Maxie Mainwaring, Lesbian Dilettante

by Monica Nolan

  I’m going to kiss her, Maxie realized in a daze. This unexpected alley meeting was a far cry from her playful powder room encounter with Elaine. This girl was no Bambi, and what Maxie felt now was as different from her attraction to Elaine as the call of the wild was from a petting zoo.

  “Who are you?” she whispered, lifting her face to the stranger, lips dry with desire, her pulse pounding in her throat.

  “My name is Lon,” said the girl, bending toward her.

  “I’m—”

  “Maxie Mainwaring, heiress to the Mainwaring fortune,” the girl murmured as her lips brushed Maxie’s.

  Maxie pulled back. “How do you know so much about me?”

  They both stared into the impenetrable darkness. A car honked in the distance. Lon lifted her head, as if at a signal only she could hear. “Good night, Maxie,” she said. “Time all good little girls were in bed.” Then she was sauntering swiftly toward the street, leaving Maxie, swamped in frustrated sensation, behind. After a dazed split second, Maxie hurried after her. She reached the street just as Lon slid into the passenger seat of a black Buick. The slanting streetlight illuminated a pair of shapely legs next to her before Lon shut the door and the car slid away from the curb and disappeared into the night.

  Chapter 6

  Advice from Mamie

  The brunette in the red twill overblouse and white crepe shirt-shift stood on the corner of 47th Street and Dock, smoking a cigarette in short, impatient puffs. Just as she dropped her stub and ground it out with an impatient twist of her red patent-leather toe, another brunette, this one wearing a pleated dress in jonquil yellow with a white piqué collar, came out of the Magdalena Arms and hurried to join her.

  “I see it worked,” said the girl in yellow. “But I can’t help thinking it was a mean trick to play on Mrs. DeWitt.”

  “No it wasn’t, Lo,” Maxie said earnestly. “You saved my life!”

  It hadn’t been easy, convincing the honest office manager to loan Maxie her favorite spring ensemble so the penniless heiress could sneak by Mrs. DeWitt. She’d only persuaded Lois by offering her imported Italian dress in exchange. But it had worked like a charm. Mrs. DeWitt had given Maxie a bleary-eyed glance as the faux-Lois crossed the hall, her heart pounding under the borrowed red twill, and resumed her watch for her errant tenant.

  “I hope Miss Watkins finds you a job soon,” Lois said now. “Or I’ll be organizing that rent party.”

  “You’ve done enough for me,” Maxie assured her worried doppelgänger, patting the borrowed red-and-white purse, where Lois’s loan from last night was safely stashed. “I’m going to wangle an advance out of Mamie, as well as a full-time job, and then all my problems will be solved.”

  The two girls were walking to the bus stop together. Maxie felt virtuous and energetic. In assuming Lois’s identity, she’d had to adopt her schedule as well. It was now seven forty-five A.M.—the earliest she’d been up in years.

  “That dress really does something for you.” Maxie laid on the flattery to distract her friend from further pangs of conscience.

  “Really? You don’t think it makes my complexion too yellow?” Lois took out her compact and held it at arm’s length, in an effort to evaluate her outfit.

  “Not a bit,” Maxie assured her as the bus arrived and they climbed aboard. They found two seats together. “I should at least give you back your pearls.” Lois sank her voice to a whisper.

  “Keep ’em,” Maxie ordered.

  The loan of her pearls was the only way Maxie could show Lois her appreciation right now. The unemployed heiress chafed at the thought that she could no longer treat a girl to a drink or dinner; she’d always been the open-handed benefactress of the fifth floor. But how could she maintain that position now? Who was she, without her family’s money? She gazed at her reflection in the window of the bus as it plunged into a tunnel. Then her questioning face disappeared as they emerged into sunlight, and Maxie’s moment of introspection passed as well. Her only thought was for breakfast.

  “See you later, Lois.” She pulled the cord for her stop as they reached the outskirts of Bay City’s business district. There was a coffee shop across the street from the offices of the Bay City Sentinel that served the most delectable buns. Maxie swung off the bus and headed for it.

  “Cuppa joe and a honey bun,” she told the waitress as she slid onto a stool at the counter. She surveyed the shop, crowded with typists, stenographers, proofreaders, and receptionists, all grabbing a hasty bite before their workday began. This would be her schedule, Maxie realized, if she obtained the full-time employment she sought. The thought was a little daunting.

