Hilda and Pearl

by Alice Mattison

  He was younger than she had thought, Pearl realized. Because he was the boss, and older than Mr. Glynnis, she had thought of him as someone her father’s age, but he was not more than thirty-five, she decided now. Pearl took time, putting the cover on her typewriter and straightening her papers for the next day. She would love to go to a dinner. She could wear the dress she’d bought almost a year ago for her wedding, a gray silk. She and her mother had hurried into New York and bought it the very day before she was married, her mother grumbling and predicting the worst all the way, though she was mollified by the dress itself, and grew almost sentimental on the subway ride home. Pearl would look beautiful in the dress at the dinner. In her mind, Hilda, Nathan, and Mike stood in front of her typewriter arguing with her, while Mr. Carmichael stood on the other side of it waiting for her to speak.

  Hilda would say her maternity dresses weren’t fancy enough. Mike hated to dress up and meet strangers. Nathan might not mind, but he’d be on his way to some rally on behalf of the Spanish Loyalists, and if he didn’t get there the war would go the wrong way.

  “We’d love to come,” said Pearl primly. “Thank you for inviting us.”

  “Next Wednesday, then,” said Mr. Carmichael. “I’ll tell Jack. I’ll give you my address.”

  Pearl persuaded Nathan that her job might even depend on their showing up for the dinner. “I don’t want them to think we’re not grateful.” That made Nathan agree to go, but he looked at her sadly. “You’d be better off forming a union, if you want to protect your job,” he said.

  Hilda was glad to go. “I haven’t been out of the apartment in months,” she said, “except for dinner at Mrs. Levenson’s, and everything she puts in front of me, she says, ‘This you shouldn’t eat.’ I don’t know what pregnant women did eat in her day.”

  She didn’t care about her dress. “I have that black dress,” she said. “Black is always dressy. Besides, they’re going to throw me out because I’m not dressed up?” She’d wear the pearls she’d inherited from her mother, she said. That would make it fancy.

  Mike was baffled, but he agreed. “If you want to go,” he said, looking mystified but amused.

  The night of the dinner was a warm evening in the middle of July. Nathan and Mike wore suits and white shirts and ties. They took their jackets off on the subway and both shook them out and folded them over their arms. Sitting next to Hilda, Pearl watched them. The men hadn’t found seats and were holding the pole in the middle of the car—Nathan’s hand on top, as befitted the older brother. She hadn’t ever noticed that they looked alike. Mike looked so young, with that hair swept over his forehead, and Nathan so much older, with his forehead bare, now gleaming under the yellow subway light. And Mike’s eyes were blue while Nathan’s were brown. But their noses and mouths looked the same. She wondered if Hilda had ever noticed. Mrs. Levenson had, of course, and had probably been waiting for the two inadequate brides to mention it for months. Years, in Hilda’s case.

  The men put on their jackets outside Mr. Carmichael’s house, a brownstone in the East Thirties. Pearl watched the windows to make sure they weren’t being observed. They were admitted by a maid, and there was Mr. Glynnis, smiling and blushing, and two women, both smoking, drinking iced drinks in tall glasses. “This is Jean,” Mr. Carmichael said, pointing to the nearer one, who was wearing light blue, “and this is Smokie.” He introduced the four of them. “Would you like to freshen up?”

  He pointed Hilda and Pearl into the bedroom, which was more lavish than Pearl had expected, with long lace curtains. “Look, that’s his wife,” she said to Hilda. On the bureau was a photograph of a dark-haired young woman with a round, cheerful face pressed in on each side by a child, a smiling boy with neatly trimmed hair and a baby with her finger in her mouth and her eyes fixed on the camera. Pearl took off her hat and ran her comb through her hair—being careful not to disturb the braid—so it would have a little softness. She checked the hairpins.

  “Pretty swanky,” said Hilda, tilting her head toward the door. “The one called Jean—did you see her necklace?”

  “What, is it real diamonds or something?” Pearl was leaning over to look in the mirror. She didn’t think she should sit down in Mrs. Carmichael’s vanity chair.

