Strings Attached (5 page)

Six

 

New York City
October 1950

“Dancing in a nightclub? Da will blow his stack!” Muddie said. “Oh, Kit, are you sure?”

“It’s not just a nightclub — it’s the Lido!” I was already starting to regret splurging on a long-distance call. I could feel my money draining with every exclamation Muddie made, from her first squeal
“Kit!”
to her
“Isn’t this expensive?”
and her
“Where are you calling from?”

Walking home, all I could think of was telling someone my news. I hadn’t been lonesome until that moment, when I had nobody to tell. I’d been dying to brag, to let my family know that not only did I have a job, it was a real job, a job to envy, something glamorous, exactly the kind of job a girl from Providence would dream of getting in New York City. And who else to call but my sister? Every Sunday night we’d listened to
Manhattan Merry-Go-Round
when we were kids, listening to “all the big night spots of New York town.”

I sat on the couch, wedged into a corner. The telephone cord stretched just far enough. Sitting here one day, I’d realized that the mirror on the far wall was hung high for a reason. If the curtains were open, you could catch a flash of the East River.

“He’ll only know if you tell him,” I added.

“I can’t lie to him, Kitty.”

I sighed. “I’m not saying lie. Can’t you stretch a commandment once in a while? You can say you talked to me. Say I’m fine, I have an apartment now and a job. You don’t have to tell him what it is. Oh, hell, I don’t care if you tell him. Let him blow.”

“You said
hell.”

“Damn right I did.”

“Kit!” I could hear Muddie try to stifle her giggle. “You’re a caution. It’s so quiet here without you and Jamie.”

We were both silent for a moment.

I looked at the sliver of river in the mirror. Home. It came back to me then, the apartment on Transit Street. Cramped and damp, street noise coming through the window, along with the smells of Portuguese stew and someone playing the radio. Kids down the block playing a game on the street, yelling out instructions for One Flies Up. And me, grabbing for privacy in the bathroom, tapping out shuffle ball change and time steps on the tiles while I looked in the full-length mirror Da had hung on the back of the door so I could practice. Over the years, my taps had pitted the tiles, but he’d never cared. Would he really blow his stack if he knew I was dancing in a nightclub? Probably … but then wouldn’t he in the next breath twist it around and be proudly proclaiming to the neighborhood that I was a Lido Doll?

“You’re still mad at him?” Muddie asked.

I thought of that morning when Jamie came home, of the thin line of Da’s mouth, of the way disgust had made my handsome father look ugly.

“He hasn’t done a thing since I left, has he?”

“No,” Muddie said, drawing out the word. “But, Kit, he feels it. Do you know, he stopped drinking. Not even a slug
of whiskey from the bottle when he gets home. He’s here every night on that couch, just sitting. When I come in from work, he’s there. Sitting like his heart is breaking.”

“I have to go, Muddie,” I said.

I had to be off the phone, doing anything but talking to my sister, thinking about our father sitting, just sitting.

She either didn’t hear me or ignored what I said. “It’s worse than when Elena left him. Oh, that reminds me! She’s back! I mean, she’s back in Fox Point. She got a divorce.” Muddie whispered the terrible word. “And her father won’t take her in. So she’s living with her sister. I ran into her yesterday; she’s still so beautiful…. Da knows she’s back, I can’t imagine a man feeling worse. I think he doesn’t care anymore what he does…. Say — have you heard from Jamie?”

“How could I have heard — he doesn’t know where I am. Have you?”

“No, not since he wrote and told us where he was. I look every day for a letter. I’ve written him every week — I’ll send you the address. Oh, I don’t want to use up your money. Good-bye, then, and I’ll tell Da you’re settled. He’ll be glad, no matter what he doesn’t say.”

“Bye,” I said, then hung up the phone and reached for the teacup I’d balanced on the wide rolled back of the couch. As I stood, the phone cord scraped against the cup and I just barely caught it before it fell. The spoon slid off the saucer and I heard it clatter behind the couch.

I put down the cup and the phone, happy I hadn’t stained the couch. I laid myself flat to fish for the spoon. I could see the glint of it and I stretched, fingers splayed, to find it. My cheek flat on the floor, I groped through the dark. My fingers slid over metal and I pulled it out.

It wasn’t a spoon. It was a woman’s compact, slim and silver, something you could buy at Woolworth’s. That’s
what I thought at first. I turned it over in my hands and felt the weight of it and realized it was expensive. I opened it and saw that the mirror was cracked. The powder had dried. I snapped it shut, turned it over, and saw the initials in curlicue script:
B.W.

