Glimmer As You Can

by Danielle Martin

  The two of them laughed in spite of themselves.

  They were so separate from the din of the party, tucked away in that tiny back room.

  “Care for a petit four?” Elaine had brought in a plate.

  She seemed less pale, with a smile on her lips. Madeline tried to smile too and accepted a small square of dessert, allowing her teeth to sink into the sugared, delicate crust. “These are good. I usually don’t get around to tasting the food.”

  “I guess things are different tonight.”

  “I guess they are.”

  * * *

  Elaine gave her a gift later; it was a new record for the Starlite’s collection, a jazz album that had belonged to her fiancé. Madeline set it on the turntable, and the din of voices dipped down as the opening riff came on—the clear sound of a trumpet piping, soaring up, up, up.

  It was a stunning, clear sound. Elaine’s fiancé had had good taste.

  She stirred to the beat in her hips, with quick steps of her feet. Some other ladies gathered around her, everyone in a rhythm, moving around. The music bounced and rolled, coming to a full crescendo as old and new faces assembled, grooving and shaking, twisting and turning. Women picked up the little bouquets of carnations she had set out, waving them around to the music, and they threw off their shoes, casting them into a big pile on the floor. Madeline caught sight of Lisa, who grabbed her hand, getting her up to dance. Lisa had dropped that flight attendant posturing and was letting her body move to the music. They laughed, and Madeline giggled like she was twenty-two again too.

  She was herself again.

  Then there came a slow song. Catherine Huxley sang in a tremolo, like a little bird, and the whole giant group gathered around her in awe. Cynthia grabbed one of the silk scarves from her new collection and waved it around in circles that floated and shifted—graceful movements, like water. Catherine’s voice soared higher to the heavens, and Harriet swayed back and forth, her arms twirling to match the sound. Even Elaine allowed her guard to go down in front of the others, holding her face up as though the sun had burst through the night, lit up with an unearthly beauty. Together they glowed, in a type of transcendence, and it was all grand, wonderful fun.

  Madeline found another album, and they all kept dancing. They took breaks only for sips of water and nibbles of petit fours, and even though it was a weeknight, nobody asked about sleeping, or cots, and nobody tried to leave, and the energy kept them going until the sun rose in the morning.

  39

  Lisa

  By the time Lisa left the Starlite, it was five thirty AM. She blasted the radio as she drove home, turning the knobs in pulses of volume, jolting herself awake.

  At home, her mother slept upright beneath a throw blanket on the living room couch. Her father was in the kitchen, making his own breakfast, a rare occurrence for him.

  Her father sipped coffee as he read the sports pages, not looking her in the eye.

  “Your mother stayed up almost all night waiting for you.”

  “I didn’t want to be walking home too late, so I stayed over.” The exhaustion suddenly hit her, and she yawned. Her hand moved in front of her mouth.

  “Are you—?” Her father froze suddenly, looking up from the sports pages. A dumbfounded look struck his face.

  “I’m engaged, Dad.”

  He sputtered on his coffee. “You’re what? When were you planning to tell your mother and I?”

  “It just happened on Tuesday. I wanted to wait until Billy could come over so we could tell you the news together.” It was a lie she had invented quickly, and she gulped.

  Her father set down his coffee, which splashed out on the table. “We’d better wake your mom and tell her too.” He got up from his chair as Lisa frantically shook her head.

  “No, no, no—let’s just wait, Dad—please. I need a little time.”

  “You’re going to hide your engagement from your mother?”

  “No. It’s just … I’m so tired. I need to go to bed. I know, I stayed out too late.” Her lids were too heavy; she stumbled inside.

  In her room, she soon fell asleep, with the ring still on her finger.

  A few hours later, Lisa rose, dizzily. She had gotten her period all over her new skirt from the Starlite.

  She trudged into the other room. Nobody was around. She cleaned up in the lavatory and put on a sanitary napkin with a belt around her waist.

  Then she stepped on the bathroom scale. She had crossed the line. One thirty-one. Weigh-in would be in two days. Adding to that, she was engaged, with an airline expiration date on her head. Her ring would be an invitation for Jane to treat her with even more disregard, because she would be gone from the airline soon anyway.

  Some time ago, Lisa had waited tables. She could do it again.

  * * *

  “Hi, this is Lisa O’Malley. I’d like to know how to go about offering my resignation.”

  She spoke to someone she had never talked to before.

  The lady on the phone was aloof as she gave her her personnel information, like it couldn’t matter to her less. Another girl down.

  Afterward, Lisa called her friend Betsy—she would barely see her anymore—but Betsy wasn’t home, so she left a message with Betsy’s mother.

  After this whirlwind of activity, Lisa sat in the living room by herself. The sun shone through the windowpanes, making rectangular patches on the brown carpet. Cramps clutched her lower half, and she hunched down in the corner of a chair. Drained—but in too much pain to go to sleep—she gazed through the thin, gauzy curtains on the windows, facing the brick building next door.

  She would be sentenced to a life inside Brooklyn.

  No more Paris. No more chances at Rome or London.

  Lisa moaned.