  “I don’t know,” said Hilda absently, as if she’d now lost interest. “I guess their wives are away....” She patted her hair and waited for Pearl, and the two of them went back to the living room. “Are you having scotch?” asked the woman called Smokie as soon as she saw them. “Have scotch and soda.”

  Pearl asked for a Tom Collins because she had drunk it before. Nathan and Mike had whiskey and Hilda had sherry. “Have you lived here long?” Hilda said to Mr. Carmichael. Pearl knew she did that because Mr. Carmichael was standing, and a question always made him sit down. She wanted to show Nathan and Mike. Sure enough, he seated himself and picked up his glass before he said he’d been there for five years.

  The maid offered canapés. Pearl said no, because she was afraid she’d drop something on her dress, but then she was sorry and took something right away when the maid came back. There was something on the tray Pearl thought might be pate, but you had to spread it yourself on a cracker and she was sure she’d make a mess of it, so she took one of the light brown puffs near it—almost like cream puffs, but with something unusual inside. “Is it caviar?” she whispered to Jean.

  “No, honey,” said Jean, louder than Pearl would have liked. “You wouldn’t put caviar into something like this.”

  “I hate caviar,” said Smokie. “I don’t like to put things into my body that look like caviar. I prefer to be kind to my body. Don’t you?”

  Everyone murmured that they liked being kind to their bodies. “I use enemas occasionally,” Smokie said.

  Jean turned to Hilda. “I couldn’t help noticing that you’re expecting,” she said. “When is your baby due?”

  Mike laughed and stopped himself. Hilda was eight months pregnant and perfectly enormous. “Next month,” she said.

  “A Leo!” said Smokie. She had lots of reddish brown hair. “Oh, Lord.”

  “That’s superstition,” said Mr. Glynnis.

  “Oh, really?” Smokie said, shaking her hair. “I can guess your sign of the zodiac just by the way you act.”

  “Go ahead,” said Mr. Glynnis.

  Smokie looked him up and down and said he was probably a Virgo. “A virgin! You think I’m a virgin?” said Mr. Glynnis—Jack, he had told them to say.

  “No, silly—it’s just your sign of the zodiac. Or maybe Scorpio.”

  “Well, my birthday is September twenty-sixth,” he said.

  “Twenty-sixth? You’re sure? I’m just certain you’re a Virgo, but the end of September is generally considered Libra. You don’t seem like a Libra to me.”

  Mr. Carmichael—Lester—said he was sure Smokie had many interesting ideas on this subject, but Smokie was asking Hilda what she was going to name the baby, and Hilda was saying that if it was a boy it would be Samuel, after Nathan’s father. If it was a girl, she’d be called Rachel. Her mother had been named Rachel.

  “You could vary it,” said Smokie. “You could name her Rochelle. A friend of mine has that name. Isn’t it nice?”

  “I think Rachel,” said Hilda.

  Pearl had never heard the name Rochelle, or heard anyone talk about signs of the zodiac before. She didn’t know what her sign of the zodiac was. When they stood to go into dinner, she saw that Smokie’s and Jean’s dresses were tight. Their behinds were outlined.

  At dinner, a different servant—a man—poured wine in their glasses. Pearl knew she’d be dizzy if she drank it but she was having a good time. Nathan and Mike had hardly spoken in the living room, but now Mr. Glynnis asked them where they had grown up and tried to remember whether or not he had a friend in their neighborhood in Brooklyn. Pearl thought he probably didn’t. They talked about subway stops.

  The food was served in a new way. The waiter carried a platter around an
d tilted it next to Pearl, and she was supposed to take some food onto her plate from the platter. Pearl was afraid she’d take too much or too little, and that she’d handle the utensils wrong. Hilda seemed to have no trouble, and looked as if she had always eaten her dinner in this maddening fashion. Jean said it was a pleasure to see a meal served properly, it hardly ever happened nowadays, and Smokie said they should be careful not to eat foods that disagreed with them.

  “It isn’t worth it,” she said with bitter cheer. “It just isn’t worth it. Now this potato dish looks delicious,” she said, “but I’m sure it would be bad for me. No, thank you.”

