The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress

by Ariel Lawhon

  An assistant waved her forward. “This way.” He held back the curtain and led her onstage.

  A nameless, faceless voice called out from the dark mouth of the theater, “Are you ready, Miss … Ritz?” He sounded bored, as though he’d sat there listening to one performer after another butcher the song.

  “Yes.” She searched for a face but could see nothing past the yellow spotlight in which she stood.

  “That’s Cole Porter on the piano to your left. He wrote the musical.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Her voice raised an octave. She cleared her throat. Swallowed.

  Porter looked amused at her discomfort. He leaned away from the piano, all eyes and receding hairline. “I’ll go through it once so you catch the melody. You’ll come in on the third measure.”

  Ritzi scanned the sheet music as he played. Shorty gave me a way out of this, she thought. Everything was arranged, as long as she sang well. She couldn’t flub it completely—Owney would know better. Ritzi was consistent. But she could try too hard. Put a little too much emotion into it. That certainly wouldn’t be much of a stretch today. Would Owney let her be if she didn’t land this gig? One way to find out.

  After several minutes, Porter’s fingers came to a rest on the piano keys. “Got it?”

  Ritzi nodded and he began again. She waited, marking each beat with a gentle tap of fingers against her thigh. At the beginning of the third measure, she joined the melody, her voice deep and lusty and emotional. She could have sung the song straight and high and clear. But she didn’t. Ritzi allowed herself to feel it instead of performing it. In her peripheral vision, she saw Shorty standing next to the curtain. His head jerked up at the sound of her voice. Ritzi kept her eyes on the sheet of lyrics. They rang all too true. Ritzi let her voice crack at the beginning of the last chorus, an emotion-filled rasp that would surely cost her the audition.

  Appetizing young love for sale

  If you want to buy my wares

  Follow me and climb the stairs

  Love for sale

  She brought the last line to a close with a slight waver. This was the opportunity she’d struggled for. Her chance at a real part in a Broadway show. And she’d blown it on purpose. All Ritzi wanted was to go home and go to bed with an aspirin and a hot water bottle and forget that she had ever boarded that train three years ago. She closed her eyes and waited for the rejection.

  Damning silence filled the auditorium. Cole Porter rustled his sheet music. She heard whispers. And then, “Rehearsals begin next week, right here. Don’t be late.”

  It took several moments for her to make sense of the congratulations and the handshakes and the pleased look on Shorty’s face. Ritzi was given a packet of paperwork filled with scores and scripts and a typed contract stating her role in the production.

  Cole Porter graced her with a smile that might have thrilled her had it come a few years earlier. “You’re perfect,” he said.

  She remembered to smile and give thanks, to look pretty and charming and delighted. Ritzi had enough composure left to look the part. It was only when Shorty led her down the dark hallway again that she let her face crumple into dismay.

  “That was risky,” he whispered.

  “Why? I got the part.”

  “That’s not how Owney wanted you to sing it.”

  “Maybe I wanted to try something different.”

  “Listen.” He stopped and shoved her up against the wall, lowering his voice so no one could hear. Shorty pushed up on his toes to meet her eye to eye. “Keep doing things your way and you’ll get a short ride in the trunk of Owney’s Cadillac. I’m tired of dumping bodies off the Brooklyn Bridge at two in the morning, Ritz. I sure as hell don’t wanna do yours. Got it?”

  MARIA inherited kitchen duties at the age of ten. Her mother had passed the mantle, and the family recipes, with austerity and a hand-carved wooden spoon straight from the hills of Barcelona. Caramel colored with a smooth handle that fit in the curve of her palm, it was one of the few things she’d brought with her when she married Jude. Something about the feel of that spoon, the swish it made across the bottom of the pan, was therapeutic, and Maria swayed as she stood at the stove, boiling chutney to go with dinner.

  Bifana. The meal her mother made for special occasions. Pork tenderloin with cinnamon, cloves, cumin, and raisins. Maria usually made the complicated Portuguese dish during the holidays. Tonight it was an act of bribery. A way of softening her husband, easing into a conversation she didn’t know how to approach.

