A Tyranny of Petticoats (36 page)

Before I could react, she stood up. “Get some rest, Evie,” she said.

But it sounded like a greeting, not a good-bye.

Though she was gone when I woke up that morning, I couldn’t push Frankie from my thoughts. Not only the way she’d looked at me, as if she knew a secret about me that I didn’t know, but the rest of her too. Her confidence, her silky way of moving and flowing to embody whatever she needed to be. I dreaded seeing her at the factory — had it all been a foolish moment, the sort she’d flit away from like she did everything else? But she was waiting for me with her rivet gun cocked in one hand, and tossed out a Kitty Cohen line —“Looks to me like we’re gonna have to share this town, Detective”— and I knew I had no reason to fear.

I corrected her grip on the rivet gun, and she actually followed my instructions for once.

After that, she wound up at Mrs. M’s more evenings than not, sharing her meat ration when she was lucky enough to snag one, entertaining us with monologues after dinner before the evening news broadcast. When she acted, she was electrified. I listened to the passion in her voice and saw the sharpness in her eyes and I felt that fire spreading through me. The passion she’d spoken of.

And we’d go into my room, and she’d seize my cheeks and kiss me.

Slow, fast, didn’t matter; it set my head spinning with hunger. For soft skin and her hardened stare. For the swell of her hips and the dip of her waist, all feminine, all beauty, all weaponized girl. Our fingers tangled together and then parted, and we’d sleep knotted up together, her scent filling my nostrils and my dreams.

But when I awoke, I’d remember — James. My duties, my promise to be a wife if not a homemaker, though I’d always wondered if he thought one would follow the other. I’d imagine him looking down on us and wondering why he’d never awakened that fire in me, why I’d never craved him like I craved Frankie and her starlight.

“I love you,” Frankie would murmur, usually in her sleep, but one day she slipped it in between our struggle with a massive sheet of metal. No one was around to hear — I barely heard her through the din — but I was certain she’d said it.

The words weighed like rope around my neck. Were we allowed to love each other? Was I in love with her? What did it mean for us to love; where could it even go?

“What about Danny?” I asked her.

She just shrugged and held the sheet still while I worked the edges into place. “Oh, he doesn’t care. He understands.”

Understands what?
I wanted to scream, but I was too afraid. I didn’t know what we were — laughing and kissing and dreaming together, but never looking more than a day into our future. Our future together, that was; Frankie dreamed of her
own
future, name in lights and face on posters.

But maybe Danny understood. Maybe this was something that could be understood. Maybe James would understand too.

Dear James,
I typed on my Underwood.
My dearest James.
No, cross that out.

I’m not sure how to tell you this.
What was I telling him, exactly? Even I didn’t know. I left the letter unsent.

“Come on, Evie,” Frankie said. “We’re going out tonight.” She’d arrived at Mrs. M’s in a stunning V-neck dress, tight down to her waist, then swirling into a perfect dancing skirt that hit her calves just so. She’d painted her lips bright red and set her hair in flawless liberty curls. She helped me take in my finest floral dress so it flattered me more, then she drew black lines up the backs of our bare legs with a steady hand. “Just because stockings are rationed doesn’t mean we can’t
look
like a million bucks,” she said.

I didn’t want to go out — into the seas of girls clustered around a few shore-bound sailors or, more often, exempted men pretending to be sailors, and angry zoot-suiters and the like. But Frankie said not to worry — there’d be no one like that where we were headed.

As soon as we ducked into the nightclub, I saw just what she meant.

In many ways, it looked like the stylish nightclub I went to with James and his friends just before he shipped out — sleek black glass and mirrors and a forty-piece brass orchestra on the main stage. Cigarette girls walked among the tables, wearing not much more than heels and red lipstick, while girls in an explosion of feathery costumes danced up front. But the crowd was all women — not a single Tom or Jerry to be seen.

“Welcome to the Shrinking Violet,” Frankie said, looping her arm through mine. “A place for girls looking for some fun. Girls like . . .” She trailed off, but I knew what she meant.

Like us.
The words thrummed inside me, strong as a siren’s call. We weren’t alone.