  There was a fish course followed by lamb. Pearl liked the food very much, although she thought the lamb had too much seasoning. “Now a nice piece of lamb, simply prepared,” Smokie was saying. “There’s no harm there.”

  Nathan looked at her. “You’d get along with my mother,” he said.

  “Does she like lamb?”

  “I’m not sure. But she likes to—well, she’s careful about food.” Pearl saw that Mike was trying not to laugh again.

  Smokie ate the dessert, Pearl noticed, even though she was careful and it was quite rich—a pastry filled with custard and candied fruit. And she seemed to have noticed Nathan for the first time. “Did I hear you’re a teacher?” she said.

  “History.” Nathan had received a permanent appointment for the coming year.

  “History!” she said. “You probably know all about world affairs. Now what do you think about Mussolini? Should we be so worried about him? Or is this just something a few nervous Jews are trying to make us worry about?”

  Nathan looked at her quietly, then looked sideways at Mike. “I think Mussolini is extremely worrisome,” he said.

  Mr. Glynnis was talking at the same time. “World affairs, yes, they certainly are getting complicated,” he said. “Suppose—”

  They didn’t find out what Mr. Glynnis was supposing. The waiter began serving coffee, and Nathan, holding out his cup toward the silver coffeepot with its curved spout, must have moved the cup at the wrong moment and with too much force, while he said, “Look, if you think Mussolini’s some sort of joke—” and the coffee arced gracefully onto his pants. He started and the waiter saw what was happening and tilted the pot up, but everyone had noticed.

  “Are you scalded?” Smokie asked, jumping up. Hilda ran into the kitchen and returned with a wet cloth. Nathan said he was all right, he was sorry if it had gone on the rug, it was entirely his fault. The waiter apologized, and Nathan clasped him on the shoulder, refusing his apology, insisting he was fine. In the end the waiter led him out to the kitchen. When Nathan came back, Mike stood up. “We have to call it a night,” he said. “Awfully nice of you folks.” Hilda and Pearl found their handbags and hats and they all thanked Mr. Glynnis and Mr. Carmichael and soon found themselves out on the sidewalk, where, to their surprise, it was almost midnight. A light breeze was blowing; it was cool, and the men took off their jackets and put them around the women’s shoulders. Without discussion, they walked past their subway stop and toward the next one. Pearl was pleased—she wanted to keep the evening going.

  “You did that on purpose,” Hilda said to Nathan then.

  “Did what?”

  “Spilled the coffee.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know—to change the subject, I guess. So they wouldn’t talk about Mussolini.”

  “Change the subject!” Nathan said, and he sounded more excited than usual. “I wanted to talk about Mussolini—I wanted to talk about Mussolini a great deal.”

  “But that would have been worse,” Hilda said. “What if they took it out on Pearl?”

  “Oh, it wouldn’t matter!” Pearl put in quickly.

  “Don’t be so sure!” said Hilda.

  Pearl was startled. She’d thought it was a party—that it didn’t matter what they did.

  “Nathan was careless with your bosses—with your job,” Hilda was saying angrily.

  Now Nathan sounded angry as well. “I hope you don’t feel that way, Pearl,” he said, and his quiet, low voice made her cold. “I don’t have much respect for those two, and I don’t care to hide my opinions from people like that. That waiter—when I got him in the kitchen I asked him some questions. He’s been unemployed for two years. They’re paying him almost nothing tonight.”

  They were still walking. The night was quiet and chilly, and Pearl felt accused, pulling Mike’s jacket closer to her body.

  “And those women!” said Hilda, but now she sounded amused, not angry after all. “Those women. They were call girls. That’s what they were—it’s that simple.”

  “Do you think so?” Pearl hadn’t been sure.

  “Of course! Didn’t you see their jewelry? And their dresses?”

  “They had nice backsides,” said Mike.

  “You could certainly discover that without trouble,” Hilda said.

  “Their poor wives,” said Pearl, thinking of the round-faced woman in the picture on the dresser. “Do you think they suspect?”

  “Women can sense that kind of thing,” said Hilda.

  “How do they bear it?”