  The apartment was three rooms cobbled together with thin walls and rusty plumbing. A tenement near Chinatown. One corner of the living area was reserved for the kitchen, a nook containing a stove, a sink, an icebox, and a small stretch of counter against which Maria now rested, stirring the chutney in rhythmic circles. The heat radiating from the stove caused beads of sweat to rise along her hairline and lip. She wiped them away with the back of her hand.

  Maria had rushed home from Smithson’s that day and worked out her anxiety by preparing the meal. She browned the tenderloin. Added spices. Stuck it in the oven to roast. And all the while, she wrestled her fears about Jude. She stacked the questions in her mind, shuffling them like a deck of cards in the hands of a dealer. Muttered prayers. Worried her rosary with puckered fingers. At one point, she lit a cluster of votive candles on the coffee table and tried to recite the doxology, but she couldn’t get through five words without her mind wandering to Jude and those envelopes in the Craters’ apartment. When Maria heard Jude’s key in the lock, there was nothing left to do and she surrendered to the inevitable. She didn’t move when the door pushed open or when she heard him stop in the doorway. Instead, she swayed to an imaginary tune and hummed beneath her breath, arm raised to pin a pile of chestnut curls to the top of her head. Maria jumped back when a glob of chutney splashed her arm. She brandished the wooden spoon like a weapon, banging the side of the pot in frustration.

  “Don’t hurt the cookware,” Jude said. “It’s no match for you.”

  Only then did she meet his gaze. She couldn’t help smiling when she saw his blue eyes, his hesitant dimples. “You’re late.”

  Jude looked guarded. The words he chose were noncommittal. “Long shift.”

  Maria set the spoon on the counter. She crossed the room in four steps and wrapped her arms around him. She kissed his cheek. Then his neck. “Come eat dinner.”

  The small table sat wedged against the open window and was covered with the only tablecloth they owned. There wasn’t even enough breeze to startle the lit candle.

  She pulled the platter of bifana from the warm oven and drizzled it with chutney. The meat surrendered easily beneath the knife, and she sliced several thin pieces for Jude and set them on his plate.

  Maria watched him cut the tenderloin into strips, amazed at his left-handed dexterity. Writing, cutting, and eating all required a shift in posture for Jude that looked uncomfortable to her, as though he were tipping to the side to accommodate that left hand. He was fully immersed in his meal, while she swirled each piece of meat through the chutney and chewed more than necessary, trying to find the right question to ask.

  Finally, Maria pushed her plate away, appetite gone, and looked out the window. On the street below, a group of boys played stickball during lulls in traffic.

  “Do you know anything about Owney Madden?” she asked. “That gangster from Liverpool?”

  Jude dropped his fork. He stared at her with suspicion, palms spread flat against the tablecloth. “Why?”

  “He came into Smithson’s two days ago. And there was something really familiar about him, but I didn’t figure it out until today.” Not the complete truth, of course, but hearing Jude mention him at the Craters’ that morning kept Owney firmly cemented in her mind.

  “You’ve seen him before?” He picked up his fork and stuck the tines through a raisin. “Where?”

  “He was at one of the Craters’ parties.”

  “
Owney Madden was at the Craters’?” His jaw stretched tight.

  She wanted to hear the truth from him. “Who is he?”

  “A brutal son of a bitch. Gangster. Bootlegger. Owns Club Abbey. And the Cotton Club. Not to mention half the showgirls in this town. Among other things.” Jude gripped his steak knife, knuckles white, and cut a long strip of tenderloin. He dissected it into small pieces before taking a bite.

  “I’ve never heard anyone talk that way. Like he spent his days on a fishing trawler and his nights on the dock.”

  “He probably did.”

  “Have you ever met him?”

  Maria was startled at how level his voice was. How calm. How he chose such a careful answer.

  “He’s not someone I want to know.”

  She turned to the window to avoid the intensity in his gaze.

  “Why was he at the Craters’?” Jude asked. His eyes had that curious slant she’d always loved. Until now. Now it unnerved her.

  “Celebrating. Same as everyone else.”

  “What?”

