by Selena Kitt
“Just.” Frannie nodded.
“You didn’t miss much. The food here is awful.” Lizzie screwed up her face and stuck out her tongue. Leah laughed at the childish gesture. Lizzie looked incredibly young. She was afraid to ask how young.
“You were clearly too skinny to begin with,” Marty observed sagely, reaching over and opening her night table drawer. “Here, I stole some Skippy.”
She fished out a spoon, opening the jar of peanut butter and digging in, handing a scoop of chunky to Leah.
“Thanks.” She licked the peanut butter off the spoon, wishing for milk, but the rumble in her stomach began to subside as the girls passed the spoon around, sharing not just the food but their lives as well, talking about their homes, although not their locations, and their friends and family too, but not sharing the details.
“No real names!” Frannie warned when Leah went to speak of Erica, her best friend in the world, the person she missed almost as much as Rob.
“You’ll get used to being someone else,” Marty assured her with a gentle pat when Leah’s eyes filled with tears at the thought of home, of everything she’d left behind, and her new friend’s words turned out to be very true. She learned quickly, far more than she ever thought possible, how to be someone else.
And that was how Leah first became Lily.
Chapter Two
By the time school started in the fall, Erica’s world had gone black and white. There was no Leah to walk home with, no Leah to sleep over on Friday nights, no Leah to giggle with or talk to or share everything with. Her best friend had disappeared and Erica’s life had, like a reverse Wizard of Oz, gone from Technicolor to an achromatic, dusty gray.
She didn’t talk to anyone. She sat quietly in the back of her classes and she went directly home after. Erica was in her second and final year at St. Mary Magdalene’s Preparatory College for Girls, learning far more about running a home than running an office—or for office for that matter.
She had been editor of her high school newspaper, and was currently the senior editor at St. Mary Magdalene’s, but she spent a great deal of time arguing with her journalism teacher, Sister Agnes, that issues like segregation or the growing communist threat were far more important than advice columns about the correct way to set a table.
Erica felt as if she was just biding her time until she could escape to Vassar in the fall. Solie, their housekeeper and cook and the closest thing she’d had to a mother in the past five years, kept checking her forehead with her cool, dark hands for fever and tried tempting her daily with after school treats, from Rice Krispies mixed with melted marshmallows and peanut butter to celery dipped in sour cream and Lipton soup mix, but Erica left them untouched, closing her bedroom door and putting a stack of albums on the record player to keep the world at bay. Dinner was a solitary affair, prepared by Solie and left enticingly for them both like a baited trap on the dining room table, but Erica would wait for her father to eat and go up to his loft before venturing out for a piece of cold fried chicken or meatloaf.
Her father was the last person she wanted to see, except maybe for Bobby Harris.
Bobby still called often but she wouldn’t talk to him any more than she’d talk to her father. She had broken things off with Bobby months ago, citing his callous disregard for her insistence that they halt any future sexual activity, and his wandering eye when it came to other girls. Bobby wasn’t used to hearing the word “no” from anyone, let alone his on-and-off-again girlfriend since middle school, and it was proving a long and difficult lesson.
So when her father knocked on her bedroom door on a Friday, ignoring her usual, “Go away!” response, Erica knew it had to be something important.
“There’s a show coming up at the gallery.” Her father leaned against the door frame, crossing his arms as he talked to her. At forty-two, he was still a handsome man, tall and lean, his face relatively unlined. A strong, chiseled jaw line, cleft chin and bright blue eyes gave him a very Cary Grant sort of look, but unlike the actor, he wore his dark, wavy hair eccentrically long, just touching his shoulders—more out of neglect than as a fashion choice, Erica knew, but he got away with it, being an artist. A very rich one at that.
“You’ll want to come.” In spite of his neat, clean appearance, she couldn’t help seeing the dark circles under his eyes or notice how skinny he’d grown in the past few months.
“I don’t think so.” Erica made a face, reaching over to turn the record player back up where a whole lotta shakin’ was going on with “The Killer,” Jerry Lee Lewis.
“Elvis is going to be there.”
She gaped at him, eyes growing wide. Her father had taken pictures of practically everyone—Robert Nolan’s name was synonymous with famous portrait photos—but his pinnacle of glory, as far as Erica was concerned, had been his series of Elvis, and she’d never forgiven him for not figuring out a way to take her to Memphis for the shoot.
Forgetting herself, forgetting everything, she sat up straight, stars in her eyes. “Oh, Daddy! Elvis! I can’t believe it! I have to call—”
She was already halfway to the door before she remembered—she couldn’t call Leah. That fact dawned on her the same time she saw it on his face, the crestfallen look, the pain in his eyes.
He still loved Leah, just as much as she did.
“I know.” His voice broke and he cleared his throat. Leah had been almost as big an Elvis fan as Erica. She would have loved to meet him. “Anyway, it’s tomorrow night.”
