“It’s just that . . . I didn’t know you thought that.”
“Don’t you think that too?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I’m sick of sneaking around, Libby. We’re old enough to know our own minds. They’ll have to get used to the idea, won’t they?”
“I don’t know if Mama will ever get used to it. She talks about your father as if he’s the devil himself.”
“Frankly, I can see how someone might make that mistake.”
“Will you talk to him?”
“He’s coming down from Boston in a few days. He has a place on the Upper East Side. I’ll go over and talk to him there, in private.”
“What do you think he’ll say?”
“What can he say? He could choose which college I went to, but I won’t let him choose who I fall in love with.”
Fall in love with. He made it all sound so straightforward. “You don’t think this is moving too fast?”
“No, I don’t. What about you?” He took her hand. “I know we haven’t known each other long. But if we’re going to get serious, we have to stop sneaking around like this is just some kind of fling.”
“Well, Jack Seabrook, like I told you, I’ve never been flung, and I don’t want to start now. What’s that look? Don’t you believe me?”
“I do, but—well, you’re so damned pretty. I don’t understand how someone didn’t snap you up before this.”
“I’ve had my share of snappers, baby. Only I haven’t snapped back, until now.”
“Well, then, we’ll have to make a stand, or we lose each other before we’ve even begun.”
She knew he was right, but she was scared. Something about the way her mother had reacted when she told her, she sensed this wasn’t going to be as easy as he made it sound.
And going against George Seabrook? From what she knew of him, it might not be quite that simple either. The one thing she did know: her mama was keeping something from her. But what?
The next evening Frankie was coming to town. She had written to Libby, saying she had some exciting news, and they arranged to meet at Penn Station. Libby’s cab was held up in traffic, and she was late getting there. She was worried that she had missed her. She stood at the top of the stairs above the concourse, under its soaring girders and towering Greek columns, stared at the tide of fedoras and cloche hats pushing and shoving and hurrying on the platforms below. How was she ever going to find her among all these people?
“You’re late,” a voice said, and she spun around.
“Frankie!”
Libby barely recognized her. She was in uniform, a white jacket and skirt, a peaked cap with the navy’s insignia. “Oh my God. Frankie, what have you done?”
“They want me to sort out that Hitler fella. I said I would, but first they had to give me a uniform and my own machine gun. I left it at home. They don’t let you have machine guns in New York, only in Chicago.” She looked down at her uniform. “Horrible, isn’t it? White was never my color.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted to see your face. It’s a picture, and no mistake.” She pointed to her shoulder tab. “And none of this ‘Frankie’ business. I’m Ensign Donnelly now. Off to see the world, I am. Are you going to stand there gaping all day, or are we going to get some dinner? I’m starving.”
They walked outside arm in arm and jumped in a rattling Checker taxi and drove over to Janssen’s Hofbrau Haus, under the Chrysler Building. Libby had originally planned to take her to Jack Dempsey’s, but it was a Saturday night, and she wasn’t in the mood to fight the crowds. When they looked at the menus, Frankie made a face at the frogs’ legs and partridge in weinkraut, so they settled for goulash and schnitzels and two glasses of wine.
Libby couldn’t get over it. Frankie had changed so much since she had last seen her. It wasn’t only the uniform; she had put a wave in her hair and taken a care with her makeup that she never had before. And there was something in the way she held herself; she had been brash on the Lower East Side, because that was what it took, but now the sharp edges had been replaced by a different kind of self-assurance.
Frankie appeared equally impressed. She weighed Libby over the rim of her glass. “Well, look at you, girl,” she said. “You look like a film star. Where did you get that dress? Don’t tell me your ma made it?”
“Of course. I told you, didn’t I? We have our own label now.”
“I suppose you’ll be taking me to El Morocco after dinner.”
“Just the ‘21.’”
“I’m not really dressed for it. I’ll need to change into my civvies.”
“When did you join up?”
“Two months ago. They’re quite choosy. But there’s not many nurses my age that have experience in an operating room, so I got the call.”
“But why?”
“I want to see a bit of the world, Lib. I didn’t want to live in Pennsylvania all my life. They’re sending me to the navy hospital in Maryland first, but I’ve my name down for transfer to the Philippines when a place comes up. Can you imagine? I didn’t even know where it was, I had to look it up in an atlas.”
Their goulash arrived. They drank their Moselles and ordered another round. After she finished telling Libby all about the navy, Frankie wanted to know everything that Libby had been doing. She said she knew all along that Libby and her ma would do all right at the rag trade.
“You’re going to be the new Coco Chanel,” Frankie said.
“Perhaps Mama is,” Libby said. “I’ve other plans. You know who I want to be?”
“Who?”
“Frankie Donnelly.”
Frankie stared at her, her spoon poised halfway between her bowl and her lips. “Now what nonsense are you talking?”
“You’re doing something worthwhile. You’re helping people. A little angel in white.”
“Get away with you.”
Libby touched her glass to Frankie’s. “The girl from Delancey Street made good.”
“You’re the one that’s made good. Did you not just tell me business was booming? You have your own label and your own shop.”
