“Either. Well, she has family, but she hasn’t seen them in years. She has a daughter, though. She’s nine.”
“What does she do?”
“Plays with dolls, I suspect.”
“Funny. The mother. What does she do?”
“You’ll like this part. She’s a Follies girl.”
George stared at him, couldn’t believe his ears. He tried to keep his expression flat. “Is this a joke, Billy?”
“Why would I joke about this, with you of all people?” A flash of a smile. “Everyone knows you don’t have a sense of humor.”
“Well, you never cease to astonish. What the hell are you doing, Billy? If you want to get yourself a Follies girl, why not some long-legged Okie with no complications. This woman, what’s her name again?”
“Sarah.”
“Sarah. You’re telling me she has no connections, no influence, and no breeding. She can’t help you in any way. My God. What would your father say?”
“My father would have a heart attack if he hadn’t had one already, may he rest in peace.”
“Your future wife is penniless, Jewish, and she’s a showgirl. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Not quite penniless. She’s getting seventy-five a week through the season.”
George slumped in his seat. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Finally: “Have you lost your mind?”
“In a way, I suppose I have.”
“When is this . . . going to happen?”
“Well, I haven’t asked her yet. She might say no.”
“From what you’ve told me, I very much doubt that.”
“Women can be quite unpredictable.”
“I think you overestimate women.”
“Thing is, I haven’t told anyone else about this yet.”
“Why are you telling me?” George said.
“We’ve been friends a long time, George. In fact, even though we don’t see each other very often, I’d say you know me better than anyone.”
“Thank you, Billy. I happen to feel the same way. Look, I know you can be a little . . . different . . . at times, but I find it utterly incomprehensible that you should be thinking of marrying so far beneath yourself.”
“She’s not beneath me, George. If you met her, you’d understand. She may not be an heiress, but she’s not beneath me.”
“She must be damned good in bed.” He turned and signaled to the waitress. She brought over the coffee pot.
As she refilled their cups, Dewey said, “I haven’t bedded her yet, George. That’s the whole point. I admit she’s a very beautiful woman, but it’s not about wrecking the sheets.”
The waitress gave Dewey a sharp look and moved quickly away.
“Marriage is about making connections, Billy. It’s a social contract. If you don’t want her as a mistress, and she can’t bring good breeding and social standing to the table, then what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I think I love her.”
“Did you say love?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
George looked away. His cheeks were burning, Goddammit. “Yes, I know what you’re talking about. You damn well know I do. And what good did it do me, Billy? Tell me that.”
“It doesn’t always have to end badly.”
“No, and the dealer doesn’t always win at blackjack. But most card players still end up sleeping on the street and lucky to have the clothes they stand up in.”
Dewey dropped two sugar cubes into his cup. “You had your moment of rebellion, didn’t you? I never did.”
“It wasn’t rebellion.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“Is that what this is? You’re marrying a showgirl so you can relive a youth you think you never had?”
“If it’s self-indulgence, at least I can afford it.”
“But why take on a child as well?”
A shrug.
“You’re going to ride in like a knight on a white charger and save a fair maid and her helpless kind from the dragons. Is that it?”
“After the bell goes off at the Exchange, my time is my own. I’ve decided to use it doing things I want to do, not what my father would have done.”
George opened his mouth to answer him, then thought better of it. He wondered, for a moment, if perhaps his old friend didn’t have a point.
“What was it that made you marry Clare?” Dewey said.
Clare. A long time since anyone had spoken her name aloud to him. His waistcoat felt suddenly too tight. He put his finger to his collar and cleared his throat.
“I’m sorry,” Dewey said. “But I have to ask.”
“Clare.” He closed his eyes for a moment, allowing himself to remember, something he had not done for a long time. “There was just something, every time I saw her, I felt quite—breathless, I suppose. I can’t explain it. She was different from any woman I’d ever known.”
“You see? You do understand.”
“But does she love you?”
“I’ll make her love me.”
“That’s what I said about Clare.”
“Perhaps I’ll be luckier than you, George.”
“Yes,” George said. “Yes, perhaps.”
26
Dewey picked Sarah up outside the New Amsterdam, as he always did. Most nights they went downtown to a speakeasy or up to Jungle Alley. He had still not tried to sleep with her. Sarah wasn’t sure whether she felt relieved or insulted.
“You sure he isn’t a pansy?” Evie had asked her one night as they were changing after a show.
“You think he likes . . . men?”
“That’s what I’m asking.”
“Why would he want to take me out?”
“So nobody knows he’s a pansy, dummy.”
Sarah had never thought of that. I must be the least worldly showgirl there’s ever been, she thought. “How would I know?”
“Some guys, it’s not always easy to tell. You don’t get around much, do ya?”
Sarah shrugged.
“Well, my advice, until he asks, you won’t really know. But when he does ask, make sure you say no. Once you sold him everything in the shop, why would he want to come back to look at the empty shelves?”
Nelson opened the car door for Sarah, standing to attention in his cap and leather gloves as if she was royalty. She almost expected him to salute. She settled into the leather upholstery. Dewey smiled at her from the other end of the seat. The back of the Bentley was almost as big as the living room in her apartment.
