The Sisters Montclair (21 page)

“May I have this dance?”

Brendan Burke leaned over with his hand on the back of her chair, his fingers just inches from her bare shoulder. She looked up at him.

“Yes,” she said.

“Now just a minute,” Bill said.

“You don’t mind, Old Sport, do you?” But he had his hand on her elbow and he was already leading her away before Bill Whittington could say anything else.

They walked out onto the dance floor. The band struck up a lively rendition of
Let’s Fall in Love
and Brendan pulled her into his arms.

“Good evening, Miss Montclair.”

“Good evening, Mr. Burke.”

He was dressed in a well-tailored evening suit that had obviously been made for him. An expensive suit. His dark hair, swept back from his forehead, glittered under the lights.

“I’m surprised to see you here.”

“Oh?” He smiled pleasantly but his eyes stayed fixed, unwavering. “Are you surprised I was able to join?”

“Well, no.” Beneath his steady gaze, she felt flustered. She
was
surprised he had been offered membership; that was exactly what she had been thinking. In the old days he would never have been accepted but the world was changing. The Depression had made paupers out of wealthy men and rich men out of clever ones.

“Perhaps you don’t see me as country club material.”

She met his eyes boldly. “It really doesn’t matter how I see you.”

“I had no choice.”

“Oh?”

“I couldn’t figure out any other way to see you.”

He said it with such sincerity that she could do nothing but look away, blushing furiously. At the table behind his shoulder, she could see Bill Whittington watching them closely. The song ended and they stepped apart, clapping politely. Bill rose and began to make his way through the crowd.

Brendan leaned close and said to her, “I want you to go out with me.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“Why?”

“Oh, Mr. Burke, there are so many reasons.”

“Name one.”

Someone had stopped Bill Whittington at the edge of the dance floor. He stood chatting in a friendly manner, glancing at them from time to time.

“My sister, for one,” she said.

“I don’t date your sister.”

“Yes, but I don’t think she would be happy about me seeing you.”

“She’s young. She’ll get over it.”

“So you say.”

“I warn you. I’m persistent.”

“Yes. I can see that.” Bill Whittington had disengaged himself and was doggedly making his way through the crowd toward them. Behind her the band was warming up for another number.

“Here comes my date,” she said.

He didn’t look around. “Say yes or there’ll be a scene.”

Their eyes met, held.

In a low, fierce voice she said, “Are you blackmailing me, Mr. Burke?”

“Call me Brendan.”

“Are you blackmailing me, Brendan?”

“Yes.”

The couple next to them was listening to their conversation. Alice was suddenly aware of this, and of the approach of her date, who had a sullen, determined expression on his face.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll meet you.”

“Tomorrow night.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Tomorrow night at the Blue Bird Café.”

“I don’t know where that is.”

“Corner of 8
^th
and Main. 7:00.”

Bill Whittington had his hand out, reaching to tap his shoulder.

“All right,” she said.

Brendan swung around. “There you are,” he said pleasantly to Bill and stepped back, relinquishing his claim to Alice. He nodded slightly in both their directions and, without another word, swung around and walked off into the crowd, his dark hair glistening like a crow’s wing.

That night she couldn’t sleep, thinking about him. It was foolish, she knew, agreeing to meet him. It would end badly. Yet she couldn’t stop thinking about his face as he bent above her on the dance floor, his expression calm, reticent, and yet certain, too. It was that certainty that bothered her, as if he had known all along that she wouldn’t deny him.

And then there was the problem of Laura. Her sister had ceased her midnight ramblings and now lay entombed behind her bedroom door, her face turned toward the wall. Alice had gone to school and collected her books and assignments, but Laura would not look at them, and finally, in desperation, Alice had finished the assignments herself. Laura would not walk across the stage with the rest of her class but at least she would graduate. Mother sent a note explaining her absence at the coming graduation ceremony due to illness.

