Chapter Two Judy
Chapter Two
Judy
“Judy Goodman.”
I steel my nerves and walk into my interview room—the one at the end of the hall. Three people sit at a table across from me, and I have the unsettling sensation that I am the defendant in a Perry Mason courtroom drama. I push the thought aside. I must remain strong. I cannot make mistakes.
I imagine a stack of books atop my head, just as Ronelle rehearsed with me. And when I sit in the chair they offer, I cross my ankles and sweep them to the side and fold my hands in my lap. The picture of effortless poise. I recall my application. The truths. The exaggerations. I read over my paperwork seven times before sending it in. I have to pretend to be confident even if I am far from it.
Smile. Show my teeth, but not my gums. Smooth down the fly-aways. Speak in a clear and calm manner. Strategically place my delicately manicured hands so that they’ll be seen. Nail biters are disqualified—a nervous stewardess makes for an anxious passenger.
In my purse, I have my birth certificate as the proof of citizenship they will require, as well as the transcript from the two years of college I completed before dropping out. My grades were top tier, my scholarship secured. I hope it’s enough to impress them.
I wonder how many of the girls completed their diplomas.
I feel the two women scrutinize me, though I cannot say that it is with unkindness. I know it’s their job to be meticulous. The good name of Pan American rests squarely on the slender shoulders of its stewardesses, and they need to determine if I am worthy and able to carry such a mantle.
One woman has hair so black it could only come out of a bottle, wrinkles on her skin revealing the age she’s trying to mask. The other is just a little older than myself and has the weary look of someone who is relieved that this is the last interview of the day.
I understand.
The third person is a man, different from the one I saw earlier. He is standing with his back leaned against the painted brick wall. Brown hair, light-brown shirt, dark-brown pants and shoes. I don’t need to look at his left hand to determine that he’s not married—if he is, his wife has no imagination when she purchases his clothes. But his uninspired attire does not hide the fact that he is quite nice looking. Square jaw, striking blue eyes. Like Sinatra.
I shouldn’t think these things. I shouldn’t notice those things.
I take a deep but imperceptible breath and remind myself that I am here for one reason and can’t give in to distractions.
The woman with the jet-black hair seems to be in charge.
“Name,” she says.
“Judy Goodman.”
True.
“Age.”
“Twenty-three, last week.”
True.
“Height.”
“Five foot five.”
True.
“Weight.”
“One hundred seventeen pounds.”
True.
“What language do you speak other than English?”
“French.”
True.
I am breathing with a little more ease. I can answer all these questions with honesty.
I have my father to thank for the French. He hailed from Montreal, a veteran of the First Canadian Army that went to Brest. He insisted on speaking his native language to me before I was even old enough to go to school. My mother encouraged it, ignoring admonitions from the women at church that we were no better than them. She’d lived under the shadow of their suspicion ever since she’d married an outsider . The gossips saw no use for French in Red Lion, Pennsylvania.
Corn would forever be corn . Not ma?s . A cow would forever be a cow . Not a vache .
Foreigner would forever bear a black mark, as étrangers were seldom embraced in the superstitious town. Locals didn’t even cross the Susquehanna River into the next county if they could avoid it.
But my father’s gift is now my salvation—Pan Am requires fluency in something besides English.
If only that was all they wanted.
“Marital status,” the woman continues, drawing me out from my memories.
A rock forms in my stomach, and I feel the acidity of bile well up. I don’t know if I can do this.
I was taught that lying is wrong.
I am careful to keep my voice steady. “Single.”
False.
I cover my left hand with my right, keeping my blush-pink nails visible. Although the wedding band with its splinter of a diamond grows cold in my coin purse, the indentation on my skin is noticeable to one looking for it. My heart beats faster, faster. It is my first deception, and I hope there won’t be the need for more.
“Have you ever flown before?”
My smile widens, stretching to the capacity of the muscles. “Yes. Several times out of Harrisburg.”
False. I don’t think this is a required experience, but I’m afraid to admit that I am such a novice. What would they say if I told them that the only airplanes I’d ever seen up close were the crop dusters on my cousin’s farm in Reading?
I don’t like this person I’ve had to become.
The man speaks up, looking at me for the first time. His Sinatra eyes are soft. Kind.
“Why do you want to be a Pan American stewardess?”
It’s the first question that isn’t merely a collection of facts that make up the biography of Judy Goodman. It’s one that seeks to know me .
I keep smiling, confident that weeks of rinsing with hydrogen peroxide have turned my teeth dazzlingly white.
“To see the world and to represent the good name of Pan American Airlines.”
True.
My heart slows down a bit. I think of the map I’ve had since childhood and all the pins I put in it as I learned about new places to explore. Blue for those of highest priority. Yellow for those of moderate interest. And white for those I’d rather skip.
There were very few white pins. I wanted to see it all.
