Music to my ears. I hung up my costume and pulled on my clothes. I’d been careful to keep quiet during the week. I wanted to see how things worked. Everybody called the owner Mr. D, for Dawber, which almost sounded friendly, but everyone was terrified of him. If he saw a problem, he’d tap his pinky ring against the table and someone would come running. The day before, I’d seen him throw a cabbage head at a waiter.
But Ted Roper was in charge of the Lido Dolls, of our hair and our makeup and the way we walked and even the way we smiled. “Lick your lips and show some TEETH!” he’d yell in rehearsals.
By the time I said good night to the manager, Joe, it was after three in the morning. I hadn’t been paid yet, so I couldn’t afford a taxi. The blocks stretched ahead of me and I couldn’t believe how tired I was.
But after a while I got into the rhythm of it. The streets were quiet, gray and silver, and the sky was like a pearl. My footsteps echoed down a river of bluestone. Every once in a while I’d see a light in a house or apartment, and I’d wonder if someone was awake, reading, or rocking a baby.
I rounded the corner, fumbling for my key. Under the awning the door swung open and Hank and an older woman in a robe and slippers walked out. She must have been his mother. They both gaped at me.
“Hi,” he said.
“Morning,” I said. I was at my private entrance now, key in my hand. Hank’s mother was frowning, her face tight as she took me in. I was still wearing my makeup from the show, powder and dark red lipstick and mascara. I could suddenly feel my eyelashes, thick and curled like a cartoon cow’s. Just what did she think I was?
I turned my back on her, feeling the snub in my shoulder blades. I opened the door, went in, and slammed it shut. Hard.
I tossed my coat and went straight to the bathroom. I creamed off the makeup, scrubbing hard. Wriggled out of my skirt and stockings and left them on the floor as I fell into bed in my slip. No. I didn’t owe anybody anything. I wouldn’t accept disapproval like that, ever again. I’d been there before.
Seven
Providence, Rhode Island
November 1949
Love had entered my life like a thunderclap, but it didn’t knock me off my feet. I was too busy for that. I wasn’t like other girls, with time on their hands to be dreamy-eyed when they discussed their Joes or Mikes or Mannys. I didn’t shriek, “Turn it up!” when “Forever and Ever” came on the radio. Billy just became part of my days, woven into the time between school and my job at the luncheonette on South Main. Providence was a small enough city that he could walk me to my dance lesson downtown and then walk back to the East Side in time for his own class at Brown. After school he’d sit studying at a table while I kept him supplied with cheeseburgers and soup and sodas and cups of coffee. On Sundays we’d take off, often with Jamie, to find parks and beaches, stretches of sand and grass where we could be alone and feel as away as it got in Rhode Island. Billy always had his camera and Jamie his sketchbook, but I’d just lie back and dream.
When I emerged from school and he was waiting in his car, I didn’t linger, drawing out the moment so that the other girls could see that I, only a junior, was dating a college man. I didn’t draw hearts in my notebooks. The first time he told me he loved me, I didn’t swoon. I laughed.
It was November. We said good-bye right by my front door. He turned and jumped off the porch onto the sidewalk. I was about to open the door when he turned back and called to me.
“Hey, Kit! I love you, too.”
I walked over to the railing and leaned over. “What do you mean, ‘I love you, too'?” I asked. “I didn’t say I love you.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I was not.”
A slow grin started on his face. “Fink.”
“Snake.”
He walked slowly back toward the porch. I walked down a step and stopped. When he came up the stairs he stayed on the third step