  Her wandering gaze was arrested by a plump woman with graying blond hair, sitting by herself in a booth. Mamie McArdle, too, was up early. Maxie took her coffee and half-eaten bun and carried them across the crowded restaurant to join her employer. The columnist looked up from her study of the Bay City Tribune, the Sentinel’s rival.

  “Maxie Mainwaring, what are you doing up before dawn? Or have you been up all night? Where, why, and who else was there? Don’t hold out on me now!” She shook her finger reprovingly at Maxie.

  “Do I ever hold out on you, Mamie?” Maxie held out her cup for the waitress to refill, and added a generous dollop of cream. Mamie was having waffles and bacon along with the diet fruit cup. Maxie wondered if she should order a side of sausage, and then reminded herself sternly that she was economizing.

  “Well”—Mamie mopped a forkful of waffles in a puddle of syrup—“I had to hear about the powder-room fracas at the Bay City Women’s Club from another source.”

  Of course, Mamie McArdle would already have the whole story of the powder-room scandal. Her “Confidentially” column was scorned by girls like Pamela for its scurrilous stories and salacious gossip, but read by all of Bay City, from the society matrons down to their maids and masseuses. Maxie always defended the newspaperwoman, who was only meeting public demand when she wrote of the sins society tried to keep secret. No one knew more about Bay City than Mamie. If she put in print a quarter of the shocking things she’d uncovered, she’d blow the lid off the town!

  Now Mamie looked at Maxie with knowing eyes and asked, “Tell me, Maxie, confidentially, is it true your mother said you were only helping Elaine Ellman get a fish bone out of her throat?”

  “Ha!” said Maxie bitterly. So that was the story her mother was spreading. “If that was the case, I wouldn’t have been kicked off the Mainwaring payroll.” She leaned forward, all earnestness. “That’s why I’m up so early, Mamie. I need some extra income, pronto! How about a full-time job?”

  Mamie shook her head. “No can do, Maxie. There’s no room in the budget. The editors are already kicking about my expense account, and the price of payoffs to cigarette girls and bellhops is rising faster than inflation.”

  “What about another position at the Sentinel?” Maxie persisted. “Maybe on the crime beat? I talked to a career counselor who said I had a penchant for writing—”

  Mamie laughed kindly. “The paper wants reporters with experience—samples and published pieces, not penchants.” She signaled for her check.

  Maxie followed Mamie to the cash register, a little cast down. The only thing she could show the city editor was the piece she’d written about horned beetles for the Camp Pottawatomi paper, Rise and Shine.

  “And another thing,” Mamie added as they exited. “When you’re on the job you deliver, but half the time you’re vacationing at Loon Lake, or flying off to Europe, or sunning yourself in Acapulco. News never stops, you know!”

  Maxie bit her lip. It was her mother’s fault. Always insisting Maxie come up to Loon Lodge for one of her everlasting parties for “nice people.” That European trip had been Mumsy’s attempt to separate Maxie from Pamela. Unbeknownst to Mrs. Mainwaring, Pamela was following the fall fashions for Grunemans and the two girls had connected in every city from Paris to Milan. As for Acapulco—Maxie shuddered, remembering. It had been Christm
astime, and she’d hated every minute of false festivity!

  She crossed the street with Mamie to the Sentinel offices, wishing she could explain this to the columnist. Instead, she pulled out her ace. “What if I told you I witnessed a mobster paying off a policeman last night?”

  Mamie’s eyes gleamed. “When, where, how?”

  Maxie told her the story, leaving out her conversation with Lon. “You always could get the good stuff!” Mamie said admiringly. Then she sighed. “But I can’t use it. The editor got so many complaints about my piece on mob murders he put the kibosh on any more crime stories for a while. The DAP says I’m giving Bay City a bad name.”

  “But if they’re true . . .” Maxie began.

  “And then the accidental death of a fellow named Swensen somehow got mixed into the list of hits on the Swenson mob,” Mamie admitted. “I don’t know why I didn’t catch it. But the upshot is, nothing but society gossip in ‘Confidentially’ for a while.” She patted Maxie consolingly as they climbed the broad marble stairs to the Sentinel newsroom. “Maybe your cop will keep.”