I think of Frank Sinatra’s words that suggest that exotic adventures are within my reach. Far beyond the banks of the Susquehanna. Far beyond the box in the attic where that map is folded, hidden from sight.
I don’t know what the other girls before me have said, but I am certain that it is a variation on a theme. We are still caught in the shackles of a culture that limits our choices to teachers, nurses, or mothers, though there are cracks in that thinking that widen every day.
But the lure of being something else altogether is intoxicating. To do it in tropical locations and world capitals is positively heady.
I look at the faces across from me and see that my answer pleases the panel but does not surprise them.
What I do not tell them is this: if I don’t escape living under my husband’s roof, I fear that he will kill me.
The train ride home is nerve racking. Already, I have gotten up three times to use the lavatory, as if all the emotions that I held at bay liquefied at the first opportunity. I chose poorly in selecting a window seat—I’d looked forward to watching the scenery go by. But I’d clearly irritated my seatmate, and I promised that this would be the last time.
I hope it will not be my third lie of the day. I wouldn’t want to form a habit of it.
I look at my watch and pray that everything is on schedule.
Three and a half hours from Grand Central to Lancaster, then half an hour in a taxi back to Red Lion.
I’d been naive to think that the interviewers would make a decision on the spot. They said they’d notify applicants by letter within two weeks, which might as well be two centuries to me. It consumes me with a new anxiety: I will have to be vigilant in getting to the mailbox before Henry does.
Even if they do not accept me, the mere discovery that I’d applied will land me in heaps of trouble.
I shiver at the thought. I am exhausted by the end of each day, spent from having to consider every move, every thought, hoping that I don’t do or say something that angers him.
What will I be coming home to today?
If all goes as planned, Henry will not be back until several hours after my arrival, and I’ll have time to whip up the shepherd’s pie that he likes so much. The one with ground beef, plenty of carrots, no peas, chunky potatoes. He’s always in a better mood after that. I would make it every day if that was all it took to appease him, but he is not so easily tricked.
Ronelle cajoled her husband, Richard, into introducing himself to Henry and inviting him to his parents’ hunting cabin in the Poconos for a couple of nights. Cabin being a loose word for the elegant mountain house that she showed me in photographs. They boast an impressive whiskey collection and a trophy room lined with souvenirs from their shoots. Though I know little of such things, I’ve been told that their rifle collection alone is insured for twenty thousand dollars.
Guns and alcohol sound like an ill-advised combination, but Ronelle knew it was my only hope to keep Henry from discovering that I’d gone to New York for the day. He’d never resist an offer like that, no matter his feelings about the Rorbaughs. The scandal of their mixed marriage permeated the community despite it being perfectly legal in Pennsylvania. But a chance to pretend, even for a weekend, that he was more than the supervisor of a small-time concrete company in a small-time town was catnip to his big-time ego.
I don’t know what I’d do without Ronelle. We met four months ago when I was up early shoveling snow from the driveway so that Henry could leave for work on time. She invited me to her place for coffee, and I wanted nothing more than to say yes. A hot drink and the hope of making a friend. But I declined. My husband believed that other women would be bad influences on me, so until he met them and gave them the Henry Goodman Stamp of Approval, I was not allowed to visit beyond the outward pleasantries that were the basics of human interaction. Hellos at the mailbox and such trifles.
And under no circumstances would he condone my friendship with a woman who had dark-brown skin and the audacity to marry a good local boy . Local being a euphemism for a color he found acceptable. Not that he’d come out and say it that way. And not taking into consideration that being from the adjacent town of Shrewsbury, Ronelle was certainly local by any reasonable definition.
But Ronelle, I came to learn, was not made of convention or passivity or demureness, and her searing sense of justice had bolstered me ever since that day when I took the first step toward thinking for myself.
The last time I’d acted on my own accord was when I spoke those vows— I do .
I was hopeful that the merits of this time would undo the mistakes of the last.
It had to.
Maybe it was the full moon or the bone-deep cold of that Pennsylvania morning, but something snapped in me that snowy day. Once the taillights of Henry’s Chevy had disappeared, I trudged over to Ronelle’s house through the knee-high drifts and rang her doorbell with gusto. I didn’t take the normal precautions to hide the bruises on my arms as I removed my jacket. And when Ronelle saw them, I didn’t make up a story about where they’d come from. If she was meant to be a friend, she would have to see my life for what it was. And if she was one of those women who would defend the husband come hell or high water, then that wasn’t a relationship I wanted.
She turned out to be the former.
Oh, God, did she ever.
It was a lot to reveal on the first day of knowing someone, but it also sped us past the do-you-have-children-are-you-from-here-what-are-your-hobbies stage and thrust us into the kind of meaningful friendship that usually takes years to cultivate.
Ronelle Rorbaugh loves a cause, and I became her newest one.
By lunchtime, it felt as if we’d known each other forever, and she’d talked me into something I would have never had the courage to do on my own: leave my lamentable marriage.