Baker Towers

by Jennifer Haigh

  “My sister lives in California,” said Patsy. “Everyone out there knows about it.”

  “California!” Dorothy repeated, impressed. “Is she in the pictures?”

  “Lord, no. She lives near an air-force base in San Diego. Her husband’s a pilot. She’s just a regular girl. Dottie, you’re a stitch.” She blew at her fingernails. “I guess I’m dry.” She peeled a photograph from the wall. “You don’t want to keep these, do you?”

  She crumpled the photo and tossed it into the wastebasket. Later, following her downstairs to supper, Dorothy recognized the dark eyes of Hedy Lamarr staring up at her from the trash.

  AFTER SUPPER THEY sat on Dorothy’s bed, eating caramels Patsy had produced from her suitcase. Dorothy ate one candy to Patsy’s three, savoring the rare sweetness of rationed sugar. Laughing, Patsy unpacked a bottle of bourbon. “From my daddy,” she said. “So we’ll be stocked when he comes to visit.”

  She was a Southern girl, raised in Charleston; the baby in a family of girls. Her daddy was a lawyer for the local school district. He had taught her to ride and shoot, to tack in a windstorm, to drive a car. That morning he’d slipped her an emergency twenty dollars at the train station in Charleston. “ ‘Don’t fritter it away on perfume and bonbons,’ ” Patsy said, imitating his voice. “ ‘Use it for bail money, or not at all.’ ” She loved Charleston but lately found it depressing: the girls working in the shipyards, like Communist women. “It’s a different place now,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “It won’t be the same until the boys come back. Then look out, Lucy! I’m going home.”

  “Do you have a fellow overseas?” Dorothy asked.

  “Actually,” said Patsy, “I have two.” It wasn’t two-timing, she explained; she hadn’t seen either of them in a year, and that was barely one-timing in her book. The boys, Fred and Ted, were like night and day. Fred had been her beau in high school, a tall, serious boy who planned to become a doctor. Ted had kept her occupied after Fred left. He had no plans for the future that Patsy knew of. He was just after a good time.

  “He’s a lot of fun,” she admitted. “I went with Fred for two years, so we were like an old married couple. No more surprises. You know how that is.”

  Dorothy had no idea how that was, but she was pleased that Patsy thought she did.

  “What happens when they come back?” she asked.

  “I’ll jump off that bridge when I come to it,” said Patsy.

  THE NEXT DAY they met Mag Spangler for lunch.

  “Lord, it’s crowded,” said Patsy. She and Dorothy had arrived late. Every table in the drugstore was taken.

  “Well, no wonder. It’s nearly ten past.” Mag shot Dorothy a look. Where’ve you been, for Pete’s sake?

  They sat at the counter: Dorothy in the middle, Mag and Patsy on either side. “Patsy works at the CAS,” Dorothy told Mag.

  “Central Administrative Services,” said Patsy. “We’re the ones who scare up desks and file cabinets for all your new girls.”

  Dorothy glanced nervously at Mag, who knew perfectly well what the CAS was. She’d been complaining about it for months.

  Patsy scrabbled in her pocketbook for a cigarette. “The funny part is, I don’t have a desk yet, myself. Or a typewriter.”

  “Then what do you do all day?” Mag asked.

  “Yesterday I read the paper.”

  “You’re joking,” said Mag.

  “No, really. It’s a piece of cake. I can’t complain.”

  Mag snorted. “I think I’d complain. I’d feel terrible, getting paid for nothing when the boys could use that money overseas.”

  Patsy smiled sweetly. “Do you have a fellow in the service, Mag?”

  “No,” said Mag. “Do you?”

  “Patsy has two. One in England and one in Italy.” Why am I telling her this? Dorothy marveled; but she couldn’t help herself. Mag’s frown delighted her. In some way it made her proud.

  That week Mag’s schedule was changed, her lunch break pushed back by an hour so that another girl could use her typewriter. After that Dorothy and Patsy ate lunch without her, at a different drugstore near the Treasury.

  EVERY SUNDAY NIGHT Dorothy wrote a letter to her mother.

  “Why don’t you just call her on the phone?” Patsy asked. There was a pay phone downstairs in the lobby. Dorothy often saw her standing next to it with a handful of coins.

