Good enough, Vivian thought, puckering one more time into a piece of tissue. She leaned away a little from the dressing table, made a final appraisal. Maybe a touchup with some light powder. She snapped the compact shut, stood, and stepped back from the mirror. One last long view: tailored wool suit (fifteen dollars at Oppenheim Collins on West Thirty-Fourth Street), a single strand of pearls, kid gloves, and her hat. Since she was old enough to understand fashion, she has abided by one credo and one credo only, and that is from Edna Woolman Chase, the editor of Vogue: “Fashion can be bought. Style one must possess.”
She slipped her arms into her coat. She would not be outside long, but still, she would be outside. She took a deep breath.
I’m ready.
Should she bring her bag? Yes, it will have her identification inside. Vivian slid it onto her crooked forearm, then downed the final gulp of whiskey from the crystal tumbler on her dressing table, felt it barrel down her throat, warm and bitter. A small smile escaped as Vivian glanced at the suitcase and hatbox beside the door. Both were empty. Thank God, neither Laura nor Dolly had the chance to pick them up before they’d left. She’d have been found out. And then what would she have done?
She stepped out into the hallway. Quiet. It is Friday, the last before Christmas. Most of the girls have left already. The lucky ones are sipping champagne, on dates at the Stork or the Harwyn, others already on trains or buses back home for the holidays, bags packed and brimming with lies about their fizzy days in the big city. The Women are the only ones left behind, each locked on the other side of her door, her only company tepid tea and crossword puzzles.
Vivian passed the elevator bank. If she stepped into the elevator, there would most certainly be questions from the operator, one always desperate for a story. Instead, she exited the door at the end of the hall that leads to the stairwell, and began a slow, steady ascent up the steps.
It was fifteen minutes before she pushed the door out, felt the whoosh of crisp night air rush at her. She was winded from walking up so many flights in heels, but the biting chill felt good seizing her lungs. She stepped onto the veranda, looked out onto New York—on beautiful, wonderful, dizzying New York, teeming with life, each tiny lit window a tale: of someone, of something, of heartbreak and triumph and joy and agony and stupidity and sorrow and sex and laughter and betrayal and loneliness.
She took in another deep breath, placed her hands on the balustrade. It is, she thought, a glorious night to die.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The sound of the door swinging violently open sent Vivian whirling around. She watched as Laura and then Dolly burst through, running to where she stood by the railing.
“Stop!” Vivian thundered, holding out her palm. “Not one more step! I mean it!”
Dolly was behind Laura and, in exhaustion both physical and mental, plopped onto one of the metal chairs still scattered about the veranda, the cushions that welcomed so many girls for sunbathing long packed away in winter storage. Laura remained perfectly still in the middle of the terrace, her eyes fixed squarely on Vivian.
“Vivian,” she said breathlessly. “Come away from the edge. Come talk to us.”
Vivian held her ground, pressing her lower back against the top of the balustrade. “What are you two doing here? You should be on trains going home on holiday.” She eyed Laura coolly. “You read the card.”
“It all just sort of hit me, what you might be planning. I just put it all together as we were sitting in Grand Central. And so, yes, then I opened the card. And I . . .” She started to well up. “Oh, Vivian, please. Please. Come down!” Laura held out her hands, beseeching. “Just come away from the ledge and talk to me!”
Vivian didn’t move. “There’s nothing to talk about. It’s all over.”
Dolly bolted up out of her chair. She’d thought Laura had gone mad until she’d read Vivian’s own card to her as the cab had gone racing back to the Barbizon. She didn’t know what to say; the whole situation felt surreal, as if she were watching a film rather than being there herself. She felt ill-equipped for the task in front of them. But she had to try. Just stay calm. As long as we’re calm, she’ll stay calm. “Vivian, whatever it is, we’re your friends,” Dolly said. “We can help you. It can’t be so bad that you would consider doing something like this. You have a lot of life left to live.”
“My life is over.”
“Vivian, what happened?” Laura asked. “Talk to me. Please. Tell us what’s wrong. Perhaps we can help you find an answer—”
“There’s no answer!” Vivian screamed.
