Dream When You're Feeling Blue (18 page)

“G
OING UP
!
” THE ELEVATOR OPERATOR SAID.
Kitty and Louise squeezed into the overly full car. Someone’s elbow knocked into the operator’s little hat, perched like a monkey’s at the side of her head. She adjusted it wearily; it was clear this happened many times a day. Kitty figured the operator felt it was worth it; after all, Dorothy Lamour had been discovered here working as an elevator operator. And even if you didn’t get discovered, you still got to go to charm school—Field’s sent all its operators there.

Kitty and her sister exited on level 7: lingerie, bridal wear, better dresses, junior deb department. Kitty didn’t want to overdress for Hank, nothing so obvious as a new dress, but having nice new underwear always gave a girl a certain kind of confidence. She wanted a lacy slip, a well-fitting bra. To Louise she’d simply said she needed underpants; Louise had said she needed some, too, and Kitty had invited her along. She was glad Louise was coming, glad they’d have time to be alone. They’d have lunch at the Walnut Room; with her salary from the factory, Kitty could now easily afford to pay for both of them. And after they’d eaten and were lingering over dessert, Kitty would tell Louise what she had discovered.

The sisters separated in the lingerie department; Louise looked through underpants, and Kitty moved over to the lacy slips. My, but they were something. When she got married, she’d wear a slip like this every day. And she’d wear a beautiful nightgown every night. She wished she could look at them now, all the fancy negligees and peignoirs, but it wouldn’t be right. You had to at least be engaged, it seemed to Kitty. What would a woman with no ring on her hand be doing, searching through such filmy, frankly suggestive things? Before whom would a single girl parade such an outfit? Still, a girl could look. A girl could be trying to find something for a friend’s bridal shower. Maybe she’d find something to suggest to Louise.

All but licking her chops, Kitty moved to the rack with the gossamer, beribboned garments. Oh, it was heaven just to touch them. They came in all colors: white, black, blue, turquoise, pink, yellow. How must it feel to pull one over your head, button the little buttons (some had rhinestone buttons, some had pearl), and tie the pretty ribbons, knowing that they were meant to be undone by your husband. At this, Kitty’s stomach flipped: to have a man undress you! How could you ever stand for it? How could you not simply die of embarrassment? What did you do while he undressed you? Stare at the ceiling? Say a prayer to Saint Thérèse, the Little Flower? Did you keep your eyes closed? If you smiled, did you look loose? If you didn’t smile, did you look like an old crab? And what if the man fumbled, his big hands trying to undo all those dainty closures? Were you to help him? Oh, it was awful to contemplate the many ways things could go wrong. Kitty thought if she ever got a negligee, what she would most want to do was lock herself in the bathroom and stare at herself in the mirror, turning this way and that, trying out different expressions. As for men, she knew enough about them to know that they didn’t need a negligee and peignoir; come out in a potato sack with your shoulders bare and your hair loose and perfumed, and there’d be a knock at the zippered door, as Julian would say. In fact, Kitty doubted that most men would ever really notice what you were wearing, no matter what the occasion. No, these delicate creations were more for—

“What are you doing?” Louise asked, and Kitty jumped.

“Nothing. Aren’t these pretty?”

Louise tilted her head to one side, then the other. Finally, “Sure,” she said, “if you go in for that kind of thing.”

“So you don’t like them?” Kitty felt insulted, as though she were standing in front of her sister wearing one of these gowns and Louise was looking her up and down with a critical little smile on her face.

Louise shrugged. “Well, sure, I like them. Who wouldn’t? They’re beautiful. But for that amount of money, you could get three regular nightgowns that would wear a lot better.” She reached out to touch a turquoise-colored gown. “Gee, they do feel nice, though, don’t they?”

Kitty pulled the gown off the rack. “I’m buying this for you.”

“No!” Louise grabbed the hanger from Kitty, and Kitty grabbed it back from her.

“Let me!” Kitty said, laughing. “I can afford it.” She could, and she really wanted to buy it for Louise. Kitty knew her own faults, her smallness of spirit or outright meanness, her jealousy and greed, her laziness and lack of spiritual devotion. But sometimes her heart opened and she was wildly generous, even saintlike, if she did she say so herself.

But, “Please, Kitty,
no
!” Louise said, and tears came into her eyes. Embarrassed, she turned to the wall.

