Glimmer As You Can

by Danielle Martin

  Always in and out, in and out. Sometimes he would smell different, like roses or heavy perfume, feminine scents. She asked him and he said it was hand soap. All the hand soaps at my office smell like women these days!

  He always laughed.

  She checked his collars when she did his laundry and always checked his pockets. But there was never anything, and he was his regular self otherwise, chatting up a storm at dinner, taking her out to shows on the weekend.

  He was always so friendly to everyone and anyone—a real man about town. She felt silly to be suspicious, because she had such a sociable, charming husband who was politically engaged and locally powerful.

  With Fred being out and about so much, she had a lot of free time, so she took up sewing projects when she wasn’t cleaning or cooking. She had always been good at sewing. Before she married Fred, she had worked at a little dress shop in downtown Brooklyn. So, once she had all this free time, she toyed with the idea of opening her own dress shop in a nice part of Brooklyn Heights.

  Fred encouraged the project, and he gave her some starter money. She became busy when he was, and in that way she found plenty of things to do when he was at work, or at another “male-only” function.

  “Too much detail?”

  “Not at all. You’re showing me that he was building a facade around himself, trying to be the Fred that everyone thought he was.”

  “Okay.”

  Then she told the society-pages reporter more—about the day when she climbed up the stairs to her apartment and saw a woman scuttle out through her own door.

  Fred claimed that this woman was a missionary, knocking on the door to try to convert him. But she sure didn’t look the part in her form-fitting attire, pointy brassiere, and high heels.

  But there was no evidence. Nothing was out of place in the apartment.

  “I thought you had a late day at work today,” she told him.

  “I thought you had a late day too. Why are you home so early?”

  He was an expert at flipping things around.

  He got craftier after that first time. She was pretty sure the other liaisons didn’t take place in their apartment, though she received phone calls from women sometimes. They asked for Fred but wouldn’t give their names. She told him about the calls, and he said they must be “sleazy reporters” trying to pin him for something.

  The day when she finally confirmed her worst fears was an unexpected one. She was at a gala function, a political fundraiser in a large hall overlooking the East River. It had been a gorgeous day, and she was in a great mood, looking at the sunset and sipping a perfect cocktail creation while having a lovely chat with the district attorney’s wife. The district attorney’s wife had just invited Madeline and Fred out to her estate on the East End of Long Island.

  Madeline wanted to check to see if that date worked with Fred. She searched the reception hall for him, to no avail.

  She went to get her coat so she could search outside for him, but the coat check girl wasn’t at the window. So she opened the door to the cloakroom herself, grabbing her woolen coat from its hanger.

  That’s when she heard him.

  “Quickly,” he said, behind a closed door.

  She opened the door, and there was his naked backside, hairy and pale, with the coat check girl kneeling in front of him.

  She didn’t say anything.

  She only saw streaks of white.

  Fred turned to face the open door, and she slammed it, running to the ladies’ room, where she vomited, over and over again, as if willing her insides to get rid of this horrific thing. She wanted to stay in that stall forever, but other women started banging at the door to ask if she was all right. When she coughed out that she was okay, the women whispered to each other that she must be pregnant.

  She emerged from the stall about an hour later. A fully-dressed Fred was back in the ballroom, chatting with his cronies, puffing on a cigar. She was about to rip the cigar from his mouth and tell him that she was leaving him, right in front of everyone.

  Before she could do it, he gave her his big Fred smile, putting his arm around her. “We’ll be going now, dear,” he said.

  She wrangled herself away from his grip as party guests looked on in curiosity. Madeline kept silent for aching, choking minutes, and on the walk to the car she nearly passed out, but she got in the driver’s seat.

  Fred didn’t dare argue, as he took the passenger’s seat. She wouldn’t let him drive her anywhere. She left the car idling.

  “I’m leaving you.”

  “Maddy, let’s not be silly now. You must have known, dear. I’ve made it quite obvious. You can’t really be that dense.”