“Where is she?” Erica whispered the words to the air, not really asking him. They’d both been through it, over and over, to no avail.
“We may never know.” The pain in his voice broke her heart, for both of them.
“Mrs. Wendt still won’t tell you anything?”
Her father shrugged and shook his head, avoiding her eyes in the array of 45s she had spread out on the floor when she tried to catch his gaze. Leah’s mother refused to talk to either of them. Erica had tried twice, once at church, and another time when she’d seen her at Woolworth’s, but both times the woman had pretended as if Erica simply didn’t exist.
“I thought you might want to go out and buy a new dress?”
Erica brightened. “Yes!”
“Are you up for a trip to Hudson’s?”
She squealed. “Does a Commie steal government secrets?”
His smile actually reached his eyes that time. “Well then let’s go, Pinko—before they close.”
Solie didn’t cook dinner on Fridays, so she was gone for the day. They always ordered out or went out on Friday nights. B.C.—Erica thought of her life in those terms now, B.C. and A.D., “before catastrophe” and “after disappearance”—it would be her father and Leah and Erica ordering Buscemi’s pizza and eating it in front of the television watching The Life of Riley and The Thin Man. Sometimes her dad would treat them to a nice restaurant and a movie.
“We’ll get something on the thirteenth floor,” her father said, reading her mind.
They went out the big steel entry warehouse door in front—they didn’t live in a house, not anymore, not since Erica’s mother had died. She missed the big house on the river sometimes, where most of her childhood memories resided, but her father had commissioned Luis Elosegui, a famous architect known for his urban development projects, to convert the warehouse into a living space, half of it committed to a studio and darkroom for his portrait work.
Leah had spent so much time at their house, her father had a mirror and barre installed for her friend, whose whole life had been devoted to dancing. Erica remembered how jealous she’d always been of Leah’s form and grace. Erica was ineffably clumsy. She could trip over herself walking up a flight of stairs. But she’d lived vicariously through her best friend, watching her practice going en pointe, hours of sweat and pain and even blood, until she could pirouette flawlessly.
Of course, that was before her best friend had fallen in love with Erica’s father and everything had fa
llen apart.
“I heard a rumor Leah was at the School of American Ballet in New York,” Erica said over the hood of her father’s Cadillac DeVille. “Can I drive?”
“She’s not.” He tossed her the keys and headed toward the passenger side. “I checked.”
“You called?” Erica got in, starting the engine.
“I went there.” He shut the passenger door, reaching over to grab his seat belt.
She stared at him for a moment, incredulous—he’d gone all the way to New York to look for Leah? He traveled all the time, so it was certainly possible that, on one of his trips, he’d dropped by the School of American Ballet and inquired.
Without a word, Erica put the car into reverse, backing onto the street.
They parked in the Hudson’s structure and Erica gave him his keys back as the doorman tipped his hat and opened the door for them. She loved Hudson’s, all thirty-something floors of it, a veritable shopping Mecca. You could get easily lost in the labyrinth of departments, and she and Leah had, on more than one occasion. One year they’d gotten in big trouble for sneaking to the top floor, opening a window, and tossing rolls of toilet paper out to watch them unfurl on the way down.
But it had been worth it.
This year, the Fourth of July fireworks had been spectacular from the roof. Joe Hudson was a fan of her father’s work and let them set up lawn chairs on Hudson’s roof every year with a select group of people to watch one of the largest fireworks displays in North America. Leah had missed them this year and Erica could still feel it, a deep pang. It was always an event, and Hudson’s hung a mammoth American flag on the front of their building, covering most of the windows. Hudson’s itself took up an entire city block, so she couldn’t imagine how big the flag really was.
She and her father rode the elevator up to the fourth floor coat check—September was cool enough for a coat, although Erica hadn’t started wearing her wool one yet. The elevator operators called out what was on each floor as they stopped on the way up. There was a big sign on the wall with a list, but the elevator operators knew it by heart, every single floor. Only twenty or so were retail floors to remember, the rest were offices, but still, it was a lot to memorize. They were always nice, always smiling. It was like everyone’s mood improved in Hudson’s, no matter how you felt before you walked through the doors. There was something magical about it, and today was no exception.
Her father had an exorbitant amount of endurance when it came to shopping but, as she tried on dress after dress, coming out to model each one before trying another, that didn’t last forever. After an hour or so, even his patience was wearing thin.
“Pick one!” he insisted finally, his head in his hands, but Erica couldn’t.
“Leah would know which one I should get.”
That made them both sad, and Erica decided not to get a new dress after all, but she did find a lovely new hat for winter, caramel-colored wool trimmed with a copper satin band and bow. Her father paid for it and gave the saleswoman—who went out of her way to flirt, Erica noticed with amusement—their address. Hudson’s delivered purchases for free, so they didn’t have to carry anything around with them.
