teased.
‘Mmmm,’ came Franny’s soft response. ‘I guess it’s just that I haven’t met anyone who’s taken my breath away. You know, like they write about.’
‘Well,’ Jane admitted. ‘Maybe it’s not like that for everyone …’ Her voice trailed off as each decided this wasn’t a subject best broached in the moment.
Suddenly everything was all a-flurry. ‘My, look at the time – I’ve gotta scram! I promised Eddie I’d be at Dean and Delucca’s corner by 3 – oh, I’ll never make it!’ She gulped hot tea, fanning her throat dramatically and looking at Frances over the rim of her cup with big eyes. ‘Can you imagine? I’ll have to run in my Mary Janes!’
Then it was all a-rush to extract the compact from her bag, powder her face, re-pencil those eyes, and flesh out full lips in ox-blood red. She looked up and stared at Fran as if into a mirror. ‘You really should wear more make-up, honey, you’re almost invisible!’
Frances gestured outside. ‘Seen what the clouds brought? It’s raining pitchforks out there.’
‘Damn.’ Jane pulled her cloche down more firmly, encasing her head in the figure-hugging tea cosy, and blew a kiss across the table. ‘Oh well, I’m just going to have to brave it. I’ll pretend to be Ukelele Ike,’ and she was gone, singing at the top of her lungs:
I’m singin’ in the rain
Just singin’ in the rain
What a glorious feeling
I’m happy again.
I’m laughing at clouds …
Frannie could hear her all the way down the block till the sound segued effortlessly into the plish-plash of rain against window glass.
Old Mr Wong himself came to clear the table as Frances finished up her tea, draining the tiny square pot to avoid heading outdoors herself. She smiled and thanked him, left a generous tip for the workers to share. Pocketing the money with a small bow, he continued to wipe the table clean.
‘You crazy friend, you crazy friend, you crazy friend lotsa trouble one day,’ he said shaking his head. ‘Talk too much, talk too much too loud. And what about?’ throwing his hands up and almost scattering bowls and chop sticks to the four winds. ‘’Bout nothing! Big fat talk about big fat nothing.’ He looked close at Frances and rubbed his fingers together two inches from her face. ‘It just paper. It just paper, you know? Big – fat – nothing.’
Frannie came home to dinner that night and told me and Stan the latest news from the Jane files (mind you, she did this each Saturday evening). The wedding duly took place in late summer up on Rhode Island, with the reception at the yacht club where young Ed’s Daddy’s a member. My Frannie looked a picture – she’s never been so dolled up! And she got to keep the dress and all. A coupla boys from Fred’s circle made overtures at the time, saying she looked like Louise Brooks of all people! A real gush, but to her credit, she told them she ain’t interested.
‘It’s not my world, Mom,’ she explained. ‘I don’t want the sort of life Jane’s got. It makes my guts kinda squirm. The stuff they do, the things they talk about – maybe Mr Wong’s right, in a crazy Chinese sort of way … it’s all a sort of nothing. In the end.’
Anyhow, as rules go, Macy’s had a good one to help Fran stay apart from that world. Jane had to resign once she’d wed, and the friendship slipped gently away. And, well, a month or so back the stock market started to fall. It’s now mid-October, see.
Frannie came in last night from work, saying how crazy it’s been downtown all week with the news of falling stock prices every day, the customers all jittery and telling stories and all. It’s true. My Stan said it was only a matter of time before the luck ran out. Big bull market, indeed. I mean, he’d go into the barber and get a tip for Standard Oil, for heaven’s sake, rather than a decent shave! It made no sense. Everyone was talking about the stock market, even the bellhops at hotels thought they knew their onions.
And so Frannie says, ‘I wonder what’s gonna happen to Jane’s world now?’
Indeed, I say. Indeed.
A Dime Spared
(inspired by Hopper’s Hotel Room, 1931, in the collection of the Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid)
I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed. She stared at the timetable on her lap but couldn’t seem to make out what it said. I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed. Tears dripped slowly onto the page, blotching all to an inky mush of fine print. I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed. ‘Aarrgghh!’ she cried and hurled the book across the room. It missed the vase on the dresser, instead reaching the windowsill, and there lay limp, seemingly curled in foetal comfort. Away from her rage. I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed.