If anyone saw Alice with Brendan Burke and reported it to Mother or Father, she would tell them that she was intervening in her sister’s unfortunate love affair. They would believe that readily enough; they would even be grateful for it. The more she thought about it, the more Alice convinced herself that this was the actual reason she was meeting Burke. To put a definitive end to his connection with her family. She would tell him the same thing she had told Bill Whittington when he brought her home from the Country Club dance. She was leaving for New York in the fall. Clarice was graduating from Sweet Briar and going up over the summer to find them an apartment.

Bill had stared at her, his eyes unreadable behind the glint of his glasses.

“Do your parents know about this?” he said finally.

“Of course,” she lied.

“And what will you do in New York?”

“Live.”

It sounded trite, childish. She avoided his eyes, turning to go in.

“Will I see you again over the summer? Before you leave to begin your new life in New York?” There was a hint of something in his voice, not sarcasm exactly, but derision, disbelief.

“We’re bound to run into one another,” she said mildly. “After all, it’s a small town.”

“That isn’t what I meant and you know it.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t see the point.”

“Goodnight then.”

“Goodnight.”

She felt a sense of relief, watching him drive off and yet a faint sense of unease, too. Now that she had spoken the words aloud, New York was no longer a dream; it was a reality. There was no turning back now.

She wondered if Brendan Burke would be so easily discouraged.

He was waiting for her outside The Blue Bird Café. As she emerged from the alley behind the building where she had parked, he saw her and took off his hat, walking slowly toward her. It was a beautiful evening, warm and balmy. Above the roof of the Chattanooga Hotel the sky was a pale blue, tinged with pink clouds.

“Good evening, Miss Montclair.”

“Good evening, Mr. Burke.”

His manner was jovial, slightly teasing. He did not take her arm but walked beside her, matching his stride to hers. The café was crowded but she didn’t see anyone she knew, and she saw now why he had picked the place. They chose a small table in the corner near a window. The waitress came and brought them menus, smiling at Brendan, and Alice took her gloves off and laid them across the table.

“She seems to know you well,” she said, looking at the menu.

“I eat here a lot. My shop is just around the corner.”

She looked at him. “I thought your shop was in Brainerd.”

“I have one there, too.”

“So you have two service stations?”

“Three, actually.”

She looked down again at the menu, reading carefully. “Is there money to be made servicing automobiles?” she said rather casually, and then instantly regretted it. He would see her as one of those women who cared only for money. He probably already saw her that way.

“Automobiles will change everything about this country. Look at all the state highways being built. And there’s even talk of a national interstate system crossing the country at sometime in the future. People will move freely from place to place, they’ll no longer be tied to the small patch of land where they were born. Goods will be shipped from one end of the country to the other.”

“But isn’t that why we have trains?”

“Trains were the past. The automobile is the future. There’ll come a time when every family will own one.”

She glanced up at him, her light-colored eyes resting for a moment on his face. “You have a rosy view of the future considering we’re still recovering from one of the worst Depressions in history.”

He stared at her, his face darkly handsome, his expression bold but wary. “I’m an optimist,” he said.

She felt the comment was directed at her and, despite her reservations, she smiled.

“You have a lovely smile,” he said.

She read the menu and said nothing.

He leaned toward her, lowering his voice. “You really are quite pretty. But I suppose you hear that all the time.”

“I think I’ll have the catfish,” Alice said.

“I’ll bet you hear it all the time from pompous fools like Bill Whittington.”

She closed the menu and laid it on the table, sitting back in her chair with her hands crossed in her lap. “You don’t know Bill,” she said. “You shouldn’t pass judgment on people you don’t know.”

“I know he and his friends tried to have me blackballed from the Country Club. Luckily I know several of the membership committee and I was able to call in a few favors.”

“Why would you do that?” she said sharply. She meant, Why would you want to belong to a club where people will constantly slight you?

“You know why,” he said, his expression bold, unwavering.