  “I like writing,” said Dorothy. “Can you hand me another sheet of paper?” She didn’t explain that to receive a phone call, her mother would have to walk a mile to town and wait at the booth in Meeghan’s Drugstore.

  “I ought to do the same,” said Patsy. “I haven’t written Fred in ages.” She took a sheet of paper from a drawer and handed it up to Dorothy. A week before, in a burst of inspiration, Patsy had proposed stacking their beds like soldiers’ bunks. The two bed frames were identical, she pointed out; the square end posts would fit together perfectly. They spent a rainy afternoon struggling with the beds. Patsy bought a hammer at the dime store and tapped in a few nails for good measure. Dorothy took the top bunk, Patsy the bottom. The idea was a good one; the room seemed doubled in size.

  They installed themselves on their beds. Dorothy glanced at the letter her mother had sent. Cold weather in Bakerton, a rainy spring. Georgie was still waiting to hear about his furlough. With everything happening, he’d written Dorothy, don’t hold your breath.

  She filled her pen and began to write. Beneath her Patsy sighed loudly. Dorothy heard her crumple up her letter and toss it into the trash.

  “I’m out of smokes,” she said, rising. “I’ll be right back.”

  “It’s Sunday. The store is closed.”

  “I’ll bum one from the gray lady.”

  “Mrs. Straub smokes?”

  “Drinks, too. I can smell it on her breath.”

  Dorothy blinked. She had known the landlady for months and had never suspected. More and more, the people around her seemed mysterious, impenetrable, their lives governed by secret desires visible to everyone but her. She wondered what else she had failed to notice.

  At the end of her letter she added a postscript: I haven’t seen Mag in ages, not since Mr. Leland moved her lunch hour. But we have not had a falling-out. I can’t imagine why Mrs. Spangler would think such a thing.

  She climbed down from her bed and reached into the bedside table, where Patsy kept a supply of stamps. At the bottom of the drawer she found the box of stationery and a leather-covered Book of Common Prayer, its gold-edged pages perfectly crisp, as though it had never been opened. She took a stamp from the box. The corner of a photograph peeked out from beneath the prayer book.

  She hesitated a moment, then withdrew the photo. Patsy and a tall, thin boy stood before a gleaming automobile. The boy’s face was long and handsome. He wore rimless eyeglasses. To Dorothy he looked like a young Franklin Roosevelt. Fred and Pat was written on the back. May 1942.

  She replaced the photo and closed the drawer. She’d never had a beau; she’d never even gone on a date. That any girl did these things filled her with wonder. She remembered clearly the moment when her classmates had begun to pair off, early in the tenth grade. It had seemed then that she’d missed a crucial lesson, one that would not be repeated. Girls like Mag Spangler had missed the lesson, too; for years they’d been Dorothy’s only friends, keeping her company as they all fell further behind. Patsy, clearly, hadn’t missed anything. Dorothy watched her closely, feeling privileged to share her dresses, her secrets. For the first time in her life, it seemed she might actually catch up.

  NOON, A RAINY MONDAY. The luncheonette was noisy and crowded, the windows steamed with the diners’ breath. Dorothy and Patsy took seats at the counter. Next to Patsy was a lone man in uniform, looking into a bowl of soup. He sat with his right hand flat on the counter, his sleeve rolled to the elbow. His left hand was tucked into his trouser pocket.

  “Excuse me,” he said (to which of them, Dorothy would later wonder). “Can one of you
girls give me a hand with my soup?”

  The soldier, Chick Rowsey, treated them to a boyish smile. His eyes were blue, his mouth full-lipped and adult.

  “What’s wrong with your hand?” said Dorothy.

  “This one’s fine,” he said, showing his right. “But I’m a lefty, so that doesn’t do me much good.”

  Laughing a little, Patsy dipped the spoon into the soup; she leaned close and lifted it to his lips. The soldier opened his mouth to accept it. A rivulet of broth dribbled down his chin.

  “You girls work for the government?”

  “The CAS.” Patsy dabbed at his chin with a napkin. “I’m a file clerk.”

  “You’re lucky.” He reached for a packet of saltines and tore it open with his teeth. “I’m looking, myself. Before the war I was a carpenter. Guess I need a new line of work.”

