by Amber Brock
“It’s not another passage from What a Young Woman Ought to Know, is it? I hate to spoil the fun, but I already knew most of those things.” Vera tossed a wry look over her shoulder as she slid down the aisle to her preferred seat.
“No, it’s not that.” Bea dropped into her seat, letting her books scatter across the desktop. She turned to beam at Vera. “I made you something.”
“What?”
“It’s a little trifle, really a little nothing. Can you come by my room?”
Vera smiled. “Of course. We’ll go right after class.”
Vera labored over the test, ink smudging her fingers as she wrote, crossed out, and rewrote. She couldn’t help but notice from the corner of her eye that Bea wasn’t taking the same approach. Bea filled in the blanks on the right side of the page, one after the other, with an air of something like boredom. Vera took care not to read the answers themselves, but she saw that the first letter of each word looped and swirled with embellishments under Bea’s pen. Vera forced her attention back to her own test paper, wondering whether Bea was concentrating harder on the artistry of her penmanship than the accuracy of her responses.
Vera left the classroom with the same washed-out-and-emptied feeling tests always gave her but had confidence her time studying had paid off. Bea talked the whole way to her dorm, though she never said a word about the test. In her room, she took Vera’s hand and guided her to the desk chair.
“Now, close your eyes,” Bea said.
“This is a lot of ceremony for ‘a little nothing,’ ” Vera said, but complied with the request.
“You can’t see anything?”
“Nothing at all.”
Bea ignored this, placing something feather-light in Vera’s lap. “Now, open!”
Vera opened her eyes to find a scroll of paper tied with a rose-colored ribbon. She pulled the ribbon off and unrolled the page. A gasp escaped her. “Where did you get this?”
Bea sank, satisfied, onto the dress-covered bed. “I told you, I made it.”
“You never did. How did you…Bea, it’s remarkable.”
The drawing on the paper was so vivid, so clean, it looked as though someone had taken a photograph of the Bon Ton magazine cover it was meant to mimic. And yet, it was sharper somehow, each line so even and resolute it seemed one of them might slice right through the thin paper. The girl’s black hat and bright yellow coat looked like they would be starchy and stiff under Vera’s fingers, though she knew they would only be smooth paper. She had seen Bea’s doodles and sketches in the margins of her notebooks, and of course they had discussed their favorite works and artists in class, but Vera had no idea Bea had such genuine talent.
“You did this from memory?” Vera said when she found her voice.
Bea waved her off. “No, Catherine Allston had a copy of the magazine in her room. She let me borrow it.”
“This is beautiful. I love it. Thank you.”
“I’m so glad you like it. It took me positively forever, but you were so upset when the other got torn. I wanted you to have a replacement. Though if Catherine were tempted at all by treats, I might have gotten the real thing off her.”
“I like it better than the real thing, truly.” Vera traced a line with her finger. “You should have gone to art school, Bea. Somewhere with a real studio program. Why didn’t you?”
A cloud crossed Bea’s face for an instant, then was replaced by a smirk. “Are you trying to say you wish I hadn’t come to Vassar?”
Vera laughed. “Of course not. But you’re very good. You must have studied drawing more seriously at some point.”
The brightness in Bea’s eyes dimmed. “Oh, Vera. None of it matters anyway, does it?”
“None of what matters?”
Bea cocked her head. “None of…this.” She gestured to the books piled on the desk. “School. College.”
“Of course it matters,” Vera said, the words clipped. “We ought to do our best.”
Bea sat quiet. She picked at some lace on the bedspread, no longer meeting Vera’s eyes. “I always thought all your studying, all that work…I thought it was like your room. Everything where it belongs, even the right answers in the right spaces. That you had to do well because it was who you were. Because it was expected of you.” She looked up, the corners of her mouth pulled down. “But it’s important to you, isn’t it? That you learn it. That you know it.”
Vera studied the drawing spread across her skirt. “It isn’t to you?” She knew the answer before the question left her mouth, but she didn’t know what else to say.
