“All this time since I have seen you,” Sarah said.
“Two days, Mama.”
“You’re not still mad?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Mama.”
“Three weeks now and living in a hotel like a girl with no reputation. Maybe it is time you come home. Etta and Yaakov, they are all moved out. You won’t have to share the bathroom with half Russia.”
Libby let that slide. “I went to Altman’s for you today. You remember, I made the appointment last week.”
“Altman’s, yes. So, how it was?”
“They’ve agreed to take the entire spring range on sale or return.”
“Libby, that’s wonderful.”
“I’m glad you’re pleased.”
“Pleased? I don’t know what I’d do without you, bubeleh.”
“They’re your designs, Mama. You catch the fish, I wheel the cart down the lane and bargain with the housewives.”
“You know that’s not true. You have such flair for sales. Miracles you perform.”
“It helps that all the buyers are men.”
“Did I tell you I am looking at apartments all afternoon? On the Upper West Side. Near the Arlington, where we used to live before the crash. Like we always planned.”
“Like you always planned. Well, good luck on you, Mama. You deserve it.”
Sarah’s face fell. Her martini arrived, and Libby ordered another manhattan, inviting a disapproving glance from her mother as well as the waiter.
“So, what are we celebrating?” Sarah said.
“I want to toast the future,” Libby said.
“And what a future we have!”
“I hope you think so after I have told you my news.”
“News? You have news?”
Libby took a breath. Her mouth felt suddenly dry. She finished her manhattan and prayed the waiter would hurry with the other. “I’ve enrolled to take a nursing degree at Yale.”
Sarah smiled as if she had made a joke.
“Mama? You’re allowed to say something.”
“This is supposed to be funny, bubeleh?”
“Not to me. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. It’s what I want to do.”
“No.”
“I knew you’d say that. But it’s too late. This time you don’t get to decide. It’s done. I called an old friend from Westover. Her father has some influence over there, and she got me in. So all the school fees Dewey paid, they didn’t go to waste after all.”
Her manhattan arrived, and not a moment too soon. Her mama just stared at her. Like a corpse she looked, still and gray in the face.
“Mama, please say something.”
“How could you do this?”
“It’s my life. It’s what I want to do.”
“But why would you do such a thing? This business, this good living we have now, it is all for you.”
“Yes, that’s the problem.”
“What problem? How is there a problem of making a millionaire life for your daughter?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You are sorry?”
“I don’t want to sell clothes. This is not a life for me.”
“Not a life? What do you know from life? I have been a good mother to you. Go ahead, tell me you wished you had another mother. Tell me.”
“You are a wonderful mama. The best. But I’m twenty-three years old. You must let me be now.”
“Let you be?”
“Let me make my own life. Loving is not just looking after, it’s about letting go.”
“I cannot let you go. Cannot.”
“You have to. I know this is hard. But I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, ever since Frankie started nursing. Do you know she’s in Manila now? The adventures she’s having!”
“You think about this for so long? And you say nothing to me?”
“I knew you’d be angry.”
“Yes, I am angry! Why not angry? I cannot believe what I am hearing.”
She sat back in her chair, looked up at the crystal chandelier above their heads.
“A nurse? I cannot believe. You don’t want a nice apartment, a motor car, nice things to wear? Instead you want to look at men’s I-don’t-know-whats and clean up other people’s business all day?”
“I want to help people, Mama. I want to feel like I’m doing something worthwhile.”
“What we do is not worthwhile?”
“You mean helping some society matron think she looks better than the bored lawyer’s wife in the next apartment? It’s not going to save a life, is it?” Libby immediately wished she hadn’t said that aloud. It was just business, and there was nothing wrong with being good at it. “It’s not what I want to do with my life,” she said more gently.
“I won’t help you,” Sarah said. “I won’t give you money.”
“I didn’t think you would. That’s all right. I’ll wait tables if I have to. Whatever it takes.”
Sarah shook her head. “I cannot believe what you have done to me. Better I was dead.”
“We both know what you did, Mama. I guess one day I’ll forgive you, but today’s not that day.”
She realized she had drunk too much after all. It was as much as she could do to make a dignified exit without sprawling on the polished marble. Outside, the cold air made her head spin. Thank God for the bell captain who found her a taxi in just a few dizzy moments.
The cabbie asked her where she was going. “I have no idea,” she murmured, and then she fumbled in her purse for the card they had given her at the hotel and handed it to him. She had had enough of being Liberty Levine. It was time to be her own woman, whoever that turned out to be.
PART 7
59
Pennsylvania Station, New York, February 1942
How beautiful it was, this place, Libby thought; never mind all the noise, the announcements over the loudspeakers. It took her breath away, this great vault of girders, the crisscross shafts of light from the lunettes, the big clock with its hands creeping past eleven o’clock.
She sat down on one of the varnished walnut benches to wait. The whole world was going off to war down there—there were soldiers in khaki, sailors in white, kissing and waving to the women who would wait for them. Not all of them waiting, not in this war, some of them going off with the men, nurses in ANC khaki, the pretty WAVES all in white.
