“Yes, as I was getting into my car, about ready to close the door, he nonchalantly walked over and told me to tell you he found a Junonia shell on the beach. Is that supposed to mean anything to you?”
“Yeah, he’s rubbing it in my face that I couldn’t find one,” I said. “Or it’s another one of life’s reminders that anything is possible. I think I’ll write him.”
Marlena smiled as she reached into her bag and pulled out another set of pages. I should have known Ava was up to something I might relate to in my own life.
“Tell me this,” I said, taking them from her. “Did she do it? Did she commit a crime like she was talking about?”
“Oh, did she ever!”
But that was all Marlena would tell me, for it was up to me to find a quiet spot to spend with my friend Ava so she could tell me all about it in her own words.
Marlena and I finished lunch and then walked back to Michigan Avenue where we shopped without buying and stopped for coffee twice before continuing on to the art museum. She wanted to look at beautiful art as a way of forgetting about the hurricane for an hour.
After that we parted. She left to meet up with her friend, the aspiring actor. And tomorrow morning, the two of them would drive back to Florida together. It sounded like a chaotic, poorly thought out plan to drive this far for just one night, but there was no convincing her otherwise. Her mind was elsewhere. It was on Sanibel, along with everything precious that she owned, and from what she claimed, bits of her soul lingered there. She had to get back, to assess the damage and to simply be there. And then she’d be flying off to London the following week to start filming on a new movie.
It was early evening when we parted, and I walked to the corner of Michigan Avenue and Chicago Avenue and sat down on a bench near the Chicago Water Tower. It was one of my favorite places to sit in the city, and I found it as relaxing as one finds sitting near a lighthouse. It, like many lighthouses, had survived through disasters.
I opened Ava’s journal and started to read, wondering whether it was going to be a journal entry from prison.
NEW YORK CITY
1905
Ava
As surely as God created the sun and the moon and put the stars up in the sky and the granules of sand on the beaches, so do I believe we have natural resources placed within us as abundant as the sea. But if we don’t believe and we don’t tap into those resources, they’ll lie dormant within. And our lives will never change.
I was twenty-two years old, and it was the summer of 1898—two years after my mother’s death and one year after inheriting the responsibility for those three despised girls—when I committed my crime. It wasn’t the sort of crime that sends anyone to Hell, I don’t think. I didn’t strangle anyone—nothing like that. But the crime I committed was a premeditated one. I had given it thought, knowing it would rescue me from my life in Kentucky, from the never-ending daily chores and tedious doldrums of life on the turkey farm and from having to look at the hurt, angry faces of those nasty flowers every morning and from turning myself into a heartless spinster.
What did I do? I married a wealthy man. There’s nothing wrong with marrying a wealthy man, but I married as a heartless woman, meaning I didn’t love him. And marrying a man, when your heart is elsewhere, is a criminal thing to do not only to the man, but also to yourself.
Leonardo DiPluma was an advertising executive from New York. I met him when he was traveling through the Midwest conducting demographic surveys for a mail-order catalog. He came through Kentucky to interview farmwomen on their likes and dislikes at about that time when I had been pondering how I might escape my life. I had been receiving the catalog in the mail for years, and when he walked up to me in town one day with a clipboard in hand and introduced himself, I told him I liked what I had been seeing in the advertisements.
“I know some ladies are put off by your catalog. Maybe because they can’t afford anything, but I hope you keep sending it. I love getting your catalog in the mail.”
“Tell me, what is it that you like so much?” he asked, removing the pencil from behind his ear and writing something down.
“The pictures remind me there’s a whole other world out there, so unlike my own.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Yes,” I answered. “I especially like the ads that depict women outside of the home in nondomestic settings.”
“Advertising is leaning more in that direction,” he said. “A few men I interviewed earlier criticized it, saying it’s the advertisements that are pushing women out into the world. I disagree. I believe the women are doing that on their own and the advertisements simply reflect it.”
“Yes, I agree with you,” I said, amazed at how interesting this man was.
“You’re an intelligent demographic,” he said, flipping to a new page on his clipboard.
“I am? Why thank you,” I said. “But what’s a demo … demographic?”
“We break people into categories, age, gender, income levels … things like that.”
“Well, I’m flattered to be one of your demographics and to be on your mailing list,” I said. “It’s about the only mail I get. I especially like the postcard with the handwriting. Are you the one who personally writes that to me?”
He laughed. “No. There’s no way. We send out eight thousand of those postcards. It just looks like someone personally took the time to handwrite it.” He smiled and added something to his notes.
“Now tell me,” he said. “How often do you purchase from our catalog?”
I was embarrassed. I wanted to lie. I didn’t want to tell him that I never had any funds to place an order, but it didn’t mean I didn’t like all the watches, jewelry, shoes, garments, wagons, stoves, furniture, china, musical instruments, baby carriages and glassware. Those items reminded me of all there was in the world and of potential. “Please, don’t be offended when I tell you this, but I’ve only ordered one item. Everything looks lovely and it’s all displayed so nicely, but …”
“What was that one item you bought?” he asked.
