Chapter Six #3
Dotty’s fellow was named Larry something, and he was nice but loud.
The other fellow was named Felix Salt. Like the shaker, he said.
Felix was twenty-five and as handsome as someone in a cigarette ad, tall, with a strong cleft chin, an aquiline nose, amber eyes, and raven hair that shined with pomade.
When he leaned in to shake her hand, he smelled of cinnamon and vanilla.
His Adam’s apple bore a recent nick that had been tended to with a styptic pencil.
The four of them got shoes, and when the women took their turns at the lane the men instructed them, which was funny and broke the ice.
Felix bowled well—not that that mattered, but it was nice to watch his athletic frame deliver the ball to its mark.
In caramel-colored trousers, no less, and a red, blue, and gold plaid shirt that seemed tailored for his broad shoulders.
She found it hard not to look at him. He’d gone to college in Akron and had studied business and minored in engineering, he told her.
He’d been engaged once for six months to a woman named Helen, and they’d seemed like a good fit, but she’d gotten cold feet and broken it off.
He’d been hired for product development by an aluminum plant in Akron not long out of college, and within a year he’d been promoted and transferred to the Columbus home office.
He didn’t design products or engineer anything now, he said; he was a junior executive who oversaw the production of girders and rebar—two items that were seeing an increase in demand, thanks to the WPA.
He used to play a little football in college but not anymore.
All of this Margaret learned while he blinked his dark lashes at her and bowled a 195.
At the end of the evening, he asked if he could take her out sometime for a piece of pecan pie at the Waldo Hotel restaurant.
She accepted that very specific offer and was surprised when “sometime” didn’t turn into right that minute.
Instead, he suggested the following Saturday.
They parted ways, and she held on to her formula of pie + hotel = sex.
He was, after all, the most attractive man she’d ever met.
And fun to be around. And sweet-seeming.
She was eager to get undressed with him.
But pie at the Waldo Hotel restaurant turned out to be just that, with ice cream on the side.
Followed by a walk in the chilly October air.
Felix was extremely pleasant but also a little formal and nervous on that first official date.
Still, she enjoyed being with him. She said yes when he asked her out on a second date a week later.
And yes the third time he asked, a week after that.
—
They graduated from pecan pie to whole meals, and over a series of dates they made their way through his favorite restaurants.
They bundled up, darted from place to place to stay out of the cold, found themselves ducking on a regular basis into the cozy warmth of the Drexel and the Ohio Theatre.
They both enjoyed the W. C. Fields shorts, and Margaret pretended to like the Three Stooges the way Felix did (though she hated them so much she wanted to close her eyes and plug her ears while they were on the screen).
Dinner and a picture became one of their weekly dates that winter.
Pennies from Heaven, Born to Dance, The Bold Caballero.
She was prettier than those women in the movies, he told her on more than one occasion, and she loved that.
She couldn’t get over the fact that this gorgeous sweetheart of a man thought so highly of her—and didn’t seem to want anything from her except her company.
That was honorable of him, even while she thought, Come on, already, let’s go to bed!
He took her to a nightclub with dancing.
The musicians sat behind stands that matched the walls.
Margaret remembered some of the basic steps Lydia had taught her and discovered she had a knack for dancing.
Felix didn’t. Dancing with him was like walking a cabinet across the floor.
He seemed to enjoy himself, though, and she didn’t mind.
He was a model of propriety—that was a phrase she’d picked up from a movie somewhere along the way, and it fit him well.
Propriety signaled to her a seriousness she’d never encountered in a man before.
Even when he tried to be funny, he seemed serious.
It was like watching Gary Cooper trying to do a Red Skelton impression.
Before dinner one evening, he took her to the aluminum plant and showed her the display of casting molds in the front lobby, and the map of all the plant locations, and his office, where there hung a group photo of the Columbus executive team: twenty-six suited men, including Felix, all standing in a row outside the building with one of the founders, Lucian Tuck, in the center, bow-tied and spectacled.