“But it reads better than it lives, Frankie. It’s my mama’s dream, not mine. Now eat your soup. I have a big night planned for us.”
They drank manhattans at the Tap Room in the Taft on Seventh, then caught a cab downtown to the New Circle Bar at the Governor Clinton, where Libby said they could drink old-fashioneds all night for a quarter and listen to Jay Coe. They finished up at a club on Swing Street before sprawling into a cab in the early hours.
“What are you going to do about this Jack fella?” Frankie asked Libby as they headed downtown along Sixth.
Libby put her cheek against the cold glass of the back window. She felt as if she were burning up. Too much alcohol. “I don’t know, Frankie.”
“You can’t let a good man go. Your ma will come around.”
“What if she doesn’t?”
“Then you can come join the navy and run away with me.” Frankie was drunk, and it was just a stupid joke. But after she had dropped Frankie off at her hotel, Libby thought about what she had said and decided that perhaps it wasn’t such a terrible idea. She even saw some sense in it the next morning when she was sober.
Anyway, what was wrong with wanting to have your own life? Perhaps the only sure way to make yourself unhappy was to let someone else live your life for you.
Sarah sat with her head down on the sewing-machine table. She was too tired to cook for everyone tonight, let Etta do it. The seamstress girls were finished for the day, and Liberty was out somewhere, but Sarah never had a moment alone anymore. She could hear Etta’s brood in the kitchen. She couldn’t get used to having so many people around, not like when she was little. In those days, she didn’t like ever to be alone.
Tonight, she was too tired to do anything. Perhaps she would just sit here. Her arms and legs, how they felt, couldn’t even lift them up anymore. Not the work that made her like this, it w
as this life, too complicated to live it anymore, and nobody’s fault but hers.
She heard the door creak ajar, knew Etta was standing there, watching her. Let her watch.
“Sura?”
“What?”
“Are you all right?”
“Do I look like I am all right?”
“It’s about Libby?”
“Sure, it’s about Libby. What do you think?”
Etta sidled in another few inches, like Sarah was a bomb and any loud noise, any sharp move, it would level the whole apartment. And maybe she was right.
“You have to let her go, Sura, make her own life.”
Sarah sat up. “You don’t understand. It’s complicated.”
“Why is so difficult? Just let it be.”
“Etta, I love you, you know this, right? You are my sister, my favorite sister in the whole wide world. I have missed you this last twenty years like nobody’s business.”
“I know.”
“But you can’t help me on this, believe me. Now please, I need to be alone.”
Etta nodded and went out. The door clicked shut behind her.
Sarah closed her eyes. She thought about when she and Etta had been riding on the sled back from the market in Tallinn, how Etta had had her baby in the snow. What happened to that Sura? Perhaps one day she would come back, that girl.
But for now, this Sarah knew what she had to do.
54
A big expense, the telephone. It was Liberty who had insisted that they must have one. We cannot run a proper business without, she had said. She used it to talk to department store managers and wholesalers. A real Wasp on the phone, she was.
Sarah stared at it for perhaps half an hour before she finally summoned the courage to pick up the earpiece. She checked again that there was no one else in the apartment and then dialed the operator and told her the number she wanted.
An eternity before one of his flunkies answered, asked her name, told her to hold the line while he informed Mr. Seabrook that she wished to speak with him.
What if he refused her call?
Then she heard his voice. So strange, after so many years. “Mrs. Levine. How did you get this number?”
“It was in Dewey’s diary. I kept it.”
“I see. Of course. For a rainy day.”
“You think I want your money?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
The money, always the money; that was what he had thought from the beginning. Well, she supposed that would make it easier to do what she planned. “I want to buy you lunch, Mr. Seabrook,” Sarah said.
Union Oyster House, Boston
They were sitting in a wood-paneled booth, nice and secluded. She had seen him slip a note into the maître d’s hand as they walked in, to make sure they were kept away from the hoi polloi. They talked about the weather and made small talk about the fashion business until their food arrived.
George regarded her over his plate of half a dozen shucked Virginia oysters. “Enjoy your lobster.”
“It’s a compromise,” Sarah said. “They got no pickles.”
“Long way to come to make jokes about the food in New England,” he said.
“I get the bill at the end,” Sarah said. “So I get the one-liners.”
“But that’s not why you’ve come up here. You’re not fooling me, Mrs. Levine. You’re dancing on hot coals.”
“You don’t chew your oysters?” she said. “Such good money I pay for those things, and you don’t chew?”
“A good oyster I swallow whole.” He gave her a tight smile and speared another with his toothpick. “What’s this about?”
“What this is about, is my daughter and your boy.”
He stared at her. “Jack? What about him?”
“Did you know he is romantic with my daughter?”
She let that sink in. He took a sip of his beer and straightened his waistcoat. “No, I didn’t know that. My son has not mentioned this to me.”
“He knows you would not approve.”
“How did this happen?”
“A girl has to make her way in the world,” Sarah said.
“What does that mean?”