They stopped on the thirteenth floor, just like her father had promised, ordering Hudson’s famous Maurice Salad. The restaurant had a breathtaking view of the river. They had lunch and dinner menus, and it was nearing dinner time, but they stuck with lunch, which was seventy-five cents and included the appetizer and entrée, plus tea, coffee and dessert. Erica devoured it, feeling hungrier than she had in months. Dessert was an ice cream puff with Sanders hot fudge, a glorious concoction.
“Well that was a wasted trip.” Erica held her hand out for the keys again as they walked through the parking garage.
“No, it wasn’t.” Her father smiled over the hood of the car at her, dropping a wink before they got in. “Hey, can you stop at the gallery? I need to go in for just a minute.”
Erica loved driving, even if she wasn’t very good at it. It made her feel powerful, in control. Of course, her father’s duck and cover tactics didn’t help her confidence much. The gallery was on the corner of Shelby and Lafayette, catty corner from the big post office, and she parked the car—almost perfectly straight—in front.
“I’ll be right back.”
She watched her father disappear into the gallery, seeing the advertisement in the window for the upcoming show. “The Roots of Rock N Roll” was the title, and they were featuring all sorts of blues artists who had been the forerunners or inspiration for Elvis. Leah would have loved it and, in spite of Erica’s hesitation about her best friend’s relationship with her father, she knew Leah would have been at his side, supporting him.
They’d be married by now.
She still couldn’t understand why Leah had just taken off. Had her mother’s disapproval really been so horrible? Not that Erica could blame Leah’s mother really. Leah’s mother had been long time friends with Erica’s parents, before Erica’s mother had succumbed to lung cancer, and she imagined the thought of Leah marrying a man the same age as her own mother hadn’t gone over too well.
All Erica knew was the morning after her father had proposed to Leah, her best friend had gone home to pick up some of her things and she hadn’t come back. Her father had returned, white-faced and distraught, looking for Leah. When Erica told him where she’d gone, he’d taken off again searching, but Leah had disappeared, vanished, and no one would tell them where she’d gone.
Especially Leah’s mother.
Speak of the devil.
Erica saw her out of the corner of her eye, doing a double-take to make sure, but she was out of the car before she could think, bolting across the street. Thankfully she was wearing saddle shoes and not heels and she caught her in plenty of time. Patty Wendt had just reached her car when Erica zig-zagged in front of it, standing on the street and blocking the driver’s side door.
“Erica!” Patty Wendt was a pretty woman still, with the same bone structure as her daughter, tall and thin, dark hair and full lips and big brown eyes that widened in surprise at the sight of the robust blonde standing in front of her.
“Oh, so you do remember my name?”
Patty’s mouth drew into a thin line. “Of course I do. Now get out of my way.”
“Just… please… please...” Erica knew she was begging, but she couldn’t very well demand, now could she? What else was there to do but appeal to her sympathy? “Tell me where she is.”
“What does it matter?” Patty crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at the girl.
“She’s my best friend! She’s been my best friend since we were this high!” Erica exploded, her hand down at her side, showing Leah’s mother and the world how little they’d been when they cemented their friendship. “We went to catechism together, we went to school together, we took our first communion together. We double-dated on prom night. We did everything together!”
“Shh!” Patty glanced around, trying to shush her as Erica grew louder and louder and more pedestrians slowed down, taking notice of their confrontation.
“You don’t want me to make a scene?” Erica hissed, hands balled into fists at her side. “If you don’t want me to make a scene, I suggest you tell me where she is.”
“Erica!” It was her father, raising a hand in a wave and heading across the street.
“Tell me,” Erica said through gritted teeth.
“Move.” Patty reached around her to grab the door handle, pulling hard.
“I’m not moving until you tell me.” Erica bumped the car door closed again with her hip. “I’ll scream bloody murder. I’ll do it. Right here in the street.”
“Rob, control your daughter.” Patty turned to Erica’s father as he approached, coming around the vehicle to stand with them on the street.
“Erica, come on.” He took her arm, trying to lead her by the elbow, but she shook him off.
“No! I want to know where Leah is, and she knows!” Eric
a accused her, pointing to Patty like in the movie her father had taken her to last year, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as if she were fingering her for an alien or a communist spy, screaming her words. “She knows! She knows!”
“Stop it!” Her father grabbed her around the waist, turning her to face him, and snapped, “It doesn’t matter, Erica!”
“Why does everyone keep saying that?”
Patty leaned close, so close Erica could smell her perfume and the Juicy Fruit gum on her breath, hissing the words, “Because she doesn’t want to see you again, don’t you understand that?”
“What?” Erica whispered, feeling her father’s arms tighten around her, a forced hug, pulling her away from the car door. “What?”
“She doesn’t want to have anything to do with you.” Patty yanked the door to her navy blue Belvedere open, tossing her pocketbook on the passenger side seat and glaring over her shoulder at them. “Either of you. Ever again.”