  Dorothy watched him crumple the crackers in his suntanned hand. If another man had done it, she reflected, you’d call his manners atrocious; but a wounded soldier was different.

  Rowsey looked up from his soup and saw her watching him. She looked away, embarrassed.

  “What about you?” he asked. “You’re a file clerk, too?”

  “Typist,” said Dorothy. “At the Treasury.”

  “Good for you.” He took a cigarette from the pack on the table. “That’s a good skill for a girl to have.”

  “Awfully noisy, though. You should hear the racket in Dorothy’s office. I’d lose my mind.” Patsy tilted the bowl and spooned up the soup. “I’m happy filing, thank you very much.” If she and Dorothy had been alone, she’d have launched into an angry monologue about why the filing clerks made five dollars less per week than the typists did; but now she only smiled.

  “Down the hatch,” she said, lifting the spoon to his lips. “Oops!” Giggling a little, she dabbed his chin with a napkin.

  “So,” Rowsey said after he’d finished. “What are you doing this weekend?”

  Dorothy felt her face flush. He seemed to be talking to her. She glanced quickly at Patsy, who smiled and shrugged.

  “Me?” she said finally.

  He waved a hand carelessly, as though it made no difference.

  “Both of you,” he said. “I want to take you out on the town.”

  THEY LAY stretched out on the imported sand, the soldier in bathing trunks, the two girls in bright nylon suits, one green, the other red. Substantial suits, reinforced with darts and seams and sewn-in undergarments; yet Dorothy felt unprotected, uncomfortably exposed. The borrowed suit fit closely at her hips. It would have fit anyone. She’d never worn one before and was surprised by the fabric—curiously elastic, like a balloon.

  The park, Glen Echo, sat on forty acres south of Washington. From May to September, the city trolley stopped there six times a day. The park had a swimming pool, two carousels and a Ferris wheel. There was a casino for gambling, a bandstand and a dance floor.

  Dorothy leaned back on one elbow and shielded her eyes. Light danced on the surface of the Crystal Pond—the largest swimming pool on the East Coast, built to hold three thousand swimmers. Purple-lipped children crowded the shallows at the perimeter. Mothers in sunglasses clustered along the edge. The water at the center was a deeper blue; a few swimmers crossed it with smooth strokes. Lawn chairs dotted the half-acre beach, sand brought in by the truckload from the eastern shore of Maryland. There were girls in Bermuda shorts, smoking cigarettes, flipping through magazines; girls under umbrellas, in straw hats, in bathing caps. Under a tree, a few grandfathers drank cans of beer from a cooler. Otherwise there were no men at all.

  Beside her Patsy stretched in the heat. She examined her plump shoulder. “I’m red as a beet.” She reached for the bottle of oil.

  “Let me,” said Rowsey.

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She handed the bottle to Dorothy.

  “Just trying to help.” His eyes went to Dorothy. “Look at this one. She’s not burned at all. Gypsy blood, am I right?”

  “My mother’s Italian.”

  “No kidding.” He grinned. “I spent four months in Sicily. Those girls were something. Wouldn’t give us the time of day, most of them, but they were something to look at.”

  Dorothy spread the oil over Patsy’s shoulders. The skin was moist and freckled, hot to the touch.

  “Hey, you know who you look like?” said Rowsey. “It just hit me. Hedy Lamarr.”

  Dorothy’s cheeks warmed. “No, I don’t.”

  “Sure you do. It’s been bugging me. The first time I saw you, at the lunch counter, I thought, ‘This girl looks like someone.’ The eyes, the mouth. Doesn’t she?” he demanded.

  “Hedy Lamarr isn’t Italian.” Patsy raised her head, shrugging Dorothy’s hands away. There was an edge to her voice. “She’s Austrian.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  Patsy glared at him. “What’s the difference?”

  Rowsey frowned, aware he’d made an error. Girls were forever getting mad at him. He accepted this fact cheerfully, as he accepted bad weather.

  “I’m going for a swim,” he said, pulling off his shirt. “Anyone want to join me?”

  “Too crowded,” said Patsy.

  “No thanks,” said Dorothy. She stared up at him, her eyes drawn toward the thick scar at his shoulder.