  “Mr. Crater becoming a judge.”

  He mopped a bite through the chutney. “What made you think of him?”

  “Nothing, really.” She swallowed. “It just surfaced. You know, the way thoughts do.”

  Jude threw his knife and fork onto the plate, and they bounced, then fell to the floor, leaving a blotch of chutney on the tablecloth. “Don’t lie to me!”

  His voice was a slap. She recoiled. “What?”

  “Did he come to their apartment? Did he threaten you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Shit, Maria. Do you know what bad news that guy is? I could kill the Craters for putting you in the same room with him. And Owney for going anywhere near you.”

  Maria yanked the bifana from the table and carried the platter back to the kitchen. Set it on the counter with trembling hands. “I have never seen you like this.”

  Jude got up and stood behind her. “You gotta tell me if that guy’s been around.”

  “You’re scaring me.” Maria placed her palm on the rosary where it hung between her breasts. Took a measured breath. “Why would I lie to you?”

  He set his hands on her arms. Panic stretched his eyes wide. “You would if you thought it would protect me. I know you.”

  “Is there something I need to protect you from?”

  “It’s my job to protect, okay? Mine.” Jude loomed over her, shoulders rounded and the veins in his neck drawn tight with a frightening intensity. Maria stepped away, and he reached for her, imploring, but caught a fistful of blue rosary beads instead. Too eager, too desperate to make her understand, he yanked her toward him. The thin silver chain snapped in half, and beads went spinning across the floor, under furniture, against the walls. The crucifix dropped to her feet.

  Fear and shame fought for control of his face. He trembled as he towered over her. “I’m sorry—”

  She fell to her knees, scooping up the beads. She chased them across the floor. When she counted them in her hand, over half were missing. Maria could not look at him. She cupped them in her palm.

  “It was your grandmother’s,” Jude whispered.

  Maria stumbled to her feet and moved toward the bedroom.

  “I went to see Finn this afternoon,” Jude called as she reached for the knob.

  It took a minute for Maria to register what he said, and then the atmosphere pitched sideways. “Since when do you go to confession?”

  “I needed someone to talk to.” Jude sounded pained. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It was a long, rotten day.”

  In all the years they’d been married, Maria could not remember a single time that Jude had gone to see Father Finn Donnegal on his own. For the most part, he’d insisted on calling him by his first name—a liberty that the priest never seemed to mind. A patient man, Father Donnegal.

  “What happened today?” She leaned forward a bit, expectant, hopeful that he’d tell her about those envelopes, about Owney, that he wouldn’t keep something of that magnitude from her.

  He grabbed a handful of tousled hair and yanked. “Nothing … just … shit, Maria, it was just a bad day, okay?”

  Maria stared at him with mournful brown eyes and then stepped into the bedroom and locked the door. She went to the bathroom and ran the tap so the rush of water would muffle Jude’s apology on the other side of the door. Maria climbed into the empty tub and held the broken rosary to her chest.

  Chapter Five

  BELGRADE LAKES, MAINE, SATURDAY, AUGUST 9, 1930

  STELLA dove off the pier into shallow water. She knew better, really, but there was no feeling like the caress of water against her skin. With a quick arch of her back and three kicks, she came to the surface and then swam freestyle deeper into the lake. Fifty yards from shore, she rolled onto her back and floated, her arms drifting wide. A sky stripped bare of clouds, so blue it seemed bottomless, stretched above her. If only they would meet, sky and lake, and swallow her whole.

  Her bathing suit was scandalous. A strapless number in blue and white checks with a satin belt and a skirt so short it didn’t fully cover her derriere. She’d bought it this summer, intending to surprise Joe on their first swim together, to show him that she was still willing to be seduced. Stella had imagined the look of pleasure when he took in the bare expanse of leg and the hint of cleavage, had hoped he would take a renewed interest in her. It hadn’t happened, of course. Joe was gone again before she could model it for him. Back to his mistress.

  Nature had not endowed Stella well up top. But she was long and lean with a small waist and clear blue eyes. Joe was fond of both. She’d turned more than her fair share of heads—including his, all those years ago. There was no reason for Stella to feel ashamed of herself, and yet she could not stop the insecurity from smothering her right there in the water. She was a fool for thinking a trashy bathing suit could mend a rift so deep.