  He’d done it again, flipping it around on her. “I hope you burn in hell,” she said.

  “I thought you were more forgiving than that, Maddy. And believe me, I’m not the only man in that ballroom who’s guilty.”

  Inside her beautiful, purple coat, her inner core was boiling and blistering—like she was a nothing, a wrinkled crab inside a pretty shell.

  “I’m leaving you. When we get to the apartment, I will remove all of my stuff.”

  “You won’t be getting any of my things, Madeline. People saw the way you acted today. I can easily say that it was you who got in some trouble.”

  “Nobody will believe you.”

  “Everyone will believe me. I sell promises for a living.”

  She started up the car and drove home in silence, mechanically. She was dead but still moving. She didn’t have anywhere to go but home. All her friends were wives of Fred’s cronies.

  When they got back to the apartment, Fred put his hand on her arm.

  “How about we make this easy on you—I have a few places to live. You can have the apartment. You can still play the role of my wife. You’ll have every material thing you want from me. I’ll do my thing, and you do yours.”

  She didn’t respond.

  Once they got to their apartment, Fred packed up a few bags and left.

  She wanted to leave too. It felt filthy at home, though she kept it sparkling clean. But her dress shop wasn’t making enough money, and she had nowhere to go unless she wanted to live in a tenement. She didn’t want to be a woman alone in a tenement—so she stayed.

  She worked long hours. She continued going to social functions, playing the role of wife, dead-eyed as Fred came to pick her up in his town car. At the functions, she tried to drum up more business for her shop to give her some savings, so she could move out on her own to somewhere that Fred couldn’t find her.

  After months of loneliness, she started the social club. Then she met these lovely women, her friends, and Brooklyn didn’t belong to Fred anymore.

  * * *

  She told the reporter about the divorce, about the lies he spread.

  And she told her about the broken window.

  “You think he’s out to get you?”

  “He could be. I’m sure he would love to see me disappear.” Madeline paced, and the telephone cord dragged around the carpet, picking up little pieces of lint. Her voice slurred with the effort to talk. “When will the article come out?”

  “It shouldn’t be more than a few days,” the reporter answered. “You better get ready. I have a feeling that a lot more women will be coming to your shop and club, now that you’ll be public.”

  “Public?”

  “ ‘Owner of the Starlite Dress Shop Reveals All.’ That’s our headline!”

  “Fred’s name won’t be in the headline, will it?”

  “He’ll get his fair share of headlines after this comes out, darling.” The society-pages reporter laughed.

  It was too late to keep quiet.

  33

  Madeline

  A few days after Madeline made the phone call, she decorated the storefront in paper cutouts of stars and moons, created from pieces of discarded fabric patterns.

  Celestial accents shimmered everywhere: on the carpet, shelves, and racks. Early ar
rivers to the social club enjoyed a telescope positioned between the blinds of the intact window.

  “Have you heard?” Madeline announced. “We’re going to send a satellite to the moon this week.”

  She was paying strict attention to the news now, buying a paper each morning. She would turn through the pages with sweaty palms, looking for her name, but she hadn’t found it yet. There were headlines about space instead. Lots of speculations about the grandness of it all. It reassured her to read these pages of something magnificent and large, beyond herself.

  Elaine’s lips drew upward with effort. “Oh? The satellite will launch straight from the Starlite, I presume?”

  Madeline laughed heartily. “Well, the U.S. government has a big part in it!”

  “Those Americans! They’re always up to something.” Elaine gave a more earnest laugh—seeming to surprise herself as her eyes twinkled.

  “We’re a hoot, aren’t we?” Madeline smirked, with a sudden sassy lightness of being. “If they find little green men up there, maybe they’ll send them down here. I’m looking for a new green man!”

  A certain kind of moonshine was burning through her veins now; she glowed with something new, and her spirit soared in release.

