The Chaperone (17 page)

Yet Cora couldn’t believe all standards were truly so ephemeral. And how far would these new fashions go? Where would it end? Would women be expected, in a few more years, to walk around with their thighs and midriffs showing or risk being called a prude? Or maybe women wouldn’t be clothed at all? They would just wear makeup and underwear. All for the sake of being modern? How would you tell if a particular woman was of a certain profession if all women started dressing the part?

She turned to Louise, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Even if wearing paint is more common now, I still think it looks tawdry. And many people agree.”

“You just said they looked ele—”

“By elegant I meant wealthy. But wealthy or not, obvious paint makes a woman look desperate. Everyone knows that. A woman wearing rouge might as well put a sign around her saying, ‘Hello. I’m really trying to be attractive.’”

“What’s wrong with trying to look pretty?”

“It’s not about trying to look pretty, Louise. You look perfectly pretty right now, a soap-and-water girl, fresh-faced. You’re prettier than any of them.”

“I know
that
.”

“I mean the paint. Women wearing that much paint just look…” She glanced over each of her shoulders. “Available.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

Cora looked away. She would not be roped into another ridiculous argument over something so obvious. Louise just liked to fight, to bounce back every answer like a ball off a stoop. Cora wished she could take the girl down to Fifteenth Street and let her go head-to-head with Sister Delores to see who would get the last word. She didn’t think Louise would make any more headway than she had, but just imagining the two forces in full combat was entertaining.

“I wish we had better seats,” Louise said.

Cora turned back to her, grateful. It wasn’t much of an olive branch, but she had at least tried a subject they could agree on.

“I do, too. My neck hurts from trying to see around that balcony support. We’ll get tickets earlier from now on.” She’d had no idea the show would be nearly sold out on a weeknight, especially in such a big theater. “I saw a few empty seats that were closer. We could try to move up.”

Louise wrinkled her nose. “How will we know if the seat belongs to someone just getting back late? People could come back for their seats after the show is started, and we’ll have to move. How embarrassing.” She scowled out at the crowd. “I have a better idea. I’ll be right back.”

She was already walking away. Cora had to pull her back by her elbow.

“Where are you going?”

She looked down, clearly offended, at Cora’s hand on her elbow. Cora didn’t let go.

“I’m going to talk to an usher.” She lowered her voice to a hostile whisper. “Cora, it’s true he’ll likely be male. But neither of your prior objections to me talking with a man holds up in this case. One, we aren’t in Wichita, nor are we surrounded by Wichitans. We are surrounded by strangers who cannot affect my reputation back home. Two, we are in a crowded foyer of a theater, and you, my watchful chaperone, will only be about twenty feet away, making it difficult, even for me, to be assaulted.”

With that, she twisted her arm so her elbow moved out of Cora’s hand. “Give me three minutes.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “If you do, it won’t work as well.”

From where Cora stood, she could see two ushers, each man standing by an exit. They wore the same light gray coats and white shirts and black ties. Both men, oddly, were tall and very thin, though one didn’t look much older than Louise, and the other was at least Cora’s age. Louise stood between them for a moment, looking at one, and then the other, before she made her way through the crowd to the older man. When she reached him, she kept her hands laced behind her back, twisting her body back and forth a little. Cora watched as the man leaned down to better hear her voice. His face was kind, but he shook his head no. Louise gestured toward the auditorium, the same hand then grazing her hair, then touching her bare shoulder. The man touched his ear and shook his head. Louise stood on tiptoe, her heels just leaving the floor, her hand balanced on his arm.

Cora moved as quickly as she could, excusing herself as she cut through the crowd, her gaze angry and hard on the back of the girl’s head. But she was only halfway across the foyer when Louise turned around and pointed her out to the usher. The usher glanced at her, and nodded before smiling back down at Louise. Louise stepped away from him, turning back to Cora with a smile.