“A bicycle.”
He looked up from his clipboard and raised an eyebrow at me. “Really?”
“Yes, I love it. It was like a burst of freedom the day it arrived. I take off on it whenever I’m upset or frustrated or bored. I’m gone for hours, and no one knows or cares, I don’t know which.”
“I see.” His hair was dark and slick and his eyes blue, the color of deep water, and it was the first time I noticed them. I had been preoccupied with his clothes. He wore a brightly colored shirt with a hard, white tubular collar worn under a sporty sack-suit jacket, and he looked like he just stepped foot off the pages of his catalog. He was around thirty years old and good enough looking to be a model.
“With regard to clothes,” he continued. “If you were to purchase any clothes from our catalog in the near future, what would they be?”
“Sport clothing,” I said without hesitation. “A bicycling costume. I saw one where the wearer can buckle the skirt around her legs for complete coverage of the ankles. The same skirt could then be unbuckled for a more ladylike traditional look when not on the bicycle.”
His questions made me feel important, and when the sun that was above us when the survey started was now leaning to the side of us, I noticed Leonardo no longer looked to his clipboard for the next questions. I think he was making them up because he didn’t want our conversation to end.
“Ah, let me remember what else I’m supposed to ask,” he said when I started pacing back and forth impatiently. It wasn’t that I was bored, but nature was calling. “Do you plan to stay in Kentucky or are you interested in ever moving to New York?” he asked.
“I love Kentucky,” I said. “But I’d move just about anywhere. There’s nothing keeping me here.”
“Are you engaged?”
“Is that really a question on your survey?”
“It does apply,” he said. “It’s the awkward part of
gathering demographic information.”
“Oh,” I said. “No, I don’t have time for men. I’m too busy chasing after the turkeys and these three wretched girls I care for and …”
“You don’t sound so happy.”
“Is there a demographic category for unhappy women?”
“No,” he laughed.
“Then I don’t have to answer that one.”
“No, you don’t,” he said. “But are you available tomorrow, same time, same place? I’ve got another survey I’d love to conduct on you. You’re a great demographic.”
I laughed. I was not only flattered, but I was interested. Ours was the first stimulating conversation I had since … since I was in Jaden’s arms and we had been talking about my being a woman and the choices I had since becoming one.
“I’ve taken too much of your time. Thank you.”
“Your welcome,” I replied, snapping out of my Jaden daydream and remembering where I was now and who I had become—a woman dressed in a curtain standing in the middle of town answering a list of questions about my life, which suddenly didn’t sound anything like the life I could have chosen for myself had I stayed on that island and married the man I loved.
The next day we met again, but this time I brought a blanket and a picnic basket and suggested we sit under a tree instead of standing for two hours.
“I don’t want to damage your reputation by doing this,” Leonardo said as he took the basket from me and watched as I flipped the blanket up into the air and let it land flat on the ground. “This is a professional survey, you know. I am here on business.”
“To hell with everyone,” I said as I took the basket from his hands and sat down. “I’m tired of living in fear that I might offend someone. I wasn’t put on this planet to properly please others and pretend I like doing so.”
He stood there staring down at me. “I’m thinking you fall into a different demographic category now that I’m getting to know you a bit better,” he said. “You’re not the typical woman.”
I rolled my eyes and opened the basket. “Yes, I do live in a lonely category all of my own, don’t I?”
He sat down beside me and took the bread I handed him. “I wouldn’t say that. I see women like you in New York all the time, and I’m thinking there might be more of you out here in the country, as well, but they’re not being honest in their survey answers. They’re in hiding, and they’re afraid to come out of the haystack, maybe. I appreciate your honesty.”
“Why?”
“My job is to interview all kinds of women and then create a publication that appeals mostly to the masses but also to ladies living on both sides of the spectrum. Because of you I’m thinking of going out on a limb in future publications. I’d like to start gearing my material more toward the women out there who actually want to be doing more in life, meaning sporting costumes and so forth.”
He asked me a bunch of silly questions and then took a break to eat bread and cheese. And then I pulled out a secret stash of brandy I carried with me from time to time, and I sipped just enough to tingle my toes.
Soon, I took charge and started asking him the questions. He was thirty-one. He came from a wealthy but small family. He was the only son and inherited his parents’ wealth. His father had been a banker in New York and died a couple of years ago. His mother died five years before that. He knew people in New York, and it had been simple for him to get a job at the catalog. They paid him well, and because I was now trying to figure out what sort of demographic he was, I asked him to be more specific with regard to his financial status. I liked his answer, and I liked him. Had my heart not sunk to the bottom of the sea, I probably could have fallen in love with a man like him.
“Do you have time for one more survey tomorrow?” he asked when we stood up a few hours later.
“I do,” I said. “I do,” I said again after the next day’s survey. “I do,” I said the day after that. “I do,” I said a week later and again two weeks later.
“Do you?” I started to ask ten surveys later, when I learned he wasn’t as interested in my information as he was in my long, dark hair, heart-shaped face and brown oval eyes. It was the first time anyone put shapes to my features, telling me I had a heart-shaped face and oval eyes. “Do you want to marry me?”
