Baker Towers (6 page)

“Believe what you want,” said Mag.

When Dorothy returned to her room that night, Jean Johns was gone.

E
MPTY OF JEAN’S
possessions, the room seemed hollow and drafty. One afternoon Dorothy covered the walls with photos she’d clipped from
Screen Stars:
Veronica Lake, Tyrone Power; a close-up of Hedy Lamarr, whom people said she resembled. She caught herself glancing at Hedy each morning before she left for work, a more confident, more glamorous version of herself.

Sundays were the longest days. In the morning she went to mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral. Then, for hours afterward, she walked. Up Massachusetts Avenue past the grand embassies; the whole length of Connecticut Avenue, from Rock Creek Park to the White House. She walked for distraction, for warmth. Some days she wandered the elegant neighborhoods around Dupont Circle. She knew the owners’ names from the society pages: Cissy Patterson, the newspaper heiress; Mrs. Sumner Welles, the diplomat’s wife. One Sunday evening the Welleses had thrown a party; Dorothy had joined the small crowd on the opposite corner, gathered to watch the guests arrive: men in white jackets, bare-shouldered women in dark silk. Oddly, it was the men’s hair that most impressed her: long enough in back to touch their collars, slicked with something to make it shine. In a time when most fellows wore army cuts, the curling forelocks seemed more extravagant than jewels.

I
N THE SPRING
a new girl came. Looking back, Dorothy would remember it as the beginning of everything, a door swinging open, a dark room filling with light.

She arrived on a Sunday night. Dorothy returned from her walk to
find the bedroom door ajar. A girl sat on Jean’s old bed, polishing her nails. A radio played in the background; the girl hummed along with it, her voice low and husky. A cigarette burned in an ashtray near the window.

“Hi there,” said Dorothy. “I’m Dorothy Novak.”

The girl started. “Good Lord, you scared me. Patsy Sturgis.” She offered her hand, then withdrew it. “Wet,” she explained, blowing on her nails. “Sorry about the mess.” On the bed lay a suitcase, half unpacked; an open steamer trunk stood in the corner, trailing scarves and sweaters.

“I brought too many things.” She was small and blond, with a perfect rosebud mouth. “Lord knows where I’ll put it all.”

“Here. It’s for us to share.” Dorothy opened the flimsy metal armoire. The cupboard was already crammed full of dresses. Her own skirts and blouses had been shoved to one side.

Patsy laughed, a trilling sound. “Sorry, Dottie. Looks like I hogged all the closet space.”

Dorothy smiled. Nobody had ever shortened her name before. She liked the sound of it.

“That’s okay. You have more clothes than I do.” She fingered the sleeve of a dress, embroidered with tiny flowers. The fabric was sheer and light, soft as a person’s skin. “This is beautiful.”

“Oh, that. I’ve had it for ages. I can’t squeeze into it anymore, but I hate to part with it. Lord knows when I’ll get another silk dress.” Patsy butted her cigarette. “You can borrow it, if you like.”

“Really?”

“Try it on.”

“Now?” She had never undressed before a stranger. She and Jean Johns had waited until the other left the room, or gone down the hall to change in the washroom.

“Go on,” said Patsy.

Dorothy turned away and unbuttoned her blouse. Her brassiere was yellowed from too many bleachings, the elastic of her girdle puckered and worn. She stepped quickly out of her skirt, then pulled the dress over her head.

“Well, look at you,” said Patsy.

Dorothy approached the mirror. The dress fit perfectly, close at the waist and hip. The rose color flattered her complexion. She looked like someone else entirely.
Like Dottie,
she thought.

Patsy helped her with the zipper. “God, I’d love to be so slim. In my family we’re all top-heavy. Turn around.” She frowned. “Fits like a glove, but it hangs a little funny.”

“It’s my posture. My mother’s always after me to stand up straight.”

“Tall girls! You make me sick. When you’re five-one you can’t afford to slouch.” Patsy glanced at the photo on the bureau. “Is that your fellow?”

“My brother Georgie. He’s in the South Pacific.”

Patsy leaned close to examine it. “He’s nice looking. Does he have a girl?”

“Back home he went with Evelyn Lipnic. Now, I don’t know.”

“I’ll bet he does.” Patsy straightened. “This room isn’t much. I thought it would be bigger.” She squinted at the photos on the wall. “Are those yours?”

