The Dressmaker (25 page)

Pinky slung the market basket over her shoulder and began to tiptoe out of the apartment, ignoring the unwashed dishes. Nothing was noisier than the clatter of dishes being washed. He was asleep, and she wanted to get out before he woke again. She didn’t want any more demands this morning. She had shaved him earlier, a routine he
usually enjoyed, but not today. So okay, some days were better than others. She was getting tired of telling herself that.

“Where the hell are you going?” he yelled from the bedroom.

“Out to the market. It’s Sunday, remember? I’ll get some fruit, some bananas? You like those. I’ll get the papers, too.”

“Come here, Pinky.”

Damn. Pinky put down the basket and walked into her father’s bedroom. She felt a thud in her heart. He looked so ashen.

“They don’t pay you much, do they.” It wasn’t a question.

“Oh, it’s all right.”

“You can’t kid me—I heard you bargaining over money with that fat excuse for a nurse last night.”

She smiled in spite of herself. “Maybe you can talk her into losing weight, then she won’t need so much money.”

“Very funny.” His voice was raspy but gentle. “When are they going to give you a raise?”

Her own question, of course. “I’m getting some good stories, and next week I’m covering the suffragist parade. I’ll get one soon. They need me.”

“Don’t believe your own press notices. Big mistake.”

There it was again, more advice on how to do her job. Pinky shifted her weight, edging back toward the door. “Look, I’ve got to go or all the best stuff will be picked over. Okay?”

He nodded. “Sarah—”

She stopped. He never called her Sarah.

“I’m sorry, kid.”

She almost went back to kiss him on the forehead. But she couldn’t trust the stinging in her eyes.

Tess saw Pinky first. Chatting with a vendor, her hair blowing across her face, looking as totally comfortable in this market, with its colorful awnings and boxes of lettuce and peaches and children playing around the skirts of their mothers, as she did at the hearings. Looking
benign and cheery, as if she weren’t out to destroy lives and reputations. Tess started to turn away.

Too late. “Tess?” Pinky was approaching. “So Lady Duff gave you a day off? You’ve come to a great Sunday market.” Her voice was relaxed but tentative. She was braced.

“Why did you do it?” Tess hadn’t known what she would say the next time they met, but there it was.

Pinky started. “What?” she said.

“
Cowardly
baronet?
Bribing
the sailors to go back? It’s not true.”

“I didn’t make it up,” Pinky said quickly, taken aback.

“But you took somebody’s word for it. Somebody who didn’t have the character to put his name behind his charges. Who was it?”

“Look, Tess, I don’t like being attacked. I had sources from the ship—”

“A sailor?” Tess said, dismayed.

“Yes, if you have to know.”

“Not Jim Bonney.” Please, not Jim Bonney.

“You mean the sailor who’s sweet on you? The one who carved that lifeboat of yours you weren’t hanging on to too tightly?”

It was Tess’s turn to be taken aback. “Yes,” she said.

“Well, you’re some friend. And I don’t have to tell you anything.” It was her day off. She needed fruit and vegetables for dinner; maybe she would make a stew for her father. He loved onions; she hated them. She didn’t have to stand here and be attacked.

“All you want to do is get a good story. You don’t care about ruining lives.”

Pinky slammed her basket down on the ground, ignoring the glances from shoppers around her. She was too tired for diplomacy. “All
you
want to do is be like those self-involved, self-satisfied people you work for, looking down their noses at everyone else. So I’m wrong? What’s your story? Do you know what happened in that boat?”

“You’re not pulling me into that. No, I wasn’t there, but Lucile swears that nothing bad happened.” She was having trouble catching her breath. “Why do you hate them? You’ve got a privileged life
yourself. Look at the freedom you have! You have so much power. Why don’t you use it more kindly?”

“What do you think America is?” Pinky said with mystification. “Some Nirvana where everybody is as rich as the Duff Gordons? So you come here and eat off a table filled with crystal and china the very first night and you think that’s what it’s all about? And that people should be free to ignore or harm other people if they can get away with it? And then you get mad at me, when I’m just trying to tell the truth?”

“You throw out one self-righteous pronouncement after another. And I don’t think you care about the truth.”

“Look, I work hard to find out things and I try to be a good reporter. You’re the one who’s self-righteous. Are you absolutely positive the Duff Gordons
weren’t
trying to bribe the sailors not to go back?”

Tess responded as slowly and calmly as she could. “They gave the crewmen money, but not as a bribe—it was to
thank
and
help
them. Why is that so hard for you to believe? Why does this make them bad people?”

“Tess, loyalty can make you blind.”

“So can running after headlines.”

“Could you be wrong?”

“Could you?”

They stared at each other. Pinky took charge of what came next.

“So I’m privileged—want to see where I live?” She reached out and grabbed Tess’s hand. Market forgotten, Tess allowed herself to be marched down the street, turning finally onto a narrow, twisted road lined with shabby walk-ups. Pungent smells wafted from the windows, cabbage and stew meat and onions; children cried and dogs barked. Lines of laundry between the buildings flapped in a gentle wind. Pinky pointed upward.

“Fourth floor. With my father. He’s sick. No pension. Not that anybody else should care. How’s that for a self-righteous pronouncement?”

Tess stood silent for a moment.

“Are you saying you’re poor? Is that it?”

