8
Seated across from each other at O’Donnell’s, Francine and I fell into an awkward silence. “When did you and Larry split up?” she asked.
“About two weeks ago.” I sipped my water. “I caught him with his secretary.”
“Such a cliché.”
I shook my head. “You’d think they would at least find creative ways to humiliate us.”
Francine smiled tightly and changed the subject. “How did they find out I was Jewish?”
“I haven’t the faintest of ideas. I went to another club looking for work, and they told me Emory was hiring—I assumed to supplement your hours. It wasn’t until I was in that cretin’s office that I learned they were trying to get rid of you.”
“ Cretin is right.” Francine shook her head. “Probably a blessing in disguise, but now I need to find another job.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Why are you looking for work? You’ve got kids. Larry has to keep supporting you.”
“He’s threatening to make me downsize, and I don’t want to move to some tacky apartment with the kids.” Then I covered my mouth. Francine’s husband had sold their house before leaving her for their widowed neighbor, and, to the best of my knowledge, she was now living in an apartment. “I’m so sorry.”
She shrugged. “It’s not so bad. Although I could see where it would be with kids. At least Larry didn’t burn you as badly as David burned me.” The waiter brought our food, and Francine cut a piece of fish, brought it to her mouth, and chewed delicately. “The worst part,” she said when she’d finished chewing, “honestly, was all my friends giving me the cold shoulder.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I didn’t know you well, but I—I don’t know.”
“People think it’s contagious,” she said, shrugging again. “It wasn’t like I had a choice though. He left. What was I supposed to do? Waste away and die in a sanatorium somewhere?” She cut another piece of fish, but stopped short of her mouth with it. “I’ve made new friends. Turns out, there are a good number of divorcées now.”
“Soon to be one more,” I said, raising my glass to her. She clinked hers to mine. “Listen, Francine—”
“Fran,” she interrupted. “We’re in the same boat. We can be friends now.”
“Fran. I am sorry. I want you to know that.”
“Water under the bridge.” She hesitated. “But now we both need jobs. Do you have any skills?”
“Skills?”
“Typing, dictation, anything like that?”
I colored slightly at the reference to dictation. “I don’t think I want to be a secretary. Not after—”
“No, that wouldn’t do, would it? Besides, anyone good would want someone who had gone to secretarial school. Did you finish college?” I shook my head. I had left college my senior year to marry Larry. Papa had thrown a fit at that. Who knew he was going to turn out to be right? “Me neither,” Fran said glumly. “I was trying to avoid retail.”
“Retail?” I was fabulous at shopping.
“Yeah. I suppose we could go to the makeup counter at Woodies and see if they’re hiring.” My eyes widened. “You’re good at your own makeup. They’d hire you.”
“But—then everyone—”
Fran looked at me for a moment. “Oh, honey. They’re all going to know eventually anyway.” She sipped her drink. “Why don’t you just move in with your parents? Then you won’t have to work, and your mother’s reputation just may save you from suffering my fate.”
I shook my head. My desire not to live with my parents outweighed my desire to avoid seeing all my friends—if they were still my friends—while I waited on them at a store. “Woodies it is.”
Fran raised her glass this time. “To new beginnings.”
I clinked my glass to hers. I knew Nancy would never abandon me, but it was nice to have someone to talk to who had been through it all already.
My career behind the makeup counter at Woodward & Lothrop lasted exactly two hours and thirty-four minutes.
I left the house the following morning and took the bus to the Woodies in Friendship Heights. I had debated suggesting the Hecht’s in Silver Spring to buy myself some time before I ran into everyone I knew, but the reality was that there was no shame in working. And Fran had been right: everyone would know Larry and I had split eventually. Did I actually want to be friends with anyone who would stop talking to me over either situation?
Well, yes. I wanted Larry to be the pariah, while I flourished in my exact same social circle with the largest disruption being the fact that I no longer had to wake up so early.
But even I knew that was unlikely.
It probably didn’t help that I arrived late. Mama simply didn’t understand why leaving at a set time was important if it wasn’t for one of her various social outings. And she peppered me with questions about where I was going and when I would be back.
Miss Llewelyn wasn’t exactly forgiving of my tardiness, suggesting I use my first week’s earnings to purchase a watch from the jewelry department. “I have one,” I told her. She looked pointedly at my empty wrist. “Perhaps you should wear it, then.”
She didn’t seem like she would sympathize with why said watch was ticking away in the junk drawer, so I just nodded. And I had spent enough time at that exact makeup counter as a customer that I was already quite well versed in where everything was.
The first two hours were uneventful. I sold six lipsticks, three tubes of mascara, and two powder compacts. Fran was opposite me behind the perfume counter, and we chatted when we could until Miss Llewelyn told us that was what our breaks were for. I made a face at her behind her back, and Fran stifled a laugh.
But at eleven thirty, I heard a gasp that I knew all too well, and I smeared the lipstick I was applying on an elderly customer across her cheek to her ear.
“Beverly Ann Gelman Diamond,” my mother said. “What on earth—?”
I took a deep breath. “Hi, Mama.”
The woman with the lipstick on her cheek turned to my mother. “Millie!” she said. Then she looked back at me. “I knew you looked familiar.”
“What are you doing behind”—she gestured to the counter—“that? Come out here right now.”
“I can’t, Mama. I’m working.”
“Working!”
“Yes. I have a job now.”
“Absolutely not. My daughter, working behind a makeup counter! You come out here at once.”
“Is there a problem, Mrs. Gelman?” Miss Llewelyn asked smoothly. Of course she knew my mother by name.
“I should say so!” Her hands were on her hips, and I suddenly realized there should have been tiny people attached to those hands.
“Mama—where are the children?”
“I’m looking at one of them,” she said, pointing a finger at me. “I don’t know what you were thinking! Does Larry know you’re here?”
“It’s not Larry’s business where I am,” I said tartly. “And if he wasn’t threatening to sell the house, I wouldn’t be here. But he is. Now where are my children?”
She waved a hand in the air. “I dropped them at Nancy’s house. I had errands to run.”
“Mama, Nancy isn’t free babysitting.”
“And I am? While you come and make pennies here?”
“You’re making a scene,” Miss Llewelyn hissed at me.
“I’m not doing anything! She’s making a scene!” I pointed to my mother.
“Well, I can’t fire her, but I can fire you. Take your things and go, please. Now.”
“Good,” my mother said. “Go get in the car. The very idea. I’ll never be able to hold my head up in here again.”
“What about my lipstick?” the customer asked.
“That color is all wrong for you anyway,” my mother said. “I don’t know what Beverly was thinking.”
“Me?”
She turned to me. “I told you to get in the car.”
“Mama, I’m a grown woman. You can’t order me around like this.”
Her lips almost disappeared. “Car. Now.”
I lifted the counter’s opening and came out meekly. “Call me this week?” I asked Fran as I passed.
She nodded. “Good luck.”
“I’m going to need it,” I said as my mother prodded me in the back toward the door.