It had belonged to the woman who’d lived here before. Or could it have been someone else, a woman Nate had brought here? Someone with a sophisticated name that clanged with brass. Barbara, or Brenda.

I wasn’t very bright, but I was starting to get wise, just by keeping my ears open. I was beginning to realize how New York worked, how the men chased their secretaries or the Broadway dancers and brought them to discreet hotels or apartments they kept without their wife knowing. I figured Angela Benedict didn’t know about this apartment. And how would she find out, if she never left the house back in Providence?

I leaned back into the pillows and looked out at the gathering dusk. I held the compact in my hand. Suddenly, I could feel someone else here, a presence. Another woman had sat here, had hung that mirror at an awkward height just so she could see the river. I shivered. I didn’t know why it should have spooked me, but it did. With the compact still in my hand, I went around the apartment and turned on all the lights.

 

Chorus girls’ dressing rooms had their own rules and their own comradeship. We were there to make ourselves beautiful, borrow lipsticks, complain about our aching feet and our boyfriends. I’d noticed a certain frost in the air during
my week of rehearsals, but after my debut on Saturday night, I settled into a chair at the mirror and felt the atmosphere shift. I hadn’t tripped into someone’s drink, I hadn’t lost my headdress in the “Hoop-De-Doo” number, and I hadn’t stolen the show. I was okay.

At first, I hadn’t been able to attach names to faces. Polly, Mary, Edna, Darla, Mickey, Barb, Pat. But after a week I knew them all.

“So how old are you, kid? Twenty-one, you say?”

“Yeah, and you have the papers to prove it, right?”

“Leave off the kid. I started when I was fifteen. Said I was eighteen.”

“When was that, honey — in 1933?”

“Hardey-har-har.”

“I like your hair. Is it natural?”

“You’re lucky, only redhead in the line. People will remember you.”

“Don’t say that or Pat will dye her hair again.”

“Dry up. I get more dates with blond hair. You think I’m going to go changing a good thing?”

“Is the coffee still hot?”

“Anybody got an extra pair of stockings?”

Music to my ears. I hung up my costume and pulled on my clothes. I’d been careful to keep quiet during the week. I wanted to see how things worked. Everybody called the owner Mr. D, for Dawber, which almost sounded friendly, but everyone was terrified of him. If he saw a problem, he’d tap his pinky ring against the table and someone would come running. The day before, I’d seen him throw a cabbage head at a waiter.

But Ted Roper was in charge of the Lido Dolls, of our hair and our makeup and the way we walked and even the
way we smiled. “Lick your lips and show some TEETH!” he’d yell in rehearsals.

By the time I said good night to the manager, Joe, it was after three in the morning. I hadn’t been paid yet, so I couldn’t afford a taxi. The blocks stretched ahead of me and I couldn’t believe how tired I was.

But after a while I got into the rhythm of it. The streets were quiet, gray and silver, and the sky was like a pearl. My footsteps echoed down a river of bluestone. Every once in a while I’d see a light in a house or apartment, and I’d wonder if someone was awake, reading, or rocking a baby.

I rounded the corner, fumbling for my key. Under the awning the door swung open and Hank and an older woman in a robe and slippers walked out. She must have been his mother. They both gaped at me.

“Hi,” he said.

“Morning,” I said. I was at my private entrance now, key in my hand. Hank’s mother was frowning, her face tight as she took me in. I was still wearing my makeup from the show, powder and dark red lipstick and mascara. I could suddenly feel my eyelashes, thick and curled like a cartoon cow’s. Just what did she think I was?

I turned my back on her, feeling the snub in my shoulder blades. I opened the door, went in, and slammed it shut. Hard.

I tossed my coat and went straight to the bathroom. I creamed off the makeup, scrubbing hard. Wriggled out of my skirt and stockings and left them on the floor as I fell into bed in my slip. No. I didn’t owe anybody anything. I wouldn’t accept disapproval like that, ever again. I’d been there before.

