Concrete Angel (8 page)

T
wo detours interrupted Mother’s path to reproduction, neither happy events. A few days after Hank asked Eve whether she had any plans for herself, when he was still flush with anticipation, if slight skepticism, at his approaching fatherhood, Eve traveled into the city to do some spring shopping. 1962. Shopping in downtown Philadelphia was still something special. A trip “downtown,” rather than to suburban main streets or the mushrooming malls, communicated a message about the seriousness and glamour of the task.

Mother’s trip on that particular day was a story told to me many times: by Mother, Daddy, Aunt Linda, Grandmother Hobart, and other Moran family members. Perhaps all families have a story repeated often, but probably one with a less calamitous conclusion. A saga where something noble happened, where someone does a good turn, saves a life. Ours was a different sort of story.

Since it’s mostly Mother’s story, this is her version and the one I loved to hear her tell. She had no compunctions about spilling the more salacious parts of it and I had none about listening.

E
ve put on her new pink linen suit, a pair of black, patent-leather heels, short pink gloves, and a perky Janet Leigh kind of hat. She ordered a taxi to the railroad station and took a train to 30
th
Street in Philadelphia, and then another train to Market Street, the principal shopping area. The length of the trip worked against it becoming a commonplace event, which may have been Hank Moran’s primary reason for choosing Doylestown for their home.

But Eve got herself to center Philly without much fanfare, stepping off the train full of expectation for the day ahead. There were four elegant department stores in which to shop in 1962. Not playing favorites, Eve pocketed an item from each of the stores within an hour of arriving. The “rush” she experienced from impetuous forays into quasi-criminal activity was a feeling she’d subconsciously sought since their return to Pennsylvania. Her life in Doylestown played as flat, monotonous, gray. And yet, she hadn’t
planned
on spending the day like this. It simply overtook her more ordinary intentions.

Lit Brothers, the most modestly appointed and priced department store, occupied a city block and appeared to be forged from cast-iron. Its place in the Philadelphia pantheon of stores—its very reputation—rested on being the affordable alternative to the remaining triumvirate. Affordable or not, Eve waltzed in through the Market Street door and stole a bottle of perfume from the first counter she came on. The clerk, busy with a large purchase from an imposing Main Line matron at the other end of the counter, missed both Eve’s fleeting appearance and the theft. This customer seemed to inhale all the air in the room with her voluminous baggage and personage. Eve stored this observation for later use.

“It wasn’t the scent,” Mother admitted. “I’ve smelled nicer perfume at People’s Drugstore. It was the bottle—pink crystal and shaped like a swan. I’d have it still if those security men hadn’t seized it as evidence.”

Eve exited Lit’s and made her way to Strawbridge and Clothier’s, across the street. The fourth-floor lingerie department was a quick jaunt up the escalator. In minutes, Eve found the rose, lace-trimmed negligee she’d been dreaming about. She folded it into a square the size of a table napkin, stuffed it in her purse, and moved on. Again, no one gave her a glance. Department stores in 1962 teemed with bored, rich women, especially on a mild spring day. It was nearly lunch hour now. Businessmen often dined here after choosing a necktie to match a shirt or purchasing a gift for the wife at home. Noon was a pleasant hour. It was the after-school and weekend crowd that made store management anxious.

Eve took a ceramic candy dish from a window display near the back of the store at Gimbels. Little more than a prop, but its pattern was perfect for her new modernistic décor: small irregular squares of bright colors, looking like it’d been designed by Paul Klee. The dish would be perfect on the coffee table with a handful of Hershey’s silver kisses inside. She’d whip her hideous house into something elegant or else. Into her purse it went.

Wannamaker’s: a bit of a walk, but the Queen Bee of Philadelphia stores was the emporium where dreams were made, boasting the largest organ in the world, which hovered over the Grand Court. Through some mysterious mechanics, floral scents wafted over the throngs of shoppers at Easter. Models stalked the floor in spring fashions that time of year, answering customer queries in a hushed tone. Eve ducked to avoid a collision with a model in tennis togs. Lilac was big—tiny checks, taffeta, cinched waists. Women mirrored Jackie Kennedy and Audrey Hepburn. The number of blondes had decreased since the presidential election two years ago. Suddenly brunettes, willowy thin, were in vogue.