“Well, we’re going to be wives, aren’t we?” Bea said, her voice falsely bright. “It’s not as if we’re planning to be teachers or curators. We don’t have to do any of that.” She scooted to the edge of the bed and took Vera’s hands. “We’ll have our lovely lunches in the city and dinner parties and trips to the shore. We’ll have big households to manage. That’ll be far better, won’t it?”
“But I know you get good grades, I’ve seen them.” Vera plowed through Bea’s sunny version of their future, more curious than ever about the disconnect between Bea’s sloppy study habits and her good marks.
“Please don’t worry about it.” Bea dropped Vera’s hands. “Let’s just say I have a system.”
The answer clicked into place. “You’re cheating?” Vera asked. Bea opened and closed her mouth. When she didn’t answer, Vera said, “Tell me the truth. You wouldn’t cheat, would you?”
“Don’t be cross with me. I never meant it to be a lie. When we first met, I assumed you knew, and then it got harder and harder to tell you. So I didn’t. Everyone does it,” Bea said, her voice taking on a pleading tone. At a hard look from Vera, she held her hands up in defeat. “Not everyone, no. But who’s it hurting? Not you. And I don’t go for top grades, just enough to keep me here.”
“But how?”
Bea examined her fingernails. “Girls who’ve taken a course give me old tests, old essays. I make them things in exchange. Drawings, that sort of thing. I give Professor Harrison an essay he’s probably accepted ten times, and he gives me a B. It’s easy enough.”
“Why even come to college then?” Vera asked.
“To make friends. To have a good time before I’m an old married lady.” Her answer rang false to Vera, but Bea did not elaborate. “Speaking of which, I have another surprise for you.” Bea leaned forward, a hopeful gleam in her eyes.
“I don’t know if I can take another surprise.”
Bea blinked hard and leaned in. “Please, Vera, you’re not surprised. You must have known I couldn’t be doing as well as I am. You’ve dressed me down more than once for leaving an assignment to the last minute.”
Vera had to admit that was true. She’d seen Bea’s study habits—or lack thereof—firsthand. Had she really been willfully blind? It was a distinct possibility, and one she didn’t like pondering. Still, she didn’t want to fight with her friend about something she knew she wouldn’t be able to change.
“And you did like the first surprise, right?” Bea tapped the drawing.
Vera’s shoulders relaxed. “Yes.”
“All right then.” Bea sat up straight, her eyes shining once more. “You’ll love this one, I promise you.”
Vera looked around. “Is it in this room? Do I have to close my eyes again?”
Bea lowered her voice to a hush. “Get ready, Miss Longacre. I’m bringing you some boys.”
Seeing Bea at Fleming’s gallery rattled Vera for days. Thoughts of her old friend continued to pop up, unwelcome, as Vera attempted to get through tea with the ladies in the Angelus or one of her charity meetings. Lunch with her mother had been the most trying. Vera ate much more than she normally did in an effort to keep her mouth full. She feared if she did not, she would blurt out Bea’s name. Any attempt to explain that to her mother would have been a horror Vera could not contemplate. That was one name her mother would never want to hear again.
Alone at night, howe
ver, Vera wondered what Bea’s life had become. She had not expected Bea would be working, least of all as a secretary. Vera had always hoped for the best for her former friend, despite everything. When Vera had seen her those few times in the city, she’d seemed in high spirits, at least from afar. She’d liked to imagine Bea enjoying a glamorous nightlife, juggling suitors and dancing at clubs until the hour Vera herself sat at the breakfast table. She’d consoled herself with those daydreams. Now she knew better. Then again, perhaps Bea had changed and liked secretarial work despite her college talk about wanting to settle down. She could have chosen a different life. Vera thought about going back to the gallery, this time to begin a real conversation. Begin again with Bea, their girlish mistakes behind them.
But no matter what stories she’d told herself before, dark thoughts settled into Vera’s mind, a fog that would not clear. Vera knew Bea’s skills. The beautifully copied Bon Ton cover might have been years in the past, but Bea’s presence in an art gallery, only steps away from a fake Vermeer, could not have been a coincidence. Vera was not going to upend her own life simply for a chance to reconcile with a woman who might be involved in criminal dealings.