“I’ve never heard of a woman asking that before,” he replied. And then he said, “Yes, I do.”
I didn’t love him, but I liked him. I especially liked the way he complimented my features, making me feel like I was an exquisite and detailed object straight off the pages of his catalog. I was also flattered that beneath my old faded dresses I still possessed beauty, for I hadn’t felt any since leaving Sanibel Island nearly two years ago.
And when he placed a ring on my finger, a ring I had only gawked at in the catalog for years, I cried, for I never thought my hands or fingers could ever look feminine, not after all the work they had done.
Dahlia gave me her blessing, as did Stewart. And the girls were giddy as river otters the day I married Leonardo out back, behind the pond with the sun glistening down upon the brown, muddy water. Their Aunt Mary, the one they adored, had arrived from Alabama, and she was as excited to take over as their caretaker as they were to see me go.
I left Kentucky and moved to New York with Leonardo, him having no idea he married a heartless woman. He was a good man and attractive, too, and I felt bad marrying him when my heart was elsewhere, but I couldn’t see I had any other choice. I carried the burden of my crime within me for years, trying never to make it difficult on Leo, the innocent victim of my heartless love. But every night I faced the consequences of the crime I had committed.
I quietly cried myself to sleep thinking of Jaden and how I loved him. At first, it was horrific trying to love a man when my heart was settled on the bottom of the sea, longing to be rediscovered by the man it belonged to. I thought about what dear old Grandmalia once told me: a woman would be wise to marry a man that loves her more. That way, he’ll stay devoted. I now disagreed with her and had to catch my mind from fluttering off to a time and place where I loved someone who loved me equally. That sort of balanced love is out there, but it’s rare.
Soon, I became like any other woman who simply thinks back fondly to the boy she once loved and wonders how his life turned out. Had he any hardships? True joy? A woman to love him? And, most importantly, had he ever in the course of time thought of me in any way?
Leo loved me aggressively, and his words of affection read from his mouth boldly and confidently as if they were coming from one of the advertising campaigns he was working on. I never had to question his love for me. If ever I was ten minutes late after shopping or having tea with the ladies, he came in search of me. His kind of assertive love made me think Jaden never loved me as intensely. If he did, he would have come searching for his lost treasure. And because he didn’t, I now belonged to someone else. And now Jaden would no longer recognize me, starting with my clothes. Leo took pride in dressing me like a model from his catalog. He surprised me with extravagant reception gowns and visiting dresses, and despite years of living and socializing like royalty, I stopped in my tracks like a wood duck one day when I spotted my lovely green, purple, yellow, red, buff and blue gown in a mirror I was passing by.
Who was that woman wearing a huge picture hat piled with flowers, ribbon, and stuffed birds? And look at that excessive jet beading trim on the shoulders, waist and lower half of her skirt! Fancy trim meant one thing: status!
“That can’t be you,” I muttered beneath my breath, turning to view my new plumage. Ava—the girl who once wore curtains and didn’t care about fashion or outer appearance and who had in the past become so meshed in tedious tasks that she swore she was the color gray. It’s the male ducks that live the loveliest, most colorful lives. The females are drab. “But not anymore,” I said into the mirror. “Look at you, Ava. Your new outer color reflects so well who you are on the inside, a creative being. Try to adapt.”
“Talking to yourself, dear?” Leo asked, startling me. “I guess a few words of positive affirmation to one’s self is a good thing.”
I laughed and felt my face turning red. Then I looked him in the eyes, not sure whether he’d understand. “I guess I still perceive myself as the girl chasing after the turkeys instead of my own dreams,” I said.
“How about perceiving yourself as Leo’s beautiful wife and as royal-looking as any queen?” he asked. “Ava, you don’t notice all the heads turning your way when you walk by, but I do. You don’t have to feel guilty for your beauty. You’ve hidden it long enough.”
We both laughed at how silly our conversation had turned, and he took me in his arms and started kissing my neck and whispering into my ears.
“Whistle,” I said with a grin.
“Why should I whistle?”
“Just do it,” I said, laughing. “It might bring the stuffed birds on my hat back to life again.”
He pulled the hat off my head and tossed it on the ground, and we laughed as we often did and then walked hand and hand down through the long halls to our bedroom.
Later that evening I told Leo that I liked the social world he had introduced me to, but that I craved more than biscuits with the ladies, fashion shows, and chit-chatty female gossip. I told him I always wanted to be a writer and that I cared more about inner ideas than I did about outward appearances. It surprised me horribly the next day when he had told me he talked to his creative friends over at one of the women’s magazines and they agreed to give me an opportunity to write fashion articles. Leo knew everyone, and he was well liked, and when he wanted something, he had no problem asking, and they had no problem giving.
But fashion articles? I didn’t tell Leo how disappointed or uninterested I was in writing about fashion. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings or make him look bad in front of the people giving me the opportunity to write in the first place. Still, I wanted nothing to do with it and longed to run and hide within the private corridors of my mind, where maybe I had some ideas lying dormant for a novel.
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