Dorothy flushed. “The other girl put them up,” she lied. “The one who lived here before. You can take them down, if you want.”

“Whew.” Patsy wiped an imaginary bead of sweat from her brow. “That’s a relief. I’d get the willies looking at Errol Flynn all day. He’s queer, you know.” She giggled, seeing Dorothy’s look. “You didn’t know? He likes boys.”

Dorothy thought of a Sunday afternoon, months ago, when she’d seen two blond-haired fellows walking hand in hand in Lafayette Park. At the
time it had given her a strange feeling. Now she put it aside to think about later, how such a thing was even possible.

“My sister lives in California,” said Patsy. “Everyone out there knows about it.”

“California!” Dorothy repeated, impressed. “Is she in the pictures?”

“Lord, no. She lives near an air-force base in San Diego. Her husband’s a pilot. She’s just a regular girl. Dottie, you’re a stitch.” She blew at her fingernails. “I guess I’m dry.” She peeled a photograph from the wall. “You don’t want to keep these, do you?”

She crumpled the photo and tossed it into the wastebasket. Later, following her downstairs to supper, Dorothy recognized the dark eyes of Hedy Lamarr staring up at her from the trash.

A
FTER SUPPER THEY
sat on Dorothy’s bed, eating caramels Patsy had produced from her suitcase. Dorothy ate one candy to Patsy’s three, savoring the rare sweetness of rationed sugar. Laughing, Patsy unpacked a bottle of bourbon. “From my daddy,” she said. “So we’ll be stocked when he comes to visit.”

She was a Southern girl, raised in Charleston; the baby in a family of girls. Her daddy was a lawyer for the local school district. He had taught her to ride and shoot, to tack in a windstorm, to drive a car. That morning he’d slipped her an emergency twenty dollars at the train station in Charleston. “ ‘Don’t fritter it away on perfume and bonbons,’ ” Patsy said, imitating his voice. “ ‘Use it for bail money, or not at all.’ ” She loved Charleston but lately found it depressing: the girls working in the shipyards, like Communist women. “It’s a different place now,” she said, lighting
a cigarette. “It won’t be the same until the boys come back. Then look out, Lucy! I’m going home.”

“Do you have a fellow overseas?” Dorothy asked.

“Actually,” said Patsy, “I have two.” It wasn’t two-timing, she explained; she hadn’t seen either of them in a year, and that was barely one-timing in her book. The boys, Fred and Ted, were like night and day. Fred had been her beau in high school, a tall, serious boy who planned to become a doctor. Ted had kept her occupied after Fred left. He had no plans for the future that Patsy knew of. He was just after a good time.

“He’s a lot of fun,” she admitted. “I went with Fred for two years, so we were like an old married couple. No more surprises. You know how that is.”

Dorothy had no idea how that was, but she was pleased that Patsy thought she did.

“What happens when they come back?” she asked.

“I’ll jump off that bridge when I come to it,” said Patsy.

T
HE NEXT DAY
they met Mag Spangler for lunch.

“Lord, it’s crowded,” said Patsy. She and Dorothy had arrived late. Every table in the drugstore was taken.

“Well, no wonder. It’s nearly ten past.” Mag shot Dorothy a look.
Where’ve you been, for Pete’s sake?

They sat at the counter: Dorothy in the middle, Mag and Patsy on either side. “Patsy works at the CAS,” Dorothy told Mag.

“Central Administrative Services,” said Patsy. “We’re the ones who scare up desks and file cabinets for all your new girls.”

Dorothy glanced nervously at Mag, who knew perfectly well what the CAS was. She’d been complaining about it for months.

Patsy scrabbled in her pocketbook for a cigarette. “The funny part is, I don’t have a desk yet, myself. Or a typewriter.”

“Then what do you do all day?” Mag asked.

“Yesterday I read the paper.”

“You’re joking,” said Mag.

“No, really. It’s a piece of cake. I can’t complain.”

Mag snorted. “I think
I’d
complain. I’d feel terrible, getting paid for nothing when the boys could use that money overseas.”

Patsy smiled sweetly. “Do you have a fellow in the service, Mag?”

“No,” said Mag. “Do you?”

“Patsy has two. One in England and one in Italy.”
Why am I telling her this?
Dorothy marveled; but she couldn’t help herself. Mag’s frown delighted her. In some way it made her proud.

