Over the Christmas holidays Kay decides they will cook at home, their facsimile of a home. They drive to Vons and load the basket with a turkey small enough to fit in their tiny oven, but large enough to have leftovers the next day. She buys cans of cranberry jelly, peas, and pumpkin, but they also have to buy all the spices and even the pie pans. It would have been much simpler and cheaper to go out, but Kay feels something important is on the line, and if they don’t compose a scene of domesticity on Christmas, something crucial will have been surrendered by her, and could be hard to recover after that. When she moved west she brought her mother’s Bible and handwritten recipe notebook containing dishes in no particular order, from Bombay Golden Cake of the missionary days to beefsteak pie for the Pleasant Hill church socials. Every recipe notes the giver, a genealogy of homemakers. Seeing the familiar handwriting—very like her own, in fact, blotched in some places by a drop of batter or a splash of water—shocks her, the juxtaposition of Elsie’s industrious, communal kitchen (Mrs. Smucker’s Fruit Cookies, Mrs. Ingelnook’s Good Biscuits) and Kay’s lone improvisations in West Hollywood.
Kay slips back to being Kathryn as she rolls out pie dough and mixes up the pumpkin with the cloves and cinnamon and nutmeg, cooking for all she’s worth in their tiny alcove of a kitchen. They make do with paper napkins and place mats instead of linens. Earlier they debated a tree, but it seemed there’d be no good place to put it, so she bought candles and evergreen boughs. Bing Crosby sings on the radio as they eat seconds and she pours coffee. Carl is very pleased with their home dinner. He grabs her by the waist and sits her in his lap and tells her she’s a wonderful cook. Kay knows he’s used to rooming houses and transitory jobs, but the idea is growing in her that if they stop spending money like water, and if they make a down payment on a small house somewhere, she would know how to proceed with their lives. She could create what needs to be created.
January arrives, the last month of the bank tower construction. After that will come a crossroads. Sometimes during her idle daytime hours, she imagines that her mother arrives for a visit, and that Kathryn is making her a cup of tea with plenty of sugar and milk, and cutting her a slice of cake. Would she even have come west if her mother had lived? Undoubtedly not, but here she is, so she puts her mother in the California scene in a white cotton lawn dress, like one she’d wear at Dhamtari. Elsie would revel in the winter sunshine reminding her of India’s, the flowers blooming in the darkest month—calla lilies, cyclamen, geraniums, and primroses. They’d have so much to catch up on that Elsie would never mention what God thought or what Daddy or her brothers Russell and Paul thought. She’d want to know what Kathryn thought, and what she’s been doing, ever since she had to leave her when Kathryn was just nineteen.
Kay is rinsing her lunch plate before her afternoon walk. She’s considering a new route; she already knows every garden and shop window on her usual loop. Maybe she’ll put the map in her pocket for security and just follow her nose in a fresh direction. The radio finishes playing Dinah Shore when the announcer breaks in with a news bulletin. His voice is strangely excited, though you can tell that the excitement is about something bad.
A woman, a young woman—and as he gives the height, the weight, the hair color, Kay keeps noticing my height, my weight, my color—found dead in a vacant lot on South Norton Avenue. The details are just coming, but are said to be gruesome. He’ll update listeners with additional information as he receives it.
Kay stands up, bolts the door. Carl leaves every day at just about dawn. She makes him his coffee and breakfast and smokes her first cigarette of the day while he eats his cereal and eggs, then she goes back to bed for another hour, getting up later for her own breakfast and to clean the apartment that doesn’t need cleaning. She never before thought to lock the door after he left.
The man comes back on the air after a song by Sammy Kaye. The lushness of his low voice makes Kay think, He’s enjoying this, though he uses words like terrible and horrifying and twisted.