For a minute that felt like an hour, the three of them simply stood on the terrace of the Barbizon, twenty-three stories above East Sixty-Third Street, each girl cemented in place. The temperature had started to drop. Finally, Vivian spoke again.
“I’m pregnant.”
Laura ignored Dolly’s gasp behind her. Okay, she thought. Okay. It’s a bad situation, but it’s not the end. We can get her out of this. We just have to get her to see that she has another way out.
“Okay, then,” Laura said slowly. It was, she knew a delicate balance: too forceful and you could trigger anger; too coddling and you come off as patronizing, treating her like a child. “I can understand why you would be scared. It’s a scary thing. But, Vivian, let me ask you one question: Do you believe we are your friends?”
Vivian didn’t hesitate. “I do.”
“Okay. Good. Because we are. Aren’t we, Dolly?”
Dolly took a giant step to stand next to Laura, instinctually grabbing Laura’s hand and squeezing it. She found Vivian’s detached affect unnerving and began to shiver. “I’m confused,” she said finally.
Laura could have killed her. What kind of thing is that to say?! “As your friends,” Laura continued, breezing right past Dolly’s comment, “we’re here to help you. We can help you. We can help you figure everything—”
“No,” Vivian said. Her face had taken on an odd expression, intrigued and contemplative. “Please, Dolores, do tell: Why are you confused?”
“I mean, you’re pregnant,” Dolly said, almost in a whisper, her face incredulous. “How could you consider killing yourself if you’re pregnant? How could you kill your own baby?”
“Dolly!”
“No, no, Laura, it’s a good question. The answer, my dear, is that I am saving this poor, unfortunate child. That’s what mothers do, is it not? They protect their children. And I am protecting this one from a life in a prison camp.”
Dolly’s face devolved into utter confusion. But Laura understood instantly. “Nicky,” she said. “He knows.”
“Oh, far more than that, I’m afraid. He has our entire lives planned out in Brooklyn. Or perhaps New Jersey. I am to be a good hausfrau and bake pies and learn how to make spaghetti and go to Mass every Sunday. It’s all been arranged, you see.” She looked up at the sky, her laugh brittle. “What a beautiful disaster.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Laura said. “You don’t have to live a life you don’t want to live, Vivian. I know it seems impossible, but we can help you. My father is a lawyer—”
“Oh, rubbish!” Vivian yelled, her eyes flashing. “Don’t you see? This isn’t one of your petty dramas, trying to decide which boy you’re going to pick as Romeo to your tortured Juliet. Really, Laura, sometimes I wonder if you’ve grown up a day since you’ve arrived here. Wake up, my darling! Have you spent your entire time in New York learning absolutely nothing? Torn between two men and gleaning nothing from either. Did you really not know Box Barnes was still carrying on with the model?”
Laura felt her throat closing. “How did you—”
“I work in the Stork Club. It’s the city capital for gossip.”
“And yet you said nothing.”
“I . . . I was going to. Honestly. But you seemed so happy. And it wasn’t like he was coming into the club with her. I had no proof. Just idle rumor.”
Laura tried to contain her anger. “It was an idle rumor tha
t I should have heard. From you.”
Dolly turned to her. “You broke it off with Box? Because you found out he was two-timing you? With who? What model?”
“Not now.” Laura was still staring at Vivian. She hadn’t really known Box; it turned out perhaps she really hadn’t known Vivian, either. Maybe nobody really knew anybody.
It was neither the place nor the time for this. But she couldn’t help herself. “I would have never kept a secret like that from you,” Laura said. “I was going to marry him. And you would have stood there, silent, and let me do it?”
“Some lessons we must learn for ourselves.”
“This isn’t Glinda and Dorothy and tapping your heels three times, dammit!” Laura roared. “This was my life, Vivian. Just like I am here trying to save yours.”
“I didn’t ask you to do that.”