With concentrated effort, Vera forced herself to abandon thoughts of Bea after a few days, as she had done every time she saw her old friend before. About a week after her trip to the gallery, no longer so preoccupied with Bea or the forged painting, Vera dressed and took the elevator down to 17B with Arthur for a dinner party at Clarence and Ida Bloomer’s. She linked her arm with his.
“Have you steeled yourself?” he asked, a hint of amusement in his voice.
“For another description of Ida’s new curtains? The greatest mercy would be for them to actually arrive, so that she can show them to us instead of trying to describe the exact shade of red.”
“At least you don’t have to spend your evening trapped in a corner by Clarence. He may be the host, but I’m the one entertaining him.”
Vera always felt a little bubble of hope rise in her in these moments of camaraderie with Arthur. They tended to agree on the tediousness of evenings like this, even if neither of them could think of a graceful way out of them. As they rode in the clattering car, Vera took in the musky, slightly medicinal smell of her husband’s pomade; the scent of it always reminded her of their courting days. She wondered if she had seen more of him then than she did now, despite living in the same apartment. She could feel the crispness of his suit jacket under her gloved fingers. Perhaps when they got home that evening she could coax him out of it, unbutton his starched white shirt, and slide her hands down his bare chest. The thought of it left her light-headed, and she gripped his arm tighter. She let her mind wander, imagining his warm breath on her neck, until the creak of the elevator door opening interrupted her reverie.
The butler let them into the apartment, and Ida immediately descended on them. The wobbling feather in her headband made the plump woman look like one of the cooing quails Vera’s father kept for hunting at his lodge in Vermont.
“Arthur, Vera, so glad you could make it,” Ida said. “Please, come in, cocktails are in the drawing room.”
Vera stifled a groan. The invitation had plainly said, “Cocktails at 7, dinner served at 7:30,” which was the very reason she had taken until seven twenty-five to leave her own apartment. Fashionably late was forgivable. Delaying dinner seating meant additional nattering conversation about nothing and, to Vera’s mind, ought to have been punished with a firing squad. She did not know why she had expected anything different. Too many invitations arrived with times printed on them that had no relationship whatsoever to the actual times observed. She straightened her shoulders and followed Ida into the drawing room, her arm still linked with Arthur’s.
A man in a white jacket, hired for the occasion, presented Vera and Arthur with martinis, and they started toward a little circle of guests near the window. Vera took the first cool sip of her drink, grateful for the enterprising people bringing liquor over the borders from Canada. A more effective Prohibition law would have made cocktail conversation unbearable. Clarence, Ida’s husband, was describing problems with his newest hotel to a less-than-riveted Julius and Poppy Hastings. Of course, Vera considered, Julius’s slack expression was probably more closely related to the dotage of age. A tiny, wrinkled sack of a man, he generally had to be woken several times even before the soup course. His wife, as vibrant and lurid as the flower from which she took her name, could easily have been mistaken for his daughter or an extravagantly dressed nursemaid. Though Poppy was Julius’s third wife, married after his seventieth birthday, their union had still managed to produce two little girls. Vera wondered how they fared with a nearly senile father, but she supposed it was all they had ever known.
“Ah,” Clarence said, catching sight of Arthur and Vera, “welcome. How are you both this evening?”
Arthur took a deliberate sip of his drink. “We’re well, and you?”
“I’m well, but Ida has been in such a frenzy over this party of hers. I told her, ‘Ida, it’s not as if the royal family is visiting, you give these damned parties once a month.’ But you know women.” Clarence raised his bushy blond eyebrows.
“Quite,” Arthur said. He turned to Vera, and the corner of his mouth twitched just enough for her to see. She mirrored his expression, in a show of solidarity.
Freed of the responsibility of general greetings, Clarence launched once again into his description of the failings of his new hotel’s architect. Arthur listened, and Julius leaned in their general direction. Poppy laid a hand on Vera’s forearm as Bessie Harper walked up to join them. Bessie, an older woman with springy gray curls, was lean and lanky. She reminded Vera of one of the cranes from Arthur’s construction sites, but with a cocktail swinging from her hand instead of a wrecking ball.