The woman: no ordinary corpse. A body sawed cleanly in half. Drained of blood and apparently washed, so that no blood was at the scene of the discovery, just two marble-white halves that the housewife who found her thought at first were parts of a department store mannequin. The body mutilated with cuts in slashes and circles like some kind of code. The face, also mutilated—cuts made from the corners of the woman’s mouth, three inches up on either side, to her ears, in what the reporters were calling a Cheshire Cat grin. More details would be released as they came from the medical examiner. No information yet on the woman’s identity. Some kind of sex fiend, the announcer says in his low-keyed, excited way, warning the women of Los Angeles to stay indoors.
Carl calls on his lunch hour, in case she hasn’t heard. He’s glad she’s staying in. He comes home that night with the Examiner’s extra edition. There’s nothing in it that Kay hasn’t already heard on the radio. She could leave the rooms, finally, since he is home to take her out, but she doesn’t have any appetite for a restaurant and neither of them wants to dance.
The next morning, she walks out only to the corner box for the morning paper, and even then keeps looking over her shoulder, though it is absurd: Their street is bustling with life in the broad daylight.
Fiend Tortures, Kills Girl. The victim’s identity is still not known. Kay spends another day caged indoors, starting letters and not finishing them, turning the pages of magazines she’s already read. She naps, though it will ruin her sleep later, and keeps the radio on for company.
Then, on Friday morning, Slain Girl Identified, with a picture, and, yes, a slight resemblance between them—the dark waves of their hair, and their similar size, and Kay just two years older. As more details emerge, Kay keeps a kind of comparative ledger in her head: Elizabeth Short, a former resident of Hollywood (though lately of San Diego). Elizabeth Short, last seen at the Biltmore Hotel (where Kay and Carl have often gone dancing—a grand, refined place where for the price of cocktails you can feel you are far above the lowest common denominator in the city). Elizabeth Short, who dressed well, almost always in black, and whose last outfit had been a smart, fitted suit, and whose friends, after seeing the movie Blue Dahlia, had given Beth—Bette—Elizabeth (another woman whose name splinters into versions) a glamorous nickname: “The Black Dahlia.”
The papers insinuate things, or say them outright: Bette Short was a lost soul, a drifter; she traded on her attractiveness to men; the suitors paid her rent, her meals, gave her pocket money. There was a name for that.
Kathryn lives with Carl. Who pays the rent, yes. Who buys her dresses and dinners and drinks, yes. But she cooked him a Christmas turkey and her mother’s pie, despite the fact that her kitchen has only two burners and an oven the size of a breadbox. They taped the holiday greeting cards they received—six in all—to the cupboard.
“You need to get over your fear,” Carl tells her one night, when she reports again that she didn’t leave the apartment. “Just stick to the busy streets, the stores.”
The next week the killer sends a packet of Bette’s personal items to the newspaper, things from her pocketbook. He is taunting the police, letting them know he’s still out there. The man on the radio continues to warn women to use special caution. Matinees are over for her; she can’t sit in the dark alone. Nor can she be out there with him on the streets. She manages a trip to Evelyn’s salon chair for a wash and set, and the Black Dahlia is all the women in the beauty parlor can talk about. The Cheshire Cat grin. The cigarette burns and careful, surgical dismemberment. He followed a plan, some internal instructions, and who knows how far they go, and what block he’s on, and how he chooses? Evelyn says it’s because of the way that woman lived, and Kay thinks about Evelyn’s many boyfriends, but doesn’t remark.
She has no appetite, so that she’s down from her usual 115 pounds (the weight she and Bette shared), and smokes way beyond her usual six cigarettes a day. Her throat feels raw and scraped. She has to cle
ar it repeatedly before coming out to the hall to take the telephone call her landlady tells her is waiting.
“Is it Carl?” she asks as she takes the receiver.
“A woman,” her landlady says, hovering while Kay holds the receiver cupped in her hand. She waits for Mrs. Fitzpatrick to turn and finally shuffle back to her own door, taking her sweet time to close it.
“I am calling for Carl,” the woman on the line announces. She has an accent of some sort, but not, Kay thinks, a Finnish one. But maybe; what does she know about Finnish?
