Strings Attached

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.