  She’d had too much to eat. She was too heavy for the airline.

  She would marry the son of a cheater.

  He could abandon her again, like he did at the airport.

  The sparkling new diamond on her finger rose upward in its perfect cut. It was exactly the sort of ring she would have chosen for herself.

  At least Billy had a good job. That counted for something.

  Lisa’s mother was coming back, ascending the creaking steps. She shouted upstairs: “Will you help me bring these groceries upstairs?”

  “Okay.”

  She roused herself from the chair, taking a moment to collect herself. Then she trudged up and down the stairs with armfuls of bags, sprinting back to sit when she was finished.

  Then her mother shouted from the kitchen as she put away cans. “Your father tells me you’re engaged.”

  “He told you?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me first?”

  “You were sleeping when I came home.”

  “He said it happened on Tuesday.”

  “I know, Ma.”

  “Why would you be embarrassed about being engaged?” Her mother came inside, holding a can of peas.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Ma—that …”

  “Didn’t you say that he had apologized? You told me that everything was okay, didn’t you? That he apologized. You’ve been fine since, right?”

  “Sure, but …” Lisa ran the edge of her diamond across the part of her lips that met her skin. It had no give; it was a tough stone—hard proof that Billy loved her. She spoke quietly. “Well, I don’t know what my friends will think.”

  “Why do you care about what your friends will think?”

  Lisa didn’t answer. Nothing about Madeline, or about Fred Abbott, or about Billy’s cheating father. She said nothing about quitting the airline.

  “I don’t know! Oh, God. It’s hard to be a girl.” A mumble dropped from her mouth as she seized up in cramps and doubled over on the fraying chair.

  She began to cry, and her mother came over with outstretched arms, squeezing next to her over a piece of patchwork, stroking her hair like when she was little.

  * * *

  Billy wasn’t home wh
en Lisa called his apartment.

  His mother spoke to Lisa.

  “Oh dear! I’m so excited! We need to plan a special dinner in your honor! Billy told me how he popped the question, too. I didn’t know he would do it like that! A balloon at Woolworth’s! Isn’t he a riot?”

  Lisa fingered her ring. “Yeah, I know! I’m so excited, too.” Her eyes locked on a piece of peeling paint in her kitchen.

  Billy’s kitchen was always meticulous. His mother changed their wallpaper every six months. Lisa imagined that one day her married home with Billy could be just like the one he’d grown up in: spic-and-span, updated with the latest trends.

  “Billy is out right now, honey,” his mother said. “He’s out with some friends, I think. I’ll have him call you when he gets back home, if it’s not too late.”

  “Okay.” She didn’t ask if he was out with Mack.

  For two hours, she lay with a hot-water bottle on her stomach, watching game shows on television until her cramps dissipated.

  Then she readied herself to go to the Starlite.

  40

  Madeline

  The Spring Fling had been a free and clear night with no signs of danger. No signs of lurking men.

  But Madeline needed a night to recuperate. She shut the doors to her shop for the evening, drew the blinds, dressed in her nightclothes, donned her eye mask, and put herself on her cot in the back room. In a matter of seconds, she entered a deep, dreamless sleep, the black void of exhaustion.

  When she woke, it was dark beneath her eye mask.

  She startled.

  A knock.

  The knock turned to a pounding—an insistent rhythm—from the front of the store, someone from outside. She ripped off her eye mask and padded across the floor in her bare feet. After her short, interrupted slumber, she walked dizzily, stumbling between the clothing racks.

  She jammed her toe on the edge of a metal bracket and yelped as she moved toward the front door in a haze.

  Someone was still thumping.

  She moved aside the curtain on the front door just a little bit.

  Outside was a tall man. A dark mask covered his features. He must have seen her shadow through the curtain as he leaned toward the glass.

  Madeline backed away from the door. The man turned quickly and darted his head over his shoulder, perhaps to see who was watching.

  She felt around for the phone in the dark. She stumbled over her own feet.

  “Come on out!”

  He thumped louder and yelled.

  It wasn’t Fred’s voice.

  She searched for the phone, knocking over a pile of clothes, tripping, kicking things around in the dark.

  Outside her door, he shouted, loud and sharp. “Come on out before you get hurt!”

  An orange light flickered behind the curtain.

  “Come on out!”

  The words were blurred together. “We’re gonna torch it!”

  She ran up to the window.

  He was poised with a pointed stick. A fire stick, near her window. His hand was in position, ready to throw.

  “Come out now!”

  The carpet in the Starlite was shag. Easily burned. Reams of fabric in flammable cardboard lined the walls.

  The store would incinerate. She would be inside, aflame.

  She would be safer in the open, on the street. She could flee. Someone would see her.

  Her breath almost stopped as she ran to the door. He was still there, trying to peer in. She braced her hands. She would push the door hard, push the door fast and move, move, move—

  She would run.

  Her hand gripped the doorknob.

  Now.

  She was outside.

  She ran fast, so fast. In her bare feet, on the sidewalk. He wasn’t behind her. She was in the street, far away, stepping on glass. Her feet were bleeding. He wasn’t behind her.

