just before their first anniversary, and I was fit to bursting with happiness for them! And with the amount of advice I have to offer, having raised six of my own alongside Fred? The poor young dear simply peppered me with questions.”
She removes her jewelry, puts it carefully in her handbag, and sniffs as she locks the satchel, placing it behind her pillow. The lengths I go to ignore her are positively transcontinental.
“You’re such a comfort, you know, Miss James. Forgive me for being this direct, but so many young women have abandoned the ideals of motherhood and child-rearing. Anyhow, I wanted to tell you that I trust in you, truly, to find a proper mate. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, dear, being a tad plain, a bit forgettable. That requires moral courage, you know, and someday the right man will take notice. Just you trust in God and in His timing.”
The genuine smile that pools over my face pleases her. I’m recalling sitting at the Tobacco Club with Mr. Salvatici, wearing a House of Worth gown. It plunged in great V’s down my chest and my back, neckline bordered in a thick stripe of golden beadwork that made my carefully curled hair gleam like Broadway at midnight. The loose bodice fell in pale sea-breeze greens and blues, dripping sequined bubbles into an underskirt of aqua tulle, and when I threw back my head and laughed from heavily rouged lips, only six or seven hundred people that night looked at me at all.
If I’d wanted to get storked, I could have done it when I was seventeen. I wear a rubber womb veil, thank you—all the fast girls do, and the careless ones have been more than once to the lady doctor who solves their problems. She takes a vacation every Christmas to shore up her energies for the post–New Year’s stampede. No kidding. A lot has changed since the War. Since Prohibition.
Since six days ago.
If I must die, let it be in a city. Nobody dead nowhere is too much punishment. So let it be in Portland, I decide, wondering how far I can make it until dissolving into ocean foam like some mermaids of note who weren’t loved in return either.
* * *
—
When we arrive, it’s still dark.
Clash-ring. Grate-scrape. Whistle blast.
Now my head is pounding, and I dread what happens next with all that’s left of my heart.
Here’s mud in your eye.
Sitting up, I use my arms mainly, and I don’t shriek over the sensation. Markedly unpleasant though it is.
“Well, you simply must contact me when you’re feeling better, Miss James,” Mrs. Snider fusses. “I think we could be great friends despite the difference in our ages. My husband, Fred, is a member of the Arlington Club, and you seem of such good stock, I imagine he must know your parents already. Which is their congregation?”
“Oh . . . my parents are poor farmers some sixty miles outside the city. I send them whatever I can from my own income as a music teacher. In fact, I’m still very new to Portland. I miss them, and the farm, just . . . just terribly.”
When she raises her eyebrows, it’s as if a cardboard box lifted its lid. “You dear, sweet soul. Please look me up—the right connections mean everything. And there are a great many young bachelor gentlemen of our acquaintance with sober and pleasing ways! Here is my card—”
As I’m taking it, resenting the extra weight of carrying so much as her printed name, a polite knock sounds.
By now my pulse is too feeble to blaze up into genuine panic and gives a flicker of dismay instead. But it’s Max again. He’s wearing a chocolate-brown hat that suits his lighter complexion and a beige trench that matches the pale leather of his luggage. His eyes dart, identify the olive coat I’d hung and forgotten, and he snatches it up, draping it respectfully over my shoulders.
Mrs. Snider looks as if someone just slapped her on the ass. It’s dreadfully unfair I haven’t the energy to be amused.
“Aw, Miss James, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this here favor you’re doing me.” Max’s grin is blinding. “You’re a model Christian, I tells you. I’ll carry your bags like they was my own firstborn.”
“You—I—whatever is the meaning of this, George?” Mrs. Snider splutters.
Max whisks off his hat and rests it over his heart. “It’s like this, see. I was looking sorta down as we passed in the