  “Suit yourselves.” He loped easily toward the pool.

  The girls sat back on their blanket. Patsy reached for the oil and spread it thickly over her shins. Dorothy squinted into the sky—a faded blue, streaked with high clouds. A bell clanged in the distance, the streetcar stopping to let off passengers. A breeze blew the sweet, burned aroma of roasted peanuts.

  She closed her eyes. The trip to the park had been Rowsey’s idea. The girls had met him that morning at Union Station and they had ridden the streetcar together. He had chosen a seat in the middle of the car. The girls had sat on either side.

  Dorothy picked him out of the crowd, watching as he lowered himself to the edge of the pool.

  “I’m surprised he can swim,” she said. “With his bad arm.” He’d taken a bullet in the shoulder at Salerno, which had severed a bundle of nerves. His hand hadn’t worked properly since.

  “I hope he drowns,” Patsy snapped, then laughed. “Oh, don’t look so shocked. I didn’t mean it.”

  “I thought you liked him.”

  “I like him fine. But sometimes I’d like to jerk a knot in him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Patsy studied her pink-tipped toes. “Doesn’t it bother you, the way he plays cock of the walk? It’s unnatural for a man to have so many women falling all over him. It turns everything backward.”

  She stretched out on her back. Her skin glistened with oil; her plump legs looked smooth and boneless, like a roast. At the edge of the pool, Rowsey stood talking to a woman in a striped bathing suit. A fussy toddler squirmed in her arms. Smiling, Rowsey took the baby from her. The child quieted, hanging easily over his good shoulder.

  “Look at that,” said Dorothy.

  Patsy opened one eye, then snorted. “I’m taking a nap. Wake me if something interesting happens.”

  She rolled over onto her stomach and covered her head with a towel.

  THEY WERE BOTH SLEEPING when Rowsey returned to the blanket. He leaned over them and shook his wet head, like a dog drying itself. The girls shrieked, outraged.

  He stretched out on the blanket between them, his skin radiating cold. Dorothy avoided looking at him. She sensed rather than saw his long blond legs, his belly matted with darker hair.

  Patsy sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Who were you talking to?”

  “Some girl. Her husband’s over in England.”

  “Does he know she’s back here flirting with half-naked men in swimming pools?”

  “Who’s flirting?” He studied her. “You’re jealous.”

  “Oh, that’ll be the day.” Patsy gathered her things and rose. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

 
“Where are you going?” said Dorothy.

  “I need some shade. Come find me when you’re ready to go.” She turned and headed toward the pavilion. The suit rode up on her pink thigh, revealing a slice of white skin.

  “What’s eating her?” Rowsey asked.

  “The heat, I guess.”

  “It’s awfully hot,” he agreed. “You ought to dive in and cool off.”

  Dorothy hesitated a moment. “I can’t swim.”

  “You’re kidding.” He sat up, studying her. “How come?”

  “I never learned. Back home there was no place to go. Not for girls, anyway. There was a swimming hole in the woods where the boys went.” Every sunny day her brother had hiked there with his friends—Gene Stusick, two or three of the Poblocki boys. Once, the summer she turned fourteen, she had followed behind, stepping carefully along the rugged trail. Screened by trees, she had stood a long time watching. A thick branch of cherry hung low over the water. The naked boys dropped from it like monkeys. Tenor shouts, Tarzan cries, a flash of skin.

  “Come on,” said Rowsey. “I’ll teach you.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure.” He got to his feet. “It’s time you learned.”

  She followed him across the expanse of sand, stepping between blankets and lawn chairs. A wind had started. The pool was emptying out. Mothers crouched on the cement walkway, wrapping children in beach towels.

  The lifeguard gave Rowsey a wave. “There’s a storm coming. If you see any lightning, get out quick.”

  Dorothy approached the edge and dipped her toe in the water. A chill traveled up her leg.

  “You can’t do it like that. You’ve got to go all at once. Watch.” He backed up a few paces and took a running leap into the water, landing with a loud splash. Dorothy stepped back, startled.

  His slick head reappeared at the surface. “See?” He swam toward her. “Your turn.”

  “Don’t splash,” she cried. And quickly, before she could change her mind, she scrambled down the ladder. The water was very cold, a shock to her heart.