  Her heavy breaths mixed with the smell of smoke, which trailed from the Starlite.

  She didn’t look.

  He would chase her, come next to her. She hadn’t seen if he had a gun. Or if there were others.

  She turned around; she didn’t know.

  All at once, there were headlights in her face, blinding her.

  41

  Lisa

  Lisa was a few blocks away from the Starlite. With a backup on the avenue, she waited. It was nine-thirty at night. The traffic was heavy, and her car stood at a complete standstill.

  An ambulance squealed around the corner. It was natural to hear the wail of an ambulance in Brooklyn. Cars drove between squeals; there was always a person in an ambulance, or a person about to be in an ambulance.

  As her car inched forward, Lisa moved to make a right down one of the street blocks. She might be waiting for another half hour; instead, she would turn around and go back home.

  She had come all the way up to Brooklyn Heights, and she hadn’t even asked Madeline if an event was scheduled for tonight. She had been too hasty.

  She made the right turn, then another right, and another right, and soon she was cruising in the opposite direction, with traffic backed up the other way.

  There was a car up ahead of her, ahead of other cars, in the dark. From the distance, it almost looked like Billy’s convertible with its roof rolled up, but the shadows under the elevated train obscured a full sweep of the street.

  Billy would assume she was tailing him as he went out with his friends. Engaged not even four days and already stalking him like a possessive woman. Mack would roll his eyes and snort with tobacco in his cheek. Desperate woman you got there, Billy.

  She beeped at the car anyway, but the vehicle moved into the next lane, made a quick turn, and was gone.

  Lisa seized up, trying to sit straight, her cramps squeezing; she cringed.

  PART FOUR

  Locking Up

  42

  Elaine

  Elaine woke every morning in the early hours, tossing and turning.

  She would feel the empty spot in the bed—the crevice where his body had sometimes curled around her own.

  After her own twisted ruckus above the sheets, eventually she would get up to douse her face in the sink.

  She had begun to make use of the early mornings these days. She had started to pack boxes and make strides toward getting free of the house. The bedroom was crammed with boxes, hastily thrown together tangles of clothes, shoes, and other sundries. She had packed some gadgets Tommy had made, things she didn’t know how to use but would keep.

  As packing material, she used a stack of newsprint that she had gotten from a friend in the printing room at the Chronicle. The dry skin of her palms was irritated from crumpling up the paper as she shoved wads between the breakables.

  Elaine packed in the yellowish light of a small lamp, as the sun had yet to come up, but the brriing of her alarm was her cue to get ready for work—to stop the packing.

  Then came the numbing familiarity of pulling on her nylons, putting powder on her nose, and setting her hair.

  This morning she took out the dress she had worn at the Spring Fling—the dandelion-yellow number. It was a little soiled, but that was nothing a dose of perfume wouldn’t fix.

  On the bus ride to work, Elaine nodded off and nearly missed her stop. She jolted awake just in time.

  She rushed into the office, heading to roll call for the daily dispersal of articles.

  She took a seat in the back of the room, her recent post. Other fact-checkers jostled for the easy assignments, but Elaine took whichever jobs required the most tedium.

  Once upon a time, this had been her dream employment, to be at the Chronicle.

  But these days she found it impossible to dream of anything.

  A few articles were about the effects of the continued embargo with Cuba. Others were about space. Explorer 11 had launched into Earth’s orbit to study gamma rays.

  She was falling asleep again in her chair as the long list of assignments continued. Her eyelids flut
tered down as Mrs. Ainsley read the headline toppers in quick staccato.

  EX-WIFE OF BROOKLYN COUNCILMAN KILLED BY SPEEDING CAR

  The words didn’t connect at first.

  Then her eyes opened wide, with a jolt.

  She repeated the headline under her breath, as though it might make sense if she spoke it aloud.

  Her arm shot up in the air, and she claimed the article in a trance, dashing to the front of the room and snatching it up.

  Madeline Abbott, ex-wife of B’klyn councilman Fred Abbott, died yesterday evening in Brooklyn Heights. She was hit by a car on the street in front of her own dress shop. The driver, an unnamed resident of Bay Ridge, was going at 25 mph above the legal limit. He claims to have not seen Ms. Abbott as she dashed across the street.

  Ms. Abbott is reported to have died instantly, upon impact.

  The driver of the vehicle was inconsolable at the scene of the incident. Police are holding him for further questioning. There were no eyewitnesses to this incident.

  Councilman Abbott was asked for a statement.

  “I express my deepest condolences to the family of my estranged wife.”

  * * *

  “Elaine?”

  “I don’t think she hears us.”

  “Elaine?”

  “Yes?”

  Bunches of faces gathered around her.

  “Oh, honey.” Her office friend, Nia, was stroking her head. “You knew her?”

  “Yes.”

  When Elaine opened her eyes, the room blurred in a bending light, as if she were underwater.

  She could sleep now, take a nice rest. Change to a new nightmare. She had been having nightmares since Tommy died.

  “Do you want any water?”

  Mr. Stephens bent down near her head, and Elaine accepted a small glass.

  She took small sips.

  There was the reality of her tongue and the cool liquid.