“He’s at work. May I take a message? Is this one of his sisters?”
The woman laughs, a bark really. “No, not a sister. Not a sister at all. And who are you?”
Kathryn stiffens. “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your name.”
“This is Fanny. You’ve never heard of me, have you?”
“No.”
“Tell Carl his wife called. And give him a message, no, two messages. One, Mamacita died. In Los Angeles. I thought he’d want to know. Maybe go see Gonzalo, pay his respects.”
Kay clutches the phone. “I’m sorry, you’re—”
“His wife, I just told you. The second message is that he should not bother to come home, if he ever intended to.”
Kay is still standing stupefied with the receiver cradled to her cheek, the line at the other end dead, when she notices her landlady’s door showing an inch of light where she never closed it all the way. The biddy.
Then: the bastard. The bastard, the bastard. How could he? He knew who she was, what kind of a girl she was. This accompanied by a small misgiving: Was she? Still? Then: How dare he!
She goes to their apartment and shuts the door loudly so that Mrs. Fitzpatrick will know what a closed door sounds like. Sails into the bedroom and drags her suitcase out from under the bed. She folds everything meticulously. Her mother’s Bible on the bottom. Her handwritten Tested and Tried Receipts. The letters from soldiers that are tucked away in one of the suitcase’s satin pockets. The bastard, the bastard, a kind of song in her head giving her movements a sick rhythm. Underwear and slips and stockings, blouses, pedal pushers, dresses, everything folded just so. The bathing suit she bought here—no, he bought it. She puts it back in the drawer. The plaid taffeta skirt, folded carefully. The peach organza and cream viscose, left on their hangers. There is the trunk, also under the bed, full of her winter things, including her mohair coat. She will have to write and ask him to send it. But no, it is January everywhere else. She kneels down to drag out the trunk with its film of dust—something that eluded her housekeeping—and pulls from it her best sweaters and a few woolen skirts and slacks and the mohair coat. She will wrap it around herself on the bus.
What else? She forces herself to slow down, think. She won’t be back. She has her mother’s things. Her letters. Everything else will arrive later or can be replaced. She has her savings from Portland. Just go.
She calls a cab from the hall, and sees Mrs. Fitzpatrick spying on her through the door’s crack. She hauls her suitcase down the stairs and to the curb, and for a few minutes forgets about the Black Dahlia and about the packets sent to the newspaper with cut letters pasted to make the text. She forgets about the Dahlia’s naked legs spread open, one foot just about touching the sidewalk, where the mother pushing the stroller came upon it in the clear morning. The torso half lay five inches over from the lower half, less visible in some higher weeds. The Black Dahlia grinned up at the uncracked sky.
The cabbie tries to make conversation about it. No one in Los Angeles can leave the story alone, stop prodding it. Perhaps her brothers and father have been following it in the papers. If they have, their letters demanding she leave town haven’t arrived yet, though they’d never associate her with the kind of girl who wore lipstick and strapless dresses and spent evenings in cocktail lounges. Well, she is leaving and that should make them happy, if they care. Maybe she is going clear back to Illinois. It doesn’t matter where, really; she’ll decide on the destination when she gets to the station. She thinks of the bus as a clean arrow that could travel straight across the middle of the country, slicing through the heartland, back to the Mennonites and her father’s house, and her stepmother the medical doctor, who was a missionary in Africa and who addresses her politely, as if she were not someone the doctor knows well. As if she were a patient, perhaps, needing diagnosis.
Kathryn now knows where she will go. To her aunt Lena, her mother’s sister, and her uncle Manny. She will live on their farm and make herself useful. Maybe some soft summer evening shucking corn, Kathryn will tell her aunt the story of meeting this man, Carl. How he wasn’t satisfied until he’d gone through all the kinds of pie. And Aunt Lena will listen sadly, and rub her shoulder in circles when her story is finished. She will pray with her, and Kathryn will feel her old life come back to her in the groove of the words—The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want—and she will never be Kay again.