“My Libby, she has a lot to offer. She don’t want to work all her life doing rag trade like her mama. We’re doing all right, but there’s easier ways, if you get my meaning.”
“Let me get this straight. Jack, you think, is the easier way. Old money, class, and privilege, there for the taking. Another Bill Dewey.”
Sarah chewed a mouthful of lobster and smiled at him. Hold his eyes, she thought. Look convincing.
“So you took the train up to Boston today for what? For my blessing to the union, or a payoff?”
“You decide,” Sarah said. “Me, I don’t care which. I never did.”
George took his napkin from his lap and threw it on the table. “I think these oysters are off,” he said, and stood up. He signaled to the busboy, who ran over with George’s hat and jacket. “I’m not for sale, Mrs. Levine. I’ll bid you good day. Thanks for lunch. Don’t forget to leave a tip.”
Sarah waited ten minutes, and then left. She stood outside, under the awning, thought she was going to be sick. Someone stopped and asked her if she was all right, and she nodded and pushed them away. She had to get back to the train station, get back to New York. She wondered if maybe instead of getting on the train, she should lie down under it. You wanted to be a mother so bad when you were young, Sura Muscowitz. Could you ever imagine back then, this is the kind of mama you would be?
55
Upper East Side
Whenever Jack came to see his father, he always felt as if he had an appointment to see God, but wasn’t sure he would get past his secretary. He admired him, respected him, sure, but he never fooled himself into thinking he knew what was going on in that great silver-haired head. His uncle Billy had told him once: “Old George’s a good man, Jack. But he’s lived all his life on that pedestal your grandfather built for him. One day he’ll have to come down off that damned thing or spend his whole life alone, and I hope I’m around to see it.”
Billy wouldn’t see that day now. Jack kind of wondered if he himself would.
He sure couldn’t fault the old man’s commitment. He had practically raised him on his own—well, with the help of a housekeeper, a nanny, a tutor, and half a dozen house servants. But he would have had those anyway. He could have easily packed him off to boarding school, but he hadn’t done it.
Instead he had kept Jack around, showed him how to fly-fish, box, catch a baseball, and read a set of ledgers. He made sure he went to the best schools, wore the best clothes, and had the best friends. But he wasn’t the kind of father to wrap his arms around you. It’s a man’s job to run a business, he liked to say. It’s a woman’s job to spend the money and cry into her handkerchief over nothing.
Not that he’d seen his father with too many women.
He didn’t come to town very much. Boston had everything he needed, he said: his club, a perfectly adequate golf course, and his mistress, who was penciled in for Wednesdays and Saturdays. He thought that coming to the apartment he kept on the Upper East Side was slumming it.
He didn’t even open his own door anymore. His man, Harley, showed Jack through to the study. The room looked as if it had been engraved in sepia, was lined with books with gold lettering on the spines, mostly classics; some tomes on business practice; Thomas Hardy novels; nothing frivolous, and nothing American. There were oil portraits of his ancestors hanging on the walls. None of them looked as if they approved of Jack; he wondered if their expressions changed as soon as he walked in.
The room had been repaneled in mahogany; lamps threw a yellow glow on everything; a deer’s head hung on one wall, looking moth eaten and miserable, as well it might. Shot and decapitated and stuffed, not even allowed to rest in peace. He wondered which of his ancestors had hunted the poor creature down, or whether his father had bought everything as part of a job lot
in a mortgage sale.
“Jack.”
“Father.”
“Go ahead, sit.”
He sat. “What was it Hemingway said? The ‘road to hell is paved with unbought stuffed animals.’”
“I don’t care much for Hemingway.”
“You’re looking well.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. I’m almost sixty and I smoke too many cigars and I work too hard.”
“How’s Jennifer?”
“My mistress is none of your affair. Unless you’re sleeping with her as well, in which case, I’d have to shoot you.”
Jack laughed.
“It amuses me that you think I’m joking.”
“What brings you into town?”
“Business.”
“Of course.”
“Actually, I want to talk to you about your future.”
“I was hoping you might. Is it Davidson’s, or do you want me back in Boston?”
“I’m sending you back to London.”
There was a long silence as Jack digested this. “But I’ve only just got back.”
“True. It seems I have wasted the cost of two perfectly good first-class tickets on the Berengaria. But it was my error, so I won’t be docking it from your not-inconsiderable salary.”
“You promised me Davidson’s.”
“I have changed my mind.”
“Mind telling me why?”
George didn’t answer. This was always his father’s way; he liked him to work things out for himself. When he was a child and asked his father a question—Why is the sky blue? Who was Homer? How do you spell iniquity?—he would simply look toward the dictionary or the encyclopedia on the bookshelf.
The silence in the room became oppressive; the ticking of an antique clock on the mantel made it even more so. Finally, the answer came to him. “Libby Levine.”
“She doesn’t use the Dewey name? Not even for the cachet?”
“It’s her father’s name. She took it up again after Uncle Billy died.”
“Liberty Dewey, Liberty Levine. Whatever she calls herself these days, you are in over your head, I believe. London will help you see things more clearly, despite the fog.”
Loving Liberty Levine Page 29
