Chapter Six #2
Mr. Higgs smiled. He said he could envision her as a greeter one day.
He took out his wallet. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but as soon as you can get around to it,” he waved a hand at her blouse and midi-length skirt, “mind the store a little better, would you?” He produced a ten dollar bill.
“This”—he said, waving the money—“has nothing to do with what just happened. This is a favor, because I see such potential in you. Spruce up to match those looks, and I’ll tell Mrs. Conroy to make sure you’re on track to become a greeter. ”
Margaret just looked at the money and thought, This is one of those decisions people in movies make. What would Bette Davis do? As sweetly sharp as she could muster, she said, “You think that’ll be enough?”
Mr. Higgs looked impressed and pulled out an additional five.
—
That night, when she got back to her room, she cried and pounded her head against her pillow.
Never again, she told herself. Never, ever again.
Because somehow it became, in her mind, something she’d decided to do.
Or something she’d allowed to happen, at least. Was allowing the same as deciding?
She didn’t know! And had no one to ask. She wasn’t about to call Lydia reverse-charge and ask her. Should she keep the job?
She couldn’t do this—start her new life—feeling bad about herself. She had to feel good about herself, somehow. Lie to herself. You did nothing wrong. Of course she was keeping the job. That was the whole point.
She got out of her clothes, pulled on her robe, and walked down the hall for her second shower of the day.
—
Smiling at customers, spooning food, and moving pans around for eight hours: that was a part of grown-up life she wasn’t wild about.
The hourly wage part. It was so tedious.
At least at the orphanage there’d been folding day, and hose-off-the-porches day.
(Who would have thought she’d miss hose-off-the-porches day?) Anton’s was hours of serving meats and green beans and potatoes and cobbler to snooty women and leering men and children who picked their noses and ordered by pointing.
The best part of the job, besides the paycheck, turned out to be the absence of Mr. Higgs, who never came to the lines and rarely showed his face to his employees.
At the end of her first week, with the fifteen dollars in her purse, she clocked out, walked with her sore feet and aching legs up to High Street, and rode the streetcar to a department store a co-worker named Dotty had told her about, a place where they had just about everything you could want, not bad prices, and sales, she said, don’t forget to look for the sales. The store was called Lazarus.
Margaret had walked past Lazarus several times and had admired its window displays and neon and revolving doors.
Entering, she felt her breath leave her lungs, and for a moment she forgot to take a new breath in.
The store was like nothing she’d ever imagined, the size and scope of it, the high ceilings, the leaf-topped columns.
The mirrored panels placed throughout that gave the whole inside a wonderful endlessness.
Entering Lazarus was like stepping into a city within a city, and finding a thousand villages.
Every department had its own industry and its own smiling people.
And while the lights were bright and dazzling throughout, the look of the departments kept changing.
Dark polished wood, mustard-colored paneling, white lacquer, metal-framed glass, row after row of clothing racks and display tables and mannequins.
It took five floors to contain it all, linked by elevators and escalators.
Music sifted down from hidden speakers. And the things you encountered!
An actual rowboat in the middle of the sporting goods department with a mannequin sitting in it, holding a fishing pole.
She’d never seen so much in one place before, all of it displayed so beautifully.
She felt as if she’d fallen into a Hollywood musical.
At any moment she expected everyone—even the mannequins—to start dancing.
In Women’s, she went systematically from department to department and from counter to counter, reinventing herself.
People were much nicer when you had a little money.
It was like a secret handshake that gained you admission to a friendlier world.
When she agreed to buy three lipsticks instead of two, the woman behind the counter gave her the warmest smile she’d ever received from a stranger.
The saleslady who helped her choose skirts and blouses complimented her legs.
The shoe salesman told her she had elegant feet.
Even at work, in her dress uniform and apron, people were more patient with her now that she wore makeup and had her hair styled.
Fellow servers who stood in line with her at the time clock said good morning.
More than a few customers began to thank her for the food she spooned onto their plates.
Every now and then one of the men tipped her—against policy—as discreetly as a bank robber slipping a note to a teller.
—
One Saturday afternoon in the middle of that summer, she was sitting on a bench in the park by the river, watching the artists, when a voice asked if she had the t-t-t-time.
He was standing a few feet away. Boyish but around her age, she thought. His olive blazer was buttoned across his shirt, his hands were sunk into the pockets. He had a simple, straightforward face and a brown porkpie hat raked so far back on his head, she didn’t know how it didn’t fall off.
He didn’t strike her as someone who needed the time. She told him, though, glancing at her watch, and because he lingered she asked him if he’d like to sit down. He sat and held out his hand. “I’m B-B-B-Bernard,” he said.
An attractive stranger introducing himself to her in a beautiful city park was exactly the sort of thing she’d imagined might happen to her.
Feeling emboldened, she introduced herself, said she was new to town.
He asked how she was acclimating, and she said she was acclimating just fine but didn’t really know anyone yet, hadn’t had the time to make acquaintances.
She said, “Tell me about yourself, Bernard.”
He told her he was a deed researcher for the county. That seemed to be about it. He couldn’t stop smiling at her.
Two sandwiches and a shared Pepsi later, they were in his apartment, where he had a bed that pulled down from the wall.
He had to move a chair and the coffee table to make room for it.
“G-G-G-God,” he said when he went off into his poke, holding her, breathing into her neck.
It turned out he was an excellent person to have second sex with.
Third and fourth sex too. With him, it dawned on her why people had sex: because it was—or could be—extremely fun.
A month later, she was going on dates with a sheet music salesman she met on the streetcar, who took her to the theater and liked bubble baths.
She was going on dates with a high school English teacher who wanted to walk across Tibet and who was like a rabbit in bed, hopping from one part of her to another, a real thrill, but he sure could go on about Tibet.
Then there was the docent at the Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, who had an attic apartment with a nice view of the Citadel and wanted her to pound his buttocks with a tiny mallet he called a plum blossom.
He walked her through the museum, told her, with his hand on her bottom, about the work of the Impressionists and Cubists that caught her eye.
He also told her about the free drawing classes the museum offered, and she signed up for one the next day.
And throughout those initial months in Columbus, there was Bernard, who never asked her on a proper date but called from the pay phone near the lodging house every other weekend and invited her to share a walk and a sandwich and his Murphy bed.
She always said yes, and he, when climaxing, always said, “G-G-G-God.”
She enjoyed all the contact, had her first orgasm with another person (Bernard), and forged an appreciation for sex that cast new light on the adult world she’d seen in the movies.
Nothing progressed with these men, but that was okay.
She couldn’t imagine any of them as husbands.
Bernard came the closest, but she suspected there was someone else he saw on the alternate weekends because he was never available.
This is the department store I told you about, she wrote on a postcard to Lydia. It’s very beautiful inside. I’m working hard at the cafeteria and dating—nice men only! I like it here. I miss you. When you didn’t want to say too much or explain anything, postcards were just the ticket.
—
In October of 1936, she was in line to clock out at Anton’s when Dotty asked if she wanted to go bowling.
Margaret said she didn’t bowl, and Dotty laughed and said she didn’t either, but she had a fellow waiting for her, and that fellow had another fellow with him.
If Margaret didn’t have anything better to do, why not come along?
Margaret had just changed out of her uniform and back into her cerulean skirt and lavender sweater. Did she look date-worthy? Dotty thought so, but offered her a tangerine scarf from her locker if she wanted it, it would look so cute with her hair. Margaret tied the scarf around her neck.