She looked like a child. It was something in her face, an easy, naive pleasure in her smile, with no sign of the strong will or cynicism that Cora had come to know in her. It was so strange, the way she seemed to be able to change from younger than she was to older than she was, then back again, with so much ease. Had the usher, with his small authority, brought the little girl out in her? Or had she brought out the look of a girl like a trusted tool before he even spoke a word?

“Louise,” Cora said sharply.

“Cora!” She was still smiling, but the sharpness returned to her eyes. “So glad you found me.” She looked back over her shoulder and said something to the usher as Cora took her by the arm. “For a minute there I felt like an unleashed dog.”

“Do we need to go home?” Cora hissed, steering her back across the foyer.

“Home?” Louise looked at her with wide eyes. “You mean the apartment? Or are you threatening Kansas again?”

“Stop it.”

“I don’t see why we should consider either.” She leaned in. “Especially because my new friend said when the lights start to flicker, we can follow him to our box seats.”

Cora stopped walking and stared.

“I know.” Louise shrugged. “Certainly not my first choice. Mother says box seats are for people who want to be seen at the theater, not for people who want to see theater. But they’ll be a lot better than the back row of the mezzanine.”

“Louise, did you make some kind of
arrangement
with that man?”

“Don’t be revolting. I just asked him nicely. That’s all most men really want.”

Cora gave her a wary look. But she wasn’t sure what to do. Really, maybe Louise hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d gotten what she wanted, with no real risk or harm. No sense in faulting her for her confidence and the generosity of ushers. Maybe she, Cora, was the one with the crass mind, an old Mrs. Grundy harping on the young, seeing sin and scandal at every turn.

“You can thank me later,” Louise said, the black eyes gazing up as the lights began to flicker. “Next time, if you want orchestra seating, you might let me wear a little rouge.”

She wasn’t anxious
so much as silently frenzied, as if she’d had too much tea, or sugar, her mind alert and focused, even in the midday heat. For almost twenty minutes, she’d been waiting under the shade of a striped awning outside a drugstore. Her watch was back at the apartment, along with her pearl earrings and wedding ring, but if she turned and looked through the window of the drugstore, she could see the clock over the counter, next to a picture of the Holy Virgin and an advertisement for Juicy Fruit gum. She was a block away from the orphanage. In three minutes, she would start walking.

It had rained that morning. She’d used an umbrella when she walked Louise to class, and by the time she returned to the apartment alone, her hair was still more or less dry under her hat, but her curls, enlivened by the humidity, had begun a wild mutiny, with several strands springing free of her hairpins and making her reflection in the bathroom mirror appear, as she saw it, a little deranged. She’d redone her hair, pulling it up into a new and tighter twist, though a few frizzy strands had again broken rank during the miserable subway ride.

She looked back at the drugstore’s clock again. At exactly half past noon, she started walking. She’d thought it all through the night before, lying awake in bed, Louise asleep beside her. If she had miscalculated, if Sister Delores or another nun answered the door, she could say she was missing her parasol, and just wondering if, the other day, she had left it behind. She told herself this, rehearsed saying it, even as she walked down Fifteenth Street, even as she climbed the steps to knock.

The handyman opened the door, wearing the same pair of overalls. Or a different pair. They looked clean.

“I’m sorry,” he said, no sign of friendliness. “The sisters have Mass. Every day at this time.”

She stepped away, and had to turn quickly to check the stairs behind her. He was German. She hadn’t realized before—he’d said so little. But now she was almost certain. During the war, there were vaudeville skits about the Kaiser, usually some jokester with a fake curling mustache, marching around and yelling with an accent until he got a pie in the face.

“Oh,” she said. “May I wait again?”

He nodded.

“Thank you,” she said, her smile as friendly as any Ziegfeld girl’s.

He stepped aside, gesturing into the entry. He was only a little taller than she was, though his shoulders were broad, his forearms thick. She moved past him, waiting as he closed and locked the door. Upstairs, the girls were singing, the piano playing along.

He led her down the hallway, keys jangling from a side loop on the overalls. Her gaze focused on the balding back of his head, the blond hair cut short at the sides.

“It was a nice rain we had this morning, wasn’t it?” she asked. “So refreshing.”