“Louise?” Kitty returned the gown to the rack and put her arm around her sister. “Coots? What’s the matter?”

“Oh, Kitty, I can’t have anything like this. I…Listen, I have to tell you something.” Louise wiped at her face, where the tears were now flowing freely.

One of the salesclerks, an older, well-dressed woman, her maroon leather sales book in hand, came over. “May I assist you with something?” She had a pencil tucked behind her ear, a pleasantly expectant look on her face. Kitty wished she could simply say, “Yes, we’ll take the blue negligee and matching peignoir,” and watch the woman write the purchase up, carefully fold the garments in tissue, add the carbon copy of the sales slip, and then put everything in the beautiful white shopping bag, complete with the silver
MF
with green detailing—Kitty loved those regal bags. But now the saleswoman saw Louise’s tears, and she put her hand to her breast and peered over the top of her glasses at her. “Well, for heaven’s sake. Are you all right?”

“She’s fine,” Kitty said. And then, to her sister, “Just relax, okay, honey? Let’s go get some lunch.” She took Louise’s hand. “Don’t worry, okay? Don’t worry. Come with me. We’re going to get some nice chicken pot pie. You won’t believe how good it is.” Over her shoulder, she said to the saleswoman, “She’s just hungry. She gets that way.”

AFTER THEY HAD ORDERED,
Louise sat staring down at the table. Kitty waited, then waited some more. She knew her sister; Louise would talk when she was ready. Oh, what hard news for Louise to deliver, even to Kitty, to whom she’d always told everything. And despite the bravado Louise had shown in her letter to Michael, she must have been so frightened for weeks, she must have felt so ashamed. Kitty and her sisters had always looked down on girls who got pregnant out of wedlock, on those who had relations outside of marriage. But now everything was different. Yes, it was wrong, what had happened, but it had been Louise and Michael who had done that wrong. And so the impropriety was mitigated by love, by familiarity, by knowing that there was far more to this situation than just another girl in dutch. Kitty couldn’t wait for Louise to confess, so that she could reassure and comfort her. She would remind her sister that in this, as in all things, Kitty would stand by her.

It was funny, how sometimes it took someone getting hurt to remind you of the depth of your feelings for them. Once, at Kiddieland, she’d seen then four-year-old Binks get injured on one of the rides—he’d banged into something and gotten a bloody nose. He couldn’t get off until it was over, and Kitty had thought her heart would break, watching him go round and round with his hand up to his face, holding back tears, until the ride finally stopped.

Kitty wanted Louise to feel no pressure to talk—to know she could take all the time in the world. So she leaned back casually in her chair and looked around at the diners—mostly women, wearing wonderful suits and gloves and hats and heels—smiling, chatting, blowing cigarette smoke up into the air. The Walnut Room was such a grand place. Once a year, in December, the Heaney family came here to eat lunch and admire the gigantic Christmas tree. They saved all year for it, threw spare change into a big Mason jar kept in a high kitchen cupboard. Some years, they didn’t have enough for dessert; some years, they had enough for two apiece. But here Kitty was, making enough money all by herself to take herself and her sister out to lunch and not worry about the price of anything on the menu, including dessert. And it was her factory job that had given her this privilege.

Not that the job wasn’t still difficult. In addition to the physical challenges, almost every day some annoying incident happened to her or to Hattie—or to both of them. A disparaging remark about the quality of their work. A pat on the behind. A torrent of terrible cursing used right next to them just to irk them. The injustice of working up until the last minute as they were supposed to, right next to another male worker who lay loafing or a woman worker patting her hair and putting on lipstick while staring into her compact mirror. Last Friday, Hattie had said she was really going to quit this time, until Kitty had talked her out of it—they did this, took turns talking each other out of quitting. Usually it was Kitty, sighing and saying she’d had enough. But this last time, someone had kept throwing the word “nigger” around, and Hattie had been so upset, she’d said she was going back to Mississippi to work as a maid. “Least there it’s out in the open,” Hattie had said. “Least there, I might not make much money, but I don’t have to work myself to death, either.” Kitty had insisted Hattie come out for a hamburger with her, to calm her down. They’d sat at a dime-store booth beneath posters warning them that spies were everywhere, reminding them to write to the boys, to buy war bonds, encouraging them to join the WAACs or at least to take their place in Civil Defense. It was hard to remember when these messages weren’t everywhere, when their lives didn’t revolve around the war.