Eve was drawn to a bracelet with chunky gambling charms: dice, a roulette wheel, a horse, a racing form. She had to have that trinket and unobtrusively slid it off the disembodied plastic arm on the counter, admiring her own skill as she dropped it into her pocket.

On her way to the door, a clerk handed her a shopping bag. “We don’t like to see our competition’s bag so prominently displayed,” the woman joked, motioning toward the Gimbel’s bag in Eve’s hand. The Gimbel’s bag held a soft pretzel and two wrapped chocolates purchased from Gimbel’s food counters.

After the clerk moved on, Eve stepped into the passage to the restrooms, cleared her handbag of merchandise, popped a chocolate in her mouth and headed for the door. A man in a dark suit grabbed her arm as it reached for the door. It was a firm grip. No way to wiggle out of it.

“Come along this way, Miss,” he said in a low tone. Like Paul Winchell, the ventriloquist on TV, his lips hardly moved at all. “Don’t want to make a fuss now, do we?”

He swiveled his head, nodding toward the crowd of shoppers threatening to engulf them. Eve reviewed her options, found none, and went along.

In the elevator, his hand continued to grip her elbow. The uniformed operator shot her a sympathetic glance while delivering them to the top floor. She’d probably seen this a hundred times, watched other women or children or men make this wretched trip. The man in control of Eve’s arm captured shoplifters and miscreants every day: women who couldn’t keep their hands off the merchandise; men who picked pockets; scoundrels of both sexes with stolen charge plates; boys who broke things then ran; girls who sneaked into dressing rooms and came out looking like polar bears, or ones ransacking the makeup counters, dropping tubes down their blouse or into their pockets. There were the new teams of
boosters
too, who made a science out of it according to the newspapers. It was an epidemic and today Eve was part of it.

This man was an expert in methods to defraud his store and felt no pity for her; she could sense it. She was certain to have bruises and a nasty wrinkle or two in her jacket. And this would be the least of her troubles.

No one spoke to them as they passed along narrow hallways and climbed the final flight of uncarpeted steps. He showed her inside a gloomy office minutes later, silently holding the door open. She pushed by him, trying not to brush against his obvious disdain. But she was close enough to smell onions on his breath, garlic, power.

It was more cell than office. Dark, almost windowless, small—a battered walnut table, two chairs, cheap paneled walls. It smelled of smoke, burnt coffee, Dentyne chewing gum, sweat. It was a serious office, not the sort of room where suburban women were coddled, pitied, or forgiven. Not a place where sympathetic gestures were made, not where men in off-the-rack suits overlooked transgressions if a pretty face stared back at them. My mother couldn’t think of how to turn this around—of how to make it go away. Her brief detentions with inexperienced clerks in backrooms of tiny shops in South Carolina or Texas were no preparation for the security staff at John D. Wannamaker’s. She’d no leverage to use here, no husband wearing bars or stars on his chest on a base a mile away to allude to obliquely.

“I think you may’ve misunderstood what happened today.” It was important to establish herself as a person of character. “My husband runs a printing business…”

“Not a day goes by when someone doesn’t say something like that to me,” he said, motioning to a chair. “Says they were gonna pay for it all in a minute.”

“I’m sure I have the necessary receipts somewhere in my bag.” She began to reach for her handbag, but he didn’t hand it over.

This man, this security guard looking like military police, had seen and heard it all before. She couldn’t think of anything to offer him. Any idea about how to charm him. He seemed far too tired to trade her release for a grope or a kiss. There was some relief in this information though, in knowing she’d been out-maneuvered and could wait for her sentence without discussion. A sort of calm descended.

He gestured again to a wooden chair, and once she was seated, he proceeded to remove the items from her bag, one by one, shaking his head at the variety of store tags, and saying, with a hint of a chuckle, “Don’t play favorites, do you? Was it on a dare?” He tossed her hard-won booty on the table. “Half of this is junk, Lady. A dish probably selling for $2.99? Crissake, it has dust in it!” He held up his finger and she blushed. “And this. This,” he said, picking up the bracelet from downstairs, “this is something a twelve-year old girl buys. Not a woman like you.” He fingered the dice. “Kind of a sign, isn’t it? You like taking chances, right? Have to have your souvenirs, don’t you? Even though they’re worthless ones.”