“I’m saying I have a great job that doesn’t pay a lot of money, and it gets frustrating. Especially”—Pinky took a deep breath and tried to speak calmly—“when I’m told I am both privileged and self-righteous.”

“From my perspective, you are”—Tess took a deep breath of her own. “Some of both.”

“Maybe I am. I see people shoved into institutions and left to die by the rich people who attend balls and don’t give a fig for anybody other than themselves.”

There was no use ramming her head against such absolutes. “Can’t you look at the good things, too? Lady Duff Gordon employs people and pays them decently and … treats them well.” She blushed at her own exaggeration. “Doesn’t that count for something with you?”

“You Brits, with your titles,” Pinky retorted. “She’s doing what works for her.”

“She isn’t a terrible person, Pinky.”

“Okay, but I know what I believe. I think you’re trying too hard to please that woman, and her kind can’t be pleased.”

“She could have left me on my own after we got here, but she didn’t. Do you know how important that is to someone like me?”

“You don’t have to bow too deeply, Tess.”

The words stung. “I don’t understand why you use your power the way you do.”

“I try to fight a few battles that get attention. And I try to change things a little. But I get riled, because I can’t change things a lot.”

They stood again in silence for a few moments.

“I might as well tell you,” Pinky said reluctantly. “I got my story about what happened in your lifeboat from a sailor named Tom Sullivan. Creepy guy, but he was there.”

Tess felt a wash of relief. It wasn’t Jim. “How can you trust him?”

“He didn’t get the amount of money he thought he would get from Lady Duff, so he’s mad. They got stingy on the payout. Works for me.”

“Can you possibly admit that you might be wrong?”

“Only if she denies it under oath. Even then, I’m not so sure. Why did you think Bonney was my source?”

At that moment, a boy in a green cap weaved past on a wobbly bicycle, forcing them both to step aside. Tess was grateful for the time to frame her reply. “I didn’t think it. I feared it,” she said slowly. “Do you understand?”

“Oh, sure.” Pinky mentally scored one for her instincts yesterday, but it didn’t give much satisfaction. “What do you say we go back to the outdoor market? I can introduce you to the best apples you’ll ever taste,” she said, a touch of cheer back in her voice.

Tess started to shake her head.

“I’m not a bad sort,” Pinky said quickly. “I like you. You’ll do all right here, Tess.”

It was the same thing Jim had said. “I’m not sure how to think of you. Whether I should be wary of you or think of you as a friend.”

A friend. Pinky liked that. “I do my job. Nobody likes reporters.”

“You are too sure of yourselves.”

“Unlike Lady Duff?”

Tess was silent.

Pinky sighed. “Okay, would it help if I told you that my father thinks I’m a raging harpy sometimes?”

Tess couldn’t help smiling. “I guess it does. For now, anyway.”

Silently, in mutual consent, they walked back the way they had come. Soon the brilliant awnings and overflowing carts of the outdoor market came into view. Tess shaded her face from the sun, comforted by its warmth, thinking of Jim. She felt her spirit relax. For one day, surely, it was all right.

The sun was high when Tess made her way back from the outdoor market to the Waldorf, a small basket of apples under her arm. Pinky had done much of the talking as they wandered the stalls together, chattering away about New York, offering advice on where to buy
cheap shirtwaists and the best places to buy decent tea. There was going to be a suffrage march starting from Washington Square in a few days, she said, a big one, the biggest yet, and it was the kind of story she loved covering, because it was about oppression and women’s rights. The leader would be a woman mounted on a white horse. A splendid, huge white horse. There would be banners and babies and even men—a few, anyway. What kind of existence did women lead anyhow, all trussed up in corsets and suffering through childbirth while their husbands spent nights in brothels? Marriage was a trap.

It all flowed out so passionately. There were suffragists in England; Tess had read about them, even seen them marching once, carrying banners they waved back and forth. But it was always something that happened far away. Suffragists? Women declaring independence? They were strangers, from some privileged planet. Women with the time and the energy to do something besides change bed linens and clean toilets.

“Well, they won you the vote, didn’t they?” Pinky said.

“It did me no good. It took enough energy to fight off the son of my employer in Cherbourg. He figured he had license to grope.”

“You see? You had no power to stop him.”

“I don’t see how my being able to vote could have kept his hands where they belonged.”

Pinky looked at her with the impatience of a schoolteacher facing the slowest of pupils. “It might have meant you had a voice and could influence the politicians who want to stay in power enough so maybe someday there would be a law sending gropers like that to jail.”

“I would love to see that day.”

“Then come to the march. I’ll tell you a secret,” Pinky said.

“A secret?”

“It’s just the most exciting thing. I’m covering the march, and they’ve agreed to let me ride the white horse before the march begins. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.” Pinky spoke with the reverence of an acolyte.

“You can ride?”

“Of course.” She laughed. “You know one of the best things?

Women gathering, marching, doing anything together makes a lot of men go crazy. They yell and scream and taunt and shake their fists. You know why? They’re scared. They’re scared we’ll actually gain power and force them to change.” Her eyes brightened with the mischievousness of a child. “That’s fun to watch.”

“I know men like that,” Tess said. It hadn’t taken much for the officer on the
Titanic
to blame her for a man’s clumsiness. And she was used to it—would that horrify Pinky? Probably. It felt good to be walking along, talking about women and voting and power and white horses. And oh, the sun felt so good on her skin. Pinky was chattering away about her next
Titanic
story as Tess only half listened. It was all quite peaceful.