Glimmer As You Can

by Danielle Martin

“Can I have the article?”

  She would read it again, to parse out the reality.

  She jerked with a spasm; she needed to be the one researching this, to call people.

  “Oh, God.”

  Sobbing, she couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t move. Until she ripped off her tight heels and threw them across the room. She had never shed a tear in front of her office mates after Tommy’s death. She’d cried only when alone. She had taken pride in holding herself together in front of people.

  Later, she would call Madeline, of course, who would answer and tell her about the event at the Starlite tonight. An event, and Elaine would lead the literary circle.

  “I’m sorry.” Her eyes were a flood. She coughed on her own efflux, on and on, and she apologized as she made a scene, everyone gathering around. She was at work. “I’m sorry.”

  You have to be calm to work for a newspaper. Calm in the face of any story. Her journalism professor at Briarcliff College had often repeated this mantra.

  Calm in the face of anything.

  “Let’s take you home, honey.” Nia put her arm around her shoulder and gently lifted her from the floor.

  “She was a friend,” she whispered.

  They nodded, like they understood.

  43

  Lisa

  “Lisa!” Her mother called her inside and pointed to the TV. “Is that the social club you go to?”

  It was the Starlite, right on the news. Police tape crisscrossed the entryway. A dour anchor reported from the studio.

  “Brooklyn Heights is in mourning for the owner of the Starlite Dress Shop, which also served as a woman’s social club. Madeline Abbott was hit and killed by a car yesterday evening. She was forty-two years old. She was the ex-wife of Fred Abbott, who has offered his condolences to her family.”

  Lisa’s eyes were broken. They wouldn’t blink.

  She stood in a stupor.

  The ambulance.

  The traffic.

  Madeline wouldn’t have been out on the road if Lisa had been there.

  She wouldn’t have been crossing the street if Lisa had been there sooner.

  44

  Elaine

  Madeline’s urn had a pearlescent surface. It was topped by gold filigree and encircled by a ring of low candles. Thin flickers of the flames reflected in golden streaks that hopped up and down the curved lines of the porcelain, illuminating it in bursts as if it were a holy object.

  Elaine knelt on the floor, hands clasped, knees bare.

  Madeline would have come behind her to compliment her on her dress, an elegant black number she’d brought over from London last year.

  You look very sophisticated, darling.

  With a drink in her hand, she would have twirled Elaine around to dance.

  She had tried many times to twirl Elaine.

  To release her.

  But Elaine had accepted only a few times. Now it was too late to dance.

  * * *

  Madeline had just one family member who could be located, an elderly aunt, who had paid for the public wake. Madeline would have hated it. It was in a stark hall with heavy black curtains, and there was a layer of dust on everything. Madeline’s aunt couldn’t afford much, and there was a horrific smell; nobody could breathe too well. The ladies kept filtering in, and every time another arrived, Elaine would shake uncontrollably.

  Fred had made an appearance at the wake. He’d knelt in front of her coffin and said something in a voice nobody could hear. Elaine unknowingly asked Harriet if he was another one of Madeline’s relatives, but Harriet gave her a horrified look—the man was Fred.

  He stood in the corner of the room, in the pretense of looking at the memorial program. He stroked his waxy moustache and glanced up at the ladies in the room; Elaine even felt his eyes examine her body. He seemed to be sizing them all up, and they edged to the other side of the room, skittish, grouping together.

  He left after a few minutes, and none of them could even talk about it.

  They couldn’t talk about anything.

  When everything was said and done, the service wasn’t enough for Madeline.

  They took up a collection and rented a hall for another memorial service not too far from Green-Wood Cemetery, where her ashes would be interred.

  None of the regular Starlite ladies had much money, but Cynthia donated to pay for the headstone, using the money she had saved to move out of her parents’ apartment.

  The ladies chose Elaine to write the inscription. Elaine ground her pencil to a nub and wrote a bunch of empty words throughout the night, barely breathing.

  She fell asleep in the early morning.

  She awoke an hour later, and there was something at least—a Hamlet quote she had memorized at age twelve.

  Doubt that the stars are fire,

  Doubt that the sun doth move.

  Doubt truth to be a liar,

  But never doubt that I love.

  * * *

  The women of the Starlite stood and knelt in lines behind the urn, their faces streaked with red that wouldn’t fade.

  Their tongues were dry from their stilted speech.

  Harriet came forward and wrapped the urn in a piece of cloth. It was an unfinished dress, a shimmery piece of cloth, intended for an unknown customer. Now it served as a shroud for the vessel that held Madeline’s remains.

  They were silent, vibrations passing through and between them. The past revelries of the Starlite throbbed as a taste in their mouths, echoes of what had been lost in the rose-scented air of their last event, their entire group together, laughing, Madeline in her beautiful dress.

  They trembled and shook.

  Nobody was ready to act.

  After the time on the hall rental expired, they left. Harriet and some others blew out the candles. The candles and urn went into a beautiful rolling valise that someone had once purchased from the Starlite.

  The women huddled on the wide patch of concrete, under a green awning. They grouped together like shaky tree branches tied together with ribbon.

  “Maybe we could get together again sometime.”