He asked to see her driver’s license, wrote a sentence or two on his pad, gathered the stolen goods, and headed for the door. “Part of the kick, huh? Seeing if you can get away with it? Guess what? You can’t.” He shut the door behind him.

She hadn’t uttered another word about her innocence, not a sentence more of denial. No protests or grimaces at her rough handling. And his suggestion that seeing if she could get away with it was part of the kick, was ridiculous. She knew she’d get away with it. Dime-store psychologists were running loose. She sat for a long time wondering if they’d called the police yet. What the fine or punishment might be? Could she cover it herself? How would Hank react if she couldn’t? Would she have to tell him? She could already picture his red face, purple when she crossed swords with him. Maybe there’d be some way to avoid his involvement. How much money did she have with her? She hadn’t planned on needing more than enough for a quick sandwich at a counter. Money spent on food was wasted money. She reached for her purse.

Something similar to this—an incident where things had spun out of control—had happened to her once before when she was fifteen. She’d taken a lipstick from Woolworth’s makeup counter. Well okay, a couple of tubes of lipstick and some eye shadow on the theory “in for a penny in for a pound.”

The clerk caught her, grabbing her wrist as she reached for the third tube, making her sit on a stool while she called Herbert Hobart after going through her pocketbook to find his name. The clerk had dumped all the contents on the counter, attracting the attention of a number of shoppers as they rattled on the glass. Her cheap, worn-out possessions were ridiculous on display—a comb needing cleaning, used tissues, bus tokens, a torn makeup case. Shabby. The whole incident might’ve been forgotten if her purse’s interior hadn’t branded her as that.

Her father came after her. Grim-faced, stoop-shouldered, scuffed-shoed Herbert Hobart, hat in hand. Leaving his cubicle at the Philadelphia Naval Yard, paying the dime store clerk with nickels and dimes and quarters for her theft as if he didn’t have a real bill in his pocket, as if the Hobarts were the poorest mice in the city. The clerk scooped Eve’s things from the counter, making a face, returning them to her pocketbook, her pocketbook to her.

Her father didn’t speak once on the bus ride home, hadn’t said a word about it since. She didn’t know if he’d told her mother. She’d brought shame on him once again. He didn’t ask her why she’d done it. Didn’t remind her of the eighth commandment.

Somehow there was nothing but a long line of dour-faced men in her life: fathers, husbands, school principals, security guards, cops. Each of them avoiding her eyes, disappointed with her in the end. The episode back in high school hadn’t changed her behavior, but it’d made her more careful. No one who counted had caught her—until today.

And no one caught her with a pocketbook full of dross again. She became careful about many things—and one of them was the contents of that bag, which became clear that day was a reflection of herself. Never again would someone empty her purse on a counter and find used tissues, dirty combs, Tampax, worn lipsticks and other makeup, half-eaten boxes of Good & Plenty, stuff she’d taken from other girls’ lockers in school, snapshots of movie stars from Hollywood studios autographed by a machine.

“Those little shops near the army base—the stores I was used to—none of them hired security guards, Christine.”

The women in such stores, many the wives of GIs making a little pin money, were glad to let it go knowing she’d come back and spend double what she stole. But a store like Wanamaker’s…

There was less than fifteen dollars in her purse. She counted it twice to be sure, checked the little pockets, unrolled the white hanky, dug around in her suit jacket pockets. Too little money to pay a fine or bribe the guard if it came to that.

Looking at the spare change made Mother feel like the old Eve Hobart again, paying bills with nickels and dimes, walking across a college campus with no money in her pocket when everyone else had plenty, when the other girls had a new dress for the dance, money to go into Boston to see a play, money for a dinner in town.

She hadn’t expected to need much cash today, had no expectations for the day at all. She’d come here in a fog. In fact, she seldom set out to do what she’d done. Some part of her brain must make the plan, lay out the geography of it, and only let her in on it incrementally.

Could she tell this to whoever came into this room? Say she hadn’t known any of this would happen—that she didn’t mean to take those things, hadn’t exactly considered her heart’s desire till it was tucked inside her purse. Would they care she’d set out from Doylestown this morning in her pretty pink suit with nothing but a jaunt into the city in mind. Then suddenly—and it always came over her like this—she had to have one or two of the beautiful things she saw, things she’d always wanted—for practically her whole life. It was as if she was in a dream—maybe she was. She did these things like she was sleepwalking. There must be a name for it.