“Did you hear?” Poppy asked in a rapturous hush. “Caroline Litchfield’s nurse up and quit yesterday. Walked right past Caroline and out the door, never to be seen again. She’s got her hands full now, no one to help with the boys. Ida said Caroline’s maid had to keep them tonight.” Poppy attempted a sympathetic tilt of her head, but her green eyes gleamed.
“It’s so good of you to keep up with the maids, Poppy,” Bessie said, with a hint of earnestness in her expression. “And Ida, too. Without you, whatever would we do for conversation?”
Poppy bit her lip. She never seemed able to sort out which of Bessie’s comments were compliments and which were slights. Vera took a long drink of her cocktail to stifle a laugh. She excused herself and stepped out of the cloud of Poppy’s too-sweet perfume, then crossed the room to where the Kellers stood. After accepting Martha’s kiss on the cheek, Vera joined another plodding conversation, this one about the garden planning at the Kellers’ weekend house. The list of flowers and their varying levels of sun tolerance was dull, but still preferable to Poppy’s tawdry gossip.
At last, a maid appeared and rang a small bell to begin the dinner seating. The crowd moved into the dining room, and a few white-jacketed waiters showed people to their seats. Vera took her seat, between Walter Litchfield and Clarence. Arthur sat across from Vera but was listening to Ida’s explanation of the menu, and Vera could not catch his eye.
Tomato soup came out first, followed by a pickled beet salad. Vera had never cared for beets, so she cut a few pieces and shuffled them around to give the appearance of having pecked at them, then enjoyed a glass of wine. Next were oysters, then olives, all washed down with more wine. By the time the waiters brought out the roast, the conversation was well lubricated and quite a bit louder. Vera tuned out Walter’s bellowing on her right and focused on her husband across the table.
“You know, Arthur,” Ida said, “I must confess, I had a bit of an ulterior motive in sitting you beside me tonight.”
“Oh?” Arthur speared a piece of beef with his fork and glanced at Vera, who suppressed a smile.
Ida wagged a chubby finger at Vera. “Oh, nothing naughty, Vera, don’t you worry.”<
br />
“Not at all,” Vera said. She could not picture plump, graying Ida attempting to seduce Arthur. “I’m intrigued. Please, continue.”
“Well, I take a little swim every morning in the basement pool. On my doctor’s advice. And the pool is lovely, Arthur. It’s one of the main reasons Clarence and I bought here, from you, instead of at 863 Park. But the walls are so drab, all that plain white.” Ida let out a tinkling laugh. “And this morning I had an inspiration. Why don’t you have someone in to paint them? As the building’s owner, I thought you ought to be the one to do the hiring.”
“Did you have a particular color in mind?” Arthur asked in a dry tone. Ida rapped him lightly on the arm, and he startled.
“Not a color, silly,” she said. “A mural, like the ones they’re putting in all the public buildings these days. Something really fine.”
Clarence had turned his attention to them. “I think it’s an excellent idea, Arthur. Surprised you didn’t think of it in the first place.”
“Think of what?” Walter asked from Vera’s right.
Clarence leaned over Vera and shouted, his breath heavy with the smell of wine. “A mural. For the pool. Ida’s idea.”
“Oh, marvelous. Yes, just what the building needs,” Walter said, punctuating his approval with a gulp from his glass.
“And Vera knows all about art, don’t you? She’s the ideal person to tell us what we need.” Ida fixed a slightly swimmy gaze on Vera.
“I studied art at Vassar, but my concentration was the Spanish masters. Murals are not really my area,” Vera said.
Ida waved a hand. “That’s perfect, isn’t it? We want something classic. Don’t want one of those daffy modern things in our building.”
Bessie piped up from down the table, her drink sloshing dangerously. “Oh, yes. Wouldn’t want anyone thinking of us as modern.”
“Quite right, Bessie.” Clarence elbowed Vera. “Not one of those fellows who puts a toilet in and calls it art. A real artist.”