Seven

 

Providence, Rhode Island
November 1949

Love had entered my life like a thunderclap, but it didn’t knock me off my feet. I was too busy for that. I wasn’t like other girls, with time on their hands to be dreamy-eyed when they discussed their Joes or Mikes or Mannys. I didn’t shriek, “Turn it up!” when “Forever and Ever” came on the radio. Billy just became part of my days, woven into the time between school and my job at the luncheonette on South Main. Providence was a small enough city that he could walk me to my dance lesson downtown and then walk back to the East Side in time for his own class at Brown. After school he’d sit studying at a table while I kept him supplied with cheeseburgers and soup and sodas and cups of coffee. On Sundays we’d take off, often with Jamie, to find parks and beaches, stretches of sand and grass where we could be alone and feel as away as it got in Rhode Island. Billy always had his camera and Jamie his sketchbook, but I’d just lie back and dream.

When I emerged from school and he was waiting in his car, I didn’t linger, drawing out the moment so that the other girls could see that I, only a junior, was dating a college man. I didn’t draw hearts in my notebooks. The first time he told me he loved me, I didn’t swoon. I laughed.

It was November. We said good-bye right by my front door. He turned and jumped off the porch onto the sidewalk. I was about to open the door when he turned back and called to me.

“Hey, Kit! I love you, too.”

I walked over to the railing and leaned over. “What do you mean, ‘I love you, too’?” I asked. “I didn’t say I love you.”

“You were thinking it.”

“I was not.”

A slow grin started on his face. “Fink.”

“Snake.”

He walked slowly back toward the porch. I walked down a step and stopped. When he came up the stairs he stayed on the third step so that he was just a bit below me. “Aw, you’re just chicken,” he said.

“Try me.”

He put his hands on my cheeks and gently guided me down to his mouth. The kiss started, stopped, started again and kept on going. I put my hands on his shoulders so I wouldn’t fall. Da would hear about this the next day at Sullivan’s Bar.

From then on, we were together. He introduced me to the best spaghetti restaurant in Providence, to fried clams at the beach at Misquamicut, to lobster rolls in Watch Hill. He introduced me to the complicated rhythms of jazz and the photographers he loved, like Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose name I could hardly pronounce but whose pictures I could understand.

Unfortunately, he also introduced me to his mother.

 

“This is Kit, Mom,” Billy said.

I held out my hand to shake, but she turned to take Billy’s coat. I pretended to gesture instead. “You have a lovely house,” I said.

“You’re letting in a draft,” she told me. “Close the door, Billy.”

Her hair was tightly curled, and a bit of lipstick had been applied, an orange-red that was the wrong color. I could still see the indentations from the bobby pins that had anchored the curlers to her scalp. She was dressed in dark green with a gold pin near her shoulder.

“We’ve met before,” I reminded her. “In the lobby of
Carousel.”

“I don’t recall,” she said, and I could see not only that she was lying, but that she knew that I realized it, and she didn’t care.

Nate came forward to shake my hand. “It’s good to see you, Kit. How is your father?”

“He’s fine, thanks.”

There might have been a blinking sign above Angela Benedict’s head reading
YOU ARE A
POOR IRISH GIRL — GO AWAY.
She turned and led us into the living room, where tiny sandwiches had been set out with the coffee. The plan was to have a snack and go out to the dance, where we’d meet Jamie. There were four tiny tea sandwiches on a silver plate. Obviously, we were supposed to eat and run.

Billy perched on the edge of the couch. I’d never seen him so nervous. “Kit just got a job at the Riverbank downtown,” he said. “She’s a hostess on Saturday nights. And last night Tony Carroll, the headliner, asked her to sing, and she’s become a regular part of the show! That’s how good she is.”

“That’s wonderful,” Nate said. He lit a cigarette and poured some coffee.

“I guess you enjoy being looked at,” Angela said. “Me, I think a lady should stay at home. Take care of the family.”

“I’ve been performing since I was two,” I said. “You get used to it.”

“I suppose so, if you’re that type of person.”

“What swell sandwiches,” Billy said. “I love a deviled ham sandwich.”

“You have a lovely home,” I said to Angela. Then I remembered that I’d said it already. “Beautiful furniture.”

“Angela knows exactly what she wants,” Nate said. “She describes it and sends over fabric, and Greenaway’s makes it up for her.”

“When I was little, we did an advertisement for Greenaway’s Department Store,” I told them. “My da had lined up the endorsement: The Corrigan Three Love Greenaway’s Goods! They promised to pay us in trade, so we thought we’d get a new bed or two, or a kitchen table. They gave us pillows instead, the ones that didn’t sell. For a while we didn’t have a couch, but we had pillows. Ugliest pillows you ever saw.”

Billy forced a chuckle, but nobody had anything to say about that. I don’t know why I’d just blurted out that story. This was supposed to win them over?

“Billy, pour some coffee for yourself,” Angela said. “Warm yourself up before you go.”