Libby had written to Etta, arranged to meet her at Penn Station and go eat someplace nearby. She almost didn’t recognize her; she was looking for a dowdy Russian peasant woman, like the Etta she remembered from the last time she saw her. When was it? A long time, three years, maybe more, certainly since before she joined the army. Six years she had been away from New York, and how many times had she been back? She could count them on one hand. She and Etta had written to each other many times, but her rift with her mama had made things difficult.
She was taken by surprise when a woman in a long dark coat, her hair curled under her tricorn hat, came toward her and waved.
“Aunt Etta!”
Etta held out her arms. “Libby! Look at you!” These days she spoke English with a real New York accent. “Like a real hero, you look!”
“You want to buy a hero a cup of coffee?”
They hugged again, and Libby followed Etta out of the station to find the nearest diner.
Etta pulled her down in the chair beside her, gesturing to the waitress for coffee. It was steamy hot inside the diner; outside, New York was hunched and gray, wisps of steam rose from the grates in the street.
“How important you look in your uniform!”
Libby took her bag from her shoulder and loosened her coat. “Everyone is in uniform now.”
“What a world we are having,” Etta said. “So now there is war everywhere. Yaakov was right all along. Thank God we left when we did.”
“Have you heard from Aunt Zlota?”
Etta shook her head. “Not for a year, maybe more. I worry so for her an
d her children. You hear these stories about what the Germans are doing. Once, I thought nothing could be worse than the Russians. Now look.”
“It’s good you are here, at least.”
“I have such a smart husband.”
“You look so well.”
“You mean I look so fat! It is all this good American food we are having now. Too many cream cakes and candy bars, what they call.” She laughed and put three spoons of sugar in her coffee. “So good to see you again. It has been so long. And the places you have been!”
“Only the Philippines, Aunt.”
“But it all looks so romantic on the postcards. And warm!”
“Thank you for all your letters. They’ve meant the world to me.”
“What else would I do? You hear from your mama lately?”
“Not so much,” Libby said, and quickly changed the subject, warming her hands on her coffee cup. “How is Yaakov?”
“A proper Amerikaner he is. You should see him, manager of this big bookshop. You should see it over in Brooklyn. No pushcarts in the street. You want something, you have to go to a proper shop. We’re modern now!”
“And the boys? Is Ruben still working with Yaakov?”
“Well, he’s never going to do any good in school, that one. Shine a torch in one ear, you see the light coming out of the other one. But his little brother, he does okay. Like I write to you. God willing, he will start college next year.”
“And Bessie. Has she had her baby?”
“A little boy, praise God.”
“A rich husband, you said in your letter! Who would have thought, Aunt Etta?”
“Rich, but a face like a pickle that’s been run over by a truck. Still, you can’t have everything. At least she has a husband. What about you, bubeleh? We are all so worried for you when we hear on the radio about the bombing.”
“I was never near Pearl Harbor. I was in Manila until the summer. Lucky for me I got transferred back to San Fran.”
“Someone up there is looking out for you.”
“I got sick. It didn’t seem like luck at the time. I spent two months in the hospital. Funny how it’s all turned out. You remember my friend Frankie? I wrote you about her.”
“She is all right?”
“She’s okay. She has a baby girl now, lives in San Diego. But her husband was on the Arizona. He’s lucky to be alive.”
“Well, at least you’re safe.”
“Nowhere is safe in a war, not when you’re in uniform. I’ll see action sooner or later. Hopefully I can make a difference to someone.”
“Your mutti must be worried sick about you.”
Two young soldiers burst in, bringing an arctic blast of air with them. Outside, the rain had turned to sleet. The waitress came over and refilled their coffee cups.
“She sent a telegram to the base to make sure I was all right, after Pearl Harbor. She thinks Pearl Harbor is in California. I wrote back to her, but she didn’t answer. She barely ever writes. I don’t think she’s ever really forgiven me for leaving.”
“She never was this way when we were growing up. It is America does this to her. Will you go and see her?”
“Of course. But I’m scared about it. It’s always difficult between us now.”
“You should try and mend this thing.”
“I don’t know how. And anyway, perhaps I haven’t forgiven her either.”
“That she should come between you and this Jack, I can’t believe.”
“I’ll try and sort things out with her. With the war and everything, this might be our last chance.”
“Don’t say such things!”
Libby stared into her coffee. “The best days, you know, they weren’t those years on the Upper West Side, with the maids and the view of Central Park and the chauffeur. It sounds grand, I know, but the times I loved best were when it was just me and her, living in that broom cupboard in Greenwich Village, building our little business, finding a way to survive every day. It was hard, but it was fun too.”
“When they made your mama, God took away the mold and used it for making tigers.”
“Yes, she’s tough. That’s her greatest strength and her biggest weakness.”
“She loves you, Libby.”
“I would give anything to start over, you know, go back to Cannon Street with her and Frankie and Frankie’s mom, eat potato pancakes, and play in the mud in the street, and buy pickles from the old guy on Willett Street. They were good days. Mama wasn’t so damned complicated then. And what about you and her?”
