them to believe I had taken a teacher’s interest in her, that I might, given my familiarity with Shakespeare and the classics, influence her toward a career on the legitimate stage and away from the moving pictures. In fact, the talk at lunch was much in that direction. Mrs. McClelland, Harriet’s aunt, had briefly been on the stage herself, at the turn of the century, but had abandoned it when she met her husband. She, too, had studied with Theodora Winkler, with whom Harriet would now take lessons. The plan, as she revealed it, was that Harriet would live with the McClellands and study every day with Madame Winkler and twice a week with an elocution instructor, who would soften the rough edges of her accent.

  I couldn’t help wondering, as I watched her daintily nibbling at her chicken with as little appetite as the last time we’d met, what Harriet wanted. Was she excited by the prospect of living in New York and taking acting lessons? Or did she have reservations? When we were finally alone in the parlor having coffee, I asked her. Her answer came out in a rush of emotion and with several tears.

  “It all seems so silly,” she said. “I want to be an actress, and a good one, but to study every day? I just want to act.”

  I found myself patting her arm, then her hand, and she lay her hand gently over mine. It became unbearably warm in the room and I flushed and lowered my face to hide my embarrassment. She stood and placed an arm around my shoulders, as if to comfort me, when she was the one who needed comfort. It was a moment that touched me deeply.

  “I’m so glad to have you here,” she said softly, as if I were her oldest and dearest friend in all the world, when, in fact, we barely knew each other. “I will be so happy to be in the same city with you!”

  We talked t
hen, long and fully, about ourselves, our dreams and aspirations. She was, I knew, like me, a woman meant to have a full life, her own life, a woman who would never tie herself to a man. It was late when her mother came in to interrupt us; the afternoon light was fading. We parted, but with plans to meet the next day for a walk.

  It was, as I recall and as I have carried it with me these many years, one of the most purely happy afternoons of my life.

  • • •

  During the next month, we saw each other as often as we could, though never enough. Because I was a sort of mentor, a respected college instructor, I was invited to Gramercy Park for dinner on several occasions, but always as the dinner companion for an eligible bachelor or widower who was a friend of the family. I am certain that Mrs. McCleIland wondered about my unmarried status. I was not considered a bad-looking woman. Though unmarried school teachers have never been an unusual breed, a woman without a man was still subject to question. Was I a suffragette, Harriet’s uncle wanted to know? Written beneath the question was another: Was I going to influence his niece in that direction?

  I was not a vociferous proponent of votes for women, though I, of course, did support the cause, and it was the principal reason I had been drawn to become a member of Heterodoxy, a women’s club that met in Greenwich Village. The McClellands, however, did not understand the nature of that group, and I was purposefully vague about its meetings, labeling it a “social group,” though we were all at that time self-described feminists. Many of us had socialist leanings. I didn’t mention the names of the famous and politically vocal members whom Mr. McClelland would surely have recognized—Crystal Eastman, Katharine Anthony, Inez Haynes Irwin—or the many others I had met or who had spoken at our meetings, like Rose Schneiderman, who would not have won the approval of Mr. McClelland, a banker with Morgan Guaranty. The less he knew, I thought, the better, though when he asked direct questions, I responded just as directly.