  Lisa smiled. “You look great! Hey, let me check out what you have tonight. Is that a new rack of clothes?”

  “Oh, darling, you have to see this newest thing I just got in! It would look perfect on you!”

  Madeline flipped through a rack and pounced on a pastel-blue flounced skirt. Lisa slipped it on over the skirt she was already wearing and spun around in front of the mirror. Then she went around the Starlite and modeled it in twirls; the tulle expanded like a blossom in its burst.

  34

  Lisa

  Elaine’s crew—the regulars—had started to make their literary circle. Lisa joined them; though she wasn’t yet a regular, sometimes she did a bit of writing.

  She could only imagine Billy’s reaction if he saw her, with her little notebook on her knee, sitting with the other ladies. Though her flouncy skirt defied any image of beatnik.

  “What’s our topic tonight?”

  “We’re doing something about space. What do we all imagine that it’s like out there?”

  The women in the circle scribbled with their stubby pencils, focused in their reverie, as others nearby enjoyed laughter and dancing. Lisa eyed the partiers on the dance floor a bit wistfully as she struggled to begin writing.

  Elaine had frozen up again. She made a gaunt shape, hunched over her notebook, unable to generate anything new. Lisa tried to make a show of her own writing to encourage Elaine; it was slow going, but she tried to scrawl down some words.

  “I think I’ll write about when I was a kid,” Lisa whispered suddenly. “My parents couldn’t pay the electric bill one month, and I woke up from sleep one day with icicles up my nose. That’s what I imagine space is like. Freezing and bleak.”

  “Icicles in the nose?” Elaine lifted her head, taken aback. “I’ve never heard of that happening to someone. That must have been terrifying.”

  Lisa nodded slowly. Then she started to write.

  In the middle of the circle, Jackie came and sat with them. She hadn’t been to the Starlite since the day the window was smashed.

  Jackie accepted a pad of paper from Elaine and got to writing. She bent over her work, writing without saying a word.

  Lisa tapped her shoulder and whispered, “I’m happy to see you here.” Many weeks had passed since Lisa had last seen Jackie, that day at the dry grocer’s where her husband publicly bullied her. More obvious bruises now covered Jackie’s arms, which were draped in a shawl of green lace.

  “Thanks. My husband’s visiting his brother in New Jersey. He’ll be there overnight and into the morning. He’s going to move us to Jersey soon. He says he doesn’t like me walking around Brooklyn—there’s too many men on the sidewalk, and he doesn’t like how they look at me!” Jackie laughed bitterly.

  Lisa leaned over to squeeze her arm. “Really? He said you have to move because of that?” But Jackie didn’t respond, pulling back from her touch, so she modulated her tone. “Oh, goodness. I’m so sorry to hear you’ll be leaving us.”

  Jackie kept her head down, looking at her work. “Yes.” She bit her lip. “Thanks.”

  Lisa bent her head down too and whispered, “It must be hard for you.”

  Jackie was silent as her eyes skittered across an empty page on her lap. She turned away, and a tear fell on the paper. Then she cleared her throat.

  Lisa put a hand on her arm for comfort. The other women in the circle didn’t notice, absorbed in their work.

  “Thank you,” Jackie whispered, her head still down.

  She made a motion to go back to writing, and she and Lisa each wrote only a few words between them before the ladies started up again with their reading.

  Gloria raised her arm, as if in school. “I’ll read first!”

  Starlight.

  Twinkles.

  A great big glittering mess in the void.

  A mind bereft of Earth.

  Sing, baby, sing, going into the unknown.

  Madeline had come over to the circle to listen, perched next to Lisa. Her eyes also glistened with tears. This display of emotion was too thick for the moment, so Lisa shifted the dynamic after Gloria finished reading. She talked about a photograph she had once taken from an airplane, high up in the atmosphere. It was a clear photo of the edge of Europe—thirty-five thousand feet up in the air.