She must have slept. The light was still burning. But dawn had arrived to cradle the city in her arms. She went to the window, retrieved the timetable from the sill. Stood, shivering in her underwear. Hadn’t she bothered to take out her nightdress?
She looked out on a brief sear of sunlight, bronze-coating the building opposite. Soon enough it was gone, she was gone, back to the gloom of her thoughts. That blasted timetable. I have failed I have failed I have –
‘No!’ she said out loud. No, don’t start that again. It won’t help. We’ll try again soon, she encouraged her psyche. It’ll be OK. We’ll try again soon.
There was a tap at the door. ‘Housemaid,’ was the muffled explanation.
She rummaged in her case till she found a robe, pulled it on and went to the door.
‘Can I make up your room, Miss?’
‘Um. No. Not yet.’ She chewed on a fingernail.
‘But Miss, it’s my last, and then I’m off.’
She smiled. ‘It’s OK. You don’t have to bother – I’m checking out.’
‘Oh, thank you, Miss,’ and a broad grin. ‘Have a nice day!’
She closed the door, let the robe slip from her shoulders, sat back down on the edge of the bed, and picked up where she left off the previous evening with the train timetable. I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed I have failed. Her shoulders hunched. She moaned a low note. Clare Baker-Hamilton. What are you going to do?
That book in her hands. Lines and lines of names, numbers, destinations, times. Looking, searching for the train back home. Change at Chicago and then on and up. On and up to Montana.
She could picture the scene – getting off the train, her family patiently waiting. Joe scuffing the dirt with a holey boot, not wanted to meet her eyes. Ma and Pa a mix of happiness at seeing her safe and well after so long, and profound disappointment. That she had failed, her white collar smudged with the grime of unemployment.
She’d only just finished paying them back for the four months of courses through business college. It’d cost so much and there hadn’t been much left out of her pay packet each week to put aside. For a start, the lodging at the Barbizon wasn’t cheap. It was a genteel residence after all – her parents hadn’t been happy for her to come to New York City without a good place to stay, and the YWCA’s reputation was very sound. Prospective tenants needed three letters of recommendation. They’d gotten the pastor, her high school teacher and old Mrs Grimes for whom she’d cleaned once a week after her stroke. All proving what a good girl she was, with high thoughts in her head.
Words like ‘failure’ hadn’t been in her vocabulary back then, but neither had ‘Great Depression’ meant very much. She had tried to save money but it was hard. Expenses like the Barbizon, but also the navy blue wool jersey dresses with those starched white collars she’d needed to buy to last a full working week. Only coffee and a doughnut for lunch at the drugstore counter, though, and she didn’t smoke Wings or Camels like the other girls.
Yes, she’d get right off that train, straight away hand them her purse. And they’d look inside, disappointment less
than a second away. Nothing more to show for more than a year in this damned Big Apple.
Her bare shoulders hunched some more at the prospect. No, she couldn’t go back. She couldn’t show them she’d failed. She closed the timetable with deliberate finality. There had to be some other way. Still, she had to move out, had to leave, leave now. And until two minutes ago that had meant going home, getting on that train and going home. But –
No, no, no, she steeled herself. You may be a failure. But they don’t need to know about it. Ma and Pa and Joe have enough of their own troubles without you lobbing in with some grenades of your own.
Time to dress and finish packing what she’d started the night before, pull on her wool crepe hat and slip into her shoes, stand at the dresser in that closet of a room which had been home since she’d arrived in this town – a room, no bigger than a cupboard, the same as any other in the hotel. Twenty-three floors of tiny rooms, all with the same bed, dresser and easy chair, all with the same working girls as their sole occupants. A colony of ants, that’s what they were, with a code of conduct and a code of dress, strictly enforced from the day the establishment had opened on the Upper Eastside’s 63rd Street four years prior.
The door of her room closed, almost by itself, yet the key lingered in the lock. Are you really sure? it asked.
She took the elevator down to the lobby, crossed the