We sipped our coffee and nibbled at the sandwiches. I couldn’t think of another thing to say, especially since the woman was willing me out of the room.

After barely ten minutes, Billy stood and said, “We’d better be going, we don’t want to miss the fun.”

“Now be careful driving,” Angela said. “There’s supposed to be snow tonight.”

“Oh, Billy’s a great driver,” I said.

A strangled silence fell. Billy pulled at his tie, looked at his shoes, then his watch.

I stood up quickly. My skirt brushed against the coffee cup and it rattled in the saucer. Angela jumped.

We got our coats and scarves and said good night and escaped into the frosty air.

“Sorry,” he said once we were out of earshot. “That was awful.”

“I bombed,” I said. “Was it the pillow story?”

“I loved the pillow story.” He took my arm and pressed it against his side. “Tell it again.”

It was a relief to laugh. “Why did everyone freeze up when I said you were a great driver? Should I be bringing a crash helmet?”

Billy gripped my elbow as he led me around a patch of ice. “She doesn’t trust my driving. Ever since Michael was killed.”

I wanted to kick myself down the street. Billy’s cousin Michael had died in a car crash when he was sixteen. “No wonder she hates me,” I said.

Billy sighed. “She hasn’t left the house in five years,” he said. “She went to my cousin’s funeral and then she never left the house again. At first we didn’t notice it. She’d always make me run errands, buy the groceries, and told me not to tell my dad. She even sent me to the dress shop a couple of times. I almost got beat up on the way home, carrying that bag. But my dad figured it out. Now everybody pretends it’s all right. All the family — they say she has headaches, poor Angela. The doctor comes to the house,
the food is delivered, her clothes, they just send them over, all the stores on Federal Hill know Angela Benedict. God forbid she gets a toothache, she’ll rip it out with pliers. So don’t take it personally.”

But I did. It
was
personal. I’d seen hatred in that woman’s eyes. “I guess she doesn’t want to let go of you.”

“She won’t let go of anything.” We reached the end of the driveway and stopped by the car. He stepped back from me and jammed his hands in his pockets. “I just want to punch something.”

“That’s why you’re on the boxing team.”

“I quit.”

“You didn’t tell me. Don’t you like it anymore?”

He swung open the door and held it for me. “I started to like hitting the other guy a little bit too much.”

The interior light illuminated his face, his full mouth so taut. I touched his arm. “It’s all right. It’s just family. We’ll make our own one day.”

“Not here. Not in Providence. We’d never have a life here.” He looked back at the house. “You never talk about what my father does.”

I shrugged. “He’s not you.”

“We pack away lies in that house like you pack away Christmas. We put them in boxes and tape them over. My mother is a great hostess — that’s what everyone says. She never comes to anybody’s house, but she cooks like crazy on holidays. My father is a stand-up guy, defending people in the neighborhood. You should see the fruit baskets we get at Christmas, the liquor, the presents … for what? For getting some murderer acquitted? Do you think he sleeps at night, my dad? I hear him walking around….”

“Billy —”

“Can you honor your father if you think he’s a louse? And he wants me to be him! Benedict and Benedict, that’s his dream.”

“It’s okay if it’s not yours.”

“I want to take pictures, I want to travel the world —”

“You can do anything.” I said the words firmly. “Anything you want.”

He dipped his head and rested his forehead against mine. “You put up with a lot from me. I don’t want you to have to put up with my family, too.”

“They’re part of you.”

“No.” He shook his head, back and forth, his cool forehead moving against mine. “You’re my family.”

When he kissed me, his lips were so cold they made me shiver.

“I hate deviled ham,” I whispered.

We laughed, and something eased in him. He took my arm and helped me into the car, even though I didn’t need it. The upholstery felt stiff and cold through my coat. He closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side. I watched him through the windshield. I never got used to how beautiful he was. I had watched him box once — only once — and I’d seen how the elegance of his movements translated to a ring. He had been a beautiful thing to watch — until the blood began to flow, and I had to run out of the room.

Later, at the dance, we held each other closer than we ever had. All he had to do was touch the small of my back and I shuddered. With his lips close to my cheek, he said, “Thank you for tonight.”

“For what?”

“For not kicking the tray of sandwiches over. For not dumping your coffee in her lap. For not insulting her the
way she insulted you. For trying to tell a funny story. For making me feel okay.”

“Just okay?”

“For making me feel like I can do anything.” His arms tightened around me. “As long as I have you.”