  “I’ll go get the photo—I think it’s in my car!” Lisa dashed toward the door to go get it. It would be her contribution to the literary circle, a beautiful photo. Nobody would cry; they would look at it in awe.

  But at the door, the guard stopped her. “Not a good idea to be running off, miss. Too dark outside. No good to be out there by yourself.”

  “I just need to run to my car. It’s right around the block. I’ll be right back.”

  “Do as you may. But you be careful now,” he warned.

  Lisa shrugged, though it was exceptionally dark out that night.

  She scurried quickly across the street, toward her car, in the thin beam of the streetlight.

  It was only a moment before someone grabbed her arm.

  A large presence pulled her aside.

  He was bigger than her.

  She let out a shout, before the light reflected off the man’s face.

  Lisa craned up at him, in the long shadows of the streetlights.

  “Billy! What are you doing here?”

  He looked strange. Older. Gruff and angry. “I can’t believe you’re just walking around by yourself!”

  “What? What are you even doing here?” she sputtered.

  He had an unsettling air about him, on this dark street corner. His usual casual tone was gone, replaced with a sort of glazed distraction. He shot glances over his shoulder, like he was keeping his eye out for someone. He was urgent as he drew her close, darting glances all around. “I need to take care of you.”

  “I’m not five years old, you know. You don’t have to supervise me.”

  “I’m not supervising you. I’m watching out for all of them.”

  He gestured with his chin. There was a couple, hand in hand, and a man pushing a hot dog cart. Other stray pedestrians walked past and paid the two of them no heed as they strolled briskly to their destinations.

  “Why are you acting like this all of a sudden?”

  He cleared his throat and coughed. “I need to make sure that you stay safe.”

  She gazed longingly at the Starlite, silent in the distance. The security guard stood smoking with a little hunch in his back—without a uniform, he looked just like a man who had found a convenient doorway to provide shelter from the wind.

  She took a subtle whiff of Billy’s breath. No alcohol.

  “I have to get back inside, before the girls start wondering what happened to me. You’d better get going, Billy. I’m spending
the night here with the rest of the ladies. There’s a guard, you know. I’ll be fine.”

  “Fine.” Billy released her from his arms abruptly. “See ya later, sugar cakes.”

  Then he strode into the darkness, rounding the street corner.

  No good-bye kiss.

  Her shivers came in a rush as she stood alone on the sidewalk.

  She scampered back toward the Starlite, fast as could be.

  When she neared the door, the guard looked her up and down with a question in his eye. “Everything all right? That took a little while.”

  “Everything’s peachy keen.”

  Back in the Starlite, everything was vibrant, bright and buzzing. Warm. Ladies chatted and played cards among the paper stars. Others practiced a new dance step.

  In the literary corner, there was an air of focus, with everyone attentive to their writing—even Madeline was writing something. Usually Madeline didn’t sit still for even a moment at the social club, as she perennially mingled or served as the mistress of ceremonies.

  But Madeline interrupted her rare state of silence to whisper to Lisa, “You have to be careful, my girl. You can’t just run outside into the dark.”

  Lisa cringed. Everybody was treating her like a child. “Listen, I know about the incident with the window, but things happen. Street vandals, right? They’re not always around.”

  “The vandal who I believe it to be will be getting wind soon, darling. Because there’s a story coming out in the papers tomorrow.”

  “A story?”

  With the word repeated, Madeline flinched, and her beautiful long nails turned white above her cigarette holder. “Yes—I spoke to a reporter. So certain things will be said. I just hope they get the story right. I’m not even sure of the things that will be said. I just can’t have things be one-sided anymore.”

  In confusion, Lisa scanned Madeline’s face. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Fred would love to have everything be his way. But I’m not going to let that happen. This—” Madeline swung around her long cigarette demonstratively. “This all matters too much to me. And I don’t want people to think things about me that aren’t true. So now they’re going to know the truth.”