“Where to?” she said.
“Why don’t we do something different?”
“Different like how?”
“Actually, I’d like to meet your daughter.”
She stared at him.
“We can’t keep putting this off forever, Sarah.”
“Why not?” she said with a little laugh.
He leaned forward, pushed the glass panel aside. “Lower East Side, Nelson. Cannon Street. It’s near the Williamsburg Bridge.”
“You know where I live?”
“I know a lot more about you than you think.”
They set off downtown, through the chaos of taxicabs and limousines. This must be how Cinderella felt, Sarah thought, on her way back from the ball. Wait till he sees where I live. When the clock struck on Delancey Street, she would turn from a princess back to a scullery maid. At Union Square, she could almost hear the clock chiming down to midnight.
The Williamsburg Bridge loomed ahead, stark against the night sky. She could make out the glow of the oil-drum fires under the approaches, the bums settling in for the night.
Nelson pulled up outside their tenement. She looked at his face in the rearview mirror. He was inscrutable, as always; she supposed that was what Dewey paid him for. He reached under the dashboard and passed his employer a box wrapped with pink tissue paper and a white ribbon.
“Thank you, Nelson.”
“You sure you want to do this?
” Sarah said.
“Shall we go up?”
Nelson came around to hold open the door. She could feel eyes watching them from the fire escapes—all the mattresses up there, the only place to be on a hot night on the Lower East Side.
He didn’t seem to mind the climb up the five flights of dark steps, and at least he didn’t trip over any rats. The rancid summer smells would have knocked over a horse, but Dewey, gentleman that he was, never even mentioned it.
She knocked on the Donnellys’ door. It opened, and there was Mary, her jaw falling open when she saw Dewey standing there in his homburg and his fancy suit with the trouser cuffs and embroidered waistcoat. A warning glance from Sarah, and she recovered quick enough. “I’ll get Libby,” she said.
Libby came to the door and stared. Sarah could see the rest of the Donnelly family behind her, peering out in a sea of red cheeks and snotty noses. Even Mary’s husband, Dan, was there watching, rubbing his walrus moustache like he always did whenever he was perturbed.
“Libby,” Sarah said. “This is my friend Mr. Dewey.”
She led him across the hall into their apartment. What must it look like to him, Sarah thought: moth holes in the little lace curtain she had put up around the sink to hide the pipes, rotten boards on the window sill, broken plaster on the walls. At least there was a new white oilcloth on the table and the cheesecloth curtains on the windows, she had bought them new just last week.
If Dewey was bothered, he gave no sign of it. He crouched down so that he was eye-to-eye with Libby. “I’ve been wanting to meet you, young lady,” he said. “Your mother has told me so much about you.”
Libby hesitated a moment, then reached out, fingered his tiepin and the jacket, feeling the quality like a good seamstress’s daughter.
Sarah wanted to say, don’t do that with your smudgy fingers, but she didn’t because of the way he was smiling at her. “Your mama says you’re very clever.”
Libby shrugged and kept her eyes on the carpet. Sarah had never seen her daughter so shy.
“Here, I’ve brought you a present,” Dewey said.
Libby tore open the pink paper wrapping. Inside was a book of fairy tales. It had color illustrations as good as the paintings Sarah had seen once in an art gallery, and it was printed on shiny white paper, expensive. It was the most beautiful book Sarah had ever seen.
“Your mother said you like to read.”
Libby nodded.
“Say thank you, Lib. The cat got your tongue?”
“Thank you,” she said, her voice barely audible.
“I’ll make you tea,” Sarah said.
“Do you have anything stronger?”
She shook her head.
He nodded toward the little girl. “I suppose that’s very commendable. Setting a good example, I mean.”
Sarah went into the tiny kitchen. When she came back with tea in her two best cups, he was sitting on the sofa with Libby, who had her dirty bare feet resting on his pressed gray trousers. He was flipping through the pages of the book. They had found the story about the brown duck and the white swans, and she had persuaded him to read it to her.
Dewey grinned at Sarah.
“Well,” he said. “Isn’t this nice?”
It was as he was leaving that he turned at the door and told her what a beautiful daughter she had. “When she grows up, she’s going to be a real head-turner.”
“You think?” Sarah said.
“Where did she get those amazing green eyes?”
“They are Ashkenazi eyes. Her father, he was Ashkenazi.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a Jew that has green eyes.”
“I didn’t know Jewish people had green eyes.”
“Sure they do. For a smart man, you don’t pay much attention.”
Dewey laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“There aren’t many people who dare to talk to me like you do.”
“How do they talk?”
“Like they are either afraid of me or licking my boots, hoping I’ll give them money.”
“You don’t scare me, Dewey. And your boots? Look at them, looks to me like they are shiny enough.”
“You should ask me back sometime. I’m a good storyteller. Just ask your daughter.” He put on his homburg, touched its brim, and kissed her on the cheek. “Good night, Mrs. Levine.”