He barely looked over his shoulder, but he nodded. She followed him through the kitchen into the dining room. Three of the long tables were as clean and bare as they’d been the other day, but the table in the far corner was covered by a white oilcloth, and on top of that sat a mahogany box about a foot high, surrounded by tools and screws.

“You would like some water?”

“Oh! Oh yes! Thank you.” She continued to smile. “You were so thoughtful the other day, and today, too, of course. Offering water again, I mean.”

He gave her an odd look before moving back into the kitchen. She touched her hair beneath the brim of her hat. She was talking too quickly, perhaps. Maybe his English wasn’t so good. She turned, looking out the cross-barred windows as she unbuttoned her gloves. There was no point in thinking of Alan.

He didn’t always think of her.

“Sorry for the mess,” the German said, handing her the water. “I am working on something.”

“Thank you so much.” She took the glass and walked over to the far table, moving lightly, like Louise, she hoped. She didn’t have to be herself. She could be anyone. She would never see this man again. “Your mess looks interesting. What is it?”

“Well,” he said, following, “it was a radio.”

She looked at the box, which she now saw was missing its front panel, an interior of black wires and clear tubes exposed. The front panel, with one of the glass dials shattered, lay flat on the table. But she recognized it as the same model that Alan had showed her in a hardware store just before she left. He was going to decide between it and another model while she was gone. She would love having a radio, he said. Wichita’s new station was still mostly broadcasting crop prices and weather reports, but they were going to add in more music and lectures, things she would be interested in.

She touched a finger to the shattered dial. “What happened to it?”

“It was going on or coming off a ship. I don’t know which. Someone dropped it, and it broke, and they throw it away.” He stood beside her, looking down at the radio, his arms crossed in front of his chest. “My friend told me, and I went to get it.”

“Oh. Are you good at fixing things?”

“Sometimes.” He looked at her again, his eyes small and green behind the spectacles. She smiled, and with her free hand, touched her shoulder. She had worn her only short-sleeved dress.

“What are you hoping to listen to?”

He gave her another odd look. His thinning hair, she saw, made him look older than he was, at least from far away. He was around her age, with only a few lines around his eyes. “For the girls,” he said, pointing at the ceiling. “For them to listen.”

“That’s so nice of you!”

He didn’t have to keep looking at her like that. She was just making conversation. She took a sip of water. She was fine. There were nuns and children upstairs. If he misunderstood, if he was a bad man, she could scream for help.

“You are not from here?”

She shook her head. “I’m from Kansas.” She paused. “It’s in the middle of the country. West of the Missouri River.”

He smiled. “Yes. I know.” He pointed to his own mouth. “I could tell you are not from here from how you talk.”

She nodded, looking back at the radio. She wouldn’t think he would want to bring up accents and places of origin. “How will so many girls share the headset?” she asked. “They’ll have to take turns.”

“No. They can use a horn, as with a phonograph.” He pointed to the horn on the oilcloth. “They will all be able to hear together.”

“Wonderful!” She continued to smile. It was hard to touch her hair, since she was wearing a hat, but she did her best. “You’ve really figured this out!”

He shrugged, blinking at her from behind his spectacles. “You are being much nicer than you were the other day.”

She had to think to continue to smile. Perhaps in New York, or in Germany, this kind of frankness was not considered rude. She set down her water glass.

“Yes,” she said carefully. “I was short with you the other day. I thought about it, and I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you I was sorry. I was just upset. I was very upset.”

He nodded, meeting her gaze. “It’s fine.”

“You see, I came a long way, all the way from Kansas, to find my records. And I think that they’re in this building. But the sisters don’t think I should see them.” She lowered her head, raising her eyes to look up at him. “I think I should decide that for myself. I’m an adult, after all. Isn’t that right?” She swallowed, still trying to smile.

She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He stared back at her, his face neutral. Perhaps he was not intelligent. The spectacles gave him the look of a scholar, but he was just a handyman. In any case, she didn’t have much more time. Thinking too much, she decided, was the enemy of confidence.