At the beginning of each date, Felix waited for Margaret just inside the front entrance of the lodging house, catching coquettish glimpses from the other young women as they came and went, and even from the dour old tight-lip who sat at the front desk.
At the end of each date, he walked her home to the front of the building and, when saying good night, kissed her like people kissed on the silver screen: eyes closed, lips together.
He never asked if she was seeing anyone else.
It either didn’t occur to him, or he didn’t want to know.
As soon as dating other men began to feel wrong to her (which was about a month after she started seeing Felix), she dropped them.
Bernard was the last and the hardest to say goodbye to.
Whoever this guy was, he told her, he was lucky.
Margaret hoped so, and hoped the same could be said for her.
—
In December, they were strolling through the kaleidoscope of holiday decorations in Lazarus—the endless twists of garland, the oversize tree bulbs, and red-saddled white reindeer hanging suspended over their heads—when Felix, out of nowhere, asked about her family.
She’d already told him she’d grown up in Doyle.
Now, having thought about it more, she told him her parents had both died of influenza when she was a little girl and that she’d been raised by her aunt Lydia.
There was nothing fancy about the way she’d been brought up, she said; they didn’t have much, but they got by.
She ran her hands over a table of scarves, the smoothest wool she’d ever touched. “Tell me about Akron.”
“Cleveland. Akron’s where I went to school.”
“Tell me about Cleveland.”
He was no more forthcoming than she was. He’d been glad to get away, go to college. His parents, he said, still lived there and were “real doozies.” She was going to ask what he meant but saw a slight tremor run through his face—as if some memory had chivied him and he was resetting his thoughts.
Santa’s Workshop stood in the tiled intersection of aisles ahead of them, and Felix asked with a grin if she wanted to go see Santa.
“Oh, sure,” she said and hooked her arm around his, and he walked them to the end of the kiddie line.
She balked, thinking he would pull them right back out again, but he just looked around and pretended to whistle.
When one of the elves asked them where their child was, Felix said, “Around here somewhere,” and bumped his elbow against Margaret’s.
They got all the way to the front of the line and even managed to make eye contact with the bemused Santa before they broke into laughter and darted away.
Such fun! The Great Santa’s Workshop Infiltration, Felix was calling it before they were even out of the store.
—
In January of 1937, three months to the day after they’d met in the bowling alley, in the middle of that same intersection in Lazarus where Santa’s Workshop had stood, Felix got down on one knee and proposed. Ring and all.
A small emerald, from what she could tell, surrounded by tiny diamonds.
There were twenty or thirty other shoppers milling about the vicinity.
Did someone gasp? Maybe. Did she love him?
She didn’t look around to see how many people had noticed what was going on.
She was thrilled. She would describe this to Lydia in a postcard—how time seem to have stopped.
But did she love him? How could she? She hadn’t been to bed with him, hadn’t been passionate with him.
She liked him—very much. She liked everything about him that she knew, right down to his smell. But love?
No. She trusted him. She would trust him with her life, in fact. Who else besides Lydia could she say that about? Still, she didn’t love him. She didn’t even feel the spark with him that she’d felt with Bernard.
But couldn’t she grow into it? Just as she was growing into every other aspect in her life?
She felt another deal in the works—nothing like the one-off she’d made with the awful Mr. Higgs, something much more tender and significant.
Marry me, Felix seemed to be saying, and you’ll fall in love with me.
Marry me, and I’ll make you happy. Just marry me.
Maybe it really was that simple. If their intentions were in the right place, they would land in the right place.
She wasn’t even nineteen yet, after all. There was time.
She smiled and felt herself nod.
The salesman in Accessories had been leaning forward to listen, almost to the point of lying across the countertop. When he heard her response he sprang upright and announced, “She said yes!”
A few people clapped. Someone called out, “Can I kiss the bride?” and someone laughed.
Felix seemed to remember it then, the kissing part. He closed his eyes, leaned down, and planted his best one so far on her lips.
—