  Mamie picked up a sheaf of messages from the receptionist and went into her office, reading all the way. Maxie wandered after her, not knowing what to do next. Her schemes so far had all fallen flat!

  “I think I’ll do an item on the Driscoll-Ellman engagement,” Mamie announced, as if she’d forgotten all about crime. “Scuttlebut is, the Driscolls are selling off a string of dry cleaners to raise some cash. ‘Decimated dry-cleaning empire delays wedding bells.’ How does that sound? I don’t suppose,” she suggested in her most persuasive voice, “you’ll be seeing your little friend Elaine again?”

  “Certainly not,” said Maxie. She felt a wave of wrath when she thought of the underhanded Elaine and the trouble she’d caused. And how tame Elaine seemed, compared with handsome Lon. Who’s just a gang girl, Maxie reminded herself.

  “What about Ted Driscoll?” Mamie was asking. “Do you see the Driscolls socially?”

  “I suppose I could call up Elaine’s cousin, Sookie,” Maxie said halfheartedly. “Isn’t there any way to cash in on my corrupt cop? I need money now, Mamie!”

  Mamie only laughed. “Oh, pshaw! A Mainwaring needing money! Your mother will be handing out your allowance again in a week. Unless”—an inquisitive gleam came into Mamie’s eye—“the Mainwaring fortune isn’t as solid as it seems?”

  “Of course it is!” Maxie retorted indignantly. “Don’t you dare print anything to the contrary!”

  Evidently full-time employment at the Sentinel wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d thought. But she still had a paycheck to collect, thank heavens. Her weekly pittance suddenly seemed a significant sum. However, when she picked up her pay envelope and tore it open with unaccustomed eagerness, her check was for only fifteen dollars.

  “There’s been a mistake,” she said, returning to the payroll window. The clerk pursed her lips and opened a heavy ledger. “No mistake,” she said, her spectacles flashing triumphantly. “Salary of thirty-five dollars, less twenty advanced last Wednesday.”

  Maxie remembered then—she’d needed money to pay for the hairdo at Henri’s, the Fairweather Flounce she’d gotten to make her mother happy.

  “Can I get another advance?” asked the ex-deb desperately, but the clerk was already shaking her head. “I’m sorry, Miss Mainwaring. Payroll policy limits salary advances to three per month, and you’ve reached your limit.”

  Maxie turned away, clutching her meager check. She couldn’t help overhearing the clerk, who commented to her colleague in an undertone, “All that Mainwaring money and always asking for advances! Those rich girls give me a headache!”

  Chapter 7

  Raid on the Mainwaring Manse

  Standing in Bay City’s Central Station, which had recently been renamed the John F. Kennedy Memorial Station, Maxie counted her money. Had her breakfast really cost sixty-five cents? It was disconcerting, the way she always had less money in her pocketbook than she thought she did. After she bought her ticket to Waukesset, her loan from Lois would be half gone!

  Maxie had decided that a visit to the Mainwaring Manse was in order. She needed to retrieve the educational records Miss Watkins had requested, and the sooner she got them to Miss Watkins, the sooner the career counselor would come up with a real job, paying a real salary.

  And Maxie was determined to collect one last allowance. Mumsy always kept a quantity of cash in a lacquered box on her dressing table for household emergencies. Sure, some might call it stealing, but to Maxie’s mind, her mother owed her that money!

  Mabel Mainwaring was unlikely to see it that way, but fortunately Fridays were Mumsy’s days to get a facial and massage at Countess Elfi’s. The coast would be clear.

  Money, money, money—it was monotonous to be preoccupied with filthy lucre to the exclusion of all else. Somehow, knowing that she shouldn’t buy even a magazine made Maxie long for one more desperately than on previous train trips. How did poor girls stand this constant obsession with cost? Maxie’s membership in this sad sorority was only a day old and already she felt she’d go mad from this—this fenced-in feeling.

  Getting off the interurban at Waukesset, Maxie looked longingly at the taxi stand. It was three miles to the Mainwaring Manse, and Maxie felt utterly conspicuous trudging her way down tranquil streets past the lavish lawns and well-tended gardens, under the curious glances of gardeners trimming the shrubbery.