  They all said the same, though no one could mention a place or time.

  45

  Lisa

  Lisa hadn’t attended the public service, because Fred Abbott would surely be there; a councilman would need to be present at the wake of his ex-wife. Lisa had never met him in person, only seen his picture in the paper, with his waxy moustache, his grin—the same grin Billy’s father had, a closed-lip smile of being pleased with oneself.

  Now, however, she was on her way to the memorial hosted by the Starlite ladies. The spring weather was warm and humid; Lisa’s knit black dress was too thick. She was running late. Sweat made her palms stick to the hanging strap of the bus, to which she held tightly as the vehicle bumped ahead.

  The driver called out the stop, and she exited. She walked the few blocks to the hall, dripping with perspiration.

  But she was too late. The service was finished. Women were already filing out the door. They stood in a group out on the sidewalk, talking to each other with glazed eyes, and Lisa formed her lips to say something, but nothing came out. She had been to only one funeral previously—her grandfather’s—but he had been very sick before he died, and everyone had expected it to happen.

  As she stood with the group, Lisa once again hid her engagement ring by turning it into her palm.

  Elaine came up next to her and gave her a gentle pat on the back. Someone dug a pen from her purse, and someone had paper, and they made a list of all the names and phone numbers, and Elaine took the paper—somehow she had become the designated woman for writing things down.

  “We’ll find places to go.”

  This came out loudly, from Elaine’s mouth. They turned around, startled—she was so wispy, air rushing through her perfect accent with the ravages of it all; then Catherine chimed in while taking a drag of her cigarette.

  “We’ll figure it out; we’ll
get things together.”

  “Not yet.” Harriet’s voice quavered. Then all at once she broke into the wails of an animal, something loud and feral. “We never finished the dress!” She yanked the shimmery cloth out of the valise, waving it over her head. “We never finished!”

  They all clustered around her, dozens of hands grasping to hold an inch of the fabric, joining them as one.

  “We’ll wait a little. Until we’re ready,” somebody said.

  “When we’re ready.”

  “When we’re all ready.”

  They all seemed to agree on it, and they nodded their heads up and down. But it was getting late, and a large, bright moon was rising, and they couldn’t stay.

  46

  Elaine

  July 1962

  Elaine sat upright on a red velvet couch.

  “Lie down. Let your body relax.”

  “I’d really rather sit up, thank you.” She was in a little office with an absolute stranger, who expected her to spill her most intimate thoughts.

  The psychoanalyst gazed at her quizzically, cocked his head to the side as if she were some sort of zoological specimen, and jotted down some notes.

  He spoke in a monotone. “So tell me, what brings you here?”

  “My sister keeps insisting that I’m in a bad way.”

  “And you don’t think that you are?”

  “I go to work. I’m quite active socially. I take a leading role in organizing my social group. I’m quite functional.”

  “Then what does your sister perceive to be the problem?”

  “She worries that I’ve been getting too thin, and that I’ve been crying. But I’ve had two people who perished within a short period of time.”

  “You feel that your reaction has been a normal expression of grief?”

  “Yes.”

  This was a lot of questions for such a hefty sum. At the analyst’s request, Elaine talked about Tommy’s death—in full detail. She talked about Madeline.

  The analyst didn’t say much in the midst of this, only: “Yes. Tell me more.”

  Before she left, she paid the exorbitant fee. Now her wallet was empty along with everything else.

  Elaine went back to her new residence, the ladies’ boardinghouse, and sat upright on her own hard little bed.

  If she had insisted that Tommy go to that center for men with problems, she might have been able to save him.

  She tried, as she usually did, to write a poem, but nothing came out.

  47

  Lisa

  It was stuffy in Lisa’s tiny room. She scratched her irritated skin. She had fallen asleep early the day before after working an overtime shift at the luncheonette, and she hadn’t bathed.

  A few weeks after quitting her flight attendant position, she had gotten a job at a popular sandwich shop, right near the courthouse. The money was decent enough; usually the courthouse employees were pretty generous with their tips.

  Billy would pick her up soon. They were going to a Fourth of July party. She had told the hostess that she would bring a macaroni salad, so she had to figure out how to make it. Her mother would have a recipe. Lisa had made a list of things she needed to learn how to do before she was married, and macaroni salad was on the list.

  Now she aimed her tiny electric fan at her face as she lay on her bed and gazed at her ring. The big diamond gleamed like ice, even in the heat. She pushed the ring over her finger, sliding it back and forth.

  “Lisa!”

  She jolted as a voice came from outside her building. She hoisted herself up, peering out the window at the sidewalk.

  It was Elaine and Catherine.

  She hadn’t seen the two of them since Madeline’s service, two months prior. She hadn’t made any effort to see any of the ladies from the Starlite. It was too complicated, with Billy’s father working for Madeline’s ex.

  Elaine had phoned several times over the past few weeks, but Lisa hadn’t spoken to her. Lisa’s mother had always answered the phone, and Lisa had made dramatic hand gestures for her mother to pretend she was out.

  Now Catherine shouted up at her from the sidewalk. “Hey Lisa! Do you want to join us for a party at Harriet’s apartment tomorrow evening? It’s us and some other girls from the Starlite.”