That week Mag’s schedule was changed, her lunch break pushed back by an hour so that another girl could use her typewriter. After that Dorothy and Patsy ate lunch without her, at a different drugstore near the Treasury.

E
VERY SUNDAY NIGHT
Dorothy wrote a letter to her mother.

“Why don’t you just call her on the phone?” Patsy asked. There was a pay phone downstairs in the lobby. Dorothy often saw her standing next to it with a handful of coins.

“I like writing,” said Dorothy. “Can you hand me another sheet of paper?” She didn’t explain that to receive a phone call, her mother would have to walk a mile to town and wait at the booth in Meeghan’s Drugstore.

“I ought to do the same,” said Patsy. “I haven’t written Fred in ages.” She took a sheet of paper from a drawer and handed it up to Dorothy. A week before, in a burst of inspiration, Patsy had proposed stacking their beds like soldiers’ bunks. The two bed frames were identical, she pointed out; the square end posts would fit together perfectly. They spent a rainy afternoon struggling with the beds. Patsy bought a hammer at the dime store and tapped in a few nails for good measure. Dorothy took the top bunk, Patsy the bottom. The idea was a good one; the room seemed doubled in size.

They installed themselves on their beds. Dorothy glanced at the letter her mother had sent. Cold weather in Bakerton, a rainy spring. Georgie was still waiting to hear about his furlough.
With everything happening,
he’d written Dorothy,
don’t hold your breath.

She filled her pen and began to write. Beneath her Patsy sighed loudly. Dorothy heard her crumple up her letter and toss it into the trash.

“I’m out of smokes,” she said, rising. “I’ll be right back.”

“It’s Sunday. The store is closed.”

“I’ll bum one from the gray lady.”

“Mrs. Straub smokes?”

“Drinks, too. I can smell it on her breath.”

Dorothy blinked. She had known the landlady for months and had never suspected. More and more, the people around her seemed mysterious, impenetrable, their lives governed by secret desires visible to everyone but her. She wondered what else she had failed to notice.

At the end of her letter she added a postscript:
I haven’t seen Mag in ages, not since Mr. Leland moved her lunch hour. But we have not had a falling-out. I can’t imagine why Mrs. Spangler would think such a thing.

She climbed down from her bed and reached into the bedside table, where Patsy kept a supply of stamps. At the bottom of the drawer she
found the box of stationery and a leather-covered Book of Common Prayer, its gold-edged pages perfectly crisp, as though it had never been opened. She took a stamp from the box. The corner of a photograph peeked out from beneath the prayer book.

She hesitated a moment, then withdrew the photo. Patsy and a tall, thin boy stood before a gleaming automobile. The boy’s face was long and handsome. He wore rimless eyeglasses. To Dorothy he looked like a young Franklin Roosevelt.
Fred and Pat
was written on the back.
May 1942.

She replaced the photo and closed the drawer. She’d never had a beau; she’d never even gone on a date. That any girl did these things filled her with wonder. She remembered clearly the moment when her classmates had begun to pair off, early in the tenth grade. It had seemed then that she’d missed a crucial lesson, one that would not be repeated. Girls like Mag Spangler had missed the lesson, too; for years they’d been Dorothy’s only friends, keeping her company as they all fell further behind. Patsy, clearly, hadn’t missed anything. Dorothy watched her closely, feeling privileged to share her dresses, her secrets. For the first time in her life, it seemed she might actually catch up.

N
OON, A RAINY MONDAY
. The luncheonette was noisy and crowded, the windows steamed with the diners’ breath. Dorothy and Patsy took seats at the counter. Next to Patsy was a lone man in uniform, looking into a bowl of soup. He sat with his right hand flat on the counter, his sleeve rolled to the elbow. His left hand was tucked into his trouser pocket.

“Excuse me,” he said (to which of them, Dorothy would later wonder). “Can one of you girls give me a hand with my soup?”

The soldier, Chick Rowsey, treated them to a boyish smile. His eyes were blue, his mouth full-lipped and adult.

“What’s wrong with your hand?” said Dorothy.

“This one’s fine,” he said, showing his right. “But I’m a lefty, so that doesn’t do me much good.”

Laughing a little, Patsy dipped the spoon into the soup; she leaned close and lifted it to his lips. The soldier opened his mouth to accept it. A rivulet of broth dribbled down his chin.

“You girls work for the government?”

“The CAS.” Patsy dabbed at his chin with a napkin. “I’m a file clerk.”