A gloomy shrug. “What to do? I thought that one day she will let it be, but you know, it is like she doesn’t want to have anything to do with the past anymore. And me and Yaakov and Bessie, we are her past. Still, when you see her, will you tell her . . .”
“What, Aunt Etta?”
“Tell her I miss her. Tell her that without her, my life is just a sled stuck in the snow. Yes, tell her that.”
Mama has done well, Libby thought, as her cab pulled up outside the red-and-white canopy of the Barrington Apartments, and a uniformed doorman stepped out to open the door. Twenty people working for her now, a factory in Brooklyn, and such a list of customers, with Bloomingdale’s at the very top. As her mama reminded her in the few letters she wrote, she could have been a part of it. But Libby was happy with how it had all turned out. If only her mama could be as happy for her, if only she could let go of the past, like Etta said.
The elevator opened on to a marble foyer and a pair of dark-blue Japanese cloisonné vases on wooden stands. Her mama stood between them with her hands folded, as if she was waiting to greet an exiled monarch. She was almost fifty years old now, but she looked at least ten years younger. She was wearing a tangerine collarless top with a nipped waist over a gored skirt.
“Well,” she said, “look at you in your blue, very blue, uniform.”
“Hello, Mama. I see your lips moving, but I see your eyes redesigning it.”
Sarah plumped out the shoulders, pulled at the buttons at the waist. “Perhaps I would have made it so it brought out your figure a little more.”
“They don’t care about my figure in the army. Not the generals anyway.”
“And what is that you have on your head? And is it a tie you are wearing?”
“It’s called a forage cap,” Libby said, and handed it to a maid who was dutifully standing by to collect it. “And yes, the tie is part of the dress blues.”
“Ah well, thank God you’re safe.” A brisk hug. “Dressed like a janitor, but safe. How long will you be in New York, bubeleh?”
“Just tonight. They’re sending us to Washington tomorrow. I have twenty-four hours’ leave.”
“Washington you’re going?”
“For military training. I’ve only been in the army two years, and now there’s a war. They’re panicking because we don’t even know how to salute properly.”
“Where will you go after that?”
“Who knows? It’s the army. They never tell you; they just do it.”
“You want to stay here tonight?”
“Thanks, but I’m staying with a friend, we have a hotel near Penn Station.”
Sarah’s eyes shot wide. “A man?”
“No, another nurse from my unit. She gets in tonight.”
Sarah showed her through the apartment. She said she had bought it eighteen months before—Is it that long since I have seen her? Liberty thought. It was a classic six, with three bathrooms and more marble than the Parthenon. The living room, with its views over Central Park, even had a frescoed ceiling. She had almost outshone Dewey.
After the tour, Sarah asked the maid to bring them coffee and arranged herself on a tapestried sofa, as if she was posing for a Vogue photographer. She is making a point, Liberty thought, letting me know what I could have had if I had stayed.
Unopened novels were scattered about a glass-top coffee table—D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce—along with several copies of Vogue and the New Yorker.
They talked about business. Liberté Fashion was all over New York now. Bloomingdale’s stocked her entire catalog, and a young Brooklyn actress called Gene Tierney had bought several of her dresses. She was charging private customers thousands for one of her creations.
A maid brought coffee on a tray.
“The suit you’re wearing, is that one of your creations?” Libby asked, nodding.
“You like it?”
“It’s beautiful. I always thought you were a genius. Even after what you did, I still thought that.”
It was like a shadow passed over Sarah’s face. “Still you talk about that man.”
“Yes. Still think about him too.”
“It is all such a long time ago. I don’t know how you remember such things. Don’t you have a beau now?”
Libby answered with a shrug.
“You won’t always be so young and beautiful. How long you going to be this old-maid nurse?”
“Is that what I am?” Libby sipped her coffee, almost amused. “There’s been a couple of close calls, but it never turned into anything.”
“What is wrong with these boys, that they don’t want to get married with you?”
“It’s not the boys, it’s me that’s the problem. Whenever something looks like it will get serious, I get cold feet.”
“I don’t understand this cold feet. You get a boy, he’s not so terrible, it don’t matter about your feet, you make children. What is so hard?”
“It sounds so romantic when you put it like that.”
“Romantic, you don’t need. Romantic just for movies. Real life, you want a serious boy with a job and everything down there working right.”
“Like you and Papa. It was an arranged marriage, right?”
“Yes, whatever you want to call, arranged. But I get to love him, like an old pair of boots.”
“I haven’t found an old pair of boots that fits me yet.”
“You are impossible, impossible!”
“Oh, Mama, enough about all that. Show me what you’ve been working on for the spring catalog.”
There was a studio with windows all along one wall. It looked right over Central Park and the Upper West Side, flooded with light. There were wire half mannequins, some bare, some hung with partly sewn scraps of unfinished designs; a large table with pencil designs and sketch pads scattered over it. Sarah sorted through them. How far she’s come, Libby thought, from everything piled on the kitchen table of a leaky tenement.
Loving Liberty Levine Page 31