  Stella pounded her fist in the water. Squeezed her eyes shut. And pushed beneath the surface. She held her breath until her lungs burned and her lips began to tingle. Finally, she bobbed back to the surface and resumed her floating position.

  A small family of loons rose from the shore with a squawk and flew low over the lake. They parted around Stella and then landed on the surface twenty feet away. She watched the female beat the water with her wings, proclaiming her displeasure. Stella glanced toward the cabin and saw a truck backing up to the water’s edge. A canoe was tied to the flatbed, candy-apple red and slick with varnish. All the greens and browns of her lakeside retreat were ripped open, exposed by that streak of color.

  Irv Bean climbed from the truck, scanned the lake, and waved when he saw her treading water offshore. Stella returned the wave and swam back to the pier. She covered herself with a towel before crossing the yard. Dripping and embarrassed, Stella ran one hand along the glossy finish. She didn’t have to ask what it was.

  Her birthday present.

  “Joe ordered it for you. I’ve had it sitting in the storeroom for a week. Figured I’d go ahead and bring it up since I haven’t heard from him.” He looked at Stella, a little sheepish. “Hope I didn’t ruin the surprise.”

  Irv tugged at one of the ropes harnessing the canoe in place and pulled until the tail end rested on the ground. He hoisted it onto his shoulders and trudged toward the dock, where he slid the canoe into the water with a splash, then stood back to admire.

  “Sure is a beauty, ain’t it?”

  “You haven’t heard from him?”

  Irv had one of those faces that struggled to muster any expression other than jovial. Bright eyes and flushed cheeks and a wide grin. “Sorry, no messages for you. I’ll drive up right away if anything comes in.” He shrugged broad shoulders in apology. Then he tied off the canoe so it wouldn’t drift into the lake. “Best be getting back. Happy birthday, Mrs. Crater.”

  Stella’s eyes filled with the canoe. Long after the sound of Irv’s delivery truck was replaced by
the hush of afternoon, she hung by the water’s edge, wondering exactly what had happened to Joe.

  Chapter Six

  BELGRADE LAKES, MAINE, MONDAY, AUGUST 11, 1930

  “I WANT you to go back to New York and look for Joe.”

  Fred sat at the kitchen counter, cup of coffee in hand, watching sheets of rain slide down the window. The rain had returned and with it Stella’s dismal mood. “You think it’s that serious?”

  “I think it’s time we do something other than sit around and wonder. I want you to search everywhere you can think of. Especially the apartment. What if he’s in there …” Stella pulled at a loose thread on her blouse. “What if he’s dead?”

  “Mrs. Crater, I don’t think—”

  “This will get you in.” She pulled a key ring from her purse and set it on the counter. She pointed at a large brass key.

  “You’re not coming?”

  How could she answer that question? That she only wanted to know what had happened to Joe? She settled for the easiest explanation. “I need to be here if he comes back.”

  “I’ll search for him,” Fred said. “I promise.”

  “Write to me if you find anything.”

  “Of course.” Fred picked his jacket off the floor and ducked out the door, arms over his face to protect from the biting wind. He was lost in the rain before she could see him run around the cabin toward the car.

  When Stella was certain Fred had driven away, she went upstairs and dumped out the clothes hamper. At the bottom were the khaki pants Joe had worn to the Salt House. Stella turned the pockets inside out but found only the wrapper to an after-dinner mint. She stuffed the dirty clothes back in and went to the closet. Joe’s dinner jacket hung on a peg inside the door. Stella reached into the left pocket and found his cigarettes—unfiltered Camels—and a matchbook with the Club Abbey logo. Stella grimaced. She’d never approved of Joe’s patronage of the speakeasy that the papers referred to as a “white-light rendezvous spot.” In Joe’s right pocket were two business cards: one for Simon Rifkind, a law associate of Joe’s, and the other for Owney Madden, proprietor of Club Abbey. Stella tapped the cards against her palm.