“Stop it! Just stop it! Don’t you get it? You’ve just proven my point. I was blindsided by Box’s betrayal, Vivian. But you weren’t. You suspected it all the time, I bet, probably even before you heard the rumors of him and Agnes Ford. That’s because your instincts are good, Vivian. They’re valuable. I need you, Vivian. So does Dolly. You’re needed.”
“Greeting-card sentiment,” Vivian said.
“No, no. So much more than that. You’re not the only one who picked the wrong man. The important thing now is that you have options—”
“Are you daft?!” Vivian screamed. “Do you really think that I would be standing here, exercising this one, if I hadn’t considered every other possible alternative? Do you know what Nicky’s capable of? Do you?! I had a friend, a very good friend, who I had turned to and who was helping me. Do you know where he is now? In a cemetery, that’s where. He was murdered because of me. Because that is what Nicky is. That is what he does. You can’t help me. No one can help me. Anyone who tries to help me ends up dead.”
“Vivian, you have to go to the police. They’ll lock Nicky up. You’ll be safe.”
“I’ll never be safe. Never. They’ll never send him to prison. Men like him never go to prison. And he’ll find me, no matter where I go, where I try to hide. And he’ll drag me back, force me into his form of slavery. Either that, or he’ll kill me. And he’ll ruin any child unfortunate enough to be born to him.”
Dolly had been quiet, her face nothing but pale quivering and abject terror that at any minute Vivian would turn around and leap. But something in her seemed to crack under the combination of the situation and Vivian’s immovable stance.
“The child!” Dolly suddenly interjected, fury in her voice. Her face was flush with anger. “You’re killing your own child!! Anything is better than that! Anything, you hear me?! If you do this, you’re no better than he is!! You’re a murderer!”
Laura’s hand was swift and brutal as she slapped Dolly clean across the face. The force of the smack sent the girl teetering back, until Dolly grabbed the arm of a chair for support.
The three of them once again, suffocating in the chill and the silence.
“Perhaps you’re right, Dolores,” Vivian finally said. “Perhaps I am simply a coward.” Dolly straightened up, muttering, “I’m sorry,” as she walked toward Vivian, arms outstretched.
“No! Stay back.”
Laura pulled her by the sleeve. Dolly shrugged her off.
“I don’t think you’re a coward,” Dolly said. “I just don’t understand a woman who wouldn’t want a baby. Who wouldn’t want a home with a man who loves her? Yes, maybe he’s controlling. Maybe he even killed someone. I don’t know. But men mellow over time. Some of us . . . some of us would give anything for the life you’re describing. Some of us . . . have nothing.” She dissolved into tears. Soon her body was shaking from the force of them, and she dropped to her knees a few feet in front of Vivian, like a supplicant praying before the Madonna. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I don’t even know what I’m saying.”
Laura glanced at Vivian, saw softness and pity creep across her face. She seized the opportunity. Vivian was suddenly invested in someone else’s trouble. It would buy some desperately needed time. “Oh, sweetheart,” Laura said, dropping onto her haunches to slip an arm around Dolly’s heaving shoulders, “what happened when you went to Yonkers? What happened with Jack? Don’t hold it all in. Tell us.”
Vivian stood like a sentry as Dolly cried for a few more minutes, Laura rubbing her back. Once she’d calmed down enough, she sat back on her heels, her face drawn and exhausted from all of the night’s emotion. “It was a choice,” she said flatly, wiping away her tears with the back of a glove.
“What do you mean, ‘It was a choice’?”
“He had to choose. Between me . . . and God.” A sarcastic chuckle escaped. “Not exactly a fair fight, is it?”
“The address, in Yonkers, it’s a church?”
“St. Joseph’s Seminary, of Dunwoodie.” She relayed her trip on the bus, about the woman with the dog who had given her directions. “As soon as I found out, I felt so stupid. I mean, it was so obvious. The unexplained absences, the mystery about his studies, where he lived, his shyness, the way he could sometimes just look so tortured. He was torn.”
“You talked to him?”