  “Maybe it’s different for people like that,” said Hilda. “People with money.” When they came to the next subway station, they went down. They got home late, not talking on the walk to their houses, and just waved good night when they separated. “I’m going to take off my shoes,” Hilda called, “and stick my feet in a pail of cold water.”

  Hilda gave birth to a daughter, Rachel, on August seventeenth, after a long labor preceded by a four-day hot spell that made her jumpy and uncomfortable. Pearl had brought a couple of meals over and Hilda had barely been civil. She insisted it was too hot to eat anyway. She didn’t know why Nathan persisted in eating. It nauseated her to watch him.

  The day Hilda gave birth was a little cooler. Pearl walked home from the subway station feeling a slight breeze ruffle her dress, enjoying the air after the subway’s stuffiness. When she passed Hilda’s building, she hesitated. Then she saw Nathan hurry out. He told her he’d just come back for a shower and a nap. He’d brought Hilda to the hospital in a taxi at midnight and she’d had the baby at eleven in the morning. “It was hard,” he said. “They didn’t let me stay with her. She was in pain.” He paused. “I thought it would be different.”

  But Pearl could hardly listen. She felt her face breaking into a grin. “What does she look like?” she said. “Does she have hair?”

  “The baby?” said Nathan. “I had to look through a window. I didn’t realize what it would be like. She’s cute—she’s skinny, though. She was wrapped up, but she looked skinny. I think she has brown hair.” He looked at her tiredly. “Maybe later I can see her better.”

  “What does she weigh?”

  “I think about six pounds.”

  “I guess that’s pretty little.” Pearl stood up on her toes to give him a kiss on his cheek. His cheek felt like Mike’s but a little different. She could feel the stubble on his face and it seemed a little softer than Mike’s. He had his own smell. She was embarrassed, as if she might have done something wrong. “Can we visit her?”

  “Tomorrow or the next day,” Nathan said. “Hilda’s pretty knocked out.”

  “Okay, tomorrow,” said Pearl. “Congratulations, Daddy.” Nathan grinned at her as she continued walking. She was oddly self-conscious, thinking of him watching her, watching the way the wind picked up the hem of her dress, a lightweight blue-and-white print, and jumbled it around her legs. But when she glanced over her shoulder he was gone.

  4

  FRANCES WAS SORRY SHE’D SHOWN LYDIA THE BABY SHOES. She’d liked burying them in the park, and in a way her secret had been enhanced, but in another sense it was smaller. And she was afraid Lydia would tell someone about them. Several weeks passed, and Lydia didn’t mention the shoes. Frances had trouble bringing up the subject. Then Lydia told their teacher about another secret of theirs.


  One afternoon, before Simon ran away and Frances and Lydia buried the shoes, they’d been playing at Frances’s house, and had started sorting Frances’s doll clothes. Neither of them played with dolls anymore, but they had kept them, and Frances had been meaning to go through their clothes and organize them. But one of the dolls was dressed in a nurse’s uniform, and without thinking about what they were doing they began a game having to do with a nurse and her boyfriend and the hospital where they worked. After a while they took the nurse doll to Lydia’s house because Lydia had a boy doll who could be the boyfriend.

  Lydia’s mother was surprised when they got the dolls out. “It’s for school,” Lydia said. “We’re making up a story about nurses for school, and we’re using the dolls to help us make up the story.” As far as Frances knew, Lydia was not planning to make up a story until she said that, but now Frances said it would be easy to write a story about the dolls—about nurses and their boyfriends, that is—and they began planning the story as well as playing the game. Before they separated, they wrote about a page, mostly taking turns making up sentences, but after that, though they sometimes said, “This would be good for the story,” they didn’t write down anything more. By the time they buried the shoes, Frances had almost forgotten about the story and the nurses.

  Then one day—a week or two after the burial of the shoes—Mrs. Reilly, their teacher, called them over and asked them how their story was coming along, and Frances realized that Lydia had told her about it. Frances didn’t really like Mrs. Reilly, who was asking them to show her what they were writing, saying she could mimeograph it and distribute it through the school. They could include illustrations.

  “Now we have to write that story,” Frances said to Lydia when they left.

  “I can’t today,” said Lydia. “I have to go to the store for my mother.”

  “Do you want me to come?”