  “I have plans—I’m so sorry! But thanks for the invitation!” Lisa made her voice bright and cheery, and Elaine uttered an inaudible response. “What’s that?” she called down to the sidewalk.

  Elaine repeated herself, but Lisa still couldn’t make out the words, so Catherine translated: “She said that we would love to see you out and about. We’re trying to get the girls together now that some time has passed.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Lisa reached up to her hair self-consciously. “Sorry I’m so sloppy! I haven’t curled my hair yet.”

  The two sisters were dressed neatly, in sharp, tailored little dresses with belts around their waists, and their hair was styled.

  “We don’t care about your hair!” Catherine laughed, but Elaine turned away, as if she was thinking of something else—then she mumbled to her sister. Catherine vocalized for her again. “We might be having a thing on Saturday night too, if you want to come. A little get-together at one of the ladies’ apartments.”

  “I’m sorry; I’m working then. I got a job at the luncheonette.”

  “Well, okeydokey.” Catherine smirked at her own funny little American accent.

  Elaine’s serious face seemed to crack a little; Lisa couldn’t help but giggle too. Then the sisters waggled their fingers, waving good-bye.

  The door to Lisa’s bedroom creaked open; her mother poked her head in. “Were you having a conversation with yourself, honey? I heard you from the living room.”

  Lisa yawned, like it was all very casual. “No, those girls were here. The one who keeps calling me, and her sister. They were asking me to go to some party tomorrow.”

  “I guess they haven’t gotten the hint that you’re busy! I’m happy I only have a few friends. Too many can be a bother.” Her mother wiped her hands on her apron.

  “Yeah, well …” Lisa changed the subject. “Hey, Ma, can you show me how to make macaroni salad? I told Billy we were bringing it.”

  “I’ll make it for you, honey.”

  “I want to learn how to do it myself.”

  “All right then.” Her mother shrugged. “I guess you’re growing up, now that you’re an engaged woman.”

  “I guess so.”

  Lisa brought a brush to her hair.

  Billy would be there soon.

  * * *

  He beeped his horn outside her building.

  Lisa’s mother threw her hands in the air, still putting the finishing touches on the macaroni salad. “Why doesn’t he come in?”

  “I told him to wait for me outside. I don’t want him to see me until I’m ready.”

  “After you get married, is he gonna wait outside while you put on your makeup?”

  Lisa shrugged and glanced at herself in the mirror. Her hair was perfect, and her lipstick was sharp. In keeping with the day’s theme, she was patriotic, in a white blouse and little blue skirt with red stars. Madeline would have approved of the outfit.

  Lisa shuddered, averting her eyes from her reflection.

  At least Billy’s father wouldn’t be at the party. No campaign talk of Fred Abbott.

  “See ya later, Ma.” Billy was still honking outside, so she sped down the steps.

  He waited for her in his father’s car, the shiny red Oldsmobile with white stripes down the sides. The car was very flashy; her neighbors all down the street gawked from their front stoops.

  Billy made a long, low whistle. “You look fabulous, babe. Hello, America, indeed.” He gave her a French kiss, running his hot tongue against hers.

  Lisa buckled her seat belt and rolled down the window. The car smelled like his father’s cologne.

  His father could have brought that woman in the car. They might have French-kissed in the car
, like her and Billy.

  “So, why’d you bring your father’s car?”

  “Pops is at one of his campaign functions. Someone picked him and Ma up in a Rolls-Royce.”

  “Your father doesn’t mind you bringing his car on the ferry?”

  “Why should that matter?”

  They cruised down to Sixty-Ninth Street with the windows wide open. It was only a little past noon, but kids were already setting off firecrackers in garbage cans. Brooklyn was thundering in small explosions.

  The ferry station was packed with cars trying to make it onto the ramp before the cutoff point. Their own car slid into the line just before a man flipped up a sign that read FULL.

  Billy rolled the car into the dark underbelly of the ferry and parked in the one remaining spot, a forsaken corner of the boat. The two of them raced up to the deck as the man started to close the bottom of the boat. Lisa clung to her Tupperware of macaroni salad as she ran in her heels.

  On the observation deck, they leaned against the railing, and Billy wrapped his arm around her. Lisa watched the long path of water trail behind the boat, a triangular footprint of their ferry. A drop of water fell on her head. She stuck out her free hand to see if it was rain, and Billy tickled her underarm.

  “Stop! I’m gonna drop the macaroni salad!”

  A little girl dressed in stars and stripes stared at them from across the deck as Billy continued to tickle her.

  “I mean it—I’m going to drop this! Stop it!”

  A moment before the Tupperware fell to the water, he grabbed her hand and pulled her down to the other side of the deck. “Look, you can see my bridge from here, babe. Check it out!”

  He always pointed out blurs in the distance that she was supposed to see, as though she could make them out from so far away.

  After the ferry docked, they got back in the Oldsmobile and drove to Roger’s house in New Dorp.

  Roger had gotten married last year, and Lisa had cried over his wife’s gorgeous wedding dress. The two of them made such a nice couple. Roger worked down at the bridge site with Billy.