She ordered the catfish. The waitress brought them tall glasses of iced tea and a basket of golden brown hushpuppies, just out of the fryer. He told her about his childhood in Kansas, the long flat prairie, the grasshoppers that dropped out of the sky like a biblical plague, eating everything in sight. She listened, smiling slightly, imagining the dug out homes with their earthen walls and ceilings, imagining him as a boy, curious and self-possessed. He had a way of telling a story that made you feel as if you were there.

When he had finished, he shook his head and said carelessly, “Enough about my dreary childhood. Tell me about you.”

“Compared to yours, it was very – tame.”

He laughed. “You don’t strike me as the kind of woman who had a tame childhood.”

“I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”

“Trust me, it is. I like spirited women.”

She ignored the overt familiarity of this remark and told him about Charlie Gaskins, how he’d thrown rocks at her and how her mother wouldn’t let her retaliate because he had a stutter.

“You must have been itching to toss a few rocks.”

She grinned. “Yes, I suppose I was.”

“I can’t imagine you as the kind of person who lets others take advantage of you.”

She said nothing, turning her face to the window. Dusk was falling and the lights of the city had begun to glimmer. The waitress brought their meals.

“What about now?” he asked her.

“Now?” She chewed slowly, looking at him.

“What’s in your future? Marriage, motherhood, a life of comfort and ease?”

She looked down at her plate, carefully removing the bones from her fish. “Isn’t that what most women want?”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

Now was the time to tell him about New York and yet his expression, intense, expectant, kept her silent. She was afraid she’d sound like a boastful child. What did she know, really, about New York? How would she make a living? Her father would be happy enough to pay for a summer vacation with the understanding that she would return in the fall; he’d be far less likely to support her if she chose to stay in the city. She had always been comfortably well off, had never worried where her next meal was coming from. All her life she had taken money for granted; but she could imagine that living without it would be a very difficult thing indeed. She would somehow have to make her own way. The usual understanding was that educated women who wanted careers had three to pick from – teacher, nurse, or secretary. Alice wanted none of those. She wanted something challenging, glamorous, slightly dangerous. Everyone said there would be another war and, if so, men would be called up to fight and jobs would be opened up to women. She had only to wait until the right one presented itself.

In the meantime, perhaps she and Clarice could waitress for awhile. Or get a job as hat-check girls in some nightclub frequented by artists and musicians and gangsters. Or better yet, land a job as a magazine or newspaper writer. They hired women writers nowadays. Look at Martha Gellhorn. Alice had always been a reader, a storyteller, and there was no reason why she shouldn’t get paid for it. She imagined herself at a typewriter, a cigarette dangling from her lips. She would walk to the park, the library, have dinner in small cafes with other women like her (surely in New York there would be other women like her, women who liked a good argument and read Mary Wollstonecraft and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.)

They finished eating and he lit two cigarettes and gave one to her. She felt awkward, mildly disreputable smoking in public. It was a giddy feeling.

“There’s a jazz club I want to take you to,” he said, exhaling.

“I can’t.” She glanced around the cafe again, making sure she didn’t see anyone she knew.

“It’s Saturday night. Live a little.”

“I have to help mother with the flowers for church.” It was a lie; she avoided his eyes, resting her elbows on the table and leaning forward slightly.

“Is that the best you can do?” he said.

He raised his hand and motioned for the waitress.

She colored lightly at his implication but shook her head stubbornly. “I can’t.”

His expression changed, becoming detached, coldly polite. “You won’t see anyone you know. I can promise you that.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“Don’t you?” He looked up at the waitress, smiling in a subtly contemptuous way. “You can bring the check,” he said.

He was quiet on the ride out to the jazz club and Alice was amazed to find herself sitting beside him, the darkened countryside rolling away on either side of the car. The mountains were black against the moonless sky. Here and there the lights of a lone house twinkled along the ridge.

Crazy to have left her car in the alley and ridden with him. Crazy to have come at all.