After dinner, she and Hattie had gone to see
So Proudly We Hail.
Both of them had loved it. Oh, that Claudette Colbert, with her long eyelashes and bright smile, waking up in the morning with George Reeves. Never mind that their honeymoon suite was a ditch, what a love they shared! After one of the couple’s romantic kisses, she and Hattie had looked over at each other in the dark, sighing. Kitty had come out of the theater resolved to be more like Claudette: gorgeous and cheerful and strong, even under extreme duress.

But that, too—how wonderful that Kitty was able to go to movies as often as she wanted, and to contribute to the household in a way she’d never been able to before. Her mother may have resented Kitty ruining her hands and working at a job Margaret would rather not have her daughters do, but she certainly appreciated the extra income—and regularly told Kitty so. It made for a feeling of pride, of power, and Kitty liked it.

Now Louise cleared her throat, and Kitty sat up straighter in her chair. “Okay,” Louise said.

Kitty waited.

“I think I might—” A burst of laughter came from a corner table, and then their waitress came to the table to ask if there would be anything else.

“The check, please,” Kitty said, and Louise sat silently waiting until Kitty paid it, then thanked her sister. “I would have put in some, you know,” she said, and Kitty said, “I wanted to treat you.”

“Let’s go outside,” Louise said. “I don’t feel like I can talk here.”

The sisters rode the elevator down in silence, listening to the operator musically list all the departments on each floor and then finally say, “Main floor, State Street to your left, Michigan Avenue to your right.”

In the thick of the crowd on Michigan—girls like themselves excitedly shopping, families with their children, the ever-present soldiers and sailors—Louise linked arms with her sister. Then she said, “I think I might be pregnant.”

Kitty swallowed. Now that Louise had come out and said it, she wasn’t quite sure what to say back. She stopped walking and turned to look at her sister. “You are?” she managed.

Louise wasn’t crying now. She even smiled. “I want to go to confession,” she said. “Then I want to talk to you about what I should do next. Okay?”

“Yes. And Louise, I just want you to know…I just want to say…”

Louise threw her arms around her sister. “I know. Thank you, Kitty.”

The girls began walking again, their arms linked. Kitty thought she might as well go to confession herself. It had been two weeks. She actually liked going. The way she pushed aside the burgundy velvet curtain and came out of the booth feeling so much lighter than she had going in. The way the air came more easily into her lungs, the immense relief she always felt. It was as though she had just escaped some terrible danger and needed to wipe her brow and say “Whew!”

Kitty always said her penance gratefully, knowing that, in exchange for this simple task, her soul was once again snowy white and not peppered with the black of sin. And then the careful walk home, trying so hard to keep that perfect state of grace. It never lasted long, but while it was there Kitty felt lit from the inside, held in the hand of something so much bigger than herself. It was at such times that she thought she might like to be a nun. But then she would remember all the reasons why she would
not
like to be a nun. For one thing, a veil and a black habit every single day!

The sisters walked slowly toward the downtown cathedral, admiring the Christmas displays they passed in the windows. It came to Kitty that now that Louise was pregnant, everything would be changed, irrevocably. And there was a sadness to it. Outweighing that, though, was a great sense of joy. The idea of a new life in the midst of all the deaths they were hearing about—well, it was swell. Already, Kitty’s mind was crowded with ideas for how she’d buy her sister baby clothes, how she’d babysit on a Saturday afternoon, how, after the shock and disappointment had left their parents, they’d lift the baby high up in the air and laugh with it. It. A boy? A girl? Suddenly, Kitty couldn’t wait to see.

Surely Louise and Michael could get married, somehow. Kitty had heard about German soldiers getting married while they were in war zones, far away from their sweethearts. An empty chair with a hat on it to represent the groom, a minister, and the bride, all dressed up so that her photo could be sent to her new husband. Well, if they could do it, so could Louise and Michael. And then after the war, they could get married all over again. And Kitty could be the maid of honor and wear a beautiful green dress, Julian loved her in green. And Julian would be the best man. Oh, Julian, home again, turning her around and around on the dance floor. Kissing her forehead, her neck, her mouth.