At the bus station, she stands in line to purchase her ticket. She doesn’t know how many days and nights she will be on the bus before arriving. She will call her aunt and uncle from somewhere in the middle. It doesn’t matter when she calls, or even if she does, Aunt Lena will open the door and gather her in her arms without amazement.
Someone touches her from behind and she recoils from a beery breath.
“Hi, doll. Where you off to?”
Kathryn stares straight ahead, her back rigid.
“Hey, don’t be like that, all high and mighty when a guy’s just trying to make conversation.” His hand on her shoulder.
She jerks away as if it were fire. “Please don’t touch me again.”
“A live one!”
Kathryn is suffused with shame. Alone in a bus station, what does she expect? Her heart throbs in her throat. She casts around for escape, or rescue, and sees the blue uniform of a policeman by the wall. She doesn’t know what she’d say to him. Maybe she won’t say anything, just move closer for protection.
She leaves the line and carries her heavy suitcase toward the officer. The beery man sees where she is headed and mutters something. When she glances back, he’s taken off in the opposite direction. Perhaps it’s safe to go back to the line now, but then what? The whole trip by bus will expose her to this element. She needs to get another cab and make her way to the train station, where there is a better class of traveler. But first she needs to collect herself. She keeps moving toward the policeman as if to a beacon. She sits down on the bench nearest him, and is so relieved at the sight of his badge and gun and club that she has to wipe some tears away. He’s young, younger than she is, but he has all those things: a badge, a gun, a club.
“What is it, miss?”
“Nothing, nothing at all. I’m sorry.” She fishes for her handkerchief, ashamed. She is ashamed to be here, ashamed to cry, ashamed to have been accosted by the man slurring his words. She doesn’t feel able to report him to the officer, because really, what is there to report? She would rather deny he existed, and that he picked her out as someone who might welcome his advances.
“No one here to see you off, miss?”
More shame. “No. My husband had to work.”
She feels him glance toward her ring hand, but she has it buried in the twisted handkerchief.
“Where are you headed now, ma’am?”
“To visit relatives in Illinois. I have to buy my ticket. But I’m thinking—”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Perhaps I’ll take the train instead.”
He stares at her quizzically. She must sound like she’s raving.
“Do you know the schedule, ma’am?”
“I—no.”
“Then you should telephone, save yourself a trip. I’m pretty sure both the Golden State and the Chief go out in the afternoon. You might have missed them for today.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea.” She is relieved that he gave her a reason to move away and stop the conver
sation. There is a bank of phones ten yards down the wall; she can stay near him without having to answer any more questions.
Once she’s lugged her bag over to the phones, she turns to survey the station. It’s mostly men here; how could she have been so foolish? There are a few women dressed flashily; that’s when she remembers that Bette Short came into L.A. from San Diego for the last time on the bus. Her trunk was discovered in checked luggage, almost all the clothes inside black. The press made it sound sinister, but Kathryn understands the value of black when you’re poor. It doesn’t show the dirt; it’s elegant for any occasion; people won’t remember if you wear the same thing more than once. Bette had been here, maybe been spoken to in the same way, by the same dissolute type of character. Had it bothered her? Or had she been exposed to so much insult that she was hardened, and had learned to brush off a drunk like a fly? Whatever armor she’d developed didn’t do her any good. And there is surely no sense in Kathryn using her as an example of anything except how not to act, what not to become.
The officer is right. The trains have left for the day, or rather the last one is about to, impossible to make it to the station in time. That leaves the bus, going east to anywhere, or a hotel near Union Station while she waits for tomorrow’s train. She still has all the savings she brought with her from Portland, and this is no time to pinch a penny. She’ll go to a hotel, and a decent one.
“Kay!”
There he is, looking angry, looking hurt, hurrying toward her.
He clutches her elbow. “Don’t ever do that again!” Angry now.
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