She shook her head. “I knew it wouldn’t do any good. After the woman at the bus stop told me what it was, I still had to go and see it, because I hadn’t punished myself quite enough. It’s actually very beautiful. I stood by the fence for a while, watched some of the seminarians passing by, but I didn’t see him. Thankfully. I couldn’t have been certain I wouldn’t have made a huge scene, and that wasn’t going to benefit anybody. He’d said everything he needed to say in Central Park. I know he feels guilty, feels he led me on.”
“Because he did.”
Dolly shrugged. “No, not really. Not when you really look at it, plain and true. I’ve had a month to stew about this. When you take off your rose-colored glasses, you see the world as it is. The truth is I pushed him. I was always pushing. Because that’s what I do. I’m pushy.”
Laura looked at the pain in Dolly’s face, so raw you could almost touch it. Somehow, Dolly’s calm, workmanlike recitation of the events of the past month was more unnerving than if she had been telling the story in hysterics. There was something profoundly defeatist in her entire body language. Laura couldn’t risk Vivian climbing aboard that bandwagon. “Dolly, don’t do this to yourself again,” she said. “You’re always beating yourself up. You must stop it. It’ll destroy you.”
Vivian had been standing, immobile, the entire time, surveying the scene with the calm reserve she’d displayed all evening. Finally, she spoke. “Laura is right, Dolores.”
Laura took in a deep breath, slowly exhaled it. Good, good. Vivian is focused on something else. Let’s keep her focused on something else. Laura spun around on her knees to face Dolly. “Honey, listen to me. You are a special, special girl. You’re funny, and pretty, and smart, and the best friend a girl could ever ask for. Isn’t she, Vivian?”
Vivian nodded. “Yes.”
“You need to take this as a learning experience on the road in life. Look at me: I had two great guys, and now I have none. I betrayed one, only to be betrayed by the other. But I’ll learn from it. I’ll know better for the next time.”
Dolly smiled ruefully. “That’s because you know there will be a next time.”
It took all of Laura’s strength not to lose her patience. She could almost hear the voice coming from inside Vivian’s head: You don’t know problems, sweetie.
But Dolly did know. “I’m sorry,” Dolly was saying, looking up at Vivian. “I know this must all seem so silly to you, when you have it so much worse. But that’s life, isn’t it? We all want someone else’s life, someone else’s problems, because they always seem so much better than our own. Vivian, I want you to know I have always admired you. Honest. Even when I was being nasty. Because you never lie. Ever. You always say what you think, and not many people do that. At least not many people I know. So I want to be
honest with you back. This isn’t as impossible as it looks. I know it probably feels impossible, and for a girl like you, with so much pizzazz, it must feel like you’re going crazy inside. But you’re not the first girl to ever be in this situation, to be having a baby, to have a jealous boyfriend. You don’t believe it, but you have friends. You have Laura. And you also have me. For sure. I might not be the most swell girl you’ll ever meet, but I bet I’m one of the most loyal. We won’t let you down if you just let us help. Deep inside, you know we won’t let you down.”
Laura had never felt so proud of anyone in her life.
She slid her arm back around Dolly. All of their eyes were watering from the cold; Laura had lost the feeling in her feet. She glanced up at Vivian’s face, still placid and knowing. Standing there hovering above them, she looked almost beatific. “How about it, Vivian? Look at us: three girls, with three broken hearts, surrounded on all sides by the big city four days before Christmas, wondering what happened. But we’re still here. We know we can deal with whatever comes our way.” She leaned forward, stretched out her hand. “Please, Vivian. Please.”
For the first time, Laura saw small droplets of uncertainty seep into the resignation in Vivian’s face. “I . . . I don’t know. It’s so utterly hopeless.”
It was time to go for broke. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see?!” Laura said, leaping up to her feet. “That’s it! Right there! It seems that way. But it isn’t that way. You can’t see it, because you’re too far in it. But we can. We can see it. Let us see it for you. You have no hope. You must let us carry your hope for you. I swear, Vivian, I can have you in Connecticut in ninety minutes. And from there we can get you anywhere. He’ll never find you. Nicky may have muscles, but my father has brains and money. You have to trust me.”
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