She closed the door behind him. “Good night, Dewey,” she murmured. She went in to check on Libby, make sure she was asleep. As Sarah closed her door, she heard Libby say: “I liked him.”
27
Dewey picked Sarah up on her day off. This time there was no Nelson; Dewey had decided to do the driving himself. Sarah thought they were going out to his house on Long Island, but he stopped at a general store a few miles short. There wasn’t much around: a low whitewashed fence; the glare of a few dusty, open fields; a billboard advertising building lots with easy terms.
It wasn’t much of a store either: a couple of diesel pumps; a sad-looking office; and a run-down bungalow out back, where the owner lived, she guessed. Dewey left his car in the forecourt, threw his jacket in the back seat, and walked up.
The owner seemed to know Dewey pretty well. He shuffled out from under the car he was working on, wiped his hands on a rag, and shook hands with him. Dewey introduced him to her as Mike. “This is Sarah,” Dewey said, and Mike touched a finger to his forehead.
“Want a beer?” he said to Dewey.
Dewey nodded and followed him into the office. He shucked down his suspenders and sat down on a wooden box while Mike went into the back to fetch a chair for Sarah.
“You want a lemonade?” Mike asked her.
She shook her head. Mike took two beers from the refrigerator and handed one to Dewey, who raised it in a toast and drank straight from the neck of the bottle.
“How’s Betty?” Dewey said.
“Much the same. Thanks for asking.”
Dewey put his feet up on a crate. “Business all right?”
“Can’t complain.” Mike turned to Sarah. “Sorry about this place. I guess a fine lady like you ain’t accustomed to this kind of mess.”
“Fine lady like me grew up helping my mother milk cows and sleeping on the stove. It’s Dewey that tiptoes through puddles.”
Mike liked that and dug Dewey in the ribs. The two men talked about cars and about the new lots being built down the road and how that might help turnover. Mike rolled two cigarettes and handed one to Dewey, and then a car pulled in, and he went outside to pump gas.
“How do you know him?” Sarah asked.
“Used to be my chauffeur, before Nelson,” Dewey said to her. “His father worked for the old man for near on twenty years. He was with me for another five until his wife got sick.”
“Does he own this place?”
“Kinda,” Dewey said, and she realized that it must be Dewey’s place and that Mike worked it so he could look after his wife and still make ends meet. She wondered how much of the action Dewey took for himself and guessed that it probably wasn’t very much.
He and Mike talked some more when he came back, and then Dewey said he had to be going, and they went back out to the car. They drove out to the Sound, and he stopped by the shore. They had a good view of all the houses along the water from there. Dewey got out and sat on the hood. Sarah came and sat next to him, and they watched a yacht beat against the wind, the whitecaps breaking over its bows.
“Practically grew up here,” Dewey said.
“Nice.”
“Maybe.”
She gave him a look.
“Loneliest time of my life,” Dewey said. “Milking cows and balancing on duckboards doesn’t sound so bad if you got company. Fact is, been lonely a lot of my life.” He reached into his trouser pocket and took out a Tiffany’s box. He gave it to her. “Well, go on, open it. Not going to bite.”
“Is that a diamond?”
“I sure hope so, or I was seriously overcharged
.”
“Is this for me?”
“I don’t see anyone else out here. This is not too romantic, I guess, but I’m not good at things like that.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said, and she felt like she had a stone in her throat.
“I want you to marry me, Sarah.”
“Marry?”
“Well, where else did you think this was going? I’m a serious guy; I’m not like Wilson. I don’t take Follies girls out every night of the week.”
She picked up the ring and held it in her hand, couldn’t think. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Her second time a wife, but this time she would have a choice.
“You’re the nicest girl I ever met,” Dewey said, which showed what kind of judge of character he was, she thought.
“You can’t marry me, Dewey.”
“I can do what I damn well please. If you’ll have me.”
“Dewey, I hardly know you. This is so fast for me. You sweep me off my feet like nobody’s business. One minute you are in the dress circle, staring at my tush, the next you want I should be wearing white gloves, shaking hands with Mrs. Rothschild?”
“When you know, you know,” he said.
“But, Dewey, I don’t think . . . I don’t love you, not in that way. I mean you are such a sweet man, and I like you, a lot. But . . . I don’t know.”
She supposed it was his being rich that confused her. She did like him, but was she liking him for herself, or did she like him for Libby and the fine life he could offer her? It was all mixed up in her head.
“Well, I don’t pay no mind to that,” Dewey said. “I know I’m no Rudolph Valentino. Just liking me, maybe that’s enough for me right now. Maybe you’ll come to love me in time. At least you’re honest about it.”
“Why me, Dewey? What I got that you need? I can walk in high heels; I can sew; I can bargain for herring. What good is all that on your West Side?”
“High heels and herring are much in demand. You ever been to one of J. P. Morgan’s parties?”
That made her laugh.
“I like it when you laugh,” he said, and he picked up the ring and put it on her finger. “Tight fit,” he said, and grinned. “You’ll have the devil of a job trying to take that off now.”
Loving Liberty Levine Page 15