We crammed into a booth with a trio of well-dressed girls a few years older than us who peppered us with questions between performances. Frankie did most of the answering, her starlight dazzling them the same as it had dazzled me; even the waitress, Madge, seemed locked under her spell, and slipped us a drink on the house. No one was immune to Frankie, I thought; but as her hand rested on my knee, my heart swelled to know that she’d chosen me.

The Shrinking Violet rang with bright brass musical numbers and comedy skits and even a one-act play, a fun twist on
Romeo and Juliet
where Juliet, upon awakening to find Romeo supposedly dead, sought comfort from her scandalously dressed nurse and decided to run off with the nurse instead. Romeo awoke to an empty crypt and aw-shucksed his way off the stage to the cheers of the crowd.

After an impressive set of croony songs usually sung by men, the singer, Luisa, joined us in our booth and traded kisses on the cheek with Frankie. “Who’s your girl?” Luisa asked Frankie, before tossing me a grin.

As usual, Frankie spoke before I could. “Evie’s a writer. She’s gonna work for Metro-Goldwyn one of these days, mark my words.”

“Yeah? She write about girls like us?” Luisa laughed. “Good luck gettin’ that past the censors. Maybe you could write a new act for me here. The Romeo and Juliet number’s getting a little stale, y’know? Talk to Violet. She’d love to get some new talent in the club.”

Luisa gestured behind us to a private box at the top of the hall. A dark figure stood silent, leaning against the railing, watching over the club with what looked to me like a satisfied smirk.

“Violet runs the club?” I asked.

“Runs it? She owns it, books the performers, oversees all the productions, does about everything but pour the drinks and wait the tables — aw, thanks, Madge,” Luisa said, as the waitress brought her some water. “A self-made woman. And she’s always happy to help out our own, y’know what I mean?” Luisa winked. “Seriously, if you’re any good, Violet’d pay you well, I’m sure.”

A self-made woman. Like my Kitty Cohen. Maybe they didn’t just exist in my shoddy scripts. I smiled up at Violet and thanked Luisa before she headed back to the stage for the next show.

“That was incredible,” I said to Frankie as we headed home. “I had no idea there was — that anything like that existed.”
That we’re not alone.

Frankie grinned and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “You can find anything in this town, Evie. Just a bit of fun, right?”

I was too enchanted by our evening to let her words sting. “And they need writers. And probably performers too! Why haven’t you auditioned for Violet?” I asked.

Frankie’s gaze darkened; she shrugged and glanced off down the street, where servicemen waited in line for another dance hall. “Oh, I dunno, it’s not really what I want. I might as well swing for the fences, y’know? Land a real studio gig. Then I’ll know I’ve made it for real.” She snorted. “If I can.”

I clutched both her hands in mine. “Frankie. You’re incredible. Of course you can. You can win an Oscar, I know it. Soon the studios’ll be beating down your door. I just thought it might be nice for you to start out among girls like us, and —”

“You really think I’ll make it?” She squeezed my hands tighter, urgency punctuating her words. “You aren’t just saying that?”

“Of course I think so. I —” I swallowed. I knew she’d said it before, but Frankie said a lot of things. “I love you, Frankie. I know you can do anything you aim for, and I —”

She kissed me before I could finish, a toe-curling kiss that melted away the rest of the world. Frankie loved me back — she had to, didn’t she, to kiss me that way? That’s why she’d brought me to the Shrinking Violet. I wasn’t alone in loving her, in loving girls, in finding my true self —

“Hey, would you look at that!” exclaimed some wise Joe as he passed us on the sidewalk. “Sorry, ladies, but I bet your guys’ll be wantin’
that
job back when they get home too!”

I yanked away from Frankie, but I knew just how I looked — lips ripe and swollen, panting for breath, my every skin cell crackling and alive. The man chuckled to himself and continued down the boulevard, but his words rattled around inside me like loose rocks in my shoe as we headed back to Mrs. M’s. There was no more hiding who I was.

I was in love with another girl.

“Don’t be silly,” Frankie said that night, in the silvery dark of my room. “We’re just havin’ fun, you and me. No need to put a label on it or nothin’.”

“It’s not just fun for me.” My heart was throbbing, sore and worn out. “This is who I am — who I’ve always been. I just never admitted it before.” And I
wanted
it to be more. The way she looked at me sometimes, like I was the only one who knew the roles she wanted to play — that’s the way she made me feel all the time. “I don’t want to be someone I’m not anymore.”