  At least she’d had the sense to wear flats today. She turned up the Mainwarings’ curving driveway toward the big redbrick mansion, built by her great-grandfather in 1882 in the style of an English manor house. Patrick, the groundsman, was clipping the box hedge, but he stopped what he was doing when he saw Maxie.

  “Good morning, Miss Maxie,” he said, taking a few steps toward her. “Your ma said you weren’t to come to the Manse no more.”

  Maxie essayed a little laugh. “Oh, Mumsy! I guess she was mad for a couple minutes—we had a small tiff yesterday, but she’s over it now. It’s all right, Patrick, really it is.” She took a step up the drive, but Patrick blocked her passage.

  “Your ma said ‘under no circumstances,’” he said stolidly. “You better come back later, when she’s home.”

  Maxie bit her lip in vexation. Patrick was obviously determined and bigger than her to boot. “Well, of course I don’t want to get you in trouble,” she said with a wide, false smile. “And it isn’t important anyway.” Damn Patrick and his loyal retainer act! Well, there was more than one way to skin a cat. No one was going to stop her from getting inside the Mainwaring Manse today!

  She retreated down the driveway and turned toward the Thorwalds’ turreted, gingerbreaded mansion known as Viking Hall. Along the far side of the house was a narrow path, little more than a beaten track in the grass, which led to the ravine where she and Ginger Thorwald had played as children. Maxie turned into it. “Quiet, Odin,” she muttered, as the Thorwalds’ aging Newfoundland barked at her inquiringly. Odin followed her, panting in a friendly fashion, but left off when Maxie began inching down the steep hillside. Losing her footing, she slipped and slithered down the side of the ravine, landing feetfirst in the muddy creek at the bottom. Wonderful, she thought in disgust. Now Lois’s shoes were soiled and would have to be cleaned. Another expense.

  “In for a penny, in for a pound,” she muttered, making her way along the creek until she saw the fence that marked the Mainwaring property. On hands and knees, she inched her way back up the side of the ravine. Now, if no one had noticed the broken boards by the oak tree . . . No one had. Maxie wriggled through the narrow opening, realizing she’d grown some since her teenaged years, when she’d used this route for many an illicit excursion. Brushing herself off on the Mainwaring side of the fence, she saw that she’d acquired a vivid green grass stain down the front of Lois’s borrowed ensemble. That tied it. Her mother was paying all the expenses of this little outing!

  Darting from tree to tree, then to the arbor, the
sauna, the poolhouse, and finally the bushes that fringed the terrace, Maxie reached the house without being seen. She slipped inside the little door that led to the service corridor. On her right she could hear a clatter from the kitchen. She pushed open the swinging padded door in front of her and tiptoed into the great hall, empty but for the familiar suits of armor her grandfather had brought back from some European shopping spree. Crossing hurriedly to the library, Maxie opened the paneled door cautiously, on the off chance Dad was dozing on the overstuffed leather sofa instead of at the polo club.

  The sofa was empty, the needlepoint pillows symmetrically arranged, which meant that the maids had already done this room. Maxie dropped to her knees by the walnut filing cabinet and pulled out the lower drawer. Waukesset Day School, Miss Gratton’s, Dr. Ridgeway, Circle School, Woodbury Secretarial School. Maxie pulled out the files, deciding Miss Watkins would probably want the records of her analysis by loony Dr. Ridgeway as well as her grades from Miss Gratton’s. She looked around for something to put them in, and spotted her father’s briefcase standing next to the desk. That would be perfect, and Dad hardly ever used it.

  Setting the briefcase on the desk, Maxie’s eye fell upon the papers spread out there. The words Hedda Nyberg Trust leaped out at her. Who was looking at Grandma Nyberg’s trust papers—and why? After a moment of hesitation, Maxie gathered up the legal documents and put them in the briefcase with her educational records. She’d show them to Janet.

  Now for the upstairs. But first—Maxie went to the bookshelf and took down the gilt-bound copy of Hard Times. This was where her father kept his secret supply of betting money. As an eight-year-old, she’d displayed to an awed Ginger Thorwald a hundred-dollar bill she’d come upon while reading. She flipped through its pages, then shook the book vigorously. A bill fluttered out and Maxie pounced, but it was only a dollar. Her father must be picking the wrong ponies these days.