Her laugh was like metal shearing in two. “You think you can just declare it, and no one’s gonna mind?” She turned away from me. “That Mrs. M would keep renting to you? That the studios would hire you? Ain’t it tough enough, just being a gal? Why do you want to make it even harder for yourself?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do.” I cupped my hand around hers. “All those girls at the Shrinking Violet — they aren’t afraid. I shouldn’t be either.”

“Those girls at the Shrinking Violet can’t get work anywhere else. Even in this day and age, with no menfolk around. You think they’re there because it’s so lucrative?” She pulled her hand away. “Get some sleep, Evie. I think the champagne’s gone to your head.”

After she’d left that morning, I was back at my typewriter. If she didn’t think I should declare myself to the whole world, well, there was at least one person to whom I owed the truth.

I’m coming to understand something about myself that I hadn’t known before. I care deeply for you, but I’m not sure I’m able to be a wife — to you or any man.

Once the words stared back at me, black ink on white, I realized they were the words I’d been searching for all along.

I’d come to Los Angeles to find myself — the work and life that I wanted. Now, for the first time, I felt that I actually knew who I was. Behind the scenes, writing the script, not acting out someone else’s story. Loving a girl who inspired passion in me, instead of a man I was expected to look to for security. It was terrifying, to throw away the script I’d been working from my whole life — but now I felt certain that I could write my own.

“I told him. I told James the truth about me.” I gazed into Frankie’s eyes that night, aching to drown in their depths.

“What truth?” She turned away from me and buried herself in her script. Another audition, this time for a supporting role. Frankie supported no one, but she was, I could tell, grateful the studio had given her a second chance.

“That I like girls. That I like you.” I reached for her shoulder, but she shrugged me off.

“I don’t see why you worry about defining it.” She leaned back in her chair. “How should I say this line? ‘Oh, Deborah, I don’t know how you always land the right man!’” She rasped breathlessly. “Or is it a joke? ‘Oh, Deborah, I don’t know how you always land them . . . ’”

I wanted to believe, though, that Frankie appreciated me telling James the truth. She just needed to get her big break — we both did. If we couldn’t do it now, with the war on, then when would we get another chance?

As it turned out, my letter never reached James.

One afternoon, Mrs. M called me to the front door, and I bounded out of my room, thinking Frankie had rushed straight from her audition to tell me she’d landed the part.

But I didn’t recognize the dark-haired man standing there, crow’s-feet crinkling his damp eyes, hat crushed in his restless hands. And yet I knew him — his features lined up so well with James’s.

“Listen. You’re — you’re Evelyn, right?” He took a deep breath, eyes wrenching shut. “I’m James’s father. Ricky Falcone. I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

I sank into the armchair, no longer able to feel my legs.

The explosion had ripped straight through the hull, he said. James had died trying to save his fellow sailors. Smoke inhalation, shrapnel wounds . . . An honorable death. But it didn’t matter. I felt dishonorable — I’d never properly ended things with James. He died thinking I loved him, that I’d been true. He’d never heard my words. My declaration of me. Hot tears of shame and grief needled at my eyes, threatening to spill.

“James told me he wanted to make a wife of you when he returned,” Ricky continued. His eyes never really found mine. “If you’re in a — a
situation,
or you need money, or anything —”

“No. No, I couldn’t, Mr. Falcone.” James had been a good man and a good friend; I thought I’d loved him once. But I couldn’t accept his father’s help. “You’re very kind, but I . . . I’m very sorry for your loss.”

I was no one’s responsibility. I was my own woman, for good and bad.

When Mr. Falcone left, I slumped against the door and allowed myself a few raw tears. James deserved to be mourned. He deserved someone better than me — but no, I told myself, that wasn’t quite right. He’d deserved someone different from me. Someone who could have loved him fully. Didn’t we all deserve that? I wanted to believe so.

Frankie didn’t land the part, but we celebrated anyway. I’d set aside
City of Angels;
in truth, Frankie was all I could think of those days. I saw her in my mind when I awoke and tasted her on my lips when I fell asleep. That, and factory production had ramped up, and everyone said Berlin would fall to the Allies any day. Frankie and I worked double shifts, side by side, daydreaming of how we’d use the money from our war bonds when we cashed them in.